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shelovescontrol91 · 3 years

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Writer/director Kay Cannon (Pitch Perfect, Blockers) has re-envisioned Cinderella as a modern musical with a heroine at its center who has ambitions of a career in a world that just wants her to find a prince to marry. Ella (pop music superstar Camila Cabello) wants to design beautiful ball gowns while her stepmother (Tony Award winner Idina Menzel) unsympathetically attempts to squash her dreams, until her fairy godmother Fab G (Billy Porter) shows up to help boost the confidence she already has in her heart.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Cabello talked about tackling her first lead feature film role, wanting to be responsible with her platform, believing in herself, her own Cinderella story, the music she’s currently dancing to, getting to put on the ballgown and slippers, the first day of shooting vs. the last day, and her desire to continue doing acting projects.

Collider: When the possibility of playing Cinderella in a big movie musical came your way, especially knowing that fairy tales and particularly princess fairytale is they’re often old-fashioned, misogynistic and sexist, what needed to be there in the character for you to feel like she was someone that you wanted to represent?

CAMILA CABELLO: I feel like I try to be as responsible as I can with my platform and putting forth messages that I stand by and feel like right to me. That is why I did the film. It’s just really empowering for women, and really empowering for me. It doesn’t have these messages that are this black and white way of looking at people, where they’re either good or they’re evil. It just has this complexity that I think is really beautiful.

You’ve had great success as a singer and performer, in that sense, but this was the first time you’re leading a film, as an actress. How did you find your inner confidence, to show up on set and lead this cast, as an actor, doing something that’s outside of what you’ve become known for?

CABELLO: I think that it was about just letting go of my ego, as much as I can, and just trying to have fun with it. Obviously, there were times where I felt nervous and I felt the pressure, but at the end of the day, it’s something that I chose to do because I believe in it. Clearly, I’m here because Kay Cannon, our director, and James Corden believe in me and they wanted me to be this character. I’m here for a reason, so I’m just gonna believe in that and have a good time.

Did you also have a real movie star moment, where you felt like you really owned that, when you were on these extravagant sets, in these costumes, and working alongside Pierce Brosnan? Did you feel the movie magic, in that way?

CABELLO: I feel like because it was my first movie, it was obviously really, really thrilling. And also, you don’t wanna feel like that, when you’re making a movie. You wanna feel grounded and present and not psych yourself out too much. I tried to just keep it as chill as I could, which is hard when there’s Pierce Brosnan in there, but I tried.

In a lot of ways, your own life journey feels like a real Cinderella story. Do you feel that way? Have you really felt a sense of that?

CABELLO: I definitely feel that. I feel like my story is a total Cinderella story. My life changed so much. I was just in Miami, with no connections, really, to anybody in the music industry. And one day, I auditioned for X-Factor and my life changed, and my life keeps changing. I definitely have been like the underdog, for sure, many times, so I totally relate to that story.

What’s it like to go from being that underdog to seeing how you inspire other young people?

CABELLO: It’s amazing. I just feel super lucky that life worked out that way. There’s just a lot of gratitude. There were a lot of really fortunate events happening.

A lot of actors talk about not wanting to watch their own performances, and you’ve said that you don’t like to listen to your own songs. How hard is it to then watch a movie that you’re acting, singing and dancing? Is that even more difficult to watch?

CABELLO: Totally. It’s very difficult. I had a lot of fun watching it because I was watching it with my castmates and my director, and we formed a little family together. And my acting coach, Anthony Meindl, was there too, so it was fun to enjoy that with the people that I made the film with, but it is, by no means, fun to watch yourself from all of these super up-close angles.

What is the strangest or most memorable place you’ve been, when you’ve heard one of your own songs start playing?

CABELLO: Hmm. I don’t know. There hasn’t really been any weird places. Out of people’s cars, on the street, is really interesting.

You’ve never been in an elevator with other people, when your own music has come on?

CABELLO: No. That would be terrible.

It’s hard to know how to handle a fame until you’re in it. What has most surprised you about yourself, having had the spotlight shown on you for some time now?

CABELLO: Honestly, how much that is not really the fulfilling or meaningful part of what I do. Even though it might look like it because that’s the part that most people see, the behind the scenes of making the music and the people that I make it with, and also the stuff that has nothing to do with my career at all, is really fulfilling and meaningful. The actual fame part is not really a big thing that I think about.

Has it taught you anything about your own strength that you didn’t expect to realize?

CABELLO: As I get older, I my sense of self gets stronger and stronger. I’m really lucky that I have an amazing family and amazing parents. My mom has been with me for a lot of this, so I never really lost myself in that, which is more of a testament to the people around me.

You have great comedic timing that seems very natural, which is not necessarily an easy thing to pull off. Do you feel that not taking yourself too seriously helps you with just jumping in and finding the comedy?

CABELLO: Totally. Hopefully, I’ll do more comedy. I think it’ll get easier and easier. Obviously, I really cared about, and care about, this film, so I wanted to do a good job. But I think that, at my best, I am pretty funny.

You’re definitely a powerhouse, in your own right, but what’s it like to get to duet with someone like Idina Menzel? As a singer, when you’re told that you’re going to be belting it out with her, is it intimidating or is it fun and exciting?

CABELLO: It’s so fun and exciting. I love her. Obviously, she’s so talented, but also I feel like we’ve connected so much during this whole process that it was just really fun.

Had you ever found yourself belting out any of her songs, before doing this?

CABELLO: Of course. “Into the Unknown and “Defying Gravity” are some of my favorite songs.

I especially enjoyed the big musical performances in this, at the beginning and the end, with “Rhythm Nation” and “Let’s Get Loud.” Both of those are songs that just make you want to get up and dance and sing along. Do you have songs that do that for you? Is there a song you always put on when you want to dance around the house?

CABELLO: Yeah. Tight now I’m listening to a lot of Reggaeton and a lot of J Balvin, a lot of Bad Bunny, and a lot of Rosalia. That always makes me want to dance around.

How much fun was it to get to do the big performance numbers, with all of the staging? What would surprise people about what it takes to pull off something like that?

CABELLO: It’s amazing. That last finale number and that week was a real movie magic moment. It just felt very like, “Oh, my God!” The best part of a live musical is having a huge ensemble singing and dancing and doing this amazing choreography. It was a lot of rehearsals, after set days and between set days. It was definitely a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun.

If we got a glimpse into the blooper reel for this movie, what kind of things would we see?

CABELLO: You would probably see a lot of unprofessional laughter. It’s hard for me to say anything specific on the spot right now, but a lot of the moments with the comedians, like James Acaster, Romesh [Ranganathan], James Corden and Rob Beckett, were really funny.

Your Cinderella is a fashion designer and has a great sense of style. Are you the same way? Have you always had a great sense of style, or are there fashion disasters in your past that you wish you could forget and that you wish didn’t live on social media now?

CABELLO: I’ve definitely had a lot of fashion disasters because I started doing this at 15, which is crazy. I’ve gotten more of a sense of style, as I’ve gotten older. Now, I just find it a lot more fun than I used to before. It was like a chore to me. I didn’t get joy from it, but now I really do. So, I relate to her more, in that sense.

I love that this is also a Cinderella who doesn’t change who she is or give up her life for a prince. How important was that to you? Is that something that you had conversations about and that really mattered?

CABELLO: Yeah, that was one of the things I loved about the script. She’s not really giving up her life for the prince because she knows that she would just be unhappy. She wouldn’t be able to be herself. At the end of the day, you wanna be in a relationship with somebody where you can be yourself. You don’t have to give up a part of you for them. So, that was one of my favorite parts of the script. I think she’s a real bad-ass for that.

One of the things that doesn’t change with the story of Cinderella is that you still get to wear a gorgeous ballgown and have glass slippers. What did you think of her look for the ball and getting to put on that incredible gown?

CABELLO: It was awesome. Ellen Mirojnick (the costume designer) did such an amazing job with that iridescent, non-traditional version of the Cinderella gown and the slippers. I loved it. It was gorgeous.

Was there a scene that was the most technical to do?

CABELLO: There was the running scene that we had to do, over and over again. That definitely required a lot of endurance because I was just running, all day. That was definitely a little hard.

Was there a most fun day on set?

CABELLO: There were different most fun days. The day with Billy [Porter], doing the Fab G sequence was super fun and magical. And also the finale was really fun. The last song was super fun.

You’ve said that you don’t know if you could have done this with anyone other than Kay Cannon. What was it about her and her vision? What was it like to really establish that collaborative and creative relationship together?

CABELLO: I feel so fortunate. Any other person that I work with now, it’s gonna be such a high bar because she’s just such a great person and an amazing collaborator. She’s so passionate and such a good person. I think that shows in the script, her emotional awareness, her sensitivity, and her desire to stand up for people and give people a voice. She’s like the character. She’s like Cinderella. She’s a bad-ass.

What do you remember about the first day on set and shooting the first scene you had, and how did that compare to the last day that you had on set and doing the last scene for the movie?

CABELLO: The first day, I was insanely nervous. I was so nervous. And the last day, I was not. The last day, I was just having so much fun. At that point, I was just like, “This has been the best experience ever,” and I wasn’t nervous anymore.

Now that you’ve had this experience, where would you like to take your acting career next? Are you already reading a lot of scripts? Have you thought about the type of things you’d like to do?

CABELLO: I haven’t because I went into making my album after the movie. But I would love to do more acting roles, for sure.

Is there dream project, a specific genre, or a character that you’d like to play?

CABELLO: I literally couldn’t tell you. I’d love to do more comedy. I think drama would be really fun. Action would be really fun. Thriller would be really fun. There’s so much. There’s a lot there to explore it.

Cinderella is available to stream at Amazon Prime Video.

#camila cabello #cinderella

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tessandscottforever18 · 3 years

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Sept 12

Camila Cabello on the Responsibility of Playing ‘Cinderella’ and Updating the Classic Story

In a lot of ways, your own life journey feels like a real Cinderella story. Do you feel that way? Have you really felt a sense of that?

What’s it like to go from being that underdog to seeing how you inspire other young people?

CABELLO: It’s amazing. I just feel super lucky that life worked out that way. There’s just a lot of gratitude. There were a lot of really fortunate events happening.

What is the strangest or most memorable place you’ve been, when you’ve heard one of your own songs start playing?

CABELLO: Hmm. I don’t know. There hasn’t really been any weird places. Out of people’s cars, on the street, is really interesting.

You’ve never been in an elevator with other people, when your own music has come on?

CABELLO: No. That would be terrible.

It’s hard to know how to handle a fame until you’re in it.

What has most surprised you about yourself, having had the spotlight shown on you for some time now?

Has it taught you anything about your own strength that you didn’t expect to realize?

CABELLO: It’s so fun and exciting. I love her. Obviously, she’s so talented, but also I feel like we’ve connected so much during this whole process that it was just really fun.

Had you ever found yourself belting out any of her songs, before doing this?

CABELLO: Of course. “Into the Unknown and “Defying Gravity” are some of my favorite songs.

CABELLO: Yeah. Tight now I’m listening to a lot of Reggaeton and a lot of J Balvin, a lot of Bad Bunny, and a lot of Rosalia. That always makes me want to dance around.

How much fun was it to get to do the big performance numbers, with all of the staging? What would surprise people about what it takes to pull off something like that?

If we got a glimpse into the blooper reel for this movie, what kind of things would we see?

Was there a scene that was the most technical to do?

CABELLO: There was the running scene that we had to do, over and over again. That definitely required a lot of endurance because I was just running, all day. That was definitely a little hard.

Was there a most fun day on set?

CABELLO: There were different most fun days. The day with Billy [Porter], doing the Fab G sequence was super fun and magical. And also the finale was really fun. The last song was super fun.

What do you remember about the first day on set and shooting the first scene you had, and how did that compare to the last day that you had on set and doing the last scene for the movie?

Now that you’ve had this experience, where would you like to take your acting career next? Are you already reading a lot of scripts? Have you thought about the type of things you’d like to do?

CABELLO: I haven’t because I went into making my album after the movie. But I would love to do more acting roles, for sure.

Is there dream project, a specific genre, or a character that you’d like to play?

#camila cabello #cinderella #cinderella promo #collider #interview: collider

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bonestructureandcontempt · 3 years

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Well, there's a new Justice League coming out and it's got me thinking about the DCEU movies that have come before it and Tiermaker is my new favorite way to waste time online so I decided to rank the movies. My opinions of some of these have changed over time, probably BvS being the biggest example, but just running them down:

Birds of Prey: The pinnacle. A movie I would recommend even to non comic book/superhero fans. Just a great movie.

Aquaman: A movie I absolutely adore. You know, a lot of superhero movies these days like to play with genre and break outside of their normal conventions and Aquaman I feel does it the most successfully. It feels a little bit like a Stephen Sommers adventure flick in the vein of The Mummy. This and Wonder Woman also do a great job at taking the sort of aesthetic and film language of Zack Snyder's films and sorta doing their own spin on it.

