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martilyongabo · 8 months

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EO3 (partial) lineup - November-December 2022

Peak MAbo is collaborating with your best friend for a(n admittedly unfair) final project (for web development!!!! an elective!!!), saying you would post it, forgetting about it for a year, posting it on Artstation and forgetting about it again.

As always, AC drew the lineart, and I colored. Designs were more of a collaborative effort between the two of us!

Probably should have shared this when the HD collection came out... anyway it's here now!

Some design ramblings under the cut :0! There's a lot i wanna share especially given that we recently did a soft rewrite that departed from the guild system entirely ^^" and EO3's cast was actually one of the first that we had, surprisingly!

Micah is quite clearly alt gladiator 3, but in an entirely different profession. instead of going into the labyrinth, he works in what i imagine would be an analogue to the forge in Tharsis (aka helping people make things busted af). It probably works best for his character, since he was always a gizmo freak even in his first iteration! geomagnetic (or submagnetic, ugh) gizmo is AC's idea!

Micah's brother, Eva, is a very loose spin on zodiac 3, but with a wayyyy lighter colour palette. Admittedly, i did steal a little bit of the spiritmaster's coat from bravely default, but AC managed to spin it back to resembling the original coat that the class had. Eva works as an astronomer, hence the little telescope he always has on him.

Next up we have Eva's protégé, Miri (who was imported from AC's stories)! Theoretically, Miri would be a second zodiac, and, after watching some EO3 speedruns, would probably be really strong in the earlygame when working with Eva in an actual playthrough. AC's design heavily borrows from Patho II's Grace, hence the coat + dress combo.

Following Miri in this lineup would be Noa, her admittedly very lazy but clingy sibling. I think it's apparently here that we didn't have much time to filter what a believable design would be in an EO setting, given that Noa's clothes were translated directly from our designs of them in school attire. It's actually funny how for we diverged from their original portrait (buccaneer 3) to the point that she is literally unrecognizable. Truly a pipeline from good sea boy to j-horror twist character.

Last in the OC section would be Masaru, who recently found work for the Senatus. Admittedly he does have another example of "incongruent time period" clothing (the jacket), though it's a lot more reworkable than Noa. We also made his design a lot less poofy and rugged compared to the original, and I mixed the base and alt color palettes as well to make him less, well, glaringly red. Probably one of the funnier things is that his clothing palette made him blend in more with the likes of Kujura, but given that they work for the same place, it'll probably work out fine.

Now we go onto NPCs, and who better to start than with Flowdia! Admittedly, her art was one of the last ones that we did, hence why her design looks relatively plain (sorry lola). Probably one of the things I would like to add would be more ornate patterns, perhaps of butterflies to tie her closer to Gutrune!

Before we get to the Princess, we gotta get through her bodyguard first! >:0 I honestly don't like Kujura because I answered honestly in his first question, and he said that I was prideful, but AC likes him so he looks really good here. He isn't as rendered here as he is in his portrait, since he was also one of the last characters we made, and I didn't really get to notice that he doesn't have as much value contrast in his clothing as Masaru does. Probably something to think about next time I color him >:0

Next up we have Gutrune!! We decided to make her look more jellyfish-like, while still keeping it a bit uncanny and unsettling. We tried to give her a more traditionally Filipiniana look (mostly on the Maria Clara gown), but we haven't yet made a poncho design that mixes well with butterfly sleeves without looking cluttered. As such, she has a more nightdress-y look here. AC drew in a few tentacles, and I couldn't help but make them look squishy.

Last but not least is Olympia! We wanted to align her appearance more with her background, hence her altered design :0 Having rips of the artbook easily accesible online also helped us flesh out her hair in particular, since we didn't want to just transplant Gutrune's hairstyle onto her.

And that's all of them!!! I'm honestly hoping to draw more EO characters, though Seyfried's design scares me (honestly the reason why I couldn't make a Reversed Emperor comic).

Currently, I've made a lot of progress on the EO4 game, and I'm excited to draw up the three N-turned-PCs + Xiuan >:'0!!! I don't think I can ever get as cool as Morika tho. If you've come this far and aren't into EO, please check out their blog!! Their art is stunning and has come a really long way :")

#etrian odyssey #etrian odyssey 3 #etrian odyssey iii #idylls of the abyssal forest #gawang abo #colorist #noa minjin #miranda minjin #gutrune #olympia #kujura #flowdia #micah abdelghani #eva abdelghani #I'LL GIVE THEM SURNAMES WHEN I NEED TO #honestly why i never got to finalize work on the CR x RGU series is not just because I wanted to animate it #but also because i had to give the students surnames #like ye they're ~10 characters but surnames don't come easy to me >:'000 #and i'm super particular with names so :AAA:#issa trap i'd rather sidestep entirely #also if you follow me for CR... hi i'm sorry but i reverted back to my oldest brainrot to cope with thesis + the new game updates #NOT TO SAY THE NEW UPDATES ARE BAD #but i realized i cared more about crafting a story than following along the trail of another :")#i still want to work on the CR stories and animate them and put them up!#it's just that i need time to recoup i guess #community is also really buck wild. I don't think i ever got over the whiplash of them saying “we will not play *ends up excited anyway*”#it's ok if u enjoy it naman but the speed in which they get stoked for updates was like “:”D? i thought we were protesting. what y'all doin #i'm sorry if u read thru all these tags and saw me processing my trauma with the cr fandom #i'm doing a lot better now!!! please have a good day as well and take care of yourself!#EDIT 04.27.2024 THEY ALL HAVE SURNAMES. HURRAH!

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martiwikiwi · 2 months

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Welcome to yet another post of Marta's very old OCs! Today we have another of my 2010's queer dramas, but this one was a special comic because it was like, the origin of all the other dramas I drew after. Also, I drew this comic twice, and the second time it had a special ending featuring a character from another comic that took place in the future because by changing the ending of this story he could rewrite the timeline and avoid the big drama of his own story, which allowed me to draw that comic again but with a new ending. It was a very complex story, ok?

This imposibly handsome wizard was the main character: Prince Darkdawn (he/him). He was a very talented half-elf wizard but his weapon of choice were his fists, and he punched the bad ones real hard. He had a very important mission: to protect an angel. Ironically, by the end of the story he died of an incurable illness that the angel infects him with... Despite of being a prince, his dream was to make a living of his erotica novels that for some reason nobody dared to publish. He started the story claiming he had never felt attraction (you can see my surprise as I was reading the comic and finding my first asexual quote) but by the end of the story he had three boyfriends. Looking at him from the distance, he was demi and pansexual, also sickly romantic. Wanna know his army of boyfriends?

This super cool elf here is Sora (he/him). Sora's big drama was he had amnesia and couldn't remember anything of three years of his life. Ironically, during the story he had an accident and forgot everything but remembered what happened during those three years and that's when he discovered he already knew the angel! Because he used to be his bodyguard! And they were a couple! But drama happened and was forced to quit the job then! And his romantic relationship with the angel too. He was the responsible party member, always caring about everyone and planning stuff ahead. His very gay ass fell in love with the prince almost instantly.

The cutest and smallest warrior ever was Song (he/him). Yes, this is a very early version of my Prince Forgotten Love Song, actually, both of them have a serious heart condition. However, this Song wasn't a prince and couldn't cast any magic, instead, he was trained exclusively for protecting the angel, so he was like his (new) official bodyguard. He was very very very cute and everyone adored him because of reasons and while he was the most capable party member he felt very frustrated at the minor failures. He was crazy for the angel and by the middle of the story started falling in love with the prince too. He was a very dramatic gay but also very top.

Finally, we have Angel (he/him). He was... good for nothing. He was a failed experiment and had super dangerous psychic powers he couldn't control. He actually used his powers once to defend Song in a battle but hurt everyone instead so for the rest of the story his role is of a helpless maiden. Because he was so so useless, everyone was obsessed with his well-being and loved him dearly. He had chronic pain and disliked his angel wings a lot. By the end of the story, the love of the prince, his exes (Sora wasn't his only ex) and the kiddo transformed him into A GOD OF LIGHT or something like that.

It was such a drama of 500+ pages full of sweet romantic scenes and tears. I don't do romantic scenes like that anymore...

#Marta Selusi #my art #oc #sketchbook #artists on tumblr

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dangoarts · 1 year

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i realized something as i was falling asleep yesterday: if i want people to like the au i'm making, i need to actually share what the hell's happening in my brain. therefore

Blotted AU Masterpost!

I've mentioned the Blotted AU a bit here, but I've barely gone in depth about what it actually is. In short, it's a Batim/Batdr rewrite AU inspired by Epic Mickey. It roughly merges the concept of the Cycle with the early game story of Epic Mickey, ideas from Ink Machine and Dreams Come to Life, and the story of Dark Revival. The general plot is that the cast from Bendy and the Ink Machine are all dragged into the Cycle by the Ink Demon and now have to survive as a team.

Before I go in depth (and it's gonna be long i apologize), here is the google doc where I wrote down every idea dump I had for it, a cast list with their roles and brief history in the au, and a rough timeline. It won't be any better of a tl;dr for this post since it's a barely organized mess that only makes sense to me, but if you're interested in seeing how the au developed over time, feel free to give it a read! A lot of the idea dumps ended up being about Sammy whoops (he's my favorite).

~*~*~

The rewrite starts off when Joey commissions the Ink Machine from Gent. Originally it was to cut down on animation costs and time, but when he realizes he could make 3D actors with it, he starts to experiment.

His first attempt that lives is Ink Bendy. His disfiguration and uncannily human appearance is immediately met with hostility and rejection, and Joey basically crams him back into the machine to try again. Unbeknownst to him, that creates the Cycle and Bendy never actually died. The rejection and isolation along with being trapped in a realm that mimics the fleeting glimpse of the real world he could've lived in started brewing up his very negative feelings towards Joey and humans in general.

Joey tries to make Bendy again, but the only surviving clones are the Wandering Sin Bendy and Concept Bendy, both of which are "scrapped" like Ink Bendy. Once he accepts that Bendy won't work, he tries with the Butcher Gang. A lot more clones survive, but they all end up horribly disfigured and mutilated. All of them are thrown into the Cycle.

His attempts with Alice Angel make incredibly humanoid creatures (original Lost Ones minus the dead employee bit), and that leads him to try creating an actual human with the Ink Machine. Everyone is really concerned about his actions and the ethics behind it at this point, and they get Henry to try and stop him. Naturally, Joey ignores them, makes a secret room for it, and continues his experiments.

After numerous failures that end up creating the population of the Cycle, Audrey is born in 1941. Joey discovers the joys and struggles of being a single dad working an executive position until 1946, when the Ink Demon finally gathers enough power over the Cycle to control the Ink Machine. Joey Drew Studios floods with ink, and every employee in the building is dragged into the Cycle.

Nathan Arch inherits the studio rights and adopts Audrey like Joey's will requests. A lot of her childhood with Joey is forgotten due to normal childhood amnesia, but she still goes by Audrey Drew. Her life is relatively uneventful and she gets hired as an animator in Archgate Studios like normal.

Meanwhile, in the Cycle, the studio employees quickly have to find shelter from the hostile toons. After finding refuge in Artist's Rest, they start pushing back against the Ink Demon's relentless aggression. It turns into a war of survival, with each side fighting to trap or destroy the other.

The animators start losing the fight when Sammy gets his eye torn out by the Ink Demon. The ink from the wound creates a mental connection between the two, and he's slowly corrupted from the inside out. It culminates into the Ink Demon puppeteering him, forcing him to lead the toons into the animators' base. A massive fight breaks out that kills most of the studio employees, and the Ink Demon consumes Joey's soul to permanently kill him.

Besides Joey, the employees who died are reincarnated as toons or Lost Ones, dubbed "conversion death." Usually their memories of their past life are blocked off, allowing their original personalities to stay but creating a blank slate for the Ink Demon to control. Conversion killed toons can keep memories from their past human life, but they never keep all of them. They can also regain their human memories again, but the process is usually very confusing, drawn out, and painful, with the memories coming back as visions accompanied by migraines.

Sammy was conversion killed after the fight that killed Joey. He was made into the Ink Demon's second in command, complete with receiving a fraction of his power as shifting through walls and manipulating his ink appearance. Susie and Norman were conversion killed during the fight, and they became Twisted Alice and initially a Lost One respectively. Norman's body was incredibly unstable and needed mechanical implants to survive outside of the Puddles, resulting in the Projectionist.

Henry steps up in Joey's absence and leads the surviving few to the Gent workshop after a few days of living precariously without safety. They switch their focus from fighting against the Ink Demon to surviving, now locked in a defensive stalemate with the toon forces. During the time, Thomas uses the familiar tech and supplies to create the signal towers, sealing off the workshop from the toons.

During the stalemate, the animators still had to brave the studio to gather food and materials. Jack, Wally, Shawn, and Daniel did most of the scouring, and Allison and Thomas only ventured out whenever they needed more supplies for his machines. While on those missions, Daniel was conversion killed into Buddy Boris, Jack's left arm was slashed and corrupted, and Allison and Thomas were conversion killed together into Allison Angel and Tom.

Boris forgot everything from his past life, but still shows sympathy to the animators. He lets them stay in his hideout he made if they need to and helps them evade the other toons. Allison and Tom forgot most of their past, but they remembered that the Ink Demon was dangerous and the animators weren't. They quickly went back to their side as soon as they could.

In 1963, Wilson disappears from the real world after finding out what the Ink Machine does in Archgate's museum honoring Joey Drew Studios. In the Cycle, he picks up where Thomas left off on the development of technicolor to combat the toons, along with trying to create his own ink life. He succeeds at both with the creation of the Keepers and technicolor ink, and the war flares back up.

Eventually, he uses the technicolor to gravely weaken and imprison the Ink Demon after a large fight. Henry is against his actions and torturous experiments on the Ink Demon, and he leaves after getting into a massive argument with him. To everyone else, he completely vanishes, but he instead takes up residence with Boris.

In 1973, the Ink Demon escapes from his physical prison Wilson trapped him in. He starts to recover from Wilson's treatment, but still can't get past the mental prison of Dapper Bendy he trapped him in. On the anniversary of the studio's disappearance, Audrey is lured into the Cycle by the Dark Puddles. Most of the story here follows Dark Revival's, with Allison finding her after a Piper raises the alarm, Audrey discovering Bendy and accidentally shocking him with her power, the Ink Demon getting released periodically from his toon prison, and Audrey finally making it to the Gent workshop.

When the Ink Demon's toon prison destabilizes, he acts a lot more aggressive and automatically treats everyone as his enemy. He kills anyone he can get his hands on, which included an overjoyed Sammy that ran straight to his death. He calms down after Audrey shows him kindness as Bendy, and he especially calms down when she shows him that same level of kindness and additional sympathy both as Bendy and the Ink Demon once she learns what had happened to him.

