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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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YYH Recaps: Episode 1, Surprised to be Dead

Hello, all you hypothetical readers! It's a beautiful spring day and I have a free afternoon ahead of me, so what better time to start another massive project while I guilty stuff my other WIPs deep into the depths of my hard drive? Yeah. Iffy life choices aside, someone mentioned a few weeks back that they'd love for me to recap a show I have more positive things to say about than negative (RIP RWBY) and ever since Netflix announced that their live-action adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho is in the works, I've been itching for a re-watch of the anime. With the RWBY hiatus underway, it seemed like the perfect time to fulfill both desires.

Before we begin though, I'd like to touch on a few things that are going to influence this project.

First, YYH is near and dear to my heart. Written by Yoshihiro Togashi in the early 1990s and later adapted for an American audience by Funimation, I had the pleasure of experiencing this story five different ways: as a serialized tale in Shonen Jump, a binge read when I had the money to buy the manga, tiny snippets of the anime on Adult Swim late at night — don't tell my parents ;) — as an after-school treat on Toonami, and then years later as a re-watch when I introduced it to a friend (who, in turn, blessed me by having us watch Fullmetal Alchemist next). I used to keep a Hiei bookmark in everything I was reading, the spirit gun made it into our witch-wolf-space adventures on the playground (middle school was wild), and there was a long period of my life where I tried very hard to teach myself to stand with my hands behind my back, precisely as Genkai does. Spoiler alert: I failed. So to say I love the series is... a little bit of an understatement. I bring this up simply as a way of demonstrating that there's more than a bit of nostalgia attached to YYH for me and that will inevitably cloud my reading of it. How can it not? So that's just something to keep in mind as I work through a series that, like any having hit its 30th birthday, has its outdated, flawed, and other questionable aspects.

Second, but very much connected to the first point, is that these are pretty casual recaps. I summarize and extrapolate, focusing primarily on plot and dialogue (but with the occasional cinematography aspect tossed in). I'm not conducting research on the cultural history here — something that will come up at least once in this episode — I'm not arguing an overarching thesis, and I've never been someone who focuses on the author/production/trivia of a series. I'm here for the story as the story is presented to the viewer. If you've read my RWBY Recaps, this will function precisely the same way, with the only difference being I'm engaging with a finished text as opposed to an ongoing one, so there’s a lot less, “Maybe ___ will happen” theorizing going on.

Third, I obviously recommend that you watch the show yourself (you can find it on YouTube!), but you don't have to know the series to follow along. As these massive paragraphs attest, I tend to be both detailed and verbose, so we'll be covering every major plot point — and most of the smaller ones too.

Finally, I'm working from the dub. I know, I know, the horror. But it's what I grew up on and, honestly, I think it's superior to the sub. YYH's dubbing is in a class all its own and to this day there are very few shows that compare to it. Trust me, it's a good call.

That's enough of the boring chit-chat though. Let's get started!

Our very first episode "Surprised to be Dead" opens on a crowded street. We see lots of traffic, people going about their business, and a pedestrian crossing sign that, crucially, turns red. This is our normality and, like in every genre story, you need to break that normality at some point so that the protagonists can go on their fantastical/supernatural/science fiction journey. YYH eases us into things by first breaking the normality of an everyday afternoon: there's a screech of tires, quick shots of a man pushing a child out of the way of an oncoming car, and then his back is hitting the windshield. We begin this story with a horrible — but otherwise mundane — car crash.

Now, these flashes alone have a fair bit to unpack. Despite later getting a brief shot of the man's scared face right before he's hit, the moment's focus is really on the child. He's the one foregrounded in the initial, slow-mo shot. He's the one who appears in color while the man is kept in shadow. This isn't just a hit, it's a rescue. The camera is also careful to follow the soccer ball this kid was playing with (more on that later in the episode), with it flying through the air as the man is hit and bouncing to a stop in the street, acting as the dramatic finish. It's childhood! It's innocence! It's play on a sunny afternoon! And it's all gone wrong.

This moment is chaotic and even a bit confusing. Not in the sense of what's happening — that is quite obviously a guy being hit by a car — but who the victims are, how precisely this came about, or even why we're meant to care about this beyond a generic capacity to feel for other human (fictional) beings... that's all removed. And it works. As the crash takes place, the camera pans across the stunned crowd and we, the viewer, become a part of that crowd. They don't know what precisely is going on either. We're all just horrified onlookers as a sudden tragedy takes place. We're all watching the same show.

So everyone realizes this guy has been hit. People are staring in shock and someone calls for an ambulance. We see the driver fall to his knees in the street, distraught, shakily saying, "I didn't mean to..." It's a very serious and emotional scene that —

— is immediately tempered by this guy waking up, complete with a cute 'pop!' sound effect when he opens his eyes.

This is YYH's brand, this Very Serious Circumstances skillfully interwoven with casual indifference/comedy. It's admittedly far from a unique brand, but it's an excellent choice given that this is the same attitude that will drive 99% of our protagonist's interaction with the world.

Speaking of said protagonist, our guy wakes up, opens his eyes, and realizes that he's floating. There's a great, disorientating shot from his perspective where everything is upside down, causing him to nearly fall out of the air. Well would you look at that, he's as confused as we are. It's our audience surrogate!

A narrator says, "And so it all begins. This boy's name is Yusuke, he's fourteen years old, and he's supposed to be the hero of this story. But oddly enough, he's dead."

Game of Thrones might have made it popular, but YYH did it better.

(Yeah, yeah, I know one death kick-starts the journey and the other is a shocking twist. Just let me have this.)

Now, it's a weird introduction, right? At least at the end. The announcement that change has occurred, a name, an age... that all checks out. But "supposed to be the hero"? What the hell is that “supposed to” mean? Our narrator gives us the easy, surface answer: "But oddly enough, he's dead." We're capitalizing here on the audience's expectation that death ends a character's journey and though they may have been a hero previously, they can no longer be one moving forward. That function within the story has passed. So it's this intriguing question of, "What kind of hero do you have when that hero is dead from the start?" but as we'll see soon, there's an additional meaning here of, "How can Yusuke be the hero?" As this premiere sets up, Yusuke doesn't act like the hero is “supposed to” act.

Until he saved this kid.

But right now he's just confused: "Okay, this is weird. Stupid weird."

Two EMTs arrive on the scene and are hilariously useless. You know how in any medical drama a doctor will stop CPR after a couple of seconds because obviously you're not going to spend half the episode on realism? Well, that's this only a thousand times worse. One guy just looks at the kid and announces he's fine except for some bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, the kid is sobbing.

"Well, at least one of them is," replies the other EMT, because I guess he can tell Yusuke is beyond hope without taking a pulse or anything? "I hate cleanup," he complains as they load his body onto a stretcher because that's? An empathetic response to have??

Honestly this scene is wild.

Yusuke is understandably upset that he's, you know, dead and all. He starts hounding the EMTs who, unable to hear him, just go about their business of taking the kid and his body to the hospital. "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on? You can't just write me off. Listen to me!" and Yusuke tries to punch one of the EMTs in the head, resulting in him floating right through.

What a great way to introduce your protagonist's personality. We see here that when things go wrong Yusuke's default emotion is anger and it starts creeping in even before he thinks the others are ignoring him: "Stupid weird." He has problems with authority — "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on?" — is used to others listening when he gets angry — "You can't just write me off!" — and is poised to use violence at the slightest provocation. Yusuke is a guy who, right now at least, is ready to punch first and ask questions later.

As Yusuke floats back up into the air and the ambulance drives away, he finally cools down enough to try and think his way out of this. "It's not like this is the first time you've been in a jam,” he thinks. Yusuke recalls that yeah, something was different about today...

...he actually went to school.

Catch me laughing that this idiot boy equates the weirdness of him dying with going to school. Good lord.

Anyway, this jumpstarts our flashback. We open on a generic, anime middle school (that always feels like a high school to me) where the principal is calling for Yusuke through the loud speaker. Oooo someone’s in trouble! We follow a young girl up to the rooftop and she gets a classic hair-blowing-in-the-wind moment to establish that she's our love interest. Meet Keiko Yukimura.

Keiko finds Yusuke hanging out and immediately starts lecturing him for trying to chew gum and refusing to wear the boys' uniform. "Oh, give me a break, Keiko. I look better in green." Note that it's here we learn her name and it's an easy, casual way to introduce it. I bring this up because Yusuke's introduction via our narrator is very much... not that. It's an on your nose statement about his name, age, and importance to the story, and if you're just starting the show in 2021, it might come across as a rather armature move. Like something out of a kid's show, perhaps. Yet here we see that this was a deliberate choice, considering that YYH is capable of introducing character information naturally when it wants to.

This moment also tells us that Yusuke cares a great deal about his image. More on that in a bit. Because Keiko isn't finished her list of grievances yet, going on to say that his attendance record has hurt their entire class, hurt her as class representative, and if he keeps going down this path he won't even graduate middle school. "Sometimes I think you don't care about anyone but yourself and then you don't even do that right!"

They're legit complaints. Too bad Yusuke is busy looking up Keiko's skirt.

Yeeeeah. Sadly, this is common for anime, particularly a 90s anime like YYH. Even presumably more progressive series like My Hero Academia feature characters like Mineta, whose entire personality is being a pervert, and the creation of abilities that "require" kids/young women to be scantily clad. See: Yaoyorozu. YYH is no different in this regard, with various forms of sexual harassment functioning as a shorthand for how much Yusuke secretly likes Keiko. "Boys will be boys," right? Obviously not.

Like so many others series, the creators get away with it because they’re framing it as a bad thing. It's totally fine because look, Keiko slaps him! This is teaching the viewer how wrong this behavior is. Never mind that this is clearly an established habit between them, that Yusuke laughs off Keiko's discomfort, and that the whole scene is meant to be funny for the viewer. That's the real purpose here; it’s not a PSA on harassment.

That, and to establish the long-suffering love Keiko has for Yusuke in turn, largely stemming from a life-long friendship. "Dumb boy! He hasn't grown up a bit since he was four years old." We see that Keiko's early interactions with Yusuke have given her insight that others lack. As she heads down from the roof she runs into two girls hiding around the corner, too scared to come out lest "the great Urameshi" set his sights on them. Isn't Keiko terrified of what he might do to her? "Or worse, what others might say of it?" Like any classic high school middle school setting, one's reputation is king. Yusuke cares about how others see him — maintaining that tough boy attitude — and the girls care more about what the rest of the school might think of Keiko's interactions with him than the presumed harm Yusuke could do to her. They heard he can summon 2,000 men with just a whistle and that he "kills for fun!" But that means nothing in the face of people talking about you. Despite being one of the most popular girls in school, Keiko is the outsider here via her disinterest in what other people think.

The animation changes here, giving us a good look at how the girls picture Yusuke: tough, scowling, surrounded by shadows, and backed by an entire army.

In contrast, we've already seen what Yusuke is really like.

Keiko laughs the image off too. Yusuke is more like a "lamb" than a killer and besides, he couldn't order around two people, let alone two hundred. "He doesn't have many friends."

"That's not what I heard," says one of the girls.

"Yeah," goes the other. "I think we would know."

Again, rumors rule here, with whispers in the hall considered more reliable than someone who interacts with Yusuke on a daily basis. Keiko doesn’t have a hope of changing their minds.

Oh, as a side note, I love that they gave Keiko Miyazaki-esque hair. It's very emotive.

Yusuke escapes outside where the principal is still calling for him to report to his office. He overhears a conversation around the corner and we cut to two boys, one of which is showing a wallet off to the other. He explains that some bully tried to rough him up, but he said he was Urameshi's cousin and the bully took off, dropping his wallet in the process. The guy's friend is impressed, but what is he going to do if Yusuke ever finds out he lied? Not to worry, he says, that "blockhead" would probably think it's true even if he did somehow hear.

Yusuke, obviously, does hear about this and he, also obviously, does not believe this guy is his cousin. He looms ominously and they scurry up against a wall, terrified and offering him the wallet as an apology.

"You think I want your money?" Yusuke yells.

YYH is, in many respects, a rather simple story, but I appreciate the hints of complexity in these otherwise straightforward interactions. It's not that this guy used Yusuke's name to steal a wallet, he used it as a form of protection against another bully — a far more sympathetic motivation. It's not that Yusuke's fearsome reputation has resulted in any genuine respect because once people think they're safe they reveal how little they think of his intelligence — he's a "blockhead." And Yusuke, though intimidating and violent, is not your average, schoolyard bully. He doesn't care about money, only the insult and the damage this guy using his name might have done to his reputation. There's a little more nuance here than you might otherwise expect.

Also, note how dark the boys' standard uniforms are and how much they blend into the rest of the world. Yusuke, as our protagonist, stands out in his bright clothing. He was right, he does look better in green!

So he's ready to clobber this kid when one of the teachers arrive: Mr. Iwamoto.

Iwamoto demands to know what's going on, but the boys are too terrified to rat Yusuke out. Noticing the wallet on the ground, he assumes that Yusuke was after their money, something that greatly offends him: "Whatever!" Iwamoto goes on to say that, "No good weeds like you should have been plucked a long time ago," making it clear that he considers Yusuke a hopeless case. The positive aspects that Keiko sees, as well as the complexity the viewer sees — to say nothing of his introduction of saving a kid — aren’t considered here.

Notably, Iwamoto exists in part to show us what Yusuke could become. Not a teacher (he's obviously not attending school enough for that!), but a cynical man who is cruel for cruelty's sake. Yusuke is already barreling down that path, ignoring Keiko's advice, terrorizing other students, trying to punch EMTs, etc. If his life (or afterlife...) hadn't changed through that accident, this is the kind of person Yusuke might have grown up to be, and we can see that clearly in the visual parallels between them. Dark haired men dressed in green who scowl with ease and toss out cutting insults. Yusuke is staring his future in the face.

For now he walks off with a final shot, "You shouldn't talk. It makes you sound stupid." This time Yusuke makes it to the school's entrance and tries to enjoy his second attempt at chewing gum, but someone hits him in the back of the head.

"Okay, somebody's DEAD — ah. Sorry, old man."

"That's Mr. Takenaka to you."

Our principal has finally left the office and hunted down Yusuke for himself! Putting this interaction immediately after the one with Iwamoto allows the viewer to compare them. Yusuke might be irreverent towards his principal, but it's clear there's still some kind of respect between them. Yusuke only starts threatening because he doesn’t realize who hit him and once he does realize it's Takenaka, he immediately apologizes. That "old man" comes across as a teasing insult and Yusuke allows himself to be briefly dragged back towards school, rather than throwing a now classic punch. In turn, Takenaka cares enough about Yusuke to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. He utilizes Yusuke's preferred language — violence — but in a casual way, nonthreatening way: slight hit to the back of his head, noogie, pulling him along by the ear.

It's the sort of physicality we're used to seeing in media between a parent and child who are outwardly antagonistic, but actually share a deep bond. Takenaka is also careful to frame their return to his office as a "discussion," not a punishment, and offers Yusuke tea along with the conversation. Whereas Iwamoto considers Yusuke to be a "weed" that should have been plucked from their school long ago, Takenaka is determined to help Yusuke bloom.

If we're continuing the flower metaphor :D

Yusuke isn't in the mood to play along though. He gets away by using a fake ear, startling Takenaka when it unexpectedly pulls free. Yusuke escapes the school grounds and Takenaka, suffering a back twinge from his fall, can't chase after him. Poor guy. I understand that pain lol.

Yusuke heads home where we're introduced to his mother, Atsuko. Most notable in her first shot is the soft lighting that highlights her looks. We're not told how old she is here, but I believe she's around 28 — and she looks it, if not younger. Given that Yusuke is 14, that means Atsuko was a mom at his age. This is a quick and subtle way to tell us about Yusuke's home life. There are more overt details in this scene — it's at least lunchtime and Atsuko hasn't left her bed yet, she demands that Yusuke make her coffee instead of greeting him, it's all meant to imply (before we actually see) that she's an alcoholic — but her age is another way to highlight the broken household here. There's no partner in sight and she clearly had Yusuke as a teenager. He hasn't had a strong parental figure to take care of him. If anything, Yusuke is taking care of Atsuko here.

"Oh great, mother of the year!" basically sums things up.

Atsuko wants to know why Yusuke isn't in school and he says that everyone is pissing him off today, particularly with their preaching. "Dear, if you hate preaching so much you should live on your own... but you can't do that, can you?" Alongside a rough upbringing, Yusuke is suffering from the common problem of being trapped in a dead-end life. He hates his school, his town, and coming home to find his mom hungover. Yusuke has no prospects and, outside of one principal, no one who is actively working to help him find some. Even the little things he hates, like being preached to, are unavoidable because if you want to live on your own, that requires money. Good luck pulling that off as a middle schooler whose only skill is street fighting!

Yusuke walks off in a huff, literally shouting in a street about what a bad day he's having (and hilariously scaring off pedestrians in the process). His shout brings trouble though. A couple guys appear to ambush him, their boss close behind. The music increases the tension, Yusuke's expression is serious, and we even get a Dutch angle thrown into the mix.

For any who don't know, the Dutch angle is a popular film technique to establish that something is wrong. There's tension in the scene, something uneasy is at play, and the world is now literally off center. It's perhaps most famously used in Do The Right Thing to establish the friction between an Italian-American pizzeria and the predominantly African American neighborhood it's based in.

But it's also used a great deal in horror as a way to say: yup, shit just got real. Scary real.

This Dutch angle introduces a character you may not appreciate at first, but absolutely should: Kazuma Kuwabara.

He's initially the comic relief and that's clear in his introduction. Within seconds we move from that intimidating arrival to, well, seeing him. To be clear, I've got nothing against redheads with big chins, but compared to Yusuke's design, Kuwabara is meant to be the funny looking one. His threat level plummets the moment we get a look at his face, especially in a series that will occasionally use looks as a (supposed) measure of intelligence.

Also, Kuwabara is dressed in light blue so, like Yusuke, we know he's important!

Any assumptions that his appearance isn’t meant to imply a goofy, embarrassing personality are put to rest when Kuwabara starts rambling about how they last time they fought Yusuke just got a cheap shot in and he'll definitely win this time. Yeah, he won't. Yusuke is thrilled by this diversion though and we get a shot of him looking almost as creepy as Keiko's friends think he is. Whatever else might be said about Yusuke, he is absolutely a monster in a fight.

Which we see here. If anyone picked up the series without knowing this was a fighting anime, they'll realize it now. Yusuke's choreography is stylized to show off his skill: he disappears with a 'whoosh' and dark lines to suggest inhuman speed,

attacking Kuwabara with a knee to the face, utilizes flying kicks, lands perfect, precision punches, and ends it all with the toe-tip landing we've come to expect of all powerful fighters. Kuwabara never even got a hit in.

Happy as a clam now, Yusuke wanders off whistling and Kuwabara's friends are left to pick up the pieces. AKA, his likely broken bones. I love that they're legit friends though and not just nameless goons for the sake of giving Kuwabara a small gang (though their names won't come up until later). "That makes 0 wins an 156 loses!" one of them cries, trying to get Kuwabara to stop ending up in the hospital, probably. We establish that Kuwabara is The Most Dramatic Ever when he pulls his broken body into a seated position, shouting, "No! I almost had him that time!"

Then he passes out.

Kuwabara, honey, you obviously did not almost have him, but god bless you for the outlook. The most optimistic thing on this Earth is a well-loved Golden Retriever, but Kuwabara comes in at a very close second.

With his dream to one day beat Yusuke in combat established, we cut to Yusuke wandering the street where the episode opened. "Okay, I'm remembering" he says in a voiceover. "After that I met the kid."

The soccer ball reappears as it rolls to a stop at Yusuke's feet. He grabs it and immediately starts yelling at the kid. Horrible protagonist, right? Well, Yusuke is trying to instill in him the danger of using this street as a playground, a worry the viewer already knows is 100% justified. “Listen, kid, that’s dangerous! There are cars going by that will splatter you into the pavement!” It's one of those quick moments where we get to enjoy Yusuke's duality: he's someone who is nearly making a toddler cry, but for rather understandable reasons. He's got the right idea, but needs to go about it in a more mature manner.

Which is precisely what he attempts to do. Sort of. Yusuke changes gears, though whether it's a more "mature" route is certainly up for debate lol. He tries entertaining the kid instead, raising and lowering the soccer ball to reveal goofy faces.

