#the difference between the two was supposed to be even more comical and extreme but idk how to draw that sorry

[unityrain24]

hate how all "genderfluid"/genderswap loki fanart is like this:

#had to search up “how to draw anime girl eyes” bc the original ones were not soulless enough no matter how hard i tried #i still didn't get them soulless enough #honestly i didn't do a great job portraying it i was trying to make masc loki way more “sexy muscular masculine man” but. #idk how to draw that lol #and fem loki still looks more human than they usually draw her #idk how to draw a “sexy woman pout” #the difference between the two was supposed to be even more comical and extreme but idk how to draw that sorry #maybe in the future #unityrain.txt #genderfluid loki #whyyy

[smileycarat]

idol!wonwoo x idol!reader

small instances where both of your fanbases start to notice lingering looks between the two of you until it becomes so much more

a/n: this isn’t much but i had fun writing it, lmk what you think! :)

pt 2

the first interaction is when you’re presenting an award that seventeen happens to win

as you and your co-announcer pass out awards, your fingers brush against his as you congratulate him, and he flashes a smile at you

both of your fan bases were quick to screen grab the interaction, and it very quickly became a cherished moment of more to come

it was closely followed by a different interaction where both of your groups were talking on stage, and you were moving to the side and had tripped over the length of your gown

he was quick to catch you by the elbow to steady you on your two feet

the people around you gasped and moved to make room

which left a spotlight on the two of you

it was slightly comical the way you both looked at each other before turning to the audience with shy smiles

wonwoo stood behind you the rest of the time on stage

when it came time to leave, he offered you his arm as you stepped off the stage

with a bright smile his way, you accepted and walked off together

fans nearly had a heart attack

since then, people would point out almost every interaction between the two of you

if you would be in the same room and happen to make eye contact

during a game competition, you two get paired up together, and safe to say, you demolish the rest of the teams

wonwoo is an extremely smart man, and as are you a smart person, and after the episode airs, fans make memes on how you both make a dangerous and powerful duo

you were both quick to devise a plan, hushed whispers in the few seconds you had together, his shoulders shielding you from the rest of the room from where you both stood

your mics caught your plan clearly, and fans were impressed by how in sync you both were

he worked with distracting other people, making it seem like he was the one they should look out for

however it was you who gathered information and the hidden objects you were supposed to find to complete your mission

in the end, not only were you both able to complete your mission, but you were also able to hide the other object other groups were supposed to find, making it near impossible for them to find

the prize you both won was a coupon to a nearby cafe

it was adorable the way you both cheered in excitement for the coupon, wonwoo even raising your hands clasped together in the air in celebration

you would have thought that you both couldn’t afford your own coffees with the way you both cheered

the video ended with vlog footage of you both walking to the cafe

you held the camera in your hands facing you as you both walked to the location, camera tilted up to capture wonwoo in the frame

fans were surprised to see the way that wonwoo joked with you and tugged on the end of your hair to catch your attention to point to a billboard with your group in it

he took the camera from you to capture a shot of you smiling and posing in front of the billboard

when you took the camera from him, you also made him pose in front of the billboard, which was comical since you couldn’t see much of his face due to his hat and mask, but he did make a peace sign when posing to amuse you

he opened the door for you and stood behind you in line, even crouching down slightly in order to hear your answer when he asked what you were going to order

when it was your turn to order, he walked forward to place your orders before handing the cashier the coupon you both worked hard for

wonwoo even paid for the difference despite you trying to pay, and he stepped in front of you to block your way from the pin pad

you both sat down at a small table in the corner of the cafe side by side so you could both be in frame, and you rated the coffees you had bought

you weren’t the biggest fan of your own coffee, stating that it was slightly too bitter, and he was quick to switch out your straws and give you his cup

the video ended with you both waving goodbye, and safe to say, the video was trending for a week

when you posted a selfie together after the episode aired, it quickly became your most liked image on instagram

wonwoo also posted a different picture of you together standing back to back with your arms crossed

he captioned it “partner in crime”

you commented “dream team”

other svt members would comment under your posts demanding a rematch and wondering how they won

wonwoo would comment the shrugging emoji in response 🤷🏻‍♂️

you once post a picture if you out in the city

a few days later wonwoo posts a picture taken of him holding a camera, and fans were quick to notice the similar locations you were both in

when at other music events, there was footage of you waving to him from your seats with your group, and him shyly waving back

later when he walks with the rest of svt on the red carpet, fans notice him wearing a ring with the top facing in, and it’s not until he waves that people capture your initial on it

on your birthday when you post a clip of someone recording you with a cake while people sing happy birthday, fans swear they can hear wonwoo’s voice singing amongst the rest

one day you post the cutest kitten on your instagram page, showing your fans how you recently adopted a cat

a few months later, wonwoo posts a selfie of the same colored cat, only slightly bigger, sitting on top of an open book (presumably the one he was reading)

fans once spot you both visiting a bookstore and they just about died when they saw you walk out with the same book

at times, sometimes wonwoo is spotted exiting your company building while other times you are exiting his

fans are waiting for the collab tbh

you are both extremely private people, and any interactions you have together publicly has fans eating it UP

rumors of your potential relationship are all anyone talks about leading up to major events where both your groups will be attending

wonwoo surprisingly is the one to confirm the rumors two years later when he posts a mirror selfie of the two of you on your birthday with a simple cake emoji

the internet broke

#seventeen #embabbles #delulu thoughts #seventeen headcanons #seventeen x reader #seventeen fluff #seventeen imagines #seventeen x you #wonwoo #wonwoo x reader #wonwoo x you #wonwoo x y/n #wonwoo x idol!reader #idol!au #idol!reader #jeon wonwoo #jeon wonu #seventeen wonwoo #svt wonwoo #svt wonu #svt wonwoo x reader #seventeen wonwoo x reader #seventeen drabbles #seventeen fanfic #seventeen kpop #seventeen jeon wonwoo

[shigayokagayama]

The Beach Omake And Authorial Intent

initially i was going to save this for a big teru analysis i had cooking however i eventually ended up deciding that it would feel like a really long tangent in its original context and probably deserves a separate post.

when it comes to the whole "teru's parents" thing i generally see two competing ideas on it

a. terus absent parents are the real villains of mob psycho and are the direct cause of everything wrong with his life and any and all teru analysis must center around this fact

b. terus parents being absent in the first place is only revealed in an omake and only exists for plot convenience and is not something that should be focused on at all when writing him

and whenever i see either of these my mind always drifts to the question of authorial intent. i know how people are reading this information, but how are we supposed to? i know death of the author is becoming more of a common thing in fandom spaces (albeit usually misused) but i feel like a better understanding of why this omake exists and how we're supposed to read it might help to better synthesize two takes that seems to be completely at odds with each other.

okay first i want to go over the actual placement of the beach omake in the update schedule of the manga because, unlike most other omakes, i feel like this ones placement in the schedule of page releases is actually super relevant

the vast majority of omakes come at the end of weekly updates. you finish reading the usually 15-20 pages ONE put out and then you get a little bonus comic at the end, usually something funny or a slice of life but but occasionally more serious. multi part omakes are usually spread out over multiple updates, making you wait a couple weeks for a punchline.

beach omake is not that. between chapters 99 (mob gets hit by a car) and 100 (the whole rest of the omake) there was a 6 week hiatus from normal pages and in this hiatus is where we get beach omake. reading it all together immediately cuts away the sort of "slice of life sunday paper comic" tone other multi part omakes have and make you read it as a part of the actual main story, since that's how you're used to reading these weekly updates.

now the actual tone. generally the multi part omakes exist to be long punchlines and the rare emotional ones are a single page for maximum impact. beach omake has a very different structure compared to, say, the haunted doll omake or the pot of happiness.

off the bat from the first two pages there's not really a joke. the tone mostly seems kind of melancholic. mobs expression for the middle section of the second page (maybe purposely) is obscured by the panel breaking off, it's hard to tell his reaction, all our attention is directed at teru. with all of the panels taken up by dialogue (primarily his own), we're being asked to focus on what he's saying:

-teru lives alone

-he lives alone because his parents live overseas

-he hasnt seen them in a while

-he doesnt like having nothing to do

-he doesnt like being alone

all of this information is delivered with an extremely casual expression from him, implying that it's not something that seems ll the out of the ordinary for him. mob, on the other hand...

the hesitation before he says anything and the way his expression is obscured seems to imply something is... off... about this information to him. this isn't a handwaved "oh mob is walking home from school after passing out because he needs to for plot reasons", we're reacting to this information like it's weird.

the next two pages are, mostly, a lot more of what we expect out of a mob psycho omake. the first one works as a standalone joke page, teru is bad at identifying animals which leads to him showing reigen a roach, something reigen is terrified of, instead of a beetle.

the second page starts similarly, we get a dumbass joke about reigen trying to pick up women at the beach (note: i think this is the singular time we get an indication reigen is even into women) but then the next two panels take on a more melancholic tone again. we get a small panel of mob and ritsu playing on the beach and a much, much larger panel of teru sitting on the beach, watching them. the dialogue bubble forces us to pay attention to the fact that he is silent.

the ending of this omake is where we bring it home. generally the last panel centers the punchline of the page, or of the whole omake, but the final panel of this isn't really what was being built to in this case.

we start our second page on teru. his expression is obscured, reigens speech bubble is shoved to the side so we can see that teru's hat is being held in his hands.

when we see his face in full view he looks... confused. he looks like he doesn't know how to react to someone going through all this trouble for him. teru is a character who, up to this moment, we have seen as extremely independent. he always rushes into things alone, he always has to be the hero, he always has to be the one to save the day. hell, this omake is immediately followed by the confession arc. where... you know.

so what are we supposed to get out of this omake?

teru's been doing everything on his own up to this point

but he doesn't have to anymore

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #teruki hanazawa #pic #edit: even though the hair makes this difficult to date timeline wise #i like to picture this as post confession arc #i feel like it makes the most sense

[ashe-studies]

another issue i have with sonic prime - shadow the hedgehog. ( very long )

.

just gonna say this upfront - do not interact if you are a prime shadow fan and just want to insult or start an argument // debate with me in the comments.

.

ever since his debut in the show, shadow in sonic prime has been frequently called 'the best he's been written in years', well loved by a large majority of the prime fandom.

because of this popularity, i was under the belief that shadow was going to be more like how he's written in sa2, satbk, or sonic 06. i've since learned that many shadow fans ( that i've seen ) just like shadow on screen

which isn't necessarily a problem, but i think it's safe to say the sonic fandom has always been a mixed bag when it comes to critiques of the games and their contents ( ever since sa1, or even before that, to sonic frontiers, but i can't comment on the comics, as i've never read them ).

so, in hindsight, i should've proceeded with caution and not take popular opinion into high account.

anyway, i'll get to the point. shadow in sonic prime is one of the worst characterizations of shadow i've seen. i think the only one worse is shadow from the sonic boom universe.

shadow is quite frustrating in this show for a few reasons:

he loses the chaos emerald within five minutes of obtaining it, like an absolute idiot.

he antagonizes sonic every chance he gets and seems to believe the only way to resolve an issue is through violence or aggression. like, yes, of course, shadow, i totally wanna listen to you after you punched me in the face so hard that i literally suffered amnesia.

does next to nothing in the entire show ( up until, like, s3? ), but acts like he's needed.

insults sonic's friends for no reason ( originals and alters alike ).

somehow thought the tech was the only reason sonic could pass through the gateways when he literally saw sonic pass into new yolk before he got the tech. it'd be one thing if he knew sonic could pass regardless and figured the tech would help himself pass through, but he just ignored or forgot what he saw, i guess??? and this is never brought up again.

real question, what does sonic need him for again? even if shadow was never there, sonic would eventually come up with the plan on his own. it's not rocket science.

keeps insisting the alters aren't real people ( this is a problem of the show in general, esp where they go back and forth with sonic in particular, but it's extremely aggravating with shadow as, even if he was right, he's basically saying that sonic shouldn't care about the people that look like his friends, even if they're copies ).

