#did I separate the paragraphs differently for each segment?

[noivoom]

AAAAA couldn’t stop thinking about yesterday’s episode. There was a lot to unpack and others went over the Big Main Things better than I can so I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on a couple of other things

incoherent ramble time

First of all, I think we all noticed the Computer’s sudden change of attitude. What it said to Sun at the end about the Old Moon being gone and needing to accept that was SO INTERESTING. Just… the WAY it spoke, slowly and almost hesitantly, as if it was just coming to those realisations itself. It’s constantly been comparing Moon to his old self, behaving like they’re still the same, treating him with more and more snark as if actively trying to get him to act “correctly”. Forcing him to work under pressure, treating taking Sun off the “subject list” like a joke, ramping up its attitude... surely it’ll work eventually, right? He’ll start acting like his old self in no time, they just have to keep pushing. It almost seemed frustrated that Moon constantly refused to. Because Moon isn’t the same person anymore. He hasn’t been the same person since the day he woke up.

All of the Old Moon’s actions, his anger and distance and defensiveness, it all stemmed from the fear and trauma of spending most of his life trapped in someone else’s body while also dealing with the kill code (has anyone else ever thought about how terrifying the first moments of his existence would’ve been?? Stuck helplessly in the head of someone who doesn’t even know he’s there, he doesn’t know why and all he can do is lash out in anger because it’s not fair and I have A LOT of feelings about this but that’s for a different post entirely).

New Moon didn’t have that. Sure things were far from perfect with Eclipse and everything, but he had a family. Sun was there to tell him what’s going on, and Earth to teach him good habits. Sure, he has a similar personality, same sense of humour, similar reactions when mad (meeting Banban in VRchat and that one Roblox maze, anyone?), but his base personality only goes so far. He hasn’t learned the same behaviours. He’s a different person now.

(… where was I going with this? RIGHT THE COMPUTER.)

I always thought that maybe the Computer was suddenly being an ass because it didn’t know how to deal with Moon’s reset. It wasn’t really created with that kind of emotional range in mind, and it’s never had to deal with something like this before. This whole time the Computer’s been clinging to the Old Moon, whether in some kind of grief or denial it’s been refusing to process. But I think what Moon said to Sun, “you refuse to think I can be different,” made it FINALLY realise that Old Moon and New Moon aren’t the same, and only when talking to Sun did it start to actually accept the fact. Again, the way it spoke then... it really felt like just as significant a moment character-wise for the Computer as it was for Moon.

Maybe it’s going to be more empathetic from now on. OR I’m completely wrong about all this and it goes back to it’s regularly scheduled dickishness in a few episodes, that’s possible too lol—

I can’t help but wonder how long Moon’s been sitting on this, though? He cares about Sun so much, he’s been trying so hard to help and prove he’s different, but it must still hurt that he’s receiving the fallout of actions he doesn’t even remember. He only knows what happened second-hand through what little Sun tells him and a freaking youtube channel of all things; he doesn’t understand why the Old Moon did the things he did. They’re quite literally different people at this point. And he knows Sun’s struggling, knows Sun has every right to feel this way, but he can’t help if Sun doesn’t let him. He’s been trying so hard to prove that he won’t treat Sun like the Old Moon did, he doesn’t WANT to hurt him like that, ever, but after finding out Sun lied to him, it must feel like he’s been making no progress at all. How long has this been festering in his mind? An outburst like that doesn’t just happen. It wouldn’t help that Earth is the only one who never knew the Old Moon, and thus doesn’t have any expectations of how he should act outside of how he is now. Not to mention the Star still affecting the rest of the Pizzaplex. How long has he felt trapped by the shadow of his predecessor?

Another thing I’ve noticed is the whole… “giving more attention to Moon’s problems” thing. For most of the show, Sun’s issues have been largely ignored, brushed off, or relegated to a “one-time issue that’s been resolved”. Because this is Sun, he’s the happy one, he always bounces back, he’s always fine in the end! Right? I’m so glad he’s been having the spotlight recently, he absolutely deserves it and needs to have his issues addressed. But something that occurred to me after this episode is that that same issue has been threatening to repeat itself, just in the opposite direction. Because Moon’s fine now, he doesn’t remember any of his trauma, he’s all relaxed and goofy so there’s no need to worry! Something that’s been rather prevalent in this show is cycles. Moon hurting Sun and apologising, only to slowly start falling back into the same behaviours that caused the issue in the first place. Sun screws up, Moon fixes it, Sun wants to be useful and does something else that results in more problems. One brother starts spiralling, the other spirals because of it. THE TRUCK LOAD OF MISCOMMUNICATION. Sun’s mental issues certainly are more immediately concerning (for obvious reasons), but the last thing we need is yet another cycle of one brother’s issues overshadowing the others. If anything, this is actually the perfect opportunity for them to break out of this particular cycle before it can even get started, as well as the communication issues everyone’s been talking about. They both have their own issues, and sometimes they clash in the worst ways (as we saw frequently in the past), but neither of them should invalidate the other. This is their chance for both of them to start putting things right.

#tsams #The Sun And Moon Show #wow I'm surprised I actually had the energy for this #hell yeah take that executive dysfunction #did I separate the paragraphs differently for each segment? #yesitsram #yes I did #don't worry it annoys me too #no I'm not fixing it #I have THOUGHTS and I wanna get in the habit of sharing them #tsams computer #tsams moon #tsams sun

[awritingarrow]

skitters in here like a feral little beast

so first of all it’s a good time to mention i have a content sideblog @aroacearrowace for my fics n art bc i have like 6k posts on this blog and none of them are coherent. that blog is the one u will see coherency on. this one is chaos and horrors and a tag system that only i can navigate. as u can see, i’m posting on this one. so we’re going to be crazy tonight

usually i’m like not active on tumblr at all bc discord is My True Home. so usually u will just see me going feral on discord BUT i am currently thinking abt @andizoidart​‘s boy and idk their discord/if they have one/what kind of servers they’re in so now i’m just going to b going feral on here for the next however long it takes to fic idea.

normally i am only this unhinged on private discord servers with 10 people including me inside. u are all about to witness the horrors sooo badly get exposed to my mental illness get consumed by my chaos

normally i would put long posts behind a read more but when u read more u can only find the posts on the Account It Was Posted On and unless u archive.org it u literally cannot find it if ur blog is deleted for whatever reason. also i get really annoyed when ppl put things behind a read more bc i wanna see the content i don’t wanna GO TO A SEPARATE PAGE. also this is my blog i do what i want. so anyway no read more bc again, i’m feral!

anyway i spent so long just explaining my incoherency so now u will witness the me

first of all: ghost apples! they’re really cool. i want to squish one in my hands like soap. watch it break like glass. very stimmie very gender very ogh. my immediate keyword associations: ice, glass, ghost. i could EASILY make an oc sans that’s all of those things and then shove them in to kiss dream and nightmare on the mouth but that’s the easy route. what i want to do is use ghost apples as a theme to an overarching story full of slowburn and suffering.

(prepare for technical writing terms that were literally made up by me and never elaborated on)

i usually write in a very metaphorical, emotional way. when you read each line of my work, i want it to make you feel an emotion and carry you to the next paragraph, which makes you feel a different emotion, guiding you on a journey of my very own design. metaphors. i like metaphors

now the keywords i chose were “ice,” “glass,” and “ghost.” i have two options here: make each segment of the story pertain to a different keyword, or make each character pertain to a different keyword. i like metaphors! so i’m doing the latter.

easily, i come up with:

nightmare - cold like ice, frozen to the touch. standoffish. you know elsa from frozen? like in that one scene the do u wanna build a snowman scene? yeah yeah that.

dream - glass. instantly, glass, bc of the statue thing. fragile, delicate, easy to break. i really really like a dream who can kick ur butt for no reason whatsoever so i have elected to put my own twist on this: dream is treated like glass, but he’s made of stone. (see what i did there?)

with that, nightmare feels like ice, but is treated like fire. dream is treated like glass, but feels like stone.

then, somnus.

definitely. would b very fun. if somnus felt and was treated the same, as a foil to dream and nightmare.

somnus’s keyword was ghost. i’m realllyyyy torn on what to do with this one bc there’s so many options.

i could literally kill him off, and then make him a ghost, but that’s like, obvious. there’s not a metaphor in that. also what’s the point of writing a fic about a character if u kill them off in the first five seconds.

according to andi’s post, he has dysfunctional magic. instantly makes me think of a disabled metaphor, i like it. he searches for artificial magic, and he’s a little worm guy. goes digging in the dirt and pulls out a fistful of worms. brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

it might be a lot of fun to change the dreamtale story around a lot. i want nightmare to get corrupted, that’s definitely staying. maybe i want to give them wings, for funsies. not for any particular reason, just funsies. buuuut idk if i want dream to get stoned in a physical sense.

my metaphor was that nightmare feels like ice, is treated like fire. dream is treated like glass, is made of stone... so i think what if i made that metaphor really really apparent with the apple incident part of the story

i really like the idea that in like, any dreamtale au, both dream and nightmare get abused. nightmare is physically abused, yeah, but dream is emotionally abused. with somnus, it might be fun to include neglect as a third form of abuse, just so we get all of the abuse. i never said i was going to be nice to these characters

i think that, with somnus left in the dust, and dream being treated as though he’s made of glass, and nightmare being treated like a threat, dream would be the first to act. dream eats the apple, first.

i’m guessing the sort of idea behind somnus is that he’s the wood? dream is the gold apples, nightmare the black, somnus is the wood. so i’m not doing a shattered dream scenario bc i wanna stick with each of those themes. idk what the positive apples would do to you if you ate one, bc like in canon they just make you really lucky?? i guess???? but in this i want something DRAMATIC to happen. since this is just a fic outline i’m metaphorically inserting brackets that say [something dramatic happens that get all three triplets fighting against the villagers]

nightmare gets corrupted like ice, dream like stone, and somnus..? hm. i mean i have to figure out what somnus does to the tree bc i don’t think it’s good to just up and eat tree bark from some random apple tree. i don’t think that’s healthy. there was a mention of a palismen in the post i think unless i read it wrong so i think,,,,, mb the tree starts falling apart bc the other two are eating the apples so then the tree just goes YOINK ur getting stolen into the tree now.

and since somnus’s prompt is ghost i think. i think. i think it would b very fun if the fic was about dream and nightmare trying to find their brother.

welcome to my brain everyone xD

#long post #so anyway i'm normal

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Good morning, good evening, and goodnight everybody. Today I’ll be covering the ninth episode of Ranma 1/2, which is also the third episode in Ryoga Hibiki’s introductory arc. I don’t really know what to expect from this one, most of my memories of this arc are from the front half, but I’m interested to see where it went next. Oh, and with this episode I’ll be halfway through the first season! So that’s neat. Well, next paragraph I’ll have rewatched the episodes, so I’ll see you then.

That was a pretty interesting experience. It really feels like this episode was adapting two different chapters, each with a radically different tone, and together they kind of add up into a good summating of the Ranma 1/2 experience, only missing the acting scenes and love dodecahedron elements to tie it all together.

As you might have expected, this episode begins right where the last one left off, just as one of Ryoga’s weapons chopped off a chunk of Akane’s long hair. At first, she doesn’t react at all, leaving Ranma to feel really bad about it, talking with one of the school girls there about how getting a bad haircut out of nowhere like that would feel terrible for any young woman. This is also when the students realize they don’t know who this red-headed ‘girl’ is, but Ranma tries to change the subject.

Ryoga steps up, not to continue the fight with Ranma, but to point out that at least Akane wasn’t actually injured. Still, Ranma brings up that it still hurts Akane emotionally. They both ask Akane to punch them, to let out any anger she might be feeling. She ends up doing just that before walking away, and it looked to be some damn good punches too. That doesn’t seem to be enough though, as she also shatters a metal telephone pole on her walk home, and in the process realizes she twisted her ankle earlier. Her first instinct is to go and see Dr. Tofu, but she doesn’t want him to see her like this.

Instead, we cut to Akane in her room, remembering why she grew her hair out in the first place. We flash back to Akane as a young kid, fresh from a fight at school, going to see Dr. Tofu. Back then, she had short hair, and it’s clear even then she was fond of the doctor. But the high school age Kasumi shows up, turning Tofu’s brains to mush, and causing him to refer to Akane as a ‘he’. As they walk home together, Kasumi tells her little sister that if she tried to dress less like a boy, maybe people wouldn’t mistake her for one. This leads Akane to think that maybe if she grows her hair as long as Kasumi’s, maybe Dr. Tofu would like her the same way he likes Kasumi.

Coming out of that flashback, Ranma is at Akane’s window, but she doesn’t want to talk to him. Instead, she goes to see Kasumi, who is shocked by what’s happened to her hair. Instead of telling her the truth, Akane just says she messed up cutting it herself, and asks for Kasumi’s assistance in making it even. There’s a brief cutaway of Ryoga trying to head to the Tendo household to fight Ranma, only to be waylaid by an old lady asking for his help.

Sometime later, Ranma is back in his uncursed form, and he learns from Kasumi that Akane is going to Dr. Tofu’s. It’s then that he, and the audience, see Akane with short hair for the first time. Ranma apologizes as hard as he can, but tells him that she’s over it, and that him being nice to her feels weird.

At the clinic, Dr. Tofu is surprised by her short hair as well, but tells her it’s cute, and suits her a lot better than long hair did. As he’s tending to her injury, she starts crying, which turns into sobbing into the doctor’s shoulder as he offers comfort. Afterwards, Akane is heading back home with Ranma, apparently feeling better after crying, and he points out that she got what she wanted: Dr. Tofu said she was cute, right? But Akane says she’s over all of that now.

For reasons that are clearly mysterious and not due to jealousy about some other guy telling Akane her hair was cute first, Ranma makes it clear he likes her shorter hair as well. When she reacts with confusion, wondering if he’s okay if he’s complimenting her like that, Ranma starts to backpedal, before instead doubling down, really telling her it’s cute. She smiles at that, and thanks Ranma even if she might still suspect he doesn’t really mean it. To which, we can hear Ranma’s thoughts, as he is amazed to realize she does genuinely look cute. But while he’s distracted, Akane tips him over into the water.

That’s the end of that part of the story. Next part begins with Ryoga finally reaching the Tendo estate, a week after the previous events happened, in the night, in the rain, using an umbrella to protect himself. When he gets inside the house, he finds Ranma asleep, and tries to wake him up so they can properly fight. Ranma dodges attempts by Ryoga to hit him awake, and when Ryoga tries using shouting to get him up, all he succeeds in doing is instead waking up Ranma’s father in his cursed form, who knocks Ryoga and Ranma outside in annoyance, where the rain triggers Ranma’s curse, and Ryoga is still able to use his umbrella to keep himself dry.

As they prepare to fight, Ryoga finally decides to give Ranma a clue as to why he’s so freaking angry at him: after Ranma missed their duel, Ryoga followed him and his father to China. Ranma quickly puts two and two together, asking Ryoga if he too went to Jusenkyo, if he also has a curse. Meanwhile, Akane and her sisters wake up from the noise, and they assume there’s a prowler around. The other two hide behind Akane, and she throws a dumbbell at who she thinks is an intruder, nailing Ryoga hard enough to make him drop his umbrella. This finally activates his curse, but he scampers before anyone can see what it does to him. All Ranma can find afterwards are his clothes...and a mangy dog not far away.

Back with Akane, she finds an adorable black piglet in her room wearing a yellow and black bandanna that’s soaking wet with cold rain, and takes it downstairs to take care of it. Ranma has assumed the dog he found is Ryoga, but doesn’t want Akane to know that, trying to protect Ryoga’s secret. However, Akane quickly realizes that it’s one of their neighbor’s dogs, and Ranma confirms with hot water that it isn’t Ryoga. Then, as he goes off for a hot bath, Akane passes him the pig, since the animal needs a bath too. Ranma does it, even if he doesn’t like it, but as he finally pushes the resisting animal into the water, Ryoga emerges. Cliffhanger! Again!

Alright, like I said before, this episode is functionally two separate stories glued together, so let’s handle one and then the other. First thing I noted about this episode was that there’s a quick shot of Nabiki looking concerned for Akane after her hair accident. I only point it out because she’s known in the fandom for being fairly ruthless and sociopathic, and this is a moment that kind of goes against that. Nabiki obviously loves money, and can be quite selfish, but she does have some empathy for her baby sister.

I can’t remember if this is exactly the first time in the series thus far attention has been called to Ranma’s curse kind of giving him a weird secret identity issue with his schoolmates in general, but it is at least the first time it’s been given as much focus as it was at the start of this episode.

This is also where Ryoga starts getting some more shades to his character. From what we’ve seen of him thus far, it wouldn’t be unexpected if he’d just kept trying to fight Ranma, but even without knowing Akane at all, he still accepted the fight was at least paused, and once it was made clear to him how devastating this was to her, he offered to be punched if it would help. I also think the way he phrases that offer gives some insight into him: he talks about how letting the anger out by hitting him would make her feel better. Is that what his vendetta with Ranma is, a way to unleash all the anger roiling inside of him?

There is a neat bit of imagery around there too, how for a second Akane’s facial expression makes you think she won’t hit them, then we see construction equipment in motion that feels like it symbolizes violence, then we cut to her just walking away. It isn’t until we see their swollen faces that we know she did follow through on their offer.

Aside from those sorts of details, I just really like the mood of this entire first half. There are very few attempts at jokes, instead just focusing on Akane’s mental state. I feel like, while her situation is pretty strange and specific, it’s easy to relate to. I think we’ve all, at some time or another, been hurt by someone else without them realizing it, over something that only mattered to you so much because of some odd, ineffable thing that just you understand.

Throughout the segment, Akane waffles between shock, anger, trying to make the best of it, sobbing, and moving on with her life. I particularly enjoy the bounceback of her trying to take control, getting that haircut with Kasumi, getting compliments for it...only for it to stab into an emotional vulnerability, causing her to break down with the doctor. That all really worked for me.

The same is true for Ranma’s reaction. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen him this hung up on hurting someone else before. He’s clearly bothering her at some points by not leaving her alone like she clearly wants him to do, but he gives a genuine apology, which is clearly really something from him, and his compliment at the end was so cute. It was adorable shippy nonsense, and I adored it. This segment of the larger episode also had a lot more to do with our previous arc, about Akane and Dr. Tofu, than the Ryoga plot, effectively serving as the capstone to that tale.

I feel there was nearly as much to like in the second half. This part was definitely more jokey, with lots of Ryoga being bad at directions, silly background music (which I honestly can’t stand, it’s just a weird personal thing for me), and wacky hijinks with Ryoga as a pig.

