#like scripts for a hypothetical cartoon

[teddybearty]

💕 S-M-I-L-E everyday!! 💕

#smiling critters #poppy playtime #bobby bearhug #dogday #kickinchicken #hoppy hopscotch #bubba bubbaphant #catnap #picky piggy #craftycorn #teddy's artwork #teddy's art #digital art #all the critters are done #love how they came out #my favs are Bobby and crafty corn #but I also like the look I gave to kickinchicken #I’ve mentioned this on stream when I was working on these #but I definitely wanna make a story for them #like scripts for a hypothetical cartoon #nothing too crazy #I don’t have too many ideas tho #we will see

[blueikeproductions]

I’ve been seeing debates on whether Hasbro should do a remake/continuation of G1’s cartoon. While most have said no for one reason or another, citing the poor reception to MOTU: R and the mixed reception to X-Men in particular, I’m more curious on the matter. While I agree we don’t need it, part of me really wants Hasbro to do it just to see what they’d do with it.

I’ve seen some point out there wouldn’t be toys to sell for it, but my rebuttal is that’s what Legacy/Prime Generations is for. Basically just have this hypothetical show be the WFC/PW equivalent. One MAJOR stipulation: it must be tonally in line with the original cartoon and Transformers Devastation. Make this an all ages, but especially kid friendly show. None of that nonsense PW/WFC did. In fact keep those writers away from it, bring in Simon Furman, Flint Dille & Bob Budiansky to throw in some sexy adjectives and be script supervisors/editors to the new staff.

As for the plot, it depends on what they’d do: full remake-AU or continuation. The later would be simpler I think, just following up on what Galvatron and Zarak have been up to and the Autobots’/humanity’s reaction to it.

No matter what they’d do I feel like Hasbro would insist on lite retcons that include the 13 Primes and their Relics, which in turn fuel Galvatron and Zarak’s ambitions, while Optimus and Hot Rod have shared premonitions about the history of the Prime lineage, revealing in the cartoon universe, the thirteen primes were the prototypes the Quintessons developed after the Trans-Organics, with the Prime relics being Quintesson tools the Primes inherited after the Quints were driven off Cybertron. The Quints aren’t particularly happy their own tools are being uncovered, let alone seeing Galvatron using the Forge to upgrade his troops into Micromasters, Action Masters, & Pretenders. It becomes a race to see who collects the relics, with the Autobots determined to stop the Quintessons and Decepticons from abusing this ancient power. All the while, Solus Prime, Alchemist Prime and Quintus Prime are watching from the sidelines, the last survivors of the ancient Primes. And because Furman, there’d be a bit in here about Grimlock being a vessel for Onyx Prime temporarily, lol.

A clean slate AU could be done any number of ways, though my stipulation would absolutely no Allspark plot, but instead maybe combine elements of Dark of the Moon and Devastation where the factions are looking for the Ferotaxxis, which possess the data necessary to restore Cybertron by producing Synthetic Energon to whoever finds it first. The Ferotaxxis is unearthed by humans meanwhile, who study it and the unearthed Nova Prime, seeing a technological boom as far as the 80’s/90’s are concerned (similar to the Bay films and Sumac Systems in Animated). Nova isn’t particularly pleased at being poked and prodded by what he deems a lazy inferior species, and like Bay Sentinel concocts a scheme to screw over humanity, Optimus’ Autobots and secure the Ferotaxxis to gift Cybertron Earth’s energy. Because Cybertron is all that matters, the devil with anything that gets in the way of it.

The Autobots human friends would be Spike, Carly and Chip, the children of scientists and engineers working on Project O-Part; the O-Part, the Ferotaxxis, reacting to the Autobots and Decepticons presence on Earth.

The plot would then extend to the lineage of the 13 Primes and their relics, as they were things Nova and the Ferotaxxis were privy to, leading to the Autobots and the kids from stopping the Decepticons from getting their hands on the relics, with another wrinkle being added that some countries already found some like Carbomya, and won’t surrender them easily…

Like I said this concept can go any direction, but for a pivoted AU, this is just how I’d do it, going by what I assume Hasbro would still want with the 13 Primes being a component. Elements of Skybound would probably be here too, like Spike and Carly being those designs in particular.

But I think continuing where The Rebirth left off would be the better option, being the easiest to work with and with the already admittedly shoddy continuity of the G1 cartoon, you could pretty effortlessly add aspects of Skybound, IDW (and by that I mean characters like Nova, Rung, Rubble, Termagax, Three Fold Spark, etc) and the modern 13 lore.

Will do they do it? If they’re desperate enough, absolutely, but I don’t know if we’re entirely there yet. It’s getting closer and closer though.

#blueike productions #blueike #transformers #maccadam

[julik0vatay]

New Beetlejuice teaser got me HYPED!!

Me: woohooo Lyds get his ass! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Also me: if they won't acknowledge their friendship I will cry

While I love cartoon's portrayal of Lydia and Beetlejuice characters there's less conflict between them, almost like they resolved most of their grievances with each other off-screen. But movieverse is a perfect setup for frenemies dynamic and I freaking love that trope! Let them bicker, let them fight, force them into reluctant alliance and I will be cheering and hollering the whole time >.> So much angst potential to explore on both sides of their conflict..

I don't even care if new movie is trashy, I'm just excited to see my faves again tbh

In fact I got so excited I ended up writing 1.5k words of them bickering <.<

And I am throwing it into the void to sandworms and closing the door

So… Hypothetical reunion talk, movieverse sequel speculations, ambiguous and complicated relationship, with nods to cartoon and scrapped script

Slight warning for strong language and alcohol mention, and half-hearted death threats i guess? But otherwise pretty chill

Comeback of the century

He is pacing and fuming, muttering to himself, when she enters the room. Air feels cold and full of static, making his hair stand up even higher than she remembers. She stops at the doorframe, taking in sight of him looking like angry puffed up cat. She hesitates to interrupt his monologue that was definitely not for her ears.

– … and it's not like I was expecting a warm welcome, but a grown-up kid? When did that happen?! I almost mistook her for Lydia herself!! With that black hair and attitude, I thought my eyes are playing tricks on me! Wouldn't be the first time…

He trails off, finally noticing company. He snarls in her direction but doesn't stop pacing and doesn't try to get closer.

Lydia clears her throat, searching for words that wouldn't set off an explosion. It's not like she has to advocate for herself living her life as she did. And yet…

– I was not expecting to actually see you in my life ever again. Dreading it? Yes, sure. At 20 waiting for it at every corner. At 30 it got old. At 40 this whole thing felt more like a fever dream. And now you're here.

– And now I'm here, babe! Deal with it! Why aren't you running yet?!

She looks away, uncomfortable. Why indeed.

– Playing cat and mouse with you? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not a teen to run around anymore.

That out of all seems like wrong thing to say because next moment he's in front of her, irrirated grin and barely held back anger in his voice.

– So am I not worth your time and money, honey? Not even batting an eye for good-ol-me? I can turn this into a literal nightmare, would that be worthy of your attention?!

She looks at him, stubbornly not moving an inch, deciding how much to say. All options are wrong ones so she goes with honest, because how much she has to loose at this point? She lived her life well enough, and her kid is all grown-up and ready to leave the nest…

She takes a shaky breath bracing herself and looks danger right in the eyes.

– …You're my worst nightmare not because of what you did. I've been haunted by what-ifs my whole life… You're a mystery that slipped out of my hands. What if, what if… ...What if we could have been friends?

He visibly deflates under her searching gaze like someone dropped a bucket of cold water over his head. There's a conflicted look on his face for a moment but then it passes leaving behind resignation and defeat. (He fucked up. She was the one, the perfect chance for everything he wanted and HE FUCKED IT UP!!)

– Lyds…

He stills as if thinking it over before opening his arms. (He can work with fucked up. She's right here after all. Maybe its not too late to fix a rush job)

– How about a bit of death's embrace?

There's a faint surprise in her eyes. She considers the risk, her eyes tracing his hands, his posture, his face. He doesn't look threatening, just weary and rough. She reluctantly steps closer.

She's caged in his arms immediately and its the most familiar feeling in the world. Faint smell of decay and ozone, chill running down her spine, just like her dead-parents hugs. His embrace is firm and maybe a little bit desperate. She raises her hands and returns the hug, hiding face in his shoulder.

This is a tightest hug she had in a long while. This is the tightest hug he had in a lifetime deathtime.

A long moment passes before he breaks the silence:

– I could snap your pretty little neck right now and you wouldn't be able to stop me.

– Yes, you could, – she sniffs. – Would you? If you do make it quick.

She's shoved back, his eyes locking with hers. Then he raises hand and bonks their foreheads together never breaking eye contact.

– I was thinking about this. Don't tempt me, Lydia.

She lets out a snort.

– Of course you did. Beetle… – she's interrupted with finger over her lips.

– Shhh-sh-shh! Careful with the B-word, babe!

– I've been thinking about you for past 30 years.

That brings smile back on his face and he's back to looking manic instead of just dead.

– Way to stroke a guy's ego! But then why didn't you just call me??

– While dreading what you'd do to my family if I ever dared?? I bet you had some petty revenge planned for all of us, – She deadpans before muttering under her nose, – …Or if I called… and you didn't show up… And I don't know which is worse…

He's staring at her again. Then he's laughing quietly, then at full volume, his whole body shaking and electric like she just cracked funniest joke in his life death.

– ..Hahaha.. I honestly dunno what I expected, of course you of all people!.. Oh, I sure did plan a revenge, do you wanna hear the deets, Deetz?

She rolls her eyes, wary but amused.

– I'm trying to be vulnerable here but sure, hit me with what you've got.

– I was thinking a merry-go-round, you know, classic! Filled with worms. You know, URGH, sandworms!! Make you all taste your own medicine!!! That was awful by the way, you owe me for that one!

– Hmm. Sounds unpleasant. Not as exciting as I hoped from you.

– Oh now she's judging me, huh?? Try getting slimy feeling off your skin for a decade then we'll talk!

– I think I already went through that. You know, feeling haunted, with a mix of dread and regrets hanging over my shoulders. Does that mean we're even?

That makes him pause. Breaking eye contact his eyes search for something to focus on that isn't her face. The room is bare (but not exactly quiet, there's at least two more voices screaming at him that he's walking on eggshells, that he can't let her go, that he can't let her close, YOU KNOW HOW THAT WORKED OUT FOR YOU LAST TIME!!) except for ugly sofa that seen better days.

– Lemme think about it… Yeah, sure, alright, whatever, babes, water under the bridge! How about we start on a clean page instead? Just you and me, no interrupting family, some alcohol…

– Hold your horses, cowboy, I already feel insane just talking with you. I'm not adding alcohol to the mix.

– That's the best part, we're already mad! Your loss! Personally I wanna get wasted. And I'm not asking by the way but you're free to join me aaanytime!

With that he makes a 180 turn and beelines towards beaten sofa fishing a fancy-looking bottle out of thin air. Familiar looking bottle.

– Yeah, right. Wait, is this from my parents' stash?? Give it back!

He crashes on the sofa making it squeak under dead weight and flashes her a crooked smile full of teeth.

– Nooo way, doll, I think I deserve a vacation and a drink!

– Vacation?? Your last job was 30 years ago?!

– And I spend them in bureaucracy hell! Give me a break! You don't know what it's like!

– Actually I do.

That paints his face with genuine surprise like it's something he hasn't considered.

– Huh?

– Barbara and Adam.

– Hmmm? What did you dooo? :)

He leans forward, all smiles and all ears, like she's about to share latest gossip he missed out on.

– Found a loophole. Helped them move on.

– Ohohoo that's my girl! Do tell, do tell?

