#but most units can be used on hard and the royals specifically are mostly still GOOD on hard

[my-current-obsession]

I see a lot of people saying that the royals (mostly Alfred, but I’ve seen a fair bit of complaining about all the others too) are statistically bad in Engage. I have to wonder, what difficulty is this based off of? On my Hard playthrough most of the royals were my best units, and Alfred in particular was amazing. Ivy and Celine were probably the weakest two - Ivy due to being a bit slow and having AWFUL dex and luck, and Celine just lacking power due to splitting her attention between strength and magic.

Is it just Maddening that they’re specifically bad for? I have not (and will not) played that mode in any FE but my impression is very much that Maddening mode is a different experience and you’re basically forced to play a certain way to win. That’s probably even more true here since fixed growths are in play, so you can’t count on RNG to give you good units. You have to find the ones that the game wants you to use, and stick with them.

For me, one of the biggest joys of FE has always been the RNG of it all - I love the random growths meaning different characters shine (and suck) each run, which encourages you to give different units a try. I love that, at least on Normal and Hard, you have enough breathing room to basically play how you want - favor the units of your choice, reclass whoever into whichever classes you fancy, etc - and doing so MIGHT make your life harder but probably won’t doom your entire run. The versatility and random nature of your units growths makes strategy & combat in this game infinitely more appealing and adds to its replayability.

Like I LOVE Persona games and Stella Glow (which gameplay wise is fairly similar to FE) but in those games the characters are what they are, and the stats on level-up are set in stone. Once you’ve done ONE run and know what works, Complacent Gaming kicks in and you repeat the exact same steps in future runs. In FE even if you use the same characters in the same classes, their performance WILL vary based on how blessed or cursed the RNG has been for them.

If Maddening IS as difficult and particular as I’m assuming, and basically every unit’s viability is determined from the moment you get them and you HAVE to play a specific way to win... is it really right to judge units based on that specific difficulty? Like, sure, so-and-so SUCKS on Maddening, but so does EVERYONE except this specific handful of units and if you use anyone else you’re just hurting yourself.

I feel like we should be judging characters based off a difficulty where everyone is at least VIABLE from the beginning, but judging how likely they are to REMAIN that way based on their growths/classes/personal skills/etc.

To put it another way, what would a tier list of a Maddening run look like? My impression is that it has two, maybe 3 categories of who you can actually use, who gets benched immediately, and MAYBE a middle category of who exists to fill a spot on the team and take a few hits/deal a smidge of damage for just a little while until someone better comes along to replace them. Meanwhile on Normal and Hard you can have a full spectrum of who on average is statistically the best through the worst, with everything in between. And considering several “unusable” units on Maddening are at least GOOD or even better on a normal or hard run, can you really call them bad? At the very least CLARIFY you mean they’re bad on Maddening specifically instead of in general.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe17 #happy for all the people who love maddening mode out there but it's Not For Me #for one i am a casual gamer that doesn't hate myself. I want a challenge but not TOO MUCH #(this is the same reason i don't fight superbosses in KH games. it's equivalent to smashing my head repeatedly against a brick wall IMO) #and if i'm right about how maddening works it also sounds like it takes the most fun aspect of FE out of it for me #since i'd be railroaded into using specific characters and strats instead of being able to play however i want with whoever i want #basically i want people to clarify if they mean maddening mode specifically when they call units awful #because i'm not bothered at all by people saying ANYONE is bad on maddening. i believe you i guess. i also don't care. #maddening plays by a distinctly different set of rules so i barely think of it as the same game #any FE veteran would tell you not to waste EXP on your pre-promote in the beginning #yet awakening lunatic is affectionately called Frederick Emblem so... i've learned to think of that difficulty as its own entity #but most units can be used on hard and the royals specifically are mostly still GOOD on hard #if i had polls i might not have made this post at all btw. because really what i want to know COULD be condensed into poll questions #what difficulty do you prefer/think is default/judge characters by & were the royals GOOD units for you? #anyway my second (hard) run is underway and alfred CONTINUES to be a great unit for me #about to go into chapter 10-11 and alcryst and diamant are doing great so far too #celine however is struggling. she is REALLY hurt by trying to be physical AND magical. she ends up middling in both #she might end up outright benched in this run

[thethrillof]

Hollow Knight time travel AU except characters go into the future instead of the past?

oh no.

(this bounced between headcanon and funky plot summary, as these things tend 2 do for me......)

let’s handwave this as an extremely mcfucked up experiment with soul and void with the pale royals trying to look into the most likely (and, they hoped, best) future way too hard.

everyone pretends not to panic while noticing everyone is panicking from the instant they notice what’s around them. they start from the white palace being gone to the void being uncomfortably barely-contained to, ofc, the entire dead hallownest thing. they try so badly to reason with the shambling infected guards and rich bugs they find once they get to the city, even though they know it probably won’t work...and then the white lady and the pale king absolutely blast those infected into ashes. for safety! and, to everyone else who were dragged along for the ride, exceptional trauma and grief that both are not letting themselves process.

lurien and monomon and the great knights, including hollow are probably there...

...but it’s too early for herrah, who has agreed and has placed her terms but hasn’t finished the deal completely.

this is a blow to hornet--who definitely noticed the terrifying white light that flashed through half the damn kingdom--and she is...not quite as helpful as she could be beyond tersely explaining the situation once she investigates. just there and gone again, watching as she did the little ghost from her webs above to see what happens. in particular, if the pale king fails and flees again.

“the situation” is solely the infection, the pure vessel’s failure, and everybody’s deaths. she does not explain much about herself and absolutely nothing about the fact that other vessels exist and there’s a strong one running around right now.

the pale king takes the hollow knight not being hollow badly, of course. because it’s terrible, the plan failed, and...he knew, on some level, but had been so deep in desperate denial and arrogance that he didn’t allow himself to think it through. tries to interrogate them but it goes nowhere b/c they’ve been acting hollow for so long they don’t know how to just stop--

--and they’re also horribly wrecked by the knowledge they failed and getting to see the ruins of the kingdom they were meant to protect before seeing the kingdom as it was living. they never left the white palace before, and would not gain the full knowledge of it until they were sealed within the Egg with the World Sense as a final gift. so for a long time they’re barely listening to more than the most direct orders, like “look at us” and things like that.

lurien wants to lock himself in his tower; monomon wants to go to the archives; neither of them do this because it is terribly dangerous to split up. this ratchets the tension up further. there is a lot of bickering that, again, everyone pretends is not bickering and is just discussion, because they are all too dignified and have more important things to be paying attention to for something so petty.

this doesn’t last, of course. they are reasonable enough not to storm off into the helltrap the caverns are, but everyone just gets fucking angry and starts flinging accusations at each other. and hollow. not the pale king because he’s the pale king and creator, and not the white lady because she is the queen and powerful, but quite frankly they’re both accusing themselves internally and every word flung at hollow is the same to the pale king as at himself.

dryya is defending the white lady as doubting the whole plan without quite saying so directly. ze’mer is incredibly loud and goes so far into her own language that nobody really knows what she’s saying. hegemol wants to go patrol the city and keeps nearly going off on his own anyway. ogrim and isma try to settle them down and fail.

(above, hornet is suddenly far less shocked in hindsight about everything going to shit for the kingdom. her childhood memories were maybe too steeped in nostalgia when she allowed herself to consider them.)

they do end up in the Watcher’s Tower just to get a better look in the city after all the arguing burns out for a bit (and calls infected their way). lurien suddenly doesn’t want to stay there anyway, since it’s wrecked and there are bodies of his loyal servants and also possibly his own self, dreaming. nobody learns anything of value and everyone just gets more upset! just what they all need amirite

the pale king decides the thing to do is to go to the temple of the black egg for a direct investigation. sort of in denial but mostly just floundering. the white palace is gone and so is his workshop. he knows only he could have done that. everything he ever built is gone, in fact. it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, he’s latching onto something.

the theme of “everyone knows something is wrong but won’t directly call it out” continues! nobody else really has better to do. monomon is the most optimistic and tries to think of this as a chance to study the infection further, which she says aloud. she sees this as a chance to study the hollow knight as well, which she does not.

it’s not that hard to get through hallownest, all things considered. this seems like a good thing until the realization sets in: it’s only easy-ish (for these gods and knights) because most of the worst of it has passed. most of the potential threats died a long time ago.

quirrel! quirrel quirrel quirrel. he shows up at some point and it’s definitely freaky because he knows monomon but doesn’t, and this is somewhat stressful. on the flipside his lack of memory and having her mask unsettles everyone but her greatly. 

he doesn’t come with them. instead, he wrangles a promise from monomon and the rest to meet him at the archives (once they talk a bit and he remembers where they are) later to talk things through properly. he’ll see the kingdom as it is before discussing memories of how it once was.

the little knight gets a heads-up from hornet when she sees them nearly crossing the path of the pale court’s remains. she warns them away, specifically, but it’s their choice, and they choose to go look at them. they’re not at the level of knowledge yet to fully understand the significance, only that there’s a bunch of non-infected and hornet not challenging them to battle, but speaking to them? warning them? must be a huge deal.

can’t say all hell breaks loose once they show up. really, everyone freezes. more guilt for the royals! various degrees of dawning horror for the rest. 

hollow finally reacts, if only to step closer. they remember the little knight. oh, they remember.

the little knight does not remember them, but it doesn’t matter. familiar enough. and some answers, potentially, if they stick together now. so that’s what they do--once everyone starts moving again, the knight is there too, though they go off to wander fairly often.

the egg reveals nothing. watching the vessel reveals what they should have known already--impurity, or rather, that they are people. 

they end up in dirtmouth, where people still live, and try to plan further there. 

the knight basically abducts hollow to explore the kingdom with them anyway, after that takes a while. waiting is not giving them answers and hollow will listen to them as long as they aren’t given contradicting orders, and the pale king is suddenly unable to do that! 

hollow gets to learn to be a person, in their own little ways. it’s not easy, but being away from the rest and with a vessel that expresses themselves in minor-but-genuine gestures helps immensely. 

hornet shows up also for Sibling Bonding even if is not intentional on her part.

the future white lady is visited, eventually, and that goes rough. she’s glad to see the pale king and the rest, sure, but she can do little to help. it’s disturbing for everyone else to see how she’s bound herself, and dryya is extremely messed up by the fact she is dead and the white lady was unaware.

monomon and quirrel run the archives, sort of. quirrel tends to disappear for a while. monomon insists she’s fine with it. she’s not, but she’s certainly not going to discourage or stop him.

for the travelers, there’s no way home. the white palace’s tools are too important. all they can do is...rip their way into the Black Egg and end the Radiance. the pale king takes this upon himself, once this is apparent.

and once he bonds (barely) with the little knight, anyway, and they let him know about the dream nail. this takes a while, but not that long. the hollow knight of now still exists, and suffers, and they can be united in hating that if nothing else. 

they take her down together. 

the void drags them down together.

the pale king’s light and the knight’s power over void is enough to drag them back. the little knight, the king, the hollow knight of now and the not-pure vessel of then, and...

...there’s no running away. nothing else left to do. the kingdom is still dead, if not still rotting.

calling them a family is definitely incorrect! but all of them end up with a bond, and mostly choose to stay in dirtmouth, retrieving helpful things that still exist in hallownest and planning improvements to make it a better, bigger place to live. a good town, if nowhere near a kingdom. that’s for the best.

#vivifrage

[impossiblesuitcase]

The official time in which Kai was kidnapped aboard the Rampion was short lived.

Really from retrospect, one would assume the most significant revelation would’ve been the identity of a certain missing princess, or the ambitious plan to usurp a queen.

Interestingly, the most notable takeaway from the experience was Kai’s lack of life skills. So the dust settles on the Lunar revolution; weddings come and go, the world is explored, a queen abdicates and an empress is sworn in. But of more supposedly more importance is the mission to teach Kai any and all life skills deemed necessary.

Thus ‘The official and completely authentic list of life skills as directed by the Rampion Crew for his Majesty, Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth, aka our pal Kai’ is born.

Iko sticks with the lengthy name despite Cinder calling it at best superfluous. The unofficial title of the official title replaces Kai’s name with “Cinder's trophy husband”, which earned Thorne a jab to the side from the cyborg in question.

Most of Winter’s additions are charming but unachievable, such as her advice to dance through the streets of New Beijing on horseback, whilst wearing matching outfits with said horse. Kai declines for the most part but does fulfil the smaller task of wearing matching face paint with someone; he and Cinder don cheek marks on one of their ventures out, even to Cinder’s embarrassment.

Some question the reliability of the bioelectrical lock based on Winter’s eccentricities, but those who know her realise that her quirks are simply Winter being Winter.

While in her satellite, Cress curated lists and lists of things she wanted to try on earth and gives these ideas to Kai. Being incredibly sheltered, a lot of her ideas are ones that Kai has already completed over his life, but he does his best to recreate some of them.

Even with Kai’s meticulously planned diet and nutritionist, Cress's workout regimes are useful. Kai makes an effort to add some of the stretches into his morning routine, even encouraging Cinder to join in (“Your foot can’t be asleep, that’s impossible, it’s metal.” “If it could let me stay in bed for another twenty minutes instead of going to a press conference, I can make it whatever I want”). Cress also recommends that Kai learn ethical hacking, but he takes one look at her coding and variables and assures her that if ever a situation should arise, “I’d entrust hacking to you over myself any day.”

Thorne’s contributions are ignored by everyone but still added to the list by Iko. They consist of everything from “Scale a mountain and plant a flag of your face at the top” to “Transfer 100,000 units to Carswell Thorne.” However, building up flight training is one of his milder and more reasonable suggestions, so Kai takes some time to learn the basics in case of emergency. Kai does not seek his guidance from Thorne himself.

Cress, ever the romantic, finds Thorne's ideas endearing, no matter how bombastic and preposterous they are. One of his more creative schemes is for Kai to build an island right off Jeju where Cyborgs can vacation. It is (unsurprisingly) rejected, but one day Thorne boards the Rampion to find a diorama of the island, complete with sustainable popsicle stick Cinder, Scarlet and Thorne. Thorne scooped Cress into his arms and declared that she can be the honorary non-cyborg invited to the island.

Jacin has no time for Thorne’s or even his beloved Winter’s nonsensical suggestions, and bluntly adds: ‘learn first aid.’ Kai takes this seriously, until Jacin is teaching him a specific technique and mentions “this is what I used to save Cinder when she stopped breathing.” Kai hadn't known that particular detail, and has to take a small anxiety break before resuming the instruction.