However, during that, Sammy took the death extremely badly, believing that he was killed because he didn’t free him, and does everything he can to earn his forgiveness again. Along with suffering through memory flashes of his past life, he tries to sacrifice anyone he can get his hands on, which includes the other toons that once trusted him. They reject him as their leader and start forming isolated groups, with some of them becoming Amok and their followers, the Ink Jets, the Demon Followers that still fight against the animators, and colonies of Butcher Gang clones. Alice wanders the studio alone, and the Projectionist stays in his designated area.

Sammy gets imprisoned after trying to attack the Gent workshop in a desperate attempt to please the Ink Demon. During his imprisonment, he regains most of his memories and starts to question how genuine his loyalty was to the demon. Audrey finds Henry shortly after and brings him back. Henry explains the full history of the Cycle to her, including what Joey did and the revelation that she's not human.

I'm still unsure whether or not I want Wilson to create a big scene with Shipahoy Dudley, and if he did, he would permanently die like Joey. However, I do want Audrey to deescalate the situation between the Ink Demon and the animators. His problems all came from Joey, and the other workers did nothing and were against his actions with the Ink Machine. Once he calms down and stops, he'd release everyone who isn't native to the Cycle back into the real world.

The ones who died in the Cycle revert back to mostly human in the real world. Some traits from their previous forms carry over like scars, Alice and Allison keeping their horns for example. They'd have to readjust to living like humans again along with revoking their legal death status.

~*~*~

and that's it! if you made it this far congrats you're a trooper

i'm still working on it and i wanna make stories for it like i did with sammy already, so praying to the motivation gods that i can get enough brainthoughts to write

now that i have the explanation done i can go back to posting cryptic nonsensical stuff about it

#batim #batdr #bendy and the ink machine #bendy and the dark revival #batim dctl #batim au #batdr au #blotted au #blotted au masterpost #blotted au explanation #writing stuff #gif warning #long post

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zalrb · 1 year

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Could you do a ranking your favorite scream movies and why?

Scream

I'm not really sure if this needs an in-depth breakdown. It's iconic. The originator. The ultimate make-fun-of-and-pay-homage-to-movie-tropes movie. The first phone call, Drew Barrymore dying in the first 5 minutes? The dialogue, the meta, the balance, it's just all so well-done.

Scream 2

Randy is correct, this one is inferior to the first but it is a great sequel and not an inferior movie. I love the Ghostface reveals, they're very fun and funny, they're so close to being my favourite (but Billy and Stu reign supreme) the conversation about desensitization and art imitating life was carried throughout and carried throughout well. Joshua Jackson and Sarah Michelle Gellar having their small roles in it is great 90s teen pop culture reference.

Scream 4

Scream 3

I'm going to talk about them together. I put Scream 4 before Scream 3 because I think Scream 4 is technically tighter and the reveal of Jill Roberts being Ghostface was more interesting than Roman's reveal, which was kind of a jump the shark moment. Scream 3 had some good elements, like Sidney getting attacked on the set of the movie-within-the-movie so her life has become blended with pop culture, and in a lot of ways the third movie is the most meta considering the actors in Stab are given the same complaints about Stab that the actors in Scream had about the movie, i.e. the constant rewrites. Roman having to do the Stab movie before he could do his romance is what happened with Wes Craven, he had to direct Scream before he could do the movie he wanted so while Stab is a movie about the characters' lives, Scream 3 is kind of a movie about what's going on with the cast. That's deep-dive inside baseball meta. But it's not very fun. It is certainly more fun than Scream 5 or 6 but it kind of drags, Sidney is hardly in it because Neve only worked 20 days, and the supporting characters aren't nearly as engaging, not like how Randy was, or even Tatum and Halli.

Scream 4 didn't feel as laborious, it's light on the meta compared to the first three, but it's back to that kind of light, tongue and cheek vibe. Emma Roberts niece to Julia Roberts playing Jill Roberts who is tired of being Sid's cousin is a very big wink. Rory Culkin being in it, great choice. Having Adam Brody and Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin and those girls from PLL and Degrassi TGN do cameos were all great pop culture references. It also delivered on the "modern horror film" rules in a more satisfying way to me than Scream 3 did on the trilogy rules, like the deaths being more gruesome or "shocking" for the time and for the franchise like Jill shooting Trevor in the balls, which wouldn't have happened before.

Scream 5 + 6 are equal to me

I find them equally joyless and charmless tbh, I have the same "meh" attitude towards both of them.

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 3 years

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Ruth Etting (November 23, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American singing star, vaudevillian and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film. Known as "America's sweetheart of song", her signature tunes were "Shine On, Harvest Moon", "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Love Me or Leave Me".

Her other popular recordings included "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Mean to Me", "Exactly Like You" and "Shaking the Blues Away".

As a young girl in Nebraska, Etting had wanted to be an artist; she drew and sketched everywhere she was able. At sixteen, her grandparents decided to send her to art school in Chicago. While Etting attended class, she found a job at the Marigold Gardens nightclub; after a short time there, Etting gave up art classes in favor of a career in show business. Etting, who enjoyed singing in school and church, never took voice lessons. She quickly became a featured vocalist at the club. Etting was then managed by Moe Snyder, whom she married in 1922. Snyder made arrangements for Etting's recording and film contracts as well as her personal and radio appearances. She became nationally known when she appeared in Flo Ziegfeld's Follies of 1927.

Etting intended to retire from performing in 1935, but this did not happen until after her divorce from Snyder in 1937. Harry Myrl Alderman, Etting's pianist, was separated from his wife when he and Etting began a relationship. Snyder did not like seeing his former wife in the company of other men and began making telephone threats to Etting in January 1938. By October, Snyder traveled to Los Angeles and detained Alderman after he left a local radio station; he forced the pianist to take him to the home of his ex-wife at gunpoint. Saying he intended to kill Etting, Alderman, and his own daughter, Edith, who worked for Etting, Snyder shot Alderman. Three days after Alderman was shot, his wife filed suit against Etting for alienation of affections.

While Alderman and Etting claimed to have been married in Mexico in July 1938, Alderman's divorce would not be final until December of that year. The couple was married during Moe Snyder's trial for attempted murder in December 1938. Etting and Alderman relocated to a farm outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado, where they were primarily out of the spotlight for most of their lives. Her fictionalized story was told in the 1955 musical film Love Me Or Leave Me with Doris Day as Ruth Etting and James Cagney as Snyder.

Etting was born on November 23, 1896, in David City, Nebraska, to Alfred Etting, a banker, and Winifred (Kleinhan). Her mother died when she was five years old and she then went to live with her paternal grandparents, George and Hannah Etting. Her father remarried and moved away from David City and was no longer a part of his daughter's life. Etting's grandfather, George, owned the Etting Roller Mills; to the delight of his granddaughter, George Etting allowed traveling circuses and shows to use the lot behind the mills for performances.

Etting was interested in drawing at an early age; she drew and sketched anywhere she was able. Her grandparents were asked to buy the textbooks she had used at the end of a school term because Etting had filled them with her drawings. She left David City at the age of sixteen to attend art school in Chicago. Etting got a job designing costumes at the Marigold Gardens nightclub, which led to employment singing and dancing in the chorus there. She gave up art school soon after going to work at Marigold Gardens. Before turning exclusively to performing, Etting worked as a designer for the owner of a costume shop in Chicago's Loop; she was successful enough to earn a partnership in the shop through her work.

While she enjoyed singing at school and in church, Etting never took voice lessons. She said that she had patterned her song styling after Marion Harris, but created her own unique style by alternating tempos and by varying some notes and phrases. Describing herself as a "high, squeaky soprano" during her days in David City, Etting developed a lower range singing voice after her arrival in Chicago which led to her success. Her big moment came when a featured vocalist suddenly became ill and was unable to perform. With no other replacement available, Etting was asked to fill in. She quickly changed into the costume and scanned the music arrangements; the performer was male, so Etting tried to adjust by singing in a lower register. She became a featured vocalist at the nightclub.

Etting described herself as a young, naive girl when she arrived in Chicago. Due to her inexperience in the ways of the big city, she became reliant on Snyder after their meeting. Etting met gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder in 1922, when she was performing at the Marigold Gardens. Snyder, who divorced his first wife to marry Etting, was well-acquainted with Chicago's nightclubs and the entertainers who worked in them; he once served as a bodyguard to Al Jolson. Snyder also used his political connections to get bookings for Etting, who was called "Miss City Hall" because of Snyder's influence in Chicago. Etting married Snyder on July 17, 1922 in Crown Point, Indiana. She later said she married him "nine-tenths out of fear and one-tenth out of pity." Etting later told her friends, "If I leave him, he'll kill me." He managed her career, booking radio appearances and eventually had her signed to an exclusive recording contract with Columbia Records.

The couple moved to New York in 1927, where Etting made her Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927. Irving Berlin had recommended her to showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Etting nervously prepared to sing for Ziegfeld at the audition. However, he did not ask her to sing at all; only to walk up and down the room. She was hired on that basis because Ziegfeld did not hire women with big ankles. While the original plan for the show was for Etting to do a tap dance after singing "Shaking the Blues Away", she later remembered she was not a very good dancer. At the show's final rehearsal, Flo Ziegfeld told her, "Ruth, when you get through singing, just walk off the stage". Etting also appeared in Ziegfeld's last "Follies" in 1931.

She went on to appear in a number of other hit shows in rapid succession, including Ziegfeld's Simple Simon and Whoopee!. Etting was not originally signed to perform in Simple Simon; she became part of the cast at the last minute when vocalist Lee Morse was too intoxicated to perform. Ziegfeld asked Etting to replace Morse; she hurried to Boston, where the show was being tried out prior to Broadway. When Etting arrived, songwriters Rodgers and Hart discovered that the song "Ten Cents a Dance" was not written for Etting's voice range. The three spent the night rewriting the song so Etting could perform it.

Toward the end of Simple Simon's Broadway run, Etting persuaded Ziegfeld to add "Love Me Or Leave Me" to the show though the song was originally written for Whoopee!. She had recorded the song in 1928, but Etting's new version of it was impressive enough to earn her a Vitaphone contract to make film shorts.

In Hollywood, Etting made a long series of movie shorts between 1929 and 1936, and three feature movies in 1933 and 1934. She described the short films as either having a simple plot to allow for her to sing two songs or with no plot at all. The idea was to have Etting sing at least two songs in the film. While she received a marquee billing for Roman Scandals, Etting had only two lines in the film and sang just one song. Etting believed she might have had more success in full-length films if she had been given some acting lessons. Her perception was that the studios viewed her only as a vocalist. She later recalled, "I was no actress, and I knew it. But I could sell a song". In 1936, she appeared in London in Ray Henderson's Transatlantic Rhythm. Etting quit the show because she and the other performers had not been paid.

Etting was first heard on radio station WLS when she was living in Chicago. Her appearance drew so much fan mail the station signed her to a year's contract for twice weekly performances. She had her own twice weekly 15 minute radio show on CBS in the 1930s. By 1934, she was on NBC with sports announcer Ted Husing doing the announcing and Oldsmobile sponsoring her program.

After an unissued test made by Victor on April 4, 1924, Etting was signed to Columbia Records in February 1926. She remained at Columbia through June 1931, when she split her recording between ARC (Banner, Perfect, Romeo, Oriole, etc.) and Columbia through March 1933. She signed with Brunswick and remained there until May 1934, when she re-signed with Columbia through July 1935. After a solitary Brunswick session in March 1936, she signed with the British label Rex and recorded two sessions in August and September, 1936. Etting returned to the US and signed with Decca in December 1936 and recorded until April 1937, when she basically retired from recording.

Etting saved some of her paycheck each week, regardless of the amount she was making at the time. Her friends said she invested in California real estate rather than the stock market. Etting, who made many of her own clothes, did her own housekeeping and lived frugally, initially announced her retirement in 1935. It is not clear why she did not go through with her announced plans, but she issued a second statement regarding retirement after filing for divorce from Snyder in November 1937.

Snyder's aggressive and controlling management style began to cause problems for Etting; during her work with Whoopee! on Broadway, Snyder was a constant presence. He was never without a gun and enjoyed poking people with it while saying "Put your hands up!" then laughing when their fright was evident. Snyder also persisted in cornering Ziegfeld because he believed Etting's role in the musical could be improved. Ziegfeld had a different opinion and indicated nothing would be changed. Snyder would then mumble that it was not a suggestion but a demand.

By 1934 she was having difficulty getting engagements. Snyder's arguing and fighting at venues where Etting was employed caused her to be passed by for jobs in the United States. In 1936, she thought taking work in England might be the answer, but Snyder created problems while she was working there also. Soon after the couple arrived in England, Snyder became involved in a street fight which created adverse publicity for Etting. She divorced Moe Snyder on the grounds of cruelty and abandonment on November 30, 1937. Snyder did not contest the divorce and received a settlement from his former wife. Etting gave her ex-husband half of her earnings at the time, $50,000, some securities and a half interest in a home in Beverly Hills, California. She deducted the gambling debts of Snyder she had paid and the costs she had paid for a home for Snyder's mother.

Etting fell in love with her pianist, Myrl Alderman, who was separated from his wife. In January 1938, she began receiving threatening telephone calls from Snyder, who initially claimed Etting withheld assets from him when the divorce settlement was made. Though the couple was divorced, Snyder was also upset because of reports that she was seeing another man. Snyder told Etting that he would come to California and kill her. When Snyder telephoned and found Etting unavailable, he told his daughter Edith that he "would fix her ticket, too". He called again that evening; this time Etting took the call with her cousin, Arthur Etting, listening on an extension. Etting requested police protection after the telephone call and arranged for private protection. Apparently believing the danger was over when Snyder did not appear soon after his telephone call, Etting released her bodyguards a few days later.

On October 15, 1938, Snyder detained Myrl Alderman at a local radio station and forced the pianist to take him to his former wife at gunpoint. In the house at the time were Etting and Edith Snyder. Edith, Snyder's daughter by a previous marriage, worked for Etting and remained living with her after the divorce. Snyder held Etting and Alderman at gunpoint; when told his daughter was in another part of the house, he made Etting call her into the room. Snyder said he intended to kill all three, and told them to be quiet. When Myrl Alderman attempted to speak, Snyder shot him. Snyder then told his ex-wife, "I've had my revenge, so you can call the police."