When these fail to impress, Yusuke goes full out by stuffing the ball into his pants, pushing his nose up with a pair of chopsticks he got from god knows where, and generally just putting on a display.

So Yusuke cares very deeply about his reputation... but only when it comes to those who are an established part of his life. Keiko, Mr. Takenaka, and the other kids at school all need to maintain a particular image of Yusuke, one that he's carefully cultivated. But random pedestrians on the street? Who cares about them? Let them talk.

This shows us that Yusuke does indeed have priorities over his own, selfish goals. Namely, the happiness of some kid is more important to him than looking "cool" for a bunch of strangers. Lots of characters with Yusuke's surface attitude would sneer at the idea of degrading themselves for — their words — some brat. But Yusuke, as we constantly see, actually does have that heart of gold. “Well, if all else fails I can still make kids happy.”

Although... I'm not sure what to make of his display itself. I have the distinct sense that there's something prejudiced here that I'm not able to fully articulate, what with the chopsticks, slanted eyes, bald head, and the like, though to be entirely frank I don't have enough knowledge of Japan's history to say precisely what it might be. Or, really, whether it exists at all. Just something to chew on.

What I am sure about though is the importance of having the child label Yusuke as monster — "Yeah, monster! — but in a delighted manner. Yusuke is indeed some kind a monster, someone who disappoints adults and terrifies his classmates, a demon fighter on the streets too, but here that identity is reworked into something positive.

Having successful secured a laugh, Yusuke tells the kid — calmly this time — to go play elsewhere. The toddler stares up at him with the blank expression only kids can manage.

Well, kids and whatever headspace I'm in after writing these metas.

To absolutely no one's surprise except Yusuke's, the kid does not go elsewhere. Instead, he continues kicking the ball down the street, causing Yusuke to exclaim, “Dammit, what’s the use? The kid can get smashed by a car for all I care!” Liar, liar.

The picture becomes desaturated as the kid kicks the ball and it flies into the street, time slowing down to show it landing precisely in the middle of the road. Yusuke again yells for him to stay put, but when has a toddler ever listened? He begins to walk into the road as our driver arrives, speeding, swerving, and paying more attention to the girl at his side than what's in front of him.

This time, we see the accident from the front with both Yusuke and the kid presented equally.

There's a cut to black and when we return we're in the present, Yusuke floating above the policemen now investigating the scene. “So that’s it? I’m roadkill?” As Yusuke realizes he's dead, specifically that he's a ghost, a voice goes,

"Bingo! Bingo! You win the prize!"

A woman has appeared who is quite obviously othered by the standards of the episode so far. Unlike the greens, blues, and browns of the series' modern clothes, she's dressed in hot pink kimono with blue hair to match. She's also, you know, floating on an oar.

“I didn’t expect you to figure it out so quickly," she says, referring to Yusuke's revelation that he's dead. Apparently, those who meet unexpected and/or violent ends tend to take some time coming to terms with their demise. It's a nice acknowledgment of Yusuke's intelligence in an interaction that's otherwise... not great for his self-esteem.

Meaning, this woman is about to drag him lol.

She introduces herself as Botan, pilot of the River Styx and guider of souls to the afterlife. You might also know her as the Grim Reaper.

(Hey, RWBY fans: I originally wrote that as Grimm Reaper 🤦‍♀️)

It's an claim Yusuke takes issue with because 1. Botan is too pretty to be the Grim Reaper and 2. If she was really some god of death she'd be taking this much more seriously, not laughing and saying, "Bingo!" For the audience this does two things. First, it acknowledges our own expectations and validates them. Yusuke's world isn't so far removed from our own that he takes Botan's looks and personality at face value, he also expected a skeleton with a scythe. So don't worry, all the weird stuff in this series is weird to our protagonist too. They'll be explanations. Or, even if there’s not, you’re not wrong for being surprised.

Second, it sets up the very common theme in YYH of undermining those common assumptions again and again and again. We've already seen it with Yusuke, wherein characters who look and act a certain way are, supposedly, destined to be that person and nothing more. Yusuke is meant to be just a "weed," a dumb, violent, angry loser who goes nowhere in life... but we already know he's more than that. Botan is supposed to be scary and serious, but she says nah, I want to be cute and bubbly instead. No character in YYH embodies who they're "supposed" to be when you look past those surface characterizations. They play the part of archetypes — and do keep certain parts of their expected personalities — but they're also far more well-rounded than that. Which yeah, is something most people expect from any story nowadays, but YYH is particularly adept at making you think you're watching Simple Show A only to turn around and surprise you with More Complex Show B.

It's great, trust me.

So Yusuke is pissed that Botan isn't adhering to those expectations, in the same way that he works hard to validate others expectations of him. He doesn't know how to deal with someone challenging his world view yet. Rather than angering Botan though, she just nods and says that this response makes sense for him. “Rather than being scared, or surprised, you yell a lot and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about." Taking out a notebook, she quickly summarizes everything we learned in the flashback — minus Yusuke's complexities: he's fourteen, in middle school, is ill-tempered, violent, hates authority, and is a horrible student.

Typically, Yusuke responds by getting angry and trying to snatch the booklet out of her hands, only for Botan to pull it out of his reach, laughing. The tables have turned! Rather than being surrounded by people who cower at Yusuke's imposed authority, he now finds himself faced with someone who laughs at his transparent attempts to take control of the situation.

Calming down, Yusuke wants to know if the kid he saved is really alright and Botan offers to let him see for himself. That offer produces Yusuke's first, genuine smile.

They fly to the hospital where a doctor is in the process of giving the kid a clean bill of health, his mother crying with relief.

That's enough for Yusuke. “Alright, Botan, I’ve got no regrets, so you can take me to hell or wherever it is I’m going.”

That tells you all you need to know about Yusuke's self-worth, despite his bad boy attitude. His life is a dead-end as far as he can see and most of those around him haven't done anything to dissuade him of that idea. He says he doesn't care if the kid lives or dies, but then instinctively saves him. Post his death, Yusuke doesn't have anything he considers a regret, or anything he'd like to do before he leaves, like saying goodbye to a loved one. Oh, he's also pretty sure he's going to hell and has resigned himself to that without a fight.

Uplifting!

Botan just laughs though, saying that she's actually here to offer Yusuke an "ordeal" that could bring him back to life. See, he wasn't supposed to die today — let alone die saving a kid — and frankly they don't know what to do with him. It's another neat summary of what we've already learned: Yusuke is a far more complicated case than the afterlife assumed and now, when push comes to shove, deciding whether he belongs in heaven or hell is... muddled.

There's a fantastic story there about the problems with an afterlife that reduces a person's entire life to a few surface characteristics recorded in a book, refusing to acknowledge the context of their situation, or their capacity for change. “Run someone with your credentials a thousand times and they never would have saved a kid like that." Except, of course, Yusuke did save him, so those "credentials" are suspect, to say the least. However, YYH is not a story that explores these issues. Instead, I recommend you watch this!

Rather than being upset at the afterlife's low opinion of him (because let's be real, Yusuke shares it), he latches onto a little detail Botan let slip. If he wasn't supposed to die today... then was the kid?

Mmm... no. Actually, without the chaos of Yusuke jumping into the road, the driver would have swerved at the last second and the kid would have not only lived, but actually come out with one less scrape.

So Yusuke is obviously upset by this news! I would be too!! Holy shit, hang onto the "it's the thought that counts" message with everything you've got.

Also, don't think too much about the fact that the afterlife apparently knows exactly what will happen to people, down to how many cuts they accumulate in an accident. Also, don't think too much about where the afterlife foreseeing the crash begins and the unexpectedness of Yusuke interfering ends. That way lies madness. This will never come up again, so just let it go.

Sorry, 2013 me hijacked the post for a second.

As said, Yusuke is understandably upset by this revelation and as he fumes I'm reminded that this series likes to pull some amazing expressions.

Botan reiterates that it's all fine because Yusuke can come back to life. Weren't you listening? He should feel honored, in fact, considering that an offer like this only arrives every 100 years or so. Well, that explains why all of humanity isn't grappling with people coming back to life on the daily. One person every generation isn't going to cause much of a stir.

However, instead of jumping at the chance Yusuke announces that Botan is just like the teachers at school: she doesn't know what she's talking about. “You said yourself my life was kind of pathetic, right?” he says, going on to explain that everyone will be happier now that he's dead. His school won't have to deal with his behavior, Keiko won't have to nag him, and his mom will be able to party whenever she wants. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

Hmm, this feels familiar.

Don't worry, Yusuke doesn't need to experience a whole alternate reality to get the message.

“I’m sorry you feel that way at such an early age," Botan says and she is sorry, because despite her teasing nature that's a legitimately horrifying thing to believe. Yusuke won't budge though and after a little back-and-forth Botan leaves, telling Yusuke he should think it over while visiting his wake. She'll come back once he decides what to do.

“Do you have worms in your ears, lady? I did decide!” but Botan is long gone.

We cut to that night where Yusuke has indeed decided to attend his own wake. Maybe because of Botan's advice, maybe because he's just morbidly curious. We’re not given insight into the decision.

Atsuko is a mess, to put it mildly, not dressed for the occasion and sitting slumped against the way, staring vacantly as the guests offer their condolences. Yusuke is surprised by the fact that his entire class is here, but quickly writes them off when he sees two of the boys laughing. I'm on the fence about this detail, which I'll unpack in just a second.

First though, Yusuke sees Keiko exiting the house, inconsolable in her grief. She collapses on the ground with her two friends trying to offer comfort, despite the fact that they had nothing good to say about Yusuke himself. Good on them.

Before he can think too long on this though, Yusuke is distracted by Kuwabara's arrival. Unlike Keiko's crying, he expresses his grief through yelling. Specifically, yelling at Yusuke. For dying. For daring to "run away." His own friends are physically holding him back as he charges into the wake, screaming, “Who am I gonna fight now, huh? Who am I gonna fight?" It's not really about the fighting, of course. At least, not the fighting alone. "You’re supposed to be here for me," Kuwabara finishes, the punch he's thrown at Yusuke's photo going limp and catching his first tear.

You know, for all the goofy expressions, this show really is gorgeous. Just wait until we get to the fight animations.

Kuwabara's reaction is why I hesitate to write off the classmates like Yusuke has. Granted, we have no reason to believe that they care for him as Kuwabara does — they're nameless background characters defined only by their terror of "the great Urameshi" — but it's still a split second taken out of context. We don't know what they were laughing at, or if laughing is a part of their grief. God knows I personally laugh at the most inappropriate moments. If you tell me someone has just died there is a very good chance I will laugh awkwardly as I try to process that. It’s just a reflex. All of which I bring up not because these side characters are important, but because Yusuke's perception of his own worth is. The point of each of these moments is to show that those around him have always cared for him, even if Yusuke didn't notice. It's nice to think that extends to his classmates too. The variety likewise exists to show us how people grieve differently, with Kuwabara's friends not understanding that this is how he's working through the trauma: “This place is for mourning!” He is mourning, even if his way of mourning isn't as socially acceptable as Keiko's. So if screaming and throwing punches is valid, crying is valid, staring stoically in a drunk stupor is valid... why not laughter too?

Not likely, perhaps, but possible.

As an additional possibility to chew on, watching this premier again, it struck me how more emotional Kuwabara's scene is compared to Keiko's. Don't get me wrong, crying and calling Yusuke’s name gets the point across, but it's two seconds of generic grief compared to a much longer scene rife with intensity. When Kuwabara arrives the music swells and everyone is forced to pay attention to him. His grief is loud, violent, and given symbolism with his fist and the photo. There's more effort put into his reaction, frankly, so it wouldn't surprise me if fans started shipping them after this. That grief combined with an "enemies to lovers" possibility is a pretty potent mix. To be clear, Yusuke/Keiko is the (oh so obvious) canonical endgame and in the fandom Yusuke/Kuwabara can't compare to another slash ship that will turn up later, but this is a good example of how writers can craft some Very Gay Scenes without realizing it. When you have the girl crying prettily for a second and the guy absolutely losing his mind over Yusuke's death, questioning his purpose now, his support network, and then collapsing in grief... don't be surprised if your audience goes, "Oh hey, maybe they'd be a good couple instead."

But I digress.

The only people who are unquestioningly happy about Yusuke's passing are Mr. Iwamoto and his co-conspirator, Mr. Akashi. You know Akashi is another bad guy because he has bucked teeth and "ugliness" is an easy way to code for evilness. YYH is not immune to those mistakes :/

These two are really something else though, standing in the middle of a wake and claiming it's “too bad that car wasn’t big enough for them too," referring to Kuwabara and his friends. Wow! What stellar members of the academic community. Iwamoto goes on to say that Yusuke dying at least accomplished something good. Not, mind you, saving the life of a child, but rather looking good for their school's reputation. Akashi agrees, but says it's likely Yusuke only accidentally saved him while trying to steal the kid's lunch money. Remember, that accusation of theft is the one thing Yusuke has said outright that he does not do.

He's pissed listening to all this — wouldn't you be? — but knows by now he can't do anything about it. In another fantastic shot, Yusuke hovers his hand over Iwamoto's shoulder, desperate to grab him, when Takenaka's arrives there instead.

“What do you suppose is more disgraceful? That boy showing his misery, or your insensitive and idiotic words!”

HELL YEAH. You tell 'em, Mr. Takenaka.

Yusuke gets his third shock of the night at this passionate defense. Takenaka leaves the teachers to go pay his respects, but admits to Yusuke's picture that he just can't speak well of him. He was surprised to hear that Yusuke gave up his life for another and it's a fact that he acted selfishly. Though he doesn't say it in as many words, Takenaka explains that he's not grieving because Yusuke was a good person, but because it's so clear to him that he might have been. “Why didn’t you stay? You could have made something great out of yourself.”

Normally, "Why didn't you stay?" is just something for the living to grapple with, as the dead obviously don't have any say in what happens to them. But Yusuke does. It's here that the lighting grows soft again and Yusuke considers Takenaka's words. Keiko and Kuwabara grieve for who he was, but Takenaka grieves for who Yusuke could have been — someone that might still exist if Yusuke decides to undergo this ordeal.

Atsuko adds fuel to the emotional fire, breaking down and hiding her face in her knees.

Finally, the kid Yusuke saved arrives with his mother. Because yes, Yusuke saved him in every way that matters, considering no one else knows — or will know — that he'd have lived anyway. I like that the show doesn't allow that knowledge to undermine the emotion of their arrival, or what Yusuke’s act meant to them.

The mom tells her son to pay his respects and the kid thanks Yusuke for saving him, and for "making faces." He clearly doesn't get what's going on here. This is confirmed as the two leave and he asks his mom if he can play with Yusuke again tomorrow. “I know some people sounded angry at him, but he’s really nice!"

They're probably just crying because they want to play with him too, he thinks, which just makes his mom join in. Everyone is crying in this club tonight.

Those words are the cincher for Yusuke and with a brief montage of all the grief he's witnessed, he makes his decision.

We cut to later that night where Yusuke floats above the city, admiring the moon. Botan reappears and he asks, “Have you ever not known about something that seemed obvious to everyone else?” Yes, everyone has experienced that at one point or another. She asks if he's made his decision and Yusuke agrees to try and come back to life.

Emotional revelations out of the way, we're allowed another tone shift as Botan yells with joy, speeding off and causing Yusuke to grab hold of the end of her oar, lest he be left behind. Cranky as always, he demands to know where they're going. "To the spirit world, of course!" They're off to see someone who can explain the ordeal and give Yusuke the tool needed to complete it. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.

Thus ends our very first episode! Ah, the nostalgia. This is part one of a four arc series, with the anime cutting out a lot of the filler stories found at the start of the manga — a smart decision, I think. They primarily do the work of teaching Yusuke what he learned at the wake, so if you can accomplish that as quickly as the adaptation did, all the better. Especially since Yusuke needs to grow a great deal beyond the basic understanding that people might, sort of care for him, and that work will occur primarily through a job he's going to take on. The series isn't really about his death and it's not about an attempt to come back either — it's about what happens once you get that second chance. So this is the setup, but it's important setup all the same.

No need to skip ahead though. I've blathered enough for one recap. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you when the writing gods next bless me with energy! 💜

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH recaps #mymetas

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yarrowleef · 4 years ago

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Daffodil, Laurel, Lily, Sunflower, Violet, and Wisteria? Also Begonia but I'd like to know your favorites of the old covers and the newer/reprint covers. And the Russian Warrior Cat covers too! Some of their art is quite pretty.

laurel, violet and sunflower answered previously

Daffodil: When did you first start reading the series?

Start of third grade when I was 8 years old, which I believe was 2007!! .......so like literally most of my life I have given to these cursed cat books. I remember The Sight was the most recent release. It was the first real book series I ever read, and I think I went through the first 2 series within a couple months.

Prior to that I just read stand-alone books and I only read because I wanted to win “accelerated reader” points....i couldn’t do sports, so reading was the only thing I could win at AND I DID WIN. but warriors was the first thing I read that I was actually like...into. and realized I could read for reasons OTHER then winning the most points.

Lily: If your five favorite characters were foods, what would they be?

asdfghgfdxs I honestly have no idea how to answer this question, in part because I don’t think I even have 5 favorite characters. I suppose Firestar is doritos out of obligation. What else can he be?? I mean ok flaming hot cheetos maybe seems more fitting on the surface because ~flame-y~ but lets be honest, Firestar is a bit too bland a character to be spicy. He is one of my favorites for nostalgia sake, I mean it’s Firestar, how can I not be fond of him?

I also have a soft spot for Scourge just because of the sheer ridiculous audacity of him. I wish he’d come back as an evil ghost. Anyway, when I was about 9 and going through my brief (incredibly unfortunate) twilight phase (I was just jumping on the popularity bandwagon tbh) I went to Hot Topic right before one of the movie premieres and they had this...edible bag of blood? it wasn’t actual blood obviously, but I remember it was advertised as being really high in iron to mimic blood, but it was really this sickly sweet mystery juice packaged inside of a fake hospital blood bag. I of course bought it because I went through my edgy phase early, and for some reason thought it would look cool to pretend I was drinking blood. It was the most disgusting liquid i have ever consumed but hey it did also have the unpleasant metallic tang of blood because I guess they were going for authenticity over edibility, so it’s not like I didn’t get what I paid for (or rather what my mom paid for, because i was 9)

Anyway, Scourge is that. He’s awful fake blood juice from the Hot Topic in the mall.

That's all I got.

Wisteria: Are you looking forward to the Warriors movie?

YES ABSOLUTLEY!!

don't get me wrong, I fully expect it to be terrible. Embarrassing even. I expect they will try to change it for a wider audience appeal, and of course it will end up bad, BUT IT WILL BE SO FUNNY!! I have this inescapable morbid curiosity about it, like I really want to see what they try to do. Like watching a train crash. I can't help it.

Warriors is a silly series. I have a feeling this is why a movie hasn't been made yet, even I would have no idea who to market it for. Yes it's violent and touches on very dark topics, but the fact that its about cute little cats with very dumb names coupled with those dark topics in a way makes it look even MORE silly. I don’t think Warriors will ever have wide appeal outside of its fanbase, the concept looks too ridiculous if you’re not someone already into animal xenofiction like this, but a movie is inevitably going to try to have wider appeal anyway because that's what movie studios feel they need to do. They will either water it down, or worse, try to go a more family friendly comedy route since that’s how general audiences are used to seeing animated talking animals and they think that's the only “”safe”” way to market an animal movie, which will 100% ruin it either way. The second one is more likely, I mean why else do you think they hired the guys who wrote kung fu panda, and the recent alvin and the chipmunks and Spongebob movies to make the script?? [no shade to kung-fu panda, it’s good in it’s own way, but it is not the same vibe as warrior cats at all]. For me, this is simultaneously the absolute best and the absolute worse scenario, because like, it’s horrible, its an insult to everything I love about the warriors world, i have surreal nightmares about it, but it’s so horrible it f*cking hilarious ya know? how can you not be a little curious to watch that train crash (and the outraged reaction posts that will inevitably follow)????

