#also we're just different as people and as artists so some of his story choices I just don't vibe with

[troutfur]

bonefall rewrite piece where owlstar and sparrowstar meet at a negotiation of some sort.

Not so fast, REVERSE CARD OPEN!

I target BB!Owlstar on my side of the field to special summon canon!Owlstar in attack position and canon!Pebble Heart in defense position.

Anyway! My bad attempt at a joke aside I'm gonna have to hijack this prompt for my own ends because I've always thought that the Pebble-Sparrow-Owl trio could have a really cool dynamic as a trio in the aftermath of DotC. I need Pebble Heart to be a separate character from Owlstar because both from his position as a meddie and his characterization in canon I have him serve as a mediating influence, as an anchor that keeps his siblings from drifting too far off from each other. Plus I think trios just generally give a more stable ground for character dynamics than mere dyads.

This one I based on a fic I that's been rummaging in my mind for ages about Sparrow facing a coup from Skystar's kin following his death and having to convince her brothers to lend their aid in her campaign of guerrilla warfare to reclaim her position.

(Want to submit a prompt of your own? Check out my guidelines and send it in! I'm only slightly likely to hijack it with a lame Yu-Gi-Oh! joke.)

With labored breaths, Sparrow Fur sat against the rough bark of a tree with a trickle of blood going over her left eye.

Everything since the ambush had been a blurr. Skystar hadn’t even been cold in the ground for more than before one of his brats got cocky and decided to organize an insurrection. There’d been no shortage of cats to stand behind him, the downside of Skystar’s system of advancement by merit was that there would always be a gaggle of malcontent cats eager to stand behind the first cat to promise them a place by his right paw.

Though she had barely the energy to move she attempted anyway to rise to her feet before she was gently guided back down onto her back.

“Easy there,” Pebble Heart instructed, pressing a wad fo wet most as he wiped the spot on her head from where the blood was oozing. “I haven’t even finished cleaning your wounds, Sparrow. Are you like this with Acorn Fur as well?”

She didn’t reply, instead just letting the twitching of her tail to give the message. It had been humilliating enough to be forced to flee her own territory, to hide among the dampness of ShadowClan and forced to rely on kin she thought she’d have no debt to anymore. Yet here she was, SkyClan’s deputy reduced to such a sorry state.

“I know, I know,” the dark-gray tom soothed., adding with a sigh, “It’s so hopeless with you, SkyClan cats.” Briefly he turned around to retrieve a herb from the stash he’d managed to bring alongside him from his nest. “Will you calm down if I tell you that I have someone who can help you out with your predicament?”

“Pryyp?” Sparrow Fur mrowwed. It’d been the first word the ShadowClan medic had heard her say in hours.

“Pebble Heart?” a familiar voice asked approaching the makeshift clinic fashioned from the cover of a fallen tree.

For a moment Sparrow Fur vocalized a sound like a growl. The recently-arrived tom widened his already large eyes in surprise, standing there for a moment before rushing to the side of his brother and sister. It was Owlstar of ThunderClan.

“Do you know who did this to her?” Owlstar asked. “How did this happen? When?”

“I found her a couple sunrises ago,” Pebble Heart explained. “I don’t have all the details and she hasn’t been well enough to tell me herself but I’ve got an idea of what it was, and she’ll need your help.”

“No!” Sparrow Fur immediately snapped, causing her brothers to tumble back as she labored to go back on her feet. She found it hard for the words to come to her mouth but she could say that much. “No! No! No! NO! Not ThunderClan!”

“This is no time to be proud, Sparrow,” Pebble Heart insisted. “If you want to reclaim leadership from Tiger Tail--”

“Wait,” Owlstar piped up, his sight brightening. “Skystar’s dead? And it was one of his sons and not Sparrow who took the leadership? This is excellent! From now on we could--”

Owlstar was stopped in his enthusiasm by a growl from his sister and a scolding from his brother. “This is no time to be thinking of a battle! Sparrow’s hurt and her would-be murderers are chasing her and this is what you think about?”

“Well, I have to think of ThunderClan!” Owl Eyes defended himself. “And SkyClan’s been nothing but a threat. Why shouldn’t I think about our rivalry now?”

At least there was something she could agree with her brother on...

#also like while I wouldn't mind doing one or two BB rewrite prompts as a general rule I'll ask people to avoid them #I love Bones and his work and if he ever finishes the book-by-book outlines I'm for sure claiming chapters to write #but a lot of his story choices are explicitly about serving an authorial intent which I do not share and am in fact against in my own work #namely making WC into his personal political parable #also we're just different as people and as artists so some of his story choices I just don't vibe with #for a multitude of reasons from the petty to the profound #ANYWAY ESSAY IN TAGS ASIDE #warrior cats #wc #warrior cats au #pebble heart #sparrow fur #owl eyes #owlstar

[sage-nebula]

I think one of the reasons I don't vibe with theories or headcanons that make Sonic out to be anything more than Just A Guy™️ is because it sort of . . . cheapens his story, to me.

I feel like we have an oversaturation of Chosen Ones in popular culture. We have so many characters that are prophecied or reincarnated or Actually Not Ordinary, and that's fine . . . but it's also a.) a little boring by now, and b.) not very inspiring. Because we, the audience, aren't Chosen Ones. We aren't aliens or reincarnated heroes or lab experiments. We're just people. We're just guys.

And stories where that's enough? Those are the stories that really matter.

Don't get me wrong, I love Chosen One stories too. I've been a Zelda fan since I was nine. And it's true that Sonic has super speed and can use the Chaos Emeralds to go super saiyan. But considering that other characters can go super using the Chaos Emeralds, and that other characters have above and beyond abilities as well (e.g. Knuckles and Amy have super strength, Tails is a genius who can fly), those don't disqualify Sonic from being Just A Guy™️, a normal hedgehog. After all, when everyone is super, no one is.

But more to the point: we might not have superpowers, but all of us have skills that we can use to make the world a better place. Even though we are only human, some of us have linguisitic or artistic or mathematical gifts that we can use to make a difference, if we choose to.

And stories like Sonic's promote that idea, if he is also just a regular person with a gift. If he just decided one day to stand up and say "no" to oppression. Not because he's a Chosen One, or an alien, or an avatar for the planet. But because he's a person who was born on this planet from two parents, and so he fucking lives here and would prefer for the environment to stay nice and people to not be oppressed. And if he can do it, so can you.

If Sonic was a Chosen One, or the planet itself or whatever—well then, of course he stands up for environment and against oppression, that's his role. That story isn't special. But if he's Just A Guy™️, then it's a conscious choice he's making to do the hard thing instead of the easy thing, because it's the right thing to do. And that makes his story, and his character, so much more special to me than it would be otherwise.

#apropos of nothing i was just thinking abt it #i know that there's the Angel Island mural of Super Sonic but tbh I've always hated it lmao #its only use was inspiring Gerald to make Shadow hedgehog shaped #Sonic is just a person who exists bc a male hedgehog and a female hedgehog got busy w/ each other #and then flounced off to parts unknown or died or smth #and so he - as a person and guy - just lives here now #nothing more complicated than that #sonic the hedgehog

[whatinthehale17]

Okay so, this is a bit of long shot but I'm planning on starting a fanmade project for TE. It's my favorite choices story and there's still so much you can do with it.

I'm currently figuring out how to use Ren'py right now and watching videos and what not to figure out how to do this. I'm pretty new to all this but I think it'd be a fun project.

I'm probably gonna do some of the writing like the plot and Shreya's route (best girl) and also as I said I'm figuring out the coding as well.

But I'm definitely gonna need some help on this. I know others have expressed interest in a 3rd book and now is your chance if you're willing to help. Again it's fanmade and we're not making money off of this, this is just for fun and you can bail at any time.

I'll be making a discord once I start to get some interest in this so the link will be up at some point but if you're interested, just comment saying you'd like to help and what you'll be able to provide for this project.

Co-runner- I'm gonna need someone to help me run this project, help me keep the thing running and I'm a bit of an idiot so I'll be coming to you if I need help with anything. You'll be the Atlas to my MC lmao.

Artist- If you're a good drawer or you just love to draw and wanna help out on this project, we'd love to have you. I'm thinking we'll need some new characters for the plot and if you want, maybe some new backgrounds too (or we could just pick ones from the multiple backgrounds choices already has)

Writer- I'm a lesbian and obsessed with Shreya so I don't really have any idea about the other routes. But I know a lot of people are obsessed with like Beckett and the other love interests so anyone willing to help work on the different routes would be great. Not to mention the plot of the book, the adventures the pend pals could be getting into and side stuff like your relationship with your mom and the villains and such.

Coders- Like any great game, we'd need people who can code or wanna try it out like I'm currently doing. I've always heard Ren'py is good for that stuff and that's what the ILW crew used and that's what I'm currently learning right now so if you wanna try it out or already know how, we'd appreciate the help.

And of course, if you just wanna help out, you can join and I'll figure something out for you to do. My work schedule is kind of whack right now so this week we probably won't be getting anything done unfortunately (maybe Thursday or Friday if I have people and what not) but hopefully the week after, i'll have things figured out.