Scarlet is better than all of them, honestly when it comes to practicality. Basic dishes and chores are her additions, and Kai completes them, even with some blundering. His palace staff protest the emperor lifting a finger, but he finally manages with Cinder as his scapegoat (“You would let the Empress hang out the clothes!” “With all due respect your Majesty, Empress Selene does whatever she wants”).

Wolf mostly supports whatever Scarlet lists, especially since he learnt his own life skills with unattainable resources from Luna. He does though continue to teach Cinder some practical fighting skills, which Kai observes and attempts to recreate. Their more daring moves are a little too much for Kai.

Human life skills aren't Iko's expertise, and neither does Kai need to know how to reboot an android power cell, so Iko assigns him more frivolous things. Many are cosmetic based such as braiding hair, which results in many sessions where she instructs the flustered but dedicated Kai. He patiently weaves Cinder's hair back and forth until he familiarises himself with the pattern. Cinder obediently stays still as the hair model of choice, usually catching up on comms and royal duties on her portscreen.

When he gets too frustrated, Iko reminds him, “What if you have a daughter, and when she grows up she’s asked: “Princess, what is your greatest woe in life?” and she responds that her father never braided her hair?” Kai quickly learns the skill after that.

Torin’s protective nature over Kai is impervious to time, but his disposition softens a bit with Cinder’s influence. Torin encourages Kai to pursue the skills, knowing how much the approval of his friends means to him. And if Cinder’s singular addition of watching New Shanghai’s most renowned musical happens to be Torin’s favourite film, that’s probably a coincidence.

Cinder doesn’t really need to add to the list. Her skills—ranging from mechanical know-how, ruling a Kingdom 101 and overthrowing a tyrannical queen who is also your aunt—are inconsequential to Kai. He listens to Cinder’s recounts of mechanical problems and solutions but remains hopelessly inept with tools and motors. The ruling of a Kingdom also proves to be a bust, since Kai is the more experienced one of the two. However, he often finds himself intrigued by her perspective on matters, free from the bias of his politically-centred upbringing.

Cinder instead focuses on life experiences over skills. Eating ramen at a convenience store. Seeing the local markets at night. Going down the cramped alleyways, seeing the poor conditions, homelessness and rubbish. It’s a hard pill to swallow for Kai, but one that he needs to understand the full breadth of life in New Beijing as Cinder knew it. Cinder works hard to help Kai, especially as she knows he secretly really cares about accomplishing the skills.

Slowly the revised list is whittled down as Kai completes the tasks. Although some of them are simply not feasible or even plausible, the suggestions are kept for joint laughs and memories. The list never truly fades, with other members of the crew occasionally receiving a skill to try—often the result of an inside joke or dare.

Kai comes to consider himself fairly well-rounded, but he learns more from his friend’s qualities rather than any skill they could teach him. And if all else fails, at least he can talk eloquently enough to save his life.

Except he’ll probably interject with sarcasm.

#repost cause the original formatted weirdly #tlc #the lunar chronicles #lunar chronicles #kai #cinder #linh cinder #emperor kaito #empress selene #princess selene #prince kai #kaider #cress darnel #carswell thorne #konn torin #iko #liam kinney #Scarlet Benoit #Creswell #wolf kesley #winter hayle blackburn #jacin clay

[yutaya]

Iron Fist Week Day 7: minor character/missing scene

Albert is a man. A man... with a van.

He's proud of his van. Sure it was a bitch and a half to get certified and sometimes trying to drive three freaking blocks in this city when he's having a bad enough day can threaten to put his blood pressure through the roof, but he's ground out an honest living for himself with it. That's no mean feat, in this neighborhood.

Plus, Al likes his job. It involves a lot of visiting every nook and cranny of the area, meeting loads of people at varying levels of talkative - it's a job that requires someone personable, and Al doesn't think it's too immodest to say that he fits the bill.

Staring down a fully loaded armoire, though, Al can admit to himself that there are times he's less fond of this job than others.

By the time he's got the thing down on the sidewalk, doors and drawers bound shut and with an initial layer of wrapping to protect it from pedestrian traffic while he sets up the loader, Al has mentally added two upticks to his pain-in-the-ass fee.

"Woah, can I help you with that?"

Al pauses in his transferring long enough to take a look at who's spoken. It's a white guy, 20s, a little scruffy but looks comfortable, and, most importantly, seems genuine.

Al smiles at him. "I appreciate the offer, but these need to be moved in a specific way to prevent scuffing."

"Oh." Al goes back to loading the armoire. "...Would you show me?" Al pauses again. Looks back at the guy. "I'm Danny, by the way," he adds, and smiles beatifically.

Al blinks up at the sky. Had the sun shone more brightly for a second, there? He turns back to wrapping the furniture with blankets and bungee cords. "You need to move a lot of furniture, Danny?" he asks while he works. Engaging in friendly conversation with strangers is second nature to him, at this point.

Danny, who has the courtesy to remain standing out on the street behind the van as they talk, bounces a little as he replies. "Yes, actually! My girlfriend and I have been redoing her apartment."

"Wow, big project. Hey, if you guys need stuff moved around, I've got you covered. Back and forth from the storage unit, delivering your new stuff from the store, bringing your old stuff wherever it's going... My rates are fair and, as you can see, I'd actually take care of your things." He pats the carefully cushioned furniture from his current job in indication.

Danny laughs a little, looking at it. "At least that isn't a piano, right?"

"Hey man, pianos have wheels. I can walk them right up the ramp."

Danny eyes the ramp Al uses with the handtrucks. "Isn't it too skinny?"

Al laughs again. "What kind of piano are you picturing, a grand?" As if anyone who owned one of those would be hiring Al to move it. As if anyone who owned one of those would be living in this area at all.

Danny shrugs, unbothered. "I haven't seen one since I was a kid. Maybe it seemed bigger back then." A beat passes, and then Danny continues talking, the oversharing sort of babble symptomatic of the sleep-deprived. "Anyway, we'll definitely call you for help with our stuff. And you can show me all the right ways to handle everything! I'm probably going to be doing a lot of rearranging furniture and stuff since Colleen is out at Bayard all the time now; she keeps talking about helping the community during the daytime - Colleen's my girlfriend, she's the best - and, I mean, she's right, of course, plus, we just got back to the city and I am not used to not having to do something -" he cuts himself off, lighting up. "Hey, could I get a job with you?"

Al startles. He can usually recognize when someone's coming at that angle. Granted, they usually don't seem to stumble into it by mistake.

"The shop down the street is hiring," he offers. "On the corner."

"Thanks! I'd like to work for this business, though."

Al pauses. Revaluates "Danny". There are only so many reasons someone would be looking for a moving job specifically, and in this neighborhood, the most likely scenario is one that Al has been very carefully steering clear of for 30 years.

"I appreciate the interest," he repeats cautiously, "but we're a small business. I'm afraid we don't really have the means to hire right now." It's a bit of a risk, revealing a vulnerability like that. Luckily, Albert is overstating it a bit; it won't be that easy for any of the triads to put financial pressure on him, and, well. He's stubborn. He swore a long time ago that he wouldn't go there.

"Oh, that's not a problem!" Danny says brightly. "You wouldn't need to pay me. I'm more looking for the experience, you know? I've never had a normal job, and Colleen thinks it'll be good for us to start over."

The alarm bell clanging in Al's head rises to a shriek, then falters. If this is a ploy, it is astoundingly poorly executed. If this guy is in with any sort of organized crime, he can't be more than a fledgling recruit. Al feels a moral obligation to try and steer him better, even if his self preservation instincts disagree.

"Look," Al says, watching Danny's face carefully. "I'm running an honest business, here. I'm not interested in having our name attached to anything. And, if I could offer you a word of advice?" Danny, who mostly just looks confused, nods. "Don't go saying that stuff about working for free. Depending who hears it, that's a good way to end up either severely taken advantage of, or in a coffin. Anyone you might be trying that hard to get a resource for won't be happy about you overplaying your hand."

Danny still looks confused. Al mimes swinging a hatchet. Danny's eyes go wide with clarity.

"I'm not with the triads," he says disconcertingly earnestly. "I'm the Iron Fist. I'm sworn to defend the city from people like them."

...Ok.

Well, at least this is an interesting conversation.

"If you're not with the triads, why do you want this job?"

"I guess I'm looking for something new. For fifteen years, I had one purpose. Now, it's done. Now, I need to build a new life, and..." His voice dips in a certain way with the next words, a way that makes Al's stomach sink with the familiarity of it. "...keep a promise to a friend."

Al looks at Danny, a pit in his stomach and memories in his heart. Resignation settles underneath his skin.

"You have a résumé?" he asks. At least Danny doesn't seem inclined to just throw things around, like some other shipping companies that Al could name. Royal Al Moving provides quality for its clients, thank you very much.

"I don't think so. What is that, equipment? I could buy some."

Al stares at him. He'd been expecting either an agreement to email or bring by a copy later, or a conversation along the lines of 'do I really need one?' followed by a verbal listing off of previous work or even just ability.

"Do you have any previous experience?" Al tries again. "Had any jobs before?"

"Yeah, I have," Danny says, and doesn't elaborate.

White people.

"What about ID?" Al asks, despite knowing full well he'll probably pretend not to notice if anything seems off about it.

Danny laughs a bit, seemingly unphased by his own complete lack of knowledge regarding ordinary job application/interview etiquette whatsoever. "Oh, I definitely have that. Had to fight really hard for it, too. It was almost all gone, but once everything got sorted out, we made, like, 10 new copies of everything." Danny pats around at his pockets, not appearing to notice Al's incredulous expression. "I don't have any of those with me right now, but... Ah ha!" He pulls something out triumphantly. "Business cards! I'm pretty sure my brother thought I was just going to destroy them, but my friend Jeri said it's important to always have one. It might have gone through the laundry, though, sorry."

Assuming this day can't get any weirder, like a fool, Al takes the card.

Even worn and slightly crumpled, the obnoxiously expensive quality of the original card is still clear. There's embossing and gold foil, for god's sake. The Rand Enterprises logo glints up at him almost mockingly even as the three dimensional lines of the border rise and fall under his thumb. Either seems unnecessary and frankly tone deaf for a Humanitarian Aid company, let alone both. Then again, maybe they reserve this version of the card for the executive level, those who hobnob among the elite, who need to make a certain type of impression on the too rich in order to convince them to donate well.

Because that's another thing this card reads, right there in plain English: a 9pt bold 'Daniel Rand', and under that, 'CEO'.

'What,' a little voice in Al's head wails semi-hysterically, 'the fuck?'

"Is this a joke?" Al asks out loud, vaguely surprised by how calm he sounds given the way the voice inside his head might be having a meltdown. "Am I on Candid Camera?"

But, no, wasn't he just thinking that this card is way too expensive - and thus definitely too expensive to be a prop?

"Hey, I know that one!" Danny Rand says cheerfully. "Joy and I used to watch it together!"

'Joy,' the voice in Al's head supplies. 'Joy Meachum.

'Well, at least this explains why he said he doesn't need money.

'Wait, why is he looking for a job in the first place? Is he not CEO? Did they kick him out or something? Did they disown him for wearing a hoodie with holes in it? Is that what he meant earlier when he said the thing he was doing before is over now?'

Al has never felt more rueful that he doesn't pay much attention to celebrity news.

"So," Al tries to find a way to word this that isn't 'have you been cut off or what?' "Why is Danny Rand looking for a job here?"

By "here", Al means a lot of things. This type of neighborhood, in general. Chinatown, out of all of them. At a low-wage position in a manual labor business with very little room for growth, if they're really getting into it.

"I like your name," Danny replies. It's far from the kind of answer that Al was expecting, but he finds himself unperturbed. Maybe he's hit a point where nothing is surprising anymore. "It reminds me of a friend. He was more of a Big Al than a Royal one, but I saw your logo and it seemed right."

-

(Al still pays Danny, because he refuses to be a shady business and because if he's finally getting around to setting up an employee system, he's needs to make it one that will work for anyone he might hire in the future, too. They won't all be Danny Rand. Danny keeps finding ways to immediately give it back, because he's literally a billionaire.)

#here it is like an entire week late #it took so long to write and i still kind of hate it but whatever #ironfistweek #iron fist #danny rand #fanfic #? #my stuff #the immortal iron fist #the internet is for fanfiction #colleen and misty's days still to come #they're just gonna be gifsets tho so~

[introvertguide]

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); AFI #39

The most recent movie for the group to review was the Kubrick dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove (I am not writing out the whole title each time). This film has some of the most legitimately funny lines of bewilderment, with some occasions involving an actor playing across from himself. For most film goers, this will be Peter Seller’s most famous role since he plays three main characters, all with different accents, appearances, and quirks. The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor) but did not take home any trophies. The film did win best picture at the BAFTAs. This film was definitely in the style of Kubrick, but it was in a genre that I don’t believe he delved into again. I want to review the plot before discussing further, so let me get the usual out of the way:

SPOILER ALERT!!! I AM ABOUT TO GIVE AWAY THE WHOLE PLOT OF THE FILM!!! IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FILM ON YOUR OWN WITHOUT HAVING ANYTHING SPOILED, STOP NOW AND WATCH THE FILM!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

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At the start, we are introduced to United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who is commander of Burpelson Air Force Base. This base houses a group of B-52 bombers armed with hydrogen bombs that are constantly in the air. The planes are constantly within two hours from their targets inside the USSR in case of nuclear war. General Ripper orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the UK Royal Air Force (Peter Sellers), to put the base on alert and to issue "Wing Attack Plan R" to the patrolling bombers, one of which is commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens). All of the aircraft commence an attack flight on the USSR, and set their radios to allow communications only through their CRM 114 discriminators, which was designed to accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code known only to General Ripper. Mandrake discovers that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has gone insane.

In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson (George C Scott) briefs President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again) and other officers about how "Plan R" enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all superiors have been killed in a first strike on the United States. It would take two days to try every CRM code combination to issue the recall order, but the planes are due to reach their targets within hours. Muffley orders the U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson then attempts to convince Muffley to let the attack continue, but Muffley refuses. Instead, he brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski (Peter Bull) into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov on the "hotline". Muffley warns the Premier of the impending attack, and offers to reveal the positions of the bombers and their targets so that the Soviets can protect themselves.

After a heated discussion in Russian with the Premier, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Union had created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried bombs jacketed with "cobalt-thorium G", which are set to detonate automatically should any nuclear attack strike the country. Within two months after detonation, the cobalt-thorium G would encircle the planet in a radioactive shroud that would render the Earth's surface uninhabitable. The device cannot be deactivated, as it is programmed to explode if any such attempt is made. The President's wheelchair-bound scientific advisor, former Nazi German Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers one more time), points out that such a doomsday machine would only be an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; Alexei replies that the Soviet Premier had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week.

