#antagonist quartet

[queenofhearts7378]

“So this is Jake's fault, right?” Randy asked.

Danny made a noise of agreement as they continued running down the hallway, red flashing against their eyes and alarms ringing through the air.

And okay, it wasn't really Jake's fault they were being chased by a killer robot after breaking out of some holding cells.

Ever since Jake had turned 16, he'd been getting more duties outside of New York, really stepping up into his role as the American Dragon. NYC was still his home, his main area of protection, and the main capital of the magical community; he wasn't leaving anytime soon.

But occasionally a smaller community would reach out, asking for help with bigger problems they couldn't handle and he couldn't answer over the phone or e-mail. So Jake began traveling (through mundane or magical means), and solving the problems in person.

And occasionally dragging his out-of-town friends along with him.

Which is how the four of them ended up here: in an off-the-books government facility in Horrible, Arkansas, and made up of the same branch as the GIW.

(Danny had groaned out loud in his and Rand's cell, thunking his head against the bars when he heard that.

The agent that was interrogating them gave him a weird look.

“He's from Amity Park.” Randy said solemnly, patting Danny’s shoulder.

The agent went white so fast Randy honestly thought he was about to pass out before fleeing the room.

“Wow,” Randy said, “Y'all's city really is a curse.”)

The four of them had literally stumbled onto the grounds, got searched and had most of their stuff taken away, and thrown into holding cells where agents would periodically come to interrogate them on how they found the place and who else knows about it.

Danny had phased them through the back wall as soon as they were left alone, and accidently ran directly into a wall of weapons that fell on top of them both. Randy only got a sore shoulder, but something zapped Danny and he hadn't been able to transform since.

Which was when the alarms went off.

And when they discovered that the facility used killer robots as security and were all too happy to shoot a couple of teenagers.

Now they were running for their lives trying to find their stuff and their friends without getting shot by the robots or the agents.

They skidded around another corner, and Danny grabbed open the nearest door, throwing it open to check for their stuff.

Instead they were met with two startled agents in the middle of grabbing their weapons.

Randy didn't waste the chance and spun around Danny, landing a kick in the first man's diaphragm and then bringing his knee up just as the man bent over to gasp for air.

(The ninja suit let him be faster, stronger, more bouncy, and protected him from hard hits. The lessons and training of 800 years worth of ninjas were pressed into the fabric enabling him to fight when he had never done it before. He still had training though. He spent hours in the Nomicon practicing the moves and katas his brain knew but his body didn't. Following the footsteps and marks the Nomicon drew out around him, mirroring the poses the illustrated samurai and dragons went though. And lately, following along next to the First Ninja as he performed the moves next to him, occasionally fixing his posture, as Plop Plop chattered nearby.

Being the Ninja wasn't all cool flips and awesome weapons. Even without the mask, Randy was still a ninja.)

Danny took the chance to leap onto the other agent's back trying to get his weapon, throwing the man off balance right as he tried to shoot Randy.

The shot went wide and hit the wall, leaving a faint scorch mark on the white plaster. Randy dived under the shot, rolling forward right past the agent. He kicked his leg out, catching him in the back of the knee, right as Danny yanked the weapon out of his grasp and leapt off the agent's back. Between the teenager using him as a springboard and his leg giving out on him, the agent hit the floor hard. Danny didn't give him the chance to get his bearings and swung the weapon, clocking him over the head.

He swayed for a minute before hitting the ground. He wasn't unconscious but he wasn't getting off the floor anytime soon.

Randy and Danny high-fived before fleeing back out the door.

“Randy, that was awesome!” Danny exclaimed as they checked the other doors for their stuff. “I didn't know you could do that!”

“I know, I know, I'm the Bruce McCheese. Hold your applause,” Randy bragged as he opened the last door in the hallway to reveal yet another supply closet. Running past Danny, he punched him in the shoulder, “I'm still a ninja without the mask Casper.”

“What was that? I couldn't hear you over your ego getting in the way!” Danny laughed as he turned the corner, only to catch a metal leg in his stomach. His back hit the wall and his stolen weapon went flying away from him.

“DANNY!” Randy screeched, knowing he wouldn't get there in time as the security bot charged up to fire.

His feet and hands moved before he could think about it.

‘Separate - Gather - Free’

Randy could feel the energy pool through him, starting with his feet (“Your stance grounds you,” First Ninja said, “It centers you. It's the most important part of using the spells.") and surging upwards through his body in a way he's never felt while in the suit. Randy could feel the air thicken in his palms and he thrust out his hands just as the energy hit his palms and the top of his head.

“Ninja AIR-FIST!”

He could see the ninja magic hit the security robot and smash it into the wall. All the energy that had surged through him faded out, leaving Randy feeling like he just played Grave Puncher for two days straight.

He swayed for a moment, exhaustion hitting him like a brick, before he stumbled over to a gob-smacked Danny.

“Since when could you do that?” Danny asked as he scrambled to his feet.

Randy braced himself against the wall, “Uhhhhhhhhh……now I guess?”

Danny looked at the dented wall, then back at Randy. “Can you do it again?”

“Nngh….think I'll pass out if I did.”

“Alright, last resort then. And I still can't go ghost.”

Randy groaned. “Man we are shoobed.”

“We just need to find the others…..and our stuff.” Danny crouched down in front of Randy. “Alright hop on. You look like you're about to pass out now.”

“Pretty sure it'd just slow us down.” Randy said, even as he wrapped his arms around Danny's neck.

“Dude it's like I'm holding a couple of grapes. What are you, 80 pounds soaking wet?”

“Screw you too.” He dug his heel into Danny's thigh, “Giddee up. I think I hear the others breaking things up ahead.”

Jake and Adrien were indeed in the next hallway over, both transformed and absolutely wrecking anything they came across.

“Hey guys!” Chat grinned at them, impaling the last security bot with his staff. “We were looking for you!”

“Yo Ribbons! What happened to you?” Jake flew over to hand them their backpacks.

“Turns out Mister Ninja over here can use his ninja magic out of the mask.”

Jake blinked at them, “You can do that?”

“Apparently,” Randy said as he slid off Danny's back, “if I want to feel like I went ten rounds with a hoard of robo-apes.”

“Oof.” Jake shook his backpack at them as Randy pulled on his mask. “Well we found the main computer room, stole a bunch of hard drives that I'm going to give to Spud and Tucker, and Chat broke like, everything in there with a Cataclysm so no need to worry about cameras.”

“And we found out what they are called.” Adrien chimed in, “Beings Under Government Surveillance. They had a sign.”

“Bugs?”

“B.U.G.S.!”

“No wonder the GIW are such pests!” Danny and Adrien said together, high fiving. Randy snickered at the pun.

“Yeah, you're all comedians, can we go? The missing fairies are running loose and I've got to figure out if they need to move, or if they'd be fine with some more magic barriers around their town.”

