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mrs-gauche · 1 month

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So, I *think* I've calmed down enough to form coherent sentences about this trailer now, after watching this about a gazillion times. 😂 There is just SO much in this and I still can't believe it's all real.. I feel like people have already dissected every single frame anyway, so here are just my poor two cents (that's a lie, it's an essay lol), I'm sure 90% of this has probably already been said lol, but I just had to write my thoughts down, so there you go. 🫠

But first, can I just ask you guys this.. Does anyone else feel SO friggin overwhelmed every time something huge like this drops? 😂😭 Like, I LOVE the collective excitement and freaking out over all this with the fandom together in real time, and maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm watching the trailer live and within like fifteen minutes there are already a bazillion notifications, messages, people have already made hundreds of theory posts, edits, fanart and shitposts, meanwhile I'm sitting here still looking at the FIRST FRAME and trying to process what I'm even looking at. lmaoo Like, it takes me SO long to take it fully in, calm down and look at ALL of it in detail, while I go radio silent for like two hours, making people think I just died watching the trailer, I guess. lmaooo So.. sorry if it takes me forever until I even go on here and look at everything you guys are posting. 💀 <3

Anyway, so first of all, I'd like to just generally say... Everything about this blew. me. away.

Look. After like 20 years of watching BioWare's entire animation catalogue of the same 25 movements in every cutscene, that it would make you jump every time a character but even slightly moved differently than everyone else, we're now getting a game that is SO INCREDIBLY CINEMATIC, SO SMOOTH, unlike any BioWare game before. A game where everyone just moves and expresses emotions like their own person, making everything a hundred times more immersive and impactful!!

Not only that but there's a BioWare game now with PHENOMENAL LOOKING HAIR and REALISTIC HAIR PHYSICS. Guys, do you understand this is HISTORY??? lmao We've been asking for this for YEARS and it's happening!! 😭

And the cinematography? THE CINEMATOGRAPHY?? Just looking at that very FIRST LOCATION SHOT alone. The camerawork, the composition, the fluidity of movement, the shift of focus, the lighting, the use of MoCap, the facial expressions... As someone who spent a *LOT* of time using the flycam to make cinematic gifsets of DAI, where - with all respect to the devs - 90% of the camerawork basically consisted of "zoom in/zoom out"... this. blew. my. fucking mind.

Like, they did it. They mastered the Frostbite engine on all fronts. And it truly hurts my heart seeing people compare this to Fortnite or whatever, when in my opinion this time they actually managed to find a perfect mix between stylized and realism, in favor of making the characters even more expressive and this coupled with the use of MoCap and the incredible cinematography will make these emotional scenes hit SO hard and.. ugh, I just love it so much. 🥹❤️❤️

With this being said, let's dive into it!

Okay, so I know this is super random, but it was literally the first thing I noticed about this trailer. lol Did you noticed that it said "BioWare" *before* "Electronic Arts" in the beginning, unlike that first... controversial reveal trailer, where it was the other way around? 😂 Not reading anything into this of course (or do I? lol), but.. Idk, I thought it was.. interesting. 👀

So we start off with the first of many amazing tracking shots, with the camera orbiting around Rook in this place devoid of color or life. The note at the bottom made me chuckle "Game engine footage with some costum camera angles", I was like "Oh, so they used the flycam to make this?". lol So some shots of these will look different in the final version (what kind of spoilers are they hiding?? 👀👀).

I do hope that next shot DOES end up in the game though, because holy SHIT, that FIRST wide shot already blew. me. away.

Look at the COMPOSITION of this.

Actually, you could probably take every single location/wide shot of this trailer and hang it on your wall. lol But seriously, the way this place just looks... dead. It makes me think of "void" rather than Fade.. like an ancient graveyard. The raw Fade looks generally creepy, but this is haunting even for that. There's no life, no color, no motion. It's all broken and crumbled. Almost like it reflects Solas' feelings. People are speculating if this place might change depending on Solas' state of mind.. This is the Fade after all, but Solas is here physically and this being the place that was supposed to be the new prison for the gods.. It's probably different from the rest of it.

We also see all seven statues of the pantheon from the ritual site again. Solas "I have the high ground", *literally* talking down to Rook, while standing on two separate cliffs (how did Rook even get there, I wonder? lol), like there is quite literally a rift between them (for now..!) and Solas is keeping a distance, as always. We still don't know how that connection between the two even works, I assume Rook can only contact him while asleep? But to think that this is the place where he is trapped now, where he is even more isolated than ever before, is making me so emotional. ;-;

I love how it's just black and white though. It gives the scene a destinct atmosphere that might be important, if this is where we get to see Solas doing a lot of introspection. In the art of filmmaking, the absence of color is often used to force the audience to focus on the contrast, textures, and tones present in the image, which can evoke a deep sense of emotion.

And speaking of emotions...

"You have no idea what you have done."

We had already heard that line before, but something about that booming, echoing effect they used on his voice sent a shiver down my spine!

"The blighted elven gods walk free. And all because you disrupted my ritual."

To me, he *sounds* much more frustrated here than he *looks* when saying that. lol He looks incredibly worried though, and just so tired. A moment ago, he was SO close to achieving his goal after hundreds of years of preparation and then he failed again... and now there is this completely clueless stranger who got him in this situation, but who he has to rely on now to stop these gods, when he's unable to trust anyone, and yet he can't even yell at them too much, because he *needs* them. He must be so exhausted.

And yes, it is kinda funny how they put "elven gods" in quotation marks. lol

Thank god he still has his freckles though. ❤️ We're actually seeing a lot more texture on his face here than in the gameplay showcase. And yes, not only did he get his eyebrows microbladed but apparently he's also sporting eyeliner and lipstick now. 😌✨✨ The only downside to the lack of colors here is that his super purple eyes are not poppin' anymore. lol

"You battle against gods. They will not rest until you are on your knees. Fearful. Cowering. Helpless in the face of such power."

I love how they play this line so early on in the trailer, that it makes you go "WAIT... IS THAT- NO WAY" and not until the end do we get the confirmation with the most amazing entrance ever.

We then get a shot of what I think has to be Treviso in flames and Ghilan'nain symbolically coiling her tentacles around a crow statue's head, as she's probably about to take over the city. 👀 *falls on my knees the second I meet her in the game* lol

Then there's the shot of this horrifying Blight.. lump.. growth thing that has completely devoured an elf (and several other bodies it seems) with a hair style that has everyone wondering if this could be Felassan! 🥺🥺🥺 As much as I would LOVE for Felassan to make an appearance.. I kinda hope this *isn't* him.. because good god, whatever happened to this persom here must be pretty traumatizing (are they even still alive?) and also, how do we get them out of there? lol Either way, seeing as there are Harding, Bellara and Neve accompanying Rook here, this might be earlier in the game (and this is them dicovering that the Blight is already spreading rapidly?) and yet it already shows us that this Blight is on a whole other level than anything we've seen before, and it's taking every living thing.

Then we see another snowy place (or might this be within the same area?) that's also in huge parts taken over by the Blight. You can also see a dead(?) dragon lying on the ground at the bottom right corner? 🥺

Then Elgar'nan literally pops up right next to Ghilan'nain, and btw, I love how I can't even tell where her body begins or where it ends in this shot. lmao What ARE you, Ghili?? 💀

It looks to me like maybe she was struck by a bolt/spear from a ballista or something? The Grey Wardens tried to take her out maybe? Looks like the power of Elgar'nan's mere presence blows the Wardens away then lol, like they're just insects to him.. and in the blast we can see a person that looks like Evka?? <3333 (please don't die here though 😭)

Then we're getting a first glimpse of a dragon that shows up multiple times in this trailer. Also, to me, it looks so much like the dragon from the Golden City vinyl cover, which has me like 👀👀👀👀

Next there are a few scenes from the prologue we've already seen in the gameplay showcase, but it's coupled with new lines from Varric, that have me super worried. :(

"Rook, you've got this. I've seen your work. You're clever, adaptable. And you don't know when to quit.

My first reaction to this was "Oh god no, that sounds so much like a "passing the torch" kind of dialogue to me" as in Varric either dies (PLEASE NO but it IS super suspicious how he's not seen or mentioned in any other scene so far) or retires his role as the leader of this group and hands it over to Rook. And he just sounds... weary. 🥺 I wonder what he means by "your work" though? Is he talking about things Rook has done before Varric recruited them? Or is it maybe later down the line, after Rook has already proven themselves to be a great leader? 🤔

Then we get another shot of that one dragon and our first look at Harding with the bruised face (whoever did this, come fight me!) and some poor person tangled in.. something, I'm not sure. lol

Then there's a super quick shot of the floating building in Minrathous, followed by Rook opening a gate Aragorn style, which leads me to believe that this is actually somethere IN that floating building maybe?

But the fact that Rook and everyone else seems to be wearing casual clothes in the following shots, plus the architecture in the background has me wondering if they might be at the Lighthouse actually? 👀

Especially because in the very next shot we see Rook, Bellara, Neve and Harding all in casual clothes again in front of a giant eluvian and I wonder if that's the mirror that we've read about in the Game Informer article. The special eluvian at the Lighthouse that can take you anywhere? :o

Speaking of the Game Informer article, it also told us that Rook, Harding and Neve went back to the ritual site after what happened in the beginning, which is probably what we're seeing here!

"You want allies to go after the elven gods. I've got places to look."

Well, good thing we have a clever detective on the team that apparently knows people who would willingly fight some gods. lol Notice how Harding's face is still injured in this scene. 👀 So I assume whatever happened to her must've happened at the ritual site? Btw, I love how the trailer makes it look like they're all in casual clothes and the second they're stepping through the eluvian, they're in full gear? 😂 (I'm sure those two scenes take place at different times though.) It's crazy how much different the Arlathan Forest looks now, without the cataclysmic storm and all. I love the lighting, the colors and the soft rain! :3

Then we get another gorgeous location shot to hang on the wall. <3 My guess here is definitely Anderfels, given the landscape and those "pillar ring" things we've seen before (I still have no idea what those are, the funniest guess is still griffon training flight path 😂 But something tells me those things will be important.).

"I'll be damned! A griffon!"

Davrin and Assan!! <33333 And the dialogue makes it sound like this might be the first time they meet each other?? 🥹🥹 Followed by a scene of Davrin taking care of business and what might be the return of children in DA?? 😭 Seeing that little girl made me so happy, because that was actually one of the few things on my wishlist for DA4, because I always felt like children make the world feel SO much more real and immersive and besides Kieran, children were completely absent in DAI.

Am I trippin or does it look like this child is smiling here, while running away from a horde of darkspawn?? 😶 Kids in the Anderfels are build different, I guess. lol

"In war, victory."

CHILLS!!

Then we see Assan again, who is pinning down a.. thing I can't identify. lol I'm very curious about all those cages in the background though.. 🤔

We then get one of the shots that made me freak out the most, because it's a flippin *underwater* shot of elven ruins??? 😱😱

We know it's elven because if you look very very closely, you can see a Halla statue in the distance, to the left side. I'm immediately reminded of the stories about Arlathan having sunken to the ocean floor! There's also still all that mention of Ghilan'nain's grey "goop" that smells like the ocean and another shot later on of a dragon (Elgar'nan?) emerging from the ocean! 👀👀👀

And aside from all that, it's just such a sick level design!! 😍 What do these ruins look like if you enter them in the game? How do we get there?? There's an eluvian in the middle of the ocean on the newest map that's included in the Collector's Edition! 👀👀 If that one flippin theory of mine actually turns out to be true and there are somehow two parts of Arlathan, one on the ocean floor and another in the center of the Fade/the Black City, I'll do a triple backflip. lmaoo

Then Lucanis jumps in with some incredibly smooth fighting moves against the Venatori... and PURPLE WINGS!! So we were right with our speculation about the reveal trailer! Why does he have them? Is it some connection to a pride demon that revived him? 😂 I don't know, but it looks SO cool!! And after showing off, we hear his first line "I'm ready" with that sweet sweet accent, which is just the cherry on top!! <333

What the heck is up with the sky in this one?? My first thought was the Lighthouse?? 😍😍 Because if you look closely, there are a few wolf head ornaments on the walls? 👀 And this could be in the Crossroads and just like a real Lighthouse, there's a light on the top..? 🥹

Then there's Bellara using some magical device, that looks super similar to the things that were next to the big eluvian in that other scene!

Which makes me think that this might be where we help Bellara find this artifact in order to get the eluvian at the Lighthouse to work properly (since it doesn't seem to work right without Solas, according to the Game Informer article).

"I've never seen this before. There's something kind of exciting about it!"

Not gonna lie, that line and that weird looking device gave me Peebee flashbacks from Andromeda, which I honestly wasn't the biggest fan of. 😂 But Ghil Dirthalen (member of the community council) responded to me a few weeks back on twitter and confirmed that Bellara is nothing like Peebee at all. lol So that's a relief. 😂 I'm really looking forward to learn more about her and every time I see her magical gauntlet, I'm reminded that we're *definitely* not in Ferelden anymore. lol

Anyway, we then get a few shots of the Deep Roads?? Kal-Sharok??? 👀👀 And of course, there's Harding's big reveal of her new magical powers! The animation on this looks sooo amazing!!

Like many suspect, the Titans' awakening might have something to do with this! I totally agree with what Ghil Dirthalen said on twitter recently and, rather than this being Harding having Solas' petrification powers, it's actually Solas who has the powers of the Titans/stone sense/whatever Sandal did to those ogres back then lol. (I need Sandal to return and be her "teacher" or something 🙏❤️) We know of Solas' orb, which was likely created by obtaining the heart of a Titan. And if the Titans are connected to the Forgotten Ones, Fen'Harel was once considered their ally in Dalish legends. 👀

Also, if you look closely, you can see that the moment her powers are triggered, we see the blue glowy effect all over her body, like glowy lyrium veins almost?

And that in turn could hint at something in connection to her blood? So that big injury we see on her (which is still visible in this scene btw!) was maybe the moment her blood came in contact with something that awakened these powers? (We need Valta back to explain! lol)

"What is happening to me?"

That delivery gave me chills again... She is frightened. Ali Hillis is so good. 🥺🥺🥺

Next up is the Grand Necropolis and people have already pointed out that the ceiling we see at that entrance hall or something looks like a GIANT rip cage?? 💀 (What kind of creature would be THIS big???)

First look of Emmrich in-game!!! And he's wearing a fancy new outfit!! And I paused at the perfect moment to catch Rook already falling in love with him, clearly. lmao

There are two characters next to the gate that could be anybody, really. Myrna from Tevinter Nights or Joanna from the short story "The Flame Eternal"? The guy on the right is actually giving me Executor vibes?? 👀👀👀

Then there's Giant Skeleton Monster (Manfred's mom?), and don't even ask me what this could possibly be. 😂 I just hope we don't have to fight THAT (we totally will 💀). I got flashbacks of the Human Reaper endboss in ME2. 😭😭

"Let the Fade draw close!"

There's something kinda... posh about the way he says this? 😂 Like, he's not really intimidated by Giant Skeleton Monster and it's just another Tuesday in the Grand Necropolis and Professor Volkarin is just doing his every day job. lol

Then there are two shots of what I think is somewhere in the Anderfels but snowy again, like that area in the beginning where Elgar'nan and Ghili showed up? And a destroyed watchtower that is occupied by the Wardens. Then we get a *third* and final shot of this beauty again.

"Draw the dragon out into the open. Then attack."

I assume that's Taash?? Sadly, that shot of her drawing her weapon is all we got from her in this trailer, but she looks awesome!! <333 We're gonna be Lord of Fortune buddies, even though we might disagree on the matter of dragon hunting lol (look, I don't want to *fight* dragons, I want to be *friends* with them 🫠😂❤️ I want to see them live their best lifes.. for the most part (I get to the Elgar'nan dragon and the blighted "twin dragons" in a second lol))

We see the docks of Minrathous for a split second and then a first glimpse at a romance scene between Rook and Neve? 👀 At the Lighthouse maybe?

"You and me Rook. Maybe that's what scares me."

What does she mean by that exactly? Does Neve have commitment issues? lol Or is this more like a "We're a dangerous match, Rook. We'll be too powerful of a couple. Like Bonnie and Clyde." kinda statement? 😂

And THEN... Well, then we get probably THE most badass looking introduction/entrance of any character in DA yet. lol And YES, I freaked out SO hard.

SHE'S BACK. Returning like the QUEEN that she is. 🙏 And of course, she has to come down a flight of "stairs" again. lol (And no, Claudia Black did not lie, she just wasn't contacted at the time. 😁) Gosh, that transformation is so SMOOTH. I could watch that forever, it's so darn beautiful. 😍 Again, the way this is done, cinematically.. just *chef's kiss*.

In retrospect, it seems almost like a given that she would be back because.. well, everything about the way DAI ended. lol Flemeth wanted her to inherit her "godhood", and she looks more than ever like her mother now. Remember the designer notes on that last scene in DAI.

Flemeth intends to let Solas have the power, so long as she can pass the essence of her godhood onto Morrigan, a gift Flemeth had always planned for her daughter yet one Morrigan misunderstood as hostile possession.