Meanwhile, U.S. Army troops arrive at Burpelson, and General Ripper commits suicide. Mandrake identifies Ripper's CRM code from his desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Using the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of the bombers except Major Kong's, whose radio equipment has been damaged in a missile attack. The Soviets attempt to find it, but Kong has the bomber attack a closer target due to dwindling fuel. As the plane approaches the new target, a Soviet ICBM site, the crew is unable to open the damaged bomb bay doors. Kong enters the bay and repairs the broken electrical wiring while sitting on a H-bomb, whereupon the doors open and the bomb is dropped. Kong joyfully straddles the bomb as it falls and detonates over the target.

Back in the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. He suggests a 10:1 female-to-male ratio for a breeding program to repopulate the Earth once the radiation has subsided. Worried that the Soviets will do the same, Turgidson warns about a "mineshaft gap" while Alexei secretly photographs the war room. Dr. Strangelove declares he has a plan, but then rises from his wheelchair and announces "Mein Führer, I can walk!" as the Doomsday Machine activates. The film ends with a montage of many nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's rendition of the song "We'll Meet Again".

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This is a pretty weird film, but it has some of the funniest lines in cinema. Discussions of not letting a Russian envoy into the war room because he will “see the big board,” the president announcing there is no fighting in the war room, a crazy general constantly talking about a plot to steal American bodily fluids, and a discussion about how the high ranking officials and generals would be hidden in shelters with a 10-1 ratio of hot women to men with the expectation of constant impregnation which everybody suddenly favors: it is all absurd. But I really love it and laugh every time I watch.

The three roles of Peter Sellers is especially noteworthy, as all of his characters are so different. He plays a very British foreign exchange officer (I am not sure this exists), an absolutely whacky former Nazi scientist, and the straight man of the film in the form of the US president. Since Dr. Strangelove was an advisor to the president, there were many scenes in which Peter Sellers was acting across from a stunt shoulder or the back of a head that was supposed to be him. He did a fantastic job of making light of total world destruction during the cold war.

One very notable thing about the acting of Peter Sellers was that he had a couple of ad libs during the movie. Stanley Kubrick is not a director that particularly cares if he gets along with his actors, often times demanding dozens of takes for even the simplest of background scenes. Long dialogue scenes are repeated over and over to the point that many actors did not want to work with Kubrick. And still, the director seemed to like Sellers quite a bit and kept a couple of the takes that were ad-libbed, specifically for the character of Dr. Strangelove. Perhaps the crazy former Nazi character was so unpredictable that random whacky outbursts (like the scream for “Mein Fuhrer” at the end) seemed appropriate.

A little side note is that this was the first film appearance of James Earl Jones as one of the bombardiers on the B-52. He was known for his work in the theatre at the time, so of course he had a bit part in which he was mostly covered in a flight suit and said very little. Now that is a misuse of talent. 

A point about the movie that I was unaware but was pointed out by a follower of the group was that the promotional material for the film shows that the plane was named “Leper Colony” (thank you @themightyfoo). This implies that this group was actually a bunch of screw ups, which is part of the overall joke that this group was given access to world ending bombing capabilities. Maybe it was assumed that the order to drop the bombs would never be given and this group was just given this detail to get them out of the way.

So does this movie belong on the AFI list? Yes, but maybe not ranked so high. It has a lot of name recognition, but I think that is more due to the very distinct naming and the titular role. Maybe the notoriety is also due to the subject matter and the time it was released. It is a fine film with great acting, but I find it hard to put above Jaws, Rocky, or Taxi Driver. I guess that is more my humble opinion, but I agree the list would be lacking without this film. So would I recommend it? Absolutely. It is an interesting story about how red tape allowed one high ranking individual to literally destroy the world. And it is a joke. It is such a well told story that they had to put a disclaimer at the front. A great lesson, even today. 

#dr. strangelove #stanley kubrick #top 100 #movies #black and white #nuclear war #cold war #dark comedy #peter sellers #george c. scott #introvert #introverts

[hayleyarts]

Broken Without You (Jasper Hale x OC) | chapter 1

Author’s note: Hello! i don’t normally post that many stories or much on here but I’ve been working on a Jasper Hale fan-fiction to try and redeem him and show my favourite cowboy vamp some love. Anyways, this story contains swears and will have some graphic scenes referring to mental health and past trauma. I’ll give more specific warnings where they apply. Also, each chapter is inspired by some music; so if you want to listen to that particular song while you read, you can but you don’t necessarily have to :)

Summary: Eleanor Rae lives in a town where there are seemingly no secrets, but what happens when a certain vampire takes an interest in her. She’ll soon find out she’s not the only one with secrets. Will he be able to put her broken pieces back together? Can she fix him in return?

Word count: 2334

Read Part 2 Here 

Track 01 - Eleanor Rigby by Alice Cooper

Forks, Washington; the rainiest town in the United States. The benefits of living in a rainy town is the fact that the forests nearby are some of the greenest you’ll ever see. The cons of living in a rainy town as small as this one is how there are no secrets; everyone knows everyone for the most part. Therefore, when people see me: Eleanor Rae, they immediately know my back story. Of course, you’re not from Forks, so how would you know who the hell I am, or what my story is. 

The Rae family, also known as my mother Cecilia and myself, lives in a small cottage on the edge of town. Our small, 2-bedroom place is just close enough to town to be considered still in Forks, but with the town being so small, you’re simply ten minutes from all needed amenities. One such amenity is the hospital that my mother works at and the high school I’ve been attending for 2 years. At school I’m known as the strange girl with headphones glued to their head. Everyone has stopped trying to talk with me and try to become my friend, because I’m just ‘too weird’. Outcasts in small towns are rare; no secrets are allowed. Thus, why I envied the Cullen family. 

The Cullen’s were a family that became the talk of the town since freshman year of high school mostly because they broke the unwritten rule of small towns; they had secrets. No one knew what these secrets were, but everyone knew there was something they were hiding. The patriarch was the best doctor Forks has ever seen; Dr. Carlisle Cullen. He and his wife manage to take care of six adopted teenage kids; who in their right mind would do that to themselves? Their kids are a completely different anomaly. Even though they are all adoptive siblings, they happen to look extremely similar; blemish free complexion, model-like beauty, and this sense of grace that normal teenagers definitely don’t have. The thing that bothers me the most is that after a year or so, everyone stopped paying close attention to the strange family, but I didn’t. I mean, it’s hard not to when they’re all so beautiful, especially the brother with the wavy golden hair that frames his face perfectly. He was the one I was the most drawn to, and I don’t really know why. There was something about his presence that calmed me; God I wanted to talk to him. But how does one speak to someone as gorgeous as Jasper Cullen? 

I climb out of my Jeep, my feet planting on the cement of the parking lot. I look up at the building, sighing softly to myself; Junior Year of high school. A lot of people tend to stress about senior year, but to me, junior year is the one that matters. You need to figure yourself out because next year you’re applying for colleges. If you don’t have yourself figured out before senior year, then you’re royally fucked. I take my time to cross the lot before entering the school; the white tiled floor already scuffed from the various footwear. The lockers remained the same, even some of the posters on the walls were the same. The only thing that really seems to change is the people; some with different haircuts or new clothing. Different people smiling and laughing with new friend groups, some people missing because they moved during the summer. Growth spurts from the now sophomores, and then the completely new group of people that no one from the older grades recognized; the new freshmen. The one thing that stayed the same among the students, is no matter how much they laughed and joked with their friends; at the end of the day, we’re all lonely people. 

I follow the flow of people as I make my way to my first class of the day: history. I always dreaded history class because of the teachers that usually instruct the class. Why is it that every boring and/or almost ready to retire man teaches history class? If someone exciting taught the class, I might actually like it more. I arrive to the room, flags of various countries littered over the open door and students were already finding their seats. Luckily the seat in the far back corner by the window was vacant; that’s where I always try to sit. I like that seat because its far enough back that if you doze off in class no one really notices, and if you want to zone out rather than listen to the teacher, then you have the window to stare out of. 

Once I sit down, I take the time to pull my supplies out of my bag. All I tend to use is a notebook and pens while everyone else pulls out tablets and laptops; call me old-fashioned. I flip to a fresh page in the notebook when a voice pulls me away from my task. The accent clearly southern and extremely polite.

“Excuse me ma’am, is anyone sitting here?” I look up and I’m immediately met with the eyes that resemble the most expensive topaz gems; glittering underneath the fluorescent lights. He raises a brow as he gestures to the desk adjacent to me, “Ma’am?”

“Yeah… sorry,” I blush, snapping out of my daze, “There’s no one sitting there, go ahead.” He smiles at my answer as he makes himself comfortable, or well, as comfortable you can on a plastic chair. He pulls out his own notebook and pens, preparing for the class that’s about to begin. I couldn’t help myself from admiring his movements. His pale hands move with more grace than I could ever; placing the pens gently down on the wood of the desk, making sure they were ready when needed to take notes. My eyes didn’t stop there; they wandered from his hands to his choice of clothing. It’s not every day you get to sit this close to a member of the Cullen family, I plan on taking advantage of this rare moment. His clothing was simple but coordinated; his grey sweater with brown buttons matching the brown colouring of his dress pants. The one thing that stood out was his choice of footwear: cowboy boots. They were legitimate brown and black leather cowboy boots, and damn did they look worn in. 

I snap my eyes away from him before he could notice my staring, paying my attention back to the rain falling outside. Its then when Mr. Henderson stomps in the room and slams his folder down on his desk. He seemed about as thrilled about the first day of school as everyone else in this room. He began his lecture the same as every other first day lecture; the expectations of the class, the policies and rules and what he expects from us as students in his class. This isn’t what I dislike about the first day of school, what I hate are the icebreaker activities that the teachers force you to partake in.

“Okay class, for the rest of the period I’m going to have you and someone next to you discuss the answers to these various questions.” His monotone voice explains while handing out a worksheet covered in various questions. Students quickly pair off, some actually participating in the exercise while others begin discussing what they did during the summer. 

“Would you like to be my partner?”

I raise a brow at the southern voice breaking my observations, “What?”

“For the exercise?” He mimics my expression.

“Right… sure.” I blush, chuckling awkwardly.

“I’m Jasper, by the way. Jasper Hale.” He smiles politely.

“Hale?”

He chuckles, “Yeah, my sister Rosalie and I kept our last names.” 

I nod, taking in the new information. I had no idea that he had a different last name. I always assumed that because they were adopted by Dr. Cullen, they all had the same last name. 

“I’m Eleanor… Eleanor Rae.” I smile, turning to face him, “But my mom calls me Ellie.”

“What do your friends call you?” He raises a brow.

“Um… I guess Ellie?” I shrug, “I don’t really have any friends.” I look down at the worksheet, reading through the questions. Most of them were related to history class, some were about life goals, and school related questions. 

“You don’t have friends?” I glance up at him as he asks his question, his brows furrowed. 

“Not really. I like to be in my own little world I guess.” I shrug, “Kind-of similar to your family in that way.”

“How is that similar to my family?” 

“Well, you and your family keep to themselves, so do I.” 

He chuckles, shrugging, “I suppose,” He looks down at the questions, reading the first one off, “What are your goals for after school?”

“Um…” I furrow my brows thinking about the question. What are my plans? I haven’t really started thinking about where exactly I’ll be in roughly two years; after graduation and when I’m supposed to have my life figured out. I hope one of my goals for after I graduate would to attend college and take classes in psychology or philosophy; wanting to learn more about myself in the process. Another goal I eventually want to accomplish is leaving this small town; starting a new life in a new town where no one knows who I am, maybe take some time off and travel the world. Of course, I don’t say any of this to him, instead I respond with, “Probably go to college or something. Get good grades, you know?”

He nods, “That’s what the teachers want us to say.” His face slowly forms a smirk, “I feel like there’s more you want to say.”

I roll my eyes, my own face phasing into a smirk, “Maybe,” I lean closer to him, “But I’d like to hear your answer first.”

He chuckles, “Well, one of my goals is to settle down eventually. Find someone who understands me.”

I blink, “How romantic.” I reply sarcastically with a chuckle. 

“Don’t judge darlin’.” He chuckles along with me. His pet-name catches me off guard, the southern drawl dripping from the word, “Now, give me your real answer.”

“Well I’d love to travel, and maybe start a new life somewhere.” I shrug, “Some place where no one knows everyone else.” I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. 

“And you judged my answer.” He raises a brow playfully as I blush. 

“Well, both of our answers were cheesy,” I glance back down to the paper with a sigh, “These questions are also lame and cheesy.”

“Then let’s make our own questions.” He retorts, “What…” he pauses to think then continues his question, “What is your favourite movie?”

“Really?”

Jasper laughs, “It’s a valid question. Mine is Pride and Prejudice. Either that or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”

I chuckle, thinking about his answers. They’re both older movies, and one an even older novel. To be honest, those movies seem to match him perfectly. He seems like a gentleman kind of guy, and extremely old fashioned in his mannerisms and in the way he speaks. Not only that, but the western matches his god-awful cowboy boots. 

“Well, probably Jaws or The Breakfast Club.” I shrug, “I’ve seen both of them too many times to count so they’re probably my favourites.”

He nods at my response, “Both excellent movies. Very different though.”

I blink, “Well, your mood changes therefore the things you enjoy watching or listening to at any given moment doesn’t necessarily stay the same.” 

He narrows his eyes at my words. It was like he was surprised by my answer, and that he knew something I didn’t know. He didn’t say anything to my answer, but I could tell he wanted to. He fell silent as the class continues to have their various discussions; his golden eyes shifting from group to group. 

“What’s your favourite colour?” His eyes snap back to me at my question.

“It changes all the time.” He smirks, his answer mimicking mine from previously.

“Well what is it today?” I smirk back, raising a brow. I watch as his eyes look around the room, as if to find the answer throughout the room.

After what feels like hours, his eyes finally land on my own, “Probably green.” I blush, looking away from him, letting my dark hair fall in front of my green hued eyes. I didn’t know why he was trying to flirt with me, I mean… I’m me. Why on earth would Jasper Cull–Hale want anything to do with me? “What’s your favourite?” He tries to get me to look back at him. 

“Red or burgundy.” I mumble, glancing up at the clock; only five more minutes of class left, and, in this moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted these last five minutes to last forever, or be finished in seconds. Jasper makes me feel differently and I’m not sure if I can pin-point why. 

