#useful because its got a lot smaller fanbase than others so i go to them if i need help with something

[hollypies]

I lied. Death time

[canmom]

on D&D

there have been many a Posten floating across my slice through the tumblr database of late on the flaws of Dungeons & Dragons. this is an old, old argument - pushed by the White Wolf fans before my time, raised to a furious pitch by the Forge movement (Ron Edwards infamously declared that D&D players have brain damage), and continuing to simmer as the Forge gave way to 'Story Games', and then ebbing a bit with whatever that movement have way to. i don't even especially disagree - most of the good times I've had with D&D have been more despite the printed rulebooks than because of them.

however, it's worth considering what D&D actually is.

"D&D" should not be confused with the books released by Wizards of the Coast or TSR. Nor even the other books in the D&D family in the OSR, Pathfinder, etc. these are an important part of it to be sure, and WotC would certainly like us to think that it all flows out of the books.

however, I think 'buying a D&D book without any expectations, reading it cover, and attempting to run the game as described in the book' represents probably a tiny fraction of D&D players. any more than you could discern the practices of a religion by reading their holy book.

D&D, as actually practiced, is something like that - a set of practices or sorta oral tradition. you learn what D&D is when someone invites you to a D&D group, or you listen to an 'actual play' podcast, or - like me! - you fall into forums and read libraries worth of arguments about which edition is best and game balance and funny game table anecdotes, which create a picture in your head of idealised D&D, and then off you go and try and get your friends on board. you use the books primarily as a reference. (or nowadays you go on 5e.tools instead and don't buy expensive books).

the thing is, this tradition is really good at perpetuating itself and it's as endless and weird to dig into as any long running media franchise. and because a lot of it is an echo of weird 70s shit that comes from, say, an off-brand tokusatsu figurine from Hong Kong, or an author like Jack Vance whose legacy has been kinda swallowed by D&D, there's real character. yeah, there's plenty of tedious wank too, but the density of it means it can serve the 'creative prompt engine' function of an RPG in a way that's very difficult for a smaller, more tightly focused, and tbh less stupid game to be able to do.

it's also got a huge body of folklore to immerse in. the Dread Gazebo. Tucker's Kobolds. Pun-Pun. and it's fractal. a D&D forum, a podcast fanbase, etc. will end up with their own niche injokes. (of course, so will an individual group). there's endless lore to learn about the game's own history if you're that way inclined.

now you might say, most of that doesn't depend on it being D&D, the janky system outlined in the books of WotC. and that's true! there's no reason (beyond copyright) you couldn't confront a Bulette in Burning Wheel, play a Mind Flayer in Fiasco, or even set a game of Apocalypse World in Dark Sun.

this is where one of the quiet strengths of D&D-the-product does come in though. the role of the book is mostly to lend a certain sense of concreteness. it's a rhetorical trick: if you can turn to a page of the Monster Manual and see a mindflayer with a statblock, an artwork and a couple of unique abilities, then mindflayers feel more 'real'. factor in the existence of decades of history, splatbooks expanding on the concept, articles in Dragon, modules, stories about other groups who've encountered a mindflayer, and you feel like you know something. nevermind that most of the mindflayer lore is kind of eh at best! D&D is a machine that rewards your autism, hard.

and in terms of actual game design, there are some things that D&D is very granular about, like what your character can and can't do. D&D certainly is an unbalanced grab bag of not-exactly-integrated systems with no unifying design philosophy... and that's largely to its advantage in terms of making the stuff on your character sheet feel concrete, rather than ephemeral like the freely chosen Aspects in FATE. by making the map more complicated, the supposed territory it describes (the shared fiction) might be made to feel more substantial. it's not the only way to do this, mind you - you can absolutely make something a strongly impactful, constraining part of the shared fiction without numbers and dice. but the numbers and dice provide a scaffolding, a thing to lean on when you draw a blank.

(D&D arrived at this more or less by accident mind you. you could definitely say that something like the Moves of a PbtA game are a more coherent and flexible framework for system and fiction engaging without sacrificing substance. and there's plenty of trad games besides D&D which follow the same paradigm, not least because splatbooks are good business. still, I think there is something gained by what seems at a glance to just be an unholy mess of jank).

for a new game, it can't work in the same way. it's a chicken and egg problem. if nobody's ever played your game before, you can't so easily introduce it by doing. (sure you can run it for friends, but you can't rely on most people being introduced to the game that way). there may be a small or even large community of people for any given game, or maybe fans of types of game, but you have to mostly rely on the book to build up the concept in the player's mind.

one of the most useful tools you have is genre, but that's a double edged sword. there are many games that are just 'PbtA for cyberpunk' or whatever, instantly forgettable. again, that's a tricky bootstrapping problem. somehow, a game book needs to get players enthusiastic about the premise using the familiar, introduce them to the unique quirks that make it interesting, and put them in a mindset where they're ready to extemporise in whatever idiom the game suggests. tall order!

the voice of Apocalypse World - the rulebook - is very casual, quite aggressive. 'to do it, do it', not 'when its condition is met in the fiction, the Move is triggered' as a later PbtA might put it. it swears a lot. the voice of a Jenna Moran game is full of little asides and wordplay. the voice of an Avery Alder game is exhaustingly sanctimonious, which has unfortunately spread to other authors. this aspect, the feeling you get reading it describe the stuff it wants you to do, is way more important in telling you about the game than the short story you skip over at the beginning of the book, or even any particular mechanical procedure.

the voice of modern D&D is... honestly in its current edition, painfully corporate and dull. nothing puts me off playing D&D faster than reading the class introductions! but where it has the most character unique sort of slightly arch 'game prose', kind of like an encyclopedia entry with dice rolls in the middle of a sentence. it's unabashedly nerdy, comfortingly so. this is why long lists of almost identical polearms are actually valuable. games need to have something weird and jank and inexplicable for your brain to hold on to.

however... that mass is also a weakness. because all that concrete stuff that you can lean on to flesh out and inspire your imaginings... is also a lot to digest for a potential new player. (this is a reason why I've found it hard to get into games like Shadowrun and Eclipse Phase, lacking a clear on-ramp, and my ideas clashing unpredictably with established stuff.)

compared to games with a hyper-defined setting, and games that create it all improvisationally in the first session, D&D's modular framework is actually pretty ingenious. if every campaign takes place in its own mini setting designed by the DM, there's huge libraries of stuff that could be there, so you can get that 'I recognised that' knowledge, but there's no need to digest a campaign setting or worry about lore conflicts. you can be ~intertextual~ with other D&D games - "oh yeah, my DM used that!" - without all the commitments of an official setting. (of course, D&D has plenty of those too, and many of them are pretty neat. but it's agnostic about whether you use them.) this also gives you a starting point for making your own setting. "here's a thing that's expected to be there. what's your spin on this?" is a really productive question, if the things are minimally interesting.

so being a DM is kind of a bridge between "run it by the book" and "make your own game". you have a lot of freedom, and you have fallbacks to lean on. that's actually pretty good I think.

the DM role is... you could spin it different ways. on the one hand, it gives one player vastly more work than the others, turning them into a mini game designer + master of ceremonies + multirole actor + narrative author + typically, organiser; the one who's responsible for carrying the whole thing. on the other hand... that's a stage. if you are lucky enough to play with a really good DM, the whole thing really does come alive in a way that a book, no matter how elegant or flavourful, could never convey - because it's responsive to you and you get a rapport going. of course by the same token an unengaged, unenthusiastic DM can't be saved by any procedures or rules you could imagine. in that middle ground... that's where tools like Apocalypse World's MC moves come in to help. for D&D, 'how to DM well' is in my experience communicated almost exclusively through stories and imitation - you could never learn it from the DMG.

viewed as a practice or a ritual, D&D likes to mysticise the DM, like the mad wizard who built the moldering pile etc etc. you have the pageantry of the DM's screen, hidden dice rolls, passed notes, asking for perception checks without explanation. if you play in to it (you should, it's part of the fun), you get to lean on the established image of the Dungeon Master, not just someone in a room telling a story. oh wait, is that actual magic?

incidentally, I never really ran Apocalypse World strictly 'by the book'. I was aware of the list of principles and vaguely remembered the moves, but equally, perhaps more so, I was thinking of the idea of an Apocalypse World MC suggested in discussions online. I was also of course leaning on previous experience playing D&D and other games. it worked well, better the second time when I was older, because it's like 75% about being genuinely enthusiastic and paying attention to people when you get right down to it.

all this is why it's hard to replace D&D with a suite of modern, elegant purpose built systems. most of what happens at a TTRPG table, with any 'system', is not determined by what's written in the book but some fuzzy social dynamic in a given group of people and their shared idea of what the game is supposed to be. you can try and introduce rules and procedures into that dynamic, even create a game like Firebrands where nearly every step comes from a prompt list. (the question of how much the explicit mechanics should touch social interactions and narrative structure is a matter of taste). it can be helpful, but you can also risk stifling something important that comes in improv.

viewing the broad space of indie RPGs as its own tradition, like D&D... 'indie RPGs' has its own content, a shared context of frequent ttrpg players, the type like me who are likely to try a new system every campaign. the more games you play, the more analogies you can draw and the quicker you can pick up the gist of a new game. you'll have cross-game skills in e.g. improv or breaking down systems, and an established habitus in terms of stepping into character or playing a GM-like role that can't be written in a book. if you've only ever played D&D, or no TTRPGs at all, you'll have some of that, but a lot will be unfamiliar and the benefit won't necessarily be obvious.

I do think getting into the broader space of TTRPGs is worthwhile, because... ok this is going to sound pretentious as hell but seriously, it's a ridiculously interesting art form, both the designing and the playing of them. but also that's given me a perspective to look back and say, oh, that's what D&D was all along!

what would kill D&D, WotC edition? hard to imagine. there have been splinters, like the OSR for people who like simple mechanics, high lethality and the flavour associated with older editions, or Pathfinder for people who... idk, who really like 3.5 I guess and just wanted a few balance tweaks, idk, did it diverge more? it's definitely just D&D in a funny hat though. oh and there's Dungeon World but lol, Dungeon World.

D&D-the-product-line has come close to collapsing a couple of times, once when TSR went under, again when 4e divided the 3.5e fanbase hard, but 5e being a 'pretty solid for the most part' game that managed to somehow appeal to multiple ideas of 'what D&D is', along the Actual Play renaissance selling a new generation on the idea of D&D... that saved it. maybe it's about to take another hit with this new OGL killing the secondary industry.

I don't think that most of the D&D groups out there, in it for the idea of D&D, would be playing other TTRPGs if only D&D was not so big. likely they wouldn't be doing any such thing at all, but some other dorky hobby. if WotC-run D&D goes under, I'm not sure what happens! D&D-the-practice would continue no doubt, and maybe it starts looking like the OSR, with numerous variations on a theme that don't carry the stamp of 'officialness', until one or another can become an unofficial standard. maybe it looks like open source software and some kind of nonprofit D&D foundation is created to control the source lol. would be interesting to see.

aaaaanyway. if you want your fave non-D&D TTRPGs to thrive as D&D has, here's what you gotta do. talk about them. tell anecdotes from your games, the stupid memes and injokes, what you really like about the mechanics, tell everyone about the weird fun fucked up bits of the lore. tell a story about what it means to play that game. and sure, talk about how it's different from D&D and why you like it more. that story is the bait that will get people onto that fun new RPG system and give them a handle to get started. what got me into 'Story Games' all those years ago was finding a forum with a whole bunch of people having fascinating nerdy discussions about sides of TTRPGs I'd never been exposed to in D&D.

[of course me being me, I took it way too seriously and made a whole thing in my head about how much better these new, progressive Story Games were better than janky old incoherent Trad Games. for years I wouldn't even consider playing D&D or similar. all I can say is, I'm really glad I got over that attitude. hence this kind of post.]

[single-malt-scotch]

it is funny seeing now what ppl have surged in popularity in fandom, namely the ppl i watched years back mindcrack era that i dont feel like even got that much attention in the (much smaller) fandom. like at least fandomwise i never felt like bdubs or etho were that popular in regards to fics and stuff, mostly comparing to others at that time- tho bdubs and his later roleplaying (bteam) did gain him more attention i think. and like, nebtho was certainly a dyanmic ppl liked but it was otherwise pretty contained to those few moments and the fics were very much nonexistent even tho that fun pair. when i did see etho it was often with team canada as a whole. and in similarity w bdubs i feel like etho got more attention during more of that kinda phase (but nothing comparable to now). and ofc im speaking from experience of the ever tiny tumblr community... undoubtedly ppl leaned towards certain guys and it just kinda encouraged more focus on those people.

but i was curious if i could see how correct my memories were. while ao3 is a thing with tags im not sure if itd be skewed due to other things these people are in, so i thought itd be interesting to go to the salad and take a look since it was one of the most contained places for mindcrack fics i used back then

(under the cut bc this got even longer. sorry i can shut up abt fandom analysis and how things change <3)

some of these tags usages can be like... minor appearances. but at first i was surprised to see bdubs with a whole 478 tagged fics... but then the etho tag has a whopping 895. i think hes mentioned in a lot of fics in passing, but still thats a lot more tagged than i wouldve thought in the end. but i can say i really do remember bdubs getting very little attention in the fic area back then so. some of the other notably highly tagged people were beef (601), guude (753), kurt (731), nebris (662), pause (715), vechs (985), and zisteau (860).

leaving vechs at #1, etho at #2, and zisteau at #3. i was not a vechs reader but goddamn he really was everywhere fandom wise i recall, so that adds up. z and etho were definitely people i saw getting more attention at the end of my mindcrack era too (mostly z with vechs). of course some of this again should be taken w a the note that there are likely a lot of background appearances/minor ones. regardless, to know that even some of them were mentioned enough to add up like that is kinda wild when you think about it. i had some blinders on because i cared mostly about kurt and zisteau, and no surprise they have been tagged 700-800 times either- sms wasnt the most popular, but i know it came up quite a bit.

i did take a quick look at the mindcrack tag on ao3 but it houses wayyy less fics (466 right now) than the salad so, i guess its a better idea, mostly because it is what was popular back when these ppl werent as popular!

but in terms of now??? what got me back to watching these guys was being surprised at a post about bdubs that had like, 5k notes. so obvious things have changed A Lot. i mean hell. the salad has 2,578 fics tagged. ao3 has ummm 10k+ hermitcraft fics and 3k+ last life fics.... and for both etho and bdubs, theyre tagged in over 1k hermitcraft fics (2k, if you count last life as separate). actually an even more amusing comparison is Doc- on salad theres 213 tags and hes never someone i considered writing about or reading about (shockingly i did write him once) but in the hermitcraft tag on ao3 hes up as one of the most tagged with 1,940.

i find it so interesting how things change direction. bdubs was kinda early on the rping ideas and its no shock people caught on to him more- but etho is someone im surprised has exploded in popularity now? but also not? like im surprised interest like now didnt catch on until recently. the way people have molded a character and Vibe with him now Makes Sense. i think i always saw him in similar ways years ago, but that fandom attitude hadnt caught up, the fanbase was too small. but its wild to go from a few sporadic fics focused on one of these guys to like..... very very consistent interest, headcanons, fan art, fics, etc. fucking wild.

