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frodo-with-glasses · 9 months

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25 Questions with Phil Dragash: YES, SERIOUSLY!

So y'all know how I was reviewing Phil Dragash's audiobook of LotR last year, but kinda fell off somewhere in the middle of Rohan?? Well, guess what! A couple weeks ago, I received a tumblr message from the man himself, saying he'd read through all my reviews, had really enjoyed the little blast from the past, and was open to answering questions if I had any!

So of course, I had LOTS of questions.

The first one being: "Are you actually the real Phil Dragash??"

But I'm delighted to say that after exchanging emails with the work email listed on his website, I can confidently say that it is the real dude, and I've had a blast chatting with him! So for those of you who urged I listen to this audiobook—especially @laurelindorenan for her glowing recommendation—and for everyone else who likes the audiobook and/or enjoyed my reviews: I am delighted to present, ladies and gentlehobbits, this peek behind the curtain!

But of course I'm putting it all below the cut, because this man rambles like I do 🤣

Obligatory disclaimer: All opinions presented by Mr. Dragash are his own, I am not necessarily condoning any of them; please do not come after me for his opinions regarding pineapple on pizza.

25 QUESTIONS, LET'S GO!

1. Tell me how you got into Lord of the Rings!

I was ten years old when my dad took me to the library, and found a VHS copy of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings film. I was already a fan of the “Chronicles of Narnia” and my dad just handed the tape to me and said “Look, C.S. Lewis’s friend made this”. I watched it, and had no idea what was going on. It was so hard to understand.

Fast forward to the year 2002 when “Fellowship” was out on DVD, and we had a movie night at my older cousin’s place, and watched the film for the first time. My 13 year old self was enraptured by it. Dad bought the DVD first thing the next day, and I’ve been a fan ever since! I, my brother, and our dad watched “Return of the King” in theaters four times, which was saying something, considering we only ever saw a movie once in cinemas. Between “The Return of the King” opening in December ‘03, I picked up the books and read (as well as I could) through them. A lot of friends kept joking “tell us how the damn story ends!”, good times.

2. When and how did you decide to make this audiobook? What’s the story behind the entire project?

I was a very ambitious lad, and my first and biggest interest was filmmaking. I used to direct short films with my friends ever since my 11th birthday, and was the youngest in class at the filmschool I attended a few years later. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had massive ambitions to direct “the Hobbit”, which is silly in retrospect considering I was 16 years old at the time. I even sent my portfolio and DVDs of my films to Peter Jackson’s manager (who actually got back to me with a wonderful response, despite not being able to accept my ‘completely reasonable’ offer) When I was heartbroken and torn to pieces knowing I wouldn’t be directing the movie, a few more years went by, and I decided to reread some chapters of the “Lord of the Rings” books. I remember really well that this was late at night, laying in bed, and going through “King of the Golden Hall” and seeing how close to the movies it was, but also far more expanded. I thought “my extensive home-made short movies experience with sound design and sound mixing could work here, and I could just read a few chapters and try to make the soundscape as realistic as possible. Why not try it?”

So, the next day I tried. The first two chapters I tried were “King of the Golden Hall” and “A Journey in the Dark” (which partly answers your other question about that chapter). I was so absolutely surprised by how well it was going, that I decided to upload them onto YouTube in March 2010 I think. I got a fairly good response, and I was planning on doing a few more random chapters. I never intended to do the whole thing. But this one comment on YouTube I’ll always remember, it said: “I think you should go from start to finish, because you’ll probably get used to the characters and sounds and people can also follow along in the story gradually”.

Taking that suggestion to heart, in August 2010 I went from Chapter 1 onward.

3. Were you inspired by any other audiobook versions of LotR (such as the BBC radio drama)?

I was not, I actually haven’t listened to the BBC Radio drama until far ahead into the project I was doing. I did some research on what other audio productions anyone did with LOTR, from The Mind’s Eye edition, to the ‘60s Hobbit Radio Play; so I felt pretty confident. I just fell in love with the way the films brought Middle-Earth to life and seeing their incredible dedication for authenticity (from the props department, to the music), you really couldn’t do any better than that visually or audibly - at least in my opinion. I just wanted to hear Tolkien’s text but with the realisation of the films.

However, if you listen to Chapter 1 of TTT, and hear how Legolas laments their absence from not being there to help Boromir at Amon Hen, you can clearly hear the inflection from the BBC Radio play’s version. I just lifted that because I thought it was a fantastic way to deliver the line.

4. Did you have any rituals for “getting into character” before recording?

If I were to show you the raw unedited recording sessions, you’d probably be surprised at how underdeveloped it is! I had no real rituals or warmups, I just went for it. Usually went in cold, and tried reading the entire chapter and doing all the voices at once. Then I’d be exhausted, and afterwards start cutting all the mistakes, and separating each character into different tracks – and then re-recording 50%-70% of it, as I was laying in the sounds.

I think any character just needs a few words for me to say in their voice, and that helps for the rest of their dialogue. For Aragorn it was usually: “You cannot wield it! None of us can.” for Pippin it was: “Sometimes”, just random things that make things ‘click’ in my head. If I got lost or didn’t feel like the performances were working, I’d simply just watch scenes from the films to hear the real actors again!

5. Who was your favorite character to voice? Who was your least favorite? And why?

People who know me, know I love doing the villains. Sauron, the orcs, the Nazgûl, etc. I just love the idea of personifying things that scare you. Something completely the opposite of who you are. Always a fun time! Any character I can nail extremely accurately always makes me happy, but I’m always very critical of my own work, so it’s a rare thing.

My least favorite characters to voice are: Imrahil, Denethor, Arwen, Celeborn, Galadriel, Erestor, Lindir, Haldir, Goldberry, Gildor… I think the pattern is pretty obvious if you realize that I am incapable of providing a satisfactory voice that feels unique enough. They just sound to me like “I wish I had a broader range. They weren’t done justice.” I have feelings for most of the characters in this situation, but I’m a mere mortal. I can’t do all of them as well as I wish I could. I wish Aragorn was more like Viggo Mortensen’s voice (I tried with the nasally yells you mentioned!), I wish Gandalf had a richer tone, I wish Saruman sounded more majestic, and I wish Frodo was - in retrospect- more older sounding, too. There’s so much I wish I could do better, but to hell with it, I tried.

Fun fact: my least-favorite to voice are also Orcs because they destroy my throat after a while. Which is ironic, because of my first statement.

6. I noticed that you gave the men of Rohan and Gondor slightly different dialects! Are you pulling from any real-world accents to make that happen?

I did try to listen to Anglo-Saxon, and ancient norse but I just tried to make Rohan and Gondor slightly distinct in any way I could. I never really tried to make things too obvious, but admittedly, I think I just used my intuition (smoothing the R’s for the Rohirrim, making the Gondorians more ‘proper’, etc.). I do want to emphasize that this was a one-person project and keeping things together or consistent is definitely an extraneous exercise when you’re just trying to get something finished by yourself!

7. Some characters (like Beregond and Quickbeam, to name a couple of my favorites) aren’t in the movies, so they don’t have an actor for you to imitate. How did you decide what they would sound like?

Well, in the case of Beregond, I realized he was just “your ordinary guy”, and seeing Minas Tirith through his eyes (and Pippin’s) is such an amazing and interesting opportunity. It made the city feel so real, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I think I started with a ‘generic’ voice, but when I re-recorded him knowing more and more of the context and what he was saying to Pippin, and as a result who he is, made me adjust what I felt were more his personality. But still that ‘ordinary guy’ idea was the bedrock, and it’s been years since I heard that chapter, but I hope it holds up! (I just remembered Bergil is in that too, another voice I wish I could have done better)

Another fun fact: when Pippin scares the kids in Minas Tirith, the audio was from something I videotaped when I was 10 years old with my friends, it had the perfect “kids-going-aaah!” sound.

If I had it my way, I’d have a cast of dozens in this Audiobook, so a lot of times I never felt like my voice was enough to truly capture the “We’re in Middle-Earth, we just have microphones to record it” idea. So I have to make compromises since I was the only one doing the voices. That being said, Quickbeam was a fun surprise because he felt like, as you said “young treebeard”, and these things just worked out through experimentation! I think Quickbeam turned out pretty nice. I like Quickbeam.

8. HOW—I ask with great enthusiasm—DID YOU DO TREEBEARD’S VOICE? How did you get that resonance and woody sound? Did you send your voice through a wooden box and re-record it on the other side like they did in the movies?

It’s really great that you know all the behind the scenes stories from the films! Especially what Ethan Van der Ryn, David Farmer, and the late Michael Hopkins have done with their incredible creativity. I had no such resources to produce Treebeard’s sound. What I did was a digital facsimile: a special ‘room’ reverb, with some other equalizing effects to boost the bass and (maybe, I can’t remember) another higher pitched track of the same voice faintly in there.

You won’t believe this, but I was not going to do The Two Towers audiobook unless I could do a good Treebeard voice. In 2011 after finishing “Fellowship”, I was on the fence about continuing, and only committed once I knew I could do Treebeard right. Treebeard was the key to all this. This should come to no surprise to the ones who played the game, but I used a lot of sound effects from ‘Battle for Middle-Earth’ which contained a lot of clean sounds for ents, trolls, the balrog, the ringwraiths, and other monsters from the films. I used the ent’s footsteps from the games, and recorded my own foley for some of the trees snapping and leaves rustling as well. The “fart” sounds were the low creaking of tree branches, and - as they stated in the making-of for the films - very pitched down cow moos.

9. Tell me about the foley work! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been that nerd who watched the Behind The Scenes featurettes for fun, so I’m very interested to hear how you made the sound effects for footsteps and whistling arrows and jangling horse harnesses and such.

I’m glad you are! I’ve collected sound libraries (ripped from video games, and finding and buying sound packs) for a literal decade, because I always needed sounds for the short films I made when I was younger. I just kept learning about how to mix sounds together, and it’s very creative and very enjoyable! That being said, the foley work itself is mostly recorded by me. If I can’t find a sound in the library I have, I will record it. Clothing rustles, and touch are all recorded while I listen to the audiobook playback and ‘perform’ each character. It’s a really arduous process, but I think it adds so much life into the sound.

I went out into the woods (or backyard) with my mic to record footsteps, sometimes I would listen to the audiobook with headphones while performing the footsteps. When I would have traveled somewhere with different terrain I would be sure to record more foley (rocks being moved, or pebbles being stepped on) knowing I’ll use it for certain chapters. I do not want to reveal a huge secret about the predominant foley for the character's clothes, but an old backpack I used were 90% of the characters’ ‘movements’. Some wingflaps of the fell beasts were just my jeans. It’s a really creative process trying to find things that ‘sound’ right for an environment or action. The magic is putting them all together and hearing the result. Also, yes Sam’s pan is my grandma’s frying pan, and I know it’s sometimes annoying, but - look - Sam has a lot of stuff to carry.

I start with the background sounds (wind, tree rustles, water if there is any, etc.) lots of layers of them just to make them sound unique and not the same. Then I move to selective and nearer environmental background sounds. Then, the ‘hero’ sounds, the effects that are integral to the story (if it’s sword clashes, or an explosion, or who knows what), and finally the foley (footsteps, clothing rustles, breaths, etc.) - I had a friend record her own horses breathing and moving for a lot of closeups of the horses in the audiobooks. I think even if you can’t really hear some of their low breaths, their presence is still ‘there’. I personally think I got a lot better by the end of LOTR than when I started!

I wanted to add, the sounds for little Elanor in the very last scene of “The Return of the King” (the baby sounds), I was not happy with the stock baby sounds I had, and asked my older cousin (an audio person too!) to send me recordings he made of his then-1-year-old daughter in a studio. So, my first-cousin-once-removed is Elanor! She’s 22 now. I feel old.

10. Do you have a favorite sound effect from this project? Mine is the “pat-pat” against cloth that’s used to denote a hug.

Absolutely, do you remember the two “watchers” before the tower of Cirith Ungol? The vulture-like statues that block the hobbit’s path out? The alarm sound is a wholly original sound design I did, and I’m really happy with it. It’s just ugly sounding, and that’s the point. I always wished I had more Nazgul, and I think the worst moments I had with mixing were the battle scenes. There’s just too much to handle and make it sound good. But I really tried.

I’m very glad you heard the ‘pat-pat’s. I try my best to perform every character when recording foley, and want even some of the sounds to convey something in the telling of the story.

11. What's the thought process behind your use of the various musical motifs from Howard Shore's score? (Read: Why do you use the Shire theme so often, and why does it get me in the heart every single time?)

I want everyone to know that this is a really important and valuable question, and one I never really get to talk about: To me, Howard Shore’s music is one of the very best things to come out of the films. He truly made an opera out of the story, and all his leitmotifs and orchestrations are a stroke of genius. They work on their own, and when reading the books as well, and as a nerd for films and all that stuff, I wanted to put a lot of care into how I’m placing the score, and for what scene, emotionally and leitmotivically, if that’s a word.

The Audiobook I did is obviously a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ situation, so I can’t credit myself for the majority of the Audiobook I did, but I wanted to use all my filmmaking intuition to properly use the music to enhance the telling of the story. So, just like the filmmakers had to change and mix lines from the book, or make changes to make it work as a film, I felt like a lot of instances happened with the music for the audiobook. Obviously, I used the score when applicable to the intended scenes, but there are very often cases where they won’t work. I read as much as I could in the past about what the motifs were and where Shore used them in the movies, so I followed that trajectory for the most part. Gondor is Gondor, Rohan is Rohan, Mordor is Mordor, etc.

Changes happen when I feel the emotions for a scene in the books do not match up to the ones in the films, and then there are brand new scenes and characters not in the movies at all, that I have to figure out! Take the pause from music between Gandalf falling into the chasm with the Balrog, and the fellowship successfully escaping. It’s perfect in the film, but I knew I couldn’t put the lamenting heartbreaking music in there yet, since the descriptions all drive the idea that escape is paramount. So I treated it as a ‘shock’ moment. No music until they’re completely out of the mountain, then the grief comes in. Things like that, a lot of fun creative thinking to get those emotions working!

I recall you mentioning the ‘Gimli / Legolas drinking game’ statement and how I used the hell out of it throughout the Audiobook, which is a good example. I pitched it up and down, for different moments, and it just has that hobbit mundane and jolly quality to it. So, in it goes to fill moments from the books.

I also edited and modified existing motifs for completely different scenes and ideas. One of my favorites is when Treebeard talks about the Entwives. I needed this melancholy yearning sound that was really essential, and found it by reversing Eowyn’s theme, and pitching it down so the violin sounds like a cello/bass. To me it just felt extremely appropriate for the sound of a long-lost relationship while portraying a larger-than-life creature.

Let’s also say Bombadil. I made up the idea that the last statement in the credits for “Return of the King”, was Bombadil’s theme. It’s actually just a reference to Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner, a very verbose beautiful crescendo, but I thought “I’ll pretend like it’s Bombadil, he’s last in the score even though he’s the first in Arda”. So I used that musical progression in his songs, that’s his leitmotif now (to me, anyway) He sings in that wavy up-and-down melody. Which is why you hear a lot of that in those chapters.

I also try to use recordings not from the original score: I looked far and wide for alternative recordings, predominantly the album by the Royal Prague Philharmonic, and the “LOTR Symphony”, just to make the Audiobooks feel different. I pitched down and moved and reassembled a lot of different cues for different scenes as well.

There are not a lot of instances of music from other movies, however, they do exist! I used music from “Battle for Middle-Earth”, the game “War in the North”, and for the last few chapters, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” since it just came out at the time. I used a lot of music from Howard Shore’s “Seven” and “The Game” during Shelob (I think), and for the Barrow-Downs. I used a tiny bit of underscore from the brilliant Don Davis’s “The Matrix Reloaded”, it had a really eerie choir which made me feel like it would be perfect for the fatigue and dizzying unreality of Mordor when Sam and Frodo were on their last leg, trying to get to Mt. Doom. Lastly, I used a little bit of music from Howard Shore’s “Twilight: Eclipse” for some dialogue scenes during Return of the King! And music from the independent film “Mongol” by Tuomas Kantelinen for the Woses when Theoden has to get help from Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Also the ending of ROTK has a few cues from “The Lord of the Rings musical”, lovely stuff.

