#And I know I write some dark stuff pertaining to his character when the show is NEVER that deep but just | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ltleflrt · 3 years

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Hey Carrie! You talked a little the other day about writers' tendency to start a fic too early in the story, and how you see a lot of first scenes that could have been scrapped to improve the story. My question is if you have some tips to recognize while writing that first scene that you are starting too early in the story?

Hello friend!

That's a really good question, and I'll see if I can give an answer that makes sense. I am not a professional, and I'm not educated or trained in this stuff, it's just something that I recognize from years and years and years of voracious reading. And as with all writing advice, I encourage you to take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt and remember that no writing rule is a hard rule, only a guideline.

Also, my advice is going to be pertaining fanfiction, and specifically to AUs. Obviously a published book has an editor with a razor blade going through a manuscript for you, and the problems that bother me in fanfiction crop up in AUs more than Canonverse.

Oh, and every instance of "you" is general, not specific 😜

So I think the main problem that I see is that people are starting with an Info Dump. An Info Dump is not always a bad thing, sometimes it's completely necessary, but it is NOT where you want to start your story. If it absolutely has to be done, it's better to be somewhere in the middle or near the end. When it's something that your characters need to know.

That's an important bit: Do your characters need to know this?

And related to that: Does your audience need to know this for the story to make sense?

And very important follow up: If the answers to the above questions are yes, does the character/audience need to know this RIGHT NOW?

There's a lot of information about your story that YOU need to know. Heck, my notes files are full of sooooooo much stuff that I know about the characters and plot that never reaches the final product.

So when you're reading your first chapter (I say reading, not writing, because sometimes info dumping for your own benefit is good, and then you fix it before you share the story lol), ask yourself those two questions.

So for example:

In an AU where Dean is a tattoo artist, and it's his POV. The story starts with Dean driving to work, and when he gets there he's going to find out that the empty shop next door has been purchased and is going to be a yoga studio. He meets Castiel out front, up on a ladder trying to hang a hand painted sign, and some teens go running buy and knock into the ladder and Dean has to catch Castiel from falling. (Anyone who wants to adopt this idea is welcome to it btw, I would love to read this lol)

The mistake I often see in a first chapter like this is that as Dean is walking to work, there's a whole Info Dump about why he's a tattoo artist instead of a hunter. He'll be ambling along, thinking about his nice little business, and there's info about how his mom died in a fire, and his dad was a jerk, and Dean didn't go to college because he saved his money for Sammy's college fund, and Dean's only passion was art, and Bobby Singer introduced him to a tattoo shop owner who took Dean under his wing, etc.

Question 1, does your character need to know this?: Why is Dean reflecting on his past? Does Castiel need to know this information in order to build a romance with Dean?

Question 2, does your audience need to know this?: Why does this information matter? If Dean's only reflecting on this because you want to make sure your audience knows where the timeline changed and this became an AU, then you're starting too early in your story. Dean doesn't need to know this, and honestly in a lot of cases the reader doesn't need to know this. This is information that should have been left in your notes file.

Question 3, does the character/audience need to know this NOW?: If this information is pertinent to the plot, like maybe there's some trauma there that Castiel might need to know about to develop their relationship, then you don't want to put it HERE, you want to put it in a conversation with Castiel LATER.

If I was writing this AU, I would just start with Dean sipping his coffee, he's kinda tired because reasons, he looks up to see an unusual commotion, and has to drop his coffee and sprint forward to catch Cas. If he's reflecting on anything in this scene, it's going to be whatever made him tired, or how good/bad the coffee is this morning. Since Cas is a new business owner, they can talk about the origins of Dean's business on their first date, because it'll be a relevant response to Castiel talking about the origins of his yoga studio.

And just in general, if Dean's origin story includes a lot of canon elements, like mom dying in a fire, dad being a deadbeat, Sammy being the adorable overachieving Stanford student.... try to hide that info for as long as you can so that the audience is actually curious about it by the time the info might pop up. It's the wild divergences that are more interesting earlier on.

Okay, and then I want to talk about my giant pet peeve for a starting chapter. It's a specific kind of info dump, that often includes the stuff from above, but then goes a step further.

My nemesis, The Daily Grind.

I haven't asked the authors, so I could be wrong about this, but I feel like most of the time when this type of chapter is included in a story it is because the author wants to show the reader that the character's life is boring and meaningless before the plot's inciting incident. I can absolutely see why that might be considered an important detail about the character, but keep in mind if it's boring and meaningless to the character, it's boring and meaningless to your audience.

You know how I said earlier that writing tips should never be hard and fast rules? Well this is in regards to that Show Don't Tell rule, and it's an example of TOO MUCH showing lol

It is possible to do a daily grind in an interesting way, but only if you include a Shake Up right away. And you have to look at the 3 questions a little bit differently.

So for example:

Castiel POV, and he works in an office. His daily routine is to always get up at the same time every day, he goes for his run, he grooms himself, he has his breakfast, he goes to work and talks to Kelly about how Jack's doing in kindergarten for a few minutes before going into his office. Adler comes in to be a prick, Castiel hates him for it, and then he does his reports, has lunch hiding in a corner of the lunch room so that his co-workers will leave him alone, he does more reporting, leaves an hour after his shift technically ends, goes home to a lonely apartment that maybe includes a pet who is the only being that shows him affection, has an unsatisfying dinner of leftover takeout while watching a mindless reality tv show, then he goes to bed.

Ugh.

BORING.

Which, yeah I get it, the point is that his life is boring. But now the story is too, and I've clicked the back button before I can see how exciting it's capable of getting.

Question 1, does your character need to know this?: No. He knows. Poor thing definitely already knows.

Question 2, does your audience need to know this?: Yes, but...

Question 3, does the character/audience need to know this NOW?: Yes, but new question for ya:

Optional Question 4, why does this need to be separate from your plot's inciting incident? The answer to this 4th question is usually that it doesn't.

Chapter 2 of this type of beginning usually shows the shake up of Castiel's day. My advice is to start with the shakeup, and sprinkle in the details of what you would have put into chapter 1 to show the contrast. It's far more interesting to learn how boring Castiel's day is by starting with the shake up.

So, same scenario:

Castiel's alarm doesn't go off for some reason, OH NO HIS ROUTINE IS SHAKEN UP! You're explaining his routine while also stressing him the fuck out because he has to rush, or skip something that he normally needs to do. Action! Interesting! He gets to work late, and has to miss his conversation with Kelly about Jack because she's telling him that Adler's already in his office being a prick because Castiel isn't there waiting for him like he always is. Oh shit, he's pissing off his asshole boss! Conflict! He's so flustered by the shakeups that he misses something on his report, and he gets a call from that new marketing guy Dean Winchester who asks if they can have a meeting about it when Castiel normally takes his lunch. BAM! MEET CUTE OPPORTUNITY! While Castiel is getting all flustered by how pretty Dean is while they talk about TPS reports, he can reflect on how this is both better and worse than hiding from his co-workers in the corner of the lunch room. The rest of the day after that meeting he's thinking about how weird this day is, he still goes home an hour late, he talks to his pet about his weird day when he gets home, and maybe he still eats leftover takeout, but he's not paying attention to the reality tv show because holy shit he wants to count Dean's freckles.

In this example, you're Telling the audience about Castiel's normal routine instead of Showing them. But since it's during a plot heavy chapter, it works!

Lemme see if I can TL:DR this...

As you're reading, ask yourself who needs to know this information, why do they need to know this information, and why is it important for this information to be included early instead of later?

If the answer to any of those questions boils down to "this is backstory" instead of "this kicks off the plot", then you've started too early.

I hope this helps? I'm always nervous about giving writing advice because so much of the time I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm just feeling around in the dark. And I definitely do not ever want to hurt an author's feelings, because this hobby is so fucking hard, and we're all fragile. Even authors who welcome con-crit with open arms will have a weak point that they're unaware of that might get poked wrong and cause a crack, ya know?

I hope anyone who gets this far who might see their own works reflected in my examples understands that I have a lot of respect for their ability to put their work out into the world, and I want them to keep doing it. We're here to have fun, okay? Okay. I love y'all 💜

#ltleramblings #writer's angst #also i think some of these problems can be solved with a prologue #but that's something i'm literally exploring in my current WIP #so I have no idea if I'm doing it right #and i might be breaking all of my own rules with it lol

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 4 years

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THE BOX IS NABOO

That’s it, I’m doing it, I’m writing that stupid meta I’ve had in the works for two and a half years, I’m sharing it with the world. I promised it for last Thursday, my poll was forever ago, but whatever! I’m writing that freaking thing.

(super duper long post, press j to skip)

Enter my rabbit hole.

First thing to establish: the Box makes no sense whatsoever in-universe.

((EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. IRL, the premise of a giant murder cube and the aesthetic - wall patterns, light designs, etc - of the episode come from the 1997 horror movie Cube, (see the episode’s wookieepedia page). However, while the two are very closely linked visually, the Box does not follow the movie structurally or narratively, as you can verify by simply reading the movie’s summary.))

Recap of the context for the "Box" episode (s4e17): Palpatine is planning his own kidnapping. It was never meant to succeed, and while the plan would obviously benefit him (making the Jedi look bad, pushing Anakin closer to the Dark Side, making Republic citizens more afraid -> more docile, etc...) his actual goal is never explained, and it’s weird that he’d go to such extreme lengths for results so minimal that we’re never told what they are.

So Palpatine asks Dooku to kidnap him at the Festival of Lights on Naboo. Dooku hires Moralo Eval to design a giant box-thingy to test bounty hunters to hire the best of them to kidnap Palpatine. Moralo then gets arrested to alert the Republic that something is afoot, and hires Cad Bane to break him out. Obi-Wan - undercover to learn Moralo’s plan - goes with them. They evade capture and go to Serenno, and Bane and Obi-Wan have to pass the box-thingy test. The level of brainkarked logic here... Truly on par with Megamind, Gru and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Setting aside the insane plot holes and utterly nonsensical behavior of the villains, the Box itself is moronic from a plot perspective. It’s insanely complex, obviously incredibly expensive and would have taken months (more like years but it’s a short war) to make when it’s not even needed for the dastardly plot! Just hire some guys who have already proven themselves against Jedi! Throw cash at Bane and Embo and a few others! Maybe attack them with your saber and see how they do!

And after all that, Dooku still ends up trying to kidnap Palpatine on his own. I can’t even...

So why does the Box exist? Well, apart from being a nerdy callback to Cube, giving us a good thrill and being generally awesome to look at, it has actual narrative purpose within the SW universe.

The box is Naboo.

What the Box lacks in plot relevance, it makes up for with its heavily symbolic meaning. It very closely follows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s experiences on Naboo - but only certain parts, which I’ll explain later.

We start with clean, sterile environments, SW’s favored way of showing villainy.

Then we have the protagonists locked in a room as dioxis, a poison gas, pours in.

And then they escape... this way.

(Okay, here the shaft is down, not up. And it’s not a ventilation shaft per say, it’s the designed escape route. Same difference).

We then skip most of TPM (namely, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the droid army, finding Padmé, leaving Naboo, landing on Tatooine, going to Coruscant, etc, etc) to come back to Naboo and go directly to the lightsabers and catwalks.

(Note: in both scenes, Obi-Wan has to propel himself from a catwalk.)

In TPM and TCW, the catwalks are immediately followed by ray shields

And we finally end with the last scenes. Now, they don’t look the same but they are structurally identical.

Obi-Wan is faced with a challenge unsuited for his abilities (facing Darth Maul // shooting three moving targets when he’s far more skilled with a blade than a blaster) on a narrow space above a melting pit/pit of fire.

He first watches someone die failing to complete the task...

... and has to do it himself, faring much better than expected (holding his own against Maul // shooting all the targets easily).

He then almost falls to his death and gets saved unexpectedly.

And then there’s the final showdown.

In both scenes, Obi-Wan is angry. And in TCW Dooku eggs him on, banking on his anger. (More on that later.) In both cases though, he centers himself and is able to overcome both his opponent and his own unbalance. But in TCW, he doesn’t go for the kill, because he doesn’t need to.

The Box, as a literal character-explorator ex-machina, thus shows us Obi-Wan’s growth.

In TPM, Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon’s lead. In TCW, he is the leader. He identifies the gas, makes the plans. He doesn’t fall from catwalks anymore - he runs atop moving ones. He doesn’t stay stuck behind ray-shields, he finds the solution. (Btw, how did Moralo know what blood type Derrown the Exterminator was? There was a 50% chance of him dying - thus killing all of the bounty hunters. Was that an acceptable outcome? TCW I need answers!) He doesn’t slay his foes, because he’s become powerful enough, skilled enough and wise enough to survive (and win) without needing to kill.

He’s grown - and, even more interestingly, he’s also stayed the same. In the previous episodes, we see some of the dark aspects of Obi-Wan. How he - like all Force-wielders, all people - could lose himself if he stopped maintaining absolute control.

But in the Box, surrounded by the worst criminals of the Galaxy, the most ruthless, worthless people, he’s still kind and tries his best to keep them alive.

The Box is a reminder and a reassurance for the audience that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still there under Rako’s face. He hasn’t lost his compassion, his restrain. He’s still a Jedi. And he’s an awesome, badass one.

And now, for what it tells us about Dooku!

It’s much shorter, don’t worry. Basically, Dooku considers that the best way to pick “the best of the best” of the deadliest people in the Galaxy is making them go through what killed his Padawan. There, I’ve broken your hearts, you’re welcome.

More seriously, Dooku is a manipulative ass. It’s pretty clear that he knows Rako is Obi-Wan, or at the very least suspects it.

He has an interesting reaction upon learning Rako’s identity, he keeps praising him despite his usual distaste for low-lifes, he smirks secretively after Eval says “I’ll show you who’s weak” (not included there because it’s a close-up of Dooku’s lips and no one wants to see that) and he tells Rako he’s very disappointed when he doesn’t finish off Eval.

[Later]

(Look at this smug asshole - I can’t. YOUR GRANDSON IS THE BEST, WE KNOW, STOP ACTIVELY RUINING HIS LIFE ALREADY.)

(Dooku... why...)

Now obviously Dooku couldn’t have made the Box specifically for Obi-Wan, because it would have to have been designed months before the Council ever decided to send Obi-Wan undercover, but he has no qualms trying to use it to push Obi-Wan to the Dark Side. Ffs Dooku, making your spiritual grandson relive one of the most traumatic events of his life on the off chance that he’ll join you (and desecrate his Master’s memory in doing so) is not okay!

Final tidbits of analysis: I mentioned that not all of TPM is mirrored in the Box. What’s omitted is the droids (even though Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight B1′s and droidekas between the dioxis and the ventilation shafts) and anything pertaining to Sidious (all the political stuff on Coruscant). You’ll also note that the fake lightsabers are orange.

=> The Box distances itself from anything that connects Dooku to Naboo. Red lightsabers are the trademark of the Sith, so they’re not used. The bounty hunters will be facing Jedi, so logically the fake sabers should be green or blue - and yet they’re orange, the color closest to red without being red. It fits with Dooku’s special brand of dishonesty - he always tells bits of the real story but twists them just enough to absolve himself of any fault and to justify his choices.

(”We can destroy the Sith” -> could maybe destroy Sidious with Obi-Wan, but fails to mention he’s a Sith Lord himself; “the Viceroy came to me for help, that’s why I’m attacking the Republic” -> political idealism is a small part of it, but fails to mention he’s Sidious’ underling and is playing the Viceroy like a fiddle; “Qui-Gon would have joined me” -> maybe, still fails to mention he’s working for the man who ordered Qui-Gon’s death; “I told you everything you needed to know” -> debatable, never said that Palps was Sidious; “Sifo-Dyas understood, that’s why he helped me” -> partly true, doesn’t admit to killing Sifo-Dyas right after getting his help)

So we have a twisted version of Naboo, droid-free (as droids are now irrevocably associated with Dooku, even if that wasn’t the case in TPM) and with sabers that aren’t quite red. Keep in mind that Dooku had already fallen by TPM. (We know this because he killed Sifo-Dyas and created the Clone Army - part of Sidious’ plan - when Valorum was still Chancellor, as per the episode The Lost One.) That means Dooku was (in)directly complicit in Qui-Gon’s death. And the Box doesn’t (=refuses to?) acknowledge that.

(Also omitted in the Box are the Gungans and Tatooine. It makes sense, because Dooku probably wouldn’t have the full details regarding those parts of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s missio as they weren’t as public, and would see them as irrelevant if he did. He utterly despises Anakin, and Gungans are the type of people he always dismisses out of hand).

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the Box. To quote Lucas...

“It’s like poetry. It rhymes.”

Thanks to @lethebantroubadour @impossiblybluebox @nonbinarywithaknife @ytoz and @kaitie85386 for voting for this one. Next up is a compilation of the Jedi being casually tactile with each other (because they’re a warm and affectionate culture, dammit).

Also thanks to @laciefuyu for giving me gifs I ended up not using ^^; you rock anyway!

#meta #my meta #the box #deception arc #rako hardeen #rako hardeen arc #naboo #obi-wan kenobi #count dooku #cad bane #moralo eval #darth sidious

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watch-grok-brainrot · 3 years

Text

A Good Sword

Written for @mdzsnet 1 year net anniversary event. Request sent in by @susuwatari-kompeito

Rated: G

Word Count: 4392

Characters: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin, Suibian (Módào Zǔshī), Lan Yuan | Lan Sizhui, Lan Jingyi, OC character mentions

Other tags: Post-Canon, sentient weapons, cw blood, cw injury, Night Hunt, Yunmeng, Post-Canon, Established Relationship WangXian, Gusu, Jiang Cheng being difficult, I stan the least Lan of Lans who also happens to be the best Lan, food mentioned

Summary: Wei Wuxian is forming a golden core in Mo Xuanyu's body. He realizes this means he can wield Suibian again but Lan Wangji reminds him it's with Jiang Cheng in Yunmeng. Their help is requested to subdue supernatural disturbances on Mushan Island so Wangxian head there with some juniors. During the night hunt, they run into Jiang Cheng who happens to have Suibian with him. How will Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian resolve who gets to keep the sword?

Thank you @merelhyn and Aube for the beta!

