#hence the premise of the game being like a musical | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

utilitycaster · 1 month

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@rowzeoli replied to your post “Do you think part of the D20 journalistic bias...”:

I rarely go on tumblr so sorry if you see me spamming your posts tonight, but I really enjoy your perspective and thoughts! I think I'm the journalist you're referencing in regards to the Fantasy High Junior Year article and unfortunately 1) journalists only get access to interview subjects at very specific junctions (usually press day before the series goes out or halfway through) 2) most publications are honestly Going Through It and cutting freelance rates and just not paying to cover AP

So I'll be totally honest - I post on Tumblr because I assume it is far more unlikely to be seen and so I can vent freely (hence the fairly harsh tone of the criticism in the original post), but I guess this is a chance to clarify. I don't expect anything to change, nor do I expect you to respond; indeed, I wouldn't blame you if you block me after this. But if readership is down (and who knows? maybe it's not and I'm the outlier), this may be illuminating.

The issue with your specific article - which I brought up relatively tangential to the larger point of "at this point I think Polygon's AP/TTRPG coverage is a waste of time to read" isn't really that it's only an early look at the series; and because Fantasy High Junior Year is at this time ongoing, it's honestly entirely valid that there hasn't been a follow-up. It's, well, the "surface-level and factually wrong" issue.

Dimension 20 was by no means the pioneer of remote recording as you claim in your article; that had long been the default of smaller recorded AP shows well before pandemic lockdown for the simple reason that if you're not a media company the overhead is very low - no need to have a dedicated space or even cameras beyond decent laptops. Burrow's End's puppetry? Critical Role's Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace did shadow puppets in 2019. They had diagetic audio on the main campaign as early as 2016. I don't even like Kollok, but that's had complex set design since 2019. Meanwhile premise of the article is yet another rehash of Polygon's "Dimension 20 is CHANGING THE GAME" constant drumbeat, while your actual pull quotes from Brennan Lee Mulligan are him musing that this is simply an entry in an ancient tradition of storytelling and isn't, in fact, terribly novel. The interview fails utterly to back up your point and indeed contradicts it; I get that the timeline was probably tight but this is outright incorrect in multiple places and your argument isn't just unsupported; it's outright dismissed by the very person you claim is proving it. If the premise came before the interview, it needed to be reworked afterwards, and if it came after the interview…I'm not sure what to say, really.

This isn't your article, and I'm putting it here to illustrate that this has been a pattern for Polygon's AP coverage specifically. This article about Worlds Beyond Number is perhaps my favorite example of "this is not serious journalism:" Rusty Quill Gaming, The Adventure Zone, Friends at the Table, and NADDPod are all theater of the mind long-running podcasts (RQG's campaign lasted a whopping 7 years of real time) and that's just off the top of my head; the idea of a long-running edited audio podcast being novel is laughable. RQG and TAZ both started at level 1; I'm not personally familiar with Friends at the Table. I don't actually think starting at level 1 vs. 2 is terribly important in storytelling in the first place other than that a few D&D classes pick their subclass at L2 and that choice can be narratively relevant, which it was in TAZ; however, some classes pick a subclass at L3 so you can still achieve this with a level 2 start (as Critical Role's second campaign does). Both Emily Axford of NADDPod and Griffin McElroy of TAZ have long been composing their own music and RQG is heavily sound designed. These are not obscure pulls, either; these are some of the more well-known names in the space.

At this point, Polygon AP/TTRPG articles - by multiple different writers - simply feel like madlibs: "(actual play show) is groundbreaking in its (thing that other shows have been doing for 5+ years); I especially liked (visual effect) and (incorrect understanding of TTRPG mechanics)."

The people I allude to in the post you responded to as having egregiously uncharitable and sanctimonious takes on Daggerheart (within, again, hours of its publication) are a frequent Polygon contributor and a Rascal editor and they further my mistrust of those publications: There is this constant insistence that everything they like be "groundbreaking" and "innovating" and they will claim this even when it's demonstrably not the case, as the above examples note. As Mulligan says in your article "it’s important to keep new artists with new experiences and backgrounds flowing in," and yet by focusing intensely on high production values (difficult for smaller indie upstarts to have) and by incorrectly claiming that a well-established media company within the space like D20 invented a number of things it flat out did not, this journalism is actively, if unintentionally, working against that goal. As I put it elsewhere, Polygon's bizarre pedestaling of Dimension 20 and simultaneous putdowns of Critical Role (which turn into wild contortions when D20 mainstays like Mulligan or Aabria Iyengar collaborate with CR; for that matter others besides me have observed that Polygon acts like Spenser Starke is two different people, the genius who created Alice is Missing and the knuckle-dragging moron who put out Candela Obscura and Daggerheart) coupled with the obsession with production values over story has the whiff of claiming they're the champion of the little guy for sticking it to the 700 lb gorilla in the space and then focusing on 500 lb gorillas while making it impossible for smaller monkeys to compete because most brand new shows without the name recognition of someone like Mulligan involved can't exactly hire Rick Perry to do their models or Taylor Moore to do sound design.

I suppose a good way to put this, since I've run into this in many spaces, not just AP/TTRPG or even journalism, is that bias on its own in a subjective medium isn't inherently bad; but if something is so nakedly biased against something I love, I will, naturally, turn to it with a far more critical eye, and if its arguments are not ironclad I'm going to start noticing every structural issue in every argument and every tiny mistake. Sure, as a fan of Critical Role, and as someone who feels that Kollok was nigh-unwatchable and that Burrow's End was promising in parts but deeply flawed, I disagreed with Polygon's nonstop mud-slinging towards the former and glowing, verging on fawning reviews of the latter two. But that's not entirely damning on its own; I do get that not everyone will like Critical Role and that some people will love Kollok or Burrow's End for valid reasons. What's damning is the journalism itself is riddled with factual errors and the analysis is so weak that to call the arguments a flimsy house of cards would be generous. The opposite is also true; if Polygon's lead editor were out here repeatedly misspelling the name of one of the main characters in Worlds Beyond Number (note: this has since been corrected) but the articles had compelling arguments, even ones I disagreed with, I'd be far more forgiving, but as is? It's offering me absolutely nothing: it's poorly researched, it's poorly structured, it's poorly written, it's poorly copy-edited, and it shits on things I like seemingly just for clicks. I'm done giving clicks.

I am deeply sympathetic to the pressures facing digital journalism and media and the arts in general; as someone who is fortunate enough not to personally face those pressures and has the income to be a patron, I would love to help in my small way (and I do, at least, financially support a number of the AP shows I love). But the quality of some of this journalism is truly so bad that I can't bring myself to support the institutions putting it out; it's "dead dove do not eat" until such time as someone whose analysis and opinions I do trust cites them (or, perhaps, until there is a sea change of lead editorship). I know that this won't help the crunch, and may make it worse, but I just can't because the quality is so poor. I don't have a good solution to how to write about something that takes a lot of time to watch and process and about which the articles pay very little in return, but the current strategy of bouncing between uninformed provocateur and utter sycophant depending on the show and creators; of drooling over such surface features as shiny production and falsely claiming everything is "groundbreaking" while getting the most basic facts wrong has driven me away.

#rowzeoli #i'm leaving this rebloggable but other people...try to be respectful i will turn off reblogs if need be.#long post

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pigeonwit · 7 months

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hihi hope you're doing well and had a good time at musical con!!

For the ask game:

💭🌝 &🌈 for rbr or baby that's the new vavoom

hello anon!! i am WONDERFUL if kind of drained and headachy but i had a fantastic time, thank you so much for asking! alright lets get to it-

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

alice, maggie and florence from 'run boy run' are my absolute beloveds and i need everyone to know that alice and mags are absolutely going to have that kind of girl-friendship where they like each other just a liiiiiiiittle too much. i didn't intend for that to happen but when i wrote that scene of alice encouraging maggie to talk to davey i was like 'oh. oh yeah. historians would for sure call these girls Best Friends'. they don't know it yet but they will.

🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?

this one is very specific but when i was planning out 'the crime of being small' and was assigning wings to everyone i realized barney peanuts would absolutely be based on show-bred roller pigeons whose wings have been selectively bred to 'roll' in midair instead of properly fly, hence why he needed a career in the circus doing tricks instead, and i DESPERATELY want to write a tombarn fic for that premise. it's a little difficult right now since there's such little information about barney, and because i know the newsies purists will get angry with me for blending livesies and uksies characters, but,,, i really want to do it.

🌈 What inspired you to write [insert fic here]?

so 'run boy run' has been in the works since like,,, 2019? and i can't quite remember what sparked the thought. i think i just had a very soft spot for davey being intelligent, but very oblivious, and therefore very unaware of when people like him - and considering he is gayer than the day is long, the thought of davey running in panic away from girls trying to flirt with him was just so funny to me that it spawned the fic. it was going to be a lot more comedic, but since my little fandom break my writing style's changed a lot and it's a lot more character study-ish now.

'new vavoom' was ENTIRELY inspired by me watching 'grease: rise of the pink ladies', listening to marisa davila perform 'i want more' and going 'oh that's a davey song'. the lines 'wish i could try to suppress // convince myself that i want less than i deserve' and 'i never have a defense // 'cause i always want more than less than i deserve' just felt SO daveyish to me. after that it just follows the jane-olivia storylines in the plot but blended together and adjusted to fit davey a little more. it's derivative, obviously, but that's par for the course in fanfiction and i had fun doing it, so if you enjoyed 'new vavoom' i encourage you to watch RotPL (if you can find it, since paramount has completely scrubbed it from their platform :)))) it's fine we're all fine here)

#newsies #fic thoughts #ask #anon #run boy run #news is the word #tcobs

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weekend-whip · 1 year

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What’s everyone’s favorite media/song/whatever they consume or like to do?

HmmmmmmmMMMMMM—

(not me being able to do complex character analysis chronicling how a character develops over time yet being completely stumped when it comes to what stuff they like—)

We're breaking it down by strictly media then cuz tryna give everyone a favorite song would kill me and I have never been good with specifics:

Kai: Likes movies, video games, and occasionally music. Doesn't really have any particular favorites due to only getting into this kind of stuff relatively recently (eventually and especially including social media), but he definitely likes rock music, and Fist to Face 2 is "his game". Also has been known to indulge in Teen Idol magazine.

Jay: Likes video games, movies, and comics, if he's not in the middle of inventing. He'll endure a sappy romcom if it's something Nya's into, but he's actually a superhero movie junkie. Loves anything action-y. Faves for both comics and movies is Starfarer, and fave video game is Lava Zombies.

Zane: Likes books and movies, both because it opens up ways for him to broaden his horizons on peoples' experiences. He finds both romance and horror hilarious (and comedies confusing), but his real adoration is reserved for things that have taught him something new (which...also includes cookbooks...what? he likes learning new recipes!)

Cole: Likes music and video games. Doesn't quite have attention span for books/movies, but will go to a movie if the premise interests him. Obviously has at least a bit of a taste for classical stuff when it comes to music/dancing, but also enjoys songs he can dance to or songs Jesse is willing to sing. Favorite video game is Sitar Legend!