– There's not much to tell. They wanted a family. They raised me. And then I moved out. And then they moved on. But there was plenty of paperwork leading to that last part.

His smile falters but doesn't leave. Been there, seen that.

– Ah, boring happy ending for everyone but you, huh?

– Yeah, pretty much.

– …So do you want a drink or not?

– …Okay, fine.

That gets him excited all over again and he materializes a couple of glasses out of nowhere with fanfare like some sort of street magician. Both are filled with liquor (that was carefully saved for special occasions which happened never so now dead man is the one who gets to drink it all) and one is presented to her.

She accepts the drink but hesitates to try it. Looks back at her drinking partner, waiting.

– Right, we need a toast!

He rises his glass almost spilling its content over already sad looking sofa but catches it mid air last second. That makes Lydia laugh and she rises her own as well. Sound of her laughter makes him grin and he puffs out his chest for audience of one.

– For the living!

– And the dead.

– Cheers!

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice 2 #beetlejuice beetlejuice #Julik writes stuff #2024 #this man has so many party tricks up his sleeves but everyone around finds him obnoxious or repulsive #except Lyds #imho thats main reason he's fixating on Lydia so much #birds of a feather flock together and all that #metaphor for mental illness alienation? In old and “problematic” media? Its more likely than you think #those are my blorbos and I decide what I project on them

[davidmariottecomics]

Send in Your Qs!

Hi there! 

This is a suuuuper short blog this week. It was going to be a "Stuff that Sucks" but probably because there is so much bad stuff going on, I'm not really up for doing that deep dive right now. But, y'know, please please please pay attention to what's happening at a local and national level. I reached out to my Senators to tell them the RESTRICT ACT is bullshit. And for some reason, 25 Senators are co-sponsoring it and should be appropriately shamed for such an action. Again, that's only one small of the larger puzzle, but as I said to my senators, it seems increasingly the U.S. is facing on a congressional and judicial level (which is it's own problem...), decisions that are polarizing simply because they will either define things for the better or for the worse and many of the decisions being made have been for the worse. 

Anyway, like I said, I'll be back to talk more about that soon, but for the moment, let's talk about what's coming up! 

Next week: I'm finally actually going to do another Ask Me (Almost) Anything blog! I've been teasing for a while, but next week I'm actually going to do it. I'll be soliciting questions on the comments of the website version of this blog or at my blog announcement tweet on Twitter. As usual, the rules are pretty simple. Requests for work/portfolio reviews will be disregarded, sorry. There are some things that I can't answer for confidentiality reasons. If your question isn't chosen, chances are, I just can't answer it. Questions about what it's like to work in comics, my personal life (within reason), and wacky hypotheticals--like what's more intimidating: one dog correctly riding a motorcycle or a bunch of dogs sharing a sidecar?--are appreciated. 

And hope everyone is having a peaceful Ramadan, Easter, Passover, or just weekend! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (Anime), Mass Effect (Video game), The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (Video game--I've only played the first half-ish, so no spoilers, please), Teen Titans Go (Cartoon), Poker Face (TV show, finally finished the first season), Forest Hills Bootleg Society by Dave Baker and Nicole Goux (Comic--it's very good!), Devil House by John Darnielle (Book) 

New Releases this week (4/5/2023): Sonic the Hedgehog #1 5th Anniversary Edition (Editor)

New Releases next week (4/12/2023): Quiet week from me! Enjoy another comic! 

Announcements:

I don't know if I can talk about it just yet, but watch this space in the very near future for an upcoming in-person appearance. I might have more things to announce soon too, so definitely consider this a tease! 

I was a guest on Becca's Twitch livestream, playing The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. You can catch that on YouTube (and subscribe there and on Twitch for more of this kind of fun)! 

Wanna practice your sequential art skills and/or just do something kinda silly and fun? A few weeks back, Josh Burcham was sharing this really great thread from Scott Gray comparing Steve Ditko and Gene Colan's takes on the same script. It's a lot to see, especially since Gene was given twice the page count to tell it, but it's also just fascinating to see how wildly different two creators can interpret the same script. Josh suggested doing a new version where people draw from the same one-page script and I volunteered to write something for it! Here're the scripts (I did two so there's a robot one and a not-robot one) and if you're interested in participating, just draw what suits your fancy. They're meant to be loose and open to interpretation--so feel free to cut what isn't working, combine panels, rework things, etc! If you do it, please share with Josh and me!  

Lastly, I haven't exactly worked out how all I'm going to go about it, but you may've seen last week, I hit 4000 Twitter followers (and that number kept growing) and I hosted an art share. Check out the thread. There are a ton of very cool artists over there to go follow and hire and work with! I've talked a lot recently about how things are really difficult as social media is increasingly segmented and visibility is made harder on the existing platforms. I can't independently solve that problem, but I am going to be trying to do more stuff like this more often, be it on the remains of Twitter or adding a weekly round-up of cool stuff I saw this week to this blog or something else! 

Pic of the Week: While we were streaming this week, Tiansheng decided that he wanted to sleep on Becca's bag. Why? Who knows! But he really hammed it up. 

#ask me almost anything #but next week #comics #comics editorial #restrict act #cute cats #comic scripts #murder of sonic

[thankskenpenders]

Did you hear about Ken Pontac announcing his leave?

I’ll say up front that the fandom is way too obsessed with bullying Pontac and Graff, and (as I’ve said several times before) people place way too much blame on them. They’re responsible for writing the English scripts only and likely have next to zero influence on the actual plot of any game. Them leaving doesn’t necessarily mean that the storytelling style of the last few games is going to change because they were only ever doing what Sega told them to

That being said... I’ve made it no secret that I just don’t think their dialogue is very good. Sega hired two guys largely known for doing work for hire writing on the kind of Canadian cartoons that exist to fill out network schedules, and that’s the quality we got. It’s not the worst thing ever, and I’ll definitely take their hit or miss jokes over something like 06. It’s just kind of obvious that all of the jokes have been passed through the What Boomers Who Write Canadian Cartoons Think Kids Find Funny filter. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a very specific brand of humor and you know it when you see it. It’s not quite as witty or inventive as the humor you see in better kids’ cartoons, and it fixates on weird things, and it feels a little out of touch, like it’s an extra step removed from reality compared to other cartoons. Or perhaps it’s that most of the funnier cartoons these days are just the adult writers writing what they find funny (and editing out the swears), while these kinds of shows feel like they’re trying more to appeal to a nonexistent hypothetical child. I’m just rambling about Canadian cartoons at this point

Anyway, if this is true, maybe the next game will at least have better banter. Or not! Who knows!

#tkp post #anon #ask

[come-on-shitty-boys]

//chocolate impressions. akaashi keiji//

Warnings: None.

Word Count: 2.8K

Notes: I’m such a simp for Akaashi like hi.  He should not be allowed to be that gorgeous?  Choke me, please. *Single Parent!/Doctor!Akaashi x reader*

*Read Part 2 HERE*

“You’re stressing out over nothing.  It’s not like you’re going to be with him alone,” Akaashi soothes, placing the hand that wasn’t holding onto the steering wheel on your thigh in an attempt to get you to stop bouncing your leg.  

It was the first time that you would be meeting his son, so there was, of course, something to stress over.  What if his son didn’t like you and Akaashi broke up with you?  What if you weren’t cut out to be a step-parent?  What if Akaashi realized that you had no idea what to do around kids and decided that he should find some other woman who did?  Every hypothetical situation ran through your head, finding the worst possible outcome to conclude them all.  You had been worried about this day all week.  Akaashi had invited you to spend the weekend with him. Excited to finally be able to enjoy a peaceful weekend with your boyfriend where he wouldn’t be on call at the hospital, you were quick to agree.  There would be no phone calls in the middle of the night, begging him to come in to assist with a patient.  He would finally be able to get a good night of much needed rest and the two of you could just spend some quality time together.

But your plans for the perfect weekend when you caught sight of his calendar hanging on the side of his refrigerator one night when you were over for dinner.  There was a red circle around Friday and in Keiji’s sloppy script was “My week.”  He must’ve noticed the fall in your disposition, because he pushed the skillet to the back burner and wrapped his arms around your waist, a hum as he rested his chin on your shoulder being the only question.

“I didn’t realize that your son was going to be here too this weekend.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but he’s important to me.  I don’t want to move things further with you until he has a chance to meet you.”  

There was a pause in which you couldn’t think of anything to say.  Move things further.  The fact that he saw you in his future made your heart skip a little in your chest.  This weekend was important to him and to your future together, so you were going to try your best not to disappoint.  

“You’re going to have to cancel any plans that  . . . aren’t exactly PG,” he whispers, a soft kiss placed at the base of your neck.

“Damn, so we can’t play Smash Bros?”

You can feel his chest shake against your back as he laughs quietly to himself.  “No.  No, Smash Bros. until he’s back at Akiyo’s.”

The car slows down to a stop as Akaashi pulls into the driveway of his ex-wife’s house.  He hides a small yawn in the sleeve of his scrubs, climbing out of the car.  Not sure what to do, you stay in your seat.  Were you invited inside?  His ex-wife had never met you so maybe- no.  

“Are you coming in?” Keiji asks, giving you a bemused look.

“Am I allowed to?”

“Am I allowed to,” he mocks.  There’s a playful eye roll as he shuts his door.  You watch him walk, anticipating him to head towards the front door, but the passenger door opens and he’s holding out his hand for you.  “Come on, princess.  Let’s go.”

You follow him up the front steps, your anxiety returning as he rings the doorbell.  He gives your hand a firm squeeze as his thumb runs over your knuckles.  “You’ll be okay,” he whispers as footsteps on the other side of the door become audible.  

The door swings open to reveal his ex-wife, a polite smile on her perfectly painted lips.  “Katashi’s just getting his school stuff together.  Come in.”  Akiyo steps out of the way to let you both in and leads you both to the kitchen.  “Can I get you anything?  Tea? Water?”

“No, we’re fine.  Thank you.”

She nods, sitting down at the table across from you.  “I didn’t realize that she’d be with you,” Akiyo states as if you weren’t even there in the first place. 

“Is that a problem?”

“No.  You’re allowed to bring whoever you want into your life, Keiji.”

The quickly growing tension in the air causes the environment to go quiet as the ex-spouses try to refrain from getting into a hostile argument.  Keiji’s face carries his signature frown.  You can’t remember the last time that you’ve seen him annoyed enough to look this bored with another person.  His hands are clasped tightly together on the table in front of him, his steady stare trained on his ex-wife.  Her lips fell from their polite smile and have settled into a look of distaste, hands wrapped around a steaming mug, knuckles white as her grip tightens.

This is awkward.

The steady sound of feet running down the stairs is enough to break the tension.  Keiji stands up from his chair as a boy, probably no more than eight, races through the doorway, instantly running straight into the open arms of his father.  “Dad!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Akaashi says, laughter bubbling in his chest as he runs his hand through the messy black curls on his son's head.  “We’re ready to go home whenever you are.”

“Okay!” Katashi runs over to his mom, throwing his arms around her in a quick hug, a “Bye, Mom!” leaving his mouth as he excitedly runs to the front door, his backpack bouncing against his back with every step.  

“I’ll see you next week,” Akaashi says, waving politely to his ex-wife, following his son to the door.  

“Thank you for the hospitality,” you say, putting on your best smile for her before joining the boys at the door, bickering back and forth at each other before they even have a chance to step outside.  

“Well, I don’t see how it’s fair that you get a head start.”

“You’re older, so you have to be faster!” 

“I don’t think that’s how speed works,” Akaashi argues, his hands on his hips as he stares down at his son.  “Besides, these shoes put me at a total disadvantage!”