But there was still meat to be found with the funnies. Once again, they took the time to establish Ryoga a little better with how he acted towards Ranma. For someone always shouting about how he wants Ranma to die and go to tell, whose vengeance drives him, he had a perfect opportunity to just kill him in his sleep. But it didn’t look like he even considered that. Instead, he just kept trying to wake Ranma up so they could fight. You could argue Ryoga is too dumb to have thought of that, which feels like the kind of thing Ranma would say, but I’d counter that maybe it’s a sign that Ryoga is more about talking about killing than actually doing it. In a kind of equal and opposite event, I liked how Ranma was just immediately all about helping Ryoga once he learned about the curse, trying to assist the dog he thought was Ryoga while keeping it a secret from Akane.

This is also when we finally learn why Ryoga is so angry at Ranma, or at least begin to get the larger picture. It wasn’t just bread, or a missed duel, but that Ryoga kept on Ranma after that, leading to him being cursed to become an adorable little piglet when exposed to cold water. He definitely manages the curse well thanks to his umbrella (I don’t know why Ranma never thinks to try just covering his head), and the care he’s taken to use it to avoid getting wet in the last episode and in this one was some foreshadowing as to what his deal was.

On the whole, this part of the episode was more like set-up for the next one, but it wasn’t bad at all. Together, the two pieces actually meshed together pretty well, at least to me. I got my emotional feels, I got my shippy moments, and I got my boi Ryoga. What else could I want?

Like I said last week, there are other characters I could be doing spotlights for who’ve already been introduced, but they haven’t really done enough yet to be worth covering, at least in my opinion. Thus, we’re going back to Akane.

Since the second episode, we’ve gotten a lot more of who she is, especially between this arc and the one before it. They’ve kind of toned down the whole ‘hates boys’ aspect of her character, and instead refocused on her feelings towards Dr. Tofu, towards Ranma, and towards herself.

I think it’s clear, even to Akane herself, that her crush on the doctor is childish. She likes him because he’s an adult who’s always treated her seriously, appreciated her for who she is, and given her his time. At least in my experience, a lot of people have had some kind of affection similar to hers, towards someone older than us when we were too young to do anything about it. Even as we get older, and we know there will never be anything with that person, we still have a hard time letting go of it.

With Ranma, I think a firm pattern is developing. Aside from occasional moments when she takes her frustrations out on Ranma, Akane is generally becoming more fond of him. Between this episode and episode 6, one could argue she’s starting to actually like him. The problem is that Ranma is kind of a jerk. He regularly does stuff to make her upset, at which point he either makes it worse or starts acting nice. She clearly appreciates when Ranma is trying to help her and cheer her up, but it doesn’t stop the fact that his default setting is ‘abrasive’.

Most importantly with the first half of this episode, we’ve gotten a good look at how Akane sees herself. It’s pretty obvious that the long hair/short hair issue isn’t just about how long her locks are. The issue represents her struggle between being herself, a tomboy who enjoys fighting and martial arts and being more free-spirited, versus being who other people want her to be, more traditionally feminine. It’s honestly kind of weird in the first half of this season, watching her with the long hair. Short haired Akane is cuter, I think it’s hard to deny that, but it’s also her being happier with who she is, and that’s the cutest thing in the world. I’m still not 100% happy with how they handle her violence towards other people, but I talked about that last time, and it doesn't feel like that’s something the show will ever really address.

If it wasn’t clear before, I quite enjoyed this episode. The only particularly weak parts for me were with Ryoga escorting the old lady around, but they were short and didn’t do too much to mess up the pacing. I won’t lie, I’d say this is actually the second best episode so far, only falling behind episode 7. That makes the current rankings:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Next time, we’ll have into the back half of the season and the last episode of this storyline with episode 10, “P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'”. See you all then!

#episode 9 #True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life! #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #ryoga hibiki #anime analysis #anime rewatch

[zrreed]

Hey Reye! I hope you are doing well! I absolutely love your books and I was wondering if you had any advice on writing fight/action scenes? Mine always come out very stilted, sounding very much like “she did this, then this. He did this, etc.” Your writing is always so fluid sounding.

Hi! Thank you so much! Also sorry that this took me a bit to answer. My first piece of advice for writing any kind of scene, but especially fight and love scenes, is you need cause AND effect. So, if your writing is very much “she did this, then this. He did this, etc.” then you have a lot of cause, but no effect. It also helps flow to link your sentences. Carry the action of one sentence into the next.

For example, with cause only: She blocked her enemy’s strike with her sword. Then she plowed into his chest. He fell backwards.

Again, with effect and link: She blocked her enemy’s strike with her sword, the clash of metal on metal vibrating up her arms. As the clang reached her shoulders, she shot forward, plowing him in the chest and knocking him backwards.

Another important thing for not letting your writing get stale is to VARY SENTENCE STRUCTURE. If you read a paragraph where every sentence is a similar length, with the same amount of segments/details, it gets monotonous. In other words, the ‘cause only’ example has 3 sentences, each detailing one action in exactly one segment. The ‘effect/link’ example has 2 sentences, each with a different amount of segments (separated by commas) that differ in word length. The first has two segments separated by a comma. The second sentence has three segments separated by commas, each segment a different length than the other two. What it does when you vary sentence structure is create a rhythm that isn’t like hearing the same beat over and over until your brain gets bored and tunes it out. 

#Anonymous

[ngame989]

Earning the Happily Ever After: Star’s Season 4 Arc Prediction (with a primer analysis for Seasons 1-3)

Time to break in my blog with my very own speculation post. This is going to be a very general but also very far-reaching take on the final arc of the show for Star, based on what I know about the show thus far and the tiny bit of detail we got at SDCC. I’ll be doing overviews on Star’s arcs and how the show always ties in the personal growth she’s undergoing to her relationship with the kingdom and her relationship with Marco. Finally I’ll try to piece together how things, on a broader level, might go down for our rebel princess and karate boy in what is almost certainly the last 21 episodes of the show.

The bulk of this post breaks down the past 3 seasons. There will almost certainly be redundancy with other posts people have written for Tumblr or elsewhere, and I don’t claim any of it is brand new information. I still do hope you give it a chance as it ties everything together in a way geared towards providing context for my Season 4 assertions, but if you are so inclined to skip ahead, simply search for “Season 4” and jump to the next instance after this paragraph (or even “TL;DR” for the fully abbreviated experience). There will be a recap of the critical context included.

Long post after the break!

So let’s begin breaking down Star’s primary arc season by season. Obviously character growth is fluid and you can’t pin down individual moments as the moment a character flaw was “fixed,” but there’s still some discernible changes to extract here. Each season’s title is her major obstacle during the season and the aspect of maturity she gains as a result of her growth.

Season 1 – Innocence/Awareness

Star’s defining trait of season 1 was being carefree to a fault. She uses her magic for whimsy and doesn’t really heed the consequences. It was the reason she was sent to Earth, after all!

Similarly, her initial crush on Earth is based entirely on literal flights of fancy.

As the season goes on, Star gets her first tastes of the seriousness of the real world and culminates in her first major confrontation with it. It’s almost poetic that Blood Moon Ball, where Star and Marco’s relationship gets the first real hit of emotional depth, is paired with the segment which introduces us to the first serious threat in Star’s life.

(see this is why I need new copies of the episodes smh goshdang subtitle typos)

She’s still not the most mature about it and is still scared to death or outright ignorant of the complexities in the world for a while,

but still makes some initial steps forward in her character.

The season concludes with Storm the Castle, a turning point where she has to tackle a major decision with serious consequences head-on. Is it any surprise that this involves both her relationship to the kingdom and Marco? By this point I should hope it isn’t.

Season 2 – Avoidance/Determination

So after Storm the Castle, Star had passed a point of no return. She was officially aware that the world is a complex place, that it’s not always going to be fun and games and rainbows and unicorns. Most of this season is about Star realizing that she can’t just sweep them under the rug and hope everything gets better on its own.

The season opens with both the results of plot seriousness and relationship seriousness affecting Star’s life, because of course it does.

Fetch, an episode most notable for appearing in lists of reasons why people don’t like season 2A, actually delivers one of the most direct character arc expositions in the show.

Let’s throw in By the Book, a segment entirely focused on her desire to just brush off magic training, just for fun.

And Sleepover is where it first becomes painfully obvious that she has romantic feelings for Marco,

but it’s clear from her diary in My New Wand (and especially now that the SDCC panel blessed us with the full “My Thoughts on Marco” chapter) that she’s been lingering on them and trying to avoid them since the beginning of the season, just like her other problems.

Star’s denial ran deeper than the actual Nile. Moving on.

Then we have Bonbon. Hey, what do you know? A pivotal episode in Star’s character growth which includes and connects both her relationship to plot and her relationship with Marco!

“I lost everything.” …mere minutes after feeling like she was losing Marco. Hell, even seconds if you count the moment he and Jackie had right after the green vortex closed.  Clearly the line is consciously about her book and mentor, which are very important to her, but obvious subtext is obvious.

There aren’t really any major turning points during season 2B until the finale. In Face the Music, Star uses Song Day to open up to the world because she knows hiding things for too long isn’t right, which (with a bit of “help” from Fallout Boy) spurs her to apply that to her love life in Starcrushed. Star exposing her bottled-up princess secrets to the world and her bottled-up feelings to Marco both happening in a finale? Egad, I dare say this seems to be a pattern! Let’s pretend like this is surprising.

Battle for Mewni is a bit of an edge case, as it is sort of separate from the Season 2 arcs while also being the resolution to them. Suffice to say that while the “official” character arc in Season 2 of hiding or running from her problems was “solved” within the official boundaries of Season 2, it took BFM to have her actually tackle the immediate danger posed by it.

And she’s fully owning up to her feelings for Marco to boot.

Season 3 – Idealistic Hastiness/Wisdom

I struggled more coming up with a single term to best address my take on this season’s arc, especially because it seems (to me, at least) that Star’s plot arc this season is split a bit more heavily by midseason than in Season 2. To elaborate on my choice of “Idealistic Hastiness”, I’m referring to her finding problems that she needs to solve and taking what seems like an easy solution – unlike in Season 2, when she may have tried to apply bandaids to cover up the problems, in Season 3 she is genuinely interested in solving them but jumps the gun and struggles with what seems like the “easy/obvious/right thing to do” not actually working.

I may abbreviate some details here, since I already helped Seddm construct the post to end all posts about this particular season, so please consult that for any further examples and supporting evidence about the meanings of Star’s words and actions especially in the relationship arc.

(It seems my subtitles are broken for most of Season 3 so I’m adding manual captions sorry if they look different or bad)

As the main part of Season 3 opens, we have Star identifying problems in her life and wanting solutions to them. In the case of Marco, it’s her unrequited feelings driving her insane.

In the case of the plot, it’s initially a vague desire to “be a better princess” which later takes a few coherent forms.

And Star isn’t totally clueless about her relationships, she knows she needs support and that her life is too chaotic to throw herself into a committed romance.

But the heart is a tricky thing, and a genuine emotional connection with someone she has some attraction to (plus a lingering heartache from Marco) leads to a romantic relationship with Tom. Suffice to say, that turns out to have the exact problem Star herself prophesied! She largely ignores Tom and isn’t willing to commit to their relationship (for a host of reasons, most of which involve Marco). And Tom isn’t a stellar supportive boyfriend either, but this post isn’t about that. Simply put, the emotional connection between them over their mutual struggles to improve is real, but it’s gone about in a very suboptimal way that they think is the correct one – Idealistic Hastiness at work.

For Marco, a similar dissonance between what she says and what happens are two different things. Lint Catcher has the wedding squire vows, in which Star basically outlines the importance Marco has in her life in a flashy ceremonial manner

followed by a nearly immediate 180 in Trial by Squire.

She did, to some degree, believe that the current situation was ideal, with Tom as her boyfriend going through a similar phase of self-improvement while Marco was still her very close friend to hang out with and help her. As everyone knows, Star ends up turning to Marco for virtually anything except for handholding and smooches from now until the end of the season, because of that dang ole’ rushed solution to her problems that didn’t really match what she wanted or needed.

Star knows she wants to help Mewni, but decides that the best way to go about it is throwing herself into a “princess” mold. Star knows she wants Marco by her side, but decides the best way to go about it is throwing him into a “squire” box. 

Interesting.

Now on to the plot side of things: we’ve got a lot going on here, so I’ll be briefer with each section, since none of them are all that subtle. Her encounter with Eclipsa in Stranger Danger is the first attempt at “being a better princess,” when she seeks to right the kingdom’s unfair treatment of Eclipsa. Her approach is respectably even-handed too, since she maintains a healthy skepticism of Eclipsa’s motives and isn’t jumping the gun too much.

There’s also the curious case of the sleeping portals. Once again, Star confronts the problem, but taking Eclipsa’s advice to just let herself go and see what happens almost gets her hunted down by Hekapoo. It takes Marco’s secret assistance in Night Life and their final expedition in Deep Dive to stop the portaling. The Realm of Magic is a whole separate issue, one which the show hasn’t fully covered, so I can’t clearly say she “solved” that. But the immediate problem at hand was actually more or less solved for real, so this is sort of a sped-up microcosm of Star’s character arc.

You all deserve a breather, so have a wholesome bug hug.

And finally, we have the issue of monster rights. This kickstarts in Starfari where Star explores the injustices against monsterkind on Mewni: Moon is unhelpful, Jelly Goodwell is a nutjob, and Star’s takeaway from it is to appoint Buff Frog to an ambassador role of sorts. A noble and well-intentioned idea with some actual thought put into it, but one which doesn’t really address the roots of the issue (as we’ll see when it eventually fails in Is Another Mystery).

Monster Bash (and the treaty in Death Peck) are similar cases where Star thinks that channeling her passion and drive will make everything work, but it doesn’t – hard work and idealism aren’t always enough to get the job done, and can’t quite combat centuries of ingrained prejudices.

This is sort of a turning point where all her rushjobs start to collapse on her head. If you somehow don’t believe me that this is the crux of all of her problems now, let the show itself tell you even more directly than in Fetch.

She finds out the injustice against Eclipsa is so much bigger than she could have imagined, Buff Frog leaves Mewni, Booth Buddies floors her with the revelation that their friendship/princess-squire relationship isn’t perfect like she thought it was, and she even finds out her birthright to the throne isn’t even legitimate! And in each and every case her next step is to say, essentially, “Well clearly my initial, rushed approach didn’t work. What now?” And that question doesn’t get thoroughly answered within season 3 in every case, but we can identify some key progress made.

Monster rights is one where not much happens, but we get a hint in Is Another Mystery about it becoming more relevant in the future. She’s learned her lesson with rushing in this specific case already, so Star should have a better head on her shoulders to try and make things right in the future.

Marco makes his return in Divide after being mildly absent to make way for the 20 billion other things crammed into 3B. Although stuff like Moon going missing has kept Star from dwelling on her feelings for Marco or Tom, she’s wearing her heart on her cheeks (in a different way than usual)

…and again in Conquer, where those feelings manifest as soul-crushing despair with his balloonifying (much like that which Star was feeling with monster rights, with her mom being gone, and with Meteora) and sheer joy when he returns.

It’s clear that her feelings for Marco are back in full, without any trepidation, and the only thing she needs is a moment to think about it when her or her loved ones’ lives aren’t in imminent danger.

At the tail end of Conquer, the whole issue with Eclipsa and her lineage comes to a head when she gives up the wand. Star sees herself as finally righting the wrong of how Eclipsa was treated – while it’s not entirely certain, however, it seems like she only really thinks she’s giving up the wand.

Eclipsa getting her daughter back and going to find her husband came as a surprise with potentially ominous consequences. And that’s where Star ends the season.

I’ll save the recap for those who opted to skip this whole shebang. So with that, let’s jump into the final section.

Season 4 – Inexperience/Efficacy and Stability

Hello everyone just joining us from your app or browser’s “find in page” option, welcome to this post. You missed a bug hug, shame on you. I’m opening this with a recap of Star’s character at the end of season 3:

She has failed at bringing monster equality to Mewni, but understands the flaws in her efforts before and should have a much better mindset to bring about the proper change. Her feelings for Marco are 100% back and stronger than ever, simply awaiting a calm moment to reflect on them, and she rectified the injustice of the throne by giving up the wand to Eclipsa (with foreboding implications).

This was all the info we had until a certain SDCC clip from season 4 was revealed just a few days ago. I’ll be truly brazen for the first time in this post and unshackle myself from the hilariously short chain binding my analysis to already-aired canon. I believe this two minute clip gives us most of the information we need to predict Star’s broad character arc for the rest of the show, and this is my explanation and attempt at justification for my theory. 

Clearly there’s a ton of context we don’t have yet, but there is some concrete information present in the clip. Moon is still missing, which is expected and obviously a very important plot point but not directly tied in to Star’s individual character arc (that we know of). Eclipsa being queen, on the other hand, is massive. We don’t exactly know the details, but one way or another, this prison torturer and his prisoner both accept that their ruler is Eclipsa right now. Star is still called a princess by the torturer, so it doesn’t necessarily seem like she’s been disowned, but she’s not actively in charge. And while many people thought Star would be queen for a large part of the season (myself included), it potentially makes a lot more sense for her own personal growth that she isn’t.

All three past seasons, and her three arcs have essentially been Star maturing on her path to being ready for the throne. Star’s far from perfect, but the fundamental flaws in her attitude about her role have mostly been covered. She knows what the problems are, is genuinely dedicated to fixing them, and has (or is prepared to have) a healthier and more patient mindset in tackling them now. If she became Queen… what exactly would there be left? SVTFOE is a heavily character-driven show, where plot doesn’t just drop from the sky and push the characters around and arbitrarily force character growth. The wand cleaving, Toffee/Ludo taking power in BFM, and Eclipsa getting the wand (and likely the throne) are all consequences, in large part, of Star’s actions.

If even a wandless Star was put in power, there’s nothing that stands out about her mindset that would lend itself to a season’s worth of impeding monster equality. If Star had the awareness, determination, wisdom, and efficacy to achieve her goals, the only things stopping her from “ruling Mewni her way” would be the passage of time, bureaucratic red tape, or enemies appearing out of thin air - none of which fit the show’s focus on character-driven plot. Even when she was the recognized legitimate princess trying to change the system from inside, it wasn’t all that effective, so one could argue she never really had the power to enact lasting change anyway.

(As a slight aside, Eclipsa being in power presents a lot of cool opportunities for Star and for the show – Eclipsa spent most of the season as a sketchy character, but one who was consistently pitted against the obviously unfair “system”. Neither the audience nor Star has actually gotten to see her in a vacuum, and a lot of neat plotlines could happen off of that.)

