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tenaciouschronicler · 1 year ago

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June 14 2024 2009

This is some crazy interactivity we got. Im not gonna talk about everything since many arent plot/lore relevant. At the least getting to explore more of Johns house in detail has been great! I love his silly little walk animation.

We have two speakers, the first being the new disembodied voice. They type in all caps on a black background with orange borders and address John as Boy throughout the flash. Each of their texts are preceeded with the command '>' symbol, though not everything they type is a command. The other is, I assume, our narrator. They type in the way we've seen so far on a white background with lime green borders and, unless 'talking' with >VOICE, address John as 'you'. Its interesting to note >VOICE can see what Narrator says when its addressed to them. Its unclear if they can see Everything the narrator types however.

Now for the nity-gritty. (Which is all gonna be under the cut for lengths sake)

(Just so I dont have to type it out so much >VOICE will be V and Narrator will be N)

We start this flash on the roof landing where we get instructions on how to proceed. Vs text boxes are stated to be command menus.

When I was first clicking around I though each object only had 1 command. I found out the sprite and John actually have follow ups when I was trying to tap the sprite when I miss clicked with how closely it sticks to John.

For the Sprite, N rehashes what we saw in the previous update and also notes the transformation did not make the Sprite understandable, it still speaks in fleur de lis. In the next command from V, N reveals [The only thing you can theoretically do with it is TIER 2 PROTOTYPE IT, assuming that's still possible...]. V doesnt seem to have knowledge of SBURB trying to get John to <TIER PROTO TYPE THE SPRITE, OR THE THING YOU SAID.> According to N, [The SBURB SERVER USER is supposed to do that.] With the previous comment combined, it seems Rose may or may not be able to affect John wherever he is. That or N is just as clueless to the extent of SBURBs reach, even if they have more knowledge.

John has a lot more said about him. Here is where we get the interactions between V and N.

> BOY. LISTEN TO ME, BOY.

[His name is John, you nincompoop.]

Absolutely hilarious, N.

> BOY WHO IS JOHN. DO AS I SAY.

[What would you like 'BOY WHO IS JOHN' to do?]

> OBEY MY COMMANDS, JOHN BOY.

[And those commands would be...?]

> I WOULD LIKE THE BOY TO INTERACT WITH HIS ENVIRONMENT IN A CONSTRUCTIVE MANNER.

[Maybe you should be a little more specific?]

Vs use of Johns name doesnt last very long and quickly reverts to Boy. While they are issuing commands, it seems like broad statements dont work. Im wondering where V is even doing this from. Surely it has to be somewhere where they have a visual on John to be able to discern his gender. Its probably a computer of some sort but they probably havent replaced Rose as the Server player or else I feel like N would have said something when talking about sprite prototyping. If thats the case, is V some sort of interloper? Are they Supposed to be able to do this or have they somehow stumbled upon this feed? How would that even be possible and what are the implications of that?

> HAVE THE BOY ASSESS HIS CURRENT SITUATION.

[I'm afraid I can't 'HAVE THE BOY' do that. Tell him to do it yourself!]

> VERY WELL.

[... Ok.]

N is Not having it with V and seems pretty frustrated with the whole situation. Im also realizing the same questions kind of apply to N as I have for V. We kinda took the narration for granted but this is opening the idea that N Is their own character and is Also somewhere commenting on all of Johns actions. When did this happen? Has it been a constant for John that was never noticed? N is more likely Supposed to be able to do this but for what reason?

> ==>

[That instruction does not do anything at the moment!!!]

> ==>

[Sigh. Could you please turn the controls over to a more competent user?]

Interestingly, V is attempting to use a command that has shown up in the comic already, ==>. So they have some knowledge of how commands Should work but cannot entirely control the narrative.

The Cruxite and Alchemiter also rehash things we already saw such as the tree creation. N however does have this to say at the end of the Alchemiter text, [You wonder what happened to your DAD?]. I am now increasingly worried Dad might not be in the kitchen.

We leave the balcony and go to Johns room first. Upon entering it seems that whatever was under Johns bed is no longer there though it left traces of some sort of black substance. Whatever it was seems to have taken Johns gift according to N:

[THE BUNNY IS NOT IN THE BOX.

I SAID, THE BUNNY IS NOT IN THE BOX.

WHY COULDN'T THE BUNNY BE IN THE BOX?]

On examining the posters, V has no idea of the movie titles. Stangely V does seem to know something; <IS THAT JOHN CUSACK?>

Clicking the computer gives us good and bad news, [It seems you are still connected to the internet. Rose is trying to get in touch with you.]

BUT, in the bottom corner the time has been replaced with question marks. Wherever John is its not just frozen in time but Completely Removed From The Natural Flow.

<BOY, LOOK THROUGH THIS WINDOW.> On inspection it seems only the things mentioned in commands were saved as the green between the mailbox and tree is now void.

In a perversion of the original command N states:

A tree without a tire swing is like...

Like a house without a surrounding neighborhood, you guess.

Terrible. Dreadful. How dare you.

Its important to note V does not use any of the names given to the SBURB machines only approximations based on looks, <THIS HUGE SEWING MACHINE. OF WHAT USE IS IT.> Conversely N does have knowledge of the machines but not the extent of their uses, at least in so much as John is supposed to have, [You guess maybe other PUNCH CARDS will produce different shapes? It bears further exploration.] We might likely do more alchemy further on in the comic with this comment in mind.

We leave Johns room and head right.

[Your DAD'S room is still locked!!! ]

Thank you, N. Bathroom it is.

Looking out this window we see the cake covered pogoslime and a mangled swingset.

The only other clickable things, the tub and toilet have the same text with V being unintentionally hilarious, <YOUR PLUMBING APPEARS FAULTY.>

Back to the landing and going downstairs we find V does not share the same appreciation for Harlequins as Dad, at least when it comes to paintings.

<VILE. PAY NO MIND TO THIS FILTH.>

<UGH, NO.>

The Cruxtruder text from N implies moving it would require Grist which seems odd to me. Deploying it was free so it stands to reason moving it should also be free. But I guess you only get one shot at placement and Rose screwed that tremendously. N thinks themselves a really funnyman, [More than ever you feel... what's the word you're looking for? Of course. Housetrapped.]

Hilarious.

In the study we actually get a lot more insight into Dad. Clicking the mural of the <MERRY BAND OF PERFORMERS> reveals them to be the Cirque du Solei. [Cirque du Soleil once filed a restraining order against your father. You were never so embarrassed in your life. ]

...Im....sorry? Dad... what? I have more questions for this man than ever before and I Must get the Dad lore behind this Immediately.

The piano gives us a portion of the sheet music for Johns piano piece and plays the song again for us. I dont know how to play any instruments so I'll leave that to someone else to interpret.

Since we never looked out this window there is nothing to see. [It's dark out there. Can't see anything for miles.] Below it on the sill is more of that weird black stuff.

The picture to the left [can only [be] assume your DAD hung it crooked to make it look more 'whimsical'] which really speaks to how John views his Dad.

At the desk we <READ UNPLEASANT LITERATURE> titled [SERIOUS JESTER MAGAZINE. FOR THOSE FOR WHOM CLOWNING AROUND IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.] This only solidifies the theory @homestuckreplay had on the Serious Business chat being Dads clown troupe. *thrusting microphone in your face* Good sir, how does it feel to be right?!

My shenanigans aside, we head back <TO THE LARGE ROOM WITH THE GROSS PAINTINGS> and go to our next destination, the kitchen.

Immediately we have a lack of Dad and an increase of my concern tenfold.

The bowl of cake batter is on the floor and the black substance is Heavily smeared from Dads last known position to the door.

[You wonder what happened in here. Where's your DAD?]

You and me both John. You and me both.

Examining the bowl leads to a gut wrenching comment, [Wherever your DAD went, he seems to have left in a hurry. For all his absurdities you have to put up with, you sure wish he were here right now.]

Now I am full of concern for John! This is all probably really confusing for him and I wanna go back to the slapstick shenanigans please.

Clicking the artwork just further adds pain as N just Has to let us know [Your DAD was so proud when you drew this. He hung it up immediately and it's stayed there ever since. That was one week ago.]

You know... before this I was just glad John was alive and had nothing but curiosity for the house but now...

We follow the smear out the door to the laundry room John parkour-ed into. Theres nothing really of note except for the lack of more black goo.

The next door takes us outside where again we see no signs of goo or Dad. From here theres no way to the front of the house to explore further. I do wonder Where Dad was taken(?). Theres no visible way down from the cliffs so...

Theres a lot more that I didnt cover so I implore you to explore it yourself, its quite fun actually when you ignore the implications.

#God! i had written a good portion but it didnt save properly so i had to rewrite the majority #if it sounds weird at some points thats why #homestuck #homestuck replay #hsrp liveblog #chrono #hsrp lore

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paragonrobits · 2 years ago

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so one xenodesign idea I’ve had for Homestuck trolls and have been mulling over for a while is thusly summarized: “What if trolls had a skull structure or head design clearly adapted for ramming into things and using their horns as weapons?”

This presents a broad potential for design influences. You might have very heavy bone structure around the skull, shielded with fatty deposits and the kind of impact shielding you see in the heads of rams and other animals that treat their heads as bludgeoning weapons. You might also see bulky hair-like forms that act as shock absorbers, which would work well as a nonhuman interpretation of their hair designs.

Though ultimately this is based on a more fundamental, simple question. Do trolls actually use their horns for combat, or not?

Their horns DO get really, really big; we see this most especially in the Condesce, and the Grand Highblood. This might also suggest that extremely long or large horns are something specific to highbloods, or a status symbol. Potentially any troll could grow horns to this length, but doing so is a statement of power or confidence specific to highbloods and doing so is dangerous. If you take this interpretation, it would also suggest that the Signless’ nubby horns were deliberately kept short as a gesture of humility or defying the showboating of the highblood ruling classes.

But even if the horns get big, that doesn’t mean we really see them used as weapons, or if they are SEEN as weapons. Equius notably has a broken horn (and him never fixing it or trying to make some sort of prosthetic extension might ALSO say something about him), and of all the troll kids that we first see that give us our introduction to Alternian culture, Tavros has the largest horns that could most easily be used as vicious weaponry, and he is a passive person that doesn’t have much interest in fighting except in the context of doing it as a job.

So, if the horns AREN’T a weapon, and weren’t designed that way or evolved as such, it remains less likely trolls would have a skull structure that would minimize the damage of headbutting. It would still be a cool design, all the same, but less likely. And of course, the risk of severe injury would NOT stop Alternian trolls from considering it, given that injuring yourself while in the grips of insatiable bloodlust seems to generally be seen as cool factor.

So then what do horns actually do?

My personal speculation on what they do follows two broad theories: the first is that ALL trolls have psionic powers, naturally generating psionic energies and using them to power the abilities associated with each caste, and this is also why highbloods are known for being stronger than the lowbloods and having a rarer amount of psionic abilities; their innate energies are already spent towards this immense strength, rendering other psionic abilities weaker, unreliable, and generally not as consistent as the powers of lowbloods.

The second theory is that horns play a vital role in regulating this psionic energy; they may act as grounding rods, produce substances or specialized bodily fluids that store excess psionic energy, or simply direct it more efficiently. Larger horns may not necessarily play any kind of role in this (though it is possible that more energy causes horns to grow bigger at a faster rate, which may also influence Condy’s appearance, especially after she modified herself to have all caste powers), but trolls might BELIEVE it does, which again lends itself towards bigger horns as a symbol of status and personal power.

Equius is my main suggestion for this theory having validity, as he has a broken horn and his immense strength is, uniquely among all the characters, completely uncontrollable. He physically cannot control it at all; an attempt to give a gentle pay leaves a bruise behind, and this suggests a lot about the peculiarities of his character in that he struggles for ANY kind of control, or regards the control he fundamentally cannot have as the highest of dignities.

