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florida3exclamationpoints · 1 year

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Now please allow me to sing this movie's praises.

First, I love a sequel that knows its a sequel. It didn't try to outdo Enchanted at all. I think that "That's How You Know" is THE song from Enchanted and Robert and Giselle dancing at the ball is THE scene. None of the songs tried to be That's How You Know, or be better. They never tried to do a better dance scene. There was the adorable little slow dance at the very end but it was more in honor of the original. Everything was in honor of the original. They respected it and added onto the story in a way that made sense and was good. It was so good.

All of the old disney easter eggs got me they really did!!! We love easter eggs.

The plot as a whole was just!!!!! So good!!!!!! I love that Giselle's life wasn't bad, she just had struggles that she never would have had in Andalasia. And I also love that even though Morgan's teenager-ness was the catalyst for the conflict, she wasn't villainized for it. Giselle didn't resent her for it, she just wanted to understand and help. She wasn't "fixed" at the end. She was still a teenager, still a little snippy, she's still gonna be embarrassed by Giselle sometimes, but that's ok. And Giselle understands her better now. Her whole relationship with Morgan was beautiful. The way she was just so desperate to help, how Morgan was declared a true Andalasian daughter because she's Giselle's daughter. Morgan calling Giselle "mom" really got to me. The fact that her saying "she's my stepmother" has the power to make Giselle that upset just shows how good of a mom she is!!!! That entire dynamic was just. More than I could have asked for.

Speaking of dynamics!! Giselle and Nancy girlbossing together. Amazing. Edward trying to help Robert. Adorable. I love how Giselle and Nancy basically switching roles made them able to understand each other so well. The fact that Nancy is the one dealing with hobgoblins on a daily basis now but she can still give Giselle teenager advice. I love it. Nancy and Edward on their own were amazing as well!!!!! Big fan of them not having kids. Big fan of Edward being the largest himbo to exist even after all these years. Big fan of him sword fighting with the kids at the end. Big fan of him saying "that's all it [the wishing plate] does, we're fairly certain?" Big fan of Nancy's wardrobe. Big fan of them being Sofia's godparents. Big fan of the implication that they visit pretty often. Big fan of them <3

The Giselle and Robert content, while perhaps a bit more sparce than I may have hoped for, was just UGSFJHSDBHGBVOUBGABVSDAU. Perfect. The way he looks at her??? Kill me. I love how he loves her singing now. When he was watching her dance around the house in the beginning and when he was smiling when she started singing again that night OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM I LOVE THEM. The kiss at the end. Actually. Every kiss. They kiss and I cry it's very simple. The glimpse of the wedding oh my god??? When you can hear Robert's voice say "I do" and "You'll always be a princess to me" when Giselle's getting the memories back I DIED. And I choose to believe the princess line was a part of his vows. Yeah.

The soundtrack was great. Badder is my favorite at the moment lol. Speaking of, Amy Adams' range???? I mean I knew she had it but Giselle slowly becoming a villain was so satisfying to watch. I loved when she was talking to herself sdfbsdjf she's so funny. The humor all around was great too!

That's all I got for now. I'm sure more will come to me. Overall i really loved the movie and im really happy with how they handled it and seeing Giselle and Robert again in the year 2022 was desperately needed for my mental health. thank you.

#disenchanted spoilers #disenchanted #enchanted #giselle x robert #giselle philip #robert philip #morgan philip #nancy x edward #amy adams #disney

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rwrbficrecs · 8 months

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Readers' Choice Rec List Part 4 of 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

lifelines by @indomitable-love

@dot524: I have been working my way through all of indomitablelove’s fics. They are all fantastic, but this one blew me away. Added so much depth to an already very dramatic event. Well written & includes some very thoughtful character PoVs.

@space--potat0: A perfect companion when you're rereading the book but want some extra Pain And Sadness

babygrxmlin: The emails from everyone else's point of view (it's so beautiful and gorgeous and stunning and it made my chest ache in the best possible way, please read it everyone!)

Rio by @treluna4

Statueinthestonetoo: This was one of the first rwrb fics I read, and Treluna is a wonderful writer who pulls you in and captivates you with their words. It's sexy and sweet at the same time and I highly recommend it.

eyes full of stars by @acdsbff

@musicandi: I submitted this fic because it is so beautiful and heartfelt.

Now and Then by @mudbloodpotter05

anon: This author told a Soulmate story with a canon divergence and made it AU all at the same time. Not only that, while it does have an MCD, the author has a happy ending that…well, gotta love that “soulmate magic” because while it does have an MCD, this story has not let me down when I need to feel the bad and read the good.

ManBatman: I tend to stay away from stories with an MCD, but when I saw that this was a Soulmate story too, I decided to read it especially when it said happy ending, despite the MCD. Happy endings can be subjective, but I can tell the author loves the Henry and Alex because as much as they lean into the drama, and live up to the mcd tag, they still pay off the happy ending in a way that definitely reminds me why soulmate stories are my favorite.

Hit (my love) out of the park by bleedingballroomfloor

Tabitha: The first story and the series as a whole, of Baseball Boyfriends, always is just the perfect read for me. Angst and joy, love and patience and acceptance of others and one’s self and never leaves me feeling left wanting when I read this series at least once a month!

Hashtag Soulmates by @everwitch-magiks

@mudbloodpotter05: This is such a crazy story and one of the first ever RWRB stories that I read in the fandom. Each chapter has a different fanfiction trope, and leans into what we love about fanfiction in the first place and just how outlandish and fun a story can be all the while telling a compelling story that has some angst, but also provides that lightness that comes with a happy ending

@three-drink-amy: It is the ultimate love letter to fanfiction and rwrb! So fun and well done!

The Other way by @three-drink-amy, @everwitch-magiks, @athousandrooms

@mudbloodpotter05: I love this story because it take reality tv and puts an RWRB spin on it while still staying true to Alex and Henry. Even though it isn’t the standard RWRB story for them, they still have to learn to communicate and grow all the while trying to make it down the aisle for their happy ever after.

In need of assistance by @stutteringpeach

anon: This story and it’s follow up are just one of those sweet stories that fill one’s cup I always come back to this story because one, arthur is alive and two the way he tries to go about setting up Henry and Alex is amazing and so obvious you can’t help but love it and the sequel is just as good as the first!!

Aged like a fine wine by @three-drink-amy

anon: I was reading this one as it was posting and I was absolutely hooked for weeks. It has several rwrb tropes I love and it's definitely one of my favourites

#readers choice #rwrb fic recs #red white and royal blue #firstprince

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raeynbowboi · 1 year

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Disenchanted: A Creative Breath of Fresh Air for Disney

In a sea of lazy adaptations and painful live-action cash grabs, the sequel nobody asked for blew expectations out of the water. With a clever and charming concept, and writing to match, Disenchanted proved to be one of Disney’s best films among a slog of dreadful productions. The movie drips with a clear love for fairytales and their tropes, and writers who clearly know how to use these tropes to tell a great story. Where Enchanted was a critique and parody of old school Disney films, Disenchanted was a love letter to fairy tales, and Amy Adams dripped with villainous panache. Seriously, somebody needs to sign Adams to a movie or TV show STAT that’s going to let her play a hammy, scenery-chewing villain the whole way through. I am eating her up in this role. She is delightfully wicked in all the right ways, and I want that peacock evening dress. My god, I’m envious and I don’t even have the hips for it. Even if there were ideas we’d seen a million times, they worked here because the actors are just having so much fun with the roles that it sucks you up into it. The movie is hammy, corny, and melodramatic, and it knows it. The movie is full of recreated shots, call backs, and winks to the audience that makes the movie just drip with charisma. All while ultimately being a story about women and their relationships to one another. Plus, any musical that puts a spotlight on Amy Adams, Idina Menzel, AND Maya Rudolph and lets them all a turn to bring down the house like the true divas that they are, it is just an overdose of ear candy. While there were some aspects like Robert’s storyline not really going anywhere, in the long run, you kinda shrug it off because the story’s not really about him. He’s a supporting character in this movie. The focus is where it needs to be, and that’s good. I don’t know if the actress playing Morgan has been in other things, but she did a good job singing her solo, and she certainly didn’t fall into the trap of bad child acting. All things considered, this is a great film, and an easy A tier film from the studio. Nothing deeply moving or something that simply must be seen on a big screen like Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, but it is absolutely worth the watch. If you haven’t seen this movie, I recommend it. It’s the first really great Disney film in a long time, and it needs to be showered in attention so that Disney knows that this was the correct direction to move in. More this, and less live-action Lion King.

#disenchanted #enchanted #disney #amy adams #movie review #disneys disenchanted #maya rudolph #idina menzel

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kaylatoonz · 1 year

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I drew this when I first found out about the Knuckles series we're getting in 2023 (I'm still kind of sad we haven't got any news yet).