“Then take them off!”

“But, then I have to come all the way back here to get my shoes!”

“I get a three second headstart.  Take it or leave it,” the little boy huffs, holding out his hand for his father to shake.

“Deal.  Y/N, will you hold my shoes?”  Before you even have the chance to object, Akaashi is taking his shoes off and handing them to you.  He shakes Katashi’s outstretched hand and the two get in position at the back of the porch.  “First one to get in the car wins.”

“Hey, miss! Will you start us?” Katashi asks, turning to look at you.

“Uh, sure.  Yeah, I can do that.  On your mark . . . get set . . .” The boys get down in a track starting position.  “Go!”

You hear Keiji counting to himself before running off to catch up with the younger boy who is already almost to the car.  But, his old high school athleticism kicks in and he has little problem closing the distance.  You hear hands slam against the car mere seconds apart.  

“I win!” Katashi shouts, beaming at his father.

“I distinctly remember saying first to get in the car wins.  You’re not in the car.”  Katashi tugs on the handle only to find his door locked as Akaashi twirls the keyring on his finger.  “Wow.  That’s rough, buddy,” Akaashi says, unlocking his own door.  

Katashi sees his slim window of opportunity and jostles Akaashi out of the way, sliding into the driver seat.  There’s a smug smile on his face.  “Now, I win.”

Akaashi’s mouth falls open and he just turns to look at you, a silent plea to help him out in his eyes, but you can’t do anything but laugh.  “It’s not his fault that you were slow, Keiji.”

“That’s not fair.”

Katashi just shakes his head in disappointment.  “That’s rough, buddy.”

You try to hold back your giggles as Akaashi shoots you a soft glare.  “He’s got your sass!”

Katashi crawls into the backseat so his father can get in the front seat next to you.  “So, are you my dad’s girlfriend?”  He asks, buckling his seatbelt.

“Yeah, I am.  I’m Y/N.  It’s really great to finally meet you.  Your dad has told me a lot about you.”

“Oh, okay.”  He sits back in his seat as Akaashi pulls out of the drive, heading in the direction of his own house.  “What are we going to do this weekend?”

“Depends.  Do you have homework?” Akaashi asks, looking at Katashi in the rearview mirror.  

Katashi begins to shift in his seat and refuses to meet his father’s eyes.  “Well, not exactly. . .”

“Katashi,” he warns.

“I have extra lessons,” the boy sighs in defeat.  

“Math again?”

“Yeah. . .  I can’t help it! I don’t understand division.”

Keiji sighs heavily.  This had been the last thing he had wanted to do this weekend, but it needed to be done.  “We’ll work on it after dinner, okay?”

“Yessir.”  Katashi slinks down in his seat, staring at his shoes as his cheeks flare up.

You turn around in your seat to look at the boy in the back seat.  “I used to get extra lessons all the time.”

He looks up at you, almost startled that an adult would say something like that.  You can see his eyes had begun to water, upset that he had disappointed his father.  “Really?”

“Yeah.  I was really bad at math so my teacher sent extra work home all the time.  I just had to find what kind of studying worked best for me and I eventually caught up to everyone else.  You’ll get there too.”

Keiji takes his eyes away from the road momentarily to shoot you a look of confusion.  “You never told me that you had extra lessons.”

“Oh, sorry.  I must have left ‘given supplementary lessons in second grade’ out of my Tinder bio.”

He lightly punches your shoulder.  “And you call me sassy.”

“You are!”

“You are pretty sassy,” Katashi agrees.

“I did not invite you over so you could turn my own son against me,”  Akaashi says, mock betrayal etching his voice as he pulls into his driveway.

Once inside, Katashi immediately nestles himself on the couch, the television remote in his hands so he can watch cartoons.  Keiji follows you into the kitchen, setting his briefcase down on the counter and hanging up his jacket.  He can’t even bother to change out of his scrubs before slumping down into one of the dining chairs, the exhaustion of a long work week finally taking over him.  

In a matter of minutes, a steaming cup of tea is set down in front of him.  A soft sigh escapes his lips as your hands make contact with his shoulders, massaging the tired muscles.  “We could just order in tonight, if you want,” you say, watching Keiji’s form relax as you continue to release the tension from his body.  He only nods in response.  “You want your usual?”  Another nod.  

“Katashi likes the Miso one,” he mutters, further melting into your touch.

“Okay.  Why don’t you go take a nap?  I’ll get you up when it’s here.”

He shakes his head, sipping his tea.  “I’m fine.  I’m just going to take a shower.”  He gets out of his seat slowly, tired eyes hiding behind a small smile.  “Thank you.”  Keiji places a soft kiss on your lips before wandering off to the bathroom.

You slump down on the couch with Katashi, the take out menu and your phone in your hands.  “Are we getting take-out?!” He asks, scooting towards you to look over your shoulder.  

“Yeah.  Your dad’s really tired tonight, so we’re just going to order ramen.  Is that okay with you?”

Katashi nods.  “I like that one,” he says, pointing to one of the pictures on the little menu pamphlet.

“That’s what I always get too.”  You smile at him, dialing the number of the restaurant to place the order.  “Okay. . . Yes, that’s correct. Thank you!”  You say, hanging up the phone before turning to the boy on the couch who has, at this point, completely invaded any and all of your personal space.  “Thirty minutes.”

“Is that enough time to finish my lessons?”

“I don’t know.  Probably.  But, I thought your dad was going to help you after dinner?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Your eyebrows furrowed together.  “What kind of secret?”

“He’s a really bad teacher,” Katashi whispers in your ear, making you giggle slightly.  Who knew that Dr. Akaashi Keiji was terrible at explaining basic math principles?  Honestly, you weren’t surprised.  His mind was so flooded with fancy medical words and the obvious secret doctor scheme to make any written prescription completely unreadable that he struggled to explain things in simpler terms when it was needed.

“Your secret is safe with me.  Go get it and I’ll see if I can help.”

Katashi runs off down the hall and returns a little later with a piece of paper and a pencil.  He sits himself down at the kitchen table and waits for you to join.  Rather than immediately sitting down, you start rummaging through the cabinets.  “What are you doing?” He asks as you start pouring chocolate chips onto a plate.

“This is how I learned how to divide.  We can always see if this helps you too.”  You sit down next to him, placing the plate down in front of him.  “Okay.  Number one.  36 divided by four.” Katashi watches as you place 36 chocolate chips in front of him.  “So, let’s think about it like this.  You have 36 chocolate chips that need to be divided evenly between you and three friends.  Four people.  We’re going to start by giving each person one chocolate chip.”  You push one chocolate chip to four different spots in front of him.  “But, we still have more, right?  So, let’s give everyone another chocolate chip.” 

Katashi adds one chip to each pile.  “Do I add more?”

“Why do you add more?”

“Because I still have some here?” He says, unsure of himself.  

“That’s right!  Go ahead and divide the rest out.”

Katashi nods, pushing chocolate chips into piles until all 36 have been evenly separated into four piles.  “Is that right?”

“Yes!  Very good.  Okay, so how many chocolate chips did each person get?”

You watch as Katashi counts the pieces of chocolate in each pile.  “Nine.”

“So, what’s 36 divided by four?”

“Nine.”

“Exactly.  And it works backwards too.  You have four groups of nine so how many chocolate chips are here in total?”

“36.”

“That’s right.  You’re already better at math than I was.  Let’s move on to number two.  18 divided by 6.”  You count out 18 chocolate chips and move the rest to the side.

“Everyone gets one. . .  There’s still some left, so they all get another one. . . And another one.  Three!”

“Very nice, Katashi!”  

“Division is so easy.”  He takes one of the chips and puts it in his mouth.  “And delicious.”

“See?  You just had to find what worked for you.”

“You’re pretty good at this math stuff.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that, but thank you.”

The minutes on the clock tick by as chocolate chips continue to be divided into various piles.  Katashi is lost in thought as he tries to divide 24 by three.  A pair of hands come to rest on your shoulders, causing you to jump at the sudden contact.  You gaze up into Akaashi Keiji’s smiling eyes.  “Hey,” he whispers, damp hair causing droplets of water to slide down his face.  You watch his face twist from soft happiness into pure bewilderment.  “Why are there melted chocolate chips everywhere?”

“We’re dividing!” Katashi exclaims, using his chocolate covered fingers to scoot around his division tools.

“Katashi, I told you that I’d help you after dinner.”

“Y/N helped me instead,” he shrugged, writing down the answer onto his paper and moving onto the next problem.

Keiji looked down at you and shook his head.  “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.  Besides, now we have more time to kick your butt at Mario Kart later.”

“You’re totally going down, but okay.”

“Hey, Dad?” Katashi asks, not looking up from his hard work.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to marry Y/N?  Because I really like her and I think you should get married to her.”

“Well, I’m glad you really like her, because I really like her too.”  Keiji reaches for your hand, giving it a loving squeeze.  He brings it to his lips, leaving a soft kiss on your ring finger.

#haikyuu!! #haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #imagine #fluff #single parent au #akaashi #akaashi keiji #keiji #a literal angel #haikyuu fandoms baby #fukurodani #akaashi x reader

[heckyeahepithetswitched]

candaru liveblogs reading her own writing: episode 7

let’s get right to it boys

in my head she’s doing the lame cartoon gag where they cross their arms over each other

IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE IT FITS HER JUST AS WELL AS, IF NOT BETTER THAN, HOWIE

same energy as/swap version of “Listen here, Mr. Police officer—” “It’s Ms.”

I tried to give him a gambling theme to give him SOME sort of different flavor from canon Zora, although apparently it made some of his lines confusing “-_-

listen I really love Yoomtah and Sylvie’s relationship. he pretends not to care but he doesssss

I feel like,,,, I ended up mixing motives a little bit here, but shhhhhh it’s fine

“I am NOT. a KID.” + “I’M NOTTA SQUIRE!!!”

little reference to some more Zora HCs that were later confirmed, regarding her powerset :3

I really liked this bit with the playing card, but oh BOY was the entire ending fight a giant knot to untangle. I spent like an hour trying to sort out one part in particular while my family played cards in the next room

very, very lame throwback to the McHammer reference in the Museum Arc which I regret

THIS WAS THE PART I WAS LOOKING FOR IN THE SCRIPTS WHICH MADE ME GO “I actually don’t remember writing any of this, I should do a reaction reading of my own scripts” BGJASDK

I HC that this is tied to how Ramsey lost his eye in this universe :3c

trying to write Ramsey’s voice was STUPID hard; I kept mixing Zora’s voice + accent and Will’s (Ramsey’s) voice + accent and those REALLY DO NOT MIX

there’s an improv game called “the hardest game in the world” where you have to mix two accents and now I see why it’s called that

this is 9x funnier when you consider the types of commissions Ramsey is known for

1. I am very proud of myself for figuring out a way to swap Zora’s speech

2. I got SO close to making Ramsey call Zora a “Stardew Valley character” but decided against it because I wasn’t sure if SDV was too much of a passing trend that’d become irrelevant. now I kinda regret that decision because it probably would’ve been funnier and it’s not like these were made for posterity

another small jab at Jello for THE INCONSISTENCY OF ERASER CUFFS

ok so

I originally had Percy as Sylvie’s daughter just because 1) I thought for some reason maybe that was a thing in the AU??? I think it was actually people going “haha swap!Sylvie would totally adopt swap!Percy on sight” but then like it turned into an ACTUAL thing in my head, and then 2) it provided a VERY good excuse to get the police into the museum in the museum arc because nobody ever calls the police or trips the fire alarm

but then by the time we hit this part, I was 1) in love with the Ashling-King family unit, and 2) thought that having Percy around really added motivation to Sylvie’s character, and also gave another dynamic to the bond between him and Zora, which is just (chefs kiss)

