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respectthepetty · 6 months

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Because when a color demon is summoned by @negrowhat and @mggsttn's post, I show up!

Top 5 - Color-Coded Storytelling in BLs

Y'all already know what number one is, but let's pretend you don't. Instead follow me on this journey into BLs that gave the best color-coded storytelling. In order to be considered for this list:

The story had to integrate the colors into multiple aspects of the series: wardrobe, lighting, accessories, setting, etc.

The colors had to be meaningful to the plot.

The narrative did not explicitly state what the colors meant.

The color coding had to be consistent and featured in each episode.

The series has to be finished.

So let's begin!

Honorable Mention: Oh No! Here Comes Trouble

This isn't a BL (yet it's queer, so anyone who says it isn't can argue with the ghosts), but that damn red thread of fate had me and Yiyong messed up all season! The appearance of the color red in the series was less of an alarm, and more of a signal that every single moment was connected. All those single red threads that Yiyong and his unlikely crime-solving buddies weaved each episode came together at the last minute not only to solve the crime, but to stitch Yiyong together and bring him back from the edge of death because the true message of the show about fate and dying was how connection is what makes life worth living.

#5 - Moonlight Chicken

Director Aof and Cinematographer Rath never miss, but this particular story being told in this series through the symbolism and lighting depicting moon vs. sun, coldness vs. warmth, dislike vs. love, and so much more was phenomenal. Watch the scene of Li Meng holding a crying Heart in Heart's cold, blue, dark room then witness the two kissing in Li Meng's warm, orange-ish, bright living room or watch the hatred and blue melting off of Alan as he begins to find love again and you'll understand that the color coding in this show wasn't just a simple red versus blue dynamic. This was the work of PROFESSIONALS. This color coding was like tiramisu made by the best Italian chef; it had layers and was effing delicious!

#4 - My Beautiful Man

This show did several visual devices oh-so-well. We got Hira always being lower than Kiyoi. We got the duck. We got Hira capturing Kiyoi with his camera instead of being present with him. We got traditional colors but with that Japanese twist. And all of the elements worked together to give us an elite visual story. Hira was blue. Kiyoi was white. Hira was the loyal and reserved servant. Kiyoi was a god. Yet this was the point of contention between the two. Kiyoi wasn't a heavenly being. He was a human boy devoid of love. He wanted Hira to love him, not worship him. He wanted Hira to stand with him, not lower himself. He wanted Hira to live with him, not through him. So we saw Kiyoi struggle with his color when he didn't feel stable in their relationship, but once Hira made it clear that he loved Kiyoi, Kiyoi never shined brighter.

#3 - My Love Mix-Up

Nobody does colors like Japan. It color codes its ties. It leans into the religious aspect of the light versus dark color scheme. It invents new ways to color-code and is always evolving . . . like Aoki's orange color did in this series. Our disaster bisexual started the series with a muted color and as he discovered he liked a boy and not the girl he originally was crushing on, his color started to emerge. At first it was a soft yellow, but by the end, it was a vibrant orange. Ida was a solid blue, so watching Aoki's feeling deepen for him was electric each time the blue lighting lingered on his face until it overwhelmed him. Oh, and that color exchange is the best that has ever been done!

#2 - Semantic Error

This show tricked us. Jae Young played us the way he played Sang Woo, yet Jae Young's true colors were revealed as the boys spent more time with each other because isn't that the entire point of color coding? Seeing people's true colors without having to be told? Jae Young started off as red solely because quiet and introverted Blue Boy Sang Woo HATED red. That was it! That was the entire reason Jae Young became red. He just wanted to piss off Sang Woo. But as the boys worked together and Jae Young's personality shown through, Sang Woo realized Jae Young wasn't the devil he made him out to be and was actually a pretty chill Green Guy who he wanted to hug longer than two weeks.

#1 - Big Dragon

The only reason 82% of the crowd decided to watch this show was because of the visual above. Let that sink in. This one visual piqued y'alls interest enough to watch a show about a guy drugging someone to have sex with him and blackmail him with the tape of it so he could *looks at notes* get the girl? A girl?! And the guy who was drugged, almost sexually assaulted, and blackmailed was *checks notes again* HE WAS IN TO IT?!

Y'all hated this show. I loved it. Y'all think it was ridiculous. I love it. Y'all are rolling your eyes right now. I will always love it because it understood the assignment! I can't keep repeating the same points over and over, but here I go again:

Everything was color coded!

And it all supported the story. It never distracted from the story. It never became its own story. It was laced into the story. It did exactly what visual rhetoric is supposed to - show don't tell.

And it showed me when Yai opened his heart to Mangkorn.

And how Mangkorn's love transformed Yai.

It showed me that Yai's sister was his only source of light living in that isolated house.

It showed me the warmth Yai felt from Mangkorn's mom.

And it showed me that no matter how much he protested, Yai was deep in love.

And to think it all started here.

And ended up here.

That's the power of color coding and remarkable visuals.

It makes you see the beauty is in the details.

#color coded boys in love #the colors mean things #color coded storytelling #I'll have a different answer when something better comes along #until then big dragon is always the answer #moonlight chicken #my beautiful man #my love mix-up #semantic error #big dragon

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iamarealkat · 2 months

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Kind of couldn’t let humanity forget about this.

About Hannibal’s drawing pencils…(Decided to make a whole separate post about Hannibal Lecter’s drawing supplies to keep all the things I figured out after really attentive, extensive and obsessive research & viewing. Thanks to @existingcharactersdiehorribly for signal boosting my original questions! Sharing the fruit of my labours for the good of all Fannibals.)

1. Free range psychiatrist drawing habits

Hannibal DOES, in fact, draw with Tombow MONO graphite drawing pencils! (Originally, I just tossed the idea out there because these beautiful Japanese pencils seemed to fit his style, and it was an accurate guess.) These are professional drawing pencils, high-density graphite, strong point, smooth line. Hannibal has several at hand when he is drawing (which makes sense since his drawings have different values): in one scene, he’s shown with four different pencils while working on one sketch.

In case you want to sketch like Baltimore socialite Hannibal, this is a Tombow MONO.

He sharpens them with a scalpel (again, makes sense, a blade is preferable to a pencil sharpener for a better point).

Hannibal doesn’t seem to use a kneaded eraser, which is strange, nor have I spotted a blending stump (tortillon), but he has an ergonomically shaped triangular eraser. It looks like one of Faber-Castell grip erasers, the one Hannibal uses is the triangular shape but in a dark colour, possibly dark green (?). He also has a brush (to brush off the bits of eraser from the drawing).

2. Cooped up BSHCI resident drawing habits

Apparently Dr Alana Bloom provides Hannibal with quality drawing supplies. Unlike his usual set of hexagonal graphite pencils, Hannibal is seen with a single black round one. The lead is very black, suggesting a mix of charcoal and wax or charcoal and lead. It would have a soft matte finish. After squinting about 1001 times watching it roll over Hannibal’s table for half a second, I am certain it is Sanford Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencil, 935 Black, which is actually much more expensive than a single MONO drawing pencil (rough estimate: approx. $6.50 for 935 Black vs. approx. $1.50 for a Mono?). Alana is really pampering Hannibal.

In case you want to sketch like Hannibal in BSHCI, this is a Sanford Prismacolor Premier 935 Black.

(NB: Hannibal also uses a different pencil while in BSHCI, specifically, during the coversation with Alana about his insanity plea. The non-drawing tip is similar to the Tombow MONO, but I can give no definitive opinion yet.)

So far I haven’t been able to identify Hannibal’s drawing paper (loose sheets). He seems to use at least two types, one which appears heavier and with a warm tint (example), the other less heavy, smooth and prone to minor creasing (example), probably for looser preliminary sketches? But there’s also an unfinished study of a woman on a warm-tinted (or perhaps yellowed with age?), thinner, slightly creased paper (this one). Examples from NBC Hannibal site.

If you have any ideas about the grain, weight, tint, and brand of Hannibal’s drawing paper, or any observations of his use of erasers and blending stumps, please let me know! Or just chime in if you, too, care about Hannibal’s drawing supplies.

cc: trobador (banned I think?)

#hannibal’s sketching utensils #hannibal #hannibal lecter #tv series #art #fannibal #yeehaw peepaw #peepaw

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wutheringmights · 1 month

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AUTHORS COMMENTARY FOR NEW CTB PLSSSSS😭😭😭

Thank you! I would be more than happy to explain myself.

My commentaries have, historically, been a pain in the butt to read on a formatting level. I have attempted to fix this by breaking up the commentary into labeled sections. Consequently, this led to me writing out way more than I normally would.

So, enjoy.

[The Past]

Pre-Festival & Festival Day

As I mentioned previously, I wrote a significant part of this past section for the last chapter-- all the way up until Link asks for Icarius’s name. I ended up cutting the chapter into two for space, which meant that there was a few weeks between writing the first and second half of the icarius stuff.

I really did not spend as much time with the latter half as I wanted to, and I think it suffers for it. I’ll elaborate on that in a second. Let’s try to stick to talking about the chapter in a somewhat chronological order.

I joked about this last weekend, but Jakucho is extremely funny for hearing Link speculate about Icarius and Nephus and deciding, “Yup. Not my problem. Have fun with that.” Of course, she thinks he’s obsessed with Nephus and not Icarius.

Gaze upon my weak attempt to confirm Ayane is trans. I think this might have been a bit of a clunky way to do it. I never know how to get characters to confirm their identities without it sounding too much like a script read. Hopefully, this was at least clear if not entirely blatant.

Holidays are such an important part of world building, and I think it is very silly when you are in a fun little fantasy world and they celebrate not-Christmas or the like. That being said, sometimes you are so exhausted of any ideas that you have to sit down and say “Fuck it. Off-brand Halloween.”

That being said, having a holiday to mourn the loss of the Sacred Realm feels fitting for the world, even if the inclusion of masks was a bit clunky.