Last but not least, my idea for how I think the plot should go-

The gang is back for their next year of school

MC, Shreya, Zeph, Beckett- Juniors

Griffin- Senior

Aster, Atlas- Sophomores

But just like always, the school year is never simple for them.

The High Attuned has been watching over the school and visiting more frequently, keeping an eye on you and Atlas.

Zeph is having trouble with Thief captain as much as he hates to admit it.

Griffin is having parent troubles after they found out about his interest in Natural disaster field work instead of being a professional Thief player.

Shreya has hired an assistant to help with Serene and Sublime, though the assistant keeps messing things up and causing Shreya to lose customers, important ones at that.

With Beckett's urge to please his professors, he works himself too much to the point he begins to experience burnout and freaks out over the smallest things resulting in him pushing his friends away.

Aster is having trouble running the shop and keeping up with her studies and she's worried she might have to close it down.

Atlas is happy to catch up on lost time with their mom but when their mom becomes a professor for the school, Atlas isn't exactly sure how to feel about it and starts to lash out on Theia, resulting in the MC to have to try and fix the relationship.

MC does their best to help everyone with their problems but begins to have problems of their own when the school recruits another sun-att who does everything in their power to one up MC in every way.

Of course, it's just a rough draft of how I think the year should go, but we could always change stuff around if people have better ideas. Also, of course, there will be new spells to learn like in the other books and I was also thinking like...was I the only one that shipped Dean Swan and Theia together? Like Dean Swan already acts like a mother figure to the twins. And some of the sources will be back like Gemma and I really wanted to incorporate the High Attuned because we got like two minutes of information about them and then nothing ever again.

So yeah, this is super long and we can talk more on the discord but if you're interested just tell me what you wanna do.

#choices stories you play #playchoices #the elementalists #shreya mistry #griffin langley #beckett harrington #zeph hernandez #TheElementalists3FanProject #Atlas Ernhardt #Aster D'Yew #choices pixelberry #choices

[septembersghost]

Thank you for your post. I don’t have a problem with Elvis being portrayed as a flawed person because he was and I don’t agree with everything he did, but I feel like there’s no such thing as nuance in regards to him. Like are we gonna disregard the great story Dionne Warwick told about him helping her sell her most records in Las Vegas because he had a toxic relationship with Priscilla? People are multifaceted and are different towards different people but I feel like with Elvis, he’s just painted as 100% all bad by people. That’s why Baz’s movie and Austin’s performance was such a breath of fresh air. I worry about a portrayal of him that’s mostly negative or unflattering, especially when his relationship with Priscilla already gets people so heated. Today people were pissed Priscilla spoke positively of him and said he never took advantage of her. We can disagree with their ages when the relationship began all we want but if she says he never took advantage of her and does not view herself as a victim, why complain about it?

it's infuriating that online comments refuse to defer to priscilla's OWN voice and perspective and remembrances of him - the fact that people won't recognize that shaming/pitying her and saying she's delusional is so much more misogynistic than listening to and accepting her words and her view of her life! she literally said today, "he was very kind, very soft, very loving" and that he respected her and kept boundaries between them, yet instantly we're inundated with takes about how he was awful and tabloid headlines about sex because that gets them clicks. it's so disrespectful of priscilla along WITH elvis. the refusal to treat him like a whole, multifaceted person with complete lack of context extends to victimizing her against her will.

there are such a great number of stories about how good and generous and thoughtful and supportive he was to others - from fellow artists to strangers on the street - we know those beautiful aspects of him to be true. he WAS flawed and had a temper and made mistakes, i don't agree with everything he did or every choice he made either, and simultaneously also wish he'd had better care around him, but this is because we are willing to see and value him as a complex man, not as only a symbol of whatever role we want to foist upon him.

one thing i will say is i do believe baz's film and austin's portrayal is what will remain in the culture through all of this. a LOT of other flimsy or less meaningful "biopics" have faded, but that one will be remembered and vital, especially given the soul of it being that sensitivity and the power of his music. which isn't me saying this film is worthless or whatever, but it's not going to have the same impact (and isn't meant to). i keep thinking about lisa and how moved and happy she was about the film and austin's embodiment of her father - nothing diminishes that, and it remains true.

some people just want to get on their high horses of judgement and complain, but that's honestly so tiresome and boring to me. finding the humanity of someone and the light to be kept there is so much more fulfilling. the people who are nasty about it, that's their loss. we know what the heart of this is for ourselves.

#anonymous #letterbox #elvis presley #priscilla presley

[sweetmariihs2]

A headcanon-like thing I would like to share about Queen Lorelei

Tw: death during childbirth and some light mentions of suicide and grieving

I love Queen Lorelei (King Roland's deceased wife). She barely appears or it's mentioned in the show? Yes. But oh well. Fandom.

We believe she's that genuinely kind deceased character, that everyone remembers as sweet and beautiful, always more gentle than the world was to her, like a ray of sunshine. She's absolutely adored by everyone and her beauty and kindness always brought all the eyes in the room to her and her sweet laughs and smiles.

But unfortunately she died some time after she got married, during the childbirth of the princes that her body wasn't made to support, because the only reason she got pregnant in the first place was the wishing well, and that action had consequences, which means, she got pregnant indeed but that didn't changed the fact her body wasn't capable of enduring this.

And well, she died because of that. I usually feel really bad about childbirth deaths, because I feel like that could have been avoided months earlier. She was well and healthy but trying to have children took her life, and that just happened because she wanted to have a family and live a happy life.

But well, despite being something that lacks information, her story and character fascinates me, and we try to suppress that desire to see her story through fanfiction and fanmade content.

In my case, I have a constant habit of relating characters to songs, in some cases to whole artists if their whole discography match this character or fandom. For example I can't hear some of Aurora's songs without thinking of Cedric.

In Lorelei's case, it was something I never spoke about, but since we're in a fandom and in constant search for STF related stuff and fan content to keep enjoying our favorite show, I decided to share this.

Basically, I'm a HUGE Lana Del Rey fan since around 2019. I know 90% of her released songs and I also listen to some of her unreleaseds (that despite me knowing a ton of unreleaseds there are more than 200 wandering through the internet so there's no way I know all of them)

During the start of her carreer (actually, her first albums, since her career started years before the debut album) Lana's songs told us stories. Some key words that I would like to relate to her songs are: girlhood, nostalgia and melancholy (+or tragedy if you think about it)

In her first albums (Born to Die + The Paradise Version which is a deluxe of BTD) her songs were centered around nostalgic stories and feelings surrounding girls' experiences. Because she is so beautiful and often delicate while singing about darker topics, it's like her voice and lyric choice just interconnect. She sang about girls who lost their lovers, about beautiful girls that felt unhappy or/because they wasted their youth, about tragic endings, like being taken away from your friends during your teenage years because you guys were doing all kinds of crazy stuff at that time (this song is called This Is What Makes Us Girls), all of this surrounded by a feeling of nostalgia, as if those stories had happened a long time ago.

(Her songs weren't made to romanticize anything, like some people say they were; in fact, a huge part of these songs were inspired by her own life and feelings, and Lana is just telling us stories.)

So, going back to Lorelei, some of Lana's songs remind me of her. Based on what I said you can understand why. But not only that, Lana has some very specific songs that kinds match the fandom's headcanons of how Lorelei would be like (since we have no official info about her character).

Like in the song Blue Velvet, which is a cover from Bobby Vinton's song, but Lana brought a whole different feeling to it. Bringing it to the context of her album, her version sounds a lot more heartbreaking than the original one. The lyrics are about a male character missing his lover, singing about her blue velvet dress and how he will never forget about his love for her, even after she passed. Lana's version has a whole orchestral instrumental through the song and mostly at the end of it, making the song sound nostalgic, tragic and even sounds like some kind of anthem close to the end.

There's also the song Carmen, where there is a girl called Carmen, who attracts all eyes to her and is known for her beauty, but deep inside she's not mentally well, and people seem not to care about or notice how she's feeling. By the end of the song she even gets a love confession (in french), probably hinting at the fact that she receives many of them, but it doesn't matter because those who give them don't really know her or care about it. Despite her state "she's still shining" (in Lana's words), because even though she's suffering, she's still beautiful and loved by people.

In the song Born To Die, Lana sings about enjoying your life while it's still happening, because we're gonna die sooner or later. In the music video the scenes interwine with her sitting in a throne and spending time with a lover, who seems to give her an unhealthy relationship, judging by his aggresive behavior. At the end of the music video they're travelling together by car and her boyfriend, the driver, tries to force her to kiss him back, and because of that their car crashes and she dies in his arms, making him face his guilt because he was the one who did this to her. Tragic ending.

Dark Paradise is a song about grieving a loved one. It was made based on her feelings and her life.

These are some of the songs that match because of the lyrics, but being honest, because of the album being so concrete, the lyrics don't even need to match for me to remember her, because as I said this album is about nostalgic girlhood and melancholia, and she often sings about memories like in the song This Is What Makes Us Girls, that was also inspired by her teenage years when she was taken from her friends, but the memories she carries with them last till this day and it makes her miss those times.

