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black-emporium-exchange · 3 years

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How to sign up for Black Emporium!

Yes sweet nuglets, it's that time of year again: Time to sign up for Black Emporium!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN-UP!

Helpful Links:

How to Guide || Requests on Ao3 || Tagset || Nominations Spreadsheet || Request Database || Parent Collection (All Past Years)

Main hubs:

@black-emporium-exchange || black_emporium @ Dreamwidth || blackemporiumex on Twitter || AO3 Subcollection || Discord

Signups end: July 17, 2021 @ 8:00PM EDT || Countdown

CHANGES THIS YEAR

- We now have a brand new Request Database this year! Unlike previous years where mods had to hand copy requests into a separate Google Doc, the Database will automatically populate who and what people are requesting. (Should come in handy when writing treats or looking for inspiration.)

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO SIGN-UPS BELOW THE CUT:

1. Sign in to Ao3

If you don’t have an Ao3 account, contact the mods for help!

2. Go to the Black Emporium signup field (link)

3. Scroll to the “Requests” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationship:

Additional Tags: You can request fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting "any" is treated the same as selecting both.

Letter: If you have written a letter on an external website (such as Tumblr/Wordpress/Dreamwidth/Google Docs), you may link it here.

Description: Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you would like to see in a fanwork, both in general and for specific pairings. Good things to include (in this box, a letter, or both) are general likes and dislikes, preferred content rating, and Do Not Wants. Please remember to put your DNW's (do not wants) in the Ao3 sign up form - we can only take action if you put your DNW in your Ao3 sign-up form because it is the only thing we can absolutely guarantee that your creator will be able to access.

Remember that anyone who creates fanwork for you must respect your Do Not Wants. If you do not enter anything into this box, and you do not have a link to a letter, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s). If you have any preferences or things you do not want, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved.

Here are some things commonly put in the description box:

Likes/Wants:

- Frequently it can be considered helpful to your author or artist if they have some idea of what you like to see, and what you don't. For example:

I love F!Adaar/Sera because I think the idea of them merrily pranking their way around Skyhold is so much fun. Please don't write me something sad about them.

Do Not Wants:

- Stuff that makes you uncomfortable, or just plain stuff that is Not Your Thing. While the Black Emporium does not believe in kink shaming or otherwise insulting people for their own personal taste, we do want people to let their artists or authors know what their limits are. You don't have to give any reasons for this; "no x/y/z" gives your creator plenty of info to discern where your limits are.

We can only take action if someone writes you something against your DNWs if it is in your sign-up.

Prompts:

Prompts can be just about anything, but they're meant to be ideas that you'd like to see that can help give your artist or author something to work off of. Sometimes this can be a prompt or a question you'd like explored (for example: What if Solas found himself falling for M!Trevelyan? How would he feel about potentially falling for a human?) or an idea you'd love to see (Josie and M!Cadash snuggled up in front of a fire, please!) or just a few words of inspiration (Leliana/Josephine - secrets, lies, ravens).

Details about your character(s):

It is fairly common for people to give basic descriptions of their characters if it is a character where their appearance or personality may vary (ex: Wardens/Hawkes/Inquisitors), particularly if fanart is requested. These descriptions can be very basic indeed (ex: purple hawke), or extremely detailed (ex: This is Celeste Trevelyan, she loves her squad more than life itself, pink hair, dusky-rose skin, built like she could bench press you six ways from sunday).

Bucket Requests:

You may also use the description field to note additional pairings that you would be willing to receive. You may find this option helpful if you are willing to consider different Warden or Inquisitor backgrounds for your specified pairing that have been nominated. You are limited to an additional ten pairings specified in this manner. Please fill out the form entirely before filling in pairings manually in the description; those that you fill in in the relationship field (the first 30) will take priority.

Things you should not put in the description field:

“I would like anything but nasty [kink]. I think people who write that are gross and nasty.”

Please do not insult people who like something you dislike. It’s Not For You, and That’s Okay. “No [kink]” expresses this much better than a long explanation of why you don’t like [kink].

“I’m only choosing this to get to three nominations. Please don’t write it.”

While we know someone who signs up for a, b and z may want a and/or b more than z, but please don’t scream to your author or artist that what you may well match on is something you don’t want as much as other pairings. Writing something like this also reduces your chance at treats as well.

“Even though I said I wanted M!Solavellan, I’m fine with F!Solavellan too if you like that better.”

Please don’t tell people that you’d be alright with non-nominated pairings, as fics with only non-nominated pairings cannot be added to the collection.

Minimums and Maximums in Requests:

You are required to fill out a minimum of three request fields (Required: Relationship, Additional Tags; Optional: Letter, Description). Remember that you may put in one OR two relationships per request field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is thirty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 request fields, so if you fill 2 out with 3 requests in each "request box", Ao3 will still want you to add one more -- it's a good rule of thumb to fill at least three out with one request, then double up as you wish.

4. Continue to the “Offers” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationship:

Enter one, two, or three approved relationships that you would like to see in a fanwork created for you. This field will autosuggest approved pairings. If your pairing does not show up, it may be that you have fallen victim to a known bug of Ao3's that we cannot fix, wherein pairings in a tagset do not autofill. If this happens, simply type it in as it appears in the tagset. If it continues to give an error, please drop us a comment with the pairing so we can figure out what's going on. You also have the option to select any relationship.

By selecting “Any Relationship,” that means that you are willing to write or draw fanwork for, literally, ANY of the approved pairings.

The only limitation we will accept will be be a limitation of what category of relationship you want to create for: eg, Any F/F, Any M/M, Any F/M, Any Multi, Any Other, or Any Nonbinary. Anything else WILL BE REJECTED. You may NOT use this option to say, for example, “Any Cullen pairing”. This option is for any and all of the approved pairings in your designated category/categories. Do not use this option unless you are sure that any is truly what you want.

Additional Tags:

You can offer to create fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting "any" is treated the same as selecting both.

Comments for mods:

Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you will and won’t create. As with your requests, you can provide general likes and dislikes as well as things that you absolutely will not do. If there is someone signed up you absolutely cannot stand, please write "don't match me to x" here; we won't ask details, we just won't match and this will be a fully confidential field. If you hate nugs, put it here, and we'll make sure you get at least one nug-free prompt and, ideally, a nug-free sign-up. We want you to have an assignment you'll be happy about, so if you've got something that would be triggering for you to create for, let us know. We can only take action based on our own knowledge, so the more information we have the better we can try to match you with what you really want. If you do not enter anything into this box, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s) selected. If you have any preferences or do not wants, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved. None of the mods will blab over whatever you write; we just want you to have the best time possible with your assignment.

Minimums and Maximums in Offers:

You are required to fill out a minimum of three offer fields (Required: Fandom, Relationship, Additional Tags; Optional: Comments to mods). Remember that you may put in one or two relationships per request field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is twenty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 offer fields, so if you fill 2 offer fields out with 2 offers in each "box", Ao3 will still want you to add one more offer field even though you have one over the minimum required amount of offers -- it's a good rule of thumb to fill at least three offer fields, each with one offer, then go back and double up or not, as you wish.

Bucket Offers:

You may also use the comments to mod field to note additional pairings that you would be willing to write if you have already filled thirty slots. You may find this option helpful if you are willing to consider different Warden or Inquisitor backgrounds for your specified pairing. You are limited to an additional ten pairings specified in this manner. Once again, those filled in the actual relationship: tags will take priority over those written in, so choose which pairing goes where carefully!

A Note on Matching

Black Emporium runs on OR matching, which means that you will match on one relationship out of the ones that you offer and request. You are guaranteed to match on ONE relationship; you may match on more, you may not. For your assignment, you can write what you matched on OR you can write any other couple on their sign-up form. You will only have to write or draw for ONE request, not all of them. The minimums will be one piece of artwork or one 1,000 word fic.

#be_2021 #be_signups #be_announcements #be_rules

78 notes · View notes

hello-im-not-a-possum · 3 years

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2. twisted

The cartoon that came out of the machine was pretty as a picture, perfect in almost every detail, and had a bubbly, positive personality. But she was not what Joey had wanted Susie to become. (Set in an AU where Joey gets perfect toons from his freshly killed employees and STILL isn’t happy, the unpleasable bitch…)

“Progress report to GENT home office, Client; Joey Drew Studios.

With the addition of the new ink recipe to use in the machine, we have made an unbelievable leap in progress and have almost met our client’s expectations. What had started as a machine to mold life sized figures out of ink has now done things that border on being supernatural.

Although Mr. Drew seems unimpressed, even frustrated with the results at times, in spite of the fact that the models have come out identical to their cartoon counterparts.

The process of running the cartoon film through the machine for the figures to imprint on has been successful, but it looks like that unless someone goes through the trouble of making a short that only has ONE character in it, the machine picks what character it makes at seemingly random. That is our client’s complaint; that instead of being user chosen, the machine picks out which living, breathing, thinking ink models it makes at random. Upon working on this, if I were to be in the client’s shoes, I’d have several valid complaints regarding the machine and the models it created, but our client’s complaint… Is that the machine that doesn’t have a system that allows the user to pick and choose which model it makes yet creates a physically flawless model every single time, does not allow the user to pick and choose which model it makes. He never ceases to infuriate me.

On a sour note, there was an incident with the figure in the likeness of a character called ‘The Brute’. Upon its creation, it immediately went and broke our client’s leg in a very… well, brutal fashion too. But fortunately, it has not physically attacked anyone since The Cameraman figure was made as we have threatened to separate them if it keeps up that behavior. It still likes to insult people, and it still does things that unnerve me though. We’re hoping that the rest of the figures will be less violent and or creepy.”

Thomas clicked off the recording and sighed as he looked at the newly made report, there was no way he could submit this to his boss without someone sending in someone to make sure he wasn’t huffing in ink fumes and whatever the Studio workers smoked to consider any of this to be normal.

“Hey Tommy! I think I figured out the issue with the machine! Or rather, its fuel.”

The mechanic grit his teeth and turned to face his client.

“What? I wasn’t aware that there was a problem with it.”

“Why, Tommy, how could you forget? I’m talking about the figure deposit problem of course! Why did we get The Brute when we wanted to get Boris? Why did we get Cameraman when we wanted Bendy? The answer was so simple, why, it was even staring at us the entire time!”

“Uh huh…” Thomas did not look convinced. “And what was this issue?”

“The ingredients, the Ink of course! You simply can’t put blueberry pancake batter in an oven and be surprised when you get blueberry pancakes instead of blueberry muffins, We got those two knuckleheads before we got the real stars of the show because the souls used to make them weren’t fit to make those two, but the machine still did what it does best: made living cartoons.”

Tom had an uneasy feeling in his gut as Joey grabbed his arm and led him to the Ink Machine’s room. He felt like a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, he KNEW what went down in there! He knew the other ingredients, not well, per say, but for long enough to judge them and their characters.

He didn’t shed a single tear when Sammy was used in it, in fact, he was rather pleased with the results before it started acting out like that. He and the music director were almost always at each other’s throats for one reason or another. If you asked him, the ex-musician was strange, rude, clearly mentally unstable, and sometimes even cruel. And even if he wasn’t, his physical health had declined so much over his time at the studio that it was obvious that he would die regardless of whether or not he was put in the machine. Feeding Sammy to that machine was an act of mercy, really, and even if it wasn’t, it served him right to become a- err, The Brute and have him put the former musician in his place- put his villainous ways to a decent cause. Now if only someone could ensure for a fact that The Brute would behave...

Now the other ingredient, Norman Polk, was a different story. The man was old, weird and kinda creepy. On the surface, the man was an ideal candidate. Like Sammy, he would die anyway and nobody would miss him when he did. But on the contrary, he seemed like he still had some good years left in him. And while he was weird and creepy, he had been those things in an oddly endearing way that most of the studio had either liked or tolerated enough to not be bugged by it. The mechanic didn’t know how to explain it, that man reminded Tom of a mysterious, mostly-estranged relative that shows up out of nowhere and was always there for you even if you don’t always see him. So when the man snooped too much for his own good and had to be silenced… Tom could never look the resulting toon in the eye, or in his case, the lens.

But the mechanic couldn’t deny that it needed to be done, after all, the former projectionist was far too nosy for anyone’s sake. Nobody who knows the secret of the Ink Machine (or rather, it’s unconventional secret ingredient needed for its ink) should be free to wander the studio and spill the beans.

And a feeling in his gut was beginning to tell him that that was why he was the next on the chopping block.

He had built it, he learned what it would take to make it work, he had done what it took to make it work, and it was working now; No more models that would only move a tiny bit before collapsing into puddles! No more off model models! No more issues aside from x, y, z… -No more reasons for Joey to keep him alive when it was now too dangerous to his business…

A tiny voice at the back of his head told him it served him right. The creator of this unholy torture device would now be consumed by it, just like how the maker of the Brazen Bull was the first victim it claimed.

At this point, he was almost morbidly curious on who or what the machine would make him; would it poke fun at his past and make him that territorial junkyard guard, Canoodle? Would it ironically punish him for his greed by making him The Fat Cat of the show, Boswell Lotsobucks? Would it acknowledge that although he was a villain to the bitter end, he still tried to go clean only for demons to drag him back down his dark paths and make him into Charley? Thinking about it, any butcher gang member would be a good enough fit really.

He was a mix of relieved, disappointed, and horrified when he was brought into the room and saw the unconscious voice actress of Alice Angel strapped to a mobile operating table. Joey seemed to ignore his reaction as he proudly showed her off and began to monologue.

“Like Boris, Sammy was a musician, simple-minded, and was very loyal to those he considered friends until the bitter end. But what made Sammy more like the Brute then Boris- Aside from body type, obviously, was that Sammy had quite the short temper on him, one that got messed with often, and a tendency to hold onto a grudge that can’t be swayed away with a good meal or a bad joke… Just like our friend; the Brute.”

Tom stayed speechless as Joey continued his seemingly prepared and rehearsed speech.

“As for Bendy and Norman, well, it’s obvious that those too simply weren’t compatible in the slightest! Sure, they both have their mischievous sides, but that alone doesn’t make a man into a good imp… However, do you know who DOES have more in common with Mr. Polk? That’s right! A certain smart alec-someone who knows a thing or two about anyone, everyone, and everything whether he wants to or not. Someone with a darker, more jaded sense of humor than our little devil, someone who can lurk in the shadows, or in his case, ‘backstage’ for safety or to gather Intel, but be happy and proud to take the front stage when the need arises! ...Alright, I can see that Norman’s soul may have influenced the personality of our Cameraman, but at least he did it in ways that make sense to the character.”

The mechanic continued to stay silent as Joey continued.

“But the main point is: we know what to do to fix this little issue. If we want a main character, we need someone who embodies the soul of that character. And Ms. Campbell here said it herself; Alice is a part of her!”

“Joey…”

“Why, she’d be thanking us if she knew what was coming! This is a dream come true for her! She always seemed to be the happiest when she was singing our angel darling’s songs…”

As if he was snapped out of a trance, the mechanic pulled Joey to his face, gripping the animator’s arms tightly and shaking him up a bit.

“Joey! We can’t do this! Susie isn’t like Norman or Sammy. She’s young, healthy, and still has a lot to live for. Nobody would buy that she passed on from something out of the blue, or that she moved away without warning or telling anyone. Everyone in the studio loves her and talks to her frequently! If we do this, especially so soon, they will make the connection, and they will find out about this. It was bad enough when Norman went, imagine if someone as well loved as her went too!”

Joey just laughed and slapped Tom’s shoulder.

“Oh Tommy, all we need to tell them is that Susie got her big break and is Bringing Alice to life in ways never before seen! And to sell the illusion, also tell them ‘you know how those folks in Hollywood are with their schedules, always a bunch of busy bees.’ They’ll bite, you just have to trust me.”

“What if they don’t?” the mechanic argued. “What if they start snooping around and start to piece together what really happened to her?”

Joey’s smile wavered a bit, but remained steadfast.

“Well, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we reach it. And when we do, we’ll have our answer!”

“Nnnnggghhh…”

Both of them shuddered when they heard the voice actress start to stir awake.

“I swore I used stronger stuff in her drink…”

“...Jo...Joey..? ..Mr. Conner..?” The voice actress’s real eye widened in horror as she looked around, and her voice wavered as she grew more and more frantic. “WHat’s going on?! Where am I- Why am I tied up?!”

“S-Susie! Everything’s perfectly fine my dear, you just need to calm down a bit and I’ll explain everything…” He subtly jabbed Thomas in the ribs with his elbow. “Tommy!” He hissed “Throw her in the machine already!”

The frightened voice actress began to struggle against her restraints while Tom hesitated. Joey shot him a glare as he strolled up behind Susie and put a ‘reassuring’ hand on the weeping angel’s shoulder.

“Joey, please… let me go… Don’t do this to me!” Tears were running down the woman’s face, her voice was soft and breaking from her stress. “Just let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone…”

“Now, now, Susie, there’s nothing to worry about, yes I know this looks unsettling from your position… But you and Alice are going places, new, big places that most people only dream of seeing! You’re going to bring her to life in ways that will touch the hearts of generations!”

A flash of realization crossed her face.

“Joey… answer me this: when Sammy ‘died from untreated lung cancer’ did he actually die from lung cancer? And when Norman ‘died from a workplace injury’ did he really…?” her voice trailed off a bit with uncertainty before asking her third question. “Did their deaths have anything to do with those two toons that showed up?!”

Her questions were not answered by words, but with actions as the two men stuffed her into the machine. When it turned on, her screams echoed throughout the mostly empty studio, chilling all who heard them to the very bone.

When they finally stopped, the machine whirred and roared to life and Joey rubbed his hands together in glee as he watched the machine work its magic.

Thomas, on the other hand, stood in silence while staring at his hands as dread and guilt sank in his gut.

The former man’s smile fell into a look of confusion when he saw a pair of gloves with ‘X’ marks on them come out, followed by arms that connected to them. That look of confusion fell deeper into a frown when he saw the arms stretch, curl, and twist when the gloves reached the floor as if they were streams of ice cream coming out of the machine at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Alice didn’t have arms that curled and stretched, but Joey knew a certain demoness toon who did; Miss Twisted. He was cursing under his breath, of course it would complete their little trio before giving him what he wanted! Now he wasted his one shot at getting Alice!

The rest of the toon didn’t even get out of the damn machine, it was like she was taunting him by continuing to stretch her arms and let them continue to coil in piles on the floor instead of showing him the finished product.

