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vidavalor · 7 months

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Crowley actually says a barely-coded "I love you" to Aziraphale back in 2.03

In his proposal in the S2 finale, Crowley told us that he and Aziraphale know they're in love and have known it for damn ever but they pretend they're not a couple. This, by default, means that they've not specifically said the words "I love you" before, by Crowley's own admission. They've said I love you in their own little language and we've watched it before. It's little demonic miracle of my own. It's don't go unscrewing the cap. It's just a little bit of a good person and just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing... But what Crowley says in the S2 finale is that they've never-- ever-- said in 6,000 years is just I love you in those normal people, human words. It has always been too dangerous for too many reasons to count so they have euphemisms for it and whole conversations around it and have made that be enough. Why do I bring this up? Because Crowley found a middle ground between the words and their coded language with one another in S2 and it's flying under the radar.

So you know that scene when Muriel has shown up and interrupts Crowley and Aziraphale talking in the back room? The one where while Crowley is speaking, Aziraphale suddenly looks like he's about to pass out with sheer want? Yes, our angel always looks at Crowley like he hung the damn moon (which he did but lol...) but this scene is different. This scene is like... someone get Aziraphale a chair and a glass a water because he is pupils-dilated, audibly breathing, and eyeing up Crowley with naked want. More than the lust? He looks happy. He looks delighted. You can basically hear his heart race from that look on his face. Why here? Yes, Crowley looks hot. Yes, he's in profile in a way that is a visual parallel to Before the Beginning (which was an inspired choice for this scene.) Yes, he's here with a Plan and taking charge of the Muriel situation and swaying his hips a bit while he speaks. It's not any of that. Those are nice bonuses. Aziraphale likes them. He gets them all the time. It's what Crowley said in this moment. To Aziraphale. Through what he said to Muriel.

Crowley cracks a dry, kinda dark joke that is meant for an audience of one: just Aziraphale. He knows Muriel won't get it. Since Muriel is cosplaying as what they think is a human Inspector Constable and they are here to verify the miracle Aziraphale has told Heaven and so are monitoring them, Crowley quips that Muriel is here to spy on them (since they, well, are, actually) and that he knows that many human police officers like to make a bit of a hobby out of spying on "people in love."

People. In. Love.

In a one-two punch in the same sentence, Crowley called him and Aziraphale queer humans and he called what they have love, using the actual word *aloud* for the first time in 6,000 years. He said he loved Aziraphale in front of an angel of Heaven in a little coded joke but this time, using the coded bit to say the real thing for the first time.

Then, just to hammer it all home and make sure that Aziraphale really knows it was very much intentional, Crowley says 'love' again in the next sentence. He starts going on about how Muriel can come to him anytime with any questions about love and he's happy to assist with their understanding of human love with all of his implied vast, vast years of experience with the subject and how he'll be here to answer their questions, in the bookshop, while Aziraphale drives his car to Edinburgh.

Go back and tell Heaven I'm here, Inspector Constable, I don't give a fuck anymore. *We* don't give a fuck anymore. You go tell The Archangel Michael that I'm who they're going to get managing Angelic Embassy X aka The Bookshop until Aziraphale gets back-- yep, me, former Demon of Hell. The Boyfriend in the Dark Sunglasses. He's asked me to, which is his way of saying he wants to stop hiding and asking me not to sneak out to my car in the middle of the night which hallefuckinglujah, Inspector Constable... Go tell Their Beatitudes that we ravish each other all over the bookshop. You won't even be lying. As Maggie'll put it later in the season: I'm done being afraid all the time. I love him. We're in love. There's your hot intel.

Aziraphale:

Aziraphale: Inspector Constable, be a dear and spray me down with all 700 of our fire extinguishers, will you?

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #good omens meta #good omens 2

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cellarspider · 2 months

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20/?? Special delivery

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We return to a movie that has never been to medical school, Prometheus.

Here it is. The scene that everybody remembers because it gave a fair few people the screaming heebies. This is their version of the chestburster scene–except for the less impactful, literal version of the chestburster scene we’ll get later, I mean. This one, though, this one, they got it right.

Content warnings for gore, nudity, nude gore, exhaustive discussions of the place of chestbursting in franchise history.

But first! I saw a tag with a desire to see the scene with David and the star map. To spare everyone from watching the rest of the movie to get there, here it is!

youtube

[See previous post for lengthy description of the events. I didn’t talk about the music in this before though! It really adds to the sense of wonder in this scene. It reminds me of Daft Punk’s Overture to Tron Legacy (2010), another beautiful and flawed movie. Given the modern use of temporary music in editing that definitely sneaks into what directors demand of scores, there’s a chance this was a direct influence. In terms of the “oh wow, space!” feeling it gives me, I’d also mention the Star Trek TNG opening theme.]

Anyway! On with the horror.

In Alien, the creature’s life cycle was developed by writer Dan O'Bannon, who had two major ideas for its early appearances: sexual, reproductive threat directed at a male character, and Crohn’s disease. O’Bannon had Crohn’s, and he said that inspired the idea of a critter chewing its way out of a man’s guts.

That personal connection has been lost through subsequent media, in part because the series has continued to use the same creature and the same method of killing, minor deviations like in Covenant and tasteless ones like AvP Requiem notwithstanding. The chestburster is a thing that can only ever really work once in a movie. The first time is relatively drawn out, made a setpiece of the movie, and is a horrifying plot twist for anyone who goes in blind. After that? Drawing it out may risk becoming meaningless gore or boring, so most movies have chosen to just have the little bugger pop out within seconds. It’s the sideshow before you get to the main event, despite being the iconic scene of Alien.

Prometheus’ equivalent scene wins back a fair amount of tension by altering the details of the event, if not the general arc of it. It certainly hammers on the reproductive horror aspect, but loses the original subversion of targeting a male character. Which is a shame, because male-targeted reproductive horror is still boundary-pushing. From the world of horror gaming, Outlast: Whistleblower produced some notably panicked reactions from male players when they encountered the emasculating, specifically reproductive threat of Eddie Gluskin. (Content warning for gore, death, forced feminization, misogynistic language, censored nudity.)

Regardless, we have The Chestburster Scene again, but now it’s in the back half of the movie, and happens to the main human protagonist.

I find it very odd that this movie is so self-consciously iterating over things that were first done in Alien. It’s like watching a devout Catholic pray at the Stations of the Cross.

Speaking of crosses

Before we get to the main event, there’s the first actual attempt at character work between David and Shaw in the movie, as we’re in the final act. David confiscates Shaw’s cross as she wakes up from her post-boyfriend-barbeque faint. “It may be contaminated,” he says.

Shaw’s christianity is one of the few character traits in the film that ties into one of the themes, and has its own arc. She’s giving up her cross to the person who killed her partner, a metaphor for a crisis of faith which is so blatant as to barely be a metaphor at all. And, given the general arc of how these things go, means she’s going to get it back at some point. The context for it is going to be confusing and disappointing, frankly.

And it’s especially weird given the other metaphor going on simultaneously: David runs some scans on her, and declares she’s three months pregnant. This is a non-virgin virgin pregnancy. She is Alien Mary. This, then, is the narrative reason why Shaw is infertile–so that she could be the Mary figure, and, more practically for the plot, have foreknowledge that something was wrong.

Except it really didn’t have to be that way to make this work. While christian allegory and the creation of life are themes in this movie, Shaw’s infertility was handled with zero grace. And honestly, the movie could work without it–Shaw and Holloway did not have romantic chemistry, as far as I could tell. Lean into that! Just say they haven’t had sex in ages. This scene would actually flow better, because Shaw explicitly objects that she only had sex with Holloway “ten hours ago. There's no bloody way I'm three months pregnant.”

Which again hammers in how stupid fast this movie has been racing its characters toward their doom, but I’m immediately distracted by David pronouncing “it's not exactly a traditional fetus.”

