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parachutingkitten · 3 years

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Y'all suck at dissecting Kai's character, so I guess I have to do it.

And I'm not even a Kai stan. He's a bottom tier ninja for me, which I guess means you can trust me, cuz I'm not biased, but also why am I the one doing this? I don't know about y'all, but recently on my dash, the method by which Kai fans try to make him sound good is... saying the writers hate him, ignore him, and that he isn't written well? Which... I mean there is a little bit of truth to, but like yikes guys, is this the best you got? Kai is a wonderful character with plenty of attention from the writers, a meaningful piece of the cast when put in secondary rolls, fairly consistent character writing with actual progression and valuable qualities that help the team without having to be the smart one- despite what some posts might tell you.

Let's get one thing cleared up: Ninjago isn't the best written show. By high level Hollywood standards, most the character arcs are kinda weak or too heavy handed, character consistency can be iffy, and most things serve the plot rather than the characters. There is no character you can point to and say "wow, this character is written so well! No complaints!" Nya and Jay were butchered by their weird love plot, Cole's one season doesn't actually give him an arc, Zane's been nothing but the robot numbers guy for like 10 seasons now, and Lloyd seems to be incapable of doing anything but relive the same one piece of dad angst for depth. Sorry, it's true. All the characters suck when you look at it from a large scale writing perspective. So when I say Kai is well written, I mean by ninjago kids show standards- cuz that's the scale we're working on. No, you couldn't drop Kai into a well written drama, but as far as ninjago goes... he's got a lot going for him, and by no means is he the biggest victim of poor writing.

(fair warning, wall of text below)

The title is a bit disingenuous. There are plenty of good Kai character break downs. What I am presenting here is a more positive perspective. On the whole, I will tend to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and credit for what they do right writing is hard guys. That's what I'm doing here. I don't see much sense in getting mad the writers on behalf of Kai, or any other character. Ninjago is a simplistic ensemble show that works because of the identifiable simplicity of its main characters with some deeper layers hidden underneath if you keep watching. They've given us a damn good show with some damn enjoyable characters, so here are some criticisms I feel are a little flawed:

First, let's get the 'focus' thing out of the way. Apparently there are people saying Kai doesn't have a season yet? Which... what? I mean, I get that the pilots aren't a full season, the first two seasons, though he is the central protagonist, aren't "Kai seasons" as we've come to define ninja focus seasons, season 7, though he gets majority focus, he shares with his sister. But like... did y'all just forget about season 4? You know, the season where he had the title card, was on the box sets, got the love interest, and the majority of the A-plot? not to mention it's the best season don't @ me Like... if season 4 isn't a Kai season, I can make a damn good argument that season 3 isn't a Zane season, and I doubt anyone wants to go down that rabbit hole. I really can't wrap my head around this one. And I get that the fandom hates season 11 for some reason, but like you can't just pretend it doesn't exist. Kai has a consistent arc across 30 episodes in which he takes his powers for granted, loses them, and learns that, not only does he have value within the team without them, but that his element is intrinsically a part of him that he reclaims, bringing them back more powerful than ever, and with new respect for them. That's one of the most solid arcs in the whole series- the location is even thematically connected to his element. That's some good stuff right there! (Quick plug for season 11 if you haven't watched it in a while. Give it a rewatch, you might be pleasantly surprised)

Not to mention the writers give him fun side stuff all the time. Lots of fears of tech and water to overcome, a deep protective streak with Lloyd, becoming a chancellor, having a true potential actually relevant to the plot as a whole, blacksmith responsibilities, befriending dragons, hanging out with his dad. Not to mention actual focus stuff we haven't talked about yet, like his whole "my dad is evil" phase, and his "I might be evil" phase with him and Skylor. And on top of that, even when he doesn't have an explicit side plot, he's always just a fun and dynamic side character to make jokes or give exposition.

Now, into character stuff. Let's start with Kai's hot headed-ness. Some people say he's been loosing this quality, and I will admit, that's true! But those that claim this makes him inconsistent... I strongly disagree. In early seasons, Kai's temper would lead him to snap at his friends or make stupid decisions that set the team back (see episode 2 Zane freak out)- these are bad things. These are character flaws, yes? Now, in newer seasons, people say that he's inconsistent, cuz sometimes he'll be hot headed, and sometimes he won't. I'd say, this is exactly how being hot headed... works? It flares up without warning, and as an individual gets control of it, it'll pop up less and less often because they're channeling it into productive things - like say directing the anger towards an enemy (see season 11 end freak out). Kai has gained control of a character flaw, and though it still pops up on occasion, the fact that it's a once in a while kind of thing speaks to his growth. I have a little brother who has this exact personality, and watching him grow up, I can tell you, this is how it is. He used to snap all the time, and he still does sometimes, but much less frequently, because he's a more mature person with better control of his emotions. This is a good thing. This is overcoming personal flaws. This is progression we're seeing.

And while you're hyper focused on this one aspect of him, things like his cocky confidence haven't changed a bit. I mean, that season 3 bit between him and Pixal, and his season 11 "fire maker" streak have the exact same energy. You can not convince me otherwise.

Another adjacent quality that hasn't been dampened is Kai's impulsiveness. This can be a good quality of his, he'll get into a fight without thinking, getting the jump on the enemy. Good stuff. But, this has become such a well defined trait of Kai's that it has been used in a comedic capacity. This is what happens when a character is extremely consistent to the extent that both the audience and the characters in universe would be able to predict their actions. Kai's impulsivity used to be a more serious quality that put himself and others at risk, and was a big power move whenever he did something rash, but it's become such a staple of the show that it's now being used for comedy. That isn't Kai's impulsivity going away, that's Kai's impulsivity being recontextualized for the sake of the show. The season 9 "Who's stupid enough to jump on that thing" isn't a joke at the expense of Kai just for being dumb, it's a joke at Kai's being so predictably impulsive that everyone already knows he'll be the one to put himself in an insane amount of danger without thinking twice (you know, something stupid that might get him killed). But because in this instance, the danger is warranted, this is bravery. It's a complement to his character- it's what ends up defeating the colossus. Why are some people so bothered by this joke?

Oh right, cuz for some reason people want to peg Kai as the smart one? Look, Kai isn't stupid, none of the ninja are. All of them have smart moments (all of them have dumb ones too) and Kai can certainly handle himself, but "smart" is definitely not one of his defining characteristics- I think some people are confusing smart for his actual strength. Connected to his impulsivity, Kai has very good simplistic instincts. He sees the big picture and looks at the most surface level solution- which when the situation calls for it, that does indeed make him smart. But the same logic that led him to think "This snake has a glowing target on its head, lets hit it" also led him to think "I'm in a video game, therefore I am immortal." Are you really going to look at me and say he figured out Lloyd was the green ninja through logical deduction and a careful consideration of the facts? No. He had a gut feeling, and he trusted it. Instincts- instincts paired with his impulsive following of said instincts is what leads him to solve problems- and sometimes, that can be extremely effective. This goes for other ninja too. Jay isn't the smartest ninja- I would really only classify Zane and Nya as having intelligence define them (hence their ship name). But Jay is extremely creative and crafty. He also knows his was around mechanics, and as such, this will lead him to come up with creative tech based solutions which are smart. But, idk about you, if I had to point to another ninja as being 'dumb' it would 100% be Jay. Kai is a lot of things. He's passionate and determined and confident and persistent. He's a good improvisor, he's powerful and he's charming! These are all wonderful qualities, he doesn't also have to be the smart one. I am the worlds biggest Pixal stan, and she's a smart, sassy, powerful character, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you she's also hilarious and adaptable and strong willed. She's a straight man to all the ninja's antics, extremely tied to her samurai x suit, and lets people push her around all the time. That doesn't mean she can't be funny, or self interested, but when she does act these ways, it stems from her other more prominent qualities. That make sense?

And while we're clearing up what Kai isn't, please stop characterizing Kai as an overly protective brother - especially romantically. The only two times he's been romantically protective to Nya are in Wu's Teas which I mean, come on and in the pilots when Jay is literally a stranger. For crying out loud, by the end of the pilot, he's smiling when Jay and Nya hug. That's not overly protective, that's just normal, any reasonable person would react this way, protective. And it's such a great stereotype break for a kids show like ninjago, having an older brother who actually trusts his younger sister to be her own independent person who can make her own decisions. I mean, I guess it's fine if you HC differently but like... idk, I don't buy it.

Now, is there still room to criticize the writers? Yes. Hell yes. But not to an extent greater than any other character. Could he have had more of a defined reaction to events of the most recent season that I won't name for the sake of spoilers? Yes. But could Zane have reacted for more than .5 seconds at being an evil war lord for apparently 60 years? Yeah. Has Kai taken a back seat in the past 4 seasons? Yeah. But so has Lloyd- and he's literally the main character of the show. Not to mention two of those seasons have gone to people who had to wait over ten seasons to get one to themselves, and one of them is a 40 minute special. Kai's doing just fine.

Anyway. Kai is great. He's a fun, stereotype breaking, impulsively driven, ball of energy and confidence who gets a good amount of screen time and some fun side plots.

One last thing to clear up: no hate to anyone. This isn't targeted at anyone specific, this post has been a long time coming, I've just seen some weird overblown claims on various platforms over the past few months and I finally sat down to write about it.

I like the Kai content we have. After all, if the writers were really that bad at writing him, then no one would like him.

Wow this was so much longer than I thought it would be. Um... if you have other long winded rants you'd like to see from me... let me know I guess?

#ninjago #kai ninjago #kai smith #parachuterants #analysis #lets add this tag:#/lh

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true-blue-megamind · 3 years

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FAN THEORY THURSDAY: Who is the Real Megamind? Part One

Even though our favorite blue alien threatens to return to supervillainy just so that he can fry me with a giant laser every time I say it: SPOILER WARNING!

Yes, that’s right! After weeks of a seemingly endless busy schedule, I am finally back! Did you miss me? (Just lie and say “yes.” LOL.) One thing has not changed in my absence: I’m not any better at uploading these on time. This post is still a bit late, going up well after midnight, but, as the sun's not quite up, I am still calling this Thursday.

Also, just to confuse everyone, this is going to be a two-part post because, upon realizing how long the first section was growing to be, I decided to be merciful. You’re welcome.

Today’s blog article will look at Megamind’s actual personality type, while next week’s will delve into his persona, his tastes, etc. So you can look forward to more of over-thought insanity to come. Enjoy!

Megamind is an undeniably interesting character, as the mere fact that he still has so many fans, more than a decade later, proves. Part of the reason for this is that he presents an unusually deep and complex personality for an animated film protagonist. This, however, raises the question of exactly how intricate his character really is. What is Megamind’s true personality? Behind the cloak and the spikes, who is he really? Let’s explore that question.

Megamind May Have an ENFP Personality

The DreamWorks team clearly spent considerable effort on developing Megamind’s character, so much so that he can actually be psychologically analyzed. In fact, fans have put a surprising amount of thought into exactly what Megamind’s personality type is. On the FunkyMBTIfiction Tumblr page, MysteryLover123’s submission suggests that the Blue Defender is an ENFP on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Certainly, many of the alien’s actions and traits seem to support this. According to Very Well Mind, ENFP stands for Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Perceptive, and people with this personality are enthusiastic, creative, inventive, charming, independent, emotional yet logical, and highly energetic. (If that doesn’t sound like our favorite villain-turned-hero, I don’t know what does!) It doesn’t stop there, however, and looking deeper we can see several more ENFP traits in Megamind’s character.

Future Focused and Goal Oriented

This particular personality type is known to be focused on the future, and, in the beginning of the movie, Megamind is obviously dedicated to his goal of one day defeating Metroman and ruling the city. When he achieves his aim, however, the blue man quickly becomes unhappy, and that, too, is an ENFP trait. People with this personality are adaptable, as well as fond of change and challenges, but they harbor a great dislike for dull routines, and tend to become bored and unhappy when they feel stuck in a rut. Relating back to the earlier point, because of their tendency to focus on what’s ahead, they can often fall into this feeling of “melon-coloy” stasis when there is no clear goal.

A Brilliant Mess

Thanks to the combination of inventiveness, creativity, perception, intuition, and adaptability, ENFPs often excel at thinking outside the proverbial box, generating plans and ideas, problem solving, and making new things. (Does that remind you of any animated characters we all know?) However, they also tend to be disorganized and need to feel enthusiastic about something before they can get it done. When they are excited about a task, (which usually means it relates to their future goals,) they may procrastinate a little, but will then throw themselves headlong into it and work almost obsessively to finish it on time. If they decide whatever they’re doing is boring and uninspiring, however, they will procrastinate a lot, be easily distracted, and may simply wander away and never come back to it.

Quite a few of these traits are evident in Megamind’s life and the state of his Lair. The former supervillain’s home is a riot of machines, parts, hanging idea clouds, tools, and seemingly random sundry. (I mean, he used an altered Karate Kid poster mounted in a gilt frame to represent his planned New Hero Training Process rather than simply hanging a note card reading “train new hero” because, apparently, that made more sense to him.) In fact, his creative process is so chaotic that the clearly clean and organized Roxanne had to recreate his hanging idea cloud to have any hope of deciphering his plan.

Furthermore, in both the movie and the comics, Minion is the one who appears to do all the cooking, grocery shopping, and cleaning, while the brainbots are responsible for organizing tools and other items. All of this indicates that Megamind probably has a great distaste for the monotony of repetitive chores. Finally, we can also deduce from both the prequel comic The Reign of Megamind and from Roxanne Ritchi’s comments about his plans always failing that, while the blue man’s designs appear to be brilliant, the execution may be rushed, leading to regular mechanical failures. This could very well be due to a tendency to procrastinate along with an equally likely penchant for working long hours and burning the midnight oil while his enthusiasm lasts.

Caring but Criminal

There are a few more ENFP traits that fit Megamind perfectly, but I’ll focus on just a couple of them. Specifically, ENFPs tend to exhibit “a strong desire to be true to themselves and their values,” as well as a wish to ideally make the world around them match those values. However, they also feel deeply and sincerely care about other people. Perhaps because of this, combined with some of the aforementioned traits, they have a tendency to step into leadership roles. (In fact, they can sometimes be very dominant. That plus all the black leather has led fans’ minds to some rather adult suppositions. I’m just saying.) Indeed, these qualities may be part of why ENFPs have a distinct tendency to disregard rules and butt heads with authority.

Again, all of this might as well be describing our favorite blue alien. Many fans suggest that the mistreatment Megamind endured as a child could have prompted him to decide his local society needed to change and he needed to be the one who changed it. That may be the original reason why he wanted to take over the city, thus putting himself in a leadership role.

In fact, as I mentioned in a previous post, The Not-So-Evil Overlord, a popular fan theory holds that Megamind ruled Metro City’s criminal underworld as a supervillain (and perhaps continues to do so as a hero) in large part because it allowed him to curb violet crime and set certain limits for the good of the city as a whole.

That may seem odd at first, but consider this: in the same aforementioned post, I detailed evidence that Megamind usually set his plots in unpopulated areas, where bystanders would be unlikely to be hurt, as well as refusing to engage in anything worse than vandalism and theft once he had the city at his mercy. Furthermore, when Metro City was truly in danger, Megamind sought Roxanne’s help to save it despite the facts that his choice put his life at risk and that he could have easily fled. So, clearly, he not only legitimately cares about other people but also possessed a drive to lead and, to some extent, protect even when he identified himself as a supervillain. But, of course, however good his intentions may have been, it can’t be denied that he also was clearly comfortable ignoring laws when it suited him.

Then Again, Megamind May NOT Have an ENFP Personality

There are, of course, some fans that disagree with the theory that Megamind is an ENFP. A few suggest that he may actually be an ENTP, as he exhibits several of those traits as well. Because of this there is some discussion among the fandom about which one the blue alien actually is. (That’s hardly surprising since, as you might guess, ENTP and ENFP personalities have several things in common.) To explore this, let’s look at Very Well Mind again. Like their ENFP counterparts, ENTPs are inventive, creative, and independent. They also both share the same dislike for routines and schedules. Unlike ENFPs, ENTPs like a good argument or debate, which could possibly be extended to include Megamind’s apparent enjoyment of banter. Beyond that, as the names suggests, while both are Extroverted, Intuitive, and Perceptive, ENTPs are Thinking rather than Feeling. With an intellect like his, thinking is certainly something the former-villain is known for.

Indeed, ENTPs highly value knowledge, and this definitely seems to fit the Blue Defender’s personality. In fact, it is itself cause for some discussion. A few fans point toward Megamind’s attraction to Roxanne Ritchi’s intelligence as stemming from the value he places on intellect while a larger number suggest that this attraction is actually cultural or biological.

Personally, I think it’s the latter. Among a species clearly adapted for enormous intellects who likely place cultural significance on mental prowess, it would be only natural for high intelligence to be deemed a desirable quality in a mate. In fact, there are related fan theories, supported to an extent by details of the film and other sources, that suggest that Megamind’s high collars—which draw attention to his large head—and drive to show off his brilliant inventions in front of Roxanne may all be a sort of “peacocking” courtship behavior. (For more on that, please read the post entitled Why Kidnap Roxanne.) If this is true, then the appeal of Roxanne’s mental acumen to Megamind’s desires is almost certainly cultural and/or instinctive, not an individual personality trait.

Another aspect of ENTP personalities many fans point to is the fact that ENTPs tend to be less empathetic. Because the emotional aspects of their personal characters are less developed, they can have a harder time remembering to show compassion to others. Well-developed, psychologically healthy, and socialized ENTPs can overcome this enough to be charming and charismatic, but otherwise they often seem unkind and aloof.

Some fans suggest that Megamind’s treatment of Minion is evidence of this trait, but others argue that it might not be. After all, during the film, the former-villain calls Minion his “fantastic fish” and his “best friend.” Despite ordering the henchman around, Megamind can also be seen showing him affection as a child, having destructive fun with him after taking over the city, and displaying great concern for him after his injury near the end. This hardly seems like the actions of someone who is “aloof.” Furthermore, there seems to be a difference between the way Megamind treats Minion when they are alone and the way he treats him when others are around, leading many to suggest that the super-genius’ unfeeling boss act is just that: an act. It is part of his supervillain persona. (We’ll get into that more next week.)

Beyond that, there is another ENTP characteristic which more directly contradicts Megamind’s actions in the movie. People with this particular personality tend to be, if anything, even more focused on the future, so much so that it often excludes serious consideration of the past. Our favorite blue hero, however, specifically says near the end of the movie that “there’s a benefit to losing: you get to learn from your mistakes.” This clearly indicates that he obviously thinks about his past and uses it to inform his present.

