#The only way this gets fixed is if more people create stuff about female chars and POC | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

felassan · 4 years

Text

Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

3K notes · View notes

ichigopanhpff · 5 years

Text

BNHA Fic: Blink! Ch. 9

Read Ch. 8 | Masterlist

SPOILER ALERT: Continuing with the Hassaikai Arc. From hereon, I’m basically inserting Ren into the story here. Out of the entire story, this area felt the most organic part in fitting my OC in.

Several days later, the interns were called to show up without their costumes. Kirishima and Ren headed out of the dormitory and saw Midoriya, Uraraka and Asui not too far behind them. They weren’t heading to Kansai today, rather just an hour away from U.A. to Sir Nighteye’s Agency. And by coincidence, their destination ended up being the same, with the Big Three greeting them all at the front door. The students entered the building and found themselves in a big room with Fat Gum, Ryuukyuu, Gran Torino, Aizawa-sensei and several other high classed heroes.

“What’s going on...” Midoriya uttered out and looked around in confusion.

Hadou greeted her mentor in the form of a running hug, asking why everyone was gathered here, to which she mention it’ll start soon with Nighteye taking charge. Ren’s chest got hot, her throat closed from the nervousness.

Sir Nighteye emerged, thanking everyone for showing up and supplying all the information they could and got down to business. Everyone took their designated seats in the meeting room. Ren was seated between Kirishima and Amajiki. Directly across from them were Nejire, Uraraka, Tsuyu, a few other pro heroes, Midoriya and Togata.

“I’ve called you all here to discuss the small organization known as the Shie Hassaikai,” he announced. “They seem to be plotting something and wanted to share with you all exactly what we know. Let’s go over everything step by step.”

Her eyes widened.

It’s been nearly eight years since she’s heard the name of that organization spoken.

Shie Hassaikai.

The Eight Precepts of Death.

Her breath hastened upon hearing the name as her heart pounding hard against her chest and pupils dilated in rage. Unconsciously balling up her hands into a tight fist, her mind wandered back to her past. The smell of their charred corpses lingered in her olfactory, the riddled white-hot pain singing all over her body. She wanted to vomit, her shallow breaths shaky.

Sensing her unease, Kirishima placed a gentle hand on her forearm, shocking her back. The look on her face was one of a horrible trauma, one that isn’t so easily erased by talking. Her breath hitched in her throat and stared into his concerned ruby red eyes.

“Ren-senpai...” he softly called. “Are you okay?”

Her elevated pulse seemed to have slowed itself upon the redhead calling out to her, bringing her mind back to the present.

“Y-yes...” she stammered out in a whisper and looked away, hugging herself. “I’m fine.”

Amajiki noticed his junior’s current state of mind bumped her other arm with his elbow. She met his gaze, only to see his bandaged upper arm from the shot he took last week. It was his way of reminding her whatever she was thinking, she needed to see the bigger picture and not pigeon-hole herself with her own issues.

Ren inhaled a big breath and exhaled to calm herself, clearing her mind of any unnecessary thoughts as the brief continued on with Bubble Girl explaining the origin of the investigation stemming from a band of thieves called Reservoir Dogs.

From there, Nighteye’s sidekick, Centipeder, took charge of the remaining information, where he divulged the leads he looked into found the organization had made contact with outsiders and dealers from the black market in order to secure funds for something. The lights dimmed as the projector came on, showing a photo of two people on screen; one of which was wearing a plague mask, the other an ordinary looking man by the name of Bubaigawara Jin whose villain alias was called Twice.

This man supposedly had connections with a group called the League of Villains.

The same group who were involved with the USJ and Kamino incidents.

And for some reason, they seem to be interested in class 1-A.

Gran Torino entered the discussion when the League was mentioned and directed his attention to Midoriya, warning him of being dragged into some possible nasty business with this case.

Continuing with the discussion, Nighteye’s female sidekick mentioned the reason they were here was due to them reaching out to the Hero Network for assistance. That’s when a pro hero by the name of Rocklock interrupted by sneering at the students being here, saying they would be in the way. Ren’s eyebrows immediately knitted together in annoyance, glaring at the arrogant hero across from her.

“What’re you glarin’ at, girl? You wanna have a go at me?”