Snyder claimed Myrl Alderman pulled a gun and shot at him first and that his ex-wife would not file charges against him because she still loved him. He also claimed he was drunk when he made the telephone threats to Etting in January 1938, saying that at the time his intentions were to kill both his ex-wife and himself. Ruth Etting said that the only gun in the home belonged to her, and after the shooting of Alderman, she was able to go into her bedroom and get it. Upon seeing Etting's gun, Moe Snyder wrested it away from her; it landed on the floor. Snyder's daughter, Edith, picked it up and held it on her father, shooting at him but hitting the floor instead. During a police reenactment of the shooting three days later, Edith Snyder said that she fired at her father to save Ruth Etting, weeping as she continued, "I don't yet know whether I am sorry I missed my Dad or whether I am glad". Snyder was accused of attempting to murder his ex-wife, his daughter, and Etting's accompanist, Myrl Alderman, the kidnapping of Alderman, as well as California state gun law violations.

Three days after the shooting of Myrl Alderman, the pianist's second wife, Alma, sued Etting for alienation of her husband's affections. Though Etting and Alderman claimed to have been married in Tijuana, Mexico in July 1938, Alma Alderman said any marriage was invalid, because her divorce from Myrl Alderman would not be final until December 1938. Police investigators could find no record of the couple's Mexican marriage. Etting publicly invited Alma Alderman to visit her husband in the hospital, in an effort to see if the couple could reconcile.

Ruth Etting testified that she was not married to Alderman. During the course of the trial, there was also a question of the validity of Alderman's marriage to Alma. Alderman's first wife, Helen, obtained an interlocutory decree on January 7, 1935; the divorce became final one year later. On January 9, 1935, Alderman married Alma in Mexico. The second Mrs. Alderman called Moe Snyder to the stand as a witness regarding an attraction between her husband and Etting. Helen Alderman Warne also appeared in court, claiming that Alma Alderman had spirited Myrl away from her. Warne added that she had married and divorced the pianist twice. Alma Alderman's lawsuit ended in December 1939, with the court finding that she was not entitled to damages from Ruth Etting.

The testimony in both trials brought much personal information into the public eye. Snyder, who claimed to still be in love with his ex-wife, gave Etting a diamond and platinum bracelet which she accepted after Snyder's telephone threat in January 1938. Etting testified that she agreed with her ex-husband's statement to police that Snyder was either drunk or out of his mind when he threatened her by phone. Snyder's attorney initially tried to prevent Etting from testifying against Snyder with a charge that the divorce she obtained in Illinois was invalid because she was a resident of California at that time.

During the trial, Snyder's attorney portrayed Ruth Etting as a calculating woman who had married Moe Snyder strictly for the benefit of her career, and that she divorced him in favor of being with another, younger man (Alderman). Snyder's attorney echoed his client's claim of self-defense and said his client never intended to kill Etting, his daughter, and Myrl Alderman. The attorney further claimed that if Snyder intended to kill the pianist, he had ample time to do so while he held a gun on Alderman during the drive from the radio station to the home where the shooting took place.

Etting married Alderman, who was almost a decade her junior, on December 14, 1938 in Las Vegas, during Moe Snyder's trial for attempted murder. Snyder was convicted of attempted murder, but released on appeal after one year in jail. Snyder won a new trial but returned to jail in January 1940 in lieu of bail. In August 1940, Myrl Alderman asked the district attorney to drop further prosecution attempts against Snyder for the 1938 shooting.

Etting, who had retired from performing prior to the shooting and subsequent trials, briefly had a radio show on WHN in 1947. She also accepted an engagement at New York's Copacabana in March 1947. Etting traveled alone to New York and during a newspaper interview, was asked if she had ever seen Moe Snyder again. She replied, "No, I hope I never do." and said that her husband never went to bed without a gun.

The couple relocated to an eight-acre farm outside of Colorado Springs in 1938. Alderman, who was raised in Colorado Springs, operated a restaurant there for a time. Etting and Alderman remained married until his death in Denver on November 28, 1966; he was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs. Etting died in Colorado Springs in 1978, aged 81. She was survived by a stepson, John Alderman, and four grandchildren. Alderman and Etting are now interred at the Shrine of Remembrance Mausoleum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Her life was the basis for the fictionalized 1955 film, Love Me or Leave Me, which starred Doris Day (as Etting), James Cagney (as Snyder) and Cameron Mitchell (as Alderman). Etting, Myrl Alderman and Moe Snyder all sold their rights to the story to MGM; Snyder was living in Chicago in 1955. Etting expressed sadness that "the real highlight of my life", her marriage to Alderman, was omitted from the film. Shortly before her death, Etting said she thought the screen portrayal of her was too tough and that Jane Powell would have been a better choice for the lead.

Etting has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in films, located on the north side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard. Her recordings of Love Me Or Leave Me (2005) and Ten Cents a Dance (1999) are part of the Grammy Hall of Fame.

#ruth etting #classic hollywood #classic stars #golden age of hollywood #singer #1920s hollywood #1930s hollywood

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Ranking Cinderella Adaptations

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A dream is a wish your heart makes, and if your wish is to see countless takes on the beloved fairy tale of Cinderella, then consider your dreams having come true many times over—including this year, with a new Cinderella by way of Amazon Studios. This latest adaptation seems to have combined qualities of many of its predecessors: it’s playfully anachronistic and eschews the traditional Disney or Rodgers & Hammerstein songs in favor of a tracklist of modern pop covers; it also engages with Cinderella’s career aspirations beyond fitting her foot into a glass slipper.

But this Cinderella owes everything to the other soot-stained girls, animated and otherwise, who wished with all their hearts for decades before her. How does the new adaptation compare to the modern fairy tales, animated classics, and another fairy tale riff with an outstanding Stephen Sondheim tune? Check out our ranking of Cinderella adaptations, from worst to best.

10. A Cinderella Story (2004)

This cult classic is a clever retelling, with peak early-aughts casting of Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray as the star-crossed, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired lovers: Sam toils away at her late father’s Southern California diner, under the heel of a delightful Jennifer Coolidge as her vain stepmother, while Austin is the closest thing to high school royalty as the quarterback with a sensitive side. Regina King as the longtime diner employee-turned-metaphorical fairy godmother who gets Sam to the homecoming masquerade dance is the other key bit of casting, but you’d have to really be a fan of the “fairy tales in high school” subgenre to get on board. Plus, the stable of derivative direct-to-video sequels makes the sparkle wear off with each new, formulaic installment released.

9. Cinderella (2021)

Kay Cannon’s (Pitch Perfect) progressive plot urging entrepreneurial dressmaker Ella (Camilla Cabello), her bitterly materialistic stepmother (Idina Menzel), and other original female characters to choose themselves over the supposed security of marriage is not quite enough to balance the cringey modern soundtrack and anachronistic witticisms. It’s too bad, because this Cinderella puts forth ambitious ideas, and any production with Billy Porter as the fairy godmother should be nothing but fabulous. Compared to most of her predecessors, this Cinderella is a distinctively fresh role model for the next generation of kids, but adults won’t find much magic in her story.

8. Ella Enchanted (2004)

This is a tough one, because the source material—that is, Gail Carson Levine’s 1997 middle grade novel—is unquestionably one of the very best Cinderella adaptations: Ella’s curse of obedience is an apt commentary on manipulating young girls into giving up their agency under the guise of people-pleasing. But the film—despite its adorable, baby-faced stars Anne Hathaway and Hugh Dancy—overcomplicates an already daring plot with a throne-stealing subplot (that Cary Elwes, as the unnecessary evil uncle, can’t save) and an unforgivably cheesy cover of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.” Hathaway’s voice is sweeter than Nicholas Galitzine’s rendition in the new Cinderella, but the giants dressed in early-aughts miniskirts strain even the most loose definitions of fantasy. Despite all that, it (mostly) sells Ella struggling against abuses of her obedience in a way that’s still more revelatory than many straight adaptations. Still, you’ve got plenty of better movie choices; forget this adaptation and just read the book.

7. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1965)

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II originally wrote their classic musical for television broadcast instead of the stage, though it has found its way to the latter. CBS’ second TV production (following the original 1957 version starring Julie Andrews) introduced a bright-eyed Lesley Ann Warren (a.k.a. Miss Scarlet from Clue) as Cinderella, and unlike its predecessor was able to be recorded in color. Between the vivid hues, Warren’s expressive acting, and the array of sets, it all contributed to the feeling of watching a taped performance—an incredibly charming one, at that. But the effect does come off as overwrought at times, making it the lowest of the three specifically Rodgers & Hammerstein adaptations on the list.

6. Cinderella (2015)

While visually Kenneth Branagh’s live-action adaptation of the animated Disney classic hews so closely to its source material that it feels like a lost opportunity to be more original, there are some sly plot tweaks. Lily James’ Ella is not hopelessly naïve about her abusive home situation, yet manages to keep up the mantra of “have courage and be kind” through even the worst mistreatment. Streamlining the classic songs to score strengthens the plot, with Ella’s rare occasion of singing being what ultimately saves her. Fans of the blue dress and romantic vibe will have much to swoon over, even if they’re not surprised.

5. Into the Woods (2014)

Or, then, what if I am? / What a Prince would envision? / But then how can you know / Who you are til you know / What you want? Which I don’t… Anna Kendrick brings us a relatably existential Cinderella in this movie adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical about various fairy tale characters who wind up with questionably happy ever afters—including Cinderella, who decides “not to decide,” then ends up with a philandering Prince. It’s not a complete Cinderella story, but it’s a more memorable performance in a handful of scenes than entire movies have attempted.

4. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1957)

Despite only surviving in black-and-white form, CBS’ original TV broadcast shines thanks to its star: Julie Andrews, then performing My Fair Lady on Broadway, who makes this Cinderella both an amalgamation of her then-current and future roles and a performance all its own. You can see glimmers of her comic talents as Maria in The Sound of Music—this Cinderella also has more wit than other versions—but it’s her voice that elevates Rodgers & Hammerstein’s adaptation of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale into something timeless.

3. Cinderella (1950)

Few Cinderella adaptations have achieved the same sweeping sense of sheer romance in the Disney animated classic: the painted backgrounds, the dreamy sequences reflected in soap bubbles and sparkling through the palace gardens, the surprisingly high emotional stakes that make the resolution all the sweeter. And while it’s become a common Disney trope, the requisite scene in which the stepsisters cruelly rip apart Cinderella’s dress adds a layer of wickedness not present in the Rodgers & Hammerstein adaptations, nor successfully recreated in any of the live-action versions. The same goes for the goofy mice singing “Cinderelly, Cinderelly”—every subsequent CGI mouse lacks the warmth that goes into a believable animal companion. That said, the animated movie’s legacy is somewhat marred by its direct-to-video sequels of diminishing returns, though you also have to give them props for pulling an Avengers: Endgame 12 years earlier with Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time.

2. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997)

For many of us, Disney’s animated Cinderella was a childhood classic, but The Wonderful World of Disney’s ‘90s production was the first time the story truly felt magical. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s songs were updated with contemporary beats, bridging the forty years between the first broadcast and this version: “Impossible” is one of the best songs from the show, but it hasn’t been truly sung until Whitney Houston is belting it out to a starry-eyed Brandy. The production’s effortlessly diverse casting—Whoopi Goldberg as the queen, Paolo Montalban as the prince, Bernadette Peters as the stepmother—only amplifies the universal nature of the story. Almost twenty-five years later, this adaptation still feels like the television event it was when it premiered.

1. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

A truly successful adaptation is one that doesn’t have to feel beholden to its source material. By opening with the Brothers Grimm explaining the inspiration behind their own interpretation of Cinderella, Ever After rewrites all of the familiar themes into a historical fiction—specifically, Renaissance-era France—context. Danielle’s (Drew Barrymore) misfortune as an orphan servant girl is so believable thanks to the cruelty of her stepmother’s (Anjelica Huston, a legend) abuse, but so is her determination and ingenuity to rise above her station. While Disney’s animated Cinderella is romantic, Ever After is a romance: Danielle disguises herself as a comtesse in order to spend time with Prince Henry (Dougray Scott), and they develop an actual relationship, complete with rejection once her subterfuge is revealed. Plus, Leonardo da Vinci is there for comic relief and an unintentional fairy godmother assist! If you want your Cinderella story with a compelling feminist arc but you’re also burnt out on the songs, this is your happily ever after.

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Cinderella will begin streaming on Amazon Video on September 3rd.

The post Ranking Cinderella Adaptations appeared first on Den of Geek.

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tsuki-sennin · 3 years

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Mina-san, bonne lecture~! (Tsuki recaps his feelings about Kamen Rider Saber, a personal essay.)

So, Saber... what a wild ride it's been, huh? Just a quick heads up, this is very long and rambling, and also contains spoilers for everything in Saber. It's fine if you don't wanna read all this, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

TL:DR, Kamen Rider Saber's an undercooked hot mess I absolutely adore, warts and all.

Speaking as objectively as possible, it's a 6/10. Probably closer to a 5 than a 7... it's not great: All the different plot elements are cluttered and weirdly paced; character focus is disjointed and clearly biased toward certain characters, leaving great ones like Kento and Ogami, interesting ones like Kamijo and Hayato, and underdeveloped ones like Sophia and especially the Shindais in the dust; not to mention its balance of comedy and drama is off, and while both are very effective, there's a lot of mood whiplash that can take you out of the story. I also feel like a lot of the easily avoidable character conflict could've been easily resolved, even in universe, by simple conversations. Be careful Fukuda, I think Inoue might sue you if he finds out you've been biting his style and doing it worse.

Rider shows have a very frustrating tendency to drop cool form ideas and not do anything with them, and I don't think it's ever been more the case than with Saber. There's a similar argument to be made with the majority of Heisei Phase 2 after Gaim, but wow. The suits are expensive to make without just straight up recycling everything, I get that, but man, I really wanted to see more Wonder Rider forms. How come Touma got all the fun, eh? Of note are the Blades King of Arthur forms (which look amazing by the way), Espada's Jaaku Dragon forms (one of which I even drew last night), even the non-elemental random Wonder Ride Books all have awesome design elements that go tragically unused. Even if the other Swordsmen just kinda have the ones they do get to use slapped onto them, that's at least something. Touma also just straight up only uses Diago Speedy twice and never again. You have cool props guys, don't waste them like that!

Speaking of waste, Espada, goddamn. Since most of the Wonder Ride Books are Story Type and he needs one very specific Story Book to transform, he doesn't get much of... anything, really! No Wonder Rider forms like Blades, Lamp Do Cerberus being exclusive to Ganbarizing, only getting to use the Ride Gatriker like once, he even spends the second and third arcs as a completely different Rider, then once he comes back he doesn't get a King of Arthur-granted upgrade or even a Necrom Espada form. ...at least, not yet anyway. I'm holding out hope for Espada x Necrom and the eventual Saber V-Cinemas. Extra Rider stans, we will be well respected someday.