Anyway, I had the idea that they could introduce Amy and Rouge to the series and connect it to the third film.

Thinking about it now I don't think this would work because not everyone going to watch the show (they either don't have Paramount + or they feel the need to). So introducing two new characters in a series that not every movie fan going to watch would just alienate certain audiences. (This happened with my family when we went to see multiverse of madness. My older siblings didn’t see Wandavision so my twin sister and I had to explain a lot before and during the show).

So the best way to solve this is to have the show be a prequel that covers Knuckles' adventures before coming to earth. The last few episodes can be set in the present time (hinting at or building into the sequel).

Rouge is a thief who has stolen a jewel that looks oddly similar to the master emerald that Knuckles has been questing for. with this being his only lead he sets off to bring justice to the thief and honor back to his tribe. Along the way, he meets a pink hedgehog on her own journey who pauses her own quest to help him (Amy can't leave anyone behind who needs help, it's just not in her nature😁). This confuses him but he allows her to follow him (Amy may have unintentionally contributed to knuckles being too trusting😬).

After a wild goose chase between a thief, warrior, and wanderer Knuckles realizes the jewel is not what he's looking for so he returns it to its rightful owner (or it gets destroyed 😂).

Rouge having the most fun she’s had in ages sets her sights on Knuckles and even more on the Master emerald/Chaos emeralds. (Knuckles let slip about a jewel much greater than the rock she stole🤦‍♂️). Eventually they meet again in the next film her siding with Shadow to get her hand on the Emeralds.

As for Amy, she offers to be his friend and continue helping him on his journey. Knuckles declines Amy's offer and insist they both finish their quests alone. Amy tells him she senses their paths will cross again and she hopes by then he'll be more open to friends. (it's a bad and good thing that Knuckles took this to heart, based on how the second movie with his 'friendship' with Eggman and later friendship with Sonic and Tails).

In the third film, they can introduce Amy and Rouge in similar fashion Tails did with Knuckles (when they got chased by Knuckles) and the echidna lore (please use this art style again for any lore😭)

youtube

Knuckles vouch for Amy for helping him once and tell Sonic and Tails how she would be a valuable ally. (Though he's a bit uncertain if she was ever his friend because of what happened with Eggman. Luckily Amy proves him otherwise.) He refers to Rouge as being complicated... suggesting they should keep their guard up at all times when confronting her.

I think doing it this way would allow the series to serve as extra content rather than required content to understand the movie. Either way, I hope we get something good from the Knuckles show we're getting in 2023.

Bonus:

I think Sonic would be peeved that Knuckles knew another hedgehog and didn't tell him.

Sonic: You knew another hedgehog that didn’t want to kill me and you didn’t tell me!!!😡

I also think Amy's quest may have something to do with Sonic or a prophecy of a future threat they must face together (fourth movie tease).

#amy rose #movie amy rose #sonic movie 2 #sonic movie 3 #knuxouge #procreate's chalk brush is my favorite #I tried working on one layer per character Never Again #i like how it turned out #Knuckles the series #sorry if there’s errors #Youtube #knuckles the echidna

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06wastherealsa3allalong · 1 year

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Fic Masterpost

Forced Into the Wild: Eggman launches an attack that reverts anhomomorphic animals back to just normal animals. We watch the fallout of that as Tails+co deal with the situation. Current status: Chapter 35/36. 73,897 words.

A Spark of Lightning: Surgeamy fic (currently holds the title of longest surgeamy fic on ao3 :D)! Amy gets in a fight with Surge and very quickly falls for her, but also sees that she needs help. We follow their troubled situation. Current status: Chapter 6/?. 11,663 words.

I'll save you again and again and again: Written for The Sonic Library Secret Santa 2022! Prompt: sonadow time travel. Follows Shadow trying to prevent Sonic from getting infected by the metal virus. Current status: Completed one-shot. 5,406 words.

Sonic's Christmas To-Do List: Christmas fic with the classic brothers! Follows Sonic trying to convince Tails Santa is real because he's 4 and deserves it. My personal favorite (i think)! Current status: Completed one-shot. 3,633 words.

Project Polarization: Written for The Sonic Library January Prompt 2023! Prompt: mind control/amnesia. Eggman has a new plan, one that might take out Sonic for good. Current status: Chapter 1/2. 3,367 words.

Grew Up Too Fast: Conversation between Sonic and Shadow reminiscing on the past. Short and sweet. Probably the shortest fic I'll ever write. Current status: Completed one-shot. 526 words.

How To Bake a Mint Chocolate Cake: Valentine's fic where Sonic tries to cheer up Tails by baking him a cake. Sonic is a bad cook. Shenanigans ensue. Current status: Completed one-shot. 4017 words.

The Kingdom's Lost Prince and Healer: Written for Sonic Platonic Fairytale week day one: Rapunzel. In which Shadow takes on the role of Rapunzel, Rouge is Flynn Rider, and the Babylon Rouges are the Stabbington Brothers! :D Current status: Completed one-shot. 7310 words.

find the meaning in the stars: Written for The Sonic Library March 2023 Prompt: super forms. ARK siblings angst where Shadow is given a mission from Maria to find a reason for her to like the stars so much. A The Fall™️ fic. Current status: Completed one-shot. 3182 words.

A Responsibility To Carry On: Written for The Sonic Library April 2023 Prompt: transformation. Follows Tikal looking after Knuckles as he grows up. My new personal favorite fic I've written c: Current status: Completed one-shot. 3761 words.

Hold For Sixteen: A simple fic where Espio's a little stressed about what happened back on the Mirage Express so Vector prescribes him a trip to fish with Big. Current status: Completed one-shot. 2102 words.

Once every year, and it happened to be tonight: A metamy fic written for a friend in which Amy decides to revisit Little Planet, and finds she wasn't the only one. Her and Metal reminisce. Current status: Completed one-shot. 1512 words.

Not perfect, but memorable nonetheless: A fic written for a friend's birthday where Cream has a sleepover with Charmy and things go terribly, terribly, wrong. Current status: Completed one-shot. 2366 words.

The Weird Tail Trio in: The Case of the Console Caper!: Written for The Sonic Library Secret Santa in July 2023! Tails, Belle, and Tangle team up to take on a case where someone took a gaming console from the Spiral Hill library. Current status: Completed one-shot (with potential for a sequel/series). 2282 words.

Shadows of Ashes: Written for The Sonic Library July 2023 prompt: Disguise/Puppet. Sonic is the only one that remembers the events of 06 and Mephiles is back. Current status: Chapter 1/?. 2611 words.

The Weird Tail Trio in: The Mystery of the Missing Emeralds!: A fic written for a friend's birthday where Tails, Belle, and Tangle team up once again to take on a case where the chaos emeralds mysteriously go missing. Current status: Completed one-shot (that is a sequel to my first one). 4327 words.

Forget again and again, but I'll remember you: Written for The Sonic Library August 2023 prompt: Dreams/Memories. A metamy royalty au where every day Metal meets a familiar pink hedgehog and every night Robotnik scrubs his memory of her. It doesn't end well. Current status: Completed one-shot. 5563 words.

believe me darling, the stars were made for falling: A fic written for a friend's birthday. Masquerade ball metamy with a little Metal and Sage siblings sprinkled in there. Current status: Completed one-shot. 2422 words.

#sonic fanfiction

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theresawritesstuff · 9 months

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1, 6, 7, and 9 about your current fave fic of yours (I'm not familiar with what midgexlenny is, but tell me about it if you want to!)

Lol oh I do sometimes feel bad for my poor Sherlolly mutuals putting up with me while I lose it over a different ship ❤️ they're different but the venn diagram of pairings does overlap in places.

First off, this is Midge and Lenny from Amy Sherman Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. They're two foul mouthed stand up comedians in the late 1950s/early 1960s and they're soulmates.

If you enjoy Gilmore Girls level fast paced dialogue but with more f bombs and so so so many pretty dresses I definitely recommend at least bits of the show.

Being that Lenny is a fictionalized version of real life comedian Lenny Bruce (originally intended to only appear in the pilot but they brought him back as part of the show because the chemistry was just too good. The actors are friends in real life and the joy in working together comes through in some really beautiful performances) the final canon of the show was a bit handcuffed on just how far the creators decided they could let the ship sail but that's where the fanfic comes in 😂

Which brings me to my fic Guess Who's Coming to Yom Kippur!