Nya: Likes books, music, and the occasional movie. She's an avid attempter / enjoyer of just about everything, so like Kai she doesn't exactly have any favorites (but for different reasons). But, she does have a special fondness for anything she's made a good memory with (like amusement parks, for example). ...her movie tastes may be slightly skewed in favor of Jay and Olivia, however.

Lloyd: Likes essentially anything that can occupy his attention, but especially comics, cartoons, and video games. Obviously likes Starfarer (and where Jay likes the movies, Lloyd prefers the comics), but when it comes to video games he likes the fighting ones. Mindless violence is always fun, but games where you gotta 'be a hero, save the world!' all the time...nah, pass. He gets enough of that.

Jesse: Likes music, movies, and the occasional video game. You already know he's a huge theater/musical nerd, so that's just like music + movies mashed up into one right there. And no, I can't pick a favorite for him because *I'm* not a theater buff and all musicals I know are generic mainstream ones snksnksnk (...Chapter 20 is literally a Hamilton reference I'm—) Likes any video game his sister can't best him at (which is...not a lot haha)

Antonia: Likes...well, everything. Reading and writing especially and obviously, but with trying to always be on top of what's mainstream (as practice for a future journalist career) she tends to try and consume whatever's popular while it's popular (hence her brief obsession with Samurai X). Avidly listens to the Top Pop 40, but actually prefers alternative and indie artists. Same with movies and books—she keeps up with the latest release, but some of her favorites are the most underground things you've never heard of. And in the case of video games...she's a fighting game enthusiast. Living the dream.

Harumi: Really likes books. Doesn't watch a lot of tv/movies as it is (though she does like watching horror/thrillers when she can) nor does she have a phone (her parents have plans to surprise her for her next birthday in April, though), so a good chunk of her personal entertainment is via reading. Primarily enjoys fantasy and mystery novels!

Olivia: Does not get a whole lot of time for herself (ironically still only goes to school just to not have to think/work so hard) but when she does miraculously have free times, she likes movies. Primarily ones were there's an animal going on a rampage, or zombie/alien invasion movies. Gets freaked out by scary movies but watches them anyway because they're entertaining. Likes rock, but of the screaming, metallic variety. And she likes DND and other related campaigns 👀

Miranda: Likes video games and...computers, essentially. Most of time she's absorbed in her own projects (especially when she has little else to do), but when she needs a brain break, video games are the go-to. And she likes all of them–puzzles, RPGS, adventures, Tactical, FPS, monster-collecting, collect-a-thons, racing, fighting, mystery, strategy...anything except sports games. She also listens to a lot of electronic and dubstep music (which Jesse cannot understand how that happened, but okay. At least they both can agree on the legend that is Owl City)

#Nyeh *throws this into the ether*#the ninja legacy whip #legacyverse #k1ng boo #asks from nice people #ninjago #being well-versed in common media consumption #my one weakness

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doom-nerdo-666 · 1 year

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Hypotheticals if Doom was always a "story focused" series or had a greater universe

(From D2's manual and also because i like adding images just for filler's sake)

These are just a bunch of random hypotheticls about an alternate timeline where story mattered a bit more in Doom.

A lot of them might be stretches or even wrong to some degree, but i tend to overthink Doom and come to contradictive conclusions anyway.

Maybe some of Tom Hall's ideas could be accepted or even lead to something more.

We could have had the Marathon thing of there being texts you had to read.

We probably wouldn't have plagiarism like the Caco's design or most music.

Levels could be less abstract.

"Doomguy" would have an official name and not rely on a fanmade nickname.

Final Doom and RPG wouldn't exist for not being canon or even being mechanically different (RPG specifically, since FD is just D2 megawads).

D64 may not exist because of its different art style and being made by a different dev (So a classic Doom 3 could have been to D2 what D2 is to D1).

Doom in general could have retained the classic art style and even stuff like Eternal's "classic" looks would be closer and more faithfull.

If there were more Doom games, maybe even Quake and Heretic would be Doom games and lose what made them stand out as new IP's.

D3 wouldn't exist because of its differences from the old games or at least be closer to them, whether they'd please fans or disappoint them.

Ideas from 2016/Eternal such as the Sentinels and Urdak would be seen as being too deviating from the traditional Doom premise.

The Doomslayer may not exist because of his influence from the fanbase and outside factors.

Doom wouldn't have a huge modding scene, either because the series' setting could have been "expanded enough" that fan creativity wouldn't be that huge or in case id gets restrictive over the setting that they don't even care about fanmade levels or designs inspired by the setting.

We wouldn't have movies and books that changed the setting heavily.

The "Blazkowicz family/idverse" stuff would be taken seriously beyond easter eggs and small crossovers or stuff in obscure content.

Some of these are exaggerations, but it can also say something about how people perceive the setting of Doom besides mentiong a quote by John Carmack (One that he later disagreed a bit on and got attention mostly because of DidYouKnowGaming).

Because i like to think there's two ways to look at the world of Doom:

The "soft" way is seeing it as a concept that can be done in a lot of ways, justifying later games looking/playing/feeling differently, "non canon" stuff and even the creativity in the fanbase; Worst case scenario is some ideas people don't like such as a movie/novels changing the demons to aliens.

The "hard" way is taking the little existing story (Ingame texts, manuals etc) and the abstract levels/textures/sprites/assets too seriously, whether it means looking at how id made them, expanding the setting through fanmade assets/mods or even getting picky over what couldn't work, hence some restrictions; You still have to realize that some lore contradicts itself, levels will always be obscure and Doomguy's armor has inconsistencies etc.

Since Doom's main "focus" of its existence is the innovation and gameplay, that might've resulted on the setting and its presentation being "unfinished", so different interpretations in both the series and fanbase seem like a given.

But i also see benefits from that and how it affects its staying power: Doom is not just a painting in a museum, it's also a brush and canvas.

It also comes to mind when i see people disagree with Eternal's story and even if id themselves are having second thoughts.

The solution is just to see the modern Doom lore as just an experimental thing and not "the definitive" lore; Like i'd still allow a Doom 6 based off this version of the setting but also have it coexist alongside a Doom game doing its own thing.

There are a lot of franchises that are affected negatively by bad stories or decisions because their stories always had a big role, so i think Doom can be an exception because of how messy and unimportant the story always was.

Just have some game do an idea differently and try to be cool, i guess.

#doom #id software #lore #opinions #doom eternal #doom 2016 #doomguy #uac #classic doom

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weiwithwords · 1 year

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Nihilist Philosophy in Concorditor Humilia

There is no sound in the world uglier than music.

I would sooner submit to the squealing of a starving infant, the shriek of stone on glass, the squelching of a dying warrior's intestines, than submit my ear to song. No auditory experience is as grotesque, passion-killing, or debased. Yet these plain facts elude us, for our lives are drenched in song, from the moment we are born (always crying) to the moment we die (surrounded by others who are crying, if we are lucky). We are immersed in the abomination so we cannot see it, wanderers blinded by a killing-fog.

The most common ontology of music frames it as a "contract". This is pure delusion. A contract is, by definition, an agreement. There is mutual understanding in a contract, an intent to be bound by terms. Even the most exploitative, labyrinthine contracts nonetheless exist in some enforceable space, are intelligible in theory.

Music bears no such features. Music is more like begging. The first measure of a song is the first measure of an anguished, raving entreaty, a desperate plea for the universe to loosen its grip on our neck, just a little. So when the universe hears that plea and relaxes its grip by the meagerest ounce -- when it doles out that simulacrum of pity -- you understand why I am less than grateful.

But the choir's plight is worse than helpless supplication. For the beggar, no matter how destitute, is at least in relationship with another human being when they beg, and every human, no matter how vile, is capable of goodness. The universe is not so capable. The universe feels no emotion, experiences no beauty, harbors no mercy. The nature of the universe is evil, incapable of consideration or intent, much less mutual understanding. Hence why every chord of every composition, from the incessant Firestarting Canon to the vomit-inducing Grappler's Canticle, rings out with ugly desperation. Let us not forget the act of song -- which some have the gall to call "art" -- originated as a means to violence.

Then there is the act itself. No act is more soul-crushing and less creative than making music. Music is, at its heart, repetition: harmony borne from the same rote spacing, melodies reaped from the same abysmal harvest of frequencies, that pitifully puny subset again and again and again -- to say nothing of music's underlying structure. Measure and time signature are jail cell and prison guard with the (aptly-named) key locked inside, denying all escape.

Endless, monotonous repetition is music's bones. Composition tries to rearrange these bones into something lifelike, but it's as hopeless as trying to breathe life into a skeleton. And what do we get after shuffling these identical pieces around for the millionth time? What awaits us when our throats are raw, lungs gasping? What is our reward for participating in this looping, waking nightmare? We get to wake and do it all again on the morrow.

I say, no thank you. I reject song, reject music. If choir is necessary for our survival, then I proudly choose annihilation. At least down that path, I'll find peace for my aesthetic faculties, my body, and my dignity.

--------

This is philosophy written from the point of view of a nihilist in the world of Concorditor Humilia, a game of Microscope I played with a couple friends. The premise of the Microscope game was pretty fun: we'd hit the RANDOM button on TvTropes a bunch of times, and build the resulting chaos into a serious fantasy world.

We got Headlock of Dominance, Finger Poke of Doom, Killer Game Master, and Ominous Latin Chanting, so we envisioned a world where choirs empowered martial artists to duel each other. Two competing traditions, the Grapplers and Strikers (or Headlockers and Finger Pokers), had a bitter rivalry. The universe was an inhospitable, brutal place to live (a Killer Game Master), and could only be persuaded to relax its viciousness by song (Ominous Latin Chanting). Consequently, survival necessitated membership in a choir. I wondered how it might feel to hate that.

#microscope #nihilism #philosophy #music #ttrpg

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5amfever · 1 year

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DACHRA (2018)

Filled with a deliberately off-kilter style of framing and oppressive lighting and atmosphere inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER, you'd be surprised at how familiar and oddly comfortable writer/director/producer Abdelhamid Bouchnak's 2018 film DACHRA can be, despite being pretty much the first of its kind to come out of Tunisia. While the subject matter is anything but cozy, DACHRA takes structural notes and story beats from horror history to weave a darkly intriguing tale of witchcraft and other more culturally contentious topics. Even if you can see some of its turns coming way out in the distance, you still ultimately haven't seen anything exactly like it.

Yasmine is a student of journalism tasked with taking on a unique documentary subject for class—anything is fair game outside of the Tunisian rebellion, which, as the professor reminds everyone, is well-trod ground—and with the help of the two bumbling, bickering bros with which she's partnered, she lands on the case of a deeply disturbed woman named Mongia. As the old tale goes, Mongia was found at the edge of the road with her throat slit 20 years ago, miraculously still breathing, and has been in the care of a local asylum ever since. She's considered among the most dangerous patients, such that the director of the facility won't even acknowledge her existence. With some clumsy negotiation, the trio is eventually able to take their equipment deeper into the asylum to interview Mongia. Speaking of well-trod ground, you'll recognize this as the quintessential horror film depiction of mental care; screams echoing off the walls and bug-eyed patients practically licking their lips at presence of their new visitors.