I had a split-second heart attack about “WAIT HOW DO I GET THE CUFFS OFF ZORA, SHE CAN’T HAVE HER ARM CHOPPED OFF BECAUSE I DON’T THINK SHE COULD REGROW THAT/EVEN IF SHE DID IT’D BE GRAPHIC, AND RAMSEY’S NOT EVEN TRYING TO CUT HER HE’S TRYING TO TURN HER TO GOLD—” before I remembered that gold is soft enough to bite through and I was like aw yes nevermind, I got this

hehehe :3

I knew I wanted a plot twist of some kind during the final battle because people wouldn’t be expecting it, but nothing that would impact the story, and this ended up working perfectly

also you know we had to get Beefton in there somewhere! :D

I, personally, think the gold cracks are a REALLY cool idea

everyone thank goldbricker-ramsey for that one

THE FACT THAT ZORA IS STILL TALLER THAN HIM KILLS ME

I do not remember deciding that the height chart was Zora -> Ramsey -> Sylvester but that’s how it is I guess

we decided (and by “we” I mean Mari) that since canon Zora hates kids, of course swap!Zora must LOVE them, hence her softening up around Sylvie a lot once she learns he has a daughter :’)

the hardest swap of the Museum arc was Mera and Indus because they were TOTAL OPPOSITES

the hardest swap of the Redwood arc was Ramsey and Zora because they were the EXACT SAME ENERGIES

again... I felt there was just a liiiiittle bit missing with canon Percy and Ramsey’s dynamic, and for me personally, this moment fills that missing bit in. but that’s just me and this IS my writing, so XD

so, just as a heads-up, apparently the people who did the audiobooks changed around some of these minor-character (well, “not-yet-revealed character”) swaps

and since they know the AC characters better than me, I’d proooooobably go ahead and use their swaps if this project ever did continue?? hypothetically??? basically these last bits are all still malleable

I wrote this entire scene with Trixie and Phoenicia before someone pointed out that Trixie and Phoenicia already had swaps in this universe

*facedesks*

probably not. but hey!! it was super fun!!! the most fun I’ve had in a LONG time, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a project as much as the Epithet Switched scripts.

Spliinkles thank u for letting me take ur awesome idea and just run wild with it, writer brain went brrrrrr and it was such an absolutely fantastic experience that I can only hope I get to relive :’)

#candaru liveblogs reading her own writing #epithet erased #epithet switched

[bluepluto03]

mcu spiderman rewrite/au i may or may not do

ok so first quick disclaimer! i do not hate the mcu spider man movies in any way!! i actually enjoy them quite a bit and have seen homecoming like 4 times! and i absolutely adore all the actors in the movies, especially tom, zendaya, and jacob 

but the problem w/ the mcu spiderman movies is,,, they’re just not spiderman. at least from a writing/thematic perspective, which sucks bc so much other stuff about them is great! like tom holland is the perfect peter parker, which is why it seems so close to being right, but with the way the script is actually written... it’s just. not spider-man. 

i feel the need to explain all this/my problems w/ the movies b4 i get into the actuall au idea/plot, so please bear with me for a sec

for context, I’ve loved spiderman my whole life. i’d watch the cartoons when i was younger, and then went back and watched them all again when i was a bit older and figured out how to pirate stuff lol. i didn’t really know how to get into the comics, so i just kinda read wikis and got second-hand info from fanfics and the other movies

to me, spiderman, (at least, peter parker spiderman,) was always about like... a kid, who saw the world was broken and fixed it because he could. he had the power to fix stuff, so he did. 

as a kid w/ mental illness and a not so great home life... that was something really really important to me. to see another kid out there, who’s been through some shit, but finally has the power to make stuff better, so he is! and it would make me think, maybe i can change stuff for the better, someday, if i just get my chance

but,,,,, the problem is mcu peter parker isn’t that. 

instead of becoming spiderman bc he knows there’s bad in the world and wants to fix it, suddenly his motivation is impressing tony stark?? and don’t get me wrong i don’t hate tony, but the way they wrote his and peter’s relationship basically trapped peter. he could no longer be his own hero, bc he was tony’s successor. and that's never who peter parker’s spiderman was?? he was never a follower, he was a trendsetter. he didn’t become spiderman for approval, hell he had dozens of newspapers constantly slandering him. 

honestly the following in someone else’s footsteps thing was always a miles morales thing. he had to step up to the plate and fill the shoes of a spiderman who had already existed for years and was beloved by the whole city. obviously thats not all he is and simplifying his character to that is incredibly obtuse, but i bring it up bc tbh alot of stuff w/ mcu peter parker is just straight-up ripped off from miles morales. like how peter now goes to a fancy private school, is no longer poor (which is a huge thing w/ peter parker’s character in like every other incarnation), has a living father figure, and is bffs w/ ned, who is a straight-up rip off of miles’s best friend ganke. (for the record tho i adore ned and jacob i’m def keeping him in my rewrite,,,, also i’m glad he’s in the movie bc having a plus sized poc protagonist thats not constantly mocked is incredible) 

so, i’m complaining about all this stuff lol but ur probably wondering how exactly how i wanna fix it lol,,,, 

first, give peter an arc thats more than just..... i want tony to believe in me. my idea for that is basically a type of thing where he learns to rely on others! bc like... peter isn’t good at working w/ others lol, he’d much rather do it all himself so no one else gets hurt. (like in the andrew garfield movies where he just,,,, webs his gf to a car so she can’t run into danger lmao) 

the plot would start at a similar ish position to homecoming, though tony never recruits peter for civil war. tbh not sure if it even happened but we’ll disscuss that later

peter’s been spiderman for a few months, after a trip to oscorp left him w/ a radioactive spider bite. currently no one knows about it, and he’s doing a pretty ok job of dealing w/ everything on his own. until he takes down a big bad, lets say rhino for now, and gains a ton of publicity. after stooping a hudge disaster he’s suddenly in the limelight, and catches the attention of one norman osborn, aka the green goblin 

now, quick sidenote. green goblin is genreally seen as pretty goofy, but there are comic versions of him that are legit terrifying. if im being honest i didn’t even know about that version until i read aloneintherains fic birds eating other birds so ig thats kinda ish how i’m imagining this version of norman? though alot more composed, like the man who could someday turn into that 

so norman becomes intrested in my boy peter, and starts sending ppl after him. possibly the sinister 6, but uhh maybe not bc tbh i think this “rewrite” needs to be split into 2 “movies”/works and i might wanna save that for the hypothetical pt2 (btw if i write this it won’t b for a while cause i got other stuff going on but ig if ppl are intrested i might write some snippits/make more content for it) 

so basically the main plot is peter dealing w/ all these big bads on his own, doing ok at first but later getting really fucked up, and eventually revealing himself to ned and mj which ends up being the only way he can save the day in the end. by relying on others! yay!! 

thats it for the main plot, but don’t worry y’all we got other stuff going on too lmao 

so, for one. my boy peter is realizing he has a crush and just,,,, freaking tf out. (i have yet to decide if it’s on ned or mj. or both. sue me) the crush isn’t definitely resolved in p1, but i imagine there’d be some cute thing of him suddenly realizing and freaking out and almost revealing his powers. 

thing 2! tony stark! he is still in here, and still a mentor to peter, but in a pretty drastically different way. one, he doesn't know about peter being spiderman. he doesn't even suspect it lmao. he just gets involved bc of.... some sort of reason bc peter is so smart. do i know why just yet? no. does it matter? probably but i’m writing this pretty late after i had school all day so i’m too tired to care 

bc tony basically gives peter a real internship/mentorship type thing, peter now has access to all this tech!! and all these funds!! fucking lit!! so he changes from his pajama suit to the fancy one, tho he actually built it!! which i feel like him making his suit is a really big really important part of his character. so it doesn't really have all those random things tony added, tho peter might add stuff himself. he gets Karan as a like assistant ai as part of his internship but she never gets put into the suit

for the fist part tony plays a super minor role but like,,,, the first part is about osborn taking an intrest in him, and him confiding in ned and mj. the second part norman is become progressively more dangorus and peter has to fight him and stuff, kinda proving he is strong enough to be spiderman/be trusted to the whole world, beyond just ned and mj. also him actually getting together w/ either one or both of them bc...... bc i want that. 

oh btw idk if tony finds out or not in p2? if he does it’s either at the end or in a scene like the one w/ may bc like. please imagine the shenanigans of peter and ned (who both have high intellegence but low wisdom) in tony’s lab, obviously trying to hide the fact that peter’s spiderman. like he walks in on them and peter looks all frumpy bc he’s been trying to change real fast, and ned’s shirt is messed up bc he just stuffed the mask down the front of it, and mj is just. chilling behing them. so tony just like assumes stuff and is like....aight.... have fun.... 

oh btw the last big change that i didn’t really have anyway to insert natrually into this,,,, so remember how i said ned was kinda a ripoff of ganke? well, the writers claim he’s a “composite character” so i figured, why not give him traits from other famous spiderman side character so he actually is a composite character! 

so like,,,, throughout p1 it’s referenced that ned has a kinda dickish estranged ish dad that he hates and his mom doesn't really like but kinda forces him too... theres some mentions of his dad wanting him to transfer to a private school and being kinda rich, bur he dosen’t want to bc he knows his dad is a total dickead,,,, anyway end of the movie we find out norman osborn is ned’s dad, and ned hates him even fucking more bc it’s like bitch?? u tried to get my (maybe) bf murdered?? tf?? and its lowkey bc he can’t reveal peter’s id, but then in p2 after norman takes matters into his own hands and tries to kill peter on his own ned just fucking yells at him while the man is in jail and is like fuck u lmao 

soooo thats my really messy au idea!! i’m really tired sorry if this is hard to understand or rude! for the record i have nothing against the ppl who adore these movie’s, i just think they could be better! 

#spiderman #spider man homecoming #spiderman homecoming #peter parker #tony stark #michelle jones #ned leeds #parkerleeds #spideychelle #peter x mj x ned #marvel #pls rb i worked p hard on this #my post #my writing #norman osborn #green goblin #mcu spiderman

[gemtalkpodcast]

We’re alive, we swear! (Along with some insight into making a podcast!)

Hello, everyone! Shane here!

I know it’s been quite a while since our last episode, but with the combination of life hitting Ken and I relatively hard, the holidays, AND Steven Universe going on a long hiatus, we haven’t been able to produce episodes for the past few months. On top of that, producing episodes is a bit more difficult now that Ken and I no longer live in the same building. We weren’t sure if we were going to continue making episodes after the movie ended, since we didn’t know what the Crewniverse had planned. Now that several episodes of Future has been released, though... we’re debating getting back into weekly updates. 

Now, I know I’ve said this before, but editing a 1-2 hour long podcast weekly is NOT a small feat, especially for a group of two people. Allow me to give a very brief explanation behind what goes behind making just one of these GemTalk episodes:

1) We watch the episode once for enjoyment, at this point we aren’t thinking about the show as theorists/podcasters, but rather as fans. We don’t put on our super-fanboy glasses until step 2. (15 min.)

2) We separately watch the episode critically. After we let the episode roll around in our heads for about a day, we sit down with the episode and watch it with an intense level of scrutiny, jotting down nearly everything that happens in the episode worth mentioning. This can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour, depending on how lore-heavy the episode is. (30-60 min.)

