#p sure the story picks up when more arcs are add i think

[delicate42]

As always I’m thinking about some character and how they could had actually been developed during the show, so I was thinking about Poe and a possible arc with Lena,magica, violet and Webby between s2 and 3 if we had the life and crimes airing during the season 2 so i have a whole arc ideia for it and i’m going to write a little bit about it .

Idk if I’m actually going to continue this or if I’m writing everything but I’m calling this something like magic connections arc/ alternative storyline or au.

—————-

So FHM would happen a little bit early so the next episode we would get from team magic was Lena’s life adjustment with the sabrewing family which the episode starts with lena and violet at the backyard learning, practicing and studying magic (so we would start getting an insight into Lena’s magic struggles while learning and discovering with Vi about it). Violet explains something and Lena tries it but fails ending up destroying/transforming something, Vi tries to comfort her but then the doorbell rings and one of the dads say it’s webby so Violet goes open the front door, lena stays in the backyard picking up some stuff she dropped when she failed and then looks at one of the open books which was open at a page with an animation spell, Lena frustrated complains about her struggle and decides to try the spell alone right there with that she casts at an iron cup but a raven shows up flying for the cup at that exact time and ends up being hit by the spell.

Lena gets shook and goes see if the bird is alive and she asks “are you alright little buddy?” but for her surprise the raven opens his eyes and he is like “wow, wait wha, I’m confused what happened?” Looks at Lena who says with a shook expression “wait… you’re…talkin…” then Poe cuts her off “WAIT I CAN TALK AGAIN!”

Lena:“YOU’RE TALKING!”

Poe: “Oh my… I CAN’T BELIEVE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS I CAN TALK!”

L: “It really worked! Wait I finally got one right ” *makes a surprise face

P: “wait you did this… how did you do it?” *looks at her

*Lena stops looks at him

L: “I, hmmm, I saw a spell in this book”

*shows the book page

*poe analyses the book

P: “ohhhh great choice, this is a really good volume from this particular book series of commands and transformations”

L: “wait you’re just a raven how can you know about magic and books like this one?” *makes a confused expression

P: “ehhhh… wait please don’t get scared or even turn me again into a raven! I actually have a very good explanation about it!” Says it with a awkward and desperate smile

Lena makes a confuse, nervous and concerned face when Violet and Webby finally arrive (Violet is holding a plate of snacks)

W: “HIIII LENAAAAA!! LOOK WHAT I BROUGHT” shows a different volume of the “The Grimoire du Merlock"

Poe and Lena looks at them

P: “Oh my goodness, is this the seventh volume of the The Grimoire du Merlock???? CAN I SEE IT?”

The girls look at him

V: “ehhh did the bird just talk?”

L: “ehhh yeah he did”

P: “hi?”

W: “ OH MY… LENA DID YOU…?

L: “yeah? I guess so”

——————-

As of right now I just wrote till this point but after this scene they start to talk with Poe and he presents himself without saying he is a “de spell” or magica’s brother and tells his story only the parts he can remember because the raven life made his memories a bit confusing but at least remembers he was with his sister(not mention his name) but something bad happened so he became a raven and his journey with magic growing up (we get some sort of flashback).

I do have an idea about how the arc would go but as for episode events I need more time to explore the ideas like this whole text I wrote has a continuation (since is some sort of a episode ideia) but I’m not sure how continues.

This arc adds up to the idea I had sometime ago of Poe having a similar behaviour and situation as Salem from the 90s show Sabrina the teenage witch, I hope someone likes my idea.

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #ducktales au #poe de spell #ducktales poe #ducktales lena #lena sabrewing #violet sabrewing #webby wanderquack #i guess this is some sort of fan fiction #ducktales fanfiction #magic connections arc alternative storyline au ???

[otomes-and-tears]

hi 👀👀👀👀👀👀 i heard u got a lot of nevra headcanons and thoughts?? share them with us!! i'll give u a kiss!

♦ Me talking about Nevra for way too long ♦

► tags/warnings: -

► words: 813

► a/n: Thank you Anon for giving me an opportunity to ramble about him. I do, in fact, have a lot of opinions about Nevra!

Also... I’ve been a bit busy lately, but I’ll probably have more free time to write next month. I’ve also had spent a lot of time on @marycecilyy ‘s discord server, which is a joy. So yeah! I’m not dead :p

► Masterlist

• I’m almost sure this is canon, but he’s musically inclined;

• He can play a couple of instruments and has a nice voice, though he doesn’t have an impressive range;

• Nevra hasn’t touched an instrument in years, but he’s always whistling some tune or humming a melody when he’s out and about;

• When Karenn was younger, he sang her old lullabies when she was upset. Not only did his songs distract her but thinking about something familiar would often make her feel better. Even after she grew up, if she’s upset he will still hold her and sing her favourite songs;

• He’s bi with a preference for women;

• My boy has a really weird sense of moral when he left Yaqut. It took him a long time to figure out what he actually thought was right and wrong and separate it from what he was taught;

• He still struggles with that occasionally;

• After the events of the first season... He starts trusting people way less;

• Nevra always struggled a bit with building genuine connections with others but ever since he lost those most important to him he just can’t let more people in, fearing they will also leave;

• He also became even more protective of Karenn since then, and Chrome by extension;

• Nevra has this womaniser, bad boy persona that he built as a way to protect himself and he doesn’t know how to fully get rid of it;

• While he can often try to pretend to be emotionless and distant he is a sensitive soul. Things get to him easily, but since he sees himself as a pillar of support in the guard (in s1 as the leader of the shadow guard and s2 as Huang Hua’s right hand man) and he knows people look up to him as an example, so he doesn’t let it show;

• Drowns himself in work to avoid thinking about things that hurt him;

• Doesn’t like twilight, but he has read it multiple times;

• I think he’s one of those people who really wants to understand why it’s so popular, so every once in a while he’ll pick it up and try to read it with a new perspective but ends up finding new reasons why he dislikes it;

• Ended up learning how to style hair because of his little sister and he’s decent at it;

• If he was in the human world...I can see him being VERY bad at technology and just being able to manage one social media at a time. He would probably have an Instagram account dedicated solely to pictures of Shaitan.

Thoughts:

• I chose Nevra right off the bat lol;

• Look, none of the Eldarya love interests were exactly my type;

• But between all of them, he was the one who caught my attention;

• I really like his first interactions with the mc;

• And when I looked at him i immediately pinned him as the “depressed character with a tragic backstory that hides behind a mask of flirtatiousness” love interest;

• which always have the most interesting routes;

• I’m still disappointed they didn’t give him a character arc. HE HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL!;

• I love him to death but goodness gracious that man did NOTHING on season one;

• I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this, but I’m absolutely sure the team had a completely different story in mind when they started writing the game but ended up changing the storyline once they decided to tell a darker story;

• And they just... Forgot to add his contributions to the plot;

• Or a character arc;

• Or anything other than just fanservice;

• But really, the little hints of a story that they gave us were so interesting;

• He came from a vampire clan?? They were involved with some shady shit?? He left with his little sister??;

• How old were they?? How long did they travel around until they got to eel?? How was his personality like back then??;

• What made him leave? Why doesn’t he talk about it?;

• Those components could make for such a dramatic, interesting story;

• I had faith they would do something with it;

• I remember being so desperate for some semblance of a character arc that I started theorising that he would eventually join Lance and Leiftan on the dark side;

• That didn’t happen, but now that I’m actively participating in the fandom and not just lurking I’m down to making this an AU;

• But seriously... Even with his lack of story, I still really like him;

• He’s charming and I think his interactions with the MC are very fun! I liked all the little details the writers added that gave him a little more personality;

• Like how he likes dogs and is a good dancer;

• His relationship with Karenn and how caring he was with those under his care;

• Nevra is a very sweet character and he deserves better!

#I didn’t mention this in the ‘’thoughts’’ section but he’s grade A material for angst which I appreciate #I’m sorry for everyone who knows me from the server #I’m sure you heard me screaming about all of this more than once #I just love him okay?? #ALSO #I’m sure that he would start appreciating the little human trinkets that would end up in Eldarya #at least during the years where the guardian was stuck in the crystal #even stupid little things like children’s books or yes eVEN TWILIGHT #they would be harder to come across #but every time he came in contact with something human he’d wonder what the guardian thought of it #even as the memory of them faded and he started giving up on ever seeing them again #he would hold on to some of these things and just think about them #Eldarya #eldarya nevra #eldarya a new era #A new era nevra #I’m on mobile so I’m sorry if this post is wonky #I also didn’t grammar correct it #so if anything is weird #it’s because of that #bee's writing

[miraculouscontent]

Ask Explosion #9:

Asks answering previous posts:

Sabrina, I have one word of advice for you...

R U N

“Chat, please stop talking.”

“But that’s my thing!”

“YOU JINX EVERYTHING!!”

Ayyyyyy~

Well, it’s something, I suppose?

Answered this here.

It absolutely did. Bless you, kind and hilarious citizien. ;P

I’m torn because... on one hand, I want to give proper mythology and such for like--anything that’d be put into the show, but on the other, I liked the idea that Alix’s brother was just sort of a conspiracy who thought of stupid stuff (which is why I kept the concept for MC Jalil Kubdel).

Zoe did it really well in Scarlet Lady where Alix knew the actual mythology and started blurting it out whenever Jalil got it wrong.

New Asks:

Considering “Ikari Gozen,” I imagine Alya and Kagami don’t get along as well. I agree with basically everyone that Marinette and Kagami not getting along is bad, but Alya and Kagami not really getting along makes more sense and is more tolerable.

Since Alya is Marinette’s “““BFF”““ (supposedly), I could see her kind of being like, “You’re competing with my girl over the same guy,” and keeping Kagami at arm’s length, worried that keeping Kagami close will allow Kagami to be closer to Adrien since Adrien is an extension of their friend group (kinda, sorta, not really, but Marinette calling him a friend so technically--)

You know, Alya trying to be a good friend and help Marinette with Adrien in more subtle ways. It’s the wrong way to go about it but she’s trying.

LUKANETTE IS AMAZING IN TERMS OF PROGRESSION KDJNGJDFG, I ADORE IT. Every episode they share together, we either learn something new about them or see more details on their relationship.

I think I was already all-in before “Silencer,” but man, that episode just sealed it even more. I was like well dang, why does the love square even EXIST???

jfdngjkfdjgfdg

Incredible. Only problem is that the creator doesn’t know how to use it properly.

You mean fourteen year olds aren’t perfect human beings???? :o

(no, but really, that’s me all the time; like, she’s barely a teen!)

He’ll believe it if it’s Chat Noir who’s doing it. If Marinette ever does it though, he’ll be sure to shut it down. ;P

Ugggggh, the worst part is that I have the same exact fear that they really are going to be like yeah Ladybug you silly fool Chat Noir has been with you since the beginning!

I mean, we’re already basically getting that with the New York special; Chat was supposed to protect Paris and then didn’t tell Ladybug that he “had to” leave for New York (and the New York thing is inadvertently Marinette’s fault and parts of the fandom actually did blame her for it even though it was Chat’s choice not to say anything), then Ladybug gets upset with him when she discovers it mid-battle, which leads to Chat being distracted and Cataclysming someone (another thing that Ladybug can be “inadvertently” blamed for), then Chat gives up his miraculous so Ladybug isn’t even allowed to be angry and cue the later line of “I can’t imagine being Ladybug without... him.”

So clearly that’s saying something. Adrien doesn’t get anything close to that level and Marinette is chewed out for not asking him to stay when Nino had already asked him too.

It’s like--Marinette chooses to go after Adrien and then gets either nothing in return, or humiliated by the narrative, and then in the New York special, she decides to do nothing and everything still goes wrong while Alya yells at her for it. The “damned if she does, damned if she don’t,” on display is stunning. The girl tries to confess and it’s like, “no, not allowed, but Chat is allowed to confess.”

I still don’t understand this logic of his overarching plot but also “there’s not much of a timeline.” I think the only solid thing we’ve ever gotten was something about all the episodes in one season coming after all the episodes in a previous one, but there are still things that don’t add up? The only thing the season 3 production order will give is making sure the hero debuts work out (so no Viperion or Pegase before “Party Crasher,” for example).

It’s not really reliable. I mean, like--I’ve been experimenting with timelines for a while, and stuff like “Miraculer” baffles me. It’s basically non-canon with no value whatsoever. All it does is make “Heart Hunter” look even more confusing and treats Marinette even more horribly for not picking Chloe when she explicitly told Chloe that she wasn’t getting it back.

I’m not familiar with that one! Is it any good?

(Okay, I actually was too curious and ended up looking it up; fancy! I couldn’t have guessed that it was a webtoon! I started reading the 1st issue and before I knew it, I was on the 6th! Oops~)

Lila is totally Rashta, 100% agree. The fact that the comments have a nickname of “Trashta” for her, equivalent to Liar Rossi, says as much ;P

Because lessons that involve telling someone that they’re valid and allowed to feel a certain way don’t apply to Marinette. Isn’t it nice? :3

Not that I know of? Though I also don’t look for that kind of thing, so it’s possible that it exists and I just don’t know about it.

Even if it did exist thought, I don’t see a problem with you doing your own regardless. Good luck if you do!

No. No I do not. ;P

GREETINGS FELLOW INTJ!

And yeah, I’m not really capable of not analyzing shows. There are some small exceptions, but they’re usually not full shows in the normal sense. If there’s an ongoing plot, my mind tends to be working at all times.

In terms of Miraculous, Season 1 was harmless enough where I was bothered but pretty quiet about it, but then it just got progressively worse. It really feels like one of those things you can’t unsee when it finally hits you, y’know?

I’m glad I was able to help you get that satisfaction you need (and appreciate Lukanette, of course ;3)!

Non-Miraculous Asks:

(some heavy Puella Magi Madoka Magica salt below)

Wow, this is a really dedicated ask! Nice!

Gonna go point by point here:

1 - Yeah, the whole thing with Homura not “being able” to save everyone... kinda questionable, and I didn’t really buy the arguments they used to explain it away. I think there was this one PSP game or something with Madoka Magica where you could kind of choose what happened (like, there were bad ends where Sayaka didn’t get her soul gem back in time and her body was partially decayed; ick) and I think there’s a good end where Homura saves everyone but--yeah, not canon.

I just don’t care for twisted stories like that unless there is actually a good end on the horizon (and I mean like “Everyone Lives and is Happy” good end). Angst is just so exhausting so the second I saw Mami’s head being bitten I was just like, “Ah, okay, so we’re doing this then.”

2 - Eugh, the sexism thing. It’s so... yeah, and especially this because the whole “girls are emotional” thing, I don’t really care whether or not the show is trying to “subvert” or “explain” anything, it just feels like poor taste and I don’t like it. (I also didn’t know about that Death Note thing because I didn’t watch it, but geez.)

3 - Wow, I’ve been away from the show for so long that I forgot what Mami’s wish was; I thought it was to “not be alone” or something (or maybe not die alone?? I really don’t remember), but either way, the fact that it follows some sort of genie wish logic is just--*sigh*--they’re teenage girls, come on (plus, the “genie wish logic” is really overdone to me anyway).

4 - The other thing about Sayaka is that it’s really predictable that she’d “die so quickly.” Basically everything was pointing to her just being annihilated at some point, and being Madoka’s best friend, it was pretty inevitable that she’d go.

((semi-unrelated, but someone also asked me which character’s name was lied about before episode 3 hit and they wondered if it was Sayaka’s; it was Kyubey’s))

Yikes. Sorry you had to experience that.

Anyway, I guess I’m not experienced enough in multiple fandoms to say for sure? If I was ever in a fandom, I would just blacklist the people/stuff I didn’t like, so I didn’t get to see a tong of “bad things” going on.

+ I try really hard not to generalize fandoms into one thing.

𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻 𝓝𝓸𝓻𝓶𝓼 𝓐𝓻𝓮 𝓢𝓽𝓾𝓹𝓲𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓑𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓐𝓻𝓮 𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮 “𝓖𝓲𝓻𝓵𝔂” 𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼

Oof, uhhh, shows, huh? That’s tough.

I think the main ship from Given (Mafuyu and Ritsuka) is really adorable (you might’ve seen the amusing video of their love being mutual before), and while I would’ve said the same thing for the kinda-sorta side ship, it gets--uh... really bad during the movie/rest of the manga, I’ll just say that much.

Mafuyu and Ritsuka though, totally adorable.

Inuyasha kinda? Though Inuyasha and Kagome are definitely not the kind of romantic chemistry that I lean towards (I find “the bickering couple” to be rather exhausting). Plus, Cardcaptor Sakura did the “male tsundere” better than Inuyasha did (though the Clear Card Arc was terrible, at least it’s not canon kinda-sorta? idk it seems like a mix of the anime and manga so...).

After that there’s...

uh

...

hm.

I mean, there’s probably a couple more examples somewhere, but--yeah, I’ve got nothing. Maybe if I thought back to all the generic children shows I watched when I was little (like those old Disney live-action shows; I had no taste when I was younger), there might’ve been something that satisfied kid me but idk.

I don’t remember what post inspired this, but I have no problem answering regardless, ahaha~

My main issue is Aang’s attitude about the whole thing. I’m not saying it was right of Katara to go out and get “revenge via murder” exactly, but I also think that Zuko had the right idea with allowing her to go and face the man who killed her mother so she could get some form of closure (also note that Zuko doesn’t express any sort of opinion when Katara decides not to kill him; he just wanted her to have whatever she thought she needed to heal).

It’s also the episode where Zuko directly confronts Aang on his “violence isn’t the answer” rhetoric which then goes completely ignored as Aang lionturtles his way out of the conflict. Aang is also not confronted on his point of “forgiveness is the first step to healing” (when Katara has a right not to forgive and Aang isn’t challenged outside of Katara commenting on it) and was permitted to ride his high horse when Katara “steals” Appa like, “It's okay, because I forgive you... that give you any ideas?” which is just--

reaaaaaally "holier than thou”-esque when Aang is like, ten, and Katara is a sort of motherly figure to him. The episode even has Sokka praise Aang for how “wise” he is and I groaned through the entire thing.

Another smaller thing is that it sort of makes the air kingdom look way too “perfect” by having Aang be the “source of wisedom,” especially when it’s like “violence isn’t the answer” while all the other airbenders are dead.