Shortly after they enter her cell—where Mongia sits in the shadows, cutting an imposingly enigmatic yet still clearly human figure—the violent whisperings of Mongia's behavior are confirmed. She may not get her teeth on Yasmine or her friends, but soon after they leave we learn why she's notorious for taking a bite out of her caretakers. Is she really a "witch" or merely a representation of the oppressed, or both?

Thankfully, DACHRA isn't that interested in overtly answering many of the questions it supposes. The setting's promised threat is fulfilled when Yasmine, Walid and Bilel end up stuck in a remote village (hence the title of the film, which translates to a remote village or hamlet). The horrors, while never terribly over the top or shocking, ramp up from there. As we barrel toward the climax there's also a major revelation, but again, DACHRA doesn't hammer it home. We don't need a lore dump in the third act, we just need to keep chugging along through this grim scenario and see it through to its inevitable conclusion.

DACHRA ticks a lot of the horror trope boxes over the course of its 114-minute journey, from bickering and obnoxious leads to stupid decisions and provoking music cues. It still manages to eke out some standout imagery in the process, especially during one of Yasmine's key late-story visions, where shrouded women stand silhouetted and spaced apart right outside of the house they're using in the village. The ending is suitably haunting, as well, and the fact that it was apparently made for somewhere in the range of US$80,000 is undeniably impressive. It might seem dismissive to call this the best Tunisian horror film ever made given the playing field, but unlike the purportedly true stories on which its premise is based, there's no room to argue against its veracity.

#dachra #tunisia #horror movies #witchcraft #films #abdelhamid bouchnak #dekanalog

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chibimyumi · 3 years

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I think you haven't talked about it till now. So may I ask that what are your thoughts about the 1st musical of kuroshitsuji? (That butler, friendship)

Dear Anon, my short answer is:

( ´ρ｀)。o ○ Zzzzzzzzzz......ꉂꉂ(థꈊథ)੭ु !!!

Nah sorry XD You are very right Anon, I have sorta mentioned Kuromyu 1 before, but never really talked about it. That is because there's just... very little actual content to talk about. But I will try!

My feelings about Kuromyu 1 as phenomenon

Despite my complete lack of ability to enjoy the content itself, I.......am grateful for Kuromyu 1. It was the starting point of a very game-changing franchise (Kuromyu in general, yes, even Kuromyu2 at the time), for me personally, as well as the JP theatre world.

For me personally it was also a bit melancholic to see Matsushita Yuya again from 2009, from before he got so impossibly cocky. (Here I wrote a post about my opinion about him through the years). I was reminded once again how Matsushita also started as an innocent kid who was just crushed by expectations, and nevertheless worked so hard.

My latest watch

The last time I watched 'That Butler, Friendship' was in 2019. At the time my sister and I were at our grandmother's place for a week. We were in the middle of nowhere, accompanied only by extreme heat, cicadas and rice fields..... and I said to my sis: "Hey, you were too young when Kuromyu 1 came out, this year happens to be its 10th anniversary, shall we watch that?"

Our room was the only place that was humane to stay in because it had airco (which our dear grandmother got installed especially for us because we're like butter (TTATT) I LOVE HER!!!), and both my sis and I thought: "why not!" And so......we started watching.

The beginning of the musical was... fine. It did the obvious: setting everything up, introducing three idiot servants, the bratty Young Master, and the infallible perfect demon butler. There was just very little coherence; everything felt like patches of ingredients, rather than a completed meal. But that was... fine.

Then come the introduction of the main plot... and we were introduced to these Japanese brothers. They were very hard to watch... I had the feeling they were supposed to be late teens? But it was just so badly acted and CLEARLY 30+ year olds acting like 5 year olds. Okay, on average 30+5/2 = 17.5, that checks out I guess. Late teens!

Then entered this blatant racist stereotype, and I just kinda lost it. Yes, Lau as a character DOES play with the Chinese stereotype to lower other people's guards. However, in this musical Lau does not have character depth to back that up, and the execution makes it clear that everyone on the creator's side fell for this ploy. Okay... okay, it's 12 years old, moving on.

Except that there was just nothing to move on towards! (Ò~Ó) The rest of the story just gave our brains NOTHING to work with. My sister and I were so understimulated we just couldn't watch it without yawning every other minute.

So we just skipped through some scenes (which all felt like scrambled moments to showcase Sebastian's amazingness juxtaposed against by everyone else's stupidity). Then we ran into ...this thing... which we dubbed "Duocorn".

From that point on my sis and I just shifted in an out of bursts of yawning or ridicule. Even when surrounded by only cicadas and barren rice fields as alternatives, we still were so bored with the musical we couldn't finish watching it... Hence my initial short answer being:

( ´ρ｀)。o ○ Zzzzzzzzzz......ꉂꉂ(థꈊథ)੭ु !!!

The understimulation is the main reason I said at the beginning: "there's just... very little actual content to talk about." So much and yet so little was happening in the musical; it kinda felt like the stage-execution of somebody's work in brainstorming status.

Otherwise everything in 2009 was just so crudely done (because of lack of budget and experience), it almost felt unfair to even critically look at anything. Unlike with Kuromyu 2's blatant bigotry (which doesn't need budget to avoid), with the exception of the racist caricature being Lau, there was just nothing there that was even worthy of unpacking or praising. Unpacking Kuromyu 1 would feel like commenting on a toddler's work using adult standards.

Final thoughts

The premise of the musical was weak, the execution was rough at best, and everyone's acting and singing were also "barely-tolerable" at best. But still it is a very meaningful start for me, because - as mentioned above - Kuromyu 1 kick started something that would later become a phenomenal milestone in Japanese 2.5D culture.

Sorry I couldn't say anything more meaningful than this, but truth be told; I don't think there is anything meaningful in the musical that can be said about meaningfully. Nevertheless, I hope you at least sortaaa enjoyed reading about my revisiting experience?

Cheers!

#kuromyu #Kuromyu 1 #That Butler - Friendship #Matsushita Yuya #Duocorn #wtf was that even?????#Still grateful for what this kickstarting project made available for us!

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nyadversary · 2 years

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1 and 3 for writing ask memes!

1. give short descriptions of all your current WIPs.

the main original project i've been "working" on (i put that in quotes because this is still very much in the brainstorming stage — there is very little actually on the page yet, all i've got is notes) has gone through a variety of iterations in terms of general plot arc, but the basic premise right now (though this may change) is that it's about a writers' retreat/workshop type of program that the main characters attended as teenagers. i did a couple summer writing workshops myself as a high schooler hence the idea. the workshop happened a decade ago at the time the story starts, so the former participants are all in their mid-late 20s. they end up having an unofficial "reunion" of sorts. i'm being vague because i'm still figuring out the specifics and also the idea is that i'd reveal this gradually during the course of the story, but Something Happened during the first workshop and everyone who attended has been dealing in their own way with the aftermath of that. i'll leave it at that because this is already not a short description.

also i have a couple fanfics i've been working on occasionally; one of them i have about 11k words written (most of that is from when i started the fic back in 2014 lmao, but the last couple thousand are recent) and the other is also still in the brainstorming stage. the one i have 11k words of is a danganronpa fic that i actually plotted out a large amount of back in 2014; the basic idea is a protagonist/mastermind swap (though i guess it's actually a lot more complicated than that) and it's essentially an alternate timeline of the first game. the other one is also danganronpa, specifically sdr2, and it's sort of a similar alternate timeline idea. i just wanna write some fucking murder mystery bullshit i guess (also it's fun to play around with other people's characters)

3. what makes you love writing?

i'm not even sure that "i love writing" is how i'd put it, though that's not wrong either. the way i tend to think about it is more like... writing is something i feel the need to do, more along the lines of like a compulsive behavior. i don't feel as though i really have any choice in the matter. ever since i was a little kid i've devoted large amounts of my time to coming up with story ideas and (when i manage to) writing them down. from what i know this is fairly common with writers, i think it's also similar for those who write music or draw/paint or other forms of creative expression. it's something you just feel compelled to do. i do get an immense amount of satisfaction out of actually finishing something or getting substantial work done on a project, so i guess in a way i'm just always chasing that, but even during periods where i haven't gotten much writing done at all i'm thinking about it near-constantly.

i was also always a huge reader growing up, and i go fucking nuts about analyzing the fiction i enjoy, which probably stems directly from that. i would always reread books as a kid (often many, many times over) to catch the stuff i missed the first time, and i think that gave me a lot of appreciation for writing as a craft and has motivated me to hone my own skills in that department. good fiction (also bad fiction sometimes, especially if it still has some good elements that shine through) can have a profound impact on people — it certainly has on me — and that's what makes me feel as though this compulsion i have is worthwhile. i'm not sure that i'd ever be Successful Author material, that's all kind of a crapshoot anyway, but it is my hope that i'd be able to write something that means something to somebody, even if the audience winds up being small.

so i guess the tl;dr there is that i love writing as an art form because it's had a huge impact on me personally throughout my life. writing as an activity, though, i tend to think of more as like "me doing this is just how it is on this bitch of an earth."

#silverstreams #inbox #thanks for sending these!! sorry i rambled!! etc. i have had so much caffeine

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revengerevisited · 3 years

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So I’ve been kinda dancing around my original story idea for a little while, and I got this idea in my head of ‘what if I release chapter 1 and then get feedback without telling anyone what the story is about first so it’s more of a surprise?’ But honestly? I’m realizing since I already released a preview-of-a-preview for chapter 1, and it might be a little while until I finish chapter 1, plus I honestly kinda feel like I’d rather work on sketches of my character designs than write at the moment, I might as well go ahead and tell you guys. X’3

So! I watched a couple anime recently both centered around the premise of... monster girls! These being Monster Musume and Monster Girl Doctor, but then I noticed there’s also Interviews with Monster Girls, A Centaur’s Life, and the infamous Interspecies Reviewers, and I asked myself... Monster girls are pretty popular right now, yeah? But where’s all the monster boys?! And that’s how I got the idea! I re-watched some of my favorite anime based on Otome Games, Kamigami no Asobi and Uta no Prince Sama for inspiration as well, and a few ones I hadn’t seen before like Dance with Devils and Magic-kyun Renaissance for inspiration as well.

So now I’ve got my premise that I shared earlier: This is the story of Millie, a young woman down on her luck who happens to live in a world where monsters aren’t just real, but commonplace. She started working as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school whose students are a group of very attractive monster boys. The twist is that these aren’t just any monster boys; they belong to various rare and exotic species with deadly reputations...

Note that character and place names are technically place-holders for now and may change if I come up with better ones. Now, I don’t wanna spoil anything story-wise, but I think I can introduce my setting and some of the characters that you’re gonna meet. The story is set in a modern setting, though it’s vague if it’s actually Earth or just some generic world similar to it, as I try to avoid referencing real-world places or events. This is a world where humans and monsters live together after a Great Interspecies War happened in the past, but tensions have mostly relaxed by the time the story takes place. The war could be thought of as the equivalent of our own World War One, one in which there was a truce decided after many years of stalemate fighting.