We know the spiritual reason for this; Equius’ lack of control is a direct consequence of his ancestor, Darkleer, being unable to execute the Disciple, and shortly afterwards leaving as an exile, perpetually ashamed and in ever-increasing personal conflict over his loyalty towards the empire and his inability to kill the Disciple in that moment when he had choice over life and death. As he could not exercise his power in that moment (and its interesting to speculate on whether this was a sudden attack of conscience he was never able to fully reconcile, or not), his descendant physically CANNOT control his strength at all. Equius can only strike to kill, or not at all, and it is interesting that despite his loyalty towards the Alternian Empire and its cruel ways, he actively chooses restraint in a lot of ways that makes him stand out against the more kill-happy denizens of Alternia.

But what of the physical reasons?

This is where my theory comes in. Why Equius’ power cannot be controlled as a reflection of the deeds of his ancestor coming back upon him, physically my proposal is that his broken horn has sent his psionic energy system completely out of control. Imagine electricity constantly coursing unpredictably across a circuitboard and things will get fucked up, really fast. That broken horn prevents him from controlling his strength, since his psionic energy is constantly expending itself and bleeding off too unpredictably to allow him to have any of the fine control he might otherwise have if he DID have his horns intact.

#homestuck #trolls #hs trolls #xeno trolls #xeno ideas #ideas #long post

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maverick-werewolf · 4 years ago

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Werewolf Fact #60 - Werewolves Have Tails

Unbelievably, I never actually did a werewolf fact on this. But... Well, it disturbs me just how many random people on the internet I see making the utterly baseless assertion, as if they actually know, that “werewolves in folklore didn’t have tails.”

That is categorically untrue.

(Although plenty of things in Hollywood spurned tails on their werewolf designs for various reasons, Underworld remains the primary culprit for popularizing the concept of “my werewolf is too edgy and unwolfish to have a tail”)

Do werewolves in folklore have tails? The answer is so simple it can be shortened to just one word:

Yes.

Now, if you ask me, I think it looks totally ridiculous to have a werewolf with a wolf (or whatever modern designs pretend passes as something remotely wolfish; let’s face it, most werewolf designs, especially movie ones, have basically nothing in common with a wolf) head and/or digitigrade legs that doesn’t have a tail. Those need tails. But don’t get me started on werewolf designs.

I also personally think it’s much scarier for a werewolf to have a tail, and I don’t buy the arguments that they are “scarier without one,” because apparently startlingly bare werewolf butts sticking out like they’re begging to have a tail pinned on them are scary (?), and I’ll tell you why at the end of this post.

Before I get into the folklore meat of this, though, I will say that part of my personal stake in werewolf studies is to push for a less broad definition of the word “werewolf.” Personally, I don’t hold to many scholars’ ideas of calling every single person turning into a wolf a “werewolf,” and this applies doubly to things involving witchcraft.

Personally, I think a “werewolf” needs to fit a certain, meaningful criteria, instead of any old person or thing who has the ability to turn into a wolf.

To start off, I will open with the very simple statement that the overwhelming majority of werewolves in folklore turned into giant wolves. Yes, just wolves. Not wolves walking upright, not wolf-men, just wolves. And what do all wolves have? Tails. Case closed.

If that isn’t enough for you, though, there are many sources that detail exactly the how and why of werewolves having tails in folklore...

Firstly, there’s Henry Boguet in “Of the Metamorphosis of Men into Beasts,” from 1590 (my version was republished in A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, edited and compiled by Charlotte F. Otten). On page 79 of this edition, Boguet marks a difference between werewolves and witches that have turned into wolves, repeating a common belief that, when witches turn into animals, they have “no tails.”

Notice that the witches do not have tails. The werewolves, however, do, and that is even specified as an identifying attribute.

Secondly, there’s the Malleus Maleficarum, specifically question X of part I, “Whether Witches can by some Glamour Change Men into Beasts.” I’m pulling this from Monatgue Summers’ translation.

They say that, “the devil can deceive the human fancy so that a man really seems to be an animal.” This specifically refers to deception. Thus, illusion. Not a true, physical change as we get with a werewolf.

Furthermore, however, they say that “when it says that no creature can be made by the power of the devil, this is manifestly true if Made is understood to mean Created. But if the word Made is taken to refer to natural production, it is certain that devils can make some imperfect creatures.”

“Imperfect,” in this instance, generally thought to refer to “tailless,” along with a few other legends, such as a witch in animal form still bearing human eyes. Again, witches.

Bear in mind that the Malleus Maleficarum was written and compiled during a time period in which werewolves were considered a form of witchcraft, although not equal to it. One could become a werewolf via a curse, without directly practicing that witchcraft. Long story short, werewolves and witches were NOT the same thing.

This also came from a time period when werewolves were considered negative (obviously), unlike in earlier time periods, and much more like today.

Moving on, we also have Albert the Great in his book On Animals, as cited by Montague Summers, who says that devils can indeed make animals: “they can, with God’s permission, make imperfect animals.” Again on the imperfection.

There is one scholar who disputes this very, very briefly in his writing, and that is actually one of my prime sources: Montague Summers. In his book The Werewolf, he remarks, “many–but not all– authorities hold that the werewolf has no tail.” Like, dude, what? We just established that they do.

Something to remember about Summers is that firstly, he truly believed in werewolves as a form of witchcraft. To him, werewolves are more closely connected with those aforementioned witches (that I think werewolves need to be separated from). Secondly, when he makes this sweeping statement, he provides absolutely no sources whatsoever and doesn’t really make any kind of argument to back up or to defend that idea. I’m calling his BS on that one.

Thirdly, we have an overwhelming number of other sources on werewolves being depicted with tails as opposed to without. We have imagery from various time periods (as appeared in my post on werewolf appearances; there are a few more images here), in which they are virtually always depicted with tails or mid-transformation into the form of a wolf, which would have a tail. One of the only depictions we have of a tailless werewolf is the wolf-man woodcut of the one eating the baby, which is in itself a rare sight, as werewolves weren’t generally “wolf-men” very often in folklore. And, frankly, I think somebody misnamed that woodcut, because I’ve never seen any sourcing on it and I don’t even know if it’s supposed to depict a werewolf in the first place.

Descriptions of werewolves in folklore frequently refer to tails, or else refer to the werewolf as simply a “wolf” and thus lead us to assume they must have a tail, or such a radical difference would’ve been noticed by the narrator (Niceros’s tale, Bisclavret, Melion, the curse of Lykaon, Chinese legends, and many more).

There are doubtless many more citations/discussions/arguments on this, but I think you get the picture.

Werewolves have tails. And not some funky little cut-off rat tail or some stub sticking out from their spine - a wolf tail.

And you know one reason why werewolves have tails? Because, ages ago, people didn’t see a terrifying werewolf and immediately go “omg puppy uwu must pet good boi” or “werewolves are so corny lol.”

Because, ages ago, the concept of a human turning into something so inhuman was terrifying. Unfortunately, everyone today has reframed like 90% of everything into “that is bad and corny” if it’s remotely fantasy. Regardless, the idea of a human turning into something with a tail - a tail being a markedly inhuman trait - was extremely scary and startling. A werewolf with a tail will always appear much less human than a werewolf without one, and that is something that brings them closer to being terrifying beasts as opposed to just hairy dudes.

So yes, sure it’s an aesthetic choice of the creator, but werewolves in folklore had tails, whether anyone likes it or not. And if they are anything beyond a wolf-man, they’re simply going to look better with tails, and if you ask me, that’s also something that will be the case whether anyone likes it or not. You hear me, Blizzard?

(If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to check out my other stuff and consider supporting me on Patreon!

Patreon — Wulfgard — Werewolf Fact Masterlist — Twitter --- Vampire Fact Masterlist )

#werewolf #werewolves #werewolf wednesday #werewolfwednesday #lycanthrope #lycanthropy #lycanthropes #folklore #random werewolf fact #werewolf fact #werewolf facts #tails #worgen #underworld #world of warcraft #wolves #wolf

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uwua3 · 5 years ago

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hi bunnie! can i first just say that your name and blog are both so dang cute aaaa 🥺 can i request a best friend!izumi hc? 🥺👉👈 thank you so much 💛

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! YOU ARE THE CUTEST PERSON EVER~ i am in Love With You !!! also omg IZUMI ♡u♡ she is the Best Girl ever but #AllGirlsAreBestGirls !!! i love her so much, i’m so glad this was requested!!! i am so happy to write this ♡ PLEASE LOVE IZUMI!

summary: together, you and the currian are unstoppable! watching the cooking channel with your best friend just got even better

author’s note: i hope you love this 🥺 i am genuinely so soft over izumi she deserves the whole world

count how many times i say curry, it isn’t even Funny at this point T___T anyways, i was a bit nervous over this because i hadn’t watched the anime, so i didn’t know izumi well as a character! if all else fails, use the traits you know to the best of your ability! i love our curry queen regardless, though~

word count: 2,001

music: good as hell – lizzo ft. ariana grande

my best friend.

🍛 tachibana izumi

you, funny enough, met izumi at the grocery store in the spices aisle

you were unable to decide between which spices were necessary for the curry recipe you were about to attempt, staring at your phone screen with obvious confusion

what was the difference between each type of curry? which one was better? you scrolled down, reading off the countries,

“india, thailand, malaysia, china, south africa, japan...” you mumbled inaudibly before you heard a very distinct crash in the next aisle over. someone must’ve just hit their cart into a display or—

you saw a girl with long brown hair and pink eyes with... wait... were her pupils heart–shaped? you stumbled back as she approached like she was on a mission, standing a mere few feet from you as she smiled pleasantly at you like the situation wasn’t out of the ordinary at all

(oh no... was she one of those pyramid scheme scammers?)

“are you making curry?!” she questioned, leaning forward to glance at your screen only to squeal in excitement at the confirmation. you gulped, nodding with a tinge of doubtful fear

if you said yes, were you about to be attacked right here and now in the middle of a grocery store? you just wanted some curry...

“i’m so happy for you! do you need help? i know the perfect combination of spices for any type of curry! i can make a different curry for each day of the year!” she offered to help, putting her hands together with a pleading look like she was dying to talk about curry

you nodded again and her entire face lit up again, going off on a rant without taking a moment to breathe

she was so knowledgable on all types of curry! you took notes diligently, deciding on japanese chicken katsu curry as the meal for tonight

when you told her, she clapped her hands and giddily jumped up and down. it was honestly refreshing to see someone so enthusiatic about food!

“i’m sorry for randomly talking to you, but i just love curry! do you need help looking for the rest of the items?” she offered to help, already with an armful of the spices you needed and dumped them into your cart

you pondered, thinking as you looked at the girl. she was nice enough, and clearly wasn’t much of a threat if she was willing to approach a stranger without any discomfort

why not? you smiled, offering your hand out to shake as you introduced yourself. she took it quickly, enthusiatically shaking it up and down as she giggled

“izumi! glad to meet you!”

from that point forward, you two became best friends for life!

izumi was the life of the party and brought happiness wherever she went. not only that, but she was incredibly polite and kind! it wasn’t everyday you met a girl that was full of life and always determined to overcome any obstacle in her path!

izumi would go through anything and everything for her friends despite how busy she was 24/7. she juggled being the mankai director (which was babysitting 20 boys), helping other acting troupes, and cooking at night but still made time to see you at least every week

you weren’t surprised when you were encouraged to come over for a company dinner one night and saw so. many. variations. of curry set up at the table. like the other boys, you attempted to hide your grimace (but very poorly, you weren’t a trained actor like the rest of the entourage was)

“what’s wrong? are you okay?” izumi’s motherly instincts kicked in as she hurried to put her hand against your forehead. you had to pretend like you were coming down with a cold the rest of the week and forced the curry down your throat

(the boys secretly gave you water under the table, whispering advice on how to bear it and grin as they made up fake situations to pass your chair)

(the high schoolers just looked relieved to not be the victim that night)

(seriously... so. many. variations.)