#((Guess who lost asks AGAIN.)) #((Ugh I'm so annoyed this laptop is really giving up on me I swear.)) #((I lost like fifteen.)) #((Most of them were ones I was really looking forward to answering as well.)) #((Basically needed an emergency restart while I was saving all of them.)) #((Really sorry about that for the last fifteen or so asks I had.)) #((I remember one from emikogale that involved the ideal ending of the show and that one was great.)) #((and another about the fandom not really getting along that said particularly nice things but UGH.)) #((If you sent me an ask recently and it's not here then it probably got washed out.)) #((Because I don't recall just outright deleting anything because I didn't want to answer it.)) #((I'll try to save a whole snapshot of my inbox beforehand so this won't happen again.)) #((Seriously sorry.)) #((Know that I saw it and likely approved of it but stuff happened and I acknowledge it's my bad.)) #((Winter is just really out to get me isn't it? ugh)) #character: Sabrina Raincomprix #character: Alya Cesaire #character: Marinette Dupain Cheng #character: Chat Noir #character: Sabine Cheng #category: staff #category: salt #other: non ml talk #other: ask and answer

[simpbur]

hello! i would like ur 40 song wiblur playlist

anon thank you so much for asking <333 while it would’ve been easier to just drop the link i have so many thoughts about everything so i explained why every single song has its spot on this list which was IMMENSELY fun for me

(also: if anyone does want the link i can provide both apple music and spotify but if u would like the apple music link i’d rather it be through dms or an ask off anon that i can make private!)

another also: i bolded all the songs for ease of perusing if you don’t want the director’s commentary and bolded + italicized the ones that i think fit Very Well

another another also: wrote the second bit of this on my laptop and the keyboard is p funky so if there are any typos or things that do not make sense i will try to fix them asap haha

saint bernard by lincoln: this is one of those like. Dream SMP Songs that i added because it fits into so many different relationships and plot lines and arcs but i think there’s some connection to c!wlbur somewhere out there. idk i asked my friend and he said to add it so this one goes out to him

amnesia was her name by lemon demon: ghostbur song ghostbur song! mostly comes from this lovely animatic

o valencia! by the decemberists: okay this is one of those songs that only really has one lyric that fits but is an absolutely banger so it’s here anyway. you’ll also notice a trend of quasi love songs that i relate to c!wilbur’s perception of l’manburg and i think this song shows this in a really cool way, esp with the chorus (‘and i swear to the stars i’ll burn this whole city down’ is The Line)

achilles come down by gang of youths: another one of those Dream SMP Songs. i think this fits better with c!tommy but i like it too much to remove it. this is a somewhat common trend with the earlier songs on this playlist (i’ve been building this thing since january, for reference)

brave as a noun by ajj: another Dream SMP Song. i think certain verses fit better than others when it comes to wilbur’s character but that ones that work really work

harness your hopes by pavement: a song that is one here for vibes alone. i have no idea what these lyrics mean. all i know is that i heard it, thought of c!wilbur, and put it on the playlist. thank you all for being here

evelyn evelyn by evelyn evelyn: sad-ist made this a tommy and tubbo song (as she should) so it’s validity on this playlist is questionable but folks used to compare it to wilbur and tommy’s relationship during the pogtopia arc and i think some points were made there

the execution of all things by rilo kiley: i’m so excited to get here because this was the first song i put on the playlist that i think really works and i thumb nailed an animatic for the last verse and november 16th so! i think it’s a good l’manburg song and the last verse has some good ghostbur lines (‘and lately you’re all alone with nothing left but sleep/but sleep never comes to you, it’s the guilt and forever wakefulness of the weak’)

i’m just your problem from adventure time: this ones a bit tricky since at is my favorite show of all time and i cannot detach this song from its in-show context very well but there is a very cool animatic with this song that landed it a spot on the playlist

man burning by josh ritter: almost became an animatic but the audio i wanted to use (which i recorded at a josh ritter concert and it’s just him and his guitar and there’s echo and it’s very haunting and pretty) has my stepbrother singing in the background and i could not edit it out so. that will probably not happen. but anyways the only hole i would pick in this song is that it’s mostly about self sabotage which isn’t really applicable but i think the imagery is cool

mamma mia by abba: here me out. here me out. this is another song that fits so well and i have spent so many hours thinking about this and somewhere there is a note on my phone explaining how every single line relates to c!wilbur’s entire arc from founding l’manburg to the resurrection (made when we thought gbur was going to get resurrected in january) and just. the metaphorical ‘you’ is l’manburg does this make any sense (another almost animatic except now that wilbur’s actually back it might become an actual animatic)

the other side of paradise by glass animals: no idea why this is here other than being a Dream SMP Song. it’s good tho

infinitesimal by mother mother: they saaaaay it stared with a big bang but they saaaaaaaay it came out of a small thing latelyyyyy i’ve been feeling like a big bang You Know

curses by the crane wives: had a thing drawn out for this song showing the comparisons between c!wilbur and c!niki because of the chorus and i think the last two lyrics of said chorus are the best thing about this one

lonely eyes by the front bottoms: gotta admit that i have no idea how this song got on here but i’ve come to associate it with ghostbur based on vibes alone. it’s a friendly song he’s a friendly ghost it works. the other tfb song coming up fits a bit better methinks

king of new orleans by better than ezra: not to put better than ezra on my c!wilbur playlist but like. something about the whole ‘tasing something up to let it fall’ motif makes me think

get me away from here, i’m dying by belle and sebastian: another almost animatic song (there’s a trend here). not only does the story told in this song work i like the lines ‘play me a song to set me free/nobody writes them like they used to so it may as well be me’ in relation to my l’manburg

montgomery forever by the front bottoms: certain bits and pieces of this song fit so well, specifically the chorus and those bits in the last two choruses Yeah (’montgomery forever and ever and ever and now they’re blowing it up/(x2)/as you started laughing and crying and trying to explain how all you want to do is leave’)

don’t look back in anger by oasis: out of all my almost animatic songs, this one got the furthest. the animatic, which I got pretty far in thumbnailing, was about wilbur and tommy and kind of drawing comparisons between their characters, also about the revolution in general. maybe i’ll finish that animatic one day idk 

snow by ricky montgomery: i wish i had a link for this so bad but!! saw art on twitter!! with the lyric ‘bury me six feet in snow’!! and went ahfsdjfk!!

burning pile by mother mother: a Dream SMP Song. also a jam there’s no real specific connection for this one but i think it could fit in a couple of ways

rounds by the oh hellos: in the same position as snow except it was on tumblr..... @ whoever made this comic i saw these lyrics in your brain is massive and your art is incredible

lovely by mt. eddy: on here for vibes alone. there’s something in the lyrical content too, but my thoughts in that regard are not very fleshed out

adventures in solitude by the new pornographers: ah yes..... the song that prompted this all...... this is a beautiful and incredibly well written song and if you’re going to listen to any song off of this playlist i’d encourage you to listen to this one. it’s place of here is mostly cause of the chorus but the imagery in the verses could all represent a part of c!wilbur and i’d love to explore that more

caught in the middle by paramore: obligatory paramore song. i think it got on here because limbo = ‘middle’ but i’m not quite sure. on the verge of being deleted if i can find a better pmore song

delicate by damien rice: one of the oddest songs on this list and i am well aware that it sticks out like a sore thumb. a song that’s on here pretty much because of one lyric, which is ‘and why’d you sing hallelujah/if it means nothing to you’ which i related to both eret’s betrayal and how my l’manburg is hallelujah yknow

bang! by ajr: almost animatic song. i think we all know what the bang is here

somewhere only we know by lily allen: ik i said don’t look back in anger has the most potential to get made into an animatic but this song might actually take it place. on par with adventures in solitude in terms of how pretty of a song it is, and probably even moreso. it’s kind of turned into a ghostbur song in my head, and makes me cry like an infant child every time i hear it

a pearl by mitski: i cannot defend this song’s place on here past the line ‘it’s just that i fell in love with a war and nobody told me it ended’

eight by sleeping at last: the official c!wilbur song needs a spot on here <3 if i can dig up the clip of cc!wilbur talking about this song in relation to his character i’ll add it but until then yeah <3

always by rilo kiley: no idea why this is on here but it fits well!! could not tell you why!! banger!!

celebration guns by stars: it’s a hauntingly beautiful song about war, and kind of one of those that necessarily isn’t about wilbur but moreso his place in the story? idk how to explain it but yes

passerine by the oh hellos: it’s. it’s from the . the fic. yeah h

oh, you are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place by bright eyes: added this after the real resurrection and i think it’s because fo the imagery? also the last verse

we are beautiful, we are doomed by los campesinos!: all i have to say is ‘i cannot emphasize enough that my body/is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel/harboring these diminishing, so called vital organs/i hope my heart goes first, i hope my heart goes first!’ has always made me think of pogtopia era wilbur :(

dead weight by jack stauber: no real connection other than eret played this song during a break during the ghostbur’s january ‘resurrection’ and i heard it and went :0

point me at lost lands by tired pony: gives me season on l’manburg vibes..... i love how free and passionate it sounds and that's p much the only reason it’s on this list haha

ghosting by mother mother: added this five seconds ago because i could not BELIEVE it was not on here. ghostbur song. mans sang it on that one stream with the reverb and everything. the lyrics ‘i will be kind and i’ll be sweet/if you stop staring straight through me’ hit particularly hard back when everyone thought that ghostbur was actually wilbur in disguise 

#oh man. oh man #this was so fun ty anon #i'll do some spell checking after i write my english paper but for now take this #wooo boy #also if i interpreted canon wrong i do apologize i am here to have fun and think about fictional character #anon #ask

[miraculous-mare]

Hi everyone! I'm Imbri, I made this sideblog earlier this month when I got super into MLB and DCU from a more fanfic-esque perspective and wanted to try my hand at fic writing. I've since been pretty sick and I'm only just getting better, so I wanted to throw some possible story arcs and headcanons on here so I could preserve them somewhere and hold myself accountable for writing them. If this gets long I'll make separate posts but for now enjoy my tired ramblings

1. To All the Vigilantes I've Loves Before (TALTBILB AU)

We're starting with a fluffier one bc I'm in that kind of mood. You know how in To all the boys Lara Jean writes her letters when she has a huge crush? To her, the letters are a way to immortalize that feeling, to preserve it forever. She locks her love away until she wants to acknowledge it again, preserving it and ensuring her feelings are never tainted by the reality of these people. I don't think Marinette would do that. No, Marinette gets too caught up in the rosy side of love, especially when she's younger. She doesn't need a constant reminder of the good things about her crushes, she needs to be reminded of the bad, of the harsh reality of these people. Young Marinette dives in too deep too fast with Adrien, ignores his character in favor of her fantasy, and she never forgets how much it hurt. So in a moment of clarity, when he tells her not to stand up to Lila and abandons her, she writes him a letter. It's not mean, or attacking, and she doesn't intend to send it (she still addresses and stamps it, of course, because she's extra like that, and makes sure not to seal it so she can reread it, but she plans to keep it locked away). It's just an honest reflection on how he's not who she thought he was. How her affection for him was toxic, how she can't go back to being the Marinette who's obsessed with him, but he will always be the first boy she ever loved. Loved, past tense. And she intends to keep it that way.

Luka is the next one to get a letter. She writes his in the middle of the night. She couldn't sleep, had randomly decided to design a new stage outfit for him, and was quite impressed with her work until she found herself coloring his eyes green and his hair blond. She stops herself before she adds black cat ears, but the damage is done. Mari realizes he had always been a distraction for her, that she was trying to use his affection to bounce back from heartache. She rereads her letter to adrien before taking out a clean sheet of paper. Luka's letter is about how she can't hold on to love or the idea of a relationship so as to ignore her feelings and her hurt. She writes about how she was lucky to make new friends when her class turned her back on her, but she was trying too hard to pretend nothing had changed. Luka was filling the void Adrien had left, and marinette knew that she couldn't fall back on her unhealthy habits. She mentions that she still loves Luka, of course she does, but not like that, never like that. The next day, she tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he means a lot to her, really, and she doesn't want to lead him on, but he's honestly just a friend. Luka smiles and hugs her and tells her that's fine, and they remain close.

Chat noir gets his own letter when she starts to see herself with him but he won't stop flirting. She writes that as much as she can get caught up in the daydreams of their superhero power couple, he never wants to give her space or let her figure anything out. When they defeat hawkmoth and she finds out who he is, she pens an short paragraph about how hypocritical it was of him to tell her to back off Lila and let things work themselves out while being so insistent in his relationship with ladybug. She puts all three letters into one envelope and seals it. She knows now she can never love Adrien, that she will never look at him the same. She's learned her lesson, and she wants to leave this chapter in the past.

As Marinette grows up, finishes high school and her Guardian studies, as she gets her business degree, the pile of letters only grows. But Mari has become too hurt, too cautious with her heart. Her letters, once testaments to her growth and maturity, are now filled with excuses. Too scared to let anything develop into more than a basic crush, she pens a letter every time she lets her guard down, every time she feels even a sliver of non-platonic affection for anyone, and stashes it away with the rest of her unresolved feelings.

When she pins Kim down for a second too long during one of their sparring matches, she writes that she cannot jeopardize their friendship. They train together less frequently after that.

When she finds herself laughing too hard at her seatmate's whispered jokes in Intro to Business, she reasons that they're probably a player and sits somewhere else from then on.

On a visit to Paris, she loses herself in Kagami's eyes and her letter is about how stupid it is to even try long distance. So on and so forth, until her letters are nothing but quick notes and her reasons become meaningless.

This post is too long so I'm gonna rush through the next bits I'm sorry. She finally moves to Gotham, opens up a little boutique, and ladybug accepts an invitation to join the League. Soon after, she meets the Robins (it's hard not to come in contact when everyone enjoys jumping off the same rooftops in the dead of night), and she has a new, albeit secondary, team/family (because of course they know each other's identities).

At this point, Marinette has over twenty letters, all wrapped in twine and stuffed into a small box she keeps at the back of her closet. Her kwami try to push her to date again, insist this terrible habit needs to be broken, but she insists she's fine alone. Most are okay with this, but Plagg and Trixx? Not so much. One day, while she's down in her Atelier in the middle of a fitting, they rifle through the box, pick out a single letter, and convince kaalki to (begrudgingly) open up a portal straight into someone's PO Box (p sure Plagg used cataclysm by himself once so it's possible. If not let's ignore that and pretend it is lmao). Tikki is not impressed, but she doesn't do anything to stop them either.

It's three days later when Marinette finds out it's missing, a flirty encounter with red hood sending her rifling through her stash for Jason Todd's name. She needs to remind herself that he's too much of a bad boy, too flirty, too dark, that she’s too close to the bats to ruin it with feelings. She decides she misplaced it until Jason stops by her flat two days later, letter in hand.

Now, Jason technically comes over to confront Marinette, but he’s not sure about what, exactly. she seemed to have liked him at some point, but was convinced it wouldn’t work out. Part of him wants to prove her wrong, part of him is wondering why she’s so mistrusting to have written him off so soon. Marinette, upon seeing her letter, panics, but she ends up having to explain everything. Jason isn’t sure if he should be more concerned that literal gods have decided to take her relationship into their own tiny hands or that she’s so scared of loving she’s got this stash of letters about nearly everyone in her life. Eventually he convinces her to pull them out, and Jason is so shocked by the sheer number of them that he almost wants to wrap her in his arms and show her that love isn’t all bad. Instead, he slips and offers to help set her up on dates, and before they know it they have a contract: he’ll plan a new blind date for her, with anyone from one of the open letters, every two weeks. She promises to go in open-minded and do her best to actually make it work. In exchange, he’ll model for her newest line (something she’s been begging him to do for ages). When she says the contract is all in her favor, he throws in that she can be his date to the Wayne Christmas Party at the end of the year. They shake on it, and the pieces begin to fall into place.

Cue six months of a heavily pining Jason setting Marinette up on dates she progressively wants to go on less and less. Cue them meeting for fittings and clothe designs in Marinette’s atelier and grabbing coffee together. Marinette starts to open up to the possibility of love, but with Jason, who’s obviously not interested or else why would he still be setting her up on dates? it’s all incredibly messy and complicated and a little angsty but just a ton of fun.

Idk I feel like this idea low-key sucks now that I’ve written it out so uhhh let me know what you guys think? I have other ideas but I’m gonna put them into other posts bc this is too long as is. 

#maribat #mlb x dc #jasonette #to all the boys au #my writing #Imbri rants about fictional characters

[noddytheornithopod]

92, 94, 95, 99

(For this) 

92. Issue you’d like to see addressed in DW? If I could REALLY have my way... more capitalism bashing (thanks for Oxygen, Twelve), ableism, more nuances to technology than just straight good/bad. Also more obscure and less Western centric time periods for past episodes. I’m sure it’s also cliche to say, but... a companion not from present day Earth would be pretty refreshing. It would offer a nice new take to things.

94. One unanswered DW question you’d love to know the answer to? Honestly most questions I have are related to the Timeless Child, so I can’t even answer this because the show probably will answer them anyway. Like come on, I’m pretty sure Chibnal knows where Ruth!Doctor is in the Doctor’s timeline and plans to eventually reveal it (if I end up eating these words, uh... force me to watch some really bad classic Who serial? Or make me watch Series 9 because I skipped it?).

95. Actor/actress you’d like to see play the Doctor? Okay, time to list random British actors... insert Primeval cast members here? Well I mean, you could have Andrew-Lee Pots for a more fun Doctor (if were to name an actor off the top of my head he’s usually what would come to mind lol), Alexander Siddig would be pretty cool overall especially if he’s on the more serious side. If you really wanted a darker Doctor maybe Juliet Aubrey (oh shit, maybe she could be a Missy/Master)? Okay... enough random throwing Primeval cast members at the wall. Only like ten people care about the late 00s dinosaur show. :v For more conventional picks, I definitely agree Richard Ayoade, Idris Elba or Phoebe Waller-Bridge could be cool Doctors. IDK when someone would get too big to fit the role, but yeah. Anyway... that’s all I can think of for now, I’m honestly bad with actors. :P

99. What about DW could be improved? Well I guess there’s obvious stuff like better overall representation (and Doctor Who already is pretty good compared to many shows, but there’s still stuff I’d like to see delved into further eg trans, nonbinary or disabled characters). In terms of how the show’s story is handled... I guess maybe don’t feel the need to have big grand story arcs? A lot of stuff that turns people off seems to be tied to people trying too hard to make these big epic arcs, when I guarantee even if things were much smaller or self contained (I mean, classic Who was mostly self-contained stories except for like Trial of a Time lord and maybe some other thing I don’t know, right?). It adds more stuff to have to get right, and with stuff like Series 12 often having too much going on in an episode often because of the series arc, it’s probably okay if the writers learn to chill out. Also I guess just keep encouraging risks and unconventional ideas. No need to worry about appealing to fans, just do whatever weird sci-fi ideas you wanna do. Like I said before, a companion that isn’t from present day Earth would be quite refreshing, same for less known historical eras. Do new things with old foes while obviously keeping their core ideas. Look into lesser known science concepts or social issues. Oh yeah, also... no need to be tied to Monster of the Week. You don’t NEED a monster or villain every episode.