[Gusu, Cloud Recesses]

A warm spring breeze drifted through the bamboo forest outside the Jingshi, rustling the leaves. As the wind ebbed and flowed, the rustling rose and fell, mimicking the sound of ocean waves. The soothing sound of the bamboo served as stark contrast to the stillness of the Jingshi. Cool sandalwood smoke curled up from a small ceramic incense burner, tumbling up and dissipating into the air. Lan Wangji knelt before his desk with his back straight and shoulders relaxed. A small mountain of letters piled to his right. Three stacks sat neatly to his left. He took a letter from the pile to his right, skimmed it twice with his pale colored eyes, and carefully set it in the appropriate pile to his left. The sandalwood smoke continued to rise as Lan Wangji methodically moved through his work. Only the occasional crinkling of paper and the wave-like sound of bamboo could be heard. The stillness was interrupted when Wei Wuxian charged into the building. Lan Wangji looked up at the sound of quick footsteps. “Lan Zhan! Look what I noticed today!” Wei Wuxian shoved his wrist in front of Lan Wangji. His shirt was half open, showing his bare chest, and his cheeks flushed from exercise. “Mn?” Lan Wangji asked, setting down the letter he was reading. He looked up at Wei Ying’s face and then his gaze drifted to Wei Ying's bare chest. “Feel, Lan Zhan! Feel my pulse!” Wei Wuxian waved his wrist in front of Lan Wangji’s face as he plopped down next to Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji caught the flailing limb, set Wei Ying’s hand gently onto the desk, and pressed his fingers against the other man’s pulse. Wei Ying beamed as Lan Wangji assessed his pulse, feeling along the paths of the shorter man’s meridians. Lan Wangji’s qi was met with Wei Ying’s own energy and ferried to Wei Ying’s core. A golden core was forming inside his Wei Ying at last. “It’s coalescing.” “Yes! And at a decent pace too! Before you know it, I’ll be able to fight with a sword again! Are you looking forward to sparring with me?” “Mn,” Lan Wangji felt the corner of his lips pull back slightly. “Hey, Lan Zhan, speaking of swords, do you know what happened to Suibian? I haven’t seen it for months. Did I misplace it somewhere in Jingshi?” “Jiang Wanyin has it.” “What? Since when?” “When we left Yunmeng.” “Huh. I don’t remember this.” “Do you remember Jin Guangyao provoking Jiang Wanyin about the core transfer?” Wei Wuxian’s eyes darted up towards the ceiling briefly. “He could pull Suibian from its sheath. I remember that now! Hm… I wonder if he’s planning on keeping it or if…” Wei Wuxian trailed off as he turned around and leaned against Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Lan Zhan, were you working this morning?” “Perusing correspondence. I should continue,” Lan Wangji responded as he wrapped his left arm around Wei Ying. He placed a kiss on the other man’s hair and breathed in — musk from exercising, dust from outside, pine resin, and hint of prickly spice. “Wei Ying always smells good.” The other man laughed. “You always smell good too, Lan er-gege.” Always active, Wei Ying reached towards Lan Wangji’s desk. “Lan Zhan, watcha reading now?” “We received a letter seeking help from Wuhu Gong Sect.” “Wuhu? Where is that?” “Between Gusu and Yunmeng, east of Hefei.” “What did they want?” “Disturbances on ChaoHu’s MuShan Island near Hefei.” “What kind?” “Unclear.” “Are we going to go help?” Lan Wangji waited, choosing not to answer. Wei Ying will figure it out. “Silly question. You go where the chaos is,” Wei Wuxian turned and kissed Lan Wangji. He then laughed, “And here I thought I was the chaos.” Lan Wangji huffed out a small snort. “Alright, alright. We should write back and go help out. I’ll find Chenqing and pack our stuff. You can finish your pile of letters.” “Check between the bed and the window.” “What?” Wei Wuxian hopped from where he was sitting and bounded over to the bed. “You left Chenqing there earlier in the month.” “You really remember everything, don’t you, Lan Zhan?” “No. Only if it pertains to Wei Ying.”

[Yunmeng, Lotus Pier]

Jiang Cheng snapped his head up at the sound of running. “Zongzhu! Help is requested urgently from Hefei!” A young disciple charged into the room waving a letter. “Is there the need to yell and run? Will a few additional moments change the outcome?” Jiang Cheng scolded as he snatched the folded message from the frantic disciple. “Go practice ‘Picking Lotus Roots in the Mud’ in the courtyard at one fifth the standard pace.” “Uh… One fifth?” “Do I need to repeat myself?” Jiang Cheng looked the boy in the eye. “No Zongzhu. Right away,” the disciple scurried off. Jiang Cheng watched the retreating figure and wondered if he himself could even perform the form at one fifth the speed. No matter, the boy was supposed to practice and it would teach him patience. Jiang Cheng turned his attention to the message in his hand. It was from Hefei’s Mi sect, a small sect allied to Yunmeng： “Seeking help from Sandu Shengshou Jiang Wanyin and the Yunmeng Jiang Sect. Mysterious yao disturbances on ChaoHu’s MuShan Island. Hefei Mi and Wuhu Gong attempted to subdue to no avail. Many spiritual weapons were lost in the process. The disturbances have been intensifying over the past three months. The people suffer. Area sects are forced to seek aid from major sects. Hefei Mi Sect Mi Tayan” Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes and refolded the letter. Why can’t minor sects be more competent? He and Wei Wuxian were probably subduing yao of that caliber when they were thirteen. Then again, Gong and Mi have had decent reputations lately. Maybe he should not underestimate the yao. Jiang Cheng’s right thumb began idly spinning the violet ring on his middle finger. ChaoHu was large. Yao thriving on those resources could be powerful. Such situations would be best approached with caution. A pity he couldn’t simply ignore this. As the Mi sect was Yunmeng’s most loyal supporter, Yunmeng was obligated to help. Luckily he had at least one spiritual weapon to spare. He stood and swept out of the room.

[MuShan Island]

Dusk blanketed the island in the middle of Chaohu. As the long shadows of trees merged into deep blue darkness, a full moon rose to cast a crisp white light over the party of cultivators on a night hunt. “Lan Zhan! There’s something over here!” Wei Wuxian said as he threw out a talisman towards a large tree. They had been scouring the island since lunch time and Wei Wuxian was growing hungry. The talisman flew forward, glowed bright red, and expanded into a spiritual net, aiming to capture an unidentified target. Wei Wuxian followed his talisman attack by pulling out Chenqing, twirling the flute in his hand once to adjust positioning, and bringing it to his lips. As the high pitch trill of the black bamboo flute pierced the air, the red glow of the spiritual net flickered and flared. Shadows pulsated against the net and Wei Wuxian closed his eyes to focus on pushing his will onto the creature with his infamous demon flute. “Sizhui, flank right with your group. Jingyi, flank left with yours. Aim to subdue, not kill,” Lan Wangji instructed the group of juniors. He then summoned Wangji qin from his qiankun pouch and set about sending spiritual energy towards Wei Wuxian’s net. Sizhui and Jingyi had developed enough experience that they were leading small groups on their own in major night hunts. The two juniors directed their groups to take up positions based on the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper. Then, they all unsheathed their swords and sent them towards the being under the net. The spiritual blades danced around Wei Wuxian’s talisman. As they flew, the swords collided continuously. “PoZhangYin!” Wei Wuxian opened his eyes and exclaimed after a few collisions, realizing the clanging of the blades played out Gusu’s famous battle melody. “That’s a clever use of swords! I see someone has been teaching useful things like creativity and practical application of known skills!” “Wei-qianbei has a good ear!” Jingyi said as his sword hit Sizhui’s. “It was Sizhui’s idea. He remembered that awful blade of grass you used and thought we could do the same with our swords. We have been practicing!” “Jingyi, focus,” Lan Wangji chided, sending another wave of qin energy towards the target. “Wei Ying, do you know what it is?” “Some sort of old waterfowl yao. I can’t quite get a sense of it yet. Possibly a duck. Hey, Hanguang-jun, do you want to have roast duck for dinner?” “I prefer sampling local delicacies,” Lan Wangji responded, his voice steady as he sent another wave of energy towards the trapped yao. “You do have a point, Lan Zhan. I hear the Binjiong cakes here are good. We should give them a try.” “Mn. Focus so Wei Ying can eat later. It’s loquat season.” Wei Wuxian laughed, “Alright! Your treat, Hanguang-jun!” He turned his attention back to the trapped yao. As the nine cultivators poured their energies into the talisman and sword formation, the shadows emanating from the net began to subside. After a stick of incense worth of time, the last notes of PoZhangYin clanged from the swords and the talisman net’s bright glow softened to the dim light of embers. Anguished quacks could be heard. “Wei-qianbei! You’re right, it is a duck yao!” The noises continued and Wei Wuxian’s brows furrowed. Something did not feel right. The sound was not… Wei Wuxian cursed and bolted to the yao. He hurriedly started casting a silencing talisman while explaining, “This isn’t a duck yao. It’s a mandarin duck yao and she’s calling for her mate. He’s probab—” Something fast crashed into his back, knocking him forward. He fell, crushing the talisman net and releasing the yao inside. “Wei Ying!” Wei Wuxian heard Lan Zhan yell as energy waves from Wangji washed over him. Both yao being hit by the chord attacks reared up and expanded in size. The smell of rotting fish, stale lake water, and decaying wood filled Wei Wuxian’s nose. The two yao propelled themselves into the air, their attention diverted from Wei Wuxian to Lan Wangji. “Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian yelled as he scrambled up and brought Chenqing to his lips again. The strong melancholy notes from Chenqing pushed towards the yao, attempting to control them. “Sizhui, Jingyi, Bagua formation! Contain them. Vanquish if necessary,” Lan Wangji ordered, Wangji still in hand. He swept his fingers over the seven strings, sending out seven separate chord assassination attacks. The juniors took positions in accordance to Bagua with Lan Wangji at the Qian position and Sizhui at the Kun position wielding their respective qin. The other juniors’ swords wove around the two yao. Marsh, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, and Mountain anchored between Heaven and Earth. The Bagua formation shifted between its permutations, drawing upon these primal aspects of nature. The two yao, trapped in an ever-mutating array of sword and qin energies, struggled against the Lan sect attack at first. The female soon calmed. She flew around the male, calming him as well. They hovered in midair observing the attacks. Then, the two yao moved. The female allowed herself to get hit by an attack from Lan Haoye. The sword stabbed into her left side but seemed to do little damage. Instead, the sword became embedded in the yao and Haoye lost control of her sword. Then, the female dove for the youngest cultivator, Lan Pinshu, who stood halfway between Lan Sizhui and Lan Wangji. The male, similarly, took a hit from Lan Runchan and dove for Lan Jinglin. Haoye stood on the water position and Pinshu on fire. Lan Runchan was on marsh and Jinglin on mountain. Wei Wuxian cursed again, “Everyone be careful. They’re taking hits aligned with their nature to strengthen themselves and attacking the opposite element to counter us. The female is cunning.” Wei Wuxian gathered his qi and pushed off the ground towards Pinshu. Times like these he missed his old body. This one was still too slow and had too little reach. To accelerate himself further, he slapped a talisman onto his lower back. He was closer to the boy than the female yao. He had a chance to protect the boy if he could just move between them. The force of the magic boosted his speed, giving him just enough time to step between the yao and the boy. He tucked Chenqing into his qiankun sleeve and grabbed Haoye’s sword jutting from the yao’s side. The yao screamed, strong resentful energy burst forth from her body. Gusts of resentment whipped around Wei Wuxian and Lan Pinshu, lifting up small pieces of foliage and debris. Wei Wuxian stood firm, putting himself between the yao and Pinshu, using his body as a shield. He clung onto Haoye’s sword and sliced down, aiming to split the yao in half. The yao screeched for her mate. The male yao abandoned his trajectory, shifting his body and arced towards Wei Wuxian. In flight, his form flattened into a blade with his beak elongating and sharpening into a point. Wei Wuxian saw the male yao approach but stood his ground. Haoye’s sword cut through and broke free from the female yao as the male yao’s beak pierced Wei Wuxian’s left side, sliding between two of his ribs. Before Wei Wuxian could redirect Haoye’s sword to slice towards the yao embedded half way in his chest, a bright flash of purple accompanied by a loud pop grabbed the tail end of the yao and forcibly pulled it out of Wei Wuxian’s chest. Wei Wuxian bit down on a scream. There was no reason to scare Pinshu right now. Wei Wuxian heard his name through a daze as something zoomed towards him. He lifted up Haoye’s sword to deflect the projectile but instinct took over and he found himself catching the object at the last moment. Suibian, his old sword, rested in his hand. In his previous life, Suibian’s hilt fit his hand so perfectly it was as if the sword had formed knowing it would be his. Considering the inscription on its sheath, maybe it did know. In this new body, his hand was just a fraction too small to wield Suibian with that old familiarity and ease. Wei Wuxian tightened his grip on his old friend. “Wei Wuxian, pay attention!” The sound of Jiang Cheng yelling shook Wei Wuxian from his thoughts. The female yao charged at him with half her entrails spilling from her body. Wei Wuxian unsheathed Suibian, pulled spiritual energy from his newly forming golden core, and sliced towards the yao. After a few exchanges, Suibian decapitated the creature, its body falling to the ground with a splat. Wei Wuxian smiled, “Suibian, looks like we still got this.” He thought he felt the sword shiver in response. Looking around, he saw Jiang Cheng and the Lans had disposed of the male yao as well. Lan Wangji and Sizhui were putting their qin away; Zidian was receding into Jiang Cheng’s ring; and the juniors were all sheathing their swords. Wei Wuxian watched Lan Wangji give instructions to the five unseasoned juniors to cleanse the area of residual resentment. Everyone was safe and well. He let out a sigh of relief which turned into coughs. Blood dribbled from his mouth and he fell to his knees. As he toppled forward, his right hand shot out to support his weight as his left hand pressed against the suddenly searing wound on his chest. Footsteps and people yelling his name closed in around him. “Wei Ying!” “Wei-qianbei!” “Wei Wuxian!” “I’m ok. Just a small wound,” Wei Wuxian tried to wave everyone off. Lan Wangji knelt by Wei Wuxian and started examining his puncture wound. “I can’t believe you let that yao hit you. What were you thinking? What if it were trying to curse you?” Jiang Cheng walked up and started scolding. “I was fighting the female.” “You’re coughing up blood.” “Jiang Cheng, you try having something stab you in the lungs. I’m sure you’ll cough up some blood too,” Wei Wuxian retorted, making himself cough up more blood. “Jin Guangyao did a few months ago, remember?” “Wei Ying. Stop talking.” “Jiang-zongzhu, maybe it’s not the best idea for you to antagonize Wei-qianbei right now,” Sizhui spoke up, giving Lan Wangji nervous glances. Lan Wangji stymied the blood flow by hitting a few choice acupoints. He then disinfected Wei Wuxian’s wound with a stream of qi and sprinkled some wound sealing powder to help accelerate clotting. He wrapped his right arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist, “Can you stand?” Wei Wuxian gave a nod and let Lan Wangji help him up. He looked at Jiang Cheng awkwardly. “Um…” “I’m just here to retrieve my sword.” “Sandu?” “The one in your hand.” Wei Wuxian felt his grip on Suibian tighten. “Suibian has always been my sword.” “It unsheathes for me.” Wei Wuxian paused. What argument could he use? They both knew Suibian would unsheathe for Jiang Cheng because Jiang Cheng has Wei Wuxian’s golden core. Because it was what Wei Wuxian owed the Jiangs. Because Wei Wuxian did not believe Jiang Cheng would be able to survive without one. But that was not an argument he could make. His chest was hurting and he did not need to revisit Jiang Cheng’s reaction. “I’m taking your silence as agreement,” Jiang Cheng reached for the sword. Wei Wuxian pulled Suibian out of Jiang Cheng’s reach. “Suibian also unsheathes for me.” “Suibian was given to you as the head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang. You’re no longer in the sect. You defected. I should have taken Suibian with me then,” Jiang Cheng drew himself to his full height and looked down his nose at Wei Wuxian. “Suibian is sentient. It knows Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji spoke up, glaring down at Jiang Cheng. “Suibian is made from the trees of Yunmeng, its blade quenched with our waters. It belongs in Yunmeng. And it knows me as well.” “Suibian has always been Wei Wuxian’s sword. You did not take it when Wei Ying moved to the Burial Mounds. It is not yours to take right now.” “Wei Wuxian would not even have it had I not brought it as a backup to Sandu today.” “Jiang Cheng, why are you here anyway? And why bring Suibian?” Wei Wuxian asked. “Mi Tayan wrote Yunmeng seeking help. Apparently the Gong sect and Mi sect could not handle these two on their own. Suibian served as a spare since the yao had been taking spiritual weapons,” Jiang Cheng answered frankly. He then looked Wei Wuxian up and down. Wei Wuxian shrunk into Lan Wangji, hearing Jiang Cheng’s unspoken words: Your new body is weak. You don’t have a golden core anyway. You can’t use it for long. “A few days ago, I felt the beginning of a golden core coalescing.” Jiang Cheng raised an eyebrow. “Why are you telling me this? Why would I care?” “I will have the strength to wield Suibian again. Suibian is mine.” “You can take it when you can and are willing to take the golden core inside me back,” Jiang Cheng spat. His ring crackled as Zidian sent forth a warning shock. “You know I would never do that.” “Then give me back my sect’s sword.” Wei Wuxian pushed Lan Wangji away and placed his right hand on Suibian’s hilt. “I don’t want to fight you Jiang Cheng but I’m not someone you can bully.” Zidian crackled. “Suibian belongs to Yunmeng. I will not let Lan-er or any other self-righteous, headband wearing, cultivator take what belongs to my sect. Yunmeng will not back down.” Sizhui interjected, “Wait. Fighting now is unproductive. Jiang-zongzhu, Wei-qianbei, is there no other resolution? If Suibian is sentient, can we not ask it to choose?” “Yeah! Even if Jiang-zongzhu beats Wei-qianbei, it wouldn’t reflect well on Yunmeng. I didn’t think Yunmeng would be the type to pick on someone who was just injured and without a fully formed core,” Jingyi added. Wei Wuxian scoffed, “You’re not holding back, are you, Jingyi?” “Sorry Wei-qianbei. Fighting Jiang-zongzhu right now would be so unfair to you.” “Ask it to choose?” Jiang Cheng scoffed at Sizhui. “Suibian isn’t some spirit you can just ask with WenLing who it is, how it died, what it wants. It’s a sword that has bonded with a person.” Jingyi laughed, “Well, then we just have to show if it’s bonded more to the soul or the golden core.” “And how do you propose to do this? I’ve never heard of such an assessment.” “Jiang-zongzhu, we just need to be a bit creative. Would you mind performing some initial tests with us?” Sizhui asked. “I’m not here to play games.” “We are serious, right, Sizhui? We are simply trying to apply our new-found creativity and practical application of known skills!” Jingyi beamed. Sizhui did not roll his eyes at his smug friend. “Jiang-zongshu, has Jin Ling ever spoken with you about the events that transpired at Yi City involving Xue Yang, Song Lan-daozhang, and Xiao Xingchen-daozhang? “Some.” “Are you aware that Xue Yang had Shuanghua at the time? And Hanguang-jun was able to take it from him?” “Jin Ling did mention something like that.” “Shuanghua was aware that Xue Yang did not align with Xiao Xingchen-daozhang’s world view and thus abandoned Xue Yang. I believe if you and Wei-qianbei are both able to wield Suiban then it becomes a matter of seeing if one of you can override the other’s will.” Jiang Cheng pursed his lips into a line. Sizhui added, “Jiang-zongzhu, you have the advantage here. Considering Wei-qianbei’s lower cultivation, he would only be able to override your will if Suibian is truly loyal to him. You have very little to lose.” “Fine,” Jiang Cheng scowled. “Let’s get this over with.” Sizhui then turned to Wei Wuxian, “Wei-qianbei, would you mind sending Suibian out to encircle that tree, approaching from the left, and returning it to its sheath?” Wei Wuxian performed the task. “Wei-qianbei, hand Suibian to Jiang-zongzhu,” Jingyi ordered. “Jiang-zongzhu please do the same but approach from the right.” Jiang Cheng performed the task with a bored expression. “Jiang-zongzhu, please hand Suibian back to Wei-qianbei. Now, Wei-qianbei will perform the same task as he did earlier. You goal, Jiang-zongzhu is to get Suibian to circle the tree from the other direction.” Wei Wuxian stared at the sword that was too big for his hand. Are you really mine? Or have you bonded with Jiang Cheng in the last few months? He closed his eyes, sighed, and sent Suibian flying. Suibian flew true and returned to Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng scowled, “Is that it? This proves nothing.” “There is at least one more step,” Sizhui answered respectfully. “Wei-qianbei, give Suibian to Jiang-zongzhu. Your turn to try to make Suibian fly the other direction!” Jingyi said, shaking with excitement. “Jiang-zongzhu, if Wei-qianbei is able to divert Suibian, then it is likely bonded with him more than with you. If not, then we will need to find a different way to assess the ownership of the sword.” Wei Wuxian nodded and whispered to the sword, “Suibian, you sealed for me for thirteen years. I cannot ask for more. But maybe do me a favor this one time.” He then handed it over to Jiang Cheng. Sizhui stared Jiang Cheng in the eye. “You may proceed.” Suibian flew out from Jiang Cheng towards the pre-appointed tree. It started veering right but wobbled. Jiang Cheng’s brow furrowed, driving it back on course. Wei Wuxian bit his lip, his eyes narrowing slightly, shoving his focus into the sword. The distance between where they stood and the tree was only ten zhang or so. He didn’t have much time. He could feel Jiang Cheng urging the sword to the right. Wei Wuxian shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, mentally reaching for Suibian. Suibian, I miss you. Please. Wei Wuxian could feel Jiang Cheng’s connection to the sword snap as Suibian swerved in mid-air, circled the tree from the left, and flew into Wei Wuxian’s grip. Jiang Cheng let out a startled grunt. Wei Wuxian almost laughed at the familiar sound. It reminded him of childhood in Yunmeng, of waking up to that sound and a thud as Jiang Cheng rolled off his bed. A grin spread across Wei Wuxian’s face. “Incredible! Suibian really is sentient,” Pinshu sighed in admiration. “I thought only cultivators who had bonded for a lifetime with their swords had that sort of loyalty!” “Suibian has always been loyal to Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji explained. “Its inscription is indicative of its devotion. Sizhui, Jingyi, good work." The two juniors stood up straighter and grinned at each other under Lan Wangji's praise. Jiang Cheng handed Suibian's sheath to Wei Wuxian, “Yours. Don’t be too smug. I don’t want it if it doesn’t belong to Yunmeng. And stop leaving it places.” “Jiang Cheng…” “What?” “Thank you.” “Whatever. It’s not like it’s that good a sword anyway,” Jiang Cheng said and stalked off into the darkness to look for the other members of his sect. Wei Wuxian clung onto Suibian, “Welcome back. I’ve missed you.” He suddenly lifted up Suibian and stared at the sword in awe. “Wei Ying?” “Lan Zhan, is my hand suddenly bigger?” Wei Wuxian asked, holding up a hand that once belonged to a man named Mo Xuanyu. Lan Zhan held up his hand as well. Wei Wuxian’s hand was smaller by the same familiar margin. “No. Why does Wei Ying ask?” Wei Wuxian gripped Suibian by the hilt and held out his fist out. “My hand was a bit too small earlier tonight. And now it’s perfect for my hand again.” “Mn. Suibian is a good sword.” “Suibian really is a good sword,” Wei Wuxian echoed. “Hey, do you think you can treat your poor wounded husband to some roast mandarin duck and Binjiong cakes now?” “Loquats as well. My treat,” Lan Wangji nodded once with a hint of a smile.

