#for the scene i basically left the original coloring of the episode with small additions here and there but nothing major

[asukachii]

Gojo Satoru Catoru

[full scene]

(I don’t like putting watermarks so, PLEASE, if you want to post this gif somewhere GIVE CREDITS! Also, don’t use it in edits/videos. Thanks~)

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #gojo satoru #jjk edit #gojou satoru #catoru #gif #my edit #asukachii #the other post flopped so bad #oki ok #gojo with cat earsss ; v ; i saw the preorders for gojo and geto's plushies with cat onesies on and they're adorable... i'm tempted #this has a different coloring from the scene in my previous post #this is more saturated also #for the scene i basically left the original coloring of the episode with small additions here and there but nothing major #saying here as well cat ears and tail are from tokyo mew mew

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Back at it again with my self-indulgent comic posts. This time! It’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #3, perhaps the most tonally-distinct entry yet, with shades of The Twilight Zone. 

Spoilers!

So, as mentioned, this issue is the most deliberate in terms of both its pacing and its tone, IMO.

What is that tone, you ask?

To quote Alex Danvers, from “Midvale”: Hello, darkness.

THE STORY:

Kara and Ruthye are still looking for Krem Clues in the alien town of Maypole.

(Which is actually just Small Town, USA, complete with vintage 50s aesthetics.)

But the locals are clearly hiding something! So Kara and Ruthye continue to investigate, and they eventually discover what it was that the residents of Maypole were so keen to keep hidden. 

Genocide, basically. 

As I said, this issue struck me as very Twilight Zone; a genre story involving the build-up to a dark twist, all set against the backdrop of an idyllic small town. (Think, like, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” but instead of focusing on the Red Scare, it’s classism and racism.)

The wealthier blue aliens kicked all of the purple aliens out of town, and when space pirates showed up to pillage and plunder, the blue aliens made a deal with them: the lives of the purple aliens in exchange for their safety.  

Which is where the episodic story connects to the larger mission; it was Krem who suggested the trade, and then joined up with the Brigands (space pirates) when he was freed by the blue aliens.

The issue ends with no tidy resolution to the terrible things Kara and Ruthye discovered, but they do have a lead on where to find Krem, now, as well as Barbond’s Brigands.

KARA-CTERIZATION:

Ironically, it’s here, in the darkest chapter yet, that we get the closest to what might be considered ‘classic’ Kara. 

Which I think comes down to that aforementioned deliberate pace--this issue is a little slower, a little quieter. It gives the characters some room to breathe.

That’s not to say Crusty Kara is gone. Oh no. She is still very much Crusty. XD 

But anyways. A list! Of Kara moments I loved!

I mentioned a few of these in a prior post when the preview pages came out: I like the moment where Kara blows down the guy’s house of cards, and I like that the action is echoed later in the issue when she grabs the mayor’s desk and tosses it aside. A nice visual representation of the escalation of Kara being, like. Done with these creeps. (Creeps is an understatement but you get the idea.)

Another one from the preview pages: Kara explains to Ruthye that her super hearing won’t necessarily help her detect a lie, especially if she’s dealing with an alien species she’s not familiar with.

It not only reveals her level of competence and understanding of her super powers, it also shows that, you know. She’s a thinker. She’s smart. 

Amazing! Showing, rather than telling us, that Kara is smart! Without mentioning the science guild at all wow hey wow.

(Sorry, pointed criticism of the SG show fandom.)

Anyways.

I dig the PJs! 

And Kara catching the bullet! Not only are the poses and character acting great, it’s also a neat bit of panel composition:

We start with Ruthye’s POV, and then move to the wide shot of the room. The panel where Kara actually catches the bullet is down and to the side of the wide shot panel--we move our eyes the way her body/arm would have to move to intercept the bullet. Physicality in static, 2D images!

Also, like. It’s a very tense moment, life-or-death, but. Ruthye’s wide-eyed surprise at the bullet in Kara’s hand? Kind of adorable. 

I was pretty much prepared for the page of Kara shielding Ruthye from the gunfire to be the highlight--it was one of the first pages King shared and I was like, ‘yeah, YEAH.’ But, shockingly? The TRUE highlight of the issue?

Where do I BEGIN?!?!

EVERYTHING. About this moment. Is lovely.

From Kara holding Ruthye above the bench to explaining the concept of a piggyback ride, to telling her:

“I’m going to hold my hands here, and these hands can turn coal into diamonds, so they’re not going to let go. I’m going to keep you safe.”

HNNNNNNNNNNNG.

Ruthye’s narration--about how Kara had avoided flying as she was concerned it would freak Ruthye out--just adds a whole additional layer of YES, GOOD, YES, and her line on that splash page is great: “You see, all that time, she was worried about me.”

HNNNNNNNNNNNG. AGAIN.

To say nothing of the STELLAR ARTWORK.

And SPEAKING of that stellar artwork, Evely and Lopes continue to knock it out of the park. Each issue is distinct and beautifully crafted, a true joy to look at.

Before I jump into more of the art, a few final notes of character stuff in general.

Ruthye is the one most affected by the experience in Maypole, as she can’t comprehend how a society of people that look so nice and gentle and peaceful could have been party to such a horrible act.

One of the big criticisms of the book thus far is that Supergirl is not the main character, and I guess I can agree with that observation. Typically, in Western media, the main character is the one who goes through the most change in the story. 

And, yeah. That’s Ruthye.

As I was reading the end, where Ruthye sits on the curb and Kara hugs her, I was imagining how the scene would’ve played, had King stuck with the original idea for the series: Kara as the one learning to be tough/experiencing all of this for the first time, and while I think that could certainly work...

I continue to appreciate that King literally flipped the script; that Kara, especially in this issue, is like, ‘I’ve seen this, I know this,’ as opposed to being the one going through a loss of innocence.

*Marge Simpson voice* I just think it’s neat!

Because Kara’s been a teen in DC comics for so long--ever since she was reintroduced to the main DCU continuity, actually--so this is all brand new territory, here. Having an older Kara who’s SEEN SOME STUFF.

(Alsoooooo, since Bendis made the destruction of Krypton not just inaction and climate disaster, but rather, genocide, and the subtext of a Kryptonian diaspora text, the waitress’ derogatory comment regarding the the destruction of Kryton, as well as Kara picking up the bad vibes the entire time, suggests not just a broad commentary on discrimination in all its forms, but specifically allegorical anti-Semitism. The purple aliens being forced out of their homes and into substandard living conditions, then the blue aliens--their neighbors and once-fellow residents--essentially allowing the space pirates to kill them, making them literal scapegoats, Kara discovering the remains of the purple aliens, and Ruthye’s horror at the ‘banality of evil’...yes. A case could be made, I think.) 

(Which would probably require a post unto itself and a lot more in-depth discussion, nuance, and cited sources.)

(Should mention that King has brought up that both he and Orlando--the other Supergirl writer he talked to--are Jewish, and for him personally, that shaped his views on Kara’s origin story.)

I guess my point is that this issue is perhaps not as out-of-left-field as some might think, and just because there isn’t as obvious an arc for Kara, doesn’t mean there isn’t some sharp character work at play. 

(I could be WAY OFF, of course, and I’m not suggesting it’s a clear 1:1 comparison. I’d actually really love to hear King talk about this issue in particular.)

Anyways.

Here’s the final page, which I think works, because as I mentioned before, there is no easy answer/quick wrap-up to the story of Maypole:

THE ART:

I mean. How many times can I just shout ‘ART! AAAARRRRRRRRRRRTTTT!’ before it gets old?

I dunno, but I guess we’re gonna FIND OUT.

There are some panels in this issue that I just. Like ‘em! From a purely artistic standpoint! Because they’re so good!

Like, I just really love the way Kara is drawn in that top panel. Her troubled, confused expression, the colors of the fading light, the HAIR. 

Evely draws the best hair. I know I’ve said this before. I don’t care. I will continue to say it, because it continues to be true.

The issue I find myself running up against when I make these posts is that I really don’t want to post whole pages, as that’s generally frowned upon (re: pirating etc.) but with something like this, you just can’t appreciate it in panel-by-panel snippets.

(Guided View on digital reading platforms is a BANE and a POX I say!)

Anyways.

LOVE the implied movement of the cape settling as Kara speeds in and stops. 

And, obviously, Kara flicking the bullet away is just. A+. 

And the EYES, man. LOPES’ COLORS ON THE EYES???!?! BEAUTIFUL.

Also, should note the lettering! The more rounded letters for the ‘WOOSH’ of Kara’s speed (and, earlier, the super breath) work nicely, and contrast with the angular, violent BLAMS of the gunshots. 

And, I gotta say, the editor is doing a really great job of not cluttering up the artwork with all the caption boxes. Which is no small task.

(I assume the editor is placing them, as editors usually handle word balloon/caption box placement, but I suppose it could be Evely? Sometimes the artist handles it. Either way, whoever’s taking care of all the text, EXCELLENT WORK! BRAVO!)

Okay I think that’s everything.

Ah, nope, wait.

MISC.

Just a funny observation, more than anything else: Superman: Red and Blue dropped this week, and King had a story in there, “The Special” (which was very good, btw.) Both Lois and the waitress swear a lot so I’m beginning to think that this is just how King writes dialogue for any adult character who isn’t Clark. XD

This is absolutely a personal preference but when Kara was like, “And my name IS Supergirl,” I was like nooooo. I know King is trying to simplify all of the conflicting origin stories and lore but I LIKE KARA DANVERS, SIR. XD

It’s almost assuredly a cash-grab/an attempt for DC to get all the money it can out of a book they don’t have much confidence in, but I like the cardstock covers! Very classy, much Strange Adventures.

(OH my gosh, can you imagine that issue 1 cover with spot gloss???? Basically the only way you could possibly improve on it.) 

Okay NOW I’m done. For real. XD NEXT TIME: Kara and Ruthye go after Krem and the Brigands!

#supergirl: woman of tomorrow #long post #dc comics #supergirl: woman of tomorrow spoilers #kara zor el #comic thoughts #comic opinions #just occurred to me I should be crediting the creative team in these things #I think thus far I've included every title page? #still #will try to be better about that going forward

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 3 for the first time. Random thoughts.

Episode 1: I know in the original series She-Ra was the sister of He-Man so I'm curious how much of that will be carried over to this series. Not saying He-Man has to make an appearance, same as how Batman didn't need to show up in Teen Titans. That was Robin's story, not his, and similarly this is Adora's story, not Adam's. Regardless, it makes sense why Hordak was so annoyed with the baby Adora in Shadow Weaver's flashbacks. To SW, there was something different and special about the baby, but to Hordak, whom seems familiar with the world before Mara separated Etheria from the rest of the universe, including Eternia potentially, Adora is just another "First One" child like he's seen many times before. Special in comparison to those who only know Etheria.

Great clap-back from Catra to Hordak, and not entirely unfounded. It's debatable how much he actually cares about conquering Etheria. He has others leading his forces in his war yet all his focus is on his portal creation.