Furious, he marched over and grabbed the toon demoness’s arms and yanked her out of the damn machine.

“Stop messing around!” He scolded before pausing and reapplying his signature smile. “Your friends Brute and Cameraman have been worried sick about you ever since their creation! You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting for you any longer than they’ve already been, right?”

He could’ve been imagining it, but he swore that she had a look of pure terror on her face before she put on a fake smile of her own. And was it just him, or was this Miss Twisted’s left eye slightly discolored, glassy looking, if that made sense for someone with pitch black pie-cut eyes. The grayer eye she had reminded him of Susie Campbell’s fake eye.

“Y-yeah! You’re right!” She pushed Joey out of her face, clearly uncomfortable by his staring but pretending to be perfectly fine. “I can’t keep my boys waiting for too long, who knows what they’ll do?” She chuckled nervously. “So… where are you keeping them? where are they hiding?”

“Tommy here will be happy to show you, just follow him and-”

“Thanks!”

The demoness chipperly chirped and swiftly yanked Thomas out of the room at a speed that almost insulted the man.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #Thomas Conner #joey drew #susie campbell #miss twisted #fanfic #ink demonth #murder warning

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shinneth · 4 years

Note

Spill the tea on Stevinel (just because I saw one for conniverse) And yes, I'm not on Anonymous. Because I'm a proud stevinel shipper and no one's going to stop me from loving it, also your blog is cool

And you know what? That’s the right attitude to have! People should be free to express what they ship without shielding themselves with anonymity. I don’t blame the people that do these days - antis are fucking dangerous people - but goddamn, people. It’s fiction.

So I commend you for shipping Stevinel openly and proudly! Hard to believe it’s actually considered a bold and brave move just to be open and honest about harmless preferences these days.

That said, I’m sorry it took so long to get to this. I felt you deserved an epic, given how unexpectedly successful my tirade on why Connverse is a shit ship with an undeserved golden reputation was...

But the truth is, even though I’m very much a Stevinel shipper, it’s definitely not my OTP.

And it’s very tricky for me to figure out how to spill the tea on Stevinel in a way that’s distinct from me doing the same with Stevidot.

Because, well, let’s face it: these two ships, beyond being very similar in nature, have also endured identical hardships from the fandom.

All the death threats Stevinel fans get from the raging antis for daring to ship something so “problematic/immoral/wrong/not Connverse”?

Stevidot fans have been treated that exact same way for years. And still are. For the exact same reasons.

Both Stevinel and Stevidot shippers are valid, but the fandom constantly turns a blind eye to Rebecca Sugar’s husband who also worked on the show outright saying gem x human ships are FAIR GAME.

And also turn a blind eye to the recent interview where Sugar herself stated that the gems are more like AI - a conclusion I and many others deduced ages ago just by how gems are portrayed in the show.

But by god, they’ll hang on Matt Burnett’s word that “grown gems” are a thing even though canon itself explicitly states that GEMS DON’T GROW.

Just like how despite Maya Petersen outright admitting that Aroace!Peridot is just her headcanon, people treat it like the fucking gospel now.

(no offense to anyone who’s committed to that particular headcanon - I just don’t really see it with Peridot in particular and it’s really fucking stupid to claim it’s 100% canon when the source herself explicitly said it wasn’t)

Well, it’s canon that Spinel kissed Steven and he didn’t turn into dust. And Steven was already well on his way down the path of self-destruction at this point in time; he would’ve gone monster whether this happened or not.

Also, how often does a character get the “heart eyes” expression for just a platonic love?

If there was ever a scene where Connie or Steven had heart eyes, no doubt most of the pricks would scream “YES!!!! UNDENIABLE PROOF THAT THEY’RE IN LOVE!!!”

But when it’s Spinel, suddenly it doesn’t count? Really?

How convenient.

There’s also the stupid idiots who saw the conceptual development of Spinel in that movie artbook and saw some vague color keys during a conceptual stage and claimed that Spinel was “family” to Steven - which of course must mean “related” and therefore must make Stevinel an incestuous relationship!

Which is bull. Also shit. It’s already common knowledge that gems don’t work that way. She was the designated playmate for Steven’s mother. Nothing more.

Of course, most gems who come in Steven’s orbit end up being sort of a family to him.

But everyone seems to have this impression that a gem being part of Steven’s family means they become additional surrogate mom figures.

And yeah no, that’s dumb and wrong. Garnet and Pearl are really the only ones I’d consider actual “mom figures”. Amethyst’s more of a big sister. Everyone else can vary depending on perspective, but I’ve never seen any of the other gems as anything close to a motherly figure for Steven. Any time I see shit about Lapis or Peridot being regarded as “gem moms” to Steven, I laugh my ass off. They are so not moms or any kind of authoritative figure for Steven. Bismuth at best is more of the fun-loving aunt.

There are more roles in a family than just a paternal/maternal substitute. In fact, I believe Steven has considered Connie to be part of his family well before they hooked up in canon.

(as a side-note, I love how people who are allegedly SO squicked out by age gap ships totally pardon Connverse - you guys realize Connie was 14 in Future, right? Possibly 15 depending on the time scale? There’s gonna be a point in the relative near future where Steven is 18 and Connie isn’t - why don’t I hear you assholes angst about that “atrocity”, huh?)

I honestly do consider the CG B-Team as part of Steven’s family, but more in a loose sense. But by that same token, I consider Connie as part of the family in a similar manner.

Especially since Spinel was shoved off to live with the Diamonds after the movie - and the Diamonds themselves have a very fucked-up relationship among themselves to the point where I honestly hesitate to put a familial label on it at all - it’s extra stupid to try and paint Stevinel as something with incestuous overtones when it clearly doesn’t.

Spinel does happen to be a perfect representative of how full of shit antis are about age gaps, though.

While Peridot’s age has always been left vague, we know she can’t be 5K or older due to being an Era 2 gem. Due to her utter lack of knowledge of Era 1 events (or being completely sold on the Diamonds’ propaganda) and her general inexperience with her own equipment - as well as her ability to quickly adapt to Earth - I always headcanoned Peridot as being especially young. Like, younger-than-Steven young.

Mostly because Peri’s attitude reeks of Gen Z - also because it’d be nice for a change to have a gem who isn’t thousands of years old like literally every other noteworthy gem in the show. We need a representative of gemkind who hasn’t been around for ages.

Of course, Spinel’s backstory proves that even if they went the boring route and made Peridot thousands of years old just like everybody else, it wouldn’t really mean much of anything. She’d be no less of a valid romantic option for Steven regardless of age.

Spinel is several thousands of years old, and the movie explicitly shows us what exactly that amounts to for a gem.

As I mentioned earlier, Sugar sees the gems more like AI. Spinel remaining in one spot for several millennnia, not moving an inch, not speaking to anyone, not seeing anything other than a gradually-deteriorating garden... yeah, and somehow, despite all that, Spinel’s still very childlike per her design. She had literally no room to mature or accrue life experience: Pink Diamond basically hit the pause button on her entire life.

Even though she’s several thousands of years old, through no fault of her own, Spinel’s mindset remained unchanged. It wasn’t until Steven inadvertently came into her life that she became twisted - understandably so after finally realizing she’d been abandoned by Pink.

But she still didn’t completely lose her true self. Spinel realized on her own that Steven didn’t deserve to suffer just because his mom was a negligent asshole. She also came to understand on her own that unlike Pink, Steven truly cared for her no matter what shit she threw his way.

Steven could give Spinel the care and attention she always deserved; something Pink totally denied her while deceiving her into wasting away with her abandoned playground. He could be the one to give Spinel the love she always deserved but was either denied or manipulated into believing she got.

Honestly, this is more than enough to warrant building something more between these two.

The age gap is irrelevant. The two have chemistry. They aren’t related.

(and honestly, this is fiction - these details are largely irrelevant in fiction anyway. I’m only bringing it up because it doesn’t take much research to find that every label the antis put on Stevinel is complete inaccurate Diamond propaganda bullshit)

Stevinel is FINE. Let people ship it if they want to!

Um... is that good enough?

Honestly, I’m not gonna lie: Stevinel’s pretty goddamned popular; so much that I’m a bit jealous of it. I enjoy the ship a lot, but I’ve been keeping it at arms-length all this time. I’m looking forward to when I can write my own brand of Stevinel interaction when I get to introduce her in my series, but that’s still a while to go.

Also, there’s almost zero Peridot/Spinel material, let alone my Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3. And Stevidot material is still hard to come by; I’m noticing Stevinel’s still quite a bit easier to find by comparison.

So in a way, I feel many other unpopular ships deserve some tea-spilling sooner than Stevinel because Stevinel at least still has a sizable fanbase. Same can’t really be said for a lot of similar ships here...

A lot of this can apply to other Steven x gem ships, honestly.

But I guess I haven’t been showing Stevinel much proper love due to my devotion to my superior SU-AU. I can only hope I can soon reach a point where I can have GA Spinel react to Steven, since their dynamic will be significantly different.

(and then one day I’ll finally make the Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3 fic!!)

Until then, I can only hope I did Stevinel some justice here!

#answered asks #ryan-spinel #stevinel #stevidot #steven universe #spinel #su spinel #shipping #spill the tea #peridot #su peridot

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kulemii · 3 years

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an unwarranted, not asked for (positive) rant about Yakuza 5

So, I get it. Yeah? In the grand scheme of the yakuza 5 plot, Aizawa definitely should not have been the final boss but he was (more on that in a different post). We gotta get over it. I'm not gonna waste a bunch of energy frothing at the mouth about how much better the story wouldn't been if the writers had done x, y, z.

I'm tired of ruining RGG games for myself by doing that. I'm nearing the end and there's a certain formula I've come to terms with that is in EVERY SINGLE GAME. So, imma just love it for what it is, write my lil fanfic and call it a day.

Yakuza 5's plot was convoluted and maybe even longer than it should've been but I still really enjoyed it.

If I'm honest, because 5 was so long, I got this odd sense that I would play it forever. So once it ended, I got pretty bummed out.

It's funny because as I came across aspects of the game that were unfamiliar I greeted them with a roll of eyes and a groan and without fail, I wound up loving whatever it was and wanting more of it.

I'm not a game reviewer. I can barely even write but I'm going to take a shot at talking about the things I loved about 5 that aren't really related to the plot. If ya wanna read my babbling, feel free but expect no semblance of order or structure. If ya want a proper game review, you won't find it here lol. I'll try to keep it spoiler free here and make a different post for when I talk about the characters specifically where I will wanna go into more detail.

Alright..

Graphics:

Visually, I think it looked pretty damn good. I played it on PC and had very few problems. There were times when it was a lil wonky. For example, some of the cutscenes looked like they were ripped straight from the PS3 version for a few seconds, especially if the camera was zoomed out from the subject. Sometimes, the blurring was very obvious to the point of it being eye catching but I don't know if that's just because of the time I spend editing that makes me pay attention to things like that or not. Another thing I took issue with was the glossiness of the eyes of some characters. Like, say, Kiryu. He looked like he was on the verge of tears for majority of the game and that broke some of the immersion (for me) when he's supposed to be threatening and tough.

Other than that, it was great. I loved the animation details. I'm a sucker for that sorta thing. All of the little facial expressions that are 'blink and you'll miss it' are right up my alley. Aizawa, I'm looking at you! I'm not scoring things but if I were, I'd call it a 10/10 for sure. 20/10 for Aizawa's facial expressions alone.

Gameplay:

Combat-- Booooy. The combat/progression system was a lot of fun. The training was engaging and I was (for the first time out of the ENTIRE franchise) thrilled to max out all the stats. The addition of the extended health bar and the Tatsuya health bars (idr what they're called) were great. Doing all the training, having the dragon gauge filled, the health bar doubled and the focus, strength and spirt bars filled brought something different to the combat that I really enjoyed. Kiryu and Saejima were OP'd af but I loved it. Kiryu and Akiyama's combat was very appealing and seamless (mostly). I preferred playing as them the most. Saejima was okay but nothing that really stood out to me, personally. Shinada's combat was extremely clunky though and unless I had weapons I enjoyed, I loathed fighting with him.

Side/sub stories-- this was one of those areas that I rolled my eyes at and then got fucking obsessed with once i got used to it (except Haruka's; I was looking forward to hers because I expected something different).

- Working as a Taxi driver? You kidding me? What the fu--Oh, damn. That's actually pretty neat-- Hold on, I get to race-- What?! I FINISHED IT?! ALREADY?!

-Seriously? Hunting? You've gotta be-- Oh that's that guy that that one tumblr acct is always posting about-- If I get rammed by one more fucking deer so help me-- Wait, I don't wanna leave the mountain yet!

-Don't even get me started on Haruka's. I get to watch Haruka do choreography to some fucking bops?? I get to dance to more bops in town??? I get to shake hands with creepy, sticky fans??? And read Haruka's sweet reactions to fanmail????? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!

One issue though is that I didn't get into Shinada's side story. The baseball thing was just not for me. In it's defense, everything else, I'd gone back and given it a chance and wound up loving them but I ruled this out from the get go. That's on me. It's probably great but nah.

I am really bummed that Akiyama didn't get a side story. One thing that I will complain about and give my unwanted suggestion is: if they didn't wanna give Akiyama a side story, they could've given him double the substories but that's just because I am a whore. SO no hard feelings.

Locations:

Nagasugai, Fukuoka-- was pretty. It gave a sense of serenity before Kiryu's ultimately dragged back into the fray. I enjoyed exploring it. The npcs were friendly and with that one bracelet, it was nice not having to fight random thugs every 2 seconds. I loved that one little quest where you have to go around collecting trash. That was oddly fun to do (the sfx were oddly satisfying too) and then going back to work and seeing Kiryu's progress on the board: Loved that. Kiryu's apartment was nice too. It was all clean and organized which was a shock because he was so clearly depressed. Buut that might've had something to do with the owner of that extra toothbrush thoooo.🤭

Tsukimino, Sapporo-- very nice! Prison and the mountain village didn't really offer a whole lot visually (imo) so it was a nice change of scenery. It was really pretty. The snow festival sculptures were super cute and I kinda wish that it played more into the story just so I could see what they'd do at such a festival. At the time of writing this, I just remembered that I forgot to go back to the snowball fight which is a bummer. Maybe I'll go do that.

Kin'eicho, Nagoya-- very unsettling. It was another factor that kinda encouraged me to speed through Shinada's route. It came off as really eerie, grimy and seedy. Perhaps that was an intentional, creative choice given the type of life Shinada leads but it was too off putting for my liking.

Sotenbori and Kamurocho-- tried and true. Loved them. Always gonna love them. But let me just take a moment to congratulate my husband on Kamurocho Hills turning out amazingly!! Job well done, babe. Love you! It looked great and it would've been so cool if I could've explored it outside of combat.

Music:

I expected nothing less from the Sega Sound Team but they did a fantastic job. I loved the music. Now, there were times where they'd play a cheesy song during a really corny scene that made me cringe a couple times buuut I have come to expect that so it was all good. Majority of the time, the music did a swell job of setting the tone and making the story that much more immersive. No major complaints from me. My personal favorites are: all of Haruka's songs (duh), 'Be the Star!!' and 'Comin' at ya, My girl.' I was pleasantly surprised to find on Spotify 'Be the Star!!' is 4:36. I have been playing it to hell. It's playing right now and what about it????

Overall:

Yakuza 5 was a fun time. When I sit here with all my thoughts and just accept it for what it is, it's a solid game in every sense and I genuinely take back anything negative I said when I first started getting into it. This comes at a surprise to myself but it's over taken Kiwami 2 as my second favorite game in the franchise, Yakuza 0 being number 1, naturally. I already have the urge to replay it which is refreshing because I stopped having that feeling after playing 3 and 4.

If there is one thing that I wish I could change about the game, is that there was so little Majima it made me sad, especially with the plot being what it was.

Anyways, if you're looking for a sign to play Yakuza 5. This is it. Go! Do!

Next post, I'll be talking about the characters that stood out to me that I'd like to voice my opinion on from 5.

#yakuza 5 #kulemiirants #thanks if you read this far ^^

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sweetkale · 3 years

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all evidence that points towards Magneto being Jewish before it was first explicitly established in 1991

!!None of this is my writing!! It’s a useful but outdated source that I merely revised to replace the G slur. It was written by Rivka Jacobs and the original can be found at http://www.alara.net/opeople/xbooks/magjew.html

The Magneto Is Jewish FAQ (revised 11/9/98)

Rivka Jacobs

(1) In Uncanny #113 (Classic X-Men #19), the added material has Magneto on Asteroid M, talking about the deaths of Magda, Anya, and he mentions Auschwitz for the first time. "I endured one death camp ... in Auschwitz ... I will not see another people fear what they do not understand and destroy what they fear." Uncanny #113 is from 1978. The additional scenes were included in 1988's Classic X-Men #19. So, we know Magnus was at Auschwitz, a death camp, not just a concentration camp. (Many fans [and writers] seem to get the two types of camps confused). There could have been a number of reasons he was at Auschwitz: he was a Polish political prisoner, a Russian prisoner of war, a member of the French underground, a homosexual from Germany, Roma, or, with a high probability, a Jew. (Out of 1.5 million victims of Auschwitz, between 1.1 and 1.2 million were Jews).

(2) In Uncanny #150 (one of my favorites) Magneto mentions, in a fight with Cyclops, "I know something of grief. Search throughout my homeland, you will find NONE who bear my name. Mine was a large family, and it was slaughtered ... without mercy, without remorse." So that eliminates German homosexual and French partisan, because the entire familes of such prisoners were not slaughtered throughout an entire "homeland." After Magneto thinks he has killed Kitty, he says: "I remember my own childhood ... the gas chambers at Auschwitz, the guards joking as they herded my family to their death. As our lives were nothing to them, so human lives became nothing to me." Storm is about to blast him for "killing" Kitty, and she says, "If you have a diety, butcher, pray to it!" Magneto answers, "As a boy, I believed. As a boy, I turned my back on god forever." So now we know that Magnus is not a political prisoner (German political prisoners were sent to camps on German soil, like Dachau, or Bergen-Belsen), he is not Polish, since whole Polish families were not herded to the gas chambers. The Poles were not the target of pre-meditated Nazi genocide. While the Russian people were the target of genocide, only Russian POWs were in Auschwitz, not whole families. So, we are now left with only two groups of people that Magnus could be from, the Roma and the Jews. Uncanny #150 is from Oct. 1981; already Magnus says something very interesting here. He says he "remembers" the gas chambers of Auschwitz, "remembers" his family being herded, he "remembers" the guards joking. Fact: no one remembers the gas chambers of Auschwitz except in two ways (or three if you believe the dead can speak to the living), either you were a Nazi SS guard or doctor or official, or you were a member of the Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommando, Jewish prisoners who were forced by the Nazis -- in all the death camps -- to do the dirty work of killing. It was Nazi official policy. The Jews, the lowest of the low to the Nazis, in Auschwitz hierarchy, followed by the Russians, and then the Roma, the Jews would be the ones to lead the victims to the gas chamber, to haul the bodies from the gas chambers to the ovens, to burn and bury the dead. The Jews would pull the teeth of the corpses, cut the hair, pile the bodies three at a time on the retorts of the ovens in just the right way. The Sonderkommando had a few kapos (overseers) who were German and Polish prisoners, criminals from civil prisons in Germany and Poland. During the summer of 1944, 19 Russian POWs from Mauthausen were sent to augment the Auschwitz Sonderkommando. Totally documented, on paper and by eye witness accounts. All other members of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando were Jews.