(every time you were invited to a meet–up, you texted the groupchat named “stop the currian” to see if izumi was making curry)

(she always was. you still ate it because you loved her too much to say no)

but other than curry, izumi loved cooking! she was subscribed to sooo many culinary and baking channels on youtube. she loved sending you links with a follow–up text that said: “wanna make this tonight? i know you want to eat it! ;)”

(you complained about how it always ended in a minor food fight you had to clean up. you still let her in when she knocked on your front door with bags of groceries)

(after so many visits, izumi was beginning to be proficient at other forms of culinary like baking since you enjoyed it so much)

one time, you even convinced izumi to make her own youtube channel. you had set up a camera omi loaned on a tripod, acting as the best cameraman ever of course

(you had a clapperboard that had the production titled, “izumi is replacing bon appétit’s claire” with take 1 freshly written)

“you got this, izumi!” you encouragedly put a fist in the air, “fighting!”

izumi nodded cutely, wearing her favorite striped shirt with a pastel pink apron. she held a automatic whisk in her right and was already posing with a mixing bowl in her left, ready to demonstrate how to make your favorite dessert

(maybe you suggested the idea because you wanted food, who knows?)

counting down vocally, you watched as your fingers dropped down to a zero and the red light on the camera started blinking. it was go time, and izumi immediately got into action

“hello, everyone! my name is tachibana izumi and today we will be making—”

the camera fell off the stand as izumi’s whisk flew out of her hand and smacked the lense directly in the middle. a sickening thud echoed through the apartment as you two stood in shock, staring at the expensive camera with unease. it didn’t look... uh... functional?

you quickly put your finger on your nose since it was an unspoken rule that touching your nose automatically meant opting out. you were a second earlier than izumi as she gasped like she was offended

“i am not telling omi!” izumi freaked out, running over but the damage was already done. the camera definitely didn’t turn on anymore

(you and izumi bought the same camera that day and switched the memory cards) (omi raised his eyebrows at the sudden newness of his trusty camera, but didn’t say anything as he just took it and thanked you for bringing it back safe)

(yeah... omi definitely knew. but, he wasn’t too bothered to say anything about it)

(“izumi? what did you spend so much money on last month?” sakyo reviewed her financial statement, watching as she nervously sweat and glanced at omi. he just shrugged like he had no idea)

so you two stuck to mindlessly watching the cooking channel on the tv. it was the usual weekend: becoming insecure over the unreal and extremely talented kid bakers who made a whole 3–tier cake in two hours, making fun of america’s worst chefs when they didn’t know how to cut a chicken, and yelling at cheating cooks who were way too competitive on chopped

it was better that way, anyways. maybe going viral on the internet wasn’t meant for everyone. you still got your dessert, much to your satisfaction

(“yeah, yeah. it’s only because you’re my best friend.” izumi laughed, shoving the plate with extra servings as you stuffed your face. she just fondly rolled her eyes as you tried saying thanks with your mouth full)

(“gross!” izumi squealed, throwing the kitchen mitts at you as you fought back, nearly hitting her with one of the pastries. you already know what happens next. izumi stopped baking for you for a long time [a month] as punishment)

speaking of baking, izumi loved making the most ridiculous cakes you’ve ever seen in your entire life

on random days, she’d make the most creative cupcakes ever with individual designs with meticulous attention to detail

(izumi always had to slap masumi’s hands away from the white box she’d set aside specifically for you. he’d pout, hurt, wondering why she didn’t make any food other than curry for him)

(“masumi... you really need to look at other girls.” you remembered advising him, sympathetically patting his back as he angrily accused you of being in love with izumi, too! to this day, it’s still awkward on your end when you see masumi and he thinks you’re his lifelong competitor)

but on important celebrations like your birthday and anniversaries, her cakes were... something. they’d be the most delicious things on earth, but the design would be comically ugly. she’d put the most bare minimum art ever and write the words way too big and it wouldn’t fit. there were always misspellings. maybe it was a curse for being so well–rounded?

another fun fact was you and izumi were the ultimate power duo! whenever you two went to hang out in public, you always made sure some creep wasn’t staring at her and she did the same for you all the time

as friends, it was your job to make sure you two were as safe and sound as possible

(one time, an absolute douchebag tried to wolf whistle her and izumi had to stop you from getting into a fight in broad daylight)

izumi was way too nice. she was such a selfless person and often acted like the big sister you never had. she was always ready with the most agreeable advice and showed up with her arms open. she was so giving, it was easy to see why everyone loved her

but you liked giving back, too! (much to her surprise) you even tried your hand at making some new form of curry by throwing in random spices and calling it a day, but you realized she was the most critical judge ever for any type of curry

(you stopped making curry for her. she would narrow her eyes and push her imaginary glasses up like an anime character. it was terrifying, she always appreciated it but... you shuddered, izumi was scary)

once, you even rented that curry truck to come by for her birthday! you never saw someone look like they were this close to passing out from maximum happiness

(you even bought a director’s chair for her with izumi bedazzled across the back)

(she now sits in it to get that extra confidence boost before a big show)

but the most important gift that kept on giving was spending quality time with izumi when she needed it most

when the anniversary of her father going missing came back around, you were the first person at her room. with curry you knew she liked from that really one obscure place and all the time that day to make sure she way okay

(she was such a big sister! izumi always claimed she was fine and it was just another normal day, but you were always there to provide comfort she didn’t even know she needed)

you took time out of your day to help her with all her mudane tasks after you saw she once physically fainted from tiredness

(it almost gave you a heart attack the first time, but then you noticed tsuzuru also did that too so it must’ve been something in the mankai dorm air)

you then became a well known figure in the theatre community as “izumi’s best friend”

(you were not upset with that title at all, in fact, you hoped it never changed)

who knew you’d meet your best friend forever at a grocery store? over curry nonetheless?

(yes, you’re izumi’s best friend, but it doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the spices rant)

#tachibana izumi #izumi tachibana #a3! act! addict! actors!#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game #a3! headcanons #act! addict! actors! headcanons #mankai a3!#mankai company #a3! x reader #a3 x reader #izumi x reader #a3! izumi #a3 izumi

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assortedasurathings · 4 years ago

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The Lore-Purists Guide To Writing Splices in Tyria (Yes, It’s Lore-Adherent!)

Hello! Now that the Title has got your attention? YUP I’m actually going to prove how ,from a “ Lore Purist “ perspective, you can not only WRITE splices, but do so in a way that is 100% true to ALL given Tyrian lore.

Introductary Terms :

Splice : A character consisting of a hybridization or fusion of two species. GW2 has a class that plays with this already : Soulbeast, but for the purposes of this excersize, those will only be touched on .

Lore-Purist : Oftentimes read as gatekeepers , Lore Purists ONLY accept what is written DIRECTLY in the wiki, or things that came directly from the mouths of devs. Of course, this is usually based on bad experiences with Lore-Lenient folk, oftentimes newer roleplayers in general, thus lending to the perception as Gatekeepers

Genetics : The understanding of, and decoding of, the genome of species, sapient or otherwise.

Part 1 : Hexes, Soulbeasts, and Magick Amok .

Tyrian magic is a fantasic, all-encompassing system of INCREDIBLY diverse spell types . Imagine if you would , throwing light into a prism. That’s how magic works. The spectrum of magic is broad, and it’s uses moreso. Hexes are lore compliant, demonstrated by the Siren’s Reef Fractal, The Foefire Ghosts, The Undead ‘ Charm’ in Some paths of the personal Story, and Even More! , so , as demonstrated by the Foefire , Undead Charm, AND the Spectral Magic At Siren’s Reef, curses are capable of not only altering body shape, but the soul and magic of It’s target. Thus, an easy way to have a splice is just to have your character be cursed. Just, be sure to throw in some /ACTUAL/ Curse-like bits in there. Like being unable to say some words or having an allergy to some oddly-specific but common thing. Soulbeast magic! This is by far the easiest way to do this. Soulbeasts,” can become one in spirit(with their animal). By channeling their pet, they become a single entity, attacking with fanglike dagger strikes and using the abilities of their companion and its archetype.. “ Notice something in the wording there? “ Becoming a Single Entity “ There’s a few ways to interpret this. Either by just “ Buffing” yourself using the power of your animal, or, the more generally accepted, fusing yourself magically into a new beast. Fangs, Claws, tails , Scales, and Burning Breath all possible... And encouraged.

What’s more ? Magic in Tyria is decidedly unstable. Ley Magic Surges , Instabilities in Artifacts, and More can cause a soulbeast to be ‘ Stuck’ in a merge, thus resulting in a splice.. and likely a fair amount of distress over a “ Lost “ companion, depending on how you handle the merging of minds. Part 2 : Asura don’t know Genetics* (*AKA ‘ Anet isn’t consistent ‘ ) It’s explicitly stated that the asura don’t actually understand genetics. This is, of course, Only true at the time the statement is issued. From there we’ve had two pretty impressive peices of genetics-based lore given. Taimi suffers from a genetic condition, a terminal illness which is well understood and treated. The clue-in that this is genetically related is that the treatment isn’t shotgun-style “ throw things at it until it works “ ... That can not only prove detrimental, but outright lethal. Thus, the remaining conclusion, and the one that’s , yes, Genetics related: that asura doctors, if nothing else, understand genetics enough to know that ‘ upping dosages’ when something doesn’t work , or rapidly changing medicine types, probably won’t get them anywhere with terminal illnesses. Unless of course, one wants to say that they magically stumbled along the perfect route to learning about medicine without ever once touching on How illnesses develop. Given the asura tendency towards obsessive learning patterns, it’s doubtful that they’d pick up medicine without picking up anatomy, genetics, and more. Rata Primus Is the 1 absolute in this case. When dealing with plagues, especially ones that are species-specific, tampering with them to get them to jump across species requires some baseline understanding of genetics. You can’t just throw magic at it directionless and expect it to do anything but kill the researchers first. Yet we see those beautiful inquest bastards slowly, if not certainly, tweaking the plague generation-by-generation to adapt to new targets and hosts. while notably being wholly unaffected by it themselves in those first few iterations. Thus,even from a purist standpoint, the Lore has shifted enough from the “ Asura can’t do Genetics “ Time to today. We’re nearly in 2021,it’s time we update our Canon , just like the writers have done with the story itself. Part 3 : The Inquest Can Clone This is where things get fun! So , even without genetics , the inquest are capable of manipulating dragon magics and cloning entire creatures using them. Examples of this are Subject Alpha , An amalgamation of many different dragon magics, the Six Simulacrum (Artificially made) Of dragon minions , And various projects that violently warped the state of their subjects (Subject 6, Thaumonova Fractal ). Kudu himself was even capable of absorbing absurd amounts of dragon magic and staying sane Part 4 : Dragons? Easy. Souls? Easier. Splicing? Why even ask. The extreme ease by which the Inquest manipulates dragon energies is superceeded by one other thing they’re experts at warping.. Souls. In the asura personal story, long before dragons become a hassle for the commander, the inquest are seen fusing souls to Golem bodies as a power source.. so easily, in fact, it can be done without even touching the subject or golem, as well as being done in multiples (Funhouse instance Cutscene). Doxa is one such victim of technology like this going awry.

By this metric, it’s extremely easy to infer that the Inquest are capable of precise tampering with Bodies , souls, or magic as a whole in subjects.. meaning if they felt like it, an abuse of any of these magics would suffice to make a splice : Druid , Soulbeast, Dragon Corruption, Ley Energy, . Or, if you prefer Less magically dubious : Just fusing the two bodies into one.

The Conclusion : The Lore is Hazy. It’s fairly well established that lore in GW2 isn’t IRONCLAD, nor is it very definitively written. We, as players, have seen things go 180 in the drop of a hat. Norn Roleplayers have seen “ All the spirits are dead “ turned into “ All the Spirits are imprisoned “ In the course of 1 single story update. Asura have seen the Inquest go from a fringe group of mad scientists to a Mega-civilization that encompases the bulk of asura population itself. Anet isn’t known for consistent writing, and it’s not our place as players to say they’re concrete, and infallible, in their wording. The long and short of it is, Just have fun Roleplaying. Policing other players based on what they write is outright petty at best, and Full-on gatekeeping at worst. If you don’t want a specific Kind of Player or Character in your guild, Say it outright, Be direct yet Kind in doing so. It’s a stressful world, and the last thing anyone should do is attack a person for the wrong reason when they’re just trying to have fun. Edit : Updated Terminology , removed tooth from Post

#Guild Wars 2 #Guild wars 2 Lore #Asura #Guild wars 2 Asura #Asura Lore #Genetics #Splicing #Roleplay #Roleplay Ettiquite #Inquest #INquest Lore #Anet Writing #Lore Purists #Canon #Rp Canon #Norn Lore #Gw2 Norns #Spirits of the Wild.