I really do think an under-explored area of Zelda lore is that the goddess’s realm is just... gone. Corrupted. Where are the goddesses now that the Sacred Realm is the Dark World? Is there a holy crusade to restore the Dark World to the Sacred Realm? I think Nintendo could do a dark fantasy spin off about this. Or when I finally get around to running that Hyrule homebrew DND campaign I have been cajoling my friends into playing, I’ll make it a plot point.

Now that I am typing this, I am realizing that I really should have had a little moment where all the masks forces Link to remember the child. Fuck.

In my original vision, Icarius was going to be very polite and quiet while at Jakucho’s estate, only for his next scene to be him snarking at some guys during a bar fight. What a bait and switch that would have been.

When I was a kid, I genuinely thought that the keaton mask was supposed to be a Pikachu mask (in part because I had only seen it in my cousin’s copy of Super Smash Bros). Hence, the yellow fox vs yellow mouse banter.

Link’s House / Icarius Backstory

Writing Icarius and Link banter was surprisingly difficult. I have this whole vision in my head about these two being loving to verbally spar with each other. And for some reason, the dialogue was just not flowing the other day.

And by the other day, I mean that a part of my major revisions the day of posting was to fix this entire section. Did it work? Not really. But I got a D grade prose up to a B-, and that was going to have to do.

My biggest gripe is their conversation in Link’s house, where Icarius info-dumps his entire backstory. In my brain, this scene would have felt dark and moody while still being a little romantic. They definitely hit all the points I needed them to hit for the plot, but it just... it’s so stilted. It doesn’t feel like Icarius is unloading years-worth of grievances on someone who he can trust to listen, if only for a night. It feels like Icarius is reading from a script. Ugh.

There was going to be an in-story explanation from Icarius as to why his hair is bleached that never actually came up. For those curious, it’s that Nephus had the grand idea first to bleach his hair but was worried it wouldn’t look good. So he had Icarius dye his first. Sure enough, he thought it looked terrible and decided to not go through with his end. Icarius was going to be very annoyed by that and would bitch about how long it would take for him to grow it out again.

I originally was not going to give him the bleached hair to begin with, but after everyone made fun of Warriors for not recognizing him in the first place, I felt like I had to make a significant change to his appearance. It actually helped to get him to play the role I needed him to play in Link’s post-war problems.

Let’s rewind. In my original outline, Icarius was never here in Kakariko. This entire chapter would have instead been Link deciding on his own terms to get over his hang-up over being involved with men and going out to flirt with one. This would have been a random soldier who had been discharged and was just passing through town on his way home from the war. Link would have subconsciously been attracted to him because he resembled the engineer.

For example, he would have made some comment about liking how strong his hands were.

This soldier was truly going to be a random guy. At most, he would have mentioned rooming with a friend on-leave named Arlo (who appeared earlier in story as a soldier in the trenches). The whole point was that Link felt like he could connect with another person as long as he didn’t give them a chance to look too deeply into him.

But after the House of Nephus characters were all introduced, I realized I needed to find some way to elaborate on them. Switching out the random soldier for Icarius was the easiest move.

Does it work? Kinda? It definitely helps the obsession plotline, but the original point got lost among all of the Icarius backstory.

So, Icarius backstory. I feel terrible for everyone who was looking forward to Link being swept away in a beautiful, touching romance. I tried to warn you.

Icarius and his relationship with Nephis is fascinating to me, and I really feel like I only have time to scratch the surface. Icarius is very smart, but believes that Nephus is one the “good ones.” But he can see that Nephus is starting to lose respect for him, so he plays these tricks to remind him that he’s still needed. He knows its foolish but his entire like has encompassed Nephus and he’s scared to know what it would look like without him. It works for a while, but not long enough. The reader knows that it stops working because that smart mouth of his that always picks fights gets taken away.

And that’s not even addressing the greater society Icarius lives in or the way Philo’s addition changes things for him even more.

All that’s to say that even if Icarius is not the perfect romantic lead people were hoping for, I intended to suggest in-story that if either him or Link were in different circumstances, there could be something there.

I actually really like the idea of Warriors’s love interest being an agent of an enemy state who is mean to him in the exact way he thinks is hot. Instead of inventing Hylian soldier or Sheikah warrior OC’s to be Warriors’s love interest, can there be more of this? It doesn’t even need to be Icarius. I just think falling-in-love with-the-enemy-but-the-enemy-is-a-shithead-about-it is an extremely funny dynamic.

There is also nothing funnier than Icarius thinking he’s met a nice, normal guy only to realize mid-act that he Messed Up

Also I hope this contexts helps fill-in the blanks for some of Icarius’s actions in the present day, which is no doubt a lot of “oh crap, it’s that guy I screwed that one time” and “how dare you forget about the one time we screwed!”

Post-Icarius Timeskip

I really needed to spend a few days at least on that last bit about Link’s realization. It’s so pivotal for his character, and I really just shoved it in at the end there. I’m going to have to add a lot of flowery prose to the beginning of next chapter to make up for it.

That being said, it’s important to me that there really isn’t a specific trigger for him realizing what he’s done. He just finally feels comfortable and safe enough for his brain to start processing everything he did.

It was very important to me that Link decided to stop dwelling in his past by putting a bowl into his cabinet, only for that bowl to break when he realizes what he’s done. Symbolism and stuff.

[Present Day]

Ganondorf’s Arrival & Townhouse

I’m really happy that so many of you were excited for Ganondorf’s arrival last chapter. That scene was so cheesy that I was worried it would dampen the excitement of actually getting to see him.

Originally, Ganondorf and Lincoln were going to have their argument in a bedroom, but I moved it to the foyer for convenience sake. But in my mind, I never moved Lincoln’s starting place from hiding in Ganondorf’s room, hence why he started the scene at the top of the stairs and not a more logical spot (in the hallway).

The reason it was going to be in the bedroom was because I thought Lincoln had snuck past Ganondorf’s guards and housestaff. But they all know about Lincoln, so it made more sense for Lincoln to subtly enter through the back entrance. It’s a whole thing.

I think my favorite part of the Chain already being at Ganondorf’s house is that there’s an implied subplot that happened off-screen where they plus Lincoln had to go hunting for where they thought Ganondorf was staying.

When Spirit pretends to not know who Ganondorf is, there was going to be a joke where the boys are trying to explain everything and he’s like “oh, so we’re all being racist here.” I ended up cutting it because, well, they were being racist.

Speaking of which, the whole thing with the maid calling Warriors “my lady” is that Warriors was going to try to gently correct her (because he thinks she’s stupid), only to find out that she was just being passive aggressive

Some may remember that one of the hardest cuts I made to CTB was a reporter OC. You can definitely tell that I am massively regretting that cut right now. Imagine how could it would have been for Warriors to pressure this antagonist journalist who’s been reporting all his fuck-ups into helping him fix everything. That sub plot would have been so good.

I was going to have a few of the other heroes confront Warriors as to why he credited Zelda, reaching a similar conclusion that his narration provided. Ended up cutting it for space.

A lot of the black blood stuff that I came up with for this chapter really doesn’t hit with LU, but at this point, I really don’t care.

There’s something about how Spirit viewing monsters and humans the same resulting in him very easily killing people while also being the only one who would realize that black blooded monsters could have always been cured, had anyone thought about it before. I just enjoy the way this man thinks.

Also, Spirit really enjoying spicy food is such a stupid character quirk, and I am almost ashamed of how much effort I went to develop it. Originally, I wanted Wild to get so fed up with Spirit being unimpressed with his cooking that he would demand Spirit to cook one night, only to discover that he actually can’t cook and just overcompensates with a shit-ton of hot sauce.

Ganondorf’s speech about how to win a war is partly the result of me spending months ruminating about how the Triforce could be used to end a war ethically, and partly an exploration of how Ganondorf thinks

I wanted to do one last scene of everyone leaving, where Wind would confront Time about being an asshole to Ganondorf. I cut it for space, then convinced myself that I would have time to add it back in, only to then cut it for time. My apologies to the Wind fans who have gotten nothing as of late.

Hospital & Family Dinner

I said before that I wasn’t initially going to rescue Toto until the end, which means that I had no plan for how Toto would feel until now. I realized that Toto was just... done. He wanted no part in Warriors’s life any longer. Unlike Kat, who got a lovely send off, I think this will be the last we see of Toto: an unfinished, unresolved mess of emotions.

When I was first describing Lincoln’s casual fit, I remember thinking to myself that I was just describing a semi-retired aged rockstar. The image has not left my brain, and if I was willing to throw a few more anachronisms into the story, I would have 100% described Lincoln like that.

Fun fact: Orlanda’s family was going to come back in the form of her sibling being a prominent member of the rebellion. I didn’t do it because it was getting ridiculous how many relevant people were related to each other.

When I was first coming up with Linkle’s character, I had the idea that she had that shallow form of feminism where it’s a big win for women everywhere when, say, generic action heroine wears pants. So I had it in my mind that Linkle hates dresses on principle. So during the fever dream sequence, when Warriors dreamt that Linkle was fawning over a dress, it was to show that he didn’t really know her that well.

But I never really established this idea that well and no one knew this about Linkle, so into a dress she goes.

I told myself that I was going to scour the entire story to double check if I had ever described Lincoln laughing anywhere, but never got around to it. But the nice thing about unreliable narrators is that if I get something wrong, I can just blame Warriors (that is not really how unreliable narrators work)

I have a friend who “tee-hees” while she laughs, and it’s the cutest thing ever. I just think it would be fun if Lincoln also has an adorable little kitten laugh.

I had to look up how they build roads on dunes for this chapter.

I did write the full Lincoln and Ganondorf backstory in a post way back when, if anyone wants to review it. It would be nice to get to get all the small details into the main story, but it’s really not pertinent to any of the main action

I definitely talked about Niko before, but I can’t find the posts. To refresh: Niko is Spirit’s uncle, in that he’s a member of the Macaryll family but no one can remember who he’s actually related to. Spirit’s parents are dead, and he lived with a different uncle and aunt until his apprenticeship. Then he moved in with Niko since he lived near Alfonzo.

