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quitealotofsodapop · 4 months

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haha I love the "slow-boiled stone egg" name for this au thats adorable! I have some to chew on now thank you! I will be drawing some funny moments for this au now <3

[Many foes back off just by the tired firey glare in the King's eyes.] Wukong's presence is enough to scare most off, and the most of the rest who think about still trying end up taking one look at him and just knowing it's not worth it XD

[Wukong never managed to tell Macaque about the Egg in that lifetime.] it breaks his heart. later, the fact he never knew breaks Macaque's heart too, he'd always wanted a family with his king

[he's convinced that the Egg's presence at the Samadhi Fire was what caused the Rings to Split and hit Ao Lie.] I didn't mention it in my first post but it was part of my thought process that the stone egg started "kicking" mid-ritual, and try as he might to keep control of the situation the pain from that is what causes Wukong to slip allowing the creation of the fourth ring.

[By isolating himself, he accidentally causes his body to *turn down the heat* and extend the process even longer.] awww no, nore isolation! he's gonna be so mad when he realizes he prolonged the whole thing more. but maybe it's better that way, it wouldn't be good to have the egg be born while his mental health is that bad and he doesn't have a support network. egg is like, "no troop? no family? not suitable conditions, I'm staying in here for now". [he geniunely believed that keeping MK whilst the Stone Egg was still draining life force could kill the cub. So SWK is forced to give the little toddler up to save his life.] on the same note it's also (unfortunately) for the better, he wasn't in the right mind to care for a kid, and ebven if that isn't the direct reason he acknowledges as he reason to give MK up the fact he recognizes he might not be safe for a kid right now and does things to ensure MK still gets a good life says a lot. bonus points if he still watches over MK as he grows and giving up MK leads him to trying to better his mental health for the sake of his unborn infant.

[When him and MK finally reunite, its a little awkward but MK immediately understands the reason for the Monkey King's retirement.] wait, did MK remember he was with SWK first here or was just "meeting my fav legend irl" kind of awkward? also MK assuming it's a bad break up situation is super funny when you remember that it was his break up with Macaque that led to Wukong's body finally reaching peak egg making conditions. in a way, it is a bad break up situation, just not in the way that MK is assuming.

[being "like this longer than even Lao Tzu's mother". He returns to Pigsy's that evening silent with a horrified look on his face.] SWK def brags that he now holds the record for the longest pregnancy from any immortal. when MK goes back to Pigsy's the othres notice, and MK having already told the others why SWK wasn't doing hero work himself anymore (with SWK's permission ofc) explains what Wukong told him and the whole shop is silently horrified/very sympathetic the rest of the night.

[New Years does not go smoothly. The Spider Queen can sense that there's a new life within the King, but she decides its an issue for after the takeover.] Wukong is very surprised she doesn't immediately try and exploit the obvious weakness but she's like "I hate you but I still have some honor ape" but still goes and drains him. he's very surprised to see LBD present, and her being there when he's caught is how she learns he's carrying a stone egg. her having this information freaks him out, especially when it doesn't take her long to start making passive threats. after the spider queen debacle SWK def make a really quick tri to the south sea for a check up with Kuan Yin to make sure being drained like that didn't hurt the egg.

[DBK frees himself, not only from the fear of losing his wife and his son, but also out of fury that Wukong had been hiding his condition for so long!!] LBD approaches SWK who is tied up close to DBK, so DBK hears the whole conversation, including the parts about Wukong's condition. he spends the whole time he's trying to escape grilling Wukong about keeping it secret from even him.

[Any resentment surrounding the Bull's imprisonment is forgiven due to a certain offer... + PIF demands a proper baby shower when she hears about it from her excited husband later.] it is surprisingly easy to get back into the bull family's good graces after imprisoning DBK with that single question, as well as making up for not telling them. DBK picks up red son and runs back home super excited, he busts down the doors to his family's castle and just yells "DARLING WE'RE GONNA BE GODPARENTS" to both PIF and RS's confusion until he explains everything.

[Macaque has... suspicions when he and Wukong finally meet again in S1. He makes a comment about the king being "out of shape", but becomes concerned when his Sun refuses to fight in any way that leaves his stomach exposed.] Macaque's "comprehension of all" be coming in clutch here baby! he's instantly concerned about Wukong so closely protecting a certain part of his bidy, that usually means there's a vulnrability, a big one, but it's only when he's laying in bed later that night that it occurs to him just what that vulbrability may have been. it causes many sleepless nights after that, driving himself insane trying to figure out if he;s right or not with the information he has at hand.

["The Shadow Play" becomes more a plan to trap the Monkie Kid gang for answers. MK spills the beans. Macaque stares blankly for a minute before yelling in frustration. It's too much emotional baggage to process right now!] the endless speculation becomes too much and he just needs answers, now. but with that question out of the way there's a couple more lined right up. how far a long is he? who;s the other parent? when did it happen? but ofc he ends up not having the chance to answer those questions before LBD decides to shake things up some more.

[now with the additional threat that she will harm the Stone Egg if Macaque fails her again...] even without all the answers he wants about the stone egg Macaque knows he can't let that happen, he may have hated Wukong for a while and they have yet to even begin reconciling but he would never do anything to harm Wukong's baby if he ever had one. he wasn't going to bring an infant into their conflict. but Wukong doesn't know that. he knows Wukong doesn't know that from the way he hunches in on himself to protect his stomach the second Macaque's voice is heard above the airship. Wukong is at first terrified when Macaque gets involved, he hates the idea of having to choose between him or his unborn infant again, but Wukong already knows what he'll choose if he has to. but Macaque barely even acknowledges him, specifically doesn't target him, a noteworthy thing since Macaque's quarrel is most personal with the sage. SWK doesn't complain, he doesn't want to have to choose again.

[She tries to offer protection for the Stone Egg in exchange for the world - but Wukong refuses to answer and gets the drop on him.] clever considering his love for children in general let alone his own, but what good is having his little one alone when he so desperately wants to share that love with his family? [Macaque breaks the King from his possession by casually placing a curious hand on his swollen stomach, smiling in a way Wukong hadn't seen in centuries. "I know," is all that is said as the two monkeys allow their foreheads to touch.] Macaque is very mindful not to do anything that would risk the stone egg's life during the fight because LBD doesn't care to protect SWK's stomach the way he himself did back in s1. still, Wukong was so stressed by what was happening while he was possessed that Macaque's gentleness+pregnancy hormones causes him to ust start bawling his eyes out. loud, ugly crying tears of joy and relief.

[She did not count upon the Egg recognising her as a yummy source of spirtual energy as she was possessing it's parent. LBD soul is literally devoured as the Stone Egg responds to Wukong and Macaque's reconcillation.] the mental image of the stone egg's magic just chomping down on LBD's soul is super funny, stone egg be like "you hurt bama and then try and leave like nothing? i think not! nom". SWK sensing the egg absorbing some powerful magic and is just like "oh gods".

[Until the newly unpossessed Monkey King doubles over in pain and cries for the Bodhisattva to help him. Guanyin is on the scene in seconds, glaring at her little brother angrily. Half the gang stare jaws dropped at what is happening while the rest are panicking.] the stone egg go the last of the magic it needed and later during the celebrations felt that SWK finally had his whole family present and didn't feel isolated anymore and was like "huh, guess it's time, is it? okay" and that's that. with how close he was to popping these days Wukong had Guanyin on speed dial in case of labor finally occuring, comes in handy now with how quick they shows up but they're not happy with Wukong for putting himself and the egg in so much danger with what was happening with LBD. he shouldn't have been fighting her! he shouldn't have been fighting at all! and the smadhi fire again? they're gonna skin Wukong.

[After many hours of painful labor with Macaque clutching his hand for support, Wukong *finally* greets his baby for the first time.] Macaque is def worried on a few occasions that his hand is gonna break, but he ends up only losing feeling in his hand for a while. it's also bruised and sore for a while but it's the price he's willing to pay to be present for the stone egg's arrival. Wukong, holding his new born infant after the egg hatches def joke that she "kept him waiting".

[Her dark fur is hard to ignore. As well as the ice-blue eyes that stare between the two monkeys with wonder.] ice blue eyes as a side affect of LBD's soul getting devoured at the end there, but what if the dark fur is actually because of SWK constantly yearning for Macaque to come back after their fight during the early stages of his pregnancy, SWK's desire and longing worsened by hormones causing her to shift in appearance to fit not just her parent but his wants. [And the little excited chirps she makes that sing the tune of Wukong's favorite songs. Everyone in the Monkie Kid gang, the Demon Bull family, and any present celestials are crying with joy.] I headcanon Wukong hums a lot, so his infant picking up on the sounds of the tunes he hummed in the later stages of his pregnancy is very cute, but he probably thinks every sound she makes is like music even when not trying to mimic him. he bursts into tears the first time she chirps. Macaque def cries at her having dark fur like him cause it makes him feel more like a bio parent. DBK tries to hold it together but starts crying when she can fit into his cupped palm with ease. Kuanyin cries and gives Wukong a hug when he holds her for the first time.

[Gold Star comes down from Heaven in person to bless her arrival.] he is thanked for his blessing and also thanked for being to busy to read the specifics of Wukong's imprisonment, seeing as if he had Wukong wouldn't be holding the most precious little furball in the universe right now.

[Her eye lazers come in a little later than expected... singeing Azure Lion's fur as he goes to take the Jade Emperor's throne. All present, including members of the Brotherhood, laugh at the coincidence.] it's hard not to laugh given the context, there ends up being a joke mad that every new Jade Emperor will have stone monkey lazer eyes shot at them when they try and sit on the throne for the first time. Wukong is insanely proud.

[Yuebei's whole family are willing to *destroy* the divine animals if even dare touch a single hair on her little head.] Azure would likely try deluding himself into believing that he, Wukong, and Yuebei could be a perfect family once justice is brought to Heaven, or try to blackmail the MKrew. or both. you can imagine that won't go over with anyone too well.

[The retrieve Yuebei after they enter the palace and see the three usurpers beaten to a pulp. The infant monkey rolling around on her butt as she giggles. Azure begs the crew to "please take her back".] Azure was so busy fantasizing he didn't notice Yuebei starting to get playful, and playful+super power do not mix. she starts tugging at him to play and the rest is history.

[Wukong and Macaque are so proud of their super-delayed baby girl. :3] they will always be super proud ;)

sorta mirror post to this one.

[it breaks his heart. later, the fact he never knew breaks Macaque's heart too, he'd always wanted a family with his king]

Macaque having the mega-regret when he finds out all those years later about the Stone Egg, feeling like a dad who wasn't around for their (ex)partner and unborn baby and barely having enough time to adjust when baby arrives.

[I didn't mention it in my first post but it was part of my thought process that the stone egg started "kicking" mid-ritual, and try as he might to keep control of the situation the pain from that is what causes Wukong to slip allowing the creation of the fourth ring.]

Ooh he'd feel so bad for allowing the slip-up to happen cus of being distracted by the Egg moving (likely responding to the Samadhi fire like it would consumable dao like; "Hey, can I eat that- OOO NO SPICY!!!"). Whats worse is that his slip-up indirectly hurt his baby's godfather, and nearly killed his master :(

Wukong's mental health was not good after the ritual, no matter how greatful the Ironbull couple were for the safety of their son. Wukong risked his own baby for them, and the couple don't learn this until centuries later.

[on the same note it's also (unfortunately) for the better, he wasn't in the right mind to care for a kid, and ebven if that isn't the direct reason he acknowledges as he reason to give MK up the fact he recognizes he might not be safe for a kid right now and does things to ensure MK still gets a good life says a lot. bonus points if he still watches over MK as he grows and giving up MK leads him to trying to better his mental health for the sake of his unborn infant.]

Bonus sad detail: Wukong probably didn't need to give up MK. The Stone Egg would have sensed MK as a fellow baby monkey, and hence "troop/sibling, no eat". But Wukong could not take that chance with the limited knowledge he had. He'd rather silently watch over MK being raised by other parents, than risk the Egg's magic killing the older cub. And ofc he was in a mental health pit and just *couldn't* raise MK on his own in that state.

[Wukong is very surprised she doesn't immediately try and exploit the obvious weakness but she's like "I hate you but I still have some honor ape" but still goes and drains him.] + [after the spider queen debacle SWK def make a really quick tri to the south sea for a check up with Kuan Yin to make sure being drained like that didn't hurt the egg.]

Ohhhh, imagine post-New Years the Spider gang hears some furious knocking at the entrance to the sewer-cave. Spider Queen turns, only to see Guanyin/Kuan Yin glaring her down like the vengeful goddess she is.

Quanyin: "You hurt my little brother and his unborn baby."

[even without all the answers he wants about the stone egg Macaque knows he can't let that happen, he may have hated Wukong for a while and they have yet to even begin reconciling but he would never do anything to harm Wukong's baby if he ever had one. he wasn't going to bring an infant into their conflict. but Wukong doesn't know that.he knows Wukong doesn't know that from the way he hunches in on himself to protect his stomach the second Macaque's voice is heard above the airship. Wukong is at first terrified when Macaque gets involved, he hates the idea of having to choose between him or his unborn infant again, but Wukong already knows what he'll choose if he has to.]

Ohohoho the spicy conflict. Wukong not wanting to choose his baby's safety over Macaque again, not knowing that this time Macaque knows about the Egg and is trying his damn best to ignore Wukong so he won't have to.

Instead of the infamous "OH WUKONG!" while flying overhead at the end of S2, Macaque instead announces hos presence to MK specifically. Wukong and the gang are confused when Mac is actively trying to pretend Wukong isn't there until it clicks that he knows.

[clever considering his love for children in general let alone his own, but what good is having his little one alone when he so desperately wants to share that love with his family?]

Wukong gets the drop on him cus it's such a paradoxial offer. If he agrees, his baby will be a lonely little cub in the world like he was + he'll lose all his found family and the world at large. If he refuses, LBD might just decide to aim for the Egg directly, taking away something Wukong has been incubating/nuturing for centuries away from him and using the energy accumilated within to fuel her mech.

It gives him enough pause that LBD manages to target her possession onto him.

LBD does not think about feeding Wukong in this timeframe ofc, since in her mind he's an immortal self-sustaining puppet now. It's ultimately what leads to her demise...

[the mental image of the stone egg's magic just chompingdown on LBD's soul is super funny, stone egg be like "you hurt bama and then try and leave like nothing? i think not! nom". SWK sensing the egg absorbing some powerful magic and is just like "oh gods".]

Oh gosh I'm trying to think of how terrfying that would be to witness.

