#i really do just throw my favorite concepts into the blender to see what comes out

[softshelltaakos]

what’s up everybody! it’s time for part 2 of my taz graphic novel review.

part one covered (most of) my beef with the writing and storytelling choices. this part is gonna cover character designs!!! you should know going into this that my opinions are not positive. this post is also a lot less analytical in tone than part 1, because art is not my forte.

disclaimer: i love the mcelroys. i truly do. taz has gotten me through some very difficult stuff and i have a tattoo. all this to say i’m not doing this because i hate them or because i like hating things. if you feel the need to message me about how i am overreacting, specifically to green taako, or about how i should just calm down and ignore it, or about how it’s sad that i’m getting so worked up instead of just enjoying the show, i’ve heard it and i don’t care. you will not be taken seriously. save yourself the energy.

there are spoilers for the graphic novel under the cut.

alright. i’m getting the elephant in the room out of the way first because it’s the most important thing to address, and once it’s out of my system i’ll feel better goofing on the rest of the designs. as i mentioned in the disclaimer: Green Taako Is Bad.

[ID: a panel focusing on taako. he’s skinny and minty green with chin-length light blonde hair and a big, pointy nose.]

now, a lot of people have made posts about this before, and i’m not saying anything new about it by any means. i’m also not the most equipped person to talk about why green taako is bad, because i’m a white gentile (i’ve heard conflicting opinions on whether or not green taako is antisemitic, but it feels remiss not to mention that there’s been discussion) and therefore not part of any groups affected by this whole debacle, but in short: when pressed for more diversity, specifically in taako’s case as a pretty large chunk of his arc involves literally inventing a mexican cultural food (fun note: that’s never mentioned in this book,) carey pietsch decided he should be green and the mcelroys were down with it. this is not an issue that cropped up when this design was released; it was something that there was already a ton of discourse surrounding, and it should never have gotten concepts drawn, let alone made it to publish.

this article by natt cuesta has been linked before on the subject, and i think it’s a good, concise explanation of why green taako is bad as well as why aracial characters in general are bad. this is a racist design.

now that we’ve gotten those ethical ramifications out of the way... i’m sorry, but it’s an ugly design, lmao. he looks like a palette-swapped version of pearl from steven universe with less character. the ONLY thing about this design that i like is the prominent lower lashes, if only because they’re the only thing that keeps him from looking entirely generic. because, like, y’all, when has anything about taako been generic?

[ID: a panel focusing on magnus. he’s a muscular fair-skinned man with auburn hair, a bushy beard, and a scar over his left eye.]

generic is a word that’s going to come up a lot over the course of this review, because i genuinely can’t think of a more apt descriptor for pietsch’s designs. it feels like she went with the lowest common denominator of every character’s design, a synthesis of all of the most popular (and most boring) ones, except in instances where that would lend any personality to a character’s design. magnus fits what brief description we’re given in the podcast: auburn hair. beard. big. and i guess that’s all you need?

i understand that by appealing to the most common and basic designs for these characters you’re inviting a lot less ire than you might by going with something more individual, so i get the motivation behind it -- or i would, if her designs hadn’t always been about this dull. but it’s bizarre to me that in a story as unique as the balance campaign, we ended up with the most basic ass Fantasy Hero lookin’ dude in the world as one of our protagonists.

i just really don’t have a lot to say about this. i’m just bored by it.

[ID: a panel of merle. he has medium-dark skin with a smooth white bun and beard.]

merle is simultaneously the design i like most out of the boys and the one that throws me the most, because i feel like he’s the most out on a limb one. which... oof. most merle designs i see give him a floral motif (i guess he has a few petals in his hair, maybe?) and big coke-bottle glasses, and i miss those things with this design, but at least it doesn’t totally feel like pietsch threw every merle she could get her hands on into a blender and poured it out on a page, although honestly, that might have been more satisfying. people do some really fun shit with their merle designs, but again, he’s. generic.

as the cuesta article mentions, with how much of an issue it was to get any of the boys to be poc in the first place and in conjunction with minty up there, this design also feels like tokenism -- an appeasement rather than an honest attempt at diversity or god forbid because the artist actually headcanons merle as a person of color. personally, i wish that she’d gone a step beyond re-coloring his skin and idk given him a natural hairstyle or something. he still feels very much like a recolor to me rather than a character who was designed as a person of color from the beginning.

i feel like he looks more like a cleric than he looks like a merle, which i feel like is pretty contradictory to who merle is.

[ID: a cutaway showing griffin, a white man with brown hair and glasses wearing a collared shirt.]

i’ve said before that it feels a little odd to talk about her design of a real person, so i’ll keep this brief, but... you know how every drawing of a basic white dude looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how that one arthur character looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how everyone is constantly messaging mysillycomics about how her avatar looks like griffin mcelroy?

how did carey pietsch manage to actively attempt to draw griffin mcelroy and miss the mark? it boggles the mind. he doesn’t not look like griffin, i guess, but he doesn’t look like griffin, either. i don’t know, man

[ID: a generic gerblin. he has yellowy-green skin, slight tusks or fangs, and weird, nubby little horn-type things.]

i hate these gerblins. they are ugly. next

[ID: two images of klaarg/g’nash. he’s a bugbear with brown fur and yellow eyes as well as a mouth full of pointy teeth. in the first image he looks pissed off; in the second he’s starry-eyed and delighted.]

klaarg is probably my favorite design in the book, and that’s just because he looks like a cute dog for most of the time he’s on the page. he’s fluffy and i love klaarg anyway, so like. did not take a lot to reach this mark. especially considering how i feel about most of the other designs lmfao

i do definitely think he keeps up the trend of looking generic, though.

