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niseamstories · 3 years

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10 Lessons on Realistic Worldbuilding and Mapmaking I Learned Working With a Professional Cartographer and Geodesist

Hi, fellow writers and worldbuilders,

It’s been over a year since my post on realistic swordfighting, and I figured it’s time for another one. I’m guessing the topic is a little less “sexy”, but I’d find this useful as a writer, so here goes: 10 things I learned about realistic worldbuilding and mapmaking while writing my novel.

I’ve always been a sucker for pretty maps, so when I started on my novel, I hired an artist quite early to create a map for me. It was beautiful, but a few things always bothered me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on it. A year later, I met an old friend of mine, who currently does his Ph.D. in cartography and geodesy, the science of measuring the earth. When the conversation shifted to the novel, I showed him the map and asked for his opinion, and he (respectfully) pointed out that it has an awful lot of issues from a realism perspective.

First off, I’m aware that fiction is fiction, and it’s not always about realism; there are plenty of beautiful maps out there (and my old one was one of them) that are a bit fantastical and unrealistic, and that’s all right. Still, considering the lengths I went to ensure realism for other aspects of my worldbuilding, it felt weird to me to simply ignore these discrepancies. With a heavy heart, I scrapped the old map and started over, this time working in tandem with a professional artist, my cartographer friend, and a linguist. Six months later, I’m not only very happy with the new map, but I also learned a lot of things about geography and coherent worldbuilding, which made my universe a lot more realistic.

1) Realism Has an Effect: While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating an unrealistic world, realism does affect the plausibility of a world. Even if the vast majority of us probably know little about geography, our brains subconsciously notice discrepancies; we simply get this sense that something isn’t quite right, even if we don’t notice or can’t put our finger on it. In other words, if, for some miraculous reason, an evergreen forest borders on a desert in your novel, it will probably help immersion if you at least explain why this is, no matter how simple.

2) Climate Zones: According to my friend, a cardinal sin in fantasy maps are nonsensical climate zones. A single continent contains hot deserts, forests, and glaciers, and you can get through it all in a single day. This is particularly noticeable in video games, where this is often done to offer visual variety (Enderal, the game I wrote, is very guilty of this). If you aim for realism, run your worldbuilding by someone with a basic grasp of geography and geology, or at least try to match it to real-life examples.

3) Avoid Island Continent Worlds: Another issue that is quite common in fictional worlds is what I would call the ��island continents”: a world that is made up of island-like continents surrounded by vast bodies of water. As lovely and romantic as the idea of those distant and secluded worlds may be, it’s deeply unrealistic. Unless your world was shaped by geological forces that differ substantially from Earth’s, it was probably at one point a single landmass that split up into fragmented landmasses separated by waters. Take a look at a proper map of our world: the vast majority of continents could theoretically be reached by foot and relatively manageable sea passages. If it weren’t so, countries such as Australia could have never been colonized – you can’t cross an entire ocean on a raft.

4) Logical City Placement: My novel is set in a Polynesian-inspired tropical archipelago; in the early drafts of the book and on my first map, Uunili, the nation’s capital, stretched along the entire western coast of the main island. This is absurd. Not only because this city would have been laughably big, but also because building a settlement along an unprotected coastline is the dumbest thing you could do considering it directly exposes it to storms, floods, and, in my case, monsoons. Unless there’s a logical reason to do otherwise, always place your coastal settlements in bays or fjords.

Naturally, this extends to city placement in general. If you want realism and coherence, don’t place a city in the middle of a godforsaken wasteland or a swamp just because it’s cool. There needs to be a reason. For example, the wasteland city could have started out as a mining town around a vast mineral deposit, and the swamp town might have a trading post along a vital trade route connecting two nations.

5) Realistic Settlement Sizes: As I’ve mentioned before, my capital Uunili originally extended across the entire western coast. Considering Uunili is roughly two thirds the size of Hawaii the old visuals would have made it twice the size of Mexico City. An easy way to avoid this is to draw the map using a scale and stick to it religiously. For my map, we decided to represent cities and townships with symbols alone.

6) Realistic Megacities: Uunili has a population of about 450,000 people. For a city in a Middle Ages-inspired era, this is humongous. While this isn’t an issue, per se (at its height, ancient Alexandria had a population of about 300,000), a city of that size creates its own set of challenges: you’ll need a complex sewage system (to minimize disease spreading like wildfire) and strong agriculture in the surrounding areas to keep the population fed. Also, only a small part of such a megacity would be enclosed within fantasy’s ever-so-present colossal city walls; the majority of citizens would probably concentrate in an enormous urban sprawl in the surrounding areas. To give you a pointer, with a population of about 50,000, Cologne was Germany’s biggest metropolis for most of the Middle Ages. I’ll say it again: it’s fine to disregard realism for coolness in this case, but at least taking these things into consideration will not only give your world more texture but might even provide you with some interesting plot points.

7) World Origin: This point can be summed up in a single question: why is your world the way it is? If your novel is set in an archipelago like mine is, are the islands of volcanic origin? Did they use to be a single landmass that got flooded with the years? Do the inhabitants of your country know about this? Were there any natural disasters to speak of? Yes, not all of this may be relevant to the story, and the story should take priority over lore, but just like with my previous point, it will make your world more immersive.

8) Maps: Think Purpose! Every map in history had a purpose. Before you start on your map, think about what yours might have been. Was it a map people actually used for navigation? If so, clarity should be paramount. This means little to no distracting ornamentation, a legible font, and a strict focus on relevant information. For example, a map used chiefly for military purposes would naturally highlight different information than a trade map. For my novel, we ultimately decided on a “show-off map” drawn for the Blue Island Coalition, a powerful political entity in the archipelago (depending on your world’s technology level, maps were actually scarce and valuable). Also, think about which technique your in-universe cartographer used to draw your in-universe map. Has copperplate engraving already been invented in your fictional universe? If not, your map shouldn’t use that aesthetic.

9) Maps: Less Is More. If a spot or an area on a map contains no relevant information, it can (and should) stay blank so that the reader’s attention naturally shifts to the critical information. Think of it this way: if your nav system tells you to follow a highway for 500 miles, that’s the information you’ll get, and not “in 100 meters, you’ll drive past a little petrol station on the left, and, oh, did I tell you about that accident that took place here ten years ago?” Traditional maps follow the same principle: if there’s a road leading a two day’s march through a desolate desert, a black line over a blank white ground is entirely sufficient to convey that information.

10) Settlement and Landmark Names: This point will be a bit of a tangent, but it’s still relevant. I worked with a linguist to create a fully functional language for my novel, and one of the things he criticized about my early drafts were the names of my cities. It’s embarrassing when I think about it now, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to how I named my cities; I wanted it to sound good, and that was it. Again: if realism is your goal, that’s a big mistake. Like Point 5, we went back to the drawing board and dove into the archipelago’s history and established naming conventions. In my novel, for example, the islands were inhabited by indigenes called the Makehu before the colonization four hundred years before the events of the story; as it’s usually the case, all settlements and islands had purely descriptive names back then. For example, the main island was called Uni e Li, which translates as “Mighty Hill,” a reference to the vast mountain ranges in the south and north; townships followed the same example (e.g., Tamakaha meaning “Coarse Sands”). When the colonizers arrived, they adopted the Makehu names and adapted them into their own language, changing the accented, long vowels to double vowels: Uni e Li became “Uunili,” Lehō e Āhe became “Lehowai.” Makehu townships kept their names; colonial cities got “English” monikers named after their geographical location, economic significance, or some other original story. Examples of this are Southport, a—you guessed it—port on the southernmost tip of Uunili, or Cale’s Hope, a settlement named after a businessman’s mining venture. It’s all details, and chances are that most readers won’t even pay attention, but I personally found that this added a lot of plausibility and immersion.

I could cover a lot more, but this post is already way too long, so I’ll leave it at that—if there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to make a part two. If not, well, maybe at least a couple of you got something useful out of this. If you’re looking for inspiration/references to show to your illustrator/cartographer, the David Rumsey archive is a treasure trove. Finally, for anyone who doesn’t know and might be interested, my novel is called Dreams of the Dying, and is a blends fantasy, mystery, and psychological horror set in the universe of Enderal, an indie RPG for which I wrote the story. It’s set in a Polynesian-inspired medieval world and has been described as Inception in a fantasy setting by reviewers.

Credit for the map belongs to Dominik Derow, who did the ornamentation, and my friend Fabian Müller, who created the map in QGIS and answered all my questions with divine patience. The linguist’s name is David Müller (no, they’re not related, and, yes, we Germans all have the same last names.)

#enderal #dreams of the dying #worldbuilding #resource #writeblr #writing tips #mapmaking #cartography #illustration #realism #writeblogging #novelwriting #writing research #research #writing

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cheri-translates · 4 years

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Interviews with the Chinese VAs

English translations of the interviews from the MLQC Weibo page! Little hints of what we can look forward to in the anime 🥰

1. Wu Lei (voice of Victor / Li Ze Yan)

Q: How did you feel when you found out MLQC was getting an anime adaptation?

A: Pleasantly surprised. After hoping for such a long time, the MLQC game has finally turned into an animation. I’m incredibly happy. A lot of notable scenes will appear in the anime.

Q: How was your experience voicing the animation?

A: We know how Victor has the nickname "Normal Citizen Victor”. In the animation, a lot of little moments in his life and his interactions will be fleshed out. Look forward to discovering them.

As an animation, there will be differences from the game. In the game, the plot reveals itself gradually over several chapters. In the animation, the pace is more close-knit. So it will help you quickly understand what’s happening in MLQC.

Whether you like the anime or the game, you will discover new moments in the animation which will help you enjoy MLQC even more.

Apart from that, I think Victor has a very amazing power. I’ve mentioned this on various occasions. Time-control. It can be used for saving the world, and also for dating. Such an amazing ability... oh god, can I have it too?

More perspectives can be presented through animation. Whether it’s in the past, present or future, just as Victor says, he is destined to be drawn to you.

Q: Will Victor be as critical in the animation?

A: Don’t you all like being criticised by Victor? Do you like it? Really?

Victor is an extremely sweet person. I did record a lot of “dummy”s for the animation. But we know that every “dummy” from him is not meant to scold you, but... I’ll leave the rest of the sentence for all the Mrs Li’s to leave in the comment section.

Q: Do you have any final words to say to all the producers?

A: I hope all of you can continue walking alongside Victor. No matter what you see Victor doing in the animation, don’t worry too much. Just relax and be his dummy.

2. Xia Lei (voices Lucien / Xu Mo)

Q: How did you feel when you found out MLQC was getting an anime adaptation?

A: Extremely happy. MLQC has had a big influence on my work and life. Being able to let a larger audience know about it makes me happy. With this anime adaptation, the audience will no longer be confined to just players of the game, but also to people who like 2D animation.

It’s almost the fourth year that I’ve been involved in MLQC. This production has had a major influence on my life. I hope, with my hard work, that MLQC will continue to expand in the future, and that I can continue this journey.

Q: How was your experience voicing the animation?

A: There’s quite a big difference between voicing the game and the animation.

The game tends to present specific words, specific scenes, and specific locations. It can’t present things as meticulously as in animation.

A simple example would be how we know Lucien is an amazing researcher who has profound knowledge. We can show this ability very clearly in the animation when he talks about science. But we can’t put all these words into the game.

There is very large script for the animation, so it’s a little more difficult. There are more words. So you will get to interact with Lucien and know him better. Perhaps you will have a deeper understanding of Lucien too.

In the game, there are a lot of nice angles and actions. But when it comes to things like his gait, they are more thoroughly presented in the animation. Animation fills in a lot of gaps of how we imagine these actions to look like. How does he walk? How does he take up his cup to drink? How does he prop up his spectacles? You can find the answers in the animation.

There are other differences in terms of artistic presentation. The music in the animation follows the plot closely, and is more meticulous.

You’ll be able to better experience a living Professor Lucien.

Q: Will we get to see Ares?

A: This... I personally feel that even if you want to be spoiled, you should find the answer in the anime. I believe the anime will present a thorough story to you.

The people closer to Lucien, like his students, will definitely appear.

Being able to see these characters animated is something I’ve always anticipated. When I first started voicing Lucien, I felt the plot was very good, that the characters were done very meticulously, and that it would be nice if they could be presented in another form.

Back then, I didn’t say anything because I knew that animation was expensive [laughs]. So being able to have this dream come true, and see a more complete, more emotional, and more living MLQC makes me happy.

I hope through everyone’s efforts, we can present a complete and beautiful story to all producers.

Q: Do you have any final words to say to all the producers?

A: If you don’t want him to always make wrong decisions, watch the animation. Now, it’s too late to escape.

3. Ah Jie (voices Gavin / Bai Qi)

Q: How did you feel when you found out MLQC was getting an anime adaptation?

A: I can finally see a living Officer Bai! Previously, we could only have simple motions in the game. More complicated movements like riding a motorbike or firing a gun have to be described using words. In the animation, we can see these cool images. It feels great!

The animation is really able to bring out the cool and dashing side of Gavin. It looks great, and everyone can look forward to it.

Q: How was your experience voicing the animation?

A: When doing the voice-over, I realised he has many more expressions than in the game. So when I was recording, I’d try to grasp his emotions and match it with the voice so it fits his expressions. For example, when he feels embarrassed, when he blushes, these things. I find it very interesting.

A lot of people may be wondering if the plot would be different in the animation. I can reveal a little bit - the changes are very natural. It wouldn’t feel odd. The overall pace is still great. So you can all rest assured.

As for the overall voicing experience, I feel it’s more difficult than voicing the game. In the game, I’m basically given the script and a bit of illustrations of the scene. So we base it off our imagination.

But in the animation, we see the final product when we voice it, including the movement of the mouth. We have to follow the mouth movements strictly to fit the voice. So this is more difficult. We also have to follow the expressions and movements in the anime. So we’re not given as much freedom as in the game, but it’s a nice challenge.

In the animation, what is most impactful is that a moving Gavin is very very very cool.

For example, in the 2nd chapter of the game, which is where he first shows his Evol, we can only imagine it through the words. But in the animation, we can actually see him flying. The moment he does it goes beyond my expectations. Everyone can look forward to it. It’s really cool.

Q: Will the animation address things from Gavin’s time in high school?

A: Do you want me to reveal anything? I will definitely not. But I can guarantee that the memories most important to you will not be missing in the anime.

Q: Do you have any final words to say to all the producers?

A: As long as you watch the MLQC animation, he can sense you in the wind.

4. Bian Jiang (voices Kiro / Zhou Qi Luo)

Q: How did you feel when you found out MLQC was getting an anime adaptation?

A: I did think MLQC would eventually be made into an animation, and was anticipating when it would happen. And now it’s about to start.

In the PV, people commented that they wanted to see Kiro’s superstar side. When voicing the animation, I did see things like him being on stage, dancing, and interesting tidbits from his filming and photoshoots. I think you’ll definitely see a different Kiro, and have even more surprises.

Q: How was your experience voicing the animation?

A: When doing the voice-over, I realised there are a lot of notable scenes in the game that appear in the animation. I find myself thinking back to how I began voicing Kiro, and the tranquility that comes with it. Kiro is always really easy to like.

Something you might want to know - will we get both Kiro and Helios? Hmm...

During the voice-over, we saw a lot of NPCs. Savin has many scenes, so I wouldn’t mention more. We will get to see Hollow, who brings us a lot of joy. A lot of NPCs have scenes. It’s worth anticipating.

Q: Will we get to see Kiro singing?

A: I have a big surprise for you - Kiro will be having a new single in the anime. Can I reveal it? I’ll hum it for you. [hums the character song] Does it sound good?

Q: Do you have any final words to say to all the producers?

A: Miss Chips, Kiro commands you that whether or not he can see you, you have to watch the MLQC anime. Or else, he will feel very disappointed.

Random input: This is the scene I was talking about in the tags-

#mlqc #mlqc cn #have you all seen the ED where Gavin just h o v e r s in the sky where everyone can see him #it’s amazing #I included a screenshot at the end for your viewing pleasure

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quicksilversquared · 3 years

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The Wavering Peahen: Chapter 6

When Nathalie started feeling oddly ill again, both she and Gabriel were worried that the Peacock Miraculous might somehow (impossibly) be to blame again.

So naturally, they pick someone else to be the Peacock for a bit. You know, as a test subject. Except the new Peacock… doesn’t exactly know that.

links in the reblog

Marinette was starting to think that Hawkmoth had officially gone around the bend.

For months after the Miracle Queen attack, Hawkmoth and Mayura had hammered at the superheroes, both of them plus the regular akuma and a sentimonster showing up to the battles. The superheroes had struggled to adapt, sacrificing their free time and fun activities to find and train new allies to help them as needed and doubling up on Miraculous almost as often as not to have access to more powers. They had been managing- sometimes only by the skin of their teeth- but it was taking a lot of effort.

And then, all of a sudden, Mayura vanished, and Pavona took her place next to Hawkmoth.

The change by itself would have been odd enough even if Pavona was an equally good fighter as Mayura. But Pavona was a poor fighter and even worse strategist. Her sentimonsters were easier to fight than Mayura's, and her outfit- while fancy- was a piece of cake to grab onto, either to yank her backward (or sideways) out of an attack or to fling her several blocks away, away from the fight and out of their hair for several minutes while the supervillain picked herself back up and straightened her outfit out.

(The Ladyblog had had an absolute field day with how ridiculous and ill-suited for fighting Pavona's outfit was. Marinette had worried that it would make Pavona reconsider her transformation and choose something more practical, but either the supervillain was unaware of the Ladyblog or was just so generally inept that she wasn't willing to sacrifice fashion for practicality.)

In most cases, Marinette would have assumed that Pavona had stolen the Miraculous from Mayura, and that was the reason for the change. But it was obvious that Pavona wouldn't have been able to overpower Mayura to start with, and Hawkmoth had clearly been anticipating the change. Right now, her assumption was that something had happened to Mayura- maybe she had died in an accident or something, she didn't know- and Pavona was Hawkmoth's only choice for an ally.

To be honest, Marinette was of the opinion that Hawkmoth would have been better off fighting on his own. Pavona only seemed to get in the way, and then she had to be saved before the superheroes could grab for her Miraculous. Pavona hadn't come out on the battlefield again after one particularly idiotic blunder, but considering that Mayura hadn't returned and the Peacock's sentimonsters were still showing up, it was more than likely that Pavona was just sulking in a lair somewhere for a bit before trying battlefield fighting again.

And now, after weeks- no, months- of Hawkmoth going after the superheroes with increased ferocity, the attacks had suddenly stopped. There had been nothing for the past four days.

Not that Marinette was complaining! Being able to attend school without having to dash out was really nice. It was just odd, that was all.

"Oh, Lila's looking like she might be finally getting better! I'm glad, she was looking so ill at the end of last week!"

Marinette blinked, pulling herself out of her thoughts and glancing over at Alya. "Hm?"

Alya nodded towards the front of the classroom, where Lila was straggling across the front of the classroom. "Lila caught a cold or something last week and she was so exhausted. She couldn't rest very well, since she's been pushing herself to get all of this work for her charities done before this deadline and there's been, like, so many emergencies that she's had to deal with all in a row. We've all been trying to help out so she won't get behind, but she's really been struggling. So I'm glad that she's feeling at least a little better now!"

For once, it was easy not to sigh in exasperation. Instead, Marinette frowned, glancing towards Lila as she headed for the back of the classroom.

The charities were a lie, of course. They always had been and always would be. Lila was too selfish and self-centered to even think about spending her time and money helping others. But the lie definitely got Lila a lot of (undeserved) admiration and offers for help. Mysteriously, Lila could never use the help with the charity directly- Marinette hadn't bothered to hear her excuses for that- but she could use the help when it came to things like homework. Normally, Marinette would assume that Lila had just wanted her classmates to offer to do all of her homework because she felt a little under the weather.