Wonder Woman: I love this movie for a lot of the same reaons I love Aquaman. It breaks out of the normal conventions of a superhero movie with its WWI setting, Gal Gadot and Chris Pine just have infectious chemistry, and there's really spectacular set pieces. Patty Jenkins really knocked it out of the park directing her second ever feature film.

Batman Vs Superman: Yeah, this is probably gonna be the part that surprises people. It's taken me years to come to this, but I don't think BvS is a bad movie. In fact, I think it's actually a pretty decent movie AS LONG AS YOU'RE WATCHING THE ULTIMATE EDITION. Do not under any circumstances watch the theatrical cut, it removes actual vital context for why things are happening as well as whole scenes that humanize Clark Kent or remove him saving people as Superman at a critical moment. Batman killing people doesn't bother me anymore, it makes sense in the story they were trying to tell even if Snyder's bombast kinda cranks it up to absurd levels. He is a villain, a fallen hero. Superman not being the most cheerful guy also makes a lot of sense in context. You have to understand, this movie serves not only as a sequel to Man of Steel, but a means to address some of the criticisms people had with it within the fiction of the movie itself. And by george, I think it does a good job of it. The Knightmare scene is still a very awkard interlude. I realize it's supposed to be a sequel hook but in the middle of the movie, Zack?

Shazam: Very fun and funny, I appreciate seeing the same universe as some of the darker movies but through a child's eyes. And of course it would be more lighthearted in tone. Also appreciate it embracing some of the weirder aspects of the DC universe as shown in Shazam's early comics. I mean for heaven's sake, Mister Mind shows up. A literal sentient caterpillar.

Wonder Woman 1984: You know this movie caught a lot of flack for some very valid reasons, but I know that Patty Jenkins wanted to make a sort of throwback to the Richard Donner style and I think she succeeded and I enjoyed watching it. Once again, Gal Gadot and Chris Pine's chemistry shines through, Kristen Wiig is great and Pedro Pascal alone is worth watching the movie for. I thought it was funny how the first quarter of the movie could easily be mistaken for a movie about sweet nerdy Barbara Minerva falling in love with the classy, confident Diana Prince. Almost wish that was the movie instead.

Man of Steel: So you know how I said how Batman killing people doesn't bother me because it makes sense in the context of the story? I'm just gonna go ahead and say the same about the thing everyone thinks about when it comes to this movie. It makes sense in context. He clearly doesn't want to, but he feels like there's no other option so he just acts. Anyway, my biggest problem with this movie is the editing. By which I mean the sequencing of scenes doesn't make a lot of sense and it makes the movie seem really disjointed and like it's being played out of order, particularly in the scenes where Clark Kent and Lois Lane interact. I don't think Henry Cavill is a bad actor and I've warmed up to him as Superman for this cinematic universe. However, the face he makes when he takes flight for the first time haunts me to this day and I just wanna know what his direction was when they shot it. And just as a sidenote, Henry Cavill's hair is the best in this movie. I hate that it's slicked in BvS, It makes him look scary and mean. I also like how weird and alien Krypton looks. Russell Crowe is a great Jor-El and Michael Shannon is a great Zod. But overall this movie is pretty mid to me, a stepping stone to the vastly improved BvS: Ultimate Edition

Justice League: I almost didn't include this because I wanted to wait for the Snyder Cut but I figure what the hell, I'll grade the theatrical cut on its own merits because I've seen it a couple times. It's probably not a good thing that I only found the CGI tolerable on a TV screen. It really does look like a PS3 game in its big action set pieces. The differences between the material shot by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon is like night and day and I'll tell you I have had my fill of Whedonisms. You can just keep that shit in the early Avenger flicks. The only reason I can say it kinda sorta works is the cast of the League have great chemistry that sells it.

Suicide Squad: An irredeemably bad movie. The absolute worst. Looks like shit, badly edited, story makes zero sense. Much like I consider MoS to be a stepping stone to the vastly superior BvS, this is that to BoP, but like, MORE. Which is a shame because it has a talented ensemble cast but it does not save this one.

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mingi-bubu · 4 years

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A Subpar Guide To Unine

I was inspired by this video, their new album coming out on May 6, 2020, and also yanjuniverse saying something about not knowing them and wondering if there was a guide or something so yeah!

anyway please enjoy my nonsense it’s fun and there are a lot of songs and performances that I recommend looking at!

if anything is unclear, send me a message or something! i just want everyone to love Unine

Unine is the second nine member group to be created by Idol Producer/Youth With You/QCYN/whatever you want to call the competition show. The group is made up of Li Wenhan, Li Zhenning, Yao Mingming, Guanyue or Guan Yue, Jiayi, Hu Chunyang, Xia Hanyu, Chen Youwei, and He Changxi.

The official fandom name is Nano. Unine debuted with their EP 《UNLOCK》 on May 6, 2019. Their album 《U-Night Flight》 will be coming out on their one year anniversary May 6, 2020.

As someone commented on YouTube under one of their videos, I can’t remember which one please don’t ask, they are a more vocal line leaning group whereas Nine Percent was more rap line leaning. I think it’s neat to see the contrast between what people want to see in any given year and how different their music styles are.

Some members have been in or are currently in other groups as well, so you may see some familiar names if you don’t know Unine (yet ;})

Members:

Li Wenhan

Final Rank: 1

Leader, Center, Main Vocalist, Lead Dancer, Sub Rapper, Face of the Group

‘94 Liner

A Cancer with his birthday being July 22

Yuehua Entertainment boy

Representative Animal: Shiba Inu

A member of the Sino-Korean boygroup Uniq

There his position is Vocalist

He is fluent in Chinese, Korean, and English

His nickname is Hanhan

He is also an actor and owns 2 cats and a corgi

He says that every time he’s working on a new project he adopts another cat or dog

He is very caring towards his younger trainees and is always looking out for them

Neighboring Tarzan was a good performance of his and it also contains 5/9 Unine members so that’s pretty frickin cool tbh

His audition stage was Uniq’s “Monster” and it was a great performance like Minghao and Jolin were jamming along to it

also the flower petals at the end that they then had to clean up killed me it was a beautiful effect but ill planned with the consequences

“gui-ze” meme stemmed from this performance

please let this tired man rest

He studied in the US but then left to focus on his music career

He has a great singing voice and is always ready to help his members and he is just a good leader wow

Li Zhenning

Final Rank: 2

Lead Dancer, Lead Vocalist, Lead Rapper, Face of the Group

‘95 Liner

He is a Scorpio (like me!!) with his birthday being November 5

BG Project boy

Representative Animal: Koala

Nicknames include Shenshen and Black Pearl due to his tanned skin

He has a cat named Aoao who is a little over a year old now I think maybe?

He didn’t get noticed until his Retreat performance where he pulls his tie

He used to be one of those people who was like “this person is actually quite good; nothing’s wrong with him, but I can’t remember him” and like he considered himself like that and him debuting at the no. 2 spot was really well deserved and i am so proud

This is also the performance where he rapped and he spent so much time practicing for it and it was successful and I am just really proud of him bc he leans more as a vocal and was really struggling and wanted to make sure he did it right and i’m jsut really proud i love himso mcuh

His dancing in this stage was unmatched by anyone else there (and this sounds biased because i am)

Li Zhenning vs Li Shenshen

on stage mans is focused and completely undaunted and carries sexier concepts well

off stage mans is baby boy. baby. he’s goofy and adorable and i love hiim so much

compares himself to a koala because “especially [his] nose shape is similar…and [his] eyes look blurred…[and he’s] sleepy all the time”

we stan a short king (he’s 5′9 which yeah, is taller than me, but still)

He dances so well and just owns any stage he is on

Rebuild is one of my favorite stages hes done and coincidentally has 5/9 members of Unine in it, though they didn’t know at the time of course

He was incredible during this stage like ugh i didn’t have a bias bc he was there, Mingming was there, Changxi was there, i had no way of surviving

Hair Color King

He had a blue-lavender color during Rebuilt, in Unine’s Set It Off mv he had blue, he’s had black and blond and he’s rocked all of them

Yao Mingming

Final Rank: 3

Main Dancer, Lead Vocalist, Sub Rapper

‘97 Liner

He is a Capricorn with his birthday being January 5

One Cool Jasco Entertainment boy

Representative Animal: Cat

He had been a trainee for six, almost 7 years, when he debuted with Unine

He had several near debuts including with Seventeen

Speaks Chinese and Korean

Because of this, he was very closed off at first with the other trainees and eventually had to have a talk with Zhang Yixing PD

The gist of the conversation was that Mingming was sort of…doubting, I guess you could say, his talents and Yixing told him to treat the show as if he were a new trainee

This led to Mingming becoming more open with the other trainees and more confident in his talents and skills and it really showed and I was really happy he was able to debut bc he deffo deserved it

Mingming’s gray and floral suit in the Rebuild stage is something i think about on a weekly basis at least it’s a really good look for him guys

also just the confidence and cockiness he has during this stage i love to see it

He also has an opportunity to really show off his dancing skills and i loved it for him

He can do imitations really well and likes to imitate Hanyu a lot

think Yesungie and Eunhyuk except accurate

He has very feline features

this has nothing to do with anything he’s just really really pretty

is it because i am biased? perhaps

Guan Yue

Final Rank: 4

Lead Dancer, Lead Vocalist, Sub Rapper

‘94 Liner

He’s a Capricorn with his birthday being January 16

Cast Planet Entertainment boy

Representative Animal: Rabbit

The leader of XII Constellations as a whole and the subunit The Wind

12C is a CPE group with a concept of having four 3-member units, each focusing on a different music style

The Wind focuses on bright and upbeat music and was the first to debut in 2017

Currently there are only six members of 12C

He knows sign language as both of his parents are deaf and when the trainees are allowed to call home, we see him talking with his mother

He has a lot of love and respect for his mother and it shows

His goal in life is to make enough money to support his family so they don’t have to work

I love Guan Yue’s “Turn Up” stage like the cockyness and confidence he has is fantastic i love to see it

his costume is also pretty good esp considering what the trainees sometimes have to wear

also Shenshen and Mingming are in it as well

His performance in Ugly Beauty was incredible also

I loved his Neighboring Tarzan performance bc he was able to include his dialect in his rap part and I love when trainees are able to bring more of themselves into a performance

I want him and Chen Linong to collab bc he was essentially idp2′s Nongnong with the infectious smile and incredible stage presence

the cutie, sweetie, angel, sweetheart, etc. of the group and of the show’s run

Jiayi

Final Rank: 5

Lead Dancer, Lead Rapper, Lead Vocalist, Visual

‘98 Liner

He’s a Cancer with his birthday being July 14

Star Master Entertainment boy

Representative Animal: Bear

Is a member of Mr. Tyger

There he held the roles of Visual, Lead Vocalist, Sub Rapper, and Youngest

One of his nicknames is Little Star

He can play the saxophone

His favorite part of his body are his eyebrows, which, valid

Jolin Tsai’s Xukun

So like y’kno how Yixing was a fan of Xukun the moment he saw him? Jolin was a fan of Jiayi the minute she saw him

The “Ugly Beauty” performance was certainly something to witness

Jiayi as a blond was a fantastic look and i miss it. a lot.

like Neighboring Tarzan was very good look for him even tho the stage costumes were a little a lot extra

his dance was great and bitch got them body rolls on lock

Jiayi vs Huang Jiaxin

on stage focused, determined, owns it

off stage he’s a giant goofball and i love him so much

hes like unfairly handsome but thankfully likes to make dumb faces

somehow he still stays pretty its upsetting at times

Hu Chunyang

Final Rank: 6

Main Raper, Sub Vocalist, Youngest

‘99 Liner (like me!!)

He’s an Aquarius with his birthday being February 5

Yuehua boy

Representative Animal: Golden Retriever

Nickname is Yangyang

Was one of those nerds who would rather stay behind in class and finish their work than go and eat or whatever

Mad respect tho bc i am too when i am at campus dkfja;lsdk

At his audition stage, he covered Wang Yibo’s rap in Uniq’s “Monster” and honestly who is doing it better than him?