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cinemavariety · 6 years ago

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Cinema Variety’s Top 25 Favorite Films of the Decade

This past decade has been a monumental ten years for the state of cinema. To think that there were actually still video rental stores all around the country, to almost becoming nonexistent, is statement enough to show how vastly audiences have changed the way they consume media. Through much thought and careful deliberation, the following 25 films are my personal favorites of the decade and are what I think best represent all that indie, international and arthouse cinema had to offer over the past ten years. Honorable Mentions: Shame Green Room A Ghost Story The Lost City of Z Knight of Cups 20th Century Women Jackie Blade Runner 2049 The Lighthouse Ingrid Goes West A Hidden Life

#25 - Suspiria (2018) Dir. Luca Guadagnino

“It’s only hours afterward that Guadagnino’s film will cohere for you and yield its buried treasures: the bonds of secret sorority, the strength of a line of dancers moving like a single organism, the present rippling with the muscle memory of the past. It’s so good, it’s scary.”

#24 - Call Me By Your Name (2017) Dir. Luca Guadagnino

“The final beats of Guadagnino’s adaptation galvanize two hours of simmering uncertainty into a gut-wrenchingly wistful portrait of two people trying to find themselves before it’s too late.”

#23 - American Honey (2016) Dir. Andrea Arnold

“Part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical, “Honey” daringly commits only to the loosest of narratives across its luxurious 162-minute running time. Yet it’s constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel.”

#22 - Post Tenebras Lux (2013) Dir. Carlos Reygadas

“Some metaphors score and some miss, but this is leap-of-faith cinema: the rewards entail some risks.”

#21 - The Revenant (2015) Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

“Pushing both brutal realism and extravagant visual poetry to the edges of what one customarily finds in mainstream American filmmaking, director/co-writer Alejandro G. Inarritu, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and a vast team of visual effects wizards have created a sensationally vivid and visceral portrait of human endurance under very nearly intolerable conditions.”

#20 - Her (2013) Dir. Spike Jonze

“What begins like an arrested adolescent dream soon blossoms into Jonze’s richest and most emotionally mature work to date, burrowing deep into the give and take of relationships, the dawning of middle-aged ennui, and that eternal dilemma shared by both man and machine: the struggle to know one’s own true self.”

#19 - Annihilation (2018) Dir. Alex Garland

“A shimmering example of what Hollywood sci-fi can achieve when the aim is high, Annihilation is a gripping, mystifying adventure and proof that a transportive experience is more rewarding than a story with clean-cut resolutions.”

#18 - The Neon Demon (2016) Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

“Spectacular, gross and delicious (so unsavory it’s almost sweet), the film is more proof of Refn’s mastery of his trash aesthetic and more fun than anything this indulgent and empty-headed has any right to be.”

#17 - Waves (2019) DIr. Trey Edward Shults

“Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.”

#16 - Mother! (2017) Dir. Darren Aronofsky

“Mother! is something truly magnificent, the kind of visceral trash-arthouse experience that comes along very rarely, means as much or as little as you decide it does, and spits you out into the daylight dazzled, queasy, delirious, and knock-kneed as a newborn calf.”

#15 - Melancholia (2011) Dir. Lars Von Trier

“The vision is as hateful as it is hate-filled, but the fusion of form and content is so perfect that it borders on the sublime. Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.”

#14 - Song to Song (2017) Dir. Terrence Malick

“Any number of sequences find feelings both externalized and hidden intermingling within the same shot, continuing in a subsequent image that carries the impression, the feeling, without replicating the exact tenor of what has just been seen. They exist simultaneously as certain backstories and what motivations they may inspire delicately unfold. Malick has found a way to translate how a familiar song has the ability to transport you back to a particular time and conjure a specific set of emotions. Whatever he’s been exploring over the past few years pays off here.”

#13 - If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) Dir. Barry Jenkins

“What Jenkins gets most right—what astonishes me the most about this film—is Baldwin’s vast affection for the broad varieties of black life. It’s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin’s work that blackness contains multitudes. In some ways Beale feels less like a movie than a well-staged, meticulously shot play; a period piece that floats beyond its specific time and place and into the realm of allegory.”

#12 - Samsara (2012) Dir. Ron Fricke

“Simply put, Samsara tells the story of our world, but onscreen, it is so much more than that. A darker and more ambitious meditation on impermanence, Samsara relies on blunt force and unforgettable imagery, overcoming the hazy logic of Fricke's editing to earn your awe.”

#11 - It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012) Dir. Don Hertzfeldt

“A highly original and utterly enthralling film that touches on staggeringly expansive themes - more typically expected in the work of master auteur and persistent award-winner Terrence Malick, than from animations. An existential flipbook and a heartbreaking black joke: stickmen have never looked so alive.”

#10 - Upstream Color (2013) Dir. Shane Carruth

“You may not be able to figure it out, but that's part of the point of this sensually-directed, sensory-laden experiential (and experimental) piece of art that washes over you like a sonorous bath of beguiling visuals, ambient sounds and corporeal textures.”

#9 - Hereditary (2018) Dir. Ari Aster

“It’s a supremely effective gauntlet of supernatural horror that’s also, at blackened heart, a grueling domestic drama about how trauma, resentment, and guilt can seep into the roots of a family tree, rotting it from the inside out.”

#8 - Spring Breakers (2013) Dir. Harmony Korine

“Spring Breakers seems to be holding a funhouse mirror up to the face of youth-driven pop culture, leaving us uncertain whether to laugh, recoil in horror, or marvel at its strange beauty. Full credit to Korine, who sustains this act of creative vandalism right through to the finish. Spring Breakers unfolds as a fever dream of teenage kicks, a high-concept heist movie with mescal in the fuel tank.”

#7 - The Master (2012) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

“Two things stand out: the extraordinary command of cinematic technique, which alone is nearly enough to keep a connoisseur on the edge of his seat the entire time, and the tremendous portrayals by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman of two entirely antithetical men. Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own.”

#6 - Interstellar (2014) Dir. Christopher Nolan

“It’s a bold, beautiful cosmic adventure story with a touch of the surreal and the dreamlike, and yet it always feels grounded in its own deadly serious reality. An exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human.”

#5 - The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) Dir. Derek Cianfrance

“A brilliant, towering picture, The Place Beyond The Pines is a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight. The movie succeeds both as a high-stakes crime thriller as well as a far quieter and empathetic study of angry, solitary men proves that Cianfrance has a penchant for bold storytelling and an eye for performances to carry it through.”

#4 - Black Swan (2010) Dir. Darren Aronofsky

“A full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd. It centers on a performance by Natalie Portman that is nothing short of heroic. This is, no doubt about it, a tour de force, a work that fully lives up to its director's ambitions.”

#3 - Drive (2011) Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

“From the beginning, it's clear this is not a standard-order action film. It takes its characters as seriously as its chases, shootouts, and fights. Drive dynamically merges a terrific film noir plot with a cool retro look. It's an unapologetically commercial picture that defies all the current trends in mainstream action filmmaking.”

#2 - Blue Valentine (2010) Dir. Derek Cianfrance

“Cianfrance and his actors, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, have not made a cold or schematic film. They aim instead for raw emotional experience, one that's full of insight into the ways a relationship can go astray, but mostly feels like a slow-motion punch to the gut.”

#1 - The Tree of Life (2011) Dir. Terrence Malick

"The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. I wrote earlier about the many ways this film evoked my own memories of such time and place. About wide lawns. About a town that somehow, in memory, is always seen with a wide-angle lens. About houses that are never locked. About mothers looking out windows to check on their children. About the summer heat and ennui of church services, and the unpredictable theater of the dinner table, and the troubling sounds of an argument between parents, half-heard through an open window.”

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death-burst · 5 years ago

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My thoughts about His Dark Materials

I’ve finished volume 3 last week, and I wanted to come back to the earlier discussion now that I have a fresh memory of the conclusion.

And ooh boy, I don’t like that conclusion, but not for the reasons mentioned by star-anise that started this discussion. I’ll start with my own criticism, and go back to that after.

[Obviously, SPOILER WARNING, proceed at your own risk.]

So, in the last 30 pages or so, we get:

a reiteration in even clearer terms of that “servants have dog daemons” point, that a daemon represents a person “true” nature. We already had a branch of the previous discussion on that topic, and we all agreed it was bad. Some where doubting that it was what Pullman actually meant, or whether it was only some unreliable narrator’s opinion. Well, for me there’s no doubt anymore. At least, there’s a vague suggestion that it isn’t definitely fixed and that people could, theoretically, change, they just choose not to, so you know, silver lining and all that....

Lyra coming into her prophesied role as the “new Eve” and somehow preventing all the Dust from exiting the universe through the huge gap in reality caused by the Church’s bomb, without any explanation of what made her special or even how it works at all, and without any real story need for that, since the (good) Angels would close it soon after anyway. It’s just that, looping back to the foreshadowed prophecy, only for the sake of meeting expectations, but I find that it actually weakens the story a lot.

a confirmation that Angels are dumb-asses, and have been so for the last 300 years. For real, if it was so important, why did they need to ask Will specifically, and not any of the previous knife holder, how to close the portals?

and not only are they dumb, they are also mean for no reason to the kids that JUST FRICKING SAVED THE UNIVERSE, no big deal. Seriously, I’m not opposed to bad/sad endings when they are credible, but this one, gosh, I’m so angry, there was probably a dozen workarounds to have a happy ending instead, based on the books own premises. Just to name a few:

They are closing dozens of portals that have stayed open for hundred of years, but really, the universe can only withstand A SINGLE portal, strict limit, I promise. No way you can keep two portals open, no way. Yeah, I don’t believe you...

OK, OK, let’s admit we can’t keep two portals open. But we can open the second one briefly every 5 years or so to visit each other’s world, right? No? It will create a specter? AND HOW IS THAT A PROBLEM EXACTLY?!! You just fricking dealt with thousands of specters that accumulated and grew over a couple centuries. One specter every five years is peanuts. Just send a couple Angels to get rid of it as soon as it is spawned, and voilà! Or a squad of volunteer ghosts. With the number of people dying over 5 years over the whole multiverse, I’m sure you’ll get more than enough volunteers. You bunch of ungrateful pricks, you owe this two kids at least that much, and probably a thousand times more.

And what about the “natural” portals, those not created by the knife that do not leak Dust? Oh, you will close them to make sure I don’t waste my life looking for them? WHAT THE HECK!! Alternate proposition: I promise I won’t look for them myself, YOU look for them, AS YOU INTENDED TO ANYWAY, and instead of closing them, you map them, and if you finally find a route from my world to hers, you come back and tell me? Yeah, you know, try to find a solution instead of squashing hope and all that? I think someone needs to read Pandora’s myth again, the importance of hope and all that...

(sorry for all the caps. i’m REALLY *that* angry)

Also, in the grand explanation of everything at the end, we get told that the big fight between “good” and “evil” is actually a fight between wisdom and ignorance, with a flat affirmation that half the universe, including all organized religions, was fighting on the side of ignorance, to keep people dumb. I’m more or less an atheist myself, and even me, I feel so offended by such a rash statement. That’s such a narrow understanding of the origin and role of religion, how can you write a whole three books about it and come to such a broad and coarse conclusion? Get some nuance, dammit.

..... Probably the worst ending I’ve read to a series that I enjoyed.

Because yes, I enjoyed most of the series, it’s just the conclusion that is so awfully terrible, but the vast majority of the story is interesting and entertaining.