So, it appears unlikely that Megamind actually is an ENTP. However, people are not robots installed with particular standard programming, and many possess a large number of one personality’s trait along with a few aspects of another. This may very well be the case with the alien supergenius.

Finally, there are some fans who question whether Megamind actually has either of these personalities. This supposition is based on one particular thing: Megamind’s extroversion is debatable. Those holding this stance argue that the blue alien lives alone with Minion and seems to have no desire for other companionship with the exception of Roxanne Ritchi. In fact, he displays a great distrust for people in general. Could he be an extreme introvert? Again, while others are free to discuss and make up their own minds, personally I have to say no. Megamind’s lack of social interaction stems not from a lack of desire, but from defense mechanisms born out of years of ostracization and bullying, not to mention surviving a childhood in prison.

What makes me so sure? It’s simple. Far from wanting to remain in the background, the blue man clearly enjoys being the center of attention. In fact, he absolutely loves putting on a good show. I mean, he stomps around in giant death machines accompanied by laser light shows and blaring Heavy Metal music. And, just in case someone somehow managed to miss his presence, he broadcasts it all live. You don’t really get much more extroverted than that. That remains true at the end of the film as well. When he becomes a hero, he is perfectly comfortable in front of a large crowd, cracking jokes and dancing on stage.

Considering this, I would argue that his distancing techniques are born of nurture, not nature, and may even be evidence of an anxiety disorder that occasionally rears its ugly head. That would hardly be surprising, given all that he endured during his formative years, and it might explain why he would be so fond of attention while simultaneously distrusting most others.

So, as far as the evidence available from examining Megamind’s character can reveal, it appears that our favorite blue alien is likely an ENFP, possibly with a few ENTP characteristics and an anxiety disorder. Of course, I don’t claim to be a psychiatrist, so this conclusion is certainly open to rebuttal. Whatever his personality may be, however, the mere fact that this animated protagonist can be analyzed this way is more proof of just how much time and effort the DreamWorks team put into developing his character. If anyone ever deserved a sequel, Megamind definitely does!

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millllenniawrites · 2 years

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mack's 2022 birthday rec list list!

so i missed doing this last year because ✨mental illness✨ but we're back! i feel weird about birthdays so i wanted to thank you guys for such a great year by putting together a list of fics that I've loved so y'all have some good stuff to read! i've mostly been reading oscar fic this year so the vast majority of fic on here is oscar fandom, though there are a few others. im sure this list is missing fantastic fics i read in the last 12 months but i've tried to compile the ones that have stuck with me and that i've gone back to! this is my gift to y’all for getting me to another birthday 💗

if you like the stuff on this (unfortunately brief) list and think our taste lines up, feel free to check out my recommended tag (now featured!). i don’t have a lot of time to read these days but I reblog every fic that I finish so you might find something you like in there!

disclaimer: please note that some of the following accounts have dni statements. i adore them and would never want anyone to disrespect their boundaries so please be aware of who you are interacting with as you go through this list! thanks!

Old Dog by the wonderful Dany. @youvebeenlivingfictional is a god and her writing never fails to floor me. if you aren't a bond fan, you will still love Old Dog, and all her other fics are incredible too (I am obsessed with Be Changed; Be Undone right now as well)

this untitled fic by @userpoe is a great example of the mastery tegan has of the star wars canon. they capture character SO WELL and talking to them about poe is always a joy because of the sheer DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE they have. also their gifs are GORGEOUS and they're unreasonably talented at everything but that's besides the point

i have to include All Bets Are Off by @writefightandflightclub because i've read it like seventeen times and it gets better every time?? luna's ability to create tension is unparalleled and the dialogue in this is SO GOOD. oh my god they were roommates and captain of the team are others fics of theirs that i love for these same reasons

and i cannot get you out by @moonknightly is her brand of beautiful angst at it's finest. i love the way hadley can perfectly place you right in the moment, even if that moment isn't reader-driven. it's a skill i wish i had and reading her work is like a masterclass on writing.

i fell in love with clarke's writing because of the insane amount of creativity she possesses, and her Kinktober Day 16 - Hair fic is such a great example of that. every time I read @budcooper 's work, especially work that comes off a prompt list like this, im always in awe of how she can spin well-loved tropes into something new and fresh. Trying is another great example of exactly this.

A Very Lovely Woman by @acedameron is gorgeous and makes me YEARN SO HARD. it's beautifully written and angsty and smutty and i ADORE it. they've also written some stuff for William Tell (The Card Counter) so if you read for him, go check out their account!

Tinder Saves the Day by @maybege is a FANTASTIC fic that really surprised me?? I realized I was doom scrolling so I clicked on the first fic that popped up on my dash and it just so happened to be this masterpiece. I didn't know who this man was. I had no idea what fandom he was even for at the time. but was I entertained?? is the writing gorgeous?? did I immediately go read everything else on May’s masterlist for Paz?? absolutely yes.

so there you go! the 2022 mack birthday rec list. thanks for keeping me afloat this last little while. as always, if you are a writer and you wanna tag me in your fic, feel free! i love finding new writers (and new friends) on here and it’s honestly one of the main ways I find new people to interact with! i love y’all 💗💗

#mack speaks #mack birthday rec list

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Its really interesting how quirks are used in BNHA vs RUBY'S semblance. Like I feel there is a lesson to learn about magic systems in the two

Oh definitely. Which isn’t to say that BNHA’s system is flawless—I’ve talked a little about problems/missed opportunities in the past and I’m sure the hardcore fans have plenty more to say—but comparing the two, it’s like day and night. Putting aside for a moment the huge leg-up BNHA has simply by virtue of not introducing “Your magic system now has other, literal magic,” something that stands out to me is how variety is upheld as a necessity for success. Meaning yeah, you have characters who are super powerful and could 1v1 a fight (All Might, Izuku, Bakugo, Todoroki, etc.) but the series also develops a lot of characters who, frankly, aren’t that impressive at first glance. Like, Ojiro literally just has a tail. That’s it. That’s his power. Having an extra appendage is not going to let him win against a villain with any combat-focused quirk, but the in-world system/the structure of the worldbuilding teachings that this doesn’t matter because they’re going to work as a team. Heroes aren’t supposed to be fighting any of these battles alone. They have classmates, mentors, organizations, peers, other heroes that randomly come on the scene. There’s a lot of emphasis in the series on people figuring out how to use their quirks together to take down the bad guy, rather than simply relying on those with the most "powerful" quirks to get the job done. (And indeed, we often see the most "powerful" heroes in situations where power alone could never win.) You need Izuku’s strength to crush the giant, but Uraraka’s float ability to ensure he doesn’t die upon landing. You need Aizawa to give you an opening and Thirteen to capture the enemy and Jiro to scout the area, etc. etc. It always struck me that Inko’s belief that she has an unimpressive quirk isn’t true. Though the story doesn’t always capitalize on this, the takeaway is that any quirk, in the right circumstances, with the right support, and with a bit of creativity, becomes an asset. If she’d wanted to be a hero, her quirk is no more or less useful than many of our side characters’. You just have to figure out the best way to use it.

In contrast, RWBY has really lost that sense of teamwork. The creators seem to think they’re telling that story, but it hasn’t actually shown that message in a long time. One of the excellent designs of quirks is that, given their endless variety, that means enemies come in an endless variety too; the power belongs to both good guys and bad, making for challenging, creative encounters. However, RWBY’s primary antagonist are the grimm and though they come in different shapes and sizes, the way to beat them is (almost) always the same: hit them with something sharp. Characters don’t even need their semblances to stand a chance, given that they all already possess weapons, dust, and aura. No one needs a character with a shield semblance to take a hit for them because everyone already has a built-in shield with aura. No one needs a character with a fire semblance to attack an ice creature with heat because everyone has access to dust, etc. And even with the insane amount of power each individual has, making peers somewhat unnecessary to their own potential success, it often still comes down to a generic hack-and-slash. Meanwhile, many of the people they fight—Roman, Watts, Ironwood (yes, I’m including Ironwood)—don’t have semblances of their own, or they’re characters like Tyrian who technically have one, but don’t seem to use them in a fight, or characters like Neo who do, but only once or twice per battle. Semblances are very rarely presented as a challenge to overcome. They're just a flashy additions to weapon-based fights. When was the last time the characters encountered a semblance they had to collectively figure out how to get past? ...never? And then we have enemies like Cinder and Salem who possess generic magic that should be a major hurdle to overcome, yet the characters aren’t working to utilize their unique skills to do that. How do we attack Salem? Idk, charge her and strap a bomb to her chest. Exactly as you would a grimm.

So we have a real underutilization of semblances, combined with every character being capable of taking on any enemy themselves (in theory), and that creates scenarios where teamwork just… isn’t necessary. No one needs Ruby’s speed semblance to beat an opponent because everyone has a weapon they’re just trying to hit the villain with—and eventually do. It used to be that, though semblances were supplemental, they were at least combined to create interesting advantages. Now, characters almost never rely on one another, let alone their unique talents, to overcome a formidable foe. Let’s tally up some recent fights:

Salem, as said, is attacked by Yang charging her and placing bombs. Hazel fights her solo. Oscar defeats her while the rest of the group escapes. The only teamwork is in Hazel sacrificing himself to hold her in place.

Ironwood goes to fight Watts solo.

The group all attack Ironwood one at a time, taking turns despite it being 5 vs. 1.

Same with the Cinder fight and here Yang’s semblance, which should have been the exact skill needed to save her from Neo’s hit, is inexplicably absent, leading to her “death.”

The show keeps insisting that the group beat the Ace Ops due to teamwork, but they split up at the very beginning of the fight. Ruby actually enters the room Weiss is in again at one point and then just… leaves. Blake and Yang fight together, but that’s their norm and, crucially, Vine and Elm fight together too, evening those odds. The most we get in terms of creative semblance help is Weiss summoning her wall of ice, after Ruby already has Harriet beat.

Blake and Ruby don’t need to work together to kill the centipede grimm, Blake instead begs Ruby to wake up and do it for her, which she does. Weiss and Willow don’t need to combine their semblances to beat back the Hound, their attacks remain separate. Ruby does the majority of the work herself by flashing her eyes and the kill shot is dumping a suit of armor on top of him.

The story separates Penny from the rest of the team when the Ace Ops attack and when they get out they’re immediately knocked off the platform, resulting in them doing nothing for that fight.

We have another split as Maria fights Neo and Penny fights Cinder. Having Emerald there should have been an easy win for the villains—there's literally a scene where she begs to come so she can be of help!—but instead Emerald only summons up one vision that's immediately overcome.

Qrow goes up against Harriet solo.

Winter goes up against Ironwood solo.

Ren, Yang, and Jane take turns attacking the Hound before just standing there while it transforms.

I could keep listing examples until… well, I’d argue Volume 4. I’d say that’s one of the last times we saw the teams working together, specifically in a way that creatively combined their semblances, such as Ruby carrying Nora so she can lightning up and smash the geist. Though it’s not quite the level of teamwork we saw in fights like the Nevermore or against Roman’s mech, it was still there. Then Volume 5 taught Oscar how to 1v1 Ruby using only hand-to-hand. It separated everyone for the final battle. Yang beats Adam almost entirely by herself. The major beats of the Cordovin battle are Ruby using her eyes and Ruby throwing herself into the cannon. No one is functioning as a team anymore and the story goes out of its way to separate people for a fight: Blake is alone when Adam attacks, then Blake is too injured to seriously help Yang. We flip-flop. There are some battle exceptions of course (there’s a little teamwork when the trio is trying to rescue Oscar) as well as the nugget of ideas for other semblance uses (Jaune helps Penny fight the virus), but on the whole we’ve really lost that work of semblances acting as a necessary, collaborative tool to win the battle. Work that, while not always perfect, BNHA has had a much better time with.

RWBY’s magic system suffers from a lot of problems, but at least we started out with the idea, “In order to beat something as powerful as a Nevermore, your tanks need to hit it hard enough to stun it, the girl with dust and glyphs needs to hold it/provide a way to run up the mountain, and the speedster needs to quickly use her scythe/the momentum and cut off its head.” A pretty good use of weapons, resources, and magical powers. Now we’ve got fights like, “Girl who can summon things runs outside, fails to summon, goes back inside, girl who can make copies of herself doesn’t use that, let alone using it with dust like she once did, instead just parries uselessly while begging for help, scythe girl stands up and cuts through the beast from behind.” No innovation. No creativity. No real teamwork. What happened to Ruby shooting Nora with a lightning bullet? Weiss powering up Blake with a time glyph? Yang riding Blake’s ribbon to gain extra power in a punch? Why bother giving grimm speed or acid or (harking back to Oobleck) intelligence if our characters no longer need to find ways around those unique traits? The closest we've gotten lately is the Apathy, which was really just a way to re-introduce Ruby's silver eyes — and that was at the expense of things like, "Neither Wiess nor Yang can blast a flimsy, wooden door down now. In a world where they're blowing craters into the ground, a lock is the true enemy!" It just feels like we’ve lost the majority of that collaborative creativity, replacing it with solo fights, or taking turns fights, almost all of which are focused on each individual character battling with the tools they have, rather than figuring out how to combine their abilities to create a whole that’s more powerful than its parts.

#rwby #rwde #BNHA #My Hero Academia #mymetas

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uomo-accattivante · 3 years

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Great comprehensive interview with Elvira on the making of The Letter Room and filmmaking, in general. One interesting tidbit mentioned: she is currently developing a podcast about sex. 👀🤔

For most of her creative life, Elvira Lind has been behind the the lens compassionately capturing true stories as a documentary filmmaker. Her debut feature, Songs for Alexis, observes two young lovebirds navigating a long distance relationship and challenging views on gender identity in the modern age. While her sophomore feature, Bobbi Jenne, explores the life of a famous dancer fighting for her own creative and personal independence.

Despite her prolific doc work, a story that couldn't simply be told in its raw form kept circulating in her head: a dark prison comedy about the secret life of a correctional officer trying to bring humanity to the prison system. When he gets transferred to a job in the letter room, he finds himself a little too involved in the private lives of the inmates.

Far along in her second pregnancy, and with the support of an incredible team of collaborators, Elvira took on the challenge of writing and directing her first narrative short, "The Letter Room." The film stars Oscar Isaac and Alia Shawkat, and has had an all-star festival run, screening at Telluride, Tribeca, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Here, Elvira reflects on the joys and challenges of creating your first short film—putting empathy first, reshaping the tropes around pregnancy, and screening in the COVID era.

vimeo

FTW: How did you become a filmmaker?

Elvira Lind: I’ve always loved film. I was very drawn to documentaries because it felt like you were entering something that was really happening. You opened a door and were already inside the film. You’re just trying to keep up with what’s being thrown at you. As opposed to fiction where you have to conjure it up from nowhere. I loved imagining and writing stories when I was little, but I didn’t have the confidence to pursue it.

I didn’t come from a family of filmmakers. And I came from a time when people had a little shitty camcorder that you borrowed from someone’s uncle, and buying film was expensive. Things opened up and changed a lot when cameras became more accessible.

I could only afford one year of film school in Cape Town, where I met some amazing people and learned about so many different ways of storytelling. I came back to Denmark and found myself working for free a lot for other filmmakers while doing a side job. The paid work was very hard to get, but I’d rather work for free with filmmakers that I loved and have more responsibilities than have access to nothing. It wasn’t easy to find my way in, but it’s so worth it.

And now you live in New York. How does this global background affect your general filmmaking style and approach?

I definitely bring a lot of Danish documentary traditions with me and hold it very dear. There are a lot of kick ass female documentary filmmakers in Denmark that have taught me a lot. There’s a good support system for women there. It’s an incredibly privileged place in that there’s funding from the government to make films. You can make things that, in my opinion, are often far more interesting because it’s not reliant on how it’s going to make money in the box office.

You’ve shot many of your documentaries in the past. So what was it like this time to be working with a cinematographer?

I always wanted to work with a cinematographer on my documentaries; we just couldn’t afford it. Now for “The Letter Room”, I worked with Sam Chase, who has got such a brilliant eye and it was wonderful to have someone to work with on composing the look of the film because I’m usually doing it by myself. It is kind of like a marriage. I work with the same editor on all my projects as well. You enter this symbiotic sort of dance together. For me, it also means you have to fight about things and disagree and then make up and hear each other out. My editor, Adam Nielsen, is the kind of guy who just comes up with genius ideas while in the shower or on the way home from work on his bicycle. You have to find these key people in your life where you can bounce ideas back and forth with.

Where did the idea for “The Letter Room” come from?

It was a story that was brewing in my head for a long time, but I wasn’t sure how to put a narrative film together. I just started to write it down and then it kept developing.

There was a podcast that I listened to that really inspired me. It told the story of different men who were all unknowingly writing love letters to the same woman. She started to ask for money and help with rent, but the letters she wrote were so wonderful and all these men were very in love with her. These very lonely men felt like magic had entered their lives. They all eventually found out that the woman was actually a man writing to different people trying to get their money. They were all heartbroken, but one of the men said that the worst part was losing these letters and that the fantasy was gone. He wished they could just keep writing to each other. So much of life is fantasy and trying to live through other people’s lives. I’m very drawn to stories of loneliness and bottled up feelings.

And then I am firmly against the American prison system. It’s heartbreaking, frustrating, and I can’t make sense of it. How do you even begin to explain this system to a child?

It’s a society that doesn’t care about humanity. I wanted to show the monotony, the repetition, the sadness. I don’t see the bigger goal or purpose of locking people away for countless years and taking away all the things that makes you feel human, that makes life joyous. I really believe that we can all change and this system teaches people nothing. “The Letter Room'' is the combination of these two concepts that I’m very passionate about.

And then I got pregnant for the second time and I hadn’t made a film between the two. It was a crazy feeling to be taken over again by pregnancy. A wonderful friend of mine, Sofia Sondervan-Bild, came to me and said, “I think you should make this film and I’ll make it with you.” Initially, I freaked out and thought I didn’t know how to do fiction and doubted how I could make a film in a prison, but she inspired me and told me to do it. She’s just one of these incredibly powerful people that you want to go on an adventure with. She made me feel like my pregnancy wasn’t going to stand in the way of me making this film. We ended up shooting while I was far along in my pregnancy in a prison in the middle of a summer heat wave. It was crazy, but it was the best thing that I could’ve done at the time.

When you were directing on set at that stage of pregnancy, did you feel like you were reshaping tropes of what women are capable of?

It was insane. The funny thing was that the crew was like, “we can’t complain that we are tired because she is extremely pregnant and still running around.” I was so high off of that experience. When we finished, I collapsed. I fell straight onto the couch and then I have a two and a half year old screaming my name. That was more work for me than directing the short. I edited the film right before I gave birth actually, and then I gave birth and did sound right after. I was pumping breast milk in the corner in the darkness during the sound edit.