[ID: an image of barry bluejeans. he looks like tom arnold, kind of; he’s square-jawed and white with thick-rimmed glasses. he also has a light brown mullet.]

i hate this. i hate the mullet. i’m sorry, y’all, i really, truly, cannot stand the mullet. i don’t feel like barry has mullet energy. i feel like it’s too powerful a move for him. it wouldn’t be a good move, mind you, but it would be a big one. i don’t know y’all it’s just bad

[ID: an image of killian. she’s a green-skinned orc woman with prominent eyelashes, eyebrows, and tusks, and straight brown hair.]

i can’t have been the only one who was hoping for a badass, visibly muscular, maybe even butch killian design, right? that wasn’t just me being a big old lesbian, that’s a pretty common theme of killian designs? i guess kudos for going out on a limb again, but then, like, take the kudos back for going out on the most boring limb possible again. i could hang with the face if her hair wasn’t so boring, but it’s... it’s so boring

[ID: an image of magic brian. he’s a drow with long white hair and an oblong face and oddly shaped nose.]

for how many of her designs are syntheses of popular ones, i..... don’t understand how this happened. i don’t understand how whimiscal and flamboyant magic brian who’s often drawn as taako-but-a-goth-dark-elf ended up looking like this. he looks like he used to play football and got his nose busted up and peaked in fantasy high school. he looks like the first quarter of a monster factory video where the thing’s just ugly but doesn’t have a personality or any endearing traits yet. he didn’t have to be the goth twink we all know he is but what.......... is this

[ID: an image of gundren rockseeker/bogard. he’s a light-skinned dwarf with dark long hair and a matching beard.]

..........listen i know they’re cousins and distant cousins at that but all of merle’s cousins are light-skinned and, like, not to say that that can’t happen but having them be anywhere near merle’s skin tone would’ve been such an easy way to help bolster the obviously inaccurate idea that this is a work concerned with diverse character designs, or rather to help ppl claim it was being bolstered, and yet

[ID: avi, a fair-skinned man with long dark hair kept up in a ponytail and slight scruff on his face.]

i feel like maybe avi is intended to be east asian so i think at this point that brings the count up to a whole two characters of color. we’re almost done with the book. cool. he’s cute, i guess, but guess what word i’m about to say again (it’s generic)

[ID: a panel of several unnamed cameo characters. from right to left: carey fangbattle, a light blue dragonborn; brad bradson, a green orc man with a long brown ponytail; and presumably lucas miller, a tan human with glasses and dark hair.]

ok. deep breaths.

first off, there’s another panel w these three as well as boyland, who looks fine, but i didn’t grab that one bc it’s harder to make out detail. carey is cute. brad is fine.

i assume the third guy is lucas miller because i’m not entirely sure who else he would be, and... oof! as you may know i can’t stand lucas miller, which has nothing to do with his necromancy or nerdiness and everything to do with the various human rights violations he commits in the small time he’s got focus as well as the fact that he’s got a theoretical redemption arc that’s not actually an arc so much as us being told he’s better now. lucas is an entitled jackass who repeatedly uses other people’s bodies and minds without their consent, from the obvious offense of using the bugbears as brainwashed chore-doers (read: slaves) to the less-oft discussed dragging of noelle and others out of the astral plane into robot bodies, again to do his chores for him. because of this, it has always sat very uncomfortably with me when people make lucas a poc, because everything about him screams Shitty White Nerd Boy to me. it sits extra uncomfortably coming from carey pietsch, given how white all of her other designs are.

it’s a little hard to tell because i took all these pics with my phone camera in my room’s lighting so they’re not super high fidelity or anything, but pietsch’s lucas is noticeably darker than any other character we’ve seen so far save merle. maybe he’s just a white guy with a tan, but all the same, it strikes me as incredibly skeevy to have one of so few characters of color be this fucking guy.

[ID: johann, a black man with an oblong face and textured dark hair.]

johann’s design is fine, although this is a similar face shape to that brian from earlier and i just. i don’t. understand it. it’s not especially interesting, but hey, at least he’s not another generic white guy.

that being said, as i mentioned in part 1 of this review, johann’s role is severely cut in this -- he’s reduced to three panels, when in the show itself he’s the one who escorts the boys to the voidfish’s chamber and inoculates them. as i mentioned in that post i understand that they shifted it some to give lucretia a more prominent entrance, but as i also mentioned in that post, they should have compensated for that. three panels.

johann is not a character with a great deal of screentime as it is, but he’s a character with a major impact. he is the reason story and song happens. his song serves as a direct foil to john’s nihilistic conversion of his own home plane into the hunger. the fact that he’s been reduced to three panels with little to no characterization at this point, especially in conjunction with the fact that he’s one of very few poc, makes me really, really uncomfortable. avi is in more panels in this book than johann is, and while i love avi and as i said i am parsing him as an asian dude, he’s also still light-skinned enough and the style is nondescript enough that there are definitely people who will parse him as white, and also, avi’s role in the story is not as big as johann’s.

it doesn’t sit right with me.

[ID: an image of davenport, a fair-skinned man with a big red mustache and slicked back red hair.]

ginger davenport with a big mustache. groundbreaking.

[ID: an image of lucretia, a slender black woman with short white hair dressed in blue layers.]

and finally, lucretia. now, i’m biased, and it’s hard for me to see a lucretia design i don’t like. i also think that this is, compared to a lot of the others at least, one of the more interesting designs in the book, at least as far as her clothes go. it’s not a long robe that would be hard to move in, and i appreciate that -- it strikes me as a pretty practical outfit while also being ornamental and wizard-y. and she’s pretty, and she’s not whitewashed, and that’s all great. i like her earrings.

all that being said, i feel like it’s not enough. luc’s hair continues a theme with merle’s and johann’s (as well as the preview we’ve seen of angus,) which is that it strikes me as very low-effort on pietsch’s part. it’s short and it’s definitely not straight, but it doesn’t feel to me like it had as much thought put into it as, say, minty green taako’s hair. we could’ve had a lucretia with a big beautiful afro, or long box braids, or so many other natural hairstyles; we got this. it’s not bad, but i do think it’s disappointing. without going looking for it and without being a person who reads a great deal about character design, i’ve seen a fair amount of discussion from black women (artists, writers, and none of the above) about the portrayal of black women as it pertains to their hair. they’re never designed to be as feminine as their white counterparts. their hair is never treated with the same amount of detail or respect as their white counterparts. it’s short, maybe curly if you’re lucky.