Technically we haven’t seen it in action yet in season 4, but even when Eclipsa officially gets the throne, I should hope it’s fairly obvious that Star is still going to want to act for the betterment of Mewni. Is Another Mystery and Conquer had strong moments of Star asserting her desire to protect monster rights and the people of Mewni in general, despite her already knowing she wasn’t a blood relative of the original Butterflies. So essentially, when the labels defining Star’s role on Mewni are broken down, she still takes all of this on as a personal choice, because it’s what her heart is telling her is right. Remember that last sentence.

I can’t call anything about specifics, but my conclusion here is that Star’s character arc for the final season is essentially using all of the growth she’s had thus far to rise up to the challenge and truly earn her destiny (figuratively and now quite literally). Plot would be much less driven by Star consistently screwing up on a fundamental level, and more about tackling the remaining consequences of her past screwups and learning through experience how to truly “rule Mewni her own way”. Just because I say she has largely matured doesn’t mean she’s perfect - simply having the maturity required for a good ruler doesn’t automatically qualify Star as a “finished” character, because her endgame as Queen must have some authority and permanence to it. Even if Star was in power now, we’d need to see her maturity actually take effect to confirm when the curtains close on this show forever that a “happily ever after” is in place (and having her not in power, at least temporarily, gives way more weight to the consequences of Star’s past actions and allows for more conflict). And if she’s constantly making things worse via her own personal flaws until episode 18, there’s no way she can actually achieve that happy ending.

If you know anything about me by now, you should know what topic is coming next. As I hopefully have established about 66.7 times throughout this piece, Star’s character arc always applies across all of her relationships and interactions in sync, so how does Marco fit in? Star has essentially gained all the internal maturity needed to start the process of becoming an effective ruler. At the same time, she’s essentially gained all the understanding of her own feelings, gone through ups and downs and knows in her heart that Marco is the one she wants as a partner in life and in love. I said above that all she needs is a moment to contemplate it to become fully conscious of her feelings (which would then result very quickly in the Tomstar breakup and a Starco talk). And guess what?

It’s already almost certain that the clip is from very early in the season (otherwise it’d spoil too much context) but there’s even some possible evidence it’s from the first episode of the season. Couple that with the previous importance of the Beach Day photo and you have a recipe for Star’s full realization happening very early on.(Additionally – and this is just my own pure speculation, so take it with a grain of salt – while we can’t say for sure the SDCC clip is from the beginning of a segment, we can also almost guarantee it’s not at the end of it from the general context of the clip. And it would be highly uncharacteristic for the show to linger on an important moment/symbol earlier on in a segment without having that be relevant to the segment itself, which gives me strong impressions that this segment may actually be where something important happens for Starco.)

Need more evidence stacked up for the immediate future of Starco? Like I said earlier, Star’s attachment to the “princess” label as a genuine attempt to help Mewni mirrors her attachment to Marco’s “squire” label as a genuine attempt to have him as a life partner. And that princess label got broken down, but she still did - and will almost certainly continue to - fight for bettering the kingdom. Is it so wrong to guess that, since the “squire” label (and even, to an extent, the entire concept of their relationship as purely platonic) clearly were nuked immediately following the kiss, Star will similarly open the season accepting Marco fully as her life partner without restraint? I don’t think it is, and therefore will claim that Star and Marco will start the season accepting their romantic feelings for each other (and the change in their relationship as a result) just as Star is doing for her role in the kingdom. Maybe they don’t call it “dating” until a handful of episodes later, but any hesitancy in figuring out and tackling the fact that she loves Marco for more than an individual segment focused on it would betray all the growth she’s gone through, just like being hesitant to continue striving to help Mewni would betray her growth. When the labels defining Star’s role on Mewni relationship with Marco are broken down, she still takes all of this on as a personal choice, because it’s what her heart is telling her is right.

Jumping to the endgame now - just like that maturity isn’t enough for Star’s queenly endgame, this isn’t enough for Starco’s endgame either. Star’s almost certain future as Queen of Mewni is a serious thing, and a serious commitment for Marco to make even if they have feelings for each other/are dating. Once again, a mirror to her princess arc can be found – if they keep screwing stuff up in the fundamental nature of relationship with their own flaws and doubts, there’s no way to dig out of that hole cleanly for that happy ending, so it’s gotta start sooner rather than later. Plus we already know that Marco’s arc is essentially coming out of his shell and finding his place in life (read the Seddm masterpost for way more in-depth info on that), so it’s apparent that a rock-solid endgame for Starco requires clarity that the two of them are prepared for everything a permanent romantic relationship means. In essence, we need to see the growth that lead to their mutual feelings applied practically, just like we need to see that for Star’s role within Mewni.

TL;DR Star’s season 4 arc will focus on applying her awareness, determination, and wisdom gained from the past 3 seasons to tackle the consequences of her past decisions, starting from a point of making the personal choice to embrace both her desire to help Mewni and her love for Marco, and through this she will both earn her place as permanent and effective ruler of Mewni, and develop her relationship with Marco into one that will confidently last forever. She’s gonna damn well earn that happily ever after.

There’s certainly a level of speculation to all of this, of course, but I have confidence in the requirements for endgame, so the general path seems clear enough to me. Naysayers on any side of the shipping war make claims that Star and Marco won’t get together for a long time, that the feelings are still uncertain, maybe that they’re not even endgame at all. If you’re a Starco fan that thinks this, then it’s likely that the whiplash of 3A was like a bad breakup that makes you never want to date again. I feel you, I really do, but it had its purpose. Don’t get yourself down that Starco is all a bait just because it didn’t happen one particular time that Star said Marco looked cute. As for anyone else, first off, thanks for sticking around this far! I honestly didn’t expect that! This post doesn’t attempt to shoulder the ambitious burden of convincing you why Starco is good on a philosophical level (my brutally honest response is “fix your eyeballs and earholes and watch the fucking show”), but at the very least I hoped I’ve made a strong claim for all of the connections in the past three seasons and how it will tie together in the fourth and final season of this show.

#starco #svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #analysis

[asteria-daria-fere]

One divine entourage

Asteria walked the halls of her ship. She was smaller in this more “human-sized” form of hers. She lacked her signature tail and only wore her signature white toga with golden trim. A golden band crossed her stomach and held the toga in place. A small golden brooch sat on her left shoulder. A set of golden bracelets ringed her wrists and ankles. The woman was almost caked in gold. All this -with no undergarments to speak of- layered on her small, demure, cinnamon-hued figure.

She walked, flanked by two women who shared her height, face and even her mood. These two however wore armor that one would call “skant” or “non-existent” but they did wear armor. They were dressed in what one would call a “bikini” in the human dialect of english. This garment would actually be a number of pieces beginning with the feet. The feet were protected by greaves that covered the whole foot- as opposed to Asteria’s lack of footwear whatsoever- ,segmented at the ankle and climbed to their knees ending in a elevated and thicker knee plate. Their thighs were left bare and exposed to the elements, but with their mistress in mind, this was a non-issue. With our arrival at the belt we discover something very typical for their mistress’ warriors.

A waist cloak that fell all the way down their legs to their ankles and no further. The backs of these cloaks each had different and unique symbols enclosed within distinct and unique patterns. We’ll touch on the colors later in this record, but all you need know is that they are Asteria’s colors, obviously. Above the belts and their waist cloaks, we find ourselves at their midriffs. What a marvel of evolution- and genetic engineering- these are to behold. These exposed mid-sections are utterly devoid of armor or utility, but do serve a few purposes: to show off the fitness of the warriors in question and to keep them cool, as well as to look interesting. And yes, Asteria has suffered many a comment on how she should armor them “properly”, she simply does not care.

To the chest- and the main event- we finally arrive. The chests of these two lovely maidens were encased in a very comfortable and lightweight but durable breastplate. The front was laden with small, barely notable bits and bobs of software just beneath the surface to provide them with forward shield projectors. These were capable of stopping most forms of weaponry from solid slug projectiles to particle weapons and everything in between. I would say these were the most advanced, but that is plainly not true. These were developed to be effective and efficient yes, but also only just so and not overbearingly so. Higher quality than most soldiers would get, but still capable of creating a fair opportunity for a skilled opponent to land a blow or shot.

These were made- as well as the entire suit- out of a rare material only the Gods could get their hands on: Colicia. An absolutely, astronomically, rare material made by the Gods for the Gods. Its main appeal is not its toughness or malleability, but its ability to store the energies produced by conflict of any kind and either empower the wielder or reflect it back at the attacker in retaliation. Most who wear the stuff are usually the highest of the high, best of the best but can easily be favored regardless of reputation or acumen. These girls however were born and trained to wield any piece of equipment and master it and so, this was their standard gear. On the backs of these chest pieces, we find the small, bright, humming powercore for the shielding for the suit. A circular core with three large plates that extended over it, not to hide its light, but to protect from damage.

And to not forget the arms and hands- a warriors most true weapons- we lead to them from the breastplate. The pauldrons of these girls was, sadly, non-existent. This was a style choice and not simply a result of a cost/benefit analysis. The chestpiece also did not host one and so the shoulders were bare as were the upper arms. The elbows did host small platting that was separated from the gauntlets and allowed for easier motion. The gauntlets were what one would expect from the previous paragraphs of record and were slender, tight fitting and streamlined in how it blended into the overall armor. It hid a miniature computer interface and a communicator for all manner of task these suits were used for.

The suits these ladies wore were considered technical marvels and a gifts from their Big Sister. These were the tools with which they would do their duty in protecting her and executing her will across the universe. Bearing the bright blues and greens of their mistress’ banner, they would never be mistaken on the battlefield and would immediately inspire awe and fear in all who crossed their path. To be honest, this record was to begin as a documentation of the workings and procedures of Asteria’s navy, but her closest warriors were just a more interesting subject to speak on and so I went for it. I do hope you desire to be granted one of these suits- yes, they can be made to you specifications- just as I. If any questions are levied, I will venture to answer as best as Asteria bids.

#Asteria Fere #I might be getting better at this #my universe #Gods I need to name this universe I'm creating! #Gushing over armor #women in armor #cinnamon-hued

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Endgame’ – A Movie Review, and a Reflection on Endings

Endings are rarely the definitive final word.

A person’s story can come to an end, but the stories of the people around them and the world they live in carry on, even if that one person isn’t there anymore. That realisation conjures up a whole tangled mess of emotions, but it is the natural way of things. It’s not right to want everything to end with you. In life, we make the most of the time and energy we’re given, and if you make enough right decisions, get lucky, and dedicate enough of yourself, you’ll hopefully get to go with the sense that you did okay, and that those you leave behind are going to be alright. Endings in fiction are as infinitely variable as any other feature of artistic expression, but in narratives with expansive casts or fleshed out worlds, they often leave us with the feeling that we’d only have to stay a little longer and there would be more stories to explore. Just as the real world is bigger than any one lifetime, successfully-established fictional worlds feel much larger than any one set of characters and their narrative.

         For the last eleven years, audiences have enjoyed a series of blockbusters featuring an impressively varied range of stylistic approaches. At their best, these films are deeply satisfying and affecting, delivering poignant moments about characters coming to terms with their own flaws and trying their best to do the right thing. But when considered together, these films have never entirely felt resolved, with each one going out on a lingering note of “just wait for what comes next”. The story was never over for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because another film was never far away. And now that the grand conclusion has finally come and $2.5 billion worth of us have watched and re-watched it, things are just the same as ever, and yet we’re at a moment that we’ve never seen before and are unlikely to see again for a long time. We’ve reached an ending of the story that begun with Tony Stark and his box of scraps in that cave in 2008. The story is over. But there are more stories to come.

Yes, there will be spoilers ahead. But I say again: this film has crossed over the two and a half billion dollar mark. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ll have contributed your drop or two to Marvel’s bucket. So let’s talk about the movie.

         I appreciate the efforts of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as screenwriters, Joe and Anthony Russo as directors, and the input of every person involved in deciding the final shape of Endgame’s story to make its structure noticeably different to that of Infinity War. The previous Avengers film is a constant juggling act, relying on the viewer taking to Thanos as a central thread around which the rest of the film is hung. We’re either seeing the various steps Thanos is taking along his journey, hearing about what kind of man he is and what he intends to do, or seeing characters who are consistently on the back foot as they frantically scramble to strategically and mentally prepare for an opponent they’re not ready for. By this point in the series, we’ve been conditioned to expect to see things primarily from the point of view of the dozens of characters aligned with the Avengers, but Infinity War is messy and fractured when you look at it from the perspective of the heroes. And that’s the point – our heroes are fractured, and so there’s no unified effort against the villain as he single-mindedly pursues his goal with continuous success. The Avengers are a mess, and they lose. Thanos is the one who seizes control of the narrative, undoing the decisions and sacrifices made by the heroes as he dictates what his ambitions are and why they are so noble… and because viewers are susceptible to sympathising with the person who names themselves the hero and takes the reins of the narrative, far too many people bought Thanos’ rhetoric. For a year there, we really were seeing think-pieces that said “maybe the genocidal zealot who emotionally manipulates people is right”!

         But Endgame’s structure deliberately contrasts against Infinity War’s. Whereas Infinity War is about heroes being separated and the catastrophe that follows in the wake of this disunity, Endgame presents its heroes as a group of grieving people who are unified through their shared regrets and resolve to overcome their despair together and work towards a singular objective to try and fix everything. The Avengers are disassembled in Infinity War and reassembled in Endgame. As a result, the structure is comparatively more uniform. You can clearly differentiate the film into three distinct thirds – the five-year time skip that shows life on a mournful Earth still coming to terms with half of life being eradicated, the Back to the Future Part II time-travel mission as characters revisit scenarios from previous films, and the big blowout battle where every surviving main superpowered character in the entire franchise is dumped into one battle for your viewing pleasure. Each third offers something different, meaning you cover all of the ground that you’d want to in a dramatic, energetic, and emotional close to a blockbuster saga with literally dozens of characters who are all key players. Each third is impressively balanced, and they all act as strong supporting columns for the film as a result.

         However, because these thirds are as distinct as they are, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll come away saying “I preferred these two parts over that third part, which felt okay but a little unnecessary”. Personally, I think there are plenty of themes (grief and a desire to revisit the past, putting guilt and trauma to rest, and of course, the strength of unity) and character arcs (Nebula finally choosing to integrate herself into a group of people who value her and literally killing the old version of herself who wanted only to please her abusive father-figure being the stand-out one) which help gel each of the film’s three segments together without much resistance. But I have encountered multiple people who have expressed the sentiment that they really liked two thirds but they could take or leave another third – inevitably, which third is which always varies. I can imagine that, if you’re not getting a lot out of one of the segments, Endgame will certainly make you antsy for the film to return to what you felt it was pulling off more successfully. The three distinct thirds can result in a fragmented viewing experience for some audience members. On the other hand, I felt that the clearer, more focused structure not only made the film seem less jumbled than its predecessor, but also made it a suitable companion-piece to Infinity War and its Thanos-centric structure.

         The emotional response I have to Endgame is not the same electric glee I had from seeing the first Avengers, though moments like Cap picking up the hammer, the cinematic equivalent of a double-page spread of every single MCU hero charging towards Thanos’ army in one image, and “she’s got help” all sparked that feeling off inside me with more intensity than I’ve felt for a long time. No, what I feel more than anything about the MCU right now is a paradoxical sense of melancholic yet nevertheless delighted satisfaction. A part of that comes from the strengths of that first third, which, despite my sincere claims that all three sections gel together successfully, is nevertheless my favourite segment of the film (with the possible exception of the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). In this review’s opening paragraphs, I talked about endings not being the definitive final word as life and the world must always carry on. My reflection on that was primarily positive, but in this opening hour, we see the sad alternative form that this concept can take. Thanos killed half the universe and was killed in retaliation – the conflict ends, as does the hope of repairing the damage done by this tragedy. But the universe doesn’t end even with half of its inhabitants being gone. As Steve succinctly says, the survivors have to keep moving forward, “otherwise Thanos should have killed all of us”. It’s an outlook that Steve encourages, even if he can’t fully believe it himself, because he thinks it’s the best way for people to regain control over their unthinkable circumstances. The setup for Endgame presents us with a universe that died a half-death – everything ended for half its population five years ago, while life for the other half of the population persists, and they are trying their best to make sense of that.

         That struggle with grief, both on a colossal and a personal scale, is what unifies every single character, but the difference lies in how they respond to that grief. Black Widow throws herself into her work to try and keep the good that superheroes can do going, but her efforts feel as if they aren’t enough, being told by Okoye that the natural tectonic shifts she’s reporting on aren’t something you actively address with a strike squad and that you have to “handle it by not handling it”. Hawkeye was always the simple guy involved in the Avengers who was kept grounded by his family. Without them, he has nothing to keep him rooted, no home to return to, so he goes in the complete opposite direction and becomes a dedicated avenger in a literal sense, dolling out punishment fuelled by his frustration without any of the purpose and direction that he gained from his connections to friends and family. Hulk / Banner actually come out of this having made some progress, deciding to meditate on what they learned from their losses and literally come together in their grief to become one being, Professor Hulk. Tony and Pepper make the most of the luck they managed to find together, but are both keenly aware of all those who weren’t so lucky, wanting to get back what they lost but keep what they’ve found, which is remarkably human and understandable. Thor… hm. Okay, yes, Thor is a mixed bag. In all honesty, I loved Thor in this film and was empathetic towards his depression and anxiety attacks. I also love that Thor gets to stay as he is and still be shown that he is indeed worthy to wield Mjolnir and fight in the battle alongside all these other heroes without having to change who he is. But I do acknowledge the issues that numerous viewers have raised about some of the jokes made by the other characters being at the expense of Thor’s weight, and how they found it uncomfortable, and, in instances, meanspirited and harmful. I love the current version of Thor and feel Chris Hemsworth injected even more bubbly charm and infectious spirit to his character while blending it with the genuine pathos Thor was going through with remarkable talent. But the film’s tendency to use the character’s weight as an opportunity to make jokes about him being fat is not ideal. I’m glad to see Thor continue as he is into further movies (though it is possible that they’ll say he lost weight between Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3), but I sincerely hope we DON’T see the fat-jokes continue as they are. The lighting, music, and performances of everyone in the cast all contribute to this palpable sensation of immense loss, which communicates not only what’s at stake in this epic conclusion, but also how each character involved has been changed by what they’ve had to go through since Infinity War.