Warriors hating chocolate is a character quirk that’s not necessary to the story, but I just think is too funny to not go out of my way to include

The idea of Linkle and Lincoln dancing came from a completely different scene idea. I played around with doing a similar set-up while the Chain is on the road to the Zora’s Domain. The scene would start with Sky showing Lana how to do a Skyloftian dance, which would lead to everyone else showing off their moves. When Warriors admits that he doesn’t think he could dance anymore, Spirit would teach him a New Hyrulean dance that required only one hand.

That led to an idea of Warriors dancing with Linkle and Lincoln, then just Linkle and Lincoln dancing themselves.

The night was going to end with Warriors forgetting his scarf and, when he went back to get it, he would overhear Lincoln venting to Ganondorf about how the whole stepping up as the parent thing is going. This got cut because it’s more fascinating when you’re forced to infer that a character is thinking.

The Walk Back & Out Dancing

This scene of Warriors and Spirit walking back together and opening up is my real pride and joy this chapter, which unfortunately got massively overshadowed by everything else.

So I will now take time to gush.

Spirit’s photography... so I wanted to give this man a hobby because the man cannot just like trains. I know everyone headcanons it as his hyperfixation, but it’s also his job. He needs a richer life than just that one thing. Granted, I took the route of making him start as a trainspotter like the Spirit Tracks NPC Ferrus.

I just feel like I am so correct about Spirit liking photography. I want this to be my cultural impact. I know I said that already about Icarius, but I mean this more. Go forth and give that man a camera.

The official document Spirit was carrying around was his engineering license.

Also, I was 100% ready for everyone to flood me with questions about Spirit’s ex-boyfriend. After the ickywars ordeal, I figured that there was a significant chance y’all wouldn’t be normal about him. I was prepared. And you know what? I’ve heard zilch. So, let me info dump about this man now.

Spirit’s ex-boyfriend is named Jean. He is on the cusp of 30 (compared to Spirit’s 23/24). He’s a mechanic, which is a few steps below Royal Engineer. He lost his leg in a work accident when a piece of machinery fell on him. They met through work. Spirit goes through phases of being a serial dater before swearing off dating for a few months, but Jean is the first person to make it past an awkward first date and hit relationship status. Spirit thought that because he was older, he would be more understanding.

And Jean tried. He really did. But Spirit is massive defensive and always on the offensive, so every slight disagreement turned into an explosive argument. Jean decided that he could not deal with someone who could not have a rational conversation with him, so he dumped him after 6 months. This was fairly recent, about three months before Spirit returned to Warriors’s era.

Spirit was going to name drop Jean in his speech later, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make it clear who Jean was without it sounding awkward.

I really like Spirit and Warriors’s conversation about Icarius, if only because it shows where their communication fails. When Warriors insists that you have a duty to disobey bad orders, he is criticizing himself for falling into the military mindset. This sounds like a criticism to Spirit, who insists that people will do anything under orders because that is what he did.

After Warriors has spent nearly every chapter since his amputation bemoaning his disability, I really wanted there to be a moment where he realizes that just because his ability level is different, he doesn’t have to give up doing everything he loves. That’s just an important lesson for him to learn, even if it is a little inspiration-porn-y.

The Hot Mess

You might realize that there is a massive elephant in the room I am not going to discuss here. That is because this post is going into the main tag. No one has complained to me yet, but let’s not tempt anyone right now. Just like the Neck Thing, I’ll make a separate post later for anyone who wants it. Just remind me in a few days.

With that being said--

Them sharing a cigarette was another scene that was originally conceived as taking place during the trip to the Zora’s Domain. Spirit’s anecdote about failing to make friends would have served as an early hint about his loneliness and inability to make friends.

I also have never smoked a cigarette before, so I had to sit there on wikiHow reading up on how to smoke one without coughing.

The half in Spirit’s four and a half attempts at quitting is this time he decided to quit, only to relapse after three hours. It was too short to count as a full attempt.

Spirit’s speech hopefully reveals what exactly is Spirit’s problem, both how he sees it and how it really is. Unlike Warriors, he never found support and healing once the war ending. No one understood his experiences, and his coping mechanism of lashing out ward away anyone who could help him. Spirit just wants to feel better, but he doesn’t know how.

Like... his whole thing about starting his own garage-- he’s a child prodigy who is used to be good at the things he does. He ended up tarnishing his own reputation, so he threw himself back into work because working on trains and fulfilling his dream is supposed to make him happy. He’s successful, but he’s not satisfied.

I was also expecting people to have a ton of questions about why Alfonzo disowned Spirit. In short, Spirit was already on a thin line with his lashing out and shitty attitude. Alfonzo was willing to let that slide until he realized Spirit was breaking work regulations to go on more runs without taking the legally required amount of time to rest inbetween. Spirit was a legal liability. He fired Spirit, but made it very clear that he was doing him a favor by not reporting him and getting his Royal Engineering license suspended.

No one else in New Hyrule knows the real reason why Spirit was fired, so they all assumed it was his personality. So he has a bit of a reputation now for being hard to work with.

Another thing that was not 100% conveyed in Spirit’s speech was that even if he didn’t hurt Zelda, he could not be with her because he does not want to be Prince Consort. His experiences in Warriors’s Hyrule thoroughly scared him off from politics, though he would have refused anyway since he would never give up being an engineer.

Fundamentally, Spirit is an extremely lonely person who has felt abandoned by everyone in his life. He knows that his life is the way it is now because of his experiences with Warriors. His guiding principle is trying to find some way to fix himself so that he can get the life he was supposed to have, one where he is happy and loved.

I just... god, I love this character.

And then there’s Warriors, who feels like he not capable of change and that any opportunity he has to change has been denied to him. Fixing Spirit and Time’s relationship was supposed to be a part of his redemption. Making Spirit happy was supposed to mean he’s forgiven. He has no friends, not in the Chain or in Toto. No one needs him.

Warriors also just means so much to me. I adore this disaster of a human being.

Warriors’s Plan Out

Does Warriors’s plan make sense? I am assuming it does since no one expressed confusion, but nearly every comment thus far has exclusively been about the Hot Mess (understandable).

There was a reason I was peeved I had to cut every chance in earlier in the story to go back to Castle Town, and it’s because I’ve known that it was going to be an extremely important location.

Warriors choosing to forgo a glorious revolution in favor of maintaining (if not manipulating) the status quo is not a great philosophy for our protagonist to be spouting in 2024. In my defense: a) I came up with this story in 2021, which was a different real world landscape, and b) Warriors would never become this ideal hero.

It feels more true for Warriors to not really become the idealized hero. His best is not that great. But if he can’t help being the worst, he could at least use his methods for good.

I have mentioned before that I have low empathy. Lincoln’s speech about people naturally being better or worst at being good is a product of a lot of my musing about how I sometimes feel frustrated and resentful at how hard I find it to follow the social cues that would make me a “better person.” Wouldn’t I be a better person if I had an easier time recognize when someone is in trouble and needs my help. Instead, I have to depend on myself to remember the cues, and I am so prone to mistakes.

I want to be a kind person. I want to be the best person anyone has ever met, but it’s an uphill battle. I feel like I am always working against myself. But it’s still important that I make the choice every day to be kind to others.

Besides, I have been told that I am more kind and helpful than other people, if only because I don’t rely on my feelings when deciding to reach out to others. So it has its perks.

I’m not saying Warriors has low empathy. I have expressly written him as someone with empathy. But my philosophy that kindness and caring for others is an active choice just felt like it belongs here.

There is story-canon low empathy character that I wanted to reveal in story to help Warriors beat the accusations and get people to not armchair diagnose him. I am still holding out hope I will have time and space to explore this in story, but if I don’t--

Four is written to have low empathy. It’s a consequence of the Four Sword splitting up his emotions, making it extremely difficult to tap into more than one emotion at a time, much less his empathy towards others. He can feel how this change in himself and has some thoughts on the whole thing.

Is that the end of the chapter. Fuck yeah. I’ve been working on this since Monday, If you read all this... congrats! I hope it was worth it.

Also, I forgot to mention that this is the end of Act 5. My act system is a scam and not that important, but I figured I should let you all know.

#your bonus fact is that i misspelled ganondorf's name about twenty different ways while writing this chapter #the swiftness and volume of demands for a commentary was very funny #y'all really wanted me to explain myself #bonus bonus fun fact is that it took all my will power to not formally name the chapter the Hot Mess #but like the neck thing we will just have this informal title for the scene in question lol #me rambling #lu ctb #ask #linked universe #anonymous #ctb spoilers #ctb commentary #ctb lore #fallenleafofmaple #meanlesbean #shoot-i-messed-up #savimatteo2810

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boasamishipper · 1 year

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my personal favorite highlights from the official top gun: maverick script:

meek engineer's name is simon and is dating someone at the pentagon which is how they found out about the drone ranger coming to shut the darkstar project down

"That's...blue sky up there, Mav." "Yeah, but dark blue. Ominous."

mav also called darkstar 'angel' and 'girl' which i'm glad they cut otherwise i would have died in the theater then and there

"Hondo stares at his monitor. He knows his friend well." 🥺🥺🥺

"y'all built one hell of a plane" oh mav ❤️

"For anyone unfamiliar, it’s obvious there is story here - Glory and ghosts." g o d

admiral's aide do you MIND he's having a MOMENT

warlock is described as "an affable, brilliant two-star" hell yeah

i personally think it's hilarious that cyclone was apparently top of his class in '88 but in the script he's in his forties?? even if he's 49 the film takes place in 2019?? that would make him 18 in 1988?? mr mcquarrie sir the math ain't mathing

"Maverick has had about enough of this shit" if that doesn't just sum up both movies

as a macheresin shipper the fact that hangman and coyote were planned as besties from the get-go,,,,,,,my heart is Full

"sorry i couldn't be there" oh ice 🥺🥺🥺

mcq's love for casablanca continues to shine through

penny's dad is alive and retired and still hates mav

"Keepin’ it tight, I see, Phoenix" hangman is such an ASSHOLE i HATE him (affectionate)

bob's description is "human wallpaper" i am DYING

"shit, that's fritz" i DEMAND to know why fritz's arrival elicited that reaction from fanboy!! show me the fritz&b-team daggers cut!!