Author’s notes:

1) For SHL/WOH fans, I was working on this request and trying to find a place between yunmeng and gusu. I ended up seeing Hefei, Chaohu, and Mushan Island. As I was zooming out, I noticed Wuhu was a town pretty close by… so I decided to shove a reference to Gong Jun and his Wuhu singing into my story as an easter egg. I’m not sorry.

2) Poetry references: A - The name of the form JC asks the disciple to practice is 泥中采藕 in chinese. I pulled it from this poem: 元 · 丁鹤年水上摘莲青的的，泥中采藕白纤纤。却笑同根不同味，莲心清苦藕芽甜。

B - This is completely me being derp. Hefei is a location where the name fertile (in terms of soil)/fat is part of the name. I chose the sect to have a last name related to grains. And then I looked up that character in poetry to name the sect leader: 黄庭坚 (宋）嚼冰进糜餐，冲雪踏层巘

C - Since CR’s name is from a Jia Dao poem, I chose to pull all the names of the OC juniors from Jia Dao Poems as well: Pinshu is from: 《让纠曹上乐使君》瓶汲南溪水，书来北岳僧。

Haoye is per: 《上谷旅夜》月到寒窗空皓晶，风翻落叶更飕飗

Jinglin and Runchan I took inspiration from: 《升道精舍南台对月寄姚合》月向南台见，秋霖洗涤余。出逢危叶落，静看众峰疏。冷露常时有，禅窗此夜虚。相思聊怅望，润气遍衣初。

3) Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper is the big dipper. It’s common in wuxia as a formation. Same goes for Bagua. Both are daoist but so is Xianxia type cultivation. I know the Lans are Buddhist in origin but they really aren’t that way religion-wise.

4) Mandarin ducks are yuanyang and a term/symbol of a loving couple and monogamous faithfulness.

5) 滨炯一品玉带糕 are binjiong yiping (first ranked) jade-belted cakes. They’re a famous pastry/cake in the area. Idk if it’s period accurate but mdzs isn’t period accurate so i’m using it. 姥山枇杷 (mushan loquats) are supposed to be large, sweet, thin skinned with lots of flesh and super juicy. It was a good thing to include since this story is so heavily wangxian. And i don’t know if people eat mandarin ducks, but I would want to if i were wwx after that night hunt.

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irandomblogfulb · 3 years

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FATE: What happens when you get a bunch of middle aged white guys to adapt a cartoon for girls

Well, I just went through 6 hours of fate and I have a lot of opinions on it. Yeah, this is going to be long (slightly under 3k words) so putting it under read more and obvious spoilers.

PSA before delving right in:

1) Yes, I will be comparing to the original. Any comparisons are not through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. There are parts here and there that I genuinely think were done better in the cartoon on a writing standpoint.

2) This is purely my opinion and overall negative. Don't like it? Don't read. I'm all up for discussion but I don't want another person crying to me about how I “ruined” their experience of the show.

3) If you like Fate then good for you. This isn’t me bashing people who like it.

I've spit it up into sub sections just for my own convince.

1. The problem with the 'I'm not like other girls' trope

This pertains to the entire Bloom-Sky-Stella love triangle. I wasn't as pressed about it compared to other winxers (and I loved Stella's and Brandon's relationship on my rewatch). In fact, I was okay with it. But then I sat down and watched the show and there's a lot of underlying problems with the love triangle. Particularly pitting Bloom and Stella against each other for Sky's affection.

Now this part of the love triangle I already didn't like. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I dropped the OG Winx after season 5 but the Winx while they did have their conflicts and arguments, never fought over a boy. I really appreciated that from the cartoon so seeing that live action would fall into that trap – I was mildly annoyed at that. Then it hit me. It's Bloom and Stella.

The seemingly ordinary girl vs the pristine princess of Solaria. If the title didn't give it away, you should get the point by now. Others have already called it by now but the "I'm not like other girl's" trope in itself, while seemingly feminist is actually misogynist. Saying the more masculine type of girl is better than the feminine is inherently misogynist. Stella, the prime princess, girly and feminine, is villainized by the love triangle. Sky's and Stella's relationship is toxic and Stella's overt co-dependence and jealousy are already big fat red signs - but Sky's and Bloom's relationship is built on how she's "different". Bloom isn't like Stella, she's "real".

2. Am I supposed to like Riven?

As the title puts it, wtf am I supposed to feel about Riven. Is he supposed to be a good guy? Do I root for him? Is he morally ambiguous? Because holy shit compared to OG!Riven, this guy is diabolical and much much worse! OG!Riven is an asshole and he teams up with the trix but his arc was very simple and easy to understand. He joins the bad guys, distances himself from the good guys, the trix betray his ass, he self-reflects in the dungeon - escapes and redeems himself. Net!Riven is so bad to the point where you can't redeem him and the writers don't even try. Freddie Thorp is good in his role. (however, he definitely doesn't pass for a 17-year-old. He's 26 and it shows) and he actually makes the cringe dialogue work. But he's way too diabolical and downright predatory. The scene where he forces Dane to gulp down his spiked drink - it’s worse seeing it than reading it. That grossed me out more than the gore.

What makes it worse, nobody properly calls him out. Beatrix kinda does on his homophobia – “Homophobic bashing by GIF” - and Sky does chastise him, but they still tolerate him. It is kinda funny in a way Sky has a whole ass arc about how he's enabling Stella's problematic behaviour by still dating her after she blinded her friend but doesn't realize he's doing the same for Riven.

The only person that really puts her foot down with Riven is Terra and nobody takes her seriously about anything she says.

Everyone is very laissez-faire around him and that's not how you respond to your friend being problematic. (Hey, kinda like the other girls sans Aisha are with Bloom!) Everyone surrounding Riven is so disgusting and the notion of him supposedly being a good guy is very hard to buy into. His whole relationship with Dane has a section of it’s own because there’s just a lot to unpack.

3. Stella I am so sorry

I'm also in the majority hating how they've tarnished Stella. Basically, they turned her into the stereotypical rich bully with mommy issues.

I get that Stella has an abusive mom but that’s no excuse to be a total bitch to her roommates. And no, her roommates shouldn't accept her back with open arms. And she doesn't even redeem herself - the girls just accept her back after her mom pulls her from Alfea.

And this is also another issue with the writing were the characters suddenly just change their opinions on a whim. Suddenly Stella likes the winx, suddenly Terra misses Stella even though having that girl literally gives her anxiety. Suddenly Aisha's on Bloom's side in the end.

This isn't me simping for the cartoon out of nostalgia. I was mostly okay with the idea of Stella and Sky hooking up. But Looking at it from a creative standpoint - looking at the source material, and the many paths you can take this character, the best thing Brian Young and co. can think of for her was turning her into the stereotypical rich bully that we've seen time and time again? No deconstruction no meta take, it's played out exactly how you’d expect it.

Again, this isn't me simping for the show. Purely from a creative standpoint Stella was such a major let down. There's so much to the character and Brian Young took the easiest, saturated path.

4. That one scene with Bloom's parents

You know the one. Mike unhinges Bloom's bedroom doors and Vanessa cusses out and insults her child like a petty teen bully. Forgetting how utterly cringey that scene was, you can't have her mom go batshit insane on her child, then act like she's this loving parent that cares so deeply about her daughter. Screw that! Vanessa deserved those 3rd degree burns! She invaded her daughter's privacy. Bloom didn't even do anything wrong!

I can't buy into this narrative of Vanessa and Mike being loving parents when they do something like that. Seriously who thought that was okay?

5. Pity Parties for everyone.

I already discussed this in Stella’s section but I don’t like the “it’s okay for me be a shitty person because my life sucks :)” narrative Fate tries to pull. They did it with Stella, Bloom, Riven.

What I liked about the first season of Winx Club is Bloom’s arc and her character as a whole. Because while she went through shit, from the Trix, to finding out she was adopted, her existential crisis, not feeling like she belonged, losing the dragon flame, she went through a lot. She didn’t throw a pity party. She didn’t whine, bitch and complain. She allowed herself to feel upset, took it as it is and tried to make lemonade out of lemons. And I respect that.

Net!Bloom is agrevating. She does some dumb, reckless stuff but it’s excused because she’s the protagonist? She let the war criminal out, the school gets taken over by the bad guys because of Bloom. Faragonda fucking dies because she let the war criminal out! The burned ones attacked the school because she let the war criminal out!!! But no, Aisha’s villainized for calling Bloom out because Bloom’s existential crisis is more important then anything else.

Getting to Sky, he isn’t as bad as the others. He doesn’t become a shitty person because of his problems. (Though lowkey flirting with Bloom while he hooks up with Stella is uh not good.) But he does come across incredibly whiny. Because of the cringey dialogue and the unnecessary swearing I can’t take his speech on opening up to Bloom seriously. I laughed throughout the whole thing and Bloom leaving his unconscious body there was the icing on the cake.

One of the few characters that deserved a pity party is Terra. She’s very much like OG!Bloom in a way. She is bullied by Dane and Riven, has body insecurities, anxiety, nobody listens to her and at most only tolerates her. Despite all the crap that is thrown her way she still reminds humble, kind, and respectful. And she is one of the few characters that deserves more support than what she got out of the season.

5. Bloom, Aisha, Tokenism and their awful relationship

I’m going to be upfront, their relationship sucks. The core of their dynamic is what Aisha can do for Bloom. It’s very one-sided. Bloom only goes to Aisha to help solve her problems, which Aisha gladly does – but when Aisha disagrees with Bloom or says something Bloom doesn’t like, Bloom suddenly goes off and Aisha’s made to be the bad guy. Even though she’s right? And Aisha has her own problems as well, shown to also struggle with her powers. But nope, that’s pushed to the back burner because Bloom needs help.

I am all for creative freedom. I can stomach Stella x actual Sky. I can stomach turning Stella into a rich mean girl. I can stomach the dark academia aesthetic but what Brian Young and co. did to Aisha is just plain racist. Screw the “it’s an adaptation” excuse. Turning this character who had a rich storyline and was a princess into a white girl’s magical negro who fixes all her problems is racist and by definition tokenism. And by whitewashing the other two characters of color, making Aisha the only poc in the group – that’s the worst thing you can do to her.

And frankly we need more black princesses on screen.

6. Dane and the homophobia of the show

Towards the show’s climax it’s revealed Dane is helping Beatrix because she accepts he’s “different”. Not only does this go back to my pity party rant but like bruh,

1) Beatrix never really did anything for Dane? She hung out and smoked with him a bit, but that’s all. You’re telling me Terra wouldn’t accept Dane? Beatrix never helped him and he never really opened up to her about his struggles.

2) Nobody else, not even background characters bully or harass Dane for being “different”. It’s only Riven, the guy he’s crushing on. The whole falling in love with the bad boy/abuser trope is bad in a hetero relationship and that still stands for a gay one. And I know damn well if Dane was a woman half of the shit Riven did to Dane wouldn’t slide.

It makes no sense for Dane to side with the bad guys when Riven’s the one bullying him and Beatrix is complacent in the bullying. Oh, and having your second black* character who’s also lgbt+/potentially questioning be a villain? Not good.

I’m all for gay and poly rep, but not like this. If Stella and Sky’s toxic relationship is going to be called out for what it is, why not Dane’s?

*Idk if Theo Graham is light-skinned black or biracial so I’ll just refer to him as black.

7. The plot

It’s very predictable. Personally, wasn’t fond of the ‘twist of a twist of a twist’ style of writing. The story tries to be nuanced and deep but it’s not. Common sense is treated like a big revelation. Not trusting the war criminal you barely know isn’t as big of a take that the writers try to make it out to be.

8. Everything else

· Beatrix is fine. No Icy but did like the gothic bookworm aesthetic.

· Sam is just there to be Musa’s love interest and provide some dumb drama between Musa and Terra. I thought they’d go the Edward/Bella root – Musa’s drawn to Sam because she can’t sense his emotions for some reason. Nope, they just get together for the obligatory make out sessions. Don’t care much for the relationship or the character.

· Since the powers are all elemental shouldn’t there be classes purely for an elemental? Classes purely for fire fairies, etc?

· Musa’s powers are confusing. If she has no control over them and they are “always on”, shouldn’t her eyes constantly be glowing purple? Very wishy washy. Sometimes they overwhelm her and other times she has complete control. Her character is just there for plot stuff.

· Terra is one of the better characters but can’t enjoy her knowing about the whitewashing. Why can’t we have a plus sized character just exist and not have body issues?

· Sky doesn’t feel like a prince. Characters treat him like his dad is a war hero and not the King of Eraklyon. There was a point where I thought I misheard and thought his dad was just a war hero and not a king.

· Why try to justify Rosalind’s war crime if she’s going to be the big bad anyways?

· The way the characters treat death/act around death is very weird. Musa and Terra see a pile of dead bodies and they’re unreasonable calm. Especially Bloom an “ordinary teenage girl from earth”, reacts very nonchalant when death and war crimes are brought up. Doesn’t help the show tries to push this “they’re kids fighting a war” narrative.

· Can’t buy into the girls’ friendship. The Aisha/Bloom dynamic is centred on what Aisha can do for Bloom. Bloom only cares about herself and only goes to her friends to help with her problems. Most of Musa’s and Terra’s interaction centre around Sam. Stella didn’t care for the girls until her mom showed up and pulled a 180. The girls were quick to turn on Aisha when she sided with the adults.

· I have no problem with technology existing but why do they have Instagram, Tiktok and Tumblr? The otherworld is a completely separated from Earth, why do they have the same technology?