(3) In Uncanny #161, Sept. 1982, we have the story of Xavier's trip to Israel. There he meets Magnus for the first time. However, it should be noted that the entire story is a Charlie-dream, while he is with Lilandra. In Uncanny #161 we see for the first and last time Magnus' tattoo from Auschwitz. His number is #214782. Xavier says, "That tattoo, Magnus, were you ...?" Magnus answers, "Auschwitz. I grew up there." So now we know that Magneto was first in Auschwitz as a very young person, but we can't pinpoint the age yet. Also, his number is high for someone who was there from the beginning of the camp. The first Polish prisoners, like author Wieslaw Kielar, had very low numbers, like in the 200s. Sonderkommando survivor Filip Muller's number was in the 20,000s. He arrived in early 1942. Magnus' number is a standard number, however, without the A of the 1944 arrivals, or the Z of the Roma, or the other special classification symbols. Of course the penciller didn't know these details. So a standard Auschwitz number, which is too big, but it doesn't tell us anything.

4) Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Vol. 1, #4. Magneto has just found out Wanda and Pietro are his children. (This is from Feb. 1983). He is on the moon, in the Inhuman city of Attilan, telling VIsion about his youth. "I was born into a time and place ... Android ... where both man and mutant were persecuted for being ... different." Picture of the Auschwitz camp, guards tormenting emaciated prisoners, one of whom displays a very prominent and exaggerated Star of David on his clothing. Remember Jews and Roma were kept apart in the camp. In the next panel, however, Magneto sort-of goes into a fantasy. He says, "But unlike the other victims, I possessed the power to fight back." He imagines he's hurling Nazi tanks away with magnetic energy. What's this? In 1983, the reader doesn't know what to make of this. Keep in mind, he's meeting with Wanda, Pietro, Vision, and Crystal, and has held Luna for the first time. Is he exaggerating? Showing off for them?

(5) Now for the second most important comic proving Magneto is Jewish, Uncanny #199, Nov. 1985. Magneto with Lee Forrester and Kitty Pryde arrive at the National Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC. (It's not really Lee, but Mystique, trying to capture Magneto). Magneto has been having an affair with Lee, he loves her. He brings her to the Holocaust Memorial? Why? Fun date, huh? Why, because he has no other family. These people are his family. Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. (The Roma have their own name for the genocide, and their own gatherings, with their own rituals and customs. Magneto has no reason to go to a Jewish gathering if he isn't Jewish). Lee/Mystique says: "Man's inhumanity to man ... how easily the race kills." Magneto answers: "Then, Lee, it was the Jews. My nightmare has ever been that tomorrow it will be Mutants." Why would he say that, why wouldn't he mention another ethnic group, if he weren't Jewish? Next, Magneto tells Kitty EXACTLY how to address the gathering in order to get information about dead or missing family members. How does Magneto know how to do this? Isn't it obvious that he's done this before? Why would he address a Jewish Holocaust gathering looking for information about his family if his family weren't Jewish? (And it is a Jewish gathering, besides the use of the word Holocaust, a speaker says in the background: "... the systematic institutionalized extermination of one people by another."). Kitty asks about her great-aunt Chava, who died at Auschwitz, and Magneto is recognized by two survivors, Ruth and David Shulman, two Jewish survivors. (Shul is another name for synagogue -- Shulman means man of the temple, or man of the synagogue). They remember Magneto as a youth in Auschwitz, and say he helped them survive. And witness him as having been there. (No implanted memories, please). They testify that he " ... Had been at that accursed place from the very start..."

Later, Mystique reveals herself, and arrests Magneto in front of all these people. Magneto says that he recognizes no authority. "My land ...all the countries of the world ... turned their back on me and mine when we were condemned to Hitler's death camps. Therefore, in return, I have sworn to deny them." So let's clear this up ... the Roma were not persecuted in Greece, the Greek Jewish community was decimated. A small number of Roma and Jews in Rumania were exiled to a new border country called "Transnistria" but the remainder of the Roma were left alone. Several hundred thousand of them. 350,000 Rumanian Jews were savagely murdered throughout the country. In Slovakia, the Roma were left alone, the Slovakian Jews were among the first sent to Auschwitz. After the Slovakian uprising was crushed in 1944, several hundred Roma who had courageously helped in the rebellion were murdered, along with the remainder of the Jews of Slovakia. Bulgaria did not persecute its Romani people. Bulgaria, although resisting deportations of its Jews, persecuted them locally. In the Netherlands, only the "wandering" Roma who were captured in camps and wagons were deported, about 500. The remaining who had bought homes or found shelter with neighbors, were left alone. The Netherlands is where Gabrielle Haller comes from -- in under two years 100,000 Dutch Jews were deported, most were killed. I could go on. There is no other people who were hunted everywhere the Nazis went or had influence but the Jews. There is no other people who had the gates of escape cut off after the war started, but the European Jews. Magneto's reasoning is based on this most extreme situation.

(6) Uncanny #211, Nov. 1986. The Mutant Massacre. Page 9 -- Betsy Braddock has just come in from discovering what happened to a wounded Morlock, who has just died. Magneto, Storm, and Wolverine are standing there in Xavier's infirmary. Betsy says, "... I saw a cadre of super-beings ... massacring every living thing in the Morlock tunnels." Magneto reacts immediately, out of pure emotion. "NO! The horrors of my childhood, born again...only this time, Mutants are the victims, instead of Jews." What else does this mean? He's talking about HIS childhood, he's making a parallel. If he weren't Jewish, he wouldn't have said Jews, he would have said Roma. The two groups of people are not interchangeable.

(7) New Mutants #49, March 1987. Magneto is dreaming. It is an entire page representation of the massacre of his family. Here we see for the first time, his family -- father, mother, sister -- as they were gunned down in front of open graves. The family members are dressed in middle class urban clothes. No peasant dress, no Roma clothing. (And it is not a cliche. Roma women always wore, at this time, their flowing skirts and distinctive scarves and clothing, similar to the Bosnian women of today). Being massacred with Magnus' family is a mixed group of people. Men in bowler hats and suits, one old woman in a long skirt. One man in a bowler hat has the side-locks of the devout Jew, but the other people could be anyone. Poles or Jews or Roma. It's Magnus and his family who are out of place. They are well-dressed, Magnus's sister in a proper school uniform with the prim collar. Every picture I've seen of the German Rom show: a people of color, having left India and Armenia five- to six-hundred years ago, the men wearing Fedoras (favorite style of hat) and normal suits and ties, and the women and girls always dressed in the long skirts and distinctive flowered scarves. The boys wear a mixture of urban short pants but scarf belts, some have socks, some don't. New Mutants #49, page 17, could show some Roma in the crowd, but Magnus' family members are definitely not Romani in this picture.

(8) X-Men Classics #12, back-up story, Aug. 1987. The actual scenes of Magneto's escape from Auschwitz. "And with World War II ending... the Third Reich defeated...it's guards wanted no witnesses left...to tell the tale of this horror..." Picture of an SS soldier about to shoot a fallen and stricken Madga. "He had been there from the start ..." Magnus has just slammed a wooden beam into the head of the SS soldier. "Grown to manhood within its electrified barbed wire fence. If he was to die, it would not be in this abattoir ... and not without a fight!" Magnus grabs a terrified Magda by the hand and drags her with him in his escape. (a) The war is almost over, it is winter, it is the winter of 1944-1945. The Roma were gone by 1945. All the Roma women were gone. Only 4 clerks, high-status friends of Nazi officials in Camp I, were left. The Romani camp was murdered in the gas chambers in August 1944. (b) This scene, by Claremont and Bolton, is completely accurate. It takes place on Jan. 20, 1945, two days after thecamp was evacuated and the Death marches began. Some 70 of the Sonderkommando were kept to help destroy the evidence of the death factory, before they were to be killed. Some 200 women from the woman's camp, Jews, were chosen to fill in the huge pits where bodies were burned. They had to haul ashes, break up human bones, all in the coldest part of winter. The SS soldiers sent back on Jan. 20th were sent to kill the women. That is exactly what you see in this comic book, because Claremont and Bolton took the time and cared enough, to do their research. Magneto was saving Magda becasue at that point, he wasn't the target, yet. If they were out by the burial pits to the northwest of the camp, that is a point close to the forest. It just makes sense.

(9) New Mutants #61, March 1988. On page 22, Magneto is alone, kneeling over the dead body of Doug Ramsey, thinking thoughts only the reader can see. This is one moment he would not misrepresent anything, to himself especially. He says, "An ill wind is coming ... they are registering mutants ... like they once registered my people in Poland ...! Who knows what horrors await us." Only the Jews were registered, and forced to wear armbands with the Star of David on them, in Poland (at the end of 1939). Efforts to murder the Polska Roma (the Polish Roma) began in 1942, but they weren't registered first. Young Magnus wouldn't have known about any of that in any case-- he was already at Auschwitz by 1942. He would only have known that "my people" the Jewish people in Poland, including the German Jews who had already been deported there in the first months of the War, were registered.

(10) Classic X-Men #19, March 1988, back-up story. Magneto is apparently working for the CIA hunting Nazis. He is about to be betrayed by them, and his lady love of that time, Isabelle, is about to be murdered. But as he is apprehending a Nazi war criminal he gets one of his massive headaches. "Pain," he thinks, "again indescribable." "Worse than the bite of the kapo's whip. The murder of parents and family, the death of a child ... the loss of a beloved wife!" So here we see that Magneto was the victim of kapos. He could not have been a kapo. He was too young anyway, as we've seen. He grew up in Auschwitz. Here he says the murder of parents, and family. The parents separate, gunned down. The remainder of his family, no doubt sent to the gas chambers later, while he was in the Sonderkommando. Remember what he said in UX #150, his entire family wiped out. So as a Jew in the Sonderkommando he not only watched his family die, he helped kill them. How can any other comic book character ever come close to Magneto for dramatic intensity, but only if he is a Jew.

(11) X-Factor Annual #4, 1989. Doom challenges Magneto to a duel of wills, with a helmet that pulls out unpleasant memories and torments the wearer. Who will crack first? Magneto takes his turn -- Doom describes what he sees, "...after the ignoble defeat of the Nazis in Germany, you and the woman Magda you rescued, fled the prison camp Auschwitz, in Poland."

"Auschwitz, where your family had perished --living skeletons -- and you had grown to manhood amid horrors most men could not conceive." First, Doom confirms that Magnus and Magda "fled" or escaped Auschwitz before liberation and after the Roma camp was murdered. Then he describes some of Magneto's family perishing, as living skeletons, at Auschwitz. They could either have been kept as prisoners, or brought in, starving, from ghettoes in Poland and gassed. They could have been either Roma or Jews. But then it's Doom's turn to wear the helmet. Doom's Romani heritage is discussed at great length. Doom is proud to be a Rom, he knows he is a Rom. Why would he not acknowledge that Magneto is also a Rom? Why did he say your family, implying your people, to Magneto? Not "our" people?

(12) And now the most important evidence, and just about my favorite X-Men comic, Uncanny #274, from March 1991. In the Savage Land, the entire comic is told from the point of view of Magneto. It is a first person narrative, he is talking directly to us, the readers. He is not exaggerating, he is not showing off. The writing is elegant and wonderful ... "My life's ambition has been to safeguard my fellow mutants," Magneto says. "Zaladane has no such compunction. And I hear the echo of Der Fuhrer's voice in the radio of memory, smell the awful stench of the sick and dying as the cattle cars brought the comdemned to Auschwitz. I wear red, the color of blood, in tribute to their lost lives. And the harder I try to cast it aside, to find a gentler path ... the more irresistibly I'm drawn back. I should have died myself with those I loved. Instead, I carted the bodies by the hundreds, by the thousands ... from the death house to the crematorium ... and the ashes to the burial ground. Asking now what I could not then ... why was I spared?!" So there it is. He describes his job at Auschwitz. That is it. This is no vague job description, this is what the Sonderkommando did. This is fundamental to the history of the Holocaust, to the history of Nazi Germany. Making the Jews the ones who had to do all the dirty work in the death camps.

Marvel cannot say they have their own version of Holocaust history. What kind of reasoning is that? Where do the editors and writers of Marvel get off making up their own history of the Holocaust? Where do they draw the line? Has any reader out there ever seen any major publisher or entertainment outfit, outside Neo-Nazi groups and the Militias or Far Right Splinter groups, who just took it upon themselves to change a Jew into a Romany and change Holocaust and Auschwitz history to make it fit? Magneto says it here, he was a member of the Sonderkommando. He was not a kapo. He was not a Russian POW. He was a Jew! On page 14 of UXM #274, Magneto is dreaming again. He again sees his family being gunned down. He again feels what it was like to be buried alive. Rogue wakes him up.

(13) Uncanny X-Men #275, April 1991, which concludes the Savage Land story from UXM #274, referred to above, also contains confirmation as to what happened to young Magnus. Magneto says, directly to the reader, in diary-like narration, as he uses the last strength of his emaciated body to push away his captors, "They think me beaten, finished. A mistake many have made in the past. As I found the strength, as a boy, to survive being machine-gunned and buried alive, and later the unimaginable horror of Auschwitz ... so do I find it in me, here and now, to break free."

(14) X-Men Vol. 2, No. 2, Nov. 1991. The beginning of the end for Magneto. But on page 24 he says to Moira MacTaggart, who has seemingly betrayed him, and enraged him, "Of course not. You worked for the betterment of the world and the race. I heard those same rationales as a boy, in the Auschwitz Death Camp. From Dr. Joseph Mengele himself!" Mengele's first victims were the Roma, he liked the Roma. He brought the children candy and extra food. And in August of 1944, after trying unsuccessfully to save the Romani Family Camp (also for his own experimental purposes) Mengele obeyed his orders and vigorously hunted down and helped exterminate all remaining Roma. He then dissected those of most interest to him, and sent body parts to Berlin. Then he turned his attention to the Jews of Auschwitz. Only his Jewish victims have survived. His Romani victims, those transfered out of the camp in the spring and summer of 1944, have rarely come forward. If Magneto is alive in Auschwitz after the start of 1945, and he personally heard Dr. Mengele, he is a Jew.

Magneto is a Jew especially since Mengele would have been one of his supervisors in the Sonderkommando.

(15) X-Men, Vol. 2, No. 3, Dec. 1991 -- Magneto to Xavier, "You speak to the best in humanity. I have endured the worst. You imagine the reality of the Holocaust, of the Nazi Death Camps. I grew up in one." Magneto says The Holocaust. This is the translation of SHOAH, and was first used after the war, and popularized by Eli Wiesel. It means the Jewish Holocaust. One can say the Romani genocide, and today sometimes you'll hear the Romani holocaust, or the Russian holocaust, or the holocaust perpetrated against the mentally ill and the handicapped. (Nazi pre-meditated genocide was really only carried to the fullest extreme against three groups, the first were the mentally ill and the handicapped, who were the first victims of genocide. The second and third groups were the Jews and the Roma). But the Holocaust is what Jewish people say when they refer to the calculated campaign of Nazi Germany to kill every Jew in the world. (They actually made lists of every country in the Western world, and all the Jewish populations. They made no such list for any other people). Nazi Germany succeeded in killing almost 6 million of their foremost victims, until the Third Reich was defeated.

(16) X-Factor #92, July, 1993. Havok and X-Factor are battling Cortez and the Acolytes, in this opening chapter of Fatal Attractions. Cortez is ranting about the "flatscans" and how mutants have to subjugate them. Havok says, "Out to destroy the "inferior" race ... in Magneto's name? Don't you know what an insult that is to the memory of the very man you claim to worship? Fifty years ago, Magnus barely survived a Holocaust that destroyed almost all of his people: all because some lunatic took it upon himself to decide who deserved to live ... and who didn't. Where's the sense in resurrecting that kind of evil ... in the name of one of its victims?!" Cortez answers, "You've seen this place Havok! You've seen the sentinels! You tell me ... where's the sense in letting the flatscans do to the mutants what Hitler did to the Jews? ..." Cortez has done research on Magneto, he says the Jews, as a parallel metaphor. Why say that, if Magneto isn't Jewish?

(17) Then comes the infamous Unlimited #2. This is a long and involved FAQ I've got going here, so I won't go into detail at the moment. But the bottom line is, everything that Gabrielle Haller says about Magneto's history is false. I don't want to go line by line over it now. Everything! Danzig was not annexed. It was a Free City, under League of Nations protection, that voted itself a Nazi government and welcomed the Nazi troops in like liberators. Gauleiter Forster, the extremely anti-Semitic Nazi leader of Danzig ordered all 10,000 Jews of Danzig to be kicked out of the city in 1939, not the Roma. The Jews. Auschwitz wasn't opened as a Polish political prisoner camp until the summer of 1940, not 1939. The Roma were sent to German municipal camps, in Germany and the Greater Reich, as early as 1933. But they were not sent to Auschwitz from Germany until 1943. The only people who were in a work camp in Auschwitz before it opened were 300 Jews from the town of Auschwitz who were forced to transform a collection of horse stables and army barracks into the Polish prisoner camp. "Genocide, extermination ..." of Poles? No. The Polish people suffered terribly, and were considered "sub-human" by the Nazis. Millions of Polish citizens were killed throughout the course of the war, as soldiers, as slave laborers, as underground fighters, as members of the intelligentsia. But this was Nazi suppression of a conquered country, not planned genocide. Roma, Yes. The homosexuals, no. Not genocide. Persecution and imprisonment. Treated terribly. But people weren't sent to the gas chambers just because they were homosexuals. And "intellectuals" ? (How could Nicieza have written this?) Intellectuals were targets of genocide? Well, I hardly think so, since Goebbels, and Albert Speer, and even Mengele were considered intellectuals.