last but not least, HE KEEPS BRINGING UP THAT HE'S THE ULTIMATE LIFEFORM, WHO FUCKING CARES, GET A LIFE-

( should i also mention how misleading it was for it to seem like shadow was concerned and trying to warn sonic about the shatteverse, only to immediately go on the assault when the two meet up? what the fuck? )

after i got my hopes up by the reviews and all the love for this show, this was just sad and annoying to watch. how many times is it gonna take for sega and any writers associated with them to get it?

shadow is not an overtly aggressive, hot-headed, domineering person. that was never what shadow was or was supposed to be.

shadow is a kind, loving person. yes, you might not see it from pretty much every canon media of him aside from a few select games, but that's who he was meant to be.

of course, in sa2, he did nearly destroy the world. the difference between that shadow and prime shadow is that, in sa2, he did it out of the love he had for maria and because his memories were affected, making him misremember what maria really wanted.

in his debut game, shadow is meant to be something akin to a guardian angel. the 'ultimate lifeform' meant wish fulfillment, immortality, healing. and to have shadow believe that sonic is the true ultimate lifeform instead speaks volumes of who he is and how he's changed in a considerably short amount of time.

in prime, shadow isn't any of these things. sure, he protects sonic every now and then, but for a while, i didn't even know if it was because he actually cared about sonic or if it was because it was necessary to get back home. the 'ultimate lifeform' doesn't mean anything to him or to this show. it's just to wave his big dick energy around. it shows he doesn't actually see anyone, let alone sonic, as his equal.

yes, shadow is standoffish, but it's not like he's ever been out of touch with emotions or relationships. i don't believe that it was because of maria's death that shadow had essentially 'shut down', but rather because he wanted to grant her wish as soon as possible. and even then, he saved rouge's life. while the game could've led us to believe it was because she had the chaos emeralds, they showed us that he just couldn't let her die if he could prevent it by showing that he couldn't save maria way back then.

this is what a lot of the games, and frankly, most of sonic media in general, seem to have entirely forgotten about shadow.

even as a child, it wasn't difficult for me to understand that shadow did care. that he does care. in fact, that's pretty much what drives him throughout his entire debut game, that he cares so much for maria, so much for her wish, and, eventually, so much for humanity.

i think the closest we've ever been to getting a characterization just like shadow in sa2 is in sonic 06. say what you will about the game, i personally like it ( i acknowledge it has a lot of flaws, but let me be ).

in sonic 06, shadow doesn't have any hostility with sonic. in fact, sonic gives a silent thanks to him for saving him from silver. and shadow proves that you don't have to tell your friends you love them in order for them to know, 'cause he loves rouge and omega in this game. he deeply cares about them and is noticeably disheartened when he discovers what becomes of omega in the future.

shadow doesn't become persuaded by mephiles' tactics to turn against humanity, even when he gives plausible ( but not 100% ) evidence that it is likely authorities would blame shadow for the downfall of humanity, due to his power. in fact, the only thing about any of that information that brings shadow pause is the fact omega would have been the one to arrest him in said future.

and to mephiles' face, he accepts the possibility humanity will turn on him head-on and tells him that he will choose his own fate, that he will fight like he always has, that he decides how his story ends.

i find it hilariously sad that the few games that gets shadow is a game largely hated by a majority of the sonic fandom ( this included me at some point, i'll admit ). i think i'm seeing a turnaround though, especially with P-06 in the works, so that's some good news.

but back to my main point, there's a reason why sa2 and s06 shadow work much better than prime shadow. because shadow honestly, truly, completely cares.

he saves rouge from prison island.

he works alongside sonic without a second thought.

he saves humanity from his own wrong-doings.

he acknowledges sonic's power.

he saves rouge from eggman.

he is upset about omega's possible future circumstances.

he protects sonic from silver.

he is aware of how much rouge cares for him.

he helps in bringing sonic back to life.

and he does all of these with little to no complaint, no sarcastic remarks, almost no attempt to hide his true feelings under a mask, none of that. shadow is completely true to himself. shadow doesn't only care about others, he cares enough about himself to know who and what he truly is and everything he's capable of.

like, goddamnit, shadow isn't my #1 favorite sonic character, but he's SO close in these specific games.

this is why prime shadow feels so hollow and dry in comparison. he's just devoid of almost everything that made shadow... well, shadow. and it's been like this for years!

i'm not sure why people are saying this is the 'best he's been written in years' when, for a long while, he was no different from a majority of his characterizations.

but, hey, he's better in s3, right?

well, yes, but we don't know why he's like that.

in s2, he had balls of steel for treating and talking to sonic the way he did, but now he's...

kinder? protective? actually listening? ( sort of, dude's still kinda stubborn )

what the hell happened???

did his sympathy finally kick in? did he get hit by a coconut and had amnesia for a while? was he one of infinite's copies ( honestly, i would've bought that )?

seriously, what happened?

yeah, obviously, s3 shadow still has flaws, but i think if they were established in s1 or s2 and slowly developed over the course of the show, he would've actually been a really good character.

not that the shadow i know would call the alters 'not real' anyway, but, y'know, for the prime universe and all that.

anyway, overall, i think shadow in sonic prime is one of the worst versions of shadow to date. in their efforts to make him cool ( i guess? ), they made him devoid of a lot of emotion and connection with the rest of the cast, but especially sonic.

completely pushing shipping aside, shadow and sonic do not have a healthy relationship in this show. i'm not going to ignore that sonic definitely has flaws in his writing, but the relationship is unhealthy from sonic's passiveness and shadow's aggressiveness.

due to this, i only like specific moments of prime sonadow, and all of them are in s3. which is saying something.

if it were me, i would've written shadow more true to the original, with my own minor creative liberties here and there, in terms of his personality.

with sonic, i would've made it so he's definitely more on the line of friendly allies with him, but not quite friends yet. throughout the show, their bond would've become stronger and stronger, with a lot of queer undertones ( c'mon, i'm gay and i like these little freaks, leave me be ) and mayhaps a romantically undertone ending, if i didn't wanna be bold about it? maybe? i'm as transparent as glass.

i absolutely would've included omega into the cast and make his relationships with omega and rouge very important to shadow and his character, 'cause HOW DARE YOU TAKE THAT AWAY?!

generally speaking, there's just a lot i would've changed about shadow if i was in charge of writing sonic prime, but alas...

i can only write fanfiction.

and yes, i'm absolutely serious.

thank you for reading this long, ridiculous rant with me about a popular character that is guaranteed to get me some flack in one way or another.

lemme know if you'd have done anything different with shadow's character in the prime universe, or if you have any questions!

#sonic prime #prime sonic #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic prime shadow #prime shadow #shadow the hedgehog #sonic prime analysis #i guess

[pinkandpurple360]

Trash Anon here:

I kind of feel bad for Stella's voice actor because how she describes Stella long before season 2 was announced that Stella had her own baggage and being a complex character in her own right only for that not to happen. Though this made me think of something:

Was Stella originally supposed to be completely different from the one we have now? Was there an outline for season 2 that was planned before Viv threw it away because it didn't fit her 'idea' of the show going forward and the reason Brandon stepped back from writing due to knowing that his idea of the show was pushed aside for this Wattpad fanfiction bullshit.

I'm only pounding none of this could not be true but now I wish we lived in a world where Brandon was the show runner and not Viv.

Absolutely, she rewrote season two, and probably the rest of the entire story, for her newfound otp. And the best she can do to sell it as romance is to have them abuse each other comedically and reference the stolitz non canon Instagrams via the horse hoody and blitzo saying “he comments on my photos”

They don’t deserve Georgie Leahy she’s just a doll. I guarantee whatever character they had planned before Viv came up with the stolas show was great. She’s an extremely talented LA showgirl, a VA, comedian, not to mention sweetheart to all the Stella fans. Only for her character to be reduced to the hate sink of the entire fandom. And you know how some stans go so far that they can’t separate a VA from a character, she’s probably received at least one nasty comment or message towards her, which makes me so sad for her. Little known fact that she and Brandon have done countless comic skits together and are friends. So…that’s weird. And it’s making me really excited for a Stella and Blitzo interaction. Ironically, the two characters are very similar.

It was around when Viv claims Brandon “handed (her) the reins” that the shows writing went from dark comedy with an occasional sad moment, to absolute utter “stolas is an uwu baby victim who is always correct and right and perfect” crap. And she started projecting onto him heavily, even though she really doesn’t seem like him.

They had to retcon everything, practically every single character, to make way for Stolas’ sob story. Stella is cardboard, Octavia is just impulsive and needs to cut her dad slack, fizz and Loona shill stolas constantly, Moxxie oh god Moxxie completely serves and revered stolas, and acts as his obedient minion always saying “yes your highness, of course your highness” Millie is there too I guess.

It’s clear as day, in LooLoo Land we have a heartbroken enraged woman. Her feelings aren’t invalidated, Stolas is too callous and spineless to even apologise properly, which is his flaw, and Octavia is more on her mothers side than his. As anyone would be.

In Stolas’ apology, he tried to say that he hasn’t been honest, that they weren’t in love, that she has always been (some type of quality that he doesn’t like). And it was always a two sided bickering between two people who aren’t afraid of each other, and didn’t always hate each other. Outside of the balcony scene in s2e1 this dynamic is the same. Only every word stolas says is taken as gospel.

Now he says “I’d be sorry if I’d hurt you but we both know I didn’t do that” which is gaslighting plain as day. When she hires an assassin, she says she wants the “cheating prick” dead. And in Western Energy it’s proven that this was an act of blind rage. She wasn’t thinking about the imp, or the money, only the betrayal and embarrassment. But having her throw a silly party (big fucking deal) and trying to slap him (bad thing she did, but isn’t it funny how stolas almost being slapped is awful with a full orchestral soundtrack, but moxxie and Millie almost dying trying to cover stolas’ ass is no biggie?) and stolas violating women, abusing and murdering imps, isn’t his fault. They brought it on themselves right?

#helluva boss #Stella

[syn0vial]

Apologies for the long take/response/reblog thing from your JF post. But I'd like to hear more about your thoughts about the Fett dynamic ♥

no problem at all! lord knows i'm a rambler, too, haha.

as for the dynamic between jango and boba, my personal interpretation is that jango felt pulled between two ways of relating to boba, his clone: one, as a son, and two, as a carefully-crafted extension of his own self and legacy. we get stories and scenes where he is simply a doting, loving father—when he first receives boba as an infant from the kaminoans in the republic commando novels, for example, or in the dark horse comics where we see him making time to play with boba before a mission. and we get stories and scenes where he treats boba much more callously, like when he forces boba to fight a monster alone in the blood ties comic or gives boba posthumous orders to seek out people he knows will be a danger to him in the junior novels.

now, if i'm being honest, i think that oftentimes, the actual, "doylist" reason for this is that different expanded universe writers had different ideas about jango''s moral alignment and personality and this shines through in how they write about jango treating boba. at others, however, i think this ambiguity is very much intentional. in these moments, i think we're supposed to see jango as someone who requested a clone of himself for his own, fairly selfish reasons but who, maybe unexpectedly, ended up loving that clone as a son as well. but rather than the latter overriding the former, jango tries to have it both ways and it makes for a pretty unhinged upbringing for poor boba.

some moments in particular that come to mind when contemplating this dynamic:

in open seasons, jango explicitly denies to dooku that he intends to raise his unaltered clone as a son and instead refers to him as an apprentice and a means to continue jaster's legacy. while one could assume he's lying, it's curious that when taun we tells an adult boba about his father's words, boba feels hurt by them. that implies to me that there is at least some truth to them, because if it was ridiculous or beyond belief, why would boba entertain the notion enough for it to hurt? for this reason, i think jango really did mean it when he told dooku his intentions—even if his feelings evolved once said clone was actually a reality.