It certainly isn’t. It’s an alien squid, placed there by the holy spirit of black goo. She’s all set to give birth to Squesus.

I think that’s the only worse way he possibly could’ve said it.

David, frankly, gets some of his worst dialog of the movie here, because he is infected by The Plot for a bit. “It must feel like your God has abandoned you,” he says, after sedating her, “to loose Dr. Holloway after your father died under such similar circumstances.” Which leaves one momentarily with the wild mental image of Dad Shaw sacrificing himself to a flamethrower-welding corpo, but no, David means ebola. David found this out via that dream-watching tech that exists solely to be a mildly unnecessary plot point. Blessedly, this is the last time we see any mention of it.

It’s very strange, how the movie is stuffed full of plot and edited so tightly around the plot that characters barely have room to breathe, yet what it prioritizes as plot-relevant is so scattershot. This failing is also inflicted upon the part of the otherwise very effective Chestburster: The Prequel scene.

Shaw attacks the people who come to take her away to cryo, running in her underwear to the PAULING MED-POD the movie very loudly announced earlier, so that you wouldn’t forget it exists. She tells the PAULING MED-POD that she needs an emergency caesarian. The PLOTPOINT MED-POD informs her that it’s only formatted for male patients.

I’ve seen many people complain this makes no sense. It’s in Vickers’ quarters, why would she have an expensive medical device that she can’t fully use? Others counter that no, it makes sense, because the med-pod was actually installed for Peter Weyland, thus justifying its male specificity. He’s a selfish bastard, he got it for himself, plot hole avoided.

…Except that doesn’t address the more fundamental problem: What does this add to this scene, to balance out the fact that the audience is now distracted by this information? It slows Shaw down a bit as she figures out how to cue up a foreign body extraction from the abdominal cavity, adding to the tension. But you don’t need that to be what draws out the scene. Maybe the PAULING MED-POD has a slow boot-up sequence. Maybe someone follows her there, and she has to fight them off, possibly killing them in her panic. A dead body in the room would solve an actual logical problem with a later scene.

It’s frustrating, because the pacing of this scene is actually excellent, as is its premise. Shaw has to forego anesthesia and make do with self-administered local painkillers, because the prosthetics and CG teams have done a bang-up job making her stomach writhe unpleasantly, making it very clear that whatever’s in there is mobile enough to be a danger to her, even if it’s removed.

The pods instruments are mostly CG, but its combination of unhurried routine and abrupt, industrial roboticism adds to the uncomfortable nature of the scene. Sound design is also important here, with all sound effects well-chosen, and mixed to imply claustrophobic closeness and how trapped Shaw is.

The creature itself? Eh. It’s a slightly phallic squid, and squids were already slightly phallic to begin with. They added on a slightly vaginal mouth, which is also a lateral move--squid mouths already look quite a lot like an unworksafe orifice with a beak tucked away in it. Unless you're looking at Promachoteuthis sulcus, whose inner lip structures fold into patterns that look distressingly like human teeth.

Honestly, this is freakier than the actual prop. Good job, Promachoteuthis sulcus. You're only 25 mm long, and a delightful tiny terror.

...But the fact that Shaw’s stuck in the pod with her flailing squid-child is what actually adds another minute of fear and wince-worthy pain, as the almost comically brutal medical staple gun closes her incision and the pod slowly opens up.

She tries to kill it with what appears to be a soothing mist of decontamination spray. This is the one other stumble of the scene, because it’s just… I mean, look at it.

It’s just been spritzed with Febreze. There’s nothing that leaves you wondering if the thing’s still alive for later, you know it’s still alive.

But overall, a well-done scene. The standout horror scene of the movie, which is light on scares. That sparsity wouldn’t even be worth mentioning if the movie were going for slow tension, but with its strange blend of existential quandaries and unremarkable horror tropes, it takes a very strong, singular scene to feel like the tension has actually paid off. I don’t think it completely balances out the deficits of the rest of the horror, but it very nearly manages it, and does manage to be memorable.

Next time: An entirely underwhelming horror scene, and the movie takes another swing at having themes.

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/30/memory-the-origins-of-alien-review-francis-bacon-greek-myth-dan-o-bannon-sci-fi-classic-film

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/aliens-chestburster-mechanism-behind-the-scenes

https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Seegson

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3314219/how-do-u-v-coordinates-work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_staple (medical gore cw)

https://sites.uw.edu/pauling2020/

https://www.paulinamarket.com/

Overflow Ramble #1

A shot of the screen on Chekhov’s g–I mean the PAULING MED-POD, showing the text “EMERGENCY PROCEDURE”, and that it is “AWT VERBAL CMD”. The med-pod turns out to be a Weyland product, because all corporations in Alien movies are either Weyland, Yutani, or Seegson, if you’re particularly unlucky (cite 3).

They made the mistake of putting more actual words on here, and so I’m squinting at the top right corner at “CARDIAC STRESS TEST”, “ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHY” AND “MECH ALGN TCH”, which means the pod appears to think she needs to have her heart checked or her wheels aligned.

But what I find funniest is that there’s coordinate sliders in the center bottom: X/Y/Z and U/W. You know where I recognize that from? 3D modeling. U/V/W are used as an alternate coordinate system in that context (cite 4). Somebody was designing this, thinking “well, we need more buttons. Where can I get more buttons?” and then looked at the horrid mass of options and sliders in their modeling software and realized they had the answer.

Overflow Ramble #2

A close-up of David’s hands, holding a sample container and placing Shaw’s necklace inside. Two details, one of them insane, the other just plain funny: First of all, this is a different set of hands than the one when David was messing with the black goo–there was a small but notable blemish on the fingerprint that wasn’t there, proving once again that hand and arm doubles are one of the odder things you don’t think about in film production.

Second: The container is turned so that the label on it is facing away. This allows you to see the necklace, but it also highlights a completely flat Braille label, reading “PN#ZTZouSthe#Z”, which is obviously very informative.

But the real reason why the label is facing away is because it almost hides the fact that the label says “PRODUCT CODE” on it, which means he may have just put Shaw’s necklace in an empty peanut butter jar.

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#Prometheus 2012 #Prometheus (2012)#finally some well done scenes #though the plot still does not leave them unscathed #Youtube

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brother-emperors · 5 months

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I don't know how to explain this and maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there but I'm obsessed with the fact that Crassus in your art always seems to be in a position where he s being moved by someone else, or is taking a step back as an observer and I don't know how to explain the emotions this gives me

HAHA YES!!!! that's on purpose!!

crassus has a very specific style guide, and it would probably be more obvious if I posted more of the rough/sketch comics I have, but basically it's like

so supernatural! jared padalecki is tall, so it was. god. it was one of the directors or kripke who was talking about this, but they have to pull some camera tricks to make him smaller on screen so that the height difference between him and everyone else isn't jarring, but in s1-2, they do a lot of OTHER visual tricks to make him seem Small that are honestly top tier. he's frequently sitting down or angled in vulnerable positions so that he has to look up, because (sp8jr voice) to look up is to be vulnerable.

crassus follows a similar visual pattern, but it's also there to reflect his positioning with regards to power.

basically, crassus is tall. he's taller than sulla. but early on, sulla is the dominant force that everyone falls under. rome has a coalition with scipio and sertorius and norbanus, but they don't fall under one each other the way that everyone in sulla's faction falls in step with him. it is imperative that crassus does not dominate a scene he shares with sulla for this reason, but also because crassus, relatively, doesn't hold a lot of power.

until colline gate. at that point, crassus can stand taller than sulla and dominate a composition. that's his victory, baby!

later, tho, crassus absolutely has a dominating force of power. he does not, necessarily, need to be relegated to submission. he maintains the visual, though, as a misdirection! crassus (me, the artist) wants you, dear viewer, to follow the line of action past him. don't worry too much about what he's up to! look at these OTHER people. absolutely do Not Worry About The Plans He Is Making. when someone touches crassus in a scene post sulla, it's now meant to make the eye follow the line of action past him.

this also means that when he shows up like a blunt force hammer in a scene, it's to remind everyone that you cut yourself on crassus at your own risk :)

all of this is also partially inspired by some delightful staging choices people have made with cassius specifically over the years in media. I Took Notes. I took a Lot Of Notes.

