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taylor-titmouse · 2 months

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hey i want to talk about how you should be promoting your work as an erotic author/illustrator

i'm writing this up because the marketing aspect of my work as an erotic author/illustrator is a science to me, and also because i'm the guy who gets unreasonably annoyed when i see other creators not properly advertising their work. you presumably want to make money off your work. this post will be written under the assumption you want to make money off your work but are doing a bad job at it. it will be very confrontational. if you read this and feel attacked you're right and i am attacking you.

this is geared toward selling erotic comics/writing/books/art as products. i will probably write more than one post about this subject so if i didn't touch on something you want to know more about, comment/send me an ask and i'll keep it in mind for the next one.

i will start with my first and least specific but most important point:

DON'T GET FUCKING CUTE

hi are you paying attention. i'm gripping you by the sides of your face. do not get fucking cute with what you are trying to sell. you are not a big enough property to get cute, nobody LIKES it when big properties get cute, and you are selling porn. you have to own this. you have to be up front about this. don't be tongue in cheek, don't be all teehee i wonder what this could be~, don't be secretive. you are selling a product. you have to fucking act like it. you are an adult selling pornography to other adults. i am GRIPPING your HEAD you NEED to understand this.

and to be clear when i say 'cute' i mean coy. i don't mean cutesy, as in the aesthetic. you can be as hello kitty pastel ten emojis a post uwu as you like when you're building your audience and generating hype. but when you start trying to sell, don't be vague, don't be sarcastic, don't mislabel your work as a joke and assume everyone is on it. because they're not.

you must always assume 75% of the people seeing the thing you are advertising have no fucking idea who you are. and that includes a huge chunk of the people who already follow you. they do not know who you are or what you've been working on for two months or why they should care about it. they just got here. somebody just reposted it. they are seeing it for the first time. most people are only looking at social media for a tiny chunk of their day. they are not keeping up with you. you cannot get cute about what you are trying to sell because nobody knows what it is until you tell them.

okay are you still with me. we are going to talk about clarity now.

YOU GOTTA TELL ME WHAT IT IS

good lord the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's comic or book and had no idea what's actually in it or what it's about. who are the characters? why should i care about them? what do they do in it? what is the premise of this thing you want me to spend $5 on? why would you not tell me? i'm shaking you again. please i have to know what i'm buying i only have so much money to spend on porn.

porn, arguably more than any other genre, relies on knowing exactly what is in it. you do not want to surprise your readers with a kink they were unaware of! and on the flip side, you do not want to miss out on your target audience! if your book contains a hot spider babe laying eggs in an elf, you have to say so. not just so people who don't want to read about eggs know it isn't for them, but so the people who are egg crazy can see that and go "oh fuck YES i love EGGS here is my $5 and an extra $2 tip for catering to me specifically". a contents/features list is as much an advertisement as it is a warning!

as for re: who the characters are and why should i care, i'm sorry but you need to learn how to write sales copy. you have to write blurbs. you have to get good at the shit that goes on the back of a book. we all hate it but we have to do it. i want to know who the characters are and what the context is. i, personally, am not interested in contemporary stories as much as fantasy and historical. please tell me what genre this porn exists in so i know if it aesthetically appeals to me. pull some books off your shelves and see how they do it. hell man go look at mine.

while you're there, note that every single book of mine has a sample of what's in it. this feels like such a no-brainer to me but again! the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's work and they don't show me what their work looks like! you gotta give me the first page or two! just enough that i know if i like the way your writing sounds, or the way you draw your comics! i don't know you! i am not going to trust that you're good at what you do just based on a cover. the cover is to get me to this step, it is not the only step. you have to show me that you're worth spending my money on!

to put it less cynically, you want to catch my interest. you want me to go 'oh i want to see more of this', you want me to go 'ahh i want to know where this goes!' you need to get me invested and craving more. earn my $5!!!

YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT EASY TO GIVE YOU MONEY

hey go look at your bio right now. go look at your pinned post. do you have a link to your patreon there? do you have a link to your itchio/gumroad/whatever? do i have to click more than once to get to the places you want me to go to give you money? why? why are you making me click twice? have we learned nothing from every website making you click an extra time when they make some stupid UI update and how much it pisses us off? i have already given up, i have forgotten you, i am not giving you my $5 today. put your links in the easiest places to get to them.

god literally as i was writing this post i went to go find somebody's itchio to see how they described their work and it was not anywhere on their profile. grabbing you and shaking you PUT THE LINK WHERE I CAN FIND IT. don't make it hard! make it easy! i am a dickhead sitting on the toilet scrolling, saw your post, and was interested enough to read further. but you made me go to your bio to find your linktree and oops i have already gone back to my timeline to look at the boobies in the next post. stop wasting precious bio space on DNIs and put your fuckin links there!!!

this is more for the twitter people, but: just put the link in the damn post. just say the word commission. just say it's for patreon. "wuh wuh the algorithm" it is not the damn algorithm it's that everybody hates advertising and nobody wants to retweet ads. putting slashes in the words doesn't do anything and you look like a fool. i have posted so much art that says it's 'a commission for ___" and it did exactly as good as any other art despite having the word commission in it. and by doing the slashes you just made it impossible for anybody to search your account for your commission information (which should be at the VERY LEAST in a post under your pinned tweet if you're not actively posting about them being open).

okay that went on a tangent i'm going to back to the point of putting the link in the tweet. put it in the first post. not in the first reply. don't tell them to go to your bio. put it in the post people are actually going to share. it's fine to put more information in the thread but people are only ever going to share the first post. so put the link there. you have to make it easy. putting links in tweets can hurt you algorithmically, even in the replies. so you're better off having it in the post that actually gets seen and shared. i don't want to open the tweet and scroll to get to your sales page where i ASSUME you will have put all the information anyway. put it in the tweet that just got retweeted by itself onto my dash!

also you have to share it a ton of times. i repost my shit every few hours when i'm trying to push a new product. as i said before people are not 24/7 looking at their timelines. they missed it the first time. they missed it the second time. they didn't get paid yet that week but they were after the eighth time and you reminded them again so they finally bought it. that i will still get sales every time i repost a book ad weeks after release says there are always people who missed it, or who only just showed up.

abandon your pride and shill. shills pay their bills. anyone who gets annoyed about it isn't giving you money in the first place. don't worry about looking like a sell out. don't apologize for plugging your own work. post about it often, post about it in different ways. post about it. post about it. you are not going to make money if people don't know you have something to sell them. if you want to make a career out of it, you need to act like it.

I DON'T HAVE A FOURTH POINT

kisses your forehead. i'm sorry for yelling at you. i've been making and publishing and selling adult art for the past two-three years and have got myself to the point where it pays my rent, and i got there by paying attention to what does and does not work.

please do your best to make money. i want you to make money.

as i said above i plan to write more posts on this subject, such as cover design, how to actually write sales copy, and best practices with running a patreon, but if there's things you would want to hear more about leave a comment or send an ask! i will probably be less aggressive on future topics. these are just things that have grinded my gears for a grip.

#tt talks writing #tt talks drawing

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fuumiku · 4 months

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They’re really interesting foils in many ways. I’ve always thought that Marcille & Mithrun have underrated dynamic potential. Give me the cringefail dungeon lords. Give me the elves with ears-centric metaphorical self-image issues. Give me the academic elites whose deepest strongest desires will always remain unreachable and the only option is to turn to the corrupt forbidden fruit of a demon pact. I am so so normal about Mithrun and Marcille

I wonder if the resemblance between captain Mithrun and general Hagreus aka Marcille’s fave in Dalclan is intentional… They definitely look very alike. It could represent idealization vs reality? Something something the romanticization of elves and their societal drama in their fiction vs a very real and imperfect product of their military system. The canaries certainly aren’t glamorous next to whatever Hagreus is the general of. I feel like she never had the opportunity to notice the resemblance herself bc within seconds of meeting him he was wrestling her on the ground but. If she had… She would so think he should have been his actor in the tallman stage play of Daltian Clan in that new extra comic hehe. I love the little details like Hagreus’ lips being drawn with extra details because they’re full and pretty while Mithrun’s lips are drawn with extra details because they’re chapped lmao.

This art is all silly and surface level but in my head mithrille is like so dramatic and I make up daltian clan level big plots with them gbdgd. I made a spotify playlist for mithrun if y’all interested, rn it’s mostly centered around cravings that consume and losing yourself and illusions inspired from his time as dungeon lord but it’s branching out. Varied vibes, levels of intensity and degrees of confusion and await you ✨ I would emotionally rant about Chainsaw Man ost lyrics and how they tie in with Mithrun and the winged lion’s relationship but this post is already a monster

I want more of these two please please please pleaseee just one or two interactions in the new canon content coming up… All they ever did was debate philosophy on desires and human self-fulfillment and try to murder each other, please… I never get to gush about them and I can’t shut up so if you want more thoughts I talk about them more below

To get a girl to peacefully accept arrest follow these simple steps: in private, ominously stand above her and forcefully interrogate her, while in public, tell her you’ve met before (untrue and also not a pickup line, you’re just face blind) and interrogate her with a thin veneer of decorum. If all else fails, threaten and follow through on said threat. My guy needs more than just physical therapy I’m afraid

Sorry if most of these were Marcille-centric with Mithrun standing there looking cool, if I were doing these more from Mithrun’s pov things would be like "She’s a bit much but I guess I don’t mind hanging around her." or "Oh you’re a half-elf? -insert elven supremacist rethoric-" or "I have to keep her from becoming demon stew." immediately followed by "Did someone say demon? Kill kill kill kill kill" since these are set prior to like really knowing another. Then things would be more like "huh she has bad tastes in novels but her magic research is pretty interesting" and "I’m lonely and don’t understand myself— Oh she loves talking about feelings? Oh shi-" That last one is an aspect of why I like Marcille and Mithrun’s potential dynamic lol. She’s very… Emotionally intelligent alongside being impulsive. You think you have no feelings because the world has beaten them out of you? Think again!! Marcille be upon ye! -In a therapy sort of way but mostly in a connecting with people and your own self through interpersonal relationships and talking kinda way. I just think a lively, upbeat, annoying friend way too interested in your personal life would do him good, the canaries are nice but like if Marcille went to prison and was a sort of extra new bunkmate I think that’d be interesting and fun to read is what I’m saying

