#tdp transcripts

[raayllum]

Transcript of Aaron Ehasz Interview (Sept 2024)

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R: Alright so welcome back to the Wordswithdragons podcast, and today I’m joined by a very special guest, the co-creator of The Dragon Prince, Aaron Ehasz. 

A: Hello, thank you for having me today. Glad to be here.

R: Thank you so much for being here. Um, yeah, so, as we semi touched on, it is the 6 year anniversary of The Dragon Prince this September 14th.

A: Yeah.

R: Do you have any thoughts, reflections, feelings about the show having gone on for this long and being such a big part of people’s lives?

A: I mean for starters, it’s really hard to believe it’s been on for six years. Like that seems insane to me. Cause it seemed like we had — Justin and I had been working on it for so long before it finally came out because we had worked on the story and then gotten feedback, and help in improving that pitch and bringing it out and we had it set up at Netflix, and we had to — we wrote the pilot obviously, and we didn’t know where we were gonna produce it, and found Bardel. So there was so much time between even just starting to think about it and when it came out.

R: Yeah, cause that was like 2015, right?

A: Yeah, I guess we started the journey in 2015 and we got with Bardel by the end of 2016, and it got released evidently in 2018, so... Yeah, yeah, cause I remember even we were writing kind of the end of season 3 when we had that panel with Marco and named the character after Marco.

R: Oh yeah.

A: The character [chuckles] from the first episode, we only had an opportunity for him to say his name out loud in that last episode because we were writing the ending while we were showing the episodes for first time, so. Anyway, that’s my reflection, it’s great it’s been six years.

R: Yeah. I know The Dragon Prince has been a really like — both life changing and I think, like, life affirming experience for a lot of people, myself included. So we just really appreciate everybody’s hard work on the show and are very excited for season 7 and hopefully beyond as well. As well for any future projects that Wonderstorm comes out with, like Bonders sounds amazing.

A: I feel — well first of all, thank you for saying that it’s life affirming, that’s such a nice thing to hear about something you’ve worked on, but I also agree that Justin and I feel a ton of gratitude for the whole team and the work and heart that everyone put into making this. I think people wanted it to be meaningful and special and that takes a certain kind of energy and vulnerability to build something like that, that you share, and our whole team really did give that in building the show.

R: Yeah. I think for sure. I think that’s like, um, I was even — I was rewatching some of the show earlier for — for a parallel, and it was the scene between Avizandum and Zubeia when she goes to him in like her kind of corruption dream semi-nightmare, and obviously that’s such a heartfelt, touching scene, and it’s always so strange. Because on the one hand, you should hate Avizandum, he killed Sarai and Rex Igneous has rightful criticism of him, but then you watch that scene of him and he really did love his family, so I think the show being able to draw out those strong, conflicting emotions for so many of the characters is one of the reasons why it connects with people to the degree that it does.

A: And that’s one of the themes you probably see in the show — just gonna make a quick —

R: Yeah, yeah for sure. 

A: Avizandum, which is that being a good dad can make up for awful lot of [R laughs] monstrosities, as long as you’re doing it in the name of being a good dad. I’m joking, uh. Of course, yeah, Avizandum was always meant to be a complicated figure like many of our characters. 

R: You mentioned that you guys have been working on — I think season three during this panel with Marco, or Marcos, and I remember, I think you’ve said before that the seasons get worked on concurrently, that there’s a decent amount of overlap.

A: Yeah.

R: I’ve always wondered, because we know — obviously, I’m a big Rayllum fan — but I’ve always wondered, cause I know they weren’t originally planned, and then you guys were boarding season two when you were like, “Hey, maybe this should be a thing,” and then probably like shifted and tweaked things or changed things to write more towards that in the future... Um, I’ve always wondered, if there was time, like at that time, to go back and change anything in season one for them, or the season one that we see was just like that?

A: I don’t recall there was time to change season 1 — that does happen because we are working on things in parallel because we are working on something in the script and then some time later we are working on the later stage of production, like an animatic, and we’ll be able to kind of give notes or even make changes with the knowledge of what’s coming, so that has happened. But in the case of Rayllum, I don’t think so. I mean, I think — again, I remember...

R: It was a while ago, yeah.

A: We were rekindling, or when we were realizing that something was being kindled between them, it was watching an animatic so that shouldn’t have informed our writing of season one, but our later stage stuff. But we weren’t trying to force anything so it got in there naturally and I don’t think we went back and changed anything.

R: Yeah, that’s what I’ve always — they had those kind of vibes to me from like episode two and three, obviously season two brought a lot more people on board, but I was always curious. Cause in season one, like, I think, it feels so natural, it feels so organic, and like I’ve shown — one of the things I love about Dragon Prince is it’s a great way to connect with friends and family and you kind of catch up with each other like through the show, of “oh have you seen the new season yet?” and that sort of stuff. And so when I’ve shown the show to like my brother-in-law, who is not plugged in at all, he also kind of picked up on it in season one, so I’ve always been curious. 

A: You know, what else, I’ll even say, I think we initially, intentionally planned they weren’t going to be a couple. We were like “Oh yeah, no, they’re—”

R: Friends, yeah.

A: Friends, with different views of the world and they journey together, and we don’t want them to be a couple. We’re not — we’re definitely not targeting it. I think we were intentionally not targeting it, and then it was “too bad creators! [R laughs] We’re going to fall in love despite everything you’re planning.”

R: Well, that very much I think even fits what they represent to each other, of like you don’t have to do this path that you think you have to do...

A: Yeah.

R: You can be something new. I always kind of felt like Ezran and Zym were — felt very kind of like designed as foils, as like a pair, of like through Zym, Ezran learns more so like how to grow up, and they’re both like the princes who will be king, and then Callum and Rayla also kind of felt sort of like developed as a pair, in terms of like — he needs to gain more confidence, she’s pretty confident on the surface.

A: Yeah.

R: She needs to learn how to open up, he’s really good at being open especially in the beginning.

A: Right. 

R: So I was always like...

A: He needs to be murdered, she needs to learn how to murder someone.

R: Yeah! They complete each other, yeah. Uh... Some other questions that I had [rapid typing]. So I guess, maybe, I have some questions that are more season specific, in respect to time, but I also had like more general questions. 

A: Okay.

R: So, one of the things I’ve always love in general and really love about The Dragon Prince is its like use of philosophy and like its deeply interested in ethical and moral questions, and presenting some answers for some of them, but like are those the right answers? We don’t know. 

A: Right.

R: So I know King Harrow’s choosing of Lady Justice’s blindfold is a pretty apt comparison to John Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance—

A: Yes.

R: Of, you know, you strip away everything that you could have, like advantages, disadvantages, and think, would the system work for me? Which has been useful when I’ve like, had to tutor students in philosophy actually, but I was curious, were there any like philosophical concepts or ideas that people really, or you really, wanted to work into the series? ‘Cause we have a lot of trolley problems.

A: Right. Um, probably. I mean like, I should say, I was a philosophy concentrator in college so I absorbed a lot. Things like  Rawls, I had a class with John Rawls, and thought that was a really interesting concept and I liked including it, and I thought we can include it in a fun way, the idea of justice. So other philosophy probably makes its way in, it can makes its way in accidentally or subconsciously, so nothing specific right now comes to mind. I will say, as with kind of Avatar before this, I don’t like to have — I’m not trying to have a right answer, ever. I’m trying to have the characters have a deeper understanding of what they’re struggling with, and y’know, move in a direction of deeper understanding, so if anything, it’s more interesting to me to see conflicts between maybe philosophical approaches that are different and see how — Oh well, this has these kinds of results, and positives and negatives, and this has... so that the audience can have a chance to say, “Oh well okay, I have some thoughts on that,” or “here’s what I feel,” and that’s why sometimes I think we see the fandom actually kind of go back and forth—

R: Yeah.

A: On — around characters and people’s choices, and things like dark magic or Viren, which are controversial, are things where like, I do not have a strong point of view on... the kind of binary right or wrong of... Viren in the long term. He’s made a lot of wrong choices and he’s made a lot of choices for good. 

R: Yeah.

A: He is an arrogant and power hungry person and he’s also a caring and loving father and someone who wants to have a positive impact on the world, right, like?

R: Yeah.

A: So those conflicts play out in him. But similarly, I think with maybe most of the philosophical ideas I can think of, I’d rather get to like a place where everyone just has a chance to entertain those thoughts and ideas and struggle with them, or hold them in an authentic way, and then can come to their own conclusions and feelings. I mean, I have some deep feelings about like, the world, and how can people be optimistic or not pessimistic or—y’know, what it means to hold onto hope or what it means to try to move past conflict, and I have beliefs that there are conflicts that get so you know, kind of sewn in, that they feel they are impossible to untangle, and especially if the game you’re playing is who started it, or who did the worst thing, where you can’t just ever untangle it. You can’t ever find a right or wrong, so how do you get past that? That’s one of the questions I was hoping Rayla, Callum, and Ezran would try to—

R: Figure it out.

A: Struggle with. Anyway, I’m giving a very long winded answer—

R: No, no.

A: That’s the philosophy that comes to mind. If something comes to mind for you, you can bring it up and I can go, “Oh yeah, that was probably influenced by so-and-so.” [R laughs] Or maybe not.

R: Well, one of the things I loved about season six was kind of — you see, even... One of the things I thought was really interesting was we see, not quite like that return to trolley problems, but we see Aaravos at the end of season 5 is telling Viren you have to make the sacrifice so that you can live, and then we see Rayla tell Callum, “Hey, if the choice ever happens, you also have to sacrifice me,” for — so Callum can live, but also for like the greater good and that sort of stuff. And then you have Kpp’Ar, who — I love Kpp’Ar, I think he’s terrible and interesting and I love him.

A: Awesome. He is — we’ll learn a little more about him in the future, but yes.

R: And obviously when Viren’s like, “A child will die,” and this is a kid that Kpp’Ar would’ve known, and we see in The Puzzle House that he loved these kids, and whatever is up with the Staff is bad enough that Kpp’Ar’s like, “Okay. I’ll make that sacrifice.” Which feels very much in a way like he’s given up on dark magic, and to a certain degree he’s both given up on the mindset of dark magic, and maybe also hasn’t given it up in the same way. Like I love that — Claudia, you know, obviously, puts Viren above all else, is she always right to do so? Maybe not, but we get why she’s doing it, that’s a hard thing to say. And then we have Callum, who also seems inclined to put Rayla above all else, and because we like Rayla more, we’re like “Yeah, he can do that, it’s okay for him to do dark magic for her, that’s fine,” even if there’s also like, consequences. Cause most characters in the show, like you said, everybody kind of wants the same thing, they wanna have a positive impact on the world, they want to protect their loved ones, but what constitutes that world, what they think is a positive impact, or who they want — how they protect those people, that’s all very malleable and can fluctuate. Viren says “Claudia, you’re on the wrong path,” and we’re like yeah, he’s right, and Karim says the same thing about Janai, like the exact same thing, and we’re like, well he’s wrong.

A: Yeah. I mean a lot of things come to mind when you’re talking through that, but one is there’s often a conflict between rigidity and rules and some kind of compassion, or emotional decision, and those decisions are hard, right? Like I dunno, maybe Kpp’Ar should’ve said, “Okay just this once, it’s Soren,” or not, I don’t know. I mean obviously Kpp’Ar had taken himself to some deep horrible place and he really had, actually. And was like, “Okay, dark magic is just corruption when you start and keep going down this path, but this Viren’s kid so I don’t know.” One of the things here, I think there’s a relationship between — you know, sacrifice plays a role here. Sacrifice and thinking about generations and generational conflict and thinking you know maybe in a way I think is interesting. I think about the beginning of season 6 when Claudia has done all of this and sacrificed another life but also sacrifices some of her soul or whatever to save her dad and he’s like “No no! This is not the way! A parent is supposed to do this for a child but never the other way around,” right? And there’s something to that I find interesting which is — it’s almost the inverse of children having the opportunity to start anew and break cycles, parents potentially have the opportunity to make sacrifices that don’t pass by burdens onto their kids, but sort of like that’s the mirror I see a little bit, in terms of how do you have generational change and evolution? It’s somewhere in younger generations being able to not get stuck on conflicts and burdens, but also the older generations recognizing that they may have to be the one to take the — and this is I think a natural... I dunno, it’s something I think about a little bit and came to mind when you were talking. So we’ll see more about what is the meaning of sacrifice and when — when do you... trade? Yeah.

R: Yeah.

A: Side note on sacrifice. You’re familiar with Game of Thrones? You’ve watched all of Game of Thrones?

R: I’m decently familiar, yeah.

A: Okay.

R: And if not, I can have Kuno explain it to me later, so.

A: One of the things I love about the sacrifice Ned made, that we didn’t realize he’d made until I think the very end of the series, we realize — a sacrifice to his kind of reputation, right? And I’m talking about him representing Jon Snow as his bastard to protect him, right? Think about that, that’s a sacrifice, he had to go through the anger — he didn’t tell his wife the truth, he didn’t tell anyone, because it was the only way to protect the child, and as a result he lived with — even though the truth is that he was a really honest, good, or evidently he didn’t go cheat on his wife, he sacrificed that part of his reputation to protect Jon, at least how I see it. I think things like that are kind of interesting. I dunno.

R: Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks to that idea of — one of the things I love about Dragon Prince is it’s so much about choices.

A: Yeah.

R: Like one of the things I really really liked about season 6 was that, you know, Callum is like, “Okay, I’m going to get myself purified, healed of dark magic,” and Rayla was his light, which was very validating, cause I had noticed in season two there was like some framing so I was like well “Maybe, maybe” you know? And then slowburn buildup but it was — I think that was a great moment that really paid off. And he’s told “if you ever do this again, it’ll corrupt you completely.” And whether he will or won’t — I personally think that he will, but spoilers, you know — but whether he will or won’t, I think it’s really nice because now whatever choice he makes, he’s making with the full context, of what this would do to him.

A: Yeah.

R: Whereas in season two, yes he was making his choice to do dark magic then, and I don’t necessarily think he would make a fundamentally different one if he had known what it would lead to, but there’s a different kind of awareness. Like I always of it would’ve been so easy to have Harrow not know that Viren was going to kill Zym, cause that’s such an easy way to kind of let Harrow off the hook of well Viren went off and did this on his own, and Harrow had no idea, and blah blah blah, right? Cause we like Harrow, he’s a — again, he’s a good dad, we’ll forgive a lot. And instead, it’s not his idea but he’s fully aware, he signs off on it. And I think constantly pushing characters to make hard choices — kind of like what Ezran says, “these aren’t dreams, these are choices.”

A: Yeah.

R: You can choose love, you can choose to make... It’s something that makes all the characters feel so fully developed and interesting, so I always appreciate that you guys push them to make the hard choice. 

A: Yeah. Cool. Thank you.

R: One question I did have is, uh, Karim is one of my favourite characters.

A: Okay. Unusual person. A lot of people hate — or love to hate...? I love him too. 

R: I also love Kasef, so I think I just kind of love everyone, because I’m like well, they’re really interesting. I feel like [Karim’s] arc was one of the things I loved most about season 4 because you can see him really wrestling with his choices and I love watching him fail, cause that’s kind of all he does, so that’s always fun. But I am really curious obviously now he’s been betrayed by Sol Regem, Katolis is in ashes and maybe they’ll blame Karim for that cause Sol Regem is like — dead, and now, presumably his only hope is going to be that his sister doesn’t execute him on the spot? 

A: Yeah.

R: So is there anything you can tease about Karim’s arc in season 7?

A: Yeah, so — so it’s not just Karim, there’s an army of people who betrayed Janai, and — and...

R: What do we do?

A: Yeah, what do we do? That will be something we’ll have to see them grapple with pretty much right away in the season. Especially cause [Karim’s army] showed up for this battle where they were never even — they were just planning to sweep up the ashes afterwards, so when they didn’t get the dragon support they needed, I suspect they lost really quickly. 

R: Yes, yeah.

A: So uh... Yeah, but basically as of the start of season 7 — all of them are prisoners of Queen Janai and the question is — what do you do with that? What do you do when you have an entire army and your own brother who betrayed you? And so that’s — we’ll find out.

R: Yeah. [Laughs] 

A: But yeah.

R: Yeah. Another question I had going forward was Terry and Claudia obviously I thought had a really beautiful relationship arc, particularly in season 6, and we saw in season 4 the lengths he’s willing to go to for her, and how Terry, I think, is a great example of how there’s a lot of character traits where we think “oh, if you’re a selfless, helpful, accepting person, you’re a good person,” and I feel like Dragon Prince does a really good job of how, Rayla’s selflessness can be great but it can also be kinda bad, or, um, Terry can be super accepting, maybe a little too—

A: Yeah.

R: —accepting sometimes, right? So I feel like at the end of season 6, it will presumably be him, Claudia, and Aaravos for a little bit now that he’s out of the prison. And it feels like maybe Terry might hit a breaking point?

A: Here’s what I will say — Terry is a really special character and if you watched him, he’s so good, and what we’ll find out is, he is — there is an episode called TRUE HEART and he is someone who has a true heart.

R: Oh that’s so sweet.

A: It’s very impossibly rare and special — but also we all understand what a true heart is in some way and we’ll learn a little more about that. But yeah, the question of what will Terry do, what can he do, is difficult because he has a very strong sense of right and wrong, but he has a very deep capacity for love and he loves Claudia with all of his heart. Where does that present an impossible conflict, it may... we’ll see a challenge.

R: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

A: I’ll also throw in like I sometimes see some parallels between Terry and Uncle Iroh—

R: Yes.

A: Though Uncle Iroh I think has a very different journey. Iroh is kind of a recovered problematic person who now has some wisdom and enlightenment, so in terms of the difference between the purity of a true heart versus where Iroh is more of a later stage enlightenment, the love that they have for the kind of complicated person that they are with is similar to me. And the way that they both sometimes have to, or don’t have to but...

R: Choose to?