#ask #meme #fryferbfringefan44

[dewprisms]

After your binge-watching session, which would say is better: Kim Possible or Danny Phantom, and why?

Someone actually interested in my opinion for once?

Well it depends, both have their pros and cons in regards to episode plots/arcs, characters and chara development, character designs etc. So I’ll suppose I’ll break them down into different categories. Under a cut as to not make scrolling a hassle.

Also I apologize in advance for my page theme, I know it’s kinda shitty and hard to read sometimes but I’m too busy to change it right now.

Designs/Art: I know Stephen Silver was the main designer for both shows (and his designs for a lot of the teenage girls has a uh, Obvious Pattern.) Ignoring my bias towards Vlad and Drakken, I think a lot of the ghosts have fun designs, but KP gets points for actually letting characters (esp Kim and Ron) wear other clothes in S2 and beyond, and between Phantom, S1 Kim and S4 Kim I think S4 Kim has the best “action” outfit. BUT the art style for DP is pretty stiff at times and KP style has a lot more range for animation, body types and faces.  Overall though, I say they’re pretty tied imo. Both have a lot of ups and downs that truly comes down to a personal pref, even though the Fartman’s style is the more iconic one. I think KP wins animation/art and DP wins for designs.

Characters: Again, the villains shine here more than the protags. KP as such a wide range of villains that I have have to give them the point for creativity and FUN in antagonists, (Duff Killigan is prob my favorite in absurdity followed by Monkey Fist, the Seniors and DNAmy all tied for second. I really like Motor Ed too, seriously.) but that’s not to say that DP doesn’t have them either. Vlad’s true motivations are really...unique compared to other DP villains and even KP ones, (seriously? How many bad guys you know who’s goal in life is “fuck the MC’s mom and also make MC your son”) who like KP are just “take over the world and/or cause tons of destruction” but with only half the fun. Sadly Dark Danny’s entire thing hinges on him being Danny But Evil who only wants...destruction??? Whereas Evil Ron actually does something interesting with the character, showing Ron’s true potential (see Evil Ron vs Electronique in “Stop Team Go” for example) and being in-character for him still. (Faux Take Over The World plot to cover his true goal of owning all the world’s Nacos? Of fucking course Ron would. Brilliant.) Evil Ron still has hints of Ron’s personality (”Boo-yahaHAHAHA!”) whereas Dark Danny is just... evil for evil’s sake, which can be good when actually done right, but in this case isn’t because the only thing that resembles Danny is his outfit. Shego’s backstory is great. DP’s new S3 enemies are very boring despite interesting powers. KP S4’s Camille Leon is great but Warmonga is just eh. Moving on to protags, KP’s protags are far, far more interesting than DP’s. Which brings us to the next point. (Also Mr. Barkin > Mr. Lancer, and Kim’s parents > Danny’s parents.) KP gets this one.

Chara Development: Gonna say it, DP almost has none, and straight up regresses in very end of S2 and most of S3. I swear the only real characters who have any are Vlad (for better or for worse, the latter imo), Jazz (when they remember her, and is good) and Valerie (whose is good too). Tucker gets 3 (three!!) fking episodes about him and they ALL carry the same theme of him not being able to responsibly handle having any kind of power, which is why him becoming the town mayor at the end is so BAD. There’s NO WAY Tucker of all people would make a good mayor. VALERIE got more episodes than him, JAZZ got more episodes than him, both with development that STUCK while he’s a MAIN CHARACTER. Sam never changes, def for worse. Sam is a Base-Breaking Character for a dang reason. She’s extremely pushy, acts like she’s lowkey better than everyone else, and never seems to consider how her actions affect other people, and the like 1 or 2 times she does it doesn’t fucking stick like she’s Hank Hill or something. Danny has no real development for his character. All that develops for him are his powers and nothing else. On the other hand, KP characters DO have development and it shows! Not just for the protags but for villains too! Kim is bossy and a lil controlling early on and stops during S2, whereas Ron was extremely cowardly and gets, not exactly braver but just less phased by it all, plus early he never quite liked going on missions but later on gets sad if he has to miss them, before he doesn’t like being distractions but later on very much takes pride in being one, and etc. Drakken and Shego get development too, esp their relationship with each other AND with Ron and Kim. Bonnie actually got an episode of development (but sadly regressed in time for the finale) whereas Pauline just...never changes whatsoever. Bonnie actually makes for a good rival and mean girl for Kim for the entire show whereas Paulina and her relationship with Danny and Sam are just....bland and doesn’t go anywhere. There’s nothing for Dash, though Ron doesn’t really have an equivalent. So, KP gets this one.

Episodes/Plots/Arcs: DP wins in the Lore department by far, KP wins in character arcs. A Sitch In Time answers the great questions of What Would Happen if the Villains Teamed Up AND Shego is a Better Villain than Drakken so Why isn’t She in Charge? ft Time Travel. The Ultimate Enemy answers What If Danny Went Evil and Is Vlad Completely Irredeemable? ft Time Travel. KP definitely does the “balancing Hero duties with School life” better than DP. You can definitely see her struggles with it whereas DP is just kinda there. I also very much like that Kim is girly but is never shamed for it both in-universe and out, whereas DP is known for the shitty “I’m not like other girls” fake feminist bullshit. A problem I have with DP is that time pretty much never changes, as if the show takes place within a year, and it seriously hampers the growth of the show could have. Time is also just out of whack, they take their big end-of-the-year test then it’s Christmas THEN it’s Summer Vacation but even in S3 they’re all still in the first year of high school like ??? What?? Whereas KP starts in Freshman year and ends with Senior Graduation. The arcs of Danny/Sam vs Kim/Ron are just...D/S was definitely teased a ton more but by S3 you just get tired of it, not to mention the hypocrisy regarding the character relationships. Personal opinion warning, but Danny/Valerie had a lot more development in such a short time and was super interesting. Kim/Ron didn’t have as many teasing esp in S1 and S2 (it’s there though) but it def picks up in S3 and I love how their new relationship was handled in S4. Back to episodes, my favorite episodes for both are Reign Storm and So The Drama, but while I might be biased toward Reign Storm I’m gonna have to ultimately give better episodes overall to KP. So The Drama has Drakken going back to his Actually Dangerous roots from early on and becoming the closest to anyone to actually winning on his own merit (Shego stole the Tempus Simia from Drakken/Duff/MF and relied on weird time shit of Kim being “lost in the time stream” ((actual canon explanation)) to travel to the future specifically to stop her, to actually win) and is SO good when Dr. D finally gets defeated, plus (personal bias here) Kim and Ron’s teased hook-up finally happens. I will say though, I’m not a fan of S4′s Hana Stoppable/The Han story. As both shows are action-oriented, they definitely have their fair share of good fights but I think KP also has better action and fight scenes. Humor is extremely subjective but I think KP made me laugh more. Finally, DP is infamous for S3 just being bad whereas KP just got better and better with each season, though I’d put S4 below S3 and above S2. So: Lore = DP. Arcs, Action and Eps = KP.

Fandom: Ignoring the super gross shipping aspects of some parts of the fandom (If ur a P*mpousP*p or K*go shipper pls go away from my stuff i’m fucking serious), I think DP wins for this one. Many great OCs, (I really haven’t seen any for KP aside from next gen?) the already interesting lore is def expanded so much by fans, I legitimately don’t care for “Wes Weston” but my god did the fandom do some serious work for this boy. I don’t know too much about KP since the fandom seems kinda dead aside from some shipping stuff and a very slight revival from the movie, whereas DP ended before KP and is still very very active. DP wins fandom.

(Bonus) Reboots/Redesigns: I’m gonna be honest, I’m not sure what could be done better for KP aside from the mess of Disney’s out-of-order airings, a more serious reboot wouldn’t work for the show at all, but DP could definitely use a reboot and fixes the disaster of S3. And reboots & character redesigns are def a hot topic for the DP fandom. So DP gets this one, though I’m not sure if this is a good thing.

Final: So over all, 4 for KP and 4 for DP, or if you add the little groups, 7 for KP and 4 for DP. Overall, I’ll say KP is the better show, but DP shines with the fandom. I also have a personal bias in favor of DP but it makes them even out for me. If you want interesting lore and good fandom content, go for DP. If you want fun and interesting characters, actual character development and more action and drama, KP is the way to go.

But instead of picking one, just watch both!

#danny phantom #kim possible #disney #nickelodeon #ship hate / #asks #rue postings #Anonymous

[f4liveblogarchives]

Fantastic Four Vol 1 #187, #188, & #189

Thur Aug 22 2019 [02:04 PM] Bocaj: 187 issues later, still fantastic but not necessarily still four [02:05 PM] Wack'd: Eh, they're still pretty Fourish [02:05 PM] Wack'd: Unless you count Franklin I guess [02:05 PM] Wack'd: Sure, Thundra, Greer, and Impy have been around a lot lately, but Greer insists she's not part of the team and Thundra and Impy don't really play well with others [02:06 PM] maxwellelvis: Also, Impossible Man's been KO'd by an unseen assailant. [02:06 PM] Wack'd: Also true [02:07 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, on the plane ride back from New Salem, the team recaps a little [02:07 PM] Wack'd: Agatha left that place in the hopes that others have her kind would be encouraged to join her, and she blames herself for raising Nicholas badly [02:07 PM] Wack'd: These are, again, the kind of details it might've been nice to have during the actual story so we could wring something out of them [02:08 PM] Bocaj: "Thundra and Impy don't really play well with others" I posit that Johnny and Ben historically haven't always played well with others [02:09 PM] Bocaj: Sometimes a family is that cat woman stray you adopted, the woman from an alternate universe where men are considered the weaker gender until you slammed her universe into another, and that annoying alien [02:09 PM] Bocaj: We'll call him the 'urkel' type [02:09 PM] Wack'd: Let me rephrase that to "are openly contemptuous of others and seem hesitant to do even the bare minimum to lend aid" [02:09 PM] maxwellelvis: Yeah, but in a different way from Impossible Man, who literally nobody except other Popuppians can stand to be around. [02:09 PM] Bocaj: Ok well thats different [02:10 PM] Wack'd: The Four discover Impy, knocked out but apparently unharmed. Sue worries that whoever did this might still be in the Baxter [02:11 PM] Wack'd: We can also add to George Pérez to the long list of comics artists who are bad at drawing children but very good at drawing tiny adults

[02:12 PM] Bocaj: George Pérez can draw a lot of things, in terms of range and also in terms of numerical things on a page but children are black magic that eludes him [02:13 PM] Aleph Null: i relate because children are also black magic that eludes me [02:13 PM] Wack'd: So Johnny flies outside to look in all the windows while Ben decides to go floor by floor. Reed is out out because they made a plan without him and Sue has to heal his fragile ego [02:13 PM] Wack'd: “Without my stretching powers, I'm not really good enough to be anything more than a nursemaid!” [02:13 PM] Bocaj: fuck off reed [02:14 PM] Aleph Null: can we retitle the blog to “fuck off reed” [02:14 PM] Wack'd: This is a nice moment

[02:15 PM] Wack'd: Honestly I like how forgiving everyone is being of Agatha. Not that anyone on this team has room to throw stones [02:16 PM] Wack'd: Oh my god Johnny is also like "man, running off on my own like I always do probably hurt Reed's feelings" [02:16 PM] Wack'd: Anyway Ben runs into KLAW! [02:17 PM] Bocaj: Ulysses Klaue Klaw? [02:17 PM] Wack'd: Whose shtick at this point is still being made of sound and also being able to fire sound monsters at people [02:17 PM] Wack'd: And not, you know, having a claw [02:17 PM] maxwellelvis: His artificial hand is his claw. [02:19 PM] Wack'd: Oh hey it's this guy

[02:19 PM] Bocaj: oh thats a bad look [02:20 PM] maxwellelvis: Actually that's not that guy. That's a different guy. [02:20 PM] Wack'd: Back in #20 he got the ability to alter non-organic matter because he was exposed to an atomic incident [02:20 PM] Wack'd: Since then he's had a couple of appearances in the 70s, one in Two in One and one in Iron Man [02:20 PM] Bocaj: The guy I knew as Molecule Man is a multiversal bomb [02:21 PM] maxwellelvis: Wait, I saw that guy shrivel up and disintegrate when separated from his wand for too long. [02:22 PM] Wack'd: Yes [02:22 PM] Wack'd: This got undone in the Iron Man appearance I mentioned [02:22 PM] maxwellelvis: oh [02:22 PM] Wack'd: Where he also gained the ability to possess people [02:23 PM] Bocaj: There was a shitty Avengers Assemble episode about Son of Molecule Man [02:23 PM] Bocaj: It had a stylistic flashback to EMH [02:23 PM] Wack'd: Given how fucking often these books are like "oh, they killed him, he's gone for real" and then in a completely different book he comes back to life and then he returns to his original book with a long winded explanation... [02:23 PM] Wack'd: I'm not sure why you would've assumed that he was actually dead [02:24 PM] maxwellelvis: Because this time he left behind a body. [02:24 PM] Wack'd: That doesn't mean anything! [02:24 PM] maxwellelvis: Well, a pile of dust in a ragged old Molecule Man costume. [02:24 PM] Wack'd: At the end of his first appearance the Watcher aged him into oblivion [02:26 PM] Wack'd: Agatha filling the role of "lady who tells Reed to suck it the fuck up" now that Medusa's gone

[02:28 PM] Wack'd: Anyway Ben gets turned into glass, Johnny is drowned in midair, Sue is...uh...

[02:28 PM] Wack'd: Sure, that's how that works [02:29 PM] Wack'd: And Reed tries to fire on the two but his gun is turned to helium and he's knocked out [02:30 PM] Wack'd: Okay so uh [02:31 PM] Wack'd: In the aftermath of that Iron Man I mentioned, Klaw found Owen's wand, with Owen's mind trapped inside, and gave it to a guy he met on the street so Owen would possess that guy [02:31 PM] Wack'd: The narrative notes that the guy was a boxer so I should probably also note that the guy was a boxer in case it becomes relevant [02:33 PM] Wack'd: So! The Four are incapacitated! Who cam save them now! [02:33 PM] Wack'd: Why, Impossible Man, of course. Not because he cares about the team, but because he's angry that someone defeated him in combat [02:34 PM] Wack'd: Impy can shapeshift so Molecule Man can't really do much to him [02:34 PM] Wack'd: And Impy removes his ears and makes himself into a non-sound-conductive material so he's immune to Klaw [02:34 PM] Wack'd: And then he kicks their asses [02:35 PM] Wack'd: Owen had been planning on using Reed's psi-amplifier (from that time Ben and Hulk switched brains) to make it so he could keep his ass in this body forever [02:35 PM] Wack'd: But Reed manages to cut the cord mid-process, sapping Owen back into his wand [02:36 PM] Wack'd: And undoing all the damage he caused [02:36 PM] Wack'd: AND THEN REED PICKS UP THE WAND WITH HIS BARE HANDS, LIKE AN IDIOT [02:37 PM] Wack'd: W E L P

[02:38 PM] Bocaj: Basically Lunella becoming Smartest was long overdue because Reed is dumb [02:38 PM] Bocaj: Someone needed to explicitly be smarter than him or else it would be very sad [02:39 PM] Wack'd: Don't think it's escaped my attention that this is our second evil Reed storyline in which Reed isn't actually evil [02:39 PM] Bocaj: Hm [02:40 PM] Bocaj: At least it’s not an evil Sue storyline [02:40 PM] Bocaj: Those are bad in many many ways [02:40 PM] Wack'd: If Gerry Conway's read on the Reed/Sue divorce arc was "if they're going to split up it should be because Reed does something truly ghastly", it seems like Wein's was "people seem to really want to make Reed a jerk, so how do I do that without altering the fact that he's genuinely a nice person" [02:42 PM] Wack'd: I loathed Conway's take, but Wein's is even worse because it denies the idea that Reed has anything to be culpable for. It seems like people have been shilling him constantly recently--Sue noticing Counter-Reed is unaffectionate to spot the ruse, Ben assuming Counter-Reed is obsessively watching the Negative Zone because he wants to save his counterpart, Counter-Reed immediately becoming a selfless paragon when his headache wears off [02:43 PM] Wack'd: And this issue, too, with everyone but Agatha assuming Reed is entitled to authority and feeling bad for hurting his feelings by doing their own things [02:44 PM] Wack'd: Maybe I'm being uncharitable because he's the cripple-the-b**** guy, but it does really seem like he sees nothing wrong with Reed's normal pattern of behavior and is mildly baffled anyone would. Which would fit well with his aesthetic of overwhelming nostalgia [02:45 PM] Wack'd: Anyway

Thur Aug 22 2019 [02:46 PM] Wack'd: So Reed's brain is trapped in Owen's wand now [02:47 PM] Wack'd: Ben destroys the Psi-Amplifier so Owen can't take over Reed's body permanently [02:47 PM] Wack'd: Owen, in retaliation, traps Sue, Johnny, Ben and Impy in an adimantium cube [02:48 PM] Wack'd: While he goes to blow off some adimantium rage [02:48 PM] maxwellelvis: Spider-Man and Venom ~ Maximum Carnage (Genesis) - Main Theme [02:49 PM] Wack'd: Johnny uses his heat to expand the air in the box, forcing it open, but it takes basically everything he's got [02:49 PM] Wack'd: You would think everybody in that box would die a million times of heat stroke but I guess not [02:50 PM] maxwellelvis: I was about to question the presence of Adamantium in an FF story, then I remembered that A. it's past 1975 now so Wolverine is a thing, and B. Len Wein is one of Wolverine's co-creators. [02:50 PM] maxwellelvis: And I think he first coined "Adamantium" to describe what his claws are made of. [02:51 PM] Wack'd: Watcher has gone from a white Grey to a fat bald guy to a Tor Johnson character

[02:53 PM] Wack'd: Watcher is still not talking, which Ben takes as a sign of apathy [02:53 PM] Wack'd: "Why don't you go to sell tickets to a funeral," he asks [02:54 PM] Wack'd: Ah yes, my favorite Tom Hanks movie

[02:55 PM] maxwellelvis: "You should make'em bugs!" [02:58 PM] Wack'd: Credit where it's due, I think this is genuinely the coolest monster design we've had in a while! You can see some remnants of the Kirby aping that still, in 1977, has not worn off, but it feels novel applied to brick and mortar, and I love the arrangements of the windows and the way the structures on the roof jut out of it's shoulders

[02:59 PM] Wack'd: Reed agrees to stop resisting, and the building returns to normal [02:59 PM] Wack'd: And then his friends show up and Reed starts resisting again [03:00 PM] Wack'd: Thanks to that resistance, Owen can't do anything to our heroes directly, and has to settle for transforming their surroundings [03:00 PM] Wack'd: This would be a lot simpler if they just kept the "no organic matter" limit from his first appearance [03:01 PM] maxwellelvis: Blame Steve Gerber, I guess. [03:01 PM] Wack'd: Impy tries to hit Owen with a giant mallet but Sue stops him because she doesn't want to hurt Reed [03:02 PM] Wack'd: Impy takes it well

[03:05 PM] Wack'd: Unfortunately, Reed's body gets knocked out anyway [03:06 PM] Wack'd: But while this renders the Reed inside of Owen's wand unconscious, it sends Owen into spasms of pain [03:06 PM] Wack'd: Causing him to release his grip on the wand, dropping it into a nearby factory furnace [03:07 PM] Wack'd: And so normalcy is restored--OR IS IT?! [03:07 PM] Wack'd: Reed's decided to resign from the Four [03:07 PM] Wack'd: And Sue's going to join him because "I already deserted my husband once, I'm not going to do it again" [03:07 PM] Wack'd: *sigh* [03:08 PM] Bocaj: 😐

Thur Aug 22 2019 [03:10 PM] Wack'd: FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 1 #189 [03:10 PM] Wack'd: Is a reprint of Annual ’66 [03:10 PM] Wack'd: Moving on [03:10 PM] Wack'd: As if there weren't enough reasons to hate Wein, it certainly seems like a lot of issues get delayed while he's around [03:11 PM] Wack'd: This is the second in less than ten issues [03:11 PM] maxwellelvis: That might explain why Chris Claremont took over Uncanny X-Men almost immediately after Wein revived it

#1977 #Len Wein #George Pérez #The Main Book

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider Ghost Movies and Specials

It's very amusing that I'm covering a horror movie here, but that isn't a part of the Ghost series.