Going to the unreleased, there are so many more. Like the song Angels Forever, where she's singing about memories that at her youth she never thought they were going to end: "we were angels forever, forever angels".

Or Fine China, where she is watching a friend having their first child, and remembering that at her own wedding years ago her groom left her at the wedding, depriving her of the dream life she would have liked to have had, singing "I'm going down now, with all of my fine china and fresh linen, all of my dresses with them tags still on", hinting at what was left of the wedding, of a life she couldn't have, but that she was watching others around her having it in her place. This song kinda reminds me of Roland to be honest, even thought his story with Lorelei isn't really related to their wedding, he was also deprived of a life he wish he could have had. And he had her dresses packed, her stuff still there in the castle, just like in the song the pov had her fine china and dresses with tags still on (they were never used).

It kinda fits even more with that headcanon that Cedric was in love with Lorelei. He never had the chance to live a life with her, and he's a bachelor till this day, watching all the weddings and happy lives through the years but never being a part of them, thinking about what would have happened if life wasn't so cruel.

I had these thoughts and despite being a bit niche I still felt like it should be shared. I know that not many people are fans of listening to recommended songs (at least in my case that's true), but I also made this post for those who already know some of those songs and didn't noticed these connections with Lorelei's story. Those who don't know the songs and want to listen to them now are also very welcomed.

I think about how amazing would be if I made a fanfic about this and using these songs. But I won't do it, it's just a thought. Feel free to do it though, I would absolutely love to read that.

#sofia the first #queen lorelei #king roland #sofia the fandom #cedric the sorcerer #cedric the great #cedric the sensational #stf #headcanon #headcanons #stf headcanon

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

Hi! I agree with a lot of your criticism towards twc3, biggest issues imo being 1. increasingly weaker writing for the characters 2. weak plot. I'm curious: if you could prioritize fixing only one (for example: great plot with increased/meaningful branching but relationship writing stays as in book 3) what would you pick/believe would serve the series best going forward?

The focus has always been on the romance, and that's what I would prioritize if forced to make the choice, and it's one that would please the most fans as nobody's here for the plot. However, I don't believe that the choice is necessary, and that both can be improved simultaneously without sacrificing the other. Simply put, it needs to be scaled down, and it needs to be more focused. I would prefer shorter books, with tighter plots, fewer but more meaningful variations, and less wordy and more purposeful writing.

I know that M!shka has the whole thing vaguely planned out, given that we knew it'd be seven books from the start, but whatever her outlining process is, it's just not visible on the page. I'm honestly starting to think she said seven because it sounded cool, and not because she actually had anything to fill each book with. 3 reads like it's a bunch of random Patreon drabbles slapped together and barely connected by time skips.

Most of the issues -- the cheap and OOC romance interactions, the vague plot, the dropped subplots -- could be solved by just removing a lot of the unecessary fluff and by focusing in on one thing and tying everything else back to it. And I'm not saying that it needs to be plot progression and action all the time, not at all, but there needs to be a throughline that connects what's on the page to the overall story, that justifies the words put in front of the reader. I just don't see that focus and that artistic vision here. It's a bunch of bullshit that doesn't stick together.

Reading book 1 compared to 2 and 3 is so wack, because at the end of book 1, there were so many interesting and exciting possibilities. It felt as though there were many different and equally worthwhile plots that could be explored in the next books. And then you read book 2 and go "Oh ok? So I ... I guess the romances will progress in the next one? That's neat. And there might be some even bigger bad on the horizon?" Then you read book 3 and what do you feel? I felt nothing, aside from anger maybe. Because all you get is like, a half-assed climax and then a cheap teaser. Does it feel like the story is going somewhere? Like there are infinite possibilities to explore? Like we're building up to something? No, not really. That's what's lacking, a vision, a vector that guides your thoughts forward based on the movement of the previous books. Book 3 sorta meanders about and then falls face-down on the ground.

For book 4, I would probably, once again, stop trying to one-up myself with bigger and badder plots and have a smaller mystery happen, something more character-focused and maybe relevant to the detective personally, and give each LI a distinct subplot that ties into the main mystery. Because you decided your LI in book 1, it also opens up the opportunity to make the mystery tailored to the LI. That way, both the main plot and the detective being an actual detective feels interesting and hooks you in, while also providing plenty of romance opportunities and character development.

I also think that having 7 books, combined with having the PC be a detective, and the thing being set in a small town ... Idk, it was the perfect setup for having semi-independent, smaller mystery stories, all connecting together by the romances and characters, and slowly building up to something bigger by leaving crumbs in each book. Just a lot of missed opportunities, tbh. People who say "omg it's just a small cute romance game!! Stop trying to make it more than it is!" but I'm not? I'm all about making it SMALLER and MORE romance-focused! It's when it stretches and tries to do bigger things and overreaches that you start seeing how thin the fabric is.

Obviously it's easy to sit here and think you could do better, and honestly I don't know if I could or if my fixes would actually improve anything, but if given her resources, I'd damn sure try to lol.

#twc critical

[variousqueerthings]

yeah woody allen cast that film intentionally w/the idea that he wanted to frame musicals as like… outpouring of emotion in daily life, something more grounded than like a fantasy musical where every character no matter how ordinary can sing. he intentionally asked goldie hawn who was the only Explicitly Trained vocalist to sing worse bc he intentionally wanted the movie to feel like “real people” singing. whether or not that…worked….and was a good choice……. is obviously a different Q

the irony here is that this movie isn't naturalistic or grounded at all, because everything is so obsessed with being oh so cool and Funny and Performatively Smart and new york chic, so it just comes off as someone who doesn't get the intention of musicals at all/doesn't like musicals perhaps/is afraid of the real emotions that (good) musicals are all about!

"I'm a guilty liberal who is the butt of the joke that we can reform prisoners, and the guy I helped is actually a creepy career criminal who uses this naïve rich girl's romanticization of the sexy criminal in order to commit more crime, ha... ha? anyway it's fine, because none of it matters, we're all just as fine at the end as we were at the beginning, except idk, who knows if I'll still be campaigning for prison reform, that's not really important."

woody allen is not "one of the people" or challenging an elite institution through form, the "ordinary life" he's portraying, is... not the ordinary life, and he's not even doing anything new, I've seen low-budget musicals that are made by a bunch of actual avant garde artists fucking about and that is something. this is. not.

I mean, hell, the 1993 cabaret performance with Jane Horrocks intentionally has her singing "worse" in order to juxtapose the character's dreams/illusions of becoming a great performer with the reality that she's in a seedy bar where men come to ogle her and the world is ending around her, but her own personal world is crumbling as well, that is intention!

(also am at the goldie hawn singing moment and she's clearly so much better lol -- alan alda wasn't bad either, + his main Moment was actually happening within the story, which made it work on multiple levels)

the thing I noticed is that when the movie does just allow itself to be a straight musical (ex. goldie hawn dancing moment, some of the ensemble stuff) it's just... better......

anyway: new york rich people stop making media about rich new yorkians as if they're relatable challenge, your life is not the norm

and since I'm doing this for alan alda (and I just finished it) I can say @majorbaby you wanna check out the 52min mark, which is his main singing moment + maybe the only genuine emotion in this movie alongside goldie hawn's singing moment (but that's at woody allen, so... eh), and that I don't know if I'm strong enough to watch another one for him. Teeth-pullingly agonising

I'm making a separate post about how I generally am establishing thoughts about alan alda roles, so that people don't have to engage with the woody allen movie if they don't want to...

#oh goooosh now that i have this im like... oh yea connecting the dots between this and fucking lala land #im watching a woody allen movie #unfortunately #sdfghgfds anon again not at you -- using this opportunity to vent so i can recover #who let this guy make movies? #seriously who thought he had a clue? #who FUNDED this???? #it's not even Bad it's just dull #❤ anon

[number-0-iz]

hi there! this is your secret santa for the grishaverse! i was wondering if you could give me some information on your interests?? like what other media do you like?? (shows, movies, etc.) who is your favorite grishaverse character & ship, what is your favorite genre to read or watch, is there any kind of content you don't like, and are there any triggers i should stay away from, and anything else you wanna share! thanks in advance : )

Oof that's quite the ask! Well here we go:

Other interests:

This is gonna sound cheesy but I love writing when I get the time. The main character of my grishaverse fanfic, Anya Oryalen, truly has a special place in my heart and just feels so real to me, it's a feeling I can't describe.

A lot of the commenters on the fanfic seem to love her as well and it's just something so personal. I have been told that she is a true inspiration and that she is very realistically written in trying to overcome obstacles and hardships and her own walls.

I love to draw but I haven't been able to do it in ages thanks to college and assignments and stuff.

I obviously love to read.

I also love editing for my books and upload then to my YouTube frequently.

Love having sister nights with my older sisters when we're all together.

What other medias do I like:

Well currently I am reading Blades Of Light And Shadow book 2 on the choices stories you play app! I liked book 1 more than book 2 but I still really like it!

I am also on another rewatch of Friends! And Shadow And Bone season 2 so I can take notes for my fanfic!