You know when the Mayor gets un-possessed by LBD? Think that, but the soul energy is getting eaten like a string of noodles and slurped into Wukong's body.

Yuebei, from deep within Wukong's body: *burp!* Everyone present: 0_o Wukong, very concerned/proud(?): "Uh... I guess the Egg... ate her???"

[the stone egg go the last of the magic it needed and later during the celebrations felt that SWK finally had his whole family present and didn't feel isolated anymore and was like "huh, guess it's time, is it? okay" and that's that.]

The Egg needed Wukong to gain a couple few more family members before it could "hatch" into Baby. XD

[I headcanon Wukong hums a lot, so his infant picking up on the sounds of the tunes he hummed in the later stages of his pregnancy is very cute, but he probably thinks every sound she makes is like music even when not trying to mimic him. he bursts into tears the first time she chirps. Macaque def cries at her having dark fur like him cause it makes him feel more like a bio parent. DBK tries to hold it together but starts crying when she can fit into his cupped palm with ease. Kuanyin cries and gives Wukong a hug when he holds her for the first time.]

The whole squad is crying.

The baby does a little series of chirps that Wukong swears sound like a piece of music he hummed to himself when alone. He can barely explain it until he just buries his face into his (!!!) baby's dark fluffy hair. She smells like new beginnings and Wukong has to constantly wipe his eyes to prevent his tears from wetting her little face.

Mac's crying cus he's finally coming to terms with why Wukong hurt him all those years ago + he's meeting his former mate's little cub who looks like him!! He makes a sound akin to a dying squeaky toy when he's asked how he thinks of little Yuebei.

DBK holds it together until he has Yuebei in his palm. Smaller than even Red Son was as a baby. DBK does one deep breath... and quickly has to pass the baby to PIF cus his eyes have turned into waterfalls. She's so small!!

Quanyin has cried many times in their life as a goddess... but holding Yuebei is the first time in a long time she makes a joyful snotty sob. The baby monkey is confused by the bodhisattva's reaction, and tries kissing her tears away. This only makes her honorary aunt/grandmother cry even harder with pride and joy.

Not to mention how hard MK cries when Wukong introduces him to Yuebei as "your honorary big brother". Mei has hundreds of timelapsed photos of MK as his face contorts into an ugly cry as he holds Yuebei for the first time.

[he is thanked for his blessing and also thanked for being to busy to read the specifics of Wukong's imprisonment, seeing as if he had Wukong wouldn't be holding the most precious little furball in the universe right now.]

When Gold Star arrives to deliver his blessing, he finally gets a good look at the baby and is like "Oh!!" His previous divine demeanor immediately drops like an old coat, cus this is the first Stone Monkey infant he's seen in thousands of years!! And she's so beautiful!! He reminds himself to say sorry to Wukong for not checking if the Buddha's punishment was Stone Monkey friendly. Wukong and Mac laugh him off cus the Gold Star of Venus is currently having his beard nearly yanked off by the playful newborn cub.

[it's hard not to laugh given the context, there ends up being a joke mad that every new Jade Emperor will have stone monkey lazer eyes shot at them when they try and sit on the throne for the first time. Wukong is insanely proud.]

Wukong most certainly is proud!! His little girl is already developing ways to defend herself! She's supposed to be kidnapped after all.

[Azure would likely try deluding himself into believing that he, Wukong, and Yuebei could be a perfect family once justice is brought to Heaven, or try to blackmail the MKrew. or both. you can imagine that won't go over with anyone too well.]

Azure: "What do you think little cub? Am I not a fine Emperor and guardian? Do you think your mother will warm to being at my side?" Yuebei, hungry, frustrated, and bored: *glares and makes a distinctly "Macaque"-sound as her ears glow* The Brotherhood: "..." Peng: "She must be hard to impress. As any princess ought to be." Azure: *feels a little better* :'3 Yellowtusk the Wise, internally: "I'm telling Guanyin. I am not going to be held responsible for what nonsense Azure gets up to regarding Wukong and the infant."

[Azure was so busy fantasizing he didn't notice Yuebei starting to get playful, and playful+super power do not mix. she starts tugging at him to play and the rest is history.] + [they will always be super proud ;)]

If Azure still had a tail, Yuebei would have taken it as a chew toy long before the MKrew (love that name) got there. And Wukong would have let her keep it as a trophy.

Hope you enjoy this slightly different version of the other ask! I hope I managed to get to some details I forgot/overlooked in the other one!

#slow boiled stone egg au #stone egg talk #lmk aus #lego monkie kid #lmk #lmk yuebei #yuebei xing #pregnancy tw #sun wukong #shadowpeach #six eared macaque #liu er mihou #long post

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adobe-outdesign · 2 months

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If it's not getting tiresome would you mind reviewing the mynci? They've been my favorite since childhood

The Mynci is our only primate Neopet (not counting TNT staff, the freaks) and it's... alright. Honestly, I'm kind of amazed we only got a singular monkey Neopet for this category, considering how diverse primates are all-around—you have baboons, gorillas, monkeys, lemurs, etc. It's not a bad thing, but it's head-scratching compared to the number of dragons and birds we have.

As our only primate Neopet, the Mynci is about as literal as you could get with a monkey—long tail, big ears, snub nose (their most distinctive feature tbh) and what seems to be exposed flesh over their ears, face and stomach, down to even having a belly button. I feel like they're kind of like Lupes, being real animals, but they don't have as incredible as a selection of colours to support them like Lupes do.

I guess my main problem with them is that there's no fur indicated on their bodies, just two hairs on their heads, which always gave them this weird feeling of being bald. I feel like just a few small tufts of fur in the right spots would've helped avoid this. Their body shape is also pretty standard. Out of the designs that were voted on, I kind of gravitate towards Mynci #2 here, which both has more fur and a more interesting body shape, as well as a more obvious personality to it. (Though I will admit that #3 is the most Neopet-ish of them all.)

Mynci were basically left untouched by customization aside from gaining a fist, so that's a plus.

Favorite Colours:

Stealthy: Stealthy pets sometimes end up looking incredibly busy, with too many details and colors, but the stealthy Mynci gets it just right. I like the subtle dark green and gold palette used to accent the stealthy colour's natural navy and bright blue eyes, and little details like the stitch marks. I also love how the symbols on its headband and belt are clearly in the shape of a Mynci's nose. The only minor thing that bugs me is that those two hairs on top shouldn't be visible.

Royal: I have no idea why these are Shenkuu-based and I do not care (I guess it's because China has a fair amount of monkey species IRL?). Either way, these designs are super pretty, and work well eith the Mynci's design. Both the royalboy and royalgirl feel on par with each other, with both sporting long flowing robes (hanfu) and luck charms—the main difference being the color palettes and the royalboy having a beard and hat while the female has a headdress.

For the record, both versions are fine with the UCs obviously being better, though there are some weird things we lost in the conversion—like, what happened to the RB's beard and tail cuffs, and why did its eye color change? What happened to the RG's ring? Why did the grey in the RB's eyebrows get lighter? But regardless, these are still solid.

Toy: Come on, it's a symbol monkey! You can't not like it. The purple base is pleasant as well and goes well with the red and peach accents, and it looks nice and plastic-y. Bonus points for hiding the fist. (The eyes should've been purple or red though.)

Bonus: If you want something more ape-like and don't vibe with the Mynci's overall design, give the mutant version a spin. I really like the gorilla-like stance and anatomy, the more muted colors with bright red accents, and little details like the devil-shaped tail and extra fur. My only nitpick is that having both ears and horns feels weird—should be one or the other.

#a shoutout goes to robot which is also good but got slightly edged out by mutant for the bonus slot #neopets #neotag #myci #neopet reviews

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internutter · 3 years

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Challenge #03062-H154: Monkey Gonna Jump

A member of a race of aliens new to the Galactic scene holds the misconception that life can be either land bound or aquatic watches a human climb a steep hill specifically for the joy of jumping off the cliff on the other end into deep water. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I have a much more capable program doing the counting for me, so today's full challenge number is actually correct. I'm not going back and fixing the others because that is full-on nightmare fuel. Just... no. I tried, I failed, and now I have a thing that counts better than I ever could. Also expect further shenanigans at the closing of the year, as my count is off there, too. There will be bonus stories for this year's anthology. All so I can re-synchronise the calendar. (FYI, I'm out by at least four weeks)]

Companion Gann had heard things about Humans. Dangerous psychotic warrior race who didn't take "no you can't" as a warning that some things were bad for continued existence. Those weird hairless apes seemed to believe that they could do anything. Worse, most of the time they were right. There remained one sticking point upon which Gann remained adamant.

"There is no such thing as amphibious and mammalian intelligent life. Mammals are not amphibious. Amphibians are. You have aquatic mammals, or terrestrial mammals. Those are the limits of intelligent mammalian life. Even your lot can't defy the rules of basic evolution."

"So..." challenged Human Aura. "If I can prove to you that we're semi-acquatic, what do I win?" This was the way of Deathworlders in general and Humans in particular. Everything was a contest to these maniacs, and there had to be a prize involved. If Humans didn't win some form of enrichment to their existence, they could sulk about it for months[1].

[Check the source to see the full story]

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #havenworlders v deathworlders #humans are insane

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infriga · 2 years

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22, 15, and 4 for the meta writer asks? ~ @authortango

I put this in my drafts because I was planning on pulling up the meta ask post on my phone to help me answer, and then my adhd ass totally forgot to actually answer OTL sorry for the delay lol

(meta asks for writers post)

4: Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why if you like)

“I’m a fraud.” He’d said, on his hands and knees. “I’m a monster.” Something inside him had torn its way out, and he’d tried to hold himself together, but he couldn’t anymore. He was a dying star, a supernova, destroying everything around it in a flash of heat and terror before collapsing in on itself and ceasing to exist.

(From Aid to Navigation)

I like this one because it’s a nice multilayered metaphor for Steven’s conflict in that scene and Future in general (I’m a sucker for metaphors lol) that came out really nice and feels like it puts across the exact sort of feeling I was trying to convey.

15: Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Usually titles, cause I’m kinda picky about my titles. Sometimes they come easier, but in general they’re the hardest. Summaries I don’t have too much trouble with since I usually go for something that I think would entice me to look into a fic with the premise I’m using. I also might use a relevant snippet of my writing so people know what it looks like and to give a small glimpse of what’s going on and what the tone is. The only trouble I have with tags is trying to keep the number of them reasonable while still being informative so they aren’t overshadowing the summary.

22: Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

All the time lol, though there are some I might not read as much because I don’t feel they aged as well as I’d like and I am only human. I’m obviously more partial to my newer work, but I’m still quite fond of some of my older stuff, and I feel like plenty are still good and/or at least fun to read, even when they’re dated, or have lots of mistakes. I remember a very short story I wrote based on a prompt in a Gaia Online writing contest forum from 16 years ago that I still occasionally look back on fondly for no other reason than because I find it cute and funny. And it won me the contest so bonus! The prompt was just something simple based on a character named Chairman, who was “a member of the elite Chairforce, which fought the evils of the world from the chairs all over the world”. Here’s the snippet for anyone who’s curious :

"Oh no!" cried Chairman "the world is being over run by evil monkeys!"

"Nonscense" chided his wife "why would evil monkeys want to rule the world?" she continued her knitting, oblivious to the howler monkey tapping on their window.

"Haven't you ever seen "planet of the apes?"" Chairman asked her angrily.

"Yes of course dear, but those were apes, not monkeys"

"I see no difference!!"

"Of course not dear"

Chairman wheeled himself over to the closet and pulled out a 50 caliber assault riffle. He loaded it and headed towards the door.

It was time to shoot some monkeys.

I didn’t mention anything about the Chairforce, and I never actually clarified that Chairman is supposed to be in a wheelchair, but I give myself bonus points for at least hinting at it, since it was a creative and inclusive take on the chair theme (for a 2006 Gaia online writing contest at least lol). I also still really like the goofy tone of it. Somehow the mistakes, like misspelling rifle as “riffle”, only add to its charm for me lmao.

I used to be really embarrassed by my old writing, and sometimes I still can be, but the older my old stuff gets the more I appreciate it for what it is, cause sometimes I surprise myself with how much better I did than I remember, even if it’s not as good as I am now. And I like seeing how my work changes and evolves over time, it’s a nice showcase of how I’ve improved over the years. Something that stuck with me was when I deleted a fic once, because it was old and I thought it was cringy, plus it hadn’t gotten much attention anyway. But not long after I deleted it someone actually messaged me asking where it went. It was just a random oneshot, but someone still liked it enough to notice that it was gone, and they even brought it up to me directly and told me that they’d enjoyed it and wanted to read it again. Because of that I’d planned on editing it a bit and then posting it again instead of removing it permanently, but tragically I ended up losing the original document before I could. Now it’s gone forever, and I really regret deleting it in the first place because I’d still rather have the original version than nothing, for that one person who wanted to re-read it if nothing else. I’ve never deleted any of my old works completely off the internet since then, just kept the oldest ones mainly on FFN cause I like having the older stuff just on the older account where they originated, like a digital museum (though I have backups and if needed will probably archive them on a separate AO3 account/pseudonym if FFN ever goes under).

#writing #ask meme #ask tag #sorry this took like 3 days to reply to lol #maybe someday I'll find that lost fic and be able to post it #but it's been years so I don't have my hopes up #that was a lesson learned the hard way

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cmweller · 3 years

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Challenge #03062-H154: Monkey Gonna Jump

[Check the source to see the full story]

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #havenworlders #deathworlders

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monstersdownthepath · 3 years

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Spiritual Spotlight: Angazhan, the Ravenous King

Chaotic Evil Demon Lord of Apes, Tyrants, and Jungles

Domains: Animal, Chaos, Evil, Plant Subdomains: Decay, Demon, Fur, Growth

The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 18~19

Obedience: Ingest hallucinogenic jungle plants and then beat a complex rhythm on a large drum made of human skin and bones while chanting prayers to Angazhan. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against diseases and poisons caused by exposure to the jungle or inflicted by creatures native to jungles.