No one was sent to the gas chambers, or was shot in an open grave, or was tortured and murdered JUST because they happened to be an intellectual. Thousands of Polish citizens who were members of the intelligentsia (the educated class, the vanguard or elite of the educated class), were murdered in the first months of the war. But there was no planned campaign to hunt down every intellectual in Europe and exterminate them. The mentally ill and handicapped, the Jews, and the Roma were the primary targets of Nazi genocide. The Russians came next. Everything Haller says about Magneto in Unlimited #2 contradicts most of Magneto's history as presented in 15 years worth of comics.

(18) Until recently, when, in Road to Onslaught, Marvel once again published that outrageous Gabrielle Haller speech about Magneto like they were proud of it (??) the next references in the Age of Apocalypse comics portrayed Magneto once again as Jewish. In X-Men Vol. 2, No. 40, where David Haller, Legion, pulls Magneto's memories out, you see young Magnus with the men, standing behind and below a high, barred window. This is an accurate portrayal of the quarters of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz I. At Auschwitz I, only the Sonderkommando (other than prisoners awaiting execution) were kept in isolated basement cells, the windows of which were high, barred, and as seen from the outside, half-below ground level.

And why is Magneto in Israel anyway? How could he have come there? Well, why would a Romany go to Israel when at least 30,000 Roma lived in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s? And many more Rom formed a thriving community in Paris. Why not just go home to his own clan and tribe? Roma have a complex system of extended familes, clans, and tribes. Why go to Israel to "find himself" or find his "soul"? A German Jew had no place to go but somewhere else. A Polish Jew definitely had no place to go back to, since some Polish fanatics continued to murder returning Holocaust survivors well into the late 1940s. Any Jew can emigrate to Israel, under the Law of Return. All Magneto had to do was show them the tattoo on his arm. And he was home. (And in case some of you were wondering, as some of us have discussed, with the exception of the Muslim Bosnians, only the Jews of Europe practiced circumcision. It was a religious rite, not a medical procedure. Only Jewish men and boys were circumcised among the prisoners at Auschwitz. The Nazis already knew what Magneto was. He was chosen for the Sonderkommando, he was Jewish. He was not pretending to be a Jew. He wasn't misidentified as a Jew. He was a circumcised, young Jewish man). Furthermore, Magnus at this time had forged papers, that identified him as "Erik Magnus Lehnsherr." He could have immigrated to any country in the world, including the United States! If he were Roma, and didn't want to self-identify as such, why not go to America? Why go to the one country that represents enormous pain for modern Roma -- i.e., the Rom today deeply resent the focus on Israel, and the support Israel enjoys among nations of the Western world, while the Roma continue to be persecuted and ignored.

(19) In Astonishing X-Men #3, formerly Uncanny, from May 1995, we have the most clear reference to Magneto's being Jewish, written by Scott Lobdell. Magneto has just hit Bishop, and is helping him to his feet. He says, "Long before Xavier died ... before this point of divergence ... I stood by helplessly as millions of my people were led to slaughter in the name of 'genetic purity." Now the AOA is not a what-if story. It is a divergent timeline. Magneto says, before the timeline diverged. What other people were lead by the millions, led to the slaughter, in the name of genetic purity? Many people suffered and died in World War II. 250,000 to 500,000 Roma were murdered. Millions of Russians and Poles during the course of the invasions, and in political violence, and in acts of pure murder, were exterminated. But only the European Jews were "led to the slaughter" in the millions because of one man's racial beliefs. Only the Jews of Europe Persecutionand incarceration are not the same as genocide and extermination.

20) X-Men #72, cover date February 1998, published in mid-December 1997. This comic book makes a significant contribution to Magneto's history. Basically, the book reveals that the name *Erik Lehnsherr* which was revealed by Gabrielle Haller in Unlimited #2 to be Magneto's real name, is fake, and so Haller's assertion that Magneto is a *Sinte* Rom was based on false and forged identity papers.

The scenario begins with Gabrielle Haller, lying on her bed, working on a lap- top computer, writing the American Sen. Kelly, begging him to help find and secure the release of Charles Xavier. Sabra, the Israeli super-hero, a mutant and Mossad agent, suddenly appears floating in the air outside Haller's balcony doors. Haller has just pushed open the doors, saying, "You're too important to lose, Charles. I will see you ... FREE?" And Sabra says, "Sometimes, Ambassador Haller ... freedom, like the truth, is little more than an illusion. Don't you think?"

Sabra has come to Haller with information. She says to Gabrielle Haller: "I"m sure you recall shocking the world when you announced that you had UNDENIABLE proof ofMagneto's identity as Erik Lehnsherr. The undeniable has just been DENIED." Sabra then goes on to show Haller, and the readers, the file on a master forger named George Odekirk. In this file, apparently, is a computer analysis of the identity papers of Erik Lehnsherr, which shows that Odekirk forged those documents. Haller says, "He created Erik Lehnsherr? If this is true ... you must take me to him! He could be our only link to Magneto's true identity ... our last chance to stop him once and for all!"

But just as Sabra is flying Haller to the Transylvanian Alps, to meet with Odekirk, the scene switches to Odekirk, who is working on another forged passport, sitting in bed while his wife sleeps beside him. Suddenly, Odekirk looks up -- he has a visitor. It's Magneto, in full costume.

Magneto is floating in the air. He surrounds Odekirk's bed with his magnetic energy, and uses his power to keep Odekirk's wife unconscious. He says, "You failed me." Odekirk responds, "Please ... please, my wife ..." Magneto answers, "She will sleep the sleep of the innocent. She has done nothing ... but you ... YOU, my friend, have BETRAYED me." Odekirk protests his innocence, and then Magneto makes this remarkable speech: "Do you remember what you promised me the night I came to you, torn and filthy, nearly a quarter century ago? I was searching for my beloved MAGDA, determined not to lose her as I had lost so many others in the fire that engulfed all of Europe during my childhood. The authorities were in pursuit of me for the "crime" of avenging my daughter's murder. I was willing to deny who I was ... everything that my family died for ... so that I could find one woman ... so that I would not be caged AGAIN. The Erik Lehnsherr fabrication was a convenient means of ensuring that. You swore that the forged papers were FLAWLESS, that your skills were unsurpassed... but now, you have proven to be a liability. Your work has been called into queston by my enemies, and they will trace Erik Lehnsherr the Sinte BACK to you." Odekirk protests, "That is impossible! That forgery was impeccable! My work is ... " Magneto answers: "It was not ENOUGH! You gave birth to Erik Lehnsherr, Odekirk. And tonight, you have killed him. My secrets shall die with him. All that remains now ... is MAGNUS."

This scene says, subtly but clearly, that Magnus denied who he was, gave up everything his famly died for, to take the false identity of a Sinte Rom named Erik Lehnsherr. Since this entire FAQ has gone into great detail showing exactly how and why Magnus was born Jewish, it seems there is no doubt now, that Magneto's family and he himself, were Jews. Magnus would not say he denied *everything* his family died for, by taking a Romani identity, if his family were indeed Roma. As I pointed out above, only the Jews and Roms were targeted as entire peoples, and killed for no reason other than they were Jews and Roms. Magnus was either one, or the other. Since in XM #72, it is revealed that he is NOT a Rom, we must conclude he was born a Jew.

There are several continuity problems that arise from the revelations of XM #72. Several unanswered questions:

1) How much of Haller's speech (Unlimited #2) was based information contained in Odekirk's forgery, how much was based on what she personally knew, and how much did she "fabricate" herself? She makes a large number of mistakes, about nearly every aspect of Magneto's history and life. She also gets her Holocaust history and dates wrong. Did she perhaps add her own *facts* to what she found in those old identity papers? Was she perhaps trying to make the story coherent? As in, trying to make what she knew about Magnus and his history fit what she learned about *Erik Lehnsherr*? For example, where she says, on page 19 of Unlimited #2, "...Lehnsherr had taken to calling himself MAGNUS ... as if by choosing his MIDDLE name, he could bring some semblance of BALANCE and SIMPLICITY to his haunted life." This is Haller's supposition -- the reason he was calling himself MAGNUS in Israel. She knew him as Magnus back then, she had just found out, his full name was supposedly *Erik Lehnsherr.* Did she try to splice together the information?

2) While XM #72 makes it clear why Magnus cloaked himself in this false identity and ethnic background initially, what is not so understandable is why he continued to maintain that false identity after his search for Magda was over, and he immigrated to Israel. Did he use the forged *Erik Lehnsherr* passport to enter Israel? Why would he use a false identity and ethnic background to enter Israel, when he was a Jew?

3) Why would Magnus continue to use the Erik Lehnsherr identity during the Age of Apocalypse, especially since he publicly identified with being a Jew? (Astonishing X-Men #3, quoted above.)

4) Magnus worked for at least one intelligence agency, most likely the CIA (Classic X-Men #19). He then hunted dangerous mutants, for his own mysterious purposes, as shown in a brief cameo in Generation X #10 -- which was a memory belonging to Sean Cassidy, telepathically accessed by Emma Frost. During the time he was working for the CIA, his code-name was Magneto. In Classic X-Men #19, he is called only Magneto. In Generaton X #10, Interpol agent Sean Cassidy doesn't know who the man is who is helping him track down Arcady (the future Omega Red). Emma Frost, commenting from the present as a psionic guide to Cassidy's memories, calls the man *Erik Lehnsherr.* But the question is, after he left Israel, did Magnus use the false identity Erik Lehnsherr?

5) During the time that Magneto tried to follow Xavier's path, roughly from UXM #196 through UXM #253, and New Mutants issues #35 through #75, including UXM #188, NM #21, #23, #24, #26, #28, and #29, he referred to himself as Magnus, and others like Storm and Kitty Pryde called him Magnus. Even though he was disguised as Michael Xavier for the outside world, the X-Men and their associates all knew Magneto as Magnus. During this time, Magnus also identified strongly with his Jewish and Jewish Holocaust history. The question now is, what happened to the *Erik Lehnsherr the SInte* identity during this time?

6) Why, now, after so many years, did Magneto find it necessary to kill George Odekirk in order to protect his identity? We know why he took the false name and ethnic background to begin with. But we have no evidence that he continued to use *Erik Lehnhserr*, during each stage of his pre-Magneto career. After he became Magneto, after all the battles with the X-Men, after the events of Fatal Attractions, after the mind-wipe and the appearance of Joseph, after Onslaught, why would Magnus be so concerned with protecting his true identity? Was he trying to protect the memory of his family? Has he maintained contact with pre-Holocaust family grave sites, or places where he once lived? Is he worried that the very bones of his ancestors might be violated by those looking for his genetic material? Then there's Anya, his beloved daughter -- she was never Anya *Lehnsherr*. Her last name is now unknown -- is Magneto trying to protect something concerning her? George Odekirk wouldn't be the only witness to Magneto's true identity, either. What about those Carpathian villagers, who accepted Auschwitz escapees Magnus and Magda in 1945? Did anyone in Vinnitsa who knew Magnus' true last name survive his burst of electromagnetic radiation? What about Ruth and David Shulman, who knew him at Auschwitz, and recognized him, in UXM #199?

These, and other unanswered questions, remain.

By removing the *Erik Lehnsherr the Sinte* identity, fixing that particular retcon from Unlimited #2, and leaving the rest of Magneto's history intact, writer Joe Kelly and editor Bob Harras have not officially stated that Magneto was born Jewish, and was a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. But, as was the case during the years Chris Claremont wrote the character, the references to Magneto's Jewish identity are there, subtle and at the same time, obvious.

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atlas-the-worldbuilder · 3 years

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Final thoughts on Pokemon Sword/Shield

So in case you weren’t aware (which is most of you, I’m sure), a few months ago I started a Pokemon Shield blind Nuzlocke Run. And recently, I completed the main portion of the Nuzlocke by defeating the Champion. Having played through the game, though, I thought I’d give my final thoughts on it as a Pokemon fan, a gamer, and as a storyteller.

The Story & Characters

In all honesty, I rather enjoyed the main story of this game. The Pokemon League has always been presented like a professional sport (at least in the anime/cartoon), so it’s fun to see the games taking that perspective and rolling with it. It felt like an actual tournament/championship, to compete for the title in an officially organized manner, rather than just running a gauntlet of preset combatants.

In addition, I liked how they incorporated both the gym leaders and our rivals into the league story as not only combatants, but also as individuals with their own lives and aspirations. Marnie and Team Yell are adorable, Hop is... mostly tolerable, thus far, but by far my favorite rival character has been Bede, the Psychic/Fairy trainer. His haughty and prideful demeanor make him a delight to defeat, and his arc is a wonderful story to see unfold. I’m really curious to see what he gets up to in the after-story! The Gym Leaders are also fun to meet and battle; the Pokemon games as a whole have been gradually attempting to give more and more character to each of the Gym Leaders you meet, beyond just trials to overcome on your journey to victory. And while I always have a soft spot for the Hoenn & Sinnoh gyms, I like that they opted to have the Gym Leaders return in place of having more Elite Four members to fight I only wish I could get more opportunities to get to know them better, cuz there’s some standout leaders from this batch which I truly enjoy!

My biggest complaint with Sword/Shield’s story, though, has been the “Heroic Quest” plotline which has become increasingly common these days. I like the character of Sonia the researcher, and Oleana is satisfying to watch lose, my biggest complaint has been the pacing of the plot; the first 2/3rd’s of the story are us teaming with Sonia to gradually get the backstory revealed to us, and then in the last half hour, right as the Tournament’s getting underway, all the villains suddenly crawl from beneath the floorboards and run amok while you have to chase them down! There didn’t feel like there was a proper buildup explaining why the villain wanted to summon the legendary Pokémon, especially one which we heard next to nothing about! This brings about an interesting idea, however... what if instead, they had completely forgone any Legendary-Summoning stories until after the league? Honestly, I was way more invested challenging the gyms and fighting the champion than I was stopping the literal POKEMON APOCALYPSE from happening... so what if for future games, they saved those for after you became champion? As a sort of test of your skills, to prove your worth to bear the mantle you have taken! Maybe it wouldn’t have meshed well, maybe they needed to show of the game mascot more, I dunno... it’s just my thoughts.

The GamePlay

THEY FINALLY LET US TURN OF THE GODS-FORSAKENED TUTORIALS!!! PRAISE THE ALL-FATHER!!!

Ahem... In all honesty, I think I’d grown a bit too used to the 2nd screen of the DS-series games, but after a couple days of getting used to the mono-screen style again, I am pleased to say I found it very easy to settle back into. Though there are still some features I wish would make a return (the HM moves as opposed to public transportation, poison’s effect while walking, wild double battles, etc.), there are alot of fun mechanics introduced and remedies to older problems that have been introduced!

I think one feature which hasn’t had much said about it is the introduction of the Poke-Jobs system; this system allows you to send your Pokémon out on timed “away missions” to gain both experience and items. In the old days, if you wanted to passively level your pokemon, the only real option you had without introducing a second player was the Daycare center, and they could only raise two pokemon at once... and you had to pay for it. With Poke-Jobs, though, I can send anywhere from 5-10 teammates out for whatever amount of time I want them to be out for, and then come back later to see them lively and with goodies to show for their work! At first, I didn’t think I’d get much use out of this system; I, like many players out there I’m sure, prefer to guide my pokemon’s training personally, honing their movesets and guiding their levelling and points the way I want from them. But as I progressed further in my Nuzlocke, and as my daily life became busier and busier, I found myself sending my backup teammates out on jobs to keep them on par with my main team. Given that the Move Deleter/Tutor and Name Rater are now services that have been rolled into the Pokemon Center, yet another good thing this series has done, I found it much easier to keep my reserve Pokemon prepared in case I needed a substitution. Some Nuzlocke “Purists” may call that taking the easy way out, but... frankly, I don’t have the willpower to do that much grinding. I’m here to play a game and have fun doing it, dammit.

The Wild Area is another thing I’ve wanted to see from Pokemon for a long time - taking more steps to make the regions seem like an open world, with vast sprawling environments full of pokemon and secrets to uncover. I’ll admit, though, the execution is... not entirely perfect. While open expanses are fun to explore, the Wild Area did seem a bit... flat to traverse. And while the weather mechanics translating into battle are fun to deal with, the same sets of wild pokemon appearing did start to wear me down. I think what the Wild Area really needed, in the long run, was a system similar to how Black/White/Black2/White2 did - having seasonal progression ingame, where different pokemon would show up during different seasons, making the different places unique and novel all over again throughout the year. And for the record, many of my gripes with the Wild Area were addressed in the Isle of Armor’s expansion island. VASTLY superior, and much more fun to navigate and traverse.

...I’ll openly admit this: I was not a fan of Mega Evolution when it was first introduced in X/Y. I felt it was fine enough to see Pokemon battling without power boosts or “digi-volving” or whatever you wanna call it. When Sun/Moon Introduced Z-Moves, it felt like a step in the right direction, but at the same time, I ended up not using it very often. If I had to have a power boost to my pokemon, I would want it something that couldn’t be used as a crutch when the going gets tough - something that has a limited usability, and offers benefits specific to the time it’s being used. I say this because I initially approached Dynamax the same way: as just another power boost to level the playing field and shake up the battle meta which I don’t keep track of. However, after barely surviving all 8 gym leaders without using a single dynamax pokemon, I decided to give it a chance: after having completed the Isle of Armor’s subplot and gaining access to the Max Soup, I fed it to my Toxtricity Spike, and started running dynamax raids. As I started using it more and more, I started gaining a certain appreciation for it that I hadn’t before; this was something written in to being a unique cultural effect! This literally is imagining Pokemon as Kaiju! And for the most part, it works! While I still feel mega-lvl-power-boosts in pokemon are a huge waste, at the very least I can say Dynamax didn’t leave me with too bad a taste in my mouth. I do hope, however, that Dynamax stays a Sword/Shield exclusive power; given it’s cultural importance in Galar, and how Mega-Evolution was in the previous generation, I think having power boosts specific to regions works better than having the same stuff used across the board for every meta onwards,

What Do I hope for the Future?

I can’t say for sure if they’ll release a sequel game for Sword/Shield, but if they do... I would want them to make these minor changes:

Hold off the Heroic plot for after the League plot; devote the main first half of the game to just the gyms and league story like was done here, and then save meeting uber-god-tier Pokémon for after you’ve claimed the title of Champion.