A warriors movie will be bad, I can't see any way that it won't be bad, and honestly? I think that's ok. I don't need a good movie, I simply need a good laugh, and then I'll go back to watching fan animations which will always be more interesting anyway because they don't feel the need to have ~mass appeal~

Listen, we don't actually need a good official adaptation. In some ways, a good adaptation might be bad for the fandom. The fandom is cool because of how wildly different and creative it is, the series is so bare bones with no consistent official art that people can go nuts with it. I worry on the off chance we get a really good adaptation, it might take over the books. People might be less likely to draw/create with their own wild bonkers interpretations of canon in favor of sticking closer to what the official adaptation presented us with, and idk if I want that. I also def don't want to deal with searching "warrior cats" for the rest of my life to only bring up gifs/discussions of the movie/tv show, rendering material and fan creations for the books almost impossible to find. This is something i've suffered with when other books i like get popular adaptations, where as series with bad adaptations (like percy jackson) I have less trouble finding content about the books.

Begonia: Which book cover is your favorite?

So of the old covers I admit i have a soft spot for the darkest hour, it was my favorite as a kid and I know I tried to redraw it several times. Warrior covers have a tendency to blend together, there’s only so many ways to draw mysterious cats fighting, but I think this cover is one of the most memorable for me, if only for the center art (shout out to the old Fire and Ice cover though, I also really like the center art on that. I wish the box had kept being used for more than just a single cat face in the later series)

but now that i’ve gone and looked, I really really like the full cover art for Tallstar’s Revenge, the colors just look super nice and match his eyes and everything. Tallstar having a fun and more unique looking design gives it extra points. Maybe I just like warm tones idk. And shout out to Wayne for also imagining the moor as a golden-brown field even though it’s probably supposed to be green.

out of the new covers, I like the vibe of Dark River, it just looks spooky and mysterious......and I think this artists cats look better from the side, they are always a little crooked from the front (honorable mention to Place of No Stars cover, I really like the colors and the ominous vibe, it definitely had an impact when I first saw that cover, I just don’t love the look of the cats faces blown up close from the front. The more I look at it the more off it becomes, but the colors are cool)

and I definitely agree the Russian warrior cats art has a very charming look to it, I like seeing it whenever it comes across my dash, but unfortunately I’m having trouble finding a catalogue of it to look at so I can’t pick a favorite

#warrior cats #ask #yarrow speaks #ask game #LMAO typed out half a response then put it in my drafts and forgot for 4 days #LONG POST

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imnotwolverine · 5 years ago

Text

The Witcher way

Henry Cavill x OC Lisa - multi-chapter fic

Author’s note: Smutty smut, fluffy fluff and a few skipping heartbeats. Lisa and Henry get back to work, but life - as usual - offers them a challenge or two.

Word count: 1.572

Disclaimer: fluff and smut

This is part 18 of the Tea for Two story.

You can find the Masterlist here.

< Go back to part 17

‘Pizza!’

Henry cheered as we heard a faint knock on the door of the small cottage, the floorboards creaking under his weight as he sprinted down the hallway to open up. I chuckled softly and half-listened in on the conversation between the delivery boy - obviously a fan - and Henry as I moved to the small kitchen to get some paper towels and cutlery.

It was Sunday evening and tomorrow morning working life was starting again. The Witcher production was beginning its first month of pre-production in the Scottish highlands, which offered not only beautifully picturesque landscapes..but also a complete lack of supermarkets that were opened on Sundays.

A challenge, surely, but one that was easily overcome by Henry whom had taken it upon himself to figure out if we could order in. We could; Pizza... Pizza... And more pizza.

And that was really all we needed right now, our bodies quite travel worn from the long trip from our - did I mention I officially moved in? - London home to this cute little cottage in the Scottish highlands.

The rural style kitchen of the cottage was simple at best. A small hob with an oven, an even smaller fridge, a porcelain sink and an old oak dinner table that stood below the paned window, an empty vase and some candles placed on top to spruce the room up ever so slightly.

I leaned on the rough wood of the table as I peeked out of the window, the delivery boy now climbing back on his scooter, while laughing at something Henry said, his hand revving the engine back to roaring life.

Wandering back into the hallway I was met by a giddy-with-excitement Henry, the boxes with pizzas and some drinks stacked carefully in his arms.

‘Smells good!’ I hummed, appreciatively sniffing in the savoury smells.

‘Sure does.’ He agreed, his eyes moving to the living room. ‘Couch?’

‘Yes pur-lease.’ I smiled, curtsying slightly as Henry offered me first entry to the living room.

As Henry started to investigate the pizzas I turned on the television, happily surprised to find it offered the functionality to log in to Netflix.

‘Netflix and chill?’ I purred, looking over at Henry who had already dug into one of the pizzas, his teeth biting into an oozing hot slice of pepperoni pizza. He nodded, slightly embarrassed by his manners and moved up a hand to hide the mess of cheese strings that were hanging from the corner of his mouth. I laughed, poking him in the arm and reached for the box to also take a slice, my other hand scrolling through the new additions.

Some cooking shows, some mildly interesting documentaries, some Netflix originals that did not look promising in the slightest..and then..the Witcher season 3.

‘Hey. Have you seen the new season yet?’ I quirked up an eyebrow, looking at Henry as he was once again mid bite. He shrugged and quickly swallowed his bite. ‘Only the first episode…Premiere nights you know.’ He winked. ‘Want to maybe..continue? Call it work research before we start shooting the next season?’ I tried, Henry already grabbing a new slice of the pizza. ‘Sure. I’ll try to not hate seeing myself.’ He said casually.

‘Bear!’ I sighed, giving him a exasperated yet comforting smile. ‘You know I don’t want you to feel that way. If you don’t like it, we’ll watch something else.’ I said before finally taking a bite, humming in satisfaction as the hot cheesy goodness oozed down my tongue. ‘So gooooood.’ I groaned, barely noticing Henry’s hand reaching for the remote, clicking on “ok”.

The episode started and we ate and ate, Henry occasionally making comments on scenes he had fond..or not so fond memories of. Especially nude scenes got him all quiet and awkward.

I smiled, laying against his chest, enjoying the series without much of a thought. No thought other then; Holy fuck, Geralt is so hot.

To realise that the very man was now being my personal pillow, was more then a little arousing.

I looked at him during a sex scene between Yennefer and Geralt, seeing him once more stare in utter silence.

Hmm…

I Moved my hand to his chest and wrapped my leg over his lap, crawling on top of him just like Yennefer had gotten onto Geralt. Our eyes met, his blue orbs looking at me with confusion, before realising what I was onto, my lips slowly inching down to his mouth. He moved back a little, leaning into the soft pillows of the fluffy brown couch before letting out a pent up sigh, his eyes quickly darkening. ‘Don’t be shy now…Geralt.’ I said playfully, kissing him more entrancingly. His hunger was now fully awakened, a hunger that sparkled in his eyes as his lips curled up ever so slightly. ‘Hmmmpf.’ He growled.

Geralt is in the house.

In one fell swoop he pushed the pizza box behind me off the couch and pushed himself down onto me, my back now flat on the pillows. His jaw clenched as his nostrils flared - with annoyance or lust.. I did not know.

‘That scent…’ He rumbled in Geralt’s low, raspy voice, roughly moving his hand through my hair. I bit my lip, expectantly, feeling him move his nose down my neck, sniffing me like a touch-deprived animal, his hands starting to tug at my pyjama pants. He looked down at me, embalming me with his wanton gaze, his arms moving to quickly take of his shirt.

‘What’s taking you so long?’ I said in Yennefer’s cocky voice, making him growl even lower, his large body quickly climbing back on top of me, rubbing himself against my groin. He was ..very..excited.

His heavy erection already pressing eagerly through the fabric that separated us, making me shiver in anticipation. I forced myself to breath in deeply, closing my eyes as I felt his coarse fingers near the trim of my lacy underwear, the fabric being pulled away with ease before the silky skin of his erection pressed against my core.

I gasped at the sensation, my eyes shooting open at him as he pressed higher, my clit awakening in an instant. ‘Hmmm…you’re quite ready.’ He said gruffly, before penetrating me in one smooth motion, making us both groan. Still half clothed, it felt ever as hasty and passionate as Geralt and Yennefer on screen, our bodies a tumble of passion.

The series already continued with some grave fight scene, but we didn’t care. We ravaged each other, our hair wild, our hands grasping at each other, searching for skin until we finally found our release, our bodies crashing back onto the couch.

His love making had been so rough I could only shiver and shake when he was done, my legs splayed out as he got up slightly, cupping my cheek, demanding me to look at him. ‘Hey..you okay?’ I looked at him, still shaking. ‘Wew…’ I panted. An exhausted, slightly pained smile played on my lips.

‘Oh my..’ I continued, still panting and shivering. He pulled up his pants and pulled me onto his lap, kissing me sweetly on my temple. I snuggled away in his chest, still a bit shaky, but smiling.

I looked back at the screen. The episode had ended, credits rolling as a loomy soundtrack played.

‘Okay, roleplaying at own risk.’ I finally said, sniffling, then rolling up further in his arms, putting my head against his chest. My innards were on fire and electricity kept shooting through my nerves every few seconds or so.

I guess this is what one would call “fucked out”.

He wrapped me more gently in his arms, like a babe, kissing my forehead, sighing. ‘I’m sorry.’ He whispered. I smiled and shook my head. ‘Superman..super sex.’ I shrugged, feeling another spike shoot through my body, making me stiffen. He kissed my head again, sniffling softly as he kept me snug against his chest. We sat there for a moment while my body slowly quieted down.

‘Oh..I’m leaking…’ I said a bit embarrassed, feeling it go through my panties.

Without question he stood up, keeping me snug in his arms as he walked through the small hallway to the quaint bathroom. I sniggered.

‘I CAN walk you know.’

‘Mhm.’ He smiled, hoisting me up further, placing a pillowy kiss on my lips. ‘I know.’ He said smugly, still not lowering me down.

He turned on the shower and walked us into it, our clothes quickly soaking in the hot water. He huddled over me, shielding me from direct water in my face, his lips caressing me with the sweetest of kisses.

‘A bit of romcom romance to wash off my sin.’ He whispered, cheekily grinning at me. I smiled, relaxing more into his strong arms as the hot water relaxed me to the point that I felt like putty in his arms. He kissed me one more time before lowering me down slowly.

Our clothes were now heavy with water, our hair falling like curtains around our faces.

‘Maybe that’s a roleplaying more to my liking.’ I said, biting his lip playfully. He laughed, then started to pull off his socks, pants and trunks. I in turn pulled off my panties and shirt. We giggled, throwing the soaked clothes in a corner of the shower, before giving each other another lingering kiss. ‘Hmm.’ He hummed, enveloping me once more in his arms as I soaped up his hair. ‘My sweet Geralt.’ I smiled.

—

The next morning I was the first to leave for work. But I didn’t feel all too well. Actually not well at all. I rushed to the toilet, throwing up, feeling my lower back all cramped as I clamped onto the toilet.

‘Mmmpff.’ I groaned, taking a few deep breaths. My stomach was pretty upset.

I could hear Kal’s nails ticking on the floor behind me, a wet nose pushing against me, asking me what I was up to.

I sat up a bit, feeling nauseous from just breathing. Kal whined softly, pushing his face through my arm and licking my face.

‘Pfff.. I hope it wasn’t the pizza, or Henry will be next.’ I mumbled, giving him a stroke through his thick fur.

‘Hey boy.’

I forced myself to get up, feeling weak in the legs. This was not like me…I took a deep breath through my nose, keeping my mouth fell shut but immediately feeling another wave come over me. I crouched down again, throwing up once more. Though it mostly was dry heaving now. I flushed and groaned in dismay. NO. I can’t be sick on my first day back at work. Get it together girl. Rawr!

I spritzed my face with some cold water from the sink and saw Kal looking at me with a confused look. Had he ever seen a human vomit? I pulled myself back up and looked into the mirror. I looked normal, I guess. Not pale, or sweaty. I felt my cheeks. They were fine. Yea..maybe just some bad food. I washed my mouth, then opened the drawer and popped some pain killers in my mouth.

Kissing a sleeping Henry goodbye I went off to work.

—

Throughout the day I started feeling a bit better. It was quite calm at work with a few meetings and some prep work, leaving me with a lot of spare moments to give way to a certain nervousness. Was there some other reason I had felt sick this morning? Did I maybe not take my pill at the right times during our holiday?

I was sitting in the back of the set, waiting for others to move around some set pieces and looked around. Nobody was watching. Quietly I squeezed one of my breasts. Painful. Oh gods. Could it be…? I started rummaging through my bag, looking at my pill strip. I was only 3 quarters through. It was too early. I felt my breath quicken, my head a little light. ‘Okey..calm down girl. Let’s..Let’s not overreact.’

During my lunch break I borrowed a car from a colleague to buy some pregnancy tests, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

Should I tell him? Should I tell him?

Should I?

I came home, good smells coming from the kitchen. I plopped down my bag, was greeted by an overly excited Kal and walked into the kitchen.

A very sexy, domestic Henry was wearing a fitted t-shirt, jeans and apron. ‘Hey..what’s cooking good-lookin’?’ I quipped, giving him a quick peck on the cheek before looking over his shoulder at the cut vegetables on the wooden board.

‘Hello dear.’ He gave me a playful pat on the butt. ‘Something simple. Vegetarian pasta.’ He shrugged. ‘Well..it smells a-ma-zing.’ I said, smiling as his knife continued to cut up vegetables. ‘How was your day?’ He asked. I stole a bit of cheese from his cutting board and moved to the table, plopping down on one of the chairs.

‘Not great. Felt very ill this morning. Maybe I ate something bad..’ I frowned. ‘Did you have any stomach pains by any chance?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really.’

I touched my breast again, my lips forming a thin, unsure line. ‘I think we need to…check..if this is not something else..’ I said, hesitatingly. He looked up and over his shoulder, his face a bit confused, first looking at my face, then at the hand on my breast. His lips parted as his eyes darted back to mine.

‘Wh..’ He breathed, turning fully towards me, one of his arms ghosting over the stove to push a pan with some frying onions off the stove before they’d burn.

His eyes widened and within the blink of an eye he was kneeling before me, a hand cupping my cheek while the other folded around the hand on my lap. I looked down at our hands on my lap, my throat suddenly feeling dry as sandpaper. ‘I got some pregnancy tests on the way back home.’ I said softly, my breath hitching.

‘OH.’ He gasped, his mouth slightly agape as he pulled me in for a hug. I could almost feel the joy radiate from him. His long cherished dream.

‘So…do you have to…pee?’ He looked at me, curiously. I sniffled. ‘I believe it’s best in the morning.. But I still have to read the wrapper.’ I sighed, laying my head against his shoulder. He nodded, then wrapped me more tightly in his arms. ‘Oh my.’ He sighed, finally letting out the breath he had been holding.

‘I’m scared.’ I said in hushed tone.

He cupped my cheek again, keeping his other arm safely wrapped around me as he searched for words.

‘I don’t know if I’m ready.’ I said, looking up into his eyes. They became a shade sadder.

‘Let’s…give it a moment. And…see what it is first?’ He said, raising his eyebrows in an expression mixed between joy and confusion, before deciding it was best to just fully wrap me in his arms, his fingers gently coaxing me to lean into him as he laid his head in my neck.

—

The next morning we both awoke anxiously. We did not even yawn or stretch, just ..straight to the bathroom. I peed on one of the sticks, while Henry petted Kal nervously, waiting on the door step with the door opened. Our eyes met, both our faces etched with tense nerves as I put the stick on the edge of the sink. I didn’t feel terribly sick this morning, but my stomach sure was turning. I finished peeing, flushed, and looked at the stick. No signs yet. ‘A few minutes,’ Henry whispered, eyeing the stick as it lay there balancing on the white porcelain.

I sighed, then walked up to Henry, hugging him. ‘Let’s…get breakfast.’ I said, hoping it would take our mind of the matter just long enough to calm our nerves. He nodded.

Well..we never munched down our breakfast so fast, quietly shoving it into our mouths.

Before re-entering the bathroom, he grasped my arm. ‘No matter what happens. We’re in it together. I support you and love you.’ He said, looking at me intensely before pressing a kiss on my lips. I nodded, then walked to the sink, my eyes immediately sinking down to the little stick as it lay there, forlorn.

Negative.

I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding, the spinning world suddenly coming to a halt.

I could feel Henry’s arms as they tentatively wrapped around me, his hands curling over my belly. He was quiet. His breath slow and warm in my neck. And I wasn’t sure what to do. After a long exhale I finally looked up, our eyes looking at one another through the mirror.

‘Gods.’ I breathed.

His face was a touch pained, his jaw clenching. A sight that made me hurt beyond words. I knew he was trying to keep it together, to be calm and supportive, to give me space. But what about him?

I turned around, looking at him directly, wrapping my arms around him. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked gently.

He drew in a deep, sharp breath, his deep blue eyes meeting my green ones. ‘Okay.’ He nodded, slowly accepting the reality as it was. ‘..A bit of a rollercoaster of emotions.’ He sighed again, looking over my shoulder to see the negative result once more, burning the image of the offensive piece of plastic in his mind.

I pulled his face towards me, laying a most gentle kiss on his lips. ‘I love you bear. And please know, that it will come. Just…not yet. We know each other for a little over half a year. Besides parenthood still feels kind of daunting to me…pregnancy especially. I guess I need to get used to the idea first before we…’ I looked back in his eyes, losing my trail of thoughts.

‘I know. And I understand.’ He was obviously a bit sad, his blue eyes blazing with emotions unspoken.

I smiled feebly.

‘I love you I love you I love you.’ I whispered, squeezing him into the hardest, most snug hug I could manage. He hummed quietly, also pulling his arms more tightly around me. ‘I love you too my dearest.’

Part 19 >

#henry cavill fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #henry cavill #henry cavill fluff #henry cavill smut #geralt smut #witcher #teafortwo #scotland #henry cavill x oc #pregnancytest #smut

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minijenn · 5 years ago

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Universe Falls turns 5 years old this week

I was 19 when I started it and still in college, in the throes of depression bc I hated college and wanted out even during the start of my sophomore year. I was homesick and had only a handful of friends bc I was shy as fuck back then and terrified of rejection (and had gone from a small pond back in high school where I was fairly popular to being an absolute nobody in college). I really, really fucking hated it during my freshman year and in particular and begged my dad to let me come home and go to college there instead of thousands of miles away. But for better or worse he made me stick it out even though I was absolutely miserable. But if there was anything that got me through that horrible freshman year it was my discovery of two shows:

Steven Universe and Gravity Falls

I binged SU first, having seen it when it first aired back in 2013 but then got back on the bandwagon for it around the time its first season ended, which was when I became a devout fan. GF was something I discovered through tumblr, I watched it not long after Not What He Seems premiered and fell in love hard and fast. I would spend hours watching and rewatching these episodes, reading fics and fan theories, speculating on what was going to happen next. Never before in my life had I ever discovered two shows that brought be so much joy and comfort until these two came into my life. I loved these characters, felt like they were the friends I knew I was lacking even though they were fictional. But they felt real, they felt alive to me.

So fast forward to August/September 2015. I had just started my sophomore year and so far wasn’t having any better of a time than I had when I was a freshman. I still clung onto GF and SU as new, very exciting episodes were airing for both (that was the month we got the Last Mabelcorn and Catch and Release, for reference’s sake). And then, one night, while I was falling asleep in my cramp dorm room I shared with a roommate I couldn’t stand, the thought occurred to me:

What if you brought these two things you loved so much... together?

It was a random thought, almost insignificant, but in the days that followed, I just couldn’t shake it. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see these characters interact, the more I wanted to see their plots intertwine, the more I knew I was the one who had to write this since GF and SU crossovers were pretty scarce back then (unlike they are now in the new wave of SUF and GF crossovers that I don’t much care for).

I was in the midst of a writing funk at the time, my ongoing Zelda fics all on hitaus while I began a new year at college. I had more or less lost passion for most of them, with the majority of them except my HW fic receiving low numbers of reviews and feedback (back then I didn’t really know how to promote my fics like I do now). Even so, I started planning on this new project, but not without a bit of hesitation since I’d never really worked with GF or SU characters before. But I began plotting out a chapter list (the original UF chapter list has been lost to the ages, I wrote it in an old homework planner during class), and I had decided that I wanted to try my hand at making this thing a comic. A hand drawn comic. And given that my drawing abilities were... subpar at best, yeaaaaah it wasn’t the best idea....