i’m gonna circle back quickly to killian’s hair. it’s long and smooth and kept down, despite the fact that killian is an action-oriented women and might not want it to be in her face all the time -- it could have at least been braided or in a bun. it could’ve been short! and that would’ve made sense. and i don’t mean to say that lucretia couldn’t have short hair, but she’s a very elegant woman whose dress is described as intricate. she wears business regalia. she could have any number of hairstyles, from something elaborate to something simple but more out-of-the-box than this, but she doesn’t. i found this on a quick hunt through my ref tag -- it’s a tutorial for drawing black folks with just a small selection of interesting things you can do with afrotextured hair. these resources aren’t hard to find! and i’m doing this for fun -- carey pietsch is a professional artist who was paid for these designs. if she’d put in more than the bare minimum effort, we could’ve had some really interesting shit going on, but she didn’t.

and that’s the core of the issue here. i truly do not feel like pietsch put the same amount of care into the designs for the few characters of color we see as she did into the white ones, and that’s upsetting and emblematic of a larger problem in the work: neither pietsch nor the mcelroys put in very much care at all for the fans of color who spoke up and asked for representation.i know i said i was getting taako out of the way first so the majority of the post could be goof-heavy, but goddamn, y’all, it’s hard to goof about when it’s so blatantly shitty. pietsch’s designs are boring at best and racist at worst, not to mention conspicuously lacking in anyone who is not skinny, muscular, or a dwarf. people have praised this thing so uncritically, including people whose opinions i generally really respect, as if the fact that the mcelroys signing off on green taako made it above reproach.

it didn’t, by the way. there’s no such thing as an unproblematic fav, because everybody fucks something up now and then, but even then, this is a pretty egregious fuck-up! and it was willful!

i’m not saying y’all need to burn your copies of the gn or stop listening to the mcelroys entirely or anything of the sort -- you may remember the disclaimer at the top of the post where i say i really, really love them, and more specifically, i really love taz: balance. but i am BEGGING YOU to think critically about their work. good, good boys can do bad, bad things. white people can produce work that’s racist even if they’re gay women. it’s not mean to critique the boys and it’s not homophobic (or god forbid reverse racist, which is still not a real thing) to critique carey.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the real kicker of this whole thing for me is that there’s a small fanart gallery in the back of the book. most of them aren’t labeled with the artist’s handles, just their names, but there are some truly beautiful pieces featuring diverse designs -- galacticjonah and milkychai both have beautiful latino taakos featured! galacticjonah’s is fat, too! but even after the backlash against green taako, even aside from that being the design that people are going to accept as canonical, there are pieces in the gallery of green taako, as if doubling down on it was the right move.

and by the way, yeah, i’ve read griffin’s apology. but i thought we all learned in kindergarten that an apology doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.

#prim.txt #tazposting #tazmeta #taz: balance #taz balance #taz graphic novel

[thetygre]

30 Day Monster Challenge 2 - Day #23: Favorite Bad Movie Monster

Alright, so most of these movies aren’t really all that bad; they’re just kind of ‘meh’. But they would have been a lot worse without these cool and/or goofy monsters.

1.       Jabberwocky (Alice in Wonderland 2010)

I am prepared to disclose that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was not horrible, but 60% of that opinion stems from the Jabberwocky. (The remaining 40%is 30% the other monster designs and 10% lesbian subtext.) The Jabberwocky has always been my favorite part of the Alice mythos (surprise surprise), and not to sound petty, but I have dropped Alice movies just for not including the brilling beast. Burton’s Jabberwocky might not be my favorite, but it has a lot going for it. The way they treat it is basically as Wonderland’s Tarrasque; a living WMD, a legendary kaiju, the ur-monster in a world teeming with dangerous and crazy creatures. The way it wakes up is even a direct nod to Chernabog from Fantasia; they are literally equating this thing to the Devil.

Second off; Christopher Lee.

Finally, when the Jabberwocky meets Alice to fight, he says this thing about meeting his ‘old foe’, ‘the vorpal one’, in battle again. It is made explicitly clear that he is talking about the vorpal blade, not Alice. And that just… I don’t want to say that that changes the entire movie, but yeah, it kind of does. The implications here are that the vorpal blade and the Jabberwocky have fought each other countless time before in the past. The history of Wonderland is just the history of a dragon and a magic sword fighting. Is the vorpal blade sentient? How many times have these two fought? This kind of transforms everything about the setting the movie has established for the last hour and a half. It’s just so filled with so much potential to me.

2.       Torgo (Manos: The Hands of Fate)

Y’know, when you’re in a dark place, you have to find your own light. A source of motivation, something you can cling to to pull you through to the other side. Maybe that’s a dream, a goal at the end of the tunnel, or maybe it’s a hero, someone you can look up to. I’m not saying that Torgo is a hero, but he inspires me. There are weeks at work where I just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. I come home at night to an empty room and fall asleep alone. It gets hard, is what I’m saying. But you know who never stopped trying, even though he hated his job and was lonely too?

Torgo. That’s who.

Everyday Torgo gets up, throws on his blazer and hat, and he goes out there and busses a haunted motel for a boss he hates. But he does it, every day. And if Torgo can do it, you can too. So you’ve got to get out there and be the best damn lackey you can. You’ve got put in the work to make it to tomorrow. And when the good times roll in and come shining down on you, you take a minute to remember the man who helped you get here. Take a minute to remember Torgo, looking down on you from Cloud No. 9, shedding a tear.

3.       Radu (Seventh Son)

The Last Apprentice series is actually a pretty cool (and grim) series of dark fantasy/horror young adult novels, kind of like junior’s first Solomon Kane. The Seventh Son movie based on the series has piss-all to do with it, and its only redeeming features are some cool monster designs and Jeff Bridges. Of those cool monster designs, the stand-out for me is Radua aka Muslim Dragon Kratos. He’s one of our villain witches chief thugs, and is unnecessarily cool for a side-character. He’s got this whole Nosferatu Zodd code of honor thing, and wields these two chain blades and probably could have been the villain in his own movie.