“And I really gotta talk to the Nomicon. It's wack they didn't warn me about this.”

~~~~

Later in the Nomicon:

First Ninja stared at him in disbelief, “You did what.”

#in which i recently rewatched randy cunningham and now have a lot of thoughts #and decided to write 1.4K words of something i realized Randy could do #and finally had a reason to introduce the SQ's personal Big Bad Antagonists: Beings Under Government Surveillance #yes i did the anagram just so i could make that pun #feel free to ask me about them #anyways try and see how many heacanons i shoved into this little one-shot #queen will write #secret quartet #miraculous ladybug #danny phantom #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja #randy cunnigham #adrien agreste #chat noir #danny fenton #american dragon jake long #jake long #beings under government surveillance

[mirrorofliterature]

quynh @ booker: you almost killed my wife and subjected our boys to endless torture. fuck you.

#let quynh and booker have an antagonistic relationship! #like quynh my beloved #she probably won't be like that but I think she could be #quynh #booker critical #queer quartet #something else #the old guard #it's something in a fic I saw? like personally I prefer interpretations of Quynh where she is angry at the WORLD but not at andy/nicky/joe #or if she is at least not permanently

[salemoleander]

After seeing these generous lifespans/regen chances, and keeping the Secret Keeper and Evo symbol in mind, imo the only way to keep this from going past Christmas is to make the secret tasks start being things like 'push someone into lava' or 'kill the next player who says your name'.

Which is of course a delightful way to up the ante! However, given all that...

I really hope Grian has considered and is prepared to roll with:

The Secret Keeper is going to start asking for crueller and crueller things.

What happens if a significant number of Players try to rebel or destroy it? *

I understand if it just ends up being a mechanical macguffin! I won't even really be disappointed! But I'm crossing my fingers that he might be prepared for if the story builds to a non-Player antagonist.

To be clear, I don't want an entirely external antagonist for the whole series! I like the complicated motivations the Life games require if they're voluntary rather than some Watcher trap (apologies Martyn). However, consider:

A single season where this particular Life server houses an insidious and monstrous rock that commands people to hurt each other for life and prizes. **

* Yes Scott defied Boogey in LL, and the Divorce Quartet defied their soulmates in DL. But the source of these curses/ impositions have never had a physical, in-game form, and that may understandably spark new reactions. In this case, it feels like a good GM would be prepared for the players to want to bounce off that antagonist.

** This would also be neat to me as a canonization of the Life series taking place on different worlds each time, that have seemingly-innate rules or properties that differ from vanilla. Fun bit of worldbuilding there.

#slsmp #secret life #secret life spoilers #slsmp spoilers #secret life smp spoilers #life series #life series spoilers #salem tag #salem meta #trafficblr #spoilers #i love that I manage to write posts with fucking footnotes #it's not on purpose I just love asides #anyways. kinda tempted to write fic but LMAO no time for that we're on 24/7/365 MCNN lockdown baybee

[trash-heron]

Red Dragons; Or, the problems of adaptation and the early serial killer procedural

Red Dragon (1981) has the distinction of being the most frequently adapted Thomas Harris novel in the Hannibal Lecter "quartet." Despite the universal recognition of Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), with iconic performances from Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, and the more recent cult status of the series Hannibal (2013), which draws from all four books, it's Red Dragon, in some ways the most "obscure" Thomas Harris novel, that has lived three, arguably four, different lives onscreen over three decades.

Manhunter, visually, is an 80s noir feast set to atmospheric synths, but works within the newly established slasher genre as it attempts to make its own mark. The 1980s were truly the decade of the slasher flick, or the first wave thereof, and Red Dragon had to contend with expectations set up by the likes of Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers. Although this isn't a write-up about the history of slasher films, the basic premise I am going with is that the early slasher serial killer was portrayed as monstrous and, compared to our favorite killers today, one-dimensional antagonists. When I think about the origins of the slasher genre, I always think about the way the ineffectual psychologist in Halloween (1978) describes his former patient's "devil's eyes," behind which lived something "purely, simply evil." Dr. Loomis is dogged in his determination to impress upon the local authorities that Michael Myers is a force of nature who is unreachable by psychology, the study of the human mind. Furthermore, the slasher flick was unconcerned with the elements of the procedural: like in other horror subgenres, law enforcement are disposable foils that demonstrate the danger of the "monster" and the vulnerability of his targets and/or come in at the end to mark the conclusion of the spectacle (until the sequel, that is).In many ways this just seems like a quirk of history. I've been operating under the assumption that when Red Dragon came out in 1981, Thomas Harris introduced a type of story to a media landscape that had scant precedent for the serial killer mystery or procedural, distinct from the related nascent slasher horror subgenre, unlike today when a plethora of "murder shows" benefit from the success of this formula. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, the ur-murderer of the Thomas Harris fictional universe, became a cultural archetype that looms over modern crime television and film as he does over the investigations of beleaguered law enforcement officials in both Red Dragon (1981) and Silence of the Lambs (1988). When Michael Mann brought this first "Hannibal" novel to the screen in 1986, he too was breaking ground, to mixed reactions. Manhunter (1986), which lamentably lost its "Red Dragon" title due to studio publicity decisions, is both ahead of and a product of its time.

Manhunter, visually, is an 80s noir feast set to atmospheric synths, but works within the newly established slasher genre as it attempts to make its own mark. The 1980s were truly the decade of the slasher flick, or the first wave thereof, and Red Dragon had to contend with expectations set up by the likes of Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers. Although this isn't a write-up about the history of slasher films, the basic premise I am going with is that the early slasher serial killer was portrayed as monstrous and, compared to our favorite killers today, one-dimensional antagonists. When I think about the origins of the slasher genre, I always think about the way the ineffectual psychologist in Halloween (1978) describes his former patient's "devil's eyes," behind which lived something "purely, simply evil." Dr. Loomis is dogged in his determination to impress upon the local authorities that Michael Myers is a force of nature who is unreachable by psychology, the study of the human mind. Furthermore, the slasher flick was unconcerned with the elements of the procedural: like in other horror subgenres, law enforcement are disposable foils that demonstrate the danger of the "monster" and the vulnerability of his targets and/or come in at the end to mark the conclusion of the spectacle (until the sequel, that is).

Manhunter, and Red Dragon generally, is not a slasher flick. In fact, beyond the deliberately provocative reporter Freddy Lounds and a few men with barely any screen time who are killed off in brief fight scenes, the Great Red Dragon doesn't kill anyone at all. At the very least, no one is murdered in his signature serial killer style. The ritualistic murders occur before the film (and novel) begins, and the narrative revolves around understanding the mind of the serial killer and preventing him from killing again. At the same time, the conventions of the slasher film seem to limit the directions the film can go. Both Francis Dolarhyde and Hannibal Lecter (or "Lecktor") in the film have fairly opaque inner lives and limited screen time, while Thomas Harris notably does delve into the mindset and motivations of the "psychopath," positioning the killer as a subject of psychology, rather than an exception to it.

Furthermore, Manhunter's revised ending reframes one of two major female characters as a recognizable "final girl," and relegates the other to only existing in Will Graham's "happy ending," out of reach for the killer. This is the opposite outcome of the actual ending in the novel, and always seemed a bit tacked on to me, and not for artistic reasons. Will Graham can't actually end up broken and haunted because there has to be a clear demarcation between the serial killer "monster" and the "real" people who survive him. Blurring that distinction is, arguably, the "point" of Red Dragon. Michael Mann, perhaps, couldn't adapt the novel's conclusion "faithfully" because the conventions of this kind of psychological thriller weren't established, and did the best he could, introducing new building blocks for the "serial killer" archetype but not successfully pitching them to the wider public. Manhunter was not a financial or critical success upon its release, and refining the Thomas Harris "blueprint" was left to Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), which made the strategic and hugely significant choice of allowing Hannibal Lecter to become a breakout character.

The next adaptation of the novel Red Dragon has seemed to me, frankly, like a bit of a cash grab. The 2002 Brett Ratner film, starring Edward Norton and Anthony Hopkins, capitalized off of the success of Silence of the Lambs and the release of a new Thomas Harris Hannibal Lecter novel. This film was for those who missed Manhunter in the 1980s, which many did, and those who considered a prominent Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins essential to an adaptation, which many also did. The most recent adaptation of Red Dragon is the cult hit drama Hannibal (2013), which focuses on the main characters of the novel, Hannibal Lecter and FBI profiler special agent Will Graham, and can arguably be seen as two different adaptations of the novel. Both of these more recent adaptations are more coherent and recognizable as exemplars and/or subversions of the serial killer procedural, playing off of the tropes introduced to the genre by the source material itself, like a particularly grizzly and morbid ouroboros.

So, we have many points of data to consider if we wanted to determine what makes a good adaptation of the novel Red Dragon.

Ironically, for a story that laid important groundwork for a whole subgenre of film and TV, Red Dragon is hard to adapt and definitely hard to update. (So is Silence of the Lambs for that matter, but that is a whole other kettle of fish.) To my mind, the main two difficulties stem from both a strength and a "weakness" of the original novel.

A strength: Harris takes advantage of contemporary technology to create a clever mystery at the center of the novel. The problem: this particular bit of technology was only truly at home in its first 1986 adaptation, Manhunter. Both Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal (2013) had to make compromises to adapt the central plot device. Red Dragon (2002) avoids the issue by simply setting the film in the 1980s, relying on the audience's knowledge of VHS technology of that time, which, since it was 2002, was more or less assured for an R-rated movie. Hannibal (2013) sidesteps the issue more or less entirely by making the "mystery-solving" pieces functionally irrelevant. (At one point, Hannibal Lecter makes a dismissive reference to the killer using "social media" the way the original story used VHS and the matter never comes up again.) To date, this central plot twist has never been successfully adapted for contemporary audiences in the 2010s - or 2020s for that matter. The 2010s show itself, in its choices, implicitly makes the argument that the technical "mystery" elements of novel weren't really all that important to its overall message. Depending on your point of view, this argument is successful. However, this argument also depends on the irony that the creators of the show can dispense with the set pieces of the serial killer procedural and take artistic license because the source material introduced those expectations into the genre to begin with. Tradeoffs all around.

Another challenge to adaptation is sometimes considered a "weakness" of the book: after the real "plot" of the novel vis a vis Will Graham's hunt for the "Tooth Fairy" begins, Harris makes the bold choice of adding the point of view of the serial killer du jour himself, diving into the eponymous Red Dragon's motivations and experience, which almost takes place in a parallel universe apart from that of Will Graham, Lecter, and the BSU/BAU until both narrative threads collide in the climax. The problem: this choice "derails" the suspense of the whodunit and adds character development for a relative stranger to the reader. Every adaptation of Red Dragon changes the structure of the plot so that the parallel storyline of Francis Dolarhyde, the Red Dragon, is pared down and interspersed with the main narrative (usually) earlier on. Every adaptation has decided that Thomas Harris's precise plot structure isn't actually essential. This judgment call is also ironic: Thomas Harris apparently "flubs" the standard conventions of the serial killer procedural that did not yet exist because he was in the middle of inventing them.