According to Entrapta, productivity of the Horde is up 400% ever since Catra became Hordak's 2nd in command. I wondering how much of that is Catra's direct doing? Is she genuinely just that good of a commander? Is it because she's properly delegating and Scorpia has been handling most of the load? Or is this just because it's in comparison to Shadow Weaver? Entrapta said Catra's focus on First Ones' tech has been greatly aiding them and SW definitely focused more on magic, which was an aid mostly to herself since everyone else in the Horde seems to fight only with weapons and technology. And most of what she saw of SW while she was Hordak's 2nd was her being obsessed with bringing back Adora rather than fighting the war.

Episode 2: Let's see... Hordak's easily an adult and Entrapta is...[checks google] late twenties, early thirties. Oh good, then let's sail this ship!

But yeah, that was a heck of a backstory for Hordak. This reminds me of a video by a Youtuber named Savage Books comparing the villain Steppenwolf in the theatrical and Snyder Cut versions of Justice League and how, while he still wasn't a great villain, just a small addition made him a much better villain, that being a failure in his past and the desire just to go home. And in this case, Hordak is the much better, or at least way more developed, version of that. One of many clones of Hordak Prime but having a defect that labelled him a failure and had him cast out to Etheria, a "backwards world" as he's called it before. If he can conquer Etheria, perhaps by building a portal that'll bring forward Prime's army, he believes that'll prove to Prime that he is not a failure and that he can return home to rejoin his forces. Just this bit of backstory adds SO MUCH to Hordak, including new insights on his past interactions, and keeps him from being a flat character like theatrical version Steppenwolf. His lack of tolerance for failure makes sense when he himself is trying to prove that he's not. It gives him compelling motivation to want to conquer Etheria beyond just power and greed. Not motivation you're meant to agree with but one you can still understand.

I like the story with Huntara too. It's a nice little tie-in to something Adora was talking about with Glimmer and Bow last episode. Adora defected from the horde, not because she was different but rather very much in spite being very much like every other soldier there. She wanted to believe Shadow Weaver may have at least some goodness in her too and now we have Huntara as a fellow defector who realized the evils of the Horde, even if she chose to stay out of the war entirely after.

Episode 3: I legit thought Catra stabbed the goat lady for a second.

After Scorpia asking her why don't they just stay in the wastes I'm seeing a bit of a parallel between Catra and Hordak. They've both found a place where they can be the top dog, where they can do and have basically anything they want; her with the wastes and him with the Horde. They can be happy. ...But there's still this pull they're feeling to somewhere else. Catra back to the Horde and Hordak back to Prime. Because they feel they have to prove something; prove that they're not failures. They could be happy but they can't let go.

And that scene between Adora and Catra at the end. That was such a great line read from Catra's actor. "She left me for you. Everything that's happened is because of you." I got chills.

Minor note: While I'm only judging off the Mara hologram, which didn't have color, I do think the She-Ra outfit looks better with pants than shorts like Adora's She-Ra form. I think it makes it look sleeker, if that makes any sense.

Episode 4: Catra's spiral has turned into a drill and its taking her down as far as she can go. Though something I had to a laugh a little at myself over was that my biggest "Catra, no!" reaction wasn't to her wanting to open the portal but rather when she lied to Hordak and said Entrapta let the princesses in. She was actually a positive influence on Hordak's life and Catra with one move just destroyed that relationship and all progress Hordak had been making.

I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of long-term effect from Shadow Weaver continuously siphoning off Glimmer's magic. The woman is basically a parasite and the magic she uses is very different from the kind Glimmer does. I can't believe it never occurred to me that since Shadow Weaver trained Glimmer's father there might be a connection there between the two of them later in the story. While we don't know about anything that might've happened after she left, SW clearly had enough affection for Micah still to not kill him. I could see her trying to take Glimmer on as a student later like she did him.

Episode 5: There is something kind of hilarious about it being Scorpia's jealousy of Catra and Adora's closeness that causes her to be the first one after Adora to pick up that something is off.

11 is my favorite of the Doctor Who Doctors so naturally I'm comparing all this to the crack in Amy Pond's bedroom wall. Whatever goes in gets forgotten about and basically never existed. Though does that mean Bright Moon isn't going to remember the Horde? Basically that entire place got sucked up in the collapsing reality. There shouldn't be at war anymore because their enemy literally no longer exists.

Adora and Catra had their own little Star Trek 3 moment there.

Adora: "If we don't help each other, we'll die here!"

Catra: "Perfect! Then that's the way it shall be!"

Catra's just so far down her spiral she doesn't even care about getting her own win, just so long as Adora doesn't get one, despite just minutes ago clearly loving having Adora back in her life and on her side, to the point was trying to resist remembering the old reality. Her "perfect" world was them together again but when given the chance (another of many. I love those cuts to their past woven in there) she slapped the hand away.

I'm sure I'm wrong but I'm starting to theorize Madam Razz is actually Mara and just at some point went kind of crazy and started thinking as and Mara were two different people.

Episode 6:

"You are everything I ever wanted in a son. This... This is everything I ever wanted in a life. ...But I've got responsibilities, Van. And...I have to...go now."

-Superman, Justice League Unlimited: For the Man Who Has Everything

That was my favorite episode of JLU, where Superman is trapped in this world that isn't real but still perfect in every way, and the only way out was to give up everything he'd ever wanted, including a son he remembers watching grow up, even if it never really happened. With a similar premise, this definitely helped elevate Angela up a bit for me, whom I was kind just meh with before. I didn't dislike her but I didn't really care much for her either. This episode gave her a lot to work with though, with the heavy sacrifice she made. Not just saying behind to pull out the sword but just simply forcing herself to accept her husband is gone and not coming back. I was right that they wouldn't remember the Horde, but I definitely didn't think of the full effects of them never existing. They never exist, Bow never becomes a rebel instead of a scholar like his dads wanted. They don't exist, Micah never dies in battle against them. Glimmer gets to grow up with her father in her life. Everyone, most especially Angela, has to reject everything they would love to be real in favor of what actually is.

I'm guessing we're going to have Shadow Weaver taking advantage of this situation, trying to act like a teacher and mother-figure to Glimmer now that she's basically a orphan.

I talked before about how Catra and Hordak seem to have a parallel between them, especially regarding failure. Catra seems like she has a very hard time accepting her own failures and mistakes and thus why she more or less uses Adora as a mental scapegoat for all of it. Nothing is ever really her fault, it's Adora's, or Shadow Weaver's, or Hordak's. It makes for a great moment when Adora finally punches back, both literally and figuratively. She's not going to accept responsibility for Catra's actions anymore. She gave Catra every chance to make the right choice and she didn't, so now she has to finally live with the consequences. Heck of a glare She-Ra gave Catra at the end. Very much a "If I ever see you again..." and it certainly scared Catra, at least for a moment.

Now, someone go save Entrapta from Beast Island!

Season 3 verdict: Easily the best season thus far. I know this was technically the second half of season 2 but even in comparison to the full season 1 there was just so much that happened in this, so much that got revealed, and so, so many moments of emotion or tension. Weirdly I feel kind of disappointed that Hordak Prime is probably going to come in now and be the new big villain. I really like our Hordak's motivation and Prime seems like he might just be the generic conqueror for power that Hordak seemed like he was going to be at first. Not saying those types can't work. I love All For One from My Hero Academia and Frieza from Dragon Ball. Those guys are pure evil and selfishness, but they also have a captivating presence/charisma to them.

Naturally, since I bring her up the most out of all the characters, I'm very curious to see what happens with Catra now. She's basically nuked every positive relationship she had with anyone. Entrapta's gone, she threatened Scorpia, Hordak's not going to trust anyone including her anymore now that he thinks Entrapta's betrayed him, and Adora firmly sees her as an enemy. She has no one (those under her direct command don't count) and it's entirely her own fault.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o0trfz/going_in_blind_watching_season_3_for_the_first/

#she ra #she ra spop #random thoughts #reddit repost

[beatrice-otter]

Some Thoughts about Tagging on AO3

(I originally made this post back in 2014 on the Yuletide LJ com, and I think it's still both helpful and useful, and other people have told me it is, but it's not actually in my own space, so here it is for posterity.)

There are a lot of people confused about what to tag their stuff on AO3. I mean, like, people who use AO3 regularly sometimes talk about not knowing how to tag their fic. And this is Yuletide; there are people who only post to AO3 for ficathons such as Yuletide, and they probably are even less sure what to do. There aren't many rules, and even the guidelines are kind of fuzzy. But yet there are many dedicated volunteers who spend many hours trying to make some sense out of the mess! It's chaotic and organized at the same time.

Fear not. I'm not a tag mod or anybody from AO3, but I am a power user of the site, and have been since it started, so I have a pretty good feel for the different ways people use the site and how people tag. So here are some suggestions, if you feel you need them.

ETA: Thanks to some wonderful feedback in the comments, I'm adding some other perspectives.

First, remember that the primary purpose of tags is to help people find stuff they'd like to read. No matter what your philosophy of tagging is, your goal should be to make it easy for people to find your fic and decide if they want to read it.

There are two basic ways people use tags when they're looking for fic.

1. Clicking on tags they want to read. Do you want to look for a particular fandom, character, or pairing? You can click on a tag and get all of them to come up. But you can use tags to find so much more than just the basics! Do you want to read wing!fic? Search for it on the archive and click the wingfic tag and you'll get a list of all fics tagged with "wings" or "wingfic" or something similar. The tag mods have done a lot of background work to make sure that similar tags (i.e. every permutation of wingfic ever used) are put together so when you're looking for wingfic you don't have to think of every possible permutation of what someone might have tagged it. They'll all come up. Now, if you click on the "wingfic" tag, it will bring up every wingfic in every fandom. Which is great if you're polyfannish like I am and don't necessarily care what fandom something is if it hits whatever kink you have right then. If you are more monofannish, then the sort and filter bar on the left side of the "Works" list is your friend, but either way, the tag is the first place to start. People look for a lot of things. Here are some categories that people may search tags for, either within a particular fandom or across the archive:

fandoms, characters, relationships, obviously.

AU types: is it a canon divergence, is it a highschool au, or a coffee shop, or whatever?

SFnal or fantasy elements: time travel, wings, magic, werewolves, telepethy, etc

Genres: angst, fluff, mystery, comedy.

Trigger warnings to avoid: mentions of rape or abuse (things not warned for in the warning tags).

Tropes: Aliens made them do it, kidfic, etc.

Sex stuff: kinks, positions, sex toys, polyamory, etc.

Social justice stuff: bechdel pass, character of color POV, etc.

Fandom specific stuff: is it related to a particular episode, or season, is it about a particular theme or backstory or trope or characterization that your fandom likes, is there any other fandom-specific thing that people might look for?

2. When they are deciding whether or not to read a particular fic. That is, a potential reader is looking at a fic in a list on AO3 (maybe they're going through the fandom's page, maybe they're looking at an author's works list, etc.) or perhaps have clicked on a link in a rec list and have opened the story up to see more about it, but the fic is in front of them and they haven't yet decided whether or not to read it. In this case, tags are one of a couple of things people will be looking at. The summary is the biggie; at this point it's usually the first thing people look at. They will also look at word count--they may be looking for an epic, they may be looking for a vignette, either way, word count matters. They'll look at the rating--do they want something hot and heavy, or not? They'll look at the comment/kudo/bookmark/hit counts--how popular is this fic? And they'll look at the tags. What is this fic tagged for? Characters, pairings, fandom, etc., all can be useful, but so can many other things.