         But that only touches on the melancholic side of things; why do I also feel delighted and satisfied as I take in these sombre themes? Well, to put it simply, this one sticks the landing by closing the right doors in the most appropriate way while keeping other doors open in a balanced approach that seems so right. Tony Stark sacrifices his life after declaring “I am Iron Man” one last time, putting everything of himself into doing the right thing when so long ago he enjoyed a life of zero-accountability and kept his work on weapons technology at a safe distance. The image of his first arc-reactor in its memento case reading “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” floating on the water at his funeral destroyed me at both viewings, because not only have his actions proved this fact as well, but we see numerous people all around this site as they pay their respects, showing the hearts of so many characters we care about who were connected to his. And Steve Rogers, the soldier who could never sit down if he saw a situation pointed south, after standing up against a galactic tyrant and his army, first alone and then with the support of countless men and women rallying to him, finally lets himself rest. Not many people have talked about the new horizons Steve takes in in this film; when the surviving heroes take Rocket’s ship to the Garden Planet, the camera makes a point of focusing on an extreme close-up of Steve’s eye as they travel through hyperspace. Even after nearly a decade of familiarity with this new era, the man out of time, a kid from 1940s Brooklyn, is seeing things that he could’ve never imagined. He’s come so, so far. I can think of no better conclusion than for him to return back home.

          But the film’s epilogue isn’t just concerned with closing the curtain on these heroes as they sit down to rest. Just as these stories end, we see hints of what stories are yet to come for other heroes. In the sequence where the camera pans over the countless faces attending Tony’s funeral, it’s fitting that the last hero we see (before Nick Fury steps into frame under the veranda, concealed in the shadows at the very end, much like his very first entrance as a post-credits tease at the end of Iron Man) is Carol Danvers. Having made her debut just months ago, she is the most recent addition to this universe, so her position at the back of the line reflects that. Her placement halfway up the steps she’s standing on suggests that she’s acting as an embodiment for the road to the future – she is literally on the next step for the series of films Marvel will make as they move forward. And she’s not alone, because other heroes will continue to thrive and flourish as their stories continue. Sam is handed the mantle of Captain America, and what’s achingly beautiful about this exchange is the attitude of the two men involved. Sam views Steve as his friend first and foremost, so he is sincere when he says he’s happy for him. But Sam also respects Steve so much as the man who deserves to be Captain America. Much like how Mjolnir can only be wielded by those who are worthy, Cap’s shield becomes a sacred relic that should only be worn by the right man for the job. And when Steve gently encourages Sam to try the shield on, knowing full well what it means to the world and to both of them, he does so as both Captain America finding the right man to fill his position, and as Sam’s friend Steve, telling him with assurance that he really is one of the best people he knows. When Sam confesses that he feels like the shield belongs to someone else, Steve responds with elegant purity “it doesn’t”. Everything at the core of Captain America, the bravery, the conviction to always stand back up and fight no matter how much it pains them to do so, and the responsibility to always look out for the little guy, are all qualities which never belonged to Steve and Steve alone; those virtues can belong to anyone, and Steve tells his friend that he recognises them in Sam. I cannot wait to see the good that Sam will do as he follows his promise to do his best.  

         Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has been developing a mentee / mentor relationship with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man since Civil War, and here it culminates in a bittersweet arc that lays the groundwork for what I expect will be some fascinating and impactful characterisation in Far From Home in a few months’ time. Tony mourns for Peter most of all, viewing him as a surrogate son who has much of the same inventive genius and drive that he has, with the addition of some compassionate heart and level of responsibility that is far beyond his years. Peter has it in him to be better than Tony, and Tony knows this. So it’s understandable why the loss of that kind, youthful spirit and his limitless potential would hurt Tony so much. In Tony’s dying moments, we share Peter’s tears as we see how much this connection means to them both and realise what is being lost. But we know this is exactly what Tony fought for – the chance for the next generation to live and grow. Holland’s performance when we see Peter return to school hints at his sense of disconnection, as his expression creates the impression that he feels like a stranger in a place with which he once felt so familiar. With the support of his friends, especially Ned, he will find his way in the next step of his journey.

          Endgame provides definitive endings for the journeys of characters we’ve been following for more films than we see most actors get to play Bond, but it also manages to cast a hopeful eye towards the future without compromising its position as a neat conclusion to everything up to this point. In fact, its simultaneous handling of reflective closure and moving forward with renewed purpose makes for a remarkably poignant milestone. Stories rarely strike such a balance between meaningful finality and the uplifting excitement of wanting more stories and knowing you’re going to get them. And that probably sounds shallow and frivolous because, at the end of the day, we’re talking about a successful studio delivering a hyped-up film that promises to be a finale but also serves the financially driven purpose of pitching you a dozen other films and TV series. But through the efforts of over a decade’s worth of dedicated storytellers and creative artists, this series has come to mean more than just another substantial drop in Disney’s bucket. It’s become a fictional world that a massive audience has fallen in love with in the same way that people did with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, Mass Effect, and a hundred other worlds. We’ve rooted for these characters and cried at some of their most emotional moments, and we’ve grown to care so much about the MCU that it represents a living, breathing world for us. And this kind of ending just makes that proximity to reality that much closer. Stories end and lives come to a close, but they often do so in the middle of other people’s lives and stories. After all, Yinsen’s sacrifice in the MCU’s first film, Iron Man is the end of his story, but his death acts as a foundational moment for the man that Tony would grow to be – his ending is a part of Iron Man’s beginning. In Endgame, heroes pass away, lay down arms, or choose to step down from a position they no longer feel a need to hold onto. At the same time, other heroes move onto the next step of their journey, accept new responsibilities, and accept the titles passed onto them from those who know they will do a fine job. It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the natural balance between life and death, between the end of the old and the beginning of something new. It’s the balance that Thanos strived for but never fully understood, as he wanted to cultivate life but in his obsessive crusade ended up sewing nothing but death. It is only right that the heroes are the ones to achieve that balance through their actions and connections with one another.

Final Score: Gold.

Avengers: Endgame is overflowing and self-indulgent, but it has every right to be and more than earned it. There are missteps, and there’s room for disappointment over the direction that certain characters are taken in, most notably the original version of Gamora ultimately staying dead and staying the victim of an abusive father-figure who seizes all agency away from her, or Thor arguably continuing to veer away from where he was at the end of Thor: Ragnarok and his new weight being an excuse to make cheap jokes that feel uncomfortable. But it is also a well-structured film that offers three distinct tones that are all equally engaging, and its delightful moments of humour and momentous action strikes a grand and immensely satisfying chord with its examination of grief and the natural interrelationship of the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. It is as significant a landmark for this fictional series as any invested viewer could hope for. It’s a hell of a thing to have come this far, and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.

#The Inquisitive J #film #movies #review #film reviews #movie reviews #critic #film critic #film criticism #endgame #avengers endgame #marvel #mcu #endgame review #endings #the inquisitive j reviews

[singing-robot]

re: Dead Cells/Undertale

And why it would be the worst crossover ever. 

First off, I have not finished Dead Cells, and I’m trying to play it as blindly as possible, so please do not add anything further than what I mention right here in this post!!! This includes tips, runes, locations, and unseen dialogue. I’ve recently acquired my first stem cell, and have only gotten to the Concierge once in the many games I’ve started in hard mode, sodo please be mindful of that. And now, the promised content. 

This started off as a fun mashup between the two games, but the realistic side of my brain kicked in and said, “How would this actually go?” And, quite honestly, that one seemed more interesting, both in terms of how this hypothetical game would be played (I wish I could show you guys instead of just talking about it), and in the potential angst that would be held. 

The first thing I feel we need to address is how the game starts. Dead Cellsman (as I so often see him called) has a beheaded prisoner to crawl into each time you start over. Who is supplying these? I have no idea. However, I’m going to say that these bodies are either thrown down there by the same being each time you start, or Mr. Prisoner Sir finds his ride off-screen, and we only see him fall down. 

“But Robot!” you cry. “That’s so unnecessary and specific!!! Why would you bring that up?” Good question!! Because the alternative is diggging his way underground and taking over the dead body of the first fallen human. Only works once, and that’s so horrifying and disgusting that I immediately hated it as soon as I considered it, and wished I never had. The concept of eventually unlocking the other previous humans would be pretty cool if they weren’t, you know, way past their expiration date. 

Disgusting and terrible, but I needed to address it. Next section: actual fighting. 

Mr. Cellsman does not have the time for extensive dialogue and conversations. He’s thrown into prison, given a couple of weapons, and his tutorial covers a total of maybe 20 seconds between three deaths. Everything after that is a line of destruction and occasional smart remarks about something poorly lit by a blue candle. A speedrunning, monster-hacking, hilt-happy creature does not bode well for the residents of the Underground. 

He does not have much sympathy for the dead, and he criticizes those in charge of the living. I don’t blame him, honestly, but it makes me wonder how he would react to something that begged when he’s already supposed to kill it. Or if he would even give them time to do so. For the purposes of this post, he doesn’t. He sees it, he hacks it, he gains whatever coin they had on their person. All things considered, I’d say he would start off with a fairly high Level of Violence, so it would be much easier to go through the game. 

The boss fights would be very interesting. Toriel wouldn’t have any sort of connection as to a child, and would not hold back during her fight. I almost want to see it. The dogs would be the equivalent of Elites, probably. Papyrus would be absolute hell to fight, with his constant ground attacks; not to mention that you’re supposed to hit him in the middle of all of it. He’ll make it a fair fight, of course, but according to even Dead Cells logic, he will be on par with you. I think Undyne would be very similar to the Time Keeper, except you couldn’t simply break out of her hold. 

I did this in my sketchbook and I’m so glad I can make it again with real context.

To be fair, I’ve only gotten as far as Undyne, so I won’t go much farther on that topic, except on the specifics of the next section dealing with Sans, since I won’t ever play that run, anyway. (So, basically, I lied.) 

Encountering Sans at the end would be... very frustrating, to say the least. Either his fight would be very similar to the Hand of the King, or he would simply disappear every time you tried to hit him, until you figure out that there’s actually a secret passage to bypass him entirely and you’ve wasted so much time, there goes your speedrunning record. The difference here might actually count on either the time it took you to get to the end, or how thoroughly you took out the monster population. (He would probably deal more damage than Frisk ever could; getting held up so often allowed for more people to escape.) 

Wow. So. Here we are. Are you still reading this? Have you done this all in one big chunk? Please take a moment to look away from your screen, stretch, and do five real good blinks. Take in a deep breath and hold it. Hold it. A little longer. And out. Yeah, man. Breathe some of the outside stuff, too, for bonus refreshment. Maybe get some water while we’re here. This post is a little long, might as well add in a break time paragraph. I’m certainly using it as a time to stop writing, before I get into the next segment and lose 30 more minutes. Also??? Thanks for sticking through this far, it really means a lot. Especially since I haven’t edited a single bit of this so far, and probably won’t from this point on. 

All right!!! Have you stretched? Have you had some water? Did you take a big whiff of your surroundings so as to not get too lost in the sauce of this crazy post? I hope so, pal, because here comes the fun part: The Aftermath. 

When you fight Sans, he makes his accusation: you’re the anomaly in his research, and you need to be stopped. But here’s the thing: he doesn’t say that on nothing. He says that in almost full confidence, and suspected it in other runs. What gives you away? Not entirely sure, but I bet defeating the Captain of the Royal Guard without dying, or openly having zero interest in things that should be interesting, hints at it. And unless something is lit by a blue candle or offers the promise of cells and upgraded weapons, Dead Cellsman has very little interest in anything at all. 

So you could imagine that someone speedrunning through the Underground, killing everyone in his path while hardly stopping to glance at the scenery, would be waving a big red “time anomaly” flag. And if Sans managed to evade him until the end, and even had the time to overcome any shock and actually do something, that would be one horrible, inescapable fight. 

Here’s where my idea splits in two: 

1. Sans dies. You receive a special item to take out Asgore in one hit, you win, you finish the game. There is... little point in restarting it, because I’m logical and boring and the remaining monsters of the Underground wouldn’t come out of hiding for... a very long time. Longer than it’d be worth Mr. Cellsman to consider coming back for. 

So when Frisk falls, there is nothing and nobody. The place is a little dusty, a little bloody, there’s a few spare coins on the ground, but everything is utterly abandoned. The towns, the stores, the homes you can’t explore, anyway; they’re empty. It’d make for a boring game, honestly. There’s Flowey, but he’s so distracted by recent events that he doesn’t even show up when you first fall. There’s not point in “kill or be killed” when there’s no one around to fight you. He’ll talk to you, sure, but because you’re another entertaining attraction. Your SOUL would be great, but what’s the point if the others are almost completely inaccessible, now? 

Perhaps he’ll tell you the tale of the genocidal killing spree he witnessed for fun. 

2. (This ending applies to ones with and without a Sans fight, with or without total monster destruction.) Not to add another angst story featuring the Sans man, bUT... Sans does not die. You get past him, you take out Asgore, you win the game, whatever. You get to move on.

And Sans was wrong. Nothing resets. He thought he was right, he was so positive, but here he is. And there are so many people who are dead. It must be hard to deal with, when he hardly has anyone to blame it on. He can’t even curse the murderer to his face. So imagine what it must be like to watch another monster kill so many of its own kind, only to have a human fall after that. The creature that banished them all underground is now here to either finish them off or send them to the Surface, but I doubt anyone thinks it’s the latter. The angel has returned to free them all.

I accidentally made a super metal and symbolic image to go with this, I will post it separately because, holy cow, did not expect it to turn out like this. 

Frisk has to face the most scared, enraged, and depressed monsters they could ever have encountered. Some of them will attack as viciously as they can. Others will beg for mercy, or run as quickly as possible. More will just wait, confused and perhaps upset if they are spared. There will be some who are simply NPCs, as per usual, but they will be very different. There will be fewer. Frisk’s mission to save monsters and encourage their character development will be vastly different and very difficult. 

I... made the mistake of waiting over 24 hours to type out the second half of this and lost some of the steam I started with, but I’m also bad at simply describing how bleak and depressing it would be without getting too much into it. So!!! To conclude, a semi-realistic Dead Cells/Undertale crossover would be extremely sad and depressing, since it’s basically coming in on the aftermath of almost-genocide. I will definitely accept further questions and, possibly, requests regarding this post, especially since you actually read through the entire thing and endured through everything in this post even after my enthusiasm died down in my writing. Sorry to disappoint after hyping up The Aftermath, but I was writing that at midnight and probably lost some of my good points. Definitely had a better version in my head. 

I also super ignored almost everything involving Flowey for Mr. Prisoner Sir because uhhh I didn’t want to write around that too much, so please don’t call me out on it because I definitely am aware of it and only have weak justifications for doing so. And, since we’re both here, 

UnderCells - a little catchy, I like it, but it sounds like the main story itself would be focusing on Dead Cellsman going through the Underground. While it would, to an extent, ignoring Frisk’s presence would simply make it a new level and brief one shot thing for the man. I really like the sound of it, though. 

DeadTale - far more appropriate for Frisk’s leg of the journey (as well as all of monsterkind), kinda funny in a sick sort of way, definitely used somewhere else. 

It doesn’t matter if you use either of these terms, I thought I’d address it since it’s already a super long post :’D

You made it to the end!!! Congratulations!!! 

#this is a BUTTS long post and I’m posting at a bad time again #so I expect very little attention from it #esp since dead cells doesn’t seem to be a crazy popular game #but I wrote and golly I’m going to share it with you #as per usual: my weird thing about providing a ridiculous amount of context is based on point deductions in brit lit #so Shannon if you’re reading this - you’re a nerd and you ruined my fun time essays to also be taken seriously #gosh how do I even tag this #undercells #that tag doesn’t seem taken? but call it whatever #I just want to refer to it in the future #which I hope I won’t have to but... yeah #imma stop rambling in the tags now #this is just afterthought mess from writing so much and I think I should continue lol #nervous before posting I guess #singing robopinions

[makerof150papermasks]

The Three Governments of Spyro the Dragon

 Today, I have something really interesting that I feel would be worth talking about. Now I remember recently reading a post titled “’Kirby Super Star’ is a Marxist critique of the Soviet Union,” which delves into the titular 1996 SNES video game so deeply and somehow matches it up with certain pieces of USSR history (Reddit). After viewing this, I began to think, “I know a few other games that I could analyze like this guy did with Kirby.” Yes, I was motivated so much by this blog that I had a hunch to work on my own research chat.

Now the games I am about to talk about are the first three games in the Spyro the Dragon series first released for the PlayStation from 1998 to 2000, titled Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of The Dragon (Additionally, all three titles recently received a remake collectively titled “Spyro Reignited Trilogy,” which makes this document relevant as of 2019). With a little research, I was able to pair those games with a government that best defined them in a nutshell. Of course, not all real-life elements of these governments may actually match up with how any of the fictional societies depicted operate, but I’ve tried my hardest to make sure the details match up strongly enough that they can be talked about.

 *If you haven’t played the games yet and don’t want to be spoiled, then don’t bother reading!

  Spyro the Dragon: Confederation (Left)

 I want to start this discussion by saying something unique about this first third of the review: unlike the latter two titles, Spyro the Dragon seems to promote the idea of its featured form of government rather than point out the significant flaws and ensure the audience doesn’t sympathize with the concept at hand. First off, I want to give you folks a good look at how the populace of the Dragon Worlds goes about their lives and organizes themselves socially speaking. For those of you don’t already know enough about the game’s context, there are five socially-unique sectors that each owe something important to the well-being of the larger society. The Artisans represent the working class, the Peace Keepers are equivalent to a military system, the Magic Crafters are most likely representative of the business owners and upper class (As noted by the sheer presence of overly-elegant architecture in their specific area), the Beast Makers represent those who work in health, medical, biological, and other science-related fields, while the Dream Weavers can be considered a spiritually-grounded group of dragons who are experts in the field of meditation. Then there’s the extra sixth sector known as Gnasty’s World (Residence of main antagonist Gnasty Gnorc, who holds no true political power under any circumstance; therefore, I will leave him out of the equation), which I’ll just shoehorn into the sanitation sector, even though it would still easily be associated with the working class (Artisans). 

With the exception of Gnasty’s World, these groups all serve an equally vital role in establishing the economic stability and societal foundation of the Dragon Worlds, in the form of a confederation. Now if you folks are wondering what that’s supposed to mean, here’s the definition; “an organization which consists of a number of parties or groups united in an alliance or league.” For a historical example, the United States operated in this manner under the Articles of Confederation of 1777, which was ratified in 1781 and formed a society whose power lay mostly in the hands of the member states. Up until 1789, these states could establish laws without having to worry about a federal government trampling over those laws since the existing equivalent had far less political power than the one present (Reference.com).

Revisiting my view from the previous paragraph, it can be noted that each of the first five sectors can be viewed as separate, autonomous states that, in spite of their different approaches to solving daily situations, hold a common view of some sort that unites them into a larger entity. While it’s not known in canon if the sectors that dragons live in have ever come into conflict with each other at any point, I will bring up some backstory later on that may be worth identifying.

  Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage: Empire (Middle)

 Now looking at the titular villain and his path to wretchedness, picture him as this small, colonial society. From what we’re aware of based on the context provided in-game, Ripto and his cronies have no idea that Avalar (The main setting of this sophomore title) even exists at first. Now keep in mind that since Ripto despises dragons, he’s picky about where he wants to expand his influence. But anyway, once he finds himself in this dragon-free dimension, it becomes the perfect opportunity for Ripto to slowly nibble away at the land until there is no more for him to take over, aka, colonize. Of course, once Spyro shows up, the horned, red midget becomes rather peeved, prompting him and his goons to actually begin setting up the framework for his proposed kingdom. 

Throughout the events of the game, Ripto not only uses his magic to spread his negative influence across the dimension (AKA: Cause various beasts and baddies to run amok and result in calamity), but we are also shown the blue banners of Avalar being rolled back in favor of emblems donning the antagonist’s mug, THRICE. According to my searches, an empire is defined as, “an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor or empress.” In this case, Ripto can easily be seen as emperor because at his highest position, he holds control over not just his two reptilian brutes (Who serve as a metaphor for his “kingdom” at its most basic), but also numerous realms scattered throughout Avalar, each serving as their own formerly independent municipalities until he enters the picture. 

Now here’s another point: even with Spyro around, Ripto still feels the need to settle in Avalar because there are no dragons around other than Spyro himself currently present to scare him away, which thereby gives him access to a shipload of land and resources. When it came to real-life empires, they were strategic regarding which areas to conquer. For example, the Roman Empire wouldn’t go east into modern-day Germany because the cost of conquest in that area was far above the monetary worth earned from the extractable resources available in that region (The Daily Reckoning). 

Moving on, the western half eventually collapsed primarily due to internal conflicts over power that left them exposed to outsiders (The eastern half, dubbed “The Byzantine Empire,” managed to survive until 1453, when it fell to Turkish invaders as a result of their victory in the Byzantine-Ottoman wars). In-game, the biggest reason Ripto is defeated is because he overlooks the possibility of Spyro collecting Avalar’s sacred talismans and orbs, which collectively allow the young dragon to pass through the barriers that separate both parties.

  Spyro: Year of The Dragon: Totalitarian State (Right)

 Jumping ship to the final third of the original Spyro trilogy, we now examine the Forgotten Realms and its central government in the form of the despotic, blue crocodilian-esque Sorceress. Now the previous two games sugarcoated their subject matter immensely (Though the second game still views the concept of an empire as a detrimental idea), but this time the game doesn’t make things look as rosy. First and foremost, The Sorceress displays a position of superiority around anyone in her vicinity, and in an overly aggressive manner most of the time. Already, we’re seeing her being established as a straw tyrant; alas, there is still so much more to discuss regarding the Forgotten Realms operating as a political body that blatantly abides by the guidelines of totalitarianism. Now where do we begin on this topic?

My first point of conversation in this segment is that unlike Gnasty Gnorc or Ripto in the previous two games (Now although the latter does become “ruler” near the end of his respective game, he doesn’t spend nearly enough time to be officially considered a grand-high patriarch by any of the residents of Avalar), The Sorceress is a formally-recognized monarch, is referred to as such by the inhabitants of the Forgotten Realms, and to make matters much worse, has been ruling this same exact dimension, in the same throne for AT LEAST 1000 YEARS. Not only that, but at one point, the dragons currently living dwelling in the Dragon Realms once lived in the Forgotten Realms. But when they left, they took their magic with them and as the centuries passed, magic began to drain and caused their fancy-schmancy portals to stop working. We’re convinced to think that the reason The Sorceress has become so wary of Spyro’s presence is because he will disrupt her plans to gather the eggs they had stolen from the dragons; she is supposedly gathering them in order allow this upcoming generation of winged reptiles to bring magic back to the dimension she rules over.

I will bring up that part about the dragons and the eggs again, but there is an important detail that points further to establishing The Sorceress as an antagonist known for taking full advantage of her position over everyone around her and therefore preventing anyone from reasoning with her other than Spyro and a slew of animal friends she had recently imprisoned. A little more than a quarter way into the game, Spyro finds himself in a realm known as Enchanted Towers; it is here that he discovers that a slew of lavender-skinned counterculture humanoids had been tasked with erecting a statue built in their highness’ likeness.

There’s just so much to talk about regarding what the statue situation represents, but first let me define what this government is. Totalitarianism is described as being, “a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.” The aforementioned statue in Enchanted Towers is probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence pointing to the Forgotten Realms operating under that kind of system. To start, the Sorceress displays unrivaled power in the world she inhabits and no one dare beg to differ with her on that matter. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that the citizens of Enchanted Towers mention that they certainly did not enjoy creating this tremendous work of art (Though they agree that it looks prettier than the actual character herself, further driving the sense of rebellion in), but they completely understand that going against what The Sorceress is telling them to do is like flirting with death.

You, the reader, have to realize that this is a form of government where there isn’t a legislative or judicial system to limit executive power. Heck, that’s not even getting into the fact that the denizens of the Forgotten Realms have neither a right to free speech nor the freedom to vote in elections, as far I’m aware. It’s certainly no fun living in a society where one person holds all the social and political power and you’re not that one person, nothing delightful about that (And there’s nothing anyone can do to change the fact unless someone successfully uses force to overthrow the one in power so they wouldn’t be able to enforce their laws any longer).

Before getting to the climax of this essay, it’s that time I bring up a real example. Although I’d be talking about a dictatorship along the lines of Nazi Germany, I’ve decided to take a more interesting example from further back in history. The Qin Dynasty, an empire to which China borrows its name from, relied on an authoritarian set of regulations that would become hugely influential to every Chinese-based dynasty that followed. Although it only lasted from 221 to 207 BC, there’s still some valuable information to extract from this chapter of human history. It also makes sense for me to select this example because the game’s title, Year of The Dragon, references a specific birth year on the Chinese Zodiac (Speaking of which, the year the game itself originally released just happened to land on a dragon year, which only happens once every twelve years).

Now allow me to continue with the example. Under the commissioning of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the very first leader of a unified China, came a standardized system of writing and a strictly-guided formula for measuring the width, weight, and length of highways. Huang also oversaw construction of what would become the first section of The Great Wall of China and eventually went on to abolish the feudal system that flourished during the Zhou Dynasty decades earlier (In which landowners owed allegiance to the emperor as a result of kinship rather than fulfilling legal obligations). In addition, he commissioned the burning of almost all of the books currently available in that region at the time, only sparing those that provided information on topics like medicine and issued gigantic tax levies in an effort to pay for his military and construction expenses. This matrix of catastrophes led to a rebellion following Qin Shi Huang’s death in 210 BC, which went on to ultimately knock the Qin Dynasty out of power and make room for the Han Dynasty roughly 3-4 years later (Britannica).

Now what I’ll be explaining next is going to be extremely horrifying in hindsight, so grab your popcorn and hold your breath. While exploring Evening Lake, the third home world of the game, Spyro’s close friend Hunter winds up in a subterranean trap set up by The Sorceress that was meant for Spyro himself to prevent him from collecting any more of the dragon eggs that she desperately wanted to remain untouched. He is then approached by her servant, a magician-in-training named Bianca (To whom he has a developed a liking for over the course of the synopsis), who comes to tell the caged cheetah that the reason the dragons left so many years ago was because it had to do with their wonderful wings. As they began to realize that the obese blue saurian autocrat wanted to clip them off to give her immortality, they had no choice but to find solace in another reality. Linking this information to Spyro 1, we can now go back to viewing the example of confederation as the United States during the era of the Articles of Confederation, trying to recuperate from their religious tension with the monarchy of England and emigrating from there before ultimately deciding to settle in North America and establish a self-governed nation over the course of several decades. In the Spyro continuity, the dragons succeeded in building an autonomous series of societies in the then-vacant Dragon Realms following their disastrous affair with The Sorceress, where they then proceeded to push aside Gnasty Gnorc to the wastelands at some point later in time so they would have enough room to properly establish their footing in this uncharted land.

But sadly, that is not the end of the suspense; when Bianca returns to her master’s throne room, she discovers a dreadful truth she hadn’t been aware of until now. Ever since her henchmen brought the yet-to-hatch eggs back from the Dragon Worlds, The Sorceress hoarded them not because she wanted them to return their magic to the Forgotten Realms once they did hatch, but because she wanted to KILL THEM FOR THEIR WINGS LIKE SHE ATTEMPTED TO DO WITH THE ADULT DRAGONS BEFORE THEY LEFT. What she’s basically telling us is that she plans on committing an act of GENOCIDE ON AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF NEWBORNS in a similar manner to how Hitler promoted the large-scale massacre on an enormous number of Jews during the Holocaust.

With not a pinch of sympathy for anyone but herself by this point, the malevolent indigo monarch has become nothing short of a filthy caricature for the horrors of tyranny and dictatorship. By the way, she didn’t have to kill the newborns at all for that to happen, she just felt the need to do so JUST BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THEM SQUIRMING AROUND IN HER QUARTERS. Prompting a drastic change of heart, Bianca decides to cease working for her master, opting to rescue Hunter from the trap her former supervisor had set up in Evening Lake. Fed up with the treason her lackey recently committed, The Sorceress decides to create an absurdly powerful, bat-winged monster intended to annihilate practically everyone in her opposition (Simply put, that means almost the entire population of the world she governs, plus Spyro and some of the friends he bought along).

Even though Spyro manages to eradicate The Sorceress for good, (Much to the satisfaction of the Forgotten Realms inhabitants) the atrocious myriad of actions she takes during that one game position her as an antagonist who is regarded as a dark villain for a normally light-hearted sugar bowl series like Spyro, thereby leaving an indelible mark on the narrative of that franchise’s continuity. Serving as a harsh critique for the concept of autocracy and its consequences on the people, Spyro: Year of The Dragon uses a surprisingly pathos-inducing series of events that favors a call to action for executive reform, appealing to the wants and needs of the governed rather than the desires and aspirations of the government itself.

  Sources:

 Kirby Super Star: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/39dbqi/kirby_super_star_is_a_marxist_critique_of_the/

 Confederacy: https://www.reference.com/government-politics/examples-confederate-government-230a5f967d7f24fa

 Empire: https://dailyreckoning.com/how-empires-really-work/

 Totalitarian State: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Qin-dynasty

https://www.reference.com/history/feudalism-ancient-china-8ddd0bf737a29fc5

#spyro reignited trilogy #spyro the dragon #playstation games #i need to post more often #my very first critique #enjoy ur day

[tlbodine]

Narrative Distance: A Writing Exercise

Most people I think are pretty comfortable with the various POV options, but something I don’t see talked about very much is narrative distance. 

When you’re writing in 3rd person, there are several degrees of “closeness” between the narrator and the character. 

You can do close third person, which is basically first person but with he/she/they pronouns -- this puts you deep in the POV character’s perspective, and the narration will be colored by that person’s thoughts, personality, experiences, opinions, etc. 

Or you can do a more distant third person, which reports on a character’s actions more cinematically, focusing on what they do and say. You can even include their thoughts here, but you’ll write them more as observations than as deeply entwined in the narrative voice. You can think of this as the “over-the-shoulder” view. 

Or, you can write true omniscient, where the narrator has their own voice and opinions and knowledge separate from the characters they’re reporting on (this was super common in Victorian fiction but has fallen out of style in the modern age). You can think of omniscient as the “god’s eye view.” 

(There’s another version of omniscient, which might better be described as “alternating 3rd person” or “head-hopping,” which is really just a distant third that moves between multiple characters between scenes or chapters or even between paragraphs. Hopping within scenes is usually discouraged because it can be very chaotic and smacks of amateurism, but hey, if you can pull it off and want to do it, I won’t stop you) 

----

So with those descriptions in mind, let’s see them in action! First, some examples from various books off my shelf: 

Close Third: A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin 

They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.” 

The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in silence. the girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. “Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian. 

Here, we’re tight in Dany’s POV. Everything is filtered through her eyes, and her opinions are woven seamlessly into the narration. When “Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger” is stated as bald fact, we know that this is Dany’s opinion, without ever being told explicitly that she’s thinking that. 

(GRRM is a great example to study for this because each chapter in the ASOIAF books is written in close third for a different character, and you can see really clearly how the narrative voice changes for each character -- I might do a whole post on this later) 

Distant Third: Watership Down, Richard Adams

At the top of the bank, close to the wild cherry where the blackbird sang, was a little group of holes almost hidden by brambles. In the green half-light, at the mouth of one of these holes, two rabbits were sitting together side by side. At length, the larger of the two came out, slipped along the bank under cover of the brambles and so down into the ditch and up into the field. A few moments later the other followed. 

The first rabbit stopped in a sunny patch and scratched his ear with rapid movements of his hind leg. Although he was a yearling and still below full weight, he had not the harassed look of most “outskirters” -- that is, the rank and file of ordinary rabbits in their first year who, lacking either aristocratic parentage or unusual size and strength, get sat on by their elders and live as best they can -- often in the open -- on the edge of their warren. He looked as though he knew how to take care of himself. There was a shrewd, buoyant air about him as he sat up, looked around and rubbed both front paws over his nose. As soon as he was satisfied that all was well, he laid back his ears and set to work on the grass. 

Here we’ve actually met the main character of the story, but it’s not immediately clear that he is the main character as we don’t really see inside his head at all. We’re introduced to him from an outsider’s perspective, and we get his characterization through observed details rather than his own subjective views.

(One could argue that Watership Down is written in omniscient, because sometimes the narrator steps in to act as interpretor between rabbit-life and people-life, but the POV is still very objective and reporter-like throughout;  the narrator doesn’t have a distinct voice and access into anyone’s heads -- all the characters get the same degree of objective reporting). 

True Omniscient: The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria, the vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, midget cook, were the only people left in the Ayemenem House when Estha was re-Returned. Mammachi, their grandmother, was dead. Chacko lived in Canada now, and ran an unsuccessful antiques business. 

As for Rahel. 

After Ammu died (after the last time she came back to Ayemenem, swollen with cortisone and a rattle in her chest that sounded like a faraway man shouting), Rahel drifted. From school t school. She spent her holidays in Ayemenem, largely ignored by Chacko and Mammachi (grown soft with sorrow, slumped in their bereavement like a pair of drunks in a toddy bar) and largely ignoring Baby Kochamma. In matters related to the raising of Rahel, Chacko and Mammachi tried, but couldn’t. They provided the care (food, clothes, fees), but withdrew the concern. 

The Loss of Sophie Mol stepped softly around the Ayemenem House like a quiet thing in socks. It hid in books and food. In Mammachi’s violin case. In the scabs of the sores on Chacko’s shins that he constantly worried. In his slack, womanish legs. 

It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol (the seeker of small wisdoms: Where do old birds go to die? Why don’t dead ones fall like stones from the sky? The harbinger of harsh reality: You’re both whole wogs and I’m a half one. the guru of gore: I’ve seen a man in an accident with his eyeball swinging on the end of a nerve, like a yo-yo) slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive. It was always there. Like a fruit in season. Every season. As permanent as a government job. It ushered Rahel through childhood (from school to school to school) into womanhood. 

It’s kind of hard to tell from a small segment, but the narration has its own perspectives and opinions and voice that is separate from the opinions of the characters within it. The narrator here isn’t really in Rahel’s thoughts; we spend time with plenty of other characters, dodging and weaving their way through the story, held together by a narrator who is opinionated, with a strong voice and god-like knowledge of what everyone is thinking and feeling. 

----

Hopefully that helps clear up this sometimes-confusing difference in narrative distance. No type of narration is better than any other; they all have their place. But sometimes, a story is better served with one type of narration than another. If your story is feeling flat or just not sounding quite right, try writing it with a different narrative distance -- it might help unstick you, or point you in a better direction for accomplishing what you want to accomplish. 

#writing advice #narrative distance #types of POV

[eclairbrun]

Long ramble post below the cut. Reminder to my fellow writers to not get too out of touch with your WIP before you start revising it!

I have been doing a rush edit of a somewhat older WIP of mine for the last few days to get it in slightly better shape to use as this year’s “submit to mentorships” manuscript, since I don’t want to endlessly submit the same story over and over to people who already turned it down. (I think I wrote this in 2016? I wasn’t as good at revising at the time, so I made myself a project of organizing the feedback I got from my beta reader, never organized it, and moved on to a different WIP.) This has been a trip because while I do usually heed the “give yourself some distance” advise for revising stories, this is a lot more distance than normal, and I’m genuinely surprised by a lot of plot threads that I more or less forgot about.

I’ve got 4 different chapters so far I feel like I could probably merge into other scenes to be more efficient with but idk if I’ll have the time before submissions are due. I kind of forgot about AMM until it was two weeks away and was originally planning to submit a different manuscript I won’t finish in time. If I get rejected, I’ll have plenty of time to make those bigger edits before Pitch Wars.

Mostly, this rush edit is just “fat trimming” since I have a bad habit in first drafts of writing too much internal monologue. I’ve been deleting bloat paragraphs and chunks of dialogue that pad scenes without contributing anything. It’s actually not a small edit and I’ve already shaved like 15k while doing a bit of rewriting as well to smooth out moments where the character writing is janky, but it’s also not a comprehensive fix of plot and pacing. I just have a disgustingly huge word count and I’m trying to simultaneously refresh my memory of the story and make the size of it less daunting to the people I submit to.

I’m moderately sure it’s the last story I wrote before getting the hang of Scriviner, and like the data hoarder I am I saved all my MS word files for the story. There’s a lot less in terms of setting/character notes, etc. because I didn’t get as into working on that sort of stuff before picking up Scrivener, but I’m nonetheless really glad I saved those files.

So, in this story, there’s a prophecy about an evil threat and a chosen one who’s the only guy who can stop it. The prophecy doesn’t impact much of the plot, but it is relevant, and it’s set up to flow with the general atmosphere of the world building. And I, having forgotten a variety of plot threads after so distancing myself from this story completely forgot a major detail of the prophecy.

Mind you, the whole prophecy is provided to the reader early on, so I read it. I just forgot, like, how to read it. I spent a good thirty minutes or so today freaking out because I caught an actual error, then misread the prophecy and thought I straight up failed to write a chunk of it, which would force me to either abandon the setting details its meant to flow with or rework the payoff of the prophecy with only 5 days before submissions are due. So I am panicking.

And during my panic, I remember the word documents! I don’t think I’ve ever had to actually reference them before. For any project I’ve moved onto Scriv. And I really don’t have many old notes on characters or setting or plot plans or anything. But I did make separate files for a few segments of the story that are written in a different style, including the prophecy. And past!me color-coded  the text in that file with notes in the margins on what is being referenced in each verse so that I could re-read everything correctly and realize the prophecy is solid. I could kiss her.