It is time to (kinda) close the book on the Ghost season.

I gotta be honest, I wasn't looking forward to doing this, and I was both very disappointed and also very surprise. It was a fun journey, with a few questionable choices, but still fun nonetheless.

But before I get to the works that belong under this umbrella, we'll dive into something a bit different at first...

Kamen Rider: THE FIRST & Kamen Rider: THE NEXT

So, while looking at the list of Ghost's movies I saw that Kamen Rider 1 was on the list and that it was also technically part of the canon. I debated if I should watch it or not since, after all, my knowledge of the OG Kamen Rider is pretty much below basic and I was very afraid I would be missing in a lot of stuff. I was well aware I wouldn't be able to watch the actual show right now and I didn't want to read the wiki so I was about to give up on the idea when I looked at my notes and I saw that Kamen Rider THE FIRST and THE NEXT were a thing, and I thought this would fit in perfectly with the amount of time I have right now. I knew THE FIRST was a remake/adaptation of the original TV show and the manga and THE NEXT was its sequel so this would probably give me enough context to watch Kamen Rider 1.

And I wish I had done some more research before watching these movies because I feel like watching THE NEXT was a mistake.

Like, while I can't attest how truthful to the source material THE FIRST is, it was pretty much one of those compilation movies. The impression I had was that they choose the most crucial moments in a "The Best of" format and just glued that together and sold it as a movie. Which was not really a problem because it was pretty much a very solid movie, despite the cuts that leave a lot of gaps between each point. It lacked a lot of information, like how Hayato got to Shocker, and it kinda wasted time with the plotline of the kids from the hospital that didn't get a proper payoff, but it was still an entertaining movie. I love the action scenes, I'm not a specialist in this matter but it was really refreshing seeing a fight scene that was pretty much all done with practical stunts and very little CGI. This movie made me really curious to watch the original show, I know this is not exactly what I'll get whenever I watch it, but it left the "I want more" taste in my mouth.

THE NEXT on the other hand, while it was more of a "film" rather than a "compilation", it was also less of a Rider movie, they had riders on it, but it felt like they weren't the main focus. The feeling I had while watching it was that the producers either read the Helter Skelter manga, or watched Perfect Blue, or they saw one of those conspiracy theories of artists who don't seem to age that died and were replaced and wanted to make a horror movie that would deal in with the cruelty of the entertainment world, but they got denied and were put in to make the sequel of THE FIRST without wanting it, so they picked their original idea and shoved Kamen Rider into it as a secondary element that feels like it doesn't belong in that movie, and in the end, it fails at both. Admittedly, the horror portion was pretty good, I would be interested in watching it. It was the rider portion that was a letdown, it was pretty much just some random action, and while watching that girl fighting with a chainsaw was cool as hell there wasn't much background stuff to justify all of that and put some meaning on it. And there's also the terrible final scene with that awful CGI fire that was cringy as hell. If you want some advice, skip this one, it's not worth it.

Kamen Rider Ghost: Legendary! Riders' Souls!

Because I was left with the feeling that I got no useful information after watching THE NEXT, I decided to do something that I never do that is watch the web specials they release for each movie in the hopes that I would have enough context to watch Kamen Rider 1 without a problem. And well... I didn't expect them to be so pointless. Like, they have enough content to be its own TV movie and it's all just to explain how they got the Rider Eyecons, AND THAT'S IN THE MOVIE FOR LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES!!!!!!!!!! And like, these form changes are so useless that if they had taken that out of the movie it wouldn't make a difference!!! I swear to god, why do they still think this kind of stuff is cool? UGH

I don't have much to say because this was pretty much just a boss rush, but I have to say this. PLEASE STOP BRINGING FINAL BOSSES BACK, they're final bosses for a reason goddammit, they're not cannon fodder! When you bring a final boss back anytime you have a chance it just loses the cool effect it could have. Please, Kamen Rider, stop, we get it, you love your own franchise, you don't need to keep doing this circle jerk all the time when you wanna do something cool that serves as an homage to your own history.

Kamen Rider 1

Complains aside, finally the actual first Ghost movie, in the Ghost Movies and Specials post.

And this was a great movie, probably my favorite thing that came out of Ghost. This movie is exciting, it has things for both old and new fans, the plot is pretty decent, the action is a lot of fun, and the emotional beats work very well. I felt in love with Takeshi after this movie, he's such a cool guy, and I really like the actor, it was always a joy seeing him on the screen, his whole thing with Mayu was great, it was very endearing, and when Takeshi dies I really felt it, and the only reason why I'm okay with them bringing him back is that I like him so much and I didn't want to see him die. If THE FIRST made me want to watch the original series, seeing Takeshi in this movie made me want that even more.

I expected the Ghost cast to be the low point of this movie, and while my biggest complaint is about a thing related to the Ghost lore, I overall liked seeing Takeru tag along with Takeshi. To the surprise of a total of 0 people, Makoto was useless again, but honestly, his participation in this movie is so minor it doesn't even bother me. I also like that the villains of the movie were Shocker and Nova Shocker and not that white-suit guy from the specials. Having both Shockers there fighting not only the riders but also each other earned a lot of points with me, I particularly love how Nova Shocker decided to do their thing by embracing capitalism and becoming a corporation because corporative people are the scariest and I love when they make villains based on that.

But I think what I like the most of this movie is that brings up to discussion a theme that I always thought the show should've tackled on TV that is the importance of life, and all that Love&Peace talk about how we're all connected, and that we're connected to nature, that is connected to the world, and yadda yadda yadda. Yes, it's a pretty old speech and everything, but it's one of the subjects that match the most with what I believe is the premise of this show, and while I love that this is a part of this movie, it's pretty sad that none of this bleeds out to the TV show.

And talking about things that are pretty sad, the element I liked the least was the thing that Mayu had a very powerful Eyecon that has been dormant inside her. I understand this is a Ghost movie and they wanna use their gimmick, but they could've used Takeru's gimmick of going full ghost mode and start fo follow Mayu while invisible instead of making the final villain just another MOTW. I honestly think the conflict between Shocker and Nova Shocker was enough to make everything they wanted to do, on the scale they envisioned, without having to add anything related to the villains of this season.

Regardless of the complaints, this is worth watching, for sure, and I wish I hadn't wasted my time with THE NEXT and the specials because I wish I could've met this movie way sooner. XD

Ghost: The 100 Eyecons and Ghost's Fateful Moment

This movie... was a choice. I feel like I have nothing to say about this movie, it was empty, it was pretty much a copy of the Wizard and the OOO's movies merged together, there were a lot of depiction of historical figures that would probably leave some people turning on their graves, they tried to make not just one but TWO familiar dramas and both of them failed in being interesting or having a good pay off at the end, and if all of that wasn't bad enough, guess what? Takeru died again! And was "revived" once more! Yay! I swear, this movie is so frustrating, I just wanna forget it exists.

Well... at least the new Napoleon and Darwin forms looked good I guess.

The Legend of Hero Alain

Now, what wasn't a frustration was Alain's special series! I absolutely love being able to see different points of view of the same story, and being able to see that from the perspective of who became my favorite among the riders of this season was a true delight. I do think episode 4 was a bit useless and if they wanted to make an epilogue they could've done something better, but the other 3 episodes are pretty good.

In particular episodes 2 and 3, that are from the time around his redemption arc, were very touching and a huge part of that is obviously from the presence of the best character of this show, the #1 takoyaki lady, Fumi-san, who once again was here giving her wisdom and passing down some of the messages the TV show tried to pass but that it failed completely. And even though I knew they would eventually hit a point where they would talk about her death, I was still hit by the feels like if they were a truck and I cried.

If I have to say two things that I don't like about these specials it would be that "Human Life Course" Takeru, Akari, and Onari had in episode 3, that was just ridiculous. And I'm not the biggest fan of having this thing of Alain and Fumi having a story that goes way back than what we saw in the show. But honestly, even with these problems, this is one of my favorite media that came out of Ghost.

Kamen Rider Ghost RE:BIRTH: Kamen Rider Specter

Last, and deservedly the least, is Specter's movie. And talk about a bad movie,

You would think that at least on his own movie Makoto would be important, play a big role, but even though he defeated the big bad in the end, he actually did nothing that couldn't have been done for another character. Heck, if you think about it, the real hero at the end of the day was Onari because it was sneaking around and stealing that gem that solved the main problem about clearing the sky atmosphere in the end. All Makoto did here was take a dumb decision after the other and is dreadful to watch.

I think the biggest problem of this movie is that it depends on us believing in feelings developed between two characters that know each other for less than three days and one of those characters is framed by the movie SINCE THE BEGINNING as a maniac villain. And our pay off of this is to believe Makoto forgive the guy who was conducting crazy experiments and that threatened to kill his beloved sister because he considered her a failure. Thanks, I hate it!

Oh yeah and we had power-ups for Necrom and Specter that came out of nowhere and we just have to buy it. At least Spector's new form looks pretty cool, despite me not buying the "sin" motif, I would like to have an opinion on Necrom's form, but it happened on a shitty rain scene and I couldn't distinguish any memorable feature while watching it.

All in all, this movie was another disappointment.

Well, that's it for Ghost. I wish I could have something good to say to sendoff this series, but I honestly don't so I'll just wrap-up here after all this post is already long enough. What are your thoughts on these? Have you watched any of them recently? Let me know in the comments down below. Stay healthy, stay safe, never stop resisting, thank you so much for reading, and until the next time. Bye~

#Kamen Rider Ghost #Kamen Rider THE FIRST #Kamen Rider THE NEXT #kamen rider

[higuchimon]

[fanfic] A Prisoner’s Desire

Shun stood at the cave opening, drinking in sunlight that cascaded downward. He couldn’t step a single footstep past the entrance – Yuuri’s magic made certain of that. He’d tried. He’d tried more times than he could even name – mostly because he tried multiple times a day and he’d been with Yuuri close to a year now.

Just thinking that sent his stomach twisting and his heart pounding in hatred and rage even more. He clung to that rage – it kept him from giving up hope altogether. He wasn’t gong to let the dragon take that away from him. Yuuri had already taken so much away from him. Starting with his freedom.

It was already late afternoon. Soon the sun would slide behind the mountains to the point no light entered this valley and the moon would rise. Shun stared at that as often as he did at the sun. Anything that represented freedom he stared at hungrily, aching to reach it once again.

Though in fairness, he could set foot beyond the cave entrance, but there was a condition to that. He could only do so when Yuuri was with him and that wasn’t what he wanted.

Yuuri had taken him out a few times, mostly when Shun demanded certain cooking implements be purchased. Shun insisted that if he were going to be Yuuri’s cook, then he was going to at least have the utensils to make what he wanted. Yuuri seemed to find that very amusing.

A faint noise sounded from outside. Shun frowned. He’d heard that sort of sound before. It wasn’t Yuuri; Yuuri had gone to visit one of his brothers. Or so he’d said. Shun wasn’t certain if or when Yuuri told the truth, even after a year.

He’d heard it before, but he hadn’t heard it in a very long time, and it wasn’t until he actually saw the person who entered that he recognized the sound of armor. Someone wearing chain mail entered the valley and stumbled their way towards the cave entrance. They also wore a helmet, concealing their features, and Shun didn’t let himself feel even a scrap of hope.

The knight – or whoever – stopped in front of the cave, tilted their visor back, and shouted at the top of their lungs.

“Dragon! Evil beast! Bane of the world! I demand you face me in single combat for the freedom of your captive – or captives!”

Shun did not stop himself from facepalming. He’d hoped for a year now that Yuuto or Ruri or Crow or someone that he knew would find him and help him get home. This wasn’t what he wanted at all.

“Who do you think you are?” Shun asked, shifting to where he could be seen. The knight blinked and turned towards him.

“You’re not a dragon,” he said. Shun presumed he was more or less attractive, but there didn’t seem to be a great deal of intelligence in his eyes. “Are you the dragon’s servant?”

In all technicality, Shun knew that was the truth. He argued continually with Yuuri about that. He preferred to call himself a captive if he were going to call himself anything. Yuuri preferred other names. Shun did not like to think about those names.

So he didn’t quite answer. “I’m not here because I want to be,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I am the Prince of Devalon!” The knight raised his head so much that Shun didn’t think he could see anything else in front of him. “I’ve heard that the dragon who lives here is the most terrifying of monsters who has taken many people captive and will not release them. I’ve come to slay the beast and free them all.”

Shun let out a very annoyed breath. “You’re partially right. He is a terrifying monster. But he’s only taken one prisoner – me.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the prince. “And I don’t think you’re going to be able to slay him.”

The prince slowly lowered his head and blinked at him. “Excuse me? There aren’t any princesses here?”

“No.” Shun bit the word off. “Nor princes.” One could never be too certain how a prince’s tastes ran. He’d heard of one that actually had a dragon as a consort. “Just me.”

The prince’s eyes narrowed, moving past Shun and then back to him. “What about treasure? I could at least loot the place. Let me in.”

For a few seconds Shun considered it. He wasn’t sure of how Yuuri set up his defenses so that Shun couldn’t leave. Perhaps anyone who wasn’t a dragon who entered couldn’t leave again. Or perhaps the prince wouldn’t be able to get in at all. He already knew that he wasn’t getting out. If it had been someone he knew, he would have faith in them to figure it out.

This person, however, who focused on rescuing people who didn’t exist and ignored the one who stood right there, and who wanted to take all the treasure, wasn’t the sort of rescuer who could do anything for him. He wasn’t even a rescuer at all.

“I can’t,” he finally said. He wasn’t entirely certain if he would have if he could. Leave on his own, without a doubt. Let this person who intended to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down and probably couldn’t even break the spell that kept him in here? No.

The prince stared at him, lip curling. “I’ll make you my squire if you let me in,” he said, trying for a commanding tone and sounding more petulant. “You’ll have three hot meals a day and be allowed to live in my castle. A soft warm bed, too.”

I have that here. And more. He wasn’t very happy about the soft warm bed that he shared with Yuuri – or Yuuri insisted that they share – but he cooked three hot meals a day and Yuuri didn’t mind if he made more for himself, so long as Shun always had enough for him, no matter what it was.

“No.” Shun started to turn away. “You’d better leave here before he comes back. I don’t think he’d like to see you here.”

He’d taken no more than a bare step away before there was the loudest clang he’d heard in close to a year rang out. Shun turned back to see the prince trying to get through the cave mouth and beating against empty air. The faintest hint of a smirk crossed his lips.

So it looked like he couldn’t enter at all.

“Let me in! How dare you just walk away! I am Prince of the realm! I will set you free from this place and you can be my servant! Wouldn’t you rather be mine than a beastly dragon’s?”

Shun didn’t like Yuuri. He hated it when Yuuri’s tongue traced against his skin, sending his head spinning and rousing ardor that he’d never had for anyone else. But Yuuri also talked to him. Yuuri talked to him like a person, telling him stories of being a dragon, and listened to his own tales. Shun told them in the hopes that he could persuade Yuuri to let hi go. It hadn’t ever worked, but there were so many nights when they’d curled up beside the fireplace together, Yuuri teasing him to greater and greater heights of passion, and Shun - Shun hated to admit it, but he’d grown a bit attached to that.

There were probably names for things like that. But Shun refused to think about it too much. It would tell him things he’d rather not know about himself.

“No,” was all he said. He wanted to go free. Not be someone else’s servant. He wanted the skies again. He could live forever as a falcon if he needed to.

The prince pounded on the invisible barrier harder and harder. “Let me in! I demand it!”

A shadow fell over the prince from behind. Shun turned back, a tiny thrill racing through him that he pretended wasn’t happening. He knew that shape, and he knew the one that appeared a breath later, as Yuuri in his human form approached from behind.

“What do we have here, my pretty bird?” Yuuri asked, his gaze sliding past the angered prince to Shun. Shun stepped closer to the cave entrance.