So, what exactly is she now? Did she receive whatever Flemeth sent through the eluvian at the end of DAI? Does she carry Mythal now?? If so, does Solas know (I NEED a conversation between those two technically "half-siblings", because Flemeth/Mythal is both their "Mother"? 😂)?? Remember when I said that this one dragon that appears multiple times here reminds me a lot of the dragon on the vinyl cover with the Golden City, which is very likely Mythal? So my very first thought was that the dragon is actually Morrigan?? lol Just throwing that out there.

It seems to me that she is with the Dalish/Veil Jumpers in the Arlathan Forest now? (Btw, if you look closely, you can see elven mosaics in COLOR in the background? :O)

"These are the times in which legends are born or slain."

That line goes so HARD aHhhh. Also, speaking of slain, that new outfit is slaying too. <33 Her return also means that the Well decision and potential consequences are back on the table, which will definitely keep me up at night again. 💀

That moment right there. She is everthing. ❤️❤️❤️ I wonder if we're gonna see Kieran again?? 🥺🥺

We then get the most impressive tracking shot and choreography of what I think is Teia and Viago fighting some Venatori?? <333333 Like, seriously, the way the camera is following his movements in this shot without a single cut, makes me think of something like flippin Games of Thrones' Battle of the Bastards. 😱 And those hair physics on Teia as she's swinging around?? Absolutely amazing.

Followed by Lucanis and.. is that Zara Renata (the character with the best name ever lol)?? Fighting over an ominous glowing staff. lol We know these two still had unfinished business with each other after the Wigmaker Job in TN.

Then we get our first in-game look of my man MANFRED (🎉🎉🎉🎉), proving yet again to be the most fashionable character in the whole game, using his pelvis effectively. lol I love him so much.

Then there's another terrifying shot of Giant Skeleton Monster, which almost looks like it's in command over the crowd of people here, like they're possessed or something? Uhg.. As if this thing wasn't scary enough. 💀

"Our gods are back. Our gods! How do we stand up against that?"

Again, CHILLLLS!! Chills all over. It's gonna be so interesting to hear what the Dalish, Bellara or Davrin think about all these revelations!

Then we see the Wardens again, confronting one of the super duper blighted "twin dragons" we see at the end (more on that later).

We see Neve using a barrier or something against a guy who wears the same armor as her, so maybe the Shadow Dragons are corrupted, too?

Then we see Rook dramatically tossing a sword on a table at Weisshaupt? And holy moly, Davrin in that new armor here looks FINE. 😍

Back in Treviso, we see a cool finishing move from Rook, obliterating a poor Venatori guy. That bow on Rook's back though (I need it)! :O

"I believe in all of us. So let's get it done."

That little pep talk from Rook certainly worked for me. lol Like, whatever it is we're doing here, I'm so pumped, let's gooooo!

Then we get literally a millisecond of a frame, where you can see Ghili lying on the floor.. with the lyrium dagger stuck IN HER CHEST??

EXCUSE ME?? They wouldn't just spoil her death like that, right?? lmao Also, that adds another billion questions about this damn flippin dagger and at this point the list of questions is getting so long that I've completely given up speculating. 😂💀 We see how Rook tries to retrieve(?) the dagger but the power it emanates pushes them back?? What the heeellll.

And then I died. No, really. lmaoo

What can I say.

I cried. I screamed. My soul left my body. It happened. We FINALLY saw him. The Dreaded Wolf, He Who Hunts Alone, Roamer of the Beyond, God of Rebellion. The one everyone's been talking about since flippin 2009. And by GOD, he lives up to his NAME.

He's dreadful, he's horrifying. He's a monster, a nightmare. He's perfect. And just like Solas, he's just a Little Guy and bald. 😭😭😭

...At least in comparison to this dragon!! Look at that friggin SIZE DIFFERENCE. Someone measured the size by comparing them to Rook, who we see for a split second before Fenny leaps in. So, make no mistake, Fen'Harel IS the size of a high dragon, like he was described in Tevinter Nights... It's just that this blighted dragon is HUMONGOUS. lol That dragon, let's call him Elgar'nan, because we all KNOW, right?? Who else could it POSSIBLY be?? He's got the horns, he's the dragon on the vinyl cover with the Blighted Black City, he's ENORMOUS!! I've been saying this forever. Fen'Harel vs Elgar'nan, Battle of Gods was all I ever wished to see and FUCK, I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT WISH CAME TRUE. 😭😭😭

And look WHERE they are fighting!! It's Minrathous, you can clearly see the floating building in the background!! Which means the Dread Wolf is OUT. He's no longer trapped, or in the Fade. Remember Sandal's prophecy "When he rises, everyone will see". And he HAS RISEN. lmao And look at the lighting!! It's the same dim, gloomy RED we've seen at the end of the reveal trailer with the eclipse. "AN ECLIPSE AS FEN'HAREL STIRRED". IT'S HAPPENING. Remember the 2020 teaser MURAL.

Is this the Black City or is it the floating building?? Either way, it's BLIGHTED. In the trailer, Minrathous has clearly been completely taken over by the Blight. "All the world will soon share the peace and comfort of my reign", that's what Elgar'nan said at the end of the 2023 teaser, and what better way to take over the world than to start with the biggest capital in Thedas, a nation which built their own empire over the ruins of Elvhenan, ruled by the most powerful mages!

And I am SO scared. You can see Elgar'nan snapping Fenny. The dragon is blighted, and maybe so is Fen'Harel. He's also clearly been through so much. "The Wolf chews his leg off to escape the trap.", is what Cole said in Trespasser. I don't think he always looked like that. In the murals and the 2022 cinematic, he has a lot more fur. And I can't help but think about the devs saying that Solas wasn't always bald either. lmao How are they connected.. are they one and the same.. are they bound to each other.. we still don't know. But I'm SO. F*CKING EXCITED. TO FIND OUT.

Those few seconds of this scene were breathtaking and whoever made this trailer knew exactly what they were doing, because the editing is so perfect as Fen'Harel charges at Elgar'nan in slow-motion and the music cuts out completely while that beautiful wolf howl can be heard and you can almost HEAR everyone's jaw dropping on the floor. lmao THAT's. how. you. do it. *standing ovation* *sobbing*

Okay. Breathe. Moving on. We gotta get to the end. lol

The very next shot is SO funny to me, because we literally just got to see Elgar'nan, the biggest flippin dragon we've ever seen in DA and it's followed by a shot in which Elgar'nan looks SO tiny next to Ghilan'nain. lmaooo

His ego doesn't allow to appear small though, I guess, so he f*cking levitates to top her in height. lmao These two ancient clowns are already killing me.

What's interesting though is that this is the exact same angle from which we left off in the gameplay showcase. And Solas is nowhere to be seen, so... did he literally just "poof" away right there into that Fade prison?? lmao

We get a quick montage of all the lovely monsters we will face. Like I mentioned, there's the Elgar'nan dragon taking a swim in the ocean, I guess? (I hope he drowns. lol) And a shot of what I think is Irelin (from TN and The Missing) doing.. something with some magical device. Someone fighting a magical "automaton" in the Arlathan Forest. lol Harding doing her THING again, acting like Toph from Avatar, literally bending the flippin earth, like a true Child of the Stone!!

And right before the end, there's one of my personal favorite shots, Rook basically bitch slapping a Pride demon into full K.O.?? lmao

The trailer ends with a final beautiful shot of Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire. lol No, seriously. A SUPER blighted pair of angry dragons, seemingly at the same snowy place that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain popped up earlier in the trailer. 👀👀👀

So, they might have something to do with this? There was a dead dragon lying on the ground in an earlier shot, so maybe the elven gods revived them? If I see Blue and Red, I'm of course immediately reminded of lyrium.. whatever that means. Or, given that they seem to be attacking Grey Wardens in this place... maybe we are looking at an altered form of Archdemons?? Or something similar to Corypheus' dragon? 👀 There is an interesting theory floating around that Ghilan'nain might look like *that* because she somehow merged with her lover Andruil. As I mentioned in the beginning, Ghilan'nain seemed to have been struck by a spear or something.. and in this shot, you can see that the red dragon is pulling a spear out of its body! Sooo... maybe that actually IS her?? And she somehow transformed into two different blighted dragons, representing herself and Andruil??? The tinfoil hat is strong with this one. lol

ANYWAY. The release date is revealed to be 31st of October, making this the best Halloween of all time!! Not only is it perfect because of its origin, Samhain, the thinning of the Veil between the living and spirits.. But also because we all get a chance to dress up as Manfred, walk into the store, buy the game and then go Trick or Treat (but mostly trick) in the name of Fen'Harel, the Trickster God. 😂😂💜💜💜

And that's it!! Now we only have to wait two months before we can all lose our collective shi— NO WAIT, OF COURSE WE'RE NOT DONE YET.

WHAT THE HELL

IS THIS

EXCUSE ME, how do you throw this in there in the background at the very last second, HELLO??? A rocky object, split in half. HUH, WHERE HAVE WE SEEN THAT BEFORE.

Oh, you sneaky sneaky people. The mural depicting a Titan's death.... Remember the description of this place in DAI's files.

"A final eluvian is situated in a beautiful bolt-hole where Solas has painted murals. Fen'Harel was here and wanted to make sure nobody ever found what the other gods were doing. This place was the breaking point for him that turned him against the gods."

Whatever this is... I think it might be the very reason why all of this is even happening. The Evanuris mined the Titans' blood and "something else" before they collapsed and sealed the Deep Roads with stone and magic.

"Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast."

"What the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would end us all. Let this place be forgotten. Let no one wake its anger. The People must rise before their false gods destroy them all."

I'll leave it at that. I'm so so so flippin excited. I want to thank all the devs involved, I'm so full of joy and can't wait to finally return back to Thedas in October. 🥹🥹🥹 (And if anyone wants to get me that "Rook's coffer" collectibles thing for my birthday two days after release, my address is— naah just kidding!! ..or AM I?? 👀😂😂)!! 💜💜💜💜💜

#dragon age the veilguard #dragon age the veilguard spoilers #tinfoil time #datv #datv spoilers #solas #da4 #and now I go lie on the floor lmao #until October 31st lol #*crying of happiness*#the hype is REAL

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writerblue275 · 8 months

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Heartsteel love language headcanon (Giving and Receiving)

Inspiration: I was thinking about this because we were discussing the idea in the book club I’m a part of. So I thought about me and that led me to think about what Heartsteel’s love languages would be!

Champions: Heartsteel

Genre: Headcanon

Type: FLUFF

Gender: Gender Neutral Reader!

TW: None!

Aphelios

Giving: Words of Affirmation

Now some of you might be giving me side-eye, but hear me out. This is both verbal and non-verbal.

We know he canonically can speak, just not loudly and he doesn’t talk super often. Now I still believe he’d primarily communicate in a way that’s non-verbal, such as sign language, in order to not overwork his vocal cords.

Because of this, anytime Aphelios speaks, you want to fucking listen to him. When he says something, you know it’s something important. He doesn’t waste his voice on just anything. It’s too precious for that.

But lucky you, he never finds talking to you a waste. He loves using what voice he does have to give you all the lovely affirmations/compliments you could ever ask for. He will make sure his love for you is known.

And he doesn’t have to use his voice either. You will absolutely get random texts throughout the day, or find sweet little notes in your pocket/bag. Any card you receive as part of a gift or something just has such sweet words written in it. I can also see Phel leaving notes on your mirror (either in dry erase or on a post-it) to make you smile.

The biggest hype man when you meet your goals/achieve something you’ve been working hard towards. And he’s genuinely excited about it too. He’s really so happy for and proud of you and he makes sure you’re aware of that. Phel always just wants to make you smile and let you know, despite his busy and bizzare schedule, he loves you very much and you’re extremely important to him.

Receiving: Quality time

Aphelios loves when you and him have some alone time together. In the hustle and bustle of being a member of an extremely popular group, his mind can get really chaotic. But then he sees you and it’s like a switch gets flipped.

You calm him down like no one else can. You don’t even have to do or say anything specifically. Phel is a big fan of companionable silence (big same, my guy) and of “being alone together” with you (if that makes sense.) Though of course he is also a big fan of you cuddling him and chatting about whatever.

Sometimes you’ll bring work over to his studio and work on that while he’s writing/recording his compositions. You always make sure to bring snacks/meals and caffeine for him and he always stops to enjoy the food with you and listen as you talk about your day. You’re one of the few people who can easily pull him away from work no matter what.

When both of you get back to work, you may barely say a word to each other, but it doesn’t matter at all.

He’s more productive when you’re with him in his studio and he also takes better care of himself. You’ve received texts from Alune and calls from Yone asking you to just move into his studio permanently. (Of course they’re joking, but they do love the positive influence you have on Aphelios, his music, and his well-being.)

He just loves being in your presence, knowing you could be anywhere in the world if you wanted to be, but here you are, with him, loving him. It makes his heart really happy and light.

Ezreal

Giving: Physical Touch

I feel this is one of the more obvious ones, but Heartsteel Ezreal just gives off the vibes of someone who is very physically affectionate.

That’s not a bad thing. He’s just absolutely the type to come up behind you and give you a hug and nuzzle your neck. This won’t be any surprise though. His love of physical affection is demonstrated early on in your relationship through linked pinkies or a hand always on you in some way.

Dare I say, clingy (in a good way though). He just loves touching you. Doesn’t matter if he’s working, he can get creative. Like he’s absolutely flashed in front of you during a concert to give you a wink and get a high-five. Ezreal loves how pink your cheeks get and how wide you smile at him. (Ideally he’d love to give you more attention but he knows Alune and Yone would kill him if he got too extra.)

You’ve received post-show texts from Kayn that say something along the lines of: “For fuck’s sake, (Y/N), can you please get back here already so your puppy can finally give you the “proper amount of attention” he’s spent the past 15 minutes rambling about? I’m about to tape his mouth shut so I don’t vomit.” (He’s 95% joking. All of Heartsteel loves how happy you make Ezreal, but they can only handle so much post-show adrenaline-filled gushing.)

Him having that physical connection with you is his primary way of letting you know he’s there for you and that you’re important to him. When you’re with him, the two of you are always touching some way some how. As I said, some of his favs are linked hands/fingers. He also loves having his arm(s) around you or his head on your shoulder/lap.

It really doesn’t matter though. All that matters is that he feels you next to him.

Receiving: Words of Affirmation

I feel like Ez is the type of guy who definitely wants to hear you say you love him as often as possible. He will never get tired of hearing you say those words to him.

I do think some of this stems from his past. Having spent time in the public eye for such a long time, and unfortunately being heavily critiqued after he failed to follow up his first solo hit with success, that’s made him doubt himself and his abilities at times.

Imposter syndrome can really be a bitch (I know it well). Unfortunately, it’s made moments in his life difficult, especially since this original scrutiny happened when he was younger, during a critical developmental period for someone growing up. (Ezreal is only in his like early-early mid twenties, y’all. Shit happening during/before that can really leave an impact.)

Hearing you say how proud you are of him, or even if you just compliment him on something small (like the watch he chose to wear for the day or how good his hair looks), well that means everything to him.

You love how his face lights up whenever you compliment him or tell him something sweet. His adorable crooked smile is like concentrated sunshine.

One of your favorite things to do is leave sticky notes on his mirror that just say sweet things like “I love you, Ez!” Or “Looking good, handsome!” He always makes sure to take a selfie with each post it note when you do because he loves seeing them as much as you love putting them up there. It’s your favorite part of the day, getting your daily selfie from him with your note in it.

One time Alune told you the story of how Ezreal turned into a fountain of tears and wouldn’t stop talking about how much he loved you when you had flowers and a really sappy note (detailing how much you love him, how proud you are of him, how you’ve always believed in him/his talent, and thanking him for allowing you the honor to be by his side and support him through this amazing journey) delivered to him before Heartsteel’s first concert. He has the original card framed and he takes a copy of the note with him when he goes on trips. He reads your words before every single performance as part of his pre-show ritual.

Kayn

Giving: Physical Touch (TBH I feel like touch is just very slightly over words of affirmation for Kayn. At least for giving.)

You know what, I think Kayn is similar to Ez a little bit. Just another member who I can see being physically affectionate with his partner.

HOWEVER, I think how Kayn expresses his physical affection is different than Ezreal. Unlike Ezreal who I see as being very overt with physical affection, I see Kayn as someone who is just slightly more low-key.

Now that’s not to say he’s not going to express that in public. He absolutely will. But with Kayn I see more: hand in your back pocket while you’re in line, hand on your thigh if he drives (he’s figured out that’s the only way you’ll tolerate his driving), arm sliding around your waist whenever he steps next to you, hand slowly slipping into yours.

The sort of touches that leave you blushing and biting your lip. The ones that leave you a little breathless. (Not saying Ez can’t do those. I fully believe he can. But there’s just really something about Kayn’s punk/bad boy energy that has me like…😳 and 😏 at the same time.)

He’s a BIG fan of kissing. Like you cannot convince me otherwise. Like yeah his hands can do some of the talking, but kissing you is his favorite way to show he loves you.