3) We research anything that could possibly be a clue, hint, reference, etc. This involves a great deal of internet sleuthing to uncover things we might not have known, such as references to places, events, subjects, or pretty much anything that we need more data on to make an informed commentary. This is one of my favorite parts, as I’ve learned a great deal about a broad list of subjects from doing research for a podcast about a cartoon. However, this is also one of the longest portions of the process. We do our absolute best to provide ONLY information that has been provided by several sources or thoroughly verified, while simultaneously keeping the show as fair and honest as possible. While we obviously have a lot of fun with what we do, we strive to maintain a level of honesty, kindness, and integrity in everything we produce. (60-120 min.)

4) The theory crafting section comes next, where Ken and I sit down and discuss how the recent information we’ve received could be connected to past events. Sometimes we go back and watch old episodes, or review old theories, or even plan out extensive hypothetical situations to see how well they hold up to scrutiny. Sometimes we let our minds go wild and come up with some pretty crazy theories, but we do our best to focus most often on where we think the show “will” go. Since most of this section is open conversation, plotting, reviewing, and theorizing, it happens sporadically over the next day or so. (120 min. - 180 min.)

5) Planning out the show comes next. It might be somewhat surprising to hear this, but our shows do have a fairly loose script. We’ve tried going nearly completely off the cuff before, and it just ends up as a rambling mess. To do this, we sit down with our separate set of notes, compare what we both feel is important to discuss, and determine the order in which we should talk about each topic. This is done to ensure that the flow of our conversation feels natural while running parallel to what is happening in the show. This also usually serves as a “mock run” of the episode, giving us the opportunity to practice how we’ll approach each topic and loosen up the ol’ lips. For me, it also means I’m chugging the last of my coffee before we go on! (60 min.)

6) Recording! This step doesn’t require a great deal of explaining, aside from some small “behind the scenes” facts you might not know. For example, there are several moments where one of us will trip over our lines and “bluh bluh flibberty gibberty” for a few seconds, which obviously gets cut. Also, one of us will occasionally say something very wrong (intentionally or otherwise), which leads to a fit of laughter, which also must be cut. Very rarely we’ll think of something right in the middle of an episode and literally stop what we’re doing to do research just to make sure we’re right. Either way, this usually ends up with nearly twice as much content as actually gets posted. (120 min.)

7) EDITING. The bane of my existence. The curse that accompanies my love of podcasting. This is where I make a massive cup of coffee, burn a pumpkin spice candle, get super comfy in my blanket, and sit at my computer for half a day. The process starts with taking a raw 2+ hour clip, canceling out the noise, adjusting the volume levels, editing out any unexpected background noise, cutting out any mistakes, ensuring that the audio around the cut sounds natural, fixing mic peaks (usually from laughing), removing “filler words” (Hmm, Ummm, Uhh, etc.), adding the intro and outro music, saving, and exporting. This whole process is pretty much the rest of my day once I get home from my day job. (240-360 min.)

8) Posting and advertising is the final step. We’ve pretty much gotten this down to a science at this point, so it takes a lot less time and effort than it used to. We upload the episode to Soundcloud, which beams it out to other podcasting websites, and then post it out on our social media pages. We also try (sometimes better than others) to create other fan content to keep our social media pages as more than just another reservoir of episodes. (30 min.)

If you add all of that up, it comes out to around 13-14 hours of work a week to generate a 1-2 hour podcast. That means GemTalk is practically a part-time job for each of us, on top of our full-time jobs. However, SU has been a wonderful part of my life that has allowed me to create something with my best friend. The time I spend working on the show is a labor of love, and just hearing that people enjoy listening to us ramble about the show for hours at a time means the world to me. Making GemTalk also provided Ken and I with the opportunity to reach out to the community during conventions and provide help in areas like writing, critical thinking, and (perhaps unexpectedly) cooking. It’s been a wonderful ride so far, and we wanted to reach out to everyone and let them know that it’s not over just yet. 

As stated when I began this (now much longer than anticipated) post, we’re currently holding discussions as to whether or not we should continue making episodes about Steven Universe Future. We’re not opposed to it, so it’s likely we will. Regardless of what we decide, however, please be aware that there will be something to look forward to! We can’t promise exactly when, but it’s likely to be within the next few weeks. I’ll do my best until then to try to keep everyone posted.

As always, love ya’ll and thanks for reading/listening!

- Shane <3

#Steven Universe #Steven Universe Future #SU #SUF #GemTalk #Podcast #GemTalk Podcast #Podcasting #Editing #Behind the Scenes

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Have you seen the Youtuber Cartoon Cipher's interview with Tyler Walker? I think you'd find it very insightful

Yes, someone shared it over on /r/Baccano. I meant to share it here in turn, but life’s been a bit demanding lately and I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

For those wondering, here’s the interview in question. It’s an hour long.

I listened to it last Friday so it’s not entirely fresh in my mind, but I’ll note that the interview invokes/draws upon some of the same points Tyler makes in the DVD dub commentaries. For those who don’t have access to the English dub commentaries, I transcribed all four episode commentaries here if you’d like to have that context.

Although much of the interview does retread familiar ground (for me, having already listened to the commentaries), I was definitely interested in the parts where the interviewer and Walker discuss how different dubbing anime is today compared to the era in which Baccano! was dubbed. Most interested, I suppose one could say, because...

...Well, in October of last year, I wrote a short post expressing doubt/concern that a simuldub of a hypothetical Baccano! ‘reboot’ or ‘new season’ in this day and age would not live up to the high standard the 2007 anime’s dub had set. My reasoning--which I expanded on in this follow-up post--included tighter time restrictions (less time for period research, retakes, script revising) and most of all production material access: assuming that FUNimation would receive new Baccano! material on an episode-by-episode/week-by-week basis, I worried such conditions would be to the dub’s detriment. For a dense, non-linear show like Baccano!, you’d surely want more materials in advance so as ensure you understand what’s going on.

This interview...somewhat validates my concerns, I think. I’m not happy about it, mind you, but look at what Walker says when Cartoon Cipher asks him what the 2007 Baccano! anime would be like if it were produced today:

"I think it would definitely be more challenging [to produce today]..”

"It'd be very challenging. I think maybe the nature of doing things so quickly perhaps may have led to, you know, these days may lead to some more, like, safe choices."

"Not being able to look at the whole picture is just a, especially on something like this, it would be a challenge."

Yikes! I thought so, but yikes! This is what I was worried about! The ‘safe choices’ point included; just as I would want the English dubbing team to have enough time and enough materials to understand what’s going on and punch up the script, I’d want them to have enough leeway for trying out creative ideas. I’d want that collaborative process to have breathing room.

What I’m saying is this interview did not leave me reassured in that vein, haha, oh boy. Oh well, not like a new Baccano! anime is on the table.

#Baccano! #Baccano #Asked and Answered #videos #Tyler Walker #aproperkatie

[invertedfate]

I guess it makes sense than that mettaton wont die in one hit in the hypothetical genocide run because even if undyne didn't work on his defenses he is incorporeal so he would be unkillable anyway though one thing has been bugging me mettaton hates anime and calls them "awful cartoons" in his diary so why does he reference anime so much

A few factors. One, Undyne designed the body with heavy anime influence and she’s the one who wrote the scripts for the shows in the Hotland arc. Two, I think the “awful cartoons” he referred to were Alphys’ tastes in anime, which seem to veer heavily towards the cute, slice of life type content. The way I see it, Mettaton prefers big, bold entertainment. Broadway musicals. Explosive action setpieces. If it’s romantic, it needs to be bigger and bolder than cute anime girls in high school. So as far as anime is concerned, he can at least tolerate the more showy series enough to borrow the over the top elements for ratings. (As a side note, I recall a tweet ages back where Toby mentioned MTT’s gloves were inspired by western cartoons. That he likes those. I’ll have to dig for that at some point. It was about the poster on fangamer.)

#asks #mettaton #undyne #Anonymous

[bigskydreaming]

gingerjab replied to your post “ANYWAY. The petition/prayer circle for Michael Trevino to be cast as...”

I’m forever an asshole obsessed with fire/ice ships so Thunderbird or Sunfire, fuck the inhumans one off and St. John. Also, Rahul Kohli as Neal Shaara/Thunderbird/Agni. Also I’m sposed to be asleep so ignore if this is a shit idea.

For the record, I actually kinda like the Inhuman guy, cuz I mean, its not his fault he’s part of a trash franchise. I think it probably helps that I’ve only ever read one issue with him, so as to render it absolutely impossible for his writing to piss me off. I like to just close my eyes and pretend he’s a mutant. Y’know. Like I do with Kamala!

Who is obviously a mutant.

(And like.....let’s be real. The dude is a pyrokinetic with a demon form, the codename INFERNO, and his REAL name is DANTE Pertuz. DANTE. INFERNO. Like, that’s the on-the-nose-fuck-your-subtlety-we-came-here-to-be-pretentious-as-fuck-with-our-literary-references-look-how-dignified-it-makes-our-character balls to the wall character concept I am HERE for. I’m like OH HAI I SEE WHAT U DID THAR. And they’re like “oh yeah? You got it? Hahaha, we were worried nobody would, phew, good job tho. Totally adds to the character right? Pretty clever of us.” And then I’d be like Hahahaha no, not even a little bit, but ‘scool, I like him anyway cuz I’m easy like that. I put out for puns.” And then they’d be like awwwww, dammit, we worked so hard on that. And I’d be like....well, that doesn’t speak highly of your abilities, I mean it was a super obvious joke. And then I stopped making up conversations with hypothetical people in my head.)

Also, in defense of comic book St. John Allerdyce and absolutely NO OTHER VERSIONS EVER because agreed, they all suck....

Comic book St. John is a snarky Australian asshole who in between acts of mutant mass destruction, has a side career as a successful romance novelist under a pen name.

(I’m not even joking. Comic book St. John, in canon, writes romance novels in his spare time as a hobby. LOLOLOL c’mon, how is that not a great character beat for a supervillain slash occasional kinda-if-you-squint-superhero).

Anyway.

I too am also trash for fire/ice ships because SCREW SUBTLETY, WE SHIP THEMATICALLY. But like, its gotta be the RIGHT fire/ice ship. I weirdly have standards with my fire/ice ships? Probably just because I’m obsessed with Bobby Drake but whatever, who cares, how is that relevant.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY, you have your proto-fire/ice ship, the one, the original, the Word I came out of the womb prepared to preach and ship and like, spread to the masses....Bobby Drake/Johnny Storm. Because like. They are elemental dorks whose competitiveness is only matched by their dumbness, how can you not love them, I DEFY YOU TO SAY.

I’m kinda meh on Iceman/Pyro, because like, original comic book Pyro and Bobby never even interacted I think? And in cartoons they’re always totally different generations/age groups, and in the movies they’re like....boring and stale and not even all that attractive and also did I mention boring, omg no offense to whomever wrote them, but I tried reading Bobby/Pyro movie fanfic years ago because like, that’s the only movie Bobby fic there is, unless you want to read about him being an asshole to Rogue and/or cheating with Kitty and just generally driving Rogue into the arms of the much (much much much much, like ewww) older Logan or Gambit. Because srsly, so appealing. So obviously, I caved and tried reading Bobby/Pyro fics because like, they had the word ‘Bobby’ in them, and the bar is too low in my X-Men fic reading habits. And omg I fell asleep. I just. It was all just the standard m/m cookie cutter generic ‘good boy plus bad boy uwu yaoi-zowey’ bleh starring two not at all deeply written or well-acted meh-looking white dudes, and just. Why.