(my personal headcanon is that he was forced to reconsider the second he actually held a baby boba in his arms. we see a moment in republic commando where he's holding boba and he's very clearly totally bowled over by love for the kid)

in the posthumous recording jango makes for boba in the junior novels, jango tells boba that he loves him. he also tells boba that he was "more than a parent to you" and goes on to give him orders for who to find next—people who jango knows to be dangerous individuals who will force boba to become more self-sufficient and mistrustful to survive or die trying. i think it's interesting that jango calls himself "more than a parent" in this context bc it calls into question how jango himself sees his relationship with boba. like, what else are you then, jango?

in the attack of the clones novelization, we do get some thoughts from jango's POV about this question and they're interesting, to say the least. here, jango reflects that raising boba is an opportunity to see "all that he [himself] might have become" if circumstances had been different—if there had been someone in his life "to force him to perfection." here, i think we get some insight into the "more than a parent" remark. boba is jango's son, yes, but in jango's eyes, he's also jango himself—a version of him that jango can mold to be without his flaws and setbacks, a version of him he can perfect. in this way, jango is indeed more than boba's father—he is that person who can "force [boba] to perfection," as he says, and the prototype whom boba must surpass.

(extremely ironic then that, as an adult, boba is quite astutely accused of constantly self-sabotaging because he's afraid of ever surpassing his father. in enlarging his own importance in boba's life, jango actually prevents boba from fulfilling the purpose he was created for: being a perfected version of jango)

as for how this affected how he treated boba, i think this excerpt from the same novelization sums it up pretty well: "With Boba, there was pride and there was love, and Jango had to work constantly to keep both of those potential weaknesses at a minimum. While he loved his son dearly-because he loved his son dearly-Jango had been teaching him those same attributes of dispassion, even callousness, from his earliest days." this ties into what i was saying in my earlier post: though jango's actions towards his son may at times seem unloving or even callous to the reader, in jango's mind, even those actions are acts of love.

as for how it affected boba's view of jango, i think boba's reflections on his father in legacy of the force offer a pretty believable picture of how this kind of treatment would affect the child's psyche as an adult: boba loves his father and cherishes his memory, but also very much fears it as well. he conceptualizes his dead father as constantly watching him, judging him—and finding him wanting.

tl;dr: jango loves boba but he also has a destiny in mind for him and while a more good-aligned, well-adjusted character might have ultimately decided that the love is more important, jango pretty much just grit his teeth, dug his heels in, and went, "i can do both."

#jango fett #boba fett #fett feels #told ya i was a rambler :`D

[adarkrainbow]

The Tale of Tales movie analysis (2)

Let us begin with the story of "The Flayed Old Lady" - here depicted as the saddest and most tragic of all the three tales. To analyze each of the stories, I will compare the original fairytale by Basile with what the movie did.

A first difference lies in the character of the two old ladies. In the story they aren't just old - they are also very, very ugly (bearded and hairy hunchbacks with crooked limbs and yellowish skin), and also extreme complainers and basically Karens of their time. They notably keep accusing everything of hurting them for no particular reason - if they receive a flower on the head, they claim it broke their skull ; if someone touches their arm with a paper suddenly their shoulder is dislocated ; even dust is supposed to give them bruises. And so they hide shut away in their house, out of both refusal to interact with anything AND to hide their horrible ugliness. But in the movie? In the movie they are just ordinary old women. Old, worn out sisters living in the poor area under the king's castle, exhausted and deformed by a life of labor, misery and loneliness, but who otherwise are not particularly monstrous, wicked or flawed people and just wish to live their life without anyone bothering them. (At least that's how they start - the older sister's vices poke their head later, once the king enters the stage). By already making the old ladies into regular elderlies with a sad life, instead of the grotesque caricatures of the tale, the movie clearly sets the tone. It won't be a farce about sex and old people - it will be an emotional and human tragedy.

Speaking of the king, we have here the second main difference. In the movie, the king is one of the worst slimeballs you can ever imagine. His first scenes make it VERY clear what kind of character we have: he is a lustful king obsessed with women, who keeps organizing huge orgies at his castles, and is so depraved he even has sex with women while at a ROYAL FUNERAL. In fact, whereas the old ladies are supposed to depict the obsession with youth, the king is here reimagined as the pure image of sex obsession - or even sex addiction given how extensive and extreme his behavior is. But here is the thing: the king is clearly worn-out and tired by his own depravation. The orgy scene is very revealing - all the girls there are sleeping, everybody is exhausted, and the half-drunk king can just walk between the naked but lifeless bodies, grunting in annoyance, kicking them with his boots, not finding anything pleasant anymore... He has done all the girls he could find - to put it in a vulgar way - and now he reached the end of the horizon, he explored all the continents and can't find anything to satisfy him anymore. This is why he quickly grows this new obsession for the mysterious "maiden in the small house" - she is this mysterious unknown, this virginal purity, a last island to explore for this old traveller of the flesh who saw everything and is now bored with all.

And this is a departure from the original story. The king of Basile is just as obsessed - and he clearly is obsessed in a lustful way, as Basile evokes through poetic periphrases and comical allusions (he is "burning" in the lower part of his body, and "tight like a rope" while waiting for the promised maiden) - but his behavior is not one of a depraved, lustful orgy-man, but rather a caricature of the intense, poetic lovers typical of medieval and Renaissance romances. The reason he convinces himself that the old ladies are pure and lovely maidens is because of all those complainings I described above - he has this sort of ideal, Princess-and-the-Pea idea that only a delicate flesh, a noble person, and a precious beauty, could be harmed by such small things, and this is how he imagines in his head a superb maiden that does not exist - and the fact of not seeing the object of his love makes him even more extravagantly romantic and extremely imaginative. Basile story is more in the lines of "Don't get head over hell and don't lust for something you cannot see and only imagined" ; while the movie is more about "Reign in your lust and stop trying to have sex with everything".

In Basile's story, it is the two women that purposefully and actively decide to trick the king, because they are shrewd, cunning, deceiving old women - if it wasn't clear already, they are basically the ultimate caricature of the "wicked old woman", ugly in spirit and body. They clearly see that a king is in the position of a beggar, and decide to use their newfound power as much as they can. As a result, when the old lady gets throw out of the window, it is more of a "justified" punishment for her ambition, greed and active deception ; and when she tells the king "You summoned me here!", it should sound more comical than anything, especially since she drowns this argument with all sorts of proverbs like "Old meat makes better soup". But in the movie, the old ladies are forced into deception by both the king's forcefulness and one of the sisters' ambition. The element of a beautiful and precious necklace offered to the old ladies, and one of the sisters' refusal to give it back, forces the two women into deceive the king - or rather encourages the older sisters to create frenetically this plan to pretend to be a young maiden, especially out of fright of what the king might do to them. We are here presented with two women trying to survive the dangerous whims and possibly deadly lust of a king, but also a poor and worn-out woman who sees a chance, as small and impossible as it is, to get more riches than she ever had in her entire life. And this makes the "You summoned me here!" line very different - it is a victim trying to explain the situation she was forced into, trying to defend herself as the king suffers the consequences of his own madness ; and unlike her literary counterpart, that kicks and bites those that try to take her away, the old lady can only wail and cry as she is helplessly tossed out of the window...

But it is her obsession with escaping her misery that will make the older sister grow into the "bad" sisters or "wicked" sister - once she gets her wish of becoming a young, beautiful and wealthy queen, while she still thinks and care for her sister, she also tries to hide her and get away from her, ashamed of her own past, fearful of what the superficial king would do if he discovered her true self, growing more and more selfish, and ultimately causing the demise of her sister. The older sister's selfish detachment from reality manifests when she sends her sister a dress to come to the wedding - not realizing that no matter how glorious the dress, her sister won't know how to put it on and won't look good in it. The younger sisters, meanwhile, is also obsessed - but by her own sisters. Despite being an old woman, she is still a childish soul, who clearly doesn't know how body or reality works, who is used to obey or be bossed around by her older sister, and more importantly who cannot stand living alone without the only other person she loves in the world. This makes her ultimate fate a tearful tragedy, as she sacrifices herself to try to reunite with her sister... Only to die.

This is a complete reversal of the original story, where the flayed sister was actually the worst of the two, since the story made it clear that she was being gnawed at by envy and jealousy upon seeing her rejuvenated sister, so much so that she could not find peace and could not appreciate anything as long as she didn't know how to regain her own youth and obtain a somptuous beauty. In fact, unlike in the movie where the sister cries and screams as she is flayed alive, in the story she stays absolutely still and doesn't make a sound because, as she explains to the barber "One must suffer to be beautiful", making her an absolute embodiment of the vice of vanity.

The obsession of a lustful king leading him to have sex with an old woman believing it is a maiden... The obsession of a poor woman to get out of a misery to the point of destroying her sister... The obsession of a childish woman to stay with her older sister, at all costs...

But what about the magic in this story? you might ask. Indeed the story takes a very literal and realistic approach to the story. For example, instead of the old lady pulling her skin tight in her back, here she uses a hot glue to try to tighten up her skin ; and instead of hanging by her hair on a tree, she rather gets tangled in the bed's cover. The only exception to realism is when the younger sisters gets flayed - instead of dying halfway through like in the original story (bringing a realistic ending to a grotesque and extravagant tale), here she stays alive long enough to return to the castle - bringing a horrifying unrealistic note to a mostly realistic tale.

But there's the fairy. Or the witch. In the original story, the first old lady is turned into a beautiful maiden by seven fairies who happen to be passing by and laugh at the sight of the naked, old, ugly creature hanging in the tree - and since these fairies had never laughed in their life, they reward the old lady with various gifts (including youth, beauty, wealth, to be loved, etc). In the movie, the seven fairies are reduced to a more sinister and "realistic" character - a witch, who happened to walk in the woods, and also laughed at the old woman in the tree, but comforted and healed her. And did so by breast-feeding the old woman to turn her into a young girl. This act, symbolic, surreal, disturbing, highlights the topic of age that is so prevalent in this story. The old woman is returned to youth when an elderly witch acts as her mother and treats her as a baby - when it is later her own elderly sister that acts like a child, and looks up at her sister as if she was her own mother. The change in the scenes also serve the "raw" and "realistic" aesthetic of the movie - the old lady doesn't have beautiful clothes appearing on her like in the book, nor does the tree she is in turns into a throne, and it isn't just done by some random unseen magic. No - the old lady was naked, and stayed naked in her young, and the magic is performed by a visceral, physical act using bodily fluids to change the flesh. This also serves to keep the idea that this is a story of lust and not of love - because in the book, the fairies gift the old lady with "being loved", supposedly causing the love of the prince for the beautiful princess he sees in the woods. But in the movie, the king simply sees a naked beauty in the woods, and immediately falls to his knees - because he only thinks of bodies, of flesh, of superficial beauty, and this is enough to win him.

This same lack of love is what poisons the relationship between the two sisters - the older sister doesn't love her sister, or doesn't love her enough, while the younger sister over-loves her sister. This clear unbalance is what leads to their destruction - and ultimately, the older sister choosing superficial lust over true sisterly love is punished. Indeed, at the end of the movie, a segment completely invented is added: the new queen discovers that her youth is fading away alarmly fast, and is forced to flee her king, flee the castle into the desert to hide her true age and true appearance returning. A sequence illustrating how useless the fight against time is, how vain any battle against old age can be, and how the quest for eternal youth is ultimately doomed to fail. Even if you return to youth... it will only be for a brief time, before the natural world sets in again. In fact, it is a rule that the "Enchanted Doe" explicitely presents: in this world, magic is a question of balance, and all spells must ask for a counterpart and a sacrifice. When one receives a gift out of pure kindness like the old lady received from the witch, this blessing will never last...