This time, though, Marinette had noticed that Lila seemed a bit under the weather, and it hadn't seemed faked. In fact, it had been pretty obvious once she looked a little closer that Lila had applied makeup to hide how bad she was feeling. And that was strange.

Sure, Lila seemed to have made a little bit of a recovery, but Marinette couldn't help but feel a bit curious about the whole situation. Downplaying her troubles wasn't Lila's style at all, and Marinette had to wonder what was going on. Because something had to be going on, unless Lila had gotten a personality transplant overnight.

(Considering that she was still lying about her charity work, Marinette doubted that.)

"I wonder if there's something going around," Adrien commented quietly to Marinette as Alya and Nino broke off into their own little conversation. "Nathalie was sick a couple weeks ago, and I've never seen her so drained. She's been getting better, but she still gets these little relapses sometimes." He glanced towards the back of the classroom, his brow furrowed. "Maybe Lila picked it up at one of the photoshoots or something."

"I hope it doesn't spread, then," Marinette said. She chanced a glance back at Lila, who was clearly half-heartedly engaging in conversation with a few of their classmates. "Being tired and miserable for over a week sounds miserable."

Miserable, and not very safe. Marinette had had to be Ladybug when she had a bit of a cold more than one time, with a stuffed nose and a sore throat, and that had been bad enough. It hadn't affected her fighting that much, she thought, but combine that with how being tired during late night and early-morning fights affected her...

"She probably shouldn't have been coming to school," Adrien added after a moment. "It's a bit odd that most of the time she's so eager to skip, but the one time when she actually has a legitimate excuse to stay home, she doesn't."

Marinette nodded, glancing backwards again. "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing."

The lack of akumas continued for the rest of the week, and Marinette got to get caught up with- well, everything- for the first time in ages. She worried that Hawkmoth was planning something, of course, but there wasn't really much that she and Chat Noir could do about it besides patrolling every evening in search of trouble.

Well, patrolling and going over what little information they had about the Miraculous powers and potions, comparing notes about what Master Fu had taught them. Thankfully she had gotten copies of pretty much all of Master Fu's translations before he was caught, but she hadn't had the chance to go through all of them and truly figure out the extent of the information at her fingertips. She and Chat Noir had been finding hidden crannies- ones where they wouldn't get spotted and where they couldn't be overheard or snuck up on- and going over the notes, puzzling over cryptic clues and tossing ideas for interpretations back and forth. Maybe it was a nice change of pace from battling akumas (and it was definitely something that they had to do anyway), but it was also difficult and frustrating and slow-going. Things had to be interpreted and then sorted into some semblance of order so that they would be able to find the notes again when they needed them.

So by the time Saturday rolled around, marking a full week without the barest whisper of an akuma, Marinette was more than happy to set her schoolwork and the Miraculous notes aside (the latter locked up in a box that was both secure and hidden), bake a batch of cookies, and package them up with some rejected pastries from the bakery to bring to their class picnic at the park. It sounded like a great opportunity to relax and focus on something else for a change.

Their classmates trickled in, coming in pairs and trios, laden with food. Thankfully it looked like people had brought dishes instead of just treats this time, so they would have a proper meal instead of just sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It was a far cry from their first class picnic, where almost all of them ended up feeling a bit ill from the number of sweets that they had eaten.

Rose, bless her, had even brought salad. She had put in a fair amount of work, clearly, tossing in more veggies and croutons and bringing a container of homemade dressing to make it more interesting.

Everyone milled around, talking and relaxing in the warm sun. Marinette wandered between her classmates, chatting with pretty much everyone before gradually circling back around to hang with Alya, Nino, and Adrien again. Maybe she got to hang out with them most often, just by virtue of where they sat in class, but they were also her best friends. They could talk for forever about nothing in particular, and it was nice to have that.

Ten minutes after the bulk of their class had arrived, Lila finally showed up. And in typical Lila fashion, of course she had to make her entrance loud.

"Oh my god, you guys, you'll never guess what my mom did for me! It was so sweet of her!"

"Oh, what now?" Marinette grumbled as people started to flock towards Lila as though they were being drawn by a magnet. "Can't we go one day without her making up some ridiculous story to tell?"

"I'll go listen in," Adrien volunteered, placing one hand on her shoulder. "Just to see what she's up to. If you want to, uh..."

"I'll go organize things on the picnic table so that I don't have to listen to her," Marinette offered, picking up what he was going to say. It was obvious to anyone with eyes (and critical thinking skills) that listening to Lila blather on made Marinette's blood pressure rocket up. "And then, uh, do some cloud-watching?"

Adrien snorted. "Honestly, that sounds way more appealing than listening to Lila. Anything is, really, but..." He glanced towards the growing group around Lila. "I'd rather not have to hear about what Lila was saying and showing off secondhand, not when everyone believes everything she says."

Before Marinette could agree, Adrien had darted off, lingering on the edges of the group. He blended in pretty naturally, clearly going for a 'just-here-because-Nino-is' look and succeeding fairly well. Before anyone could notice that she wasn't joining the rest of the group, Marinette wandered off to rearrange the table and make it not quite so chaotic. Since Lila seemed to be settling in for a long story-telling session, Marinette took her sweet time in surveying everything that people had brought (Lila, she couldn't help but notice, had opted not to contribute) and figuring out the best way to arrange them. Shapes of containers had to be taken into consideration, of course, and then similar things- the salads, the chips- could be put together.

It made the table much neater and meant that nothing was in danger of falling off anymore.

Lila was still going strong with her stories, so Marinette turned her attention skyward for all of a minute (cloud-watching, it turned out, was not particularly interesting for an extended period of time) and then down to her phone. Finally, finally, Lila stopped talking and everyone broke up into their little friend groups. Marinette headed over to Adrien's side at once, something that was made much easier by the fact that Alya and Nino were still talking to Lila.

"So what's the latest nonsense?"

Adrien startled for a moment, then relaxed once he realized that it was Marinette next to him. "Oh, gosh. I don't know how, but Lila's come up with pictures to go along with her stories. She has selfies with Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, Prince Ali, Ladybug..."

"She- what?" For once, Marinette was caught completely off guard. "She has photos? But none of those stories are true!"

"My guess is Photoshop. That, or she wanted to go low-tech, posters and life-sized print-outs." Adrien made a face, glancing around as he did to make sure that they weren't being overheard. "I don't know why she went all-in like that all of a sudden. Like, it didn't seem as though people were believing her any less than they were when she first showed up."

"Maybe she just wanted to head off that possibility before anyone caught on." Which was annoying, really. Marinette had just been about ready to try for another round of pointing out inconsistencies in Lila's stories to Alya, abet a more subtle round, and now that Lila had "evidence" to back up her claims...

Well, that made things a lot more difficult. She would have to abandon subtlety altogether and do something much more direct, like calling up Jagged Stone and having him come in or somehow approaching Lila as Ladybug when Alya was nearby and calling her out for the Photoshop.

She really should have just nipped the entire problem in the bud when Lila first showed up and gone to Alya's apartment to ask about the video of her "best friend" on the same day that it was posted, but it was a little too late to do that now.

"It makes me wonder if she's setting up to do something bigger," Adrien murmured, keeping his voice low. Maybe none of their classmates were lingering close by, but they didn't want to be overheard. "Then she would want to have a solid base. If she validates all of her previous lies, then she can tell a bigger one and not run as big of a risk of people doubting her."

Marinette nodded. Yeah, she was afraid of that, too. She also wouldn't be surprised if Lila decided to make up something about her to get rid of the dissenting voice for once and for all. If she tried, though, Marinette was ready.

There was a lock on her school bag, and another on her locker. Tikki had been told to keep an eye out and to destroy anything that Lila tried to plant. Marinette had even bought a recorder, in case she ever found herself alone with Lila and no witnesses again.

Of course, Lila might very well decide to take the approach of making Marinette look like the bad guy by bringing attention to the fact that she didn't believe any of Lila's stories, and then try to alienate her friends that way. Marinette wouldn't let that happen- she'd just use her connections to discredit Lila if it got that bad- but it wouldn't be particularly pleasant, either.

"Maybe she wants to skip again and the teachers are starting to doubt her," Marinette suggested, keeping her voice just as quiet as Adrien's. "So she's going more indirect this time by showing off her pictures to classmates but not the teacher- except no, it would make more sense than to show the photos off at school. Then she wouldn't have to depend on the teachers overhearing classmates just happening to mention the photos."

"True. Which suggests that whatever she's planning, it's more important that our classmates all believe her." Adrien sighed. "I miss the days before Lila showed up. I didn't feel like I had to keep an ear open to what was going on and what was being talked about all the time."

Marinette nodded. Yeah, things had been a lot more simple before Lila returned. Maybe she still had to deal with Chloe's nonsense, but at least Chloe hadn't been trying to frame her for things, just make her life difficult in typical bully fashion.

"I guess we'll find out what she's up to soon enough," Marinette said with a sigh. She wasn't looking forward to it. "I almost wish I could see the photos without Lila there. I bet there's something off about them that I'd be able to point out, but she's hardly going to hand over her phone and let me pick them apart."

Adrien perked up. "Oh! Lila sent her Ladybug photos to Alya to post on the Ladyblog. Maybe it's not all of the photos, but you could at least look over those ones."

Marinette grinned. That was a start, at least. Of course, she would have to be really careful when bringing up any problems with the photos because otherwise she wouldn't even get her friends to actually look at the issue before they jumped down her throat about how she was being so mean doubting poor Lila, but maybe she could pose any concerns as a question or something.

"Hey, Marinette, come check this out!"

"I'll wait here and if Nino and Alya got anything more out of Lila once they finish chatting with her," Adrien said when Marinette hesitated to respond, not fully willing to give up their discussion so early. He nudged her towards Max. "There'll be plenty of time to try to figure out what Lila's up to later."

Marinette nodded, stepping away from Adrien and heading across the grass towards Max. He was grinning, looking eager about something.

"I would love some feedback on some of my proposed designs for the akuma villains that I'll be rolling out as part of my upcoming game update," Max told Marinette as she drew closer. He pulled a folder out of his bag and opened it, pulling out a sheath of papers. "Both the villain costume design and the powers, really. I want to make them a bit less, ah, one-dimensional, I suppose. Less predictable. I had some ideas, but would definitely be open to any improvements before I code them all in."

Marinette perked up. Oh, that sounded interesting, and something that sounded loads more interesting than discussing Lila and her nonsense. "Sure! How many akumas are you thinking of adding?"

"I thought ten to fifteen in the next release, then maybe do regular releases after that on a more regular basis with five or so akumas per release, just to keep things fresh." Max adjusted his glasses, angling the paper stack so that Marinette could see the top design. "Of course, how long I can do that for depends on Hawkmoth making new akumas and not simply recycling powers over and over, but at the moment I have quite a list of supervillains that I could use."

"That sounds like a lot of work, but very cool," Marinette told him, accepting the top paper. She scanned the design, grinning when she noticed how well Max had done at getting the details right. "This is so cool! Was it hard getting all of the details?"

"Nathaniel assisted with the character modeling," Max told her, shuffling around so he could stand next to her and see the page as well. "Which really helped bring the characters to life."

"It's really fantastic!" Marinette glanced through the next few papers, impressed. It was a real step up from Max's original character designs, which had been detailed enough for people to be able to identify the characters but nowhere near this quality. He had focused less on the design and more on the coding for the actual play. "Have the old characters gotten the same design upgrade?"

"Yes, that was what the last update was. I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect and there wouldn't be any mismatch between the old characters and the new ones." Max shuffled a step closer. "So, what do you think about this character?"

Ten minutes of character review later, Marinette left Max scribbling down notes in the margins of his character pages and headed back across the park to where her friends were hanging out. Halfway there, she was stopped in her tracks by the sound of Lila's voice, loud and pointed and annoying.

"You missed out on seeing my pictures earlier," Lila said loudly, smugness coming across loud and clear in her voice. "Which is a pity, really. There were some really nice ones that my mom recovered off of my old phone. If you wanted, I could still show you a couple."

Marinette snorted at that. As if. "So you've taken up Photoshop as a hobby, I take it?" she asked, thoroughly unimpressed. "And I think I'll pass on looking at the photos. If I wanted to see something that wasn't real, I'd go watch an action hero movie. That would at least be enjoyable."

"You're just so certain that they're doctored," Lila sniffed, still insufferably smug. "Do you know how jealous that makes you sound? It's not a very attractive look on you at all."

Marinette had to roll her eyes at that. Jealous? Why on earth would she be jealous of Lila? "Puh-leeze. There was a photo of me and Jagged Stone on the cover of Metal Lord not even a year ago, and I've got actual selfies of me and Clara Nightingale on my phone from when she was doing her music video. I don't need Photoshop. Some of us actually have the connections that you pretend to have. If anyone is jealous, it's you."

With that, she turned on her heel and left before Lila could say anything else, continuing her journey towards Alya and Nino and Adrien. Alya was busily tapping away on her phone, clearly in Ladyblog article mode.

She would probably have the photos and whatever article she was writing up done by the evening and posted with the photos, and then Marinette could look at them. With any luck, there would be something obvious wrong with them, and maybe- maybe she could post under an anonymous name and bring up the fact that the photos were clearly faked then?

"Max sure looks serious about something," Adrien commented as Marinette returned, settling down on the grass between him and Alya. "I don't know anyone else who would bring a file folder to a picnic- well, anyone else our age, at least."

"He's gearing up to start work on a new release for his video game," Marinette told him. She was really excited to see it, actually. Hopefully she would actually have the time to play. "Or, well, he's started work, but he wanted to get some input on how to make it better. He has twenty new akumas lined up to create, and they all look fantastic!"

Adrien perked up. "Oh, cool! I saw that the graphics took a huge leap forward with the last release, which was really nice. Before, it was very, ah..." He tipped his head to one side, considering. "Very early-game-y? But now the graphics match the coding, which is nice. I know there was a huge spike in interest once that upgrade came through."

"As there should be!" There had been several akuma-and-superhero-themed games that had come out since she and Chat Noir hit the scene, but in Marinette's (completely unbiased) opinion, Max's was one of the best. "We were talking about the powers that the akumas get and how he's working on making them a little more realistic and less predictable. Thankfully he doesn't have to puzzle it out through trial and error for each akuma. Or, well, at least he really only had to do a bunch of puzzling for the first one, and then each one after that only needs a few small tweaks here and there."

"I can't wait for that to come out. Did Max say when he's expecting to have that ready to roll out?"

Marinette shook her head. She had asked too, but Max had said that there were way too many variables to promise anything yet. "I think he's still early on enough in the process that it's impossible to predict. Everything could go really smoothly..."

"...or the code could tie itself into knots and take weeks to find the issue," Adrien finished. "Ah, I suppose I could be patient."

"I wonder if Max would be interested in giving out some preview pictures before everything is ready to go," Nino chimed in. "I know Alya's mentioned his game on the Ladyblog before, but it never hurts to drum up some more interest. Right, babe?"

He got a vague grunt in response.

"Babe?"

"I think she's a bit focused at the moment," Adrien said with a laugh when Alya didn't respond again. "We'll bug her later. I think Max's game is a pretty cool thing to put on the Ladyblog."

"Though not as cool as Lila!" Nino exclaimed. "I mean, I guess her friendship with Ladybug is old news now, but Ladybug doesn't pose with civilians that often, not unless there's an event or something. And the pictures- Marinette, you missed that! Lila's mom got a specialist to recover a bunch of her photos from off of her old phone that got destroyed, and she was showing everyone. It was cool to get to see the inside of Prince Ali's palace! Like, there weren't a ton of pictures of the inside, just what we could see in the background of her photos with him, but still!"

"Hm," Marinette said, completely noncommittal. "Pity. I had to make sure that none of the food was going to fall off of the picnic table. It kind of looked like Kim might have arranged it last- there was a really precarious pile of stuff. One pan was hanging halfway off of the table and the only reason why it hadn't fallen yet was because something else was piled on top of the portion that was actually on the table."

Adrien laughed. "That sounds like Kim. And yet there was plenty of space on the table, it seems? Nothing is about to fall off now."

"Yeah, it was just that dishes were piled every which way and there were a lot of oddly-shaped gaps between..." Marinette trailed off, squinting across the park. Lila was headed towards Rose and Max and Juleka, but something seemed... off. She didn't seem entirely steady on her feet for a moment, half-stumbling before catching herself and continuing.

Huh. Was Lila still sick? She had seemed mostly fine at school on Friday, and for most of the rest of the week, too. Marinette would have guessed that Lila was just trying to get attention again, except that stumble was...muted. Almost like Lila was trying to hide it.

...maybe she just didn't want to take attention away from her faked photos? The attention from that was sure to be better than any attention that she could get from being sick, even if Lila had clearly enjoyed the attention that she had gotten during her- what? One, two, maybe three weeks of being sick?

That... that was a long time to be sick.

Marinette kept watching Lila as she sat down, almost immediately joining in the conversation. She seemed fine now, but Marinette was positive that she hadn't imagined that stumble.

"-lots of tasty dishes," Nino was saying, though Marinette had largely tuned him out. "A lot of things that I want to try. The pastries you brought look great- and did you see the quiches that Juleka brought? I heard she made them herself!"

He didn't get a response. Marinette was too busy watching Lila.

She had the feeling that something was off, and she didn't want to let her guard down until she figured out what.

Hawkmoth had been quiet lately. Lila had gotten photos that were either photoshopped or had been made in some other way. Maybe it was a stretch to say that the two were related, but there was a niggling feeling in Marinette's gut that there was some sort of connection.

Marinette had long since learned that her gut was usually not a great thing to ignore. If she sensed that something was wrong, she needed to investigate. Just sitting back and waiting for things to resolve themselves or for problems to show up wasn't enough, not anymore.

"You guys? The quiches?"

Marinette startled, pulling her gaze away from Lila and back towards Nino. Right. Investigating was important, but so was not being obvious about it. If Lila caught her staring, or one of her other classmates did, then Lila would no doubt go out of her way to be even more sneaky about whatever it was that she was up to.

That was fine. Marinette could hold a conversation and watch Lila unobtrusively at the same time. So she did. And what she noticed...

Well, Lila was definitely still sick. She had looked positively green as she picked up food from the table (following what might have been either an attempt to make people feel like they had to rush to assure her that she could take all the food she wanted or a stab at getting out of eating that backfired spectacularly- Marinette suspected that it was meant to be the latter) and not entirely steady on her feet as she headed back to the bench that she had been sitting on. She hadn't eaten until one of the other girls commented on it, instead just pushing her food around her plate, and, if Marinette's eyes were serving her correctly, Lila seemed to occasionally be swaying in place. Which... wasn't normal.

If it weren't for the faked photos, Marinette would say that Lila was just ill and wasn't up to- well, wasn't up to being up to something. But clearly she had had enough energy to put in the work to create the photos.

Unless- well, there was a possibility that Lila had been working on those photos gradually, over the course of several weeks, and just finished them recently. Several weeks of Photoshop work logically made more sense than a day or two, unless Hawkmoth was involved. Somehow.

...it wasn't a completely illogical thought, right? She was pretty sure that Lila had worked willingly with Hawkmoth before. She had been Akumatized and looked just like normal, at least for a bit. So it wasn't impossible.

...but then how did the cold fit in? And why on earth would Hawkmoth bother giving someone photoshopping powers?

Across the way, Lila swayed in her seat again. She was looking rather pale now, and Marinette wondered why she hadn't just gone home. It would have been easy enough for Lila to claim that she had just gotten an email requesting an urgent Skype meeting about pollution or something and then she could have left.