A: You have to give that person the space — you can’t force them to choose right or wrong, you can be there with them, you can try to guide them, you can — but ultimately you have to give them the space to fail, and eventually, you may have to turn your back on them. 

R: Yeah.

A: At some point. I don’t know. But um yeah — I still see them as connected characters in my mind. 

R: I think I can even see some of that with even the way Callum is with Rayla, like season five onwards, of like “I’ve hit my turning point, I’m not mad at you anymore, and you can steal my key, you can lie to me, and I’m not going to have you open up to me out of guilt or obligation, I want you to tell me what’s going on when you want to tell me what’s going on, and I’m going to give you the space for that.” So I think it speaks to that unconditional love that I think—

A: Yeah.

R: —a lot of the characters are blessed to have. But I do see the Terry Iroh connection. So another thing that I thought was really interesting was — obviously next season is dark magic, and I’m very hopeful that maybe we’ll learn more about the origins of dark magic or Elarion, even. 

A: Great.

R: Because I know when I was watching Sol Regem burn down Katolis, it made me think of what might’ve either happened or almost happened to Elarion in the past, you know? 

A: Yeah.

R: Even down to Ziard and Viren both die, kind of deflecting and trying to save people, with the same staff, you know, and how the cycle continues to just always repeat itself over and over again. And if there was like — yeah, cause burning down Katolis was a massive shakeup, you know?

A: Yup.

R: And what maybe the process was there, with the — Aaravos seems like he’s trying to repeat the cycle of like “Oh I’m going to take down the dragon monarchy or I’m gonna use that vacancy to my advantage, and mess with the Sunfire elves.”

A: He has a specific vendetta against Sol Regem, obviously, but it’s one where he has played it out in... What’s certainly meant to be implied, even though we’ll find out more later, is that one of the great mysteries of Sol Regem’s life is that his mate disappeared and he never found her. He’s the freaking Dragon King, and she disappeared. And though we don’t know how or what happened, while she was buried alive. He killed her. He didn’t even realize it, somehow. Somehow, Aaravos manipulated him into killing her, and he doesn’t — I dunno, I assume Sol Regem does understand when it must have happened, but that moment, it’s like an impossible — it’s meant to be just...

R: Awful.

A: He’s tortured him for 1000 years or whatever, without him knowing he was being tortured by Aaravos, and now he’s given him the mercy/cruelty of knowing the resolution to the mystery was that he killed her. And one of the things that worked well with that was that, we had sort of said Sol Regem can smell the truth from a lie, so he has the horrible curse of being able to know this is the deep dark truth. So I dunno, I think um, are we going to find out more about that? So, if we can eventually get the Book Three novel out [R laughs], we will find out more about that.

R: I did wonder, I was like “Maybe this is something that was gonna be in the book three novelization.”

A: Yes, we will find out more in the book three novel, it may be a year or so before unfortunately. And then I don’t think we’re gonna get too deep into that in season seven, that’s part of — it is involved in what we’re thinking about as the third arc, understanding and resolving the third arc, is gonna go a little deeper into...

R: Some of the history, yeah.

A: Some of the stuff that happened with Sol Regem. But yeah, no, I — it’s enjoyable to have these figures like Aaravos and Sol Regem who are ancient and operate over the course of centuries and are incredibly powerful, yet they can’t — or at least Aaravos,  they can’t conflict directly as easily, and so Aaravos has played this really complicated game. Anyway, but yes Sol Regem is part of that, but there’s — there’s more, there’s more people who — beings that took from him. He feels that Leola was unfairly punished and that that was — you know, he sees a future and he has something... All this time, a burning — it’s the twisted form of his love, in which he’s full of hate right now to the beings who brought this about. Obviously, Sol Regem played a role because he’s a rules dragon.

R: Yeah, yeah.

A: He is the one who betrayed her to the Cosmic Council ultimately — but how do you punish the Cosmic Council? That’s a bit more complicated.

R: Yeah. No, I remember finishing season six and just being so impressed with the story. Like, taking that direction, and almost doing a lot of recontextualization, because it’s one thing to have like your worldbuilding where “magic in the story works like this” and it’s just very kind of like hand of God, you know? Like oh — cause the magic system has always been unfair, that’s why we have Callum, you know? It’s another thing to say we’re going to have characters in the story who are responsible for it being unfair. And now we’re just going to have that in terms of conflict and themes of destiny. We have about seven, ten-ish minutes left I think.

A: Probably seven, if that’s okay?

R: Yeah. Of course. 

A: I’ll throw one other thing in there, which is that — cause characters experience things that change them: has Aaravos experienced — I’ll phrase it as a question, even though probably the answer is here, has Aaravos experienced much that has changed him in the last — since the death of Leola? I mean certainly some things, and is what’s happening now changing him in any way? Is it satisfaction, is it the relationship with Claudia, and what does that mean to someone? That’s a question that I think we’ll have to watch play out a little bit.

R: [Intrigued] Okay. Yeah. One thing that I really liked about Leola’s character was I felt like she had pieces of each of the main trio in her? Of this very helpful innocent well meaning child, kind of like Ezran — and I have also always seen Ezran as autistic as well cause I know that Leola canonically is — and then you also kind of have the whole oh she gave  / helped humans have primal magic, which obviously Callum has. And even just being this young elven girl punished for her compassion and mercy, that felt a lot like Rayla. And when making the choice for Leola to be Leola, was that something intentional or like the choice for it to be a child rather than another loved one?

A: It was very intentional that it was a child... And we talked through other versions of Leola that could’ve been, in other ages, genders, relationships with Aaravos that an important person was lost. Some of the things I liked about the way, Leola both as a child, children are the cycle breakers.

R: Yes, yeah. I think it was the strongest choice.

A: And in particular also, the idea of coding her autistic was a little bit like not as cued to kind of accept the social order and the order of things, but actually more open in a way to in what some people see as like — something that’s broken which is not taking those cues, something else about that — not being bound by it that allowed her to have compassion that crossed the line in terms of the perceptions of what the Cosmic Order needed to be in it — but it made her more, both as a child and an autistic person, to make that choice and do what she did that changed everything.

R: Makes a lot of sense.

A: [Her being a child] also frames it with some innocence obviously right? It’s not calculated, it’s kind. 

R: Yeah.

A: So I dunno.

R: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been curious about how Ezran might be challenged now that Runaan is back in the picture.

A: That’s a great question. That’s a great question. I mean, it’s so weird, it’s like no one even asks that, it’s like “Cool,” Rayla’s like “I’m gonna go get him. Awesome! Runaan’s back.”

R: Yeah I’m like either — either Callum is like “Ezran will be totally fine with it,” and Ezran  is probably not going to be fine with it, or maybe Callum knew that maybe it wouldn’t be great, and kept it under wraps. Yeah, I’m so excited for that like trio, potential broyals conflict, so...

A: Well, I mean, Ezran is a very special kid and he’s very positive and kind and forgiving and all of this. But we’re talking about, Runaan is back.

R: Castle’s destroyed.

A: Katolis is rubble. Where does that leave him?

R: Yeah.

A: You know? I mean — so I’m excited about that part of Ezran.

R: I know the fandom is really, really excited for Ezran to get to be — not that he hasn’t always been complex, but to get to be like messier, of letting his emotions maybe get the better of him and that sort of thing. So people are definitely hype for that, for — cause I feel like season six really brought home a lot of things for Soren, and it seems like season seven is going to do a similar thing for Ezran, so that’s — that’s really exciting. Um, with our final couple minutes, I wanted to see — do you have any questions that you want fans to ponder or to be thinking about?

A: Um... Gosh. I don’t think I have anything specific that we haven’t talked about, but you know. On some level, like, you know how do you take the tragedies and conflicts that we all inevitably face repetitively and relentlessly and kind of learn to move forward in hope and optimism? I think that’s more of a question of like how do you personally learn to process — all the kind of bullshit in the world, and process it, and still move forward as a kind, connected—

R: Measured person.

A: —hopeful person? That’s a challenge we all face in our lives, so that’s like...

R: Yeah. Well, I think the show does a good — really good job at asking and challenging that — that question. Uh, yeah, I think — I think that’s our time for today, uh. Thank you so much, this was... 

A: It was my pleasure. 

R: This was a lot of fun.

A: It’s always my pleasure reading your theories and your—

R: [Gasps] Oh my gosh.

A: Honestly, I came on today and to tell the truth [R laughs] a little bit intimidated.

R: Oh my God. 

A: You’re so—

R: I also felt intimidated [laughing] so don’t worry.

A: You’re so insightful and articulate, that I almost am like [R laughs] what if they catch me that there’s something not as smart in the show as I thought it was?

R: Oh my gosh, no, you’re fine.

A: [Overlapping] So anyway, I really enjoy what you write—

R: [Overlapping] I’m also a writer so I know what it’s like to be like “I did this subconsciously,” it’s — yeah.

A: I love what you instigate in the fandom and the kind of conversations you support and engage in. I’m a huge fan of yours, so.

R: Oh! Thank you so much, that’s so sweet. Um. And I am a huge fan of yours.

A: Yay. That’s a great way to end a podcast.

R: That is a great way. Okay. Alright, well thank you so much, hope you have a great day, great week, uh, and — yeah. Okay.

A: Alright, and I’ll see you soon, we’ll do this again sometime, I hope. 

R: Yes! Yeah. Okay.

A: Alright. Thanks again. Alright, bye.

[self-spaghettification]

once again thinking about the scene where claudia and soren talk cause like. if there’s any time his motives are revealed it’s through someone who has been listening to him for the past 2 years echoing the same sentiments to her brother

Claudia: Aaravos. It’s Aaravos! it’s not that hard.

Soren. That's what I said!

Claudia: No, you didn't. And you don't know anything about him.

Soren: I know that he wants us all to fight and-and hate each other! He wants the world to burn.

Claudia: You're wrong! The dragons and the elves already hate us.

Soren: That's not true. I'm friends with dragons and elves now.

Claudia: Oh, are you sure? Are they real friends? Or are they just taking advantage of you?

( melancholy music playing ) You'll always be a human to them. You'll always be less! Thousands of years ago, humans had nothing. We were starving, and wretched, and helpless. There was famine, and disease, and... Uh, there was war and fighting over the few resources that we could get our grubby little hands on. Life was pain and struggle, and the dragons and elves, they did nothing! They judged us. They pitied us.

Soren: How do you know this?

Claudia: The same way you do. You can feel it's true, can't you? Humans understand suffering deep in our bones because so many generations went through it.

Soren: Claudia, I... I don't think we have the same bone feelings.

Claudia: Aaravos believed in humans when all the other elves and dragons thought we were worthless, stupid, dirty animals! Aaravos believed we could be better. So he gave us magic!

Soren: You say that like it's such a good thing. But if you ask me, it's caused nothing but trouble. Maybe the world would be better off without magic.

Claudia: Without magic, you would be dead. Without dad's magic.

[self-spaghettification]

Reblogging with S4 and S5 Lines!

Buuut

There’s also the intro to the show, he narrates that as well:

S1E1 Echoes of Thunder

Aaravos: Long ago, Xadia was one land…rich in magic and wonder.

In the old times, there were only the six primal sources of magic: The Sun. The Moon. The Stars. The Earth. The Sky. And the Ocean.

But, a thousand years ago, a human mage discovered new magic, the seventh source, Dark Magic.

It used the essence within magical creatures themselves to unleash dark power.

Horrified by what they saw, the elves and the dragons put a stop to the madness. They drove every last human to the west. And so, the continent was divided in two. In the east, the magical lands of Xadia. And in the west, the human kingdoms. For centuries, the King of the Dragons himself defended the border.

The humans called him Thunder, for when he spoke, his voice shook the Earth and the sky. But on the eve of last Winter’s Turn, the humans used unspeakable Dark Magic to slay Thunder. Then, without mercy, they destroyed his only egg, his heir, the Dragon Prince. Now the world stands on the edge of all-out war.

S4E1 Rebirthday

(via Claudia’s retelling) Aaravos: The Being that emerges from the chrysalis will guide you to one who has answers.

S4E4 Through the Looking Glass

Aaravos: Zubeia. You haven't aged a bit. You look as young and ravishing...

...as the day you betrayed me. So sorry to hear of your mate's untimely and tragic passing.

So these are the champions you've gathered to try and stop me? They're nothing but pathetic children.

The whining child king. In over his head and he knows it.

The Moonshadow assassin who... Can this be right? Isn't capable of killing.

The failed son, whose father wishes he had never been born. Ouch!

And my favorite, the human mage, already tainted by darkness and destined to play right into my hands.

Oh, my time has come. My return to this world is inevitable!

S5E9 Infantis Sanguine

Aaravos: Lord Viren, fancy seeing you here.

Viren: You...

Aaravos: Where are you going? This is a special day.

Aaravos: Stop. You're so close now. We are finally on the cusp of each other's realities.

Viren: The cusp?

Viren: What have you done? You've trapped me with you.

Aaravos: No. I've merely borrowed your consciousness for a few moments. You are my guest.

Viren: I do not want to be here.

Aaravos: Ah! My freedom is so close, I can taste it.

Yes. I sense Claudia approaching. Others are near as well... but no matter, your daughter is far more powerful.

Now... As to the matter of your mortal existence, you cut it rather close, coming in on the 30th day, just a few hours left before your life expires. Poof! ( chuckles ) Don't worry. Making your resurrection permanent won't be a problem. It's one of the old spells... Infantis Sanguine. Named for the one necessary ingredient. The blood... of your child.

Viren: What? The blood of my child?

Aaravos: You can't expect to wield such powerful life and death magic without some sacrifice.

Viren: I am not a monster. I would never sacrifice my child!

Aaravos: Relax. I wouldn't expect you to harm Claudia or Soren.

You will sacrifice your other child.

Viren: My other... but I don't have a...?

Aaravos: But you do.

Viren: What, who?

Aaravos: Our child.

Our baby was so cute. And he's grown into quite the strapping young homunculus. Are you telling me you can't see the resemblance? He has my lovely eyes.

(homonculus squawks)

I'm afraid his voice must be from your side of the family.

Now he's here for you. And I will show you how to use every drop of his living essence to restore your own life and your future.

The resurrection spell will expire tonight, and you will die. You must make the sacrifice.

If you don't, tomorrow, the sun will rise... and you will not.

Viren: No.

I won't do it.

I finally see the truth. I find myself here at these horrifying crossroads because I have followed a dark path. And worst of all, I have led my beloved daughter down this path.

No more dark magic, never again! I am done with it. And I am done with you!

-

Aaravos: You're just like your grandmother.

Would you like to know the truth of her fate before you face yours?

I swallowed her.

-

Aaravos: Tomorrow the sun will rise.

And you will not.

—

Notes:

Aaravos clearly lies a few times, both in the sarcasm about Avizandum and about the egg being destroyed (the mirror would have had a perfect view of Viren taking it unharmed), possibly knowing Claudia wouldn’t be powerful enough as well, and the petty insults, particularly the one towards Soren. Take it as you will.

Even so, the creators have stated that Aaravos is very intentional about what he does & does not do or say, despite having access to a lot more capability or knowledge, so it’s useful to have all his lines in one place to better understand the…. Mystery of Aaravos ;)

Every line Aaravos says...

In an interview Ehasz & Richmond confirm that Aaravos never lies, but..

if you understand where he’s coming from, he’s not lying about anything. But you don’t necessarily know where he’s coming from. He never lies, he always tells the truth.

So, how much is the real truth, subjective truths, alternate interpretation of words, or paltering (misleading by misrepresenting select truths)? Who knows.

But I copied all of of Aaravos’ lines from transcripts if you want to try and guess.

Some are kinda funny in hindsight -  “ Preparing you for greatness.” Just meant being able to see Aaravos, who is a Great One. (Or very impressed with his own looks).

Keep reading

[leedsomics]

GRASPS: a simple-to-operate translatome technology reveals omics-hidden disease-associated pathways in TDP-43-related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Transcriptomes and translatomes measure genome-wide levels of total and ribosome-associated RNAs. A few hundred translatomes were reported over >250,000 transcriptomes highlighting the challenges of identifying translating RNAs. Here, we used a human isogenic inducible model of TDP-43-linked amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which exhibits altered expression of thousands of transcripts, as a paradigm for the direct comparison of whole-cell, cytoplasmic and translating RNAs, showing broad uncoupling and poor correlation between disease-altered transcripts. Moreover, based on precipitation of endogenous ribosomes, we developed GRASPS (Genome-wide RNA Analysis of Stalled Protein Synthesis), a simple-to-operate translatome technology. Remarkably, GRASPS identified three times more differentially-expressed transcripts with higher fold changes and statistical significance, providing unprecedented opportunities for data modeling at stringent filtering and discovery of previously omics-missed disease-relevant pathways, which functionally map on dense gene regulatory networks of protein-protein interactions. Based on its simplicity and robustness, GRASPS is widely applicable across disciplines in the biotechnologies and biomedical sciences. http://dlvr.it/T3qmZ7

[similistic]

Books of 2024

Favorites:

- Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim I wouldn't exactly call it a prequel to Six Crimson Cranes/The Dragon's Promise, but it's set in the same world. It tells the story of Shiori's step-mother. I liked SCC/TDP, but I liked HRC better. The protagonist is more mature and the story feels more fresh.

- Bookshops & Bonedust and Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree YA-ish modern high fantasy with LGBTQIA+ characters presented in a very matter-of-fact way.

- The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston Time travel-y popfic romance.

5-Star Ratings in 2024:

- A Witch's Guide to Burning by Aminder Dhaliwal I was following this story on Aminder's Instagram account. Really enjoyed it and decided to buy the physical copy both as a gesture of support and because it's cool with the embellished text.

- Lessons in Chmiestry by Bonnie Garmus As a chemistry major (sort of), I got a lot of recommendations from people to read this book. I also heard a lot, both good and bad, about it before I read it. I was pleasantly surprised, perhaps because of the criticism I was prepared for. I think if you read it as pure fiction (as opposed to historical fiction) it works quite well. There were some neurodiversity stereotypes I didn't enjoy, and that is a legit criticism. CW: sexual assault.

- Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively Very "classic" feeling prose. Historical fiction based around the life of a woman born around the time of WWI and then grows old into the 1980s and 1990s.

- Squire & Knight by Scott Chantler A fun graphic novel. Wholesome, with a clear moral of the story.

- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner This book is essentially the memoirs of a mixed-race Korean American who is grieving her mother's death (her mother is the asian parent) and all that that implies (culture, identity, etc.).

- The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green If you are familiar with the vlogbrothers Youtube channel, this book basically reads like a collection of video transcripts. The topics chosen, the "voice" of the writing, etc.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EPISODE ONE [Transcript]

LAVANYA Good morning, Red Acre! And welcome to your favorite nighttime show, the Dreaming Prophet. Now, they may have taken away our phones, and they may have taken away our computers, and they may have taken away that coveted one hour of subliminal messaging that passes as television here.

  LAVANYA But do you know what they haven't taken away? The shitty radios in the garage, which is exactly what we're using right now to bring this especially to you, because we're just that fucking dedicated dedicated to you. You're welcome. Now, my name is Lavanya --.

  ASTRO And I'm Astro, and we'll be your hosts for tonight!

  LAVANYA So make sure you have fun~.

  LAVANYA First of all. We're gonna start off this podcast with a quick explanation of what it is. If you want to do the honors Astro?

  ASTRO Yes. This is a "The Blackout Club" podcast for Blackout Club players, and we'll talk about what that means after we wrap up with our intro. But the basics are that this podcast focuses only on the facts. All lore, no speculation.

  LAVANYA Even though we love speculation.

  ASTRO We do. We love speculation. But we want to provide solid facts for other players use in their own speculation, so we'll try to keep ours to a minimum. We begin each show with a spoiler warning, and a content warning, because this game does deal with some heavy topics. And we will go right into that now.

  LAVANYA Our general content warning for this podcast is that there will be discussion of children being harmed, and children being injured! Nothing in depth, but that is kind of part of the premise of the game, as well as general horror themes.

  ASTRO And as a blanket warning, please keep in mind that the Dreaming Prophet will not be spoiler free. If you really want to experience the game to its fullest, play it yourself, don't listen.

 [Music cue: Sleepers playing strings]

ASTRO If you haven't heard of The Blackout Club game, go ahead and check out WWW.BLACKOUTCLUBGAME.COM.

  ASTRO And there's a lot of info on that page, but I'll read off a little bit. The premise of the game is that you are a child in this suburban town, Red Acre. And you are recording evidence of the strange things that are going on, to try to tell the world about this cult that's taken over everyone - including you, including your parents.

ASTRO When you close your eyes, you get possessed by a god, and so does everyone else in the town. It’s called “blacking out,” and it causes people to sleepwalk, and then wake up with dirt and blood on them, and trails that lead through their houses. Or they may not even wake up in their bed at all. They may wake up outside of town. They may wake up on train tracks. Kids in the Blackout Club are trying to record what’s happening in their town, to hopefully stop it, and they’re also trying to protect their own while they do it. Because as they’ve found out, the organizations behind this phenomenon - the god, Speak-As-One; the organization, CHORUS - They don’t want anyone to know what’s going on in Redacre, and they certainly don’t want it to stop.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

  LAVANYA The Blackout Club is primarily a multiplayer game, but there are parts of it that are single player. As of right now, there are no plans for single player missions, but we do have the prologue! The Prologue basically involves you, instead of playing your own individual character, you are playing Bells, who is a young woman 14, about to be 15 in three months, if I recall correctly. And she is trying to figure out a way to leave Red Acre!

  BELLS V/O OK, recording... I think... Hi. It’s Bells - Isabella. If you’ve done your homework, you probably know I live in the Radio Quiet Zone. We have no cell signal here, no internet - Nothing. So no one knows what’s happening to us. At night, our town - [stuttering] - it changes. We like, wake up in the woods, or on train tracks, no idea how we got there. If you tell an adult, they just laugh it off, and most folks my age - well, they’re cowards.

BELLS V/O But - so last night, I set up a hidden camera, and I finally got proof. Stuff the world needs to see. The video’s all on this thumb drive, and tomorrow, I’m gonna take Mom’s car, and sneak it far enough out of town to finally get online. To reach you. When you see this, come to Redacre. Help us. Please. Um, thank you.

  LAVANYA OK. So that exciting clip is a line directly from the prologue of the Blackout Club, the single player mission. What we heard there was Bells explaining the basic premise of the game. I personally feel it's important for most players to try to play it, because it sets up the basic themes of the game.

  LAVANYA The basic themes of the game are friendship and also psychological terror. What Belles keeps having emphasized to her throughout the prologue is that she cannot trust anything that she sees or anything that she hears. She's seeing a strange shape that is pursuing her and trying to maybe kill her, maybe mind meld with her, throughout the prologue. The game will instantly end if you're caught by it.

  LAVANYA She's getting mysterious voices in her head: two different ones that are speaking to her and trying to guide her through this to safety. And she's realizing that: are her parents are on this conspiracy that she's discovered prior to the start of the game, or is literally everyone in town?

  LAVANYA She cannot trust anyone in the town and she cannot even trust herself. As is shown by the ending of the prologue, when the voices lead her all the way to the boxcar, and then she is dragged away.

  LAVANYA So, it's kind of a good summary for the overall game, because the children face the same issues during the multiplayer game play as well. You can't trust the adults. You can't trust the other children who might be following opposing Daimons, and you certainly can't trust yourself, because the game keeps empathizing, every time you close your eyes - every time you black out in game - you're being possessed.

  LAVANYA So the only people that you can trust actually are your friends. The player characters operate in missions of up to three other players, all of whom are bound together by friendship, trust, and the knowledge that they are working together to succeed in taking down CHORUS. Bells is betrayed by her parents in the prologue, and she is potentially betrayed by the voices as well. The player character, any time that you play with stalker enabled, is betrayed by the stalker, who is someone in the Blackout Club that is working for SAO instead of the kids. So, when you can't even trust yourself, the only people that you can rely on are the friends that you choose to surround yourself with - which is one of the biggest themes of the game.

  [Music cue: Stalker switch]

ASTRO The prologue, in addition to introducing you to this story, also introduces you to a lot of the core gameplay, which we'll go over here.

  ASTRO You have two different things that you can see. When your eyes are open, you can see the overworld, you can see the adults walking around sleepwalking or not, and you can see the houses and everything else around you.

  ASTRO When you close your eyes, you can see the Shape, you can see footsteps that are guiding you to your next objective, and you can see secret messages that may be hidden somewhere in the map. Among other things, there are several new things that have been cropping up lately, so it's always a good idea to close your eyes every so often, and see what's out there.

  LAVANYA Exactly! Because sometimes it's secret messages, sometimes it's just secret marks that, when you look at them with your eyes open, they just look like scuffs on the ground - and when you close your eyes, they're glowing in red!

 LAVANYA We're going gonna do a quick breakdown of all the basic items in the game. The way that the items are set up in game is that you have two classifications of items, basically.

LAVANYA You have the hero items, and then you have the standard normal items that you use and then they'll be terminated from your inventory. Let's start off with the hero items. Hero items are controversial! They are a controversial part of the fandom, because everyone has their specific favorite and everyone will talk shit about others. Which one you take ultimately just depends on how you feel and what your gameplay style is, because this will change the way you play the game pretty significantly.

LAVANYA So with the hero items, we have three hero items. First off, we have the Taser which is, to quote the game, “a close range stun gun. It requires time to recharge after every use and is not for use by children.” Luckily, we're not children in game. We're 14, going on fifteen in three months. Perfectly safe for us to use!

LAVANYA The way that the Taser works is: it is an item and it is an escape item, basically, that will recharge over time. So if a lucid or a sleeper grabs you,  then you'll be able to automatically tase them as long as you have a charge on your taser and be able to escape from them. It traps them for about three to four seconds in a loop of electricity.

LAVANYA If you have a Stalker in game, you can also tase them. If you have a friend who is shaped in-game, and thus wandering around spouting off voice lines about being asleep, you can also tase them. I don't know why you would, but that option is there!

LAVANYA The second hero item is the grappling hook. The description for the grappling hook is: “will stick to walls and ceilings, and lower a climbable rope.” So it's pretty straightforward! What the grappling hook does is basically it increases your mobility in a game that is already so heavily focused on movement.

LAVANYA With a grappling hook, you don't have to jump up places. You can throw your hook and you can hop right onto it and climb up. I would say it extends about 15 to 20 feet down.

ASTRO On average, it's about two stories. So if you are three stories above something, [you] will have a steep drop, but it'll be less fall damage than if you fell from the full height.

LAVANYA Exactly. And the grappling hook - most places in the game, you'll be able to get with the grappling hook, or else you'll be able to get as long as you and a friend have a grappling hook. Most of the tunnels that connect the rooms in the underground and most of, like, the major shorter cliffs, like Hoadly's Leap, in the first two areas, you can climb up that with a single grappling hook. So it's pretty useful if you want to increase your mobility.

LAVANYA It's by no means required. You can get anywhere that you would get with a grappling hook without a grappling hook, it may just take longer.

LAVANYA The last hero item is the crossbow which says, “modified from an old history project to fire tranquilizer darts with pretty decent accuracy.” Because Red Acre plays history rough, I guess. In a lot of ways, the crossbow is possibly one of the most powerful items in game so long as you have tranquilizer darts. So if you are willing to drop the snacks to buy tranquilizer dart at the beginning of each game, what this does is it means that anyone within - I would probably say, 60 meters or so - as long as you have your crossbow cursor aiming at them, you will be able to shoot them.

LAVANYA You can shoot and tranquilize tranquilize a Lucid from about two houses, down as of June 6th, 2019. This may get changed after we say that. [laughter]

LAVANYA Honestly, the crossbow is my favorite item, when I'm not scampering around the walls like a fucking aye-aye. Because you can use it to take down Lucids. You can use it to take down drones - not the large ones that fly overhead, but the other player drones, if you just want to be horrible for some reason.  You can take it to take down sound mines. You can use it to.. I think that's about it, actually.

LAVANYA So, maybe technically, it doesn't have a lot of use? But it has a lot of use in my heart. I love the crossbow. We have a very special relationship.

ASTRO It's not versatile, but it is useful.

LAVANYA Exactly. It is useful and if you have stalkers in your game you can absolutely buy a ton of tranq darts and load that motherfucker up.

ASTRO The hero items will become obvious to you when you're in the boxcar.  There is a table that has all three of them laid out in a row. And, strictly in my opinion, they're in the order of difficulty.

ASTRO  If you're a new player - if you have just picked up the game - the taser is going to be your best friend as you try to learn how to navigate and how to get out of these scrapes. The taser is your second chance.

ASTRO The grappling hook helps you explore more after you understand parts of the map; after you start getting on your own two feet.

ASTRO And the crossbow, I feel, is extremely difficult to master, but once you do have mastery of it, it is so helpful to everything that you do.

LAVANYA It really is. It takes a minute to master it [the grappling hook] because the walls are not always smooth in the areas in which the grappling hook can actually successfully land are not always straight-cut.

LAVANYA I've been using the grappling hook for three months now, and I still sometimes hit spots where I throw it, it should land and instead it ricochets off the walls. [laughter] Because early access! But once you get the hang of it and you have a general idea for what the grappling hook looks like when it will be able to actually drop down, it is absolutely wonderful.

LAVANYA So now we're just going to cover the in-game items real quick which are largely self-explanatory.

LAVANYA The first of the in-game items is the bandage! The bandage is basically: you can find this in chests, you can start off the game with this if you have the Medic perk, and you can buy them from the snack machines or from the firework vendors in game. What it does is it will heal about one third of your stamina. So if you've taken a wound by falling off a cliff, being grabbed by a lucid, or being fucked up by a stalker, it's here for you. You can bandage yourself or else you can be bandaged by another player, too, which is always useful.

LAVANYA Second up is the energy bar, which is often having debates involving it on the various Discords over whether or not it is OP. Because the energy bar will briefly top off your complete stamina bar, so you have endless energy, and more importantly you will do not get staggered when you fall. So you can jump off as high of a cliff as you want, and when you hit the bottom, as long as you had an energy bar on the way, you will be able to still keep running with no interruption.

LAVANYA Third up is the flash bang, which - it is an escape item. It is a military flash bang, which - we are not asking how these fucking children found this in Red Acre. Red ACre is just stocked the fuck up. What it does is you can throw it and you can blind enemies - in what I'd probably say is a six foot radius around where it lands? - And it will also stun the Shape. It will also make the screen flash white for any players around, but it won't stun them the way it will for, like, Stalkers, which is always nice.

LAVANYA Third up is the noisemaker. It's little fireworks. When you toss them, it will create a ton of noise, and it will attract any lucids or sleepers who are not presently engaged over to it. So it's a very useful method of crowd control in a game that does not necessarily have crowd control. It also seems like it may be one of the most common drops because you will usually have a noisemaker in your games.

LAVANYA Foam grenade.. basically, whether or not its OP, like with the flash bang grenade, is a pretty big topic of discussion in some parts of the community. Because a foam grenade, once you thought it will create a puddle of foam - hyper absorbent foam! - on the ground. When you land on that, it will produce no fall damage. If you walk on it, it will have no noise. It will disable cameras temporarily if you throw it at it. It will disable sound mines and proximity mines permanently if you throw them on it. And anyone who walks through it will start producing footprints you can see exactly where they go. In addition to that, if you throw it at the Shape, it will stun the Shape very briefly, and it will highlight the Shape, so he'll be covered in foam and you can actually see him with your eyes open.

ASTRO The foam grenade as one of the most versatile items in the game, if not the most versatile item.

LAVANYA Oh I think it's absolutely the most.

ASTRO It's quite genius. I think it's one of the highlights of the blackout club as a game..

LAVANYA It is, it is, because the thing is the foam grenade is one item, and people can use it for about five different gameplay styles. Which is very nice, because I almost never use it to actually make - to reduce noise, I use it as a limited form of crowd control to get Lucids the fuck away from me, as a method to stunning Lucids, and also to ensure that I don't take fall damage, so I never have to stop. [laughter]

LAVANYA The next item is basically, uh, a tranquilizer dart. Unless you are carrying a crossbow, it is melee only. It is an escape item. You can use it when you are grabbed, or else you will have to grab a Lucid in order to use it. Or a Sleeper, or a Stalker. Kids can be tranquilized by Stalkers. It is not a big deal. It will stun you for about 5 seconds, but it is fucking infuriating. Best way to make somebody tilt in zero point five seconds! [laughter]

LAVANYA The sleep trip wire is basically the tranquilizer dart for anyone who plays more stealthily. It will create a trip wire across the ground, and any enemies - whether that's Lucids, Sleepers, or other children - who walk across it, will be stunned. In the case of Lucids and Sleepers, it will knock them the fuck out. You can also set it up for the Shape, and it will stun him temporarily the same that it will do for player characters.

LAVANYA Quick note here! Except for shooting other players’ drones, TBC does not have friendly fire. So you don't have to worry about setting up a sleep tripwire and then fucking over your teammates, because they just won't be affected by it at all.

LAVANYA And the last item is lock picks! The locked areas in game are the chest, doors to the houses, and I do believe that's it. You can also “kick in” anything that is locked instead of unlocking it, at the severe risk of drawing a shit ton of aggro. So, it's another matter of gameplay style.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

Astro [00:06:58] When you play a mission your character has one of four classes. These are called major powers in the game, and the four major powers at this time are Takedown, Prankcaller, Unstoppable and Drone.

  ASTRO Takedown players are your hand to hand combatants. They are really really good at wrestling with sleepers - with adults - which is something that not all of the kids can do. As a 14 year old, a 15 year old, you don't have the strength or body weight of an adult, but Takedown players have trained themselves to be able to do that to be able to stand a little bit more of a fighting chance. Takedown players can wrestle enemies for themselves or for their friends. If you see a friend in trouble, you can grab an enemy and hold them down and try to decrease the danger in that area.

  LAVANYA Takedown is one of the most uncommon powers for people to take, but honestly it's one of the most useful, because what's more helpful than when somebody is jumping for your friend when they're on low health, than being able to just jump in there and pin them for the rest of the session down to the ground? The Lucid! Don't pin your friends.

  ASTRO Prankcaller is a more stealth focused class. Prankcaller asks you to use your tech know-how to hack into phones and other devices, and disable them for your friends. You can call sleepers at the first level, which distracts them with a spam marketing call while you sneak past them. Sleepers can't see you. They can only hear you and so filling their ears with pyramid schemes will distract them pretty well, unless you make a horribly loud noise.

  ASTRO Unstoppable temporarily makes you invulnerable and gives you extra stamina. Your stamina doesn't deplete when you run or jump. At the first level, you have about 10 seconds to do whatever you want and get the hell out of dodge.

  LAVANYA And, my god, you can do anything you want. Fall damage: no. Lucids: no. Sleepers: no. Speedmines: they will fucking destroy you, don't do those. But anything else!

  ASTRO So this is really, really good if you are a player who tends to get yourself in a bunch of bad situations and needs to run very, very fast. Also interesting: Unstoppable recharges when you take damage. If you end up in a lot of scrapes, that will eventually help you down the road.

  LAVANYA Exactly. And if you like going places and you like going to them fast, Unstoppable is an excellent power - but you have to keep in mind when Unstoppable runs out, you will have to take a ton of damage in order to turn it back on. So don't race into danger, race across the map, separate yourself from your team, and then start crying when your unstoppable is gone. That's the classic mistake.

  ASTRO And the last class is Drone. Drone players have a secondary player character, if you want, which is this drone. It's a stolen drone from the cult that you've managed to jury rig into your own device. Drones are a remote camera that you can send around the map within a limited range from yourself that can see other things and at higher levels can perform actions such as recording or tasering. Drone players are able to look around corners and scout out inside houses and rooms without actually going there and putting themselves in danger.