It may surprise you that there is a small amount of score I actually ‘wrote’ with help from my brother (he’s a musician). It’s in the coronation of Elessar. It’s not very good but I needed something. There is also a cello version of “to the edge of night”, which I kindly asked permission to use by YouTube celloist, but I sadly don't think that video is up anymore.

Lastly, I use the Shire music so much because - just like Howard Shore said - it becomes a ‘hymn’ or an ‘anthem’ for the hobbits as they leave their comforts behind and are in a wide and unfamiliar world. Every little bit that reminds them of home, or relates to each of them, usually deserves a little ‘shire’ statement here and there. I feel if it’s in the characters’ hearts and minds, it has to be expressed in the music!

12. Out of all the chapters I’ve listened to so far on the Internet Archive, “A Journey in the Dark” is the one most plagued with editing issues; Sam’s temper tantrum over leaving Bill the Pony is cut out entirely. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to hearing your take on that. (Is it strange to say that I wanted to hear you break down into blubbering tears? Probably. Let’s ignore that and move on.) Is there any chance that you have a cleaner edit of that chapter somewhere?

I think you’ll be very unsurprised to know that “A Journey in the Dark” is the first chapter I ever recorded. I think you’ll also need to know that I did FOTR when I was 21 years old, and my grasp on doing better sound mixing or even getting the characters right was still a work in progress. I learned so much going chapter-by-chapter and felt that each succeeding one improves from the former. As a demo-run, I did “King of the Golden Hall '' and “Journey in the Dark” in early 2010 (in fact, I did only the first half of “JITD” back then. Stopping right after they are barred inside the mines, as the Watcher destroys the gate. I did the second half once I caught up with the story going chapter-by-chapter.)

There are so many issues with it, and I haven’t listened to it since. If you have headphones you’ll also notice that none of the voices really pan from left to right, or feel like they’re ever anywhere else except the dead-center. I was lazy back then.

When I read the chapters, at the time, I was sharing an ‘office room’ with my younger brother, and as a teenaged younger brother does - continues strumming his guitar no matter what the other brother is doing. It was really fun, and funny and I was extremely sloppy with editing things out, and taking it too seriously. So, for sure you can hear ‘someone’ in the background during the early parts of FOTR, and I was too lazy to re-record or edit out the noises that weren’t supposed to be there.

Forgive me if this part is a lot longer, but now that you mention it, I want to get on my soap-box and rant about how many things I agree with about the Audiobook’s shortcomings and how many things have changed since the wee days of 2010:

I didn’t really get a grasp on the characters, and I had no idea I was going to do the entire book. I did not take enough care with sound mixing (it’s a highly technical and rigorous practice, I’ve discovered. Even now, ten plus years later - it’s too technical for me to fully understand yet), and I did not thoroughly re-listen to the chapter when I was done with an edit or a sound-effects pass. Therefore there’s always been mistakes still in there, and just unpleasantly careless placement of sounds and music. I have often thought about re-recording it to get it up to scratch, but it’s been over a decade and I haven’t properly preserved all the sound stems without having to re-sound-mix the whole chapter again, and there is that little thing called ‘burnout’ which is hard to ignore. So, I apologize to everyone who has to suffer through that huge drop in quality with “A Journey in the Dark”. It quite literally was my first attempt, and it definitely shows.

The good news is that a fan asked me the same thing about the missing piece in that chapter (the one you mentioned! With Sam and Bill!), and I’ve heard the same comments about it throughout the years. Why is it missing? I don’t know why! I recorded it, but in my loose run-and-gun past when I was a wee lad, I was careless, and just had the mp3 with that part missing. A rendering error, perhaps! Stupid 21 year old Phil just hodgepoging everything.

A Few months ago, I did get another email about that missing piece. I thought “okay, once and for all, I’m going to find that missing part.” - and I searched my old harddrives for some kind of archival copy with that part in it. Amazingly, it was a lot harder to find than I thought. Every rendered version of JITD either stopped right before that scene, or had it omitted. I actually found one half of it as a ‘demo’ piece I rendered years ago for a ‘sound trailer’, and then I finally found the original YouTube video I made - which had it intact! Now the hardest part was stitching it together with the rest. Took longer than I thought, but I finally amended this horrible incompetence. And yes, I will share the link to you! And be prepared to be disappointed at the 2010-era quality!

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but with the mp3s circling around, I have taken the liberty of re-recording and re-working some chapters from their original versions. I try my best to preserve the originals, but I also wish people to listen to the re-records. I have actually re-recorded and re-mastered “A Long-Expected Party” three times. 2011, 2013, and 2014. I re-recorded “King of the Golden Hall” in 2013, and “Shadow of the Past” in 2014. I usually try labelling the dates on the mp3 files themselves. The one I’m most proud of re-recording bits of, is “The Pyre of Denethor” as the first time I had Denethor say his last words he was mildly raising his voice, but I listened to it again one day and went “this man should be at the edge of sanity.” - so he absolutely yells now, and it’s such a night-and-day comparison.

Another addendum: I completely understand the complaints about ‘the sound/music drowning out the dialogue’. It’s been the #1 complaint over the decade. I completely understand. I never had professional sound mixing gear, nor did I have proper mixing headphones or speakers or a proper studio (most of the audiobook was recorded at my grandmother’s house!). The balance of the audio making it sound immersive, (like you are there!) and having clear dialogue to hear is - like I said - an extremely technical and complex process that I’ve never had the ability or tech to master. Let alone for a book that’s 48 hours long, and has so much sound and music to it. Nothing would bring me more joy than to work with an experienced sound mixer, and find all my audio stems, and for us to work together to clear up any and all issues. But as this project was a simple fan-made work, and I haven’t distributed it myself for a decade, who knows?

This is also why I never went on to do “The Hobbit”. Burnout is real, and I’ve never recovered from LOTR. The burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

13. What was your favorite scene to record and mix?

Mount Doom. Can’t get better than trying to make the climax as horrible and eucatastrophic as that. It all led up to this, and it was such a rush to work on. I remember how I was at the edge of my seat watching ROTK in cinemas for the first time, and how amazingly they pulled it off, and I wanted to definitely imitate that, but using Tolkien’s own writing. Just so cool.

I have two favorite chapters: The first one is “The Scouring of the Shire”. I remember well, when I was working on it, I realized this has never been ‘dramatized’ before. At least not in full. I felt so special being the first one (probably) to do it. I could imagine the entire chapter in my head like a film, and I could bring it to life with very little outside influence. Such a poignant and shocking chapter.

I don’t think I would have done it as well without the experience I gained doing the rest of the Audiobook. Showing the strength of the four hobbits, portraying the dignity and resolve of their kind, giving that pathetic yet dangerous authenticity to Sharkey, and the ruffians, illustrating the battle of bywater with sound… this was done in 2013, so we all were able to listen to new music by Howard Shore (for The Hobbit), and I would be able to transpose motifs from that, into “Scouring”, and honestly I wouldn’t know how it would have worked out if the Hobbit films didn’t come out just at the right time. I think the score fits so well with the events of “Scouring”, there is a ‘mordor’ theme but it feels ‘unfinished’, like the remnant of an old defeated foe; there’s that wily progression for Radagast in the films, that I used for the hobbit’s rebellion and the conflict, and there’s a new ‘hobbit/shire’ motif that worked so perfectly for a ‘wounded, but recovering’ Shire. I feel so silly talking about decisions I made for this, but I always wanted to share some thoughts I had!

Fun fact: I had a wonderful person ask if she would be able to play Rosie Cotton back in 2013, and I asked her to perform her lines. She was great, but I realized a very strange thing: when I put her in the audio mix, it would actually break the immersion, because you can hear a voice that wasn’t mine, and as a result - I couldn’t help but keep thinking - my voice for Rosie’s mother sounded like a Monty Python skit in comparison! And thus her lines had to be unused. It kind of just opened the fourth wall, breaking the illusion. Which is a shame, because I always dream of having a fully-cast LOTR Audiobook, maybe someday officially.

The other favorite is “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” just because I listened to it one day in 2014, and heard no errors. I was so proud. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to change substantially. No one dislikes all the errors more than I do!

14. What’s your best memory from this entire project?

My late dad drove me and my brother out into a clearing at midnight in the forest. The sky was so clear and starry. And we were here simply to just yell at the top of our lungs to record material for “Helm’s Deep”. All the clear yells: “Elendil!!!” “Gúthwinë! Gúthwinë For the Mark!”etc. Etc. - I lost my voice, it was a fun time. He held the microphone for me as I splashed around a stream (for Gollum), once again at midnight since there were fewer background sounds.

I also tell this story a lot: A friend of mine who was listening to the chapters as I finished them - she hated the sound of knuckles cracking. And hated spiders. So, obviously, Shelob would have to have knuckle-cracking sounds for her limbs. So I recorded my own knuckles cracking and tried using it as much as I could for Shelob’s legs moving about. My friend was soooo ecstatic to know this fact.

15. If you could do it all again today, what would you change?

I would consider doing a ground-up re-recording of everything. With a budget, with a cast, with a lot more understanding of the story and intentions behind them. With VR sound options. With extra original music. That’s the dream.

If we’re back to reality, I guess I’d just re-record a bunch of chapters since they could always be better, and tighten all the technical errors. But that would require a lot of assembling of the raw archived files, and re-building of sounds, and re-recording of lines. Also, as I stated before, I do not want to distribute my unofficial fan work just because I know that it’s a copyright nightmare. And burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

I like taking other people’s opinions to heart, such as the issues with Frodo’s youth or inflections and intonations for certain scenes that I didn’t quite fully grasp the first time. I would love to adjust things and make it closer to the book now.

- - - - -

And now! The Silly Questions Lightning Round!

(With thoughts from Lady Glasses in parentheses and italics!)

1. In Fellowship, long stretches of dialogue would often have someone randomly cough in the background. Tell me about the Cough. Why is the Cough there?

No one hates the coughs more than me. That’s either my brother minding his own business in the other end of our ‘office room’. I think you now know I was 21, I didn’t care, so these things are just left in because I was careless. However, sometimes there are intentional coughs to make it feel more realistic. It’s been years since I listened to it, so unless I somehow do a massive commentary stream someday (thinking about it), your guess will be as good as mine! The coughs heavily subsided once I did Two Towers, since I was by myself.

2. During the dinner scene with Farmer Cotton, someone burps. Who was that?

Mine. I have no regrets with that one. Or Pippin. I guess it could be Pippin.

(Darn! And here I thought it was Farmer Cotton, LOL)

3. How did you manage to make Bill Ferny’s voice so perfectly obnoxious?

I imagined Bill as an obnoxious guy. The image in my head gives me a good idea of what he’d sound like, and I’m so glad he’s so obnoxious that you had to mention it.

(He sounds perfectly punchable. Thanks, I hate it.)

4. Did you crack yourself up at any point in the recording?

Oh yes, in fact I have a whole outtake reel just for you!

(Warning to anyone who clicks the link: the April Fool's audio had me ON THE FLOOR)

5. Voice acting aside, who is your favorite character in LotR and why?

If you asked me in 2002 it would be the Balrog, if you asked me now it would be difficult because so many of them mean so much to me, and each of their aspects have something to aspire to. Gandalf, Aragorn, Sam, Frodo, Galadriel, the list goes on and on.

(That's beautiful, and so true. The story really grows with us, doesn't it?)

6. What’s your favorite color?

Blue. Always has been.

(Blue is a good color! 💙)

7. Political question: Pineapples on pizza, yes or no?

Yes, I still don’t get what the fuss is about

(Oooh, controversial)

8. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

No, it’s a hotdog!

(Counterpoint: A hotdog is a taco.)

9. What’s your opinion on geese?

They’re racist

(Racist against the entire human race, apparently)

10. How much would I have to pay you to say “I love boats!” in Merry’s voice? (It’s an inside joke with my friends.)

Nothing, it’s on the house!

(HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU)

- - - - -

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us! What are you working on nowadays?

I’ve actually had a few people ask me if I’ll ever do more audiobooks like this, and I seem to have tapped something. Yes, in fact! I’m working with a few creative collaborators on a small company to do the exact same sonic experience with other books! Since we’re very small, we are starting with stories in the Public Domain, and have successfully kickstarted (and finished) “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Which will be out (hopefully, officially) by early September! I’m really excited and hope this will lead to more projects, and - hopefully- back to Tolkien someday, in an official manner. Please follow my Instagram or Facebook for more info about it. (I also have a Twitter and Tumblr and more, but they’re all completely unrelated to LOTR and are just me drawing doodles and being a nerd, very unlike the Audiobooks I did, which is a bit confusing, I admit.)

- - - - -

And that concludes our interview! As I told Phil, it was so much fun to discuss a fellow fan's passion project like this. The more I read about it, the more I realized just how similar it was to my own experiences as a fan creator. We all start out as just a noob with a few unpolished skills, making something because we love it, and we learn and grow and hone our talents along the way. It's legitimately inspiring.

Needless to say, I am stoked to finish listening to the rest of this audiobook! Is it a bit weird knowing the creator of the thing might drop in and read my reviews?? Yes. Yes it is. But I'm gonna do it anyway. No holds barred! If I hear another cough, you're gonna know about it, Phil!

Also I may or may not do something with that audio of Merry because I'M STILL DYING OF LAUGHTER HELP

Anyway! If you made it to the end of this, you deserve a cookie! Everybody say thank you to Mr. Dragash, and go check out the other stuff he's doing nowadays! Namárië!

#phil dragash #audiobook #lotr audiobook #interview #CATCH ME SCREAMING ABOUT THIS FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS

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nordic-language-love · 1 year

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wow you're so cool! how do you keep up with (what i assume are all side hobbies on top of probably a regular job) all of the things you do in your logs, especially with adhd? I struggle a lot with executive dysfunction and would love any new tips! Also, moving to Japan, what prompted you to move and how?? Thanks in advance for answering, and also so cool!!!

Hahaha thanks for thinking I'm cool 😅 Well, I'm a part-time performing artist and aerial/pole dance instructor, so I'm always at the studio for teaching on Thursdays and Sundays if nothing else, and I'll typically train a bit before teaching and do some kind of stretching as part of my warm-up. Sometimes I go in on other days too because I'll need to cover classes or because I'll book on to classes. Having a commitment like a booked class definitely helps with motivation!

As for languages: a lot of the activities I do require minimal executive function (e.g. reviewing vocabulary on Anki, playing on an app, reading a fun little science article in Norwegian etc) and I often do them when I lack executive function elsewhere (e.g. when I've driven somewhere and I'm struggling to transition from being in my car to getting out of my car). So it's not really hard to do them even with executive dysfunction. I also try to squeeze in listening as a form of multitasking (listening to Japanese music or Norwegian radio while I'm driving/doing housework etc). And sometimes I hyperfocus! So I might study a language all day and not realise I've done it.

Sometimes having a strict schedule really works for me, so I might plan my day down to the minute. Other times it's too restrictive and I just kinda do what I want. At this point I've learned to embrace the bouncy brain and follow where my interests take me.

I've also learned to accept I might need to lower my expectations of myself just to get me started. A 1-hour exercise session seems daunting. 5 minutes "just moving" is a lot more manageable (and will very likely turn into a 1-hour session). I do this with housework too: rather than saying "I'm gonna unload the dishwasher now" I'll be like "I'm gonna take ONE thing out of the dishwasher and put it away". Giving myself permission to not complete tasks can help me get started (and often I do actually finish the task anyway).

I can also overcome executive dysfunction with the countdown method (when I remember to employ it lol). It's something I saw on tumblr, actually: whenever you decide you want to do something, count down from 5. By the time you've finished your countdown, you need to have moved in the direction of the thing you want to do. You don't have to start it; just move towards it. When I remember to do it, it works a good 95% of the time.