The Unreal Engine CGI used for fights in early Chapters was pretty good but wow it feels disconnected and they really drop it quick. I feel like if the animators had more freedom to use as many forms as they want, we'd have gotten a lot more mileage out of the books beyond... decoration basically. I actually really liked the CGI sequences, they felt creative and were fun to follow along with.

The soundtrack is pretty great on its own and conveys what it needs to, but they seriously overplay the orchestral themes. It honestly feels kind of... stock at times. I think my favorite parts of the score are when it winds down, since it feels a lot more natural and lets the cinematographers and actors speak for themselves.

As awesome as I think Falchion's design and the Mumeiken Kyomu are, The Phoenix Swordsman and the Book of Ruin comes up short as its own standalone thing. You'd think 30 or so minutes of non-stop action would be awesome, and it almost is? It's as good as a typical episode of the series with a higher action budget, but it kinda drags on a bit too long; and although I think Emotional Dragon looks cool, it feels a bit tacked on. Coming off of the incredible Zero-One REAL×TIME, it doesn't give you much room to breathe, which Rider films are typically great at handling. I also thought the resolution for the kid's subplot was kinda forced. He does an okay job at acting considering his age and doesn't overstay his welcome, but I really don't see how 20 minutes of violence and action is enough to convince him to be brave enough to go play with the other kids. 5/10, it's closer to a 4 than a 6 and I think that maybe Zero-One should've stood on its own if they really had to push back Kiramager Bee-Bop Dream because of the pandemic.

Alright, with all that said... As imperfect and undercooked Saber was, like Ghost I can consider it a personal favorite, 10/10. Call it a guilty pleasure if you want, but holy hell it's just the show I needed. Takuro Fukuda has a talent for creating fun, wonderful characters and utterly fascinating worldbuilding and concepts. It's a shame he doesn't utilize them fully, but hey!

The action and fight choreography are pretty top notch as usual. Lots of beautiful shot composition and set pieces, and plenty of great angles to help keep up with the extra busy action. I love watching the suit actors perform and they deserve all the respect in the world for their hard work in those hot, sweaty, and heavy costumes. Their visual design is also top notch, with lots of unique and fascinating forms and cool weapons I desperately want to play with despite being broke, all with spectacular finishers and hype jingles with the voice of Akio motherfucking Ohtsuka calling them out. A real feast for the eyes. Not a single bad suit among them, yeah I said it, fight me.

The crossover specials are soooo good too.

-I went over my feelings on the Zenkaiger crossover episodes in a separate post (good luck finding that btw), but to sum it up, they were great character moments for Zox and the Shindai siblings with lots of great screwball comedy and some good old fashioned meta humor.

-The Ghost crossovers are great little side stories all about how Daitenku Temple somehow had the Ghost Ijunroku Wonder Ride Book? I genuinely have no idea why it was there, or how Makoto had the Specter Gekikou Senki, and as far as I remember neither of their origins are explained. Did Luna or Tassel hand them off to them and told them to wait for a sword guy? And why do these generic French Revolution Gamma villains working for Danton get their asses handed to them so easily by Kanon, who literally just became a Rider? I thought that Makoto deciding to adopt all the Kanon clones into his family was both hilarious and adorable though; considering all the crap they went through, I think it was a good ending to this plot. Gimme Espada x Necrom already Toei/Bandai/Fukuda/whoever I need to yell at, give Kento things to do, I beg you.

-I haven't actually seen Super Hero Senki since it's not available for subbing yet, but apparently there's a Journey to the West plot starring the Taros and Ohma Zi-O and I want to see that so badly.

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra? Yoohei Kawakami? A match made in heaven, that's what they are. All of their themes are absolute bangers. All of them. Almighty, Kamen Rider Saber, Sparks, Taju Rokou, all excellent and empowering pieces. Rewrite the Story, Will Save Us, and The Story Never Ends are all amazing inserts done by the cast, and it makes me wish we had even more of them to help break up the monotony of the score.

The characters are what easily make this show such a great watch though. For the most part, they have great personalities and chemistry, consistently fun and interesting scenes, well acted and... sometimes well-written development, and deeply investing personal stakes.

Narrating it all is the delightfully eccentric Tassel/Viktor, portrayed by Romanesque Ishitobi "TOBI" of the Paris-based Les Romanesques. I was utterly confused by his presence at first, wondering why there needed to be a narrator when the story would've been perfectly fine without it. He even got a special spot in the opening despite having no stake in the plot despite seeming to live in Wonderworld, who the hell is this guy? But then I thought "OH MY GOD, HE'S THE MAIN VILLAIN USING TOUMA AS THE HERO IN HIS OWN TWISTED STORY, THE BASTARD". I thought it'd be some subversion of expectations, true form, "That Was His Mistake!" shit. Trust me, it made a lot more sense in my head. I'm very happy that they didn't do that, as I grew to love having male Yuuka Kazami as my narrator, and when he was shown to be actually important by being friends with Yuri my mind was blown. And doubly so when I realized just how deeply necessary to the plot he really is.

Rintaro/Blades is up there as one of my all time favorite secondary Riders, since his curiosity is always consistently funny and adorable, his forms are all gorgeous and impressively designed, his relationships with Mei and Touma are absolutely sweet and compelling to see unfold, and his arcs about becoming willing to call out those he views as family and coming to terms with his feelings of inadequacy and both moving past and using them to strengthen himself are always great lessons to pass on to kids. ...even if they took like 10 goddamn episodes to be conveyed in what could've been 5, but hey, Takaya Yamaguchi does a stand-up job all throughout. Rider veteran Eitoku's refined, almost logical movements with the Suiseiken Nagare absolutely beautiful to see in action, and his final form having the same white and blue color scheme as Zooous's base form is an amazing touch I don't see appreciated enough.

Mei Sudo's also absolutely wonderful, serving as the perfect emotional core of the story, responsible for most of the funniest lines, sweetest character moments, and some of the most deceptively compelling drama. Asuka Kawazu brings the perfect energy for such a dynamic and well rounded character, and absolutely nails her scenes of quiet turmoil. As much as I would've loved her to become a Rider, I don't think she really needed to. She's already done so much to help, and as cool as it would've been to see her pick up a sword and fight alongside them as Espada, Calibur, or Falchion she's already endeared herself to me as one of my favorite supporting characters in the whole franchise.

I can't get enough of my homeboy Kento Fukamiya/Espada. Like Rintaro and everyone else for that matter, he also suffers from Saber's pacing issues; and like his predecessor Valkyrie from Zero-One, he doesn't get a proper upgrade aside from his Wonder Combo, instead becoming an anti-villain using a completely different powerset and shifting the Raimeiken Ikazuchi out of focus for the Ankokuken Kurayami, and I feel there's a serious missed opportunity to see him use Jaaku Dragon with Alangina. However, Ryo Aoki's performance is probably among the most easily praiseworthy in the whole cast, managing to convey both Kento's kind and knightly stoicism as Espada and his emotionally unstable despair as Calibur perfectly, in conjunction with Yuji Nakata's experienced and expressive stuntwork.

Ren Akamichi/Kenzan's a dark horse favorite for sure. I remember back when Saber was first picking up, people hated this breezy mad lad for being such a simple character at first. Overly concerned with strength? Black and white world view? Annoyingly energetic? Agh, real-feeling character flaws, I hate them, get him away from me! But then y'all came crawling back. Eiji Togashi's apparently a bit of a rookie actor, and it really shows with some stilted delivery and the way he sometimes bobs his head when giving his lines, but man he improves dramatically as the series goes on. His inexperience ironically ends up really selling his character development, and his unexpectedly beautiful relationship with Desast is special evidence of that. The Fuusouken Hayate's three modes and Satoshi Fujita putting them to excellent use through his stellar acrobatic movements are also really cool.

Why did Luna have to be a child for so long? Does Wonderworld not age whoever inherits its power? Well since Luna randomly becomes an adult in Super Hero Senki and some of the final episodes, I guess so? Miku Okamoto does a fine job for a kid actor, but she's basically done all the heavy lifting for the whole series and doesn't give Mayuu Yokota enough time to get a feel for her character as an adult. How did she choose Touma to inherit the power anyway? Does she just subconsciously decide to trust him with it upon seeing how kind and passionate about storytelling he is? Well if that's the case, why didn't Kento get at least some of that power too? He's just as important to the merchan- I mean Luna-chan, isn't he? Why did Tassel pick her over someone who isn't a literal child who'd be understandably terrified about basically becoming an embodiment of storytelling?

Sophia also kinda suffers from the same problems. Rina Chinen's voice is very pleasant to listen to, but she doesn't really do much beyond serving as a source of exposition and support. I think her dynamic with Mei's adorable, and given her kindness I can certainly understand the respect Northern Base has for her, but she doesn't really contribute a whole lot. If she could use the Kurayami and become Calibur all this time, then why didn't she take it from Kento and Yuri and do so earlier when Kento decided to go back to being Espada? I know she's not much of a fighter and as the closet thing the Sword of Logos has to a leader after Isaac's death I'd understand not wanting to put her at risk, but considering Storious is destroying the world, and she's very evidently kicking a lot of ass in the first part of the final battle even in the basic Jaaku Dragon form, I think it would've helped a lot, just sayin'. Tassel at least has the excuse of being unable to interact with the real world, but Sophia obviously didn't just be put in charge of Northern Base just because she's a pawn in Isaac's plans right?

Ryou Ogami/Buster is also a victim of the disjointed character focus. I have no problem believing he's an excellent father and fighter thanks to Yuki Ikushima and Jiro Okamoto, respectively, but he feels a bit flat and simple in comparison. His rivalry with Desast is randomly dropped, his wife doesn't even show up until the final episodes, he's kinda sidelined in terms of action a whole lot. I imagine that must've sucked for the Rider Dads out there. He does get to star in his own manga, and that was pretty good, so I guess I can't be too mad.

Tetsuo Daishinji/Slash fares better though. Hiroaki Oka, being a Kamen Rider fanboy himself, manages to make him among the most relatable characters in the series. Not only are his hyperfixation on swordsmithing and anxiety played surprisingly believably, Hirotsugu Mori letting him cut loose is extremely cathartic and hilarious, and you really feel for him when the Onjuuken Suzune becomes the first victim of Calibur!Kento's sword sealing.

Yuri/Saikou's another dark horse favorite, for me at least. "Oh great, Avalon guy's got even more merchandise to sell, I wonder what his Sword of Light is- it's himself. Well... that's different." I admit, I didn't like him at first. He felt like he was there to fill out character dynamics in the absence of both Rintaro and Kento, I thought his gimmick was too silly even if his design and jingles were bangers, I didn't particularly care for his power set. But then XSwordman came around I totally got it. He's an endearing, hard-working man trying his best to catch up on all the cool shit he missed, unafraid of experimentation, ready to throw down at a moment's notice, serving as a wonderful bit of consistent support for our heroes, a truly knightly individual, an absolute Chad. and goddamn does he make me worry. Tomohiro Ichikawa, I salute you good sir.

Even if they fall short compared to the rest of the cast, the Shindai siblings are at least cool enough to not wanna write out entirely. They kinda devolve into comic relief after they become allies, something that villainous Riders from Chase onwards are very prone to doing, and it's especially awkward in their case because I think that they kinda get off scot-free for obeying the obviously sinister and crazy Isaac for so long, as well as driving a wedge between a lot of people and threatening children in Reika's case. I think their sibling dynamic is nice though, even if Fukuda recycled it from Makoto and Kanon and has some... questionable possessive undertones as a result. It's cool how they're basically foils to Touma and Rintaro though. The dispassionate and methodical Reika/Sabela is beautifully played by Angela Mei and her moments of emotional depth are fascinating to watch. Her Rider form is a thing of beauty, and its use of literal the Eneiken Noroshi's smokescreens and Yuki Miyazawa's precise and deadly stinging strikes are a joy to watch. And while Ken Shonozaki's not given the best direction as the undercooked plate of 7-Eleven fried fish that is Ryoga/Durendal, he manages to sell him as an experienced and hardened warrior with an awkward side that's especially evident in the Zenkaiger specials. His goddamn RWBY weapon that is the Jikokuken Kaiji is absolutely sick, I'm a sucker for transforming weapons and its combination of time and water powers is really cool, especially with Yasuhiko Amai's deliberate and forceful acting in the suit.

Daichi Kamijo/the Second Calibur, for as brief as his story was, was a pretty cool starter villain. Hiroyuki Hirayama brings this poor bastard to life in a genuinely touching way. I love how as Calibur he goes full force on his creative use of Wonder Ride Books for attacks, and his debut as Jaou Dragon got my blood pumping. His end is also deeply tragic, and I really felt for him when he realized just how badly he fucked up. Hayato Fukamiya also does wonders for the backstory, and while he also doesn't get much to work with, Mitsuru Karahashi makes his regrets and love for Kento feel genuine.

Legeiel and Zooous are both very intimidating and entertaining villains. On top of being just the right balance of goofy and threatening, Kairu Takano and Koji Saikawa's stage presences are both very strong, and their mixture of camaraderie and in-fighting is extremely believable. Zooous's rivalry with Rintaro feels incredible to see through to the end, and although Legeiel doesn't get quite the same treatment, Elemental Dragon had such a cool debut that it more than makes up for it. Their final fights are also absolute spectacles. I don't think their sympathetic angle works even close to as well as it does with MetsubouJinrai or even the Gamma, but I get it, power corrupts, and you probably feel a lot of sadness and regret for things you've done when you die unless you're a right bastard.

Isaac/Master Logos/Solomon is kinda generic. As wonderful as Keisuke Soma is, he doesn't get much dimension to work with. The result of that is while he nails being as smug and punchable as possible, he feels almost... comically generic. Genta Umemori from Shinkenger was full of personality! He was also basically some guy, but he was fun, he felt connected to the rest of the cast! Meanwhile the only real time we get to see Isaac's depth is when we see him crying over his failures. I almost appreciate him being unapologetically evil though, since I've seen way too many shows where redeemed villains get off scot free for way worse things, and some where they outright demand you to sympathize with them despite them doing nothing to warrant it.