This is why people add chatty tumblr-style tags, such as "Tony Stark has Daddy Issues." That tag tells you a lot about the story that may not be evident from the summary. You can add any tag like that you want, that will help people get a feel for your story. If it's unique, clicking on it won't help them find other stories like it and it won't help people find your fic, either, but it may well help people who have already found your fic decide if they want to read it. And, if enough people tag things with a chatty tag like "Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues," eventually the tag mods will take it and make it into a tag you can search on just like more general tags such as "wingfic." (There are currently 51 fics on the archive tagged "Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues.") Also, chatty tags like that can sometimes be made subtags for larger tags, so that "Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues." is a subtag of "Daddy Issues.", and then you can click on the Daddy Issues tag and filter by fandom and/or character.

3. Looking for things to avoid. If a trope squicks someone, they want to know before they click on the story.  If someone hates a character or relationship, they want to know if it's in a story.  Even if it's only in a minor/background way.  Protip from tag wrangler liviapenn:

"if you are posting a story and you want to indicate that the character or ship appears in the story -- but only in a minor/background role -- you can tag for them in the "Additional Tags" field, with a modifier. For instance, "Minor appearance by Sam Wilson". Or, a tag like "Very minor background Tony Stark/Pepper Potts" or "Past Tony Stark/Pepper Potts" for a story where Tony and Pepper's relationship is only mentioned but not really important in the story. Then those stories won't come up when people are searching for Tony/Pepper in the Relationships field.  You can also make 'warning' type Additional Tags more specific or accurate, with modifiers like "implied," "referenced," "minor," "mentioned", "non-graphic" or "past", if the story doesn't seriously focus on those topics, but you still want to indicate that they appear in the work, even in a minor or slight way."

(ALSO, if you are one of these people, the "Sort and filter" bar on the right side of the page is your friend. I hate, loathe, and despise Killian Jones on Once Upon a Time, and so whenever I'm searching for OUaT fic on the archive I go to the "Sort and Filter" bar, go down to the Exclude section, and I check his name and any pairings he appears in. Then I hit the "sort and filter" button at the bottom of that bar, and poof!  It's like he never existed!  It's wonderful.)

So how does this affect how you tag your fic? I'm so glad you asked. It means you need to take both uses of tags--finding fic, and deciding if you want to read a fic you've found--into account. As you tag, ask yourself: what in my fic might people want to read? What kind of craving would my fic satisfy? Tag for those things (fandoms, characters, relationships, tropes, kinks, whatever). Then ask yourself: once people have found my fic, what might help them decide they want to read my fic? Then tag for that. Then ask yourself: is there anything in my fic that might squick people or that they might want to avoid? Then tag for that, too. Autocomplete is your friend. As you start typing in the tag field, it will bring up tags people have already used, which are searchable, and which may therefore help people find your fic.

ETA: section edited because of youraugustine's feedback.

But beware! Before you hit "post," look at your tags and ask yourself: is there any deceptive advertising here? By which I mean, if someone is looking specifically for a fic with something you tagged for, are they going to be disappointed in your fic?  Different people use tags differently, so you can't please everybody.  But sometimes a selective approach can be better than a "kitchen sink" approach where you select every tag that might be half-way applicable.

As an example, take Sam Wilson. He is tagged in over 2800 stories on AO3 ... but in the vast majority of them, he's a sidekick, if that. Yes, he appears in each of these fics, but he's a very small part of the story in most of them. When I go looking for Sam Wilson fic, I sigh, because I may get three pages in to the list of works tagged "Sam Wilson" before I find one where he's important enough in the story to get mentioned in the summary. Having to slog through all those fics about other Avengers to get to the fics about the character I want to read about does not make me likely to read those stories. It makes me annoyed, because they're taking up my time and preventing me from finding the stories I actually want to read right now! I love reading about Steve's angst over Bucky, and Bucky's recovery, but if what I'm craving at the moment is Sam Wilson pwning everything, 50k words of Buck-and-Steve angst in which Sam appears in three scenes is just not going to scratch my itch. On the other hand, some people may find a mention that Sam plays a role in the story to be the difference that makes them read this Steve/Bucky fic over some other one. Even so, if he appears briefly but isn't significant to the plot, even they may be annoyed.

Now, as sandrine points out, some people have aversions to particular characters, pairings, and tropes, such that including them in your fic will completely ruin the fic for them even if all that happens is a one sentence mention buried in 100k of fic. For example, some Science Bros and Steve/Tony fans prefer not to read about Tony/Pepper. (I get it, because I loathe Killian Jones with the passion of a thousand burning suns.) liviapenn points out that (instead of using a regular character tag), if you put a tag with a modifier in the "Additional Tags" category (for example, "background Tony/Pepper"), it will be there for people who want to avoid it but won't pop up for people searching it out with the main character or relationship tags.

Just use some common sense, folks. Tag for everything important, and don't bother with the minor stuff. And you're the one who knows your story best; you know what's important in your story.

On creating new tags: This is particularly important for Yuletiders to know, since so many of us will be creating tags for characters and fandoms that did not exist on the archive before this Yuletide.

From tag wrangler liviapenn:

The only other advice I would give is for people posting stories in superhero comics fandoms. So many superhero names are very generic, or shared by multiple people within one canon (like the 3 or 4 different versions of "Robin", "The Flash" or "Supergirl" in DC fandom.) If there's a possibility that your character's cape name might have been used for another character (in your fandom or another fandom) maybe consider tagging with their "real" name instead of (or in addition to) their "cape" name. So for instance, "Tim Drake" or "Robin - Tim Drake" "Tim Drake aka Robin" -- any of those would be better than just "Robin". Finally, if you want to find out whether a tag already exists in some format you can use the Tag Search page: http://archiveofourown.org/tags/search So let's say I wanted to find out if there's a canonical tag for food carts or food trucks. I would go to the tag search page and type in "cart* " (which brings up any word that starts with "cart") and click the Canonical ticky box. This just brings up a lot of tags about Sam Carter and Peggy Carter though. So I hit backspace and type in "truck* " and click the Canonical ticky box, and this will bring up all canonical tags that have a word that starts with truck in it, and hey, one of them is Food Trucks. Freeform: Alternate Universe - Truckers ‎(10) Freeform: Truckers ‎(8) Freeform: Food Trucks ‎(7) Freeform: Episode: s08e07 Shawn and Gus Truck Things Up ‎(1) Freeform: Trucks ‎(11) If anyone has any other questions about tagging I'd be glad to answer them!

From tag wrangler lost_spook:

As another tag wrangler, I'd just add that the thing about cape names applies generally really - if you want to make a freeform (or any tag) involving your characters, remember the archive is a big place and expanding all the time with fandoms in multiple media, so the more you use full names etc., the more likely it is the tag can stay in your fandom or eventually become canonical. one of the joys of Yuletide is that it's about fic in rare fandoms or non-existent-till-now fandoms, but that does mean you might well find yourself posting the first fic in a fandom or for that pairing or character - and that means you have to create that tag yourself. So I just wanted to add - don't be nervous of doing that! You don't have to read through archive tagging guidelines and get it perfect; just be as clear and specific as you can, especially with fandom tags, where the wranglers dealing with those might never have heard of it. The same with new character and relationship tags - do add them! Just be sure to use full names in both categories, and if the names are very common or likely to cause confusion, add something like the fandom name in brackets to make doubly sure. Wranglers can link up any tags like these no problem - it's only when things aren't clear (ambiguous), that it gets tricky. (Wranglers in tiny fandoms love it when they suddenly have actual tags to wrangle! ♥)

From an anonymous tag wrangler:

One other thing I'd like to suggest is keeping each freeform/additional tag to one discrete concept! For example, "Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues" is a single concept; "Tony Stark has daddy issues and mommy issues and luckily lots of money too" includes several, and is unlikely to ever become filterable in any way. Also, if a single concept is split across multiple tags, a wrangler often can't do anything with the individual tags-- for example, the two tags "his heart", "it is so broken" is likely going to end up with both tags unfilterable instead of being linked to a canonical tag like Heartbreak.

When a new tag is created (i.e. when someone tags their fic with something that has never before been tagged) it is not yet canonical--that is, when you click on it, you won't bring up any other fic tagged with it, and even if someone else uses that tag, at this point it won't come up when you click on the tag. That only changes when a tag wrangler--a volunteer with AO3, in charge of wrangling tags for that particular fandom--looks at it and decides what to do with it. Most chatty tags get ignored (unless the wrangler has seen others very similar). New fandom tags and character tags get made 'canonical' and attached to particular fandoms, so that a) they will now be clickable so you can find other fic tagged with that tag once other people use it and b) it will come up in the autocomplete. Other tags that the wrangler thinks will be generally useful (i.e. anything that other writers might use) get made canonical as well, either attached to the fandom (Tony Stark's Daddy Issues) or not attached to the fandom (mpreg, wingfic, etc). Tags that are close to/mean the same thing as other tags already in use get 'synned' to those tags, so "Bechdel Pass" and "Bechdel Test Pass" become functionally the same tag--you click on one, you get all the fics tagged with one or the other, so you don't need to know the exact tag you're looking for if you can get close.

A note: the tag wranglers are awesome, and do a lot of work behind the scenes to make the Archive work right. To learn more, check out this post on AO3. And if you want to make life easier on the tag wranglers, here's something one of them posted on tumblr:

What actually makes life harder for tag wranglers? People tagging obscure characters or OCs who are not in the work. Private bookmark tags that use terms we’ve never seen before. Smushnames. Comma fail. Drafts that stay for months because people keep editing them. All of those are allowed, and hardly anyone ever says anything about them outside of wrangler spaces.

If you spot a tag that you think is wrong (wrong spelling of a name, for example, which I've come across a couple of times--for some reason Vulcan women often get their names improperly capitalized, T'lar instead of T'Lar, that sort of thing) you can report it! At the bottom of every AO3 page is a link to "Technical Support and Feedback." Your comment will be sent to the tag wrangler for that fandom, and they can then either fix or explain the issue. (Thanks for pointing this out, liviapenn)

If you're really interested in How It All Works, you can check out the Sekrit Decoder Ring of tagging, aka the Tag Wrangling Guidelines. It's designed for the Tag Wranglers, so you don't need to know it--they'll handle any fixes that need fixing--but it's there if you want it.

If you want a different step-by-step explanation of how to tag on AO3, here's a post by superhappygenki, an AO3 tag wrangler.

Hope this all helps!

#archive of our own #ao3 #fanfiction #fanfic #meta

[entamewitchlulu]

Year of Yu-Gi-Oh Part II: Toei Adaptation

After the manga comes the anime adaptation known infamously among the fandom as “season zero.”