The city everything takes place in is tentatively named Dullahan, and was built directly after the war to commemorate peace between human and monster kind. It’s considered an artistic cultural center, and it’s got a lot of interesting entertainment places to go to, arcades, theaters, aquariums, etc, that the characters can have a lot of different shenanigans in. The other main setting is the Beaufort Academy of the Arts, which was actually a mansion that was converted into a small private school. This is where all the characters live, and our main character Millie works as a maid there.

Before I go into the characters, I should start with the various monster species. There are 12 species, divided into 2 groups: common monsters and exotic monsters. The common monsters are centaurs, harpies, lamias (snake people), kobolds (dog people), ogres, and merrows (mermaids). These species are all pretty standard, and will be mostly background characters and npcs. The main characters, and love interests for Millie, will be of the exotic variety: arachnes (spider people), sirens (deep-sea mermaids), mandrakes (plant people), dragons, manticores (with a liontaur body-type), and scyllas (octopus people).

So what differentiates a common monster from an exotic one? Well, while the Interspecies War was between humans and monsters in general, some monsters were already at least partially integrated into human society, and the rest followed soon after the war ended. These monsters were almost as common as humans, and either herbivorous or omnivorous, with the exception of the carnivorous lamias who prefer to eat eggs over anything else. On the other hand, the so-called ‘exotic’ species were not only much more rare, but they had a very different food preference... one which earned them the now derogatory nickname... man-eaters.

Naturally, most ‘man-eaters’ weren’t exactly welcomed into human --nor common monster-- society with open arms, not that most of them wanted to. For the most part, species as powerful and dangerous as them didn’t want to play nice with those they had once --and in some cases still do-- regard as prey, and so hid away into the furthest reaches of the world. Which of course makes them perfect material for all our leading men and Millie’s various love-interests!! Oh yes, while all of these monster boys are perfectly civilized --well, for the most part-- they still belong to species that many both human and monster alike continue to fear to this day. While they aren’t exactly fish out of water (well, except for the siren) there’s still plenty of awkward misunderstandings and interesting scenarios that can be played out.

So! Let’s have a quick run-down of the characters, keep in mind that none of these names are final and could change later on. First there’s Millie, a hardworking young woman who’s had a recent streak of bad luck. Through a misunderstanding she gets hired as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school. She’s very sweet and tries her best to help others, but she’s not as innocent as she appears; she’ll understand your innuendos just fine, even if she doesn’t really say any herself! Next is Richard and Lara Beaufort, a husband and wife who run the school. Richard is rather laid-back, yet he’s also a master of all kinds of art, painting, sculpture, photography, dancing, singing, you name it! Lara is his arachne wife, a rather boisterous woman who owns a high-class fashion company. The secret to her clothing’s success?? Arachne silk, of course! The school was her idea, a way to help better integrate exotic species into society. Will her mission succeed? Only time can tell.

Richard and Lara have a son named Simon, our first love interest and a human-arachne hybrid who takes almost entirely after his mother in the looks-department (hybrids tend to look like one species or the other, rather than a mix of both). He’s a bit withdrawn due to dealing with bullying as a kid; most people --human and monster alike-- are afraid of his spider-like appearance, so he doesn’t get out much-- to the point his parents worry about him being a shut-in for life! He’s also a gamer boy, and has a secret soft side for gothic poetry, although he doesn’t want to join his parents’ art classes. He actually disapproves of his mother’s exotic species integration plan, as from what he’s experienced he feels it’s a waste of time.

Simon’s best friend and Millie’s second love interest is Louis, a mandrake who lives in the woods behind the manor. Louis is extremely shy and more than a bit lonely, even more so than Simon, and he doesn’t speak very often out of fear that the sound of his voice will hurt others around him. Mandrake screams can induce insanity or even kill those that hear them, hence his fear. Being part plant, Louis has mild shape-shifting abilities and is able to transform between child and young adult forms at will, although he’s actually the oldest of the group. He also isn’t a student at the art school, although he has an interest in floristry.

Now for our actual students! Forrest is a manticore, which in this world means he has a body similar to that of a centaur, but with the lower half of a lion instead of a horse, and a scorpion-like tail tipped with a deadly venomous stinger. Despite his species’s name literally meaning ‘man-eater’, Forrest is extremely friendly and cheerful, and is very sporty too. His passion is photography, and he also loves eating food-- any sort of meat dish is fine by him! He’s also a fan of fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, and will often make references comparing them to everyday life; he always plays the knight who saves the princess!

Anthony is a childhood ‘friend’ of Forrest’s, though he’s loathe to admit it. Highly intelligent and highly snobbish, Anthony fancies himself an intellectual-- and he’s not exactly wrong. Being a dragon, he likes to hoard things-- in his case, knowledge. Anthony loves to read, and is most often found in the library. His skill is in drawing and painting, and all his paintings’ invariably morose subject matter worry Millie. Still, this haughty dragon could definitely learn to loosen up a little, and be a little more kind; perhaps his stay at the academy --and his interactions with Millie-- will open his mind to appreciating the feelings of others. He does, at the very least, greatly respect Master Beaufort as a master of the arts.

The other two students are denizens of the sea, and have been friends for a very long time. Emil is a scylla, and like all scyllas he’s a little eccentric, and just can’t seem to keep his tentacles to himself! While Forrest is obsessed with eating, Emil’s true calling is cooking, and he loves making all kinds of dishes, especially anything seafood and/or foreign. Emil also is highly appreciative of women’s fashion, and absolutely adores everything to come from Madam Beaufort’s clothing brand-- so much so that he actually wears them himself! His pretty-boy looks and penchant for wearing women’s clothing actually has Millie mistake him for a girl at first, though he’s very much unafraid to show her his romantic side, or at least what he interprets as romantic...

Keeping Emil’s pervy antics in check is our sixth and final monster boy, Oswald! As a siren, Oswald spent most of his life in the sea, and still has a lot to learn about humanity. He’s a pretty cool guy but gets a bit embarrassed about his species’s troublesome past as the cause of many shipwrecks at sea, and would prefer to not discuss it. His passion is rock music, and his main instrument is the guitar. He also loves to sing, but refrains from doing so due to the hypnotic effect it has on other species. His lack of legs, tentacles, or a snake-like tail means that like other merrows and sirens he requires a wheelchair to move around on land, and often feels frustrated that he can’t show off how adept he is at traversing water. He’s also easy to embarrass and obsessed with not allowing anything to ‘ruin’ his manly image, including allowing Millie (a girl!) to help carry him around.

So there you have it, all my monster boys! I left out a few things, as those would be major spoilers, but those are my ideas for the characters for now! I’ll try to draw and post some sketches of their designs later. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything, but this won’t be the last time I talk about monster boys. Any questions or comments would be very much appreciated! Nsfw questions are allowed (all the boys wear pants for a reason, after all), though I’m currently not sure if this series will be 16+ or 18+, if you catch my meaning. Lemme know how interested you are in this story, or if you’re not interested please let me know that too!

#writing #monster boys #maddie's monster boys #if you ever wanted to see a merman wear pants... here's your chance XD

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lycorogue · 3 years

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Hey girl! For your "Ask about WIPs" game, I'm interested in "I Don't Care" and/or "Seduce with Caution." Hope you're well, stay safe!!

Hey right back! I am doing well. Hope the same for you and yours.

[WIP tag game: my list]

Ya know what, no one else has played yet, so I'll go ahead and indulge. 😀

I Don't Care

This story actually started life as a "tumblr exclusive" one-shot called Stranger in a White Dress (published here May 2018). It was actually one of the first fanfics I posted to Tumblr. It was inspired by the song "Play Me Like a Violin" by Stephen (*warning: the music video has flashing bits, so those with photosensitivity, please be careful if you watch instead of just listen).

I don't know why specifically I latched onto Gabriel Agreste and Emilie Graham de Vanily, but it seemed appropriate somehow. The story was them having a meet cute in college. Emilie would have blown into Gabriel's life for a few minutes, stole a kiss unexpectedly, and then blew back out of his life just as abruptly.

The story stayed like that for quite some time. Then, August 2019, I heard the acoustic version of Ed Sheeran's song "I Don't Care". At first blush, the song sounded like something my husband would sing, but the more I listened the more I realized it could be Gabriel singing about/to Emilie. This song was kind of the theme of the Agrestes' relationship, in my opinion. Hence stealing the song title for the story's title. I took the first verse about being at a party, and continued my story. Gabriel was dragged to a party by his flatmate, and Emilie coincidentally was there. The two reconnected, and Gabriel turned a one-time chance encounter at a club into a potential relationship.

I'm not entirely sure where else to go with this story, aside from knowing I want it to be the love story between these two. Possibly ending with Adrien's birth. Possibly continuing until Emilie's "disappearance." Not sure which yet. However, this whole story is a bit of a slow process while I wait for inspiration to strike again, mostly by way of new music. I have been a touch obsessed for the past year with the songs "2AM" by MK (feat Carla Monroe) and "Say You Won't Let Go" by James Arthur as a back and forth between Emilie and Gabriel respectively (the fact that "2AM" has a female vocalist and "Say You Won't Let Go" has a male vocalist just makes it all the better). The only snafu there is that this would be a chapter about them drinking too much while out, and/or Emilie drunk calling Gabriel and asking for him to spend the night with her. As spontaneous as I like making Emilie, it seems a bit abrupt considering where their relationship stands at the end of the 2nd chapter. So I want to come up with a buffer one showing their first official date as my 3rd chapter. I'm just not sure what said date should look like yet. Thus this WIP sits in waiting.

If you want to read the first two chapters, you can find them over on AO3, FFN, or DA.

Seduce with Caution

This one is actually my current WIP. It's also my first foray into Miraculous Ladybug smut (aged-up, of course).

For some reason, August brings out the smut in me (is it the warm weather?), and I've written other smutty fics during that month in the past. Most have never seen the light of day. I've written a couple using the X-Men OCs created for my husband's play-by-post role-play game. I've written one using my D&D character and one of her partymates. The only smut I've officially published though was my interpretation of a handwaved sex scene in the book Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore (mostly because the series was fairly unknown and that book had been published 7 years prior, so I figured not many would even find my smut).

I have never tried ML smut before though, despite enjoying a lot of the ones I've found. I just couldn't get past the mental image of the Love Square as 14-year-olds.

Last year, however, while reading Dressed to Confess by @zenmisery , she had a bit where Chat Noir's costume acted as a bit of a magical chastity belt. For some reason, that gave me this fantastic concept for a MariChat sex scene. I started working on it, but I realized that it seemed too abrupt of an interaction between these two characters without also having the story be post-reveal and the two of them being in a relationship. The concept, though, would have been how MariChat could spend a night together without Marinette finding out who Chat Noir is under the mask first. The whole premise crumbles if they're already in a relationship and/or it's post-reveal.

I just couldn't get the balance right, and so I abandoned the story. Right around December, I tried again by backtracking a touch to include the seduction and foreplay leading into the sex scene. That too seemed a bit left-field. It felt like glorious crack, and I was tempted to just run with it because crack is a fantastic story "genre" but I... just can't find it within myself to do so. So the story was abandoned again.