Bahato/Falchion surprises me by not just being a movie villain whose actions affect the main plot, but also being a movie villain who actually gets to appear in series as a recurring threat! ...and it's not a particularly great showing on his part, sadly. Masashi Taniguchi does a wonderful job with what he's given, but his character feels like a retread of Eternal without any of what made Katsumi Daido a compelling and frightening villain. I'd like to believe Yuri when he says that he used to be a good person and a hero to the people, but I can only hear so many anime villain monologues about the pointlessness of life and the beauty of destruction before I can never take them seriously again. ...I think that's his biggest problem, actually. I thought he was an overall uninteresting and generic villain in the movie, and the cartoon nihilist he's shown to be in series is only a small step up. He still feels like filler. If only there were a far better written and much cooler villain who takes on the Mumeiken Kyomu after his de--

Desast is probably one of the finest anti-villains I've ever seen in recent years. On top of an absolutely badass character design and the excellent combination of Kazuya Okada/Danki Sakae's suit work and Koki Uchiyama's stellar voice acting, his story being so thoroughly intertwined with Ren's makes their shared journey and bromance a borderline Shakespearean tragedy. His struggle for identity despite Storious treating him as nothing more than a failed experiment and the Sword of Logos treating him as a mere monster really gripped me, and the way he uses what little time he has left to encourage Ren into blossoming on his own is absolutely beautiful. I think his enmity with Ogami is criminally underexplored in series, considering he killed several of the previous Riders and how Ogami's in desperate need of screentime.

Then there's our main villain, Kamen Rider Storious. Robin Furuya brings an incredible amount of charisma to this character, expertly portrayed as both a sinister, manipulative bastard , and as a lonely, tragic figure that arguably makes him feel even more villainous. Speaking as a struggling writer myself, it's easy to feel stuck in the idea of "fuck it, who cares, maybe everything is predestined", but I can't imagine what it's like to know that as the truth and carry it with you for all that time. All of your grand ideas have roots from your experiences, and you're not the only one who even could have those experiences. It's easy to just fall into despair and give up trying, but would that make you happy? Sure, Storious is sadistic, he may be fulfilling his goals, he may be ungodly powerful... but it's not enough for him, is it? All of his friends are gone, one of them even at his own hand, he probably doesn't have any idea what to do after he destroys all the world's stories, Touma even reached his full power before he did, and his downfall is so predictable that even a blind person could see it. He even seems to welcome it, what's up with that? But then I realized... OH MY GOD, HE'S THE MAIN VILLAIN USING TOUMA AS THE HERO IN HIS OWN TWISTED STORY, THE BASTARD. He's so far gone, he's so desperate to stick it to the Almighty Book, he's willing to twist the archetype of the Hero's Journey so hard, it snaps in two. What I think is interesting is that he's ironically trying to chase the trend of "edgy superhero story" that became super popular in the 21st century. The Boys, Brightburn, Kamen Rider Amazons, The Sentry, No More Heroes, Magical Girl Site, even mainstream comics from DC and Marvel... Surely Storious must've seen the cruelty and tragedy these stories are filled with, but he chooses to go through with trying to force the world into this direction anyway. Did they, along with seeing the ever-popular tragedies of legendary playwrights and bleak satire of the twentieth century fuel his despair?

And yet... there's one who stands in determination against his ideals.

Our hero, Touma Kamiyama, the titular Kamen Rider portrayed by Syuichiro Naito and Kousuke Asai, he speaks to me on a personal level. There're plenty of jokes to be made about his procrastination in early chapters, his godless fashion sense, and him doing the funny run up the slope, that's all fine and dandy, but I rarely feel so connected to a character the way I did Touma. The struggle to create, find companionship, live your life, reach out to others... these're things a lot of people struggle with, and of course you see them depicted a lot in media about creators, but Saber gets to the root of what the greatest thing about storytelling really is. Giving people hope, while using the pain of the past as fuel for the future. Sure, Storious may be right about how every story has been done as far back as human civilization gets, he may even be right about how any spin or creativity humanity has is outright predestined. It should be pointless to even try, right? That's where Touma Kamiyama disagrees. He didn't spend all that time fighting and creating just to give up at the idea of predestination. His novel writing-fueled creativity in his early training, his devotion to his friends that let him surpass Kamijo as Dragonic Knight, his compassion for the Primitive Dragon that let him combine their powers to destroy Legeiel as Elemental Dragon, his resolve that let Xross Saber dethrone Solomon, and his passion for the craft of storytelling that let our heroes channel their wishes into Wonder Almighty... all stemming from the belief imparted onto him by his predecessor that "Hope lies beyond your resolution." And that you decide how your story ends. He may not be the greatest Rider to some, he may be as lame as others think he is, he may not even be my favorite, but I have no issue calling Touma Kamiyama... Kamen Rider Saber, one of the all time greatest carriers of the Kamen Rider name.

The final chapter's definitely not as great as some other Rider finales, but goddamn. Primitive Dragon consciously choosing to save Touma is so sweet and such a great emotional payoff, I loved jamming out to the opening theme while our boys lay the smackdown on Storious. Wonder Almighty's a fitting final bit to close the main series out with, if not exactly a great one. I think the cover is great, and the book's body is a lovely shade of candy apple red, but I really don't like how its pages are just the covers of the other books copy-pasted onto onto the pages, that feels lazy. Maybe if it were a panorama of all the books' characters, I'd like it a lot more as a symbol of how unified the Swordsmen are, but eh, what can you do? On a related note, does this mean all the "last episode extra final forms" of the Reiwa Era are gonna be named after their series's opening? That's a neat idea.

I felt a lot of feelings seeing all those video messages of Rider fans all across Japan talking about their favorite stories, and how their passion and fond memories help reshape the world. Mei's monologue at the ceremony about is also really touching and- IS THAT A HUMAGEAR!? :O

Y-yeah dude, it is! Wow, where have you guys been for the past 48 episodes?! Are you guys doing okay? How come you're like... the only one here? Is the technology of Hiden Intelligence only really that prevalent in that very specific metropolitan part of Japan and they're just not coming around much over here? Is it like Dragon Ball where anthropomorphic animals are just vibin' with humans while the heroes are off kicking ass? Apparently he's played by Hasegawa Keiichi, who wrote this episode and had the award ceremony named after him. ...is Hasegawa Keiichi a HumaGear in this universe then? Did he set up this award ceremony in Touma's honor? If so, why is it named after him? Did reading one of Touma's books lead to his Singularity? I know this is just a cameo, but... god, I have so many questions that probably will never be satisfactorily answered.

Overall, if I had to compare Saber to anything, it'd probably be Sam Reimi's Spider-Man trilogy. It's awkward, stupid, overwrought, undercooked, illogically written, scattershot, cheesy as fuck, and has a tendency to squander its otherwise fine execution; but the sheer passion for storytelling, sense of spectacle, deeply fascinating characters, and belief in the ideals set forth by the cast, crew, and fans are absolutely admirable. Improvements would certainly make it an overall better experience, to be sure, but there's something deeply captivating about how wonky this series is. Seeing everybody get their happy ending after all they've been through felt extremely gratifying though, and I may have to wait another for the epilogue to and then wait for Revice, but... man. I'm hella proud of our awkwardly-emoting, fashion disaster novelist and all of his heavily flawed friends for carrying the Kamen Rider name on to the future. Here's hoping Revice will keep it going.

Alright, that's everything I wanted to talk about. Sorry this was so long and ramble-y, I had a lot to say. I'll probably be liveblogging Revice as episodes of that come out, so... look forward to that, I guess. See ya.

#kamen rider saber #long post #tsuki talks #personal #kamen rider #whew #ok bye have a nice day

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wehavethoughts · 3 years

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Zack Snyder's Justice League Review!

Zack Snyder's Justice League dir. Zack Snyder (2021) Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Atlas Entertainment and The Stone Quarry Science Fiction, Action, Superhero Movie

Rating: 3.5 Waves

Summary: Tormented by visions of a dark future, Bruce Wayne aka The Batman attempts to gather a team of superheroes to defend the planet. When alien tyrant Steppenwolf arrives on Earth seeking a long forgotten technology, this group of heroes must do everything in their power to keep him from locating all three Mother Boxes and destroying the world.

Content warnings: Violence, Death, Body Horror, Gore

This review DOES NOT contain spoilers for Zack Snyder's Justice League

A bit of background for those of you thinking “Didn’t Justice League come out years ago?” You are exactly right! Justice League was released in theaters in 2017 and is the fifth movie in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe). The same company that produced Justice League then funded Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) which is a different version of the story that was released in 2017. Zack Snyder was actually the original director of Justice League (2017), but he stepped away from the project during post production and the film was handed over to director Joss Whedon. Whedon’s creative decisions led to rewrites, heavy editing and a notorious reshoot that required removal of Henry Cavill’s mustache via CGI. Therefore, Justice League as it premiered in theaters in 2017 was Joss Whedon’s vision of the story. As some of you might remember, Justice League (2017) was considered a “flop” as it lost the studio ~$60 million overall and was received by fans with mixed to negative reviews (6.2/10 IMDB, 40% Rotten Tomatoes). But since Zack Snyder had left so late in the project, there were rumors that his version of the film had been nearly finished and there was hope that the movie Snyder filmed was actually better than what Whedon had created. Fans took to social media to demand that Warner Bros release the “Snyder Cut'' of Justice League and in a move I personally find baffling, Warner Bros actually gave Zack Snyder another $70 million to finish his version. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) which was released on HBO Max is the final product.

While understanding the context of how this movie came about is neat and honestly pretty hilarious, I never got around to see Justice League (2017) so I cannot give any commentary on whether this new film is any better. For those who are curious, my fiancée who has seen both says that the movies are extremely similar in plot, but there are significant changes to characterization and pacing. This review will solely be on the merits and shortfalls of Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) in a spoiler free context since the movie was released just over a week ago (if you want to talk spoilers DM me I have So Many Thoughts).

Honestly, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. My expectations were quite low considering what I heard about the original 2017 version and the fact that I’m more of a Marvel fan. The most surprising thing for me was that I sat through the entire 4 hr and 2 min runtime (for reference the runtime for Justice League (2017) is 2 hrs). Aside from Lord of the Rings (Return of the King runtime 4 hr 11min), I usually don’t indulge in movies that require me to block off an entire day, but I was curious and I love bandwagons.

The highlight of this movie are the characters. Each of our main characters had a deep, solid backstory that drew me in and made me invested in what was happening in this world. One thing lacking in a lot of ensemble superhero movies is balanced screen time between the main cast, but Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) uses its time wisely to give each character depth and critical purpose in the narrative. Even the villain had compelling motivation as to why he is on earth doing dastardly deeds, and while I wasn’t rooting for him, I respected his motivations. I also appreciated that the writers of this movie made the characters intelligent. Sure, some decisions were driven more by emotion than logic, but the way defenses are set up and how our heroes use their unique powers left me incredibly impressed.

The characters’ interactions with each other was also very enjoyable. Snyder took the time to include scenes centered around the team chilling with each other in ways that were refreshingly low stakes and mundane. The story was interspersed with scenes like Wonder Woman and Alfred making tea, Aquaman and Wonder Woman musing over cultural differences, and Cyborg and Flash digging up a body where you could really see the characters grow from strangers to teammates to friends. These scenes also peppered in some light humor that kept the movie from becoming too dark without distracting from the tone.

Since Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) is technically an action movie and it is rated R, I feel like I should touch on the action sequences. Overall, the action was incredibly fun to watch! It was made for the big screen so watching the epic battles for the first time on my TV at home was a bit underwhelming, but the well choreographed, high stakes fights were still visually pleasing. For a rated R movie there was not as much gore as there could have been, which I appreciated and the level of violence was pretty much what I expected from a comic book movie.

The action scenes also do a fantastic job with power escalation. By that I mean the action illustrates the limits of one character’s power clearly in relation to other characters’ powers. This way you are aware of exactly how impressive the characters and their powers are on their own and so when someone or something stronger shows up we have context for how big of a threat we are dealing with. The clean way the story shows us everyone’s respective powers and their limits makes it so the stakes feel more tangible and it's not just unfathomably strong characters beating the shit out of each other with the winner decided by chance.

There are a few reasons the movie didn’t get a full five waves from me. First was that the Amazon’s outfits were very clearly made by horny men based on how much skin they were showing. I, a bisexual, personally love to see superheroes in less then full coverage, but when the Amazon warriors have their entire stomachs and cleavage out of their armor for no reason it exhausts me. What happened to the tasteful and stylish armor from Wonder Woman (2017)? This feels like a step in the wrong direction.

The next concern I have that has kept me from recommending this movie to people is the overall pacing and length. While there were some great uses of the extended run time like the action sequences and team bonding I mention above, there were so many scenes that were way too slow for me to stay engaged. I found myself editing the movie in my head, like did we really need 2 full minutes of Bruce Wayne and his horse climbing a dreary mountain? I don’t think so. This was a narrative where I needed to pay attention lest I miss critical pieces of the story, but the random scenes that dragged on too long had me going to get snacks and checking my phone throughout. If I could rate the movie by halves the first half would get 2.5 Waves because of how it dragged and the second half would get closer to 4.5 Waves since the story really picks up and fun things start to happen.

The final part of this movie that kept it from getting a higher rating was how closely it was tied to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In fact, the first scene of Zack Snyder's Justice League is the final scene of Batman v Superman. There were many plot critical tie-ins to previous movies that left me feeling confused until I googled my questions during the slow scenes. If you have never seen Batman v Superman or Man of Steel then you will miss a lot of this movie, which I thought was unfair because other DCEU movies came out before the first iteration of Justice League like Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad and while events in those movies are mentioned in passing they are not nearly as important as the Batman and Superman-centric films. If the DCEU is going to pick favorites, the least it can do is pick movies I actually like (Wonder Woman (2017) remains my favorite DCEU movie to date). In general, superhero movies seem to be trending toward sagas and I prefer movies that you can just watch and enjoy without needing to see a bunch of other movies first.

Overall, I did very much enjoy this movie, but based on the run time alone it is not going to be for everyone. Measuring movie success during the pandemic is trickier than looking at box office numbers and labeling it a success or a flop, but it does appear that Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) is doing well as far as critical reception and viewership. I hope that this success will allow the DCEU to explore all of the fun nooks and crannies of the universe Snyder pulled together. In fact, half of the epilogue of this movie felt like set up for future movies. I hope they come to fruition because there were some pretty compelling teasers at the end that I would love to see played out on the big screen.

As I mentioned before, I’ve never seen the original cut of Justice League, but Snyder’s version left me fulfilled and satisfied with the narrative, so I am happy to have seen this newest cut first. This is a movie for people who love DC, love superhero movies or are just really invested in the hype.

~TideMod

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imagine-loki · 4 years

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Soulbonds and Fairy Dust

TITLE: Soulbonds and Fairy Dust (rewrite) CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 1/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine one of the fae has been helping the Avengers, jumping in to help them on missions and vanishing before Shield can bring her in. Loki joins the team and convinces her to come talk to the team and consider joining before Shield takes more drastic measures. RATING: M NOTES/WARNINGS: This is a rewrite of the original work of the same name. Also on AO3 here

The fae woman knew she had to keep a low profile. The courts were still looking for her. She’d been hiding in the human realm for years by that point. So she hid her pointed ears, wore contacts and illusions over her eyes, and claimed she dyed her hair the Seelie red.