*What is your favorite thing about this fic?*

This was my first dive into writing for this fandom and it has been so much fun. Truly delightful! So many things I've enjoyed with this one. But my favorite thing I think is that it really is an ensemble piece. The characters of the show are all very nuanced, often delightfully flawed, sometimes wacky individuals and I love giving them all a seat at the table and getting to know them. Sometimes quite literally within the fic (it centers around a big family dinner for several chapters). I've had to think of scenes cinematically and it's stretched my dialogue writing in a really enjoyable way. There's at least one scene I wrote visualizing it as a long tracking shot with characters moving in and out, very high energy and lovingly chaotic. It's a fic that has a lot to do with family both found and blood related and how love can show up and show through in a lot of humorous ways.

*Were there any alternative versions of this fic?*

Yes! I originally came up with the idea a season prior to my actually getting around to writing it (wrote it after watching season 4, thought of it watching season 3). The original vague concept for it was much shorter and ended with Midge and Lenny in more of an ambiguous but hopeful "maybe someday" where as the current fic has them very much endgame. And I'm quite happy with that. I feel like I discover more about the story and the characters the longer I work on it. I'm eventually going to write a sequel because I'm having so much fun (another first for me!)

*Favorite line of narration/ Favorite bit of dialogue*

So this fic is currently sitting at over 62k words and counting (it comes with trying to emulate Amy Sherman Palladino levels of dialogue) Easily the longest thing I've written 😅😅😅 I'm not sure I could pick any specific favorites without reading through the whole thing again. And maybe not even then. There's a lot of moments I'm very fond of. Though most probably require more context than would make it easy to share. I'll include a snippet of the tracking shot arrival scene I mentioned since that doesn't require a ton of context from the show other than knowing the names mostly.

In this bit they're arriving at a party hosted by Midge's ex in-laws and Lenny is meeting her older brother Noah and his wife Astrid for the first time. Esther is Midge's two year old daughter. Noah is canonically a secret agent. Lenny is known for getting arrested for things he says in his stand up (a proponent of free speech in a red scare era).

They arrived at the Maisel residence as dusk began to settle in over the sleepy suburb.

"Hi everyone! Sorry we're late. Esther needed to make a pit stop," Midge called out as they let themselves through the front door.

"Us too! We just got in," Noah said from somewhere deeper in the house.

Midge set the kids loose and made her way towards the kitchen. "Mama, Shirley, what can I help with? Oh, Esther sweetie, I don't think Grandma wants you touching that."

"Hi Midge," Astrid greeted, coming in holding little Chaim.

"Hey Astrid! One second," Midge called over her shoulder, rushing to corral Esther away from the more breakable tchotkes. "Esther. Esther put that down!"

Lenny smiled, collecting the kids discarded shoes into a pile by the door.

"Oh hi! You must be Midge's friend." Astrid gave him a welcoming smile.

"Lenny," he supplied.

"Lenny. So nice to meet you. I'm Astrid. This is Chaim." She held her son out for him to hold, passing him off. "Would you mind?"

"Oh I–" Lenny took Chaim in hand on reflex as Astrid didn't wait for a yes or no.

"Thanks."

She gave him another quick smile before dashing out the front door and wretching over the porch rail.

Lenny held Chaim at arms length, both too stunned by the transfer to know how to proceed.

"Hello…" he attempted, looking the child in the eye.

"Astrid, honey?" Midge's brother's lanky limbs carried him into the foyer in search of his wife.

Midge returned with a rescued porcelain figurine in hand. "Hey Noah, how was traffic–oh my god."

She stepped out immediately to check on Astrid the moment she saw her, leaving Lenny with Noah and his offspring.

"Yours, I believe," Lenny said finally, handing Chaim to Noah.

"Yeah…" Noah replied, taking his son while glancing after his wife and sister in concern.

The two men stared each other down for a moment, neither one quite sure how to react to the other.

"I'm Lenny."

"I know."

#Writer things #Fic asks #Thanks for letting me ramble!

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kitchfit · 5 months

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Year in Review: Games pt 2

Back to Bildeo Bames! After finishing my big Kingdom Hearts binge, I told myself to cut back on gaming for a while until Tears of the Kingdom came out. That was a huge lie! I love deception and falsehoods :D

Psychonauts

The idea of going inside someone's head to discover an entire universe created from their thoughts and memories has always been a fascinating one for me. I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining what my own or my friends' brain-world would look like and how you might navigate it. So imagine my surprise when I found an entire 3D platformer based around that concept. And for $5 on sale, no less! This had been a cult classic for a long time, but the recent sequel I still need to play elevated it to a higher place in the social conscience.

You play as Raz, a young kid who crashed a training camp in order to become a Psychonaut, people who covertly enter other's minds to extract secrets for the government. At least that's the idea, Raz ends up using his training to help his mind-victims work through their insecurities and psychoses in order to improve their mental health, first focusing on people in his camp, and then on clients in the nearby insane asylum. This isn't just out of a heroic desire to help others, but the easiest way Raz has to save his new camp friends, whose brains have all been cartoonishly sucked out of their ears and placed into jars. This world is so goofy and fun and the premise allows for endless creativity with settings and like. You can write a whole essay on any one of these levels. Damn I need to play the sequel.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

I like Sonic quite a bit. The characters are so expressive and fun and the world is similarly wacky and cool. The lore is an odd mix of typical video-game nonsense and genuinely fascinating tragic backstories. I loved the Sonic X show and Sonic Underground but like. The games... Okay the games are fun, but there's always one thing that ends up giving me a huge headache. Usually the Chaos emeralds. Eventually I'll go back and play through the Origin games and meet the games on their terms, but in the meantime this is the perfect Sonic game for me.

It's just a three hour visual novel written in the style of a murder mystery! It's so cute! Sonic is dead! You spend most of the game as Barry the Quokka, who's name is actually Kitch, a dorky dude in charge of catering on the murder mystery train, thrust suddenly into Amy Rose's birthday party on a quest to figure out the culprit who fake murdered our best blue boy. The game is full of so many adorable designs, fun characterization, and goofy plot tangents that its clear Sega just gave a group of Sonic fans free reign to go crazy over an official project. If you get bored of the visual novel part, its interspersed with random isometric Sonic levels you can plow through pretty quickly. I had a pretty good time with all of it.

Sonic Adventure: DX

In fact I had such a good time with The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog that I jumped immediately into an actual Sonic game. This was Sonic's first real jump into 3D, and I was always led to believe that jump missed the platform and tumbled into badly rendered, inanimate water. This isn't true! The voice acting is pretty bad at times and the animation gets wonky in places, but like. I am a Kingdom Hearts fan. These are not negatives. It also splits a singular story into multiple perspectives, so you discover more context for what's happening the more characters you play as. That doesn't mean the story is amazing or anything, but the effort is commendable and I love when stories do this.

Each character sits in a different genre of game as well. Sonic himself translates his 2D gameplay pretty well into a 3D setting, which is what most people reference when talking about this game. Tails is more of a direct racing game where you can basically skip most of any level due to the fact he can fly. Knuckles is a treasure hunting game focused on exploration. Amy is a survival horror game where you beat the shit out of robotic pyramid head at the end, and Big the Cat is a fishing game that's pretty fun after you tear all of your hair out. The last story, Gamma, is a rail shooter about one of Eggman's robots developing a conscience after learning it is being powered by a small tormented bird, before going on a rampage against its robotic brethren and self-destructing, freeing them all from Eggman's control. It's surprisingly... pointiate? powniant? *checks watch* poignant dammit. I have an English degree. Anyways robot stories like this always get to me for some reason.

Pokemon Infinite Fusion

There are a few communities where the amount of effort that can go into amateur fan content astounds me. The Pokemon fanbase is one of those communities. Romhacks have been popular in this community for a long time, many of them matching or exceeding some of the professionally made mainline titles, in my opinion, at least. Pokemon Infinite Fusion approaches that line with just the shear volume of fan content present in this game.

Any Pokemon of any stage can be "fused" with another to create a new design. Their typing and stats depend on a fairly simple algorithm, but the designs themselves are created by hundreds of incredibly talented independent artists you can find credited in the Pokedex. You can even import your own design if you wish! Obviously, with the amount of possible combinations, not all of them are artist-created, most procedurally generated, but there are just so many that it boggles my mind. Here are a few of my favorites

[Image I.D. Fusion of Mawile and Electavire created by Sadfrog, it has jumper cables in place of its giant mouths]

[Image I.D. fusion of Cofagrigus and Weavile that resembles Midna from the Zelda series created by King Peggy]

[Image I.D. fusion of Charizard and Aerodactyl created by artist Beespoon]

The game itself is a decent remake of Firered and Leafgreen with a significant post game. I have a couple issues, such as the credits being kind of vague and buried, and the gameplay being glitchy in certain areas, but this game is still being updated, so I'm excited to see what else it will offer in the future.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Ocarina of Time is the quintessential Zelda game, Breath of the Wild reinvented the franchise, but this is my first and favorite Zelda game. When I think of Zelda I think of this Hyrule's landscape, this Link's journey. I can talk at length about the perfect structure of this game, the dungeon layouts, the visuals' mix of quirky and grimdark, the fun boss designs, but I can't deny its all washed in nostalgia.

