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s10127470 · 17 days

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The MCU Synergy Problem

It’s been a month since X-Men ‘97 came out, and just about everyone’s has already pointed what makes it so good.

-Staying true to the spirit of the original while still striving for its own identity

-Staying true to the characterization and depiction of the characters, and in some cases, improving on their characterization such as in the case of Jean Grey and especially Morph.

-Introducing new concepts, elements and characters that haven’t been explored in other adaptations yet.

-Having so many callbacks to the original while not coming off as nostalgia pandering.

-The animation and action! MY GOD! The animation and action!

Really, the only problem people have with this show is the weird love triangle between Rogue, Gambit and Magneto.

We already had to deal with the infamous love triangle Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine in the original, we did not need this.

Not only is this just unnecessary, it’s also just weird since in the original, it was never even implied that Rogue or Magneto had any sort of history between each other at all.

But here, they met during Rogue’s days with the Brotherhood. And I think when they met, Rogue was still a teenager.

During that time, the two grew an attraction towards each other and although it’s not explicitly stated, it is implied that they did….ya know…

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Man….

Although I do enjoy Magneto, unlike a lot of other people, I can acknowledge that he’s kind of an awful person.

He’s a supremacist, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a violent, abusive psychopath, and a deadbeat father (well, when he used to be a father but we’ll get to that soon).

But never though that “groomer” would be an addition to that list as well.

All I can say is that….if this show took place in the modern day, Magneto ain’t beating any allegations.

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But besides all that, another major positive people have with this show is just how….comic booky it feels, which is something that’s been lacking with a lot of Marvel content for the better of a decade now.

But before we get into that, let’s take a little history lesson.

Marvel was founded all the way back in 1939 by Martin Goodman….but it wasn’t called Marvel at first, it was actually called Timely Comics. But by 1951, the name of the brand was changed to Atlas Comics.

During this era, the comics saw the introduction of several characters include The Human Torch (the android), The Whizzer, Miss America, The Destroyer, the original Vision and The Angel.

But the two most notable characters introduced during this time were none other than the patriotic fighter of justice Captain America and the anti-heroic aquatic incel Namor the Sub-Mariner.

But Marvel would become the comic book powerhouse we know them as today starting in April of 1961, when Altas Comics was changed to be part of the newly-named Marvel Comics brand, helmed by the legendary duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

And over the course of the 1960s, Marvel would not only quickly become the biggest name in the comic industry (only being rivaled by who else, but DC), but also introduce many of their most recognizable stars.

This would include the likes of The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Iron Man, The X-Men, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, The Inhumans, Black Panther, The Silver Surfer, Black Widow and Hawkeye, and of course, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

And in addition to tons of, in the words of Yogurt…..

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Marvel would also see plenty of entries into the wider world of television.

From the anthology series Marvel Super Heroes, to the acclaimed five-season run of The Incredible Hulk starring the legendary bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, to the absolute meme-fest that was the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon.

But Marvel really found their footing amongst the public consensus in the 1990s, largely thanks to their animated shows.

We had X-Men ‘92, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Fantastic Four ‘94, and The Incredible Hulk ‘96.

What made these shows stand out from their predecessors was that they strived to actually be adaptations of their respective comics.

Yeah, prior to these shows, all of the cartoons were largely villain-of-the-week shows with little to no continuity and apart from the characters, didn’t really take a whole lot from their source material.

But these shows actually went out of their way to actually adapt storylines from the comics, had ongoing plots, and much stronger characterization than before.

And even besides that and of course, merchandising, Marvel was making quite the name for itself in the world of video games. Most notably the ones that were made by Capcom, which included the likes of The Punisher, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and most famously of all, Marvel vs. Capcom.

Their status among the public consensus became even stronger when the 21st century rolled around.

This was largely thanks to the multiple films based on Marvel Comics properties that came out during the 2000s.

This included the likes of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Ang Lee’s Hulk film, Tim Story’s Fantastic Four duology, Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil, and (Sirs whose names will not be mentioned here at all)’s X-Men series.

And apart from the merchandising (which was stronger than ever before thanks, the 2000s would also see some of the best video games based off the Marvel Comics and its IPs.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: A New Age of Heroes, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, X-Men Legends and its sequel Rise of Apocalypse, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Spidey himself had a multiple of great games from this era.

From ones based off his cinematic outings, to ones based off his alternate universe escapades (Ultimate Spider-Man), to ones that featured the characters’ worst voice actor to date and was responsible giving us that famous depressed Spidey walking meme (Web of Shadows).

But everything would change for Marvel in 2008 with the release of….

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This film would not only serve as the invincible armored Avenger’s first outing on the big screen, but would also be the start of one of the most well-known and influential pieces of media in Marvel’s entire history…..

The Marvel….Cinematic….Universe….

Just about everyone knows about the MCU.

It only not made the characters of Marvel even bigger than before (along with introducing some of the more lesser-known characters to the general public), but also helped popularized the concept of the shared cinematic universe in general.

The franchise has gone on to become one of, if not, the biggest and most successful film franchise in history and has left a major impact on the world of cinema and even Marvel themselves.

And unfortunately, not really for the better…..

Everyone has already pointed how much of a negative influence the MCU has had on the media we consume.

From the multiple failed attempts from studios who desperately wanted to trend chase by making their own cinematic universe, only for these attempts to end up being massive failures, to a lot of writing in many films post-Avengers having this quippy and observational sort-of-write that while beloved at first, has gone on to become seen as annoying and tiresome…..

But I really want to focus on the effect it’s had on Marvel as a whole.

To start this off, let’s look the place where this MCU effect has been the biggest problem…..and it’s ironically enough, the comics.

Ever since MCU began, Marvel has been adapting elements from the MCU into the comics, which became especially more apparent after the first Avengers film.

And while Marvel is no stranger to adapting elements from Marvel media outside the comics, it’s never been to this extent.

This synergy has seen major changes in the appearances and characterization in many of its characters, including…..

-Iron Man being portrayed as far more snarky and quippy than he previously was. At first, people were on board with this change, not only because people liked Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal, but also because during the mid-2000s, Iron Man was not a popular character. Not in the frankly overused and tired “nobody knew who Iron Man was prior to the release of the first film” way. But more in the sense that everyone hated him during that time. This was largely thanks to the absolute clusterfuck known as Civil War, which turned Iron Man into a full-on villain. Plus he was indirectly responsible for One More Day, aka the worst Spider-Man story ever written.

-Loki became far more heroic and started looking and acting more like his MCU counterpart. Hell, the Loki we know today isn’t the same one introduced back in the 1960s. That Loki died all the way back in 2010, and the one we know today is essentially his reincarnation. And this reincarnation was not only introduced in the exact same year that the first Thor movie released, but in the exact same month as well!

-Thor started acting far more goofy and air-headed like his MCU counterpart following Thor: Raganrok.

-Hawkeye started giving off what could be best described as “uwu small bean tired dad” in the Matt Fraction run, which started just 4 months after the first Avengers film.

-Agatha Harkness having her appearance changed into that of a much younger woman following Wandavision.

-Introducing the Ten Rings following Shang-Chi, and having the titular hero being the user of them instead of just being Bruce Lee like he had been for last 50 years.

-Literally everything involving the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Its also led to tons of the characters getting somewhat phased out like….

-Iron Fist, due to the poor reception of his MCU show and complaints towards him being a “white savior”.

-Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, aka the original Ant-Man and the Wasp, who were also two of the five founding members of the Avengers. But despite that, neither of them appeared in the first Avengers film. And although it was a loose adaptation of The Ultimates, Hank and Janet were still present in that story as founding members of the titular team. Hell, Hank definitely has this the worst as he was killed off back in 2015, and was only recently brought back from the dead…..and he’s an old man now. I wonder why?

-Valkyrie, who was not only killed off permanently after Thor Ragnarök, but replaced with not one, but two characters very similar to the Valkyrie that appears in Ragnarök.

-The Inhumans, who had a major push in relevancy in order to promote their upcoming movie and TV show. But after the former got cancelled and the latter ended up being a massive flop, they ended up being banished to the shadow realm and barely acknowledged anymore. Also, the reason for their push plays into a later point.

-Quicksilver, which also plays into that later point I just mentioned.

-Black Panther, who Marvel seems to be somewhat edging out in the comics literally because of Chadwick Boseman’s passing.

And worse of all, retcons……such as…..

-Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch being revealed to have never been Magneto’s children nor mutants at all….shortly after the release of Age of Ultron.

-Shang Chi’s biracial heritage being rewritten to have him being fully Asian shortly after his film.

-Nebula, in addition to being made to look and act more like the movie version, also was revealed to be Thanos’ adopted daughter and Gamora’s sister….just like in the movies.

-Ms. Marvel being revealed to have been mutant all along instead of an Inhuman…..just months before the release of The Marvels.

-Thor and the other Asgardians are not mythical beings, but actually aliens who were mistaken for gods by humanity….who just so happen to use magic (yeah this is a weird one because it constantly keeps flip-flopping between one or the other).

-Nick Fury being revealed to have had an illegitimate son who looks exactly like the MCU Nick Fury, who himself was based on the Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury, who was African-American and modeled after Samuel L. Jackson. This is really weird because if they wanted a Samuel L. Jackson inspired Nick Fury, they could’ve easily just waited for the 2015 Secret Wars event and just had the Ultimate Nick Fury be one of the surviving inhabitants of the Ultimate Universe to be brought over to the 616 Universe along with Miles Morales, The Maker, and that son of Wolverine everyone forgot the existence of (even Marvel themselves!).

So yeah, as you can see, this is quite a problem.

Marvel has essentially been trying to make the comics resemble the movies rather than the other way around.

Which has not only gotten annoying and tiresome, but it’s also pretty disingenuous.

I mean, you’re pulling from a source material that has literal decades of content and lore to use, and now you’re actively trying change and contradict that lore just because of a series of movies adapting said source material?

This is obviously because they’re trying to appeal to new Marvel readers who came right from the movies.

But for some reason, Marvel seems to believe that general audiences have never heard the word “adaptation” before.

But this isn’t just an issue for the comics, it’s also an issue for…..pretty much every medium Marvel can be represented in.

For over a decade, Marvel has been essentially trying to push the MCU as the default everything.

Anything Marvel related: it all has to be similar to the MCU and barely anything else. And if it can, just utilize any of the comics written post 2010.

It’s pretty much the same problem that a lot of recent Spider-Man media suffers from.

When they’re adapting stuff, it’s almost always from the cartoons, Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man and Dan Slott’s run on Amazing Spider-Man.

And this has often come to the detriment of many of the non-MCU projects released during the 2010s.

Three of the best examples of this I could think of were Avengers Assemble, Square Enix’s Avengers, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

Avengers Assemble is famous for being the Marvel cartoon that was only created just to ride on the success of the first Avengers film.

But in spite of this, it was apparent during the first two season that this show was striving to have its own identity. Specifically utilizing some of the lesser-known faces of Marvel.

But as the series went on, the MCU got bigger and bigger. And as a result, the show started to get bogged down by MCU synergy.

From having storylines that were obviously done to tie into whatever movie came out not that long ago, to even changing characters appearances in order to better reflect their MCU counterparts.

The best example of the latter was with Falcon, who was a member of the main cast.

During the first three seasons, he actually stood out from the rest of the team visually as his outfit wasn’t trying to emulate the MCU.

It wasn’t emulating the comics either because I think that outfit of his was wholly original to this show.

But during season 4, Falcon ends up going through a time warp. And when he comes out, he’s been aged up from a young college-aged man to a grown man around the Avengers’ ambiguous age range and is wearing an outfit similar to his MCU counterpart.

Now we come to Square Enix’s Avengers.

My God…..was there anything this game did remotely right?

Or at least competently?

And one of the many flaws of this game was its roster.

And this actually plays into another major point on how stifling MCU synergy is.

Ever since the first Avengers movie, whenever the titular Avengers appear in just about anything, they’re almost always shown having the same roster.