"Just like Mom and Nathalie," Adrien murmured, pulling her out of her thoughts. "That's so strange."

"Hmm?" Marinette blinked over at him, puzzled. "Who is?"

"Lila." Adrien tipped his head towards Lila, who was pushing herself to her feet to follow Rose. "I think I might have mentioned it once before. Nathalie was really ill just like Lila. She was all tired and ill and dizzy for the longest time before she started getting better, and then there were sometimes off days where she seemed just as sick as she had been before. Mom was like that too before she vanished. And I've never heard of a cold before that acted like that."

"Me either." Not that there weren't illnesses that behaved that way. They just weren't colds. Not an average, run-of-the-mill cold, anyway. "Nathalie got better though, right? So if Lila caught whatever she had- oh my god!"

Across the park, Lila had stumbled and then simply collapsed, hitting the ground hard enough- and in an awkward enough position- that it was pretty obvious that it was 100% not at all faked.

"LILA!" Rose shrieked, dashing back to her side. "Oh my god, can you hear me? Are you okay? What- what do we do?"

"Rose, take a deep breath," Marinette called, already shoving herself to her feet. She had gotten first aid training several months prior, just in case she ever needed it as Ladybug, and- well, she was pretty positive that she was the only one in the class with the training, which meant that she needed to take charge. No matter how much she disliked Lila- or how suspicious she was that Lila was up to something- she had to do the right thing. "Juleka, help Rose roll Lila onto her back so that she isn't all crumpled up like that. Alya, call for an ambulance."

"On it!"

Marinette dashed over as Rose and Juleka got Lila into a more comfortable position on the ground. Lila's skin was white as a sheet against her hair, so far beyond pale that it was really concerning.

At least she was breathing. Marinette could tell as much as she skidded to a stop by Lila's side.

Rose was practically in tears. "Is she going to be okay?"

"She's breathing, so she should be fine." As long as she kept breathing, at least. Marinette quickly scanned through her memories of what she had learned in her first aid class. Lila had been acting ill before, so they didn't need to worry about environmental threats to them, too. That also pretty much ruled out choking, and the fact that Lila hadn't been coughing or clutching at her throat (or eating) before confirmed that. She had just passed out, so watching after her while they waited for an ambulance to arrive should be pretty easy.

Now, as far as things that they could do went...

"We want to encourage blood flow to the head, since Lila fainted," Marinette told everyone, keeping a close eye on the slow rise and fall of Lila's chest. "If someone could find something to prop Lila's feet up a bit, that should help. And then I'm just going to make sure that her clothes aren't too tight, because tight clothes restrict blood flow."

Several people darted off to grab their backpacks or bags to prop Lila's feet up. Marinette watched them go for a moment, then turned her attention back to Lila.

Right. What she was meant to do if Lila's clothes were tight, Marinette wasn't sure, but if she could figure out how to defeat an akuma with a traffic cone, she was pretty positive that she could puzzle out how to help Lila.

Methodically, Marinette worked over Lila's body, scanning for anything that might be in need of loosening, pausing briefly partway through to help Nino prop up Lila's feet slightly before going back to her scan. Nothing in particular was sticking out, except for maybe Lila's scarf. Even that was pretty loose, though, not something that would be cutting off any blood or air.

Maybe she should still be removing it? That would probably be a good idea.

"Marinette," Tikki hissed suddenly from Marinette's collar. "I'm sensing something really odd near Lila's neck. Can you take off her scarf? I just- I want to check something out."

Marinette nodded as subtly as she could, not wanting to attract any attention from her audience, then carefully removed Lila's scarf. There was something hard hidden in the folds, and a quick glance down at Tikki confirmed that whatever it was that she had sensed was on the scarf itself.

Had- had she been right? Was Lila actually akumatized and Tikki had detected the akumatized object? Maybe she had been akumatized all week, and that was why she had seemed better. Then the sickness had gotten too much and gotten through the boost that the akuma gave.

Which... well, that made Marinette wonder just how sick Lila was if it was able to force its way through the boost that an akumatization usually gave.

Also, speaking of which, she had to get away soon, then, and purify the akuma before it peeled itself out of whatever was in the scarf. But she couldn't just step away from Lila unnoticed, not when she was the only one of her classmates who was trained in first aid. She would have to wait until the professionals arrived- and even then, she would probably have to brief them on what she had seen and done, even if she had seen the same thing as most of her classmates and hadn't really done much in terms of care.

...maybe she would get lucky and the cursed butterfly would stay in the brooch or whatever it was in the scarf until after Lila was turned over into far more capable hands. It was a long shot, but not completely impossible.

Maybe. Hopefully.

"Here comes the ambulance!" Nathaniel called from the corner of the park. He rushed back towards them. "Clear a path, clear a path!"

The next few minutes were a blur as everyone scrambled out of the way of the path and grabbed up stray bags, making way for the paramedics. They surrounded Lila, taking her vitals and moving her onto a stretcher when she didn't respond. There were questions to answer about what they had seen and what they had done and then Lila was being wheeled away towards the ambulance. The class swarmed towards the curb, watching the ambulance pull away anxiously, but Marinette held back. With everyone else's attention off of her, she glanced down at the scarf in her hands. No corrupted butterflies had fluttered free yet, so Marinette carefully unfolded the scarf to see what was inside.

The folds fell away, tumbling to the side, and the pin inside was exposed. It glinted brightly in the sun, and Marinette gasped.

Because that was no akumatized brooch. That was the Peacock Miraculous.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #The Wavering Peahen

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amplesalty · 3 years

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Halloween 2021 - Day 5 - The Invisible Ray (1936)

Doesn’t that just sound like a bad magician? “Ladies and gentlemen, introducing...The Invisible Ray!”

Ah, this takes me back. Back in year 0 of this horror marathon business, before this blog was a thing, it was kinda heavily skewed towards the ‘classic’ period; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy..all that Universal 1930’s type stuff. Amongst that first run were a pair of films starring both KARLOFF and Bela Lugosi; The Black Cat and The Raven. I remember them both being quite good, both having this sort of rivalry between their two characters. The Black Cat moreso with a young couple caught in the middle of a heated feud between KARLOFF and Lugosi’s characters. Whereas The Raven has KARLOFF as more of a de-facto good guy as he plays a reluctant henchman to Lugosi’s character. Not that that level of power translated off screen, with Lugosi’s star beginning to fade but I remember reading something about KARLOFF insisting on some parity in pay between the two in one of their movies when the studio tried to lowball Lugosi so good on you, KARLOFF.

Neither have much to do with the Edgar Allan Poe stories they take their names from, outside of Lugosi’s character in The Raven having an obsession with Poe and adapting various means of torture from Poe stories. There have been plenty of Poe adaptations throughout the years but the other big uptick in them was in the 1960’s with a series of films directed by Roger Corman, often starring Vincent Price but with other big names sprinkled in like KARLOFF, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr. Plus a relatively early Jack Nicholson appearance in The Raven, which was shot at the same time as The Terror. That bloody bird!

So, yeah, it’s good to see one of these KARLOFF/Lugosi films again. Apparently there are eight films that featured both of them so I’ll be halfway there now on them. This also has Carl Laemmle Jr’s name attached, albeit in a minor way as he’s listed as ‘presenting’ the movie. I’m not sure if that ever means anything. It’s like when Tarantino ‘presents’ something, did he have any actual input on the film or was he just shining a light on something he personally liked because he has so much power and influence?

The movie’s foreword is an early indicator of the more science-fiction leaning nature of the movie which catches you off guard a little with the people involved and the timeframe we’re working in. Feels like the 50’s was more when the whole sci-fi thing took off. Also, since when was science a verb?

Certainly has the feel of that classic ‘old, dark house’ horror thing early on as we start with the Rukh household awaiting the arrival of some of Dr Janos Rukh’s (KARLOFF) peers who are to bear witness to his new discovery.

KARLOFF has clearly been eating his crusts to get curls like that, normally he’s a slicked back kind of guy. And it’s kinda weird seeing both of them with facial hair. Oddly though this is one of the rare times that Lugosi plays a good guy, this is a clear violation of the parallel universe protocol:

Normal universe – clean shaven – good guy Parallel universe – goatee – evil

This early version of Dr. Doom is a bit naff. Are you making a great scientific discovery here or doing a spot of welding?

Apparently Dr Rukh’s invention is a telescope that is able to see into the deepest reaches of space, but can also pick up on vibrations left by the events that have taken place and he can then project that as a moving image that shows an asteroid crashing to Earth millions of years ago that can help him pinpoint the crash site and allow him to discover new elements inside the asteroid...wait, what?! Is this like that time on CSI when they solved a murder by getting sound out of something someone made in pottery class because the grooves could be played like a vinyl?

We then pivot sharply into the great plains of Africa where our team have set off in search of what will become known as ‘Radium X’. Oh yes, I think that’s on the periodic table next to Hardtoobtainium. And I’m specifically trying to avoid animal cruelty by not watching Cannibal Holocaust, don’t come around here with your dead leopards and talk of how many rhinos you’ve shot. I must say I’m a little wary of this sudden introduction of all these natives carrying spears and wearing bone necklaces, I just don’t feel like I can trust a movie made in the 1930’s to be sensitive on it’s portrayal of other cultures.

Thought it does present us with the best actor in this picture, look at those bug eyes! He’s like Africa’s answer to Marty Feldman.

And that’s just his reaction to a piece of scanning equipment going off, him and his mates are definitely going to be worried when this white devil makes a demonstration of his new found Radium X and it’s ability to melt pure stone. Looks like a portajohn backing up...

He then promptly turns his cosmic ray gun on all the locals when they tell him they want to go home. Sure, you can leave, you’re not going to get very far though. Dude, there’s like 12 of you and he’s given some of you rifles. Just jump him when he’s asleep.

Dr. Rukh finds that evening that he’s suddenly turned an interesting shade of neon yellow and can be seen by anyone in a three mile radius so either this Radium X is highly poisonous or Rukh has been running in opposition to Vladimir Putin. This poisoning leaves him so irradiated that merely touching another living thing is enough to kill it. Dr. Benet (Lugosi) is able to make a serum for him but can never truly cure him, he must regularly take this serum or otherwise he will revert to this killing machine type state.

But, in his eagerness to not spread this poison to his wife, and his general upholding of the man code to never air ones medical problems, he generally acts a bit surly and tells her to piss off which see views as him not loving her anymore so he promptly shacks up with the young explorer type who came with them to Africa. Worse yet, Benet and crew have taken a sample of Radium X to show at a scientific conference in Paris. Between losing his missus and thinking that other people are taking all the credit for his work, Rukh is just slightly annoyed.

It’s not all bad though, he is able to use this new element to cure his mother’s blindness. I like how his first reaction upon learning that Radium X has irrecoverably changed his life, leaving him one missed injection away from imminent death, is to shoot it directly into his mother’s face.

“Patients won’t like being shot in the face.” “They’ll like what I tell them to like.”

Whilst sulking outside of the church that his ex is getting re-married in, he spots a series of statues of saintly figures and imagines them representing each of the 6 people on the African expedition, vowing to destroy each of them until only he is left. Marvelous invention this Radium X, it can melt statues and cure blindness. Do you have to put special filters on that ray gun of yours depending on the situation? That’s a malpractice suit waiting to happen if you mix those up.

Dr. Benet is a little suspicious when one of their party dies suddenly for no explainable reason so takes a few ultraviolet photos of the victims eyes in order to study. And wouldn’t you know what he finds?

Bullshit! Nevermind the ultraviolet camera, this is more like the dues ex machine camera. I know this is science fiction and all but what is this, 1936 or 2036? Or maybe they’re just able to make the most detailed contact lenses known to man.

Eventually, when Rukh finds himself unable bring himself to kill his former love, he is confronted by his mother who smashes the serum and condemns him to death as, going unchecked, the Radium X within him will destroy his body. Sensing the end coming, Dr. Rukh dives out of the nearest window and promptly erupts bursts into flames, now left as little but a pile of ash on a damp Paris street. It’s a shame really, dozens of people spontaneously combust every year, it’s just not widely reported.”

This one was okay, definitely a different vibe compared to other Universal stuff at the time with all the science fiction and Africa based stuff but it does still travel down that ‘descent into madness’ thing that they often fall back on and it’s always fun to see KARLOFF and Lugosi, especially when they’re together. But, if we’re strictly talking about the KARLOFF/Lugosi pairing, I’m definitely leaning towards one of their other outings like Black Cat, Raven or Son of Frankenstein. There’s just something not right about Lugosi playing some normal, if he’s not being unhinged then you’re not really getting what you came here for.

#Halloween 2021 #The invisible Ray #KARLOFF #Bela Lugosi

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only-by-the-stars · 3 years

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the annotated Tome of the Wild

Part five: Babes in the Wood!

- A half-moon the color of yellowed pages hung high in the sky above the figures on the ground OH LOOK IT’S THAT SAME DAMN MOON AGAIN. DESPITE THAT DAYS HAVE GONE BY AND IT DEFINITELY WOULDN’T LOOK THE SAME AT THIS POINT.

- “Idiot child. Perhaps I should've done something to make you more intelligent, instead of just transforming your body.” And here we have confirmation that it was Koume that changed her into this.

- Of course, the centerpiece of this scene is the reveal of what Midna’s been up to this whole time. In the show, the situation for Beatrice is similar: she thought that Adelaide just wanted a couple of kids to do household chores, and was fine with just turning them over to her in exchange for the item she needed to break her and her family’s curse. Until, of course, she grew to like them and have second thoughts, as Midna does here. Which of course lines up with how Midna initially thought to just use Link in TP to help herself and her people, until his actions and Zelda’s made her reconsider her disdain for the people of the world of light. Here it’s her bond with Aryll and Link that makes her hesitate to hand them over: she really likes Aryll, and after a rough start with Link they’re now getting along, and she feels a lot of sympathy for his situation with Mipha. She doesn’t want to keep them from getting home even for a little while, and when she finds out about Koume’s true intentions she draws the line, as her moral code won’t let her hurt others for her own sake and she knows Zelda wouldn’t want her to hurt anyone on her behalf either. This conflict and growth are exactly why I had an easy time casting Midna in this role, and I loved being able to write her and develop the dynamics she has with Link and Aryll.

- “Only the voice of the shadow that lurks in the woods, the king of darkness that rules the night, concerns me...” King of Darkness is one of Ganon’s titles in the series.

- “There is only his way.” A line that will be echoed by the Beast himself much later.

- “Aryll, I know!” Link froze as soon as the words were out of his mouth. We’re at the point where Link is snapping at his beloved baby sister, showing just how stressed out he is right now. He was able to relax more when Midna was around, but now her betrayal is driving him further along that path to despair I’ve been mentioning. He immediately apologizes, to his credit, but he’s still starting to crack.

- “You are in grave peril, and your fate, your very lives depend on if you heed my words or not! The Beast stalks you, seeking your fall into his grasp... but you must not allow him to capture you, you must not give in to despair!” He’s not wrong! Listen to him!

- The shadow laughed, a long, low sound that seemed to ooze up from the deepest depths of the earth where eldritch creatures slumbered, forgotten by time and the gods alike. Calamity Ganon emerges from deep beneath Hyrule Castle.

- “You forget, do you not, that your daughter's safety depends upon keeping me happy?” The first hint of the deception that the Beast is working on Rhoam.

- Aryll is now calling her frog Alfonzo, after the engineer in Spirit Tracks.

- AND THEN THERE’S NAYRU AND KOTAKE. This was one of the most FUN things I got to play with. The episode this portion is an adaptation of is probably my favorite in the show, and I had an utter blast toying with expectations here just as the show did. Maybe even more! The show leads you to believe that the character Kotake replaces is the sinister and evil one, preying on the hapless young girl that Nayru is replacing, only to yank the rug out from under you and reveal that the girl is possessed and trying to eat the brothers.

now, Nayru is from Oracle of Ages. You meet her at the beginning, whereupon she quickly becomes possessed by the evil sorceress Veran. Kotake, meanwhile, is present as a villain in OOT and a linked Oracle game, and as a friendly shopkeeper in Majora’s Mask. We just saw the villainous version of her sister at the beginning of this chapter. So... is she evil too? If you’ve never seen the show, have played OOT and MM but not the Oracle games, you probably got taken in just like a first time viewer of the show is. Only to find out too late, as does Link, that Nayru is the people-eating one, and not Kotake, who is indeed her MM self and not evil.

- Nayru laughed too, a pleasant sound reminiscent of harp strings being played. Nayru gives Link the Harp of Ages in OOA.

- Aryll has switched the frog’s name to Dr. Calip, after the NPC in BOTW who gives you the Cursed Statue shrine quest.

- “It is thanks to you that I shall finally be free to roam the outside world, after all.” DANGER DANGER, the evil spirit wants to roam free and EAT MORE PEOPLE.

- Aryll spots the danger, but mistakes it for her desire to see Link end up with Mipha and no one else. Which we all agree with, of course, but it’s not the real reason she’s uncomfortable. Link, meanwhile, is oblivious to it, at least partially because he’s sinking deeper into despair and contemplating just letting Mipha go out of his intensifying self-hatred over what he’s done to her.

- Nayru's eager whisper broke into his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her eyes gleaming with a sort of hunger as she gazed across the room at him. DANGER DANGER, SHE WANTS TO DEVOUR YOU. Again, I choose my descriptive words very deliberately.

- Eerie purple light glowed around Nayru as she hovered in the air, and her face had been twisted into something that resembled a ReDead mask. Veran’s spirit form is indeed purple, and nobody who’s ever played OOT, MM, or WW can forget the ReDeads. my favorite monster I want them back dammit

- “Link?” Aryll pressed herself against his side and clutched at his arm. “There are a lot of skeletons in here...” Remember how Aryll was so excited about digging up a single skeleton back in Ikana? Not so fun anymore.

- In the show, the whole sequence of trying to avoid being eaten was creepy, but a bit more comedic too. I leaned fully into the horror that it truly would be here, not just because I wanted to write something scary, but also because I needed something that would traumatize Link enough to push him into the breakdown he has in the woods afterwards, setting the climax of the story in motion. His feelings of failure mirror what I headcanon he must’ve been going through just before he fell in Blatchery Plain as well, the despair he would’ve felt over being unable to prevent the fall of the kingdom, the deaths of his friends (especially Mipha, who he’s grieving the most), and knowing that he’s at his limit and about to die before he can get Zelda to safety. Which is another way that the appearance of that painting in the last chapter ties in.

- Aryll’s dream sequence! OH BOY. In the show, this is an entire episode, done in the style of 1930s animation, with musical numbers and everything. That doesn’t quite translate to prose, though, so I had to change and abridge it. More interestingly, though, there’s subtle hints in the show that the dream is not real, and is intended to lure Greg, the younger brother, into the clutches of the Beast. I decided to run with that. One of the hints in the show is that the gates you see seem to be made of ivory; in Greek myth, dreams pass through one of two gates, either horn or ivory. True dreams come through the gates of horn, while false ones pass through the gates of ivory. So naturally Aryll walks through gates of ivory to reach the tower.

The tower itself is the one located in the Cloud Tops in Minish Cap. Which, here, is ruled by Princess Hilda from Link Between Worlds, who has Aryll save her kingdom from the evil Yuga. This is all a HUGE hint that this is false, a trap. Because in ALBW, Hilda was conspiring with Yuga in a desperate bid to save Lorule. And who took over Yuga’s body as part of that plan? Ganon. BAM.

- And now the frog is being called Ezlo, after the talking cap in Minish Cap.

- Link is now so deeply in despair that the dekuwood is starting to grow around him, which is what motivates Aryll to make her deal with the Beast that brings everything to its eventual conclusion.