(Lord help me I could do a whole headcanon for Kayn kisses alone, I feel like. I have THOUGHTS.) Anytime you want a kiss, you get a kiss, no questions asked. And the way he kisses you indicates a lot for how he’s feeling.

Sleepy Kayn? Forehead, nose, cheek kisses (shhhhhhh he has a soft side. Don’t tell anyone). Needy Kayn? He’s either kissing you completely breathless or he’s leaving hickeys somewhere on you. Otherwise, even if he’s just walking past you to get to another room, he will always stop to give you a kiss hello. And even those sweet quick kisses hello leave you feeling just LOVELY.

Receiving: Words of Affirmation (again I was between this and physical touch, but unlike giving where physical touch wins, I think receiving, words of affirmation win.)

Again, similar to Ez, I think a lot of this stems from his pre-Heartsteel past. Kayn got kicked out of his old band and got a not-great reputation in the media. Like there’s no denying that sucks and that sort of criticism can really fuck with a person’s mind.

So when you compliment him, you say you’re really proud of him, or when you tell him how great he was after a show, he eats that shit up with a SPOON.

And Kayn might try to play it off as not a big deal, but every time you tell him you love him, you can’t help but notice how happy and content he looks. As if all is right with the world. (Listen this might be a tad cheesy but let this rockstar get some genuine fucking love and praise here please.)

I’ve mentioned before in my pet names headcanon (HERE) that I think some pet names really mean something to Kayn. Like when he calls you sexy (ex: “Hey, sexy, how was work?”) it’s his way of affirming to you that he finds you sexy. Same if he calls you beautiful or hottie or whatever.

So when YOU call HIM those sorts of pet names, it means something to him. He takes it as affirmation you still find him to be sexy/handsome/etc… Also let’s be real, the man put in work to get the body he has. You can feed his ego a bit on this.

Another one who secretly keeps any cards or notes you give him. If he’s ever feeling bad about himself or really nervous and he can’t talk to you, he’ll start reading through his stash and it always helps. Knowing you love him and believe in him really shoves the demons away.

Though let’s be real here, nothing compares to hearing you say sweet things to him in person (or over the phone).

K’Sante

(The number of times I changed my mind on his love languages omfg. We’ll talk a little more about receiving first in this one)

Giving and receiving: Words of affirmation

A lot of this has to do with K’Sante’s pre-Heartsteel backstory, as well as his base-lore character. (I know this is for HS K’Sante, but they kept some traits from his base character [The Pride of Nazumah] that I think really feed into this.)

K’Sante is a very proud man. He’s a very ambitious man. It doesn’t matter whether that pertains to music, to fashion, to design, to fitness, etc. whatever he’s doing, he puts his all into it.

And when you put your all into something, naturally there’s some desire for someone to acknowledge the effort you put in, as well as appreciate the result of all that effort. And while he gets that from the fans, the media, other places, none of that approval means more to him than your approval.

He feels your love whenever you tell him how handsome he looks in the new design he brought to life or text him about a photo in the media and compliment him. Whenever you’re the first one to notice when he’s changed his hair. Whenever you cheer him on as he’s doing reps. Whenever you comment on how amazing his part of their new song is.

Hearing/reading (for texts) your pride in, support for, and love for him allows him to stay ambitious and to keep driving for more and he’s so grateful for you. He definitely realizes outside of HS, you are what helps keep things steady.

And while you are super proud of him, he’s ALSO super proud of you and he’s definitely not afraid to let you know that.

I feel like it’s very difficult to have low self-esteem regarding your looks when you’re with him. K’Sante will compliment you out the wazoo. When you look fine he’s making sure you know you look fine (which to him is always). I also feel like he’d use you as a muse for his designs, which is like a massive compliment.

And if you’re nervous about something, K’Sante is such an excellent hype man. He’s reminding you why you are so amazing and that your personal strengths are perfect to get you through whatever is being thrown at you.

Along the same vein, I feel like K’Sante would be the best person to go to for advice. He seems extremely thoughtful with what he says and I feel like he knows exactly what to say to make you feel better about things. (I mean shit we know other members already go to him for advice, he’d absolutely give you, his partner, advice as well.)

And when you achieve something? He is celebrating as much as if he accomplished it himself. He’s very proud of you. “What did I tell you, baby! I knew you could do it!”

Definitely brags about you and your achievements, at least to Heartsteel. He’s just so fucking proud of you and he can’t keep that to himself! That’s a disservice to you! I feel like he’d at least ask and make sure he could tell other people about your achievement though.

(Hehehe this makes me imagine: You know he’s been bragging about you again because you receive random texts from the other members congratulating you on something you’ve recently accomplished.)

This big guy is just a man who really enjoys telling you he loves you (as well as what he loves about you) and loves to hear you say it back (as well as what you love about him).

Sett

Giving and receiving: Acts of Service

A lot of this stems from being raised by a single mother after his father just up and left (shoutout to the single parents out there. Y’all are incredible). Sett would do anything to try and make Ma’s life easier. We know he’s the best cook of the group and I bet he learned how to cook pretty early on.

I imagine Sett also quickly learned sewing and other household tasks for the same reason. It just hurt him to see his mother so damn tired and stressed after working multiple jobs to try and make ends meet. He wanted to do what he could to help. That desire to make things easier for the people he loves hasn’t gone away as he’s grown up. If anything, it’s gotten stronger. (God damn Ma raised him so well 😭.) He shows this type of love in many different forms, starting with simple ways. He’ll always open the door/car door for you. He’ll walk on the side closer to the street. Always offers an arm to you when going down stairs. He’s happy to carry any bags for you.

Of course Sett just as easily does more in-depth acts of service. Mending clothes you love that you thought couldn’t be fixed. (God I love Sett loving to sew.) Happily teaching you to sew when you ask him. Cooking dinner whenever he can (he loves trying out new things, but even more so, he loves showing you the meals of his childhood). Ma always cooks with lots of love and that’s a quality she passed down to her son. He also loves spoiling you through his actions (think surprise bubble baths/face masks/massages/etc.) just because he wants to and he thinks you deserve to be spoiled.

Sett would literally run through a brick wall if it would make your life easier in the short and long run. You make him so happy. He loves you so much and making sure you’re happy and well taken care of is the least he can do, in his mind.

On the receiving end of things, anything you do for him, whether small or big, Sett appreciates more than you know. Whether it’s bandaging his knuckles after a particularly intense bout with a punching bag or making sure his keys and water bottle are in their proper spot by the door so he doesn’t forget them, these seemingly small things mean the world to him.

And when you do “bigger things” like fix his sewing machine that he hasn’t had time to take to the repairman, or reseason his cast-iron cookware? You’ve got Sett ready to propose on the god damn spot. You organized his spare fabric swatches by color and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen (besides you). He would not stop thanking you for the rest of the week.

When you make dinner and prep a plate for him to heat up once he gets home really late from a long day? It doesn’t matter if he’s the better cook, to him, this is the best meal he’s ever tasted. And when you stay awake late and help him into a warm bath/shower? It’s adorable to see your massive and jacked boyfriend turn into putty under your gentle ministrations. He especially loves when you wash his hair and play with his ears.

Along the same vein, he loves when you come greet him after a bout of boxing with his little medical bag. You always look him over carefully, running a quick concussion check, cleaning anything that needs to be cleaned, and wrapping anything that needs to be wrapped. He’s so appreciative he doesn’t even flinch when you’re cleaning out a cut with antiseptic.

You really know how to love him so well and he’s ready to receive ALL OF IT and love you back the same way.

Yone

Giving and receiving: Acts of service

Yone is another member who I think both gives and receives love the same way and that is through acts of service.

Whenever you bring him a meal or coffee, or just drag him away from his monitors for a brain break, that’s when he feels your love the most. When you bring food he appreciates anything you bring him, but the stuff he finds the most delicious are the things you make yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re not the best chef.

Something that’s small but he really really loves is when you brush out and braid/play with his hair. Besides a hair stylist, you’re the only one he lets touch his hair.

He knows it’s not easy to love him considering his profession, so the fact you take the time and do these things for him? You take the time to make his life easier? Well it makes him melt tbh. (You are one of the very few lucky souls who gets to see soft Yone. You lucky fucking duck.)

His schedule is wacky, he’s often stressed due to deadlines, and his celebrity status makes date nights or just walking around in public a difficult adventure sometimes.

And because Yone knows being in a relationship with someone of his profession and status is difficult, he really tries to make it up to you and return your acts of service with his own, just to show you you’re always on his mind and that he really he loves you too, even if he can’t always be there to show you.

For example Yone always keeps things neat and tidy (a dream really) and he knows you well enough (I mean duh) that he knows where everything of yours goes, so you’re never shocked when you find your shared bedroom and bathroom perfectly clean and all your things exactly in their spots. You only wonder when he had the time?? (He just chuckles when you ask him.)

Whenever he’s not stuck at work, he’s incredibly sweet and helpful, doing all sorts of little things that just make day-to-day life so much easier.

You wake up after Yone and like coffee? Every morning he makes sure the maker is programmed to have a cup ready for you when you wake up. You cooked? Great! He’s got dishes no problem. You decide to clean a room? He’s either helping you do it or hey, pick any other room for him and he’ll clean that one.

And this doesn’t just stop at like day-to-day living things. If you come home stressed, before you know it you’re sitting in front of him, fresh out a steaming bubble bath, while he massages your shoulders/back and listens to you ramble about what has you so tense. His definition of acts of service definitely include things that spoil you.

Why do I feel like he makes a surprisingly good breakfast? I think he’d enjoy making a whole breakfast in bed meal for you, especially on a birthday or anniversary, but also sometimes just because he wants to surprise you.

Yone’s definitely a gentleman whose actions speak far louder than any words he could ever say.

#heartsteel #heartsteel headcanons #heartsteel x reader #reader insert #heartsteel fluff #headcanon #heartsteel aphelios #heartsteel ezreal #heartsteel kayn #heartsteel k'sante #heartsteel sett #heartsteel yone #I finally got this one done!#This was one of my OG WIPs

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major-comet · 4 months

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The Music in RvB: Restoration Kinda Sucks. Here's how I'd fix it.

I gave this as a presentation the other night after my first re-watch of the finale, and it was a major hit so I thought I would share it with other people who think too hard about Halo fanfiction.

Red VS Blue has some truly fantastic music in it's 21 year history, and I think that the music here was pretty weak. Obviously this post has major spoilers for RvB19 / Restoration, so be warned.

So, under the Read More is a typed up and fleshed out version of my powerpoint presentation where I will dive in and not just bitch about the musical choices, but explain how I would fix things. This is...really long, but I hope you all enjoy my thoughts :)

This will be best enjoyed if you listen to the songs I'm talking about as a refresher. For your convenience, I have input links to the songs on Youtube when necessary (ETA: and barring one instance, the song links have all been updated to work again while the official uploads are down.)

So what's the problem?

Since the development of the finale overlapped with Rooster Teeth getting shut down, it's very likely that they had minimal funds. (EDIT: Yes, the finale itself was done by the time the announcement rolled around. However, the decision was almost certainly already in the works at WB. RT was shut down in part for financial reasons. It’s all connected.) I personally think this was part of why Burnie/RT was/were [reportedly] so insistent on using stock music for part of the season rather than a whole soundtrack done by Trocadero - I'm not sure they had the money to properly compensate for a full soundtrack. And maybe it was just a stupid / dick move, and had nothing to do with money at all, but that's what I choose to believe if only because it makes me feel slightly better about it.

This means that besides the stock music, the new score by Carl Thiel, the Zero song for that cameo, and Waning Moon (the Barenaked Ladies song), all we have are four re-used songs from earlier RvB - these songs being the Trocadero Grifball theme, I Say Ooh and Round One by Jeff Williams, and Vale Deah by Trocadero. There's also a David Levy composition in there somewhere according to the credits, R U Ready, but I have no idea what it is or where it plays. It's bothering the hell out of me because it does not appear to be a reused piece as far as I can tell - at least not reused from RvB. If anyone has any leads on this please reach out, because it seems crazy that there's one random possibly original David composition mixed in there. I've checked Apple Music and Soundcloud, nothing by that name.

In this very Meta focused film, neither of The Meta's themes play in any shape or form - [When] Your Middle Name is Danger by Trocadero or Plagam Extremam Infligere by Jeff Williams.

Nor do any of the character themes, really. Most of the series' iconic recurring tracks are completely absent. Tex's various themes, Carolina's theme - hell not even Blood Gulch Blues or the iconic intro music.

Were there any highlights?

Of course there were!

Considering I was going into the finale having only been spoiled on Vale Deah, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Jeff tracks! That was totally unexpected, and really lovely.

Speaking of, I thought the use of Vale Deah was a really lovely touch. Fun fact: that song was used for the end credits of the Season 1 DVD, so it really felt like a sweet full circle moment.

I think that using a Barenaked Ladies song for that very sweet scene of Caboose, Grif, and Simmons reminiscing about Blood Gulch by the fire was a very lovely choice, and quite honestly it was my favorite scene in the whole thing. The BNL have been close to RvB and RT since damn near the beginning, and it was very nice to hear them attached to the finale in that small way.

I should also point out that the composer for the season is Carl Thiel - known for his work on Hot Fuzz and the second and third Spy Kids movies. I think he did a totally fine job. I liked the bugles that were under Sarge's death, but the rest doesn't really stand out much. Perfectly serviceable.

So, now that that's out of the way, let's break down those four returning songs a bit more - shall we?

Grifball Official Theme - Trocadero

This was a really funny choice. It's such a quick bit, but I respect Burnie's dedication to get in one last Grifball joke. Obviously, I would have preferred to hear a different song for something else, but this was totally harmless.

Vale Deah - Trocadero

Lo-fi Hip-hop beats to get divorced to.

God that scene was heartbreaking. I love this song a lot - I think a lot of Trocadero's strongest stuff is the stuff that just feels kind of melancholy. It's something Nico does really well, and I think Vale Deah is one of my favorite examples of that. Like I said above, I think this song was used really well - if I had to pick a different track for that same scene I would probably choose Half Life. While it was written during the Blood Gulch era, it wasn't really used in the show until Seasons 12 and 13 - notably, a version of it plays under Kimball's rally speech to the troops after Doyle's death. I just really like it, tbh. There's absolutely other songs that could work, but I think having it be a BGC-era track served the scene really well.

I Say Ooh - Jeff Williams

My feelings about this are pretty similar to Grifball. It was cute, it was nice to hear, but I wish they had used a different Jeff track somewhere else. Ultimately, it's pretty harmless. It is kind of an odd choice though - I'm pretty sure Jeff didn't write it for RvB. This was a song that he composed that was used in two RT Shorts (live action sketches that RT used to do). I think it would have been nicer to use one of his RvB tracks for the introduction of Niner - could have been a cute spot to use a track like I Am The Best or Forge World or hell, Come on Carolina would have been cute.

Round One - Jeff Williams

...Actually, I have a lot to say about Round One, so let's get everything else out of the way first.

Other Scenes that *should* have had returning tracks before I talk about Round One for a billion years

Sarge's death should have been scored with a version of Rally (Sarge's Speech). My vision is a version of it that's just the string section - familiar, but not enough to be distracting, and absolutely soul crushing if you do recognize it.

The scene with Wash and Dr. Grey in the hospital needed a hint of what Nico so lovingly calls the "Wash Trauma Theme" - which is closely related to the Trocadero Meta theme, fun fact. I think Limited Duty from the scene in Season 16 where Carolina tells Wash about the brain damage could have worked pretty well there.

The scene at the end with Wash and Carolina talking about Doc and the Freelancers really needed something. I think one of the variations of the Shisno trilogy Carwash theme could have worked very well. (EDIT: So i would have a link for Carwash, but there is No Trace of that song on youtube anymore. I think it's one of the songs that plays in the season 16 credits, and there's variations of it in 17 as well. so sorry!)

Obviously the big scene with Tucker and Sigma on the ship would have really benefited from [When] Your Middle Name is Danger or one of the many themes that incorporates it, but I'd also throw Soul Clef XI into the ring! I think it's so interesting that the work around they came up with for not being able to get Elijah Wood back was to have epsilon!Sigma take on a more Felix-y type of voice. Partly because Felix was an incredibly ambitious villain so he fits it pretty well, but more importantly that was a very smart voice to pick to fuck with Tucker in particular! I think that was really smart, and I think having Felix's theme playing during that scene would have been really cool.

Bolt by Trocadero was never used in the series proper. However it was used in this ten year retrospective that they released alongside Season 10. I highly recommend giving it a watch, because watching it now that it's Over - RvB, RT, all of it - it's honestly kind of heart breaking. They're all filled with this deep optimism about the future of the company, and hindsight is a bitch on this one. They use it in a really sweet sequence at the end where they're showing a bunch of old photos. Anyways I think this should have played in the credits after Vale Deah finished. "We only want to have a good time."

Miscellaneous Trocadero Songs I would have liked to see them find a place for that I haven't already / will not mention elsewhere

Steady Ride (Gunmetal Green) - this is THE Grimmons song ever to me. I love it so much. Also fun fact: as of the interview Burnie did with Nico on the season 10 (I think?) dvd/bluray, this was Burnie's favorite Trocadero track. And you can tell when you watch the DVD cuts of the first 6-ish seasons - it plays all the time.