“He says that he’s a prince,” Shun answered. “And he wasn’t all that happy to find out there weren’t any princesses here.” He considered for a moment. “Then he wanted me to let him in so he could rob the treasury.” He’d seen Yuuri’s treasury. There were kings who would weep at the sight of that. Even if he could have let him in. the prince wouldn’t have been able to carry it all away from there on his back.

The prince whirled to glare at Yuuri, who stood there ever so calmly in his purple garments, one hand resting on his hip, head tilted to one side. “Let me in there! That treasure is stolen!”

“That treasure is mine. None of those who I took it from are alive to claim it – neither are their heirs.” Yuuri smiled in that way that displayed his draconic teeth in a human mouth. “If you take it from me, you’re nothing but a thief.”

“It’s not theft to take from a dragon!”

Yuuri chuckled softly. “Then let us settle this the old fashioned way. It’s a bit boorish but I suppose you won’t learn any other way.” He turned towards Shun and reached one hand out to him. “Come on out, pretty bird. I want you to see this.”

Shun’s initial thought was just to step back and let Yuuri do t+his without him. But he knew far too well how Yuuri would react to that. It would probably happen anyway, so the least he could do was do it by his own choice. He set his hand in Yuuri’s and Yuuri pulled him through the barrier as if it wasn’t even there.

Again the knight threw himself at the barrier, but it bounced him back as hard as it had before. Yuuri shook his head.

‘You can’t enter my home without my permission. Now, if you can slay me, then you can have my treasure, and you, my pretty bird, can depart to wherever you wish to go,” Yuuri told him, and Shun could feel the tingle of magic in his words. “But when I slay you, I will eat your corpse and whatever you have that I want I’ll keep and sell the rest.” His violet eyes shifted over to Shun. “And then I’ll celebrate with you.”

Shun shuddered, both from what Yuuri said and the way his eyes slitted for a few seconds as he turned back towards the knight. For a few brief seconds he considered taking to the air. But he knew Yuuri could easily catch him again – he’d tried that before, so many times in the first month or two, before he’d unwillingly began to accept that Yuuri was far faster than he was.

He would find a way. He’d never for a breath given up on that. Now wasn’t the time.

The knight glared at Yuuri. “I will have you know that I wield the greatest weapon to slay dragons ever forged! It has been passed down in my family for seven generations!”

Yuuri sniffed towards him and his lips quirked. “You bought it at a cheap fair two weeks ago. Along with the armor. You >are a prince, but you’re the youngest of your family and all of your older brothers have married and produced heirs. The only way you’d ever ascend a throne is to marry into it or if some sort of disaster happened to your entire family.”

Shun couldn’t see the prince’s face, but the way his eyes widened and his fists clenched before he yanked the sword out of the sheath told just how true those words were. He settled himself on the rock he enjoyed sitting on the most when Yuuri brought him out for sunshine and exercise. He didn’t think this would take long.

Nor did it. The prince lunged forward, sword flailing as if he’d never had a day’s worth of proper training. Yuuri didn’t even bother to change form. He slipped to one side and perched on another rock, caressing the soft blossoms of meadow sage growing nearby.

“I said that I’ll sell whatever of yours I don’t want – and you don’t have anything I want – but I also don’t know who might want to buy that. It’s not going to be worth anything once I’m done with you.” Yuuri regarded his erstwhile opponent with a very amused look. “Are you ready to die yet or did you want to run around a little more?”

Again the prince charged, sword waved about fit to cut the wind to tatters, and Yuuri lazily strolled out of the way. The prince kept on charging forwards, showing nothing that resembled the slightest knowledge of how to fight, finally taking the sword’s hilt in both hands and running at Yuuri.

Yuuri didn’t move this time. Instead, he reached up and caught the sword in his bare hands – bare hands that still were as strong as a dragon’s scales – and wrenched the blade away from the prince. He examined it only for a moment, then snapped it in half. The prince stumbled to a halt as Yuuri disarmed him, then stared as if utterly incapable of believing what just happened.

Then Yuuri did change. The meadow here was more than large enough for him, but he still brought fear by his mere existence. Yuuri smiled. Shun doubted that the prince realized it was a smile, which was probably a good thing for him.

Yuuri did not allow any last words. He simply breathed fire, a raging torrent of burning blaze that blinded Shun for a few seconds. When he could see what was going on again, Yuuri was once more in his human form, and there wasn’t anything left of the prince saved a burned smear on the ground.

“You’ll have to clean that up tomorrow,” Yuuri said, strolling over towards Shun. “It’s unsightly and I don’t want it on the front doorstep.”

That didn’t surprise Shun. Yuuri never cleaned up his own messes. He regarded Yuuri curiously.

“How did you know that about him?”

Yuuri shrugged. “He came with a friend. That’s how he got up here – it was a magician. He was waiting down below and I saw them on the way home. Magicians know better than to enter my territory. Most of them do, anyway. When the magician saw me, he told me everything about his friend.” Yuuri swayed close to Shun, his eyes dark and desirous. “And then I ate the magician.”

Shun couldn’t move a single muscle. Yuuri’s gaze had that effect on him, keeping him trapped with his eyes alone. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he just couldn’t move or if he didn’t want to.

“I thought you didn’t like to eat humans,” Shun murmured, recalling what Yuuri told him on his first day there. Yuuri smiled and licked his lips.

“I don’t. Not very often. Certainly not my favorite.” Yuuri swayed a little closer. “Not when you prepare so much better meals for us, my pretty bird.” He rested one hand against the side of Shun’s face and tilted the shapeshifter down towards him. “I think I promised a celebration after I was done, didn’t I?”

Shun swallowed. He knew exactly what was coming next and he could not have said if he anticipated it or feared it. All it would take would be one simple touch from Yuuri’s far too wicked tongue and all thoughts of resistance would vanish, replaced by cravings he could not deny.

“Yes, you did,” he murmured when Yuuri expected him to say something. Yuuri smiled, leaning in closer, his breath ghosting hot against Shun’s ear.

“I always keep my promises.” He wrapped one hand around Shun’s and tugged him once more to the cave entryway. Shun followed along, casting a longing glance at the darkening sky overhead, where a single star gleaming bright.

Then they were in the cave once more, moving through the entryway and the variety of corridors until they arrived at the bedroom. Before he’d seen this for the first time, Shun always imagined that dragons slept on piles of gold. That was what legend always told him.

Yuuri had a large bed, with a soft mattress and a dozen softer pillows, each in a slightly different shade of purple, edged around with pink, all of it matching Yuuri’s own coloring. Large was perhaps not the right word. There was more than enough space for both of them, as well as perhaps two more if Yuuri had so chosen. So far he hadn’t – and Shun eternally knew he was grateful for that.

It wasn’t just large. It was comfortable. Shun could not remember having slept in a better bed. It would be more so if it weren’t for the company.

“Are you going to -” Shun couldn't quite form the question but Yuuri knew what he meant and shook his head, reaching for Shun.

“I don’t think I need to tonight, do I?”

The way that Yuuri smiled sent more shivers all through Shun. He wanted to look away, but those eyes of Yuuri’s kept him focused on the dragon. Yuuri fitted one hand against the side of his face and brought him down closer.

“Do I?”

Later, Shun thought he didn’t melt into Yuuri’s arms, but it was a close thing. He knew Yuuri could get him to do whatever he wanted with a simple brush of his tongue. Yet he didn’t. And Shun did all that he wanted regardless.

A tiny part of him murmured that he also wanted this. But it was not a part that he chose to listen to.

The End

Notes: Well, "break me" was supposed to be for an angsty drabble. I think I got the angsty part done. Drabble, not so much.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo arc-v #kurosaki shun #yuuri (arc-v) #au: dragon & falcon

[itspixcelation]

Is The Caligula Effect: Overdose Worth Your Time?

I initially wrote this review for an episode of The Pixcelation Show over on my channel, which you can visit by clicking HERE. If that seems like something you’d enjoy, please scroll to the bottom to find the finished video. Thanks!

In the spring of 2018, an anime by the name of Caligula aired. No; before you ask, it’s not at all connected with the incestuous third emperor of Rome, nor is it connected with the 1979 film about the incestuous third emperor of Rome, but rather, it’s reportedly named after ‘the guilt and excitement that comes with doing something that you shouldn’t do.’ It didn’t really do too much for the anime community at large, only receiving a 6.18 on MyAnimeList as of writing. I remember thinking the series was unnecessarily complicated, and, it being deeply rooted in psychology, it tended to play armchair psychologist to an annoying degree, but it was serviceable, at least.

It wasn’t long after I started the series that I discovered it was based on a game released on the PlayStation Vita called The Caligula Effect, but I would’ve never known about it because there was next to no marketing for it here in the west. I suppose such is the fate of a JRPG on one of the most, if not the most, underappreciated consoles in history.

Welcome to the Pixcelation Show; the only series on YouTube to tackle the questions on everyone’s mind, such as ‘do artificially intelligent idols dream of electric sheep?’ I’m pixcelation, and in today’s episode we’re not gonna be discussing the Caligula anime, nor are we gonna be talking about the original game on the PS Vita. No — in today’s episode, we’ll be talking all about the recently released remaster on PS4, Switch and PC, entitled The Caligula Effect: Overdose. In order to be completely up-front with everyone, I feel obligated to disclose that I was given a code for the PS4 version by NIS America, who published the game in the west.

Imagine, for a moment, that the vocaloid Hatsune Miku gained sentience, and because of songs such as The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku, she comes to the foregone conclusion that we’re all practically suicidal and that being in the real world is what made us this way. So, she does what any rational, sentient AI would, and traps us in the matrix. In the world of The Caligula Effect, their Miku, an AI known as μ, believes she can provide humanity with a happier existence within the artificial world she’s created, called Mobius.

In The Caligula Effect: Overdose, you play as an unnamed protagonist, one of the people invited by μ to live within the simulation. It doesn’t take long before they’re able to see the rift, at which point they join a group of rebels fighting back against μ and her Ostinato Musicians, all of whom desire to keep everyone blind, deaf and dumb to the truth about their world. As you come face-to-face with each of the Ostinato Musicians, you begin to unravel the truth behind the truth, and you’ll be forced to take sides in the battle for the future of both Mobius and the real world.

In my opinion, while the story isn’t necessarily anything revolutionary, the characters drive it home with relatable arcs and … well … character. In the Go-Home Club, as well as the Ostinato Musicians, there are incredibly memorable characters that really twist your arm when it comes to picking the ending you’d prefer. In both groups, there are characters that are foils for characters on the opposing side. For example; Kotono, Mifue and Shogo in the Go-Home Club directly oppose Mirei, Sweet-P and Thorn respectively, in both their actions and character arcs. I really liked how they handled that, as it helps to illustrate the idea that, while the Musicians are the enemy, they’re also only human, and as such, while you may want to return to the real world, each of them has their own compelling motive for remaining within Mobius.

In thinking about each respective arc, one thing that I wasn’t the biggest fan of would be how the writers handled certain social issues through the characters. I’ll provide an example; in one of the early arcs, it’s revealed that one of the Musicians is transgender in the real world, and as a result they’re often the butt of everyone’s jokes just because they’re one of the ‘bad guys.’ I found that, when I was given the option to join the Musicians and learn more about this person, they actually seemed to develop into more than just a stereotype, but players who didn’t choose to become a double agent like I did would never know that, and therefore think of them as a joke. The same can be said of another character, who has developed a hatred of overweight people, and as such the game tends to play said people as stereotypes that only exist to stuff their face. I applaud the game for tackling heavy issues such as body dysmorphia and eating disorders, but I could have gone for less of the victims of these conditions being played for laughs.

 In-universe, the cannon fodder enemies, called ‘digiheads,’ are created because:

they aren’t aware that Mobius is a simulation, and

they listen to μ’s songs way too much.

I could see people going insane and attacking each other after listening to the same song in a twenty-four hour loop in this reality, especially since each and every stage in the game has its own unique track … that is played … nonstop. I almost lost my mind at first, but thankfully, I either got used to it, or I’m actually a digihead and I’m trying to pull you into Mobius. I really did enjoy the character songs, though; they’re all produced by well-known artists such as DECO*27, Pinocchio-P, 40mP and OSTER Project, among many others, and they add a whole new layer of depth to these characters who only appear a minimum of times in the main story. I kind of wish the Go-Home Club also had character songs, but that might not make too much sense in the story, so I guess that’s something I’ll have to accept.

I have to admit, I had every intention of quitting the game and writing that it was just as good as the anime adaptation, but then I had a change of heart. I decided to give it another shot, and it was then that I discovered there was an option to join the Musicians, as I mentioned earlier. I can’t really tell you why, but playing as Lucid, the musician version of the protagonist, is very fun. Sure — the game doesn’t really change in any meaningful ways until the final battle, but between the character designs of Lucid and the other Musicians, and the fact that you can learn so much more about your supposed enemies, this addition makes that final decision weigh a lot more than it would’ve otherwise.

I won’t sugar-coat it; as much as I adore this game and its aesthetic, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is so desperate to be the next Persona that it’s practically salivating. Think about it: it’s a third-person, dungeon crawling RPG where you control students fighting back against forced they don’t understand in order to solve a prevalent mystery, and their adventures are rooted in psychological themes and motifs. There’s a social system where you can create bonds with not only your teammates, but also with all five-hundred-and-twenty-four students in the school, and as you deepen said bonds, you can help them overcome the trauma that keeps them in Mobius. Its battle system is reliant on powers your characters can only use after they’ve confronted their true selves and accepted that they want to return to reality. It’s probably not a coincidence; the writer who penned the game was Tadashi Satomi, who worked on the first three games in the Persona franchise, so that most likely explains the unnerving similarities, but I’d argue this game takes the social aspect a bit farther than its more shiny cousins.

I’ll give the social system credit where it’s due; it’s the most simple and most complex of its kind. As I said, there are five-hundred-and-twenty-four students in the school, and you’re able to not only become friends with all of them, but you can invite them into your party and fight with them in the main game if you … dislike the main cast, for some reason. It seems a bit overloaded, because the developers seem to expect the player to max out their bonds with every student in the game, but … that’s just too much to ask when some of the students seem to appear based on a random number generator. It’s almost like they wanted to incorporate a system that’d keep players engaged after the main story had concluded, but it ended up manifesting as a chore to work through. I dunno about y’all, but, when I see that there’s over five-hundred students, and I’m expected to resolve every one of their traumas, that’s where I check out. In Persona 3, 4 and 5, there were actual incentives to maxing out social links — not only did it increase your stats, but there were also less than five-hundred to complete, and they all had unique dialogue options that helped the experience feel less like a chore. As a result, you looked forward to the next chapter of each character. In this game, I’m aware that fully completing bonds does seem to improve your stats, but when the dialogue is recycled so often that I skipped a lot of it, there’s no reason for me to care about anything they’re saying. I think this concept is actually really solid, but if it’s filled to the brim with mediocrity, it’s not gonna realize its full potential. I’d love to see a game utilize the interconnected nature of its NPC cast in the same way that this game did, except there’d be more reason to go along with it.

I really have to give the game props for its intuitive battle system, as it turns the concept of being ready for anything on its head. As you engage your target, you select your given attack as you might in any ordinary JRPG, but you’re then given a chance to see what your attacks would do ahead of time, as well as adjust the timing of said attacks. It seems a tad bit like cheating the system since you can see what moves your enemy will make, and cater your turn accordingly. I must admit, however, that as unique as this prediction system is, I found myself caring about it less and less, instead opting to use the same moves over and over again. It may sound cocky to say that I knew the attacks would land, but it’s a disturbingly accurate segue to my next point.

I started my save file on ‘normal’ difficulty, but the longer I played, the more it felt like the easiest difficulty there was. I was grinding like a madman, sure, but there’s no reason the bosses of each chapter should’ve been taken out like a snap from the Infinity Gauntlet. I just expected more of a challenge from normal difficulty, that is to say, any challenge whatsoever. I thought it might pick up towards the endgame, but even the final boss was a breeze to get through. I say all this, but I know that if they were to patch in a more difficult mode like they did with Kingdom Hearts III, I would probably cry, so … I’ll leave it at that.

Here are some things you might want to keep in mind before playing The Caligula Effect: Overdose:

+ If you haven’t played The Caligula Effect, there is quite a lot added to Overdose that was not present in the original. For example, characters Eiji Biwasaka, Ayana Amamoto, Stork and Kuchinashi are all new additions with entirely new dungeons, but they’re integrated really well into the story and don’t feel like additions.

+ If you’re looking to get that sweet, sweet platinum trophy, make sure you keep up with all the character scenarios on both the Go-Home Club’s side and the Ostinato Musicians’ side. It appears that Eiji’s scenario is critically linked with Kuchinashi’s, and if you don’t complete Eiji’s by the time the story takes you to Landmark Tower, PEOPLE WILL STRAIGHT UP DIE, and you’ll be unable to complete the deceased character’s scenarios.

+ If you choose to accept Thorn’s offer to become one of the Musicians, DON’T FEEL BAD. It may start to weigh on your conscience as you betray your friends, but you’re not on the bad route by handing out with the Musicians. In fact, you’re required to max out all of the character scenarios in order to get the true ending. PLUS, if you refuse to join the Musicians, you’ll miss out on a bunch of adorkable moments involving μ, and you won’t want to miss those!

+ If you want to get the bad end, you don’t need to max anyone out — just accept Thorn’s invitation, then at the final battle, choose to stay in Mobius instead of going home, and … well, I’ll let you see for yourself.

+ I’ve heard whispers that it might not be possible to max out Ayana’s scenario unless you’re playing as a female, because of her androphobia. If you’re having issues with Ayana, maybe try again in a second playthrough.

+ If you’d like to explore Mobius a second time, there’s a New Game + option that’ll allow you to increase the enemy level en masse if you’re wanting a challenge, as well as carry over your levels and NPC bonds. It won’t, however, carry over your progress on character scenarios. You can also pick the female protagonist in a New Game +, which helps if you’d like to get that plat.

+ SAVE. SAVE. SAVE. In a game like this, you want to save every chance you get, as when your party dies, it’s lights out. There is NO autosave, NO continues. It takes you right back to the title screen, so be wary of that.

Is The Caligula Effect: Overdose a perfect game? No — not at all. BUT, is it fun? Yes. It’s a unique JRPG that uses the tried and true tropes found in many others of its kind, but at the same time, experiments with other elements of its presentation to create a memorable experience. I may not be motivated to complete the social element of the game, but I struggle to find fault in other areas, such as the character designs, the music and the overall aesthetic.