Now that alone would have been a neat detail, but then he can turn into what I honestly consider one of the more interesting dragons in recent cinema. I talked before about how one archetype of dragons was of being these unholy, scavenger type wilderness monsters, and that’s kind of the vibe I get from Radu’s dragon form. It’s all lanky and feral looking. It has too many limbs, and it walks around like it doesn’t know how. It’s another unnecessarily cool design for such a generic movie, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

4.       Krakensaurus (Jack the Giant Slayer)

I don’t want to be mean and discount Jack the Giant Slayer as ‘discount Ray Harryhausen’, but thems is the breaks, as the saying goes. The movie is kind of charming in how earnestly it plays to being a 1960s fantasy movie, with princesses in pink dresses and warlocks with goatees and a rhyming leprechaun. The movies stop-motion monsters don’t really live up to industry standards, though. But I can’t sit here and lie and say that I don’t have a special fondness for the sea monster at the end. The movie’s penultimate scene sees our heroes trying to escape the warlock’s castle, so the villain summons a two-headed giant (or ettin, if you know your monsters) which looks suspiciously like one of Ray Harryhausen’s cyclopes. Trapped in a sea cave, the rhyming leprechaun trapped in a bottle (roll with it) summons a sea monster to deal with the problem.

Sometimes it’s the little things in life, like watching two weird looking monsters fight to the death. Our sea monster is a blue-green mixture of kraken and allosaurus, and I’m pretty sure its toy had more detailing than the actual moving model. When this guy showed up on the screen, six year old me was hype enough to punch through a wall. I spent the next week drawing pictures of him so I wouldn’t forget him. This movie has 100% more sea monsters and singing leprechauns than The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and that almost makes up for its deficit skeleton warriors.

5.       Queen of the Lair (She Creature 2001)

Stan Winston was on the helm for this little lady’s monster design, and it shows. A mermaid queen, it’s hard to tell if her monster form is her real shape or just something she can morph into. Even her basic mermaid form is pretty interesting; the split tails remind me of sirens or tritons. Her monster shape, though, is pure Stan Winston gold. There’s more than a little bit of the xenomorph queen in there, between the crest and the fangs. Someone threw it into a blender with a sea serpent and a viper fish and what comes out is the most badass mermaid to ever slink across cinema. She rips people’s heads off, her tail is covered with bone spikes, and she can sing a siren song to summon up her mermaid swarm. Oh, and psychic impregnation powers. That part’s kind of important.

6.       She Creature (She Creature 1956)

Aforementioned sea monster queen was part of a series of horror films based on old b-movies, so this is the original She Creature. Even today, this is one of my favorite designs from the 1950s. Paul Blaisdell might just be the king of B-movie monster suits, and belongs up there with Ray Harryhausen in the great monster hall of fame. The she creature looks like the sum product of an orc, a lobster, and a scorpionfish. It’s a shame you only see her in monochrome, because her color scheme is a startling mix of green and pink. What I find most fascinating is the concept that this is supposed to represent some parallel evolutionary stage of humanity. This is supposed to be a different version of Homo sapiens that never left the sea. Stan Winston’s mermaid queen is great, but I would still love to see an updated and more articulate version of this design.

7.       Vampire Spawn (Van Helsing)

This raises so many questions. So the crux of Van Helsing is that Dracula needs Frankenstein’s monster to power a force-field that will allow his swarms of vampire spawn to survive past infancy. I bet you thought vampires reproduced by biting people, right? Well, apparently they also have egg-sacs. Just, massive, Aliens style egg-sacs full of bat/human fetus monsters hungry for blood. It’s so stupid that I love it. These things are horrible and adorable; they remind me of chupacabras. I want one as a familiar, or at least statted up for a tabletop roleplaying game. Just really try to avoid thinking about the whole egg-sacs thing and all the implications that brings to vampire mythology.

8.       Emperor Tyrannus (Attack of the Super Monsters)

I don’t… I don’t think I have the strength to really get into Attack of the Super Monsters. When I watched it, liquor was involved. Describing it reads like a parody of Japanese media that involves anime, men in monster suits, and giant robots meant to sell collectible toys. But it’s real, and the realest shit ever is Emperor Tyrannus. Emperor Tyrannus is literally a giant tyrannosaurus rex who is the evil mastermind of an underground civilization of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs talk, because shut up, and Emperor Tyrannus in particular talks with a villain voice that I just can’t really convey through text. I think the closest I can get is saying that he sounds like someone doing an imitation of Brian Blessed while having a stroke. Emperor Tyrannus shoots laser beams from his eyes that mind control the other dinosaurs into being evil, and watches them fight a hermaphroditic cyborg superhero in a drill/airplane. Look, you need to see this for yourself. I’m not doing this justice. Get your friends, find the DVD, and strap in for a wild ride.

9.       Witch Tree (The Last Witch Hunter)

The Last Witch Hunter is another guilty pleasure move where Vin Diesel brings what I’m pretty sure is one of his D&D characters to a movie and somehow ropes Michael Cain and Elijah Wood into it with him. Our villains are, in a surprising twist, witches that cook up some fairly grotesque magic. One of the creatures meant to act as the witches’ guardians is a magical sentinel, and it just goes so hard and so dark for what amounts to a stick golem. It’s the fine details that make this construct stand out. The extra limbs let it move faster and have extra attacks, the jawbones around the front form a crude mouth, and the branch rib-cage makes it look like something that used to be alive instead of something that was just magically summoned. There’s so much work poured into this one monster, and it’s definitely a treat to see it at the end of the movie. Rethink your golems, kids; treat yourself better.

10.   Giant Leeches (Attack of the Giant Leeches)

I used to be pretty intensely leech-phobic when I was younger (and by younger, I mean a couple of years ago), but even then I knew the giant leeches were lame. Incredibly lame. Like, honestly kind of pathetic. I kind of like them out of a bizarre sense of pity. Giant leeches should scare me, but these guys are just goofy. A leech isn’t a hard design; it’s a tube with a sucker on each end. But I am almost convinced that the person who designed these monsters had never actually seen a leech, or possibly even a worm. But the movie still treats them with all the dignity and awe of the Creature of the Black Lagoon. There are prolonged sequences of these guys swimming underwater, floating around like hungry garbage bags. These things are not, nor were they ever, leeches; they are some kind of aquatic octopus or confused anemone. That’s why they need our love, our protection; because they’re too stupid to survive by themselves.