The story is about two people with the rest of their life apparent ahead of them, both cursed and disfigured beyond their imagination and forced into a role they could have never predicted. People say Midna is the greatest "helper" in the franchise, but really she's the hero right alongside our main boy. This isn't Link's story, its both of theirs. And at the end, neither of them can truly return to what they used to be; the curse is dispelled, but the change remains. For Midna this means sacrificing her closest relationship for the good of her kingdom, and for Link this means leaving the town he knew as home. Maybe he's looking for a way to find Midna, maybe he's off on a new, dangerous adventure, maybe he wants to do motion-controlled sharpshooting on Nintendo's cool new console. Regardless of his goal, his adventure changed him in a way that he can no longer live comfortably in the life he grew up in. So he leaves.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

When this game came out, the biggest complaint about it were the broken motion-controls. Personally, they always worked fine for me, but I'm glad the switch remake added a new control scheme to make the experience more accessible. Now more people can complain about the actual game rather than the controls! Honestly never really understood why this game was so polarizing, the only big problem I had with the original was Fi's constant interruptions (which were toned down in this version), but Navi did that shit way more frequently and no one marked that as an abject flaw. It's a damn good 3D Zelda with excellent dungeons and a really compelling conflict.

This version of Link and Zelda are one of the only overtly romantic iterations of these characters. A classic childhood friends to lovers dynamic. Zelda is on her quest to restore the power of the goddess and Link is set on supporting her, no matter how painful it might be for him. A cool detail I love in this game is after Zelda seals herself up in the Orange Sap of Eternal Agony or whatever, the lines on Link's face notably lengthen and darken.

[Image I.D. Link at the beginning of Skyward Sword. The lines under his eyes are visible, but indistinct]

[Image I.D. Link towards the end of Skyward Sword, the lines under his eyes are deeper and more apparent.]

It's as if the trauma of his journey has physically aged him. Idk maybe its just a lighting thing I'm reading too far into. I'm glad this Link and Zelda get a happy ending. My only complaint nowadays is learning Nintendo almost made a "hero mode" style extra game where you play through Zelda's adventure! And they took it out! Cowards! You get glimpses of what it would be like in the end credits, like they're taunting you.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Breath of the Wild might be my favorite game to just exist in. Every inch of Hyrule is so thoroughly laid out; the environments are gorgeous, the movement is fun, there's always something in the distance worth checking out, and the towns are so heavily detailed. You can spend hours even after completing the game 100% just driving around the landscape or studying the textures and wall decor in Kakariko to find some hidden piece of storytelling. In that regard, excited to say the Tears of the Kingdom is the perfect sequel.

I was concerned when it was revealed we were exploring the same Hyrule's map, just a few years later, but they changed things up so thoroughly, exploring the same area doesn't feel like retreading old ground, but seeing how the area evolved. It's familiar, rather than identical. Not only that, but there are now two entirely new maps situated above and below the old one, each with a new, invigorating aesthetic that are so fun and exciting to travel through. Go to the Sky for some awesome Agoraphobia, or travel to the Depths for some cooky Claustrophobia. You will never know how badly I spelled claustrophobia at first.

The story is nowhere near as elegantly written as BotW, and that's fine, it's a sequel, it only needs to add on to the original, and it brought it me Tears (HAH) for entirely different reasons that BotW. The dragon's tears sidequest had genuinely shocked me with the order I collected them, and the endgame boss sequence was just so incredibly peak. On the lore side of things, and how it connects to the larger mythos, this game makes me want to strangle someone, but this is Zelda, I would not have it any other way. Mechanically, I'm never one to push a game to its absolute limit, but this game has so many tools intended for the player to do exactly that, and I'm excited to see what other people come up with.

youtube

Recently, as of writing this, the Youtuber Any Austin put out a video analyzing the woodworking of TotK and BotW, and it might sound goofy, but it got me pumped to return to it in the near future, to just exist in Hyrule for a while longer.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team Pt 1

This is the first title I'm granting the "pt 1" moniker. Some games have a definitive ending, and then a post-game epilogue that is an entirely new story that I might finish next year. This is a childhood favorite of mine I'm revisiting. The mystery dungeon games have this insane hold over my psyche and always wrench an emotion out of me like no other Pokemon games can. While that didn't change time around, I realized I had a great deal of nostalgia blindness over its story. It's not bad at all, but it plays into a lot of generic adventure story tropes while I remembered it being more unique. In truth, this game was actually my introduction to a lot of those tropes and archetypes, and it pulls them off very well. It occasionally moves into some insane territory, like your cute Pokemon guys are hunted down by a lynch mob at one point.

This game also established a lot of Pokemon identities in my head, and are the reason Mons like Ninetales and Gardevoir are some of my favorites. Its such a comfortable game to go back to, but it will always be outshined by its successor, in my opinion.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Skies Pt. 1

No, I didn't misspell that. This is a fanmade improvement hack that adds some quality of life adjustments, like shortcuts for all of your moves, and a bunch of new story sidequests. Most of the story elements are relegated to the post game, so my playthrough was more or less identical to the original. That being said, this is one of my favorite games of all time. The reason I remembered Red Rescue team as having a more in-depth story is because of this game. Upon my umpteenth playthrough of this I can confirm that it is not (just) nostalgia blindness, this is still one of the best video game stories I have ever experienced. You can withdraw all of the elements that make it a Pokemon game and you are still left with a really well written, emotionally driven science fiction story. Wigglytuff and Chatot aren't even Pokemon to me. They're just the chaotic gay couple from this game.

The gameplay is mostly unchanged from the first, with the addition of the lovable 4th generation freaks. The change of focus from rescuing Pokemon to exploring new areas and finding treasure always hooked me and spurred on my imagination as a kid, it captures the sense of wonder really well.

Link to hack: https://hacks.skytemple.org/h/skies

Pikmin

This is probably my most replayed game ever. It's a pretty short game, if you know what you're doing. There was a point where I had the map so consistently memorized I could do a playthrough in my head, lmao. Take that Miyamoto. I pirated your game through MY MIND. YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A MEMORY.

There's still something magical about the atmosphere in this game that I don't think any of the sequels quite matched. Something about music; the mystery; the sound design; the isolation. It's just one man forced to make friends with these adorable alien freaks to ensure both of their survival. Later entries would focus on the intrigue of exploring what seems to be the ruins of human society from an ants perspective, which has its own appeal, but this game feels most genuinely alien and hostile in the way nature can be, in a beautiful way. I also played this with gamecube controls for the first time in my life man fuck the gamecube controls.

Pikmin 2 pt 1

This game has come under fire in recent years, which I think is goofy as all hell. I heard people call it "the black sheep" of the Pikmin series back when there were only three sheep! And a pygmy goat on the 3DS, I guess. I understand a lot of the criticisms, but this was a dream come true when I first picked it up as a kid. Now you have an endless amount of time to explore the Pikmin Planet to your leisure! You have another dude (he sucks so much I love him)! More little freaks to follow you around! Even more big freaks who want to kill you! I love freaks. I don't know how much time I spent studying through the Piklopedia to understand the wider ecology of this viddy game. It solidified the character of Olimar in my head even moreso than the original.

People hate the caves, (or hated?) but I think that's just because it wasn't like Pikmin 1. There's something to be said about the generic aesthetics dulling down the personality of these dungeons, but it always felt like a suitable expansion of this world. They're bugs! Tons of bugs live underground! Of course that's where they're all hiding. Because of the endless time limit, they did ramp up the difficulty on some of these caves to the bullshit level, which made me want to move on once I paid off the debt. Sorry Louie! I know you like it down there anyways. With the other freaks.

Pikmin 3

I never owned a Wii U, so this game coming out at the peak of my Pikmin hyper fixation was agonizing. I staved off the insanity of not being able to play it by scrolling the fanwiki articles for every new creature it introduced and rewatching the trailer demo over and over again? Huh, I really did that. Finally being able to play it on the switch is fantastic, and I don't have to deal with that stupid gamepad. Sorry, really cool bulky controller with a tiny screen you can't see shit on.

This game is so beautiful. It almost retains the majesty of discovery that the original had. I understand why people often refer to it as the true sequel. It works to strike a balance between the tight survival gameplay of 1 and the explorative aspect of 2 by having your day count tied to the amount of resources you can gather within a day, which also allows the plot to manufacture genuine anxiety when a certain asshole steals all your shit. All that time you spent gathering a buffer against certain starvation for your dudes was worthless unless you can get it back. You can actually lose the game at this point if you aren't on top of things.