I haven't really had the time to read other books what with college classes and stuff but the last book I read was Once And Future Witches, currently reading Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery. I also finished volume two of the manga In The Land Of Leadale.

My favourite characters:

My favourite grishaverse characters are Kaz Brekker and Nikolai Lantsov! I have done deepdives on their character, what other people think of them etc as to write beautiful and full characters for my fanfic.

My favourite grishaverse ship:

I'm gonna sound very very basic but I love Kanej. I also like David/Genya and show Malina but not as much as them.

My favourite genre

Well I really love different variations of fantasy. Like contemporary fantasy (fantasy elements in a world like ours), full on fantasy world, historical fantasy, high fantasy and dark fantasy.

I also do quite like Sci fi.

Content I don't like:

(Trigger warning ahead)

Dark genre books that basically tries to reason that things like rape or stalking are okay or sexy. When I say I like dark fantasy, I mean in the sense with gore and death and violence and war and not whatever shit like Haunting Adeline or some SJM stuff that tries to talk good about stuff like abduction. Or the glorification of shit like Stockholm syndrome like in those 365 movies. Read and watch that all you like but keep it away from me and do keep in mind that it is and should always stay fictional.

I'm not a big romance read because I often find that when one focuses solely on the romance storyline, other might suffer. I really prefer it as a sub genres because that way other genres in a book or show can make it feel more whole and complete.

Something else I don't like is how people claim that 'art' or 'architecture' or 'pictures' made by AI are real art/architecture/pictures. I cannot stand that shit. As a writer, artist (don't post that stuff and haven't worked on it a while but still), a person studying Interior Design, that is the type of shit that I absolutely despise and it will have a major effect of the things I will do as a job in the future. Sure some AI can and probably will be helpful in the future but stuff like MidJourney and OpenAI are the dangerous ones that you shouldn't trust at all.

That's about all I can think of! Do come back again and I hope to see more!

#isabelle answers! #anon ask #anonymous #send anons #playchoices #choices stories you play #blades of light and shadow #aerin valleros #bolas aerin #imtura tal kaelen #bolas imtura #mal volari #bolas mal #nia ellarious #bolas nia #willow #cherta #valax #threep pompedorfin #loola dupopodolis #bolas #fantasy #grishaverse #grishaverse xmas

[bizarrepotpourri]

Behind the Scenes: The Murderous Brat

[Previously on: Unlucky Thirteen]

As promised, this time we focus on the case of a "depraved murderer barely out of high school", written all on my own without asking other users of A Certain Website for inspiration.

This post, of course, contains mentions of violent crime, death and hornyposting again, so everything is under the cut. Proceed at your own risk.

Important info: you can access the link only if you set explicit material to be shown in your Pixiv settings. For a good reason.

As I said, the idea for this one hit me during the writing of "Unlucky Thirteen", sending me down a rabbit hole of outlining the concept through important-sounding legalese, and that it's based on an actual case. Well, two actual cases and each one of them is a doozy.

The original idea came from a discussion with one of the users of A Certain Website about a fairly recent case of parricide over here in Poland. But when I picked up speed and decided to google the details to confirm a few things, it turned out that I misremembered a crucial detail.

Namely, that the perpetrator wasn't a 19-year-old girl (that was the accomplice), but a 40-year-old woman. How she got a 19-year-old to help is less important - the main sell just got shot down, and that while I already had a full page of the notes including made-up press article headlines and ledes and about a third of the story proper written down. But, good for the story and bad for the real world, my lovely country also had another case of parricide involving high-schoolers a few years earlier. A boy and his angsty artist girlfriend stabbed his parents to death and then some, and by "and then some" I mean the investigators describing the crime scene as something straight from a horror movie.

This meant I had the crime implement (a silenced submachine gun), the motive ("I really, really hate my parents" - and I omitted the previous attempt using horse sedative) and the name from one case, and approximate age, accomplice and "angsty artist" schtick from the other one. I even cooked up bad angsty teen free verse while I was making dinner, and in two languages while we're at it. With that, I got to writing the most important part of the story - the conversation.

My idea was to have the condemned have a talk with the executioner as a last wish, in order to highlight her pretentious, insufferable Angsty Teenage Artist personality. I joked to another user of A Certain Website that I was imagining Julianne as a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Wednesday Addams in a private school sweater, and noted down that she was supposed to be "passive-aggressive" and "morbidly curious" - as expected from someone who shot their parents, cut them up, packed the remains in suitcases and finally dumped the suitcases in several different spots in the wild. Putting it together took me three days, and my original idea of making Julianne a psychotic hate sink just couldn't click. Even the “blue and poo” line that I shamelessly stole from the testimony of one of Australian serial killers (I can’t remember which one, though - I’m fairly certain it was either Ivan Milat or the Barrel Killers, but couldn’t find a source confirming either), who described strangling people as “smurfing”, because “first you go blue, and then you go poo”, didn't quite do it - mostly because its context in the story went from complete sociopathic insanity to gallows humor. Sure, she's still impudent, sarcastic and has ridiculously skewed priorities throughout her life - while I haven’t explicitly put the pedicure line in my notes, I had it in my mind pretty much since I started writing the scene. But then, when I started basing the way Julianne acts while smoking and talking on a former friend of mine, I got two ideas from that: obvious posturing and an apparent addiction to bad choices in life. I mean, I couldn’t have come up with the entire footjob situation if I didn’t know someone operating on similarly fucked-up logic. And to top it all off, one reader's opinion on Julianne as a character was "I don't condone her actions, but I understand her." And that means I achieved the exact opposite of my original idea: of course she thinks entirely too highly of herself and sounds a lot like a countercultural caricature, but on the other hand, you can feel sorry for her being treated like a failure through no fault of her own.

There's a lot of emphasis on Julianne being the youngest woman executed in the Kingdom in this century, for two reasons, both related to the twist in the case with Prosecution appealing the original life sentence soon after Julianne’s 18th birthday: first, long ago I had an idea for a still-unfinished story in which a group execution was delayed until after the 18th birthday of the youngest of the condemned, just so nobody could accuse the justice system of putting children to death. Second, they really wanted to get her: the Kingdom wants to be seen as modern and civilized, even if it has teenage skeletons in its closet, but on the other hand, it doesn't want to be seen as soft on crime as heinous as a double murder using a very illegal weapon. So if you're thinking that it was a setup and the entire schpiel about "psychiatric evaluations" was just an excuse, you're most probably right.

The story also gives some insight into the secrecy surrounding executions in the Kingdom. My original idea was that the names of Special Correctional Officers are confidential and listed only in Ministry of Justice personal files - even the Regional Courts and prison wardens know only the Officer’s badge number and it’s all that goes into the case files. There are also non-disclosure agreements and gag orders, so while the journalists attending the execution get to know the last words of the condemned and witness them being taken away, they not only don’t see the grisly end in person, but are also forbidden from probing the involved people for details. Meaning, Missis Officer won’t get to write a tell-all when retired, as opposed to Albert Pierrepoint, for example. Not that she would - the introduction describes her feelings toward the press fairly well, and she can't help but agree with Julianne when she mentions her hate for tabloids. Not only the "reporting" on high-profile trials often turns out to be sensationalist bullshit that skews reality into unrecognizable mess, with "unbridled joy" being an euphemism for baying for blood, but also the condemned often get the wrong ideas from seeing themselves on the front page. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Since the city of Blackmill is a stand-in for Manchester, the Raymouth prison is mostly based on HMP Strangeways, but when I got an interesting image of Julianne hanged in an industrial-looking room generated by AI, I decided to abandon the original plan of making it more typical and similar to Wandsworth and Holloway and go with basing the execution chamber on the former Nottingham Gaol (more precisely, their current museum exhibit of 19th century gallows), and the post-WW2 execution sheds built in German prisons, based on the stills from "Pierrepoint" again.

And finally, THE SPLOOSH. While Nicole in "Unlucky Thirteen" might have gotten wet at the last moment for an unspecified reason, Julianne is an utter little freak. While she was mostly trying to get a rise out of Missis Officer with the remarks on leather and masturbating in the noose in front of an audience, she was playing up her actual kinks for shock value. If she wasn’t warned beforehand that any stupid stunt means that her conversation with the executioner is over and she’ll be dragged back to her cell with all the remaining privileges forfeit, she’d probably do something like pulling up her dress and pressing her tits against the glass. But still, in her last moments she went like Madeline in my story “Worst Day of the Year”, just witnessed from an outside perspective.