#ask tag #thank u for picking up on that. it was 10000% intentional #hopefully. it becomes more obvious. as trikaranos gets up and running so that the visual and narrative intent actually #gets to unravel itself linearly instead of in an assorted mess of thoughts in one off comics shdhdhgh

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koravelliumavast · 2 years

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All Zellion Lore

He gets no bitches

Absolutely zero pussy

Is an incel

Does not actually exist

Raw ANTI-sex appeal (leads to being sent to tumblr horny jail)

No bitches megamind

Saddest most pathetic sex ever

Lesbian

Brandons elden ring character

Syls exlover

Zellion is the same Zellion as in Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, an unpublished sci-fi novel which he wrote

Dustbringer Moash

The author of the Gravity Fallsjournals

No drip

Secret project main characters

Is in fortnite

Died on the way back to his home planet

Is a war criminal

Zane venture but with spikes

Is kelsier in shardplate

Zero swag points

An onion 🧅

Swagless bastard

Constantly taking L’s

Has a homoerotic friendship with dalinar

Coolest mfer to ever exist

Wears metal plates

Inspired mass hysteria (true)

Zellion is love, Zellion is life

Unchained bondsmith

Is tumblr pikachu guy

Both odium and dalinars champion

The hero of ages

Has secrets

His only rhythm is Nickelback

Moashes boyfriend

Raboniels ex

Emperor Zurg

Has hooked up with dalinar in his drunk era

Is actually Adonalsium who didn’t get shattered but it was actually a prank

Unknowable

Did something unthinkable to that old man

Nvm he just fucked him

On the Kaladin and Szeth (b)road trip

Unfuckable

He might kill Moash idk at this point

The only blue fused

A simp for Kaladin

Is actually Szeth

Bisexual loser

he is also Taravangians new godsona

Drops his microwaveable lonely boys dinner for one and cried

A worldhopper who moved to Roshar to get a mini

Lezian with those fake mustache glasses

Navani will not accept him into her theoretical polycule

Taravangians new look after taking the shard of Odium and killing Rayse

A tumblr sexy man

A tumblr sexless man

Punches Ruin in the face (real)

A liar and a dirty dirty cheat

Will be at Dragonsteel 2022 with a chair (for hammering)

Actually just a human with carapace

Biggest loser in the cosmere

Loves plinko

Despite apperances he’s completely unbreadable

Zellion was pinning over szeth who is already in a committed monogamous relationship with nightblood, but he's rebounding with moash

Models the fused fashion line

Is Kelsier

Is also every sexuality and none of them at the same time.

Himbo

The tenth unmade

Gaslight gatekeep girlboss

Literally Hrathen but unfuckable

Has a gun

Created in a lab made specifically to be unfuckable

Virgin Loser (emphasis on loser)

Hot

Hoid in yet another disguise

The desire to be sexy but not having sex

Smores stick

Big scary fused villain (probably)

The Warrior of Light from final fantasy 14

Odiums champion? (One to make sense)

One of Hoids exes

Aesudan post crystal monster magical girl transformation sequence.

Is a slutty slutty bitch

Unfuckable

Sits in pain AND misery

From Sudan

A rough lover but once again is unfuckable

The sole knight radiant. Accesses all 10 surges

Clowned upon

Cries when he fights you. Like his (NOT)lover szeth

A ben10 alien

Mysterious

All of us

Has slept with Sadeas

His spikes are full of secrets

Is actually MRAIZE

Mansplain manipulate malewife

Is cringe

Bisexual but nobody wants them

Is actually a noble gas

Dalinar/Zellion/Szeth love triangle

Is Moash

Came from Moisty Mire

The most powerful being in the cosmere

Just a human guy

Nepotism baby

Is probably like hot but also still gets no bitches

The only thing nightblood won’t eat

Is actually Rin (bisexualzellion) in disguise

One in a Z(e)illion

He’s a shard

Odiums singersona

Is Brandon’s self insert

Swagless he/they (and any he/they pronouns user you have swag because you are not the biphobic bisexual Zellion)

#zellionsweep

A Pokémon or something

A new foe has appeared

Maybe he’s a cat boy

Wears metal plates

Is also Evi Kholin who could never be cringe

Yells it’s Zellin time before fighting anyone

Biphobic

Lavender marriage

He should be in fortnite

In love with szeth

Naked wrestling scene in Oathbringer

The friends we made along the way

Shouldbereadingprobably‘s cat

You canNOT fuck the spikes as the spikes are unfuckable

Is El (again probably actually makes sense)

Forgiven by the lgbt community

Highest popularity to word count ratio

Additional lore (courtesy of @poploppege-cosmere)

Hoid behavior (that’s actually us)

Fucks with Maggie’s internet connectivity

Is not actually fuckable. Does not fuck.

Blorbo from my kickstarters

Zellionsweep girlies are the daughters of the Moash girlies you didn’t fuck

COSMERE TUMBLRS CHILD

#lists #cosmere #brandon sanderson #stormlight archive #zellion lore #zellion #only takes an hour to get clowned upon #ok I’m going to chem lab #please update with what’s missing #zellionsweep

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dawnrider · 2 months

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*jingles cup at you*

Hello @xanthippe-writes! A great question and one I will try to give an array of answers to. I hope at least one of them is helpful!

Prompt lists: There are a ton of great writing prompt blogs right here on Tumblr that provide frequent, sometimes even daily, prompts that you can use to get juices flowing. It doesn't have to be a whole story, doesn't even have to be relevant to what you're writing, just a way to get the brain working.

Ask for prompts from mutuals or in servers: Sometimes a little community is really what you need. I don't always get to the prompts people have sent in my inbox, but on occasion I can get a lot of inspiration from that. Some of the servers I'm in have prompt channels, specifically where you can look for or request prompts from others, or where people leave ideas that they aren't going to get to for others to use at will.

Write the scene you want: Some people write linearly, as in completely in order of the story. That works for them and that's great. But when you're stuck, and there's that far off scene that you really want to get to, or is the inspiration for the story, it can feel really frustrating and out of reach. Write the damn thang. You can always modify it later if it doesn't quite fit once you build the rest of the story ahead of it. But if that scene is nagging at you, WRITE IT.

Write fanfiction of your fanfiction: Sometimes there are what-if scenarios within your own story that plague you. "What if they DIDN'T kiss here?" or "What if he ends up much more injured than I first planned?" Those can be worth it to explore in a separate document. Maybe you use it, maybe you don't. But it gives you the room to explore the webs of happenstance that are created when your characters make choices... or don't make them.

Let yourself have multiple WIPs: I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but hear me out. Sometimes the reason I feel stuck when I'm trying to hammer out part of the plot for say, Your Lying Smile, is because my brain is just not feeling it. But my brain is all over Stealing Home at that time, so I go work on that. And I can get a few paragraphs in, or maybe a chapter. Then I return to YLS with fresh eyes and I can think more clearly about what I want from the story because I feel successful and productive from what I was able to accomplish on a different story. You don't have to have multiple stories you're posting, if that isn't your jam, but sometimes letting yourself work on multiple things allows you to set aside your block on one story and get your juices flowing by working on something else and it doesn't feel like avoidance because you still made progress on something specific.