Still, I got through two parts of UF’s “first chapter” and posted them on here (they’re still up somewhere if you wanna go back and cringe hardcore at my bad old art). Still, it had taken me a loooooong ass time to draw them and even more crazy was the fact that my laptop had crashed during that span of time, leaving me with only my shitty iPad to work with. Frustrated, I decided to forego the stupid comic altogether and write the damn thing as a fanfic, knowing I could get chapters out way faster than I ever would have by drawing it.

So I wrote the prologue and posted it on September 29, 2015. And let’s just say right off the bat people were excited. I’d never seen so many reviews on the first chapter of one of my fics before and those numbers only started to go up the more I posted. I was jazzed up to work on this fic, pushed on by this encouragement as I decided to build my relatively reblogging-heavy blog up around it. Toward the end of the year, when I was nearing the end of arc 1, I decided to get myself a drawing tablet and download Sai so I could begin drawing my own art for the fic, leading to me first passes of character designs and UF’s old fugly cover lol

Still, I kept going with it into 2016, getting through both arcs 2 and 3 as the fic only began to grow more and more with more engagement from its fans. AUs were made, fanfics and fanarts of my fic were created, it was a glorious time to be alive, even going into 2017, 2018, 2019, and now. And all the while I kept at it, coming up with sequel plans, taking breaks every now and then to refresh and recoup, and to give the new pet project I started in 2019 (Keys to the Kingdom) some time to shine. But I’ve still never truly lost passion for UF. It’s something I tend to see through to completion, no matter how long it takes.

Fast forward again and now its 2020. I’m 24 years old and still going strong with it, having just completed RMD, an arc ender that I always hoped would be my magnum opus for this fic (and I’m so incredibly proud of how it turned out). Both GF and SU have ended, their stories both told and their endings inspiring me in so many different ways. And while those stories are over, I still strive to keep these characters, or perhaps, my own unique takes on them, living on to tell new stories, to have new adventures right alongside the canon ones. To keep their flames going in the same spirit and hopefully try to follow, even in some small way, in the footsteps of Rebecca Sugar and Alex Hirsch, two of my absolute heroes in the animation world.

So UF turns 5 this week. It’s half a decade old and it’s nearing its 100th chapter. Its passed the 1 million word mark quite some time ago and I’m sure it’ll pass 2 million before its all said and done. It’s accumulated thousands of reviews, hundreds of followers/favorites, plenty of incredible fan interactions across the board. It’s 9th arc is about to begin, leading the way into 2 more before its all said and done. And from there it’ll only grow when I eventually write UF2 and UFF sometime way down the line. All things I could have never imagined doing as a lonely college sophomore back in 2015 when I was just starting this fun little experiment off. But as for where we are with it no, well, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So here we are in the future. And, well, for UF at least, I’d say it’s pretty bright.

#i would have drawn something to accompany this post but ehhhh im busy #anyway ignore me im all emotional rn #my baby is technically old enough to start kindergarten #lol #jen writes #universe falls

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cheyentjj · 5 years ago

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A/N: so this is a little something I've written based on a dream I've had recently. I have to say Henry doesn't occur in it much, I had to write it though. I hope you like it and let me know what you think. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Looking around me i saw a gorgeous looking tree. The leaves on it so green, so vibrant, a painting would go to shame next to it. Here and there a flower scattered around the surface. Pure white petals with pink tips. Passing by the tree I was unable to take my eyes off of it. I was walking down the path when I crashed into something. "umph" I exclaimed struggling to keep my balance.

"oh, dear are you alright?" a strong but pleasant voice asked.

Looking up I realised I hadn't just ran into something, but someone.

A lady of age standing before me. Short white hair framing her face. A genuine smile shaping her light pink lips, making her blue eyes all the brighter.

I smiled back. "yes I'm quit alright. I'm so sorry though, I wasn't watching where I was going."

She waved in my direction, "don't worry dear. I'm just fine. Are you lost?" she asked obviously picking up on the fact that I was a foreigner to this island.

"well," carefully thinking about my answer. I didn't know where I was going, so theoretically I was lost. But I didn't wanna come across as someone who couldn't take care of herself.

"not lost per se." the last vowel being dragged out just a little more than necessary. While looking around, squinting when the sun shone too brightly into my eyes.

She raised an eyebrow at me, an amused smirk grazing her lips.

"so where are you going then?" she asked pointing at every direction around her.

I chuckled lightly. "to any place that will take my breath away." I shrugged.

The look she was giving me right then and there couldn't have been anything else but surprise and admiration. Her eyes slightly bigger than they were before, mouth opening and closing a couple of times. Before letting out a breathy laugh.

" I don't think I can say I've heard that one before. But good answer. How about I show you a couple of places that could do just that? I know the place quit well." she suggested pointing down the road.

I nodded, finally admitting that I could actually use a tour guide on this island.

" oh, shoot. I'm Ronnie by the way"i rushed out of my mouth before raising my hands at her.

"Marianne" she said, accepting my hand.

I smiled and then motioned for her to walk ahead.

Minute after minute passed of Marianne walking beside me down the road. Showing things left and right that she redeemed worth a visit in my days left on the island. She showed me where to find the gardens, the underground war hospital, and what she believed was the most beautiful spot on the beach.

Though I was sure I had never met Marianne, never having been to Jersey before. I kept having the feeling that I had.

After about 45 minutes of walking and pleasant talk I stopped dead in my tracks looking at the lady in front of me.

She turned around a confused look on her face. "dear, are you alr"

"you're Henry cavill's mother" I said quietly. Solving the riddle in my head.

For a second a flash passed in Marianne's eyes. I would say it was disappointment. But it was gone before I had the time to really see it.

"yes I am." she said firmly.

I nodded at her. "you raised a good man."i looked towards the ocean before pointing to it." so where exactly is that spot you were talking about. "

Again that look of surprise making her look like she had no words left in her brain.

But then she smiled again, as warmly as ever. The kindness returned to those blue orbs.

We were sitting on a little cliff looking over the ocean and beach. And in that moment I doubted I'd ever find a more beautiful place to spent my free minutes.

Though our pleasant talk had returned shortly after we had left for this particular spot, I could tell Marianne wanted to ask me something. I, however, did not want to push it so just stayed quiet until she would take the plunge.

"so you're a fan of my son's work?" she hesitantly asked looking into the ocean.

"well yes. He's very talented. Who could not be a fan of his work."i said again shrugging my shoulders.

" which one is your favorite? "

I glanced over at her, just to find she was looking me dead in the eye. Right into my soul.

" the Witcher. His passion for the role is very visible in his performance. It's admirable. " I said, not ones breaking eye contact.

She smiled widely and I couldn't help but be confused with her reaction.

"what?"

She shook her haid. "oh it's nothing dear. Most girls that get asked that question just go with superman. No explanation as to why. Probably cause they have never actually seen the film, they just know he looked good."she said.

" oh well, yeah he is good looking. But having seen you it's not hard to see where he got that from. "I smiled at her.

" oh he got that from his father dear. "she smiled in admiration." so is it safe to say you are here for the durrell challenge then? "

" oh yes, but please don't get this the wrong way. I'm not here for him. I'm here for the zoo. You see I used to study animal care in college back home. I knew as soon as I found out i could participate in a charity run to benifit the zoo, that I was gonna do it. Been training for a whole year now. "I explained to the elegant lady sitting next to me.

She smiled at me again." you, my dear, are one in a million. How about we go for a snack? I have some fresh fruits at home that desperately need to be eaten."

"oh no I couldn't intrude on your private life like that. I'm fine I'll ju"

She cut me off placing her small ha'd on my knee. "nonsense. Cmon off we go."

I stood up along with her, not wanting to say no if she insisted. And followed her to her home.

On the way there I tried multiple times to get out from it, make up excuses to leave, but she was having none of it. And when we arrived after a ten minute walk I was at a loss for words. A beautiful house stood before me. It wasn't just a house, it was a home. The warm brown brick making it feel a bit more rustique than modern.

She opened the door, motioning for me to get in. I hesitantly did so but stood still in the hallway. Not daring to go too far.

"oh dear don't just stand there, go on in."

I smiled nervously but obliged either way. Walking further into the home.

I could hear people talking somewhere in the house. The sounds getting louder as I got closer to what seemed to be the kitchen area.

"oh hello there." someone said as they saw you enter.

"hi, ehm, I'm Ronnie. Marianne said to just head on in."you explained.

" ah and if mother said so than so it shall be." the man said dramatically." I'm Charlie." he stretched out his hand to me. Taking his hand I smiled.

" come sit down we were just about to crack a beer and have a snack. Want to join?"he pointed his thumb towards the glass back doors which were slightly open,leading to a backyard.

" I could do with a snack, thank you. No beer though"you accepted his offer.

"perhaps a cocktail then? My wife made me take classes so I can make a pretty good one." he winked.

"well in that case, yes. Please, surprise me."you laughed.

He pointed to the back door, letting you know you could go on ahead. Nodding you started towards the garden.

Stepping out following the sound of laughter. Pure and utter belly laughter. Three guys standing there hurled over with laughter.

Though all three were not small in stature their laughs making them look like mere boys.

"I swear they never grow up" Marianne nudged you, now dressed in something more comfortable. "boys, this is Ronnie. She will be joining us for the afternoon. Please, behave like the gentlemen I raised you to be."she scolded them playfully,making me laugh in the process.

Marianna grabbed my elbow, guiding me toward the one son I knew all too well.

" Henry, this is Ronnie. She will be running the race tomorrow. Shes studied animal care. Isn't that wonderful."she said excitedly and then just left.

I let out a breathy laugh. Looking from her into the pools that were his eyes. And then straight to the ground trying to compose myself.

Just a guy. He is just. A. Guy.

"animal care, huh?" he said making me look back at him.

"yea I started. Didn't get to finish. But the intrest is still there."i shrugged.

He smiled widely at me. Looking over to his mom, he shook his head.

" so tell me more. What did you learn?"

" and that is the story about how I met my husband" I finished my story.

Henry sitting next to you laughing. "yes my mum is quite the character." he said. "see I could never tell this story like she does. I want there for the half if it."he acted dramatically.

" well it's a lovely story. But I'm afraid our time here is up. I'm glad to have met you, Ronnie. Henry, always a pleasure, and good luck with the premiere of your new movie. And to you at home I will see you again tomorrow. Thank you and good night."

We finished the talk show we were invited to a couple months after our wedding. We had been together for two years now. Inseparable since the day we met.

@mary-ann84 @littlefreya @burdenedwith-gloriouslove @wondersofdreaming @iloveyouyen

@dancingwendigo @hnryycvll

#henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fic #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill

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doctorocsid · 5 years ago

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THE MAKING OF PHOENIX WRIGHT’S SECOND DAY OFF

Or: The Immense Struggle of Trying to Make Decent Content

A good year and a half. That’s how much time passed between me starting Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off and me uploading it to YouTube. What a hell of a load off my back that was. If you couldn’t tell, making this video was a bit of an undertaking, to say the least. And by “undertaking” I mean “an exercise in pure agony”. So, I figured I’d do a bit of a writeup here so I can get across to you the absolute hell of an experience making this video was.

PART 1: THE INITIAL PLANNING STAGES

The original “Phoenix Wright’s Day Off” was released in February 2018 to, though not a lot of views, a generally very positive response. Despite its janky animation, people seemed to enjoy it for its complete ridiculousness, comedic timing, and overly-choreographed fighting. Not to mention literally being the only Ace Attorney-themed Garry’s Mod video ever made that actually uses the Ace Attorney characters. (I’m still the only person to ever do that as of the time of writing. Woohoo.)

Given the positive reception and the fact that I literally ended the video with a “To Be Continued”, I was ready as I could ever be to start work on a sequel. The first one only took me a couple weeks to make, so surely a sequel wouldn’t take much longer, right?

Oh, how wrong I was. Still, I started planning out exactly how things would go. Throwing around ideas in my head. I needed it to be bigger and better than the original, of course. How was I gonna do that? Well, my initial plan was, uh, misguided, to say the least. What I wanted to do at first was create the sequel entirely in Source Filmmaker, along with giving it a darker, more serious tone to contrast the ridiculous slapstick of the first. Not a great idea for a sequel to a video that mainly relied on throwing ragdolls around for comedy.

https://streamable.com/taxrn

The original intro for PW2DO, based off the intro for “Fargo”. A lot less cool-looking than the final intro I made. (Even though I intended the video to be made in SFM, I made the intro in Gmod solely because I could just film myself driving the car instead of having to animate it manually.)

The final intro was done in a not too difficult fashion - the characters were animated in Garry’s Mod on top of greenscreens, which I then imported into Premiere and changed to solid colors. Added some extra video effects I found in places. Set it to an instrumental of Propane Nightmares. I’m proud of how it turned out, mostly. I won’t deny after I introduced the characters I didn’t exactly know what else to do with it, so I just filled it with some random actiony shots I thought might look cool. Incidentally, this was the only part of the final video that was made in Premiere - the rest of it was just edited together in Vegas Pro. Which crashed many times during editing. Fun.

PART 2: THE PAINS OF INDECISION (AND ALSO SOURCE FILMMAKER)

Nonetheless, I got to work, despite not actually knowing how to use Source Filmmaker. “I’ll figure it out as I go along,” I figured. And over time, more or less, I managed to figure it out. Sort of. And by “figure it out” I mean “become subject to the true hell that is SFM”.

Let me give you some quick background here. SFM has two main editors for animation: The “motion editor”, and the “graph editor”. The motion editor uses a relatively easy-to-understand method of animating: you select an object you want to animate (a prop, weapon, ragdoll, etc), select the span of time in which you want the thing to move to its new destination, and then you move it to the new destination. Sounds simplistic, but can be used extensively to create good-looking animation. (I myself used this method for the bar fight in PW2DO.) The graph editor on the other hand, is much more involved, depending on the tried-and-true method of using keyframes for animation. Some people prefer this one because it allows you to directly edit and fine-tune each little animation curve to your liking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXnpk8xDLg

This unfinished PW2DO prototype was animated entirely with the graph editor in SFM.

Really, you can use either one for animating, whichever suits you best. For me, personally, the graph editor feels like something designed in the seventh circle of hell specifically to torture me. Why does adding a new keyframe screw up all my preexisting animation? Why does adding a new keyframe make the ragdoll’s bones stretch out to infinity? Those are just a couple questions I shouted at my computer screen while trying to figure it out.

Eventually, I just gave up. I came to terms both with the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with what I was making, and with the fact that trying to use SFM’s graph editor to animate was making me want to julienne my keyboard. (I hadn’t figured out, or really even considered the motion editor at the time.) “Screw it,” I said to myself. “I’ll do in Gmod, like the last one.”

PART 3: OH RIGHT, GMOD SUCKS TOO

The first PWDO was relatively simple to make, at least compared to the second one. There were two main tools I used: Stop Motion Helper (a tool for animating stuff within Gmod itself without the need for actual stop motion or whatnot), and the classic technique of “throw stuff around in front of the camera”. I had little to no experience doing 3D animation when making it, but it worked out anyway. It let me practice some camera framing stuff, too. All I was really doing for most of it was animating the characters moving along with the camera. But for the second video, I desperately wanted to up the ante. I wanted it to be cooler. More edgy. More cinematic. Turns out, there’s one main reason that proved difficult for me. And that’s that Garry’s Mod kinda sucks for long-term animation.

Here’s the difference between animating in SFM and animating in GMod. SFM is made for animation. GMod isn’t. So, if you want animating in GMod to be anything less than horrendously tedious, you need some addons to help you. Stop Motion Helper is a neat little addon that lets you animate stuff in Garry’s Mod with the “tweening” type of animation. Simply put, you pose something in point A, make a keyframe, move it to point B, and then make another keyframe. Stop Motion Helper will then automatically animate it moving between the two points. Thus, instead of the stop motion method where you have to pose every individual frame, you technically only have to pose the beginning and end. Not that it looks very good if you only do that. Of course, like any kind of animation, it’s still something that requires a lot of effort if you don’t want it to look cheap and robotic. But it works. Sort of.

Doesn’t work too well with vehicles, though.

There were a multitude of small limitations and annoyances, however, that proved to be annoying to deal with in GMod nonetheless.

FIRST PROBLEM: Because GMod isn’t made specifically for animation, resuming a project within it is kind of a hellish endeavor at times. Unlike Source Filmmaker where you can just open a project file and everything remains the same, Garry’s Mod’s saving tool doesn’t save a lot of the addon-related data when you create a save file of whatever scenario you’ve made. That includes stop motion helper animation. While SMH does have its own support for saving animations, you have to save every single animation as its own separate file. Take the scene in PW2DO, for instance, where Phoenix shoots those cops to get the security footage.

https://streamable.com/2ikd1

There are seven moving parts in this scene - Phoenix, the picture frame, both cops, the gun, the shampoo bottle, and the camera. Note how many of these are moving in each camera shot along with how many shots there are (ignoring after the cop goes out the window, because that’s not done with SMH). That’s ten shots, if you didn’t want to count. If I wanted to save this whole scene for potential later tweaking, I’d have to make a save file for the session along with saving the animation data for all ten shots - that’s ten separate animation files for this one scene - and then I would have to manually reapply the animation to each individual moving element.

On top of that, not everything can be saved at all just by sheer concept. The muzzle flash, for instance. While the flash graphic over the gun was added in post, the actual light emanating from it was something I had to do in-game, and it’s not something you can animate with SMH. Therefore, I had to play the animation in GMod, and then specifically time me hitting a button on my keyboard to make the flash happen at just the right point. That’s just one workaround in a program that, when animating in it, is like 80% workarounds.

But nothing about Garry’s Mod frustrated me quite as much as the final fight scene.

PART 4: THE BAR FIGHT

The final fight scene of PW2DO was the one thing that kept me from releasing the video sooner. Seriously, out of that year and a half or so, I’d say only a month or so was spent working on the GMod portions of the video. The rest was just that stupid, godforsaken fight scene. (And mostly procrastinating on making it.) Allow me to try and outline to you what I went through doing this.

Now, the fight scene went through three specific incarnations. They were all based around Maya and Athena tracking down Phoenix and beating the crap out of him, it just differed on two basic things: the location, and the fight music. The first idea I had was them fighting Phoenix in an alleyway while ABBA’s “Waterloo” played in the background. (i know that sounds silly but i swear i couldve made it work) That one didn’t get beyond planning stages - I’d kinda choreographed some of it in my head, I know Phoenix was supposed to get a crowbar at some point, but it didn’t get any farther than that.

The second incarnation was much more well-developed. The way I figured it was as such: Phoenix, after retrieving the security footage from his office, would go on the run and get on a bus. However, when he got on the bus, it’d be revealed that Athena was driving it, and Phoenix would fight Maya as they went down the road. (No comment on how Maya and Athena got a bus.) This was gonna be set to “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, inspired by the opening car chase scene from Kingsman: The Golden Circle. (Meh movie, neat fight scenes.) Eventually they’d crash the bus, all go flying out the window, and then Phoenix would get arrested by the cops as he did in the final video. Sounds neat, right? So, what stopped me from doing this?

jesus christ so many things

Everything wrong with this concept centered around one particular problem. I absolutely could not, for the life of me, figure out how to animate a fight scene in a bus that was moving down the road. In SFM that might’ve been possible, but in Garry’s Mod? Good luck with that one. I practically tore my hair out trying to come up with a single working solution to this. Allow me to present to you the various ideas I had and why they all failed miserably.

IDEA 1: Animate the bus moving and the characters moving in it at the same time

This was the fastest-thrown-out idea because the complexity of something like this was just too much for Gmod and an animation addon. What’s that? You want to be able to stay with the scene as it animates? No, that’s basically impossible to do. It’s not like SFM where you could just attach yourself and a camera to the moving vehicle and animate from there. It just wasn’t feasible.

IDEA 2: Create moving textures and place them outside the windows to give the illusion of movement

This one went out the window too, unfortunately, as rotating the camera to any degree kinda just seriously killed the illusion. I could’ve done the scene without the cool cinematic fighting camera movements, but… is it really Phoenix Wright’s Day Off without those?