That being Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Sometimes there will be other members like Falcon, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, Vision and Captain Marvel, but that’s because those guys are also major names in the MCU as well.

Like for God’s sake, switch it up a bit!

For the next major thing the Avengers appear in, how about we have a roster based on like…..

The Heroes Return roster, or the Hickman roster, or the Englehart roster, or the New Avengers roster, or the Stern roster, or the West Coast roster, or even the Classic roster!

But back to the Avengers game, they didn’t even commit to that never-changing roster I just mentioned!

When the game released, the Avengers video game had Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Black Widow as the main Avengers roster until Ms. Marvel joined up.

Yeah, Hawkeye didn’t appear as a part of the roster until his own DLC with Kate Bishop!

As for the other additions to the roster, we had Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Winter Soldier and the Jane Foster Thor.

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Yeah, when looking at this game as an adaptation of the comics (which it barely was), the roster is absolutely pathetic when you look at the INSANE amount of members the Avengers have had over the decades.

And when looking at this game as an adaptation of the MCU, it didn’t even commit to that!

This is even more of the case when you look at the list of characters they initially had planned, but they obviously had to drastically cut all that for the sake of time constraints.

Hell, if you want to see something really sad, just look at the villain roster.

Over the 3 years this game was around, it only gave us 4 (yes 4) villains.

M.O.D.O.K., Taskmaster, The Abomination and Klaw….

Yep! Just these four schmucks!

No Red Skull, no Mandarin, no Baron Zemo, no Leader, no Ultron, no Kang the Conqueror, no Absorbing Man, no Wrecking Crew, no Enchantress, no Whirlwind, no Crimson Dynamo, no Circus of Crime….

Hell, they don’t even have Loki, the most popular and well-known Avengers villain!

It’s even more sadder when you consider the DLCs, i.e Spider-Man, who despite having undoubtedly the most well-known rogues gallery in all of Marvel, not one of them appear at all in his DLC!

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In the wise words of a young redheaded YouTuber who likes to talk about Spidey….

“How easily you got showed up by Fortnite!”

If you want more detail on the history of this game and what went wrong, I suggest watching Matt McMuscles’ What Happened video on the game, but basically the reason that the game was the way that it was due to the laziness and apathy of Square Enix, the inexperience and slight incompetence of Crystal Dynamics, having WAY too many cooks in the kitchen (i.e., they worked with five studios, all of which were located in different parts of the world), and most of all, the utter greed of Marvel.

And funnily enough, this game ties into my next talking point…

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite! The fourth and possibly final game in the series….and is regarded by just about everyone to be the weakest game as well.

Just like Avengers, one of (if not) the biggest criticisms of this game was the roster.

Infinite had a roster of about 36 characters, having the second smallest roster in the series’ history, only surpassing Clash of Heroes’ 15.

This was quite the surprise when compared to the previous game, 3’s 48 characters and especially 2: A New Age’s 56.

As for the roster itself, it was made up of both veteran characters and new characters.

Returning from the previous game, we had Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, Dormammu, Ghost Rider, Nova and Rocket Raccoon.

Also returning were two faces that hadn’t been seen since 2: Venom and Thanos.

As for the new characters, we had Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Gamora and Ultron.

Yeah not exactly the most interesting roster.

And I’m sure many of you noticed by now, there’s something notable characters missing from the roster.

Namely the X-Men, their villains and Doctor Doom, all of whom have been staples of the franchise since the beginning.

And there’s a reason for that….

A very, scummy reason….

I already mentioned this in my X-Men: The Next Mutation post, but it does bare repeating her.

As the MCU became more popular, Marvel became focusing on pushing the Avengers as their premiere superhero team, with the Fantastic Four and X-Men essentially being dethroned.

Along with that, their relevance in the comics notably began to degraded, and barely began making appearances in media outside the comics.

The reason for this, apart from Marvel focusing on cashing in on the Avengers, was because despite still owning the overall rights for the FF and X-Men (which, why wouldn’t they?), their film rights were still owned by 20th Century Fox.

Since Fox was pretty much a rival company to Marvel until Disney bought them out, Marvel basically saw any form of FF and X-Men representation as free-marketing for Fox.

So they decided to essentially not to allow any FF or X-Men related characters to appear in any media outside the comics and even reduced their overall presence as well.

Which is why Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and the other non X-Men mutants were retconned into not being mutants, why Quicksilver himself has been sort of been an afterthought in recent years, why the Inhumans were pushed so hard, and why the FF and X-Men characters weren’t in this game.

Plus the justifications and excuses for this from the developers are absolutely hilarious, because you can just tell that they’re lying through their teeth while being held up at gunpoint by a bunch of Marvel executives.

Oh yeah, let’s bring up the other biggest elephant in the room and want led to Square Enix developing Avengers.

After Infinite came out and got quickly abandoned by the player-base, many people at Capcom have come out to reveal just how awful it was working with Marvel and Disney.

They weren’t just pushy with who and who couldn’t be in the roster.

They were also pushy about how the characters that would be in the roster would be portrayed (specifically wanting them to heavily resemble their MCU iterations) and even changing their themes to be exactly like the MCU ones.

Hell, this pushiness was so bad that for the trailers, they did not want the Marvel characters to be depicted as losing!

This was also an issue back during 3 as well, but it was essentially amplified during this game.

This really shows just how petty Marvel really is….

They’re willing to ignore and downplay the existence of two major players of their brand that people have loved for decades and were created by the two men them helped make the company they are today.

They’re unwilling to compromise and it has to be their way or the highway.

And this pettiness eventually came to bite them in the ass as Capcom’s statements about working with them eventually reached many of the other big video game developers.

And soon enough, when Marvel was trying to find someone to develop Avengers, none of the big game developers wanted anything to do with it!

Eventually, they did find a developer with Square Enix, who already had experience working with Disney via Kingdom Hearts.

It’s actually ironically hilarious that the heads at Marvel believed all three of these projects would actually be successful because of the MCU synergy, but they all ended up being flops because of said MCU synergy!

But this desire for MCU synergy has not only negatively affected non-MCU project of this time, but even ones that either came out before this desire or….never came out at all.

I’m sure many of you remember The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

This show was essentially a love letter to the Silver Age comics of Marvel and strived to be an near-faithful adaptation of many classic and even recent Avengers storylines, while also having its own unique spin on it.

Hell, in some cases, the EMH versions of these storylines are actually better than the originals, especially in the case of Secret Invasion.

Sadly, the show got cancelled in 2012 after 2 seasons and 52 episodes…and to this day, EMH probably has one of the dumbest and scummiest reasons for cancellation in television animation history.

The reason this show was cancelled because Marvel wanted to replace with it a show that was more in-line with the MCU, aka Avengers Assemble.

Yep! Not low ratings. Not bad critical reception. Not budgetary reasons. Hell, not even bad toy sales, which was a major reason for a lot of action cartoons around this time getting the axe!

And it doesn’t get much better from here.

During the 2010s, there were a lot of promising Marvel projects that never saw the light of the day, with two of the most notable being the animated Deadpool series and Marvel Era.

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Following the success of 2016 film, FX and Marvel Television decided to collaborate to created an animated series based on the merc with the mouth, with Donald Glover (yes, that Donald Glover) being one of the main showrunners, alongside his brother Stephen.

However, the series was cancelled almost a year within its development, with the main reason being that Marvel wasn't particularly big on the vision that the Glovers had for this series.

And apart Donald speculating racism on Marvel’s part (which given that Jeph Loeb was meant to be an executive producer on this series, that possibly could be the case), another possible factor for the show’s cancellation was because of Deadpool’s connection with the X-Men, and during this show’s production, Marvel was still in their “the X-Men don’t matter anymore” phase.

And it really sucks because the pitch animation for this was really good and made this seem like it was going to be a very fun show.

New we come to Marvel Era.

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Out of all the cancelled projects, this was perhaps the most interesting.

Marking a first for their animated shows, this would’ve been an anthology series released in 2014 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Marvel Comics.

It was going to be produced by Powerhouse Animation (best known for Netflix’s Castlevania series) and it was gonna have 7 stories, with each one being themed around a different decade and focusing on a different character.

There would’ve been a 40s story focusing on Captain America, a 50s story focusing on either Wolverine or Namor the Sub-Mariner, a 60s story focusing on the X-Men, a 70s story focusing on The Heroes for Hire, a 80s story focusing on The Punisher, a 90s story focusing on the aforementioned Deadpool, and a 2000s story focusing on Captain Marvel.

This honestly seemed like it was going to be a really great show, which was enhanced by the absolutely gorgeous animation of the pitch trailer.

Unfortunately, Powerhouse announced that the project was cancelled because it wasn’t what Marvel Television were focusing on.

Which is code for: Marvel didn’t want it because it wasn’t MCU adjacent….

To wrap this up, I just wanted to bring up the reason I made this in the first place.

Over the last few weeks, there was a leak for a upcoming episode of X-Men ‘97, which showed a shot of Captain America’s shield.

And this led many people to somewhat groan, believing that this was yet another case of MCU synergy.

And although this was proven to be false, it really does speak volume with how much influence the MCU has had.

Although it has brought lot of Marvel’s star characters into the mainstream, the MCU has shaped and changed them so much, that it seems like they can no longer exist as characters who have existed for literal DECADES.

They always have to be associated with a film franchise that has existed for about 1/6 of their existence in fiction.

But I think the biggest takeaway to all this is that this constant MCU synergy kinda shows a lack of reverence for Marvel’s legacy.

Look at this merchandising from the 2010s and 2020s....

In most of this merchandise, the character roster featured is almost always the same.

The Avengers, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man and the Web Warriors, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Inhumans were also apart of this roster until, as I mentioned earlier, got banished to the Shadow Realm....

Occasionally you'll get some of the other cosmic characters like Nova, She-Hulk and some of the street-level heroes like Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider, and The Heroes for Hire.

But those are few and far between.

But other than that, it's largely the four I mentioned earlier.

Because they're the main faces of the MCU, and as we all know, everything has to be related to the MCU in some way....

But now let's compare that to some Marvel merchandising from the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s....

Upon seeing this, you can tell that there’s a far greater sense of appreciation for Marvel.

This merchandising pulls from nearly every corner of the Marvel Universe you can think off and features characters from the heavy hitters, to the borderline obscure.

Plus it still heavily features the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters, who, may I remind you, spent a good chunk of the 2010s having their presence greatly reduced and their existence constantly threatened or denied because of movie rights!

All in all, Marvel really needs to stop the MCU synergy.

In spite of what they think, it’s clearly done nothing but harm and stifle many potentially good (even great) projects.

Not only that, but it’s also gonna start harming the Marvel brand itself with how homogenized they’ve made everything and the rapidly increasing lack of interest in the MCU.

Plus its also brought out the worst in Marvel.

From cancelling projects for stupid reasons, to showing a lack of respect for the legacy they’ve build, to literally being difficult to work with because of how they want everything to be their way.

But things do seem to be looking up a bit….

There’s been the multiple of Spider-Man media of the last few years , which has been one of the few Marvel projects that aren’t bogged down by MCU synergy.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur also ended being shockingly really good, and although it does have some MCU synergy, it’s pretty minor.

And now we have X-Men ‘97.

It does appear that there’s some kind of movement in Marvel to actually start making projects again that aren’t being made to be a glorified MCU circle-jerks.

And hopefully, this could led to some really unique and interesting projects, specifically for this year.

Since remember, this year marks the 85th anniversary of Marvel Comics, so that’s pretty big!

But then again, their corporate overlord had an utter embarrassment of a year for their centennial….

And Marvel themselves also contributed to that as well….