#stories #my writing #creative writing #Ravenka hornyposting #The Murderous Brat #Special Officer 432 #behind the scenes #writeblr

[savventeen]

🎧 for the ask game please? i'd like some song recommendations because my playlist is like 80% kpop help-

but also!!! hihi savv i hope you're having a good day today ily ♡♡♡

OMG HI XANTHE!!!! 💙✨ i hope ur having a good day too!!!!

okay im gonna go ahead and give u a few bc ur the only one to send one in so far and i have So Many songs i want to write fic for sjdjdkkddk (narrowing it down to three was actually really hard lmao)

first up i'm gonna give you i will by mitski

so stay with me / hold my hand / there's no need / to be brave and all the quiet things you bear / seal them up with care / no one needs to know they're there / for i will hold them for you 'cause all i've ever wanted is here / all i ever wanted / all i want is / always you / it's always you and we're not out of the tunnel / i bet you, though, there's an end and while you sleep / i'll be scared / so by the time you wake / i'll be brave

this makes me want to write qpr reader x member emotional hurt/comfort. like, just them being vulnerable with each other and holding each other (both physically and emotionally) and reader knowing that while they worry for member, member worries just as much over them and. idk, being brave for the people you care about and having it not automatically equal romance :')

(also mitski's one of my all-time fav artists so if u like this song u should check out her entire discography, her songs make me Feel Things, in like, the experiencing the human condition kinda way)

[putting the rest under a readmore bc i apparently have a lot to say OOPS]

okay next i'm gonna give you sweet time by porter robinson [cw: death mention]

and i feel so stupid / 'cause i wasn't scared of this before / but since i met you / i don't wanna die no more so take a long time / 'cause, oh, the world is lucky to be your home, i know / i need a next life / 'cause i'm not satisfied to know you just once / so take a long time

this makes me want to write some kind of reincarnation/reality-hopping au So Bad. just like, the idea of meeting someone and wanting to know everything about them, and not just the them of now, but every them that could and would have been. idk what the plot would actually be, but [member of choice] needs to find you in all these different realities for Reasons and in getting to know all these yous, comes to love all these different parts of you. sometimes it's romantic, sometimes it's platonic, but it's always with the same dedication

but yeah. "i need a next life, 'cause i'm not satisfied to know you just once" ughhhh. love this so much

(also another favorite artist of mine, specifically his album 'nurture'. listen to that shit on repeat so often lol)

okay lastly im gonna give you it happened quiet by aurora [cw: blood mention]

feathers falling out of the pillow / as if time is standing still / i can’t remember much more / but i know it happened quiet / so quiet you fell apart / like a stone can be broken into sand / a thousand pieces / spread across a crying land / and you can’t remember that day / but you know it happened quiet / so quiet / words falling out through the window / all that remains is a silent call / is the earth colored red? / as i land like a flower on the meadow are your dreams as dead as they seem? / don’t you speak over my voice / i will return from the shadows / and i’ll bleed in your bed / turn it red / like the ground outside your window / love is wild

i would love love LOVE to write a dark fairytale/fantasy fic for this, like!!! god, the vibe of this song feels like those stories that start off soft and fairytale-esque but by the end you realize it's actually a dark kind of warning and not a happily-ever-after.

so the basic idea i have would be something along the lines of: reader was once like, a forest guardian or something, and at one point a human came along and was like "let me live in ur forest pls" and they were skeptical but eventually let them as long as they didn't hurt the forest at all. so the human builds themself a little cottage in the clearing and doesn't hurt the forest and so reader lets themself start to get to know the human and oops! they end up falling in love (bad idea) and in a moment of vulnerability, the human attacks them, nearly kills them, and curses them so they can't protect their forest anymore. bc lo and behold, little human is actually a greedy bastard from the nearby kingdom wanting to take all the resources here.

fast forward a bit, and [member of choice] who has some magical abilities, starts getting really weird dreams about the forest on the other side of the kingdom. cue member being enlisted to help reader enact their revenge plot to save their forest (and also maybe reach some righteous havoc while they're at it) and they become best 'villain' bros the end :')

(once again, love aurora so much, i highly recommend checking out her discography haha)

send me a “🎧” and i’ll give you a non-kpop song i want to someday use as fic inspiration

#i wrote so much i'm so sorry sldfjsdlkjfsldkjf #i hope you like the songs at least!! #savv answers #ask game #xanthe 🐢

[plan-d-to-i]

Hello, plan! Iirc, you're somewhat familiar with SVSSS, right? Can you answer these questions of mine: Did QJL r**** SJ? Is it true that in PIDW, SJ and OG!LBH was supposed to be the main cp Airplane planned and end up together or is it just a headcanon?

We're only told about Qiu Jianluo beating Shen Jiu in the novel. I think that's a mix of fanon & conjecture based on Shen Jiu's subsequent repulsion towards men and seeking safety around women. But that can be explained in canon by the violence he endured at QJL hands and the fact that QJL behaved around his sister.

“Back then Qiu Jianluo would often beat him up, so much so that at a certain point Shen could sense when he wanted to do it, so he would crawl away and hide trembling inside Qiu Haitang’s room. Qiu Jianluo didn’t want his younger sister to see his depraved side, so it was the only place Shen could hide and be safe.

At some point he had someone else he had trusted, an older girl whom he saw as a big sister. But, once she got old enough, she was sold to a shrivelled up old widower who had plans to marry her. And not so long after that they left the city and Shen Qingqiu never saw her again.

It wasn’t shameful at all to like women, but Shen Qingqiu knew very well how shameful it was to treat women as saviors and shrink into their arms looking for self-assurance. He would rather die than let others know about it, much less let Yue Qingyuan know about it.”

I mean this sounds horrific enough to justify his repulsion. In other words what you asked about is not canon. no.

As for the second item I wonder if this is what has people confused :

“Shang Qinghua spread his hands. “You think that I always wrote shameless content that lacked any integrity from the very start? I’ve also written belles-lettres before, but they were all unpopular, so I had no choice but to go down a path that catered to the masses. It must be said that writing novels is a very lonely undertaking. Rather than writing a stallion male protagonist who’ll be stereotypical in the end, it’s more in line with my philosophy for writing to create the current Bing-ge━this kind of weirdo male protagonist whose character is a bit more complicated, has contradictions and conflicts, and has a rough destiny.”

Shen Qingqiu concluded, “So, your philosophy for writing is to write about gay guys?”

Shang Qinghua: “Do you look down upon gay male protagonists? Works of art and artists all like to create gay guys. Belles-lettres favors gays, do you know that?”

“He waved his arms wildly and passionately. “Cucumber Bro, if the System hadn’t chosen you, this faithful die-hard reader, perhaps the plot wouldn’t have deviated so thoroughly, thoroughly to the point that it deviated all the way back to my original scrapped outline. Even though the me back in reality━who couldn’t endure the loneliness and was under financial pressure━chose to finish writing 《Proud Immortal Demon Way》 according to other people’s preferences and what they found cool… now, all thanks to you, essentially everything that I wanted to write has already unfolded in front of my eyes. Cucumber Bro!”

He patted Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders with deep sentiment and solemnity. “You… are the chosen one; as for my career, I have no more regrets!”

… why did it sound like the System and this world were both products of Shang Qinghua’s resentment over scrapping that outline and going with what was mainstream?” (Chapter 81)

Haha I didn't take it to mean that og Shen Jiu and LBH were canon cp, just that Airplane Bro would have preferred to write the Luo Binghe from this story instead of the OG LBH and he's not opposed to him being gay. There's a lot more that happens differently in the new story aside from the romantic relationship. Like Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang being the villains [fondly] of the story. Even if Shen Jiu's unfortunate background were revealed OG Shen Jiu still abused OG LBH & vehemently resented him. The one man OG Shen Jiu was different about was Yue QingYuan. Shen Yuan is the one who changed the dynamic between SQQ and LBH and then the story/system followed not the other way around.

#I like Shen Jiu #No i don't want to argue about him #svsss #Shen Jiu #Shen Yuan

[the-shared-brain-in-retrograde]

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

(Or What If... Tony Stark was a Con Artist?)

A joint review...

We met last night for a preliminary discussion and things took quite the turn. Namely the Shared Brain is very much split on this film, and maybe not in the way you would think. We also had a heated argument about Tennis (which @cassandrafey cares a great deal about, and @becksxoxo does not, even though she is the only professional player of the two) and then we got into Cass' inner horse girl (inspired by the My Friend Flicka mention, a horse phenomenon that Becks as a normal person had no reference to whatsoever and has had to google and is chuckling scornfully as Cass tries to defend herself and her interests), which is a place we wouldn't recommend, and Colin Farrell was involved, we shan't repeat it for your sanity and for our own.

But on to the film...

The big surprise of the evening was how much @becksxoxo loves this film, and how indifferent @cassandrafey was to it. It's as though we have watched two very different movies, which I don't think has happened since The First Avenger.

@becksxoxo: Another film Cass is very wrong about...

@cassandrafey: I could say some things here since I have control of the proofread and edit, but I won’t cos I think someone can dish it but not take it…

So as in Captain America: The First Avenger we shall start the review with all the bits we did enjoy together.

Firstly, that little girl's acting at the start was very good. We were both very worried this film was going to take a dark turn very early on, and other than a threatened smack round the face for lil Harmony, it did not. That screaming was brilliant. Good work child. We also have both agreed we do not wish to attend a fair in Indiana in the past, due to both the worry of clowns and the hideous colour scheme.

The narrating and the narrator of the film were also a brilliant touch. Becks really enjoyed the chaotic ramblings of Harry as he flitted back and forth from the various backstories to the current plot, the re-winds, the artistic pauses. It felt very comforting for some reason. It was also one of the many clever ways that they intertwined the pulp crime style of the books that inspired the plot into the plot itself. Also it's nice just listening to RDJ's voice sometimes isn't it, in a none bossing people around sort of way (the way @becksxoxo enjoys him most - a little bit submissive 😉 - she will discuss this again a bit later, you'll be glad to know.)