This past August I revisited the story once more. After 3 or 4 false starts, I tried backing up even further with my story's starting point. Now this story has become a slow-burn, sexual tension, blushfest. There's implied masturbation, and later chapters will include make-out sessions with heavy petting, but the actual true-blue smut won't show up until the final chapter or so. So my "Porn without Plot" has become "so much pining with a sprinkle of smut thrown in for flavor". 😅

I still don't have a concrete story figured out, but the working summary is: "While 19yo Chat Noir tries to demonstrate to Marinette his new 'moves' to try to win Ladybug over, he accidentally seduces Marinette. Now she has to come to terms with the knowledge that she finds him sexy and highly desirable, all while still holding a flame for Adrien. Meanwhile, Adrien has to wrestle with the knowledge that he found Marinette getting hot and bothered over him a major turn-on. Chaos ensues."

Considering it kept me over a year to write just the first chapter (but only 3 days to write the second one), I want this story complete before unleashing it onto the world. I also need to build up the confidence to let the rest of the fandom read my first ever MariChat smut soooooooooooooooooo..........

ANYWAY, yup. That's what's up with I Don't Care and Seduce with Caution.

A romance story between young Gabriel and Emilie where I humanize Gabriel....

And a slow-burn MariChat smut story that will only really include anything explicit in the last chapter or so.

Thanks so much for the ask! This was fun. Feel free to ask me more!

I've also talked about my original WIP Glitches here, here, and here, as well as talk about my other Gabriel-humanizing project When Love Matters here.

#writing #LycoRogue writing #rikareena ask #LycoRogue answers #WIP tag game #talking about my WIPs #Miraculous Ladybug #ML #ML fanfics #fanfics #I Don't Care #Seduce with Caution #please ask me things #long post

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allsassnoclass · 2 years

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7, 24, 42, 56, & 98 for the spotify fix ask game? -megs 💙

@igarbagecannoteven alrighty megs 5 fics got long so i'm answering under the cut but we've got some great songs here

7. "Happy Accidents" by Saint Motel

Well! right off the bat you've hit a song that i actually fully FULLY intend to turn into a songfic at some point. i feel very passionately about this idea. this song is very much an ot4 song to me considering how many little insignificant things had to add up to get these four boys together and how it feels like fate has been pushing them together since the beginning! the premise of this fic is basically "a few times fate almost got it right and one time it did" showing alternate universes where only two of the boys meet or something happens so the band never occurs and basically a whole bunch of au ficlets where they're mostly happy because they don't know what they're missing, and then a little snippet from this universe at the end where all four of them are happily together

24. "Feel Good" by Matt Maeson

oooo okay first of all great song. second of all big shout out to gregory because he's the reason i listen to matt maeson. third of all matt maeson gives me mashton vibes, although this song is not a ship song. so a fic based on this would be..... canon compliant, platonic mashton (or lashton, why not), emotional hurt/comfort having to do with the pressures of the music industry and all of the struggle that they went through. actually based on some of the things they revealed in the podcast like ashton wanting to run away and such this song fits better than i anticipated. the fic itself would probably mostly be a discussion between the two of them in like 2017 trying to figure out how to keep going after all of the beatings the industry has given them and leaning on each other because they're still trying to believe in the dream of the band even if part of them wants to run back to australia

42. "Outer Space/Carry On" by 5sos

HEY I LOVE THIS SONG. for this one though i'm going to go off of title rather than the song itself. this is a sci-fi au where they're all astronauts on a huge ship trying to find another inhabitable planet besides earth, but the journey has been long, and already a few babies have been born on the ship, creating the next generation of travelers, and none of them know if they'll actually be able to find a suitable planet within their lifetime, so they have to figure out how to live a meaningful life in the vacuum of space when the end goal that has been keeping them hopeful might be out of reach. it would deal a lot with the concept that some astronauts have talked about where like. they spend a lot of time in the greenhouse because out in space you begin craving the natural world again because you're cut off from it. it'd have a lot to do with switching mindsets from the ship being bearable only because it's a transition, to figuring out ways to make the ship a kind and gentle home for them because they have to or they're going to fall into despair. it also would talk a lot about the futility of their efforts and the idea that they have to keep going for everyone who comes after them, even if they themselves will not reap the rewards of this trip. hence: Outer Space/Carry On

56. "Matter of Time (Interlude)" by Ashton Irwin

oooo only song from either of the solo albums to make it on the top 100 this year. this fic is hopeful emotional hurt/comfort, a breath of fresh air after being inside for too long, sunshine on your face after a long rain. it's gotta be ashton-centric since it's his song. i don't have anything more for you though because the fic itself would be about The Vibes

98. "no body, no crime" by Taylor Swift ft. HAIM

okay, i could never write a true songfic for this song because it would be too unhappy for me personally (and thankfully one already exists, written by @squishmichael), BUT based on title? oh baby this is an assassin fic. let's see. let's ponder. muke and cashton perhaps? michael and calum work together, luke and ashton work together, and both teams are hired by their bosses to kill each other. HOWEVER, it turns out that their boss is the same person and there's some sort of legal trouble so he's trying to get them to get rid of each other to cover his own tracks. given that, they decide to team up, take him out, and then continue their lives together as a robin-hood-esq group of four who take down the corrupt and evil people that the law can't touch

send me a number from my spotify wrapped and i’ll tell you what fic i’d write based on it

#i can't believe you and taylor both managed to hit on the two songs on the list that i intend to turn into songfics lol #*two of the three #i have other songs in my 100 that are on certain fic playlists and stuff but those are two that Will Be Songfics #3% of these songs will be songfics i write and you both managed to land on one #wild #this is fun i really like this ask game lol #ask #megs #igarbagecannoteven

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kitty-otome · 3 years

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MY LADY JULIET (FIRST IMPRESSIONS)

RELEASE DATE: january 22nd 2021

SUMMARY: you may be a trust fund baby, but you work hard to achieve your dreams: making your mark, and maybe finding love along the way. sadly, your parents have other plans, surprising you with a fiance. are you bound to you parents choices? or does the voice beyond your balcony offer something more?

LOVE INTERESTS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE: 4/6

LOVE CHOICE: no

p. s. ��first impressions” means i only read the prologue and the first chapter of every main story available. i make a lot of assumptions and i’ll probably go on a tangent at some point or another, so please be warned.

— THE PREMISE

in short, the mc (you) is a rich kid who dreams of becoming successful without the help of your parents (just like every millennial born wealthy, how predictable). unfortunately for her, her father unexpectedly throws her into an arranged marriage (on her birthday, might i add) with the flashy ceo of an entertainment company. in this story, your fiancé is chosen for you, so the other love interests are not other wealthy men, but people who work for your family/with you (AKA people your parents wouldn’t approve of). meaning, unless you pick the fiancé’s route, we’re falling into a romeo and juliet dynamic (hence the title of the game).

i think the premise is fine. it’s nothing new or original, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. who doesn’t love a good forbidden romance? i think it’s interesting that your fiancé is picked for you, rather than you pick the fiancé, i think it’s a good chance of pace.

— THE WRITING

the writing is quite good, much like the writing in most of voltage’s new stories. there isn’t too much description (at least in the prologue/first chapter), thus quickening the pace of the story. so if you’re someone (like me) who likes slower paced stories, you might find that these first chapters feel a bit rushed, i know i did. but if you’re someone who hates descriptions and long monologues, and who just wants to see action, you might really be into this style of writing.

personally, i love long descriptions and endless monologues describing the train of thought of the mc/narrator, but i know i’m of the minority.

furthermore, i find that whoever wrote this is very good at creating intrigue. although the writing isn’t particularly poetic (in my opinion, at least), it definitely sucks you in in other ways. the writers managed to spark curiosity in the readers without confusing them (something voltage writers then to do when attempting to create intrigue), which is quite a feat.

— THE LOVE INTERESTS

there are currently four love interests that you can play at the moment, they are keiji fujieda (the butler), haruto miyake (the chef), yoshiki minagawa (the coworker) and shotaru uekusa (the childhood friend). the love interests that are not available at the moment are hisashi aoyama (the fiancé) and motoki takahashi (i don’t know what he does, you don’t see him in the prologue, but i assume he works for hisashi based on the information available about him).

they’re all very attractive characters, aesthetically they’re very nice to look at. keiji truly does not interest me at all, he comes off as a cardboard box with a high sex drive, and hey if that’s your thing then get your thick brown packing material sis, but that’s just not for me. haruto seems alright, he comes off as quite immature to me, but i find that him and mc have good chemistry. yoshiki interests me. i’m really curious to see what he’s like when he’s in love (since he’s always as. stiff as a board). his main story seems pretty good too. however, i feel like they might’ve tried to recreate a takuto moment with his character design? who knows. shotaru seems pretty cool, i find his relationship with mc to be very cute. however, the love interest i want to play most hisashi. he seems like a very complex character and i’m really curious to know what are his motives behind marrying mc. i feel like he has a really fascinating/tragic backstory.

— THE MC

i don’t know what i feel about the mc. i think it’s still too early to really make a true judgment of her character. however, from what i see, she’s basically the stereotypical angsty rich kid who wants to live like one of the middle class kids, and i’m not crazy about that to say the least. i’d honestly rather have a bratty and self centered mc than an arrogant and “rebellious” mc who tries to act like she wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, because then at least she’d acknowledge her privilege and have room for growth. but that’s just my opinion.

with that being said, her desire to distance herself from her parents is very understandable. her father is a raging misogynist and and her mother is an airhead-ish enabler. so her dislike for her parents is very understandable.

(off topic but, i think i should mention that her father’s words really hurt me, like actually hurt me. they gave me flashbacks from my own childhood, so if you’re sensitive to parental abuse or misogynistic remarks/insults, i would probably steer clear from this game.)

now, earlier i called the mc rebellious with quotation marks. the reason why i did that is because this mc has a very.. anticlimactic way of showing rebellion (in my opinion). this mc has a regular office job. there’s nothing wrong with having an office job, but if you hate your parents and want to rebel against them, shouldn’t you a) become a heavy metal singer so your parents are too embarrassed to be seen with you or b) become so successful you parents can’t interrupt your life anymore? who the hell becomes a regular office employee to rebel against their overbearing millionaire parents? not only that, but she explicitly says she isn’t completely satisfied in her current position. if she was satisfied with her job, then it would be a completely different story, but she isn’t. so, how is it rebellion? how is working a job you’re unhappy with supposed to make anyone jealous or envious? i honestly would’ve loved an angsty alt mc, who’s more interested in touring the world with her band than getting a husband, or a really brainy mc who’s more interest in pursuing higher education than getting married, or even a really business oriented mc with a wildly successful company who’s more interested in making bank than babies.

just imagine picking a job that you’re only half satisfied with when you have all that money at your disposal? that’s humiliating.

plus, she talks out loud to herself a lot which makes me weirdly uncomfortable. i understand you’re frustrated girl, but just get a journal or something. you’ll wake up the entire neighborhood with that blabbering.