I’ve learned a lot from surpassing whatever I thought was physically possible with being pregnant. I learned that being in a creative process gives you so much energy that it allows you to be in whatever shape, size, form, mental space you can. People are ready to give you their support, if you choose the right people. I’m really grateful that I chose such wonderful collaborators who supported me through it all. Even when people were questioning my choice to direct a film while being pregnant in a prison. Why not? Women get pregnant and then we still need to be supported so that we can continue to make the things we want to do.

What was your experience with getting “The Letter Room” funded?

It’s really hard, let’s be honest. There aren’t a lot of people sitting around waiting to fund a short film. We ended up working with Topic, which is a part of First Look Media. They are just incredible and really support filmmakers with whatever their vision is. I’ve had great experiences and some really bad experiences with funding, so I know this was an ideal scenario.

Having a short that is over 30 minutes long seems like a feat. At what stage in the process did you know this was going to be a longer piece? And how did that decision affect the shoot in both positive and difficult ways?

It was way too long at first, and when I shortened it, it was still 32 minutes. We could only afford five days of shooting, and a lot of it is shot on active prison grounds, which have an insane amount of protocol. We almost used everything we shot.

I’m not used to being able to have different angles to choose from in my doc work, so I think I just knew exactly what I wanted. I know that my producers were worried that I wasn’t getting enough, but to me, I was like, I’m getting double of what I usually get on a documentary! Everyone was quietly concerned, but everything worked out when we got to the edit.

The short’s length hasn’t done any favors for me so far, but you need to breathe as an audience, you need to pace it out. If I cut out certain minutes, it would’ve felt rushed and you wouldn’t have believed the arcs that the characters had.

I loved the concept of placing a very empathetic character in a setting that is contrary to that personality type. You included so many details that made the world feel so three dimensional and cared for. Can you talk about those decisions to create that feeling?

It means so much to me that it made you feel that way. What frustrates me about the prison system is that it lacks any empathy or understanding of human nature and nurture and who we are. What we need to become better people. It takes all of that away.

I spoke to people who have spent a lot of time in prison and they told me that you have to hide your feelings and that showing any signs of weakness will be a disaster. It’s the worst possible scenario you can imagine yourself in. Being robbed of every privacy, anything that makes you happy, anything that makes you feel like yourself. I imagined the character of a caregiver in this setting who wants to help and finds a silly way to do so. I was very inspired by that story of the love letters that I talked about earlier. What does it mean to lie if you’re making someone else happy?

It’s the morning of your first day of the shoot — how do you feel?

I was very nervous. I had never said ‘action’ before. I’ve been on a lot of sets, but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s also okay not to know. Mistakes are going to happen, and sometimes they become gifts. At the same time, I was very excited. You come in and there are all these people there with you who are there to make this thing you’ve written come to life.

What are some things you would do on set to create a safe space and vulnerable environment?

We did everything we could to make the set a safe space. It was very difficult and stressful to shoot in an active prison, but we made sure to actively ask our crew if everyone’s feeling okay and if we can do anything to make the situation better. I’m very vulnerable and encourage all of my crew to be vulnerable with me. Mistakes are welcome.

It's a short film, people come and work on this not because they’re making a million dollars, but because they want to be there and are being incredibly generous with their time and energy. It was such a good environment that even when challenging things came up, it was still a lot of fun.

What was it like working with actors for the first time?

That was one of the biggest challenges for me. I’ve heard so many different stories in passing of the least helpful note or worst thing to say to an actor. You want to be respectful and actors have their way of working. Ultimately, they are all really talented actors and all of them came with so much energy and a lot of ideas.

I spent time with each of them talking about their character. Those 1 on 1 conversations helped me a lot in the writing process as well because you’re bouncing ideas off of each other and they’re asking you questions about how they would respond to a certain situation.

I had always imagined Alia Shawkat as Rosita and she ended up wanting to do it and came from LA to film it. I had tears in my eyes when we were filming the scene of her and Oscar. They were excited to do the scene together. It was all a dream.

What was the experience of working creatively alongside your partner like?

We were joking a lot about it before because there was already the stress of being so pregnant and we have a 2 year old at home, and now I was putting us in another highly intense and demanding situation. Either it was going to be great OR we would drive each other nuts. But we had so much fun. It was wonderful to work together. I was so happy to be on set and make my film and he’s just so talented and fun to be around. Those little moments where you know each other so well—I’d give him notes and he just kept surprising me and was so respectful of my directions.

He found this photo for him to connect to the character and it became very fundamental to me. It was this incredible black and white photo from the 70s of a prison guard. I had always imagined that he would have this inner salsa soundtrack playing in his soul and we would play Rubén Blades and 70s salsa music and Oscar just morphed that into music into everything and created this unique character.

And he was wearing a fat suit the entire shoot and I was pregnant and Alia Shawkat had her pregnant belly on. The three of us—it was so funny.

It seems like the perfect first experience of going into narrative with people that you really trust and support you.

Definitely! Find the people that you can team up with that really believe in your vision and who will push you to do exactly what you had in mind. People who never try to push you into these conventional routes. Our creative voices are so fragile. You want to be on the same page so that they see what you’re trying to do and want to bring that out of you. Where they’re treating your film as a sacred thing that you’re creating together.

How do you know when a film is done?

Fiction is very different from documentaries. With documentaries, it never feels like it’s done because there are so many options. That’s also why I love fiction so much; It’s so much faster. It’s a whole different beast to tame a documentary with hundreds of hours of footage where you’re reinventing the wheel every day.

How have you built up your own confidence as a director and your unique voice?

Stubbornness. I’ve had many experiences working with people who didn’t believe in my project. You have to stick to your guns and trust your instincts. Once you find your voice, you find people that want to go on that ride with you and find your vision interesting. It’s a miracle when any of us gets a project made, so your confidence can’t come from how much money your movie made. It has to come from somewhere else. Did you do justice to the people you portrayed in your story? Did anyone walk away feeling like something had changed within them?

What is a good director to you?

Someone who is driven with passion without letting that passion take over and become any source of frustration that’s taken out on other people. It should feel like a collaborative effort. And having gratitude every day that you’re making something with other people who are donating their time. You’d be nowhere without them. One of the most important things is making sure that your crew is treating everyone equally. It depends on the size of the production, but having someone who can sense what’s happening in all different departments and having department heads that are there to protect everyone. Listen to each other, and make sure everyone feels safe and is in the best place to be creative.

With COVID, what has the adjustment been like to being in an online space for this festival run?

I’m really deeply saddened by not having the human interaction aspect of it. It feels so crucial to be in the room together, to meet and see each other's projects and share the experience, to cry and laugh next to people you don’t know. I’m grieving to be honest. We just gotta get through this time. It reminds us of how sacred it is for us to gather and how that feels, and I hope that all of that will come back after this and that cinemas will survive. We really need them.

What’s next for you?

Right now I’m writing more fiction and working on a new documentary feature that I am kind of researching and shooting at the same time. I am also creating a podcast about sex, called “The List” with my friend, writer and photographer Kirra Cheers, based on a book and play she wrote. My husband and I just started a production company together, Mad Gene Media, in order to develop and produce our own material. So. lots of exciting things to continue with in the new year.

Born in 1981 in Copenhagen, Elvira Lind graduated from School of Media and Creative Arts in Cape Town in 2006 majoring in documentary film where she received two awards for her final year achievements. She has worked within that field since directing and shooting documentaries of various lengths for TV, cinema and web on 4 different continents.In 2020 she premiered her first fiction project, a 32 min short film she wrote and directed. The film was sold to Topic and was invited to various festivals including Telluride and Tribeca FF. Elvira's feature doc BOBBI JENE premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 where it won all awards in its category including Best Feature documentary, best editing and best Cinematography. The film had theatrical release in US, Spain and Scandinavia.Elvira's first documentary feature Songs for Alexis premiered at Toronto HOT DOCS in 2014 and screened and competed at a long list of international festivals. Her 8 part documentary TV series "Twiz and Tuck" was bought by VICELAND and launched in 2017. Elvira now lives and works out of New York.

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#oscar isaac #elvira lind #the letter room #mad gene media #interview

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kimberly-spirits13 · 4 years

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Random Characters with Creative/ Designer S/O HC:

Characters: Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Bart Allen, Conner Kent (RSS), Jamie Reyes

Damian Wayne (Fashion Design):

· You’d started off your career when you were young

· Your father wasn’t super supportive of everything and said that you were too young to start a business or what have you

· So, with approval from your mother, you started one behind his back

· He didn’t know until one day you ended up treading and going viral with a dress you made for a very famous celebrity

· At that point he couldn’t stop you and was just impressed that you made it for months without him knowing

· As long as you were keeping up schooling, it would fly

· You ended up getting to travel the world and go to fashion week

· More specifically NYFW

· New York was the big one

· That’s where you and Damian met

· He was there for a business trip with Bruce and saw you at one of the shows the girls dragged him to

· He was immediately infatuated with you and wanted to meet you

· Thank the heavens he has sisters who wear your clothes to almost every gala

· They got to go back stage and talk to you which led to you two exchanging numbers and the rest is history

· When you started dating it was really hectic

· You had a few kidnapping scares which made him want to break it off especially after you found out about the entire Robin thing

· Heeeellllllllll no

· You didn’t let that happen at all

· Bruce actually commented and said that if you were that stubborn, Damian should probably keep you

· Fashion week becomes more tiring and you also hate not being able to see Damian as much

· He comes and visits though to make sure you don’t throw yourself out a window or something lol

· When it’s over, you guys always take a long vacation to Lake Tahoe in a house Bruce owns on the Nevada side

· He loves seeing your studio since it’s so organized and colorful

· You’ve got walls of mood boards and mannequins with unfinished garments everywhere along with a massive soft couch that one of you is always sprawled out on

· Sometimes he’ll send you pictures of pretty things he thinks you’d might like which ends up being incorporated into something

· You taught him how to drape and make his own suit so that Alfred can have a day off

· If anyone has a wardrobe malfunction and you’re around, you’ve got the needle and thread kit on hand at any given moment

· Some things in the kit come in handy for picking locks too

· He thinks it’s hilarious if you ever critique something or just call it straight ugly

· If you’re at a gala and do it it’s even funnier

· “Omg...”

· “What is it beloved?”

· “The drape and hem of that dress is the most preposterous thing I think I have ever seen. The fabric isn’t even the right material or fit for their shape. How rich are these people? And they can’t afford clothes that look decent on them?” You said giving them the famous inspecting side eye, “Also, who wears pearls with double sided sequins and fur?” “They can’t fix everything sweetie.”

· *intense snickering from Damian*

Tim Drake (Software/ Web Designer):

· It’s a match made in heaven

· The two of you meet at a tech conference

· He thought that you were such an interesting person to talk to and you had offers from places like MIT

· You got along so well and then he found that you liked coffee like he did

· Omg

· He asked you out in the nerdiest way by making you decipher code on your own computer

· You were kind of mad since you had been doing some other things for some major companies but after reading the message you determined you were fine with it

· I mean how could you say no

· Anyways the date when off great and eventually the media caught heavy wind of what was happening

· You already knew about the Red Robin thing pretty quickly into the relationship though

· Tim was a genius and you weren’t far behind

· It was scary how similar you two were

· From expressions and shared humor and meme taste, it was everything

· Staying up together was another thing you did

· Although, after some time one of you would pass out and the other would go to bed too

· It was like a competition in sorts of who could stay up the longest but at the same time you needed him to sleep

· The time he felt most betrayed by you was when you replaced his coffee with decaf

· You guys just sometimes hang out in his bed tangled up in the weirdest way watching vines or weird movies

· Totally the couple that would watch the worst rated movies just to laugh at them

· Damian commented on it once and got a tired middle finger from you once

· It wasn’t the classiest move however you couldn’t care less and Tim laughed his ass off

· After that Damian seemed to respect you more

· You guys probably have matching hoodies or something with really funny or obscure culture references

· Clingy couple but nothing too over dramatic

Bart Allen:

· Your designs in architecture went down in text books

· You were famous for some really amazing builds and constructions

· You started off by building these really insane LEGO sets or doll houses based off of designs in your notebook

· Your mother still has the models in the attic which is kind of embarrassing when he sees it but he thinks it’s really cool

· When he came to your time line he knew immediately who you were

· He also totally came to you and complimented your work plus some additional hinting at what was going to happen pretty soon

· Bart was there at the rise of your success

· He basically was your number one fan the entire time

· He’ll stay up with you as long as he can when you’re working

· It’s kind of funny seeing that when you’re designing the things you went down in history for you’ll be stuck on something and he’ll just tiredly recommend what he remembers learning

· You let him look through the designs sometimes but he understands if you don’t really feel comfortable with it

· He also knows that in order to do all of this, you’re wicked smart

· When the cave needed remodeling, you were the first person that they called in

· The League was very glad that you were there and they didn’t have to pull any strings to get anyone different in

· Plus, you knew what was needed since you were there all of the time

Kon Kent:

· You got your start writing

· It was the best thing that you did to relive stress

· Once your parents saw that you were such an imaginative child, they got you in a ton of art related classes but you liked writing the most

· Your writings had won awards before but then you wrote a book and it did amazing

· So now, that’s what you do

· Kon secretly actually really likes your books and met you at a book signing

· Nerd

· He got your number there and then you realized who he was

· It was kind of funny cause you were both in that moment of realization like

· Ohhhhh I know who you are.... kinda thing

· He finds it hilarious that sometimes you’re just all over the place

· When doing research your room isn’t terrible messy, it’s just piles and piles of notes and articles

· You also probably have an expansive collection of literature yourself ranging from all genres

· You don’t really like him to proof the book, however if you have an idea for something he’s all ears

· Coffee dates to strange hole in the wall joints

· Clark really likes you and finds your humor funny in the sense that it’s close to Bruce’s

· Both very sarcastic and dry

· Lex is just glad that his son found someone with an intellect

· You don’t really like Lex though

· That’s because you hear everything that Kon has to say about him

· Although, without giving the man too much credit, the charade that he plays on the daily in quite impressive

· You will never admit it however

· Ma and Pa love you

· So does Lois

· You get along because of the writing

· Sometimes Kon will just take you to some random part of the world if you need inspiration

· “Hey wanna fly to Morocco?”

· “Why not?”

· You make a day trip out of it but if it’s a long one you’ll stay longer

· Short distance he’ll fly you himself but overseas or something, he takes one of Lex’s jets

· He likes to tease you sometimes but will take it easy during the editing phase

· Those aren’t fun at alllll

· You get cranky sometimes during that and he just backs off lol

· He will make you sleep though

· He doesn’t want you turning into Tim or anything for an extended amount of time

· Nope

· Not doing it

Jamie Reyes:

· The team didn’t know anything about your job as an artist

· You were internationally revered

· No one knew of your job but for the boy wonder who saw the paint in your hair

· Once the team did know however, everyone was amazed

· You and Jamie were already dating by then though

· He was always impressed with what you did

· Laughed when you were covered in paint

· He lets you paint or draw on his hand

· You both have matching hoodies or jackets from your clothing line or merch that you painted

· If you have a YouTube channel, he’s in some of the videos

· Scarab notes that you have a more creative personality which Jamie responds to with a sarcastic remark

· Your clothes are partly covered in paint

· He’ll go to every show

· During the Reach thing you still stayed with him

I have more parts of the Damian Wayne x reader story coming and also requests but I’m just getting into school which is my priority so that’s why I’ve been a bit more inactive. Anyways I hope you liked this one and I can’t wait to put out more

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im-the-punk-who · 4 years

Note

Hi! I’m new to the fandom and I’m simply curious (not trying to start a feud or anything), why don’t you like Steinberg?

Hello dear anon! And welcome to the fandom!

Oof. That’s a question. xD

I’m going to try and stay as uh. neutral as possible. Because I’ve already written the post I know I failed but, the intent in answering this is also not to start a feud or hurt anyone’s feelings.

Okay, so I got fairly negative in this chilis tonight, so I want to start by saying that even in light of the opinions I’m about to express, Black Sails is one of, if not my number one, favorite TV shows of all time. Certainly in recent memory - I’ve been hyperfixating on this show for 18 months with no sign of stopping, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone who worked on the show - even Steinberg. (The one exclusion is Michael Bay, he can go twist.)

AND I think Stienberg is an incredibly talented writer. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows because it does such a wonderful job of weaving stories, creating characters, and melding things in a way that is both unexpected and makes sense narratively. I have changed as a person because of the show, and they will have to pry James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton from my cold dead knives-attached-to-them hands. None of what I’m going to say is meant to detract from that.

I will also say that a lot of these issues are not particular to Steinberg and are in fact a systemic problem with American TV + Film. And I’m not leaving Robert Levine out of my criticism, it’s just that Steinberg had the biggest hand in the pot(he wrote a full half the episodes) and a lot of what I’ve heard as far as talking about the show comes from Steinberg. So, he gets the brunt. But it isn’t that I think Steinberg was the only problematic element of the show.

Also, these are all my opinions and are colored by how I interact with my fandoms. I am not only a fandom veteran, but I work and pretty much live in the entertainment industry. I work in indie film and theatre and am surrounded by artists and creators of all walks of life, like, constantly. I know what is possible, and when I see something that can be improved, I want to note it because it is important to me to always be striving forward. Like Miranda says about Thomas, this isn’t out of malice, or out of hate. It’s because I genuinely love this show, and I love entertainment as a whole, and I think in order to get to a better, more inclusive industry we have to have hard conversations and look critically at the media we consume, and it is frustrating to me to time and again see the same faces in the room.

But if that isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine! Fandom isn’t meant to be stressful and if all you want to do is watch a show about gay pirates that is your tomato and I applaud you. Have at it you funky motherfucker.

OH! One more. At some point I’m going to talk about Silverflint. When I do, it is NOT meant as a ‘you shouldn’t/cant ship this’ or ‘this pairing is bad’ or any negative attack on the people who ship that pairing. My criticisms in this post are exclusively about what it means for Steinberg as a writer and Black Sails’ representation of gay and mlm men. While it’s not my cuppa, this is a sail your own ship blog.

OKAY! SO!

My main criticisms of Steinberg & Co boil down to:

The homozygosity of the writers and directors shows a complete lack of desire to include marginalized people in the writing of a show that is about them. Which leads to:

The centering of white men while choosing a historical setting and time period that was in fact dominated by people of color and specifically a black woman,

The gratuitous inclusion of violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and again, that the female characters are often sidelined for the central male characters.

SO.

Black Sails is a show centered around queer, female, and black leads, and yet there were only two non white-male directors (one bi-racial man and one white woman) and only 7 female writers - one of whom was Latina. The entire rest of the major creative staff was white men. I’m not going to comment on sexualities but none of the writers or directors are out as queer according to a quick google search.