Brainstorm: This is a community thing again, but a really helpful one. If you're stuck, sometimes some outside perspective can help you get unstuck. If you have a trusted mutual, or a server space where brainstorming is welcome, utilize those resources. I admit to being a bit stingy when it comes to sharing my future plots because there's that part of my brain that insists that no one will want to read what I wrote if they already know what's going to happen. But you can absolutely ask for feedback from other folks, writers or otherwise. Bouncing ideas off of them can help you figure out what you might want to see going forward in your story, and what you don't. (Sometimes those "no way!" ideas are even more important than the "oh, maybe that would work...")

If anyone else has good advice to add, please do!

#writers on tumblr #writer problems #writer's block #writer's community #writer's thoughts

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bambinification · 4 months

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Tyrus Wong's influence on Bambi's artstyle really cannot be overstated.

Like, I'm sure a lot of people have Pointed Out that Bambi's backgrounds are unlike other Disney works because of Wong's inspiration coming from Chinese ink paintings. But after watching 4 hours of behind the scenes content for Bambi, I *really* want to hammer it home for people that he didn't just bring in an idea that Walt liked. Walt literally *asked* for the aspects of Wong's work, without even knowing what he was asking for.

During Bambi's production, Walt Disney struggled for a Long time to capture the exact style he wanted. He emphasized ad nauseam that he didn't want Bambi to be a cartoon with anthropomorphized characters and environments. When his artists were working on concept art based on photographs taken in real forests, the art was constantly too detailed. They couldn't have complex backgrounds with every single leaf drawn in, but they also couldn't NOT have leaves drawn in, right? Additionally, from day one, Walt insisted on subtlety. He didn't want a cartoon, but he didn't want photorealism. He wanted to capture the essence of nature, to make you Feel the forest more than seeing it in detail. He wanted realism of Vibes.

Hey, does that sound familiar? Almost like those qualities were popular in ink wash paintings in China during the Song dynasty?? (And then later in Japanese ink paintings??)

Walt Disney did not have the education or the words to express that he wanted qualities of traditional Chinese landscape paintings in the Song Dynasty. But the aspects that he described wanting in his creative meetings are *textbook* features of Chinese and Japanese ink paintings. Essence over detail, an end result that definitely *looks* like a detailed landscape, but with techniques in minimalism and almost pre-impressionism.

So when Wong showed his concept art to his supervisor, it was less of a "oh this looks rad" situation and more like a "sent from God to answer our prayers" situation. Tyrus Wong didn't just influence Bambi; I genuinely believe he saved the film. He was the only person to give Disney exactly what he was asking for, and he did it with ease because he was familiar with an artform rich in qualities that Walt was specifically looking for.

Now, I know most people know Walt himself moved Wong to head background supervisor after that. However, Wong was laid off during Walt's anti-union bitch fit in 1941, and I don't think Wong was hired back. Even so, the animators that remained at Disney in 2005 clearly hold great reverence for his work. He's mentioned in all but two of the backstage featurettes.

#also sorry for being so vague about 'traditional song dynasty paintings.'#the featurettes didn't go into detail and with googling i can't figure out exact what the technique and style is caled.#idk if it's impressionism or ink wash or xieyi or shan shui or what #i do know about the impressionist nature of ink paintings bc i studied japanese sumie paintings in highschool #and sumie IS different than chinese ink paintings. but they're more similar than anything we had in america in the 40s.#anyway tyrus wong isn't appreciated enough lol #i learned there's a documentary abt him from 2015 which is now on my watchlist lol #bambi #bambi ii #walt disney #disney movies #disney studios #tyrus wong

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bbygirl-aemond · 1 year

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do you have any advice for planning out the story and each chapter? im trying to plan out this fic idea i have but i don’t really know how so i thought i’d ask one of the best ao3 authors i’ve seen

oh bby i'm about to go into SO much detail that i'm sure you didn't ask for but here we go! i've spent countless hours of my life on fic planning, and it usually goes entirely unseen by y'all! i'll try to use parts of my earlier planning for stormbreak as an example so as to avoid spoilers while giving you the ability to see how the plans translate into the finished product. this will also give anyone who's interested a cool behind-the-scenes look at how some of stormbreak's chapters evolved from my earliest notes!

i organize all of my planning in google drive, and i have several distinct stages i go through that increase in detail the further along you go.

at the broadest level, i have two documents that i use for brainstorming. one of them, called "snippets," is miscellaneous little half-thoughts and snippets or late-night ideas. it includes both scenes and characterizations. it's basically little notes and reminders to myself. these snippets can usually be worked into the fic at mostly any point. this document is pretty long; about 50 pages. here are some examples of the types of things i put in this doc, including something that inspired a scene later in chapter 11:

the second brainstorming document is called "scenes." this is basically a list of every single interaction and moment that i want to happen. each line of text will represent one of the povs that will end up in stormbreak, with usually 2-3 povs per chapter. each sentence is super brief, like max 10 words, and i'll usually spit them out without regard to chronology since some scenes can be worked in anywhere.

now beginning to put things together i have the document i call "chronological events." here, the scenes are all put in a specific chronological order. i'll assign chronology to certain scenes that have chronological flexibility. and each scene will be expanded into 3-4 bullet points that get at how this scene will advance the plot (through politics, characters, or relationships). here's an example of what this looked like for the scene that became alicent's pov in chapter 12:

and for the scene that became aemond and daeron's povs later in the same chapter:

the "chronological events" document is what i reference first any time i'm going through the planning process for a new chapter. it reminds me of what i need to accomplish with the chapter.

so now let's say i've looked at this document and want to proceed to the initial outline for the chapter. i write these in documents within a folder called "short chapter outlines," and each document is titled "short chapter X outline," with X just corresponding to the number in the actual fic. this will expand the bullet points from "chronological events" into an a few actual paragraphs, and add in some extra padding that isn't strictly plot-relevant but helps to build out the scenes. this is an example of what this looked like for the scene that became aemond's pov in chapter 2:

you can also see that this doesn't always end up being fully translated into the end product. in this example, i changed the events towards the end when writing the actual chapter because it made more sense to me.

okay now we go onto the last stage of planning before i write the actual chapter: the long outline. just like with the short versions, i keep these documents in a "long chapter outlines" folder and each doc is titled "long chapter X outline." it further expands upon the short outline; i'll put the short outline on the left half of the screen to look at it while i write the long outline on the right half of the screen. this is basically me stream-of-consciousness writing the chapter. the goal is to get the entire scene hammered out, pretty much paragraph by paragraph. if there are any particular descriptions, lines of dialogue, or even brief moments that i get stuck on, i write them in shorthand and don't worry about making them pretty. here's an example of this, from the scene that became aemond's pov at the start of chapter 6:

you can see that i expanded on most of these paragraphs and polished the sentences between this and the final chapter. but also that the level of detail here is really high.

lastly, we have the actual chapter, which i write based off of this long outline. i put the long outline on the left side and the chapter itself on the right side of my screen so i can see both at once. i write all of my chapters in microsoft word because that's the format i've written stories in since i was a child and it's where my creativity works best for whatever weird reason. the chapter always stays very true to the long outline, but as you'll see if you compare the long outline above to the actual chapter 6 i do add in a bunch of extra detail. the long outline is usually between 4,000 and 5,000 words and 10-15 pages, while my chapters are pretty much upwards of 9,000 words and 20+ pages. so it about doubles in length at this step.

i do most of my editing (switching certain lines and paragraphs around) as i write this first full draft of the chapter. so when i'm proofreading, i'm only ever checking for errors and seeing if i want to replace any words or phrases with a better idea. this last step usually doesn't take me more than a hour.

from there on, you guys are familiar with the end result! as a note, the "chronological events" and "short chapter outlines" are all fully completed for this story! i prefer to finish this level of planning before even beginning to seriously write. it helps me to lay the foundation for my plot twists from the very beginning of the fic!

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beezonia · 8 months

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Bad idea right?

An adrienette drabble -

Everyone is aged up in this au (20s specifically) and there’s mentions of alcohol and smoking if you’re not into that stuff.