- A dark shape emerged from the curtain of snow; it was a small, plump man with a beard that covered the entire lower half of his face, rowing a rickety little boat. His eyebrows went up as he took in the sight of Midna lifting the unconscious Link into the air with her prehensile hair. “That is one strange fish you've caught there, missy...” This is the fisherman from Link’s Awakening.

- What Midna sees in the distance is the Great Deku Tree, but I wasn’t about to reveal that just yet.

and that does it for part five!

#annotations

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rudysrings · 4 years

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Adapt or Die (Prologue)

A/N: This is a new series I’m trying out. If it’s a go then yay! If not--Well, I’ll let it fade away into nothingness then, I guess... :(

Summary/Blurb Here

SO, the main character/reader was essentially inspired by Darwin from the Marvel comics/X-men. However, I will be adapting (HAHA adapting, get it? That was totally by accident I swear) the abilities and back story to fit what I’m writing; so, die-hard Darwin fans, please know I’m not trying to misportray (is that even a word? Eh, I don’t care. I think y’all know what I mean) the original character, but I simply wanted to draw from the bomb-ass root idea of what he can do.

For those of you who don’t know who Darwin is, here’s a quick blurb from Wikipedia on what his abilities are:

Darwin has the power of "reactive evolution"; i.e., his body automatically adapts to any situation or environment he is placed in, allowing him to survive possibly anything; the exact nature and limits of his powers have not been revealed.

Examples of his powers include: gaining night-vision after a few seconds in the dark; functional gills after being submerged in water; fire-proof skin after being exposed to flame; increasing his own intelligence; converting his body into pure energy; no longer requiring oxygen after being sucked into space; morphing into a sponge when shot at with a weapon designed to destroy the subject's nervous system; and acquiring comprehension of the Shi'ar language merely by looking at written samples. His power may concern itself with more efficient methods of survival than Darwin himself might choose; for example, instead of continually increasing Darwin's powers when taking punishment from the Hulk, his body simply teleported him away from the fight.

His power can also work when dealing with non-immediately-life-threatening situations, such as rendering it impossible for Darwin to get drunk by allowing his body to process alcohol faster than humans would normally.

It’s pretty fucking cool, right? Let me know what you think. By the way, this part is pretty short because it’s the prologue, but I expect the other parts to be longer.

Oh! I almost forgot: the reader is desi :) Thanks to @parkerpeter24, who wrote an awesome Peter Parker imagine here for Holi, I felt inspired to post this WIP.

I realize that makes the writing not truly an all-inclusive one, but I thought it would be cool to bring this aspect in. Obviously, you don’t have to be desi to read it and the whole thing won’t be about being desi. Just a little background I felt like adding to the character. If you absolutely hate it... then maybe don’t read it? :) please and thank you.

Anyways! Sorry for the rambling. Enjoy and thanks for reading if you’re still here <3

Warnings: There’s for sure going to be some swearing in this series :) Also, It’s gonna be a little steamy ;-; But it’s not revolved around smut and probably won’t be all that graphic. Probably. No promises O.O Only implied sexual happenings and for once, no swear words in this part.

Words: .957 k

ON WITH IT:

You blink your eyes against the startling light that is pouring through the thin curtains. Surprised that it’s morning, you sit up quickly, looking to your side to see no one there.

Ok, so that’s two surprises in the first ten seconds of the day. We’re off to a great start today, Y/N.

You sigh, brushing your hands through your unruly turquoise hair and swinging your legs out of the bed. You slip on your jeans and look around for your shirt. The black lacy thing you had worn the night before is laying over a lamp and you quickly shuffle over to it. Your eyes flick down to the nightstand and see a flip phone. Confused, you pick it up, opening it to see a single message from a private number.

We’ll be in touch.

Your stomach drops and you hastily pull your shirt over your head and clear the hotel room. Your better judgement tells you to get rid of the phone. Toss it in a river. Run over it. Throw it into a passing car.

For some reason, against that better judgement, you tuck it into your pocket and check out of the hotel.

You remember the previous night perfectly; the alcohol that had done absolutely nothing to dull your acute senses.

You slam the shot back down on the bar counter, not even wrinkling your nose at the sharp taste of tequila that should have burned your throat.

The bartender gives you a look of obvious judgement. Next thing you know, he’s asking for your keys.

“I don’t have ’em. I walked here,” you lie.

“Wasn’t that you on the motorcycle?” There’s a smooth voice behind you and you turn to see a woman with fiery hair and an enticing smile.

“No.” You reply shortly.

She shrugs. “Hmm. I could have sworn…You know,k I always did have a thing for a woman on a motorcycle.”

She approaches the bar beside you and asks the bartender for some sort of fruity concoction.

She has an accent. Italian, maybe. It’s obviously fake. She’s doing a helluva good job of over-enunciating every single word an Italian would. However, no Italian who’s lived in London for more than a week would continue to cling to those pronunciations. So, you decide she’s either a tourist or a spy.

When you smell metal—vibranium—on her, but don’t see it, given it’s probably hidden underneath her tight-fitting clothes, you decide it’s the latter.

“Do you ride?” You asked her.

“Motorcycles? Nah. I just hang on to the one riding,” She flirts.

You finger the rim of your drink. You can hear someone speaking to her through her earpiece.

“You got her, Natasha. Close in.”

“Y/N.” You stick your hand out, unafraid.

Natasha takes it immediately, giving you a firm shake and lingering on your ring a little too long.

“Sienna.”

You can’t help but giggle out loud. Wow. She had to choose the most cliché Italian name to ever exist. You covered your outburst with a cough. “Beautiful,” you complimented her fake name.

“Classic.” She shrugged. “So, what’s a gal like you doing in a bar like this?” She asked, gesturing to how run down the area was. The bartender gave her an incredulous look, but even he probably knew the kind of reputation the place had. You had to admit that it was unkempt and clearly not maintained--not to mention the types of sleazes that seemed to frequent it.

“I could ask you the same.”

“Deflect,” said the voice in the earpiece. You furrowed your brows slightly; you could usually judge by the timbre of the voice what a person’s age was, but this one stumped you. The inflections were outdated for sure, but the man spoke like velvet, far too young to be using that old-time Brooklyn accent.

“You first,” Natasha pushed.

Shrugging, you replied, “It’s more low-key, don’t you think? Wouldn’t want to run into anyone I know when I’m clearly trying to escape the real world right now.”

The bartender slid over her drink in a cocktail glass and Natasha took hold of it, taking a sip and staining the edge of the glass a deep burgundy. “And what exactly has the real world done this time?” She asked.

You smacked your lips thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s more about what the real world hasn’t done this time. Or maybe about what it did the other time.”

“Oh,” Natasha said simply.

“Can you get her somewhere alone, Nat?” The wannabe 40s Brooklyn man in the ear piece asked.

You smiled, showing your teeth. “How would you feel about helping me escape the real world a little bit more, Sienna?”

She moved closer, brushing your elbow. “Y/N, are you suggesting we get out of here?”

You were a couple of inches taller than her and you leaned over, close enough that locks of your ocean hair brushed her forehead. “What I’m suggesting is that I know a hotel with nice sheets not too far from here.”

Natasha smirked. “Nice work, Romanoff.”

Romanoff? Sounds more Russian than Italian, you thought.

It wasn’t the first time that somebody had attempted to con you, be it for information or for money. You didn’t mind the game. So, you let it happen. Undeniably, you enjoyed the spy’s touch and the numbing feel of her pillowy lips on yours.

However, you did not expect to fall asleep. That had never happened before. Your body didn’t do that. Your body never failed to do something that would strengthen you. You had never, not once, fallen asleep in the presence of another.

That scared you.

You had been careless.

You straightened your shoulders as you walked out onto the streets of Southwest London. No big deal, you just had to be a bit more careful now.

я иду за тобой Natasha Romanoff.

A/N: я иду за тобой = I’m coming for you (Russian)

(I used google translate, which is probably wrong; so, if anyone catches a mistake in that, please let me know, and I will change it :) )

*PSST*: Isn’t Natasha so fucking stunning in that picture on my sucky ass moodboard? Those eyes? That barely there smile? I’m melting.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x enhanced!reader #natasha romanoff x darwin!reader #female!darwin!reader #desi!reader #natasha romanoff x desi!reader #peter parker x reader #peter parker x enhanced!reader #avengers x enhanced!reader #avengers x reader #avengers x desi!reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x enhanced!reader #enhanced!reader #marvel x reader #marvel x enhanced!reader #marvel series #darwin #marvel's darwin

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inuitakumi · 3 years

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Is there any advice/anything in general that you would wanna say to someone who's planning to get into mdzs? Recently I've been thinking of watching/reading it... n I know only like two (2) people who likes it and you seem to know things about it better (?)

From what I know it sounds like there's a lot of the series and the fandom seems a bit rabid? >.> Especially about the different adaptations of the novel

Aww, thanks for asking! IDK if I’m really the Most Qualified to be handing out advice on getting into mdzs but I’ll try my best to give some ideas for it since there is really a lot of adaptions to deal with

TBH most ways of getting into the story are pretty valid, and I myself actually started with the live action drama before hopping pretty quickly into the novel and I’ve seen plenty of people who have hopped in from basically all sides of adaptions.

If I had to give advice its probably to start with the novel first (which you can read here on EXR) That way you’re getting the most ‘complete’ story out of everything. Some of the adaptions (the donghua and manhua) aren’t actually finished so if you start with them you will hit a wall at some point and have to wait for updates. To me they seem like a fun to watch after reading the story type thing.

Also because it’s China there is a varying level of censorship that you have to remember that might change parts of the story outside of things naturally changing to a different medium. Some of it have it worse than others, which is why I’d say that the live action (The Untamed/CQL) is better to be left towards the end, or at least til you know the full story better. It’s kinda full of a lot of plot holes and weird inconsistencies bc they remove not just the romance, but a bunch of other things to be allowed to air.

I didn’t even realize how bad it was with the plot until I realized that I was just filling in context bc I had read the novel before finishing the live action LOL. But Xiao Zhan is VERY HANDSOME so it is worth it to see some of it bc of his face. (I am also very biased)

Oh also the subs for the netflix version and tbh most versions are kinda...Whack for the live action. Like characters have multiple names and titles already and when the subs themselves are being inconsistent on whether or not they feel like translating the names or not can make it even more confusing to a first timer

The other adaptions like the manhua and audio drama are less censored and keep more of the romance, and presumably the donghua given what TGCF has gotten away with so far (probably because it’s animation and not real people) but still imo it’s better to go novel first.

hopefully my rambling helped a little bit ^^;

#i didnt talk much about the audio drama mostly bc its kinda harder to get into #what with subs only no visuals #but it does follow the novel the most and expands on it in extras #theres also mdzs q which is a spin off and DEFINITELY wont make sense #if you haven't taken in another adaption so yeah avoid that one lol #izu-umi

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drshojo · 4 years

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The World, My Childhood And My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

Hello friends!

Its Dr. Shojo coming at you with a post that will be divided into three parts!

Part One: The world as we know it!

The world has changed a lot since we last connected. For starters, TOILET BOUND HANAKO KUN HAS NOT ONLY A PHYSICAL RELEASE BUT A GORGEOUS ANIME! And not only that, but MY NEXT LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: ALL ROUTES LEAD TO DOOM! IS GETTING AN ANIME AS WELL! The last time I wrote about Katerina there wasn’t even an official English translation of that long-ass light-novel-title. And now?

A WHOLE ANIME. A BISEXUAL HAREM AWAITS! I am JAZZED!

Do you think it’s my fault? No matter, I’ll take all the credit. All the manga I talk about are getting anime adaptations. I’LL DO MY DUTY AND TALK ABOUT SOME MORE!

But first. Let us address the Covid-19 shaped elephant in the room

I deeply regret that it took a whole-ass pandemic to get me back to writing. In my defense, I bought an iPad and started drawing like 900 kokichi oumas. I was really busy with that. And then I started reading fanfiction. Then that got me thinking about how fanfiction such an interesting look into how people interpret fandom, use it for wish fulfillment and escapism, and good god is everyone OK cause that bulimia fan fic was super detailed....and I am officially on a tangent. Off track. Ahem.

We are all staying inside a whole lot more which means y’all probably need some reading material and Dr. Shojo has your back! Go read “Horimiya”! It’s amazing! Ahhhh, my work here is done! I'm serious, if you’re here for a Shojo rec, that’s it! There's also like 8 million more Otome Isekais to check out now. It’s like they’re multiplying like rabbits..............

As a Doctor, I must advise you to stay inside and read some manga and practice social distancing. Embrace your inner hikikomori.

Allright? All good? Okay now one final disclaimer:

This post is going to be talking about something a little different than usual and I want to start by giving you some context about who Dr. Shojo is in real life.

Part Two: Dr. Shojo Exposed

You see, when I was little I was obsessed with Japanese media. This doesn't surprise you at all I can tell. Probably because I walk around calling myself Dr. Shojo and shout about manga that you should read.

Anyways, the reason why I was obsessed wasn’t because of the big eyes or the spikey hair or the interesting new culture. It was because it tended to have more character development and overarching plotlines than the media I was used to in Canada. Dexter’s Lab, Magic School Bus, pretty much everything I saw on TV was episodic in nature, so imagine how much my mind was blown when I saw Naruto and Card Captor Sakura, heck, even Pokémon had the Indigo Plateau! Here were kids that were learning more and more each day and got to see enemies become friends and vice versa. They lived and grew older just like me. Except they were cooler than me. And had more interesting lives than me. I gotta tell you, I was so sad when I was 12 and Kero didn’t tell me I had latent magical powers. But there was magic in my life and it was the magic of a complex narrative story. And not only that, it had a sense of movement and had cool costumes. I was hooked immediately.

Also, fun fact, at that age I happened to be a complete and utter tomboy! I loved pretending to fight my friends in the playground and was really worried that puberty would ruin my life because being a girl sounded so CUMBERSOME.

Which leads me up to my confession. Before I became Dr. Shojo, I was in fact......Dr. Shonen.

Bleach? Naruto? One Piece? I've read every single chapter there is.

Hundreds of hours of watching fight sequences. Another fun fact, I only got into shojo because my aunt bought me volume 7 and 8 of Fruits Basket thinking “all mangas like the same right? Kids love comics?” It’s a tribute to how episodic western media was back then that she thought buying volume SEVEN and EIGHT was a REASONABLE PLACE TO START READING.

Now you might also say, Hey! Dr Shojo! Cardcaptors was a shojo! And you are right! but back then the anime was marketed to boys over here in the west and they actualy like, edited out episodes that they thought wouldn't interest boys?! Second fun fact, Once when I was in Grade 3 I was told I was not allowed to join a club under the stairs cause I was a girl and it was BOYS ONLY. The point of the club? To talk about how great Cardcaptors was! I Kid you not!

So anyways, your pall Dr. Shojo loves Shonen manga to this day!

The only reason I made this Dr. Shojo blog specifically about shojo is because, being a tomboy with no female friends, reading shojo manga was the first time I really thought about what it meant to be a girl and fall in love. And y i k e s. Shojo manga, like most media, fails miserably most of the time in displaying real world relationships. Or at least, it doesn't prepare you for how disappointing everything can be. When I had my first kiss, I was thinking about how it didn’t feel at all like how I felt reading Zen and Shirayukis kiss in Akagame No Shirayuki Hime. Those were formative years, and shojo was one of the only places I saw romance being talked about for younger audiences. I liked reading romances where no one had any sexual experiences and were figuring out what love meant to them. But let’s shelve this topic for now.

The point is that gender roles are dumb and if you have an open mind there's a world of stories out there for you. Take this time inside to read something you wouldn’t normally. Critically think about the ways that the worlds you see in stories and how you experience the world differ. What are the messages a story is trying to tell you? And why do you like the stories you do? Reflect on how the stories you tell yourself color your view of the world. Even mindless entertainment leaves an impression on us. Anyways.

Whilst you're doing that, I'm going to absolutely lose my hecking mind over the Shonen Jump series MY HERO ACADEMIA: Vigilantes!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Part Three: I downloaded the one month free trial of the Shonen Jump app and made you read all that, so I can tell you that today Dr. Shojo is going to rant about a spin-off of a shonen manga

THAT’S RIGHT, OF COURSE I READ HERO ACA AND YES I DID PICK UP THE SPIN OFF SERIES. SHONEN JUMP LETS YOU READ ALL THE NEW CHAPTERS FOR FREE ON THEIR APP. KIDS, IF YOU LIKE SHONEN AND YOU’RE PIRATING ON A SCANLATION SITE STILL GET OUT BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO SEE THOSE WEIRD PLASTIC SURGERY AND DENTISTRY ADDS ANY MORE.

SHONEN IS HERE AND ITS LEGAL AND ITS FREE FOR YOU. GET OFF MANGA FOX OR MANGA ROCK OR WHATEVER THE KIDS ARE USING THESE DAYS.

OK, so by this point in the article you have learned two very important things about me: 1) I love Shonen manga and 2) I read a lot of fanfiction.

Specifically, I read an absolutely biblical amount of My Hero Academia fan fiction and let me tell you, A solid chunk of it is vigilante/ Deadpool / criminal with a heart of gold themed.

So when I saw Hero Aca had a spin off, and it was about vigilantes, I was NOT SURPRISED IN THE SLIGHTEST. Ao3 sure is powerful.

Now, if you will permit me a tangent in a post full of tangents—HOLY CRAP, THERE ARE TOO MANY VIGILANTE AUS. I CAN'T KEEP TRACK OF EM. IT’S THE ISEKAI PROBLEM ALL OVER AGAIN. I GET AN EMAIL A FIC HAS UPDATED AND I’M LIKE IS THIS THE FIC WHERE DEKU HAS AN ABUSIVE MOM OR THE ONE WHERE HE HAS SPLIT PERSONALITY DISORDER OR THE ONE WHERE HE’S VIGILANTES WITH HITOSHI. OH WAIT, nvm, it’s the one where deku has a healing quirk.

OH WAIT WHICH OF THE 6 DEKU WITH HEALING QUIRK VIGILATE AU FICS IS THIS ONE?! ARGH WHY DIDN’T I WRITE A DESCRIPTION IN THE BOOKMARK FOR THIS!

My gripes aside, there's a reason why there's such an abundance of vigilante story telling—

Deadpool made like an absolute buttload of money and people love sass and memes.

People have a desire for a story in which they see themselves. Or, how they think of themselves.They like a story about someone who maybe came from nothing. Someone who has less money, maybe someone who is unlucky and had some bad breaks. Someone who never learned they had magic, never got their Hogwarts letter, never saw Kero, someone who never got that God-level quirk from All Might. And if your on Ao3 They want someone who also has seen a lot of memes and kind of wants taco bell and is also questioning their sexuality a bit?

Enter our new hero VIGILANTE DEKU.

But the cannon can't do this, cause hey, Deku is the chosen one. Albeit, chosen by All Might, He’s got his own thing to do. But how can we still cash in on a vigilante story?

And thus enter our New-New hero KOICHI HAIMAWARI—code name Nice Guy and then later The Crawler. True to his relatable roots. He’s just a dude in an hoodie who can go about as fast as a bike.

First off, I love Koichi. He wants to be a hero and fight crime, but most of the time he has to run away because at the end of the day he's just a dude.

He’s cute but not wildly good-looking, A bit of a nerd but not like an extreme okaku. He’s got a part time job and hates violence.

And this is where Koichi really shines—in every day stuff. He helps out wherever he can. Often, that just means listening to people complain and maybe helping his friends out with whatever they’re going through. He’s the kind of guy who smiles, not because he's especially brave, but because he just takes things one at a time and doesn't sweat the past. I think it’s really telling that he missed getting into hero high-school because he skipped the entrance exam to help someone. He’s the kind of person who lets us experience the superpower of human decency and empathy. And you know what? That’s something the world need desperately.