#30 Day Monster Challenge 2 #30 Day Monster Challenge #monsters #movies #fantasy #mst3k #stan winston #paul blaisdell #long post

[davidthetraveler]

David’s Reviews:  “Am I Original?”  (Sanders Sides 1x12)

So, a couple of people liked last week's review of "Can Lying be Good?", so I figured I'd make this an actual thing that I do every week.  I wasn't sure what to review for this week, and I didn't get a whole lot of suggestions.  But then I remembered back when I first started watching Thomas' videos, when I was still wallowing in my creative slump.  It was right around the time we started learning the sides' names, and I remember seeing this video that talks about being creative and the odd flicker of hope it sparked in me.  So, I decided that I'd revisit the video whose message I like to hearken back to whenever I fear that an idea I have doesn't sound original enough.  Here's my review of "Am I Original?"

The Story

The concept behind this episode is one that I think a lot of people can relate to, and the general flow feels a lot like a brainstorming session.  The ideas keep coming, and are then more and more quickly replaced as we're reminded that they're not truly original.  As we become more desperate, the tone becomes more rushed and we find ourselves looking anywhere for ideas, even ones that leave us cringing.  But in the end, we finally calm enough for the truth to shine through, unhindered by negativity (which I'll get to in a minute).  This was a truly excellent portrayal of one of the hardest parts of the creative process, and the best possible way to reveal the name of our favorite Prince of Creativity.

The Aesthetic

The pace, while not necessarily slow, tended to linger just long enough that we got a taste of what each of the different ideas would be like as done by Thomas and the Sides, but also moved along quickly enough to keep us engaged.  The different shifts in video style each carefully place us in whatever idea we're currently exploring, and the editing created both a sense of interest as well as familiarity, bringing the famous styles we know from other channels to us here in the story.  This was probably some of the best video editing Thomas and his team had done by that point.

The Humor

Thomas' sense of humor has always been pretty close to my own, and those similarities were on full display here.  The love of silliness, the refuge in clean audacity, the visual gags, and the wordplay were all on point.  I'm not sure why, but I always find Roman's dramatic outbursts hilarious.  And the looks on everyone's faces during the rap battle were priceless (I think my personal favorite is Virgil Anxiety with his hood up bopping his head to the rhythm).  All in all, Thomas is probably one of the funniest people I know, and this was just more proof of that.

My Personal Takeaway

This episode's lesson is one that I try to take to heart, especially in those moments when I feel like whatever I'm creating isn't original enough to be good.  But as this video teaches, and as I always try to remind myself, it's not about having the most original idea, it's about making what you put out there as unique as you are.  I mean, I always talk about how the character I created for my story is like taking The Doctor from Doctor Who, the Genie from Aladdin, and Q from Star Trek, throwing them in a blender, and pouring the resulting mixture into the mold of a 20-something year old young man, but what people really seem to like about him are the parts that I add that are all me.  No, he's not the first reality warper you've seen or the first traveling weirdo who likes to help people, but he's mine, and that's good enough.  It's what we all need to remember.

In Hindsight (and) Summation

It's interesting to look back at when these characters were so much less than what they've evolved into.  I mean, this is back when Virgil Anxiety was still the bad guy.  But what's really interesting is how this video hints at what is to come.  At the end, when the others are trying to reassure Roman, Virgil Anxiety is just standing there, looking at a loss, especially when Logan quips that he's not a defeatist and Roman points out that he didn't try to help.  Instead, he just sinks out, silently, looking like someone who just saw themselves from a new light.  It hints at the larger story that is to come, and what a story it turned out to be, but we'll get to that another day.

Overall, this video was a great joy to watch, and one that I liked to come back to.  I look forward to my next bought of creative doubt, when I'll watch it again to remind myself to always strive for my best, even if I have to stand on others' shoulders to reach it.

Follow Up

Well, there it is, review number 2.  Let me know what you think and what else you'd like me to look at in future.  Until next time, my friends.

David TT

#David's Reviews #Thomas Sanders #Sanders Sides #Review

[toogaytowrite]

Bad People

“You thought we would get a divorce and you didn't think for a moment what an awful person that makes you." TW: dubious consent, emotional manipulation and abuse, choking, Joseph is a bad person //

For the most part, things were painfully amicable. It felt like things should be different. When Joseph offered Jean to basically be his mistress (what would a male mistress even be called? A mister? No, that sounded weird... a cuckhold? Was he being a cuckhold?) he had blanched at the idea. It didn't feel quite right. Then again, sleeping with a married father of four had never really felt right. Didn't feel wrong; not exactly. Nothing with Joseph ever felt wrong. The only thing that ever felt even the slightest bit “wrong” about Joseph was the way his wedding ring would press against the webbing of Jean's fingers when he pinned his hand against the sheets. That felt intrusive, jarring, and images of Mary's miserable face glaring at him over the rim of a wine glass came unbidden to his mind, but even then, he could move past it. Sometimes he wondered if it was evil of him to move past it. Ever since Amanda had left for college, he'd spent nights alone staring through the television, his favorite shows little more than white noise to fill a suddenly unbearably empty house, pondering this. What made him worse; fucking a married man and feeling guilty about the pain he was knowingly putting his wife through, but putting her through it anyway, or simply not thinking about her at all? Maybe he deserved to think about that every time they touched.

The fact that Joseph invited him over to the house all the time did nothing to assuage his conscience. Jean stood in that house, amid the family he was actively coming between, and made brownies with Christie. He soothed Chrish when he cried and even got Chris to say more than two words to him. Not <i>many</i> more, but some. Even so, kids, especially Joseph's kids, were smarter than people gave them credit for. Jean couldn't help feeling like they knew. It made the everyday tasks of a happy family tense, he spent most of his time in that house picking at his nail beds and sucking on the wounds where the skin would split. Every family photo and child's toy reminded him that this place, where he felt he should be, where he was needed and wanted, was a place he didn't belong.