It deals with some very serious topics, such as body image issues, gender dysphoria or transgenderism, suicide and androphobia, among others, and while at times it can feel as if its poking fun at these issues, for the most part it does handle them with respect, and ultimately shows that these very human characters deal with things that humans too, often struggle with.

If you’re anything like me, you might be tempted to give up on it after the second stage and call it a day, but I implore you to be patient, as the game hits its stride in and after the third dungeon. If I had given up on it like I planned, let’s just say this review would be quite different.

#the caligula effect #the caligula effect overdose #caligula #anime #gaming #ps4 #nis america #nisa #nippon ichi

[ladyfl4me]

A,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z ;o

Okay *cracks knuckles* let’s go! F, M, and S have already been taken from this list, so feel free to send in... B, C, D, or H, I guess. Yeehaw. This is really fucking long.

A: How did you come up with the title to [TMWCIFTC]? -- It started, as many things do, as a bad pun. The novel The Spy who Came In from the Cold was a cold-war spy thriller, about a British spy who goes over to East Germany as an apparent defect, except he’s actually there to spread misinformation and fuck shit up. He falls in love, becomes disillusioned with his superiors, and is shot dead over the corpse of his lover after climbing over to the east side of the wall. Needless to say, this is nowhere close to what happens in TMWCIFTC. I chose it early on because of the literal meaning: there’s a moth(man), he’s coming in from the cold WV weather, boom shaka laka, we have a title. Over time, though, it’s evolved into another meaning. Indrid himself is coming in from an isolated, lonely existence: he’s rejoining the family that cut ties with him, he’s in love, he’s warm and safe. The moth sure did come in from the cold, and hopefully he stays that way.

E: If you wrote a sequel to [TMWCIFTC], what would it be about? -- Hm. Considering my entire TAZ fic career is a tangled hairball of sequels and prequels, I kind of have this base covered. At the moment, TCOS - aka The Children of Sylvain, the sequel to TMWCIFTC - is about three things: a Pine Guard road trip race against time and the feds, the Spanish Sylvan Inquisition That Nobody Expected (least of all Jake and Hollis, who have to set aside their differences and past conflicts to save Kepler - and who knows, maybe they’ll fall in love along the way), and Alexandra the Interpreter getting woke to Sylvan politics and doing what she can from the inside to change them. In other words, it’s going to be a massive sequel that is the finale of the Amnesty alternate universe I’ve created. It’s this series’ Endgame. (That reminds me, I need an actual title for this collection of stories I’m writing. The “Tin Cinematic Universe” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like.)

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? -- eh, it kind of depends. It’s like a buffering bar on Youtube videos. I outline what I can until I run out of ideas, then start writing, then add outlines to the end, until the outline is complete and I just have to keep writing.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? -- I don’t have one for reading, but for writing, I fucking love structuring chapters around songs. Classical or otherwise, I love music. All my stories play in my head like a movie screen, and I just do my best to describe what I’m seeing in my head with an accompanying score. It’s not so much a guilty pleasure as it is a writing process. Frankly, I don’t think I actually have a guilty pleasure; the act of writing itself is all the happiness I need.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic]. -- An alternate ending for The Devil Went Down To Georgia would be... interesting. It ended with Boyd-as-Jersey-Devil scaring the pants off some poor broke college kid, who stole his worthless fiddle; then he changed back, and he and Ned went on their merry way to go break into Aubrey’s house and send everything down the drain. If there was one thing that I could change in there, it would be how fast Ned ran. If he ran a little faster, he would have seen the alley; he would have witnessed Boyd turning into the Jersey Devil, or at least turning back into himself; and he’d get a very rude awakening as to what Sylvans are and that his partner (in crime, and everything that mattered) was a fucking cryptid. God, that’d be a fun AU to write. Who knows, I might go do that someday.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? -- At the moment, the only angsty idea that I’m actually conceptualizing is a Hollis/Jake angsty breakup for TSG. (Spoilers, I guess.) I once wrote a very grimdark ending to TMWCIFTC where everyone fell through the ice and drowned. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also mentally killed off each Amnesty protagonist and NPC in various ways, but I never felt comfortable writing them down. I only write angst with a happy ending because those are the kinds of stories I need to hear.

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting? -- 9 times out of 10, I just throw it into the void. I write as much as I can in big chunks, and then kind of hope for the best. TMWCIFTC, for example, is a completely unedited, unbetaed vomit draft. I usually do a quick reread of my oneshots to catch grammar and spelling errors, but other than that I just trust myself that it’s fine.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you? -- Can I get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night? Can I please get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night??? I was 14 chapters into that bastard before I a) became a more casual MCU fan and b) discovered TAZ. It was such a niche fic with such a niche structure - LOTR as galactic Asgardian propaganda to cover up Odin’s mistakes - that at some point I lost interest in it. I just saw Endgame though, so now I might get some inspiration for stuff to bastardize.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Characters. When coming up with character backstories, I can usually find ways to slot their lives together that necessitate a plot. I love character-driven stories, where their actions actually do shit and their words actually mean something, in favor of getting dragged along behind the plot like tin cans behind a car.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) -- I’m definitely an architect, but in a really messy way. My friends can attest that I do an insane amount of planning for each story - often in their DMs, sorry about that, Fae, Cro, Indy and Aline 😬 - and all that usually ends up in a stream-of-consciousness rant outline on Google Drive. Knowing where the story is going helps me a lot, but the planning I do is definitely just building flower beds in which to sow seeds. Or building a greenhouse. I plan the bare bones of a story, and things get really wild within it, but it does follow a logical plot structure.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations? -- I have a lot of respect for the people who can successfully pull it off, but idk if i’d ever want to do one myself. I get really possessive of my stories and ideas and like to be the one in charge of their execution. That being said, some collabs have produced amazing stories. I don’t mind reading collab fics, but actually being in a collab grates on me more than it should.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? -- I’m definitely influenced heavily by Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods and Good Omens a lot while I was trying to write TMWCIFTC; not only was it a good brain break, but I was able to pick up a lot of tips on scene pacing, concise yet expressive language, and character interactions. My creative wriitng professors have always told us to read so we know what to steal - not in terms of content, but in execution. 

On the fanfic side, @miamaroo is a huge inspiration for me. I’ve been reading Northern Migration a lot recently, and I love how its canon divergence is so worldshaking and so complex, but is still familiar in nostalgic yet terrifying ways. I read it back in October, went, “Huh, I wanna do something that wild. And if miamaroo can do it then I sure as fuck can too,” and I started planning TMWCIFTC during that one month dead zone the McElroys took last year. Northern Migration is one of the best, most coherent, most stunning, and most incredibly written TAZ Balance AUs I’ve ever read, and if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have been inspired to take the fuckall huge plunge into TMWCIFTC.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Bed sharing and cuddling, hand kissing, wrist kissing, whump, sympathetic villains. Canon divergent AUs are my absolute favorite things to both read and write. Anything that would turn me into Charlie Kelly slamming his finger on a bulletin board screaming, “CAROL,” is a fic I would give my life for. 

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand? -- Not a fan of a) woobification and b) flat villain characterization, to the point where the story is riding on villain tropes instead of an actual person or plot. Character nuance is always something I look for when I read. I don’t usually get bitter about tropes, though; some stuff, when subverted, works really well. I fully subscribe to don’t like, don’t read, don’t write, which is why I don’t write anything that warrants AO3 content warning tags or an Explicit rating, in favor of focusing on plot. Every author has a reason for what they write and how - be it their level of experience, personal preference, or simply the joy of writing something and getting it out there - and I respect that. Within reason, of course.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much. -- 

@miamaroo, for reasons I’ve already discussed. My favorite TAZ Balance author hands down. Read Northern Migration and give it the love it deserves, or I’m replacing all the faucets in your house with silly straws.

@transagentstern. Fae has a bunch of absolutely incredible fics and an amazing grasp on characterization. We come from the same place with AUs, in that canon is but the bare planks on which we put the drywall of our plot an characterization. They structure AUs and character backstories from the ground up in believable and emotionally raw ways. Also they have great music taste. I especially like their interpretation of Indrid in Moth to the Flame; he, like all the other characters in the story, is far from perfect, and his character arc is explored in relatable ways that I love to read. 

@keplersheetz. Aline - theneonpineapple on AO3 - researches like a motherfucker and has a wealth of knowledge/experience/viewpoints to draw on, making author-author interactions with her an absolute delight. She’s also doing the lord’s work with rarepairs. Spin a wheel, find a ship, and she’s probably written for it or at least conceptualized it. Reading her character studies and stories of the old Pine Guard - aka Mama’s original crew, before the current PCs joined - is always a delight. I’ve also hashed out a lot of details for The Children of Sylvain, especially for Mr. Boyd Mosche, guilt-wracked Jersey Devil extraordinaire, with her help. 

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose? -- Not gonna lie, I’m fine with a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. It’s been a hot few months since I’ve actually stopped to read fic, but from what I recall, most of the fics I’ve read have done a good job of keeping things intact.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones? -- The vaguer, the better. With really specific prompts, it usually feels as if the story’s been written for me already; with vague, general prompts, I have more agency to explore my own ideas. Some accompanying detail is usually nice, though. For example, the coffee shop/college/flower shop AUs that @transagentstern​ wrote are my ideal prompt for drabbles: premise, a little bit of open-ended detail, clear explanation of what’s going to happen while leaving the rest up to the imagination. Good stuff. If it’s for a long-form piece, though, I prefer full agency, or even just some time to lie facedown in the dirt and wait for an idea to strike me.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer. -- Yes.

Y: A character you want to protect. -- Tim.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- I do read lots of major character death, yeah, though not always for TAZ. There’s something cathartic about seeing a character die, but sometimes it sits wrong with me in ways that I don’t like. As for writing, I’d rather kill a character for a reason rather than for shock value/for the Feels, though said Feels can accompany the reason. 

#anon please dm me so i know who u are #please #i'm begging you #i'm in hell #asks #anon #ask game

[rontra]

do you have any recommendations on how to like. Take In Umineko. I think it looks really cool and I’d like to get into it, but there’s a lot of things that are confusing (like all of the different games, the manga, the anime, ect.) and I’m not really sure where to start watching/reading it. Do you have any advice on where the best place to start is?

HOH BABY NOW THIS IS A GOOD ASK

Basically, a lot of this depends on you and how you prefer to take in media. People are different after all; some people like reading long novels, some prefer comics, u know! So let’s just go over all the avenues and how to get at them, and the rest is up to you!

I’m gonna make this post very long. VERY VERY LONG. IM SO FUCKn SORyr

First, I’ll talk abt what umineko is; then I’ll discuss the various media; finally, at the end, I’ll write down what I typically recommend to newcomers! SCROLL REALLY FAST TO THE HEADERS IF U HAVE NO TIME FOR MY RAMBLING LOL

So…here we goooo

READING UMINEKO: UNTANGLING THE WEB

OR: what the fuck is umineko and why do you want me to read it, diesel?

Since this is a general To Whom It May Concern post: Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Or Umineko: When They Cry, alternatively When The Seagulls Cry) is a murder mystery/fantasy/metafiction visual novel published between 2007 and 2011. I know “murder mystery” and “metafiction” sound pretty boring when you combine them, but trust me–Umineko’s unlike anything you’ve seen, and defies explanation. Still, I’m here to do my best!

Umineko is about a rich and complicated family, and their annual family conference–and the year it goes super duper badly. On an isolated island, in the middle of a typhoon, tragedy befalls the family–on a massive scale! Someone is killing them–all of them–and the only answer that seems to be rising is–

“Beatrice did it.”

But Beatrice isn’t supposed to really exist. Not for real!! No one by that name is on the island. It’s just a story! She’s made up–Beatrice is a legend. A witch who has lived for a thousand years–who loaned the family patriarch ten tons of gold, an insane amount of wealth, in exchange for his soul. Now she’s collecting on that loan, taking everything back, with interest–the lives of the family included.

Is the culprit a human, or not? Does the witch exist, or not?Is the culprit one of the 18 people? Does a 19th person exist? Or…?And, most importantly–when the typhoon passes, will anyone remain alive on the island?

[YouTube: Umineko opening]

I’d super-recommend Umineko if you enjoy: strong characterization, a solidly built mystery (with plenty of smaller mysteries to try your brain with along the way ;) ), complex and nuanced characters, hype magic fights, Logic-Based Combat(???), deep discussions of trauma and its consequences, large casts of characters, Genre Fuckery, coping, Meta™, and milfs Complex Lore

I would, however, NOT recommend Umineko if you are triggered by/can’t stomach reading about: body horror, gore, death, trauma, child abuse, bullying, discussion of suicide, discussion of sexual assault, etc (you can message me for a more complete list of warnings; I’m happy to provide super-specific ones if there’s something specific you’re concerned about, or even give you specific scenes to watch out for. I kept this vague on purpose, but if you message me off anon or via DMs here or at @aceyasu, I’ll be happy to answer anything!)

Overall it’s a pretty dark, emotional story, with a lot of Themes™–but it’s also full of love and genuine heartfelt Feelings. I don’t think any story has touched me the way Umineko has! Of course, everyone’s experience is very unique to them, but I think Umineko has something for everyone (provided, of course, that we’re taking into account the content warnings and excluding people who can’t/don’t want to encounter those things!). The characters, music, story and message–it all has a lot of heart and it all is very important to me as an individual. Obviously no media is flawless, but I think Umineko’s good outweighs its bad…YMMV though of course :p

Also, hype magic fights.

OKAY WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY

Umineko’s story is told over 8 arcs–styled as “episodes”. I use “arc” and “episode” sort of interchangeably! Specific ones I just call “EP#” though. All you really need to know though is there’s 8 of them, of varying length, and you have to read them all for the full story.

Thankfully they’re numbered, am i right?? HAFDmgkdfmg

Each episode has its own focus within the overarching narrative and comes with its own fun mysteries and harrowing developments just for you! yay! But basically, the important thing is that they’re divided into the Question Arcs (1-4) and Answer Arcs (5-8).

Sometimes, to make things confusing, the Answer Arcs are also called “Core Arcs” or “Chiru”. I will use “Answer Arcs” here, but if you encounter those two elsewhere, that’s what they are. :p

ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING UMINEKO

(now that im done YAPPING)

The anime

Generally viewed as a poor product. It’s a bad adaption that fails as a standalone, too, because of the amount of important scenes that are missing. Don’t watch the anime first if you really want to get into Umineko. It’s a fun watch once you know how it’s supposed to go, though :p Covers the Question Arcs only, ends with EP4–so even if it was good, it would only be half the story… press f to pay respects. The opening fuckin slaps though, and all the VAs are solid.

The manga

Each Episode has its own manga adaption, usually done by a different artist (with exception of EP1, EP3, and EP8, which are all by the same artist). Generally solid; gets the most important parts. For people who want to get through quicker, the manga helps a lot.

The primary cost is that a lot of characterization doesn’t get to shine AS bright, as there’s simply no time to get into the nooks and crannies (still a great cast, though). However, the art is usually fantastic–since the artist changes every EP, it’s easy to deal with even if you don’t like a specific one’s style. It’ll be gone by next Episode!

A lot of moments get punched up by the more visual format of the manga. You really get a better sense of the characters interacting physically with one another! You do, however, run into the Scanlation Problem…..

I know, I know–most people, when given the option to, don’t want to pay for things. So when given the choice between fan scanlations and the official release, a lot of people would choose the scanlations. And they’re fine…for the most part…except for the parts that aren’t. Some parts (notably in the Answer Arcs) are…bad. Really bad. Even I can’t really understand it sometimes, despite knowing this story inside out… LOL

If you’re good at parsing Scanlation SNAFU or can’t afford/don’t want to buy it, you can find Umineko on MOST manga hosts! I don’t know which you prefer so I’m not gonna link ‘em hahahafkgmfh I usually use Manga Rock but that’s because I usually am reading on my phone and I like their app. The episodes are all numbered, so it’s pretty easy to find your way around!

On the other hand, if you have a hard time understanding poor translations, reading inconsistent typesetting/fonts, or simply Can afford it/prefer buying media, the manga is being officially released in English by YenPress! As is standard nowadays, you can get them in both physical volumes and digital e-books! However, YenPress’ release is currently ongoing–the first volume of EP8 is slated to release in March.

[YenPress link]

The visual novel

Ah, here we are–the head honcho himself…! This is the original version of Umineko. These are the ones we call “games”, and why we sometimes say u “play” Umineko, but. Really. It’s just reading. They’re kinetic novels. Its literally just reading. So I don’t know why we complicate things like that.

(“if she an .exe, shes a game”, I guess… xD)

This is where the characterization and voice of Umineko really shines! The style is often simple to read, sometimes even comically casual, but it cuts deep when it wants to. Even really simple lines can have a really strong impact–it’s a really pleasant style to read, IMO…pretty easy to understand most of the time, but emotionally resonant all the same!

Reading the VN is somewhat of an undertaking, because of the amount of hours required…It’s a far longer read. Depending on your reading speed and whether or not you pause to think/talk about things as you read, people clock in 100-200 hours to finish it.

But, on the upside–because it has so much more time than the manga, the VN can really get deep into the characters, their dynamics, and their inner conflicts. You really get a deep sense for everyone’s character and it makes most of the cast feel fleshed-out enough that you appreciate all of them to some extent (whether positive or negative :P)

Oh, actually–the original Umineko branded itself a “Sound Novel”….as opposed to a Visual Novel, where the emphasis is on, uh–Visuals–Umineko leans more heavily on audio to create its atmosphere. And the music? Fuckin rips!! The Umineko soundtrack is huge and has tons of absolute bangers. It’s easy to see why it decided to market itself as a Sound Novel rather than a visual novel–the graphics of the original PC version are simple, but the atmospheric sound effects and BGM really shines.

Here’s some enticing tracks to pique yr interest (be careful about the comments/etc though, there’s Definitely spoilers in there xD)[worldenddominator] [dead angle] [dir] [system0] [hope]

The VN nowadays is split into the two halves; if you get EP4, it’ll include 1-3 as well, essentially. Picking up Question Arcs (or EP4) and Answer Arcs (or EP8) gives u the whole 8 episodes. Easy peasy! Because we live in the future now, and retroactive inclusion of past games is just convenient!