I want to see him and Justin interact so bad they had to have they’re both YH boys

@ YueHua let me please have this

Yangyang in the Neighboring Tarzan performance really emphasized how great he is at rapping

he seems at first like a shy and introverted guy but is a mean and grouchy little man when you get to know him

i love to see it

older trainees were always looking out for him

he has a really stable rap voice

Xia Hanyu

Final Rank: 7

Main Vocalist, Sub Rapper

‘97 Liner

Gemini as his birthday is June 11

Show City Times boy

Representative Animal: Wolf

He can play the piano incredibly well and also plays the guitar

His first impression was that of “the big bad wolf

However when he gets more comfortable with the group, he becomes a big softie and his smile compels me to smile

Still uses his dark looks to his advantage thoooo

he was being dramatic and mean once and then like after saying his ‘insult’ immediately cracked and started laughing and hiding his face

HIGH NOTE KING

shenshen in response to a performance said he immediately got goosebumps

Neighboring Tarzan was a great way for him to show off his high notes imo

He had red hair one time and I miss it a lot bc it looked good

Chen Youwei

Final Rank: 8

Lead Rapper, Visual, Sub Vocalist

‘98 Liner

He is a Cancer with his birthday being July 7

Ciwen Media boy

Representative Animal: Pig

Attended Zhejiang Sci-Tech University and majored in fashion

He can play the guitar

He modeled and is also an actor, having been in several cdramas

The most notable of these is “Story of Yanxi Palace” where he played 5th Prince

He was greeted as such by the other trainees when he walked into the room

He’s also a scholar and this was shown in a rap he had created during the show

mans is the donghae of unine

in that they’re teased for how they speak

his mandarin is bad and donghae’s korean is bad

his rapping is good and he seems like a real sweetheart

mans also likes to munch, saying he can eat 5 meals a day

He Changxi

Final Rank: 9

Main Dancer, Lead Vocalist

‘97 Liner

He is a Sagittarius with his birthday being November 24

OACA Entertainment boy

Representative Animal: Lesser, or Red, Panda

His English name is Jerry and I deeply hate how much it fits him

His nicknames include Xixi and Yong Ri Didi

He loves a good ginger foot bath

Like it was such a well known fact that Yixing even asked him about it once

He wasn’t really noticed until his performance in Fire which is especially impressive considering that his performance wasn’t filmed in front of an audience but instead one of the practice rooms

there was a competition between two teams for each song and the winning team would get to perform on stage in front of the youth producers

Xixi really looked so fierce and confident in the Rebuild stage I was so proud

He also did a dance cover of EXO’s “Love Shot” and if you’ve been following me for a minute you know that i love EXO’s music and it was great to see

his killing part was also a reoccuring meme

Mingming loves teasing him and it’s so funny

Suggested Videos of their IDP Days: (flashing lights warning)

Wenhan and Chunyang’s Audition Stage

Wenhan + Mingming React to “gui-ze” Trainee Compilation

《后退 Retreat》 – Zhenning Focus

《后退 Retreat》 – Stage Performance

《重塑 Rebuild》 – Zhenning Focus

《重塑 Rebuild》 – Concept Evaluation

《重塑 Rebuild》 – Mingming Focus

Mingming + Yixing’s Talk

Mingming + Impressions

《青春有你 Turn Up》 – Guan Yue Focus

《青春有你 Turn Up》 – Stage Performance

Jolin Tsai + Her Favorite Trainee

《怪美的 Ugly Beauty》 – Mentor Stage

《隔壁泰山 Neighboring Tarzan》 – Stage Performance

Hanyu’s Audition Stage

Hanyu’s Introduction Video

Hanyu Playing Guitar + Singing

《一笑倾城 One Alluring Smile》 – Stage Performance

EXO “Love Shot” Dance Cover – Changxi

《骑士精神 Chivalry》 – Changxi Focus

《火 Fire》 – Changxi Focus

UNINE Videos: (flashing lights warning)

《春日記憶 Memories of Spring》 – My favorite song by them, this is the lyrics video in Chi/Pinyin/Eng

《春日記憶 Memories of Spring》 – This is the performance from their fan meeting I believe. The choreo is so beautiful and I want an MV like last week.

《春日記憶 Memories of Spring》 – This is their performance from the Reedit Stage.

《SET IT OFF》 – official MV. There’s a lot of jumping out of windows, Guan Yue has purple hair, Shenshen has blue hair, and Jiayi and Xixi look great. The song is a bop, there’s a nautical theme, what more could you ask for? A coherent plot for an MV??? Overrated. It’s essentially Unine’s 《RULE BREAKER》. It’s from their second mini album “Unusual”.

《SET IT OFF》 – This is a live performance at the Mnet Asian Music Awards. I have a bone or two to pick with the sound editor of the video but they deliver a fantastic performance. I like their choreo a lot and it’s more clearly able to be seen on the live stage.

《BOMBA》 – official MV. Their first single I believe. Very colorful and fun, the song matches the vibe of the MV. Mingming’s iconic holding a geometric hanging light like a pear is from this MV. Hanyu also spends half the MV wrecking my bias. If I had more braincells I would do an analysis of the MV but alas.

《BOMBA》 – From the Reedit Stage.

《官方直拍 Like A Gentleman》 – Live performance from their fan meeting. I really like this song and the costumes for stage are stripey and I love stripes. The lights and screen in the background are in neons and it kind of gives the performance a nostalgic feeling and it’s just a really cute song.

《官方直拍 Like A Gentleman》 – The lyrics video in Chi/Pinyin/English. The song is really cute you guys and Changxi and Mingming are great in it.

Videos From the Other Groups the Members Are In:

《爱的就是你 Love Is You》 – XII Constellations: The Wind ft. Liu Jia

《燃烧吧，拳头 Burn, Fists》 – XII Constellations: The Fire [flashing lights warning]

Note: this doesn’t have Guan Yue but I decided to put it in here to really exemplify the concept that 12C is about. Also the song lowkey pops off and reminds me of my emo phase

《Monster》 – Uniq (Chinese version)

《EOEO》 – Uniq (Chinese version) [flashing lights warning]

《钛戈》 – Mr. Tyger [flashing lights warning]

《夜空悬浮》 – Mr. Tyger [flashing lights warning]

Sources: KProfiles, [Eng Sub] Intro to UNINE Members, various performances, and the show itself. If I have given any incorrect information, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately.

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ocular-intercourse · 4 years

Note

👀👀👀 there's only 25 questions 👀👀👀

i think i know what this means 😂🙏🏻

Meanest VS Kindest

meanest is definitely asher, though under normal circumstances he would not make use of it quite as often as he does rn, but even then he is kinda bred to be mean, that’s the rich kid gene, but also his father’s influence

kindest is teddy, without a doubt, i was for a second considering noor because they are actively doing more kind things, working on bettering the life for their subjects, but the prince is definitely more capable of being unkind for the sake of something bigger than ted would ever be (also they are spoiled and tend to kinda unintentionally put their needs before others in their private life)

Tallest VS Shortest

gyo the absolute beast of a man that’s them primordial genes, the shortest is ace

Most humble VS Most arrogant

hmm i think devin might be the most humble, it’s kinda pathological, a result of his low self-confidence, social anxiety and all, asher’ll be like screaming at him about how talented he is but that kinda does not sink in, but even with the things he can accept being good at in he is not the person to brag about it, he was raised to be polite and humble i guess

ah that’s a little hard it’s outwardly appereance vs inwardly feelings and they never match up, asher definitely is arrogant, but he is also very aware that anything that people admire about him and his skills is just a result of privilege and money and people wanting to crawl up his ass, so he’s like, yeah i’m fucking good at this but that doesn’t mean shit i had like 20 tutors since i was a toddler anyone could do this with my resources

finn is probably the most outwardly boasting about stuff he is arrogant about, but also the most fickle, you just gotta poke the wrong spot and he’s crumbling

gyo kinda has to be arrogant, it’s his job, it’s part of the whole ‘you can’t touch this just try and harm the empire you’re not getting past me’ deal, but he is also inwardly very aware of his limitations and what is realistically possible for him and what isn’t, he just can’t show it to leave openings for his opponents

i can’t decide 🤷🏻‍♂️

Coldest VS Most emotional

oh boy, god seriously the more i think about these questions the more i realize that my boys all just put up a front all the time whelp

ace has trained himself to seem colder than he actually is, but gyo is probably better at actually shutting his emotions down to get where he needs to be so i’ll go with him

finn is the most emotional he just puts it all out there i don’t think he could hide it if he wanted to he’s an open book really he’s even a terrible liar

Most chaste VS Most lustful

i had the impuls to say ace but i feel like asexuality and being chaste kinda cancels each other out, like you actually need to be sexually active and attracted to other people to be able to be considered chaste? like it kinda has to do with surpressing things? and if i follow that logic it fits asher way more, though he is also not really chaste, just prude, but still more than any of the others

teddy is the most lustful which is always very fun cause it’s unexpected, maybe he got a little messed up along the way but physical affection is just his biggest love language he needs to be shown that he is wanted to be happy and he needs to be shown often and thats the same way he tends to express his feelings for his s.o. (which is a huge problem between him and zeke oof), but also outside of a relationship he tends to get his self-worth reaffirmed through sexual encounters

Most serious VS Silliest

gyo is the most serious, might also be another work trait, asher also currently has little space for silliness in his life but that’s just cirumstancial, ace is by far the silliest, straight faced maybe, but he loves to irritate and amuse people

“Sleep is for the weak!” VS “Sleep for a week”

asher is the ‘sleep is for the weak’ man, though he sure’d like to sleep more, his body just does not want him to, at some point he’s just, god fuck fine more time to be productive i guess, teddy could sleep for a week

Happiest VS Saddest

GOD fuck, what a question, which one of my sad boys is the saddest boy? asher is the saddest, noor is the happiest

Darkest backstory VS Lightest Backstory

hasghj please, gyo has the darkest backstory, devin has the lightest

Biggest eater VS Lightest eater

hmmm finn has a crazy fast metabolism so he just needs to eat constantly to keep his mass it actually drives him crazy he’d much rather be able to bulk up properly, asher is the lightest eater, though a lot of that is also circumstantial, he’d be eating more if he wasn’t going through things, but still probably less than all the others, i’ll count gyo out cause he actually does not have to eat technically, so he doesn’t always, teddy is also a fickle eater with his eating disorder, but he’s being healthy atm

Most ticklish VS Cruellest tickler

never thought about it, asher is the most ticklish under regular circumstances, his meds make him a little numb, ace would be the cruellest tickler

Brainiest VS Brawniest

despite discrediting himself constantly by saying ‘i had all the help money can buy it does not count’ asher is still the brainiest, straight a student, speaks multiple languages, can play multiple instruments, is juggling two degrees and a mental breakdown etc etc excelling in all of it (especially the break down) i guess he could be considered gifted but he’d refuse to accept that denotation, he’s diligent at best, and was not allowed to function any other way, in his mind it’s really not that impressive he had no other choice and who knows how many people just praise him unfounded to please him/his father

gyo is the brawniest, no question, not all brawn no brains you need both to get where he is but his martial might is literally legendary

Most forgiving VS Most grudgeful

teddy is the most forgiving, not necessarily always because the person deserves it, but because he just wants them to deserve it, he just wants to believe people are good and have good intentions, finn is the most grudgeful (his father is a special exception i suppose) he still hasn’t forgiven kitty for killing herself after what.. 10 years or so? to a point of major detriment to his own life by giving a wide berth to anything that reminds him of her which is a lot of the things he loves/loved

Physical vices (drugs, sex, alcohol) VS Spiritual vices (Lust, wrath, envy)

god i kinda just wanna put finn on both ends of that question, he seriously is the most susceptible to vices in general regardless of physical or spiritual, and he knows, and he’s trying to be better (good thing he knows terrible examples about drugs and alcohol both so he’s pretty good at staying away from those at least)

Optimistic VS Pessimistic

teddy and noor share the optimistic spot, teddy generally believes more in the good in the world and that things will be good, noor is more active about it, their mindset is more of the ‘things might be bad but i WILL change them i don’t care who tells me i can’t’ variant, asher is the most pessimistic, but once again i feel it’s not fair to call him out on that it’s not actually in his character it’s, again, his circumstances, but i’m not sure there’s gonna be a lot of space for optimism left in his life after everything anyways so i guess it’s really him

Most secretive VS Most open

gyo is the most secretive, ace too to an extend and asher certainly has his big secret, but gyo just wont tell you a thing, you’ll hardly get him to talk at all, especially about personal subjects, devin might be the most open, teddy is all trusting and optimistic but he’s been burned often enough to know to keep some things to himself, devin is a little more oblivious to that, or maybe it’s not really that, it’s not naivite, it’s him just believing that it is the best to put everything out there so there is no space for misunderstandings

Judges a book by its cover VS Judges mostly by personality

none of my characters are overly superficial it’s hard to say if anyone of them would judge based on appereance, i want to say it’s probably noor, but it’s not really about looks, it’s more that they tend to stick to first impressions a lot, when they have an image of a person in their mind they have a hard time seeing anything but that, and get confused often when they get blindsided by traits that do not fit the idea they have of that person, finn definitely judges the most by personality, he tends to be hypervigilant around people, probing their emotional state, checking that everything is okay, it’s that classic abuse survivor habit, always making sure everything is alright and there’s no hidden threat

Best singer VS Tone deaf

finn is the best singer by far, he’s good he’s really really good but it’s one of these things he’s connected to kitty so that’s not always easy for him, noor is absolutely tone deaf it’s awful they are not insecure about a lot of things but only people they trust will ever hear them sing cause they know they won’t judge them too much

Cast iron stomach VS Most squeamish

ace can and will eat anything, he grew up in a shitty situation where they did not always have access to proper food so he’s not picky about quality or freshness, food is always a little complicated for teddy cause he has to train himself to eat regularly, on top of that he will not eat just anything, he is a vegetarian but also the kind of person that was a picky eater growing up and is holding on to some dislikes that probably only exist in his head at this point, it’s about the consistency of eggs for example, or certain combinations he’ll just not eat or even try, finns body can’t handle histamies super well so he has to be careful too, raw tomatoes even give him allergic reactions, but all of that is less about him being squeamish, he’s more the try anything once kind of person

Shows most skin VS Covers up most

i’d say it’s a cross between finn and noor for most skin, finn just enjoys being mostly uncovered, noor just likes the look of revealing clothing, asher is definitely famously the one to cover up the most, maybe that’s also a weird defense mechanism but mostly he’s just been brought up in a rather conservative household and that notion stuck

Most religious VS Most atheistic

none of them are really religious, in a ‘greek gods do exist’ kind of setting that’s a weird thing to be anyways?? is it still religious when you know gods exists/you are part god lol?? noor also exists in a setting where they, as in the leaders of the empire, are considered to have divine right to rule and are basically worshipped themselves plus i have not yet figured out in what way religion and a pantheon even exists in their world, gyo most definitely worships noor in a way but lets not go there, asher is by no means religious, but he enjoys the, uhm, quiet contemplation and prudence i guess? the sense of reverence and tradition, he likes the idea of believing in a guiding power, but he does not believe himself (he’d have a bone to pick with god if he did), he does however go to church with his family not only for outward appereance there is in some weird way something calming he takes from that (the congregation is not conservative in the gay hating way so that helps), i think gyo might actually be the most atheistic, even when confronted with god-like beings he’s more like ‘you can’t do shit i pick my own destiny and i’ll fight you if i have to’, he can’t take them seriously and he sure as hell does not consider them superior in any way (tbf the glimpse he gets at their world makes that very easy he basically just brawls his way out of hell and everybody there is like ??? help ??)