I like all the new dudes. They all fit within the pre-established universe very well and contrast nicely against the original trilogy of dudes by being nice and actually liking each other. You just feel bad that Olimar hasn't been living it up with these cool cats all this time, and is instead tormented by his asshole coworkers every waking moment of his life on PNF 404. All three of the coolcats also get original Piklopedia entries from different professional perspectives. All together we get an amateur biologist (Olimar), a cook (Louie), an engineer (Alph), a botanist (Brittany), and a tactician (Charlie). Most of Charlie's are just "can I take this bug in 1v1" and I love him for that.

Cutting this off here for now. Remember how I said I love deceptions? That also went for writing this in a timely fashion. Oh well, one person's Monday night is another's Friday morning. That's how timezones work, I think. Going back to movies next Monday. I don't watch a lot of movies overall, but I have a lot to go through.

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feathered-serpents · 1 year

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I don't think the issue with TMA2 is that they shouldn't be asking for money at all. There definitely are people who just hate the idea of a company making money (the critrole example you mentioned) but the thing that's making a lot of people wary about TMA2 specifically is that a show with such a deliberately ambiguous ending that the creators both explicitly said they didn't want to make a sequel to is getting a sequel right around the time the company is struggling financially. It's not about them needing money, it's about them potentially ruining their own ambiguous ending FOR the money. Frankly I'd honestly be a lot less nervous about this if Martin's voice hadn't been on the recording during the ARG, because while there are stories they hinted they still wanted to tell in the world of TMA, they were both very clear that they never wanted to answer the question of if Jon and Martin survived. Until, it seems, they need to bring the money back. That's the part that isn't sitting right with me.

Hello anon. Sorry for the delay in answering this I was working and then I was tired. Luckily, I sent this ask to @hihereami and she said everything I was thinking so I’m just going to let her speak

You sure are making a bunch of assumptions of the inner motivations about these people who (by your own words) have exhausted the fact they care about their story and how it's told. you sure are assuming a lot of the backstage process on how this story is done and how they're willing to ''ruin that FOR money''

as you said -- it's a potential worry, born from the fact they need money. Of course they need money, they're indie. Indies always need money. Indies don't have a way to create without direct, constant backing. They do not have a breadth of wealth behind 'em to cover their bad times and decisions'

'You don't know these people and I don't know them either. I don't think it's advisable to simply assume (or potentially assume) their unspoken intentions and motivations. What has been spoken is: 1) they've mentioned in q&a being interested in dwelling in this universe more in the future 2) they are making a story - that we dont know ANYTHING about, we dont know if ''potentially the ending is ruined'' - set in that universe 3) they care about this story. obviously. 4) they are an indie company currently not doing so great 5) they need more money if they want to go ahead with TMA2.'

And since she perfectly encapsulated everything I wanted to say (thank u Ami) I’m not going to say anything else but this: that you or anyone else have these worries is not the problem. The worries themselves are justified and fair, and I do not fault you for that, I have them too. The problem comes when we start to see people treating these worries as FACTS and spreading their speculations like they are concrete truths. The fact is, we don’t know, and we should not pretend to

Lastly, Ami asked me to add this addendum to her contribution

#tma #the magnus archives #tma2

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charlieconwayy · 7 months

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What are ur issues w Hulu Futurama?

tbh when it was announced i did have excitement in me about my number one show ever returning, but then i remembered all the bullshit that i hated in the cc run and i was just immediately skeptical and for good reason bc i am usually right. i will say that i rly am a fry/leela as characters and as a couple girlie so i am being insanely biased (my man stays dragging me saying i need to put more energy into other aspects of the show lol) but i do like other characters if the show cares about them. but that's the main issue with this revamp. the show put care into literally EVERYONE except fry and leela who are the MAIN characters. (i do think a lot of the weird "there's no main character" kinda stuff was due to bendergate - and yes i am annoyed that dimaggio allegedly has billing over billy who plays the LEAD as well as two other main characters - but it's also strange that w all that fuss, even if it was just for publicity which i doubt at this point, that bender didn't rly do all that much either?) i started noticing like two series rewatches ago that as we get later into the series, we get more planet express crew centric episodes rather than fry/leela/bender episodes, and i'm fine with that for the most part bc i adore amy and hermes, but it feels weird that they kept so much of the vibe of the cc stuff in the show considering how much most people despise those seasons.

to answer simply, almost every episode was either bad, boring, far too fanservicey (looking at you pointless parasites lost "sequel" bc how dare u shit on that episode's legacy so fucking badly), or just forgettable. the episodes i genuinely liked were children of a lesser bog, related to items you've viewed and i know what you did less xmas. i found all of those to be enjoyable and everything else to be complete and utter shit. COALB honestly surprised me bc i have never cared about kif/amy bc the show didn't rly ever care about them (always felt soooo bad for their shippers w the zapp shit and then the bender shit), and i rly rly like that they did a major status quo shift by letting them have children and actually letting those children be a part of the cast. lauren tom is mother and she killed that episode and i am so happy for her that they allowed her to show her acting chops bc i think her line delivery is insanely underrated in general. (off topic but anyone complaining ab them switching leo's voice actor to an asian man needs to grow up, that should've been the case from day one.) i knew i would enjoy RTIYV bc it was a freela status quo shift but i actually also really enjoyed the momazon plot and found it amusing/funny. very very odd that there wasn't any~major freela moments in their ONE focused episode, but w/e. it's a mixed bag bc i also would've literally died for the cc seasons to give us background stuff w them. i do love that they kind of threw back to the fry/leela/bender days with this, it felt nice and nostalgic. the xmas episode was GREAT esp bc i always hate the xmas episodes (the first one has a special place in my heart bc you're lonely and i'm lonely but together we're lonely together <3), it was so fun getting to see everyone as a family (SO happy they're acknowledging dwight and cubert exist again even tho canonically they should be grown men by now lmao) and the bender/zoidberg stuff was surprisingly sweet (honestly when they give zoidberg an ep where he bonds w any of the pe crew it's enjoyable, the hermes episode was good, the professor episode was good, now this episode is good)

now to get to my issues. i don't want to say that they shouldn't have listened to fans and given us what we want to see, but i feel like there was so much weird shit that no one was asking for? parasites regained is the most egregious example bc who tf was like "omg we need to see the worms again but this time in a gross out potty humor episode!" no one. they need to STOP with bringing back every fucking character too, like barbados slim is a good example of this. he's been used so sparingly that he is pretty loved in the fandom, but w them making hermes/labarbara an actual stable relationship (a good thing that they then immediately ruined for jokes no one finds all that funny) it was SO weird and annoying for them to play back into the "haha labarbara is cheating on hermes!" schtick again. why was the whale biologist back? why was the time machine brought back?! like i know i said i liked the xmas episode but certain things are just so iconic to the show that they need to remain untouched. pissed me off. why can't they give us shit we actually want to see? robot devil song and dance number. zoidberg/marianne (just give her another fucking voice actor if they can't get emilia clarke jfc). hedonismbot as long as he's not overused and just given a few one-off lines (did we even see him????) hmmm idk the main thing a HUGE majority of fans have been asking for for twenty fucking years in a SEQUEL TO THE WHY OF FRY????

also did anyone think it was odd how after the cc seasons cramming zapp down our throats every other episode we barely saw him?? even in COALB he was kind of irrelevant. my guess would be they didn't want to over exert billy but the professor had a ton to do so ???

there's so much else that i could probably complain about and go into but i will leave it at this: i do not like the cc seasons BUT i am glad they exist bc of the late philip j fry which is not just a perfect episode of futurama, it's a perfect episode of television. until the hulu seasons give me a TLPJF than they don't have a reason to exist. this sadly just felt like a money grab and yes, i will admit that there were good moments/episodes but as a whole, it did not need to come back. i'm hoping they're saving the masterful writing that i KNOW they can do for the next season (look at season 4! banger after banger. kif gets knocked up a notch, jurassic bark, the why of fry, the sting, the farnsworth parabox. three hundred big boys, the devil's hands are idle playthings) but tbh i feel like that fire/spark is just gone from the production team.