Let me reiterate the important bit there.

In Black Sails, where the last two seasons specifically feature around a real, actually-happened-in-history event that shaped black history in the Caribbean, there was not a single black writer on the entire show.

This is the main difference between inclusion for inclusion’s sake, and actually centering marginalized voices. Black Sails has a ton of gay, POC, and female rep in front of the camera but practically zero representation behind it, which leads to storylines and implications that Steinberg and his writers, as white men, simply would never realize.

It’s like why Silver and Miranda never realized the true reasons James was waging war on England. They just did not have the life experiences to realize they were missing a piece of the puzzle, and so they filled in their own without even realizing they’d done so.

Because no one in the room of Black Sails was a part of these marginalized identities, nuances get lost or mistranslated, motivations get muddled through a white man’s gaze(or a straight person’s) and implications that someone within those communities might think is obvious won’t even come up.

And again, because there were no writers or directors of color in the last two seasons (the biracial man directed episodes 2x02 and 2x04 - WHICH MAKES SENSE IMO) the entirety of the historical lore that the show bases itself on in its latter half is filtered through a white man’s lens. And so there is no discussion of how changing something changes the meaning, how leaving someone out or changing their role to be more minor might affect people for whom that is their heritage. How the entire story they’re telling might change with one simple exclusion or addition.

So, how does this relate directly to Steinberg, you ask? Well, simply, because it was his show.

Steinberg(and Levine) were involved in every major decision about the show, from its conception, to the script, to choosing the writers and directors. They chose how they wanted the show to look, to think, what stories to tell and how they wanted to tell them. Their decisions(and the biases that formed those decisions) are woven into the show.

And look. I don’t for a second believe any of this was willful or malicious. I don’t think that John Steinberg and Robert Levine sat down one day and said ‘you know what would make the gays really angry? If we locked the only two canonically gay men up in a prison camp.’

But the decisions that were made in the show were based in ignorance in a way that shows more than just simple negligence or laziness(especially given the attention to detail in everything else). The things they leave out or change in the Maroon War plotline for instance are not small details easily missed. They are big, giant waving flags. They are things that are irreplaceable to still have the same events and stories and tell them respectfully.

It shows an insane amount of privilege to, for instance, write a show airing during a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront of the American conscience, include black characters and black storylines, and yet not include a single black voice on their creative team.

In a show that centers a gay man’s love and his journey in attempting to process the horrible things done to him and his lover because of it, we are given just forty minutes of the entire show dedicated to their relationship - and just fifteen of those minutes actually feature the lover!

(Relatedly, the entirety of the gay romantic rep is two kisses, and a forehead touch. That’s the entirety of your gay intimacy representation. And yet there are in the first two seasons alone - because that’s all I’ve clocked so far - something like twenty seven minutes of scenes involving a naked or half naked woman. Five minutes of that is explicitly wlw sex.

Again, I just want to reiterate this because it’s important in recognizing bias.

There is fully twice as much female nudity in the first two seasons, as the entirety of the time the two gay characters have together on screen. )

Steinberg is a perfect example of how a lack of understanding why the diversity you are representing is important, matters. I dislike Steinberg because he, just like every other straight white cis man I have known, profited off of marginalized voices without including them or creating with them in mind.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot create something - especially something as back breakingly, intensely a labor of love as Black Sails - without putting several pieces of yourself into it. But those pieces color your narrative. They will expose things about you that you don’t even realize. And it’s in these places we are weakest, and why a diverse group of writers with a diverse group of experiences can help a piece be stronger. But for whatever reason, John Steinberg thought that he could make art with only people who looked and thought and experienced like him.

The lack of representation behind the camera in Black Sails was evident in front of it and yet Steinberg is out here getting to pretend like he created the most inclusive groundbreaking show that ever existed. It is important to me, personally, to acknowledge that. And that it kind of makes my skin crawl in the way all media made by straight white (cis)men makes my skin crawl. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way about my favorite tv show just because it was created by a man of privilege, but here we are.

SO. I hope that helped? Feel free to take what you want and leave what you don’t!

Below the cut is a more in depth look at things that I think show what I’m talking about, but that up there ^^ is the gist. <3 |D

SURPRISE!

The Maroons and the Maroon War

So the first thing I want to point out is that the Maroon War was a real thing that happened. It lasted ten years, and resulted in the most substantial victory the Maroons ever achieved against the British. Not only that, there was in fact a KICKIN’ badass female leader of the maroons named Queen Nanny, who is to this day honored as a national hero in Jamaica. While they weren’t able to drive the British out, the outcome of this war led to a mostly self-governing Maroon population in Jamaica from the mid 1700s on. This was a long term fight that had a very tangible and real outcome, even if it didn’t end in the destruction of colonialism.

And what is this war turned into in Black Sails? A white ‘madman’s revenge’ that is doomed to failure after six months.

That, my dear pirates, is a problem for me. (And those familiar with my brand of spiceyness know that I do not ascribe to the ‘Flint is a Madman’ trope, but that IS what Steinberg ascribes to, what he seems to have written the show thinking.)

There was no narrative reason to include the Maroon War in the narrative of Black Sails. The Maroon War didn’t happen until a decade after the Golden Age of Piracy, and aside from Silver’s wife being a black woman there is no mention of Silver ever having contact with them. To me, this feels like the choice of a showrunner who found a cool historical event and saw a chance to up the stakes of their white male heroes while getting in some sweet sweet POC rep.

Except that they then took the major events of the Maroon War and gave them to their white characters, Flint and Silver.

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take a piece of culturally important history and use it for your show, you NEED to have sensitivity writers. You need to have people who are at least familiar with those events and who care about them to do them justice. Have an expert come in and read your script or go over your ideas. Or just like. Hire a black writer. Hire ONE black writer. As a treat.

The important Maroon figures, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Quao, all get sidelined or ‘sexified’ and then used as plot points for the white characters. Nanny gets split into two women - the older mother queen and Madi, the young naive warbent visionary. Quao(Mr. Scott is the closest, or Kofi possibly) gets killed off because the writers realized they didn’t exactly have a place for him in their writing. Cudjoe(Julius) gets a few scenes and one good speech but his entire role in the war gets given to Silver. And THEN. That sexy Queen Madi figure gets used as emotional bait for Silver and then has to learn he has betrayed her and destroyed the hope and freedom she had wanted to bring to her people.

Gross, pirates. Gross.

Anne Bonny/Max/Mary Read - a heads up, this section includes a semi in-depth discussion of both Max and Anne’s sexual assaults. If that bothers you, the paragraphs talking about that begin with a ***

COOL NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT LESBIANS. Words my 20 year old self would never have imagined coming out of my mouth.

Specifically, I want to talk about Max, and Anne, and their backstories both involving extreme sexual trauma at the hands of men. And then Mary Read and the once again sexification of female characters.

(Actually while I’m here another criticism I have of Steinberg is that his writing does not seem to recognize how queer people existed in the past - again, likely because he didn’t have any gay historians to be like ‘actually buddy that doesn’t make sense also why is Anne not dressing as a man? If you want to fuck with anything and insert modern day terminology and ideas into this show, make her non binary and REALLY piss off the hetties.’)

(This same ficitonal gay dramaturg who is definitely not me has also questioned John Steinberg repeatedly about where Mary Read is, unsatisfied with the answer ‘well we wanted her to be hot so we made her a sex worker and then had Anne have to rescue her but then we realized it would be weird not to include her actual character so we gave her a five second cameo at the very end of the series and also made her like 13.’)

Anyway! So my main point in bringing up Anne and Max is the sexual trauma they are exposed to in the show, particularly being that they are the two primary wlw in the show, who Steinberg has said he views as being completely gay, and what THAT whole unexamined idea looks like.

***Max. My dear Max. There was literally no reason to have her be repeatedly r*ped(and for the love of god there was even less reason to make it that gratuitous and graphic). Max being assaulted like that did not add anything to the gravity of Eleanor’s betrayal. The traumatic event was being tossed aside by Eleanor, and that could have been just as emotionally damaging without the sexual assault. And the only reason for her to be continually assaulted was to bring her and Anne together.

***The reason imo that Max’s r*pe plot was added was because it was the only thing these white straight men could come up with that felt emotionally damaging enough to them. The act of betrayal itself wasn’t enough, the act of being thrown away, of having a lover put your life in danger because of her own ambitions wasn’t enough, they needed her to be r*ped to really drive home the point.

***Anne, on the other hand, is never shown being sexually abused, but we are given an explicit account of her own traumatic history and how Jack saved her from this vile beast who was passing her around to his friends.

But here’s the thing pirates - that never happened. According to every account we have of Anne Bonny, she chose her husband, and married him against her father’s wishes. They were probably relatively happy until her husband started being a pirate spy and Anne started cheating on him with Jack.

And yes, when they were found out. Her husband had her beat. That’s not fucking cool, and if they really wanted to go the damsel in distress route they still could have had Jack ‘save’ her from that. But at no point was she sexually abused by her husband(at least not in any accounts I’ve read.)

You know who did likely sexually abuse her or at least manipulate her and Mary for his own benefit? If you guessed our Rat man Jack Rackham, you would be correct, because when he found out about Mary and Anne’s (supposed, but probably real) relationship, it’s implied he extorted both of them into fucking him to keep their secret from the crew.

The addition of sexual abuse to Anne’s past isn’t done to be true to her character and was in fact explicitly untrue. Now of course I don’t know the reasons why they chose to do this, but I can guess. Just as with Max, the most traumatic thing a male writer can think of for a female character is for them to be sexually abused.

And the most disturbing part of this to me? The parallels it has to the real world of why straight men think lesbians exist. These characters who would be called man haters in present day are given these incredibly traumatic man-centered histories. It brings up something very uncomfortable in me about particularly wlw sexuality being viewed as a reaction to trauma at the hands of men. It’s just gross, I dont like it, and honestly there is no fucking excuse for it besides a room full of white straight men writing this bullshit. A room that Steinberg chose, because they fit his ideas.

In Fact heck, the women of Black Sails in general

***I honestly struggle to think of a single female character who I think was treated fairly in Black Sails. Miranda and Eleanor are killed for taking sides and not understanding their partners, Madi is betrayed in the worst way possible, Max is given a pseudo empowering ending but has that fucking terrible start. Idelle ends off fairly well, but tied to a man she may or may not have any actual feelings for, in what is essentially a political marriage. And Anne has her entire identity tied to a man who will be dead in two years as she is robbed of any agency whatsoever without him. (Oh, and the whole r*pe thing. And also her support for Max’s r*pe or death until she started having fee-fees. Who wrote this stuff. >_>)

Even though the characterization of each and every one of these women is PHENOMENAL - and again I will repeat that I absolutely LOVE these characters as they exist in a vacuum. I think they are well rounded, real, feeling people given motivations and drives and FEELINGS and they SHOW THEIR ANGER and i LOVE THEM.

But the show punishes them for it. Miranda is essentially fridged to move Flint’s storyline along, and to make room for Silver. Eleanor is killed for the emotional damage it will cause Rogers. Madi is placed at the center of a conflict she explicitly says she is willing to die for and then not only is her entire cause taken from her, but when she tells Silver to fuck off he - in possibly the most predictable white man move ever - says ‘no i will stay until you change your mind. I will never leave you. I don’t care about your choice in this matter, I will wait forever for you. I’m your biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me. papa, - paparazzi.’

And I touched on this before, but I want to talk in more detail about what is possibly my hottest take to date, the sexification of Mary Read and Queen Nanny, as they are presented in the show.

Max is to Anne what Mary Read is, historically. She is the lover that Jack Rackham discovers with Anne, and then he joins them in their bed. They form a triumvirate that upholds Jack at the expense of the women. But for some reason, Steinberg didn’t want to just include Mary Read as an actual character. For some reason he needed to make Anne’s love interest a sex worker who was in need of saving (and who, coincidentally, we never see working the brothel after she becomes lovers with Anne, because she is now a madam. :) Gross.)

And Madi. My dear sweet fucking Madi who didn’t fucking deserve any of this bullshit send tweet.

So, historically, Queen Nanny was the Queen, spiritual advisor, and the military tactician of the Windward Maroons. She would have filled both Madi and the Queen’s character roles(and Flint’s, but who’s counting. A BLACK GAY LEAD? Inconceivable. I digress.) But, I guess, because they were wishy-washing with Silver’s sexuality or felt they needed to give him a female love interest because of Treasure Island, or because they were leaning a bit too hard into the gay shit and needed to backpedal, they took Queen Nanny and split her into a character who is for all intents and purposes powerless in the war and Madi, who is young and naive and does not have any real world experience outside of the Maroon camp.

Because that’s sexy, or something. They could have had the Maroon Queen be a fucking badass lady who works and fights alongside Flint and Silver and one ups them and teaches them shit and has her own ideas about where the British can stick it, but instead they made her into the perfect caricature of a female monarch, letting the big strong men handle the dirty work or something. Because white male power fantasies.

Just let women be powerful and not nubile and let them have character arcs over fucking thirty and let them be CENTERED in their own. fucking. narratives.

God damnit Steinberg.

James Flint, mlm extraordinaire

Oh, my love. My most amazing child. The light of my life. My purest cinnamon roll.

~~And now we’ve come to the dreaded Silverflint criticism part of our programming. Please please know and remember this isn’t a criticism of people who ship Silverflint. As I said up top, Your Tomato Is Not My Tomato and that’s cool. Please don’t take this next part as an attack on Silverflint as a fandom ship.~~

My criticism of Steinberg as it relates to Flint is related to:

What a romantic/sexual relationship with Silver being the basis of the tension and plot means for Flint in particular as a gay or mostly mlm man.

Refusing to confirm Thomas and James being alive at the end and honestly the whole finale in general but like I’ll try and focus.

The major problem I have with Silver and Flint being coded as in love with each other is the implications there in terms of gay men’s relationships to other men.

From every corner, men are inundated with the idea that any close relationship between them must be gay. That intimacy cannot exist unless there are sexual feelings involved. That a relationship cannot be close, deep and soul shattering and life altering, unless one guy secretly(or not so secretly) wants to bone the other dude. That two men cannot value each other as partners or friends or truly know each other unless they are gay.

Seeing both of the meaningful relationships Flint forms with other men be sexually coded feels a bit the same way as Anne and Max’s sexual assault plotlines does vis-a-vis being wlw. (Even with Gates, Flint never spoke about Thomas or his plans - Silver is absolutely the closest person to Flint besides Thomas and Miranda.) And this is just as true for Silver. Having both Flint and Madi - the two people he trusts - both be people he’s in love with also just feels. I don’t know.

It feels like a confusion between male intimacy and male love that is so so familiar to me as a gay man I could choke on it. Where they wanted these men to have a deep and really lasting connection, but could only figure out how to do it if they were in love. Friendship wouldn’t have been enough - only romantic and sexual love is enough for the gay man(or men, at all).

Just because it isn’t queerbaiting doesn’t mean it’s good rep, and I would have liked to see truly deep male friendships that did not center on sexual attraction - particularly for Flint as a confirmed mlm(and Silver too, if you’re counting him. The same arguments for why I dislike Flint being paired with Silver are also true in the reverse.)

Even if both Flint and Silver were confirmed mlm I still would have LOVED to see a platonic relationship between them. In fact I would have loved that EVEN MORE. Men! Who fuck men! Not needing to fuck each other to be important to one another! Who made this. Very delicious.

But because there weren’t any queer writers on the show, writers who understand this kind of struggle that gay and mlm men face, they thought ‘oh, let’s also have them be in love with each other. More gay rep is better gay rep, right?’ False. THOUGHTFUL gay rep is better gay rep.

Okay and here’s my last thing. The fact that Steinberg refuses to say whether or not the explicitly mlm men are alive at the end of the show - that the words he specifically uses are ‘up for interpretation’ is. Fuck, it’s gross, okay? It’s fucking gross.

I have been around enough men, enough people in power, enough people with leverage who also know how to play the field, to know that when someone wants a group’s support but does not agree with them, their go to phrasing is that it is ‘up for debate’ or ‘up for interpretation.’

Say the gays are alive. Steinberg refusing to acknowledge the reality of the ending of his show to maintain his own sense of artistic integrity is what, honestly, really sets me off about him and I don’t care if this is a nuanced take.

Like yes, death of the author. I honestly don’t care if he thinks they’re dead or alive. What I care about is that he thinks he can get away with being clever and leaning hard into a story is true/untrue’ - doesn’t realize what the implications of that are, and didn’t when he was writing, and didn’t have anyone else in the room who would think about it either.

ANYWAY. So this is....my long drawn out explanation for why I do not like Steinberg. Uhhhhh tune in next week for more of my totally unpopular opinions!

#good....fucking lord #i am so sorry #how many opinions can milo fit in one post #i mean i have more but yknow lmao #black sails #behind the black sails #milos black sails meta #long posts #my increasingly devoted attempts to find tumblrs word limit #Anonymous #john steinberg #js critical but the js is jon steinberg

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necronymie · 4 years

Text

Meet the Writers of gen:LOCK Season 2 Panel Summary

Summary under the cut because this shit is LONG

There's a fun ad before the panel about how attractive MBJ is

“We may be lesbians, but we’re not blind!”

Moderated by Dorian Parks, editor in chief of Geeks of Color

Panel starts with a thank-you to HBO Max for facilitating the production of Season 2, as well as other RT shows.

Panel members include:

Daniel Dominguez: Head writer of s2

Maasai Singleton: Writer’s assistant, wrote a few episodes

Evan Narcisse: Staff writer, wrote on s1 as well

Kristle Peluso: Staff writer

Gavin Hignight: Staff writer

How did the writer’s room come together?

Dan and Evan are old friends

Kristle and Dan were introduced by a common friend/coworker

Dan and Gavin also knew each other before working together

Maasai was the only person who Dan did not know previously

To Evan: How has your journey as a writer informed your writing choices

He began as a critic, and that has made a big impact

He now pays much attention to the impact of a show’s message

To Dan: what made you want to write for GL?

He's been writing his whole life, as cheesy as that is

His first novella was written at 6 years old and it was a rip off of Nightmare on Elm Street

It was 7 pages of a woman turning into a cockroach

Kristle jokes that it's his best work to date

They joke that s2 is 8 episodes of a woman turning into a cockroach in the shower.

(Honestly I’d still watch it)

What drew him to GL: its this wonderful diverse cast telling a meaningful story about giant robot battles.

To Maasai: How was this as a start into the industry?

“We just vibed.”

“We would always say, there's mindshare in GL, and there's mindshare between the writers!”