  LAVANYA Yes. If your drone touches anyone, then it will, like, fucking die? But the good news is you can either send your friend over - your friend with Unstoppable - Make sure your team is well-varied! - into danger to grab your drone off the ground and bring it back to you, or else you can manually fetch your drone. So, it cannot be destroyed permanently, as far as I know.

  ASTRO Now these classes all work well together. Having a well-balanced team helps you because it means that you have access to all of these different powers.

  LAVANYA Exactly.

  ASTRO But it's by no means required for you to have one of every single type. I think that's a really nice feature of the game, which is that you can have whatever team composition you want. If you have one take down and three unstoppable, that will still help you a lot.

  LAVANYA Exactly. I will clarify: if you have four drone users, you may have a little bit more of a rough time, but you just have to take it steady and slow. And also have a designated victim who has to collect your drones back.

  ASTRO Now the minor powers get a little bit more complicated. There are six of them right now. They are Locksmith, Atlas, Improved Stamina, Lucky Loot, Medic and Nutritionist. Most of these will give you an extra item. Locksmith, Medic and Nutritionist will all give you various items at the beginning of the game to help you out, which are, respectively, a lock pick, a bandage, and a energy bar.

  ASTRO So if you happen to be the type to use those items a lot. Those are definitely minor powers to look into. Atlas allows you to run while carrying bodies. This won't impact the noise made from carrying bodies, but it will allow you to move quicker while you're carrying them.

  LAVANYA There isn't much practical use for carrying bodies unless you want to be a sociopath and dump them off the cliffs or something. That's not advisable. Don't kill your grandma.

  ASTRO Bodies can be discovered and if you happen to be in a tight spot and you need to hide a body, Atlas is a great power to help you book it.

  ASTRO Improved Stamina gives you 10 percent more stamina than what you start with. Again, super useful if you want to run a little bit, but maybe you aren't into the idea of the whole Unstoppable power. Improved Stamina can get you a little further. The description for Improved Stamina also says it can be used to rush skills as well as movement. They mentioned lock picking and hacking like in the Prankcaller power. I don't know how true that is. I've tried rushing lock picking and I think it speeds up a little bit, but this is not necessarily true.

  LAVANYA The truth of the Deck is whatever you believe will become true. If you just believe that you're lock picking a little bit faster, I'm sure it's 100 percent working as the devs intend.

  ASTRO And the last minor power we'll cover is Lucky Loot. Lucky Loot will sometimes grant you a second copy of whatever item you pick up. Extremely useful in all cases. Honestly, Lucky Loot players are an asset to every team.

  LAVANYA They really are. Lucky Loot can sometimes be the absolute difference between acing a level, and crashing and burning after a Stalker throws a foam grenade in your face. You will semi-frequently end up with doubled lock picks, doubled flash bangs, and everything else. And even with the ability to buy flash bangs and tranqs and bandages and candy bars with the little fireworks machines now, that can make a ton of difference. As far as I know, you do not get Lucky Loot when you purchase goods, though, you're just out of luck there.

 [Music cue: Stalker switch]

ASTRO So, as mentioned in the prologue, the core premise of the game deals with this idea of gathering evidence of what's happening in your town and hoping to eventually take it out of the town. And in the game, you do this quite a lot.

  ASTRO There are some missions that will require you to record things. There are also things called bonus evidence which are scattered around the map. When you go into your pause menu, you can see how many pieces of bonus evidence you have in any specific game. It can be anywhere from three pieces to possibly 14 pieces and maybe more. As your map expands, you have the opportunity to find more bonus evidence, but it will also be scattered further. You'll have to travel more to find it. And each piece of bonus evidence that you get will give you more XP, and it will also unlock journal entries for you to read in the boxcar.

  ASTRO These pieces of bonus evidence can be various things. You will know them, because they will prompt you to record them by having a little bit of TV static and a slight green haze on them. They can be posters. They can be suitcases. They can be -

  LAVANYA They can be creepy duffel bags full of mail. Depending on the mission, sometimes the bonus evidence will be things like pages from confidential files that you can kind of, but not quite, read. Or else they'll be bloodied up furniture, or blood stains on the ground that you have to clean up. It really just depends on what type of game you're in at that point!

  ASTRO Yes. So if you happen to see that TV static effect - if you happen to see that green haze - take out your phone record whatever it is. Ultimately it can only help you.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

  ASTRO As if we couldn't have more things to do in our games - in addition to the main missions, the bonus evidence, just listening to the different enemy voice lines to get lore - there is another objective that you can complete throughout many missions, which we might call a fragment quest.

  ASTRO There is a Daimon of this game called Thee-I-Dare, and Thee-I-Dare was fragmented. He was shattered. And because of that shattering event, various parts of his name are scattered around the map. They appear as small bits of fog against a wall, or in a specific area, and you can collect them by turning on your flashlight, aiming it at the spot, and closing your eyes.

  ASTRO This does make you more visible, so it's not something you should do in a risky situation, but collecting these named fragments allows you to choose how to use them. You can return them to Thee-I-Dare, or you could turn them over to Speak-As-One to be burned. There are no in-game mechanics for this. However, when you interact with those Daimons, you can choose what you'd like to do.

  LAVANYA Personally, I was going to do this fragment section, but someone banned me from it - [laughter] - on account of the fact I keep burning mine! But if you want to burn them, the way you do that is you light up a Light of Rebellion, one of the reward items you can get from the chest, and you just send off a prayer. And you're like, hey, Speak as One, I want you to know - here's some fragments for burning!

  ASTRO Fragments will appear once in a while. And if you spy a fragment in one place but you can't retrieve it at that time, your next fragment will always appear in that place until you collect it.

 [Music cue: Stalker switch]

LAVANYA So as your resident Speak-as-One stan, I'm going to cover the next game mode, which is possibly the most important game mode that you will ever play. Fuck the main missions, because this is what we're placed on this Earth for.

  LAVANYA So, Stalker Mode was introduced in Update 5, which was phrased ENTER THE STALKER. Basically, in order to access the Stalker mode, you'll need to gain one Dossier, and then enter into the Stalker van, and select a mission to stalk.

  LAVANYA The stalker is the player antagonist of the game. Basically your mission is not to make the team of children wipe, but to increase the spookiness of their playing experience, by not getting caught, filming them, and attracting enemies to them. You're trying to make the game harder and you're trying to freak them out. It's a lot of fun. The responses and reactions you can get from the player characters is always fucking amazing. So you'll be playing one versus two at the very minimum, because in order for a Stalker to arrive in a game, it has to have two players at the very least. Often you'll end up in a fourstack, so it'll be you versus four players.

  LAVANYA Again your goal in this game mode is not to wipe the player characters. You will almost never be able to wipe the player characters. But! It is to just make it more difficult for them. And usually if people see a stalker is in the game, they will derail everything and become dedicated to hunting you down like a fucking dog. So it's a lot of fun for everyone involved! Like a really sadistic game of tag!

  ASTRO It should be noted that when you begin the stalker mode, there is explanation text on the screen that starts with you will be caught. This stalker adds atmosphere, adds danger, but they are not the protagonist of the Blackout Club. The club kids for which the game is named are the protagonists of the game.

  LAVANYA And It's important to note that that if you wipe the kids, you will get your dossier back, the only way that you can get points is keeping them alive to farm them for interactions with the lucids or for proof of their crimes. You get points and you reach the top with the Stalker leadership board, which can reward you either a jacket or a shirt, through recording and interacting with the kids. The goal is not, which can never be stated enough, to wipe them wipe the entire party. The mode is ultimately about encouraging interaction.

  ASTRO Maybe the real winning was the friends we made along the way.

LAVANYA Yes. Maybe the real winning is the friends we made along the way. And the real purpose of the stalker mode is learning the beauty of the enemys to bff-les for life. Don't hunt down your stalker like a dog and tie them up to sacrifice In-Her-Teeth. Bring them home for hot cocoa and a blanket.

[Music cue: Stalker Switch]

ASTRO So if you are a player from the Blackout Club, you may have listened to this episode and thought to yourself - I already know all of this! What is this podcast of use to me? The reason we’re making this episode is to catch everyone up to the same point. From here on out, we'll be moving on and talking about new things, we’ll be talking about things more in depth, that you may not have thought about before. Or maybe you did!

LAVANYA Exactly. And it's always important to note - we're starting off these first few podcasts with an introductory to the game series and everything in it, partially because so many players in game have no fucking idea what's going on. They don't know how the Lucids are alerted, they don't necessarily know what the storyline is, they don't understand [Enhanced] Horror Mode.

ASTRO The learning curve of the Blackout Club is very steep, and that isn't a bad part of the game..

LAVANYA But it can be very frustrating!

ASTRO It can be very frustrating, but ultimately, it requires you to rely on your friends, which is the core of the game, and you learn together. This podcast is a small way to help that learning curve, and to help individual players learn the language and the playstyle of the game, so they can become better, and pass on more information.

LAVANYA And this podcast is also about ensuring that we can become not only your friends, but your best friends. Your truest, closest friends. WE SPEAK AS ONE.

ASTRO Oh my god. I can't believe you used me for advertising!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CREDITS:

The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our fact-checker is Be11amy. Our transcript is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Xaviul is a henway.

[medu-nefer]

Devon Giehl on a character from TDP that she's grateful for [aka Runaan ofc]

The first time we see him, in the first few episodes, he's almost-- at least partially an antagonist. He's this unmoving, uncompromising assassin badass who just will not hear reason, almost. He's incredibly strict, he has his feelings on an almost problematic level of lockdown.

But when we go to the kiss scene and his scene with Ethari, he's so soft and like, it's a part of him that he's not ashamed of, like this part of him is not on lockdown whatsoever, and in front of all of his assassins, to whom he is a leader, a person of strength and a pillar of resolve, and y'know, the person they look to to get them home safe, he still takes this moment to kiss his husband as though they aren't there. This moment's full of love and vulnerability, and I really think that that says a lot about him as a person. And makes him a very complicated and interesting character as well because y'know, this is a man with bloody hands, this is a man with a somewhat dark and complicated job, and yet with the person he loves most he-- that almost all falls away, just for that one moment where he's with this person who is his world.

And so I am grateful for him as a character because I get to explore this character who is a queer man with a fantasy role in the world, an assassin, he's a total badass, he has the coolest weapon to me in the show, and this part of him that is queer and married to Ethari is something that is not hidden. It's actually the part of him that he is-- has least on the strictest of emotional control. It is something that he is openly warm to.

Bending Not Breaking: An Avatar The Last Airbender Podcast: PRIDE & The Dragon Prince Part 3 w/ Devon Giehl

🥺🥺🥺

[koalatydm]

Hot Brown Morning Potion Podcast Episode 5 - The Deluxe Elf Interview with Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry

Transcription Part 1 of 2 (includes Wonderstorm questions and Kuno's questions)

[Transcriber's Notes: This took me SO LONG to transcribe, like multiple hours and I'm only halfway done... But I will make it through at least this one episode because I want fellow Moonfam enthusiasts to have a text source, not to mention make it easier for deaf/HoH people to follow along. I guess I'll tag @kuno-chan since she said it was OK at the beginning of the podcast, sorry if I'm bothering you!]

KUNO: Hi guys, so I have a personal request for this particular podcast episode if you guys could tweet, post, both at least one piece of information that you learned from this particular episode, that you love, that inspired you, that you thought was cute, whatever. Like, I really—one thing that really tends to happen is that people listen to the podcast and they kinda just go about their day. We don’t actually see the information circulate through the community, which we really try to have creative questions—questions that are fun and explore the characters in different situations. And it would just be really, really cool—it would mean a lot to me to see this actually circulate through the community, actually circulate through the fandom, and see, you know, it would be awesome to see it be inspired—to inspire fan works, fan fiction, fan art, especially fan art. I just—we talked like a solid hour at least—really like a solid hour about Runaan, Rayla, Ethari, that family, um, and Moonshadow elves a lot. We talked a lot about that. And I think this is information that a lot of people really wanted, even if it’s in largely headcanon form. But Devon and Iain were so gracious and we talked so much about that family, and including Ruthari, and of course some Rayllum in there. So if you guys could live tweet, or even just one tweet, at least one tweet. Tag us, tag me, tag Hailey, tag @HotPotion, even if you send it directly to me on Tumblr, that’d be awesome and we’d retweet, reblog all your stuff. It would be good for the podcast and I just really want to see this information circulate through the fandom, so at least one tweet. Alright, um, let’s get to the episode though. Thanks! Hope to see you guys on social media about this.

—————

KUNO: Alright, hey everyone, this is the Hot Brown Morning Potion Podcasts with your hosts Tamika and Hailey, and we are here with Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry, two writers on The Dragon Prince at Wonderstorm, and Devon being actually the recently announced lead writer at Wonderstorm, so say hi everyone!

DEVON: Hi!

IAIN: Hi, this is Iain…

DEVON: Hi, I’m Devon… (laughs)

KUNO: And so we have a ton of stuff to get through today, um, a lot of questions, so—but we’re going to ask Iain and Devon a little bit about themselves first, since I think—I’m not sure if this is the first interview they’ve really had, personally, so uh, Hailey do you want to start—head that?

HAILEY: Um, yeah, sure. Uh, could you tell us about your roles at Wonderstorm?

IAIN: Uh, sure, uh—I’m also a writer at—official title “Senior Writer” at Wonderstorm. I was one of the writing team on the show, not quite as early as Devon, who was basically employee 1 after the founders but um, I joined sort of, end of 2016 when season 1 writing was really starting to get rolling, and was you know part of the process all the way through all the seasons. Uh, and since this—it’s such a small start up company, all the writers take a bunch of other, like, production roles on the show. Like, throughout all three seasons we’ve done, like, continuity notes work, we’ve given feedback on like every step of the production process. And then the other kind of side things we have, like you know, very top secret game that we’re making in here. And like, kind of straddle the line between the show writing and the game so that that’s all kind of on point and feels like it’s in the same universe with the same characters as The Dragon Prince, but ah, can’t say too much about that just yet.

DEVON: Iain does a lot of—a lot of secret work (laughs). Um, yeah as for me, I’m also a writer on The Dragon Prince and my—I was a Senior Writer until very recently, and now I’ve been made into a Lead Writer, which means I just get to flex a lot. Um, but I started in, I think the very, very end of 2015 when Wonderstorm was first getting off the ground as like a tiny, tiny startup. And we were basically four people in a room about, I don’t know, like 20 ft by 10 ft. It was really, really awful—

IAIN: Really smelly.

DEVON: Really smelly, really tiny, like only a skylight for a window, it was great. And I—so I was involved in like the earliest of brainstorming for the show. I helped sort of like put together a lot of the pitch deck when we you know took it around to studios and like, I named like most of the characters—is like my most self-indulgent claim on the show cause I got to do a lot of really silly stuff. Um, but yeah, and then I like help out on a million other fronts at Wonderstorm too because we’re a small company and—yeah, the funny thing about the—the small tasks we have, like you mentioned continuity checks. Um, we often had to make sure that Callum’s backpack and book and Rayla’s bindings were always correct, and that was kind of, the funniest and most intense, like, stage of production ever. Cause you would, you know, watch one shot and then the next shot would come up and Callum’s backpack would have disappeared. So we had to be like, “OK, let’s give Callum backpack back on.”

IAIN: Yeah, and it’s not just for accuracy, but like, the way fandoms operate, like, we just knew if Rayla’s binding reappeared sometime, it wouldn’t be viewed as an error. People would be like “WHAT DID THE KING GET UNKILLED WHAT HAPPENED OVER HERE”.

DEVON: No it was just the—

KUNO: Oh, yeah.

IAIN: Woo!

DEVON: —continuity’s way harder than anyone thinks it is (laughs). It’s a lot.

KUNO: Oh bless you guys for knowing that though cause we—we totally would. Like, think, there was a point I remember saying that they changed Viren’s eye color because they didn’t want too much continuity with Rayla’s eye color and I feel like we were really that close to having a ‘Viren is Rayla’s real father’ issue. We really were. Somebody had to have thought about that issue (laughs).

DEVON: I actually think there is—there’s still at least one shot in the show where Viren has the wrong eye color and if you can find it, congratulations (laughter in background). That’s where we missed—missed it. So it’s in there somewhere.

KUNO: Xadia CSI (IAIN laughs). So you two are married, um, can you tell us what it’s like being married writing partners?

IAIN: You wanna go?

DEVON: Um, yeah, I mean it’s—we actually knew each other professionally before we dated, so it wasn’t like we—it’s sort of like, it was easy for us to—to remain work partners because that was how we existed in the first place. Like I met Iain when I interviewed him for a job and I—he was great (IAIN laughs), he was fun, he was all right.

IAIN: Apparently I passed.

DEVON: But um, so yeah we had a professional relationship before we had a dating—‘dating’ relationship. Um, so it’s strange because a lot of people will say like, “Oh, that’s probably terrible. You probably, like, become absolutely sick of each other” but somehow we’ve managed to—to have like, two relationship patterns where when we’re at work and we’re working on writing stuff we have this very professional thing going on and then at home, we’re just married idiots and we have a lot of fun. So like, I don’t know, I’m never tired of you, personally.

IAIN: No, (DEVON laughs) yeah I mean when we’re writing it’s generally like, Devon’s the one on the keys uh, you know, putting the words in and so on, and it will kind of bounce back and forth between like, I’ll have the idea for the—how the scene should flow and I’ll kinda narrate bits and then we’ll go back and smooth things over. But I mean, I could imagine that with some people it would get tense, but I think Devon and I, we’re just absolutely the most comfortable with each other and neither of us takes it personally when it’s like, “that line that you pitched isn’t working” or “this joke could be funnier”, anything like that.

DEVON: It’s usually Iain who’s—cause I usually type cause I type really too fast.

IAIN: She’s really too proud of her typing (laughs).

DEVON: I type super fast, it’s my only real talent, but—like I’ll just sort of go off on some sort of like incredibly unnecessary, long description of something and Iain will sort of let me get about like four or five lines into this unnecessary nonsense and he’ll just sort start going like, “OK so like, do we really—do we need that? I mean, you know, could we sort of parse this down a little, a little less, a little less”. And then I, just like, “Ugh, fine” (laughs).