"Maverick sees a ghost. From this angle, the kid is a dead ringer for Goose, just as gawky and gangly, loving life." and what if i Bawled

MAVERICK REQUESTED HONDO SPECIFICALLY

HONDO WAS GONNA MEET UP WITH A LADY IN RENO WHO IS 'AN ACROBAT' AND 'VERY FLEXIBLE'

"I need at least one person on my side here" MAV

"I'll stand somewhere else" HONDO

mav originally ran the entire class through the contents of the F-18 NATOPS 👀👀👀

in the original script rooster gave hangman his callsign...personally gonna stick with the headcanon that phoenix (if it had to be one of the daggers) was the one who gave it to him, but Very Interesting nonetheless.

rooster calls phoenix 'fee' brb peppering this into All my fics

PHOENIX IS THE MAV OF THE MOVIE CONFIRMED

I DEMAND TO KNOW IF THERE IS FOOTAGE OF GLEN POWELL SINGING 'HOT FOR TEACHER'

genuinely cannot believe mcq wrote this. he is on galaxy tier levels of thinking i could never even hope to reach.

rooster being protective of phoenix you know that's right

theo the yellow lab was originally named "t" in the script,,,,,,,,t for tony scott,,,,,,,,,

"You're a warrior, Ice. A fighter." bury me ALIVE

"(Note: Important we include PILOT POV establishing gray-out in the lead up to G-LOCK)" this script is tighter than a snare drum

"Kinda like your ass depended on it" GET HIS ASS MAV

phoenix and bob refuse to even IMPLY that mav was in any way at fault for them having to eject,,,,,,,,they are Ride Or Die

as a warlock/hondo shipper i am also Delighted they actually got some screentime together

MAV WAS SUPPOSED TO GIVE THE EULOGY AT ICE'S FUNERAL 😭😭😭😭😭

mav and hangman were apparently supposed to talk after mav chose hangman as his wingman but i'm glad that scene got cut because a) showing vs telling and b) hangman is Not emotionally aware or mature enough to say what he says here out loud and you can't convince me otherwise

"Hondo stares at him. Maverick stares back. Something unspoken passes between the two men." and mavhondo shippers everywhere rejoiced

"HONDO squeezes his fist tightly, feeling something crack. He opens his hand to see the crystal of his stopwatch is crushed, the second hand frozen. An omen." HEY MCQ WHAT THE FUCK

"CLOSE ON Hondo, reflecting on his last moment with Mav." see above

"How we gonna get this bag’a ass in the air?" "Just hang on. Cause this bag‘a ass is about to go ballistic."

"Rough Rider, this is, uh...Ghost Rider" *cries in callbacks*

"The minute Hangman touches down, pull the trip wires and have the barricade stanchions ready." (silence) "HE DOESN'T HAVE A GODDAMN TAILHOOK." (OH SHIT FUCK OKAY RUNNING NOW)

lowkey like the parallel between cyclone nodding at mav and hangman and rooster shaking hands. they still don't like each other, but they respect each other a little more now. as the script says, that's enough.

"Among the pictures is one of Goose and Maverick in the bloom of their youth - their whole lives ahead of them." 😭😭😭😭😭

WE WERE ROBBED OF PHOENIX JOINING ROOSTER AND PENNY AND AMELIA AND MAV AT THE HANGAR I REPEAT WE WERE R O B B E D

"TIME CUT as Phoenix holds two model planes, demonstrating air to-air combat to a very interested Amelia." ooooh amelia has a cruuuuuush

"Rooster turns, looks at the make-shift family taking shape in this makeshift home…And he smiles." 😭😭😭😭😭

#top gun: maverick #icemav #maverick mitchell #iceman kazansky #mavhondo #hondo coleman #warlock bates #hangman seresin #phoenix x rooster #brace #all the cuts and rewrites were definitely for the best but this is a solid script if i ever saw one #mcq deserves the oscar for the 'hot for teacher' line alone

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clay-cuttlefish · 10 days

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Vic Costume Tier List, featuring all the ones I remember plus a few I noticed while finding images. Under the cut because there are so many outfits.

S Tier

Cowan Trenchcoat - THE look. What can I say.

A Tier

Cowan Winter - Variations on this are the most common outfit in the O'Neil run for a reason. It works with every hair and hat style, and evokes the classic look without being too costume-y.

Cry for Blood - It's the simplest version of the costume, just hat, gloves, and coat all in the same colour, and it WORKS. Huge fan of the collar.

Trinity of Sin - It works as an update of the Ditko design, paring it down to the simplest elements while not quite losing the flair and muting the colors without getting into the sad gray-blue. It's just on the right side of simple vs boring and I'm very into it. Unfortunately.

B Tier

Ditko Original - Not that interesting out of context, but I actually really like that it seems more like a disguise than a hero costume, and the subdued blue works when he's in scenes with Ted. Loses points for ugly gloves.

Cowan Original - Excellent, but the trenchcoat is a direct upgrade.

Cowan Sleeveless - Banger. I'm so glad it came back in 52.

Batman Chronicles - Is it a little too edgy-anime-boy? Yes. I don't care, it's striking.

C Tier

Ditko V2 - I love the turtleneck, and it's the only design that makes the dark hair work over the blonde/red/light brown.

52 Miscellaneous - Vic doesn't generally repeat outfits in 52. He just wears his mask with normal clothes. It's the right choice for the series, but they aren't costumes. I'm only rating them at all because I love his and Renee's matching t-shirts for breaking and entering.

BatB - If you have to go for a darker, less saturated design, this one's really clean.

Worlds Collide - The stupid MMO design that got me making this, and the most mixed-bag of any design. The teal is great. I hate that he's shaped like that. The black gloves are a neat touch. His coat sucks. I'd love to see purple as an accent in more designs. The yellow's a bit much but it's also an interesting choice.

D Tier

L.A.W. - The least interesting version of this general look.

52 Trenchcoat - It works to establish him, and the short hair + no hat lets the blank face stand out, but it's forgettable.

Convergence - Eh. I get that it's meant to be a riff on his earliest colour scheme but it's just too washed out.

Urban Legends - It's just not quite right. Maybe because the trenchcoat seems stiff but it's also the same colour and texture as the waistcoat? Or something about the hat?

JLU - I swear I'm not just being a JLU Question hater here. I don't vibe with the dishevelledness or the colour scheme, and the BatB design executes the same concept in a way I like way more.

F Tier

2005 - This is nothing. It's just an outfit with incredibly ugly gloves. He looks so much better when the art gets weird.

Event Leviathan/Checkmate - Where are his ears.

DC Showcase - Started out way higher but the more I look at it while working on this the more I hate the colours.

#clayposts #the question #vic sage #i hate how high i put some of these but. i can't help it. i like them.

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doodleempireofsticks · 5 months

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In defense of Victim: a character analysis

OK before I start

Yeah, I know. I'm a hypocrite lol but, hear me out here.

After really analysing everything Victim has done...I can't say they're actually that bad anymore. Their actions seem extreme but they're actually kind of justified.

First of all, let's look at what most the fandom hates them for. The fight with The Chosen One in The Box. It's hard to watch and they certainly went all out, but it's not like Chosen isn't a dangerous character. He was a villian himself after all.

Chosen and Dark's actions likely led to many sticks losing their homes on websites and getting hurt in the crossfire, even if he was trying to free them. At worst, these actions were deliberate, at least on Dark's part. And how would Victim know if Chosen actually wanted to do this?

And I wouldn't be surprised if Victim knows.

In episode 30 of avm, King sees the first Animation vs Minecraft on a rocket corp TV

And Second sees the first Animator vs Animation during Animation vs YouTube (maybe that's why he recognises them? Theory for another day)

So is it that much of a stretch to say that Victim is somewhat aware of Chosen's past? Especially since they have some kind of access to YouTube.

Obviously this is a bit of a stretch, if Victim had seen Animator Vs Animation V they wouldn't have needed to use the memory reader on Chosen. But they must have known something about him to know that he has a connection with Alan, so it's possible.

On a similar note, they treat Second very differently. Sure, he's a less powerful stick in their eyes so they don't pay much attention to him, but he's still treated with respect.

First of all, he's left unpaused in his cell, despite the fact they already had him paused, they chose to let him at least some freedom by undoing it.

Also, when he was put in a box, it was a lot less violent.

Even when they were testing his powers the employees just...asked him. It was not forceful in any way and no one laid a finger on him.

Even when he was captured they were being easy on him

Agent Smith had second selected,he could have done anything, but all he did was spin then kick him and pause him immediately after. He was hitting him as little as possible, just trying to end the fight.

Then there's the last scene if The Box, probably the most unjustified part. But, here's the thing, Victim only has bad memories of Alan. He hurt and then tried to kill them. I think they believe Yellow is some kind of conspirator with Alan, maybe a lackey of sorts? Whatever they think, I wouldn't be surprised if this is some kind of misunderstanding. They may even be sympathetic towards Dark after seeing him be attacked by the cursor too.

Obviously this doesn't mean they're in the right. They're really not. But their actions have some kind of justice about them, and I don't think they're trying to be evil, so they actually have a good chance of being redeemed. And I can understand them now, so I at least don't hate them anymore.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I'll go back to fanart now (this was super out of my comfort zone and not the best explanation but I just wanted to say it).

#ava #av #alan becker #ava victim #animation vs animator #animator vs animation

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zkylearnstherope · 6 months

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My Fan Theories for Alan Becker's AvA 6 - Episode 2

It gets revealed that The Dark Lord is not actually evil.