But, we may ask, isn't this the nature of adaptation? The answer: of course it is. Adjusting plot mechanics based on the period of the adaptation and restructuring the pacing for film/television are some of the most basic changes one can make when adapting a book for the screen. However, that does open up interesting questions of theme and intent. What is essential to the Red Dragon story? What is it, in the end, all about?

Leaving aside all caveats about the subjective nature of interpretation or the possibility of a work being "definitively" about anything, I believe there are two broad interpretations of the novel and all existing adaptations favor one or the other.

Red Dragon is a novel about how much monster there is in a, well, man and vice versa: the fate of the soul is at stake. This is a clear theme of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter relationships in every iteration: to catch a particularly "monstrous" killer requires understanding said killer, but if you understand them too well, what does that say about you? And, more importantly, where does that leave you? (In the original Will Graham's case, nowhere good, with a broken marriage and an existential crisis, or, when we catch up with him in the sequel, in the Florida Keys, now a miserable drunk. For the modern Will Graham of the 2010s series, TBD.) Empathy itself instills horror, which is a fairly complex idea to explore in the late 1970s when Thomas Harris was writing the novel. (In fact, I will always find it remarkable that Thomas Harris had the foresight to research the methods of criminal profilers at the FBI at the beginning of the discipline and the BSU itself, getting in on "the ground floor" for better or worse for horror fiction and actual forensic psychology.) It's also very cross-media, as identification with violence on screen (and the "male gaze" itself) were emerging as key features and problems of film available to critique. The focus on "video" and boundaries between self and other in the novel seem very prescient.

Alternatively: Red Dragon is a novel about the limits of personal transformation. Thomas Harris seems preoccupied with the idea of ritual murder as an alchemical process motivated by the desire to become something "transcendent." (While one can see the mystical whimsy in a man thinking he's becoming a dragon, a figment of William Blake's imagination, "Buffalo Bill's" or Jame Gumb's desire to transform "into a woman" in a somehow "not-trans" way in Silence of the Lambs falls egregiously short and reflects more on a failure of imagination on the part of Thomas Harris and his readership than anything else.) I find the metaphysical aims of these serial killers interesting for two reasons. First, sexual sadism is de-emphasized as a motive, which is not typical of the serial killer archetype of the time: the most prominent serial killers in fiction (such as in early slasher films) kill because of some perverse urge, as an extension of the "evil" men they are or were made to be. Their murders aren't about anything. Both Francis Dolarhyde and Jame Gumb , in contrast, think they are setting out to accomplish something and that the brutality of their actions is beside the point. This is what constitutes their insanity, as this is clearly not true.

The actual nature of their murders and the ugly psychoanalytical implications of their compulsions are the ultimate limitation on their aspirations to "becoming." No matter what they think is going on their heads, they direct their violence toward women, and it is women who ultimately put an end to their reigns of terror. (Molly Graham and Reba McClane in Red Dragon and Clarice Starling, among others, in Silence of the Lambs.) The female characters serve as a "reality check" for the dreamy, bloody men of the books, which is earnestly ham-fisted on the part of Thomas Harris but also significant for the genre. Arguably none of the women in the first two Hannibal novels play the role of "final girl," that is, an "innocent" woman who acts as audience surrogate and restores socially acceptable norms at the end of the film. (The focus on such a "good girl's" experience means you can take a comfortable distance from the murderer and put yourself in the position of "victim." You are also anticipating that she will be spared in some way, which restores a sort of moral balance to the universe: the other victims in some way "had it coming.") In Red Dragon, the active female characters are not sorted into the "virgin/whore" dichotomy: in fact, even the actual sex worker character (Freddy's girlfriend) remains unscathed, and her feelings are more relevant to the other characters than her occupation, humanizing Freddy postmortem. The victims and potential victims, almost all of them mothers, clearly did nothing "wrong" and their sexual objectification is placed squarely on the shoulders of the men watching them. The women left standing at the end of the novels don't just "escape" the killers: they're the ones who put the killers down despite the male characters' inadequacies, and they, unlike a Jason or a Michael Myers, stay down.

Of course, I think both broad themes are very present and active in Red Dragon, and, probably unsurprisingly, Hannibal Lecter is something of a cipher for both threads. If our main concern is coming to terms with our empathy and capacity for violence (or "men's," I suppose), Hannibal Lecter nimbly eludes being a subject of empathy, instead setting himself up as the observer and interpreter of other killers. His insight into other people is certifiably superior: he's literally a renowned psychiatrist. The possibility of a Hannibal Lecter raises the stakes enormously for our own navel-gazing, as we are not just wondering, along with Will Graham, whether the wicked deeds of others might appeal to us, but are actually facing up to the reality that the killer has been beside us as a peer all along, not the subject of scrutiny. If our main concern is the limitations of personal transformation, Hannibal Lecter is a very sharp foil for our doomed killers because while he can easily identify the signs of a transmutation complex, it isn't especially relevant to him personally. Hannibal Lecter doesn't kill and eat people because he's turning into anything. As he famously tells Clarice Starling as she attempts to interview him, "Nothing happened to me. I happened." He already is what he is, rooted in sensual reality - like the women in the books - and he is merely indulging his appetites and aesthetics. This, I think, is why he prevails and why he can make himself at home on the side of our woebegone detective protagonists when he feels like it. Hannibal Lecter is never doomed: he can always happen to you.

Manhunter favors the first tendency, and is not particularly interested in Francis Dolarhyde's "Becoming" as the Great Red Dragon. This allows for a very intense and nuanced meditation on identification and the role of empathy that artistic representations of violence invoke. The focus on "seeing" gains a whole other dimension in the context of film, as there are many interesting things going on with perspective and scene composition. 2002's Red Dragon favors the second tendency, if I had to make the judgment call. Although the film is probably the most "faithful" adaptation of the events of the novel, I do think you can come away from the film not remembering that Will Graham has any particular problem/gift of heightened empathy or that losing himself by identifying with Hannibal Lecter or Francis Dolarhyde was ever a serious possibility. (Even at the climax, when Graham to a "violent" place he ends up taking on the persona of Dolarhyde's abuser, not Dolarhyde himself, which is entirely an invention of the film.) What the film does emphasize is the quixotic journey of Francis Dolarhyde, giving quite a lot of room to his backstory as well as his inner conflict between his deadly, "spiritual" inclinations and his romance with Reba. Also, and most importantly, this is the one adaptation of Red Dragon that actually allows Molly Graham to kill Francis Dolarhyde when he tries to make the Graham family another ritual sacrifice. There's an intentional symmetry in the novel between the murders and Dolarhyde's ultimate demise at the hand of the desirable "mother," which really underlines the juxtaposition between the story Dolarhyde is telling himself and what he's actually been doing.

Perhaps this is me tying a bow on it all by claiming that Bryan Fuller's Hannibal (2013) manages to incorporate both major themes, but I do think it's very interesting to at least think of the series as two different adaptations of Red Dragon. The first adaptation is obvious: the second half of season 3 "does" Red Dragon, and honestly gives fantastic depth to Francis Dolarhyde's inner world and his quest for transformation through death. However, I also think you can view the entire series as a whole as an adaptation of Red Dragon. I say this because the main bulk of the existing seasons of Hannibal cover the period of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter's relationship prior to Lecter's capture, which is only depicted (in exposition) in the novel. Aside from the incorporation of various plot points and characters from the novels Hannibal (1999) and Hannibal Rising (2006) in season 2 and season 3, one could place the (first) three seasons of Hannibal entirely in the world of Red Dragon. I think this is especially suggested in the first episode, which opens with Will Graham doing a visionary walk-through of a family annihilation that pretty much exactly hearkens back to his first major scene in the novels and the films: later in the episode, Graham's inner monologue about imagination and taste - the first substantive insight we get into the character - is rewritten as dialogue between Graham, Jack Crawford, and Hannibal Lecter. So, even while the plot of the series begins at a different point in time, stylistically, we're back at the beginning of Red Dragon anyway. This interpretation allows for a lot more flexibility if we're looking for major themes coming from the source material. Identification and empathic intimacy are the animating features of the central Will-Hannibal dyad: at the same time, the psychic landscapes Will Graham (and to a lesser extent characters like Alana Bloom or Bedelia du Maurier) explore alongside Hannibal Lecter are tied up in questions of transformation and limitation.

In the series, Lecter not only pinpoints the urges to "become" in other killers but also becomes deeply invested in Will Graham's capacity for metamorphosis as an expression of identification and intimacy. If, as I've suggested previously, Hannibal Lecter exists as a grounded corrective to the soulful longings of murderers who wish to change through the deaths of others, this seems like a contradiction on its face. However, if we take this interpretation of Hannibal Lecter in the novels into our viewing of the series, the tension between Hannibal and Will sharpens into a very intimate exchange of knowing and refusing to know one another. Hannibal Lecter seems to have no interest in Will Graham becoming something or someone else via the alembic of murder. When he tempts Will, he is not (ultimately) encouraging the profiler to look away from the world to some impossible dream that would mark him for death like the other murderers they hunt together. Hannibal Lecter is very interested in Will Graham becoming a killer, that is, embracing all of who he already is with clarity and insight, which is a transformation rooted in psychology and is also entirely possible. Will then resists self-knowledge, or bringing his self-knowledge into the material world. Hannibal resists his own identification with another human being, and realizes (a bit too late) that there may be a way to bring Will down to Earth (and closer to him) without destroying him, as he inevitably does - gleefully - to his other proteges and projects.

No adaptations of Red Dragon have embraced the novel's ending. In the end of the original novel, Will Graham is left in the hospital, resigned to the fact that he's lost his wife and stepson, and drifts into a drug-induced dream state, where he doesn't dream of "Molly leaving" or Dolarhyde, but rather visits a memory from the time shortly after he'd killed Garret Jacob Hobbs. He remembers visiting Shiloh, the site of a particularly bloody battle in the American Civil War, and has an epiphany. At the time, he'd considered the battlefield "haunted," but now realizes that it is, in fact, "indifferent." In the natural world, there is no mercy, "we make mercy": "There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us." Graham accepts that he has the capacity to "make murder; perhaps mercy too." Murder, however, is what he understands. He wonders if "vicious urges" in humanity and the "dark instinctive knowledge" of those urges could act as a vaccine against the "virus" of violence, allowing for the possibility of civilization that has "overgrown the basic reptile brain." He doesn't settle on an answer, but does believe he was wrong about Shiloh. "Shiloh isn't haunted - men are haunted. Shiloh doesn't care."

Granted, this would be hard portray on screen. A filmmaker would have to resort to voice over, perhaps, or merely suggest where Thomas Harris declares. Another option would have Will's epiphany take the form a letter to Hannibal Lecter, an answer to a message Graham never receives. In this letter, which Jack Crawford destroyed, Lecter says we live in a "primitive time," "neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books." He wishes Graham a "speedy convalescence," and hopes "he will not be too ugly" after recovering from the wounds the Great Red Dragon gave him. "I think of you often," he writes, and then writes his name. Lecter believes "half measures" are the true poison: Graham, if he knew his dream was a reply to his counterpart, would perhaps take the position that "half measures" are the antidote, a strategic ambivalence that, perhaps, makes mercy as possible as murder. Such a reply, however, would lack conviction. It would, however, betray that in the end this is a conversation vulnerable to distance and time and that there is no appeal to a higher power or state of enlightenment, just to one another. Perhaps the last scene of "The Wrath of the Lamb," the final episode of season 3 of Hannibal, is the closest we'll come to seeing a cinematic portrayal of this conclusion. The profiler taking the serial killer into his arms, where they hold each other like lovers, and then throwing both of them off a cliff and into the sea. Not a half measure at all.