[itsclydebitches]

Something I notice about the giant Grimm is that they never seem to do anything. The Wyvern in V3 awakens from it's mountain and just sits on Beacon, the Leviathan only wades through the ocean and destroys a bell-tower and Monstro only spews out smaller Grimm. Whatever happened to Team RWBY strategizing to take down a Nevermore? These giant Grimm are just showpieces now.

I honestly think part of the problem remains the show's unwillingness to attach lasting consequences—and responsibility—to the group's choices. Because what does a giant grimm do? Destroy things and kill people, to a (presumably) larger extent than the normal grimm would. The Wyvern I give a total pass to because 1. Beacon was already overrun and being destroyed (a giant grimm was kinda overkill at that point) and 2. Since it's not needed for additional destruction/death, it serves the separate purpose of helping to introduce Ruby's eyes. Which I like. We've got to remember that back in Volume 3, no one in the fanbase knew what silver eye powers were, so having Cinder flinch in pain isn't going to explain what that power actually does—her connection to grimm via the weird bug is both unique and forgettable. So you've gotta include an actual grimm in that scene for Ruby to freeze, introducing the primary mechanic of "Silver eyes are a grimm specific weapon." Making the grimm a giant and presumably powerful Wyvern both explains why the group couldn't team up to take it down normally—which, again, was never that grimm's purpose in the first place. Some grimm exist for cool fights, others for forwarding the plot—and, frankly, it's just more entertaining to get a giant grimm for a Volume finale. Freezing it at the top of the tower likewise explains why the school isn't immediately rebuilt. We answer the, "Why are the characters going on a dangerous quest when they could just go back to school?" question by keeping the Wyvern there. So all in all, I think it functions rather well, demonstrating some of the logic threads RWBY now lacks.

The other two though... that's when we run into problems. Because unlike the Wyvern, they're not serving those specific functions of introducing a new power/explaining why Beacon isn't rebuilt. For them, yeah, we absolutely expect the group to have a cool fight and take them out in some epic, strategic, GIF—worthy manner. This is a fighting show! Problem is, in order to have a cool fight with a giant grimm, you need to include the inevitable consequence that things will be destroyed and, likely, people will be killed. These giant grimm aren't appearing in the middle of a forest like the Nevermore did (or even like the first geist did), they're turning up in populated areas. Fighting them will lead to casualties... and the problem there is that responsibility for these situations goes back to the heroes. Their choice to fight Cordovin brought the Leviathan. Their choice to run with Penny kept everyone in Atlas trapped. So if an epic battle wages and people in Argus die, or Salem's army breaks through and everyone in Atlas—including the Mantle evacuees—are overrun... that tragedy is partially on the group. And, notably, the story doesn't want the group to sit with any major consequences of their choices. So nothing bad happens. And nothing bad happens by virtue of there barely being a fight. Ruby just freezes time and sets off her eyes so they don't have to deal with the Leviathan ever reaching shore where the people are. Ironwood's army holds the line until Oscar saves the day so they don't have to deal with the grimm overrunning half the Kingdom. RWBY introduces very high stakes—here's this mega powerful super big ultra evil monster!!—and then pulls back on the follow through because to do otherwise would introduce consequences the story just doesn't want its heroes to face. Anyone remember during the Volume 7 hiatus how we were saying that Salem should absolutely decimate the Kingdom? Yeah, look at all the ways the story bent over backwards to avoid that. Salem randomly waits around to start the fight, the grimm soup only attacks the shields, the whale only spews smaller grimm, the line is never broken, her subordinates turn on her... the plot (flimsily) goes out of its way to ensure nothing horrific happens, as logic dictates it should, because the heroes were the ones to prevent most of the people from escaping. You can't have the mass murder of a Kingdom after that! So it doesn't happen. Even though it should. And when the horrific, permanent things do occur—the destruction of the Kingdom itself—it's fine now because the heroes chose it.

I 100% believe that in a story where the heroes were allowed to own up to their mistakes and grow from them, the fights would likewise have more room to play with the action in creative ways. If you're willing to really put Argus in danger and have the group own up to the choices that led to that, you can choregraph that epic fight on shore. However, all of this isn't to say that RWBY doesn't also have a problem with abandoning the strategic teamwork we started out with. The Hound is the most recent example of this. There, the story's moral stance isn't hindering the action: the Hound attacks in an empty street and then in the mansion with only three non-combat characters nearby. They heroes also haven't done anything wrong in these situations where having a destructive fight would reflect badly on them. Free rein for action! Yet Team JYR still just stands there while Oscar is captured, or take turns launching single attacks rather than trying to defeat it together (though this gets much better during their chase scene). Weiss comes out to help Blake and Ruby, only to be sent right back inside. Ruby is knocked out and Blake can't defeat the acid grimm alone, but Ruby one-shots it from behind rather than the two of them working together. Then Ruby waltzes up and also one-shots the Hound with her eyes, Whitley and Willow's contribution feeling like it hardly matters. If a suit of armor falling on it is enough to finish the Hound off, any punch from any of the fighters would have done the same job. Ruby's eyes already did all the work. Even when the story has all the space it wants for those cool fights against giant and abnormal grimm... it's holding back.

The fights have really gone downhill in the last couple of Volumes and no, it's not because the current animators aren't as talented with choreography as Monty was. It's because the fights are bending in illogical ways to serve the story, rather than the story evolving naturally out of the fights. Why can't Blake take on this grimm? Because the story wants to emphasize how crucial Ruby is to the team's spirits. Why don't we get cool combos to take out the Hound? Because the story wants to reveal the faunus' silver eyes in a shocking manner. Why was Yang taken out from a single hit by Neo? Because the story wanted to quickly established that the main group would "die" in this finale. Why did JYR just stand there and attack in useless ways? Because the story needed Oscar to get kidnapped. Why wasn't the whale established as something to fight, either with traditional combat techniques or with something the group had to come up with? Because the story wanted to introduce the shocking surprise of Ozpin's cane. Etc. etc. All of these fights fail on one level or another because they're just trying to get the viewer to the next plot point, never-mind whether the fight itself makes sense or is entertaining to watch. It's the same logic as the Wyvern—this serves a purpose other than to be a cool fight for the series—but RWBY is no longer putting in the work to get all these pieces to fit together. The Wyvern keeps to the internal logic of RWBY's world, whereas something like Yang's knock out does not. Doing that with the mega grimm that promise incredible challenges and likely destruction just makes that failure to deliver all the more noticeable.

Since the Volume 4 days, the last fight I can remember really liking—that got me super hyped and eager to re-watch it on Youtube—was Ironwood vs. Watts. Looking back, it doesn't at all surprise me that this fight a) didn't require any teamwork, b) didn't have any grimm involved, c) was between a villain and a soon to be villain in an empty space (eliminating those ethics entirely), and d) existed almost solely to just be a Cool Fight (with the minor, plot forwarding details of capturing Watts and Ironwood losing his arm). Ironwood vs. Watts had the freedom to be one of the old school RWBY fights, unencumbered by the questions that now keep tripping the writers up like, "If Team RWBY won with teamwork, why didn't you animate them working as a team?" or "Why did Ruby use her eyes when we wanted to see action and didn't use her eyes to save her own life against Cinder?" or "Why did you introduce this giant grimm, promising an epic fight, only to give the group a mostly non-combat solution? Oh, because that kind of epic fight is going to introduce a lot of other questions you don't want to tackle... Jinn randomly letting Ruby stop time, it is."

[lily-the-leopard]

hermitcraft and thirdlife get a fandom tag and not dsmp bc dsmp fandom cant be trusted to fandom tag properly, like genuinely can’t be trusted with its massive scale and young users

(also dsmp fans need to stop puts dts to tag wranglers in the tags for “doxxing the creators”, maybe then they’d get a fandom tag)

"last anon was /lh kinda, but genuine reason why dsmp doesnt have a fandom tag bc it fits ao3’s pre existing conditions for rpf. plus the fandom specifically for dsmp? its fairly new and peaked during this time ao3 has been making big changes to the site, like they’re creating a blocking function + more things and that takes more than a couple of months to plan and roll out this versus hermitcraft having a tag, hermitcraft fandom has been established for multiple years with a decent size fanbase to warrant it"

Oh boy nonny, this was certainly a take to wake up to, I'll be honest. I'll take you at your word and assume you really meant this to be light-hearted, so instead of throwing out the whole suitcase, lets unpack some of this! I think it's a conversation that's a bit overdue in my little corner of the internet. I am gonna put it under a cut though, because I had a lot to say and it got kinda long.

Right, so here's the thing. I get where you're coming from. This fandom is pretty young, you don't trust them. But if you've been on dsmpblr at all, you'd know this fandom is actually pretty good about tagging things! Like- better than some other fandoms I've been in! And I think it's funny that you'd bring 3rd life into this, because from what I know they lost their tag when ao3 realized it was being used for minecraft rp, it redirects to RPF just like the "Dream SMP" tag now.

I know it's frustrating when people use posts in the archive to complain. I've actually sent a ticket about this, which is the proper way to get ahold of staff, but I'm so tired of seeing real names thrown into the Dream SMP. You don't tag MCU fanfic with "Steve Rogers | Chris Evans" do you?? No, there's separate tags for RPF on so3 because we understand that characters are not their actors.

And I don't think the DSMP qualifies as RPF personally! I think if anything Hermitcraft should. I'm glad they got their own tag, don't get me wrong, I'm an HC fan as well. But the DSMP has an ongoing plot with characters that are different than the people playing them, moreso than HC where they largely play themselves. (This isn't to discount someone like Xisuma btw I think his lore is great, but as a whole they tend to do smaller plots, if any).

Also, the DSMP fandom is huge! I've been in fandoms much smaller than DSMP who have fandom tags. You know what got a tag before it had a major online presence? The Mechanisms. Had like five whole fics and it got a fandom tag. That's a band, by the way, doesn't use the RPF tag either because it's cabaret and they're playing characters.

Not to bring mechs fandom into this (god I hope this doesn't crosspost into your tags, I apologize), but nonny why does a band and another mc server get a tag, but a mc server that has established storylines spanning over a year get shoved into RPF with character tags sharing the real names of creators who only go by an alias??

And lastly. I know we've got a lot of kids here. But I'm not a kid. I was one, back in the day, pre-ao3. And I love the archive! It has its problems, this being one of them, but as a whole I'm glad we have a corner of the internet for ourselves.

I just wish I could actually filter RPF because I don't personally read it, and I can't do that unless we have a fandom tag.

[shoezuki]

cracks knuckles. i promised to elaborate and i will.

the one common perspective that everyone seems to be able to agree on is that techno / sbi + schlatt + tubbo + ranboo are just genuinely funnier than the dteam, and honestly yes it's because if the popularity. if you go back and watch the dteams older (im talking before 2-3mil subs) videos they are funnier than their current ones and i think it's because they're trying to shift their humor to a broader audience?

the minecraft community has always been mainly queer/poc/ndv kids because it was exiled away from "acceptable society" for so long that only the people who had already been "exiled" continued to enjoy it. I, as an example, stopped playing when it became a cringy thing because I was so worried about being seen as weird. now that ive discovered, come to terms with, and enjoy my queerness, i realize that if i had known i was queer back when mc was exiled i wouldve continued to play because i alrwady would have known what it was like to be part of that seperate society. (Please keep reading i promise I have a point)

but then minecraft came back. minecraft became mainstream again, and it came back HARD. watching it go from something that you would be bullied immensely for to something that you would be bullied for not doing was an extreme experience. in all honesty im still angry about it, but that's another topic. when minecraft became mainstream it brought with it all of the people that hadn't been part of the exiled societies yk? including... the dream team.

dream blew up. we all know how much he blew up. i personally dont believe he cheated on the speedrun but to each their own (although after reading your stuff and becoming more critical of them im realizing i might need to reexamine that), and the speedrun controversy brought even more people to his base (cough drama loving straight white girls cough).

when they were brought into the fanbase that's when it started to go downhill. they shifted their humor to fit that, or maybe their humor was always that and they just got more confident in showing it after they had gotten a fan base to back them up. which is also why techno / sbi + schlatt + tubbo + ranboo (who ill refer to just as techno&co now because he's the main one but also that's long as hell lmao) are funnier than them!

for one, their fanbases are smaller. now 5 mil is by no means a small number, but compared to dream's 16 mil? yknow. especially with techno's wack upload schedule he's never had to worry about having a stan fan base because the only people who stay are people who genuinely enjoy his content the way it is.

two, techno&co are mostly ndv. techno has adhd, tubbo has dyslexia, wilbur had and maybe still has depression, ranboo has anxiety, tommy hasnt confirmed or denied his adhd but im betting he at least has borderline. i am in no ways saying that being part of one minority (in this case ndv) gives you free range over another (queer), but all minorities have this understanding about what it is to be part of an exiled community (if that makes sense).

philza and schlatt, not so sure if they're ndv, but they're also older and generally more mature and esp in philza's case, theyve had their chance to make their bad jokes and pull stupid shit and theyve grown out of it (if they ever had that phase at all). techno&co have that understanding and even if they dont know where the boundaries are they know that queer humor (and all humor! other than techno, sbi doesnt really make gay jokes) going to have boundaries, and they respect that.

three, techno is the funniest bitch because he has adhd. i dont take criticism on this point because im right.

i probably missed a lot, probably got some stuff wrong, but all in all i think i hit my mark. i can come off anon to chat anytime if youd vibe w that. no pressure to respond to this! have a good day, etc etc, it was fun getting to tear into the dteam in a safe space. respect for them and their fanbases, their humor is a little off but i still gotta respect how well theyve done. btw i woke up and rolled over and started typing I haven't proofed this at all so yeah. :) - andy

And your brain is fucking massive yo like u must got chronic back pain too from holdin up all these Thoughts in ur head

I really like. Minecraft fans is So varied cuz like u said it was so very 'cringe' before. I got into mc again n playin it w my siblings years before it Popped Off again entirely cuz i stopped Giving a Shit that it was 'weird' or any a that. N sbi have been goin strong through it So Long both when it was hotshit and when it was "cringe"

N definitely like minecraft ive always noticed has a Massive ndv community. I dont know entirely what it is like definitely part of the 'cringe' factor like u said and also cubes make our brains go brrrr? The aspect of self expression in it? I dont know but we Been Here

I do think dteam's content and shit like. It obviously moved in sync with perceptions of mc to garner a Big General audience. Dream blowing up entirely had to do w the Trends and how mc got popular. Therefore hes audience is Huge and Varied

In contrast w techno n like. He has blown up quite a bit too. But i feel its fair to say he Hasnt altered his content significantly. Or at least like. How its presented, what he does, etc. For fucks sake he doesnt have a stream schedule. And although his content is Still garnering a Large and really varied audience it feels more like. Isolated and homogeneous almost

Like. I can go into the technocord right now and say 'dont forget to take your meds' and at least 20 or so ppl would be all like Oh Fuck Whoops. Theres SO many of us adhd ppl in there. I always goof bout techno jus sayin pspspsps and the neurodivergents crawling up from the floorboards but honest to god. His content and jokes and i suppose Personality jus appeals to us So Much. Same goes for sbi pretty heavily honestly altho i feel its most evident in techno's most Dedicated fans

Also. Lbr. The people who stay through technos schedules and content Droughts are the ones who be hyperfixating Abskfvdkdsjsjsl

BUT going into sbi as a Group like. They are friends. And together they are fucking hilarious. N i feel it strongly like. The fact theyre all such Varied people of different ages and such helps w that shit. It Works So Well.