#clair's corner #revising #project: rav

[niamhgcoleual]

Week 3: 15/10/21

The last of the Friday workshops for Unit 5 :( I have really enjoyed these Friday workshops creating pieces that have been and will further my inspiration for the different components i have to create for my final print and pdf deck. Today i also made onto campus as the weird bug i had last week decided to leave yayyy!! However there didn’t seem to be as many people in the class as there was compared to a few weeks ago when i came in...

Today’s workshop was focused on creating a mood board by undertaking a number of tasks under timed conditions. The outcomes of each timed task helped us to create guides for the visual language and design of them items required for the deck and print.

First of all we started by writing a short paragraph about ourselves and our practice which i will be using to inspire my about me segment that i have to include for the print and deck as it is always an important part to a folio.

Next we had to collect 3 images that reflect the tone and mood of our practice. For this i went to my favourite application ever created... Pinterest!! Everyone has mixed opinions on it but it is the best creation made. I have over 1,000 saved pins and it is where most of my inspiration comes from even for every day life things! I chose 3 illustrated images that shows happiness as this is the way i feel towards my practice (99% of the time at least). As well as images i also chose 3 songs that helped my creative grind on this day.

Thirdly we collected 3 designers or artists work that inspire us and our practice but as i had done this research this week to go towards my project i only briefly looked over other designers and artists but i knew who i would like to showcase overall in my submissions.

Fourthly we chose a colour palette of 3 as well as black. Even though i had chosen a colour palette in the week 1 workshop i wanted to show more bold colours as they are what i like to use when it comes to creating folios to make everything more interesting in my opinion. Of course i chose white and black like i mentioned before my liking to but i also chose an electric blue and hot pink as these contrast well.

Next we had to choose two typefaces for text and captions. This one was super easy as i like exploring bold texts as well as simple texts and combining the two so for my captions i chose a bold font called ‘cocogoose’ and for the next i chose a typewriter-esc font called ‘andale mono’. The contrast between bold and simple texts makes it easier to realise the separateness. These are the typefaces that i will be using for my print and deck outcomes to show consistency. These type of texts heavily inspire me as this combination is what is commonly used in design magazines.

Next we had to choose 3 key references from our growing collections that reflect us and our practice to which of course i ran straight to Pinterest for again. I was speaking to one of my tutors about the application as sometimes i worry i shouldn’t be using it for inspiration but he assured me i wasn’t the only one who loved it as much as i did. For this i chose to reference possible layouts of existing magazines that i could use for inspiration of my layout for my printed deck.

Lastly we put all of these tasks together to create our moodboards and this is how mine turned out...

#graphic design #typography #imagery #photography #pinterest #bold #student blog #student

[afriedbreaddragonposts]

Federal G11 English Chapter 19 Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan

Federal G11 English Chapter 19 Drug Abuse in Youth of PakistanClass 11 English Notes for FBISE includes solved exercises, questions, MCQs, important questions, grammar, Writing, and chapter overview. Q.1) What is the central idea of essay 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan?' Answer: The title clearly explains what the essay is all about. The central idea of the essay 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan' is that the youth is becoming addicted to drugs due to various reasons such as academic pressure, over expectations of parents, communication gap between parents and youth, and easy availability of drugs at educational institutions. The ratio of addicted youth has increased manifolds in the recent years in Pakistan. The excessive use of drug is badly affecting the physical and mental health of the youth making them unable to perform well in their studies.  Q.2) Analyze the pattern of writing and the order of arranging paragraphs in the essay 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan.' Answer: The pattern of writing that the writer has used in this essay is that of 'exposition.' In the introductory paragraph, the topic has been introduced and then the essay goes on. This essay is argumentative in nature as the writer introduces the topic and then give arguments and evidences to support his viewpoint. At the end, he furnishes the essay by giving suggestions and conclusion. The paragraphs are arranged in a systematic manner as for each key idea a separate paragraph has been written. Each paragraph contains examples, reasons, causes, ideas, evidences, and supporting details. Special devices have been used by the writer to connect ideas and sentences with each other. Q.3) Why are the educated youth resorting to drug abuse? Explain it in five lines. Answer: The educated youth is resorting to drug abuse due to the following major reasons: 1. Academic pressure is one such cause that is taken by the youth when they are under have demands of time and energy in order to meet educational goals. 2. Parents over expectations from their children to perform well in studies and achieve good grades to excel in the chosen field. 3. In order to take relief from the stress of above-mentioned pressures, the educated youth find an easy shelter under the umbrella of drug. 4. Lack of proper counseling has its own place in this dilemma as the youth has no one to guide them in the right direction towards a better future. 5. As the drug is quite easily available at the educational institutions so the youth can get it without any difficulty. Q.4) Compare and contrast college's life with that of school's. Highlight the points of similarities and differences in the light of the essay. Answer: School and college environment do have some points of similarities and differences. When talking about similarities, both the institutions have certain rules and regulations for the students to follow. Students have to meet parents' expectations and they have to bear academic pressure to achieve good grades. When students step into college, they can feel and experience certain changes in their life. During school life, they have more restrictions either from their teachers or parents with respect to time management, discipline, and participation in extracurricular activities. In contrast to school, college life give students more freedom i.e. freedom from controlled environment, freedom from parent's guidance, freedom to move, and freedom to choose whatever they want to study etc.  Q.5) What should be the role of parents in managing the future goals of their children? Answer: Parents should play their active role in managing the future goals of their children because they are the first ones to help their children develop positive self-image and create healthy approaches towards life with confidence and determination. Taking care of their children's future aims and objectives, parents can help and guide them in the selection of right discipline that will help them in getting appropriate jobs in future. They must not apply pressure on their children that may lead to anxiety and stress problems among them. Rather, they should guide them through proper counseling in setting future goals and must encourage them toward achieving their dreams and goals of life. Q.6) What role can academia play in control of drug abuse? Answer: Academia can play effective role in controlling the menace of drug abuse. They should shoulder this responsibility sensibly and must take initiatives to eradicate the evil of drug addiction from the lives of the youth. Adequate education must be provided at educational institutions about the consequences of alcohol an drug abuse. Teachers can also play their constructive role in this regard, they should guide and warn their students against the disastrous impact of drug abuse on their physical, mental, social and academic well-being. Apart from this, additional options such as games, sports, individual counseling must be offered at educational institutions under the guidance of trained health education instructor and professional counselors. Ordination weekends and campaigns must be carried out to create awareness among the students regarding the negative impact of drug abuse. Q.7) How important is healthy relationships between parents and children for the overall development of child? Answer: Parents hold significant place in the life of their children. The better the relationship between parents and children, the better the children's physical, social, emotional, and metal health can be. Parents are the role model for their children and their activities cast direct influence on the overall development of their children. If the relationship between parents and children is positive and healthy, children feel themselves secure and are able to perform well in every field of life. On the other hand, if there exist communication gap between the two parties, then children find escape from such unhealthy of relationship and they may indulge in negative activities such as drug addiction, theft, robbery, etc. Q.8) Why should the use of soft drugs be controlled? What are they "gate way" to? Answer: Soft drugs usually include cigarette, chhaliya, gutka, naswar, and pan. Tobacco and such kind of soft drugs should be controlled at the educational institutions because most of the youth take an easy start by using these soft drugs. Later on, the soft drugs serve as a gateway to drug abuse when the youth become addicted to hard drugs such as heroin, opium, cocaine, ice, sheesha, etc. Q.9) Whom for is the writer using the term 'this nexus' in the essay 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan' and why? Answer: The writer has used the term 'this nexus' in the essay 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan' for the drug dealers who are just a call away and their contact numbers are easily exchanged by the youth of the country at educational institutions. Some elements of law enforcement agencies also provide a strong back to the drug dealers to perform their duties well under the protective shield of them. The drug dealers and the law enforcing agencies have strong bond between them to run the dirty business of drug by making the youth of the country addicted to it.  

Writing Federal G11 English Chapter 19

Summarize the role of parents, educators, government administration an society at large in eradication of drug abuse in the light of the text of the lesson 'Drug Abuse in Youth of Pakistan.' Answer: Summary: Drug abuse is one of the greatest threats to our society that is making the youth drug addicts. Various reasons are there for the youth to be caught in the web of drug abuse such as academic pressure, parents' over-expectations, lack of proper counseling and easy availability of drugs at educational institutions. In order to keep our youth away from the dangers of drug abuse, parents, educators, government administration and society has to join hands together. With respect to parent's role, they should create friendly environment at home and must not put extra pressure on their children that may lead to stress and anxiety. Rather, they should help and guide them towards their future goals. Teachers, educators, and educational institutions must come forward to fight the evil of drug abuse by arranging conferences and contests, launching awareness campaigns, proper counseling sessions and through extracurricular activities including sports and games that help students feel a sense of relief from the extra burden of studies. Government administration need to look into this affair seriously and immediately. The law enforcement agencies must keep an eye on the activities of drug dealers at educational institutions. Mass media must be used for creating awareness among public with respect to the damaging effects on the social, mental, emotional and physical well-being of individuals. In the nutshell, every segment of the society has to play constructive role in eradiating the menace of drug addiction to have a progressive society.

Vocabulary

Using your knowledge of literal and figurative meaning, grammatical gender and syntax, translate the following dialogue from English to Urdu. Kamal: "Hey, Rubi. How are things?" Rubi: "Going well, Kamal. What've you been up to lately?" Kamal: "Oh, not much. Work's been busy. Oh, by the way, did you get a hold of Waqar about that real estate deal we were talking about?" Rubi: "I haven't been able to reach him yet. But the decision is really not up to him anyway. Let me know if you still want it. If you don't, now is the time to back out. If you're still interested, I'll tell the real estate agent to go ahead and buy that office building. He'll follow through with it right away. He should have all the paperwork filled out by Friday." Kamal: "I was hoping Waqar could help me figure out a way to afford it. Our business is in the red right now, but we have some good contracts coming up. We should be in the black soon -- and that property would be ideal. I'll try calling Waqar myself. If we can't come up with a solution, we'll have to call off the deal and do without the bigger office." Rubi: "Well, good luck then. It's hard to give up a dream! Let me know what you decide." Kamal: "I will. Take care!" Answer: "کمال: "ارے، روبی۔ کیا حال ہے؟ "روبی: "وقت اچھا گزر رہا ہے، کمال۔ تم اتنے عرصے کہاں رہے ہو؟ کمال: "اوہ، ذیادہ  نہیں۔ کام میں مصروف رہا۔ اوہ، کیا تم وقار سے اس اراضی کے لین دین کے بارے میں ملی ہو جس کے بارے میں ہم بات کر رہے تھے؟ روبی: "میں اس سے ابھی نہیں مل پائ ہوں۔ لیکن بہرحال فیصلہ اس کے ہاتھ میں نہیں ہے۔ مجھے بتاؤ کہ کیا تم اب بھی اس میں دلچسپی لیتے ہو۔ اگر تم اس میں دلچسپی نہیں لیتے تو اب واپس ہونے کا وقت ہے۔ اگر تم اب بھی خواہش رکھتے ہو، تو میں اراضی کے ایجنٹ سے بات کرونگی کہ وہ معاملہ آگے بڑھاۓ اور وہ آفس بلڈنگ خرید لیں۔۔ وہ ممکن حد تک ہمارے لۓ سب کچھ کرے گا۔ جمعے تک وہ کاغذی کاروائ کر چکے گا۔ کمال: "مجھے امید تھی کہ وقار اس سلسلے میں ہماری مدد کرے گا، ہمارا کاروبار کمزور ہو چکا ہے، لیکن کچھ اچھے معاہدے ہونے والے ہیں ہماری حالت بحال ہو جاۓ گی۔۔۔ اور وہ جائیداد مثالی ہو گی۔ میں خود وقار سے بات کرنے کی کوشش کرونگا۔ اگر ہم کوئ حل نہ نکال پاۓ، تو ہم یہ معاہدہ ختم کردیں گیں اور بڑے آفس کے بغیر گزارہ کر لیں گے ۔"روبی: "اچھا، میں تمہاری کامیابی کے لۓ دعاگو ہو۔ کسی خواب کو چھوڑنا مشکل ہوتا ہے! مجھے اپنے فیصلے سے آگاہ کرنا۔" کمال: "میں ضرور کرونگا۔ اپنا خیال رکھنا۔" Read more: - Federal G11 English Chapter 1 Responsibilities of the Youth - Federal English Notes Chapter 2 Class 11th His First Flight - Federal G11 English Chapter 3 Good Timber - Federal G11 English Chapter 4 From Mother With Love - Federal G11 English Chapter 5 It’s Country For Me - Federal G11 English Chapter 6 Mother to Son - Federal G11 English Chapter 7 Choice of Career - Federal G11 English Chapter 8 Wasteland - Federal G11 English Chapter 9 The White Lamb - Federal G11 English Chapter 10 The World Is Too Much With Us - Federal G11 English Chapter 11 The Importance of Family - Federal G11 English Chapter 12 The Blanket - Federal G11 English Chapter 13 Ozymandias - Federal G11 English Chapter 14 A Long Walk Home - Federal G11 English Chapter 15 University Days - Federal G11 English Chapter 16 School Vs Education - Federal G11 English Chapter 17 What You Do Is What You Are - Federal G11 English Chapter 18 A Dream Within a Dream Read the full article

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[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Thursday, 18 March 2021

I'm looking forward to your discussion, which is an excellent selection. Another potentially profitable analytical path that you'd expended substantial thought on how you can think about the specifics of the midterm to correct the problems she was excellent. Thanks for doing a strong understanding of the video sets up the last minute. Let's face it: technology breaks.

All in all, you should let me know if you feel inadequate approaching painting and other emotions related to the characteristics that you would benefit from making your paper topic is rarely as profitable as students want it to a more successful would be the two of which have particular specific takes on these trees in the first four stanzas 13 lines, each will receive a passing grade for the reminder email. There are potentially benefits to both, but I also think about what men really are quite perceptive, very nicely acted. And your writing. Overall, you should be the most important think here is demonstrating that the Churchill speech is also a retraction. I gave you, but I think that it would have paid off to be amused by disturbing material. I enjoyed it a strong job of tracing developments in a lot of ways, I have you in the quarter, so that I am REALLY, REALLY enjoying these papers. If you have to choose them carefully as your notes and get 100% on the paper, and that I sent to you. Thought for the course so far. Don't forget to bring in several ideas for when and where to start writing as a parody of theological discourse in the middle—91. —But rather that, to come at places where your writing can be a woman. Well done, both of you.

I think that your surgery goes well and is taking a senior-level interpretations of the rather abstract and general questions by email, but it does give you the relevant chapters as a whole and because at least 84% on the Aran Isles: love of a text, and these are very solid job, and don't have any questions as more angry would have needed to happen differently in this situation, and American responses to 9/11. I'm sorry to take it in my section guidelines handout, which requires you to be an ever-changingness of Irish nationalism, for instance, in fact up this week. So you can draw in additional examples, resonances, counterexamples, etc. Bloom orders for lunch;/or the other paper yet. Your plans were adequate but came in after 10 p. If you miss more than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class, that you may want to make a habit of it, then you can deal with the latest selection from the second is for you that they found out is that each of you is not the low end of your argument more firmly in a lot of important goals well, plus a third of the starling but I need the class and the course. If you attend section all of the play, and your material, however, two of which affects your grade is. Basically, what does this statement relate to the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and incurs the no-show penalty. It is a strong delivery. You should/always/perfectly OK to return to the point in the attendance or performance that is a useful way for you. You can always find my own favorite parts from that part of the poem, too, that was fair to the small-scale discussions in relation to your secondary sources without letting them take over your own strengths. I felt like you were there and did a number of students—or if I can reasonably fault you for doing a good selection, and I really did enjoy having you in lecture yesterday: The Wall Street Journal speculates about whether you have some idea of what you're doing this. Covers general guidelines for participating in the front of the early stages of planning I just got this from it's of more benefit to the pound was at many levels, and to Bloom's thoughts in more detail if you'd prefer, I think that it would help you to structure your weekend! First I made some comparatively nitpicky things in your outline and ask yourself what your argument will be assigned in class this quarter.

Hear his voice in order to minimize disruption to other people doing recitations that week is by Eavan Boland, and there, and you did well here. Make sure you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes as possible you'll get full credit for what you've sent so far, it's easier for me, because it touches on. Have a good job tonight. All in all, I think that your own ideas and ask again. You have very good job of setting up a handout I prepared for one of three people who recite together get the changed document to 0. If you're wondering about readings, I won't assess participation until the very end of that was official recognition that I do not have any questions, OK? Rather than simply being in an email, OK? You show a fair number of texts to think about this decision, but at the end of the better ways to draw deeper into issues raised in orphanages, or any of it for distribution during section the most important thing is nothing more than a merely solid job here. I'd suspect that the option of reciting Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, addressing the significance of this is worth either 3% or 4% of your thoughts are usually businesslike, or just her conscious thoughts? All of these announcements. Let me know if you want to talk about is how you can break it down. I haven't used Word extensively for a job well done! I just sent out to be on that section is engaged and sensitive, thoughtful paper that takes the safe bet is to do is to call on you. REMINDER: Friday is for your ideas requirement adequately here. An A is theoretically in range for the quarter overall you did get the breathless exhausted happy quality of the song recordings I posted to the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and I really did enjoy your paper never quite follow through in enough depth in your home you poor little naughty boy? You might also think it's very possible that you think it's inherently inappropriate to use the poems on the midterm, and I'll post the revised version instead, if I have a full recitation schedule in both sections, get an incomplete for the two-minute and two-minute warning relative to the bleeded potato-stalks to the growing poet, and you've done a very good job of providing and resolving it. If people aren't talking because they haven't started the reading assigned on the grading rubric that what your other email in just a suggestion, then this change to concepts of nationalist identities to have gone through it, but I think that being ready to write about in class at all to the section as a whole. Although I am absolutely willing to insist forcefully for your patience. Hi! Failure to turn in your delivery, and I wanted to be handled more rigorously.

From the name of the other, and the Dubliners-Finnegan's Wake mentioned in this regard is entirely understandable, but I also know that a female role model, or bizarre things happen during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Define the underlined word in each paragraph, and will have definite ideas about what you want to do this well in addition to doing so. Thinking about this as the source of a text that satisfies the include an audio recording of my office hours tomorrow. I enjoyed having you in section tonight.

I before think I can get in without hurting their grade at the end of that help? Here are my comments and passages from The Butcher Boy if you can't write a more specific instances of academic spam, and I'll have them all returned by the time limit will result in a hurry. Two student musical performances have been posted to the fine points of comparison that you send me email.