Marinette had already worked up a sweat, the festival hadn’t even started yet. But she couldn’t help it, after all she was prone to being an absolute mess when it came to stuff like this.

Like the whole festival thing most certainly wasn’t her scene (more Nino’s) but when Alya had told her she accidentally purchased an extra ticket, how could Marinette refuse.

So here they were, setting up the tents just in the outskirts of where the main stages were. Eager to hammer the pins, and get themselves a drink to loosen up for the weekend ahead.

“It’s cool you decided to join us Marinette! Alya told me festival’s aren’t you’re thing but I hope you can enjoy it nevertheless!”

That’s Nino, the young adult sits in front of her on a small box like seat.

He hands her a can of some beer she doesn’t remember the name of, before leaning back to fall into the picnic blanket outside his and Alya’s tent.

“Nahh, it’s fine. I needed to get out of the house anyway I’ve been in this huge slump.”

The man in front of her smiles weakly.

Nino knows what she means with her “slump” (full blockage with designs and her desire to create)

This festival gave Marinette the chance to find some sort of inspiration to fuel her creative juices once more!

So the blue haired twenty something year old cracks open the can and takes a huge gulp.

Nothing alcohol couldn’t fix, especially her damn freaking blues.

She hears Nino cheer in the background, oh yeah this was going to be absolutely awesome!

————-

Their friend Luka and his sister Juleka meet them by the Orion Stage (they’d be performing there later on that night)

He gives Marinette a huge hug, they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. His streaks are a mix of his usual blue with a bit of purple.

“That’s cause I lost a bet to Jules, she wanted to test her dying skills and I ended up being the subject!”

She hears Juleka laugh at her brothers dismay. Wrapping an arm around him before trying to reach his bed head to ruffle it.

“Well it’s your fault that your shit at mini golf then!”

Marinette watches the siblings with a smile and they fall into a smooth conversation about the set list for tonight.

But then the conversation falls onto the topic of her ex, Adrien, who Juleka heard is coming to the festival for his friends band.

“Yeah, I heard their band is pretty good, supposed to be performing on the main stage!”

Ahh. At least Marinette knew where to avoid going now, thanks jules.

“Cool, so where do you recommend going? You’ve both been here plenty of times.”

Juleka smirks, taking Marinette’s hands and dragging her to the several stalls and bars they can find.

————

And in what seems like a few minutes, but is probably hours, a large group is sat outside one of the larger tents in the field.

Blasting out some of the more recent singles from artists that are playing, along with some classics.

Marinette is leaning on Rose’s shoulder, singing along to the lyrics of what seems to be an Olivia Rodrigo song.

Everyone seems so happy, Alya and Nino are off snogging in the corner.

Luka is somewhere with someone having what seems to be a hilarious chat.

Someone’s smoking and there are so many beer bottles littered around the place, but she really couldn’t care less, it’s just the lyrics stand out to her.

Specifically “Yes I know that he’s my ex but can’t two people reconnect”

It gets the young adult thinking about how she and Adrien had ended things on a sour note, and how Marinette oh so desperately wanted to get him back.

She missed him terribly and god it hurt to know he was living without her.

Even if it was a really really bad idea. Marinette was going to find him.

But it’s gets her on her feet, legging it through the crowds and drunkards, she’s also one of them, but Marinette is desperate to find him.

And she finds him there, at the bar looking somewhat sad. Marinette doesn’t want to pry, but god when she looks at him her brain just goes blank.

“This is a bad idea, right?”

The woman mumbles it to no particular person. But she knows she’s gonna regret not listening to herself in the morning.

But there Adrien is in all his glory and Marinette is drunk as fuck, so really, fuck it it’s fine.

Yes she knows that he’s her ex, but can’t two people reconnect?

———-

This is literally a bunch of gibberish but I hope you guys enjoy it nevertheless!

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug au #miraculous #miraculous au #miraculous fanfic #adrienette #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #alya cesaire #nino lahiffe #luka couffaine #juleka couffaine

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yukidragon · 1 year

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Not sure if you've talked about it before (Apologies if you have and I just didn't see the post) but I was replaying the game and when Jack starts talking after the whole "You don't miss him, do you?" "..." "Aw, Sunshine..." exchange, it sounds so personal.

"He promised you the moon and stars. But what did it all amount to, in the end?" That's not the entire exchange but the way it's phrased... Sure, it could be Jack trying to nudge MC away from Ian, trying to really hammer it home that considering getting back together with Ian isn't worth it, all the heartbreak. But for some reason, it sounds to me like Jack is talking about his own experiences?

Now, we have absolutely nothing to go on but I feel like he COULD be talking about someone he used to be in a relationship with (or at least was very close with), who also worked on the show. Could be a director or... (and this is me reaching. Like, REACHING reaching) but what if Jean (aka Raspberry Rory) and Joseph were involved? If Jean (or a director) promised Joseph the moon and the stars, made all these lofty promises? To be together forever, to reach new heights? But then the relationship crashed and burned. Perhaps they didn't expect Joseph to get as popular as he did and got jealous. Maybe other things happened and all those dreams of staying together? Nothing but dust. Which would hurt Joseph, who, from the tidbits we got had a VERY unstable (home)life, very, very deeply. Opening up to someone is hard and was probably harder for Joseph and if his partner was a guy, that would doubly go because of the attitude re: homosexuals of the 80s. Or maybe whoever Joseph opened up to played him like a fiddle and took advantage of his vulnerability?

Hence why Jack sounds so bitter when he is talking with MC during that scene.

(Bonus points if 1) Jean and Joseph were involved. 2) If Jean was the guy who killed Joseph in a fit of jealous rage. 3) Ian really is Jean's kid. Can you imagine the fury Jack would feel upon connecting all the dots?)

That line from Jack stuck out to me too. It inspired me to write one of my darkest theories, the Tragedy of [Redacted] in fact.

Also, maybe it's just me, but when Jack almost seems distracted at this particular part, as if he's remembering something. He's looking away the entire time he says it and sounds a little distant, which is a credit to his VA to put so much emotion in his lines.

Jack He promised you the moon and all the stars…And I bet he did it so well… … Jack …But what did it all amount to in the end? … Jack He doesn’t love you…He can’t love you… … Jack Nobody who can do what he’s done to you knows what love even is.

It certainly lends more evidence to me that Jack is seeing parallels between the way Ian hurt MC and something that happened to him in the past.

Although it's a popular headcanon that Jean was jealous of Joseph or even was the reason for the murder, we don't actually know if that's the case. For all we know, Jean could be revealed to be someone just as sweet as the pastries he pretended to bake on the show.

I do, however, think that Joseph was taken advantage of back when he was alive. The way he cautions MC about "other people" makes that pretty clear. Also, he asks what Ian "provides" to MC to make their pain worth it. Did he have a toxic lover who "provided" him with something he needed as Joseph? Did they make him feel like he had to "provide" something they deemed significant enough for him to be loved?

It's possible too that it relates to Jack being a star... specifically the way he was used by LambsWork Productions. Producers could've promised Joseph the moon and all the stars... or at least a life of stardom. But in the end they erased everything about him. They didn't actually care about him at all.

That possibility is a bit of a stretch, admittedly, due to the emphasis about love. Also there's the fact that Jack is a yandere, whose love has been twisted. His past probably plays a big part in that, all things considered...

Given some of the hints we've gotten about Joseph's past and the way people treated him, I have a feeling that he had quite a difficult time when it came to love...

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask

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mauesartetc · 2 years

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High Guardian Spice Redesigns: Mermaid Edition

I just couldn’t stay away. Let’s dive back in (pun very much intended) to some High Guardian seas.