Long story short being neurodivergent makes you funny as hell letsgo

[dystopiandilfs]

I am never been so close to anti-stan then I am right now. Dreams Twitter fanbase started the biggest hate train on him because they themselves:

1. Took his inital tweet with the drugs comment as a race issue, like it was obvious that was not the intent or even the focus.

2. Got mad at his completely rational reply to a toxic Stan that used both white and adhd as an isult - the toxic Stan was saying his fanbase will dogpile them, well if you didn’t phrase your concerns in a toxic way in a public place maybe you wouldn’t be concerned about it. Like he empasised he had no intent to relate it to rap - and they see him say rap and fucking ran with it.

3. Got mad at him for disagreeing with someone generalizing his 23 million fans as anti-black, like even his stance on stans is entirely anti-generalizing, he literally denounced any that are in the same comment.

4. Bullied him into unprivating his account because they can’t share screenshots apparently.

5. Got mad a him for tweeting a fucking heart.

Then they turn around and blame the entire thing on the antis, like no. You blew it out of proportion and reacted like shit to everything he did. You are the problem. All the responses to his last tweet are “educate yourself and reflect” and “come back with a better apology” like no. He apologized when he shouldn’t have and you cyber bullied him. They are bloody proud of theirselves for “holding him accountable“ for something they misconstrued.

He needs to delete that stan video because they aren’t worth it.

First thing i want to say is that this post is going to be joint answered as evangeline is white so this is going to be answered by her and me as im half african half american. Normally evanageline would be voicing her opinions and adding ours in if we had any but as its a racism issue she didnt feel comfortable to voice only her opinions. However shes the one writing the post apart from this bit to keep up the consistentcy of the blog page. -Trinity (Basically Trin gave her thoughts using a voice note and I slightly edited it so the sentences were a bit more coherent and added both mine and the other admins opinions as Trin doesn't really use twitter unless it's through my priv account - Evangeline)

I will say that a lot of the fan drama that you see are a smaller group that is known to attack and harass Dream and anyone who disagrees with anything. Eventhough they are a small group they mass reply to everything and make themselves look bigger than they are. Not only that but the only thing they end up doing is overshadowing the original issue at hand which is fans harassing and being racist to eachother. So a lot of what I'm about to say is mainly what this group is doing and isn't at all a reflection of a lot of fans but it is something that needs to be talked about especially since a bunch of this groups members are either white or white passing but get mad on black people's behalf and is basically setting them up.

I don't mean to be rude or dismissive but a lot of people used this as an opportunity to trauma dump. Like I know going into horrible details about what you have to deal with is the only way to get the point across sometimes however harassing Dream and spamming him with stuff like "I was harassed because I'm gay" "I was doxxed because I was Asian" is lowkey weird. Like why are you telling this random guy on the internet that you were doxxed? What is he going to be able to do about it? Also not to defend Dream but how are you going to sit there and break one of his few boundaries whilst trying to educate him.

On top of that the issue was originally how racist some of the fandom are to black people but then other minority groups started talking about how they were also being stereotyped and attacked but all this is doing is talking over other minorities. For example a large group of fans started off talking about how they were being attacked by other stans because of their skin colour but then immediately started to harass and threaten others. Like some were clearly not being serious but dming people and update accounts to retweet and spread awareness isn't the move you think it is. Obviously a lot of them were genuinely trying to spread awareness and were trying to get the respect and treatment they deserve but all of that was being overshadowed by the few that were attacking and harassing creators and fans. Then a lot of it turned into minorites fighting each other over who was more oppressed which just makes the whole thing seem like petty drama.

I will say a lot of them were lovely. I am pretty uneducated on race based issues and how certain things effect people and can be racist so I was asking a lot of questions and most of them were nice. However I also got a lot of snarky ones like "google it" to questions that weren't general like "Is it mocking to call white people crackers and token white boy if you are a white person" or "is ______ considered micro aggressions"

However as usual it went from trying to educate your creators to who is the most oppressed and who can bring up more past drama that has already been addressed multiple times. I'm not being funny but the fact that some well known Dream antis were defending Dream and shitting on stans should really tell you how non productive this is. It went from "Hey Dream this comment is a bit weird can you delete it please" to "Dream you should stop being friends with this person and you should follow this person otherwise your racist" Like that's not helping anyone. The only thing that it's doing is breaking Dreams boundaries, setting Dream up and making stans look bad.

Like people were @ing Sapnap and George telling them to "collect the racist friend" like how is that spreading awareness. The whole thing went from being a good chance to educate to a big fucking joke that just made a lot of people upset and anxious.

Honestly the whole thing was pretty fucking hypocritical like you can't talk about being harassed whilst harassing people into hearing you out. A lot of the issues seemed really gatekeepy to me as well. One that I saw constantly get brought up was that the only people allowed to say dy*e were black lesbians as they created the word. Like a big topic was a misuse of aave but not a single person actual explained what it was or gave examples all I saw was "mcyttwt needs to stop using aave language it's offensive" like you can't claim to be educating people if you don't explain. Not everyone can access websites and caards that get linked because of regions or web rescrictions so they're not helpful either.

HOWEVER I will agree that a lot of their points were completely valid like the whole thing of "Feral Feb" over shadowing BHM and whenever Dream listens to rap people complain and call it bad music are two really good examples. I listened to a few twitter spaces to learn a bit more and things that were said in there was all good info that would be genuinely helpful to know and it really did help edcuate me however not a single tweet said any of it and that's why people don't understand what they're doing is wrong because nobody explains it.

A lot of the issues that people had with Dream were so weird as well like a lot of them were self oppression and turning normal things into racism. A lot of the issues had the same energy as the 404twt fans who were genuinely mad at Dream for having a colour that George couldn't see and they were harassing him and claiming that he was purposely excluding diasbilities.

Usually we would add more but Trinity got a bit upset and stressed so she had to stop answering various asks and the other admins are all white or white passing and don't feel like it's our place to put our own opinions. We will try to answer other asks with similar thoughts later - Evangeline

[ohnobjyx]

Would it be that impossible for dd and gg to come out as a couple (provided they respected censorship and didn't talk about it with the media)? I read the other day that homosexuality is not illegal in China, just talking about it and showing in the media, so could not someone as brave and crazy as dd attempt to come out outside of the media? after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support. Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..

Hi, anon! (*this blogger cracks her neck and gets ready*) Let’s get into it!

Disclaimer: fake fake fake. Why would you think that we believe in bjyx?

Preface: this post might not be exactly a controversial opinion, since I think many will have the same one. However, it’s alright to disagree: we all have our own perception of the matter, which is coloured by our own experiences (let’s just say that an absolute objective view is difficult). I present here with the most objective post (at least in terms of data and facts) I could write.

Oh, and you all might have noticed, but being concise is not my forte. I tend to digress.

First of all, I assume that the concept of “coming out outside of the media” means that they could have told just close friends and family, without announcing it to the media.

But how would we know that they have done it? (and I don’t mean we should know for sure, ofc). For all we know, they may have already done this, and, from my pov, they probably have. Without entering in “fake” rumours:

TTXS bros know something (repeating myself for the nth time). From the way DZW jumps in whenever it remotely looks like dd is slipping up, how WH poses his questions, how QF teases him. It all seems references to a real, tangible thing, instead of baseless friendly teasing. It’s also very interesting that they have stopped their matchmaking mission and have instead started to defend why dd is “single”.

Their parents are their cover. Even if dd parents didn’t watch TTXS, wouldn’t someone else watch it and ask them about it? Wouldn’t they wonder about the supposed clothes that dd sends home, the medicine, the market stroll? Maybe I’m just projecting, but I wouldn’t use my parents as a shield if they weren’t aware of the situation behind it, because I’d be subjected to their questioning later. That’s why, unless I wanted to tell them or I had already told them, I wouldn’t use my parents as an excuse. So, once is alright, but dd has done it several times, and that, for me, means that his parents know.

That’s what I would consider “coming outside the media”. Of course, this doesn’t involve us fans, and it’s their decision, of which we probably will never hear about (or, at least, not soon, and that’s fine!). 

In my opinion, it’s also the best course of action, especially with all the rumours that are always circulating about them. It wouldn’t be a “brave and crazy” course of action, but rather the most sensible and rational, since it’s the best way to avoid misunderstandings with your friends and family. It’s also considerate for his friends at work, just so they know what to expect when they are on stage and it allows them to understand dd’s reactions.

(Again, we are talking about dd because that’s who anon asked about. I think gg’s circle is less close to him, so it may not be the case with him, but I don’t know enough to say what would happen).

Just let’s suppose his TTXS bros didn’t know anything and just kept trying to act as matchmakers for dd. That’s the kind of situation that’s bound to be uncomfortable for everyone because dd isn’t the kind of person who’d lie (and he doesn’t fast enough to improptu questions). 

The second thing I wanted to talk about is their fans’ support. I want to talk about numbers.

I’m going to explain why I only take the c-fans data as reference. We int fans don’t really count, because we don’t affect their careers directly, as c-fans do. Of course, our support is very useful in showing how many people are rooting for them, like what happened when Roseonly’s livestream with gg was live. And I like to think that they would feel better knowing that there are a lot of people in Chn and overseas that support them and whatever there is between them.

So int-fans do contribute to give more views and likes to their Roseonly livestream (if they can access it, which isn’t always the case), but they won’t buy the roses and impact with real money, so to say.

We don’t really participate in their endorsements, many won’t stay long enough to watch more dramas from them (and I do understand that the lack of eng subs is the main problem), and many don’t/can’t/don’t know how to push them up in the charts. We’ve talked before about how the c-ent industry doesn’t really need the int audience to make a lot of money, and to be highly profitable, and it still applies in a smaller case, like a single idol. 

That’s why I think that in matters of real, tangible fan support, c-fans still make a bigger percentage (around 80-90%) of their support.

So, as of now, there are 3 supertopics in w/ibo that features gg/dd (let’s leave the difference in supertopics for another day, but I don’t support the discussion about people’s sex life, thanks for your understanding):

BJYX. The largest supertopic (top 1) with a wide margin from the others. It has 2.570.000 fans.

ZSWW. It’s the number 5 in the CP supertopics, with 910.000 fans.

LXFY. The number 23 in the CP supertopics with 590.000 fans.

All of them added make 4.070.000 fans. But we have to take into account the overlapping in these three supertopics: many people (like me) are following the three supertopics at the same time. That’s why, in a not scientific way, I’m guessing that those 4.070.000 come to around 4.000.000 once you take out the people that are following the three at the same time.

Even 4 million people is still a huge number of people: that’s more people than the population of the capital of my country, and one tenth of the total census here.

Yet, in China, it means 4 out of every 1400, which translates into 0′003%. It’s also from a very specific demographic (mainly female and young). Of course, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get support from other people if it ever got out, but they can’t know what would happen then for sure.

It means that, in actual 3D world, there are a lot of people who don’t know about their CP. I read the other day some tumblr blogger saying that “we bxg are in our own little bubble, not that many people know about their cp” (was that you, @jcisthebestfightme?) which I agree a lot with. I mean, my w/ibo account and tumblr is filled with bjyx/yizhan, so much that it’s easy to forget that I arranged it to be like this, but that the majority of the people don’t receive so much info about them, nor they analyze their every move like we do.

The only thing they can know for sure is what general population thinks about same sex relationships.

In a recent poll I saw, with thousands of answers about what netizens thought of the legalization of same sex marriage in Taiwan, the supporting votes didn’t get to 50%. In Taiwan, public opinion was like this around the time same sex marriage was legalized:

An opinion poll conducted in November 2016 by the Kuomintang found that 52% of the Taiwanese population supported same-sex marriage, while 43% were opposed. Another poll commissioned that same month found similar numbers: 55% in support, and 45% in opposition. Support was higher among 20–29-year-olds (80%), but decreased significantly with age. (Wikipedia)

(I just want to say, I can’t wait for the younger generations to take over).

More data: the public stance in China could be described as: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”, and the public opinion is becoming more and more tolerant, but there’s still a deep-set homophobia, as in only 5% of the lgbt people comes out completely (around 20% comes out to their family), and around 80% of gay men are married to women due to social and family pressure (ofc, these data is from a few years ago, and new polls and surveys are needed, but don’t expect them to carry out a wide-range survey about this nor I think the situation has changed drastically).

In my opinion, society is slowly taking more steps towards tolerance first and acceptance second. One of their best achievement was the lgbt community and many netizens’ refusal to allow w/ibo to instate a ban on content related to homosexuality, which led to w/ibo actually reversing its decision and stop banning that content in less than 3 days.