In the meantime, all of these versions of Red Dragon are worth a look.

#nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #will graham #manhunter 1986 #red dragon #thomas harris #silence of the lambs #slashers #francis dolarhyde #murder husbands #essay #fadserver #hannibal meta

[sorenblr]

As much as I love the Qadistu quartet, I wished the antagonists of SMTVV were the Chaoskamp dragons like Typhon, Jormungandr, Apep, etc.

That also would have been cool, I think. It's extremely funny that Typhon is still represented in the series as this lizard with the body of an overweight beagle:

#ask #smt #megaten #smtv #shin megami tensei v: vengeance #typhon

[crimeronan]

wait say more about how u use tarot to make ur OCs

oh sure!!

you can basically customize whatever spread you want to whatever project you're working on. i also sometimes use tarot for solving plot tangles or inspiring new plot points.

essentially you make a tarot spread like you're asking introspective questions or questions about the future -- but you're asking questions about a character instead.

then you can write down the results and interpret them based on the card's various potential meanings. tarot is all about using vague concepts to clarify your internal thoughts and feelings, it translates REALLY WELL to writing fiction.

i just pulled out my novel planning notebook and am thrilled to report that i have Pages And Pages of tarot spreads & interpretations in here. not just sol ruby devin and nova's original spreads, but also spreads about their relationships to each other, the environment surrounding them, etc

i'm not gonna transcribe my entire reading and interpretation for all four of the main quartet. i Will say that i pulled nova's cards first, said "these are all so well-adjusted and boring," and then rafi said "but what if she's the antagonist," and...... the rest is history.

this is the spread i used:

core self (one card to return to for their personality or archetype)

childhood (what most impacted how they grew up)

parents (relationship with parents)

education (background in school, study, etc)

friendships (either an important friend or generally how this person does friendships)

sex/sexuality (their relationship to sex and romance, if any)

goal (their overarching narrative goal)

fatal flaw (what will be their downfall)

work (career, attitude toward work, etc)

mental health (is it bad)

how far they'll go (what will they do to achieve the goal in #7)

fear (their biggest fears & how they manifest)

strength (a core character strength of theirs)

the core cards for each member of the quartet are

nova - the star

sol - queen of pentacles

ruby - queen of cups

devin - strength

and again, not gonna post the whole spreads, but. if you do something this involved, you'll find that certain bits will stick out Much more than others. i did these spreads in 2019 and would say a solid 80% of the cards are STILL relevant four years later in 2023. even as the project itself has undergone multiple scrapped drafts and revisions and plot changes.

some example highlights would be:

nova is my main antagonist. her spread is littered with stability, growth, reward, responsibility, opportunities, wishes, potential, dreams, whatever. her fatal flaw is the ace of wands, the fire card, a sign of creativity and passion. her parents are represented by the tower, the most chaotic and destructive card in the deck.

so here we have a woman born and groomed into enormous power by incredibly questionable forces, who has been raised not to care about the destruction surrounding her, and who has lived an Extremely Charmed life. uh oh!

sol's childhood is the seven of swords - betrayal, deception, loss. her friendships are the three of swords - disappointment, heartbreak. her strength is the five of swords - conflict, dishonesty, intimidation, lack of reflection. her fear is the magician - resourcefulness, willpower, desire, manifestation.

and. well. that's my antihero bitch. she sucks so bad. god bless

ruby's spread is much kinder by comparison. a calm childhood with happy parents, friendships and sexual relationships that are focused on partnership. her goal is justice. self-explanatory. her mental health is the four of swords - the exhaustion card. her fatal flaw is the two of wands - plans, anticipation, restlessness, lack of contentment.

so here's this woman who loves so much and so deeply and cares so much about so many things..... and has trapped herself inside a life that makes her fundamentally unhappy. because she can't walk away

devin's fear is the five of pentacles, a card that represents loss. often called The Breakup Card. it can also mean a loss of faith. their mental health is the ten of wands - burdens, responsibility, obligation, burnout. their goal is the knight of swords - ambition, battle, assertion, big changes.

so here you have an exhausted chronically ill mess who's standing alone because they're the only person who can do so, fatally loyal to their loved ones & burning with quiet rage n a desire to rip down the entire system.

like i said, you can customize any spread for any character or relationship. you just wanna ask broad questions about what that character or relationship looks like, and then interpret the cards in whatever way is most inspiring to you! i consider tarot a tool for creativity rather than an end-all be-all of fiction plotting.... take what you like, leave what you don't.

#replies #long post #tarot #writing advice #i guess? #original fiction #original fiction quartet

[lokiondisneyplus]

The first scene filmed for Season 2 of Marvel Studios’ Loki was the one from Episode 6, specifically when Loki time slips back into the Time Variance Authority to speak to Mobius. It’s a mirror of the scene directly pulled from the first episode of the first season, where Mobius has brought Loki to a time theater to interrogate him about some of his past transgressions. Loki, way back when, does not want to partake in any of this and threatens to burn the place to the ground. But now, at the end of Season 2, the scene takes on a different tone as Loki has returned here to ask for help, and essentially say goodbye to his best friend.

While getting ready to film this scene on set on Day 1, in a behind-the-scenes interview, Tom Hiddleston reflected on what a full circle moment it was for him and the character.

“Loki has to go back, right back to the beginning of the story, to see if he can find an answer to a question in his mind,” He explains. “He needs to go back to where it all began. It reminds me of that T. S. Eliot poem, the “Four Quartets,” ‘and the end of all of our, oh no we shall not cease, we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’”

All season long, Loki has been on a mission — across the timelines — to try and save the TVA and his friends. It hasn’t worked out in his favor so far. He’s eventually faced with an impossible task and begins to slowly realize what he must do, but not before slipping back to talk to Mobius one last time. He wants to say goodbye. 

“I think structurally we felt as soon as Loki gets back into the Temporal Core control room, the story's got to pick up, and you're going to move into this fully different thing. There's no time to stop down and have that sort of goodbye with Mobius,” Executive Producer Kevin Wright explains to Marvel.com. “When you start talking about, OK, we need to carve out some way that we can get somewhere and have a goodbye with Mobius. And Mobius doesn't know it's a goodbye. Literally, in his timeline, he's just meeting this guy. But to Loki, this is the goodbye.”

Head Writer Eric Martin viewed the scene as one last time for these characters to have one of their tried-and-true conversations across a table. “Loki already knows what he's going to do. He already knows what he has to do. So, when you sit down to write that, it's just like, all right, we have to have him express where he is right now and get what he needs out of Mobius, but he's engaging emotionally, too.”

As Wright notes, unlike the scene in Season 1 Episode 1, the script is flipped on the integration this time, as it’s Loki who’s asking Mobius all sorts of questions. It’s at this point that Loki, and viewers, learn Mobius’ own origin story with the TVA and some of the hard choices he’s had to make over the years. Loki, staring down his own hard choice, needs to hear some of these things himself.

“That was always really important, revealing more about Mobius than maybe we ever realized in two seasons, what his past was, and it was sort of then a flip of that season one interrogation, where it was so antagonistic, and this time it's Loki going back to try to get advice on how to handle a really difficult situation,” Wright continues. “This Mobius doesn't even realize that's the conversation he's having.”

The two men talk for a bit, but it can’t last forever. Loki asks about what it’s like to make hard decisions, and eventually, Mobius tells Loki exactly what he needs to hear: “Most purpose is more burden than glory, trust me you never want to be the guy who avoids it because you can’t live with the burden.”

With tears in his eyes, Loki shakes Mobius’ hand and says thank you before he slips away, again. If you’re emotional, know that that emotion you’re seeing between the two men on screen is real.

“It's a special thing, because Tom and Owen, they have a real connection on screen,” Martin adds. “That chemistry is there. It's there in person. They work so well together. I think it's touching for everybody on set because you're just feeling a little bit of magic. It's the last magic that everybody will see.”

Hiddleston knows that what he’s got with Wilson as a scene partner is special, and that’s what makes this goodbye so much harder. “Owen is kind of elevated the whole series, he’s so intelligent and imaginative and witty. Mobius and Loki are kind of an odd couple but, they found a friendship. They make each other better.”

#tom hiddleston #owen wilson #loki #mobius #loki s2

[littlepinkmoonbunny]

Okay real question

Why do you like her?

Personally I hate her, she's annoying and shes much too stuck up for my liking, and yes I understand she's been in her mother's shadow for the majority of her life and she thinks that everyone prefers her mother to her and that she has mommy issues bc usagi probably isn't the best mother, but shes over 900 years old and should be much more mature than she let's on, especially since she's form Neo Crystal Tokyo, and she had this weird crush/infatuation with her father sometimes then sometimes not, I just can't ever get around to liking her, and I get it she becomes better in the arcs with Helios and with the Amazonian Quartet but i still dont even like her thwn either,

So why, what are your reasons for liking her and staning her ?

It’s a good question honestly, I understand why so many don’t like Chibiusa. I think for me it came to a point where I felt like I understood her character from a more personal point of view.

She grew up worshipping her mother and hearing stories of the invincible Sailor Moon. When her entire world became threatened and in danger she knew she had to find this invincible hero.

So she goes back in time and discovers this hero is just… a kid. And maybe not the smartest, most athletic and is a cry baby and a klutz. Just like Chibiusa herself. She didn’t like seeing the parts of her personality that she didn’t like in herself, in this supposed hero who also just happens to be her mom. As time goes on Chibiusa goes on to realize this is the reason she’s so antagonistic towards Usagi and grows closer to her. I feel these points are more noticeable in the manga than classic anime though.

I actually used to dislike Chibiusa for many years until all of that finally settled in my head. She doesn’t actually dislike Usagi, she was disappointed upon first meeting in the past and realizing her hero was a cry baby like herself, but she grew to love Usagi deeply and they go on to have a comedic almost sister like relationship with each other that they both understand has nothing but love behind it.

I find her relatable in someways due to that. I really grew to love the character as time went on. Her and Venus are absolute treasures to me.

#sailor chibi moon #chibiusa #sailor moon

[magicalhideoutengineer]

Newt & Tina: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Eddie Redmayne: What was kind of wonderful about what J.K. Rowling's written is that the way in which they met, they're almost antagonists to begin with. It's definitely not love at first sight.

Katherine Waterston: There's something. I mean, he catches my eye right away and I'm instantly suspicious of him.

Eddie Redmayne: Suspicion. Attraction.

Katherine Waterston: It's a fine line. Yeah, so, I mean, obviously that's an indication of my amazing instincts as an Auror, but also I think you do it with attraction. You notice right away something about someone, but they are not aware of it, but it's nice that the audience gets to be able to watch it from that perspective, knowing that these people will...

- Entertainment Weekly

Katherine Waterston: It’s wonderful how, throughout the film, they reveal little bits of their past and certainly reveal a great deal of their character to each other. As things are when you first meet someone, you get a very general sense of who they are. My sense of who Newt is at the beginning is that he’s dangerous and untrustworthy, and kind of cute, too. Part of what I love about Tina is she's flawed and often doesn't achieve what she is pursuing or things don't work out for her [like] she hopes. But she is good at her job and the moment she sees Newt she knows something is going on, even though she doesn't exactly know what. And that, to me, was the first clue that she's not a total disaster.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Movie-Making News & The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Katherine Waterstob: One of my favourite messages of the film: that there's so much more to people than initially meets the eye. I think it's one of the great discoveries in the film, at least for Tina as she gets to know Newt. At the beginning, he's not very engaged; he's prickly; he really wishes she'd probably fuzz off. She thinks he's got an interest in a ridiculous subject, and one that's dangerous and a nuisance. But it's through getting to know him better that she comes to understand what these creatures really mean and what they can be. And through seeing his relationship with the creatures, she comes to see there's so much more to him than just the prickly, standoffish and disinterested outsider she meets at the beginning of the film.