Despite all that, I still disagree with star-anise original post, at least as far as the books are concerned (she was watching the recent TV series). For reference, it’s here: https://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/190192181909/im-trying-to-watch-his-dark-materials-but

If I understood the gist of her argument correctly, she’s annoyed by Dust’s sudden change of behavior during adolescence, the claim "that puberty is the most pivotal time for a child developmentally”, to quote a later post in the thread. But in my interpretation, the books are NOT claiming that. I don’t know what the TV series did with that topic, but numerous points in the books point to a more continuous transition:

Lyra is always able to interact with Dust, through the alethiometer or Dr. Malone’s devices, even before she meets Will and fall in love or has sex.

The kids become gradually more aware of the Specters, it’s not a sudden shift. And they become fully vulnerable to them before their Daemons take a fixed form, showing that even before that they already have accumulated a lot of Dust.

There are various remarks that Dust accumulates slowly overtime. It says that young children have very little Dust (compared to adult), but not none at all. And it also says that old and wise persons have much more Dust than the average adult, evidence that Dust keeps accumulating over the whole life, it’s not just one change happening at puberty and/or with the discovery of sex/love.

Daemons do go through a sudden change of behavior at puberty, but a) it doesn’t seem related to Dust directly, and b) it’s implied they can still change, they just don’t want to. This sudden change is not “encoded into the physics of the universe”, it’s just a statistical trend, not an absolute truth.

On the other hand, supporting star-anise argument, there is one such change, but it’s about the mulefa, not the humans, so I’m not really sure what to make of it. The mulefa physically cannot accumulate Dust unless/until they absorb oil from the wheel trees, and so their youngsters do get through an abrupt transition when they get big enough to start using wheels, which is the closest equivalent for them of puberty. But once again, no link with love or sex.

At no point whatsoever is Dust presented as related to Sin, except by Miss Coulter and Lyra’s world’s Church, which are obviously bad guys and misguided.

So personally, I don’t fault the books on that topic, and I find that they present, on that topic specifically, a nuanced and interesting take. I think a more legitimate criticism in that direction is about the “special nature” of humans compared to animals, as if humans aren’t just another kind of animal, as if animals are not conscious at all. They are, and we should respect that more, and treat animals with more compassion in general. Animals should attract Dust too, even if at a slower rate.

(Also, I’m still annoyed by that “Daemon as true nature” bit...)

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lungsofmumbai · 5 years ago

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THE AAREY vs METRO SAGA

CHAPTER ONE: THE FADNAVIS & THACKERAY ERA

What is Aarey?

The Aarey Milk Colony was established in 1949 as a government dairy farm on 1,287 hectares of land and was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. Over the years, the land has been diverted for other uses. A major portion of its green cover has been lost to new construction projects like the housing colony built by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development and Film City.

Wildlife experts have estimated that the area has 48 species of reptiles and 12 amphibian species and 80 butterfly and moth species. It also has 16 species of mammals like leopard, deer, boar, jungle cats and 90 different types of spiders. Many of these species are under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

(A part of the Aarey Colony)

Aarey is an area which starts from Powai and extends all the way till the Western Express Highway in Goregaon. It used to be a part of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park before being opened for commercial purposes and was again declared as a reserve forest. There are at least 27 tribal communities also residing in the colony, making it home to over 3,500 families of Warli Adivasis and other tribal groups that face displacement now.

What is the Issue?

The Save Aarey Movement was never against the metro being built, it was against the car shed which will be built in Aarey for the underground Colaba-Bandra-Seepz metro line. A metro car shed is where all the metro trains which will rest during the non-working hours. It is in the car shed that the trains will be washed, cleaned and repaired and maintained. It is the starting point for train operations every day.

The Colaba-Bandra-Seepz metro car shed is worth Rs 900 crores and Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the project on September 7, 2019. The MMRCL (Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited) has earmarked 33 hectares (around 2%) of the Aarey Colony land for this car shed. The number of trees that fall in these 33 hectares of land is over 27,000.

The movement had started back in 2013 but found its momentum in the year 2019. Huge protests had erupted in Aarey Colony area in Mumbai on the night of October 4 and on October 5, 2019 when the MMRCL had begun to cut down trees for the Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro car shed.

After the Bombay High Court dismissed pleas opposing the decision to cut 2,646 trees for the Metro project on October 4th 2019, Mumbai civic authorities started cutting trees on a large scale at Aarey Colony. After this incident, the Bombay High Court ordered the petitioners to approach the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal. On October 7th 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the authorities and MMRCL to not cut down trees in the Aarey.

What is the current situation?

Ever since the Shiv Sena government came into power, the work on the Metro 3 car shed has been put on halt indefinitely. However, MMRCL has stated that 25% of the work for the metro shed is already completed, before the new government came into power. There are huge machines which lie idle at the construction site and ground leveling was also underway.

The entire area has been barricaded. Taking photographs and getting access to the construction site is not allowed and there is heavy security provided by the government. There are security guards at every entrance of the construction site and they do not allow people walking by to see what’s going on behind the barriers.

With the current government’s decision of halting the construction work on the metro shed, several other problems have surfaced. One of them being the Rs 4.3 crores loss occurring per day due to the delay. Till now there has been a total loss of Rs 270 crores on account of work stoppage. This decision will also decelerate the infrastructural projects in Mumbai. This would have a negative impact on the Central Government’s vision of ‘Make In India’.

(The construction work on hold)

Deven R Choksey, MD, KR Choksey, in an interview with Economic Times said, “State governments often cancel or stall projects granted during the last regime. This unnecessarily creates a huge amount of financial consequences for both investors as well as lenders, apart from raising the risk of defaulting by companies.”

He has further mentioned that these kinds of decisions will dissuade the corporates from taking up any more projects in the country. It will also dissuade the investors from coming to the country and from bankers to extending credit.

The new Maharashtra government has suggested about relocating the car shed to Goregaon’s SRPF (State Reserve Police Force) Ground. The State Government had set up a new panel to look into the Aarey issue and see if they could relocate the car shed to another area. The panel came up with same problems which were mentioned by the previous government of unavailability of land, financial implications, technical and operational difficulties.

(An aerial view of the construction site from the JVLR flyover)

If the State Government has to relocate the metro shed to Kanjurmarg, which is 7kms away from the last metro 3 station, Seepz, the trains would have to make dead trips to reach the depot. The metro line has been planned for a service frequency of 2 minutes and if the depot is shifted the crowd will increase at the station and thus will lead to defeating the very purpose of the metro. And there would be a Rs 1,700 crores cost escalation if the metro shed has to be relocated to another location.

CHAPTER TWO: CLIMATE VS DEVELOPMENT

CLIMATE

During the BJP led State Government, the then Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis’ standard response to the Aarey issue was ‘will grow more trees.’ He believed that trees had to be cut as development is also important.

According to a Firstpost article, “South Asian countries today are at a delicate threshold facing severe extreme weather conditions. A Global Climate Risk Index released at the Katowice Summit in Katowice, Poland, in 2018 showed that intense cyclones, excessive rainfall, and severe floods could make India and its neighbours among the worst affected countries in the world.”

India has resorted to afforestation without consulting local communities or conducting serious studies on it. As the Adivasi activist from Aarey Prakash Bhoir says, "The way most of these afforestation drives work is illogical and unscientific. How can you plant twenty-five trees at a mere spacing of a foot or less? What happens to the trees when they grow up? This proves that the approach is incorrect. Most of the saplings planted during afforestation projects die in this manner."

(A dry patch in Aarey)

An activist by the name Zoru Bhathena, who is representing petitioners in the Aarey tree felling case claimed that a substantial number of trees planted by the MMRCL during the work of Mumbai Metro 3 project are already dead. Later, the MMRCL itself admitted that only 36 per cent of the trees transplanted have survived. In a statement by a spokesperson of the MMRCL said that it transplanted 1,582 trees and 36 per cent of them i.e. 572 have survived.

There is evidence that afforestation programs may not be sufficient enough to reduce the climate crisis.

China's "The Sloping Land Conversion" program, one of the largest reforestation programs in the world aimed at "protecting biodiversity and improving environmental conditions", had a negative impact on the natural forests in the area after 13 years of implementation. Researchers found out that the rubber and pulpwood plantations had replaced natural forests on sloping lands. With the sharp increase in these plantations, the natural forests, shrubs and bushes decreased and were converted into pulpwood plantations. There is danger of carbon stock increasing if natural forests are replaced in this manner.

The article further stated that, “Researchers who examined 260 years of changes in European forest management found that despite a 10 percent increase in wooded land, the continent's forests have actually caused a slight increase in regional temperatures since 1750. This was attributed specifically to a shift from broad-leaved tree species like oak to more economically valuable conifer species like spruce and pine, which absorb more sunlight.”

Planting a sapling is the easiest part to regain green cover. The challenging part is the maintenance of the newly-planted saplings and ensuring that the saplings become robust trees. Most studies have found that survival rate of saplings is never 100 percent. Researches in Indianapolis and Philadelphia, which looked at street trees in the city of Detroit, found that high survival rates are critical during the first three years.

(A part of Metro shed which has been barricaded)

In Aarey the car shed is expected to consume an estimate of 50,000 litres of groundwater everyday for washing the metro. The residents of the Aarey Colony are worried that the car shed project will open the doors to other infrastructural projects too.

The cutting down of trees also leads to the increase in air pollution. As Mumbai doesn’t have a vast green cover, cutting down these trees will have an impact on both present and future generations. The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests that air pollution is capable of affecting the health of people.

As mentioned earlier the Aarey forest is home to many species like leopards, deer, boars, jungle cats, reptiles and amphibians. Taking over the 33 acres of land to make a metro shed puts the habitat of the animals in danger. There have been many cases of leopard sightings in Mumbai, where these animals are found roaming on the streets of the city.

With the increase in the number of leopards in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, it would be a lot more difficult to keep these animals in their habitat if the people keep cutting down trees to make infrastructural projects.

DEVELOPMENT

When it comes to development, Mumbai, one of the world’s densely populated cities with a population of 18.14 million people (as per Census 2011) accounts for slightly more than 6.16% of India’s economic growth. Mumbai’s public transport system consists of a suburban Indian rail network (Central, Western, Harbour), bus services as well as private black-and-yellow taxis, Uber and Ola services and autorickshaws.

The suburban rail network carries over 7.5 million commuters and public buses operated by Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) service carry about an approximate 3.65 million commuters every day.

(A double-decker BEST bus in Churchgate)

However, the quality of public transport infrastructure in Mumbai is on a rapid decline, which affects the time and energy spent by the citizens. Being one of the most important mode of transport, the railway network faces numerous challenges. The trains are already bursting with passengers at the peak hours.

According to an article by Youth Ki Awaaz, “In the last 10 years, 25,722 people have fallen off moving trains, of which 6,989 people died due to losing their grip while trying to get into a jam-packed boogie or hitting an electric pole while in motion. There have been alarming cases of deaths due to suffocation, heart attacks and seizures triggered due to a fatal drop in oxygen levels.”

The buses are unreliable as they get stuck during the peak hour traffic. The rickshaw walas and private taxi walas keep rejecting the travelers and Uber and Ola taxis are way too expensive for the common people of Mumbai. Hence, the need for metro.

The ticket price for the Mumbai metro varies from Rs 20 – 50 which is affordable for the common man. It is comparatively cheaper than autorickshaws and private taxis. Furthermore, the metro project will reduce the 2.5 lakhs metric tons of carbon footprint every year. As it will take out more than 50% of the vehicles from the roads such as autorickshaws, private cars and taxis. It will also reduce the number of people traveling in the suburban rails and BEST buses.

CHAPTER THREE: JANTA & ACTIVISTS KI SOCH

Views of the public:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rC6zJUG2UmfaGhJ4oywfA-Qoge0EWtqV

Interview with Reema Sushnar (Activist):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bs3fh3n88BTx-vXLt2pU-yfl35E0vmNn

Some of the points that can be taken from the above videos are the clear distinction between the thoughts of the general public and that of the activists and environmentalists. The general public are worried more about the money the government is losing due to the delay in the project. They are also more focused on their convenience and how they could save their time. As long as the trees are transplanted and afforestation happens, they are satisfied with the project.