9. Brian Young, what do you mean by mature?

I grew up on the 4kids dub before transitioning to the Nick dub for season 4 and 5 then dropping the cartoon for good. So naturally on my rewatch of the cartoon I decided to go watch the RAI dub since I heard it’s more accurate and 4Kids are infamous for their horrid localisations straying too much to the source material. Upon finishing season 1 and currently watching season 2, a few things took me by surprise. For one, the cartoon is surprisingly dark. The schools are at war with the Trix and their army of Darkness, Sky almost dies in Season 2, Riven almost dies and the Trix thinks he suicided, it’s heavily implied in Season 2 Darkar murdered some of the pixies, the paedophilic undertones of Bloom and Avalon’s relationship, the list goes on.

When the interview with Brian Young came out, he said Fate would be a mature take on the cartoon. And I wondered, what did he meant by mature? Was he going to delve deeper into the darker aspects of the show, or did he mean he was going to have the girls swear and have sex? Watching Fate, I found my answer.

If you take out the gore, swearing, drug and alcohol usage from the live action, the maturity is on par with the RAI dub. The difference is in the presentation. This is what sucks about the mentality surrounding live action remakes. Because the OG!Winx was colourful with glittery transformations , was super girly and overall had a positive upbeat tone (not forgetting 2D animated) - it can’t be taken seriously. You have to strip all that, the colour, the kindness, the femininity in order to be deemed mature.

10. Wrapping up

I went into Fate expecting the worst and honestly, it wasn’t that bad. There were things I liked about it. The show looks pretty, and I did like what they were trying to do with Sky’s arc. The actors did what they could with the material. Freddie Thorp made the cringe dialogue work and Abigail Cowen proves she can carry a show as the lead.

Fate is your generic, YA, dark academia show. It follows all the tropes of the YA genre to a T. If that’s your niche, then you’ll love Fate and I’m not bashing anyone who liked it.

For me, as a creative, it doesn’t capitalise on the strengths of the source material. I’m not asking for Winx Club again, as I’ve reiterated, I’m all for creative freedom. But Brian Young, Iginio Straffi, whoever worked on this – they could’ve created something new, innovative, something that stood out from the hordes of other YA shows. They had good material in their hands! But what I got - I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen it done better. That’s a major disappointment.

As a winx club fan, don’t bother watching this. It’s a very diluted version of the Winx. In trying to capture the interest of the adult fans who grew up with the franchise – Iginio showed how out of touch he is if he thinks this is what they wanted.

#fate the winx saga #netwinx #back on my winx club bs #long post #this took me like 4 days to write

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chaotic-lydia · 4 years

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Home as a motif for Lydia in Beetlejuice

Because Sapien is awake in the unholy hours and has decided to unburden her knowledge on all of you people

So this is mainly coming off of the back of listening to the Beetlejuice soundtrack again and fawning over the Dead Mom lyrics because DAMN

So the first mention of home is in the first introduction to the Deetz family beyond Prologue: Invisible and refers more explicitly to the old house. “Dead Mom loved that house!”/“My whole life is in that house!” Both lines are said by Lydia during her bid to try and provoke Charles into seeing her and acknowledging both her own and his own grief. What I find interesting is the use of the personal pronoun “my” over “our”. Along with her later expressions of misplaced hatred towards her father, this creates an image of Charles’ emotional incapability towards approaching grief that paints him out of the picture of the life before Emily died in Lydia’s mind. Because he cannot cope with the painful memories attached to that house, or any external stimuli that remind him of Emily (probably a contributing factor to why he begins to shun Lydia from his life — she’s the spit of Emily in character).

Okay, so now we’ve broached the topic of first introduction, we can get into the good stuff!! Dead Mom!! So, we have all of Lydia’s angsty hours going on during this song, but after the belts the song softens. She claims “You’re my home, my destination” in relation to her deceased mother. “Home”, in this instance, refers to the abstract concept of where/with whom you feel most safe, most protected, most comfortable. This is how home is perceived in every instance of its mention throughout the play. For Lydia? Home is Emily. The only person who really understands her and accepts her exactly as she is. And Emily is dead. She has no home, adrift in the “abyss” before she ever reaches the Netherworld. Additionally, there’s a lovely bit of foreshadowing here with “my destination”, subtly nodding towards Lydia’s impromptu vacation in the Netherworld in pursuit of her dead mom.

So, without doing a lot of research into the script of Beetlejuice, the next reference of the motif I could find was the song Home. Which, of course, is riddled with the word. This is the song that, in my humble opinion, shows Lydia’s character development in the most clear and concise manner.

The first time she mentions the word: “Back at home you don’t exist, so here I am in the abyss”. This is the first and only I think time that she refers to the house in Winter River as home (rather than referring to a person, as she usually does). This may just be a choice for lyrical flow, but I find it interesting, as it emphasises that Emily is NOT there and so therefore home is not home.

We get some nice metaphors for depression sprinkled within the already gut wrenching performance. And the parallels between “I’m prob’ly talking to myself here” and “Tired of talking to myself here” are amazing. She’s so weary of the world and it’s cruelty, so so tired.

“I don’t know which way’s home”; “Show me the way back home”; “Is there a way back home?” These lines come in chronological order, and their development is particularly interesting to me. The first iteration has a double meaning: firstly, the more explicit plea of ‘I’m lost’, both in terms of direction and without Emily; secondly, that she can’t find her mom, and therefore doesn’t know the way back into her arms. She doesn’t know which way’s home. But then the wording changes. “Show me the way back home”, to me, sounds like an open cry for help although she’s still talking to Emily in particular she’s not fussy. Home is no longer pertaining to Dead Mom, but is instead a reference to the human world and the life she left behind (indicated by the line “No light above and there’s no hope below”).

So I’m moving “Is there a way back home?” down here because I feel like this could be lengthy. This has so many interpretations, I love it! So, firstly, let’s start with the surface connotations. The first and foremost implication being her questioning whether or not actually leaving the Netherworld is a possible scenario for her and her father (especially since Juno is after both of them). That’s on the surface. Now, deeper, you’ve got this idea that Lydia has yet to find Emily in the deep dark pit of the Netherworld. Is she even there? Would she ever find her? Is there a way back to the woman she considers home? Who knows? There’s a further idea about a happy family that I’d like to touch on. This idea of home could include Charles. A happier, more open Charles who wasn’t so insecure (because I have a gut feeling Lydia’s actually a daddy’s girl) and a time when Mom was alive and they were all happier. That memory of having an unbroken family is also home, supported by the next reference of “There’s no home without you in it”.

Now we have the bit where Charles and Lydia make up before going back into song.

“I’m gonna go back home / Adam, Barbara, Delia, and Dad / It’s messy but they’re all that I have” Lydia finds her homes in people rather than places, and in this case she’s accepting that Emily cannot be her home anymore though she promises not to forget her and that she has to move on to make more meaningful relationships with others who care about her. “It’s messy but they’re all that I have” will always be one of the most beautiful lines in the entire musical, because it demonstrates how far she’s come. Yes, they’ll have to work on it. Yes, it will be tough. But they’re there for her no matter how disjointed and how difficult it is for them to communicate. She has found herself a new home.

Now! Onto the finale!! Jump in Line!! The very very last line of the entire musical is “I’m hoooommmeeee” from Lydia. Now, thank you to @barbara-lazuli for bringing this to my attention but there is a parallel I hadn’t noticed in this line. The very first lone of the entire musical is the ensemble: “Daylight come and me wanna go....” The line cuts off before home. Flash forward to the very last line of the musical. The ensemble sings the same line, only it ends with Lydia singing the “I’m home” part. At the start she was incomplete, ill at ease with grief and depression, adrift in an ocean far from home; however, with help, support, patience, and love, Lydia has found a new place, a new family to call home.

In conclusion, Sapien has spent 2 hours writing this and is tired as anything. Come back next time for Sapien overanalysing the motif of invisibility and how it creates a wonderful parallel for Beetlejuice and Lydia. Please enjoy. :)

#sapien rambles #lydia deetz #dead mom #home #beetlejuice #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice broadway #beetlejuice the broadway musical

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luckystarchild · 4 years

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INUYASHA Volume 01, Scroll 01: “The Accursed Youth”

Welcome to Lucky’s INUYASHA recap—a recap of the Inuyasha manga by me, Lucky, an anime fan who has somehow never read it or seen the anime before.

Over the course of these posts, I’ll be recapping and reacting to the events of a chapter (or series of chapters) of the Inuyasha manga. I’ll be using the official VIZ manga volumes as my source material. References to Not Quite Kagome (“NQKagome”) pertain to my ongoing fanfiction series, Lucky Child.

And without further ado... chapter 01 of Inuyasha (or volume 01, “Scroll 1,” as VIZ titles the manga chapters.)

We begin in media res; Inuyasha has stolen the Jewel of Four Souls (the “Shikon Jewel”) and is rampaging through a village. He wants to use the jewel to become “a true demon.” Kikyo, mortally wounded, shoots him with an arrow and pins him to a tree. Her body is burnt along with the jewel by her young sister, Kaede.

I don’t generally like prologues that employ flashbacks in writing, as they sometimes seem like a way to shoehorn in backstory that either isn’t necessary OR backstory that could be imparted through the reader more organically. (They’re all-too-often lazy, basically.) But this is a manga, so maybe it’s not so bad. Not sure how I feel TBH.

Was sort of surprised we learned what Inuyasha’s goal concerning the jewel is so soon; thought maybe that would get dragged out a bit longer, though IDK why I got that impression exactly. I’ve seen a few random eps of the anime and know he isn’t fond of his own half-demon status. Perhaps I feel like we should’ve earned this revelation during the narrative and on Inuyasha’s terms, rather than have it handed to us right off the bat by a faceless narrator. But that’s me being overly critical, perhaps.

Flash forward to 1997. The day before Kagome’s 15th birthday. Her grandfather tries to tell her a legend about the Shikon Jewel, but she shrugs it off.

Kagome’s family lives inside a big temple, and everything has a legend attached to it (including the massive 500-year-old Go-Shinboku God Tree), but Kagome never pays attention to them. Later, her brother loses their cat in the mini-shrine, specifically in the well house (which a sign declares the home of the Bone-Eater’s Well). Kagome bravely ventures inside to search for the cat.

Right off the bat, we get the impression that Kagome is a pretty average teenage girl—a bit of an airhead with a sharp sense of humor who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty or shy away from a dark and spooky well house. Nice bit of characterization in just a few panels. Well done, author-san.

NQKagome Bonus: She’d probably pay more attention to all the legends her grandfather tells, which could give her an edge in the Feudal Era.

Kagome hears odd noises coming from the covered well; the cover pops off the well and a horrible, Noh-mask-faced women with a skeletal snake body to leap out and drag Kagome into the darkness.

Her body regenerates, turning into a... centipede body. Not a snake. D’oh. Frightened as they fall, Kagome emits a light from her hands, breaking off the woman’s arm and sending her careening away into the dark as she cries something cryptic about the Jewel of Four Souls.

Soon Kagome stops falling and finds herself at the bottom of the well, but upon emerging, she’s lost in an unfamiliar forest.

I gotta say that as far as first-chapters go, this one is pretty good! We immediately know who Kagome is, where she’s from, what she’s like as a person, and this introduction to the supernatural is spooky and interesting. The stakes are high and the action is fast-paced, without an overload of exposition.

Kagome spots the God-Tree and hurries toward it, noting that she always used it to find her way home in the past, but she does not find her familiar home at its base. Instead she finds Inuyasha pinned to the God-Tree.

We’re treated to this gorgeous two-panel spread:

She notes that the boy pinned to the tree has inhuman ears before some villagers find her in “Inuyasha’s forbidden forest” and bring her to Kaede, the younger sister of Kikyo (who is much older than she appeared in the earlier flashback). Kagome realizes she is in the Sengoku Period (1467 to 1615 CE). The villagers theorize that she’s a spy, a kitsune, and similar before Kaede realizes that Kagome looks identical to the deceased Kikyo.

Kaede tells Kagome briefly who Kikyo was before the centipede woman attacks the village.

That bit where Kaede tells Kagome about Kikyo is where I would’ve placed the flashback from the start of the chapter, FYI. Would’ve given the earlier parts of the chapter more mystery to withhold some information from the reader.

Also we have TOO MANY K-NAMES. Already three of the four named characters start with K, and two even start with the “ka” sound in Japanese. We have this problem with YYH and I foresee it being a problem as I type these names a ton, LMAO 🤣

So... Kagome realizing what time period she’s been magically dropped into after approximately seven seconds seems… IDK, kind of handy? Easy? The only info she has to go on are the vague references to “battles” a few villagers shout at her, and maybe the way they’re dressed. She supposedly doesn’t pay attention to old legends, so it doesn’t seem plausible that she’d pay enough attention in history class to discern what period she’s in now based on the cut of a kimono.

(Disclaimer: I’m American and the American education system is notoriously horrible at teaching the subjects of history and science with any accuracy, so I might be projecting my experience onto hers to some degree. Maybe Japan is better about this stuff. IDK, but thought I’d mention it.)

ALSO, Kagome jumps to the possibility of time travel really fast. I would jump to “this is a dream” or “I have fallen into a historical reenactment amusement park in which no one will break character” (a special hell of its own) first. Again, though, this chapter is moving quickly to draw in readers, so I can see why they didn’t give her confusion more screen-time. Especially with serialized manga, you have a handful of chapters (if that) to grab readers, so it’s gotta move fast as a matter of necessity.

I appreciate that some of the villagers mentioned “kitsune” in this section (and not just because it reminds me of all the reasons Yu Yu Hakusho is so easy to cross over with this manga). It shows that the supernatural is something the locals consider on a daily basis, which helps with worldbuilding.

Also, I wasn’t expecting the nipples on the centipede woman??? In her first panels, her breasts were covered up a bit, but now we’ve got detailed nipples. I’m guessing the scant few episodes of the series I watched were censored quite a bit. I’m wondering if there’s going to be more fanservice in this series than I expected, especially after reading that the series’ author, Rumiko Takahashi, advised the anime team to avoid using Kagome for any pantie-shots…

The centipede claims Kagome has the Shikon Jewel, and Kagome flees the village (toward “that light” in the east, which Kaede notes she shouldn’t be able to see) as the centipede woman gives chase. Elsewhere, Inuyasha wakes, stating he can smell the scent of the woman who killed him.

So I know a few things about this series already thanks to the research I did for Lucky Child, and chief among these things is that Kagome is Kikyo’s reincarnation. We can already see this tidbit coming through in obvious ways: Kagome’s resemblance to Kikyo, the Jewel being connected to her somehow, etc. Kagome seeing that light is probably a power she got from Kikyo, too.

It’s interesting that these connections are as physical as her having the same scent as Kikyo, though; scent is informed quite a bit by genetics. Obviously we’re dealing with magic and not science in this story, so I’m not looking for infallible logic when it comes to this reincarnation plot device… but it’s almost like the magic here overrides things like genetics and the extreme differences in what Kagome and Kikyo must’ve eaten in their respective times when determining their scent and appearance. The soul is more important than the body, etc. Wondering how consistent that will remain over the course of this admittedly massive story.

And that’s it for chapter 1. This was super fun! I’m guessing I’ll have more to say once we get past the set-up and are introduced to more characters, but overall I think this was a really strong start to this feudal fairy tale.

If you enjoyed this recap, feel free to buy me a Ko-Fi☕, and subscribe to the tag “lucky’s inuyasha recap” to see more!

NEXT CHAPTER

#lucky's inuyasha recap #inuyasha recap #inuyasha manga recap #inuyasha manga #inuyasha anime #inuyasha #kagome #higurashi kagome #kagome higurashi #kaede #kikyo #luckychildfanfic

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nuttyrabbit · 4 years

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Oliver the Barn Owl Bio

So a few weeks ago I made a post where I said I’d start focusing on my OCs more and that, combined with the recent redesign I got for Oliver, finally prompted me into writing something that’s been long, long overdue: an actual bio for the boy.

Before I get into it, I have to give a couple of shout-outs.

First of all, shout outs to @shinkumancer for doing this excellent redesign of Oliver. She’s come so far as an artist and character designer since his first design almost 4 years ago, and in general is just a great artist all around. Check out her stuff and buy a commission, I promise you won’t be disappointed!

The other shout out is to my absolute best friend @pidgeonspen who not only helped me put together this bio, but was instrumental in helping me figure out Oliver’s new direction and a lot of the details for the worldbuilding surrounding him. There’s so much we’ve worked on in relation to his character (as well as certain others I have yet to share) and I’m so excited to start actually sharing it and doing stuff with it, but I’m getting ahead of myself

If you got any questions, comments, feedback, criticism, whatever, feel free to shoot me an ask or DM.

With that out of the way, here it is: Oliver’s bio. As usual, everything’s under the readmore.

Name: Oliver the Barn Owl

Age: 20

Height: 3'4"

Occupation: Aspiring historian/mage. Currently wandering around Eastern Eurish/West Yurashia

Sexuality: Bi

Personality: Kind, curious, socially awkward, overly eager, gullible and naïve; Oliver really wants to do right by the people around him and help out when he can, all while striving to learn more about the world around him and find the answers he seeks.

Oliver dislikes needless violence, but is not entirely opposed to the notion of self defense. That being said, he will try to settle most situations through nonviolent means if possible, whether by taking a diplomatic approach or using his magical illusions to trick them. When he is forced to engage in combat, Oliver never aims to kill, instead seeking to subdue or render his enemies unconscious; the only exception is when he is faced with a life or death situation, and there are no other viable options left.

His naivete shines through in his quirky habits and lack of fundamental social skills, such as voice modulation, wherein he has trouble gauging the volume at which he speaks, switching from being jarringly loud to incredibly quiet. He also rambles on about what interests him, sometimes speaking so fast others may not be able to follow. He's self aware, but unsure how to fix these problems. Because of these factors, he doesn't pick up cues when he's being flirted with, as such advances can go over his head, and he's rather uneasy in crowds, at worst finding himself panicking and fleeing to a more secluded, private location.

His naivete is the root of much of his sweet, seemingly positive traits: due to his isolated upbringing, he isn't a worldly individual and, combined with his compulsion to help others and overtly optimistic outlook, has lead to him being used and manipulated, as well as giving second chances to those who clearly do not deserve it.

Skills: First and foremost, Oliver is skilled in the use of magic, mainly what is known as "dark" magic i.e, magic that invokes the powers of a demonic entity. Using his tome as a conduit, Oliver is able to cast a wide variety of spells, though his preferences usually lie in non-offensive magic such as that of illusions and healing. The former in particular is something Oliver is quite skilled in, being able to invoke something as simple as an auditory illusion and something as complex as creating mirror images of himself, though that is something that cannot be done for too long. In regards to healing, while Oliver cannot completely heal life-threatening wounds, he is able to patch up relatively minor wounds and cure basic ailments. He is also starting to get the hang of more outright defensive spells, such as barriers and even reflectors, though, like his illusions, these cannot be maintained for too long, and he is not as adept with these as he is with his other spells. Finally, Oliver is capable of using offensive magic in the form of basic blasts of dark magic, but given his pacifistic nature, he uses these as an absolute last resort and even then, does not aim to kill with them.