Unlike Kabru she wants all the useless messy filler of his backstory, eating chips while listening. Like two chibi sets side by side, "me and my fellow canaries, name name and name-" "Hold on we don’t need to know that." Vs "Then we were to sleep on the third floor of the dungeon, which had the look of a mausoleum, and name and name got into a fight over the campfire placement." while Marcille is like uh-huh what next what next while kicking her feet. She thinks of pre-dungeon pompous Mithrun and is like omg you went through a character arc and become better as a person- and then he opens his mouth and she’s like nevermind let’s keep working on that. She would also go "ew ur hair is greasy" and give him a full hair care treatment. What I’m saying is I need them to be forced to spend time in a dungeon together and become besties through a life or death roadtrip

Marcille is insecure about her ears, long, like an elf’s pride should be, but rounder, inelegant. Seeing Mithrun though, the epitome of beauty, with his half-cut ears make it a sillier thought. Not sure if Mithrun is the best person to reconnect with ur elven culture with but it sure is an option Marcille would so appreciate being around someone both cool headed and kind, I genuinely think they’d get along, like not that Senshi isn’t that too most of the time but I think Mithrun would be in a way that’s more refreshing to her. I’d be so curious about them discussing Dalclan, I doubt he’d have read it but she could make him read it, maybe post-canon with the excuse that they’re trying to find him a new hobby hah. He’d tear into the writing and everything but it’d be a fun time, I like to think that it’d make him a bit less prejudiced. Marcille @ Mithrun "👉👈 Soo maybe you don’t know these books they’re pretty recent having come out 50 years ago but…"

I’ve been in a Mithrun phase I want to make and read Mithrun-centric fics and angst so baaad. I razz him a lot here but he’s literally a traumatized military man that became obsessed with revenge due to bad coping and neglects himself in the process idk not much for him going on and some of it is because he has to work on himself, but hey no one’s perfect it all comes from a place of love and relating though I prommy. He’s the one ungodly angsty squeaky toy blorbo with brain damage rep I have don’t take him from me

#Dungeon meshi #mithrun #marcille donato #I feel like i haven’t drawn in so long i’m so rusty #Mithrille #Mithrun x marcille #Marcille x mithrun #I finally did smth for these 2 yippee #Dust and dog hairs manage to get on my drawings while i take pics it drives me mad i can’t do this anymore sorry if you see any #Continuation of my Marcille: “LET ME LOVE YOU!!” saga #Sorry marcille i hate drawing your sleeves #There are a couple things I’m not satisfied with and might redraw at one point but i need to stop and get stuff done #Marcille has 5 cm of height on mithrun according to the adventurers bible neat #Spoilers #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #I’ll move those last two tags up when I get to my computer #Character playlist #I made a more formal mithrille post on another blog explaining what potential i saw in them just search in the ship tag if you’re intereste

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justanotherwriter140 · 1 month

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Kung Fu Panda 4 - The Movie

The last really, really long discussion post (for now).

Major spoilers ahead!

This review is full of spoilers, so please refrain from reading through it until you've watched KFP4. I would highly suggest doing so, as I want everyone to form their own opinions without my influence. The movie has its flaws (some of which admittedly being a bit distracting), but it's a fun film that has things to offer.

Kung Fu Panda 4 is a fun movie (take that as you will) that takes its audience on an action-packed, surprisingly funny, yet relatively contained adventure on which Po doesn't really do much. It's an inconsequential, safe sequel that doesn't really hurt the franchise but adds close to nothing.

I had a good time watching the movie. It was obviously produced with its theater experience in mind and the action scenes especially reflected that priority. The humor was actually funny sometimes and I enjoyed Po and Zhen's dynamic. During the film, I was able to put most (most!) of my grievances aside and take the movie for what it is. I've discovered that the best way to watch KFP4 is with low expectations and an open mind.

I have a lot of things to say about KFP4, both complaints and compliments (though the former might be taking the forefront in this review), and I hope this review can help those of you who have seen the movie organize your thoughts. I've been having a lot of trouble with that specific aspect of things myself. Those who get it get it.

With that said, let's get into my full review of KFP4! I've been waiting for nearly 2 years to write this and I'm so excited to share every single thought.

I'm going to follow the format of my first discussion post and curate a bulleted list of my thoughts, followed by an analysis of each of these points. Keep in mind that everything I say is IMO and this is more of a rant post than anything else.

Here are my main points:

The Furious Five's role is comically minuscule in the context of the film. Their actions are inconsequential and add nothing to the plot (a confirmed last-minute add), and they have 30~ seconds of screen time. Shifu is also largely irrelevant.

Mr. Ping and Li's presence has little to no effect on the movie (though I won't complain too much because they were pretty fun to watch and this movie has bigger problems). In almost any scenario, I am adamantly against having characters present that don't add anything to the narrative; however, Mr. Ping is an exception. I love Mr. Ping. James Hong is a gem.

Zhen's screen time is not utilized well and her character is underdeveloped. She definitely wasn't annoying, but I didn't find her either compelling or funny enough to warrant the screen time she was given, especially considering it wasn't used to establish a backstory/strong motives. This makes me feel bad for the character because the movie kind of screwed her out of any substantial development.

The Chameleon, while complimented greatly by Viola Davis, is an underwhelming villain. Viola Davis is amazing in this film and I would suggest watching it for her performance if for nothing else, but the Chameleon is underwhelming considering the super cool concept behind the character.

The film feels very rushed. Apologies to those who disagree, but I think the pacing is atrocious and the final fight is anticlimactic. The movie felt like a word-vomit with no discernible intermissions that stops abruptly when the film ends.

I felt as though Po didn't change/grow as a person and the audience never had a chance to either bond with or relate to his character. His internal struggle is kept to a minimum and we don't spend a moment alone with him as an audience, which is disorienting and distracting. Watching the film felt like running into an old friend at the store who's too in a rush to have a real conversation.

The action scenes were strong with few exceptions. Creative art direction was utilized and I thought the martial arts choreography was entertaining and dynamic. I love the color palette of the film and many scenes were very impressive visually.

With my main points established, I do believe it's ranting time. Strap in, folks.

Let's start strong with the Furious Five: I'm gutted. Chagrined, despondent, crestfallen, etc.

The lack of the Furious Five negatively affects KFP4 so much, because not only does their absence hurt the atmospheric integrity of KFP as a franchise, it also forces KFP4 to bring in a slew of different characters—all while still noncommittally including the FF at the very end because I believe the marketing team required it—that clog up the cast a bit. It all goes to show how important strong, established side characters are.

The Furious Five are side characters, but the role of "side character" does not equate to being irrelevant, expendable, or exchangeable. I recognize that the Furious Five aren't super developed as characters beyond a handful of lines that allude to traits sprinkled sparingly among the members; however, I believe that the tiny bits of development we have been given have proved impactful in the past. Tigress's development in KFP2 is a prime example of how much narratively conscious changes (however small they may be) can positively affect these movies.

Because of limited runtimes, the Furious Five often operate as more of a singular unit than five individuals. Even so, I don't think discarding them is valid. They're so important to the KFP universe (to Po's universe!) and not having them with him feels so wrong. The Furious Five are fully integral to the heart of Kung Fu Panda, which is why I believe a lot of those who have seen the new movie have expressed something feeling "off" or something being missing.

I agree with this sentiment. To me, KFP4 didn't feel like a KFP movie. I don't need a Furious Five spin-off movie and I can be fully content with a KFP5 centered around Po's journey as an individual as was intended from the beginning, but he can't carry an entire movie on his back. As strong as he is in every sense of the word, he is only one character. He's the centerpiece of the franchise, but a centerpiece can only go so far without the rest of the design, so to speak.

For me, the Furious Five's absence is one of this film's biggest faults. It's huge and glaring. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, either, because the friends with whom I saw the film refused to talk about any other aspect of the movie after seeing it. Seeing them at the end was better than nothing, of course, but it was a disappointing culmination after eight years of waiting.

That all is to say I feel robbed. Despite all of this, though, I understand that there were reasons why the Furious Five weren't included in the movie. I don't believe the production team would exclude the Furious Five unless they weren't given a choice.

Shifu and Po's dynamic continues to be thoroughly delightful but their interactions are short and simplified. I would have loved to see more of them in this film, especially considering the extreme relevance of teacher-student relationships in KFP4. I (somewhat) digress, though, because the idea of Shifu having to live at the Jade Palace with only Po for an extended period of time is hilarious enough on its own. Maybe that's what the short film is about!

The comedy is odd but has some jokes that stand out. Po maintains a healthy relationship with his inner sass, which I think makes him more fun to watch and kind of eradicates the man-child verdict. Some jokes don't land, of course, but I genuinely thought KFP4 had some funny moments. Mr. Ping was consistently awesome and Po had some good lines sprinkled throughout the film.

As for Mr. Ping, he and Li Shan are the subjects of the film's B-plot as they follow Po to Juniper City out of shared concern for their son's safety. In my mind, they don't add anything to the story that couldn't have been brought about by other characters, but they had their moments of being entertaining. I enjoyed their silliness and thought they had a cute dynamic if nothing else.

Speaking of other characters, I want to discuss KFP4's deuteragonist and why I genuinely feel bad about the way her character was treated.

I want to let it be known that I'm still not on board with Po passing the Dragon Warrior torch to another character. While I agree that his arc is now calling for him to have a student, I disagree with the notion of him retiring from his DW role.

As I stated in my first discussion post:

Didn’t the initial significance and nuance of the title come from the fact that there is only one person who can be the Dragon Warrior, because the concept of the “Dragon Warrior” isn’t so much a title as it is Po himself? The universe (Oogway) must choose the Dragon Warrior because they are a singular being of legend. It is one person, and that person is Po. Wasn’t the point of the first film that the title ultimately doesn’t really matter because there is no “secret ingredient,” so to speak? The title doesn’t actually give Po anything. “It’s just you,” Po says, and that was the resolution.

When it comes to Zhen as a character, contrary to what I predicted I would think of her, I thought she was okay. While I was still a bit distracted by how out-of-place her design looks, I wasn't truly annoyed by her at any point and she and Po had some cute moments. Even so, I think their relationship could have been a bit more refined and developed.

While it's evident that Po and Zhen are meant to have a teacher-student/mentor-apprentice dynamic, I think their relationship feels half-baked. There were parallels that contradicted one another and ended up being confusing come the film's conclusion, and the nature of their relationship seems to vacillate depending on the scene. Additionally, the strength of their bond goes from zero to one hundred within thirty-ish minutes and left me with a bit of whiplash.

We're shown that Po and Zhen care about one another, but we're never shown why. They have a brief conversation during which they bond over being orphans, and Zhen says at one point, "You're actually a good guy," but that's it. This obvious lack of development is a bit disorienting because we're later led to believe that Zhen and Po care very deeply for one another when there's almost nothing to back it up.