The activists and environmentalists on the other hand would choose the lungs of Mumbai i.e. Aarey over development. They believe that the Metro 3 will not reduce the carbon emissions as it is an underground metro and will run on thermal power. They also believe that the metro reducing the number of vehicles on the road is just an assumption, as the rich would still prefer to travel in their own cars, the poor won’t be able to afford the ticket prices for the metro and will stick to the BEST buses and suburban rails.

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

The fact is, the damage is already done. The previous regime had already taken over the 33 hectares of the land, begun the work and has completed 25 percent of it. To relocate the car shed to another area will just escalate the cost and increase the time overrun. Every delay would cause the exchequer several crores per day. As it is, the metro project is already delayed by a year and the effects caused by it cannot be reversed.

Unfortunately, the Aarey car shed has become a sore spot for both the political parties, that is, BJP and Shiv Sena respectively. The newly appointed panel of the Shiv Sena has also mentioned the same issues which were being faced by the BJP panel. And in the slug fest between the two parties the Mumbai citizens are the losers.

When it comes to afforestation, the government should not use fast growing trees as they have a negative impact on the environment. These trees are generally dry and can quickly catch fire. They also absorb large amount of the minerals from the soil and groundwater. This affects the growth of other trees in that area. Instead the government should plant native or indigenous trees. They should look into replanting trees like Dhaman, Shemat, Bhokar, Kahandal, Apta, Shivan and Subabul as these are some of the native and common trees found in Aarey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

1. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/over-60-trees-transplanted-by-mmrcl-dead-claims-aarey-activist-1620745-2019-11-20

2. https://www.dailyo.in/variety/aarey-forest-mumbai-metro-rail-bjp-shiv-sena-wildlife-protection-act-biodiversity-conservation-maharashtra-assembly-polls-2019/story/1/32110.html

3. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/bmc-gets-82000-objections-to-tree-cutting-for-metro-car-shed/article28325173.ece

4. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/aarey-milk-colony-tree-felling-supreme-court-mumbai-metro-construction-1607037-2019-10-07

5. https://qrius.com/the-save-aarey-activists-who-are-they-really/

6. forbesindia.com/article/special/bombay-hc-dismisses-pleas-to-save-aarey-forest-tells-petitioners-to-approach-sc/55591/1

7. https://scroll.in/article/937002/saving-aarey-why-a-city-with-a-weak-protest-culture-is-demonstrating-to-protect-mumbais-green-lung

8. https://www.firstpost.com/india/movement-to-save-aarey-forest-effects-of-climate-change-need-nuanced-interventions-afforestation-isnt-enough-7477091.html

9. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/toi-confirms-trees-gone-at-aarey-site-metro-says-25-percent-of-work-done/articleshow/72376131.cms

10. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/shadow-over-metro-three-after-maharashtra-cm-uddhav-thackerays-aarey-stay/articleshow/72301920.cms

11. https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-times-of-india-mumbai-edition/20191203/281590947430690

12. https://www.dailyo.in/variety/aarey-forest-mumbai-metro-rail-bjp-shiv-sena-wildlife-protection-act-biodiversity-conservation-maharashtra-assembly-polls-2019/story/1/32110.html

13. https://www.urbantransportnews.com/mumbai-needs-metro-here-are-the-facts-about-aarey-forest-and-mumbai-metro/

14. https://www.firstpost.com/india/movement-to-save-aarey-forest-effects-of-climate-change-need-nuanced-interventions-afforestation-isnt-enough-7477091.html

15. https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/article/cutting-down-of-trees-in-mumbais-aarey-forest-will-do-more-harm-than-we-know/484890

16. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/investors-bankers-to-suffer-if-maharashtra-infra-projects-get-stalled-deven-r-choksey/articleshow/72349482.cms

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ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is · 6 years ago

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Hi Em, I’m the Fi vs Fe anon. Please disregard my previous question as I was high when I sent it in and doing some pondering, coming up with random ideas. My real dilemma lately has been in identifying Fi vs Fe in myself, because I can’t tell. I care about other people’s’ emotions, about not treading on them or hurting their feelings somehow. I think it comes from a standpoint of not wanting to have my feelings treaded upon by others so I apply that to other people-my approach to things (1/3)

is a very “this is how I’d want to be treated” approach. I’ve heard that’s Fi, but what I’m unsure about is just how much I care about others feelings, even strangers, as I’ve been led to believe Fi only cares about the feelings of a select few. I only care about the opinions of a select few, but I also want to be generally regarded as the kind of person I believe I am-I don’t want to be seen as something I’m not, whether that’s a “tryhard” image, or even being seen as a type of person I (2/3)

generally dislike, whatever that is. I don’t care what people think but I don’t want to be seen as what I hate. I also want to become a therapist, if this info helps, because I want to help people with the exact issues I’ve dealt with, because I have an understanding of their experience. I consider myself in tune with other people’s emotions, like I feel I’m good at reading people, but I also tend to assume they’ll feel how IVE felt in a given situation, which is why I care so much. (3/4 sorry)

I tend to empathize not through distinctly ‘feeling’ the emotions of other people (although I do consider myself sensitive to the feelings of others, as I’ve said before, and if the general mood of a room is bad I find myself being zapped and put in a bad mood too) but rather I imagine myself in their situation. In examining what I do I’ve realized that thats how I operate, more through sympathy. Is any of what I said sticking out to you as Fi or Fe? Thank you in advance!

-------------------------------------

Hi anon,

So I have a couple caveats first:

All of what I’m going to say here is specifically assuming that you’re a feeler. I think Fi vs. Fe is arguably the hardest set of functions to tell apart and I think once you’re talking about low feeling it gets even harder and it’s basically impossible to talk about the lower feeling function without it being filtered up through the higher thinking function. So if you think you’re a thinker, this doesn’t apply.

Second, as mentioned Fi vs. Fe is often really hard and so if you feel confident you’re a feeler, I recommend typing your perceiving function if you have any sense of that. Basically, I think that in most cases, if you’re pondering Fi vs. Fe for your own typing, you should try approaching the problem a different way. If you think you’re a feeler, try typing your top perceiving function. If you think you’re a thinker, try typing your thinking function. If you’re not sure, go back to your perceiving function and then think about your thinking/feeling functions.

With that in mind: I think if you are a feeler you would be a high Fi user, and I’m going to go through a few of your statements.

I think most reasonably healthy people, on the whole, don’t want to intentionally hurt the feelings of others. They may want to hurt the feelings of specific people and sometimes I think that’s justified (offending the Westboro Baptist Church is in my opinion objectively good) and sometimes it’s not great but it’s human (making an ex jealous) but their default feeling towards others is “I’d rather not do harm.” A person who regularly goes into situations with the intent to hurt others has something that is, in my opinion, pretty deeply wrong with them; a person who just doesn’t care also seems like they could use some serious help. I don’t want to speculate because I am by no means a biologist or anthropologist but people are societal animals, and we want to make that society work out and part of that is respecting the feelings of others. So regardless of type, I would think and definitely hope that people generally don’t want to cause emotional harm to others.

This also covers another broad thing which is societal rules. A good example of these is manners: it is not in any way harmful to others for me to lick my plate clean, and in the privacy of my own kitchen I do it all the time, but I don’t do it at a restaurant because we as a society have decided it’s rude. This is also something basically any healthy person does. Manners may differ to an extent by culture, so the important thing isn’t what the manners are but rather any fairly normal person, regardless of type, will follow basic societal rules.

With that in mind, it’s not that Fi doesn’t care about the feelings of strangers so much as the opinions. An example I’ve used in the past here is going to the movies alone. Some people get really hung up about going to the movies alone, and a lot of that comes down to whether a bunch of strangers will think they’re weird or lonely. Like, if a stranger thinks I’m weird or lonely, that’s their projection on me, not my experience (well, loneliness anyway; I might be weird and I’m fine with that). A healthy Fi user doesn’t want to be seen as harmful or rude, but they’re not that invested in whether strangers like their outfit, for example. But they might be invested in whether specific people they respect like their outfit. Whereas Fe users tend to be more invested in the opinions of others regardless. And of course all of this has limits because people are complicated; Fi users might feel weird on occasion if a stranger seems to be judging them very intently, and Fe users might not care about specific things, and the shame triad in enneagram can add a second layer to all of this, but if someone is not invested in the opinions of strangers as a rule, and they are also a feeler, that is often a sign that they are a high Fi user.

The other sign of high Fi user is that you’re more concerned that people’s perception of you is authentic. No one wants to be blamed for something they didn’t do, but authenticity for its own sake is also often high Fi.

Now, reading people. Here’s the thing: I still firmly believe no one can truly read people with a hundred percent accuracy, and with that in mind some of the times I have been most annoyed or even angry with people is specifically when they thought they were doing a great job of reading me and they weren’t. So I’m kind of anti-reading people on the whole because, as Dr. House once said, when you assume you become an ass to me. The good thing is that you’re aware that you may be projecting, and hopefully will focus on actually communicating directly instead. It’s okay if you find people more relatable or you care more because of those projections, but when it comes to actually helping them, talk to them. Either way at this point I think the ability to read people has been so overhyped and is in my opinion so much more useless than people think I don’t think there’s much to be understood about type. Most reading people strikes me as a lot of projection, regardless of whether it’s an Fi or Fe user doing it.

With that said about reading people - it’s yet another truth that to some extent emotions are contagious no matter what, and if the mood in a room seems bad the vast majority of healthy people will pick up on that. So that’s another thing that I don’t think says much about type so much as the fact that the person has at least the normal amount of empathy. Which is yet another reason why Fi vs. Fe are so hard; a lot of feeling stuff is just human and not any specific type. That said, the fact that you specifically seem to be putting yourself in the position of others in almost all of your efforts to relate also points to high Fi more than high Fe; not that Fe users can’t project but I think they see what they do in a different way (as in, they don’t see it as “this is what I would do” but rather “this is what people do” even if it’s not).

#mbti #introverted feeling #extroverted feeling #Anonymous

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maverick-werewolf · 6 years ago

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Okay, I just found that I misremembered one of your posts; you say that werewolves ALWAYS have tails but transformed witches don't. Can you source that? I thought I've read that, at the very least, werewolves who were made by witchcraft were supposed to be tailless.

No problem!

Before I get into it, though, I will say that part of my personal stake in werewolf studies is to push for a less broad definition of the word “werewolf.” Personally, I don’t hold to many scholars’ ideas of calling every single person turning into a wolf a “werewolf,” and this applies doubly to things involving witchcraft. For example, I don’t approve at all of the now popular idea of calling Peter Stubbe a werewolf.

Personally, I think a “werewolf” needs to fit a certain, meaningful criteria, instead of any old person or thing who has the ability to turn into a wolf.

In particular if their wolf shapeshifting is based in illusionary magic, accompanied by shapeshifting into other animal forms, or their wolf form was not undertaken with any particular meaning (i.e., could’ve just as easily been any other animal with no actual wolf motifs), they aren’t really “werewolves,” in my opinion.

All that being said, as you can probably guess, I butt heads a lot with what scholars sometimes refer to as werewolves.

My sources on the “werewolves always have tails” come from a few different places…

Firstly, there’s Henry Boguet in “Of the Metamorphosis of Men intoBeasts,” from 1590 (my version was republished in A Lycanthropy Reader:Werewolves in Western Culture, edited and compiled by Charlotte F. Otten). On page 79 of this edition, Boguet marks a difference between werewolves and witches that have turned into wolves, repeating a common belief that, when witches turn into animals, they have “no tails.”

“Imperfect,” in this instance, generally thought to refer to “tailless,” along with a few other legends, such as a witch in animal form still bearing human eyes.

This also came from a time period when werewolves were considered negative (obviously), unlike in earlier time periods, and much more like today.

Something to remember about Summers, however, is that firstly, he truly believed in werewolves as a form of witchcraft. To him, werewolves are more closely connected with those aforementioned witches (that I think werewolves need to be separated from). Secondly, when he makes this sweeping statement, he provides absolutely no sources whatsoever and doesn’t really make any kind of argument to back up or to defend that idea. I’m calling his BS on that one.