Aired in 1998, “”season zero”” has no actual season relation to the main series Duel Monster anime.  Instead, it as produced and run by Toei Animation, and follows the basic storyline of the first seven volumes of the manga, mostly in a game-of-the-week style format.  Like the manga, the story follows Yugi Mutou, a boy who solves the mysterious Millennium Puzzle which awakens a spirit in him that challenges his bullies, enemies, and other opponents to magical games.  Unlike the manga, however, the anime version heavily alters many scenes, including the content of the games, their results (few, if any characters actually die from the games, unlike the manga), filler episode plots, and most drastically, the addition of Miho Nosaka, a former oneshot character, as a recurring major character.

But you all already know all of that, probably!  So here’s the important stuff: what did I think of my rewatch?  Well...

The sad thing is, I seem to recall enjoying this anime a LOT more the first time I watched it.  The second watchthrough was...less interesting.

Good stuff first, though.  Most of the main voice cast is absolutely stunning.  Megumi Ogata as Yugi/Yami Yugi in particular is incredibly strong, and I will never love a Yami Yugi voice more than hers; the soft, unassuming sort of confidence fits and characterizes Yami Yugi in a way that I don’t think any other adaptation of Yami Yugi ever could (sorry, Dan Green).  

Also, I really, really love seeing the smaller, visibly young looking Yami Yugi animated in general.  Yami Yugi absolutely becomes significantly older looking than Yugi in DM and in the later half of the manga, which makes little sense considering he is using the exact same body as Yugi.  I much prefer this younger, cuter Yami Yugi, which, in my opinion, makes his entire schtick far more intimidating.  Small, childish looking Yugi Mutou challenging you to a death game?  Far more frightening and eerie than loud, brash Dan Green-ified Yami Yugi just shouting at you, imo.  Jonouchi and Anzu’s voices really stand out as a personification of their manga characters, as well.

I may be in the minority here, but I also really, really loved Miho’s addition to the main cast.  She didn’t fit into every scene, of course, and there were bits where even I felt like her inclusion was forced, but for good chunks of the series, especially in filler episodes, she absolutely shone and stood out as her own character with her own goals and motivations, who was still a part of the group and participated--and even won!!--in many of the group’s challenges.  I also just like having another girl in the group, ya know?

Smaller details that I did like: overall color palette aside, I really, REALLY love Yami Yugi’s red eyes, and I continue to describe Yami Yugi with red eyes in every fic I ever include him in.  Ryo’s green eyes are also a fave of mine.  Also: NO JOHJI!!!!  Miho basically replaces him completely in Death-T and wow, that’s honestly an even better idea than to replace him with Honda’s dog!

Now before I move on to the more negative part of this review, lemme leave you with a cute picture of Miho Nosaka:

the rest is under the cut so as to avoid clogging up the dash even more, and so that y’all can avoid my negative bits if ya want.

So, down to business.  Why didn’t I really enjoy my rewatch of the Toei adaptation?

1) Pacing.  The plot episodes seem to rush themselves along as fast as they can, to try and fit as much from the manga chapter in as possible.  Filler episodes, or episodes based on filler chapters, drag out so long that it becomes a slog to get through.

2) Low animation budget.  Unfortunately, the limits of the time this anime was produced didn’t help it’s case either.  The color palette is a goddamn oversaturated mess, and some of the color choices are truly head-scratching.  Seto Kaiba with green hair?  Who decided that?  Wasn’t he already colored with brown hair on a manga volume prior to this adaptation?  Palette aside, action scenes are considerably muted due to lack of budget to fully animate them, resulting in strange cuts and boring shots.  A LOT of the charm and intensity that gave a lot of moments in the manga their punch is lost in the adaptation, as Takahashi’s more horror manga-esque style is heavily simplified and stylized to get to the screen.  The extra cartoonish coloring also contributes to a lot of the more intense scenes from the manga falling flat.

3) Sound direction.  It’s just boring.  Only Yami Yugi’s theme stands out, and even that’s not really top of the line.  Sound effects are silly and cartoonish, and I’ll be honest, I do not like the OP or ED.  And outside of the main cast....?  A lot of the voice acting sounds pretty dull and unmemorable.

4) Adaptation changes pt 1. Listen...I’m not here to be all Edgy and say this show was bad because it refused to kill people.  But this anime completely pulls its punches when it comes to...everything.  As far as I can remember, not a single person actually dies during the series, despite Yami Yugi killing or hospitalizing at least five-six people in the manga.  It just hits a lot less hard when all he’s done is given someone an illusion of being burned to death instead of him actually dropping his cigarette butt into the alcohol and lighting himself on fire.  For some reason, it just makes everything feel a bit flatter.

5) Adaptation changes pt 2. The games!!!  They’re boring!!!  The real draw, for me, of the manga was when Yami Yugi used ordinary items in his surroundings to pull together a game.  In the anime, he just pops them into a weird, nightmare dimension where weird shit happens and the games never make sense.  Not to mention, the anime adds a lot of extra encounters with Kaiba than the manga had, including extra Duel Monsters games.  And while Takahashi had little to no rules for the game in the first place, in the anime, when they don’t have a manga script to follow, it is a goddamn free for all. It’s like Calvinball up in here, making up shit left and right, even WORSE than the manga ever did, and it’s...not fun to watch.  At all. Not understanding what’s happening just makes me, as a viewer, feel cheated and let down.  

6) Adaptation changes pt 3.  Due to the nature of the adaptation, a lot of bits and pieces of character arcs were switched around, cut out, or straight up ignored.  Mokuba does not go rescue Honda from the blocks game in Death-T.  The Jonouchi-Hirutani arc is condensed from its original several chapters span into a single episode.  And there are other examples as well, that I think overall do a disservice to the cast and the individual characters.

So, my overall verdict?  Unless you are a super die-hard fan of Yu-Gi-Oh, particular DM, I don’t think the anime is worth the time.  It’s quirky, funny, and can be fun in places, but overall, it at least wasn’t really worth my second watch.

I’m still stealing Miho for my own purposes, though.

#yugioh #yugioh season 0 #yugioh season zero #lulu talks #year of yugioh #tbu

[componentplanet]

Upscaling Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Using Topaz Video Enhance AI

Last year, we covered one man’s efforts to upscale Star Trek: Deep Space Nine using Topaz Gigapixel AI. If you’ve ever attempted to watch DS9 on Netflix or Amazon, you know what a shame that is. The version of DS9 that you can stream via online services sucks, to put it kindly. The streamed version of the show ranges from slightly worse to much worse than what you’d get from an MKV rip or original DVD. Even if you own the original DVDs, however, DS9’s quality leaves much to be desired.

There are a number of shows that were shot from the early 1990s – early 2000s that didn’t broadcast in HD and were never upconverted to 720p or 1080p. If you love series like Babylon 5, Voyager, or Deep Space Nine, you’ve had few-to-no options for a decent viewing experience… until now. Topaz Labs’ new Video Enhance AI software ($299) uses artificial intelligence to upscale low-resolution video in ways that can dramatically improve on the original image. I’ve spent the last few weeks taking the application for a test drive.

While Gigapixel AI can upscale content, there are actually multiple reasons not to use it for the task. The app will not allow you to load large numbers of images at once and in the past, it’s had a bad habit of crashing every 500 – 600 frames. Considering there are roughly 66,000 frames in an episode, it looked as if improving DS9’s image quality would require an absolutely insane amount of work.

Way of the Warrior upscaling in progress. Click all images to enlarge.

Then, a few weeks ago, Topaz released a new product, Video Enhance AI. Instead of literally unpacking a TV show into each individual frame and then upscaling them one by one, Video Enhance AI is designed to convert entire video files at once. Performance on a GTX 2080 is roughly 95 frames per minute, or approximately one episode every 10.5 hours. While this represents a non-trivial time commitment to rip several seasons, it’s vastly better than Gigapixel AI’s demonstrated performance. Whether GP produces better results or if these results can be further enhanced via application of Topaz AI’s other software suites is something I intend to explore in greater detail in future articles. For now, we’re focusing on Topaz Video Enhance AI, specifically.

How Topaz Video Enhance AI Works

Topaz VE allows you to choose the quality level of your source from three options: High Quality, Low Quality, and HQ-CGI. HQ-CGI boosts anti-aliasing in CGI scenes, and I also ran some specific tests of this setting on the test episode I converted and will be demonstrating today. On a show like Deep Space Nine, you’ll definitely want to use LQ — a 720×480 initial input is basically the poster-child for a low-quality upscale. If you were trying to scale 1080p video up to 4K or 8K, you’d want to use the HQ setting. The application has very few options beyond choosing your file output name, your desired level of upscaling (200 percent and 400 percent were both tested here), and what file format you want to output in. Choose your starting and ending frames, hit the button, and away you go.

Be advised, however, that Topaz Video Enhance AI isn’t capable of passing audio to the newly encoded file in at least some cases. All of our test encodes came out sans audio. We recombined the audio streams into the primary video file using FFMPEG.

How We Tested

I’ve performed all of my testing with MKV files I created from the DS9 boxed set years ago. After seeing how this project came out, I actually intend to dust off my old DVDs (when I can find them) and try this project directly on the DVD source itself. ExtremeTech does not endorse piracy or recommend stealing Deep Space Nine or any other television show. If you’re interested in this kind of upscaling, you should buy the DVDs. It’s entirely possible you should do that anyway, given that the source will almost certainly be a better target for this kind of scaling.

I’ve performed a number of test runs and gathered comparison data from HQ-CGI versus LQ, as well as a wide range of Netflix – MKV – Upscaled comparisons at both the 2x and 4x scaling factors. I’ve also included a range of screenshots to show the benefit of increasing the default brightness a bit even if the DVD source is all you have. And we’ve got some YouTube uploads for you, to show the benefits of the upscaling using the DS9 credits.

Let’s get started. For starters, here’s the Defiant under attack in three frames from “Way of the Warrior.” These three are not frame-matched identically, so focus on the architecture and clarity of the ship, not the disruptor fire striking it. This is Netflix, MKV, and 4x upscale, in that order. All images can be clicked to enlarge in a new window.

Netflix, in all its smeary glory. The phrase “USS Defiant” around the saucer edge looks more like a row of windows.

The MKV rip based on DVD source. The shot is much clearer and “USS Defiant” is legible, but the overall quality still isn’t very good.

Finally, our 4x upscale. The quality level here still isn’t truly HD, but it’s vastly better than anything in the previous frame.

These were some of the first tests I did, and I was quite impressed with the results. Let’s look at a larger cross-section of an episode. Click on each image to enlarge (and you’ll want to, in order to see the degree of improvement).

Call to Arms Comparisons

All of the following screenshots and comparisons are taken from “A Call to Arms”, the 26th episode of the fifth season. I’ve included both 200 percent and 400 percent comparison images in this collection to illustrate the trade-off from each size. The best balance between visual quality and image size that I’ve seen is to upscale either 200 percent from the original DVD or to upscale 400 percent and then watch the stream at half-size.

Obviously most of you are going to be reading this on monitors, not TVs, but I checked the output quality on a standard TV set as well. If you’re sitting at standard viewing distances, all of the versions look better, but the 400 percent upscale benefits the most. I’ll call out which comparisons are 2x scaling and which are 4x scaling comparisons. All Netflix comparisons are 4x, because Netflix doesn’t allow for resolution-based resizing.