Like Red before, Dark got possessed/corrupted and it somehow revived/enhanced Alan's code inside him. Chosen must've sensed this, because I think he held back a lot in the Showdown Episode.

He was named The Chosen One, damnit! He's supposed to level up along with his enemies. He can't possibly lose a fight.

He sensed something was wrong, but is not smart enough to save Dark.

victim actually works for the government/police.

When they summoned Alan's cursor during Showdown, it created public unease in the city. Like, A CREATOR IS ACTUALLY HERE!

The cursor was big enough to be spotted in the city. And when someone came to investigate, all they saw were laser marks on the ground and a missing mountain.

Naturally, the #1 suspect would be The Chosen One. In the Wanted Episode, when he saved the office worker from the falling debris with his lasers, the office worker either (a) covered his eyes to look at the bright sky, or (b) actually saluted back to Chosen.

I think it's B. So, people in the city are actually familiar with the rocket man in the sky. He would've reacted differently if it's the first time they saw Chosen. And don't get me started with the nonchalant reaction of the Corn Dog Guy.

So with this in mind, how would anyone capture a what is essentially, a virtual god? They will go for the smartest man they know, produces the most advanced technology, and who obviously has connections with Chosen since they look exactly the same.

I don't think victim is out for revenge. Like, why would he wait all this time to get back at Alan? He has all the resources now, his own company (that sells TVs), like, what else could he ask for?

I choose to believe in victim. He's the type to defend himself rather than hurt someone else. He even stopped the 3 members of the rocket group from killing The Second Coming, and asked Agent to bring him alive.

They even unpaused Second at the end. Which makes me believe that victim would want to talk/negotiate with him. What victim needs is INFORMATION, and he's not getting that from The Chosen One.

victim is actually looking for The Dark Lord

I believe Second's powers has something to do with antivirus and codes. And firing that mega-laser actually disabled Alan's Code, and in fact, DID NOT KILL Dark.

Dark surviving off-screen is not really a far stretch. Because, it already happened before in the Flashback Episode.

Now, if you take into consideration all the stuff I mentioned above...

The rocket group approaches The Chosen One, asking for The Dark Lord.

Chosen, remembering all the crimes they did during the Internet Conquest, fearing for his friend, he gets apprehensive and starts to escape. Instead of letting him get away, they had to use all the tools at their disposal. And then enter the epic chase scene from Wanted.

Other sub plot theories

Purple will show up and help them, since he actually lived in the city before, judging by the location of his Mom's grave. Purple would know about the rocket group, and can guide/help the others to stop them.

We'll see Red cry for the first time.

The fight will go like this:

Green vs. Agent Smith - both great with staffs, spears, or any long-ranged weapons, I also think that Green would be fast enough to match Agent

Red vs. Hunter/Primal - pure strength and heavy muscle

Yellow and Blue vs. Ballista/Pixel - G U N S

Purple vs. Hazard/Sign - being trained by his father Navy, Purple is actually really good at hand-to-hand combat

Alan's Giant Cursor form is not going to show up this time.

victim is going to teach Second about his powers.

---

God, I can't wait for the next episode.

#ava theory #alan becker #animator vs animation #ava 6 #ava tsc #ava second coming #ava season 2 #ava the second coming #ava chosen one

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lizzieonka · 1 year

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GIF Coloring Guide: An Introduction to Adjustment Layers in Photoshop

This is going to be a super basic guide meant to show you the power of Adjustment Layers in Photoshop. It’s not going to be a step-by-step tutorial, though, in which I dictate what exactly you should do because it will always be different for every gif.

I’ll be turning this Isagi gif:

into this:

What you need:

Adobe Photoshop (any version should be fine. I use CC v23)

Basic gif-making knowledge using Photoshop

Basic Photoshop knowledge in general

What this guide is good for: A simple gif where the brightness and colors of each frame are about the same.

I’m writing this guide for those who already know how to make a gif in Photoshop. You’ve imported your frames, deleted the ones you don’t need, and you know how to save it as a gif. I will only be teaching you how to color, so I’m not gonna walk you all through the Photoshop basics. You can google that yourself.

Now, first things first, I want you to keep in mind that the GIF file format can hold only up to 256 colors. Thus, when coloring gifs, I try to “reduce” the colors by making the blacks blacker, the whites whiter, removing color noise, and de-emphasizing colors that are not essential to the overall scene. Otherwise, the final image will just look noisy or muddy because of the gif trying to compensate for all those extra colors—which is not bad in itself, by the way, if that’s the look you’re aiming for. I just prefer my GIFs to look HD.

And from what I’ve noticed, noisy and muddy gifs will also have a larger file size. The uncolored gif above, for example, is at 6.69mb. Meanwhile, the colored gif is at 4.96mb. Both were exported using the same settings. Although we have a 10mb file size limit for gifs here on Tumblr, I still like to keep the file size down as much as I can.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to the actual guide—

In the Isagi gif I’m using as an example, I made him look like he’s glowing in the dark and also partly blended him into the background. Here’s a screenshot of all the adjustment layers I used to achieve this effect:

All these layers should be on the very top of your gif layers. I grouped them together for convenience in toggling all changes on and off, allowing me to quickly check the “before and after” of the gif.

Before I explain what those layers do, I just want you to know that the order of those layers matter. I purposely put one Selective Color at the bottom, and that second Selective Color is no mistake. More on this later.

Selective Color 1

Selective Color is my favorite, and it’s also the most important. It lets me fine-tune individual colors without affecting the other colors much. It’s also usually the first thing I add as it lets me pick which colors to emphasize and which to de-emphasize.

Now, let’s look at our unedited Isagi:

(Above is a still image and not a gif. From hereon, I’ll be using still images coz the gif looks about the same in each frame anyway)

The colors on Isagi look too gray and cold to me. I want to make the black of his suit darker, remove a bit of that green tinge on his skin, make the blue of his eyes bluer, and just give him an overall warmer look.

Here are my settings for Selective Color 1:

Unedited vs Selective Color 1:

Although I said I wanted to remove the green tinge on his skin, I did not touch the “Greens” at all in my Selective Color 1 layer. That’s because doing so would also reduce the greens in Isagi’s eyes, and I didn’t want that. Instead, I tried to counter the green on his skin by adding some Magenta and Yellow on the “Whites” to make it appear warmer and more reddish instead.

Of course, I didn’t come up with the final settings above in one go. As I added more adjustment layers on top, I would go back to Selective Color 1 and play around with the different sliders until I was satisfied. Gif coloring doesn’t have to be a one-way process. With adjustment layers, you aren’t affecting the pixels of the image itself, so you can always go back and tweak your settings.

Dragging the slider to the right for positive values would return darker colors, while dragging it to the left for negative values would return lighter colors.

I want my Isagi gif to be vivid and for Isagi to look like he’s glowing in the dark, so I dragged the sliders in “Blacks” up to the positives. Then in “Whites,” I dragged the black slider down to the negatives.

However, if you want a more muted look like this Isagi gif 2:

...You can slide the black slider under “Blacks” to the negative values instead.

Curves

Curves, along with Levels, is usually the first thing a gif-maker learns to use. It’s good for quickly getting some nice brightness and contrast on your image. I’ve seen some gif-makers refer to Curves as the better version of Levels, but I disagree. Curves and Levels, though both affect contrast in an image, go about it differently and achieve very different effects.

In my Isagi gif, I used both Curves and Levels. But in some of my other gifs, I used only one of them.

Curves is what I usually add in the beginning stages of coloring (i.e. the layer is placed lower) when doing complex coloring. Although I never make Curves the bottom-most adjustment layer, sometimes I add it first just to give the image a burst of brightness or to quickly darken an image that may be too bright. I would then put a Selective Color underneath to make necessary adjustments.

Our Isagi gif, on top of being still muddy, is now also too reddish. I had only added those reds to get some warm undertones in our gif, and now that we have that, it’s time to reduce those reds. We’re not gonna do this via adjusting Selective Color 1 because doing so would only bring back the greens we wanted out. Instead, we’re gonna subtly bring in some whites to the gif by making it brighter with Curves. And while doing so, we can also enhance the contrast on the image.

Here are my settings:

The more S-shaped that curve is, the more contrast and saturation you’ll get. I just want a subtle change, so the curve is nearly flat.

Unedited vs Selective Color 1 vs Selective Color 1 + Curves

See the difference? Now there are darker blacks and less green on Isagi’s skin. The colors are also starting to pop, and the gif looks less muddy.

If you want colors to look muted instead, like in Isagi gif 2, you can do a reverse S curve instead. Well, actually, feel free to play around with Curves. It doesn’t have to be S or reverse S. You can add as many points there as you like and form whatever curve you want.

Selective Color 2

Remember when I said that the order of adjustment layers is not random? I’m now going to explain why.

When we added Selective Color 1, the image that layer is editing would be our unedited Isagi with all those greens and grays.

However, when we added Curves on top of Selective Color 1, the image we were editing was no longer the original Isagi but the Isagi + Selective Color 1.

Layers build on top of each other. It’s like when you’re painting. If you add red paint and then put blue above it, you get violet. If you want to put another color on top, you’ll have to work with the violet and not the red that’s no longer there.

That said, our Selective Color 2 here is not going to be redundant. Selective Color 1 was coloring the unedited Isagi, but Selective Color 2 will be coloring the version that has Selective Color 1 + Curves.

Now, I intend to use Selective Color 2 to enhance Isagi’s green aura as well as the blue of his eyes. We weren’t able to increase the “Greens” in Selective Color 1 because doing so would also make Isagi’s skin green. But now that Isagi’s skin is more red than green, we can play with the “Greens” of his aura safely.

Here are my settings:

Unedited vs SC 1 + Curves + SC 2:

Levels

Now, time to make our gif bright and vivid. You can use another Curves layer here or a basic Brightness & Contrast layer, but since the colors of our Isagi gif are predominantly black and white, I’m gonna go with Levels since it works really well with black and white images.