Biggest reader VS Hasn’t touched a book in 3 years

asher is the biggest reader, he’ll read non-stop if you let him it’s such a good way to get out of his head, so it’s a bit of an compulsive habit, teddy definitely hasn’t touched a book.. in basically ever, it’s the dyslexia it’s really not his favorite thing to do it’s exhausting and frustrating, but he’d probably go for audio books every now and then, it’s similar for ace but he has more patience to chew his way through a book

Best at self-care VS Most self-destructive

oh boy, noor is the very best at self-care, cause they are always so well cared for? they were raised in an environment where everyone always made sure they were happy and comfortable, so they themselves value these things a lot and go searching for them even if nobody offers them from the outside, asher is by far the most destructive, he’s the last priority on his list the only reason he is still alive (if you want to call it that) is to shield other people, so self-care seems utterly pointless at this point, the one thing he does still do is grooming but for him that’s more just a part of functioning than anything that has to do with making himself feel better

Most flirtatious VS Most modest

under different circumstances asher would be the most flirtatious, and he still is sometimes when the situation calls for it, but just ignoring all the trauma and everything, just looking at the person he used to be/will maybe be again, he just likes schmoozing and dazzling people, making them feel welcome and appreciated, he’s oozing charme all over the place (to be fair none of this is sexual/romantic in any way, it’s more just his base socializing mode) to a point where he gets in trouble cause he not only leads people on unintentionally but also drives devin into jealous fits, it’s really hard to figure out who’s the most modest actually, gyo is a brick wall but sometimes social events require friendly mingling and he is very much able to, you know, for the sake of the empire, but he’s usually calm and collected and unapproachable, ace on the other hand never ever tries to attract other people, but on the contrary to gyo his wall is hidden, he does not let people close, but let’s them believe differently, and sometimes has a bit of a mischievous behaviour about him that could be seen as flirtatious in some ways

Most outdoorsy VS Most indoorsy

teddy is by nature (ha) the most outdoorsy, it’s his domain, he’s truly at home surrounded by plants and animals, devin is the most indoorsy, locked behind his computer/tv most of the time, ace is a close second but he does get out more, training or hanging out in the streets

#personal #mangosandchili #asher #finn #teddy #ace #gyo #noor #devin #thank u for letting me rant about my boys #i concentrated on the main ppl #ocs #gyoverse

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calliecat93 · 6 years

Text

Callie Reviews: TMNT 2012 Season One (Part Three)

(Part One) (Part Two)

Here is where we look at the season as a whole. For this, I will be looking at four things: Animation, Voice Acting, Characters (Heroes, Villains), and Story. I’ll be going more into depths about some stuff I skimmed over here as well. So lets dig in!

Animation

This is the Turtles first CGI show... okay yeah the 2007 movie was CGI, but that was a movie. When I first heard this, I was reluctant as I felt like 2D was becoming more and more of a lost out. But the CGI was really good! Mind you it looks a tad bit dated now as every season they pushed more and more to improve it. But still, it’s very well done. I can’t recall any point where I thought it looked bad or cringy...aside form when they wanted you to cringe anyways. What helps is that the show does add in some 2D elements, There’s the comic-style flashbacks of course, but even past that. They use these anime-like quirks like the sweatdrop, blushing, wide blank eyes when reacting in shock, vein burst when a character is angry, all these tiny little things that give it a more cartoony feel. I can’t recall any other Nickelodeon CGI shows that were doing this prior, so it helped it stand out among the other shows.

Another plus side? The character designs. Aside from a few background characters they re-colored, none of the important characters look the same. Like I know that some don’t like April’s design, but at least they gave her and Karai their own distinct character designs. Then there are the Turtles. Something I don’t like about the upcoming show is how much.. accessorizing they add in to make the Turtles look distinctive. 2k12 kept it very simple. Different heights, eye color, shade of green, and of course body build. For example Donnie, the genius who is mroe invested with machines than training, is both the tallest and most slender. Raph, the strongest, is the most buff and Mikey, the youngest, has larger eyes and freckles to show his child-like nature.And even with Raph,a ll four boys have kind of high school athlete-like builds. Nothing over the top like say... the Michael Bay films. Basically, I can believe that these guys can do the ninja-like agility more than I can with the overly buff, giant versions that have been used.

When ti comes to the mutants, the animators get creative. There are so many unique mutant sin the show. Snakeweed, Spyder Bytez, Dogpound, Fishface, Splinter, Leatherhead, all the mutants have their own unique design that work for them. They also know when to get creepy, like with the mish-mash... thing... from The Alien Agenda. That was disturbing as heck, and it’s not even the creepiest one they come up with! Oh just wait for next season, haha... but yeah, mutant designs are great!

Now the settings are kinda... meh. I mean The Lair is cool, but it’s mostly just either the the Lair, the New York landscape, Shredder’s lair, or an empty warehouse most of the time. It’s nothing really... creative I guess is the right word. We also don’t explore new York much, mainly settling on skyscrapers as the setting. It’s understandable why since New York is the setting, but still it juts gets kind of boring after awhile. But for what it’s worth, they do try to do creative stuff when they can like in Baxter’s Gambit with the black and white screens.

And of course, there is the fight choreography. As I said before, it’s fantastic. All the fights in the series are fluid, well-paced, and fun to watch. If I had to give some examples off the top of my head, there’s New Friend, Old Enemy when the Turtles rise form the water. The mix of black and red is absolutely perfect. There’s the first fight against Shredder in The Gauntlet which despite the boys getting constantly knocked down by Shredder, they give it everything they have. It looks freakin’ badass. Then there is any Splinter fight scene. There’s not many, only about three in this season (It Came From the Depths, I, Monster, The Showdown two-parter) but they are excellent. I said that the Splinter vs Shredder fight was the best and nothing after ever topped it, right?

So yeah, if I was going to rate the animation on a 1-5 scale...

Rating: 4.5

Voice Acting

The series was voice directed by veteran Andrea Romano, so you know that the performances are gonna be solid. As far as casting goes, they got in a LOT of big names both in the voice acting industry and out. There’s of course Greg Cipes (Mikey), Mae Whitman (April), Nolan North (The Kraang), Kevin Michael Richardson (Shredder), Phil Lamar (Stockman), Clancy Brown (Dogpound) and of course Rob Paulsen (Donnie). Rob’s casting was actually a pretty big deal as along with being a veteran with nearly 30 years of experience, he was also the voice of Raph in the original 80′s show. So getting him back even as a different Turtle? Yeah... that’s pretty big!

Then you have more well-known on-screen actors, like Sean Astin (Raph) and Kelly Hu (Karai). Now they both actually have very solid VA-ing careers and still do voice work to this day, but if you’re say... a Lord of the Rings fan and known Sean only for that, this may entice you. The newcomers to voice acting are Jason Biggs (Leo), Christian Lanz (Fishface) and Hoon Lee (Splinter). There’s also guest actors like Jeffrey Combs (The Rat King) and Roseanne Barr (Kraang Prime), so a solid mix of professional voice actors and a few newcomers. The result?

The voice acting is fantastic. Like even as the show goes on and you see more and more mixed reception, the acting is NEVER one of the things you see go down. If anything, it is one aspect that continues to improve episode by episode. All four Turtle actors do an amazing job conveying their characters, able to go from comedic to dramatic in a split second. I’d say that out of everyone, Hoon Lee impressed me the most since he’s the only one aside from Biggs (and... e’ll talk more about him next season) I hadn’t heard of. And he gave a very solid performance. Everyone did. Even for just minor characters like Pulverizer (Roger Craig Smith... yes Pulverizer is Sonic the Hedgehog) or some of the villains like Snake (Danny Jacob who voices King Julian outside the Madacgascar films) or Spyder Byte (Lewis Black), they convey their characters perfectly. Like Black’s character is a rude slob you want to punch, and he does such a great job in making you feel that way!

So yeah, you got a strong cast, a veteran voice director, and a crazy group of characters for them to voice. All of them nail it. And just wait, this is only the S1 cast. Wait until you see who they bring in for future seasons!

Rating: 5

Characters

As I said in Part One, this is the best part of the show. I know a lot of people who fell off TMNT as it went on, but still kept interest because of the characters. To me, this is always the most important part of storytelling. Yes having a good story itself is important, but a good story will be nothing without likeable characters to move it. A cliched story may be annoying, but if the characters are likeable and strongly written, people are usually more forgiving because they care about the cast. This show is no different. To this day, the thing that kept me attracted to the show was the Turtles, April, and Splinter and what they’d get into next. All of them have strong personalities that get you to care about them, or at least see where they’re coming from. I could gush about each of them one by one... so on we go!

Lets start with Mikey because he is the least developed this season... and most of the show sadly. I’d even say that his focus episodes dropped massively in quality after this season as he was forced mroe and mroe into the comedy relief/designated victim/little brother role. It’s a shame too because this season did an excellent job in balancing out both the comedy relief and the more innocent side of the character. Mikey is the most naive of the brothers and the least serious among them. It’s not to say that he can’t take situations seriously, it’s just that he’s more easy-going and fun-seeking than the other three. His biggest problem is his inability to focus and goof around, which has caused several instances of accidentally setting off alarms.

While not the best of the four, Mikey is a talented ninja and the best at going off just raw talent. He doesn’t think through fighting moves, he can just go with the flow and be perfectly fine. His strongest skill hpwever is his empathy and desire to make friends. While this has backfired on him before, like in New Friend, Old Enemy, where Bradford used and then kidnapped him for a trap, Mikey is incredibly non-judgemental and open-minded. It’s why he could befriend Leatherhead so easily in It Came From the Depths. He saw that the Kraang were attacking him and decided to simply talk to him like he would anyone else, even pointing out that maybe LH only acts like a monster because that’s how he was treated for so long. Mikey may not be book smart, but he’s very emotionally smart. As I said, Mikey’s character sadly devolves into annoying comedy relief as it goes, but for this season he had a strong start. No meaningful development aside form slow progression on paying attention (Parasitica being the final payoff... also if you’re afraid of wasps then avoid that one), but his character is strong enough to carry him through.

Raph is the brawler of the group and the quickest to anger. Hie’s the strongest fighter and incredibly confident... unless he has to deal with bugs. His biggest flaws are his both his anger and his jealous towards Leo. The first half of the season has Raph frequently back-talks and argue with Leo all because he got made the leader over him. For example, in Never Say Xever he is unhappy with Leo using mercy because bad guys don’t deserve it. Leo does eventually use the more Raph-like approach when kidnapping Bradford... and it fails miserably. What saves them? Leo’s act of mercy causing the Purple Dragon to repay the favor sand saving their shells. While he does slowly get a better grip on his temper once Splinter tells him of how dangerous it can be (Turtle Temper), it takes until New Girl in Town for him to overcome his jealousy once and for all. It’s very well done too by having Leo finally get fed up and give Raph what he wanted. Ultimately Raph can’t handle the pressure once things get rough and comes to understand both what Leo deals with essentially every day and how his own actions made it worst.

After that, Raph becomes the perfect example of a follower. While he’s still question Leo, he has good reasons for it, like everything involving Karai for instance. But he actively looks out for him more and stops mocking him outside just brotherly messing around. And even during that point, while Raph could be an insensitive jerk, he does love his family and will make amends when he goes too far. When he mocked Mikey wanting friends in New Friend, Old Enemy, at the end he comforted him after the fallout with Bradford and assured him that he’s a good person. When he mocked Donnie’s crush in Operation: Break-Out and led to Donnie going on a mission solo, Raph was worried about him, realized that he way too harsh, and tried to make amends by giving Donnie all the credit once back home. While Raph doesn’t conquer his temper completely, over the season he does get a better grip on it, can admit when he goes to far, became overall nicer, and by the end is a much better person. It was good stuff!