Having said that, fix the pacing of how the Eternatus/Darkest Day subplot feels as it’s being played out. Offer us more insight into Rose and Oleana’s mindsets as they go about their business, and give us more coherent exposition from our field trips with Prof. Sonia.

Fix how the Wild Area looks - give it more variations for each sub-region and offer more varieties of habitats, like in the Isle of Armor. Or, alternatively, try to implement a seasonal mechanic to make the same areas change over the year, opening new paths and new avenues to explore!

Let Bede defeat Oleana. Give my boy some closure.

Allow us to see and interact with the Gym Leaders outside of the gyms more. I had, like, barely 2 lines of dialogue with Nessa, and even less for Milo. Not asking for a whole lot, just a bit more to tie us into who they are as people. Piers is best big brother. <3

That’s all I had written for now. If y’all want a biography of my champion team for my Shield Nuzlocke, let me know, and I’ll scrap a post together! <3

#Pokemon #Pokemon Sword Shield #Demotivated Review #Video Game #Atlas the Worldbuilder #nobody's gonna care about this #but that's ok

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readyforit · 4 years

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hiii abby!! can you post a tutorial for how you make edits like your latest one? the url edit fro taylorswifh? it’s so prettyyy

♡ edit tutorial for this edit, requested by anon ♡

hiii so! this is quite long, but that’s because I wanted to capture my whole entire process to hopefully help you! I used photoshop (2018) for this tutorial, and all the resources I used are listed here (everything except for photoshop is free)! I’ve sort of split this tutorial up into sections, by the different steps. thank you and have a lovely day!! ♡

so before I begin, I always think about the edit, like what I want the final outcome to look like (or if I don’t know what that’ll look like yet, what direction I want it to go in, the main themes/ideas/colour schemes that I have). I personally love using a minimalist range of colours, all of them being light and pastel (that’s just my personal liking though). I also consider the main themes or ideas that I want to translate through my edit. you also need to have the passion and desire to edit, I’ve learned that there’s nothing more draining than editing when you really don’t want to. so I think that you should think about all these things before starting!!

tip; put on some music, it gets your creativity and thinking flowing if you’re in a good mood ldkjkl

so! when creating the edit; first of all, I created a new document in photoshop - 540 x 300 pixels for this specific edit (just because that shows up as high quality on tumblr, but it doesn’t really matter!) when you click ‘create’, a white canvas should open up.

— creating the book

next! I used a book psd for my edit, which you can find and download here!! so I just opened that psd up (a psd is just a photoshop file that has like all the layers in place so it’s not just one photo);

when you open the file up, this is how it should look (well not really, because I’d edited it to look like this, but it should have this general layout);

now what you have to do is sort of literally drag the file out and then, drag all the layers from that file into your white canvas, like this;

— giffing

I just wanted to quickly mention that giffing is definitely an optional step. I do it in pretty much all of my edits, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re just beginning to edit, because giffing takes the most time and it can be really draining and messy if not done right ldkjd.

to create my gifs, I use youtube videos, which I download through 4k video downloader (it’s really simple with 4k, you just have to copy the youtube link and paste it into the app!). so to open up a video, go to ‘file’ then ‘import’ and finally ‘video frames to layers’;

once you’ve chosen the video you want to use, open that up (don’t know why that’s so blurry dlkjdlj but you get the idea);

now this should pop up! make sure it’s on ‘selected range only’ and then use the toggles at the bottom to select the specific part of the video that you want to use (I usually gif about 20 frames because it’s sooo much work for me to do more than that lkdjldj)

when you’re in the file, go to ‘window’ then ‘timeline’ for the gif to show up frame by frame;

now highlight the specific frames that you want by literally dragging across them with the timeline bar at the bottom. then click the three bars on the top right of the bar, and click ‘copy frames’;

now go back to your book psd file, and at the timeline bar at the bottom, click ‘create frame animation’;

click on the three bars on the top right of the timeline bar and paste the frames over the selection;

your file should now look something like this! to resize the gif, just press command + t and adjust it from there!

now to give it the effect that it’s a part of the book, you have to create a clipping mask (so it sort of clips onto the book layer like a paper clip). to do this, select all the layers of the gif, drag it right above the layer that you want to clip it onto (the page constraint layer in this case). then right click the gif layers and click ‘create clipping mask’;

as a result, your layers should now look like this. you can use command + t again to adjust the gif size;

tip; press command + g to group the layers together so they take up less space!

now, with your gif, this step is pretty tiring and takes forever dlkdjl, but for the layer to show up in every frame of the gif, you have to click on the box button on the left of each layer so that an eye shows up. you can also press the eye button at the top of the settings, in the unify bar, so that it stays visible throughout the entire gif. I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly dlkdjl but just go through every layer and press the box so an eye shows up.

sometimes the unify button doesn’t work for some reason, and you’ll have to manually go through every single frame just to click on the eye button. it’s excruciating, but it’s worth it in the end lkdjdl

this is how your edit should look now!

now what I do is apply a psd (sort of like a filter) so it looks softer and prettier! these days, all of the psds that I apply come from this lovely pack!

in the same way that you dragged your book psd in, drag the psd *folder* into your edit;

your edit should now look like this!

— adding the photo

now’s the fun part! you can add whatever you want to, but what I did in my edit was I cut out a photo of taylor. now what you can do if you’re running short of time is find a transparent photo of taylor on google or on deviantart, but if you want to take the time to actually crop the photo out like me (even though I’m horrible at it), here’s how I do it! first find the photo you’d like to crop out. I usually use taylorpictures, they have the most high quality photos of taylor!

so find the photo you want to use, copy it;

then just paste it into your edit;

use command + t again to adjust the size;

and now to crop it out, what I do is use the quick selection tool, which is this button right here;

in this mode, you can easily just select the part of taylor that you want to cut out (that sounds weird lkjd);

at the top, there should be a bar with a number of buttons, one of them being ‘select and mask’;

if you click on that, you should be taken to another page, similar to this;

now you can play with the settings on the right, then press ‘ok’ when you’re happy with it (the numbers change for each photo and your style, it entirely depends on how you want it to look);

now you should be back to your edit, click on the ‘add layer mask’ button on the bottom left of your page;

and taylor should now be cropped out from her background!

make sure all the layers are below the psd pack, including the photo of taylor that you just cropped out;

now for the colouring!! ‘selective colour’ is your best friend, and you can find that button here, in your adjustments (if you can’t find your adjustments, go to window > adjustments);

add a clipping mask (by right clicking the layer and clicking ‘create clipping mask’) of the selective colour onto the layer you want to colour, so that it only affects that one layer;

then on the selective colour panel, you can adjust the specific colours in that layer to your liking;

in addition, you can press command + u to change the whole colour scheme, saturation and lightness of the layer. make sure to press ‘ok’ when you’re done;

basically just play around with the colouring until you’re happy with it!

if you want it to look more realistic, you can also play around with the effects (I use layer effects all the time, they’re the best) on the layers bar, so the layer blends into the layers below it, like this;

— adding decoration

now you can decorate your little piece of work with whatever you’d like to, such as a background colour (layer > new fill layer > solid colour) ;

a texture (textures are honestly so amazing and you can find them all over tumblr and google; like you can search the word ‘texture’ up and then paste it into your edit);

I usually place my texture at the top of the edit, then use one of the effects to blend it into all the layers;

final embellishments!! this step is optional you can add anything else that you’d like to, such as pngs (you can search these up on google and paste them into your edit, or find psd packs on tumblr and drag them in). again, you can add selective colour and a layer effect to these layers;

tip; finding already transparent images saves sooo much time, so try doing that instead of cropping the image out.

text;

tip; use a new layer for each line!

and so on. the flowers that I used come from this pack and the wax seal stamp comes from this pack from the beautiful @newrcmantlcs!! my main advice is to just play around with everything till you’re happy with it. don’t be afraid of deleting something or starting over completely if you’re not.

— giffing again

now to control the speed of the gif, highlight all of the frames, then click on the tiny dropdown button and change the speed to however fast or slow you want each frame to be. I usually make mine 0.1 seconds, but it’s completely up to you (and worth testing it out to see what speed you prefer!)

when you’re happy with everything, it’s time to sharpen it! first, you have to convert the frames to a video timeline, and do this by clicking on the button on the bottom left of the timeline bar.

your timeline should now look like this. everyone’s process is different, like some people like to start off their whole edit with a video timeline, but I find it a lot easier to start with a frame animation then convert it when I’m done with everything.

now to sharpen (in this case at least, sometimes I add a grainy effect instead) it, highlight the layers that you want to sharpen;

then click filter > convert for smart filters. this will turn your layers into one layer.

tip; if you do something you don’t like, command + z!!

now go to filter > sharpen > sharpen;

and your gif should now be sharpened! you can simply go to filter > sharpen if you want to sharpen a layer that isn’t a gif. play around with your edit a bit more until you’re happy, and finally, add a watermark if you’re going to post it online!

finallyyyyy! to save, go to file > export > save for web, if it’s a gif. if it’s a static photo, just click ‘save as’!

and yayyyy, you just finished an edit!!!!!

ahhh so this was my tutorial on how I created this specific edit, I hope it helped! If you create something similar or follow this tutorial, I’d loveee to see it; so if you post it on tumblr, you can tag me with #tuserabigail, or you can just dm me!

my process usually isn’t this rigid or precise, I usually edit on a tangent and in cluttered daydreams, it’s never like “oh, I have to make a gif now” or “ahh it’s time to add a texture!” so really, it’s just about playing around with your edit until you like it! it’s definitely okay to skip some steps or do things in a different order, because like I said, everyone has a different process, and this was just mine for this one specific edit (my process changes all the time too ldkdljk)

anyway, I hope this helped, and thank you!! ♡

#anon #tutorial #letter left on my doorstep #<3 #tutorial*

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Licensing of the Monsters: How Pokémon Ignited An Anime Arms Race

"Hey, what do ya' got there? A rabbit?" Batman asks his mentor, staring at a video of Pikachu on a massive underground computer screen.

"It's a Pokémon," Bruce Wayne replies.

Five seconds later, Batman is shocked so hard by the tiny yellow creature that he ends up flying headfirst through another computer monitor (Using a clip from the "Blackout" episode of Batman Beyond, an episode that would've aired for the first time just days earlier.) It doesn't make much physical sense, but this bizarre 1999 crossover promo did establish two things: 1) Pokémon was coming to Kids' WB, and 2) Pokémon was important. So important that Batman actually took time away from obsessing over crime and vengeance to care about it.

Echoing a 1997 promo where the comedic Bugs Bunny let us in on the "secret" that the serious, dark Batman was coming to Kids' WB, it almost seems like a passing of the torch. Kids' WB, up until then, was a programming service chock full of classic Warner Bros. cartoon properties like Bugs, Daffy, Pinky, Brain, and various members of the Justice League — all animated Americana.

Pokémon wasn't a huge risk as the 4Kids Entertainment dub of the show had done well in broadcast syndication, they had plenty of episodes to work with (sometimes airing three in a row), and it was based on a game series that was already a worldwide smash hit.

But the show was ... different.

And it would end up changing cartoons as we knew them.

Part 1: Batman Jumps Ship

It's hard to think of a better scenario when it comes to appealing to kids than the one Fox Kids had with Batman: The Animated Series. Debuting in September 1992 and airing on weekdays just after school let out, it received immediate acclaim due to its moody, beautiful animation and storytelling that didn't talk down to anyone. Little kids could get into Batman throwing crooks around and adults could marvel at plots like the one where a former child actress with a medical condition that keeps her from aging takes her former co-stars hostage and ends up holding a gun, hallucinating, and sobbing into Batman's arms.

It did so well that Fox tried to air it on prime-time Sundays and though this was short-lived — turns out, Batman was no match for Ed Bradley on CBS's 60 Minutes — it solidified the show as "cool." This was a show that could hang with the big boys. You couldn't say the same of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

And then, in 1997, it was gone. A five-year contract ran out and Batman leapt completely to Kids' WB, where a continuation of the show (the often even grimmer The New Batman Adventures) aired later that year. There, it joined Superman: The Animated Series in a one-two punch of programming called The New Batman/Superman Adventures. When it came to Kids' WB, competitors not only had to deal with the Merry Melodies crowd, they now had to face the World's Finest Heroes.

This, along with a departing Animaniacs, left Fox Kids with a gap in flagship programming. Sure it had various incarnations of the Power Rangers (which was still holding strong) and Spider-Man, but if you look back on 1998 programming, little of it would survive the year. Silver Surfer? Gone by May. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation? Out by December. Casper? Dead in October. By May of 1999, Warner Media would announce record ratings thanks to Pokémon, while its competitors, including the Disney-led ABC, Fox, and even Nickelodeon, would suffer losses in the Saturday morning area. Pokemon would have the best ever series premiere numbers for Kids' WB at the time.

A chunk of that has to do with 4Kids Entertainment's (or to be more specific, 4Kids Productions) handling of the show. Again, Pokémon was a proven concept. If you love monsters, adventure, and collecting things, you'll probably find something to enjoy in the franchise. But the dub was particularly strong. For years, dubbing was seen as an inherently laughable thing in America, full of exasperated voice actors trying desperately to convince you that they weren't portraying three different characters, and lips that didn't match the dialogue. Entire Japanese series were reduced to laughing stocks in the U.S. because why focus on the lovingly created miniatures and top-notch tokusatsu action in Godzilla if one of the actors sounds weird?

But while Pokémon wasn't the first great dub, it was a remarkably underrated one. Veronica Taylor's work as Ash Ketchum was relatable, funny, and consistent. And Racheal Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Maddie Blaustein's turns as Team Rocket's Jessie, James, and Meowth gave us villains that could've easily been the most repetitive parts of the show — you can only try to capture Pikachu so many times before you should logically find a second hobby — but instead were one of the most entertaining aspects.

Aside from some easily meme-able bits — Brock's drying pan and jelly donuts, for example — Pokemon became a seamless addition to the Kids' WB lineup and would end up giving many fans a lifelong love of anime. And it was great for 4Kids, too, as in 2000, they would be number one on Fortune's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies.

Fox Kids wanted an answer to this. And it would soon find one.

Well, two.

Part 2: Monsters Rule

Saban Entertainment was no stranger to Fox Kids. They'd been the one to adapt Toei's Super Sentai into The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for American and international audiences, creating an unexpected sensation that combined monsters and martial arts. And in 1999, they nabbed Digimon Adventure, a series about kids that gain "digital" monster partners when transported to a "digital world," which had begun airing earlier that year in Japan. Based on a fighting virtual pet that had already been around for a few years, Digimon was a natural fit for an anime series and also a natural fit for a climate that was desperately trying to find the next Pokémon.

Renamed Digimon: Digital Monsters, it premiered in August of 1999. Of course, accusations followed that it was a Pokémon rip-off, considering that they were both about befriending terrifying laser critters, but they offered fairly different things. While Pokémon was more episodic, Digimon gave viewers a more Dragon Ball Z-esque experience (they were both Toei productions, too) with the titular monsters evolving and gaining "power-ups" due to fighting increasingly powerful villains.

Almost two months later, Monster Rancher would join the Fox Kids lineup, airing on Saturdays at 8:30 AM after Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (a Fox Kids lost relic if there ever was one). Together, Monster Rancher and Digimon would cover the programming block with monster action, sometimes airing twice each. Meanwhile, Pokémon would do the same for Kids' WB, and if you look at their Saturday morning schedules from 1999 and 2000, it appears they just shoved Pikachu in whenever possible.

Looking back on Monster Rancher is always odd, though, because it's so specifically trapped in the time period where it originated. The video games used metadata from readable discs to create new monsters for the player, meaning that as soon as people gained the ability to download or stream media online without having to travel to their local Circuit City, the game would look absolutely archaic in comparison to its peers.

Monster Rancher is a very fun show based on some very fun games, and the dynamic array of personalities and their particular squabbles in the core group actually reminds me a lot of One Piece. But even the show itself deals with reviving monsters on giant stone discs — a prehistoric-looking adaptation of a video game gimmick that would, a decade later, appear prehistoric itself.

The Monster War was waged across 2000 and 2001. And though it appears Pokémon was the clear winner — in 2020, it's the most popular franchise with the widest reach, even if Digimon does produce some stellar shows and movies — the ratings tell a different story. In the May sweeps of 2000, Pokémon (and Kids' WB) took the prize among kids 6-11, but in the end, Fox Kids would score a victory of a 3.1 rating to Kids' WB's 3.0 (the first sweeps win since 1997, the year that Batman left.)

Early the following year, Fox Kids would score again, narrowly beating Pokémon on Saturday morning in the same timeslot and even coming ahead of properties like X-Men. And what would propel this February 10th victory? The first appearance of BlackWarGreymon, the Shadow the Hedgehog to WarGreymon's Sonic.

However, Pokémon would still help create ratings records for Kids' WB, even though late 2000/early 2001 saw a slide that would often cede dominance to Nickelodeon. Jed Patrick, who was president of The WB at the time said: "I didn't think Pokémon would fall off as much as it did ... every fire cools down a little, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stay hot."

Even though, in retrospect, claims that "Pokemania" had died seem a little ridiculous — the latest games, Pokémon Sword and Shield, just became the highest-selling entries in seventeen years — big changes were ahead.

Part 3: It's Time To Duel ... Or Not

In early 2001, Joel Andryc, executive VP of kids' programming and development for Fox Kids, was looking for a "Digimon companion series to create an hour-long anime block." He felt they were too reliant on Digimon, as they were airing it three times in a single morning. Likely not coincidentally, that summer Fox Kids Fridays were dubbed "anime invasion," advertising Flint The Time Detective, Dinozaurs, Escaflowne, and Digimon. In one commercial, a single quote zips across the bottom of the screen: "Anime Rocks!" Nicole, TX

That it does, Nicole from Texas.

Meanwhile, 4Kids Entertainment would provide Kids' WB with another monster show: Yu-Gi-Oh! Known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Japan, this anime adaptation absconded from retelling the stories found in the early chapters of the manga — which were mostly devoted to Yugi running into jerks, only to have his Egyptian spirit "alter ego" deal karmic retribution on them — and instead focused on the parts that involved the cool monster fights. So basically the parts that were the most like Pokémon.

But how would this be received? In 2000, Canadian studio Nelvana had licensed the anime Cardcaptor Sakura and turned it simply into Cardcaptors — an extremely edited version that removed many important relationships and plotlines and tried to streamline the show into a pseudo-Pokémon story. It's gone down in history as one of the most questionable dubs ever, and never really made a splash on Kids' WB. So they wouldn't want a repeat of that.