Everyone cries at that

His first script was amazing, according to the rest of the writers

Daniel talks about how incredible Maasai is

Maasai and Kristle talk about how creative a leader Daniel is

The writers talk about how insane some of the pitches for s2 were, and how the environment in the writers room was very accepting of the more outlandish ideas

“At the end of the day, our job is about being vulnerable, because that's what storytelling is”

What inspired you and made you want to write?

Gavin has always been writing

Evan is an old school comichead; he's always been a reader, and for the bulk of his career, he was a journalist and critic.

Helping create the worlds he used to analyze is fascinating

Daniel jokes how Evan is going to get a kick out of the terrible reddit thread that will come from s2

Kristle remembers in second grade when she wrote a comedy for class and a kid laughed so hard that he fell out of his chair, and that made her realize that words have power.

She was a journalist and worked in marketing for a while (she hated it)

Especially as a woman, its very exciting working in a male-dominated industry

How do you guys feel about how inclusive the writers room is, and how did that affect the writing?

It was very intentional. No one can better tell the stories of these people than the writers who understand their struggles

Hollywood has been dominated by a monoculture of writers

Dan jokes that he is “the whitest Mexican-American that you've ever met”

Our writers room needs to look like the people whose stories we’re telling

There was a good amount of religious diversity in the room, and that shaded the story in various ways

Its implied that the above comment has a lot to do with the storyline of s2

Dan kept running around the table and yelling “Where is your god now?”

Evan recalls how Dan made the team pull apart the DNA of s1 to construct s2

What do you think the turning point of inclusivity came?

Never. It still hasn't happened

Shame is an incredibly powerful weapon, and that is what forces the people in charge to change

Evan talks about how media like the Black Panther movie definitely inspire writers and creators to create more inclusive media.

gL is a part of the movement, but the wave hasn't crashed yet

Dan talks about how lucrative inclusive media is

“Do it for the money, if not the people!”

We don't just want to see ourselves in protagonists, we want to see other people, we want to see other viewpoints, experience other experiences

“I personally don't know what it's like to pilot a giant mech, but-” “you don't?”

Looking for a common ground like this important for the storyline of s2. This struggle and this attempt of unity through looking into each other's minds is a key theme.

Maasai brings up that diversity is good because you need conflict in a story. Our character's diversity drives their character arcs, and forces them to change. They make each other think differently, literally and metaphorically

The conflicts that we see in s2, both micro and macro, the seeds are all there in s1, the camera is just pulled out to see the larger picture.

Evan jokingly “spoils” that there is war in season 2

What media inspired s2? Did you draw from any specific influences?

Gavin says that he focused on the horror of the technology. How does this technology affect those who use it?

Dan talks about how Gavin made him think more about how terrifying gL is, made him question his own humanity.

They drew from so many influences from youtube video essays to Shakespeare

They ripped off even more of Tempest in s2

Kristle talks about keeping the hope in the disaster that is s2

She says that s2 has many parallels with 2020 and the pandemic, some explicit, some not

Evan always worked remotely; that prepared the room to work from home when the pandemic struck

Evan says that he was inspired by writers who focused on how prejudices perpetuate over centuries, and how humanity changes the world

Evan has always tried to emphasize the mutual responsibility humanity has to care for each other, and the past year has made him put more energy behind that message.

Dan talks about how s2 tries to make people ask themselves if humanity is even capable of fixing our mistakes

“We got big robots, man!” “its dope!”

Can you spoil anything about s2 before the panel ends?

In GL, in the future, the only restaurant left is Taco Bell

Chase has some heavy stuff ahead of him.

#genlock #RTX #gen:lock #genlock s2 #gL s2

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daisylincs · 3 years

Text

Today is, officially, the last day of 2020 - so it's literally just in time that I'm getting to @aosrecweek's amazing challenge. But that does go to show the nature of this crazy year a little bit, right? Time has just been INSANE, and I honestly cannot believe it's so close to over.

That said, I want to put it out there that everyone - absolutely everyone - who created something in this mad year, is a SUPERHERO. Like. We could have hidden away in dark corners, curled into little balls, and lost touch with our creativity entirely - but instead, we made some of the most fantastic content I have ever seen. And, excuse the language, but that is fucking amazing, of each and every single one of us. We're bloody INCREDIBLE, you guys. We really are.

Now, the rules of this challenge dictate that I've got to start with some of my own things, then repeat with the same number of creations by other people. So I'm going to do that, and I apologise for the sheer length (and self-plug-iness) of what is about to follow - but, bloody incredible, remember? I really mean that. 💜💜💜

My Own:

you could call me babe for the weekend - 19k of Spideychelle being oblivious, mutually pining IDIOTS while being snowed in. And, you know, fake dating. (This thing was SO MUCH FUN to write and though, yeah, it got completely out of control, as evidenced by the 19k, I still really love it.)

'tis the damn season - my first attempt at writing a multi-chap, and, yeah, it only has one chapter as of now, but I really love said chapter. Basically, it's Daisy and Mackelena being friends, and honestly just the BEST friends - I adore the style I managed to achieve in this thing. Plus, the Skimmons I have planned up next is going to be da bomb.

the closest thing - Philindaisy plus fake family. Also; amusement parks. And for a fangirl like me - well, it was pretty much a dream come true to write!

oh valley of plenty - in this fic, I basically told myself, so AoS won't give us Huntingbird in the finale? Fine. I'll just do it myself then - in the fluffiest way possible. And that's exactly what I did - making them, and their kids, be best friends in Perthshire.

maybe life should be about more - a very angsty Skimmons and Daisy-centric AU, focusing on the internalised homophobia Daisy has experienced through her life, and shaking it off (and eventually, y'know, getting together with Jemma.)

and it's dark in a cold december (but i've got you to keep me warm) - Fitzsimmons just make such a supreme pairing for hurt/comfort, what with how insanely well they understand each other and care about each other, so I'm really glad for the Fitzsimmons Secret Santa giving me the chance to write this! Basically, this follows our science duo through a stressful mission on Christmas Eve (so yes, it's a mission fic!!) and realising that the two of them can do anything together.

july second - ahhh, one of my personal favourites to write! Daisy birthday surprise fluff will always be top-notch for me, especially for all the team-as-family fluff you can add in, especially especially that this is set in Staticquake times! Also, it's from Hunter's point of view, which will forever be the most insanely fun thing to write, I do think.

i just wanna be with you - man, I'm such a big royal fan, so getting the chance to write a modern royalty AU for my OTP was nothing short of amazing!! This is Princess Daisy and her fiancée Lincoln Campbell at their official engagement interview

see the line where the skye meets the sea - shameless season 1 bby Bus Kids fluff, featuring movie nights, singalongs and... so much fluff your teeth will rot. Also I'm really freaking proud of the pun in the title okay

'cause all that you are is all that i'll ever need - Huntingbird waking up together fluff (because, fight me, Huntingbird in their sweet moments is one of the sweetest things you will ever get to read or write.) This is also my, fluffy, take on the origin of the Franny's Saloon keychain.

we love you, we love you (and we hope you love we too) - aha, my first polyship fic! Also my first try at some actually fancy HTML formatting (forever thanks to Kat for explaining.) Both of these things combined to form a fic that even I think is ridiculously fluffy and funny, and kinda amazing, at that.

and man I don't know where the time goes (but it sure goes fast like that) - Another Bus Kids movie night fic, but this one set post-season 7, and reflecting on how far they've come. A little bit more hurt/comfort-y than it's pure fluff prequel, but still super fluffy and soft. And, of course, with a happy ending.

she shares my dreams, i hope that someday, i'll share her home - snowy Fitzsimmons fluff, complete with them falling in love at the Winter Olympics, as you do.

then you walked in and my heart went boom - 16k of Dekesy for the wife, and remarkable for that, because literally a month ago from this, I hated Dekesy with my entire soul. Then I started reading Kat's fics, and, well, fell in love with them... so much so that I wrote sixteen thousand words of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, bed sharing holiday fluff for them.

a love like that - a Fitzsimmons Cinderella AU, featuring my two favourite science babies, in true science bby style, falling in love over science and how stupid the whole courting thing is. Also, Daisy makes a brief appearance, and she's the freaking best.

ever after - ah, probably the one single fic I'm proudest of. A post-season 7 Daisy character study focusing on her emotional rollercoaster re: losing her family/things never being the same again, which just achieves... an emotional level that I have never managed to replicate again. I was full-on sobbing while writing it, and, guys, it also part-holds the Closest To Making Kat Cry prize.

blue - Daisy character study spanning snapshots of seven seasons, and before - but tied together by something blue in every moment. Researching for this, and finding all the blue moments, was very interesting, and immensely satisfying, especially since all the moments where a little bit of blue was present actually combine to chronicle Daisy's journey on the show remarkably well.

who is that girl I see - the one time I decided to write straight angst, and straight angst with no happy ending. Melinda May post-Bahrain, folks.

take my hand, take my whole life too - aww, the first thing I wrote that I really and truly loved. A Staticquake and Fitzsimmons Actors AU, featuring a proposal on set and INCREDIBLE amounts of fluff and softness.

hold out your hand, 'cause friends will be friends - the wife's favourite, and, as second fics go, pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. It's a Soulmates AU for Staticquake and Mackelena, with the focus being on DaisyMack friendship, and lots of denial, angst, and guilt about finding their soulmates. (They figure it out eventually, don't worry - it's me, of course I made them happy.)

Fitzsimmons + Fake Dating moodboard - Fake dating will always be FAB, and picturing it out in a moodboard - especially for my clueless bby best friends in love - was the best, and super satisfying.

Staticquake + Orange moodboard - One of the cooler ideas I had for Trick or Treat (which I still have not finished, heaven help me) was to make a series of moodboards for my OTP plus different colours. This orange one is just so light, and cheerful, and happy, and honestly I kinda adore it.

This Philindaisy + Family Moodboard - making moodboards can be insanely frustrating when you just can't find the photo that fits exactly right. With this one, however, I found all the pics I needed pretty insanely fast, and, better, the whole thing just worked, and really nicely so, too.

This Bus Kids + Baking Cookies moodboard - there's absolutely NO faults to be found with tiny, adorable Skye, Fitz and Jemma concocting choc chip cookies - but I'm actually doing a tiny cheat here, because, cute as my moodboard here is, the accompanying fic by my love @eowima is the SWEETEST and best thing you could ever wish for!!!

This Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week Photoset - Day 3 of Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week focused on an emotion, and I picked confidence and power, because honestly, it's nothing short of amazing how confident and powerful our gorgeous girl has become.

This Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week Photoset - One of the times I wish I could gif, because this quote about struggling though never giving up just suits Daisy perfectly. The photos I found are cool, though, and I mean, it's Daisy, so that's already absolutely fabulous.

Other People's:

I managed to find twenty-six of my own things that I liked enough to put up there (because, yes, I'm that big a dork, 26 things for me being 26 is the way to go :D) Anyway, now that gives me the amazing chance to spotlight twenty-six of my favourite creations by my FANTASTIC mutuals! 😍

To start, my wife - Kat said I couldn't put everything she's ever written on here, so, ugh, I guess I'll just do my top five then. *grumbling* Everything by Kat is on here in spirit, though!!

Chasing Cars (even after the story ends) by @aleksandrachaev - the epic Dekesy roadtrip AU and incredible Daisy character study itself, which, I do believe, finishes today!! Words aren't enough to describe how freaking AMAZING this thing is, or how spectacularly well characterised. Just: if you haven't read this yet, you are missing out. You will laugh, you will groan, you will want to wrap Daisy in a very tight hug, and you will probably cry, too. This fic just has it all, really!

there goes the maddest man this town has ever seen by @aleksandrachaev - the post-season 7 Deke-crashes-the-Framework-Zoom-call fic I didn't know I needed (but spent the next two weeks rereading every single night.) It is absolutely INCREDIBLE, with all the Deke & Team feels we missed in the final outro scene, and honestly just the most fantastic writing. I cannot recommend it enough!

To Box It Up And Start Again (everything must go) by @aleksandrachaev - bloody hell, this BROKE me. Deke never really got to say goodbye in canon, but Kat gave him the chance to do it here. And, my freaking GOODNESS, she made it so incredibly bittersweet and heart-shattering. 10/10

i am a leaf on the wind by @aleksandrachaev - a little bit of a stretched-out, reflective moment in the season 7 finale. As Daisy lingers on the edge of death, she reflects on all the lives she could have had - and, man, what a study in bittersweetness!! This entire fic is utterly incredible, and something I think all Daisy fans should read.

Falling Into Place by @aleksandrachaev - here's a tiny cheat from me (sorry, babes, lmao) because technically this isn't one fic, but a series of three. Way too amazing to miss out on, though!! Set mid-season 7, this has the Chronicoms go after a young Mary Sue Poots to kill Quake before she can become a problem for them. They stop the Chronicoms, yes, but not without a TREMENDOUS dose of feels and hurt/comfort. There's also a wonderful little dose of Dekesy friendship, and then an adult adoption (!!) that honestly made my entire day to read. Actually, that's true for the entire series - I really canNOT yell about it enough!!

destroyer of worlds by @bobbimorseisbisexual - a study in incredible parallels between Jiaying's daughters. Utterly breathtakingly done, this will give you ALL the feels for this small and complex Inhuman family.

Muscle Memory by @robotgort and @bobbimorseisbisexual - a Huntingbird!! Bones!! AU!! And also a collaboration between two of the most fabulous Huntingbird authors in the fandom - honestly, what more can you ask for?! This will make you laugh, and gasp, and wince, and keep you guessing at each new plot twist (and also screaming at your screen for Hunter and Bobbi to get their acts together and TALK ABOUT IT.) In short: it's completely and utterly amazing, and I cannot, cannot recommend it enough!!

You Belong Among the Wildflowers by @libbyweasley - a freaking incredible Scis & Spies Regency AU! I only just started reading, but I was hooked all the way through, especially on the way Libby writes all four characters' complex relationships (and their attraction, and their history!) Everything about it is just completely stunning, and I for one cannot WAIT for these beautiful idiots to figure out they all belong together.

Family Snapshot by @tomatobookworm - if it's family fluff you're after, especially Staticquake family fluff, look no further! This tremendously soft and utterly amazing fic follows a day in the lives of a pregnant Daisy and her husband Lincoln, and their not-so-little family of Inhumans, both adopted and biological. There's also shopping with Grandma May, lots of feels, lots of shippiness, and just AMAZINGNESS all the way through!!

Best Day Ever by @loved-the-stars-too-fondly - Jemma and Daisy want to adopt a pet, and make a very special trip to Wisconsin to do it. Also, whether he knows who he is or not, Jemma has an important question to ask Cal - and just, AHHHH, everything about this is utterly stunning! For starters, Aubrey's writing is FANTASTIC, and the scene she sets is absolutely beautiful, and so very bittersweet. I was actually misting up a little with happy tears towards the end of this - really, I cannot recommend this enough, to any Skimmons fan.

so why don't we go somewhere only we know by @loved-the-stars-too-fondly - more Skimmons (platonic this time, though), more hurt/comfort, and, yes, again, more absolutely INCREDIBLE writing. This one is canon compliant, following a shaken Jemma struggling to sleep after Maveth, and how Daisy finds a way to help her out. Incredibly sweet, tender and BEAUTIFULLY written, this one was an instant favourite the moment I read it!

Unspoken by @anxiouslynumbme - a birthday fic for yours truly, and, honestly, one of the most STUNNING Staticquake introspectives I've read. It follows Daisy and Lincoln in a beautifully tender missing moment in season 3, with them both realising their feelings, and just... AHHHHHHHH, everything about it is utterly incredible!! I cannot, cannot recommend this gem of a fic enough

the thing about water droplets and ruffled hair by @que-mint-tea - here's another fic that proves, once and for all, how good Kat's Dekesy is, because it managed to convert T to write some Dekesy smut. And, oh my GOSH, what Dekesy smut - so goshdarn angsty, but so FANTASTICALLY characterised and written that it leaves you more than a little breathless, and gaping at your screen. The first chapter initially left us on the most HORRIFIC cliffhanger, but then T fixed it, and it's just... this thing is really a whole new level of emotional writing, raw and gripping and intensely perfect for both of these characters. My haw still drops whenever I think of this thing, and how utterly AMAZING it was, so yeah. Fic rec!!!

beautiful stranger, there you are by @justanalto - I do believe I still owe Serena a long and very gushy comment on this thing, because, MAN, does it ever deserve that!! Pipsy and fake dating, with the most HILARIOUSLY incredible writing, plot and characterisation, and honestly just a giddy "askhdfkhsfh" whenever I think back to how much I enjoyed it. Yup, it was that good.

Jumping to conclusions by @eowima - a very special one, because it marks my love Océane's first venture into writing AoS fic! It's an AU of 1x06 (the Fitzsimmons episode of s1) where Fitz does actually jump out of the plane to save Jemma. Realisations of feelings, and some of the most genuinely FANTASTIC Fitz characterisation I've read in a while, follow - and, yup, I was shouting at my screen for them just to get together already. Amazing stuff, really!!

Look into your eyes and the sky's the limit by @eowima - okay, this. This. Another gift for me, and one that I will probably treasure forEVER, because it is just?? so?? utterly?? perfect?? Just for starters, the title is a Hamilton reference - and then the theme of Hamilton references continues into the fic itself, I'm delighted to say. There's also the most BEAUTIFUL, playful Skimmons friendship, and teasing, and then of course the bet about who can make out with their crush first... Staticquake & Fitzsimmons perfection. And all rendered in Océane's delightful, best-thing-ever-to-read writing!! I'm going into a giddy keyboard smash just THINKING about this, so yeah, cannot recommend it enough.

lullabies and clear blue skies by @springmagpies and @bobbimorseisbisexual - okay, I never thought I'd catch myself shipping FitzBobbi, let alone shipping it this hard, but... wow. Maggie and Al teamed up to completely blow me away, and MELT MY WHOLE ENTIRE HEART with the sheer cuteness of this!! It features Fitz, Bobbi and adopting two daughters, and it's just the most tender, beautiful development through that little family - I love it so, so much.

We made all the wrong choices by @browneyedgenius - the winner of the AoS Angst War 2020, how could I not include this one? It is such a well-deserved win, though, whoa - I was sobbing, full-on sobbing, at least twice while reading. It follows the season 5 team through the events of the time-loop, after they failed to save the world - and, oh my gosh, it ripped my heart right out of my chest, but beautifully so. Everything about this fic just hits so hard, and it's written so well - yeah, really a most AMAZINGLY deserved win, for an utterly SHATTERINGLY incredible fic.