Donnie is probably the most... divisive of the four. Not because he’s badly written per say. He’s intelligent, but also high-strung and prone to stress. He’s not a bad ninja, but because of his focus on machinery, he’s the least skilled. The two episodes that focus on this are Metalhead and Monkey Brains. Metalhead has an admittedly meh plot where he gets sick of his bo staff and therefore creates the robot Metalhead to act as his weapon. The ‘meh’ plot is IDT it addresses the message of ‘the weapon doesn't make you a good fighter, you do’ very well, ut still Monkey Brains does a much better job, demonstrating Donnie’s tendency to over-think everything and how that is detrimental in a fight. By the climax, he’s able to get himself to rely on his instincts against a mind-reading villain (we’ll get to him later) and kick his ass.

Then there’s The Pulverizer episodes, which are the most interesting but sadly don’t go anywhere after this season. It has Donnie accept Pulverizer as an apprentice of sort, mainly so the kid can have some form of self-defense if he’s going to put himself into danger. It’s ultimately ineffective, but mainly because of Pulverizer wanting to rush and not listening properly. The most important part though is Splinter telling Donnie that by doing this, anything that happens involving him after will be his responsibility. Which we see in The Pulverizer Returns where Pulverizer decides ot let the Foot mutate him to gain awesome mutant powers. Donnie tries to save him, but sadly he fails and Pulverier.. it’s not pretty. While Donnie does still save him after, he’s left with the guilt of ultimately failing his student. I’ll go into mroe about how horribly the writers wasted this next season, but here? It was interesting to give Donnie this plot since you’d expect t to go to say... Leo. I think it really worked for what it was worth and let us see a side of Donnie outside just being the smart one.

So with that said, why is he divisive? Well... it’s because another major part of his character is his crush on April. He doe snot... manage it well, to say the least. He is rather, well... stupid and kinda creepy with it. But I do want to point this out. Yes, it is annoying but I think there’s a good reason for it: he’s an awkward teenager. Yeah him asking her to feel his goosebumps (Metalhead), accidentally calling her ‘his April (The Gauntlet), accidentally saying awkward things when she acknowledges him (pick any episode) are incredibly facepalm worthy at best. And yeah, they should have done better setup than have him just find her pretty when seeing her once. However he does genuinely care about her and int he premiere, he was driven more because he saw an innocent girl scared and was unable to help than his newfound crush. The feelings are genuine and Donnie being awkward about is because... well, Donnie is awkward in general and he does slowly improve. Honestly I’ll have mroe to discuss about this next season cause haha... boy is THAT a clusterfuck. But ultimately while Donnie can be annoying, overall it’s pretty bearable and he has plenty of positive traits to balance it out.

Finally, we get Leo. He’s the group leader, but unlike the past series where he pretty much grew up with that role, here he gets the role halfway through the first episode. He starts as a goody-two-shoes with a mischievous side who had a very basic view of leadership. He see sit as a position of authority, greatness, and unstoppable. That’s not to say that he doesn’t take the role seriously, he does. He devises plans, does his best to keep his brothers focused, and frequently asks Splinter for advice on how to best do things. But he also frequently uses cheesy one-liners and does his best to be as over the top with his heroics as possible, thinking it’s cool when it isn’t. It gives Leo a more naive feel to him, someone who is serious but also is still a teenaged kid who has a lot of learning to do.

The pressures of leadership are Leo’s primary focus as a character. While he has some doubts, the biggest blow to his confident comes in The Gauntlet after there massive defeat against Shredder. The following episode has him unsure of if he can properly lead the team and feeling guilty when things go wrong. But the ultimate meltdown comes in New Girl in Town where Raph finally pushes him too hard and he quits. He’s realized at this point that leadership is not like it is on TV. it’s unforgiving, stressful, and you’re gonna be the one facing the consequences when things go wrong. His difficulty dealing with this is what attracts him to Karai. She’s fun, does whatever she wants, and doesn’t care about the rules. She offers him a form of freedom that he hasn’t had before. It’s why he tries to get her to change sides, he doesn’t want her to be an enemy. Unfortunately things end badly between them this season, but you can see where Leo is coming form no matter how naive he was about it.

Leo evolved a lot over the season. He went from a naive teenager who quoted old TV episodes to a serious, determined leader who was willing to do whatever it took to get his team through. He never quit being optimistic and he does still have his stress with leadership later down the road. But the season is about him easing not the role an understanding the weight of that role. It’s very easy to feel bad for Leo because he tries incredibly hard, but he doesn’t receive a lot of gratitude or payoff, and he just has to accept that. By the finale, he’s willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure both success and his family's safety... something that becomes a bit of an issue in later seasons (looking at you Space Arc). I’d say that because we got to see Leo actually having to come to terms with the role, it makes this imo the best version of the character. We actually have to see him accept the role and how he hate show it limits his free time, something IDT the past versions really did. And all while having this dorky, idealistic side that keeps him likable and all the mroe relateable. Overall, I’d say that the leader in blue was handeled very well here!

April is my favorite character in the show, but her writing this season has some issues. Now as a character herself, she’s perfectly fine. She’s an independent sixteen year old and incredibly proactive. Whenever she finds info on the Kraang or about her dad, she looks into it. When everyone is ready to quit in Panic in the Sewers, she’s the only one who actively tries to do something and get everyone else to not give up. When Splinter offers to train her, she accepts it and we see bits and pieces of her progressing. But it’s done realistically as demonstrated in Karai’s Vendetta where it’s very clear that April is nowhere near her level. But it also demonstrates her determination and how she never gives up, getting back up after every blow and at east trying to put up a fight. While she’s forced to sit most things out and does on occasion get kidnapped, she still tries to be an asset and does very well as an intel gatherer. She’s also incredibly stubborn and can get in over her head without thinking things through, like in Metalhead and the finale episodes. But ultimately her proactiveness and need to take action are her strongest traits and what makes her a useful ally.

The issues with April are in the writing of the plot. I already mentioned how the early episodes could have done mroe in having her ease into the group. There’s also after Karai’s Vendetta where despite living with the guys, we don’t see her until the penultimate episode. We see her express hating it in that episode, but we don’t get to explore the fallout of her losing her normal life. In fact we...d on’t see April’s life outside Turtle stuff until next season, and even then not by much. Now of course the show is about the Turtles and you gotta keep the focus on them, but still we get a bunch of ‘show, don’t tell’ problems with April. We’re told things like she’s living with her aunt, but we never see them interact. Hell, IDT April’s aunt is ever mentioned outside the pilot. We also find out that April is the Kraang’s target... and we never see how she feels about it. If she’s scared, if she’s worried. We can assume that she has some stress about it, as indicated when she vents in Karai’s Vendetta, but little to no showcase of how she feels about it. Mind you we don’t with the Turtles either, but still. Still, overall April is a solid character imo.

That brings us to Master Splinter, the best written character by far. Splinter is the perfect balance of a mentor and a father. He’s firm, strict, and not afraid to dish out punishment when it’s necessary. But he’s also gentle, patient, knows how to give his sons proper guidance, and when to let them figure things out for themselves. He’s also snarky as Hell, so it’s good that he has a sense of humor. He’s also a flawed person. He lost his wife and daughter because of hat is essentially a sibling rivalry that went WAAAY too far and his own inability to control himself worsened things. He lost his family and then his humanity, ending his life as Hamato Yoshi. Since then, he’s hidden int he sewers and tried to focus his energy on raising and protecting his sons. It makes letting them go topside difficult, as it is for any parent whose children are growing up. He can make mistakes, like letting his fear control him and press his sons far too hard in Panic in the Sewers, but he can admit those mistakes.

Splintr’s largest plot in the season, outside mentoring the boys and April, is accepting his mutant status and overcoming his fears. Many epsiodes such as the premiere, Turtle Temper, Monkey Brains, Panic in the Sewers and the finale show how much pain the rat master carries and while he’s move don to a new life, it still haunts him. The episode that best displays this however is a filler episode called I, Monster. In it we get this version of the Rat King, the mind reading villain from Monkey Brains, who uses his power to swarm New York. When he senses Splinter, he proceeds to try and brainwash him too. The episode does an amazing job at showcasing all of Splinter’s fears. The boys outgrowing him, his past tragedies, ending up alone, and the Rat King slowly uses all of it to break him down. Splinter fights back, but the thought of the boys moving on without him is ultimately what defeats him until the boys remind him of who he is. He is Hamato Yoshi, Master Splinter, but most of all their father. They need him and always will. Which lets Splinter overcome the mind control and essentially Airbend Rat King through a wall. It was awesome~

Despite that episode being filler, it’s one of the season's best. It is a strong character exploration piece about a father who has gone through Hell and is faced with the fear of his kids not needing him. It is very relatable and makes Splinter all the mroe sympathetic. And we see Splinter truly embody who he is now when faced with the Shredder again and upon learning that his daughter had survived. He went into full rat mode and gave Shredder the beating that we all wanted. And the season ends on a perfect lead in for the next one. Splinter now knows that Karai is his daughter while she was raised to hate him. It’s any parent’s worst nightmare. He now has to deal with that revelation as well as how he’s going to break it to his students. Splinter has some solid growth int he season, something that a lot of mentor figures in cartoons don’t get, and it’s done perfectly. He has his flaws, but is still a strong father figure to his sons. Add that to Hoon Lee’s absolute perfect performance and you have what is in my opinion the best incarnation of Master Splinter in any TMNT series.

While the main cast is strong, the supporting cast and villains are... not so much. There isn’t really a supporting cast honestly. The best we have is Leatherhead, who is awesome. He’s a damaged character. One treated like a monster and tortured for who knows how long. It left him damaged and prone to trauma-induced outbursts. But he is a good person who knows that what happened to him was wrong and can be quite sweet when given the chance. He didn’t have to save humanity, especially since most would scream and run if they saw him, but he didn’t want anyone else to endure what he did. It’s best exemplified with his sacrifice in TCRI, going back to Dimension X and knowing fully well what’ll await him there. But he does so to save his friends and give them the chance to save the Earth. LH is freakin’ badass and I love him!

The villains though are... kinda boring. Most of the mutants, while the designs are cool, are incredibly one-note. Not all of them, like the Rat King is so dramatic and twisted and his VA does such a great job with the delivery that you both love him and want to strangle him. But others like Snakeweed or Spyder Bytez are just... well, evil for the heck of it. The Kraang are the worst though since at least the mutants are only in like one or two episodes. The Kraang are annoying as HELL. They can be dangerous but the redundant speech pattern and all fo them having essentially the same personality (aka none) is so... boring. Min you in Season 4 we kind of get an explanation to why, but it doesn't change how grating they can get. That being said in large groups they can be dangerous and with things like the Technodrome, they’re not to be taken lightly. Still, GAH I HATE THEM!!!

The Foot are somewhat better. Stockman is pathetic and remains pathetic throughout the entire series. Bradford is a pompous asshole. Xever is a little more interesting in that he kidn of was forced to work for Shredder or go to jail... but sadly after that reveal, he reverts to typical henchman status sadly. Shredder is the Big Bad and a no-nonsense leader. He has no empathy and is more than willing to inflict physical violence on his troops if they fail him. He even threatens to harm Karai, his daughter (kinda...) if she questions him. He is a very single minded perosn, his only goal beign to kill Splinter and his students by any means necessary. Hell. he only starts caring about the Kraang when he realizes that they can advance his goal, but has zero issues letting humanity fall to them. Oh, and there’s his glee when Karai tries to kill Splinter. WOrst? THis isn’t even the worst that he does int he show. Oh just wait for next season. JUST WAIT. Otherwise though, while a powerful fighter, he just mopes in his throne for most of the season, but Richardson’s badass voice acting was nice to hear.

The most interesting villain by far is Karai, and Thank God for it. While Leo is a good-good, Karai is a bad girl. She’s laid-back, does what she wants her way, and doesn’t play by the rules. She’s introduced as a competent fighter, but unlike the other Foot she’s more interesting in talking to the Turtles than killing them. I think she did become genuinely fond of Leo, but ultimately she’s going to be loyal to what she thinks is her family. She also started off realizing that there were bugger problems, like the Kraang, that required more attention over the vendetta until the Turtles betrayed her. Then she pretty much went ‘screw it’ and decided to go with the vendetta, which only got worst when she met Splinter for the first time. Still, ti was nice to have someone actually question Shredder and try to be sensible. She’s definite the most well-written of the villains, and the revelation about her being Splinter’s daughter means that there is MUCH more to come for her. Like I said, just wait for Season 2!

Okay, this section was a LOOOT longer than I thought. So I’ll just finish by saying that the villains aren't all that interesting, but the main characters are very well written. They have strong personalities, plenty of room for growth, and their interactions always gel really well. Very well done!