But that’s what I mean when I say I’m wary of fire/ice ships, because sometimes with powered characters like, authors think oh hey, LOOK ONE IS FIRE AND ONE IS ICE, THIS TOTALLY COUNTS AS THEM HAVING OPPOSITES ATTRACT PERSONALITIES AND THUS I DONT NEED TO GIVE THEM A PERSONALITY, RIGHT? Like. They’re just very boring and unimaginative in execution, just because they expect the basic premise of fire and ice/’obvious opposites attract, obviously’ to do all the work for them.

(Katey if you’re reading this I’m super for sure not talking about YOUR superpowered romances, because you are wonderful and GOOD at writing and imaginative, and thus none of this applies to you. Requisite disclaimer.)

So, when they did this random Bobby/’New Pyro Dude like where did he even come from I still dont know’ hook-up, I was prepared to like, yawn endlessly, because I figured it would be more boring imaginationless ‘ooh look what an obvious pair they are and yet still praise me for how clever I am for pairing them’ crap. 

And I was absolutely right!

(But I mean, it was written by Marc Guggenheim, the odds of it sucking were totally in my favor. Betting against them being well-written under his pen might feasibly be construed as cheating. Whatever).

And also, the art did them ZERO favors, like I know they’re both generic blond dudes in their twenties, but I LITERALLY COULD NOT TELL WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WHICH in any of the panels that they were like, in bed together or dressing or talking or literally anything until they started using their powers to fight bad guys. It was soooooooo bad. Like the art just manifested every ‘look at the white gay date his mirror reflection lol what is variety even’ cliche and beat you over the head with it.

(Also Bobby is supposed to have brown hair, which at least would’ve helped a LITTLE bit. Meh. Still was gonna suck because like, nobody had any intention of WRITING them together, like, developing their characters and laying the groundwork for a possible relationship. It was just ‘oh look, the fire and ice dude got drunk at a wedding and hooked up, cool deal, now on with the story.’)

Anyway, the ONLY redeeming potential for a Bobby/Simon relationship in my opinion is ENTIRELY due to a fic I read with them. Its probably the only fic written about Simon ever, lmfao, so its not like the writer’s characterization of him has any competition among either canon or other fans’ renditions of him. But it was pretty well written, I actually liked their portrayal of Bobby, which I’m SUPER picky about in fanfics, and they actually invested time in developing Simon and his POV and giving him an actual personality and shit, that wasn’t half bad. So if Simon was written like that in the comics and their relationship progressed in similar ways, I could feasibly be on board with them.

But it won’t, so I’m not. Meh. Anyway.

I actually really REALLY like both Shiro AND Neal, with the caveat that I hate Neal’s stupid offensive-ass codename, I know Claremont only named him Thunderbird because he introduced him in an anniversary issue that was supposed to be a call-back to the original Giant Size lineup, and he needed a stand-in for John Proudstar, but like....wtf Claremont, just use your brain and save Neal to introduce a whole issue later and stick Jamie in John’s place the way everyone else does. He literally went by Thunderbird in the comics already in his Hellion days, which YOU wrote, so why the fuck did you feel the need to be stupidly offensive and act like Native American people and traditions are interchangeable with those of a guy from India? Ugh he’s so....gah.

Anyway. So I actually like both Shiro and Neal, though pretty much only when people other than Claremont are writing them, lololol. Which is admittedly...rare. Because of all his pet characters, they’re both at the top of the list of ones nobody else has any interest in touching. Bizarrely, my favorite run involving Shiro was when he was randomly shoe-horned into that Alpha Flight relaunch in the late 90s, that only lasted a couple years? Dunno if you know what I’m talking about, the team with Radius, Flex, Murmur, Heather as Vindicator and Mac was a robot or some weird shit.

I have no real thoughts on either of them with Bobby though, for a fire and ice pairing. Tbh I can’t really see Bobby/Shiro like, at ALL lmfao. For one, Shiro’s always felt written as though he’s a good ten years older than Bobby at least. Like they’re not really compatible dialogue-wise lol. And he’s pretty much never had any patience for Bobby in the comics, which has a lot to do with most of their interactions being written by Claremont himself, and Claremont infamously haaaaaaates Bobby’s character and trashes him any chance he gets, aka the few times editorial makes him actually use Bobby in a script. But I also think even under other writers, like....Shiro honestly is not the type to have any patience for Bobby’s antics or brand of humor, like.....he’s like JP but without the superficial crush JP used in canon to view Bobby’s idiosyncrasies as endearing instead of migraine inducing. I don’t think any readers would buy someone of JP or Shiro’s personality-type crushing on Bobby twice, lololol.

I DO however kinda like the idea of Neal/Bobby? If someone ever actually brought Neal back and gave him a new codename and stuck him on a team with Bobby? They’ve also barely interacted in canon, and the only time I can think of, Neal was super rude and dismissive of Bobby, because like, Claremont was writing it of course, so it made total sense for him to have the dude who’s literally been an X-Man for two issues talk down to the X-Man of several decades like the latter had no clue what he was doing, lol. Oops, still slightly salty there. 

But honestly, I doubt anyone who didn’t have hyperfixation fueled grudges on a fictional fave’s behalf would ever even remember that one canon interaction, and tbh Neal’s pretty much a blank slate character wise. His only defining traits from what little he’s been used are that he’s fairly young, in his early to mid-twenties, from a wealthy family, a little full of himself but in a ‘really wants to impress people and prove himself’ kinda way instead of an overly entitled ‘i genuinely believe I am superior to all you buffoons’ kinda way. And he was always endearingly enthusiastic and eager about new stuff he encountered from being with the X-Men.

(He was also randomly obsessed with Psylocke, but I truly think Claremont was like, well I’m just gonna write him like I would Warren Worthington because why not. So yeah, obvsly he’s super obsessed with Betsy. Duh.)

Anyway - I would like someone to do something interesting with Neal, and I think his and Bobby’s chemistry has a lot of potential and they could bounce off each other well. 

Also, I like Rahul, but I was randomly fancasting some of the more obscure X-Men awhile back for Reasons (I forget what they were tbh, but I’m sure I had them. I usually do). I came across this Indian actor named Karan Tacker and was like ohhhhhhh he totally looks like he could be Neal Shaara.

I mean, I’ve literally never seen him act, so who knows what his acting is like, but since we’ve established Neal’s character is essentially whatever the person to actually use him next wants it to be, I don’t think that’s a big deal lol.

So this is totally superficially based casting, like I think this guy looks and ‘feels’ the way Neal’s typically been drawn and the kinda vibe he gives off.

Also, incidentally, having absolutely nothing to do with anything, let alone my selection process, by pure coincidence the dude just so happens to have abs for daaaaaaays.

But I mean. Like I said, that is neither here nor there. Obviously.

Of no relevance whatsoever. I didn’t even notice, tbh. Don’t even know who hijacked my body and ghost wrote these last few sentences, quick, call an exorcist.

....oh noes, is this one of the consequences of being an ‘anti’? IS THIS MY COMEUPPANCE? *flees*

#gingerjab

[imjustthemechanic]

The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Part 5/? - Breathless Part 6/? - Escape at Last Part 7/? - Fox in Socks Part 8/? - Things Go Wrong Part 9/? - Downey and Out Part 10/? - Road Trip Part 11/? - Temptation Part 12/? - An Awful Reunion Part 13/? - Unreality Intrudes Part 14/? - A Call for Help Part 15/? - Loki’s Guests Part 16/? - Stan Lee Cameo Part 17/? - Reassessment Part 18/? - Midnight Invasion Part 19/? - Elevator Fight Part 20/? - Courage Part 21/? - Unwelcome Back Part 22/? - Darkest Hour Part 23/? - They Are Here Part 24/? - The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Part 25/? - Word of God Part 26/? - Avengers Assembled Part 27/? - The Houston Underground Part 28/? - Houston has a Problem Part 29/? - Onward and Upward Part 30/? - The Chi’Tauri Queen Part 31/? - Through the Wormhole Part 32/? - Prisoners Part 33/? - Arm’s Length Part 34/? - A Moment’s Respite Part 35/? - Ravagers to the Rescue Part 36/? - What Happened to Hiddleston Part 37/? - Haven Part 38/? - Steve Has a Terrible Idea Part 39/? - Can’t Be Choosers Part 40/? - Stan Lee Cameo Redux Part 41/? - Shipjacking Part 42/? - The Gauntlet Thrown Part 43/? - The Queen’s Chamber Part 44/? - The Guardians Part 45/? - The Nest Part 46/? - Heroes Part 47/? - Homeward Bound Part 48/? - Loose Ends

Just a few things to tie up - like Johansson’s marriage, how they’re getting back, and what will happen to the tesseract.

A moment later Musa was called away again by a group of astrophysicists, who were hoping she could tell them about her home system.  Steve wasn’t alone for long, though – the next person to approach him was Natasha.  She was now dressed in a pair of jeggings and a shirt with a cartoon bone on it and the words I Found This Humerus.  Next to her was Scarlett Johansson, wearing a blouse and skirt.  Both had washed up and combed their hair, and they looked nearly identical, but Steve immediately recognized which was which.  The two walked differently, Johansson gliding along like a glamour goddess, while Natasha moved with a determined stride that spelled trouble for anybody in her way.

“How’d your checkup go?” Nat asked.

“Nothing but bruises,” Steve assured her.  “If I cracked any bones it was so minor they’ve already knit.”  The bruises would be gone by this time tomorrow.

She smiled.  “Good to be back?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “And possibly just a little more appreciative of how tough I am.”

“Oh, really?”  Nat smirked.  “Does that mean you’re going to start using a parachute?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Nat laughed.  “I’m going to Malibu with Scarlett,” she said.  “We need to patch things up with her husband and daughter, and it’ll be easier to explain if I’m with her.”

That felt like something that had happened weeks ago, and Steve had almost forgotten about it.  Now he groaned.  It was true, they should do something about that, but whatever it was they ended up doing would be very, very unpleasant.  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, praying that the answer would be no.

“Probably not a good idea,” said Johansson.  “Romain’s had a bug up his ass about Chris for a while now, and I don’t think he’d want to see your face.”

Steve tried not to show how relieved he was.  “Got it,” he said.  “Text when you arrive, okay?”

“Yes, Mom,” said Nat.  “Wouldn’t want you to worry about me.”  She leaned down and gave him a kiss on the cheek goodbye.

Once she was gone, Steve worried he’d be alone again – but it was only a minute or so after Natasha left when Evans came up to him.  He had a few bandages and stitches, but he, too, had washed and shaved and changed his clothes.  With no beard, wearing jeans and a dark blue t-shirt which, thanks to somebody’s sense of humour, had the image of the shield on the front, he looked so much like Steve as Captain America that it was downright eerie.  He came and stood awkwardly facing Steve, hands in his pockets, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out how to word it.

“How are you doing?” Steve asked, deciding to take pity and give him an opening.

“Okay,” Evans replied carefully.  “That was a hell of a thing but I… I’ll get over it.”

Steve had heard that phrase before, from people who would very definitely not get over it.  Far too often, he’d been the one speaking it, himself.  “You sure?”

“Yeah,” said Evans.  He sat down on the bench next to Steve.  “My parents are coming to pick me up.  I told them guys, I’m thirty-five, I can buy my own plane ticket, but Mom wouldn’t hear about it.  She actually said, I won’t hear about it, like little old ladies do in cartoons.”  He chuckled.

Steve smiled back.  He was glad he hadn’t called Evans’ parents when he’d been tempted to, but lord, he missed having that kind of loving, unconditional support.   It would have been wonderful to steal just a drop of it, even knowing it was not rightfully his.  Loki really had meant what he’d said – this world was full of everything Steve had ever wanted.  It was just that to get it, Steve would have had to compromise everything he’d ever wanted to be.