Mary was never there. That made things a little easier for him. The few times they'd passed on the street were far from confrontations, yet still left him with knots in his stomach. Hanging off Robert's arm outside of a bar, she simply narrowed her eyes at him, tipping her head up in a minor acknowledgment of his presence. Robert, on the other hand, did everything to avoid his eyes.

The whole thing was confusing. It was what he wanted, to be with Joseph was all he really wanted, and he had that. With it came all the insecurities and late nights spent staring at the ceiling and the questions. Only one question, really. Only one that mattered.

“Am I a bad person?”

Jean observed the layers of band-aids wrapped around his torn nail beds, stretched his fingers out against the flour strewn counter top, curled them back into his palm. Joseph's hand slid over his and he felt that ring, that small reminder, that thin piece of gold that stood out and kept Joseph's fingers from interlocking perfectly with his. That thing that came between them.

“What are you talking about? You're amazing. You're kind, you raised a fantastic daughter in a loving home, you make the best brownies.” His other hand traced the curve of Jean's cheeks and urged his head to turn towards him. He felt the coarse flour covering Joseph's otherwise soft fingers brush against his skin. He stared at his shoulder, unable to bring himself to look higher. He remembered the photo in the yacht's cabin. He remembered how happy Robert looked in the sweater adorning Joseph's shoulders like a hunter's prized pelt. How dark his eyes looked when he saw the two of them together.

If Joseph was as bad a person as he seemed to think, maybe they really did deserve each other. Maybe the married man keeping a lover on the side was as fucked up a person as the man putting himself in between a family.

“What brought this on?” Joseph asked. Jean swallowed but something was stuck in his throat.

He hadn't really meant to say it. It just came out. “I'm not sure. Thinking about it I guess.”

“Aren't you happy? The last thing in the world I want is for you-”

“I'm happy,” Jean said, unconvincingly. He <i>was</i> happy with Joseph, more than he had been in months. If he were being honest with himself, Joseph made him happier than he had been since Alex's death. Amanda was the best thing that ever happened to him, but she couldn't fill that empty space left behind by the loss of a spouse. Joseph could, he did, he had been, in as much a capacity as he was capable of.

He smiled in a way that highlighted the dimples in his cheeks, one more perfect feature of a man with seemingly no flaws. That was the reason Mary was even still around, wasn't it? So it looked like Joseph had no flaws.

He pulled Jean in and kissed his forehead. “You're a good man. Don't doubt that.”

They finished baking in near complete silence, Joseph throwing him worried side-eyes now and again, but speaking little of the matter. The next morning, after another night of contemplation and booze, more booze than he ever drank alone, he awoke to a message.

From Joseph:

Margarita Zone?

Attached was a photo of a sign with those words written in chalk and strung up with lights, sat against a table with the high shelf tequila and triple sec he always bought. Beyond it was the sea stretching out past the horizon, and he knew exactly where Joseph wanted to meet him.

Jean did the bare minimum in human upkeep (a smudge of deodorant under each arm and a lackluster mouth sweep with a dry toothbrush and a swig of bourbon for mouthwash) and left the house in a jacket and sweat pants. Craig had bought them for their exercise sessions, but they had yet to see the inside of a gym. Jean hadn't really left the house much in the past few weeks. On the drive over, he tried not to think about how the innocent concept of a place where your troubles drifted away had been twisted into a code word for “come fuck on my yacht because I have just enough respect for my wife that I don't want to screw you in our marital bed in the house we raised our kids”. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel until he stretched far enough he could feel the mending skin beneath the band-aids crack and bleed again.

It was overcast by the time he arrived. The beautiful skyline of oranges and yellows in Joseph's message (his summons, Jean thought with a bitterness he couldn't pretend he didn't feel) was now an ocean of reflected rain clouds and a steady breeze had kicked up. The boats in the marina bobbed with the upset waves that lapped at the docks. The motion made him sick if he stared at them too long. The St. Peter was no better once he climbed aboard, and he had to hold onto the railing to keep himself from falling when a particularly hard gust sent waves rolling underneath them. It wasn't like it had been the first time. “You never forget your first,” he'd told him, in that casual tone that permeated all of their witty repertoire. Remembering all the things he'd said back then left a sour taste in his mouth.

He emerged from the cabin, beaming, but holding back, hesitant to offer Jean much more than a polite greeting. “Weather called for rain, guess I should have listened.” He gestured to the dark clouds above them. “Now we pay the price of my hubris.”

“Maybe God is sending a flood to wipe the Margarita Zone away.”

“We'll just have to build an ark, bring two of every margarita mix. Blackberry Grapefruit, Watermelon, Mango Orange.” He pulled a serious face. “But not Raspberry Rhubarb. I find it offensive to God's domain.”

“And you need Mexican cuties, of course.”

“Naturally.”

Jean gave little beyond a hum, a single note of polite laughter that wasn't really laughter. He wanted it to be genuine. It used to be. Joseph handed him a glass already prepared and rimmed with salt and poured his own from the small blender. The bright red slush stood out in the otherwise dreary gray sky and ocean, like Joseph, who somehow still looked bright in his over-saturated pink polo shirt. Jean used to wonder how many of them he owned- had never thought to check out his closet when he was invited over to his house. It was all part of his carefully cultivated, hip-with-the-kids youth minister look, so having an entire wardrobe full of the same shirt would probably be on-brand for him. He'd certainly never seen him in anything else.

It occurred to him he was musing at such length about his shirt because his eyes refused to go much further up than that. They stood with only the winds and waves to fill the silence. The sweet tang of the margarita he couldn't take very large sips of brought a dull ache to the back of his jaw, though he suspected that was caused by his recent tendency to clench it in moments of stress. Being with Joseph had never been a cause of stress, but lately...

“Talk to me, Jean.”