A scene that sticks out to me when discussing this is when Zhen attack-hugs Po in a way that explicitly mirrors Tigress's hug from KFP2. This happens around the beginning of the third act, and while it had the potential to be an endearing moment, I think it fell flat.

The impact of Tigress's hug was brought on by her character's hardcore nature and reputation of being heartless, further strengthened with the knowledge that she was hugging Po (which was obviously way outside her comfort zone) as a show of companionship and fundamental understanding. Tigress hugged Po because he needed someone to recognize his strive for closure.

Zhen's hug had little to no impact because she had no reason to do it and it didn't indicate growth. She hugs Po because she's sorry for betraying him and doesn't want him to be killed by the Chameleon, but neither of these things are newly-established via this hug; we have already gathered by now that Zhen regrets betraying Po and doesn't want him to get hurt.

The hug is far from the movie's weakest point, but I think it's unnecessary given the context. I'm big on hugs in movies (an underutilized form of platonic affection, in my opinion), but it didn't fit here. I don't hate it, and I see it as an honest effort to bring emotionality to Po and Zhen's relationship, but it seems arbitrary.

Zhen and Po's relationship has a lot of potential and I'd be open to seeing more of them in the future, but I think some more thoughtful development needs to occur before I can humor it further. Even so, I can see myself featuring Zhen in some future post-KFP4 one-shots—sparingly, of course, because we have a lot of Furious Five content to compensate for.

Overall, they had a cute dynamic and some sweet moments but I'm not attached. I'm on board with Po having a student but I think their relationship needs a lot more development, something that this film unfortunately didn't give them time to either accomplish or earn.

Now, onto the Chameleon!

The concept of the Chameleon's character is admittedly super interesting. She's the deuteragonist's fastidious mother figure who feels that Zhen owes her a debt and as a result holds her to an impossible standard. That dynamic had the potential to be so interesting but I didn't think it was explored at all. There is no indication of Zhen having any internal conflict about fighting the Chameleon, no emotional complexity between them at all; it's disappointing because I think it would've added a bit of earnestness to the film.

Additionally, the idea of a shape-shifting villain is versatile. A shape-shifting villain gives those telling the story a lot of room to experiment with the protagonist and different ways in which the main character can be challenged and tested. It's yet another good idea utilized poorly. Just one idea: the Chameleon could have disguised herself as one (or several) of Po's family, friends, etc. and brought to fruition a new arc with his character (seeing as he arguably doesn't have one in this film), but she only disguises herself as Zhen very briefly in the movie.

Furthermore, the Chameleon completely relies on the powers of previous villains to pose any sort of threat to the main characters. She summons Po's former nemeses from the Spirit Realm (despite there being little logic in doing so considering Kai's literal evisceration) and takes their kung fu abilities for herself.

An excerpt from my first KFP4 discussion post that I think is relevant to the point I'm trying to make:

I don’t think it would be in the best interest of anyone if the past villains were to come back in any way that’s not a flashback (even then, I’m not sure I’d see the point). In all honesty, I thought that the whole point of the villains was that they died and stayed dead. They were defeated by Po once and for all as a testament to the idea of establishing Po's character growth and journey as a person through the bad things he’s able to overcome. It’d be highly contradictory to the messages of the other films if these villains were to suddenly come back.

While there was an honest effort made to portray the Chameleon as intimidating, I never felt as though any of the characters were endangered by either her or her army of lizard henchman. She's a visually appealing character (aside from her eyes, which I thought more resembled those of a gecko than a chameleon) and I greatly enjoyed Davis's performance, but overall I don't see the Chameleon as a notable villain.

The return of Tai Lung (had he been on his own) had the makings to be an excellent story, especially considering the importance of teacher-student dynamics in KFP4. To see him interacting with Shifu would have been incredible and could have led to further closure on Tai Lung's end (because I think that's kind of what the team was going for anyway), but it didn't happen.

It was nice to see Ian McShane reprise his role, but I wish Tai Lung's characterization had been more reminiscent of the way he was in the first film and more complimentary of his overall character arc. Tai Lung isn't a one-dimensional villain with a singular goal and motivation, and I couldn't help but feel as though the complexity of his character was simplified for the sake of KFP4's narrative.

Tai Lung's presence in KFP4 may be odd, but Shen and Kai's appearances are even more so. Kai, if I remember correctly, was fully obliterated by Po, reduced to literal particles on screen (which is kind of wild now that I think about it). Shen being in the Spirit Realm makes sense all things considered; however, Po and Li had no visible reaction to his presence, which seemed a bit unlikely considering Shen's deeds. This plot hole can likely be attributed to the fact that Shen and Kai's cameos (to my knowledge) were last-minute additions to the movie.

I have to talk about the pacing. I have to. I'm sorry, bear with me.

To me, the film's pacing is erratic and disconcerting. While I can appreciate a quick-moving narrative that doesn't dawdle on storylines that aren't interesting/important, KFP4 kind of flings itself too far in the opposite direction and ends up being frighteningly fast-paced. Once the credits began, I felt like I had been holding my breath for the entire movie.

KFP4 is confusing because while the runtime is standard for a KFP movie, it feels incredibly short. At the same time, the film's story moves at a breakneck speed and leaves little time for heart and development. These things culminate into a barreling boulder of a movie that simply doesn't have time to let its characters, story, or audience take a breath.

A fast pace is not inherently negative, but I don't think it worked in the favor of KFP4. The KFP franchise has always been very emotionally grounded (and just very grounded in general), so to see a film in which emotion/heart takes an aggressive backseat in comparison to action and comedy is jarring. While I think it's unreasonable for fans to expect the same emotional integrity as the original films to be present in the current and upcoming ones, I still think there's room for Po to grow and I felt as though the notion of him developing further was brushed aside in this film.

As for Po's growth, I felt it was nearly nonexistent. The previous trilogy wrapped up his character's journey beautifully and I know that KFP4 was bound to struggle with this particular aspect of making another KFP film; however, just because the strongest pillars of Po's character are established doesn't serve as a valid excuse to reverse his development and repeat what he learned in KFP3.

In KFP3, Po learned firsthand that he is capable of spreading wisdom and teaching kung fu. He also learns that he is constantly growing and that change is inevitable; there is always something more to learn.

"If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than you are now."

"I don't want to be anything more, I like who I am!"

In KFP4, Po pushes against this narrative despite fully accepting it in KFP3, actively reversing crucial parts of his character development achieved in the latter. KFP3 was non-ambiguously about learning to cope with change and responsibility, and I can't help but feel like KFP4 is simply copying this message while not adding anything to it.

Additionally, I felt that KFP4's Po generally felt less personal than he has in the past. In every KFP movie up to the franchise's most recent addition, I felt very connected to Po as an audience member. I felt like I was truly seeing the world of KFP through his eyes. I consider this to be one of the franchise's most impressive feats; it's incredibly difficult to build a universe around a character without making the audience feel limited to one perspective and one part of the world.

With KFP4, I felt both limited and disconnected. The world didn't feel as vast and all-encompassing as it has in the past and Po didn't seem fully like himself. This could be me nitpicking (as I'm prone to do), but I can't recall a single moment in the movie in which Po was alone on screen. Scenes like these are crucial for me because I see them as a meet-cute between the character and the audience, a moment for us to cross the bridge into their world in a way that's silent and intuitive. These little bonding moments are absolutely integral to feeling connected to a character.

Po's dream sequence in the first KFP movie is one of the best examples of this. It presents his aspirations, alludes to his way of life up to the point of the movie, and showcases his personality. During Po's dream sequence, the audience is quite literally inside Po's mind; we're there with him, seeing what he sees, subsequently feeling what he feels. Po is a dreamer at heart and makes the audience feel like dreamers, too.

In KFP4, I felt like I little to no point of reference when it comes to how Po was feeling. I didn't feel immersed in him and his world.

I know I've been very "doom and gloom" throughout this post, which is an exhausting mindset for everyone involved. I want to end my critique with something positive because I think some praise is deserved. Let's just say the movie could have been a lot worse, the details of which I'm sure you're all well aware.

The color palette of the movie is beautiful and somewhat reminiscent of the first film. While the animation style of KFP4 is far more simplistic than its predecessors, I was very impressed with its use of shadow and light. Po's many faces were also hysterical, props to those who helped make him as expressive as he is.

Additionally, the movie's action sequences were clearly thought out and discussed in great detail. The experimentation with camera angles was really fun to watch and I enjoyed the majority of the film's fight scenes. They were fun, bouncy, and entertaining, and quite likely reinstated audiences's love of watching a cuddly panda kick butt.

Congratulations, you've reached the end! Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to read this unnecessarily long and detailed review. As long as I help someone translate their conflicted feelings into coherent thoughts, I'll call it a win.

I want to reiterate that I don't hate Kung Fu Panda 4 and I had fun while watching the film. It has its flaws and there are a lot of aspects that I dislike, but the effort of the crew is obvious and I greatly admire and respect the hard work put into the film by those who worked on it. This does not at all excuse my issues with the movie, but it's worth saying.

As for the future of the series, I only hope that the next installment is more considerate of the franchise's origins and why Po's story is being told in the first place. I fully believe that another sequel could be good given a strong, passionate crew with a great understanding of the characters and world (and I wouldn't be averse to some previous directors returning, just to put it out there).

Thanks again to those who took the time to read this crazy excuse for a movie review. Feel free to either disagree with me or add things in the replies/reblogs, I'm always looking for more thoughts to think.

Until next time!

#kung fu panda 4 #kung fu panda #dreamworks animation #kfp #kfp 4 #movie review #i'll add the actual picture of the furious five's cameo when i can get ahold of one of decent quality #my time has come #it wasn't THAT bad #i didn't love it #but it is what it is #it's a tentative 6/10 all things considered #free the five #perhaps i treated kfp3 too harshly #don't get me wrong the movie had good qualities and i can tell a lot of work went into it #a lot of missed potential imo #a lot of characters done dirty #i didn't even mention the score but i thought it was just okay #i wasn't wowed #i know close to nothing about composing though so i should probably just not even go there #credits were the best part both cinematically and musically #i feel mean but i'm not going to be dishonest #bc obviously you all simply must know how i feel about the silly panda movie #a more detailed version of the grievances i have w the dragon warrior plot can be found in my og discussion post if anyone's interested #as well as my thoughts on bringing back old villains #might make some edits to this in the future but this is all i have to say for now

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pluckyredhead · 4 months

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so what did you not like about worlds finest teen titans? There were a lot of dropped plot threads and bits I expected Waid to develop more (Roy and Ollie conflict, Roy, Garth and Wally never resolved their sleepover argument, Karen's reaction at the con to nearly being unmasked, Wally's parents, ect) and also the queerbaiting with garth (and his eyes changing colour halfway through???) was annoying. I thought it was cute overall but maybe I'm not familiar enough with some of the characters?

