#theyre just so not for me. like i am the opposite of their target audience

[hildegardladyofbones]

I think the reason why I almost cried over the boy and the heron's animation is because it's hand drawn in a world full of 3d animation that tries to impress you at every stage.

(Minor spoilers for the boy and the heron, no plot points tho)

Encanto's animation was impressive for the first few minutes, then it looked every other animates movie from the 2020s. The boy and the heron does a lot less than western (and 3d) animated movies for most of the movie (excluding the backgrounds because those were paintings. Like, actual paintings.) But when it needs to, it can do more than you thought possible. They clearly spent more time on making the movements human than making it colourful and flashy.

This subtlety is also extended into the character designs. In anime especially, but to some extent pixar as well, they make regular people look like humans have sexual dimorphism, but I couldn’t tell what gender Kiriko was supposed to be until she started to speak and until my suspicions were confirmed that the clothes she wore were in fact the same ones she wore in the other world. I am also a big fan of old wrinkly people so I'm glad they were once again present in a ghibli film. I think they have a knack for portraying people from different stages of life realistically. Also a big fan of how Mahito had so much personality, especially for a 12 yo protagonist of an adventure movie. Those tweens are usually given the cookie cutter hero personality, but robbed of actual humanity.

#the boy and the heron #hayao miyazaki #studio ghibli #ghibli films #movie critique #for the record i dont think disney/pixar/dreamworks movies are all bad or sth #theyre just so not for me. like i am the opposite of their target audience #there are movies from those studios that i can respect for doing new things or some that i enjoy but atp i just ignore everything they do #or have done #i will always prefer ghibli because of their different approach to storytelling

[sanstropfremir]

Hi! Have you seen that nct jaehyun, dooyoung and jungwoo made a sub-unit? Their song is called perfume and it is just SO FUN! The song itself reminds me of some of the old suju songs because the beat is so fun and makes you wanna dance, but the choreography is also ridiculously fun! You should check it out) I was reading your posts about the lack of fun in kpop, and this was honestly very refreshing to see. The mini-album is also quite good, and they even did a live-band cover of their songs. As always, nct guys are incredibly talented musically, good job

i actually really did not like their release....or their subunit.....or the album............

#like are they musically talented? yes. are the songs fine and technically good? sure #but i find them SO bland and im pissed off that theyre using the full nct brand for this discount cbx nonsense #should have been an nct lab!!! or an sm station!!! #also ngl i fucking hate the mv. like i HATE it. i have NO patience for pov fanservice stuff it makes my skin crawl. its insufferable #is it an effective method? sure. but i am NOT the target audience and am very much Too Gay for that #its one of my true pet peeves. i really. really fucking hate it and the fact that the mv was mostly like. 'chic perfume commercial' #was quite literally rage inducing. #so uh. sorry. that release is actually the opposite of fun (for me) #text #answers #nct w #slkdjfsd im so sorry you send me an ask and its RIGHT on a topic that i feel very strongly in the negative about lmao #pls dont be offended its not personal #also i need to clarify. i never said that kpop itself wasnt fun. kpop has and will always be fun. #i specifically said that a lot of fans (kpoppies) TREAT kpop like its not fun/actively eschew the fun parts of kpop #like flop groups or brighter concepts or just. taking it all too damn seriously #fans are not willing to look outside the main popular groups and so they dont actually SEE groups doing fun and cool and interesting things #like if you want to watch an actually fun mv go watch blitzers macarena #also idk how to tell you this but. ACTUAL nct music is so insanely fun. this ''subunit'' was just made to appease all the ''fans'' #who complain nonstop about 'how nct sucks now' when THEY DONT Y'ALL JUST WONT ACCEPT THAT YOU DONT LIKE SOMETHING UR FAVES MADE #anyways. i will stop talking now since this is probably gonna make ppl mad lmao #my nuclear take is that most nct fans dont actually like nct as a concept. they only like the idols. and those people are wrong

[clownkiwi]

genuinely hate the way heaven and hell is set up in hazbin like. in all honesty. whats the point of using the dantes inferno layers of hell if you are only allowed to use the pride layer. for every sinner. why the fuck would that make sense. like. a serial killer would be in the like. idfk wrath or lust (bloodlust) layer. dantes inferno isnt even fucking canonical to the bible.

the angel designs are flat, their movements feel stilted to me, all the humans in heaven just have a color swapped monster design just like the sinners.

and no fucking shit people think alastar is fucking white, you only find out that he mixed race from somewhere else. i only found out through my friend that the guy is half black because he saw a video or something of her drawing alaster in his human form (this sounds aggressive, but i am not doing that towards you this is in total agreement wirh you)

also i think adam as an angel is stupid as shit from like the standpoint of someone who is interested in the bible in the way greek myth isnt "canonical"/is separate from greek gods

the designs look like theyre still a fucking pain to animate, and i do genuinely like a lot of the designs, i think angel dust is iconic and uh. the bat cat guy looks pretty cool, i think theyre more for like. comic books.