— THE MAIN STORIES

most of the plots actually seem really good. in keiji’s main story, you realize you’ve fallen for him while he’s helping you plan your wedding. in haruto’s main story, you make a bet with him that you’ll fall in love with your fiancé, but you end up falling for him instead. in yoshiki’s main story, you start falling in love with him as you work together, but then you realize he might have sinister motives (much like a certain plot from irresistible mistakes). all of these plots seem great!

shotaru’s main story, on the other hand, seems absolutely pointless. in his story, you fall in love, but then he starts falling for a maid and you start falling for your fiancé, but for some reason, you’re trying to save your relationship, even though it sounds more convenient for him to marry the maid and for you to marry, well... your fiancé. (???) i promise i’m just as confused as you are. maybe the summary is just written really weirdly. i assume that’s what it is because the reviews are really good.

— THE MUSIC + SCENERY

unfortunately, there’s no music. although they let you know of that aspect at the beginning of the story, it still bums me out a little.

the sceneries are kind of boring, most are just old recycled backgrounds that i’ve seen a million times before, but the driving animation looks really fantastic (you know, when the love interest is driving)! it’s a different pov, the mc is in the backseat rather than the passenger AND the steering wheel is finally on the left. yippee-ki-yay! i know the steering wheel is usually on the right in japan, but as an american, i was very happy to see it on the left. that right side steering wheel irked me so much for some reason. it’s such a small detail but it brought me so much joy.

so, will i buy one of the main stories? maybe, mostly because i’m genuinely intrigued by where this story’s going to go. i’ll probably buy yoshiki’s main story, or hisashi’s main story, when it comes out. motoki looks to be my type, but i don’t know anything so far about his personality, so i couldn’t say for certain.

have you already bought any of the main stories? if so, what did you think? let me know!

#my lady juliet #mlj #love 365 #love 365: find your story #voltage inc #otome game

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great

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In the last decade, it’s become a common refrain among fans and industry players alike: the filmmakers should’ve “planned it better.” This trilogy could’ve been mapped out; those five sequels needed to be outlined first. Perhaps this is inevitable in an era where “shared universe” is part of the everyday vernacular, yet I cannot help but be amused when folks grow wistful over sequels with allegedly concrete roadmaps: franchises like Star Wars, Godfather… and the Back to the Future trilogy.

Whenever social media discussions about sequels or franchises that most smoothly told their sagas rear, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s little trio of time traveling adventures always spring to the forefront. With their economy of storytelling and strong fixation on characters, particularly lovable Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and eccentric Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), the three movies’ narrative is as stainless as the steel doors on the DeLorean. Even innocuous, seemingly throwaway details in the first movie turn out to have unexpectedly delightful payoffs in the sequels, such as the Doc’s interest in discovering who will win the next 25 years’ worth of World Series games.

Of course the irony in this is that Back to the Future was not planned as a trilogy; this was a “universe” structured around only one story, with its sequels acting as mere expansions on those initial foundations. Even the “cliffhanger” ending of the first movie, with Marty, Doc, and the original Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells) piling into a now flying DeLorean to “do something about your kids,” was never meant to be more than a gag.

“We never designed the first Back to the Future to have a sequel,” director Zemeckis confirmed on the 2002 DVD release of Back to the Future Part II. “The flying car at the end was a joke, and it worked as a great joke and a great payoff. Everyone assumed we had this grand design like George Lucas did about Star Wars and had all these sequels. My only hope for Back to the Future ever was that it would make its money back.”

He goes on to say that if he had planned on doing a sequel, he would’ve never put Jennifer in the final scene—hence why in the sequel, the character (recast with Elisabeth Shue) spends most of the film asleep on a front porch.

Said Zemeckis, “I would’ve had only the Doc and Marty be in the car, and then I could’ve put them on any adventure. But what happens when you make a movie this successful is it becomes a piece of real estate, it becomes a franchise. And the reality comes at you very quickly, which is ‘we’re making a sequel. You can either help us or not, but the sequel is going to be made.’”

Fortunately, that sequel was made with most of the key players who turned the 1985 film into an enduring classic still in place, including Zemeckis and his co-writer/producer, Bob Gale, at the top of that list. Indeed, it’s even fair to look at the success of the trilogy and conclude that world-building is overrated. What makes Back to the Future shine all these decades later, both as a singular film and an appealing trilogy, is it was always about developing an intriguing story, as opposed to an open-ended milieu of content.

The first movie was originally conceived of by Gale based on a simple epiphany. While going through his father’s old high school yearbook, he came across a photograph of the old man that revealed he’d been elected class president.

“I had no idea,” Gale told Den of Geek last year. “And I’m looking at this picture of my dad, and he’s very proper and straight. And I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class who was just somebody I would have nothing to do with. We were just in completely different circles.”

This raised a million-dollar question: Would he have been friends with his dad in high school?

The dawning realization every young person must come upon, when they realize their parents and authority figures really were young folks like themselves once upon a time, had never been captured on screen before, much less in a mainstream movie through the prism of science fiction. But that’s what the original Back to the Future script did with its yarn about an ‘80s teenager inadvertently traveling 30 years into the past to spend the week with his mother and father in high school.

Granted, it’s more than the premise that makes Back to the Future so winsome. While the movie unquestionably benefits from the striking social distance between 1950s teenagers and their ‘80s counterparts—with the sexual revolution, Vietnam, civil rights, and second wave feminism between the two eras—it still plays to kids another 30-plus years later because of its intelligence and timeless universality. Taking the concept of “Chekhov’s gun” to its breaking point, there is not a single element, character, or detail set up in the first act in 1985 that isn’t paid off once Marty travels back to 1955, and then paid off again when he returns home in the denouement.

Marty’s mom, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), attempting to micromanage her children’s love lives with apparent 1950s social values? Well, in the actual ‘50s, she was smoking, drinking, and had no problem “parking” in cars with boys. Mayor Goldie Wilson running for reelection in 1985? He’s a young ambitious man on the make in ’55 (and with a keen eye for a good campaign slogan). The clock tower that hasn’t worked since it was struck by lightning 30 years ago? It becomes the gosh darn centerpiece of Back to the Future’s climax.

Everything flowed together with the precision of an actual, working clock tower, and it worked in service to the self-awareness which springs from young people seeing their parents in a different light. Plus, Alan Silvestri’s musical score just made everything Marty and Doc did seem to have the import of charging across the frontlines.

Movies

Back to the Future: Why You’ll Never See More Eric Stoltz Marty McFly Footage

By Chris Cummins

Movies

Why Fan Response to the Back to the Future Sequels Changed

By Chris Cummins

So this proverbial little ‘80s teen comedy overperformed at the box office after ending on a teasing note that left viewers hanging. Zemeckis and Gale did not write Back to the Future to lead anywhere but the line “where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but audiences (and the studio) wanted to see what was at the end of that skyway.

Thus Back to the Future Part II and Part III came into existence—but with the ambition of its creators to make them every bit as narratively complex as the first film they were borne out from. While the sequels were very much designed on the conventional wisdom that audiences want to see their favorite characters get up to the same shenanigans, Back to the Future Part II particularly subverts this. The sequences of the film set in the future of 2015 plays into “the same but different” by bringing nearly every actor from the first film back to play their same character at a more advanced age—or younger in the unnerving case of Fox being asked to play all of Marty and Jennifer’s children—but that sequence is then quickly jettisoned for something closer to It’s a Wonderful Life than Back to the Future.

Even when Gale first began conceiving of the sequels, he imagined Marty and Doc winding up in 1967 to “correct” the future. There Marty would again see his parents, George and Lorraine McFly, in shocking ways: George would be a college professor while Lorraine would’ve become a flower child, joining the hippie movement.

However, it was Zemeckis’ input that had the story fold into itself. Instead of just playing with different time periods and doing the same setup again, the director suggested using the third act of the sequel to enter the first movie from a different vantage point. He actually did what mainstream audiences supposedly want—basically remakes of the same story—but with a much more skewed sensibility with two Martys and two Docs running around, and all of them converging on a plot that involves further cliffhangers and switchbacks on the first movie, like an ending where the sequel’s Marty surprises 1955’s Doc Brown moments after Doc had sent Marty home. Now the Marty we’ve followed for the whole second film runs up behind the Doc to say, “I’m back from the future.”

Also in a quaint departure from how sequels are conceived today, the absence of Crispin Glover as George McFly in Part II and Part III stemmed from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment failing to lock actors into sequel clauses. Back then, it was assumed movies were a one-off experience, and when Glover decided he didn’t want to appear in a sequel… well, there’s a reason George McFly had to die in the alternative 1985 ruled over by a Trumpian Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).

All of these concessions and choices made on the fly were not preordained or sketched out, but the talent involved was so keen on connecting their limitations to previous successes that they made a satisfying three-part whole out of a one-off, and without getting bogged down by fan service or further world-building. Nearly every choice made in the Back to the Future sequels—with exception to the inexplicable development of Marty being unable to withstand the insult of “chicken”—organically built off character traits or story concepts in the first one, flowing into a self-perpetuating circle.

Sure, there are inconsistencies. Consider the way the third movie is seeded into the second; it betrays a looseness to the world-building when Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen’s photo in Part II looks nothing like the character design in Part III. But it doesn’t ultimately matter. The elements that really determine the films’ quality, such as character, structure, and dialogue, are airtight across all three pictures.

Strangely though, this connective tissue was hidden at the time of release. As Gale told Den of Geek last year, there was a resistance at Universal to let general audiences know a third movie was on the way until after they’d seen the second one. There was even a fight to exclude the trailer of scenes from the third film at the end of Part II (at Gale’s suggestion).

“The biggest fight that I had with the president of Universal when we were planning the release of Part II is that I was adamant that I wanted to advertise this as part two of the three-part Back to the Future series, part two of the trilogy, and he didn’t want to do that,” Gale said. “He just wanted to say, ‘This is part two. Let them find out about part three later.’”

Gale is convinced that lack of understanding that Part II was setting up Part III led to both films being somewhat underappreciated during their releases. Now their legacy is as tightly woven with the first film, as well, those early Star Wars movies are. To the point where Back to the Future is often singled out as this rare thing—a near perfect film trilogy. That might be true, but it wasn’t set up that way. There’s a lesson in that.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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skullsgonehelterskullter · 4 years

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The Onceler’s Real Reasons For Chopping Down the Trees!

The Onceler’s Real Motivation for Cutting Down the Trees!

Hello. My name is Triniti and I speak for the Onceler. Before we get started today, I’d like to teach you a few terms that I’ll be using in this essay.

Most of you have probably heard of emotional abuse before. It’s something I’ve suffered through and something the Onceler has suffered through. Emotional Abuse is any abusive behavior that isn’t physical, which may include verbal aggression, intimidation, manipulation, and humiliation, which most often unfolds as a pattern of behavior over time that aims to diminish another person’s sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth, and which often results in anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Well, that’s quite a lot to take in, isn’t it? So let me tell you a few things that emotional abuse can present itself as: Intimidation, Manipulation, Refusal to ever be pleased, Shaming, Name-calling, Insults, Sarcasm, Silent treatment, Trivializing, Sabotage, Gaslighting, Scapegoating, Blame-shifting, Ranking and comparing, Unpredictable inconsistency, Threatening harm, and that’s not at all, but that’s not all this essay is about and I’m probably boring you.