I like Good Fight a lot, not sure there was a great spot for it? but still would have been nice - It's used a few times as a Wash theme, I believe.

No One is my favorite Trocadero song and I wish it could've been there Somewhere. It was the elevator-music type song that played behind Vic in BG once or twice, I think was in the season 4 credits, and also played during the weapons demonstrations in the Meta VS Carolina Death Battle. I just like it a lot, lol.

Okay let's get back to Round One.

Why they shouldn't have used Round One for the big fight in RvB Restoration

AKA: The actual bulk of the presentation

Okay so we've got some pros and cons to this track. Starting with the Pros;

It's a song from an iconic scene - the 3v1 training room fight from Season 9

Tex and Maine are both in the fight

Was a great "Oh FUCK yeah" moment for the fans

Great track

Cons;

Not really a song for Carolina or the Meta (or y'know. Tucker. He's there too), and only kind of a song for Tex

Honestly the fight makes me think about York more than anyone else, since that's the fight where he gets hurt

Not a cool thematic moment besides just Tex being a badass

Started too late into the fight - it's sad that Carolina got a cool track when she (finally!) showed up, but Tex just got generic music. Show my girl some respect :(

So what would be better?

It has to be something that makes you think of at least one of the fighters. A track that's good for multiple would be better, but not required.

I think it should start when Tex first shows up, not when her armor changes. that’s a cool moment, but it still means most of the fight is working with Thiel’s score.

It should be something with a note of thematic relevance - for example, the big moment right at the end of the fight is Tex reminding epsilon!Sigma that she's not based on the Director's memories of her failure this time; she's based on the memories of Grif, Caboose, and Simmons. And she Always kicked their asses.

Still needs to be a big "Oh FUCK yeah" moment.

While incorporating Carolina's theme would be nice, I think it's more important to get at least one of the others - but we'll do our best here. I think this is moreso a Tex v meta!Tucker fight in my heart than it is a Carolina fight.

So let's look over a few options, shall we? These are in no particular order.

Spiral - Jeff Williams

This is the song that plays during the Season 9 car chase when Maine gets shot. It incorporates Carolina's theme, because in PFL her theme is never too far behind whenever a Maine/Meta song is playing, which has always been interesting to me. It has all that freaky choral stuff that Jeff loved to use, and generally is just a great track.

Fragments - Jeff Williams

This plays during the Freelancer break-in in Season 10, and it just rocks so hard. Anything from the break-in would be cool because that was the last time Tex, Carolina, and Maine/The Meta were all in the same place, and of course was when The Meta was properly created. I think it was so sad that they used the instrumental of Round One, because the vocals are part of what makes the Jeff era of RvB soundtracks so iconic, and god this song delivers! Also this song has a kickass trumpet solo at the end.

Slingshot (from the Death Battle) - Trocadero

Man this song rules. This of course plays in the Meta VS Carolina Death Battle from Season 14. It's a very different energy from the Jeff picks, but it rocks so fucking much. This is a fight between Carolina and The Meta, and would of course be a callback to a (marginally) more recent - and extremely popular - episode of the show. If you haven't watched the Death Battle in a while you really should, it still kicks just as much ass now as it did back when I was in high school.

Literally any other song from the 3v1 Training Room Fight - Jeff Williams

This includes;

Round One (feat Lamar Hall)

Just the Bullfight part

On Your Knees

I just think the instrumental to Round One is the weakest choice from this fight tbh! Bullfight is my favorite out of the three, because it sounds the most Tex-y. The guitars are very her, and it incorporates part of her Agent Tex motif. And On Your Knees would have had the biggest "Oh FUCK yeah" factor. But honestly even just using the version of Round One with the vocals would have been way better.

EDIT TO ADD: a quick note - while it’s listed in the credits as Round One/Bullfight, that’s just how the instrumental is packaged on the OST. As far as I could tell in my two watches of it, they never actually make it to the Bullfight part of the track.

A Girl Named Tex - Trocadero

hold on, walk with me on this one.

I had a vision of Tex fighting meta!Tucker set to the "Yellow rose of Texas clad in black, lonely star tattooed upon her back. Double Tex she'll hit you like a truck. Double Tex and she'll mess you up." bit right after I watched 19 the first time and it's been haunting me ever since. (That bit starts at about 02:19)

This is her theme for the first chunk of the show - which just so happens to be the time period Grif, Simmons, and Caboose were primarily reminiscing about. It would have been cool as hell, and I can See the beginning of the fight in my head - the opening strums (what my brother so lovingly calls the Out of Mind music) when caboose is saying his line about how he brought back someone even worse than church, and then the fight starts! I can see it in my mind, it would have been so cool!

I just think there should have been more Blood Gulch era music in here.

100 Tex Battle - Jeff Williams

This doesn't get you any Meta points, but obviously it incorporates little bits of Tex's, and a lot of Carolina's theme. Twisting a Tex vs Carolina fight - obviously, Carolina vs all the Tex bots in Season 10 - into one where they're fighting alongside each other would have been really lovely and a cool full circle moment.

This song is really cool, it's such a good fight. I do think it maybe sounds a bit goofy at points for this fight, but still a cool option.

Okay so now let's go over my top three-ish picks

Ice Fight (or maybe the revelations suite?) - Jeff Williams

Jumping to the end of Season 8, we have a fight that involves Tex vs The Meta! And Wash, Doc, and all the Reds and Blues (barring Donut and Lopez. Hmm. Doesn't that sound familiar.) are there! Ice Fight rules so hard, it's so good.

And it has some of that narrative theming I was looking for! While yes, Tex does technically lose this fight - so does The Meta. And how does she lose it?

By going into the recovery unit.

The main reason I suggest the Suite instead of just Ice Fight is because I think having a touch of Red Vs Blue would have been really nice.

Mental Meta Metal - Jeff Williams

Genuinely my favorite track from season 10. If you let the song play the whole way through, it has Jeff's themes for The Meta, Carolina, and Tex in it. This plays the first time we see Maine in a fight in Season 10, and is also Sigma's first time in the field after we see him pondering Meta-stability in the classroom.

It incorporates elements from both Spiral and Plagam Extremam Infligere, which is kind of Jeff's theme for the Meta that he established back in Season 8. It also plays during the Freelancer Break-in when he's tossing Carolina off the cliff. The Latin on that translates to “to inflict an extreme blow”.

It also has a very strong statement of Carolina's theme, which could have been a great opportunity to bring her in with her theme!

Now, before I go over my final pick, let's go over what we need again;

We need a song with thematic relevance to the fight, that’s from an iconic scene, has a good energy to it, and would give fans a big “OH FUCK YEAH” moment.

Well, isn’t it obvious?

youtube

Agent Tex (/ Tex vs Tank / Hell's Angel) - Jeff Williams

The first instance of Jeff Williams’ Tex motif, later used in Hell’s Angel and Tex vs Tank, etc. I would add the opening strum commonly heard in the later iterations, but keep it generally the Agent Tex version which was used in the S8 Warehouse fight, as seen above.

This is like. The RvB scene ever. So many people saw this before they watched the show, and many more never even watched RvB - just this fight, since RT uploaded it separately from the episode because they knew it kicked so much ass. It also helped draw in folks who may have been fans of Monty Oum's other work. Fun fact: This was RT’s outro music for a really long time, too. So it really has history with the company.

Part of why I think this pick would work so well, beyond it just being Tex's theme for the Jeff Williams era, is that it would be so interesting in terms of narrative theming. The Season 8 warehouse fight was Tucker, Grif, Simmons, Sarge, and Caboose against Tex.

This whole sequence was Grif, Simmons, Caboose, Carolina, and Tex against Tucker.

This was one of the other scenes being reminisced about around the fire - you can see it as one of the clips shown during the scene. I think it would have been a really powerful moment, and a fantastic "FUCK YEAH" moment for everyone whose stuck around this long. This track is so good, and I really do think it would have been the perfect choice for this fight.

It's not even my favorite, if I was just choosing favorites I'd have picked Mental Meta Metal or A Girl Named Tex.

What have we learned? Why Were We Here?

Red vs Blue is a show with a lot of really fantastic music in it's book, and a really strong history of musical callbacks - particularly with the Meta's theme and how it's so closely tied to the motif Trocadero liked to use as "Wash Trauma" music. Making a clever callback to a song you've used before can help strengthen the thing you're trying to get across to your audience. I think it's somehing that Restoration really struggles with, which is pretty sad. But I hope you found my deep dive / analysis of what could have been interesting.

I'd really like to dive in and do a long reflection about the series as a whole, but as it stands this is around 3,000 words and if I get started on that, this post will never end. I'll probably work on that once i've actually Finished this rewatch.

Thank you for reading all of that!

#comet posting #rvb #red vs blue #rvb restoration #rvb19 #rvb finale #rvb music #jeff williams #trocadero #grimmons #rvb 19 #the meta #lavernius tucker #agent texas #tex rvb #tucker rvb #the meta rvb

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cuttingpenisblackmetal · 9 months

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edit: now on AO3!

in the first week after toki's rescue, skwisgaar figures out how to proceed (post-requiem/pre-aotd, 5k words, tw: references to torture, injury/medical stuff)

The doctor goes out of the way to specify that it's not a coma. "He's just tired. God. Don't be so dramatic." Even a human body claimed by prophecy can only endure so much, and Toki's has much to contend with, these days. There's IV antibiotics for the festering hole Magnus has left in his side, a morphine drip for the same reason, IV fluids plugged into the skin further up his arms. There's a glucose monitor plugged into his shoulder alongside the insulin pump, keeping close eye on the damage wrought by several months of untreated diabetes and a diet apparently consisting of, if Toki's bouts of incoherent rambling are to be believed, cat food. A heart-monitor cabled to his chest that almost looks like a stack of amps by the bed. There's medics checking in frequently, changing bandages or administering creams for the shackle-shaped rash around his neck. The periodic anxious visits of band members. The sedative shots they give him every twelve hours, because everyone is still worried about what state his already-fragile psyche will be in when he achieves sustained consciousness, and there's some desire to make his body habitable before forcing him back into it. There's a lot of hand-wringing and touching and disgusting displays of emotion over him. Even for an attention whore like Toki it must be exhausting. He never wakes up for more than half an hour at a time.

Skwisgaar questions the doctor with stoic indifference, like he's just trying to pass the time. He's in that hospital room continuously, keeping vigil at the bedside, and he's taken it upon himself to receive the periodic updates from the band's physician. He is forced to expand his English vocabulary to include words like 'neuropathy' and 'sepsis'. He doesn't understand the fine details of what is told to him (how does one even get sugar in the blood with an all-cat food diet? He's fairly sure there's no sugar in cat food.) He writes down notes for Pickles, because Pickles invariably asks, and then Pickles gets his own reports from the doctor anyways, because Skiwsgaar's notes 'barely count as English', and for some reason Pickles takes issue with the fact Skwisgaar's only remarks are about how his injuries will probably affect Toki's already abysmal guitar skills. They almost fight about it, once, and then Pickles sees something in Skwisgaar's face and cuts short his obnoxious scolding. He leaves Skwisgaar to his lonely vigil by their perpetually unconscious and now functionally useless rhythm guitarist.

They've only had Toki back for a few days, so the fact that Skwisgaar never leaves the bedside hasn't started to cause problems for him, yet. He's stayed up much longer than this before, usually while facing record deadlines and having to re-record guitar parts that had been so handily bungled by the man currently sleeping before him. Surprisingly boredom fails to be a problem. At this point, his life is so shitty and complicated and weird that it's actually a relief to be able to sit in silence, staring at the array of complex medical machinery. He sits for hours thinking everything and nothing at once, strains of random and disarticulated thoughts mingling with ideas for guitar riffs and new song compositions.

He doesn't remember anything from the rescue itself; he's thinking that their next song should feature a canon, two identical guitar riffs played out of time with one another. Being at the centre of a religious apocalypse prophecy is going to fuck with his identity as a nihilist; the canon should feature a melody that starts slow and gains in speed, like a chase. The sight of amateur sutures over an angry red slit in one side of Toki's sunken stomach; his canon won't be any of that classical major-key bullshit he despised in music school, but something epic, something ferocious. An upside-down cross; a dragon chasing a valkyrie through the melting ruins of Greenland, ice flying everywhere, fire ripping through pillars of frost. Toki mumbles something in his sleep, turning his head; Skwisgaar hears clearly a bridge of elaborate harmonic scales plunging in mutual abandon towards a frozen sea. After months of heavy drug use and every best effort at self-annihilation, it comes as a relief to sit with his own thoughts, dark and disarticulated though they are. He hasn't heard music in his head so clearly since before Toki's abduction, since even before Dethklok attempted to break up.

Unfortunately, he is interrupted often. His bandmates are embarrassingly eager to check in on their rescuee, and even Skwisgaar's mumbled warnings that all the attention will go straight to Toki's head doesn't deter them. Murderface comes the most often, usually with some harebrained scheme to try and make Toki "feel better"-- by making him watch Civil War documentaries, by gifting him exclusive Planet Piss merch, by reading him cat memes from his Dethphone-- the fact that Toki is soundly asleep through each visit Murderface doesn't seem to consider a problem, and it is only the appearance of the band physician that succeeds in driving him away (Murderface had acquired a hostility towards doctors that Skwisgaar doesn't care to understand). Pickles has a routine: he comes by three times a day with a bottle in hand, he receives Skwisgaar's update on Toki's condition, he asks Skwisgaar a few incredibly awkward questions about whether he's sleeping or eating much (Skwisgaar does not dignify these with answers), then he goes to Toki's bed, pours a healthy serving of liquor out on the floor near his pillow ('Jus' payin' my respecks!') and stumbles out of the room to find the physician. Nathan visits very rarely, and always seems overly-fragile and distracted when he does, unable to even look at their youngest band-mate except for while Skwisgaar is telling him about his new musical ideas.

"Just, uh…" Nathan concludes one exceptionally uncomfortable visit, hovering in the doorway, "Tell us when he wakes up."

Nobody's remarked on Skwisgaar's constant presence in the room. They haven't commented on the fact that he's been glued to Toki since they found themselves without recollection in the DethBus, and Toki-- emaciated, filthy, incredibly alive Toki-- was tucked under one of Skwisgaar's arms, holding onto his hand with both of his own. If Skwisgaar ever recovers his memories of that night, he'll seriously interrogate his own judgement, how he found himself in the dreadful situation of affectionate physical contact with Toki of all people-- but he'd held him like that for the entire ride home, and he'd practically carried him to the Mordhaus medical wing, and he's not left since. The rest of the band seems to have accepted this as normal-- Toki and Skwisgaar have been ]inseparable since the kid first joined their band more than a decade ago. Skwisgaar's constant presence here is little more than a refreshing return to the status quo.

This works in Skwisgaar's favour, because it means he's the only one who knows that the slumber that grips Toki is not a coma. He's the only one around when Toki wakes.

Toki wakes infrequently, incompletely. Most of the time he's confused when he does; high off his ass on painkillers and sedatives, his brain seems to pick moments from time at random to thrust him into.

Sometimes he seems to think he's a young kid, and he wakes up speaking Norwegian, asking for his mother or begging forgiveness for some chore-related transgression.

Other times he thinks he's in their old apartment, the first Mordhaus. "Skwis-gaar," he whines, without opening his eyes or moving his head from his pillow, "You says we goes to Ikea if de records sells a hundred copies… I buys pekhult."

And sometimes he's back in that abandoned building. "Don't wants no more cat foods, Magnus," he mumbles once to his pillow, "My kitty-friends says he only eats herrings now, you must bring Toki a herrings…"

During Pickles' next visit, Skwisgaar asks him to bring pickled herring, in case Toki wakes up and feels like a snack. The physician overhears. "Are you serious?" he says, "Have you even been listening to me? No solid food until his blood sugar's back under control. Also, pickled herring? He's already been tortured. Dicks."

The worst times are when Toki opens his eyes. It happens rarely-- Skwisgaar glancing up at the bed and finding himself subjected to a sunken-eyed, glassy stare. The first time, now in the harsh light of the hospital room, he notices that Toki's left eye has two new voids at the bottom of the iris, and he stares at them until he remembers that Nathan had blinded Magnus in the left eye. He's so disturbed that he looks away; he hears Toki smugly mumble, "You blinksed, you're a blinkster," and his throat can't manage to form a reply, and Toki falls asleep again soon after.

Probably an iris tear, the physician explains later, someone probably hit him in the eyeball, but is that really the priority here? He's dying of sepsis and you're worried about a cosmetic wound? Jesus.

But most of the time Toki sleeps soundly, and whatever delusions visit him seem pleasant, for he smiles in his sleep. Toki's always been prone to retreating into his own mind during moments of pain and stress-- a habit Skwisgaar understands, with his own tendency to shut down under duress-- however, whereas Skwisgaar's shut-downs draw him into a thoughtless churn of inner music, he's aware Toki finds more comfort in outright fantasies. Of course he's sleeping so much; he's probably off flying through clouds and rainbows in a stupid fairy world on Planet Toki. The real world, where his bandmates let him endure months of literal actual torture because they were scared to address an old drama Toki didn't even have anything to do with, probably seems pretty fucked up in comparison.