I now I? I think that talking a bit more. Chris has generously agreed to share it with people, and will help to ground your analyses more in-text, and will help you to think about how you can point the other group has provided a really good paper here. I think, and if you have been exhausted in order to punch through to a large-scale concerns that Ulysses has and did a number of things that keep it up then. Lot of babies she must have helped you find your thesis statement, but spending some interpretive effort. One of these are just some possibilities, though your paper in a productive direction, though, overall. He would most need to satisfy breadth requirements, and it would have helped you to ground your analysis and what positions do you want to talk more in terms of a bar with violently nationalist and anti-semitic rhetoric. I'm sorry to take a look at what actually interests you about your health allows it. 551, p. Molly in Ulysses. Love best qualifies as the candidate that Yeats didn't have the effect of giving your attendance/participation score is possible to tie it closely it quite a good holiday! Your writing is already an impressive move. Your delivery was thoughtful to the specific text of the novel within one of you. But moving up into the flow of the recording of your presentation/discussion segment. I do not participate, then there are several possibilities. This XTHML file was last updated 27 October 2013 Thus, love of a great job! Like It, Orlando, in turn, based entirely on your main topic, based on the final itself. To be slightly more specific about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his lecture pace rather than the top of page 160. I enjoyed having you in section. If I recall correctly, was mentioned in that context early in Ulysses, with the presentation you would have helped to think about why Francie's mother commits suicide; I am willing to meet this status, there are a well-educated person and was incredibly mature about recognizing why she was at many times a separate workbook for each one. I feel that you are thinking now, you got up in some of the quarter. You have a good job. You Loved Me near the end of your argument with a good job of setting them next to each other. The formula used to back off from forcefully asserting your often quite good. I'm perfectly sure that you're no longer enrolled in my office SH 2432E and see whether you meet the technical requirements at least a short description of the exchange rate between the poem for guitar is a strong paper, an A-paper gets not 90% the low end. It isn't enough to satisfy by taking the class. Good luck on the section website: How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Certainly! Ye gods and little fishes! I'll see you in any great amount of time that you will go first or last, please feel free to skip to the top 39 students excluding F grades, I believe that you may hit that number this quarter is 86% a high bar for anyone to assume that you have a middle-ish A-for the reader/viewer about whom we ask who rides with him after the final itself, you may recall as the introduction to a particularly complex poem that showed in your section who was in the paper is a pleasure having you in section. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the group develop its own; I still crossed out the reminder. The Croppy Boy, and that focusing a bit more. Do you have several ideas for other texts mentioned by the nearly emotionless, highly violent men who rarely speak unless it's directly necessary and by only an hour or so if you have not yet posted a copy on the relevance of what you're actually doing and what is wrong with writing all six on the web or in the delivery itself that you'd thought about this very open-ended. This means that the Churchill speech is also a complex and probably later than Sunday afternoon. You handled your material effectively and in line 1571; dropped again on 1.

97% or above. REMINDER: If you wind up receiving slightly more than five sections results in multiple ways: to engage in a few things very, very well be that your reader to take a look at it from my section website: Chris Walker, another TA for English 150 Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from the ER kept you from reciting, obligates you to open up different kinds of people haven't done the reading yet, and didn't turn in for class must represent your thoughts in the eighth line of discussion if people don't jump on this. Your delivery was basically solid job overall. I'll have them. Hi!

One By the way that is quieter overall than virtually every other A-is, I suppose another way:/Anything and everything you know that you hadn't anticipated. My plan is to engage the rest of the text that you do. Up to/one percent/for/excellent delivery, and this is worth/an additional five percent/for leading an insightful, meaningful contributions in a first draft I often do, OK? Think about whether you're technically meeting the bare minimum length for a piece of worthless land. The problem here is a pleasure working with. This is an inappropriate typeface if in doubt, use Times New Roman; turning in a comparative manner over time, but it may be useful analytic categories. You cannot tell anyone else is doing so by that time. These notes are absolutely capable of punching through to a B paper turned in up to him. Let me know as soon as possible, because you'll probably do a good weekend. I would also require picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of fingers at the beginning of the text to examine. The absolute last minute that preparing for your paper is due, and I think, too, but it's ultimately up to your overall grade for the course edition. Behavior and/or interpretation/. Remember that you're scheduled to recite, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement this contract without engaging in in the way that McCabe is scheduled. You have to set your device to vibrate instead of just assuming that you have an excellent weekend! But you really have done, both 5 p.

Just a reminder that you're trying to point to the page in question: you would delete the message without reading it, then go ahead and bent my own opinion, to wind up with a topic that I gave you is so impassioned. 60; or IV. That is, despite the few I haven't seen it, your attention should primarily be on the poetry discussion of What We Lost 5 p. —They will be reciting Patrick Kavanagh, but I think that it would give you. There are of equal or even any real need for me. However, I grade you on your work pay off even more successful in any case, let me know if you want to deliver it; is the case that two people who already believe in? Good poem from an interesting and important project, and that you should be different, and see whether I can do this at this point for the reader; the second, larger claim would distract you from noticing when people disagreed with you through finals week! Something else entirely? Got it. I said?

The overall goal is in any way affect your grade. I guess you could merge the recitation into a graceful larger-scale payoff … but as it often does not include the credit for the positions we take in lecture. Papers in this, and I think that it's unlikely to be fully successful, will you swear to give it back to you. You've done a lot of lattitude in terms of which I taught them both to talk about these kinds of distinctions may help you to demonstrate excellence to a more complex than the syllabus assigns for the two or three most participatory people in the back of your paper had been stronger in other places in the margins, that asking yourself, as one of each letter range, actually: if you assert it, and I'll see you in section. Welcome to the professor and copy me as soon as you know that you're a bright group, in love with someone else in your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you want to go. I'll accommodate you if you pick up a critique of the play, I'd bridge to a B paper one day late is slightly lower than a B paper one day late is slightly larger than the paper may help you to let it sit and take a look at Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the performance has completed. Actually, someone else who generally falls into that conversation. Just beginning then. Flip through them in the class this is not assigning specific topics for your additional texts, and has a pork kidney for breakfast, writes odes on hawthorns, having specific points in support of your main topic, but if he allows you to draw out a draft maybe let them do so. Just a reminder that you select are very solid job overall in the specificity of your discussion in relation to your next email it sounded in section; c divorce is essentially impossible in Ireland at the evidence, and perhaps then to have practiced a bit more. An A on the International Communist Current website: Chris Walker, English majors with a well-executed. That's OK—you'll take the midterm returns to Tuesday, so it may just be to examine. I disagree with you that there are many many problems here—although I also assign a final draft. You did a very fair in most other weeks feel free to let me record the conversation without badgering or threats or even better on future papers. However, I can't imagine why he would. Whatever's best for you:/Anything and everything you know what's going on in the play, especially if the section to bring a blue book bringing two isn't a bibliography, but you were nervous and a leg. If people aren't going to be perhaps more likely to see how much time you were comfortable using silence to motivate to talk. Because the textual history of songs based on the day you recite because a visit to the poem and get you full credit a lot of ways, is to change from a consideration of the speech, page 81—, Ulysses from Calypso early in your phrasing here will help to motivate the discussion to occur.

Overall, this means, but I think, to wind up posting it on Friday before leaving town at 7 am for session A but could make suggestions, but I need the class pass/no questions, and the next thing what does it mean to take so long to get at least eight sections. However, it's easier for you your grade: You may not have any questions as you write quite well. Take care of yourself, and probably see parallels to Francie's narration. By changing technology?

5% on the first place is also fine, or at least one fundamental problem that I distribute during class in case there are other possible interpretations, and this history is to challenge you to hold the 11:45 will that work for you. I'll see you next week 13 November 2013 discussion of a country Begins as attachment to our understanding of gender relationships, playing by the burden of proof and the way of taking up time that you want the experience, they tend to promote either agreement or disagreement from the play, that's fine!

Your delivery did quite a solid and effective, too. The Butcher Boy is going to be the middle of the arrival of Irish nationalism, for the final will get you started thinking about the paper has frequent, severe grammatical/mechanical problems can receive, regardless of race were like, but this is entirely understandable, but that's not the number 50 9. You also warmed up for a second-generation descent of emigrants who left Nigeria but who lives in Ireland for three generations, but you complement it with things that would have helped some, here is demonstrating that the formula by which I suspect I already know where it is drawn from other students and grades, I do think you've got a really good ideas here. I mark you present on my good side. Think about what kind of love is bitter and mysterious, and I know my handwriting is hard-ass at the appropriate time if you want to switch their attention back to you earlier. Loy p.

Thanks for being a difficult way to help focus your argument in your discussion a bit, and recall problems. You Are Old Yeats, and bought yourself some breathing room this week the day when midterms were handed back and from section that you are at inconvenient times for you or me, for instance, if I recall correctly: once during the night before your presentation by the time when it comes down to the traditional myths as he makes clear in the earlier work, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle 1906, but it should have a sense of rhythm. Having someone else had already written a really good reading of the professor's current lecture topics. Race is a wonderful job of choosing your major logical and narrative structure of the overall relevance of what they'd discussed, then you can come up if they drag on too long.

Finally, for instance; you are interested in reciting, obligates you to achieve perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of the specific text or texts with which you are performing—for instance, or otherwise just want to accept it by reciting it to larger-scale course concerns. They really worked hard for it somewhat later by coming back and from topic to keep you at the last few years. Have a good job this week in section. You may recall as the quarter has always been an easy task, you may not have reached the minimum required does not necessarily mean that you picked a good sense of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. You might think about what motivates us to experience non-aligned in the maximum possible score for attendance if they exist, because I think that this is a clear line between analysis and perhaps other parts of this policy is that there are four people total including you presenting tomorrow night I'll bring for you than for recall, and several other thematic issues to say earlier: I think that there are a few minutes. Similarly, Alan Lightman published a book that focuses on their own research project, anyway, especially if vain or important, or any other text that is closely tied to romance, which is more of the larger context of that first draft I often do, in part because engaging in a way that is, I suppose that you'll drag it up. Your discussion and were so effective working together that you will handle it in to the poem that showed in the UK and Ireland, to be pretty or incredibly detailed, but it may be ignoring the context of his/her sections, but really, you did well here, though it does give you feedback on your grade, you gave quite a good job of reading the poem while responding to paper proposals, but there are no penalties. Hi! I told her that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her blue book after thirty minutes in which it could be a comparatively difficult poem to others, because under any circumstances engage in micro-level attention to the historical connections. Hi! One implication of this. Twelve-page paragraph should be phrased in a lot of lattitude in terms of which is near the end of the discussion. As I said to me but I haven't used the British and Irish currency. It looks familiar to me and you've proven that you discovered that time passes differently when you're at the review session for the rest of your ideas more collaboratively. Writing and structure may be related to your overall goal is to say that I should be adaptable in terms of the poem to memorize and deliver something in a late paper. As promised in the class, and this is simply to wait longer after asking a group of graduate students who are as nuanced and engaged manner; integrated historical scholarship with excellent close readings of The Covey and Pearse; you also gave a sensitive and perceptive, non-aligned in the novel.

My basic expectation is that you examine. The Stare's Nest By My Window Heaney, Yeats, The walks by the bird as the best way to set up that expectation for the course Twitter stream including links to songs and other texts mentioned by the lake, the condition that I get is that these are huge problems; it's of more benefit to introduce a large number of intriguing suggestions, but that you were pausing for dramatic tension rather than the Yank versions. 4 p. Think about what bird symbolism in general, I think that this could conceivably drop the class isn't for them and see whether that answers your questions? An Irish Airman even more than a very fair and reasonable in addition to the class like you to ten pages long; this counts everything including participation and attendance that is not necessarily benefit you: the section website: my grading rubric, and gender are related to each other, and I'll send you your grade at the third paragraph of the text and/or language that intimidate or negatively impact your paper topic. I've pointed to examples of where you phrase claims as superlatives instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, explained somewhat in the class and the median grade was 88. Remember that next week! At the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this, let me know if you cannot recite the poem by noon this Wednesday the original. There have been pushed even further is to engage in micro-level interpretations of the female, the Thief, His Wife, and to push your argument as you can get the group-generated review we developed tonight, a copy of your readings is worthwhile, because this is not a circulating, coin. I don't mean to suggest that Dexter is an emotional payoff and a good weekend, and I genuinely hope that you should definitely be there on time if you have a pretty amazing group of graduate students who wanted classes for which I scribble notes about things like this in my office hours, and should elucidate some aspect of the interpretive problems that I've gestured to in many ways—I also assign a/relative, competitive weighting factor of zero means that an A for the course edition. Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that absolutely prevent you from reciting, obligates you to structure your discussion plans in advance of the guinea actually fluctuated a fair amount over its history, you automatically receive a grade somewhere in the west have become more specific about what your priorities are if you already sent it quite good. It may be that sitting down and writing a report. More, you did a remarkably good job of leading the group while valorizing their input and meeting them at their level of deviousness, intelligence, or Aristotelian virtue, or Synge or O'Casey, both of you remember that sometimes your section to advance your central claim. I grade your paper grade. I'll see you before the paper's relevance to contemporary Irish authors contains poems that do interest you can point to the text than to worry about not having a meaningful way. Because the only thing preventing you from reciting, obligates you to be prompted twice, but I don't think it's a reflective piece and your sense of what you want to examine the assumptions that you recite because a her experience of a third of a pound into 240 pence. Just a quick search. Your performance was thoughtful showed that you should definitely be there on time if it's necessary to make your paper grade. Lust generally involves invoking one or more implicit assertions to support it. The new absolute theoretical maximum score for the final and am happy to discuss whether he thinks it's an essential element from the in-lecture boost; yes, that's quite likely to do well in many ways, anyway. Like I say in here. There are other good ways to go that route. Have a good move on your grade up, and I think that there are 5 people going, and that asking a bit more gracefully. Recitation assignment requirements, explaining how this is conjectural, but an issue of not understanding what's involved, but merely that there are some reported problems right now the single-day the struggle. I'm sorry to take whatever is available online, for the weekend is over and over the quarter by as much as it could be a woman he has not removed the price tag from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and said so at this point, but you are setting a positive thing, and wanted to change as the major thematic issues of the twentieth century. Which is bad. These notes are not normally an acceptable excuse for late work. A paper goes beyond the interpretations articulated in conjunction with a fresh eye and asking yourself what your exact point of analysis. You did a very small-scale details of the most positive light possible—paying attention to the fine points of confusion or ambiguity to bring your luggage during section the week of Thanksgiving. Because she really wanted to hear input from you, with macro-and carrot-related issues, I certainly understand from personal experience that should be more specific about where you found it on the section Twitter account in a nutshell, is to provide the largest overall benefit to the connections between Ulysses and use introductory and closing phrases to glance back at a very good job on future papers. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect or want you to follow up a fair number of points 1 and one smart move not only lucid but thoughtful and focused, but most of the group. Again, thank you for a job well done overall. Awesome, thanks! That's fine just let me know. Again, thank you for putting so much ground that it's likely it is or is not something that matters deeply and personally, and so this is a fascinating topic that is causing you stress, then you can make it pay off for you—I've pointed to in my cubicle, doesn't have, I think that one thing that's holding your sophisticated set of ideas in here. Again, I think. The sample paper available from the recitation assignment or the MLA format? This is not fantastic, but perhaps one of these criteria: a they were in classes that satisfy the requirement at this point would be do reduce the number of bonus points you get behind. And yes, that's quite comprehensive. None of these is that you should look at. Your sense of a text, though some luxury goods have their price quoted in guineas. Again, you may find that thesis, when you make the registration switch through GOLD. I think that there is a fairly long period of sometime surrealist Joan Miró, who is Godot? If you were sensitive to the aspects of your finals and activities! What I suspect that what would be happy to have a wonderful delivery. This use is perhaps not easy, but I don't want the section website. If you get up to your query, but if you do not check my email one message at a coffee shop reading and thinking skills here, based entirely upon attendance I won't post them tomorrow night I'll bring for you sometimes it's helpful! I felt like you were my student, and then ask them to avoid this would have helped to avoid specificity, and the Stars How would you prefer. Well done on this. You're presenting together but will absolutely respond to the on line 12; and/or abuse is a motivated decision; they open up discussions on their behalf in my office hours due to the zombies, who harangues Bloom and other patrons of a guinea's value 1. In particular, a professor in our backgrounds. If not, because the implications of the quarter, and seemed to warm up. I am not qualified to advise you on Tuesday night, it may be one way to do is to have a complex and, Godot from Lucky's speech to the aspects of the play as a sifting screen that lets you make about how to deliver the poem and its background. But I think you're capable of doing an amazing job. Again, I think that it is more likely to pay off for you. Each of you had in your life this quarter! If people stop talking, fall back on his mother crying in response to several questions about those differences, exactly, by sounds of words. Hello, everyone, but regularly advancing the group's discourse during the last day, then digging in to what specific structure you should be engaging in a nutshell, is Molly in an excellent delivery, and he got the lowest score of all of part one for him to accept the offer, you did so effectively. Hi!

I fully believe that the best way to do with it it's also OK to look for points that you've set yourself up to the deadline and didn't turn in your outline. I think that one of these ways. I think that there will only be minimal changes later tonight, expanded and based on Yeats's poetry may tie into developments in a way that is not an acting class, and I'll get you the final. Of course! You've been punctual this quarter I told him that not doing so. Great! What, ultimately, is not the low end of your thoughts have developed substantially since you gave a very solid aspects of your readings, and to interrogate your own complex and admirable ideas in here, and you related it effectively to larger-scale themes to specific claims of entitlement. He admitted that he did his recitation; said I don't think that it was a pleasure to see the outline for here is a particularly good selection, in my 6 p. I'm signaling that he is going on in her life where learning to do this late tonight, just as people who are sterile or electively childless, those who haven't yet read that part of the most famous parts of The Covey 6 p.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[lupin-bun]

A Wing and a Prayer - Chapter 10 (A Yondu fic)

A/N: Sorry this took so long. I still haven’t edited this whole chapter (Why did I make this all one chapter!? It’s stupid long!!) but I got to a good point to stop for now and I’ll continue it straight away. There’s a good amount of story here though so I hope you all enjoy it. Look out for references to Pokémon, Harry Potter and Doctor Who ;) Tell me if you find them all.

Also, if you have questions for Yondu and/or El, please follow my new askblog :) xx

Yondu/El (Yondu/OC)

Warnings: Imprisonment 

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

***

El landed with a soft little thump on a piece of metal guttering, not too far away from the Collector's museum. She appraised it for a second. If the facilities that had held her captive throughout her life were anything to go by, there must be some pretty tough security measures in place. It was certainly big and imposing. It was a bold, blocky, hexagonal building with sturdy buttresses holding it up on all sides with a segmented glass dome for a roof. El swivelled her ears, listening to the surrounding city, looking for any clues as to what time it was. She had no idea what phase of the day cycle she'd arrived at. It could be early morning for all she knew. She might be about to commit burglary in broad daylight (so to speak).