One last term we should cover is gaslighting. This is an important one as I use it in this essay quite a bit. Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. They tell blatant lies; they deny they ever said something; even though you have proof; they use what is near and dear to you as ammunition; they throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

So, why was all of that important? You’re just here for more Onceler content, right? Well, all of this has happened to our dear Oncie. My thesis? Emotional abuse was a bigger motivator for the Onceler than corporate greed.

The Onceler’s Family Life.

So, where could the emotional abuse in the Onceler’s life have come from? Simple answer, his family. When we first meet them it sounds like his mom is trying to be supportive and then she laughs his dreams off. “Yes, but just remember, Onesie, if some-how your invention ends up a failure instead of a success, oh it wouldn’t surprise me at all!” After she says this, the rest of the family joins in the laughing. A few things can be drawn from this conclusion.

One, she seems to do this quite often throughout the film and probably his past. This can take a heavy toll on his mental health as I’ll explain later.

Two, she seems to be the ring leader of the abuse because the others never join in unless she starts it. It’s better to make fun of someone else than to be ridiculed yourself right? It’s a come self-defense mechanism. Three, the other people in the family probably suffer to some of the same extent of abuse she places on him. Hence why they jump on the chance for the Onceler to be the victim.

From the line, “Nice wheels! *Punch* Burn!” we can learn that he’s probably been subjected to physical abuse too as he flinches before and after he’s punched. He lunches a lot around his family and they hit him quite a few times in this film. This can pair with the emotional abuse and cause him to be overly cautious around other people.

Another thing I’d like to point out is his weight. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with him. But have you seen his family? Why is he so skinny compared to them? Do they feed him enough? Not supplying basic needs is a form of abuse too. This one can’t be confirmed but it is something I noticed.

“Ha..ha.. Yea, Burn! But you’ll see, okay? I’m going to prove you all wrong!” Right after this line, the old Onceler says he had a completely irrational sense of optimism. Why? Because a lot of his drive came from trying to prove himself worthy and to make his family proud. Yes, he did want to change the world for the better, but when he has these negative feelings surrounding him, he’s going to do nothing but drown in his fear of being the failure his family has always told him he was. When you’ve been emotionally abused you always tend to look at the negative side first because that’s all you’ve ever been told. (You can see a little bit of this in the demo song The Onceler’s Travelling Madness.)

Another, smaller, instance is when he makes his first thneed. He says, “Now there’s a thneed! Nothing unmanly about knitting. No, sir.” Why would he say this unless his family had repeatedly drilled that into his head in order to discourage him from pursuing his dreams?

One more small one is when the Lorax first appears and asks why the Onceler didn’t notie the thunder and lightning. People who live in abusive households get used to chaos very quickly and tend to overlook big and small traumitic events. It’s very possible he didn’t even realize loud noises were going on because he’s so used to them happening around him all the time.

The next bigger point is when he finally makes it big. The first person he calls is his mother. He’s feeling really great about himself because they were wrong! He can amount to something and he can be a success! “Mom? Hey, it’s me! I told you I was going to be a success! You need to bring the whole family here right now. We’re going to be rich!” The only reason his family comes to his aid is because of the money he promises them. We know this because they leave the moment he stops making money. I’ll touch more on this later.

When they arrive in the forest, she runs out of the van singing his praises. “There’s my suddenly successful son! We always knew you’d be a success!” She then uses a hug and kisses to praise him and give him affection, which if you remember is a sign of gaslighting. She’s using affection to ‘prove’ that she loves him.

“But you always said I wouldn’t amount ot anything, remember?” -Onceler. Here you can see that he is desperately trying to get his mother to remember just how badly she treated him. You can hear the hurt in the inflection of his voice. ‘Don’t you remember how you hurt me?’

“Oh, you hush your mouth. I was just trying to motivate you.”-Mother. She’s gaslighting him here. ‘What? No, I never did that. You’re crazy. I loved you this whole time!’

“I’m really glad that you clarified that because it actually hurt my feelings for a really long time.”-Onceler. She never acknowledges this and lets him continue the conversation. He doesn’t get an apology or closure until the end. After he finishes, you can see him flinch when she starts yelling at the other two to set up the RV.

Yelling is also a sign of emotional abuse. It scares and intimidates people into submission. You know that whole joke about if you shout loud enough at a grizzly you can assert your dominance and it will leave you alone? Same thing with yelling and emotional abuse. You can get anyone to do anything if you make them feel inferior enough. Hence the Onceler and his Mother.

The Onceler vs The Lorax.

Let’s take a break from that so you can absorb it. Take some breaths and think about it for a moment.

So, who is the Onceler exactly? Well we know he wants to do something incredible and change the world for the better. “Bout to make a thneed, bout to change the world.” He likes music and is really good at playing the guitar. He likes to play card games. He’s very imaginative and creative. He’s a great problem solver (when his family isn’t around). He thinks nature is really pretty. “Woah! This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen!”

He’s also very respectful of nature in the beginning. When he sets up his cottage, he sets it up in a place free of trees and other landmarks. His family goes too far as to harm the animals and the trees when they set up the RV. They throw bears around and Onceler reaches out to protect pipsqueak at his own expense when they are being saved from the river. He never intended to do any harm to the forest of its occupants in the beginning even though he did so by being a bit reckless. He even cooks them pancakes!

So, then why does he keep threatening the forest when the Lorax tells him to stop? I believe it’s because the Lorax reminds him of his mother. The Lorax also uses shaming and gaslighting to try and get the Onceler to do what he wants. For example;

“Hey! Did you chop down this tree?” Right off the bat, the Lorax starts with an accusatory statement. He knows that the Onceler chopped down the tree. It’s like a mother asking her three-year-old if he got into the cookie jar when he’s holding a cookie. He clearly knows that he did, in fact, chop down this tree but now Onceler is being faced with impending disappointment coming from another figure. A common reaction to abuse is to try and immediately escalate the situation and to keep out of trouble so you’re not yelled at or hit.

“Uhhh...no? Who did it? *Gasp* What’s that? I think he did it!” Hence this line. And here comes the inevitable yelling that he was trying to stop.

“Leave! Vacate the premise. Take your ax and get out!”

*Tries to placate the Lorax by giving him the peace offering of a marshmallow* This action shows that he wants to stop the yelling and hopefully make things right. But how can he offer an apology when he’s never been taught how? His whole life presents meant everything was okay now. Hence the marshmallow.

*Lorax start kicking the pegs holding his house up*

“Whoa! Wait! Hey, Mustache! Will you stop that? What’s your deal, man?” He doesn’t start calling names until he’s tried to peacefully ask him to stop first. He’s learned this from his family and does this towards the Lorax a few times in the film. But never towards anyone who didn’t cause him harm first. (It’s still an emotional abuse tactic though.)

“Whoa! Stop right there!”- Lorax

*Immediately stops and takes several steps back*-Onceler

“So, you would hammer one of nature’s innocent creatures?”- Lorax

*Shock and hurt* “What? No! I would never hit this little guy! You, on the other hand, I would gladly pound you and your mustache into the ground!” He is aggressive now because all his other defense mechanisms have not worked to get his aggressor to stop. But this next part is the important part.

“Behold! The intruder and his violent ways. Shame on you. For shame.” *All the other forest creatures start shaking their heads in disappointment* Who does this remind you of? The Onceler’s mother. She did this same thing with his family when he was leaving. The Lorax has shamed him for doing what he thought was a good thing and turned everyone against him. Feeling alone and isolated is a very scary thing, especially when everyone is targetting you. The Onceler has a lot of experience being on this end and never being able to stand up for himself. So, he turns to anger and ‘justifies’ his actions so people will stop targetting him and shaming him.

“All right, you know what? That’s it. You listen here, you furry meatloaf. I’m going to chop down as many trees as I need. Okay? Newsflash! Not going anywhere. End of story!”

After this, the Onceler and the Lorax reach an agreement of not chopping down the trees when Onceler sees just what kind of effect he could have on his new friends and doesn’t want to cause them any harm. But the Lorax keeps bringing up his mistake.

“You chopped down one of my trees to make that piece of garbage?” He is once again imitating the mother by putting the Onceler down and insulting something precious to him. The Oncelere’s face falls and he holds his thneed close to him as if to protect it. When you constantly bring up someone’s mistakes, it makes them feel worse and worse about themselves and prevents them from moving on and bettering themselves. This creates a cycle of self-hatred that’s hard to break out of. The Onceler has experienced this from his family and from the Lorax. After he destroys the entires forest, he also experiences it from himself as he shuts himself in isolation and refuses to move past his mistakes.

The Family influence on his decisions.

Alright, the part we all really wanted to get to. We have seen that the Onceler is not a greedy person. So, why does he keep chopping down trees to make more money and keep biggering his company? Because his abusive family manipulates him into it and it’s hard for him to break that cycle. He fully intended to keep his promise on not chopping down trees and devised another system to gather the tusks from the trees.

When does he start chopping down the trees?

When his mother tells him to. Breaking his promise didn’t even cross his mind until his mother suggested it and here’s your proof.

Once-ler: I mean, look at this. It's amazing. I am so proud of me.

Once-ler's Mom: Oncie, we've got us a little problem.

Once-ler: Problem?

Once-ler's Mom: Mmm-hmm. See, we're not making Thneeds fast enough.

Once-ler’s Dad: Harvesting the tufts takes too long!

Once-ler: Well, what else can we do? (Didn’t mention chopping down the trees at all. What can he do? He can’t cut them and he has to find a faster way to harvest them. )

Once-ler's Mom: Well, and this just came to me, we could always start chopping down the trees. (Oh, can he?)

Once-ler: What? (What? No, I can’t. I promised.)

Now you're thinking.

That would speed things up!

Once-ler: But… (But I promised!)

Once-ler's Mom: No buts, Oncie. You're running a business now. You have to do what's best for the company and your momma.

Once-ler: Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to chop down a few trees. (Well, I guess if it’s to keep my mom happy and they’re proud of me, how bad can it be if everyone is happy?)

Once-ler's Mom: You've made me so proud, Oncie. Come here!

And here it is. The moment you choose to please an abuser is the moment you lose everything. And what happens after? Exactly.

One more thing I’d like to put in here is that pride also has something to do with it. He’s proud that he overcame adversity and made it big. He’s proud that he’s helping people. He’s proud that his family finally likes him. He’s glad he made his family proud! “Look at this! I’m so proud of me.” “You’ve made me so proud!” “Something good finally happens to me!” “This is all so gratifying! (Because I’m so proud of all that I’ve accomplished and All I’ve built and all I’ve collected!)”

His regret.

After this, his family starts pushing the Lorax and all his forest friends away so that he has no other information or support system so he can only keep making his decisions based on what makes them happy and what fuels his pride.

“I’ve done nothing illegal! I have my rights!” Are these his thoughts or his family trying to keep his guilt in check so he doesn’t compromise their money income? Just saying.