The flashbacks were a fun way to get to know our protagonists, although is it lazy storytelling? Who knows? Not us. We do not think that Harry makes a very good burglar in practise. He clearly is very good at the thieving things, but he seems very conflicted about the whole thing. Who's looking in the discount bin when you're robbing a place? Someone who doesn't feel comfortable with that he's doing. And he was so devastated when his partner got shot, that breakdown in the audition was so very sad. The neighbourhood watch is quite extreme in New York... We really think that the criminal lifestyle just isn't for him, but then that wouldn't have made a very good film would it. Also, pull your hat down Harry, you look like a gnome.

Harmony's backstory is even sadder still, such a dark and distressing early life that she escapes from using fiction and a single way ticket out of the shit hole town she grew up in. The darkness in Harmony's life winds its way through the whole plot and its truly terrible, but never fully gets addressed, at times even joked about, that only broken girls make it to Hollywood. It’s hard to know if not addressing it is a choice made by the characters as a way of coping, or if it’s just a bad writing choice that stops the characters and story from becoming whole. It's something we're split on ourselves.

We think we'd like to go to a Hollywood party, but we're not sure we'd be invited. @cassandrafey would definitely like to hangout with Harmony, hidden away reading pulp books. I guess that leaves @becksxoxo looking a bit lost, getting drunk, and making up shit stories to strangers with Harry. What a night.

Cass would also like it to be known we are treated to her favourite line in the film here (and as it turns out her favourite part of the film as a whole):

B-Movie Actress: So what do you do?

Harry Lockhart: I'm retired, I invented dice as a kid.

Harry does try to be a good person. He does try to stop that pervert harassing Harmony, and he does try to fight him, but he doesn't really achieve any of these things fully. Becks got in a little Cap reference during the fight in her notes that pleased Cass no end, you'll all be happy to know. "You just had to get him in somewhere, didn't you?" she hissed. It's not Becks' fault that RDJ just gets beat on a lot...

It's also at the party we're introduced to Perry, who Cass was suspicious of the whole damn film, but Becks loves with her whole heart. Perry the PI - Becks suggested we should be private detectives, but Cass quickly shut it down. So that's another stream of income lost to us.

We will address here that the homophobia and 'gay jokes' in this film were not it. We know it was the past, but it has not aged well and did leave you feeling very awkward. It wasn't fun, and it really took you out of the film each time with quite a start. Honestly, we hate it.

Now on to boobs. @cassandrafey says she would let RDJ touch her tits if it was to remove a spider, @becksxoxo countered that she wouldn't mind if the spider wasn't involved either. Giggling ensued. The spider situation was horrible, and the thought of a massive spider climbing around on you is the worst and its was a big fat no from both of us. There was a lot of breasts just out and about in this film, and for the most part I think it was just to show that Harry was a good person for trying to not look at them, although he did usually get a peek in.

He also pissed on a dead woman, so we don't know why Becks loved him so much, but she did. He is definitely a man, written by a man, trying to show women that not all men are bad people. Becks is now have a slow worry about internalised misogyny... She's trying to defend herself now, but words are hard, and sometimes you're allowed to love the problematic fictional people, right Cassandra? (Cass here, as the authority on living problematic fictional people, can confirm that it’s a perfectly normal thing to succumb to). She does think she loves Perry more though.

Perry. Perry, Perry, Perry. We agree that Perry is very competent, and in control, but that has incited very different feelings from both of us. Abject delight and love from @becksxoxo and utter distrust and grave suspicion from @cassandrafey. Cass has also just said that she missed something at the start of this film that may have made her misjudge Perry, but instead of finding out more about this she went in feet first, 'doesn't that man have a large head, isn't he suspicious', and then just ran with it for the rest of the film. Becks on the other hand just loved him. She loved how good he was at his job, how he bossed Harry around and showed him how much of an idiot he was.

Perry: Look up idiot in the dictionary and you know what you'll find?

Harry Lockhart: A... picture of my face?

Perry: No! The definition of the word idiot which you fucking are!

In fact, he was just generally very quotable, and if Cass brings up his giant head again, Becks will use her giant head to put a stop to it.

Cass should be more grateful, because it is also Perry that brings up Colin Farrell in the first place. The Colin Farrell reference also brought up two very different reactions from the Shared Brain. One of us was confused that RDJ and ol' Colin were contemporaries, and the other half was ready to put on half a pantomime horse costume and some lingerie and get to it, if you know what I mean (none of us know what she means, we really went down a tangent that even for us may have been a step too far...)

@cassandrafey: He's just right handsome, I'm just very fond of him.

@becksxoxo: Are you? You should mention it more. Ooooooooh the moral high ground, I haven't been up here in a long time...

@cassandrafey: Am I morally wrong for saying he's handsome?

@becksxoxo: I mean I was really referring to the horse and knickers situation, but...

@cassandrafey: Oh, I forgot about that.

@becksxoxo: [wheezes]

@cassandrafey: Take advantage of this, because it’s not something I say often, but I think we should stop. We've talked about Colin Farrell too much for a film he doesn't appear in.

So back to the actors at hand. Becks has never experienced Val Kilmer before, but she's enjoyed it. (Cass pointed out he was once Batman, but Becks says she doesn’t know who that is…) He was very funny, and he really dominated Harry at times, and that was nice to see...

We should probably mention the crimes and that, which to be honest we sort of got confused by. We think Becks kept up more than Cass, but we were definitely lost at times, and so were the characters. It did get a bit messy, and we did take umbrage with Harry asking us if we had guessed the twist, when we felt it was unguessable.

I guess SPOILER ALERT:

Is it a known fact that people in mental hospitals don't wear underwear? Perhaps we're perverts but we think there might be other instances where people don't wear underwear to go about their business. It seems a part of the plot that came as a surprise quite late on in the film for us. Although I guess it was another point to show Harry wasn't a pervert for being so bothered to check the state of undress of these ladies.

Two more quick points we really enjoyed:

Frying Pan and Mr Mustard. One of our friends once told us she likes to listen to us talk, but she doesn't understand a damn thing we are on about. So we really got Frying Pan and Mr Mustard on a very deep and meaningful level. We have no real idea of their point in the film, or really what they were on about either, but we enjoyed it and we felt represented.

The electrocution of the Harry's balls. It was at this point in the film that Cass was checking her watch to see how long there was left, but Becks was *cackling* with laughter, and desire to also electrocute a man's balls. We did both enjoy Perry's tiny penis gun, although Cass' train of thought had really left the film by this point as she began thinking of tiny bullets and their effectiveness.

We were both very worried that we were in for a sad ending. All of them just lying there, covered in blood, but even as Harry joked they really did turn it around. When Perry wheeled himself in Becks made such a noise. And then the outro to boot, a thousand chef's kisses. Cass really got in her head that they were married, and Becks just wanted more, and would quite happily watch her two new favourites solving crimes and having the good bants.

Cass gave this film 2 stars. The same rating she gave the Eternals. Take that as you will. Less even than The First Avenger. IRL we're starting to have an argument about Steve Rogers. But we shall stop. Becks on other hand has given it 4 stars, and was even contemplating 4.5 but calmed herself down.

We're both a bit startled by our own reactions to this film. Who knew Robert Downey Jr could be so polarising?

#what if tony stark was a con artist? #what if #what if...? #marvel cinematic universe #marvel #robert downey junior #robert downey jr #rdj #harry lockhart #val kilmer #perry #shane black #the shared brain in retrograde #film review #movie review #colin farrell #my friend flicka #the grand adventures of cass and becks #frying pan and mr mustard #america really does have a gun problem #kiss kiss bang bang

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

#this is only like half of it #but at least you can get like a few answers #yanno fuck it #bataranswers #ask #asks #anon

[duckprintspress]

"And Seek (Not) to Alter Me" Story Teasers: Adrian Harley and Sanjita Jain

Presenting And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"

Duck Prints Press has launched our second Kickstarter, running now through April 14th, 2022 - And Seek (Not) to Alter Me, a gorgeous collection featuring the work of 16 authors and 16 artists in a full-color, A4 size soft cover size-style book!

Today, we're highlighting 2 more of our authors...

*

Author Spotlight: Adrian Harley

Biography: Adrian Harley is an almost-lifelong North Carolinian and a fantasy fiction aficionado who didn’t start delving deep into fandom until adulthood. They are an editor of research by day and an aspiring novelist, also by day. They go to bed early. They have short stories forthcoming in OFIC Magazine and future Duck Prints Press anthologies. They live with their husband and a perfectly reasonable number of cats.

Link: Twitter

Story Title: Some Sparks That Are Like Wit

Tags: coming out, found family, modern setting, trans character

Teaser:

He lost count of the articles he read on transmasculinity. He joined a Reddit group. He checked out books from the library. He spent so long on name websites that diaper and baby store ads stalked him throughout the internet. Early in the haze of this process, he picked the name Ben, but he still went to four different name sites just to be sure. Just to be sure! He’d never been indecisive in his life! No, he picked a stance or food or outfit or bar and stuck with it. And if people made fun of him or looked down on him for it, he made a joke out of the whole enterprise but, crucially, did not budge a fraction of an inch. That was his way.

