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mechanicalinertia · 2 years

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STMPD Recommends Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction (Sort Of): Terror From The Deep! Ancient Fansites! Pre-Millennial Relics!

Tumblr wiped my first draft of this post, but let's give it another go all the same. Basically, I've spent many a late night hunting Bubblegum Crisis fan 'pages' (back when a website was called a webpage, boy wasn't that a time) via various links, links to other links, links to sites that can only be accessed via the Wayback Machine, ancient internet archaeologist shit. It's... fascinating work, to say the least. There's a lot of good, a lot of bad, and overall a lot of content that I feel that fans wouldn't dream of producing nowadays. RPG fansites, for example, chronicling various mecha a play session threw together via Mekton and whatnot. Or just straight-up review and explanation sites. Or sites dedicated to holding an author's fanfiction independent of Usenet or wherever.

Are any of these useful resources for a Crisis superfan? Probably not. Are they as engrossing as a good fanfic? Again, probably not, unless you're weird like me. Either way, let's get right into it.

Andy Skuse's Raven's Garage: Probably the biggest fansite still being hosted, on an individual server no less. Old, too, it got its start in 1995. Let that sink in.

Raven's Garage is a massive site, grown over the years by virtue of archiving other people's lost 'infosites', Bert Van Bilet's fanfiction, download links to Duke Nukem 3D reskins, and Craig Wigida's Fanfiction Guide... and one of Skuse's own pieces of fanfiction (it's not very good, we'll leave it for later). It's massive, not all of it is totally functional (but that's all the bits Skuse lost to time, not his fault), and it's just... essential, I guess? Yeah. Essential sounds right.

The Bubblegum Crisis Center: While this site does exist fully on the web, it's worth noting that it's primarily focused on the AIC-solo outings of Crisis (2040, ADP: To Protect And Serve, Parasite Dolls) instead of, you know, the good stuff. (Parasite Dolls always lacked a certain something for me... creativity? It's not badly written the way 2040 is, but it feels like too much of a retread of old ideas.) So we're just going to ignore it for now.

Bubblegum Crisis Links Page: A nice little Geocities (how many of these sites have a black background? Geez) dedicated to linking to other people's stuff. It's pretty big, but it ultimately pales in comparison to...

A Bunch Of Links With No Name: I'm not actually sure where I found this page, but what I do know is that it's very useful to track down small or otherwise insignificant dead pages which might be marginally amusing. You know, the kind of pages marked as 'shrines' to a given fictional character (this was before the term 'waifu' got into discourse courtesy of Azumanga Daioh). There's some weird shit in here, much of it of dubious quality, but it's funny? You can sort of giggle at how stupid people were on the internet even back before social media got just about everyone online for good. Like, and this is just an example...

The Disgruntled Fan's BGC Page: There's a few pages like this out there, where basically one guy has a beef with Priss for existing and just extrapolates that anyone who likes her is stupid. Fanfics like this, too. I've long held that if you don't like Priss, then you may not really like Crisis as much as you think you do, for she is its emotional core for better and for worse. But noooo, somehow her being part of the story makes her a screentime hog who prevents the story from reaching its true potential. Whatever that means.

(Is BGC's story not high art? Sure, but does it neeeeeeed to be? Moreover, was that Priss's fault or just the fault of creators who wanted to make something fun that didn't try to be more than it was? I'd argue the latter.)

Still, though, the writer here doesn't like No Armor Against Fate, apparently because Priss slept with a cokehead in the original version (not Neo, I don't think), and because he felt that Hagen shoved lesbian tendencies on every girl in the series. Which, hey, knowing Hagen he's probably not wrong! Still doesn't excuse the snobbiness that feels incredibly cringey in retrospect. Oh, and speaking of which:

JChao's Bubblegum Crisis Review Site: This is comedy gold. Cringe comedy, mind you, but comedy nonetheless. This is another one of those guys who wanted BGC to be 'deeper', which sounds all well and good (okay, he likes Sylia more than Priss and wishes the former got more screen time) until you click on his ADP Files review:

"This series may easily be what BGC should have been."

Grammar problems aside... yeah. This guy thinks that High Impact Sexual Violence The Anime was somehow a masterpiece of deep insight into the human condition, which should tell you everything about how seriously to take his opinions. No, really. It's funny. Laugh.

Sylia: Da Bomb: This is probably the only 'shrine' page I'll put in here, because I think it's... interesting? Y'all know I'm a serious Sylia / Celia simp, so I was interested to see what this was about when I found it on a links page. The argument the guy is laying down is essentially that Sylia is a) probably a Boomer, b) she's the coolest Knight Saber, and c) she's a stone-cold bitch who cares mostly about the mission and keeping the Sabers together, not about them individually, and we ought to love her for it. Which... yeah? Kind of? Maybe? The point is this guy makes some half-decent points (and ribs on Rei Ayanami fans) that maybe you might even halfway agree with. So if you want a decent shrine, check this out.

Bubblegum Marriage Prospects: Priss and Sylia: Even before the term waifu was popularized... there was simpage. Deep simpage. These two pages are but one part of a massive compendium of nerds writing about whether or not x or y anime girl would be good to marry and have kids with I am not making this up. And they come off very differently.

Priss? She's sexy, fast, wild, furious, dangerous, you could make good money off her rockstar career ("If you can manage a pop star, you can probably reap an enormous amount of cash"), just don't bring her home to mom and get ready to do most of the housework. Sounds great.

Sylia? Relatively attractive, but cold-blooded, solely dedicated to The Mission, and the sex? Get this:

"At first glance one would expect her to be vanilla to the core; but positions of power, abnormal childhoods, high levels of stress, and outward emotional repression are often associated with sexual... eccentricities. Do not be overly surprised to find yourself bound hand and foot, gagged, and/or suspended from the ceiling at some point during your honeymoon."

See what I'm saying? This is funny, how much thought people put into this shit like twenty years ago. And what's even funnier is that I can form opinions about this that disagree with these two writers, I have put enough thought into this. What is wrong with me? A lot.

Christian Conkle's Bubblegum Conundrum: Now we get into RPG-based fansites, which as a rule are a little less chatty and have more nice, calming spreadsheets outlining large mecha used to kill people. How pleasant.

Anyway, this site focuses around a campaign set in the Cascadia Metropolitan Axis, (Portland-Seattle-Vancouver - take that, Shadowrun!), one where the PC's and other characters actually get marker-drawn art of their fine selves and their hardsuits, plus other gear... so that's a high bar to clear right off the bat, having actual art of everyone and their toys. One gets the sense that Conkle understands the tone of BGC, too, cyberpunk that's just a little superheroically melodramatic, focusing on macro plots instead of micro plans. So it's all great fun to read.

Also worth looking at is Conkle's great big 'Garage' section, which contains tables used to rapidly construct various big bad mecha in the RTAL system... give or take some house rules. Good house rules, but house rules nonetheless.

Christian Conkle's Dragon Knights 2050: It's a later campaign Conkle did, this time constructed as an Eva ripoff, where humanity uses giant mecha piloted by kids to fight the orbital Boomer Kingdom. I never looked into it much, because hey, it's an Eva ripoff, it's really BGC. I include it out of amusement more than anything else.

Robert Farquhar's Bubblegum Crisis Web Archive: It was discovering this page, one of the many recommended by RTAL via BGC EX - that one expansion I gushed about a few posts back - that inspired me to write this whole post. And if that doesn't mean something to you... yeah.

See, even if Farquhar (whatta name that is) was focused more on an ADP-style campaign with upgraded Masamune Shirow-lookin' battlesuits, the thing about this site is that it contains the work of several other player teams uploading their hardsuits and Boomers and powersuits and characters and even a few Cyberpunk 2020 conversions for all the world to see. So there's a lot of cool concepts, and even some MS-Paint-lookin' art of some of said concepts. For that alone, I love it deeply.

Actually, there's one particular piece of art which I think was made by a guy who designed a separate hardsuit concept that I really liked. I tried finding the guy's site, but it's gone, too. Another unsolved mystery.

Kain The Seeker's Bubblegum Crush: Another site featured in BGC EX, focusing on a campaign set in Cyberpunk 2020's Night City, but alas, it's woefully incomplete. The only part of the campaign site, really, is some background and some stuff about the characters, and that's it.

Luckily, we have a rough idea of why this site is unfinished thanks to Farquhar: apparently the hard drive of 'Kain' (I do so hate people using that name for edgy fictional characters) crashed, the site was lost, and then it was resurrected, with all the Boomers and whatnot that we see fragments of on the Web Archive. Alas, that site proper is lost to time.

Maybe that's for the best, though. Some of those Boomer designs are literally 'lol your waitress Boomer now has a laser gun concealed in her, prepare to die player characters', a cheap-o CP2020 trick if there ever was one. I don't want to know what the rest was like.