“Sorry for freezing up when Musa grabbed me,” Chris added.  “I, um… I have some… I’m good with a script, but actually talking to real people is hard for me sometimes.  I almost turned down playing the role – playing you, I mean.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be…”

“To be that kind of movie star,” Steve finished for him.  “Bob told me.”

“Yeah.”  Chris nodded.

“What changed your mind?” asked Steve.  Bob had offered an explanation, but he wanted to hear it from Chris Evans himself.

“Well… Captain America,” said Chris, with a shrug and a cockeyed smile.  “You’re everybody’s hero.  You’re… you’re everything I was raised to believe in.  It sounds corny, but all that freedom, equality, and justice stuff, you embody that and you make it look cool. When I post about politics on my twitter I get comments from people who say things like here we see Chris Evans actually being Steve Rogers and it always makes me smile.  I’m proud to stand for that, even if the fame part is kind of terrifying.”

“The fame part is terrifying,” Steve agreed.  “At least you got warned about it.  When I volunteered for the project nobody told me I was going to be a celebrity. Then they dragged me off on that tour with the chorus girls and the posters…” he shook his head.  “And I end up standing there…”

“Wondering how the hell this happened,” Chris grinned. “That’s what I figured you were thinking.  Reading the lines off the back of the shield was my favourite joke in the movie. Anyway.”  He sat up a little straighter.  “My point, which I’m getting to in a roundabout kind of way, is that it’s an honour to meet you in person, even if this is really, really weird.” He held out a hand.

“Thanks,” said Steve, giving him the handshake.  He had to agree – it was weird, but he also felt a sense of kinship with this man. Not just because of what they’d just been through together, but because he realized that Chris Evans must have spent more time thinking about Steve, and trying to understand him, than anybody else he’d ever met.  Which left one rather important question.  “Bob told me about something you said in an interview…” he began.

“Oh, no,” groaned Chris.  “This is about the teams thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Chris spread his hands.  “Well, for one thing, I never thought I’d be having this conversation.  I thought it was all hypothetical.  And I was talking about our world, if there were superheroes here. Our world isn’t run by people who thought nuking New York or approving Project Insight was a good idea.  I mean, sometimes they’re not much better, but they’re not that bad.  I just feel like real superheroes would have to accept limitations and be responsible when they hurt people.  Even if it wasn’t on purpose.”

Steve thought about the pirates… they weren’t nice people, but nor had they asked to get into a fight with the Chi’Tauri.  He wondered how many had died, and supposed he would never know.

“Well, thanks for not getting me killed this week,” Steve said.  “I’m a rotten actor.”

“Same,” Chris agreed.  “I’m the opposite – a good actor, a rotten hero.  Better for you to live your life and me mine, even if yours does sound way cooler.”

Now there was a thought… would Chris Evans find the details of Steve Rogers’ life as tempting as Steve had found his?  He decided not to ask, partly because that would involve admitting how tempted he’d been to call Evans’ parents, but mostly because the whole subject was better left alone.

NASA offered them all dinner in the Space Center cafeteria, which was fortunately not one of the buildings that would have to be torn down from the damage.  Natasha and Scarlett had already gone to Malibu, and Scarlett had texted Chris Evans to let him know they would be staying overnight. Hemsworth also turned down the meal. He hugged everybody, and then left to catch a flight back to his home in Australia.  Most of the other actors who’d come in for the charade were already gone, but Hayley Atwell hung around, as did Bob Downey.  At dinner they all sat together and listened to Hayley tell stories about the props – and people – she’d accidentally broken while filming the Agent Carter TV series.

“I need to watch some of that before I go,” said Steve.  He would probably regret it… but he would regret it more if he didn’t.

“I’ll get you some DVDs,” Hayley promised.  “In fact, take them back with you and show them to Sharon.  I can get confirmation from Emily if you like, but for my own part I’m sure she would want to see them.”

Steve could bet she would.  “That would be great.”

“That gives me an idea…” Bob began, but before he could explain what it was, the conversation was interrupted as Thor and Steve moved aside to make room for Donny Glover and Kevin Farinas, who had come to join them.  Kevin was proudly holding a tablet and a stack of binders, which she dropped on the table in front of her.

“Good news!” she declared.

“Good news?  For us?” asked Steve.

“Careful there,” said Bob.  “He’s an old man.  Too much excitement might give him a heart attack.”  He winked at Steve, looking uncannily like Stark in that moment.

Kevin opened the top binder in the stack and passed around some photographs.  “I’ve been looking at the insides of your spaceship,” she said, “and it looks like their actual device for directing a wormhole runs on very similar principles to my hypothetical one.  Here’s the switches.”  She reached across the table to indicate a particular picture, which Hayley happened to be holding at the moment.  “They’re hidden under the console, probably so the people on board couldn’t mess with them.”

Hayley passed the picture to Steve, and he saw two rows of twelve symbols, one in pink and one in blue.  The symbols themselves were indecipherable to Steve, just messes of intersecting lines.  “What do these mean?” he asked.

“No idea,” said Kevin.  “They’ve called in some cryptography people, but figuring out will probably take longer than it would take to build a new one.”

“How is that good news?” asked Bob.

“I’m getting there,” Kevin informed him.  “Now, as you can see, there are two lines – two ends to the wormhole.  The pink one tells you where you’re starting from, the blue one tells you where you’re going.  If I understand this properly, the ones on the right refer to the specific destination universe, and the ones on the left are your exit point within that universe.  I have no idea how to program it.  The left ones must be a space-time coordinate system of some sort, but I don’t know what their reference point is, while the ones on the right must refer to properties of the target universe, whatever those are.”

“I’m still not seeing the good news,” said Steve.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” asked Kevin.  “Look, they’ve got this thing set up to take them between a chosen point in this universe and their home port in yours.  But if you can change the spatial destination coordinates for your universe to match the ones you leave from in ours, then when you activate it you’ll transfer to the other universe exactly where you left from ours with no programming or linguistic knowledge required!”

That did make sense.  “So we appear over Houston in our universe… and we can fly right out over the Atlantic back to Wakanda,” said Steve.  That would have the bonus that the Leviathan would end up in hands Steve trusted.  He wouldn’t have wanted any other country on Earth trying to reverse-engineer any more Chi’Tauri technology, even the United States.  Wakanda, however, would either destroy it or do good with it, whichever T’Challa decided was best.  “Perfect. Can you have it ready by the time Natasha gets back?”

“Definitely,” said Kevin.  “It seems to remember where it left from, too, so if it doesn’t work the way I think, you can just come back here and we’ll give it some more study.” She picked up her binders again, beaming.  “You know, it sucks that we can’t keep that tesseract things.  With that kind of energy we could explore the whole solar system and then head for Alpha Centauri.”

Steve blinked.

“Yeah, sucks,” Donny agreed cheerfully.  “I’d ask to go with you guys, but my alternate in the Marvel Universe is a guy who finds Spider-Man hanging out in dumpsters, so nah.  But!” he held up a finger.  “Kevin, can you get me into the Star Wars universe?”

They were joking around, so Steve made himself smile as if he were enjoying the conversation. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what Kevin had just said.

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov

[acm420-fall2021]

Week 8: Seasons Change like the tides in the ocean (or am i dead wrong?)- Jay Bregman

This week, I was given the task of figuring out how the season "growth" montage would function and be animated. Initially, white editing the animatic and conceptualizing color scripts, I had thought that they were going to be a time lapse series of stills, which could be individually painted. However, I soon came to understand it is more meant to be a sequence of shots that seamlessly flowed into one another, meaning my primary task would be on figuring out how that transition would ultimately work, and creating rough assets to demonstrate that.

In doing research for inspiration, I came across stock animation by 3dSilver (https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-5704124-change-seasons-beautiful-illustration-concept-time-lapse-cartoon), where a cohesiveness in motion is accomplished via two simultaneous movements- the rotation of a platform, each quarter containing the set for each season, and a keyframed scroll of the different painted backgrounds. After discussing it from a technical standpoint with other members of the 2D team, I decided that I wouldn't try to replicate it because I wasn't aiming for a loop, but instead two main elements from it to use as a baseline- a constantly moving set and a background that passed by in the background

Because I still don't have a working computer, I was limited to the editing functions of Adobe Rush that doesn't allow for precise keyframing, meaning I couldn't make a demo that had a rotating set piece comprised of all the different seasons, but would I could demo was the background scroll. To experiment with, I made two different versions of the backgrounds for the season based on skies from the color script, one horizontal (like the inspo) and the other vertical. After playing with it, I found that the vertical scroll worked better when paired with the counter movement of a sun in hypothetical final composite (see below). Just like in the video, there would be pauses on each season for idle animation, or simply the growth of the tree to reflect the duration of things in the animatic

(only rough, as the placements of the seasons on the wheel can be changed)- Alternatively, depending on the desirsed floor, a octagon or flat sided 2D shape might work better to make sure the sides are flat rather than curved.

Another possible option would be to have full perpendicular movement with each of the seasons existing on one long horizontal strip rather than a rotating clock-like structure. The only reason I could see the clock structure not working well with the horizontal scroll as vertical growth against horizontal movement might be too contrasting, and as a result, too distracting.

In the demo video at the top of this post, I used the basic pan effects to demonstrate what the aforementioned vertical scroll would look like. Temporarily, the season sets are just stills with cross dissolve transitions to represent when the rotations would take place. I will try to make a demo closer to what the composite should look like in this coming week for clarification in concept

[dynared]

Honest Voltron Characterizations

@alluraofaltea posted something similar and while I don’t agree with some of her items, I did think it sounded like a fun idea, to see what people’s interpretations of the characters were. Special thanks to @fenfishtrap for pointing it out to me.

I’d love to see others do this too -

Keith - Hi, I’m the main character...I think. The show really can’t decide. I mean, I fit all the requirements, I’m the best pilot, my character design looks like it was pulled right from a Go Nagai manga, but I’m also a complete hothead, make the same mistakes over and over, and don’t learn from my experiences. One second I’m being told I should lead the team, the next I’m put out of focus for an entire season because my actor got a role that paid more. I would have a Freudian excuse for all this, except the only people who saw my moping about my mom were hardcore fans that watched an internet exclusive blog entry. Thanks to that everyone thinks my lack of character development means I’m flaming gay. Well, this season I’m going to try moping about not getting in the f*cking robot. Maybe at least that will lead to fans hooking me up with a hot redhead girl.

Also I’m half Galra which means either nothing or I have Hitler genes baked in.

Shiro - I’m the main character when the executives are done with the script editing. I’m also, depending on the fan describing me, either a shell shocked prisoner of war that just wants to sip a Corona on a beach and really should be out of the line of fire, Optimus Freaking Prime and the Chosen One, or a gay pedophile. My relationship with the Black Lion is about the same. Also I may or may not be a clone. I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to be the Roy Fokker to Keith’s Hikaru/Rick Hunter, but I kinda suck at it on screen. Thankfully there’s fanfic because Shiro loves you baby. ❤️

My robot arm makes for a killer Winter Soldier cosplay at least.

Hunk - I’m the FOOD GUY. Get it? Because I’m fat which means I like to eat and literally have no other character traits. And yet out of everyone, I’m canonically the most successful with the ladies, so I have that going for me. Chicks love a guy that can cook. I’d mention my other skills and personality traits, but they’re kind of nonexistent, while my Japanese counterpart in GoLion was a judo master because over there, heavyset, stocky frames are common in sports like judo and sumo. Nope, I’m all about the food, and looking like an idiot. Usually because of food.