story feels flat and rushed, and very much like i'm watching a childrens show for adults, and i fucking hate adult shows that think putting sex, seears, blood and gore in their product is soooooo fucking mature and cool of them and its just boring and samey and it fucking sucks. if hazbin was nade by someone else i'm sufe the peoduct wouldve been handled so much better and treated the audience like adults

LITERALLY THIS THIS THIS!!!!

for the first part, of the lore. the lore gets so much more fucking confusing and lamer if you watch the spinoff helluva boss. they go into more detail & spend more time in the other layers for each episode, but theyre all so lame and predictable. the lust layer is pink and full of clubs & bars because. romance??? the greed layer is green and pretty much chicago, especially with the demon mobs (demon mobs Should sound more fun). the wrath ring is red/orange and like The Middle Western Desert that literally takes place during the Wild West from USAmerica. LIKE they made dantes inferno LAME!!! wheres the imagination??? was the best you could come up with for greed "chicago" and wrath "the wild west"???? come on

and the way heaven and hell are addressed is so much more confusing. like. the angels have a Moral code Not To Kill, even if theyre demons (in the episode the angel opposite of IMP are focused on, they lose their jobs when they indirectly kill a guy they weren't supposed to kill), which comes into direct conflict with what the angels Were ALREADY DOING IN HAZBIN???

itd be one thing if they were taking place apart from each other in the timeline, and we don't really know that ATM, but they're supposed to take place in the same universe, so they never really seem to make up their minds on what they wanna do with that???

AND LIKE the core concept of hazbin hotel is broken from the very worldbuilding the show is built on. no demon would ever wanna work on redeeming themselves by just going to a hotel, and even in cases when they do, its really just to sabotage each other, before they solve their problems like. my fucking little pony. i cant believe this was a show made for the same target group as bojack horseman or moral orel, it makes me sick

and this idea isnt broken either!!! it can work!!! the good place worked and improved on this idea In Strides and did it with much more maturity and respect for its audience than vivziepop could even do for two of her shows

like hazbin hotel & helluva boss could be improved upon, they just need Better Writers and a Stronger Vision for where the story could go. im not even being a hater Just Because (altho i am), i'm just really upset that this was the direction the show is seemingly going to with no stop. ive seen people that have looked up to vivziepop as inspiration and felt deeply betrayed when the story was shit, when the writing was horrible, its really disappointing to see. i think the only people left watching this are people who think what vivziepop is doing is good, even if she spends more than half her time online looking up her shows to try to fight back against any and all criticism

#ruby answers tag #max i 100% agree with you on all your points #this is something ive been thinking about making a video about forever #how were such horrible pilots so highly praised before the show even came out. howd vivziepop get on tv with hazbin hotel??? #i really wanna do a video on this so badly not even in a cringe way but in an interest way... because this is So interesting...! #anyways sorry for the long post. i am angry with you i hate vivziepop 4ever... #flowerkidlove #long post (?) #hazbin hotel cw #helluva boss cw

[ot3]

wait wait wait can you explain more how to be funny and what makes humor work preferably a la essay form if you’re up to it. I’m reading a comic and the jokes aren’t sticking so I’d love to be able to properly be able to figure out what makes some joeks works but others not so I articulate what I hate about it

This response got kinda long so i’m sticking it under a readmore. TL;DR: I don’t think I can tell you how to be funny and what makes comedy work, I don’t think anyone can tell you that. However, I can give you a bunch of advice and guiding questions on how to go about figuring out these answers for yourself

Honestly I don’t think that’s something I’m capable of doing this in any sort of reasonable amount of time. It’d either have to be something really short and really general like what I wrote in the rvb0 post or it’d have to be incredibly long and incredibly specific where I pick specific good and bad examples of comedy and break down what I think works and what I think doesn’t. It’d take a lot of slow and meticulous work I don’t really have the time for, and I’m also not sure how helpful it would be, because once again, comedy is super super subjective and I don’t want to risk overemphasizing my own tastes/general observations as any sort of gospel.

the best advice i can give you would be to try and properly figure out for yourself why these jokes aren’t sticking! because processing something as Funny is much more of an innate reaction than, like, engaging Cerebrally with Narrative Developments it can be much harder to actually realize why something works or doesn’t. I’m going to start by sticking in what I said in my original RVB0 post here in case anyone is reading this without context. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

When you see a joke that doesn’t land - try mentally rewriting it. Is there anything you could do to make it funny? Can you bring to mind any similar jokes from other pieces of media that you did like? How does the joke effect the pace of the story - is it an awkward and unnatural pause within the flow of events/dialogue? Is the joke well implemented - that is to say, regardless of how ‘objectively’ funny or unfunny the actual meat of the thing is, is it coming from the right source and directed at the right target? Does it add to your understanding of events/characters/setting, do nothing in this department, or does it detract from/contradict them? Is it immersion-breaking (and if so, is this intentional or meaningful?) or does it pull you deeper into the world you’re being shown?