I’m going to cover image comparisons first, before I hit the video comparisons.

MKV versus 2x/4x Upscaling

Weyoun docked at Deep Space Nine. MKV.

Weyoun docked at Deep Space Nine. 4x Upscale.

The amount of detail recovered from this scene compared with the MKV is impressive. There’s a smeary sort of vaseline look to the MKV file that isn’t present in the upscaled version.

At just 2x zoom, the original MKV doesn’t look so bad…

But the improvement in the upscale is still very impressive.

Video Enhance does strong work with the starship battles in Deep Space Nine. The front of the Jem’Hadar battleship looks downright sharp. Compares 4x upscaling displayed at 1:2 ratio to standard MKV displayed at 2x size.

Netflix versus MKV versus 4x Upscaling

This screenshot of Deep Space Nine under heavy fire is a poster child for why the Netflix version of the TV show deserves to be drug out into the street and shot. The entire frame is noticeably orange-r (and these frames are matched — you can tell by the exact position of the pieces of debris in the lower-right-corner, inside the fireball).

The MKV original dumps the reddish lighting and looks a bit less blurred, even though it has the same base resolution. Color balance is better.

Our 4x upscale. The station and explosions both benefit enormously.

Next up: A comparison of the same Jem’Hadar battlecruiser that serves as a poster child for why the Netflix version of the TV show… wait. I already said that, didn’t I?

Well, it’s still deserved. Here’s Netflix.

Check the aliasing on the left wing of the battlecruiser. It looks like it was rendered in Quake II, which is impressive, considering DS9 is still using models at this point in time.

Here’s the DVD. Much better as far as the left-hand wing, and better overall preservation of detail, but still not great compared with what we’d want in a modern show.

Much, much better. Quite good, in fact. Alright. We’ve done two battle scenes — let’s take a look at how some of the character shots come out.

Weyoun’s unctuous used-car salesman vibe made him a great character foil for Gul Dukat. Netflix is still the blurriest option of the lot, but the gap between it and the MKV file is much smaller than normal.

Here’s the MKV file. Not much difference, though it’s minimally clearer and doesn’t have the weird color issue Netflix does.

Again, the upscale does a good job of drawing out subtle detail in Weyoun’s eyes and face. His jacket texturing is also much less blurry.

Improve Image Quality by Bumping Brightness

The color reproduction in the Netflix version of DS9 is terrible and the MKV just isn’t much better, but a small tap to brightness can improve the situation, in my opinion — and this option doesn’t require any upscaling or processing time. Here’s the Netflix version, followed by an MKV screenshot.

Netflix. Slightly brighter, but less detail.

MKV file. Dim and rather poor-looking, but slightly more detail.

Nudge brightness up a bit in-player, and you get this:

Rome — Actually Visible Edition. (season to taste)

Whether or not you consider this an improvement is in the eye of the beholder, but many DS9 episodes are much darker than I remember them being when I watched them the first time, and this tweak doesn’t require anything but a software player like VLC that supports it. Finally, here’s the same image upscaled 400 percent in Topaz VE.

Check his jacket texture compared with the image above.

I’ve also tossed a number of images into the slideshow below, with both space battles and additional characters. Check them out if you’re curious. The slideshow does a nice job of showing subtle improvements when it shifts from one image to the next.

Opening Credits

If you’d like to see what the opening credits to the show look like when rendered in 200 percent and 400 percent upscaling compared with the standard version, I’ve embedded YouTube links to all three below. Note that while the first link isn’t mine and does look slightly worse than what you’d see on Netflix, it’s honestly pretty close. Make sure to set the second and third links to 720p and 1080p, respectively. Both of these encodes were done using the HQ-CGI mode.

The standard introduction. Full-screen for best comparison — and this is only very slightly worse than what is available on Netflix.

200 percent AI upscaling using the HQ-CGI preset instead of LQ. HQ-CGI yields better results on some special effects, though I’m still working out what the subtleties are. The 200 percent upscale is subtly different than the 400 percent. Set to 720p for best comparison.

The 400 percent upscale. Set to 2160p for best comparison.

Discussion and Analysis

If I’m being honest, the existing encode quality I’m seeing is about 85 percent of where I’d like it to be. I’ve already found myself wondering if some of Topaz AI’s other tools might be deployed to perform some additional post-processing where it’s needed. The application struggles with graphics displayed on terminals or PADs, and I’m still testing to see if that can be resolved within Topaz Video Enhance AI or not.

The MKV version. Obviously not everything from the mid-1990s has aged well.

  This is one place where the upscaling effect *doesn’t* improve image quality.

I’m not going to claim that upscaling like this simply makes Deep Space Nine look like it was shot in modern times. The color reproduction is bad in all cases and no matter how good an upscaling algorithm is, it’s still an upscaler — and therefore not the same as having the original data via 35mm film. These are all fair complaints. There are still some places where I’m hoping to clear up these files further. But the output I’ve gotten is leaps and bounds ahead of the MKV versions I’ve got, and vastly better than the Netflix streams. I’m already planning to encode most of the show — I just want to see how much additional improvement I can squeeze out first.

On a big-screen TV, Deep Space Nine is barely watchable via Netflix or Amazon. The old MKV rips I did years ago aren’t much better, which is one reason I’m going to return to original source for my next round of tests. But while I may not have a perfect solution to present day, Topaz Video Enhance AI has taken the idea from “Maybe someday,” to “Holy crap, this works now.”

Low quality source for DS9 is typically better than HQ source as far as I’ve seen, but I’m still checking if HQ-CGI can be spliced into an MP4 that uses LQ for everything else. I may also check Gigapixel again, just to see how the AI upscaling method compares, or if other Topaz Labs products can improve the final output further.

Performance-wise, both AMD and Intel systems perform identically when you test using a GPU — the RTX 2080

averaged between 95 – 105fpm (frames per minute). CPU encoding is 10x slower than GPU encoding, so I’ve only begun testing that mode. GPU encoding has a reputation for not being quite as good as CPU encode in applications like Handbrake, but I haven’t yet seen evidence it’s true in Topaz Video Enhance AI. Even if CPUs do give better results, 9-10 frames per minute would mean 110 hours per episode. Even if the quality jump was dramatic, I’d only use the CPU for trouble spots — the encode time is just too long otherwise.

These software packages and techniques have significant applicability to shows beyond Star Trek. Series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer were converted for HD, but fans hated the way color balance and the 16:9 conversion were both handled. Babylon 5 can’t be remastered due to massive rights entanglements and the destruction of its original assets, which means an upscale project like this would be its best bet.

I intend to write more on this topic in the future, but I hope you’ve enjoyed the preview. Topaz Video Enhance AI and other Topaz products are available for 30-day free trials, which is how I tested the application. You can also purchase it at the current introductory price of $199, down from $299 standard. If you’re a serious cinephile who enjoys this kind of editing, it’s worth it.

Now Read:

Fan Works to Remaster Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1080p HD, Using AI First Trailer Arrives for Upcoming Star Trek: Picard on CBS Astronomers Find Exoplanet In the Same Place as Star Trek’s Vulcan

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306701-upscaling-star-trek-deep-space-nine-using-topaz-video-enhance-ai-review from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/02/upscaling-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html

#Upscaling Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Using Topaz Video Enhance AI

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks: The Return’: Even David Lynch’s Cinematographer Can’t Explain What It All Means

Lynch's longtime DP Peter Deming talks about his 20-year collaboration with the director and shooting all 18 episodes of "Twin Peak: The Return."

by  Chris O'Falt

Peter Deming is at a slight disadvantage when talking about “Twin Peaks: The Return” compared to most other cinematographers discussing their latest work. He’s only familiar with the project as one long feature film, having gone into production with a 500-plus page script that didn’t have episode breaks, rather than the 18 episodes that Showtime aired this year.

“We also shot it like a feature film,” said Deming in an interview with IndieWire. “When you went to a location, you shot all the action that took place at that location. It’s different than TV – there’s no episode scripts, there’s one director, there’s one crew. So we broke it down and scheduled it like a feature film.”

This “block shooting” approach is impossible for most television shows, which are still being written when production begins on the first episode of the season. It’s a far more efficient approach, but the trade-off is story orientation. Instead of going episode to episode, Deming and the “Twin Peaks” crew were forced to be constantly jumping back-and-forth between all 18 episodes throughout the 141-day shoot.

“You have to understand, I didn’t personally have a lot of prep time to prep 500-pages of material, but even if I had at certain point in the shooting you’re not really sure – besides a scene number – where you are in the story,” said Deming. “There’s such a huge amount of material it was sort of hard to keep a linear perspective on it. I kept going back [to the script], because there was so many new characters and trying to figure all that out and at a certain point you just had to get through it.”

You would think Deming would be at a disadvantage shooting a complex, sprawling project like “Twin Peaks” without having a global perspective of how all the pieces fit together, but as he explained, that simply isn’t how his collaboration with Lynch – which began on “Lost Highway” in 1997 – ever works.

“There’s no real explaining of narrative at all,” laughed Deming when asked if he talked to Lynch about how the scenes related to one another. “You don’t really go out of your way stylistically to make connections between scenes, unless there was something David conscientiously wanted to connect.”

For example, with the key locations from the first two seasons of “Twin Peaks” that re-appeared 25 years later in “The Return” – like the Double R Diner, Big Ed’s and the Sheriff’s Station – Lynch specifically wanted Deming to reference and evoke the feel of the original show.

“In that case, David was very much interested in maintaining the warmth and saturated colors of the first two seasons, so that look-wise they were familiar,” said Deming. “[We wanted] a comfort level – it’s like, ‘Oh, thank God I’m where I know this world.'”

This struck a notable contrast to the many new locations and dimensions of “The Return,” which are often disorientating and foreboding. Deming made it clear that he didn’t discuss a particular look for the new material with Lynch.

“I’ve known David a long time, and we don’t really talk much about any of that,” said Deming. “Most of the time, you can just sort of derive it from the rehearsal and from what he’s doing with the characters in the actual place.”

Deming said rehearsals were particularly important because the scripts lacked detailed action-description, but Lynch was ultra-specific on set in terms of staging a scene.

“It is pretty evident what emotions are happening in the scene from watching David in rehearsals – I’m just converting that to visuals, so I think you’d be shocked how little we discuss these things, it’s just sort of second nature,” said Deming. “And if I think there’s a question in my head, or stylistically we could take it to a different place, we’ll talk about it for 15 seconds [laughs] and we’ll get to business. For me that’s one of the great things about working with David  I get him to a certain extent where we don’t have to have those conversations.”

When Deming and Lynch did talk about the lighting, it’s purely about mood and tone, and they rely on simple adjectives like “sad.” Deming made it clear that to a large degree, Lynch communicates through his production design and choice of locations.

“The set you are being presented with is also David’s creation and he’s very well aware of that,” said Deming. “You can sort of tell with what’s present – David is extremely detailed about everything that is in frame, having picked it himself – as to whether [the scene is] dark or rich [with color] and the mood itself.”