She tried to keep a low low profile.

Really, really, she tried.

But she’d ended up in New York and things just… happened in New York.

There was so much metal around that it dulled her presence from those who were hunting her, though it seemed to dull her magic as well. She had to ration a lot more carefully than she ever had in Underhill, but she made due in order to be safe.

It also didn’t help that she lived a whole three blocks from the Avenger’s tower.

Bad things just seemed drawn to the Avengers. And they were just so… inept wasn’t quite the right word, but they were untrained, inelegant about fighting those bad things. And she… wasn’t, not after everything she’d been through in her life.

So it was really their fault that she kept jumping in to help them when she saw them fighting. Especially if it looked like they needed help. Granted, they always looked like they needed help. Besides, she was a trained warrior as well as being one of the fae and therefore a more than proficient mage.

Plus it was fun to jump in, help, and vanish again before she got caught up with them.

Or worse.

Caught.

Everything changed when the Avengers added a new member. The fae lady couldn’t help watching the new member with appreciation, and… more. He was a slim man with raven hair and green, gold, and black armor. He looked so… familiar… like she’d known him for centuries, but she couldn’t quite place how or why.

Obviously, she recognized Loki from the alien attack a year and a half ago. If she ever met him, she’d have to thank him for that; but, he seemed more familiar than from just seeing him on TV screens.

Still, she jumped in to help them, to help him. Something drove her to help him more than the others. Something drew her to him. She teleported in front of him and killed a monster for him. His eyes widened in shock at her appeared. “Lady Fae! Wait!” he called before she could vanish. She saw passing interest in his eyes, intrigue, and was that the same touch of familiarity that she felt? He recognized her, just as she recognized him.

But how?

Why?

She knew then, though, that he had the same goal as the others: to bring her in. She didn’t know why or how they were planning on doing that. Why the Avengers wanted her so badly when all she’d done was help them. But she knew that was their goal.

And not her desired outcome.

Not with the hell she’d been through in Underhill.

The team needed help.

Again.

They were fighting monsters downtown and they were currently scattered as they tried to regroup. Loki was the only one she could see at the moment. And was about to get his ass blasted with fire from one of the hellhounds. So she allowed her form to shimmer, green dragonscales appearing on her body as she jumped into the fray. She’d stay just long enough to help them and then get the hell out of dodge. That was her usual plan and it worked out well for her so far. She just had to not get caught. She blocked the ball of fire from Loki using her own forearms as shields. With dragon scales as armor, the fire couldn’t do any damage to her. Loki was a frost giant. She knew no one was supposed to know that, especially with the illusions he hid himself under. It was a secret, but he was the prince of Jotunheim. She could see it in his truename. “Go!” she told him firmly “Fire can’t hurt me!”

She knew the team had warned Loki to apprehend the strange magical fae girl at the end of the battle if he ever saw her. She tended to use her magic more than her blades, though she was equally skilled with both. They could never manage to catch her. She fled too quickly and they always waited until the evil was defeated before they attempted it. It gave her plenty of time to flee. At least from her point of view.

Loki wasn’t so accommodating.

Loki zeroed in on her the moment she appeared. He had been warned about the fae woman and how she helped the team and that they had to bring her in before Shield decided to step in for themselves to capture the rogue magic-user. He was intrigued by her and something seemed so familiar. It had since the first time he saw her and he didn’t know why. He also knew of so very few fae in existence. It wasn’t that hard to figure out she was one of them. She looked the part with her delicately pointed ears, sidhe red hair, and tri-colored eyes of gold, emerald green, and jade green. As with any of the long-lived races, it was hard to tell her age, though she looked to be in her twenties, as humans measured ages.

Loki didn’t wait until she’d finished helping them to confront her. He could fight the monsters and confront the fae at the same time. She would have less of a chance to escape that way. “You need to come with us, Lady Fae!” he told her firmly. He knew of her habit of running and didn’t seem willing to let her flee, especially when he knew that Shield and the team were after her. It was safer for her to come with him now.

“How about no?” she replied a bit snarkily as she threw ice at the hellhound, subduing it. Her form shimmered, losing the dragon scales so she was in her ‘natural’ form again. “That’s not how this works. I jump in, help you lot, and get out of here before I get captured and experimented on again,” she told Loki just as firmly. He was new to this game, so clearly he needed the explanation. She threw a couple of bolts of magic, cast a couple of quick spells to subdue the worst of the monsters, and since Loki’s attention was still on her, allowed her fairy wings to grow from her back. She flapped them a couple of times to flee before she was caught.

She nearly missed the quick piece of magic he worked. It was an impressive feat of magic and she wasn’t sure she had seen better in centuries. Unfortunately, he chose to bind her feet to the ground before she could take off. “You are not the only one with magic here, Lady Fae. You would do well to come with us,” he insisted, but gentled his tone some. He knew what it was like to be captured, to be held against one’s will. He didn’t want to do the same to her, but it was necessary.

“Let me go!” she told him firmly, practically shrieking with rage at being held, already fraying his magic with her own power. She had to get out of there before the team finished with the rest of the monsters. She didn’t think she could take them all if they worked together. They may be borderline inept, but they still usually managed to get the job done eventually. And she didn’t want all of their focus on her.

Loki raised an eyebrow, watching her curiously. “Why flee after helping the team? What are you so afraid of, little one?” he asked her gently. His accent and voice were so familiar. Something about the way he said ‘little one’ triggered something, some old hint of a memory. She couldn’t quite place it. Why was his accent so familiar?

“I’d really rather not getting experimented on again,” she told him grumpily while her magic frayed the bindings he placed on her. “I just got out of Underhill and the lovely treatment of the fae there 2 years ago. I do not want to go back to that kind of life,” she informed him, spilling more to him than she ever would have to anyone else. Why was her tongue so loose around him? Why in the nine realms did he seem so familiar? Odin’s beard this day was strange.

Odin’s beard? Where had that curse come from?

He chuckled in reply, again, it sounded so commonplace, that particular sound, though, not quite the same, something about it had changed. “And you actually believe these fools would experiment on you? What do you know of the Avengers?” He asked her, curious and seeming not to realize what she was doing to his spell.

“They fight monsters and things attacking the city. And are incompetent oafs about it, though they mean well. I know nothing about that Shield organization that they insist wants to get to know me. So I help them out if I’m around and then flee so I don’t have to find out what Shield does want with me,” she told him as she finally snapped his spell and took off with a couple of flaps of her wings before he could try that nasty trick again. Though trickery was in his nature. Wasn’t it?

Now, why did she know that?

She heard his groan of frustration and saw him teleport away as she flew from the scene, not risking getting caught.

He fought not to roar in frustration at losing her. Again. At losing his chance to get to know the intriguing little fae who seemed so… familiar. So he decided to just teleport back to his room at the tower, not wanting to deal with the team, not wanting to face his failure.

Thor caught up with him after the rest of the monsters had been defeated. “You lost the Fae Lady?” Thor asked him, gently for the usually boisterous thunderer. He was clearly wondering how his brother had managed to lose the fae lady, especially with all of Loki’s magic at his disposal. Loki should have been able to stop her and Thor had stressed how important it was that she be brought in. “I fear we are running out of time to bring her in safely. Shield believes she has too much power to be out in the world alone,” Thor added, hoping to press upon his brother how important it was that he not fail the next time they spotted her. Though he’d already beaten this point into his brother already. Loki was their only hope of getting her in safely. “They are talking of hunting her down…”

Loki rolled his eyes. “She surprised me. We need to convince her to come in instead of trying to capture her. And if you wish for her help, you need to make sure Shield has nothing to do with this, brother. She will not come if she feels the team wishes to do her harm,” Loki reminded him. Again. His brother really was an idiot.

Thor huffed. “As if I wish to do her harm. I wish for her to be here where she will be safe with us. You have gotten the closest to her since we first saw her…” he added softly. The fae lady really didn’t stick around no matter what they tried.

She really did not want to be captured again.

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #soulbonds and fairy dust #rewrite #nekoamamori #chapter 1

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fishymom-art · 4 years

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How do u created hate u girl? :o

AW YEAH, TIME TO MAKE A LOOOONG POST WITH ILLUSTRATIONS!!!!

All my stories begin with me creating a main character and then building a world around them. Same with HUGirl, but it was a liiiiittle bit funnier. In the beginning Diana was just... well, me.

Thhhat right, the original design of Diana and her character herself is how I used to draw myself back in 2016, when I first started calling myself FishyMom!

I drew myself in Ford Pines’ (from Gravity Falls, yes) outfit and with gills, because I was in Undertale fandom and I was in loooove with Undyne. I used to have a group chat with my friends who also liked Undertale and at some point they started calling me FishyMom, because I was bossy, caring and had gills, apparently.

This design, as well as the nickname, stuck with me for a long time. At some point, I decided to make a character out of this design.

I called her Ford. You know. Because of the obvious thing XD. But I didn’t have a world for her yet.

Then I had a lot of things going on. In around 2014-2015 I was going to write two books about this world called Mirror World or Mirror Side. Some kind of shadows, who were assigned to you since your birth, would lead you into this world if you were unhappy. Mirror World has everything you ever wanted to have, creates a wonderful, flawless life and... brainwashes you completely into hailing the king of this world who harvests your powers to break out of the Mirror World and conquer the other side???? aka Magical Cult Kingdom, nothing else to say.

Ford was going to be a right-hand-man of the king and had his mark on her face which meant that he sees through her eyes. But I never finished the book (in fact, I tried rewriting it 3 times and did not succeed) and didn’t really know how to put Ford in, since I already had a hecking lot of characters who were much more important to the story than she was. But she was still kinda there in the story.

(btw, the king’s name was Gaskard, which is Alex Gaskarth’s (vocalist of All Time Low) name written wrong. I didn’t know it was his name, my classmates were joking around when they said it when I was asking for a villain’s name. I was on their concert in 2017 uwu)

I was thinking about a sequel of the book at the same moment as I was still not writing the first one XD. And now it gets interesting.

In the first book, there had to be this girl, who was one of main character’s young sister and student. The second book was going to be about her and her twin brother. Her name was Elizabeth.

The first picture is Elizabeth with her twin-brother, Noelle and second picture is the old Elizabeth.

A lot of things later, I decided to get rid of the story and make a whole new story for a sequel. But I was still left with Elizabeth. And I made her Ford. (and I made Noelle her sister instead of brother I guess...)

At this point, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted Ford to be a scientist. I wanted her to be a warrior. I wanted her to be the characters I was inspired by when I was creating her. And I knew the story I was going to give her.

But I still didn’t have a world. And I still didn’t have a name.

And then I did a thing

There was a blog on Tumblr before hate-u-girl that had something to do with Ford. And I posted comics there. And you could or could not have seen at least one of the stupid comics I drew calling them all under the name HUGirl, which was literally Human, but a “girl” instead of “man”. And I mean this one...

my eyes hurt from the art style and from tHE AMOUNT OF NOTES IT HAS. LIKE, LITERALLY, I JUST HAD TO SEARCH FOR IT, LAST TIME I SAW THIS ABOMINATION, IT HAD 3K NOTES, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS MY MOST VIEWED ARTWORK??? MY LEGACY???? [heavy breathing] IS IT BECAUSE I TAGGED ZUTARA THERE??? IS THIS WHY?????

- ok, screaming aside XD

Yup! That was Ford! And there was also Huboy, who then went on to be Robert! (hoooo boi....). They were partners right from the beginning!!!!

And I finally started drawing the actual comic. THIS, everybody, is two ONLY pages that were made for the first ever try on “HUGirl” comic.

Ah, they were such babies....

The main antagonist of the comic, however, was someone fully new and someone who was also first just the way I drew myself.

Fishy Mom. Yes yes, you heard it right. Fishy Mom IS a character. That’s why at some point I asked people to call me RK (Ar-Key or, for Russians, Er-Ka), because that was a little weird. And she had to be some kind of a ruler of fully re-made Mirror World!!!

I came up with the idea of making her a villain and a separate character after I made a cover on Die House and drew her in that dress for the first time. She evolved to an entity that can transform into your biggest fears (directly or indirectly). And Ford’s greatest fear was (and still is) water and fish.

Strange and unpolished, I left the first attempt and started drawing the second one, already including my baby Adelaide, who has a much bigger role than you think and I won’t be telling it. (Oh, and Robert’s lasagna appeared there too! Me and my friends made a lot of jokes about this lasagna XDDD)

Here are some of my favorite panels!

“big power with a tiny apartment?”

Diana and Robert were going to be a couple.

it’s a toxic haze all around

LOOK AT THIS BABY!!!

+ bonus of a badass Robert.

There had to be that other character called Complete Failure who has first appeared in this animation I made. All the characters in it are “the original cast” of HUGirl and will always be. I wanted them to be the villain for some time but quickly changed my mind and put Fishy Mom back into the role of the villain. They still remained a very important character to me who you can thank for the story HUGirl is now and will be.

Then Fishy Mom (or rather F-001 aka Fishy Good/Too Good To Be True) got a HuMan FoRm!!!! Yaaaay! Because a cartoony fish in the middle of a sci-fi post-apocalyptic drama would have been pretty weird. Btw, I have no idea at which point it turned into a post-apocalyptic comic, but I had to roll with it, because I put it as genre in WebToon and Idk if I can change it and I already came up with an excuse ahhaha.

My idea was that she put experiments and tried to create humans out of magic and science (i like that mix). This is when the “HU” in HUGirl turned into Human Urge Academy (now, Haze Unity Academy), the research academy on human life, who’s role is to create more humans because they can’t produce them the good-ol’-way anymore XD. And Diana (the “F” in the beginning of every experiment meant “Ford”, btw), alongside other characters, became a part of it and Fishy Mom became Diana’s personal nemesis, who was one of the experiments and wanted to kinda break free. It was still very weird and unpolished but I loved it. I had everything planned, from the beginning to the end and everything in the middle.

The last character I came up with was Susan Whaletaker. And she was anything but the character she is now XD. She was going to be the CEO of HUA and a pretty nice person. [turns to Susan now] NICE PERSON.

I had a lot of other thinking and writing in-between, but now I know exactly what I want to do with the story. And I have all those babes on my side uwu

It’s not a full story since it would have contained a lot of spoilers, but those are all the main events hehe, thank you very much uwu

if you have any other questions, please do ask!

#hugirl #diana elizabeth newt #robert kaelan does #markus levi damon #adelaide #F-701 #Susan Whaletaker #hate u girl #fishy mom #original comic #fishymom-ask

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captainswanbigbang · 4 years

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CSRT Promo: youre-not-a-cat-youre-a-rat

Today’s promoted CSRT story is The Swan by @youre-not-a-cat-youre-a-rat! Read it on Tumblr and AO3!