Once you start asking these questions of both media you like and media you dislike you’ll start to recognize patterns in what lands and what doesn’t, and I don’t think they’re questions anyone else can really answer for you.

I think it also is a question of whether comedy is the intended final destination of a piece of media or just a step along the way. Media that exists solely as a vehicle for jokes is going to have comedy that looks very different than the comedy present in media that exists for heavy narrative purposes but includes moments of levity. 

Here are two examples of shows I think are really good and are also about as different in concept, execution, and intent as humanly possible: phineas and ferb and breaking bad.

Breaking bad is probably the most emotionally taxing television experience I’ve had in my life. I mean this as a compliment. breaking bad is supposed to be grueling to watch. It also has jokes in it. the scenes that are funny server to really meaningfully increase the immersion, not break it, and they do this by bringing a very realistic sense of human interaction that grounds the high-stakes melodrama into something that looks a hell of a lot more like reality. There’s one scene in particular i think does just such a great job of exemplifying this. here we’ve got jesse having dinner with walt and his wife while they are, as always, fighting with each other viciously and creating such a horrible and suffocating miasma of tension over the entire narrative, and jesse is trying to break some of this tension very poorly.

Then, in literally the complete opposite vein, you’ve got the phineas and ferb episode ‘lets take a quiz’ which i consider incredibly formative in the development of my sense of humor. The entire Bit of literally this whole episode is that they’re doing this terrible quiz with no rules that makes no sense and candace is trying to win but nobody knows how to play this game. 

Phineas and ferb is an episodic children’s cartoon that deals almost exclusively in unreality and the absurd, and so this kind of bit works here.

Saying ‘whats good comedy’ is really hard because it’s just like saying ‘whats good narrative’. There’s no one set of criteria; it boils down to what is the intention of your comedy, and how successfully were you able to act on these intentions?

This really got away from me sorry I am working on extremely little sleep i hope this helped even a little bit. My final piece of advice is: go watch hot fuzz. seriously. go watch hot fuzz (2007) dir. edgar wright and look at how the jokes in that movie are because theyre perfect and i love hot fuzz and it’s fucking funny

#long post #Anonymous

[obstinaterixatrix]

1 2 11 18 26

buckle in this one’s a long one

1. What themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?

Would it be cheating to say romantic love from an aromantic perspective?

Another that springs to mind is like... love as selfishness, but not necessarily in a bad way. Like ‘I want you to be happy because you’re a dear person to me, not because of some vague altruism, it is our connection that gets me invested, it is because I care about you and that’s what makes it selfish’

I also think there’s a bit of ‘allowing yourself to be loved as an active choice that has to be made’. I really like developing characters who can’t see themselves as a choice that makes sense, or see themselves as A Negative Influence... not the ‘no we can’t be together I’ve already decided and this is for your own good,’ but the ‘you??? love me??? are you sure??? like, really really sure?????’ and then having to make the choice to trust that the other character is really really sure, and that they can work stuff out together. love as joyous and terrifying.

2. What are some common elements of stories you are tired of seeing? What would you avoid writing about?

Fun fact for school we had a class for basic interview skills and one of the key concepts was not asking ‘double questions’ (two questions in a row) because that can overwhelm the interviewee or they might just answer the last question and I think of that every time one of these things have multiple questions in a singular question

anyway heteronormativity lol

I also tend to actively avoid writing internalized homophobia nowadays because that’s stopped being interesting or helpful to me (that includes any ‘suffering/self-loathing because they are [x] sexuality’ type narratives). I read romance because I like relationship development and conflict/resolution. homophobia just doesn’t interest me.

I talked about this earlier but a lot of adult romance (m/f specifically) still has a lot of uncritically presented. power harassment. power harassment. misogyny. assault. power harassment. actually, romances in general, but that’s more of a societal thing (like everything is).