#marvel #marvel comics #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #mcu synergy #disney #xmen 97 #avengers assemble #marvel vs capcom #deadpool #but seriously please the stop the MCU synergy it’s has been so. fucking. annoying.#avengers earth's mightiest heroes #Youtube

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backjustforberena · 20 days

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“And that gap between them gets wider and wider in the scene till his walls are raised against her.” That’s a beautifully eloquent view because we speak a lot about how their estrangement and losing Rhaenys good opinion impacted him. But a lot has to be said about him walling her out so drastically. I think after the everything happened she was probably super cold: distant but him putting a physical distance between them and leaving was definitely much more definitive. I certainly think she was taken aback.

H answers questions that have been in her inbox for far too long.

One of the many things I'd like to ask both Eve and Steve is what they were told about that six-year gap. If they were told anything about the circumstances of Corlys leaving; however vague. Whether it was soon after or a bit after we last see them in Episode 07. Whether it was after another huge argument or just dressed up as a necessity as he needed to sort of the Stepstones again. How they left things. What the formal situation was with Baela, how that came about, and how Corlys felt about it - specifically if this reignited talk of the succession, or not.

I'd like to know their thoughts on what the reaction was in the aftermath of Laenor's death, because we don't really get that, and the reaction to Daemon and Rhaenyra's marriage. All we know is that both Corlys and Rhaenys both think Rhaenyra and Daemon had some sort of part to play with it: specifically Rhaenyra, but we don't know how they come to that conclusion and what stops them from making any sort of move on the basis of that information. I can guess, due to my read of the politics and the scenes, but we have no clarity or canon information about how all that went down.

We do have some insight because of the recently revealed cut dialogue (which I personally take as canon because you can tell that they filmed it from the editing and we know that the episode ran overlong and that's why lots of other things were cut and none of the dialogue said in it is contradicted by what we see on screen so...).

In it, Corlys says he fled because he was searching for his own death and he couldn't face her after the death of Laenor. We know that Rhaenys was left in confusion and hurt by his actions. To me, what matters is a breakdown of communication. They both end up getting the wrong end of the stick and they both end up turning inwards: Corlys, more ardently because it's he that actually makes the choices to separate them and it's he that has the more dramatic reaction.

But yes, as you say, I think Rhaenys was totally taken aback because it's not what they do. It never has been. They do things together. They confront things: all the good, all the bad, as a team. And then Corlys removes himself from the equation and doesn't even tell her why. She has to ask, six years later. She has to wonder for six years and she has to be angry for six years.

What actually strikes me, just now, is Corlys's line: You were right, Rhaenys. I reached too far and for nothing. I wonder if that could be a callback to a fight we never saw? Like he's specifically saying she was right about something she accused him of or said. Which would be all kinds of tragic, if he could quote her back six years after the fight where it was originally said.

And something that recently sort of struck me about all of this and this crisis in their marriage is that it's pretty equal. As in, they both have instances where they push the other away or leave the other or remain apart from the other. It's not a case of one of them never reaching out or one of them being hostile or the power being solely with one of them.

You've got their lack of interaction at the wake which, to me, is probably more Rhaenys-led as she seems the most uncomfortable and inward-looking. Then there's the fireplace conversation where Corlys ups and leaves, then watching Viserys depart and Rhaenys leaves Corlys by the window, then Rhaenys pushing Corlys away when they discover Laenor. And then, finally, this sort of big, abstract circumstance that has Corlys leaving Rhaenys for the Stepstones.

And, of course, all of these are peppered with moments of harmony or moments where the other one reaches to comfort their spouse or, even if one leaves, the other doesn't make to follow etc etc.

I'd be fascinated to see if anything was cut from the arc of Episode 07 because I really like the interaction and arc we have between them, isolated in that episode. Just their positioning and the moments of breakage vs the moments of unity and the silent looks and the vocalised divergence in their priorities and mindset. The way it all leads to the final killer blow of Laenor's murder.

Anyway, my impression of it is, that even though Rhaenys is the one left and Rhaenys is the one that can't up and leave, there's probably some mental check-out or avoidance that aids in this breakdown. There's some action on her part, conscious or not. Some rejection. She has some control over her own actions and emotions even if that is to the detriment of her relationship with her husband. That may just be me loathing the idea of her being powerless but I think it tracks. She's never been afraid to fight, reject or speak truth to Corlys, even if it hurts him and she's also volatile when emotional.

Corlys walling her out is definitely interesting because, of the two, I'd say Rhaenys walls herself up from Corlys more than the other way around - specifically about her claim and about her pain, I think we've seen that - but Corlys doesn't hide much from Rhaenys. His first scene alone with her is asking for her opinion and advice. But losing Laenor and Laena is just such a blow and one he doesn't think he can weather. I don't really know where I'm going with this but I think he thinks she can do without him and be better without him.

Again, in the script pages that have been published online, we can read/see that Rhaenys's attack ("You abandoned me when I most needed you") takes him by surprise. And sure, that could be a general surprise that he's woken up, alive, on Dragonstone and these are her first words to him after his bad flirting. But it could also be genuine surprise that she felt his absence that keenly and that she saw it as an abandonment, rather than something connotated with freedom or relief.

#thank fudge these two are on the same page now #house of the dragon #rhaenys x corlys #corlys #corlys velaryon #rhaenys targaryen #bad meta #<- tag is ironic but i stick with it

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monyapolize · 2 years

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haruka’s crime revolves around sibling rivalry: an effortpost this post is long, just be warned

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows Haruka’s character that his main motivation is to have people pay attention to him. He is terrified of being abandoned, especially by his mother.

He wears her necklace in his prisoner ensemble, and he tucks it under his shirt to hide it in Season 2 when he replaces his desire for his mother’s attention with Muu.

He is happy to be slapped by Es in the 弱者の螺動 voice drama. This is a callback to the 全知全悩 music video where his mother slaps him out of fear. He smiles here too because to him, any attention from her is better than none. (See also: “You praised me by saying ‘You’re crazy.’ / Thank you, I’ll do my best.”) This is also supported by a double meaning found in the Japanese version of the line that was translated as “I’d like to be your favorite next.” It can also be read as “I’d like to be your next hit.” (yes, as in getting hit).

This motivation becomes a problem if Haruka feels he doesn’t have her attention. So why does he believe this? I strongly suspect it’s because he is developmentally disabled. More specifically, I believe he has both autism and an intellectual disability. Granted, we don’t have all the information yet since we are only two music videos in, but here are some things that lead me to believe this.

He engages in self-injurious behavior when under high stress by digging his nails into his palm (to the point of drawing blood).

He has difficulty reaching writing and speech milestones typical for his age.

He has obvious trouble regulating his facial expressions, and his responses are often noted to be abnormal. He smiles after getting slapped by Es in the 弱者の螺動 voice drama, is called out for it, but accidentally does the same thing again moments later.

Lack of eye contact is an ongoing theme with him.

He stims. In the 全知全悩 music video he tends to bite his nails and rock back and forth.

(Alternatively, here is an interesting idea that Haruka may have nearly drowned, resulting in brain injury. I don’t personally know enough about acquired brain injuries, but if this were the case, I’d assume it would have happened sometime during Haruka’s fireworks memory.)

I believe his disability started to become more apparent with time, to the disappointment of his parents. When he started falling behind his peers, they began to severely mistreat him. I believe this mostly took the form of neglect (since this is what Haruka is most afraid of), but there is no shortage of evidence of aggressive behavior as well.

Another way the word used in the line “Please don’t say that I am a loser.” can be translated is ‘failure, defective item.’ (ouch)

Haruka’s hidden voice line in the second season trailer is "I'm sorry!! I'm sorry!!! Making you waste your life on someone like me...!!" You can guess what kind of treatment would warrant that response.

In the 弱者の螺動 voice drama, Haruka reveals that he thinks adults are scary.

The way he socializes indicates he wasn’t listened to much. He apologizes profusely for things that wouldn’t require it, such as speaking to Es. The Portal Timeline conversations reveal he’s never sung before.

Because of this, Haruka wants to return to a time when he had a ‘normal’ life and was loved. For him, this was when he was a child. When people hadn’t given up on him.

全知全悩 features heavy taxidermy. At it’s core, the point of taxidermy is to preserve an animal in a state that you like them best in forever. In the same video, Haruka wears an outfit that is a half-and-half patchwork of his younger self’s clothes. He metaphorically becomes a piece of taxidermy, trying to stay viewed as his younger self because this is when he thinks they liked him best.

“I will definitely make you love me again.” Note, ‘again.’ He wasn’t always unhappy with how he was treated. Also, the line “Tell me, why are you drifting away from me? / Tell me, why do you say it’s my fault?” ‘Drifting away.’ Implying there was a time where his relationship with his family was good, and that something changed.

Here’s where things get wild. With all this idealization of youth, what’s the worst thing that could happen to you? You’re no longer the youngest. Haruka had a younger sister. One that his parents began devoting all of their attention to because they viewed her as a better investment than him.

“If with one click, and I can reset everything / Can I be your favorite this time?”

“You never called me by my name / You were always comparing me to someone else / You were always generous, except towards me.”

“If only I could do what anyone else could do / The right future unfairly chose the wrong me.” To interpret this, think of what Haruka values. He wants attention, and in his season 1 interrogation questions he lists his future dream as wanting to live normally. Someone close to him must have had both of these things, attention (that he thought he deserved) and the ability to live ‘normally’ (not disabled).

You may be curious why the logical leap to the fact that he had a sister. But to explain I have to first set up another premise: Haruka is being likened to Cain, the Biblical figure. Yes, really.

The murder of the younger Abel by his older brother Cain is described as the first murder committed by man. Haruka is the first prisoner, Prisoner 001.

There also exists a psychological term called the ‘Cain complex.’ Here is a brief descriptor.

“According to Jung, when a child receives parental love in a discriminatory way in a sibling relationship, the original experience of suffering from it is projected onto relationships other than siblings. It is said that those who suffer from this complex may harbor hatred toward the people around them who are of the same generation as the siblings with whom they had conflicts over parental love. Jung called this the ‘Cain complex’ based on the “Old Testament,” “Genesis," and the "Book of Jubilees". Generally, it is said to refer to conflicts between siblings, rivalry and jealousy between brothers and sisters.” x

Haruka says in the 弱者の螺動 voice drama that Amane (a twelve year old girl) brings back bad memories. In fact, he generalizes his dislike to all children at that age.

Some particular characteristics of sibling rivalry are also extremely prominent in Haruka’s character.

“The older child’s personality and psychological development are significant factors in how they react to a new baby. Children with the closest relationships to their mothers show the most anger after the baby is born, while those with a close relationship to their father seem to adjust better.” x

We know where Haruka stands on this issue. In his season 1 interrogation questions he says that his father is disappointed in him, and that the person that he wants to see most is his mother. Additionally, we have not seen Haruka’s father in his music videos to date, but we have seen his mother in both.

“Sibling rivalry usually starts right after, or before, the arrival of the second child. The older child can become aggressive, “act out,” or regress (act more like a baby). This process, known as "dethronement" occurs when the older child feels they must now share their love with someone else. It is not initially hatred but a sense of unsettlement and grieving over the loss of position as the parent's sole object of love and attention.” x

We have already covered Haruka’s regression and desire to be seen as his younger self. But what about acting out?

Not only is this more clear Cain imagery (Cain’s weapon is commonly portrayed as a rock), but Haruka killing the family dog is an example of him acting out due to jealousy.

The scene where this takes place is surrounded by yellow roses. In hanakotoba, a form of flower symbolism, yellow roses are representative of jealousy. x

全知全悩 also gives us plenty of examples. In the beginning of the video, when looking at his mother’s necklace (likely remembering his mistreatment), he becomes very upset and knocks things over, cries, screams, and curls up into a ball on the floor. We also get this shot:

Which effectively serves as a representation of all the things Haruka has done to receive attention (however negative the attention may be). This is paired with the lyrics “Mommy, look, I’ve done great / ‘There there, my good boy!’”

But the momentary attention one gets from acting out can never truly be a substitute for unconditional parental love. It relies on you having to keep doing such things forever (See: “How many more times do I have to do this so I can be human?”), perhaps even escalating if the person you seek attention from has become acclimated to what you’re doing. And this is exactly what Haruka decides that he must do.