Given both his isolated upbringing and nomadic lifestyle, Oliver is quite skilled when it comes to wilderness survival. He's able to forage for food, build rudimentary shelters and fires, and navigate all with relative ease. That being said however, when it comes to navigating urban environments, Oliver is completely out of his element and will quickly become lost and overwhelmed.

Hobbies: Oliver's hobbies revolve around his interests in magic and history; naturally, he loves reading and exploring. He often seeks out the libraries and bookstores of the towns he passes through, and will even investigate abandoned ruins and castles to satiate his curiosity, often taking barely legible notes in his tome. He can often be seen with his beak in a book, often forming a small collection of titles he's found or purchased with his spare earnings, though he tends to take on more than he can carry and so having to leave them behind is a bit of a sour point for him. He vows to one day get a library of his own so he can actually *keep* all of the books he finds on his travels.

Likes: History, magic, books (Mainly ones that pertain to the aforementioned topics), helping people, snack foods (Pretty much anything he can eat on the go, whether it be granola bars, pretzels, berries, etc. He's got a sweet tooth so anything that's super sweet is right up his alley), libraries, sharing his knowledge/findings with others, the cold (Grew up in it, so he's super comfortable in it as well).

Dislikes: Selfishness, cruelty, ignorance, crowds, excessively bitter food/drink (Not big on coffee), technology (Doesn't actually dislike it, he just has trouble actually using it), being lied to/manipulated (It's something he beats himself up over but continually falls prey to)

Backstory: Born in the remote, frigid forests of Sibral in Northeastern Yurashia, Oliver grew up in almost complete isolation, living in a simple wooden cabin with nobody else but his parents around.

Growing up, Oliver's parents attempted to give the boy the best life they could despite their circumstances, showering him with constant love and attention. They also attempted to provide Oliver with an education, with his mother teaching him the basics of wilderness survival including how to find food and basic first aid, and his father teaching him how to read and fostering his love for history. However, the foremost priority in terms of Oliver's education was in the art of magic, and it is here where Oliver received the most thorough teachings, with his mother teaching him everything she knew healing and defensive spells, and his father helping him to develop his signature illusions as well as some basic curses.

When Oliver wasn't receiving an education, he was spending most of his time either wandering around the woods by his home or reading the varied, yet also limited selection of books from his father's library. Not only did the stories within these books intensify Oliver's love of reading and interest in history, but they also gave him something far more profound: his beliefs. Whether set in fiction or reality, the novels all encompassed similar themes of good people making the world a better place simply by doing the right thing, even if they had to do so alone; the notion that no matter how bad things get or how bleak things look, the innate kindness and good in people will prevail even during the darkest hour - these are things Oliver took to heart and would carry with him for the rest of his life.

Things continued in this manner for most of Oliver's childhood and adolescence; his time split between education, reading, and strolling through the icy woods he called his home. In general, life was rather peaceful. However, the older he got, the more certain things began to bother him and gnaw at the edge of his mind. To start, his parents always seemed to dance around the big questions: "Why do we live out here all alone?", "How did you learn magic?", "Why are you so concerned about me running into 'demons'?" The demons question in particular was a sticking point for Oliver, as while his parents went to great lengths to warn him about "demons", they seemed to not know too much about them to begin with, or at the very least, weren't telling him everything. Then again, it seemed that they weren't telling him everything in regards to a lot of things.

Even outside of that however, there was something else that seemed to bother him: this growing desire to get out there. As much as he liked his home and his parents, he began to yearn to see the various places and people so vividly detailed in his books. He wanted to see what else was out there, what new things he could learn, what people he could meet and what experiences he could revel in. These sentiments of wanderlust only grew as time went on, and by the time he reached adulthood, it was becoming almost unbearable.

Which is why it came as a welcome surprise to Oliver that the moment he turned 18, his parents seemed eager to see him out of the house, helping him pack for what was surely to be a long journey, his father even giving him his favorite magical tome and cape, and his mother giving him a brand new outfit meant to show off her "handsome little boy". With a kiss goodbye and some words of encouragement, Oliver was soon off on his journey, thrust out unto the world with no real direction, yet still excited to see what lay beyond the confines of his isolated abode.

However, once Oliver got out into the world, he found that reality didn't quite match what he saw in his books. While many people he's met have been kind and compassionate like he expected , just as many have been callous, ignorant, or even outright cruel, attempting to either harm or take advantage of the owl's kindness and naivete. To make matters worse, while some have appreciated his magical talents, what he wasn't prepared for was the amount of people who treat his magic with fear, disdain, disbelief, and on rare occasion, violence. His parents had warned him that such things could happen, but he didn't imagine it could get as bad as it did.

While he has had many pleasant experiences thus far, and has even gotten to explore some of the locales described in his books, these unfortunate experiences have left their mark on the owl, and even though he still maintains his compassionate nature and optimistic beliefs, there is still a part of him that is hurt by what he's been through.

With all the unanswered questions hanging over his head - a list that only seemed to grow with each passing day - Oliver began to question things, such as why his parents had seemed to be in such a hurry to get him out of the house when he came of age.

Adding to the mystery, strange dreams have begun to plague his slumber - a voice belonging to someone (or something?), urging him to go to specific locations, searching for something important.

Now more confused than ever before, Oliver has one burning question taking precedence over all else:

Just what the heck is the "Jeweled Scepter", and why is it so important that he seek it out?

#Oliver the Barn Owl #OC stuff #Sonic OC #Sonic FC #Sonic #Archie Sonic #I've been thinking about making an OC blog just so I have all of this in one place and organized #What do y'all think?#Would y'all be interested in that?

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inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years

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DRUCK reactions - s4 ep1

Ages ago I said I wanted to write meta about Cris’ and Matteo’s seasons, so of course, when I finally sit down to write reactions to a Skam remake, it’s about Amira instead.

A few weeks back I was composing tumblr posts in bed before falling asleep (my number 1 hobby lol) when it struck me that the writing for Amira’s season was really… indefensibly bad. So let’s stroll down through memory lane and revisit Druck s4, or how to throw away your potential because you have to put out this season before summer is over!

CLIP 1: Dark clouds over Winterberg

Obviously I’m writing these with the benefit of hindsight, but I will try and incorporate what my initial reaction to a clip was whenever I can remember.

Sometime between the Abiball episode and episode 32, I argued (on twitter) that the Abiball special was the Abiball episode instead, the first episode of Amira’s season. It would thus introduce us to the conflicts and characters that would take place during Amira’s season. I thought that in addition to the obvious Amira/Mohammed, Carlos/Kiki/Essam would be important, Kiki’s family life would be important, Stefan would be important, and David/Matteo would probably not be important as they seemed to be doing just fine in their scenes.

I didn’t think Mia/Alex would be important because I didn’t actually watch their clip lol. The Winterberg stans on my twitter orbit thought the clip was cute and nothing to worry about. That should’ve been my first clue that the (twitter) stan habit of repeating the “we never lose” mantra doesn’t make for great viewing comprehension, because watching the clip, it’s so obvious that shit is gonna go down lol.

Mia moves from one of the flat share’s bathrooms to the other because they never really recreated Mia’s room in the s3 flat share.

I still haven’t watched Mia’s episode, so I don’t know how all this stuff is going to get resolved, but it seems like Mia doesn’t think they can handle a LDR, and Alex is picking up on those vibes hard. I guess I don’t really get why Mia is so pessimistic about it because at that age I kinda thought a few months break weren’t really an obstacle. (Not sure if it would help me to watch Mia’s season, because this seems like a wholly new conflict.)

Anyway, Alex acts sweet/reassuring (I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode), so Mia puts it out of her mind for now. But Idk, they haven’t really spoken about the elephant in the room.

CLIP 2: Don’t call them the chastest evak ever again

Tbh this clip comes across as a direct rebuttal to all the s3 commentary about David and Matteo seeming like they’re not into each other, or like they aren’t ~passionate~ like the other evaks.

It’s like, “these gremlins are horny on main, now shut up.”

But I like that they’re fully dressed, like yes, you can show physical intimacy without undressing your teen actors (shade fully intended).

I love Lukas von Horbatschewsky’s hair and I’m very jealous of Matteo in this sequence, lmao.

Luis Sepúlveda died of coronavirus this year, in Spain. You’re welcome for that bit of 2020 misery dripping onto this cute clip.

I do think David feels guilty that he may have caused Matteo to fail his Spanish exam because of David’s own issues, which I think is very on brand for David. Obviously it wasn’t his fault.

I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode, 2X.

And this has been said a million times by now, but David and Matteo are the one evak version where they’re the same age (Joana is in the same year as Cris, but is a year older, so she must’ve gotten held back at some point). So it’s funny, and possibly a reference to Isak and Even, to see David talking about what it’d be like if they had that age difference. Like, maybe David would be more like Even in behavior! And, going by Matteo’s reaction, he wouldn’t be into that.

This clip really feels like the ending to Matteo and David. They’ll go on a road trip, they’ll work on David’s movie, they’ll be around, but this clip is their conclusion. They both feel secure and content in their relationship, and ready for everything that’s to come.

Like I said on the post about Cris and Joana, I like that David and Matteo don’t have further issues. And while I have tons of issues with Druck s4, which I will be talking about forever in the following posts, I never had an issue with how they deployed Matteo or David. (Okay, self. Now say that again without crying about David’s season that should have been.)

Fucking David cutting their make out short only to then say such a highkey flirty, romantic thing to Matteo though. No wonder Matteo’s like, “STOP, I’M SUPPOSED TO STUDY.”

CLIP 3: A challenger appears!

I like the fanon that David is a healthy eater (or at least in comparison to Matteo), because all we ever see David eat of his own volition (i.e. not food that was made for him) is candy.

God, I love Kiki snatching David’s fruity gummies out of his hands. It makes me laugh every time, particularly how she demands to know if the candy is vegan.

Hanna looks beautiful. ;_;

There’s a split second when Jonas is about to give Hanna that box where David looks alarmed in the background. In my mind he’s all, “Bro, no. Not a public proposal. Reel it back in, bro!”

And then, to the surprise of Jonas and all the viewers, we find out that not only are Jonas and Hanna not together, but Hanna is dating German Arthur. Again, in “fandom refuses to acknowledge storyline conflict until it’s staring right at them” news, Stefan had actually been introduced via an audio to Hanna the day before, but people were convinced it was Hanna’s dad. Whose actor they called just to record an audio. Clearly.

My belief at this point was that Stefan would be relevant to Amira’s storyline, but instead it was just a way to give Hanna her own episode. 🤡

Matteo’s transformation into Michi is complete by donning his grandpa hat.

He also makes to trip David for no real reason. Throwback to Unter Wasser.

Matteo saying Inshallalalah in a sing song voice is cute, but so annoying.

Matteo Florenzi: He’s a pain in the ass, but we love him.

CLIP 4: I guess Abdi and Axel picked up his grades at another point

I love the way Matteo grabs David’s head to pull him along. They’re so cute and I’m gonna enjoy every second.

Jonas also grabs Hanna along, because fans needed to be further confused as to what was happening with Hanna and Stefan and Jonas.

Thank you, Druck, for telling me Kiki’s and Amira’s grades, but as you can understand, that’s nowhere near enough to satisfy my curiosity and I will be needing to know everyone’s GPA because that is the kind of thing that’s important to me. What about it!!!

I think, going by how impressed Mia is, that Mia’s grade isn’t as good as Amira’s. Which I think is a neat detail, since the Nooras are kind of supposed to be the perfect girls. I like that Amira is even better than Mia at school.

I thought the concept of Carlos failing his final exam and maybe realizing school wasn’t his thing would’ve been an interesting storyline to explore, but I’m not mad that it didn’t happen. Hopefully Druck will touch on it with the next kids.

And we’re now treated to three reveals about Kiki. Kiki has a sister (now she has two), she likes the idea of moving out and living with Carlos, and her mom isn’t doing well.

The remakes trying to develop their Vildes past s4 make sense to me. By the end of Skam, Vilde clearly was the character who’d been the most robbed of a season, there were several potential storylines to do with her. Financial instability, alcoholic mom, eating disorders, plus it seemed obvious that any season taking place during the girls’ russetide should go to her. And that’s without getting into Vilde’s strong denial that she was a lesbian.

So the remakes are sitting on all these potential storylines, but as we now know, they can’t make their own Vilde season.

And from a European TV exec’s point of view, Vilde (who in every version is a white, skinny, ostensibly straight girl) is a very safe main after the gay and Muslim seasons.

Cue the LITTLE SISTER.

I get why people are fed up with the Vildes’ prominence in the remakes that are in their latter stages, but at the same time we got 8 versions of Noora’s season, most of which are a limpdicked enemies to lovers story with a misguided sexual assault storyline tacked at the end. (And I say misguided because after a strong start, it’s mostly about what William will think, how William will react, I can’t tell William about this, etc.) So in my case, I’ve had quite enough Noora to last me a lifetime, but my Vilde thirst has only begun to be quenched.

Tangent over, Kiki lies that she’s not going to the lake because she’s going to check on Carlos. Bad form, Kiki.

CLIP 5: Graduation (Friends Forever).mp3

In clown news, I predicted there’d be a clip between the Kiki stuff and the actual dance (maybe a Sam clip), as it seemed to me there wasn’t much of a connection between Kiki looking sad on that ping pong table and PARTY TIME. Lol at me.

And speaking of clowning, while I thought the Abiball episode was part of s4, I also thought that was fine because it was just doing the multi POV episode in the beginning of the season rather than at the end, right? Wrong.

As much as it would’ve been great if Sam and Abdi had storylines pertaining to racism and islamophobia (whether Abdi is or isn’t a Muslim, people would probably assume he is), I also have to admit… This conversation is hilarious.

“I want to have intercourse with you.” [glass breaks in the background]

Abdi closing his speech with a wide smile gvvhvh.

The first hundred times I watched this scene, I thought Alex seemed a bit alarmed at the conversation taking place, but really… We’re back to stone-faced Alex lol.

Don’t kill me, but I feel a little bad for Abdi in this moment. He really put himself out there and Sam just leaves without giving him an answer, yikes. I actually got tired of Abdi’s sad sackiness during the season, but right now I feel for him. L

There’s this smile Jonas sometimes directs at dudes (like Alex here) that makes me think… Bi. He also directs it at Matteo in s3.

Ugh.

There’s a parallel universe where Stefan was the villain of Amira’s season, and it would’ve been a much more interesting season than the one we got.

Because Stefan is a bit of a Darth Jonas. He works for Greenpeace, but, at least in this scene, seems a bit full of himself, and like… twisting the knife in a way that feels like it has to be intentional. And it would’ve been so interesting if Druck had tackled the white dudes who seem like they’re not going to be assholes about Muslims, but then turn around and say some shocking garbage. I’m sure we’ve all met a guy like that before.

In my mind, Stefan would’ve driven a wedge between Hanna and Amira, which would’ve been way more compelling than what we got, but on the other hand, it probably would’ve made fandom people hate Hanna, and people outside of fandom hate Amira.

Anyway, tag teaming gays! I love how David and Matteo share a look and immediately take care of both Jonas and Stefan.

I also love it when David looks murderous. It looks good on him.

But I feel like this didn’t go anywhere? Like, Matteo always hated Stefan and continued hating Stefan until the finale. In this scene, David seems to dislike Stefan just as much, but it’s not a thread they bother following. It’s too bad because I think Matteo and David together sabotaging Stefan is a lot funnier than just Matteo doing it.

I love how soft spoken Amira is when telling Essam not to show up at her graduation party. I would’ve been a lot less polite lmao.

You know, I actually thought Kiki was genuine here when she said she wasn’t a fan of competitions. Obviously that’s not the Kiki we’ve known until this point, but like, I thought it was meant to show character development on her part, But we’ll talk about THAT more in the following episodes.

Matteo fully blames their win on David being so hot, mysterious and new, and it’s hilarious because that’s also what initially drew him to David. Like, “fuck you for being so hot!”

I thought it was such a nice detail that they brought back the girl from the refugee classes in s1. We’re saying goodbye to all these school people who are going on their own post high school journeys without us!

In my mind, Abdi and Alex are talking about something completely serious, like, I don’t know, Abdi’s dad wanting him to study business and Alex advising Abdi on the best business schools in Berlin or something.

I feel like Hanna is the one girl in the squad who really doesn’t feel ready for post high school life and I HATE the writers so much for how they wrapped her character up, but we’ll save that for later.

I could watch Matteo passing the tiara (=the main) to Amira forever. The way he tips his hat and looks like even he’s a little surprised that he (a character like him!) was ever the lead on a teen show, David’s voice asking Matteo if he’s coming, Matteo leaving with David to live happily ever after, the initial notes of Just Got Paid as Amira looks at nighttime Berlin. This meme is overdone by now, but THE POETIC CINEMA.

Jonas glaring at romantic rivals at end of year dances is iconic at this point.

Amira being tagteamed by an annoying little brother AND a well-meaning, embarrasing older brother. Choose your own nightmare.

I really love the set up for the Essam/Kiki/Carlos conflict. The emotional potential is SO good because on one hand you have Kiki, who wants to have a good time for once instead of parenting her own parent, then Carlos whose self-esteem is on the floor after having failed his final exam, and Essam, whose own sense of self-worth hinges upon whether white German girls find him attractive. Like, obviously Essam is never going to come between Kiki and Carlos who have been through some shit together, but with Carlos out of commission and Essam eager to please, you can see how the situation could so easily turn into a mess.

Amira and Mohammed have the most sexual tension out of any Yousana pair, period. They literally just said hi to each other and I already feel like I’m intruding gvhvhv.

Social media

David saying of Matteo: “Er bekommt Auslauf.” (Something like, “he gets walkies” because he’s been good with revising) is the cutest shit ever.

Remember when Stefan sent Jonas a whole ass message and signed it “with sunny greetings”? Stefan was much more fun when we were supposed to find him unbearable.

Kiki creating a new Whatsapp group for every single thing is so true to life.

I’d forgotten that Amira also hated Stefan almost right away. The season that could’ve been, I tell you.