But would kids be into a card game? The cards did summon monsters, but in Pokémon and Digimon, the monsters are just there, moving around and not relegated to a glorified checkers board arena. It turned out, yes, kids would be REALLY into that. Yu-Gi-Oh! debuted at number one in multiple demographics in September 2001, and would remain a steady part of its lineup for years to come.

And how did Fox Kids respond? Did the "anime invasion" work out? Well, sort of, but not in the way they were hoping.

In 2001, due to diminishing ratings and audiences, Fox Kids Worldwide (along with Fox Family Worldwide) were sold to The Walt Disney Company. By November 7th, they'd canceled their weekly afternoon blocks, and the next year, they'd end up selling their entire Saturday morning block to a company that had provided their rivals with the very same TV shows that aided in sinking them: 4Kids Entertainment. The final show to premiere on the original Fox Kids was Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, a live action series that stood beside Alienators: Evolution Continues (a cartoon sequel to the mediocre 2001 comedy Evolution) and the underrated Medabots as the block's last gasp.

Renamed FoxBox in late 2002 (and later 4KidsTV in 2005), the 4Kids run schedule would, over the years, include anime like Kirby! Right Back At Ya!, Ultimate Muscle, Fighting Foodons, Sonic X, Shaman King, and eventually, in 2004, the infamous One Piece dub. The first Saturday of the new FoxBox lineup would also outdo the previous Saturday's Fox Kids lineup. Disney would acquire the rights to Digimon and it showed up on ABC Family in late 2001 (eighteen years later, a reboot of the original series would air, which can be watched on Crunchyroll).

Eventually, in 2007, the Monster War would come full circle. 4Kids Entertainment announced they would be taking over the Kids' WB Saturday morning block entirely, renaming it the "CW4KIDS," as The CW had been born after UPN and The WB had ceased to be. Pokémon was long gone by this point, having been dropped by Kids' WB in 2006, and was now overseen by The Pokémon Company International on Cartoon Network.

"We wish Pokémon USA much success going forward," the CEO of 4Kids Entertainment said. Later sued over "illegal agreements" regarding the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, the company would eventually file for bankruptcy in 2016. Pokémon Journeys, the latest installment in the franchise, launches on Netflix on June 12th.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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lightandwinged · 4 years

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Alright, it’s review time, and it’s going to be spoilery and rambly because I’m still parsing my thoughts on everything SO.

Sans spoilers: a solid and fitting conclusion, if a bit faster paced than I would’ve liked, but it adhered to the overarching themes of the Skywalker saga probably better than anything in the new trilogy has before, and I don’t know how, considering everything (namely that Space Mom is gone), they could have or would have done things differently. Not my absolute favorite (that will forever be RotJ), but still very good.

Spoilers below, be ye warned.

I found it utterly hilarious that the plot started with Kyle Ron finding the Macguffin and chillin out with Papa Palpatine while the Good Guys had to go on this entire huge quest to FIND the Macguffin to begin with, and the only reason he didn’t just fuck off and finish some dastardly plan while they were scurrying about and trying to find the Pyramid Of Doom was because he’s got a lot to work out in his feelings about Rey. Like shit, no wonder Papa Palpatine decided to just stick with his own bloodline for galactic domination, Skywalkers are useless.

(except Leia, who is awesome)

The inclusion of Carrie Fisher in this film was VERY well done, but it also hurt a lot because you could tell that her scenes were cobbled together from old material and not made of anything new. It was good and necessary, but it also just hurt, like a constant reminder that she’s gone and nobody could replace her ever. And I’ll get more to that in a minute.

The Macguffin questing honestly felt a lot like the first half of RotJ, where we have to go rescue Han right quick because Harrison Ford was pretty sure he didn’t want to Star Wars anymore, so here’s a sidequest for half the movie, with the only difference here being that the questline had to do with the actual Plot. I’ve been following the Star Wars leaks subreddit for a while (don’t read the comments, it’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy and bitterness), and I know that at one point, it was supposed to be this race between Team Dark Side and Team Light Side to get the Pyramid of Destiny and then they’d find out that oh shit, Sheev’s here, but that was scrapped... and I kind of wish it hadn’t been? It would’ve made the first half of frolicking through this planet... no this planet... no, no, it’s on this planet... feel a lot less distracting.

The dynamic between Finn, Poe, and Rey was fantastic, because those three actors just have amazing chemistry on so many levels. They immediately fell into the dynamic of “we’re a polyamorous triad who’ve been living together for a while, and we really love each other, but we’re also a LITTLE BIT STRESSED RIGHT NOW OK” and that’s fair. I was glad to see all of it, and I just wish that we’d had more of it in both TFA and TLJ. It reminded me a LOT of how the best parts of the OT were always when Luke, Han, and Leia were together.

And now I’m going to take a sulk break to think about what we could’ve had with that amazing dynamic.

I’m back.

The new characters were some of the weaker parts of the film, I felt, save for Lando (because Billy Deeeeeeee). Dominic Monaghan, whom I love, could’ve had his role taken entirely by Rose, or Billie Lourde, and nobody would’ve noticed. And I don’t mind the addition of extra women to the cast, but Zorii and Jannah felt like they were just there to be like “Poe fucks women! Finn might too!” And... yanno, cool? But the OT3 stands.

And then General Pryde, aptly named, should’ve been a bigger part in all three films because it was like... here’s this yahoo out of nowhere who’s apparently a really big Sheev fan and just... like... what? I mean, I’m a huge Sheev fan, too, but I wish he’d been more of a Piett, where we could’ve seen him worming his way up the ranks, which would’ve made his downfall more satisfying. Instead, it was just kind of like... eh? Cool, I guess? With Piett, you felt like “yeah, we’ve seen this guy fucking things up for our heroes for two entire movies now, and here he is, getting destroyed because of his pride, hahaha!” but with Pryde, it was like “wait, who are you? Oh you’re dead now? Okay, cool, I guess?”

And in conjunction with THAT, Hux was just wasted in this film. I fully accept the idea that he rose through the ranks because of nepotism or something, and I also fully accept that he’s an absolutely useless twink who can’t do anything without having Phasma top him weekly (she used to top both him and Ren, which is why they’re such disasters in this movie), but man, couldn’t we have like... taken him with us? Imagine the comedy potential as he’s brought back as a prisoner and Domhnall Gleeson gets even more screen time with Oscar Isaac. I don’t mind that he died a worthless death because he was basically a useless wretch, but I do feel like if the movie had given itself more breathing room, he could’ve been a lot of fun.

RELATED, the pacing. So in the beginning of the movie, the idea of a light skip (basically, just sort of using the hyperdrive without planning or anything) is brought up, and everyone involved in this action bounces from world to world to world in rapid fire fashion to get rid of a bunch of TIE fighters following them, and that’s roughly the pace of this film. There are a few moments of quiet and contemplation, but they’re so rare that they seem to last a lot longer than they actually do, and I think it’s mostly because this movie really feels like a Lord of the Rings style epic packed into a MCU time frame. And I’m not complaining about the time, because by the time the credits rolled, I had to pee so fucking badly, but I feel like also if we’d trimmed out a couple of things (like maybe we can get rid of Kijimi, I think it is? The snow planet? or just merge Kijimi and Pasaana?), we’d have had more time to breathe and that would’ve helped the pacing a lot.

The slow moments in the film belonged almost exclusively to Rey and Kyle Ron, and honestly, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver both deserve some sort of award recognition for their acting, the latter particularly. Without going into wild details about the plot, Kyle Ron does change his mind and go back to being Ben Solo, and god bless you so much Adam Driver because the change is instantaneous and delightful. If we’d seen significantly more Ben Solo than Kyle Ron, I’d totally be on board with the r.3y.10.z because this child omg. As it stands, the kiiiiissssss made me do like

in real life. It felt... mm, unearned, we’ll say. Maybe as a moment of “oh fuck that was intense and now we’re both alive” I could’ve bought it, but it wasn’t that, it was supposed to be this “my looooove” moment and just... sorry, but no.

BUT that said, while I think his death was the only way this series could’ve ended for him because a redemption arc would’ve required a LOT more time and energy, and that just... wasn’t going to happen. The time to have him make the turn if we were going to see a redemption arc was during TLJ, and since he didn’t make that change, we don’t get a Zuko arc. And that’s FINE because that’s a lot of work for a three movie series. And I don’t want a TV series devoted to Ben Solo learning to not be a dick to people. That’s exhausting.

But I do wish we’d gotten more time with him. The brief time we had, the bit of Han Solo snark that came out (”ow”), that was all delightful and made me understand what people see in the character (who I hate because he’s a great character to hate).

(omg while I was writing this, someone was saying that they were in a theater with someone talking about how the movie should’ve ended with Kyle Ron giving Rey a Force baby, and Y’ALL THERE IS NOT ENOUGH NOPE IN THE WORLD)

Anyway, bullets now, for the times I cried:

Literally everything with Leia, but especially that her last word was “Ben” and her using every last bit of her energy to save her son because I GET THAT FEEL, and honestly, the only reason she wasn’t there raining death and destruction on Sheev by herself for grooming her baby was because Carrie Fisher died. But anyway, from the moment she dropped her headset on, I was a blubbering mess.

And then Han, just a memory, but looking more at peace than he ever has. He convinces his son to come home, and Ben now says, “Dad?” and Han just says, “I know,” and FUFUUFUFALSKJDLAKSJDF: SOBBING

And then CHEWIE reacting to Leia’s death just... UGH. I am destroyed utterly, still.

Luke finally managing to Force lift the X-Wing out of the water made me cry as well, weirdly enough.

And then whatever emotion I felt when Rey heard all the Jedi, and it was LITERALLY EVERYONE WHO HAS PLAYED A JEDI EVER COMING IN AND SAYING A LINE like not just the familiar ones but the ones you wouldn’t know unless you’d watched all the TV series and extra material... it was so much more than tears. I couldn’t cry because it wouldn’t have been enough to encompass everything that made me feel. Very sincerely well done.

All-in-all, yeah, it was really good. I don’t get what everyone is so fussed over with it... it ties up the themes of the entire nine-movie arc pretty neatly and does basically the best it can with what it has.

But a bigger point in its favor, for me, was seeing Sam’s reaction to it: jumping up and down in his seat, gasping, grabbing my hand, whispering, “Mommy, they’re going to be okay, right?” and then cheering at the end. Star Wars, as a thing, isn’t for just one person or one group of people, but I consider how people who were kids when the PT came out say without a hint of irony that it’s not that bad, because to them, that’s what Star Wars is and always has been. The joy of it isn’t just the OT but those three movies that were “meh” to those of us who cut our teeth on the OT only. And in a similar vein, the ST is full of that joy for kids now. Like holy moley, Sam and his best friend geeking out over seeing each other in Star Wars costumes at Halloween was just worth everything.

So in the end, like I concluded at the end of TLJ, the message here is that it’s for them. And also that there’s always hope, that ultimately, even when it seems the odds are against light, there’s more of us than there are of them.

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #I dehydrated myself crying at this movie

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williamjwatson · 4 years

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Production Bias and OWL 2020

There’s… admittedly… a lot the Overwatch League has to iron out and polish in how they run, produce, and broadcast the league if they want the league to live up to the vision that they believe is possible in the long term.

I could be here forever if I wanted to go into all of it, but I want to focus on an insidious problem that I don’t think the broadcast/production staff realize is hampering the full potential enjoyment a lot of fans could have watching the games. (As the majority of league viewers are based in North America, I will be focusing on the American, or the “main” broadcast stream and social media channels. I can’t comment on the other broadcast streams in other languages because none of them are in languages i am fluent in, so I won’t.)

That problem is Bias.

Bias emerges in many ways in OWL production.

There are overt examples:

Montecristo’s relentless dunking on the Houston Outlaws and insisting the team, its players, and its fans are trash during official broadcast and even as he is commentating Outlaws matches in a role he should be neutral in. The unified desk beating the “NYXL choking in all playoffs meme” to death while conveniently forgetting NYXL are the only two time back to back stage champions in league history, and even when the term “choking” technically isn’t relevant because they are simply being outclassed by a team that has consistently shown they can handily beat NYXL meanwhile few other teams get negative treatment as enduring Bren’s fervent backing of the Shanghai dragons, reason be damned Soe’s blatant favouritism of the Atlanta Reign in all situations because she simply loves that team more than any other.

Some of these examples can be entertaining as hell.

Others are annoying to have to be subjected to, especially if your team is the target.

There’s also much more subtle examples of bias, and these emerge more in the choice to include or omit things in production, the manner teams are discussed in desk segments, and with a whole season of footage and posts, clear patterns emerge:

The desk discussion about san francisco shock being notably more hype than discussion about vancouver titans despite both teams having the same trajectory and success over the season as a variation of above: framing every titans match as “who can defeat the titans???” meanwhile every san francisco match is “can the shock continue their streak of dominance?” as if one team inherently is a villain who must be beaten down and the other is a protagonist whose dominance is expected and accepted as the new normal as a caveat under this: being very respectful of super’s tears after stage 1 finals, and mocking bumper’s tears after stage 2 finals the desk’s respect and levity given to taimou’s mental struggles being a bench player in a meta that doesn’t cater to his skills and celebrating his return, while his teammate, EFFECT was not afforded the same respect when he had to go home for his mental health in season 1, and his return to season 2 was very much lukewarm in comparison trend towards mixed teams being lauded for performing well in a majority of their games, meanwhile full korean speaking teams get lukewarm responses even when they’re doing well, and downright mean responses when they don’t do well (there are exceptions because sometimes the records speak for themselves, ie: justice and mayhem) notable difference in how successes and failures are presented when discussing non-korean players and korean players the fact Montecristo keeps being scheduled to cast Houston Outlaws games despite his obvious and very vocal disdain for the team (this could be scheduling chance rather than choice, but even so, it makes it much harder than it needs to be for outlaws fans to enjoy watching their team play the game and the fact this isn’t seen as a problem is an unconscious issue) comparatively little or no footage of teams who don’t do comms in English being featured on the incredibly popular comms check videos, thereby hampering fan engagement and ability to relate to at least 1/3 the teams in the league (how hard is it to hire a translator to sift through footage and add subtitles?? the dragons and spark seem to do this with ease? and official broadcast shouldn’t be lacking in such resource??)

Generally, having bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Bren’s fervent belief in the dragons, even carried over as a meme from stage 1, is incredibly entertaining with the props and the ribbing, and in a way, Bren has his own redemption arc when the dragons really broke through that wall this season and won their first game, then kept winning until they won stage 3 entirely with stellar hardcore play.

The pre-show picks for the day are an entertaining segment, and gives the desk and analysts a chance to justify to the viewers and each other why their pick to win is the correct choice. Sometimes it gives fans insight into what past performance, play style, and analysis should be accounted for. Sometimes it’s just a blatant show of bias, and you know what, that’s fine. Sometimes it’s even entertaining as hell.

But sometimes Bias isn’t fun, and when the running joke about your team, or your favourite player keeps being featured even when the context is no longer there, or the talent who clearly doesn’t think much of your team keeps getting airtime to dunk on your team because some portion of viewers or production thinks it’s funny, the show stops being fun to watch.

The problem is amplified when it becomes apparent that you can’t avoid this bias if you intend to continue watching the league. As there is only one single official English stream, featuring the same rotation of commentators and analysts and desk talent, fans have no choice but to listen and go along with the flow that the main production has set up for them, or avoid tuning into pre-and post game coverage and discussion, and watch on mute, missing out on content and strategic analysis that allows them to engage with other fans, or better understand the game at an esport level and why results turned out the way they did. (Or watch Avast’s stream instead, which doesn’t show league footage and isn’t beholden to professional standards like official broadcast and also it’s not the OWL official broadcast which means fan disengagement.)

As an extension of that, with what the league chooses to post and broadcast, there’s also no way to access additional content the league chooses to omit to post unless your team takes the initiative to make that content themselves (Hangzhou Spark and Shanghai Dragons open mic are both treasures and official comms check is missing out by not including their footage, among other teams: where is mayhem? dynasty? NYXL?)

So why am I discussing this? OWL is doing okay, and you can’t please everyone, right? I obviously have my opinions, but otherwise it’s fine??

Well the thing is, OWL still very much has aspirations to grow.

I haven’t forgotten that 20 million dollar buy in.

Neither have the investors, I don’t think.

With the shift to a travelling rotating homestead schedule in four divisions next year to directly hit hometown markets and grow local communities, OWL clearly means to grow and get bigger, and that means attracting more fans and viewers and consumers, and keeping the existing fans they have.

Next year, leaving the Blizzard arena, bias no longer becomes an asset, it becomes an active, growing problem.

A significant portion of fans already find it very hard to watch and engage with pre-and post game coverage. Fans that no longer engage with desk talent centric content, and maybe even watch games on mute are very much on their way to disengagement from the league entirely.

Furthermore, it will be significantly harder to recruit fans to support teams if the official league broadcast makes a point to tell them, before they are even engaged, that their home city team is trash and they should feel bad for thinking of supporting them for x, y, and z reasons.

Additionally, with the shift next year to local market games, the attention on the league will be amplified, and with it will come an expectation of professionalism. There’s a clear lack of polish in this area, notably. What happens when the Outlaws Homestead happens and Monte is not only scheduled to cast, but spends the entire time dunking on the Outlaws? How does that look to local stakeholders? How are Outlaws fans gonna have a good time at their own homestead while the official broadcast does them dirty? How welcome does the broadcast feel to fans who don’t have means to attend their team’s homestands, and must engage via the official broadcast stream?

Given the single official broadcast in this language, and no announcement yet to expand the casting and desk talent cast, production needs to iron out their problems with bias, and that starts with stepping back and realizing they have a very obvious bias problem in the way they present narratives, decide what content is shown and promoted, and how often the talent team overtly supports certain teams while on air in an official capacity. Professionalism also needs to level up, because a recent debacle on air already received negative response in the twittersphere directly from team organization stakeholders.

If the overwatch league wants to reach out to more fans, and continue growing while retaining the fanbase they already have, broadcast needs to become far more neutral in how they present the esport with this singular official broadcast, or create local based versions of official broadcast. Unfortunately, option two is unfeasible because there is a lack of such experienced casters in the sport at this time to have the equally biased 20 local commentator broadcasts going at once.