Here are my settings:

See those 3 sliders under that graph? From left to right, those are sliders for Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. If you slide them to the right, said shadows, midtones, and highlights would turn darker. Slide them to the left, and they become lighter.

I often get carried away the first time I add Levels, resulting in extra vivid/saturated images which I later have to adjust. So yeah, try not to overdo it. It’s like vanilla extract. A little goes a long way ;)

Unedited vs SC 1 + Curves + SC 2 + Levels:

Beautiful ✨

The image is no longer muddy, but we’re not done yet!

Color Balance

I haven’t used Color Balance much in my gifs because Selective Color often does bulk of the job for me. However, the Isagi we have right now hasn’t quite yet achieved that glow in the dark effect I wanted. I also want to give Isagi that techy Matrix vibe by really emphasizing his green aura, so for that, we’re gonna add Color Balance for the finishing touches.

I think the midtones of the image look okay, so I’ll just tweak with the shadows and highlights. Here are my settings:

....And with that, we are done!

Before and after:

Compared to pre-coloring, the gif is now more vivid and not at all muddy. We also made his green aura brighter without making him look like Shrek uwu.

I actually also went to all of the 104 frames of this gif and manually reduced the noise for each one so we can have a more HD-looking gif. That’s outside the scope of coloring, though, so I won’t be including it in this guide. I’ve also reached the 30-image limit for posts, so I couldn’t include it even if I wanted to 😩

Anyways, I hoped this guide helped! There are many more Adjustment Layers that were not covered in this guide, but they should be easy to learn once you get the hang of working with multiple adjustment layers. You’ll probably never even need to use every single Adjustment Layer out there, anyway. The ones I mentioned in this post are often more than enough.

Now tagging the mutuals who may be interested in this: @usagi-yoichi and @gachagon

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pocketsizedquasar · 1 year

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how do you draw water so well what the fuck. please tell me your secrets

thank u very much FALSKJFSDJ!!! <3<3 and also uh i honestly like. don't know what to answer besides i did a lot of water studies early on in the production process and i use a lot of references

for me a lot of it is about getting the ~feel~ or the ~vibes~ of it right rather than going for pure realism (and obviously my style isn't like.. realism tm). so . focusing on where the big shapes and shadows and light fall and building up smaller details from there. if you zoom in on a lot of the water in the comic pages it kind of just looks like scribbles, but the whole image altogether conveys the mood and scene and vibes of what i want

i think something i've noticed too over painting lots of different water and looking at different references over the years is how many colors are in it? like you look at a standard photo of waves or whatever and it's dark blue. sure. but even in neutral lighting some of the shadows are more purple or green or even red. some of the highlights are yellowish or pink. some areas are super saturated blue while others are more gray -- the shadows are often some of the most saturated parts, which was counterintuitive at least to me early on. there'll be the smallest flecks of hue variation that you can't really see from far away, but including them contributes to that overall ~vibe~ when looking at it all together. even within splashes or sea spray, there's more than just the white.

and that's not even beginning to consider what the water looks like in different lighting (ie sunset or dusk ahaha or even cloud cover vs sunshine, morning vs afternoon, etc).

i also was lucky enough to grow up in california near the beach and have spent a lot of time around beaches. and, particularly as a Lot of the early comic production was during the early parts of the pandemic, i would spend a lot of time at the beach by myself and just observing the water, so I got a pretty good feel for how the ocean changes color drastically even over the course of a single day, just depending on where the sun is and how many clouds there are and etc etc. most ppl only tend to think of it having special colors at sunrise or sunset, but even over the course of a normal day, there's such a wide range of blues and greens and grays and yellows

and then i try not to go overboard with this or use it too much, but adding like an Add or Overlay blend mode over the water and putting in small strokes of light (yellow or orange or whatever the lighting color is) to give it that feel of translucency/radiance that large bodies of water have. it's a small touch but i feel like whenever i add it it elevates the water from "yeah that's water" to "OUUUGHGH THAT'S WATER," at least for me (these two side by sides are with and without that light layer — it’s also used in the above example)

I also like, don't do all this stuff if the water isn't important to the shot? like if it's just in the background (as it often is, because u know, boat) i sort of just make sure it looks vaguely . wavey . uknow. with some help of procreates wavey brush lol

anyway uh. that might have been a lot / kind of incoherent but i hope that helps hghdsfld?? it's hard for me to describe my process beyond "uh idk i look at it and i make it" adslfkjadskj but i hope this was at least a bit helpful

#ask #quasartalks #long post #art #my art #art tutorial #sort of???#resident-dumb-fuck #uh. here u go. ihope this helps. if i can clarify anything lmk #undescribed

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aprilblossomgirl · 1 year

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Color (Palettes) in Never Let Me Go - Part 2

Continuing my post about color palettes in Never Let Me Go the series. Part 1 talked about the color palettes of the show in general. This part focuses on another thing that were also visible enough: Thanya’s outfit colors as well as Nueng’s and Palm’s aside from their black-white uniform. Again, all screenshots are not color-adjusted/edited.

1. Thanya’s red, yellow, and green outfits/dress/shirts over her usual dark muted colored outfits. It was noted that she used these bright colored outfits only when Nuengdiao was present -- Red, during the announcement that she will take over as the new CEO of Phiphop’s company. Besides Nueng, there were also many other people (public setting). Yellow, when she just came back from Phuket, and talked with Chanon and Palm, and then Nueng came and hugged her (semi-private setting). Green, when she entered Nueng’s room when he was watching a video of Thanya being attacked while giving a presscon (private setting). Red, when she showed a hard exterior as someone that needs to step up taking over the role as a business leader in place of her late husband. Yellow, when she showed a softer exterior in front of her son as well as her trusted employee and his son. Green, when she showed parts of her vulnerable side to Nueng as a mother who also needs to take care of a family business.

Not necessarily associated with traffic light, but, when I thought that red means stop, yellow means careful, and green means go, I think it somehow makes sense to use those colors to symbolize Thanya’s level of openness of her vulnerability to other people. She puts up wall to public and other people including Khit -- on another note, though, it seems that she didn’t mind the rather ‘close’ interaction between Khit and Nueng when she saw them hugged in her office. She trusts Chanon, and being nice to Palm, but to some extent both sides still maintain the formal boss-employee relationship. She spoils Nueng, that goes without questions, but there were some subtle shifts through episodes 1 to 3 on how she talked with Nueng. Although, I still have my doubt that she had fully trusted Nueng to share everything, in terms of her dual roles as both a mother to Nueng and a boss to Phiphop’s business.

2. Nueng’s plain shirts vs Palm’s Hawaiian/Aloha (printed floral) shirts. I think there should be other types of combination too, such as Nueng’s striped shirts vs Palm’s plain sleeveless shirts, but I will not list them in this post, yet. So, what was interesting about the combination between the plain vs the printed floral shirt is that the plain color of Nueng’s shirts were always in-line with the color combination of Palm’s printed shirts. That is, when they shared the screen together, Nueng’s shirt color was always a part of the color combination of the shirt Palm used. In short, their colors were almost always harmonious, matching to each other you may say, either in a shade mode (darker combination; there’s a mixture or presence of black) or a tint mode (lighter combination; there’s a mixture or presence of white). Somehow, I found the color pairing to be visually easy to my eyes. In a way, such color and pattern pairing may also suggest that both of them are visually��balancing each other. It’s also interesting to note that, as the official trailer showed, in later episodes, we will see Nueng eventually wearing similarly styled printed shirts as well, especially during the beach scenes.

Episode 1 - first meeting: Palm’s shirt was in a gradient of light-dark color scheme with hints of black/dark gray, brown, dusty blue/green/gray, yellow, and a bit of white. Nueng’s shirt was in brown, rather similar or in a monochromatic term with that little hint of brown on Palm’s shirt. The color pairing between the two outfits was in complementary scheme.

Episode 2 - “pengyou” scene: Palm’s shirt was in a lighter color scheme including hints of red, darker or muted orange, lighter orange (more dominant), and a bit of green, with light cream as the fabric’s main color. Nueng’s shirt was in muted darker orange, similar to one of the colors on Palm’s shirt. The color pairing was in analogue scheme with some tints of orange monochromes.

Episode 3 - dance scene: Palm’s shirt was in a light-dark color scheme with the shades of green, a bit of black or very dark green, and yellow as the fabric’s main color. Nueng wore a white shirt, and a very dark green suits/outer which color was similar to one of the greens on Palm’s shirt (I double checked with the Behind-the-Scenes video to be sure, but maybe it was quite hard to decide if it’s actually a dark green or just a darker shade of any other color). The color pairing here was also in analogue scheme.

Episode 3 - shooting range: Palm’s shirt was in a darker color scheme dominated by a shade of turquoise, I think (?), as the fabric’s main color, with hints of lighter brown, yellow, darker green, white, and a bit of black. Unlike the previous three shirts, this one doesn’t include palm trees in its motif. Nueng wore a white shirt and a black vest, both colors also can be found on Palm’s shirt. This color pairing was in between almost complementary and triad (if only there’s a hint of purplish color on Palm’s shirt).

Notes: Analogue color scheme implies a similar or closer-in-relations color combination (colors are side-by-side on the color wheel), monochromatic scheme refers to a deeply harmonious and calming color combination (colors consists of one basic tone with shades and tints to it), and the complementary scheme suggests opposition or high contrast (colors are on opposite sides of the color wheel). I have yet to find any triadic color scheme, which represents a more vibrant and balanced color combination.

Reference.

#never let me go #never let me go the series #nlmg 🧡#never let me go colors #cinematography #color #color palette #color scheme #long post #color wheel really is so helpful in seeing these color combinations #i feel like updating my lecture notes on color scheme after this #now i'm tired

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tiffanylamps · 1 year

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𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝑩𝒆𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝑬𝒗𝒊𝒍 (𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐚)

𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝟏: 나타나다 Pals, I wrote this post months ago (maybe at the end of last year??? I don't know). I wrote it with the intention of rewatching the whole show and doing episode reviews/documenting my musings. But.... life got in the way (as it always does).