Before she could respond, Fat Gum immediately intervened to deescalate the situation.

“These three here are super important participants to the plan!” he shouted.

“The Hassaikai was once suspected in dealing illegal drugs,” Nighteye butted in to bring the meeting back on track. “This is why I called in a hero who was familiar with this.”

From there, Fat Gum took to the conversation and explained what happened last week in Kansai, where Tamaki got shot with a drug that destroyed quirks. Togata quickly stood up from his seat.

“Are you gonna be okay, Tamaki?!” the tall blond boy asked with concern.

“Yeah… I’m back to normal after a night’s rest.” He proceeded to transform his arm into a cow’s hoof. “And I ate some good gyudon to recover. See?”

“So the kid got better? Then the stuff’s not permanent,” Rocklock commented.

“On that point, I turn to Eraser Head for that,” Nighteye answered.

“The drug seems to act differently from my quirk,” Aizawa explained. “My ability temporarily stops the quirk factors from activating rather than damaging it. What we call quirks are just special additions to our body, which are the Plus Alpha Elements; the quirk factors are everything included within that spectrum.”

“We ran Tamaki’s blood work at the hospital after the attack, the tests showed his quirk factors were damaged,” FatGum disclosed solemnly. “Luckily, his body’s natural healing was enough to fix the problem.”

“Are there any other leads with this?” one hero asked.

“Were the doctors able to analyze what he got shot with?” another added.

“Unfortunately, they found nothing. The shot itself only attacked his quirk. The gangster in question completely shut down and the gun was destroyed,” the big man replied. “All we had going for us was that one empty round. But...”

The burly hero turned to Kirishima’s look of concern.

“The vial that bounced off of Kirishima’s body was fully intact and we were able to get a full analysis from it!”

“Whoa! From me?!” the redhead exclaimed, still trying to figure out what everyone was talking about, earning praises from the girls sitting across from him.

Fat Gum’s expression soon turned dark.

“The contents we found from the substance… revealed human cells and blood.”

The whole room fell into a state of small panic. The look on Midoriya and Togata was washed with a heavy sense of regret and shock, knowing more to Fat Gum’s statement.

“So the effect is from someone’s quirk who can destroy quirks… How terrifying,” Ryuukyuu noted with worry.

“I’m sorry but… how does this substance connect the Hassaikai to this?” one hero asked.

Fat Gum summarized the chain of command for drug distribution based off of his expertise in the field. Within those links, he revealed Hassaikai made a business transaction with one of the middlemen within the web. Nighteye also added Ryuukyuu’s recent run-in with one of the middlemen, where they had to fight off a villain who gave himself the quirk booster for his gigantification.

“This seems to be a bit of a reach, isn’t it?” one hero spoke up. “It all sounds too coincidental. Are you sure you’re not organizing this just so you wanna see it that way?”

The image on the projector over Nighteye’s head switched to a clearer photo of a man’s side profile with a plague mask on his face. Ren stared intently at it, burning the image into her head.

Short, unruly black hair…

Cold, piercing eyes that cared only about destruction…

She unconsciously reached up and gripped her left shoulder, gritting her teeth.

“Their young leader is Chisaki Kai. His quirk is called Overhaul, an ability to destroy and then heal. Then we have bullets that destroys quirks.”

As Nighteye continued the discussion, Ren noticed the facial expressions on both Mirio and Midoriya. It was the same as hers from that night: that look of discerning fear and hopelessness knowing they could’ve done more.

It was the look of one who caught a glimpse of hell.

“In our investigations, we also turned up Chisaki has a daughter who has no birth record, so the details are unclear there,” Nighteye declared. “When Midoriya and Togata encountered her, she was covered in an excessive amount of bandages.”

That’s when they put two and two together: There’s reason to believe Chisaki is using the girl’s body to create quirk-erasing bullets and selling them in the black market.

“Now, we’re not sure if he’s selling yet,” the tall and slender man reiterated. “But I assume this is a testing phase given how short the drug’s effect was. If he’s simply handing out samples in order to gain followers, we’ll need more proof despite knowing he’s bringing people in from all over the world to get funding. What if the final version of this bullet achieves the ability to permanently erase quirks?”

And outcry of Chisaki’s motives and actions rung across the conference room.