IDEA 3: Create a 3d video of going down the street in GMOD and paste it onto a greenscreen outside the bus, and animate it rotating properly in Premiere

I don’t blame you if you don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about. See, miraculously enough, there is actually an addon for GMod that allows you to record 360 degree videos within it - and after a decent amount of finicking around with it, I actually managed to make one that seemed to work fine. It was from this point I actually set out and started making the scene - I got about ten seconds in, mostly comprised of driving shots, a neat easter egg with Homestar Runner (not something i’d do nowadays tbh) and a single shot of Phoenix beating on Maya. I was all set to get going.

And then Premiere just refused to work with the 360 video. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to animate it rotating and stuff, but it wouldn’t let me do this at the same time as the normal 2D video that was meant to be pasted on top of it. It frankly just. Wouldn’t let me. And after a lot of struggling, I just. Gave up. That ten seconds of video, trashed.

https://streamable.com/4omnep

I did manage to re-piece it together from the old files on my drive, though. With mostly missing sound effects.

So, that was scrapped. I wasn’t doing the bus fight. What, then, would work out better than a fight scene based off the first fight scene of Golden Circle? Apparently, my mind decided that would be the last fight scene of Golden Circle. Cool.

Thankfully, things went a lot smoother there, but it wasn’t without hiccups. Now, if you’ve seen Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off - I don’t know why you’re reading this if you haven’t - there’s a chance you might’ve found the music choice for the bar fight scene a bit odd. If you’re not aware, it’s a cover of the 1986 Cameo song “Word Up”, by a German country band called The Bosshoss. This is the song they used in the movie so you’re not allowed to question me on this.

Given how western-y the song sounds, though, I had to at least make the context fit. Despite that, I couldn’t really find any GMod maps that had a good enough bar interior for a while - and I really wanted it to be a bar fight. Bar fights are cool. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to find one. This one, in particular: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806759276&searchtext=

Yes, that’s a My Little Pony based map. I worked with what I had, okay? That was the least of the issues, anyway. By this point I’d had enough of trying to animate with GMod, and as such I’d decided to move back to SFM, but that caused a whole new issue. This map wasn’t made for SFM. And opening it in SFM just. Crashed. I won’t go super into detail of how I fixed this, but essentially I had to download a program called BSPSource so I could decompile the map, re-open it in Hammer, and export it to properly work with SFM.

Still left me with some annoying issues though, as you can see. Not too difficult fixes, though - The first one I just covered up with another corkboard, and the second thing was fixed by typing mat_specular 0 in console. Was a bit annoying that I had to do that every time I reopened SFM, but whatever. It was working, at least. (that’s something you’ll think to yourself a lot if you ever get into using SFM.)

Anyway, things went pretty okay from this point on. You know, aside from me proceeding to barely ever work on the thing for like a year and a half. I didn’t have many hardships during it other than my own procrastination, so instead take a look at some of the funny tricks I pulled to get this scene to go the way I wanted.

https://gfycat.com/OldfashionedForkedFlatcoatretriever

Engineer telekinetically swooces his shotgun back to himself.

https://gfycat.com/SleepyShadowyLadybird

I had to make Phoenix hover over Engie to let his arms reach him without his legs obscuring the camera.

https://gfycat.com/AptHomelyGoral

The rope was way too short to reach the soldier, so I had to have Phoenix basically throw the rope in order to reach his gun. I also forgot to detach the rope from his hand afterward, so it kinda gets flung around with it off-camera.

https://gfycat.com/AgonizingScrawnyAbalone

Phoenix apparently decided for himself he wanted to go out the window.

Aside from all that, though, things finally went okay. Eventually. I managed to finish up the animation, add some extra ending stuff in GMod, and do a neat credits sequence to David Bowie music. All in all, it went okay.

And that’s it. After all that waiting, I finally managed to put an 8 minute video out from one and a half years of it not being finished. It was quite a load off my mind, for sure, and to this day it stands as my proudest video. It’s silly, has its down moments, but I can at least confidently say it’s the best Ace Attorney gmod video. If only because there is basically no competition.

So, what’s in store next? Not much of anything as far as I feel right now. I could make a third one, one day - I did envision it as a trilogy - but although I do have some ideas for it, I still have zero motivation to actually make it. So who knows. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe Phoenix Wright will escape from prison one day.

So, this was the experience of making Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off. I hope this gave you something of an idea on how agonizing this video was to make, and totally means you should go and share it everywhere to get me more views because I DESERVE it after the hell I went through.

Seriously, though, thanks for reading, and may this post serve as a warning if you ever decide to do Garry’s Mod or SFM videos. Not a warning against it, mind you, you can make some totally cool stuff. Just be prepared to suffer a bit in the process.

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dolphin-bouillabaisse · 6 years ago

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GO-ctober prompts, 5

Inktober except without the ink, and with drabbles instead.

Prompt #5 - Build

(previous | next | beginning)

(find it all on Ao3)

(Note: Build - Create - it’s all relative, isn’t it? I gotta find some wriggle room for these prompts from time to time, right?)

Demons were not creators.

They were destroyers, that was more their style, raging destruction and disaster in the world. Not making things, inventing, breathing life into newfound creations. That was angel work. (Or it had been, back when things were being created, six thousand years ago and before. By now, even Upstairs was not really involved with anything close to 'creation' anymore, but at least closer to it than demons were.)

Nevertheless, Demons did not create.

Then again, Crowley had never given much of a shit about what demons did or did not supposedly do.

Crowley was good at creating. It might hint back to his former profession, of which he'd told Aziraphale only once or twice, under the influence of far more alcohol than a human would've been able to digest, but was barely enough to let a demon who'd spent the past few millenia closing up and hiding finally open up just a little.

Most of all, though, it spoke of his intense imagination (yet another very un-demonic thing, to be honest, but again – Crowley didn't care. As stated before).

He'd created an awful lot of things over the many centuries. Even at the beginning of it all, he'd snuck the strangest looking creatures into the garden when the guardians didn't look his way – Aziraphale would stumble over them while taking his tours, and look at the little things shuffling about, something always a bit off about their markings or their eyes or the way they moved, but beautiful and fascinating nonetheless. Six thousand years later, and he was still trying to figure out which were just from some poor angel having a bad day, and which were from Crowley.

“The platypus, really? That one's almost a bit too on the nose, don't you think?

“Yeah, I admit, that was mostly stuck together from random parts I had left. You know, nose and tail and webbed feet and some fur. Turned out pretty funny though, didn't it?”

“I suppose. Poor thing.”

“Hey, I gave it venom at least. That counts for something, right?”

He'd spent the early years of humanity's growth learning their various crafts, turning his imagination towards everything and anything that meant creating new things. From stone to clay to metal to fabric to paint to gemstones, there was nothing he couldn't make something out of. When the Renaissance finally came around, Aziraphale saw the demon happier than he'd ever seen him before. He turned his attention to everything at once – in true Renaissance fashion – and Aziraphale's lodgings were filled with sculptures and paintings almost as much as any of the palazzos they found themselves in as guests. When Aziraphale's own guests became too interested, Crowley's name close to becoming famous (not exactly a thing he'd get a commendation from Downstairs for, both of them suspected), the demon turned his imagination towards the more supporting role of a muse.

“You can't give him that! Humans aren't supposed to invent these things for at least another- where did you get these plans from anyway?! Did you steal them?” “Oh come off it – he's not gonna be able to build any of it properly anyway – I just wanna see what he'll do with it. The guy's bloody brilliant!” “Can't you stick to being a bad influence with his art, instead? Or his social life? Do you have to give him- do the humans really need more war machines?”

“He's already better than me at painting and sculpting. How much more do you want? And he's got the strange private life done all on his own, that wasn't my doing. C'mon, angel. Don't you wanna see a helicopter crash at least once, before they do them right in a few hundred years?”

He'd stopped sharing his creations with Aziraphale at some point – when exactly, he couldn't remember. It had all become a bit icky, seeing the angel stare lovingly at a statue that maybe had just a bit too much fluff in its golden curls, or smile at the soft curves of a pencil study that would've turned into a full painting if the angel had only sat still for a little while longer, or stroke reverently over dark satin and linens and comment on how lovely it would look on Crowley when the job from Downstairs called for a more feminine tempter again. It was a sweet mixture of joy and pain, seeing Aziraphale so enamored with his creations. It was not something he could stand for too long without the pain overtaking, unfortunately. He couldn't imagine how it would feel to see him reading one of his poems. He didn't dare.

“Really, Crowley, you just have to give this one a try. The boy is nothing but brilliant. Oh, the stories he can think of-”

“Thanks, but no thanks. You know I don't do the whole book thing, that's yours. I don't read.”

“Ah but that's the brilliant part! It's a play! And I was wondering- I mean, that is- next friday is the premiere, and dear Oscar has given me tickets, but I wouldn't know who- he was very insistent I come-”

“Oh please, like he's expecting you to come with someone, you know damn well he's just trying to get into your-”

“Crowley!”

“Fine. Alright. One play, if only to keep you from succumbing to his temptations. That'd be something now, wouldn't it? Thousands of years working with a demon, and you fall for some human making pretty eyes at you.”

Nowadays, in the calm times after Armageddon't, he'd turned towards smaller creations. The garden of their cottage was filled to the brim with his ideas quickly turned into reality, from raised vegetable beds housing plants that shouldn't be able to withstand English weather to a shed that was far bigger on the inside to a proper little picnic area complete with stone-encircled campfire that never seemed to burn out. The flowerbeds were a work of art, and so was the conservatory. While Aziraphale had finally found his own interest in creations in the kitchen, Crowley had turned their garden into his very own Eden again (safe for the weird little creatures he'd made back then, as he didn't think it would look to good on the protocol of either Heaven or Hell if some new animal showed up in the north of England of all places). And this time, no one would be banished from it (as long as they behaved).

“Adam called to say he might drop by for a visit next weekend with the rest of his friends. Apparently school will be out by then.”

“At least he's giving us a warning beforehand this time.”

“He said you were expecting him. That you were planning something in the garden?” “Oh damn, right. Didn't think he'd remember that. We were talking about putting up a treehouse, cause his parents won't let him have one. They think he'll try to sleep up there, or cause some kind of trouble with the other kids. Wouldn't put it past him, to be honest.”

“A treehouse? Where would you put a treehouse here?”

“The tree back at the wall should be sturdy enough to hold it, with a bit of occult help.”

“Really, Crowley. You're really building a fort for the Anti-Christ in an apple tree?”

It took a while, and a lot of courage, to share his creations again. Aziraphale had ooh-ed and aah-ed over anything new popping up in the garden, and spent a considerably long time reading between the flowers in the conservatory instead of his library, but Crowley still wasn't sure if he should let him see the new sketches he'd begun. Show him the warm tones of a study of hands, holding a book like a relict. The lines of a soft body hidden under even softer sheets, the precise colouring of the light dancing over porcelain skin and golden hair. None if it was as beautiful as the smile on the angel's lips, though, as he carefully leafed through the pages of the small sketchbook he'd found on Crowley's nightstand, opened only after asking for permission. Crowley was glad he'd been to groggy from waking up, too distracted by the joy of warmth and scent and sight of his angel next to him in bed, to say no.

“Oh my dear, these are wonderful. Just wonderful.”

“S'just sketches.”

“I really missed your art. Do you remember those little figurines you made back in Spain? And that shawl you gave me for the dauphin's ball, oh my heart, I have it somewhere in the back of the closet. Do you still have your drawings? I must've kept some sketches-”

“Got some leftovers. Back with the stuff from Leonardo. I think. If you wanna see them.”

“I do. We could frame some of them, put them in the study.”

“Don't think we should frame the new ones, though. For the bedroom, maybe.”

“They're not- I see what you mean, but it's not really too erotic, isn't it- more romantic, I know you don't like that word, but really, the way you've drawn these-”

“Angel.”

“Yes?”

“Would you-

Would you like to read one of my poems?”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #my writing #october prompts #prompts

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royallyprincesslilly · 6 years ago

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Title: Animal (11)

Chadwick Boseman X Black Reader “Sianna”

Chapter Warning: Cursing, angst,

Word Count: 5k

Note: How long’s it been? Wow, I’m sorry guys. Anyway, here we are. Hope you guys enjoy this one. As always thank you for reading, I appreciate you!

**Loosely edited/Proofread***

**Interactive Chapter**

If you enjoyed this please LIKE, REBLOG, COMMENT. ❤️ ❤️

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

Three Weeks Later

-Chadwick-

“Chad!” Shouted Tye trying to get his attention. Chadwick snapped out of it with a shake of his head.

“Yo.”

“I been calling your name for a straight minute. Where the hell were you?”

“Right here, man. What’s up?”

“Nah, you’re not here. If you were here you would have objected to that salary for the next role, especially given how bankable you are now,” Tye added.

“12 mill is abysmal especially given the immediate success of Black Panther. Don’t worry I’m going to hardball for 20,” Tye finished closing the folder on his desk before putting it back into his desk drawer. Once finished Tye looked at him.

“Now tell me what the hell is going on with you. The last few weeks since you came back from what was to be a relaxing vacation your ass looked dazed as hell like you didn’t know shit. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said you met some fine Jamaican ting, and she put it on you. Now for the last 3 ½ weeks at least you’ve been wandering around here completely not there. You’re physically there but your head man; your head’s not in the game. What the fuck is up?”

Tye had been his agent/manager since he did his role in “The Kill Hole,” since then they’d been through all the ups and downs of the agency, and he’d always had his back professionally, hell he considered Tye a good friend at this point. He hadn’t told anyone of the shit going on, but his boys and he was reluctant to tell anyone else. He knew what Tye would say. He would make it a huge deal that he hadn’t used protection and that he was even in the situation. Then Tye would say it was for the best because his career was taking off and the complication of a “baby mama” was not something he needed at the time. So, he didn’t say anything.

“Just tired,” he lied.

If he were frank with himself, it wasn’t a lie. He was tired. In the last 3 ½ weeks since finding out he was going to be a father with a woman he actually wanted to be with, then fucking it up with said woman, then finding out he wasn’t going to be a father because the woman he wanted to be with ended the pregnancy because of him he hadn’t slept. He roamed around his house at night thinking, painting and writing. In the last few months, he’d gotten further on his screenplay than he had in the last year. He’d created more pieces than he’d ever done on his leisure time. After Tye studied him most likely thinking he was a lying bastard he nodded.

“Okay. I’ll be in touch when I have some news on the salary negotiations.”

Chadwick stood preparing to leave; he was supposed to meet Kareem at Urthe for lunch.

“Don’t forget the Q&A with the BP cast,” Tye reminded. He nodded and gave him a pound and left.

On the drive to Urthe, he passed Sianna’s store and just like that his mind went right back to her. He scoffed, shook his head and focused on forgetting her. What choice did he have?

“My man!” Kareem greeted pulling him into a quick half hug.

“What’s up?”

Chadwick looked around to make sure no paps were around. Nothing ruined a low-key lunch like the damn flashing of a camera. When they sat down and got comfortable, they ordered their meals.

“So, what’s new? You’ve been MIA for the last three weeks. What’s up with that?” Kareem asked sitting back in his chair waiting for an explanation.

Out of all his friends, Kareem seemed to get him the best. He never needed the extra words; they were like brothers from different mothers.

“Nothing much, just taking some time to—decompress.”

“Decompress, is that code for find some balls to talk to that girl?”

Chadwick laughed and shook his head.

“Man, if you only knew.”

“Well tell me then.”

He took a deep breath and with that, spilled it all. He started from the beginning in Jamaica, rounded to Barbados, the fashion line premier, the club, the park, the crash, and the burn. He didn’t leave a single detail out. He was even honest about how he felt for her and his regret with how he handled the whole situation. After he’d explained it all to Kareem, they sat there silent with their plates in front of them. Kareem looked stunned, and Chadwick didn’t blame him. Telling the whole story out loud for the first time, he heard how much this was. After a few more minutes of silence, Kareem finally spoke.

“So, you met a beautiful, sexy woman on vacation that you fell for, got her pregnant and then called her a slut pretty much? Does that bout’ sum it up?”

“I mean I didn’t call her a slut…” Chadwick trailed off before looking at Kareem’s “nigga why you lyin” face.

“Yep, I pretty much called her slut, yep.” He admitted with shame.

“Wow, nigga. I thought Deron was a whole asshole but you, that was an asshole move.” Kareem chastised. It wasn’t anything Chadwick hadn’t thought, so he stayed silent and nodded.

“Yeah.”

“For months you’ve been saying how Simone didn’t feel right. Saying things weren’t the way you wanted, she didn’t make you feel the way you wanted. Now here you met a woman on vacation; said woman made you feel everything that was lacking and then some in one night and every day since and you let her slip by?”

“I didn’t mean to. Honestly, after the park, I expected to see more of her, get to know her better, build something. I was caught off guard. You know Simone tried that trapping shit. Remember.”

“Yeah I remember, but she’s not Simone. From what you’ve told me she’s a successful designer. Why trap you when her career was just starting to take off. That’d mean less opportunity for her to build her brand.”

“I know, I wasn’t thinking. All the blood was literally pounding in my head; all I kept hearing was the word pregnant over and over and then flashing through every time we had sex.”

“That too, in a club nigga? You a freak if I’ve ever seen one.” Kareem teased. They both laughed for a few moments because it was true.

Since meeting Sianna, he’d turned into the world’s horniest teenager, and he was a grown ass man. A grown ass man who had self-control, but with her that self-control was obsolete. He sighed out and finished his iced tea.

“So now she had an abortion, and you’re in your feelings because why? Is it because you really underneath your asshole stint wanted the baby or because she told you to lose her number and stay away from her and that means no more amazing sex?”

“This was never about the sex. I can get sex anywhere.” Chadwick quickly dismissed, to a pleased-looking Kareem. He asked on purpose because he already knew the answer.

“I’ve always wanted a family; you know that.”

“I do,” Kareem confirmed.

“She’s amazing; smart, funny, ambitious, talented, kind, quick-witted, sexy as hell and equally as beautiful.” Chadwick listed off staring out into the sunny afternoon.

“I don’t know if I can forgive myself for being the reason she terminated.”

“You’re going to have to because there is no changing that fact. The past is the past. The question is what are you going to do about the future?”

“What can I do? She told me to leave her alone.”

“You remember when we were in college and that girl Cassie said she had a man and there was no way she was ever going to leave him? You said wanna bet. She told you that if you were smart and knew what was good for you that you’d leave her alone cause her man was on the football team and crazy as fuck?”

Chadwick smiled. He remembered this story.

“Hell, even her man told you to stay away from her. So, color me fucking shocked when I walk in the dorm room and see her getting pounded out by you. Then her man shows up because everyone on campus loves to talk. So, there you are almost getting knocked out because you couldn’t listen.”

Chadwick laughed loudly as he fully recollected the situation from sophomore year.

“Oh man.”

“You didn’t listen then. Are you the same guy from then?”

“Hell naw, I’m not gonna go pounding out some other man’s lady on my bedroom floor.”

They laughed again.

“But your ass still don’t listen. You always end up doing what you wanna do. What do you wanna do?” Kareem finished.

Chadwick knew what he wanted to do.

“She never seems like she’s in. She always comes off like I’m entertainment for her.”

“Then maybe you should make your intentions clear, that would endear her to opening up to you. You’re a Hollywood actor man, actors have reputations, and they’re not good ones. You have all of Hollywood working against you. What’s she supposed to do; wear her heart on her sleeve?”

Chadwick hadn’t thought of it that way. He sighed again fully feeling his idiocy. He’d been not only a world-class asshole but also the biggest idiot. He never laid it out for her that he was interested and wanted to be with her. He never made it that far. Whenever he was around her, it was a matter of minutes before they were both naked and completely wrapped up in each other’s pleasure. Another mistake on his part probably, he should have practiced stronger restraints than he did. He would in the future.

“It’s not a Gmat exam man; what do you wanna do?” Kareem asked again finishing his glass of Pepsi.

“I want the chance to make things right. I want the chance to show her who I really am,” voiced.

“Still not saying nothin man. What do you want?” Kareem continued to badger.

“I want her. I want her man,” he finally verbally admitted. Kareem sat back, and a wide grin spread across his face.

“Then make it happen, man. You’re the most persistent man I know professionally speaking, translate all that to your personal life. If she’s anything like I’m imagining, then she’s worth it, and you owe it to yourself.”

Chadwick nodded his head allowing Kareem’s pep talk to fuel him. He knew he was right, he’d known it for weeks. If he was candid, he knew it the first night his lips touched hers.

“Nigga why you still sitting here with my ass? Go get her!” Kareem further pushed.