All the Abi Chaker Clan content reminds me of how I thought Jonas looked like, well, such a child, compared to Stefan, and I thought that was intentional. Like, here is Stefan with a Greenpeace job whereas Jonas doesn’t know what to do with his life, and he’s like, spray-painting abi chaker clan onto walls and posting pics to the abi chaker clan account. It’s not that I thought Jonas should’ve acted like a whole ass adult, of course he’s having fun with his high school friends, but I thought Jonas might feel inadequate in comparison to where Stefan is at this point of his life.

I can’t remember who revealed it, but Sara was supposed to end up with Toilet Sam and that was supposed to come out during the s3 finale (on that week, Sara posted a story with a guy whose face was obscured iirc). Since that was part of the clip where Hanna and Jonas also got back together, which they cut to make way for Hanna/Jonas/Stefan drama, Sara takes some other dude to the Abiball. And I think we’re supposed to think that’s the same dude she went on that date with.

#druck #these are very heavily inspired by lightsandlostbells' format btw!#in case you wanted to check her out #about druck

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stratamuzak · 4 years

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Interview with Voltagehawk

STRATA: What artists in particular you are drawn to (alive or deceased) that you listen to for particular moods? Such as happy/sad/contemplative/etc… Explain why you might listen to one artist for a particular mood.

CHASE AROCHA When I want to feel inspired I listen to a lot of the different projects of Mike Patton. Be it Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Peeping Tom, or Tomahawk, the range of styles of music is so diverse that I’ve been listening for like 15 years and I haven’t gotten bored yet, haha. When I want to relax or chill, I love BadBadNotGood, an amazing jazz artist doing incredible arrangements all in a hip-hop context. It’s great! Or Ray Lynch, I really love his writing and use of counterpoint melody. Then if I’m getting hyped I put on something like Dying Fetus or Vitriol, or Maximum the Hormone. And any other time I’m blaring Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper and Sturgill Simpson.

DAN FENTON I think a lot of the time music finds my mood. Sort of more a spiritual or cosmic connection. When I was a kid my mom would make us watch musicals if we stayed home sick from school. Jokes was on her because I hated school but I loved learning musical scores and how to write dynamic parts and movements. The fact that people like Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brand were also amazing actors only added to that unlikely education. I learned how to really feel music between that and the intense very bloody hymns we had to sing in church. I understand the sentiment but that shit is harder than a lot of black metal. “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb”. Hard core shit. Sorry, I digress. During the making of our most recent record which is called Electric Thunder and set for release later this year or early next (hard to navigate releases with all this pandemic shit) I listened exclusively to film scores, classical music and radio evangelists. I am not religious but I grew up in a preacher’s home and when I needed to get my creative push and anger at its peak, I listened to preachers who were clearly greed driven and motivated by the lust for power. It made my adrenaline rush in anger and it came out in the recording for sure. I am a huge fan of Hans Zimmer and Vangelis. Each of these artists move me in powerful ways. The juxtaposition of darkness and light both in traditional instrumentation and experimental synth based work. Just musical giants. When I am feeling frustrated about the social issues I see everyday in my East Nashville neighborhood I listen to KRS-One, Kamasi Washington, Outkast. A lot of protest music. I am in love with band IDLES from the UK. Such powerful lyrics tackling issues like the need for male vulnerability, equality for all and the seemingly ironic brutal beat down of toxic masculinity. That band is great if you’re happy, mad, sad, whatever.

STRATA: Do you have a process you go through prior to writing, playing, and even performing?

CHASE AROCHA I do a lot of breathing exercises like the Wim Hof techniques. I have generalized anxiety disorder and I used to get horrible debilitating panic attacks, it helped me get into breathing and meditation. Anxiety will never go away but you learn ways to live with it and push through your panic. I think about how much this means to me and how long I’ve spent doing it, I try to see that I value myself as a person and then from that thinking I can just let go and play music. Only approaching it with love and not worrying about mistakes because that’s how we learn.

DAN FENTON The entire thing is one process. Like a heros journey of sorts. I listen and meditate everyday, I believe in a cosmic river of inspiration that flows from an energy that is and has always been. I believe if you listen hard enough and give yourself to the music the muse will send your mind transmissions that may only be a section of a song, or perhaps they are an entire album, but everyday I show up. A few years ago I read this book called The War Of Art, by Steven Pressfield. In this book he describes the invisible force he calls the Resistance. The Resistance may be things both “good or bad”, but they are anything that keeps you from showing up for your art. So I show up everyday, you can ask the dudes in the band, they receive a work tape maybe twice a week with new shit to try out. If I don’t feel that muse working I don’t force it, but I instead wait on further transmissions from the cosmic womb. All sounds crazy, but my story is crazy, so crazy makes the most sense. In the studio I have many processes. I found while recording vocals I perform better in complete darkness, I have realized how much I live inside my head and how active my imagination is and equally ADD my eyes are. So when I can’t see it brings to life the imagery and the passion of the song. I can see all those people I write about, all the landscapes, the love, lust, joy and pain. I also do some method stuff, keep things in my pockets pertaining to a character I may be portraying in a song. Wanna be Daniel Day Lewis shit.

STRATA: Your own current project, discuss the process your music went through as you built each layer. From beginning to the end of it.

CHASE AROCHA This all started with our drummer Jarrad having a vision and going through trials and errors of finding the right people to execute that. Along the way Dan, Tyler, and I all came into the picture and that vision morphed into something we all felt was not even from us. Like we were an antenna receiving a signal and these riffs and lyrics quickly meshed into something I haven’t heard before. Part hard rock, part jazz, part punk and hardcore. All with this message of love and truth being the reason for living. To end the ones controlling our thoughts and dividing us or tribalism and greed. I feel like we made something worth listening to and that’s all I feel like you can really hope for.

DAN FENTON The self titled record that we have available now on all streaming platforms was two different profound stages in my life all in the making of one record. When we began, Jarrad and I partied a fuck ton, and I was descending into some serious personal shit with alcohol. It was bad, I couldn’t get through a day without way too high of a blood alcohol level. Before we finished vocals on the record, I stayed up one night working and drinking, perhaps I had never stopped from how many nights before, who fucking knows. Anyhow, I died for 9 minutes on the side porch of my house. Fully shut down, fucking dead. Mind you, I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t know how to lay off the bottle. Woke up in the ICU surrounded by my band, my wife and what few friends I had left. At that moment Voltagehawk became a complete family to me. I spent a stint in rehab (Jarrad drove me) and that was several years ago now. When I got out I went back to finish the record, make some amends and chase this thing out for real. So that was some info on the first record. The new Album which is a 13 song space odyssey named Electric Thunder, after our beloved Electric Thunder Studio owned and operated by our resident space wizard producer Geoff Piller, was not so dramatic. After I got my shit together and my mind cleared up I began to write everyday like a mad man. Song after song after song came like never before. I think we cut 15 songs out before we settled on the final 13. Our process as a band is often for myself or one of the other dudes to present a bare bones or often finished idea to the band and we run it through the Hawk Filter. The Hawk Filter is just the decomposition and reconstruction of every rough idea till it fits us. Which is silly to say because if we like, it we do it, not a matter of genre worship. Shit’s good, do it. Always do what’s best for the song.

STRATA: Can your music personally be an open door to breath and bend in the world of artistic exploration? In Other Words… how comfortable are you as an artist exploring other types of music and creating projects that might be totally different than what you are creating now?

CHASE AROCHA There is so much great music in the world in so many styles, why shouldn’t we try to explore them all! I’m always trying something I haven’t done before, not always as a challenge, but I would hope it’s natural for people to do in art. We shouldn’t be the same people we were 2 years ago, let alone 10. I love jazz, Death Metal, and country music. If you can find a really fun and genuine way to blend those then that’s absolutely what you should do! Don’t be tied down to what kind of music you’re making and just make music.

DAN FENTON That’s all we do all day. Everything on this planet, and above it, and in it’s majestic seas and mountains, all these people of all the cultures of all the world and their energy and their culture all influence and musical inspiration is welcome. Our philosophy is never say no, and jump off the cliff, and pull yourself back up. Meaning: try all the musical options then settle on the one we believe is the most amazing. So much of our influence is from cinema and books, video games, you name it. I’ll pluck a support cable on every bridge I see ‘til I am dead just to see if it speaks to me. Sonically there are no fucking rules, and if you impose rules, fuck your rules. We love to create, to talk about creating and then to birth something new is beyond amazing.

STRATA: Are you open to change your style, genre even, and approach to how and what you create every time you enter a studio? Or do you find once you have a formula in place do you find it best to stay with what you know? Many times artists will change how they approach their songwriting and even their recording staff/producers.

CHASE AROCHA

Like I said before, I believe that you should just make music and with that should come constant experimentation. When we record we find sounds from all over the place. From children’s toy instruments, to skateboard wheels spinning to imitate rain. Our writing is kind of always evolving and changing. Dan is an amazing writer who literally has lyrics and melodies pouring out of his hands and face. Everyday he has new ideas and records and sends them to everyone. Jarrad is great at taking those riffs and making suggestions on how the structure could be of a song along with feel. I am obsessed with adding layers of guitars however I can, but I also write a lot and send tracks as well. Tyler is a tone junkie on the bass, filling in the bottom end and has such a great approach to being independent from the guitars with his lines. We send tracks back and forth to each other then we get in a room and flesh them out. The whole time in the process the songs are constantly changing and evolving into the sound we have. We are always open to change and never believe in the word No when discussing music and art. You try every idea and see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes when one member has a vision of how a song should go and is trying to communicate that, you should respect his idea and see it through. If it doesn’t work that’s okay, we tried!

DAN FENTON Voltagehawk is ever evolving. As it stands, we spend way too much time trying to pigeon hole what people will refer to our sound as. I don’t care what you call it as long as it moves you. I listen to everything from John Coltrane and Tom Waits to Napalm Death and Motorhead, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi to Kamasi Washington. IDLES and Bad Brains. If you refuse to evolve as an artist, experimenting, growing, trying new methods, all these elements then you cannot grow as a human being. Too many people are happy where they are, just okay, making the same music that their dads made and trying to cosplay some kind of yesteryear. We don’t do that shit, we’re us, that’s it. We grow, when you hear the Electric Thunder for the first time you will understand everything. If you burn some sage next to a photo of Carl Sagan while you listen to Electric Thunder, you will see the cosmic river in your minds eye. The world is full of people with a blockage in their brain. They cannot see that this bullshit we call a life is just a series of labor for hire gigs that leave us rapidly in the middle. We’re trying to break away from it all and follow our feathers, our truth, our search for enlightenment on our hero’s journey. I’ll leave you with this. Know Thyself.

#voltagehawk

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sesamesaysme · 5 years

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BOOKS COMPLETED IN JUNE 2019

(listed by order of completion)

Bookworm that I am, just thought I’d share.

I normally am in the middle of 2-3 books at any time because one in text, one in audiobook, and lately one in Chinese too because I’m trying to improve on that

SEA OF POPPIES by Amitav Ghosh / Feb.15, 2019 - June 10, 2019 / Set prior to the First Opium War a cast of characters all end up together on a ship from Calcutta to Mauritius. / Ok, this took me waaaay too long to finish. It wasn’t that it wasn’t good. It was because I wasn’t really paying attention in the beginning which caused me to not have any of the characters’ identities straight in my head which made me have no momentum reading it because I didn’t know what was going on. But once I finally did figure out who everyone was it was good. One scenario that stands out in my mind is when one guy takes care of his shitty jail cellmate (and by shitty I mean literally covered in feces). But, you see, I still can’t remember names.

THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD by Rick Bragg / May 30, 2019 - June 10, 2019 / (audiobook version) / Part memoir part cookbook of author’s mother’s recipes from the American south / I was in China for the last 2.5 months. I think I was missing food from back in the U.S. so picture me passing time on long Shanghai bus rides with descriptions of things like buttery biscuits and fried chicken being read to me 😂. Some parts felt like too much of the same thing over and over, but it was a good book to semi tune into while looking out of bus windows.

THE ALICE NETWORK by Kate Quinn / June 10, 2019 - June 12, 2019 / (audiobook version) / A young woman searching for her cousin finds out about the past of a woman who was recruited as a spy in France during WWI / To be honest I suspected going into this exactly what it was going to be but I still listened to it hoping it was gonna surprise me in someway. But nope. It’s another one of those historical fictions with a book cover that shows an image of someone from behind. And it’s that formula in which the author uses a present-day person to gradually reveal pieces of the past. Usually these things involve some sad story of women getting separated or an unfortunate romance or somebody’s child or friend or sister dying tragically but ultimately the present-day person learns a lot from it blah blah. And the past is supposed to be this big mystery but actually it’s pretty predictable for the reader. Another one that I remember being basically the same formula was Before We Were Yours.

BLACK BEAUTY (黑骏马）by Anna Sewell / April 28, 2019 - June 14, 2019 / Written from the perspective of a horse, you follow it as a young colt in a comfortable home through various other homes it lives in throughout the course of its life, sometimes getting kind treatment, sometimes incredibly inhumane. / I read this one in mandarin Chinese while following along in English for practicing my Chinese reading skills. I would guess my Chinese reading skills are at the level of a 9-10 year old. I read it at the pace of 30 minutes a day--a daily Chinese lesson. So now I know an abnormally large amount of vocabulary in Chinese pertaining to horses 🤣. All jokes aside, I felt so bad for the horses in this book though! omg!!! sob sob

REVOLUTION FOR DUMMIES: LAUGHING THROUGH THE ARAB SPRING by Bassem Youssef / June 13, 2019 - June 14, 2019 / (audiobook version) / The “Jon Stewart of the Arab World” takes you through his experience of creating political comedy that dared to make fun of and critique the Egyptian government. His program was similar to the Daily Show but with a whole lot more life-risking. / This was very interesting. I don’t know that I ever laughed out loud even though it does have humor. I was more fascinated with just finding out his story.

EVERY DAY A FRIDAY: HOW TO BE HAPPIER 7 DAYS A WEEK by Joel Osteen / June 16, 2019 - June 18, 2019 / A pastor gives his advice on how to appreciate life. / Yeah, sometimes I just want to read some inspirational stuff. I’m not really a religious person but I would say the pastor’s writing is suitable for anybody. To sum it up, he basically tells you to appreciate what you have.

THREE DARK CROWNS by Kendare Blake / June 11, 2019 - June 19, 2019 / Triplet girls, each with their own powers, have been kept apart for years and now are pitted against each other trying to kill one another because only one can be queen. / Fun, dark YA read

THE WAR ON NORMAL PEOPLE by Andrew Yang / June 19, 2019 - June 20, 2019 / (audiobook version) / This is by the Andrew Yang who is one of the huge number of Democratic candidates. / Seriously, more people need to pay attention to the things this guy is saying. The stats he gives about how many jobs are going to be automated in the next few years...just wow. Totally eye-opening.

ONE DARK THRONE by Kendare Blake / June 20, 2019 - June 21, 2019 / (audiobook version) / 2nd book in the Three Dark Crowns trilogy / It’s not very long so I listened to the entire thing while I was doing the Felix from Stray Kids drawing.

THE WORLD AS IT IS: INSIDE THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE by Ben Rhodes / June 21, 2019 - June 26, 2019 / Author was a speechwriter, policymaker, and friend during Obama’s presidency. / Will make you long for the Obama era the entire time you are reading this.

#books #books read #books completed #sea of poppies #the best cook in the world #the alice network #black beauty #revoution for dummies #every day a friday #three dark crowns #the war on normal people #one dark throne #the world as it is #andrew yang #kendare blake

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neopoliitan · 5 years

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You want asks? I'LL GIVE YOU ASKS. Firstly, what do you want to happen in volume 7? no particular order, just things you'd want to see as a watcher of the show. Secondly, hypothetical, but You're given creative freedom to make one change to Volume 6, what do you do?

Hmmm… I did this before volume 6 and I got maybe 3/5s of what I hoped which was nice. No harm in trying it again:

Volume 7 hopes:

Off the back of Volume 6, I desperately want Blake and Yang to backseat for a volume. Recently it feels like they’re the only ones with constant, meaningful development and Ruby and Weiss really need to be back at the front of proceedings, as do JNR and Oscar. Then again I’m very biased because I’ve never been a Blake fan and I’ve super gone off Yang since volume 5. Plus there’s the shipping side of things.

Nora Character Arc. Please. RWBY and Jaune have always been pretty big, Oscar’s at least had some stuff, Ren was more the focus of Kuroyuri than Nora. She really needs to be thrown a bone that isn’t labelled “comic relief”. Maybe she was from Atlas based on her Scandinavian allusion, maybe there’s a one-eyed red-haired Reinhardt lookalike in the Atlas military that she finds strangely familiar.

Oscar’s development happens on screen. No more V6E9 deals; Oscar needs to be more than Ozpin and show his own character. I know they’re kinda at peace right now with Ozpin backseat driving per Oscar’s wishes, but as the merge draws closer Oscar needs to be more unsure of himself. He needs to panic. He’s 14. We also need to see how he feels about leaving Aunt Pine behind. Surely she’s worried? Why hasn’t he shown any interest in that? They seemed to have a good relationship.

Watts and Tyrian are established as real threats on Cinder’s level. Watts was off screen during the events where his virus caused the Fall of Beacon, so it’s easy not to attribute it to him. That’s why he needs to make a big play this volume. Assassinate Jacques. Destroy Atlas’ military from the inside. Anything that gives Watts his own fall of Beacon. The guy is, at this point, Salem’s best performing minion.Same goes for Tyrian. He got jobbed in Volume 4 because the good guys had to survive. If he goes round two with Qrow, he needs to kill him. These villains need to make a name for themselves here and now, because they’re endgame and need to feel it.

Whitley is redeemable. I know what it’s like to be on his end of the deal. If he just turns out to be a boring character who hates Weiss because he can and adores his father then that’s shit. He needs to fear his father and only act the way he does to avoid his wrath. He needs to have disdain for Winter and Weiss because they abandoned him and left him alone with that abuse.

Jaune gets a good fight in. The guy’s been training for two years. Give him an opponent he can actually put up a good showing against. Say Qrow trained him. Oscar’s helped him too. I don’t care how they do it, if they have to explain it away, I’m just tired of Jaune being ‘the guy who can’t fight’ when people have few qualms about Oscar’s rapid skill growth being due to Ozpin in his head. Please, RT. You gave Adam his test footage fight. I wanna see this.

Other small things include

New outfits for RWBYJNR

Amend Neo’s outfit because her old one was way better.

Less B*mblebee unless it’s surrounding shared guilt over murdering that one guy.