“Why those?” He raises a brow. I’ve never pondered why I liked the warm colour before. Maybe it was because it symbolized various emotions like passion, love or anger. Maybe I liked the colour red because when I wear red garments of clothing, it complements my pale complexion well. Or maybe it’s because it reminds me of the red flowers in my mother’s garden outside our cottage home; roses, dahlias, and peonies planted in various patterns.  

When the bell rang, signalling the end of class, I only then realized that I didn’t answer the question; thinking of an answer quickly as I gather my supplies so I could move to my next class in my schedule, “Probably because it’s familiar.” I mumble as I leave the class. I only take a moment to glance back at him momentarily; seeing his confused expression before I join the sea of other students in the hallway.

#twilight #twilight fanfiction #jasper hale #jasper hale x oc #jasper hale fanfiction #twilight renessaince #twilight reimagined #writing #creative writing #fanfiction #oc

[antiquitiesandlabyrinths]

Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples are rather mysterious. There’s little information on them at all, and that’s one of the reasons they’re one of my favorites. I’ll be talking about Sea Peoples mostly in relation to Egypt, but general history as well, considering there’s almost nothing to say.

Essentially they were naval invaders who terrorized mostly coastal towns in the Mediterranean between 1276 BC to 1178 BC. Their battling efforts were focused mainly on Egypt – a place of great wealth. A surprising fact about the Sea Peoples is that they’re considered by historians as one of the massive factors contributing towards the collapse of the Bronze Age, an almost impressive feat for a single group of people. At one point they were seen as the main cause. They’re a people of great mystery; we still aren’t sure where exactly they’re from, and most of the information we have on them is from Egyptian accounts retelling the story of their invasion. The stela at Tanis describes them; “They came from the sea in their war ships and none could stand against them.”

There are several names for this tribe that came about through Egyptian records, names such as Sherden, the Sheklesh, Lukka, Tursha and Akawasha. The Sea People also battled against the Hittites and the Levant, as well as various places along the Mediterranean coast.

Although we don’t have answers for the question of the origin, that doesn’t stop historians from heavily debating it. There’s a variety of theories, ranging from Etruscan to Italian and even to Minoan.

Ramesses the II, otherwise known as Ramesses the Great, is a well known Pharaoh who had relations with the Sea Peoples, along with two other great Pharaohs. Each of them won over the invasion. First Ramesses II, then his son and successor Merenptah, and the later Pharaoh, Ramesses III. We know about Ramesses II through inscriptions he paid for, and though the information varies from the Hittite account, it’s still a great source of information even beside the fact that Ramesses II could’ve been embellishing. Nevertheless, let’s go over what Ramesses II told of his fight.

According to Ramesses II, the Sea Peoples were in cahoots with the Hittites. He also remarks that he had his own Sea People mercenaries in his own army. Since there’s no account of where the Sea Peoples were from in the inscriptions, historians can safely assume that the general populace knew where the Sea Peoples were from, and that it was common information that did not need introducing. The inscription also remarks of the battle – specifics, talking about the way he moved his fleets, where the Sea peoples invaded from, things like that. He seems rather glorified in the account (which isn’t at all uncommon), but in his son’s account you see the mistakes he omitted. 

In Merenptah’s account, several more things are mentioned. For example, Mereye, the chief of Libyans, allied with the Sea People in order to invade Egypt in 1209 BC. Merenptah mentions the Libyans as coming ‘from the seas to the north,’ calling the territory Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden, and Shekelesh. Scholars, ever curious as to the origin of the Sea People, have tried to find where these lands were, and what they were named as in the later future. All else information given about the Sea People in Merenptah’s account is that they were formidable adversaries, something obvious from the amount of pride Ramesses II and Merenptah held for themselves for defeating the armies. You can find the original scripts in the Karnak inscription.

Now there’s the question of, ‘why did they have so much interest in Egypt? Why now? Why not before or after?’

We can’t know for absolute sure, but from the fact that the invading armies brought their furniture and household tools with them, it’s assumed they were trying to find a place to settle down, and wanted a premade nice, warm city where they wouldn’t have to listen to the Pharaoh (which would of course have been done by killing the Pharaoh).

Although Merenptah believed he warded off the Sea People for good, they did return during Ramesses III reign. He describes the attack:

“The foreign countries conspired in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could resist their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on - being cut off at one time. A camp was set up in Amurru. They desolated its people and its land was like that which had never existed. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared for them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denen, and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts were confident and trusting as they said "Our plans will succeed!”

The countries mentioned in ‘their confederation’ could be regions of Palestine (Pelest) or Syria (Tjeker), but it’s hard to tell. Fortunately Ramesses III’s account is clear enough to know these are in fact the same attackers as the last two times, still allied with Libya. Ramesses III did win against the Sea People, using advice handed down from the inscriptions of Ramesses II and Merenptah, and making sure to use his best efforts and not underestimate them.

Fun fact: the battle between Ramesses III’s Egypt and the Sea People managed to cause the first labor strike in history. The war had been so expensive on Egypt (although they had won) that the Royal Treasury completely drained, and the tomb builders living at the village Set Maat. The workers simply walked off the job and refused to work until they were compensated fairly.

After the failed invasion against Ramesses III, the Sea Peoples fade out of history completely. This is easily assumed, but I think something bad was happening to the Sea Peoples, and they needed a home. Without being able to secure a home, they had to have died out. 

Scholars continue to debate and argue the heated discussion of the Sea People’s origin, but some say that it doesn’t really matter at this point. The important thing is that they were quite prevalent in Egyptian culture and records, appearing in stelas, inscriptions, recounting tales, and even fictional stories. It’s clear that Egypt held some sort of respect for them – maybe that respect you have for your enemy after a hard fought battle. This is a mystery that, most likely, we will never be able to solve, and humans love to decode the unsolvable. 

#ancient egypt #sea peoples #ancient history #egyptian archaeology

[gascon-en-exil]

Hm, if you could, how would you rank the final maps across the series?

I can’t really rank them, but I can give my opinions on most of them. I don’t know how much value it’ll have though since I freely admit to not playing on the higher difficulties where gameplay conversations are seen as having genuine merit. Anyway:

FE1/11 and 3/12 - only reached the end of the DS remakes, and as is the case with most of Archanea I don’t remember them very well except that Medeus is a pain in both. Shadow Dragon’s last map is also incredibly long as I recall...assuming you don’t just warpskip to the boss of course.

FE2/15 - never got to the end of Gaiden, but Echoes’s last map is an interesting mix of entertaining and frustrating. The layout is certainly distinctive, as is the novelty of using Alm and Celica’s armies together for the first time. Jedah’s gimmick is a nuisance though and I don’t care for Duma and his AoE attack and invulnerability to most attacks.

FE4 - the longest map in a game infamous for long maps, but unlike Chapters 2 and 7 Endgame offers a decent challenge to help cover up the tedious distances and backtracking. There’s also a good increasing scale of difficulty from one castle to the next, with the only real letdown being Manfroy whom is technically optional although I’ve never skipped him. Hate fighting Ishtar and the falcon knight sisters and most of the Deadlords, and it does suck a bit that the sudden rush of enemies with skills and holy weapons makes a fair number of your units dangerous to field on the front lines.

FE5 - also don’t remember it too well. The map itself is a nightmare like most of Thracia’s maps tend to be, but Veld is a joke in more ways than one. Also more Deadlords...whee. 

FE6 - all of the GBA games follow a pattern of a two-part final map with the first being a gauntlet ending in a major story villain and the second being your army rushing the final boss. Binding Blade’s is the worst in both regards. First you’re trudging your units from altar to altar fighting dragons and getting an awkward backstory dump after each one, then you finally kill Jahn at the end, and then you get to Idunn who’s a joke and isn’t even that hard to kill with Roy for the secret best ending. Three Houses gets flak for clumsy lore dumps in its lategame, but I think I honestly prefer them to what we get here. At least Rhea manages to be sympathetic.

FE7 - the best of this trilogy, mostly on account of it kicking off with a boss rush of Blazing Sword’s greatest hits reincarnated as OP morphs. Nergal is pretty standard, but the second part deserves comedy points for pitting you against a generic and calling it a final boss. 

FE8 - the monsters of Sacred Stones aren’t the most engaging of enemies, especially if you play the postgame Creature Campaign at all since there it’s nothing but monsters. This drags down the last map in my opinion, since it’s just a monster map with some mildly creative architecture and Lyon waiting for you at the end. Fomortiis is nothing special either apart from the originality of his not being a dragon.

FE9 - may be my favorite final map aesthetically, in large part due to the ironic contrast between the still tidy and peaceful Crimean palace gardens and the massive Daien army awaiting you. Similarly it may be the most mundane final map in the series with nothing much supernatural going on unless you’re playing on Hard (or Japanese Maniac) mode where Ashnard goes berserk and you have to kill him twice. I never do though, and Ashnard moving with his colossal range in higher difficulties means you don’t get to experience a good half or so of the map. I’d rather not deal with that, especially since he’s got the same nigh-invulnerability issue as Duma going on.

FE10 - depends on if we’re talking only 4-E-5 or the entirety of the Goddess Tower. The true last map is kind of bland and is more about having a good setup and positioning than dynamic tactics, because Ashera and her auras and AoEs are nothing if not predictable. The maps ascending the tower on the other hand offer a nice mixture of quick challenges that let this game’s massive cast come together for the first time (so like Gaiden/Echoes only with a roster over twice the size) and show off what they can do at their best...on Easy anyway. In Normal and Hard it’s Ike and the laguz royals and maybe about a dozen other viable units all the way up.

FE13 and 14 - I barely remember any of these to be quite honest. Awakening’s is as mediocre as every other map in that game and ends with the horrible non-choice for Robin that underscores how FE13 is terrified to have any genuine stakes. Fates’s three final maps each approximate the general tone of their respective routes: Birthright’s is the most series-typical, Conquest’s is the most creative, and Revelation’s is the most gimmicky and tedious.

FE16 - probably what most people reading this came for, so I’ll go ahead and break it down further by route.

SS - horrible by every parameter but the music, which is nothing special since all three final map tracks are excellent. There’s no setup worth mentioning to explain why Rhea is suddenly attacking you, and you’re stuck fighting enemies on all sides including a ton of flying monsters that hit extremely hard and also have to be taken out to do any serious damage to the Immaculate One. The map architecture is more of a hindrance than a help, and Rhea’s long-range attacks are if I recall the most deadly of any of the final bosses. The NG Maddening LTC crowd can have this one.

AM - feels more dangerous than it is, until you realize that you can skip large chunks of the map including Myson trolling you with his HP-to-1 spell on the right. Funneling your units through the smaller chambers on the left skips the worst of it and lets you right off into the throne room, where the Hegemon is overall less threatening than the horde of magic users surrounding her. I dislike the non-final version of this map in VW/SS more, if only because you have to move faster there if you want to stop Dedue from committing suicide by gremory/mortal savant. 

VW - deserves a nod as the only wholly unique final map in Three Houses, even if conceptually it’s just Deadlords in a swamp (that you can get rid of, a nice touch). Nemesis is without question the weakest final boss as the only one without multiple health bars, and it’s not like you wouldn’t have taken out all of the zombie Elites on the way to him anyway. At least he puts up a pretty good fight when he’s by himself, although it’s still not hard to swarm him.

CF - comparable to AM’s in that you can skip large chunks of the map to make it easier, in this case by concentrating all your forces right up the middle to kill the Immaculate One before the enemies on the side can get to you. The faster you do it the fewer enemies you have to fight and the less fire you have to wade through, which is all a plus in my book. It helps that the Immaculate One here is weaker than she is in SS, and instead of being surrounded by monsters and constructs the other enemies in her immediate vicinity are ones like Cyril and Catherine who are still a pain to deal with but nowhere near as durable. 

So for FE16 specifically I’d probably go AM > VW > CF > SS.

#Fire Emblem

[fericita-s]

For the Good of the Many

The next story in the “When All is Lost” series that @the-spastic-fantastic and I are working on to tell the story of Agnarr & Iduna. As always, thanks for beta-ing and helping me work through this @the-spastic-fantastic!

This takes place after the “Ring in the Season This Year” story.

That night in his too-big room, Agnarr got out of bed and began to pace by the fire, giving a quick “No thank you,” to the servant who knocked and asked if he needed anything. He thought about Eir’s and how the children came to live there.  Agnarr wondered if anyone thought about putting their fourteen-year-old prince there, instead of installing him as their new King after the death of his father. What a relief it would be, to be free of the duties of leading a kingdom, especially leading a kingdom through grief so deep as theirs, and through dangers more real and present than Arendelle had seen in several generations. With their best engineers and builders and diplomats and soldiers gone in the mist, Arendelle was struggling.  It was a small kingdom – already the council had conscripted their women along with the men in order to replace military losses in the North.  What new sacrifices could his people make to ensure their standing among their more powerful neighbors?

He also found himself thinking of Iduna and the losses she had suffered. He wondered at the depth of them and if she felt them pressing the breath out of her, making it hard to breathe and hard to think.  He thought they might have that in common.

Seeing her and talking to her, he had found it hard to breathe and hard to think, but it didn’t feel like grief. It was a pleasant shortness of breath, a delightful confusion. He wanted to feel that way again. He wanted to see her again. He thought about her smile and her easy manner with the younger children.  He thought about how she gave up going to the Yule Bell ceremony, and her willingness to take care of children she didn’t know well. He marveled at how she could bring brightness to others while being sad herself.  Then, abashed, he thought about how the King of Arendelle should seek to sacrifice comfort, bring joy, and give the people something to hope for. The new year was coming soon and it would not do to have a monarch paralyzed by his own grief.  He had to be the confident and strong king his people needed. Or, at least, he needed to pretend for the good of the many.  His resolve strengthened, he went back to his bed, large and cold, and dreamed of winds that pushed and pulled him up, lifting him over stones, and through mist.

***

The next morning the council convened. The council was a trying place, even in the best of times. Today was among the worst. Usually the council was able to disband for the winter holidays, but this year was different.  They were working at a brisk pace to keep up with the needs of their citizens. And since the usual joyful cheer of Yule was deadened by the absence of so many loved ones, the council had not objected to the extra sessions. If anything, Agnarr thought they were using the occasion as an excuse to take out their anger on one another instead of their loved ones. The few loved ones that remained anyway.

The Minister of Trade, Captain Calder, wanted to explore new trade routes. The Minister of War, Lord Hannesel, was certain this would invite disaster.

“We’ll never be able to man those ships! We already have women on the castle guard!  We’ll have to start conscripting ten-year-olds next.”