“So had your kids rescued the girl, this issue would’ve been solved?” Hardlock scoffed.

“I take full responsibility in that matter. Don’t blame them,” Nighteye firmly stated and placed a hand on his chest. “They didn’t know the extent of the circumstances. These two did their best to save her. Out of all of us, they’re hurting the most.”

Both the boys suddenly stood up, promptly knocking over the chairs they were sitting in.

“Next time...” Midoriya began with gritted teeth.

“We’ll definitely save her!” Togata shouted with a clenched fist.

“And that… is our goal,” Nighteye finalized.

“That’s great and all, but do you really think he’d hide the girl at the headquarters? If it were me, I wouldn’t,” Rocklock pointed out. “Seeing how these brats already spotted the girl, we’ve already lost the element of surprise. And even if we do attack and she’s no longer there, how will we know where she is?”

“He brings up a lot of good points, Nighteye,” Ryuukyuu replied and turned to the spectacled man. “What do you think?”

“That’s exactly the problem: we don’t know how far Chisaki’s planned ahead. If we don’t deal with it in one blow, they’ll have a chance to counter us.”

The overhead projector image then changed to the map of Japan with a series of dots cascaded all over the country.

“Which is why we’ve looked into all the groups and organizations who have had ties to the Hassaikai and the locations where they have control,” Nighteye elaborated. “No stone was left unturned when making this list. We’d like everyone here to assist in searching each of these locations.”

“That’s how us minor heroes can help…” one voiced out in understanding.

“Why are we goin’ about this the long way?! You were All-Might’s sidekick, weren’t you?!” Fat Gum immediately erupted with a surge of anger. “While we’re doin’ this, that poor girl’s out there crying by herself!”

“We have to play it smart,” Gran Torino interjected to mediate. “If we rush now and screw up, it’ll end up fanning the flames. Look at how Stain’s arrest was used by the League of Villains to boost their popularity. With a quirk-destroying weapon in play, their possible motives may have the same effect.”

All the heroes soon got into a frenzy of arguments in regards to the best way to go about the mission until Eraser Head raised his hand to ask a question regarding Nighteye’s ability to see into the future and requested him to use it as a possible way to find a solution. The tall and slender man tilted his head down and answered, “I… can’t do that.”

He proceeded to explain his quirk, Foresight and its limitations. When Eraser Head still couldn’t understand why, Nighteye gave a grave example.

“What could I do if a merciless death awaited in the future of the person I saw?”

The commotion in the room died down as quickly as it came.

“My ability should be used as insurance when there’s so many uncertain pieces in play.”

“Even if you foresee a death, you can still put a plan together to avoid it right?!” Rocklock shouted.

“It’s not like a fortune you read. And there’s no proof to show you can avoid the outcome,” he wearily replied.

No matter how many times Rocklock tried to reassure Nighteye, he broke down and simply uttered an, “I can’t.”

“Can’t you see he’s uncomfortable with using it?” Ren rudely blurted out under her breath and crossed her arm, annoyed at the tall man’s incessant prodding. “Read the mood.”

“I don’t remember askin’ your opinion, little girl,” he chided, earning him a death glare from her direction.

“The name’s Blink, you worthless lock-headed imbecile!” she barked, ready to shift over to his side of the room to punch his lights out. Suneater held her back by her shoulder, knowing how she could get when her emotions ran high.

“Have you even said anything useful during this meeting? Nighteye’s agency’s been the one doing all the leg work and you sit there all high and mighty complaining about how he won’t use his quirk on you? Get over it! You’re a pro right? Then act like one!”

Taken aback by her sudden outburst, the heroes shifted in their seats uncomfortably.

Rocklock turned his attention to the portly hero and barked, “Fat Gum, you gonna let her say those disrespectful things?”

“Hey, asshole. I’m over here,” she growled out in English, her anger no longer veiled. “You want respect from me? Fucking earn it, bitch.”

“Blink, that’s enough,” Fat Gum harshly warned, getting the gist of what she said based on tone, despite not fully understanding. “You’re an asset to this mission and I really don’t want to kick you out.”

She let out a hard breath and leaned back in her seat again with a loud clatter, turning away from the table. An awkward silence followed her outburst.