There is an official English release now, which is a brand new luxury. It’s even on Steam! Wow! That’s the easiest way to get your paws on the hands-on experience. The translation has been slightly updated as well! Also, they added a new set of toggle-able graphics that are…um…I mean they’re certainly new…#BarelyContainedOpinionAlert

If you don’t want to pay or can’t afford it…uhhh….I used to have torrent links but they’re all dead. :T still, you can probably just find them, if you know your way around torrents. For the translation, you’ll have to either get a pre-patched version of the game, or use the translation group’s instructions to patch it yourself. 

If you can’t do either of those, or just don’t really have a preference, or…any number of reasons, you can also find all the games fully recorded and uploaded to YouTube (with or without commentary)!

As for the links, I’ve got them right h–

Wait–oh, sh–the graphics are bad?!? You think the graphics are bad? Or you think plain reading is boring? Y-you can’t understand what the background image in this scene is even supposed to be? Ah…the post-2007 struggle….

The visual novel, Part Deux: AH, THE JPEGS edition

OKAY SO I SPLIT THIS APART BECAUSE IT*S IMPORTANT

If you wanna spruce up your VN-reading experience, here’s the thing: they ported the game to PS3, with brand new graphics and–get this–full voice acting. Wow! There’s even CGs now…Jeez!

These are NOT the same graphics as the new ones from the official English release! That’s important!

SO, if you wanna spruce up the graphics a bit, or you enjoy voice acting with your novels, you can do that! People took apart the PS3 games and made patches for the PC version to enjoy the new graphics and voices. And now it’s available for the Steam version as well!

[SPRITE COMPARISON: ORIGINAL PC | PS3 | STEAM]You pick your favorite!

ALSO VOICE ACTING! WOW!! Remember how I said the anime got two things right and they were the OP and the voice cast?

SAME CAST, BABEY!!!! They are all excellent and do a wonderful job! It can really add some more interest if you struggle with staying focused on “plain” reading.

Okay so NOW the links:

You’ll have to dig up torrents yourself if you want those, bc its 6am and I’m too sleepy to… uzu

QUESTION ARCS[Physical Eng release] or [Steam page] +[PS3 PATCH]

ANSWER ARCS[Physical Eng release] or [Steam page] +[PS3 PATCH]

YOUTUBE[Non-commentated, with PS3 patch] you can find more just by searching but this one looks good to me :p

RONTRA OPINIONS / SUGGESTIONS

Personally, I favor the VN for most scenes, but the manga for my light casual reading. Y’know? The VN can be pretty…um…dense, at times.

Ironically, I think EP1 itself might be the biggest hurdle for total first-timers. It’s definitely paced as a “part 1 of 8″ for the first solid portion! By which I mean, it really takes its time establishing the cast and their individual situations. Which isn’t a bad thing–especially in the overarching scope of how long the story is–but if you aren’t sure about the premise, format, or if you’ll enjoy Umineko at all, it can be sort of…challenging.

It all really depends on the individual–things like attention span, investment, and personal preferences, imo. Some people just don’t enjoy reading that much text at once! And that’s fine! Some people love it and that’s fine! Some people think the intro is too long, some people think it’s intriguing from the start. Some really like watching character building, and some prefer to see action happening. Either way is fine, so it’s really up to you!

Usually, if someone isn’t sure, I suggest they try EP1 in manga form first, just to see if the general premise entices them; it’s fully possible to jump back and do the VN if you decide you like it! It sacrifices some characterization in exchange for exploring the main premise a little faster.

Similarly, if you just can’t get into the VN–you can read the entire thing with manga too, if you favor action over the deepest character lore. It’s still a good time and a good experience!

Though, in EP1′s favor–if you ARE sure about it, and are able to dedicate your attention to the first 10-13 hours of set-up, EP1 has one of the most rewarding escalations I’ve encountered! If you are able to sit and read a fairly long-winded introduction, you are rewarded with the most buck wild Popping Off you can imagine.

So there’s nothing wrong with jumping right in there with the VN, if you enjoy reading!

However, if you do find that the VN is dragging too much for you, you can go in reverse too–and finish EP1 by manga, then decide if you want to jump back to the VN or not. I promise, the novels pick up the pace too–it’s just getting all the introductions down that can be daunting, when the initial cast size is a staggering 18 people (plus the LORE has to be established too)!!

Just for you–if you want to get into Umineko, but struggle with EP1, I’ll offer my private archive of YenPress manga rips for EP1–read the manga, official english translation, for free thanks to your dealer friend, rontra,You will have to message me about it, though–off anon or via DMs, here or at @aceyasu.

My favorite setups when I play by myself are either Original PC Graphics + Voice Acting, or Full PS3 Patch. I personally really like the original PC graphics, but I understand some people think they’re kinda…um…Rough, to say the least xD PS3 graphics are a close second for me though.

I don’t really like the steam version’s new sprites. Some people don’t mind them, so it’s up to you what you prefer, but I think they don’t really convey the feeling as well as their counterparts sometimes… :/

But hey, everyone’s got their own opinions!

I also prefer the EP8 manga to the EP8 VN. If I have control over someone’s first playthrough, I always push over to the manga for EP8! In my opinion, it’s a rare instance where the adaption is better than its original. People have different opinions on this, of course, but since this section is My Opinions Central, that’s my opinioooon!!! :D

SO BASICALLY MY OWN PERSONAL PREFERRED STRUCTURE IS

->TRY EP1 (jump over to manga if struggling; if enjoyed manga ep1 until the end, hop back into the VN at EP2 and come back to EP1 if you want to later)

EP2-EP7 VN

EP8 MANGA(EP8 VN if desired afterwards, once the dust settles)

But you’re free to do what you want, of course. ;9

And then after that there’s some spinoffs that I didn’t talk about because that’s a post for another time. (There’s a fighting game! It’s packed full of spoilers.)

AFTERWORD

All in all, Umineko is…big. its very very big. it has a huge cast (the final count comes out to like, almost 70 characters!) and a huge story. and huge feelings.

The manga and the VN are the main avenues of getting into it. It’s easier than it looks at a glance; and yet, more daunting than it seems…

If you have the time and energy to pour hours of your time into it, Umineko is a super worthwhile story that tackles genuinely difficult material with a delicate but honest hand.

It clowns up sometimes and stumbles over its own demographic–see: Weird Vaguely Unpleasant Anime-brand Sex Comedy that springs up a lot in EP1, some in EP2, and then largely disappears save for a few dumb jokes here and there–but overall is a solidly built and solidly delivered story about trauma, love, loss, and getting your family ritual-murdered by a thousand-year-old witch who may or may not be real.

And if you have any questions at all (or just wanna talk Umineko), you can send an ask or IM me here or at @aceyasu–you can ask for my Discord too if you wanna really get into it. Or DM me on twitter! I’m happy to answer any question or elaborate on anything you’re confused about. I tried to go over this post quickly, so if I was too vague on something, feel free to ask!

The same of course applies to content warnings; if there’s something specific you’re worried about, I can answer it for you, whether it’s “does [specific thing] happen/appear” or “how much of [thing] is there, i can handle a little bit”! Anything! Of course I want people to read my favorite, but I also more than that want u all to be safe.

I’m very sorry that this post is literally three thousand words long. Umineko’s been my special interest for almost ten whole years. I get chatty! But hopefully my passion shines through and gets you excited!!!

LOVE, A BIG NERD

#Anonymous #long post #the umineko post

[erictmason]

THEY’RE GONNA WRECK IT: A “Ralph Breaks The Internet” Review

I don’t know that I ever would have told you that the original “Wreck-it Ralph”, one of the more pleasant surprises of post-Pixar-merger Disney, “needed” a sequel; the original’s story was compelling and complete enough on its own.  But the characters were so much fun to spend time with and the world felt so intrinsically interesting that it also seemed like a prime candidate to give a sequel to anyway.  And to its credit “Ralph Breaks The Internet” starts from a premise clearly designed to keep it from simply being a needless retread of the original, trading the halls of an old Arcade for the world wide web.  Unfortunately, the resulting film, while not exactly a TOTAL wash, also feels like it’s learned all the wrong lessons from its predecessor, taking an anted-up version of the first movie’s playful Video Game in-jokes that were there a mere garnish and here turning them into an inescapable aspect of the entire story that severely compromises its narrative integrity.

(SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT)

(SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT)

(SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT)

(SPOILER SPACE)

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Said narrative picks up six years after the events of the original, with Ralph happy as can be with his lot in life nowadays: thanks to his friendship with “Sugar Rush” superstar Vanellope Von Schweetz, he’s more than content to just do his job and hang out with her goofing off all night.  Vanellope, however, feels increasingly constrained by the repetitive limits of her closed-off racing world, leading Ralph to try and give her a new surprise or two to cheer her up; unfortunately that just leads to "Sugar Rush” getting broken.  Ralph and Vanellope thus decide to venture into the arcade’s newly connected Wi-Fi system to reach The Internet in hopes of finding the part necessary to fix the game before it’s permanently unplugged.  

Which kind of sounds like a bit of an overcooked premise, and indeed the number of contrivances the movie throws at you more or less right out the gate to get to where it wants to go speaks to the problem at the heart of the whole thing, but to start things out on a relatively positive note: Ralph and Vanellope remain a great pair of characters, and if nothing else the opening few minutes of the movie honestly do make for a pleasant little coda to the first movie.  More to the point, there actually IS something admirable about how this movie chooses to dig into how their characters have changed and where they stand:  now that he has an anchor of affirmation in Vanellope, Ralph is able to find acceptance and fulfillment in the same places he once felt rejected by...but once that anchor is threatened (as it is when Vanellope finds herself increasingly attracted to the idea of staying online in the wild and unpredictable world of an online racer called “Slaughter Race”), all of his old insecurities begin to surface.  Meanwhile the same drive to strive for something greater that drove Vanellope in the first movie has now begun to slowly but surely push her out of “Sugar Rush”; this one’s a bit shakier (and the movie fumbles it pretty much completely in the execution but we’ll get to that) but you really can see the emotional logic it works on in a way that adds up, especially because the movie genuinely has the courage of its convictions and chooses to pursue it to its most logical conclusion rather than try to hedge its bets or chicken out at the last minute.  

As well, basically all of the new characters work.  The obvious highlight is Gal Gadot as Shank, the Boss Character of “Slaughter Race”; even as her presence in the movie overall is surprisingly limited given her importance to the main emotional arc that (eventually) reveals itself as the heart of the story, she is nonetheless an immediately enjoyable presence, at once tough as nails and On The Edge (one of the movie’s better sight gags is how the world of “Slaughter Race” is bathed in the reds and browns that dominated Video Games for most of the mid-00′s and Shank feels right at home in that tone) but also a caring figure who looks at her job with a genuine sense of Duty and Honor.  Likewise Taraji P. Henson’s Yesss is delightful, a beaming bouncing presence whose constantly-changing look is a consistent delight (and who may have the most enjoyably subtle details of animation of any character in the movie with the way her coat lights up whenever she gets excited being a personal favorite).  But even minor characters like the Search Engine curator Knowsmore (our now-traditional Alan Tudyk role) and Bill Hader’s J.P. Spamley are genuinely fun new additions to the overall cast.  You do find yourself wishing they could maybe get a bit more screen time or else be better integrated into the overall story, but even so I really liked just about all of them and they do a lot to buoy the whole thing.

Unfortunately none of them, nor the movie’s clever-if-not-especially-original conception of what “The Internet” would mean to this kind of world (my personal favorite touch might be portraying pop-up ads as old-school Newsies), can really add up to much in the face of the larger problem here.  See, even though they’re a relatively minor presence in the overall movie, the original “Wreck-it Ralph” hyped up the presence of its various Video Game character cameos (many of whom return here), and the attendant in-jokes that came with them.  “Ralph Breaks The Internet” apparently seems to have the mistaken belief that it was this wink-wink nudge-nudge meta-humor at the original’s margins that was in fact the key to its success and thus, using The Internet as a launching pad to broaden its range of targets, has made that element much, much more prominent this time around.  Sometimes that does make for amusing gags; the extended (and heavily-touted) scene where Vanellope meets the other Disney Princesses is indeed a particular highlight, and the one sequence where the movie comes even remotely close with reconciling its desire to indulge in fairly tired meta-textual snark with actually trying to tell any sort of real story.  Far more often we have to deal with things like how a joke about Ralph making the age-old mistake of reading the comments stands in for any kind of actual attempt to show how his old anxieties are resurfacing (in a moment that fails to land almost completely; it is honestly impossible to tell while watching it how seriously the movie expects us to take it), or even more frustrating how Vanellope’s realization that she wants to stay in “Slaughter Race” is told to us through an incredibly ineffectual and far too self-aware parody of the old Disney-style “I Want” song.  That Vanellope would in fact choose to leave Sugar Rush behind is already the biggest buy-in the movie asks us to make of its characters, so that failed short-cut proves especially harmful to the overall arc here.  It all leads to a finale that feels like it could, indeed even should, work for how frankly it chooses to tackle the underlying emotional problems at the heart of the story, but it ultimately can’t because the movie just flat-out has not done the work to really earn it.

There are other smaller problems as well; Fix-it Felix and Calhoun, the primary side-characters from the first film, are here given what feels like it should be the lead-in to an enjoyable and inspired B-story of their own but instead wind up being nothing more than glorified cameos.  I’m also not super fond of how the movie actively begs the audience to question the logical nature of its world and characters as often (and seemingly without much thought) as it does.  But the real fundamental issue here is that “Ralph Breaks The Internet” just plain cannot square its two competing impulses; the desire to actually try and tell a story that meaningfully expands on the original’s characters in some genuinely-daring ways is ultimately undone by the far-stronger drive to weigh it all down beneath a lot of knowing referential humor that feels far less relevant and insightful than the writers think it is.  There really is something good deep in the heart of all of this, but, sad as it is to say, it basically gets wrecked this time around.

#disney #wreck it ralph #ralph breaks the internet #review #spoilers #disney spoilers #My writing

[elizabethrobertajones]

Comparing Season 6 and Season 10 - which one do you think makes more sense as a whole, which one better pulls of seeming like what happened/was revealed at the end of the season is what was supposed to happen/was planned all along?

I may be biased, but for me, season 6 by miles. And almost all of that is Edlund desperately cramming everything that had happened so far into something that either made sense or handwaved why it didn’t make sense in an effectively emotional enough episode that by the end of TMWWBK you sort of feel like you’ve actually got your answers and Cas has been completely honest and open with YOU at least, making it that much easier to handle what was going on. 

I think for me season 10 was poorly handled in ways that weren’t particularly well addressed and the only offered explanation ever was “oh it was Amara after all” which in the context of season 11 gives us some more characterisation to begin to pull things together, though without addressing everything. Still if we’re dealing with things as a whole, season 10 doesn’t have an episode that scrapes everything together in the post-Edlund era and what we get only within the confines of season 10 is extremely unsatisfactory, even if later canon eases it a little bit, along with just… not being actively in SPN season 10 as it airs :P 

Going off my memories of being in the fandom at the time, we had a lot of issues with things like 

Dean’s incomplete demon reversal (so far as in 10x02, written by Dabb who invented the cure repeating the correct steps, then in 10x03 Buckleming not following through with them)

“the river ends at the source” “never mind I was screwing with you”

Did Cain still have the Mark after 9x11? lasting drama until 10x14, and still debated afterwards especially by people who had thought he didn’t have the Mark and had passed it entirely to Dean now being very confused  

What the fuck was this about Lucifer having the Mark and how did that last minute addition affect everything? 

the Colette parallel being wildly mis-applied by fandom but also issues with the show’s fear to explore it leading to “we are all the colette” episodes with lasting drama until 10x22, where Charlie, Sam and Cas all variously and persistently seemed to be suggested to be capable of being a team effort to pull Dean out of the darkness. 10x22 also wasn’t enough to stop Dean, and the final confrontation was with Sam, I think a general consensus was - especially again with season 11′s help - that the memory of Mary drew him back/unleashed Amara metaphorically who unleashed Mary literally - it wasn’t a great note to end on without season 11 context (as a whole, so, like, a whole YEAR later) that Sam had “won” the battle to bring Dean back from himself where Cas had failed, and the subtext and show and fandom most of all had made SUCH a huge deal out of Colette, after 9x11 over-told her story instead of retelling Cain & Abel, that it was set up with the expectation that saving Dean was a romantic quest, not a brotherly one. 10x14 sort of helped set things to rights with the list, but the fighting about what it all meant at the time was AWFUL, and though I think I was right and the show bore that out and these days I type it all with confidence, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of buried wank about it that could be dragged out if we want >.>

the fact there wasn’t really an overarcing Mark of Cain plot except “Dean is suffering” with the only 3 actual plot points they could do with it being demon!Dean, kill Cain, and remove Mark. Because of that, everything else is literally set-dressing to fill the time and add drama in between, but these were played with poorly and there wasn’t any subterfuge we weren’t in on (i.e. sam stealing the book) vs Cas betraying both the Winchesters and US. The only retcon offered in the end was Death’s exposition about the Darkness.

people literally forgetting which order episodes came out in and being very confused about why Amara wasn’t released when Dean was 14 in 10x12 even though he didn’t kill Cain for 2 more episodes (like, within weeks of 10x14 airing, I swear)

the understandable disappearance of Cole but bizarre application of that hunter called Rudy who popped up in his place and featured in 10x23 along with Cas for Dean’s guilt trip. Even if Cole and TAW sucked ass, it’s much easier to understand the emotional impact of what happened to Rudy if you assume he has the exact same backstory as Cole and the same nonsense happened to Dean twice in the same year :P 

Pre-season hype about Rowena made a huge deal out of the Grand Coven, and for a brief moment it seemed like there might be a witch plotline, including new lore dumps about different types of witches in 10x07, characters like Olivette the Hamster, etc, but they squandered her first season and 10x19 was as close as we got to any pay off to her actual storyline

Then Oskaar happened and that was like ??? Okay just introduce him in the second to last episode and throw us into that emotional situation 

the entire cure coming out of nowhere as a random last minute macguffin instead of having been anything they put together over the season - even though the book of the damned thing showed up in 10x11 it changed substantially from the clue Charlie left with (a less than 100 year old book with a library reference number found on an antique rare book website, based on a real book, which we all picked over and were left wondering if the plot was to be about some sort of occultism thing as a result) to a much different lore. Then there were a few episodes dealing with it and the codex, the actual spell had no real struggle, and Crowley delivered all the pieces while Cas stood around scowling and Rowena stood around in chains eye-rolling. Compare season 13′s pacing with Sam and Dean cobbling together what they needed from halfway through the season, and being on the mission to get to the AU from episode 9, with relatively little of the endless sitting around googling and being frustrated of past seasons but ESPECIALLY season 10 where Sam was futilely trawling the results of googling “mark of cain” from mid-late season 9 through to like, 10x18 when an actual brief plot appeared around it directly. 