Agnarr thought of the ten-year-olds at Eir’s, eager to play and explore, still very much children. Being a confident, strong leader was going to be harder than he reckoned during his pacing the night before.

The district leaders were adamant that their ruined cobblestones or crumbling footbridges were worse than anyone else’s, and the Minister of Health was convinced that if the merchants selling lutefisk were not required to add a specific amount of salt to their treating solutions, the toll on citizenry would be catastrophic. And in the room, the absence of loved ones lost to the Northern Expedition felt tangible, a grief able to be seen in its heaviness of presence.

Lord Hannesel was droning on again. “If other countries learn of our recently depleted force, they will be on our shores before we can mount a defense. They may have already been so told. There have been far too many whispers of foreigners about.”

Agnarr felt anger uncoil in his chest immediately, and did his best to conceal it, to keep it from reaching his face. His father had always warned him to show little emotion when making decisions known. It was the way to be respected and followed. No one would trust a ruler who was ruled by emotion. “Conceal what you feel. Don’t let it show. Give a strong, steady answer or wait until you can.” He could hear his father’s voice as though he was standing next to him.  The speech had been given often to Agnarr when he was angry - usually when  Agnarr wanted to read and his father wanted him to practice archery or fencing.

“We don’t need ten-year-olds as soldiers,”  Captain Calder sneered as he spoke and Lord Hannesel gave a huff of irritation.  

Agnarr interrupted the overlapping replies of the other ministers and councillors. “We don't need to cut off contact, we don’t need to root out foreigners.  And we don’t need to give ten-year-old children deadly jobs. Ten-year-old children should be in school. We should build a school. A new school, where all the children can attend together.” The council looked at him in astonishment. In his short reign, the king had not said much. And now he proposed a school? This brought more loud voices and arguments from the room, and finally Agnarr stopped them by pushing his chair out and leaving the room.

He sent Kai in to close the meeting according to protocol. Kai was barely older than him, but loved nothing more than observing and ordering the strict rules of the royal court. Agnarr had seen him hovering by the door, waiting to help.

Just now what would help Agnarr was a walk outside. The weather was cold and cutting, and the tears in the corners of his eyes were drawn out by the cold.  Probably.  It was hard trying to put aside his mourning to lead.  Especially with a group of leaders who were acting like children.

Agnarr thought of the children he had spent Yule with, and about how there was so much promise in them. Iduna with her ability to help Iggy and Stig recover from their illness, Aksel who was quick with a helping hand to unload the gifts, Jac who helped the little ones assemble their bells, and Eydis who wanted to read every book that had been delivered.  With school, with the best tutors and units of study, what might they become? Arendelle had lost some of its most able citizens.  Training a new generation in science and engineering and the advancements in transportation and productions: that was the way forward for his people. A school. A school funded and run by the royal family of Arendelle. Which of course, was just him at the moment.

***

The next day in the council chambers, Agnarr stood and told his councillors what they would be doing next. He wasn’t sure if as a fourteen-year-old king he truly had that power, but he decided to assume he did.  This was the first idea that made sense to him since becoming king.  It felt like a way out of their valley of kingdom-wide grief.  

“People feel pinched now, there is not enough, too much is missing. But we have always been a kingdom that stands for the good of the many. We will bring in teachers and start an academy. We will begin a new era of science, of advancements, of triumphs in engineering  and industry.  The children will go to school. All the children.  The ones in the village, the ones on the mountain, and the ones at Eir’s. A school that goes beyond what has been taught in the kingdom thus far.”

“Where should we have it? Here at the castle?” Agnarr could hear the disbelief in the Lord Hannesel’s answer, but chose to ignore it.

“Yes, we should have it here at the castle. We are a nation that invites each citizen to take part in its triumphs.  Any child ten or older shall be invited to come and study. No one shall be forced, but all are welcomed.”

Agnarr looked around the table and saw a nod from Captain Calder, a shrug of agreement from the Minister of Health, and some other tepid support.  The Royal Academy would proceed.

***

As he walked with Kai on the castle grounds after the meeting, they mostly kept silent as they avoided icy patches on the path. Agnarr was relieved to have the support, however mild, from the council.

Did he want to learn, and have others learn, to make his small nation strong, or did he want to stop being lonely? Did it matter? A king must do what's best for his country, but if that aligned with what he wanted, all the better.

Kai asked, “Is there anything I should do for His Majesty today?”

Agnarr cleared his throat and spoke in the voice of a king. “Yes. You will help organize the new school. Dispatch instructions to the palace tutors to prepare lessons for large groups of students, and begin to search for new tutors as needed.  Send word to the citizens, including the children at Eir’s.” At the name “Eir’s, ” Agnarr’s voice cracked.  He adjusted his necktie and kept walking, the heat from his cheeks making the cold air more tolerable.

Even as he directed Kai to begin the preparations, he felt the desire to see Iduna apart from any plans for his kingdom.  Maybe she could teach him how to be helpful to his kingdom the way she was helpful at Eir's. Maybe she could teach him how to live in mourning, how to make it through the mist of grief that still seemed to surround him and paralyze his ability to think, to plan, to dream. Maybe they could help each other, and maybe he could hold her hand and see if it felt as warm as her smile.

#agduna #mama and papa arendelle #young agnarr #young iduna #when all is lost #for the good of the many

[starsailorstories]

So! Given, uh, everything, any chance you could talk about how various Astraea cultures deal with sicknesses and quarantine? Especially since some (especially Bell Town) are extremely or entirely genetically identical, and so more at risk?

Also, how would the cast members react to self isolation and social distancing?

FIRST OFF, sorry this took 10 years to answer, I was super busy and there’s kind of A Lot Of Spec Bio to discuss here

Also, this question made me feel very Seen lol…why yes i DO use worldbuilding as a coping mechanism for the stress of watching the wet tissue paper my country calls a social safety net dissolve

Most sickness that astraeas deal with day to day isn’t actually contagious*, but more a result of individual reaction to the environment (in terms of public health response, think seasonal allergies, although physiologically speaking it’s nothing like that). Communicable, infectious disease tends to be a less frequent problem but purely for that reason is more feared, especially as the most common source for novel diseases is interplanetary shipping (like, astraeas on one planet who have immunity to something unknowingly ship contaminated goods to another planet where people don’t). All that is nowhere near as devastating as it could be in a human context–for one thing astraeas’ bodies are hella dry compared to ours, so if a microbe isn’t airborne it’s almost a non-issue (on the other hand, infection is almost a guarantee if you have an open wound)–but most planets, stations and orbiters have a list of OTHER planets, stations and orbiters categorized by how long it’s been since first contact and how long shipments need to be in quarantine based on that, and that kind of thing runs the same gamut from “rigorously evidence-based” to “completely political and petty” that it does on earth.

Speaking of which, the issue of genetic similarity as a disease risk is as politicized as you’d expect in a society where people said “oh, with our genetic technology we can just design the working class to be however we want.” The Hyperians, being, you know, A Rigidly Hierarchal Interstellar Empire In A Space Opera as they are, tend to present the genetic homogeneity as sort of a good thing, what makes Us Us and Them Them, and the royal family themselves subscribe to the very historically royal (and also very eugenicist) idea that genetic “purity”–which for astraeas mostly just means having children in a very chemically controlled environment–helps keep em’ royal or something. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t it just makes hemophilia, and the more conservative Basileans minimize the environmental variance that keeps them from wiping each other out like some kind of aggressively graceful banana monocrop, the easier it is for epidemics to escalate in general because whole colonies become vectors together.

You won’t read about it in your galactic history book til after the revolution, but the dangers of genetic homogeneity were actually observed by lux units, who noticed that “variant” and “off-order” clones were a bit more likely to survive outbreaks of disease. Supervisors in clone factories have tried HARD to excise the superstition that variant units who remain un-decommissioned into adulthood are good luck to have on your cabin crew or manufacturing-plant shift, but it’s never completely gone away, and once Bell Town goes topside their medics and scientists immediately get to work testing, peer reviewing and proving the mechanics of diversity as a factor of public health because it’s a helpful argument for legitimizing their seizure of the means of their own reproduction and fighting the prejudice against “defective” lux that don’t fit the mold.

To really get into your question, Bell Town at least has the advantage of being small and having a busybody mom friend for a de facto head medic, so I don’t think they’ve ever had a quarantine situation get much bigger than four or five people just because Bolt is very up on how everyone’s doing and very very persuasive–the medics know that that’s just a matter of luck though, and I’m sure a factor in the push to go topside is the potential for tragedy involved in having a settlement of mostly/nearly genetically identical people in somewhat adverse and scarce conditions. That’s not to say there’s no plan–the shortages in Bell Town tend to be of immediately consumable raw materials, like air and fuel and very basic multi-use medicines, whereas raw materials for manufacturing specialized equipment are a lot easier to get because organized factories in DT’s network can have them smuggled out. And a majority of the town’s population, at least by vol. 2, are former manufacturing-plant labor with working radio receivers in their heads, so it’s fairly feasible to expect even a small portion of them, with an emergency push, to manufacture A Lot of vaccines, or intensive care equipment, or whatever was needed practically overnight with the direct guidance of the medics to ensure as much safety in the process as possible (they do just that with medical and defense supplies in vol. 2 for various spoilery things).

Up top, the aula’s responses to any and all large-scale social crises tend to be erratic but sweeping. There are some advantages–in terms of expertise, there are certainly things that well-paid doctors with fully equipped research hospitals can accomplish that a dedicated crack team of self-educated medics can’t, including proactive study of new strains of disease. There’s also feudal insanity–technically individual hospitals/institutions aren’t supposed to issue info without the aula’s permission, though legally local nobles can give it on the Hyperians’ behalf if they’re willing to risk Drama. The internal weirdness of the court both logistical and interpersonal (which I need to make a post about) can sometimes mean, in any emergency, that different parts of the empire receive conflicting information, or an edict followed after a day’s delay in the satellite network by a retraction. Public trust (among citizens of relative status at least) that the Hyperians know what they’re doing tends to decline exponentially as you move out from the inner Rings for this exact reason.

Derafior City on Caesura B dealt with a wave of multiple epidemics a couple hundred turns before the official rise of the empire that still affect how the city is laid out–leaders at the time issued quarantine orders in cooperation with individual colony matriarchs, and as those orders became enforced in physical “zones” neighborhood identities, reputations, and rivalries became increasingly defined (Crater culture being what it is, quarantine boundaries were often pretty literal battle lines as the situation became desperate). A lot of historians trace the factionalism of the Crater to this era, although outside imperialism was also a major instigator of both factional conflicts and disease exposure. Keep in mind too that while outsiders like to portray Derafior as violently fractured and there’s a grain of truth to that, there are just as many deep loyalties between neighborhood/colony factions as there are rivalries and as we see in vol. 3, Caesurans are certainly not allergic to closing ranks when shit really hits the fan. 

I don’t have specific canon examples from other ante-dome cultures but another thing of possible interest that I’d like to talk about is that in places touched by Basilean culture, a lot of what we consider “social distancing” is just normal because cleanliness is highly ritualized and valued. Although platonic adult friendships tend to be very cuddly by American and British standards, at the same time, hand touches between strangers outside specific social rituals are seen as quite inappropriate, so things are more thoroughly designed to prevent them–for example, most trading of goods is done purely on paper at the point of sale and nothing actually passes from hand to hand, you go get it out of the crate or pick it out of the field yourself (which is also a practicality of the relative non-ubiquity of flexible currency–and actually, one of the complaints about the use of currency among more traditional astraeas is that it spreads germs). Basically everyone who can afford it wears gloves in public, which are changed and washed every time a person re-enters her home (disposable gloves are mostly limited to medical and laboratory settings, although it’s not unheard of to use them in a pinch if you don’t have a place to launder gloves at home. Side note, if you’re translating directly Altamaian actually refers to manual labor that makes it impractical to wear gloves as “barehanded” labor and the summary conceptualization of such as unhygienic represents a MAJOR vein of classism among Basilean citizens). The reason for the glove thing is that for a species with an exoskeleton regular hand washing can be kind of involved (You know how sometimes it takes a lot of scrubbing to get the dirt out from under your fingernails? Now imagine you have fingernails all over your hands). 

Oh and to answer your second question: out of the main cast the one you’d think would suffer most with self-isolation is Bolt, but being a healthcare worker she’d still see people. Rugsy would complain the loudest but also paradoxically be secretly kind of relieved to not have to worry about People for a while. DT experiences virtually no change from her normal lifestyle lmao

*There’s two kinds of disease that can affect astraeas–what they call “miasmic”, and infectious. Miasmic disease (which as you might guess I named after the precursor to modern germ theory–it’s kind of true in this instance!) is basically when an individual’s body and light chemistry can’t maintain its normal balance in certain atmosphere conditions. A big reason for the kickoff of the artificial atmosphere industry after the settling of Altamai is that the cloud cover tends to trap a lot of carbon dioxide, and for i.e. Basillans and Sitherians (who have come to be based on G-type stars, like the sun, and K-type stars, slightly smaller and cooler than the sun) there’s just not enough hydrogen atoms in there to run their bodies optimally. This mostly affects very young children, the elderly, and those whose cores were formed in suboptimal conditions (comparable to a human who has a chronic health condition because of a birth defect) and if it can’t be remedied by a move to more hydrogen/helium rich air, it’s treated by sucking the pure hydrogen out of a water electrolysis device through a hose on the daily, which side note, is also a reliable hangover remedy for them.

#sweet chariot #worldbuilding #onwardmotley #ask me to tag

[kpopmusiclyricsalbums]

Group: NCT Dream

Song: Boom 

Type: Dance

Dance with an aesthetic meaning.  There is no clear story plotline running throughout.  It consists of them mainly dancing or interacting with sets, a clear view to just show off the members individual aspects rather than a story plotline.  It reminds of EXO’s tempo in that way.  A dance video with moments showing them growing up in the spotlight and trying to come into their own while under the pressure of the ones who came before them in SM, yet still thriving in their environment. 

Concept: Coming of Age - Modern

Okay, this one is actually hard for me to put in a specific category.  One because unlike Female Groups, there tends to only be really two or three different concepts for males.  Cute, Bad Boy/Gangster, or boyfriend material.  This is more of a coming of age, modern concept.  None of them were dressed in really the overall sexy way, yet everything was kept very young and fresh with a growth in sophistication.  Compared to We Go up! Which was more of a rebel in high school, this seemed to be more of a transition to college level students.  

This was made apparent for me in the way, they still appeared in style, sets, and overall interaction with each other. 