With all the pep talks he was giving himself about decisiveness, he should have known that he’d end up coming out by accident.

*

Author Spotlight: Sanjita Jain

Biography: Hi! I’m Sanjita (she/they). I’ve been a writer since I was 12 years old, which is when I started reading fanfiction and almost immediately felt compelled to write some, too. I started in the Percy Jackson fandom, then moved through various medias until my stories started becoming so AU they were practically my own. While I’ve never published original fiction before, I’ve been publishing fanfiction steadily over the last decade across various usernames, and have published articles under my given name for multiple genres: interview, research, and more. I’ve also begun songwriting, and recently had one of my songs incorporated into a video game!

My fiction writing tends towards introspective, character-driven short stories, often laden with metaphor and double meanings. I love flowery imagery and poetic prose, and making characters suffer in the name of growth. More than that, I love using fiction as a way to connect with others: both through the text and through the process of writing. I’ve been running a fandom server for the past two years to build community and support other fanfic writers. I’ve also run two to three prompt months per year, and I’m excited to take on the beta and co-head mod role for a current zine!

When I’m not writing, I’m studying (for grad school, for a future medical school, for research work). Any time after that goes into reading as much as possible, or recently, graphic design, as I start creating graphics to enhance the quality of my events. I love talking to people who want to talk to me, and I will sleep anytime I’m presented with a soft surface to lay on (and sometimes even without). I can’t wait to share my work with you, thank you for taking the time to read it!

Links: Archive of Our Own | Tumblr (fandomsilhouette) | Tumblr (nottesilhouette)

Story Title: find ourselves unstuck

Tags: character growth, modern setting, panic attacks, self-destructive behavior

Teaser:

“That’s fucking different. I could’ve made better choices; you had no other choices to make. This was my fault.”

You can’t take my mistakes away.

But Hero can take herself away. She flees, retreating to a rooftop where the air is thin enough to breathe past the terror in her chest, and somehow this surrender feels like a victory.

***

Learn more about this project by checking out our Kickstarter! Running now through April 14th, 2022!

#duck prints press #our titles #and seek not to alter me

[lokiondisneyplus]

After spending over 30 years in the world of makeup design for film and television, Douglas Noe landed in the time-defying, creative playground of Marvel Studios' Loki. Serving as the Disney+ show's makeup department head, Noe not only designed the characters' individual looks, but continued to be Tom Hiddleston's makeup artist. Noe has worked on Hiddleston's Loki since 2012's The Avengers, carefully evolving the God of Mischief's look over time.

Loki isn't the first time Noe has spearheaded a makeup department for a Marvel Cinematic Universe production. Previously, Noe served as the makeup department head for Thor: The Dark World's additional photography -- making up approximately 20% of the film's final looks. He's also no stranger to the magic of prosthetic work and the intricate details needed for Marvel's epic adventures, having a creative hand in bringing both Captain Marvel's Skrulls and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Kree to life on-screen. In the industry, Noe is also known for specializing in palettes for actors of color and has worked on stars like Jackie Chan.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Noe discussed what it was like bringing The Avengers-era God of Mischief into Loki and his approach to doing makeup on a production stuffed with special effects. He also shared which MCU stars have graced his chair and his advice for makeup departments looking for practical ways to de-center whiteness.

Loki's Makeup Evolution

CBR: One thing that I noticed -- which I'm excited to pick your brain about -- when we first see Loki, he has a really pale complexion. His hair is greasy. As he evolves, his skin gets a warmer look. Was that an intentional progression from when we first see him as a villain-ish and how he grows within the MCU?

Douglas Noe: Yes, that's a very astute observation. Of course, at the beginning of The Avengers, he's kind of a wreck, isn't he? And as he settles and normalizes, his pallor then indeed calms down. It was very nuanced. It was only a matter of maybe one or two shades difference, but you definitely caught something most people have not.

That was 10 years ago, but it was a very minor detail we decided would be important as the narrative and the dialogue and the intellect of that character evolved into the storyline. It became important to kind of mainstream and refine his appearance.

Since Loki kicks off from that earlier version of Loki, did you think about bringing any more of that paleness to his look? How did you decide on how you wanted to show him from Loki's time period/first episode?

Oh, that's a good question. The truth is, from the end of The Avengers also shot again in Avengers: Endgame, we change nothing.

We did exactly what we did on Endgame that we did for The Avengers. And in turn, that's how we started the Loki series. It was that that look from Endgame, which, of course, is the look from The Avengers. No alterations were made, other than -- and I can already tell we're not getting anything past you -- we did warm him up. We did bring some more flesh into him... The truth is, that was Tom's idea. I get it because it was an unspoken understanding between us that there's greater accessibility to Loki if he looks more like most people. Now, those are my words. Not his. But, he definitely wanted us to warm it up just a skosh.

How Loki's SFX Affected Its Makeup Design

With Loki, there's a ton of visual effects. With makeup, it's so dependent on lighting -- it can change everything. What was the biggest challenge about working on a show like this that has so many special effects being added in post?

What you just said, it's working on a show like this. Marvel gets it and they do it right. There's almost an aspect where we lean into these kinds of things. And we change nothing to take into account the constantly evolving and changing lighting effects. The approach was to keep everybody natural, or naturally beautiful. Whatever happened happened. [We] knew Marvel is going to give it the once over once it's all done. And if there was anything to address that did happen because of lighting, it would have happened in post.

But, to my knowledge, nothing was addressed. We just accepted that. At certain times, people would be pink because of the light. They would be blue because of the light or purple and we accepted that and didn't try to make any attempts to balance it or right it in any way. We leaned into it and accepted it made it part of the story. It was its own character, if you will.

Sylvie's Makeup Was Always Meant To Be "Natural"

Building off what you said about a natural look for Loki's actors, did you always know you wanted Sylvie's makeup to have a natural look?

Absolutely, absolutely. The approach there was less is more. We didn't want to bury her in beauty makeup. It would have been very easy to do, because Sophia Di Martino is gorgeous, of course. But, the idea was let's do just enough to keep her naturally beautiful.

Practical Ways To De-Center Whiteness In Makeup Rooms

You designed Hunter B-15's look, and you're well known in the industry for specializing in makeup palettes for people of color. Since you've been in the industry for so long, what are some practical things that people within the makeup department, or its heads, can do to make it less white-centered?

That's a great question. Get out of the way. You have room for everybody, especially with today's explosion of content. But I would say to those who are going to hold tightly that they may as well just squeeze it out of their hands, "Just understand color theory." And, have it in your head that if somebody wants someone to do their makeup that closer represents how they look, get out of the way. It really is that simple. As you said, I've made it a specialty, a rite of passage to learn the ins and outs of all color tones. For me, I bring that to the table, so I don't have to get out of the way; but I know enough to know when it is time.

I have an anecdote that relates. I just did the Netflix series [True Story] with Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes for eight episodes. And Tawny Newsome [who portrays Billie in the upcoming series] was our leading lady, a beautiful African American woman. I could have done a bang-up job, but that wasn't the right decision to make. She needed a female makeup artist because it was a modern beauty glam look we were going to do on her. Now I do get modern beauty glam very well, but I wanted somebody that would do it great. So I got out of the way.

What's one, nitty-gritty thing that helped in expanding your understanding of color theory? Any books or makeup brands?

Oh, well, I could talk about makeup brands all day long. But, again, go back to the color theory. Get a color wheel from an art store. If you don't know how to mix colors, how to make primary and secondary colors to get tertiary colors, get a color wheel and be a sponge. I'm, what, 36 years in this career? 31 in film. I've never stopped learning. I'm never closed off to garnering new info. And when I don't, again, I get out of my way. I'm not up to snuff on this contemporary modern book with the square eyebrows, so I hired somebody that was.

But, getting back to your point, there are so many books. I have countless books on this very topic. I would say, "Be patient, learn color theory. And accept that, especially now, we're in an era where you may just have to get out of the way. And let it be what the person in the chair wants it to be." Because, ultimately, that's who we're there for, the actors.

You've been working in Marvel's world for a long time. What's one Marvel character that you would love to do their makeup or prosthetics?

I've never thought about it because, to be honest with you, I feel like I won the lottery. When we started with doing Loki on The Avengers, we didn't know what was gonna happen. I'm trying to think, hmm. On Captain Marvel, I was doing Skrulls -- that was fun. I did some work on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when they had a couple of episodes with Kree.

They were so cool.

Right? I'm trying to think -- I did mention to somebody before that on The Avengers I was given the choice:  [Jeremy] Renner or [Mark] Ruffalo or this new guy called Tom Hiddleston. The makeup was described to me and I was told that Hulk was going to beat him up a little bit and we were going to do a little something-something and they asked, "What do you want to do?" And I said, "I want to do a little something-something." So, I landed with Tom.