“Let’s… just proceed with the plan as is.” Ryuukyuu changed the topic to move the conversation along. “Don’t forget, there’s a young girl in trouble here.”

Nighteye jolted up from his seat and slammed his palms on the table, as if to rid himself of his emotions he momentarily laid bare from before.

“Our goal is to resolve the situation as quickly and effectively as possible. Locate the girl and secure her rescue.”

After thanking everyone for their future cooperation, the U.A. students filed out first to get some air while the pro heroes were filled in with the specifics of the mission.

“Ren-senpai,” Kirishima called. “I have to admit, I was really angry with what Lockshock was sayin’ ‘bout us. But you were the one who spoke up for us, so… thanks.”

“It needed to be said,” she replied bluntly. “He was pissing me off.”

“Sure that was the only reason?” Amajiki questioned, earning him an annoyed look from her.

The eight sat down at a table in the lobby with feeble attempts to relax. Out of everyone in the meeting, Midoriya and Togata were the most emotionally affected.

“What exactly happened when you guys were patrolling?” Ren summoned up the courage to ask, the look of extreme frustration gracing both their faces.

Both boys took turns telling their side of the story when they ran into Overhaul with the little girl named Eri. She still couldn’t believe her ears: a cold-hearted monster like him produced an offspring?!

It was unthinkable.

At that moment, Ren may have been a little selfish for a fleeting thought: What would she have done were she in their stead?

Would she have been able to control herself in not ripping his throat apart?

Would she have gone after the child too?

The latter thought made her sick to her stomach.

She’d be no better than him if she killed a child for her own sense of justice!

Both her and Amajiki looked at Mirio, realizing this was the first time he’s ever been this down before.

“Mirio-senpai…” Her voice shook with a mixture of anger and rage, lulling him back to the group. “Chisaki… Was it really him?”

Already knowing where the conversation was going, he looked up and faced her with a concerned expression.

“Ren-chan…” he began in his deep voice. “You should remove yourself from this case.”

“That’s not your call,” she coldly responded.

“You’ll act irrationally,” Amajiki predicted. “Given your ties to this.”

“W-wait, wait,” Uraraka interjected with a tone of confusion. “What’s going on? Why should Ren-senpai not be apart of this?”

The Big Three looked away with hesitation and clammed their lips shut. It’s not that they didn’t want to say; it wasn’t their place to. Ren let a heavy breath through her nose, the word vomit burning to come out at the base of her throat.

“Chisaki killed my dad and brother when I was eight… while I was living in California.”

The four first year’s breaths audibly hitched upon hearing those words slip out, their eyes widened in shock and sadness. Before she can say any more, the elevator dinged and out emerged Eraser Head.

“What’s wrong? You look like you’re holding a wake,” he casually remarked while walking over. The students greeted their teacher, to which he reminded them to call him by his hero name when they’re out in public.

“How did the debrief go?” Ren suddenly asked, in hopes of changing the topic.

“Well, I originally planned to suspend all of your internships today…” the ebony haired man started, only to be interrupted by Kirishima’s protest. “Since the League of Villains may be involved, that changes things. But y’know, Midoriya…”

He then turned his attention to the viridian haired boy.

“You haven’t regained my trust yet and you got into that fight,” he bluntly stated. “I have every reason to believe if I stopped you right now, you’d jump into this anyway.”

Eraser Head squatted down to meet Midoriya face-to-face, his stern expression unchanging.

“I’m watching you. We’re going by formal procedures this time if you act out again. Got it, problem child?”

Both Amajiki and Hadou comforted Togata while he was still moping, with the latter person reminding him there’s nothing he can do about his feelings of regret, to which the blond boy sniffled and gave a strong affirmation.

“Let me tell you something. That hand of yours… I bet she felt something other than despair when you reached out,” Eraser Head encouraged. “So keep looking forward.”

5 notes · View notes

republictrooper · 5 years

Text

Because I feel like I want to get my thoughts down some place where I can kind of let it all flow, here’s where I am on what I thought of the keynote, specially why it lowered my hype overall:

GENDERLOCKED RACES

-The Genderlocked races thing speaks to toxic attitudes about gender that we, as a people, should have gotten over long ago, specifically about how so much of gender is wrapped up in wrongheaded views and fantasies of the cis hetereosexual men who still hold most of the power in most modern societies.