The above image evokes the feeling of a solitary confinement room, with it being largely empty, undecorated, and having a single barred window. Haruka’s mother has no idea how to handle her son, and decides to keep him locked up away in his home instead of seeking help. So Haruka now has a final play to make, one to both get rid of the rival for his affection and also ensure that his mother will lash out at him again. Which brings us back to Haruka’s sister.

This is not the crime scene. This is a memory of a happier time.

This is the crime scene. Here, older Haruka is in a forest, and he reaches out to his sister, before

strangling her.

I’m sure that the scene with older Haruka in the woods is showing us the crime because of Haruka’s mugshot in Undercover.

The card he’s holding depicts the location of his murder.

As you can imagine, there is no situation where this could turn out well for him. But from his viewpoint, it’s his last resort, as he says in this voice line:

“Then what should I have done instead?! Tell me! Tell me so even I can understand!”

#milgram #milgram theory #haruka sakurai

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shadamyheadcanons · 1 year

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My thoughts on Sonic Frontiers

I really enjoyed it and appreciate everyone not spoiling it for me :) I meant to post about Frontiers months ago, but this took forever for some reason. Naturally, there’ll be spoilers under the cut.

(Are Frontiers details still considered spoilers? Idk. If they are, let me know!)

I like how many callbacks there were to previous characters and events. It made it feel like an actual narrative with greater stakes. There’s actual continuity now!

Tails and Knuckles were handled better than I ever could have anticipated. I haven’t loved them so much in years! I couldn’t ask for more.

Eggman and Sage are standouts. I’m interested to see how they’ll write Sage moving forward. I could see her feeling torn between supporting Sonic or Eggman.

I feel...conflicted about Amy in this game. Her compassion is there, at least, and she's not the bland cheerleader she was in Forces. She wasn’t a jerk like in Free Riders, either. Thing is, though, what I love most about Amy is how fierce she can be. It’s directly tied to her brand of kindness. She needs those strong feelings, both the good and the bad, to be her. And there was barely a glimmer of it in Frontiers. I was so excited when it finally popped up and she argued with Sonic about not doing enough to help the Kokos, but she backed off really quickly. She just got shut down.

I fear that the writers have decided a milder Amy is more “mature” than her fiery, feisty former self. I don’t want them to make her boring because they’re afraid of what she used to be. I’m scared that the Amy I grew to love is gone for good because people think she needs to be “Nice.”

She needs that energy. She needs that spark. She carries around a giant hammer, for Chaos’ sake. You can’t give her a giant hammer and then tell me she doesn’t have guts and a temper.

We already have Cream. We need Amy!

I’m hoping it’s just a side-effect of Frontiers’ somber setting. Ian Flynn *gets* her, so if they keep giving him more influence, then I have hope. And this is still an improvement in some ways.

As a side note, they really toned down her crush, huh? They emphasized how important love is to her (as they should), but none of it really seemed directed specifically at Sonic. Every time she mentioned love, she looked away from him. And if she’d decided to go on a journey to spread love around the world in literally any other game, she’d have invited him...but she didn’t in this one. And he showed no interest in joining her. Idk. I’m not saying she’s over him--I don’t think she is--but I’ve been seeing Sonic x Amy fans going nuts over this game for months now and calling them “canon,” and I don’t know why.

I saw far more chemistry between Sonic and Knuckles, no contest.

This game does a great job making use of the characters’ strengths. I love how Knuckles got to show his expertise with the ruins. I love how Amy was able to point out the freshly-recovered nature of Kronos Island, implying she goes back to the towns they’ve helped in the past and checks up on how they’re doing. In a game where Sonic’s friends can do so little, these details say a lot.

I was disappointed when Sonic’s cyber-corruption was immediately fixed by the cheesy “let’s hold hands” Power of Friendship deus ex machina moment. Cyber-corruption was built up for the entire game as something debilitating that couldn’t be easily fixed. Sonic was straight-up deteriorating, barely able to stand, and the stakes felt extremely high. Making it harder to undo all that--and bringing in his friends to do so and repay everything he’d been doing for them--would be ideal to me. This would have been the perfect place for the new story and playable characters they’ve promised! Give them their own missions! Use the corruption as a reason Sonic has to be sidelined! It’s obvious the devs were feeling the time crunch by that point in the game, so I don’t blame them too much, but it would’ve been seamless.

As it is, though, I am absolutely thrilled that I’ll get to play as Amy again!!! It’s been so long, and some leaks have been hinting at Origins Amy DLC, too!!

Give me the hammer! It’s! Her! Turn!

Finally, I’m really excited to see what they do with the time skip--or at least I’m assuming it’ll be a time skip. They’re all going on journeys and Tails literally said “You won’t even recognize me the next time you see me,” so I’d say it’s pretty cut-and-dried. New powers, designs, etc? Who knows?

#not a headcanon #sonic frontiers spoilers #sonic frontiers #i mostly wrote this to field any common questions #but feel free to send in frontiers asks now! i finally have some time

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ntshastark · 2 years

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X-Men: Evolution is nothing like the comics

But still a better adaptation than the MCU

So, this tweet kind of really annoyed me. It’s in portuguese, but it says:

Good thing X-Men Evolution came out at a time when there wasn't much access to the internet, if this cartoon had come out now in 2022, even though it's a VERY GOOD cartoon, it would be massacred by the internet for not being faithful to the comics

My problem with it is how it implies that comic stans will tear any adaptation down if it’s not “faithful” enough. I won’t deny some people are like this, but I’d actually say (most) comic fans are actually more likely to enjoy an adaptation that’s nothing like the source material than most people. Under the right circumstances.

(Disclaimer: Whenever I say ‘comic’, assume I mean Marvel/DC comics unless stated otherwise; and whenever I say ‘film’ or ‘TV series’, I’m including both live-action and animation)

First, I want to make it clear that I’ve loved few cartoons in my childhood as much as I’ve loved XMEvo. It was HUGE in Brazil, as popular as XMTAS is in the USA. It was literally my first superhero obsession, and it actually, still to this day, colour a lot of the things I feel about the X-Men.

Second, I want to defend the right to not like an adaptation for not being faithful. I’m a fan of The Princess Diaries (book series), so that’s a pain I know all too well. It sucks to see a character or story that you love be turned into something completely different, and it’s a thousand times worse when this twisted version becomes the most popular one.

But anyway. How to be a good adaptation without “being faithful”?

1. Being its own, separate thing

Comics are basically the most adaptable stories there are. Those who read them are familiar with the multiverse, likely have several different versions of the same characters that they like, and sometimes even prefer an elseworld than the main universe. If you make a film or a TV series based on a comic and, from the start, treats it as just another different universe, it’s unlikely that a lot of people won’t like it just because it’s different. Maybe they won’t like those specific changes, but just the fact that there are changes is completely understandable.

(XMEvo never tried to be like 616, or even Ults, it always made it clear that it was an AU)

2. Not claiming to adapt directly if you’re not going to

Another thing about comics is that they’re old as balls. By this point, literally everything’s happened at least once, probably twice, maybe three times but with a different name now. It’s not like a book or even a graphic novel or a mini, where there’s a linear story with beginning middle and end. So there’s a huge number of stories for adaptations to choose, or even just tap into. If the adaptation isn’t an origin story, or specifically say it’s going to be based on a certain arc, no one is even gonna be able to directly compare it to the source material.

(The name ‘X-Men: Evolution’ isn’t a callback to any specific arc - at least that I know of - and neither are any of the episode names - which tbh really surprised me. The series taps into some origin stories but none of them are really the main focus)

3. Not being the only adaptation

And, side effect of comics being old as balls, there’s adaptations to spare. Rarely a book will be adapted more than once, unless the first adaptation is a success and then the adaptation itself gets a remake. The only exceptions I can think of are Literature Classics (so even older) and Percy Jackson (exactly because the fans hated the first adaptation for not being faithful to the books). The fucking horrendous Princess Diaries adaptation is actually getting a damn sequel.

Basically, comic fans are used to adaptations. They inevitably reach a larger audience than the comics and influence their perspective on the characters, which is “dangerous”. But adaptations end, the next one happens, the general public’s perception is adjusted again. An adaptation that people know is an adaptation and treat as an adaptation is never going to annoy a fan of the source material the way an adaptation that’s treated as the main version, or, even worse, seen as an original work, will. And being less annoyed by it means you’re more likely to give it a chance, even with it being different from the original.

(XMEvo came out 3 years after XMTAS ended, lasted 3 years, and 4 years later Wolverine and the X-Men came out. It also premiered the same year as the first X-Men live-action film)

4. It’s ok if it’s not, the comics are still there

And the thing about comics is that they don’t die. Even if the adaptation is bad, the comics are still coming out and you can just focus on reading them and ignore the rest. Sometimes, however, elements from the adaptation are incorporated into the comics. You can only hope it’s done in a organic manner and doesn’t interfere much with the established characters and relationships you already love.

(XMEvo did have an effect in the comics, as it was the first appearance of Laura Kinney. Laura was introduced in the comics as a new character, after XMEvo was already finished)

And what does the MCU has to do with this?

Well, you see. The MCU does absolutely not a single one of those things.

2. It chooses specific arcs to adapt - or claim to.

The MCU isn’t adapting “vibes”. Each character besides Spider-Man has their origin story adapted. Event names show up in the actual titles. Sometimes comic panels are directly recreated on-screen. There’s no way it could pretend to not be directly using specific comic storylines as a base (and then not paying the people who made those comics).

A film based on a book is supposed to tell the same story of the book. Maybe some details change, but the story is the same. Comics usually have a lot more leeway, but if you choose to wave that, you should be prepared to have your film/TV series judged accordingly. Committing to adapt a specific comic arc is completely different than simply making a movie about a character or a team that has decades of stories to pick elements from.

3. It monopolises adaptation.

Not only have other Marvel adaptations been based on the MCU instead of the comics for a long time now (ex.: ’Avengers Assemble’ replacing ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ in 2013), but recently every single Marvel animated project was cancelled (’Guardians of the Galaxy’, ‘Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest’, and the entire Marvel Rising line-up all ended in 2019. ‘Spider-Man’ ended in 2020), and projects set in the MCU were announced (’I Am Groot’ in 2020, ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year’ and ‘Marvel Zombies’ in 2021).

[[For the sake of completion: ‘Hit-Monkey’ (2021) was cancelled and ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ (2021) is in limbo. The only non-MCU animated properties still going - besides Sony’s Spider-Verse - are ‘Baymax!’ (technically based on Marvel comics, but in practice just a Disney property), ‘Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ (has been in production since 2018 and keeps getting delayed) and ‘X-Men '97′, which is actually the first non-MCU project fully produced by Marvel Studios (it’s clearly being done to promote the introduction of the mutants in the MCU, but at least some good is coming out of it) (ETA: Marvel apparently can’t recast the Fox X-Men cast until 2025, so I guess the only way for them to do something not MCU-based is not being legally allowed to)]]

It’s not that bad when a comic adaptation doesn’t do your favourite character justice if another, hopefully better, one happens not too long after, or even simultaneously but in a different medium. But the MCU has been going for over 10 years and there’s no end in sight. A character you like is dead, written completely different, had some of their more meaningful relationships erased, or was whitewashed? Tough luck. Maybe in 50 years this shit will be finally over and they’ll get another shot.

And, yes, this deprives Marvel fans who don’t enjoy the MCU of content, but it also monopolises the public perception of characters. That version, inaccurate as it is, is all the general public is going to know.

4. It doesn’t leave the comics alone.

Taking over all the possible adaptations wasn’t enough. There has been countless changes to the comics so that they more closely resemble the MCU. Characters’ stories, personalities, relationships. Team rosters, teams’ existences. Events are constantly recycled so that they help promote films that are (supposedly) based on previous events. It’s all done extremely obviously and clearly under instructions from above. Nothing about it is organic, most of it barely even makes sense.