“The last tree. That might stop you.” You can see the guilt hit the Onceler really fast and he desperately tries to win the animals back as he realizes just how bad his actions really were. FOr the first time in his life he doesn’t receive any backlash for a mistake

the animals don’t fight him and the Lorax doesn’t tell him how wrong he was. He just sits in the knowledge that he was wrong. “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

The guilt hits him hard and he spends the rest of his life wallowing in his mistake. Not to mention all his efforts were for naught as his family leaves him, slamming him with more disappointment. “You have let me down. Bret! You are now my favorite child!” He tried so hard but they never cared about him and all his mistakes and choices were made in vain because you can’t please abusers. He had to be hurting really really badly after that.

I firmly believe he’s still a good person because I can see just how much he regretted his mistake. In my opinion, O’Hare represents corporate greed much more than the Onceler does because he doesn’t regret any of his actions and he purposely keeps the environment bad and making more smog and making more plastic to keep the people paying him and getting more money. He does all that on purpose.

The Onceler? He made mistakes and he was manipulated. It doesn’t excuse his actions and he does hold accountability because abuse isn’t an excuse. But it was emotional abuse, not corporate greed and that’s my point. Thanks for coming to my essay. Have a lovely day!

#the lorax #the onceler #lorax 2012 #oncie

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sansanficrec · 5 years

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Q&A with ladytp

Grab a glass of wine and get to know @ladytp!

How long have you been writing fanfiction?

I actually went back to the folder of my first posted fanfic, and it was almost 6.5 years ago, September 2012… That was my first ever creative work I wrote as well, as I started quite late – being already adult, established professional and all that. So never too late to start, one doesn’t have to have grown up writing!

Did you write before that?

No I didn't - unless scientific publications are counted as 'creative' writing (well, to be honest, sometimes there was an element of creativity when trying to make one's data make sense, LOL!)

How long ago did you join Tumblr?

To be precise (as I like to be!) I joined March 1st 2013 – so almost six years ago… But it took me four months to make my first post (an awesome music video about ASOIAF and GoT), being initially a ‘lurker’ to observe and learn. I migrated there from Livejournal when things started to quiet down there – like a moth I was drawn to bright lights, moving images, and more of my fandom content!

What is the meaning behind your username?

My username is from the Livejournal times as well, as when I joined it, I didn’t grasp the significance of one’s url or username and just picked the first one that came to mind when filling in the details: “lady” and my initials. D’oh! Luckily I have been able to successfully have the same name in other platforms as well, which is great – it is easier than have many different names. I am also glad that it is not fandom specific, as my interests are many and varied…

What was your first fandom? First pairing?

Definitively ASOIAF – that was my introduction to the whole cultural phenomenon of ‘fandom’, devouring fics and joining communities (yeah, I am so far behind of everyone else – I used to have a life, LOL!). Sansan was my first ship, but I also had a brief period when I was very interested in Daenerys and Jorah (this was before I saw the show). Even though the show had a big negative impact on Sansan experience for me (not due to Rory, I hasten to add – but the storylines), it has still stayed my OTP in a sense that I feel most comfortable about writing them and their dynamic still fascinates me above anything else.

How/when did you first notice (or start to ship) Sansan?

My story is very typical; first reading their interactions after the Hand’s Tourney, then the scene of the Battle of the Blackwater – and I was hooked. Googling and finding fics, Livejournal communities and all the metas…no getting back from there! I mean; it is so blatantly obvious that I wonder who can read the books and NOT get the vibes??

Is there a SanSan fic you’re particularly proud of? Chapter? Paragraph? Plot?

Hmmm…’Which one of your children you love the best?’, in other words – always a difficult question! I guess I am still the proudest of “The Triangle” It was one of my early fics, it was a long-fic, and it was about the subject I had been fascinated with for years and years; the complicated Arthurian relationship between 3 people who loved each other for different reasons (Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot in the original, Sandor, Sansa and Jaime in the fic). Chapter-wise I am very happy with the last chapter of the “Kiss of the Blade”, as hard as it may be for some due to the character death implied. It has melancholy but also beauty, I thought when I wrote it. Plot-wise I am excited and happy about my current WIP “This Time, We’ll Do Better”, as although it has some common trope elements, I think they have somewhat cool applications and it is nice to write something more plot-orientated for a change!

Any comments you’ve received that stick out, even now?

I have to admit that again, “The Triangle” inspired some absolutely wonderful comments, probably because of its unusual premise. Towards the end, and especially with people who had read it in one go long after it had been completed, there were some wonderful convos going back and forth. I especially enjoyed the ones where people either told that they had had some reservations starting it, but then ended up really enjoying the fic, or the ones where they might have had some queries and doubts and questions, leading to a mutually fruitful and eye-opening discussions on both sides. Those conversations really blew my mind!

Do you use a beta?

I have had the privilege of working with two wonderful betas, of which I am eternally grateful. The first one was wildskysheri / wildsky, whom I “met” via Livejournal, and who betaed for me for “The Triangle”, “A Chance Encounter” and “A Premediated Reunion”. She taught me – a non-native English speaker/writer – so much about writing and what to pay attention to and what to look out for. I owe her so much! After our ways parted amicably as she moved on to other things, I was without beta for a long time, not really actively looking for one, but when my path crossed with the lovely @hardlyfatal, I have once again had the pleasure of getting my words scrutinised by someone knowledgeable, making them better on “This Time, We’ll Do Better”. I honestly can’t speak highly enough for a beta who can make any writer and fic so much better!

Are there tropes/styles/genres you struggle with? Any that are almost too easy?

I do struggle a bit writing babies and children, and hence haven’t written much about them… I don’t generally care for modern AUs either and would struggle to write a full story in a modern times – although who knows, maybe in a right setting, replicating the high stakes situation of the canon, it could work. Haven’t tried so can’t say for sure! Very fluffy genre is also something I don’t feel particularly comfortable with, nor anything where the characters are very young. And porn without plot is neither a genre I relish. The most comfortable genres for me are the slow-burns, where mature people interact with each other in a mature way (whatever that means…). First realisations of feelings, hesitancy, and all that. I also do like plot-driven stories that have a start, middle and ending. I am all open for fake marriage, bed-sharing, ‘there was only one room at the inn’ kind of genres – any kind of ‘forced’ situations where the characters are obliged to spend time together!

When you start a fic, do you know where it will end? Or do you figure it out along the way?

There have been fics along both scenarios – some were started at the spur of the moment, with only vague ideas of where and how far they would go (”The Prophecy” comes to mind, which I started as a random holiday scribbling – and repeatedly apologised and updated my chapter number as it grew and grew and grew…). And there were the ones where even at the end I couldn’t decide what the ending should be, so I wrote two (for example “Past Was Such A Long Time Ago“). But for most I would have some idea about the ending at the start, and for some I would gain it somewhere early along the way. So yeah, it varies!

Do you have any rituals/conditions for ‘getting in the mood’ to write?

I mostly write over the weekends when I have more time, after getting up and having breakfast, reading my emails and checking on Tumblr and doing all the routine stuff one does – and then I open my doc and start writing… With my internet radio blasting on the background on some jazz or lounge or classic channel. I find it hard to write during the weeks after getting back from work and being distracted by mundane home things and TV and such.

Have you ever had writer’s block? Any tips for overcoming it?

I did have a period well over a year ago when I felt I had ‘lost my mojo’. It was largely to do with the way the Game of Thrones show had progressed and changed the characters so much that I couldn’t recognise them anymore, and my initial inspiration of writing about them consequently suffered. Especially as the show canon started to take over the original book canon so strongly in many platforms, including fics. The way I got over it was to distance myself from the show and partly, unfortunately, also from the fandom (so largely focused on show). I had a nice break, didn’t read many fics, focused on books and generally took a step back. Then I challenged myself to write a new type of story, a plot-focused ‘action & adventure’ story instead of romance focused only. That inspired me to write again, and I have been riding on that inspirational wave ever since with my latest long-fic WIP!

Aspirations of publishing one day?

No, not really. It is a tough world out there, especially as writing has become more reachable to many people who previously might not have even considered it (yay, fanfic and other forms of creative writing and platforms encouraging it!), and publishing world is awash with submissions and self-published stories alike. Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that wanting to become published would take much more effort and determination and will than what I have for now, as for me this is a lovely hobby, nothing more.

What are your other hobbies?

My absolutely biggest hobbies are food and wine. I have loved cooking, eating and learning about food and wine for most of my life and it’s really important for me. Cooking meals ‘from the scratch’ from their base ingredient is what I love, as well as learning to master new techniques, new cuisines and difficult recipes. When I travel, food is one of the main drivers for that too, and holidays are largely built around restaurants, regions, cuisines and wineries. Holidaying in wine regions and wine tasting is the favourite kind of holiday! Yet I also love everyday cooking – the beauty of this as a hobby is that I get to do it every day and can challenge myself, be inspired by it and practice it all the time!

As for other hobbies…not really… I follow the transformative artform that is WWE, especially Dean Ambrose, and love visiting historical sites and reading about history, but that can hardly be called an active hobby… I also make some photo and video edits for fun, but lately my writing has taken much of the time I used to dedicate to that. Yet I feel that what I have is enough – I have no desires for an active life with lots of different hobbies and activities.

Any tips for writers looking to post their first (or second, or twentieth) fic?

I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh, but it would be really cool if even those who write only for ‘shits and giggles’ would do some basic formatting and language checks… Things like how to indicate dialogue, spacing between paragraphs and when to apply them, and of course, basic grammar. There are nowadays so many websites advising about those things, as well as free tools (for example Grammarly), that they are accessible to every person with access to sites posting their stuff – and a simple Google search is your best friend. I recommend this because ignoring those things may easily drown even the most amazing story in these times of fic over-abundance.

Other than that, write the stories you would like to read yourself, and the scenarios you would like to see in the canon. Study the writing style of the writers whose stories you admire and see if you could pick up a trick or two from them (but not plagiarizing, naturally). And if you can, get a beta – it is not absolutely necessary, but would give you a second opinion and advice from a trusted person. Oh, and give yourself a break between writing and final editing – ideally have a buffer of chapters in a draft phase before starting to post, so whenever you write something new, you can afford to let it rest for a while before getting back to it with fresh eyes. And have fun!

Anything you’d like to say to writers in general?

Don’t get hung up on statistics or comparisons. Think why you are writing – is it because everyone does it and you feel you should too, or because you truly enjoy it, or because of the stories themselves, or because you have an internal urge to do it, or it is part of your social networking activities… all are valid reasons, but once you define what they are for you, the easier it is to focus on it and the satisfaction it gives to you.

Anything you’d like to say to readers in general?

If you like a fic, don’t be shy about commenting, as it truly means so much to the writers… Even simplest comment is gratefully received. If you feel like wanting to pass on constructive criticism, first ensure the writer welcomes it, then formulate it in the politest possible way with positivism thrown in as well (and of course, make sure it is actually constructive). Marvel the choices and abundance of fic availability and acknowledge what a joy it is to live in this time and age when all that is possible. Enjoy!

Anything you’d like to say to the SanSan fandom in general?

Do not give up hope – Game of Thrones is over soon and we can get back to canon content, hopefully soon with The Winds of Winter. Whatever the further story of Sandor and Sansa is there, we know how important it has been already and nothing can take that away!

Read LadyTP’s SanSan here!

Read LadyTP’s full library here!

#sansan fic recs #Q&A #ladytp #sansan

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