However, the fact that a lot of people express their support doesn’t take away the truth of a lot of people openly opposing it (let’s remember that there weren’t so many antis to start with in 2/27, but its effects were undeniably large and unjust).

(If any of you read more data about lgbt rights in China, please remember that Hong Kong receives a lot more Western influence, and that public opinion in HK does not represent the actual situation in mainland Chn. Ofc, because they’re more open to lgbt, there are also more data and polls carried out in HK, so a lot of info is HK based).

Leaving this kind of data aside, let’s take another matter of numbers. While they have in total 4 million fans in the supertopics, dd has as of now 35,400,000 fans following him on w/ibo and gg has 26,690,000 fans.

One thing I’m sure they are aware of is the discussion that arises from time to time between the solo fans and the bxg. Another thing they must be aware of, specially dd, is that their fanbase has a lot of females who are their fans, not just because of their talent, but also because they’re single and therefore they can fantasize about being with them.

All in all, even though a lot of people support them, there would be also quite a number of “disappointed” people, with the danger of them becoming antis.

So while I do think they appreciate it, and leave clues specifically for us, and dd goes as far as interacting with bxg, I also feel that gg and dd might not see widespread support, enough so they’d feel comfortable coming out completely with the current public stance on homosexual relationships in Chn.

(And again, from my pov, they aren’t in the closet with their family and friends).

And last, but not least, does “coming out respecting the censorship and not talking about it with the media” mean that it would be known by the general public, or, at least, their fans (in a very hypothetic case, since I don’t know how this could be achieved)? Because then, even if they didn’t talk about it with the media, it would be as good as coming out publicly.

In an idol’s life there’s no “private” and “public”. There’s only “public” and “secret” (and by secret I mean things they “hide” in public/don’t talk about, even though people next to them might know about it). The line between public and private is very very blurred in the c-ent industry.

I always remember the case of an actor who had an affair. Because of his affair (he was married and had a son), he lost endorsements, he was taken out of tv programs and literally erased from filmed episodes. The things he did in private affected very directly his job (I don’t approve of the affair, but the consequences it had surprised me a lot). 

So, while I do think that gg and dd are getting bolder with time, when they were both very startled by the “you’d lose your job if you were in a relationship” phrase, the fear was real and palpable. However, I’m aware that that was their stance a year ago, and that a lot of things have changed (heck, we’ve gone through a pandemic, something I couldn’t have imagined a year ago), so I’m going to observe how they act from now.

That’s why, “coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..” is true, but it’s also true that it would push them into a storm I’m not sure they’d come out completely unscathed. And it may be selfish, but I don’t want them to be the ones who test the public’s tolerance to gay idols.

I think I’m missing my point, so I’ll spell it out: if they want to come out, I’ll support them with everything I have, as I think many fans will do. If they ever prove us wrong dating another person, be it male or female, I’ll support them as a fan too. But I would like any action they take to be decided by them, instead of pressed by fans who just want a confirmation at any cost.

I’ve seen people saying that if they were really together, they should be “honest” with themselves and the audience and come out publicly. In my opinion, it’s easy to judge when you’re not the one who might lose something if you take a step in the wrong direction, and it’s not your income and your job in the line.

I’m sure (reminding you all that I believe that bjyxszd) that they’d come out completely if possible. I’m also sure that they have consulted with managers and public relations experts (and their team would have talked with them about it even if gg and dd didn’t bring it up). Therefore, I strongly believe they are doing what they think is better at the time being. 

To sum up: I’ll support whatever they do, but I don’t want others to push them to do things they don’t want/aren’t prepared to do. They are already between a rock and a hard place, so whatever they do with their relationship is absolutely their call.

So, anon, I hope I have answered you, but I leave here a short summary for you in the case the info was too scattered for you:

Would it be that impossible for dd and gg to come out as a couple (provided they respected censorship and didn't talk about it with the media)? I read the other day that homosexuality is not illegal in China, just talking about it and showing in the media, so could not someone as brave and crazy as dd attempt to come out outside of the media?

They might have come out to friends and family, and, based on dd’s interactions with the people around him and the words he has said, I do believe he has. Because gg is also an honest, sensible person, I think he might have done the same.

after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support 

Chn is a big country. That means that in terms of public support, sometimes numbers that would be astronomically high in other countries, is not so much in Chn. Translating numbers into percentage, a 1% means 14 million people.

So it’s true that they have a lot of people supporting them, of course. 2 million people is a lot of people, especially considering that many don’t know about them. But when you have to take into account the general public (because it’d be a scandal), since their fans aren’t the only ones interacting with them, it’s still a low number.

Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed.. 

That’s true in the case of family and friends. But if you’re talking about being outed in the media, that’s not possible. Known by the fans = Public.

And remember that in this case, the media wouldn’t talk about them, since talking about homosexuality in the media is prohibited. The problem would come from within the industry and the antis.

[fictitiousponies]

Rusty Quill Official: My thoughts

First I’d like to point out that I’m literally a nobody. I’m not a mod, I’m not a crew member of Rusty Quill, I am literally just someone who hangs out in the Rusty Quill Official discord (I AM a patron though, so I do have access to the Patron only channels). 

I’ve been seeing the people that are in this ‘group of 10 or 11 people’ stir things up in the server for a while now, and I thought I’d just give my own experiences and thoughts on the subject.  Firstly, the fact that I even have to ‘give my credentials’ about this is ridiculous, but these are the type of people who if you aren’t ‘xyz’ and you disagree with anything they say, you are automatically deemed racist, homophobic, ableist, sexist, etc etc, so I’d just like to point out I am a queer woman with both mental and physical health disorders and disabilities. I’m also white, cis and allo, so I do admit there are only so many things I feel comfortable commenting on without getting piled on for ‘not being allowed’ or ‘not understanding’ (because thats 100% what the folks who are responsible for that doc do in the discord) First of all, I’d like to discuss the fact that the RQO server has grown RAPIDLY in the last few months. I don’t have access to the statistics but I’ve seen them in the past, and the server went from less than 2000 people to over 8000 in a matter of like two or three months. The mods of this server are all volunteer, besides a select few(Anil(Community Manager), Bryn(who is a voice actor/talent for Rusty Quill Gaming) and now Autumn, who literally was just announced as Anil’s new assistant community manager YESTERDAY. Before yesterday, April, the production manager, was also a Mod. Besides those people NO ONE works for rusty quill. Everyone is a volunteer and a fan. Rusty quill is a SMALL PODCAST COMPANY that has seen a rapid growth of their fanbase over the last 9 or so months. They have stated many many times that they are working behind the scenes to plan a server overhaul, and have given us a suggestion form. They all work very hard to try and make RQO a place where people feel safe. There are topics of conversation that NEED a more intense style of modding to be handled correctly, and at the current moment they don’t have the ability to do that so that things can be discussed safely for everyone involved. They have stated multiple times that is being worked on as something for the server revamp, and it just seems to not click. There are conversations that happen in this server that they have a problem with getting ‘sideswept’ that I KNOW make MANY people uncomfortable, and that is mainly the policing of headcanons. Saying ‘it makes me uncomfortable when Elias/Jonah is portrayed as trans or gay’ is one thing. Its completely another to call someone who HC’s Elias/Jonah as trans or gay as transphobic or homophobic, use vomit emojis and basically sit there and completely bash someone for having that headcanon, which is what tends to happen and makes people SUPER uncomfortable, causing the mods to come in and go ‘okay enough of this’ (but they didnt screenshot themselves being nasty because why would they?) They also straight up bash you if you like certain characters, Daisy and Gertrude being two main ones I’ve seen. I understand the discourse surrounding Daisy, I really do, but to be treated like the scum of the earth for daring to like Daisy as a character, for automatically being labeled as racist or pro-cop just because you enjoy a FICTIONAL CHARACTER is...absolutely ridiculous. Its THIS that the mods are reacting to, NOT calling the characters themselves out. Its them blatantly being rude and making people uncomfortable about liking a fictional character.  Another thing I’d like to address is the server being ‘ableist’  towards people with ADHD by being strict about going off topic. This is something I’ve been EXTREMELY vocal about myself, as someone with ADHD, I DO feel frustrated with the fact that if things veer off topic we get told to take it to another channel. Its jarring, as someone who tends to go on tangents and it doesn’t feel great but I understand the need for it. There are specific channels for a reason. Just because something inconveniences you doesn’t mean its automatically ableist. if every conversation was allowed to run rampant in every channel it would be chaos. AS IT IS so many of the channels are far too busy for my liking and I don’t feel comfortable in them with the amount of people (something that has zero to do with the way RQO runs the server and everything to do with the fact that its just a very large server with a lot of people) I tend to like to stay in the Patreon section because its much smaller and calmer. Also the Gen channels for me(General, Court of Nobles) are great because unless its something super specific(a long discussion about food, a specific character discussion, etc etc) there isn’t a topic to follow, therefor my ADHD can run free. Thats just...how things have to be sometimes. Once again its something thats been told is being worked on for the server revamp, possibly adding more gen channels or such things because the server is getting so large. I’m sure there are other things I could address here, but Honestly I am tired. I’ve been in a LOT of Discords only to nope out of them within a few weeks because I don’t feel safe or welcome. Rusty Quill Official is the first server I’ve been in where I don’t feel like I am just a number, just a nameless fan, despite how large the server is. Its the first large server where I feel like I have a sense of belonging. Its a place I hold very dear to my heart. It might not be for everyone. It might not be everyones cup of tea, I certainly don’t blame the servers I’ve left for not being something I vibe with, but to hear it be ‘called out’ and bashed like this is really sad, especially when SO MANY of the screenshots were taken out of context/not shown the whole story/had bits cut out that would importantly show another side to everything.  To call the RQO server an unsafe space would be extremely unjust. If its not something you enjoy, then thats unfortunate. There are opportunities for you to maybe meet people in the discord that you vibe with and break off to your own smaller server. Thats perfectly valid, and in now way us telling you to ‘leave if you dont like it’. Do what makes YOU comfortable, but to continuously cause issues and drama on purpose when things have been addressed and you simply dont like the answer... Its not fair to everyone else on the discord who IS having a good time. Allow Rusty Quill time to grow with its fanbase. There are going to be hiccups. There are going to be snags. People are HUMAN and to expect things to be Absolutely Completely Unproblematic Or Else is unrealistic. Things ARE being addressed. things ARE being worked on.  Thats all I’ve got to say. 

[spaced0lphin]

Massive Speculation

On N7 day of this hellscape of a year, BioWare announced they were making another Mass Effect instalment. Naturally, being sat up here in the bridge as I am, it gives me a lot of time to speculate and here are my thoughts on the wider picture.

These remasters are intended to revitalise the fandom for the upcoming project.

That much, to me, seems obvious. Whatever this new instalment is, it’s some years off and it makes perfect sense to give something to the (not insignificant) fanbase Mass Effect still has to attract them again, as well as new fans. These remasters will be well positioned to buy them a few years of good “fandom time.”

This upcoming instalment after the remasters is going to be Mass Effect’s last hurrah.

And maybe, as much as it sucks to say, BioWare’s last hurrah in its current form, too. It’s no industry secret that BioWare has outlived its life expectancy since the EA takeover. EA notoriously acquires and dissolves spirited, highly skilled studios once they stop being profitable (and sometimes even before that.) Unlike films, where franchises are just allowed to limp on indefinitely despite litanies of failures (think Terminator, Alien vs Predator and its ilk) games “enjoy” no such luxury. Beloved franchises are taken out behind the barn on the regular. BioWare’s productions in particular are large, grand, expensive, and alarmingly the past two have been both critical and commercial failures, vastly underperforming expectations. Mass Effect: Andromeda sold well initially, but proved to have no legs in the market; so much so, that all its DLC was cancelled and the title unceremoniously shelved. Anthem suffered a very similar and drastic fate. Whatever this upcoming Mass Effect title is going to be, it needs wide, iconic and lasting appeal.

Mass Effect can only be a flagship title.

There is no way to make a cheap Mass Effect game, and so all the stops are going to have to be pulled for this one. The studio learned a painful lesson when they left ME in the hands of their passionate, yet relatively inexperienced branch. Narratively, that puts the upcoming title in a very interesting place.

Mass Effect: Andromeda 2 is not a safe investment for a flagship title.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to rile up interest in the ME universe again just for the next offering to be a sequel to the broadly disliked and violently shelved Andromeda. Such a decision seems counterintuitive. ME:A seems like a very bad basis to hitch a project of such importance on.

In terms of Mass Effect, what is more iconic than Commander Shepard?

As discussed, the new title is going to need to capitalise on broad appeal and fan favourites to survive. Mass Effect: Andromeda’s premise of sidestepping the whole Reapers debacle by being pioneers seeding the stars in a new galaxy was an excellent idea. Unfortunately, that ticket has been used up. Doing that same idea again seems ill-advised at best. Fandom has been hungry for more Commander Shepard for almost eight years, now... Easily, they and the N7s are the most recognisable, iconic figures. But, and it is a krogan sized “but”...

However, the endings were not meant to be written around.