There’s nowhere left to run. Adaptations other than the films are now either based on it (if you’re lucky) or part of it. The comics are being moulded to its image, usually to their detriment. Everyone else in the world sees “Marvel” as a synonym to "MCU”. Your favourite character is now incredibly popular, but only as a whitewashed antisemitic version, and if their fans could spit on you via twitter for pointing that out they would.

1. It doesn’t stay on its lane.

The MCU straight up claimed for itself the reality number of the original comics universe (616), even when it already had a established reality number (199999). It is in no way satisfied with being an adaptation, it needs to have the center stage. The comics, the original universe, what started everything, is pushed aside in favour of it. And this was officiated when they gave it the main universe’s number. The MCU is the main universe, and comics are simply the script’s first draft.

So I think it’s fair that “the internet” “massacres” it “for not being faithful to the comics”. Your regular comic adaptation doesn’t really need to be, but we’re way past that. If the MCU is to be the main universe, then the bare minimum it should be is accurate to the main universe’s stories.

#i wrote this at 2am yesterday and i think i'm going insane #almost cried at some point bc - as someone in the comics industry - it's so deeply heartbreaking to see how little respect comics get #like great!! i've devoted my life to this thing!! and people see it as a stepping stone in the movie-making process!!! awesome!!!!!#anti mcu #anti mcu for ts #f: marvel #g: marvel animations #s: x-men evolution #g: marvel live-action #u: mcu #c: comics #t: talk post #mari rants

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waheelawhisperer · 1 year

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My (very critical and generally unimpressed) thoughts on RWBY Volume 9 Episode 4 are behind the read more.

Poor Weiss. Her suffering continues.

Don’t worry, Yang, none of this makes sense to me either.

Why is the creature wearing Blake's skin like a suit calling itself a cat isn’t “Faunus aren’t animals” Blegh's whole schtick at this point

Oh wait that’s telling your fellow minorities to protest in a way that makes their oppressors more comfortable and then pining over Yang in the Kingdom most closely associated with Faunus oppression

I agree with you, Weiss. Like every other denizen of the Ever After, the Cat is constantly fucking annoying

Not sure if Yang is making fun of the Cat or Weiss here, but either way the humor actually does land for me for once. I do genuinely enjoy the Freezerburn dynamic. It's arguably my favorite in the show, especially after what the writers have done to the Bees so far this Volume.

Good plan, Blegh. I like the initiative she’s been showing spurts of throughout the Volume so far. It's the one bit of characterization she has left that doesn't revolve around Yang.

Okay they’ve snagged themselves a guide. That’s progress. Maybe soon we can get WBY back to normal size and leave this fucking setting

Love the Bees being visibly fed up with the cat because holy shit so am I

Saw on Twitter that Miles said he really liked this episode. Not hard to see why, given how much this writing team loves the smell of their own farts. This scene reads to me like a middle finger to anyone who's critical of the show, and like, I get it. Some of the people who don't like this show are real jackasses about it, and I completely understand the impulse to say "fuck the haters" at any time and for any reason, and even support it, but, like... bro. You are not good enough at your job to be this arrogant. You're not even good at your job. If you wanna take shots at the people who think your art sucks, you'd better produce better art than this, otherwise you just look like an insecure dumbass with an overinflated ego. Lampshading criticism doesn’t make it less valid. Hate to tell you this, but the shit the Cat mentioned is a set of actual flaws your show has. Sniping at the people who point them out doesn't make them disappear.

At least Weiss is focused on getting back to her normal size, and we get an interesting bit of worldbuilding, comparing the world to toys and explaining how each acre has its own characteristics and inhabitants

Once again, Yang, the bad sister, is the first to pick up on Ruby’s distress

but for the love of God please stop forcing Rubes it feels so out of place if you wanted to make this a thing you needed to do it before the ninth fucking Volume of the show

At first I was annoyed by Blegh saying they shouldn't worry about Remnant yet because dear God do I want someone to actually engage with the events of Volume 8, but after thinking about it I'm not too bothered by it. It makes sense to focus on the immediate problem right now. I just wish I felt like the writers cared about anything beyond the immediate.

I think it’s kind of funny how Yang is the official cat tracker. She’s more responsible than the fandom likes to think...

Little has been downgraded to Emergency Rations again

Let it all out, Weiss. I share your frustrations. Go off, queen. You are rapidly rising in my estimation this Volume.

"I'm getting really tired of that question" So am I, Ruby, so am I.

Keep up the snark Yang and you might fend off Weiss’s challenge to your throne (the coveted position of Heela's Favorite Character)

Looks like we’re getting more of the Ever After’s emphasis on purpose.

The “What is a Huntress?” question has the potential to serve as an interesting callback to the Mountain Glenn conversation around the fire. Let's see what the show does with it.

I like the Herbalist he’s as fed up with all of this as I am

I enjoy seeing the clash of perspectives here. Team RWBY and the Herbalist have fundamentally different approaches. Really drives home how different Remnant and the Ever After are.

Oh boy a magic hookah den. Really don’t like this choice, but not because I think it's inherently bad writing, I just have personal issues with drug use. I don't like it. I don't like being around it, I don't like seeing it depicted on-screen, I don't like it when media presents it as a positive thing... I'm not condemning people who use intoxicants or trying to prevent them from having the autonomy to do so, but I have a very strong negative reaction to it. I don't like this scene.

Having Yang call out for Blegh before Ruby is certainly A Decision and I’m not sure how I feel about it (poor Weiss, guess we all now where she is on Yang’s priority list lmao, baby I’m sorry your dom doesn’t treat you better). I don't really agree with them, but I can see where the people who think Yang isn't concerned enough about Ruby are coming from, even though Yang's been picking up on Ruby's emotional state better than anyone else so far. I can understand how it would be jarring to see Yang go from flinging herself in front of a fatal blow days or hours earlier and then first call out for someone else in a strange situation.

I don't think this bothers me yet. I think what the writers are trying to do here is set up a situation where Yang ends up prioritizing Blegh and misses the fact that Ruby needs her and then things go Very Wrong as a result, so I'll withhold judgment until I see what they do with this. I definitely get why some people are bothered, though.

Okay guess they’re confronting their past selves somehow?

Go back to before, Yang, back when this series still had potential and the cracks in the foundations weren’t tearing down the whole damn house. Go back to when I still had hope that the show would improve Volume over Volume. Do it. You know you want to.

Lmao did we really just offer the minority a chance to not be a minority anymore and compare her to an animal in the same sentence what is with this Volume and comparing Blegh to a cat

Like the writers already stated that the White Fang Arc is a direct analogue for the American Civil Rights Movement and explicitly equated Faunus oppression to black Americans' struggle for equality so the "human" and "Faunus" categories pretty clearly correspond to "white" and "black"

which means they just directly compared black people to animals lmao

This is actually so disgusting ngl but what do I expect from a company that called black employees racial slurs and let their community harass those same employees for years without doing shit about it

Dude MKEK you wrote your racism arc out of the story and still managed to be racist. Amazing.

God I hate this company and these writers

Blegh when have you ever been a bridge between humans and Faunus

Was it when you were blaming your fellow Faunus for their oppression and telling them to be nicer so the humans would like them?

But hey at least Yang's hitting us over the head with the impending change in her relationship status

What culture Blegh we don’t know shit about your culture there’s been close to zero evidence of it onscreen

Not that this is a problem exclusive to Faunus culture. We don’t know shit about any other Kingdom’s culture except maybe Atlas either because this show’s worldbuilding sucks ass. That said, this is egregiously bad. If Blake’s culture matters to her so much maybe make it a part of the show before now

Weiss your grandpa built fucking fantasy Amazon and helped colonize Vacuo but I don’t really hold this against you because to you he is a hero and you haven’t seen any of the effects (and the show really likes insisting that Nicholas was Good and all the Bad started with Jacques). At least you understand your daddy blows. Your magic acid trip sucks the least so far and you're coming very close to toppling Yang from her position as my favorite

Not sure how I feel about Yang’s whole conversation tbh, I feel like they're probably being gross about her disability again somehow but honestly I don't necessarily think offering a disabled person a chance to have their disability "fixed" is a bad thing because that can be a very powerful fantasy. I know that if I could have magic mushrooms take away the need for me to wear contact lenses I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I don't trust this company with this topic so this puts me on edge.

MKEK I hate to tell you this but having your characters turn to the screen and claim they’ve experienced character development doesn’t mean it happened. This is one of those moments where RWBY tries to insist a thing happened without doing a particularly good job of actually showing it on-screen (see: everyone hugging during the Volume 6 reunion despite the Beacon Volumes never taking the time to properly build all those relationships and the insistence that everyone cared about both each other and Pyrrha when fucking Jaune and kind of Ruby are the only ones ever allowed to grieve for her).

We are FINALLY diving into Ruby’s head and feelings. I love this for real. There's some good in this Volume.

We're finally learning a little bit about Summer Rose and how Ruby views her. Maybe this is the Volume she becomes a character instead of a plot device.

Okay it’s starting to look like Ruby’s depression is manifesting as a desire to not be herself/not exist anymore. I wonder what would’ve happened if the cat hadn’t showed up.

Okay so the Cat did the same thing they did for the Red Prince, apparently this can calm/stabilize people?

What the fuck

No seriously wtf just happened to the drug dealer

Shut. The fuck. Up. Little. You aren’t funny, you’re just annoying. MKEK, please stop undermining every serious moment with humor. Not only is the tone inappropriate, you’re not even good at making jokes.

Anyway it was pretty cool to see the V1-3 outfits in the new artstyle, and the crew did a really good job of making the whole series of scenes with the Herbalist feel very creepy, so props to them there.

Still laughing at the way Yang was just like "Weiss who?" during her magic bong hit babygirl really has been getting the short end of the stick ever since she dropped into the Ever After. Treat your sub right, Yang.

Marginally better than the first two episodes, worse than the third. If not for the "fuck the critics" vibes I'm getting and the frankly gross racism, it would've just been bad, but as it is I have to dock it points for that.

Overall rating: Fucking Horrendous/10

#rwby

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convexicalcrow · 8 months

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Same Anon as before, any cool things you want to share on Crossfires? My understanding is that Scar is using HG as a cover for what he's doing. But i'm not 100% sure on that theory. I'm also loving HG being obedient to only Scar, and that Scarland is a very dangerous place at night.

tbh there's a lot about this particular AU that I never fleshed out, so there's a lot that's still 'idk! *throws hands up' in terms of motivations and world-building and whatnot. But it was definitely based off Area 77 vibes as much as anything else. Like, instead of Scar and Doc, it's Cub and Doc, and Scar's just having to deal with the Perimeter Overlord. I was inspired by that Perimeter Officer Cub art that tibby made a while back.

I wanted to lean into Scar's unreliable narrator tendencies. So you're never quite entirely sure about what's going on and what he's trying to do. Because he's so good at lying and making you believe whatever he wants you to believe, it's entirely conceivable that Scar set up the entire protest just as a publicity stunt as much as it's just Scar simply trying to get the announcement shut off and his park back in business as much as it's him trying to prove a point to the Perimeter Overlord and to make him hesitant to mess with him again. All of these things and none of these things can be true, all at the same time.

As for Cub, I liked the idea of him being Head of Security, as a bit of a callback to his role in Area 77. The spying, the commanding droids, information gathering, that kind of thing. But instead of being on the outside, he's on the inside now. He's easily corrupted as most of the high-ranking officers are. It's how these governments function.

I also wanted it to feel more... not Minecrafty, you know? To make it feel more like a real-world, but fictional sci-fi place. A techno-dystopia, in a way, with droids that function mostly automously, but aren't designed to have AI-like consciousness, and they're the responsibility of their owners if their programming breaks. It's why they're obedient to their owners. They're common enough for folks to be hobbyist with them and hack them, but they're still just at the levels of automatons at theme parks. Only dangerous if they go rogue, either by accident or by deliberate tampering/design.