Budget: High 

This was a well funded music video, with several rich items and callbacks to previous SM Group music videos.  The underground parking lot, they use along with the car if I’m not mistaken is the same place where EXO’s Call Me Baby is from.  The white background with the flowers, reminds me of Shinee’s Good evening, with the royal concept, even reminds me Red Velvet's Be Natural.   

Execution: Fantastic! 

This felt very well thought off, in a way that showed them growing up and moving on from their previous more boyish themes like Chewing Gum.  It was very well executed in terms of dance, style, and cinematography.  For me, this felt like someone taking this music video as an artistic interpretation more than a literal translation.  

Did the Song fit the music video?

It did.  The song was more about the group themselves coming into their own as a group, achieving their dream and growing older.  Throughout the music video you can see the progression of members from being young to finishing in suits.  

Style of members: Great

What I liked the most was the evolution of them from more boyish clothes to more significant ones.  Starting off they are in more streets clothes, baggy, while throughout you see them start to get more tailored, and end up in suits.  Though I necessary wouldn’t have used the shoes they used in the last outfit change, mostly because on some of the boys it looked rather chunky, that was more of me nitpicking a minor detail.  It just looked hard to dance in for one of them. 

Also this is a good example of what to do with white.  White catches your eye, and everyone has a different degree of it.  It’s like a line, one has the most, then it decreases over time.  I don’t know if this is also the age growing older, but if it was that is a really cool styling choice!  

Things I didn’t like: 

When they put the guy in the full white outfit...in front of the bright white backdropping….come on! Did you not learn anything from the floating Siwon head in Devil Dance music video?

Most of the things I didn’t like was the choice in styling of one or two members.  The outfit, baggy shirt looked way to big, to the point he was more clothes then man, so it took away some of the dance element he would have shown.  

Things I liked: 

I loved the scenery.  Every set they used was beautiful.  Contrary to my previous dislike, the white backdrop was my favorite.  I loved the flowers all round and it highlighted each member (except one) perfectly.  

I was pleanstaly surprised by the song.  I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely add it to my playlist.  

Overall Rating: A- 

Overall, it was one or two things that I couldn’t give this music video an A+ or a A for, because of the fact that they seem to loose one of their members at one point.  Styling is important and can either hinder a dancer or enhance it.  The use of baggy clothes is mostly heavily used in hip hop themed which I understand is apart of the aesthetic, but in this music video, it didn’t work for one member.  To big and your swimming in it to the point that it hinders and takes away the effect you want it to have.  Because of how small his frame is, it reminded me of a kid who wanted to play dress up instead of the desired effect of looking cool.  From the context of the video, I didn’t think that was what they were going for.  

I hope SM keeps them as a unit, they seem to work well together.  So NCT Dream fighting! 

Masterlist

#kpop #kpop music video #kpop music video review #Music Video Reviews #Music Video Review #NCT Dream #NCT Dream Boom #Boom #NCT Dream review #NCT Dream Music Video Review #NCT Renjun #NCT Jeno #NCT Haechan #NCT Jaemin #NCT Chenle #NCT Jisung #NCT Dream Renjun #NCT Dream Jeno #NCT Dream Haechan #NCT Dream Jaemin #NCT Dream Chenle #NCT Dream Jisung #renjun #jeno #haechan #jaemin #chenle #jisung

[thefloatingstone]

overlordraax replied to your post: Not feeling much better after waking up. Somebody...

List your top fave fanfics. List your top fave tropes in fanfic.

Oh noooooo this is a really good one too sdjkjdhfsh

I was actually thinking of doing a fanfic Rec list tbh!! I hope you don’t mind that they’re all Undertale fics! I think I’ve read more fanfiction for this fandom than I’ve read for any other fandom I’ve ever been in. (Including MLP which is a friggen miracle if you stop to think about it)

BUT ANYWAY! Please check out these fics by some incredibly talented individuals (some of these I’ve put in lists before but w/e here it is again!)

(in literally no particular order at all)

Postcards from Waterfall

Rating: Explicit (Fic as a whole is T but occasionally has specific smut scenes which are marked for easy skipping)

Ship?: Sansby

Setting: Classic timeline

Word Count: 353 763

Ongoing

After an unremembered Genocide timeline, Sans is struggling with lingering feelings of dread. On top of this, coming to terms with his own childhood, and dealing with a lifelong recovery from a massive accident in his youth. However, things seem to slowly improve as he unexpectedly grows closer to Grillby, and feelings turn towards the romantic. But there are still things lurking in the Underground that would do them harm.

(the fic mostly focuses on Sans’ childhood trauma dealing with a apathetic Gaster, an mysterious “Accident” he can barely remember in his near-childhood, his developing feeling for Grillby, and their awkward relationship developing and reacting to situations around them. the plot is paced slowly, but I wouldn’t call it a slice-of-life story as there are larger things at play and get slowly revealed as things move forward)

Thunderstruck

Rating: T

Ship?: Reader / Underfell Papyrus

Setting: Classic Timeline with Underfell Sans and Papyrus

Word Count: 263 284

Ongoing

It’s the classic timeline, and monsters have been on the surface for almost 2 years already. In the Skeleton household though, Sans and Papyrus have acquired two tag-alongs in the form of Underfell Sans (Red) and Underfell Papyrus (Edge) who have come from a much more violent and desperate timeline with no way of going back. This wouldn’t be so bad, but a lifetime of being on constant alert and being intimidating and scary to everyone, where it once had Edge be the most respected of monsters as Captain of the Royal Guard, now sees him severely emotionally and socially crippled. Unable to make friends due to his learned behaviour of being scary and permanently angry, unable to find work because most monsters AND humans find him too hard to handle, and struggling to find his place in his own family unit, with his relationship with his own brother awkward after so many years of pretending to be “boss and henchman”, a strained relationship with Sans who does not trust him (for admittedly good reason) and with the only person he seems on good terms with being Papyrus (who also represents everything Edge could have been but have no hope of achieving).

Things change when caught in a pretty bad thunderstorm, Reader (you) finds him hiding in an alley outside your apartment. And lucky for him, you’re crazy enough to let a terrified stranger into your home until the weather improves, and even crazier, as you decide once he starts yelling, that you’d like to stay in contact with him.

The story is a slowburn Reader-insert romance, but it’s almost much more than that. Told from Edge’s perspective, it’s a recovery fic more than anything. Recovering from a lifetime of trauma, violence, learned survival behaviours, mending relationships with family, learning to fit into a world that at first seems completely incompatible with you, and finding a place in life. Lots of self reflection, sometimes self loathing, pining, confusion, frustration, brief arguments over stupid petty things, arguments over really IMPORTANT things, and a lot of tenderness, even if you’re not someone to go for Reader-insert stories, I highly recommend this one if only for the characterisation and emotional and psychological exploration, especially for Edge and his relationship to to his brother and the world at large. It definitely sold me on his character in a way I’ve never really considered.

Panic Room

Rating: M (note cw on fic)

Ship?: Nothing yet but working towards Reader/Papyrus Reader/Sans (no f//ntcest)

Setting: Swapfell

Word Count: 150 548

Ongoing

It’s been years since monsters broke the barrier, stormed into Ebott, and forcefully took over, place Toriel as the monarch and cutting the city off from the outside world. Ebott has become a dystopian dictatorship, where humans are second class citizens who can have incredible luxury depending on how useful and accommodating they are to their new monster rules, or simply be exterminated if stepping out of line. Reader (you) have been imprisoned for almost a year, living in torturous conditions, scarred from beatings and with no hope or future to even think of. But due to your spirit of Perseverance, you continue to live, to not give in to despair. One day, Swapfell Papyrus (Rus) wanders into the prison, looking to “buy” himself a human (for reasons unknown to you) and, for whatever reason, picks you.

He brings you home, has you cleaned up, healed up to the best of his ability, and then has the hurdle of trying to present you to Swapfell Sans; the Lieutenant of the Royal Guard and Alphys’ right hand man. On the verge of throwing you out, Sans allows you to stay and work as the maid in his meticulous home. A hard job, but you accept, unwilling to try your luck on the streets of Ebott. And so your new life begins with the brothers, and the longer you work there, the more you learn. You learn more about the very touchy but at his core good-hearted Rus, you learn more about the terrifying and ruthless Sans, and the sadness and desire to show kindness behind his mask, and you learn more about Ebott. About the constant servailence, the propaganda machine, the injustice, the violence, the broken system ruled by the blind and terrible queen.

You don’t know what sort of life or future is in store for you now, but it’s better than the prison (ANYTHING is better than the prison) and just at the edges of reality, where you can’t even see or notice them yet, a change is coming. Invisible and far in the distance, but slowly approaching.

Dirty Laundry

Rating: T

Ship?: Reader/Papyrus Reader/Sans (poly relationship, no f//ntcest)

Setting: Swapfell

Word Count: 49 369

Ongoing

Reader (you) have recently moved to Ebott for a change in life (it being monster central may or may not have something to do with that). It’s been a few months since monsters were freed, and many are integrating with society slowly but surely. One day, while at the laundromat, you find yourself watched by a scary but ultimately nervous and “I don’t know how to laundry!” Swapfell Papyrus.

In time, a friendship forms. He’s a really sweet guy, anxious but eager to please. It would all be very cute if not for the fact that his asshole brother doesn’t seem very pleased with you (or anybody?) “worming their way” into his baby brother’s life. Nevermind that their therapist said they needed time apart! Nevermind that Papyrus has asked him for some space! He’s going to make sure his little brother is safe! Just as he always had.

Besides... if he doesn’t, what else is there for him to do? Leave Papyrus alone? Leave both of you alone? Accept that Papyrus doesn’t need him any more? May not even want him any more?

...would that make him happier?

Fired Up and Bone Weary (Series)

Rating: G - T

Ship?: Sansby

Setting: Classic Timeline

Word Count: various

Complete

A collection of short stories and oneshots, documenting the everyday life and events in Sans, Grillby and Papyrus’ lives, starting underground and early dating, and working its way to surface life and marriage. Mostly just fluffy, slice of life settings, only now and then undercut by misfortune or drama. Dealing with Grillby’s complicated family, trying to manage Sans’ fluctuating depression, and Papyrus’ role and desire for a family. Most of it is just small, everyday happiness though. And the fear that at any moment all of it could disappear with a reset is (most of the time) not thought about.

(I haven’t finished the series myself just yet. I got stuck on the third last story in the series, the one with the most chapters, due to personal reasons. I do plan to finish it at a later date, but at this point in time it hit a little too close to home. I still recommend all of it whole-heartedly, as I doubt other people will react to it the way I did.)

There are also a few oneshots as well as fics I’ve mentioned before (like SSLL for instance which I STILL love and you guys should STILL read!!) but these are the main ones I’m reading/have read at the moment!

If you guys want I can make a list of oneshots too. Just let me know 8′D I also didn’t include people’s tumblr names just in case they didn’t want it spread around for any particular reason, and I didn’t include more than one fanfic per author, I may add some of their other work in another post at some point. But I wanted to give each author equal exposure in this post.

Anyway! Hopefully you guys consider any (although you really should read ALL) of these fics! And give the authors comments and kudos!

#fanfic rec #Fanfic #Fanfiction #recommendations #C-Puff replies #overlordraax

[murasaki-murasame]

Oh boy, that anniversary Dragalia Digest sure was something, huh? lol

Anyway I’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, and the surprising amount of announcements and surprises in it.

ok realistically like half of my brain power is still being taken up by ‘MEGAMAN!????’ but I have at least some actual thoughts on everything else we’re gonna get in the anniversary and in the near future, lol.

And on that note, I’m surprised at how much stuff they talked about that’ll be slowly coming out over the next six months. I expected this digest to just be about the anniversary. I’m honestly a little unsure exactly when certain things are planned to come out since they kinda just jump from ‘anniversary stuff’ to ‘stuff for later this year’ to ‘stuff that’ll happen by the 1.5-year anniversary’ really quickly. But at the very least we know what the 1.12 update has in it since that’s out now.

Anyway, I ended up being right about a fair amount of my predictions [if I remember them all right], with me mostly just being wrong about my more hopeful but unlikely guesses like a Switch port or an anime announcement. But I was right about a lot of the event stuff. Though it wasn’t really hard to predict stuff like Euden being our new gala unit :v

I’m honestly a bit surprised that they’re actually committing to having his alt be a summonable gacha unit and not a free welfare unit of some kind, or a direct promotion of the existing Euden. It feels kinda strange to have to try and pull for an alt of the protagonist, but oh well.

As i figured, he’s a light sword unit, and I probably should have expected that he’d end up being really strong. On paper he sounds like a melee version of Gala Cleo, so I guess we’ll see how that turns out. Light needs more strong DPS units, but it mostly just needs strong DPS units that are in the regular summoning pool. At least shadow has a whole bunch of strong non-limited units. And we’re even getting a shadow banner after the gala. So I hope that we can at least get some more good light DPS units from other banners soon. But really I just hope they don’t balance light-attuned content around the assumption that you have Gala Euden. In the short term lots of people will probably get him between the daily free tenfold summons and the platinum gala summon, but once this is all over he’ll be really hard to get.

They’re also casually dropping the fact that some units are gonna get unique coabilities, starting with him. I’m really curious to see if this will be exclusive to limited units, or if some random banner units down the track will also have unique coabilities.

It also looks like we’re getting a regular raid event starting in a few days, which is kinda surprising. I wasn’t expecting a raid event next since we’re getting an astral raid this weekend, but I think the raid event will start pretty much immediately after the next astral raid ends, so i guess it works out, lol. I was expecting more of an anniversary-themed event, if that makes sense, but the more i think about it, the more that might actually be the case. Sort of.

We still don’t really know much about the raid event since it hasn’t gotten a detailed announcement yet, but they decided to announce the post-gala summon banner which seems to be directly tied to this event, since they have the same name and all, and it puts into perspective what the event will probably be about.

Basically, the next banner has Alberius’ pacted dragon on it, a new unit who’s related to the Binding Ruins which were a big part of the history of the royal family, and the other new unit is tied to the royal family as well. The event also seems themed around time travel, since it’s called Fractured Futures, the raid boss is called Chronos, and there’s clockwork-themed event currency. The guy on the event banner image who’s probably gonna be our welfare unit for the event also looks a LOT like Euden.

So let’s just say that a whole bunch of signs seem to be pointing at the idea of time travel magic or whatever letting us get young Alberius as a welfare unit, along with his pacted dragon as a new dragon we can summon. Maybe the new banner units will be part of the raid event story itself, and it’ll be themed around Alberius’ history and the royal family in general, which would be a nice follow-up to chapter 10, and it’d feel important and plot-relevant enough to be a nice anniversary event.