I do indeed have a job! I teach ESL on italki, which means I often have work to prepare the night before. I know that starting it too early is pointless, so I purposefully leave it until the last minute, because that's when I'll actually get it done. No "well I'll do it now so I can relax later". No feeling guilty for not doing it. I know and trust myself enough to get things once the deadline starts to loom.

As for Japan... it's a bit of a long story, but basically I've always wanted to live abroad, and I got a TEFL certificate in 2020. I looked at places I could go, Japan came up as one of the best countries in terms of pay and living standard. So, I sent out some inquiries, got an interview and then a job offer. Didn't end up taking it for a bunch of reasons, but then a few months ago they got back in touch asking me if I'd like to reopen my application and I decided to accept this time. So, off I go in January!

Anyway, that was an essay! My apologies 😅 Good luck with your executive dysfunction! It can be a real bitch to overcome, but it's possible with practice and trial & error!

#ask #adhd #executive dysfunction

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tombofdelldracula · 1 year

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WARLOCK #1-4 limited series

Grade: A

Marvel Comics | Cover dates Nov 2004-Feb2005

I originally bought this series as it was released. I liked Adam Warlock a lot, I liked cover artist J.H. Williams a lot, but Marvel was in an... interesting place in 2004. The progress of Morrison's X-Men was being unwound by Joss Whedon and Chuck Austen. Bendis was one month into disassembling the Avengers. Ultimate Spider-Man was humming along, but the rest of the Ultimate line seemed like its best days were already behind it. Even though WARLOCK #1 was joined on the stands in September by new #1 issues for Black Widow, Elektra, Gambit, Jubilee, and Madrox, there was one book that loomed large over the rest of these...

STRANGE #1

This was not an Ultimate book, but it was a big deal at the time because big deal writer J Michael Straczynski was writing it, and it was supposedly a "soft-reboot" or "do-over" of Dr Strange's origin. And that was something people seemed to want to see.

Soft reboots are not my favorite concept, and if someone in 2004 asked me my opinion on JMS? I would have pointed them to the Amazing Spider-Man arc SINS PAST that was on the stands and decline to speak on it further; some of my best friends are JMS fans.

I only bring it up because in 2004 I was foolish and reckless enough to let the stink of STRANGE #1 misinform my opinion of WARLOCK #1. It looked like a reboot to me, and I didn't read any more until after the fourth issue came out. This was a massive mistake.

Marvel describes the series like this:

In a world on the brink, human kind time is running out—but deep in the jungles of South America, a solution is being forged! A solution that will bring about a grand, new utopia... and that solution is Adam Warlock!

Here are the first three pages. I mean... it kinda feels like a reboot, doesn't it?

It's not though; it's not a reboot.

HOW is it not a reboot? I'm not telling. But I am telling you to read these issues if you have a chance. You WILL need to read all four issues for the payoff, so keep that on mind.

I reread all four issues lately and was blown away all over again.

This series is recommended for literally anyone interested in superhero comics. Pak's script works nicely, the plot is the kind of plot you should just experience rather than have spoiled in a review, and Adlard's art and storytelling has a vague Rick Leonardi vibe that I appreciate. The story sets up a potential sequel (that I don't believe we ever got to see) but is self-contained. You don't need to have read or even heard of Adam Warlock to enjoy this comic. And if you know and like Adam Warlock? Maybe you saw the preview pages above and thought "the Soul Gem on his forehead isn't a diamond! What a sad lack of detail and continuity!" you'll just have to believe me: This doesn't change, ruin, or alter anything.

WARLOCK #1-4 is definitely worth the time. It is definitely worth what I paid (wholesale in 2004), and is definitely re-readable, and I would love to see Greg Pak get a chance at a sequel.

Rereading it really took me back to 2004, to the point I thought I'd offer some annotations for just that first panel.

Page 1, panel 1

Caption 1: WARLOCK was originally set in an undefined near future. How do we know? Panel 1 mentions "troops slain" and "total killed in action." This is referring to something that was on the news DAILY in 2004: the number of American troops killed Iraq. We didn't get past 3,039 until the year 2007.

Page 1, panel 1

Caption 2: Venice is indeed still sinking and does get evacuated.

Caption 3: Threat level orange for air quality is a real thing.

And I looked up this comforting verse to save you the trouble:

Physical copies of these books might be hard to find, but they shouldn't be too expensive if you can find them. Keep an eye out; they're worth it!

Otherwise, all four of these issues (and plenty of others!) are on Marvel Unlimited, and available to purchase digitally from Marvel as well. ⚡️

#marvel comics #comics #comics recs #comic review #adam warlock #2004 #genetic engineering #messiah

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ferelog · 10 days

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a dracula book review.

ok team yk what this world really, really, really needs. from me specifically.

A DRACULA BOOK REVIEW

dun dun dun. we will be looking into bram stoker’s original 1897 edition which I vaguely pirated online but it is ok!! because copyright is over (if u wanna read use this link here: https://www.bramstoker.org/pdf/novels/05dracula.pdf)

so on one hand Dracula is an icon. but on the other hand the novel was written by an Englishman in the 19th century. I went into this thing not knowing what to think and honestly idk what I expected but it was mid. that is my claim and my thesis. the characters are like grain crackers without cheese. the plot is okay and vaguely interesting but not enough to carry the mounds of dialogue and description that you sloooooooooooog through. but if it helps Dracula is kinda hot. (disclaimer: this opinion depends on your taste)

the beginning has all of the trappings of gothic horror. man goes to creepy abandoned house. man meets creepy suspicious guy. creepy suspicious guy is creepy and suspicious. boohoo yadda yadda. the protagonist figures out that Dracula is very sus within the first few weeks, since man is less subtle than the worst amongus imposter. at this point we’re like fifty pages in and I’m fearing spending the next three hundred pages reading about Dracula and the protag running around in circles. luckily that doesn’t happen and the plot actually moves out of dracula’s castle at a pretty quick pace. this is commendable: the antagonist is quickly introduced in an interesting manner and after this little tutorial we have enough knowledge to confirm that Dracula is the bad guy. this was likely pretty important for first-time Dracula readers back in 1897, when vampires were less mainstream and you couldn’t identify one by his elongated fangs and how he literally goes “When the Count saw my [bleeding] face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.” again, man is unsubtle.

as a quick aside there are some interpretations of Dracula as embodying “transgressive but compelling sexuality” (from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster culture (seven theses) if anyone is curious) which I find hilarious and can definitely make a reading more interesting. you’re welcome.

ok now that the intro is over we get acquainted with the rest of the characters and let me tell you they are dryyyyyyyyy. to make my point I will now rank them from most to least uninteresting.

Arthur Holmwood: man is literally just there to mourn his fiancée and act as a big strong man to increase the anti-Dracula attack force. only thing he brings to the plot is 1. money 2. he is attached to his fiancée I guess. 3/10.

Jonathan Harker: our MC who is vaguely an audience insert and as per such reacts averagely to anything. his character does almost nothing surprising. you see a lot of the story (especially the beginning) through his eyes so you do get familiar with him in that way but he is an utter milquetoast. 3.5/10

Quincey Morris: an unmarried American version of Arthur. he is kinda cooler in that he has a personality. “American” isn’t much of a personality but Arthur doesn’t seem to have one at all so he wins. 3.5/10

Lucy Westenra: ok she is not boring (if only because of all the stuff that happens to her) but she is so goddamn annoying. she seems like a little doll who doesn’t do anything despite everything occurring and can only wait for people to rescue her which is infuriating at best. does not pass the sexy lamp test. 4/10

Dracula: weird evil man who has weird evil motives. his lack of nuance is a shame since the novel does mention interesting lore about him like how he lives on “the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk” and how “In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child.” but it's not explored and in the end he’s just a villain who kills because he needs to kill to survive. a shame. 5/10

John Seward: ok he actually has like. unique feelings about what is happening. his romantic interest for Lucy v. not being able to marry her v. his distaste for vampires is kinda entertaining, or at least more entertaining than whatever Arthur has going on. he makes some unique actions (for instance, calling Van Helsing) that make him seem more reliable 6/10

Mina nee Murray Harker:

she is cool but severely undermined by how sexist the book is. 6.5/10

Abraham Van Helsing: ok he is cool if only because he has all the puzzle pieces (apparently) and actually seems to know what’s going on but it has to be acknowledged that his reluctance to explain what he knows screws people over. 1/10 teammate 6.5/10

Renfield: his personality is nothing to write home about but what happens to him is the most interesting thing by far. 7/10

u need to spend a lot of time with these characters since the story is told from their perspectives. the storytelling method is also really interesting—it’s told in first-person via the characters’ journals, audio recordings, and diaries, which is admittedly clever. the method that a character uses to record their thoughts is also indicative of their personality and profession. Mina uses a typewriter since she wants to be a secretary. I really like this aspect of Dracula. unfortunately, the plot and characters are still something you have to trudge through. the plot itself is a typical adventure gung-ho “let’s go defeat the villain” type beat, which isn’t particularly inspiring. Dracula’s supernatural abilities also seem utterly random, which makes the mystery of “what does Dracula do??” significantly less interesting since turning into a tornado and sucking blood doesn’t seem to be related at all. why bother predicting this character’s powers if they’re completely absurd? a shounen battle anime could do better (Naruto-excluded).

TL;DR: Dracula is mid. it is 357 pages of dried bread characters, an average plot, and not even that terrifying gothic horror. read it if you want, it’s a classic, but honestly it’s not really worth it. #sorrydraculafans

#dracula #Stoker Bram. “Dracula.” Archibald Constable and Company 1897.#book review #in which i unleash my objectively correct opinions unto the world #all things aside mina is actually pretty interesting #i really liked her and then they did her dirty #stoker y u gotta do dis to me #thank u for coming to my tedtalk

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zlichchamber · 8 months

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Prologue: Interlude

The beginning of a story always has a hook. I suppose that was something we were taught in school or noticed throughout the many shows, movies, and books we read, but for me I wonder why isn't the same true about life. Life was in itself a story; the countless autobiographies prove that much the case. However I don't think coming out of the womb counts as an interesting hook, so if I have to guess I think there was one moment in our lives that defined it- that served as that hook for us. Whether for the worse or the better. If I had to choose the hook of my life it would be October 14, 2021 the day the very world became my story.

Chapter 1: The Recluse Writer

Mr. Numvil, Caesar wake up"

The cries of my name jointed my eyes opened, as the entire class stared at me. I must have fallen asleep in class, as the mean witched teacher was staring daggers at me, but honestly what could you expect in history class of all classes, with the air conditioner on full blast and at the end of the day.

"Glad to see you're with us now Mr. Numvil. I hope you are alive for the rest of the class.

Some of my classmates giggled, while others grunted at me. They all probably saw me as a nuisance or some form of entertainment, not that I cared much. The impression they held of me didn't matter in my eyes. I was used to this kinda stuff and crying or being upset by it wasn't even in my nature. I glanced up at the clock and it read 1:15 pm.

"Only a few more minutes, huh" I glanced at my notebook and picked up my pencil. There weren't any notes written inside, instead in placement was a barrage of words more important than any lecture of the American revolution. They were my bloodline-our in other words my stories. I probably does off when writing the latest addition of the story of an revenge stricken war veteran inspired by this very class.

I suppose I could explain it, but the plot was so cliche that you basically figured it out if you seen multiple action flicks, but I suppose the point of this story wasn't a good overarching story, but something to kill my boredom and more exciting than the review of the same war we heard about countless times.

"Hi Cesar, what u writing" the boy seated next to me said, as he glanced at my notebook..

" Nothing just notes"

"Hmmm ..Doesn't look like notes, plus I doubt u are writing every little word Ms. Flair saying.

"Oh what would you know? Anything could be on the test.

"With this shot I shall avenge my brother…"

In embarrassment I quickly shut my notebook."You saw nothing"

Author Note: Hi everyone, Riz here again or LKR. Well I leave that up to you to decide.

I created a blog again on this site. Yeah I know the last two times ended in failure mostly cuz of my laziness and want to be perfect, but as they always say third time the charm, right.

I just wanted somewhere to post all my ideas or concepts and this happens to serve that purpose. I didn't know what to post here, so I just chose the concept of a prologue that appeared in my mind. I wrote this like two days ago and it was just a draft. Not even finished.

I try to update this blog with my blog, somewhat regularly. Til then peace out and stay safe goofballs.

#writing #wip #original story #fantasy #fanfiction

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holdooutforahero · 10 months

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Ginny & Georgia recap - season 1

Spoilers for season 1 of Ginny & Georgia!!

This show is so fascinating to me. It's playing off several different tropes and themes of TMS (teenager murder shows), parent/teen dramas (does this need an acronym lol?), YA as a genre (whoops that's an acronym), etc. Everything is put into a blender and then WHIZZ out comes Ginny & Georgia!

I have a thought... you know how one of the rules of the romance genre is the happy ending? I wonder if one of the rules of TV more broadly is a neat ending. Where there are maybe 1-2 loose ends but for the most part everything gets buttoned up. Of course, neat endings are prevalent in a lot of other mediums, too. And with G&G, the neatness of the ending is only really related to Georgia not going to jail for financial fraud and murder. Who knows what is going to happen to the kids!

Anyways.

I was hoping for more murder, and we got one more body, so that's fun. I was kinda hoping that Carolyn would get more maligned. Losing the mayor's election... eh. That wasn't enough for me! But I appreciated the extra depth with the scene at home where we saw her husband.

I've been thinking more about the appeal of TMS and I think part of the no responsibility bit involves financial freedom, which means either 1) the characters start off rich, 2) the characters do crime to get rich, or 3) the characters are around people with some semblance of stability and they can do crime/do drugs/be fuck-ups and still eat and all that. In G&G, it's mostly 2 - do crime to get rich. And WOAH there is so much crime. I was honestly shocked by Georgia stealing from the city. That's so risky -- and frankly implausible, unless your city is truly incompetent and not reviewing the financial books regularly?? I enjoy the way the show mixes different types of crime. It makes you constantly question your sympathies for Georgia!

There's more to say... I'll just fire things off now:

Austin is probably a psychopath... hate to say it as he's just a little kid, but good god there are red flags everywhere with that one

The voiceovers give strong Veronica Mars vibes, which I appreciate

Ginny is a bitch but I feel bad for her, her friends are forgiving but even she pushed them too far. Running off with your brother is questionable.

Side note, I am reading a novel right now where the lead says you shouldn't use gendered insults b/c they're lazy... I dunno.

The proposal scene between the Mayor and Georgia was fantastic, really took me by surprise! Also, I loved when Zion was looking into this camera during the rally/community fair scene and realized what he was looking at. Maybe too on the nose, but if you're going to be that sincere about something, might as well follow through!

Poor Hunter. He was absolutely a great boyfriend.

Marcus is borderline creepy, like the love interest whose name I forget in... that movie with Winonna Ryder where the school blows up? It was turned into a musical? I'm not going to google. Also, I appreciate the efforts to make Marcus look like a 15 year old where the actor is in their mid-twenties. They did a good job, though I'd still peg him for late teens.

What's the name for a woman who consistently murders her husbands for money? I swear there's a distinct name for it but I cannot remember if for the life of me.

MANG is fun. Abby breaks my heart! Maxine is a delightful mess. Norah avoiding her friends b/c her mom betrayed her to hurt Ginny's family/the mayor was interesting.

This show is such a soap opera!

#ginny and georgia spoilers

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awe2u · 2 years

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The four best books out of all the 80 Steven Yessick books.

P.S. There's photos of me on my Tumblr blog called awe2u

Art Theory

This book would benefit any artist. The first part is inspirational and gives an artist hope. Then, there are all of these ideas on how to design abstract art. Then there’s this list of 500 drawings of ideas for form combinations that you could use somehow, or maybe just enjoy for whatever reason. Next are some dreamins’ of Architecture that I wrote late one night in the subways of Los Angeles. Also included are My Ninja Rules, ten rules which helped me survive. There’s a brief explanation of my Systemic Abstraction process, and at the end is like this Gestalt thing relating to Carl Jung’s book Synchronicity.