Thirdly, we have an overwhelming number of other sources on werewolves being depicted with tails as opposed to without. We have imagery from various time periods (as appeared in my post on werewolf appearances that you referred to; there are a few more images here), in which they are virtually always depicted with tails or mid-transformation, thus leaving us unsure if they are going to grow a tail or not. One of the only depictions we have of a tailless werewolf is the wolf-man woodcut of the one eating the baby, which is in itself a rare sight, as werewolves weren’t generally “wolf-men” very often in folklore.

If I dug through my mountains of books, I’m sure I could find more citations/discussions/arguments on this, but hopefully this helps for now! :) In my opinion, I think it makes sense to say that werewolves have tails, whereas witches don’t if or when they choose to turn into a wolf via illusion or otherwise.

(If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to check out my other stuff!

Patreon --- YouTube --- Wulfgard --- Werewolf Fact Masterlist --- Twitter)

#asks #joemerl #werewolves #folklore #werewolf #tails #sources #source checking #academia

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twdmusicboxmystery · 6 years ago

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9x14: Scars - Details and an Epiphany!

As I said yesterday, this episode was loaded with parallels, most of it very subtle. If you haven’t read my post from yesterday, click on the link and read it because I’ll be referencing it a lot here. The other great thing about this episode is that it seems every scene and line of dialogue is packed full of callbacks and parallels. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of them.

***As always, spoilers abound for TWD 9x14. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

The short of it is that Rick and Michonne’s story is closely mirroring Beth and Daryl’s (one member gone and presumed dead by the other).

We saw some water symbols, such as when Michonne and Daryl searched for Rick's corpse by a body of water. Daryl said he'd followed it all the way to the ocean. We've seen a lot of ocean symbolism around Beth, especially in conjunction with Oceanside. Now, that cannot extend to Rick. So, the two people believed dead by TF but who we know are alive will probably both returned by ocean. So that reinforces that Rick/Michonne are going through the same arc as Beth and Daryl.

In that same conversation, Michonne asks Daryl if he's coming back to Alexandria. He says yes, once he finds something. Michonne says, "Plenty of reasons to come back. Finding something doesn't have to be one of them." I think that's part of the, "we get to come back," theme.

Of course, Daryl says he will never stop looking, and we definitely want to compare that to him looking for breath after she disappeared. Again, because the arcs are the same, this confirms what we’ve always theorized: that Daryl looked for Beth but never found her. Just as he’s never found Rick.

Then there's the sad line where Michonne asks if he's okay being alone. First of all, part of the “it’s okay/not okay” theme. When I saw this scene before the episode aired in a sneak peek, I actually this interaction. I thought Daryl said, “Yes,” but he didn’t. He simply nodded and then asked Michonne, "You?"

So, when Michonne replies, "I'm not." I thought she meant she was not okay being alone. But what she really meant is that she wasn't alone because she had the baby.

This line is actually much sadder for Daryl because he is alone. I think we all know him saying he’s okay being alone is a load of crap, given his reaction to Beth’s statement about him being the last man standing. The most obvious parallel here is to be episode Alone from S4. Obviously Daryl has been alone in the woods for several years after the time jump, and he is surviving, but he's not really okay. (Beth: "it's not okay.")

And I know Michonne didn't mean anything negative, by it, but it's really kind of insensitive thing to say to Daryl. After all, he doesn't have Beth’s baby to remember her bad, does he?

Michonne finds Rick's gun, which is a lot like Daryl getting Beth’s knife. I can't help but wonder what this means for how Carol came to have Beth’s knife. Because, as we’ve established, this is such a close parallel to Beth and Daryl, we can draw conclusions from what they’re showing us here. So did Carol find Beth’s knife in the mud somewhere AFTER her body went missing? The parallel probably won’t be that close, but we really don’t know what went down during that missing 17 days, and I’m willing to be that in a broad way, the parallel to how Michonne found Rick’s gun will be direct.

I noticed when Michonne puts Rick’s gun in Judith’s box, there's a picture behind her with purple flowers in it. That jumped out at me because I remember in S7, when Maggie woke up at Hilltop after Glenn died, there were purple flowers that looked exactly like those ones. Because of the way they showed Maggie wake up, we compared it to Beth waking up to Grady. We also saw similar flowers when Rick woke up in the hospital in S1. I’ll talk more about this at the end, but it could be a tie to Beth at Grady, or simply to Maggie having lost Glenn at that point. Michonne has lost Rick for all intents and purposes right now.

When Daryl and his group arrived at Alexandria, I noticed a couple of random references in the dialogue. Connie holds up a note to Michonne and says she wished she had worn different shoes.

Super random, and kinda funny, but I wonder if it's a reference to the lost shoe/foot theme. I also noticed animal cages hanging in the background. They’re square, not like the rounded birdcage we saw in Beth’s cell, but still similar.

We all agreed that Henry’s scar reminded us of Beth’s. Probably just because you can see the stitching. Henry, with all the Beth parallels he's had this season, now has a scar.

Aaron tells Daryl that he once told him he would be a great dad and it turned out to be true. A couple of things about this. It does show that what Aaron said back then was a foreshadow. (Another thing TD has been written about.) And we did suggest that, while we do think Daryl will eventually have his own children, a part of that could have foreshadowed him being a father figure to Lydia and Henry. This is a confirmation that that was the case.

(Quick aside: those people to swore to high heaven Daryl would have a romance with Lydia? TD was right about that too. Definitely not a romance, and he is definitely a father figure to her. Daryl didn't even bother denying it in this conversation. Just saying.)

You could argue that the father foreshadow ONLY referred to Henry and Lydia, but I don't think so. My evidence for it comes from this same conversation. Aaron specifically says, “you got to skip the exploding diaper part,” to which Daryl replies, “A lot’s changed. Back then, we were still building bridges.” It feels like a contradiction of what Aaron said, which to me says Daryl may have to deal with the diaper situation at some point.

The dialogue itself is also important. “A lot’s changed,” is a callback to Beth’s, “I wish I could just change.” And then there’s the Bridge Theory.

There is a part where RJ asks for more tomatoes. We’ve seen the tomato symbol a lot. In general, they represent peace and prosperity. I'm not sure where they had RJ asked for them. Perhaps to show that RJ is doing well at Alexandria, or perhaps because Michonne thinks there is peace there, which right now there largely is. It's right after that, the Judith goes missing.

When she finds Judith gone, Michonne goes to see Negan. He makes an interesting horse reference. When he realizes Judith is missing, he says, "maybe she's off petting a horse." The way he's using it in context is to say, maybe she’s off doing something idle or little-girlish. But we know she's not. He says she's Michonne's daughter and, like Michonne, she's not taking shit going down.

The first thing petting the horse made me think of was Daryl and Buttons, which happened in S5, right after Beth. We can also point out the Horse Theory in general. So, not sure exactly why they used this line here, but it's interesting. Again, with how closely this whole thing is paralleling Beth and Daryl, the horse reference makes a certain amount of sense.

Judith took Rick’s gun and left a note. Naturally, we always went to compare any written notes to Beth.

We also saw a super-random bicycle in the middle of the woods, maybe meant to be Judith’s? I’m honestly not sure what to make of that yet, but it was obviously a symbol of something, and it was mostly yellow (Beth color). I know a revamp of my bicycle theory is long past due, so I may come back to this.

Overall, I thought the end of this episode was very sweet and very good in showing not only Michonne and Judith bonding, but Michonne’s character development.

I gotta say, I loved the horse drawn minivan.

So, in a more general way, this tells us a lot about Michonne’s new attitude at the beginning of this arc, why she wouldn't let people in, etc. It was a flawed way of thinking, but after seeing what happened, we understand more where she's coming from. It does seem that she's now moving back toward the Michonne she used to be and what Rick and Carl would have wanted.

Quick note: While this does explain a lot of the questions we had about the time jump, it definitely doesn't explain them all. It doesn't explain why Tara, specifically, was so angry at Michonne. Even in the flashback with Carol and Tara and Jesus, Tara’s says Michonne isn’t her favorite person these days. She’s already very angry with her. Maybe it's just because Michonne decided not to let people in, but Tara's anger almost seems a little too heavy for that. So, we don't know specifically why Hilltop is angry at Michonne. We don't know why they all dropped their farming tools and ran inside the gates when they heard riders coming.

We also still don't know how Daryl lost the wing on his vest. When I noticed he had both wings when the flashback started, I thought when he got shot by the arrow by one of the kids, maybe somehow that made the wing fall off his vest. But I did find this shot when they returned Alexandria with the kids, and both wings are still on Daryl's vest. So still not know how that happened either.

We also don’t know how he got the scar over his eye, as that doesn’t seem to have been a result of this incident either. So again, he answers a lot of the questions we had, but not all. Other stuff must have happened to result in the rest.

Jocelyn:

Jocelyn, who just so happens to know Michonne—Denise Huth confirmed on TTD that it was a mere coincidence that Michonne ran into someone she'd known before the turn—pretends to be hurt and needs help finding the kids she's caring for. Michonne and some others going find them in an abandoned building and bring them back to Alexandria.

They employed a TON of dialogue foreshadow in these flashbacks. Some for what would happen later on (still in the flashbacks) and others for what's happening in the present with Whisperers.

When Michonne went to get the children from that abandoned building, there are diagrams of how to string animals up for gutting. An obvious foreshadow of her and Daryl being strung up in a similar way and branded. The animals in the diagrams were even cows. And what animal is most famously branded? Cattle.

Which, btw, we can relate back to Carol and Mary at Terminus. “You’re either the cattle or the butcher.” In this case, Jocelyn’s group = Terminus and TF had fallen prey to their “mask of evil” as Daryl would have called it. A lot of things in this episode felt like Terminus, actually.

The second chart shows rabbits. Remember that Lizzie also killed rabbits.

When Jocelyn makes off with the Alexandria kids, they disappear through the drain tunnels in the ground. This is really an interesting callback. I think Michonne’s terror comes mostly (other than the fact that Judith is gone) from the fact that she probably associates the tunnels with Carl's death. It was down there, after all, that she found out he'd been bitten. Now Judith, her other child, has disappeared via that same route.

But the other thing I really want to callback to is when we first found out about that the existence of those tunnels, when Maggie went looking for Glenn in S6. She and Aaron went down there, but didn't end up actually leaving to look for Glenn. Why is that important? First off, because that was during Glenn’s death fake out. There was a million parallels between Glenn and Beth during that fake out.

Also, earlier in S5 we learned that Alexandria had exiled three people. The walkers Maggie and Aaron ran into in those tunnels were confirmed to be some of the people who’d been exiled. So just as Jocelyn went down through that drain to escape Alexandria, we saw others doing the same in the midst of Glenn’s death fake out. Which in turn had lots of parallels to Beth. (I promise I’ll tie that all together at the end. Bear with me.)

Okay, Daryl and Michonne at the abandoned playground. As I said yesterday, ots of people picked up on Daryl's line about how some people are evil, but they hide it, as if wearing a mask. That’s a perfect example of how they’re foreshadowing what's going on in the present day with the Whisperers, which is why I think this Jocelyn thing will replay at some point during the Whisperer arc.

Earlier, when Jocelyn and all her kids are at Alexandria, a couple of interesting things. We see them all playing “the quiet game.” I seemed just a little bit random to me. Maybe a foreshadow of Connie and her being deaf, but the quiet game is about not talking, more than it is about not hearing. And given that Jocelyn's group turned out to be evil, I feel like this is a sinister foreshadowing of some kind. Something we haven't seen fulfilled yet. Like maybe someone isn’t able to be quiet and it means their death. We did have the crying baby, which Connie saved, but that doesn’t ring true to me either. I'm not sure, but this was just so random, I think it has to lead to something.

When talking to Jocelyn, Michonne says that when she heard Jocelyn's kids could hunt, she assumed it would be a few squirrels and a slingshot. The slingshot is an obvious foreshadow of Connie. I also noticed that when Jocelyn told the story about Michonne getting signatures for a petition in high school, she showed up at some "fancy ass Regent’s dinner” with double the number of signatures she needed. Regent is another word for ruler or King. Fancy academic dinners often have names like that. But I couldn't help but think that foreshadowed Michonne showing up at the Regent’s (King Ezekiel’s fancy ass fair). See what I mean about how they were using dialogue foreshadows for the present day?