Rating: 4.5

Story

The main plot threads are the Turtles against the Foot, and the Turtles feud against the Kraang. All with some subplots, like Pulverizer and the mutant of the week stuff, and filler episodes thrown in. I say that the plots are handled very well. For example well go with... say two or three Kraang-centric episodes. Then we may or may not get a filler episode before shifting over to the Foot Clan for awhile. It never felt like we got smothered with one faction over the other, which is good. The plots also slowly intertwined and it felt like they came together at just the right time during the last six or so episodes. Hence hwy the finale worked so well, giving some kind of payoff on both ends.

Many of the episodes were very basic and outright bizarre. Like Cockroach Terminator having a mutant cockroach tr to murder Raph... it’s kinda gross, but entertaining! Every episode normally has at least something small that’ll carry over as the story goes along. For example, Donnie built Metalhead in... well, Metalhead and brought him back in the finale, plus it helped him learn mroe about Kraang tech. In Baxter’s Gambit, April finally gets her own weapon and she attempts to use it in Karai’s Vendetta. The episodes all play a part, even if just minor, in the larger narrative and I feel some of the later seasons kind of slacked on that. This season had a perfect balance.

That’s not to say that it was perfect. Like at the end of TCRI, we find out that April is the Kraang’s true target which makes us wonder why... and the next episode is about Raph’s fear of bugs! So TCRI was episode 17, we don’t even mention this fact again until Karai’s Vendetta, which is episode 21. Five episodes later, and even then we get one tiny hint (April doesn't get damaged by mutagen-laced water) and... that’s it. The.show has a bit of an issue with not exploring fallout, which is weird because Panic in the Sewers did and id it excellently. Maybe it’s because they have to make episodes to sell toys, IDK. It doesn't do too much damage, but it makes it feel like they both wasted character opportunities and like there’s something missing. But at the very least the episodes remain entertaining, so there’s that.

Rating: 4

Final Thoughts

You know what I like about this series and why I ran it above the other ones? Well it does something that I feel that the previous incarnations lacked: The Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles felt like teenagers. They felt like a bunch of kids truly entering the world for the first time. They screw up, they have problems to overcome, and they don’t always learn it immideatly. Like their cockiness is a frequent pain in the shell for example. But the reason that I like pretty much all of the episodes aside form Episode 11 is because it feels like we’re watching a group of kids truly starting to grow up and learn about how rough life can be. How they have to change, how they have to fix their mistakes, and just become better people. As a nineteen year old who was just staring to figure my life out, when I started the show, that drew me in. I related to these characters so much. I felt like I was growing with them and coming to understand who I was due to it.

It felt really nostalgic to go back over this season. Imo, it still holds up big time. It’s funny, action-heavy, well animated, and the characters are just as enjoyable as I remember. Would I call this the best season? Hmm... maybe. I still have three more to look over. But it was a really fun ride and it got TMNT 2012 off on the right track. Can they stay on it during Season 2? Come back next week, and we shall see!

#tmnt #2k12 #tmnt 2012 #callie reviews

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queenofthyme · 6 years

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November Third (part two)

@o0o-chibaken-o0o‘s birthday drarry bingo fic (that’s really a mouthful) continues....

bingo l part one l part two l part three l part four l part five l part six l part seven l updates to come...

Second year, they’d been having one of their regular arguments when it turned into something else. Draco couldn’t even remember who suggested it when suddenly they were on the Quidditch Pitch, alone, for a match of seeker vs seeker. How it was that nobody followed them, no crowd, nor their friends, could have been chance, but years later Draco would attribute it to the date: November third.

In truth, Draco wasn’t expecting to win but he couldn’t very well back down from a challenge. Draco may have been flying since he was young, but he had seen Potter on the field last year - it appeared as if Potter had been born flying and yet he’d only just picked up a broom at the start of the school year. How could Draco compete with that natural talent?

Still, he didn’t want to lose. His pride was at stake. If he had to play dirty to have any slight chance at winning, then he was very willing to do so. Although he had to be careful. Being caught cheating would be even more humiliating than just losing - Potter would know that Draco thought him to be the better player.

While Draco fiddled with his gloves (Potter hadn’t bothered to get his), Potter took control in preparing the snitch for release. Potter was a natural leader, Draco noticed. He was always taking charge with small things like that. Not to mention he also had no shortage of followers. Draco’s father had told him that everyone was either a follower or a leader. And that Malfoys were always leaders. But Draco’s father was a follower. And Draco didn’t know how to be anything else.

He let Potter release the snitch, and followed him up into the air, not failing to notice that he kicked off the ground half a second later than Potter. Whatever. He fixed his mind on winning.

Potter was already flying high, scanning the pitch from above Draco. How he saw anything with those ridiculous muggle glasses was a mystery. Which gave Draco an idea. He waited until Potter was facing the other way and pulled his wand from his robes, casting a quick vision charm on himself. It was a charm his mother always performed on him when they watched professional Quidditch games. It allowed him to see more than regular sight allowed, to catch movement that was usually too fast to focus. He’d never tried it himself before but he was relieved to find it worked straight away, although perhaps not as well as when his mother did it.

Still, looking around the pitch with enhanced clarity, Draco was rather confident about winning this match. Especially since he was able to spot the snitch within seconds. And he wasn’t going to waste time and give Potter any opportunity to win.

He flew casually in the direction of the snitch at first so as not to alert Potter, keeping one eye trained on its movements. When he was comfortable with Potter’s distance - which wasn’t until Potter had floated to the complete opposite side of the pitch - Draco sped up to full speed and easily snatched the snitch in a single outstretched hand before Potter could even look up. It was all too easy. Draco felt none of the adrenaline that usually coursed through him after playing Quidditch. He felt nothing at all, really.

Draco raised the snitch above his head to alert Potter to his win - since it had been completely unwitnessed and non-climatic - and flew back down to the ground. Potter joined him moments later, a familiar disappointment on his face. Neither of them had even broken a sweat.

Draco shook off his annoyance at the easy win. Even an easy win had to be better than losing. And of course, now he had bragging rights. “Remember the date, Potter. November third. The day I beat you.”

Potter’s face twitched, a little bit of life streaming back into it. “Enjoy it, because it’s the only day you’ll ever get to say that about.”

Draco felt some of the adrenaline he was missing building in his bloodstream. This was more like it. “Don’t tell me you’re a sore loser, Potter,” he teased, enjoying the way Potter’s face flushed in reaction.

“You’re hardly a gracious winner, Malfoy,” Potter retorted.

Draco smirked. “Oh no. I don’t claim to be. I’m going to hold this over your head forever.”

Potter looked around, a glint in his eye revealing the promise of a challenge before he spoke. “Shame there are no witnesses.”

“What are you -“

“After the whole school watches me destroy you at every Quidditch match this year,” Power elaborated, mimicking Draco’s smirk (except with far less style of course), “do you really think they’re going to believe you could ever beat me?”

Draco gaped back at Potter for a moment. He was in two minds - one was impressed by Potter’s bravado, the other furious that Potter could be so smug - like he was really that much better than Draco. Both minds were thrilled at the challenge presented, all the same. “You haven’t beaten me yet,” he reminded Potter, waving the snitch between them, the proof of his win.

Potter didn’t even glance at it. “Now that you’ve shown me your tactics and the way you fly, I’m pretty confident I can -“

“You did this to spy on my technique?” Interrupted Draco. “That’s- thats-“ The word ‘cheating’ couldn’t quite make it’s way out of his mouth. Not when those very “tactics” (whatever Potter meant) were exactly that.

“Genius?” Potter finished for him.

“I was going to say cheating,” Draco finally managed, hoping Potter wouldn’t notice his slight wince at the word. “It’s cheating,” he repeated, with a little more conviction.

Potter didn’t look too happy at the accusation. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No,” Potter said again, his voice prickly, “it’s really not.”

“Yes, it is,” Draco insisted.

“No, it’s not.”

Draco let his broom drop so he could cross his arms. “Yes, it is.”

“No,”Potter said, throwing his own broom down (oh, it was on!), “it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” Draco repeated. Even irritated, he could still appreciate the strength of the adrenaline within his body from a fight with Potter. Turns out, cheating in Quidditch had nothing on accusing someone of cheating in Quidditch.

“Malfoy, it’s not cheating.”

“I think you’ll find it is.”

“No, I won’t, because it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” Draco said, raising his voice a little.

“No,” Potter said, raising his own voice higher still, “it’s not.”

Accepting the unspoken challenge, Draco lifted his voice so that he was almost shouting. “Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not,” Potter said louder.

“YES, IT IS!” Draco yelled, sparing a quick thought to anyone out in the school grounds that might be able to hear them.

“NO, IT’S NOT!” Screamed Potter back at him.

Draco sucked in a breath and concentrated on making his voice as loud as possible. “YES, IT - “

Draco was interrupted by a loud bark of laughter from Potter. Which was followed by another. And another. And another. Draco supposed they were being a bit ridiculous but there was no need for Potter to lose his cool completely. He couldn’t very well continue their argument when Potter was laughing.

However Potter had other ideas. “No, it’s not,” he wheezed quietly between laughter. How Potter had gone from shouting to laughing in seconds was completely nonsensical.

And yet, Draco could feel his own lips quirk upwards into something other than a smirk in response. He quickly controlled himself, reverting to an eye roll instead. Just because Potter was being childish, it didn’t mean Draco had to be too. Although, he still needed to have the last word: “Yes, it is.”

Potter was still laughing. And it was all a bit unsettling. Potter had never laughed like this around Draco. He had seen Potter laugh with his friends of course, but always from a distance. He’d never been close enough to really hear the sound properly, or see the lines on Potter’s face. And with the vision charm still in effect, he could see every crease line - every ripple across Potter’s face with each bout of laughter. There was something about the way Potter laughed. It was a little too relaxed. A little too free.

And Draco, always the follower, found it catching. His mouth fell open of it’s own accord and let out the smallest huff of breath - a static laugh - before Draco shut it down. That, at least silenced Potter. His laughter died down and he stared at Draco strangely as if waiting for it to happen again.

But instead of laughing with Harry Potter, his sworn enemy whose guts he hated (he reminded himself), Draco calmly picked up his broomstick and walked away, hoping that neither he, nor Potter, would ever have to speak of the bizarre moment again.

Bingo progress under the cut...

@o0o-chibaken-o0o um so you were totally right! Can you please stop cheating by reading my mind thanks? It’s rood™. Anyway, real question is...can you do it again? ( I don’t think so)

#drarry #o0o-chibaken-o0o #birthday #november3 #queenofthyme #bingo #ah sorry it's so slow #like #twelve year olds here #absolutely clueless

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theantisocialcritic · 4 years

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Archive Project - February 7, 2014 - Avengers Lineup