Whatever you think of them, each “candy flavour” has far-reaching consequences that narratively speaking would be intensely difficult to write a meaningful and interesting continuance for. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but it is extremely challenging and I think the only way to go forward with that would be to piss off a lot of people, for lack of a better term. It presents several challenges: 1. Okay, so the protagonist is Shepard. How? We have to pick the only path forward from here, which is to say that only the Shepards who chose this particular colour candy ending can proceed. This essentially makes one of the decisions the “canon” ending, because you can only make a game based on one of these outcomes, realistically. Scope becomes too huge if you’re trying to include all the branches. So... we are faced with the age old problem that caused such outrage over the endings initially... a lot of people are going to feel like their choices didn’t matter. This said, there is a slight precedence for this in that one could get their squad and themselves all killed in Mass Effect 2, and only my man Joker is left. That’s a bit of a different situation, but it’s all I got. 2. Okay, so only the Shepards who chose x ending can load their save and continue on. Shepard doing what? N7s are an interesting concept and the Mass Effect universe is a very interesting one with many kinds of narrative possibilities, however, it’s a real pretty corner the writers have painted themselves into on this one, gotta say. This leaves only two other narrative possibilities: 1. The least interesting of all the options, a prequel. This presents challenges of its own, because in Mass Effect’s own lore, it’s not actually that long ago that humanity came into contact with the rest of the galaxy. You can either write about the First Contact War, which involves only humans and turians and shrinks the scope drastically so much so as to be disappointing and lose much of the colour of the universe... or you go so far back into the past that it’s the Protheans’ cycle, in which case there’s no opportunity for a human protagonist - which is a massive problem - and is narratively not very compelling because we know everyone and everything dies, unless you want to do something stupid like time travel. Mass Effect is already high concept enough, I don’t think time travel is a particularly good mechanic to introduce to the series... Unless it’s short-term and single-use, like Shepard has to stop themselves from making a choice in the third game’s era. Even then, that’s opening a big can of worms that I don’t think is a good fit for the series. 2. Mass Effect: Mandalorian The only way to retain the colourful scope, the human protagonist, and the aliens we’re familiar with is ditch the iconic N7 situation entirely and set the instalment maybe 5 or 10 years before Shepard’s time. This ensures humanity is still an up-and-coming member of galactic society, yet the whole Reapers business isn’t going on yet. They won’t go for N7s because as we know, Shepard was the first human Spectre, so the protagonist could be some kind of smuggler, criminal or vigilante rather than military. Touching on what fans loved so much about Mass Effect 2, which was the feeling of getting together your motley crew of misfits to do a real big job, your role could simply be to amass a group of space jerks to do a mission of much smaller scale than the Reapers’ plotline, but no less fun. I’m going to bet it would be called something like Mass Effect: Renegades (you can have that one for free, BioWare) and the player could be pitted against C-Sec and other galactic law enforcement agencies. This even gives the opportunity for small cameos, such as Garrus’ time in C-Sec, and other characters to appear in different points in their careers. Whilst it wouldn’t make up for the loss of the iconic N7 visual and idea, it might go some way towards helping broad appeal. Also just look at how successful the Mandalorian has been for Star Wars. The only reason I don’t like these ideas is because I don’t get to date Joker in any of them. Seriously, BioWare, I don’t care what you do, just let me date the damn scruffy pilot. Not a different one, that one. Specifically. You could get an impersonator if Seth Green doesn’t wanna do it. Say his voicebox got damaged, I don’t care, just something, please In all seriousness though, I’d love for Shepard to come back. My ideal situation has to do with only one of the endings being “canonised” and is that Shepard somehow survives. Then it’s about rebuilding the galaxy after the Reapers have gone. I’m sure there’s drama to be had in that. And it gives me the opportunity to hope for Shepard to finally, FINALLY hook up with Joker. Seriously it’s so narratively powerful they’re always there for each other come on give me this I think that option would be challenging to write and would involve a sacrifice of pissing some fans off quite a lot, but the fact is, Mass Effect needs to be saved if it’s going to continue on, and it might be possible to orchestrate a situation where Shepard passes the torch on to new characters at the end. That’s also a common theme in shows and games these days.

[kitkatopinions]

To be fair heroes overcoming great odds isn't unheard of and I don't expect Salem to literally win outright and end the show this volume (now THAT would be unexpected). However, that doesn't mean they can build up Salem like this and then have her fail while causing minimal no name casualties. I really wanted her to kill off at least 1/4 of the named cast. That would show the survivors though she might have been defeated, there were serious consequences to their screw ups and Salem is dangerous.

I absolutely agree with this.

Let’s look at the Fall of Beacon as an example of how the heroes overcame great odds and the bad guys didn’t win outright, but there were still plenty of casualties, the losses were significant, and the main characters had things they needed to learn from. Not only were the main cast dealing with hordes of Grimm and all the villains that have been established so far at once, the city was also overrun with Grimm, the White Fang was attacking, and the Atlas robots that were meant to protect everyone got hacked and turned against people, and then a massive and clearly very powerful Grimm got released as well, while Cinder claimed the second half of the Fall Maiden powers. These were massively hard to beat odds. And funnily enough, many of the problems got taken out without much victory from the main characters. Roman was eaten by a bird and the crashing ship cut off the signal to the Atlas robots, Blake was running from Adam and he just didn’t chase her, Cinder and the dragon Grimm were both taken out by Ruby discovering her silver eyes, which were a suddenly introduced magic power.

There are two things that made the Fall of Beacon still much more significant than the battle at Atlas. Number one is effort. Everyone was desperate and scrambling to help, everyone was seen fighting off Grimm and the Atlas robots throughout the whole of the Fall, everyone ended the battle exhausted or wounded. The only people who were making quips were the longtime hunters and inner circle members who had seen all kinds of battle before like Qrow, and only in moments of temporary reprieve. Before Roman got swallowed by a bird, Ruby had spent time fighting him and Neo in an effort to stop him from shooting down other ships. It doesn’t feel like she did nothing to earn a victory, because she was distracting Roman and trying to save people and clearly was fighting as hard as she could. Roman even being out of the cockpit in order to be eaten was a direct result of Ruby’s actions. Blake escaping didn’t feel like Adam just let her go without a fight because they did have a fight, Blake put in a lot of work for it. When Blake ran away and Adam didn’t go after her, it didn’t feel like Blake did nothing to earn it because she fought him for a time despite her trauma, pushed down the pain of her injury, and used cleverness to get some distance between them. The second thing that made the Fall of Beacon still feel more significant than Atlas was loss. They were in a situation where it was impossible to save everything and everyone, and the writing reflected that. Ironwood lost a lot of resources, the school had to shut down, there was a ton of property damage, but those are all smaller stakes. What really hit was the injuries and the deaths. Penny’s death started the whole thing, and whether or not she’s back now, she literally was dismembered on screen, leading the audience to be shocked, emotional, sad, and to know this is serious. In the fight against Adam, Yang lost her arm, which was something that her character dealt with the fallout of for the next three seasons. Roman was a villain, but Roman died as a causality to the Grimm despite being on Cinder’s side, which proved just how dangerous the Grimm were to everyone and that no character was safe. We didn’t see many civilians die, but it was obvious that they had to have died.

And then there was Cinder and the dragon Grimm. Ruby triggered her silver eyes for the first time accidentally and took out Cinder and the dragon Grimm at once without even meaning to or fighting Cinder at all. But it still felt earned and significant. Partly because Ruby didn’t know she could do this, so it wasn’t a ‘why didn’t you just use this earlier?’ moment, it wasn’t a ‘so you’ve been sitting on this power for what reason?’ moment. Partly because it came at a cost and directly after the loss of Pyrrha, another emotional loss for both the characters and the fanbase - and a main character. When I was watching this scene, I wasn’t worried about small details because a main character had just had an on-screen death! And Ruby’s emotional reaction, freezing for a second and then screaming Pyrrha’s name was impactful. The cost of Ruby acquiring this new sudden power was Pyrrha’s death, so it didn’t feel unearned for Ruby to use it. And then it clearly took a lot of her, the consequence of acquiring her power was passing out for at least days, likely weeks. The other reason why this scene in particular didn’t feel like a deus ex machina was because it didn’t solve the problems before they could start. They already lost Penny, they already lost Pyrrha, they already lost Ozpin, Yang already lost her arm, Blake already had her trauma reignited and felt like she had to run, the city had already been over-run, civilians had died, the school had already fallen. Ruby’s silver eyes stopped Cinder from continuing and stopped the largest and most dangerous Grimm in its tracks, but it wasn’t a fix. They triumphed, technically. They had stopped Cinder for the moment, taken out the largest Grimm, saved a lot of people, stopped the Atlas robots... But there was still massive cost.

Of course, it doesn’t have to even be that big. Although I’d have preferred it, the kingdom doesn’t have to fall, the school doesn’t have to go down, no main characters need to die. I can’t think of a good example in RWBY, but let’s talk about a part in the Lord of the Rings movies, Helms Deep. The people of Rohan holed up in a fortress to try and outlast the armies of orcs attacking them, but they had already lost a strong number of (nameless, characterless) fighters. So they started pulling mostly nameless and characterless children and elderly men from the civilians to fight to save their people (yes, it’s incredibly stupid that there were able bodied adult women literally asking to fight that aren’t allowed, but we’re not talking about that.) Our hero, Aragorn got in a fight with Legolas where they made it very clear that they both knew that all of these kids and elderly people would die and that if they fought, they’d likely die too. A group of elves came to join in their desperate last stand, and during the large fight, a side character elf from the last movie died brutally, on screen, while Aragorn yelled and fought to try to get to him and held him in his arms as he passed away. Later on, we saw very few live soldiers trying to barricade what seemed to be the last door between the Orcs and the civilians hiding in the caves. The king, Théoden, seemed to have lost all hope, but Aragorn talked him into trying to make one last stand to give the civilians a chance to escape and Theoden clearly thought they were riding to their deaths. Gandalf arrived conveniently just in time with an army of more Rohan soldiers (previously exiled) and turned the tide of the battle. The people of Rohan survived, Rohan itself survived and could start recovering, none of the (very capable of fighting) women or children younger than seemingly thirteen were lost, none of our main characters died or even seemed to obtain severe injuries, and not too long after that, Rohan threw a party. The only named character we know we lost was a side character who we didn’t have a lot of time to get attached to. But this still seemed like a well earned and hard fought victory, where the stakes had been incredibly high.

The Battle at Atlas is completely empty. We didn’t lose anyone other than Hazel, who was killed by his own boss (iirc.) Three of our four main protagonists spent episodes sitting around doing nothing. JRY interjected quips and fun times into even serious moments (like Oscar being kidnapped by the Hound.) The only losses we received were nameless and characterless soldiers that the writing clearly doesn’t want us to really feel for. Ruby’s silver eyes haven’t come at a cost for seasons and have just been an easy way to get rid of Grimm before they can do much damage, which is exactly what happens with the Hound. Ironwood, a villain, is the one who keeps Salem back for episodes, and then Oz just pulls a sudden power out of nowhere to get rid of the whale and temporarily remove Salem from the picture with very little effort and zero consequences. No civilians die, no main characters die, everyone is fine, only Nora is even injured and she still seems mostly fine and like she’s already well on her way to recovery. It’s so disappointing, really. They gave us endless stakes and then had next to nothing come of it. I honestly don’t know if their writing could get any sloppier.

[jackdawyt]

ICYMI: As my last video/post for 2019, I figured we should have a reflection on Dragon Age 4’s major news updates and uncover what we know about Dragon Age 4 throughout this year and beyond!  So, we can go into 2020 with the right expectations and understanding of the game’s development!

The Dread Wolf Rises:

To boot of this year - we had the most exciting announcement from The Game Awards in December - the official confirmation of the next Dragon Age project with the current given title: #TheDreadWolfRises.

The trailer, while enigmatic, showcased the next Dragon Age centring on the Solas’s plan to rise up and destroy the veil, fulfilling the Dread Wolf’s prophecy. At least that’s one interpretation of it.

The trailer seemingly was made for the fanbase of Dragon Age with the given title, because if you didn’t know what Dragon Age was, or anything about The Dread Wolf, you could totally pass up that trailer as a different game entirely. So, it was more of an ode to the fans that the next Dragon Age game is in the works.

Alongside the release of the trailer, the Dragon Age website was updated for #TheDreadWolfRises with Mark Darrah, Executive Producer & Matthew Goldman, Creative Director sharing a few words on the production of the next Dragon Age.

TLDR: Mark is excited to show more and Matthew states that this is the strongest team yet and they’re venturing forth on the most epic quest ever.

In a September blog post, Casey Hudson wrote that ‘I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises,’ alluding to the narrative and production of Dragon Age 4. Before we delve into the current development of Dragon Age 4, we’ve got to talk about the two initial iterations of Dragon Age 4.

Project Joplin:

Based on Jason Schreier’s expose’ into the past and present developments of Dragon Age 4 - the previous iteration of Dragon Age 4 was known as ‘Joplin’, like Janis Joplin.

Janis Joplin was one of the biggest female rock stars of her era, she revolutionized her genre of music for the next generation – clearly, this is something the devs were going for with the original Dragon Age 4 project – to revolutionize the Role-Playing Game genre.

The developers on Joplin were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition. Veteran Mike Laidlaw was the creative director of ‘Joplin’ until the project was canned and reworked so ‘live service elements’ could be added. After the decided rework of Dragon Age 4, Mike left the studio in late 2017.

Project Joplin’s initial concept followed the next protagonist ‘playing as a group of spies in Tevinter, a large chunk of the narrative centred on heists. The goal was to focus as much as possible on choice and consequence.’

There was an emphasis on this ‘hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth.’

The developers talked about building systemic narrative mechanics, allowing the player to perform actions like persuading or extorting guards without the writers having to hand-craft every scene.

It was very ambitious and plenty of the developers were excited, stating that they put some of their best work into this project.

However, Anthem was in real trouble, and there was a concern that it might never be finished unless the studio did something drastic. EA and BioWare took that drastic action, cancelling Joplin and moving the bulk of its staff, including executive producer Mark Darrah, onto Anthem.

Project Joplin was reworked into Project Morrison with a skeleton team building the very foundations of the next Dragon Age.

Project Morrison:

The latest iteration of Dragon Age 4 that is currently in the works is known as ‘Morrison’, like ‘James Morrison’ – the lead singer of the rock band ‘The Doors’.

Jim Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. (Wikipedia).

Morrison is being built on Anthem’s tools and codebase of the Frostbite Engine, this will save time as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Anthem were each built from scratch. With a pre-set already there, Morrison’s development can save a lot of time.

This new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. It’s not clear how much of Joplin’s vision will shape Morrison.

Matt Goldman, art director on Dragon Age: Inquisition and then Joplin, took over as creative director for Morrison.

Many of the BioWare developers “know it’s going to change like five times in the next two years.”

Morrison will change its shape multiple times. However, “Dragon Age games shift more than other games.” So, it’s not uncanny for a Dragon Age project to undergo drastic changes in its development.

Live Service/Multiplayer:

It has been confirmed on LinkedIn that BioWare has hired a software engineer to work on a multiplayer component for Dragon Age 4, however, it’s unsure what exactly this multiplayer could look like.

Jason Schreier stated that “he heard some ideas for Morrison’s multiplayer include companions that can be controlled by multiple players via drop-in/drop-out co-op, similar to old-school BioWare RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and quests that could change based not just on one player’s decisions, but on the choices of players across the globe.”

In 2018, Casey Hudson tweeted a statement on live service: “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote on Twitter. “Story & character-focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”

It’s still unclear how much of this game will focus on live-service elements and multiplayer, it could follow something as simple as Dragon Age: Inquisition’s separate multiplayer mode, or it could transform the game completely. Take note that Morrison is still early in the works and it will change multiple times until release. That is for sure.