- HMV

Eddie Redmayne: Certainly at the beginning of the film when he meets Katherine's character, there's a great antagonism between them, and they're both quite sort of knotty characters. We sort of know that ultimately those two in the Potter lore get together, and there's this sort of central build of these two people who are outsiders finding each other.

- Entertainment Weekly

Eddie Redmayne: One of the things I loved about this script when I first read it is, I think JK Rowling had always seen it as telling a larger story, but the film is it's own thing. Actually the relationships that you see arrive in the film, they stand together as one sort of whole piece. But What I love is that the relationship starts kind of...

Katherine Waterston: Combative.

Eddie Redmayne: Yeah, it's not love at first sight put it that way. Maybe there's a bit chemistry at first sight, but it's quite combative. But what was lovely was to play a slow build, to be able to play this kind of — these characters are thrown into a world, this quartet together. They're all outsiders in some ways, and yet they have really heroic qualities within them. So it's kind of lovely for us to not rush that and be able to play it slow.

Katherine Waterston: You know that eventually you know these two people end up together. So you can see and look for when they start to notice each other, you know what I mean? Because you're in on it in a way that I think is really fun. I feel like there's a lot in this movie of us kind of like, oh, that tragic stuff where you look at someone and they're not looking at you, and then you look away and then they look at you. So there's like all of that sort of stuff going on.

- Entertainment Weekly

Katherine Waterston: I think the biggest distinction is actually the way witches and wizards interact with the muggles, or as we call them "No-Majs" in America, because we're forbidden to engage with them at all. We were persecuted during the very real Salem Witch Trials and went into hiding. There's just a lot more secrecy aroud witchcraft in America. When Newt shows up, he's very casual about things we are very, very strict about.

Eddie Redmayne: I feel like Newt doesn't really care about rules that much anyway.

Katherine Waterston: No, he doesnt. It's quite shocking to me.

Eddie Redmayne: It really irks her.Katherine Waterston: It stresses me out a bit, but also I find him really charming and engaging. So you know...

- Entertainment Weekly Binge Dec 07 2016

Katherine Waterston: With Newt and his case, the main problem is that it's a lot easier for witches and wizards to hide from the No-Maj world than to hide magical creatures, especially ones that are on the loose in the community. So that's the number one threat. It would be disatrous. They plough things over, they break things, they could harm people. For most of the film, Tina is just imagining the worst-case scenario. In Amercian, as it's established in the film, we've been taught that magical creatures is a bad thing. We should not have them at all, not in America and certainly not on the loose. She's almost panicked to get them back. In her interaction with the beasts as the're tracked down and recovered, Tina galves a better appreciation for Newt. So when push comes to shove, she again abandons the rule book and helps someone in trouble.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Movie-Making News

David Yates: She had done something really bad. Like Newt, she is a wee bit of an outsider.'

- Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Katherine Waterston: Her relationship with Newt? I think if you're peculiar, it's nice to meet other peculiar people. Whether it's romantic or not, it's lonely when you feel like you're the only peculiar person out there. I think Newt and Tina are both kinda offbeat and have a lot of qualities that have often been attributed to geeks. I don't really think of them as geeks, just a little bit unusual.

- Yahoo UK

Katherine Waterson: There’s pieces of it that are very true to life, the cultural clash, we use different words, we have different ways of engaging, she’s an New Yorker, she’s kind of loud and aggressive.

Eddie Redmayne: He’s an introvert. He hates people.

Katherine Waterston: Yeah, and polite. Maybe not polite. There’s a different way of interacting that you certainly notice, Iike I notice goning from New York, as I'm from New York, to England to shoot the movie and sometimes there's a real...

Eddie Redmayn: Even in press, there are things. Sometimes I'll say a word and Katherine will be like, "What does that mean?" Or I'll say the other way around.Katherine Waterston: I'll have to translate it or the other way. Yeah, so, there was so much that I think that JK Rowling noticed about the differences and the cultures that she used in the story. But then at the same time, there are these beautiful parallels between Newt and Tina, and I think once they get to know each other better, they notice the similarities, and the connection there builds. But at the beginning, I think all they see is differences.

- Netease

Katherine Waterston: I think she felt more like a fish put of water in the first film, and I think maybe she and Newt recognised the similarity in one another. They both were in a situation where things weren't quite familiar or right for them.

- SFX Magazine

Katherine Waterston: Actually this is a point of connection between Newt and Tina is that they both had an aspect of their lives that really makes sense to them that in which they are highly functional, and then these other aspects of their lives are not so much. She also struggles with communication. She was orphaned as a child and had to take on a lot of responsibility at home, and as a result, didn't really socialise and develop like the average teenager might. So there are these aspects of her that are a bit stunted, but like all JK Rowling characters, utimately, whatever the guards are, whatever the barriers are, she has this huge heart.

- Kermodeandmayo

Katherine Waterston: What was great at the beginning, you see this slight clash of cultures. He's the outsider in New York. It's her town. She says things he doesn't understand, like No-Maj. He doesn't know what she's talking about. And they started off having this combative relationship. And I think they probably think that they are quite different from one another, but as they get to know each other, they see that there's a lot of points of connection that they had actually quite a lot in common, that they are both really passionate about their work, that they are both a little bit awkward in social interactions. That part of their lives has been sort of neglected and underdeveloped. And they both have a tenderness to them and big-heartedness to them that is quite covered by the way that they present themselves to the world. So it's fun to find the moment where they recognise each other.  

- Tencent

Eddie Redmayne: They're both really passionate people. Newt is absolutely, he's sort of slightly awkward amongst sort of human beings and wizards, but with his creatures he's like hugely passionate, and similarly Tina is pretty formidable at what she does. She's fallen from fame at the beginning of the film, but she is deeply, deeply sort of obssessed with her work in a brilliant way.

Katherine Waterston: Yeah, actually in our world, we both kind of come alive, and in the rest of the world, we haven't quite figure out how to be complete people. Also what's so nice about that is that there's so much room for us, I think, as actors, for us to grow. I think these characters will, when push comes to shove, I'm imagining in the future films, be challenged to rise more to occasions and stuff and I think it'll be really fun to, you know, it's more interesting and exciting to see someone who doesn't know if they're gonna able to pull something off and attempted and than someone who's like, "That's right and no problem. I got this." There's no tension there. So I think there'll be lots of fun. Feats ahead.

- Entertainment Weekly

Katherine Waterston: She has good instincts. She knows she has a lot of potential, but can't seem to convince people of it. I think Newt sees that potential in her. That's a lot of what falling in love is, you feel someone else recognizing what you have to offer. As the relationship evolves, she sees what’s motivating him and why he is the way he is. They are both very passionate about what they do. They are both a little stunted, not very good at expressing themselves. And then you start to see the reason why they have become that way. He’s very isolated in his work. She’s become the parent to her sister, Queenie, because they lost their parents when they were young. So they’re these two people who really haven’t had much time to have a good time. In contrast to Jacob and Queenie who are much freer, and it’s in that contrast that you see how trapped they are. The moments where a little bit of who they really are gets to come out, it’s really exciting. And as the film goes on, that starts to happen more and more.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Movie-Making News & The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Katherine Waterston: I think what you see there are two characters who are confronted with their own social limitations. That the areas in their lives where they really thrive. If he’s with his animals, he’s confident and he knows just what to do. And although we don’t really see her thriving at work in this film, at work – that’s the place where the world makes sense to her. It’s what she’s poured all of her energy into in her life. In a sense, by mistake they’ve missed out on developing the parts of themselves that would allow them to just simply enjoy a dinner. I think in that moment they’re both confronted with their own inadequacies and their shyness, so they’re recognizing something similar in one another, but also totally too limited to do anything about the fact that they’re realizing that they’re similar. Then it’s almost made more embarrassing by the fact that the two people right next to them have no difficulty in this area. But, I think that the whole quartet tells a story of oddballs coming together and feel understood by one another. The same thing is happening for both couples in that moment. The ones that are having an easy time talking are finding that they have things in common and a connection, and the ones that are struggling are also finding a connection in that moment.

- Snitchseeker

Katherine Waterston: I think they really kind of are actually kindred spirits. They recognize a similarity in the other. He has an area of his life that makes sense to him when he's with his creatures, and that's the safe place in the world he understands. In the broader world, it's challenging in many ways. Human interactions are challenging. Tina, her work makes sense to her. That's the world in which she thrives, and beyond that interpersonal relationships are quite difficult. You see it when Queenie and Jacob are at the dinner table in the first one. I always thought that scene told so much about these two. Just with the little quick glances and stuff, they were observing a great deal about the trap they are both in a little bit in human interactions, while these other two are so freely engaging with each other, but that's a comfort for them, and I also think I really don't have to act. It's a wonderful gift. Tina loves his relationship to the creatures and I, Katherine, I think it's so beautiful to watch Eddie work with them in the way he does. I feel like that's something that's very easy to perform, but that I think makes her feel like, "This is a really, really special wizard."

- FilmsNow Bloopers & Extras

Katherine Waterston: Part of what causes the wonderful connection to happen in the first film is that they recognise that similarity in each other. She also has a world that makes sense to her, and the greater world is a challenge and those personal relationships, she just doesn't... I think a little bit differently. She just maybe hasn't allowed herself that. There hasn't been time for that part in her life, because she's had a responsibility to care for her sister and focus on her work. But also that's the kind of thing people say when they're like justifying being single or something.

- Wizarding World

Katherine Waterston: When I first read the script, I really loved her journey that at the beginning she's really uneducated about fantastical beasts and maybe even a little bigoted and judgemental of what she doesn't fully understand and through the process of being exposed to them and seeing what they are through Eddie's eyes, she comes to a greater understanding and I loved that journey and that growth.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Interview

Katherine Waterston: And I love Tina because – and I think we can all relate to this. She’s very complicated. She has that aspect where you can feel incredibly confident in yourself, but also be filled with self-doubt and insecurity. She’s got all this hope for herself, but every time she tries to do something right, it goes wrong. So she’s wondering if she is as hopeless as other people perceive her to be. She’s living with that question when Eddie’s character comes along. He lets her try magic and it galvanises her. It can be lonely being an oddball until you find other oddballs. Their friendship is not a mere byproduct of the extreme set of circumstances they go through together; it is their common experience as outsiders that draws them to one another.