He jolted, gaze darting upward, and he finally meets Joseph's eyes, his chest constricts. There was only the honesty and calmness in his face that drew him in in the first place, and he was overcome with a sense of guilt that he had been trying to look away from it in the past weeks. Guilt was something he was becoming more and more accustomed to.

Jean swallowed thickly and set his glass on the table, holding it steady as another storm wave cresting underneath them threatened to slide it off. Once it had calmed, he let himself let go.

“I don't know if I can keep doing this.”

“Isn't this what you wanted? If I've done anything wrong, you can tell me, we-”

“It's not you.”

In a way, it was. Joseph might have been the type to handle this guilt- if that picture of him and Robert together meant what Jean thought it meant, then it wasn't the first time he'd carried on an affair. Some people were just wired to handle it, to compartmentalize, to justify, to twist themselves up with such mental gymnastics that they could be okay doing this. Jean wasn't one of those people.

“Is this what you meant the other day? You think you're a bad person for doing this?” Joseph asked. Jean felt a hand slide across his cheek as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, fingers lingering as they traced its shape. He leaned in to the touch. Joseph leaned in and went on, in such a soft, warm voice, he could only bask in it, “You are.”

The words didn't register at first It took a moment for the meaning to cut through the tenderness with which they were spoken, and the warmth in his chest slowly receded. He looked up, brow furrowed. “What are you-”

“You're a bad person, Jean. You were perfectly content flirting with a married man, well before you knew Mary and I were even thinking of separating. It was fine then wasn't it?”

“That's not fair.”

He stroked the tender skin behind Jean's ear and down his neck. “Isn't it? What was your ideal outcome to this arrangement? You were hoping I would leave my wife and we would have a happy ever after.”

“You just... you were unhappy, I thought-”

“You thought we would get a divorce and you didn't think for a moment what an awful person that makes you. To wish for that. To hope that I would ruin the lives of my wife and children, just so you could get what you wanted.” There was no resentment in his voice, no malice, and that somehow made it worse. The calm, matter-of-fact way he plunged his hand through Jean's chest and pulled out his heart- was he right?

Jean felt tears bubbling hot in the back of his eyes, but Joseph ran his thumb against his lashes and brushed them away before they came close to falling. “But you were okay with it before. With the flirting and trysts on this very yacht. Now you're not. So what really changed? Nothing. I was married then, I'm married now.” He tipped his head when Jean looked away, never allowing him a reprieve from those untroubled blue eyes that pierced him with accusations. But they weren't accusations- they were simple truths. He couldn't deny that.

“Joseph-”

“So what is it you want? Is all of this too easy for you? Too friendly? You want Mary to break down sobbing and call you a home wrecker? That's it, isn't it? You want there to be consequences.” His fingers slid once more from his ear to the back of his neck, then made their way across his collar bone until Joseph's thumb came to rest in the middle of his throat. Jean's breathing was already labored and his heart was pounding in his ears when he began to press deeper and deeper against his windpipe. “You want to be punished because you know what you're doing is wrong.”

It wasn't posed as a question or as Joseph fishing for consent. He captured Jean's lips, his head so swimming from the conversation and oxygen deprivation he couldn't begin to piece together his own thoughts. Joseph's teeth dug into his bottom lip and pulled back until it hurt before releasing him, the pressure on his throat relaxing just enough he could take a deep breath, but still feel the uncomfortable block stopping him from breathing of his own free will.

If he had said something, it would have stopped. Somehow he knew that, even as Joseph pushed him into the cabin and onto the bed, it all could have gone away if he told him to get off. Truth was, Jean didn't really want it to stop. For the first time in weeks, it felt right again. It felt like this was what he deserved. Where he had been tender and slow in the nights before, now he was rough, impatient, his nails raking up and dragging down Jean's back when his hands weren't enveloping his throat. There was no safety net to catch him as he teetered on the edge of a thin rope, Joseph's wedding ring buried so deeply into his trachea it brought tears to his eyes. It should have worried him how quickly and how eagerly Joseph was ready to punish him, but it didn't. He liked it. The pain of him entering without so much as a warning was almost unbearable, yet he still bobbed his hips, begging for more. Whatever his conscience might have told him, his body couldn't deny that he wanted this.

He was a bad person. He had been wrestling with this because he was convinced of the opposite his entire life. But Joseph was too. It was easy to forget that when looking at his wholesome family and his perfect smile and just how hard he worked to make people overlook the ugliness in him. Mary saw it. Robert saw it. Now Jean saw it too. It was just like Robert had told them at the marina that day;

“You're both awful. You deserve each other.”

#dream daddy #joseph christiansen #dadsona #joseph X dadsona #emotional manipulation #emotional abuse #dubious consent #dubcon #choking #the gay writes stuff

[loveurn]

company.

it’s surprising to say the least. it’s the digital kind, so she’s not complaining - much. it’s still a quarter to 2am and if she weren’t such a revered work-a-holic she’d almost be offended that he thought she was awake. but soohyun’s schedule is a bit more strict in terms of accurate sleep and relaxation, in that he tends to leave studio matters at the studio. so she’s picking up her phone after pausing the music that was helping her get through the finer details of her presentation. 

“are you drunk?” ‘hardly.’

there’s no tinge of laughter, there’s nothing in his tone that adds to the joke or the banter they engage in. she’d known though, with the timing of the call, with how unexpected it was - something was off. though, hyerim’s chain of command for the company was unmatched so she had an inkling about what was going on. 