Bubblegum Crossfire: Sabers and Angels: A simple little site focusing on an LA-based group, featured in BGC Ex. There's not a whole lot to recommend it, the art's small portraits and not very good ones at that, the story's a little less exciting than Conundrum... but it's there.

Bubblegum Crossroads: Chicago 2033: No art, but it's a complete RPG site with some cool worldbuilding and a cool concept for interchangeable 'battlegloves' allowing some modularity for combatants.

That's it, so far. Go forth, my children! Explore the Dead Net!

#stmpd reviews bgc fanfic #bubblegum crisis #bgc #old web #geocities

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mspaintlover · 4 months

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12 13 15 :0

12. how would the fandom view your character?

probably around the same way they view Swasch: a really small dedicated group of people are hardcore fans and like no one else . trying not to be entirely negative here but they probably play up her ditzyness to 50000 and ignore that she has like, thoughts and feelings and everything. that or basically not even treated like an adult even though she's probably almost if not in her 30s (metaphorically(?) because darkners probably don't age in the same ways lightners do) because she happens to be a bit sillay

but broadly ignored because she would realistically be a equally minor character that doesn't have some kind of yaoi ship they can shove her in. HOWEVER there would be one person like me who would Get Them. and make 500 beautiful pictues of fanart and then drop off the face of the earth

13. does your self insert have any information about their family?

it's kind of unclear if darkners have families in the same literal way lightners do (do they reproduce??? the Card Kingdom has the King and Lancer but that's because theyre literally playing cards...) but for the sake of the hypothetical Palette has a pretty stretched relationship with her family she doesn't really talk to any of them. her mother would've been part of a paint program like her and her father would've been like another part of the hardware or like, a overclocking program.. something like that ... sibling status unknown (doesnt really know any extended family either)

she probably hasn't seen any them in years because they live out in the fields and she's working in that dam mansion and in Cyber City and stuff but she also just really doesn't want to . needless to say they didn't treat her the best (understatement) and if they talk at all its like once every 5 years. her mother shows up at the cafe once and she just walks out. they probably look down on her for where she lives and works and stuff but they never liked her all that much to begin with so it's fine 15. how does your self insert play a role in the plot of the story? do they help directly defeat the villain, support the heroes, etc.?

oohourughouh so OK she ties into Swasch's deal and they admittedly mostly exist in the game to have done stuff pre-canon to set up stuff that happens in the game (why the NEO machine exists in the basement so it can later get stolen, the presence of a preinstalled program, and to be a shopkeeper in the third area of the chapter to replace Sweet Cap'n Cakes in the fields area/the Addisons in the city for healing items, ect. mostly behind the scenes stuff) so Palette kind of ties into all that

but theyre also extremely side characters so they don't have a lot of direct influence in the plot of the canon game. but trust me they have some weird shit going on in that kind of pre-canon (and post-canon but thats another can of worms) space especialy with like their place as darkners that kind of communicate with lightners in such a way with helping them create their(the lightner's) art and stuff that's very personal and almost direct like a connection not a lot of other darkners would have & like how they rationalize how they basically are used as a literal tool without lightners even knowing theyre alive......

but that's getting more into them Personally . they don't have a lot of direct influence on the main plot because of the type of characters they are and thats OKAY i love them(both) anyway. unless i misinterpreted the question. in which that';s my answer anyway

#.bmp #load file #i forgot what was in this the second i was done writing it so honestly anything is subject to change at any time

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leaky-pen · 2 years

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Organization Stuff And Info. Please Read Before You Follow!

Hi! Hello! How are you? Welcome to my extremely scuffed blog!

@curry-and-casteliacones - pokemon sideblog

@squid-ink-symphony - splatoon sideblog

@splatoon-edits - splatoon edits/pfps/more

@daily-pokemon-screenshots - basically just the blog name

Putting This At The Top Just In Case:

This is a safe place for all kinds of people. If you discriminate in any way based on someones gender, whether they are a part of the LGBTQ+ community, their race, their religion, where they were born, their lifestyle, or anything else they do that isn't you business please leave. (Of course this excludes things like zooph*les and p*dophiles and l*li/sh*tacons. They are terrible)

Want Just The Art?:

@leaky-pen-but-only-art is where i only reblog my art. Feel free to follow that instead of this blog. I also run the following:

About Me:

I am Ink, as you may or may not know. I am just a funky lil alien living in your computer who makes art from time to time. I am genderfluid and am ok with any pronouns, even neo ones. I'm not comfortable sharing my exact age, but i'm legally an adult. I am extremely awkward and have no clue how to english correctly, but i am nice tolerable if you get to know me. Also I have a habit of not posting/reblogging or only doing it sparsely for stretches of time before just randomly showing up and doing a whole bunch all at once. I try not to spam post/reblog when I remember but I can get excited and forget.

Tags:

#OffTopicInk - all my posts that aren't art of some kind will fall under this tag

#InksFanart - All my fanart and such

#InksOCs - Art or text posts about my original characters

#InksArt- Art of literally anything else

#AlienReblog- A thing i reblogged. I kinda forget this feature exists a lot lol.

#InkIsWhining - I have a habit of just kinda rambling about nonsense on here. If you would rather not see the more negative stuff, feel free to block this tag!

Can You Use My Art?:

Totally! Feel free to use my art for pfps, banners, etc. Just make sure you credit me :)

Do I Take Requests/Feedback?:

Yes! If you want to suggest something for me to draw feel free to, however this does not mean I am guaranteed to draw it. This includes OCs as well! Gimme their ref and I might just draw them. :) I also take constructive criticism or feedback. For example the following would not be constructive: "The hands look weird". This is just saying you don't like a part of it and doesn't actually help much. However if you were to explain why they look weird or give a suggestion on how to avoid any mistakes i made in the future, that would be helpful and allowed.

If One Of My Posts Is Misinformed, Improperly Tagged, Accidentally Offensive etc.:

You always have permission to correct me or ask me to tag something! Of course this is not an excuse to be rude to me! Just explain/ask politely and 99.99% of the time i will comply with what it is you are asking of me! I try my best not to say anything wrong but sometimes i'm just not properly informed about something, so if you have to energy to let me know what i did wrong feel free to. Even something as simple as linking to an article or research about it so you don't have to explain it yourself is fine.

You Engage With XYZ Media, Did You Know It's Bad?:

I can't control what becomes a comfort media for me. If the creator is a bad person i just do my best to never support them financially, I never buy merch, i pirate the show, whatever i need to do to avoid giving them a cent. And sometimes i don't even know the creator is a bad person. But i try to always be critical of the content i'm consuming and i'm always willing to admit it's flaws.

#please read #important

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undertheinfluencerd · 3 years

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https://ift.tt/2WYI14A #

The release date for the highly anticipated Tim Burton inspired game, Lost in Random, is right around the corner and hype is building up. What began as a small idea about dice quickly grew into an incredibly expansive project that, after nearly four years in development, is finally coming to fruition. Screen Rant‘s preview for Lost in Random joins the chorus of voices praising its unique style, gameplay, and the world that await players.

Lost in Random tells the story of Even, a young girl from the Onecroft district, as she tracks down her sister, Odd. In this world, those who come of age participate in the sacred dice roll, which the Queen oversees, and the result of that roll will determine their future. After Odd rolls a six, the Queen determines that her fate lies in the district of Sixtopia, where the Queen resides, and takes her from her family. Even, spurred by heartbreak and anger, sets out to find her sister with the help of a sentient die named Dicey.

Related: Shai Matheson Interview: Dragon Quest XI & Sylvando

Recently, Zoink CEO/Creative Director Klaus Lyngeled and Creative Director/Lead Writer Olov Redmalm virtually sat down with Screen Rant to talk about Lost in Random. Read on to find out how Lost in Random came to be, its influences, and some of their favorite easter eggs and references.

What sparked the idea for Lost in Random‘s story and how did it evolve during development?

Olov Redmalm: It all started out with Klaus wanting to do something darker while we were still finishing Ghost Giant. We’re a very art-driven studio so we start out with drawings and trying to find an idea through that, and a mood and setting – [which] especially felt fitting and important for this since it was a fairytale, first and foremost. Then Klaus found this drawing of a dice and a girl… and everything just started coming out of there. Like, what’s a world look like that is under the whim of dice and being stuck in a giant board game?

One of the things that first drew me in was the focus on dice and randomness because, I don’t know how it is over with you guys, but Dungeons and Dragons became way more popular in the U.S. during lockdown.

Olov Redmalm: I’m a Dungeons and Dragons player too and I think of my job kind of like dungeon mastering. I ran a few campaigns when I was younger.We even made our own rules sets, me and my friends, and we were like six people enjoying this campaign. And when it was over, after like two years, we were like, it’s really sad that no one else will ever experience this. That’s why I love video games so much, because that way, so many can experience an adventure withdice.