- Hot Press

Katherine Waterston: Tina is a very serious, hard-working, also awkward, damaged person. They share some traits. Both are very passionate about their work and thrive in that enviroment, but are little stunted developmentally in other ways. What I loved about Tina was that she loves her work. She's so proud of it and has a sense that she has great potential as a witch, as an Auror, but also at the same exact time, harbours a real anxiety and fear that she won't reach her potential, that she isn't good enough, and so I love that kind of internal struggle she has. It is when she too bonds together with these other three... It's kind of strength in numbers thing. They, especially Newt, I think, starts to encourage her to performe magic more than she's been doing recently because she's been demoted at work and she starts to kind of get her groove back because of that support.

- Filmsnow Movie Bloopers & Extras

Katherine Waterston: It just occurred to me now that both Newt and Tina are kind of rebels. He got kicked of Hogwarts at the beginning of the film. She is been demoted at work, so she's like a career gal without a career when you first meet her and is sort of struggling between both, feeling courageous, outgoing and confident and also vulnerable and insecure, so she's a bit of jumble. It is through joining together with, well, particulary Newt, but with the main four, or the other three I should say, that she kind of gets her groove back.

- MoviemaniacsDE

Katherine Waterston: Yeah, I mean it's one of the lovely things that I think Newt and Tina have in common is that both are really passionate about their work and their interests. It's where they kind of come alive. So for her, to have the place where she's most comfortable taken from her is very uncomfortable for her. So she wants to be a great Auror, but she also really wants to get back in the swing of things, because that's where she feels the best. She's really striving to kind of undo the damage she's done, but she has so much heart, and sometimes there are situations that compelled her to maybe bend or break the rules, even though all she wants is to get back in good graces at work. So she's kind of got this internal struggle going on there. But what's also amazing in the couse of the film is that because... I think that Newt sees her potential and kind of encourages her to get back into doing some pretty badass witchcraft.

- Entertainment Weekly Binge Dec 07 2016

Eddie Redmayne: With Katherine's character, it is sort of a slow-build connection. these two people, who are outsiders yet passionate people, begins to glimpse things in one another.

- Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Eddie Redmayne: It was one of the things that I loved – the idiosyncrasies within these characters, as you say. Tina was someone that presents as incredibly strong, and yet she has the fragility as well. And similarly, Newt has a seeming awkwardness and shyness, and a complete incapacity to relate to other people. One gets a sense that that stems from some sort of damage. It's also because he is someone who has grown up with these creatures, so he has great empathy for them. And he's his own person. J.K. Rowling writes about these characters who all appear to be misunderstood or outsiders in some way, but when they find each other, they bring qualities out in each other. Both Newt and Tina have a certain pre-judgmental notion, and yet when they really look and listen, I feel that they see each other.

- HMV

Eddie Redmayne: He does have a vulnerability but it's not like he's striving for a connection with humans. At the beginning of the film, he's very happy in himself. He's seemingly completely content in his skin, but it's only when he realises that he can have a connection, that he sort of begins to fall for Tina. He connects with Tina and it's very slow burn but it's been wonderful to play. They start as antagonists, finding each other deeply frustrating, but by the end there's a kind of sense of something.

- Yahoo UK

Katherine Waterston: I don’t think it’s too theatrical a notion that Newt and Tina could bond so quickly, because a lot happens. When you’re thrown together with someone in a high-stakes environment, you tend to feel quite close to them even after a little bit of time. Sometimes you know someone for three days and it’s amazing and you think, “Hey I actually know you. You don’t, ladies! You don’t know them yet, but you can feel like you do.

- Wizarding World

Katherine Waterston: As Tina gets to know Newt, she sees more of him when she sees him interact with the animals because at first she does see him as uncomfortabe and guarded, but she's not seeing him interacting with the creatures, and I think it's part of where the love story begins at least for her is when she sees him the side that he kind of hides from other humans and it's very moving to her. 

- Adorocinema

Katherine Waterston: She really has a journey there to understand so much that she's never explored before. She took her job very seriously and she has great pride in being a part of MACUSA, but there's also a bigger world out there. There might be something a little bit narrow-minded about her—her perspective in the beginning of the film. This is why diversity is a good thing and understanding other cultures is an important thing. As she gets to know Eddie's character, she also comes to understand there's lots of different kinds of points of view about things that she had sort of been a little bit more rigid about... rigid-minded about before.

- KUTV

Katherine Waterston: My character in the beginning of the film, has been raised and taught to fear the other in the case of the fantastic beasts. And through education and through understanding and being exposed to it…Eddie Redmayne: And empathy.Katherine Waterston: Yeah, and being presented with a different perspective on it, she comes to understand that there's no reason for her to fear what she's been taught to fear. So those messages have a solution in them, too, which I think is fucking useful.

- Mugglenet

Katherine Waterston: In another interview I was talking about Tina's journey: she has a fear of the other, she's been educated to fear these magical creatures, and through exposure to them and exposure to a person who has a different perspective on them, her perspective changes. There's hope for growth so long as we open ourselves up to it.

- Leaky Cauldron

Eddie Redmayne: At the beginning, I think Newt has sort of no interest in Jacob. He's just about getting the creatures back. But there's one moment early on when Newt takes him down into the case and Newt doesn't take many people down, if anyone down to the case and he shows Jacob the Occamy, the little and he watches the way. Because these creatures are hated by the wizarding world. Everyone hates these creatures. He watches the way that Jacob looks at this creature and he suddenly sees someone who sees what he sees. And I think that's the first moment that Newt kind of falls a bit for Jacob and I love that progression. And similarly with Tina, when she comes down later and begins to understand these creatures for what they are and I think he can put his defense down a bit.

- Star

David Yates: There's another scene where Alison and Katherine, in the case, sing the Ilvermorny song, the school song. I asked Alison would she write it, and she wrote this beautiful Ilvermorny school song. And they sing it together and the two boys, Jacob and Newt, they sit there and they watch. And as the girls perform this song, this ode to Ilvermorny, they slowly fall in love.

- Slashfilm

Eddie Redmayne: In order to surprise him, Newt has to appear entirely relaxed and unpredictable, but the Demiguise knows him; he already has a sense of what he’s going to do. So Newt encourages Tina to just be casual. That it’s going to be up to her to catch the Demiguise, because he knows less about her. I think that not only is Newt trying to find the Demiguise, but subconsciously he’s beginning to enjoy the proximity with Tina.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Movie-Making News

Katherine Waterston: Perhaps my favorite day on set was a scene with Tina and Newt on a dock. We were on location in an enormous hanger originally used to build zeppelins. It’s the biggest single storey building I’ve ever seen in my life, and had this incredible energy to it. We only shot a few takes of that scene, but that was one of my best memories. It was just one of those days that felt electric.

- Female First

Katherine Waterston: I loved the scene between us at the end of the movie. Because we’ve been doing all these action and stunts and working with the magical creatures, and this was just a very simple scene, two actors just communicating together, and we shot it with two cameras as well. So it was like sometimes you shoot one side and then the other, but we were really in the moment together. So what you see in the movie isn’t cut together between like many hours of shooting. It’s kind of more in real time. That felt magical.

- Tencent

Eddie Redmayne: What do I enjoy most about the work? It's the tiny moments when things feel real and they happen very, very rarely. You're very lucky if it you have one in an entire job and it happened for me on this job when, in the last scene between Tina and Newt, when they're leaving to go away, she wishes him and says, "Good luck on the book." And then she says the title of the book, 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.' Newt can't believe that someone's seen him, and in that moment, whenever Katherine said that, I got goosebumps. I was like got the tingles, "Wow!" Like being seen. And It's a weird moment. You can't really quite describe it and that's why you never talk about it in acting, but it's like something feels true for a minute or a second, and you don't feel like you're putting it on. It's just a natural reaction that happens to you.

- Snitchseeker

David Yates: In the course of the story Tina and Newt have this unrequited, quite tender, quite funny journey together.

- Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Katherine Waterston: I suppose in the beginning of the first film, she's a survivor and she sort of developed a kind of hardness in order to get by in the world and I think when she encounters Newt, it does soften her in a way.

- Cinemark Argentina

Eddie Redmayne: One of the things I love about Newt is that he's completely his own person. He's learned to be content with that - or he thinks he's content with it. In the last movie, he connected with the [principal] trio, and particularly with Tina, who saw elements in him which other people had never seen. Probably one of the only other people in his life who had seen that was Dumbledore.

- SFX Magazine

Eddie Redmayne: In the last movie, getting to meet Queenie and Jacob, and particularly Tina, like his heart has been opened. So his world has always been his creatures and his case, and through meeting Tina, his heart's kind of exploded, and so I would say he is out for being much more open

- iQIYI

Eddie Redmayne: What is it that he doesn't like about Tina? I think Tina is an extraordinary character. She is formidable, she is vulnerable, she is incredibly caring, she sort of looked after her sister in this extraordinary way despite a tricky upbringing. Even though she's created in the first film this sort of exoskeleton through damage, he can see into her and I think it's just a magnetic connection between them.

- FilmsNow Bloopers & Extras

#fantastic beasts #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fbawtftinterview #coginterview #tina goldstein #newt scamander #newtina #katherine waterston #eddie redmayne #david yates #fbawtftbook

[dededaio]

i was thinking about this recently and i think the best game to use as basis for new kirby anime (if you absolutely have to use any game as basis) would be star allies, funnily enough.

star allies is the game that was hurt the most by tight development schedule, lots of plot and lore details were poorly explored or not even explored at all and only later revealed in the interviews. tv series where narrative is more important could easily put all that in place

the huge amount of different dream friends can also be used to the greater effect in the actual STORIES and not just as bonus content, while also being great jumping off point of introduction to many of these characters

to top it all off mage sisters and hyness are memorable antagonists and already have iconic VAs attached to them, so you don't even have to recast them for anime or anything. they can easily work as team rocket quartet type of villains

#klu.txt

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Here's an interesting request. It mostly focuses on the reader finally making the perfect version of the Butcher Gang (Including Carley)

Whoever thought it was a great idea to "reverse-engineer" the Butcher Gang to fix their monstrous appearances was clearly an idiot.

It was sloppy work, only succeeding in making them look even worse than the first time they emerged from the Machine. And it never stopped cranking out clones of them, who eventually overran many parts of the studio and led to Lost Ones and all other trapped within fear them.

They weren’t even called their original names anymore..only Piper, Striker, Fisher, and Slicer.

It was quite sad that people like Allison didn’t remember their true names. You always knew them as Charley, Edgar, Barley, and Carly.

Yes, even you considered Carley to be a worthy member of the gang, a tough and sassy lass. You adored the idea of her in the cartoons, but unfortunately her creator’s dream was never realized, as both of them became the laughing stock of JDS.

After replaying Jane’s tape a few times, you understood how much this character resonated with her. It reminded you of Susie and Alice Angel’s connection, in a way, but you knew how that turned out--with them becoming one and the same, striving for beauty and perfection that was always somehow just out of their reach.