Heurgh, Angazhan has some pretty restrictive requirements here, and his Benefit really only works against a single environment, making Angazhan one of the most environmentally-locked deities since Dagon! It’s fitting, considering Angazhan is basically only worshiped in Darkest Africa the Mwangi Expanse, a massive and terrifying jungle he’s had his six-fingered hands buried deep into ever since humanity began settling the land. Since worship rarely ever leaves a jungle home, any player character wanting to serve the Ravenous King had better make sure they’ll be sticking close to the vine-draped homeland, or they’re just completely out of luck! Not just because they lose out on the benefit above, but because they lose out on a good number of Boons too!

anyway, it’s a difficult alignment to set up for and keep a secret, if you’re trying to hide your worship of the Tyrant King. You COULD pass off the drum as being made of animal tissues, but the loud chanting to a known and famous Demon Lord and the fact you’re likely to be seeing stars and colors due to your Hearty Breakfast is much harder to explain if someone kicks your door in. The fact you need both jungle drugs and a drum means this Obedience is utterly ruined if you get robbed or have your equipment stolen, though at the very least it’s easy enough to replace your belongings... if you’re in a jungle. If you’re not, getting a new drum is simple, but a visit to the black market may be necessary to restock on your Hearty Breakfast.

The benefit is notably weaker than other benefits of a similar theme; a few deities are generous enough to give universal protections from poison and disease, but Angazhan punishes you for going where he cannot tread. Fitting for a tyrant who likes having people under his thumb, but annoying for someone trying to actually extend his reach. In a jungle area, however, it’s MUCH more impressive than it looks in a vacuum; many, many, many, MANY horrors within the deep and mysterious tangles rely on poisons or disease to fell their enemies and their prey, so the added protection will always come in handy!

Boons are acquired slowly: the first once you reach 12 hit dice, the second at 16, and the third at 20. However, the Evangelist, Exalted, and Sentinel Prestige Classes can be entered as early as level 7; doing so grants you the Boons at levels 10, 13, and 16 instead. Servants of demons may also take the Demoniac Prestige Class; you don’t get the Boons any faster than E/E/S, but you may select which Boon set you get, and you get cool demon-related powers!

------- EVANGELIST -------

Boon 1: The Jungle Consumes. Gain Pass Without Trace 3/day, Tree Shape 2/day, or Spike Growth 1/day.

‘Consumes’ indeed; Spike Growth can render a frankly offensive amount of terrain completely inhospitable (ten 20ft squares!), shredding 1d4 HP off every creature trying to pass through a single 5ft square and threatening to halve their movement speed for a full day every time they take damage. As anyone who’s played as or fought against a Druid can attest to, Spike Growth is useful for exactly two things (slowing an enemy’s retreat or advance) but it’s amazing at doing so. The sheer amount of terrain the spell covers and the length of time it covers for (an hour per level) makes useful for stopping everything from a charging dragon to a charging army... provided your foe has less than 4 DR. In order to halve someone’s movespeed they need to actually take damage from the growth AND fail a Reflex save, meaning even the meager DR 5 you’re likely to encounter at levels 10+ is enough to make Spike Growth completely irrelevant.

If you can use it against a foe who’s not immune to it, though, it’s absolutely stellar. Moving through even a single 20ft square triggers four separate Reflex saves to avoid having one’s movespeed halved for a full day, and--as written--the halved speed can’t be undone with Fast Healing or Regeneration, the victim MUST find a Cure spell. Perhaps the biggest downside is that using it to its fullest potential--that is, to cripple a charging swarm of foes--is unlikely to happen, delegating it to crowd control versus a small amount of enemies.

It’s leagues better than the niche Tree Shape, but Pass Without Trace also has its merits, hiding up to 10 people from sniffing noses and prying eyes for half a day, letting you and your allies effortlessly vanish into the foliage. Indeed, all three of these spells are extremely useful in the jungle setting Angazhan demands you remain in, so if you ARE actually hiding around in the Mwangi Expanse, all three of these can be genuine picks depending on if you plan to be a trapper, a stalker, or a sentree that day.

Boon 2: Canopy Crawler. Your feet become prehensile and apelike, allowing them to act as a second pair of hands for every purpose except wielding a shield or weapon, such as to execute somatic components, to aid in climbing, to hold objects, and to maintain your Dexterity bonus to AC while climbing. In addition, you gain a climb speed equal to your walking speed +10, and can attempt a Climb check in place of the following checks: Acrobatics checks to swing or leap between branches and vines; Stealth checks to remain hidden within trees, and you can move at full speed through them without penalty; and Stealth checks to snipe from trees, the penalty for doing so reduced by 10.

The way this ability is written in the book is kind of a mess, so I tried my best to shuffle it into a more easily digestible form.

Anyway: Freaky monkey feet! For all your freaky monkey feet needs! One of the more unique Boons in the game, and unlike most highly unique Boons, this one is still highly useful! While your handfeet can’t wield weapons or shields, you can use them for more or less anything else while your actual human hands are occupied. Sleight of Hand? No, my friend, I’m on a completely different level.

The big star here is the free climb speed, which automatically gives you a meaty +8 to Climb checks, making the various skill checks it replaces much, much easier to exploit. You become an expert of gorilla... guerrilla... Gorilla Guerrilla Warfare, soundlessly moving from tree to tree and hurling spears or firing arrows with nary a peep but for the whoosh of the weapon through the branches and leaves, moving from position to position as easily as playing hopscotch. Even if you never invested in Stealth at all, you can suddenly pour ranks into Climb and become an ersatz Rogue for the party, leading a silent charge against the foes of the Ravenous King’s cult.

Side note, this ability combines beautifully with all 3 of the spell-likes from The Jungle Consumes, as your brachiating movements put you above Spike Growth, Pass Without Trace makes you utterly impossible to nonmagically track if you attack at night, and Tree Shape lets you become a horror movie villain that vanishes the instant it appears you’re about to be ‘caught.’

Boon 3: One With The Jungle. While in the jungle, you gain blindsight to a range of 60 feet, you gain a +2 insight bonus to AC and on saving throws, and you are never flat-footed or surprised. You ignore cover and concealment caused by natural features of the jungle, as the very plants and stones twist out of the path of your attacks and spells.

An eternal Diet Foresight if your reward for remaining in the Ravener King’s grip, but this ability--unlike Canopy Crawler--is entirely blank if you adventure outside of your god’s chosen locale, a punishing loss of an otherwise incredibly strong defensive ability. Being impossible to catch by surprise is good enough on its own, especially at levels where enemies can have Sneak Attacks exceeding +4d6, poisons that cause people to hemorrhage ability scores, or fatal grappling embraces, to say nothing of what happens if a spellcaster gets the drop on everyone. The +2 to AC and universal bonus to saving throws will struggle to make a difference, but it’s a rare insight bonus and will thus stack with all your existing bonuses... and, of course, it lasts forever so long as you remain in a jungle.

I enjoy that the jungle will shuffle aside to let you shoot and swat your enemies without penalty, making my ‘treetop sniper’ suggestion in Canopy Crawler even more viable. Now, as long as you can see even the smallest portion of your target, the natural world will bend and sway to avoid your blows so that they always strike true, letting you attack enemies without the possibility of them retaliating unless they begin cutting down the whole jungle... at which point they’ll have much bigger issues than just you.

------- EXALTED -------

Boon 1: Jungle’s Wrath. Entangle 3/day, Bull’s Strength 2/day, or Summon Monster III (1 fiendish ape, 1d3 fiendish advanced baboons, or 1d4+1 fiendish baboons) 1/day.

Bull’s Strength is always nice to have to give the beefy members of your party, giving them an extra +2 to attack and damage rolls for ten or so minutes at a time, among other bonuses. Strength bonuses are some of the most boring but practical things you can hand out, because you never know when you’ll just need to do something as simple as moving a large rock or hit something for 2 more points of damage than normal. Having it at twice a day means it’ll likely carry through the most important battles or puzzles you’ll face.

Entangle, however, tends to be the better option here. See everything I said above about Spike Growth? Paste that here, as well, but trade off the damage for the ability to grapple everything trying to move through the 40ft radius(!) of plantlife you’ve affected. In some ways it’s better than Spike Growth, utterly halting the movement of anyone heading through it if they fail their save rather than halving it, and being difficult terrain even if the victims succeed, which halves their speed anyway.

Seeing summoning abilities on a Boon is usually good, but the painful limitation of only being able to summon various demon apes means it severely lacks its normal Swiss Army application. It’s only really good if you need either a distraction, or something heavy moved, both of which could be accomplished with Entangle and Bull’s Strength without it being tied to a creature with subhuman intelligence. At the very least, apes have humanoid hands and can thus perform tasks very few other summoned creatures could do, such as wielding weapons.

Boon 2: Summon Child of Angazhan. 1/day as a swift action, you can summon an Advanced Fiendish Girallon, 1d3 Advanced Fiendish Dire Apes, or 1d4+1 Advanced Fiendish Apes as if you had cast Summon Monster VI.

In spite of my mockery of the Boon above, the ape restriction here is anything but painful. ... well, it’s painful for anyone who’s not you, mind. An Advanced Fiendish Girallon is a CR 8 monstrosity with enough damage output and resilience from the Fiendish template to punch above its weight class. A Girallon is a four-armed, Large-sized ape beast with five attacks (and Rend!) a round, with enough agility and maneuverability to run down fleeing foes or chase them through just about any terrain easily.

It’s also your best option among the summons; the Dire Apes and normal apes are nice, but the chance of summoning a single Dire Ape or a meager 2 fiend apes means a Girallon is the best go-to unless you need a lot of bodies rather than one large one. The Fiendish template is really what gives this ability the oomph it needs to shrug off most of my criticism of Jungle’s Wrath, granting even your normal apes a bit of Spell Resistance and elemental resistance to Fire and Acid... though, notable, both the normal ape and the Dire Ape have too few HD to gain the advanced benefits of the Fiendish template, and none of the creatures here have high enough Charisma to make the Smite Good ability granted to them useful, even with the +4 to all ability scores from Advanced.

Perhaps the biggest gold star this power has, however, is the fact that it can be used as a swift action. You can instantaneously flank an enemy with a murderous gorilla and then stab them in the back when they rightly turn around to look at said murderous gorilla in disbelief, or you can blast them with another spell, or you can do any number of other things with the distraction you’ve just created. Don’t forget that Summon Monster VI also has a range of Close, letting you hurl a demon gorilla at an enemy from 25+5ft/lvl away. The downside, however, is that SMVI also has a duration of a meager 1 round/lvl, meaning you’ll often run into the issue of saving the use of this ability, often until you no longer need it.

Boon 3: Jungle’s Might. You gain a +2 profane bonus to your Strength score and a +2 bonus on Fortitude saving throws.

Useful but boring. It’s moderately better than most stat-buffing Boons thanks to the additional Fortitude bonus, but final Boons typically give +4 bonuses, not +2. There’s no flash or pizazz here, nothing to really expand upon, so lets move on!

------- SENTINEL -------

Boon 1: Tyrant’s Roar. Gain Command 3/day, Sound Burst 2/day, or Suggestion 1/day.

I almost got mad because I mistook Sound Burst for a different, much worse spell. Nope! That was sonic scream or whatever, one I’m so unimpressed with I didn’t even bother looking it up. Sound Burst is significantly better, anyway, able to stun a small crowd of enemies in a single casting, which is exactly what you--as the Sentinel--want to happen. Either because you’re holding back an enemy(/ies) for your allies to get into place, or because you’re holding them still so you can get in close. The damage it deals is pitiful, but it’s automatic even if they succeed against the stun effect, and you never know when 8 damage to up to a crowd will make a difference!

Like most of Angazhan’s blessings, it gets better if you’re in a jungle, as the hostility of the Mwangi Expanse means invaders are likely to be clustered together as tightly as possible to prevent attacks from all angles. Punish them, hard.

Command is in-character for the Tyrant King, and it rewards creative uses beyond the ‘come,’ ‘stay,’ and ‘drop’ commands, though those serve their purpose well enough. I’m quite partial to KNEEL, which fits Angazhan rather well! The only problem is that its low saving throw scaling means it’s unlikely to affect enemies that matter, and in combat it’s often much better to just rush in and start slapping. Out of combat Suggestion is king, though it’s an odd choice for someone who tends to force people to follow his orders through violence and threats rather than relying on coercive and subtle magic. Personally, I’d let the Face of the party or the dedicated enchanter rely on Suggestion, and carry Sound Burst around for those times you need to explode people’s eardrums.

Boon 2: Reign of Terror. You add your Strength modifier to Intimidate checks (this does not stack with Intimidating Prowess or similar feats and abilities) as well as your Charisma modifier. Once per minute, you may use Intimidate to demoralize a single creature within 30ft as a swift action, or all creatures within 10ft as a move action. When using Intimidate to demoralize a creature in this way, if your result exceeds the DC by 5 or more, the creature is frightened for 1 round and then shaken for the normal duration; if your result exceeds the DC by 10 or more, the creature cowers for 1 round, then is frightened for 1 round, and then is shaken for the normal duration. When you use Intimidate to demoralize an ally, instead of being shaken, that creature gains a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls for the appropriate duration.

While normally Boons are built to be taken advantage of by any class within the margins of those who can enter the Prestige Classes in the first place, sometimes you get one that forces you into a specific path. This one highly, highly rewards having both a high Strength and a high (or at least neutral) Charisma, and focusing a feat or two into making your Intimidate as high as possible can see you sending squadrons of enemy combatants scattering and trampling one another to get away from you. I love, love, LOVE that there’s no per-day use restriction on this power, only that it can be used once per minute, meaning you can bring it out in more or less every fight you encounter.

Exceeding the victim’s Intimidation DC by 10 or more causes them to cower, a status affliction barely above paralysis in how terrible it is to be suffering, opening them up to a whole round of being beat on without any ability to retaliate. Even if they survive the round of helplessness, they’re forced to run from you and use whatever resources they have available to get as far away from you as possible... which can be a blessing or a curse depending on what they were carrying and how badly you wanted it.

Being able to Intimidate a single foe as a swift action or a whole crowd surrounding you as a move action is strong, especially if you can bolster your prowess enough to always score 10 higher than their DC (a challenge, but not an insurmountable one)... And even if your enemies are immune to being intimidated either because they’re mindless, starved, or immune to fear, you can use this ability to give your whole team +2 to attack rolls for 4+ rounds. It’s more of a consolation prize than anything else, but note that the final sentence does not say “in this way,” meaning you can use Intimidate normally without needing the 1/minute bolstering to give your allies a bit more accuracy! Wasteful, but viable!

Boon 3: Unchallenged Tyrant. When you perform your Obedience, designate a number of present and willing creatures equal to your Charisma modifier; these are your Thralls. This designation lasts for 24 hours or until you next perform your Obedience. 3/day, you can infuse all Thralls within 50 feet of you as a swift action, granting them a +4 bonus to their Strength and Constitution scores and a +2 bonus on initiative checks, and granting any teamwork feats you have as bonus feats *for an number of rounds equal to your hit dice. If a Thrall dies within 50 feet of you at any time, you gain the effects of Death Ward (CL = half the Thrall’s Hit Dice, to a maximum of CL 20th).