Production:

Now we get to the tea - The past and present developments of Dragon Age 4’s new iteration.

So, Project Joplin was canned in late 2017, with Project Morrison rebooting sometime after that with an essential, small team. The rest of the Dragon Age team that worked on Joplin, went to fix Anthem during its troubled development. Even Mark Darrah, the Executive Producer of Dragon Age was shuffled to Anthem’s production. All the while, Morrison lay low in very early pre-production stages.

In 2018, the majority of the news we got on Dragon Age 4 came out in January, with Joplin’s initial codename and Anthem’s reshuffling. However, with Morrison in deep pre-production, nothing substantial - production-wise - was heard on this project until The Dread Wolf Rises teaser launched at The Game Awards eleven months later in December. Of course, this trailer was hype hype hype!

In early 2019, BioWare resumed their focus on Anthem and its release date. After Anthem was released in February 2019 - according to comicbook.com - the core Edmonton team working on Anthem, returned to work on Dragon Age 4 in full-scale development following the reworks of Morrison.

Built on Anthem’s codebase and its pre-sets of the Frostbite engine, following a very enigmatic live service model – Dragon Age 4 entered its pre-production stages with a full-team. As Casey Hudson later confirmed in September:

“We have several other big projects in the works.  I wish I could tell you more about them, but they’re mostly super-secret right now.  I can say however that one of our projects has a large and growing team in Edmonton working through pre-production, and based on the progress I’m seeing, I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises.”

Key processes during the pre-production stages include:

Concept Art

Storyboarding

Level Design

Mechanic Design

Around June, an IGN Greece article resurfaced again, according to said article ‘an anonymous BioWare employee had given clues Dragon Age 4. Stating that the game will be released in 2020 and that the voices of the characters are already being recorded, which indicates an advanced stage of development.’

This article initially launched in 2018 and has many rebuttals, the first being the release date.

This 2020 expected release date has been debunked because according to EA’s 2019 earnings call, the new release window for Dragon Age 4 is at least April 2022, and any time after that. Perhaps Joplin’s initial release window was 2020, and the developer may have shared that, but as far as Morrison is concerned, the project is 3 years away.

However, voice work being in the works could be plausible at this stage. Alix Wilton Reagan has teased a few seasons of her in full mocap mentioning NDA’s and #dragonage and #inquisitor, this could just Alix teasing us, or using social media to its full advantage, or it could be something Dragon Age-related.

Surely the Inquisitor will make a cameo appearance and that could justify why Alix could be doing VO?

On top of both Alix’s tease and IGN Greece’s article, very recently Jo Berry, a writer at BioWare tweeted about voice over work coming in and it being fantastic, however, they have to remove the goofy robot text to speech which is awkward and funny to listen to.  

“When VO is coming in and it’s fan-tastic, but it means saying goodbye to that goofy robot text-to-speech that makes you all laugh.”

So, indeed voice work does seem to be going on for Dragon Age 4’s development at this stage.

In jest, BioWare hasn’t replied to my request for voice acting a character in Dragon Age 4, so I think because of that, we can assume that they haven’t started the majority of the main character’s voice work just yet, right?

Moving on…Throughout the months of August and September, BioWare moved to a new office space in downtown Edmonton. Once they had settled in, a few very interesting Dragon Age 4 titbits came to light.

Emily (Domino) Taylor posted a picture on Twitter, showcasing a post artboard for Dragon Age 4, as we can assume it’s Dragon Age! There’s a Grey Warden and their Griffon-friend showcased in the picture.

Griffons and Grey Warden’s confirmed for Dragon Age 4? It’s not too much of a stretch considering the drama at Weisshaupt and Last Flight’s ending, but alas, as we can see BioWare’s art division are getting ready to line up concept artwork for further production and development. Probably for 3D model creation and animation stages.

Regardless, it’s very exciting to see the start of official artwork developing for Dragon Age 4, I’ll be keeping an eye out to see how this board develops further.  

Another huge titbit that was revealed with BioWare’s office move, was when the mayor of Edmonton decided to visit and congratulate BioWare at their new offices. On one of the photos the mayor and his team took, there was a shot of an HD version of Solas on a TV Screen.

I personally believe that this is a shot from Dragon Age 4 or the prototype version of Morrison showing off Solas. There’s been no confirmation of where this shot comes from, and I’ve spent an entire video dissecting it. However, my point is, I don’t think this comes from Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s way to HD, look at his face, the fur on his outfit, the outside environment. It’s very distinct, and I believe it’s the first shot of Dragon Age 4 revealed.

I’ve not seen any rebuttals to this, and I’ve openly asked multiple times online, however, no one has come up with anything. So, even towards the end of 2019, it remains a mystery. I think this is a Dragon Age 4 shot, let me know if you think otherwise!

Around the same time, Matt Rhodes, an Art Director, posted a short story on his Instagram stating that he’s “more excited working on Dragon Age 4 than any other project so far.”

Just after BioWare moved offices, Fernando Melo, a senior producer on The Dread Wolf Rises left the studio after 12 years.

As stated on his LinkedIn profile, a lot of Fernando’s job on Dragon Age 4 surrounded “help[ing] establish the vision for the game. Guid[ing] the team through EA’s concept and early production phases. Prov[ing] out the core concept and key innovations of the game”.

He signed off with an email sent to everyone on the Dragon Age team, stating that he left at the “least disruptive timing as it would likely get.”

Considering that Fernando’s job was ensuring the pre-production stages were completed efficiently, and with his departure being at a time where it’d be least hectic for the development of Dragon Age 4, it’s safe to say that the pre-production processes are wrapping up and the team can begin to enter full production.

Fernando said that “with a great game leadership team in place, a fantastic creative vision, and some of the best devs in the world. Morrison is well underway to becoming the definitive Dragon Age experience - and I’m incredibly proud and honored to have played a part in that. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to experience the next DA as a fan this time around.”

So, with Fernando’s send off via email, the entire Dragon Age team has moved on from the initial pre-production stages to the main development of the project with an estimated release window of any time after April 2022.

Mark Darrah Major Hints & Teases:

Now we get to the most divisive news topics - the teases from Executive Producer Mark Darrah!

Mark has actually been teasing us since the beginning of 2017, when he dropped a video of an artbook that collated a plethora of Dragon Age concept characters, with many mysterious and ominous photos showcasing potential concept art and character designs.

A logo of a wolf, on fire encased in a tower, was all we had on Dragon Age 4 at the time. However, considering Project Joplin was canned at the end of that same year, I think it’s safe to assume this work went alongside that project, whether it will remain, we’ll uncover in-time.

At E3 2018, in a video interview with Game Informer, Mark Darrah said that Dragon Age 4 was going ‘swell’ with a cheeky grin.

At Pax West 2018, Dragon Age 4 was officially confirmed again since it’s reboot in development, the Triforce Quartet played Dragon Age: Inquisition’s theme as Mark Darrah confirmed that the next instalment is in the works… again.

Towards the end of November, Mark Darrah teased the entirety of Twitter with his Dragon Age remarks. Having tweeted the single words “Dragon Age”, he had PC Gamer and many other onion articles writing up on his huge Dragon Age 4 tease.

However, to be fair, Mark dropped an image that resembles Dragon Age, only we’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

Midnight snow, rocks, forests, a completely different landscape to any of the maps in Dragon Age: Inquisition, yet very familiar with its Frostbite Engine aesthetic… is this a shot of Tevinter, more than likely taken on Mark Darrah’s phone?

Well, I think so. It doesn’t resemble any location I can recall in Dragon Age: Inquisition… But you might say “there’s snow in Tevinter, which is the opposite end of Thedas’s Equator, that doesn’t make sense lore-wise.”  

Well, Mark Darrah replied to someone questioning if and why there would be snow in Tevinter, he sent them a link to this article that explains how there can be snow on the equator, meaning that Tevinter can have snow.

So, is this our second or first look of Dragon Age 4? Well, depending on if the Solas shot is viable, I’d say definitely, but I’ll let you make your own mind up on that. Speaking of Tevinter, Mark Darrah also teased that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is titled “Tevinter of Our Discontent”, which is a huge story reference that I’ll touch upon in a separate category.

However, back to the picture teases, and Mark Darrah also posted another photo…

A sun blinding a knight, very ominous, I don’t even know where to start with this one… I mean it could have some subliminal message about how Solas may destroy the veil, or it could have a rather obscure context that fits to Dragon Age 4’s narrative, but I honestly just don’t even know what this is…

On Dragon Age Day, Again, Mark Darrah posted another screenshot of Dragon Age 4 with everything redacted other than a pixel in the corner.

And, erm, yep. That’s super. Thanks for that, Mark.

If you’d like to see more Dragon Age 4 teases that may or may not make sense and will most likely leave you frustrated and clueless, why not give Mark Darrah a follow-on Twitter. He’s one to keep an eye out.

Story:

The next narrative surrounds the Dread Wolf rising and attempting to destroy the veil, it’ll most likely be our next protagonist’s goal to stop Solas from achieving this.

We will have a new protagonist, like every other Dragon Age game. It’s been confirmed copious times by many developers old and new that the Hero of Ferelden will never return in the future, so stop asking. And even if they did return, Patrick Weekes is in charge now.

Dragon Age 4 will be set in the Tevinter Imperium, if Trespasser’s ending wasn’t a good enough clue for you, Project Joplin was also set in Tevinter. Alternatively, according to PC Gamer, it was the newly announced Tevinter Nights book that confirmed Tevinter to be Dragon Age 4’s setting.

Mark Darrah confirmed and teased on Twitter that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is Tevinter of our Discontent, derived from Shakespeare’s “The Winter of our Discontent” which is the opening lines from the play - Richard III (3rd).

As a TLDR: the words lay the groundwork for the portrayal of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. However, since his family were victorious in the war, they reign the nation once more, and so as winter dies, glorious summer is upon them.

There are plenty of references we can make to Solas and his scheme to destroy the veil, he’s woken up to a world that despises his name and people that revoke his actions as evil. He wants to correct this world and restore his ‘family’ so to speak. Perhaps, like Richard the 3rd, Solas’s glorious summer is what awaits him in the next game.

So, we have plenty of plot potential with this given title and I do have a separate video for even more thorough speculation on this topic. However, based on Shakespeare’s work being the main inspiration for Dragon Age 4’s narrative, we should expect tragedy to be one of the main themes of the plot.

According to Video Gamer, in 2017, Alexis Kennedy was writing freelance for BioWare, ‘working on a whole chunk of lore and backstory for the faction in the game that you would think of if you were thinking big old goth. You know, if you were interested in death.’

Instantly what comes to mind is Nevarra’s Mortalitasi – Death Mages that’s responsible for the mummification process of the dead in Nevarran culture. However, we’re not sure how much of his work went into the cancelled Joplin, considering the timing at which he worked on Dragon Age 4.  

According to Alexis’s LinkedIn page, he worked freelance at BioWare from February – August 2017. The end of 2017 was the same time Joplin was canned, and Mike Laidlaw left the company, so there’s a huge possibility that Alexis’s work has been shelved.

Even if Alexis’s work wasn’t shelved at the time, given his recent allegations and controversy, Mark Darrah confirmed on Twitter that BioWare no longer has a working relationship with him, so his work seemingly has been scrapped.

According to Dark Horse writers Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir who’re creating the comics. In a comicbook.com interview, they shared the collaboration with the BioWare writers, it’s a case of sharing notes on where the narrative is going, and how the comics can help reach that point for Dragon Age 4’s narrative.

So, if you want to see where Dragon Age 4’s narrative may go, or which characters could turn up, read the comics as they’re pushing the narrative forward.

According to Chelsea Fariello, Assistant Animator at BioWare, it seems we could have a Mabari War Hound companion, or at least NPC in Dragon Age 4, as she stated on Twitter that she was interested in what interactions people would want to see for a dog-like creature in a video game. With the hashtag Dragon Age. Perhaps Mabari War Hound, or even a Griffon? “What interactions would people want to be able to do with a dog like creature in a video game? I need to know…for reasons… #DragonAge “

The “creature” part in that tweet is what makes me think it could be a small griffon? If it’s a Mabari then it’s just a dog, however, if it’s a small griffon then that could make sense. That’s just my hot take.

On Dragon Age Day, Arby’s expressed their interest in opening a new branch in Thedas, could we see a new type of cuisine in Tevinter? It’s hard to say, other than the fact that John Epler loves Arby’s, not Wendy’s though. Don’t mention Wendy’s!

Weekes’s Tweets:

Adding to the story category, we have plenty of tweets by Patrick Weekes that hint at future elements for Dragon Age 4.

Patrick Weekes responded to Autumn Witch when asked on Twitter ‘to pick one character from Dragon Age that has never been a companion or advisor that you would like to see as a companion in DA-4? (For the sake of this post, Lace Harding is also not available.)’

Patrick said: “Oh that’s obvious, I’d go with (Reads parenthetical) THIS IS RIGGED.”

So, Scout Harding as a Dragon Age 4 Companion teased? I freaking hope so.

Patrick Weekes posted on Twitter that they just teared up reading a scene, so unless they’re cutting onions while writing, we should expect tears to be shed in Dragon Age 4. If I were to guess, I mean Solas is walking the Din’anshiral. Which means there is only death on this journey…

Weekes was asked about non-binary lingo & representation and if the players would have the option to not identify as a male or female in the next Dragon Age. They replied saying:

“No guarantees (it’s something that is very difficult in romance languages we get translated into), but our team is always looking for better ways to let players see themselves in our games.”

Other Dragon Age Projects:

According to EA’s 2019 Earnings Call, “there are plans for not only Dragon Age 4, but other Dragon Age products too.”

At a guess, this ‘other product’ could simply be a mobile companion app to coincide with Dragon Age 4’s launch. Or it could be the rumoured tactics game that we haven’t heard about since Mark Darrah’s tease in 2017.

On top of that, at a guess, it could also be an extension to the Dragon Age Keep.

Expectations:

There’s still a couple of years yet with an expected release window at any point after April 2022. However, that doesn’t mean the news will not be coming, just look at all the tidbits I’ve uncovered from developer tweets on the side.