And check out these illustrations done for Chapter 3 and this drawing of Knight Emma, all done by the author herself!

When did you start writing this story, and what inspired you to write it?

So, I watched the first season of Once as it aired, but I fell behind starting with season two and would just occasionally keep tabs on it through tumblr gifsets and Entertainment Weekly recaps. When I decided to binge the show before season 7, I was excited to get to Killian and Emma's romance bc I remembered really falling in love with Emma in season 1, and of course Colin's wild charisma and distinctive energy made Killian intriguing as hell. I also love me an enemies-to-lovers story, so I was pumped to see that play out. And I think it only took me starting the first season to start coming up with this idea. I've always gotten a masculine energy from Jennifer Morrison's performance of Emma (one of the many things I love about her), so I liked imagining a version of the character that grew up in the Enchanted Forest with an androgynous look. I knew Emma's romance with Killian was going to start with them as adversaries, and since he's a pirate I figured she should contrast him as a knight. So I had my cool knight/pirate romance aesthetic all set up in my head as I mainlined the show (figuring I'd start writing it when I finished watching) - and then I made the mistake of falling in love with Once's massive extended cast of characters and adding all of my favorites (and all of my grievances with certain plot points) to the story.

What is it about this story that made you feel like it was worth rewriting?

It was the first story I ever wrote for Killian and Emma, and I was so in love with the world I made and the drama I had planned, and when this event was announced I rediscovered my love for it. But since it's been so long since I've touched it, I also got excited to mercilessly scrap things that weren't working and brainstorm new ideas to fill out the narrative.

What is one detail about your story that you’re almost definitely keeping?

My massive cast of characters has actually stayed pretty much the same *gulp*. But I have a much better understanding of how they're serving the story...and how much screen time they're gonna get :). I could never get rid of Killian's female-heavy pirate crew or Emma's misfit knights. Or villain-turned-weird-uncle Regina.

What is one detail about your story that you’re almost definitely throwing out or changing?

The long sea voyage that I originally thought was going to take up the whole story. It's not a coincidence that when I was first writing this story I hit a block as soon as they set sail. There will still be scenes on the Jolly Roger, but it turned out there was too much court intrigue for the action to be centered there.

What has the rewrite experience been like for you so far?

Nerve-wracking and exhilarating. This is the first time I've really committed to writing something long form and it's pretty scary, but it gets easier every time I open up that draft document. It's also been maddening, in that Charlie-Kelly-in-front-of-a-wall-of-paper way, whenever I'm brainstorming plot points/solutions. But that's one of the most fun parts!

What would you like readers to know about the original version if they decide they’re going to read it?

That I'm still very proud of it, especially of the prologue. Killian was the character I understood the most, back when I was writing it, and I'm still very satisfied with how he turned out in that first chapter. Also that I drew that first knight/pirate-face-off scene! And then embarrassed myself by getting poor Jennifer Morrison to sign the knights line up...

#csrt #captain swan rewrite a thon #captain swan #csrt promo #youre-not-a-cat-youre-a-rat

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dimonds456 · 4 years

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18 for the writer's meme?

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

WARNING: LONG POST

Before I got into Steven Universe, my main AU comic that I had was a BATIM comic called “Demons Inside.” That thing... hooooo man, did it have so many alternate things going on.

Originally, the story was only 3 parts, and both of the main antagonists were very 1-dimensional and attacked for no reason. Joey Drew was there to start the plot, and Ink Bendy (renamed Inkoliss later) possesses Toon Bendy, for no reason other than to be evil. The whole story is pretty bad, and the entire thing has changed now.

The second rewrite, I had Joey make some different choices that gave him more depth and extended the story. We find out that he is seen as a father figure to all these Toons and took care of them for 25 years, and that he wasn’t just suddenly evil- he got possessed by Inkoliss so that Inkoliss could get to Bendy, using family as a weak point.

The third write brought the story to 4 parts, the fourth brought it to 5 with a massive time skip (5 years!). Inkoliss got more depth and vulnerability, as well as regret for his actions and a possible redemption arc I juggled for a long time. I don’t remember what I decided for him.

The fifth rewrite brought it to 5 parts and a whole bunch of in-between scenes in the time skip, plus my main villain’s backstory (he went from a cinnamon roll to a dude out for power, just so that he can be free. He’s not even doing it for himself (though that is part of it), he’s doing it for his friend!). We got more Butcher Gang (I started the story before Chapter 3 of BATIM, so we didn’t know they existed before), and I split them up as well. Charley (the main of the three) winds up becoming a double agent, and becomes the most burdened character in the story besides Inkoliss himself.

The sixth rewrite focused on revamping the ending, as did the seventh and eighth. I’m still not completely satisfied with how it ends to this day, but the ending I do have ties up all the loose ends and presents us with a best case scenario, though I won’t say much. Inkoliss has a Spinel moment, though, where he kinda goes “What am I doing??” And turns it all around, but we’re not there yet.

Demons Inside is a comic, first and foremost, so I only had to redo Part 1 when all was said and done, but some scrapped concepts I have are the return of OCs that come in to save the day (but that took away from the main cast so I opted not to), killing off poor Henry, the main bad guy being pure evil for no reason, and Bendy (main protagonist of two) having to sacrifice himself to save everyone else.

For Second Chance AU (SU), I have a scrapped idea where Spinel becomes corrupted, plus another where I rewrote Pink’s and Pearl’s entire plan to get her to become a Crystal Gem. It came from meta commentary I was sharing with another AU creator, and I realized that the way I was writing Spinel didn’t line up with their plan at all and made Pink more evil than she is. It’s better now, though. :,)

I don’t have many AUs of my AUs though, besides everything that goes down in asks on Second Chance. Those asks are canon to their characters and reactions, but not the story. Like there is a thing where Spinel sees what goes down in Maximum Capacity (Amethyst shapeshifting into Rose) and freaks out, but that is not canon to the AU. I guess in How to Train Your Monster, I have a few plot bunnies running around, but that one isn’t completed either so I can’t really say what all has been abandoned and what hasn’t.

Although, for the SU Movie in Second Chance, I’ve had a lot of alternate ideas. The biggest one now seems to be a second gem rebellion, and I’m running with that one for a while. Abandoned plot points have been having a fusion replace Spinel with two new Gems, Bluebird showing up earlier, and Emerald having an entire movie all to herself.

I’m sorry this got so long. Thank you for asking, though! :D

#god I haven’t worked on Demons Inside for so long...#I gotta move that one over to Tumblr. It’s chilling on DA right now #DA is falling apart at the seams so.#I should probably do that actually #a lot of people are still reading Demons Inside #It’s just weird tho since Joey Drew isn’t at all like BATIM Joey Drew anymore. Joey is more like Henry than anyone else #Toon Dad needs to protect his sons and daughter y’know?#man I want to draw my boi now. Inkoliss I miss you.#my art has gotten better since I put DI on hiatus. maybe that’s a thing I should focus on #idk #harmonytre #ask meme #writing meme #asks #answered asks #dimond speaks

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beckytailweaver · 5 years

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Avatar: The Last Airbender (fic stuff)

Since I’m trying to work on something (ANYTHING!) and I seem to be in an Avatar mood of late, I’ll throw this up here.

These are fics, potential fics, and mostly-concrete ideas that have existed in the back of my closet for a very long time, since the good old days of watching ATLA when it was shiny and new and cool. Most of them are also so old that LOK didn’t exist yet or was in its infancy.

Note: These are mostly gen fic. If pairings come up they are not the central goal of the piece; they will be mainly canon as it existed at the time the fic was outlined. Treat them like the scenery (no ship war drama allowed in my workroom, that’s what stopped me participating in the fandom years ago).

I’d kinda like to put some feelers out and see what folks think would be most interesting to work on.

Read on:

The End of the Circle Post-canon continuation, my oldest ATLA fic, conceived and outlined before comics or LOK existed. Does some headcanon worldbuilding based on what was available at the time of the original series. Dragons and spirits and legends coming to life, oh my!

Status: outlined, some scenes written, firm endpoint, world built.

Summary: Roku warned Aang that he could not die in the Avatar State, or the cycle would end. Azula’s lightning killed Aang in the Avatar State. To their good fortune, Katara’s spirit water was able to bring Aang back to life, but there are Consequences—for the Avatar and for the world.

Wild Fire Canon AU/semi-rewrite. Also born before LOK was a thing so Druk doesn’t exist. It borrows some concepts from the idea of Toph and her badgermole family. It breaks some TLA canon around the edges but it’s all in good fun.

Status: outlined, many scenes, ending fully plotted.

Summary: The young Fire Prince was burned and disowned by the Fire Lord, cast away and abandoned on the hostile shores of the Earth Kingdom before his kindly uncle could aid him. Disfigured, angry, and lost, young Zuko finds solace in the wilderness when he is taken in by a most unusual protector: A dragon.

Phoenix Legacy Not-a-time-travel “time travel” fic. It was born after seeing Season 1 of Avatar LOK and...kinda liking it but not? (I mostly lost interest in LOK after S1.) And wanting to add some more classic feel to the season. No information from subsequent seasons was used to outline it (thus there is no Druk) but recently I have gone back and “fixed” Zuko’s daughter (giving her the correct name and appearance), and added her nameless daughter (Iroh II’s sister) for lulz. Basically a rewrite of LOK Season 1 with a TLA character along for the ride to shake everything up, because at the time I was disappointed that there was only Katara and no other Gaang members out there kicking the new Avatar into shape.

Status: outlined, a few scenes written, ending plotted; not to be a rehash.

Summary: A phoenix cannot die by fire—it can only be reborn. When Ozai claimed the title of Phoenix King, he had no idea what sort of spirit he might be invoking. When he lost his ancestor’s war and his crown, the spirit’s blessings were unknowingly conferred upon his heir: The hapless Fire Lord Zuko, determined to bring his nation to peace. Seventy years later, there’s a tragic explosion in a tea shop in Republic City, and exiled traitor Fire Prince Zuko wakes up to an unfamiliar world full of unfamiliar faces. The last thing he remembers is an Agni Kai under a Comet, catching lightning to protect a friend.

The Prince’s Prisoner Another ficling born before the comics or LOK were really a big deal and/or I didn’t know about them. Basically during TLA S1, rather than fleeing Prince Zuko’s clutches, Aang decides to remain his prisoner. The original reasoning for this was a kind of modified Peggy Sue: Aang effed up his final battle with Ozai for reasons, his soul is sorta sent back in time to do-over from his iceberg wakeup. The problem is that this is not a perfect process and he doesn’t actually remember everything, only some very important faces, feelings, and concepts. The idea of Zuko as a dear friend/teacher/trusted person is one of these things. Thus, in defiance of all visible logic, Aang trusts S1!Zuko with his life and keeps his promise to go with him. In spite of his Water Tribe friends continuously trying to rescue him, Zhao continuously trying to capture him, and Zuko himself continuously trying to avoid being befriended by his ticket home. (”I’m your prisoner, not anyone else’s.”) Intended to be a funny and heartwarming friendship/journey story taking a different angle at the series.

Status: tentatively outlined with very few scenes skeleton’d out, season 1 definite, endpoint undecided but can continue throughout the series. The premise mechanic is a bit flimsy; it’s less concrete since it’s supposed to be fluff, angst, and friendship.

dragon!Zuko AU fic Everybody has to write one of these, it’s like a law. Here’s mine: Ozai’s cruelty during the Agni Kai with his young son invoked the wrath of Agni, bringing down a magic from a time before memory and no one knows if it’s a blessing or a curse. When Zuko’s face burned, the fire didn’t stop there, and when the flames went out a young dragon was left on the floor of the arena. Uncle Iroh came to his rescue before the rest of Court could gather their wits, and then had to get him on a boat and out of the Fire Nation before Ozai could decide whether to make him into a pet or a trophy. Part 1: Rather than going on a mission to hunt the Avatar, Zuko and Iroh are on a road trip to keep Zuko alive and secret from the world (Ozai wants to usurp his brother’s title of Dragon). Iroh and his crew end up raising this stubborn angsty dragon prince; since he can’t turn back into a human he has to come to terms with being a dragon most of the time (which can’t talk), and he can often be Very Dramatic about it. Part 2: Years later, there’s rumors of the Avatar’s return and Zuko (who has sort of learned to take a human shape again) sees an opportunity to spare his own life and go home by offering his father a bigger prize than a dragon’s head...

Status: very general outline, some scenes conceived and a general plot/endpoint. Part 1 is in the 3 years pre-canon, Part 2 is during canon, including the grumpy dragon hiding out in Ba Sing Se.

Years Gone/Avatar kids AU S1/pre-canon rewrite. Some whim of fate cracks open Aang’s iceberg three years early (a storm, a passing boat, pure chance?) and he tumbles out into the world in the same year that Prince Zuko was banished. Despite befriending some Water Tribe children who would love to go adventuring with him, he’s got to get home to the Southern Air Temple and that’s where he runs into young, angry, raw-wounded Prince Zuko on his first visit. The tiny chase ensues up and down the entire temple. Aang will of course be friendly but escape. And this begins a probably-ill-advised adventure with a lot of kids who are entirely too young to be camping across the world on a bison (but it’s exciting!), chased by another kid entirely too young to be leading a manhunt. The Comet is three years away so there’s plenty of time for adults to tear their hair out over this. Zuko is a tiny ball of determination, rage, and tears. Aang feels bad for him and tries to make with the befriending even as he’s dodging the fire tantrums. Occasionally during adventures Zuko just gets scooped along for the ride in Appa’s saddle, no one’s sure how these weird truces get called, but Iroh sips tea and directs the crew on a new heading and they’ll pick up their prince at the bison’s next stopover most likely after the kid pendulums back the other way and remembers he’s trying to nab the Avatar again. So Zuko spends 50% of the time yelling and chasing the Avatar and 50% of the time sitting in Appa’s saddle learning tentative smiles and being offered berries and seal jerky, all the way from the South Pole to the North. (It’s slightly terrifying to realize that Aang and Zuko are currently the oldest kids in the party and are actually in charge of this terribly irresponsible expedition.)

Status: general outline, a couple of scenes written, particular S1 plot points, no endpoint yet. Possible bonus content: Toph and/or Suki come along for the ride because why not.