The one thing I’d change in Volume 6

That would be the Blake, Yang, Adam stuff from Ep11-13. Sure, I don’t like the ship, but regardless of that I’m not a fan of how the whole ordeal was presented.

Picture the volume 3 fight with Adam. Dark, surrounded by grimm, flames and chaos in the midst of a schoolwide battle. Lots of reds and blacks in the color palette to reflect Adam himself. Now look at the volume 6 confrontation; Sun? a Waterfall? Killing a dude and simultaneously pushing a romance? It’s baffling in my eyes.

What I would have done is have the setting be more dramatic. A red sky at dusk to reflect Adam’s color palette and his seeming omnipresence even before he makes his appearance. Instead of cutting to him mid-attacking Blake, have the reveal occur slowly as she explores the radar tower, eventually stumbling on corpses and stuff until she puts all the pieces together like a horror film.

During the fight, have it in a more characterful location. The waterfall is fine, I guess, but perhaps a dam might’ve served better, with some maintenance buildings dotted around to add more to the set. Throw in some rain, and bam you got yourself a much more dramatic confrontation.

After that I’d nix the cheesy dialogue. No “We’re protecting each other” or “I’m not alone” or “people hurt me” monologue or “WHAT DOES SHE EVEN SEE IN YOU REEEEE” or “i’m smarter >:3c”. In fact I’d take out the romantic aspect all together. If it’s really necessary at all in the plot (I personally don’t care for it), give it its own scene instead of those two finding love through a shared murder.

I’d have Adam’s attack do more than scratch Yang’s arm and have it fully obliterate the damn thing. Because that arm is skeletal and ugly and I cannot stand looking at its bony fingers, and also it’d have more parallels to Beacon - except this time Yang is victorious.

I’d probably change how Adam dies. The canon version is kind of laughable, so I’d maybe have Yang deck Adam so hard he almost falls off the cliff. Blake tries to convince him to take her hand as he’s hanging on for dear life, but with no sword, no shotgun, no aura, no Blake, but Adam grants himself one last victory. He has nothing to live for except to cause Blake pain, now, and he can die knowing she’ll blame herself for his death for a good long while. So he tells her “I want you to live with this” and lets go. Dead. Took himself out of the game, but knew he could fuck Blake up even in defeat.

I dunno, that’s just a ton of ideas I’ve spitballed right now while writing this reply. I have a lot of issues with the back half of Volume 6, and my story-fix would definitely be to fix the Adam plotline. For personal gratification, though, I’d just cut out everything pertaining to b*mblebee because the toxicity it brings both out of shippers and myself affects my enjoyment of the show so much I don’t really want to watch volume 7 if that’s what it’s going to consist of.

#Anonymous

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4pondsinabox · 6 years

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Summer 2018 TV Binge Ranking

I use the term “Binge” lightly, since I’m not used to watching a lot of tv at once. Anyways, starting out this summer I realized the number of my active fandoms had significantly decreased, which I needed to fix asap. Luckily, not only did I have more time than usual to watch some television, but I also had access to a Netflix account for once, so I went right to work. The following shows were picked from various gifsets, edits, fanarts etc. on Tumblr and Instagram, so for those of you I follow who post occasional stuff that don’t pertain to the main fandom I follow you for, you probably had some influence on my list. Because of this, I figured it might be useful for anyone else looking for a new show to watch to have some kind of ranking, though I realize different people have different tastes. You will notice though that none of these shows are long-running, so it’ll be pretty easy to jump right on board any of them. These are ranked purely on my enjoyment of them and how much I looked forward to seeing the next episode, NOT the actual overall quality.

1. Legends of Tomorrow

“You’ve got to be joking” Nope. No I am not. Ok, the first season is really rough. Like, extremely rough. But the show finds its footing by season 2 and becomes essentially the American version of Doctor Who (aka my favorite show of all time). Time travel? Check. Sentient Time Ship? Check. A good blend of hilarity and touching moments? Check. Badass bisexual queen (who was trained to kill people)? Check. The list goes on. It’s extremely enjoyable, particularly when you need a good laugh, I really looked forward to every episode post-series 1. I would almost recommend skipping the first season altogether but there are a few important backstories for the characters that might make some later moments confusing. You don’t really need to have watched other Arrowverse shows to understand what’s going on and, aside from 2 crossover specials, there’s hardly a connection at all. Legends is also pretty diverse, although it would be nice to add a few more women to balance out the man-heavy team. Otherwise, their “dysfunctional family” dynamic is, quite frankly, hilarious and the overflow of pop-culture references (there’s a whole episode where they have to convince George Lucas to return to the movie industry because of his films’ influence on history) made my geek heart so happy. My biggest critique is the show’s use of the “only white boys are nerds” trope because, while I love these two particular characters, I would really love to find another show where the women aren’t always “sensible and non-geeky.”

2. Black Lightning

I don’t think I can put into words how wonderfully heartwarming this show is. I have seen one too many shows with dysfunctional families, so watching the Pierces grow and work through their issues in a healthy way was just … so important to me. Literally all of them are beautiful, flawed but well rounded characters that I would fight for. Also, Lynn and Jefferson? Freaking adorable and couples goals (Also ironically the names of my aunt and uncle). Anissa was born to be a superhero. She never had a moment of calling like most do because she was already an activist and her reaction to her powers is extremely believable. So is Jennifer’s. She’s 16 and wants nothing more than an average life. I completely relate to their sibling relationship (I, too, frequently borrow my sister’s stuff). It’s a bit darker than Legends but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of light moments to go around. Needless to say, this is another wonderfully diverse show. Aside from focusing on a healthy, black family, the fact that Anissa’s a lesbian isn’t made out to be a big deal. The underlying commentary on black incarceration and other racism issues is very poignant and eye-opening, as someone who’s not a part of that community. I don’t feel like I can say much on the actual superhero aspects of it, since I generally don’t watch DC or Marvel stuff (previous mentioned show aside) because the amount of fighting overwhelms the plot and characters for me, but I thought this show had a good balance of superhero-y moments and touching character moments. It really did feel like a break through in television.

3. Sense 8

Late to the party, I know, but I knew I’d get here eventually. First off, if you opened a dictionary to find the word “diversity,” this show should be underneath it. Every time I think they couldn’t find another way to integrate another identity into it, they proved me wrong. I particularly loved that they trick the audience into thinking they’re setting up yet another love triangle, then are like “Psyche, threesome.” They know modern audiences too well. The characters are fantastic, I have a particular soft spot for Lito Rodriguez. The concept is unique and the camera work is another level (as someone who’s thinking about heading into the film industry, I appreciated that). What threw me off was how graphic the show was. I tend to keep away from television that has copious amounts of sex and blood, largely out of discomfort, so if that stuff triggers you in any way it would be good to steer away from this particular show. I grew accustomed to it as I kept watching but early on I had to take significant breaks between each episode. Luckily, the characters and storyline was interesting enough to keep me coming back.

5. Dark Angel

Not from Netflix and technically a two part miniseries instead of a full tv show, but I had to include it. Wow. Just wow. I enjoyed Joanne in Downton Abbey but boy I was not prepared for the stellar performance she gave off as Mary Ann Cotton, Britain’s first female serial killer. This is about as dark as television gets, there was hardly a happy moment in the whole thing and yet I was compelled to keep watching. This is quite the accomplishment for any show or film that doesn’t have at least some humor added in to balance it out. The show depicted the difficulty of Victorian women extremely well, and almost made Mary a sympathetic character. Almost. What I admired about this telling was the writing’s ability to do this without glorifying what she did. You can understand her actions without condoning them. Considering how many people Mary was suspected of killing though, there wasn’t as much death as I expected from a serial killer story. Not that I’m complaining. Probably not one I’ll re-watch anytime soon, but I’m definitely glad to have seen it.

5. A Series of Unfortunate Events

Boy, where do I start. This is the one show I started watching without prompting from social media, simply because I had read the first few books when I was younger. Watching this reminded me why I never picked up the other books in the series. It’s not technically a bad show, I did mostly enjoy the first season, it just became so dark and depressing by the second season, even with the bright and comic-y look to the show. I actually think that was a smart decision on the creators part, to include the over-the-top scenery and clothes, because I can’t imagine how much more depressing it would have been if they’d gone with dark tones. The Lemony Snicket dialogue is also amusing, and I appreciate this show for giving Tumblr more dialogue to play around with. On the downside, I wanted to punch literally every adult onscreen. Shows are a bit difficult to watch when you have that kind of reaction to them. At this point, I can’t say if I’ll watch the third season when it comes out or not, as I do generally like to stick with happier shows.

That concludes my summer show review, I tried not to go super in-depth and spoiler-y I hope these thoughts were helpful or, at the very least, an interesting read.

#legends of tomorrow #black lightning #sense8 #asoue #show review #doctor who #arrowverse #netflix #ouat #dark angel #i actually did a thing #and posted it #yes I'm proud ok

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whydidireadthis · 6 years

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Dark Reign...a brief look.

Events.

The word alone is enough to make a superhero comic reader fight their understandable gag reflex.

In the 80s, confronted with a capricious market, the genre powerhouses Marvel and DC experimented with “events” -- limited crossovers of numerous characters for a singular storyline. DC had been doing this annually as a tradition, typically between the Justice League and the Justice Society. However, their company crossovers were cranked up to eleven around the mid-80s, and Marvel decided to give it a try.

Both companies decided that events were the thing of the future. The main reason for this is because they could very easily make series seem to tie into the main crossover’s storyline and, thus, wring out a few more bucks from hapless readers who didn’t know any better. It’s also worthy of note that this same initial period is the period where the expression “red-sky crossover” comes from.

If you didn’t know what that meant, it means “a book advertised as being a part of an event that only includes some superficial aspect of it”, which specifically refers in its name to the many “crossovers” of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Many had nothing really to do with the main story, which was ridiculously dense and a massive clusterfuck that could have used decompression into other books; instead, the labeled “crossover” would feature something like the red sky from the main Crisis books and have someone comment on it, then the rest of the story continued on as normal.

Classy.

But after that little bit of setup, let me just segue into saying that Civil War was the event to end all events. And by that, I mean it was the absolute nadir for the superhero genre and unequivocally the worst “event” ever conceived, figuratively and literally destroying countless characters and making it impossible to repair the genre into what it should be: super-powered champions in iconic costumes fighting back against evil, villainy, and oppression.

Days of Future Crap

Civil War took an old, tired X-Men plot (which was probably why the X-Men were largely absent from it) and decided to rehash it one more time, except worse somehow. And as much as I hate the “Marvel cinematic universe”, I have to admit -- without it coming along to build some characters back up, they would have been completely and utterly unusable after Civil War made them into nasty little fascists...the exact thing most superheroes love to punch right in the face, for good reason.

But after Civil War tore the real Marvel Universe apart, alienated longtime readers in droves, and brought extremely short-lived sales boosts that petered off almost instantly, Marvel found themselves stuck for what to do. Eventually, they went with the sure bet of Skrull fuckery, because Skrulls could change shape. That worked, right? Sure! Even if it did completely ignore or contradict decades of established continuity in so doing, as with garbage -- which you would rightly clock as garbage from the title alone -- like Skrull Kill Krew.

And after the yawn that was Secret Invasion, which was basically just an excuse for more graphic violence and “shocking” twists, then came the brusque push into Dark Reign.

In many ways, Dark Reign kind of exemplifies the worst tendencies of the superhero genre since 2000, that period of over-the-top violence and flagrant disrespect for beloved characters and teams, but also tries to include some genuinely good ideas and concepts. There’s good stuff in there, which is far more than anyone could say about, for example, Civil War or Secret Invasion.

Unfortunately for Dark Reign, it also stuck around just short of for-fucking-ever, and it gave us remarkably little in return for our investment of time. And money, because over 200 issues, at a very reserved estimate, carried the Dark Reign tie-in label.

And that’s really its biggest problem: it was an idea that was conceived with no scope in mind. Marvel editorial wanted, they claimed, to get away from the concept of “events” as essentially limited series storylines with tie-ins, which came and went relatively quickly.

Well cry me a fucking river, since they started that shit in the mid-80s and rode it for over twenty years while readers complained every god damn time an “event” came along and derailed the story and characters to tell its comparatively stupid one.

Ahem. But I digress. The main problem was that Dark Reign was an event, without actually being an event. It’s a lot like my feelings about superhero stories that are totally superhero stories, they know they’re superhero stories, but they act like they’re too good to admit that and look down on superhero stories, constantly sniping at and avoiding genre staples out of contempt. Fuck you. Call a spade a spade. You’re not some amazing auteur because you wrote Superman without a costume.

And that’s really the big problem here: in trying to avoid making Dark Reign seem like the usual type of event, it’s a vague, nebulous mass of barely-related issues where the villains of the piece may only pop in at one point to twirl their moustaches, and nothing can actually be accomplished because, at the end of the day, it is an event and its plot will not advance until the event is resolving. It’s virtually impossible to figure out where the story starts, where it advances, and there’s no real order to it. Multiple would-be authorities on the subject have put forth their proposed reading orders, but it’s all conjecture at this point. The only order you have is when there is a limited series specifically tied in to the event (and there were several) or when an already-running series has tie-in issues that go in sequential order.

What makes it even more complicated and frustrating is when you have tie-ins only sometimes. For example, with the then-running series of War Machine, issues 1-5 and then 10-12 are the only ones considered part of Dark Reign. They’re the ones that directly pertain to the Dark Reign plot. But there are a lot of times in the various series where the issues with the Dark Reign label cut off before any real resolution...making it either poor organization or just poor planning. Some series, like War Machine, just abruptly end with the end of that tie-in, as if that was the only thing keeping them going. In War Machine’s case, that may have been true.

But it’s a huge mess. Even if you were to decide “oh hey, I’ll just grab the trade paperbacks, that’ll be easier to read them in order”...not really. Sure, it’s all collected, and in order. But not always a coherent order, and not always including all of the parts of the story that you need to have it actually make sense.

For example, one of the high points of Dark Reign is the X-Men leaving San Francisco and establishing an independent sovereign island nation of Utopia. However, for whatever reason, it’s ridiculously difficult to find any of those issues included in any collection. Maybe it’s Marvel’s stupid rights mismanagement with the X-Men and Fantastic Four, but it’s just as likely to be a really tremendous lack of organization with regards to the event.

And I’m not giving them a free pass on this, either; the Utopia storyline suffers from terrible inconsistent characterization and oftentimes, just painfully bad writing, like Daken’s inexplicable voiced contempt for female fighters...which had not previously appeared and never popped up again afterwards. It had some great moments too, though, like Emma making a strong showing but still remembering that she had a heart and feelings, as well as being an excellent strategist and tactician. It was also nice to see that Sentry, for all his overblown bullshit, wasn’t a match for Namor and Rogue, on the rare occasion she’s written well, is able to hold her own against serious heavy hitters.

But I’ll come back to the Sentry later. Oh yes. He’s not getting out of this unscathed.

The Un-Crossovers for the Un-Event

The thing is, everything feels adrift in a sea of crossover labels. Oh, this book’s part of Dark Reign! Well that’s cool...too bad it doesn’t have much context beyond the basic premise of the event, and almost nothing in any story ever seems to have any consequences or repercussions beyond that individual story! It’s this feeling of futility that really makes it hard to enjoy Dark Reign, especially since it was conceived with no scope in mind. They really wanted it to feel less like an event, and more like just something happening in the world of the characters. And that’s cool and everything, but...

It doesn’t work.

The reason why events even work at all is because, love it or hate it, once it’s over, things are going to continue on without having to tie into it. People will be relieved, they’ll pick their series back up, and they won’t be constantly bothered with some extraneous story that doesn’t focus on the character or team they really care about. Plus, the company can compile the event into a couple of trade paperbacks and wring a little more profit from them, since that’s why they did the event in the first place anyway.

When you have an event so nebulous and yet so ubiquitous, it really shows the weakness of the event mindset. Stories function better when the villains, who are built up as being detestable -- you want to see the heroes get one up on them, you want to see the big bad guy punched in the gut and brought low -- are defeated before they become too much and it just becomes depressing and miserable.

When a story drags on for over a year, readers become used to it. It becomes a new normal, and that’s a depressing reality, especially when the villains are constantly being built up for readers to hate them. You have to give readers something, and that something increases in scope with every evil, detestable act the villains commit. You have to balance it out with victories, even small ones, so that hope can be maintained and it doesn’t become a drudgy slog.

And I’ll say this too: Alan Moore was right in the fundamental message of Watchmen. Which I will also say I hated as a story, I think it’s overrated miserable crap, and it’s fodder for the endlessly pretentious to harp on when they think they’re too good for superhero comics. Like I said before: fuck you. Call a spade a spade and be done with it.

But the fundamental message was this: it’s better for superheroes to fight supervillains than it is for there to be no superheroes or villains, because then all you’ve got are politicians and shitty regular humans constantly trying for a pathetic little bit of what they think is power over each other.

And fundamentally, we read superhero comics not to see bureaucracy, politics, or the inherent shittiness of people. We read them because they are a modern mythology, of heroes we vicariously identify with, whom we join on their adventures through the medium of comics. We see them at their high and low points. We join them in their moments of tragedy and triumph both, and we delight in those highs and understand those lows.

When we are enjoying superhero comics, we can fly above any unhappiness or inadequacy that our real lives give us, and in those moments, we are invincible. It is because of this that superhero fans are so passionate about their heroes.

There has always been some element of things like government and military shit in superhero comics. The fact that they really kindled as a genre during World War II is not lost on me. But since shortly after 2000, Marvel tried really hard to militarize superheroes and brought in a heavy governmental angle too. SHIELD was promoted and became more overblown than it was in the age of the superspy. Suddenly, everything had to revolve around one or the other, and it was not a wise or welcome turn.

So I will say this for Dark Reign: it illustrated very well, especially in tie-in storylines like Avengers: The Initiative, why militarized superheroes and government lies are not a good thing to have around. Sure, we shouldn’t need to have it spelled out for us, but it’s nice to have that precedent set that no, superheroes shouldn’t be government-controlled, no matter who is in power, because even if we have an administration that isn’t overtly malevolent, that won’t last. Inevitably, someone will get power that doesn’t deserve it, which is something especially painful to say in this day and age.

But having Norman Osborn be constantly, repeatedly built up to be even more of a piece of total shit than we already knew him to be...was a huge mistake. Because we knew that, despite everything, despite Marvel’s tendency for that 2000s “kill-’em-all” attitude and despite their unending contempt for readers, shown very well with Civil War alone...

We knew nothing was going to come of it.