-Viera being kept as woman-only seems to be both a clear concession to male sexuality (Viera racial gear is clearly made with a straight male sexual gaze in mind, and Viera women are designed with supermodel bodies that appeal to a large section of stereotypical straight males) with a slight nod to gender roles (making male Viera who shared the female viera perchant for skimpy clothes and lithe sinuous bodies would make homophobic straight men uncomfortable).

-Hrothgar very clearly fulfill stereotypical straight cismale fantasies of being big buff powerlifter types. Strength and power over any other type of depiction of men.

-Hrothgar are also suspiciously underdeveloped compared to Viera. No examples in the trailer, and their models in their preview video are very obviously not created with the same care and attention to detail as the Viera examples we’ve seen, say, in the dancer reveal video. I’m not saying the Devs chickened out on male Viera and threw together Hrothgar as a very weird peace offering/attempt to deflect criticism at the last minute, but also, very obviously putting more work and care into the fetishy male-gaze lady-only race is a little much, don’t you think?

-The lore excuse holds no water. If the lore excuse was valid, we would have no playable WHMs (because the elementals only allow a small handful of people to become WHMs, and then mostly only Padjali), no playable BLMs (because BLMs are outlawed with extreme prejudice due to their affects on the land’s aether), no playable male miqote (because lore-wise, they are born at exponentially lower birth rates than miqote women), and no playable viera at all (because lore-wise, they never leave their forests other than a small handful of rebels and misfits. certainly not in large enough numbers to justify the thousands of lady viera that will be seen on the streets of our major hub cities soon enough). I could probably go on, but I’ll stop there. Point is, lore hasn’t stopped the dev team before, and even if the lore was rock solid here... Yoshi is the head designer. He could change it.

-The “We didn’t have time for both genders for both races” explanation doesn’t sit right with me either. It’s kind of like how in Dragon Age/Mass Effect we constantly learn that they were planning to add more gay/male-on-male romances but ran out of time. Even if that is true, what you chose to cut first says something about your values and priorities. IE, if you chose to cut a queer romance instead of a het romance, it says you got some heteronormativity issues at the least. And if, when faced with the inability to complete two new races, you keep both races, but cut the genders that least conform to standard modern gender roles instead of completing one race and cutting or delaying the other, it says you still have some pretty messed up views about gender. I would have much rather seen them cut one race and make two genders for the other, and it would make more sense to do so absent the gender issues obviously on display.

-They have already made this mistake in the past. Multiple races were genderlocked in 1.0, and they deliberately fixed that in 2.0. It was clearly a mistake. Returning to that same mistake now is a clear backslide.

LACK OF THE HEALER CLASS

Listen, the idea of a Dancer Class at its base isn’t bad. I love the idea. I like capping all battle classes on my main, so I will play Dancer, and probably cap it before multiple other classes.

However, I am a main healer at heart. Scholar is the first class I level in new expansions, and the class I take to do new content 9 out of 10 times.

I love Scholar. Even if there was a new healer class, chances are I would still level Scholar first.

But sometimes I get tired of Scholar and I want a little variety. But I’ve played WHM and AST a lot already. What if I want to explore another possibility? It is now very possible that I will not have that chance for over 6 years.

When I get tired of my main classes in other roles, I have options.

If I get tired of my BRD (main DPS class), I can switch over to NIN for a while, and in the most recent expansion, I had RDM and SAM to offer new ways to experience the role.

If I get tired of my WAR (main Tank class), well, I WAS in the same boat as healer, but at least I get Gunbreaker this expansion, so that drought is SOMEWHAT broken.

Listen, I understand that healers are technically a little more common than tanks judging by queue time, and most people play DPS, so you feel like you’d rather just pad out either the stuff that needs the most new players or the stuff most people play anyway, but that doesn’t make it any nicer for healers to be the neglected middle child.

Given that I already had to stop playing Overwatch because they neglected their healer chars, I’d rather not one of my other beloved games do the same. It’s also kind of disconcerting that at the same keynote we learn FFXIV made some very weird male-focused genderlock choices, they also indirectly implied that the MMO role most commonly associated with women will have a lack of classes for at likely least 5 years in a row.