*this ability originally had no listed duration, making it quite awkward and insanely powerful. I’ve added one that makes sense.

Oh, not bad! Another reward for buffing up your Charisma! Even if it’s just to a +2 bonus! And it’s a fine one, too, letting you enchant your allies with a discounted Barbarian Rage, including a bonus to initiative checks to help them move before your enemies even know what’s happening! THREE TIMES a day!!! And--wait, wait, there’s more? You also transfer ALL your teamwork feats to your Thralls? Teamwork feats are pretty powerful but wholly rely on your allies being willing to give up their own feat slots for them, and they utterly fail to work if you aren’t working together or become separated by enemy shenanigans. This ability (along with the Inquisitor’s Solo Tactics) turns those empty feat slots into something truly game-changing due to applying them to all of your Thralls at once. This means that, even if you don’t or cannot join in the fight, they can still use teamwork with each other, and all you need is one of them to be nearby to make use of feats like Lookout (if one of you can act during the surprise round, all of you can), Precise Strikes (+1d6 damage if you’re flanking an enemy)... or, perhaps the most useful of them, Coordinated Charge, allowing you and your allies to all charge the same target.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why Coordinated Charge is one of the best you can use with this ability, as the +Strength and Con bonus means you can turn even the weakest member of the party into another source of damage however small. It also means all of your melee battlers can get into the fray immediately, and if used in combination with Lookout, it can turn an enemy ambush into a pile of severed limbs and broken armor before they even realize what they’re up against.

I also like that if any of your Thralls die, you get a free Death Ward. If you know you’re going up against a necromancer or an Undead with Energy Drain, making an incredibly weak but tasty-looking creature one of your Thralls and sending them in to die is one less spell slot your Divine caster needs to use on you. I’m amused by the idea of blessing one member of your Sack Of Rats and just crushing it in your hand if you ever need a ward. If you have the Charisma for it, definitely try it out!

You can enter Monkis World here.

#Sinister Spotlight #Spiritual Spotlight #Pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons

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bookishdiplodocus · 4 years

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Writing humor

George of the Jungle: A case study

I’m analysing several forms of humor in the 1997 movie George of the Jungle, and I would like to share it with you. Remember, this is a family movie, the humor is not that finetuned and often targeted towards children. Even if a movie is not your style, you can learn from it. If you want to do your own analysis, I would advise you to pick a movie with a form of humor that’s relevant in your writing. (This seems obvious, but I personally enjoy more forms of humor than I can use in my writing style and genre.)

How do I go about it, analysing jokes?

George of the Jungle is a very joke-dense movie, it averages about 2 jokes per minute, often using different humor layers within the same joke. It’s a lot, considering it also introduces all the characters and set up the storyline in between the jokes!

Every time a joke is made, I write it down word for word and try to see why exactly it is funny. Try to be as specific as possible. This is the difficult part, obviously. I included some examples to make it clear for you. Often the answer is “Contrast” or “Subverting expectations”. Obviously not all the jokes are laugh out loud funny, and they don’t need to be. Some jokes just lighten up the scene without even making you smile, or without making casual watchers notice it is in fact humor.

Bonus points if you can tell certain forms of humor are tied to certain characters. (In this case: slapstick for George when he swings into a tree again, contrast between what is said and reality for mean guy Lyle etc.)

Some examples from the case study

But first, some warnings:

Obviously there will be spoilers for this movie in this post. It’s hard to show you how a joke works without giving you the joke.

Analysing jokes makes them less funny, in the same way that analysing plot lines or storytelling techniques can make books lose their glamour.

Alright, here we go. Because this will be a longish post, I’ll put the other examples under the Read More.

Example 1:

Lyle: “I am the richest, handsomest, smartest guy here, so I get to go first!”

[Established mean guy Lyle passes by everyone, almost shoving them out of the way. He promptly trips over a tree root and lands face first in a huge pile of steaming elephant dung.]

Lyle: [lifting his head up] “There’s an elephant around here.”

Carrier: [looking right into the camera] “Bad guy falls into poop. Classical element of physical comedy. Now comes the element where we throw our heads back and laugh. Ready?

Other carriers: [also looking right into the camera] “Ready!”

[They throw their heads back and laugh.]

[Nearby monkey also laughs and points at Lyle.]

[Off-screen, more animals start laughing at Lyle.]

Lyle: [Spits out some elephant poop] “Those are nowhere near properly digested.”

[Carriers still laughing off-screen]

Lyle: “In case anyone is wondering, I’m okay.”

Technical analysis:

Lyle might be the richest, but definitely not the handsomest and smartest guy: contrast between what he says and reality. (As I told you, this is a recurring technique for him, perfect to show his personality.)

Lyle faceplanting into a pile of elephant dung: poop humor, slapstick (physical humor), the feeling that he gets what he deserves.

“There’s an elephant...”: stating the obvious. And, he says it in a deadpan kind of way.

“Bad guy falls into poop. Classical element of physical comedy”: breaking the fourth wall big time, looking right into the lens, refering to genre conventions, explaining the joke to us. Breaking the fourth wall is a meta humor in which the characters are aware of genre conventions of a fictional story (in this case, the presence of the camera/audience) and sometimes, like in this case, of the fact that they are characters in a fictional story.

“Now comes the element where we throw our heads back and laugh”: refering to a trope, genre conventions, while still breaking the fourth wall by looking straight in the camera.

Repetition: first the carriers announce what they will do in detail and right after they execute it exactly like that. It’s similar to the jokes where the narrator uses a certain phrase and right after a character uses exactly the same phrase. (See example no. 5.)

Monkeys and off-screen animals: hyperbole. Basicly, an exaggeration, in this case, built-up in steps: first his companions, then one non-human, then what seems to be the entire wilderness.

“Nowhere near properly digested”: dirty/poop humor (eww he had poop in his mouth), characterisation (Lyle is the kind of guy who will complain about everything), subversing our expectations (that’s not the first thing you and I would say when we face plant into a pile of poop).

“In case anyone is wondering”: By now, we know what kind of a man Lyle is. This, and the fact that the carriers are still laughing, implies that no-one is wondering if Lyle is okay. Again, contrast between reality and what he says

Example 2:

Narrator: “When they finally beheld the mighty Ape Mountain...” [They see a mountain shaped like a gorilla head] “...they reacted with awe.”

All: “Aww.”

Narrator: “I said “awe”! A-W-E.”

All: “Ooh!”

Narrator: “That’s better.”

Technical analysis:

Ape Mountain is shaped like a gorilla head: visual humor, subverting expectations about geographical naming conventions, breaking the conventions of a fictional movie (the shape of the mountain is obviously a joke for the watchers, not for the sake of the inhabitants in this world, or a concidence), subverting the expectations of our geological knowledge (what are the odds of a mountain actually being shaped like a gorilla head? In the real world, we sometimes see animals or other figures in mountain shapes, but not as detailed as this.)

Aww / awe: It’s a play on words, because “awe” and “aww” sound the same.

The narrator interacts with the characters and the characters are aware of the nattaror: meta humor: breaking the fourth wall.

Example 3:

[Mean guy Lyle jumps on the rope bridge, making everybody swing dangerously. An indigenous carrier falls dramatically into the deep chasm.]

Narrator: “Don’t worry, nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos.”

Lyle: “You know, they shouldn’t let unexperienced carriers like that on these tracks.”

Technical analysis:

Meta humor: breaking the fourth wall: the narrator is aware of the genre conventions + he is aware of our presence.

“Big boo-boos”: Language, contrast between the children’s word and the tough men in the harsh wilderness.

Subverting expectations: when you fall into a deep chasm, you don’t expect to get away with just some boo-boos. A boo-boo is the kind of thing you fix with a band-aid and a kiss.

Lyle’s remark: he is the reason the carrier fell. Contrast between what happened and what Lyle says.

Bonus: characterisation. Remarks like these, and especially the contrast between what happened and how Lyle sees/portrays it, show how self-centered he is.

Example 4:

Lyle: [takes a polaroid picture of the carrier.] “Do you like it? Magic picture. Yet another gift from America. Here you go. You’re welcome.”

[Carrier answers something in Swahili, not translated.]

[All the native Africans laugh out loud.]

Carrier: “[Swahili] ... 35 mm.” [Takes a fancy camera out of his own backpack and takes a picture of Lyle.]

[All the native Africans laugh.]

Lyle: [not amused] “Translation, please.”

Guide: “He says he likes your magic pictures, but he prefers the resolution of the Leica 35 mm transparencies.” [Everybody except Lyle laughs.] “He also says your lens is dirty, but he has the equipment to clean it for you.” [More laughter.]

Technical analysis:

This joke consists of 3 parts.

The set-up: Lyle is the arrogant dck who’s come from America to show the indiginous people what cultural civilisation is. We think we know where this is going...

Subverting our expectations: The carrier is not impressed, he knows Polaroid and has a camera of his own. He’s Lyle’s equal, not subversive. The way the carrier takes a picture of Lyle is a mirrored action of Lyle taking a picture of him. The similarities between these actions accentuate the differences.

Further subverting our expectations: the carrier has a lot of knowledge (implied: more than Lyle), he’s probably culturally more civilised than Lyle, beating Lyle at his own game.

Bonus: He shows his superiority in a polite way, showing he’s a better man than Lyle.

Example 5:

Narrator: “Meanwhile, at a very big and expensive waterfall set, Ursula was amazed that she was lost in the wilderness with a jungle man.”

Ursula: “And here I am, lost in the wilderness with a jungle man.”

Technical analysis:

“At a very big and expensive waterfall set”: breaking the fourth wall, referencing the fact that this is a movie with a set and a budget.

“lost in the wilderness with a jungle man”: literal repetition immediately afterwards. If Ursula can hear the narrator, it’s like he’s telling her what to say (meta). If she can’t hear the narrator, the joke lies in the “coincidence” of her saying exactly the same words he used about her, moments before.

Example 6:

Narrator: “... the carriers came dangerously close...”

Narrator: “... that is, dangerously close to shove a coconut up in Lyle’s...”

Narrator: “... (pause) sleeping bag.”

Technical analysis:

Playing with expectations: The first sentence implies they are close to a dangerous situation. The second sentence implies they are so irritated with Lyle they want to shove a coconut where the sun doesn’t shine. The third sentence doesn’t take away the second implication, but just makes it more family friendly, but it’s still a turn on our expectations of how the sentence will/can end.

Young children will find the turn between the second and third sentence hilarious, especially the implied “dirty humor”.

Example 7:

[Love interest Ursula has taken George home to Los Angeles. Her best friend shows up and starts to question Ursula.]

Ursula: “He’s in the shower.”

Friend: [Distracted by something behind Ursula] “Not anymore...”

[George enters the living room, still all wet, obviously naked (barely SFW), and for the first time his sexiness is accentuated, ironic for a man who wore a loin cloth for most of the movie.]

George: “Bad waterfall. First, water get hot -” [A saxophone starts playing off-screen.] then George slip on this strange yellow rock.” [George shows a bar of soap and drops it.]

[The perspective changes, shows the 2 friends from between George’s legs. They are obviously checking out his naked crotch.]

[Ursula sighs happily.]

George: [sees Ursula’s friend now] “Hi! George of Jungle.”

Friend: [eager] “Charmed, I’m sure.”

[Ursula strategically hands George a large book to cover his crotch. The camera zooms out now and we see George also from below the waist, still wet and tan and muscular. The friend is staring.]

Friend: [mumbles to herself, appreciatively] “Now I see why they made him king of the jungle.”

Technical analysis:

First, this is a gender reversal of a trope commonly used on female characters. I saw it described as “Born sexy yesterday”. A (usually female) character is new to this life/society/body/... and doesn’t realise that being naked has a certain effect on the other gender. In the 1990s, this was very common to happen to female characters, and not common at all for male characters.

Friend, distracted: the friend has a dirty mind.

Bonus: characterisation: Friend serves here as a contrast for Ursula, who hasn’t objectified or ogled George at all. In fact, this is the first time George is shown as sexy, so we see his sexiness through the perspective of the friend. This tells us something about the friend, but also about Ursula: he likes George for who he is, not how (incredibly sexy) he looks.

The saxophone: the movie is playing with genre expectations (off-screen saxophone means sexy time) as a hyperbole. The movie makers are pulling out all the registers in this scene to show off George’s sexiness.

“this strange yellow rock”: word choice, mental distance from an everyday object, contrast.

“I see why they made him king of the jungle”: this could be a continuity thing, but no-one has used the words “King of the jungle” up till now. So either a line was cut in which they use this phrase to refer to George, or the friend is aware of genre conventions, refering to Tarzan.

These are just some of the many, many jokes in this movie. I tried to make a small yet diverse selection.

I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!

Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing tips here. New topics to write advice about are also always appreciated.

Tag list below. If you like to be added to or removed from the list, let me know.

@therska @writingwordsanddrawingpictures @the-words-we-never-said @writingwhithotchocolate @i-rove-rock-n-roll @maskedlady @no-time-like-write-now @timefire25 @black-lakritz-dragon @nzmayart @fandomrandomness-stuff @dangertoozmanykids101 @anaestheticdisaster @storytellingofravens @purpleshadows1989 @mathematicpony @i-don-t-know-words @notquitenovelist @coffeescribles @reffaces-old@livingthelovelylife @katsglabella @lokitty-is-my-spirit-animal @thefallenbibliophilequote @watchmewritedumb @sting-the-scribe @kais-writing-shit @dameschnee123

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #writing tip #writing humor #humor #writing jokes #george of the jungle #writing analysis #how to tell me a story #sanne

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takaraphoenix · 5 years

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Review: Barbie as the Island Princess

This movie is basically Tarzan but with role reversal and cooler animal parents?

I mean seriously monkeys and apes are creepy. Do not like. But here? Barbie has two dads! A peacock dad and a RED PANDA DAD! RED PANDA RED PANDA RED PANDA!

Have I mentioned that red pandas are my absolute favorite animals? So there are most definitely bonus points here for the kind, soft red panda dad! He is lovely, I adore him!

Generally, after I watched the Fairytopia movies last, I am really pleased by these animal sidekicks. Animals that actually talk, that fulfill a purpose and that are also looking like proper animals. Nice.

The insecure elephant, even the white monkey, they're adorable and have actual purpose.

And I like that the girl set up as a love rival isn't really a love rival. She doesn't want the prince. That's nice. Couldn't sit through another vicious, antagonizing, jealous bitch...