I threw stones at the stars (but the whole sky fell) by @nazezdha321 - this is Z showing us all how to write a backstory for a minor character, and write it so well that everyone's hearts break all over again when she dies. This one is about Victoria Hand, and it builds a stirring and profound childhood for her, also making her rise through the ranks of SHIELD and just her entire character mean so much more. Really, fic-wise, this is goals, and I take my hat off to you, Z, 1000%, for writing it.

in which the universe is put together by @besidemethewholedamntime - Rebecca's emotional writing, particularly Fitzsimmons' emotions, is incomparable, and she proves it all over again in this fic. If follows Fitz and Jemma before, after and during the bloodwork, and I just... wow, honestly. The emotion!! And the characterisation!! Absolutely stunning, and honestly all I could wish for in a we-had-time fic.

Agents of SHIELD Season 8 by @egumal - THIS. This, this, this, oh my gosh - as fix-it fics go, this has to be the most spectacular one I have ever read. What it does is find a way - a potentially canon compliant way, too - to bring back Lincoln Campbell, and reunite Staticquake. Basically: just about as season 7 finishes, the Astro Ambassadors get an unexpected visitor from another timeline, who asks them to come help out against Hive. Case in point, Daisy meets her lost love again (... but he has no idea who she is) and also has to relive the Fallen Agent drama. It all gets even more complicated when Kora restores Lincoln's memories, and Daisy meets the full team Deke has assembled around him in the 33 years (for him) that they've been apart... in short, this is one of the most thorough, well-written and downright SHOCKING plot-twist-wise fics that you will ever read, and honestly, saying "I can't recommend it enough" is an understatement. This thing is thd BEST, plain and simple!

Black Roses aren't real (but you and I are) by @ohwriteiforgot - ahhhh, a fic that will always have an incredibly special place in my heart, because it introduced me to one of my best fandom friends. The main focus is on Clintasha, it's true, but it's also a crossover with AoS in the sense that Clint was adopted by Coulson and May. Also, Daisy is his little sister, and their bond is gold. Also - there's Staticquake!! And flower shops!! And rivals to friends to lovers!! All I'm going to say is, what more can you ask for?!

A book to shield my story by @maybebrilliant - Staticquake High School AU, ahhhhhhhh!! There are only two chapters out so far, but the way this is shaping up is making my DAY - with Daisy as the new girl who meets Lincoln and his group of friends, and, though her foster parents are absolutely shit, starts to find actual happiness in a school for the first time in her life. Also - THE REFERENCES. Guys. I'm crazy for those, and in this book, so are my favourite dorks, Daisy and Lincoln - and let me tell you, it's nothing short of the best thing ever.

This AoS Finale Gif Edit by @heysteverogers - AoS really has been the most INCREDIBLE journey through the years, but what's really made it special is the company - and that's summed up perfectly in this gorgeous gifset. Also, the graphics on this are just, ahhhh, stunning - I'm in awe, and I've spent very long periods of time just looking at this thing in a state of heart-eyes.

This AoS Finale Gif Edit by @jemannesimms - combining Auld Lang Syne and the final scenes of my favourite show was a raw emotional - but utterly brilliant experience - for me. It's just so absolutely beautiful, and perfectly suited to the team, and their goodbyes!! Breathtaking editing work here, too.

This Daisy as Peter Parker and May as Tony Stark moodboard by @agentsofcomedyandchaos - ahhhh, a crossover of two of my favourite fandoms!! And what a lovely one, too - the colour scheme, quotes, and just the whole FEEL of this is absolutely genius, and I am guilty of being inspired by way too many fic ideas by it. Stunning stuff!!

And... whoa, that was long, but I really do feel that we deserve a bit of a proper pat on the back after creating such magical content in such a messed up year. So that's the note I'm going to leave you with for 2020, my friends: hell-year or no, look at the absolute beauty we were still able to create!! We really are freaking amazing, guys.

#aos best of 2020 #fic rec #massive fic rec list #and honestly; WHAT a list!!#despite this utter hellstorm of a year #we as a fandom have still been nothing short of INCREDIBLE #and honestly; I am SO proud of us #💜💜💜

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 1: E is For Extinction “They Will Need Us”

I am SO fucking excited for this one. As might not be obvious to ALL of my readers but should be obvious to some, I fucking love the X-Men. They are one of my favorite superhero teams period as are several of their spinoffs such as X-Factor (All versions), New Mutants, and Marauders. I love the wide cast, the hugely vast universe within the already vast and wonderful marvel universe, and the sheer amount of GREAT stories. I own all 11 movies, have several action figures, and two posters from Jonathan Hickman’s current and utterly dynamite run right above me right now as I work, as well as a marvel 80′s themed poster behind me that’s at least half x-men for good reason. I love this gang of mutants and I have not talked about them enough.

I”ve done some X-Men stuff sure: I’ve talked about hickman’s time as head writer of the books a year in earlier this year, I did a few scattered reviews back when I did single issues of comics, and then we get to the one I beefed big time: covering ALL of X-Men evolution. While it’s a noble endeavor I freely admit to overexerting myself: I recapped the episodes way too closely, gave myself no real schedule and did so while I was already covering two shows a week at the time. My point is it was a good idea, but the timing was REALLY fucking bad and if I do it again, I intend to do it right and iwth a proper place in my now properly paced schedule. I also planned to do the movies which, unlike evolution, I have solid plans to do once I clear out some of my projects. Point is I burned bright and then exploded and took a whole projecet with me phoenix style.

I had until this moment yet to do a really big x-men project, something digging into the comics, something that could help fans both of the comics and not get familiar with something really good, and help me dig into both the good and bad of something. I jsut needed the right start.

Then Christmas gave me that spark, that project that gave me the idea for a butload more x-men content on here and was the perfect starting point for some. See my friend Marco lives in Honduras, and so since i couldn’t afford to send him anything for christmas in the mail, as i’m not exactly rich, I instead offered him three reviews of anything.l He still hasn’t taken up two of them, nor one I gave him for graduating college, but the first one was a doozy, something he hadn’t read due to not liking the art, which is fine as I have some art in comics I don’t like everyone has diffrent tastes, at least for the first arc, and something VITALLY important to x-men as a whole and that’s the backbone of hickman’s current run: the first arc of new x-men, e is for extinction. And given New X-Men is one of my faviorite comics of all time I not only lept on it.. but decided fuck it I’m covering the whole thing. So every so often on here from now until I finish, i’m going to be covering Grant Morrisons ground breaking, mind shattering, status quo destroying run on the children of the atom. This.. is going to be fucking awesome. Buckle up.

New X-Men came about in 2001. Stop me if you heard this one: The X-Men, once marvel’s best selling title and one of i’ts most beloved, had been set adrift in a seal of editorial bullshit, bad writing, bad storylines and a stale continuity where not much could change or grow and things always reset to about the same place it was last week. If this sounds familiar it’s because it somehow happened AGAIN thanks to Ike Perlmutter’s bullshit, hence the current hickman run, but we’ll get into all of tha tsome other time. Point is as it was in 2018, so it was in 2001: The x-men were in bad straits and marvel reached out to a host of various creators to swing for the fences and find a new direction, something to bring sales and life back to the book. To my shock they actually took a LOT of diffrent pitches in before Morrisons won and from huge names: Geoff Johns, who had not yet returned to DC never to leave, Alex Ross, Keith Giffen.. all huge creative types. but in the end the best man won.

For those unfamiliar with him, Grant Morrison is a gloriously batshit scotsman with a long, storied and delightfully insane history in comics, mostly at DC before and after this comic. This is for good reason: DC scouted Morrison specifically because of his early work at 2000ad. See at the time Alan Moore had hit it really big with Swamp Thing, taking a d list, so so book and making it into an utter masterpiece and giving it thoroughly interesting mythology. Given it was a blockbuster hit that’s still widely loved and discussed, as it should be today, DC decided to repeat the strategy of asking British indie comics creators to come do the same to another property. This same experiment is why Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman exists, so.. yeah it was actually a great strategy and naturally Grant had their first big hit with Animal Man, a metafictional take on a b-list hero that made him a loveable family man, while also putting him through hell and playing with the medium and dc’s vast history, the last two being Morrison’s trademark from then on out.

They’d next go on to reinvent one of my other faviorite teams: THE DOOM PATROL! The patrol are a bunch of victims of strange accidents who got powers out of them that are basically curses... and Morrison solidified that concept, taking over after a weak run that ironically enough was trying to imitate the x-men’s success at the time. Instead Morrison just went all out with his weird shit for the first time and made them a team of broken but likeable people with weird powers fighting just the weirdest most incomprehensible shit, a run i’ll likely be digging into eventually along with the team as a whole. It’s also, along with Gerard Way’s recent run, the bedroock for the current and utterly masterful doom patrol series I need to catch up on. They also apparently once wrote a satrical comic starring and lik mocking hitler... a fact I somehow JUST learned but naturally doesn’t surprise me at all.

Morrison’s career at dc, after doing some creator owned stuff there when Vertigo opened up, hit it’s peak in the late 90′s as they were given the go ahead to reinvent the Justice League, with the wildly successful and awesome JLA, another book I probably need to take a look at that put the big 7 back into the team. And by now your probably getting the point of me covering his career pattern.. besides giving morrison the praise they deserve, and they’d have some really great runs after this.. and some terrible ones but no one’s perfect. My point is that at this point in their career Morrison’s greatest skill was taking something that had grown stagnant or been forgotten, blowing it up and reworking it into something glorious and new. Taking what worked, scraping away what didn’t and on the whole making something fucking glorious out of it. So here we are. The X-Men needed a new coat of paint and uncle grant had their lcd laced psycadelic paint bucket and brush shaped like a pidgeon at the ready. And for better, way better and admitely sometimes here and there worse,they changed the x-men for good. Some changes were rolled back out of spite, others finally got their chance after said rollback recently, and some were just outright thrown on the grown and smashed with a hammer. But for the most part Grant left a huge impact on the x-men and i’m here to show you why, warts and all. To me my x-men, this is new x-men. Now naturally there’s even more exposition but i’ts more in what COULD’VE been. Originally while Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Professor X were all part of the team the other two members of the slim roster for this run, Beast and Emma Frost.. weren’t. Originally Morrison was going to have Colossus and Moira Mactaggert, long time team ally, token human until very recently, and now thanks to hickman one of the most important x characters peirod and long before that a fan favorite of mine, on the team, with Moira taking over for beast.

This.. didn’t pan out since Marvel apparently either didn’t give a shit about their plans or already had things in motion as the climax of the longtime legacy virus storyline killed both off. Colossus until Joss Whedon, bastard he may be, brought him back for his terrific Astonishing X-Men, and Moira SOMEHOW stayed dead until House/Powers of X. See this speaks to one of the big roadblocks morrison faced: Jonathan HIckman currently has absolute power and all his writers working in concert, a new way of doing things comic companies shold honestly copy en masse as it’s really working wonders. Grant.. was just one of many writers and one of three main x books the others being Chris Claremont’s XTREME X-MEN, basically “let the legend do what he wants since he can’t get freedom on the main book” and another writer on uncanny... before eventually chuck austen took over and I will tackle that horrible mess some other time. Point is while Morrison was setting the tone, costume style and making the big waves, they still didn’t have full power and thus had to play nice with eveyrone else. So their next idea was Rogue, making mer more like her x-men evolution version.. except Chris wanted her, so that was out, though being a decent enough guy he willingly gave up Beast since the moira thing meant Morrison needed a science person. As for Colossus replacement, as it turned out a fan had suggested Grant do something with Emma Frost since Gen X was canceled and while Morrison had zero intention for it clearly Emma clicked with hthem and she was soon both a main part of the cast and one of their biggest contributions to X-Men as a whole.

As for what I think of the needed changes.. they ended up being for the best. I do like Moira... but Hank ended up being a much better fit for the team dynamic wise and power set wise, while Emma was the same. While Colossus, Rogue and Moira are all fantastic characters, I think what we ended up with was just a better mix overall. I DO think the team is incredibly white, but that’s a general x-men problem, even with having an assload of diverse and intresting characters, so it’s not entirely his fault. All in all it’s a fantastic roster: four of the x-men’s best, their leader in the field for the first time in forever, and a new and intresting wild card. IT’s a nice ballance of characters and we’ll get more into it as we go. Now all the expositions done, we can finally dive head first into new x-men. I hope you survivie the experince under the cut.

After an utterly gorgeous and striking cover, the one used up top, we get one solid page to introduce us to Morrison’s mission statment, how they feel and how good Frank Quitely’s art looks

I cropped it best i could for tumblr but this one image immidetly says a lot. Our heroes are just.. easily taking down this sentinel, an old model... the same one we’ve seen a dozen times. What were once the grim, possible destroyers of an entire race of beings in days of future past and devistating killing machines in the present.. had become stale easily defeated murder bots There had been noble attempts to really make the sentiinels work again like the horrifying omega sentinels, humans forcibly converted into sleeper agent killing machines, during operation: zero tolerance, but otherwise they were mostly just a prop for the x-men to knock down. And that.. really is morrison’s whole point. Lampshading and mocking the fact the x-men had grown stale, things hadn’t really progressed.. and that it was time to move on. But to Uncle Grant’s credit, they not only uses this as a mission statment but it’s plot relevant: this mission will both be explained soon and explains why Logan and Scott are out and about enough to end up where the plot will soon need them. It also helps, via the sight of the syndey opera house establish something Morrison made a staple of their run: the X-Men going global. While the x-men were never really NOT global post claremont, Morrisons run has them handling rescue missions and what not worldwide far more often than most runs before it sans Claremont, and really made it feel like they weren’t just another super team but a global force of good with a specific goal and mission. More on the global aspect next time, as that’s where it really comes in but I felt it was important to show it was there for minute one.

So yeah before we move onto the first full scene of the run, let’s talk about the costumes.

We’ll talk about Emma’s later since she’s not introduced to the story for a while but yeah. There’s a sharp, obvious and immediate change just in the outfits, which take after the movie’s more military look, having the x-men not only look more like a unit but more like a professional orginization. Someone to come and help when needed. While this would take on more siginifigance in a bit, we’ll get to it, it also fits Morrisions own views that the x-men were less of a traditional superhero team and more something different on the edges that fought things out there, sorta what like he did with doom patrol. And it’s honestly a valid interpretation as the x-men are often seen as outlaws and misfits by society for beingn well.. mutants. Not as trusted as the avengers. So having them adopt this look played into that: Having them look more professional and focused as The X-Men have a less blanket mission statement than the avenger.. but also mildly threatning. Something to alarm the humans. It’s an utterly brilliant look thrown best together by the big yellow x’s, still giving it a nice flash of color to show off and show this is still a comic and this is still damn colorful.. this just isn’t your AVERAGE supherhero comic or the x-men your used to. IT’s a real shame the only fox x-men movie to use it was fucking dark phoenix.. a film where it didn’t even fit as xavier was getting flashier and more reckless so why wouldn’t he have more garish and colorful and more traditional superhero outfits. They did look good in their variants in first class though. Props there. Point is this is a classic, utterly stunning look, and tha’ts coming from someone whose fine with goofy superhero outfits and perpetually bitter hawkeye is almost never allowed to wear his actual comic outift and is instead stuck with shades instead of you know.. a mask. Or anything resembling an actual good looking costume. This though this is how you do a less superheroy costume: practical and realistic, but still cool looking and comic book friendly.

We cut to a mysterious lady, we’ll come to know her as Cassandra Nova and while I know her origin... i’m saving it for later as the comics themselves explain it eventually, and a simpering dolt she brought with her, Donald Trask, a distant relative of the creators of the sentinels who, via holograms she’s showing cro magnons slaughtring the neanderthal. Her point is that Mutants are going to do this and she’s clearly fearmongering him and trying to talk him into genocide: to wipe them out before they wipe out humanity. And it’s here we get one of hte most important plot points of Morrisons run and one of the most intresting: according to cassandra’s research Humanity will be no more in 4 generations. Mutankind is on it’s way to overtaking them at last.. i’ts still a few decades off.. but it’s coming. It’s sometihing that the whole decimation nonsense sadly snuffed.. and John Hickman has thankfully brought back. I’ll get to his run once i’ts complete in a few years, but point is it’s an utterly marvelous plot hook: Humanity, whose already attempted genocide a few times, is now in real danger of what their petty, racist, fearful attacks have been about: being replaced. It’s one of the central themes of the work the other two being “Just what IS mutantkind and what will it be”. WHat are they as a people? We’ll dig into these as we go but the threat of exctincion is the backbone of this arc... and will lead to something truly ghastly.

It’s then we get our title page.. which nothing really to add it just looks really good and helps show off who are cast is and what they can do with striking simple art.

And since we’re already talking the art of the book, let’s take a moment to discuss an intresting detail of this run: despite it’s short length there’s quite a few diffrent artist, who we’ll talk about of course as we get to each one. The most common and notable though is Frank Quitely. Frank Quitely is one of Morrison’s closest and best creative partners, having a unique, squishy art style.. i.e. the one my friend didn’t like which is why i’m covering this. And while I like the art style quite a bit, I do get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea: His art is squashed, weird, and admitely some faces can be good god no incaranate. But it’s also why I like it: his characters feel unique, each body and figure feels like it was custom made and thus feels.. real. Like this is a person before you. And given comics can often surrender to having everybody look the damn same, this is nice. His faces may sometimes look similar but his bodies are where the action is. But while having a realistic feel his work also has a weird alien quality that perfectly fits Morrison, and thus his run on x-men. I will say while I love All-Star Superman, his art fits less there in the more hopeful silver agey story, so he’s not an artist for EVERY STORY OF EVERY TYPE.. but when it comes to sci fi weridness, he fits it like a glove so i’ts unsuprising he and morrison are practicaley soul mates, nor that his art sets the tone perfectly for the run: this is something new, diffrent and strange.. and what says x-men at it’s best more than that?

So after our opening titles we cut to the mansion where Hank is showing off his latest and greatest invention: Cerebra. Cerbebra is a massively upgraded version of Cerebro, aka Professor Xavier’s iconic helmet that allows him to track mutants to help them out.. and covertly backup their conconousness for his long game plan, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone yet that’s not going to be retconned in for a few decades. Though i’m damn certain if Morrison has heard about the current era of x-men and how it both builds on what he built, shatters the status quo and is incredibly weird, he’d be damn proud. As for how it’s diffrent Cerebra not only has a large dome around it but said dome allows the machine to amply Charles powers to a global reach. He can now see mutants all over the world anywhere in the world, something I didn’t realize wasn’t ALWAYS a thing because it seems so simple. It’s also likely to bring it more in line with the movies. And while marvel has done TERRIBLE with bringing things in from the movies or in line with them in recent years, i.e. making star lord more like his movie self while forgetting that’s how he already used to be in canon before later writers thankfully did hte better step of merging the two, Hawkeye’s outfit, Cap’s outfit or Nick Fury Jr. But for every mistep there’s also been tons of times it’s worked out really well such as here, as well as bringing hulk into the avengers for the first time since the founding, making tony stark more like the mcu version and less like a nightmarish self righetous dicktator who rightfully gets beat up and called out a lot, making Scott Lang prominent since he became prominent in the MCU, Wakanda being a major force in the marvel universe as it always should have been and various titles that have popped up to tie into movies, often bringing back a team or property that hadn’t had a book in some time like Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Shang Chi just to name a few. It’s not always hawkeye looking all jeremy renner is what i’m saying.. though thankfully comics clint isn’t that uninteresting. Hopefully the series will change that.