I mean, I can keep my fingers crossed for a surprised reveal of a chemist or geomancer in a patch class, but at this point that is wishful thinking. We healers deserve some indication that the dev team hears us and wants us to feel wanted and appreciated as players.

FAT MIQOTE.

I’m fat. I will probably always be fat. Call it genetics, call it social pressure, call it whatever you want, but the reasons for being fat are as many and varied as there are fat people. It is not simple for most of us to become not-fat, and we deserve care and consideration as human beings regardless of our body size, body type, or whether we are trying or even planning/wanting to become non-fat or not.

And yet, in popular culture, again and again, fat people are almost universally presented as little more than dopes or comic relief at best, and usually as gluttons and bad people. Fat people are often, or even usually bad, evil people who’s body size is either a punishment or an indication of a corrupt, greedy person who consumes and takes. Even good fat people are often small-minded and weak gluttons who talk of nothing but food, are picked on or made the butt of jokes because of their size, never get a spotlight or even a break, and are often shown as gluttonous to the point of actively endangering themselves and others in pursuit of more food.

That is not who we are. Fat people are fat for a variety of reasons. Fat people can be healthy or unhealthy. Fat people can be good or evil. And yet we always fall within a few negative stereotypes in fiction. And now FFXIV is carrying those forward, front and center on the main advertising for their new expansion.

And like, If devs don’t want to allocate resources to creating fat models for player races because of animation concerns or whatever, that’s one thing. It’s still speaks to your priorities that you think fat people aren’t worth animating, but at least we have some sort of explanation.

But the fact that the only time fat people get paraded out is as shorthand for greed and corruption is demoralizing at best, and speaks to a lack of understanding and compassion.

Fat people deserve to see heroic fat people. They deserve to see brave fat people. They deserve to see kind fat people. They deserve to see fat people of all walks of life, not just corrupt villains and lazy comic relief. I hope at the very least FFXIV’s devs realize this and give us fat people populating other villages and cities, being as visible and varied as thin people.

IN CONCLUSION, I FEEL KINDA BAD, SORRY

Anyway, I still plan to play Shadowbringers. There’s still a lot about FFXIV I love. But I feel like the dev team made a lot of really bad missteps and unforced errors at last night’s keynote, and I hope they realize that and strive to do better and fix those errors in upcoming live letters and patches.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #shadowbringers #viera #hrothgar #ffxiv critical #fatphobia #spoilers

12 notes · View notes

misterbitches · 4 years

Text

unpop opinionz abt bl or just my opinions. that may or may not be popular. stream of consci. no one has to care or read. i will do this whenever i like or when i am drunk and/ or high. like now. i do tharntype + sotus, uwma, lbc, and MODC...and long ass writing and spoilers so if u stumble it aint my problem

tharntype:

some user on here blocked me cos i said rape is bad*. and it is. and it’s stupid. and not done right it has no place in these writers, who really cannot write, or producers hands. it’s easy for people to judge it because it allows itself to be judged. and bl doesn’t fix its own issues. it just keeps perpetuating. when you gain an ounce of respect for women mayhaps that will change and we fuck up all that misogynist shit in our brains (FREE YR MIND)

but anyways i skipped til like ep 6. i barely know what the storyline is and id ont care. it isnt that interesting. they’re not great actors but i like the look of that bigger one. together their chemistry is fun i wouldn’t say like....as deep as i would like but watching them is nice

(this is where the wife/husband thing is relevant. i watched 6 - 13 a lot. so the father saying “as long as you’re not the wife i’m ok with ur HOMOSEXUAL rship then” but it turns out his son was the “wife” and guess what? that’s gross. if you can’t write female characters then leave us out of it.)

anyway i can see why people didn’t watch it. i say skip everything and see how they are together. the skinnier one is not as good w like idk. being seductive? but he’s fun to watch lol. together they are nice. i really enjoyed watching their dynamic.

some of the kissing was a lot but not in a bad way. i think if they had a deeper connection i would feel it more. but i saw gifs of them and piqued my interest and i clicked(footnote 2)

the actors as themselves and whatever their rship is fun to watch..i read some UNSAVORY things about one of the actors with another dude in another show but whatever.