I mean, the jealous, greedy woman who really really wants the throne is slowly growing a little tiresome in the overall concept of Barbie movies at this point, but oh well.

This movie is very enjoyable – I do like Tarzan after all – and has great characters, really good animation (I'm glad it's getting better with every movie!) and adorable animal side-kicks. And I am a sucker for a good “separated but finding their way back together” story.

#Barbie as the Island Princess #Barbie Movies #Barbie Movie Reviews #Phoe's Movie Reviews

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years

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Dumbo

I’m kind of over these Disney live action remakes and we’re just so early in the process. This does not bode well for the rest of my 2019 or the years to come. Granted, Dumbo is one of the best candidates for remaking because 1) depressing and 2) racist, even for 1941. So there’s nowhere to go but up, right? Well...

How can I put this - all the things that made the film better than the original made it SO MUCH BETTER. But all the things that made it worse made it...worse, but in such a boring way. I’m happy the virulent racism has gone by the wayside but I’d rather have a crazy technicolor nightmare than a bland bowl of oatmeal with some CGI on top. The basic story remains the same - flying elephant, big ears, magic feather, etc - but with some extra set dressing of a World War I veteran (Colin Farrell) coming back to work in a rinky dink circus run by Danny Devito, which is then bought out by an evil millionaire (is there any other kind?) played by Michael Keaton.

Some thoughts:

Pros: the pink elephants are no longer life-ruining nightmare fuel. Cons: most other things about this movie. Literally at one point an announcer yells LET’S GET READY FOR DUMBOOOOO and if that doesn’t make your brain want to shrivel up into a hole and die, I don’t know what will.

I fucking love circus stories. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and read one of my favorite books of all time, The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day. In terms of circus aesthetics, Tim Burton’s choices are just the right amount of charming/creepy, that perfect blend of things meant to be colorful and joyful but derelict and rundown.

God, this monkey is super disturbing looking. Can we make an agreement as a people to stop with the CGI monkeys? Apes in Planet of the Apes are fine, but I draw the line at these horrifying zombie Capuchins.

I could have lived my whole life without seeing Danny Devito take a bath.

However, I am solidly here for Eva Green just playing herself, I assume, as a mysterious French acrobat who’s probably killed a man with a high heel at some point.

Here’s my fundamental issue with the premise of this film - in what universe are big elephant ears a bad thing? That’s one of the things elephants are known for, right? Like, the Navajo invented fry bread around 1864 and white people stole the idea like we stole everything else and started calling fried dough elephant ears after that - I just feel like as a rule, people are PRO large elephant ears. But then arbitrarily, these circus hands are making fun of the literal cutest baby angel to ever be born? It makes no goddamn sense.

Speaking of, what is UP with this guy who hates elephants? Who the fuck hates elephants? They can make art, and they hold funerals for their dead, and also they’re elephants I just can’t with this insane anti-elephant prejudice.

Did I Cry? Not as much as I expected to, given that river of tears during the trailer. But yes, I did during “Baby of Mine” and pretty much every time Dumbo doesn’t think he should fly but then at the last moment he does.

Like the first big flying scene is a real emotional rollercoaster - the clown makeup is very upsetting, and he’s so scared, and then there’s that FUCKING MONKEY and then Dumbo actually flies. It’s just a lot for my poor heart to take.

What accent is Michael Keaton doing? In fact what movie does he think he’s in? He’s doing kind of a weird, old timey Mid-Atlantic evil Scooby Doo villain thing, which tracks for a Disney movie, but he’s kinda...bloodless? He’s nefarious in an “I’ve got more money than God” kinda way, but frankly, I think Jeff Bezos is a much scarier dude. Also? His big “vanquishment” at the end? He’s just going to get so much insurance money. Like. So much. He’s not even defeated. If anything, you made him even richer. I would ask “what kind of fucked up kid’s movie is this” but you know what, Dumbo is, in general, pretty damn bleak and disturbing, so maybe these decisions were thematic in nature. Hey kids, guess what, everything you love will be taken from you and the rich get richer every day! *Disney castle logo appears*

Can you even book tickets for elephants on a boat to India? They’re domesticated! How will they feed themselves??

On a scale of eh to meh, this falls solidly into the bleh category. Controversial opinion - cut out 2/3 of the film, make it a silent movie that’s all about Dumbo and his learning to believe in his magical abilities, scrap all the people because literally who cares about them, end it with him finding his mother and bringing her back to the circus family she knows and loves. BOOM. I fixed your fucking childhood.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#119in2019 #dumbo #dumbo review #dumbo 2019 #disney #michael keaton #danny devito #colin farrell #movie reviews #film reviews

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badbackgroundscience · 5 years

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Where does he get those wonderful toys?

It’s the first BBS post without Stan Lee in the world. A sad time, indeed. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he brought inspiration to millions (perhaps even billions) of people with the characters and stories he helped create.

And thus we continue as always, this time with Marvel’s First Family - getting kidnapped by a Soviet cosmonaut and his band of mutant anthropoids* they last saw stranded on the Moon in F4 #13.

While we don’t get an explanation for how they managed to make it back to Earth,** we do get a correction in terms of the science between the two issues.

Previously, everyone was allowed to run around on the surface of the moon sans spacesuits. (Though, to be fair, that’s Uatu’s fault.)

Now, Ivan Kragoff - aka the Red Ghost (aka Beardless Soviet Santa) - plans on killing the team by smashing them onto the lunar surface and dying from the lack of atmosphere. You know...instead of the force of slamming into the surface.

As I mentioned in that previous post, there technically is a super duper thin atmosphere on the Moon, but it’s not made of anything you’d want to breathe. So Kragoff’s not too wrong.

Unfortunately for him, Sue manages to trap just enough oxygen in a forcefield before the crash (that they weren’t even injured by) and the Thing digs them over to Uatu’s house.

And then they get to check out his toys.

Ah, another complete misunderstanding of evolution. It’s not like Pokemon (or that infamous episode of Star Trek Voyager) - it takes place over generations, not within a single individual.

The whole point of evolution is about small genetic changes that get passed down. Sometimes it happens in the “survival of the fittest” way, where a new trait makes it easier to survive (e.g. better access to food, better avoidance of becoming food) to the point where you can make babies and pass that trait down. Sometimes that new trait just makes you slightly more attractive to a sexual partner so you’re more likely to get some (and thus have babies). And sometimes a trait has no benefit but it gets passed down ‘cause it doesn’t kill you before you have babies.***

Now, technically, there are going to be cells in your body that have slightly different DNA than all the others. This is because every time your DNA gets copied to make new cells, there are always going to be errors. Your cells have a natural “autocorrect” proofreading that fix most of those errors, but it’s not 100% effective.****

Does that mean if you managed to live for 20,000 years, your DNA would be so different you’d grow large ears and a lumpy forehead? No. Modern humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and we’ve barely changed in physical appearance. There are some differences, sure, but nothing so drastic.

Perhaps counterintuitively, our brains are smaller than what they were 100,000 years ago. This of course does not mean we’re dumber, as there are many animals on this planet with brains physically larger than ours that are not capable of sending members of their own species to the Moon.

We’ve also grown a lot more diverse in physical appearance, because as we spread around the globe we got exposed to different environments which favored different adaptations, from skin color to hair texture to nose shape.

[Bonus: I will point out that ever since we started regularly using forks way more people naturally have overbites. (Close your mouth right now. Are your top teeth resting forward of your bottom teeth, or do the tips of your teeth naturally touch?) That has nothing to do with genetics, though. So sometimes, changes in biology have nothing to do with genetic drift and everything to do with new cultural behaviors.]

Now, toy number two:

A planet 30 times larger (by which I take to mean “more massive”) than our Sun is - while maybe not impossible if engineered to exist - does not exist in nature. The only bodies in the known universe with the mass of a 30-solar mass star are, well, the pretty rare occurring 30ish-solar mass stars (e.g. θ1 Orionis C),***** and some black holes.

A planet with the mass of 30 Suns (i.e. 60 million trillion trillion kg) but the density of Earth would have a radius of about 2 million km, ~350 times that of Earth’s.

The most massive planet we’ve managed to find (in our limited few decades of exoplanet hunting) is many times that of Jupiter, but it’s hard to pin down exactly what body it actually is, because the line between “a failed star aka a brown dwarf” and “just a really fat gas giant” is ambiguous. For example, NASA’s exoplanet archive lists HR 2562 b, with a mass 30 (+/- 15) times that of Jupiter, as the most massive exoplanet, but it’s also classified as a brown dwarf.

The largest radius we’ve managed to measure is about 30 times that of Earth (specifically, 3 times that of Jupiter). Nowhere near 350x. And it’s, as you should expect, a gas giant.

No wonder Uatu bottled it like Kandor. That’s a really special planet!

[Bonus 2: I wrote about a much more extreme version (i.e. 2000 instead of 30x) a while back.]

* “Anthropoid” just means vaguely resembling the look of a human, and is used both to refer to apes and monkeys. I’m using it because the comic does, but really, almost all the aliens we run into in these comics are anthropoid, unless it’s a Skrull who shapeshifted into a cow.

** or why the gorilla, orangutan, and baboon have un-turned on their master

*** This is one of the arguments for why we still have butt hair.

**** From Nature:

“DNA polymerase enzymes are amazingly particular with respect to their choice of nucleotides during DNA synthesis...Nonetheless, these enzymes do make mistakes at a rate of about 1 per every 100,000 nucleotides. That might not seem like much, until you consider how much DNA a cell has. In humans, with our 6 billion base pairs in each diploid cell, that would amount to about 120,000 mistakes every time a cell divides!...Proofreading fixes about 99% of these types of errors...After replication, mismatch repair reduces the final error rate even further.”

***** The more massive the star, the rarer it is. Even stars with masses like our Sun are more massive than like 70ish percent of all the stars in the galaxy, if not more if you classify brown dwarfs as stars.

#comics #fantastic four #Astronomy #space #planets #physics #biology #evolution

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jejublr · 7 years

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Super!Woozi

A/N: Did someone say Super!Woozi?? Because I’m here to deliver ;) omg Nat stop. I’M SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG T^T Here’s something an anon requested and the AU update @mansaeboysbe asked for bazillion years ago. This one is suuuuper long to make up for it so I hope you all enjoy! This story is such a hot mess tbh. Also this gif of Jihoon is exactly what this fic is all about.

You thought Jihoon would be a hero?? lmao think again

Bc I think he’d be the perfect villain

Ok not really but hear me out

Jihoon would be some kind of a genius mastermind ok?

If you think that’s not a superpower, you’re wrong

You can say he’s some kind of a technopath bc this guy can literally build anything tech-y out of everything

For example, he made his first weapon at the age of five. fIVE.

Like what was i even doing at the age of five?? my only accomplishment by then was being the champion in a cracker-eating competition during independence day celebration smh

I’m so proud of it tho so y’all can fight me if you disagree

He can also manipulate most forms of technology

He can turn off lights without having to switch it off, manipulate computer data, he can hack into cyber systems, restore information and break computer codes

He could’ve done much worse but since he never had any form of training since he first discovered his power, his power is pretty underdeveloped

Nonetheless, technopath!Woozi is still super powerful, even with his limitations

Supervillain!Jihoon would wear some kind of a black suit with some cool-ass tool belt strapped on his hips for his tinkering needs

Definitely no spandex and absolutely no capes

We hear ya, Edna

He’d wear the typical black mask and his red hair would be a stark contrast against his dark ensemble

I live for red-haired Woozi

He also got these cool gauntlets on his wrist and he can shoot out sedatives, tear gas pellets, tasers, grappling hooks, a radio transmitter and explosives

Woozi also got his own personal A.I. assistant

Think of it like J.A.R.V.I.S. and it works exactly like it

It oversees Jihoon’s overall health, help him construct weapons and sometimes poppin’ some popcorns for Jihoon during Friday movie nights

Jihoon would also be super agile! He’s really quick on his feet and can do some cool acrobatic s***

Because Jihoon might sit around and construct weapons all day so you’d expect him to be out of shape lol

But Jihoon figured that while he wasn’t tinkering, he’d be running away from the cops or smth so why not start training his cardio right?

So yeah he did a lot of gymnastics and acrobatics

Besides running from the cops, he wants to make memorable entrance and exits in the future, too, lmao

It’s pretty funny bc one second he’d be like Bob the builder and the next he’s tumbling like a f***in ninja

It’s incredible

Anyways

So Jihoon has been plotting his big debut as a super villain for a long time now

He’s so tired of everybody underestimating his power despite him probably being able to ensemble a makeshift grenade in record time to blow your ass off

And he’s also tired of the times people called him cute

He’s not cute, alright?!

It’s been his lifelong dream to be able to look into people’s eyes and see fear in their eyes as he whispers,

“Am I cute now, you little s***?”

And he also decided that his super villain name would be Woozi

O yeah, bc something that means Our Jihoon is so evil. Oooh, I’m shaking in my boots

I’m getting off topic

About his super secret world domination plan..

Woozi had built a robot army to take over the city

I mean, he could’ve done it all by himself but

It’s his big debut, man

Give him a break

In no time, the city was completely taken over by his army of evil robots

He didn’t do anything serious

Just letting his robots do their evil stuff

Pulling out dead 2010 memes on people

Stealing candies from children

The usual

Also, people were already pretty terrified at the thought of a robot uprising so it wasn’t like he needed to work very hard to make people s*** in their pants

At this point, people are screaming, babies are crying; it’s music to Woozi’s ears

And everything’s going to plan until

OK, WHAT THE F*** IS THAT?

Ok quick backstory: the local factory had been dumping all its illegal waste into the local reservoir, the chemicals contained in the waste genetically transformed some of the wildlife around the reservoir into mutants

Wow did this just become an environmental propaganda?

Nevertheless, don’t litter, kids

Woozi looked ahead at the sight ahead of him and the city was suddenly swarmed by dozens of mutant creatures, animals and plants alike

It’s like Jumanji on steroids

F***in mutts tryna derail his plan of world domination?

Woozi is not having it

So Woozi whipped up random stuff from his tool belt and started to construct a make-shift weapon

And so you got Woozi who’s combating evil wildlife with his Object Animator

Which is like, a gun but instead of firing bullets it would “scan” objects and turn them into data in which he stored in the memory card in the weapon

HE’S LIKE A POKEMON MASTER

And there are few other heroes from different parts of the city who came, too, bc they heard some crazy guy tried to take over the city

But now instead of seeing some maniac cackling as they watch the robots take over the city, they see animal mutants everywhere like Madagascar: Evil Edition

The hero from a neighbouring city, S.Coups, was throwing mutant elephants here and there like nobody’s business

Honestly, at this point, the city was a hot mess with robots, evil mutant wildlife and heroes all compiled in one city

Anyways

So you’re one of the city’s local journalist so cliché

You were reporting from the roof of a carpark building

“I s*** you not, viewers, we just saw a flock of two-headed swans chasing down the police forces. You may laugh but have you ever had a swan hot on your trail? It’s the scariest s*** ever. Now imagine it with two heads and multiply it by tEN. Ok wait, let me put down the mic bc I’m gonna pray for the police bc only God can save them now.”