I also am not the target audience for ‘love rivals’. Nothing I ever write will ever have a character legitimately be framed as a threat to the main relationship because I’m too tired for that. basically the sequel of to all the boys I’ve loved before is exactly the opposite of my speed. unless it’s a longform series with ensemble cast focus, the love rival either ends up two-dimensional and obviously a stepping stone for the main couple, or they end up more compelling and sympathetic than the love interest which makes their role as stepping stone all the more frustrating. The majority of the time love rivals don’t get a character arc or any resolution because theyre there as an obstacle rather than a character, and obviously some characters are going to be more fleshed out than others, but it’s just so... ANNOYING WHEN PEOPLE DON’T USE LOVE RIVALS EFFECTIVELY, AND JUST LIKE FIRST PERSON POV, IT’S AN ASPECT OF STORY CONSTRUCTION THAT HAS BECOME POPULARIZED AND STANDARDIZED WITHOUT PEOPLE REALIZING WHAT MAKES IT STRONG OR WEAK, PEOPLE JUST THROW IT IN WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT FOR MORE THAN A MICROSECOND, and that’s why I’m not a fan of how people use love rivals. plus 90% of the time it’s used to show off the love interest’s possessiveness which usually is framed as hot but comes off as emotionally immature, which could be an interesting conflict if people actually recognized it as a red flag to be addressed rather than just. something that’s hot. That got longer than I expected.

11. Set the scene for us. What are your settings like and do you have any pictures saved that represent them? Do your characters travel and see more than one? What are their names?

first of all this is exactly what I was talking about re: double (triple) questions. anyway. [was an art minor] I am not a visual person. generic city. generic countryside. w/e

18. What writers have inspired you with their use of language? What are some of your favorite quotes?

Definitely Terry Pratchett. I’ve said this before but the full ‘elves are marvelous’ quote was really formative for me, hang on I’ll grab it

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.

Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.

Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.

Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.

Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.

Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

No one ever said elves are nice.

Elves are bad.

I love double meaning and ambiguity lol

I think it’s gotten further away as an influence but I do still think Homestuck has left its mark on me. not as obviously as it has on other folks, but still.

This is probably more on a subconscious/confirmation bias level, but mark forsyth’s elements of eloquence really struck me, too. like I’ve always done some of the things he writes about but after reading his book I think I notice it in other writers more.

mxtx... is more of a thematic influence than linguistic influence but I still think about ‘above all else there was incurable love’ all the time... contrast of the grotesque against tenderness and affection...

26. What do you feel like you need to work on as a growing writer? How can you improve?

DESCRIPTIONS. PLOT. MAINTAINING ENOUGH ENERGY/COMPLEXITY TO CARRY ANY PROJECTS OVER 10K.

#tumblr ask thing reply #writing ramble #thewrongexecution #long post

[cherryscentedlube]

agreed. I'm still sometimes so surprised at how much they can ease my anxiety. I haven't ever really come across anyone or anything that has that effect on me, and i don't quite understand it. But I'm very grateful for them and all that they do.

i wrote a post on this when first starting my blog;

unofficially titled the thing about dan and phil

‘why do you like dan and phil lol??’

see, this is something im always asked, and today im here to answer it.

i always have identity crises. always. i dont know who i am. i dont know if i ever will. im a 5sos fan, and i do like 5sos a lot. hell, i lined up for 15 hours for their concert and waited 6 hours at an airport. but the thing is, im not like them. i never will be like them. i’ll never be like their fanbase, i’ll never be the epitome of a band geek. the ‘sexy band girl chic.’ i will never be that. and for a long time, i wanted to be. i wanted to pretend i was into heavy makeup and skintight clothes and revealing skirts and that i had a sexual aura around me. i wanted to be that person. but i couldnt. i never will be. 99% of the celebrities we see nowadays have these fans, and you usually need to adapt to some kind of persona along the lines of what i described to be a ‘proper’ fan. i changed myself into someone i didnt like because i wanted to be seen as that; as an admirable 5sos fan.

the truth is, im the opposite. i dont wear a lot of makeup. i wear sweaters and jeans and i stay inside all day reading ridiculous fanfictions. i chat to people on a blog forum. i watch these two guys. you might know them by dan and phil. and the thing about them is that, in my eyes, theyre different. they arent trying to make you like them. they arent striving to target an audience. they dont pretend to be something they arent; and theyre not ashamed of who they are. dan and phil are two kind, genuine, unproblematic people with unbiased opinions and an outlook on life that one day, i hope i have. they dont judge. they arent dramatic (well, usually). theyre just these two guys. daniel howell and phil lester. and theyre themselves. when i joined the ‘phandom’ i realised something. i could be who i wanted to be, and they would accept that. i could cry all day and never leave the house, and that’s cool. i could be an energetic sports geek, and that’s fine. i could be a nerd who loves school, and that’s great. i don’t have to become the epitome of a dan and phil fan. i can be someone who i already am; me. and theyre ok with that. someday, i really hope that’s okay with me too.

dnp taught me that it’s okay to be myself. i dont have to pretend anymore. we are all different. but thats okay with them. and i feel comforted knowing that i can be myself.

#danandphil #ask.com