For location shooting, Deming said that the conversations revolved around what the location needs and he’s often not able to zero in on what Lynch wants until he sees the actual location itself.

“I’m not really sure based on the name of a location [in the script] what it’s suppose to look like,” said Deming. “For instance, Karl the Giant, he lives in this strange house, there’s not a lot of description on the page, so I’m sort of trying to pull information out of David, but once you find the location you can zero in on what he wants it to look like. If it should feel normal, very odd and weird, what in the room were seeing – he’ll be very specific about the parts of a location he doesn’t want to use – to get a sense of the room.”

Unlike lighting, Deming is not left to translate Lynch when it comes composition and coverage.

“He’s very specific about what shots he wants and what shots he thinks he needs, and whether we need to cover something or not,” said Deming. “He’s very much in control of that process and sometimes we say, well we could get this piece of coverage or that, and a majority of the time he’s pretty decided he doesn’t need it. He also sticks very close to the script. I know that he and Mark [Frost] invested a lot of time in writing this and that it was very much a fine polish, which is very rare these days.”

In terms of choosing cameras and shooting format, Deming and Lynch haven’t always been on the same page during the digital era, but they ended up finding common ground for the third season of “Twin Peaks.”

“David went digital before anybody, at least in his mind, and he shot ‘Inland Empire’ [the one project in which Lynch served as his own DP] with a digital camera. He and I would disagree on the quality of [that camera], but he became very enamored with becoming a small self-contained unit and the sort of do-it-yourself situation,” said Deming. “And he was still very much interested in that type of set-up for this.”

The problem is that with the amount of special effects required for the new season of “Twin Peaks,” smaller, less expensive DSLR cameras have a “rolling shudder” and don’t supply a constant frame, which makes it extremely difficult for visual effects artists. In addition, Showtime, like Netflix and Amazon, wants its original shows to not only to deliver in 4K resolution, but shoot in 4K. This made Lynch’s preferred, smaller digital cameras an impossibility. The happy medium became the Arri Amira, which is popular in the documentary community and been used on indie films like “Goat” and “The Fits.”

“The Amira is essentially the same sensor as the Arri Alexa, records at 3.2K which is easily up-res’d to 4K and Showtime was nice enough to say, OK, you don’t have to originate in 4K,” said Deming. “It was the smallest camera that could do that and I had a lot of experience with the Alexa, which I love, so when I tested the Amira it was basically an Alexa in smaller housing to me. So I was please we went out with that camera and I think at the end of the day David was as well.”

They rented older 1960 ultra speed lenses from Panavision to “rough up” or soften some of the sharpness of the digital image.

Deming started color correcting Lynch’s silent picture locked cut back in January, but ultimately the cinematographer has been parsing “Twin Peaks” alongside other viewers, appreciating and for the first time piecing together “Twin Peaks” week to week on Showtime – except that shooting the new “X-Men” movie has put him a few episodes behind after he attended the premiere in May. It’s an experience he relishes.

“When I see the imagery with David’s soundtrack, I think, ‘Oh, that looks better than when I was [color] timing it,'” said Deming. “Of course, it looks the same, but because half of David’s work is sound adding sound to picture is one plus one equals five. I’m lucky to be in that position where he elevates the imagery with his sound work.”

As to what it all means and how the story fits together? “I’m still trying to figure it out myself,” he said.

As for plans to collaborate again on a new project, Deming thinks people need to give Lynch some time. “This was such a huge undertaking for David, it probably took four and half years of his life and certainly from the beginning of shooting until it aired it was literally seven days a week for him,” said Deming. “I haven’t seen him since the premiere. I’m sure I’ll connect with him this fall and see what’s on his mind.”

Link (TP) 

#Twin Peaks #Peter Deming #David Lynch #season 3 #The Return #IndieWire

[fadedtoblue]

Recap of the Defenders panel at SDCC, pt. 2 (aka just a beat by beat recap of episode 1...)

If you missed, it you can catch part 1 here. I’m sure you can find videos of the panel out now, but if you wanted my additional commentary, there you go, haha :).

I’ve been writing bits and pieces of this since Friday night, so needless to say, I’m starting to get a little fuzzy on the order of the scenes and specifics b/c I was in such a state of shock while watching (and I don’t get the benefit of rewatching it right away 10 times in a row, lol), but I’ll try to recollect as much as possible, as best I can. I’ll also share some of my opinions and theories at the very end.

Some brief, non-spoilery thoughts: This was definitely a set up episode for everything that is to come, so as much as I know everyone wants answers to certain questions, you’re just not going to get to them right away. The show doesn’t hesitate to pick up the threads left from each individual series though, so don’t expect it to be slow at all. They also did a lovely job making each Defenders’ scenes look and feel like their own shows, while still bringing them all together into a new kind of feel and style for The Defenders. I was impressed by that. Anyway, if you have any more general questions, feel free to send me an ask or note.

And now...I shouldn’t have to say this, but just in case...HUGE SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE DEFENDERS UNDER THE CUT! (Apologies for any mistakes, I wrote too much and just want to get it posted rather than spending even more time editing!)

Opening scene:

Very first scene opens in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. An unnamed man is being chased by a woman in black wielding double katanas and shrouded in darkness down some sort of sewer-like corridor, exchanging blows, and the man is clearly getting overwhelmed in the fight. Before she can land the killing stroke, Danny appears out of the darkness and jumps into the fight to draw the woman away. Danny is holding his own, but the woman is clearly a superior fighter, and lands a nice slice across Danny’s tattoo; in his shock, the woman gets the opening she needs and stabs the mystery man to death. Danny tries to chase down the woman, who is running away, and manages to land one Iron fist-packed punch on her, which sends her flying, but she disappears as quickly as she appeared. When Danny returns to the man, Colleen is with him, and we see that he’s clearly dying. After a bit of back and forth, the man tells them that their fight is not there, it’s in New York. Very mysterious, and Danny is extremely frustrated. This has apparently been one of their biggest leads in their search for the Hand, and just like that, he’s gone. Also, it’s pretty obvious this woman is Elektra, and the most impressive thing was how much her fighting skills had supernaturally improved. A small hint at the power of the Black Sky! (Note: there’s really no hint as to who this guy could be, and I originally assumed maybe he was affiliated with the Hand, like Bakuto’s faction or something? But the end credits mention Shaft, who was announced as a character on the show, and plays a big role in the Chaste, so that’s an interesting tie in!)

Opening credit sequence:

New song and graphic styles, I really can’t recall now, but think the instrumental had a kind of synth-y vibe. The backgrounds are basically outlined, lit up, 3-D maps of New York, but they form each of the different characters in their main color palette. It’s super cool. The names on the credits also utilize an effect on certain letters to make it look like a subway line design (i.e. Charlie Cox’s name has a C in a circle). It’s a cute touch and really drives the whole “New York is the fifth Defender!” thing home.

Okay, this is where the order of these scenes gets a little iffy in my head, not to mention we do switch between the characters pretty often this episode...I think I’m fairly clear on the details themselves though! I’ll basically try to summarize everyone’s scenes in one go and then summarize the closing act on its own!

Jessica Jones:

Jessica is (surprise, surprise!) passed out drunk in an empty bar and gets rudely awakened by the bartender, who helpfully informs her that it’s morning and she should probably get out of his bar. Next, we see Trish is running across the street to keep her car from getting towed, but the cop is an ass and refuses to unhook it. Suddenly, we see the car get pulled off by an inexplainable force! Turns out it’s Jessica, who snarkily asks the cop if he has a problem, and Trish has trouble holding back a smile. Now we see Trish and Jessica walking down the street with coffee cups and fighting over Jessica’s life state post-Kilgrave, one that involves a lot of drinking and zero working, which greatly concerns Trish. Trish lets Jessica know that she’s been getting a lot of interest in her story and wants Jessica to take some interviews, if only to make some extra money while she’s not working. Trish says something to the affect of, only you (Jessica) could take a personal triumph and turn it into despair, or something like that. Jessica tries to tell her not to worry. Trish takes a sip of her coffee and nearly spits it out -- turns out Jesica had handed her coffee to Trish and Trish finds out the coffee has whiskey. This got a pretty good laugh during the screening :). Jessica is then shown walking down the hallway to her apartment -- the window is boarded up and clearly hasn’t been fixed since JJ S1. There are two people standing outside the door as she approaches, a woman who seems well-dressed and pulled together, and her teenage daughter, who is snarky and disdainful toward Jessica. The mom heard about what Jessica did and wants her to take a case -- her husband has been missing for a week -- and Jessica flat out says no. As the woman presses her case, Jessica goes into mocking mode, and suggests that everyone thinks THEIR partner would never do anything like this, but usually they’re always cheating. The daughter lobs a few snarky comments at Jessica and the mom, and finally the two of them leave. Jessica seems to have a moment of remorse as she’s opening the door, turns around, and calls out to them. The woman turns around hopefully but Jessica only says that she hopes they can find him soon. The inside of Jessica’s apartment is still absolutely trashed from all of the Luke / Kilgrave stuff from S1 -- part of the scenes are shot through the hole in the wall, which is hilarious. She gets a phone call, and someone using a voice scrambler warns her not to take the case. Dun dun dun! We know what that means!!

Later on, you see Jessica sitting at her desk with her laptop open, using her expert Googling skills to learn more about missing mystery man. At this point, Malcolm strolls in, which pisses Jessica off -- she’s already told him to stop coming into her apartment, he says she gave him a key, she counters that he made himself his own copy of the key, he helpfully clarifies because he was helping her get her locks changed, banter banter banter. I want to know that Malcolm has beefed up a lot for this show. It was noticeable lol. He immediately notices she’s on her computer and absolutely lights up, asking whether she’s taken on a case? She insists she hasn’t taken it...yet, and he’s basically celebrating that she’s totally taken the case and runs over to hover over her shoulder while she’s researching, which pisses her off. They talk briefly about the guy who’s missing, and Jessica mentions that the only reason why she’s even doing this is because she got a call from someone using a voice scrambler who doesn’t want her to look into it, but surely they covered their tracks and won’t want to be found. At which point Malcolm posits the possibility that the guy is actually an amateur, and what if she could track the call back? So Jessica pulls a Jessica and calls the operator, pretending that she received a call from her grandfather who is missing from dementia and gets the number. They find the address the number is connected to, which Malcolm immediately recognizes as a super shady neighborhood that people generally used to get off the grid to use drugs, etc.

Jessica shows up at the building Malcolm helped her identify. Inside, it looks and sounds sketchy as hell -- flickering lights, sounds of people fighting and/or having sex, a real ball. She heads up the stairs to the specific apartment she seems to have identified as the exact location of the call. She bangs on the door, telling him (I assume she thinks it’s James -- the husband -- hiding out in there) that the landlord / someone already told her he’s inside. After getting no response, she does her patented doorknob breaking move (the scene we saw in the first trailer) and goes in. There’s a TV on, but the place is otherwise dim and abandoned. She slowly walks through, peeking into the bedroom and rounding back out to the living area. She spots some boxes, opens one up and inside is either weapons or explosives (I’m leaning toward the latter) -- the camera paused on it for a quick few seconds and I didn’t absorb the writing as thoroughly as I’d like, but it’s obviously something really bad.