But as today is the two year anniversary of the first episode airing, I thought I might as well share what I wrote. Even though it only covers the first like... 20 minutes of the episode lol

Having said that, I will note that there's definitely an abundance of rambling, as well as me taking the piss out of Joo Won, and of course, me thirsting HARD for Shin Ha Kyun 😌 So, are you wearing your glasses? Cause, I am. fyi, you're going to need a drink and maybe a snack because this is a very long post. I hope you enjoy what I share. Please note: Do not read this if you haven’t seen the whole show. It contains major spoilers.

Part 1/2 (??) Okay, out of all 16 episodes, the first is the one I have seen the most. I have previously done a ridiculous review of it, which you can read here. ⬅️ Now for my unorganised thoughts (which have been organised more as bullet points than anything else):

I like BE’s intro/title sequence. There are some very sexy scene selections and colour grading. I’m personally a little fatigued when it comes to glitch art, so the little 90s-inspired glitch effects don’t “wow” me. But I still appreciate that they included this in the overall design of the show’s aesthetic

here are some of my favourite shots

⬆️ THAT'S GAY! Dong Sik looking down with his eyes open and Joo Won looking up with his eyes closed??? heaven vs hell, open mind vs closed mind. Bound together by cuffs (their version of the red thread of fate) on THEIR LEFT HANDS. resting their heads against each other????? Excuse me, but this has no right being so obvious

I didn’t like the soundtrack when I first watched the show… I know… I know. I did like a few songs but overall, I wasn’t too keen on the general sound. Now, however??

i'm grooving Also, does anyone else get... you know... in the opening scene when Dong Sik demands Ji Hoon to put his flashlight into the air so he can find him?? 😳 sir, give me a chance! I like a logical man (who canonically was just flirting with his future boyfriend)

Also, I like that Ji Hoon is wearing a yellow and blue raincoat in this scene. I wonder if this is a slight nod to the yellow raincoat serial killer, Yoo Young Chul?? Also, visually, it is an early indicator of Ji Hoon’s age, as he (out of the three men in the scene) is the only one wearing bright primary colours, which is often associated with young children/younger people. It could also be a subtle indication of his profession, as the South Korean police use blue, yellow, and red as a part of their emblem's colour scheme. It is also an efficient way of adding contrast to an otherwise very dark and semi-monochromatic scene.

"동식아"/ “Dong Sik-ah”- JUST YES. Through the power of honorifics alone, we are able to gauge the nature of Ji Hoon’s relationship with Dong Sik, before they've even shared the same space onscreen.

Including Dong Sik’s heartbeat during this part of this scene - told entirely from his perspective - is a very nice touch of immediately humanising him to the audience and indicating the gravity of this event.

Cut to the year 2000 and we're immediately shown the killer (1 of 2). Jin Mook’s van is shown passing through various locations throughout Manyang as a way to establish the location, the events of the era, and the personality of the town. But what the creators do so artfully here is they showcase to us how Jin Mook was able to go on for 20 years without being suspected by his fellow townsfolk. We, the audience, just like everyone else in the story, do not pay attention to him/his van. Instead, we focus on the people and locations he passes through. He is almost invisible, but he is like a poison or an air bubble passing through the bloodstream, you can’t always see him, but he kills the host either way.

This sequence of events also mirrors how Joo Won is introduced

We are shown Jin Mook delivering a bouquet of flowers for a funeral (belonging to the Lee family. Which I'm guessing Jin Mook maaay have worked for or at the very least, helped out), and then immediately to Yu Yeon’s fingers.

Then we are shown Yu Yeon in the glow of the hazy sunlight basking through the church window as if she is an angel or more of a memory than a living person.

“Even when injustice strikes our world. Even when mistrust spreads. We will only believe in our Lord.” “Our world is covered in darkness. Lord, please light our world.”

These are the lyrics to the song the choir is singing. How… yeeeeah… how appropriate for the rain scene in episode 16.

I love the tenderness we see in Kim Young Hee (Yu Yeon and Dong Sik's mum). Honestly, I adore her! What a wonderful mother that loved her children and tried to do right by them. I love that Dong Sik got his curly hair from his mother, and I love that he has her wide smile (it's a smile the twins share). I love that you can see how proud Young Hee is of Yu Yeon and that, even though Dong Sik is “bringing down the family name”, you can tell that she still loves him dearly.... even if he’s a little shit.

Also, we do not give enough credit to the makeup department for the way they transformed Park Myung Shin’s appearance.

Oh god. Not Dong Sik not turning up to his grandmother’s funeral service…. In a scene where they just brought up the concept of karma, and how Dong Sik is bringing bad karma to the family… 🙃🙃

Here he is choosing not to say goodbye to a family member (in a church, no less), then later in the same day, he loses his twin sister, and then 3 years later, his father dies. He doesn’t go to the funeral of one family member and loses two family members by force…. Almost like he’s being punished for his “poor” choices. He was released from the army to attend his father’s funeral (where he was the “상주”/Sangju/Chief Mourner. He is shown all alone before Sang Bae came to support him), and then much later on, he is shown again choosing to go and to be the Chief Mourner of two more funerals (Kang Min Jeong and Nam Sang Bae). It is only when he completes this does he find out who Yu Yeon's killer is; almost as if he’s made up for his bad karma??? Am I pulling smoke out of my arse here? Probably

NOT DONG SIK BADLY SINGING ALONG TO A SONG WITHOUT A CARE! Nope. nope. STOP 😭😭😭

I find the way the three females in this scene interact with Dong Sik to be veeerrry interesting. There are no giggles, no exchanging of telling glances, no blushing, teasing, and definitely no flirting. None of them finds Dong Sik attractive (they have no taste) or believes that he finds them attractive. There is no indication of any romantic connection between him and them. They only view him as someone they can openly laugh at because he’s (in their eyes) an annoyance: someone worthy of their laughter. This scene could have been an easy way for the show to make Dong Sik het, but they didn’t do that, leaving his sexuality and relationship status during his younger years unknown to us. (Considering he didn’t go to church and that he has no romantic tension with any of the girls in his age group, it really says a lot👀)

I really like Bang Ju Seon… she’s so cool and a little mean but I respect her for it! Although....

This is uncool. But I do like that they interrogated this into the story and that it was subtly explored through Dong Sik's actions throughout the show

Young Dong Sik is really given way too much shit. They’re acting like he’s the worst kid on the block (i’m exaggerating), when in reality, he’s a 20-year-old hanging out at a music cafe in his local town. Yeah, he “starts fights”* (as noted in the church scene) but his face isn’t bruised or bloody. He’s not shown smoking or doing drugs; he’s not getting anyone pregnant. He’s just a teenager in a small religious town, who’s clearly feeling the pressures and restrictions placed upon him. He’s just trying to have fun. He’s not sure where his life is going next and honestly, that’s super okay. Poor baby, he really didn’t deserve what that town did to him. *throughout his childhood, Dong Sik would beat up bullies. But I do love how these small details of his teenage self are used as fuel for the fire. Because of his “bad” behaviour, the people in the town were quick to believe that he committed sororicide. The detail that Dong Sik is "nothing" in comparison to Yu Yeon was probably seen as a motive (he was angry about being second best and was jealous of YY, etc)

Yu Yeon has a picture of her and her mum together [top left-hand corner], just like Jae Yi.

Also, her room reminds me of Min Jeong’s

I like the detail of Yu Yeon sneaking out. It shows that she and Dong Sik aren’t as different as everyone makes them out to be. Also, I like that we’re led to believe that it was Dong Sik that “lured” her out of the house.

The Lee’s family home was so nice!! 😭😭😭😭

NO! NOt the camera lingering on where Yu Yeon’s fingers end up!

YU YEON AND DONG SIK BOTH WEAR PLAID SHIRTS. Do you think she’s wearing one of Dong Sik’s shirts??? Cause I do.

I also like that the camera focuses on Yu Yeon tucking her hair behind her ear. In visual media, this is often used to convey bashful/shyness/romantic feelings from young women. So, without words, we are being told that she’s thinking about/on her way to meet a romantic love interest.

ALSO!!! Due to the fact that the city council weren’t distributing funds equally throughout Manyang (it’s noted that they spend their budget on the densely populated areas), the lights are turned off on the road. This leads to Yu Yeon becoming scared and deciding to run to meet up with Jung Je. Perhaps, if the lights have been left on, she wouldn’t have felt scared, meaning she wouldn’t have run, and wouldn’t have ended up coming across Jin Mook murdering Ju Seon… meaning… maybe she wouldn’t have died that night.

I get shivers every time they pan down to Ju Seon's body

The religious imagery!!! The angel statue is first shown with Yu Yeon, then Ju Seon, Young Hee, Dong Sik, and then finally, Joo Won.