hm what else....yea the show is ok. theyre not great actors. cute together. sometimes when they kiss there was way too much like breathing jesus christ shut up. they totally could have done some inverted tropes but they didnt bc why would they.

a...c? c-? i give it? maybe that. people who had some criticism for it were right (like me :P) idk why i got BLOCKED cos i was JUST SAYING. rape in a story for no reason or as a startoff for lust is ridiculous. disgusting. i wont ever shut up about it. it helps no one and doesn’t help the gay community (can go down a rabbit hole here, too)

C- (this is generous but D+ seemed kinda mean...)

sotus + sequel:

idk why but i’ve seen some things flaoting around about the light guy. idk if they are true or not. i did not like that. i saw this before i read those tho (abt him not being comfortable)

this is what im talking abt...and this is where gmmtv will fail. but most bls. they’re CLEARLY worth something. they make money. the actors are a draw for others. i am not a thai citizen nor a thai teen so but i am assuming many get popular. this is because there’s a formula that is almost always stuck to. i am guessing that the channel is a public broadcast (not an HBO type) so there has to be more censorship

i LOVE seeing what countries with less production $ or a more current industry, (like in SEA tho ppl hav ebeen making revolutionary art foreverrrrrr don tforget there’s more than dramas) create. there’s less money and stuff and maybe the editing isnt good or a certain way the drama is shown is very particular and not always appealing. i am nigerian, i respect that shit. nollywood is that shit too.

and as people ge tmore $ for prods or more public support they get better (i cannot emphasize how MUCH BETTER SOUND HAS GOTTEN FOR THAI SHOWS OMG dramas in general but)

so sotus kind of suffers from lower prod quality. but also the acting is bad. sorry it is. i like the darker guy (sorry im too lazy to google names but...singto? right? hes a good photographer) and he has gotten better or wil get better i think but. yea. terrible acting lol

also like...u can tell that other dude wasn’t totally comfortable or they just didnt know each other enough. i don’t know. it was very much two guys standing next to each other now like kiss once. the reluctance to show like affection even in private settings is BONKERS TO ME. literally it’s like these men have the most sterile rships and that is suchhhh an issue in BLs, particularly the thai i guess.

tbh if the storyline was better and if they had more chemistry it would be better to me. i know ppl love it, i dont really get it lol...their kisses r ok...idk it’s like a waste of time. i’ve tried watching it like 1000000 times

thats all i have for now

*im oversimplfying. i think it was bc ppl were being harsh. but any excucses people want to use the fact is that....rape bad and that’s stupid ok. but it sucks cos i wanna rt their gifs sometimes but nope lMAO

i know im not wrong so...

lbc, uwma, modc:

I LITERALLY CANNOT WATCH THESE ACTORS. I’M SORRY I CANNOT. THEIR FACES MAKE ME FURIOUS OR THEIR ACTING. I DONT KNOW WHY. i am shocked i dont totally hate saint bc i abhorred the character in LBC and like. every ounce of it. i dont rly like taht small dude from uwma (the past s/l?) i just cant w his face, and modc...omfg....the guy was so fucking SICK LOOKING

this is where footnote 2 comes in: if i cannot handle ur fucking face i will hate the drama. the secondary char in tharntype like the highschooler? oh my god i wanted to die too but like. shit. i wouulda watched for teamwin but that was barely there. and i could not get through modc. the couple with the age gap is gross, and i lit cannt look at this hot-ass big guy making out with a stick that dies

i cant be the only one. i didn’t like uwma dude’s face in the other drama he was in either. i like him as a person. maybe if i could see him do something else. ...

oh this is also why the first 2 moons....i hated...pha’s....whole.....existence. his face, his attitude, fuck. maybe it’s the playing up the femininity part of someone but then having them being a fuckin doormat. sad cos in lbc and modc the main love interests i like. but they’re also stupid. and just. god. stupid fuckin rships.

too much emphasis is put on love as The Thing but they can’t even exhibit love the way they should. idk what im SAYING IT’S JUST WORDS

had sth else to jot down but i forgot i may update this and remind meself

#thots #my thot #a thot #idk if it counts as 'a thot' bc that tag is for INTELLECTUAL AMBIEN NONSENSE

0 notes