Other than Tim Burton, what are some other inspirations that you feel have had a significant influence on Lost in Random in regards to design and gameplay?

Klaus Lyngeled: We talked about “Over the Garden Wall” [TV series] when we started, just because we really like that each episode has this kind of weird little story to it and we wanted to have each level, each world that you entered, to have its own sort of story or problem – and then of course, an overarching story at the same time. I think that for the [Queen’s] mask, there was a lot of Miyazaki in there too, with like the No Face character from “Spirited Away.”

The painting that inspired us was a painting from Shaun Tan, who did that painting of a girl with dice. He also has these kinds of weird creatures that are not very explained and it’s quite nice that they’re not so explained in the game. I like that because it feels more like a fairytale – like the Grimm fairytales, for example, but also fairytales like HC Anderson. So, I think there’s a lot of inspiration from that.

You have worked with the Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North on a couple of projects now and I’m curious how he fits in to Zoink’s writing process?

Olov Redmalm: He wrote out basically all the dialogue in the game. We would write the outline for the whole story, so you can actually read the whole game as a book… and so, we kind of tried to envision what could potentially happen step by step. We imagined some way of traversing through each level so that we have these descriptions of characters and their background story… and then Ryan would take that.

Klaus Lyngeled: He’s very comic of course, very funny… but it was interesting to get him to write something that’s a little bit more serious, but also very cool to me. It’s like this really sort of overarching, giant big story which feels very heavy, but then having little funny characters here and there.

Related: Gen Kobayashi & Miki Yamashita Interview – NEO: The World Ends With You

Can you talk a little more about how randomness impacts the game?

Olov Redmalm: It is a story about the randomness of life and uncertainty and, you know, “what am I going to get next in life?” You might try to predict the one long roll of the dice after the next to protect yourself from harm, but of course you can’t. You can’t know if you’re going to get a six and then a one after that, you can only take one at a time. That’s kind of the narrative of the combat as well. Like, okay, fine, I got this hand, now I have to play it. I have this higher number, this is what I can do with it. Then just roll with the punches – pun intended.

Klaus Lyngeled: And I can tell you this, like, already we’re [thinking], “should we do a second game or not?” You know, cause we have so many ideas that – just the board games itself is like, there’s so much stuff you can do with that! It’s like opening a Pandora’s box.

I’ve got one last question: are there any Easter eggs or references that either of you are particularly proud of and want players to look out for?

Klaus Lyngeled: There’s a character who has two personalities and two faces, which is something that also happens in “Stick it to the Man,” and it’s the same actor actually. He does both those characters.

Olov Redmalm: If you’re a Shakespeare fan, the Queen makes some uncanny references to Macbeth… because Ryan, he’s a huge fan of that. He actually wrote a choose your own adventure book based on Shakespeare. Oh, I’m also really proud of a character that’s called Korv, which sounds really cool and fantasy, but in Swedish it means hotdog. The Swedes love it.

Next: Wil Wheaton Interview – I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and the Liar

Lost in Random releases on September 10 for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

#marvel #avengers #marvelcomics #spiderman #mcu #ironman #comics #captainamerica #thor #avengersendgame #marvelstudios #xmen #dc #marveluniverse #art #cosplay #tomholland #hulk #disney #comicbooks #dccomics #peterparker #tonystark #blackwidow #marvellegends #endgame #deadpool #marvelcinematicuniverse #loki #bhfyp

The post Klaus Lyngeled & Olov Redmalm Interview – Lost in Random appeared first on undertheinfluencerd.net.

#entertainment, screenrant #tumblr #aesthetic #like #love #tumblrgirl #follow #instagram #photography #instagood #likeforlikes #s #likes #art #cute #o #girl #followforfollowback #a #tumblrboy #grunge #fashion #photooftheday #tiktok #l #photo #sad #k #frases #f #bhfyp

#Undertheinfluencerd

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lwbluedice · 6 years

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Masterpost for my Stories and Ocs!!!

A spoilerfree list of most of my Ocs and stories (reuploaded here on my main blog)

Includes:

- Name of the story and state it’s in

- short summary/facts

- Character names

If you want more information abt any of them(like a description or a pic) or abt the stories, just message me/ ask me! Also feel free to ask me to draw them ( for example in the color scheme thing or sth)!

Note: The stories are all written in german so if you don’t speak that language i can’t send you the original documents but i can try summing them up for you!

I bet this is not everything and i will add stuff but yeah!!!!

Hotaru (first draft is finished)

- Abt two men that are linked through a surgery called “synchronisation”, which basically connects their minds and bodies, so they are forced to work as a team. Ea is an ex-soldier and Cain was a hacker, but due to the fact that they can’t stand each other, they also didn’t share their pasts with each other. To pay someone to unlink them, they become bounty hunters and kidnap the girl Ai and her robot Subaru, which is one of the old military robots, called Hotarus (high technologised, operating, transforming, artificial intelligence, ranger units). They are connected to a human ranger and can transform into what the ranger wants them to transform into.

The Hotaru headquarters exploded 10 years ago and since then the Hotarus are super rare on the black market.

The two men plan on selling both the girl and her robot and let’s just say it all doesn’t work out that well.

Ai Hoshino

Cain Bishop

Subaru

Dr. Chandra Natarajan

10 A

10 B

and other synced pairs

George Watton

Asha Watton

Elaine Bishop

Christopher Bishop

Haruto Hoshino

Shiori Hoshino

The Pleiades. A Hotaru Unit.

Atlas/ Emmett Hunter

Maia/ Ilya Neverwinter

Elektra/ Hailey Gray

Taygete/ Daiyu Ghou

Alcyone/ Charlotte Gryffith)

Caelano/ Sora Aurora River

Merope/ Imogen Harrington

Sterope/ Elizabeth Bresley

Additional Characters for the (maybe Sequel) in which the grown up Ai will try to find out who attacked the Hotaru Headquarters

- Skya

The day the world turned white ( first draft is finished, working on it)

To stop global warming some scientists basically caused a new ice age. On the long run this might be very effective but the former countries, now sectors, are hit by strong ice storms, called snow white. To stay safe huge bunkers, the Safe Cities, were built and the local fauna and flora were stored in Arks, to preserve them.

Usually an alarm sounds before all citizens are brought into the SCs, but this time Reese and her best friend Yuki dont manage to get to the vehicles on time and are left behind. They seek shelter in a private bunker outside of town that Yuki found out about recently. Suddenly a group of boys their age knocks on the door, because they were also left behind and followed the girls.

Al, the brothers Eli and Isaac, Gil and Henry become the new bunker-mates and the group has to survive one year in the bunker, until the storm is over.

( I have a blog for this story, just search for The day the world turned white! There are pics and some posts for example abt which patronus/spirit animal the charas have!)

Reese/ Therese Wells

Al/ Alexander Glover

Yuki Sarah Brooke

Eli Green

Isaac Green

Gil de Santos

Henry Summers

The Sun will always rise (The sequel, probably forever unfinished)

About a group of rebels, the Sun Children, that are sworn enemies to the government and its ways to cope with Snow White.

Takes place abt one/two years after Tdtwtw.

Lucy and Aidan are kicked out of an underground organisation that stays in the cities underground system during the storm phases and the two wander around in the snow until Michael and Rin pick them up and bring them to the Sun Children. From looking into the snow directly to maneuver, Lucy has turned snowblind.

Yeah the plot is… not 100% existent.

Characters:

Lucy

Aidan

Michael

Kate

Gil

Finya

Rin

The XII Games ( First book is finished, i started the second one, unfinished)

A story abt spaceships that let slaves fight in games, if they win a certain number they are “free”. Cassidy makes it and is sold to a women, Trisha, that takes her home onto her home planet, where Cassidy lives a nice life and learns abt her heritage. One year later she meets Tobias again and she and Trisha are brought to a planet that is basically the universes capital. Cassidy has to take a more important role in the uproar of a war, than she ever imagined.( The cast members are mostly human looking but are other, non human, races)

Cass (Cassidy ) E’ Alandril

Tobias

On the slave ship:

Neala

Sam ( Samuel)

On Anterra:

Trisha Willowrish

Max ( Maxwell) E’ Alyndral

Lukas

Tori

Khorr

Keri

Wil

Quinna

On the Space sparrow:

Zach ( Zacharyas) Gryaan

Benj ( Benjamin) Bottledom

Rashka Hyrelian

Oreadh Urunna'ur

Butcher

Kagrim

Kyluur

Irian Ashcott

On Capital Estellar:

Galea ( Galeandrih Fiyur’ Ihal)

Iyal

Wren Fawell

Luasia

Luminor the Shining

Fallen Angels ( A trilogy, one and a half books were finished, reconcepted)

We don’t talk abt this but it was one of my first stories i truly wrote.