As far as a book that would help an artist, this is the best book.

If you would like the same book as a workbook, then get Ideas for Artists, which is basically the same book, just a different size. It has plenty of room in the margins to write notes, draw, and make your own ideas from those ideas. It’s meant to be a point of departure, basically, for inspirational purposes.

Also, don’t even believe those two 1 star reviews. They are just from some haters from facebook that I used to know, so don’t take those bullcrap ratings to consideration when looking at this title.

Book of Good Quotes

As far as having a wider appeal to all audiences, Book of Good Quotes is the best one. Out of all of the free downloads for every book I gave away for free on kindle, this book had the most downloads by far. So, maybe this, I would say, could be considered the most popular one.

Btw, I ain’t even giving no more books away for free anymore, for real. And I’m not even trying to publish anything or make anything for a super duper long frigging time, so deal.

Beautiful Poetry that Inspires Book

All of the poetry that I have ever written is freestyle, meaning, I just wrote it just like it is there how you read it word for word, like flowing out of the top of my head. It just happened. I just knew which word to write next. For twenty years I just wrote mainly stuff that didn’t make total sense. Then, I just dropped everything and dedicated my life to writing stuff the is coherent and makes sense. Simple. Understandable. Out of all the fifteen poetry books I wrote over those three years, this is the best one.

It kind of has the spirit of like a 20’s ish female who is maybe popular or something. It’s beautiful, fun, and clever at the same time. I had the writing thing going on for reals when I wrote this particular book. It’s like my third to last book I wrote.

Abstract Paintings

I’ve had such a polarized reaction to my paintings after everyone I know seeing them. I’ve had people warp my frigging mind driving it into my head how bad I suck at art. At the same time, I’ve had people becoming obsessed with my art. I’ve even seen people jump up and down, they are so excited to see whatever it is they saw.

I just think it’s kinda interesting to flip through a book and see artwork spanning 20 or so years within a few minutes. It’s almost like compressed time or something.

To see all but five pieces of everything that I have ever painted, then definitely get the paperback of Abstract Paintings. The kindle version is more like a “best of” for the paintings.

One more thing. If you are or know of a visual artist who has self published any kind of contemporary art that isn’t comic books or some evil stuff drawn in blood, the please send me a message and let me know. I would love to use my kindle unlimited to see that.

I tried to look for some other visual artists who have used kindle direct publishing, however, I couldn’t find anything except one bo0ok of landscapes, and one book of simple shapes drawn in photoshop. If you know of any self publishing author who publishes artwork that isn’t completely banal, then I would love to know. Maybe it is hidden. I couldn’t find any on Amazon.

Anyways peace, thanks.

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alloftheblackwidowfeelings · 3 years

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Almost every reviewer on YouTube wasn’t satisfied with this movie IMO they said it was just Marvel combined some elements from other marvel movies so they could throw fans a BW movie so we could stfu, it didn’t do justice to the the character ,what do you think, is it really that bad.

To be honest, I've been working on this one for a while but I keep writing and deleting my response. Because all the things I want to say sound gatekeeper-y, in one of several ways.

I think you can be a Nat fan and not read the comics. I think you can be a Nat fan and never talk about her. I don't think you need to know everything about canon and be an "expert" to be a fan. I'm not interested in a locked-gate version of fandom. I don't think this movie should just be for die-hard Nat fans. And I don't think that all Nat fans will like this movie, for a variety of reasons.

Despite all of that, a lot of the comic book/movie expert reviews I've seen feel, to me, like they were evaluating a movie that isn't the one this movie was ever trying to be, and missing some of what the movie explicitly says it is because that doesn't fit what they want from it.

A bit more spoilery and a lot longer under the cut. I am so sorry I'm like this.

This movie felt tailor-made for me. Not because I loved every answer they gave, but because the questions they asked are ones I've been waiting to hear since 2012, when I first saw Avengers and then immediately went back to see the rest of phase 1. I think people disliking the answers is a legitimate opinion, and I'm looking forward to detangling that with people. What surprised me in reviews was not reviewers disliking the answers, which is legit, but not even seeming to realize the questions had been asked.

Most prominently, what felt like the huge thematic arc of the movie to me has been nonexistent in so many reviews that I've started to feel like I made it up, even though I took notes of exact quotes so I could reference them. The movie isn't a Nat origin story, and it's not about her as a cool edgy villain, so not seeing either of those didn't bother me. It's a movie about Natasha's trauma and how that manifests, and how her attempts to break free of it have harmed others in the past, and how she can move forward from that. We never get the key that unlocks the history of Natasha's past, so if you approach this as a puzzle box, it's going to fail.

THIS INDENTED PARAGRAPH IS THE CLOSEST I GET TO DIRECT PLOT POINTS, FEEL FREE TO SKIP

Specifically most of the reviews seem to view Nat's motivating guilt as over how she escaped the Red Room, particularly one casualty she deemed an acceptable sacrifice. But as I interpreted it, Nat's guilt in this movie came from a much closer place: the other Widows were all she'd had, and Nat being able to escape the Red Room made the Red Room hold on to the other Widows that much tighter. She thought she'd taken it down, but she was wrong. So her freedom, essentially, came at their expense. Natasha working to take down the Red Room this time is personal both to avenge her own trauma and to make up for her guilt in the Red Room still existing and creating more trauma for her peers. Without this context (and to be clear, I have gone back over the quotes several times to see if I'm misinterpreting and I really don't think I am), the idea that all of her guilt is over what she did to a single person makes more sense, but it also makes the movie a lot less interesting. If Natasha is justified in blaming Alexei and Melina for condemning her back to the Red Room, how could the other Widows not blame Nat? To me the entire story swings from that, and by not acknowledging Nat's (inadvertent but still very real) responsibility for continuing the cycle, the movie would feel hollow.

PLOT POINTS OVER.

Many critics they seem to feel like the potential this movie introduced was wasted because Nat's dead, so what's the point. First of all, the point is she's Nat and we care. It's not like we went in to Iron Man expecting that we'd have a decade of a franchise; we cared in the moment, and this movie is asking for the same thing. It delivers for over two hours of NOT murdering Natasha, which is more than I can say for Endgame.

To be clear, BW does set up other things for the MCU, and it's but if you're only watching it for what it's going to tell you about the future of the MCU (and I get it, because that's how I'm watching Loki, and it's a very different type of watching than I did for FATWS), this probably IS going to be a disappointment, because this isn't a big crossover event movie; I mean, none of Sam's "Big Three" show up at all. But again, that's about the movie someone wanted it to be, not the movie this was aiming to be.

Is this like a lot of other Marvel movies? Kinda. It's definitely taking a lot from Civil War for its set-up. Its arc felt like a close mirror of to Winter Soldier to me, to the extent that I'm planning to rewatch that on Thursday so I can see how much that's just me projecting my fave onto it. The third act is very Marvel-third-act-y, as adapted to Nat's character; the adapting to Nat's character are the parts I like and the rest is kind of what I consider the MCU price of admission.

I also kind of hate that it feels like the last few movies- Black Panther, Captain Marvel, now this and some rumblings about Shang-Chi- have all been kind of dismissed with "it's just the Marvel formula." It is, but that doesn't change the fact that different protagonists make it different. Dr Strange is pretty much just "Iron Man 1 with cool magic" and people didn't mind, but "how does this formula change when the protagonist is fundamentally different than the archetype to this point?" is apparently not different enough. I get Marvel fatigue, I really do, but for me it's tempered by how, in this case, Nat doesn't have the moral clarity Steve or Thor or even Tony or Scott has. No one in this movie lets her forget that she's a trained killer who little kids look up to.

Again: there are parts of this movie that don't work. I also don't ever ever EVER want to seem like I'm saying that if someone didn't like this movie they're not a real Nat fan or they're wrong. I know there are reasons to not love this movie, and I'm sure I'll figure out more the more I watch- it may not make me not love it, but it will at least complicate it for me, and i think we all know I live for that shit. Moreover, I intimately know how much it sucks when something you've been enthusiastic about and anticipating for ages doesn't pay off and everyone else seems to like it- it's isolating and upsetting and you just sit there wondering why no one else understands, and that's bullshit and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. People who don't like this movie are valid!

But if someone has a history of seeing Nat as just background, or considering her as a T&A deliver system more than as a character, or caring about hot women with guns but not care about the trauma that turned them into that, or saying they like movies about women but just not THIS woman for every comic book movie about a woman not there for them to ogle, or claiming to be experts in all things comics while doubling down on their theory that Yelena wouldn't appear because she was in Agent Carter (YES THAT HAPPENED, MORE THAN ONCE, THE NORTH. FUCKING. REMEMBERS. AND WISHES THEY KNEW WHERE THEY SAVED THOSE SCREENSHOTS), I don't need to weight their reviews heavier than the adrenaline rush I felt watching this movie.

So in answer to your question, I don't think the movie was really "that bad." I think this movie delivers in very specific ways, which definitely are not the flashy ones or the "every Marvel movie builds to the next great EVENT" ones or the male power fantasy ones, and if those ways aren't the ways you care about, it's going to be a disappointment. Even if those AREN'T the ones you care about, it could be a disappointment for any number of reasons, some of which I noticed during the movie and some of which I'm sure I'll be surprised to read about Friday morning.

But it wasn't one to me. For whatever it's worth, despite the movie's flaws, I loved it, I haven't stopped thinking about it in five days, I can't wait to see it again, and I hope that whether other people do or don't like it, they want to roll around in it as much as I do to pick out every single shred of canon worth overanalyzing.

If this is all we ever get for Natasha- and it is a CRIME if this is all we ever get for Natasha but that doesn't mean it's not so- I am grateful that this is what we got.

#allofthereplies #Anonymous #Black Widow movie spoilers #BW spoilers #I mean I tried to make this not that spoilery but I'm sure I didn't completely succeed #also warning for long post #extremely long post #again: I am so sorry I'm like this

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morkofday · 3 years

Text

2020 – a (content creator) year in review

I decided to make this into a mix of these two games I was (kinda?) tagged into so thank you for @leonzhng and @tiesanjiao ♥ I hope you don’t mind me doing it like this ^^ all the questions were just so interesting that I wanted to try!

(bc of the amount of questions, I’m placing them under a cut so that I don’t flood anyone’s dash)

(this is the 2020 year in review that hanyi tagged me to ♥ sorry am so late!)

Top 5 Movies you saw this year

wow tbh I didn’t watch many movies this year as I realized yesterday when I was thinking about this for certain reasons. Or at least I feel like I didn’t watch that many? Nothing really stuck with me it seems.

Because of this, I will only mention two: Parasite and The Old Guard. Those were both wonderful in their own ways and I’m very happy I got to watch them both ^^

Top 5 TV shows you watched this year

this one is difficult bc I watched so many (and forgot even more?) but:

The Lost Tomb Reboot (my introduction to DMBJ. this drama stole my heart and helped me through the tough autumn semester!)

Joy of Life (it’s nuts that this happened during 2020? it feels like it was ages ago)

Kingdom (such a positive surprise and I really hope we get more of this :o I really recommend!)

Detective L (easy, nice aesthetics, amazing costumes. Bai Yu was a delight as Luo Fei)

Sand Sea (I am still baffled by how much I loved this bc I had so many doubts? am happy I did tho)

Bonus: Guardian (bc it has come to stay and the rewatch has been so emotional but so rewarding)

Top 5 songs of 2020

this is a tough one too bc I’ve heard so much new music during 2020 but I will try to put it simply:

Black Swan by BTS (I absolutely adore this song. I listened to it on repeat when it came out at the beginning of the year, I have cried for it a ton, I enjoy every stage I see for it and it’s just a masterpiece. it has also helped a bit with my writing struggles that I’ve felt creeping up on me lately)

Always by By The Coast (an amazing song that always leaves me in my feels. inspires me a lot all the time)

Love me or Leave me by DAY6 (this whole album was a masterpiece and I listened to it on loop for like. two weeks? this was my favorite song on it even if I adored the rest too, especially Zombie)

all of my life by Park Won (listened to this a lot in relation to my xicheng and the wedding I finally got to write for them ;; that’s one good thing that came out of this year tbh)

雨人 by 刘畅 (Liu Chang) (with the Reboot’s ending song, this one is my favorite on that ost. I love Liu Chang’s voice, I loved Liu Sang as a character and as I said, I loved Reboot as a drama. I get super emotional about this ost so I think it defined this year a lot for me)

Top 5 books you read in 2020

All For The Game -trilogy (listened to these as audiobooks but that counts right?)

The Song of Achilles (as an audiobook too and really adored the reader’s voice)

The Smoke Thieves -series (I really just binge read the two first books in this series and am so excited for the next one!)

Call Down The Hawk (love love love)

Guardian novel (am not very into these novels usually but I was positively surprised this time? it was so cool to finally get the original story and compare it with the drama version)

5 positive things that happened in 2020

joined mdzsnet and met all the amazing ppl there and got to become part of this loving community and :’) I’m so thankful, it’s been a joy

learned more about editing? or started doing it regularly. I still can’t do shit but am having fun learning more all the time and I really hope that maybe the upcoming year I can switch to PS and try out giffing?

went to Halsey’s concert! it was in february so a bit before all the hassle with covid happened over here ;; it was super cool and so nice and I just. I love Halsey

fell into the DMBJ hellhole which am very much enjoying. it’s a great universe and the story is so good and the dramas have been so fun to watch and. it feels like a good continuation to The Untamed somehow haha (also brought me a new friend! you’re amazing ashen!! ♥)

started therapy and it’s been... a journey. but towards something better I think? it’s something I would’ve needed ages ago but it’s better late than never I suppose

My Creations

(this is the other part where ali was being super sweet and mentioned me ♥ thank you for being so awesome!)

1. first creation and most recent creation of 2020: wow it’s been a while since I’ve looked at this horrible creation but here ya go jkdhgk [x]. I’ve come a long way from this (and my xicheng has come a long way from this too). most recent one is this xiaoge edit that I absolutely adore [x].

2. one of your favorite creations from 2020: this wwx edit that was part of my agust d2 edit series [x]. I loved to give him blue instead of his typical red.

3. a new style you tried this year and a gifset edit that uses it: this [x] wwx edit which I don’t know if I like or not but I was playing around with the font and all the effects instead of just normal screenshots + coloring. also I just adore the quote.

4. a creation to be proud of: I could mention that xiaoge here but in addition, I will also say this wu xie edit for reboot [x]. I managed to capture my vision so well, I was surprised. for cql, this songxiao edit [x]. I loved how it turned out in the end.

5. a creation that took forever: this wangxian edit [x]. like I’ve said several times, I lost sleep bc of it. I just kept struggling with the third pic and how to place the text there D:

6. your creation from 2020 that received the most notes: this lwj/wangxian edit [x]. I had many ideas for this edit when I first started making it and I never managed to capture my vision in the way I first intended... the pictures I was supposed to use just never fit quite right sigh. I dunno why it was this one that gained all the notes in the end bc I personally think I have better ones too but am still thankful :’D

7. a creation you think deserved more notes: as said, dmbj fandom on tumblr is very small so I really want to say the two already mentioned ones (wu xie and xiaoge) and then my pingxie edits [x] [x]. also these wwx edits which I personally am very happy about [x] [x]. and from my agust d2 series, this yun bros one [x].

8. a new fandom you joined and a creation you made for it: really just dmbj this year and I’ve already linked all of my creations for that :’D tho I have plans for another pingxie edit and a liu sang edit! oh and maybe I could mention guardian here with this shen wei [x]. I had so much fun while making it (also the quote just haunted me relentlessly until I gave it a moment).