I held on to this ask because I was going to reread the miniseries to answer you more accurately, and then I decided to not put myself through that, so...hopefully my memory is accurate lol.

(I should note before I get into it that none of my quibbles are with Emanuela Lupacchino's art. She's a treasure and we're thrilled that she's here.)

But yeah, you've put the nail on the head with a lot of it. It was just terribly paced, like Waid didn't know how many issues he had or something. Aside from all the dropped threads you mentioned, it felt like the main bad guys were...pretty much hastily introduced, or at least assembled, in #5? There didn't seem to be any kind of...well, point to this miniseries. There was no theme. There was nothing Waid was trying to say, as far as I could tell, except "Fuck Roy Harper." (Oh, we'll get to that.) It wasn't an origin story for the team. It wasn't about adolescence or coming of age or learning who you are, except maybe a little bit for Garth. It was just...there.

And I want to be clear here: Mark Waid is one of my favorite comic book writers of all time. When he hits, he hits. The regular World's Finest book and his Shazam are wonderful. I just think this wasn't the right match of writer/characters, because he didn't handle these very well. Taking them one by one:

Dick: DC is fully in their "Dick the unbearable Mary Sue" era and this book is no exception. If I never see another comic where a whole team of experienced superheroes with major league powers and training stands around like incompetent jackasses until a Bat comes along and tells them what to do, it'll be too soon. I'm here to read about an ensemble book where everyone is a three-dimensional character, not The World's Most Perfect Boy and his loser sidekicks. Not only is it unfair to everyone else in the cast, it's doing a disservice to Dick, who is a much more interesting character than this book (or Tom Taylor, ahem) gives him credit for.

(There's also something very weird and inconsistent Waid is doing across his books with Dick - WF, WFTT, and BvR - where sometimes he's throwing a tantrum because he doesn't get to be a circus star with everyone looking at him all the time, and sometimes he's screaming at Roy for filming them, and both feel utterly arbitrary to me as well as contradictory.)

Donna: Donna's characterization in this was just...bizarre. I was a little worried about how Waid would handle her, since he has a tendency to turn more quote unquote "wholesome" female characters into the Mom Friend (see: his Champions run, where he tries to get away with it by having Kamala announce that she's not going to be the Mom Friend because she's the only girl on the team...and then immediately becoming the Mom Friend), and Donna's already very much a Mom Friend, and I didn't know what Mom Friend Squared would look like. But instead he went for this...Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl approach? Where she's really into bungee jumping and monster trucks? I'm not offended by it, it's just so utterly random. This isn't who Donna is? It's never been who she is? Baffling.

I am offended (I mean, mildly, but still) by the fact that she and Garth are shoehorned together in this. He's the only boy on the team she's never been romantically linked to, even in dreams/hallucinations/whatever, so completing the set feels very much like Donna's only narrative worth is in being a love interest, which...gross.

Garth: Garth probably got the best treatment of the bunch, to be honest. He was in character as the shy little weirdo he was in the Silver Age and in pretty much every flashback we've ever seen. He's smart and perceptive and bad at saying what he wants and generous towards those who have hurt him, all of which is very Garth. I have no complaints about him except the weird queerbaiting, and I'm not blaming Waid for that because from what I understand, solicits are written by editorial working off of a pitch, potentially before the comic is even written, so who knows what happened there? It might have been a stupid joke that didn't land, it might have been a story that was pitched and then a higher up vetoed it, it might have been a story Waid was going to write and then changed his mind. I'm not going to say it's his fault when I have no idea if that's true. Otherwise, I think he handled Garth well.

Wally: Wally was another one where I was just like ??? the whole time. He didn't feel like Wally, he felt like Bart. But, like, fanon's innocent child version of Bart and not the actual canon character, who has a lot more backbone. Why is he hero worshipping Dick like that? Why is he so docile? What was up with that weird line where Dick's like "you're the youngest?" Yes, historically Dick had already dropped out of college while Wally was still in high school, but otherwise they've always been portrayed as the same age. And if it's a reference to debut year, Donna's the youngest. It's such a random throwaway line dumped in at the very end for...why? Confusing me personally?

The worst, though, was whatever the hell was going on with Wally's parents. Wally's parents are not an idyllic suburban couple! They are not the Kents! Rudy West is only not classified as a supervillain because he doesn't have a costume! Even if he hadn't tried to kill Mary, sold the Earth out to alien robots, faked his own death, or run a deadly labor camp for children at this point in the timeline, he definitely hit Wally and, uh, poisoned Wally's Little League coach. I don't think Mary is as bad as some of fandom does, but she's certainly a difficult person. Wally was desperately unhappy at home as a child, which is why he latched on so hard to Barry and Iris. And Waid knows this, because he wrote a lot of that canon. If it's a retcon, it's such a strange, pointless one that makes all of them a lot less interesting. Just baffling.

Karen: I think it was a very smart choice to add Karen to the founding roster and make the team slightly more gender-balanced and not all-white. It's kind of a wasted choice, though, when she's so aggressively sidelined. All she does in this book is hang around with Mal and the support staff. She isn't looped into any of the major emotional conflicts - Garth and Donna, Dick and Roy, Roy and Wally and Garth. She's not treated as a headliner in the same way the others are, and that really sucks.

Roy: Hoo boy.

When Waid was announced as the writer of Batman vs. Robin, I was worried, because I had a feeling he didn't like Damian. I couldn't put my finger on why, it was just a feeling I had. And boy howdy, was I proved right! Damian is treated like shit in that book.

I had the same feeling with this book and Roy, and...let's just say I'm two for two, okay?

Here's the thing. I'm okay with Roy being written as kind of shitty, especially during his period of his life. Teen Titans: Year One writes him as an utter fuckboy, and I love that comic. The Mal and Karen issue of The Other History of the DC Universe retells the Bronze Age Titans era from their perspective, and it pulls absolutely no punches regarding Roy being, well, kind of an asshole...and it's right to do so, because it's drawing very directly from those 1970s comics, and he was often awful in those.

But Waid writes him as a generic 80s movie villain. He's a human popped collar. He's a stereotype of a bully. My problem isn't that I need him to never do anything wrong, it's that nothing in this book is specific to Roy, his history, or his established personality.

For instance, all of his bragging about how much money he has? He comes off like a kid who was born into wealth and has never known anything else, but that isn't true. He was at best middle class before Ollie, probably more likely working class given the economic situation on most reservations - but there's no indication that he's responding specifically to that shift in circumstances. He's just, like, Draco Malfoy with arrows. Also, Dick has a nearly identical history but none of the same issues. He even says "Roy and I have the same background but he sucks." Why is one of them a perfect angel untouched by filthy lucre, and the other is Bradley Uppercrust III?

And then there's the subplot with Ollie neglecting Roy, which fizzled out to a real wet fart of a resolution. But honestly, at no point did I know where Waid was going with that, because...well, if you know Roy's history, you know Ollie neglecting him is what leads directly to Roy getting into drugs. And like...first of all, the timeline here is off, because historically Ollie didn't ditch Roy until after he lost his money, and he still has it here. (How interesting would it have been to have Roy pretending he was still rich in addition to pretending Ollie was around?) But also, this comic ends on an "and now everything is fine!" note, but it isn't! It really, really isn't. So Ollie showing up at the end and being like "I'm here for you, buddy" doesn't ring true, because he is demonstrably not in this very comic, and we also know he won't be in the future. And Roy getting what he wants doesn't feel like a satisfying resolution either because we don't actually get to see changed behavior from him, and again, we know this won't last. (Again, TT:YO handles this dynamic very well, where we see that Ollie is an affectionate but negligent guardian who Roy is learning some very bad habits from.)

And to top it off, constantly contrasting Terrible Roy to Virtuous Dick and simultaneously pretending that Ollie was at this point a responsible guardian has the (I hope unintentional) effect of implying that Roy will eventually become an addict because he's just a bad and weak person, instead of a struggling teen who needed support and didn't get it. I would have actually preferred a story that hinted at the beginning of Roy's addiction and how he hides it from the Titans, because we've never had that story told in comics, but I don't think Waid's the one to write it. Instead we get a conflict that's out of character for Roy, a resolution that doesn't feel at all earned, and the looming threat of Roy's immediate future which Waid refuses to address.

In conclusion, this book was a mess, and you should all read Teen Titans: Year One instead.

#meta #teen titans #dick grayson #robin #donna troy #wonder girl #garth #aqualad #wally west #kid flash #karen beecher #bumblebee #roy harper #speedy

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sciderman · 6 months

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Can you please recommend some Cable and Deadpool comics? I have a few of them, a collection of one actually, but it's still not enough to scratch that itch of mine. I am completely in love with Cable's character and Deadpool is truly my spirit.

the cable and deadpool series (2004) is the definitive! you probably have a collection from there, but it ran for a grand total of 50 issues – though, nate was awol for like the 8 last issues. kind of hilarious that they just kept the cable and deadpool series running without cable. but that's kind of just how their relationship goes.

following that – deadpool and cable (wade gets top billing now) split second (2015), which is like, one of my favourite books of all time.

you know, someone asked me before if there were a storyline i'd like to adapt for a deadpool movie and you know - if i knew they weren't going to make a mess of it, this is the one book i'd love to see adapted. but it would be a mess. and it would need SO much set-up. but i love this book.

additional issues – you've gotta read new mutants #98 – it's just required reading - deadpool's first ever appearance, and hey, wade and nate's first ever meeting, too.

it ends so embarrassingly for wade

bound and gagged?? on the first date?????????

i don't actually really have an expansive list of all cablepool interactions – and i can't really find anyone who's put one together – that's why i'm sure there's plenty that's slipped under my nose because i'm oh-so-slowly making my way through cable's history of comics... but other such memorable moments...

deadpool (1997) #22

deadpool vs x-force (sexiest art in the world ever)

cable/deadpool annual #1 (2018) (i kind of hate it. wade has the most annoying characterisation you've ever seen, and i just get the feeling that whoever's writing it kind of just doesn't get it. but it has some fun panels to take out of context.)

uncanny avengers (2016) - nate's a bit too serious whenever duggan writes him, but... uh. i guess they stand next to each other sometimes and that's always nice to see.

also uncanny avengers #8 was so hilarious for this

always thinking about how nate just knew where to find wade. i know this means that even despite the mind-control rewriting all their memories and identities, nate and wade still found each other and were definitely having a hunky love affair (this lives in my head an unreasonable amount and i might write about one day.)

um. despicable deadpool? honestly i love when wade gets nasty. i love a nasty, nasty boy. he's so ugly and it was so bloody, and i kind of love to see it. (heart wants what it wants.)

please don't kinkshame me. but i find this very sexually gratifying. in ways i'm not prepared to explain.

this isn't by any means an expansive list - calling on cablepool nation, please add your recs in the replies!