Luke Cage:

We start out with the scene of him walking down the jail corridor, while the inmates cheer him on. It’s not super clear in the beginning, but we soon discover that Luke had his charges cleared, thanks to the excellent lawyering provided by one MR. FOGGY NELSON, who is clean shaven and sporting a very short haircut (gotta look the part at those big firms I guess!). Luke asks for Claire, but Foggy tells him only lawyers are allowed. Luke decides it’s time to hop on a bus and get back to New York ASAP. Before he leaves, Foggy gives him his business card and lets him know he can always reach out if he ever needs help starting over. Luke assures him he doesn’t need to start over, just need to move forward. Foggy helpfully lets him know that most people call him Foggy, to which Luke quips: “And you let them?” which earns a great laugh from the room :).

Now you see Luke on his bus ride back to NYC, and this scene is basically just the same scene in the first trailer with him looking out the window and seeing things like Pop’s barbershop as he drives by. He gets off the bus (which is plastered with a New Harlem Renaissance ad, so you can assume Mariah is still going at it) somewhere in Harlem and as the camera pans out, you see Ms. Claire Temple looking like her damn fine self, leaning against the wall, waiting for his return. They end up back at her apartment and immediately rock that cup of coffee, like wow, it was...physical hahaha. Think overturning furniture, going at it all over the place, I’ll admit to being slightly concerned for Claire b/c damn Luke is a strong guy, but she seemed like she was having a good time lol. In the trailer I thought they were leaning against a headboard - nope, it’s a table turned over on its side on the floor, haha. They have a nice chat afterwards, mostly focusing on what Luke might do now that he’s back in New York. He calls Claire out a little bit, saying that he knows she kept some things from him in the letters they exchanged while he was away. She confesses a lot of things happened and are still going on in the city, and she’s concerned about Luke trying to be a hero (cue the dialogue from trailer #1). At this point, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s...Misty! She’s bemused to see Luke at Claire’s place so quickly after being let out, and asks if he can take a walk down the street with her.

They exchange some small talk, apparently Misty has been made head of some sort of city-wide initiative, which is probably how they’ll take her out of Harlem and into some of the other neighborhoods in the Netflix Marvel world. They end up at a burnt out car that’s decorated with flowers, and Misty explains: there’s been a rash of somewhat unexplained deaths that bear striking similarities -- all young men from Harlem, who were recently employed at some sort of mystery job, moved their moms out of Harlem and into nice houses in what I presume is a more gentrified neighborhood of New York, but end up dead under mysterious circumstances. It could be drug running or it could be something more nefarious -- Misty doesn’t know. Luke wants to help, which Misty reacts to with skepticism (she makes a “Really? I’m going to send the guy who just got out of lockup?” kind of joke) but she mentions that this particular memorial is actually for the brother of Candace Miller, who died in LC S1. Apparently she had two brothers, so Misty tasks Luke to track down the last brother, who she last heard wasn’t exactly on the right side of the law, and talk some sense into him before the mother of that family loses her last child.

Luke heads over to the apartment building of the third brother, another interior with flashing lights, except this time with loud music. Luke encounters a group of guys in front of an apartment and asks them where he can find “insert brother’s name here b/c I honestly can’t remember it out” -- they’re about to snap at him for interrupting them and realize it’s Luke Cage, at which points their jaws snap shut and they direct him one floor up. Luke lets himself into the apartment, sees the brother, and walks up to an expensive looking speaker set up to turn down / off the music. The brother angrily exclaims, thinking that his friends are messing with his equipment and is surprised to see it’s Luke. Luke says he’s here to pay his respects, and the two have a conversation in which the brother pretty much stubbornly refuses to listen or provide any information on his brother who just died. Luke notices that for a kid between jobs, he seems to have some pretty nice things (the music / speaker system, spacious apartment, really nice shoe collection) and asks if he might have taken on the same job his brother had before he died. The boy is silent, Luke says something wise, and then leaves.

Matt Murdock:

His scene opens in his apartment, focused on some sort of Braille printer? Matt is practicing an argument for an upcoming case as the pages print off. Suddenly, he catches on the sound of someone getting mugged and you see him going into Daredevil mode and hearing the situation unfold -- Matt is visibly tensing and literally willing his body not to rush off. As he’s listening, he also hears the police approaching and containing the situation. He untenses his body and resumes practicing his speech. At this point, we switch immediately to the courtroom, where Matt is grilling a man on the stand. I couldn’t exactly follow what the incident was and what product the man’s company made, but whatever it was, it was responsible for injuring a young boy, putting him in a wheelchair. Matt is really in his element and manages to pin the executive on the stand into a corner and goes in for the kill. Then we are suddenly outside the courtroom, actually in the same courthouse we were in for the Castle trial, and the news media is there -- Matt won the case and the family of the boy who was injured were awarded $11 mil. The parents of the boy walk ahead to talk to the reporters, while the boy, sitting in the wheelchair, hangs back. Matt has a really lovely scene here when he steps back to talk to the boy, who is clearly having a hard time adjusting to his new circumstances, and gives him a Matt Murdock pep talk about handling adversity and very specifically, coming to terms with a life changing injury (wish I could share more of what he says, but I just can’t remember it and don’t want to butcher it!! It was good though). It does seem to get through to the kid, who then goes back to join his family during their little hallway press conference.

Matt turns around, and we see Karen, who was in the courtroom covering the case for the Bulletin. Karen congratulates Matt on winning the case and is complimentary toward him and what he did in the room. I think Matt also mentions Karen’s work as a journalist and she does her aw shucks Karen thing. She mentions that she needs a quote from him for the story she’s writing, and suggests that maybe they do it over a drink or a bite to eat, which Matt seems surprised at, but agrees to. (This suggests to me that they really haven’t spoken much, since the end of S2 reveal, though they’ve likely crossed paths politely since then.)

Matt and Karen are sitting in a diner, and while the atmosphere is a little awkward, it’s still friendly. They exchange some small talk about their jobs -- Karen asks Matt about his lawyering and I think this is where Matt reveals he’s doing pro bono work, although it’s possible he mentions it at the courthouse, and Karen talks about how she really feels like this is what she’s meant to do. She lowers her voice a bit and asks Matt whether he’s missed being Daredevil. He basically lies and says no. That he doesn’t regret it, but he doesn’t miss it either. Karen seems to be satisfied with that response. She has a whole line about how she really feels like they needed some time to figure themselves out and it sounds like she believes that both her and Matt are in better places now than they were before. She mentions she’s been covering the police beat and she really thinks the police are doing a good job handling the crime, at which Matt cracks a bit of a cynical smile, so maybe he actually did it...he was the hero this city needed and now they don’t need him anymore. But she thinks that right now the city needs more of Matt Murdock, and btw, she still needs that quote, and that’s just about how the scene ends. Very friendly.

EDIT!!! Didn’t realize a huge chunk of Matt’s section was missing from this recap. Damn it Tumblr, you’ve eaten parts of this post like 5 times already. This re-recap will be a bit of a rush job, sorry! Anyway, after the meeting with Karen, Matt goes to find Father Lanthom for confession. He says it’s been three days since his last confession, which suggests to me that he’s been going consistently, and often. He initially brings up the meeting with Karen, and talks about feeling bad about lying to her about not missing being Daredevil. In order to remain transparent, I will say he did use language to refer to Karen as someone he loves, but the impression didn’t come off as romantic, but more out of friendship / deeply caring for her. I really do believe he is sincere in wanting to become friends again. And nothing about the diner meeting or the conversation here feels like it’s moving toward anything more than trust building, which Matt already kind of fails at since he lies to her face there. Anyway, this part of the conversation didn’t last for very long since Lanthom takes the temperature on the situation and immediately gets to the heart of what’s bothering Matt, which I won’t bother recapping b/c you can see it in the scene below:

Danny Rand:

Since Danny was such a big part of the opening scene, he doesn’t get a traditional intro scene like the rest of the defenders in the first act of the episode, so after we’ve touched base with all of the Defenders, we bounce back into his story and find him flying back to New York on his jet with Colleen. It starts with him, alone in the bathroom, and this is where we get that dramatic scene of him wiping the mirror from the trailer. There’s little bit of editing trickery here, as he notices some weird blood splatters on the wall behind him, and he goes from the mirror to tearing off a piece of the wall? Or pushing aside some sort of curtain? And we segue seamlessly into Danny walking into some sort of eerie, abandoned hallway, all torn and tattered. We quickly notice the hallway floor is covered in bloody bodies, bodies of the dead K’un Lun monks. He passes through another doorway and there’s a whole group of them, standing in formation, covered in blood and staring down at him accusingly. He is clearly overwhelmed and confused, and turns around, only to see himself, dressed in robes and looking serious. He says something to real Danny (again, sorry about being spotty on the actually lines), which prompts real Danny to basically breakdown screaming. At this point we hear Colleen in the background, shaking him awake from what’s obviously a nightmare. She tries to get him to talk about the screaming, which he tries to shrug off as turbulence terrors, but she’s not buying it. They talk about the man they hunted down in Cambodia and it’s clear that he’s feeling guilty about his death, and is still feeling guilty about the not being at K’un Lun to protect his city. Colleen insists that it’s not his fault, but Danny remains unconvinced. Danny and Colleen return to the city and are taking a helicopter ride over the city. They’re holding hands. She’s marveling at the view and they’re discussing home -- New York is basically Colleen’s home but for Danny, even though he grew up here, he still doesn’t know if this is his home.

Alexandra:

Our introduction to Sigourney’s antagonist Alexandra lacks any bombast or fanfare, but you definitely feel...unsettled in a lot of her scenes. We first see her in some sort of nondescript building, and she’s waiting for an appointment, looking classy af. A person comes up and leads her to a really bare, empty room, and asks Alexandra to change into a patient’s gown. The nurse brings her out of the room and to a larger room with a CAT scan machine. The doctor greets her warmly but has bad news for her, which she seems to be expecting -- her red? white? blood cell count is precipitously low and her body’s organs are starting to shut down. She asks what the doctor is going to do about it, and he says there isn’t anything they can really do, which is an answer that clearly doesn’t satisfy her (“That’s not what I asked.”). When she asks how long she has, he guesstimates around a few months.

Edit: Embedded the released preview clip that corresponds with the below scene :)

We see Alexandra again in what I assume is Central Park (sorry guys, I don’t know NY!), sitting on a bench and feeding the pigeons. Again, she looks amazing. Madame Gao (woohoo!) comes into frame and says she thought she’d find her here, it’s always been her favorite spot. Alexandra muses about how surprised she is this place hasn’t already been razed to the ground and replaced with high rise buildings, she remembers when it used to be forest. She starts into a mini history lesson about New York City and how the Dutch bought it for 24 dollars -- then she drops a burn -- it was 24 dollars too much. She delivers it with such classy disdain, I love it. There’s also a hint of “Hey I was here when this happened” which tracks nicely with the hints Gao has given about her longevity / immortality...clearly Alexandra has quite a history herself. Anyway, they move onto discussion of more important things, like nefarious evil plans? Madame Gao updates Alexandra about some part of this plan and says in a few months they should be ready to make their move. Alexandra quickly shuts this down, which seems to take Madame Gao by surprise. Instead, Alexandra wants to make her move now, which Gao tries to talk her out of -- she doesn’t think it’s a good idea, they still need more time, etc etc -- but knowing what we know about Alexandra’s updated life expectancy, she obviously can’t afford to wait to make her move. At the very end of this scene, Alexandra quite flippantly tosses her bag of bird seed at Gao and orders her to finish feeding the birds. So there’s a really obvious and interesting power dynamic here...whoever Alexandra is, she’s quite used to calling the shots!