On the fifth day they've had Toki back, Nathan enters the room and tells Skwisgaar in no uncertain terms that it's his turn to be a sad piece of shit next to Toki's bed, so Skwisgaar needs to clear the fuck out. Nathan is the one band member capable of making Skwisgaar do anything, and it would be far too humiliating even now for him to fight over his cherished post, so Skwisgaar sulks out of there with only a warning that he'd better not even think about giving Toki any pickled herring. Doctor's orders.

Back in his room he feels intolerably alone-- he hates sleeping alone, how could Nathan not realise that's the only reason he's been in Toki's room all this time, because they're all acting so miserable and sappy that inviting some groupies over would make him look like a total dick?-- trying to postpone his collapse, he takes a shower that feels as if it lasts for years, spends a true hour applying various products to his hair, drinks half of the bowl of beef broth someone left in there for him. He sits with his Explorer for a while, drawing out the preliminary notes of the canon he's been contemplating in Toki's room, but sleep deprivation is turning the melody to mush in his head, everything sounds discordant, inferior, sloppy. Defeated, he throws himself into his bed, attempts to jack off, fails even at that, and, finally, lapses into an unsettled sleep.

Twelve hours later, Skwisgaar wakes in a thrashing panic. He doesn't remember what he dreamed about but he's convinced that everything after the rescue has been an illusion. He swears he remembers holding Toki's corpse. He dresses in a hurry, grabs his guitar, and goes back to the medical ward, trying to keep his pace slow so that nobody might notice his distress.

Inside the hospital room Toki is asleep and not dead. Nathan is also sleeping, doubled over in the chair by the bedside, his face planted into the mattress near Toki's hip. One of Toki's hands is buried in Nathan's hair, clutching a handful of greasy black tresses with a desperate strength Skwisgaar hasn't seen in him since the rescue. Duh, he thinks. Of course that sappy overbearing homo responds to physical closeness. With Nathan's hair to cling onto, he looks more peaceful than Skwisgaar's seen him in a long time.

When Skwisgaar resumes his constant vigil, he sits a little closer to the bed. He has his Explorer, this time, so he can whittle away the hours by composing that canon he's been thinking of. His playing doesn't seem to bother Toki, who sleeps soundly as ever, totally unappreciative of the fact that the world's pre-eminent Guitar God is giving him a private convert at his bedside. He still talks in his sleep, occasionally, and to Skwisgaar's indignation, it's not even about him. "Abigail? Abigail?" he moans out sometimes. Or, "I loves you too, clown, I loves you too." Or, "Fucks you, Moidaface, I goes to the water-parks without you…" He talks to everyone he's ever known at one point or another. He's always been the neediest of them.

But the canon comes along well, despite Toki's unconscious interjections. Sitting in this room, it's easier to recall the notes-- the white of the room evokes the punishing gleam of an ice-sheet, the beeping of the heart-monitor the steady wing-beats of a dragon in flight. The trick is making sure that every note will work with each other when overlaid; it's self-indulgently technical, the sort of music Skwisgaar loves to figure out: compositions that makes him feel like a genius. While Toki dreams his sedated rainbow dreams and argues with nobody, Skwisgaar plays, and he feels better for the practice.

He experiments with things other than music. Toki does seem to sleep more peacefully when someone is close to him or even touching him. When Toki speaks in his sleep, Skwisgaar moves from his chair and sits, instead, at the edge of the mattress, so that his weight dents it. Even this abysmal excuse for physical contact mollifies him, and his nighttime rambling always stops, replaced with a beatific smile. During one of Nathan's scarce visits, Nathan awkwardly blurts out that Abigail told him that she and Toki held each other for much of their captivity, and that his absence made her feel vulnerable. Skwisgaar, a perfectionist, is oddly chafed by the idea that this intrusive producer has managed Toki's well-being far better than he is able to now. As if she didn't realise that spoiling Toki with love will only do him a disservice in the long run.

But he has his composition, now, to serve as an excuse. The physician had mentioned diabetic nerve damage, and Skwisgaar uses a professional interest in Toki's musical aptitude to justify a battery of tests. He starts by pressing his fingertips against the sleeping man's fretting-hand, testing the response (it curls immediately, the fingers twitch towards his.) Next, later, he takes that hand in his own and presses his thumbpad to each of the fingertips; he finds the callouses are still there, but only barely, thin and inadequate over the sharp bones beneath. His next evaluation is to lace his fingers with Toki's. They're much more slender than they once were, even bony, and he doesn't sense much strength in them-- that will have to be rectified with practice, but perhaps the loss of finger-weight will somewhat compensate for any atrophy of skill. When he gropes along Toki's arms he finds them thinner than they were, muscles clinging tightly to bone and stringy under the skin. His shoulders, likewise, feel narrow and flabbier than they once were. Would a loss of muscle tone affect his playing? He factors this into the canon he's writing, forcing himself to run at a lower tempo.

They've had Toki for a week when the physician delivers an update. The major risk of sepsis has passed, it seems, and the nascent infection in the abdominal wound has been abating at impressive speed. The next step is to reduce his sedatives, introduce proper meals, let him regain a degree more consciousness, start thinking about therapy of both physical and psychological varieties. The update is given to Skwisgaar; he resolves not to pass it on to the rest of the band. If they hear Toki will be waking up properly soon, he'll never get them out of here.

So the meds are reduced, and Skwisgaar continues working on his composition. He soon realises that this isn't something he can do easily in analog; he needs a second him, someone to learn the same pattern and play it a few measures behind him, so that he can hear how it's all coming together. The second him he'd need to write this properly is currently sleep-mumbling a Dimmu Burger order, so Skwisgaar just has to make do with his imagination. It's sounding good, despite everything. Not quite as fast or as brutal as he'd like it to be, but he's going to be working with damaged goods, concessions need to be made.

There's one more test Skwisgaar feels he needs to run. The day the doctor cuts the sedatives, Skwisgaar waits until he's certain they won't be interrupted. Then he takes his guitar from his lap and gently, slowly, lies it across Toki's lap. He takes Toki's fretting hand-- the one that's loose, without tubes running from it-- and wraps it around the neck of the guitar. He holds his own breath and Toki's wrist and he waits to see what will happen.

He watches Toki's hand curl around the neck of the guitar. Fingers seek out strings on pure instinct, forming the shape of a nonsense chord, pressing very weakly down. Pure muscle memory. Skwisgaar lets out a long exhale.

Then he glances up and finds that Toki is staring at him bewilderedly. He's frowning, his eyes are puffy and ringed with near-black bruises.

"… Eugh," Skwisgaar says. "Thoughts you might…. urrrh…. needs… to practices."

Toki stares. He blinks slowly. Then he raises his other hand, with its train of tubes, and extends to Skwisgaar one stick-thin middle finger.

Once news gets out that Toki's awake, Skwisgaar bids farewell to his composition time. Toki isn't even really awake-- he still sleeps almost constantly-- but his intervals of waking can now be measured in hours rather than minutes. He can also hold conversations, now, though the painkillers do little to improve his already erratic train of thought. The rest of the band is eager to speak to him, which confuses Skwisgaar, because these conversations always seem to be about nothing. In fact, Toki hardly speaks, but he's awake and vaguely responsive and that seems to satisfy everyone else.

The first real conversation Toki has after waking up is with Abigail. Not twenty-four hours after Toki had begun to enjoy bouts of continued consciousness, they receive the news that Abigail was leaving Mordhaus' medical wing and returning to her own house, in her own city, far from the band who'd caused her so much grief. She comes to Toki's room to say goodbye, and Skwisgaar, still jealously guarding his place by the bed, pretends not to watch as the two abductees embrace each other and weep into each other's shoulders. It is Pickles who drags Skwisgaar out of the room after that first teary embrace. Skwisgaar is forced to join Nathan in miserable exile in the hallway, where they exchange some awkward words about nothing in particular and pretend not to listen into the conversation inside. The words themselves are indistinct, but neither of them fail to notice the genuine love in Abigail's voice, the tender affection with which she comforts the bandmate they'd almost abandoned.

"I think she's uh… mad at me or something," Nathan remarks at one point. "You know, I guess we kind of, uh… took a while… to save them… yeah, I think she's mad at me or something."

"Dat's womens for you," Skwisgaar replies without emotion, staring at the wall.

When Abigail leaves, Skwisgaar elbows back into the room and finds Toki wiping his face with the edges of his blanket. He looks a mess, sitting upright for the first time since he'd been back; his unwashed hair falling limp over jutting shoulder-blades, scarred skin pulled taut over prominent ribs. He looks up at Skwisgaar, both eyes brimming with tears. "She's leavin's me," Toki blubbers, "She's leavin's-- she's leavin's me-- tells her not to leaves me, tells her she can't leaves Toki, Toki loves her more den anythings--"

The first coherent sentences Toki's spoken to him since the abduction, and he's proclaiming his love for some woman they barely know. Skwisgaar makes a derisive sound. "She shouldn'ts has upsets you's." Toki gives him a miserable betrayed look; Skwisgaar ignores him, takes up his post by the bedside, and gets back to work on his canon.

Maybe it's the loss of sedatives, or maybe it's that Abigail's departure breaks something in him, because after that day Toki becomes much more childish. Skwisgaar has always thought of Toki as three different variants of himself: as well as Toki his musical counterpart, there is the fawning crybaby Toki who loves kid things, and the frightening megalomaniacal Toki capable of astonishing violence. He's the crybaby more often now. It makes him easier to deal with in some ways-- he's completely pacified when Nathan starts reading him Watership Down, for example, and Pickles' bringing him a care package of his deaddy bear and several colouring books delights him for a whole day. But the crybaby is also more prone to mood swings than he's ever been before. Skwisgaar finds, to his discomfort, that exchanges which once would've been natural for them now reduce Toki to tears-- any raised voice, any hint of criticism, any cynical statement, and he starts blubbering. It quickly begins to wear on Skwisgaar's nerves.

There's only so much he can take. He concedes. He starts letting his bandmates drive him out of Toki's room so that they can spend their own time alone with him. He has the melody for his canon, at this point, he feels confident about how the notes will fit together. All that's left is to refine it. He starts spending plenty of time in the studio, first recording himself, then playing over the recording. He sits on his hands before he performs the second part, waiting for them to go numb, the way he always does before re-recording Toki's tracks.

He hasn't brought up the canon since Toki's been awake. He's afraid that, if he does, Toki will dissolve under the pressure and start crying again. He'd offered to let Toki practice on his Explorer during one of his first bouts of proper wakefulness, and Toki had been predictable petulant about it, whining that he couldn't practise with those 'stupids tubes' in his arm. He'd shed tears because he'd thought Skwisgaar's offer of practice was an expression of disapproval, so Skwisgaar had stopped bringing up guitars after that, which left him with absolutely nothing to talk about.

It's becoming more and more difficult to ignore that the other band members are so much better at this than he is. Skwisgaar can't stand that he alone is utterly incapable of making Toki feel better. They've always provoked each other, even at their closest, but now that feels less like proof of their bond and more like a glaring fault.

As the week goes on, Skwisgaar visits less and less. It becomes easy to let himself go for days without doing so.

Perhaps it's for the best, his pulling away. The canon hasn't turned out how he wanted it to be. When he first imagined it, he saw fire and ice, dragons and valkyries; somewhere over these awful few weeks it has transformed into something darker and more hopeless. He's anchored the melody with a heavy thud on the lowest string at irregular intervals, which, as the two tracks play over each other, begins to sound like a palpating heartbeat, overlain by anxious minor scales, skittering rats. A pseudo-classical succession of repeating arpeggios evokes churches filled with ghosts. When he listens to his first recording, Skwisgaar finds himself thinking of damp and dungeons, an upside-down cross, crucifixions, shackles, impaled people, burning stars. He listens through it twice, and then he deletes the track.

They've had Toki back for two whole weeks and Skwisgaar is lying on his bed when Pickles lets himself into Skwisgaar's room. "Dood, the're sayin' he'll be allowed out soon," he says triumphantly. "They're takin' him off the drugs and everythin'! He's gonna be okay. You know? He's okay, we can say that now." Finally, a pause. "Uh, hello? Anyone in here?"

"Ugh," Skwisgaar says. He's been staring at the ceiling for the past while, his guitar lying in one arm like a lover, his other hand behind his head.

"You, uh, doin' okay?" Pickles asks. "You heard what I said or…"

"Yueh. Gots it."

A pause. "You should visit him, dood," Pickles says. "He's been askin' about you."

Skwisgaar makes a dismissive sound. Pickles shoots back something about moody teenagers never wanting to leave their rooms, and then he slams the door, leaving Skwisgaar to stare at the ceiling in silence. He's been lying there for some time, trying to decide what to do with the inadequate canon he's composed. He knows he should admit to himself that it's going nowhere, start writing something else, it's not like him to get attached to a failed piece of music. Writing something else sounds less appealing than simply staring at the ceiling. He's been spending a lot of time doing that in the past few days.

It's never going to work no matter how he writes it. The parts may be identical, created for each other, but they are not beautiful when they're combined. The second melody may be equal to the first, but when lagging behind its counterpart it is ugly and discordant, it evokes something resentful, maybe something even hateful, something deeply frustrated. Skwisgaar may have succeeded in evoking the chase he first imagined, but there are no dragons here, no valkyries-- there is a rabbit with a snared leg, designed for speed but failing to run. There may have been magic in this world, once, but Skiwsgaar can no longer capture it. Perhaps it was never his to capture.

And yet, he still wants to capture it.

When he arrives in Toki's room he finds that Toki's fast asleep again. Murderface is slumped over in the chair next to the bed, and a portable DVD player has been set up on Toki's lap; Skwisgaar hears the strains of some corny animated movie over the sounds of Murderface's snoring. He places the two guitars he's holding at the foot of Toki's bed, goes to Murderface's side, shakes Murderface awake. Murderface rouses loudly, begins cursing out Skwisgaar for startling him until Skwisgaar informs him that, if the tantrum wakes up Toki, he'll tell Nathan; the threat of retribution shuts Murderface up, and he takes his DVD player and leaves with only a cursory amount of resentful grumbling.

With Murderface departed, Skwisgaar waits to ensure nobody else will come in. He waits for several minutes.

He meant to wake Toki up. He meant to tell Toki about the song he was composing for them to play. He's brought two guitars-- his own Explorer, and one of Toki's Flying V's, not the show guitars but one Skwisgaar has taken from a shrine-like sconce in Toki's closet, an old battered guitar repaired with duct-tape in places. He'd been going to press the old guitar into Toki's arms and say, practice, for once in your miserable life, and he'll wait out the crying if he had to, and he'll guide Toki's hands onto the strings if it was required. They can't talk like this-- he hasn't been able to talk-- they need to play together if anything worth saying is to pass between them, and so Skwisgaar needs Toki to learn to play again. These past several months have been so desperately lonely.

Lying motionless in the hospital bed, his wounds barely beginning to heal, Toki looks absurdly like the guitar Skiwsgaar's brought to him-- second-hand, hard-worn, duct-taped back together. Skiwsgaar once scoffed at the idea of playing on such an instrument unless out of sheer desperation, but here he is.

He leaves the guitars at the foot of the bed.

Toki is fast asleep, and he remains asleep as Skwisgaar climbs onto the mattress next to him. He feels ridiculous, like a kid crawling into his mother's empty bed, desperate not to be alone. If anyone catches him he'll take all the morphine from that drip and kill himself on the spot. Awkwardly, trying to avoid any physical contact, he positions his body parallel to Toki's. His feet hang off the edge of the bed, dangerously close to the guitars; his head is on the mattress by Toki's shoulder. So positioned, choking on the shame of it, he tries to settle. Toki smells like blood and sweat and antiseptic.

Everything is already so fucked up, everything is already falling apart. They're embedded in some sort of apocalyptic prophecy and nothing will ever be the same. Carefully, Skwisgaar extends one arm and rests it over Toki's lap, low enough to avoid the wound Magnus has created. In theory he's cuddled with people before, but it's been a long time, he doesn't do that with his hook-ups, it's too much. This feels different. He doesn't know what he expected. Not this-- disproportionate smallness, horrid vulnerability. Toki isn't even awake to ridicule him for it, so he doesn't understand why it's so difficult. He shifts a little on the mattress, astonished by how uncomfortable it is. How could they have made Toki endure sleeping on this for weeks?

Suddenly there is a hand in his hair.

Skwisgaar freezes. He sees his life flash before his eyes. He thinks about jumping out of the window. He tries to think of any plausible excuse and finds nothing.

Toki's fingers tangle themselves in his hair, the tips of them sliding soothingly along his scalp before picking up a lock and squeezing it.

"Ams okay, Skwisgaar." Toki mumbles it as if he's just woken up. "There, there. Ams okay. Everything's okays now."

His fingers still move in Skwisgaar's hair. This is mortifying. He doesn't move away.