9. a creation you made that breaks your heart: this must be my easter islanders (lwj and jc) edit [x] that just. awoke many thoughts in me? I’m going to put a link to the version where you can read my ramblings underneath :’D

10. a ‘simple’ creation that you really love: my creation for the creator (gif?) challenge that was going around! [x] it was simple and nice to do and I loved the result. also, it was nice to work with jl for a change :’)

11. a favorite creation created by someone else: oh wow ok so this is going to be rough bc I have so many favorites ;; you can look at this post here [x] to see more!

but to love my two taggers am going to say these [x / x] [x] [x] [x] [x] by hanyi (I always love your edits, the colors you choose, the thoughts you put into them (and your humor too!). there are so many cool things you’ve done that I just stay in awe of! I adore all of it ;; ♥) and these [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] by ali (I love all of your gifsets so much, they have such pretty colors and such good scenes, and I am thankful every day that you make all the amazing dmbj content, pls never stop ;; I should go through all of your creations properly one day! I noticed you have sand sea stuff too and let me scream?) ^^ ♥

12. your favorite content creators and blogs that you appreciate: this is going to be a huge list and I’ve already made my love heard for some but no hurt in doing it again so @i-am-just-a-kiddo @ashenwren @tiesanjiao @kholran @lzswy @englishbunnyrocks @leonzhng @aheartfullofjolllly @yibobibo @inkblue-black @cross-d-a @bloody-bee-tea @fytheuntamed @mdzsnet @lifegoesmon @creeds-eagle @underaswift-sunrise @sarawatsaraleo @lan-xichens @mylastbraincql @wangxianbunnydoodles @manhasetardis @distantsnows @ohsehuns @minmoyu @linglynz @highwarlockkareena @yiqiie @aowyn @alienwlw @wangxiians @kingbadcat @sassyassassy @tytangfei @lanzhannnn @skzmxtp @leoyunxi @yoonqiful @softjeon @rapbabenamjoon @ronan-adam @miyakuli @pavusdorian @arsuf @brolinskeep @gawincaskeyy and so many others! (sorry for all the random ppl on this list that I’ve never even talked to ^^’ just know that you make my dash a wonderful place! ♥)

I won’t tag anyone separately here but everyone who’s already been tagged or sees this is free to do this (or link me posts if you’ve done these already!) ♥ have a nice day everyone!

#tag game #wow this took ages #am sorry am late #thanks for tagging me tho!!#i enjoyed this a lot #about me

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olivieblake · 3 years

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As a writer or even just a consumer of media do you find people are less willing to accept “flaws” in characters and stories? I’m not talking like this character is a murderer he’s evil no one should like him type stuff, though as someone who started off writing dramione I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of that but just like when characters are ever short of perfect. Like when a strong female character is kinda insecure or a couple isn’t communicating well or has a heated fight everyone gets mad that it’s a toxic relationship or bad writing. I once read a review of a book where someone stopped reading it after two chapters cause it had bad therapy practices, ie. the character still had shit to work through and therapy isn’t magic therefore they weren’t always doing the healing right and it’s like? that’s the whole point!! it’s an arc the character is gonna grow! It’s also made clear early on that the therapist didn’t agree with the coping methods (overly controlling their life) so it wasn’t like they were trying to portray it as a good thing. I know you’ve mentioned people have ✨opinions✨ about your DFS Hermione for having flaws and staying flawed and her flaw is just that she kinda thinks she’s right a lot and maybe isn’t the most self aware nothing even serious lol. I’m not saying don’t be critical of media but it’s kinda overwhelming reading think piece after think piece about why this thing you enjoy is actually the literal worst™️. Like am I toxic for having some of the same flaws ? Am I a problematic creep for enjoy stories where everything isn’t always sunshine, I don’t want to have a train wreck of a relationship but sometimes reading about one can be kinda fun? Is that terrible?

there’s a lot here that I’d like to discuss and I’m thinking about how I’d like to do it (I’ll inevitably chat about it in a video because it’s interesting and complex but I think I may have too many topics for this monday)

let’s see I think I will start by saying: in general, critical discourse about media (books, tv, film, fanfic) is a good thing, but it has definitely gone awry from what I consider to be its origins. I think the whole point of viewing media critically and making observations about what we are portraying via fiction is crucial for amplifying/protecting marginalized stories and reducing harm—specifically, the harm that minorities and women face by being inundated with bigoted, prejudiced, hateful, or ignorant tropes, caricatures, or relationship dynamics. I definitely believe that we should consider what we consume and how we consume it, particularly when it comes to the marginalized voices who do not see themselves represented well or fairly in white male dominated media

that being said, I do think it has led to the expectation that fiction cannot have ANY problems, which is absurd and counterproductive. it’s also extremely reductive, particularly when it comes the Strong Female Character™ thing you mention, where a woman STILL only has value if she’s strong in the “correct” way. I mentioned in one of my other posts and also last week’s video that there’s some kind of disconnect between the VERY GOOD intentions of things like #ownvoices or the movement to empower female characters and the actual outcomes, which make it so that any flaws in a marginalized fictional character are magnified to represent the entire group. the very reasonable request to see ourselves in fiction has somehow become an exponentially convoluted demand to see ourselves a certain way in fiction, where any character who does not reflect our personal experience is bad and wrong. previously, the expectation was that white male stories were universal whereas everything else was only for that specific group, and now, ironically, everything that is created still has to fit that universal quality and please everyone, despite that not being the point. the problem is when you only have ONE movie about this topic or ONE book about this ethnicity, then of course it hasn’t done enough to exemplify an entire subject or culture. there has to be an entire body of work the way there is with white-dominated media, where no single film or book accurately represents the experience of being white

plus we have twitter which is a horrifying hellscape where you get rewarded by the algorithm for making loud, obnoxious points so add that to the list (yesterday I saw that one of the top 3 reviews on Beloved by toni morrison is a 1-star review written by a white man and I was just flabbergasted by the lack of self-awareness)

but anyway that’s like, more of a macro look at what I think is going on but you’re right that people are not very forgiving of flawed characters. to some extent, I get it; the one thing we don’t want our characters to do is annoy us, and that’s fair. but I also think people have lost the sense that “oh, this thing isn’t for me” and thus can’t successfully identify the difference between critical failure and personal dislike

now. as for Divination for Skeptics. let me start by saying it’s not like I don’t understand why people find hermione in Divination for Skeptics annoying, because I get it. if you’re taking the story very seriously then sure, maybe you want her to change her behavior and it’s frustrating that she doesn’t. fair enough! to that I say it’s a comedy and if you don’t find it funny you’re perfectly welcome to dislike it, it’s not a big deal to me if I don’t make you laugh. however, I DO take issue with people who claim she’s too flawed or doesn’t grow, because they almost always do it in a very specific way: they say that she doesn’t show enough empathy, aka how dare she not read draco’s mind and simply alter her personality and behavior to suit his. it genuinely infuriates me that in my opinion, people who voice that particular “criticism” have seemingly internalized the belief that women should be emotionally perceptive; that for them, hermione’s “flaw” is that she does not take on the emotional labor that draco refuses to perform. (her actual flaw is that her survival technique/coping mechanism is a hyper-rationality that incorrectly assumes she has perfect information; i.e., that everything she knows is accurate, and therefore all of her decisions must be sound.) whereas draco knows this about her—knows and acknowledges it—and yet cannot bring himself to voice his feelings out of a fear-based desire to hedge his own emotional risk. who, then, is more flawed in the context of the story?

I don’t really have a conclusion yet so I’m going to pause for now and we’ll revisit this; I think mainly it’s that the more media diversifies, the more people will struggle with the preconceptions they have and the presumption that everything they consume is for them, and therefore that they are the metric for whether something is “good.” I think good art, good media, will reflect the world as it exists, but it will still only be the world according to one tiny fraction, a sliver of the actual human experience. does bad representation mean bad art? when it harms people yes. but when it speaks to a deeper truth (the truth of “we are all given to vice and imperfection even if it is not this specific version”), no. but that requires quite a degree of sophistication and self-awareness to identify, hence the discomfort of continuous vitriol or bad takes

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elkian · 3 years

Text

So I rewatched Mulan and then got around to finally watching Mulan 2 so buckle up I guess

(apparently Mulan 1 has an IMDB rating of 7.5 and 2 has a rating of... 5.8 hoo boy.)

the intro’s okay but this title card... it really looks like they copied the first movie’s and slapped some clipart on it.

the animation is... something

generally it actually looks pretty good but it’s fairly obvious that they outsourced a lot more if not all of it

okay the first musical sequence slaps

I tried like 5 times to get a shot of shang getting feathers up his nose. alas. decent physical comedy tho.

the kid animation and design reminds me of Cats Don’t Dance’s villain for some reason

i like that they let the audience’s imagination do the work here

also the dad spouting koans constantly is kinda jarring tbh

“betting against my mother is not a gamble, it’s an investment” amazing

okay I read the description so I know what’s up here

also this whole exchange is v cute, good friend stuff

Like, it feels like they actually watched the first movie at the very least, yanno? Not every sequel can say that.

amazing

“Mulan... seems your grandma invited someone to help celebrate the engagment.“ “Really? ...who?“

-cut to huge crowd- “China.”

okay they’re really cute tho

“How about a pink slip?“ “Ain’t nobody want to see your drawers, Prunehilda.“ HELP

okay the jokes are actually pretty good? the timing isn’t as perfect as 1 but it’s really not that bad

the turnaround here makes it funny instead of just annoying tbh

the short timeline feels a little contrived tbh. also shouldn’t shang have known about this major threat before now if it’s this sudden

the emperor has been p on model actually (this shot not so much but /shrug)

“This calls for force, not finesse. We must become one with the countryside.“ calling ur bois yokels is quite the bold move shang xD

You know I actually like this characterization of the Emperor. The leader of a country (particularly set in a timeline and story where sexist oppression is the norm, see the first movie) isn’t necessarily going to be a perfect or even good person. His trust+honoring of Mulan does not equate to equity for every woman in the country, after all. And yet, he’s still concerned for the safety of his children, even outside the political ramifications. It’s a surprisingly and pleasantly deep characterization.

Speaking of which,

(it even characterizes the Matchmaker beyond “terrifying Ursula-like” from the first movie - heroes or no heroes, she don’t like the cut of their jib and has no qualms saying as much)

oh my god this reprise is amazing

v prepared, boys.

i like this little deflating moment

And the Emperor watching them pull away... ;_;

prebby,

lmao

pffft

of all the voice actors, it sounds most like Ling’s changed. Which is interesting since I would not expect him to have had the highest billing name. Maybe they got some really good fakes for some of the others?

oh my GOD this reminds me of that bit in Castle in the Sky (the Dianne Wynn Jones book not the movie) where the protag brings the princess dozens of portraits of men bc she’s only seen like 2 dudes in her life

Princess Mei did you actually get a look at this man

“But you didn’t even talk to him!“ “A true romantic can tell.“ Oh good you’re both overly romantic dorks

how do i tell them fantasies don’t constitute reality bc this could be tragic

safasdsafdgf amazing

the like one review I saw implied the princesses were kinda cardboard cutouts and of all the elements to be wrong about I’m glad that was one. They really feel like sisters and people it’s all very endearing

#elk text #19th #February #2021 #February 19th 2021 #elk watches Mulan 2 #part 1 i guess

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lady-plantagenet · 3 years

Text

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n5): Wife to theKingmaker

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account I had a tendency to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic novel. Certain books are either severely underrepresented where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others that are talked about enough - something more can still be said. So for my quarantine fun, I had decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Ok swear to god this book was written by two different people. The ending was actually heart-wrenching, but so much had annoyed me throughout that I swore to myself to never again touch this genre for my own health. Twas an odd tale, and tbh the fact that it was odd probably elevated it from the 2 stars (or hell maybe even 1 if it was going to get any more richardian) to 3. Honestly, quite glad I read it in the end. Not the most historically informative, but some of the character arcs were actually quite neat (however extremely farfetched). Spoiler Warning: I’m going to divulge a lot on here because I know no one who follows me is going to read this book.

Plot: Ok, the plot... It was only after I placed my order that I realised this is the Sandra Heath Wilson of ‘Cicely’s King’ fame. I cringed and didn’t know what to do. For all you innocents out there... her Cicely series is a saga wherein Cecily of York pretty much bangs everyone who is male and from the house of york (minus her father and uncle George) and Even Henry VII(!!). She then has this kid by Richard III, calls him Leo and the rest is history(this is what I gleaned from goodreads). Nevertheless it had already shipped and honestly I had it coming; the synopsis does say she has an affair with her brother-in-law John Marquis of Montagu. Whatever, I couldn’t resist buying the only novel about Anne Beauchamp, and since it was published in the 70s/80s I knew it would at least be flamboyant and go all out. It delivered enough for it to have been worth reading.

So the novel follows Anne Beauchamp!(Nan) from when she is a 13 year old girl to 1478 when she finally leaves Beaulieu to go live at Middleham with her (as you guessed it- favourite) daughter Anne and her oh so belovéd son-in-law Richard Duke of Gloucester - You see? Since now finally the Great Other (Mr George) is finally vanquished England has its peace. Of course this is not true, Nan historically left the abbey in 1473 for Middleham and while I wanted a possible explanation from the author (who I would assume is better researched than I) for whether she went to Middleham out of her own volition or simply because the King trusted Gloucester better than Clarence... alas I got none. It was all pinned on the fact that the evil George (who as per usual alternates between omnipotent mastermind to absolute drunken himbo at the turn of a page) would not have her free for as long as she lived (for whatever reason). I really think the real historical explanation was because Edward trusted Gloucester - because after all Warwick Castle was Nan’s patrimony not Middleham. I doubt Nan had a choice in the matter but, the point is, Isabel was alive in 1473 and since there’s zero historical record or suggestion that Nan and Anne had ever seen her again, it would have been nice to have had a depiction of the conflicted feelings or a final meeting written for the three women. I’ll let it slide I guess, after all, one needs to cut some slack when it comes to books written pre-internet age by non-historians. And unlike Sunne in Splendour, this book does not purport to be completely accurate or a representation of the truth.

Christ some sub-plots were truly unexpected. One that made me groan at first was the whole arc between Nan and her niece Eleanor Butler. In this book she’s her ward (not historically true) and little Eleanor is all sweet and innocent and virtuous and, hell, at one point we get more Nan-Eleanor interaction than even between Nan - her own daughters (particularly Isabel who would have been the right age and a better substitute for Eleanor in their dialogue, but alas, who cares about Isabel right?). Eleanor even is the one to accidentally discover that Margaret of Anjou slept with Edmund Beaufort, siring Edward of Lancaster.

Ok. You’re probably thinking, god how trite eugh the Richardians are at it again, right? Yeah ok the Richardians are at it again, but it turns into something really neat at the end. Essentially, as I said, Nan has an affair with John Neville Marquis of Montagu (long story that I will expand on in characterisation) and she and him come upon Edward and Eleanor (overhearing them nothing more). So Edward and Nan then have this mutually assured destruction between them, because Edward divulges that he saw Nan and John years later when Nan confronts him (by this time he is married to Elizabeth Woodville) that she knows about the pre-contract with the intention of telling him off. He tells her that if she dares tell Warwick about the pre-contract he will tell Warwick about John, so she then agrees (also because she promised her niece that she would keep it quiet for the safety of her son by Edward). Years later when they meet again, Edward realised how much is at stake for Nan (especially since it turned out she loved Warwick all along and Edward figured that out), and so, during the period of John’s back-and-forth loyalties (we know he was disgruntled by the loss of the Northumberland Earldom)... Edward returns and tells Nan that if Montagu abandons him he will out her to Richard and cause a massive division between the brothers (militaristically speaking as well) and he knows he can do that because he figures out Nan will not out him because she blubbs about her promise to her niece. This madness then becomes bittersweet when (as history would have it) Montagu does end up fighting for Warwick, nevertheless, Nan is releaved during the whole time because there’s nothing in Warwick’s letters that give any indication that Edward ended up exposing her. Warwick dies in the battlefield, Nan is deeply aggrieved but happy he never found out at least. But then... years later when Edward comes to Beaulieu (1478 as this story would have it) to inform Nan that she may depart for Middleham, he tells her that he in fact did expose her to Warwick... but that Warwick didn’t believe him and laughed in his face because he thought there was no way she could be unfaithful because he knew she loved him. This sounds silly but it got to me a bit when I read it. Of course, we also have Edward saying he regretted his handling of the pre-contract affair because apparently Elizabeth Woodville had since lost interest in him and he’s hurt by how she shows no reaction to him having mistresses and he’s kinda given up, whereas Eleanor would have been more of a lapdog. This was essentially the centrepiece of the plot.