Abt fallen angels saving the world or sth. It’s super clichee and just ugh.

The newer version would cancel some charas and make it abt rebalancing Darkness and Light in the worlds. With a more diverse cast and also different magical races. And a way less creepy Adam.

Eve/Evelyn White

Adam

Peregrine/Perry

Ray/Raven

Sera

Colin

Robin

Raphael

Ky/ Kyron

Gabe/Gabriel Frost

Bree/ Gabriella Frost

Indigo ( haven’t written it yet and i don’t know if i ever will, but have drawn stuff. I lowkey wanna see this as a comic)

A story abt a clan of shapeshifters, called Indigos. They are basically human that can shift into dolphins and their clan lives on an island near Australia. Its a modern story and the gang consisting of our local gay dolphin girl Keerie, her cousins Akash and Arjuun (younger brother, older sis), and Ky ( adopted as a child, japanese heritage, a different breed of dolphin idk) lives their “normal lives” with lots of shenenigans and drama.

Some day Keerie falls in love with Navy, the daughter of the owner of the local Aquapark (that the clan suspect also does illegal stuff like snatching wild animals).

Keerie

Arjuun

Akash

Navy

“Neo Alcatraz” ( reworks of a very old story)

To put it simply, there is a pack of scientists that bionically enhance children and send them off to different countries to basically be local superheroes. Our gang was kinda left behind bc the countries rather took the newer, better versions and here they are now, a bunch of supernatural teens facing the (not so) everyday struggles of life.

Atalanta

Chi

Callie

Lee

Victor/Konrad

Gemsona (just art)

Larimar

- has water powers and her backstory bases on my private/old Squads life story and a lot of me thinking of drawing music videos for her but never doing it

Anthea (art and headcanons)

- my Dnd Oc

The Bender Girls ( art and headcanons)

- basically some Avatar the last Airbender Ocs i made once

Daiyu

Hotaru

Yura

Sündenfall / Sinfall (short story)

A short story i wrote for a competition which is basically every crime series but magic.

Harvey is immortal, he dies and is revived, and solves crimes through it. Paige is basically his assistant and the case they are on is abt a person that kills magical beings and “arranges” the victims fitting to the seven sins.

Ilya Winter

Harvey

Paige

Delphi

Sphinx

The concept charas, that had a different storyline ( they were basically a team of magical beings that would solve cases… rather unconventional.) I considered reworking them into the new Fallen Angels concept:

Ilya

Harvey

Timothy

Worth mentioning:

Project Alpha (script, some art):

The script for a shortfilm i once made with my friends. A school class has a plane crash and only a few students survive, they all embody a different character archetype (the sunshine, the soziopath, the smart one etc.) They try to survive and are put through weird psychological mind experiments like the trolley problem.

To be honest, the concept had and still has a lot of potential and we just hadn’t the opportunities to rly set it the way we anticipated. The shooting day was super fun, though! Still laughing about the outtakes

Astral Chronicles (some art and a few chapters, unfinished)

A story Idea i still like but probably wont write like this because of copyright problems. Its basically a giant Crossover.

Its abt people who have an Astral( mostly a literature figure) they embody when they are dreaming. Their body stays in bed and is vulnerable but the Astral can basivally run around and has special powers. If the Astral dies, the person wakes up but i think when the body dies the person dies too? idk.

The Protagonist embodies Alice and there are also the White Rabbit, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell usw.

There was also some kind of conflict? I dont remember.

If i would ever rewrite it the Astrals would be embodiments of the Zodiac signs.

(does this even fit?)

The Fanfiction thing i wrote abt Peter Pan/ Jack Frost

- like i have tons of short drabbles and the start of a fanfiction and honestly i liked the ideas i had a lot

The ones we better not talk abt:

Part Hunter

Basically there was a being named eternity/aeterna that was shattered into oarts (like in TRC)

and chosen ones have to reclaim them.

The ones that basically die are turned into guardians, like Time and Space ( they had animal companions they were fused with i guess)

Melody is the current part hunter and has a tragic love story, her animal is a tiny horse thing??????

Idk

basically a long story in which i used my dreams as base for the episodes

The nameless story

Actually super interesting but too many charas and a too tiny will to draw action scenes or write them.

Like its based around a super popular game in huge spheres/buildings and the teams wear some anti gravity outfits and shoes and can walk on the walls and shit and can basically attack using elements/illusion/ conjure monsters idk.

And the main team had an opponent team that basically specialized in the 25272 other elements and some day they just fused teams idk.

There also was some prophecy shit abt the anchors, ppl that can control all elements the same???? Idk

Element guardians

- basically four teens that control the elements and do shit together

- at some point i gave all of them dragons

- still thinking abt this sometimes

- The originals:

Luna: the shameless self insert , earth, pony girl, bland blonde i think

Katy: Air, best friend, bubbly

Dan: The jock. Fire

Nick: The emo. Water

At some point Katy became Skye and Dan and Nick got other names but yeah-

Talent Academy

The story thats basically a ripoff of Alice academy. Like a school with hierachie between the students and ranks and shit and different houses and the students have powers IDK

If you read through all of this, bless you for showing interest in my stories ;) And hey, if you want me to rant about any of them, just send me an ask or a message!!!

#masterpost #ocs #my stories #my ocs #stories #list

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sanctferum · 7 years

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Dangan Ronpa Chapter 4 Free Time part 2, and probably a Deadly Life by the end of this

OK, so last time we decided to spend what’s probably our final Free Time event of chapter 4 with Kaito. Problem is, I can’t find him anywhere. That is…concerning. OK, I’ll hang out with Himiko instead.

A present for Himiko, huh? How about a Firebolt, I mean Flame Thunder, broomstick?

Himiko is too lazy to tell people not to talk to her if she doesn’t want them to. Or, at least she was back in chapter 2 or whatever point in time this Free Time event was written for.

Himiko became a magician, sorry, a mage, because she was good at it. Not following her talent would go against her master’s teachings. Said master is an amazing archmage, who- oh, we called her a magician by mistake, the conversation’s over. RIP Shuichi.

One final free time. Looks like Kaito’s available now. Let’s finish up his free time events.

Kaito seems awfully nervous about something. Let’s calm him down with this weird space thing present.

Kaito’s upset that we’re moping around. Shuichi isn’t sure why Kaito thinks he’s moping. But, in the interest of sharing burdens, Kaito convinces Shuichi to tell him a story that he’s previously only told Kaede. The story of Shuichi’s first case, the one that went horribly right. Shuichi insists that him solving the case was a complete accident, and that he foiled the culprit’s revenge, despite it turning out that the culprit was justified in seeking that revenge. Kaito thinks that the culprit, had he gotten away, would have been crushed under the weight of his own guilt. In that sense, he should almost be thankful that Shuichi caught him.

Kaito’s an idiot, but…he supports Shuichi and expects nothing in return. He is a true friend.

We get the Spacewalk skill and Kaito’s underpants. Spacewalk looks like it will be useful for psyche taxi.

As night-time approaches, the doorbell to Shuichi’s dorm room rings. Kaito? Maki? Nope, it’s Miu.

Shuichi has no patience for Miu’s perverted remarks, but Miu does say one interesting thing. If Shuichi meets Miu on the fourth floor computer lab, the two of them, and I presume everyone else as well, will be able to escape. Shuichi decides it’s worth going there. Probably.

On the fourth floor, Himiko is outside the computer room. Everyone got the same basic message from Miu, but Himiko says it smells fishy. Well, Miu would know about that. …She’s starting to rub one off on me. Rub off on me. Fuck.

Himiko is hesitant, and then she remembers all the times she didn’t want to do stuff, but Tenko grabbed her and dragged her all over the place. In Tenko’s memory, Himiko won’t hesitate any more.

The green circle in the center of the computer is red now. Everyone is already gathered inside. Including Kokichi. I’m nervous. Really nervous.

Sure enough, Miu plans to get us out of here via bringing us to another world.

Miu will tell us how it works…if we bow down to her like dogs. Kokichi suggests that if Miu wants to be heard, SHE bow down to US. Miu gets desperate and then suddenly the art style shifts to manga style as Miu bows down to us.

There’s a device connected to the computer that can upload your consciousness to it. Which means the way to escape is to abandon our physical bodies and run to a virtual world. My theory as to what’s happening here inches ever closer to being the truth…

The computer doesn’t have “virtual reality” in the sense that we know of it as. It’s really…a Virtual World. One step further than the Neo World Program from Dangan Ronpa 2, sounds like. As Tsumugi puts it, it’s basically the Matrix.

The consciousness is put into an avatar, just like with the Neo World Program. Naturally, we’re all pretty hesitant.

Kokichi found out what Miu was up to. He agreed to bring chairs here for our bodies to be left behind in, in exchange for learning what Miu was planning.