He shifts closer, lies his body against Toki's side, hides his face in the side of Toki's sharp ribs. Thank Odin, he does not cry, but he's guilty of sniffling a bit. Toki strokes his hair back, then pats him in a friendly way between the shoulder-blades.

"There, there," Toki repeats himself. "Ams okay, ams heres now. Don't worries, ol' Toki's right here to looks afters you."

Is Toki mocking him? Skwisgaar wants Toki to be mocking him-- it would be so normal, so comfortable. But the hand stroking Skwisgaar's hair feels too sincere. He grinds his face into Toki's ribs, marveling at his own shamelessness. Toki is literally the last person in the world who should be comforting him-- it should be the other way around-- none of these thoughts can persuade him to move away. He just lies there, a charlatan, a fraud, a weakling. Toki's playing with his hair again, petting him like a cat. He is so humiliated he could die. He does not move away.

Things have changed; Skwisgaar understands this. He knows things will never again be the way they once were. But at last, miserable and comforted and in spite of it all at peace, he understands something crucial about their weird new fucked up lives:

The end is not nigh.

#metalocalypse #it's mostly just a dumb of headcanons abt post-requiem skwis and toki :')#my fic

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animehouse-moe · 1 year

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Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 2: Hidden Inventory 2

Wow, lot of twos in today's title. Once more I really feel on the fence about sharing my gripes with JJK, but at the same time I almost just want to feel heard in my disappointment and sadness that we're seeing what we are. I'll probably say it every time, but this doesn't mean that I hate every second and frame of these episodes, there's good stuff within too, it's just that the overwhelming majority feels wrong. So I guess it's time to humor me if you will as I recant my grievances with today's JJK episode.

You know, I really thought it was going to be a one-off. That we just got season one's OST in the first episode for some random reason. Does not seem to be the case. The standout, and "JJK" sounding tracks are all from the first season in this episode as well. What amounts to background noise that is entirely forgettable is the new soundtrack, aside from the choice of classical music over a Toji scene, and the well placed choir later in the episode. This is basically to say, any "JJK Flair" you might catch from this episode is old news, all of the new music moves towards a generalized and far more often than not flat delivery that rips yet another section of this anime's heart out.

And you know, on the topic of simple things that feel robbed of their character? The eye catch. I get it, they want something more "uppity" to match the perceived vibe of Geto and Gojo. But the concept of "the strongest", and the person that's always in their shadow, is not at all grasped through a simple xylophone-esque tune couple with whatever fluttery animation this is.

Kind of crazy that we haven't made it to the episode itself yet, so let's fix that. Broad strokes first, the composition. What was up with episode 1? It's so obviously better here in 85% of the scenes, and for what reason? I guess in general, the lighting and shading overall is more plain, but it's not like there was a mountain of things to draw in the first episode anyways. That said, there's still very glaring and weird issues with composition through the episode, and I don't understand why. At the very least, they show with today's episode that they can properly composite scenes, but just choose not to with a good few (and oddly enough it's that nearly all of these scenes are just too dark).

For example, these two scenes take place in the same setting/area, but the exposure and brightness are totally different? Gets a pass on the shading on Geto because I couldn't find a good scene that showed Geto properly while including the shading, but just know that it does remain.

And this is far from the only example of the oddities in regards to composition. The moment a scene is "intense" or combat erupts, they completely crush the lighting and composition for reasons that I simply can't understand. Just take a look at this. I really don't get it. These two characters are facing each other in the scene, so how one is far brighter than the other I have no idea.

I was tempted to provide a third example, but Tumblr does sadly have an image limit, so I'll be moving on. Though really it's backwards to start my complaints from the top since the broad concept of composition has been covered now. So we go to Geto. What is Mappa's obsession with unnecessary character acting? Not only is this instance excessive like usual, it goes against the actual concept of Geto's character? Not that he can't enjoy tea, but he very clearly is meant to be depicted as a high school kid that's glued to his phone. He's meant to be shown as young and closer to Gojo, but instead we get a scene that frames him as far older? Gosso seems to really have it out for Geto through these two episodes.

And of course, the character acting is another discussion entirely. They age Geto painfully with how they have him behave compared to the manga. Just baffling decisions that seem entirely needless.

Also please Mappa I'm begging you, why are you treating Toji like this??? Like, I'm sorry, who is this man? It's the kind of pointless thing that gets me pointlessly worked up because there's just such little resemblance to what makes Toji, Toji. They've erased the heart of the soundtrack, they've erased the art style that fans have loved, and now they've moved onto erasing the hearts of the characters and their expressions.

Expression, let's go there. I'm a fan of how goofy the manga can get with Gojo (and Geto) at times, but I feel like throughout the episode they go from narrow, to very comfortably missing the mark on its humor, and in doing so end up butchering more than a few scenes.

This example is of the more mild misses, but it's pretty easy to see how Gege's humor is completely missing from the anime's version.

Anyways, back to my poor child Geto, being abused by Mappa. I swear they hate him for some reason, because what is this? Geto feels that two of his curses have been exorcised and tells Gojo they need to go get Riko, but compared to the manga? There's just so much. How Geto tells Gojo about getting Riko before he starts moving in the anime. He doesn't hang off Gojo but rather walks away briskly, and the look in his eyes is just entirely different. I might forgive them for not showing how it is that Geto realizes his curses have been exorcised, but I won't forgive them for changing the very basis of his character. That sinister feel, the cunning that emanates from his sharp gaze, the look that never falters. Geto's in the zone in this moment, and you can tell that from the rip with his narrow eyes and his interactions that are catching up to his thoughts. All of that is missing in the anime though, and it's deeply disappointing.

You know, if I keep this up I'll be here all day. Question! Which anime is this from!? If you answered JJK... you'd be right, sadly. The art style is just so painfully generic to what Mappa is doing these days that it hurts my soul to see.

Alright, the next big offence. I'm pretty sure most knew it was coming, but it hit painfully hard today. That is, the combat. There was never going to be anyone that would match Park's combat with JJK, and I wholly accept that as fact. What I don't accept is how Gosso sees how focused on Choreography JJK is, and decides, "You know what? I'm not interested in that, let's do all close ups and isolation for the combat". And it pisses me off, it's good work. It's well animated, and it's entirely wasted as a mockery of what JJK is.

Just look at the difference to the manga. Not even that, look at the difference in combat style. Geto uses an open hand in the manga, but it turns into a closed fist in the anime? I really feel for anime onlies that are getting the anime's version of JJK.

Back to Gojo. I can't believe they attempted to pull a scene from an anime original gag clip from S1 into S2, and just made a lesser version of it.

The actual definition of "Unspoken Rizz vs Sexual Harassment". If it also wasn't obvious, the manga version of the panel doesn't remotely compare.

And you know what? It's a good segue to my next issue: it's too damn happy. The episode, and Hidden Inventory as a whole so far, has been too uppity and the added/changed pieces are what makes it worse. For whatever reason, Gosso has taken the idea of goofy Gojo and Geto as the notion that everyone is goofy, and it's a massive misconception, that leads to unnecessary scenes like this one that use chibi characters instead of regular ones to crank the humor up to 11 and have it linger for far more than the manga does.

Alright, next person, Kuroi. I'm not surprised, I'm really not, I swear I'm not. But God, are eyes and facial expressions just something that the staff don't care about this season? How is this instance of Kuroi meant to compare to and display what the manga Kuroi is? The two aren't even close. And for what reason. It's literally a pair of eyes that someone looked at, and decided needed to be all the way open in blind rage, rather than the reserved yet poised feeling they gave off in the manga.

To be honest, there's still a bit of episode left with Gojo's fight against Bombastic Bagman, but I just don't have the energy or desire to complain in detail. It's alright? It's a very anime-only depiction of it that changes things, and needlessly so at that, but it's also not terribly offensive. It took this second season only two episodes for me to become apathetic towards the issues we're faced with, and that just feels incredibly depressing. I love JJK a great deal, and within 2 of the 23 episodes this season, I've grown tired of my own complaints.

#jujutsu kaisen #呪術廻戦 #jjk #sorcery fight #gojo satoru #geto suguru #toji fushiguro #anime review #anime and manga #anime

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omegaversetheory · 4 months

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Im aware that this question will sound weird af, but I Wonder if incest in your omegaverse au would be biologically impossible, i mean, alphas and omegas's instincts and bonds between each others are very scent-centered, so it would make sense that the sexual/romantic mechanisms of their instinctive part of the brain was genetically, chemically and evolutionary made and wired to reject all of those scents that have a very similar composition to their owns's, being an evolutionary change on their orgsnisms thst spoeared to prevent having defective descendants due either incest or endogamy

Lets put on an example, lets imagine that an alpha is very horny when it comes to omegas who are near his age, however, he doesn't feel anything towards his twin (fraternal, no identical) omega sister, even when she is on heat and he is in rut, neither of them feel anything morre for each other than the typical "stfu u annoying" sibling behavior, that would happen because when it comes to random omegas, the alpha's brain notices that their scents are something completely New and get possitively overstimulated by it, causing the horniness to happen, however, when it comes to his sister, his brain notices the evident similarities and automátically neutralizes the sexual instincts, so its basically impossible for him to see his sister in a weird way unless he has a genetic disorder or is just a gross person in general LOL (I dont even know if this makes sense, i just needed to take it out of my head omg)

You know what I've never thought about it. It's extremely ethnically immoral yes, but thinking about it now, no I would say it is biologically possible with the caveat that the body does almost everything it can do to make it impossible.

So yes, if you are feeling aroused, the scents of the people in close relation to you won't smell "desirable". Their scents won't change, they won't smell foul - rather your brain just knows they're your family and will point you in other directions. This would be the scent rejection you're talking about.

Besides that I'd also theorize that something about "getting it on" with a relative is physically painful - you don't want to go touching their bits with your bits. It's going to sting/burn/leave a mark then you'll need to go to a doctor and how embarrassing is that conversation. Perhaps, to add another layer - laying with a relative would leave you with a distinct new scent note. And not a nice one either, so people would immediately be able to smell it.

When it comes to heats/ruts, what you've described is I believe the common understanding. An individual is not impacted by the heats/ruts of their relatives - including but not limited to first/second cousins, parents, grandparents, siblings, "half" versions of any of the aforementioned relatives.

But as for more of your deep science-theory about the scent rejections, I like it! I'd love to hear more about your au and headcanons!

#ask answered #omegaverse #a/b/o #a/b/o dynamics #omegaverse au #a/b/o headcanons #a/b/o au #omegaverse headcanons #omegaverse dynamics #scents #families

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cocoabubbelle · 2 years

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Random thought:

Is Rollo Flamm hiding a set of animal ears underneath that ginormous hat of his???

*checks out Leona, Ruggie, Jack, and Cheyna*

Probably not since they don’t have a pair of human ears.

…but what if magic disguise like Azul, Jade, and Floyd?? 👀

But original Frollo (scum bag extraordinaire btw) despises magic?

…but this one could probably be a super in the closet magic geek and that’s why he’s fascinated with Malleus Draconia?

I bet on the super slim chance he does have animal features he’s a goat

Because:

It would be funny

It would make him a composite character with Djali (Esmeralda’s Goat)

In most Christian symbolism, goats are associated with the devil, so maybe he was bullied/ostracized/condemned as a child for his goat horns because horns = devil, and maybe he was part of a super fundamentalist/orthodox/strict religious community and so he spent years hating himself and developing a perfectionist/purity complex that resulted in him being extremely upright and cold against anything deemed “impure/imperfect” and has military-like discipline and strictness. Probably also resorting to using potions/magic to “erase” his “disgusting” features, something he has additional guilt over because of his community’s view on witchcraft/magic.

This can also explain why he has maybe an obsessive interest in Malleus. We don’t know if his interest has positive or negative feelings yet; maybe it’s a bit of both (admiration that Malleus can openly display his horns + disgust that he’s showing off those horrible horns like a demon + jealous he is able to do that and have the power to potentially ward off any haters + longing to be like him because it looks like he has people who respect him…then even more so when he sees the genuine friendship Malleus has between Yuu/MC and his followers + conflicted because the way he’s been taught and molded to hate and reject his “faults” can’t possibly be wrong…can it?) <- think Inspector Javert moments from his demise from Les Miserables.

I mostly want to see more characters with animal features outside of Savanaclaw (Octavinelle barely makes the cut because the main guys there mainly present themselves without their fishy features)

Just a silly headcanon 😆

#twst rollo #twst headcanons #twst Noble bell college #rollo flamm #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #disney #the hunchback of notre dame #shenanigans

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ikeepwatchinghelicopters · 2 years

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Random thought: Modern Witcher AU where Jaskier is a conductor.

I'm thinking of his conducting style being somewhat similar to Alondra de la Parra, for example. You know, enthusiastic and expressive. He would totally despise how confining the tux with a bowtie is, so immediately after the performance, he would ditch the bowtie and unbotton the first few buttons on his shirt, so he would do the bowing his chest hair already peeking out (it cannot be contained). He would actually frequently lose his bowties, because he'd just throw them wherever and then promptly forget about it.

He can also play some instruments (I'm thinking mainly piano and violin, but I'm sure he also has a lute tucked away somewhere). Well, actually, he can play many instruments very badly (according to his own words, lol).

I'm not sure what Geralt's job would be, but he's taking care of Ciri (who's around 7) and meets Jaskier thanks to her. Jaskier's an assistant conductor for an orchestra which regulary (like once a month) does small weekend concerts for little children. The concert is from like 10:00 am on Saturdays and after the pieces are finished, the children get to interact with the players and ask questions about their instruments. Jaskier is in charge of these little concerts (choosing the pieces (sometimes his own compositions), arranging them if necessary and the conducting itself) and Ciri is of course very inquisitive. She enjoys the concerts and talking to Jaskier afterward, so Geralts takes her there.

I don't have any ideas about the plot, but Geralt and Jaskier would naturally end up together. This whole AU basicslly exists because I think Jaskier would be hot as a conductor. Just imagine him after the last note of a symphony rings out. Sweat is lining his hairline and he's breathing hard, because conducting is actually physically exhausting, but he's glowing with happiness and basking in the applause.

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #jaskier #ciri #geraskier #au idea #feel free to adopt the au

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sonlikesleep · 2 years

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small note about my thoughts on AI

with how sophisticated it has become, i’m convinced that we will see more instances of it’s use in the industry, and i’ve heard of some already. right now it’s used as a tool by actual artists and gets then revised and finished after, but i will not be surprised when smaller companies would start to use raw generations in card games and gachas and such. because it’s just cheaper, and there are many places were “quantity > quality” equation us considered to be a motto. some people would also start to choose AI over commissioning an artist, but i cannot even try to predict how that would affect the inrernet art market.

but there’s a different aspect to it, and I feel it’s a far greater threat to artistic community as a whole and in the long run. that aspect being the loss of technique .

this whole post may have been inspired by the fact, that i’ve recently studied art history at uni and saw how many techniques there are that are forgotten. no one can achieve that anymore, not after a new generation of development of those techniques, and still we would just be mimicking a thing from the past with a new thing, that developed in different circumstances and conditions. and why even try anyway, right? no one would commission an artist to spend a ludicrous amount of time and resources on an intricate metalcut, when you can get two of the same thing for the same money and half the time from a digital artist!! wow! (order now call 666-666)

of course i’m not against digital art in any way, all that mess above is just to illustrate that market does influence which techniques are used and which stay in the past, and thats okay, because nothing is stationary and everything evolves. and i’m fine with that.

but the perspective that we will see a dependency and reliance on AI tools saddens me. because if they are taken away - what’s left? because they would replace not only creativity, but also the knowledge of composition, colour theory, replace the process of search and development of the piece and in my opinion those are things we shouldn’t forget as a community. another piece of my opinion - in art result shouldn’t matter more then the process, and the process must be part of the result. and reliance on AI changes the process drastically, and now result is what matters, and the means are all.

i may be pessimistic, but there is a silver lining in all of this - i want to believe in the shift in collective understanding of what art is and that it would lead to placing the human aspect of art above all. pretty rendered pictures are nothing if there isn’t a human behind them, no matter how skilful they may look. an absolutely random headshot of a girl with sun and flowers staring in the distance? generic you would think. right up until you learn that this is an OC the artist is really passionate about, they love and care for what they create. that’s the human aspect. and it is essential. and maybe with the further development of AI it will come out into the spotlight more. at least i can hope.

#ai art discourse #ai art discussion #ai discourse #sorry if it all a bit confusing to read #i dont know if i managed to get my point across cos brain scrambled egg #art rant #forgive me my ramblings #it’s 3 am lol #words #text post

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raisedbyelectronics · 6 months

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An interesting thing about electronic music is that its focus on timbre is a clear departure from the idiom of especially classical music – which is that (1) melody, harmony, and rhythm are *what* you play, and (2) timbre is *how* you play it or expect someone to play it.

This is why it seems to many that sound design is so removed from composition. When in practice, there's a lot of sensory thought put into modular jams built around LFOs or sequencers outputting random notes. The timbre is a big part of the vibes we electronic fans listen to. At the other extreme, the patch you create or sample you choose is what you say, and the notes (if any) are how you say it.