IAIN: But um, every word she writes is great.

DEVON: Mmm (skeptically)

IAIN: It’s perfect.

DEVON: Completely not true. Also in our scripts I think like—

KUNO: Aw.

DEVON: —in terms of the way that we work professionally, I think like a lot of my strengths are in—in really almost self indulgent levels of drama and he can kind of pull me back from being too indulgent on those fronts. And then I think that Iain is objectively absurdly funny and so when you kind of look at our episodes usually everything that’s pretty funny and lighthearted and like the sense of levity often comes from you and then if there’s anything that just feels really painfully sad it’s probably me?

IAIN: I’m the funny one.

DEVON: (laughs) It’s true.

KUNO: Aw, I feel such a connection to you Devon, because I’m actually, episode 3 was actually one of my favorite ones because I love all that like domestic stuff. I love just kind of like—oh, I don’t know what you call the trope, like a safe house trope where you go somewhere, you’re still kind of in the adventure but we’re in a space right now, a narrative space where people are safe, if that makes any sense. Like you—if you’ve ever seen How To Train Your Dragon, like (T/N I don’t know what was said here, sorry!), the base is the safe place, that kind of thing. So, I totally get that, I actually see—episode 3 was one of my favorites outside of pretty much every episode where Rayllum was a thing. (laughter from multiple people)

HAILEY: The whole season basically (laughs).

KUNO: Pretty much the whole season, um. I think there was one more question about two.

HAILEY: Yeah sooo.

KUNO: Before we get to the elves.

HAILEY: Yeah, definitely. Uh so it was mentioned that you’re now lead writer, Devon, and can you tell a little bit more about what that entails if you can, and how that’s been going?

DEVON: Yeah, I mean… I actually don’t know what I can say about it, um… I think it—it means that uh, for future Dragon Prince stuff I’ll sort of like take a bit more of an active role in leading the—the development and the storylines and things like that. It also means that from a company perspective um I’ve been kind of involved in some other side stuff that Wonderstorm is quietly looking into developing and um I help a lot with other IPs that we would love to make a real thing someday and that’s kind of all I can say about it I think or I’ll get in trouble.

HAILEY: All right, that’s great, that’s good to know, thank you.

KUNO: The Dragon Prince 2 (laughter from multiple people). I’m totally joking everyone that’s not a thing so don’t take that for—

HAILEY: Wow.

KUNO: I’m joking.

IAIN: Two dragons.

DEVON: The Dragon 2 Prince.

KUNO: Yeah. OK also if there’s anything that you guys say that you want redacted this is probably not going up for another week because I have to get our reaction episode out. So anything you guys think about that you’re like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that” just message us and we’ll redact that. Yeah, cause we know that—

HAILEY: Or just say it. Just tell us, like, what’s—

DEVON: Hopefully we have some self-control but—

KUNO: Okay, so we are going to get really indulgent here and I think this is going to be really in Devon’s wheelhouse. We have a lot of questions and a bunch of the scenarios so try to get through as much of it as possible. Um so the first question is can you tell us more about the Silvergrove? What is the government system like in Silvergrove? Who runs it? If you could tell us that is that the only—at least like the leadership role? Um, is that the only Moonshadow elf village? And also do they actually get any real daylight because I noticed when the illusion thing happened it just got shady and I’m like, “They might be taking this Moonshadow thing too far”. Like the elves—do they really like that much? So like tell us about the Silvergrove and where Rayla grew up.

IAIN: So I guess it’s probably worth just starting off with a kind of blanket like, ‘if it hasn’t been in the show, we can’t say it’s 100% fact. A lot of this is just gonna be what kind of we thought, rough shape of things happen in our heads—‘

KUNO: Yeah, absolutely.

IAIN: —going into the writing and so on. So you know, don’t come after me with any, uh, fandom lawyers, anyone. But um yeah, I guess like it’s sort of—it’s most useful for us to think about it in comparison to how the Sunfire elves, like clearly they have very structured society. They have a queen, obviously, and they have large cities and so on whereas we think Moonshadow elves live in, as you saw, much smaller communities. And I think the Silvergrove is not the only one of those, it might be one of the better known ones where clearly the best assassins come from. But uh, I think are other ones out there, um, and maybe even Moonshadow elf people do not know where all the other ones are. Obviously the Silvergrove is hidden and maybe they don’t even have access to all the other ones. So I think there’s a sort of community run vibe to things. I think you know when they decided to—to ghost Rayla, and before that Rayla’s parents, I think that was probably a ‘let’s all come to a consensus before we make a decision about something like this’. I think, Devon, if you want to talk about the kind of like sunlight vibes things, because that was a big part of your driving force behind how this episode looked and felt.

DEVON: Um… well… first, I will say that it was potentially from the top down a complicated visual decision to have episode 3 take place in a Moonshadow elf shady forest grove and also the kingdom of sunlight.

IAIN: Yup.

DEVON: It created a couple production problems in terms of like the way we wanted the Silvergrove to look was very like evening themed and cool colors and you know shaded. And I had this really sort of self indulgent thing where I really wanted it to be as close to night time as possible and yet the story line in Lux Aurea was clearly taking place in the middle of the day. So we came to this sort of compromise that you know it is technically daytime through the whole day and there is enough tree cover that it’s already pretty shadowy but also I think there is some magic at play that’s sort of like generally um shrouds the whole thing in more of like a night time vibe. And my inspiration for that was I’m a big World of Warcraft player, or was I don’t super play a ton anymore but I really loved Ashenvale and some of the night elf regions and they had that similar thing that no matter what time of day it was it always felt like at least dusk or like this sort of like ever—ever shaded feeling. And I indulgently kind of wanted that to be where Rayla came from. So that’s what that’s about.

IAIN: Yeah and I think they’re magical beings. They don’t need vitamin D from the sunlight or anything like that. They’re totally fine if they just get moonlight every so often.

DEVON: But yeah, don’t write a script that has, you know, moon themed place and sun themed place at the same time. It was a… questionable choice (laughs). But I think it turned out—

KUNO: Yeah, ‘cause I was wondering—I was wondering—I was like “Okay” because a lot of the stuff you run through—you run the okay, if I were to write a fanfiction how do I use this. So it’s like, do they just never like—if they like—if Callum were to say live in the Silvergrove would he just have to get used to the fact that like it’s just never totally bright daylight or unless you leave the Silvergrove in the forest, uh, and like—that type of—is that what’s kind of like going on, they just like their shade?

DEVON: I think they like their shade. It’s like Scotland in the winter.

IAIN: Oh yeah, except we all get miserable by around about February when we haven’t seen sunlight in several months. But um yeah, I think it’s kind of like yeah, a combination of ‘oooh, magic’ and also just extremely, like, thick tree cover in the deepest parts of the forest. But I don’t think you have to travel too far. But uh, I think there’s a reason why everyone in that town was a Moonshadow elf and there were no Sunfire elves or random humans just like, chilling and living there. I think only the most goth of kids would be able to live in the Silvergrove without going a little bit mad.

DEVON: I mean you only have to go as far as the adoraburr field which clearly still gets a significant amount of daylight.

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: And you said there’s not really like a leader. They do as a community, but is there anyone that like makes decisions, like is there anybody that like if they were to go to somebody, like if they have like village leadership decisions. And obviously, um, blanket statement that all this we assume is kind a little bit of headcanon so it doesn’t have to be like for gospel, but you know for purposes of writing stuff.

DEVON: Um the way I thought about it—well, to back up a tiny bit, there was actually a version of the story where there might have—this was super, super early on, we were thinking about how the story might play out and we talked about there being potentially another Moonshadow elf leader type character that they would meet who, you know, was the one who ultimately called for the Ghosting decision. But that didn’t really fit the sort of, like, very personal nature of the story we wanted to play out with Rayla specifically. Um but thinking about that and the way that we were, you know, trying to shape it—I would imagine that like the assassins are sort of like a specific group that live in the Silvergrove which is otherwise—it’s not all assassins, like, not everybody there is an assassin. And I think that means that like you know Runaan was the leader of the assassins so he might consult with the leader of the blacksmiths who may be someone over Ethari but maybe it’s him now who might consult with the other general leaders—I don’t know. Like I think it’s more of a counsel of different groups than one single authority. It just seems like that would be a better fit for Moonshadow elves than the sort of like very, very strong-army, structured, high-and-mighty feeling that the Sunfire elves have, so, does that make sense?

KUNO: That totally makes sense, a little bit like an oligarchy, I think I had the idea that like they sound like they like a counsel. Like it sounds like a elven conciliatory.

DEVON: Yeah I think like someone might say, like obviously something horrible has happened and Rayla is exactly the person we thought she was. I’m calling for a—a ghost vote. And then you know—

IAIN: With a cooler name than that.

DEVON: No I think it’s canonically, I’m sorry—

IAIN: Ghost vote?

DEVON: The canon is “ghost vote” now.

IAIN: Okay.

DEVON: But yeah, they would all sort of like weight in kind of like a town hall scenario about of like why this is obviously the correct call and they would all sort of like have to come to some sort of agreement about what to do versus the Sunfire queen just being like “mph, time for the light, light decides!”

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: Okay um the next question being almost a little on that, does Ethari regret, um, what does he—does Ethari regret doing the banishing spell now that he knows the truth about Rayla?

DEVON: Oh absolutely 100%. But I don’t think he would have the power to—to reverse it. Like I think he could do a quick charm to help reverse it in the moment just to speak with her but ultimately it would take a lot for him to undo it and I’m not—we haven’t talked about what he’ll get up to in the meantime, but I don’t know he would be able to pursue it so directly—I’d have to talk about it, I think it would be an interesting side thought to think about how he might pursue redeeming her in the eyes of her people knowing what he knows, but—

IAIN: Yeah I think given that we said it would take everyone to do it collectively and make an agreed decision it would similarly everyone would have to understand the truth and go back on it and ‘oh I saw her one time and she said she didn’t do anything wrong probably isn’t enough to overturn that. But yeah I think he probably felt some regret even at the moment, but you know he’s in some of the worst grief of his entire life and he’s not going to make perfect rational decisions. And I’ve seen you know some people were slightly upset that he got so angry with Rayla in the moment of seeing her but I think like when you first see the person that you’ve tried to convince yourself sort of took the most important person in your life away from you, you’re gonna feel a big mess of feelings and it will bring up some grief that maybe you thought you were just—just starting to get over, so ah. Yeah I think hopefully he can turn that around in the years to come but they’ve all had a rough time. They’re at war. It sucks (DEVON laughs). Don’t go to war, kids.

KUNO: Hailey did you want to ask the next one or did you want me to?

HAILEY: Sure I can ask it. Could you—so I mean—you mentioned a stuff—a couple things about their government system and whatnot, but is there anything else you could tell us about Moonshadow culture, like what their day to day is like, and what it means to be a Moonshadow elf?

DEVON: Um I do think that a lot of the fandom I’ve been pleased to see has picked up on this sort of idea of a fairly rigid culture and you know there’s a lot of importance placed on things like honor, loyalty, and the ability to commit to things. And um I think that could come off as pretty strict but I actually think it comes from the place of valuing a close knit community. And I think, like, to the idea that we said like they probably have some kind of counsel instead of some single authority kind of ruler. It’s—I think their day to day would be very much going about their business in ways that support each other you know? Like does that make sense? It’s—you go to the blacksmith and he does work for you and it’s friendly and conversational but it’s productive—it’s all very for the good of the community.

IAIN: Yeah I think early on in season 1 even Rayla says that you know they’re not really meant to show their feelings. So I think everyone kind of commits to doing their task for the good of the village and doesn’t gripe about their day to day until something bad happens as the entire series to this point has been driven by. But um yeah I think they uh—they’re just committed to having a good, small, close knit village life and all supporting each other the best they can. And then occasionally the dragon queen tells you to go kill someone and that’s your job so you better go do that without complaining about it.

DEVON: I think we use the words “reclusive yet intimate” in the article we put up about the two moon creatures, the moonstrider and the shadowpaw. And I liked that a lot because I think they’re reclusive in the sense that they’re a little bit shut off from the wider world and they’re um isolationist in their preservation of their own culture but they are very close to each other and that is something that they hold at such an—like a preciousness level but it’s also a bit extreme, like if you betray that in any capacity like obviously they take that very seriously. And so it’s a double edged sword if you will, to have a community that supportive and that close but also your ability to perform all of yourself for the good of that community can be your undoing so—

KUNO: No I actually kinda get that um ‘cause I’m Pacific Islander so I think we’d call that what you’d call a collectivist society where it’s like the needs of the group supercede needs of the individual so I kinda like I—it’s not the extreme I think that they are because they’re very like reclusive but um I kinda live like that in a little bit of way. It’s what I grew up with. So I actually totally get that which might be why I like that so much (multiple people laugh). Um so the next question would be how does the banishing spell work that, um, that was used on Rayla politically and magically? I think we’ve talked a little bit about politically already but magically is—I’m assuming it’s a collective decision or does each person, like, opt in? Like could Ethari have opted out of doing it or did we—did they all have to agree?

DEVON: I think everybody have to agree?

KUNO: And how is it broken?

DEVON: I don’t think you can opt out?

IAIN: Um I think ‘how is it broken’ is something we definitely want to save for—for the future uh we really hope that Rayla manages to undo that. In terms of I think that it’s just culturally ingrained that you wouldn’t opt out. Um I think they would probably just argue forever until they manage to come to an agreement. So I—yeah I don’t think there’s you know half the elves in that village who are seeing Rayla and were like “Oh hey Rayla how’s it going?” I think uh they all came to the collective decision. That’s kind of the political angle. Um sorry, what was the other part? Magically how it works?

KUNO: Yeah? How would you do it?

IAIN: I—again, you know if it’s not in the show it’s not canon, but I sort of inspired by how the entrance spell works where they do a dance and there’s a ritual and I imagine it’s kind of similar. Like I think there’s a lot of that kind of like ritualistic style of magic and it’s kind of like what you see when they put the flowers out onto the water as well. There’s you know a collective dance probably involving a lot more people, a lot more cool intricate runes that happen only with a much more somber mood than the fun, happy times of Callum and Rayla dancing around in the forest. Um so yeah it’s probably—I would imagine it’s probably tied to some whatever the saddest phase of the moon is and that’s when they all get together and really somberly and really sadly uh commit to never seeing this person again. At least that’s the part of the plan. An interesting question that I think could be something that fanfiction writers such as yourself could get into is has any one of these ever been broken before or have they all been pretty sure that they would never need to go back on it? Is that going to be something that Rayla is going to figure out for the first time ever or is there a precedent for this happening. And we don’t have an answer right now but I think that would be a cool story to think about and write.

DEVON: Oh man I love the saddest phase of the moon idea. Imagine if they do it at the new moon because it’s like the moon’s face is hidden forever. Whoo.

IAIN: Whoo.

DEVON: Sad.

KUNO: Maybe we’re birthing things while we’re doing this interview. I actually think it would be like Callum does the Historia Viventum thing and it would be so—cause now I’m just imagining this whole village doing this sad dance which is the Banish Rayla dance essentially. And like that would be so sad for Rayla to witness that just for the drama of seeing her entire village decide to just not see her ever again. And that’s like wow, I’m so sad now.

DEVON: I love sadness.

IAIN: Yeah Callum just crushing a series of Moon Opals to show such a clip show of all of Rayla’s saddest history moments (laughs).

DEVON: Oh god.

IAIN: That’d be great.

DEVON: Thanks Callum.

KUNO: Thanks Callum. Um, she’d love him anyway. But um okay so some of my favorite stuff, what was it like for Rayla when her parents had to leave her to live with Runaan and Ethari and what was that transition like for them all? How old was like Rayla too?

DEVON: This was one that we’ve had a couple different ideas about so this is another one that’s like heavy not quite canon bubble. Like if we actually end up doing a story that involves some of these details it’s likely to change and be slightly different but the versions that I’ve liked have involved her being pretty young. And because honor is such a you know key part of Moonshadow culture I think like overall it was something that she felt you know sad about because she knew that she wasn’t going to be directly seeing her parents very often anymore. And—but it was uh such a huge honor that she felt you know pride in what her parents were being selected to go do. You know, act as Dragonguard and serve as these sort of like honorific, um, warriors that left the collective of the Silvergrove to go represent Moonshadow elves in the service of the Dragon Queen. And I think she had—she grew up being told what an honor that was and how much pride she should have in her parents because that is such a special thing. And then I think like it speaks a lot to how proud she was when she believed that they ran away and abandoned that duty because you know, how could they? If that was their reason for leaving her when she was a child and then they ran away from that job, like, how important could it have really been? And then you know, I’m sure that makes her feel very, very small. It made her feel so hurt that she told Callum at first that they were dead so she took it pretty hard.

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: But I think the other thing about it that we’ve sort of kicked around is that like, Runaan and Ethari were Rayla’s parents’ close friends and I think she was familiar with them enough that she didn’t feel like she was being you know left with two strangers. It’s sort of just like, you’re going to be under the care of people who are already very, very close to you and care about you quite a bit.

IAIN: Yeah I think with like Moonshadow elves in general the thing I think about a lot is like the good and evil that comes from suppressing your true emotions to show a different face to the world and I think we see a lot of that in Rayla. Like I think she probably committed pretty hard to Ghosting her parents because she had this like big mess of like sadness that she’d left but at least the soft landing of Runaan and Ethari to live with and so on. But believing like this sadness is worth it because they’re doing something so noble and then the betrayal of that—it just came out in kind of a messy like toxic way, right, where now she’s committed to becoming an assassin at a really young age in a way Ethari doesn’t agree with and so on. But I mean on the other side I think having a strong handle on your emotions is often one of Rayla’s strengths right? Like we saw in episode 5 of this season after she’s going through a whole lot of stuff, both her family situation and this new development with Callum, she’s just able to like operate as a cool badass extremely cool assassin without letting any of that affect her. But you know I think there’s balance in how you handle your feelings and how you externalize them in a good way that people can learn from, but sometimes you gotta—you gotta work (laughs).