#cablepool #sci talks comics

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evilmagician430 · 5 months

Text

boyfriends but awesome (and instead of a webtoon its an independent webcomic)

design notes and 3ds flipnote concept art below the cut

general notes abt their designs and what the comic would be like in my head:

>they dont have names in this version cause i think that was one of the good things they did originally. i imagine they refer to eachother as "that one" "the other guy" etc like the dhmis guys when talking about eachother.

>they are not in a defined romantic relationship with eachother because i think thats more interesting, the polyamory aspect would be kept (im not polyamorous btw so im not gonna try to write an established polycule) but its more vague in that they all kind of have a thing for eachother but also hate eachother and want to rip eachothers guts out. and theyre all roommates and bffs. if you asked them what they were the answer you would get would be "friends who are boys". they are the height of male friendship, hate, love, etc.

>instead of focusing on sexualizing them in strange ways and doing boring moe shit it would lean into the comedy aspect BUT NO MEMES OR LATE 2010S SLANG !! this was something i could not fucking stand when reading the original (if you couldnt tell by now i did used to read boyfriends. it was a regrettable time and in redesigning and overhauling them i hope to make something good out of this wasted period of my life) like even when it was current boyfriends always made memes feel.. out of place. like as soon as they said it it wasnt cool anymore. it was the unfunniest shit ever

>i wanted the characters to look less WHITE and also more distinct from eachother and also less young cause in the original its like the same twink 3 times in different haircolors and their Chad. said chad is the best character only by way of not being annoying. so yeah i'll be more specific later but none of them are white and i gave them all different eye and nose shapes and distinct physical traits and bodies etc.

>mostly i just did this cause the "nerd" and "goth" ones piss me off so bad like thats not real. thats not a nerd thats just a nondescript waify femboy with glasses. thats not a goth, thats a tiktok eboy. and i felt bad for jock being trapped in this comic. and the prep one i feel nothing towards hes the most accurate to gay preps irl because they really are that annoying. but i tried to make him a little interesting atleast. anyways

nerd - black, brony, always aggressively corrects the others when they state an incorrect fact, really into playstation eyetoy and obscure playstation games. insanely autistic. usually pissed off if hes not indulging himself in something he likes (yaoi, games, ponies, figures, etc). i just wanted to overhaul him completely to make him almost nothing like refrainbow's nerd because nerd type characters are always the ones i tend to see myself in and are my favorites but reading the webtoon that guy just pissed me off fr.

jock - 2nd gen chinese american, one of the things i liked in the original actually was when they sexualized the jock (probably cause hes the only one who doesnt look 14 in that comic) and his big tits. hes a very genuinely kind guy, not the brightest, has a voracious appetite, he also still bakes cause thats cute i think.

prep - he looks different here because i was originally going to make him white but i decided to make him a light/medium skintone black guy (he just wears a blonde wig and contacts). when companies make their pride month merchandise and advertisements this is the exact person they imagine in their head who is going to buy these products. hes a million percent one of those swifties who thinks taylor swift is secretly a lesbian. trust fund kid btw obviously. his only redeeming quality is that hes good at makeup. jokes in the comic are usually made at his expense.

goth - 1st gen latino american, specifically peruvian because i am a self serving motherfucker. hes a really big numetal fan and listens to like 2000s evil wolf amv music in addition to legitimate gothic. his face changed a little too between this and the final design. his outfit completely changed but its only because i realized everyone else was dressed for relatively warm weather so it wouldnt make sense for him to be wearing multiple layers of black. if i do cold weather outfits for them id def reuse this look for him. hes still trans but i think all of them are in my version. also they dont use labels for their sexual/rom orientation. except prep hes homosexual gay.

congratulations for reaching the end of this incomprehensible bullshit 👍 hope someone enjoys this but idrc if its just for me either

#images that are horrid to see and look at #mspaint #boyfriends #boyfriends webtoon #boyfriends redesign #redesign #character design #boy-friendz #nerd guy #jock guy #prep guy #goth guy #boyfriends slander

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thescrolls-haveforetold · 4 days

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Hey so in response to your art request callout, I've got two possible suggestions, one practical and one hopefully interesting? On the practical side I'd love I lineup of your OCs, names and pronouns and all that, because I've just found your stuff and I'm fascinated! And on the more creative side, I'd love to see a look at some of the crazy shit your Nerevarine got up to in their(? her? his?) early days on Vvardenfell! Like, the really early days when you're clearing caves and tombs and nearly dying constantly XD

i have like..40-50 or so ocs, so while that would take a lot of work (that i’m Far Too Lazy to even try to do) i will introduce the main group thru words

Kynwyn Heraclea Chirharia ‘The Dragon’/Maldovjun (little-dragon-king) is my last dragonborn, 15, she/her. she is a dragon in every sense of the word, she hoards, she steals, she collects and with her voice she kills. There’s more to her dragon bloodline than meets the eye. She brash, annoying and anything but selfless. But what can you expect from a kid. She is brunette, white strips of hair, big purple eyes and a mischievous grin

Valiel Hlaalu(-Septim) is my Hero of Kvatch, he/him, 38. Prior to the Oblivion Crisis, he was a courtesan by no choice of his own, by pressure of his mother to use his beauty to gain secrets for political advantages, he despises politics. He loves Martin, but he’s grumpy, rude but surprisingly down to earth for a noble from the imperial city. He is also a little stupid. He is a very pale dunmer with icy eyes, beauty marks and a scowl.

Nerevar ‘Neht’ Mora is my Nerevarine (who isn’t the nerevarine in a classic way, because he IS nerevar), he/they, the body he’s in is 25, but the man himself is at this point at least 800-900 or so years old, he himself doesn’t know due to him being snatched up by slavers at an early age. He is literally Nerevar. Just The Indoril Nerevar Mora stuffed into the body of some poor unsuspecting individual who had the shit luck to be hand picked by Azura. He is totally aware of his former companion’s troubles, and he hates them for it. He’s hedonistic, hyper competent, extremely intelligent and extremely difficult to kill. There is a reason the idea of Nerevar coming back was so terrifying for the Tribunal, and Nerevar, in the most literal sense, returned. As soon as the individual put on the ring Moon-And-Star, his consciousness and soul was sacrificed, and the empty vessel was replaced entirely with Nerevar’s soul and consciousness. Nerevar’s vessel is a redguard with gold eyes, branded with Nerevar’s partial heterochromia to symbolise who he is. He has long locs and a red jacket.

Gwyndir Shadowfoot is my Eternal Champion, she/he/they, I don’t have much lore on her yet, i do know she’s a werewolf bosmer. He has antlers, with an autumn colour palette, brown skin and freckles. They wear a green cloak.

Arenwe the Fair is my Hero of Daggerfall, he/him, again, there isn’t much lore on him. Arenwe is a long, fair haired pale altmer with pink eyes and a shy smile.

OBVIOUSLY HERE YOU CAN TELL WHO THE FAVOURITE IS LMFAO

in regards to cave trotting and stuff like that, i’d actually love to draw a comic or write a fic about it, I just don’t have that much faith in my author skillz to actually manage writing a fic . or a comic for that matter. Maybe at some point when i feel okay with it i’ll actually try to start mapping out Nerevar’s story

#the elder scrolls #tes #morrowind #elder scrolls #nerevarine #oc: indoril nerevar mora #oc: valiel hlaalu-septim #oc: kynwyn the dragon #oc: arenwe the fair #oc: gwyndir shadowfoot #THANK YOU FOR THE ASK BTW I HAD LOTSBOF FUN

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docilepillow · 3 months

Text

2024 January Media Post Thingy

i dont post on tumblr.com a whole lot i mostly just love to reblog but i wanna see if this novelty thing sticks because for like 2020-2022 i had like a text file i did that i stopped doing in 2023 or so for like video games in particular and i unno it was fun but i got distracted cus half that month i was doing retail anything special happen this year yet? not especially, but since soon ill be very busy with something that IS indeed special, and my bday, i may as well make a post now bc i feel like i will be preoccupied for the first good bit of febuary personally ( exciting life stuff ! ) last disclaimer is that at some point i would want to add movies and shows to this list when i get around to it , but for me december and january've kinda blended in that regard.. me and my friends watched Wonka recently and i was kinda so-so on that just cus' i think the original movies a certain way i guess. oops. i think there were other movies/ shows too and comics as well but once again, december-january blurr for me. Furthermore, any piece of media i pick out for this will also have a completely arbitrary doc-ism secondary title just because i feel like it. Enjoy! VIDEO GAMES! ! MARIO GALAXY 2 < SECOND ROUNDEST MARIO GAME >

I wanna say i spent from the first of january to the third on this game, but my Wii Menu calendar is a little fucked up....

Whoops! Regardless, i do have a bit of a background of not completely " gel-ing " with the original Mario Galaxy gameplay wise in my own friendgroup, to mostly dismayed reactions n junk. In short, i think artistically the game's merits are absolutely fantastic, but since i played it on the switch 3d mario collection some time after sunshine, i do think the control scheme is overall pretty limited, and that does apply to mario galaxy 2, i guess, but methodically, i think playing this game on a wiimote does make the limitation feel i guess more fair in terms of like camera control and deliberacy n stuff... the galaxy games and presentation are completely amazing works of art obviously and theres some good music here but i think between galaxy 1 and 2 i definitely prefer 2 mechanically. i enjoy the level scenarios more thats primarily it, i think. I'm so-and-so on how comets work and how many stars you need to get to get to the end ( I think how comets spawn is a little filler-ey and waiting for them to appear in a level i don't know it'll appear in was a little obtuse to figure out, even if i did eventually manage it and actually enjoy the challenges they offer. its mostly just really annoying comet spawning mechanics that were a drag. a very deliberately- controlling mario i guess and being more familiar with galaxy's control probably was why i was able to enjoy this one more ? Yay! I think i still enjoy 3d world more then this and most other 3D marios, though. It's a good video game and i liked the boss fights in it, theyre surprisingly cool and dynamic for what i'm used to from the mario series. I didn't do the special world, though. i wasn't compelled to go that far past the credits. ( You'd think this game's doc-ism title would come from it being the sequel to mario galaxy, and thus, second roundest, but honestly, i think in terms of the mario series scale, Mario Pinball Land has round mario in it, and galaxy 2's starship mario is definitely, i think, rounder then the comet observatory from galaxy one. That makes Mario Galaxy the third-roundest mario game! )

From around the 6th to the 13th, I ended up playing --- ACTRAISER RENAISSANCE < THE CEREAL-BOX GOD GAME >

actraiser is definitely a mixed video game for me, because i definitely see the merit in it. It's a very unconventional splicing of both sidescrolling and city-development game, a " remake " of a novel SNES/Famicom game with the same premise. You're like a big god of light guy who sends your soul into this little warrior guy who cleanses the land of monsters for around 6 different settlements to florish in with the assistance of a cute little angel friend and whatever area's flavor of local legend the game gives you after a story event or two to hold down the place from encroaching monster dens and such; and, apparently exclusive to this version, there's also little tower-defense segments that come in waves around four or five times per area, which in my opinion are kind of this game's weakest link, but not without like Some kind of merit. At the end of each town segment, there is also a big boss fight, usually tying into the story in some way.

( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) ( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) Some things i like that this game does, alot ---

i think it has a very very cool " world select " map. one very postive thing is that it updates in real time with your progress in the area, so you can watch it all expand from your little sky palace once you've done your buisness there. it's really satisfying and pretty... this game's got really good 2d art, i think. I've heard people be mixed on the sidescroller art in comparison, but i think it's got a charm to it. I think it's cute and while its probably more a budgetary limitation, i do like how everything kind of looks like one of those fantasy stills you can sometimes buy from arts and crafts stores. The framerate on them is like a bit lower then what you'd expect from a modern game but mechanically its still very responsive, which makes me feel like it's a stylistic choice to look more stop-motioney, i guess. Maybe im just a fan of ham, i unno.

In terms of the overhead segments, it's pretty basic and automated, which is fine by me, and perfectly workable for what it is, i think, conceptually ( they build out on your own but you do kind of " guide their hand " when it comes to where paths go, at least. It does lead to a weird meta thing being to zap your own people with holy lightning to destroy stuff you don't want though, which feels flavorfully odd for a benevolent god.... I guess it's fair enough

the main problem with the game is that the tower defense segments, the main major feature and addition of this remake, does kind of take the game's pacing and drop flat in the middle of it. They're usually decently long segments where you can only indirectly fight, and are kind of slow. They also usually need you to protect or have a certain number of buildings left by the end of it ( having all of your farms in tact by the end, defending the main temple, not having every house burned down ) which can be a bit more difficult then it sounds. i dont think the segments are bad or anything, there's just.... entirely too many of them??? like mechanically theyre fine they just happen every other second between story events and it feels kind of padded after like the second one in one area, and there's about 5 per area of increasing difficulty. i definitely think if anything could be reined back, it'd be that. I don't think the story is too special , either, the angel kind of just quips sassily about the story at you from time to time and your followers make requests of you at the temple, usually manifesting in the town segements as " have x number of y " or getting the population to a set threshold, or getting x number of resources. The structure of each area isn't shaken up too much, mostly just " new settlement, find a guy, guy isnt so sure about this lord of light guy but through fighting alongside u and some small character arch, they become a champion of yours or something and you meet the scary boss guy and kill them and weaken the big bad dark lords forces behind it all, but there were two segments i liked, both pretty late-game, with the ice wyvern and this guy named shemall whose only affront to you is having a more popular humanitarian ideology ( who actually becomes the dominant ideology in the segment leaving the church literally empty for a good portion of it , and is only tied into the status quo by the dark lord himself possessing the other temple and shit and starting a really really bad storm of eeevil , who i like a bit ) and a boss in the last area who was implied to once be a force of good but ultimately subservient to the bad guys will, which is basic but i tihnk neat. also they have cool designs. )

Shrug! I think it's neat but it has problems that bog it down! Waah! i dont regret playing it or anything but it's like a 7! ( It's kind of like a game you'd get in one of those cereal boxes, and it's a little cheap, but its endearing to me ? ) TOREE 3D < LEAST-CONSEQUENCIAL SPOILER AWARD >

finished this game the same day i finished actraiser, in one sitting. Ummm... i know this game's like a crowd favorite, and it's, like, solid, but i don't really have all that much to say about it ..... Like, it's an OK platformer, with like really great value for your dollar, but i don't really have all that much to say about it, endearment-wise. I think also that the VHS horror elements are largely unnecessary and are kind of whatever, but I know i'm not really the audience for it. That's the spoiler, i guess. Around the same time, in a date range I don't remember, I basically ended up completely reorganizing my room for Life Stuff, and ended up giving a really cool fan project a try, from a series i've always wanted to try more of, if not for the language barrier, in the form of -- STARFY ORIGINS ( Densetsu no Stafy ) < SPLASHABLE VIDEO GAME >

Waaaaaaaa ! i love starfy ( Stafy? ) You probably wouldn't have the background on it unless you knew me, but i'm a real DS head, and one of my earliest games on the system, one i have vivid memories with, was The Legendary Starfy, an " underwater platformer ", mostly known as being a kirby-like game in style, and being the last entry in a mostly untranslated series of platformers that're japanese-exclusive!

Essentially, what this means for me was that there was , for a very long portion of my kid-years, a bunch of video games out there that i knew i'd be instantly endeared by if ONLY i could play them ( since, even at the time, gba emulation for me was kind of mystical and out of my ability ) ; and , at least in my mind, that meant it'd have just as many lovable characters and such as the the starfy I got to play, anecdotaly meaning the only exposure i'd have to these games beforehand is ferverously looking up stuff on the starfy wiki and watching youtube videos of the final bosses and stuff; basically just lementing for years that " aww,, theres no translation. i guess it's just too obscure " with the rest of the starfy fans i've heard about online, until recently! I emulated this game on Vita and overall i'd just have to say its a cute, decently-novel-but-slightly-padded 2d sidescroller. I'd say it was like ok-levels of worth the wait, but im honestly just floored that a translation of the first game happened at all, and i think its awesome what's been done. It's selfish to want, but i'd really like to try the other DS starfy game sometime, whenever that's translated. It's honestly one of the few loose-end games i can even think of and mechanically that one's a whole lot more out there then this one, which, other then the novelty of playing this game i've only heard murmurs of for over a decade, is just kind of alright. kudos to the fan translators making this game work out!!! I wonder if the team that did this have plans for the others now that this game's been translated....

Wew, halfway down the list, i'm sick of typing, but i'll keep going with ---> DEATHSMILES < SCARY >

Cool bullethell shmup with really tight gameplay my friend endeared me to with a single screenshot and a slightly empassioned ramble i forget the exact context of

idk i think this green girl is neat and the arcade style bullethell gameplay's really fun on steam deck; i just think the girls should be like 7 years older each then what the game says because the loli aspects of this game are kind of uncomfortable and unavoidable and i don't like them at all... the gothic horror halloween aestetic the game has otherwise absolutely rocks and is just up my alley, though. i guess its just part of the style theyre going for, but it's a really unfortunate Japanese quirk you kind of have to just tolerate for the other Very Good aspects the game has gameplay and artisticly wise ( music and art direction is awesome )

the girl's dragon familiar is named booboo by the way. just thought that's important. LITTLE GOODY TWO SHOES < GAME **MOST** RESPONSIBLE FOR SINGLE-HANDEDLY HOME-WRECKING MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY THIS MONTH >

Another game my friend reccomended whicch is completely awwesome and my entire aestetic and i love it alot and i think its my game of the year unless something else comes around and im absolutely floored with it and i went into it completely endeared and its completely wrecked my vernacular and its so pretty and its so artistic and its so different and its so pretty and its so girl and its so gay and im Elise and im in the woods i like being in the woods this game has the best aestetic of any game ive played ever and it feels like no competition and ummmmmmmmmmm

idk just fucking look at it its so so so so good i love this games world so sooso osososoos s oso ososo o os so mcuh its so good it so nice its so charactered genuinely great little slice of life slash horror slash social sim game with admittedly some jank portions of it that piss me off a little bit but holy fucking shit this games aestetic is the best besy best best bersy tbest best thing ever made i think its really really good pelease watch this segment on youtube its so silly

youtube

im not gonna type anything else this game Is its narrative and i dont wanna spoil anything but its great its got a lovely dark fable aestetic and i think everyone should play it especially if you like rpg maker horror type games / are gay as hell / love fairytale aestetics like I do

i like ummmm Lebkuchen by the way. if u wanna know what my ending is. there is some fucked up shit that happens in this game though despite how absolutely adorable it looks. everything in this game points to it being one of my favorites of all time or at the very least it will definitely poison my brain forever at the expense of my friends who havent played it yet. Waaah..... no i dont think talking about a fanmade pokemon rom hack after arguably a massive artistic achievement is disrespectful thats just how the month flows POKEMON ROWE < I broke it, oops... >

really cool open-world emerald rom hack, similar to crystal clear and the like. I've technically played it already, but this is the first time i've completed it, though i completely broke the game really early into it that undermined it in a way i didnt realize for about 7 gyms, before i accidentally nuked the overworld with a massive bug that scrambled my player's gender and made the overworld color pallete fuck-ey, which, im not ggoing tto blame the developer on, i'm summing that up to a cosmic ray or something. i think with time and with more polish i could see myself liking this more then crystal clear, but time'll see. ( Team was as below )

MIGHTY GUNVOLT < tie in video game i've ever played >

typing this like an hour ins making me realize this docism thing might not stick but mighty gunvolt is neat i guess i never finished it when i first played gunvolt and obsessed over that when it was new ( Mighty gunvolt came as a free download if you bought the first game digitally, you see ) because of the first boss, but now as a more experienced gamer, that's really just because the fire boss is kind of just a weird difficulty spike at the start that the rest of the game difficulty wise doesnt really match up to. It's a cute, very short ( i beat all 3 character campaigns in two hours , liesurely ) platformer styled like megaman, and that's all it really needed to be at the time. i wouldnt go out of my way to play it these days if it wasnt for my own baggage with the gunvolt series in general, and if it wasnt for my much greater affection for its sequel, mighty gunvolt burst.... I'm just gonna say if this game interests you , you really should just play burst instead. Even if you've played the latter before, you're really not missing out on much more then a moderately ok side scroller. it sure is a tie in demake on the early 3ds ! 6180 THE MOON

Surprisingly, this game's on alot of platforms? I just kind of chose it on a whim 'cus it was on the top of the list of H-SHOP stuff and i was looking for something short to play, but it's pretty artsy.