Okay, so this heartbreaking scene of Young Hee finding her daughter's fingers. Other than the obvious (and the way she stretches her hand out towards Yu Yeon, foreshadowing how even though she can no longer hold her daughter, she'll never let go😭😭), please note that Dong Sik and his mother have the same singing voice 🫠

Then we cut back to 20 years later/present day. But the show makes sure to show us that Seoul expanded and grew, but Manyang stayed the same/got worse (a.k.a became purgatory)

The female gaze is so sexy here. THIS IS ~THE~ INTRODUCTION SCENE OF ALL INTRODUCTION SCENES. Can you believe that Joo Won got to sleep with this man??? I honestly think about this scene every time I wash my face… that’s probably super sad but… here we are. Also, I know it doesn't need to be said but.... SHIN HA KYUN 😩😩😩😩

The shot of Dong Sik walking through his family home, with the camera following him to reveal the way the house hasn’t changed (has only been touched by time) is one of my favourite shots of the show. We are given so much information with a singular pan of the camera 😩

We are shown Dong Sik walking through his family home, stuck in time. Then the next introduction we are given is Joo Won, in his flashy sports car on his way to Manyang. It’s the equivalent of a slow-mo shot of a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun and the journey it takes before it reaches its destination. (Dong Sik is walking around in circles. Joo won is moving in a straight line, heading directly to Dong Sik. DS is shown wearing browns and reds. JW is first seen in a bright blue car. Dong Sik is shown as a person inside a family home, and Joo Won is shown inside a machine. What I’m trying to get at is that they’re shown as opposites)

NO. FUCK OFF! I JUST REALISED SOMETHING: jwds are both shown twice through glass/mirrors during their introduction sequence. (side note: I love that they're given equal attention during this sequence, it really establishes that this is their story)

Dong Sik is shown shaving- as in shedding a layer, preparing himself for the day, and getting ready for his next performance (which is something he has to overcome)

We first see Dong Sik through a fogged-up mirror, then through a completely distorted mirror. Further proving that the person we are being shown is viewed as a reflection of our perspective of him, and not the person he truly is

Joo Won is shown looking through the car window with the sun beaming on it- detailing to us that he is blinded (which is something he has to overcome)

His view is insular and dictated by the "bubble" he was brought up in/keeps himself in. He also looks out to the world through an unclear perspective.

Dong Sik is shown looking at his own distorted reflection, whereas Joo Won is looking out through the glass. Neither has a clear vision of what they're about to face. (And only when Dong Sik isn’t hiding behind his facade and Joo Won starts seeing with clear eyes are they able to unveil the truth.)

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill??? Or am I onto something here?

(Also, it should be illegal for a show to have two leads that are this attractive. That is genuinely one of the things I liked the most about BE, the first time around and even now😂 In my opinion, Shin Ha Kyun and Yeo Jin Goo are equally matched in their looks. Ngl, it’s a nice element to their partnership on screen haha)

When I saw Jin Goo’s face for the first time, I remember thinking, “gosh, he’s wearing a lot of makeup” 😂😂 But I will note that I like the way the makeup department decided to present Joo Won. He isn't too dulled up, he's not perfect (you can see Jin Goo's skin texture, his scars, and some spots/zits every now and then) and in comparison to other shows Jin Goo's been in, he looks way less airbrushed, and more like a person wearing makeup. It just looks like Joo Won is choosing to wear makeup, which I personally really like for his character. Basically, he's pretty but not perfect

[Cut to the salon scene] I like that it is noted that Lee Kang Ja’s husband is a cop, and how it’s understandable for the audience to believe that Dong Sik is her husband… but nah 👀😂 Also, I swear that Lee Kang Ja calls Dong Sik “Dong Sik-ah” (which… given her and Gil Goo’s involvement in his framing and the cover-up that ruined Dong Sik’s life, is suuuuper fucked up)

Also, I like that class and financial income is brought up in this scene. It adds substance to the kind of area Manyang is

I reaaaally like that we get to see Dong Sik doing his job without Joo Won making us believe that he’s guilty of something. We see that Dong Sik is observant, patient, kind, calm, and authoritative. He knows the law and understands when to apply it (👀😈)

Park Ji A... oh what I would give to be in your shoes right now. Also, thank fuck for Dong Sik that Joo Won never saw this… he may have gotten ideas 👀😂 (also tag yourself. i'm ji hoon at the window)

Honestly, this scene is kind of hilarious because it's like the only time the show dedicates this much screen time to comedy, and the way they chose to do it is by showing people disregarding Dong Sik's person 🙃 [cut to the station scene]

Up until the scene inside the station, we have been told by multiple people that Dong Sik isn’t/was not as accomplished as Yu Yeon. Which kind of implies that he wasn’t as academically accomplished, and perhaps, not as smart. But then we are shown Dong Sik resighting individual articles from the criminal code from memory, proving that these claims against him were false (it really sets up a precedent, doesn't it???)

Side note: Gwang Young is such a brown-noser and I really like that about him. He’s a bitch- a harmless bitch but a bitch nonetheless, and I fucking love it!! 😂😂😂 (I just wanted 1 bitch-off between him and Joo Won. Like a proper one! Where neither wants to back down)

This scene just proves that Dong Sik is the smartest in the room and is one step ahead of everyone and is sooooo bored. It’s the perfect time for someone smart and new to come into his life to shake things up, isn’t it? 👀 Also, the women from the salon were taken to the station with perming lotion on their hair… GOODBYE HAIR!! SEE YA! RIP. That hair is literally being burned off as they argue over their innocence

I love the first time Joo Won arrives (properly… aside from his stalking) at the station, we are shown him pausing to observe what is happening. Joo Won is highlighted as an outsider, looking in

Not Gil Goo wanting to break the rules and asking Dong Sik to let things slide!!!!!

💀💀 isn't that what he gets arrested for in the end???

🔊ATTENTION. ATTENTION. PLEASE MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION. HAN JOO WON HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING. I repeat... HAN JOO WON HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING 🔊 🚨 IN FUCKING SLOW MO!!!!🚨

The “sea” of women part, making way for him… kind of like how the Red Sea parts for Moses, js

Of course, Dong Sik doesn’t look up from the computer until he hears THAT voice… I get it, Dong Sik, no judgement here. I totally get it. 😌

Joo Won has the fucking AUDACITY to sigh before introducing himself! Girl, YOU SET THIS UP. YOU WANTED THIS. THIS IS YOUR BIG MOMENT. WHY ARE YOU SIGHING??? (maybe it’s cause he knows he can’t go back now??)

🫠Yeo jin goo’s voice should be illegal🫠 Them:

Me:

In case you were wondering… dong sik fancies joo won from the get-go 🤷‍♀️ i don't make the rules Note: This is also the last scene Joo Won has any resemblance of “coolness” or can be seen as “chill”, which is hilarious considering all the hoops he put himself through to get to this moment 😂

In the scene with Joo Won and Sang Bae, I’m really taken aback by how young Joo Won seems. I know it’s because Jin Goo was like 22(??) when they filmed this, but yeah… he seems very… unprepared for what he’s about to face (which he is) “Delaying things isn’t really my style” Well, you sure did delay arresting Dong Sik, didn’t you???? I guess with everything in Joo Won’s strict life, Dong Sik is the exception to the rule

Joo Won’s first question about his new job is “who is my partner?” and I’m just screaming. I wrote about this scene here (but I’ll sum it up now: I think he wanted Dong Sik to be his partner)

Sang Bae isn’t really the kind of person to care about other people’s opinions of him. But in his first scene with Joo Won, he seems almost embarrassed that his computer crashes. He has a nervous energy and keeps laughing to downplay that embarrassment. Do you think he knew Joo Won came from Seoul and was worried that his smaller substation (later referred to as “the worst” substation by Hyuk) may be looked down upon?? Or… perhaps it’s all an act to make Joo Won warm up to him???

One of my favourite scenes of the whole show is where Dong Sik is pretending not to listen to the gang when they're talking about Joo Won. I. LOVE. IT!!! I love how much he wants us to know that he “doesn’t care”, but then just ends up showing us that he really does, in fact, care. I personally think that he likes what he hears about Joo Won’s accolades (although he's singing THIS to himself😂), and only seems to sour once he’s informed of who Joo Won’s father is. His disappointment is soooo apparent. He cannot and does not hide it. That’s a super interesting detail to include… it says a lot. (it's also the first time in the show that Dong Sik shows any interest in someone). Dong Sik learns that HKH is Joo Won’s dad, and his first reaction is quiet disappointment, NOT excitement… He cares more about Joo Won, the person, and not Joo Won, the chess piece. Hmmmmmmmmm... interesting.

(it's okay baby, you'll get him in the end dw)

Note that the camera lingers on Dong Sik when Gil Goo points out that Joo Won is handsome and physically fit… 👀👀👀👀 Also, when Joo Won is put down on paper, he’s super impressive and almost untouchable. But through Dong Sik, we get to see that it’s bullshit. Joo Won isn’t the person his father wants him to be (i.e, the perfect student and police officer). I really like that we’ve been told to be impressed by him, without getting to know him, and it’s only when we get to know Joo Won, do we get to see that he’s a walking contradiction (and he’s as human as everyone else). We shouldn’t view him through the narrow lens he and his father put him in, because he is so much more than that Sang Bae lets Dong Sik process a missing person’s case, even if they technically can’t do it within the confines of the law!!! 😩 Fucking hell, they really showed that guilt from the get-go, didn't they??? This scene is so goddamn important for the whole show!!! I JUST!! Ah! and of course it’s Dong Sik who first highlights the restrictive nature of the SK's laws. Joo Won watches this whole interaction (and gets turned on). He listens to the difference between a “runaway” and a missing person… what does Joo Won’s job become at the end of the show?????? 😩😩 I'm fine, I promise Joo Won leaves the station after getting one last look at Dong Sik and then later on (how long was he driving around Manyang, cause it is daytime and suddenly it’s nighttime??) in his car checking Dong Sik out, are the first warning signs of the Inner Slut ™ begging to be unleashed.

Also, I guess Dong Sik walked to work that day???

When I first watched BE, I wasn’t a huge fan of Dong Sik popping pills for his leg injury*. I’m still on the fence about the fact that he bites the pills and seems to eat them, instead of swallowing them whole. But then again, this guy is severely depressed and a smoker, so maybe he doesn’t care about the taste… or for the health of his teeth and gums???? It doesn't matter. I'm convinced that Dong Sik was thinking about Lee Sang Yeob in this scene because Joo Won reminds him of him (they have glaring similarities) and that's what causes his leg pain *During my first watch, I immediately knew it was psychosomatic pain. It’s a pretty easy visual motif to show us that he’s dealing with unresolved trauma.

Gosh, Joo Won really did watch Dong Sik cross the road, getting all horny cause Dong Sik can recite the criminal code from memory… and then later uses it as a way to flirt, showing that he cares enough to listen and that he retains that information... that really is one of Joo Won’s biggest love languages