KUNO: That makes sense. Oh well yeah I always had this personal headcanon which I kind of like incorporated into my fanfictions where she felt abandoned by her parents so in a way it’s kinda like slightly—kinda like that except it was all those feelings that have been repressed from years and years basically came out when she felt like—like the abandonment came to like the head when she felt like they had left because they had ran away—they kind of like ran away like from her.

DEVON: Oh yeah, absolutely.

KUNO: In a way—their duty to—

DEVON: I think that validates the suppressed feeling, you know.

KUNO: Yeah, since their duty to the Dragonguard was in it’s own way more important and that’s something that was like okay because it was an honor but since they ran away it’s like obviously it was more important in a terrible way, if that makes any sense?

IAIN: Yeah I mean I think it’s like she did her best and she’s trying to be a grown up but it’s hard at a young age to accept that you know there are meant to be higher callings than a bond between parents and children, right? Like that’s hard for her to grasp and she probably didn’t express that openly ever really. But I think it really did help that she had two genuine loving father figures ready to accept her with open arms even if one of them did train her to become the best assassin of her generation, which again I wouldn’t advise to—to most parents out there.

DEVON: I do think like even that was considered, you know, honorable. It was you know, you’re going to—not only are you going to get to live with Runaan and Ethari, like Runaan is the leader of the assassins, or at least maybe at that point in time he wasn’t the leader but he was very up and coming. I don’t know, it could be either or, but that I think was probably something that she fully embraced and fully wanted, like you know, ‘this is my purpose in life, this is my calling, my parents have gone off to do their calling and it’s a great honor for them, and this is my path and what I’m going to do with myself’. And that didn’t end up being true but it was probably a comfort to her at the time.

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: That makes a lot of sense. Moving on, okay, this, we’re getting real indulgent now—do you know what Ethari and Runaan’s wedding was like and what are Moonshadow elf weddings are like in general?

DEVON: Um, I have a, so a lot of the dancing stuff is because I have an enormous soft spot for tropes involving cute dances, like, just a huge, huge soft spot. And the thing that comes to mind is, if you’ve seen the movie Prince of Egypt, which is such a weird reference—

KUNO: Yeah, I love that.

DEVON: —the scene where he and the girl, I forget her name, they do the thing—

KUNO: Tzipporah.

DEVON: —with the ribbon and they do the cute little dance with the ribbon. For some reason that’s what I think of when I imagine what a moment in their wedding would look like would be a dance with a ribbon that they sort of use to—you know, Moonshadow elves love ribbons, I guess, but this is a good ribbon! It’s a love ribbon. But anyway, that’s just my idea. I love that specific—that song that, “Through Heaven’s Eyes”, it’s during that sequence but that—

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: —would be my go-to inspiration for like, it’s like that and then you know, everybody dances with them because Moonshadow elves like to dance.

IAIN: Yeah, I kind of like the idea of the—there’s a lot of these symbols that are sometimes extremely sinister. I mean I think Ethari even kinda calls this out when he shoots the—the Shadowhawk arrow to inform the queen that her son is in fact alive. But like, Moonshadow elves believe that death and life are not good and evil, they’re mirrors of each other and an important part of the cycle. And you know, the moon has cycles and that’s an important part. So I think thinking about all the rituals and stuff that they have, which initially you’re introduced to as ‘let’s go murder someone party’, like if that was—there was a kind of inverse to that that was a big part of their wedding ceremony I think that would make a lot of sense to Moonshadow elves because this is two people binding their lives together forever. Binding for a shared purpose in a good way and not the grim ‘let’s go kill Prince Ezran’ kind of way.

KUNO: Yeah. Cause naturally this is involving like several ships so I’m like, I had to ask that. And on the piggyback of that, as detailed as possible, can you describe courtship customs for Moonshadow elves?

DEVON: Oh man.

KUNO: I mean like dating—dating customs, like a headcanon even if it’s just headcanons.

IAIN: Devon is deep in thought (laughs).

DEVON: I’ve never—like for some reason the—the headcanons that I’ve thought about are more specific to like, Runaan and Ethari than I’ve really sort of like branched out into thinking about how Moonshadow elves do this in general. So I imagine there’s intended—there’s some formality to it, I would imagine, in that like, because they’re so, you know, purposeful and thoughtful with how they express their feelings if at all, I think it would be, you know, exchange of gifts like small favors and making your purpose known in a way that starts small but has purpose. So I think like, there’s versions where Ethari would put extra detail into the work he was doing for Runaan which you know, could be perceived as a sign of affection or Runaan was coming to Ethari asking him to work on his weapons or metalcraft stuff a little bit more than was necessary and—stuff like that, where it’s a bit stiff and difficult but I think like once—once there is clear reciprocation I think there can be more of an open discussion about it, does that make sense? But I think Runaan probably struggled with this a whole lot, like, ‘cause he’s—did I, it might have been you who I responded to on Twitter but someone asked me something along these lines and I think Runaan had a really hard time even with this first sort of like simple offerings of affection because that’s just him. Like he sort of takes that aspect to an extreme. Like he has a hard time being like “here is the way I wish to express myself in a soft way and not with a—a sharp object. So I think Ethari had an easier time because he’s just more naturally soft (laughs).

IAIN: Yeah I sometimes think that Runaan is the most Moonshadow elf of all Moonshadow elves, but like, you know, it’s—

KUNO: I was gonna say that.

IAIN: Yeah, um, you know when they have such a hard time showing their feelings and they sometimes feel like they’re not supposed to and so on, and so Runaan is trying to pick up on the tiniest possible hints through professional exchanges and so on. And I think when it’s actually time to confess that there’s a feeling there you would, I think especially Runaan would have to be 100% sure and then do it entirely in private, the most private situation possible where there could be no possible spies who could see this if it was going to go wrong because that would just be the end of his entire life, obviously.

DEVON: Yeah he would bind himself to his own death (laughs).

IAIN: Yeah, that’s it. Gonna assassinate myself because I confessed love and it didn’t get reciprocated. That’s that.

DEVON: It’s over.

IAIN: So yeah, lot of—lots of awkward advances where they’re trying—trying to have the escape hatch of “Oh I didn’t really try to suggest that I liked you, this was just me asking you for a professional favor by let’s never speak again”.

DEVON: And then he comes back the next day (DEVON and IAIN laugh).

KUNO: Oh my goodness. Uh I felt—I—I kinda like headcanoning now that Ethari tells Rayla all this “how I met, you know, your surrogate dad” kind of stuff. Like, and that’s how she—she’s like, this is how you do love apparently.

DEVON: I do think that like, yeah, he had a much easier time and probably picked up on stuff. And to me there’s a side of Ethari that you don’t really get to see in the episode because he’s very sad. I think he’s a—he does have a playful side and I like to imagine that while Runaan was doing his, like, really just not-the-best attempts to display affection early on, like Ethari would pick up on them but not necessarily give the full signal back. And he played a little bit oblivious but he absolutely was—he’s just more emotionally in tune. So I think, “Oh hey, you’re back again, wow. I thought I did fantastic work on your blades last time. I cannot believe they’re already dull!” Like and he just sort of like, he knows—he knows there’s something there.

IAIN: I think like this kind of gets echoed in Rayla, like where Callum in an effort to pick her up and be honest about how he feels that she’s just an incredible person. Like to her that’s like, ‘person being entirely open with their feelings in a positive way? That’s a love connection!’ And then it goes wrong for one entire episode and then it turns out that Callum was also not fully aware of how he was feeling and so on. But I think like, yeah, I think that’s why she was like immediately “Wow, this is clearly meant to be romantic and this is—this is going exactly the way I want!” and then it didn’t. But then it did! So we’re all happy.

DEVON: Aww.

KUNO: I am! I’m certainly happy. Um—uh let’s see—the next one is—okay. What was Rayla like as a child growing up in a household she did—household? Um, she mentioned going to school and we’d love to know how baby Rayla fared as a student and just a child growing up in the Silvergrove and what that experience is like for a Moonshadow elf child?

DEVON: You want—you want me to do this one?

IAIN: Go for it.

DEVON: Yeah, um, I think Rayla was feisty (laughs) in a word. I think she—for some reason there’s a scene in the beginning of Korra where she’s already mastered like, three elements and she like comes out punching. I kind of think about that when I think about baby Rayla. She knows she’s—there’s that end credit scene where she’s got the two sticks and she’s posing with them and Runaan’s sort of lifting one of them up and I’m thinking like, okay so sheg’s like, from a tiny, tiny age thinking like, “I’m gonna be the coolest assassin the Moonshadow elves have ever seen!” and she’s like rambunctious about that almost, because you know, as a child you don’t really understand what the ramifications of that are but it’s considered like a highly, highly valued, honored position and so she’s obviously like, “Yeah I’m gonna do that and I’m going to be the best at it and there will never be any complications whatsoever!” In terms of Moonshadow elf childhood, I think with the way that I would think about it is—we talked about the sort of community aspect. I imagine Moonshadow elves have pretty, like, what’s the word, like, a lot of general education, sort of, like, “this is what weaponsmithing is like and this is gardening and raising crops and things to provide for the community” and so I think they would have a lot of ‘school’ that covers a lot of just like, life basics because you are expect to find a place that contributes to the collective whole. Does that like—?

IAIN: Yeah, I think like it’s also lucky for Rayla that a big part of Moonshadow elf culture is what we would call PE. Like I think she excelled at striving to be an assassin warrior and so on. Especially like, she’s trying to live up to her parents who at first were honored Dragonguard and you know, Runaan as well. I think in terms of like, more academic stuff like if there was Moonshadow elf history lessons and “let’s go out and understand the, you know, ecology of the Moonshadow forest” and stuff I think she was probably a bit kinda like, rambunctious and not super paying attention and running off and not really giving it her all and so on. Um, you kind of get that impression from early on where she knows what Primal sources are and she’ll explain that to Callum but like, when she’s talking about ‘how do you do that Moonshadow form thing’ she’s like “I don’t know, it just feels right”. Like I think that’s—she did everything very intuitively and focused on the things she cared about and understood and kinda did what she—did what she could on the other subjects, I guess, but didn’t care as much.

DEVON: Yeah I feel like if you imagine the kid that is going to grow up to be an artist is doing doodles on their math homework and just sort of like doing the math homework but—but you know, clearly the effort is being placed elsewhere. I think it’s that but she was excelling at PE and assassin training and therefore fell very, very easily into her supposed path.

KUNO: The—this isn’t on the thing, but did—did she ever—did she ever really have any friends? ‘Cause she doesn’t really mention—ever mention friends. I—maybe that has to do with the whole assassin thing where if she wasn’t learning being at school she would probably doing assassin stuff with Runaan or assassin training stuff—I guess not really assassinating. But um did she have really friends growing up?

IAIN: I think if she had friends they were not super close. And I think she valued her alone time. There’s a sweet moment early in—well end of season 1 where she like tries to cheer up Ezran by saying that fitting in is overated and I think she felt that a little bit. Um and you know I think there’s some amount of when you’re being trained in the art of an assassin like you’re probably somewhat taught to—to keep people at arm’s length a little bit, right? And I think she—she took that to heart. So I think that’s a big part of why when she was first traveling with Callum and Ezran there wasn’t that much trust between then and it was kinda like, it was Ezran honestly that bridged the gap being most empathetic number 1 child. And yeah, I think having a close friend is relatively new to her.

KUNO: Makes sense. Like just few, not the many. Um okay then next question before we get to Hailey’s batch of them are um, what are Runaan’s feelings toward Rayla as of right now and everything that’s happened since season 1? I understand he’s in a coin, he’s in a finacial crisis, he’s probably not thinking about it too hard—

DEVON: Oh my god (laughs).

KUNO: But you know, like he’s gotta be—you know he’s not doing anything right now, I’m assuming, so like what would be his feelings about her at the moment?

DEVON: I mean he’s got a lot of time to think, wherever he is. I think like—I got into this a little bit on Twitter in a self-indulgent rant at one point where I think he went through a lot very quietly during the first few episodes of the show where he very, very much wanted Rayla to succeed, even if he wasn’t necessarily like being the dad on the sideline of the soccer game, like, cheering for her. But he thought this was her moment, this was her time to prove that she really was more dedicated to you know, her cause and her people than her parents were because they had, you know, been the subject of such shame. And then ah, everything goes the way it does, I think he has a brief crisis of, “Is this my fault? Did I fail to train her well enough? Like, was Ethari right?” Because he always thought she had, you know, a softer heart. And I think like those are the types of things that he’s still stewing on, um like did—”did he overstep? Was it something—was he so eager to give her the opportunity to prove herself that he, you know, ultimately put her in a position where she could not succeed?” I think like, the other thing that I mentioned on Twitter was I think he took her off the mission both because he very, very much wanted to give himself and the others a chance to complete the mission even if it meant their deaths. But it also meant that Rayla had the chance to survive even if it was potentially going to be misinterpreted and she’d get slapped with the Ghosting, I think he believed that her alive was better than everybody being dead. So I think like, he’s got a lot—a lot to work through and I think like—I think he feels guilty. I think there’s the smallest part of him that he has the—again, a lot of time to potentially stew on and reflect on is he does feel like he put her in a position that was, you know, not fully taking into account the type of person she was and more projecting onto her the type of person he wanted her to be and gift he wanted to give her of redeeming herself in the eyes of her people for her parents. And I think he’s gonna have to work through that. Poor dude.

KUNO: That’s so sadly heartfelt. That’s so sadly heartfelt. Here I am thinking that he’d be, like, maybe a little angry with her, ‘cause obvious reason, but now it’s like, oh he feels guilty. Like, “Oh, okay, let’s just slap the angst on, okay”.

DEVON: I mean, I think like—

KUNO: Yeah, mm-hm.

DEVON: Sure he’d have some anger, like, “Awgh, I gave her everything. I gave her the exact opportunity she needed”. But I think like the guilt and the reflection leads to the “Maybe I—maybe it was me who stepped too far here”.

IAIN: Yeah, I mean another part of it is like, we don’t know what it’s like being trapped in the hell coin dimension, right?

DEVON: Oh I do. I—I mean—

IAIN: Oh you do?

DEVON: It sucks.

IAIN: Oh it sucks?

DEVON: When it happens to me on the reg (IAIN laughs).

IAIN: But you know, does it feel like an eternity is passing? Does it feel like no time has passed? Is he in eternal pain? Because if it’s like real bad—

KUNO: Oh my god.

IAIN: —in there I can imagine that like yeah there’s definitely some of those kind of anger feelings that you don’t want to feel in but you do sometimes, right? Like it’s like, if he has a snap moment of “I wouldn’t be in here if she hadn’t gone off and disobeyed our orders and, like, lied to me and so on”. So if he ever comes out uh don’t know what side of the emotional coin he’s gonna land on.

DEVON: Ohhh, please leave.

KUNO: Oh my god.

DEVON: Get out, oof, ouch.

IAIN: Finger guns.

DEVON: I do think like that sort of complex—

KUNO: It sounds—

DEVON: —emotion is just, I don’t want to give any time to that pun, we’re moving on. Like that sort of complexity of emotion and relationships is something that I really like in the show overall. Like you said earlier, you saw some people that were a little bit upset that Ethari was so willing to lash out at Rayla at first and I think like to me that was always part of the big, big thematic of the show, which is this sort of endless cycle of people being willing to hurt each other and not forgive each other and not, you know, accept that you can choose peace. It’s, you know, it’s—Runaan having that impulse to anger is a very natural thing and it doesn’t—I don’t think it necessarily makes him a bad person for feeling that. And I don’t necessarily think that Ethari having his moments of grief lead him to actions that are ultimately like, regretful, like I don’t think he would want that to define him in the long run. Like those are very human things but those are the things as we acknowledge them and as are—so long as we are capable of recognizing how flawed we are and how violent and…

KUNO: Messy.

DEVON: Messy! Thank you, that’s like, I was going to say like churning, messy is good. Like messy emotions can be and how they can like, dictate the way we treat each other, um, but forgiveness and patience and acceptance are ultimately just so much more powerful than those negative perpetuating lashing outs. That was an inelegant way of ending that screed, but yes.

KUNO: I actually really love that um ‘cause I from the beginning I’ve loved their father-daughter relationship so I love how complicated it is, ‘cause the truth is you know every parent-child relationship is a little complicated, except theirs is a little more complicated with assassination going on in the works, the family trade. So I love that it is this complicated ‘cause I know I remember in the beginning where people were like you know—you know she does have a dad. And it’s like I know she has a biological dad but until I am told otherwise that’s her father. I don’t care and I love their relationship so I love that that really reflects that. Another—the next question out of me before we get to, um, Hailey’s, which are all about different elves, is um, course I have to ask, my policy is one Rayllum question per interview. Um what are Runaan’s feelings—whah, no, whoop, how would Ruthari and Runaan react to Rayla’s relationship with Callum considering he’s not only a human but a human prince? ‘Cause as far as we know Runaan really hates, um, humans and I’d love to see that story later, both individually and as a couple. Because as far as I know, Ethari probably doesn’t know that their in a relationship unless he sensed it?

DEVON: Oh man, I—I think you should take this one, but I do want to say that I saw one comment on Tumblr at one point where someone said that they wished that Ethari had said something to Callum along the lines of like, “Take care of her”. And I want to travel back in time and pretend that was in the script ‘cause I think that would have been really, really nice. And I do think like, he picked up on the fact that Callum was important to her even if it—he didn’t necessarily read it as romantic right off the bat. I think he mostly was like, “Oh this guy is kind of like a cute—he’s a human but he’s, you know, a friend to someone I care about and that in and of itself is valuable and there’s something there”. So I think—pretend that was in the script. I wish I had thought about something like that but—

KUNO: I will (DEVON laughs).

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: That’s canon as far—as far as I’m concerned that’s canon.