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thenightling · 5 months

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Fright Night (2021 comic)

I finally got the opportunity to read the 2021 Fright Night comics based on the original 1985 movie. It starts a lot like the Fright Night movie sequel. It's set in 1986. Much like in sequel movie Charlie is seeing a therapist and is broken up with Amy but unlike the sequel movie, Charlie still knows vampires are real but he has enough sense to pretend Jerry Dandridge was just a serial killer. Okay, first the good... The comics have a retro feel and the inner artwork resembles the 1990 Now Fright Night comics. These new comics are from American Mythology productions. So it actually does feel like a comic book from the mid to late 80s or early 90s. And it borrows a lot from Fright Night: Part 2 and the New Fright Night comics, right down to a group of vampires wanting to revive Jerry Dandridge and Evil Ed still being alive. There are even nods to Tom Holland's Peter Vincent one shot comic from a few years ago by bringing up the Peter Vincent fan club. And the variant cover art is excellent. The more common cover resembles a Now comic, while the variant is the more dynamic cover with Peter Vincent holding a cross and looking heroic. _________________ Now the bad: The interior artwork is not very good. It feels retro but it's also rough and sloppy. And Peter Vincent looks NOTHING like Roddy McDowall. I don't know if that's a copyright thing or what. In his illustration on the back of Tom Holland's Fright Night: Origins (Book one of the new three part Fright Night book series) Peter Vincent looks like Vincent Price, which I'm okay with. Peter Vincent is drawn with a goatee, which I don't really like and it's kind of distracting. He's also been given oddly dark skin. On some panels he even looks like a person of color, which I'd be fine with if the cover wasn't obviously a white man. The villain is a woman vampire like in Fright Night part 2 but instead of being Jerry Dandridge's bisexual sister, she's Jerry Dandridge's bisexual maker out to revive him from the dead. There were only two issues. I don't know if the comic has been quietly discontinued or not but if it had continued I am pretty certain Peter Vincent's very wholesome and innocent friend / assistant / college student that he's mentoring, Danny (female presenting but I could be mistaken)... is a dead character walking. She's a sweet heart, Peter loves her. Peter even says the dreaded "What would I do without you?" so I was like Oh, yeah, she's gonna die... Either that or end up Charlie's new romantic interest. The bullies Charlie is dealing with are very Stephen King. And by that I mean they have no motivation other than that they are jerks. I read what they say and do to Charlie and it's like "...Why?" They're targeting him for having survived a serial killer? Amy's grown out her hair and learned self-defense because she defends Charlie against his bullies. Um... Girl power. Except Amy was played by a very short, very scrawny, Amanda Bearse. And this "new and improved Amy" looks nothing like her. I only realized it was supposed to be Amy because Charlie said her name. And finally... the group of vampires needed an INVITATION to enter a MOVIE THEATER! Did these people even SEE the first Fright Night movie? They need an invitation to enter a HOME, not a business. Jerry Dandridge did not need an invitation to enter the night club where he enthralled Amy in the movie. Needing an invitation to enter the movie theatre is like a joke from What we do in the Shadows and completely took me out of the story. I've seen bad role players do that at inn settings. Vampires need an invitation to enter a HOME, not a public space! I'd really wanted to read this for nearly three years now and I'm sorry to say I can tell why it only had two issues. I'm kind of disappointed.

#Fright Night #Peter Vincent

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welllpthisishappening · 1 year

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Hey there! You said to message you about what we're reading, and I felt like chatting about that (hopefully you won't mind). I really love hearing your thoughts on various books.

I've been reading the Rokesby series by Julia Quinn (Bridgerton prequels) which I am really having fun with. I'm also reading The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig, Darling by K. Ancrum, Impossible by Nancy Werlin, The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson, and An Unexpected Earl by Anna Harrington (second of a series called Lords of the Armory) As you can tell, I am really bad at picking just one book at a time!

What are you reading at the moment?

Please come here to talk about books with me whenever. I promise absolutely never mind. And gosh, do you have a lot of things to talk about! I am impressed, honestly. I would never be able to keep all those plots and storylines straight!

I'm a strictly one-book-at-a-time kinda lady. Which is not great for the number of books on my Kindle, actually. Because I have this horrible habit of just downloading them, so I don't forget that I want to read them, and then I wind up with, like, 15 books on there, and I make Justin pick a number as to what I read next or give him a general idea of what the genre is and make him pick from that.

I am horrible at making decisions, you see.

As to what I've been reading recently, I've been a bit all over the place. I mean, there's been kissing in.... all of them, but the type of kissing varies. Some of my recent ones ,though:

the last in a series where someone on this football team falls in love with some quirky™ girl, and the sports descriptions are only kind of incorrect

a historical romance that was truly TOP TIER where the main characters used to flirt in their first season, but then she got married because her father was going to die and he wanted her protected™ but the guy was an unfeeling, uninterested jerk and then he died and now his sister is threatening to take her children away and so she needs to prove there's a responsible male presence in the home, so she and her lawyer!brother devise a scheme to fake an engagement, and who is the perfect candidate for this fake arrangement than her former flirting partner who is now a decided rake and in need of funds???

a set of short stories set in the daevabad verse, which is a fantasy trilogy i read last year and LOVED, but it is INTENSE and the world building is vast and i'm still not sure i understood the first book at all, but the stories were gorgeous and some of them made me cry

the sequel to a modern-day supernatural book that has witches and demons and werewolves and everyone falls in love and i liked the first one way more

another sequel, but this one is part of a series that's a spinoff of a different series and is focused on this one candian family and they own a ranch and everyone is decidedly emotionally stunted and needs heaps of therapy but they fall in love really well and kiss even better and the last one was my favorite because they were idiots! and pining for years! and the dude played hockey

If you can't tell, I've been traveling a lot. And spending a lot of time on team buses. And planes. And, so, I read. When I'm not making more Instagram reels.

#laura reads books #snowbellewells #laura rambles #happy conference tournament week guys!#i will be on another team bus this week #and presumably reading more trashy books 10 feet away from a bunch of college kids

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ketone-bodies · 1 year

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How I‘d Improve “Disenchanted”

ALT TITLE: What I Disliked About Disenchanted

Ok so forgive me in advance if this comes out incoherent and unorganized but I really need to let this out cuz this is a brainworm that won’t seem to go away. Now I’m not really a professional writer or anything and I’m basing this all on vibes and trying to figure out what kind of story Disenchanted was supposed to tell. So this is more like a mental exercise for me.

If you don’t wanna see any criticism of this movie, then don’t read. Otherwise, thank you for bearing with me.

So to start off, I’ll get this part out of the way: The animation felt inferior to the original. I get that they used a different animation studio for the sequel but heck, even Nancy’s design looked vastly different from what she looked like in the original for some reason. Did they not have the original model sheets? (This could be a nitpick, they probably wanted her design to look more like Idina). Anyway, would have been nice if they brought back James Baxter’s studio who had worked on the original (that’s a personal gripe I suppose).

Next, the thing with the original movie was that there was a perfect balance between the fairy-tale and real life, something I was also hoping for in the sequel, but instead they ramped up the fairy-tale energy, neglecting the real world aspects, and in the end, felt...cringey (and not in a so-bad-it’s-good way). While my thoughts about this part are a little more vague, I suppose it can be summarized with this: They should have been more willing to explore the deeper, more-real parts of the parent-child relationships in the brighter fairy-tale setting instead of externalizing the whole thing as a purely evil-stepmother-and-Cinderelly-in-a-fairy-tale-world conflict.

The thing with the original movie was that our two main characters ended up discovering what they want, seemingly away from the external conflict with the Evil Queen. The latter’s involvement was simply to move the plot along. Of course, her plot point needed to be wrapped up in the end, but she was barely directly influential during the middle portion of the movie except to have her henchman chase the princess around to kill her. This approach did not happen in the sequel. Instead, the external conflict of having to deal with a magical real-world and evil women trying to one-up each other took so much unnecessary focus and it felt like the setup was inappropriate for something as personal as a mother-daughter relationship. Maya Rudolph’s character had no real stakes with what was going on between Morgan and Giselle. Morgan was only used as a bargaining tool at the very end of the movie as if part of a checklist.

Also the thing with Andalasia magic felt a little phoned in. Did we really need the whole “If magic is brought to the real-world, Andalasia will die” schtick? Or was it just the easiest (and not very narratively effective) way of raising the stakes? Either way the magic appearing in the world didn’t need that explanation. It could have just...happened and we would be able to focus more on Morgan, Giselle and their family. Nancy filling in the fairy godmother role did not require her adopted fairy-tale world to be on death’s door. After all you already had the wishing wand there. There was no need for another explanation.

I also wished they hadn’t shoved Patrick D.’s character to sidelines and make him a complete bumbling fool. Robert was the straight-person in the first film, foil to Giselle, why suddenly take that out of his character and then render him a side character in a movie about his family? His involvement with the conflict between Giselle and Morgan would have been more compelling if he was his real-world self. Just look at Turning Red and Encanto where the fathers didn’t have such large roles yet helped the main character immensely.