The Blacksmith of Ba Sing Se This is a very old Lu Ten Lives! story. Lu Ten always knew Uncle Ozai envied him, but secure in his position he didn’t really care about it until he took an arrow in the back during the final battle of the Siege of Ba Sing Se. With unknown assassins among his own ranks and no safe place to retreat in the melee, the wounded prince decides to fake his own death by hiding in the rubble, and then swapping clothes with a slain Earth Kingdom soldier half crushed in the ruin. At first, it’s only to get to safety until he can get to the bottom of this. But Lu Ten is picked up by the EK medic teams after the surprising withdrawal of the Fire Nation troops, and ends up spirited away into the heart of Ba Sing Se—where he discovers that it’s hard to escape. He also discovers a whole new world, and a whole new perspective, and, keeping out of the authorities’ notice, eventually manages to make a life for himself as Chang the Blacksmith, a humble craftsman with a wife and kids. This...is much nicer than war, death, and Court politics. Years later: refugee Zuko walking home from his job at Pao Family Tea Shop runs across a little boy crying over his broken toy in the dusty street...

Status: nebulous outline with a few particular sketched scenes. Takes place mostly in Ba Sing Se, outcome indeterminate. It could be mixed with the Lineages concept from below.

Lineages / not Ozai’s kid AU Not really a concrete plot so much as a campy idea from long before the Avatar comics blundered through Ursa’s backstory. There was a phase in the fandom (I think the Search comics drew off of that) where it was popular to imagine almost anyone else than Ozai as Zuko’s Secret Real Dad (the boy deserves a better father) and Iroh was often selected as primary candidate. (I know, Iroh is already the real dad and stepped into Ozai’s cold empty shoes like a pro.) Me, deciding that I had to be different, decided to offer up Lu Ten on that altar. Justifications: Iroh and Ozai looked to have a pretty extreme age difference and there was no solid age for Lu Ten at the time of his death, but his picture looks mature enough. Deals with family secrets and the political issues of muddying the lines of inheritance in the middle of a war. Also takes a crack at Ursa having a clever hand with Azulon’s last will and testament on Ozai’s behalf, with provisos.

Status: nothing really more than a vague concept without enough plot to stand on its own. Without a viable framework, it could work better/well folded into The Blacksmith story, above.

I’m open to opinions and/or asks about these. Trying to get a spark going! (I need to be working in a fandom, ANY fandom at this point! ^_^;; )

#atla #avatar #avatar tla #the last airbender #atla fic #fic ideas #stuff becky never got around to writing #but wanted to #except atla fans back in the day could be kinda really scary #sad to say the zutara battleship drove me out of those waters #don't hate the pairing just misliked the attitudes and actions of people involved #there was no chill and it made me sad #but I'm willing to try again!

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sabrinaofwoodsbeyond · 5 years

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Are ya going to update the SGE Star Trek fan fic? It’s really good!!

Short answer: I’m not really sure? It would have to change in a lot of ways, which I’ll get into in my long answer. I’d definitely do it if I thought people would still read it after I changed it.

Long answer:

Alright, so I really loved writing SGEtrek, but it’s got a huge, glaring flaw: I’m just not that into Star Trek anymore. When I started it, the idea was basically “SGE in space,” and since I was watching Star Trek at the time I used that universe as a framework to get it off the ground. But my interest in Star Trek waned pretty quickly, and now it just seems like a chore to look up trivia about it and make sure the stuff I want to do in SGEtrek fits with the lore. If I were ever to continue it, I’d need to rewrite it so it either takes place in an original universe, or crosses over with a similar universe that I’m more familiar with and enthusiastic about.

On the bright side, I’ve actually given some thought to which universe that would be: Starbound! It’s a space exploration game that I’ve been playing on and off for years now, and the universe is much more flexible and easy to work with. It also has seven main alien races that are all equally important, (as opposed to Star Trek where the main race is clearly humans) meaning I could get a little more creative with the characters (without spoiling too much, I don’t know if anyone wanted Robot Tedros, but you’d be getting him). Here’s my pro/con list for rebranding “SGEtrek” as “SGEbound” and continuing it that way:

-Pro: more aliens is more fun! All seven Starbound races have some pretty rich lore that I’ve all but memorized, and it would be really fun to incorporate that into the existing characters. Sure, regular human Hester is fun, but what if Hester was also a super smart, Planet of the Apes style ape-like humanoid on the run from her home planet’s tyrannical government? Now that’s something I could get into.

-Con: the Starbound aliens are less well known, and most of them are significantly less human than Vulcans or Klingons. In the version of SGEbound I have in my head, Sophie and Agatha are the only human main characters in a universe where, for plot reasons, humans have recently become an endangered species. Personally, I’m very into the idea of “Three-eyed Amphibious Fish Person Kiko” and “Tagatha, but Tedros is a robot programmed to think he’s a medieval prince,” but I can see how that might be off putting for some people.

-Pro: Starbound is way more flexible than Star Trek! It’s a game designed to be modded, which basically means that players are encouraged to program new stuff into the game if they want. The way that translates to fanfic writing is that it’s really not a big deal if Castor and Pollux stay a two headed dog instead of turning into one of the seven playable races, or if the cast uses magic in addition to technology. Many aspects of the main plot are open to interpretation as well, so while there’s kind of a built in storyline for the SGE characters to progress through, it’s not particularly hard to change it to suit the AU’s needs.

-Con: Starbound is way less recognizable than Star Trek. Like with SGEtrek, you definitely wouldn’t need to know a thing about Starbound to understand SGEbound’s story. But Star Trek, at the time SGEtrek was written, had two recent movies that did fairly well, and people generally knew what the concept was even if they had never watched the show or the movies. Starbound doesn’t have the same cultural relevance, and that might make people less inclined to read an AU based on it.

-Pro (and a pretty important one imo): Not much about the first two chapters would have to change! Starbound’s version of the United Federation of Planets is called the Terrene Protectorate, and the game begins with the main character (characters in this case) graduating from the Protectorate’s academy. I’d still want to show a bit of Sophie and Agatha going through the Academy, so I’d just have to edit some names and locations and the first two chapters would be more or less the same.

-Con: The “school” portion of the story would be shorter, and some fan favorite characters wouldn’t be there. Alright, so if you’ve read this far, I’ll reward you by not burying the lead anymore: on graduation day, the Earth gets destroyed, and only a small handful of ships are able to evacuate in time. Sophie and Agatha would be part of the even smaller handful of Protectorate ships that make it. I feel like it’s a much richer story if Sophie and Agatha are some of the few survivors, and have to make allies from scratch instead of coincidentally running into a bunch of folks from Earth they were separated from and assumed were dead as the plot demands it. By the same token, I don’t want to kill off 75% of the canon cast in the first part of the story, so what we’d end up with would be a very Sophie and Agatha-centric first 3-4 chapters that more or less summarize their academy days.

This is probably a way longer answer than you were looking for, and I’m gonna be even more annoying by ending this with a couple of my own questions: would y’all read SGEtrek if it were rebooted as SGEbound? If so, what aspects of SGEtrek would you want me to keep? And does anyone want me to post the art I drew forever ago of Glitch!Tedros failing to woo Protectorate!Agatha?

#sgetrek #sgebound #(?)#(maybe???)#I'd love to hear any feedback!#just fyi that feedback *can* be 'suck it up and finish sgetrek as is'#but it's probably gonna take way longer #ask #anon #fanfic #who startled the witch

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mst3kproject · 7 years

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Face of the Screaming Werewolf

So. That's a title.

Face of the Screaming Werewolf was directed, so to speak, by Jerry Warren of Wild Wild World of Batwoman fame. It stars much of the cast of Robot vs the Aztec Mummy, because bits of the first film in that series were used in its construction – just as they were in the flashback sequence of Robot vs the Aztec Mummy itself! The movie also stars Lon Chaney Jr. by virtue of footage stolen from another Mexican horror film called House of Terror. As you might imagine, the resulting Frankenmovie is not particularly coherent viewing. Are we gonna see that singing Aztec sacrifice scene again? You bet your butts we are! In fact, we see significantly more of it.

Scientist Dr. Edmund Redding places a young woman, Ann Taylor, in a trance, and listens to her describe an ancient city of the Aztecs. She hints at something of importance hidden in a pyramid there, so Dr. Redding and his colleagues set out for Mexico to look for it. The pyramid itself prompts Ann to have another vision, and she guides the scientists to a chamber deep inside it, where they find two mummies. One, which I shall call Mummy A, is our old friend Popoka, who to general horror is up and shuffling around. Mummy B, as described in a news broadcast, is a modern man who was injected with mummy juice in the attempt to induce a state of undeath. Whether either mummy is the important thing that drew Ann to the pyramid in her visions, we never find out.

Naturally Dr. Redding brings these corpses, both animate and not, back to California with him and holds a big press conference to announce his finds. Before he can take the stage, however, he is mysteriously assassinated, and Mummy B is stolen! The thugs who took it try to ressurect it with mad science, but fail, so they hire a guy to steal Mummy A from Dr. Redding's research institute. Meanwhile, a chance bolt of lightning ressurects Mummy B after all, and the full moon turns him into a werewolf! He begins slaughtering scientists, while Mummy A, having knocked out the thief sent to collect him, kills Ann and then vanishes from the movie entirely.

So what we have here are highly abbreviated versions of two different movies stitched together, and wow, are the seams ever visible. There's the scene that's supposed to be Dr. Redding's presentation: we see a big audience applauding, and Dr. Redding stands up... but he's clearly in his own living room, while the audience is in a large hall in what looks like a completely different building! Even more obvious is the stuff Jerry Warren shot to fill in the holes between the two plots, which is on a completely different grade of film stock (and in a completely different decade) than anything in either source movie. And while both The Aztec Mummy and House of Terror put some actualy money into their productions (not much, but some), the extra footage had no budget at all, and gives us things like a 'Cowan Research Institute' which appears to be next door to Batwoman's house.

As in other Jerry Warren movies, nothing follows anything else logically, and the fact that we've got two movies mixed together here only heightens this effect. In fact, I suspect that a lot of things here did make sense in the original movies, before Warren took a hatchet to them. Take, for example, Mummy A's fascination with Ann. In The Aztec Mummy this was explained as her being the reincarnation of Popoka's lover Zochi. Face of the Screaming Werewolf might be doing the reincarnation thing, too, but is way less clear about it. In House of Terror the mad scientists were working on ressurecting the dead, but in Face of the Screaming Werewolf we are never properly introduced to them and their goals are a mystery – although their hideout, in a wax museum, is creepy as hell and their equipment is incredibly amusing. Among other things, they appear to subject Mummy B to a giant panini press and a purpose-built corpse centrifuge!

The mixing of stories leaves the movie with a particularly egregious case of No Main Character Syndrome, simply because we never stay with a set of characters long enough to consider them 'main'. Dr. Redding and Ann are introduced as if they ought to be the main characters, because of course that's exactly what they were in their own movie. Rather than stay with them, however, the movie disposes of them both by killing them offscreen (since at no point in the Aztec Mummy quadrilogy do Eduardo or Flora die). Then the scientists at the wax museum appear as if they're going to be main characters, but without ever being properly introduced to us. I don't think any of them even got a name. The detectives in Warren's added footage might have had names, but if so I don't remember them, and because they can't interact with any of these other characters they never do anything useful to the plot. That leaves us with only the werewolf and the mummy, neither of whom ever even speak.

The thing I do find rather interesting about a patchwork movie like this is what was kept versus what appears to have been cut. The Aztec Mummy was eighty minutes long, House of Terror was sixty, and bits and pieces of both have been combined into the sixty-minute Face of the Screaming Werewolf. A lot clearly had to go from each, but what they kept was, in some cases, really strange. As I noted, we don't ever get proper introductions for the guys at the wax museum, and yet we see the entire Aztec sacrifice scene without any of The Aztec Mummy's backstory to give it context – and without context, the events we see are meaningless. Why include it when it mostly just draws attention to the fact that Mummy B does not belong in this tomb with Mummy A? The only answer I can imagine was because it represents the nearest thing Face of the Screaming Werewolf has to spectacle, but the movie didn't need spectacle. It needed characters and a plot.

Meanwhile, because we never get the beginning of House of Terror, very little from that story means anything to us, either. We get repeated shots of the museum's creepy wax figures, which were significant in House of Terror, but have nothing to do with Face of the Screaming Werewolf. The werewolf himself has no backstory or motivation, and although we're told he's a modern man who somehow ended up in the pyramid, we're given no clues as to how or why. He has no lines, I'm guessing because Lon Chaney Jr. didn't speak any Spanish. His rampage is committed against more characters we've never met, and we don't understand why he kills some people, kidnaps others, and leaves yet more alone. A scene of him in human form, moping over his sorry plight, suggests that we're supposed to feel sympathy for this character, but how, when we know nothing about him?

If I were in charge of fixing Face of the Screaming Werewolf, he first thing I would do is go back to the source material and make some changes in what actually became part of the final movie. And once I had my footage all picked out, I would then rewrite the story that goes with it very thoroughly indeed. As I observed in my review of Time of the Apes, the beauty of dubbing is that you don't necessarily have to stick to the original script. You can take out irrelevant stuff and add in new material. I think I would have kept it to a single mummy, and perhaps made lycanthropy a tomb curse of sorts – Chaney's character would be the last archaeologist to profane the pyramid, and he was punished by becoming a werewolf so he could in turn punish any foolish enough to come after him! There. I just wrote a more coherent version of this movie in ten seconds than Jerry Warren did in however long it took him.

All this does tend to make one ask: is making one movie out of two, like Face of the Screaming Werewolf, or finishing somebody else's movie, as in Monster A-Go-Go, a lost cause? I think if you could find a pair of movies that shared actors or sets, it might be possible to come up with something reasonably coherent, but you'd still have the problem of characters who can't interact, or scenes that have to be stitched together where they obviously don't belong. It seems to me to be something that works better as a joke, as in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist or Ninja: the Mission Force, rather than something to be done seriously. When not used for Internet Humour, frankenmovie-making seems to be motivated primarily by greed. Herschel Gordon Lewis finished Monster A-Go-Go in the attempt to sell an unsalable product, and Jerry Warren turned La Momia Azteca and La Casa del Terror into Attack of the Mayan Mummy, House of Terror, and Face of the Screaming Werewolf so that he could release three movies for the price of the rights to two.

Greed is of course at the core of a lot of modern moviemaking. Summer blockbusters and long-running franchises are designed specifically to earn as much money as possible without anybody necessarily caring if they're any good. A lot of the time they're not, yet despite poor reviews they still earn money, so I guess moviegoers don't care either as long as they get to see something cool. Even by that standard, though, Face of the Screaming Werewolf is extremely cynical. Warren figured as long as he gave the movie a cool title, people would pay for it regardless of whether it even made any damned sense. And you know what? I watched the damn thing, so I guess I don't care, either.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #face of the screaming werewolf #60s #you is a warwelf #royally lame crummy mummies #curiously caucasian aztecs

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