The last scene we have with Alexandra takes place after all of the scenes from the other characters, and on some sort of fancy rooftop -- it’s the one from the trailer, and I think it might be the same one Gao met with Fisk in S1? I’m not 100%. Gao lets her know that things have begun, which seems to please Alexandra greatly. And at this point, we start to see what exactly that plan is.

Closing scene:

It starts out with a rumble, almost like mild earthquake tremors. Matt is back at home after his confession with Lanthom, and his apartment is bathed in red. When the shaking starts, he freezes almost seems like he’s not sure what to do. The shaking intensifies, dust and debris flying off, and he seems actually scared at this point, kind of crouching over and covering his head. Jessica, in the mystery apartment she’s tracked down, is also looking around in a mixture of confusion, fear, and WTF as everything shakes around her. In the streets, you see huge tremors and rows of cars being propelled upwards with some sort of strange force before slamming back into the ground. At the memorial for Candace’s mother, you see her standing outside of the car and looking around in shock as the city shakes around her. A streetlamp breaks and starts to fall, but Luke appears and immediately bears the weight of the falling lamp and pushes it back up and away from her. Danny and Colleen have just gotten off the helicopter, unaware of what’s going on on the ground, but in just a few moments as they walk off the landing pad, the ground cracks beneath them and between them.

As everything crumbles outside, Alexandra calmly turns from the edge of the rooftop and walks over to Elektra in the black cloak, and says that iconic line, “It’s just a city. You’ll get used to watching them fall.”

And basically while the city is falling apart and all of our heroes are like WTF, the episode ends. I know, we were really disappointed lol.

Interesting things of note:

There’s a little scene transition device they employed, at least for the first episode, as you go into a scene for a specific character -- it was sort of a quick-cut style with visual snippets and ambient sounds and slightly colorized for each Defender. I haven’t watched Jessica Jones since it first aired, but it reminded me of that show. Not too surprising because the director for the first 2 episodes of Defenders is the same director who did JJ!

I wrote the heading for this section 2 days ago so while I may have had interesting thoughts then, I certainly don’t now, sorry lol!

#the defenders #marvel's the defenders #the defenders panel #sdcc 2017 #the defenders spoilers #the defenders 1x01 #matt murdock #elektra natchios #jessica jones #luke cage #danny rand #colleen wing #madame gao #my thoughts #text #p talks about stuff #mine

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

The History of Reptilicus

When Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuted on national television in 1989, the first victim of Joel and the ‘Bots was The Crawling Eye, a British monster movie. The show’s revival on Netflix begins with another creature feature filmed in Europe, Reptilicus. I had the pleasure of watching this episode at the Season 11 premiere in New York and thought it was incredible, with a blizzard of quality jokes and a monster rap for the ages. Certainly Reptilicus was an excellent target: the monster is laughable and the comedy is horrifying. But there’s an incredible story behind the making of that 1961 movie, and a trio of strange adaptations that followed it. MST3k, by its nature, can’t tell that story, so I’d like to give it a try myself.

Sidney Pink produced almost 25 movies over the course of his career. To his dismay, Reptilicus became the most famous of them. At the time, he went all in on the dragon from Denmark: aside from producer duties, he directed it and came up with the story. Though the novel concept of a giant monster movie set in Copenhagen was the idea of AIP co-founder Jim Nicholson, Pink’s pre-existing relationship with Saga Studios made it possible. That connection also led to Reptilicus’s occasional moments of high production value. Fleming John Olsen, who owned Saga, used his influence as a member of the majority-ruling Social Democratic Party to secure the cooperation of the Danish army and navy. Unlike many of its contemporaries, all the footage of the military in Reptilicus was shot for the movie, even the Albatros-class corvette firing depth charges.

Reptilicus was the first science-fiction movie made in Denmark in almost fifty years. The hype generated for it by the press gave Pink tremendous freedom in filming scenes of panic in Copenhagen. One thousand extras participated in the drawbridge scene, with members of a bicycle club agreeing to plunge into Copenhagen Harbor.

The premiere, of course, was a disaster. Mystery Science Theater was this movie’s destiny from the beginning, as audience laughter gave way to outright heckling. The formal reviews were no kinder. In Jack Stevenson’s book Land of a Thousand Balconies, he states that, “To this day, Reptilicus is responsible for some of the most colorful and excited prose in the entire history of Danish film criticism.”

Though Reptilicus features lines like "You'll have to fire point-blank, at very close range," its special effects provide the richest target for mockery. One look at the film's miniatures make the problem obvious: they were built at too small a scale to be convincing. Set photos from the film are rare, but the few available show monster props about seven and four feet long. Shots using the former turned out decent enough, but the latter never looks like anything but a floppy marionette.

The version of Reptilicus that became a national embarrassment to Denmark was quite different from the product unleashed on American theaters and the Satellite of Love – and in my opinion, a little bit better. The dialogue scenes in Reptilicus were filmed simultaneously in English and Danish, with Poul Bang directing the latter. Every character in Reptilicus was played by the same actor in both versions, with the exception of Connie Miller (Marlies Behrens in the American version, Bodil Miller in the Danish version). You can see the problem with that approach: the largely Danish cast delivered their English lines with heavy Danish accents. AIP’s other founder, Samuel Z. Arkoff, was mortified at their performances, and demanded that American voice actors re-record all the dialogue. Pink, who was used to the accent by then, sued AIP when it refused to distribute the movie. After his lawyer looked at the Danish performances for himself, he convinced Pink to drop the case. Reptilicus was dubbed by Titra, a New York company which handled countless Japanese monster movies throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, and released in the United States in 1963, almost two years after its Copenhagen premiere. Ib Melchior, the screenwriter, claims to have dubbed six different characters himself. The original English audio is unlikely to ever surface.

Danish version on the left, American version on the right.

The Danish Reptilicus, shot from the same script as its American counterpart, has basically the same plot, with two major exceptions. Dirch Passer, a legendary comedian in Denmark, received his own musical number about the monster, which he performs with a mysterious gaggle of children who are never seen again. Reptilicus also flies in the Danish version. For some reason, AIP felt that those shots were unacceptable, though its own version added some special effects which were even worse. The neon green slime Reptilicus spits from his mouth is the most famous, but the American version also shows him devouring a farmer in a shot so hysterical that the roar of the audience at the MST3k premiere made Crow's joke impossible to hear.

Reptilicus received a novelization from Monarch Books and a comic book from Charlton Comics. The novelization was written under a pseudonym by Dudley Dean McGaughy, who primarily worked in the western and crime genres. He... took some liberties with the source material. As Bill Warren explains in Keep Watching the Skies, "Along with Monarch novelizations of Konga, Stranglers in Bombay, Brides of Dracula, and Gorgo, it was the closest thing to over-the-counter pornography as you could find in the early 1960's." Sid Pink, who received credit for the original story, sued AIP and Monarch again for using his name in the book without permission.

Charlton's take on Reptilicus was more conventional. The first issue was simply an adaptation of the movie, while the second took a freshly-regenerated Reptilicus on an adventure in Africa. Then the character mutated.

Pink never sued Charlton – in fact, he never knew about the Reptilicus comic until years later. However, comic book veteran Stephen R. Bissette postulates that his action against Monarch caused Charlton to change the characters' name preemptively. In his third issue, Reptilicus became Reptisaurus the Terrible. Reptisaurus wasn't all that different from Reptilicus, just red, less toothy, and with a new prehistoric origin completely divorced from the movie. He became a monstrous anti-hero patterned after Gorgo and Ogra, who had their own Charlton comic. Like them, he fought Communists, repelled alien invaders, and ate atom bombs for breakfast. In a crossover less exciting than it sounds, he actually appeared in an issue of Gorgo, swooping in to smash some flying saucers. For some unfathomable reason, however, the story concluded without a face-to-face meeting between Europe's premiere giant monsters. In his seventh issue, Reptisaurus received another makeover, growing a nasal horn and more powerful limbs. This version was much better-drawn, but only lasted another two issues.

Scary Monsters magazine published all the Reptisaurus the Terrible issues in a book called Scarysaurus the Scary in 2012, with every mention of the monster's name clumsily replaced. Why the change? Well, they might have been trying to avoid any legal entanglements with the makers of the movie that had come out in 2009. Reptisaurus was the first movie directed by Christopher Ray, who has gone on to have a prolific career with The Asylum. As far as I can tell, it's only available on DVD in Japan and Thailand, making it exceptionally hard to find. But if the trailer’s any indication, you're not missing much. The monster himself is a Wyvern 2.0 model currently sold by DAZ 3D for $14.95.

Since Reptilicus was released in the days when the only people who cared about box office returns worked in the film industry, I can only say that it turned a profit for AIP. Its reputation as a bad movie of legendary proportions would develop over time. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is sure to raise its profile, but the American version has been readily available on home video for a while now, with each new format helping a new generation discover its unique charms. The Danish cut came out on DVD in 2002, though you'll need to do a bit of Googling to find an English translation. And if you find yourself curious about what such a film's screenplay was like, Reptilicus superfan Kip Doto published it in 1999, along with a detailed commentary, after befriending Sid Pink. Doto also helped facilitate the production of a Reptilicus toy by M1 and Club Daikaiju the following year.

Before he passed away in 2002, Pink unsuccessfully attempted to find financers for either a remake or a sequel to the movie. An attempt by a small Danish company to create a video game in 2015 also seems to have fallen through. Still, history shows again and again that no giant monster can be counted out entirely. If Moguera, Yongary, and Guilala can roar back decades after their original appearances, the not-too-distant future could very well see a wobbly lizard darken the skies over Copenhagen once more.

Sources and Additional Reading:

“It Came from Beyond Belief - The Incredible Movies of Sidney Pink in Denmark” by Jack Stevenson (republished in Land of a Thousand Balconies)

“You Say Reptilicus, I Say Reptisaurus — The Charlton Monster Comic Saga, Concluded!“ by Stephen R. Bissette

Keep Watching the Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren

Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants by Samuel Z. Arkoff with Richard Trubo

Both issues of Reptilicus on Comic Book Plus

Every issue of Reptisaurus the Terrible on Comic Book Plus

Glenn Erickson’s review of the 2001 MGM Reptilicus DVD

Mention of the Reptilicus remake on the site of CG animator Gary Dohanish

Undead Backbrain AMA with Reptisaurus director Christopher Ray

#mst3k #reptilicus #reptisaurus #writing