#convexical asks #fanfic #hermitcraft #cubfan135 #gtwscar #perimeter dystopia au #world-building notes

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isfjmel-phleg · 2 years

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Meta Asks for Writers: 2, 4, 18, 19, 20

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

More Amarantha and Elystan interaction in Book 2 will be fun, but there’s a big part coming up at some point in that book that changes a lot of things, and that will be interesting to navigate.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

It’s hard for me to say I’m proud of anything in particular I’ve written, but I think the opening paragraph of Book 1 (and thus the series as a whole) is pretty decent:

Rachel Doncath readjusted her battered boater hat, clutched her satchel in one hand and her little sister’s squirming fingers in the other, and tried to look as non-threatening to the Faysmondian government as possible. Most fourteen-year-old girls can succeed at this feat, but ever since Rachel had disembarked from the steamship, the certainty that troublemaker was written on every detail of her person had sunk in until she expected the customs officers to apprehend her on sight.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

In the old version of the world, when it was still a really bad fantasy, Antavia was obligated to renounce her claim to the throne when it was discovered that she had an aptitude for magic and wanted to study it (what kind? why? what was its purpose? who knows), because Coregean law prohibited magical knowledge for its ruler, on the grounds of giving them too much power. She was meant to be a much more likeable character.

Original Ayra was...not exactly evil, but actively malicious toward Josiah because of their father’s favoritism, and she started off the original plot of his story by putting him in harm’s way.

Delclis’s father being noble and good and flawless, compared to Elystan’s father, who is Pure Evil, used to be a thing.

None of these are particularly interesting or complex characterizations, which is why they’ve been scrapped.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

I found out after some helpful editing of one of the Book 2 chapters that I had a tiresome habit of unconsciously repeating “not a [noun]...” or variations thereupon!

Lots of awful royal children and dead/absent/problematic dads and protagonists with friendless backgrounds. Literally every BB story has at least one of these things.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Of the two sets of children that Odren has from each of his marriages, there’s a pattern. The elder of the set takes more after him; the younger resembles the mother. Odren’s attachment has always been more to the children who are like him, the ones who are the most convenient to use, the ones whose company is less of a painful reminder. Ateva and Mikaiah are, in a way, Liane’s and Nyella’s emotional successors in the family, and they’re also the most dismissed because Odren, Ayra, and Josiah are unwilling to fully confront the losses that these two represent. Nevertheless, Ayra and Josiah need to tap into the qualities that their younger full siblings inherited from their mothers, while Ateva (and probably Mikaiah later--I haven’t got as far as an arc for him yet) could learn from the responsibility and dutifulness of the elder siblings as inherited from their father. Everyone in this family is in a position to help the others somehow; their problem is that they’re all so disconnected that mutual help isn’t happening.

#asks #fictionadventurer #thank you!#random personal stuff #The Blackberry Bushes

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contentcompendiumrw · 9 months

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Paranormal Activity 4-6: Thoughts

Paranormal Activity 4:

Paranormal Activity 4 is where the original novelty of the series kinda begins to wain off a bit and it becomes very, oddly conveluted. The film for one, isn't really scary, any semblence of the sound design from the prior films that really allowed for tense moments to, feel tense is just gona. I find it interesting that the addition of sound, air, noise in silence so to speak is more horrifying than, the lack of iot approach taken here. The characters are, fine, I like Alex and Ben enough but they ain't Dennis or Micah. Here more than ever the situation seems very, spontaneous and random. I fail to understand why Hunter was, adopted, just for a second child to regather him for the coven. especially when the film begins stating their whereabouts are unknown. The Kinect thing was always a bit odd but I really do think it had very missed potential. I only noticed Tobey once, I just felt there was some missed potential even if it was just a bizarre little tie in (Dragula goes hard tho props to that being the first, incorperation of literally any song in the series) I do find it very funny that Katie has decided her signature move is just a quick neck snap, nice callback to the best part of 2 being, Daniel's death.

5/10

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

I don't follow the fandom, so, I'm really unsure where people sit on this one in particular. It's not scary that's for certain and seems to be where most people dropped off the boat in fairness. It's kind of a guilty pleasure film for me though, however only under the circumstance that I view it as a comedy as supposed to a horror film. I enjoy the switch up culturally from, white ass Americans to Mexicans, it allows for a different feel to the film from the rest and having it be a bit more primative, allows this to be the first purely handheld film of the franchise which, can be disorienting but strurally, again, it's different. They have a few still moments but I appreciate the constant action, it allows for a different kind of tension because the film keeps ramping up and giving smaller more channeled scares as supposed to, a lot of nothing like in 4. Jesse and Hector as protagonists, are very randomly fucked with like the family prior however they do have some genuine bro chemistry that's nice to see. I guess I like sarcasm with my Paranormal Activity. (I blame Shane Madej) It's also nice to see the posession of a character, that isn't just like Katie who gets real tired and zoned out, and it comes with some perks, the ghost (I don't believe it's Tobey this time) initially seeming like a positive only to lead to the film getting darker and darker allowed for really solid pacing. I guess my biggest irk is the ending. On an initial watch like, yeah it's neat and makes you go 'Wait what? Huh???' But I don't see the purpose of it. There were real stretches to get it to connect with the others and I don't think it needed to, it could have just been a story about another family getting ruined by the Coven. Watch it as a comedy and this one's kinda crazy.

6/10

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

I believe the second you can see the ghost is, the second the original concept is firmly dead. It seems The Marked Ones really wanted to be different but this one really fell back in to, the security of the original formula but with none of the tension. It tried to have the creepy girl idea from 3, an extension of the Kinect idea without the marketing gimmick from 4, the slow posession of someone from Marked Ones and, literally The Exorcist, and of course brought back the original nightly forumal of 1. A film attempting to be the culmination of everythjing before can sometimes work, however it doesn't here. It's just got no substance and tries to be too much. I believe focusing on the idea of the tapes revealing the future and focusing on that would have been a good shot, but it felt like such a muddled mess I genuinely have very little to say on it. Every prior fiml, does everything this does, a little bit better. I cannot think of a single thing I really liked abou it...Maybe I suppose, the visual effects given it has the most out of all the films and I wanna give it something.

3/10

I am not done with this franchise just yet, there is of course one more film: Next of Kin and I will be watching that and because I'm a little silly, will also Watch Paranormal Activity: Tokyo Night. I believe it's just a Japanese remake however I do enjoy me some Japanese Horror so, hopefully it will be a nice palette cleanser afer Next of Kin.

#paranormal activity #series #film review #movie #movie review #Paranormal activity 4

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cheswirls · 3 years

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hmmmmmm so i completely forgot in the blur that was 2020 that the tie-up movie for psycho pass s3 aired and now its available w eng subs so s3 is complete. but like, is it separate from s1/s2 for the most part??? i rly wanna watch it now that i think abt it bc psycho pass was such a good show but if its too direct of a follow-up then id have to rewatch s1 and s2 and like.. as much as i love the series s2′s gore was unbelievable i dont think i could stomach it again

#god its been so long since ive seen pp actually.....#i stopped at the 1st movie which i watched w everyone else w ripped eng subs and a raw mov #i had no idea they made more movies to bridge s2 and s3 like 4 yrs later oof #i do remember vaguely hearing abt a s3 tho??#but yea my psycho pass phase ended early 2015 would GLADLY hop back on tho #if the new content is worth it #i read the summary and it seems like its w a new cast #but if there are callbacks of any kind i most likely will get none of them sooo #damn all of them literally came out in 2019 what was i watching then that i missed all the pp content????#i feel like all the k project movies came out early that year so prolly that #golden kamuy n chihayafuru too #o actually wait that was the start of the Year of daiya no wonder i blanked on everything else #anyway im rambling but IF YOUVE SEEN PP S3 N ENJOYED IT PLS RESPOND #if i have to watch the movies b4 s3 iunno tho #the eps are already 45+mins #if i have to watch 3 1hr long movies b4 i might fall off #esp if they dont have anything to do w the sibyl system #tbh i could def watch s1 again but like #knowing what happens (what to expect gore-wise) in s2 is a turn off plus mika is annoying lmaoooo #if i could go in blind again i would give it a shot but knowing #that i would be rewatching scenes that had my stomach in knots n remembering having to pause the ep to sit n breathe is a turn off #pp is incredible w the genre tho its very psychological #anyway thats enough ill stew on my thoughts for a few days

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stagemanagerssaygo · 4 years

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Heaven and Hell: or my experience being a person of color in Disney’s Hyperion Theater