A world without murder and Monokuma, huh? I don’t think we’ll be in a hurry to leave behind the world with our friends and families in it, but I also suspect that said world no longer exists, and that the world we’re in now – possibly even the world we all came from – originates within this same computer.

Himiko is refusing to go. This reeks of danger. And Miu didn’t even create the Virtual World. Someone else made it. HMMMHMMMMM.

Himiko doesn’t want to separate her body and her soul. Kokichi says Keebo might not have a “consciousness” to be uploaded. But surely being a program in the first place will make this definitely work on him, right?

Shuichi is nervous about who could have created the Virtual World. He’s right to be, because as it turns out, it was Monokuma. Just as I thought…

Following on Monokuma’s footsteps are Monophanie and Monotaro. Monotaro is still confused after being hit so many times, and decides that the robot is his father. He picks the wrong robot, though – Keebo, not Monokuma.

Monokuma used a certain program as a template to create the Virtual World. Is that program called the Neo World Program?

The program is called the Killing Game Simulator. I think I must be right about the true nature of this world and everything in it. I’ve got to be.

Miu stayed up all night deleting all dangerous stuff from the Virtual World. Still, even with that, it’s obviously a trap.

Once we go to the Virtual World, we’ll understand how awesome it is. Miu’s speaking like she has already been in and out. Has she?

The Virtual World was originally a killing game simulator? I dunno. Monokuma said he based the Virtual World off of the Killing Game Simulator. It’s therefore more likely that the Simulator is what we’re in now.

Monotaro thinks Miu’s his mommy now. Maybe Miu and Keebo can adopt him.

Kokichi is on Miu’s side when it comes to trying out the Simulator. Very adamantly and suspiciously so. He knows something. Something about what they might find inside the Virtual World. A super crazy secret. Some kind of bait from Monokuma that would be a reason for them to try it out.

Monokuma says it’s…the secret of the outside world. Whoever finds it, will instantly know what’s happening outside the academy.

Kokichi says he didn’t know about this for sure. It was just a hunch. But I think he knew. He used the card key to get into the Monokuma room and found out something…

Kokichi says that the info could be used to end the killing game…Gonta immediately falls for it. Keebo again mentions his “inner voice” and says it’s telling him that this is the right thing to do. Kaito is just plain curious to see what the Virtual World looks like. Maki thinks he’s an idiot, but will go along anyways. It might be dangerous, but everyone’s been in danger for a while by now.

It’s obvious to Shuichi that Kokichi’s planning something. But what?

Two ports on the VR visors…that’s what connects you to the computer. Into the ports go a red cord, for consciousness, and a blue cord, for memory. Red goes in the right port, blue in the left port.

Once the helmets are connected, everyone puts ‘em on. Miu says she tweaked the avatars to look even better than what the rest of em look in real life. Uh-oh…

Himiko, I don’t think Miu was talking about your face.

Despite our reservations, we flip the switch and…are digitized. We black out for a moment.

And in that moment, a message appears. “Welcome to the Neo World Program…”

We’re actually doing this, then? Oh fucking boy. I just hope this doesn’t mean the mastermind is Junko or any incarnation of her. (It’s totally gonna be fucking Junko)

And here we are, and we’re…funko pop chibis. MIIIIIIIIIUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!

Yeah, agreed with Himiko, the graphics could use some improvement.

Keebo was hoping to have a human body. Poor guy.

With this body, Kaito doesn’t have to worry about any of the stuff he’s been worrying about. Shuichi inquires what stuff, but Kaito brushes it off.

Maki appears. Weird, she wasn’t here before? Now that I think about it, Himiko, Tsumugi, Maki, Kaito, Keebo, and Shuichi are here. Where are Gonta, Kokichi, and Miu?

Maki immediately wants to go back to her actual body. Gonta and Kokichi show up, and Kokichi punches Keebo. Keebo is shocked to feel actual pain from having his avatar hit…our senses in the real world are connected to our senses in the Virtual World. Yeah, that’s how the Neo World Program works…

Miu shows up. All of us are here, then.

Oh, when she said we’d look better in the Virtual World, she meant we’re ugly IRL. Thanks.

The thing about the senses being connected is worrying Maki. Miu explains that whenever an avatar receives sensory input, electric signals are sent to the real body’s brain. And the brain interprets those signals as if it actually experienced it.

Miu has a map of the world, but also a warning regarding this world. Objects are unbreakable. Nothing can be broken here. Also, everyone’s avatar has the same physical strength and abilities. Himiko would theoretically be able to overpower Gonta in this world.

How do we log out? Good question. This better not go Sword Art Online on us…

Ah, we log out using the conspicuous telephone on the counter. Pick it up and say your name, and you’ll be out of here in a flash. The phone can’t be moved from the room we’re in, making this room the only place we can log out from. And whenever we log in, we’ll be transported to this room…

The map is posted on the wall outside the room. Also, the back of Tsumugi’s neck is sensitive. Not sure if that’ll ever be of any importance.

Two maps…the smaller one is of the building we’re in, the mansion. There’s a dining hall, kitchen, salon, bathroom, stairs to the roof, and a main hall, and also a salon, which is the room with the phone. The bigger map is of the Virtual World as a whole. Besides the mansion, there’s a run-down chapel. And the black borders of the map represent a wall. A wall that surrounds the entire Virtual World. SOUNDS FAMILIAR, HUH.

“Beyond that wall is the end of the world. Literally.” Just as I suspected, then.

Past the wall, there isn’t anything.

Miu says she prepared the maps herself. Not Monokuma, then. But the way she says that sounds odd…I think she’s lying.

Kokichi plans to go investigate by himself, much to everyone’s worry. Gonta says he’ll keep watch over Kokichi, but I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. Kokichi obviously planned on Gonta volunteering, so…

There’s a weird clock in the hall. Maybe that’ll be important?

We need to go to the roof to see the view. Up a few stairwells is the roof. It’s snowing outside…

Our avatars can feel heat and cold. Also pain, as demonstrated by Keebo, and…pleasure. And since this is a virtual world, birth control isn’t necessary. So that’s what Miu meant about us never needing a rubber again.

Tsumugi and Shuichi discuss whether an avatar can get sick. According to a study Shuichi read, if the mind is utterly convinced that a bucket of hot water is being dumped on the body, the skin will burn even if the water is cold. I think I have an idea of where this is going, and it’s nowhere good.

There’s a storage shed on the roof. Nothing dangerous that can be used as a weapon inside. Just rolled up carpet.

There’s mounted binoculars on the roof. At the point where the black border is on the map, there’s simply nothing…Miu invites us to go over ourselves and see what it means.

Keebo has started to think about things. Nothing is beyond the wall in this World…and the Academy also has a giant wall. No, never mind, it’s probably nothing. Except I think it’s very obviously something, Keebo.

Before we follow Miu to the river, let’s check out the other rooms. The bathroom is odd, since we don’t know if avatars even need to go to the bathroom. Also, if nothing breaks, toilet paper won’t tear, so that could become a pressing issue. We can’t check the dining hall for now, so…outside we go.

There’s a sign near a fork in the river that says “Mirai Hills”. Mirai is of course the Japanese word for future. The plot thickens.

There’s no bridge over the river, but we can use the Mirai Hills signboard as a makeshift bridge. Also everyone thinks we enjoy being bossed around…Shuichi is kinda a submissive guy, but he’s no masochist.

The signboard can’t support our weight, but it doesn’t have to. Nothing breaks in this world. Still, if the signboard gets washed away, we won’t be able to cross back. Which means we’ll be unable to reach the mansion and log out…

We cross over to another screen, but during the second it takes for it to load, we experience the loading screen instead of the Virtual World. So the squiggly line Miu drew on the map is where the second map loads when you cross over. The reason the binoculars couldn’t see past the loading point was because of this. And while loading, there’s no sight or sound. Nor can you see or hear someone on the other side.

The chapel is indeed a mess. Now to split up and look for clues about the outside world.

Kokichi has something he wants to ask Miu, and he then tells it to Gonta, but since they’re whispering, we don’t know what it is.

Kaito will check the roof, and Kokichi will check the salon. Kokichi decides that he’ll search the mansion’s surroundings, since no one else wants to be outside in the snow. He’s going to pair up with Gonta again for that. Tsumugi, upset that Kokichi is clearly using Gonta, volunteers to also search outside, so she can keep an eye on Kokichi. Shuichi’s also on mansion duty. Maki looks like she’s not happy about being left out…well, she’ll join Himiko, Miu, and Keebo in searching the chapel. The chapel has, at a glance…an organ, which Shuichi thinks Kaede could’ve played, books, posters, Christmas decorations…also Miu is mad that we don’t appreciate her beautiful virtual world.