This theme of human decency is really the driving force of Vigilantes—it’s a manga about how the laws are there for a reason but sometimes they unfairly impact the poor and vulnerable. It's about how a lot of criminals are just people who fell into bad social circles or on bad times. People have the capacity for cruelty and violence but that’s never all they are.

Now, speaking of crime, the entirety of Hero Aca falls into some murky water when it comes to its evil doers. Much of the fandom has a huuuuuge problem with how much the franchise is willing to sweep under the rug in the name of redeeming their baddies. RE: people getting mad about forgiving Endeavor’s child abuse, or Bakugo’s suicide baiting. Or Mineta’s blatant sexual harassment.

But this theme is in Vigilantes even more than it ever was in the main series. To start off with, there’s this guy who tries to rape Pop Step early on, and the later he later winds up befriending everybody. It becomes a running gag that each new villain winds up befriending the other villain guys and then they all open a cat café together.

Using jobs as a way to lift people out of lives of crime is great and all but in the story there is no nuance or consequences for past wrong and well.....it feels very weird. It's like Vigilantes plays at having an opinion about moral ambiguity and the complexity of human existence and then just.......lets everyone get along because who has time to get into all that. Make of that what you will but it sits weird for me personally.

Anyway, let's move on and talk about POP STEP our main girl!

I love pop stars and I love vigilantes and a guerrilla performer is defiantly a character I could get behind. And I think they do a good job with Pop. She is actually kind of shy, but has this secret edgy persona she puts on when she performs. She is every girl on tumbler in the early 2000s. I also looooove that they make her not that great a singer. SHE’S GOT PASSION AND CHARISMA and maybe not born talent but like why should that stop you! Talent can be earned through practice and this is a great lesson to show people.

Unfortunately, Pop is also a great example of everything wrong with romance in Shonen.

It’s established early on that Pop loves Koichi because she is the girl he rescued all those years ago and yada yada yikes we’ve heard this one before. Many times before.

Sure, it's fine that they’ve met before, but gosh am I sick of damsels in distress. It's like she can't love him just because she respects what a great guy he is in her life and in the community at large, no no, she just needs to be rescued on top of that. And LOLOLOL isn't it funny he never noticed she was a girl because she was a child with short hair?! Once he realizes she has boobs now they will for sure fall in love! That’s how love works!

She's just with him all the time—nothing romantic ever happens she just gets a little tsundere.

I am never ever going to believe Koichi likes Pop because he spends like sooooo much time with her and they never have like, a moment. The first time he considers her is when Makoto is like, ‘hey I would love to get together with you, but have you thought about if you are crushing on Pop’. (Also this entire plot point is suspect—she's arbitrarily falling for Koichi cause he.......is the protagonist?)

Say what you will about shojo, they give you the emotional conversations, the moments where you think.....ahhh I can see why she is falling for him. They give you context! Shonen likes to just say HERE’S A GIRL YOUR AGE. YOU CAN DATE LATER WHEN THE ADVENTURE IS DONE.

Just when they might get together, Pop suddenly turns evilllllll. The evilllll beeeees made her eeeevilllll (and more sexy).

*Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*

Because why on earth would they get together if Koichi didn’t get to rescue Pop one more time?

I’m tired. These troupes are tired. I’m sure you are too. HOWEVER! If your still with me, Let’s move into why I'm really writing this post. Let’s get to the part that got me screaming to my friends, who by the way, don’t even care bout Hero Aca….but listened anyways. May you all find nakama like these my friends.

Anyways,

HOLY FUCK ERASERHEAD’S ENTIRE BACK STORY IS IN THIS AROUND CHAPTER 60 AND IT IS WONDERFUL AND ABSOLUTLY HEARTBREAKING AND IS ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTER BACKSTORIES I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IS THE REASON WHY THIS SERIES IS A MUST-READ FOR MAIN SERIES FANS.

AND BY ALMIGHT.

WHY. IS. IT HERE.

I present to you my late night text messages to my friends

ALSO, AIZAWAS TEACHER IS PRINCE?!?!?!

AHEM, so as you can see, I kinda lost my shit.

And now, I would like to formally defend my claim that DESPITE HOW AMAZING IT WAS, ERASERHEAD’S BACKSTORY HAD NO BUISSNESS BEING IN THE VIGILANTES SPIN-OFF MANGA.

Eraserhead, aka Aizawa Shouta, is a side character who is working with the police on some crime stuff. He is not a main cast member in this spin off. He’s a guest character that fans of the main series will be like OH COOL. GRUMPY CAT MAN LIKES CATS ON HIS OFF HOURS TOO. LOVE THAT FOR HIM.

So, my imagine my absolute surprise when Aizawa runs into Koichi and the following happens:

It starts to rain, so, like in any good manga, this means some great FORCED BONDING TIME

Except no. It doesn't because rather than start talking, Aizawa JUST STARTS REMEMBERING—ABSOLUTLY SILENTLY TO HIS OWN PRIVETE SELF—HIS ENTIRE TRAGIC BACKSTORY.

AND THIS GOES ON FOR CHAPTERS.

THIS GOES ON LONGER THEN ARC ONE IT FEELS LIKE.

I LOVE IT, BUT KOICHI IS ABOUT TO JOIN ATSUSHI NAKAJIMA IN THE DUBIOUS CATEGORY OF “PROTAGONISTS THE SERIES FORGOT ABOUT IN LIEU OF COOLER SIDE CHARACTERS”.

AND LO IT HAS NO BEARING ON THE REST OF THE PLOT, CHARACTERS, OR STORY

What the ever-loving-just WHY?

WHY?

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

SURE, IT’S A COOL TIE-IN.

YES, OF COURSE I LOVED IT. I SHIP ERASER MIC, I DREW THIS FOR HECK’S SAKE:

AND YET I AM ANGRY.

I AM ANGRY BECAUSE MY FRIDAY WAS RUINED BECAUSE VIGILATES SUCKER PUNCHED ME WITH AN AMAZING STORY THAT REALLY WASN’T PLOT RELEVANT AND PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THERE.

IS THIS WHY THEY TOOK LIKE NEXT-TO-NO CARE WITH POPS ARC?!?

I mean its ongoing, so it’s too early to say but—

In conclusion—

Excuse me one more,

AIZAWA WAS TAUGHT BY PRINCE!?!??!?!?!?!? PURPLE RAIN PRINCE!?!??!?!?!? WHAT!??!?!?!

It’s so ABSURD that I HAD TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I HAD TO WRITE PARAGRAPHS TO JUSTIFY YELLING ABOUT THIS ONE THING. WHAT THE ABSOLUTE—

Ahem,

Anyways, I hope you liked this weird rant/personal-story/random-diatribe in three parts.

If you’re reading this, thank you, stay safe, and I’ll be back with more shojo manga next time.

Ciao!

Dr. Shojo

(aka Dr. Shonen)

#my hero academia vigilantes #koichi haimawari #pop step #my hero academia #erasermic #Cardcaptors #Shojo manga #Shonen Manga #Dr Shojo #read Horimiya

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elencelebrindal · 4 years

Note

About the line from Niobe opinion “he’s a Gold Saint, it’s obvious something about him leaked” and your complaints about Cheshire’s wasted potential (seconded!): what do you think about the idea that Cheshire (just like the, well, Cheshire cat) could disappear at will and thus could go on recon missions to gather intel? That would actually add some point to his existence. The other Spectres from Minos’ group didn’t listen to him because he’s such a comic relief in the end, but Niobe… Niobe did.

I just stared at what you wrote in pure and disbelieving shock, IT’S PERFECT! Oh my goodness, this never crossed my mind. Never. That he could be exactly like the Cheshire Cat. It makes so much sense, holy shit. So. Much. Sense. I’m just...wow.

I love it. I just love it. Cheshire would be so useful, a spy hidden in plain sight!

Ok, serious talk now.

Let’s take away Cheshire’s comic relief role, and analyze him like a proper Specter. He is the Terrestrial Specter of the Bestial Star, very close to Pandora. This means that, despite his low rank, he could have access to more confidential information. Even if he just so happens to hear said information indirectly.

He has feline-like abilities. Cheshire is quiet, has extraordinary senses of hearing and smell, and can detect movements not only in low light (normal cat-like capability) but also in complete darkness.

Not only that, he can vanish and turn invisible if he wants to, and can teleport. These abilities all can be deducted by looking at his Surplice (and at an amazing ask, my god I am still flabbergasted), which comes from the Cait Sidhe, while the Cheshire Cat part of him is just his name.

The Cait Sidhe is a creature from Celtic mythology, a fairy that takes the form of a black cat; not an evil creature, but probably the reason why it’s said that cats have nine lives, since it’s an ability it has. It also has the power to steal the souls of the dead, and sits behind the tradition of the nightly wake (I hope it’s called like that in English, I relied on a translator).

The Cheshire Cat, a creature inspired by an old figure of speech about... well, cats and farms (they grinned because free milk is free milk, guys, cows are literal gods for tiny felines), comes from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Thought the Looking Glass”, and is widely known thanks to various adaptations, especially the Disney movie “Alice in Wonderland” and both Tim Burton’s movies “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through The Looking Glass”. It’s a grinning, talking cat able to vanish at will, as mad as one from Wonderland can be. If you haven’t, please read the books. Mental breakdown guaranteed 100% every three pages.

In light of that, as far as I can give him abilities, this Surplice can only be associated with cat-like behavior.

The rest of his abilities... he simply refined them himself. Just like any other warrior under a deity (Saint, Specter, Marina...), Cheshire developed his powers by adapting them to what he knew how to do best. So, they don’t have close associations with the Surplice, but still rely on his feline abilities.

(I had the sudden thought that maybe he was the one who inspired Lewis Carrol to write the Cheshire Cat, because we all know Alice in Wonderland came out kind of a century after the timeline of Lost Canvas. I don’t know how bizarre and/or impossibile that sounds, but I stand for it)

The natural consequence of this is: despite him being a Terrestrial and not a Celestial Specter, having him as a spy, thus making Cheshire one of the most important servants under Hades’ authority. This also helps to explain why he can stay in the castle, without anyone demanding him to be somewhere else to help with the War. Cheshire is too precious to send him on potentially deadly missions, so Pandora keeps him around. He goes out to gather information, and that’s it. Not only that, him being a spy and not a warrior tells us why he doesn’t fight, or doesn’t have that much of a technique. Cheshire is not made to fight out in the open, but to walk around like a cat, putting together pieces of information otherwise impossible to get.

There’s no other explanation on why a Specter with such a low rank would be kept around like that. “He has to avoid any unnecessary risks for the sake of his role” is such a powerful description of what’s never seen, that I just cannot say enough about it.

But there’s more. Taking away the comic relief role he has, there’s no reason for Minos and his Specters to ignore him. Unless he’s a Specter under someone else’s authority (*coff coff* Rhadamanthys *coff coff*). Niobe, opposed to everyone else that was present at the time he appeared, serves under Rhadamanthys. It goes by itself that he listened to Cheshire, maybe because he knew him better.

Maybe Cheshire hangs around with Pandora for a higher reason than just his protection. Maybe, exactly because the other two Judges will not listen to a Specter serving under a rival, his job is to report everything to Pandora, which subsequently would tell this or that information either to Hades, or to other Specters.

I might be looking a little bit too deep inside this character, but I love doing this kind of analysis.

And honestly, it makes too much sense to throw the entire post away.

#saint seiya #i cavalieri dello zodiaco #los caballeros del zodiaco #os cavaleiros do zodiaco #knights of the zodiac #cait sith cheshire #cait sidhe #cheshire cat #specters #character analysis #ask me anything

16 notes · View notes

kaialone · 4 years

Text

Spirit Tracks Translation Comparison: The Bow of Light

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover the scenes following the resurrection of Demon King Malladus.

You can also watch these scenes for yourself in English and Japanese. If you want, you can check out the EU English version, too.

For the comparison, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

Characters in this part who had their names changed between versions:

Dego = Byrne, Sharin = Anjean, Mallador = Malladus, Kimaroki = Cole

Aftermath of the Resurrection:

Zelda:

…そうだったのですか

...So that is what happened.

Oh, no...

Anjean:

うむワシはこやつに敗れた

Indeed, I lost against this one.

I...I couldn't best Byrne.

Anjean:

なんのかんのと言っても大した奴よ

Say what you want, he's quite good.

I have to admit, he has grown very strong.

Anjean:

たかが百年やそこらの修行でワシに勝つのじゃからな

I mean, it only took him about a century of training to beat me.

Of course, he's had a century to train.

Anjean:

こやつなりの努力は尽くしておったのじゃろう…

Knowing this guy, he must have been busting his back, for sure...

And he's always had the drive to succeed.

Zelda:

…シャリン様マラドーが復活してしまいました

...Lady Sharin, Mallador has been resurrected after all...

And now Malladus has been resurrected...

Anjean:

うむ奴がおぬしの体に完全になじんでしまえば…

かつての神であっても封印することはかなわぬやもしれん

Indeed, and if he becomes fully accustomed to your body...

Even the God of old might not be able to seal him away.

Yes. And once he adapts to your body, my dear,

even the spirits of good would be nothing to him.

They would be unable to seal him away again.

Anjean:

それ程のものじゃよおぬしの体に宿る力は…

That's how immense the power dwelling inside your body is...

Such is the extent of your body's sacred power.

Zelda:

…何か打つ手立てはないのでしょうか?

...Is there nothing we can do?

Is there no way to force him out for good?

Anjean:

ないこともないが…

伝説の戦いで神がお使いになった武具…光の弓矢…

There might be something...

A weapon which was used by God in the legendary battle... The Bow of Light...

In the battle between the Demon King and the spirits,

there was a weapon called the Bow of Light...

Anjean:

あれならばマラドーの魂をおぬしの体から追い出せよう

With that, Mallador's soul could be driven out of your body.

Perhaps it can drive his spirit from your body.

Anjean:

魂に戻ったマラドーに残された時間はいくばくもない

Reduced to a soul, Mallador doesn't have much time left.

There's not much time to rid your body of his spirit.

Anjean:

放っておいてもすぐに命が尽きるはずじゃ…

He should soon perish, even if left alone...

Resting even a moment could cost you your life.

Anjean:

…しかし…

...However...

However...

Zelda:

しかし?

However?

Anjean:

マラドーの魂をムリヤリ引きはがすのじゃ

We would be tearing out Mallador's soul by force.

If we force out the spirit of Malladus, my dear,

Anjean:

その時おぬしの体はどうなってしまうか…下手をすれば…

I'm not sure what would happen to your body then... If things go badly...

I don't know what will happen to your body.

If things go wrong...

Anjean:

おぬしの魂を受け入れる事はもう出来んかもしれん…

It might no longer be able to take in your soul...

Your spirit might not be able to reenter.

Zelda:

そんな…

Oh no...

No... It can't be!

Zelda:

リンクわたしがもしもずっとこのままだったら…

Link, if I would have to stay like this forever...

Could I really be trapped like this...forever?

Zelda:

一生こんな姿のままだったら..

If I would have to stay like this my entire life...

What will I do if I can't return, Link?

Zelda:

わたし…どうすれば…

What... should I do...?

What will I do?

Link:

もどれるよ / ずっと一緒

We'll turn you back. / We'll always be together.

Relax! / It'll be OK.

Zelda:

…ありがとうリンク

...Thank you, Link.

Zelda:

シャリン様その弓矢はどこにあるのですか？

Where is this bow, Lady Sharin?

Where can we find that bow, Anjean?

Anjean:

おぬしたちが足をふみ入れておらぬ最後の神殿…

砂の神殿深くに安置されておる

It's enshrined deep within the final temple...

The Sand Temple, which you two have never set foot in.

Go to the final temple, the Sand Temple.

The Bow of Light is located deep inside.

Anjean:

じゃが…かの神殿は今まで以上に手強い

But... That temple is more formidable than all the previous ones.

It will be the most difficult place you've visited yet.

Anjean:

光の弓矢をあずかる場所だけあってな

After all, it's there to keep the Bow of Light safe.

It was built only to protect the Bow of Light,

Anjean:

大がかりなしかけが多くそして謎も深い…

There's many large-scale mechanisms, and the puzzles are tricky, too...

so it's full of the trickiest of traps and surprises.

Anjean:

おぬしらの知恵が試されることになるじゃろう

It might prove to be a real challenge for your wisdom.

The temple will test all of your abilities.

Zelda:

でも恐れている時間はありません

But there is no time to be afraid.

We have to go now. There's no time to be scared.

Zelda:

行きましょうリンク

マラドー達が再び動き出す前に

We should go, Link.

Before Mallador and Kimaroki make their next move. (1)

We must return before Malladus fulfills his plan.

Zelda:

…シャリン様この方をよろしくお願いします

...Lady Sharin, would you please look after this man?

Please make sure Byrne remains unharmed, Anjean.

Anjean:

良いのか？おぬしの体をうばった相手じゃぞ？

Are you sure? He did steal your body, you know.

Are you sure, my dear?

He is the one who stole your body, after all.

Zelda:

ええですからわたしの体を取り戻したら…

Yes, and that is why, once I regain my body...

Yes, but once I reclaim it...

Zelda:

たっぷりお小言を言わせてもらいますわ

I would like to have a few choice words with him.

I would like to have words with him!

Obtaining New Tracks:

Zelda:

さあでは光の弓矢を取りに砂漠に向かいましょう！

Alright then, let us head for the desert, and take that Bow of Light!

Let's go find the Sand Temple and the Bow of Light now!

Zelda:

とはいっても砂漠までの線路はつながっているのでしょうか？

Well, that being said, do the tracks reach all the way to the desert?

But do the Spirit Tracks even go to the desert?

Anjean:

案ずるなこのフォースが砂漠の奥へと行ける線路を出現させるじゃろう

Do not worry. This Force will make tracks appear that reach far into the desert.

This Force Gem will serve that very purpose. It will open tracks into the desert.

Zelda:

シャリン様…？

Lady Sharin...?

What? Anjean...

Anjean:

知ってるかと思うがフォースは人が人を思う感謝のしるしじゃ

I believe you're already aware, but Force is a sign of the gratitude that people feel for one another.

As I am sure you know, happiness and gratitude create energy.

Anjean:

わしも心のそこからおぬしたちに感謝しておる

And I also feel grateful to you, from the bottom of my heart.

Well, I am deeply grateful to both of you for all of your help.

Anjean:

わしらは何も手伝ってやれんが頼んだぞ！

We can't help you out, but we're counting on you!

I cannot help you directly, but I can at least give you this Force Gem.

Zelda:

はい！必ず光の弓矢を取ってきます！シャリン様！！

Right! We will make sure to get the Bow of Light, Lady Sharin!!

OK, thank you, Anjean!

Text Box:

感謝の気持ちであるフォースをもらった！海の大地の石版が輝き出す！

You received a Force of gratitude! The lithograph of the Ocean Land is glowing!

You got a Force Gem! The Ocean rail map has started glowing!

Text Box:

新たな線路が現れた！

New tracks have appeared!

This Force Gem has energized the rail map. New tracks have appeared!

Zelda:

さあ海の大地から砂漠に向かいましょう！リンク！！

Alright, let us head for the desert from the Ocean Land, Link!

Let's head for the Ocean Realm, and from there, to the desert!

Translation Note:

In Japanese, Zelda actually says マラドー達/Maradō-tachi here, with the suffix 達/-tachi essentially meaning “that person as well as one or more additional people”. Given the context, she would most likely just be referring to Malladus and Cole here, which is why I adapted it the way I did.