He laughed, and the two of them wrapped up lunch. Chadwick paid the bill, and the two of them said their byes at their cars. Once he sat in the driver’s seat, he was at a loss. He had no idea what to do to get what he wanted.

He drove around L.A for what seemed like hours just brainstorming ideas. Every idea he came up with he either found to be too extra or not enough, or too close to throwing his money around to impress her. He didn’t want her to think any worse about him. He didn’t want her to think that he thought she was only about the money or how someone could wine or dine her. He needed to connect with her apart from financial expressions and sex. He needed to show his heart.

~~~~~~~~~~

-Sianna-

“Thump-thump, Thump-thump, Thump-thump, Thump-thump”

The sound loudly filled the room, wrapping around you. You smiled and stared at the monitor watching as Dr. Dubois video graphically traveled the space of your womb. The rapid beating of the heartbeats unexpectedly filled you with worry.

“That sounds fast. Are they okay?” you asked.

“Yes, they’re good. It’s normal for it to be so fast. Once they’re born, it’ll level out.

Just then the image on the monitor in front of you visibly showed two small almost skeletal bodies. The second you saw it you audibly gasped and clasped your hand over your mouth.

“There are your babies Sienna,” Dr. Dubois informed. A heavy feeling filled your chest as tears stung the backs of your eyes.

“Oh my god.”

You paid close attention as Dr. Dubois slowly scanned over each of their tiny bodies and tapped along the adjoining keyboard of the machine. You couldn’t believe your eyes. There they were. Your babies. Yeah, you knew you were pregnant. You felt your expanding belly, the daily growing pains that radiated through your pelvis, and your hips. You saw the changes in your body, the increase in your breasts that pushed you up two bra sizes. You were now a proud card-carrying member of the D cup squad. You spotted all the evidence of your pregnant state, but this was the first time it fully hit you. You were pregnant; you were going to have two babies. Tears streamed down your cheeks before you could stop them. You swiped the backs of your hands across them swatting away the tears.

“Okay, these babies look and sound great. I’m officially placing you at two days shy of twenty weeks. The babies are about the size of mangos; they look to be measuring around fourteen to fifteen centimeters. Things look good,” Dr. Dubois finished. She finished her exam of the two babies and turned off the machine.

“Okay, so while those print. How have you been feeling?”

You sat up and sniffled.

“Uh, fine, I get a few dizzy spells here or there, um, I get a lot of pelvic and hip cramps it’s pretty annoying. I also feel a little off balance sometimes, more tired, other than that nothing major,” you explained.

“All right, the dizzy spells are because of the increase in your blood volume. Since conception the volume of your blood has increased and will continue to increase, you may even soon notice more leg cramps, circulation will slow down especially in a twin pregnancy. Hydration plays an important role here, do stay hydrated. As for the pelvis and hip cramps we will blame this on ligament pains. Your body is working hard to stretch to accommodate not one but two babies. Pregnancy is not a small job Sianna; you’re working hard. For ligament pains, maybe try yoga, rest, incorporate stretching through the day. It’ll help with the pain and delivery,” she recommended. You nodded.

“Equilibrium fluctuations, again blood volume and your center is a little off with the weight of the babies, amniotic fluid, and things of that sort. Tired, rest, take days this is not a quick race, it’s a marathon, a nine-month one. I know you’re busy and trying to achieve all your dreams and I know you may feel like this pregnancy is cramping that, and you now have a deadline before you’re really limited by not only delivery but life with two newborn twins, but there is no need to rush,” your godmother hammered into your brain. You nodded. She knew everything you were going through.

“I’ll try to listen.”

“Good. All right, so that wraps up this appointment. Again, if there is anything you can call or text me, I’ll always pick up for my favorite goddaughter. They’ll make your next appointment which I think you’re all set up until the end and by next appointment, we’ll be able to clearly figure out the sex of the babies. Okay?”

You nodded. Dr. Dubois came to your side and kissed your cheek.

“You’re doing great Sianna,” she reassured before leaving the room.

Once alone with your thoughts, you took several minutes to let everything sink in. You were not prepared for the reaction you had. The way you’d been feeling since the beginning of the pregnancy made it difficult to connect. You didn’t think you’d connected but you somehow you had. You slowly dressed and gathered your belongings. Once you made your way to the front desk, the receptionist handed you six freshly printed ultrasound pictures. You looked down at them, and again the heavy feeling returned and along with it the urge to cry. You swallowed the lump in your throat and shook off the overwhelming emotions.

“Thank you.”

As you went down in the elevator, you couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. They were small but not nearly as alien-like as the weeks before. They looked very much human. You marveled at the fact that they were made from a part of you. You’d created them.

Once you made it back to your office, it was close to lunch time, and while your entire office took lunch, you sat behind your desk and continued to stare at the ultrasound pictures. A small smile spread across your lips, and you released a sigh. A knock at your door drew your attention. You quickly put the photos in the top drawer of your desk.

“Yes?”

Carolina walked in carrying a vase of flowers. Your eyes widened from shock.

“What in the hell is this?” you asked without censor.

“They were delivered fifteen minutes ago and had been sitting out there,” she informed putting the heavy vase on your desk. You stood and stared down at the gorgeous pink and white carnation arrangement.

“They’re beautiful,” Carolina announced. You nodded in agreement and searched the flowers or a card; there was none.

“There’s no card.”

After a few moments of searching to no avail, you shrugged.

“Hm, strange,” you said before you remembered Chino and smiled.

“Thank you, Carolina. Are we all set for the meeting?

“Yes, everything is all set. I’ll see you in there?”

You nodded. She walked out the door. You picked up your phone and checked your messages. You were getting ready to send Chino a message but paused remembering he was probably busy at the hospital. Instead, you gathered everything you needed the meeting and walked out.

For the last three weeks since returning from Miami, you’d spent almost every evening with Chino. He took you to dinner when he wasn’t working into the night, lunch, sometimes breakfast when he wasn’t on the early shift at the hospital, and he called and texted you often. You enjoyed spending time with him and more time you spent with him you liked him more. He didn’t overstep your boundaries, wasn’t rude, didn’t come off as all about himself. He never tried to force you into something you weren’t ready for. Instead, he was on board with taking it snail slow, allowing you to take the lead of how often you saw each other, he always remained the perfect gentleman.

Besides holding your hand, the only other move he’d made was a cheek kiss. It was all refreshingly innocent. While this was on the opposite side of the spectrum when it came to things with you and Chadwick, you still enjoyed it. Your hormones raged during the night and often you found yourself still dreaming of Chadwick, but for the most part, you were able to keep yourself in check.

Throughout the rest of the day as you worked ever two hours you were interrupted with yet another flower delivery. After the carnations came an arrangement of pink Hyacinths, then an arrangement of pink and white tulips, then a bouquet of white lily of the valleys, then an interesting selection of purple orchids that stole the show. You were blown away with how beautiful each display was. You almost sent Chino a message but decided you’d thank him that night when you met for dinner.

When you were leaving for the day Carolina brought in yet another arrangement.

Good lord, I can’t carry anything else,” you blurted out.

“Don’t shoot the messenger. These are m favorite,” she said.

You stared at the embarrassing display of pink, peach and white roses and smiled. You shook your head.

“You’re one lucky girl, and that baby has a sweet daddy,” Carolina said. Her words dropped the smile from your face and filled you with a little bit of sadness.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no. I’m fine. Can you help me to the car?”

She nodded and gathered a few of the arrangements and walked with you out of the office. After she’d helped you pile all the flowers into the backseat of your car you made your way home. The smell of all the flowers in the car mingled together creating a new breed scent. The drive was an uneventful one filled with daydreams and smiles when the scent of the flowers filled your nostrils.

You made it home with an hour to spare before your date with Chino. You unloaded all the flowers from the car to your living room and sat down with a bottle of well-deserved sparkling water. You heard your phone chime with a message. You took it up and saw a message from Chino.

MSG Chino: I’m sorry, I can’t get away. Three GSW patients just rolled in, and I’m the only attending here until 2 am. I’m so sorry.

You sighed but didn’t feel any disappointment.

MSG Sianna: It’s fine, I understand, gunshot wounds before dates. It makes perfect sense.

You teased.

MSG Chino: Are you mad?

MSG Sianna: What kind of person would I be if I were? Date with me or 3 lives?

MSG Chino: A perfectly fine one. Matter of fact I think you're a great person.

MSG Sianna: Well, thank you. It's okay, I understand. Save lives. Talk to you later.

You put your phone down and decided to soak in the tub, hoping it helped with your ligament pains.

Somehow, you’d fallen asleep in the tub and woke up to the sound of the doorbell. You looked at the clock in your haze; 10:20. You wondered who it could be then thought it was Chino stopping by to apologize again. You sparingly dried off and wrapped yourself in your robe before going downstairs. Once at the door, you opened it and saw Chadwick standing there holding another bouquet of flowers. Your jaw nearly dropped.

“Chadwick?”

He stood there in an army green ensemble. All words escaped you for a little while before you realized what time it was and where you were.

“What’re you doing here?” you asked.

You watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed before he spoke.

“I know it’s late, and I’m sorry for the time, but I wanted to personally bring these to you to join the others. I also wanted to apologize to you for not only my behavior a few weeks ago, but for the things, I said to you. I was way out of line, and they were beyond disrespectful. I have no excuse for my actions, and I won’t make any, I just need you to forgive me,” he said. You opened your mouth to speak, but before words came out, he spoke again.

“I know it will take more than a few bouquets of flowers to begin to make up for what I’ve put you through, but I can only hope you’ll let me make up for it,” he said.

You waited a few moments to ensure he was finished.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell did you find out where I lived?”

“Um, I may have pretended to be an associate of one of your high-profile clients and coerced your assistant into giving me your address,” he casually informed. You were stunned silent.

“Wow.”

“I’m sorry, I can see now how you’d see that as a breach of privacy, but I had no idea what else to do, or how else to make it up to you. I haven’t been able to sleep, work or think without thinking of you and how royally I screwed things up and I’ve been wracking my brain with ways to apologize and show you what you mean to me, and I couldn’t wait another day,” he rushed out.

You allowed his words to sink in. He looked tortured but sincere. So sincere it tugged on your heartstrings. You were tempted to forgive him, but then you remembered him practically calling you a slut and insinuating that you were trying to trap him with a pregnancy.

“How did you screw things up? Was it by calling me a slut and accusing me of trapping you? Or was it by everything else you said?” you asked.

“I was a major asshole Sianna, that’s clear. I’m sorry. Part of being a man is recognizing when you’ve made a mistake, acknowledging it and having the fortitude to apologize. I am here doing all three,” he said. You sighed out and looked down. He was right.

“So, you were the one who sent the flowers today?”

“Yes, and these complete the set,” he said holding out the bouquet of peonies, your favorite.

You smiled and took the bouquet he offered.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful…my favorites.”

He smiled that smile that made your stomach do backflips, your heart skip a beat, and your panties soak. You licked your bottom lip and sunk your teeth into them. His eyes dropped to your lips, and he took a step to you.

“Does that mean you accept my apology?” Chadwick asked, his voice low. It sent chills up your spine.

You thought for a moment. Flowers and a rinky-dink apology was not enough for the things he said about you or how he’d made you feel. This man had actually made you cry when no one else had in years. The level of how much he hurt you could not be fixed this easily, but something in you wanted nothing more than to give in to him, say yes and invite him in for the night. When you didn’t say anything, he took another step to you then placed his hand on your waist. His eyes dropped down to your stomach before confusion warped his expression. He looked back to you, and you saw the question in his eyes.

“Shit,” you thought. Chadwick took a step back and gaped at your stomach.

“What the--, wait--,” he trailed off. You took a step back and released a breath.

“What’s going on Sianna?” you closed your eyes and rubbed your forehead feeling your stress level rise.

“Okay wait.”

“You’re still pregnant,” he said. It was a mix of a question and a statement. He scrunched up his nose and finally met your eyes waiting for an explanation — no words formed in your head.

“You told me that you were getting an abortion, you told me that you were getting an abortion the next day. You yelled it before running off, but…you’re still pregnant.” He rose his voice a little louder.

“You lied?”

“Chadwick--,” you began before he cut you off.

“Why did you lie?”

“I—I,” you trailed off.

“You what? Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through these last weeks thinking that I was the reason you aborted the baby, I was at fault for my own child being--, how could do that?” he asked dropping his voice down.

Now you felt like the asshole.

“Chadwick—,” You began before Chino’s figure approached holding a bouquet of flowers.

“Sianna?” Chino said. Chadwick looked to the left at the man now in front of your door. He looked him up and down before he looked back to you with a tight clench to his jaw.

“Shit,” you thought.

“Is everything all right here?” Chino asked, authority in his voice.

“Hi. Yeah, everything is fine,” you dismissed. He nodded and held out the bouquet of red roses to you.

“As an apology for missing tonight, wanted to make it up to you.”

You tried to smile, but it was a forced one because this situation was so awkward. As you took the bouquet, you chanced a look at Chadwick who looked like pure unadulterated venom. If looks could kill Chino would be dead followed by you.

“This is why you lied. Him. Wow. Here I thought that there was something between us, something from Jamaica that traveled to Barbados, something that wouldn’t let either of us go. Then, these last few weeks I was depressing over the fact that I’d screwed up so bad that I lost you without giving this a real chance to be something and here you are. Lying about the baby and carrying on with him,” Chadwick said. His voice wasn’t filled with the venom from his face; it was just filled with sadness and disbelief.

He nodded and looked down.

“Okay. Have a good night.

With that, he turned and walked away into the night. You sighed out, looked to Chino who had a deep scowl on his face.

“I take it that’s the father.”

You looked down and nodded.

“I see he’s not so much out the picture as he is in it,” he said.

Again, you were at a loss for words.

“I thought he was.”

Chino took a breath and rushed it out.

“Okay, and all the things he said—where do you stand on that?” he asked. You again looked down. You didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how you felt. Chino took your silence as an answer and nodded his head.

“Okay, I’m gonna go then, I should get back to the hospital and check on my patients. Night,” he muttered as he walked away from you.

You stood there in your door frame, dressed in your robe holding the two bouquets. You looked down at the entirely different arrangements. One was subtle, soft, yet strong and spoke of tenderness, the other was bold, commanding, but gentle and spoke of assertiveness. The flower choices did wonders describing the two men.

“Shit! What do we do now?” you asked into the empty darkness.

To Be Continued….

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tygerbug · 6 years ago

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Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers without an actual cast and crew and (as of right now) no ability to get a formal education? Tips on what to practice or challenges so when I actually start involving people, I'll have a decent grasp on what I'm doing?

This is a big topic to discuss. I’m gonna write a long one here and reminisce a bit about movies I made a long time ago. Hope you’re into that sort of thing.

Shoot some footage on your own, record some sound and learn how to edit! I was on a Mac so I used the now very outdated Final Cut Pro 7 for many years. Adobe Premiere Pro is more standard. I used that when I started out, and I use it more now, along with After Effects. I originally trained on an ancient version of Avid as well.

Try to get a single friend to help you! That will help. But you can also do animation, or film yourself, or film scenery, or voiceover. There’s plenty you can do on your own.

I started in the 90s, when camera technology was terrible. The cameras now are amazing! The economy is not. I started to have trouble making movies because I need to pay bills! It’s a cliche but people’s phones are better than anything we had then.

Currently I have a Panasonic Lumix G7 DSLR which shoots 4K, and cost maybe $450. I used to know every feature of my camcorders and be in complete control, but I honestly don’t understand this one as well as I should. It’s nice though.

Before that, in 2007, I had a Panasonic MiniDV camcorder which must have cost $4500 or so. I was still using it for some things until recently, when it started eating my tapes.

I have a Sennheiser cardioid XLR mic (from 2007), and a Tascam audio recorder hooked up to it (from 2019). Maybe $150 altogether. I’ve somehow had the same microphone stand since 1993, maybe longer.

I also have a Parrot teleprompter mirror, for when I need to record web videos and read text off a screen.

We bought a heavy expensive tripod in 2007 and I found it difficult to use. I probably broke the damn thing. It wasn’t working well. I was used to much lighter, cheaper tripods, and kept using my old one. Then I ended up buying two tripods cheaply. I think both were Goodwill finds!

I still have an enormous greenscreen setup we bought in 2007, very wrinkly now and rarely used.

With the old MiniDV cameras (or before that Hi8, 8mm and VHS) you needed a lot of light to get any kind of decent picture. I’d buy a $20 shop light from Home Depot and point it at the wall. It was very hard light, but bouncing it off something would diffuse it and light up the room. It was also very yellow and we’d put a blue theatrical gel over it to change that. It was also very hot and would make the room tough to film in! We also had little clamp lights with regular light bulbs in them as needed. You can get that stuff at Home Depot or similar for cheap.

Cameras today are a lot better, and even if the footage is grainy you can noise reduce in post with plugins like Neatvideo. You’ll want to be more subtle with your lighting than I had to be back then. But a lot of times you’ll still want a powerful light that will light up the room in a clean-looking way. Even then I’d often work with cinematographers for a more subtle feel. They would put diffusion material over the lights, or black foil to concentrate a more powerful light into a single beam. It’s worth experimenting.

I guess I’ll get very personal with this and talk about my whole history, because I’m like that.

I started out making movies as a kid in the 90s. I started out doing little animations on my own, which grew into a 90-minute sketch comedy feature (I was 15-17). I attempted to involve my friends from high school, but it was hard to get them to commit and show up, so a lot of that film was just me doing animation and puppets to fill the gaps. Once I premiered it, everyone got very excited at what I had accomplished without much help and wanted to be involved. I worked with them to figure out what they were interested in filming, and they contributed to the scripts and concepts and production.

We shot four more comedy features in the first half of that year, before I left for college (USC Film School in Los Angeles, 1999), often with a big cast and in all kinds of locations. I was also writing a satirical musical play at the time, and was starting to try to be a screenwriter (I eventually wrote about twelve unproduced screenplays). The main feature we shot that summer was a 2-hr parody of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which would have been my first “real” screenplay, and which was based partly on the ideas of others in my friend group. There was some improv to the comedy. We also shot a 5-hour improv piece which was a comedy-drama (and then cut down to feature length) and which aged better.

I came back the next summer and shot two more similar features (which were in the same style as the Phantom Menace spoof and the improv piece respectively). I also ended up collaborating with other filmmakers on some stuff, which I ended up regretting due to the people involved. And I made student films, and a big, overlong drama feature while I was in college called Gods of Los Angeles (which took about three years). Later in 2007-9 (ages 25-28 or so) I directed Shamelessly She-Hulk, a superhero feature which is on Youtube. I also did more animation, and some quick, low effort webseries and web video stuff on my own, and I continue to do so. I’m currently working on some Unannounced Projects.

I often think that moving to Los Angeles and attending USC Film School was a mistake. It’s an easy town to get lost in and just sort of fade away and disappear, even before the economy crashed and things got a lot more expensive over the past 20 years. At any rate, my film education at USC was similar to my film education outside of it- The teachers would just tell us to pick up a camera and go, and do our best with it. It wasn’t very formal. What film school did provide was an audience- Your fellow students would all give notes tearing your student films apart, and I had to get a lot better very fast to keep up and deliver quality filmmaking.

So my advice is that you don’t really need a formal education in film to make movies, at least if you’re starting out and doing your own stuff. What you really need is to be young and have a certain amount of financial support on your side. Once I got older and had to work and pay my own rent during an economic recession, it was a lot harder to make films. If you’re still living with your parents, great! Or if you’re in an okay financial situation, great! Use whatever resources you’ve got.

Mainly you need free time, and people to help you. There’s a lot you can do on your own. As I said, my early experiments as a kid filmmaker were pretty much done on my own, and I sometimes had to create scenes on my own for every movie that followed. I might do a quick pickup shot, or re-record some voiceover. Making movies on your own isn’t an ideal way to work, of course, but a lot of people on Youtube are doing it!

I learned a lot about filmmaking by simply doing it. I’d made something like twelve features by the time I was out of college. Nothing I would still want to watch today, but I learned a ton by doing them. I expected I’d become a Hollywood filmmaker, but making that happen takes money and resources and connections I didn’t have (and still don’t). People don’t want to admit it, but it takes money to get noticed at all in Los Angeles. And when you’re older and need to pay bills, time is also money, so it’s very hard to find the time to work on projects unless you have some money in your bank account. If you have money and time in Los Angeles, you can go to more events, meet more people, pay to enter your scripts into contests and things, and there’s not much of a chance you’ll get noticed by doing that either. But money and time allow you to make more art and try again.