IAIN: I think uh it would be best for everyone involved if they found out together, uh, because I think Runaan’s impulse would not be good immediately. I think like, when you spend so much time as an assassin and you drill into your head that the people that you’re meant to kill are not people, they’re the enemy right? Like I think that’s—sometimes that’s a thing he turns on to do the job and so on, but I do think that’s gonna bleed into his personality and it’s—you know, especially given his extremely recent history he’s not got the best feelings about humans. So I think it would inspire an immediate negative reaction in him that would not be pleasant for Callum and Rayla, but I think Ethari just has a much softer heart and that is where Rayla kind of got that side from. So I mean I’m not going to say that he would immediately—you know, they’ve been at war for hundreds and hundreds of years with humans and they’ve been told all through their history that humans committed the original sin of dark magic, et cetera et cetera, but like, I think it would take not that much time of seeing Rayla and Callum together for Ethari to see that there’s something there and then I think Ethari would have the ability to ah, to talk Runaan down pretty quick. But I also think that like, Runaan might not even show any of this, there might just be a kind of seething resentment that he’s not really talking about inside. Um unless it was like on the battlefield or something and he was like, “That’s a prince that I’m meant to kill” or something like that. But overall I think Ethari would sense that Runaan was not like—was not taking this well and they would be able to talk it through. At least that’s my gut.

DEVON: No, that sounds right (DEVON and IAIN laugh).

KUNO: I feel like poor Callum is just always on the edge of “Am I going to die tonight?” while he’s there, “Is this gonna be it?” Just gonna be like, “Oops sorry I had an accident—hey I had an accident in the middle of the night, you know, just a knife to the throat, that’s all”.

IAIN: I mean, he’s doing pretty well, like he said as they were about to meet Ethari and Rayla was like, “Remember Runaan?” He was like “Oh yeah, that guy who tried to kill me as soon as he met me? Cool guy”. Callum’s doing pretty well on the acceptance front these days.

DEVON: I do—

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: I do want to say that I think Ethari and Callum would get along really well because I think they both have sort of like a soft hearted friendliness to them that they would have a fun rapport. And that’s the sort of like “Trees to meet you” line is definitely supposed to be like—they’d you know, crack some goofy back and forths and I think that would soften Runaan too because he couldn’t ever hate someone that Ethari liked.

IAIN: Yeah, I think it’s a weird—

KUNO: Aww.

IAIN: —reversal where like Callum’s the one doing the dad jokes and Ethari’s like humoring them and Runaan’s like, “I don’t understand. Trees do not meet.”

DEVON: “Please stop saying ‘trees to meet you’.”

KUNO: Aw it never gets old. I love that. Um alright, Hailey, take it away. Your turn.

[aresmarked]

it’s always on advent of important rl stuff that i want to write

escapism? probably!

[balamist]

I always wanted to play thief but the first game looks so old and I'm worried it's clunky? have you played all of them, which one did you start with? :3

Short answer: play them all in the release order.

Long answer: there are 4 games total. The original trilogy:

Thief: The Dark Project

Thief 2: The Metal Age

Thief (3): Deadly Shadows

In which the first two games, TDP and TMA, are the ones that are considered The Classics. DS is like the least favorite child, but something something the poorest billionaire. The trilogy's lore and plot are interconnected, but each game is its own finished slice of story. Also TDP and TMA were made on the same engine (therefore look and play roughly the same), while DS is more "modern".

The fourth one is a 2014 reboot called simply "Thief".

It very vaguely references the og trilogy here and there in form of easter eggs and vague many-many-years-ago's, but otherwise is its own game that can be played without touching the other three at all.

Personally, i 100% recommend giving the og trilogy a try, and playing the games in the release order. The trilogy is indeed old and somewhat clunky, but nonetheless holds up amazingly even to this day. I first played Deadly Shadows like 15 or so years ago, then Thief'14 on its release (loved both a lot), and only got to The Dark Project and The Metal Age a couple of months ago. And honestly? I liked TDP and TMA more :^) They're just incredibly solid games in every aspect, and the amount of good they offer - level design, art direction, sound design, core gameplay loop, and whatnot - outweights the clunk by a ton.

As for Thief (2014), it's what i'd call a good stealth game, but not a good Thief game, if that makes sense? I enjoyed it a lot (the art direction and the way Garrett's hands are animated are *chef kiss*); you might as well skip straight to it if you don't feel like figuring out how to setup/play the trilogy. It's just, well, not the Thief that everyone talks about.

Here's some useful technical stuff if you decide to try the trilogy:

Thief: The Dark Project has a "definitive" version called Thief Gold. Gold features a number of alterations to original missions, as well as includes several completely new missions. So go for Gold.

There's an unofficial patch for TG called TFix, which is pretty much mandatory for installation. TG does not have built-in subtitles, there's a patch for it as well. Also the wiki and TTLG forums have pages with transcriptions for all briefings, in-game texts, dialogues, etc.

TMA has a similar patch called T2Fix, which among other things adds english subtitles directly into the game.

Upd: a good advice in the comments, TDP/TMA's default control scheme is weird, definitely re-bind the controls.

Thief: Deadly Shadows requires Sneaky Upgrade to be playable on a modern pc. Also you can edit/fix a lot of stuff by simply fiddling with .ini file in the game's folder, everything in it is neatly labeled.

Also if you end up not liking TDP/TMA's sort of clunk after all, i still recommend giving Deadly Shadows a try, since it was made on a more modern engine and you might like it still. And it features one of the best horror levels in gaming history, which even has its own wikipedia page :^)

(gif via @psychiclounge)

UPD: after playing the trilogy go play The Black Parade. It's a huge, masterfully crafted unofficial campaign for TG which acts as a prequel to the trilogy and greatly expands the City lore. Has built-in subtitles, but a patch is required to display them.

(ik it's not a fan mission recommendations post but TBP fucks)

[self-spaghettification]

edit of all the times (that I could remember) of characters repeating words they heard from eachother.

tdp s6 leak spoilers ‼️

leak free version here

the dragon prince & passing down lessons.

also on tiktok

Transcript:

“TMO: We are, all of us, stardust. - A: Held together by love, for an instant.”

“H: I want to talk to you about life, and growing up. - C: And how sometimes there are changes you don’t expect. But when you grow up, sometimes, - E: you have to face things you’re not ready for.”(thank you to @konmaao3 for the footage here!)

“R: I’ve been thinking about something someone once told me. About how when one person hurts another, then that person hurts them back, - C: then it’s a cycle. You hurt me, someone will get revenge against the elves. It won’t end. -

C: Who told you that? R: You did. C: Oh.”

[crokus]

So I was doing a bit of looking and came across some interesting reads. Though someone on here might be curious:

A Stairway to the Unconscious-- Thief: The Dark Project, 20 Years Later - Fascinating and long article about a lot? I'm short on time so I just skimmed it (and all the others), but it seemed intruiging and brought up some things I don't see brought up very often, which I appreciate. Very interesting media comparisons and discussions. I enjoyed this one the most by far. Definitely recommend.

Postmortem: Thief: The Dark Project - A bit more technical, so more useful to me than the former. Still pretty digestible and more detailed than most others I've found.

Those were the most interesting. There are more, but there are more, so they'll be under the cutoff if you're curious.

Garrett has been psych-profiled... - More of a fun interlude than anything useful (to me), it's amazing and hilarious that someone did this. Complete with in-text citations. Very quick read. Very amusing.

War Stories: Thief's intuitive stealth system wasn't intuitive to design - This one actually leads to a video. Haven't watched it yet but I plan to. Seems to be mostly about the AI of the opponents / enemies?

Thief Gold: Can A Game Have A Setting Without A Plot? - Interesting criticism that applies both to TDP and Gold, though more to Gold. I don't know if I agree with it all, but it's very fun to see the author's perspective.

Thief ll turns 20 - A Retrospective On A Pioneering Stealth Series - Brief summary of the trilogy and Thi4f. Graphics are a bit rough in my opinion. Mostly relates Thief to other stealth games and goes over some history of the series.

Why The Thief Remake Was A Complete Flop Despite The Hype - Has very strong opinions. I enjoyed the criticism of Thi4f, toward which I am not favourably disposed (nothing personal against it, just not my thing). Another one more amusing than informative.

Thief: The Dark Project is 20 years old, and you should play it today - Shining praise of Thief. Fun to read, quick. Articulates the architectural / spaicial wierdness and athmospheric draw pretty well. I'm saving it to show to people.

Thief Is Just A Stealth Game - Another 'Thief is great' article. Part of a podcast, though I don't think the transcript. You could probably find the episode if you want to; I haven't. Main focus is that Thief is very good at what it aims to do, which is not everything. Very fun.

And if you like Thief and reading, I'd recommend the books Thieves' World and Foundryside.

[arospacecase-moved]

here’s a list of blogs to follow in case any of my followers would like to make their blogs more accessible! this post will be broken up into two parts: (1) blogs specifically dedicated to making image descriptions and/or transcriptions, and (2) blogs run by people who make a habit of writing descriptions!

blogs dedicated to descriptions:

@a-captions-blog

@accessibleaesthetics

@accessible-aspec-positive

@accessiblecoldtimes

@accessiblecomics

@accessiblegoodomens

@accessiblelesmis

@accessiblesurvivor

@accessible-userboxes

@accessiblezelda

@accessiblyvintage

@aestheticallyaccessible

@aestheticcaptions

@anarchist-accessibility

@atladescribed

@audio-video-transcripts

@beauberry

@better-image-descriptions

@can-i-make-image-descriptions

@captioned-daredevil

@captionedtiktoks

@captionsandescriptions

@cartilageandperfume

@describedgoth

@doomhope

@doorfus

@dragonagedescribed

@hyrulecore

@image-described

@imagedescriptions

@image-descriptions

@imagedescriptionsquare

@imgdesczone

@iwillcaptionthat

@justaddcaptions

@lit-described

@makingdndaccessible

@one-aesthetic-blog-to-another

@pictureids

@readyset-id

@resource-ids

@rq-described

@taz-ids

@theplanetinmoonlight

@transcribed-described

@to-transcribe

@toxictiktokssubbed

@typodescript

@video-transcripts

@yafriendlytranscriber

@/accessiblecore

@/cinnamonappledoughnuts

@/florafae

@/gnomevi

@/helianthuscottage

@/homeyhearth

@/jobetter

@/picid

@/tdp-described

@/trendercenter

@/tsdescriptions

blogs that often write descriptions:

@/adhd-hippie

@/aevios

@/agentgem

@/ambassador-song

@/angelictroublemaker

@/army-of-bee-assassins

@/axolotlhuman

@/azepci

@/beyondthesunrise

@/bisexual-sokka

@/blackbirdsonthemarsh

@/chaoticlesbianenergy

@/chief-yue

@/closet-keys

@/coralreefskim

@/crowpxnk

@/dadsandals

@/deglutitionborborygmus

@/dragons-and-flowers

@/dramaticowl

@/dullahandame

@/femmesitive

@/gingersnapped

@/gothicmai

@/herbgerblin

@/hufflepuffzuko

@/infernallegaycy

@/jg-piff

@/kallistoi

@/keplercryptids

@/kfriedrice

@/killjoyjay

@/kingvamps

@/korradefensesquad

@/kyanitedragon

@/lichfucker

@/lovingitaromantic

@/maisupremacy

@/mimzy-writing-online

@/minghuas

@/moonshinecybins

@/multiclassing

@/my-username-is-classified

@/night-dark-woods

@/nonbinary-crafter-aang

@/nonbinarywithaknife

@/owlbuddy

@/pir8core

@/prridot

@/qjusttheletter

@/queerasfact

@/renegades-redemption

@/raavenb2619

@/scyphers

@/solarishashernoseinabook

@/stainedglassthreads

@/stamp-it-to-me

@/strawberrygiorno

@/swallowtailed

@/themacklemorebrothers

@/thepastisaroadmap

@/the-sarcastic-shortie

@/thespacesay

@/theweefreewomen

@/transtenzin

@/undercovermartina

@/unregisteredcookie

@/wakkoswish

@/windbison

@/yourfriendthefangirl

@/zebian

i’m sorry if i left anyone out! if you want to be on this list please feel free to plug yourself, or if you have more suggestions please add them!

EDIT: this list is being continually updated!

EDIT 2: thank you for all the suggestions everyone! i’m gonna stop updating this list, just because i’m getting kinda tired of it and there are a L O T of blogs here, but feel free to keep suggesting things in the notes, they just won’t be added to the original post. thank you for caring about accessibility!

[koheletgirl]

Hey Shira, may I ask what a vriska is?

ok so again i have not ever seen homestuck so i don’t have the full context, but im going to do 2 things here - 

1. link this post, which i love

2. copy the transcript of the relevant part of this video, under the cut.

so taking into account that i think this should be taken semi-seriously, i really really love vriskas. obvious examples are azula, catra, tdp claudia (who i dont think is a vriska yet but is definitely headed in that direction), and im sure there are more you can think of. anyway the concept is fascinating to me for so many reasons, i might talk about it more in the future but for now ill leave it at that

the relevant part in the video is 29:44-36:37. im leaving some parts out bc it’s pretty long, i’ll use this [...] as an indicator of parts i’ve skipped. also i did leave in the part where she talks about redemption arcs, bc i think she’s right.

“So, basically, Vriska is, especially at the start, not a good person. She’s manipulative toward all her friends, she’s really mean toward several characters for what seems like cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and she kills a lot of her friends. Keep in mind that death in Homestuck is very much not permanent, because resurrection is a thing and multiple timelines are a thing and so a character can die and come back and be  kind of okay with the fact that they died. A lot of it is video game rules, y’know? But. Still. She does do quite a bit of murder. I would say she’s, in academic terms, kind of a huge b*tch. And a lot of people don’t like her specifically because her levels of uh… Huge B*tch Energy are sort of relatable to people. [...] The ways in which Vriska  was A Huge B!tch were very real to some people, so she naturally inspired a lot more emotion than some of the other characters. [...] Not only that, but a lot of people feel like given all the times she’s depicted as sympathetic, she isn’t sufficiently punished for all the bad sh!t she’s done.  So, this is where my opinion differs from other people’s in terms of redemption arcs. I don’t think characters need to be physically punished in some way to be redeemed. I think redemption arcs are about making amends to the people hurt in as good a way as possible and making an active commitment to do better. It’s why I hate redemption arcs that start and end with a character doing one grand gesture and then dying. I don’t think good redemption stories need to  incorporate punishment, but rather a commitment to do better. But a lot of people did feel like she didn’t earn what redemption she got, whether it was because of a lack of punishment or a lack of commitment to do better. [...] On the other hand, a lot of folks really, really liked Vriska. For one, a lot of the shitty things she does are… I wouldn’t say excusable. But it’s at the very least, explained beyond just that she’s a shitty person who hurts people for no reason, so a lot of fans can be like ‘oh wow,  this is a tragic character, I can  ympathize with why she’s like this’. She’s a murderer because she was raised with an abusive parent figure [...] who forces her to do it. She’s cruel to people because,  due to her parental figure and background, she sincerely believes she’s making them stronger.  There are moments where she clearly shows a capacity to be tender and care about others and try to be better, which makes it fascinating and devastating when she fails to do that. And because she gets so much focus by the narrative, she’s very easy to grow attached to. [...] So, there are naturally a lot of divides when it comes to her. This both included shipping debates with her, and the big thing: whether we should like her or hate her. There are people who hate everything she stands for and they think she’s a bad character and a bad person. There are people who think she’s a bad person, but a  great character. There are people who feel really attached to her and defend her and feel like she’s a good character and a good person. I… haven’t met anyone who thinks she’s a good person and a bad  character, but I’m sure they exist. [...] But you can see how very quickly, these sides could come to hate each other. One person complains that Vriska shows up too much? Someone who loves her comes in to argue that she’s a great character and you’re being unfair to her. One  fan says they think she’s a good person? Someone else comes in with a laundry list of bad things she did. Someone else replies that those things were excusable and understandable. Someone else says they’re not. And because it’s the internet, these people fight forever and ever and ever. [...] It also spawned the meme ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’, which some people loved and some people hated. My understanding is that most of these people do not actually sincerely believe that Vriska did nothing wrong, but it’s more like a glib ironic thing you say when you like Vriska and don’t want to fight about it. They were tired of people getting mad at them for liking a character who’s a bad person. Some people also point out that a lot of male  characters have done stuff that’s pretty much on par with Vriska’s actions, and they tend to be humanized more and seen as a lot less divisive by the fandom. So ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’ quickly became a meme.“

[d-pennants]

Through the Moon Instagram Live

Partial transcript of the Instagram Live with Justin Richmond and Aaron Ehasz. It was only posted for 24 hours and a lot of stuff was talked about. I tried to copy the answers as close to what was actually said, but I won’t guarantee I didn’t mishear or miss stuff. I just focused on the stuff about tDP.

No S4 announcement today.

Do you have a favorite character? Are you allowed to play favorites? JR: Yeah. I definitely have characters that I like more than other characters, but I’ll never admit who they are. [laughs]

Fine, how about hints about S5 then?

AE: Justin and I were working on a scene this morning, a scene in which someone makes a sacred promise to Bait. Hope that’s not to big a spoiler.

[Explaining about Through the Moon which is out today (Oct 6th) Shout out to Xanthe Bouma & Peter Wartman, who will be there for the AMA on Friday. And shout out to the team at Scholastic.]

[Technical issues made the audio break up while JR was relocating. I couldn’t catch what the actually questions were for this little bit, but I caught some of the answers.]

Question about Zuko’s VA Dante Basco

AE: He’s amazing to work with. I’d definitely be happy to work with him.

Question about Callum’s Mage Wings

AE: I’d just get mage wing out even just to go to the bathroom at night if I were Callum.

Question about Runaan

AE: I don’t know. That’s a mystery. Runaan is certainly in the magical cursed coin in some form. But I don’t know what he’ll do or if he can survive it. But that’s a story we’ll be certain to tell.

[JR relocated & AE had to log out and rejoin, which fixed the issue.]