We knew Norman Osborn was going to get the easy way out, survive the whole ordeal, and be locked away somewhere until someone wanted to bring him back as the Green Goblin or something.

And you can’t do that with this kind of storyline.

You can’t make it a shitty, real world-feeling storyline like this, mired in politics, bureaucracy, militaristic bullshit, and the bad guys winning, not to mention taking things way too far in tone with everything from rape to cannibalism, and not have the big bad guy die to resolve it.

You cannot, with the unlimited scope of superhero comics, leave someone like that alive. They have caused, directly or indirectly, horrific things to happen, and they committed crimes that are completely inexcusable; if you want them to stick around, if they’re the kind of “love to hate them” villain, then you have to do less to make them the kind of person that even the best and most heroic would say “yeah, nothing of value would be lost if you just offed that guy.”

Because it’s pretty fucking unsatisfying and pretty god damn smug when you try to have the good guys act like they’re the better people for not just ending evil -- and this is a fictional evil, so it’s absolutely, completely, and objectively evil -- but every reader of every age knows that doesn’t do anything at all to fix the things that person did. It doesn’t bring back people from the dead, it doesn’t undo their trauma, it doesn’t heal their injuries. It doesn’t repair the damage done to the world at large.

When you have someone who essentially steals a position of great power and influence, they must have absolute accountability. Which...is also pretty relevant to modern life, but painful to have to spell out.

The thing is, with Dark Avengers, they could have balanced this out a bit. The characters in that series (who were almost invariably as written completely different people in any other series) were pretty fucked-up, but they were often treated as more nuanced, three-dimensional people, with only a couple of exceptions. I’m looking at you, Sentry.

In Dark Avengers, even the team of villains and grey area antihero types didn’t know how to deal with Norman. Which was a bit stupid, since any one of them probably could have destroyed him effortlessly, but it made for a more psychological conflict. Unfortunately, the glue holding it together was the Sentry...one of Marvel’s worst characters and worst character ideas, who comes off as a bad idea somebody had while stoned, but who became a high-profile character anyway.

He’s not altogether the worst idea ever, but he’s up there. Conceptually, it’s pretty interesting to examine a high-powered superhero everyone somehow forgot about, but in actual execution, the Sentry is just a crazy twat. He’s impossible to like, he’s uninteresting because he’s overpowered, and nobody knows how to write him well, because his fundamental premise is one of not understanding his character. It’s obvious that whoever thought up the Sentry was someone who didn’t understand how to write Superman, didn’t know what made Superman great as a character, and thought it was ludicrous that such a character could exist in the Marvel Universe.

But it’s not. There are cosmic-level characters all over Marvel’s whole cosmos. And while superheroes are all about the action, that’s not all there is to them. How hard a character can punch something isn’t really what the character should be about, despite superheroics tending to revolve around resolving problems with fighting and powers. If you don’t have a context for those fights, it’s just meaningless, hollow visuals. If a character doesn’t have a motivation to do something that tells you something about that character, you probably won’t care about that character.

How hard does Superman punch? As hard as he needs to. How much can he lift? As much as he needs to. What can he do? As much as he needs to. That’s why Superman is an excellent character who has stood the test of time, and the Sentry is a terrible character who only pops up when people think they have something clever they can do with him.

His function in Dark Avengers, as in Dark Reign, is Norman’s imagined ace in the hole. He uses Sentry as a bully, to just casually destroy anyone or anything that gets in his way, and he constantly holds that threat over everyone...except when the story needs him not to do that, which it does often. Sentry is fairly easy to take out, but when it matters, he’s impossible to get rid of, and for no reason that really develops him as a character or makes him more interesting. He’s a schizophrenic idiot and contributes essentially nothing to the story. He is a placeholder until or unless he’s used as a deus ex machina, when he becomes insufferable because he’s nothing but a crutch for weak writing.

The worst and most glaring part of it is that Norman is batshit crazy, and it’s frankly unbelievable that he is somehow able to handle the Sentry, by using Sentry’s crazy against him. It’s just unbelievable, and it’s ridiculous that it goes on as long as it does -- a year, which in superhero comics is an eternity.

Sentry has no pathos and no real levels to him. All the depth he has is manufactured, artificial, and wholly “who cares” at every point. The one series that ever managed to make me care about him was the whimsical series The Age of the Sentry, done in a spirit of fun and real, palpable love for bygone eras of comics, and that was a series of stories told about the character and of dubious veracity.

In Dark Reign, he’s written like Superman when Superman is badly written: a crutch to quickly resolve stories the writer has no idea how to get himself out of, or alternatively the one that has to be taken out as soon as possible because the writer can’t write, usually because he wants to show that the person doing it is a serious threat. Either way, it doesn’t work.

Cul-de-Sac Reign

In a similarly dead-end sort of way, most of the tie-in stories are nothing but plot cul-de-sacs. They can’t actually advance the plot appreciably until editorial wants it to advance...so instead, they just end up being prolonged exercises in futility.

For the same reason I hated The X-Files, in which the protagonists were constantly prevented from accomplishing anything by increasingly ridiculous plot devices, I hate pointless stories. The Young Avengers miniseries is pointless, for introducing characters who all but came from nowhere and vanished back there, in a worthless plot where characters were inspired into complete inaction despite having a resolution to the entire event available. Similarly, the Elektra miniseries takes the widely-hated horrible joke of a character, makes her somehow more unlikable, and wastes everyone’s time with a story that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing but character destruction, mainly of Elektra and Wolverine.

Who is, by the way, now absolutely complicit in multiple premeditated murders of people justifiably pissed off at Elektra being a complete piece of shit. Not that they bring this up with any of the gravity it should have -- just look at any time Rick Remender writes Wolverine or, for that matter, anyone in any series. Or don’t. No one should have to read Remender’s pretentious garbage.

Even the Punisher, whom I can’t stand, is dicked around by Dark Reign’s insistence to avoid having things happen. It’s pretty shitty when multiple issues of his title advertised him going after various members of the Dark Avengers to take them down, and he wasn’t even able to make any significant impact with anything he did. He couldn’t even take down Norman, who had no believable excuse for being able to escape mortal danger! You know, for all I give superhero comics shit for killing off characters needlessly, having the Punisher actually take out Norman -- or Sentry -- would have actually been shocking, and that could have led to so much more interesting conflicts and storylines about what this means, if it was right if the other heroes were thinking about it (and they were), and they could have had the Dark Avengers scrambling to try and hold onto their legitimacy and almost make it...but be defeated by the good guys, who prove their goodness and show the public what they bought into.

And can we just talk about the animal cruelty that popped up from time to time? It seemed really overt and conspicuous, and it’s absolutely not okay. Extreme violence is never okay, even in superhero comics (or maybe especially in superhero comics), but animal cruelty is really going a step past a step past too far.

Get your shit together, Marvel.

To say nothing of the inherent lameness of the Hood, probably the absolute worst character to be introduced and featured prominently in these past couple of decades of superhero disaster. It’s some lame whiner of a shit garbage character that dresses in everyday clothes but wears a red cloak over it and, of course, dual wields guns. Because that doesn’t look stupid or anything. And of course his background is basically the one thing I despise more than almost anything else in tired-ass writing cliches: straight people baby daddy issues. Please go fuck yourself. Nobody cares about the asshole who knocked up some bint who shit out a kid and became a by-the-numbers deadbeat dad. Because they’re lame.

The underlying basic concept, that of someone finding a magical cloak that gives them powers, is wondrous and fun. It’s just that the Hood himself is the exact opposite of wondrous and fun. He comes off, every time, like some asinine mary sue author insertion character you hate the moment they’re introduced. It’s cool when Doctor Doom shows that he’s not only a scientific genius, he’s also a skilled sorceror. It’s not so cool when some asshole dumbasses his way through magical power because of some cape he found randomly that anyone could have found.

It makes him seem even worse, and even more of a character almost metaplot levels of desperate to intimidate that he keeps trying to spook the people around him because they don’t take him seriously. Here’s an idea: create an imposing costume. If you can’t do that, you really can’t expect to be taken seriously. If you can’t even make imposing fashion choices or bring together an ensemble that will impact others, you have no business expecting them to just take you at face value because you’re wearing a red cape that you have matched with literally nothing else you’re wearing.

Plot, Unmoving

But none of it really adds anything to Dark Reign, and it really pisses me off to see stories where direct resolution was available, but heroes couldn’t actually do what they would logically or reasonably do...because editorial wanted to stretch out the event to make it seem like it wasn’t an event.

The whole concept of “Dark Avengers” is made even more stupid by the fact that they’re wearing obviously outdated costumes. As cool as Moonstone looks in Ms. Marvel’s old outfit, she also looks like she just stepped out of a disco. And while the different lineups of Avengers have sometimes been really strange and seemingly random over the years, you can’t expect me to believe that literally nobody noticed how awkward this one was, and how their costumes were almost all completely out of date and out of touch with the figures who are well-known public figures.

There’s also this weird aversion to the actual heroes confronting the people masquerading as them, because Norman’s good at PR spin. I’m sorry?! This just doesn’t make sense, and it keeps making less sense when some of the heroes are actually willing to strike out on their own to kill Norman, rather than to actually make it public that they are being impersonated...which makes it even more ridiculous when you consider that some of the people being impersonated have public identities.

The Dark X-Men team was actually was more plausible, in large part because much of the public didn’t know the X-Men well, and also because there actually was an actual X-Man in the group. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to have Wolverine really in the Dark Avengers, and maybe have the X-Men or some other group have to work with his dangerous and unpredictable son Daken to get one over on him and take him out, thereby reducing the power level of the team significantly?

But no, they couldn’t have that. The X-Men had to have their own inane events, and Wolverine, despite being a dumpster fire of a character at this point, is somehow sacrosanct for vicarious dick-waggling of insecure writers who live through him just like the same pack of wankers do for Batman.

There’s also this bizarre insistence that somehow, despite people overtly getting plenty of proof that the “Dark Avengers” aren’t who they say they are, and some of them are committing pretty serious crimes in costume, in a day and age where everyone has a camera and a microphone and there’s recording everywhere...nobody gets any real dirt on them until they write it into Spider-Man for Peter Parker to do it.

I think it’s great Peter does it. But at the same time...how exactly is it that a top-level investigative journalist isn’t able to do it for a small eternity, and how exactly is it that it doesn’t have more serious repercussions in the public eye? It may just be the chaotic nature of the incoherent narrative, and I’m just not seeing it in any sort of cohesive order, but it sure seems like one of the many plot elements that doesn’t really matter until editorial decides it suddenly has any bearing on anything.

And I’ll just address the elephant in the room: the Dark Avengers lineup is not, to be totally honest, the most powerful or able he could have assembled. Most of them being mentally unstable doesn’t exactly help the plausibility. Given, the Marvel Universe tends towards more street power level and less cosmic, but there are plenty of real hard hitters that have been in the Avengers’ membership over the years, not to mention their foes that a villain supposedly so resourceful should have been able to recruit.

It’s basically just a sort of take on the Masters of Evil or the Sinister Six or something. And I have to say again that having an actual hero, or even a fallen hero desperate for redemption, would be a vast improvement. Instead, we only have elements like that in side stories or tie-ins that go nowhere and are easily missed by the central narrative.

Additionally, Norman Osborn is not the most believable as a long-term leader, even if he does use strongarm tactics, blackmail, and manipulation to get his way. He’s just not that smart, certainly not as much as he’d have to be in order to keep his team of people together and not killing him, and incidentally avoiding anyone else outside the team and thus his control similarly killing him. This is where I’ll bring Doctor Doom up again, since when he gathered a group of people together, he had a damn good reason and, as a reader, you could believe he could actually control them...or at the very least, keep them from posing a serious mortal threat to him.

Members of the Dark Avengers fight other teams and heroes, but rarely do they ever bother to clash en masse with any other group to any narrative end. There’s such a feeling of futility that pervades it all, that if you read any story supposedly tying into it, you start to expect it to go nowhere and accomplish nothing. Because even if it seems to actually make a difference, everything it does is either handwaved, ignored, or somehow doesn’t work into the next story you read under the Dark Reign banner.

Dark Reign is an event, make no mistake. It has a central storyline that we should be seeing unfold with every tie-in and every crossover. Instead, Marvel’s complete aversion to admitting what it is leaves us with a meandering, disjointed tale that promises something unique and superior and instead leaves us thinking of what it could have been, and probably should have been, instead.

#dark reign #marvel comics #writing critique #comic review #critique

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odogaronfang · 6 years

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(Psst, I challenge you to write down every Four Swords headcanon that you haven't already shared so far).

uhhhh this took me a while bc sometimes it’s hard for me to remember what headcanons i have without specific prompts, but here are some i can think of off the top of my head

-vio and red both have a huge sweet tooth (and especially vio, though he won’t always admit it). though they disagree on chocolate- red likes milk, vio likes it DARK, like 80-90%- mostly they share the same taste, and if they buy or bake cookies or something, they have a joint stash that no one else is allowed to touch. like, if you take even a single crumb, they’ll know, and they’ll get you back for it. it’s a bad idea. the others learned the hard way.

-ironically and perhaps paradoxically, vio takes his coffee black and his tea plain. no cream, no sugar, nothing. no one understands how he does it. (it’s probably because he’s always eating something sweet along with it.)

-green and red share a favorite season: autumn. blue’s favorite is summer, and shadow and vio both like winter; vio because of the weather and the constellations that are visible, and shadow because he likes the dreary weather. edgelord.

-you know those videos where the people are spinning pens really quickly, doing all sorts of tricks with them that are almost too fast to follow? that’s shadow, with knives. it’s terrifying, honestly. he can get you with a throwing knife before you ever knew it left his hand. he likes showing off. he’s also very good at the knife game, especially because if he’s about to stab himself he can just turn his hand incorporeal.

-relevant to that is shadow’s propensity for cheating (or sometimes not flat-out cheating but dishonest strategies). it’s very easy to not play by the rules and get away with it, when you grew up in a place that lives and breathes deception. also magic helps.

-shadow, once he’s settled in a bit, ends up instructing red in the proper wielding of magic. the ability to naturally use magic is very rare in hylians, so there are precious few others that would be able to help, and why bother those busy busy people when there’s a lifelong caster living in the room next to yours? of course, it takes a little adjusting for red, as controlling elemental magic via proxy is quite a bit different from directly wielding dark magic. still, he can at least teach the fundamentals, and then help with the adaptations based on what he knows. he focuses the most on teaching fire. he likes fire.

-shadow physically cannot feel differences in temperature. it’s suspected it’s just because he’s made differently, biologically. but whatever the reason, it’s kind of unnerving, because he could have his hand on a heated stove and not notice until he smelled it burning. and then he could dip into the shadows for a quick second and come back out good as new. he likes to freak out the people in the castle kitchens by doing it sometimes.

-i’ve said it a thousand times by now, i think, but shadow is definitely one to go and psychologically toy with people he’s fighting. like, in the prior point i mentioned how he can regenerate- he does that a lot in battle. granted, he needs the energy to do it, but it’s so incredibly fun to him to get his arm nearly hacked off by an enemy, only to melt into the ground and pop up behind the guy unscathed. he’s probably convinced a soldier or two that they were going insane. he also REALLY likes to clone himself; he does it in the game, actually, but as a more recent example think of the hyrule warriors dark link. all the clones are insubstantial and unhittable- you can only make them dissipate, and only temporarily. it’s like one of those games where you have to guess which cup is hiding the coin, only in this game the coin will kill you if you don’t find it quickly enough. sometimes he’ll do it casually, when there’s no real danger, but he’ll only do it partially, so if you look at him it seems like you’re seeing double, or triple, or whatever he’s in the mood for. in general he just has a good time confusing the hell out of people.

-out of all the archers in the guard, only a few others can match vio’s accuracy. it could be chalked down to practice, or to skill, or to a blessing from the goddess as a chosen hero, but the fact of the matter is that the odds of him missing a target are very, VERY low. but he will deliberately miss sometimes, during battle, to fool foes into underestimating him. (red does that too.)

-i guess this isn’t entirely character-specific, but i imagine that at some point, a few new types of arrows are invented (that are basically my takes on elemental arrows from the games). one is an incendiary, and doesn’t require supplemental magic. on its most basic level, how it works is that there are two or three compartments in the arrowhead, depending on its type, separated by thin glass; the force of impact with an object snaps the glass, mixing the components, and the resulting reaction causes an explosion. think of it like a glow stick that also kills people. the elemental arrows are more designed to hold magic until the seal is shattered, also on impact. the arrowheads are hollowed, made with a crystal that when treated and cut correctly acts as a sink for magic. those arrows require input from magic, of course, in one of two ways: they can be charged where the strength of the target element flows strong and freely, such as infusing fire at death mountain, or they can be manually filled by a magic-user. charging them at specific locations is something done far in advance and can be generally inconvenient, so manual input is much preferred, but not always realistic. (the royal mages get paid to breathe, practically.)

-drawing on my arrow worldbuilding, finally here’s some character stuff pertaining to it, even if it’s pretty obvious. if they aren’t on the front lines, red and shadow are sent back to the archer lines to help charge extra arrows. shadow is especially in demand with them, because there’s no natural source of dark magic in hyrule strong enough for the crystals to draw from, so the shadow-arrows are very rare; the benefit of that is that enemies can hardly prepare for them. so there are times during battle preparations when they pull him to sit there and be a human energy well. and as only the most skilled archers are trusted with the special arrows (to prevent accidents), sometimes one or both of them will stand back with vio and have some fun mid-battle banter. they like to pick out targets for vio to shoot at.

-save for maybe blue (and not always, even then), all of them rely more on speed than brute strength when fighting. it’s why they wear very light armor; mostly leather, with very occasional plate if they’re expecting something especially brutal.

-they (read: blue) like to tease vio about hanging back with the archer lines. they (blue) especially like to challenge him to a spar in their down time, usually with a line like “wouldn’t want you to forget how to use a sword”. he hasn’t, of course. he can still knock just about anyone on their ass.

-red uses the elemental rod for seemingly inappropriate purposes. like setting it to fire to roast smores, or ice to make ice cream or snow cones or something. people like to gripe about abusing power and mismanagement of resources, but they sure aren’t complaining when the temperature exceeds 100 and red’s got the ice rod going.

#four swords #vio link #blue link #shadow link #red link #green link #sorry these are taking so long #and especially this one #my memory is really bad sometimes and i had to think to remember some lmao #also ! i hope everyone enjoys me throwing random unnecessary science into things #(eyes emoji at the arrows part)#its an idea ive had for a while #anyway im sure i have more hcs laying around in my brain #i just wanted to get these up #my headcanons

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