Not to mention that BioWare generally start the marketing phases of their upcoming games two years prior to release, so if Dragon Age 4 were to release in 2022, we could actually see something in 2020. I’m not banking on that, but just for the doubters out there, we’ll easily hear something regarding this game in 2020, whether that’s a trailer or small tweet trials of news, we’ll be sure to get something, and I’ll be sure to stay on track of that.

if you have anyone saying there’s no news for Dragon Age 4, just gently send them my way and share this video in their dm’s!

[uiruu]

one problem with my exposure to korean being mostly from kpop (and related content like variety shows and reality shows and vlogs) and things like duolingo is that i have no idea how to swear in korean. 

i know what some korean swears are, or really just the big one tbh (basically the stand-in for “fuck” or “fuckin”), but idk how to actually use it. and any number of other curse words too, like... at least people who pick up a bit of japanese comprehension from anime get exposed to things like that lmao.... or people who pick up like any european language from any european media... and certainly people who pick up english from english language media, especially american, are exposed to a fuckton of swears cause we swear so much that it’s essentially devalued the swear words, leaving them more or less filler words and colloquial slang used by everyone instead of words that hold a lot of weight and power.... 

but korean media is scrubbed very clean of all that stuff, and i understand why. hallyu (the “korean wave”) is one of korea’s biggest cultural exports, and the government has really made a super strong effort to promote it and cultivate it. they really wanna make it look good. i dont think thats necessarily wrong or shady of them, because i think the korean people and language are good, i think every culture and language are good. it’s not like korea is a massive superpower running a gigantic state propaganda program or whatever, they’re a country with a history of being subjected to colonization and war and i think it makes sense for them to want to promote and cultivate some art. 

i also think there’s way more artistry and creativity in kpop than people give it credit too, because sure the money from the government is just so that kpop can be sort of a propaganda and increase korea’s status globally, but the people who actually make the songs, make the outfits, make the stages, make the music videos, train incredibly hard to master their craft of dancing singing and performing, etc... like... a lot of legitimate hard work goes into this stuff. even if you dont like the music or music videos or things like that conceptually, you have to admit that a lot of the stuff is very elaborate, and people put a lot of themselves into that stuff. so i dont think its some straightforward “kpop is just propaganda made to make korea look good” thing, i think it’s just creative people being creative, and it’s the CEOs and politicians who make money from it all who want it to be propaganda. i think the performers and designers and musicians who get involved do so because they want to do their thing, first and foremost.

but yeah, one side effect of that is the fact that kpop idols have to watch what they say. it’s not that different from a lot of media in english, and an american celebrity isnt allowed to swear when they go on certain shows. but at least in that case, there are a lot of other avenues where that celebrity is allowed to swear (or talk about sex, politics, drugs, any number of other topics like that. im just using swearing as an example). korea doesnt have as much of that, and partially that’s because a lot of korean media is made with korea’s reputation to the rest of the world in mind, but another factor is that korea is just a lot smaller than a lot of people realize. kpop seems huge, and there are definitely a lot of people involved in it, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty small. there are probably less than 100 currently active kpop groups who are relevant (sustaining themselves, have a decent enough fanbase, not in danger of disbanding) at any given time, and even that might honestly be a generous estimation, depending on your criteria for those things. the disparity between the top groups and the smallest groups is massive, and yet a lot the members of the top group might be friends with the members of the smallest group, because they live and work and went to one of the two or three schools of performing arts in seoul, and maybe some were trainees together at a company, or they met backstage at a music show, or any number of things like that. compare that to the american music industry... even just within a single genre, you would not be able to list all the currently active and relevant artists. it’s just too big. 

this got kind of off topic, but it’s all a single train of thought, really. i’m just thinking about why it is that i’ve never really encountered the word for “penis” despite having been learning korean steadily for almost two years. i know what it is, but only because i’ve looked it up. that’s just kinda the reality of the situation, for better or worse.

[rallamajoop]

Some musings on symbiote morphology (AKA when size does matter)

So, back when Venom was still in cinemas, I saw it with a friend who (like me) enjoyed it mightily -- though said friend did roll her eyes pretty hard at the She-Venom scene, because of course the female!Venom has to be skinny and sexy. Of course she does.

I mean, the sexual dimorphism on display here is, uh... pretty extreme.

Usually, this would’ve gotten to me too. Few issues in genre film stick in my craw like the double standards applied to male and female bodies (ask me my thoughts on the likes of Wonder Woman or Gamora at your peril). So it was a little surprising to find that this was one I was mostly willing to shrug off.

Why? Well, that requires a bit of backing up and some more context. But mostly, it’s the perfect jumping-off point for a whole lot of rambling about visual shorthands and how symbiote morphology has been handled in the comics over the years, which apparently I had a whole essay’s worth of thoughts on. So here we go.

Now, Comic!Venom =/= Movie!Venom. They aren’t the same character, don’t have the same history, and their biology doesn’t follow the same rules.  But one is still the basis for the other, so we’re going to start waayyy back at the beginning.

Since the symbiote's introduction back in '84, precious little about the species has remained consistent through the many writers and retcons, but one detail that Marvel was -- mostly -- consistent on back in the early days is that the shape a symbiote takes depends a lot on the body of its host. So when Spider-man was wearing the symbiote the result was (by design) literally just Spider-man-but-in-black:

But Venom's next host did not have the muscularly-lean body of Peter Parker, he had the jacked-up muscle-mountain that was Eddie Brock’s -- and the result is the Venom we all know and love.

Whereas when completely-normal-human-woman Anne Weying first bonds with the Venom symbiote in Sinner Takes All, we get a much slimmer She-Venom.

You can see the same trends at work with the Life Foundation Five and various other examples. So, in the comics at least, there’s some internal consistency explaining why He-Venom and She-Venom should look so very different. (Why Eddie and Anne should be such wildly different sized humans is a whoooole other topic, but best left in the Don’t Get Me Started pile for now.)

Of course, when the guy you've cast as Eddie has the physique of Tom Hardy rather than, say, He-Man, the logic of why Venom looks so huge falls apart. 

  ⬥ Venom and She-Venom, actual size comparison.

While comic book writers of the 80's may have been able to convince a generation of fans not to question why a professional journalist would be jacked enough to dwarf Captain America, film adds a layer of realism and audience expectations that would make that a much harder sell (not to mention limiting your casting options to a much smaller pool). Casting Tom Hardy was inarguably the right call. 

If Eddie no longer looked like Venom, the other solution would have been to make Venom look more like Tom Hardy--but good luck getting that past the existing fanbase. When it comes to pleasing the longtime fans, it's safe to say that Venom, not Eddie, is the character who has to look the part. Plus, Venom is entirely CG, so casting and realism no longer have to matter. Fanboys can have their giant Venom and tiny She-Venom, and the fangirls can have Tom Hardy getting all prettily roughed up. There are worse solutions.

Don't get me wrong: they could and absolutely should have evened up the difference on screen by giving She-Venom some extra body mass (she is on screen for like ten seconds, the fanboys can effing deal). But when the key decision that fucked up those ratios is making Eddie so much slimmer and sexier than he was originally supposed to be, I am unusually willing to give them a tentative pass. I mean, I love comics!Eddie too, but I can’t see him working on screen.

While I’m talking symbiote-bodies, it’s worth going into some of the other reasons to make Eddie+symbiote so huge, the obvious ones being to a) make him more threatening, and b) emphasise that Eddie's bonded with the symbiote in a way Peter never did. As a shape-shifter, Venom can make his host look bigger but not smaller (which is presumably why Rad Eddie may look younger than regular!Eddie, but is still suspiciously large for a skateboarder hanging with teens).

But size isn't the only way to make a character like Venom threatening. Compare Carnage, who is much more dangerous than Venom -- but (along with his host) fairly consistently drawn as smaller and leaner than the original.

He's still plenty threatening, though -- not because he's huge, but because he's completely bugfuck nuts and into murder for recreation. His design gets this across with a texture less like skin than a mass of veins and tentacles. Size is a good visual shorthand for danger, but it's not the only shorthand that works for symbiotes of the 90′s heyday.

You can see the same logic at work in Toxin too (a lesser-known and sadly mistreated Carnage-spawn from the early 00's). Precious little about Toxin's look remained consistent from one creative team to the next, but the impact of the host body is still there. His first host, Pat Mulligan, was a pretty average-sized dude, which is reflected in his bonded form (left), but when Eddie gets the Toxin symbiote later on, we get a much bigger Toxin (right). And Eddie's Toxin has more tentacles and rougher skin, so we know he's not going to be friendly (Eddie was really not in a good place at this point in his history).

Perhaps the most interesting example is Agent Venom, who turns up when the military bonds the Venom symbiote to Flash Thompson: disabled vet and card-carrying Spidey fan. His Venom-look is a brilliant bit of storytelling-through-design: the face and overall build hearkens back to Spider-man's time in the symbiote, the equipment signposts his military connections (past and present), and black will always be the signifier of a guy working black ops.

Perhaps most important, there's no mouth (compare both Spidey and Toxin #1), which is our sign that the symbiote's under control -- drugged into submission by the military, in fact.

But key to Flash's time in the role is that the Venom symbiote doesn't always stay drugged and docile, and whenever it starts to break free, Agent Venom morphs into Venom's traditional look -- gaping mouth, no belts or shoulder pads, and lots of bulky muscles a la the original flavour Eddie Brock (you can see him mid-transformation on the left below).

Does that make sense, when Flash is the host? Probably not, but comic book logic, as usual, is suspended for the sake of visual shorthand: fans know what Venom is "supposed" to look like, so that's what he looks like when the comic wants to telegraph that Flash is losing control. And that, I suspect, is why Lee Price's Venom (above right) looks more like Eddie's, even though Lee Price looks more like Flash. Price may be the one in charge, but he’s also a madman, so his Venom has to look out of control. The comics have officially hit Tom Hardy territory: Venom is huge now because people have come to expect Venom to look like the original Eddie-Brock!Venom, regardless of who’s inside.

There are bigger exceptions to the rule, however -- two of the more interesting turned up almost simultaneously in 2015, when both Venom!Flash and Toxin!Eddie got significant redesigns in the pages of Venom: Space Knight and Carnage (2015). Now Flash's Venom is the bulky muscular one, while Eddie's Toxin looks slimmer than Eddie has ever been before or since. What's going on here? Did the artists just screw up?

Well, not entirely -- the characters haven't just flipped looks, they've flipped roles. Now Toxin's the one being drugged into submission by a US agency (and we can only assume those drugs somehow prompt a symbiote to produce pouches, because we're two-for-two on that front). Meanwhile, Venom's been "purged of corruption" and has finally bonded with Flash as a full partner, which may be why they opted for something closer to his original look. Note that Venom has no mouth, and Toxin's is positively restrained by symbiote standards, which tells you a lot about the temperament we can expect from both of them.

That said, I don't think either design really works. Venom's new look is a real step back in creativity from his Agent Venom days, and the helmet-face would be better suited to a mech design than a symbiote who's being treated as a real character for the first time. Meanwhile, Toxin’s look doesn't really work for Eddie, for all the same reasons it did work for Flash: Eddie isn't a trusted agent in this scenario, he's more like an intelligent animal on a short leash. It isn't just the builds that are wrong -- none of the story comes across well in these designs.

All in all, the longer Venom’s been around, the less the standard host=symbiote rules seem to apply. Venom is huge because his look is sufficiently iconic that that’s what the fans expect, regardless of who’s on the inside, or whether we’ve just rewritten his entire backstory and made the jump to film.

Speaking of which, it’s worth pointing out that there is actually precedent in the comics for female symbiotes who aren't drawn like a bikini model in a layer of black body paint. One is Patricia Robertson, who bonds with the "Venom" symbiote (read: not actually the Venom symbiote) in the 2003 Venom series.

Though Trish is a woman of fairly average build, her "Venom" is virtually indistinguishable from Eddie's (too much so, if anything -- it's very hard to tell which is which when they clash). Unfortunately, the 2003 series is otherwise an ugly, incomprehensible mess of a comic, containing almost nothing that has ever been referenced again. I can really only recommend it to absolute completists.

Somewhat better handled is Tarna, a skrull Agent of the Cosmos who appears in Venom: Space Knight. Tarna's symbiotic look is not remotely feminine, and one suspects that's the point: it's ugly, threatening, and gives no clue as to who's inside. (Her symbiote can also separate from her while maintaining form, making the comparison pic unusually easy for me).

But as a shapeshifting alien bonded to a shapeshifting symbiote, Tarna perhaps doesn't make the best example for general principles. It’s worth keeping in mind that every design has a storytelling function too: Patricia’s Venom needs to be mistakable for the original Venom for plot reasons, and the reveal that Tarna is a humanoid woman under her symbiote is set up as a surprise. But the creators of the film wanted us to know that was Anne under the symbiote from the moment she appeared, so sexy!She-Venom it is.

All that said, at the very end of the day, I’d much rather not have to make these excuses for the film. I’d much rather see more Tarnas and fewer She-Venom’s, and both film and comics have a long way to go before we get there yet.

[orange-juice-speaks]

The Usage of Purple as a Symbol for Straying From the Norm and Character Development in the Broadway Production of The Prom Musical: An Over-Analysis.

As written by Ozzie Clifford

This is some long stuff, I’m putting a cutoff here. Also spoilers The Prom Musical. Enjoy this weirdness I wrote at 2 in the morning.

If there is one thing I loved, and continue to love, about the fandom for The Prom Musical after over a year, among so much else, is its ability to analyze the true depth of the ultimate protagonists of the show, Emma and Alyssa. Who are the protagonists in the show can be made into a separate mini-essay on its own. Believe me, it has been discussed plenty enough, but for the purposes of keeping things to one concise thesis here, I'm going to say that because the character growth of the arguably more prominent Broadway stars is caused by the citizens of Edgewater, and the center of that conflict that led them to Edgewater is ultimately Emma and Alyssa, so they will be referred to as the main protagonists for this interpretation. Based on the surprisingly small amount we are given on these characters, the fanbase for the Tony-nominated 2018-2019 production is surprisingly able to get a lot from these characters and infer plenty about them. However, one facet of these characters' growth throughout the plot goes surprisingly unacknowledged: The use of the color purple to show how they do not fit the norm, but are eventually able to find acceptance of that by the time they do get their prom.