“WHoA, Ben’s Taco is on fIRe, everyone! Lmfao bc f*** Ben, he always charges extra for guacamole so he finally got what’s coming for him. Moving on..”

I’m so sorry if your name is Ben and bc Ben is the least Mexican name ever

You’re pretty controversial bc you speak without any filter but that’s also the reason people love you lol

Anyways, you’re up there reporting, ready to deliver the biggest drag of the century on national TV when a group of winged monkeys decided to go ape s*** lmao get it? ape s***? on you crew

You’re like “Elphaba’s not here. Wrong show !!!”

But of course, did they listen? No.

And somehow you got cornered to the ledge and by the time you realized what’s going on, you’re free falling

Free falling.. falling...

Bonus points to the person who gets this reference

Coincidentally, at that very moment, Woozi was right at the bottom of the building, completely unaware of what had been going on a few meters above

He was shouting at one of his robots for not doing its work properly

“You dips***! Why do you have a cat in your arms! How did you even find it?! I designed you to be evil! EvIL!

“But boss, villains always have a cat in their arms!”

Ok Woozi couldn’t argue with that but

“Priorities!! We’re supposed to tear those mutts apart!! They’re in the way of my plans!!!”

“But I know my priorities!!”

“Oml I should’ve done all of this myself! Now if there’s an answer to all of this f***in mess-”

Woozi had his arms out in exasperation at this point and BAM

He wasn’t ready when you suddenly fell into his arms lmao

You were lucky you both didn’t fall into a messy heap on the pavement bc Woozi regained his footing pretty quickly

You were definitely ready for sweet, sweet death but you felt like you weren’t falling anymore and

You opened your eyes to see the most beautiful confused face you’ve ever seen???

Your heart did a little backflip in your chest and you’re like

“My hero~” *heart eyes*

Woozi almost dropped you bc he’s anything but

“Who the f*** are you??” he said

“Y/N. And you are?” you asked breathlessly

Now your name sounds familiar to him and he remembered you’re that notorious journalist everyone seem to have a love-hate relationship with

You’re just..blunt and cute

This was like his chance of publicity lol so he was like “Woozi.”

You would have loved to stay and have a little chat with the hero with the clearest eyes you’ve ever seen but he got to go

So that’s how your first encounter went

With you falling into his arms lel

It did take them some time but they eventually managed to save the city

Mostly with the help of Woozi and his robot army

‘well, at least what remained of it’ Woozi thought as he looked at his robots, most only with one of its limbs left attached and barely able to stand

same tbh

People knew this but they were also confused??

Bc wasn’t he the guy to tried to take over the city earlier?? Is he the good guy or the bad guy??

They were pretty baffled but grateful nonetheless

So everyone’s cheering for Woozi and chanting his name and Woozi’s like??? why

Tbh he’s just as confused as you are

“Ok this is not going according to plan.”

And somewhere down on the streets you’re like “YeAH! WOOZI! MA BOI.”

The first person he’s gonna kill after this mess is you for calling him your “boi”

He’s not your “boi”

Anyways, the crowds are chanting and Woozi’s confused

And emerging from the crowd was S.Coups who approached him and was like

“Dude, you’re pretty cool. Come to the Heroes Conference tomorrow. It’ll be great having you on the team!”

And Jihoon’s never been one to be approached, let alone being invited to something

But despite him not even liking superheroes he couldn’t help the meek “O-Okay” that escaped him

dang it.

HE’S NEW TO THIS SUPERHERO-VILLAIN ORDEAL ALRIGHT? LET HIM LIVE.

And that’s how he finds himself at the Heroes Conference the next morning

So the Heroes Conference is a conference held regularly by the Heroes Association after any sort of event when a super managed to defeat a villain

It’s a way for the Heroes Association and the people appreciate having their city saved

Here, the supposed-hero would receive a token of appreciation, a medal of some sort

And most of the times, new heroes are recruited during these conferences

To say Woozi felt like he’s out of element is an understatement

He couldn’t help but feel like he’s a black sheep there

A supposed-villain surrounded by heroes

Why is he here again?

Well he came bc he thought it’d be weird if someone who everybody thought saved the city doesn't come when a big superhero like S.Coups invited him to get initiated into a team

Unwittingly, he said yes

Yeah, it’s not like he was starstruck or anything

And it’s not like he’s curious, pffffttt what’re you talking about

But he’s been seething inside bc what’s supposed to be his big debut as a super villain was completely ruined by those stupid mutant motherfrickers

His evil daydreams are ruined now

He was brooding when he heard a familiar voice

“Hey! Woozi!!”

And there you were, approaching him with a sun of a smile and he couldn’t help but feel his breath hitch roll his eyes

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Yeah! It’s me!”

“What do you want?”

You dismissed his tone and was like “Please let me do an interview??”

And he’s like, “Me?? An interview??”

say whaaaaa

Woozi was already in a bad enough mood from being where he doesn’t even want to be

Adding to that fact was you asking him to do an interview was stretching it a little too far

Woozi was so ready to say no

But you’re looking at him with so much admiration?? Nobody has ever looked at him like that?

He couldn’t help but feel his heart melt a little

BUT WAIT HE ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING LIKE THIS!

HE’S EVIL.

E-VIL.

Woozi wouldn’t admit to himself that he’s weak for you and it’s not even day one lmao

“Fine. Make it quick.”

Seeing the smile that bloomed on your face almost made it worth it

Almost

So that’s how he found himself sitting face to face with you

Honestly, the interview was pretty colorful and entertaining, even to him, with you hosting it

You: “~And BAM your robots just sent that freakin rhino into the gas station and BOOM it exploded!!! And then the monkeys went SWOOSH and then I’m falling!! Right into y o u !!!!”

Honestly he didn't see the point of this interview since you just chronologically explained the whole story but oh well

Woozi had never gotten himself interviewed before but?? wOw aren’t you a handful but he likes it

He didn’t mind, though?? bc all he was thinking throughout the whole interview was you

When the interview finally ended, he almost regretted when he said to make it quick

He couldn’t stop thinking about you that day and they day after that, and the day after that

So now Woozi has two issues; aside from having a huge f***ing crush on you, now Woozi’s kinda stuck doing the Good Guy stuff

Like, he still doesn’t understand???

How do you do the superhero thing?????

Woozi literally doesn’t know how to superhero

Some days he’ll be on a mission and his teammate suddenly go

“Woozi! The what are you doing?!”

“I’m beating up the bad guys, like you said.”

“...wOOZI THAT’S OUR GUY.”

Whoops

He’s been trying to ask you out for weeks but all of his free time is now spent doing boring good hero stuff

He couldn’t even use his explosives anymore

Trust him when he said he asked

Why did he agree to this again??

But what he didn’t expect was how much he’s been seeing you?

Like, for reals, this town is super heh problematic istg

So Woozi gets to see you a lot irl bc well, you’re a journalist

But you seem to be always at the right place at the wrong time whenever whatever happens and he saved your ass more than he could count

Like, there was the time a super-robbery happened

Yes, super-robbery, bc regular robbery is boring and apparently, aside from being problematic, this town is also very extra when it comes to crimes

And you somehow found yourself as a hostage? Like hOW?

And another time when you got kidnapped for ransom? You were pretty calm about it tho but Woozi’s the one getting grey hair bc of you

But you could say it was also the right time bc Woozi got to swoop in to save your ass multiple times, too

And from all the times he did save you, you just...fell for a little more??

Bc by the end of it, while he nags at you for being so useless and careless and everything in between, you know he cares

What a tsundere

Ok but this is where it gets fun

So Jihoon had a rough night, so he decided to maybe get some fresh air, right?

So he was walking around with his earphones on when wait.. is that?

You were cornered by a group of what seems like drunken men and Jihoon’s like here we go

How do you find yourself in this kind of situation all the time?

“Get away from her, you dick!”

You were a little bit surprised when you heard someone shouting

You weren’re really expecting someone to notice so you were shocked when this guy showed up with the scariest pissed-off look you’ve ever seen

And the drunk guys just sneered bc who is this squirt?

Oh but Jihoon’s familiar with the condescending looks in their eyes

Jihoon had experienced his fair share throughout his high school days alright

So he used everything he’s ever learned from always getting made fun of for his height

He kicked one of the f***ers in the kneecaps, grabbed your hand and ran

You finally stopped when you’re sure you’re safe enough and you couldn’t help but admire this stranger who just saved you

“My hero~”

Do you say that to every single one of your savior? bc Jihoon is getting major flashbacks now

Of course, you felt very very grateful for getting saved so you wanted to treat this cute stranger

“Here, let me treat you to some coffee. I insist.”

And that’s how he found himself sitting across from you in a quaint coffee shop

“Thank you so much for saving me!”

And Jihoon swore under his breath bc there it is again

That smile

“No problem.”

You couldn’t help but think that the guy looked kinda familiar??

“So tell me about yourself!” you said

‘Well, you actually know me but not the real me but I’ve been pinning on you from day one but this is not how I imagined our first date would be like.’ Jihoon wanted to say but he figured he’ll just sound like a creep lol

Wait is this a date? F***

“Uh, I play the guitar???”

Nice, Jihoon, smooth.

Hey, a supervillain can have a hobby, alright?

And Jihoon didn’t know how it happened but you seemed interested in what he has to say and he ended up having a lot of fun talking to you??

The conversation went for a long time that he didn’t realize it’s been hours since he left headquarters and he’s still got things to do and he’s like crap gtg

And you’re like “Oh! You need to go?? I really enjoyed talking to you.. Maybe we can..meet again??”

Bruh, you may look super cool and suave outside but you’re literally freaking out inside bc !!! You’re actually asking this cute stranger guy out !!!

And that’s how Lee Jihoon ended up back in the headquarter, everything’s the same except for the number written on the entire length of his right arm in black ink

But then the next morning people were shookth from the obvious series of numbers written on his arm lmaoo

The other peeps on the team was like, “OoOoO are you dAting someone???”

“S.Coups, I know you can’t fly and I will not hesitate to push you off this ledge and make it seem like an accident if you don’t step away this instant.”

*S.Coups backing away slowly*

One of the team members almost prank called you claiming to be Woozi but then he got strangled by Jihoon lmao

You and Jihoon started to hang out more often

One time you guys (you guys as in you and Jihoon, you’re still unaware of his alter ego apparently smh) were talking about your favorite supers and Woozi came up in the conversation

“I don’t know, I just really like him.”

That caught his interest

“Uh, why?”

“Because! He’s so cool, don’t you think??? Saved me couple times, too. What a man.”

Lmao, more like hundreds of times

Woozi couldn’t count how many times he had to save your ass now

“But why do you even like him? He’s not like S.Coups or anything. He’s not..nice.”

You looked at him a little offended bc

Did he really just say that? In front of your f***ing salad?

“Uhm, excuse me but he cares about other people, Jihoon! Just because someone’s nice doesn’t mean he’s good!”

Jihoon never thought he’d hear someone say something so nice about him?? For once, someone actually cared about him

And it feels...nice

And if he had a huge crush on you then, by now he’s f***ing flipped

“Plus, I’d totally date him.”

Choke

So you guys obviously starting to like each other more and more; him bc of your, uh, refreshing personality and him bc of his blunt nature

What a charming couple, honestly

But he couldn’t work up the nerve to ask you out when he’s not wearing his super-villain, er, hero costume

But he can’t help it now!!!

He needs to do something about this stupid crush!!!

It’s taking over his brain

It’s taking over his life

HE ALMOST DIED ON A MISSION THINKING ABOUT YOU

They really weren’t kidding when they said that love is a disease bc he feels like he gets heart attacks whenever you smile and him and it makes him want to write stupid love songs about you and it’s just ugh

He’s a swimming lovesick fool around you

But Woozi isn’t keen on grand gestures

So one day, he finally swallowed his nerves and went up to you after work in his super suit

And you were like,”Woozi!! It’s you!!”

But then he took of his mask in front of you

And “Wait, what? W ho? Jihoon????”

Again, how you’ve ever put the pieces together baffles me smh

“Yeah. It’s me.” He looked like he’s ready to s*** his pants tbh

“Look, I hate your stupid face. I hate that you made me think about you everyday. I can’t even look at a monkey the same way without ending up thinking about you now. I hate that your smile always gives me heart attacks. So let’s just get this over with. Y/N, do you want to go out with me?”

Lmao w hat

Is he...asking you out???

So all this time, Woozi is Jihoon and Jihoon is Woozi?

IT MAKES SENSE NOW

Sigh

So you stood there gaping like a fish

Which kinda reminded him of when his robot short-circuited, cute.

And Woozi’s ready to flee the scene and go home and spend his night eating a tub of ice cream while writing a two-page essay on how you will never ever be together and hide under his covers and–

“Alright, let’s go on a date.”

Well, he be da**ed.

Did you just agree to go out with him??

He feels like he can take over the world now

But maybe later bc now, he has a date to attend to ;)

(But honestly, if he had asked you without the suit and all, you’d still pick him.)

(Because in the end, you fell for Jihoon, not Woozi.)

(But also you’re feeling lucky bc you happen to like both so what a steal.)

#wow this was a hot mess towards the end #but i hope you guys enjoyed reading it AAAA #jihoon scenarios #woozi scenarios #seventeen imagines #super seventeen #seventeen scenarios #seventeen fics #seventeen fic #seventeen au #superhero au #woozi #jihoon #seventeen #woozi imagines #super!au

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noblecrumpet-dorkvision · 7 years

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Monk Week: Martial Arts Styles

image credit: David Gaillet

There are many real-life examples of martial arts that you can pull from to describe your attacks and moves when roleplaying a monk. It’s definitely more flavorful to specialize in one technique so that other players can imagine how your character moves. A Muay Thai monk is going to move a lot differently than an Aikido monk. Think of how distinctly the four different nations in Avatar: the Last Airbender fight. There’s even a short behind-the-scenes video about them. Figure out what sort of style you want to use and that can help you flesh out your monk. Look up some tutorials on moves and styles unique to your martial art and use for your character! All it takes is watching a few online tutorials or demonstrations; it's not like we are giving up roleplaying to learn secret martial arts for forty years. Here is an exhaustive list of well-known martial arts that exist from around the world:

http://www.blackbeltwiki.com/martial-arts-styles

Here are some of my favorites (click the names for videos):

Aikido: Japanese. Focuses on evasion, joint locks, and redirecting attacks away from you. Looks sort of like dancing.