And as much as I love Amy Adams going back forth as evil or good Giselle, perhaps her transformation didn’t have to be so drawn out? It would serve as a challenge for Morgan to understand and appreciate what her stepmother does when she has to deal with a completely evil version of her for a larger chunk/longer duration of the film. Here the Cinderella aspect could have been utilized more effectively, mixed with the realities of non-fairy-tale life.

Next, the music didn’t seem as good. For me, it wasn’t Alan Menken or Stephen Schwartz’s best work, as if, just like the Andalasia magic, the songs felt phoned in. It didn’t give the same energy as the original’s music did and felt more like obligatory creativity (ex. Disney Channel-level of music) than creatively genuine work.

Finally, take out the talking scroll. Alan Tudyk’s Magic Scroll character was completely unnecessary and made me take this film even less seriously. Why did he need to be there? “It could have been an email” as they say, or in this case, magically written instructions. Like those Magic 8 balls except it’s true. Besides, we already had Pip.

Bonus: It looked like it needed a higher budget and more time. Enchanted was such a well-loved and fantastic film but technically took 10 years to make from its very first conception. I’m not sure why but it felt like Disney skimped here when it came to the production value (incl. animation as said earlier). It would suck if it turns out this sequel had a higher budget than its predecessor though, with consideration of inflation.

Those are at least some of my thoughts. Apologies if I poke some bears or whatever. I really wish I liked this movie but I just saw too many problems with it and too many aspects that didn’t suit my tastes or expectations with it, considering Enchanted is one of my favorite Disney movies and whose songs still continue to give me goosebumps when I hear them.

So yeah, I was quite disappointed in this film :(

#disney #disney plus #enchanted #disenchanted #giselle #morgan #i can see why it went straight to Disney +#I mean even Prince Edward had less screentime #that hurt

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the-sinful-voice-witch · 2 years

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Ok so... It's time i give my opinion about the Sonic movies since they made me swallow the words of doubt I've been having since the very first announcement but who could blame my skepticism? There's barely any good movie based on a videogame and I didn't want Sonic to be more tarnished and HELL after seeing this thing 👇👇👇👇👇😬😬😬 this fucking thing!:

Why must you traumatize me this way?😭😭😭 What the hell with those teeth 😨😨😨? Eeeeeeeeee

Well sue me for being distrustful about having a good sonic movie! Also after Sonic X, which is ironically the only sonic show i liked for the sole reason of having Knuckles x Rouge content since I couldn't stand the rest of characters! Specially that damn useless, bland, boring, clingy tag along kid!🤬🤬🤬 I wasn't very enthusiastic about having humans with any protagonism 😤😤😤 and doctor eggman first looks didn't appeal me (because I didn't think he would change it to a more accurate appearance 😅)

The point is I stubbornly refused to acknowledge the existence of the first movie, not even with the new kawaii cutie more accurate redesign 🥰🥰🥰

Not even after being told that tails would appear in the sequel and while I was watching the first sequel trailer and I was pleased with what I saw i still remained stubborn until... HE APPEARED 😳😳😳🤯🤯🤯💘💘:

Damnit Idris Elba 😖😖😖 and also Spain Spanish voice actor with your stupid sexy smooth velvet deep voices!!! (As a voice actress I'm a sucker for voices...🤭🤭) Stop pulling out my furro side with knuckles 🙈🙈🙈!! And sexy voices! My ears are sensitive 😳😳😳

And just like that with a: "do I look like i need your power" my willpower banished! 😌😌😌 (I need a t shirt with that sentence 🤩🤩) You won Sonic movie, i watched you because I had to see the sequel ASAP and you shut my mouth and my doubts 🙇🙇🙇 forgive me!

And here my opinion of the first movie: Usually I'm not a fan of Sonic alone, i like it better when there's more characters because in all the versions (except Sonic boom) I've seen of Sonic he is... Well in all the shows before sonic X he is a bit repellent... And then in Sonic X he had a dislikable personality like he was "too cool for everything", he was so free... "Oh I don't like to be attached to anything", "im a free spirit..." "I joke and I'm so cool and I barely have any flaws and I'm only vulnerable in specific few very few moments..."🙄🙄🙄🙄 Ajjj he and Amy had the worst personalities, they were flanderized 😒😒😒 i couldn't ship them in that show like Rouge and knuckles because it was just terrible 😔 but here in the movie i adored his personality because he HAS FLAWS AND HE IS VULNERABLE! this is surprising because according to Ian Flynn writer of IDW comics SEGA for whatever stupid reasons doesn't want Sonic showing strong emotions, he always has to be cool...🙄🙄🙄 (Still i think Ian tried to make him as relatable as he could and improved Amy rose so Kudos!) and condescending and even when he is seen with his friends or at least with just tails he is always portrayed wanting to be alone, free alone on his own blah blah ajj But in this movie Sonic is lonely, he doesn't like to be on his own! He suffers being alone, he has facial expressions that feel like he is about to cry, he has emotions! He wants to play baseball with people and have fun and he is clumsy 😂😂, a complete dork, he makes bad jokes and acts goofy!! He tries to be cool but fails 😆! HE ACTS LIKE WHAT HE IS: A KID! i mean a 15 old teenager but that's a kid 🤭 and he is so lonely he pretends he is part of the family of a couple of humans he sweetly admires! I mean don't you see? Mister "I'm too cool for everything" and "I'm always my way on my own" feels lonely, shows sadness and looks up to people he secretly watches he pretends he is one of them??? I LOVE HIM! He became more wholesome and relatable! 🥰🤗😖😖😖♥️ Before him the only sonic i liked was ironically (because I hate so many things of that show) sonic boom Sonic and it was because since that show was made only with comedy purposes he was made... Not exactly too cool for everything but more like a wannabe cool hero, he had many flaws, we never see him vulnerable because of the comedy but he is sassy and cynical and silly 😂😂😂 and he doesn't seem to like being all alone on his own(he was like that in the game but learned his lesson) he spends a lot of time with his friends and because of all that i found him more likeable.

And that brings me to talk about the humans: oh dear lord donut and lady pretzel, forgive this fool for thinking you would be like that obnoxious tag along useless kid!🙇🙇🙇

This time instead of a clingy kid who follows around the too cool for everything Sonic who acts as a too cool hedgehog big brother who has to rescue him (like Amy🙄).... Since this time Sonic acts his age and it's lonely they have a father-son relationship, tom is his caretaker, it was so wholesome seeing them both with flaws helping each other and bonding over deep moments! And Maddie...💘💘💘 Pulled my gay side out! Seriously Maddie o my Maddie 😍😍😍😍 🥵🥵🥵🥵💘💘💘💘 I'm so in love with her!!! She is so beautiful, so pretty, so kind.... kyaaaaaaaaaaaa The best part of this is that they didn't use a dramatic bullshit plot to make them interesting, they are just a supportive with each other, affectionate loving couple! (No trace of stupid cliche drama to force them to be relatable and interesting like fucking Chris in Sonic x🙄🙄🙄, stupid tag along clingy brat... Little Jojo was more likeable than you and only showed up a moment) And they have a dog and Sonic gets jealous of the dog 😖😖😖😖😖 and they become a family!!!!!! YEEEEESSSSSSS and of course Jim Carrey's Eggman was marvelous!! Perfect mix of sadism, crazyness, evilness... And the fighting scenes were perfect so yeah I've never been so happy to be wrong about a movie 👏👏👏👏😭😭😭

See you in my next post to comment the wonderful sequel!!💋💋💋👋👋👋

#sonic idw #sonic the hedghog movie #sonic movie 2 #sonic movie #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #knuckles the echidna #miles tails prower #idw sonic

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forfoxessake · 1 year

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March (2023)

It’s silly but I’m happy I managed to watch some recent works that I was interested in, I sometimes get trapped into watching what I think I should watch, and not what I want. I can say the same for books, although I’m still finding it difficult to truly focus for more than a few pages.

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8 films

Catherine Called Birdy (2022) - directed by Lena Dunham, Bella Ramsey is a coming-of-age story, with a lovely cast and a profound reflection on what is to be a woman, and how you can find yourself among all the many things expected of our “designated roles” in society. Bella truly shines here and I want her to do more diverse roles.

Disenchanted (2022) - I love the original film and was genuinely excited for this, the trailers looked fun, and I was disapointed by the quality delivered, it’s a good idea badly executed, and while Amy Adams is forever delightful, and especially when she is being bad, but it’s not enough to make this an enjoyable film, not even for a 10 year old.

Glass Life (2021) a short documentary insanely full of references, I could barely keep up with it and need to watch it at least 5 times more. But I loved it. It’s a reflection on our choices in regard to our daily life, our capitalism image-obsessed life.