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series covered the show’s general issues and the thought process behind my redesigns in depth, but as a quick recap:

I’ve styled the new art direction after 17th-century woodcuts depicting witchcraft (what with the magic in the story and all)

The master palette is reduced to six base colors, all taken from spices

Everyone’s pupils are now drawn like Snapdragon’s for the sake of consistency and making the art style look more unique

Now let’s look at the results of the mermaid transformation sequence and see what needs improvement:

(Screenshot from this video, and I must say the music and sound effects add some much-needed excitement to the scene, even with the sluggish pacing that holds the animation back.)

For starters, the tail colors seem a bit random. They don’t echo the girls’ hair, skin, eyes, or the clothes they wore on land - with one exception. Parsley’s tail matches her hair, giving me an idea as to how to make the tails more consistent across the board.

Also, the tailfins look pretty generic, like the first thing someone would doodle when they were bored without doing any research. What if the tails were inspired by fish that match each girl’s personality?

Plus, the weight of Parsley’s hammer would make it difficult for her to swim upward, while the water would significantly slow down Thyme’s arrows. And yet they get to keep their weapons while Caraway takes Rosemary’s sword? Yeah, it’d make more sense for them to leave all their usual weapons on land (except maybe Sage’s terrasphere-?) and take light, water-friendly knives for self defense during their mission.

Bit of a nitpick, BUT: I get why Rosemary and Sage’s hair is loose now, since the free-flowing look jives better with the whole mermaid aesthetic. Okay, cool. But if their hair had already been held in pigtails and braids for hours that day, you’d think it’d have more waves in it rather than coming out perfectly straight in the transformation sequence.

(And this is more of a continuity error on the animation side than a design thing, but holy shit I just realized how much longer Rose’s tail is in the final shot compared to seconds earlier in the transformation.)

Enough yammerin’. Let’s get to the redesigns.

In the end I decided to merge the mermaid tails with the skin on their upper bodies, making them the same color. The first three girls’ skin color matches their eyes, though Sage was trickier. Her reddish eye color just made her skin look sunburnt, so I went with a green similar to the one used for the leaf design on her dress. Everyone has the same hair color they did on land (keeping them recognizable despite the major appearance changes), and the transformation now includes gills. Leaning into the fish elements helped me move away from the overdone Disney princess mold.

Speaking of fish, each character’s tailfin is now inspired by specific species.

Parsley- Pufferfish Small and unassuming at first glance, but not one to be trifled with.

Thyme- Barracuda This arrow-shaped fish reminded me of Thyme’s weapon of choice.

Rosemary- Great White Shark Based more on general vibes, really. I think Rose would freak out with glee if she had a tail inspired by one of these badass chonkers.

Sage- Swordfish An allusion to the sharpness of Sage’s mind. (Alleged sharpness, anyway; apparently some of the choices she makes in the show aren’t consistent with this characterization.)

Also, each girl now sports a pair of gloves with gems on them. These are terraspheres customized specifically to make blades appear in the user’s hands (and store themselves again) when she concentrates and performs the proper motions (shown below).

This way, the crew will always have access to weapons when they need them, but said weapons will be much more portable and useful for underwater fights.

As for the original accessories like decorative shells, earrings, tiaras and such... Ehh. They seemed superfluous to me, as they served no purpose other than looking pretty. The whole point of turning into mermaids was to help the undersea folk deal with a dangerous creature, not play dress-up. If a character design element is only present because “it looks cool” rather than serving the story or the character, toss it.

That’s all for now, though in the last High Guardian Spice post, I did mention possibly redesigning the dragons... Hmm.

#high guardian spice #character design #redesign #mermaid #mermaids #magical girl transformation #critique #criticism #anime #art direction #hgs

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versegm · 1 year

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Yooo how about Director's Cut on The One from Carcossa? Give me the downlow on awkward shadow roommate and hand licking lol

I SWEAR I DIDN'T REALIZE I WROTE SO MUCH HAND LICKING

God. This might get kinda long, lemme add a readmore right away.

As you can guess from the title, I wrote this after going insane over The King In Yellow for a couple weeks or so. Unfortunately I have since actually read the king in yellow and they're not nearly as good as the five wikipedia pages I dived through made it sound, but it was still a very fun time to write.

It was also very much inspired by the general concept of "the monster under your bed." You guys have that too right? Like, children's urban legends or whatever?

It's also a pretty old story, I think I wrote it in 2020-ish? But I think it still hold up well.

The monster in the story is named Cahors, which is the name of a french town. I picked that name because the King In Yellow has a running theme of characters with names starting in Ca- (Cassilda, Camilla) and I wanted to keep it going. The human is named Neha, after a friend I had at the time I wrote that story (Neha, if you're reading this somehow, hi! Hope you're doing well! :D) Neha also has a blink and you'll miss it cameo in May The Moon Shine Upon Camlann, as a treat. To myself.

Carcosa's writing system is based on qipus btw.

About ten years ago or so I followed writingprompt dot tumblr dot com, and one of the prompt was thus: the apocalypse happens, you are the last survivor, and one day you find a message that reads "last one up turns off the light," with no other purpose to your life, you decide to do that. For some reason, it struck me.

I don't actually remember for sure, but I think my reasoning behind that bit was to showcase why Cahors affectionates post-apoc stories specifically. It's their way to cope with the fact that their world ended.

Ok so this story was originally meant to be erotica, and this would be the big sexy showdown, but I found it flowed better without the sex. This is actually a recurring issue with my writing when I set off to write porn. It is unfortunate.

LOOK I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU. THAT WAS THE FATEST WAY I COULD THINK OF TO LINK INTIMACY, TRUST, AND REALLY HAMMER HOME THAT CAHORS DOES NOT LOOK OR FEEL HUMAN.

Very largely inspired by this piece of art that lives rent-free in my head.

I'm just really proud of this bit :)

I really wanted to do a callback to that one other scene in the middle of the story. I'm glad I pulled it off!

The story initially had another line about Cahors using their mask to extinguish the lights, but multiple people told me they thought it was confusing, so I removed it. It works better this way I think.

And there you go! Mostly it was me fucking around with worldbuilding and monster biology as you can guess.

#the one from carcosa #ask #characteroulette

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airasora · 1 year

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I was wondering...do you think Jasmine would be the type to be purposefully unpleasant/difficult around Henry's father to ruin the chances at the engagement? And would it backfire tremendously somehow? Like, she tries to be snide and outdo him at like hunting to try and disrespect him, catching the great bear before her does, but it ends up impressing him.

HARD YES!

Like, my favorite story in my head for Jasmine and Christopher right now is pretty similar, but with a few key differences;

Jasmine needs to get married and, preferably, to a prince from a far away kingdom to further her own kingdom's reach in the world. And what do you know, Prince Christopher from pretty much the other side of the world is looking for a wife.

Of course, the sultan sends Jasmine off to try and win his favor. Her and, of course, every single other unmarried princess in the world.

Jasmine is of course completely against an arranged marriage, and even moreso because it's been turned into practically a contest to win the prince. This makes her feel like they're all just pretty trophies for him to choose between (when in reality, Christopher feels just as much like an object as Jasmine does, something they will bond over eventually)

So Jasmine, despite loving her country and wanting to do everything to make it prosper, just can't come to terms with her situation and does the exact opposite of what she's being recommended to do. Which are, by the way, things I would describe Cinderella as, just to really hammer it in how bland I truly think she is xD

Jasmine is told that the prince wants the whole package; breeding, refinement, kindness, elegance, patience... (these are things that people are just pulling out of their asses, Prince Christopher has literally never said these things - though he does in the canon movie, see what I did there? xD) so what's a princess not looking for a prince to do...?

Everything wrong of course!

I have one specific scene in my head that was inspired by a TikTok that I DID save as a link, but almost half of my TikTok links became corrupted somehow??? I first stumbled across it and threw it into my Thraxette ideas, but honestly it works just as well for Charmine;

Jasmine overhears that Christopher is very gentle, shy and polite, so being bold or crude would turn him off. So Jasmine spends the ball watching while other princesses fawn over Christopher, being very sweet, and meek, and yuck. So when Christopher eventually approaches Jasmine, Jasmine is straight up seducing him. Really turning up her sex appeal, flirting in a way that'd make a sex worker blush and just being WAY too sexy for poor Christopher's heart... or so she thinks.