Or i could be wrong and the event welfare unit could just be some random blond dude who just so happens to look like he’s related to Euden, but the lore behind the new banner units and the fact that the next banner just straight up has Alberius’ dragon on it makes me think I’m probably right. [He might also be some other ancestor of Euden’s who isn’t Alberius, but it’d be weird if we got some random ancestor of his while we get Alberius’ dragon in the next banner]

I was kinda sad that us getting Gala Euden might mean we wouldn’t get Alberius as a playable unit, but this would be a fun way for them to have their cake and eat it too, lol. Considering what happened in chapter 10 they were going to need some kinda time travel magic to let us use him anyway, and that might be exactly what they’re doing. So I can’t complain, since chapter 10 really made me want Alberius as a playable unit. I just hope that he’s not yet another light sword who’s gonna be immediately invalidated by Gala Euden. Especially since even before this we got Alfonse as a really good light sword event unit. They could at least make him a light blade unit or something to make him stand out. Or maybe they’ll throw us a curveball and he’ll be a shadow unit.

And on the topic of the shadow banner we’re gonna get for this event later, I think it’s gonna take me a while to figure out exactly how I feel about it. I’m happy about Chthonius since I don’t think shadow has a non-limited 5-star strength dragon yet, but the two new adventurers seem . . . weird. Between this and Lea, they’re really leaning hard into these Fjorm-esque units lately. It’s kinda weird. In general it’s just hard to tell how useful they’ll be.

Cassandra reminds me a bit of Veronica, but her skills don’t seem to be directly affected by her HP lowering, and her S1 is an HP buff and recovery skill, which is . . . an odd choice for someone who seems to be based around taking damage. I guess the plan is to have her keep alternating between getting to low health and then healing herself so she can trigger her strength buff again by taking more damage. Oh and there’s also the fact that she’s gonna be in competition with Gala Cleo, but at least she’s not limited.

And on the other hand, Delphi just has a bizarre-looking kit. His kit’s all about debuffing the enemy and inflicting poison on them, but he also has a permanent 60% strength debuff on himself for? some reason??? I can only assume that without it, his personal DPS would be way too high in addition to his poison and debuffs. But it’s certainly a new way to go about handicapping a unit to keep them from being overpowered. I just hope it doesn’t lead to him being too weak. But on the other hand, he’s cute, so really it’s impossible to say whether or not he’s a bad unit :)

It’s also worth noting that there might be a secret 4-star in the banner since those are never talked about in these preview posts, but the last couple of shadow banners have just been two 5-star adventurers and a 5-star dragon so I wouldn’t bet on it. But if we do get one, I think blade is the only weapon type we don’t have a shadow 4-star unit for, so that’d be nice to get.

I want to splurge on the gala since i’ve been specifically saving up for it, but between us getting free daily tenfolds, us getting a shorter second gala period where the earlier gala units are featured, AND us knowing about the post-gala banner like two weeks in advance, I’m not really sure if it’d be a good idea for me to go all in on it immediately. But I also want to get Gala Euden, so we’ll see.

I’m still kinda shocked that we’re getting ten whole days of tenfold summons. I know I predicted something like this, but I figured it’d be a week at most, and just cover the gala. But this is ten days long, and the last three days will apply for the post-gala banner. We’re also getting 5k wyrmite from the log-in bonus, 2.5k wyrmite in total from the co-op reward reset, and a tenfold voucher from the version update, so this is . . . a lot of free summons.

I probably should have expected that we’d get a platinum summon for the gala, but I didn’t expect it to also include Euden. I figured it’d only cover the first four gala units.

We’re also getting a 5-star dragon voucher from log-in bonuses, and there’s gonna be several types of 5-star vouchers in store packs.

And I guess that on the flip side, all that generosity lead to them choosing not to do a dream summon for the anniversary, which is kinda sad since I specifically had diamantum saved up for one. Oh well.

The 1.12 update itself seems a bit low-key, with a lot of the really interesting stuff coming in the next few months, but I’m really happy about the raid battle improvements. It’s nice to see what they’re actually taking feedback into consideration and improving how they work. Like how a while ago they made blazon summons way more convenient, and even more recently they got a lot cheaper to do. I’ve been one of the people wanting them to overhaul the EX Raid system to remove the randomness from it, so i’m glad we’re getting exactly the sort of system I wanted.

I wasn’t expecting the system where in each raid event from now on we’re apparently gonna be able to get a 5t3 weapon of our choosing after we beat an EX Raid. But they seem to have a lot of plans related to higher-tier endgame weapons, so I guess they’re just trying to make the 5t3 weapons more accessible. It seems to be limited to one weapon per raid event, so it’s not exactly gamebreaking, but it’d go a long way toward lessening the grind to get them.

Omega raids just seem like they’re an even stronger version of nightmare raids, which is cool and all, but I don’t even think i’ve managed to beat a nightmare raid yet so it’s not really relevant to me yet, lol

Though the new raid boost system seems designed to make the higher difficulty tiers more accessible. Assuming that they aren’t balanced around them and it all just evens out anyway.

We’re also getting a retweet campaign like last time. I think this one has even better rewards, though. The idea of one person getting literally a hundred goddamn sunlight stones is kinda insane. At that point you could probably find a whale in the community who’d give you some serious cash to buy your account, lol.

The mana and rupie rewards are whatever, but a max of 100k eldwater is kinda absurd. I guess I’ll be getting a lot of wyrmprints maxed out and characters to 50MC now.

And then there’s some random quality of life and UI type stuff. As everyone hoped, we’re gonna be able to change the home screen BGM now, which is nice. I’m surprised that they’re putting in Haikei Goodbye Sayonara as an option, though. I don’t think that’s ever been used in DL before, and it definitely wasn’t made just for the game.

The new hammer item thing seems like a nice quality of life addition to help out with late-game grinding, since it starts to take ages to finish buildings, and it’s never a good idea to spend wyrmite on them. It’ll be interesting to see how often you’ll end up getting them.

The honey tree seems to basically be a system where once every three days or so you can get a free stamina refill, so that’s pretty neat. It’ll make it even easier to hoard up honey, I guess. I feel like we need more ways to get getherwings, though.

And then there’s the stuff that we know isn’t gonna be in the anniversary but will be added over the next few months.

I wasn’t expecting them to revisit and flesh out the high dragon trials, but adding in higher difficulty tiers for them is a neat idea. I’m wary of the time attack leaderboard concept, though.

High dragon weapons seem to be their big plan to create a new weapon tier for even further endgame content. I wonder how that’ll turn out in the long run, and how hard they’ll be to obtain, considering how much you need to grind for 5t3s as it is.

I didn’t actually think this was a very likely guess, but I ended up being right about the idea of them expanding mana circles to give units more boosts across the board. Though it doesn’t seem to be tied to any sort of special transcendence/6-star/etc system like i thought. If it’s gated behind getting a unit to 50MC, I hope they really revamp the materials you need to get that far, since there’s some serious bottlenecks going on with champion testaments and eldwater. Even if every unit in the game gets more or less equally buffed by this, and some weaker units become a lot more viable, people would still just choose to prioritize their stronger units if they have to be very selective in how they spend their resources.

Either way, I hope it’s more than just a set of flat stat buffs. I hope they give units new skills and abilities, or at least boost their existing ones.

As I expected, we’re getting a new tier of endgame bosses beyond high dragon trials, though we probably aren’t gonna get our first one until chapter 11 drops. I was almost certain it was gonna be themed around Euden’s siblings and their dragons, after how chapter 10 ended, but I think I prefer the direction they seem to be going with it instead. The fact that they’re all humanoid bosses who explicitly aren’t dragons, and are a complete mystery in general, is a lot more interesting to me. I have a feeling that, like how you can obtain the high dragons as units by farming them, you might be able to earn these bosses as playable adventurers if you farm them enough, which would be really neat.

They also seem to have some really unique designs, and they all look completely different to each other. I actually wonder how they’d work as playable units, if we can play as them, since they have such unique and somewhat alien designs. I’m really curious about the boss that seems to be a set of twins. That could be a fun set-up for a boss fight in and of itself, but there’s a lot they could do with a playable adventurer who’s a set of twins that you both control. The one we got a proper design for makes me think it’s gonna tie into the sci-fi direction the story seems to be taking with chapter 11.

And on the note of chapter 11, we got confirmation that it’ll come out in December, and that we’ll get a new story chapter afterward every two months. It’s really nice to have a schedule planned out for that, but the wait for December will be rough. It also sounds like we’re getting short story segments or side-stories in the months between main story chapters. I wonder what they’ll do with that.

Then at the very end we got a rough list of stuff that’s probably all just scheduled for January-March 2020.

Most of it isn’t really noteworthy, but i’m really intrigued by the ‘play past events at any time’ bullet-point. I assume it’ll just be a way to read through old event stories, but the fact that they said ‘play past events’ rather than ‘read past event stories’ makes me wonder if they might actually include the raid bosses and stuff with them. I have no idea how that’d work, though, since not many people are going to be randomly doing co-op for old archived events. At the very least, if they use this as a way to let us obtain the welfare units from past events, that’d be great. It might let them stop doing event reruns altogether, if people can get all the rewards from them in some kind of event archive. But I kinda doubt it.

We’re also getting a What’s Ahead type of post on the first of October, which I assume will just go over some of the stuff in this digest in more detail. But maybe they’d also announce the Halloween event that we’ll inevitably get at the end of next month.

All in all I’m really happy with what this digest had to offer, even though I wish the next raid event would start immediately on the anniversary after this void endeavor week ends. It’s gonna be a bit boring if we get a few days where the only gameplay event going on is double drops.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #we sure did get fifteen whole minutes worth of back to back announcements lmao

[saint-hildegard-of-bingen]

Source

BAGPIPES AND BANJOS

My work began as I set out to rearrange a new version of “The Skye Boat Song” for the season’s Main Title. Changing a series’ Main Title is relatively rare in television, and yet this marks the sixth, arguably seventh, iteration of the beloved folk song I have produced for Outlander. (The previous were Season 1’s original, Season 2’s “French” and “Jacobite” versions, and Season 3’s “After Culloden” and “Caribbean” versions. I also produced an “Extended” version for the Season 1 Volume 2 soundtrack album, though it was never used in the series itself.)

Before I began writing, the producers requested that my music help transport the audience to a new setting. They wanted the music to sound different. With the season taking place entirely in America, it was clear this new Main Title arrangement – and the fourth season score as a whole – would need to sound distinctly American. I worked with a musicologist, and researched the popular folk music of pre-Revolutionary America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of American folk songs of this era were imported from England, frequently set to new lyrics. One of the most famous early Revolutionary songs was “The Liberty Song,” with lyrics by John Dickinson, and yet drawing its melody from “Heart of Oak,” the anthem of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, and the Irish song “Here’s a Health.” (In fact, I already featured this song prominently in the end credits of the Season 3 finale!)

Stripped of their lyrics, these colonial American songs are essentially British, played on mostly the same instruments with only subtle performance practices separating them. Had I scored this season of Outlander using only historically accurate American music, the audience would have discerned very little difference between this season’s score and the music for when our story was rooted in Scotland. I had to look outside the realms of what was historically accurate to find a new sound. I chose to integrate into the score twentieth century Appalachian music.

A large chunk of the story takes place in the Appalachian Mountains, a region of America with a strong musical identity. Over the course of a few hundred years, Appalachian music developed into what we categorize as bluegrass, country and folk music today. These genres emphasize specific vocal styles: clear, sonorous vocal tones stacked in triadic harmonies, often featuring high falsettos. This music also popularized instruments such as banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and a fretted dulcimer, used so often it became known as an Appalachian dulcimer. In the early 1920’s, Appalachian music began to be recorded in field recordings, and in the coming decades commercial studio recordings would eventually transport it around the world, peaking with a massive influence on the resurgence of interest in folk music in the 1960’s.

Our primary time-traveling protagonists, Claire, Roger and Brianna, would have been familiar with these sounds to some extent, so much so I felt confident employing them in the instrumental score. Yes, Appalachian music was mostly developed in the early twentieth century, but it offered the musical sounds that Claire and Brianna would have associated with the region. In fact, their nostalgic memories of the twentieth century influenced my decisions with the score. After all, I am not scoring a documentary about colonial America. I am scoring the emotional journey of our characters.

(This same philosophy allowed me to use “The Skye Boat Song” as the series’ Main Title in the first place, despite it not being historically accurate to the Jacobite era. The melody’s origins are hard to trace, and the Robert Louis Stevenson lyrics were written over a hundred and fifty years later in 1892. However, due to the song’s overwhelming popularity in the 1890’s and into the early twentieth century, I felt Claire would have known the song, so I imagined that she took it with her back in time.)

When I reflect back on my experiences with this song, I have to laugh at what a strange journey it has been. In the first season, I was scared to even change a word of the text! (Ron Moore suggested we alter “lad” to “lass” to reflect the needs of the story.) Since then, I have bent and adapted this song into many different styles I could never have foreseen at that time. Yet, with each permutation, the integrity and soul of the song remains clear. Perhaps that is why the song itself has endured for so long. Like all immortal folk songs, there exists something inherent to its musical DNA that allows it to change, evolve, blend, and adapt to new interpretations, while still retaining its identity. I am grateful to this song for what it has brought to my creative life, and I wonder what else might be done with it.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD: With the decision made to introduce the instrumentation of Appalachian music, the score to Outlander Season 4 was essentially born. The bluegrass instrumentation can be felt in the season’s first episode, but beginning in the second episode, “Do No Harm,” it makes its musical mark. As Jamie and Claire arrive at River Run we hear the gentle plucking of the banjo and dulcimer. I was inspired by the imagery of their river boat, as it evoked memories of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Later in the episode, a comedic sequence involving Rollo after he has been attacked by a skunk provided another wonderful opportunity to lean into the Appalachian instrumentation in a playful style. From that episode onward, bluegrass colors grew in prominence.

As I dove deeper into the underscore, I first considered what elements from previous seasons I wanted to retain. I knew I would preserve elements of the Scottish instrumentation, in particular the various bagpipes, penny whistles, and Scottish-style fiddle, because I’ve come to associate these instruments with Jamie and Claire. I felt it was important for the audience to have some sense of familiarity when they watched this season.

Many of my other original themes play important roles throughout this season, often finding new arrangements within the distinctly American setting. Audiences will hear whispers of the Jamie and Claire Theme, despite it moving to a more supporting role. The string orchestra soars with several variations of the Stones  Theme, as always representing journeys in time. Wisps of the Frank Theme recur in a ghostly fashion. Fergus and Marsali, John Grey, and Willie all have themes that echo throughout their scenes. Murtagh, that tough old rebel, is associated as always with an arrangement of a Scottish folk song, “McPherson’s Farewell,” a tune that always seems to echo something of the losses he has endured.