Holy Spider (2022) directed by Ali Abbasi (who also directed two great The Last of Us episodes) it’s not an easy film to watch, a real-life story about a serial killer who targeted sex workers and used a religious belief to justify his killing. It doesn’t hide anything, it hurts to watch it, but it’s necessary, it can be like many other similar crime films that make it all seem glorious.

Happy Together (1997) directed by Wong Kar-wai I’m slowly going through his most famous work and loving the way his movies have textured, you can feel them with our of our senses. It’s love in a non-Hollywood way, it’s real.

A Quiet Place II (2020) The first one is so refreshingly good, unfortunately, the sequel is unnecessary, more of the same but not in a good interesting/captivating way.

Inherent Vice (2014) directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this was the wrong movie to start watching on a long daytime flight back home, and it took me many weeks to finish it, and I won’t pretend to understand anything that was happening here, I’m not even sure we are supposed to understand anything.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage have fun being meta. Paddington 2 is in fact the best movie ever.

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4 books

Anton Chekhov - read two of his plays, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Garden, both really good works and now I need to watch “Drive My Car” again to better understand how they use the complexity of the play in the film's narrative.

Victor Hugo - Toilers of The Sea - I have read Moby Dick so I didn't think I could have a hard time reading something complex about the sea, and especially something written by Victor Hugo who does it so beautifully, but I just suffered silently until there was only 20% left and everything was sewed together beautifully.

Bernard Cornwell - The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1) I love the Netflix series and postponed reading the books until it was all over, I wanted to focus on that, and not to confuse any divergent timelines or anything like that. Because I believe Cornwell is an exceptional historical/fantasy writer and I knew this was going to be good.

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3 tv series

Landscapers (2021) it’s a true crime mini-series that does a wonderful job integrating the main character's (Olivia Colman) fantasy of old Hollywood life into the narrative, making her seem almost innocent, and childlike. We almost forget that she did kill her parents and buried their bodies in their backyards.

Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake (2022) a shocking natural disaster that leads to the worst of humanity. I saw this alongside the last few episodes of The Last of Us, and that helped me understand what they were trying to say.

The Last of Us (2023 -) already one of my favorite series ever, a brilliant first season, it says so much more than anyone was ever expecting. I’m not a fan of apocalypse-based fiction, and I give this a shot thinking that it sounded more than that, and I was right. There’s a lot more here than mushroom zombies, what is even more frightening is what we do as humans to survive, and how far we will go. It’s almost what we see on a smaller scale happen in Aftershock.

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Music

Vide - Hanging By the Bayou Light (2020) weirdly, this helps me focus on studying, I call it atmospheric black metal.

Comeback Kids - Heavy Steps (2022) I love when my friends recomend me stuff that fits my mood perfectly

Paramore - This is Why (2023) I gave this a try even though I have never really enjoyed their work, what made me listen to it was a vinyl reviewer tik toker that said this sounded almost nothing like their original work, more jazz than pop rock.

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swamp-spirit · 2 years

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USTATE OF THE WRITING PROJECTS - September 6, 2022

Started this a bit ago to try to keep myself accountable to all my projects despite ADHD project hopping.

You can find all the posted fanfics on my AO3 and all the posted original stuff on Tapas, but here’s what all the unposted projects are. If any of them interest you, please talk to me about them! Engagement is brain food!

Short-Change the Boatman - D.Gray-Man

Summary - The number of people being born with spiritual power isn’t rising with the population, and clandestine organizations across the world are becoming increasingly desperate. The restless dead are quickly outstripping the number of people who can send them on, souls left to fester and warp. Marian Cross may be a professional psychopomp, but she isn’t too worried about the politics. She does her job, and does it well enough to spend her eternal life with all the necessary vices. Mana Walker dies, eaten by the Campbell curse, and it’s fine. Except he had a kid, a kid who can see not just the dead, but the secrets of the living, a kid who a lot of people would love to join their faction. Nea Walker, meanwhile, has been dead for almost a century, but that doesn’t mean he’ll let Allen Walker fall into the hands of people who’d use him, even if that means attempting to raise a kid with Marian Cross

Since I’m Back Into DGM, of course there’s fic. I wanted to do a modern AU adventure focusing on Allen’s apprenticeship with Cross. Hopefully with a sequel about [spoiller noises]

Doomed from the Start - MDZS/Untamed

AU where Jiang Cheng marries over the time skip, but it’s less of a ‘OC insert romance‘ and more of a ‘character study about Jiang Cheng’s relationship to duty and family‘. It’s specifically for two friends of mine who’ve been supporting me as a writer for literal decades, but is being held back by my inability to finish Untamed or the MDZS novels.

Loyal Hearts - Bokura no Kiseki

I love what I have written for this, but no idea where to go next. It’s an AU where Momoka and Teshimano got memories early instead of Minami and [manga spoilers]. It’s a little bit romance (Momoka/Hiroki and Teshimano/Zeze), but also just having fun with a shakeup that leaves a lot of characters a lot more unhinged.

Devil, Tower, Death - MDZS/Untamed

I’ve been jokingly referring to this as my ‘time-travel break-it fic’. It’s one of the fics where a character gets to go back and do everything right, but its Jin Guangyao who A) Wants many bad things B) Is not always moving towards the things he actually wants/needs so instead of solving all the problems, it just makes things weirder. This ones depressing as hell TBH.

Destructive Forces - Original

One of my favorite recent projects. It’s about a girl who was born to be a curse upon the world, but doesn’t actually hate it, and is trying to get through life not slowly poisoning everything she touches. Lots of monster hunting and lesbian romance.

Solar Fields - Original

Born from reading a bunch of isekai and historical novels and feeling frusterated with how often the genre felt like it reinforced the idea that there were Important People (nobles) and everyone else. I always bad for the maids of villains whose lives are tied to a person they could be killed for helping but would also be killed for betraying. The main character lives in a post-apoclyptic America and is the mute personal maid of an energy baron’s daughter. Her mistress is after the hand of the prince, and Amity is just trying to survive the social season.

Signs of Decay - Original

Summary - Amy is a jaded twenty-something, sham exorcist, and flesh hungry monster. Not that she's eaten anyone. She's been raised to be more than a monster. And the second she kills, the same organization that brought her up will put her down. Everything in her life is tracked, from her pulse to her credit card. But Amy is slipping, and she knows it isn't long before she's declared to high risk to live. But when she meets eleven year old Charlie, she realizes the girl's power to channel the dead makes her a target of the same organization that raised Amy. Well, Amy's seen enough people killed. She's already called dibs on the next execution, and she'll walk to it happily before she lets them hurt Charlie

Deep Dive - Original

Deep Dive follows a journalist who lives with their sister, a passionate gamer. After spending a year working hard to save up for a VR rig to play the big new MMO with her close knit guild, the sister suddenly tosses out the rig and all her games, falling into a deep depression.

Worried for their sister, the MC decides to do their next story on the popular VR world their sister played in. They find out their sister was a member of one of the most respected, powerful guilds, but quit after a member died, something nobody seems willing to talk about.

It’s taking the ‘MMO world‘ story, but trying to focus more on the very human drama actual MMOs get that comes from... lots of humans working together, especially when you can have as many identities as you want.

Arizona* - Original

Cyberpunk disability focused lesbian romance about a model who gets locked out of her own prosthetics and ends up calling in an activist youtuber to help her remove them. It’s a lot about clashing ideals around disability and relationships to your body.

Three Down - Harry Potter

I wrote this in college almost a decade ago and removed it when JKR started getting Real Terfy, but I’d like to repost and finish it someday because it’s a really heavy, personal story for me. It focuses on Remus just after the end of the war trying to come to terms with what’s happened as he works as a librarian in a small village.

American Villain - Boku no Hero Academia

Summary - The world is changing. In two generations, quirks have gone from a feared rarity to a slight majority, and the world is still catching up.

Holly is one of the people lost in the shuffle. At sixteen, she makes good money with her quirk, making untraceable explosives for anyone who can pay.

Working alone keeps her safe, keeps people from knowing how weak her quirk actually is.

But when she gets in over her head, she’s taken in by people who offer her everything she’s ever wanted: love, family, a chance to build a better life for herself. And all she has to do is become the one thing she swore she’d never be again, somebody else’s weapon.

The other work on here I posted, then unposted, but this one because I got cold feet.

Untitled Isekai*

As he’s dying, a great hero wishes to be free of the crushing weight of being responsible for other’s lives. The spirits of the world attempt to grant each person’s truest dying wish with their reincarnation, but, understanding the hero will always try to help others and up overburdened, give him a life where he has no strength to protect.

Instead of being a hero, he slowly realizes the only way to survive with poor health, no magic, no money, and no social status, is to turn to crime.

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