by Cooper Howell

Heaven and Hell: or my experience being a person of color in Disney's Hyperion Theater. #holdingtheateraccountable Im just gonna go ahead and be straight up. This is pretty scary to share. HEAVEN: Once upon a time Liesl Tommy cast me as Prince Hans in Frozen: Live at the Hyperion. And I was gooped. GOOPED. There was nothing in my prior history that gave any indication this was possible. Up until then every role I played had to do with my race. Every. Single. One. And even ones where it didn’t (Shakespeare or classical pieces mostly) I was always made aware that the novelty of me being a poc in that role that gave me the part. So much did I not expect to get this part that when I got the callback I rolled my eyes and didn’t take the actual callback seriously. I mean, there was a zero percent chance that Disney would ever let me play a Prince, especially when the dude in the movie is a ginger. But then I got it. And immediately everything I thought was possible about my career changed. My whole life I’ve never inwardly felt black. I’ve never inwardly felt white. I’ve always felt like I was Cooper, you know, on the inside. But whether it was every single white human in Utah reminding me that I was “the whitest person they ever knew/saw” (which DIDNT mean how white my skin was. It was how white I ACTED) or Mr. Johnson, my 7th grade drama teacher, telling me that he “wanted to put Velcro on the ceiling to see if I’d stick” or Mr. Smith, my high school drama teacher, saying “finally we can do black shows” as soon as I entered high school and then not casting me in roles because of the "optics" of it, or even my best friend in high school Tanner Harmon who called me "blackie", I was always reminded that I was an other. So imagine getting paid good money to put on that $10,000 costume and waltzing out to 4000 people a day to play a really amazing part. A fantastic, evil, complicated, person who sings a killer duet and then grabs the show by the throat with a vicious about-face monologue... and not once was my race ever mentioned cuz it didnt matter. What was being prized was Cooper, my talent, not my skin color that I never asked for. Heaven. Liesl MADE SURE, almost overly sure, that the poc’s in the cast felt equal. The kingdom of Arendelle, after all, is a make believe place. It can be whatever. From having Disney executives come and tell us that they were happy to have us there, to side conversations with John Lasseter, we were made to feel overly welcome playing the parts we were playing. She encouraged us to dive deeper into the script of a cartoon that I didnt really think much of until I was in it. We were encouraged to ask why. We felt seen as talent and not commodities. There were, of course, detractors. Gosh, I remember people at a party of cast members from "Mickey and the Magical Map" another show at Disneyland which features a princess and the frog number and many of those casts mates angrily claiming that “if that black girl Tiana Okoye can play Elsa than I should be able to play Princess Tiana” and then looking at me to confirm that was okay to say, not realizing that a) she’s one of my best friends, b) that I’m in the show with her also playing a role that wasn't created to be a poc, c) how racist that sounded, and d) why there's a difference there and why that wouldn't make sense. On Liesls final night I came up to her and said “I don’t know why you did it but thank you so much for casting ME in this part” to which she replied “you mean why would I cast a handsome, talented person in this role?” And I stuttered something like “well, I mean, I’m black. You know...” to which she tilted her head to her side and said “no. I don’t know why. Tell me why that matters.” And I had no answer. Seeing that I had no answer she smiled. That was the answer. There was no reason. On the spot my outlook about myself changed. Windows into what I thought was possible for me opened. -------------------------------------- HELL: And then Liesl went back to NYC and she was replaced by a man named Roger Castellano as show director. Rogers task, he told us on the first day, was to "change the show". We were not told what needed to be changed or even why, but that changes were on the horizon. You've got to understand: to a full cast of actors who had just spent more than three months dissecting a 60 page Disney script with a Tony nominated director like it was Shakespeare, we were initially emotionally/mentally/spiritually resistant to changes. But then it became clear that the spirit of collaboration was over, and the show changes were to be given without the same care, consideration, and thematic explanation of why they were being made. Everyones initial reaction was to push back, but when people who questioned their notes or their changes started getting days removed their schedule or being replaced entirely by a new actor, the Hyperion theater became a place where no one was allowed to speak out. Injustices were happening left and right and no one felt they could do anything for fear of losing their livelihood. And that's when the Frozen: Live at the Hyperion became a living hell. In my first note session with Roger he pulled me into a room with Domonique Paton, my best friend and incredible costar who played princess Anna in the show I was in. She just so happens to also be black. Almost all of Prince Hans’s scenes in the show are with her character and so most of my notes would be primarily based on those interactions with her. Earlier in the day I performed with a different (white) actress but it was the show with Domonique that I had a note session about. Imagine my surprise and dismay when, with how Liesl set up the show experience, we were told this: “WHEN THE TWO OF YOU PERFORM THE SHOW TOGETHER ITS TOO… URBAN.” Urban. What else could that have meant, do you think? He could have said maybe “too contemporary” emphasizing that we were maybe too modern in our speech patterns or movements. We weren’t. He could have said “too lax” or “too loose” meaning that maybe we were being unprofessional and goofy up there because we’re really good friends. We were not. The best me and Ms. Paton could think of was a 8 count moment of improv dance that me and Domonique decided to use as a synchronized moment of unity. It happened to fall on the line “our mental synchronization can have but one explanation” and thought, with the freedom that Christopher (the original choreographer) had given us, was appropriate, especially considering everyone behind us was doing the robot. As in the 80s robot. But he didnt clarify. He just said “WHEN THE TWO OF YOU PERFORM THE SHOW TOGETHER IT’S TOO… URBAN” And when asked what he meant he smiled with a little shrug and said "you can figure that out. You're smart." And thats how I became Black Hans and Domonique became Black Anna. My every moment onstage afterwards became about the optics of being a poc in that show. It was if I was suddenly made aware that I was LUCKY enough to be there and under any normal circumstances, or this new directors circumstances, me getting this part would have never happened. But the message was clear. It was especially clear when me and Domonique Paton shows together durastically decreased and made even more clear when the vast majority of the new hires were not people of color. But no one said anything. And made even MORE clear when, over the next few weeks, both Domonique and I got COPIOUS notes, ten times that of our coworkers that played the same parts. It was almost a game. In fact we did turn it into a game, seeing who would get the least amount of notes from him in a day. Our costars would even joke about it onstage with us, during the ballroom scene, and jokingly whisper "The shows been up 15 minutes. How many do you think you got today?" But no one said anything. And the notes were about all kinds of things. How we held our hand. If our inflections went up or down on a word. Which side of a couch we leaned on… which was fine! When you're an actor, thats the gig... until we started comparing our notes with the actors that played our same parts and none of them, NONE, would get the same notes. Our notes would be outrageously longer, the note sessions sometimes lasting 10/15 minutes. Others would get the “Oh hey, try doing this or that next time, okay bye” walk-by notes. Sometimes I would sneak into the audience and watch as some of the other Han's, some of whom changed lines, changed entire intentions of scenes, some of whom adding in all types of vocalizations and cackles and dance moves and what have you, and would receive ZERO notes. But I was watching them to see what was wrong with me. What was my performance missing? What am I actually doing to feel this singled out. And then I realized that the thing that was wrong with me was that I was a different color than the 5 other white Hans's they cast. And then I started getting notes about my penis. Most of the time these “penis sessions”, as I called them, were given in private rooms without another stage manager present. It was incredibly unpleasant and unprofessional. In fairness, those Prince Hans pants are TIGHT! And yes, Mr. Howell is indeed a party in the front and a party in the back, but so were a lot of those fellas. And thats where I put my foot down. If Disney was going to provide me with a costume it is not my responsibility to fix their problem, especially when other of my (white) costars had been given a dance belt for the same thing. But they never got penis notes. Private session notes about what their penis looked like in that show. Over and over again I was told to fix it, to not make it (my dick) so apparent, and that “if my daughter were younger I wouldn’t want her to come to a show you were performing at" all the more insulting considering his daughter, a cast member in the show, was a friend of mine and the loveliest person. He started demanding that I buy a dance belt. It was “my fault”, “my responsibility” …and thats where I took my stand. And then it really became hell. Penis sessions were now done out in the open. Once, he screamed at me, in the green room in front of all of my costars during lunch, about how incredible unprofessional I was, about how he was tired of seeing my dick, and that if I didnt go buy myself one I didnt deserve to be there anymore. Followed by a huge litany of notes. That doesnt compare to some of what Domonique went through and I invite her to share them if she’s willing. During this time I went to every stage manager in the building and told them about being singling out and about my penis. They all told me to write a complaint report and it would go to some place called "HR". Which I did. Numerously. More months passed. Nothing from "HR". Multiple cast members who witnessed my note sessions encouraged me to go to the HR themselves. I didnt honestly know what an HR was. As soon as it was explained to me by my allies even what an HR was I went to the head of HR at Disneyland herself and waited outside of her door. I asked her if she got any of my HR reports and she told me that she had received no HR reports from the Hyperion. Ever. And then asked me to fill out a HR form. As we went over it, she asked me some questions, and then set up a second meeting. On the second meeting she said that in order for my report to be given credence I would need witnesses to give their testimony. The witnesses, in fact the very people that told me to go to HR in the first place, said no. They didnt want to lose their jobs. In retrospect that might be the thing that hurt the most but, whatever... anyway, I was told "“well… without testimonies we’ll do an investigation and we’ll call you when we’ve completed it.” I never received a phone call. With absolutely zero protection from the stage managers from both the sexual harassment or my obvious racial targeting I (and others) were experiencing, not to mention that HR reports were doing nothing, aka not being forwarded, I thought about quitting. And when a white stage manager made a show mistake and laughed it off to the cast by saying an entirely offensive lynching joke, I quit. I didnt matter to Disney. How I felt and what I was being put through didnt matter. I was a commodity. My departure was unceremonious. Bizarre. 100% un-magical. I hung up my costume one last time and it was given to a new Hans, one who looked very much like me oddly, and stepped out of the theater. The park was playing “every wish your heart desires will come to you” and I remember laughing at how dead that song felt. The director has since moved on but still works as a musical theater director in Southern California. This one time 4 years ago I got to feel something other than my color for the first and only time in my professional career. It lasted from about March 2016 to July 2016 and never again since. I will never forget in those early days looking at all the beautiful princesses I got to woo and thinking “wow. I’m a prince right now.” Im sure that sounds stupid. But it didn't feel stupid. And a Disney prince! Yeah, a shitty prince kinda... I mean, he's a sociopath... BUT still a Prince! Especially special was being able to look in Dominique’s eyes and I could see the same glimmer of “can you believe we get to do this right now” reflected back. We never knew it was in the cards for us. My race always has and will always be part of my career equation and a determining factor of its projection. It will always be a determining factor in how im treated, by creatives, by people, by the those in authority over me, including the government and the police. #wasitmyskin

Copied in its entirety here from Cooper Howell’s public Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10163696376095054&set=a.10151302685610054&type=3&theater

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el-im · 2 years

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idk if you/your followers care so feel free to delete this— but robert beltran’s whole thing was that he was a shakesperean actor who was talked into auditioning for star trek because chakotay sounded like a cool character on paper/in the pilot. he kind of actively hates scifi and has always been that way (+again shakespearean actor in the 90s so w that associated pretentiousness) but the idea of playing the first officer who had all this conflict and depth built in bc of the maquis/the war drew him in. when it became clear the writers weren’t gonna capitalize on stuff like his beef with tom/tuvok and that they wouldn’t flesh his character out that much, he was suddenly stuck on a show that he found actively annoying (he thought the format was low stakes bc the audience knows that none of the main cast is gonna die outside of a season finale/premiere and he hated technobabble + had a hard time memorizing it). after his campaigns for better characterization were met with “fuck off” from producer/writers he tried repeatedly to leave (he campaigned very hard to get chakotay killed) but the network wouldn’t let him bc of the demographics that liked him, so his relationship with the other people working on the show (cast and producers alike) deteriorated quickly. i’m not defending him in any way to be clear, he’s an old man who seems like kind of a prick, but just for context i think it’s important to say that part of the reason he’s shitty about star trek is that the creative team/the network treated him badly and made the experience miserable for like 5 out of 7 years (race also definitely played a factor as well, as garrett wang had some similar issues). sorry for dumping voyager drama from 25 years ago into your inbox.

seriously !! divorcing his more recent bitter old man behavior (lmao) from the discussion i think you do get a picture of a pretty abhorrent experience w his treatment from the writers/staff. trek + it's relationship w cast members of color (with few exceptions, the most of the notable of which--i think--being on ds9 w the siskos/bashir, who were fully fleshed out characters whose upbringings/race/culture factored heavily into their attitudes/perspectives/dispositions without becoming their Single Defining Trait) has been pretty notoriously bad. despite the inclusion of nichelle nichols and george takei on tos, they were seldom used beyond background appearances on the bridge (nichelle would laugh in interviews--saying her favorite episodes were whichever ones allowed uhura to "get off the ship" and play a larger part in an ep), w/ takei's sulu being used less often than hers, in my memory... not to mention garrett wang's treatment in voyager + (understandable) beef w berman... i think i can approach/discuss the treatment of asian characters w a little more familiarity just based on my own experiences, but it seems obvious to me that being asked to portray an image of the "nonspecific indigenous person" was neither rewarding for him personally or done with any tact (see--voyager producers consulting "jamake highwater" for a character reference... who had been exposed repeatedly, almost a decade before, for pretending to be cherokee)

anyway! i agree that it's a shame that his character was so underused. i remember being shocked at how quickly the maquis/fleet tension dissolved in the opening few seasons, and it seemed that the occasional seska callback was the only reference really strewn in throughout (at least the beginning of) the show that brought back the separation between them/their vast difference in ideals/behavior. i wish that they'd handled that tension/gradual cohesion with the same grace and patience that they did with seven/the borg children's inclusion in the crew.

#i will not begrudge him the Beef With Trek point. his character especially was not used well + im sure that his problems w the staff only #made that working environment much worse #trek #asks

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extemely-thoughtful-person · 3 years

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Chapter 6 predictions #4 or 5: The True victims of the next Chapter, and almost everything on the Shrouds Overblot. (Bonus Theory regarding RSA's system of Operations)

I'm back from the dead, everyone!!!

I took some time off of writing predictions and theories to think about more possibilities for the upcoming chapter. All Ignihyde stans and students are waiting for their beloved dorm leader to finally get therapy. And I believe that time is just around the corner.

So to kick things off the edge, let's talk about the true victims of Chapter 6.

Main challenge but not enemies

In the past, we've seen in the chapter previews that there is something sinister afoot. From planning homicide to trying to enslave whole dorms or oppress certain students, all sorts of things have been planned by dorm leader and vice dorm leader alike.

But for the current chapter preview, we didn't get any tell or foreshadowing of a sinister event or nefarious plan. Instead, we got a small celebration of a successful plan, followed by a rejection of the prizes that followed (with a hint of depression at the end). What exactly does this mean?

The Shrouds are the victims of Chapter 6. Now you're all screaming "yeah, what did you expect?!" at me, but there's more to the situation than you think. It's not just a victimizing of the past (which is most likely family problems at this point), but also the present. Because here's a little clue for you: if we're matching up the events of the Hercules movie and Chapter 6, the main story hasn't even started yet. Remember that at the beginning of Hercules the Titans were already imprisoned, and if Ortho is based off of the Titans, and he has yet to be captured by the OTC, then technically, the conflict between company and dorm begins with the imprisonment of Ortho Shroud.