It's a puzzle-platformer where the gimick is that the ball wraps around the screen when you fall down or up, which works really well with the 3ds in my opinion. with the compression and stuff on the 3ds and how the game was laid out, it affectionately reminds me of a flash game you'd find on coolmath or the such, and its very relaxed ( if a little wonky ) . i dont have anything bad to say on it or anything its just a small little game i played on a whim. it's very minimalistic, if you're into that aestetic, you might like this. That's the last of the wholy " new " stuff i finished this month, and id say overall its a solid start for me, and kind of out of season ( very octobery-feeling game lineup in retrospect..! But that month's always usually crowded with obligations and stuff, so i doubt i'd be in a mood for them even at that time of year.. )

Also, i gave a try to cavestory on wiiware, first time i've played the game in a few years now since the switch rerelease! I think its just as fun as i found it when i first discovered it on 3ds, and, while i have a friend who adamantly disagrees, i actually really do like the OST of this version. It's a cute mutation on the games ost that in my opinion enhances the kind of forelorn vibe the game originally had, and i really like the blown up art of this version of cave story, even if it does have nichalis's hands all up in the matter. since it's unlocked from the start, i played the game on Curly Story till the true ending. I still love this game alot. Sometime i'll trick a certain individual into finishing it, i hope.

That's all i have to say! this is the first time i've made such a big post on any kind of social media period, so, hopefully its not unreadably disjointed or self-absorbed. Whatever!

play little goody two shoes

#media diary #video games #little goody two shoes #mario galaxy 2 #actraiser #cave story #mighty gunvolt #I hope i didnt put an excessive number of tags on this #shoutouts to marble and brim on discord for the game reccs #video gamer #docile pillow #Youtube

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utilitycaster · 1 year

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Threatened this once as a throwaway tag, so: let's talk about why "Justice for Adeen Tasithar" as an attempted criticism of Essek is absolutely wild as a choice.

Disclaimer: there are many deeply annoying fans of Essek who do not seem to understand that the narrative and the cast (and by extension, merch/official art/comics) will treat him differently for being an NPC, even if he is a very important NPC and a member of the Mighty Nein, and you are justified in being annoyed. There are also a number of equally annoying Essek haters, most of whom are bitter shippers who have (correctly) realized it's slightly more palatable to others in the fandom to openly hate on Essek than on a PC; or else they are the miserable souls who think that every minute spent on a character other than their personal favorite stolen and wasted time. I am a firm believer in this post; everyone is annoying and complaining on your own blog about it is your absolute right. Also, both in regards to the fans mentioned above and the characters mentioned below, it is possible for people on two opposite sides of a position to both suck.

The first issue is the phrase itself; it co-opts a statement usually used for victims of hate crimes or political prisoners in the real world, and makes it unironically about a pretend guy who had precisely one scene, which is certainly a choice. I'm not actually opposed to using "Justice for" jokingly in fandom, but it is weird to use it relatively seriously in fandom.

The second is that Adeen Tasithar is a member of one of the Dens of the Kryn Dynasty, and is a Taskhand, a term reserved for people with high-level military responsibilities, and is a member of the Bright Queen's Court. During wartime. Coupled with the fact that Essek, who, as described below, is never portrayed as particularly cruel nor petty despite his many flaws, thinks Adeen genuinely does suck, this means that at best, Adeen Tasithar is heavily involved in military operations at a very high level and is in some way personally unpleasant. At, frankly, not even worst, we're talking D&D Donald Rumsfeld. Now, we can debate whether Essek is a war criminal or merely traitorous (not on this post though, because I don't care and it's not relevant), but, while we know very little about Adeen Tasithar, it's not an overreach to say that this man has a pretty strong chance of being guilty of his own war crimes. In general, calling for justice is something I'd hesitate to use in an "the enemy of my enemy" manner, especially if it's well within reason to consider that you're talking about Ludinus Da'leth's Kryn counterpart.

The third is that while you're under no obligation to like Essek, he really is, in general, portrayed as a decent judge of character and a terrible judge of whether selfishly following his own ambition was appropriate and what the consequences might be. He detests the members of the Cerberus Assembly with whom he works; he likes the Mighty Nein despite them ultimately being his potential undoing. He has a few friends in the Dynasty and cares about his (unambiguously good) brother, and feels remorse about his father. Essek has done terrible things in the service of his goals; but directly throwing an innocent under the bus (vs. setting into motion things that will, as a side effect, lead to innocent collateral damage, which he obviously will do) isn't his style. Again, at the very least, Adeen Tasithar is someone whom Essek genuinely believes is a bad person (note that Essek, by this time, also considers himself to be a bad person, and Trent Ikithon to be a "fuck hole", which might help your understanding of scale here). This doesn't mean Tasithar deserves what he got, but frankly, in a campaign about people who got a lot of things they didn't deserve, it's a pretty blatant straw-grasp onto a side character with the briefest of appearances to decide he's your poster boy victim just so that you can go full spiked bat on a character you dislike.

The fourth is that there's never any connection to how Essek not being friends with the Mighty Nein (or entering a relationship with Caleb) would provide justice for Adeen Tasithar, who is in an Empire prison by the end following the exchange during peace talks. It's actually entirely possible that the Empire eventually figures things out re: Adeen, notably because memory modification as a criminal act is going to be really fresh in their minds following the Ikithon trial (and if they interrogate Trent, it's also possible the Empire finds out about Essek). Essek is already a fugitive from the Dynasty and cannot move freely through the Empire as a drow whom assembly members would recognize. The guy didn't get off scot free anyway, so really, he is going to suffer to some extent; you just want him to experience abject and total misery, rather than constant fear tempered with a small degree of happiness, like some kind of sicko, or megachurch member.

The final one is that "justice for Yeza Brenatto" or "I don't like that Essek worked with the Assembly even if he wasn't happy about it" would actually be far more reasonable statements to make. Yeza was, in fact, a simple alchemist who was forced to become a pawn in the game being played by, among other people, Essek, and suffered immensely for it. The Assembly does in fact suck. And yet, rather than admit Caleb also considered working with the Assembly for selfish reasons, or that Veth, you know, exists people jump to woobify some random NPC about whom we know basically nothing other than "Military guy, well-connected politically."

So anyway: feel however you want about Essek; but if you're on Adeen Tasithar's bandwagon, I don't think you actually are terribly bothered by hypothetical fictional war crimes. I think you just are too spineless and online to say "I dislike Essek" and needed to construct an elaborate poor reason why.

#i feel like tagging this discourse is elevating it above what it is. this is straight up fanwank and I'm well aware of that #but if you need it tagged lmk #cr tag #queue

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hjemne · 6 months

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Ilsa, I’ve seen you posting a lot of Trigun and well I’m intrigued by it, to say the least. But just for giggles, would you try to convince me why should I watch it? 😆🤚🏻

AHHHHH!

I didn't think Trigun was going to worm its way into my brain so much but here we are. There is so much to love about it and I adore so many of the characters for a billion different ways. The character type of someone who is made into a killing machine and then is slowly convinced to accept love and forgiveness is my favourite and is all over trigun. So many characters see themselves as monstrous but choose to do what they see as right for the sake of / with the help of their friends. There are moments of silliness and of tragedy, all with an incredibly interesting setting which slowly gets revealed.

Because of the recent release of Trigun Stampede, the community is really active rn (esp on Tumblr!) and it's really cool to see so many incredible fanarts, comics, fanfics and discussions being made. It's very fun to be part of a very active fandom, but also one that is 25 years old and has fanworks that are older than I am.

I really love it, and I would recommend it, but unfortunately I also have some caveats which I gotta mention.

What you gotta know before getting into Trigun is that there are 4 different canon versions and each one has its problems. I wish I could recommend X version as the definitive and best, but that just doesn't exist which is very annoying.

1) Trigun Maximum: the manga

Good: incredible nuances to characters like Wolfwood, Knives, Livio/Razlo. Vashwood subtext is off the charts and their dynamic is incredibly fascinating and central. This is the most detailed and complex story of Trigun and has lots of themes, characters and plot points that don't exist in other versions. Has elements of sexism and sexual violence, but (imo) to show how shitty the world is, rather than to revel in the misogyny. The tone is tragic, with equal mix of hope and pain.

Bad: the female characters of Meryl and Milly get massively sidelined in comparison to their depictions elsewhere. It's a very long manga and has (imo) pacing issues that limit the impact of emotional moments. The art style is beautiful, but notoriously difficult to follow, especially in the many long fight scenes (particularly bad in volume 5). There's lots of disagreement about 'correct' translations and it can be hard to tell which character is doing/saying/thinking what at points which can make it confusing and frustrating to read at times.

Overall: 7/10, I would recommend but maybe not as your first bit of exposure to Trugun

2) 1998 anime Trigun

Good: the silliest of Triguns with some great voice acting. The friendships between Vash, Milly, Meryl and Wolfwood are very sweet and engaging (although it would have been nice to see more of the four of them together). It's a fun overview of the Trigun story and has a very entertaining mix of comedy and serious emotional moments. Lots of hijinks and lots of fights. Milly and Meryl are core characters and get time to shine (it is impossible not to love Milly). This is personal preference but the animation style is kinda goofy in the way it changes styles to exaggerate characters' feelings which I love. The first 12 ISH episodes are very Saturday morning cartoon vibes without being too inane and childish.

Bad: because it only had the first couple of volumes of the manga to adapt from, the mid-season tone shift and later fights feel rushed, a little confusing and ultimately lead to a less satisfying conclusion than in trimax. The misogyny is noticeable, especially in the first couple of episodes, though is limited to a couple of comments in some episodes and doesn't (I think) make it unwatchable. The antagonists are rushed through and it's hard to work out who the 'main' villain is. Tone change is quite abrupt. Wolfwood is a less developed character with a less intense (back)story, Livio/Razlo doesn't exist at all etc

Overall: 7/10, this is what I'd recommend you start with. It has pacing issues and uncomfortable sexist comments, but I think they're outweighed by the strengths of the main casts relationships and the pure entertainment value of it. Not the most satisfying ending, but they were constrained so :/

3) Badlands Rumble (film)

Good: animation is SO crisp. Wolfwood is at maximum chest exposure and actually his character is pretty interesting here. Milly and Meryl are back, but in limited roles. Some interesting world building and Vash and Wolfwood go thru their divorce arc TM which is dumb and funny and angsty.

Bad: Wolfwood is far too pale. The first half an hour is made almost unwatchable by the decision to make sexism and sexual harrassement a way to pad out the runtime. Vash is such a creep it just makes for uncomfortable watching.

4/10 don't watch if you're not already invested, and honestly do yourself a favour by watching the opening scene, then skipping to the 30 min ish mark and watch knowing that Vash has some very tough dried meat in his front coat pocket.