Comparisons & Thoughts:

The main cutscene here mostly acts as a set-up for the rest of the story, and there is one major aspect of it that has seemingly been mistranslated in the English version, but there are other, smaller differences as well.

I also included the minor scene afterwards as a little bonus.

When the main cutscene begins, we get the implication that Anjean explained the outcome of her battle with Byrne to Link and Zelda off-screen.

Zelda:

…So that is what happened.

Oh, no…

Anjean:

Indeed, I lost against this one.

I…I couldn’t best Byrne.

The English version appears to go for a slightly different approach at conveying this, from what I can tell.

I’m guessing they might have wanted it to sound more natural, which is understandable.

Though, in English, both Zelda and Anjean end up sounding a bit more discouraged by the fact that Anjean lost to Byrne, which is a light departure from the original tone.

Anjean’s comment on Byrne’s progress is notably different between versions, too:

I mean, it only took him about a century of training to beat me.

Knowing this guy, he must have been busting his back, for sure…

Of course, he’s had a century to train.

And he’s always had the drive to succeed.

The major point to note here is that in English, Anjean says it makes sense Byrne got so strong, since he had one hundred years to train.

But in the Japanese version, she is actually impressed that it took him only about one hundred years to get this strong.

So in Japanese, not only is Anjean implying one hundred years aren’t all that much, at least not to her, she’s also saying Byrne’s progress in that time was more than she would have expected.

In turn, these differences change the implication of this dialogue’s latter half.

The English version has Anjean note Byrne’s drive to succeed, which further solidifies the idea that Byrne getting this strong was simply to be expected.

Meanwhile, the Japanese version has her note said quality of Byrne more like it’s the only explanation of how he managed to get so much stronger so much faster than she would have imagined.

There’s a few minor details as Anjean starts to talk about Malladus and eventually brings up the Bow of Light.

In the Japanese version, Anjean merely states that "the God of old might not be able to” seal away Malladus again, but the English version goes as far as having her say that “even the spirits of good would be nothing to him.”

So, slightly more pessimistic in English there. This is another choice of words that might be there to make Malladus seem like a more intimidating foe?

And curiously, the English version actually has a mention of “sacred power“ here, whereas it was just “power” in Japanese.

A funny reversal of how this usually goes.

The Japanese version also has Anjean explicitly mention that the God used the Bow of Light as a weapon, while the English version doesn’t have Anjean specify if the spirits themselves used the bow or not.

Next up is the major difference I mentioned before, which I think is probably a result of mistranslations.

I am referring to this bit of dialogue from Anjean:

Reduced to a soul, Mallador doesn’t have much time left.

He should soon perish, even if left alone…

There’s not much time to rid your body of his spirit.

Resting even a moment could cost you your life.

In the Japanese version, Anjean is explaining that since Malladus is nothing but a soul now, he can’t keep persisting for much longer, unless he’s possessing a proper vessel.

This is a spot of hope for our heroes, since it means that the mere act of expelling Malladus from Zelda’s body should already be almost enough to finish him for good.

Once he’s outside of a body, it’d essentially just be a matter of outlasting him.

And this foreshadows exactly what happens at the end of the game. Without a body, Malladus starts to run out of time and grows desperate.

In the English version, Anjean instead suggests that Zelda is the one running out of time here, implying they will have to expel Malladus before he gets completely used to her body.

I believe the English translators simply misunderstood the first part here, and as a result misinterpreted the second one as well.

Because I can’t imagine them changing this situation to be even more potentially fatal for Zelda otherwise, considering how they usually avoid the more deathly topics.

In any case, as a result of the differences here, we don’t get this first explanation for the events that will happen during the final battle.

The implied idea that Zelda would be doomed if Malladus gets used to her body turns out to be wrong too, since they can still force him out of her body afterwards, he just puts up a bit more of a fight.

When Link is trying to cheer up Zelda, the first dialogue option for him in Japanese is “We’ll turn you back”, which the English translation adapted as “Relax!”

A problem with adapting these dialogue options for Link in English is that there is very little text space for them. So for the rare moments where Link has slightly longer sentences as options, the English localization has to find some way to express them with much fewer words.

In this case, “Relax!” is probably meant to reflect how the Japanese version of this line has Link be reassuring and confident in their success.

Working with such restrictions is difficult, so I appreciate how they managed to boil down the basic sentiment, even if they couldn’t have him say the same line.

The second dialogue option is a bit different.

In the Japanese version, Link has the option to say “We’ll always be together”, which appears to be Link suggesting that even if Zelda does end up being a spirit forever, he would still always be with her.

The English version adapts this as ”It’ll be OK“, which could read as reflecting that same sentiment, mostly if you already know the original wording.

Part of me feels that maybe they didn’t want to have Link’s reply bring up the possibility of Zelda really getting stuck as spirit, but maybe they just found no alternate way to word this.

I’m not sure if something like “We’ll be together” or “I’ll still be there” could’ve fit or worked.

I think the “We’ll always be together” dialogue option for Link does make Zelda’s response to it feel a bit different though.

Since in this case, it makes it seem as though with his reassurance, she decides to keep going, even if she really has to face this possibility of remaining a spirit.

In the English version, Anjean says that the Sand Temple will test all of Link and Zelda’s “abilities”, but in the Japanese version, she only says it will test their “wisdom”.

I don’t know if the English version made an intentional change here, or if this is just a result of the wording they happened to pick.

Now, I’m not sure, but I think the Japanese version’s choice of the word “wisdom” might not have been arbitrary though, considering how Wisdom is a quality of the Triforce that is also associated with incarnations of Zelda.

Compare this to how, in the scene in which the children first met Anjean, Zelda used the word “courage” when urgently trying to get Link to get going.

While those mentions of these words are pretty quick and don’t seem that notable in the grand scheme of things, they might have been intended as subtle references to these qualities generally associated with incarnations of Link and Zelda respectively.

In the smaller scene after the main cutscene, we got an appearance of “Force Gems”, simply called “Force” in Japanese.

I already explained Force in general in an earlier part, but here we see it as an obtainable item, too.

Specifically, this kind of Force that you can obtain in this game is crystalized Force created from emotions of gratitude.

I can understand calling these specific items “Force Gems”, and past English Zelda localizations have used that same term to refer to crystalized Force, too.

Ironically, this term could work nicely to distinguish this crystalized kind of Force and the general concept of Force better, but the latter term is mostly omitted in English Zelda games.

And finally, the Japanese version unambiguously has Anjean say: “We can’t help you out, but we’re counting on you!”

I can only assume that by “We” she means herself and her fellow Lokomo, but I can’t say for certain.

The English version changes this to: “I cannot help you directly, but I can at least give you this Force Gem.”

I’m not sure why they went for “I” rather than “We” here, because this is actually one of the rare instances where the Japanese line specifies the subject clearly. It’s just わしら/washi-ra, simply meaning “we”.

Changing “counting on you” to “can at least give you” might have been a translation issue, since the phrase Anjean uses is 頼んだぞ/tanonda zo, which can be translated as “I’m counting on you”, but it can also be translated as “I’m entrusting this to you” when you’re giving something important to someone.

But I’m confident that the latter meaning is probably not intended here, since Zelda’s reply makes more sense with the former.

Overall these scenes are a bit of a mixed bag for me.

I’d say roughly half of the text here is translated accurately in the English localization, while the rest varies more.

I think Anjean’s tone at the beginning of this scene works more in the Japanese version. She sounds more confident about her own power, which is cool to see, and it also makes her sound more impressed with Byrne’s progress.

Just overall stronger characterization there, in my opinion.

The big one for me is that one mistranslation, though.

The one where the Japanese version has Anjean explain that Malladus would soon perish without a body, while the English version instead says that Zelda will soon perish.

It makes us lose out on some foreshadowing for the climax, which makes the story progression of the game slightly less cohesive.

But more than that, it has an impact on Zelda’s implied motivations here.

With Malladus out and about, lots of lives are in danger, and he needs to be stopped quickly. Anjean reveals that a method to make fairly quick work of Malladus does exist - but it would put Zelda’s own life at risk.

Up until this point, Zelda arguably could come off as slightly self-centered occasionally, even if she meant no harm and it was often for comedic effect. Moments like her rant towards Link, or her putting her body’s retrieval above all else.

Again, there is no doubt Zelda means well for everyone, but when it came to fighting Malladus, it was always something she was doing at least partially for herself, obviously.

And now we get another challenge for her.

Malladus can be defeated soon, likely saving the lives of almost everyone in the kingdom, but in turn Zelda can’t ensure her own safety anymore.

So, the idea of fighting Malladus would now change into an almost entirely selfless act on her part.

It’s not spoken out directly, but the implication from Anjean voicing her concerns, as well as Zelda’s hesitation, seems to be that technically, Zelda could make the choice to not seek the Bow of Light.

She could make the choice to look for a different method instead, one that would be safer for her body, but would take longer, and thus endanger the lives of her people.

This seems like the main conflict for Zelda in this scene here.

In the English version, there is less of a choice for Zelda here, implied or otherwise.

Since Zelda is stated to be the one running out of time in this version, getting the Bow of Light as soon as possible is just going to be in her best interest either way.

So her main conflict here is more that she needs to overcome her fear of what could happen, so she doesn’t get scared into inaction.

It’s not a bad lesson to learn, but it feels a bit incomplete when you compare it to the Japanese version, which I think is a more direct natural progression from Zelda’s attitude when she and Link truly began their adventure together back at the tower.

I am very glad though that the English version retained Zelda’s comments about wanting to have “words” with Byrne.

That was just a nice way to close out that cutscene, and it’s one that works perfectly well in English, too.

And with that, we close out this part as well. Feel free to check out the next one!

< Previous Part | Start | Next Part >

#legend of zelda #the legend of zelda #tloz #spirit tracks #legend of zelda spirit tracks #legend of zelda translations #spirit tracks translations #my translations #spirit tracks comparisons

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fe8meta · 5 years

Text

Seth vs. Valter, EN vs. JP

In the Japanese version of the Prologue’s scripted duel, Valter basically treats Seth like he’s an accessory to Eirika and otherwise doesn’t treat him like an existence. It’s difficult to express in English without sounding odd, which is why the official translation makes him speak to Seth more directly, while Eirika is the one who takes the brunt of the disrespect.

Pre-Battle Quote

English:

You there, with the girl. Tell me, would that be the wayward princess of Renais?

Japanese:

女連れだな。(You there, with the girl.) その女がルネス王女か？ (Is that woman the princess of Renais?)

The Japanese language can imply the subject and avoid using subject markers, which is on display in the first sentence. “You there” isn’t literally in the JP script; it can be implied that he’s speaking to Seth since だ designates the state of being accompanied by a woman.

I also chose to use “woman” rather than “girl” as the English translation, since 女 more typically means woman/female rather than girl, though it can still be translated that way depending on context. The way Valter uses the word is exactly as blunt and crass as it sounds. It’s like addressing someone as “that woman” in English, which can be somewhat condescending depending on the way it’s used.

As for the second sentence, you can see that the English version lengthens the sentence. There’s nothing describing her as “wayward” in the original script. (If you’re like me, and knew the term wayward in passing but not its actual definition, it means someone that’s disobedient and difficult to control.)

JP!Valter’s speech is meant to be blunt, brusque, and rude. The English version turns it around and uses flowery language, giving an uncomfortable sense that he’s toying with the person he’s talking to.

English:

Well, this must be my lucky day.

Japanese:

くくっ　どうやら私が (Heh heh. It seems like I’ve 当たりを引いたようだ。caught a big one.)

My translation took some liberties here. 当たり has a few meanings, varying between “success,” “prediction,” and a “bite” (as in fish taking the bait). 引く has the effect of “pull in”.

Japanese dialogue media tends to use more onomatopoeia and non-verbal cues (by which I mean using only punctuation to express surprise or pensiveness) than Western literature and writing, which puts localizations of Japanese media in a tight spot. FE7′s translation retained most non-verbal cues in the original script; I saw it get some flak from game reviewers who chided the “lazy” translation. Perhaps such sentiments were common back then, as FE8′s translation did away with quite a bit of it and adjusted the script to have more dialogue.

In this case, Valter’s chuckle was removed. Instead, the writers made his line sound more casual, again reinforcing the idea that he’s toying with them.

English:

You’re a dead man. The wench goes with me.

Japanese:

男は死ね。(The man dies.) 女は私がもらってやろう。(The woman goes with me.)

Here is where it becomes obvious that Valter barely even registers Seth as a person in JP. He dismisses him as “the man,” which would sound extremely stilted in English when his previous line already addressed Seth directly. So here, they shifted the subject from third-person to second-person.

In the second sentence, the official translation adapts 女 as “wench” (meaning young girl, or in its modern connotations, a prostitute). As it so happens, the second definition is a valid way to read 女, too. Basically, it’s there to show how off-puttingly crass and vulgar he is.

Battle Banter

English:

I am Valter, the Moonstone, Grado’s finest general! And you’re just a corpse who does not know he is dead.

Japanese:

我が名は【月長石】のヴァルター。(I am Valter*, the Moonstone.) グラド帝国将の一人 (A general of Grado.) 貴様は私に食われろ。 (And you are just my next meal.)

* Technically, his name is Walter in JP.

The first two lines of the original script here were merged into one sentence in English since it doesn’t sound natural to us. Notably, though, he doesn’t call himself Grado’s finest general; just says he’s one of them.

The third line is significantly different. Valter makes a few references to his appetite for strong opponents, and in one case it is said that his wyvern is literally fed people. Although the script retained the other similar lines, it has completely changed this one (to be fair, it is one helluva memorable line).

This line is very literally translated to “You will be devoured by me,” which would normally be rewritten as “I will devour you,” but it doesn’t sound quite as cool when contrasted with his previous line. Hence its above translation.

Also notable is that Valter actually refers to Seth with “you.” It’s the infamous 貴様 (kisama), which is (now) a derogatory way of referring to someone. A mildly relevant link, for the fun of it: Glen uses it on Valter too.

The Escape

English:

Such terrible wounds, and still he holds to his duty? How entertaining. Fly away, little man. Fly away. Try to outrun death. More time to savor the hunt… and the kill.

Japanese:

ほう　あの傷でまだ動くか。(Oh? Still moving around with such a wound?) 面白い･･･ (Amusing...) 逃げろ逃げろ。(Run away, run away.) 死ぬ気で逃げ惑え。(Try to outrun death.) 私たちの楽しい遊びを (Can you drag out 少しでも長引かせてくれよ？ this fun little game of ours?)

The JP version lacks the “still he holds to his duty” part, as you can see. The EN line gives the impression that he’s impressed by Seth’s dedication to protecting Eirika, while the JP line makes him more impressed that the dude’s still alive.

The last line is a little bit different, but the EN still captures the spirit of the JP. I’m not sure how deeply ingrained hunting for sport is in Japan, but it’s still very much a thing in the U.S., so it’s just converting the phrasing into something that’s familiar to the audience.

#FE8 #magvel #seth #valter #script #translation #meta

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starboundfic · 5 years

Text

Chapter 17

Renegades

Whoops forgot to upload this here

So yeah, I’m not too happy with this chapter and it fought me the entire time it was being written, but I think that’s because it’s an episode-adaptation.

Interlude I - Chapter 18

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stan was pretty sure he woke up two times before actually deciding to get up. And pilfered blankets or not, the floor was hard. Koji was gone, and so were Allura and Coran, but he saw a tuft of red-black hair sticking out from under one blanket and heard Jordan snoring away near one of the steps.

It looked so completely, utterly normal and part of him found that hilarious for some reason.

Yellow found that slightly concerning.

It probably was concerning, honestly.

Another thing they agreed on was letting the kids sleep. At least until Shiro was able to be awake too. Speaking of whom, the others were probably either getting breakfast or maybe down at the infirmary already.

He honestly didn’t want to go down to the infirmary, now that he was thinking about it, and didn’t realize that his attention had wandered to Eva again until Yellow had pointed out that she was fine.

…maybe staying on the bridge wasn’t the best idea either.

She was fine. She’d have those scars for the rest of her life, but she’d be perfectly fine.

Barring all the trauma she already had, anyways. (That mess was even worse than he first thought.)

The Yellow Lion did the mental equivalent of a heavy sigh, if a good-natured one. It was okay to be worried about how the others were doing, but right now it was completely unnecessary.

Worry later. First, taking care of himself. Which meant a shower first, because he never got around to it last night, and he really didn’t need Koji getting on him about that.

Though to be fair, yesterday was…not something he wanted to think about. Or think in general, especially after Things Went Wrong.

He was pretty sure he could be considered a mess too, at this point. Not that he hadn’t been one already, along with Koji. Jordan he couldn’t be too sure about, and Shiro…

If that weird hallucination or whatever on Bherna was anything to go on, Shiro might actually remember more of the last year than he was letting them know about.

And Stan was pretty sure that was something to be concerned about, on top of everything else going on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Date: not known, probably should have checked a newspaper before we left Elpis

Location: somewhere in the Saphanei system

I’ve decided to start keeping a record of things that happen to us while we’re out here, in case we ever need to reference something that happened before, given that none of us have any idea how long we might be out here.

Yesterday’s rescue mission was wasn’t completely a bomb, given that we were able to rescue almost everyone held captive there and get them started on the way home, but there were some that were moved elsewhere before we could get there, Rick included.

That’s not even starting to cover us almost losing Eva. She seems to be doing okay now. Right now, we’re all in the infirmary waiting for Shiro to wake up.

Koji paused in typing, glancing at the sole active pod, before finishing with I’m not sure how we’re going to explain to him what happened on Epona-6.

“Is he doing okay in there?” Jordan asked. “It…it almost looks like he’s having a bad dream or something.” It did, with the expression he was making every so often.

“Sometimes the healing process can cause involuntary brainwave response,” Allura replied, frowning slightly. “Given the nature of his injury, I’m not surprised.”

Green agreed with her, in a way that implied that the Lion had seen instances of those injuries before, but she wouldn’t give any details on it. Instead, she pushed his attention to the others. Stan was aimlessly tapping two fingers against the pod, not-exactly glaring at the screen displaying Shiro’s vitals, while Eva was sitting on the floor away from the others, looking vacantly at the ceiling.

Koji bit his lip contemplatively for a few seconds, before going to sit next to her. “Were you able to find out where they took him?” she asked. From the corner of his eye, Koji saw Jordan glance over at them, whereas Stan just tensed; he knew already.

He sighed a little. “No. The only thing I could find was that they were brought to a transfer station somewhere in…ugh, I can’t pronounce the area it’s in, but it started with a Q.”

Eva seemed to shrink a little. “Oh.”

“But, I had an idea last night,” he added quickly. “If I could set up a facial-recognition program, we could run it through the next database we can link up to.

“Would that even work?” Jordan asked.

“It should. They keep image records.”

“Can I help with it?”

Eva’s question caught Koji off-guard for a second—even back on Alwas, she’d never really shown much interest in the computer half of all the work.

Then again, it wasn’t just Rick they were talking about here.

“Sure,” he replied, pausing at hearing a hissing sound from the pod; that was the only warning before the glass dissolved and Shiro stumbled out with a groan, catching himself on the side of it.

“Shiro, how are you feeling?” Allura asked, taking a step forward.

“I…I’m fine,” he replied slowly, blinking a few times before looking around. “How long was I in there?”

“Almost two quintants.” Her tone was a little sharper, but she didn’t elaborate.

Shiro nodded, still looking dazed, but only for a few seconds; he straightened abruptly, eyes widening, before stammering out “I remember—I remember how I escaped.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And that was how, after finding the right parts to assemble an adapter, they all found themselves on the bridge, with a cable linking Koji’s tablet to a port found in Shiro’s prosthetic.