Bajiquan: Chinese. bursts of energy and powerful elbow strikes. Movement is slow and melodic but punctuated by powerful, lightning-fast strikes.

Canne de Combat: French. sporting cane fighting. I mostly just want to see a gentleman monk.

Capoeira: Brazilian. Dance fighting.

Hung Ga: Chinese. Many styles based on animals. (Crane, Dragon, Leopard, Snake, Tiger)

Iaijutsu: Japanese. Art of drawing a sword; many forms.

Kung Fu (Monkey): Ape-like movements to attack from surprising angles or to fool opponents into thinking you are off-balance. This is where the Drunken Master style comes from. Also if you haven't seen that Jackie Chan movie shame on you.

Kung Fu (Praying Mantis): Redirecting attacks, joint locks, pressure point strikes, and traps.

Muay Thai: Thailand. Kickboxing with powerful knee and elbow attacks. Also here’s some bonus Ong Bak

Sikaran: Philippines. Almost exclusively a kicking martial art, with arms and hands used only for blocking.

Taekkyeon: Korean. leg sweeps, high kicks, spiraling arm movements to confuse enemies, soft movements with powerful force.

Example: Drunken Fist

image source: Jackie Chan in Drunken Master

To give you an example of what sorts of notes you might take, I will do my own with a style that Wizards has already made a subclass for: the Drunken Fist. A lot of people will either be confused or upset I didn't go into detail about the drunken style this week so I might as well sate your hunger for it here. And here is a link to Wizards' stats for the drunk monk for those that were unaware of it. Note that I know close to nothing about martial arts. I am just a guy with access to Google.

Drunken Fist Techniques:

Daoist Style of the 8 Immortals (as seen in the Drunken Master Jackie Chan film). Names can be used for names of moves, words of wisdom, or roleplaying.

Lu Dongbin: leader of the immortals, magic sword on his back. Style involves swaying back and forth to trick the enemy. Fast punches that return to a pose as if holding or drinking from a cup. Move where he kicks behind him.

Li Tieguai: cripple with one leg and a cane. Style is mostly standing on one leg and tumbling. The standing leg is kept rigid and ahead of you while moving. Leg sweeps, drop kicks, and a weird jump-and-tumble while grabbing the rigid leg.

Han Khongli: carries a cauldron of wine. Style mimics this by always returning to a stance with arms outstretched before you as if holding the "cauldron." Though Jackie mostly just does a bunch of punching, Wikipedia says it involves powerful tackles, so use this when describing a grapple attack.

Lan Caihe: immortal with a bamboo basket. Has a “sudden waist attack.” Seems to be holding this imaginary basket higher than the cauldron god and with one hand in front of the other.

Zhang Guolao: the elderly donkey rider. Most of this style involves kicking but has some notable moves. An airborne spinning double kick that ends by falling to the ground face-up, then kipping up into a front flip. Another is with the body rigid on the ground, held up by one arm and hopping while the other arm punches. Another that seems usable for any style is bending over backwards and punching the enemy at chest-height.

Cao Guojiu: the young and clever immortal. Most notable moves were flips, including one flip with his hands behind his back. The Wikipedia says this style includes locks and breaking joints, as well as attacking vulnerable parts of the body. This seems like a drunken Praying Mantis style (based on description alone).

Han Ziangzi: the flute-player. Hands return to a position mimicking holding a flute. This form is often used in the film when blocking or deflecting attacks, mostly with the wrists. One notable move was a raging forward attack with flailing arms.

He Ziangu: Miss He, who "flirts with the enemy to cover her short-range attacks" according to Wikipedia. This is likely the key part of drunken fist, which is luring opponents into a false sense of superiority. Use this when getting up close and personal and for comedic moments. Twist the waist whenever you dodge an attack.

Jumping to the side and backward onto one knee, twisting the waist towards the jump, likely to engage someone who was to your side or while stumbling about the battlefield to suddenly engage a foe.

Named moves found on YouTube:

Lotus Nymph Scattering Flowers: one hand up and other down while waggling fingers.

Han Khonli Waving a Fan: slapping back and forth with one hand.

Attracting the Phoenix with the Flute: In the flute position but spinning backward in a circle to presumably dodge.

Goliath Offering Wine: Cauldron position spinning around for a punch.

General Guan Stroking his Beard: the move itself wasn't notable, more like a position. I would pretend this move is a barrage of attacks or deflections mimicking stroking a beard. The name sounded cool so it's gotta be used.

Other observations:

Snakelike waist movements

Circular arcs with outstretched arms while flailing.

Stumbling has a certain rhythm to it as the center of balance moves back and forth.

Lots of interaction with the ground via drop-kicks or fake-outs or leg-sweeping.

Always miming taking a deep swig to seem off-balance. In-game this can be done by actually carrying a drink in-hand.

Anyway those are the sorts of things I would keep in mind after researching a fighting style. It’s more of a martial ART anyway, so describing your monk’s attacks is more about capturing the feel of it than knowing exactly how to execute every last move.

Tune in tomorrow for some new homebrew subclasses for the monk! (no Drunken Fist but trust me there are some rad ones!)

#dungeons & dragons #monk week #monk #martial arts #D&D #roleplaying #DnD #dungeons and dragons #drunken fist #drunken master

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junker-town · 4 years

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Seven Worlds, One Planet: Episode 2, reviewed by how sports it is

Including a walrus massacre, volcano bears and snakes pretending that they’re spiders.

We continue our extremely important mission to conduct a scene-by-scene review of the BBC’s new nature documentary, Seven Worlds, One Planet, in order to see how sports it is. We determined that Episode 1, which focused on Antarctica, was reasonably sports. How fares Asia?

Episode 2 Asia

Scene 1: Walrus Massacre

Me on my work commute. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/tZPZFsZTjl

— BBC One (@BBCOne) November 3, 2019

The Pacific walrus is not one of nature’s most appealing creations. They resemble nothing so much as socks left to rot in a garden and then stuffed full of blubber a few years later. And while on land, tusked animals are majestic — the eyes of an elephant convey a deep, thoughtful, almost platonic serenity — the walrus betrays its toothy compatriots, lurching about horribly on land and bringing to bear what is perhaps the animal kingdom’s beadiest stare. The sabre-tusks themselves (I seem to remember being taught that they are of use in rooting out clams, although exactly how was a mystery to me then and remains one now) are a perverse addition to the ensemble. “Well-armed” is hardly a sensible adjective for evolution to bestow upon what is essentially an enormous sausage.

The sausage-ness attracts exactly what you’d expect in the Arctic: polar bears. Both walrus and polar bear are creatures of the ice, and, as I expect you’ve seen from increasingly breathless news reports, there’s less of that around these days. Walruses need a flat surface upon which to rest, while polar bears need it as a platform from which to hunt. With no ice, walruses have to congregate on a few thin, rocky beaches, and that sort of gathering attracts hungry polar bears.

Packing maybe 100,000 tonnes of walrus on one beach sounds like a recipe for severe puncture wounds and indeed several dozen walruses attempt to escape the packed crowds by scaling the cliffs behind the beach. And here is where this scene turns from ominous to outright macabre.

Are walruses good at climbing? No, but they’re persistent enough to scale the cliffs, given enough time. If you’ve ever gone on a serious hike, however, you might have noticed that the descent is just as grueling as the ascent. Now imagine if you weighed as much as a small car, had flippers for limb and were trying to get down a large cliff in a hurry.

The ‘hurry’ is where the polar bears come in. Where a walrus can climb, so too can a bear, and when they reach the top of the cliffs, the walruses instinctively try to escape towards the sea, where they’re more mobile and thus better equipped to fend off attacks. So they race towards the sea, the fastest way possible: by hurling themselves off the cliff. A walrus might be ill-equipped to climb, but it’s even less capable of handling a 100-yard drop.

This rain of soon-to-be-former-walruses rather naturally spooks their fellows, creating a stampede in which many other walruses are crushed or slashed to death by flailing tusks. The Odobenid Vespers — more than 200 walruses die — conclude with a delighted polar bear surveying a pile of corpses, clearly stunned by its good fortune.

NB: This scene is shocking. I’m not trying to celebrate it by writing so much about; it’s just been weighing on my mind since I saw it. The knowledge that anthropogenic climate change is at least partially responsible for these events (Attenborough assures us that they’re still relatively rare) brings the horror home even further.

Aesthetics 9/10

As I’ve mentioned, walruses are hideous animals. But this category necessarily includes atmosphere, and the oppressive grimness of this awful scene carries too much weight to ignore. A bouncing walrus might not have any conventional aesthetic value, but there’s no way we can give this tragic, moving scene any less than high marks here.

Difficulty 10/10

I think that the difficulty of this one is adequately illustrated by the body count.

Competitiveness 3/10

Apart from the early scuffle between a walrus and a bear (in the water, the walrus has the advantage), this is all about walrus versus ground, at speed, and is therefore not competitive.

Overall 22/30

Walrus-diving is sports. Not the sort of sports I want to actually watch, but definitely sports.

Scene 2: Volcano Bears

When you’re desperate to get greens into your diet at any cost. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet #saladwoe pic.twitter.com/mignAvLIbv

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Bears are incredible animals. Sometimes they’re ferocious, brutal predators, able to rip you basically in half with a swipe of the paw. Sometimes they’re fisherbears. Sometimes they’re honey thieves. And sometimes they perch daintily on top of a volcano, eating grass.

Go find the Kamchatka Peninsula on Google Maps. It’s the thing attached like a stubby tail to the east coast of Siberia. A winter there, you might imagine, is a cold, unpleasant thing. However, Kamchatka is also blessed by a surprising abundance of volcanos, which create unusually dangerous oases in the barren desert of snow.

And so we meet our volcano bears. These bears, who emerge from hibernation hungry, converge on the only snow-free spots around. To find greenery, they must conduct some precarious scrambles above volcanic vents, and some bears have been known to get too close or to slip and fall. Those bears do not have a good lunch.

Aesthetics 7/10

The true beauty of a bear comes mostly in comparison to other animals, and unfortunately we don’t get that here. Instead we have some scruffy-looking critters doing an ungainly shuffling to eat some grass. But ...

Difficulty 10/10

... it’s metal as fuck because they’re shuffling around eating grass that’s growing over volcanic springs which would kill them if they fell in. It’s so metal, in fact, that I’m giving some bonus points in aesthetics.

Competitiveness 2/10

Bear vs. grass? Enh. Bear vs. volcano? Also one sided (and, fortunately, we don’t see that).

Overall 19/30

All sports would be improved, at least hypothetically, if conducted over a volcano. In this case, the aggressive geology upgrades ‘skinny bears eat some grass’ from ‘definitely not a sport’ to ‘possibly sports’.

Scene 3: The Battle of Little Bigfoot

Hearing your parents car in the driveway but you’ve done zero chores.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet #runningforcover pic.twitter.com/Hghyh23hIo

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

The forest of Shennongjia, in Hubei Province, China, is home to some very strange creatures. Himalayan lore is rife with rumours of man-sized, furry apes, averse to human contact. And, well, here they are. Maybe. These are blue-faced, golden-coated, snub-nosed snow monkeys. They’re rare, mountain-dwelling, mostly-bipedal and overly-hyphenated primates whom you could quite happily build that sort of myth off if you were snowblind and suffering from the altitude. Granted, they’re not that much over 2’ tall, but let’s have some artistic license here. Where’s your sense of mystery?

Monkeys are not usually associated with snowy conditions. These ones have a hard time of it in the winter, surviving by huddling together for warmth (given their beautiful, plush coats, this doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world) and feeding on what looks like a miserable diet of bark, moss and associated grime.

So desperate are they for food that when families collide at the edge of their territories we get what this hitherto serene scene desperately needed: a huge monkey fight. We begin with the dominant males baring their teeth and punching the shit out of each other and then descend into a general melee of kicking, scratching and biting.

Fight over, the scattered band must regroup for warmth, so we get another heart-rending monkey hug. Awwww.

Aesthetics 9/10

The snub nose is ugly and the blue skin is very Game of Thrones, but fortunately those considerations are overwhelmed by a) the really lovely golden fur and b) the flying hugs and c) MONKEY BABIES. These snowmen are extremely bominable.

Difficulty 9/10

I assume nobody reading this has ever tried to punch a monkey in the face. Readers, please do not try punching a monkey in the face, even if you have a monkey to hand. It would be cruel, for one, but also I imagine it would be extremely bad news for you, because monkeys are agile, strong, and mean, and seem more than capable of biting off that hand.

Now make this a small army of very hungry, oversized monkeys punching each other in the face. And it’s also freezing. They would kick your ass.

Competitiveness 9/10

The male monkeys looked well matched, and when you add the general chaos of the melee to that you get an intense, hard-fought battle.

Overall 27/30

MMMA is 100 percent sports and I will have these monkeys fight you if you don’t agree.

Scene 4: Spider-Snake

Everyone: Snakes and spiders are scary, but at least they’re mutually exclusive. Nature: Hold my beer…#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/gXpJFQ74yM

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Many people are terrified of spiders. Many people are terrified of snakes. What this scene asks is: what if we COMBINED THE TWO? Here is a special guest review of the above GIF, by my good friend Harry Lyles:

But let’s back up.

The Dasht-e Lut, in Iran, is not a fun place to hang out. It’s one of the driest places in the world. It’s also one of the hottest. There is no earthly reason to live here, except by accident.

When mishap or sheer bloody-mindedness places critters in these sorts of environments, evolution gets to work. And given long enough, evolution can come up with some absolutely wild shit. The Dasht-e Lut is on the flight path of migratory birds, which provide a rare food source — if they can be got.

Perhaps the best way of catching birds is to get them to come to you, which is the trick used by the spider-tailed horned viper. The scales on the tip of its tail have been formed perfectly to look like a plump, juicy spider with wriggling legs, and when the viper flicks back and forth it really does look like a tasty morsel (if you’re a bird) is sitting there just waiting to be plucked.

But no! It’s a snake, and now it’s going to try to bite you in the head. Have fun!

Aesthetics 8/10

Another relatively ugly scene — the shot of the shrike hovering in astonishment is a particularly cool exception — redeemed by the sheer insanity of what we’re seeing. SPIDER-SNAKE!