2012's Avengers movie is too easily forgotten as a miracle of modern film. What was once considered a film that could and wouldn't ever work, with a lot working against it, managed to become one of the best movies of the early 21st century. This is due largely to the miracle casting of Joss Whedon as director. Prior to selling his soul… I mean future career prospects to Marvel/Disney, he gained extreme nerd credibility for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and Cabin in the Woods (which premiered around the same time as Avengers). Joss Whedon's strength as a director has always been inter-character dynamics. By that I mean, he is able to establish a large cast of characters with differing personalities that all interact with each other differently in fascinating ways. This, I imagine, was largely why he was chosen for The Avengers. His touch really does show through as we see certain characters get along and bicker. For example, Tony Stark immediately gets along with Bruce Banner, but clashes with Steve Rogers. Ultimately though, I will admit that The Avenger's as a movie suffers from 1 flaw: an overall lack of depth. Joss spent all of his time working the movie developing the character's personalities and interactions, but the resulting script was pretty much a standard action movie with little to say about people, life, the universe, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn't detract from the movie, but what it does is two things. The first is that is keeps the movie from really standing out as potentially the greatest Superhero and Action movie of all time (though I will say it easily get's second best for me personally). The second is that it makes me really worried for the sequel, 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron. Joss has stated in interviews that his influences for making this movie are The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part II, which I would take as good signs if that actually was some sort of signifier that the movie's inspiration was other good movies. What he has also seemed to have done is to take nearly every single fan request for a character appearance and stuck them into the script while simultaneously making the story darker and more complex. I'm nervous because the last time I saw a movie that tried this strategy, making the movie darker, more complex, with more characters, and taking inspiration from another great movie (in this case Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan) was the unfortunately complicated misfire that was Star Trek into Darkness. I'm not saying that Joss Whedon is going in a bad direction with Avengers 2 or that he isn't talented at what he does. In fact if there is any director I would trust to make this movie work.. IT IS JOSS WHEDON! I'm just worried too many people out there are already convinced that Avengers Age of Ultron is predestined to become some sort of modern cinematic masterpiece when there is just as good a chance that the whole experiment could fall apart on itself if it makes a severe misfire. Overall though my main fear, as I mentioned briefly before, is the casting. Reading the cast list for this movie on Wikipedia makes me really afraid that Joss Whedon might be a bit over his head here and that he could be biting off more than he can chew. Lets look back of his record so far: Ok.. Firefly: 9 central characters, plus rotating cast of antagonists The characters had great dynamics and the show had a deep emotional core with a fully realized world. Avengers 1: 10 central characters, plus 1 primary antagonist One of the best Superhero-Action movies ever, kinda weak story but REALLY awesome!! Avengers 2: 9 Protagonists, 5 antagonists remains to be seen.. So maybe it doesn't sound like that much, but 14 main characters are a lot to throw around, especially when you are balancing multiple bad guys with different goals and story lines. Again, thats not to say it can't work. The first Die Hard movie had 12 villains. So the question is, how do you balance a two hour movie with fourteen or more characters. My best guess: do it the way they did in the old Star Trek shows: create a diverse cast of personalities but keep the focus primarily on the important figures. In old Star Trek, the stories usually revolved around Captain Kirk, Commander Spock and Dr. "Bones". Yah, characters like Uhara and Scotty got screen time but it wasn't guaranteed in every episode and was less significant than the main trio. If Avengers: Age of Ultron keeps it's focus on the right characters and gives screen time where it is needed then it really could end up something of a great movie! But it's important to approach this cautiously, as this could very easily turn out to be an X-Men: The Last Stand level disaster if the ball is dropped. Or alternatively, it could be a Man of Steel 2… I mean Batman vs… I mean NOT Justice League level screwup. The saving grace here is that we have hope. At the helm of this movie is an incredibly talented group of actors, directors and special effects artists who genuinely care about the material. The Avengers movies are one of those rare little treats where Hollywood figured out that they could make a lot of money by honoring the source materials people care about and making genuinely great, light hearted and fun action movies out of such odd, out there concepts. Who would have thought a movie about The Norse God of Thunder or Ayn Rand in a robot suit would become to most dominating movies out there. What i'm really hoping for is that the huge cast that Joss Whedon is collecting is for a greater purpose for these movies. The fact is, sadly.. these actors aren't going to be around forever. Eventually Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evens, Robert Downey Jr and the rest will get tired of the roles and try to retire the characters. We almost saw this with Downey in Iron Man 3. By making such a huge cast, maybe Joss is preparing for the ugly reality that we will all have to face at some point, that Chris Hemsworth as Thor really isn't immortal. That the invincible Iron Man really isn't. Just looking ahead at Marvel's Phase 3 movies, you can really see this. Marvel/Disney is currently in talks right now for potential movies for Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Ms. Marvel and Blade. Not to mention the Netflix Original Series' coming in 2015 for Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Don't take this as cynical. If anything, the untold possibilities with these films has me more excited for them than anything else! I'm not nearly excited for stuff like Star Wars VII or The LEGO Movie as I am for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man and Avengers 2! And in the meantime, I can confidently say that the characters we know and love will be around for quite a while! Thor 3 and Captain America 3 have already been announced! Take from this a sense of cautious optimism. These are the movies we will hand down to our children. Even if things crash and burn from here on out, we still got 8 amazing movies out of this deal! And I can say with confidence, that we will probably have more than 8 of these films to pass on. :) Thank you for reading! Live long and prosper!

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stuffandsundry · 7 years

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Lemme preface this with a big hello there! I didn’t actually expect anyone to reply to this post, and so comprehensively either, haha!

dynamojacks replied to your post: Alt. P5 Justice Confidant

Hrrrrrmm. Can’t say I agree with all of this. It’s not like ‘being foil to the protag’ is the flaw with the interaction - or characterisation, of all things - it’s mostly the way said interaction is framed. Also, he’s less of a direct foil to him and more an 'equal and opposite’. Goro isn’t supposed to relate to the protag entirely, that’s kind of the point. He envies him. But he’s on his level, so to speak. It’s that aspect that draws him to him.

I think we’re using foil in a two different ways here. I use it as shorthand for “we, as third parties to this story, are supposed to compare and contrast these characters”. So, yeah, he’s set up as an equal and opposite you are totally correct there, but Goro aint the one relating to the protag, we as the audience are the ones comparing them. And that’s when problems arise, because quite a bit about the protag is so open to interpretation.

He also kind of KNOWS he’s special because he’s.. seen him, and Morgana, in the Metaverse (see: pancakes ‘gaffe’). It’s not just a one-sided perception, he’s absolutely right and this is a big fuck-off hint that he’s a wildcard in hindsight.

yo what seriously? i thought that the pancakes thing happened in the hallway of the TV studio how the hell did i misremember that badly holy shit

I agree that this should have been dealt with better, and that we needed more interaction with the PT to build a collective bond. A WHOLE, WHOLE lot more. I live and breathe any writings that bring them all together, like really. But to narrow the issue down to the protag being foil just seems flimsy. They ARE fated rivals per se and for good reason, it’s just that this aspect was shafted to buggery when it got down to it.

It’s not protag being foil that’s the problem, it’s “protag is the foil, focused on almost exclusively to the detriment of any meaningful interaction with the rest of the cast.” like, yeah, it does work, to a point. but it also could be a lot better, by giving the others a chance to shine.

The ‘god’s game’ apparently meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. That was exceptionally bad writing. To build up shit like that, but for Goro’s role as wild card to mean next to zilch.

Oh yeah, that resolution was very much so missing, which is a massive pity. Like you said, the whole fated rivals chosen to duke it out by god is a pretty interesting concept. I’m interested to know more about why you think that Goro’s role as a Wild Card mean zilch, though. Personally, I’ve been looking at it as: “Goro did had the potential to choose many different paths that could shape the world around him, signified by the Wild Card, but he locked himself very quickly into one path where he was simply being used as a tool by Shido. This, in combination with him holding everyone at arms length, meant that he didn’t form any significant bonds either aside from the real fucked up one with Shido, and so he inadvertently crippled his own Wild Card ability from the beginning” Actually, on that note, maybe he couldn’t have formed confidants. Whenever you initiate a Confidant in-game, it’s Lavenza’s voice that you hear, not Caroline + Justine. Would Lavenza have reached out to Akechi? Hmmm...

Also regarding Goro and fame, he’s not as hung up on it as Ryuji is/was, not NEARLY as much. One, mistranslation (not ‘public image’ or 'celebrity’, but 'reputation with adults’ and 'charisma’), and two, he knows his fame is fickle and dangerous in itself, having lived it for long enough. Ryuji romanticises it, Goro does not. Goro resents that those people do not know him for who he is, Ryuji thinks that fame will make him beloved.

Yeah!!!! This right here!!! This is a great contrast to have, they’d be amazing foils!! Ryuji and Goro are practically complete opposites, but they also share a lot of similarities too despite that. I spent like 5 min on this section the first time, so these are just the things that instantly popped into my head, but you could also draw parallels btwn the fact that Ryuji’s dad being in his life made it worse, while Goro’s being absent made his worse, or they way that Ryuji always had his mother with him vs Goro who’s mother left him alone, or the way that Ryuji is very bluntly honest about everything vs Goro who tries to keep everything hidden behind a veneer of politeness, or public perception of ryuji as a no good thug even if he honestly just wants to do the right thing vs the perception of goro as the person who would uphold justice/stop the breakdowns even if he was the very same person who was causing them, but DESPITE ALL THIS CONTRAST, ryuji is one of the most empathetic members of the team and absolutely would have tried to help Goro if he’d only known sooner what kinda trouble he was in (re: first impressions of makoto as a prick vs jumping in front of a car in order to rescue her)

(Speaking of Makoto, she’s absolutely the person that has the most parallels to Goro, and she should have been his rival. Both joined the team through some form of blackmail, both have incredible pressure but on them by the adults in their lives, both very similar characters vis-à-vis approaches to life in general, actually wait one second i have a quote from a friend on this.... “But I think Makoto works really well in terms of how they’re narratively set up as opposites? idk, like Makoto’s approach to subterfuge is to orchestrate the people around her while Akechi’s approach to subterfuge is to manipulate the people around him, Makoto’s impulsivity means she can be prone to direct confrontation while Akechi is on guard until he’s literally right at the breaking point, I just think…. it would’ve been so much more interesting to explore more of this than putting the burden on protag to carry Akechi Interest”)

and oh god im babbling sorry I HAVE OPINIONS

As for Yusuke? Madarame’s exploiting of his talent to his own ends (check), Yusuke wanting to please him but also trapped and nigh desperate to leave (check), Madarame being essentially responsible for his mother’s death (check), Yusuke having to rely on him to survive, for roof over head (check), and would be ruined, and even die one way or another if he tried to escape (check, check, and double check). A comment Yusuke makes in Okumura’s Palace is extremely telling- about how someone who is oppressed will ‘desire for it’ (paraphrase). What’s even more telling, is when Yusuke said about Goro, quote: 'had I not met you all, I would have turned out like him as well’. Haru? They’re both puppets to their fathers. Both are manipulated for the sake of political goals. Both are actually sweet by nature- at least, not ruthless, and really have to be pushed to be (SIU Director’s comments about the plot to FRAME the PTs as being ‘too brutal’… imagine how much more actually KILLING would be..). And both started out with a naive(ish), idealistic core, if Robin Hood and his fixation on Featherman R is anything to go by.

Eyyyyyyyyy this is some pretty hella meta, kudos to you. Like yeah!!!! YEAH!!!!!!! GORO AND PHANTOM THIEVES INTERACTIONS.... THERES THE POTENTIAL FOR SOME REAL MEATY, REAL GOOD STUFF IN HERE....GIVE US MORE OF THAT PLEASE...

And part of the reason why opinion changed per se, was realising just how flimsy Goro’s own resolve was, and how vulnerable. He wasn’t hell bent on bringing disaster, he was clinging on to straws in desperation. Ryuji’s comment, urging him to realise that he was his own person, makes this much clear. Their ire was more focused on Shido at this point. Still, they did not really forgive Goro, and made this much VERY clear. In any event, the last point might have been down to cultural differences. I’m.. not sure, but to those who understood this scene, it didn’t come ‘out of nowhere’, so you can’t necessarily say that’s a writing flaw on it’s own.

Mmmm, sorry if I was unclear, but the two times I used ‘out of nowhere in this post were in regards to how i dislike goro approaching protag with little prior warning? So.... im not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Out of nowhere is too strong of a term to use for this scenario, so if its a thing I’ve said someplace else in regards to the last scene then sorry, I’ll clarify now. It’s not out of nowhere, however, it stands in stark contrast to the entire team’s opinions of Akechi up until this point. Not necessarily a terrible, awful choice, but it is certainly jarring in a way that is completely avoidable. Which, again, brings me back to “give Goro and the other PT a larger share of attention instead of focusing on Protag”. Sae’s Palace would have been a perfect place for Goro’s facade to slip a little bit, and give the rest of the team a little bit of an idea of how he’s like when he’s not constantly on guard. Instead, Sae’s Palace focuses on setting Goro up as smart which............. he’s a teen detective that works with the police. We know that he’s smart already. We should have gotten more characterization in there instead! Giving us some form of transition, like, “he’s an enemy of the Phantom Thieves” -> “hmm, there seem to be some circumstances that we can relate to that made him the way he is now” -> “we understand why you did the things you did. we still can’t agree with it, but we know now.” ...Granted, the reason that I think of it as an abrupt about face could have been due to the face that they never mention Goro again after his battle. A short scene after Shido’s Palace had been cleared to look back on the impact that Goro had had on the PT would have been a great help.

thank you for your thoughts! c:

#dynamojacks #long post #p5 spoilers #sundrywritings;

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cloakedmonk · 7 years

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What has Theater taught me? Ego indulgence and humility. Confidence and neurosis. Teamwork and competition. Empathy and retreat. Deception and honesty. The story of humanity in a microcosm. My story.

When I was a little kid, I learned that I could entertain and amuse my parents and my older sisters and get positive attention. As the youngest of four daughters, I was eager to exercise this talent to my advantage whenever my ego felt bereft. This helped me compensate for having fewer general skills and powers than my seniors. I couldn’t win at games or read or figure or run better than the rest, but I could sing and mime and look cute. I also was the only blonde, which helped.

When I was in second grade, I was very good at reading aloud “with expression”. I remember (and still have a written report about) my behavior when the class did a Reader’s Theater story about a snake. I told the teacher that I had a toy snake the class could use…provided that I got to read the lead role. Mrs. Richie declined my offer.

When I was in third grade, Miss White selected me to play Captain Hook in the musical Peter Pan. I was stunned. “I’m not a boy!” I protested. She told me privately that she thought I’d do a better job than any of the boys in the class. She could tell that I was a ham and would take risks to win attention and applause. And I did. In the final week of rehearsal, she gave me a monologue, a poem in rhyme that she would put into a particular scene if I could memorize it. I worked on it very hard. In the final performance, though, I skipped it altogether because I forgot where it was supposed to be inserted. To this day, I can rattle it off by heart. “Methinks I hear a spark, a gleam, a glimmer of a plan….”

The pirate theme lives on in my legacy.