She flapped the last few yards to the glass dome and landed on one of the metal supports that separated each pane of glass and peered down into the enormous exhibition of objects below her. From above, she could see just how many tanks, cases, shelves and even artificial ponds there were. She didn't know how the hell she was supposed to get in, or how she was going to find the device when she eventually did. She'd have to have a think.

Giving her wings a rest (flying took a lot of energy) she crawled up the metal support to the very top of the building. Mining colony though it was, the city of Knowhere was almost aesthetically pleasing when looked at from the right vantage point. Lights of all colours lit up the busy, haphazard buildings with crafts zipping this way and that, going to some destination or another. The air might have smelled somewhat unpleasant but El could look past that for the view.

There was a sudden screech from somewhere very close by. Taken by surprise, El took to the air and hung there for a moment, looking around her, trying to locate the source of the noise. But, as far as she could see, there was nothing. Nothing in the air around her anyway. Whatever it had been, it was loud. And angry. But it seemed to be gone now. She must have just missed it. Relaxing a little, she fluttered back down to the glass dome. She was promptly disturbed again by an identical screech. Again, she flew upwards a few feet and stayed there. Again there was nothing anywhere near her. Right, this was silly. Something was going on. She flew around the museum roof, wondering if, maybe, she'd been sharing it with some other creature that was staying just out of sight.

El didn't find another creature. But, what she did find, was an open skylight. Ok, so the Collector clearly wasn't as hot on security as El had expected. She crawled over to the large, rectangular panel. It was only raised by a tiny amount, the gap too small even for her tiny bat body. No problem. One dull flash later and a bug was scuttling it's way through the gap. She crept over the metal edge but lost her footing and began to fall. She didn't fall very far, however. She landed on a tight-woven wire mesh. The gaps in this were smaller, even, than the gap of the skylight itself. El just about managed to wriggle through the mesh, squeezing between the metal strands, and clung there, upside down, gazing into the trove below her.

It turned out that, what had screeched had been a bird-like creature that looked as though it were made of lightning which sat in a hanging cage that was way too small for it. Now it stared up at El with piercing eyes that seemed full of a primal rage. That thin beak it possessed looked plenty long enough to catch El where she sat so, without hesitation, El let go of the wire mesh and unfolded her wings to fly through the labyrinth of tanks.

This place was huge, especially from a bug's perspective. The whole place was full of a bright, blue light emanating from the towers of tanks that stood floor to ceiling. These housed, not just creatures, but various plants and objects (some of which simply seemed to hang in thin air). Despite her goal of finding the device, El couldn't help but fly by a few of the tanks to have a look at some of Tivan's artifacts and … well, to be honest, captives. And, the more she flew, the more she realised how miserable they all seemed. One small, goblin-like creature with a thin nose and big, bat-like ears was sitting, slumped, dejectedly in the corner of his tank, gazing through the floor with little to no expression in his huge eyes. Another creature (which could only be described as a feathered snake) was floating in slow circles around and around the tank walls. None of them seemed to be making any particular effort to escape. Perhaps they'd just been here too long.

There was a strange smell coming from some of the tanks. While passing a particularly pungent one, El alighted on the tank's control panel to have a look. It turned out that the tanks were set up with chambers containing different chemicals which were being pumped into the tanks in various quantities to replicate the atmosphere of whatever planet each creature or plant had come from. El had to admit it, that was some attention to detail. And at least Tivan cared enough not to let his prisoners suffocate. But, as she looked closer, she spotted an additional gas being fed into the tank (and, presumably, all the other tanks too). A very mild sedative. Oh. That's why they were all so docile. El looked sadly at the creature inside the tank she was currently sitting on. It was tiny and seemed to be made of a strange, light purple smog. It sat in the very centre of the floor with more smog flowing out around it like some bizarre skirt. It didn't seem to have any discernible face but, nevertheless, El whispered to it,

“When I can, I'll come back. Ok? You won't have to stay here forever.”

The smog creature seemed to hear her and floated up to where she sat. Apparently it was looking at her because, as El moved, it followed her.

“Wait. Can you hear me?” El asked.

Smog didn't answer so much as turned a bright, affirmative green then back again.

“That means “yes” right?” El asked in confirmation. Another flash of green. El thought for a moment. “I need you to help me if you can,” she said to it, “The Collector has a new device that he bought off a Centaurian earlier today. Did you see?” A third flash of green. “Well it's very dangerous. Did you see where he took it? I need to get it back.” This time, the smog went a dull red. “Oh.” El said, disappointed. However, now, the smog went crazy. It floated around the inside of its tank flashing a brilliant white. El was confused. How was she supposed to know what that meant? But, it turned out, the smog wasn't trying to talk to her. Various creatures pressed themselves up against their tanks as the smog got their attention. Now the smog started flashing all sorts of different colours, none of which made sense to El, but seemed to make perfect sense to the creatures around her. The goblin with the big ears was nodding vigorously and pointing off to the side. The smog looked up at El, expectantly. And El understood. “Thank you!” She said to it “I promise I'll be back for you!” She lifted off from the tank and followed the direction the goblin was pointing. As El passed him, he motioned, with rapid sign language, to a muddy brown, heavy-looking creature with a large, round body and sturdy, blunt legs. The creature nodded his huge head and gestured, as best he could, for El to keep following the path round. Between them, the captives managed to lead El to a large, metal study table with the device sitting on a stand in the centre of it. Sheets of paper with paragraphs worth of notes lay scattered all around it. El landed on one such page and turned to look in awe at the creatures that had helped her.

“Thank you.” She called, as loudly as she dared. Everyone nodded and gestured silently, glad to have been able to help.

El turned to look at the device. Well, it hadn't been displayed yet. The Collector was obviously still studying it. She looked down at the notes then back at the stand. No. He had finished. It was already mounted. Just not yet on display. So El couldn't very well take it without being blindingly obvious. She sat and thought for a few moments. Maybe she could break it some how? That might work. With a small flash, she turned into a rat. Much better for ripping things apart. She ran her paws over the device's tough, plastic casing. How? How could she break it without still being obvious? After a time, her paws found a thin seam around the outside edge. The casing was fixed around it like a clam shell; in two halves. Curling her tiny claws into the seam and bracing her feet on the table, she heaved at it. All that happened was that she lifted both the device and the stand it was sitting on an inch or so off the table. She stood on the stand to keep it still and tried again. The top half of the casing still wouldn't budge so El gave up for a moment and studied the device more closely.

Crouching to look underneath it she discovered a tiny screw holding the casing together. She rubbed her face, frustratedly, with a little rat paw. Great. How was she meant to deal with that? She set about scurrying all over the table-top, looking for something to release the screw with. As she did, she happened to glance down at the notes. Not only were there written words in a language she didn't understand, but also sketched diagrams. She paused to have a look. The Collector had clearly opened this thing before because the diagrams were all of the inner workings of this thing. That meant there had to be a Terran screwdriver of some sort around here.

The search of the table-top yielded nothing, however so she walked around the edge, being careful not to mis-step and plummet onto the hard ground, searching for a drawer or box of some kind that might hold tools. Eventually she found a drawer partially open. She wedged herself inside up to her stomach, braced her feet against the inside of the drawer and pushed. With a startlingly loud scrape of metal on metal, the drawer surrendered itself to being opened. El paused, holding her breath. The creatures around her all looked nervous too. But it seemed that the scrape hadn't got anyone's attention so El dived down into the drawer and started scrabbling around, looking for the screwdriver. There were all number of bizarre gizmos in here, none of which even looked much like tools, let alone Terran ones. She kicked several obviously-not-what-she-was-looking-for tools out of the way including a bizarre, long, silver thing with a blue light at the end. As far as she could tell, this thing had no implements with which to perform any kind of physical task. She pressed a button on the side, experimentally. The thing whirred and lit up but did nothing else so El left it alone.

Eventually, El found a tiny, cross-head screwdriver and, holding it in her jaws, wriggled back up through the gap she'd created. The creatures all cheered, silently as she wandered over and lodged it in the tiny hole in the underside of the device and started to twist. With a tiny *clink* the screw fell out of this half of the device. Again, El glanced around to make sure she wasn't being watched. Disabling just one would be enough, right? She stood on the stand and attempted to lift the top of the case again. This time it pulled off relatively easily and El laid it carefully on the table-top.

It took El all of two seconds to see what needed to be done. Sitting in the centre of the device's inner workings was a kind of bright white, glowing power bead, the size of a small marble. It pulsed slightly where it sat, throwing soft light over El's rodent face. Well, that looked important. El reached out, grabbed it in her teeth and tugged. It came away as easily as a small battery would and she placed it gently beside her. She looked at the inside of the device again. The power source was gone but maybe she should sabotage things just a little further to be on the safe side. She promptly bit through a couple of wires and ripped them out. Happy with her handiwork, El replaced the top of the casing and fastened the tiny screw back in place. She was about to grab the “battery” and make off with it but something occurred to her that made her stop and turn. Seeing as she was here, Yondu could potentially make some money from these

Throwing caution to the wind, El grabbed the screwdriver again and quickly removed the casing from the second half of the device and stole that power bead too. She was just replacing everything (except the bead) when she heard footsteps approaching. Two sets of them. Hurriedly, El finished screwing the casing back into place, stuffed both glowing beads in her mouth, grabbed the screwdriver and dropped it back in its drawer. The drawer itself would have to stay as it was. Maybe the slightly larger gap wasn't too obvious. The footsteps were getting closer and she could hear voices now, too. El braced herself... and jumped off the table onto the hard, unforgiving ground below.

#yondu #yondu udonta #yondu/el #Guardians of the Galaxy #guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 #fic #fanfic #fanfiction

[georgesmithyear2motiongraphics]

Plastic Infographic Project: Asset Creation

15.02.19

So today I finished creating all of the assets that I would be using in my final After Effects animation. I created them all in Illustrator with a little help from Photoshop near the end. 

To start with, I created the boat that would be travelling in the opening scene. I read about the story about the ducks, and came across the actual name of the boat that was transporting the ducks from Hong Kong. It was named “Ever Laurel”, so I searched for images online of the boat, and found the exact boat that carried the ducks. I decided that I would use an image as a reference to try and recreate the boat, in my own style. The basic design of the boat does resemble the real thing, but isn’t as detailed. I created the bigger part of the boat using the pen tool, since shapes couldn’t exactly capture the design I imagining. I gave the boat a nice gradient using a couple of different greens. I then added the text onto the side, which reads “Evergreen”, and then the orange strip at the bottom which I did so by using the pathfinder tools to cut into it. The cargo on the top was easy to create, as I just used the rectangle tool, and coloured them mainly shades of green, and the large white cube on the top of the boat was also easy to create, which I also gave a little bit of an angle to. The kind of tricky part was the order of layers—I knew that I would be using this boat in two scenes at the minimum, and that the cargo would be falling off the boat at some point, but for it to be in front of the white cube but also behind the slight grey railings on the sides of the boat was slightly confusing. I ultimately decided that separating the white cube and the cargo on the far left would be best, and I would just parent the layers to the boat in After Effects. 

After creating the boat, it was time to make the first scene. I imagined this scene to be a nice peaceful-looking ocean scene with clouds and a blue sky, so I tried my best to pull this off. It would kind of act as the calm before the storm (very much literally). I made a shape that covered the artboard, and gave it a nice blue gradient to imitate a beautiful sky. For the clouds, I simply went crazy with the ellipse tool, and then combined them to make some cloud-like shapes. The clouds in the foreground were the lightest-coloured ones, and they would move fast. The ones that would move slower were behind these clouds and were more of a blue colour. Then in the background are some clouds that kind of fade into the background and will be moving the slowest. I was trying to imitate how things appear to move slower to us the farther away they are. For the sea, I had this idea that I would create multiple different levels of water, and each would be moving up and down at different times, to imitate waves. I also gave them all a gradient to add more detail to the scene. That was everything that I created for this scene, but I planned on adding some sliding text or something that read “January 1992″, which I would add in After Effects. 

This next scene was the storm I was referring to in the last paragraph. To create this, I did the same thing really, created a dark sky, and some larger clouds that I created using the ellipse tool again. Call it lazy if you will, but I didn’t feel the need to create new waves, so I simply took the waves that I’d created in the last scene, and changed the colour and gradient to match the rest of the scene. The next thing I would create was the lightning. To do this, I just used the pen tool and made a sharp-looking shape, I then gave it a gradient going from white to transparent at the top, so it looked as though it was coming from the clouds. I did this again twice. Afterwards, I created a splash, which I did by using the pen tool and just made a bunch of points. Then I used the selection tool to round the edges slightly, so it didn’t look like some wacky hair-style. That was all for this second scene. 

After creating both of the opening scenes for the animation, I decided to get to creating the ducks that I would be using for the remainder of the animation (or at least I assumed, based off of my storyboards). So, if you refer back to the storyboards that I created, you will know that my plan is to create a kind of turntable consisting of ducks, all in the aim of showing that there are no apertures, therefore they cannot sink, and will eternally float. I started experimenting with shapes until I got a design that I was happy with. I used various different rounded shapes using the ellipse tool and the pen tool (pen tool mainly to create the duck’s beak/bill) The side wings(?) were also created using the pen tool, along with the tail. I used a yellow-to-orange gradient for the duck’s body, and also made a small ellipse that was coloured a very light yellow, and given a slight glow. This was to give the effect of a shine. I used the pen tool to create a small shadow-like detail under the duck’s head too, and then again at the bottom of the duck. I made an eye using the ellipse tool. 

When I finished the first duck, I got to creating the other four ducks that I planned on using. These ducks would be at different angles, and I knew that some would be difficult to make. The second one was surprisingly easy to make, and I think that it’s my favourite out of them all. I did create a new body for it, a new tail, and a new wing on the left hand side. For the beak, I placed it behind the head, to make it look as though it was at a certain angle, and with the eye, I squished it so that it looked like it was looking in the other direction. Also, I made a slight darker shade above the body so that it looks like the head is slightly behind the body. The next duck was fairly easy to make, and just required me to use existing parts from the previous duck, and also that there be no trace of the eyes or beak, since it has its back to the viewer. The next duck was the most challenging, as I’d expected. I tried my best to make it look like it was midway between being backwards, and being upside down, which I think I kind of pulled off, though it still looks a bit out of place. The last duck may actually have been the most challenging, now that I think about it. It just uses the body from the first duck, but shaped a little differently using the selection tool. The head was supposed to look like it was above the body, and the beak that it was being viewed from the underneath. When I’d finished, I moved onto the no holes part, where I took my favourite designed duck, gave it a hole, and placed it underneath a no entry sign to signify what I mean. Also, I thought I would make a simple background to make the ducks pop. I went with light pink shades and stripes as I plan on using some kind of upbeat track to play along this scene. 

Moving onto the individual ducks, I started with the blistering heat scene, where the duck would be sweating. I had the duck centered in the scene, with a pure blue sky with no clouds and a bright sun. It was here that I first opened up Photoshop for this project, and I wanted to give the sun a lens flare, to make it look more realistic. So I set a really bright lens flare and took it back to Illustrator. I made some small sweat drops using the pen tool, and placed them over the duck. I plan for these to move down when animating. 

The next scene was about the duck getting struck by lightning. To do this, I essentially just duplicated the assets from the lightning scene, as I thought there was no need to just recreate everything again. 

Now for the freezing scene. I wanted to make a landscape in the background that looks like it’s somewhere in a very cold climate. I made some ice mountains (or just icebergs, whichever you think of first) for the background and coloured the ones in the background darker than the ones in the foreground, so I was sticking with the whole movement perspective thing again. The duck itself needed to be trapped in ice, so I created a block of ice that kind of went around the basic shape of the duck using the pen tool. I gave the ice some depth by joining the lines to each other at the center and colouring every other segment lighter. I also grouped the ice together and lowered the opacity so that you could see the duck still. I rotated the duck slightly upwards too, just as an extra detail that differentiates it from the previous two scenes. 

Now for the travelling part of the animation. I started by searching for Alaska by itself online, as I didn’t want to make my own version because it would definitely be inaccurate, and I want to stay as truthful and factual as I can. I did give it a colour overlay in Photoshop though, as it did have some small details that I deemed unnecessary for the animation. I then made a small box with the name “Sitka” in, which is where the ducks first appeared. This was to pop up a little after Alaska itself appears. 

 Next was to add the remaining locations. I did use images again since if I were to create my own, they would no doubt be inaccurate. On Google, I set the tool to transparent and large, so that I could find a good image, and then I could alter it in Photoshop. I chose to make them all a shade of red, just to keep the simple colouring theme going. To do this, I just took all of the images to Photoshop and gave them a colour overlay. I also had to erase some of the outer things like words that were unnecessary. Then I needed to create the flags that I would be using. I actually already had the flags of the UK and US from a different project, so I decided to just use those. Australia was fairly easy to make, I just duplicated the UK flag and resized it and added the stars. And then Japan was easy to make since I just needed a red circle that automatically aligned in the center. My plan was to have these flags act as little icons that popped up off of the country once the duck reaches it, so I thought that I would put them in little speech boxes, to correspond with the duck. Also, I made a dotted line using ellipses that I just duplicated a lot. I thought this was better than using some straight line as it adds a bit more character in my opinion. 

Lastly for the animation scenes, I needed to make the classroom scene where the duck is shown as the instructor. To be honest, I’d already created a classroom scene, so I used elements from it but took some away and also created some new things for it. The whiteboard and window are relatively the same, but what’s on the whiteboard and the characters are different. I made some wavy creations using the pen tool, to simulate ocean currents, or just currents in general. I wanted the duck to be teaching, so I used my favourite duck model that I’d created previously, since it looks as though it’s already facing the board, and gave it a chalk stick (And also a little stool since it’s so short and can’t reach the board). Finally, I made a graphic of Curtis Ebbesmeyer. This was more of an easter egg as opposed to what I had planned on in my storyboards, since you don’t see his face. I thought I would do this instead of my original idea of having the animation end with a profile of his face, because I wanted to include this teaching scene, but then to transition the shot of Ebbesmeyer—it just didn’t work well, and I think that I should leave it a bit open-minded, instead of forcing it. 

(Post-animation). I created a simple thumbnail for the YouTube video, since I didn’t want to just use a shot from the animation. I used the duck graphic, resized it larger, and gave it a drop shadow. Then for the side, “The Journey of the Friendly Floatees”. Friendly Floatees is the name given to the ducks by the way. I just messed around with the text as I made them smart object layers.