Look, I don’t really read these types of novels as a habit so I don’t know if bizarre plot lines like this are commonplace. Not going to lie though, it threw me and it was pleasantly enjoyable. This is basically what is to be said about the plot... the rest goes into characterisation. Nevertheless, this novel too often fell into the exposition trap (like telling us what is happening politically instead of showing us). While I appreciated the refresher of what happened 1445-1461 and I understand that the target audience of this book aren’t Wars of the Roses experts, I’ve seen it done more smoothly in many other more literary novels (eg Hawley Jarman’s or Lytton-Bulwer’s Last of the Barons). I’ve often said Sunne in Splendour was terribly dry and exposition-heavy, but at least it had historical detail so I could sometimes switch off and treat it as a non-fiction account for battles and character locations. But with this one I a) don’t have faith that the author paid attention to detail; see what I said earlier about the years 1473-1478, so I won’t take this as information and b) know that if she had done this with the years I know more about: 1461-1478, I would have gotten annoyed because of my familiarity with those decades.

Characterisation: Well we have lovelorn saintly Dickon here - always a pet peeve of mine. Look, I don’t have strong opinions about the man but it just innures me how whenever Richardianism rears it’s ugly head the plot suffers massively and it’s always favourite figures of mine that suffer the most. George Duke of Clarence... oh god, what can I say? Wife-beater, alcoholic, is disgusted by his wife when she is ill (you know, unlike the historical Clarence who had resided in the Abbot’s home near the infirmiary for the last months of his wife’s lying-in and after to be close to her and thereafter stuck with her until she passed away and two months after that as well), is stupid yet somehow still devious, is the indirect cause of her death... the list goes on. Welp, at least this Clarence unlike the Sunne in Splendour one has an elegant bearing, sense of fashion and is a great dancer. The Sunne one had NOTHING. It’s also odd that they make his attitude towards Isabel undergo a complete 180 as soon as he realises this marriage will no longer make him king. This makes no sense as the book has them want to marry for love, like YEARS before 1469, so this sudden attitude change makes no sense. Authors really need to be reminded that crown or no crown that marriage would still have made him the greatest magnate in England. There was also a ridiculous handling on the circumstance of his death, and this was the most factually wrong part of the book. Between Ankarette being aged down by 4 decades and the whole shmaz with Stillington, I don’t know where to begin. I bet most of you can guess how it was handled. Isabel is as per usual constantly depressed and without a personality because, well, we can’t have her compared to our shining heroine Anne Neville. 3x more beautiful, 5x more vivacious and 20x more significant than her doormat of a sister who complains all day- that is when she isn’t crying. Gahhh. Of course Anne Neville also cries but it’s for her beloved Dickon who she pines for constantly. Look, I have no qualms with romanticising this pairing, but authors need to keep in mind that Anne was like 13 at most when she became estranged from Gloucester. You. Need. To. Stop. Writing. Her. Like. A. Woman. . I don’t care what anyone says, no matter the time period, you can’t make me visualise a 13 year old that could feel romantic love of that deep a devotion and maturity and not send me laughing across the floor. But want to write a strong childish infatuation coming from a place of deep friendship? Fine by me.

Ok, onto more positive characterisation points: I liked Nan, quite a lot actually (I mean blatant daughter favouritism aside). A lot of authors attempt to write the proud noblewoman and great lady character but few pull it off. This is always how I have seen the real Anne Beauchamp and I’m glad to see it here. For a novel so insensitive towards certain figures, the author wrote Nan with great empathy. She was very intelligent but not in that artificial girlboss way, she loved her daughter(s) but in that medieval mother type of way (so no baby brain here), she may have not gotten along splendidly with all the women around her but there was none of that demeaning cattiness. About that, I want to say I was shocked by what a turn her relationship with Margaret of Anjou took. Since the whole Somerset-bastard child plotline was a thing... Nan was initially revolted and lost all her respect for Lancaster, but when the two women find themselves joined by fate they gain this strange mutual respect for one another. They butt heads a bit initially but Margaret of Anjou rises above it for her son’s sake and eventually strikes up an agreement with Nan on when they are to set sail. Margaret first won’t listen to Nan because she thinks she’s a fool but when she eventually slips by to tell Nan that she had thought about her plan and that maybe she’s right, she doesn’t apologise and Nan doesn’t need her to and it’s this weird telepathic understanding from then on and I certainly did not expect to see something like this in this novel. After the landing in England and news of Warwick’s death reaches the party, Margaret doesn’t gloat but diplomatically relays the news and when Nan says she wants to take sanctuary because she lost all heart and can’t fight on, Edward of Lancaster gently says something like: well if you come with us, you’ll at least get your revenge and that’s at least something (paraphrase). You could just tell this was Edward’s way of offering condolences, the type of way a child like him raised through war and promises of vengeance only could, and it was oddly powerful. Shame it couldn’t have happened as Nan and Margaret and Isabel all travelled at seperate times. The whole theme around Nan was that she wasn’t very partisan but only followed her husband as a magnate and then as a man, which I believe and it was great to see Team Lancaster understood Warwick was a seperate entity from York, and for all intents and purposes they were all in this together. Cool-headedness is much needed in this genre I realise, god how low flies the bar ~

Now onto the characterisation most people are wondering about. What of Warwick? He was the saving grace of the novel. He has the common touch yet he is sophisticated, he is idealistic yet he is shrewd, he is impassioned yet collected, he is dramatic yet subtle, he is ... I can go on and on. What is all the affair plot point about then? It doesn’t diminish the bond between the two main characters; to tell you quite truthfully the relationship the author wrote was bizarre yet still really touching. They used to hate eachother because Nan thought herself above him (after all the Warwick earldom was far more valuable than the Salisbury one- remember it was briefly a dukedom at one point), but then she sees what he made of himself and becomes proud of him and falls in love with him. However, he starts to get carried away with his ambitions, gets all-consumed by the legend of Warwick that he had cultivated and essentially becomes impersonal without wanting to (and realising). Nan feels she has lost him to the people of England (which are apparently all hypnotised by his presence, which ok is a fact grounded in history) and because of her wounded pride she starts seeking comfort in his brother (although, it makes little sense how this would work as I would gather he would also be away, especially at the Scottish boarders). When he refuses to support Warwick over Edward later on, she loses all feelings for Montagu and thinks him a coward, and when Warwick apologises for being amiss she realises that this whole time it was him she loved all along and is racked with guilt. I found this exploration of what it is like being wed to a man of such public standing quite interesting, the idea of losing him not to another woman or such but to his cause (which in this book is a mixture of belief in the french alliance, the common weal and subconsciously his own wounded pride brought on by an extreme adherence to inflexible chivalric values on his part and Edward IV’s actions), I confess, is not something I saw portrayed in this particular manner anywhere else. I mean it’s not like I’ve been searching for this particular motif, but this was a refreshing depiction of a medieval couple and it was a poignantly written relationship which the author had me invested in. The relationship was heartfelt because it was very distinct, Nan and Warwick weren’t just some stand-ins for a cash-grab but some consideration was paid to the real historical figures. The John plotline, sure I would in principle protest against something like this but it seems to have had two plot purposes: To illustrate the strain caused by the aforementioned issue and to kick off the whole Edward-Eleanor Butler-Montagu-Nan arc, which bizarre and unbelievable as it was, kept me on my toes. I’ll let it slide. Also, Edward IV was portrayed as quite a chilling villain in this, beholden of this weird mix of indifference, charm and wickedness.

Prose: This is what made me briefly wonder if this book was written by two different people. It failed to engage me in the first half, the descriptions were trite (except for the natural scenery bits), there was very little variety in sentence structures which gave it the stilted heaviness that thus afflicted The Sunne in Splendour (and most modern literature). There was a lot of redundancies eg the type of stuff like ‘whispered quietly’ or ‘yelled loudly’ and the author’s misunderstanding of certain period fashions drew me out eg references to bodices (not a thing then), calling the henin veil a silk scarf etc. She didn’t pull a Penman: exposit emotions to us, making me feel like I walked into a therapy session, but it was often heavy-handed. It first felt very much like an uninspired debut novel. A bit try-hard and I was wondering if this was the way of the bodice ripper... I wouldn’t know, I never read one before (though I’m unsure if this qualifies as it’s really not graphic and the focus is really not on sex nor is there much of it).

However, out of nowhere, the prose suddenly changed a little before half of the way in; colours, emotions, thoughts and the like started to blend masterfully. The sentence structures started varying to convey the way Nan was feeling. It became very show don’t tell, and it drew me in emotionally a bit (I must confess). Of course, that’s also around the point the plot had sort of started redeeming itself. Nan’s grief at her husband’s passing was particularly well conveyed - how she became a husk of her former self... I could read fifty pages of that. Her realisation that it had been him all along was also well written, and you could feel all the urgency and regret she felt at all the time she had wasted disregarding him as the plot grew nearer to Barnet. The mutual longing was also subtle yet strong, and it really was down to the effective use of sentence structure and waylaying of inspired thematic details. The mingling of past memories with present day in her later years was also very well done and with flow, and the adjectives etc used were no longer becoming distracting as before. My favourite part by far was the very last scene when she rides ahead of her escort to Middleham and she imagines a horse riding beside her caparisoned with the Neville standard; you can really feel how this is the first time that she had felt joy in years and she lets the ghost follow her.

... In Conclusion, this novel gave me very mixed feelings. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much as I did had it not been for the fact that I entered it with a massive pre-formed love for the figures. It’s a bit like my experience with ‘Death Be Pardoner to Me’ (review #2 on this tag), was the book actually good or do I just have an affinity for the protagonist (Clarence in that case)? As such, I don’t think I would reccomend it. Indeed I wrote this spoilerish review because I was sure no one would fly off to Amazon after seeing this post. I can’t say if it’s above commercial historical romance in standard as this is the first time I’ve ever read a book from this genre. I think I’ll take a loongg break from historical fiction (after I finish with Jarman) because the Clarence portrayal was a bit of a nail in the coffin for me and I don’t want to continue upsetting myself for no reason. As I have now truly lost hope in reading a balanced depiction of him and if the literature isn’t absolutely expemplary why bother? Nevertheless, Warwick’s portrayal was a saving grace and made it impossible for me to give it two stars - it wasn’t perfect but still the best I’ve read (minus Last of the Barons Ofc). This is also a bit sad when you think about it, Warwick is also due some fictional justice. Even scholarly if you ask me.

The experience was educational as I learned a valuable lesson in what to avoid and include in my writing, what pitfalls/clichés not to fall into etc. I think I can draw another valuable lesson from this: Dear Histfic authors, if you happen to not be historians, heavily-researched in this time period, objective or literarily talented etc don’t take yourself seriously by publishing some tome of a work but just go nuts like this novel. At least this way you’re not sharing misinformation, inducing people into error and your work still gets to be engaging as opposed to a repetition of the previous amateur historical novelist. Yeah. For all the Sunne in Splendour’s superior quality, I must say I prefer this one better.

Tagging @pythionice who I have recently discovered has also read this book! Welcome fellow fan of Warwick <3

#lady-plantagenet’s book reviews #I’m actually embarasses by how long this is #I got into quite the rambling mood oh gosh #I confuse myself #I hope I have amused some of you with this retelling at least it is outrageous lmao #wife to the kingmaker #sandra wilson #george of clarence #isabel neville #anne beauchamp #richard neville earl of warwick #warwick the kingmaker #richard neville #george plantagenet #anne neville #I’ll add read more function tommorow I’m too tired now #sandra heath wilson

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365days365movies · 3 years

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March 1, 2021: The Hobbit (1977) (Part 1)

In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.

When I was 9, my school let us read a very special book, originally meant for kids, but beloved by everyone. My folks and I went to Borders Books (FUCK ME, I miss Borders), and we got an illustrated copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I can’t find that book, but if I ever find it again, Imma buy it IMMEDIATELY, I tell you what. And...oh shit, it’s on Amazon for $12?

Well. I just made that purchase, I guess. But yeah, I loved that book when I was a kid, and this was during the same year that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy began, with Fellowship, of course. And I wouldn’t end up watching those until a few years later, but I loved those too when I saw them. And I’ve NEVER seen the abridged version, by the way, I’ve only ever seen the extended editions.

Although, I can’t call myself a hardcore fan. I’ve never read the Silmarillion, for example. Although, weirdly, I wanted it as a kid at some point, so I was almost there. But no, I ended up getting into comic books hardcore instead, so I can’t tell you the history of Tom Bombadil, but I can tell you about at least one of the fuckin’ 87 tieles that the Legion of Super-Heroes has been involved in. I’m not gonna like it though.

...Yes, I will, who am I kidding, I love the Legion. Anyway, I’ve still always been a fan of the franchise, and I was extremely excited when Jackson announced that he’d be doing an adaptation of The Hobbit! Seriously, I WAS FUCKING PUMPED, you have no idea. I re-read the book, I was super-excited...and then Harry Potter changed EVERYTHING. Kind of.

See, Harry Potter’s development as a two films made from one book seemed to kick off a trend. Breaking Dawn and Mockingjay are the two that immediately come to mind, as does this film. However, to be fair...that’s probably a coincidence. Yeah, this film was originally developed as two parts, WAY before Deathly Hallows got that treatment. And even then, Jackson and Del Toro had difficulty breaking it up into two parts, and three ended up being easier. Still...the change from two-to-three does feel a little connected to that trend.

Anyway, in celebration of that decision, I’m gonna break this review into three parts! Yes. Really. I want to see if it works. And so, let’s talk about the other most famous adaptation of this book by talking about its creators.

Yup. Rankin-Bass did 2D-animated cartoons, too! And this was one of their most famous ones, dating back to 1977. But wait! There’s more! This was followed by Ralph Bakshi’s version of Lord of the Rings by a different studio. You know, this one?

Yeah, that one. It was only based on the first two books, Fellowship and Towers. But it was technically unconnected to the Rankin-Bass version. Which is why it was REALLY weird when Rankin-Bass came out with an adaptation of the third book, Return of the King, right afterwards!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. Because both of Rankin-Bass’ specials were animated by a Japanese studio called Topcraft, who’d actually worked with Rankin-Bass for years. But then, they went bankrupt a few years later, and was bought by Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuki, and...Hayao Miyazaki. And it was renamed as...

So, this is a Hobbit adaptation produced by the Rudolph people and animated by the people who would eventually become Studio Ghibli. Well, uh...holy fucking shit. Let’s DO THIS BABY. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/3)

As we’re wont to do in this story, we head to Hobbiton in the Shire, where we meet Bilbo Baggins (Orson Bean). A simple Hobbit in a simple home, with a happy and simple life. But one day, he’s approached by Gandalf (John Huston), who seeks a burglar to help with the mission of a group of dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Hans Conried).

We also immediately start off with two songs from the original book, and I have to say that I like them a but better in the Jackson movies, but they’re still well performed here. Anyway, after dinner, the true goal of their quest is given. Beneath Lonely Mountain, the ancestral home of the Dwarves, there was a kingdom ruled by the King Under the Mountain, Thorin’s grandfather.

Through reading the lyrics of the song “Far over the Misty Mountains,” Thorin tells the tale of the takeover of the Dwarves’ great golden hoard by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo is tasked to help the Dwarves steal back the treasure stolen from them. And, while he’s extremely reluctant to be a part of all this, Gandalf basically forces him to, the pushy bastard. And Bilbo’s Greatest Adventure now lies ahead!

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Speaking of, here’s the song “The Greatest Adventure”, sung by Glenn Yarborough, who is the living personification of vibrato. Fuckin’ seriously, this guy’s voice is ridiculous, but I love it so much. As the night passes underneath Glenn Yarborough’s hypnotically shaky voice, and uncertain, Bilbo stares out at the moon. Once it’s over, we’re on our way to the Misty Mountains.