“soohyun....” ‘i’m not drunk hye.’

there’s a grit to the tone, like he’s speaking through his teeth, speaking through frustration and whatever emotions are rearing ugly and raw in the middle of the night. whatever it is that’s prompted him to call her instead of drowning it away or leaving it for another morning, for gym buddies or colleagues he works closer with. it’s not her area of expertise really so she’s not too sure why he called. 

the news reached her, amidst the chaos of whatever happened, she wasn’t damage control, PR control or even in charge of medical expenses, anything of the sort, but she was involved enough that her phone was quick to buzz as soon as it happened. she’d read about how he’d passed out backstage, how they carried him to the waiting room and were insisting on getting him to the hospital after the show. she’d read it all, in strategically placed sentences as they relayed it to her. it’s not the same as the way some departments heads probably had play-by-play updates, but it still buzzed and she’d known of the incident within an hour of it occurring as if she were at the venue overseas with the entire team. 

in fact, hyerim’s flattered someone took the time to tell her right away despite her feeling so far removed from the process. jun’s closer to it, production is his forte, if anything the concert director as well but well - they all work together so it makes sense. no use in her trying to outline the why’s and how’s. 

it doesn’t stop her though, from wondering why he’s called her. not even a message but a call when she knows if anyone was first to hear word of it, the circle the dancers operate in is even smaller, more intimate. he had to have known before she did, probably the minute it happened and in that time he chose to call her. did he call anyone else? did he wait until he’d heard a clear from the team on seojun’s condition before calling? what did it mean? what could it mean?

“it’s late. you need to get your rest.” hyerim’s decided it’s far too late for her to try and dwell on this. on the possibilities and the buried feelings, the discarded and the hidden feelings. it’s late enough for her to need another cup of coffee to get her through her notes and maybe for her skincare to suffer a bit but she can handle that, it’s far too late for irrationalities and anomalies. both of which he always seems to enjoy pulling from her. 

there’s silence on the other end and she does pause to check if he’s still on.

‘if i didn’t know better, i’d say you sound concerned.’ “if you knew better you wouldn’t ring my phone this late.”

‘hm.’ she hears it, the telltale sound of the smirk that’s sitting on his face right now. chaos and concern aside he still manages to be the smug pain in her rear. of course. she knows what the sound means ‘you still picked up’ and of course she did. he’s her friend and he’s called for a reason. soohyun knows her schedule as well as she knows his. in times that he’s had to pull her from her desk back to bed, days where he’s up early for his run and she’s throwing pillow after pillow at him for how his blender wakes her up. he knows she’s busy. he knows this isn’t quite her area of coverage. 

but there’s a reason. there’s some kind of need, and it’s not for this meaningless banter. so with nothing but silence, she takes a shot. 

“he’s alright, seojun - he’s fine.” ‘i know he’s alright. i know. i just...’ “you just...”

seojun was fine, he gave the team quite the scare, members and venue staff alike. yichen would probably give a rather detailed speech to the trainees and artists alike when they returned. it was nothing new. but seojun was in his hotel room, in a splint yes but recovering and conscious. 

‘am i - did i push him too hard?’ she’d been multitasking in the moment, trying to divide between his needs and the screen that still blocked any blessings of sleep. she stops then, all thoughts ceasing because oh. 

oh.

there it is.

the plague. the ugly emotions that rear. the need.

“you - you can’t be serious.” ‘i am. did i miss something? did i not pay enough attention?’ “that’s not fair, you can’t do that.” ‘i pushed them so hard for this concert, for the choreography.’

“god and you think no one else did?” and for all her composure, hyerim takes no note for how her voice rises, hoe quickly she cuts in as she realizes - as she understands. “jun implemented new stunts and a set of stage concepts, they’re working with a new stage director too. yichen’s been driving them up the wall with workout training and sunghoon? god he’s around them all the time snapping up their ass and you somehow think you’re responsible for seojun passing out?”

titles and expectations aside, the care that soohyun has for his trainees and his pupils is one of the main things that brought him the job at abc. strict regimens and top-notch choreography yes, but his ability to mold and understand, in a way that made him closer to everyone he worked with, despite his rougher than average approach. it was hard to see but once people understood him, they understood his methods.

so here he is, beating himself up because he thinks he didn’t do enough, thinks he probably did too much and hyerim is fed up. maybe it’s the lack of sleep, her eyes hurting from how many lines she’s read and re-read. 

‘i pushed him, you should’ve seen them in the studio preparing for this.’ “it wouldn’t be any different from how i’ve seen them before. or you.”

some things are out of their control, much in the way hyerim gives demands and expectations and tries to mold her workers to understanding her vision and her views of efficiency, it’s the same with the choreographers, the coaches, the managers. it’s a battle. not everything is received exactly how it should and one can only wonder if their communication is to blame. hyerim has long learned all she can do is communicate where there’s been an oversight, people are human they seek to please and shy at the very thought.

“you didn’t tell him to push himself to passing out, no matter how you replay it, you didn’t.”

no one’s to blame, having to work and manage so many people has taught her that. there’s just growth and when it comes to the artists, when it comes to their minds and their bodies, it’s probably harder for those in soohyun’s position. which is why she knows she might come across crass, their perspectives too drastic. 

‘i didn’t...but i could’ve kept a closer eye on him.’ “so could his other managers, so could his members, just how he could’ve monitored his health better.” the words start to tumble, the disproval becoming rough on her tongue, the anger because she can hear the pain, she can hear how he must feel, how he looks, deflated, beating himself up over that pristine counter of his. hyerim composes herself, tries to anyway. “the list goes on, the blame is no one’s to take.” all that’s left is to learn and that’s probably what frightens people the most, being trusted to learn in spite of it, in spite of the mistakes.

‘you’re - awfully fired up.’ “cut it out. you called me.”

‘mm.’ and you picked up. it’s unspoken again, but hyerim pretends she doesn’t know it’s there.

‘i’m flying out tomorrow, to help adjust the choreography, see what changes need to be made.’ “don’t drive jun nuts, you know he hates you towering over him, especially during rehearsals..”

that brings out a laugh, it’s rough and abrupt and it’s more throat than chest but it works.

it’s something.

“don’t smother seojun either, he’s bound to be sensitive if he’s getting benched.” ‘oh, she does have a heart.’ “goodnight soohyun.” ‘actually go to sleep when you hang up.’

oh she hangs up at the speed of light at that.

and maybe - maybe she does type a few more sentences into her presentation before closing her laptop and retiring to her bed. and she definitely, definitely ignores the coffee ( her signature order by the way ) and chocolate cream madeline cookie ( her favorite ) waiting for her when she heads into the office the next day. she definitely ignores the silly smile scrawled onto the bag when she picks it up.

#abctingz. #gonna edit later