During that time, they’d given him a simplified explanation of what happened on Epona-6—that most of the aliens had been rescued, save for the ones that had been relocated before they could get there. Shiro had gone rigid when the bit with Spirit had come up, but he’d just given her a smile and a “I’m glad you’re alright.”

Not what she’d expected at all.

“I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for here,” Koji said finally, frowning. “Even with the translation program, it’s all a bunch of nonsense. Are you sure it wasn’t just some weird dream?”

“I’m positive,” Shiro replied, tone low. “Someone helped me escape.”

“And he was Galra.” There was thinly-veiled disbelief in Allura’s voice.

“Yes.”

“You know you cannot trust them—”

“Your father must have trusted them one,” Shiro interrupted, then turning to pin a glare on her. “Zarkon was the first Black Paladin, wasn’t he?”

Eva swallowed reflexively, sensing more than seeing the others processing that statement, coinciding with an attempted deflection of “That was a long time ago,” from Allura, who sounded (appropriately) guilty.

“Wait, what?” Jordan exclaimed, going pale. “You’re saying that—that creepy feeling we all got before Voltron fell apart was him?!”

“He was the one that took Voltron apart back there,” Eva clarified uneasily. “And he has Shiro’s bayard. I—I got a look at it then.”

“You have a reason for not telling us that, right?” Koji asked weakly, looking at the two Alteans. Coran looked like a deer caught in the headlights, whereas Allura averted her eyes, ears lowering slightly.

“I wanted to give you all a chance to bond with your Lions, without the history of your predecessors hanging over you,” she said, before looking at Shiro again. “You are the Black Paladin now, Shiro. Not Zarkon.”

“The Black Lion might have a different take on the matter,” Shiro muttered darkly.

“Not that this isn’t a fantastic subject to be on,” Stan cut in, pointing at the tablet’s screen. “I’m seeing a couple repeated symbols in there. Koji?”

Koji started slightly, also looking at the device. “Huh. Well what do you know,” he muttered, tapping a few keys. “I think we might’ve found those coordinates, Shiro. Now how am I supposed to…?”

“Leave that to me,” Coran said, stepping forward and bringing up a holoscreen. Ten seconds later the main display screen also lit up, showing a map of a star system. “Here we are—looks like it’s pointing to a location in the Thaldicon system.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Shiro asserted.

“H-Hold on a sec Shiro, are you sure we can trust this?” Jordan asked.

“It’s worth the risk. Someone helped me escape, and if we can locate more allies, especially ones that have already infiltrated Zarkon’s ranks, we might just have a way to start taking him down.”

There was a lengthy pause, before Allura conceded. “We can check the location, but I do not like this,” she said stiffly, turning to head to her control station. “I want all of you to get suited up, just in case. The Galra are not to be trusted under any circumstance.”

They were maybe halfway to their rooms (it had actually been something of a unanimous decision to keep their flight-suits there) when Stan muttered “Well that was a bombshell.”

“No kidding,” Jordan agreed morosely, shuddering. “Just when I was starting to think the whole weird alien mind-link thing wasn’t so bad, too.”

“Well, we’ll just have to work on figuring out how to keep him out of it,” Koji said, the attempt at sounding reassuring coming off as stilted instead.

“Koji’s right,” Shiro agreed. “It’s just another thing we’ll have to work on.”

Can we even do that? Eva asked Red while putting the armor on. The Lion seemed uncertain, but leaned towards it being possible. Maybe.

This was a new situation for them, too.

Returning to the bridge presented them with the sight of gigantic iridescent crystal clusters, starting out sparse and quickly coalescing into what might as well have been a wall’s worth of them. “Well, this is it,” Coran said, gesturing at the displays. “No sign of any sort of activity at all, living or otherwise.

“Can we get in there for a closer look?” Shiro asked.

Coran made a face. “I don’t want to risk bringing the castle any closer.”

“Why? Do those crystals blow up if you touch them or something?” Jordan asked. Eva could tell that he meant it as a joke, but Coran’s expression at hearing it said otherwise.

“Funny you should ask that. Those xanthorium clusters contain dense amounts of nitrate salts, so…yes, just poking one too hard would make it explode.”

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Shiro pressed, voice quieting.

“These are the exactly coordinates Number Four gave me.”

To the side, Koji frowned. “Maybe I mistranslated something.”

“We should move on,” Allura said stiffly. “There’s nothing here.”

“No,” Shiro insisted. “Let’s wait for a little while. Just in case.”

The princess gave him a long look before sighing. “Fine. But no longer than a varga.”

Eva stifled a groan. Guess this means we’re going to be sitting around for a while.

For ten minutes that felt a lot longer, absolutely nothing happened. Then an alarm she hadn’t heard previously started going off, with Coran hurriedly reporting with “There’s an intruder in the castle!”

“Wait, what?” Jordan exclaimed. “How could someone even get on? We’re in the middle of space!”

Allura, on the other hand, didn’t seem surprised at all. “I knew coming here was a mistake,” she hissed, bringing up a wall’s worth of security feeds, one of which was blinking red. “There he is—fifth floor.”

Shiro stood up. “Everyone, split up and have your bayards ready. Don’t take any chances.”

No chances. Wouldn’t going after some mystery intruder be considered taking a chance to begin with?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jordan found the guy easily enough. That said nothing about catching him though—or rather, keeping up with him. Whatever this guy was, he moved fast!

Not to mention Coran’s commentary on it all sounded uncannily like something he’d hear in a sports game. It wasn’t entirely appreciated.

It also went to say that this guy played them all against each other, up until Shiro got there. After that, everything moved too fast for Jordan to really process it, ending seconds later with both Shiro and the infiltrator in a stalemate—the former having his active prosthetic inches away from the side of the latter’s head, and the latter having a knife that he hadn’t seen previously pointed at Shiro’s throat.

Five very long seconds dragged by, with none of them so much as twitching a muscle, before the infiltrator slowly backed away, lowering his hood. After that, his helmet/mask flickered before fading out (more weird alien tech, great!) showing that he was definitely a Galra.

Shiro promptly looked somewhere halfway between shocked and disbelieving, which was just enough to confuse Jordan enough to not do anything right away, and it was reflected in his tone when he asked “Ulaz?”

What.

Then Allura came in and shoved the Galra-apparently-named-Ulaz up against the wall, with an angry-sounding “Who are you?” Emphasis on up.

She only spared Shiro a sideways look when he clarified on who this apparently was, with Jordan almost missing the quiet “You’ve come,” from the Galra.

“Wait, this is the guy that saved you?” Eva asked, slowly coming up to stand next to Jordan. Stan and Koji were both still keeping their distance, with Stan still having his bayard active and in-hand, though Jordan had a feeling it was more for show than any real threat. (It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing the same thing.)

Of course, the hallway wasn’t a good place for an interrogation—and neither was the bridge in this case, or at least in Allura’s opinion, because they just went for the nearest lounge room instead.

“Okay, I get the whole being-cautious thing, but isn’t this a bit overkill?” Stan asked dubiously.

“I will not have some quiznakking Galra on the bridge of my ship!” Allura retorted sharply.

Ulaz didn’t seem bothered by it, or at least he didn’t sound bothered when he said “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead already.”

Jordan tightened his grip on his bayard reflexively, and he saw both Eva and Koji take a few steps back. “Are your Galra threats supposed to win my trust?” Allura hissed.

“I'm not trying to win your trust. I’m trying to win a war.” Jordan had to give this guy some points—even with Allura up in his face, he was keeping his tone even. “And, because of Shiro, we are closer than we’ve ever been.” He turned his attention to Shiro directly before adding “Our gamble on you paid off better than we could have ever imagined.”

“Wait, you said we. There’s more of you guys?” Stan asked.

“Yes,” Ulaz affirmed. “We are called the Blade of Marmora.” After a brief pause, he added “I am alone on this base.”

“What base?” Allura still sounded hostile. “Shiro's coordinates just led us to this wasteland!”

“The base is hidden. Now that I know it is Shiro that has come, you are welcome to our outpost. It lies directly ahead of your ship.”

“Behind the giant crystals?” Eva asked.

“No.” Now there was a hint of something like…amusement? “Right in front of them, in a hidden pocket of space-time.”

A total of three seconds went by before there was a “A what?” from Koji, alongside Allura’s “Coran, are you hearing this?”

“The castle’s scanners are picking up on some sort of anomaly. I suppose it could be a cloaked base.”

Blue seemed dubious about it being just cloaked.

“Just fly straight for the center of the xanthorium cluster,” Ulaz said. “You will see.” Allura bristled again. “You think you’re going to get me to destroy our ship just because you say so?”

“We came out here to find some answers,” Shiro said finally, turning to look at them all now. “Are we going to turn back now?”

“I’m not sure about this,” Koji said, frowning. “I mean—a space-time rift? That’s more science-fiction than anything.”

“I’m with Koji on that,” Stan agreed. “Something doesn’t seem right about all of this.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure the Lions would’ve been science-fiction to us before we left Earth,” Eva pointed out. Jordan looked back and forth between her and the mechanics, who both looked slightly chastised. She’s got a point.

“Ulaz freed me,” Shiro insisted. “Without him, none of us would even be here.”

The silence following that statement was an uncomfortable one, dragging on for almost a minute, before Allura hissed out a “Fine. Slow and steady, Coran. Head for the xanthorium cluster.”

“Yes Princess.” Moments later: “Uh…I think you all need to see this…”

The display screen on the wall flickered on, and sure enough, there was a base right in front of the giant space-crystal—but at the same time, while the base itself was very clearly there, everything else had taken on a blurry, almost-translucent effect. Blue’s confusion gave way to an appreciative shock, with Jordan himself blinking at it a few times before saying “So…another point to science-fiction?”

He was pretty sure he could see the exact moment Koji realized what they were looking at, opened his mouth and then shut it again, before just asking “How?”

Ulaz actually chuckled a bit at that. “If you’ll free me, I can bring you onto the base to show you. I have to send a message to the leadership so they know I’ve made contact with you.”

“Go with him, and keep an eye on him,” Allura said, scowl still present. “I’ll stay here with Coran.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The closest Lion to where they had all been was the Red Lion, so they were all clustered in his cockpit for the short ride to the base. “That there is the is the gravity generator that creates the space-time fold that hides the station,” Ulaz said, pointing at the conical structure on top of the base. Eva looked about as interested as Stan was in it, though he didn’t miss the occasional irritated glances she was throwing at Koji, who was leaning so far forward toward the display screen that he was probably cutting into her view.

“Who designed it?” Eva asked, glancing back at the Galra.

“A reclusive genius engineer named Slav. His technology allows the Blade of Marmora to remain hidden while we work to take down the Galra Empire. Zarkon would do anything to get his hands on this technology.”

“So, this…Blade of Marmora thing,” Jordan started warily. “Is it just other Galra?”

“Primarily, yes. We have agents and informants from other species as well, though the number has been steadily declining as the war goes on. Not many would trust us now.”

“Which is why you need us?” Stan guessed.

Ulaz nodded. “With Voltron on our side, alongside the members we have working from within Zarkon’s ranks, we might finally have a chance to take him down.”

“How deep in it are you guys?” Jordan asked, after they’d disembarked the Lion.

He got another question as a response. “How do you think you were able to get away from Zarkon during your confrontation with him? Or steal the Blue Lion from Sendak?”

Yellow had an ah-ha moment at the first statement, which answered the question of why the wormhole-thing had gone from not working to working with no warning, the following chaos notwithstanding.

The second statement took a few seconds to sink in, with Jordan blinking a few times before giving Ulaz a dumbstruck look. “Wait, that was one of you guys?!”

It wasn’t until they’d reached what was probably a control room that Eva spoke up again, this time with something Stan had trying to scope out a good moment to bring up: “If you guys have people that can get at records—there’s supposed to be two more of us, but they got taken on Alwas. Could you find them?”

Ulaz paused in typing. “I’m afraid I only knew of two others from Earth being taken alongside Shiro. This is the first I’m hearing that they were any from your planet among those from Alwas.”

“Oh,” she muttered, looking down.

The Galra seemed to hesitate a moment before adding “While I don’t know anything myself, I do have some records of prisoners here. I can transmit them to your ship.”

“That’s better than nothing,” Stan remarked quietly, under Shiro’s thanks for the gesture.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, still looking distracted.

On one hand, Stan was about as curious about the space-pocket thing as Koji was—Koji was on the other end of the room, which had a better view of the device keeping the base hidden.

On the other, the lighting and narrow spaces on the base was reminding him a little too much of what happened on Epona-6. And it really didn’t help when an alarm started blaring for maybe the millionth time within the past however-long-it’s-been. Or that the cause of the aforementioned alarm was the third appearance of the giant metal box that had last been seen on the Balmera.

“I thought this place was supposed to be invisible?” Eva asked, alarmed; she’d snapped to attention when the alarm had gone off, coinciding with a heartfelt “Oh come on,” from Jordan.

“It is,” Ulaz replied tightly. “The only way they could have found us is if you were tracked.”

“Or if you ratted us out,” Jordan accused, though he stopped short when Eva gave him a look.

“It doesn’t matter how they found us,” Shiro cut in. “We have to get back to the ship!”

“Wait,” Ulaz cut in, removing something from the computer desk that looked like an oversized USB stick. “This contains instructions for how to reach the Blade of Marmora’s headquarters. But do not go there until you have figured out how Zarkon is tracking you.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“I knew he could not be trusted,” Allura seethed once she’d been brought into the loop about everything.

“It wasn’t him,” Shiro retorted sharply.

“How can you be sure?”

“It doesn’t matter how they found us now,” Coran cut in. “What should we do?”

Shiro took a deep breath, silently thanking the adviser. “Everyone get to your Lions, but don’t launch.” At the confused looks, he elaborated with “I don’t want us to fight that thing if we don’t have to. It might not have our exact location.”

It was a big might, but given how much trouble the last mech had given them, Shiro didn’t want to chance it unless there was no choice.

This one looked something like a floating torso that was mostly head. Or more precisely, mostly mouth, shown once it started drawing in the various floating crystals, which were then used as fuel for its weapon—a laser that had the larger crystals exploding on touch.

For a few moments, muffled explosions came from outside. Then the entrance to the space-fold rippled, and multiple lasers shot through, jostling the castleship. “Nope, he definitely knows we’re in here!” Coran exclaimed.

Shiro stifled a sigh. “Alright, in that case, let’s not give this thing any more ground than it already has. Form Voltron!”

The Lions came together smoothly, simultaneously with Shiro becoming more acutely aware of the other four—there was a lot of nervous energy, but given how much trouble the last robot…beast…robeast gave them on the Balmera, he couldn’t blame them.

They charged out of the space-rift, promptly dealing out a right-hook that deflected a laser shot upwards and away from the castleship, but that didn’t even seem to put a dent in it, with how fast it returned fire. They barely avoided colliding with a larger crystal; it was remembered at the last moment that they had to offset the inertia that was inherent to being in space.

They got three perfect shots in—but there wasn’t even a mark on the mech, which took advantage of the distance between them to draw in more ammo, and then they had to dodge again—

And the castleship was in full view, exactly the opposite of what Allura had said they would do. The hidden base was also in view, with one vital part of it now absent.

What started as shock-anger-disbelief quickly was replaced with bright, searing heat and something that wasn’t quite pain, more like a detached discomfort when the clusters closest to Voltron detonated, enveloping them in the resulting brief firestorm.

Can’t get distracted

Can’t let him reload

Maybe if they could stop it from taking in any more crystals somehow—the shield! But they had to find a way to keep it distracted first.

“Leave that to us,” Allura said; being fired on by the castleship definitely got the robeast’s attention, with it pulling in crystals, but not as ammo, instead crashing them into the barrier.

At least until the shield was jammed right in front of the beam’s emitter.

After that, it was simple enough to just fire the reverse-thrusters at full blast and recall the shield before the mech hit the largest crystal still (formerly) intact.

Did that do it?

One moment passed, and then two—and then it was only thanks to instinct that Shiro was able to throw the shield in front of them in time to block the laser, if only for a few more seconds before it fell apart and they were sent flying.

What’s this thing even made of?!

What else can we try?

“Hang on!” The sudden voice jarred them all into a moment of complete discordance, but not so much as the rest of Ulaz’s statement couldn’t be heard: “I’m going to take it down from the inside!”

But that would—

“Ulaz, no! Let us handle this!”

“Voltron is too valuable to lose! The universe needs the five of you more.”

The base’s gravity generator—or rather the ship holding it—vanished into the mech, and for one long moment, nothing happened. Then it just…started crumpling in on itself, before detonating, clearing a wide swatch of the crystalline asteroid belt.

What just…?

He did not just do that

“He did,” Shiro confirmed hollowly. He saved us.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The air in the ship seemed to have a charge to it, afterwards, and it wasn’t something Jordan necessarily liked. Shiro was off somewhere by himself; part of him wanted to go look for him, but what would he be able to say? He’d been in the boat of thinking Ulaz had sold them out, when he clearly hadn’t.

He wouldn’t have done that if he had.

Jordan shook his head a bit, continuing down the hall. He was pretty sure both Stan and Koji had gone in the general direction of the shuttle hangar—working on the Arrow was probably their way of dealing with steam—but he hadn’t seen where Eva had gone off to.

He had gotten a quick look at her face, though.

At some point, Blue did the mental equivalent of a thoughtful noise before going distant for a few seconds, before coming back with some directions on where to go.

If the Red Lion had any response to him walking into the hangar, it wasn’t shown, and Eva didn’t seem to notice; she was sitting on top of one of his paws, knees pulled up to her chest.

She did flinch when he pulled himself up onto the metal paw, with him thinking a bit belatedly to ask “Mind if I join you?” Eva shook her head a bit, and he sat next to her.

For a few minutes, it was quiet, before she said “Hey, Jordan? Do you think—we could’ve saved Ulaz?”

“Uh…” Jordan had to think about how to answer that one, and even then, he still wasn’t sure how to put it nicely. So he went for blunt. “Honestly? We were getting our asses handed to us back there. If he hadn’t…done that, I don’t think we would’ve walked away.”

There was a quiet “Oh,” from her, and he resisted the urge to smack himself.

“…how about we go find Stan and Koji?” he suggested, forcing a smile. “Maybe they could use some help with the Arrow.”

“Yeah,” she agreed quickly, doing the same before sliding down onto the floor.

When they got down there, though, Jordan had to take a few seconds to make sure his head wasn’t playing tricks on him, though that would’ve been proven wrong anyways by Eva saying “You guys repainted the Arrow?”

“Well, yeah,” Koji replied, sounding a little awkward. “I mean…purple. That couldn’t stay there.”

It wasn’t too much of a change, with the purple-orange having been replaced by red and blue, but he didn’t have that pang of unease at looking at the ship now.

Stan looked uncertain for a bit, before asking “You two haven’t seen Shiro anywhere, have you?”

“No,” Jordan grimaced a little. “I…kinda want to go look for him, but…”

The door chimed again, and it turned out they didn’t have to go find Shiro; he looked a little distant, but there was a sort of hard-set to them that had Jordan thinking he’d just gotten into an argument with someone. (Blue didn’t give any impressions aside from a sort of mental heavy sigh.)

“…so what’s next?” Eva asked.

Shiro took a deep breath. “First of all, we’re going to check through the entire castle to make sure there isn’t any kind of tracking device. Once we’re sure Zarkon can’t track us anymore, and only then, we’ll be going to the Blade of Marmora’s headquarters. We need all the allies we can get.”