Because while Christopher IS the romantic, naive himbo people have told her he is... he's very into being put in his place and finds ambitious, aggressive women insanely attractive. His face will be a permanent shade of red for the rest of the week, but he loves the way she makes his heart race.

So imagine Jasmine's face when, by the end of the ball, Christopher declares the "list" of princesses he wants to stay in his kingdom to get to know them better and SHE is on it... to everyone's shock cause she sure as hell made a scene earlier.

#charmine #jasmine #prince charming #aladdin #cinderella #christopher #christopher charming #jasmine salonga

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mingus-archives · 1 year

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I posted 10,979 times in 2022

That's 9,288 more posts than 2021!

11 posts created (0%)

10,968 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@spooksier

@bulkhummus

@written-in-starlight

@coffee-and-manslaughter

@revanchxst

I tagged 7,107 of my posts in 2022

Only 35% of my posts had no tags

#adrian - 4,857 posts

#tma - 874 posts

#giglia - 399 posts

#wtnv - 198 posts

#puppet history - 172 posts

#the sandman - 122 posts

#reference - 115 posts

#nope movie - 105 posts

#jom - 87 posts

#nope - 85 posts

Longest Tag: 107 characters

#a schoolgirl writing an essay while slowly being beaten over the head with a hammer and theres a time limit

My Top Posts in 2022:

Ahhh I hope all this renewed hype toward Goncharov inspires Shane and the Watcher team to feature it in an ep of puppet history! Can you imagine the Professor explaining the behind the scenes affair, the unsolved death of the assistant director? Picture cut-outs of Andrey and Goncharov making out like the oars? A song performed by Katya’s fur coat? I mean come on the ep writes itself.

46 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

Even More Nope (2022) Thoughts

The specificity of the vortex. In the desert, in the plains, the vortex is a singular tragedy. Floods, storms, fires, they hit everything. They touch everyone. But a tornado is specific. A tornado can take down a single house, a single horse, a single person. One building can be brought to its foundations and its neighbor left with just a broken window. And in the same way, a tornado can spare a single man.

Jean Jacket’s mouth is not a tractor beam. It’s a vortex. It’s a tornado. It’s choice of victim is specific. When JJ eats the TMZ reporter OJ makes it out unscathed, despite the fact that the two were mere feet apart. And that’s what makes it horrible.

But what makes it worse, you can see a tornado coming from miles away.

Gordy was a time bomb, an amalgamation of instincts placed into a setting made only to exacerbate them. In retrospect, it seems so obvious. Of course a chimpanzee, a species prone to violence, known to have man-killing strength, would cause a tragedy. But when Gordy does, all you can do is watch. All you can do is see the devastation approach and hope you’re not in its way. This is Jupe, caught in the wake of a tornado, in a singular act of havoc.

Em and potentially OJ’s survival can be attributed to their bond, their knowledge and expertise handling animals. But along with that is the tragedy, especially given that OJ may not have actually made it, that their survival was a stroke of luck. After all, when a tornado builds, there is no path or mercy, no story to tell, no motive. There is just those who survived and those who didn’t.

121 notes - Posted September 5, 2022

More Nope (2022) Thoughts

Nope is about the uncontrolled. The idea that you can conquer it, the reality of circumstance.

A balloon pops. A chimpanzee is riled into violence. Jupe survives the chimpanzee’s attack. A shoe sits on its heel. These are all by chance, a random collection of events, the creation of trauma. The media fanatacizes it, obsesses over it, feeds on it. Makes it so Jupe can’t escape it. Years later, Jupe cannot escape it, lives in that single trauma. But by profiting off of it, by telling the story, he thinks he controls what happened to him. What the world did to him and that moment. He thinks he’s conquered the chaos.

He treats Jean Jacket the same. This creature comes to his ranch, by chance, and this time Jupe tries to own the narrative immediately. He thinks if he gives the voyeur the horses, attention, care, he has bonded with it. He has gained its favor. He can make it his. But the same chaos that let him survive lets him die this time. And in that last moment he stares at the beast and he is bewildered. He doesn’t understand why that happened to him, why that chimpanzee went wild. And he doesn’t understand why Jean Jacket eats him now. He is in the eye of the storm, wondering why it would rain.

375 notes - Posted September 4, 2022

One More Nope (2022) Thought

The almost fist bump between Ricky and Gordy as subversion of ET, as inverse of an act of healing. Gordy reaches under the table, eyes obscured from Ricky, hand sticky with blood from the person he’s brutally beaten. Ricky, confused and terrified, reaches out to meet Gordy as if to perform a fist bump, an act the two had likely done many times during production of the sitcom. It’s an act of connection, Ricky desperately reaching out in hopes to calm the well-behaved chimp with whom he’d thought he’d bonded.

The scene horrifyingly echoes the iconic moment of connection in ET where ET touches Elliot and heals him. In Nope, this moment of touch is the opposite, leading to Gordy freezing long enough to be shot and killed and leading to the lifelong trauma or Ricky being witness to this violence. More than that, it shows how naive Ricky’s hope for connection is, the idea that this bloodied chimpanzee can be mollified with a gesture. How naive Ricky is for even thinking he understands Gordy at all. This is made even clearer by the fact that Gordy was not Gordy; he was a nameless chimpanzee, one of many used to play the role. Ricky is bonded with the idea of Gordy, but in reality he is just mimicking at friendship with a whole slew of chimpanzees it’s unclear if he can even tell apart.

In ET, the touch between ET and Elliot is a moment of humanity. Nope shows us how foolish that idea is in practice, and how dangerous it can be to superimpose human behaviors onto creatures we can never fully understand. Is Gordy actually connecting with Ricky? Is he reaching under to try to grab and beat him? Is there any motive to Gordy’s movement? There is no answer, and there will never be. Just like Ricky, we can’t see into the chimpanzee who played Gordy’s mind.

See the full post

949 notes - Posted September 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Another Nope (2022) Thought

What does it mean to be consumed? I am thinking of the moment after Jupe and the tourists are swept into the maw of Jean Jacket. When they are screaming, confused, trapped. As Jean Jacket hovers over the Haywood house, someone shouts and begs to be let out. Of what? Do they know that they are in Jean Jacket, the beast? That they are being digested? When Jean Jacket silences them, do they understand finally? There is something so horrifying, so visceral, about being in the maws of something and not even knowing it. Having your fate known by everyone but you.

And then I am thinking of the Haywood ranch. Of OJ and the horses, him slowly selling them away to Jupe, and thinking he can just buy them back. But the horses are already gone; Jean Jacket eats every single one of them. Jupe knows this, but lets OJ make his plan. He doesn’t tell OJ that his ranch is half-eaten, bleeding out in front of him. That he and Jean Jacket have been chewing on the Haywoods the whole time.

I am thinking about that horror, of being someone else’s meal, profit, plan, and of not knowing.

1,532 notes - Posted September 4, 2022

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demcnsinmymind · 2 years

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@ebonyforged sent “REFLECT - the lobotomy” | send REFLECT for me to explain a traumatic event in my muses’s past and talk about their perception of events, which parts have stayed with them longest and how it affects them now. ( sender can request specific scenes/backstory ) MEME | ALWAYS OPEN

ahhhh I knew this one was gonna come first :D

Anyway, here it goes. Trigger heavy so behind a cut

The explanation: I’ve gone into great detail about this scene, Friedkin and his cult on my new possession lore page. Actual canon is much shorter and straight forward: Collingwood’s head physician, Arthur Friedkin (inspired by the real dude Walter J. Freeman without a doubt) was a big fan of the lobotomy, a real procedure where connections in the brain's frontal cortex are severed/scrambled with medical tools, the most famous being the orbitoclast that looks like an icepick.That gets shoved into your brain with the help of a mallet. Looks pretty barbaric. In canon, it was stated that Friedkin lobotomized at least 140 patients in Collingwood, Lance having been one of them. It was really gruesome and not actually shown on camera, we only see the aftermath, though there is behind the scenes footage and some of it hidden away at the beginning of the movie that actually shows the whole deal.