Bilbo’s having a tough time with the long journey and rough weather, and it doesn’t get much better when they encounter a trio of trolls. They send out Bilbo to try and steal some mutton from them, but he’s IMMEDIATELY a failure, and also manages to tell the trolls that the dwarves are present. Nice one, Bilbo. The trolls catch all of the dwarves, although Bilbo manages to escape.

The trolls argue about how to cook the dwarves, but before they get to do anything, Gandalf shows up and summons the dawn, turning the trolls into stone and saving the dwarves. While they’re initially quite frustrated by Bilbo’s failure, he makes it up by discovering a horde of goods and weapons stolen by the trolls. This is also where Bilbo gets his classic weapon, Sting.

Gandalf, cheeky bastard that he is, suddenly reveals a map that he’s kept secret from Thorin, its rightful owner. Bilbo, a classic cartomaniac, is able to interpret the map. But there are also runes that they can’t quite read. And so, Gandalf brings them to his friend, Elrond (), who’s wearing a sick-ass glittery tiara that’s hovering off his head. How come Hugo Weaving didn’t have that?

Anyway, Elrond identifies the swords that Thorin and Gandalf grabbed as Orcrist, the Goblin-Cleaver and Glamdring, the Foe-Hammer, because FUCK YEAH, BABY, those are some fuckin’ NAMES! WHOOOOOO!

Anyway, he also points them in the direction of the mountain, and shows them hidden features to the map. They head through the mountains after this, and rest in a cave. Unfortunately, this cave is on Goblin territory, and the group (sans Gandalf, who’s disappeared to make out with Cate Blanchett or whatever) is quickly ambushed by a group of now-horned Goblins, who chant their song as they go “Down, Down, to Goblin-Town”. Which is a song that I love, unironically. It compels me to sing along.

The Goblins nearly kill them when they discover Orcrist in Thorin’s possession, but they’re saved by the sudden appearance of Gandalf with the glowing sword Glamdring. He kills the Great Goblin, and the group run out with the Goblins in hot pursuit. Well, except for Bilbo.

Yeah, Bilbo falls into a cavern below the mountain, and the dwarves think him gone for good. However, he’s miraculously safe on the ground, having landed in an underground aquifer, in which lives THE GREATEST CHARACTER IN THE MIDDLE-EARTH FRANCHISE FUCKIN’ AT ME I DARE YOU

And just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about the film version only, I’m talking about Gollum/Smeagol in general. Granted, I don’t want a film starring him or anything (coughCruellacoughcoughMaleficentcoughcoughClaricecoughcough), but I love this dissociative little dude so much. He’s one of my favorite fantasy characters in general, and is also maybe the best example of a sympathetic villain, in film at least.

OK, to be fair, I love Andy Serkis’ version of the character a LOT, like a LOT a lot, and it’s a great version of the character. OK, so what do I think of this version? He’s...interesting, actually. If I’m honest, I kinda like him. This is similar to how I always pictured Gollum when I was a kid.

I mean, listen to this description from the book, yeah?

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face...He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking.

I dunno, that does sound more like this version of Gollum to me, just saying. Anyway, while Gollum is off fishing in the water, Bilbo gets up on the shore, where he finds a little golden ring Not important, just a ring, definitely means nothing at all, NOTHING AT ALL, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

The hungry Gollum (Brother Theodore) happens upon Bilbo, precious, wonders if Bilbo would taste good, and is basically about to kill him for his sweet hobbit meat, before Bilbo takes out Sting. Now afraid, Gollum offers a game of riddles. The two make a deal: if Bilbo wins at a game of riddles, Gollum will show him the way out. But if Gollum wins, precious will eat him raaaaaaaw and wrrrrrrrrrriggling!

The riddles commence, in a super-fuckin’-classic moment, and also ends with maybe the most bullshit moment in all of fantasy lore. After clever riddles with answers involving eggs, wind, and time, Bilbo’s last riddle is “What’s in my pocket?” The fuck, Bilbo, that’s absolute BULLSHIT!

Not that it matters. Bilbo wins, but Gollum goes to find his ring to show it to Bilbo before he takes him away. Thing is, though, that’s what was in Bilbo’s pocket, which Gollum quickly figures out, my precious. He’s about to kill Bilbo to get back his birthday present, precious, but Bilbo discovers the secret trick of the ring: it turns the wearer invisible, AND THAT WILL NEVER BE A BAD THING EVER.

Gollum thinks that Bilbo’s escaped and runs after him toward the exit. This, of course, leads Bilbo towards the exit inadvertently, and he follows Gollum, then jumps over him to get back. To which Gollum screams the following:

Thief! Thief! Baggins! We hates it! Hates it! Forever!

I hear you, buddy. I hear you. Well, once Bilbo escapes, he reconvenes with the rest, and shares his adventure in the cave, but leaves out the ring. And Gandalf seems to know, based on his dialogue. And I checked, and he figured it out in the book and Jackson movie, too. And I gotta say...WHAT THE FUCK GANDALF

I mean...DUDE. CHECK UP on that shit. Do you wizard job, man! If you’d been like, “Dude...you didn’t find a magic ring that turns you invisible, ight, because we’re FUCKED if you did”, NONE OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS WOULD’VE HAPPENED, AND BOROMIR WOULD STILL BE ALIVE

Everybody talks about the fuckin’ eagles, but WHY DO I NEVER HEAR ANYONE MENTION THIS SHIT? Gandalf the Grey: Middle-Earth’s most irresponsible asshole, I swear...

This seems like a good place to pause, actually. See you in the next part!

#the hobbit #the hobbit 1977 #rankin-bass #orson bean #bilbo baggins #thorin oakenshield #john huston #gandalf #otto preminger #cyril ritchard #brother theodore #gollum #don messick #paul frees #glenn yarbrough #j.r.r. tolkien #rankin bass #hans conried

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iohourtime · 4 years

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Kiokuya (The Memory Eraser) Review - With Spoilers

Since I read the book, sort of followed the filming progress, and read a bunch of interviews (that all sounded the same after a while), I should finish off by writing a review for the movie itself!

Thanks to the pandemic, I was stuck at home watching Netflix for 7 months, so I’ve watched all sorts of movies & TV; sadly most are in the average to crappy category. To me, Kiokuya was probably in the average to slightly above average category. In other words, there are elements I like and there are things I feel the movie can improve on.

The review is a bit long since apparently I have a lot of thoughts about the script.😅 I pretty much summed up my thoughts in the “theme” section. If you are interested in the book / movie differences & things from the DVD visual commentary, I included those in the script & characters section. (Movie Walker included highlights from the visual commentary here.) . If you want to discuss the movie but don’t want to put spoilers on Twitter, leave me a message.

Theme:

The movie’s main theme is obviously about memory. If a memory is making your life miserable, or even stopping you from living, is it better to erase it? Or do all memories, even bad ones, shape you as a human? If someone’s memory of you is gone, are you killed in their minds? If you think someone is better off forgetting you, do you have the right to ask Kiokuya to erase their memories of you? Are the memories gone forever? If you have the power to erase someone’s memory, what are your responsibilities? And to some extent, what are the criteria to evaluate each request and what due diligence should you do before you accept this task? These were the questions the movie wanted you to ask. You know because the movie kept hitting you on the head through the dialogue! That’s probably my main complaint about the movie.

I didn’t study film so I don’t know the theories, but I think being heavy handed at telling you what you should be thinking is like listening to a textbook; it robs the audience of the chance to experience and internalize what they saw, and as a result, they are less able to connect emotionally to the film. That’s not to say people are not moved by the movie and empathize with the characters. I feel that it had more to do with the actors than the script though.

I think the cinematography was generally nice. I liked how they used the drone shots to film the beautiful Hiroshima scenery. The sunset scene was beautiful. The music did not seem intrusive. Other than that, I’m not sure I have more to say. (Fine. Yamada looked good in the plaid shirts and his hair was on point.)

Script vs Book: (Spoiler alert from here on!)

Kiokuya, the movie, was an adaptation of a “horror” novel of the same name. Although there were horror elements, mostly because Kiokuya was kind of a shadowy figure, even the novel itself was focused more on humanity. The original story was divided into 4 parts; the first 3 parts were really 3 separate short stories that explored different reasons people have for wanting their memories erased. The final part was about Kiokuya herself. The Ryoichi character simply served as a bridge between the stories. Here’s a brief description:

Kyoko - A while ago, she was attacked in a dark alley but was saved at the last minute. Even though she was unharmed, she developed a crippling phobia of the dark, so she locked herself inside her home at night and was not able to live a normal life. She and Ryoichi were kinda but not really dating, and Ryoichi, being a typical guy, figured he could fix her. Kyoko tried everything but as a last resort, she asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of the attack. Since her relation with Ryoichi was based almost entirely on overcoming the phobia, she forgot him too. Through this incident, Ryoichi remembered how Maki had her memory erased when she was 5 or 6 - she saw her mom confessing to her dad that she had an affair with her uncle. Kiokuya might have erased Maki’s memory a second time when she was 10-12. Finally, he realized he “forgot” about his year-long investigation of Kiokuya with Takahara & others. It seemed like he was doggedly pursuing Kiokuya because he felt violated more than his undying love for Kyoko. In his own words, he didn’t try to rebuild his relationship with Kyoko again after she forgot about him. There was nothing stopping him, so his feelings towards Kyoko were not that deep.

Takahara - He was a 30 year old ikemen lawyer, though like the movie, he was dying. The chapter focused on his touching friendship with his assistant. Takahara was also close with Nanami, a suicidal, 17-year-old daughter of a client who became very attached to him. When Takahara found out Nanami planned to kill herself after he died, he asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of him so that she would live on.

Misao & Kaname - They were childhood friends and Misao started crushing on Kaname. She confessed and was rejected, but after that, they were not able to be friends like before. She figured if she erased everything about Kaname, they may be able to start over and become friends again without the awkward feelings.

Maki - Ryoichi thought Maki was looking for Kiokuya to erase some unpleasant memories. Then he found out she was Kiokuya, who inherited her ability from her grandfather. In the end, Maki confessed to the burden of being Kiokuya and Ryoichi told her he would support her and that she didn’t have to do it alone. Maki decided to erase anything Kiokuya related in his memory, but their friendship remained intact. Oh, Maki was 17 in the book and also had a crush on Ryoichi. She erased his memories many times before. Like in the movie, she also would like Ryoichi to love her just once, although he never ever saw her as anyone other than his annoying little sister. 😅

The director of the movie, Hirakawa Yuichi, also wrote or co-wrote the script. While the movie stuck to the themes of the novel, the motivations were completely different. Kyoko and Misao were both rape victims, Takahara now wanted to protect his young daughter from the sadness of his death, and Maki was herself kidnapped by a psychopath when she was a kid. I guess Hirakawa needed to pump up the drama and felt the stakes were not high enough for a 2 hour movie? There is always some uneasiness with using rape and trauma to move the story along. I guess there is a difference between this and the usual example of “fridging a female character”, i.e. kill a love interest of the hero to motivate him on some journey. Ryoichi was motivated by being erased and he actually gradually realized he should not push for restoring Kyoko’s memories if it was her wish. He only found out what happened to her at the end of the movie. Considering their relationship in the movie was a lot more serious, they couldn’t really use the phobia of darkness reason. However, it would also take something really big for Kyoko to want her memory erased while not talking to Ryoichi beforehand. Anyway, I really don’t see a way out of this.

For Misao though, I didn’t think they needed to make her a victim of the same serial rapist, especially when they use the same reason as the book for erasing Kaname. I suppose they need to explain why Nanami (and later Ryoichi) was looking into them? But they could just have the doctor referred the case (who appeared to be breaking doctor-patient confidentiality?! Just me?) In fact, the whole Misao / Kaname storyline didn’t really do much other than allowing Ryoichi to find out from Kaname that Kiokuya was a young girl.

Maki’s childhood trauma was also a bit excessive. I can’t see it as anything other than to get Ryoichi out to Hiroshima to talk to Grandpa. While finding out mom was “dealing with” uncle would be traumatic for a young child, it might not be dramatic enough for a movie.

Ryoichi & Maki’s origins were also changed. They were now raised in Hiroshima and moved to Tokyo to attend university. The only reason was to place Grandpa-Kiokuya in Hiroshima after the bombing. While I liked the grandpa scene, was it necessary? They already covered the “Kiokuya after WWII” with the interview with the elderly woman. I think they could still keep Grandpa, since he was Kiokuya (and ironically suffering from Alzheimer’s) but maybe just skip the elderly woman part and use those minutes to build Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship!

Upgrading Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship to being engaged gave him more incentive to look for Kiokuya, but all we got to see was 1 proposal scene and some snapshots, which made it harder for us to understand the loss Ryoichi experienced when Kyoko forgot him. Ultimately, I feel that more time should be given to the “before” times. They don’t even need that much. If done effectively like the movie Searching with John Cho, 5 minutes or so of clips would be enough to get us to care more. I’m not saying people won’t care, but it’s true that there are people who didn’t quite feel it. Yamada basically had to sell it with longing looks at Renbutsu, so how deeply you feel for them depends on whether you buy it or not.

Takahara’s story might have been changed because of who they cast. Also, Takahara & Nanami’s relationship in the book was kinda weird, considering Nanami actually loved him and she was 17 while he was 30. I definitely cannot agree with how Movie Takahara wanted to erase his daughter’s memory to spare her the pain of losing him. It reminded me of that Black Mirror episode where the mom put in a blocker to shield her daughter from bad things. It ended up messing up the girl & broke their relationship. Young children are resilient and the sadness would eventually change into something else, which would shape their characters. Also, just because she forgot her birth father didn’t mean she would suddenly get along with her stepfather. I won’t even get into the whole consent thing. It was a good thing Maki did not follow through.

Less good was what Movie Maki did to Ryoichi & Kyoko though. When I found out Movie Ryoichi & Kyoko were engaged instead of “pre-dating” like in the book, I was quite worried they would have Movie Maki erase Ryoichi from Kyoko’s mind for selfish reasons. I was hoping that maybe he got erased by mistake, but unfortunately, the script did go with the jealousy angle, which made Maki extremely unsympathetic.

In the visual commentary, they said they rewrote the ending because it didn’t fit. Maki erased her entire existence from Ryoichi's mind as penance for what she did. (I think initially, they were going with the book ending where Maki just erased Kiokuya from his head.) In the end, the actual cut used in the movie was more ambiguous - they “left it to the audience” to decide how much Maki erased and whether Ryoichi & Kyoko got a second chance at happiness. (The director said it ended on a hopeful note. Take it how you want.)

It’s unclear if Movie Maki erased Ryoichi’s memories more than once, but Book Maki had done it many times. Even though Book Maki seemed more responsible with her powers and didn’t slip up like Movie Maki, she did wipe part of Ryoichi’s memories without his consent. Ryoichi said that she didn’t have to do this alone and she could lean on him, so why didn’t she? Also, losing all that memory got to have some long term effect on him, right? In the movie, it was worse because Maki took the “easy” way out by erasing herself. Yes, she was punishing herself, but shouldn’t the more courageous thing to do was to own up to what she had done and work for Ryoichi’s (& Kyoko’s) forgiveness?

Speaking of Ryoichi’s forgiveness, I actually saw some viewers calling Ryoichi a cad for telling Maki that he would always protect her and be by her side to protect her. Apparently they seemed to think he was in love with Maki and forgot all about Kyoko. Well, I think in that moment, there were 3 things going on: 1) Takahara told him that it was better to forgive and that there will be justice in other ways, 2) he understood why it was devastating to Kyoko to remember what happened and 3) Maki was like his little sister. His immediate desire to comfort his friend overrode the anger and betrayal he might have felt. Had Maki not erased his memory around 2 minutes after, who knew if they would have a more substantial talk? He didn’t even have a chance to talk to Kyoko. (I suspect Maki would have tried to “spare him” by erasing his relationship with Kyoko as well. He still ended up at the cafe because he could remember physically going there a lot.)