Are there other graphic novels coming? Is Through the Moon part of a series with an over arching plot?

JR: Hopefully yes. Hopefully we get to do some more with Scholastic. This is a standalone. It is part of the core story of the Dragon Prince. It counts as canon. But there’s not a sequel to Though the Moon.

AE: We would love to do more graphic novels. We are actively talking about and planning it. Definitely in the cards. But not necessarily an over arching story.

Asking about Janai’s brother?

AE: We’re going to find out about Janai’s brother for sure. He’s a really cool character, a lot of fun.

What do Moonshadow elves do during a full moon? Do they just become invisible.

AE: It’s not just invisibility. It is a stealth mode. I think we talk about it as like they’re almost partially slipping into a “Moon dimension” that partially obscures how visible they are. But also their physically is maybe changed at bit so they can partially materialize for a split instant to do damage, then they’re phasing out. I think they’re phasing in and out of some kind of Moon dimension. So it’s partially invisibility, but there’s also some defense and fighting stuff that happens.

What does Moonberry juice taste like?

AE: In my mind the things that are conjured are some kind of juice blend. Mulberry juice, pomegranate. Justin talked about a bit of cran involved? But I always think mulberries.

JR: Try mulberry juice. Mulberries have like the weirdest, coolest taste. If you haven’t tried it you should do it.

AE: Not ignoring S4 questions, but we just don’t have a good answer. We are working on it. But we don’t have a S4 date. We getting things moving in a good way and we’re excited but we won’t have the information on a date for S4. We really appreciate you being patient for that. Don’t have any age criteria that we can reveal right now.

Will there be outfit changes for the dragon squad?

JR: There’s already some in the graphic novel. Rayla gets some pretty great pyjamas.

AE: They’re just going to rotate outfits. They’re just gonna trade clothes. You should see how great Soren gonna looks wearing Claudia’s clothes. How Callum’s going to look squeezed into some of Ezran’s outfits. Everybody’s just gonna try on each other’s stuff.

JR: I like it. Too bad that actually 3D doesn’t work like that, where you just trade outfits. Because it’d be hilarious. Yeah, of course, people are going to change outfits. There’s going to be some cool new stuff to see. Absolutely going forward.

Is Callum close to obtaining any other arcanum / going to learn any other arcanum in the future?

JR: No spoilers, but there’s little bit of a hint of some of the answer to this in this graphic novel, so you should check it out. I don’t want to spoil anything. I think Callum fascinated by all the arcanum. He’s not just limiting his interest to Sky.

AE: If you’re a betting person, isn’t Callum’s going to be the first human archmage. A little bit trolling, but yeah, he loves magic. He’s fascinated. But he’s groundbreaking. He’s doing things humans haven’t done before and his potential is limitless. May not be S4, may be S17 at that point.

Will there there be more Sarai? I really want Callum and Ezran to visit her memorial statue.

JR: That would be a beautiful moment. That’d be great, that’d be pretty cool to see. There will be some more Sarai, we’ll find out more about their family. I’m not sure how much we’re aware, but Sarai is certainly not gone from the series. You’ll see Sarai again.

Is the Key of Aaravos actually the key of where he was imprisoned?

AE & JR: We can’t tell you.

JR: We don’t even know. We haven’t even discovered the answer yet.

AE: We know! Actually, that was one of the first things we knew at the very beginning. We’ll get to it.

Is the Sun arcanum the only one that can heal? Or maybe the Ocean arcanum can heal as well/or to?

AE: Great question. Yes. I suspect there are healing abilities possible through different primals. Ocean is a perfect example. I think it’s likely different kinds of healers that call on different energy to restore life and health to those who are injured or sick.

Could original characters introduced in the graphic novels potentially make it into the show?

JR: Absolutely. It’s a huge universe, so we won’t hold back if we think somebody from a graphic novel or the game will fit into the show in the right way, of course we would do that. One of the cool things about working with all the same team is that stuff like that can happen, because we can control all of it. Which is amazing. It’s a great feeling.

AE: There’s a character we’ve talked about for a while from the video game and recently that character finally had their moment in the show. We wanna see different ways to access the world and characters.

JR: Also we’re working with Fandom on a tabletop RPG so that can go another way. You can see characters coming into the show.

Do we have to read the graphic novel before we watch S4?

AE: I don’t think we should say too much. You don’t have too, but everything that happened in the graphic novel happened before S4, it really happened. So can probably infer some of it, but best experience will be read the graphic novel. Get yourself up to date.

How will Zym progress throughout the seasons? Will he grow up and learn to talk and how to manage his powers?

JR: I don’t want to say too much. Zym is going to grow along with the other characters. He’s not static. He’s a puppy, he’s a little baby, and he’s growing up.

AE: We’ll see Zym growing up more for sure.

Will there be more Gren content?

AE & JR: Yeah! [Laughing] AE: Of course. JR: How could there not be? AE: Didn’t we announce already that season 5’s Book 5: Gren? JR: Books 5 through 14 is all Gren. Then we’ll come back around to the other arcanum.

Will we ever get to see Ellis and Ava again?

AE & JR: Maybe? Probably. JR: Not 100%

How did the idea of making the graphic novel come about?

JR: Couple of things. We were talking to Scholastic and they were saying “what if we did this thing together” and we were fascinated by that idea. We’ve always been interested in comics. It sorta came up very naturally with them. And then we started talking about the story, Aaron and I, that could fit in here with the writers and stuff. I felt like a natural thing. That’s how I remember it - Aaron may have other memories of it.

AE: I think that the whole dream of this partnership with Scholastic has been to serve the community by being able to continue tell stories in the wider world of Xadia, through graphic novels, and novels and other books. That part of why we’re so excited about this partnership. It’s so much more depth and insight into different characters parts of the world that we may not have time for in the 22 minutes on Netflix. So the partnership with Scholastic is perfect for deepening and expanding those stories. That’s what it comes down to.

JR: They introduced us to Xanthe and Peter, who just absolutely crushed it.

AE: Yes. [Name?] is still at Wonderstorm if someone asks. It’s still happening. JR: Yes, I talked to him yesterday. He absolutely still here. Xanthe and Peter, we got introduced to them through Scholastic and they just absolutely knocked this out the park. It was a joy to work with both of them and what an amazing job they both did on this. We’re super excited to have gotten to work with them on a graphic novel.

AE: More shout outs to Xanthe Bouma and Peter Wartman.

What did Aaravos say to Khessa?

JR: We can’t say. AE: We can’t, but Janai is wondering that too. And we’re excited about it. It’s weird - I’m not being helpful, but it’s a good question. I may not be giving a satisfying answer, but it’s a good question.

How does Janai know Aaravos spoke to Khessa?

AE: She might not have seen it, but she’s going to find out about it.

Someone asked about the Orphan Queen.

AE: We love the Orphan Queen and there are more references coming seasons 4 and onward. It’s a story I’ve always wanted to tell. We think it will be a great movie someday, maybe. The story of the Orphan Queen is certainly relevant to the story and the saga as it’s unfolding now. It’s a cool story we wanna tell.

We know only some Skywing elves have wings, and not all Sunfire have fire-mode, but what about Moonshadow elves. As they can only use their powers once a month, rather than at any given moment, is it an ability all (or at least most) of them have or is it just some of them?

AE: I think it’s one of those things where Moonshadow elves are in tune with the Moon primal, and one of the very powerful skills that a Moonshadow elf being in tune with that arcanum can master is moonshadow mode, that makes you an excellent assassin, so they evolved this culture that does some of this stealthy, assassin work. It’s certainly possible that there are other powers and abilities that come from connecting to that arcanum that can be directly realized - that a Moonshadow elf might be able to manifest. So you may see some of that in the future. Maybe you have some ideas for your fanfiction or your cool art to show some of those powers, but the powers and abilities really come from them being attuned to these primals and some of it comes naturally and some it comes with training and bringing out the ability to do the special thing. I don’t see why it’s limited. In learning, for example, that Sunfire elves have at least two abilities that can connect to the arcanum is part of what may help understand that.

Do we read fanfictions?

AE: Yes and no - not so much. We highly encourage it and we love people do it. Every once in a while we get someone saying “you gotta look at this, it’s so charming” or “oh, this is so cool.” Or someone will bring something to our attention. There is some really amazing work out there and there’s some writers who are terrific. But as a rule I don’t think we do it regularly when someone says “check this out”.

Will there be more dark mages?

JR: Yes. You will see more dark mages, 100%. But I don’t want to say any more than that. AE: It’s interesting too. This is one of the great things about Scholastic partnership again, that there’s this sort of interplay about things you find out in the show and I think at least one of the dark mages is very significant. The first time people will hear about that person will be in Book 2: Sky the core novel. That’s someone who plays him in the story, in the saga, once the series comes back. But yeah, there’s a very important dark mage who will come up in that book.

Did Aaravos create dark magic?

AE: No, it was discovered not created. Did Aaravos turn them onto it or help them discover it? That’s very possible. Whether Aaravos played a role in developing their ability to do dark magic. Exploring the possibilities of dark magic.

Will we meet other types of dragon and/or archdragons?

JR: 100% yes. Dragon’s in the name. We’re bound by oath! AE: There will be dragons.

Is it possible the dragon king will unfreeze?

AE: Should we not answer that? I feel like it’s possible, but I don’t want to encourage or get anyone too excited. I think being turned to stone is a pretty dismal fate.

Can elves do dark magic?

AE: Can we just say yes? JR: Absolutely. Elves can do dark magic. Totally possible.

How do you go about populating Xadia with cities and landmarks? Do you have the landmarks and find places that fit or did you have the shape and find things to fill it? Or mixture of both? JR: A bit of both. There were some places we’d talked about and generally knew where it is or what this place is going to be. But some of it, when we saw the first version of that map, and the details, we were like “oh my goodness,” there were some obvious things we wanted to put in there. Then there’s some easter eggy stuff that just fun.

Do we think Claudia deserves a redemption arc?

AE: Why does she need a redemption arc. Why are you judging her? What has see done that requires redemption? She’s pretty much in the clear. JR: I’m insulted for her. (laughs)

Is Corvus’ middle name Dennis?

AE: Do you want it to be Dennis? JR: It can absolutely be Dennis. No reason it can’t be. I think I know where this comes from. There was a running gag in the writers between Devon and myself where we call Corvus “Dennis Trackerman.” There was a whole thing. It went on way too long. AE: We hadn’t named him yet. JR: We were talking about if there were a whole family of Trackerman, cousins and it went on way too long. I think his middle name could absolutely be Dennis. AE: Seems right to me. JR: So it’s official - Corvus Dennis Trackerman.

Is there a certain reason Rayla is scared of water and if there is will we find out more about it in the show?

AE: I think there may be. We may find out more about it. Part of it is because of the way she’s wired. I think she’s great at running through the trees and balancing and doing the things she does, is she senses the stability of the earth beneath her, the amount of stability or flexibility of a tree limb or side of a cliff. She’s very sensitive and in tuned. I think when you take someone like that and put them in the water, I think it - whoosh - overwhelms them. It alarming. Some of it’s a little physical, but I suspect there may have been something that happened. She certainly brings a sense of emotion around it, feels like it’s beyond discomfort. JR: I feel like there was a tra-

[There was a bit of a pause so they ending up talking over each other. AE starts asking the next question while JR gets cut off].

Someone asked if we can learn the backstory on Ethari?

AE: I know that there’s a beautiful story about Ethari’s birthday on our website that can give you a glimmer. But I think that’s something I would love to hear. I’m sure it’s something that Devon and Ian - perhaps Neil has thought about.

Do you think you’ll explore Callum’s dad or is he not important to the story?

AE: I think it’s possible we’ll learn more about Callum’s dad in the sense of the role he played in Sarai’s life and Callum’s own life. Hopefully in one of the books that comes out. JR: Yes, he is important. He’s foundational to how Callum became Callum.

Will the Dragon Queen in more involved in Season 4?

AE & JR: Yes. Dragons.

Is Rayla the main character of the story of Through the Moon?

JR: It’s Rayla focused, but it’s like the show, there’s various non-Rayla bits. But if I had to pick a main I’d say yeah, Rayla. AE: Probably ask Xanthe what she thought about that question.

Do we see more Crow Master?

JR: We can never get enough Crow Master as far as I’m concerned. If the show was just the Gren and Crow Master show I feel like we can make some stuff happen. We’ll definitely see more of him.

AE: Yesterday we were working on a Crow Master scene, and the writers were like, do we need it, and like, It’s a Crow Master scene!

Is it canon elves have 6 toes?

JR: I think they have 4 toes, right? AE: I’m not sure what happened there. I think that’s an oops someone made. I suspect they have 4 digits per hand or foot.

[Side note: I think Jack DeSena was talking about 6 toes on Zoom into Xadia]

“Gren” is that the main spinoff?

AE: We were gonna a have a spinoff that was just Gren, like the character’s life. Even if it was just mainly Gren enjoying the morning and getting ready for work and winding down at the end of the day and possibly waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about things and going back to sleep. Cause, things will be fine.

Will the history of Xadia’s splitting be important in the future?

JR: Yes, absolutely. That event is crazy important in terms of the history of the continent. You may not see more of the actually event of it, the getting split, but it’s a huge deal that matters a lot.

Soulfang serpents feed on the souls of their prey, does that make them a Moon primal creature?

AE & JR: I think that’s right. JR: And they’re terrifying.

Does Bait have a middle name or a glowtoad tribal name? They’d love to see how Ezran found or got Bait?

JR: I think we’ve said Ezran got Bait from Harrow. Harrow gave him Bait. Glowtoad tribal name is some sort of grunt noise that’s specific, it’s pretty funny to think about. Also, how would you know which is the tribal name and which is the middle? I guess they’d know. It’s only for glowtoads.

Will we see how people react to Rayllum or elf/human relationships in general?

JR: Yes. It could be a huge thing in the show. Human and elf relationships are a big deal, absolutely we will see that stuff going forward. Yes, you will definitely see that stuff.

How long did it take from conception to production for Through the Moon?

JR: I think it was about a year / nine months. To go from story idea all the way to finished. AE: If we’re talking story idea it’s almost a year and a half. It’s a lot of work. We worked with Peter on a number of drafts and outlines and scripts. Then with Xanthe for quite some time.

What is the time gap between the comic and season 3?

AE: Couple of weeks? JR: It’s pretty short. It’s almost immediately following season 3.

Is Opeli actually Soren and Claudia mom, but they  don’t remember her?

JR: No, she’s not. But that would be kinda funny. AE: Do you maybe ship Opeli & Viren a little bit. JR: That would be a pretty funny relationship.

The time gap between Through the Moon and Season 4?

AE: Can’t say. JR: You’ll find out in season 4. Lots of weeks.

How long does it usually take to animate a scene?

JR: That’s a pretty variable answer. The way it works is; we write a script, it gets recorded, there’s a bunch of 2D passes where we do storyboards and animatics and those are all hand drawn, and that takes weeks and weeks of time. At some point that’s approved and it gets handed off to the animators. In our show we do 3D animation with a sort of 2D sheet or look to it. So 3D animators would get that animatic, and they’d be handed a shot. Sometimes, depending on how complex the shot is, there’s sometime multiple animators will work on a single sequence. If there’s a lots of stuff going on with multiple characters you’ll get more than one person working on a shot. But it totally depends how much facial animation there is, how much action, how much running around, if they’re standing or talking. It totally depends. There’s a sort of variable number of seconds the animator can do a week. There’s not like a hard or fast answer here. Sometimes if it’s simple they can animate maybe 20 seconds a week, if it’s crazy complicated they may be doing half that. On average, it on the 20 seconds a week range. But wildly variable depending on the shot and what happening.

Is there a bigger world out there or is Xadia all there is?

AE: There’s some stuff on the periphery of the map that is part of a bigger world. But the main focus is this continent. It’s where the key action is. I think there are things on the periphery. We sometimes do jokes the Avatar world is on the other side. JR: If you flip the world over.

Are the elven face marking henna tattoo or are they permanent? JR: They’re more like henna tattoo. AE: Depends on the culture. There are probably some elven cultures where they more permanently tattoo some of the marking and they’re some where they’re more temporary makeup. But I think we’ve said for the Moonshadow elves it’s more like henna. Semi-permanent tattoos.

Will there be more Queen Aanya?

JR:  Yeah. AE: I hope so too. JR: I love Queen Aanya. She’s awesome and a very exciting character. Also she has the coolest bow ever and I want to see more of that not matter what.

Aanya/Ezran friendship?

AE: I want to see that. We talked about that. JR: We can’t talk about that yet, but yes.

Who is the best fighter in the show?

JR: I don’t know if there’s a best fighter. There’s a lot of awesome fighters in the show. AE: Rayla and Soren both have different fighting skills. Corvus has different set of fighting skill. They’re all great fighters. Amaya’s incredible. Actually, the answer might be Amaya. If I had to put an answer on it. Just fundamentals. That be my answer. JR: That makes sense. I agree. I bet Soren would disagree.

Do you guys ever play D&D after work?

JR: Yes, we have a whole D&D crew after work. We love Dungeons & Dragons. We love Tabletop RPG We play all kinds of board games, not just Dungeons & Dragons. We had a whole series of board game nights - when we can be at the office - that were really fun. Continue that when we can all get back together. Played some virtual version too since Covid.

Will we ever see Villads again? JR: I don’t know if we should answer that one? AE: I think so, yeah. JR: Also, Villads is the name of a person who worked on the show - he’s an amazing director. AE: Not just a person, the supervising director of the show. Wonderful leader. Inspirational. JR: And a big sailor.

Then they wrapped up. Thanks, shout outs, reminder of AMA etc.

[kuno-chan]

Is there anywhere where the hot brown morning potion interviews are just typed out? I've got hearing problems and it would be so nice to get those extra bits of tdp

We are working on that! My friend @spiritypowers is doing the transcriptions now! It takes a bit of time, but she is ON IT and we will be doing those regularly, free, no extra cost or anything. I really want those our for HOH people.