When I was in seventh grade, I was double-cast as the lead in our pre-Bicentennial musical. I was the Spirit of ’75 for two performances (why the Music teacher and the Home Ec teacher chose this theme a year early is anyone’s guess). So was Kevin Bry. Yes, I played a man. Again. I vividly remember being in performance and feeling sort of bored with the dialogue the teachers had written to link together the songs the school chorus had rehearsed. So I decided to overact. “The sun still rises in the East….doesn’t it????!!” The audience roared. I think they were pretty bored, too.

When I was in High School, I took real Drama classes. I learned to dance, and I gained some confidence singing solos in the Concert Choir and the Jazz Choir. I became a lot more aware of my own vulnerability, too. I will never forget the Talent Show in my Junior year. I was in a leotard and character shoes, posed and ready to dance when the curtain went up. I was listening for our taped music to begin. And I heard nothing…until the audience started to howl and whistle. Suddenly, I felt naked and taunted. Then the music started, and I couldn’t concentrate on it. I was humiliated. My father and mother and boyfriend (who became my husband) were in the audience, hearing those students jeering at me. We all went out for ice cream afterward, and they tried to convince me that the performance wasn’t bad and the audience wasn’t being critical, but I just wanted to block the whole thing out of my memory forever. Obviously, I haven’t.

When I was in college, I was a Music major with Voice Performance as my Senior thesis. I auditioned for a part in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta as a Junior. I hate auditions. I tend to choke when I know that someone is out there in those dark seats judging me. I am awesome in rehearsal – prepared, alert, willing and tireless. I was working hard, getting better at performance in my Master Classes and feeling more and more that my teachers and colleagues were actually rooting for me. But not at an audition. I was nervous, my mouth was dry, and my voice wavered. I could see my choir teacher in the house, talking with the casting director. I am sure that Prof. Lamkin was telling him that I was a very good soprano despite my weak scale runs in Mabel’s aria. I managed to land a part in the chorus.

That’s me, third lady on the left.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa with my B.A. in Music, I auditioned for the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Worst audition EVER! Oh well. I found out that I was already pregnant. Got the role of Mother at age 22…and 24…and 26…and 28, and stayed off the stage for years. Meanwhile, my husband performed all over the country with a competitive Barbershop quartet and once at Carnegie Hall with the Robert Shaw Chorale Workshop. My children were on stage quite a bit, too. I was their coach. They were in all the school concerts and plays, took dance and music classes, and I watched and cheered and videotaped my heart out.

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Then some neighbors invited me to help them start a Community Theater. I was tired of being in the background. I stepped up, and brought my oldest daughter with me. The next summer, I brought three of my children, my husband, and my mother-in-law as rehearsal accompanist. The next summer, it was just me, and my husband told me that he wouldn’t be able to solo parent while I was at rehearsal after this. Meanwhile, he was performing with the Chicago Master Singers and rehearsing every week. A few years later, my youngest daughter started taking theater classes with a group called CYT. The next summer, they did a community theater production, and I auditioned again and got cast. My oldest daughter played in the pit band. One of the performances was on my birthday, and the director brought me out on stage for the audience to sing for me during intermission. * shucks, folks! *

Joseph CCT

Carousel Cary CT

Hello Dolly Cary CT

Godspell Cary CT

Beauty & the Beast CCT

I ended up working for CYT and becoming their Operations Supervisor full time. In addition, I taught Voice classes and Musical Theater classes and Show Choir classes to kids aged 8-18 after work. All of my children and my husband participated at some point in the seven years I was employed there. I watched kids grow up in the theater, auditioning three times a year, growing in confidence and artistry, and questioning their identity every time.

“Who am I, anyway? Am I my résumé? That is a picture of a person I don’t know.” A Chorus Line

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Accessing emotions, improvising with another person’s energy – initiation, response, vulnerability, defense. Mime, mimicry, mannerisms, artifice and accents. Playing in the muck of human behavior. This is Theater. It can be devastating and edifying. You can lose yourself and find yourself or never know the difference.

I wonder if I should regret raising up a bunch of performers and encouraging them in this charade or if I should be proud to have modeled survival in the arena. I don’t know. It’s complex. We’re complex. And maybe that’s the entire lesson.

Theater Lessons What has Theater taught me? Ego indulgence and humility. Confidence and neurosis. Teamwork and competition. Empathy and retreat.

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xt1erminator-blog · 7 years

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“Celebrity” DMs That Slay

I love Dungeons & Dragons. I love playing it, DMing it, reading about it, watching YouTube videos on subject matter relating to it (Nerdarchy, Matt Colville and Drunkens & Dragons: Play D&D Like A Badass are all great YouTube channels with quality content). Some games are even great to watch live streams of, especially observing talented “celebrity” Dungeon Masters working their magic, some of them admitting a lot of their “performance” and the content they come up with for their players is improvised and off the cuff. It takes a lot to pull that off. Most games out there however, are very difficult to watch and enjoy. There are too many distractions among groups when streaming stuff and it can be boring.

So, for anyone new to the D&D hobby that might be reading this blog, I just wanted to write up some stuff on three of the best publicly known Dungeon Masters out there thanks to the Internet - most of us into D&D will know who they are, and they are all are on a lot of people’s Top 3 Dungeon Masters Ever lists I’m sure. These guys put in some crazy hard work to help the online community better ourselves as Dungeon Masters. Thank you.

(And you know, I should have mentioned this in one of my first posts on this site, but I’m not a professional blogger or even a good writer. This is just my space to shoot the shit (probably mostly talking to myself no doubt) about one of my favourite past times, D&D). Warning: some of this post may seem out of logical order, sorry in advance :) I had to go back and edit it a few times. Apologies for any inaccuracies as well but I’m pretty confident it’s solid.

Chris Perkins, “Celebrity DM to the Stars”

Being a semi-regular reader of Dungeon magazine for quite some time, I didn’t really pay attention to names of the authors of the short adventure modules published within the magazine’s pages. When I reconnected with the hobby a couple of years ago after hearing a lot of good praise about 5th Edition D&D, I did more and more research about the people behind it, and naturally stumbled across reading about Chris and the Acquisitions Incorporated live games run at some of the PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) Conventions with the Penny Arcade guys (Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik and Scott Kurtz, as well as occasional appearances by celebrities/TV personalities like Wil Wheaton and Morgan Webb, author Patrick Rothfuss, etc.). Then I went back through old Dungeon magazines after reading that’s how Chris got his start to getting his foot in the door, and have since become a fan of his. He’s even replied to Tweets of mine once or twice. Woo.

I am very entertained by how Chris runs his live games. It’s quite easy to see why he is held in such high regard. I started to lose a little interest in his work however when his regular weekly Dice, Camera, Action web series started. They were starting to run a series based on The Curse of Strahd just before the book released. The PAX games are still great, as are the in-studio AI series episodes, however with Dice, Camera, Action things seemed to really be a struggle and it was hard to follow and really get in to. Between technical difficulties in the first few episodes, to things taking a long time to pick up due to excessive chatter which was in my opinion a waste of time (get on with the game ffs! This happened quite frequently), it was hard to keep myself entertained and motivated enough to finish watching each episode. By the 6th episode or so, I stopped watching D, CA entirely. I decided to revisit it recently and while the presentation is a bit better and they seem to have worked out the kinks in the system, I have come to the conclusion why it wasn’t a success for me: the cast picked for this series is not very good. It’s not Chris - how can it be. The guy is probably the most dedicated and passionate Dungeons & Dragons fan, Dungeon Master, works for the company who makes the game (Wizards of the Coast), and spends a shitload of time on Twitter answering questions from fans with his unique sense of humour, I love the guy (not that way). The cast though. Very weak. Generally speaking they are either too silly to take seriously or not entertaining enough in role playing their characters (hey, I’m not very good when I play and probably an even worse DM so I’m not tooting my own horn by any means), etc. but they are on camera for this and I really cannot believe so many people like this show like they say they do. The whole “Waffle Crew” thing I just don’t get I guess. The cast isn’t exceptional and I think Chris should be spending his time with a different group doing bigger and better things. Again, I am a heavily opinionated bastard as stated in the header of this blog :) “ProJared” is probably the weakest link in the D, CA group. He just doesn’t bring anything to the table and quite honestly, his attitude sucks. It is a puzzle to me how he was chosen to partake in this show with the legendary Christopher Perkins, DM. Just watch his videos on his YouTube channel, ProJared Plays I believe it’s called. I suggest watching his video entitled “Worst Player Ever”. Wait for the part where he describes how he “loses his shit” with “Steve”. But enough about him... Chris rocks.

Matt Mercer, He’s Pretty OK

One of the players in a campaign I run is a very, very big fan of Critical Role. If you don’t know what CR is, Google it. It’s one of the reasons she became interested in Dungeons & Dragons and wanted to try it out, which opened a huge floodgate for me that had been closed for several years, and caused my re-connection with the hobby a couple of years ago. The addiction resurfaced and hundreds (OK, probably thousands) of dollars later I am the proud owner of a collection of nerdy D&D stuff that has been amassed. Damn you, Liesl.

Anyhow. I was curious and tried watching some episodes of CR. At the time, I wasn’t into it. Not at all. I wouldn’t say I am now either, but I have probably watched around half of the 80+ episodes and find quite a bit of entertainment in the performance everyone in that group delivers.

So, at the time we started getting into 5e via the infamous Starter Set, featuring the introductory Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure module. Naturally, I ran it improvising mostly everything and only referencing major area and plot details when absolutely required. I admittedly do not care much for running any of the current 5e premade adventures and therefore probably won’t ever run any of them in their entirety (I will pick apart things, and throw in content from an old Dungeon magazine, even 4e source book, etc. or borrow a part from some other WotC hard cover adventure campaign book, that, like I said, will never run in its entirety). There’s good stuff in there, but it doesn’t play like modules back in the good old days. Anyhow I think it went well. The more we played, the more references were made to Critical Role and how Matt did things. So I got more and more curious and gave Matt and CR another chance. Glad I did.

It turns out what I really went back for though after thinking I didn’t like CR, was Matt Mercer (after awhile the cast of that show grew on me, but I was paying particular attention to Matt most of the time). It’s absolutely unlikely I would ever be able to pull off 1% of what he can do with voices, and describing and gesturing things when he spins his tale - but I try to absorb everything I can, and hope my poor little brain remembers just a smidgen of it and it enters my game at some point and does just a little bit to help my improvisational skills. I don’t think I’ll ever attempt performing NPC or monster voices, but who knows... like they say, you’ll never get anywhere with it if you don’t just start doing it, no matter how much of a fool you think you are making of yourself. There is a reason why Matthew Mercer is regarded as one of the best Dungeon Masters in the world, because he truly is just that damn good.

Also - FORCE GREY IS AMAZING. It’s a short run series Matt DM’d for several other celebrity players including the immortal Brian Posehn.

Matt Colville, the YouTube DM Activist

Finally, I think my personal absolute favourite "popular” Dungeon Master these days would have to be none other than Matt Colville. He claims to be a normal person just like anyone else, but he’s totally a celebrity now, to me anyhow. Ha ha. Dude, you’re on a now-quite-popular YouTube channel. You’re awesome. Thank you.

Matt is a writer by profession. He’s got a couple of fantasy novels he’s written that you can find on Amazon.com (Priest, and Thief I believe are the titles - check them out). He’s also lead writer at Turtle Rock game studio in California. Makers of games like the Mercenaries series on consoles, and more recently the party vs. big bad enemy shooter Evolve (he says he’s most proud of this title), all of which Matt did major writing on. From the game sessions I have watched that he has posted on his channel, it is evident that he is very creative and an extremely bright person more than capable of running a really great game that is well thought out and has all the bells and whistles and logistics of everything worked out just right (in my opinion). I wish I could run my games with his brain :)

The last few videos I’ve linked on my blog here are a few of my favourites of his, and they have really kickstarted my brain. So now I am thinking of better ways to run my games, and attempting to infuse a similar kind of quality material that Matt seems to ooze out of his noggin. Watch his videos, all of them. When I first discovered his channel, I was amused. However, after watching maybe a half dozen more videos, I had to stop. I think it was the rapid rate at which he discusses the topics presented, it was maybe overwhelming me. I took a break for a couple of months and avoided his channel. Then a colleague and I were discussing him, and in hindsight I realized I really totally dug his stuff. So when I went back to checking out his videos and gave some thought about what it is that he is doing with his channel, and what he is doing to help Dungeon Masters (new or old) better the quality of their games. I watched every single video (and rewatch several frequently for inspiration) and it’s now my top rated Dungeons & Dragons influenced channel.

I respect his genuine passion for the game and how he conveys his message to us, and appreciate the time he takes to create such brilliant content for the DM crowd. I highly suggest subscribing to his channel. If you can get past the fast paced talking, it’s worth the time to check his stuff out. If there ever was such thing as a “Church of D&D”, Matt Colville should be the high priest of it.

In the words of Mr. Colville:

“Peace. Out.”

And now, enjoy some whiny ProJared! (”he’s such a dumbass!”)

-runDMsteve

youtube

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