4) Trigun Stampede anime

Good: really cool 3D animation and music. Has Wolfwood's manga backstory and some manga characters like Livio and Crimsonnail, but with very different characterisations. I really liked the episode looking at the childhood of two orphans and how their love for each other was manipulated against them both. Much bigger focus on Knives than the original and more elaboration of his motivations and plans. Zazie is SO much better here than in the original anime. No uncomfortable sexism yay!

Bad: I... don't like tristamp very much. The characters are watered down from their manga versions and Knives is just kinda evil because he was en evil child, rather than the much more nuanced version in trimax. Milly doesn't exist (yet) and they added in a new character Roberto whose role in the story is (or at least was to me) obvious if you know the basics of the hero's journey structure. Everyone has been twinkified and Wolfwood doesn't even have his tits out smh. Vash just comes across as having less agency and his motivations feel weak. I really just dont like a lot of the character decision here BUT to be fair, that's because I'm comparing them to the manga. But also, a main plot point is someone taking over his brother's body so that his sisters can get pregnant and it definitely still feels weird in context. The focus on the two brothers makes other dynamics a little weaker, and has led to a lot of incest-y fandom things which is ehh.

5.5/10 there are some things it does very well and it's very popular for a reason but I personally think the characterisations are disappointing. It's trying to strike a weird balance between being its own, new thing and also nostalgia for original elements, leading to some questionable pacing and plot choices. It doesn't even have Midvalley the Hornfreak.

I would love to be able to talk about Trigun with you and be passionate about the elements of it I love, but also I don't want to recommend it without giving you a fair picture of the parts I'm more critical about. I genuinely love the world building and characters, which are expressed best in the less accessible form of the manga but are also found in the animes. What I'd recommend is watching the original anime first, but also you might need to give it the benefit of the doubt for the first couple episodes which is where the dodgy 90s sexism is most obvious. I'd be super interested in hearing your thoughts and reactions to it if you did watch it, and also please bear in mind that my complaints about tristamp are personal and there are many who love that version so don't take my negativity as fact.

#asks #sorry that got LONG #YOU SHOULD WATCH IT #I REALLY LOVE IT #its just not perfect #trigun #trigun maximum #trigun stampede

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auraboo · 1 month

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About comment and interaction culture

Related to my last reblog, I table at cons and other pop culture events multiple times a year. While it's really heartwarming to encounter people who come by to tell me they love my art/writing and have been following me for years, it's also a baffling experience everytime. And it's specifically because online, I have usually no way to tell that my works are reaching an audience at all.

Most of the time I release art and writing to near complete radio silence. I'm used to it, I don't expect anything else because I know today's online culture has shifted to passive consumption and the way platforms function does not encourage interaction, but of course it often feels demoralising. I just tend to ignore it and keep going anyway because I still love the things I create and want to share them with the world.

It's just a really strange experience to have people come up to you irl and tell to your face that they're big fans and never miss a post, because I have no idea if anyone even sees what I post most of the time. And that's because without comments, likes, reblogs or other interaction there's literally no way to tell. Without cons I'd have no idea that I have fans or that someone out there likes my works enough to keep coming back to them. And I'm lucky, because I've decided to keep this as a hobby and not try to make a living out of it.

I don't know what the solution is - apps and platforms have made us timid to reach out to each other and trying to change that when the way they're designed encourages mindless, passive scrolling is very difficult, if not impossible for individual users. It's hard for me too - I find reblogging unnerving nowadays, like I'm somehow being a bother or annoying the creator, that I need to have something long and meaningful to say in order to leave a comment (and that's the devil speaking). In the days of old deviantART and LiveJournal I used to be a very active commenter on the daily, but nowadays just saying "loved it" once a week seems to take mental effort.

And the people who do reach out, who do reblog, comment, like or anything else, I see you. I think about those interactions all the time, and it's a huge motivator, knowing that something little old me made resonated with someone out there enough for them to reach out with something.

This is not a rant or a guilt trip btw, I'm just having some thinky-thoughts after last weekend's comics festival and seeing a bunch of other posts discussing this.

#aura speaks

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501st-rexster · 1 year

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Can't stop thinking about a Red vs Blue Clone Wars crossover.

I've been watching both shows constantly and I just keep thinking about how many of the characters are actually fairly similar in their either strict personality or absolute dumbassery or just plain similar.

Captain Rex and Agent Washington would be GREAT FRIENDS. Like, BEST BUDS. Because they both follow the rules but won't hesitate to tweak or bend them to finish the mission. Well trained badasses who'll always win a fight. They are also the dads of their squads and will die for their men without a second thought. Also, they have really annoying older siblings. Spend their days talking about how much they simultaneously love and want to kill their men.

Fives, Jesse, Kix, and Lavernius Tucker would be the "yo, let's go get some girls" gang. They're playboys. But despite putting on that "I'm too cool" persona, they're actually great soldiers.

Hardcase + Caboose = Amazing disaster duo. They radiate chaos. They're funny, they're loveable, they can be dumb but when it comes down to it somehow they'll save everyone. They are the very first ones questioned if something blows up.

Dogma and Simmons. They're kiss assess. Rules are life. Their CO is their god.

I feel very similar energies between Wolffe/Fox and Leonard Church/Epsilon. They both pretend to hate everyone, they are SO DONE WITH LIFE, everyone is amazed they haven't keeled over from an aneurysm by now, but deep down they are as loyal as can be and will do anything for their friends. But they still say "fuck you" to everyone. They're the hate gang. Boil also falls into this category.

Commander Cody and Agent Carolina. They're badasses, they're unstoppable, they're both masters of martial arts, they're both the best in their league. And they both value their friends above everything else. They also have very little patience for shenanigans. And exactly like Cody and Rex, Carolina is fiercely protective of her "little brother" Washington, no matter how dumb he can be sometimes. Constantly ask each other "want to switch little siblings?"

Cutup gives me some Grif vibes. Total sass master, likes to undermine authority, enjoys bothering their teammates (in this case, Echo and Simmons). They come up with new ways to torture their friends on a daily basis while eating all the snacks they can find.

Fox and Sarge. Both gruff and regimented leaders. Very set in their ways. Love to yell at people.

Kix and Doc. Medics. Have to deal with the bullshit everyone gives them and their never ending stupidity. Still love their teammates (though Doc is a bit more hesitant). Constantly vent to each other about their patients.

Waxer and Donut are the adorable innocent boys who put flowers in each other's hair. Tup is adopted by them both and they braid his hair together.

I just can't get it out of my head how much a crossover would be incredibly interesting. And amusing.

If you've never watched Rex vs Blue, you're missing out. It's free on YouTube, there's a ton of seasons of nonstop shenanigans, and it's absolutely amazing. Oh, and it's based off the video game Halo but in the most comical way possible.

This ends my TED talk.

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lackadaisycats · 2 years

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Hello!

First of all I wanted to say that your art is super gorgeous and I am super into your setting because ahm DUH cats + crimes are meant together

So I have several questions for you if you don't mind!

Out of all the platforms, how come you are still on tumblr? I am new here and as far as I can see usually major creators don't really use it anymore (and good gosh you are major for me <3)

Have you ever felt jealous of other creators? Do you think your work does not get attention it deserves? BECAUSE I CERTAINLY DO. I bet my friends are sick of me trying to promote your work :D

Have you ever had any fears regarding your art? Or in general?

Hey, thanks! 1. Hmm…good question. It's been, what? At least ten years since Tumblr was really in its zany, tumultuous, hormonal heyday. Then came the Great Annihilation and the Female-Presenting-Nipple Fallout. The ashes have settled and what remains is a, uh, mildly eccentric, post-apocalyptic ghost town? Like Mad Max, except everyone is wearing pastels, sipping tea and chuckling cryptically to themselves about something amusing while fussing with their herb garden. Or thereabouts. Maybe the chaos agents lost interest and everyone else who dwelled here grew up into rather chill adults. I don't know. Either way, I'm kind of liking its vibe lately? I use other social media too. As someone trying to earn a living as a freelance artist, I sort of have to. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I'm on YouTube. I have the comic up on Webtoon. I've even got a TikTok for animated stuff. I feel way more at ease here, though. There's less pressure to perform, and to do it aggressively and relentlessly so as to appease a nebulous, uncaring demigod of an algorithm. And when you're doing that amidst a morass of other people, when everything you labor over is reduced to "content", it gets to feeling like you're just flailing futilely around in a stormy ocean. Tumblr doesn't feel like that. No one is vying for massive success on tumblr. From a functionality standpoint, for me, this is still the best place to post a bunch of large images all at once without having to fully reformat everything. And I can answer questions in whatever exceedingly verbose way my heart desires without hitting a character limit…

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2. Ah, well, thanks very much. I really appreciate the of word-of-mouth championship! Promotion coming from an authentic place is absolutely the most gratifying kind (as long as your friends aren't too annoyed with it). It's difficult to objectively measure something like deservedness, though. Sometimes I feel guilty for the amazing good fortune I've had to be able to pursue some of my dreams. Sometimes it's an emotional, physical and financial struggle that has me questioning my life choices and frustrated that the universe doesn't spend any effort trying to balance sweat and tears against reward. Simultaneously, I know many artists who haven't had any of the opportunities I have in spite of - in my estimation - deserving it as much or more than I do. In a more perfect world, things would just be better for creators on the whole. And, well, for most people in general. And yes, I have experienced envy with a bitter edge, mostly when I was a younger, immature artist. I think envy is a pretty natural human reaction - it can be an overall positive motivator to see what other artists have been able to achieve and to desire some of the same level of skill or success. It can also easily turn into resentment that unleashes a whole array of destructive thought patterns and behavior. As I've grown older, I've found fewer and fewer reasons to really feel envious of anyone, though. You come to realize success is a matter of perception, a fleeting feeling, a pyrrhic victory, a largely illusory thing, and that other artists are your allies more than they are your competition. You come to value the things that are the actual substance of your life - like treasured time doing your thing (and maybe even doing it with other artists you enjoy) - more than you value the phantom triumphs and validations you imagine others possess.

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3. Oh yes. Fear is all around. Where to even begin? Fear of disappointing people, fear of ultimately wasting the time of the other artists I'm working with, fear of doing some harm, fear of accidentally offending someone, fear of disproportionate reprisals for accidentally offending someone, fear of losing everything in some contract arrangement gone bad, fear of injury that stops me from being able to continue working, fear of falling short of what I wanted to do, fear of income sources going under, fear of present political situations escalating and upending everyone's lives so profoundly that art isn't even an option any longer….and many more! They're always stacked and looming. All I know is that, while it's good to let rational fears make you careful and aware and prepared, you can't let them stop you.

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