At any rate, if you’re just starting out and learning, there’s plenty you can do on your own, but ideally you want to have a partner who is just as interested as you are, at least during the shooting. I have often spent years editing feature film footage on my own. WhoSprites, Shamelessly She-Hulk, The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut and Gods of Los Angeles all took years to edit. But the actual shooting of She-Hulk and Gods of Los Angeles and all my earlier features was usually done very quickly.

If you’re young and working with friends and collaborators to create a feature, like I did many times in my teens and twenties, there’s a certain momentum which is key, and very easy to lose. You can get a group of young people together to film a feature for a week or a month, and they’ll work very hard. All the features I ever shot were like that, where I had one or two main collaborators who were there every day for a week or a month or a few months, and we just worked and worked and worked, while other people came in and out.

The movie I did in college, Gods of Los Angeles, I flew my friend Dave in to star in it. That was summer 2002 and we had maybe a month to shoot with him, as well as do a road trip to South Dakota for an amateur film festival where we shot some other stuff as well. We worked on the movie every day. Other actors would come and go but I only had Dave as an actor for that period. Sometimes we were sleeping on the floor at a friend’s place before filming there - we were all over town. Dave lost weight in the desert on the road trip. But we had that momentum to get as much of the film done as we could. It was this ridiculous long script, like four hours worth of story. We ran out of time and I ended up cutting a whole act out and shooting a rewritten ending the morning Dave had to get on the plane back to Connecticut.

We had that momentum to work and get the feature done. We were young and in college, and it was summer. We had no bills to pay. We had free time. We shot most of the feature during that month. We worked around every other actor’s schedule but Dave and I were there every day.

After that, and when the school year began again, production was a lot slower. Trying to get any actor to show up for a shoot was tough. We went months inbetween shoots and it took a long time to finish the last few scenes.

I did notice I’d gotten a lot better as a filmmaker during that shoot. We had filmed Dave’s stuff during this crazed rush, and all the later stuff I was able to shoot in a much more controlled way. No-budget filmmaking, in my experience, is always a disaster. Everything goes wrong and you prove your worth as a filmmaker by rolling with it and still getting the scene done even if you don’t have that actor or that location or whatnot.

You learn a lot by just doing it, as a filmmaker, and it helps to be young and without bills to pay. If you have one good collaborator who is willing to really join you on this journey for awhile, for a week or a month or parts of a few months, you have a movie. All of my movies were like that.

Los Angeles never agreed with me, physically or in any way. I moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago, and left ten years later. I spent that whole first ten years wanting to leave. I knew immediately when I stepped off the plane that I’d made a big mistake. I did leave, for five and a half years, and then ended up back here. I had big dreams, but everyone in this business has big dreams. I expected Hollywood, but it felt more like tripping and falling into a white-walled room which locks behind you and sinks down into the ocean, and nothing else happened for twenty years.

So I’d often leave Los Angeles for awhile to make a movie with friends elsewhere. I went back to Connecticut one summer, and I went to the Midwest twice (a mistake), and roadtripped to South Dakota. I had just unsuccessfully tried to move back to Connecticut one Christmas in 2006, and ended up in some shitty apartment with two people who were trying to kill each other. Pretty typical for my Los Angeles experiences. It’s just a dangerous town when you don’t have money. You always feel like a criminal, and I can no longer count the situations I lived through where my life was threatened. That was almost a constant.

I needed to get out of there, and someone I’d met while doing stand-up comedy called me. He had a rich mother, and he was bored and wanted to learn how to make a horror film. For the hell of it I’d written this script about Marvel’s She-Hulk character. I’d written it in a week. My scripts usually took a year but this was an easy write. He read it, and he decided we should film that script.

I did warn him that it was a fanfilm, so we could never really make money from it, or release it on video, or show it at festivals, especially back then. I don’t think he fully understood that until we were four months into production and had shot most of the film, at which point he shut things down.

But for four months we worked together every day. Our She-Hulk actress came in pretty much every day for a few weeks to film on greenscreen. A lot of times we were shooting one actor at a time because of scheduling, and we pretty much shot the whole thing in that apartment in Santa Monica. I’d put sticky paper up to turn the walls green or black. We just kept at it, getting through a huge amount of material every day. It’s not great to shoot a big superhero feature one actor at a time. That was tricky to edit together later. But working with one actor, or two actors, at a time, is very controllable. You’re not wasting anyone’s time. You don’t have scenes where one of the actors doesn’t have much to do. They’re always working. Sometimes we had a bunch of people onset at once, and sometimes that was more chaotic. It did mean we had more people to work the lights and sound and effects. It can be tricky to get Los Angeles actors to commit to this sort of thing. You’re never sure who you can really rely on and who is going to flake out on you. We ended up shooting with fewer actors and less crew, and doing our best with it.

And when you’re not paying people, sometimes actors will quit on you. We lost one of our two lead actresses on She-Hulk, and by the time I’d recast her months later we didn’t even have money anymore, or most of the original actors. I was shooting on my own for no money. We had auditioned 400 people for the film. It was a huge, long process where I called in anyone in Los Angeles who would work for no money. But some of my first choices didn’t want to actually do the film in the end. I got my first choice for She-Hulk, and got the best people for the parts. But I recall that original actress saying she’d rather be waitressing and making money.

It was always easier to find great actresses who weren’t working. Finding guys who were any good was always tougher. On my college movie Gods of Los Angeles in 2002, I kept losing the male actors I originally cast in every single part, after a day of filming. They weren’t willing to spend that much time on such a ramshackle, no-budget feature where I was learning as I went. The women were all cast from the start, and stayed put.

I shouldn't admit this, but on both Gods of Los Angeles and Shamelessly She-Hulk I eventually had to cut scenes and edit around some male actors, who hadn't quite completed their entire parts, but had come close.The people who stayed, stayed because they believed in the project. We didn't have much money, but I was always a good dialogue writer, and was writing very meaty parts that actors enjoyed playing, even under the circumstances. And the circumstances were messy. (Screenplay structure was more of a weak point, though I got better at that too in my unproduced work.)

She-Hulk was a big role - she had tons of dialogue to get through - and we often shot her alone. We just kept working, and we had that momentum, and we wrapped her part in a couple weeks. Finishing the rest of the film later was a slower process.

But it’s about working within people’s schedules. That gets harder the older you get, because people have bills to pay and things to do.

On She-Hulk, one older actor usually had a beard for other roles. I wanted him to shave it for the part. One day he told me he’d shaved his beard and would want me to shoot his whole part in the next three days or so. We were already booked up for those days with lots of shooting with other actors. But we brought him in at night, and shot most of his part alone. Or in the morning, when he was already starting to grow the beard back.

I once shot a comedy feature in a week, where we all became horribly sick and injured in a dozen different ways. The director was depressed and not in the mood, and in retrospect was bullying me the whole time I knew him. It was horrible, but we still shot the feature in a week.

The Phantom Menace parody was filmed over a month or two, as was the one we did the next year. In both cases I was working every day with Dave, and other people would come in and out depending on their availability. So we had that momentum.

We also found time to shoot a comedy/drama improv feature. I had two collaborators on that first one, and we rehearsed for a couple of weeks while shooting the other movie, then shot the whole damn thing in one night. We tried to do it again the next year but everyone was too tired. We hadn’t really had a break, and Dave had barely slept all month.

Looking at the footage from those (summer 2000) movies later was a turning point for me. I was a dumb kid of about nineteen making dumb movies on low quality video cameras, but I was also a perfectionist. And I lost my temper a lot on that shoot, while trying to get my friends to take the shoot seriously and get the footage I needed.

As a director, if you lose your temper you’ve lost control of your film. You’ve lost the respect of those around you. It’s not going to get them to take you seriously. A director needs to be the nicest guy onset. You’ve got to make people comfortable, and feel like their contributions are valued. They should feel safe, and comfortable enough to give their best work to you. You need to earn their respect. If you have the right collaborators, they will do brilliant work for you, if you let them be themselves.

I was tough, as a director. I would shoot a lot of takes, until I knew I’d gotten the footage I needed in the edit. With enough preparation, four takes should be enough, but it’s not unusual for me to see 16 takes in the edit for more complex scenes. We wouldn’t do a ton of rehearsing. We’d shoot and fix problems on the fly.

I wouldn’t lose my temper. I’d just ask them to do it again, until we had a version where nothing went wrong technically, or with the performance. If an actor isn’t playing the scene right, it’s usually a bad idea to tell them how to read the line. It’s unprofessional but it’s also not how actors work. Fixing the exterior performance is phony. They need to feel and understand the scene inwardly. If they’re not playing the scene right, you haven’t explained it right, and you need to talk to them for a bit about what their character is feeling.

Or maybe it’s just a dumb scene and the actor isn’t feeling it. While looking back at the She-Hulk movie, there are a few lines which make me cringe, which I wish I’d rewritten. Easy jokes, which border on offensive or vulgar and don’t suit the character or the film.

I was looking at the raw footage from one of those scenes recently. I knew the line was bad at the time, and clearly I feel awkward directing the actress to say it. I ask if she can say it with a little more feeling, since she was playing it off very flatly, as if embarrassed of the line. She said “No, because it’s a stupid line!” The footage cuts off there. She wasn’t wrong. We should have rewritten the line, and she gave the best performance she could under the circumstances, because she needed to communicate that her character was embarrassed of the line too.

When I was making movies in college, I was still embarrassed that I’d lost my temper during the shoot in summer 2000. I was trying to be nicer as a director while still pushing hard enough to get the shot. I overcorrected. I have wavy hair which gets unmanageable unless it’s cut very short. I would let my hair grow longer than that, and I’d really look like a mess. A scruffy kid with glasses and mad scientist hair, wearing a red windbreaker jacket and scuffed-up jeans. I looked like a slob! I thought it helped the actors relax and not have to take things as seriously. I grew up in Connecticut as this gifted overachiever, always pushing very hard and being very intense about things. In California I was learning to slow down, and calm down, and go with the flow. I think it helped me, but I went with the flow so much that nothing ever happened in my career for twenty years!

But some of that was just that I wasn’t presenting a serious image to the world. I was presenting the image of a guy who really hated himself. I thought of myself as a clown. I felt bad that I was making my actors work so hard and do so many takes, and I thought I had to be the guy onset who was making things seem much more relaxed and casual, but also pushing them very hard to do brilliant performances and shoot a lot of takes. I should have loved myself more, enough to clean myself up and look professional onset. My appearance was at odds with the high-level filmmaking I wanted to do, because my self-esteem and self-image wasn’t there.

As a creative in Los Angeles, at least to an extent, you are who you pretend to be. The industry is full of pretenders. The industry is biased toward people with money and connections, but people with money and connections are also just more presentable. I had very high standards for the filmmaking I was doing, but I looked and acted like a weird kid! It’s amazing that anyone took me seriously enough to work with me. To an extent I had trouble making friends and felt very isolated, especially among people who really wanted to work in the industry. My friends tended to be people who didn’t fit in either, and who wanted to leave Los Angeles at the first opportunity. I took myself very seriously as an artist, but a lot of people at USC took me at face value instead, and seemed to hate me instantly! Young people can be very cruel. Well, all people can be very cruel.

I used to do stand-up and improv as an idiot character called Radio Man. When I’d perform him live on campus, people would treat me like I actually was this ridiculous character. I was thrown offstage by security several times! Maybe I should have pretended to be cool!

I feel like that was partly my problem with networking and trying to make friends in the industry and get work that way. This is an oversimplification, but I felt like the mindset in Los Angeles was very different. Not better or worse than New York and Connecticut, but upside-down. New Yorkers can be gruff until they get to know you, and they’re more open with how they’re really feeling. People in Los Angeles tend to wear a mask at first. They want to smile and seem pleasant and impress people in a non threatening way, and it’s a front. You find out what they’re really like later, if they like you. You see their dark side. I’m generalizing of course, but I was never a very social person, and this was all backward from what I was used to. People were being very guarded and false when I was trying to be open and truthful, and vice versa even! I was zigging, they were zagging. I felt like people hated me immediately wherever I went! Or at least couldn’t figure me out and weren’t impressed. I wasn’t great at putting up a front and impressing people. And in Los Angeles it’s hard to impress people anyway. You’re talking to creators, who are all boasting about what they’re doing as a multi hyphenate. At that point I’d made a bunch of features as a writer/director/editor, but I was still a dumb kid with few resources and no connections.

Youtube has changed everything, but it’s also not a filmmaker’s medium. Most of the people who are getting successful on Youtube are doing video essays as themselves, straight to the camera. People aren’t really getting known for making short films and features like we used to do. I still remaster material from the 2007 She-Hulk production for Youtube, and it feels very out of place with everything else that Youtube is.

That can be a positive, I suppose. It’s not a big deal for a filmmaker to record themselves doing video essays and reactions, and Contrapoints for example has stepped up that game with her colored lighting and aesthetics, bring a feature-film quality to Youtube.

I’d like to think there’s room for lots of different kinds of content on Youtube, and as a small creator it’s unfortunately very hard to get seen, so you might as well create what you like, and what really matters to you. The algorithm seems to push certain kinds of content (including some gross political content which is definitely helping cause the end of the world). The algorithm is also impossible to predict.

I had barely touched my main Youtube channel in eight years until recently. That was a mistake. I was sort of grandfathered in as an older channel, and once I put up new content in 2018, sometimes the algorithm would smile on me and give me millions of views. But it’s impossible to predict. One or two popular videos and the rest go thud.

I considered that a channel for the She-Hulk movie and my Doctor Who animations, and other filmmakery stuff. But I’d stopped editing that film, and was doing some very dumb web videos on my own instead for awhile, which I uploaded on another channel. I started other channels for my film restoration work. I hadn’t considered Youtube as a career. It was simply an outlet for the various things I was doing.

If I was starting a new channel now, I wouldn’t be getting the views I get on the old channel. It’s probably best to do everything in one place, do it well and make it easy to find.

As for the other stuff, the filmmaker stuff - actually learning how to make a film - just do it. You’ll learn as you go.

In my high school movies, these early comedies, I barely knew where to put the camera at all. At first I was shooting long wide shots, then some closeups. All very basic stuff. I was leaning heavily on the dialogue. Without dialogue I didn’t have a movie. There were only a few sequences I storyboarded or even shot a lot of angles for. Usually it was when we were parodying an existing movie, and recreating their shots. That was always fun- recreating a famous big-budget Hollywood movie on a budget of zero, and making it work somehow.

I learned a little more each time for sure, but in film school we had to do these little short films with no dialogue. I was leaning on the same style I’d had in my high school comedies. My first couple of shorts had the same goofy feel. One of them used pop culture references instead of having characters and story. And without dialogue that didn’t work. It was about some friends of mine as an action-hero fighting team (and not a very impressive one). It was pretty dumb.

This was for a class (in 2001) which originally shot on 8mm film, so it had to be silent. We were shooting on MiniDV instead, so we could have shot dialogue, but that’s not what the class was about.

I couldn’t use any of the tricks I’d had in my comedies. I had to tell a story without dialogue- something that people could take seriously. I didn’t even know how to get a performance out of someone without dialogue, which became immediately apparent. I couldn’t use any of my strengths, and that was great because I had to learn quickly.

My third short was vastly better. It really told a story without words. I shot a few more like that later, including four on 16mm film.

These were all supposed to be 5 minutes. I think short three was 16 minutes.

My fourth and fifth student-film shorts actually had heavy dialogue, but I was still learning very fast and challenging myself to do something different.

I scripted the fourth short without dialogue. It was about a dying cartoonist, and was intended as a very personal, serious drama. Writing it without dialogue forced me to come up with visual ideas to keep it interesting. I then rewrote it with dialogue but kept most of those ideas. I’d already been writing serious screenplays for awhile but this was my first serious film- a big step for a goofy kid like me! It was 18 minutes long.

As I recall, I got in trouble for using dialogue so heavily, and my grade was taken down a few notches. That happened a lot at USC, always on the films I was most proud of!

My fifth was an animated adaptation of the Terry Pratchett novel, MORT. It was crazy over-ambitious for a five-minute short at the end of the semester. I’d written a 45-minute script, and I had to shoot it in a weekend and edit it in about as long. I got my friends together and we recorded the voices in one long night. I played Death and I certainly sounded like Death by that point. For the animation I made some clay figures with drawn cutout faces, in real-world locations. It was nothing fancy, but I really did shoot it in a weekend, and made it work in the edit as best I could. I was new to Avid and digital editing generally. I released a 25-minute animated film, having cut out anything I didn’t absolutely need to tell the story.

I was proud. I’m sure I got in trouble for it! I wasn’t alone either- Someone else in the class had shot a dialogue-heavy adaptation of The Catcher In the Rye.

In another class, when shooting on 16mm film, the films really did have to be 5 minutes long, and not a second longer. We only got one or two takes because film stock was limited, and you really had to tell the story visually.

Due to shenanigans I was forced to take the class twice, and did better work the second time. With a partner I shot a fantasy film The Journey of Truesong (with thrift-store costumes), and a time-travel musical with CGI and splitscreen effects, all done in-camera. We also got in trouble for both, because both involved dialogue and were against the rules. We’d made the most exciting films in the class, and got punished for it. That sort of thing happened a lot.

I remember on The Journey of Truesong, our actress was vegan, and I didn’t know. I’d brought ham sandwiches for lunch. She was too polite to say anything and starved the whole shoot. When we opened up the fruit (and I think trail mix) her eyes went wide and she chowed down. Ask your actors about food restrictions and make sure you have a way to feed them! We were in Griffith Park, miles from anywhere!

A few years later I filmed a scene for She-Hulk, again in Griffith Park, with four actors. They were supposed to barbecue hamburgers in the scene itself, so I bought a grill and figured that would be our meal for the day as well. I wanted to wrap an actor playing a bad guy so he could go home, so we shot his scenes first. The sun was going down by the time we grilled the hamburgers. The scene was grainy since we were losing the light, and getting the grill running was taking time. The actors had to get a little silly and improv around it, and I reshot some of it later in a different location (obviously so). By that point the hamburgers and other food had been sitting out in the sun for hours and were absolutely inedible. Everyone was starving!

Today you could maybe use a food delivery app. Maybe not, because we were still in the park in a very remote location. It was a disaster of planning on my part, and I think an actor quit after that. When you have no budget, going out on location means going out on a limb and hoping it works. In this case I wasn’t able to feed my cast. The actresses rolled with it and forgave me. An actor didn’t.

Food is very important, and easy to overlook! If you’re shooting in your own home, or a very controllable location, you can keep food in the fridge. On location in the park, in the heat, the food had a very limited shelf life, and so did the actors.

If we weren’t out in the middle of nowhere, we might all drive to a fast food restaurant to eat. That can take up hours in the middle of a shoot if you’re not careful. Having enough food onset certainly helps.

I had very high standards for the sort of actors I’d cast. In high school I was just casting friends, but I grew out of that. Even so, I think that someone who will really stick with you and is willing to put in the work with you is just as important as raw talent. If someone can’t act, maybe they can run the camera, or hold the microphone, or just generally help out onset and with the production. They can drive around, get the food, set things up that need to be set up. They can be an extra, or a costumed character. There’s so much that needs to be done, and no-budget shoots immediately become a trashfire of problems because it’s hard to get it all done in time. Things will always go wrong, and you prove yourself by how you deal with all of that.

I know that got very personal, and very long.

But I hope that helps!

#long post

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aftermathdb · 6 years ago

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DEATH BATTLE Review: Aquaman vs. Namor

Marvel and DC’s Aquatic kings of Atlantis duke it out in this Season 6 opener. Who will reign supreme, and who will end up sleeping with the fishes?- We’ll find out in the Season 6 premiere of DEATH BATTLE!