Anyways, on the other side of the loading screen is Kokichi. As we all join him to search the mansion, Miu walks by, and “accidentally” nudges the signboard, which flows down the river. Miu yells at us, then walks off. Everyone in the chapel is now trapped in this world, including Miu herself…nothing we can do now. Gotta go check the mansion.

Tsumugi goes into the dining hall to see what’s inside. The kitchen is our duty. Inside the dining hall are glasses, dishes, etc. Inside the kitchen, we search all over but find nothing important. Tsumugi also finds nothing in her search. But 10 minutes before she comes to find us, she did look through the window in the dining room, and saw Miu. Somehow, Miu was on this side of the river despite having dropped our bridge in the river?

Before we can discuss how strange it is further, there’s a loud bang. We rush out into the hall, but no one’s there. Was it something falling from the roof? But…Kaito was on the roof. It wasn’t him, was it? It was definitely something outside. And also outside, we hear Keebo, who should be in the chapel…how did Miu and Keebo cross the river?

Outside, we meet up with Gonta. If we go to the chapel, we can find out why we heard Keebo’s voice.

Keebo, Himiko, and Maki are on the other side of the river. But we heard Keebo from the other direction.

“We might be able to make it in time”…That doesn’t sounds like good news…

Kokichi runs up to us. So he’s alright…I hope Kaito’s alright. Though if that’s the case, Miu might be dead.

The signboard washed up down the river, against a boulder.

Whatever happened, the Ultimates need to log out right now. But why?

Something happened to Miu. Her avatar stopped moving. Uh-oh.

There’s a roll of toilet paper outside the mansion that wasn’t there before. We can’t examine it now.

Maki says Kaito wasn’t on the roof. He probably just…logged himself out. I dunno, Maki.

Kokichi wants us to log off before him. Weird. You need to say your name in the phone to log out. So, something about his name?

Before we go, Kokichi tells us that we’re really useful. We should stop hanging out with Kaito and become Kokichi’s friend instead. Because…Kokichi can save everyone. Or so he says.

Kokichi is sad that Shuichi rejected him and logged the fuck off, but…when Kokichi finds someone he likes, he’ll do anything to get them to notice him. Even strangle them. Hmmm. Whoever’s dead, most likely Miu but I ain’t ruling Kaito out, did they die by being strangled? We fade back into the real world before we hear what name Kokichi says into the phone.

We wake up and take off our helmet, only to find exactly what everyone head feared. Miu. Miu, dead…apparently via strangulation. HOO boy.

Miu is dead, and Kaito is nowhere to be seen. And as the sun rises over the academy, the body discovery announcement chime plays. But since everyone’s in the computer room anyways, instead of the announcement, Monokuma shows up personally.

Now that Miu is dead, Monokuma doesn’t feel any urge to hold back on vulgar comments.

Monotaro’s weeping his eyes out at the sight of Miu’s body. Monophanie takes a moment to realize what happened, and then she vomits.

Everyone is too shocked by Miu’s corpse to even process that a murder has happened…until Kokichi brings up the topic. And also, not everyone is in the computer lab. Kaito’s not here.

The next thing we hear is footsteps running down the hall. Kaito bursts into the room, panicking over having heard the announcement chime, and there’s the body.

Kaito says he was taking a nap. But I don’t think he’s the blackened. The real blackened must have set up things to look like they did, so that Kaito would be super suspicious.

Kaito got logged out involuntarily, without using the phone. Then he went to his dorm room and took a nap, since he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to log back in…

Kokichi says that it’s Shuichi’s time to shine, as a detective! But if the culprit is Kaito, what will Shuichi do?

Before everyone can start arguing, Monokuma distributes the usual Monokuma File.

Kokichi’s excited to find the culprit…I don’t think he’s the blackened either. Kaito and Kokichi…they’re way too obvious suspects to be the blackened. Also, Kokichi points out that everyone standing around being sad is strange, considering he himself is the only one more hated among the people here than Miu.

Keebo’s completely waterproof…I was wondering about that in chapter 2.

Gonta can’t ever, ever forgive the blackened…or himself. Time after time again, Gonta has failed to protect his friends…but, there’s nothing he could have done.

Kaito claims that Shuichi and him will be able to solve the mystery together. But Kokichi won’t let them. He won’t let the detective work with the prime suspect. Kaito believes in us, which means he believes that if he was the blackened, we’d expose him. He believes we wouldn’t turn away from the truth. Kokichi brings up Kaede’s trial, but Kaito tells him to shut up. He believes in us, end of sentence.

Kokichi believes that believing in other people in a killing game is bad tactics.

Shuichi thinks that Kokichi’s manipulating Kaito into not working with Shuichi for this case. But to what end?

Miu died at 6:30 AM. There’s no external wounds on her body. Perhaps the reason she’s clutching her throat isn’t strangulation, but poison? There’s poisons in Shuichi’s lab, after all.

It’s 7 AM now. So we were still in the Virtual World when Miu died.

Kokichi plans to help us with this case, and make sure Kaito doesn’t try and partner up with us despite saying he wouldn’t. Is there something that only the two of us working together can uncover, and if so, what? And is Kokichi hiding whatever it is because he’s the blackened, or to make the game exciting?

There’s a small bottle on one of the chairs. No doubt it’s poison from Shuichi’s lab. But we’ll investigate that and everything else next time.

#Dangan Ronpa #Dangan Ronpa V3 #Danganronpa V3

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chrisoncinema · 6 years

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The Year in Review: 2017 Honorable Mentions

Originally this post was just going to list my top ten films of the year and provide a brief commentary on the honorable mentions that didn’t make the cut but I got carried away with the latter and wrote way too much. So here’s a holiday surprise: a full summation of my year at the movies for you to enjoy as I work on my top ten list.

2016 Addenda

Silence and Paterson were two 2016 films that I was only able to see in early 2017. Had I been able to view them when they were first released, both would have made my 2016 top ten list (which never got a proper post but is accessible via my twitter) and both would have vied for spots in my top three. I highly recommend that everyone watch both films. They are both challenging films in their own ways. Silence is emotionally exhausting; moments of shocking brutality and quiet delicacy abound. It’s an examination of faith worth mulling over regardless of your worldview or philosophy because, in the end, faith is an emanation of our basic humanity. Paterson is similar to Silence in its singular voice and vision. It is meandering, seemingly plotless, and deceptively simple, but sometimes one has to walk slowly in order to see clearly.

Films I Missed

As seen above, every year there are a number of films I am unable to see because I didn’t have time or it wasn’t playing in Michigan or I didn’t have the press credentials to get into a screening. This year, the most disappointing miss was Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Threadwhich, apparently, didn’t make it to my local art theater. I’ve loved Anderson’s last three films (and enjoy his entire filmography, in varying degrees) and believe Phantom Thread would have made it onto my top ten list this year, had I been able to see it. Other films I missed this year, in no particular order, include: A Quiet Passion, The Post, Menashe, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, I Tonya, Menashe, Graduation, Manifesto, Dawson City: Frozen Time, Call My By Your Name, and The Square.

Honorable and Dishonorable Mentions

Despite missing a lot, I saw more films this year than I have in a long time. This meant that my top ten list was an enjoyable challenge and that a number of films, for a variety of reasons, didn’t make the cut. These are their stories…

Lemon was the worst movie that I saw this year – or, at the very least, it was the movie I disliked the most that I watched all the way through nonetheless. The anti-comedy antihero that Tim Heidecker played to cringey perfection in the weird and wonderful The Comedy should be hereby retired with Brett Gelman’s new film. I think Brett Gelman is a very funny comedian and his wife, Janicza Bravo, who directed Lemon has a unique enough directorial voice but, in a year of terrible men, we didn’t need this one. In a year of interesting commentary on race, we didn’t need this half-hearted, cynical, frustrating attempt.

Lemon

I swore off comic book movies years ago and have only watched DC movies out of morbid, masochistic curiosity (I did not see Wonder Woman or Justice League, for the record, and don’t plan on ever watching them). That said, the first superhero movie to pique my interest in years was Logan. I hadn’t seen an X-Men movie since First Class, which I found rather pointless, but, as a childhood fan of the X-Men comics, something about Logan seemed different. And indeed it was.

Logan works incredibly well as a neo-Western road movie that happens to feature mutated humans with superpowers. Hugh Jackman is probably the best actor to ever lead a comic book movie and here he finally has a movie that is worth his time. The three leads that form a quasi-familial unit in the form of Patrick Stewart, Jackman, and young breakout Dafne Keen, all perform incredibly well together and individually. The movie falters when it tries to introduce its villains and an action-y plotline. The dude with the Anakin Skywalker hand was sufficient, the evil doctor guy played by Richard E. Grant was introduced too late to matter, and the robo-Wolverine or whatever he was called was just kind of awkward and weird and dumb. Still, I was genuinely moved by the end of this movie – brought closer to tears by this movie than any comic book movie I’ve watched. It’s not a great film, but it’s a very good comic book movie. Count it among the few classics.