The plot of the show in short, in case my passionate ramblings do find someone who is unaware of the existence of the material I base this upon, is absurd but simple. A teenage lesbian by the name of Emma Nolan is barred from taking her girlfriend, later discovered to be the PTA president's daughter, Alyssa Greene, to their senior prom by the PTA. Four Broadway stars who are at a low in their careers find potential for good press in this story, which they found on Twitter, and they inevitably wreck things before making it better. But for me, this story has nothing to do with the actors and actually starts with a scene that's halfway through the first act, so we can get a glimpse at where the color purple first becomes a prominent idea within it. The prom has just been reinstated and all day Emma and Alyssa have been watching their classmates prom-pose to each other. This is shown in the song 'You Happened', in which the girls do manage to sneak behind the bleachers and get a verse of their own in this number, discussing how they wouldn't hide anymore. At the end of the number Alyssa is shown giving a bracelet to Emma as a way of asking her out to their for a second time. It becomes a brief nod to the idea of a symbol that shows them breaking free from expectations, but it never does come up again; at least not in that form.

This is the closest replica to the aforementioned bracelet that we are aware of as of June 2020. Note that it is purple, because I do have reason to believe it ties to a greater symbolic storytelling. A seemingly insignificant detail in this scene from its initial Broadway run is that Emma and Alyssa are wearing blue and pink tops respectively. Blue and pink put together make purple, which appears to be an equally insignificant stretch until you remember Edgewater is a conservative town. Most likely, for boys and pink is for girls in this town, and gender roles are tightly wound. In coming out as gay and cutting her hair short, Emma broke away from that, potentially reflecting why she is seen wearing blue while Alyssa, who is in the closet, is stuck in the confining box of pink*. a reason I bring up this specific coloring of their clothes. It actually occurs more than once, the second time with somewhat more specific meaning that points to my initial claim but that's a point I will get to shortly. As of right now, in the middle of Act 1. Alyssa is trapped in the pink box of expectations, and Emma isn't anymore. Alyssa makes the promise of joining her on the outside with a purple bracelet, and while the color purple can easily be viewed as simply a combination of blue and pink, boy and girl, to use this color for a gay couple heavily hints at something more complex. Rather than the joining of boy and girl, in the context of Emma and Alyssa as lesbians, it's much more likely that purple is meant to be escaping the expectation of a heterosexual relationship by showing purple as it's own separate color rather than a fusion of pink and blue by the show's end. But again, more on that later.

*Alyssa is not shown in pink in the most widely known professional stills of the production, at the very least, but it got changed later on in the run.

For now, we're moving ahead in time to the end of act one, where prom takes place, and based on solely the fact that this is only the end of the first act, something is bound to go wrong. And, of course, things go wrong. The PTA has organized a separate "prom" for Emma at the school while holding the actual prom at the Elk's Club, where Alyssa ends up. Once again, this scene is significant costume-wise, but more notably than in You Happened. It's mostly cited as such because it is in this scene at the first prom that Emma wears a dress, which is completely out of line for her character. Often it gets cited as a reference point for her character development throughout the second act of the show since at the end, she shows up to the second, actual prom in a suit. The outfits in this scene are so pivotal that they are a blatant representation of Emma's character development, to the point that this is the scene that inspired this half-essay, half-ramble. If it can be seen as that level of important to showing Emma's character arc throughout the musical, why would it not do the same for Alyssa? And then it hit me: it does. It's rather simply just less obvious because Alyssa's not butch. This is the second scene where Emma and Alyssa are seen wearing blue and pink respectively. The pink is subdued to the point of being nearly white, but it is still pink. And now the separation between the completely different realities of being closeted and being out are juxtaposed in an actual, physical distance between them. There is no purple to even attempt to unite or blend these two different colors, different worlds. Emma is not wearing her bracelet from Alyssa. This on it's own is almost showing how Alyssa isn't able to hold to the promise that she made when giving Emma that bracelet, the promise of coming out. This could be interpreted asforeshadowing the events at the fake before either of the girls step foot in the buildings of their respective proms. But I digress. The important aspect here is that there is nothing that will bring the two of them back together, because they are, at the end of the day, leading entirely separate lives, and this is shown with blue and pink the same way those colors came together during the You Happened scene, proving they cannot live this split reality forever.

A conflict ensues between Emma and Alyssa as a result of this, and purple is not prominent again throughout the narrative of Act 2 until this is able to be resolved, and in the final number of the show, our leading ladies get their prom. It's here that the purple comes out full force. It's known by default that Alyssa's second prom dress is a lavender color. Emma's suit, however, is also purple, but the lighting on stage would have you believe otherwise, so here's a quick photo of the suit in different lighting.

It's smaller than expected, but gets across the point that the suit is purple. The scene where Emma and Alyssa get to be their authentic selves is where purple is the most prominent in the show, implying that the usage of the color in it is directly tied to the authenticity and character development of both Emma and Alyssa by the finale as initially shown by their bracelets in You Happened. It's because of this promise that they will be themselves that they're able to shed the ideas and concepts of cut and dry, pink and blue, heterosexual relationships being the only ones that can flourish in Edgewater, and in doing that, they make a whole new color that can't fit that box--purple.

At the end of the day, this idea is admittedly messy. I broke some of my own evidence trying to find a photo to prove it, and it's so weirdly specific that it probably wasn't intentional, but I do enjoy this way of looking at this show. Everything down to color having a meaning showcases the strange, articulate ways in which art can impact people without much thought, and whether or not it was thought out purposely or not, it adds a new level of depth to the narrative that I enjoy, and I hope I left you thinking, because whether or not I convinced you of this claim is irrelevant if you don't attempt to apply this type of weird, abstract, and ambitious thinking in other circumstances. After all, how else will we be able to make room for more "purple" things in this world? Things that can't fit into a box of 'This or That?'.

[silyabeeodess]

Tangled: The Series Analysis, Cassandra's Betrayal

Before I begin, I feel like I have to set this announcement, as it’ll be a big part over both why I’m making this analysis and why it’s necessary for those of us watching the show. I don’t often say much regarding this kind of stuff, but I’ve noticed there’s starting to become a repeating problem in cartoons (especially recent Disney ones, a lot of which are trying to mimic the Gravity Falls formula and can’t quite hit the mark).  That problem is when a show creates a “big reveal” and then caters to that point so much that it deteriorates other aspects of the show or the characters that reveal involves.  Sometimes, it’s on the fault of the fandoms for banking too much on them, but the shows themselves can be in the wrong too by sweeping other things under the rug in the name of those reveals.  When Cass took the Moonstone and announced herself as Mother Gothel’s daughter--as much as it was expected by a lot of people--this very thing happened.  Furthermore, this isn’t to make up excuses for Cass’ actions, just to give some logic that seems to be disregarded in the overview. Expect this post not to agree with a lot of mainstream thoughts and feelings among the fanbase, or at least the ones more-often vocally expressed. I’m calling out the elephant in the room, but I’m just not invested enough to join in a long debate either.  

For this analysis, I’ll largely be covering S2 for references.  While we do see Cass and Rapunzel’s friendship with its problems as early as S1 (like in Challenge of the Brave), S2 focuses more on the gradual decline of their friendship.  More than that though, it’s also important because both of those two were at high points of their lives at the start of the season.  Rapunzel was finally leaving to go out and discover a world beyond Corona, along with searching for answers to the mystery of the black rocks, while Cass had garnered enough respect from both her father and the rest of the guard at the end of S1 to be entrusted to lead the battle against Varian and rescue the queen.  She can’t called a simple lady-in-waiting anymore.  For all the talk lately of Cass playing “second fiddle” and being jealous of Rapunzel because of it, this meant that Cass had an opportunity to stay in Corona and continue to focus on her own goals.  Except she didn't.  She followed Rapunzel along on her journey because she was her friend and she felt it was her duty.  We can tell how much more respect she’s gained because, above the others in the group, it was Cass that Rapunzel’s father entrusted her safety to: 

“Not that I don't think you can handle yourself,  but I promised your dad I'd keep you safe, and I'd hate to lose you less than a week on the road.” -Cassandra, in Beyond the Corona Walls

There’s also already some tension with Cass and Rapunzel right from the start:

“Not that you shouldn’t trust the endorsement of three lifetime criminals, Raps, but maybe you should trust me too.  I just wanna make sure that we’re not losing sight of what we’re doing out here.” 

Cass had a goal and was on-route to fulfilling it, but placed a greater value in Rapunzel’s safety and mission over that. This idea would later fall in line with the following verse from “Waiting in the Wings,” which indicates that it’s not just people or circumstances holding Cass back, but some of the personal choices she’s made that have set her own wants on the sidelines.

“I hear my cue and yet I’m kept there waiting,  Know what to do, and still I stand there waiting.”

Even Rapunzel would confirm later in Season Three that Cassandra stayed with her for her by choice. 

“She could've had everything she wanted.  She had the chance to become a warrior,  but she chose our friendship instead.” -Rapunzel, in Beginnings

Here comes the glaring issue though, and some of you are not gonna like me for saying it.  Rapunzel’s not that great a friend to Cass or--at times--even in general.  Before you come at me with torches and pitchforks, let’s go over some points in the show that indicate this:

Despite all of her attempts at hosting a festival in Vardaros falling flat because her personal interests/tastes don’t fall in line with the people while clearly Cass’ tastes do, she gets petty over it.  Rapunzel may have thought she was being delicate, but she dismissed all of Cass’ ideas even though other people like Vex had already shown approval toward Cass’ ways of doing things. On top of that, Rapunzel was the one to suggest they split up instead of trying to work things out together. Yes, Cass stayed angry until the end of the episode, but she sure didn’t start it. 

Rapunzel’s always running off to do her own thing despite how many warnings Cass tries to give her in order to keep her safe, such as in Freebird, where she trusts two total strangers over her best friend because “it’ll be fun!” 

She often trusts people over Cass, who she’s known longer than many and was loyal to her. This issue of trust goes especially for Adira who--while being a good person in the end--does attack them during their initial meeting and for all they know could’ve been leading them to use as human sacrifices or toward any other dangers because she refused to be honest with them.  She doesn’t really start listening to Cass until after it’s already too late because she’d already shown she doesn’t have faith in her decisions several times over.

In Rapunzel and the Dark Tree, Raps uses a dark magic spell she knows she can’t control to defeat Hector despite the fact that she could’ve ended up killing her friends and herself as a result because she nearly did earlier. Cass warned her against this too, but remained by her side to protect her still when she didn’t listen. Sure enough, she burns Cass’ arm.

The point above is made worse in the episode, Rapunzel: Day One, because then Raps decides to blame Cass for getting injured and draws her looking like a monster as if she herself has a right to be angry.  (In contrast, Raps is shown to feel some--at least buried--guilt based on the events in Rapunzeltopia, but she never acts on it in a positive or healthy way.)  She also gets mad at Cass for not talking about what happened despite the fact that sometimes people need space before they can, constantly pushing what she wants and thinks Cass needs over Cass’ own choices until she loses her memory later in the episode.  Cass didn’t talk because she was ready: Cass talked to Raps because she felt guilty.  And why would she feel like she can talk to Raps anyway if Raps practically ignores everything she says? 

“But if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it,  this all could have been avoided!  And I feel like we could work things out,  but she refuses to talk about it!  Wow. Ugh, I didn't mean to make her look that angry.”

Last point that connects to the one above as well, Rapunzel is then made a total hypocrite for trying to force Cass to talk when she also needs time to sort out her feelings over Cass’ betrayal at the start of Season Three and does her own thing despite Eugene trying to be there for her--listening to no one, getting herself in trouble, and forcing people to come to her rescue as always.  

One point that I want to make clear is that I’m not saying these are bad character choices for Rapunzel: She’s been locked in a tower all her life, so it’s not reasonable to expect her to have the best social skills.  She hasn’t had friends until this series beyond Pascal and Eugene, so she doesn’t know how to handle a lot of situations. However, it should also be recognized that her behavior is often selfish and reactionary, and she hardly gets anything more than a slap on the wrist whenever she has to face the consequences of her actions--rarely growing from them and repeating the same mistakes time and time again. (Granted, this can also be pinned on bad writing.) She often pushes her values onto the people around her as well--with good intentions, sure, but good intentions aren’t synonymous with good choices.  By doing this, she’d taken advantage of Cass’ friendship and dismissed all of the sacrifices Cass has made for her sake.

“But I’m not that naïve girl in the tower anymore.” “I can take care of myself.”

Yes you are and no you can’t, you dimwit. You’ve still got a lot to learn, so get off your high horse and actually listen to someone instead of running off to dance over a cliff and picking up dark magic you were already warned about several times over. 

All of this can also sum up a great deal of why Cass feels the way she does.  She absolutely has a reason to be angry, but she still tries to do right by Rapunzel by staying at her side and continuing to warn her no matter how often she’s dismissed.  At that point though, even if she wanted go, she can’t because of her duty. Because of the promise she made to the king to protect Raps and because that’ll be her job still as a member of the guard. She can’t let her feelings get in the way or everything she’s done to be a part of the guard would crumble--not to mention she’d be working for Raps after she took the crown, so she’s effectively stuck.

I want you to imagine this in a smaller, slice-of-life scenario: You’re in your group of friends, but they never listen to you.  Whatever you want to do is set aside and whatever you say is ignored.  When they need help you go to them, but they rarely, if ever, return the favor.  You’re expected to give things up for them, but not the other way around.  You’re trying to push them forward while their dismissal of your thoughts and feelings only seems to hold you back.

You can’t constantly treat someone so poorly without them eventually getting sick of it.  Cass had Rapunzel’s largely one-sided “friendship,” a scarred beyond repair limb, people mocking her, and a future that seemed to repeat more of the same with no one ever taking her side.  The issue with Gothel being Cass’ mother and leaving her wasn’t strictly the cause of Cass’ betrayal: It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

Now, Cass taking the Moonstone isn’t justified. Just because she’s been wronged doesn’t mean it’s ok for her to do the same and act reckless.  However, we can tell so far in Season Three that Cass and her emotions--pain, rage, and insecurity--are being manipulated.  She’s not outright malicious or evil as she doesn’t want to follow the “destiny” she’s been told to face by destroying Rapunzel, but now she thinks she’s got someone putting her first and giving her a chance to shine through the Enchanted Girl.  Maybe she even thinks that there’s no going back--the Moonstone does look like it’s now physically a part of her, again she’s being manipulated, and it would follow an arc similar to what Varian experienced.  

I’m not gonna make any guesses on if or how Cass could be redeemed: I just hope that, if she is, she’s not the only one apologizing like in Rapunzel: Day One. Cass’ actions are wrong, but there was a lot leading up to them.