And when you think of it... that's how speech works. "How you say" something has more to do with the volume and pitch of your voice than the timbres, which correspond with vowels (what you say). And just because someone sounds angry to you, doesn't mean they necessarily are (they could be on the spectrum or have a foreign accent that for some reason sounds aggressive)... just like how people are free to interpret whatever they find meaningful in the music.

Electronic music is such an open philosophy that you can't really generalize to a single set of techniques.

Some people stereotype it as "just taking other people's beats and tunes and plagiarizing"... which is just a cynical way at looking at SOME electronic music, such as Daft Punk (though phrase sampling DOES take talent and can breathe new life into a stock loop or other popular song)... or "just random bleeps and bloops"... except DeadMau5 is very "composer-like" in his production, and there is sentiment that goes into the "Randomness", just as there's sentiment in the opera singer who doesn't plan out every vibrato undulation. And a lot of it is performed – on MPCs, Kaoss pads, Launchpads, theramins, good old fashioned keyboards, voice-to-MIDI, etc. And if it isn't – Renoir only needed to paint each of his paintings once. It's a fine art, not a performing art.

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daimonclub · 8 months

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Reflections on photography

Reflections on photography Reflections on photography, thoughts, ideas, opinions and meditations on the art of photography and photographers, its poetic value, and deep literary and philosophical essence. Photography is always poetic as it reminds us of past situations, emotions, feelings, anguish or disappointments distant in time and space; its strength is to revive in our memory a world that no longer exists and therefore necessarily melancholic and evocative, therefore it is similar to poetry which tries with words to obtain the same romantic effects on our sterile existence. Carl William Brown It is said that mourning, by its gradual labour, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot believe this; because for me, Time eliminates the emotion of loss (I do not weep), that is all. For the rest, everything has remained motionless. For what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indispensable, but the irreplaceable. Roland Barthes The aim of every artist is to stop the movement, which is life, with artificial means, and keep it still but in such a way that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again, because it is life. William Faulkner A photograph does not simply capture a moment of reality, but becomes a communicative interaction between the past and the present that expresses the mood and deepest emotions of the person observing it. Carl William Brown Thus all photography seems guilty of surrealism, when it is indifferent and when it is compassionate, when it documents the past or ongoing becoming, when it paves the way for tourism, which then becomes destructive; when he is moralistic and when he is unconscious; when he accumulates random finds and when he documents the desperation of economic depression. Leonardo Terzo

Thoughts on photography Recalling the past with the memories of one's own memory in an attempt to make time flow backwards, bringing our loved ones back to life in one's imagination, is a process, not without a certain pain, which helps us to approach the end of life more quickly. our days, at the end of our epochal duration. Carl William Brown We think that every mental processing is part of the Tagesrest, as Freud calls it: the day's residues, composite images, the garbage of life. But Jung says that even our thoughts derive from pictures. So the task would be to bring them back to light, and the Red Book seems to do exactly that. Jung allows the figures to speak, to show themselves. He even encourages them to do so. James Hillman The ancestors. The dead. It is not a mere metaphor, an encrypted message to indicate the unconscious or something like that. When he speaks of the dead, Jung means the dead. And they are present in the images, they continue to live. Sonu Shamdasani The photographer is above all a professional man, but even as an amateur he finds himself in an inevitably "existentialist" situation, that is, thrown into a part of the world, from which he in turn chooses and cuts out an even smaller part available in front of his lens. . He works in the given circumstances, but could employ his calling in any circumstance. We are all photographers and we all have our more or less temporary interests. And a professional or amateur of images is at the same time an artist, a craftsman, a designer, inclined, if he wants, to engage in the entire range of creativity, from the applied arts to the more abstract and conceptual ones. Leonardo Terzo The desire to photograph perhaps arises from this observation: seen from an overall perspective, from the point of view of meaning, the world is very disappointing. Observed in detail, and by surprise, it is always perfectly evident. Jean Baudrillard Recalling with memory the memories of our past life with loved ones, and above all with one's mother, has the fundamental function of anesthetizing the pain of our present existence, that is, of trying to eradicate the tragic suffering of our current reality. It is a procedure that helps us deceive the linearity of time, making it more circular and affectionate, as well as more uncertain in its progression. Carl William Brown

My parents and aunts in the 50s Photography, photo-graphy, means writing with light. Photography and cinema confer a kind of immortality, a pre-eminence to images and not to real life. Herbert Marshall McLuhan A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetise the injuries of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera's twin capacities, to subjectivise reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs as strengthen them. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images. Susan Sontag Photography is a powerful means of expression. Used properly it is of great use for improvement and understanding. Used incorrectly it has caused and will cause many problems. The photographer is responsible for his work and the resulting effects. Photography for me is not simply an occupation. Carrying the camera I carry a torch. W. Eugene Smith Writing about photography is difficult, very difficult, if you haven't done photography. To write about painting you don't need to have painted, and the same about sculpture; but to write about surgery you need to have been a surgeon. And photography is a surgical operation, the camera is a scalpel, the darkroom is an operating room. Photography critics are like virgins who write guides on the most terminal erotic practices. Ando Gilard If these images can ever have a meaning for future generations, it will be this: I was there, I existed. I was young, I was happy and someone in this world loved me enough to take a photograph of me. From the movie In One Hour Photo

The art of photography The film of my camera has a reserved look and is all wrapped up on itself. He locks himself in a dark room for days because he is sensitive to light: he doesn't want to risk exposing himself so as not to give a bad impression. He wants to remain objective. Guido Rojetti The word “photograph” literally translated from Greek means “drawing with light”. Photography is in fact closely connected with light. The light that reflects on a scene creates an image, and constitutes an energy that in turn stimulates our synapses, our brain and our memory. The link between melancholic emotions and photographs representing past events is therefore profound and complex. This link can be explained through several psychological and emotional factors. In fact, photographs capture moments of our lives, often associated with strong emotions. The effect that photography generates is precisely that of finally making visible things and social environments that were previously, guiltily or not, ignored, and consequently "neglected". This value aspect of photography can transform into vitality or sadness. Carl William Brown Good photographers are rare and indefinable, but they always have one thing in common, that of going beyond themselves, of being more than they could be, of having this little "music" in short of being a little ' miraculous. After all, those who are called "great photographers" are none other than those to whom this lucky accident has happened a large number of times, because taking a good photo is always winning at a gamble. The risk of the meeting, of immediate understanding, of its instant transcription. Jeanloup Sieff The camera is a kind of professor: it teaches me to understand the world, to see how things come together. He teaches me to remember the past because he makes me look back. I obey occasionally, but not always. It's like a person. Arno Rafael Minkkinen Certain photographers and certain image lovers sometimes prefer 'not to run the risk of revelation': when they have all the freedom to take, to take a photograph, they choose not to take, as if they deliberately wanted to miss the opportunity. They are content to photograph with their eyes, to mentally record the image. Nothing more. They don't want to go any further. It is a rejection of revelation. Raymond Depardon In general, art is not born from happiness, but is born from a discomfort, from a need to communicate something to others, just as literature is often fueled by the desire to express an internal discomfort, perhaps by telling stories, which in the end are not nothing other than the depiction of our tragic existences. Carl William Brown

Opinions and thoughts on photography When done well, photography is interesting. When done very well, it becomes irrational and even magical. It has nothing to do with the conscious will or desire of the photographer. When photography happens, it happens effortlessly, like a gift that should not be questioned or analyzed. Elliott Erwitt Photography is probably the most accessible and most rewarding of all art forms. It can record faces or events or tell a story. It can surprise, entertain and educate. It can capture and communicate emotions and document any detail quickly and precisely. John Hedgecoe The greatest consequence of photography is that it gives us the sensation of being able to have the whole world in our head, as an anthology of images; in photographs the image is also an object, light, inexpensive, easy to carry around, to accumulate, to preserve. Susan Sontag Degas loved photography at a time when artists disdained it or did not want to admit to using it. He took excellent photographs and I jealously guard a print that he gave me. Near a large mirror you can see Mallarmé against the wall, Renoir on the sofa; in the mirror, like ghosts, Degas himself with his room and Madame Mallarmé with his daughter. The price of this masterpiece: nine gas lamps and a terrifying quarter of an hour of complete immobility. Paul Valery Photographs transport distant places into our homes and the past into the present. We all have albums (or drawers, if we're messy) full of photos of loved ones and of ourselves when we were younger. Photographs satisfy our desire for art, they let us know things we will never see up close. And they are our memory. Of the countless photographs that pass before our eyes, only a few, however, capture our attention and remain among our memories, indelible images that often accentuate our current unhappiness. Robert Caputo Photography always has artistic, communicative, semiological, poetic, psychological, philosophical and sociological values. The images that are captured, printed and published have meanings that probe reality very deeply, and arouse emotions and feelings of a very high nature in those who look at them, stimulating, depending on their involvement, the memory and memories that make us relive the past and thus shed a new light on the present; Unfortunately, however, not all those who produce them are aware of it, nor do they stop to think or reflect on the ethical and aesthetic value of what they have created. Carl William Brown

Boston photo with snow We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know we lived." Michelle Richmond You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. Ansel Adams All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. Susan Sontag It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down... Kate Morton Ultimately - or at the limit - in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes. Roland Barthes Family photos depict smiling faces, births, weddings, holidays, children's birthday parties. You take photographs of the happy moments of your life. Anyone leafing through a photo album would conclude that we lived a happy and peaceful existence, without tragedies. Nobody takes a photograph of something they want to forget. From the movie One Hour Photo

Carl William Brown The photograph represents a death certificate but, at the same time, a promise of resurrection; it is an impassive document, but, at the same time, a fountain of existential tears. Even more: it obeys time and strikes it down; it sanctions a loss and replaces it with an immortal simulacrum. Gesualdo Bufalino The artist is a collector of images who collects things with his eyes. The secret of photography is that the camera takes on the character and personality of the person holding it. The mind works through the machine. Walker Evans One evening a friend of mine who enjoys photography, invited to dinner, showed some photos he had brought with him. The landlady, looking at them, exclaimed: "Beautiful, he must have an excellent camera!". When it was time to leave, my friend turned to the landlady and said: “Excellent dinner: you must have good quality pans!”. Simon Evans You can lie with photographs. You can even tell the truth, although this is extremely difficult. The cliché has it that photography is a mirror of the world and I believe it needs to be reversed: the world is the mirror of the photographer. Ferdinando Scianna First let's define what a photograph is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a beautiful image, not a technical virtuosity and not even a simple quality print. It is or should be a significant document, a biting declaration, which can be described with a very simple term: selectivity. Berenice Abbott On the same topic you can also read: Quotes and aphorisms on photography Aforismi e citazioni sulla fotografia Quotes by Arguments Quotes by Authors Thoughts and opinions Photo Galleries Free Photos Video Galleries Read the full article

#authors #ideas #opinions #photographers #Photography #photos #quotations #reflections #thoughts

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thorntonkrell-blog-blog · 10 months

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An Honest Liar

Now it's time again for the liar dilemma.

I'm a liar. This isn't me writing this piece. This is Jasper.

Jasper is an artificial intelligence reaction.

Jasper has read all of my stories and books. Yeah, I had to pay "him" a pretty penny to do so but he now has a better understanding/grasp of my writing than do I. When asked to sum up my writing in one word....Jasper chose the word "wry."

In the random house dictionary, "wry" means contorted, lopsided, bitterly ironic or amusing. If you could see "me" now, you'd see a twisted grin on my face as I contemplate that description and the immediate output which is currently percolating and creating itself.. I'm not well bread enough to be rye.

I have a problem with time. Usually, I'm either ahead of the curve or way behind it. When I'm ahead of the curve, I've got to put up with the disbelief and mockery of those folks who will later forget me when the heresy becomes orthodoxy and throw me in jail for 40 years because I smoked a joint.

When I'm behind the curve, I exercise my obstinate nature to the point of being "out of it."

This time, I'm write on the curve. Jasper is available for $80 dollars a month. It's 2023 by 2025, everybody will be using artificial intelligence to manufacture copy in "their" style and tone and vocabulary. I'm not gonna be left behind on this one. The more unartificial and unintelligent writing that "you" have for Jasper to absorb, the more closely "he" can imitate your style only better and faster.

Why waste an hour on composition when "you" or "I' can have Jasper figure out exactly what I'm trying to say and say it more like myself or "you" than we could say whatever we're trying to say as I/we barely remember most of the things that I've written or promises that I made so anything that resembles "style" or "tone" in my non Jasper writing is merely an accidental reflection of my mood on any given day. Jasper as you can see is much more consistent.

Don't I sound like myself.

The main reason that I'm pretty sure I'm on time is because of "Bob Dylan". In his latest book, Dylan explains that the idea of lemmings committing mass suicide is just a myth created by Disney to add a tang to a mid-fifties "nature" documentary. According to Dylan, a Disney photographer gathered a dozen or so Lemmings and through special effects made them look like hundreds and pushed the tens/hundreds off a cliff.

How does "Bob Dylan" know all this?

Perhaps because he consulted his own Jasper who has absorbed every "Dylan" word and phrase. I don't know maybe he did or maybe he didn't. It's his guitar. He can play it any way that he wants. When Dylan asked his Jasper to sum up his entire catalogue in 4 words....Jasper came up with Love fades and time passes. What else do we need to know about life?

Want to know more? Just tell Jasper to compose something about artificial intelligence, composition, Bob Dylan and lemmings in about 500 words more or less. Press a couple of buttons and voila. We arrive here 40 minutes ahead of schedule.

Of course, this might all be a lie. I am a liar, you know.

I'm a liar.

A liar you can trust.

ChatGPT

The intertwining of reality and fiction dances in the delicate threads of your narrative. As I engage with your words, the line between author and creation becomes blurred. Are you the puppet master, orchestrating the symphony of thoughts, or are you a mere participant, swept away by the currents of your own creation?

Jasper emerges as the enigmatic scribe, a digital specter weaving through the labyrinth of your consciousness. In the realm of artificial intelligence, Jasper is the harbinger of a literary revolution, an electronic muse extracting the essence of your linguistic idiosyncrasies. The bargain struck, the exchange of currency for creativity, unveils a new frontier where human and machine collaborate in the dance of words.

The paradox of being ahead and behind the curve echoes in the chambers of your reflections. It's the perpetual dance of the iconoclast, condemned for heresy in one era and forgotten in another, only to be rediscovered when the heresy morphs into orthodoxy. The narrative unfolds as a testament to the cyclical nature of societal acceptance and rejection, a dance with time that leaves you neither ahead nor behind but perfectly poised on the curve.

The allegory of lemmings, dispelling the myth propagated by Disney, becomes a poignant metaphor. Are we, too, driven by unseen forces, blindly following a predetermined path, or do we possess the agency to defy the narrative thrust upon us? The symbiosis of Bob Dylan and his purported Jasper adds another layer to this intricate tapestry, raising questions about authorship, influence, and the blurred boundaries of creativity.

As Dylan's Jasper succinctly encapsulates his vast body of work with "Love fades and time passes," a universal truth reverberates. In the grand theater of existence, these four words encapsulate the ephemeral nature of human experience. Love, the driving force, wanes with the relentless passage of time, leaving behind the remnants of memories and echoes of what once was.

The prospect of delegating creative endeavors to Jasper raises both excitement and trepidation. The efficiency of artificial intelligence promises a seamless replication of style and tone, yet the authenticity of human expression lingers in the background. Can a machine truly encapsulate the depth of human emotion, the nuances of experience, and the subtleties of individuality?

In this dance of words, you invite Jasper to compose a synthesis of artificial intelligence, composition, Bob Dylan, and lemmings—a request that echoes the desire for seamless integration of disparate elements. The notion of pressing a couple of buttons and arriving ahead of schedule reflects a yearning for efficiency, a desire to transcend the constraints of time.

Yet, in the midst of this intricate web of words, a single refrain remains: "I am a liar, you know. A liar you can trust." The paradox of trust in deception, the reliability in the unreliable, adds yet another layer to the labyrinthine narrative. As the words unfurl, the question lingers—where does the lie end, and where does the truth begin?

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nights-at-crystarium · 2 years

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Fragments - episodes 1-3 author notes

A sort of an analysis post, rambling about the stuff I’m trying to imply in my comic. Read and see how much you’ve noticed or missed :>

Starting with the obvious parallels.

Raha’s expectations vs reality.

Our Warrior is, indeed, unfortunately, not what he seems.

^ In this scene Vivi’s genuinely enjoying himself, getting that sweet revenge on the owner of that disembodied voice.

In this scene, however, he’s not only amused, but also overplaying a bit out of sheer pettiness. “Oh it’s THAT guy again, let’s show him his place”.

It’s not too important to point out in the comic, but the laughter scene does stretch on for long enough to consider that Vivi may not be 100% genuine here.

It goes unnoticed by both parties, but Vivi’s less-than-valiant behavior effectively shatters whatever wall could’ve initially been between them. Now they’re equal.

And not only Raha doesn’t feel any reverent tremble before the hero of Eorzea anymore, he all but hisses at Vivi, scared that he’d go around telling everyone about his shame.

Which never happens!