The Enchanted Doe and The Flayed Old Lady segments are also tied by their two supernatural beings, the Witch and the Necromancer, who are given a cohesive appearance to clearly show that they belonged to the same kind of magic-users, and thus form another part of shared "worldbuilding" between the tales. Both the Witch an the Necromancer are skinny and elderly figures dressed in black clothes with a hood, and who randomly arrive in a character's life before leaving just as suddenly - and both ambiguously human. After all, the Witch is a forest-dweller who can still lactate despite her advanced age and whose milk restores human to their youth... But on a more meta-cinematographic note, the Witch can still be a "fairy" just like in the original tale... But a darker and more witchy fairy. I say that because the actress chosen to play the witch is not random actress: this is Kathryn Hunter, a very famous Shakespearian actress that had made herself known with a great performance of King Lear (I heard she was the first woman to actually play Lear on stage?), and whose most famous Shakespearian role by the time the movie was released... Was Puck of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", that she played in 2013.

To choose an actress still famed for playing the fae jester of the Fairy King, in order to play a character supposed to replace seven fairies is no coincidence, and it serves to remind even further the audience of the fact that, in Basile's original story, this supernatural character is a fairy - but in the "realistic wonder" approach of the movie, they decided to not make her a full fairy and not call her a "fairy", but rather keep the character as a mysterious, human-looking woman of the woods, a "witch". Here lies the ambiguity - is she a witch as in a woman with magical powers ; or as a witch like those inhuman hags of myth and fae-crones? We do not know, but the one thing we do know for sure is that the witch is the "third" of the old women of the tales, and forms a strange echo with the two protagonists. She is a powerful elder dweller of the woods - opposing the helpless city-dwelling victims. She acts like a mother to the old lady and treats her like a baby, the same way the older sisters bosses around her younger sister ; and she rejuvenates her, turning her old body into a young one, in a dark mirror of what the older sister is implied to have done to her own sister, turning her mind into the one of a child by dominating her life so much. And the parallel is even more disturbing when you consider that the witch gave true youth by an improbable mean to the older sister... While the older sister sent her younger sister to her death by giving her a false improbable mean to rejuvenate. Both these powerful women saw an old lady in distress, but whereas the supernatural woman truly helped the one she saw, the queen, only powerful in riches and social power, could only ignore her sister's pleas for help or give her massively bad advices.

Ultimately, this entire sequence is a tragedy of misunderstanding. The king misunderstood who the woman singing under his castle was, and fooled himself into imagining a beautiful princess - and so superficial is he, for him all old women are the same, confusing the younger sister for the older. The older sister, rejuvenated, did not understood the plight and distress of her younger sister, the same way she did not care to understand what had truly happened to her in the forest. And the younger sister did not understand her older sister's anger an sarcasm, resulting in her death... Only the witch seems to have truly understood the situation she was offered - taking care of the hurt old woman and giving her what she needed to escape the fury of the king. But even then, did she truly understood it? Or did she acted out of mysterious, fae reasons? We will never know...

Fun fact: Kathryn Hunter later went on to play the Three Witches or Weird Sisters in a Macbeth movie, adding to her role as a witch in this movie.

#tale of tales #basile #pentamerone #the flayed old lady #movie analysis #fairytale movie #dark fairytale

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT:

The new episode had to be the most rushed, underwhelming, predictable and overall worst fight ever. I’m sorry I just cannot take that episode seriously to save my life, it doesn’t even feel part of the storyline it feels so random and weird that it doesn’t even feel like… Real?

My first annoyance with this episode is that.. The fucking fight was absolute dog water, there was barely any sort of real power from both of them showing during it. Persephone was just whooshing around mud?? Like that’s going to defeat motherfucking KRONOS the god who literally had the world crumbling and started a damn war for years! The god who scarred the 6 traitors and traumatized them and left scars for years, even giving many of them nightmares. The man everyone was worried about, was defeated by a boring ass super sized Persephone. I am just so extremely disappointed with this whole fight, I mean honestly how fucking long was that fight advertised in the comic? It was supposed to be some world altering threat and that’s all we fucking got are you serious. I’m sorry but I just cannot accept that that’s how the Kronos plot story ended.

About Kronos, I wanted him to be a lot more scarier or at least intimidating I’m so sick of every single God just absolutely fawning over Persephone, I’d much rather him treat Persephone like she was just a power source (like she’s meant to be) than to be a replacement Rhea for him to be with and rule the world together. It was so completely unnecessary and honestly really cringe about the way that Kronos randomly drooled over her that was so annoying I genuinely wanted him to have like… A god complex. (Get it) Overall I feel like his potential and his character got ruined because he was talked up to be some very scary and powerful being yet got destroyed by Persephone who still cannot control her damn powers or it doesn’t seem like she can since she can’t use them for jack shit unless it’s to make vines.

Something else that bothered me about this “fight” is the comic trying so hard to make Persephone so “unbothered” and “badass” genuinely it was so hard to read to be honest. Like something about it ticked me the fuck off, it just did not give what it was supposed to give and it sent chills down my spine in a horrendous way. It was just terrible honestly.

Another thing that bothered me was Persephone herself, like I said before there’s nothing scary or dreadful about Persephone I’m so tired of seeing “aesthetically pleasing” gods when they’re in LITERAL TRUE FORMS I’m not saying that all gods should be terrifying I’m just saying that I’m tired of all the gods being so pretty and polish and stuff, there’s so much potential in letting the art form be more raw without always needing to make it pretty. I just wish we could see more forms of Persephone outside of being “sweet innocent and kind” we’ve been seeing this side of her for three seasons now and it’s getting annoying. What is even the difference between Kore and Persephone? If Rachel was going to make it seem like Persephone has two sides she needs to make them very freaking distinctive.

Another thing that bothered me was the unnecessary film crew. How the fuck are they even awake..? Isn’t every citizen in The Underworld supposed to be asleep or am I going crazy? Anyways they literally did not bring anything to the scenes and they weren’t very funny at all honestly, just why were they there? I don’t get it. This is just a petty nitpick by the way just wanted to add that there.

Another small nitpick was her crying… A-Fucking-Gain, that’s so annoying to me we get it Persephone would never wanna destroy the man who is literally a threat to everyone and the one that is currently putting YOUR MOTHERS (and hades or whatever) life in danger. We know she’s so kind and empathetic that she would never wanna murder anyone boohoo, we get it please stop shoving it down our throats. It’s just annoying that Persephone just cannot be wrathful with zero regrets.

Anyways I can say that Tartarus’ design because that was genuinely the only good thing about the episode for me. It was so nice to look at and they really did serve, glad that they were the one who finished the fight and not Persephone because the whole point wasn’t to make Persephone specifically to go up against Kronos and defeat him. But yeah, good on them for doing what Persephone couldn’t.

But that’s the end of the rant. Sorry if I came off a little aggressive this rant but the whole thing really irked me because it could’ve been so much better and they’ve been dragging that fight on for seasons and it was so disappointing. But like I always say I’m very biased and I’m talking completely about how I felt about it and my own thoughts, please don’t take any of this as fact because it’s not but if you do agree with me that’s great, and if you don’t that’s also great. These are just meaningless rants and I do not want anyone to use these as fuel to insult people who enjoy and love Lore Olympus because that’s not what this is supposed to be. What’s good for others may not be good for you and you should never shame someone for that because that’s completely and utterly illogical.

#lo critical #anti lore olympus #anti lo #lore olympus critical

[maxwell-grant]

I've seen several peoplerefer to Wario as an evil opposite of Mario. But it occurs to me that Mario is deliberately kept as an audience insert with his personality being minimal. Whilst Wario himself has a very well defined personality. So that leads me to wonder: If you were to reverse engineer Mario's personality from "Wario is Mario's evil Opposite", what would Mario's personality be?

The same as it is now? Which is sorta Wario’s personality or at least general life, but selfless and more straightforward heroic and friendly and humble, toned down several notches and tailored to fit a much less confrontational and verbal character, who’s supposed to be a versatile all-purpose hero and cartoon mascot instead of a loud and stinky hyperactive crayon doodle anti-hero/villain.

Wario isn't really Mario's evil opposite: if anything that's probably just something he plays up on occasion because it's-a good for business, like this post argues: if he was just some guy, nobody would buy WarioWare. I argued before that Wario basically just does everything Mario already does, but taken to comically gross and brutish extremes. It's in everything from his design to gameplay, even to his worldbuilding. He's not so much Mario's Evil Opposite as he's Mario's Gross Cartoon Bully Mirror: closer to the likes of Bizarro and Lobo, characters notorious first and foremost for their over-the-top wacko personalities rather than any notable roles or stories, specifically because said over-the-top personality is their differential and what makes them appealing to have around.

He's not Mario But Evil, he's Mario But Wrong: he’s Dada Mario, perfect as a vehicle for comedic cartoon brutality and parody and taking potshots at his rival or videogames at large. A character with such a strong personality and hook, it’s a no-brainer to build adventures around his troubles and trials and pigbrained ideas. Charles Martinet touched a little on the differences between playing the two, how Wario gets to be a funny stinker contrasting Mario as a purely good guy, but Mario in turn has a levity of expression and carefree spiritedness that the cantankerous Wario cannot have.

When you’re acting as Wario, does it feel any different than playing Mario? Like there are less rules, or more creative freedom? Can you cut loose a little more? Charles: *laughs* Well, sure, yeah, because he can be a little… he’s just *Wario’s voice* “Yeah, I’m a stinker! Hah-hah-hah! *raspberries*”.

He gets to play and be silly, whereas Mario is *Mario’s voice* “Okie-dokie! I’m a really sweet-a guy! I’m the nice-a man, I love-a the princess, woo-hoo!” You know, it’s a very different sort of job.

But, the Mario energy is so free-flowing, it comes up from the ground, and flies into the air while Wario, he’s going *Wario voice ‘Oh, I’m frustrated! I’m gonna get this next time! I’ll get you! I’m-a gonna win!” 

But it’s never so serious, as to be a harmful sort of energy, you know what I mean? That, I think, goes back to Mr. Miyamoto’s belief and my belief that the characters are fun, they’re playful, even in the sort of flaws of their personality.

Even back in his earliest days, he wasn't really evil (or even Bowser-tier evil) so much as he was a weird rival to Mario, an obnoxious brute who got in everyone's way whether he was taking over castles and forests with armies of monsters, or just sticking buckets in Mario's head so he'd have a bad day. Key to Wario’s success is that, as much as he was greatly developed further in the Wario Land and Wario Ware games, very little had to be changed about him to make him work as a protagonist. You kinda get Wario’s deal just by taking a cursory glance at him, even if you somehow don’t know who he’s a cartoon distortion of.

(art by futuristicghost)

The main change was that Wario’s grudge with Mario was downplayed in favor of a supreme arrogance that made him vastly more fun to watch in general (even though he’s never had any games proper, the same thing happened with Waluigi, and his shift from scowling scheming loser to dancing vanity weirdo loser), and also showed how much Mario was unnecessary for Wario’s adventures. He never really stopped being a party-crashing bad guy, we just got more used to him. WarioWare’s been around for 20 years now, and he’s still the closest thing that series has to a bad guy, even though he’s also the main character and everyone’s boss. Wario’s strong personality is his selling point and the reason why they gave him games of his own, it's a compelling feature to build narratives and puzzles and fun around.

It’s one of the main contrasts between him and Mario: Mario is built to fit his games, Wario’s games are built to fit him. He is much more well-defined than Mario partially because he was designed by an effort to make Mario more interesting than just someone who goes around saving princesses and doing things for other people: He was designed by developers who were fed up with the Mario formula and wanted to try something new, something that gave Mario more agency and character and possessions of his own to fight back for: it’s not for nothing that, if he is to be the dark mirror, if he is what Mario cannot be, Wario thus has to be epitome of selfishness and greed.

The team still desired to provide Mario with a new objective, rather than fighting to rescue the princess as seen in most Mario games leading up to that time. 

The game's staff wanted a "change of pace", and decided that Mario should fight to win back something that belongs to him, rather than fighting for "someone else's benefit" - Development on Super Mario Land 2

It’s part of the problem with trying to reverse engineer a reading of Mario’s personality through Wario: Wario’s design is built around spitting on Mario, you’re gonna be working with too strong a bias. Even his very first appearence was built around this: he was stealing Mario’s castle because of jealousy and spite (and not unjustified, going by supplemental comics that showed Mario treating Wario very poorly) over Mario having everything he wanted (Mario never owned castles before or after this, Wario’s theft might as well be punishment for this particular instance of hubris), and they never really dropped the idea that Wario has some kind of unknown childhood beef with Mario that may, or may not, be justified or true.