Difficulty 9/10

You try catching a bird with your teeth. You can draw a spider on your hand (or hold a spider model, or a real spider). I don’t care. Not happening.

Competitiveness 7/10

Some birds get away, which suggests that this is not as one-sided a match as it might appear.

Overall 24/30

Imitating a spider so that you can catch birds with your face is sports.

Scene 5: Sure, Let’s Watch a Tiny Lizard Fight

Run Forrest, run! #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/DiFZXio2Qb

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Lizards will go to great lengths for love. In the breeding season, male sarada lizards strut their stuff on the open plains of northern India. They’re brightly coloured and beautiful, and have a dazzling blue and red fan on their throat they unfurl to catch the attention of those lovely lizard ladies. But there’s a problem: saradas are not very big lizards.

Standing (and their gait is quite something when they do) at all of three inches tall, male saradas need some environmental help to be seen. And so battles commence over the small rocks which dot the landscape. Throat-fans are waved with menace, and then the fight begins. Jaws snap, legs flex, and these little lizards go flying through the air, a blaze of shrieking colour.

Aesthetics 9/10

They lose a point for their ridiculous waddle, but these lizards know how to put on a show. Beautiful colours and a surprisingly acrobatic fight scene.

Difficulty 4/10

You might get a nasty bite or two but I’m pretty confident anyone reading this would clean up against a three-inch lizard if they had to.

Competitiveness 10/10

A well-matched fight between two lizards at the top of their game. It’s a shame one had to lose: he left everything on the rock out there.

Overall 23/30

Miniature sports are still sports.

Scene 6: Orang-utans

You...are...the love of my life, and I’ve never felt this way before. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/RFaosm6JAa

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Here we get to watch a baby orang-utan try to eat termites (not tasty!), struggle to climb a tree, give up after nearly getting all the way up to the top, and then take a nap on his mother. Then he eats some mangos.

Nothing else happens. It rules.

Aesthetics 10/10

Look at the little floof! I can’t stand how cute the little guy is. The nap absolutely kills me.

Difficulty 5/10

That tree looks like a very annoying but definitely possible climb.

Competitiveness 0/10

A) mother is always there to help out if he needs it and b) nothing actually happens, which is totally fine.

Overall 15/30

It’s adorable, but it’s not sports.

Scene 7: A Miniature Singing Rhino

I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know these critters existed until I watched this episode. Sumatran rhinoceros are the smallest rhinos in the world, standing around 4’ tall and covered in red hair. They also sing little songs to one another. Or they would, if there was still a ‘one another’ to sing to: Sumatran rhinos are critically endangered, with less than 100 individuals left. So that’s depressing.

Attenborough uses the plight of the rhinos to segue into an illustration of the annihilation of the Southeast Asian rainforest. They contain valuable timber, and that land can also be used to grow oil palm plantations, which produce additives to be used in processed food and biofuels. That last note is particularly depressing: even supposedly eco-friendly technologies and techniques can lead to habitat destruction.

“Huge areas were initially stripped for timber and then a very different type of tree was planted. Oil Palm.” #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/reSWTBBfNW

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Asian land is increasingly valuable as the population expands, but the growth of its cities, while substantial, cannot possibly account for the scale of habitat loss. In the battered forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, we have monuments to one of the oldest of human foibles: near-sighted greed.

Aesthetics 2/10

The rhino is ugly enough before we pivot into scenes of forests being bulldozed.

Difficulty 10/10

It’s easy to feel smug about one’s environmental footprint when the damage being done on your behalf is conducted out of sight. But we should never forget that while cheap goods come at a cost we might not feel now, the real price will be revealed soon enough.

I’m not trying to guilt trip anyone here: I live in England, and so simply by existing I am personally responsible for titanic levels of carbon generation and general destruction. But the first step in fixing the problem is recognising that there’s a problem.

Competitiveness 0/10

Pretty much beating a dead horse at this point.

Overall 12/30

Just because it’s depressing doesn’t mean it’s sports.

Scene 8: Whale sharks

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the sea. They are slow-moving, friendly filter feeders, and are absolutely enormous — the largest recorded are nearly 60-feet long. As one might imagine, they are easy to catch, and as they have so much meat that they’re extremely valuable. Unsurprisingly, there are not many whale sharks left. In this scene, a whale shark cruises near the surface, edging up to a waiting fishing boat ...

... but this scene is not so depressing as the last. Fishing for whale sharks has been banned in Indonesian waters, and instead of hunting the giants, they throw them their bycatch, causing the gentlest shark feeding frenzy ever captured on film.

Me: Oh no, I’m on a diet. Also me: ... #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/V3lB0GoTFP

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Just slurping those little fish right in. Yum!

Aesthetics 6/10

Whale sharks are undeniably cool fish. But they are in fact so cool they barely do anything apart from sucking smaller fish into their hungry maws.

Difficulty 6/10

I appreciate the choice of the fishermen have made not to defy laws and go for the easy, hefty catch.

Competitiveness 0/10

Whale sharks against little fish isn’t even fair when the little fish are alive to begin with.

Overall 12/30

Not sports. Cool whale sharks, though.

Overall sports tally: Quite a lot of sports

Four definitely-sports, one probably-sports, and three nos. BBC did a nice job stepping up the sportsiness this episode.

0 notes

cyberkevvideo · 5 years

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Throne of Night Theory Builds Part 5: The Drow Demon Binder of Book 4

Continuing the posts of wondering what the builds of certain encounters would be for this AP, here’s a drow queen that has at least two demons under her command.

Like the other post, this uses only OGL material. I had discussed things with the Paizo legal team (it was suggested I do so and it’s good that I did), and to do this without any legal issues from their side, I would have to abide by the same rules that Gary did. I’m okay with that. However, Kickstarter is out of their jurisdiction so they couldn’t comment on anything further regarding that. I’m still being careful of what information I’m sharing (despite it being six years later and most of the public now has access to the updates anyhow).

Also, I didn’t note this in the last one, but any monsters that don’t change stats and are directly part of the encounters, I’ll just link them directly. Summons don’t count though as that can change from GM to GM. Tactics can be ignored if the NPCs have gained information about the party and this would cause them to act differently.

For space reasons, cropping the encounter build.

Again, all images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus.

EDIT: Cleaned up the stats and fixed the broken link.

Book 4 discussed entering the drow city, for whatever reason that may be. It could finally be time for revenge for the drow siblings or maybe the dwarves wish to finally avenge the svirfneblin back in Book 1. Either way, the party enters here, take on an arena with spider riders and confront drow royalty that looks exactly like a dark elf version of a marilith. Both of these I’ve done previously, and have linked to those blog posts.

The situation here is that the party encounters the queen after they witness what looks to be some kind of civil war between drow families. One side are all regular drow surrounded by darkness, while the other is surrounded by flames and winged demons. My assumption is that you side with one of the two warring factions.

Ignoring that one or two of the encounters might include drow troops, I’m jumping straight to the main course. In Way of the Wicked, this same spot was a CR 18 encounter. Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t tell the entire story because no matter how I try, I can’t balance it that high without adding in a fourth party that’s not in the picture.

Meet Queen Alyarra Aleanmtor. Her name literally means “Legendary Queen of the noble line of the Abyss.” I used this generator. She’s described as a merciless monarch who wants to rule over everything, and wants to destroy the empire the party is trying to create.

Thinking about the drow side of the AP, I thought it’d also be interesting if she was also the antagonist that was responsible for their mother’s death and their banishment. It’d be a great story beat if that was the case so they could finally get their revenge on her. If this wasn’t the case in the original story, then it definitely should be now.

The best part of this build is I even got to use a feat from Fire Mountain Games Book 5 (which I’ll attach a link to it). I’m assuming that he would have used at least something from his previous publication. It’d be too sad to have made those feats, class archetypes, items, and spells only to have them appear once. This all takes place in the same universe, after all.

Don’t forget to add the +2 hp/HD for any and all demons the queen summons with summoning spells. As well, as the extra +1 for Superior Summoning and bonus to stats for Augmented Summoning (which grants even more hp) or all creatures summoned.

QUEEN ALYARRA ALEANMTOR OF HOUSE UNDORIEL (CR 16; 76,800 XP) Female blasphemous covenant drow noble conjurer (teleportation) 16 CE Medium humanoid (elf) Init +8; Senses darkvision 120 ft., see invisibility; Perception +3 DEFENSE AC 19, touch 15, flat-footed 15 (+4 armor, +1 deflection, +4 dodge) hp 110 (16d6+52) Fort +6, Ref +9, Will +11; +2 vs. enchantments, +2 vs. continuing effects Immune sleep; Resist fire 30; SR 27 Weakness light blindness OFFENSE Speed 30 ft. Melee mwk staff +8 (1d6–1) Arcane School Spell-Like Abilities (CL 16th; concentration +22) 10/day—shift At will—dimensional steps (480 feet/day) Conjurer Spells Prepared (CL 16th; concentration +22) 8th—maze, quickened wall of fire, summon monster VIII 7th—caustic eruption (R-DC 25), quickened fireball (R-DC 24), quickened haste, reach mass bull's strength, summon monster VII (usually shadow demons) 6th—conjure black pudding, globe of invulnerability, greater dispel magic, planar ally (already cast; hezrou), quickened acid arrow 5th—acidic spray (R-DC 23), cone of cold (R-DC 22), hungry pit (R-DC 23), reach greater invisibility, wall of force, whip of centipedes 4th—acid pit (R-DC 22), black tentacles, greater invisibility, solid fog, touch of slime (F-DC 22), wall of ice 3rd—displacement, fireball (R-DC 20), mad monkeys, rain of frogs, slow (W-DC 20), stinking cloud (F-DC 21), twilight knife 2nd—acid arrow, create pit (R-DC 20), glitterdust (W-DC 20), mirror image, see invisibility (already cast), resist energy, web (R-DC 20) 1st—grease (DC 19), heightened awareness, magic missile (2), mudball (DC R-19), shield, vanish 0 (at will)—mending, message, read magic, resistance Opposition Schools enchantment, necromancy Spell-Like Abilities (CL 16th; concentration +19) Constant—detect magic At will—dancing lights, deeper darkness, faerie fire, feather fall, levitate 1/day—divine favor, dispel magic, suggestion (DC 16) Hedge Wizard Cloak Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st) At will—acid splash, prestidigitation 1/day—mage armor, unseen servant TACTICS Before Combat Queen Alyarra casts mage armor from her cloak, then heightened awareness, resist energy (fire), and see invisibility. If there’s time, she casts greater false life from her scroll. During Combat On the first few rounds, Queen Alyarra casts mass hold person and quickened fireball, before dropping them into a pit spell or hitting them with black tentacles. Afterwards, she summons as many allies to the front lines as possible while her demon bodyguards protect her and attack anyone who gets too close. Queen Alyarra starts with summon monster VIII, calling greater fire elementals, surrounding as many targets as she can and using a quickened wall of fire to trap as many creatures with the elementals. Anyone heavily armored becomes the target of her maze spell, with healers being a prime candidate. Arcane casters have the best chance of inhibiting her summons and countering her spells, so she targets them with quickened acid arrow and mudball, hoping to blind them, then using globe of invulnerability to make them ineffective against her.

In following rounds, she turns invisible and buffs her allies with her quickened haste, reach bull’s strength and reach greater invisibility, before using levitate to survey the battleground. Using her wall spells to control the fight, Queen Alyarra traps opponents and summons shadow demons with summon monster VII, or frogs and monkeys, to battle those within her created barriers. If anyone turns invisible, she hits them with faerie fire or glitterdust. Queen Alyarra never stays in one place for too long, utilizing her shift ability as best as she can.

If forced into melee combat, she casts displacement, and mirror image, then divine favor, and summons a twilight knife and whip of centipedes to attack the would-be attackers. Morale Queen Alyarra does not fear death thanks to her aegis of recovery and countless summoned minions. If the aegis is used to keep her alive, she calls her summons to protect her. Her pride does not allow her to leave the battle, and fights to the death. Base Statistics Without greater false life and heightened awareness, Queen Alyarra’s stats are hp 90; Senses Perception +1; Skills all Knowledge skills are 2 lower. STATISTICS Str 8, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 24, Wis 12, Cha 16 Base Atk +8; CMB +7; CMD 26 Feats Augment Summoning, Contract Master (FMG #5), Craft StaffB, Improved Initiative, Quicken SpellB, Reach SpellB, Spell Focus (conjuration), Scribe ScrollB, Spell Penetration, Superior Summoning, True Name (greater planar binding [nalfeshnee], planar binding [glabrezu]) Skills Appraise +17, Diplomacy +19, Fly +11, Knowledge (arcana, dungeoneering, history, local, nature, nobility, religion) +22, Knowledge (planes) +27, Linguistics +15, Sense Motive +17, Spellcraft +20 Languages Aboleth, Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Draconic, Drow Sign Language, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Skis'raal, Terran, Undercommon SQ arcane bond (staff), compression (belt), summoner’s charm (8 rounds) Combat Gear scroll of greater false life, scroll of mass hold person, acid (2); Other Gear ring of protection +1 (signet ring), Aleanmtor Crown (acts as a headband of vast intelligence +4 [Diplomacy, Sense Motive]), aegis of recovery, belt of the weasel, cloak of the hedge wizard (conjuration), jaunt boots, spellguard bracers, staff of speaking (bonded object), ring of counterspells, spell component pouch, traveling spell book (contains all prepared spells plus all Core cantrips, scorching ray, whip of spiders, and fly) SPECIAL ABILITIES Blasphemous Covenant (Ex) Since their twisted beginnings, the drow have consorted with demons. Some drow have strong ties with these creatures and may call upon ancient and obscene associations to sway demonic cooperation. Drow with this racial trait gain a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks made against unbound creatures with the demon subtype. Furthermore, demons conjured with any summon spell gain +2 hit points per Hit Die. Lastly, the cost of bribes or offerings for any planar ally spell cast by these drow to summon a demon is reduced by 20%. This racial trait replaces keen senses and poison use.

--name means “legendary queen of the noble line of the abyss”

UL'GUTH XELGRARITH (CR 14; XP 38,400) Nalfeshnee

VOROK BASTROR (CR 13; XP 25,600) Glabrezu

TOZZAN (CR 11; XP 12,800) Hezrou

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And that’ll do it at this time. If I come up with anything else that needs stats, I’ll probably do another one of these. We’ll see though.

These are my own designs for how I thought things would go, and can be changed or ignored entirely. It was just something I wanted to do for myself. The itch has been scratched for the time being.

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