The main plot is going to be Idia trying to live without his brother. And knowing Idia's mental health, this isn't going to go well. But don't worry, it doesn't start like that right away.

But there's still a massive problem with the separation of the Shrouds.

A new kind of Overblot

Any observant theorist can tell you that in Idia's ceremonial robes outfit, his pen is missing. Theories big and small have all stated a similar fact: Idia's gem is the thing powering Ortho's magic and Ortho in general (because we never see the multiple Ortho gears flying around at the same time). At first I was hesitant to believe that, but now I think that this is a fact. And there is evidence in the game to prove this:

We have never, not even in personal stories or events, seen Idia use any kind of magic.

And in battles, he uses the dorm leader wand. He never uses a pen, and we've never seen him cast any kind of magical spells. We've only seen him use technology instead.

On the contrary, Ortho has been seen firing powerful blast's of magical energy. Ortho does have magic as far as we've seen. Sure, it's not a particular spell, but remember, a spell is basically a magical command. And technology uses commands all the time.

So, what does this mean for the Overblot?

That warning from coach Vargus in the camping event wasn't just a warning, but a foreshadow. Idia doesn't use magic at all because he knows the risks. Unless Ortho is close by, he would never risk casting a spell. (And from what I've gathered from the recent Bean's day event, Idia would never fight a battle that he knew he couldn't win.) Idia doesn't take risks unless the odds are in his favor.

But if he doesn't use magic, then how will he Overblot? Simple answer.

I'd like to take this time to officially bet on Idia's unique magic. Out of the four options I speculated on in a previous post, I believe it's going to be a portal/ teleportation related magic. Here is the evidence:

It can't be any deal making related magic because we've seen Idia making negotiations, bets, and deals with other people, and none of those required any kind of magic.

Hades main weapon against Hercules was other monsters. He moved them around using a special gaming board that represented the land with pieces that represented each kind of monster.

One of the things Idia hates is being told what to do. His unique magic would be a manifestation of that, forcing anyone caught up in the position control to follow his instructions.

Hades was the one who released the Titans adding them on to the board.

And in Chapter 6, where we go up against RSA in the Magift tournament, I think Vil is going to try and draft Idia into the game because of his unique magic and statistic mind. Idia's unique magic would be a callback to Hades moving monsters in Hercule's path, because Idia will be able to move players around the field to where they're needed most.

I think it only works if the person is on his side. If he has some kind of relationship with the person, then he has the power to move them around. A fun little prediction for this magic would be it's name: "Game Set!" (Hades says these words right before Hercules's first match with the Hydra.)

With this unique magic in use, Idia is going to be using magic a lot in the next chapter. But he hides the fact that his magical stone is in Ortho from the group. But he does make an alternate excuse to have Ortho by his side during the practice: for confidence and motivation. Of course, Vil's gonna see Ortho as an obstacle to Idia developing social skills. And this is where the OTC comes in and takes Ortho.

With the separation of the Shrouds, Idia is going to start feeling th the negative side effects of the blot. Why would he keep playing despite that? Maybe it was Ortho's last wish before being taken. We all know Idia would do anything for his little brother, and one last game against their enemy school would be a wish that inspires Idia to push beyond his limits for Ortho.

On the day of the tournament, Idia makes good on his promise, playing for the sake of his brother, and silently suffering the negative side effects of the blot that's collecting inside of him due to excessive magic use and negative emotions like anxiety. And they lose.

It's just too bad that Idia's the one who discovers the cheating RSA has done.

How exactly do they cheat? Well, ever noticed that all RSA students have the same colored gem? I was thinking some kind of magic seal would be placed on the disk that only responds to the type of magic stone the RSA students use.

Idia figures this out causing the Overblot effects to kick in. He Overblots on the field in front of millions of spectators.

In every villain final boss battle in the Disney movies, those battles don't have that many people watching. Sure a few eye wittness's but not thousands of people. Alice woke up from the bad dream that is Wonderland, Ariel's battle with Ursla ends with herself and prince Eric, and Only the Evil Queen saw Snow White collapse after biting the poisoned apple.

But during the Titan's rampage, everyone knows. The gods are on high alert, the people are running to get to safety, and the hero goes out to make on last stand against Hade's forces.

In turn, every Overblot battle has been kept a secret on campus. The students don't talk about the shadows, and past events have been quietly filed away and mostly forgotten. Some students are still wary of the victims, but besides Jamil's episode, no one outside of campus knows about it.

Until Idia's Overblot happens. Only a few thousand of people saw Jamil's Overblot, but here, millions of people will see it. This will be the first Overblot incident to become widespread outside of NRC. And the first incident the RSA students will face.

And this is another place where Idia's unique magic would come in. Did I mention that Hades freed the Titans? Idia is going to bring Ortho back from captivity. But Ortho won't be completely normal either.

During his time away, Ortho will be trying to get back to his brother. He becomes scared, desperate, and he worries about Idia all the time. Ortho tries to break out, but fails. BTW, the OTC treats Ortho like a dangerous weapon, not a person. They also insult Idia which makes Ortho mad. Ortho's negative emotions plus the magic used in an attempt to break out causes another pool of blot to gather. Ortho Overblots in captivity only for Idia to free him with a portal shot all the way from RSA (assuming the tournament takes place there).

There we all fight the Overblotted Shrouds. RSA students call them evil and try to fight the Shrouds but RSA fails due to a lack of experience. We gather up and try to take the Overblots down but we almost lose as well until... well, that will be a surprise.🤗

I'll reveal what and who will stop the Overblot in the next prediction post.

In the meantime, let's go back to that statement about RSA students all having the same gem color.

This particular detail has lead me to believe that RSA doesn't have a dorm system. I think they have some kind of student council instead. In a different post I mentioned something about all hero's looking more or less the same. They also have similar ways of thinking as well. Maybe there are eight types of people with magic. One type is so widespread that it gets it's own school, while the other seven rarer types get called by the dark mirror and sorted into smaller groups (the dorm system).

Basically RSA is basically a place for the widespread idea of heros, while NRC has the rest of the magic types. Maybe RSA students are taught that their magic type is superior to the others.

Or I could be wrong. Thanks for reading! The next post will be out soon!😊😊😊

Small prediction: Twisted!Hercules (Most likely Crimson muscle) has the unique magic: Zero to Hero! which gives him the ability to become incredibly strong in an instant! You cannot change my mind.🙃

#twisted wonderland #ignihyde #night raven college #royal sword academy #twst idia #idia shroud #ortho shroud #vil schoenheit #jamil viper #chapter 6 #shrouds please be safe this chapter #they probably won't #but still #rook i swear if you know what's going on but don't tell us i give you a taste of my shoe #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland theory #twisted wonderland idia

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entertainment · 4 years

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Entertainment Spotlight: Bethany Antonia, Get Even

British actress Bethany Antonia plays Margot Rivers in Get Even, a new thriller series adapted from Gretchen McNeil’s Don’t Get Mad books. The show follows a group of girls who come together as DGM (Don’t Get Mad) to expose school bullies; when they realize they’re being framed for the murder of one of their targets, they set out to uncover the truth. Bethany spent her formative years in rural France, before returning to her hometown of Birmingham, UK, as a teen, and landing her first role in a short film of The Tempest for The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. She went on to land roles on TV in BBC’s Doctors and Channel 4’s Stath Lets Flats, and in the film Pin Cushion, which premiered at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. Bethany is an advocate for social justice issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBTQIA+ rights, veganism, wildlife conservation, and sustainable living practices.

What kind of research did you do for the role of Margot? Had you read the books before taking the role?

I read both of the books! I read them once after my first callback for the show, and then again while we were filming. I absolutely love the books. There’s something so special about doing a series that’s based on a book and flying through trying to find out what’s going to happen to your character. Margot is also the only American in a British school, so I spent a lot of time thinking about her background and trying to piece together what her story was before we meet her as part of DGM.

Margot is described as shy, but she’s also the brains behind a group that seeks to stop bullying. What drew you to the role?

I got attached to Margot right off the back of reading the audition sides. Her character is everything I wished I’d gotten to see more of when I was younger. A young black girl who is shy, into gaming, and isn’t sassy or argumentative in a lead role? Sign me UP. I just adored the concept for the entire show. I loved the idea of these four teenage girls setting up a secret society in their school because straight away, I saw the bigger picture of what they were doing. It’s telling young girls to stand up for what they believe in and not to be afraid to take matters into their own hands despite living in a world that repeatedly tells them to do otherwise. It felt so empowering, and I was just so determined to be a part of it.

When you hear Black Excellence, what or who comes to mind?

Black Excellence for me is confidence. It’s power and resilience. It’s excelling in your particular area of the industry and leading by an example that others can follow. When I think of black excellence, I think of Michaela Coel, a woman who is completely changing the game in the industry right now. I have been a massive fan of hers since watching her first show, Chewing Gum, but I am so glad she is getting the global recognition she deserves off the back of I May Destroy You. It was one of the best pieces of television I have ever seen.

What role do you think film/tv/radio should have regarding social realities in Britain? What needs to change?

I think that every single form of media should be an accurate depiction of the world we live in. Any individual should be able to tune in at any given time and see themselves represented in some way, shape, or form. Anything less than that, and we have failed. We have been failing for a really long time in Britain. Tuning into the media has felt like an artist painting a blank canvas paint with little droplets of colour for effect for too long. We need to move away from the idea that the stories of white, straight, slim, able-bodied people are the only stories that need to be told, and start reflecting the realities of our country, which is so beautifully diverse.

How do you deal with a bad day, and how do you like to celebrate the good ones?

If I’m having a bad day, I like to do a complete reset: switch off from social media for a few hours, take a hot bath with a face mask or two, pamper myself, listen to a podcast or read a really good book, eat some of my favourite foods, and just take care of myself. Finding time to practice self-care for yourself is something I think is really important. So I do a complete brain reset and remind myself that tomorrow is a brand new day, and none of the day’s bad-day energy has to carry itself onto the next. I like to celebrate the good ones with my family and friends around me, making sure I’m really present and enjoying the moment, being grateful for whatever it is we’re celebrating.

Do you have any advice for young Black women looking to get into acting?

I’d love to get a whole room full of young Black women together and just tell them over and over again that they’re enough. This industry can feel impossible to break into for most up and coming actors, but for Black women, that’s especially true. It’s hard to envision yourself in a career that hasn’t been visible for you. Breaking down the door is only half of the battle. Once you’re in, there’s a million and one more challenges that come as a direct result of being a Black woman. I’d tell them to find confidence in themselves and their abilities, the kind of confidence that comes from within that nobody can take away from them, even if they have to fake it at first. I’d tell them to be proactive and take their careers into their own hands, to look into what they’re doing now and consider if it’s truly benefitting them for the kind of work they want to be doing. And finally, I would tell them to cling onto their love of acting with everything they have. Even if it feels like you’re not hitting the kind of goals you want to be hitting yet. Nobody can take your love of this craft away from you.

If you could choose any book that you’ve read to be adapted into film or tv, which book would you choose, and who would you play?

I read an amazing book recently called While I Was Sleeping by Dani Atkins, and I’ve not stopped thinking about it for weeks. It’s about this young girl named Maddie who wakes up from a coma thinking a few minutes have passed, but actually, six YEARS have passed. She was due to be married and have a baby, and she wakes up to find that her whole life has essentially happened without her while she’s been asleep. In my head, the whole book has already played out as a film over and over, with me as Maddie, ha! It could be so beautifully adapted.

Which song always manages to get you up in the morning?

“You Can Get It If You Really Want” by Desmond Decker. Every single time.

Thanks for taking the time, Bethany! Get Even is now streaming on Netflix.

Photo: Michael Shelford

#entertainment spotlight #blackexcellence365 #bethany antonia #get even

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