So yeah along with a bigger shinier cerebro we’re also introduced to a big change in Hank whose taken on his lion form rather than his classic gorilla with a weird haircut or his return to that except bald. Here he’s more like aslan in a human body and I.. love it. It looks great, helps sell hanks delima of being brilliant while looking like a beast and makes sense: he kickstarted what was likely his own secondary evolution by drinking the potion that made him bestial, so it only makes sense his body wouldn’t be all that stable even if it took years to change again. And even that makes sense as hank was breifly turned back to his original hairless ape mutation during x-factor, easily one of the books.. worse decisions honestly and one that louise simonson thankfully later undid. That probably bought him some time hence why it’s only mutating further now. It also adds an intresting wrinkle which the run will explore further: how far does this go? Will he regress? and how much hank will be left? And how will society treat his new form?

For now he’s actually extatic. While he’s going through hormonal changes, and giving out some excellent banter with Jean

Which also includes one of the greatest lines in comic book history, one that’s been in my head for decades and made me absolutely love henry mccoy.

He’s just great is what i’m saying. As you can tell it’s stuff like this why i’m glad Moira fell through. While I love her.. Morrison’s hank is just a delight and one really questionable subplot aside, we’ll get to that, he’s one of the highlights of this run with an intresting internal struggle, and great chemistry with EVERYONE. And that is the main reason i’m glad Moira fell through as his history with everyone but Emma, who he still has a great raport with, means each interaction has weight. He’s close friends with both scott and jean and thus serves as their needed confidant, while still being able to buddy and banter iwth good old weapon x, and speak with his mentor charles as an equal. While I love moira... Beast just fits into the cast too perfectly and I 100% suspect Morrison was only using her because, while she’s awesome, Claremont wanted her and thus gladly snapped her up when he no longer had a science person. I’ll get into his Jean soon enough but she’s likewise fantastic and easily my faviorite version of the character.. not that until very recently there was much honest competition.

So Cerebra fires up showing a massive cloud of mutants, showing just how much of a huge spike theirs been with Xavier wondering what it all means.. and Hank seeing a weird flare on the mointor for just a second with his special eyes. But since Xavier isn’t stupid and isn’t the kind of idiot who just dismisses it as a fulke, and since Scott and Logan are in the field, he decides to confrence call them in to see if they can go take a look.

And naturally we get to see what their up to and get context for what the hell happened in the first page. Our heroes were on a rescue mission to save Ugly John, tha’ts what people called him, a three faced mutant who ends up passing out as they head out of the atmosphere for a second. Wolverine is regenerating and smoking out of his neck becaue he could still smoke back then before marvel decided “he’s setting a bad example”.. in a comic meant for teens and adults.

I mean I get it on some level as the x-men cartoon was a huge thing in the 90′s and Ben Grimm is basically a giant children’s toy with the mind of a surly 40 year old jewish man from yancy street, but stilll it’s just.. why. I may not like smoking but it’s not like it was SPIDER-MAN saying

It’s a grown man.. whose not a sterling roll model and who Claremont went out of his way to have Logan point out his healing factor means it really dosen’t hurt him in the long run and when Kitty, an actual teenager, tried one of his cigars she choked. I know it’s a weird thing to get hung up on but while i’m all for keeping kids from smoking, this was a really clumsy way to try and hehlp that that made no sense and will never make any sense.

One tangent later we find out that Cassandra was showing Trask a simulation on a flight to, unsuprisingly, south america, to a sentinel blacksite. Between covertly funding civil wars as they do, the US Goverment naturally founded an experimental sentinal project, and a second master mold during the production of the first line... when larry trask asks where it could possibly be well...

Subtly was not the trasks strong point.. or common sense... or.. not realizing their creations would dominate humanity too or not dying.

Anyways we then cut back to the x-men, as their having a psychic zoom meeting with Charlie giving one of his patnted big speeches.. and like a lot of this comic it’s too damn good not to use

The reason I couldn’t should be obvious: This one speech sums up the x-men, why their great and why their necessary in a nutshell: in a world full of prejucided morons.. there’s plenty of scared kids who NEED the x-men to protect and guide them, and with a surge in the mutant population, their needed now more than ever. We also get a good explanation in universe for the uniform change: Charles had them in the superhero outfits hoping humanity would accept them if they were packaged as something they know. Since that clearly hasn’t worked he’s trying new ways to reach out and thus going with a diffrent more rescue team approach to the uniforms. He assigns Wolvie and Cyke to go check out the flair as you’d expect and the meetings over. On the blackbird we get our first hint at a subplot as Logan noticed Cyclops couldn’t wait to get out of there, and is being a tad distant to his wife. He actually has reasons for being kind of cold for once instead of just bad writing as he just came back from being possed by apocalypse. Yeah that happened. So the experience has rattled our boy some what. More on that as we go. But Jean ducks the subject with hank but does breach the fact that Charles has been going kind of crazy with the spending, new uniforms and ambition lately. Hank explains it perfectly: After all the death, suffering and misery the x-men have endured lately, the aforementioned deaths I talked about that took Colossus and Moira off the roster, have lionzed Charles to make sure it was all worth something and look towards the future.

But enough hope time for horror as Cassandra makes her first direct move, trying to take over Charles brain , make his body her own and use cerebra to kill lots and lots of mutants. We then get one of the best moments of Morrisons run with Charles response to a horrifying monster trying to take his brain

While it is shocking to find out Charles has a gun..it’s a grim but kind of understandable precaution. The guy once got fully taken over by a brood, assembling the New Mutants in part because the brood wanted to create more of i’ts kind with more super powers. You’d be paranoid too if some of your beloved students were brought together partly due to your good intentions and partly because a space monster wanted to make more space montsters out of helpless teens, and even horribly gaslighted one of them. We’ll get to that some day. Point is Charles brain is one of the greatest weapons on earth and if the wrong person got a hold of it, it’d be the end of said earth. Thankfully Charles does not need plan gun, as Jean yanks Cerebra off him but the sheer HATE Charles felt from Cassandra, the sheer power has rattled him.. and also told him she’s in Ecuador and his X-Men need to be warned NOW. It’s a great way to set up just HOW powerful Cassandra is. Speaking of which as our first issue of the arc ends, we find out two things: Cass faked being int he government but really just used dead soldiers as prop.. and just what kind of sentinels are out there.. wild sentinels. Easily my faviorite variant of the old killing machines and one that’s barely used despite being really damn awesome. Their adaptive killing machines, designed to mutated just like their pray and take tech from around them, as a result they look like a jumble of guns and parts.. but not only does it give them a unique, cool look.. but it makes them ten times deadlier as instead of being big bricks of robots that while intimidating, the x-men know how to kill... their unpredictable variable killing machines. You can figure out how to kill one sure.. btu the next might be entirely diffrent. They are one of morrisons best creations and I hope someone uses the idea again.. aka hickman. Please use it jonathan I know your focused on nimrod but come on.

And we end on one of the best lines of the entiire run as we close out the issue

Yeah it goes without saying but i’ll say it anyway; Morrison is really damn good with dialouge and being damn quotable.

So we open with another great quote “When I got up today I didn’t expect to kill 20 million people”... and Cassandra being aware Wolverine and Cyclops are on their way and sending the Wild Sentinels to dispatch them. Also our heroes brought Ugly John along while while a dumb move, Wolvie does point out how dumb it was to divert to Ecuador with a civlian in tow.. after the plane crash of course. As for “wait what plane crash’, the sentinels attack and start picking it apart... and since letting them have such good tech is a terrible idea, Scotty blows up the damn plane. So to recap our heroes are stuck in ecuador, surrounded by murder machines, and oh look their there and knock off cyclops viser. Fantastic. So yeah our heroes are fucked. And naturally captured by the enemy.

The rest of the x-men are doing SLIGHTLY better. While beast makes a note for his girlfriend, more on that later on, Charles is in bed, half alive, explaning the rationale I gave for why he has the gun with Jean refusing to let him get back out of bed and you know.. put on the device that just nearly killed him. But when beast announces they lost contact with our boys.. yeah that ceased being an option.

Back in the Ecuadorian Genocide Factory, Cassandra does the obvious and kills donald trask as his real purpose..was to stick around and be stupid for a bit while she copied his dna so she could have full control of her new murder toys.She soon uses them, having a horrifying death chamber slaughter john.. or at least flash fry him. Wolverine takes it how you’d expect and since the sentinels need to “perserve trask dna”.. they can’t fire on him without killing her. Scott escapes.. and in a heart wrenching scene mercy kills john.. before getting badass.

To anyone who says Scott Summers is boring, unintersting, or a stupid asshole idiot head I present exhbit shut the fuck up. Morrison gets scott just right, deconstructing his emotional suppression, while showing him off as a dedicated, companionate man who gets the job done and who seconds after tearfully having to mercy kill an innocent mutant whose death was partially his fault, wastes no time making it painfully clear to the person responsible she WILL die if she tries that again. Logan however realizes she’s already won in some fashion as she’s grinning.. and yeah never a good sign when a genocidal madwoman is grinning like a loon.. and when we find out why.. it’s even less good> We cut to Genosha. A lot of you probably know what happned to Genosha but in case you don’t know what it is it was once a horribly racist country that genetically enslaved mutants and used them for slave labor. It was freed, but still struggled to truly move on.. till Magneto showed up, took the country for himself and made it a home for all mutants. When we last saw him he once again tried to take over the world leading to Logan seemingly killing him. Right now though Emma Frost finally enters the scene teaching some mutants.. when a young one named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.. yes that one and yes she was entirely chosen for deadpool for her name, reveals, via precognition, that their all going to die.. right as the sentinels attack.

Genosha.. is gone. In an eyeblink 16 million mutants are dead, a possible future gone, and one of their greatest leaders is no more. Yeah Magneto WAS alive.. but paralyzed so he could do nothing when his island was utterly slaughtered. Only a handful of mutants will be revealed to survive. Humanity had done a lot to mutants before .. but for once.. they’d succeeded in wiping a massive chunk out. What was an x-men location for DECADES at this point.. was now a smoldering crater. A what could of been that would hant the x-men ever after, even now into utopia it remains the darkest day in mutant history outside of hte decimation. It is a truly horrific moment.. and if the changes already hadn’t made it clear this is morrison saying “NO character is safe, nothing is safe, and nothing will be the same and I damn well mean that”. In one act of hate the world has changed. And it hasn’t finished changing yet.

Issue Three opens hammering in things, as Jean and Beast are in the ruins of genosha, with Xavier having found ONE surivor among the rubble, and our heroes sturggling to find even them, though Jean eventually picks them up and uses her TK to sift through the rubble.

They find Emma who emerges from a bunker in shock, clutching NTW... and not realizing she’s dead until later and revealing she now has diamond skin, her own secondary mutation. Secondary Mutation was a birlliant idea, new powers sprouting up within established mutants.. it’s just morrison barely used this great idea as did hardly anyone else. Only X-Men Blue ever really dug into it and those were artifical at that. IT’s a great idea..it’s just barely used and at most heavily implied to explain changes in powers like Jamie Madrox Multiple Personalities later on or Doug Ramsey’s vast increase in power. Disapointing.

While Charles takes in the tragedy and the fact his old frienmie is dead, the x-men wonder what the fuck Cassandra is and what to do with her.. why did she kill 16 million people, and what the fuck is she. I mean I know, but as I said i’ll explain that when the story does. IN the other room Beast tends to Emma who wants none of not fucking killing Cassandra.. and is utterly right. Bitchy, because i’ts Emma, but right: she killed 16 million people. Say what you want but while it may not be up to the x-men to kill her.. she shoudln’t be living much longer. She commited genocide. Emma decides fuck that and prepares to leave summoning a cab and making peace with being a glorious living fabrige egg. Emma did apparelty change in generation x.. but Morrison is responsible for returning her not only to being a bitch, but a gloriously delightful one And really I don’t think they reset her character entirely: she’s not the heartless monster she started out as: she has empathy, grace, and caring.. she just buries it under a lair of absolute bitch and after you know, surviving a fucking genocide who can blame her? And honestly.. I love their verison of her. She provides a nice contrast to the more idealistic, even logan, x-men and a nice contrarian voice in the room without being obnoxious and her style and sacrastic swagger makes her endlessly entertaning. Thanks to morrison she’s stuck around to this day and went from a pretty good character.. to a great one. And what makes her this way, or as jean puts it “such a bitch?”

With that settled, Hank explains what Cassandra is: a competing species. As he puts it sometimes evolution takes a quantum leap forward.. and Cassandra is the result. Thus she wants to wipe out the compettition and is so far above humanity, she dosen’t need them... especially since she knows what Hank now knows: humanity is at an end. As hank puts it we have an E Gene, one that basically shuts off a race.. and thus the x-men now know what we learned earlier and that cassandra wasn’t lying: in 4 generations there are no more humans and something has to repalce htem. And Cassandra wants it to be her.

Before Logan can do what he does best, and asks why she looks like charles, Cassandra escapes, and Scott briliantly urges them to fight only on instict as she’s a telepath. A damn awesome fight insues including Cassandra donning Charles Psoonic battle armor, Scott being put in his black bug room and the general good looking chaos you’d expect from a superhero fight. While this goes on Emma has an ephinany and realizes she likes to teach, the x-men have a school.. and she shoudln’t give up on helping kids just because of what happened and turns around.

Cassandra is near victory, slipping her way to Cerebra.. and planning to kill only one mind before getting to the millions she wnats, a horrifying slug manifesting around her.. only...

So the x-men accept this and cassandra rises.. seemingly saying “I am charles” Huh... and then charles uncaracteristiacally shoots her saying things must change

We’ll get to what all of that means next time as we close on Jean and Scott in bed. Scott explains why he’s been so distant as what I said earlier: fighting off apocalypse stripped away a lot of illusions about himself and he’s having a hard time walking back from that but Jean is willing to help.. but before they can resolve their issues.. charles has an annoucnment to make and grant has one last whopper of a suprise to end his opening arc on, and just like genosha...it’s a game changer of titanic proportions

No longer is Xavier’s School hidden. Their walking into the light now and so is charles. Hope they surivive the experince. Obviously this move is brilliant: while it removes the veil of saftey the x-men had it also brings on tons of new possiblities and unlike secondary mutation, this one not only stuck but would impact the x-men for good: no longer would they hide and cower.. their mutant and proud.. and their here to stay. E For Extinction is one of the best x-men stories period. Blisteringly paced, full of great character, great concepts and utterly terrifying and terrific moments that would impact the x-men all the way to present day. It’s beautifully drawn, well paced, and a masterwork. I highly recommend it and it’s a great kickoff to a great run. Shame the run couldn’t of ended on this kind of high but.. we’ll get to that. For now this is a masterclass in how to start a run and if you haven’t read it do so NEXT TIME ON NEW X-MEN: A bunch of weirdos try to harvest mutant organs, the x-men get a brain in a jar and a new teamate, and Scott maybe cheats on his wife. Until then, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

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katyatalks · 4 years

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sajou no hana [MP100 II Blu-Ray Extras Interview]

Here’s “sajou no hana”’s interview from the Mob Psycho 100 II blu-ray booklet extras. sajou no hana is composed of Sana, Kitani Tatsuya, and Watanabe Shou. The band was behind “99.9”, “Gray” and other songs in MP100 II, and in this interview they discuss their creative process behind each song and their thoughts on MP100;

Q: What were your thoughts upon being commissioned?

Sana; “I participated in the opening of the first season, so I regarded Mob Psycho 100 as a work that allowed me to challenge myself. Being able to participate in the show once again made me so incredibly happy! I remember getting all excited, thinking about how I’d get to see all the fun, unique characters again.”

Kitani; “I’m someone a little estranged from manga & anime. However, Mob Psycho 100 is not only a famous work but has a good reputation among friends my age... so I really felt the pressure. After watching the first season, I felt nothing but pure motivation, though (laughs).”

Q: What instructions were you given by the director and the team?

Shou; “For the opening, we, the director and the music producer shared our individual concepts, whereas with the endings we were given no detailed instructions other than which episodes the songs would be used for. We based writing the songs upon that information. Kitani Tatsuya and I wrote our own ideas for the opening, and upon comparing we realised we had both decided to focus on ‘energy’ and ‘male and female vocals’. With the endings, they’d change depending on the episode, so we decided we’d aim to have those songs be closely related to the emotions of the characters.”

Q: Could you describe the drive behind 99.9?

Sana; “We began that song thinking we’d like to adopt the ‘99’ title from the first season’s opening, and then, ‘let’s make it even more exciting!’ That was the train of thought behind it. I think season 1 carries this powerful individualistic flair, so 99.9 became a song that we wanted to pack full of that. The kind of song that’d have everyone go, ‘Mob Psycho 100 is starting!’, upon hearing it.”

Q: It’s a song that really leaves an impression on you, with that funky slap bass and emotion-filled melody line and vocals. Could you please tell us your thoughts upon watching the completed opening animation?

Kitani; “I could see the insane amount of work that the staff put into it. I was very happy, seeing how intense the opening turned out and how the staff clearly understood the song in detail.”

Q: As for the endings, ‘Gray’, ‘Memosepia’, ‘Mabuta no Ura’, ‘Ikiru Hitobito’, in total you wrote 4 new songs. What concepts lie behind each song?

Shou; “‘Memosepia’ was written with the thought that we’d like to depict Mob’s growth from a past perspective. The insecurity and misery you feel in your heart during that period of youth. ‘Mabuta no Ura’ was written while envisioning a dream - the you that you don’t usually show others, and a sense of misery… I wanted to express that. Feeling jealous of someone else - that emotion is sung straight.”

Kitani; “‘Gray’ was written with the following question at its core: resignation, discouragement, so on… we feel these emotions again and again in our day-to-day lives, but how should we deal with these feelings? The main character, Mob, provides one beautiful answer to this question, which is largely reflected in the lyrics. As for ‘Ikiru Hitobito’, that’s a song about the connections between people. There are some people who flat out reject ‘society’, and others who struggle and compromise in an attempt to fit into it. Communicating with others is hard, but at core it’s an action that holds warmth. That’s what I believe. The song was produced with that in mind.”