Though now that the studio’s power was in your hands, you could improve upon things within the Cycle. You were able to make significant changes that guaranteed a better life for everyone trapped inside.

Among them? Giving Susie the perfection she desired.

But then you wondered, ‘why can’t I do the same with the Butcher Gang?’

After all, you pitched the idea of bringing the crew back when Archgate purchased the franchise. Despite them being the show’s antagonists, you wanted them to have a sense of wholeness, too.

While you may never know what happened to Jane, you hoped to at least make Carley an official part of the gang; if not in the real world, then perhaps in this world it was possible.

But unfortunately, even she faced rejection here, as during your first trip in the Cycle, you found a Slicer shoved into a crate near that tape. She seemed dead, though the moment you looked away...she was gone.

True to her character, she was quite the trickster, with aggression to boot as she would startle you often. She’d lunge out at you when you least expected it, swiftly retreating to the ink pipes before you can catch her. And you’d have little time to think as irritable Lost Ones would come along to investigate the commotion.

Fortunately, you’re now able to anticipate her better, keeping the crate shut tight in some Cycles, while in other you tried out ways to contain her with little success.

But you finally devised a method, believing you could finally give her the life her creator wanted:

One with a perfect Butcher Gang quartet.

The first order of business was capturing the clones with the help of traps set up by Porter, Tom, Allison, Bendy, and Henry. Then you banished all the ones you could until no more could be found.

Back in the real world, you were at the drawing board--in a literal sense--and made a bunch of 2D references to run through the Machine, before returning to the studio to see what happens. 

It was just a series of trial-and-error. Some clones emerged as monsters, others far worse..and some even fused together.

You had no idea how all of those perfect Boris clones were created. Even the Ink Demon had doubts that you’ll succeed (though only because he still has that same grudge against them, akin to his toon counterpart).

Nevertheless, you refused to give up.

Then one day you visited Little Devil’s Lounge...and finally made a breakthrough:

At one of the tables sat four perfect Butcher Gang members right before your very eyes.

Charley, Edgar, Barley, and even Carley were all there. They were apparently gambling on slugs, as you heard the clinking of coins and laugher that sounded perfectly normal for their characters. Carley was arm-wrestling with Barley, as the other two cheered them on, applauding as she won the first round.

Your heart was soaring with joy, seeing them so alive and animated. 

You did it! 

After putting all of your blood, sweat, tears, and ink into this project...you made them real!

As much as you wanted to meet them right away, they seemed to be having a grand old time by themselves. You didn’t wanna startle them like you did when you saw Bendy for the first time.

Besides, considering they’re an actual gang, they might just bring you trouble, seeing as the toons here still didn’t take too kindly to their creators. You understood this as shared resentment over Joey, but it would be a while before they ever warmed up to you.

Maybe another day you’ll introduce yourself to them. You were satisfied with just seeing them in the inky flesh.

So you simply smiled and walked away without them noticing you, eager to tell your friends the great news.

‘It seems dreams do come true down here, after all..’

#clanask #anonymous #batdr x reader #bendy and the dark revival x reader #butcher gang #platonic

[shockersalvage]

Salvage Showcase - Kyoka

This has been a longtime coming, but here is the next Showcase on the misc Danganronpa entry front. She's lean, mean and made of green in the literal sense. The main antagonist for Kirigiriso - Kyoka!

Summary

In the true route, the Plant Girl route, Kyoka was created by the efforts of Santa Shikiba and another unknown creator with DNA off of Kyoko from a case 10 years ago mixed with DNA from an unknown lifeform that was recently discovered to contain plant and animal DNA. As a clone of Kyoko, she grew up quickly, raised in Santa's mansion, though was also quite lonely, wanting to see the outside for herself. Unfortunately, her biology had her highly allergic to the outside, meaning if she would leave, it would kill her.

During this time, other Hybrids would be created, but since they lacked proper 'nourishment' (AKA human flesh), they could not be as perfected as her. In order to help them out, Kyoka began making false requests to the Detective Library, luring in detectives before feeding them to her family in efforts to make them the same as her.

Her most recent false report, would be to lure in Kyoko Kirigiri who would arrive with a civilian named Kohei Matsudaira. Of the true route to the game, both would become aware of the history behind the mansion, avoiding being consumed by these plants there and Kohei finding her diary, would encourage him to reach out Kyoka. That all three of them can go outside together.

But, knowing she couldn't live a life knowing she killed countless to feed her family, she instead sets the house on fire while the two escape. The hybrids manage to get her body outside, before they die, but she's already dead by that point. Kyoko and Kohei bury the family before leaving.

Six months later, Kohei returns to the scene and spots a giant white flower where they buried Kyoka. A flower he mistakes for her.

In the Earth Defense Force route, a non-canon story of Kirigiriso, Kyoka is a member of Santa Shikiba's Earth Defense team against the Rhinogradentia, aliens from outer space that seek to conquer the world. When Kohei and Kyoko arrive at the mansion, they join the team and the quartet are attacked by the aliens. Ultimately, Santa sacrifices himself to burn down the mansion with the invaders in it. However, Kyoko is able to deduce soon after that Kyoka is also an alien working with the Rhinogradentia. As the True Super Galaxy Level Invader, she claims her forces are trying to save the Earth from humans. She orders her mothership to send a laser right at their location, but when Santa (who is pretty much unkillable in this route) tankts the hit since it would destroy Kyoka's sakura tree, she weeps for her Captain who she thinks is dead (he is not, again unkillable) and calls off the invasion. When Santa is revealed to be alive, she happily agrees to make him sakura tea again.

There's the non-canon joke route, Extra Scenario. ES has Kyoka as the younger adopted sister of Kyoko, looking after her sister whose been asleep many years. Kyoka urges Kohei, whose been lured in by illusions by a sleeping Kyoko, to kiss Kyoko to wake her up. This is just a dream from Kohei whose been in a car wreck.

In a non-canon alternative ending to Plant Girl, Another End, when given the chance to escape from the mansion, she takes it and becomes close to Kyoko and Kohei, living like a regular friendly girl to her new friends.

Kyoka is Kyoko's polar opposite in many ways. While Kyoko is stoic, calm, and very close off Kyoka differs by mainly being warm, highly expressive and very open to others. However, this is just surface level. Kyoka is characterized as being very callous to harboring dislike against human lives. In the Plant Girl route, she's a serial killer that feeds humans to her kind as a means to an end, wanting her kin to be just like her. For EDF, she's a spy that hates humans for their crimes against nature. Regardless of both, she's an expert manipulator and skilled in deception, able to hide her true intentions up until its either too late for her victims or when someone has the means to call her out. When exposed or in control, she's rather ruthless and has her forces attack her enemies, usually without mercy.

She isn't completely devoid of empathy to humans. In the true route, she's incredibly lonely and desires to see the world, hindered by her body preventing her from going out. When Kohei offers her to escape, she's genuinely touched, but refuses out of knowledge that she can't live normally due to her crimes. In EDF, she genuinely forms a bond with Santa and once she sees his selflessnes, is willing to call off the attack to Earth. Both routes, and Another End, show she is someone who holds potential to reform when faced with true kindness.

Rundown

Like her creator, Kyoka emobides the Kirigiriso theme of Choice - Selflessness and Selfishness.

From Kyoka's point of view, her actions are selfless. She is helping her own kind reach a state of perfection that she was only able to get because she was made from an Ultimate's DNA (...not getting into that can of worms) and just wants to see them perfected as well. This also goes for her actions in the EDF route: to her, and likely the other Rhinogradentia, she's being selfless by saving the Earth from humans who harmed it. Even in the ES joke route, she's trying to be selfless by guiding Kohei into waking up her sleeping sister.

But, in truth, her actions are dripping with Selfishness when looking outwards from a human or even morally right perspective. Kyoka is heavily prejudiced to favoring her own kin and nature, her idea of 'caring' for them involves destruction of another race entirely. Be it as a food source, or straight up genocide. She embodies love for the environment and family, but it shows that without even basic love for people as a whole it could lead someone to become a monster.

She also serves a literal inverse of Kyoko. Everything about her is designed to be the sheer opposite of her. Kyoko prefers to wear darker clothing, Kyoka is in a white dress. Kyoko is serious and brooding, Kyoka is bubbly and openly chummy with others. But its not a simple case of 'twin 'sister(?)' being peppy and the other not. It boils down to their inner character. Kyoko has shown throughout the series that she feels emotions just as much as everyone else, that she can be hurt, love, be remorseful, be sacrificial, have a strong sense of justice and struggles with balancing the expectations of being a Kirigiri with her own feelings concerning her past and the legitimate bonds she made with her friends or humanity as a whole. While she's known for her stone faced, cold front, and that's very much a part of her, its also a front for a much deeper picture.

So what happens when you have a Kyoko that's meant to be her counter? Well, that bubbly, comedic, openly emotional nature of Kyoka's is her 'front' as it were. It covers for her loneliness, her desire to explore, her want to connect, but also her deceptiveness, self-centeredness, and her twistedness from her own circumstances. A girl that is colder in life than Kyoko ever could or would be.

One front could alienate people, yet ultimately her actions are beneficial to humanity. The other brings people in, yet ultimately her actions can bring humanity's doom.

She also answers another what-if scenario about Kyoko: what happens if she never had someone to connect with while in her profession? While Kyoko was able to meet Yui and grow due to her bond with her and later meets the 78th Class who she befriends, Kyoka was quickly forced to grow up quickly without a chance to meet someone outside of her nature based kin or creators (who, more than likely, aren't the most attentive to her 'activities'). She hyperfocuses on it, to the point of going to the extremes if it meant she can benefit, at the cost of other's lives. Imagine a Kyoko who would do anything if it meant she could rank up quickly in the Detective Library, and didn't have someone to anchor her morally? It's easy to imagine her falling into letting people die if it meant gaining something from it or potentially framing someone to gain easy fame. It's something she avoids, but Kyoka presents a tragic outcome without that grounding.

Personal Thoughts

Kyoka to me is one of Danganronpa's unique and better Masterminds. While some may be...just baffled by the thought of a Kyoko clone running about (don't blame them as the concept is out there even by this series standards), I feel Kyoka works well as the game's villain. She's a tragic victim turned monster out of loneliness and no real path to take outside the mansion (Santa isn't winning best Dad awards any time soon) and, even when she's an alien in the EDF route, it works well in playing off the true route's showing of her: an extremist that would do anything for nature, even it costs people their lives.

The game does well in explaining her origins under a scientific manner than supernatural, which helps soften the blow of her nature as a clone. Furthermore, I also just think that Kirigiriso really does the 'Evil Kyoko' concept brilliantly. From how she dresses to how she acts and what she's truly up to - it was just pulled off extremely well in my eyes. She's, technically, an anti-villain since her motives are benevolent to a few, but unlike someone like Tengan (who is supposed to be that.......but fails. Miserably in the execution department), her methods of going about her goals are straightforward and why she does it like that is understandable. She's stuck in a mansion she can't really leave, luring people in with fake requests and later her friendly act is the best she can do. Her kin needs human meat as food, so of course she has to kill people and deceive them to do it. She has no way else to help them or help herself.

She's someone boxed in to really only picking the worst options in life, and its a tragedy like that and the what-if she holds, that has me really loving her. Also, I really like her more comedic, yet still just as threatening, portrayals in the EDF route (with her connection to Santa) and the ES route got some laughs from me. Kyoka's just a character that I think people should at least give a chance to read about and really makes Kirigiriso work.

#salvage showcase #kyouka #dr kyoka #kyoko kirigiri #danganronpa #kirigiri sou #kirigiriso #santa shikiba #dr kirigiri #danganronpa kirigiri