Another movie that I was surprisingly moved by was Okja. I felt like I had this film’s number from the start. Not that predictability is inherently negative, I just didn’t think I’d get that much out of it. But this movie is incredibly well-crafted. The performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton are so over the top that they actually work as caricatures of evil people. This movie feels like a live-action anime. It has the energy, the flow, and the colorful cast of characters. The message is simple and perhaps a bit obvious but it works. And while I will continue blaming it on the severe cold I had while watching the film, I did get choked up at the end. Also, Paul Dano continues to be a tragically underrated performer who needs to be cast in way more projects.

Okja

Okja was very good at world-building and, unsurprisingly, Blade Runner 2049 was great at it. I was wary of this film going in and didn’t even know if I’d ever watch it – tired as I am of reboots and unnecessary sequels. Much to my surprise, though, I was captivated by this movie when it was simply following Ryan Gosling’s K through his detective work and personal life. His relationship with his holographic girlfriend is as weird and sweet and inventive as Her. Denis Villeneuve is a director I’ve written about beforewhose work I enjoy – Arrival remains his best film. Roger Deakins, as widely reported, does great work as he always does in this film. Unfortunately, 2049decided to be a legacy act. The second half of the movie is bogged down in a plot that ties the film in with the original completely unnecessarily.

2049 falls apart when it dredges up old Harry Ford in his all-too-ordinary gray t-shirt. Is he playing Rick Deckard or is he someone’s aging stepdad? Credit where it’s due: Harrison Ford performs dutifully and effectively in this movie but 1: I can’t watch Harrison Ford in a movie anymore without it completely taking me out of the narrative (Oh look, it’s ancient curmudgeon Harrison Ford. Remember Indiana Jones?) and, more importantly, 2: there was no reason why this film needed to bring him back. As I said, there were so many interesting directions this film could have gone but, like The Force Awakens, it grinds to a halt so we can see Harrison Ford react to stuff related to a movie he was in a hundred years ago. Also, Jared Leto is a scenery-chewing nuisance who should not be cast in anything ever. My suggestion: if you didn’t see this movie in IMAX, just wait and watch the 90 minute version I’ll inevitably make in 2018.

And while Blade Runner and Star Wars provided science fiction fodder for franchise devotees, horror fans were treated to a vast array of unique offerings. A horror/drama that got a little over-hyped for me was Raw. As with most gross-out horror films, there were early reports of people passing out and throwing up in screenings. With that in mind, I prepared myself for something truly shocking and was, honestly, somewhat disappointed. The story centers on a college freshman who discovers she has a hunger for human flesh. It’s a fun film if you’re a fan of body horror but even so the scenes get rather formulaic. There’s some great, atmospheric stuff in this movie, including some solid cinematography, but the moments when something gross is about to happen are never a surprise. Raw's great failure is its ending which ties such a deliciously messy story together too neatly.

Raw

Another horror film that could be accused of receiving too much early hype was, of course, mother! This movie is incredibly effective as a comedy of manners. Darren Aronofsky does an amazing job of capturing the panic and confusion of actual nightmares where you know the people populating your dream should be able to hear and understand you but their blank, unresponsive stares simply add to the horror. I had no idea what mother!was actually about or where it was going while I watched it and I found myself disappointed in myself once I realized. The thing is, though, even when the film’s narrative fully commits to its pedestrian eschatology, it’s still churning out moments that are absolutely bonkers. The ways mother! doesn’t work might be more interesting than the ways it does (Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer are particularly effective; Jennifer Lawrence remains an amateurish performer) but…I kind of loved this film in all of its sadistic, messy glory.

I really wanted mother! to make it into my top ten list simply because it felt so different. That is, until I saw another film about the dismantling of domesticity: The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I should state for the record that I was not a huge fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s last film The Lobster. That film always felt a bit obvious and stunted to me – though I’m a big fan of both Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. Sacred Deer is a similar beast. The deadpan, monotone dialogue takes a lot of getting used to and I’m sure it’ll be a sticking point for a lot of viewers. It remains an interesting and puzzling choice by Lanthimos who seems to want to strip his films of melodramatic artifice while writing screenplays that contain the drama of Greek tragedies.

Sacred Deer is a film that knows it’s weird, knows you think it’s weird, but also knows it’s weirdness is making you feel weird. If you can let yourself get into it, this is a pretty rewarding film reminiscent of The Shining (I know this is blasphemy but I actually like it more). Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman both give incredibly performances with what is surely challenging material to work with. The film’s real star, though, is Dunkirk breakout Barry Keoghan. As his character grows more strange and sinister, he somehow becomes even more magnetic. Regardless of what you think of the movie, Keoghan is one of the best performers of the year.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Of course, one cannot discuss the year’s horror films without mentioning Get Out. I have to admit I had trouble with this film for a number of months. I really struggled to see what everyone else was seeing in it. That is, until I watched Detroit. Both films are ostensibly horror flicks where the great evil is white power. Kathryn Bigelow’s film posits itself as a visceral work of journalism but beneath that facade, it’s clear she has nothing to say. Her camera is in a constant Paul Greengrass-esque tremor whether it’s a tense moment or not. Detroitis false immediacy. Detroit is torture porn. Get Out, on the other hand, has a voice and it came to make a statement. Get Out, like They Liveor Night of the Living Dead before it, is not high art. It is, for better or worse, a reaction to the sociopolitical milieu that surrounds it. Hopefully it will soon be considered the first of innumerable, blockbuster works by filmmakers of color that invades the cultural consciousness. For now, Get Out is a film that manages to be both scary and funny thanks to Jordan Peele’s vision and direction.

Logan Lucky and Baby Driver were two films by directors whose work I enjoy and admire immensely that just didn’t quite bring enough to the table to make it into a top ten list. Both films are self-assured, fun, and full of magnetic characters (save for the titular Baby) but they also seem to be exercises in style over substance. Still, I’d recommend both films in a heartbeat.

Another film that comes highly recommended by yours truly that seems to have been completely forgotten is The Red Turtle: an animated, nearly-wordless folk tale about nature, love, and letting go. The Red Turtle is refreshingly simple and unassuming – I’ve heard it described as a children’s film and, while a patient child may be able to sit through it, there’s a depth and maturity to the story that will speak to anyone who would stop to listen. Come for the animation, stay for the beautiful score and sound design.

The Red Turtle

Speaking of design, a couple films that look incredibly good are A Ghost Story and The Beguiled. Both films held spots in my top ten list but were knocked out. I really wanted to love A Ghost Story – I felt like I was really giving it my all – but about two thirds of the way through the film, it starts to preach about what it is and some of the mystery and nuance is lost. Visually, it remains one of the most interesting films of the year, but the story remains half-baked. The same could be said for Sofia Coppola’s new film. It features some of the best cinematography of the year and incredible performances from everyone involved. The aforementioned Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman give it their all; Kirsten Dunst is strong as ever; and Elle Fanning continues to prove she is one of the great young actors working today. The film’s only real fault is its table manners. Reserved and cautious, when the film finally boils over, the room has already chilled.

I also saw The Florida Project this year. I have very little to say about it, apparently. As I’ve been putting it off through this whole post. I thought it was…fine. It’s good, not great. Willem Dafoe is very good in it. If you want to know how I feel about the ending, I’m in the camp that thought it completely undercut the emotional depth and complexity that the film was just about to reach.

So there you have it – my year at the movies, save for my upcoming top ten films of the year. As I said above, many of these films could have, or perhaps should have, been in my top ten list. And if you were to ask me in a few months, some of them might return. As these things go, art is subjective and fluid, but I’m very excited to share the films that I found the most engrossing and moving this year. Some will be obvious, but hopefully some will be new discoveries for you. Come back New Year’s Eve to find out!

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pinelife3 · 7 years

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Montezuma 2EEE

This is MF DOOM on the Jake One track 'Get 'Er Done':

Make no mistake son, it's Jake One, he makes beats well like I likes my steaks done with sauteed onions and hella worcestershire, a gush of beer to wash it down.

First of all, whew that internal rhyme! Worcestershire//gush of beer. Yes! I feel like only MF DOOM can do this shit. I read a really interesting write up on MF DOOM from Ta-Nehisi Coates recently. Coates seems like the nicest guy ever - he's so smart but also completely unpretentious. He writes for Marvel and The New Yorker and seems to easily move between those worlds. (I was in a comic book shop today and feeling kind of out of place but the bald, bearded goth guy behind the counter was super nice, and declared the book I put on the counter an “awesome read” and then he recommended some other stuff to me as well. This is a wildly irrelevant anecdote - was just thinking about comics.) Anyway, Coates talks about DOOM, but also his own experience as a hip hop fan:

I kept the assembled works of Wu-Tang Clan on repeat and stewed, convinced that somewhere around 1998 hip-hop had run out of things to say. I was not alone. Disaffected music fans began to refer to the halcyon days of the eighties and nineties—when every rapper had a d.j., and label owners didn’t vamp in videos, confusing themselves with artists—as “the Golden Era.”