It’s part of why Wario on his own kinda makes for a lousy villain for Mario specifically: Beating up Bowser makes Mario a hero, while beating up Wario just makes him look petty and even mean (the Camelot cutscenes get around this by making Wario part of a comedy duo with Waluigi, and making it so they’re never really beaten so much as humiliated in karmic fashion for being such meanies, and most of the time the heroes don’t even know they are up to anything). It’s why Wario tends to make for a much better villain to, say, Toad and Wanda, or the WarioWare cast sometimes. On his own as a main villain, he kinda makes Mario look bad in a way that makes Wario less fun and doesn’t really say much of anything about Mario or does anything interesting with him.

He IS the worst of Mario, running rampant throughout the land, and when you get past Wario, Mario’s worst just isn’t that interesting. Yeah yeah, Donkey Kong Jr, the Power Tennis trophy scene, we’ve all sat through those, fuck off MatPat, Bad Mario is a boring idea used by boring people to make boring arguments or stories, the path-of-least resistance to try and make Mario an interesting character. Wario is as good as that idea is ever gonna get, and the absolute best thing they ever did to him was divorce him from Mario and his role as Mario’s Rival and let him exist on his own wacky worlds and games where he’s got nothing to prove and everything to take. Lets him be versatile in ways Mario can’t be, which is a necessary niche to have when Mario’s versatility is so central to what makes him one of the most successful characters ever.

Mario as a character borrows that design philosophy of early 20th century cartoon mascots like Bugs Bunny and yes his inspiration Popeye, of strong designs and catchy personalities left just vague enough that they can be, do or go whatever and wherever you need them to, but with at least one or more hooks to keep people interested. Mario’s is that, even without any dialogue, he looked completely unlike anyone’s preconception of what an adventure hero is supposed to look like (and still don’t, even though so much of videogames as a medium is build around Mario), which makes him an excellent character to throw into Alice in Wonderland weird fantasy realms, and with dialogue, he speaks in a ridiculous friendly falsetto (that was the diferential that got Martinet the role: instead of the Brooklyn gruff guy, he thought of a nice, jolly guy who he wouldn’t be miserable doing for nine hours a day) that is at odds, and in perfect synch, with the way he looks.

Mario is perpetually mismatched with his environment, and it’s part of why his games revolve around carefree exploration and obstacle courses through weird realms and impossible challenges: we want the little guy who shouldn’t be here to beat the odds, and we want to be the little guy who beats the odds. Mario consistently pulls off a pretty difficult trick of characterization where he’s both The Big Iconic Hero everyone looks up to as well as the clown underdog of every fight he’s in, because everything he faces is ten times his size and combat-ready in ways a funny plumber dude isn’t, and so the funny plumber dude goes on to prove himself without having to say much, and you can decide how he goes on about it, even make him shitty if you want to play around.

Videogames are a medium where non-verbal characters get to shine like nowhere else. The Mario RPGs tend to have the best characterization in the series by far (those, and the Camelot cutscenes) and they keep Mario silent even in instances he could be given lines: all the other characters are made better for having to do the heavy lifting with dialogue, bouncing off Mario, who’s holding the fort and giving them their cues. Mario’s made a better character by the fact that he doesn’t have to talk to make himself understood.

(Mario art by Gemma Roman)

I don't think Mario is without personality, I think he has mostly an understated personality, which might be a funny word to use for someone who hoots and hollers cartwheeling all over the place. I think of Mario as a character very similar to Asterix (definitely a go-to reference point if I was gonna write Mario, and Obelix for Luigi too, you’d be surprised at how much they match), in the sense that he’s rarely gonna be the funniest or most dramatic character in any given scene (although he can do that, to surprising effect), he’s surrounded by so much goofy nonsense and such colorful personalities and such dramatic stakes, that having him contrast with those winds up being the best choice. Our hero is a tiny, loving, humble character, not without flaws or excesses, certainly not someone who’s beyond failing or stumbling before reaching the finish line or making a fool of himself, and who’s made better off for it. You need that contrast, you need that guiding point.

To bring things back around I’d say that’s another thing he contrasts and compares with Wario: Both of them are central characters built in ways that free up all the other characters to thrive by contrast. Wario's sheer force-of-personality forces everyone to react to him, which makes for great comedy, while Mario’s happy to let everyone else do the talking, which makes for a more immersive adventure, and both of which allow for good characterization. A small star be the one that shines brightest to guide all the others, or a big laughing black hole of chaos everyone’s being pulled into whether they like it or not.

#replies tag #mario #super mario #nintendo #videogames #asterix #wario #wario land #wario ware

[ot3]

first of all, i am violently in love your ace attorney fancomic. that one panel of mia in the elevator and edgeworth on the stairs sitting back to back lives rent free in my head, i think abt it every 3-5 business days and go feral. tysm <3 second, would you ever consider showing us ur process behind it? like how you plan it, the dialog + composition, etc? id personally love to get that insight !!

thank you so much!!!

i actually do have a TON of behind the scenes/process stuff up on my patreon for $2. every thumbnail/color rough/scrapped page comp i've done is up there, and i've been writing detailed commentary on the comic as a whole because it's something people expressed an interest in reading. there's a decent amount of it right now and ill have a new batch of commentary up sometime in the next few days

as for more generalized stuff about process ill stick that here under the cut but unfortunately it is going to be EXTREMELY unhelpful because my process habits are very bad.

so as for prewriting/pre-planning i do almost none of it. i've been trying to get better at doing that but i get so so so bored of that so fast. here's a screenshot of my first outline, cropped to just show everything i've drawn so far.

as you can see this all means pretty much nothing and i also didnt quite follow it. we didn't get the mia and greg postmortem and swiss rolls stuff for turnabout samurai because i later decided to scrap it. later down in this document there are slightly more detailed notes about some specific scenes, but really its all super lose.

Recently i tried to write a more detailed outline for the upcoming parts of the comic, and the stuff that happened in this most recent batch of pages was documented there pretty well

but already the stuff i wrote in this outline for later batches is not accurate to what i want anymore so to be honest the outlines are kind of a wash for me. what's really the meat of my pre-planning process is i just have a private discord server where i dump notes.

the reason i use a discord server for this is because its super easily accessible from every device i have, and doesnt require backing up between locations. i also just dump chunks of canon text in there that i want to pull exact dialogue from when i'm doing my transcript rereads.

a lot of these notes are completely useless and redundant

most of them are snippets of dialogue i want to put in on later pages. almost none of this dialogue will ever be used. for starters, a lot of it is different takes on the exact same handful of scenes and so by default are mutually exclusive bits of content. i like to just dump as many ideas as i have in there even if theyre contradictory, and then just read back through and pick my favorite/most appropriate ones as i get to actually drawing whats coming up.

every now and then ill dump all this in a google doc and arrange it roughly chronologically so related takes go together, but i havent done that in like six months so its all just a huge mess right now.

the reason i can get away with such bare bones planning is because i have a very strong mechanical understanding of how this story is supposed to function. in the two and a half years that has gone by since i came up with the idea and started working on it, almost nothing has fundamentally changed in my big picture narrative goals. knowing the exact shape of what i'm building towards makes it really easy to let the more minute details come to me in the moment. they either are congruent with that end goal, in which case they can stay, or they're more extraneous/irrelevant in which case they get cut.

when i get stuck, more often than not i just slide into mia @demonkix's dms and make her hear out my rambling. thanks mia. shoutout to mia.

now, here's probably one of my biggest sins: i do not script anything. there is no finalized dialogue until i am writing it directly onto the page. unless i'm directly lifting from the text, that is. ill have a rough idea of what needs to be said in each page when im drafting, and sometimes i'll write in rough dialogue on the draft. but most of the time ill just sketch out the approximation of the speech bubble andd either leave it fully blank or jot in one or two keywords in to remind me of what the dialogue should be. then the actual dialogue gets written in once the art is finished

do not do this. i can not stress how frustrating this is for myself. i do this every time and i always hate it.

the reason i dont bother with any proper scripting is because the dialogue bends to the art. not the other way around. a massive amount of my process is dictated by what im in the mood to draw, and by keeping the actual character interactions as flexible as possible until the art is done, i can ensure i dont get stuck at key points because the thing that has to happen is something i dont feel like drawing.

in general, my process for drafting pages is just rough thumbnail -> color rough -> go actually draw the damn thing

however there ill be times when i just do not bother drafting at all and jump immediately into drawing a page. if you go look at the stuff on patreon youll see that in the beginning i pretty much just drew everything after the first batch straight through.

this comic is a lot of work so the most important thing is that hte process is fun for me. i really hate granular planning and itd just slow me down a ton so the process is really just vibes from point a to point b. hope this somewhat answers your question

i talk about my general approach to comic composition in my big composition writeup too, which is pinned, if thats something youre interested in.

#qm

[tathrin]

since you're a huge LOTR fan, I wonder if you've heard about the new LOTR MTG set and if so what you think of it. As an MTG fan who never got into the books or movies, I love it

Oh my gods HAVE I?!!! (The answer is extremely yes.) I work at a comic book store, and we carry Magic cards, so it's going to be quite a struggle for me to be surrounded by them and not purchase any, despite the fact that I've never played MTG and have absolutely no prospects of playing it either. (Although I did play the knock-off LotR Magic-ish card game that came out back when the movies did and loved it, tbf.)

My thoughts are: I freaking LOVE the parts of it that are awesome, such as of course the most awesome of all:

AHHHHH that's so good I want it as a painting ahhhhhhhh!

Look at him, look at his sword, he's amazing it's immaculate:

AMAZING I SAY!!!

But the problem with the amazing parts? Is that they make the lackluster parts stand-out all the more.

And unfortunately a lot of it is lackluster. Not bad; just...mediocre. Admittedly perhaps my expectations got WAY too high when I saw the wedding card first, but...well, what can I say? That's the first thing I saw, and it was FUCKING AMAZING, so my expectations were raised way too high for most of the rest of the perfectly-serviceable-but-not-novel-or-exciting images to measure up to.

And then there are a few that are downright bad.

Like Legolas, who is inexplicably wearing Last Alliance-ish plate armor? Despite being explicitly described as not wearing armor, except for when he borrows mail from the Rohirrim?

Yeah. That's not a Wood-elf from Mirkwood, buddy, that's just a Generic High Fantasy Elf. At best he could be Elladan or Elrohir I guess, but Legolas? Legolas of Mirkwood? Yeah, no.

(Also if we're going for diverse LotR designs, why is it that all the elves still seem to be white? *All the elves I've seen so far. Hopefully this will change as more cards get revealed. I'm perfectly happy with Arwen the way she is in the above image, for the record; she's described as being pale and dark-haired and she looks exquisite up there. 10/10 on the Wedding Card, no notes! But I'm hoping that this isn't going to end up being a case where the "immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings" species remains wholly white because that's...not great.)

Anyway most of the other cards I've seen look fine, but no better than fine; very much Standard Generic Designs. Less disappointing than the bizarre design for Legolas up there, but nowhere near even half as awesome as Aragorn and Arwen.

And then...well. What is this supposed to be?

Jaskier and Daenerys, maybe? wtf? I genuinely didn't even know who they were until I saw the caption with their names, that's how bad this design is. Why have they turned Faramir into some little bland doofus boy? How the fuck is their hair supposed to mingle in the wind when his is so short? He looks like a child, and there is not a single muscle in her arm, she looks like an airbrushed barbie. For that matter, where is the splint and bandage on her arm? Her left arm? That arm is broken what are you doing? Did you miss that bit with the Witch King??? Was this one even painted by someone who read the book, or is it maybe an image that was done for something totally different that they just went "ehh good enough" and slapped it into this deck instead of making something new and specific for these two? I am SO disgruntled.