#Oban Star Racers #Voltron #Starbound fic #Chapter 17

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usaghinanami99 · 5 years

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Hugh Jackman’s world tour: a personal comment

Hi, everyone! I know I'm a bit late, but I'm here to post a not-so-brief coverage of Hugh Jackman's world tour The man, the music, the show, or at least of the performance I've been able to witness myself. To be precise, I attended the concert held inside the Hallenstadion, Zurich, on the 19th of May, which, by a lucky coincidence, also happened to be my 20th birthday. It's been a long trip by train to reach Zurich, and I want to deeply thank my mum for being the kindest parent in the world and going through all of this just to give me the best birthday present I'll ever have had. Oh, please bear with my English, which is less than stellar, unless I’ve written something absolutely incomprehensible (in which case, please don’t hesitate to contact me!). I must say I’m very grateful that Hugh, knowing he was in a non-Anglophone country, purposefully spoke at a very slow rhythm. Thanks for being so considerate and kind. [Edited to put all this wall of text under a cut]

First things first, I have to say I had never been to such a big event, and concerts I had previously attended were nothing like this one. I mean, the only non-classical music concerts I had been to before were shows by Cristina D'Avena and/or Giorgio Vanni (who are Italian national stars specialized in anime theme songs), where the relationship between the artist and the public was completely different, in the sense that it was a given that, after the performance, they would have got plenty of time to meet every fan who wanted to do so for signing sessions, answering questions etc., with no additional price or need to preorder whatsoever. Well, things are obviously different when one's level of fame goes from "national" to "global", so what I felt was lacking more from Jackman's show was a real contact with the public... save a few horribly lucky exceptions. I mean, it's not like I thought he could do a signing session with over twelve thousand fans, but all in all, I reckon that seeing a concert with so little first-hand contact is not all that different than seeing said artist through a screen (which, BTW, we still had to do, since it was not humanly possible to see Hugh and the dancers from the furthest places without the aid of the maxi-screens). I'm sorry to have to start this post with a negative opinion, but I also have to say that this was absolutely the only bad thing about this concert; that, and the fact that Hugh always had a shirt on. Because, otherwise, I was totally blown away by the majesty of the music, as always happens when my ears are graced with hearing Hugh's fabulous voice, with the added bonus of the spoken intermissions, which were endless fun to listen to (and quickly translate to mum).

The show, as probably expected, opened in medias res, with no sort of introduction (apart from a very brief on-screen montage of various scenes taken from Hugh's filmography), but directly on the notes of The greatest show, which, thanks to the meta nature of its lyrics, may very well work as the most fitting show-opener of all time. The first verses of the song already worked very well when the film started at the cinema, but were no less than perfect to introduce a real-life show like the one that Barnum was about to start in-universe. Unfortunately, the version performed was the one from the official soundtrack – I say "unfortunately" because I prefer the film version, where The greatest show is actually two different songs and we manage to hear sad!Barnum's amazing verses at the end of the first part – albeit tweaked a bit to cut Zac Efron's solo lines out. Nevertheless, this song is breathtaking in every rendition, as are all songs from TGS, at least in my opinion, so I was still blown away right from the start of the show, and I remained in a state of hyper-excitation for its whole duration. After the show-opener ended, the first spoken intermission came, which made us understand from the get-go that this was going to be a little bit more than a normal concert, with the inclusion of these short but interesting comedic numbers by the star. This sketch consisted in a weirdly long declaration of the importance of numbers, which in the end was only functional to Hugh declaring in a depressed tone that he's fifty. A fact which matters not, seeing how he is still the sexiest man alive (disclaimer: I am not a gerontophile by any means, I usually lust over younger men and women, but Hugh's sexiness is something that transcends this, also because he objectively looks at least a decade younger than he is) and how insanely athletic he is for his age, a thing which we can confirm first-hand with all the crazy dancing he did on stage... and dancing while singing, may I add. And always with his shirt on, to boot. Man, that must have been hard. Oh, and he also said that, in case we were those horrible people who left before the show ended to have an easier time with the traffic, he would tell us when there'd be only two songs left. I wonder who on earth could have been that insane.

Immediately following this, Come alive came next, with its usual irresistible catchyness. The only negative side is that PT didn't actually put his red coat on in the epic and sexy way we see him do in the film, but I think I can live without that. I really liked the following transition, because, right after starting the show with his latest musical project, Hugh took us back to the start of his thetrical career, telling us how he still can't believe he won the audition to portray Gaston in the Sydney 1995 version of the Beauty and the beast stage musical (the theatric adaptation of the 1991 Disney Classic), seeing how he still had to take singing lessons. Now, the following part was my personal favourite of the whole show, given the fact that B&B is, in my opinion, the very best film ever created, as well as featuring my eternal OTP and sporting Alan Menken (the greatest composer alive) at the very highest of his career, who graced us with the most breathtaking songs I've ever listened to; oh, and Marjorie Biondo is my favourite singer on earth, to boot. So, you may imagine just how elated I was at the perspective of my favourite film meeting one of my favourite singers/actors! I had obviously already listened to Hugh's rendition of Gaston's songs from the official recording of the Sydney cast, just how I also watched Beauty and the beast in every language it's ever been dubbed into, because that's just how much of a fangirl I am; the only other film I've got such an extensive experience of is Frozen. That being said, I honestly reckon that Hugh's singing skills have dramatically improved during the almost-24 years that passed between that recording and this concert, even if he was already an excellent singer at the start of his career! Well, to put things shortly, Gaston was the musical number that followed, and it was undoubtedly the one that I enjoyed the most. The one performed was obviously the stage musical version, which is a bit longer than the original film version because of its lenghty dancing-only intermission; well, the crew didn't actually dance on tables, but the atmosphere was still there, thanks to Hugh being very in character as the sexy but sexist asshole that is Gaston, and the choreography involving tons of fake beer. That being said, since there was no LeFou present, the song was presented in a somewhat abridged rendition, starting from the "When I was a lad..." lines, but then recuperating some of the earlier stanzas and putting them out-of-order before the finale. The visual highlight of the number was Hugh lifting one dancer per arm to prove that Gaston has indeed "got biceps to spare", but sadly he didn't open his shirt like Gaston does in the film to show that every last inch of him's covered with hair. That was the saddest thing ever, imho. Still, I can confirm Hugh Jackman as being on the second spot in my ranking of the best Gastons ever, right after the inimitable Carlo Lepore, not to mention the fact that he's the sole and only baritone I can accept as Gaston. I mean, the character really needs a basso to fit his physical appearance and personality, especially in the film, and a basso also sounds much better in Gaston's songs, but Hugh somehow manages to make a baritone Gaston credible, like no other's been able to. Well, to be honest, maybe he's helped by the fact that he portrayed him in a stage musical and not in a film, so he didn't have to adjust his voice in order to be perfectly glued to the already-present face of a character; still, I regard this feat as something amazing, and you can't change my mind. As a side note, my mum, too, was quite happy during this number, because Gaston was pretty much the only song in the whole concert that she already knew; after all, you can't not know Beauty and the beast if you live with me, since I watch it obsessively every month (I'm still amazed by the fact that the videotape has never broken).

After an introduction with his own music repertoire, Hugh then went on to a small series of covers from different artists, starting with Fred Astaire's classic The way you look tonight (taken from the film Swing time), and on with other songs I had never heard him perform; which was a very nice surprise, because I really didn't expect to listen to anything new that evening! He thanked Switzerland for existing because that's where his parents first met (awww), which means that the country is very important for him, and thanked his public for being there for him, especially those of us who came by train or by plane – which means that Hugh Jackman thanked me, I'm definitely not delusional. But next time come to Italy, pleeease! After this, he performed I've been everywhere, which seems to be a popular Australian song where the singer mentions the hundreds of cities in the country that he's visited; this number was particularly hilarious because Hugh randomly added Zurich to the mix, and because, during an instrumental break, he asked the cameraman to show the audience the small screen where he could read the lyrics... seems that even Hugh Jackman is a human being after all, who would've guessed? Next came two songs from the film Dear Evan Hansen (absolutely watch it if you haven't!), which happens to be scored by the same Benj & Paul of The greatest showman fame, starting with the melancholy, but at the same time uplifting, You will be found, which was my personal favourite among the unreleased covers of this concert. The second song was the tearjerker For forever, a romantic ballad that Hugh aptly dedicated to his wife, and even played by himself on the piano, because apparently there's nothing this man can't do. The number was accompanied by pictures of Hugh, Deborra and their children on the screens, at which I literally couldn't not cry of too many feels... And, at the end of the song, she even went up on-stage to hug and kiss her hubby. Gosh, I envy her so much even as I still totally ship her with her husband, but really, Deborra Lee-Furness may very well be the luckiest woman alive. Returning to Benjamin and Paul, he then told us of how they composed and wrote This is me during a plane trip, one single day before a workshop where the film would be pitched. He then proceeded to recount the famous anecdote of how Keala Settle, who should've only sung this song at the workshop and wasn't to portray Lettie in the film, stunned everyone with her performance so much that she was immediately chosen for the role. This intermission, of course, served the purpose of introducing the night's special guest: the audience seemed to explode when Hugh announced Keala's entrance, to the point that I think that quite a few of them hadn't read that she would make an appearance. Anyway, even without her beard on her impression as Lettie is incredible, and her rendition of This is me was as breathtaking as always (incidentally, she also sang Tom's lines as well as her own). After her number had ended, she briefly thanked everyone who gave her the opportunity to play Lettie, and even the character herself, since she helped her become more determined, all while weeping tears of joy, which caused Hugh to cry, and... I can't. I just can't. These two are so amazing together and I want to see them in thirty more films singing and being happy one with the other.

After Keala exited the stage, a medley consisting of three songs from Les misérables started, introduced by footage from the film of Colm Wilkinson as the bishop giving Valjean the candelabra (you know the scene). The first part of the medley consisted of the aptly titled Valjean's soliloquy, which Hugh soloed with all the amazing skill we've already witnessed in the film. What I wasn't expecting, though, was for a background singer to own the spotlight as a full-on soloist: the second part of the series was none other than I dreamed a dream, in a rendition where a singer called Jenna Lee-James played Fantine. And, oh my gosh... I still have to listen to all versions of the stage musical, but what I know for sure is that I liked this performance even better than the one from the film (sorry, Anne!). I didn't think I would come out of a one-man show determined to check out a never-heard-before artist, but here I am, and it was definitely worth it; Jenna has got such a melodious, angelic voice, that I'm sure you'll be enchanted by her, too. The last number of the medley, as well as the closer of the first act, was One day more (which is already more or less a medley by itself, lol), where basically everyone had the opportunity to shine: since this is such a big ensemble number where almost every main character has got some solo lines, many different background singers managed to step out of the shadow and be recognized for their raw talent. While I'm somewhat sad that Bring him home wasn't included in the concert, this song was a truly satisfying act-closer, thanks to it epic proportions and majesticity.

After a well-deserved pause of twenty minutes for the artists, the second hour-long act opened with the cameraman gracing us with a glorious zoom-in on Hugh's butt (though I prefer his buttshots as Wolverine because here he was sadly wearing his trousers); it doubled as sexy and hilarious when the cameraman started to zoom out, only for Hugh to reprimand him and ask him to keep the focus on. By the way, at this point Hugh was already in-costume as Peter Allen, which means that he was wearing that absurdly sparkling jacket, so unfortunately it was a bit difficult to look at him without being blinded by all the *sparkle sparkle*. The initial musical numbers of the second act consisted in a series of freaking seven songs composed by Peter in various occasions and then posthumously used for the biographical stage musical The boy from Oz (I'm writing it here so that I don't have to repeat the various songs' origins every time), for which Hugh played the protagonist role in the Broadway version. The first one was obviously the legendary Not the boy next door, which was as spectacular as you can imagine, with the highlight consisting in Hugh taking the sparkling jacket off (for which my eyes thanked him in every possible sense) and spend the better part of the medley in a bright red shirt. All in all, this was probably the funniest number of the show; but then came the most irritating part, where Hugh invited a random man from the public to dance with him, and by "dance" I mean "being impossibly close and touchy-feely to the point that it was almost hard to distinguish where one ended and where the other started". I reckon it would've been sexy if the other person had been slightly hotter (for example, Hugh Jackman on Zac Efron brings infinite possibilities to mind), but he was just your regular middle-aged man, so no, there wasn't much fanservice for everyone except for him. I mean, Hugh even stroked. his. chest. Not fair. While rationally I know that it could never have been me because 1) I was as far away from the stage as you can get, since we bought the most economic tickets, and 2) he was in-character as Peter, so he needed a man, I'm still impossibly envious of this random man who's got the greatest luck of us all for no particular reason. Jeez, maybe I'm unneedlessly bitter, but I almost hope he's hetero, 'cause if he's either gay or bisexual, then he'd really have got the biggest luck of his life. Not-so-funny sketch aside, the show went on with a preposterous medley of songs from Peter's repertoire (and, indirectly through the musical, also Hugh's own) with no further interruptions: these were, in order, Best that you can do, the only one recycled from a previous musical, namely Arthur; Don't cry out loud, a pop song that Peter originally composed for a female voice, so it was a bit unexpected to hear Hugh sing it; I honestly love you, another pop piece, this one originally sung by Olivia Newton-John (which happens to be Hugh's childhood idol, by the way); Quiet please, there's a lady on stage, this one written, composed and sung by Peter himself; the iconic I go to Rio, where we found out that Hugh's red shirt actually concealed another layer of clothing – that is, the hilariously iconic pineapple shirt (and yes, he did use the maracas); and Tenterfield saddler, with which the medley closed. As previously mentioned, these songs were created by Peter for various different occasions, either for musicals or for more traditional albums, but were later reused for TBFO, sung either by Hugh-as-Peter or by other characters. All in all, this part was really enjoyable, and a totally deserved tribute to Allen's musical legend, even if one can question the inclusion of some minor pieces which kept the much more beloved I still call Australia home from being in the show.

After this, Hugh went on a speech about how dreams are important, and we know what this means: it's A million dreams time! The cutest thing is that this song was accompanied by a woman translating the lyrics into sign language... even though I must admit I struggle to conceive that a deaf would want to attend a concert, so the sense of the operation is a bit lost on me. Anyway, the version performed followed once again the soundtrack instead of the film, and once again I confess I prefer the latter, mainly because kid!Charity is also featured in it; on the other hand, it's true that the soundtrack version has got some additional verses, and the abrupt transition between the kid and the adult Barnum (which is much more nuanced in the film) is breathtaking. The parts were divided between Hugh Jackman as adult!PT, Jenna Lee-James as adult!Charity and another female singer whose name I'm desperately searching for as kid!PT. This song, which was already one of my absolute favourites, is still amazing in this rendition, but Jenna is possibly even better than Michelle (who is awfully talented in her own right), and now I really want to hear her sing Tightrope.

Following this, it was the turn for another long medley, this time a set of five covers from classic US musicals; this part of the show was introduced by Hugh confessing that he's got a very difficult upbringing... because there was only one TV channel when he was a kid, so he watched the same things over and over again (not that we do things differently even now that we can choose among many different channels), which led to his infatuation for old-style musical comedies. The songs composing this medley were: Luck be a lady tonight from the film Guys and dolls, then made even more famous by Frank Sinatra; Gene Kelly's preposterously famous Singing in the rain from the homonyme film, complete with fake rain and real umbrellas; I got rhythm from the film Girl crazy; Fred Astaire's Stepping out with my baby from the film Easter parade; and Benny Goodman's crazily-paced Sing sing sing. Needless to say, Hugh totally owned all of these songs, and I think this is the part of the whole show where his unadultered love for singing, dancing and generally being on stage shone through the most; of course the man is an excellent cinema actor, but you can clearly see that he's more elated when in a theatre or otherwise in front of an audience.

Immediately after came what was very probably the most physically prowing number for the cast, as well as the only non-sung one: after narrating that his brother was so much of an asshole that he discouraged him from taking dance lessons when he was a child, he proclaimed his happiness for having finally managed to study tip tap, which transitioned into a full-fledged tip tap routine with accompanying background music. This was admittedly the part of the show that I enjoyed the least, even if I did like it well enough (that's just to say how much I love this concert), because of the lack of singing and because I'm not the biggest fan of tap dancing. The funniest thing is that, at the end of the routine, Hugh exclaimed: <<Do you think that Ryan Reynolds could do that?>> and then did his Wolverine shtick using the battery sticks. Absolutely amazing. Oh, and after this exhausting number he turned back to drink, and even lampshaded the fact that we could take advantage of his tiredness to enjoy the view.

Then some brief footage from Australia was shown to introduce the members of a humanitarian organization called "Nomad two worlds", which made up the serious part of the show: the number in question consisted of a few men singing while two other men played the didgeridoo and a woman recited a poem. I should mention that all of these people were Aboriginals. After the end of the performance, it was explained to us that the woman who was on stage next to Hugh was actually a member of the Australian parliament who had a key role when their nation finally asked official forgiveness to the Aboriginals for the prosecution of their people. It was a very touching moment, indeed. With this over but still keeping on theme with Australia, Hugh performed a cover of Somewhere over the rainbow from the film The wizard of Oz (like his colleague and friend Nicole Kidman did in that film), and I wouldn't be lying if I said that I honestly prefer him over Judy Garland.

Then cam the most unexpected number of the whole concert, i.e., a cover of Mack the knife from Bertolt Brecht's Three-penny opera, which maybe would've fit better earlier in the programme; after which, Hugh actually told us that there were only two songs left, in case anyone wanted to leave early (I mean, does he think we’re crazy?). The following one was From now on, which I honestly expected to be used as the show-closer, but was nevertheless incredibly breathtaking; this is my favourite song of The greatest showman, in particular because it lets Hugh Jackman show everyone that he's truly the best belter of the world. From now on is also one of the two cases in which I prefer the soundtrack version of the song over the one from the film, since, like Tightrope, it features a bunch of additional verses. Unfortunately, though, Hugh performed an abridged version of the song, only starting with "I drank champagn with kings and queens...", maybe because it would've been difficult to hear him during the first part of the piece, which is sung while whispering. Anyhow, it was still exciting as heck, and the background dancers were even more amazing than usual. And, right when I was left asking myself what the final number would be, Hugh started singing another piece written, composed and sung by Peter Allen (albeit this time not in-character) and then used for TBFO; namely, Once before I go, which is incredibly fitting as a show-closer thanks to its lyrics. Thus the concert ended, with the main star, the special guests, the singers, the dancers and the orchestra bowing in front of the audience. I was appalled by the lack of an encore, and especially by the fact that no one in the public was apparently screaming for one like you usually do at a concert, but I was still utterly satisfied by the experience. Every member of the crew was simply fantastic, not just Hugh, and I'm very happy I've been so lucky to witness this show. ...I'm just still wondering why What a beautiful morning wasn't included in the programme, nor any other song from Oklahoma. That's jarring, I think.

Believe me, I would've totally stayed and bought some souvenirs, if it weren't for mummy, who wanted to go straight to bed; but, after all, she's already done so much for me, in exchange for nothing, that I can hardly believe it. She is the person I have to thank the most for this out-of-the-world trip and I couldn't be happier of being her daughter. So, many thanks to Hugh Jackman and all the others who made this concert possible, but even more thanks to the only one who made me being at this concert possible. Anyway, I simply cannot wait for Hugh to come back where he belongs to, now that his partecipation in The music man has been announced; I obviously won’t be able to go to Broadway to see the musical, but you can be sure I’m going to purchase the soundtrack album as soon as it comes out. What can I say, I love the man and I’m very happy he’s been able to realize both his personal and professional dreams.

If you've come this far, congratulations! I hope you've liked this totally unprofessional coverage, and I'd love it if you could link me to someone who's written a similar piece about a different performance, because I'm very interested in knowing how they differ between one another. Thanks for reading!

#hugh jackman #the man the music the show

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