With the singular official broadcast, this means neutral commentating without snide comments about teams casters obviously dislike. This means desk consciously making the effort to present equal narratives to teams with similar trajectory, or equally flipping back and forth over time so a “villain” narrative isn’t constantly only dumped on one team all season. This means hiring Korean and Chinese speaking editor or translator to help get equal team representation in fun quirky “get to know the team” segments like comms check in an official capacity instead of making the non-English speaking teams do extra work within their organization to pump their own versions of official content themselves. (Hangzhou and Shanghai may do their own open mics, but the point is they shouldn’t HAVE TO to get the same quirky fun coverage out that English speaking teams get to take for granted)

They’ve done a lot this year, expanding Danny and Emily’s roles beyond that of simply translator to give that extra interviewing representation to players who don’t feel confident speaking English, and giving them airtime to connect with their fans. This is already mitigating the interviewing bias of last year, and giving more screen time to players who don’t speak English primarily (the Diem Carpe segment comes to mind).

I think they can do more, and I believe they have to if they want the League to live up to what they want it to be, so every fan of every team can enjoy watching as much as they can.

Source: Production Bias and OWL 2020

#esports

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nicnacsnonsense · 5 years

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Character Arcs and Plot Progression in Moana

(Cross-posted on AO3)

Introduction

Moana is a good, solid movie. The animation is gorgeous, the characters are likable, and the songs are catchy and powerful (with one exception on those latter two, but apparently I’m in the minority on that opinion so we’ll just leave it at that). There are arguably a lot of clichés in it, but I don’t mind that, in theory. The ending was also really good and a fun flip on Disney current trend of twist villains.

All that said, this is a good movie, but it’s not a great one. When I watched it for the first time I left the theater feeling the world of Moana was disappointingly small and the emotional beats were often lacking. I’ve thought about this a lot off and on over the years, and have decided a lot of this is down to problems with three things: the general plot progression, Maui’s character arc, and Moana’s character arc.

In this post I’m going to break down what I think the problem is with each of these things, and propose one way you might fix each specific problem. Upcoming will be a second post which will be a script doctor of the entire movie with alternate solutions to all three problems that come together in a cohesive whole.

Disorganized Plot

Our story begins with Tala, henceforth referred to as Grandma, telling the story of how Maui stole the heart of Te Fiti in an attempt to give humanity the power of creation, but instead destroyed Te Fiti and caused darkness to descend across all of the Polynesia. Whoops. Within these first few minutes the plot of the upcoming movie is pretty clearly defined. Our protagonist will have to traverse treacherous waters in order to restore the heart of Te Fiti and save us all from encroaching death. A solid straight-forward premise with a lot of potential.

We then spend a while on Motunui, establishing Moana’s character and why she specifically is going to be the one going on this adventure. Our inciting incident occurs when Grandma tells Moana to get Maui to restore the heart of Te Fiti, then passes away. Moana leaves then finds Maui very quickly and faces no real challenge in getting him to join her. That is, while Moana does nominally face obstacles, the only things she does herself is get out of a cave. The ocean solves all her other problems for her – it rescues her from the storm, deposits her on the island where Maui is, (and there’s no challenges to finding him once she’s there) and the ocean thwarts Maui’s attempts to steal Moana’s boat or to leave himself. Because of this lack of difficulty and because Maui is our secondary main character, this feels less like step one on the adventure and more like the last bit of set up before we begin the journey.

Next we have an encounter with the Kakamora, then Moana finally convincing Maui to commit to the returning the heart, a trip to Lalotai to get Maui’s fishhook, what I like to call the nighttime conversation of deep sharing, a montage of Maui learning to use his hook again and Moana learning wayfind, a failed attempt to restore the heart, Moana’s lowest point and then finding her resolve, and finally the successful returning of the heart before we fall into the denouement. If we take out the character beats, we’re left with what amounts to a random encounter, then a fetch quest, then two attempts at the final boss. While the trip to retrieve the fishhook is necessary to complete before restoring the heart, as Maui needs the powers of the hook to hold Te Kā off, it feels more like a side quest, though that may be at least in part due to the whole sequence with Tamatoa feeling like something out of a completely different movie altogether. Meanwhile the encounter with the Kakamora is pointless and achieves nothing really. It could have been useful in making the world feel bigger and in selling how dangerous things are now without Te Fiti and her heart if it was one of a few such encounters, but by itself it just feels out of place.

As one possible alternative, we could have Moana not have the heart when she sets out. Maybe the ocean showed it’s choosing of her a different way, or maybe she wasn’t chosen at all, she just sets out to do it because it needs doing. In this version Moana’s only objective is to find Maui to ask him to restore the heart. She finds Maui after overcoming some genuinely difficult obstacle on her own, and makes the ask. Maui agrees, and Moana’s like great, mission achieved! And Maui’s like yeah, sure, buuut I actually need you to take me to get my hook first. So they go to Lalotai and get the hook from Tamatoa. And Moana’s like great, now you can restore the heart! And Maui’s like totally, buuut we need to find the heart first, I don’t actually have it. So they journey to the area of the ocean where Maui thinks he dropped it and they manage to retrieve it after overcoming some obstacle. One possible idea there is for them to encounter an island covered with a profusion of plants, all way larger than normal, causing to think, yep, that’s probably where Te Fiti’s life-giving heart is; how fortunate it’s just being used by plants and not been found by a monster. Except it turns out in addition to growing large and plentiful, Te Fiti’s heart has also caused the plants to grow sentient, and they don’t want to give the heart up. Moana and Maui successfully retrieve the heart, and at that point we can proceed to the confrontations with Te Kā more or less as per canon.

This plot progression allows our lead up to confronting Te Kā and restoring the heart to now become a series of finding x, then y, then z, then the final confrontation. Each thing Moana finds flows into needing to find the next thing, making the story more cohesive as a whole.

Additionally we can take our three major character beats that all take place between Lalotai and Te Fiti – the nighttime conversation of deep sharing, Maui relearning to use his hook, and Moana learning to wayfind – and spread them out between the plot beats. So we have Moana finds Maui and secures his help. Then on the way to Lalotai Maui teaches Moana about wayfinding. They get the hook back from Tamatoa, then on the way to the heart, Moana helps Maui to figure out how to use it again. Finally, as they are approaching Te Fiti, heart and hook in hand, they have a nighttime conversation of deep sharing. By spreading these out it should help build a feeling of distance between each location, making the journey seem longer and the world bigger.

Maui’s Vague Arc

Maui’s arc baffles me, in that I’m not sure what it’s even supposed to be. This I think comes back to what I mentioned earlier about not minding clichés in theory. The problem is with Maui it feels as though they decided on the cliché “disillusioned loner becomes a hero through the power of friendship” and then started applying story and character beats that went with that cliché without considering how those tropes would interact together or with the narrative. The result is a bit of a mess.

As mentioned before the movie opens with the story of Maui stealing the heart of Te Fiti. What’s weird about this is everything about the story, both in the way it’s told and in the way it’s visually presented frame Maui as the villain. This works fine on the first watch because even though even someone who lives in a cave still saw the Blu-ray box art and knows Maui is going to be a good guy, it’s plausible he wasn’t one at the time. On a rewatch though it’s weird to see Maui’s fairly menacing expressions during this story. Still, it can be argued this is Grandma telling the story to the best of her understanding, which is not necessarily a complete and accurate one, and the visuals merely reflect that. Okay, but that raises the issue of why Grandma would ever think asking Maui to restore the heart would be a good idea. In the scenario where Maui stole the heart to give to mankind, it makes sense to go to him and say, “Thanks for the thought, but this is working out pretty terribly for us, so we’d like you to return the heart.” But why would you approach someone who attempted to steal something for their personal benefit and give them that object and think they’ll go give it back to its rightful owner? How does that follow? But okay, we’ll go with it. Maybe Grandma is worried since Maui took the heart, he’s the only one who can put it back.

Moving forward, Moana arrives on Maui’s island and confronts him only for him to reveal, plot twist, he’s actually a hero who stole the heart not for himself, but for mankind. Except then we get an immediate plot twist back that Maui is a selfish jerk who leaves Moana to die in a cave, refuses to help her restore the heart, and then leaves her to be killed by the Kakamora. But twist back again, he really does want to be a hero to all and Moana is able to use that desire to get him to agree to restore the heart. But that doesn’t stop him from continually trying to get out of it, as though this is something Moana is forcing him to do rather than something she’s convinced him to do, and being extremely dismissive of and arguably flat-out mean to Moana.

The thing of it is there are a lot of different ways you could explain his behavior. Maybe he really does care about mankind and want to be a hero again, but he’s so afraid of Te Kā/convinced the heart is a genuine curse on him for stealing it that he can’t face this one particular task, and he’s lashing out at Moana for dragging him into it, despite deep down knowing she’s right. Maybe he wants to be a hero again because he wants the adulation of mankind, but he doesn’t actually care about people and feels this task is too much of a risk to be worth it. Maybe he’s only agreed because the ocean is basically refusing to give him a choice and he feels forced into it. Maybe he only agreed as a way of conning Moana into taking him to get his fishhook back, and he only decides he’s actually going to help with the Te Fiti thing after she saves him from Tamatoa. Any of these could work, but the movie pursues none of them, leaving his motivations unexplained and confusing.

Back to the plot, next they go to Lalotai and Maui gets his hook back, finds he can no longer use it effectively, and almost gets killed by Tamatoa, only to be saved by Moana’s quick thinking. There’s also a point in Tamatoa’s song where he references Maui having been abandoned in the past and brings attention to one of Maui’s tattoos. After they escape Lalotai, there’s a brief moment where Maui expresses a new found appreciation for Moana because she saved his life, but that character connection is immediately undercut by the humor of Maui’s hook continuing to malfunction.

Cut to later, and our nighttime conversation of deep sharing. Though it technically appears to be astronomical twilight as opposed to true night, but that’s less important than all the other ways this scene falls flat. The scene begins with Maui being despondent about his hook not working. Eventually he sits up with his back to Moana, prompting her to ask about his tattoo. We find out over the course of the ensuing argument that she believes the story behind the tattoo could explain why he can’t use his hook anymore. If they’re not really thinking about it, this can make sense to the audience. We were just shown this tattoo in a way that emphasizes to the us that this is important right after we were shown Maui’s inability to use his hook. In that context, Moana’s insistent questioning is justified – saving her dying island and presumably every island dying everywhere is more important than Maui’s reticence over talking about his personal issues.

But once you move past the framing and think about the logic of the situation, that assumption makes no sense. Why would this tattoo showing a woman chucking a baby into the ocean have anything to do with Maui’s hook? Why would you think any of his tattoos have anything to do with it? It’s been a thousand years since he’s had his hook; shouldn’t your base assumption be he’s out of practice and he just needs to keep at it until he can get back into the swing of things? In that context Moana’s questioning comes off as harassment. She asked him about something personal, he declined to answer and she kept asking and asking over repeated protests and even smacked him with her oar a couple times. Not hard, but she’s still hitting him. Eventually he grabs the oar away from her, throwing her into the ocean in the process.

When she gets back on the boat Moana reminds Maui of what’s at stake and says she only wants to help. Okay, fine Moana’s made this weird assumption, but given that her behavior is understandable, and it makes sense that her half-apology, half-explanation would placate Maui. What doesn’t make sense is why this would prompt Maui to explain the tattoo. Because while Moana might make a weird assumption, Maui should know the tattoo has nothing to do with his hook. It can’t, despite what the movie tries to imply, because that is something that happened when he was an infant, and he successfully used the hook for many years after it.

Maui tells her his backstory which is basically his parents threw him away, the gods gave him his fishhook and made him the demigod Maui, and then he went back to humans and started doing stuff for them, but it was never enough. What “it” was and who it wasn’t enough for is left undefined; best guess is that the adulation of humanity was never enough to give him a sense of real self-worth. Moana tells him essentially maybe the gods and the ocean chose him because they thought he was worth something and also self-worth comes from within not from gods or magic fishhooks. This comes off more as clichéd advice born of general sympathy than true friendship and deep empathy, which is not particularly emotionally satisfying, even if it does make sense as Moana doesn’t really know Maui that well and they aren’t friends at this point, or arguably ever.

Regardless, this encouragement is enough to give Maui renewed hope and he tries the hook again and everything goes perfectly. So he’s told he doesn’t need the hook and that’s the key to let him use it again. Apparently he was having performance issues, and he just needed to relax and let it happen naturally… One hopes that wasn’t the metaphor they were deliberately going for, but there it is.

After that we have the back to back learning montages, then the first confrontation with Te Kā, then Maui and Moana’s falling out where Maui leaves. I’ll come back to this scene later, but for now in specific reference to Maui’s character and his character and actions alone, it actually works well. His anger at Moana feels justified, and his psychological reliance on his hook has been established enough it feels believable that the possibility of losing it would cause him to leave.

Then he comes back and offers literally zero explanation as to why he did so. Not even a stupid joking one. He just kind of laughs awkwardly and goes to fight Te Kā. This would be fine if he had seemed conflicted when he left or if we had seen something in between leaving and coming back showing him reconsidering, but failing that there needs to be some indication of why he changed his mind. As it stands, the end of his character arc here falls flat because while his return indicates some sort of growth, we don’t know how he’s grown or what triggered that growth.

I have so many ideas of different ways you could take this character arc, probably because it’s so vague. That being said, since I’ve talked about this a lot already, I’ll stick to one fairly simple one here. You can keep everything the same except for two scenes, the one where he leaves and the one where he comes back.

The scene where he leaves would start the same, with him angry at Moana and blaming the damage to his hook on her and her need to prove she’s special. But in this version, she turns it back around on him. She’s not the one with the need to prove she’s special, she’s just trying to save her island. Maui’s the one who wants everyone to think he’s the hero of man, but a real hero would have tried to restore the heart of Te Fiti the second he realized what a mistake he’d made, not sat around in his cave and sulked for a millennium. He doesn’t care about humans, he just wants them to worship him to make up for his parents never loving him. Moana immediately realizes she went too far, but Maui leaves before she can apologize.

When Maui comes back she tells him she’s sorry, and he accepts it. He agrees that she crossed a line, but at the same time acknowledges she was mostly right about him. If he wants to be a hero, then he needs to start acting like one. Thank you, you’re welcome exchange, because that part is amazing and gives me shivers, then the rest of the movie as per canon.

Just these two adjustments fix so much. The inclusion of Maui’s backstory with his parents now feels necessary because it comes back later. Maui’s accusation that Moana risked their lives to feel special is no longer supported by the narrative – which is odd as it’s never a part of her character elsewhere – but called out as him projecting. His desire to be a hero contradicting with his actions and treatment of Moana is now a feature, not a bug. And finally his character arc is clearly defined as him starting as a fake hero only in it for the accolades to bolster his own sense of worth and growing to become a real hero in it to help people because he was inspired by Moana’s example.

Moana’s Disjointed Arc

Moana’s character arc is kind of bizarre. The opening establishes her central character conflict very well: she’s pulled between her responsibilities as the daughter of the village chief and next in line to lead – represented by the song “Where You Are” – and her own personal desire to voyage the ocean – represented by the song “How Far I’ll Go.” Then toward the end during her lowest moment, Grandma’s ghost shows up to comfort Moana, and Moana realizes these two disparate parts of herself can exist in harmony and together they make up who she is – represented by the song “I Am Moana” which is reprise of both “Where You Are” and “How Far I’ll Go.” It’s very moving and bringing those two songs back is very powerful, except…

Except there is nothing related to this character arc between those key points. Ultimately it’s less of a character arc and more of a pair of character pillars with nothing connecting them. The reason we don’t see any of this struggle during the middle part of the movie is it is fundamentally incompatible with plot as they have it. Moana’s character conflict is between her duty to her people and her love of the ocean, and the plot is her saving her people by going on an ocean adventure. There is no conflict there. The conflict was resolved the moment Grandma gave her the heart of Te Fiti and told her to restore it.

This causes a problem toward the end, because when there is no conflict, then the only way to cause her to hit that low moment and give up is by making her feel like she failed, but that’s doesn’t give us the veneer of crisis of self we need to justify the next song and to make it feel as though her arc has been completed. So the movie throws this conflict at us where when Maui leaves he tells Moana the ocean was wrong to choose her, and this apparently breaks her and makes her give up. Except, Moana never seems particularly concerned about the whole “Chosen One” aspect. Maui harps on it much more than she does. She’s here because she wants to save her people. During their nighttime conversation of deep sharing Moana explicitly says, “I don’t know why the ocean chose me. You’re right. But my island is dying, so I am here.”

As a side note to that, the whole idea of Moana being chosen is a little weird, because throughout most of the movie everyone seems convinced Maui is going to be the one to actually restore the heart. This means what Moana was chosen to do was to take Maui to Te Fiti. Maybe it’s just me, but water taxi doesn’t feel like a job that requires a chosen one.

If we want to keep this same character arc, then we’re going to need to make some changes to the plot. We’re going to really embrace the rebellious princess cliché. In this version Moana feels a lot of pressure at the idea of becoming the next chief of the village, compounded by her certainty she won’t be able to live up to her father’s example and also by the unexplained blight that has recently began destroying their crops and killing off the fish. Sailing is her one escape from everything. Moana gets older, the blight gets worse, and the pressure continues to grow. Grandma dies, and that’s the final straw – Moana straight-up runs away. No noble intentions, no heart of Te Fiti – at this point Moana’ doesn’t even know the heart’s been stolen – Moana just can’t take it anymore and leaves.

Soon after leaving she runs into Maui and, being a big fan of his from all the stories of the cool things he’s done, asks if she can voyage with him. He agrees to let her join him on his quest, but remains vague about the exact nature of it at first. They voyage together for a while and overcome a number of obstacles. Said obstacles can be things Maui says need to do to move their as of yet undefined quest forward or they can be random encounters like the Kakamora are in canon. Finally, during their nighttime conversation of deep sharing, Maui tells her the story of how he tried to give humanity the gift of creation by stealing the heart of Te Fiti and how he seriously firetrucked that up big time. He’s spent a long time running away from his mistake, but now he’s going to own up to his responsibilities. He gives Moana an out before their confrontation with Te Kā because of how dangerous it will be, but Moana reaffirms her intention to help.