That's the worst of them that I've seen so far, thankfully. But you have to admit that it is pretty bad, I think.

So, in summation: I'm still overall excited (admittedly this is bolstered in part just because racists are hella mad about it, and that always makes me happy) but I really wish that they had put the same level of care and attention into the design of all of it that they did in a few of the more stand-out pieces.

Because I probably won't end up buying any of it, unless as more cards get revealed the ratio between awesome-and-blah changes significantly. Because the ones that are good are very very good but the rest of them are just...meh.

And that's so disappointing when they could all be awesome.

#me #rants #mtg: lotr #magic #games #lotr

[wordsandrobots]

Notes on Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 1

Hmmm. So we’re calling that a season, are we? OK then. I may as well write up my thoughts, if only to get them out of my head.

There are parts I’ve enjoyed; however, overall, I've found this to be a good-looking but extremely slapdash show. Which, well, it's from the guy who wrote Code Geass so go figure.

Spoiler-filled commentary after this cut.

The main star is the gorgeous animation. Not just the overall style – the animators really nail so many little moments of visual composition (in the latest episode, the choices with Suletta’s interactions with her mother are truly brilliant).

There are also plenty of interesting characters. Miorine Rembran makes for a great deuteragonist, striking a nice balance between sympathetic and unpleasantly prickly. The show quietly but deftly builds up her deep-rooted sense of right and wrong in a way that makes the final stinger to episode 12 hit really hard. We *know* by this point that she will call out things that go against her personal morals, so her reaction to Suletta killing someone in front of her is no trivial matter.

Meanwhile, I think Lady Prospera may be the most successful recapitulation of the Char archetype there’s been in the Gundam franchise. I can sit here and stan for McGillis Fareed all day long but his Char-like characteristics are ultimately an act to cover genuine emotional connections that get in the way of his plans. Prospera, on the other hand, embodies the mix of charm and utter, unrepentant ruthlessness that makes Char compelling in Gundam '79. Plus, she's got a defined, active familial connection to the heroes, something left as mere flavouring in the original.

Sadly, I’m far less enamoured with nominal main character Suletta. She has plenty of nice moments where her awkwardness switches from being a comic trait to a rather sad one. But I can’t get past how she bimbles around the plot with such a profound lack of curiosity. Clearly she's meant to care more about people than politics; nevertheless, it feels unsatisfying to have her not question a lot of stuff that's going on. Her backstory about wanting to better the Mercurian situation barely comes up, replaced wholesale with her feelings towards Miorine. And we're told over and over that she talks to Gundam Aerial and treats it/her as a sister, but we never *see that* outside combat. This relationship drives many of Suletta's actions but the show doesn't show it as anything more than a power-up. You'd have to read a prequel text story to know Aerial can, in fact, think for herself.

I get part of this is how they’ve chosen to deploy the idea of a mind-controlled protagonist. Clearly Suletta's obliviousness is the point. But I think there should have been more interrogation of the incongruities in her personality ahead of the reveal her mum can turn her into a smiling killing-machine at will.

(It’s too early to say how well-handled the idea of a controlled/conditioned protagonist is going to be. In principle, it’s a smart move for a franchise that has always had those kinds of characters but only as tragic secondary foils to our heroes. It’ll be a very different kind of horror to that embodied by the likes of Heero Yuy and Mikazuki Augus, which is more about people consciously choosing to do horrible things to themselves and/or others.)

The place I feel this show falls down hardest, however, is in how it constructs its setting. By which I mean, what the ever-loving heck is even supposed to be going on here?

We are shown in the prologue that Gundams are considered a big enough threat to the dominant powers, those building them are branded as witches and hunted down with crushing military force. Yet however many years later, two companies in the Benerit Group are able to develop Gundam machines with relatively little consequence. Big boss Delling Rembran makes a song and dance about destroying every Gundam without hesitation, then indulges his daughter’s tantrums and put her in charge of developing the original medical application for the giant robot technology. So Gundams are at once a massive military-grade problem and something safely entrusted to the sixth-form entrepreneur club. Which, I mean, fair enough if Delling is making some kind of point from the position of god of his little world, but then we find out the Earthian terrorists have two Gundams of their own and . . . if that's the case, what has Dominicus – the supposed elite witch-hunter squad – even been doing all this time?

All of which are things that could have any number of possible explanations. It’s fiction, you can write yourself out of any corner. Yet I find myself profoundly lost as to the context for all this.

Take the school Suletta, Miorine and their peers attend. What is it for? We barely see any lessons taking place, but it seems to be a muddle of business college, engineering university and pilot training academy. Where honour duels between mobile suits decide important stuff because . . . Delling said it was OK? So is it meant to produce the next generation of military operators? Is there a war on? There seems to be, sort of, with the Spacians oppressing the Earthians who they’ve left behind on a polluted planet but . . . I mean, we see one protest and then a spectacularly well-armed terrorist group show up to make mincemeat out of the Spacian soldiers. If the playing-field is that level, why isn’t the war a bigger ongoing presence? Half of Earth House is described as war orphans but that’s literally the only time the possibility of large-scale armed conflicts happening off-screen is brought to the fore.

In combination with Code Geass, I suspect this may simply be a writer who can’t be trusted to place school drama in a broader sci-fi world with any grace. Nonetheless, I find myself unreasonably bugged by the number of questions I can ask of what happened in this first season.

For example: Benerit Group’s competitors. We’re told they have some, yet the different companies in the group seem to be producing more than enough mobile suits between them to fulfil any military needs going. Who are they selling to, that they could be in competition with someone else? Is there a government? Is Dominicus beholden to someone higher than Delling? Why did you ever pin who gets to inherit the mega-corporation on the outcome of schoolyard fights if you are in sufficiently dire straits that letting teenagers handle the cursed technology is a remotely sane idea?

Similarly, Vim Jeturk, head of Jeturk Heavy Machinery, suffers involuntary patricide at the hands of fail-son Guel because he decided to jump into a mobile suit and go fight the terrorists. He says he worked his way up to the top as an explanation for why he'd join the battle. But – my dude – you are an arms manufacturer. What, your company does the fighting with the mecha it builds? That’s not how that works! And if it is how it works, in this setting, where are the receipts? Are all these companies also employed to oppress the working classes (in a direct, stomp on the head sense)?

If there had been previous mention of Jeturk Senior being a pilot in his youth – or even if his sons being pilots had been presented as more than nepotistic self-promotion of his company's products – then his jumping into a cockpit after weeks of scheming behind the scenes would have been a natural progression. As it is, it looks suspiciously like a choice in service of needing Guel to kill him in a fit of desperation in order to set up a character arc for next season.

And . . . OK, there's an extent to which that sort of thing doesn't matter. I like Code Geass and it's a bonkers mess of plot swerves in service of getting characters to shout at each other dramatically. That's fine. But Code Geass has an incredibly straightforward set-up. It's got a cleanly defined world, split between an empire and the oppressed, with obvious ways for that division to be eroded. I won't say that erosion is handled well. It . . . isn't. Nevertheless, I didn't feel like each new step the story took flat-out contradicted or rendered meaningless everything that had happened prior.

I'm saw someone else on tumblr bring this up at the time: in the space of the first few episodes, we go from duels being something that happen whenever the students get pissed at each other, to requiring a formal process between two parties and a ritual evocation of the scales of justice, to being utterly meaningless because the disputes they're meant to settle can be overruled from on high at any time. This isn't inherently contradictory and could be a commentary on the unfairness of the system. Yet without any indication of how things got to the start of that sequence, the stakes don't so much escalate as arbitrarily shift however is most convenient for the plot.

That's how all of this reads to me. Arbitrary, in ways that don't feel like they have a solid foundation connecting them yet.

Now, I don't particularly want to do this, primarily because comparing something I have found intermittently fun to something I am unreasonably fond of is objectively unfair. However, Iron-Blooded Orphans was the last entry in the franchise, making it a comparison worth making. So: IBO is not elegant in expositing its setting (even if it is relatively careful to build in character reasons for the information to be spelled out) but it is definitely efficient about doing so. By the same point in its run that G-Witch is now, twelve episodes in, we have been clearly told and shown that:

Mars is in the grip of a brutal colonial occupation by quasi-police organisation known as Gjallarhorn.

Gjallarhorn is internally corrupt.

There are factions vying to take advantage of a growing independence movement.

Ordinary people on Mars struggle to make ends meet.

Private military companies use child soldiers as expendable labour and those children see it as a better option than begging on the street.

There are worse options in the form of slavery as 'human debris'; that Jupiter is home to a powerful mafia-like organisation.

That organisation is also interested in using the independence movement to its advantage.

They know routes between planets outside of those Gjallarhorn controls.

Said routes are dangerous because of pirates.

Pirates are a main source and user of human debris.

At least some people in Gjallarhorn are willing to use said pirates to achieve their ends.

Gjallarhorn practices arranged marriages resulting in nine-year-olds being engaged to twenty-somethings.

All this is relevant to the plot and either gestured at earlier than it appears, or fundamental enough as to be obvious. It builds to the point where each revelation coheres with what's come before. This is a world in which everyone is exploited, with clear hierarchies laid out between the different factions. The details flow such that we see why characters are making the decisions they do, even if we don't necessarily think those choices are right or know where they are ultimately leading.

Twelve episodes in to G-Witch, I remain baffled as to why anybody is doing anything. Sure, Prospera (probably) wants revenge for the death of her husband and everyone else in the prologue. But there's no indication as to why Delling is willing to make choices that play into her hands, or why Jeturk should be so gung-ho about trying to supplant him every other week, or – and I know I keep harping on this but come on – why allowing literal children to market a hyper-dangerous technology makes a lick of sense.

The key reason I'm getting so caught on this is that G-Witch sets itself up as a particular type of horror story. We see this in the move from a very bloody prologue to the bucolic school setting. By convention, we might expect the peaceful setting to be gradually peeled back to reveal the violence we already know is lurking underneath, with the attendant peril for Suletta and Miorine as they come to understand the reality of the world they live in. This seems to be where the signposts are pointing. Yet the key to that kind of horror is the reality beneath makeing sense of incongruities on the surface. And that isn't happening. Yes, Suletta being mind-controlled explains a great deal about her, personally. But the rest? As I said, it seems arbitrary, to the point where the reveals themselves become incongruous.

Why, for instance, should Elan Ceres need to send duplicates to school for him? Because it's a point of pride the company heirs pilot their top machines? Then why not perfect the machine away from the school first, so it doesn't kill the real him? Or is the school actually a test-bed for advanced tech? OK . . . but why is it the best option when Elan's backers are developing extremely forbidden Gundam-like mobile suits? Answers on a postcard, please.

Of course, one can construct such answers for oneself, in anticipation of the writing. Take Delling. Based on the latest episode, I wouldn't be surprised if the explanation for his erratic behaviour is simply a very unexpressive man poorly handling genuine feelings of duty towards his daughter. He does shield her from a chunk of debris after all, getting injured in the process, right after making sure she gets into a spacesuit during a crisis, and it would make sense of him indulging her on the Gund-Arm start-up. Trite, but it'd work. The bastard turns out to honestly care for his child while the 'nice' mother figure views hers as a mere tool. Play it again, Sam.

There're just . . . so damn many questions and none of them are really very interesting. It's all A-moves-to-B stuff that should either be invisible or an explanation unto itself. I don't want to be sitting here perplexed by the minutiae of the corporate intrigue the story is dressed up in; I want to be appreciating the final image of Suletta cheerily joking about slipping in the blood of the man she just smashed flat. It's extremely frustrating.

I shall probably keep watching when it comes back in April, out of sheer stubborn curiosity. I can see the shape of a great idea here and the character work is better than I've given it credit for.

But I really could have done with a decent 'ah ha' moment where the details began to click together and so far? It's simply not there.