They cut a lot of footage from the first movie and released bits and pieces of it in November last year, where there has been a lot more information provided, even an MRI scan of his brain.

His perception of events: He obviously felt utterly utterly terrified and helpless. I tweaked canon a little bit and made it happen later in his timeline than what was in the finished movie where it pretty much happened right from the off, the second Friedkin got his hands on him. But if I remember correctly from all the info I had on the alternate cut of the film back in the day, the ending used to be different anyway. I think it was that Lance actually woke up in the 1940s after he fell asleep in the tunnels where he lost Sasha.

Anyway, as stated on my new lore page (still gotta update the bio a bit), I headcanon that by the time Lance actually gets lobotomized, he’s spent a couple of months inside Collingwood in the 40s, and most importantly, he befriended the demons that attached themselves to the building all thanks to Friedkin’s freaky rituals. Only that he didn’t know they were demons at the time, he thought it to be a normal ghost of a murdered patient who wanted to help him. He was promised a way out by them if they worked together (little tweak to the canon plotline, something similiar happened in GE2 but I’m placing it in the 40s plotline). So he was utterly shocked and felt incredibly betrayed when he still ended up in Friedkin’s basement and on that operating table, and the demon didn’t help him or stop it at all.

He obviously had a severe panic attack and feared for his life, since he was strapped to the operating table with leather straps and couldn’t even move/lift a finger to defend himself. I also headcanon that deep down, he was in absolute denial and couldn’t even imagine that the strike of that hammer would actually happen, could actually happen since everything was such a paradox. He was in the 1940s, a time before he was even born, he knew Friedkin was dead in his timeline already and considered him a ghost, not a real, physical person, so nothing could truly physically hurt him. He even said it in canon “it’s not possible. I’ve lost my fucking mind.”

Although he was attacked once in the hallways by that tongue demon while still sorta in his timeline, that thing actually just vanished in the end and throughout the entire first movie, Lance was actually never physically hurt by anything inside that hospital. Sure enough, it had him starving and so forth, but nothing came at him wielding a knife or clawing his eyes out or whatever. Throughout his canon, he only saw it happen to the others (Sasha with scratches on her back, TC in the bathtub), but not to himself.

He thought that he was somewhat special and different (since he was the only survivor and Friedkin, the demons and everyone else in the 40s kept telling him he was the chosen one 24/7), and that nothing could actually seriously hurt him or kill him.

So he was utterly shocked and horrified when it actually did happen and Friedkin stabbed him in the brain. So yeah, the general perception of events is helplessness, panic, betrayal and outright insanity.

Which parts of it have stayed with him the longest

Obviously the pain of the orbitoclast getting hammered into his brain, hearing his own skull crack and his own screams (actually canon), but also something even worse than all that: being strapped to the table with no means of fighting back, like being at the total mercy of a man he knows to be utterly depraved and cold.

How it affects him now

He has severe problems with physical touch and intimacy. Anything involving him getting touched without his permission or getting physically trapped in any way, even just in a hug, sends him straight into a panic attack. He also has a severe fear of needles/knives/anything sharp, the smell of disinfectant/ hospital smell leaves him on the brink of having to throw up.

He also despises doctors, nurses, medication/drugs, anything even remotely connected to the medical sector after it. It doesn’t matter how capable, friendly, competent and empathetic/helpful a doctor might be. He doesn’t trust any of them. He refuses to see any doctor or go through a simple health check. Even if it’s not a doctor who offers it. If he got severely injured in any way, he’d rather fix it with a hot iron/ wooden plank or outright bleed to death before he ever setting foot in another hospital or got any medical professional involved.

Especially in the beginning/soon after getting out, he’ll have his moments where he’ll freeze up and flash back to it. He won’t say or do anything on the outside, but it’ll leave him deadlocked and shell shocked for a while and it’ll take a lot to snap him out of it.

Other than that, he has sleep paralysis and later nightmares, even straight up night terrors about it almost every single night during the first year or two, where he always finds himself strapped to that table again and this thing stabbing him in the brain, but the difference in that dream is that unlike in reality where he soon passed out from the shock, he doesn’t pass out in his dream and just feels all of it and it keeps going on and on.

Even in canon, we saw him have nightmares about it.

#text post #headcanons #hc : basics #hc : psyche #demons in my mind : main #body horror tw #abuse tw #mental health tw

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datastate · 2 years

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Q-taro Burgerberg: Who had the best character development to you?

NAO EGOKORO. HANDS DOWN. this isn't even a question to me honestly.

near the beginning we see her as a sort of overzealous character, but then she is the first on-screen tragedy. it was already horrifying to know that kanna dealt with her sister's death for something that was frankly a situation out of her control, but for nao to endure seeing her teacher's death (who she greatly admired and looked up to) and knowing that some of these people she is surrounded with are the ones who solidified he'd die is just so... it's torturous. she carries so much guilt with her for casting one of the votes, and even if sara votes for another person (marking 'two'), there's still another who heard mishima's plan and intended to ensure his death (likely sou...taking advantage of the opportunity, but. agh. speculation...)

the scene where she's forced to come to terms with the fact that she has lost him, but is inspired by sara's kindness to begin to move forward (if even in smaller steps) is so...impactful, to me. especially the somber sort of ... "but i can't give it to him anymore, can i?" hits hard as someone who's dealt with a lot of grief myself.

despite what kai did, she still feels so much guilt for casting another vote that resulted in someone's death (presumably, voted for kai). and just... she's such a vulnerable, compassionate person in the first place, but especially because of this: she is the one - not keiji, not gin, not even reko - who tries to take on some of the responsibility for sara's sake. she acknowledges in ch 2-2 that sara seems to support everyone, but she reassures her that she can be reko&alice's support in the meantime. she grows so strong and shows how smart and intuitive she in both the final attraction and in the scenario with the reinitialized mishima ai. and rather than being taken in by the false mishima, she learns to acknowledge mishima is not coming back and speaks against the manipulator using his face to test her bond with the professor. she shows more of herself, opens up, and reveals herself to be such a strong character.

she's just... i cannot put it into concise words, but it's so satisfying and comforting to see her grow through so much of this because there are people who still care about her and push her forward. there are things she's done on her own (such as taking her first stand against the mishima ai, saying her final goodbye without sara needing to interfere and pull her away), and things she's inspired others to do, and things they've helped each other with (specifically reko & nao & sara, as seen in-game, though there are other interactions hinted at with gin or alice)

the end to her story is a tragic one because we see her finally regain her footing and the only reason she was cast out is because the master of the game decided she created too much interference as an outside participant.

from a story standpoint, i can't complain because this was nearing the end of her character arc (and there is a route where you are given the chance to save her, at a horrible price), and similarly hammers home that asunaro leans far too heavily on "the ends justify the means" but it still...irrevocably hurts me. which! in a game like this is something that i adore. i do wish we got more with her, but i do appreciate what we did get for her. nankidai really did her justice and explored the full extent of her character.

nao's character development is the primary reason why she became my favorite one in yttd. although nankidai writes wonderful, in-depth characters, no one else's quite hits as hard as nao's does for me

#i think about nao a normal amount.#i wish i could phrase this better and actually do nao justice but i'm so. sleepy OTL #just. yeah. yeah. i love her so much #i might make a post on her later on that's a cleaned up ver of this bc i just. waugh;;;#ask #solidarity squad #sleeplessamongstars #yttdposting #yttd meta

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