We were the kind of fundamentalists that haunt every genre of popular music. By the end of the nineties, we had started seeking a sound that offered something other than guns, girls, and drugs. Some of us found neo-soul. Others got lost in our parents’ jazz records. And still others were radicalized and turned to U2 and Björk.

Not to be picky, but I feel like Wu-Tang talks about guns, girls and drugs plenty. But they also talk about the Shaolin, martial arts and poverty and I guess that's the difference. Anyway, I never knew why DOOM wore the mask, but he says:

I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about. Like girls being like, ‘Oh, he’s sexy,’ or ‘I don’t want him, he’s ugly,’ and then other dudes sizing you up. A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?

Huh. This other musician I like, Brock Berrigan (he makes really nice beats -you should check him out), always wears a chicken head mask - possibly for reasons similar to DOOM's. For me, that reasoning doesn't check out though, because aren't people obsessed with unmasking? I guess if nothing else it creates an iconic image around your act without that having to literally be your face the way it is with most other artists. ANYWAY, I guess lyrics don't need to be technically amazing like DOOM's to be entertaining - this dude Open Mike Eagle has some good lines. From his track "Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)":

I log into my Twitter page And start bending over like Gollum This dumb cred is like crack rock And I never seem to hit bottom

Sweet Gollum reference - I had to look this one up. The "bending over" kind of threw me: I thought he was maybe saying something about hoes on social media but then why would he be bending over? Then I thought maybe he was saying he was gay and hoeing on social media himself but it still seems weird to invoke Gollum in that context, right? I like Gollum as much as the next person (i.e. a lot), but I would not be super keen to draw comparisons between his appearance and my own (although we do share the same sickly pallor and blue eyes - plus, I too have spent many years living in a cave). According to Rap Genius (and the line's context - I am truly an idiot for not getting it sooner. Maybe I just wanted it to be something sexual to do with Gollum) he's just saying that he's addicted to Twitter and the praise/attention it affords him, similar to how Gollum is addicted to the ring (and crouching).

From age 18 - 21 I was super into Fleet Foxes (I think they hold up. They're pretty irresistible, right?). They have this song "Montezuma" which finishes like this:

Oh man what I used to be Montezuma to Tripoli Oh man oh my oh me

I guess I'm an idiot because when he sings "Montezuma to Tripoli" I always heard "Montezuma 2 Triple E" and imagined it stylised like this: Montezuma 2EEE. Tripoli obviously makes more sense but it never even occurred to me that he was saying that. I thought he was referring to something mysterious and abstract. (Writing it out like EEE makes it look like a bra cup size. I don't know if they do triple cup sizes (they do!). Even doubles make no sense to me. Okay, so I've quickly Googled it. If you're curious: it turns out that a double or triple letter cup size indicates that the boob being cupped sits somewhere between two cup sizes - so a DDD breast is bigger than a DD breast which is bigger than a D breast, and all of them are smaller than E. That's what this website says anyway. But this whole framework really falls down with the AA cup, because a AA is smaller than an A. It should at least be consistent. I've been wearing bras for years (big shot coming through) and am only now learning about all of this. To be honest, I am incredibly guesstimate-y with my bra shopping: band size is pretty consistent but cup size swings wildly across the alphabet. Should probably get fitted but I feel awkward being fondled by a shop assistant. Plus, it's not like I walk into a bra shop and immediately think that the shop attendants have great breasts - why should I take their advice?)

Montezuma 2EEE: I imagined some weird website which was techy and totally opaque to me, but also somehow involved Aztec emperors. I kind of want to make a weird, pointless website ("isn't that what this blog is, Kath?") because I have pinelife.net and nothing is happening there - I post all my Pinelife blog posts there too (which I know is a real waste of effort - my time is worth nothing so I don't mind wasting that) but I kind of prefer Wordpress' text editor to Tumblr's so it has that advantage. I found this really weird website (please please check it out) a while ago via the House of Leaves subreddit and found it so intriguing and exciting. I don't know why, but I had this insane rush of adrenaline while I was exploring the website. It was cool. Maybe I should make a weird, labyrinthine, pointless website of my own: it'll have shitty navigation, the font and background will be the same colour, possibly other things will be wrong with it too. It'd be something to do anyway. Maybe instead of making a book object I could make a website object - is that a thing? This might be a good way to waste some (more) of my time anyway. I do kind of want to make something. I’ve been bored with blogging for a while. Or, I don’t know - I enjoy doing it and looking back on my old posts (out of the vault: remember this one about cynicism and church? I was so proud of that. Weirdly, my favourite post from last year is this stupid one about pizza which was really low effort) but I don’t know if there’s anything I’ve written in the last year that I’m that proud of. The year went really fast and I feel like I’ve change a bit (or maybe a lot, I’m not sure).

Montezuma2eee.com is available. Hmmm. I already have pinelife.net. Is it greedy to want another domain? I doubt Montezuma2eee is going anywhere (but I’d feel like quite the fool if someone did take it from me - I can’t really be the first to think it’s 2EEE - it literally sounds exactly like it). Anyway, I should play around on pinelife.net for a bit before making the $0.99 commitment to a new domain.

Urgh. I’m an idiot. I nuked pinelife.net and all of the images I’ve uploaded to Wordpress there are gone and I’m lazy and never bothered to upload them to stupid tumblr, I just copied them and now they’re gone. I hate myself. Why didn’t I think for like half a second before deleting everything? Plus, there must be a better way to delete Wordpress beyond FTPing in and trawling through all my folders and deleting anything with a wp prefix. What happens if I just delete everything, like all the folders, and just start from scratch? I’ve forgotten how all this works. (This blog post is a real, rambling steam of consciousness. If I had any editorial credibility I would not publish this thing.)

Hey, talking about me trying to be creative: I was just hunting around my writing folder (basically untouched since 2015) and found this monstrosity I made to mourn the demise of Google Reader (wtf is/was wrong with me?). Jesus I have no memory of making this. Troublingly, I feel very pleased with this thing and its weirdness (obviously if I was genuinely embarrassed I wouldn’t share it here). This would have been 2013.

Also, I won’t post this, but I found an old poem I wrote (lame) in 2012 for uni which is all bullet points and features the word “pre-cum” in the first line. 22 year old me: why?

More? This is the start to a novel I was writing when I was 22/23:

Sirens by the swamp. The river doesn’t move in the summer heat: green carpet of scum across the surface. Two police cruisers are parked on the grass, another blocks the footpath. An officer unfurls yellow tape.

In a local 7/11 the Slurpee machine releases its hold on life and a stickiness of Cola flavoured low calorie slush spills forth. Potato salad is left to putrefy at a hundred backyard barbeques. In a thousand shitty sedans the steering wheel is too hot to hold. In a million armpits sweat prickles through dark hair to find cool air.

The body is partially submerged in the swamp. Obscured by slime and dark water, her hair is tangled in water grass, an eel nuzzles her cheek. From the waist down she is naked, seething with ants and flies. There is a tattoo of a dragon on her hip. If there was a lot of blood it’s now vanished into the mud. Someone has performed a riverside hysterectomy: it was not tidily done.

Sirens by the swamp. Five girls stand in the shade under the bridge: jutting hips, bare feet, iPhones, string bikinis, denim shorts. One pops gum as a police officer asks her preliminary questions. Another discretely photographs the crime scene with her phone. Their families are not expecting them for lunch. It’s Werribee and it’s Christmas day.

****

ppl made a new word for wh@ happened. they said th@ she had been uncunted. 2 b fair it was pretty bad nd even sum of tha sirens said they thought a line had been crossd. dead girl wasn’t even from werribee. actually th@s probably why she was dumb enough 2 go down by tha river

the thing th@ made me haha was th@ channel 10 made such a big deal about her being found by tha sirens b/c theyre young girls and tha news ppl tried to make out like its not a safe town 4 girls nd like girls shouldnt go out alone nd they tried to use tha sirens as an eg of young women in peril. but it was like oh man have u got it wrong. those river girls are bad

honestly werribee is fine so long as ur not fool enouf 2 go down by tha river. th@ is the ao for sirens nd eeeeevery1 nos not to go their less they want they dick sucked nd there future ruined. haha 4 real the news crews + police r lucky they didnt get uncunted 2

#MF DOOM #Jake One #Ta-Nehisi Coates #Gollum #Google Reader #Fleet Foxes #open mike eagle #Brock Berrigan

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