#GUNDAM #gundam witch from mercury #gundam the witch from mercury #G-witch #code geass #notes #mostly irritated rambling #I should probably be being kinder to a show aimed at teenagers #nevertheless #the meaner comparison is to Eureka Seven but that's a weight class above any of the shows mentioned here #ironically

[fmp2halimekaraca]

Mutants VS Kaiju

In one of my other posts I have mentioned how much King Kong related to the project theme due to the iconic empire state building scene with the planes.

In the original comics , King Kong is actually part of a prehistoric species called the Megaprimatus Kong which used to populate Skull Island along with other animal/bird/insect species and even a native tribe that worships Kong as a God.

King Kong could arguably be considered a Kaiju (which are a Japanese media genre involving giant monsters that are usually depicted as attacking major cities and battling the military or other monsters)

Since the original word (kaijū) referred to monsters and creatures from ancient Japanese legends, they most likely are supposed to be considered their own species that could naturally appear somewhere somewhere on earth or on other planets/dimensions.

In The movie Pacific Rim, the world is constantly attacked by Kaiju and the only way to defeat them is through combat using gigantic robot-like suits.

I really like these designs and how the difference between the organic monsters contrasts with the metal robots in the fighting scenes. They all have such unique designs that still feel like they could naturally occur due to some interesting key features that tie them with earth species like hammer shark heads and fins, crocodile-like bodies and even bat-like noses and wings.

I especially like this kaiju who's design seems to be inspired by Goblin Sharks. The peculiar look of this shark works very well for an alien creature since it leaves a lot of room for exaggerating features and making the design more terrifying looking.

The concept models for the Kaiju are also very impressing and offer a closer look on the designs without all the CGI and dramatic zoomed out shots that the movie has.

I really love the scaly texture and the attention to detail around the faces especially. The way the mouth and the nasal ''crests'' have visible cracks and scars that show years of fighting and aggressive behaviour. The overlapping scales on its back and behind it's head gives it an almost armour like appearance that makes it look even more tough and intimidating.

There is also this particular part in the movie where kaiju brains are used to power up two of the robots that are normally used to fight the monsters off. Not only does this link in with the idea of organic life mixed with machine but it could also be seen as a type of body possession that can open some religious links for my project if I decide to go that route.

Godzilla

In contrast with Kong and Kaiju is Godzilla which did not come from a species or a natural environment but was rather created from the nuclear wastes thrown by humans in the Pacific ocean. This results in Godzilla being extremely hostile and actively trying to kill the human race as a possible act of revenge due to environmental polluting.

The Swamp Thing

A polar opposite to Godzilla is The Swamp Thing which is a mutant created after a biochemist perfects a chemical compound that had the positive intentions of stimulating hormonal growth in plant life, enabling plants to grow in hostile terrain. Sadly he is killed and falls into the swamp along with his formula which reacts with the local plant life and transforms the scientist into the Swamp Thing.

It is interesting that although he was a normal human that got killed and then mutated into a strange monster, he is still a hero in the DC comics and is always trying to not only save humanity from various supernatural or theorist threats but also does all he can to protect his swamp home and the environment in general which I didn't really see as a main theme for any most superheroes.

Beast Boy

Beast Boy, also known as Garfield Logan, is another tragic story that ended up in unexpecting result. In an attempt to save the life of his son after he was bitten by a monkey and contracted a very rare and lethal illness called Sakutia, Beast Boy's father used an untested science experiment to change him into a West African Green Monkey, which is the only species that is immune to the illness, for 24 hours so the virus could die out.

The serum had the unintended effect of permanently turning his skin, eyes, and hair green and granting him the ability to metamorph into any animal of his choice. Similar to Swam Thing, this shows that some characters have became what they are through unfortunate situations that ultimately had a positive goal of saving someone or something.

[xoteajays]

I'm torn. And biased.. Although I do love Jin's new hairstyle, I really do miss his curly brown hair. And I did think Gun's bowl cut style was too cute for his character in my opinion. But unsurprisingly though... A lot of the time I am attracted to a man with short hair, he always has that undercut style that he has now. My shy boy became a confident man!

And those thick bulging muscles! They really need to manhandle me.

My gentle giants.

🥰😍🤤

(I hate emojis so much.)

That's what I thought. I'm happy, as happy as one could be, to see his scars.. But his scars seem light colored compared to Gun's dark scar.

Gun's a man who never drank alcohol in his entire life, yet was so able to completely outdrink every man in that group. And.. based on how I saw Jin's expression, you remember Jin is the lightweight of the boys when they were drinking with the adults. With Ju, family and friends.

But his drunk smile though! He has the most adorable smile. Actually, I think they both do. Everything these men do is so adorable to me.

I don't have any soft spot for women if I'm being honest. Maybe those pregnant women but not really for most women in general. Because I have personal issues with women. But.. I do have a soft spot for many children and animals. I hate children, I never want children. But I have never thought most children should die horrible deaths. And that also is the same with animals too. Men and women could be fair game.

When it comes to Ju's actor. I read somewhere, I don't know how true it is, but I think she would have been in the fight scenes with Gun and Jin. She was supposed to have bigger scenes. But that's all I know.

And, like you, that's why I'm curious about the comics now.. Since I'm not sure how different these last two (or three) episodes were, I would want to know the original ending before settling on this entire ending.

And I also don't know if there will be any other seasons either.

~

Besides anime. And besides Asian media too. Most of the "American" media I watch is usually European for me.. I don't know if I actually do like American media. Like.. I think Black Sails might be considered an American series I enjoy, and I would recommend it if you love pirates.

But Orphan Black is a Canadian show. But shows like Peaky Blinders, Gangs Of London, any other series like those are actually British.

So my opinion on American media is extremely limited in my opinion.

America does have trains, just not high speed trains like in the Asian countries. At least the trains in Korean. Not sure about Japan or even China. And I don't know about Australia either.. So no comment on it.

There has always been rare times when I preferred the American type version of media over the foreign version. But that's really rare for me.

I might have to rewatch Train To Busan.

~

Bloodhounds OCs

I really need to start reading the Bloodhounds comic soon. I might try combining the plots between in comics and the show into my stories.

If my character is a childhood friend to one of the boys, I can actually imagine both scenarios. That's why I'm being a bit indecisive about it.

Like.. I know Gun-woo's technically the main character so you do end up knowing more about him compared to other characters. But I also know Woo-jin's the secondary main character (at least one of them in the series), yet you don't actually know much about his character.

That's why if I make an attempt at OC being childhood friends with a character like Jin, I could try giving him more backstory with her too.

So I'm curious to know if there is more backstory for other characters - besides Gun and his mother - in the comics. But.. I don't know.

I'm seriously debating to remove the whole pandemic situation in this plot. And, honestly, I'm curious how different the show would've been if this show wasn't creating during the pandemic. Since I always think about it every time I watch the show.. Since it wasn't in the comics.

If OC is childhood friends with Jin. If she does slept over his house, I'll say it would depend where they fell asleep. Just like Jin.. She's always grumpy when she gets woken up, by alarm clocks or phone calls. And I just see her possibly pushing Jin off the bed or couch if they actually tried sleeping together (not sexually) if that happened so one of them has to sleep on the floor if they slept in the same room. Or something like. But! Regardless of who she's childhood friends with - Gun or Jin, I could imagine her having some spare clothes at their house if she is there frequently in case she doesn't have a bag that she brought with herself. Like that type of close friendship between them.

And if she was became friends with Gun (and his mother) by working in their café, maybe she made some attempt to protect Gun's mother before he showed up to protect both of them from those men.

I think.. It's kind of funny how I hate sneakers because I feel like those shoes are too restrictive to me, yet I'll wear boots a lot (whenever I am not wearing flats). And actually, I kind of want boots that would reach up to my knees. But because of my height, I don't know how the taller boots would look on me - especially because I have really thick legs.

And I rarely wear wedges, sandals, flipflops, and any of those shoes.. I never enjoyed wearing those shoes for the most part. And I still don't.

If I ever used the visuals of her with blonde hair, I might (mainly) use a lot of those imageries for the Girls Gone Vogue for another character.

And I might use blue hair for this character when she dyes her hair in the story, at least in the first half of the story before that time skip for the character's appearance. But.. where you going with dark blue hair in the Tattoo era, or brighter blue hair in the Wonderland era? I'm with the darker blue hair from Tattoo because a lot of the imagery of her is from Tattoo. So dark blue hair, dark brown hair, any dark colored hair.

But, for the time skip, I still don't know what I want her to look like yet for some reason. All I really know is the time skip is six months later.

~

High&Low OCs

Updates on some characters.

Blue:

She loves to playfully tease her closest friends; pinching, poking, or pulling hair. In a playful way, not in any aggressive way. Especially if it's my W/G character (but only if she becomes a H&L character).

Sometimes she models, possibly for her own clothing brands and clothing lines. Wait.. Is there a different between brands and lines?

Orange:

She knows how to skateboard, maybe to the least extent but she is able to skateboard a little bit. Maybe a friend taught how to skate.

She really wants to ride a motorcycle but doesn't have a license yet at the moment, which is why she rides with the original SHS trio.

"I want to ride a bike. I don't have a license either, but I'm thinking about getting one in the future."

Because of how energetic she is, every so often she goes hiking or mountain climbing with friends who enjoy those sporty activities.

She's good with children. If she and Cobra do end up romantically together, they have a family with kids. (This is mostly because I am always seeing the real Orange post pictures with her and her baby.)

Red:

Babymetal might be one of her favorite bands.

White/Green:

If she doesn't work in a bakery or even as a cook in a restaurant, she would still enjoy baking and cooking - especially baking - as a hobby she always does. That's her way of showing affection toward the people she cares about, regardless of who the people or person is (including other gangs too). Not sure who she's affiliated with.

She loves eating crabs and spicy foods. Definitely her favorite food.

She hates eating raw fish. Raw fish is her least favorite food.

She is a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, she gets drunk really easily. Which makes her friends tease her any time they're drinking.

Cold Tropical Fish is one of her favorite movies.

Her favorite sport is tennis. I hate sports.

I am not completely sure if I would use this White/Green character for High&Low story. So if I don't use her for H&L, I might even use her for another fandom then. I don't know. So.. We'll see what happens then.

Yes! My tall boys.

~

That's what I thought... Since we know the bully was also a hybrid like the two girls, would he have survived in some way like they did? But it was mentioned that, if you kill these movies, burning them is the best way to do it. And since Cheong is the main character, or was the main character, would he have survived too? Maybe as a hybrid zombie like the others. I don't know. And I wonder who the new antagonist will be too, besides the government. Since the bullies were the antagonists.

I'm the same. I've always hated Seinfeld.. I don't understand why a lot of people seem to enjoy the show. In my opinion. But I do know about the show because people in my family, like my own parents, enjoy the show. I never understood. I never liked it. But I know about the show.

unrelated to anything we’ve been talking about but it just occurred to me a couple hours ago because of tiktok that i might have a bit of a type, at least in japanese media. and it’s apparently short blondes if the recent trend is anything to go by. cobra, takeshi, chishiya. all blondes on the shorter side (5’8’, 5’7, 5’6) and all dominated my brain for Too Long after i finished their series agshdjdkl

so. short blondes …… unless yuki yamada’s around. sorry mikey/chifuyu/takemichi, but draken’s hotter.

~

they still look hot. i just miss the curls. and the floppy hair. they look much more grown up now, gun especially. i now irl they’re in their late-20s/early 30s but still.

so much muscular fan service. just throwing us a very long workout montage of them shirtless and muscly. a gift. ‘we murdered 3 (technically 4 but we didn’t know much about lee’s wife) characters in the last episode, but here’s your boys looking good as hell! look, muscles!!’.

his scars are so barely there. got my squinting at my ipad screen trying to see them. gun’s is so clear and obvious, it’s a shame jin’s aren’t, especially when they don’t have to be seen as much as gun’s is so they could’ve really done them up nice and detailed.

jin was sitting there realising that gun could have drunk him under the table at any point. gun’s tolerance is high af. meanwhile jin’s - or rather, was - a cute lightweight, tripping over himself after too many drinks and having to be carried to bed.

it makes me feels a little bad for jin in ep6, since he was probably still hungover that morning and not on top of his game when myeong gil’s men broke in. i wonder if he feels guilty later on for getting so drunk, even if he couldn’t possibly have known what was going to happen the next morning.