[basedkikuenjoyer]

The mood feels right, it's that time without light. Who's up for a lil late-night Togashiposting? Because there's one that has me thinking about a few concepts we've been on about. Which means we get to talk baby's first foxboy blorbo again. This was always one of my better posts that still generates interest today, but for the basic idea we talk a lot about the Akazaya as throwbacks and particularly Okiku's ties to Eiichiro Oda's own history on Rurouni Kenshin. There was another two-faced redhead in popular manga at the time, and we get Oda referencing the iconic clash with Game Master in interviews as a big moment he liked. But also just in One Piece canon it's interesting how Ryokugyu with a similar power intersects with Kiku's tale to bolster the connection. Likewise with the parallel story of the thieving fox spirit and how it intersects with Kiku's past.

For this part of our examination though, we're going to look through the lens of another meta concept we've been on about. Poking at the nature of "filler" and how much strict canon really matters? This is the finale of Kurama's last fight in the anime, something really glossed over in the manga as YuYu Hakusho tragically came to a close in the hurried Three Kings Saga. To me though, the anime at least salvages this arc into a worthy conclusion. I don't actually mind the idea of our quartet squaring off their personal arcs underneath the bigger show of the Makai Tournament. Kurama's fight with Shigure is so well done for that. One thing you have to give me, being filler or noncanonical is not an impediment to being an inspiration or an influence on someone else later.

The whole fight is a great finale for Kurama & his demonic past. We meet him distanced from it, they're reconnected in the Dark Tournament, he embraces it to answer the call in Chapter Black...then here after reconciling it he rejects the old self. Importantly though, he only wins through taking advantage of seeds planted by his old self. I love the final line to Yomi about it "I never leave anything behind." That reconciliation of past and present for a brighter future is where I really see Kiku picking up this torch. Himura Kenshin has a lot of similarities in his arc, but Kurama's with themes of reincarnation and parent/child bonds feel like the ways this gentle redhead seeped in. Of course, Kiku is still her own take on the idea. The trans aspect and cloaking it in a lady caring about her reputation is an excellent evolution.

Can't ignore the antagonist here either, this is why I was thinking this part in particular after all. A surgeon with a samurai vibe, choosing an honorable death after defeat. The way Shigure shaped the tone of this climax for foxboy's saga was giving me some big feelings. I honestly haven't rewatched the Three Kings Arc in years. The montage of core scenes though, showing us how Kurama grew into someone so willing to choose this new life, it had a big one I didn't really think about in this context:

How it all starts between he & Yusuke the MC. The story of the Forlorn Hope. That dub name is way cooler because the Funimation dub of the YuYu anime is a national treasure. But yeah...that's where this entire relationship started. It's an artifact that demands the user's life to grant a wish. An empty, unfulfilled Kurama was so casually willing to throw his life away to return a mother's love...without getting the point. Too busy turning over every possibility he hasn't realized how much he's grown. There's no way his mother would be happy with that trade because she doesn't see some legendary thieving fox demon...and if you told her she'd probably just say that explains a lot.

How does Yusuke solve it? Stepping in and sharing the burden. Very similar tone we'd see later with Usopp and the samurai. Even with the little dash of levity and that fine line between nobility and senseless self-sacrifice. Not to mention the big moment of Kiku's fall being Kin's final push to evolve and strike down Kanjuro. That's not unique to YYH but it's one of the biggest pillars of that series. But Bakura Town ends up being a lot like this in tone. The sumo match. Luffy jumps in because Kiku's putting her body on the line to amp up the crowd's panic. The two working together, Luffy stepping up and playing the hero for a moment, opens a new path. Just like the Forlorn Hope here and it letting them slide for being such good boys.

Then from there Kurama's story arc has the same structure we'll see out of Kiku later and Himura Kenshin around the same time. You've come so far by the time we meet you that we can do an arc about confronting that past. But that story can't end with going back to it, can it? No matter what it may mean, it's still so wild for me to see this connection over time. Kurama really was one of my first major anime characters I could latch onto and I've been a One Piece fan for so long. Just can't believe the cutesy waitress we met early Wano had all this in store.

#yu yu hakusho #one piece #eiichiro oda #yoshihiro togashi #late night togashiposting #okiku #kurama

[thedrown]

GOTS- Quartet

Since we did an updated group shot of our Separatist protagonists, naturally I wanted to do one of our Republic antagonists as well!

Though I should probably some of their general doodles too

#star wars #gots #ghosts of the separatists #andona ryft #xekhad eekal #sevtyremnuro #tyremn #narea etzo #clone wars #jedi #republic #lightsaber #kaleesh #chiss #nautolan

[paragonrobits]

i firmly believe that the Gems, antagonistic and Crystal alike, are best considered not as an allegory or metaphor but in being taken at face value for what they are; alien robots (or something so similar to robots as to have no funcitonal distinction) built for specific purposes and functions that give them some psychological value to fulfil but ultimately are compelled to grow beyond it even as the society around those functions hamper and hurt them, but knowing no alternative other than to Obey.

Born to be tools. Created not as people but as services, as weapons and accessories. A life with no choice, from the legions of rubies too the quartet-that-was of the Diamonds. Even they have little choice. They might seem to be the leaders of Homeworld, but by all indications they REALLY don't like it, are poorly suited towards it on a personal level, and much of the tragedy is based on them fully buying into everything being tools; every Gem they make, and the Diamonds themselves, created to serve a purpose and nothing else.

And so, this is a cruel system. Any deviations from it is harshly punished. There is no choice in the tyranny of programming; at the top the Diamonds conflate their feelings and lashing out in grief as the proper function of things, and their pain spreads outwards, destroying worlds not in the malice or self-interest a human might do, but because it never occurs too them NOT to. To never ask questions, because they're not supposed to. A saw doesn't get to ask if its supposed to cut this tree, or a lumber mill muse that perhaps it doesn't have the right to destroy the trees these termites live in.

But Gems might be made to BE tools, but that doesn't mean they ARE tools. They are people, with the ability to choose if only they realize the possibility exists.

So that's what the show brings us; a species of robots constrained by their programming, suffering under the compulsion to do as their function demands without any person choice, until Steven does as Rose did before him, introducing the concept of choice inspired by how humans do it, organic and messy and unpredictable but free.

This, I think, neatly addresses all the issues people have had with the show; the metaphors may seem screwy at first glance unless you conclude there ARE no metaphors. The Diamonds aren't a stand in for some flavor of human dictator; they are producer units put into a position of authority they honestly don't want to do, and have screwed up tremendously due to a lack of understanding. Gems in general might be seen as applicable to various experiences, but in practice as a textual element, they're not really allegorical and read best as what they appear to be at face value: alien robots struggling under the horror of being built to serve.

There are certainly some series that benefit from allegorical implications; SU, however, feels that it is NOT one of those.

#su #su Gems #queued

[shihalyfie]

I wanted to know if you could explain what the Digimons attributes mean? Some Digimon are vaccine types, then theres data and virus and in some cases ive read about digimon having the free or variable type.. i thought it could be something like a typical strength-weakness thing but then i read a part of a wiki where it said that virus types and vaccines dont get along? So now im just lost about what it means

I am so confused im sorry this is probably a really stupid question haha

It's basically a game mechanic. You know how games will have elemental alignments, like for instance fire-aligned characters taking 2x damage from water attacks and fire attacks doing 0.5x damage against water-aligned characters? Virus/Data/Vaccine form a rock-paper-scissors relationship like that (Virus > Data > Vaccine > Virus). It's a defining feature for V-Pets, since it adds a factor regarding whether they have an advantage or disadvantage over their opponent besides just stats. and has been a franchise staple since the Pendulum 1.0, which introduced it as part of multiple factors that made Digimon raising more complex and interesting.

So every time Bandai or whatever comes up with a new Digimon, they'll usually assign an attribute type for it as part of the lore. There are times there'll be exceptions, and the old card game (Hyper Colosseum, not the new one) was kind of notorious about messing with these -- a good number of the "exceptions" chronicled on Wikimon are that game's fault -- but for the most part Digimon are pretty consistent with the typing you see on their Reference Book profile. Different attributes are often the major distinguishing factor between variants as well, so for instance the orange Greymon we all know from Adventure is Vaccine, while the blue one is Virus. Free Digimon are ones that aren't typed at all, so from a game perspective they give and take damage with no modifier; the most famous ones are the 02 quartet's Digimon (V-mon, Wormmon, Hawkmon, Armadimon) and the Armor Digimon, and Variable ones are ones that mimic their opponent's type when they battle (basically the Frontier Hybrid Digimon).

From a meta perspective, the attribute triangle corresponds to the Chaos-Neutral-Law alignment system in Shin Megami Tensei (which Digimon takes a lot of cues from), so that's why angelic or "holy" Digimon are usually associated with Vaccine while dark or edgier (?) Digimon are associated wtih Virus, and why you saw that comment about Vaccine and Virus Digimon often being portrayed as at odds with each other. Takato is implied to have made Guilmon a Virus type because, like many ten-year-olds, he thinks being edgy is cool. In theory, it should be an even rock-paper-scissors triangle, but in practice, the franchise is biased towards Vaccine types, because it has a tendency to portray most of its holy Digimon as unambiguously good while its chaotic dark Digimon are usually evil. (In comparison, Shin Megami Tensei's Law demons would often be even worse than the Chaos ones, because when taken to extremes Law vs. Chaos basically meant authoritarianism vs. anarchy.) Even the naming probably reflects that bias, since while there are a lot of positive chaotic entities, it’s hard to argue that a computer virus is likely to be good or beneficial. The Vaccine bias is a problem that's dated back all the way to the original Pendulums, since Vaccine was the default Ultimate and most commonly used type to the point it influenced the meta. It probably even says something that we didn't get a Virus-type Digimon as a main party character in the anime until Tamers.

(Weirdly enough, Digimon doesn't have any restraint portraying the dark side of Lawful behavior or even organized religion -- Yggdrasil being one of the franchise's most recurring antagonists is proof of that -- and it's also been comfortable with "sacred darkness" like Kouichi's Spirits, it's just that for some reason the actual typing doesn't reflect this.)

That said, typing has been irrelevant in the anime for the most part, probably because it really does have "game mechanic" written all over it, and also probably because being too stuck to it would limit storytelling options, so anime between 02 and Adventure: hasn't even included it on their Analyzer segments (a big deal was made out of Ghost Game bringing it back). It was brought up at the end of Adventure (as if driving home the franchise's Vaccine bias dating back all the way to here, everyone flips out negatively at the idea of Agumon evolving into a Virus type, which is then reinforced further with 02's MetalGreymon incident), and if you count Tamers battle statistics Guilmon/Terriermon/Renamon's win records and which Digimon they struggle against do seem to be mildly influenced by their Virus/Vaccine/Data typing, but that's about the most I can really think of in terms of story impact. Even the Sakurada series (Xros Wars, Adventure:, and Ghost Game), which tend to be really enthusiastic about Digimon null canon, haven't really delved much into it at all. So that's why Takeru's Patamon changing his type out of nowhere for no reason probably isn't that big of a deal, since most of the time Takeru will have him evolve into his Vaccine-typed angelic forms or the Free-typed Pegasmon anyway if they need to battle. But it still does play a big role in the V-Pets and console video games, and in the latter, party composition often depends on it. In fact, playing a console game often involves experiencing the franchise's Vaccine bias firsthand, because a lot of the time your party will end up full of Vaccine types without you even trying -- the infamous Demon Lord endgame quest in Cyber Sleuth basically depends on you having a party full of Vaccine types.

#digimon #timelessanimo #shiha's ask box