I think all of it points to a problem of working forwards from where they were instead of backwards to tidy up what was left. In season 6 Edlund took as many loose plot threads, from how Sam lost his soul, what was up with Crowley and Cas, the angel war, explanations for Sam and Samuel working together, why eve happened, everything, and put it all together to explain the elements of the season so far in a new light. Despite how disastrous that season was, PRETENDING you knew like you meant to do it all along glosses over inconsistencies in Samuel’s story or Cas and Crowley’s 6x10 interactions, and makes them relatively inconsequential when most of the details add up. 

The same thing works with the Lucifer as Sam’s vessel storyline, in the sense that while Azazel’s plan is fucking ridiculous in its over-complex bizarre attempt to find a worthy true vessel that Heaven had fated, comparing season 1-2 to season 5 head on is bad, each season explains itself from the last in enough of a way and with enough knowledge of what already happened that really despite vast inconsistencies in the lore, by 5x22 we are pretty much all on board to accept the way it all played out because they use what was previously written to build up Sam’s arc, and little details thrown in towards the end like Brady and then Lucifer revealing ALL of Sam’s closer rando peeps had been demons, tidy up more and more loose ends and there’s left with plausible deniability about a lot of the issues.

In season 10 they kept on introducing elements instead of working with what they had already established, and also discarded what seemed like major plot hooks for Rowena and Cole, one annoyingly, one completely metatextually understandably and fuck TAW, I’m glad the show never brought Cole back as soon as rumours of him groping fans appeared, and it makes me genuinely trust that the SPN set is a safe place. But yeah. 

Things they set up and could have worked with, were the Cas’s grace arc, which was resolved to a small personal satisfaction to Cas without any major plot impact except we could stop worrying about when Cas would get sick and die from bad grace, or steal more. 

The demon!Dean issue was bad writing from Buckleming re: was he still a demon or not, but given Dean was supposed to be struggling with succumbing to darkness the season actually kept him almost completely level without any significant relapses, even after killing Cain. The sense of needing a functional Dean Winchester to keep hunting monsters and prop up the show as both the carrier of the mytharc, the emotional core, and the go-between between Sam and Cas even when the show was trying to figure out if Sam and Cas could function without Dean, it was all still so much about Dean that in 10x21 when they’re doing the cringeworthy “for Dean” thing and Rowena rolls her eyes like “I barely know the man”, I was actually applauding Buckleming snark thinking they maybe briefly had a handle on how ridiculous Dean’s position in the narrative was. (Listen, this was the last 10 minutes of my innocence about how awful Buckleming could be, leave past!me alone. She’s sweet and precious and not bitter :P) In any case, a more effective season would have utilised him more to slip and slide between light and dark and explore it in much deeper detail, but balancing that with a procedural formula doesn’t work as well and they were lacking enough philosophers on staff. I think the Dabb era writing team could handle it, because Yockey, Perez, and Glynn especially, who seems to have a psychology background based on her writing, all have a sharp attention to the exact things in emotional arcs that would have made it work better, even just as it was. Since this was a weaker writing team where Robbie, Bobo and Dabb episodes were little islands of excellence and the motw were fun but more shallow even with strong foreshadowing themes, it just didn’t pay off. 

I think the biggest waste of time was “the river ends at the source” which was either Buckleming trying to introduce a concept and hoping someone else dealt with it, or an agreed plot hook which never materialised, or Metatron literally spoke the truth, that the line had only ever been written to mess with us. However 10x23 could have actually included more of a “river ends at the source” sort of slant and had Death confirm it in so many words because Amara really did sort of seem to be the answer to the question. In 10x10 it seemed like they knew where the season was going, but by 10x17 it was obvious they DIDN’T, and it was during 10x18 that the plot actually got hashed out and Robbie was handed heavy revisions to make to change the Stynes to end of season villains and the Book of the Damned was going to be used how it was. I think this is really weak plotting, as someone who always puts in fun lines and then attempts like crazy to pay off on them. My first novel has the line “you can’t talk to me yet” and I play through that the whole book until they CAN talk and make it a major motif, goal and in the end try to explain it as best I can about how it’s all plot relevant and why using that for tension to put off the explanations and such was a valid thing to throw at my main character, and then the springboard to more adventure when she was ready for it. I literally do not understand putting a portentous line into your story, and not becoming desperately eager to answer it or twist something into revealing how it all fits at the end, if not basing your entire story off of it. Sam and Dean seemed wildly uncurious about how to apply that or what it means. 

In season 6 one of the more frustrating things is the “it’s all about the souls” line because Dean fails to investigate until someone or other rolls their eyes and makes it all clear to him. But we get a few more reminders in Cas’s presence, until we find out his plan, and Crowley repeats that line in 6x20 when making his sales pitch to Cas, if I’m remembering rightly (I hope so :/) and so despite Dean’s infuriating lack of investigation (not that he had a great deal of leads, but still - you could build a plot around it by GIVING him a lead, he’s the fictional character and you’re the writer :P) at the very least they repeat the motif in at least 6x17 and 6x20 to my memory, before the souls thing becomes a lot more obvious about Cas taking the purgatory souls and we’re allowed to actually discuss what he’s up to instead of the vague hints Atropos and Rachel give that they know his plans. 6x07 also hints early on that Purgatory is full of monster souls if you add it all up - the writers knew they were doing SOMETHING with this even if it took to the end of the season for it to all come together. (And that’s something that’s clearly and overarcing plot that Gamble oversaw because she wrote 6x11 and the line then appears in multiple episodes around the place, so that’s not just something Edlund tidied up but an actual effort to write the season well.)

Throwing aside the “river ends at the source” line is wildly frustrating because it wouldn’t have been too hard to apply it thematically and even keep Metatron being a douche while giving the viewer a pay off anyway for our own satisfaction, by showing it had been a theme all along anyway. You CAN squint at season 10 and analyse it through that lens but it’s exhausting when the show doesn’t give us the themes on a platter. It also shows that the plotting is careless and they’re experimenting, and rather than working with what they have, this is in a path of episodes where they’re discarding some plotlines, and we’re beginning to have end of season plotlines hastily pasted onto the end of the season, but they make very little of any of the work already done to build up the season as we’d seen it so far.

Add onto that Charlie being murdered for manpain to motivate some things into action and all the random elements being used, and the sense that Crowley, Cas and Rowena all abruptly ran out of a plotline that had been intended to utilise them and put on a side character duty away from Sam and Dean, the season is extremely messily and carelessly written, and without any real attention to detail to its own themes and characters and plotlines. Even if they’d gone into the season not particularly expecting where to go, they brought a lot to the table early on but then quickly wiped a lot of it off, and brought a lot more stuff to the table instead, which makes season 10 a really wonky, unfinished feeling product as a thing on its own, and the overall story is scrappy and carelessly plotted.

And that is speaking just about the easy plot stuff without getting into the absolute mess of speculation from the Destiel side of fandom wondering wtf was going on with the seeming build up to crypt scenes, colette, the grace cure, etc, that made up the bulk of the speculation but makes actually analysing expectations vs presented product completely impossible to evaluate on that side of things because as always Destiel speculation really overshoots what is expected and was really running wild at that point. I mean, not being judgemental because that was the year I was right in the thick of it. 3 years clear of it now, some of it seems really silly, but those 3 things all seemed clearly built up to our eyes, and we got the reverse crypt scene we’d been expecting since before the season started, and we got the Colette reference which slotted Cas firmly into place as a reminder of how Cain’s peeps lined up against Dean’s, as well as Cas asking Dean to stop, which satisfied the terms and conditions of Dean resisting walking in Cain’s footsteps with the overall set up of the scene. With the way Cas got his grace back and then some other rando cure popped up where Rowena of all people made the sacrifice, I really can’t help feeling like the conspiracy theorist who knows they were right but with the way it all shook out, only people who knew the conspiracy would understand how it didn’t happen and it’s very hard for me to look at that and say that some non-Cas-related cure was coming all along, given the conspicuous dropping of one plotline sort of day of picking up the next >.> But I’ll cede that from my position I might be a bit compromised on that one. 

Anyways. To me season 10 is a disaster that only season 11 really justifies, while season 6 has some truly low points but in the end the actual writing skill hauls it through so that it creates the illusion that there was consistency, if you ignore everything outside of the text suggesting it may have been as poorly planned as season 10. Planning isn’t everything - it’s what you do when confronted with the unplanned wire tangle in front of you that really marks how well they were written, and just shoving it under the table and putting a new wire tangle down vs actually unpicking it and making them as neat as possible? Gamble slam dunks Carver :P

#Asks #season 10 #we don't talk about season 6

[johannesviii]

Anachrophobia

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (Anachrophobia).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers. And screaming.

I’m glad this book is over.

Some of you might already know that if you want to really f█cking scare me, you have to go as abstract as possible. This is why I’m such a big fan of Cube, and even Cube², its terrible sequel with terrible, terrible CGI, which gets even more abstract and surreal than the first one. What happened? How did the characters end up there? How does it work? Are they even on Earth? We don’t really know. We do know, however, that if they don’t get out of the Cube as soon as possible, they’re all going to die.

Similarly: what really happened in Anachrophobia? Were Eight, Fitz and Anji really on another planet? Was it even real? Who are the clock people possessing everyone? We don’t really know. I do know, however, that at some point, I was so scared to read the last 50 pages of this thing that it took me two weeks to pick it up again.

Does it really deserve such a high note? I don’t know. I might come back later and change it. I’m not sure. I’m too busy being scared shitless. 9,5/10

WE’RE OFF TO A GOOD START, I SEE.

Well, this is an EDA, dude.

Oh, they are fighting a literal “Time War”! This has potential.

This shouldn’t be so cool.

Meanwhile, poor Fitz isn’t very good at playing chess and I’m laughing.

Excuse me I love that room

That’s the weirdest time travel explanation I’ve ever seen and there’s quite a lot of them in this series.

Try to keep up, Anji.

Hoping it's better than a certain other Narnia-like episode seriously am I the only one who hates The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Try to keep up too, Fitz.

Eight no

That kind of reminds me of Longest Day.

Eight oh my god

OKAY WHAT’S GOING ON IN THIS F█CKING WORLD

DOCTOR THIS IS A BAD IDEA

EVERY TIME YOU TRIED TO PRETEND YOU WERE AN EXPERT SOMEONE WAS WAITING FOR, IT ENDED BADLY. ESPECIALLY IN DARK PROGENY.

“And the man yelping in pain is Fitz”

Holy shit

This is an excellent idea!

Okay so this world is, like, capitalism on steroids

IT’S BEEN GOING ON FOR 400 YEARS EXCUSE ME

ANJI SDSDFGHJKIH YOU COULD HAVE WARNED HIM

Well at least Anji is keeping up

How much do you wanna bet that the opposite side is doing the same shit?

Okay now I’m starting to panic too

This is peak Eight right there

SAVE THEM

Why is this so f█cking stressful

THIS IS SCARY, STOP

Roll credits!

So Anachrophobia isn’t a phobia per se, more like a neurological trauma?

MhhhhhMMMMMMH NOPE

“I have some rather unsettling ideas”

You mean more unsettling than what is currently happening?

WHO. AM. IIIIIIIIIIIIII

Okay this is even worse

Eight please try to focus

Why is this book so scary

BAD IDEA

None of this is okay and this book needs to stop, which really concerns me because there’s more than 170 pages left.

Are.... are you hoping to spy on him too

So even after losing a heart, he doesn't need to sleep more. Interesting.

Holy f█cking shit

On the other hand, this is cute.

Ok ok honestly, fuck abstract horror, give me some gory bullshit over this any day, I’m going to have nightmares about this, I swear.

Also friendly reminder that this world is terrifying.

“Or out” oh no

Bad idea Doctor

BAD IDEA FITZ

Oh wow, that happened way sooner than I expected.

Fitz being an anxious little shit as usual, but really, who can blame him in that situation?

THIS IS ONLY PAGE 77, HOW CAN IT GET ANY WORSE

FFFffffffFFFFffFffffFFfF

GET THEM OUT OF HERE

Go Anji!

Can't they breathe for two seconds

Hey, some typical Eight echolalia, it’s been a while!

You idiots I love you

Hello Mr Mistletoe. You have a very silly name.

sdfghgfdsdfghj Eight no

The only weird thing about him so far is his name.

Oh no, what a pity, uh?

This is getting rather complicated.

NOPE nope no nu-uh no

N O P E

More echolalia!

I laughed

I’m so sorry for Anji though

ALL ABOARD THE NOPE TRAIN TO NOPEVILLE

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOPE

Eight speaks fluent sarcasm but can't recognise it when other people use it and that’s extremely relatable

“Clocky” asdfgfdsdfg

Okay

Can I breathe now

Apparently not

Please don’t come any closer to that thing, this is very bad for my nerves

Okay.... now this is weird.

GOOD

Well this is abstractly horrible, thank you very much for that.

Poor Fitz isn’t going to get a nice rest in this adventure either

Well, you gotta stay positive, right.

Also you gotta learn to enjoy the small victories, right.

“I’ve been wrong before”

You don’t say

WELL, YOU SPOKE TOO SOON

Nice.

This is also nice.

On the other hand, this sounds extremely ominous. Is the war not really a war, but something else entirely?

Is... is it because that’s good for business?

That’s it, isn’t it?

How... how do you beat something that can rewind time? I’m sure there’s a way, but at the moment I’m too busy being scared to think of any clever solution.

I... I need a pause.

Usually, “base under siege” stories do nothing for me, but that one has a terrifying abstract menace, and that changes everything.

I’m back from my pause!

And we’re straight back into the scary!

I swear, this liveblog’s notes are 60% “nope” and I’m struggling to find new ways to express how hard I’m nope-ing

What ARE those things?

More importantly: do I even want to know?

Too soon.

Okay, now this is interesting. Because Fitz’s most traumatizing “life milestone” happened to the original Fitz, not our current Fitz. Would he be able to change the events from Interference? I’m not sure.

If he couldn’t change them or anything that happened before the “birth” of his current self, what else would he change? I’m curious.

I F█CKING KNEW IT. THEY MAKE THE WAR LAST FOREVER FOR PROFIT.

Have I mentioned recently that I love Anji

Because I love Anji

Also excuse me but why and how is Mistletoe still alive?

Why are you coughing?

Is it the heart loss? Is it something new? Am I being paranoid?

Awwww

Oh my god so that’s what he would change.

I have no words.

That is an interesting possibility, honestly.

How... how desesperate must Eight be if he’s seriously starting to consider gasing the whole station?

Ooooooh. Okay. That’s how you get rid of something that rewinds time!

This is very clever!

This is also horrible!

Thanks!

“Can I just shoot him now?” “No.”

Wait.

WAIT.

WAIT WAIT WAIT.

ARE YOU SABBATH

THAT WOULD MAKE SO MUCH SENSE

At this point I’m so scared I kinda want to cry

This book is like a collection of all the scariest things possible for me

I’d say “I can’t wait for this character to die” but if he’s Sabbath that’s gonna be a bit more difficult.

“I think things are going to get nasty”

IMPLYING THEY AREN'T ALREADY?

He’s way too happy about this very disturbing situation.

F█CcCkK

Please make it stop

Okay!

All right! Okay! Good!

But there’s 60 pages left!

That’s somehow more terrifying than everything so far!

I’m fine, I’m fine I’m fine

Have I ever told you that I really like the “Hurt & Comfort” trope

You cute idiots.

FffFffygtfghgfcyuCk

I need a break from this book.

Two entire weeks later, I’m picking this book up again.

And a weird roadtrip has started. And this is pretty funny.

No, we’re not. Ask again in three hours, Fitz.

Oh. I was way off.

As if they didn't have enough problems already.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I’m screening all the scenes where Eight goes into echolalia mode because it’s relatable.

This NOPE juice is delicious.

Poor guy, though.

No they’re not, are they?

Make it stop, I kinda feel sick

“More than anything, she wanted not to feel terrified”

F█CKIN’ SAME

They... they’re all already clock people, right?

I’m scared and I’m crying a little bit

I didn’t think the author would go that far

Clearly I was wrong

THAT’S

THAT’S AN EXTREMELY SPECIFIC FEATURE OF A LOT OF MY NIGHTMARES

A PLACE WHICH LOOKS LIKE IT SHOULD BE OUTSIDE, BUT WHICH IS ENTIRELY INDOORS BECAUSE IT’S IN A GIGANTIC CHAMBER OF SORTS

THIS IS EXTREMELY SPECIFIC

WHO ARE YOU AND WHO GAVE YOU FREE ACCESS TO ROUGHLY 17 YEARS OF MY PERSONAL NIGHTMARES

Ah, yes, great, please add more nightmares to the nightmares

That was predictable, actually.

This is Time Works all over again.

Please tell me the plutocratic empire doesn't even exist anymore.

I knew it.

Also that basically makes these things Capitalismisators 2000.

Oh. So they just wanted to get clear instructions.

AHSDFGHJKJHGFDERTYUHGB

Okay. Okay. He can control it. Good.

This book really needs to stop giving me fresh ideas for nightmares.

He won’t change anything anyway.

Wait. Will he?

Good.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure he'd unmake the entire Earth arc if he could.

“He’s having some sort of nightmare”

AREN’T WE ALL

How can they solve this in 13 pages??

WAIT

WAIT I HAVE AN IDEA

WHAT IF HE UNMAKES A THING WHICH HAS NO IMPACT ON ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED SO FAR, BUT HAS AN IMPACT ON THEIR FUTURE

What............. what is he doing

HOLY SHIT WHAT THE F█CK

BUT

But that’s a paradox, surely?

It worked??

Wait, is that why he suddenly felt really ill right after the mustard gas plan succeeded? Because that’s the point where he went back to kill himself?

So it didn’t change anything, did it?

I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT.

Wait, who are his associates?

THAT'S HOW IT F█CKING ENDS

ARE YOU KIDDING ME

If you wanted me to read the next book straight away, good job, though.

#Anachrophobia #Eighth Doctor Adventures #Eighth Doctor #Fitz Kreiner #Anji Kapoor #EDAs #Doctor Who #an EDA liveblog full of useless comments #long post #really long post #caps lock #body horror tw #A LOT OF IT #gif