Pidge - Hi, I’m Katie, although everyone calls me Pidge, and it took four seasons to explain the nickname. Better late than never, right? Thanks to progressive writing, I’m now a girl, but everyone thinks I’m either trans or gay because I don’t have D cups. Yay being progressive. When the show bothers to focus on me, I’m actually pretty kickass, but the fandom still treats me like I’m made of porcelain. I may or may not have a crush on Lance (not that I’d ever admit it) but the fandom is also quick to label anyone who thinks so a pedophile. Even though he’s only two years older. Progressive! At least my brother thinks I’m cool.

Lance - Thank you, thank you. I am clearly the favorite character of the entire fandom even though most of said fandom portrays me, the confident ladies man and bundle of issues, as either a self loathing gay man or a male Disney Princess. The best way for the fandom to gay up something is to add me to it when I would rather find a hot girl to take with me on my lion. Then again, this is the same fandom that thought “hey man” was me flirting with Keith. More essays have been written about how I’m the real hero of the series and Keith’s alleged love for me than on the root causes of the US Civil War. I just want a girl to know the real me, you know?

I’m also canonically Cuban (not that it’s ever acknowledged in the show) which makes me one of a very few non-sterotypical Hispanics in animation alongside Miles Morales. And yet my fandom often portrays me as a MEXICAN stereotype instead. No, I won’t sing “Gasolina.” Shut up.

Allura - My original incarnation was the grandmother of shipping cartoon characters together, but because I’m the same age as Keith as Lance, as well as, let’s face it, my “character design change”, I am now a Strong Independent Black Woman That Don’t Need No Man, or a butch lesbian stereotype. This is despite two characters declaring me beautiful on screen. I may or may not have feelings for Keith but they’re about as consistent as who the lead character is. A lot of fans wish I just stayed in the castle ship even though I’ve gone on and on about wanting to honor my fathers legacy by being a pilot. People keep calling me “Space Mom” when I am terrible with kids. Again, probably because of my “character design change.” Without it, I’d probably be everyone’s waifu.

Lotor - The show can’t decide if I’m supposed to be Prince Zuko to Keith’s Aang or the Char Aznable to his Amuro Ray. Probably the former given the show’s complete hatred of all things mecha. I run things for about six episodes before being kicked out of the command room because it’s easier to write Zombie dad. The showrunners complete hatred of giant robots means I get to fly in a series of increasingly silly looking ships. Also I am NOT a rapist! Sincline was, and I am not Sincline! My old crush on Allura is gone, but let’s face it, it would never work out here. Also someone made a homemade body pillow of me, am I’m not sure if it’s flattering...or incredibly disturbing.

Zarkon - I make Cobra Commander look nuanced, and I am literally a zombie. I’m also the only one of these idiots smart enough to fight Voltron with a robot of my own, which you THINK would mean my dumbass son would make more of them.

Voltron - I’m supposed to be the latest incarnation of what Americans think of when they think of giant robots like how Mexico thinks of Mazinger Z and France thinks of Grendizer. Instead I’m a glorified cannon that is woefully out of place in this super cereal space opera. My five lion components apparently have minds of their own...maybe? Most fans (and the writers) forget I even exist even though the damn show is named after me! The show itself seems to have no idea how to use me, so I guess we’re all in the same boat. I’m pretty sure there’s more fanfic starring Shay than there are about me. Fans don’t even want me in a hypothetical video game, and Japan would rather bring back Combattler V for the next Super Robot Wars.

#voltron legendary defender #shiro #Keith #lance #pidge #hunk #Allura #prince lotor #Zarkon #Voltron #Klance #kallura #shallura

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Transformers 2

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart Apr 24, 2015. It has not been changed from how I originally wrote it.)

Before I go into Transformers 2 I want to talk about the X-Men and Spider-man movie that came out in the early 2000`s.

Spider-man and X-Men are in my opinion a good start. Not just to the whole "let`s try to make a serious comicbook superhero movie and not turn it into a big, campy, live-action saturday morning cartoon joke" genre, but to their own, respective movie franchises as well.

"What about The Crow and Blade?"

Yes, those were good, serious comicbook movies but they didnt start a big, new wave of good comicbook superhero movies, they were more of a prologue.As I was saying: X-men and Spider-man were a good start for their movie franchises. They weren`t perfect. The filmmakers were a little new to the universe and how to translate it into something more cinematic, but it worked well enough. In the sequels things worked a little better. The directors, writers and actors had gotten more familiar with the characters, the world they lived in and things seemed to work smoother. Not just in how close it was to the material they were adapting but in general. Then they screwed it up in the third movie.This is kinda how I feel about the first Transformers movie. The first one was a good start. It made sense how we in the beginning spent more time with the humans and didn`t get to the Autobots until a little later, and I liked most of the humor.

Though I think it would have been better without the scene where Bumblebee urinates on Agent Simmons. Just saying.

And in hindsight they could have dialed down the male gazing too. But unlike Spider-man and X-men, Transformers decided not to take what it had learned from it`s first experience and see if it could do better. No, instead Michael Bay and friends said: "Why wait for the third movie? Let`s screw it up now!" And so they did, and people still paid money to see it, myself included. Yes, I am ashamed. And yes, I know, the script was written during the writer`s strike and it`s possible that Michael Bay was involved in writing it but, come on! Even if you haven`t read books on script writing you can still see that the dumb decisions that they made were really dumb decisions!

Though in defense of Michael Bay, from what I`ve heard, he wanted to do a personal pet project after Tranformers, but was contractually obligated to do a sequel if it did well enough at the box office. Maybe he knew it was bad and screwed it up on purpose so he wouldn`t have to do more Transformers? That`s just wild speculations from me though. Let us, in my very subjective editorial, see where it went wrong and how it could have been fixed.

SPOILERS in disguise The Male gazing

They could have dialed it down or removed it completely.

Bumblebee

I get why he was mute and talked through soundclips in the first movie, because his voice thingy was damaged  and also so he could be a sympathetic character for the audience. But why didn`t he talk in this movie? His voice came back in the end of the first one. Heaven forbid he actually has any character developement. He could have talked, he just doesn`t have to talk that much. And he could still use soundclips sometimes when he feels it suits the situation. Like: when they`re about to enter a dangerous place he could use the "I´ve got a bad feeling about this" line from Starwars. And then there`s the scene where he cries like a sprinkler when Sam tells him he can`t follow him to college. Yes, I get it, they wanted to have some comedy, but they could have done that better. They could have done it like this: When Sam says to Bumblebee that he can`t come, his reaction could be "Oh... OK, I... I understand." But by the tone of his voice and body language we can tell that this saddens him. And when Sam goes away Bumblebee could play "All by myself" on his radio.

Giving Bumblebee such exaggerated, emotional reactions just makes me feel that Bay only thinks of the Transformers as silly, one dimensional, cartoon characters. Disney characters (in good Disney movies at least), The Transformers in the cartoon and the ponies in My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic have a little bit more depth than Bay`s Transformers.

Covering up the events that happened in the first movie

I can believe that such a thing could happen in the Men In Black universe where they can erase memories and stuff, but in this movie? Instead: the army`s official story to the public could be: "Yes, this battle did happen but now all the giant robots (both the good and the evil ones) have disappeared. We don`t know where yet, but we`re working on it."

Mikaela detailing the motorcycle

Yes, Megan Fox is a physically attractive woman, but that is pretty much it, and this scene is, besides pandering to horny teenage boys, also a big research failure from the filmmakers. That`s not how you detail a motorcycle, it is usually done with more protective clothing. So either:

A: have her detail a motorcycle the correct way, or

B: have her change the oil or look at the engine of a car.

Skids and Mudflap

Sigh... these guys. One stupid, racist caricature wasn`t enough, there had to be TWO. They already had Bumblebee with them on their journey so they only needed one of these guys, it would be less work for the animators and should also make it cheaper. Instead of being a stupid idiot he (since there is only one of them now in this hypothetical example) could be a competent warrior and the comedy could come from that he has gotten a few expressions and a few facts about earth wrong. For instance: when they get to the pyramids he could say: "So this is where Lenin is buried" (Lenin was mummified after his death after all). And here`s a funny exchange of words they could have in one scene:

Skids/Mudflap: Let`s kick some Donkey!

Sam or Mikaela: I think you mean "Ass".

Skids/Mudflap: Meh, Tomayto, Potahto. And instead of being illiterate: he couldn`t read the text because it was ancient cybertronian.

Arcee

There are female autobots in this movie. Not many though and they don`t have much screen time (About 39 seconds, less than a minute, out of the movie`s 2½ hours runningtime. And that includes scenes where they are in their motorbike forms doing nothing.) and one dies near the end. (If I`m not mistaken there were more than one in the beginning of the movie, but I don`t remember seeing the other female autobots in the rest of the movie and I don`t remember if

anything was mentioned about what happened to them.) Arcee appeared in eight episodes in the cartoon  BTW.Arcee should have had more screentime, and she didn`t have to die in the end. Personally I wouldn`t mind if it was she that joined Sam, Mikaela, Bumblebee and Leo on their journey to the pyramids instead of Skids/Mudflap.

Inconsistent laws of physics

A while ago I watched a video where some guy listed things he hated about this movie. One of them was a scene where a helicopter carries Optimus Prime`s lifeless body and drops it on the ground like a giant pile of scrapmetal. He felt that this was Bay being completely disrespectful to the character. Personally I thought Bay just wanted to bring in in a little realism. Prime was heavy and those wires couldn`t keep him up forever. However, earlier in the movie Sam is being thrown around by Decepticons and falls from heights that would have killed an ordinary human. If you`re gonna have realistic (or at least believable) laws of physics in your movie, keep them consistent.

The Big giant fight near the end between the humans and the Decepticons

It went on a bit too long. It could have been shorter and some of that time could have been given to Prime`s battle with the fallen, which was a little too short.

The immature humor

There are a bunch of things that I`d like to collect in one common category.

Sam`s mom running around high on campus: While I`m OK with the scene where she mentions that someone offered her brownies, the scene that comes after where she attacks/tries to get a piggyback ride from someone on the school`s lawn just felt like an unnecessary stretch of that gag. Lose it.

The dogs humping each other: Was not necessary in a 2½ hours long film that cost 200 million $ to make. Lose it.

Wheelie humping Mikaela`s leg: Instead he could have rubbed his head against her leg like a cat, and her reaction could have been flattered, yet weirded out. Or: she could be just weirded out. Or: just lose this joke completely.

Leo running out from the bathroom with his pants down: Instead he could run out (with his pants on) and shout:"I need your help! My friend just fainted in the bathroom!" (Yes, I know, the museum was closed so he`d very likely still get arrested, but still.)

Jetfire: I`m OK with him being old, but does he have to be a caricature? And I`d lose the parachute fart joke.

Devastator`s "balls": Lose it!

Robot heaven

The Autobots are not biological beings but they are sentient so I could buy this, but it was introduced very late in the movie. Instead: Sam doesn`t have a near death experience and the matrix doesn`t have to crumble to dust in his hands earlier in the movie. (Thus shortening the long running time by at least a few minutes.)

-Transformers Dark of the Moon-

My brother rented it on DVD and I gave it a watch. Slightly better than Revenge of the fallen but still not that good. Giant robots was not enough to distract me from the movie`s Bay-isms. Can`t really come up with ideas of how I would have changed it except two things:

Bumblebee`s voice

Like I said, his voice was fixed so why keep the soundclip thing? In the scene where he says Goodbye to Sam he could have done it in his original voice since it was an important moment for at least one of them.

Sam clearly acting suspicious when the watch-decepticon takes over his body

Like when he summersaults over a table for comedic effect. Was that really necessary? He could have acted normally and, at most, only have a few facial tics.

And that`s my list.

#transformers #editorial #constructive #criticism #rise of the fallen #81scorp