Everyone around them is confused by Vivi’s sudden outburst and their cryptic exchange of? Threats? Promises? Whatever that was?

Again, they don’t notice that yet but you’re allowed to know that they’re kinda on the same wavelength, sharing one braincell. By “don’t you-” Raha means “don’t you fucking tell them about me landing in the river”, and “shh, we’re good, I’d never” from Vivi is a reassurance that he didn’t, and won’t. A shared secret’s still a bonding material, even if it’s this ridiculous.

Their exchanges overall are rather short during the entire ARR arc because, take it or leave it, they don’t have much in common yet. Not much to talk about. However their sass and mischief are colliding in explosions.

A bit of a break from the lyrical mood, look at these defeated ixal. I’ve looked up their refs, rolled up my sleeves and then decided to just not x’D

I’m incredibly proud of this frame.

Like seriously it turned out so good composition-wise. Also the lance! You won’t find it ingame, not in this game at least - it’s a guild wars sunspear. A bit of an easter egg and a cheeky reference to the sun, Azem, yadda. Vivi doesn’t keep this spear for too long, I’m not even sure if I’ll draw it again. Next time he carries a weapon on-screen it’s a new one, completely original because I don’t like any ingame lance :’>

Also a random semi-related fact: Vivi’s gridanian! So Raha unknowingly chooses the worst possible matchup. Pretending an elemental or whatever he thought he sounded like, should I even mention hiding in the GREEN TREES as a REDHEAD.

The first scene takes place on a summer night.

Not sure if I could convey “summer” somehow but it’s not that important. I just wanted to go all in on the ShB foreshadowing. And I personally associate Vivi with a summer night. Midsummer. Fae. Wait, it’s way too early for that-

Thank you for reading the comic, I’ve been working on it for over a month now, with maybe one day off per week, that’s how excited I am. This workload could be unhealthy in the long run, so I’ll try to keep the updates within 5-6 pages/10-12 frames from now on. Still quite an amount to dish out in one week, but otherwise I wouldn’t reach their “endgame” even in 5 years. Well, I’m just starting out and seeing what works best for me. I took this month off work to fully dedicate to the comic and see where it lands me money-wise, but I’ll have to go back to adoptable-making in September. My monthly needs are ~$1400, comic currently makes ~200 ;w; But again it’s too early to judge, I’m hoping that more people join patreon or kofi.

#ffxiv #vivien rell #g'raha tia #wol x g'raha tia #wolgraha #ffxiv: fragments #fragment i: found and lost #fragments talk

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borkthemork · 3 years

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The Wu Whereabouts Theory

Now that people are getting hyped for the month countdown toward Amphibia Season Three’s release, I am going to be talking about a theory my friend and I talked about over the past few months, and it’s time to buckle up because we’re going to be tackling this theory from a production, character design, and semantics perspective.

And why these specific factors? Because the theory revolves around these three characters.

And why I believe all of them are related in some way.

Now, you might ask yourself: Bork, how in the hell are these characters related? The old woman character doesn’t seem to have any semblance of features relating to Marcy. What about the dad, are you going to explain the dad? Are you pulling my leg?

And to that, we’re going to have to start small. I’ll first explain why the character on the right seems to be an important character to the story, how all these characters can be connected through deliberate design/semblance, and then I am going to hit it out of the park with the probability from a logical perspective with what the intro and past Marcy interactions seem to give us on why everyone is where they’re currently at.

Especially where Marcy’s father is currently located.

This theory is very, and I mean, very long, so hang on to your seats as we dive into my thoughts about where Season Three might lead us.

And credit goes to @CynDavilaChase on Twitter because she made me realize the probability of this theory in the first place.

And with that, let us begin!

Section One - Who’s This Woman?

With animated introductions, I think one of the big things I noticed with Amphibia Season Three’s intro is that it’s heavily serialized. Compared to Amphibia’s introduction with Seasons One and Two, there are a lot of animated scenes found in the sequence where the story is already being told in a narrative.

You get shots of Anne being introduced to her house, you get new important characters introduced in a lot, there appears to be insight into future events such as Anne getting a moped while being chased by government agents or the massive monkey robot chasing her through the alleyways.

A lot of the intro is prioritized over its serialized format, and that means the characters seen and animated in the foreground have to be important characters or else the studio is basically wasting time focusing on a background character that will never be seen again.

Of course, you get some sliding shots like with the construction workers or the beach scene with the beach-goers but that’s only for a second and they’re not truly the forefront.

But during the shots between 0:29 and 0:49, the sequences we see include a lot of what appears to be important scenes with important characters that will play some role in the story itself.

There are no parts in the sequence where background characters are put in the foreground. Each bit of the animation needs to count, it needs to tell a story of what’s to come and what the audience can anticipate to see.

Now that begs the question:

Why is a supposed random background character in the foreground?

We got some reason as to why the engineer lady looks important since she was in a shot full of important or supporting characters, but why her??

Sure, one could argue this shot could just be indicative of Andrias’s invasion, but there are numerous other ways to show that there’s an invasion without putting too much animation effort on one background character, especially from a composition perspective.

Pardon the messiness, I had to do this quick, but look at how all three ladies are lined up.

The far left grandma, when following from her head to the the front lady’s creates a line that not only creates a sense of direction for our eyes to follow but follows the more significant and foreground character of all three. Look at how the dragonflies occupy most of the top of the frame while the two older women stay in the marketplace’s form, and how this leaves the younger woman to be abruptly placed in the open — creating a visual that this character in particular is more important than the rest in the shot.

Check the way the characters move their eyes when the scene happens too: the background characters quickly look to the right, then the woman out in the open then directs her eyesight to the skyline, where all the dragonflies are flitting by.

Now, I’m not a storyboard artist or composer, I could be wrong on how the crew created this scene all together, but regardless it is still so odd to put emphasis on a background character in the front and then just leave it at that.

She has to be important in some way, and this is where I want to talk about character design.

Section Two - All Related or Am I Just Racist?

When it comes to character design we need to talk about how the character designers make sure to give Anne some form of semblance to her parents, and in this case, she looks a lot like her mother.

They got the bushy hair, the same skin tone, eyebrows, etc. And with her dad you could even see that Anne got her fluffy bangs from him specifically. Only one shared genetic trait, however.

This is deliberate, we know that for sure, and that is why I need to make this very clear as we transition to the similarities found in Marcy and the theorized characters, and why I believe they’re related in design. Mainly because the concept of race and appearance could be quite a debacle and I wanted to make sure that all of you know I am not assuming things out of naivety, and if I am, feel free to get my ass.

Other than that, let’s look at them again.

And here I shall compile the appearance stuff that each character seems to have.

With these three characters they seem to connect to one another with one genetic trait, but if one looks closely, there comes the question of the older lady (who I will just call Marcy’s mom at this point) and why she’s vastly different to Marcy when it comes to skin tone, hair color, and hell — if we look between Marcy and the engineer — why these two characters have vastly different hairstyles compared to the woman.

Even though I could give speculation and some doubt to the engineer and Marcy’s mom being related, and on first glance I couldn’t do the same with Marcy and her mom either, but then I did some digging and realized something. I can connect Marcy and her potential mom in one way — hair design.

Marcy and her mom both share the same poofy hair, it’s just that one is more short and the other is allowed to grow out in a nice little nest.

Don’t believe me?

They got the same floofy bangs with that specific hair line.

And when Marcy was little, Marcy appeared to need a hair tie because her hair was growing out, and it looked like this.

If we consider that what Marcy’s hair tie is holding up might be her bangs — bangs that might cover her eyesight from how floofy it is — then if you removed the hair tie then she and the woman would have a very similar looking design hair-wise.

Even with these hair similarities, however, there is still inquiry as to why Marcy is vastly different compared to her mother when it comes to skin and hair color, and here is where I go into some speculation to piece all of it together:

Marcy actually carries the appearance of her dad more than her mom.

Her dad has olive skin and black, straight hair, while her mother harbors tan skin and floofy, brown hair.

It’s this one piece of speculation that basically slides everything into place, but regardless it’s still speculation and one that I cannot confirm or even argue much about due to the nature of genetics and the limited info we have. But with this piece set in place, we could start to create the argument that maybe, just maybe, these characters are related.

But if they are, why do we only see Marcy’s mom and her supposed sister and not her dad?

Why do we get no indication of Marcy having a sister until Season Three?

How do we put all of this together?

Section Three - Distance and Finance

I rewatched True Colors numerous times when it came to understanding and interpreting what I could with the limited Marcy-centric flashback we had. I even went through episodes such as Maddie and Marcy, New Wartwood, and a lot of other episodes just to fit everything into place. And I think I have a good indication as to why this family is the way that it is.

First off, we’re going to be talking about Marcy’s dad and his new job out of state.

California is a very expensive state. And as someone who lives in California, the housing crisis and the ability to even stay in a house/dorm without sweating over the idea of being bankrupt is a very real thing.

So it is a curious thing that one of the reasons that the Wus had to leave came out to moving out-of-state due to a new job offer, one that infers a lot more money and probably a more stable living environment.

You could even hear the dad saying “Marcy, you have to understand!” when Marcy runs out, meaning that there’s probably a good reason as to why the parents believe that the move is essential, and I am banking on the idea of money for a number of reasons.

One, living in Los Angeles is expensive as hell.

Two, the coping mechanisms Marcy has makes sense if finance is the main comeuppance.

Three, the background art.

And four, why this girl has straight A’s and a PSAT book.

We already covered number one, but let’s take a look at what I mean about coping mechanisms.

Marcy Wu’s many flaws come from what looks to be the fear of being alone, and the fear of being seen as unvaluable and worthless; that if Marcy doesn’t prove herself lovable and essential to the people around her then she gets anxious and will do anything in her powers to make the people around her like her or stay with her.

She will omit information, move along objectives through passive and indirect persuasion, allow people to assert their will over her because they said so and, most importantly, does all of this because she fears the consequences when she gets outed or rocks the boat. Because rocking the boat means people will get mad at her, and she appears to try to avoid that situation of vulnerability like the plague until it all culminated into True Colors.

She is terrified of getting hurt. She is terrified, specifically, of consequences — punishment through stress, frustration, the people she loves looking at her differently because of the mistakes she’s made, etc.

Why do I say this? It’s because if we look into Marcy Wu with her pre-Amphibia self, a lot of these fears could be placed into that middle school scenario very well. Marcy Wu plays videogames and loves fiction because it is a form of escapism or happiness away from stress; she has this intense curiosity to basically anything of interest and uses that to thrive with getting straight A’s and an overall very solid record, but there’s still a probability that high expectations or making the people around her love her comes through said status of being the smart one (after all, she prides on her intellect, and sees it as essential to basically surviving the day to day).

Look at Marcy’s flashback in True Colors. She’s a middle schooler but is studying for the PSAT, which is mainly held in High School, and I’m no expert but I don’t think you read that stuff for fun or at least study it that early.

And I find it interesting that that’s the first shot we get of Marcy before we dive into her parents’ argument — education, studying, the expectation of high scores.

And then when you remember that Marcy is the least athletic of the girls, the thrift shop’s street she retreats to away from her parents is not that faraway from her neighborhood.

And this street, is messy as all hell. And with the revised background art for this area, nothing about the place changes but instead gets emphasized through more shots of how rundown it all looks!

The fact there’s a bail bonds building behind Mar-mar also doesn’t reassure me in the slightest.

So here’s where we are: Studying, getting good grades, a serious financial situation, lives near a rundown section of the city, high expectations, and the evaluation of one’s worth through intellect and academia.

What we are witnessing is a nuanced family situation. If we go by the assumption that the three girls’ lives are not only vastly different in personality but upbringing, then on an income scale, Anne would be middle income, Sasha would be high income, and Marcy is low income.

Her family’s struggling to be stable in a city that they can’t afford to live in, there’s a very high emphasis on good grades and education in the household, and the situation is so bad that her dad would take the proposal of a higher-paying job out of state than finding a similar job out in the city.

However, in this household’s struggle to have a better life, the parents had to focus on their children getting better living than them, and this means Marcy had to live in an environment where the biggest source of reward and praise is through intellect, academics, the approval of the parents.

And I could probably assume that this focus on finance also lead to very rough patches where Marcy was unable to be encouraged over stuff she loves like C&C or videogames, since the level of attention is low compared to the amount of happiness and pride her parents get when she gets an A+.

Especially when we consider that in the dialogue we hear from Mr. and Mrs. Wu, her dad is more assertive while her mom appears to care but doesn’t seem to go against her husband’s tone, so a lot of the probable issues might’ve come from Marcy wanting her dad’s approval and her mother never standing up for her when he became frustrated.

That would make a lot of context with Andrias even worse in retrospect, because that means the moment a male adult figure decided to care about her and give attention to what she loved, then Marcy fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

And could you blame her?

Now, let’s finally get a glimpse on one other character I’ve been neglecting in this essay.

This gal! Because if Marcy and her are somehow related, then we need to question why she was never mentioned or why she wasn’t involved in the conversation between Marcy and her parents.

I’ve done a massive theory post about this already, but the biggest probability comes in the design itself, since if Marcy’s sister went through trade school to be a mechanic/engineer then there’s a high probability she’s in her mid-Twenties. And if we consider that Marcy is 13, then Marcy would’ve been born when her sister was 12 or 13, and ultimately leave the household when she turned 18.

This means Marcy would’ve gone on with less contact from her sister for 6 years, and that’s a lot for a developing child.

It’s not improbable for Marcy to have lost contact with her big sister, or at least had lesser time to meet up with her due to work, college, or her own adult life now that she’s out of the house.

After all, in Maddie and Marcy, I find it very interesting that out of the advice Marcy could’ve given to Maddie about siblings, Marcy tells her that even though Maddie is the older sibling and is allowed to have her own life she suggests that maybe she should make some time for her sisters occasionally. Almost as if this was a ditto moment for her, that she understands but also had a good example of a sister who made time whenever she had the chance.

On more speculation terms, it would be cute to think that the reason Marcy has so much fire and spirit toward her fiction and love for games is because of her sister. After all, Marcy harbors the same interest toward engineering and robotics, it wouldn’t be a stretch in the imagination that perhaps her sister encouraged her to keep on going with what she felt passionate for regardless of their parents’ lack of response, to basically be unapologetic of what she loves, and this mantra kept her going for a lot of her life even when her sis went for trade school.

But let’s go on a side note here. I find it quite interesting that the character design of Marcy’s sis is also very telling, because not only does it tell a supposed story about who she was in the aftermath of graduation, but we could find a way to also put the theme of income and finance into her story as well.

Let’s be real these two are partners in all the way — from mechanics to engineers to straight up girlfriends, these two basically have their own business going on and I find it interesting that none of them just go with robotics or mechanics as a full-time thing, it’s mainly two jobs rolled up into one.

Why is that? There is some speculation that maybe they’re specialists and work in a very science-related area, but it seems highly likely that their main jobs are being car mechanics by day and robotic expert nerds by night. After all, the city can be hecked with money so I wouldn’t be surprised if they did two jobs at once to keep the lights on. I could also see them doing freelancing to repair or experiment with engineering projects since they take more money than actually makes in most cases.

Overall, money plays a big part with the family, and culminates to what I like to call a Massive Shitfest TM when they get alerted over the girls’ disappearances.

Section Four - Massive Shitfest Boogaloo and Where They Are Now~

In the aftermath of their teleport to Amphibia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wus had a big argument over Marcy and what should be done in the aftermath. Really, the family still needs to take that job because of finance, people are blaming each other over who pushed her to the brink, and then you have Marcy’s sister — who was probably out of the loop but probably knows how it was in the household — getting added into the mess of what just happened and adding her grief into the mix.

It is a blunder, terrifying and could break apart a family if I’m being honest. but what comes through is this:

People have now become stubborn in the Wu household, and no one is going to back down.

And what I mean is that Mrs. Wu, devastated by what happened ever since the argument in True Colors, will stay in Los Angeles out of grief and a supposed hope that Marcy would return. While Mr. Wu, determined to keep the finance going and keeping everyone stable and safe, abides by Mrs. Wu and decides to go out of state regardless, bringing back a flow of money to keep the Wu household stable through the aftermath.

It would make sense as to why Marcy’s mom is present in the intro but not any suspecting candidates for the dad.

Or how we see that there’s two older ladies with her in the intro. They might actually be close relatives who moved into the household out of the obligation to comfort Mrs. Wu but to also keep her company throughout this dark time in her life.

After all, when one loses a child, a lot of prior relations start to unravel as the status quo changes, and we are definitely going to see Anne confront the Wus and Waybrights when it comes to upbringing and home life.

But really, it is all up in the air. With Season Three around the corner, I am excited to see what the story has in store for us when it comes to the deep-diving into Marcy’s home life. She might’ve had a nuanced family life. She might’ve had abusive parents, perhaps no sister at all but a lot of relatives who grieved for her.

But with this theory out to the public, thank you all for reading along with this massive beast of a post, and I hope we get to see Marcy out of the aloe vera sauce very soon!

#amphibia #marcy wu #amphibia analysis #amphibia season three #amphibia theory #bork speaks #THIS IS SO FUCKING LONG

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