They face off against Te Kā, and Moana nearly dies. She freaks out because this is way beyond what she wanted. She wanted to explore and have adventures, not face a real and imminent threat of death. She doesn’t want to do this anymore, so Maui leaves to try again on his own. Moana descends into an existential crisis: being a voyager is not what she thought it’d be and her guilt over abandoning Maui brings back the guilt over abandoning her people she’d been suppressing. Stingray Grandma shows up to comfort her, and makes the revelation the blight on Motunui is being caused by Te Fiti’s lost heart. Moana realizes that abandoning her people, though wrong, is what brought her to where she was meant to be to save them. These two sides of herself come together because she can fulfill her duty to her people by being herself and she can face the dangers on her chosen path if it’s to help her people. She heads back to Te Kā and Maui, and this time she’s the one who enters the battle at the pivotal moment to turn the tide. The rest again goes more or less per canon.

This way there is genuine conflict between Moana’s people and her love of the sea until the moment of resolution at the end. Further, Moana’s lowest moment is now caused by an actual existential crisis, not just a lack of confidence in her ability to do the task, so it makes sense it would be resolved with a realization of self. And as a bonus you can still use the song “I Am Moana” without changing it all, because if anything I feel it fits this version of the story even better than canon.

Conclusion

I just want to close out with two quick reminders. First of all, despite my complaining I do think this was a good movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves the classic Disney animated movies. Secondly I do plan to write another script doctor for this movie this time addressing all three of these issues I found in different ways than I have above and in a ways that work together cohesively. Finally, if you have thoughts on this, if you agree with me, if you disagree, if you have an idea that I didn’t consider here, I would love to hear it and discuss it!

Next part is here.

#Moana #Disney #Maui #meta #fan essay

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black-emporium-exchange · 4 years

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How to sign up for Black Emporium!

Yes sweet nuglets, it's that time of year again: Time to sign up for Black Emporium!

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CHANGES THIS YEAR -Maximum number of offers and requests increased to 30 through the Ao3 signup, plus 10 "bucket" offers/requests in optional details (40 total) -If you decide to offer "any", you may offer "any nonbinary" as well as the other relationship categories (F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi) -Sign up summary will now show requests/offers on a per-pairing basis - once a pairing is requested, it will be added to the sign-up summary the next time it updates (on an hourly basis) A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO SIGN-UPS

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“I’m only choosing this to get to three nominations. Please don’t write it.”

While we know someone who signs up for a,b and z may want a and/or b more than z, but please don’t scream to your author or artist that what you may well match on is something you don’t want as much as other pairings. Writing something like this also reduces your chance at treats as well.

“Even though I said I wanted M!Solavellan, I’m fine with F!Solavellan too if you like that better.”

Please don’t tell people that you’d be alright with non-nominated pairings, as fics with only non-nominated pairings cannot be added to the collection.

Minimums and Maximums in Requests:

4. Continue to the “Offers” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationship:

This means that you are willing to write or draw fanwork for, literally, any of the approved pairings.

The only limitation we will accept will be be a limitation of what sort of relationship you want to create for: eg, any f/f, any m/m, any f/m, any multi, or any nonbinary. Anything else WILL BE REJECTED. You may NOT use this option to say, for example, “Any Cullen pairing”. This option is for any and all of the approved pairings. Do not use this option unless you are sure that any is what you want.

Additional Tags:

You can offer to create fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting "any" is treated the same as selecting both.

Comments for mods:

Minimums and Maximums in Offers:

Bucket Offers:

A Note on Matching

#be_2020 #be_signups #be_announcements #be_rules

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kibaes · 6 years

Note

Z please~

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go

Ah I’m in too many fandoms, I’ll rant about the main thing on my mind (If you want a specific one feel free to send another ask!)

So I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: Black Clover is criminally underrated. People saw one or two episodes and immediately decided it was shitty because Asta screams a lot. Obviously, if that’s something that bothers you then you don’t owe the show to keep watching it, but just the way people treat it in the anime fanbase is annoying. One of the things that’s most annoying (that I’ve also said before) is that while Black Clover is considered trash (Western fanbase), BNHA is considered the best anime ever. BNHA is so popular that even non-anime fans watch it! Don’t get me wrong, I freakin’ love BNHA, but it gets too much-undeserved praise. So again, I like both shows a lot, but in this rant, I’ll explain why BNHA isn’t much better than Black Clover (heck, I prefer Black Clover).

I’ll start with the most obvious and talked about reasons- the way female characters are treated in each show. Some people praise BNHA for how they treat female characters, which I really don’t get. Other than an episode and a half where you kind of see Momo’s insecurities and her getting over them, the female characters don’t get any development or focus. Even Uraraka, the main female protagonist, doesn’t have much of a personality other than liking Deku, which by the way, is another annoying trait that too many characters in BNHA have. Now Asta also has his own harem which makes no sense at all (why would Mimosa like Asta when YUNO IS RIGHT THERE?), but unlike Deku’s harem, the characters in Asta’s harem have their own development and personalities, the most notable being Noelle, the main female protagonist. Noelle started off as a snobby rich person who deep down was unconfident and didn’t believe in herself, but throughout the anime/manga, she overcame (some of) her fears and managed to control her magic and acquire new spells. Having said that, Asta helped her overcome her fears, making her crush on him make some sense, while Uraraka’s crush on Deku doesn’t really make sense. BNHA uses the same excuse that Deku made her realize she can become a better hero or something like that, but this doesn’t really make much sense because it’s not like she wasn’t planning on doing that before. You can say she used to want to be a hero to earn easy money, but that’s not entirely true, and I think it’s safe to say Uraraka’s crush on Deku comes out of nowhere, especially when you compare it to Noelle’s crush on Asta. Uraraka’s crush on Deku is more like Rebecca’s crush on Asta- kind of pointless and doesn’t develop the plot or the characters in any way. Again, I have nothing against Deku x Uraraka and heck I even ship it, but when that’s all the main female protagonist is amounted to you can’t say it has strong female characters. In addition to that, most of the female pro-heroes in BNHA use their sex appeal in one way or another to defeat bad guys or make themselves more popular. In my opinion, it’s fine if there’s one character like that, but having 90% of the female characters do that just makes it uninteresting and annoying. On the other hand, I can’t think of any female character who uses her sex appeal to battle (maybe Vanessa a little, although she uses it more to persuade Finral to fight). There’s Charlotte who’s really cool and strong, and her crush on Yami is adorable (you can say it takes away from her character and her main trait is liking Yami the same way Uraraka likes Deku. I personally disagree but can see why someone would say this, but then again Charlotte isn’t the main female protagonist like Uraraka), and if you don’t think she’s a good example of a strong female character, read the manga and wait for Mereoleona, who’s quite possibly my all-time favorite female characters. Another small addition to this point can be their outfits- BC has much less revealing outfits than BNHA has. Plus too many of the revealing outfits worn in BNHA are worn by young girls, some who aren’t even comfortable in them! Long story short, BNHA definitely doesn’t deserve praise for the way it treats female characters, especially when you compare it to a show like Black Clover, who does so much better.

Now for a more personal opinion- Asta is much much better than Deku. People like to praise BNHA saying it’s progressive because it’s not like other Shounen shows. One of the main differences I see between BNHA and other Shounen shows is Deku. While most Shounens have an overpowered goofball who eats a lot as the main character, BNHA’s Deku is pretty different. Personally, I don’t even like Deku, so him being the main character is a big turn off for me (he did get better in season 3 but in the manga, he continues to annoy me). Now let me explain my point better. There’s a reason most Shounen main characters are similar- ITS GOOD. I’m not saying having something different is bad (I’ll come back to this), but the stereotypical main characters Shounen’s have are adorable and always loved. A lot of people dislike Black Clover because Asta screamed too much. First off, he screams less later on, and it actually becomes funny later (characters in the show itself address it). Also if that’s the only problem you can try to read the manga. Like I said before, these types of main characters are popular because they’re successful. They’re the type of character that goes around influencing people to be better without realizing it (Asta, Luffy, Naruto, Natsu). Deku fits the role of the unconfident kid that later is inspired by one of these characters, rather than being the one that does the inspiring. Deku gets so much attention just for existing- in the beginning, he did risk his life despite not having any quirk which was cool, but later he just does what anyone else (or at least a few other characters) would do in his situation. We’ve seen many characters put their lives in danger, and just because Deku just happens to conveniently be in places where he gets to show that he’s willing to risk his life, he gets all the credit. Adding to this, I’ll never get over how All Might picked a random kid he saw trying to save his friend (which by the way, Deku still considering Bakugo a friend is baffling to me because of how he treated him. Get a clue!) over freakin’ Mirio!!!! Mirio fits the main character role much better than Deku- he has a quirk that seems useless but after hard training, he managed to make it one of the best quirks out there. He also gave up so much to save one little girl (which by the way, Deku stole all the attention in the end and now Eri likes him for no reason). Anyways, I know most people do like Deku so these points might not seem too strong, but I can’t really see how a character like Deku can be main. He’s pretty boring and I think he fits the role of a side character much better. Something that could’ve made BNHA more interesting to me (with Deku as the main character) is if he never got the One For All. Obviously, it’d make for a pretty different show, but it’s pretty boring when you know the main character already has the strongest power ever and he will become the best superhero because of it. You can even compare this to a show like One Piece- Luffy has the Gum Gum fruit, sure, but no one ever said that’s the strongest devil fruit there is, we know there are stronger ones. Plus it’s never been confirmed Luffy will become the Pirate King (although it’s pretty safe to assume he will be). A better example is how we don’t know if Asta will become the Wizard King. He probably will, but there is still some element of mystery whereas in BNHA one of the first lines is Deku confirming he’ll become the strongest hero, which as I said before, isn’t a big surprise considering he has the strongest quirk there is. Personally, I think Deku staying quirkless and overcoming hurdles that way is much more interesting (again, would make for a different show but still), which is exactly what happens in Black Clover with Asta which is one reason I really love BC. Asta manages to become a strong magic knight despite his lack of magic and how everyone always ridicules him. Plus it never gets old to see a bad guy making fun of Asta for not having any Mana and then Asta destroying them. Anyways, Deku still can’t control his powers which is a big focus of the show which is good, since if he could control them there really wouldn’t be any point, but the fact he has the strongest quirk makes him becoming the strongest hero pretty obvious and anticlimactic. To conclude this segment, everyone hates on Asta for being an annoying main character while they praise Deku for being different. Different does not equal good, they gave up on Asta too quickly in my opinion, and personally, I just don’t like Deku.

Another reason people dropped Black Clover was because the story is pretty generic. I agree that at first when I heard Asta wanted to become the Wizard King, I thought it was pretty silly, but once Yuno and Asta leave the village, it becomes much more interesting. Plus, there is an actual bigger plot like in BNHA which most people didn’t even reach before they decided to drop the show. If you aren’t a fan of Shounen shows, then I get why you might’ve dropped Black Clover (no offense though why did you start it? It has ‘Shounen trash’ written all over it) but if you generally are, I really really recommend to give it another try!

Now a short list of other things I love in BC more than in BNHA that I can’t really backup: the art style, the openings (fight me) and focus distribution (the amount of focus each character gets).

Despite all the shit I said, I LOVE BNHA!! It’s a great show with an awesome plot, cool fighting sequences, characters, character interactions, and pace. I’m just tired of seeing it put on a pedestal while Black Clover is considered bad. I just pointed out things that I believe BC is better at to put things into perspective, but they’re both great shows I highly recommend!

#Black Clover #BNHA #BNHA discourse #?#I have more to say but this is really already

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incarnateirony · 6 years

Video

youtube

Okay so @super-powerful-queen-slayyna awesomely tagged a bunch of us in this helpful post, but I’m going to add a few thoughts. Everyone’s loving certain parts of this video and rightfully so, especially re: the “pandering” or anti-pandering quote of Yockey, but I felt the need to transcribe some full thoughts attached directly to the video that doesn’t get fractal reblogged off the ticket, so to speak.

I’m going to have a lonnnng thing reviewing commentary below, but the end has this “general takeaway”; if you want to see the content leading to this final point, click “Read More,”

. . . I honestly feel like all of these (minus Yockey’s playcrush on Churchill) is actually really relevant to the fandom’s interests as a whole: Yockey’s voice, his allowance for voice, ability to fight for plot points, but cohesively working with the entire room, that isn’t bowing or kowtowing to any specific fandom sect, but keeping to a plan; a plan they defer to his Checkhov’s Gun with his work, where everything has a plan, where SPN entrusts their actors without parentheticals and where Yockey still admires how his work turns out on screen through actors and editors, which is a gem for SPN while other authors on panel aren’t always so rewarded with end result. There’s no accident . . .

I really love right after the 13 minute mark, one playwright discusses the value of importing your voice/skills to other productions. Yockey then speaks up about the creative liberty they now have on SPN. On many shows, showrunners do a pass over on all scripts. SPN doesn’t, and they’re proud of the individual voices of their authors. This is interesting, considering Yockey is known for two major voices: his dark comedy, and his queer romantic focus, which was the voice we’ve seen imported to the show. And now, knowing he has liberty to do what he wants without Dabb or Singer even wanting to unbind that “signature.” And considering the discussion of why playwrights are added for their voice and all-the-other-things that’s particularly interesting with Yockey being added in S12 for Dabb’s new regime and this podcast is so beautiful and liberating. It’s mostly things We Been Knew, but it’s fantastic to hear confirmed is in fact the dynamic of the room.

Yockey is quite clear that he’s allowed to have whatever voice he wants and was imported for that voice, and that’s fantastic. Dabb brought him in for a reason, and now what could that reason be? Certainly not Yockey’s giggling about things he intentionally puts in scripts?

We just don’t know!

Anyway around 19:45~ish they talk about the lack of parentheticals in script, merging it into talk of freedom and liberty. Yockey mentions playwrighting as exposition of elements not on screen. Also it becomes a joke that playwrights are explicitly given flack about Chekhov jokes, presumably Chekhov’s Gun, which is the whole “don’t put absolutely anything on stage that isn’t related to the plot” and is part of standard playwright voice, so we can fall back to the imported voice talk.

Roughly 34~ minutes in, Yockey speaks of older generation authors on a show, which are generally producers and/or interchangeable, and them being willing to explain things to the new crew learning on the job (like him in Season 12), and how this sculpt their leaning on the job, handling, and understanding and this transferrance of ideas between writer generations. So... Dabberens, like most of us been said.

Here’s a fun little breakaway. The podcaster asks if any of them have actors lobbying for or pitching specific ideas and I’m just gonna do a Yockey Face Appreciation Breakaway trimmed from my twitter commentary,

SO ANYWAY

There’s a 40 minute-or-so-in commentary about an author accidentally slipping that a character wouldn’t be on soon enough, before it was meant to come out. It caused an oopsie-day fuss and I wonder if that may be about Mark S. Either way, the conversation is about the confidentiality of the author room, even after they write things, to not tip off actors before they need-to-know, which is another conversational topic, such as I handled here.

There’s some interesting talk about the right actors and editing room exemplifying aspects of script on remastered levels that knock the authors’ own socks off, Yockey uptalks SPN’s crew for that. Other writers on the panel mention heartbreaking mini trims and/or wildly misconstrued scripts where the author is like “WHAT THE HELL?” like love scenes suddenly turning rapey; it turns into a comment about earlier parentheticals by the 47 minute mark, “Yes, parenthetical: (not rapey)” but the host moves on.

Yockey goes on to say you’d have to kill him to get him off of Supernatural. The dynamic of the writer’s room deeply appeals to him. It’s not a “regular room” as he sees it. They each pitch 3-4 stories into the pool, the showrunner decides which stories make that part of the arc, then assign them, break off by themselves, pitch, take notes, defer to each other, outline, scripts for about a five week process. It’s truly collaborative and mutually agreed, drawing comraderie, shared engagement and pooled ideas. It’s not “traditional,” but we get to see the cohesive storytelling now with how the episodes get doled out after brainstorm and the showrunner stapling it together like “how can we use this?”

As we near the end, Yockey speaks what We All been Knew: the end half of a season is paying off the first things the first half set up (with insert from fellow author on the panel, if you’re in a healthy environment, which Yockey has vividly advocated he is). Most of us knew this implicitly but some people always act shocked that there’s a build into things so, again, always fun for him to acknowledge: it’s not all random, arbitrary events. Gasp.

Again: We been Knew: if you’re not the showrunner, it’s not your battle. But Yockey will still do pushback; only minor pushback over aesthetic, but will fight harder over story elements. If he’s able to go in armed with storypoints that plot point D being used or removed will have story-points X, Y, and Z as a result that they have to compensate for, he will go in and gladly do that. And minding the collaborative author room, Dabb doesn’t just want yes men, so this osmosis writing effect seems to care to that well.

Minor playwright moments vanishing, Yockey doesn’t care about. But he’ll stand for major plot landmarks of how it breaks out story.

The quote about factions, authors and pandering that the world is loving comes around the 1 hour mark, involving the wildly offsetting love-vs-vitriol they get from the fandom,

“We have to stick to our plan because they all want different things. They don’t all want one outcome for the show. So there would be no way to be like I’m gonna sneak this in because people are gonna love it, you would get murdered”.

They stick to their guns. The authors have collaborated, will fight for independent plot manifestations for overall effect, but still work with the showrunner’s vision. They refuse to pander to any demands of a specific audience because of how vast the audience differences are. Yockey just deadass said they pretty much ignore the hate. They see it. They know it’s there. They’re not going to change. This resonates with Dabb’s old comment, as people have mentioned before. But I mean, if you’re yelling at them right now: they see you, they just don’t care. They can’t make everyone happy. So they’ll stick with their guns.

Around one hour six minutes a question also interestingly brings about the difference between “what we see” vs “what we say” on screen vs play on things like emotional evocation, like “are they just standing there talking about their feelings? Or what are we SEEING?” and that’s just A+ addition.

Also offtopic from fandom relevance but Yockey’s professional crush on Caryl Churchill is adorable.

And there you go. I honestly feel like all of these (minus Yockey’s playcrush on Churchill) is actually really relevant to the fandom’s interests as a whole: Yockey’s voice, his allowance for voice, ability to fight for plot points, but cohesively working with the entire room, that isn’t bowing or kowtowing to any specific fandom sect, but keeping to a plan; a plan they defer to his Checkhov’s Gun with his work, where everything has a plan, where SPN entrusts their actors without parentheticals and where Yockey still admires how his work turns out on screen through actors and editors, which is a gem for SPN while other authors on panel aren’t always so rewarded with end result.

There’s no accident, there’s no forgetting, there’s no wild swing: there is a plan and the whole writing room knows it.

#supernatural #spn #spn meta #meta #steve yockey #is a gift #the insight to the author room here is so deep in full scale #i mean we been knew but the video receipt is nice

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