Finding the balance between new and old themes and instrumental colors would eventually prove to be my biggest challenge of the season.

NEW THEMES

Outlander is a thematic score, with over a dozen important themes already established. Season 4 required new thematic material that would come to represent new characters, locations, and story arcs. These new themes would be interwoven with older themes to create a rich musical tapestry. I believe long-standing musical connections help solidify the story for audiences, and deepen the impact of emotional moments, even if only on a subliminal level.

Of the new themes I wrote this season, none were as important as the Brianna and Roger Theme. It may come as a surprise to some that Roger and Brianna have not previously had their own theme. In my blog entry discussing their introduction, in the second season finale, I even remarked on the lack of a theme for Brianna, making the case that her sequences were about her chasing Jamie’s ghost. There wasn’t room in her scenes to define her musically, when she hadn’t yet defined herself. That decision impacted the third season, where Brianna and Roger made relatively brief appearances, mostly in support of Claire’s storyline. These scenes also left insufficient space to introduce a theme. Instead, I vowed to give Roger and Brianna a theme when the timing was right, and the inspiration struck me.

Now, at the start of the fourth season, not only were Roger and Brianna stepping forward to claim more screen time and narrative weight, but the producers and I were beginning to feel that the score was leaning too heavily on Jamie and Claire’s Theme. We felt it was time to introduce an important new character theme to the score, one that could serve as a musical partner to the Jamie and Claire Theme.

In crafting the Roger and Brianna Theme, my goal was to compose a theme that is distinct, but equal, one that could eventually generate the kind of emotional impact over the course of multiple seasons that I believe the Jamie and Claire Theme has with audiences. I drew heavily on both musical influences from the 1960’s and the bluegrass influence on the score. A simple ostinato on finger-picked acoustic guitars provide the theme’s foundation…

… followed by a gentle melody, featured most frequently on mandolin.

We first hear this impactful chord progression at the end of “The False Bride” with that gorgeous wide shot, depicting Jamie and Claire looking to the horizon. The bluegrass rhythm section and symphonic strings swell together in a beautiful crescendo, one of my favorite musical moments of the season.

After that memorable debut in the third episode, The Fraser’s Ridge Theme makes a few other appearances in “Common Ground” and “The Birds & The Bees,” adding hopeful support to scenes where the Frasers are building their new life in America.

Ron Moore and I did not intend this theme to completely replace the Jamie and Claire Theme, which still has a place in both our hearts. The idea was instead to augment their musical identity, by introducing thematic material with the sole purpose of supporting their new life in America, free from the memories of the past. The Fraser’s Ridge theme is one of the season’s most significant musical developments and I look forward to the possibility of using it more in future.

THE NATIVE AMERICAN PRESENCE

Perhaps this season’s most distinct musical development is the introduction of Native American instrumentation. First alluded to in the premiere’s mysterious opening sequence, I found opportunity to fully explore these sounds beginning in the third episode, “The False Bride.” What started with subtle new instrumentation during a trippy sequence where Claire first sees Otter Tooth, eventually evolves into a wholly new musical palette that virtually overtakes the entire soundtrack as the narrative dives into conflicts with the Cherokee and Mohawk tribes.

I felt strongly that the Native American presence in the show needed to be supported with authentic instrumentation, and so I drew predominantly from percussion and woodwinds, adding vocals for extraordinary sequences. For the majority of scenes, I emphasized drums similar in timbre to what would have been performed by these tribes at this time, leaning heavily on double-headed pueblo style drums, shaman drums, and deer hide drums. Various rattles were used, including seed pods strung together with string, gourd rattles, and a turtle shell rattle. For the more ethereal Otter Tooth sequences, or the action sequences that required more colors, I drew upon more exotic colors from throughout the Americas, adding the Inuit qilaut, turtle shells played like a log drum, and the Aztec teponatztli.

While these colors provided the backbone of the majority of scenes involving Native Americans, several sequences stood out to me as needing something special. I added a featured vocal to their already exciting instrumental palettes. Typically, the presence of vocals or choirs in Outlander was always used to represent Claire’s journey, or the Stones, or The Skye Boat Song. This is the first time such a distinctly new vocal presence has been introduced to the score, and I hope it had the same impact on audiences that it had on me!

The first such sequence occurred  “Common Ground,” during Jamie’s confrontation with the “bear.” This passage of the score is based on the Cherokee Bear Dance, and the vocals were performed by a talented Native American singer named Jaraneh Nova. I was utterly stunned by her unique musical personality, and was thrilled with how she integrated her sound into the score and elevated the drama.

“I could feel the respect that Outlander extends to the First Nation peoples, how they really value and honor authenticity,” Jaraneh said recently, reflecting on her experience with the score. “The sessions were a beautiful coming together of my ceremonial experience and musicianship, while serving as narration to the unfolding story. Finding vocal lines inside Bear’s brilliant scoring was a true pleasure! I especially enjoyed mirroring the emotion in the scene with the vocal. High vibes and great fun!”

After our first session, I was on the lookout for another sequence in which to feature Jaraneh. That opportunity would arrive in the finale, during the scene in which Claire hears the tale of Otter Tooth. During this passage, Jaraneh’s voice returns, set above the haunting texture of ambient synths, symphonic strings, and Native American percussion. Here, Jaraneh sings words and phrases that are common to Mohawk or universal, making occasional, slight omissions to fit the words into the space afforded by the drama. The text includes:

Yoon gwa no loon gwa gaw

_We love the water

_(“gaw” is shortened from “Oh ne gaw”, which means “Water”)

Yoon gwa way ah aye

_We love, vocable

Yoon gwa no loon gwa

_We love

Way ah way ah aye

_(Vocable, no meaning)

Yah, yah tewaka (tshennonin)

_No this is not happy, I am not happy

Yah yah skennen’ko’wa

_No great peace

Skennen’ko’wa

_Great peace

Shonkwaiatison

_ The Creator

“Native Americans are still very present in this world, although many believe us to be extinct,” Jaraneh said recently. “So, for me, having the opportunity to express ancient wisdom, language and prayer through song, in these modern times, was truly a blessing.”

The job of the film composer introducing cultural music to a score is always a tricky balancing act. I strove to represent aspects of Native American music as authentically as I could, however, I also had to address every scene’s immediate dramatic needs. As a result, the Native American instrumentation frequently ended up woven into the broader tapestry of orchestral strings, English and American folk instrumentation, and modern percussion.

One of the best examples of this kind of musical cross-pollenization is perhaps the finale and end credits of the eleventh episode, “If Not For Hope.” Listen for a strong foundation provided by Native American percussion and woodwinds, supporting a mournful statement of the Roger and Brianna Theme, where the playful guitar ostinato has been moved to deep, sorrowful cello lines. (Check out my blog about scoring the Peruvian episodes of “Da Vinci’s Demons” with indigenous singers for another tale of this in my work.)

OUTLANDER IN AMERICA

Scoring any project of this scale is a massive team sport, and I am fortunate to be supported by the best in the business. I want to take a moment to thank my entire team at Sparks & Shadows for all they do to keep everything running, and ensure we get music across the finish line on time every time, especially Kaiyun Wong and Marisa Gunzenhauser. I want to thank my team of additional writers, especially Jason Akers, Omer Ben-Zvi, Sam Ewing, Joanna Pane, and Michael Beach. Thanks are due to everyone at Kraft-Engel Management, especially Sarah Kovacs, for all their support, and to Joe Augustine at Sparks & Shadows, and Jaime Cyr at Madison Gate Records, for their tremendous contributions to the soundtrack album development. I also want to thank our tireless group of orchestrators, copyists, engineers, sequencers, and performers, with special shout-outs to Ryan Sanchez, Ryan Walsh, Nick Fister, Sergio Jiménez Lacima, and Andy Harris. I am grateful for every single one of these people, each of whom works long hours to make sure the score to Outlander shines in every way possible, and lives up to the remarkable promise of the story. My eternal gratitude goes to Ron Moore, Diana Gabaldon, and all the series’ producers, for the opportunity to contribute to this unique series.

I never could have imagined I would stumble upon a single project that would allow me to integrate both bagpipes and banjos, explore French baroque ornaments, fierce Afro-Cuban polyrhythms, or create a hybrid of Scottish and American folk music, set against a backbone of percussive Native American rhythms. Working on Outlander continues to be one of the most exhilarating creative challenges of my career, and I look forward to seeing where my journey leads next.

Speaking of the future, I’m happy to announce that I am currently working with the Sparks & Shadows team, Madison Gate Records, and Sony Classical on the fourth season soundtrack album! Watch this space, or my social media feeds, for more details soon.

-Bear

#Bear McCreary #Outlander season 4 musical score

[ganymedesclock]

So here's the thing: when Acxa tells Zethrid and Ezor that 'No one is replacing Lotor' (quite adamantly, may I add) I interpreted it as if she was saying that no one will/can replace Lotor, not only as emperor, but also, and mostly, as the leader of their team (they don't seem that happy acting as Haggar's cronnies). She still seems to be somehow protective and loyal to him. What do you think?

I mean, the thing about VLD is everything is color-coded and usually to show you exactly what faction somebody is on. It stands that with multiple opportunities for them to get new outfits, neither Lotor nor the generals have abandoned their Team Sincline colors, which is a really specific scheme that sticks out from most of the others.

It’s basically like if Hunk had a big arc of leaving Voltron and striking off on his own and both sides really adamantly were like “we’re done here” but Hunk kept regularly wearing and using the yellow paladin armor and whoever they shifted to fill the gap specifically wore a different color. The implication is overwhelmingly, heavily like there’s still an enduring connection between Lotor and the generals.

And entirely outside of I personally want Narti back, Narti feels very deliberately like she was framed as unfinished business.

Kova is shown specifically sitting by her body twice, and the second time is a specific reaction shot to Zarkon declaring Lotor an enemy of the empire. There is no way to read this besides that Kova and what he does and doesn’t hear are going to be important going forwards. Remember the cat, he’s coming back.

Which may not say much about Narti’s fate on its own, except that... Kova seemingly has refused to leave Narti’s body. He’s loyally staying next to her.

And the thing about Kova is that his fur patterns- something he’d be really hard-pressed to take off or change- are specifically in the same colors and patterns as the team. His orange mohawk mirrors the orange streak on the neck of their armor, his ears mimic the shape of the pauldrons, the Y-shaped rank mark on the cuirass of the generals’ uniforms is on his forehead.

Considering, again, that this show is pretty dedicated in showcasing factions with character design. When Keith is starting to drift away from Voltron in s4e1 he’s shown spending a lot more time lingering around in his Blade armor, even using his mask to withdraw from Allura. And that’s a much lesser departure- this is Keith shuffling around within the Voltron Coalition, he’s still warmly welcome within the team, as you can gather from that shot of him in Blade armor being sandwiched in a hug by the paladins all in Voltron gear.

Pretty hard to say the Blade’s not welcome here. They make sure to make it very, very clear that Keith is leaving as a beloved friend, that they’re letting him go because they trust him but they’re making sure he knows very, very clearly that they’ll miss him dreadfully until his return.

So why then make a point when as far as we know, Team Sincline’s scattered to the winds, never coming back together, murder and betrayal have sunk this for all involved parties... has literally no one taken off those colors? Lotor, it makes sense because the royal blue is his color but the generals have made no move to shed that blue, or the specific mix of galra and altean armor aesthetics.

And as I’ve pointed out before, the generals are not doing everything we know they’re capable of in s5.

Look at how dull Ezor and Zethrid’s surprise looks in comparison to Pidge and Matt. Lotor just ditched his handcuffs, whipped out the black bayard and launched Zarkon off his feet. Ezor looks like she’s sarcastically going “wow.” Zethrid’s eyebrows are touching her eyes and her face is completely relaxed.

Especially when we know Ezor and Zethrid are both way more expressive than that normally. Compare them grieving Narti at the end of s4e3 to the completely indifferent way Ezor basically waves it off because it’s not their fault Zarkon got murdered.

During the Kral Zera in s5e4, the generals, who are highly competent fighters and could easily have weighed into this conflict and taken on a lot of those people basically just stand around Haggar. The only one who doesn’t is Acxa, and the look she gives Keith and her selection of target makes it very clear she did that for personal reasons, not on Haggar’s order. And in s5e6 Ezor flat-out complains that Haggar doesn’t have them do anything, she’s just holed up scrying, and isn’t telling them anything they’re doing.

And the generals are predictably restless and frustrated. Of course they are! The so much more effort and energy they were putting into things back under Lotor was because they were an integral part of making team decisions. The Plan was something actively and earnestly discussed and the vast majority of their screentime right up to Narti’s death, Lotor was openly communicating strategy with them and relying on their input to make most of his plans. Even figuring out that Narti was seemingly a traitor hinged on something Zethrid said that got Lotor to stop and think.

But people like Haggar and Zarkon believe in separation of hierarchy, they believe the generals are there to be useful, to be good soldiers, they’re not here to have opinions, and consequentially the generals are shut out from decision making in a way they never have been before, and their response is incredulous and frustrated. They clearly lack the emotional investment in the plans that they used to have.

You can compare Ezor’s unrestrained glee watching Lotor set up traps for the Lions in s3e3 to the utterly indifferent way she tells hologram Sam Holt to “move,” in s5e2. This, plus Zarkon’s track record, is why I personally don’t think the generals masterminded the hostage situation and the “something of value” Acxa turned over to Zarkon wasn’t Sam Holt.

(that and the generals are operating pretty much exclusively as a unit at this point but the scientists only reference a single “scary lady” rather than three of them, and never once suggest that she took anyone from the base even though Matt is very obviously looking for someone)

And it makes perfect sense. I mean, the reason the generals left Lotor was arguably Lotor wasn’t Lotor enough- in panic and desperation he turned on Narti rather than realize she was a victim being used, and the fact that this behavior is repeated with the white lion at Oriande just makes it clearer that this is a tendency in Lotor to self-sabotage, and one born of fear and trauma rather than an inherent disregard of what he’s confronting.

The generals couldn’t work with Lotor anymore because he wasn’t able to protect and care about them enough. And Lotor’s, overwhelmingly, one of the most empathetic and positively concerned with his own subordinates and allies out of the empire. Zarkon and Haggar don’t have a chance. 

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Acxa #Ezor #Zethrid #Narti #readmore #Anonymous