~

i don’t actually watch a lot of european shows, including british shows, nothing’s really caught my interest lately that i can remember rn.

australia has trains, but not like. bullet trains. a lot of the trains are like hauling sugar cane and such around. there’s some long distance travel trains, but idk how popular they are since most people prefer to drive or take planes. which is a bit of a shame because i like riding on trains. but yea, around my area, it’s a lot of cane trains.

~

depending on how this last episode goes, i could maybe see possibly replacing ju with da min. i feel like it’d be an easy switch with a lil adapting/development of her character. idk much about her yet tho because she only had a couple scenes in ep7.

gun woo is slightly more main character, since you find out more about him and it surrounds him and his mother’s situation a lot as the driving plot. it’s a shame not to know more out jin tho, because i love him. he’s fun!

with jin there is a bit more wiggle room for backstory, since there’s not a whole lot laid out there so you can develop it yourself.

i was looking more at her wonderland blue hair. like the bright vibrant blue, and the later faded out look of it as opposed to the darker tattoo blue hair.

~

i can see orange having like, band-aids on her knees from times when she’s fallen off her skateboard around sannoh. also, skater girl thrown in with all the biker boys, vibes~ is cobra gonna teach her how to ride a motorbike?

babymetal fucking rocks! i love their whole aesthetic, hence why i thought of putting them as the full-timers in ojou.

it’s funny to imagine w/g as a bartender at club heaven but she’s a lightweight. no doing shots with customers at the bar for her.

~

yea all the bullies died i’m pretty sure, but idk about the main bully guy. i’d like to see him come back because i thought gwinam’s actor was kinda hot, but also i’d be surprised if he survived that whole explosion incident.

my dad’s always telling me to watch seinfeld but i’m not interested. it’s a little too old for me, and i’m sure there’s going to be jokes that are offensive now that weren’t as bad then and i’d just rather not see it.

#tj answers #long post // #long post anon

[toweringboottreads]

opposite end of the spectrum there's jake who does get a lot of screentime, but at times it just feels like "you (the story) are just going to hit him with a stick again, aren't you?"

jake is a funny case because i genuinly see him as two seperate characters depending on where in the story you are despite having no valid reason to do so

hes an oblivious twat who drones on about whatever cornball nonsense he happens to be talking about and thats some good fun

and i dont even nessecairly hate the teen drama like with janes 16th birthday like yeah all of them were being assholes but they were 16 in a. stressful situation so i can let it slide

but i dunno i work on a fancomic (wont say what cause i dont want it being traced back) so i read through bits of the comic constantly and repeatedly like ive read the general bits between janes 16th and up to game over + the retcon and like yeah i didnt like jake it wasnt fun when he was on screen and he didnt help his case

but act 6 act 1 was like night and day in how he was written? i guess it IS cause in that they go out of his way to paint his obliviousness as a comedy of errors, like no one gets mad at him for how "friend friend friendly we are friends and nothing more friends i dont have feelings for you im releived you dont have feelings for me" extreme that convo is with jane because the story goes out of its way to drill into you that jane is the fuckup there

but from then on it kinda seems like youre supposed to not empathize with him or understand his pov? not that hes being strictly the BAD guy like its complicated but you never get the sense that hes well meaning and just trying to be a good friend at least i didnt

not to mention the fun expression of his interests and adventuring charisma and making him out to not be a *badass* but not being afraid to charge the group of ferocious tinkerbulls with reckless abandon

anyhoo this is my thoughts on jake tl:dr im floored by how different he is before unite and the story might beat him down i cant say it doesnt but my problem is that jane and dirk both had explosive moments to vent about the struggles theyre having with their friend that they wish they werent having but jakes big explosive vent was. with the zillion babies. and aranea curing him. like hes always been a pathetic little loser

[lady-griffin]

One of the best things that has come from the “unfortunate” amount (imo) of background scene info we’ve gotten from the creators of Arcane, is that it shows us how Arcane could’ve easily not be as good as it was. 

Obviously, a lot of a very talented and skilled people worked very hard and put a great amount of time and effort into this show, which is the main reason for why Arcane is so fucking amazing. 

That shouldn’t be ignored, Arcane didn’t just happen by dumb luck or the stars aligned; time, dedication, and hard work were put in and that should be acknowledged. 

Still, we also see some of the “mistakes” or miscommunication along the way, helped Arcane along.

Arcane was created by many, many people, who don’t (or didn’t) always see things the same way. Arcane is not from one single mind and that’s true of most, if not all, the movies, comics, and tv shows we watch. Stories are rarely (and I do mean rarely) amazing, because one single creative genius was behind them, but instead are so compelling, because many different people collaborated together to create a cohesive story.

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That being said, there’s also the bonus element as someone who loves film, tv, and media to see ‘accidental writing’ occur in some of my favorite works. Basically, that’s an idea, theme, character trait, or some kind of world building that emerged from the story, not because the author intended for it to happen, but it just formed out of the story for whatever reason.

I think one of my favorite examples for Arcane is that according to writer Amanda Overton, Vander was supposed to have tried to kill Silco after he rescued the girls from the bridge; but the animation team made them look so much younger and that was a mistake, because of miscommunication.

But the story we actually got in the end is far more interesting and better, than what the original intention seems to have been.

Sidenote: It still feels very hard for me to believe that no one caught that Vander and Silco look so much younger in the drowning scene, before the show aired.

So, while it may not have been the original intention, I wonder if it was something they chose to keep in the story, even if it was not in the og script. 

Because that makes a whole lot more sense to me. 

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-        Vander symbolically gives up violence when he saves the girls, so him trying to drown Silco after that, takes away the symbolic weight and meaning of that scene. He literally drops his gauntlets on the ground to carry the girls back to safety. 

-       We see or learn how different Vander has become after the bridge, since years before he was willing to drown his ‘brother.’ But that seems hard to imagine for the Vander we meet in Act I; so, again, we see how different one can become and how their priorities shift after having children - solidifying the parallel between Vander and Silco. 

-        We see the Hound of the Underground return when he’s been pushed to his extreme - two of his kids are now dead and one is in severe danger.

Vander ‘gave up’ being the Hound to be well, Vander, father of four. We even see in the scene when he thinks all three are dead, it looks like Vander gives up, that is until he sees Vi is still alive. 

Vander is not pushed to such an extreme because he has nothing to lose, but because he now has everything to lose.

-       Vander also didn’t seem to be all that aware Silco was still out there (lurking/scheming) or an active threat. But, if he tried to kill Silco after he saved the girls – than it definitely feels like Vander should’ve been far more concerned about Silco, because….

Well, there’s a difference between not hearing from a man 5-6 years after you tried to murder him and not hearing from him 15+ years.

It makes far more sense if the attempted drowning took place years before the bridge, because even if Silco was an ever-looming presence or painful ghost for Vander, he still isn’t on the forefront of Vander’s mind as a current threat - because again Vander hasn’t heard from Silco in over a decade. 

-       Silco’s line to Deckard about the important lesson he learned “when he was about your age,” makes far more sense, because Silco appears to be around Deckard’s age, or a few years older when Vander tried to kill him and he fought back with everything he had.

-       Silco’s line of “I hated you, but you kept my respect. Until you made peace with them. Played lapdog after everything we suffered.” -

Does not work in the slightest with the idea that Vander tried to kill Silco after the Bridge Rebellion. It really doesn’t, like there’s a decent amount of mental gymnastics and loops to go through to make that work.

However, that line absolutely works with the idea that Vander tried to kill Silco because their ideas of how to achieve independence were diverging, with Silco potentially becoming more of an extremist, willing to hurt anyone if it got them independence. 

Silco hated Vander for trying to kill him, obviously, but since Vander was still fighting Piltover and trying to achieve Zaun’s independence, but in a different way, Silco still respected Vander for that, even if he disagreed with his methods or thought Vander wasn’t going far enough - Vander was still fighting the good fight. 

It’s not until after the bridge rebellion, after Vander saved two girls and adopted two more kids and had something to lose, that Vander started to play “lapdog,” making a deal with Grayson - that’s when Silco lost his respect for Vander and his anger and resentment grew in the time between after the bridge scene (or whenever the deal was made) and the rest of Act I.

-       It also explains why Silco seemed to have developed such a hatred for Vander’s kids. He views them as taking one of Zaun’s greatest champions away from Zaun, they’re the reason why Silco “lost respect for Vander.” You could even argue they are scapegoats for Silco, someone else for Silco to blame, not himself or Vander.

-        Of course, Silco hating Vander’s kids and hating Vander for choosing them over Zaun is quite the compelling story, given the contrast between who he was and who he now has become in the end, because of Jinx. Silco now loves Jinx as HIS daughter and he had everything he ever wanted or fought for on a silver platter, but he couldn’t do it, because he couldn’t give her up.

-        In the end, Silco understood why Vander did what he did in “playing lapdog.” Because now Silco has become someone who his younger self would’ve lost respect for and that doesn’t matter to him. Silco picks Jinx over Zaun. Silco finally has someone that actually matters to him, more than anything or anyone, someone he can’t lose. 

-       Vander trying to drown Silco when they were younger, just shows us how different these two men once were and how different they ended up being. Even when they are in the same spot, what they end up doing is quite different. 

Vander was willing to give up fighting for his kids, and for years he did that, but in the end, he never stopped fighting to keep one of them safe, not until he took his last breath.

Silco on the other hand was more than willing to burn everything and everyone else to the ground for Jinx, but when she killed him, he accepted it and with his last moments, tried to give her comfort and reassurance, the best he could. 

--

I hope Arcane keeps the story we got in the end.

Sidenote Again: It still feels very hard for me to believe that no one caught that Vander and Silco look so much younger in the drowning scene, before the show was aired. 

So, I wonder if, since a lot of people seem to think the creative process is just - have an idea and said idea becomes the final product and that’s it. Or the insane notion that the first draft of anything should be THE main source of authenticity that one should always consider above everything else...even though that’s not how the creative process works, like at all. 

Because, you know, ideas and stories grow, evolve and change as you work on them. 

So, while Amanda said that the scene was a mistake or miscommunication between the writers and the animation, maybe they kept the change the animators made and even worked with said change, within the story.

Maybe??

Because that makes a a lot more sense, considering how well the story works with the idea that Vander tried to kill Silco when they were younger. 

That aside, there can also be a problem in focusing so much on a “mistake” and trying to fix it retroactively, especially if you are able to do so in future movies or seasons. Because while not always, usually in the end that causes more problems and inconsistenties for the show, rather than solves things.

Star Wars has so many, so many examples of this. From the original trilogy’s re-releases to the new trilogy’s, well disaster of a story as they kept trying to fix the “complaints” from fans as each new movie came out. 

Arcane trying to fix previous “mistakes” in future seasons could also potentially create a barrier or exclusive nature for the show; because you might have to know background information to understand certain scenes, which…

That’s bad storytelling. 

If I can’t understand your show based on what you give me in your final product, that’s a major problem. I shouldn’t have to go onto social media, read articles about the show or know the author’s intent to understand what is happening. 

It’s fine if that stuff it out there, but it should be a bonus, not a requirement to watch, enjoy or understand your piece of work.

And I think a lot of people forget that, fans and creators alike, especially as communication becomes easier between the two.

I hope we see Arcane keep the version they gave us. That Vander tried to kill Silco when they were younger, it works with the story we got in the end.

I also think it’s a good lesson for many creative types - sometimes us creators, we need to loosen our death grips on our creatives works and learn how to adapt. 

Just my thoughts.

#Arcane #Silco #Vander #Jinx #Silco and Vander #Vander and Silco #Silco and Jinx #Arcane Vander #Arcane Silco #Arcane Jinx #Writing #Netflix #Leage of Legends #arcane league of legends