Woo hoo! It’s good to be back, folks! Man! It’s been a while. There have been a lot of changes. Like the new schedule for their podcast, the new location change of said podcast, and a whole bunch of other stuff like changing the Youtube channel name. With that said, let’s dive right into the first episode of the season.

Aquaman′s Preview.

We start off Aquaman’s lap by going over his origin story. And thanks to the new movie that’s been swimming around theaters, I’m sure we know his story by now. A good ol’ romance between the land and sea that would make one of the most remembered heroes around. The one and only, Aquaman.

With his origin story now out of the way, we can freestyle right into the powerset of the Atlantian King. And get used to those swimming, water, and ocean puns, because they’re not drowning out anytime soon.

And we even get to go over a lot of his powers about communicating to fish, though, not all of them…

(Don’t worry. Arthur got better).

And that “Clear” thing gets explained around here:

But there is one aquatic sea creature that he can’t mess around with, like his friend, Topo. Who goes from a goofy octopus to…

That.

But as it turns out, Aquaman isn’t just limited to sea life. He can also talk to birds and other less intelligent animals. And while he doesn’t have total control over humans, he can still mess with their heads and disorient them enough to win fights.

DAMN! Aquaman is scary when he wants to be!

But no true Atlantian King would be complete without his trust weapon of choice, his trident………s……… Please note the plural.

(Poseidon is in Boomstick’s hand, Neptune’s trident is in Wiz’s hand).

Aquaman also has plenty of strength feats to back him up as well. Like the time he lifted a ship comparable to the size of this thing thanks to his water magic:

And he’s got plenty more feats to back him up.

Now, blocking the Dead King’s scepter is an impressive feat. As that was the same scepter that sunk Atlantis in the first place. Since Atlantis is considered a continent, it has to be bigger than Greenland, the largest island on Earth.

Which, in simpler terms, means that the total size of Atlantis swims at about

836300 square miles! In order to sink or destroy it, the dead king Atlan would have to have managed to take down this much volume in one blow:

In order to do this, Atlan would have to have struck it with a grand total of

over 155 trillion tons of TNT! And Our boy Arthur blocked that!

But even with all of that power, Aquaman isn’t exactly invincible. He’s susceptible to dehydration, and his durability has limits (as we’ve seen with the piranha thing).

But he’s found different ways to work around that weakness. Like that one time where he used blood to refuel himself. And no, I’m not showing a screenshot for that. It might not be as bad as Elfin Lied, but I’d say that for a guy like Aquaman, one time in the blood pool is enough.

And the end line really should have been a line from Brave and the Bold. Literally any time he would shout his signature “OUTRAGEOUS!” would have been nice to hear. But we just get his word of warning from the Superman animated show instead.

Namor′s Preview.

We start off Namor’s lap by going over his origin story. And thanks to the new movie that’s been swimming around theaters, I’m sure we know his story by now. A good ol’ romance between the land and sea that would make one of the most remembered heroes around. The one and only, Namor.

Except this time, Namor would spend more time in the sea rather than on land. Basically, Aquaman is Surf and Turf, while Namor is just… Surf.

With his background out of the way, let’s delve deeper into his arsenal and powers.

(Wow… Never seen that before…)

Uh, anyways, Namor is also Marvel’s first mutant… Well, kinda. See, Namor isn’t the first mutant to be born, he was simply the first that Marvel introduced. This is because Namor is part Atlantian and part Mutant. Where the mutant part comes from is anyone’s guess, but maybe he just had an X-Gene laying around. This gene is what allows Namor to fly with those wings of his.

And Namor has plenty of other powers to fish for as well.

He can mimic marine life to copy their abilities. He can also communicate with other marine life as well, and his Atlantian education makes him a worthy heir to the throne of Atlantis.

He’s also got a trident named after Neptune.

Wait for it…

(God. I love the fact that I’ve figured out my screenshot editing skills. Makes things so much easier to work with).

Anyways, Namor’s trident isn’t just a fancy fish fork, it has hydrokenisis, mystic blasts, mystic formation, and can even animate objects.

And if he needs backup, he can use his horn to… Huh? What’s that (inaudible whispering) He doesn’t use it in the fight? (Inaudible whispering) And Aquaman doesn’t even call for Topo either? (Inaudible whispering) And now you’re telling me that we need to get to the feats?

Oh………

Y’know, the fact that they didn’t go over the Island Utopia’s weight kinda shows that Namor……… Probably wasn’t going to win this. I mean, tossing a 9000 ton naval destroyer is impressive, but when compared to the 255 thousand ton ship that Aquaman threw……… It’s not exactly reassuring to the Namor fans.

But, much like DC’s Atlantian royal, Namor isn’t invincible. He also needs water. Not to survive, but to maintain mental stability. This can sometimes cause him to be the villain. Though it should be noted that this isn’t how bipolar disorder actually works.

But as long as there is water left in his body, Namor will continue to be the defender of Atlantis.

And again, we could have gotten his signature battle cry of “IMPERIOUS REX!” From the 2006 Fantastic Four show. But no. Much like Aquaman, we get a word of warning from the 90s version of the show.

The Battle Itself.

Luis is lead on this fight, with Zack, Kiid, and Kayas helping out. Aquaman will be voiced by Kaiji Tang, and Namor will be voiced by Todd Haberkorn. Jerky is the sprite artist, as per usual, Kings of the Sea by Therewolf, Chris Kokkinos lead on sound.

I should also note that instead of his usual “Alright the combatants are set! Let’s end this debate once and for all!” Wiz now says ‘Alright the combatants are set, and we’ve run the data through all possibilities!” It doesn’t have the same feel of epicness that the previous line had. Maybe they’ll change it back, or maybe it’ll take some getting used to. But at least they kept the good old line from Boomstick.

“IT’S TIME FOR A DEATH BATTLE!”

So, with DBC’s new schedule, we didn’t actually get the full audio for the fight. Shame though. Friday was enough time to not only see the battle, but to also gather enough questions for them to answer. Also, now broadcast can’t force Achievement Hunter out of the studio anymore with the excuse of DBC since they moved. But the just of it the story of this fight is that Aquaman does a splash in the pool, and it ticks Namor off.

So they do battle underwater. I should also note that the pool says “50 ft” which implies that it’s that deep. There’s also no “FIGHT!“ Soundbite. Which takes away from the overall feel of it. I miss that announcer. Hopefully, they’ll get it back next episode. Because that sound is something that I’d use for a text alert.

They even exchange a few fisticuffs in the air before crashing onto a beach.

And we also get to see a little Easter Egg too!

(Roshi rebuilt his house. Yay! (Commentary suggests that this takes place before or during that fight though, but I like my idea better mostly because it feels better continuity-wise))

And Namor decides to bring out the big fish, by using his animation powers to summon a few rock golems to do battle with Aquaman.

But Aquaman doesn’t drown easily.

So they take the battle to the water again, where both of them call their aquatic armies to fight. But Aquaman’s army is also backed up by the Clear, so they obviously win there. So they take it even deeper where they clash.

Oh. Right. The finishing blow.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

(Y’know, I tried to make this a gif, but the website I used didn’t want to use videos from the website. So it’s back to using screenshots).

Well……… That’s quite the predicament you’re in, chum.

Verdict + Explanation.

Well, both were evenly matched in terms of ability. That was basically a no-brainier. Comparing abilities on their own basically means that you could essentially flip a coin to determine a winner

Namor had wing feet, but Aquaman had magical flight thanks to his trident. Neither side really held advantages in any category.

But while Namor could win in some scenarios, Aquaman had more intense abilities to win out more times than not.

Remember how Namor could match Savage Hulk?- That’s an impressive feat of strength, considering that Hulk could lift a 150 billion ton mountain. But Aquaman could stop Atlan’s Atlantis-Sinking strike. Which had over a hundred times more energy put into it. It’s not exactly a 1-1 comparison, but Aquaman has more feats that back up his own strength.

Namor once kept Utopia from falling into the ocean. Calculating it, that means that Namor managed to hold up a little over 1400 tons of TNT. While the force Aquaman stopped was nearly 200 billion times more powerful.

And when it came to speed and reaction, Namor could catch the Human Torch, who breaks the sound barrier on occasion and regularly flies 140 mph on his normal days. But Aquaman has gone toe to toe with Wonder Woman on multiple occasions. And we all know how fast she is.

Aquaman also had the edge in the whole “Controlling sea life” thing too. While Namor could communicate and command them, Aquaman could dominate their will. And giving them a Clear fueled edge-up also meant that Namor was stuck commanding regular fish while Aquaman was controlling super-fish. This not only meant that Aquaman’s aquatic telepathy was stronger, but it also meant that whatever he was commanding was also stronger.

In the end, both fighters had plenty of counters and abilities, but Aquaman’s strength, speed, and telepathy made Namor fish food.

Overall impression.

I feel a bit… Unsure about this. Not only is the “FIGHT” soundbite missing, but we didn’t get Wiz’s usual “Let’s end this debate once and for all!” line. Don’t get me wrong, this is still very well-researched, and the fight was pretty fun (When you could see it, anyways), but the voice acting was a bit……… weird. Not bad, it took some re-watching to get the feel of it, but for first-time viewers, it would feel weird.

The rock golems aren’t exactly that great-looking either. This kinda feels a bit… rushed. Like we go the unedited version instead of the more polished version. If I’m right on this, and the polished version is out by the time this goes up, then sure. Let’s go. But the overall feel of it doesn’t feel like one of Luis’ fights. More like… a rushed product. It kinda hearkens back to the old Captain America vs. Batman fight that was also filler. Maybe it’s because they said that they planned this for last season, but this doesn’t feel like a strong start.

7.0/10. It’s not a bad fight, but it’s……… Unfamiliar waters.

Next Time…

Well……… This should be a mega battle. We haven’t had a battle royale fight since… the Kanto battle royale. Should be fun, though now I have to write in every single Mega Man.

I’m thinking X might have this, if I’m not forgetting anything about the other robots. He was built to be better than classic Mega Man, so… It’s a reasonable guess. But it looks like I’m going to need to find a way to differentiate later on.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

A battle of Mega-proportions!

#Death Battle #Deathbattle #screwattack #review

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siobhaneardley · 7 years ago

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The Blair Witch Project & Beyond: The Increasing Laziness of Found Footage Films.

The ‘Found Footage’ method of storytelling has been around for a good while now; dating back to, you guessed it the 19th century with novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula (there will come a day when I don’t mention Dracula in an essay on horror, but apparently today is not that day). These novels were often written in a diary format, or composed of letters that have been compiled by the author.

The Blair Witch Project is perhaps the most famous film in the medium, due to its being a cultural phenomenon back in 1999 when it was first released, and it was the first big success of a film of its nature. And is still notirous to this day, having a few of the most famous words in horror history:

Although many may think that it was the first of its kind, the found footage format of filmmaking has its roots in 1980 with the release of “one of the most controversial films ever made”, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. The film follows an anthropologist on a rescue mission to find a film crew who venture into the Amazon to film indigenous tribes. Monroe, the anthropologist, finds the footage the dead crew shot, and it is presented as if we are watching it as Monroe is. Now, I will admit by description is rather vague as I did attempt to watch the film, but I honestly couldn’t make it through because there are scenes that are just too graphic for me.

The film has perhaps the most extensive disclaimer I have ever seen:

“The following motion picture contains intense scenes of extreme violence and cruelty. As distributors of this film, we wish to state with absolute sincerity that by no means do we condone the artistic decisions employed by the makers of this film. However, as firm believers in the constitutional right of free speech, we do not believe in censorship.

Therefore, we are presenting Cannibal Holocaust for the very first time in its uncut uncensored original form, with all sequences photographed by the filmmakers however offensive and repugnant, presented fully intact. What you will see will definitely shock and offend you. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as a disturbing historical document of a bygone era of extreme irresponsibility which no longer exists and hopefully with never exist again”

Initially the phrase ‘definitely shock and offend you’ did make me scoff, because I honestly thought that a horror film made in 1980 would be a walk in the park. Boy, was I wrong. Do yourself a favour and just don’t bother watching this film. I can handle pretty much anything, but this film contains scenes of violent rape and murder, and live killing of animals. It is honestly not worth it, as the reast of the film isn’t that great, the acting is pretty terrible.

Anyway, back to it. Cannibal Holocaust was such a controversial release at the time, because of the sheer explicitness of the film, and because everyone thought it was real. So real that the director was arrested on charges of obscenity and then murder, as the director told the actors to go into hiding a year after the film was released to create authenticity, as soon as the actors resurfaced to give testimony, the charges were dropped, but he was still fined for charges of animal cruelty.

Before The Blair Witch Project there were only eight films of its kind made, after it’s release in 1999, there have been around 150, that’s 150 in the space of nearly 20 years. What made The Blair Witch Project so successful that is inspired so many more filmmakers to create similar found footage films?

This notion of the authenticity of found footage films is perhaps its biggest draw and the most masterful example of creating an authentic narrative is The Blair Witch Project. The films genesis lies in 1993 when the directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick discovered that some paranormal investigative documentaries were often scarier than fictional horror films, and got to work on the film, initially creating the mythology that would be the basis for the ‘documentary’.

Set in Burkettsville, Maryland, formerly ‘Blair’ the mythology is based on a witch who was murdered by the townspeople, her spirit supposedly continues to haunt the woods surrounding the town, causing the deaths of numerous people from the town.

Heather, Josh and Mike, the three students featured in the film set out to the woods to film a documentary about the Blair Witch, after two days they get lost in the woods leading to them supposedly dying at the hands of the witch, however the ending is left purposefully ambiguous, showing no deaths on screen. However, the events that occur in the last 10 minutes suggest the death of the filmmakers, due to our knowledge of the mythology of the witch.

This mythology is fleshed out even more in the mockumentary that was made by Sánchez and Myrick, and subsequently premiered on the Sci-Fi channel before the film was due to be released. The mockumentary delves deep into the story of the witch, but also contains interviews with the missing student’s family and friends. If this wasn’t enough, there was also a website made providing all these details, with even more pictures of the evidence found with the footage shown in the film, therefore, “The Blair Witch Project does not begin and end with the theatre release; the film is a piece of a broader narrative” (Keller, 72). The website and documentary were so successful that an ex Maryland police officer offered to help in the search for the lost students. Which was only exemplified by the actors being listed as deceased on IMDB.

With the mythology set, the authenticity of the film does not stop there. The shoot in the woods lasted eight days, in which the three actors were pretty much left to their own devices. There was no script written for the film, just a guideline of the basic narrative. Each day the actors would leave the film rolls in a set location found of the GPS by the rest of the crew, and they would be left with food and very small amounts of direction.

Myrick the co-director describes the film as “not like a normal film: the actors would work the cameras, film each other all the time” they only intervened if they felt they needed to tone it down and when they needed to create the nighttime scenes in which they would shake the tent make creepy noises. Keller suggests that “within the semiotics of the film, the same unstrady images that reveal the presence of the camera also suggests ‘reality television’, a genre of film that lacks the polish of cinematic realism, but signifies the authenticity of the events depicted” (74).

The aftermath of all this hard work, left cinema viewers stunned by the film, and had them asking, was it all real? It must be there was so much evidence to suggest so, back in the day, if there were official websites on the internet, then it must be true. However nowadays we have learned our lesson and try not to believe everything we see online.

For me, I watched the film not really believing it was true, but it’s the notion that it might be legitimate that makes the experience so exciting when watching it for the first time. It’s all part of the experience and is a large factor in its success with audiences. Sadly, in 2018, when you do your research, it is very clear it was a fabrication; made all clearer by the sequel Blair Witch released in 2016…but we shall get back to that.

In the (nearly) 20 years since The Blair Witch Project, there have been a plethora of found footage movies, most are horror films, the odd one goes into the realms of science fiction, superhero films and even comedy. Arguably the most famous/successful are films such as Paranormal Activity, [REC] and Cloverfield.

Paranormal Activity kept the tradition of The Blair Witch Project alive by pushing the idea that the footage found features the deceased and could potentially be showing real life events. Cloverfield does suggest this, but the thing that draws the viewer away from the feeling of ‘real life events’ when a giant monster starts crashing through New York, which, we as viewers obviously know did not happen. I am not critiquing Cloverfield at all, as it is simply taking the genre further by exploring different narratives. Paranormal Activity however, I will nitpick (even though I love it).

Paranormal Activity begins like The Blair Witch Project with a disclaimer:

“Paramount pictures would like to thank the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherson and the San Diego Police Department”

From the beginning of the film, you expect a Blair Witch Project-esque film, which in some respects, it is, and does it relatively well. However, my issue lies with the lack of effort that is made to make the events seem as ‘real’ as possible. There is little background information relating to apparent events I mean, it would have been cool to list the actors as dead. But I guess the internet must be to blame for this, we are so god at squeezing out information that it would probably seem like a cheap marketing trick to attempt what Blair Witch Project The did.

But, I mean sometimes, they didn’t even try. Like it was common knowledge that there were multiple endings…which makes no sense if it was a ‘found footage’ film. How can they die in two different ways? It immediately takes you out of the ‘real’ world of the film.

Sequels are also a glaringly obvious issue with attempting to carry on the façade. A mere three years after the original film, Paranormal Activity 2 was released. Now, the illusion is broken well and truly, because we then question the chances of someone else connected to filming the events that are linked to the original film; and lemme tell you the far-fetched narratives that are in place so that they can have the excuse of calling it found footage. The first made sense, the second was a bit of a stretch, the third, a little bit more so apart from the fact that they had to change the VHS tapes every, like 8 hours or something silly, the fourth again, is a massive stretch. But, I mean they are still quite scary, one moment in the third one made me well up it creeped me out so much, so I guess they did the job there. I could write so much more about the Paranormal Activity films, that’s for another time, perhaps...

I mentioned the 2016 sequel to The Blair Witch Project, simply entitled Blair Witch earlier. Now, I was legitimately excited for this, I thought, hey, what could go wrong. They could perhaps learn from how great the first film was … but alas, it was not to be. Blair Witch follows Heather’s brother, 20 years after her disappearance. He heads off into the same woods to see if he can find her, because he is convinced that she is still alive in the house. He has a bigger camera crew and has two weirdo locals with him as well.

Now my first big gripe was that the camera continuation was completely off, but I now know that the crew have camera earpieces… which I didn’t even notice, but surely if it was on your ear, like your cheek would get massively in the way.

For me the film failed to capture the sense of desperation that flows through the original. It was down to complete laziness from the directors, to even make it seem the slightest bit authentic. The ear piece cameras and the GoPro are so unbelievably HD and graded, the script is just terrible, the actors are equally bad. You can tell that they had a film crew with them the whole time. Also…they didn’t even bother to shoot it in the same location as the original, it is glaringly obvious that the terrain is in a completely different country.

So we have this:

Versus this:

Another massive break from the original was that they showed the damn witch and added to the narrative of what happens to you when you encounter her. The mystery has totally ruined and feels a lot more fabricated because elements of the supernatural are shown on the footage.

...... ugh.

What annoys me most is that they had so much time to think it through and create something that, wasn’t exactly the same (because that would be pointless), but carried on the legacy rather than being tremendously lazy. I mean, the budget for Blair Witch was $5 million in comparison to the modest $60,000 that the original film had. You can see the budget all over the new film, it just looks far too flashy and is another in a long like of below par found footage movies, I mean, they even had a full on premier with all the actors, there was no effort to even let the audience pretend to believe it was real. And to be honest its link to the original just places the original further into fiction.

Most modern found footage films have gone down the route that Blair Witch did, films like As Above, So Below being one of them, which contains so much supernatural stuff that it is so unbeleivable. The biggest rule in this type of horror, for me is don’t show, dont even tell, just leave it to our imaginations, becuse often that is the scariest thing.

By Siobhan Eardley.

Works Cited:

Deodato, Ruggero. (Dir). Cannibal Holocaust (1980).[YouTube].

Hoad, Phil. “How We Made The Blair Witch Project.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 May 2018. Web.

Keller, James. “‘Nothing That Is Not There, and the Nothing That Is’: Language and The Blair Witch Phenomenon.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 22, no. 3, Apr. 2000. Web.

Peli, Oren. (Dir). Paranormal Activity (2007).[Netflix].

Rose, Steve. “Cannibal Holocaust: 'Keep Filming! Kill More People!'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Sept. 2011, www.theguardian.com/film/2011/sep/15/cannibal-holocaust.

Sánchez, Eduardo and Daniel Myrick. (Director). Curse of the Blair Witch (1999). [DVD].

Sánchez, Eduardo and Daniel Myrick. (Dir). The Blair Witch Project (1999). [DVD].

Wingard, Adam. (Dir). Blair Witch (2016) [Netflx].

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