I'd have to really think, "Who would I like?" I've done Lizzie Olsen's makeup for the Tom Hiddleston film I Saw the Light. I've done Idris Elba's makeup a couple of times for a couple of Marvel films, but also for a movie called Takers. And I worked with him on a movie called The Reaping. He's a gem, of course... I'm really happy with who sits in my chair at the beginning of every day on these things. I've never thought past that. I garner so much pleasure and we have so much joy together. I'm happy where I'm at... I'm happy with Loki. I love Loki.

Well, Loki is coming back for Season 2, so you never know who will pop in the chair.

I've heard we're coming back, but that's all I've heard. That's all I know. And that's truly wonderful for me because ignorance is bliss. Whatever they dream up, I'm always eager to jump in and be a part of it.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer's "Hush" Monsters Were Hand-Painted

Digging way back into your history, you were once a makeup designer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is one of my favorite shows! What's one thing about that era of monster-makeup that you don't think gets enough credit for doing?

I always refer to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Buffy the Weekend Slayer because we would get off on Saturday morning as the sun was coming up and have to be back to work a couple of hours before the sun came up on Monday... What you see is what you get. You had to be on your game. We were real craftspeople back then and there was no margin for error. The words that go with CGI simply didn't exist in 1999. You really had to be on point with makeup.

I would say what's lost now is the notion that makeup always has to be perfect. We know now it doesn't have to be perfect because we can fix it in post. I think a lot of people would say that helps us, but I think it handicaps those of us that are able to deliver the product without a computer's touch.

I remember I did one of the gentlemen on Buffy's episode, "Hush." My boss, Todd McIntosh, was saying, "You got to do the back of the neck... You never know what's gonna happen. You have to make sure that the back of the neck has makeup on." And, sure enough, the camera goes by and they were supposed to leave the frame, but the camera follows them. We just had to be on point and I think now many artists who came into the business with CGI, don't understand what it's like to be grinding your teeth and clenching your fists on set, hoping it looks okay because there's nothing left to fix it for you.

#Douglas Noe #makeup #Loki #Tom Hiddleston

[aot-snk-4238]

My thoughts on AOT No Requiem (Fanmade Ending) Part 1:

With another chapter of this story coming out soon, I thought now would be a good time to share my thoughts on the first part. Before I do that, though, I have a few things that I would like to get off my chest.

A part of me hates that this project exists. Not because I find it disrespectful, but because it serves as a bitter reminder of what a complete mess this ending caused among many fans. I'm still in disbelief how things got so bad so quickly. First, you've got the people who hated it. People began turning on Isayama and calling him a terrible or incompetent writer, regretting ever getting into the series, insisting that it was worse than Game of Thrones, the list goes on and on. People who liked the ending are now endlessly referred to as "ending defenders" or more crude names like "Isayama cockriders," as though they're a bunch of incompetent fools who don't know the first thing about reading comprehension all because they just happened to like it. And then of course you've got the other extreme end of the spectrum where the ones who were disappointed are accused of not understanding the story or they're only upset because their favorite ship or fan theory didn't become canon. This, too, is very demeaning and invalidating for those who grew up with this series that they gave their heart to and cherished for so long, only to have it do what they felt was a complete 180 at the very last second that undid every part of the story they thought was special and unique. It's one of the hardest slaps to the face you can get as a reader and long-time fan, and while I can't fully relate to everyone's feelings, I can at least understand and acknowledge that it's there and it shouldn't be laughed at. Now with all of that out of the way, here are my thoughts and analysis of this fanmade ending and how it differs from Isayama's.

To start things off, I found that part 1 started off similar to how 137 did in the canon manga, with Armin and Zeke conversing in PATHS. The biggest difference would be kid Eren being transported there and seeing his older self. To be fair though, this chapter was only about half the length of what we're used to reading, so I'm sure we'll get a lot more in part 2 onwards.

While Zeke is enlightening Armin on the history of the earth and how the life form that attached itself to Ymir sought to avoid death forever, young Eren is in PATHS too with his older self, witnessing the moment Ymir found the tree and fell in it to become the first titan. At first, there is no dialogue exchanged between them. They just hold hands and watch. Meanwhile, Zeke is still talking to Armin about Ymir and how she continued to serve her oppressive master despite acquiring godlike powers that would allow her to obliterate him whenever she pleased. This is where the team working on this project attempt to provide their own alternate possibilities as to why this happened in a way that would make more sense than what we were given in the canon story in which she simply had a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome and couldn't let him go no matter how much he made her suffer.

So what are these new possibilities? They come in the form of a question, so their validity is not made absolutely certain, but they're presented as the most likely candidates nonetheless.

According to Zeke, she was unable to separate her own desires from King Fritz and was a lost girl who sought meaning. A place to belong. Tragically, King Fritz was the only connection she had in her life, so she clung to it with everything she had despite it being toxic and abusive. I could argue that these are the very reasons why she supposedly loved the king in the official manga, as explained by Eren in 139, but they weren't explained or touched on as plainly as they were here. I feel like they could have been if Isayama had just been given more time, but sadly the whole thing was rushed and underdeveloped.

Moving on, Zeke states that despite his efforts in trying to understand Ymir and her feelings, it was Eren who ultimately was able to get to her and offer her the choice of freedom. The next page transitions to young Eren standing in the clouds with his arms spread out and a smile on his face just like in the official 137, only this time 19yo Eren is next to him. Now I'm going to be honest here, this is where things started to get a little corny for me. Yeah. I know a lot of people hate that argument, but that's just how it felt to me. And before I say anything else, I want everybody to know that I am in no way about to mock anyone's fondness of this Eren over the one we saw in 139, even if it was a little over-the-top. It's perfectly fine to prefer one over the other, I'm just going to try to explain myself the best I can without coming across as harsh or unprofessional.

Eren is drawn in these panels to be a stone-faced, determined and unstoppable force who will "keep moving forward until his enemies are destroyed." This is the Eren that many people grew most familiar with throughout the series, despite his occasional breakdowns, but something about the way it was executed just felt a little too overdramatic and exaggerated. For me, the contrast between this Eren and the Eren we were presented with in 139 is too jarring. It came across to me as the fandom's idealized version of Eren, the "chad" Eren if you will, rather than Isayama's portrayal of Eren who is cold and determined, but has also been experiencing stunted mental growth ever since the day he saw his mother get eaten; side note: I know that Eren himself was responsible for his mother's death, but that's a discussion for a later time. Not only that, but the "keep moving forward" line starts to get overused at this point. We already heard Eren say this a number of times before 137 where this first fanmade chapter takes place, so I didn't find it necessary to include that at the end, but it seemed to be the writers' way of trying to reinforce Eren's ultimate goal.

Regarding the rest of the chapter, young Eren asks older Eren what Ymir is still waiting for after he showed her that she's not alone. 19yo Eren proceeds to explain that while he was able to make her feel something again, she still needs somebody to free her. He shows his younger self all of the visions from PATHS that he's seen so far, ranging from past events to alternate realities to things that couldn't be changed no matter what. Now there is only one path left that he strives toward. The one that he believes will grant him and his people freedom. This next line is the one that stood out to me the most throughout this fanmade chapter. Still talking to kid Eren, adult Eren says, "When you wake up, you will forget what you learned, but not what you felt here. This will all feel just like a long dream." Only when he kisses Historia's hand will it all come back to him. This line more clearly explains why Eren woke up crying in chapter 1, but couldn't remember why. Then he circles back to how he intends to carry out his own plan to end the cycle of hatred once and for all. Despite his efforts along the way, he couldn't change the flow of PATHS and save the friends he lost or prevent certain events from happening altogether, so he had to accept that sacrifices had to be made. In this case, he will have to literally sacrifice the world, much to Armin's horror.

To wrap this up, I'm going to finish comparing this to the canon 137, but since the first part of this project only covers the PATHS portion of it, that's where I'll stop as well. To save a little but of time, I'm just gonna be lazy and copy the first part of a quick overview of the chapter I found as part of the wiki:

So clearly, canon 137 starts off focusing a lot more on Armin and Zeke's differing philosophies and does not provide any further insight into Eren's ultimate motives like this one does, at least not yet. Armin and Eren are bound to face off soon in this fanmade version, but it looks to me like this time the writers are planning on flipping the outcome and having Eren come out victorious instead, especially when I remember the name of this project and what it's based on. I guess that means that in a way, I already know what's ultimately going to happen throughout the rest of this project. Whether it's going to be considered superior to the actual ending is going to depend on if its executed properly. I could very well be wrong about some of this, though. I want to give it a fair shot since these people have clearly put a lot of hard work and passion into this, so I will refrain from further judgement until we get the full picture. On a side note, I just want to say that the artwork is beautiful so far and I commend every artist responsible for their efforts. I also liked the song choice at the beginning and thought it set the mood pretty well.

Thank you to everyone who read the whole thing. This took me far longer to write than it should have because I'm not always good at expressing myself in a way that does not come across as confusing or contradictory. I will continue to share my thoughts as more content is released, which by the looks of it could be any day now.

#snk #aot no requiem #snk fanfiction #snk manga #snk 137 #armin arlert #zeke jaeger #eren jaeger #ymir fritz