Q: ‘Memosepia’ as a song in particular leaves a very strong impression, along with those visuals that pop out. Please tell us your thoughts on the completed outro.

‪Shou; “Yes, the visuals do pop out, but I feel some kind of painful nostalgia when I watch the outro too. I thought of the outro as being something like, Mob looking down at himself from a birds-eye view.”‬

Q: ‘Ikiru Hitobito’ from the final episode is also a charming song, with the lyrics capturing the view of the world that we see in Mob Psycho 100. Where do you feel Mob Psycho 100’s charm comes from?

Sana; “I had a lump in my throat the first time I read the lyrics for ‘Ikiru Hitobito’. I think the ‘connections between people’ theme of Mob Psycho 100 is the most charming part of it. ‪Mob-kun is awkward but grows via his relationships with others, and then many others are charmed by Mob-kun and change, too. I really love the perfect flow in how we see these characters change as a result of that external influence. I think the most charming thing is how Mob Psycho 100 respects different ways of life, and that you, the viewer, are able to change alongside all the characters in watching it.”

Q: What impact do you think your work on Mob Psycho 100 will have on your future music production activities?

Shou; “The characters of Mob Psycho 100 carry all these relatable feelings. As sajou no hana, we write a lot of music about the weakness we all carry in our hearts, so Mob Psycho 100 has become a work that we can obtain a lot of these emotions from.”

Kitani; “You input Mob Psycho 100 - chew it up a bit - and the output is your own interpretation… and with that process, you start to regard the most fundamental aspects of humanity in a new light. All these thoughts and worries I thought I had dealt with in the past have been newly reborn because of Mob Psycho 100. So, off I go again to deal with these problems by writing new songs about them (laughs).”

Q: Finally, a message to the fans, please.

Shou; ”As a fan, I’m happy I could participate in the show! I think it would be nice if when you listen to the songs you remember the anime, and when you watch the anime, the songs flow into your head!”

Kitani; “Sajou no hana as a band is quite childlike in that it’s still forming its identity, so this experience with Mob Psycho 100 will have a large influence with regard to what we become in the future. I hope everyone who got to know us through Mob Psycho 100 will continue to watch over us as we evolve. I look forward to your support.”

Sana; “I feel my love for both the show and the characters has deepened with season 2. We were able to bring many songs into the world of Mob Psycho 100 this time around, so please enjoy them! I’ll be happy if you’re able to apply the lyrics to yourself or to your favourite characters and listen to our songs again and again. I’m looking forward to the future of Mob Psycho 100. I’m supporting it.”

Crossposted on Twitter here.

Part of the MP100 Booklet Extras long-thread, here.

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #sajou no hana #interview #the thoughts on memosepia are lovely and also songs confirmed to be character songs

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canonfanon · 4 years

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Moceit Sanders Sides Parent Trap AU

Hear me out:

Deceit and Patton as the parents, Remus and Roman as the twins.

((Side note: Honestly, the entire premise of the Parent Trap is so insane that I have a hard time imagining any characters as the parents. But if you pretend that the whole let’s-each-take-a-kid-and-never-speak-again thing is reasonable, this actually works super well for moceit))

So Deceit and Patton meet in college, they date for a little while, and very quickly decide to get married. So they are pretty young newlyweds, who maaaayybe rushed into this a little bit. But they really do love each other, so they don’t mind it.

Patton has always wanted to be a father, ever since he was a child himself. Deceit wants children too, but is less confident in his own parenting abilities. Still, with Patton by his side, he feels like they can do anything. So they decide to go for it, and pretty soon Roman and Remus come along.

Everything is great for a little while - both men are ecstatic to be fathers, and both love the boys to pieces. But tensions slowly start to creep into the relationship. I’m thinking this is mostly the same kind of tensions that exist in canon - Deceit being overly manipulative in his tactics, Patton having overly black-and-white thinking, both of them being just a little too stubborn to fully back down. But they still love each other, and they’re still committed to each other, so they’re making it work.

Until one day, communication completely breaks down. I’m torn as to what the actual instigating event is, but suffice to say that there is a lot of misunderstandings on both sides. Patton is convinced that Deceit is deliberately manipulating him, Deceit is convinced that Patton is refusing to listen to him out of spite. They decide that the relationship can’t work anymore, and file for a divorce.

And, per the plot of the movie, they decide that the most reasonable way to handle custody is to each take a kid. (don’t blame me for this insanity, blame the movie). Worth noting - even though their relationship has broken down, each of them still trusts that the other will be a good father. Patton knows that Deceit would cut his own arms off for their sons. Deceit knows that Patton was practically born to be a parent. Neither of them have any problem believing that the son they’re leaving behind is in good hands

Anyway, Deceit takes Remus and Patton takes Roman, and they move to opposite sides of the country. They don’t mean to completely fall out of touch, but at first it’s just too fresh and painful to reach out. As time goes on, it starts to feel like it’s too late, that they would just be reopening old wounds. So neither of them reach out to the other, and the boys don’t remember ever having more than one parent.

Until! One fateful summer, Deceit and Patton accidentally enroll their sons in the same summer camp. Roman and Remus meet face-to-face for the first time in 10 years - and immediately decide they hate each other. Roman thinks Remus is gross and scary, Remus thinks Roman is boring and “has a stick up his butt the size of the eiffel tower”. They end up antagonizing each other, which escalates into pranking, which escalates into an all-out, take-no-prisoners prank-war. This prank war eventually backfires and catches the camp counselors in the cross-fire. The boys manage to escape the adults’ wrath by working together, and start to reach an understanding. They realize that they actually work very well together when they put aside their differences. The boys slowly start to get to know each other well enough to dispel their bad first impressions, and eventually become fast friends.

It’s at this point that they also put the pieces together and realize that they’re twins. They start talking about their parents, and about how they don’t want to be separated again now that they’ve found each other. So they hatch a plan - Roman will pretend to be Remus and go home with Deceit, while Remus will pretend to be Roman and go home with Patton.

Cue shenanigans - despite all of Roman and Remus’s creativity and acting skills, both Deceit and Patton know that something is up pretty much immediately. Still, it takes a while to figure out exactly what’s going on. Patton figures it out when Remus-pretending-to-be-Roman slips up and says something inappropriate - Patton comes down pretty hard and delivers a lecture that leaves Remus in tears, with a confession coming pretty soon after. Patton then gets in touch with Deceit and lets him know what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Deceit and Roman-pretending-to-be-Remus have been having some issues of their own. Namely, Roman witnesses Deceit lying to others on several occasions, and starts to wonder how he and Remus can know that Deceit isn’t lying to them, if he lies so easily to everyone else. Eventually, Roman does catch Deceit in a minor lie and calls him on it. When Deceit brushes him off, Roman becomes upset, insisting that it does matter, because how can he trust Deceit about the big stuff if he can’t trust him about the little stuff? Deceit is trying to explain himself, with limited success, when he gets Patton’s phone call

Both Deceit and Patton are pretty emotional when they realize that their sons are swapped, but both are still hesitant to meet up - it’s been so long, they both feel like they’ve moved on, they’re both nervous of what the other will think of them. But the boys are stubborn, and they manage to arrange a meet up. Once the whole family is in the same place, the boys talk to each other a little more about their parents. Remus tells Roman about Patton’s lecture and Roman tells Remus about Deceit’s lies, and they both have to grapple with the fact that their parents aren’t perfect. Ultimately, however, they come to the conclusion that they still want to stay together, and that they still want their parents to be together. So both boys decide to go all-out on plan Get Our Parents Back Together.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really go to plan. Deceit and Patton both remember how and why the relationship fell apart, and no amount of romantic atmosphere (or what a couple of 10-year-olds think is romantic, anyway) is going to fix that, no matter how much they want it to.

BUT! This is where the boys accidentally save the day. Patton remembers how Remus broke down when he lectured him too harshly, and now he’s seen how Deceit handles Remus’s outbursts - non-judgmentally, making sure Remus knows when and why his behavior hurts others, but not letting him internalize the idea that he’s bad for having those thoughts. Likewise, Deceit remembers how hurt Roman was by lying, and has seen how Patton is with Roman - how he’s always honest with him, even when it’s difficult or time-consuming, and how that fosters trust between them.

The two start talking about the boys, and about parenting in general, and realize along the way where they went wrong all those years ago. It’s not an overnight fix, but Patton comes to understand how his black-and-white thinking can hurt others, while Deceit comes to understand how his excessive lying can hurt others. Both are also able to acknowledge that the other always had good intentions, even when the results weren’t perfect.

With this new understanding, Patton and Deceit tentatively decide to retry their relationship, taking things a bit slower this time. They also decide on a more conventional custody situation - Deceit moves back across the country, allowing the boys to easily come and go between him and Patton. Patton works hard to understand Remus and to curb his own knee-jerk reactions - he really listen to Remus, asking him questions, checking in, and modeling Deceit in responding to inappropriate outbursts. Likewise, Deceit works hard to gain Roman’s trust, being honest with him even when a lie would be faster or easier, modeling Patton in being willing to talk things out honestly.

Patton and Deceit slowly get used to co-parenting again - they work together as a team, and work on their communication skills at the same time. As time goes on, they both become more and more committed to fully understanding each other and making their relationship work.

Roman and Remus are ecstatic when Deceit finally re-proposes to Patton a couple of years later

The End

#sanders sides #moceit #creativitwins #remus sanders #deceit sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #what am i doing i don't even ship moceit #but this au just fits too well #parent trap au #also sorry if this has been done before

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razeluxe · 4 years

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Razeluxe’s Top Ten Male Characters

So I’ve been thinking about doing a particular list for my favorite characters across anime and games for quite a while and with some advice I decided to break it into my favorite male and favorite female characters. Most people that know me can probably guess at my top three favorites but if you don’t know me... well you ‘bout to learn lol. This was harder than I thought to compile...enjoy my fanboying of the boys lol.

By the by, I’ll do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum.

10) Apollo Justice (Phoenix Wright Series)

I’ve played only two games that this character was in (Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies, slowly working through Spirit of Justice) and this character particularly in Dual Destinies struck me even more than Edgeworth who is another amazing character. Apollo has an amazing spirit and it was only through playing Dual Destinies that I really got to understand Mr. ‘I’m Fine’ and his stupid ‘Here comes Justice’ puns. I feel his original game didn’t allow him to shine (still a great entry in the Ace Attorney series I don’t care what anyone says) and Dual Destinies allows him the development he deserves. He gets hurt during a trial and it allows a deep dive of his character even if his personality shifts for a while. Damn he’s savage. He’s considered the underdog in the Wright Anything Agency but he’s to me the hardest working person there who is also the most factual in court.

9) Gokudera (Katekyo Hitman Reborn)

Or as I like to call him, Scowludera since he’s scowling like 90% of the time. This Ichigo ripoff’s character development is insane. And I think that trend follows most if not all the characters in this list. His relationship with his sister is interesting and he’s pretty explosive in terms of personality and intelligence. His fights are all really interesting too, he has some of my favorite interactions in the series thus far (haven’t read the post anime manga chapters yet sadly, but he’s more than earned this spot on this list). He butts heads with people a lot and he can be ignorant but he grows from his experience and you get to see it bit by bit. This dude is loyal to the bone. RIP if you aren’t Tsuna or Reborn. Also, I’d like to shout out this anime as one of the few to do the shounen genre proper justice. Go watch it. Also his sister Bianchi is <3. Oh wait. Male list. Oops. Can we also talk about his weapon? Not gonna say spoilers but that thing is dope and probably one of the best ever designed weapons. And his kitty Uri <3

8) Joshua Bright (Trails in the Sky)

This will be short as I don’t want to spoil anything, but Joshua is a very easy character for me to connect to personally. His feelings, actions, development probably relates more to me than a lot of characters on this list. He’s got good people around him...I’m very happy for his ship and support it 120%. Also the Trails Series, both Sky and Cold Steel are probably my favorite series of anything period. Go play it. There is more to this character that meets the eye and has broken my heart more than once ;_;

7) Neku Sakuraba (The World Ends With You)

Neku Neku Neku. Another very relatable character for me (see the theme here? lol) He initially shuts out people and over time, through his experience in the Reapers Game, he starts to open up and bring people into his circle. He goes through some crap, like a lot of trauma. When you learn of him it’s no wonder he wound up disliking people and society. He’s extremely creative and that creativity manifests itself in different ways. Kinda like me. It’s worth mentioning I used to roleplay this character back in the day, the very first canon character I used to write for.

6) Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles)

One of the only blonde’s on this list. Shulk is a character that is driven by revenge but eventually changes. He goes through some pretty traumatic stuff that I absolutely will not spoil. His personality when he encounters a certain characters shifts big time and it’s kind of scary considering how early you see this. Also he gets points for being a notably intelligent character. I mean, the dude has his own lab...and is able to fix and adjust stuff. He’s really a great and well balanced character despite all the crap he goes through. Also I used to make fun of this character and dislike him a little bit, but then I grew up.

The list gets real starting...now. Not that it was fake before. :o

5) Jaden Yuki (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX)

Anyone who has actually watched the entirety of GX might know why he’s here. His character development in the latter seasons so unreal and interesting. I’m not spoiling crap but there is a lot more to the character than meets the eye. Like a lot lot. Over the course of the series he loses his innocent eyes and his personality changes a lot...His character is probably one I can relate to in terms of the reasons for his actions, the way he gets down about himself, the way he acts in the final season...it hits me hard...he’s too dang relatable...just like..

4) Rean Schwarzer (Trails of Cold Steel)

Surprise surprise. Rean is here. -hears crickets- Guess you’re not surprised. I wonder why. I think I relate to this character more than anyone else on this list. Except number one. Number one is in his own league. Rean is a character who generally carries a happy disposition...he has a unique power but you can see he is actively scared of it. It’s something I actively deal with...he’s so scared of himself that he puts distance between family and friends. He never feels he’s good enough. He’s made headway through this, but...

One thing that’s extremely interesting about this character is his selflessness. You may think this is driven to the ground in character stereotypes but for Rean it’s different...his selfless has been described as abnormal by characters in game, and it’s not for positive reasons...Rean deals with some real unhealthy stuff. This is getting long.

As of this post Cold Steel 4 comes out in one month and I’m extremely worried for his character. If you’ve played 3 then you’ll know why. Also if you haven’t played the Trails series, go play it. No buts. Heck I’ll even buy the game(s) for you if I can.

Oh look we’re at the top three. I want to say that while numbers two and three here are pretty interchangeable, these characters have been in my top three for over a decade and a half and I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Rean I love you but you have your work cut out if you ever want to breach the top 3. I wanna post a few honorable mentions here. They didn’t get into Smash but they do get Mii Costumes at least! -shot-

Davis Motomiya (Digimon Adventure 02)

This character was everything I was when I was a kid. The way he tries everything to woo Kari is too cute. Also his unwavering faith in Ken. Also Davis Cries Veemon.

9S (Nier Automata)

Not mentioning any spoilers. Just watch this character and see how his vision of the world changes over time.

Okabe Rintaro (Steins; Gate)

Okabe’s shift from his ‘persona’ as things get real and his efforts to fix everything is too relatable for me ;_;

Yosuke Hanamura (Persona 4)

No, I do not ship him with Yu. They’re great buddies for sure, and he’s pretty cool. Really likable character for me personally save for a few moments in the game...he’s also the main in the Arena games. “Let’s do this, Jiraiya!” He’s so cool lol.

Top 3 time. Fiercely dedicated to these guys.

3) Robin (Teen Titans Go! 2003)

Robin is such a raw character that carries his past and tries so hard to move from it yet it embodies him to his core. He has since gained a softer side from forming a team, and has been doing normal teenager stuff...which is good for him. However at times that Batman side impacts him so hard that he can only concentrate on his mission, and starts shutting out everyone and everything to do things himself. It actively gets in the way of his interactions. He deals a lot with moving on from failure and acknowledging his friends more, which he does get better at over time. He is also represented by the color red. My favorite color. He’s badass and yet carries so much crap. I connect to this character a lot even now. Third canon character I ever wrote for.

2 Lloyd Irving (Tales of Symphonia)

I love Lloyd. I love his voice, I love his attacks, I love his stupid double sword logic. He says wielding two swords makes him twice as powerful lol. I love his development. I love his idealism and how it matures over time. I love everything about Lloyd. It was legit love at first sight. I remember being 15-16 and seeing him on that Gamecube boxart and saying “I wanna play that guy” Most people I feel (guys in particular) probably looked up to certain characters growing up as a child/teen. Lloyd was mine.

1. Zidane Tribal (Final Fantasy IX)

While it was love at first sight for Lloyd, that was not the case for number one on this list. I was 13 when I first played FFIX. Zidane upon encountering him, I always thought he was a cool character, but he was nothing special. Even at Zidane’s lowest point I thought he was an okay character at best. I had not finished the game.

Fast forward a few years and I decide to play FFIX again, this time determined to finish it. I had went through some things, grew up a bit before turning this game on. This damn bandit...I remember writing this bit years ago: “His infamous mantra labeled above describes him well, but under his ability to console others with a smile, to cheer people up and meet them at their point of need with his abundant optimism lies a blonde who masks his pain and keeps his issues to himself. Despite his many friends and buddies he harbors a deep loneliness that, like his problems, he keeps to himself. One would have to look carefully to notice his character flaws for Zidane does an impressive job of hiding these problems. Whether it be through his energy, his theatrics, or focusing on other people, Zidane can cover things up quite well.”

Zidane has an absurd amount of depth to his character that I was never able to comprehend as a kid, beneath his flirting, his playful attitude, he hides a lot of feelings, a lot of anger, a lot of sadness. It used to boggle me how he’s able to uphold his sense of virtue despite what goes on in his life and the end of disc 3 answers this for me. It goes without mentioning that this was the second canon character I’ve ever written for, and I still love writing him. I could and write walls of text about how Zidane is so amazing, a chivalrous thief, a lover and a flirt but I think I can let you go lol. Hit me up if you really want to hear me ramble about any these characters, also play FF9.

...So I wrote all of that and forgot to write about Zidane’s ship...have to give it its own paragraph because I love these two together and she does wonders for Zidane as a whole as does he to her. She’s a princess and he’s a thief, they take their time to show them together through different things, different ordeals...particularly the ordeals. Its interesting seeing them both at their worst moments and the many funny moments..Man, that boat scene gets me every time...If I ever write a top ten couples list this couple would no doubt be in the top two if not number one. And I’d probably write way more than this about them because they’re great. Also they’re canon. A healthy canon. Also Dagger’s hot. Oh wait wrong list.

Okay finally done. Not editing this anymore :P

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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

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mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :(

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!!

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

#lj rereads mtmte

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