Overall, I think the movie was a bit unfocused due to some extraneous storylines and having too much exposition, which was a disservice to some of the characters. It failed to show how their relationships build, like Ryoichi & Takahara became buddies over what seemed like a week! I wish they trimmed a couple of the minor stories and used that time to go deeper on the main lines.

Characters / Actors:

Yoshimura Ryoichi (Yamada Ryosuke)

I was watching the movie and halfway through when it hit me… Yamada’s Ryoichi was… normal? I mean obviously quite good looking in the boy-next-door kind of way, but Ryoichi was a regular, run-of-the-mill university student, who was normally an optimistic and forgiving but happened to be dealing with heartbreak at the moment. Seriously, if you’ve watched Yamada’s other works, his characters are usually kind of comedic, sort of pathetic, occasionally brilliant, psychotic, or… non-human. (Very odd roles for a Johnny’s actor.) He probably has not been this normal since the 24Hr drama. He still cried a lot, so that’s familiar.

OK, let’s get back on topic. Since Book Ryoichi functioned more as a character that connects the short stories rather than a real character, I didn’t have hopes for the movie version. Surprisingly, Movie Ryoichi came across as a real person and I did care what happened to him. While we didn’t get to see how Ryoichi & Kyoko were in happier times, he was able to convey the longing and slight awkwardness in their interaction when he tried to talk to her after. Similarly, in the scene where he learned of Takahara’s death, you could tell what was going through his mind even though he said nothing. Same with the final “confrontation” with Maki. Even though he didn’t say much, his eyes conveyed the emotions subtly: the longing, shock, confusion, etc. Overall, he was quite subtle and natural. As the articles say, he managed to “suppress his aura” and played an average guy. I hope he can play more of these subtle types of roles in future. (It is unfortunate that a lot of people have preconceived notions about Johnny’s actors, to put it politely. It’s like the reverse of the “fan blinder” that we sometimes get accused of having.)

Now there are some discussions as to whether he overacted in the crying scenes. The main “crying” scenes were probably 1) confession to grandpa in Hiroshima, 2) in the rain, and 3) reading the letter. I’ve seen people say he overacted in either 1) or 2).

When I first watched the Hiroshima scene, I did feel that his crying may have been a bit much because I was watching the movie with just Japanese subtitles, so I missed an important detail: Ryoichi told his mom he was going to Hiroshima to confront his past. When you consider that Ryoichi had been carrying the guilt for “causing” Maki’s kidnapping for 15 years, it was totally reasonable for him to prostrate himself in front of Grandpa. He would also be relieved when Grandpa told him the statute of limitation was over and he should forgive himself. As an aside, according to the director in the visual commentary, Yamada cried in the first take of the scene. Hirakawa said “Aren’t you crying too much?” Yamada said “OK, I’ll do another take without crying.” However, when the Director was cutting the movie together, he suddenly saw Ryoichi’s mental journey and ended up using the first take because it was the logical conclusion to the closure he got.

In the rain scene, he just learned about Kyoko’s attack. Knowing how much hurt she endured and how he did nothing to support and comfort her, he was still in a state of shock when he got knocked down. Then the dam burst and he cried hysterically. That seemed quite reasonable to me. I was more shocked that nobody checked on the guy who fell on the pavement and was crying. Pedestrians were cold! So I don’t really understand the objection to that scene. Maybe they thought this was something that happened a while ago and/or he didn’t love Kyoko that much, so he wouldn’t be that emotional?

I don’t think people have issues with the letter scene? Narratively, it made the most sense since he was close with Takahara, who was literally speaking to him from the grave via the letter. Oh, they talked about filming the letter scene in the visual commentary. Yamada was just reading the letter in silence and they added in Takahara’s narration in post production. Since he wanted to save the emotional outburst for the real take, he did not dare to look at the letter during the rehearsal.

One last thing, Yamada and Yoshine spoke in Hiroshima-ben when they were talking amongst each other. I have horrible listening skills and while I think he used some slang or phrasing, his accent still seemed mostly Kanto. It’s like if I call a bunch of people “wankers” with a Canadian accent; it doesn’t make me sound English. Maybe someone can tell me just how well (or not) he did.

Kawai Maki (Yoshine Kyoko)

I have only watched Yoshine in the drama Stay Tuned and I liked her there. She played this airhead character who could be super annoying if the balance was off, yet she came across as likeable. I think she portrayed Maki very well in this movie. Of course, I knew she was Kiokuya going in, so even at the beginning, you could see some of her subtle reactions to the Kiokuya discussions. I really liked her chemistry with Yamada - they felt like they could have been lifelong friends. While she played the annoying little sister part quite well, you could also see the pain she felt when she had to make difficult choices like erasing Nanami’s memory. Throughout the movie, you could sense her regret for what she did to Ryoichi. Her emotions in the final scene were also very raw. While Maki’s characterization was problematic, Yoshine was really good at playing that character and you might even be sympathetic towards her. Also, I feel that her Hiroshima-ben might be more on point? Some people didn’t buy that she was in love with Ryoichi the whole time. I thought the flashbacks made it pretty clear but I’ve also read the book, so there’s that.

In the visual commentary, they were talking about their various acting styles. Yoshine said she carried her emotions with her even after the director shouted cut. So when she was shooting the last scene, she was still crying furiously afterwards. Yamada said she was like an acting monster - she could get right into the emotions even during the table read. It was funny how different she is from Yamada and Renbutsu. They are the flip-the-switch type - when the director yells cut, it was like they woke up from a dream into a different world. She also apologized to Yamada when they were watching the scene where she confessed to selfishly erasing Kyoko’s memory of Ryoichi.😅

Takahara Tomoaki (Sasaki Kuranosuke)

I have not seen Sasaki’s other projects, so I had no idea what to expect. His Takahara came across as pretty charming, easy going, and playful, though you could feel his love for his daughter and the hard decision he had to make. He also had a natural chemistry with the other cast and was very believable. While I disagree with what Takahara wanted, Sasaki’s acting as Takahara made sense. I don’t know what more to say. It is probably expected since he is a veteran and is generally well regarded as an actor.

Sawada Kyoko (Renbutsu Misako)

I have only seen Renbutsu in Hagaren. I liked her character there. I also liked how Yamada decided to break the ice with her back then by asking if she has any friends. (She had more friends than him. 😅) To be honest, there wasn’t much for her to do in this movie, although I think she was believable as the very confused Kyoko. She was apprehensive about Ryoichi in the “after” scenes, who was honestly coming across too strong. I don’t think Ryoichi & Kyoko really had crackling sexual chemistry based on the proposal scene, but they seemed like a cute couple. They were pretty cute together in the behind-the-scenes featurette when they took the “dating photos”. I wish those dates were included in the movie.

Conclusion:

As you can see above, I have some general issues about the script but I think the actors elevated the story. The movie could have been better if it streamlined some of the storylines. Right now, it was trying to go for a deeper message but the stories themselves were a bit too superficial to accomplish that. I suppose the problem was that the original novel was more like an anthology of short stories dealing with memory, so it was hard to create a through line for a movie.

#Kiokuya #anata ha wasurenai #yamada ryosuke #yoshine kyoko #sasaki kuranosuke #renbutsu misako #review #spoilers #the memory eraser

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rungalwaysheretolisten · 3 years

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Armada Review episode 5-8

I am putting the read more so that you do not have to read all of this if you do not want to. This is a review for episodes 5-8 season 1 and again, a reminder, these are my thoughts, if you don’t agree with what I have to say that fine but please respect my thought and opinions on what I think about the serious.

So to start this up let go in order

Episode 5 Soldier:

So with Soldier, this episode focused a lot on Red Alert, Hotshot, Optimus, and their relationship. We learn about Red being a chef science engineer which brought up a question, does that really make Red a medic? I mean, sure they are robots so you could say that that would make him a medic, but in other transformers, they call them medics, so a question I like to ask you all and see if you guy can answer this question, is Red Alert a medic or is he just a mech who had to learn both engineer and medical seen there no one on their team right now really a medic.

Anyway, we notice right away Hotshot and Red not getting a lot and having some problem working together, we see Red as being tight follow the book like Magnus and we see Hotshot being this go luckily relaxed kid like Rodimus.

We also learn about how close Red and Prime's relationship is when they talk about fighting side by side in the war which I thought was a very amazing touch to the episode and that Red is really a good person who can kick ass, and do good. Then you have the Decepticons who are just treating Starscream like trash, teasing him about not having a min con and going as far as not wanting to listen to him which I thought was brought back wonderful in the episode Jungle which we will talk about in a bit but for now, we just see Megatron as normal treating Starscream badly and not even telling the other to listen to him, which in turn make Starscream want to prove himself to Megatron and which unfortunately cause him to fail in the end when he gets beat by Red and is not able to get the min con. We also get some foreshadowing of a clue of what the next min con will be but I won't talk about that till I get to the last episode but had to say that it was an interesting idea and is pretty cool.

Overall this episode was alright, the animation again, was a little bit over the place but I say it not a skip episode because you do learn a thing about the Autobots and learn a thing about the Depictions.

Episode 6 Jungle:

*sigh* Well, everyone let buckle up for safety because we about to get into an environmental episode and I like to talk about this before I talk more about this episode. I hate environmental episodes only because it always feels repetitive and it always makes me think of the Nostalgia critic reviews where the tv or movie is so bad because of the environmental episode and that they really don’t care about the message but have to but it just because they have too.

So with that out of the way, was it that bad?

I mean, it not good, but there is some part I feel made it not as awful. So the plot of this episode is they have to find a min con in the forest and the kids point out that they have to be careful in the forest and to not hurt the living things that are there, and it made me think for a moment wow, do you think the Autobot or any of this bots care about the forest as they destroyed there whole home because of a war, I don’t think they give two shit but as I watch the episode, I notice something about Optimus...he does care, he even said: “This planet looks peaceful from a glance but it has some serious problems.” I might be going deep on this, might but hear me out on what I think he meant by thought words.

I think at that moment he was thinking about Cybertron. For a glance a long time ago, you would have said the same thing, but after the war, and how much fighting they still are doing, it looks awful and sad. The fighting is causing a lot of problems and hurting others, it hurting living being, hell the min con had to leave because they were being used as weapons just like you could say about the forest being chop down for things that might be good at first but will harm everything later on if we not careful.

So yeah, the Deception, of course, they are cutting down the tress to get to the min con and of course we get to the part I want to talk about, Starscream being treat like trash and not being taken seriously. We get a glimpse of this in the episode when there doing a simulation and Starscream is trying to tell the other what they need to do, asking them to let him do something, to have them trust him but they don’t listen which cause him to lose the simulation and be scolded by Megatron!!

Which then again, makes Starscream, even more, determined to get a min con to prove why he is the second in command and should be listening too and it somewhat looks like Starscream looking for power but really in this episode he in the right to do that. Why because he has been treated awful, no one listens to him, Megatron has undermined him so many times that when he does and this is a spoiler. When he does get his min con Swindle which I think is a great name because Starscream names him that because he Swindles Megatron out of min con he could have used and Starscream get a really powerful one that works with him and listen to everything he asks it to do, and once he does the team start to listen to him and follow his orders. He so happy and start to get respect out of fear, which is sad because he shouldn’t have to scare them into listening to him but because Megatron would not make them listen to him and he saw Megatron get respect out of fear he thinks this is the only way to get everyone to respect him and which is why I also think he says he might be even more powerful than Megatron. Which make Megatron even angrier and maybe even get him to be more paranoid.

So yeah, this episode was awful with its speech about saving the environment, and yeah it can be a bit corny with them fighting in a forest hunting for the min con, and fighting Megatron the big old deer of the forest. (Had to put that joke in sorry.) But overall it was an okay episode and it wasn’t that bad...now for the next one well.

Episode 8 Carnival

I’m sorry, watch this episode twice, twice to find the meaning of this episode, to give it a reason why you should watch this episode and I just can’t.

Again this is my own opinion, but this episode was not that good. It not awful, but it not good. Like, I love finding out Hotshot loves to watch old western, I thought that was cool, I even thought it was cool and spoiler, about him using the canon at the Carnival as his new guy that he shot with know and play western with. That cute! I love him being smug with the bullies. But this episode was bad!

The humans were dumb as bricks when they min con and Hotshot show up to the Carnival, because yeah, for a while it made seen when they sneaked out the min con to the Carnival to have some fun rather than having to stay in the base cleaning up with Alexia. Yeah, it was kinda silly how the human thought they were something that came from the sciences department and that there was clueless. But when Billy and Fred when after the min con to take them because they knew they were not science department gimmicks to help them get more funding or something like that, had them “malfunctioning” around them Carnival which scared a lot of people to run away and to have Hotshot trying to get them to leave Jolt alone, Jolt flying them, them dropping off onto a ballon and having Hotshot later save them while flying around, you can not tell me the military was not call out for that little stunt or that the people that live in this town are that dumb!

Like yeah, they are panting them that way so they can get away with things sure. But maybe it just because I was spoiled by Transformers Prime seriously but looking back on that it scary and the worst part, they don’t get yelled at by Optimus but at Alexia, Optimus should have been yelling at Hotshot and the boys! Telling them that was dumb!

So is this episode have anything worth it? Well, it shows the difference between how the Autobot work as a team to fix up the base vs the Deception who are just fighting during the whole time there fix the base, put Demoloisher down for being clumsy, which he is but he only fell down because he didn’t want to step on a min con, which I did check in the animation and thought that was interesting, he cares not letting the min con get hurt and I don’t care what anyone says, I think that kinda sweet but sad as he scolds and tases about him falling down, we later in the last episode will talk more about Demolisher and I thought it was cool about the foreshadowing spoiler about the Star Saber sword min con that going to come into play later down the next few episodes.

Overall this episode was bad but if you want to see it for thought reason I won’t blame you but I will not also blame you if you skip it.

Finally, the last episode I watch for this review is episode 8 Palace.

This episode was beautiful!!!

Like I could go on and on about the animation, it was the best one so far and I think that was because they focused a lot on the robots. The music was amazing too like it made me feel like a little kid again while watching it.

So, the story was also interesting about how min con was thought of as a gift or some type of spiritual being that was probably thought of as a god or something like that, and this episode my sibling Jamie who was watching this, geek out about her Anthropologie stuff, and before you ask no they are not an Anthropology that study Egypt, in fact, they are a Mayan Cultural Anthropologies but they did remember something from there class and nerd out with me. Anyway, we just love the way they did the building, we love the fight scenes.

Demolisher was somewhat cool in this episode too, all he wanted to do was get the min con for his own and he really tired his best, I even felt bad for him having to give it back to Megatron, I also felt like it was not fear but then again, Megatron is scared of being out powered by anyone and even thought he could challenge Starscream or order him to give it to him, it would look bad and would look like he taking his word away (even thought I’m sure he wouldn’t care about that he know for breaking it) but still maybe he was afraid of Starscream betraying him or thought maybe Demolisher couldn’t handle such a thing, or that he might both might betray Megatron whatever the case might be.

I felt sorry for Demolisher and sorry for when he spoke up agents him, that it piss of Megatron enough to want to punish him which Starscream laugh and it supose to be a funny scene but it really scary because when you think about it Starscream not laugh because it funny but because he scared.

When people are scared they sometime laugh because Starscream know how bad a beating Megatron can give when he don’t get what he wants and I just thought that was also very interesting.

I might later down the road when we get to more episodes might do a break down some of the transformers and what I thought about them throw this serious and point out the thing that I think is very interesting to me and might even say something I think are canon for them. But anyway. I think this was my favorite animated so far and I say give it a watch if not for the story then for the beautiful animation!

Next Monday I’ll be reviewing 9-13 (Yes five this time because we're getting close to the end of season one!) Thank you all for reading my review on this serious I hope you all like this and have a good night.

#Rung mun talking again #Transformers Armada review by Rung mun #Transformers Armada #Hotshot #Starscream #Red Altert #demolisher #Megatron #Optimus

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