When Michonne and Daryl get free, they split up and I noticed that Michonne grabs a water pipe. (Water =s Beth).

She drops it after fighting the kids I the hallway in favor of her katana (which one of the kids had). Yet another way to show that this arc is being paralleled with Beth in some way. Because Michonne wielded the water pipe as a weapon, I also thought it could be a way to show that Beth is the weapon they will use to defeat this (or some other *coughs Alpha*) evil group.

Michonne kills Jocelyn and then all the kids still try to kill her. I thought alternating between Michonne killing walkers in the present (while looking for Judith) rather than showing her kill the kids was really smart way. Obviously, the alternative would've been a lot darker and probably not allowed on TV.

Everything works out, Judith and all the Alexandrian kids are found, and there's a happy reunion.

Winnie does get away, which is super-interesting. As I said yesterday, I think she’ll resurface, but just a couple of details about her. Since this happened roughly 5 years ago, I think she could be with the Whisperers. Even though she’s evil, I naturally want to read into the fact that she was part of this group who disappeared, and no one knows where she is now. Feels like an anti-Beth thing. Oh, and she's blonde. I mean, I would've read into her as a Beth parallel one way or the other, but they just so happened to make her blonde. Just saying.

I will mention one point of unreality in all of this. No way all the parents from Alexandria wouldn't have been there to help get their kids back. I get that in terms of the story, they needed Michonne and Daryl to bond and go through something together, just the two of them. It has everything to do with the parallels to Beth and Daryl’s arc. But no way those parents would have just twiddled their thumbs in Alexandria while Michonne (pregnant lady) and Daryl went to get the kids. Just doesn't happen my friends. But since I know what the show was trying to accomplish, I'll let it slide. ;D

Okay, in closing, I said there was something I wanted to pull together at the end. This was a small but kind of important epiphany I had while writing this post and thinking about the episode. I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me sooner, but now that I say that, I realize it really couldn’t have until I formulated the “Carzekiel will also get a death fake out” theory. In other words, I couldn’t have put it all together until this season.

Many of my past leadership predictions for Michonne and Carol (and by extension belief that Beth will lead as well) are based on one of her lines during her and Daryl’s fight in Still. “I’m not Michonne, I’m not Carol, I’m not Maggie…but I made it.” Anyone who’s followed me long knows I can really beat this line and it’s symbolism to death.

Many TDers made early predictions about it that didn’t pan out. Or else we had theories…but they had holes in them. The leadership is the one that really seemed to work out for us. Maggie leading at Hilltop, Carol at the Kingdom, and Michonne at Alexandria. So by definition, Beth will have to lead somewhere, sometime too, and we definitely didn’t see that before Coda.

Minor aside: this is yet another reason I do think it will be Ezekiel, rather than Carol who is “just gone.” Because I think Carol will have to lead alone at the Kingdom for a time, just as Michonne is leading without Rick and Maggie led at Hilltop after losing Glenn. By the same token, if Beth woke up alone, then she lost Daryl as much as he lost her, and might have started leading at any time after that. We simply don’t know yet.

Anyway, so the epiphany I had was that three of the four ladies mentioned in Beth’s line in Still—Michonne, Carol, and Beth herself—all had death fake out arcs. So I had the thought that maybe her line foreshadowed that.

The odd one out is Glenn and Maggie. Because, although I obviously believe Beth is alive, we know Rick is, and I think the same will be true of Ezekiel, I do NOT think Glenn is coming back. I doubt anyone does.

Well, it took all of about twenty seconds for it to click for me. Glenn ISN’T coming back, but he already had his death fake out. In season 6.

So this line did foreshadow that these four couples would all have a death fake out. We know they planned from very early on that Negan would indeed kill Glenn, just as in the CBs, so they had to do something a little different with his fake out. The whole point of doing it in S6 was to include him and Maggie in this arc. And it really wasn’t even a matter of him being paralleled with Beth per se (I mean, it WAS, because hers was the only fake out that had happened at that point; Richonne’s and Carzekiel’s wouldn’t come for several more seasons) but rather that the same symbolism has been and will be employed in each case because they’re all following the same arc.

Hence, the Sirius/Serious piggyback images we’ve seen around Carzekiel, the hand-holding, the clocks…

I think the writers figured out the major characters that people loved from the first three seasons—which included Rick and Michonne, Daryl, Carol, Glenn and Maggie—and figured out who their love interests would be in the long term. These are the four main couples of the apocalypse. There have been other awesome couples, sure, but these are the most mainstream and epic. These are the couples who were given death fake outs and resurrection arcs. Glenn’s was simply shorter than the others, spanning only a few episodes where Bethyl’s spanned several seasons. I’m assuming Michonne will figure out about Rick sometime next season, and of course we have no idea what kind of time span Carzekiel will have, but you get the idea.

So, for what I said earlier: this is why the purple flowers behind Michonne—the same ones we saw Maggie wake up to RIGHT after Glenn died—are important. It’s why the tunnels being part of this Jocelyn story are important. We first saw them in the midst of Glenn’s death fake out. It’s also why the Xs are important. Michonne and Daryl both have them—rather than other characters—because they’re both part of this same arc. See what I mean?

So yeah, that was my other other epiphany. :D And it, you know, makes me happy. *Does creepy TD dance*

#beth green #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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opalknightfire · 6 years ago

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INFJ Defense... YOU are NOT INFJ!! (or maybe you really are)

So, for today I wanted to broach a subject that has kind of been starting to nag at me. The subject is the MBTI personality typing, specifically for INFJ. But before I get to the real meat of the issue, I shall give a breakdown of how this issue has arisen for me. Maybe others will be able to relate, if at least at the core of the issue, not the specific path to get there. Or just skip down to the ******* to get right to the point.

I have been spending the last several months attempting to do some deep-down soul searching. It came as maybe a Mid-Life Enlightenment moment. And by Mid-Life Enlightenment I mean that I have hit mid-life, but I don’t feel like I hit a crisis, I feel like I hit a moment when I needed more clarity, more direction for where my life was going, a turning point if you will, but a turning point that required I dig deeper into my core and discover what I really needed to start focusing on.

I had finished a chapter of my life, so to speak; accomplished the small-picture goal that had been driving my younger life. And as I stood, realizing my main goal had been achieved, I needed to start looking for what my next goal was going to be. But I also knew that it had to be more. Yes, I could spend my entire life setting small, easy-ish to achieve goals and come out the other side content with the knowledge that I had done it. I had lived. I had completed a life on this wide world. But somehow I felt that that wasn’t all I that I should do.

And so I started down the trail of self discovery: What were my flaws? What did I need to improve? How could I make myself a better person? What about me could others see that maybe I could not? How could I actually affect the world for better? All these questions bombarded me over and over as I searched different topics, issues, and sources of information.

Finally I fell onto the MBTI personality type descriptions. Maybe if I could get my type figured out, I would know where to start. Maybe I could see how my mind truly worked, could figure out it’s weaknesses, could pinpoint any strengths and use those to probe deeper into some meaning that I could direct my life towards. And so I ransacked Youtube, free MBTI test sites, and looked up sites that people had dedicated to understanding the MBTI and Jungian/Neojungian personality typology. I started with broad generalizations to lead me closer to the type I might be and slowly learned more and more about how the different types functioned and not just the superficial stereotypes that the types were labelled as. I took different tests, but spaced them out between months so that I could get a fresh look each time. And my answers varied between 3 or so different types. And many times I thought, “Hmmm, that’s probably right, but how does one know for sure?” And so the searching and testing would continue on.

It wasn’t until I came across the cognitive function flow and breakdowns that I truly hit home to how my mind must work. (as an aside I found the personality test that Erik Thor has put up on his site erikthor.com was one of the ones that better spelled out the cognitive functions in the results, so if you are curious about yourself, that might be a good place to start) I thought back to many of the distinct thoughts that I had had growing up, as a teen, in college, and my life since and saw the patterns that kept reappearing. The functions I relied on over and over became apparent, as well as those that I shied away from which lead to some of my bigger fears or hurdles throughout the years. And the type that fit my mind was INFJ.

*******************

So the point of my rather long intro is to show that I was doing my homework, I was trying to be thorough as well as objective. I didn’t start with an assumed answer and try to prove it. I sifted the info at hand over and over until all the pieces started to fall into place. And once they did, the picture that emerged became clearer and clearer and my mind suddenly made a whole lot more sense to me. It was like stepping back from a mosaic that one has been staring at too closely for too long. All the colors haphazardly scattered about slowly form a picture as you can see where different clusters of similar colors blend together to form shapes and lines. And I felt I had finally gained some clarity as to who I am.

Now, I may still have mistyped myself (I’m not perfect by anyone’s definition) but I feel fairly confident that how I now perceive my own mind and it’s intricate workings falls very well into the many (sometimes contradictory) descriptions associated with the INFJ personality.

However, the more I delved into the INFJ personality, the more I found that other people (specifically those that identified as INFJ) somehow felt the need to warn other people that if they come up with INFJ as their personality type, they are probably wrong and have mistyped themselves. Hmmm . . . why is this the case for INFJ and not the other types?

Well first off, many, many, many, many, many, many (you get the picture) INFJ descriptions start by stating that INFJ is the rarest type!!! Oh my! Really?! Can it be!! (shock and awe!)

Has personality typing somehow entered a reverse popularity contest?

Personality is just who people are: in their heads and how they react to the world. People don’t become a personality or acquire a personality, they have a personality. Maybe statistics can be gathered to get a basic breakdown of what types of personalities there are out there, but statistic gathering can be a rather imperfect measurement to begin with. Especially when the statistics are based off of self-analyzed test answers. People don’t always accurately assess themselves, especially when it comes to cognitive abilities. And maybe INFJ is the rarest type, but it isn’t that far off from some of the other rarer types, so that’s a bit of a misleading statement from the start. I mean is 1% really that far from 2% or 2.5%?

Also, maybe the statistics are just off. Maybe, of the people who took the test in places where the statistics were gathered, more of the INFJ types mistyped themselves as something else than other types did, lowering the actual percentage of people who really are INFJ. If mistyping is so prevalent, than who is to say that the statistcs don’t have just as many mistyped people as the people who are typing themselves where statistics are not being gathered?

And, if INFJ’s are really the rarest type, why broadcast that as some sort of lure for people who have the proclivity to want to feel special? By stating “Are you an INFJ, the rarest type?” you are just inviting people to want to see if they are, indeed, as rare as they may want to feel. Only for you to dash them down by saying, “NO, you are not rare, you are just wrong!” I mean, come on, that just seems mean . . and maybe spiteful.

It seems more likely that the INFJ’s who are questioning other people’s being INFJ’s are the ones who somehow feel threatened by not being special enough. After all, the goal of personality typing is to get a better picture of oneself for understanding, improvement, or possibly just for fun. People probably aren’t out to type themselves based off of what sounds good to them. At least I don’t assume most people are. And for those people who are, well, they probably aren’t taking the whole personality typing seriously enough for it to really matter. But for those people who are truly trying to learn about themselves through personality typing, it’s a bit arrogant to simply decry them as misinformed because you believe you know better based off of some percentage statistic. After all, people who have introverted intuition as their main function probably aren’t that apparent to other people what it is their mind is doing inside their heads. How does a person see someone else and just assume that the other person’s cognitive functions must be working differently than what that specific person feels about themselves?

Now, I’m not saying that mistyping doesn’t happen a lot. It does. It did for me because I did not always come up as INFJ when I was taking different tests. And the few times INFJ did come up for me, before I had gathered a lot of data, I assumed was wrong because the first statement I came across was, “This is the rarest type!!!” While I know I’m unique (honestly, everyone is) I’m not necessarily rare or special. And I’m OK with that. So I figured I must have gotten it wrong and moved on. But once I understood the processing that goes on in the mind of INFJ personality types, well then I started to realize that I was, in fact, probably INFJ after all.

Now, I’m running out of time here, but there is another point I want to make on this subject, but I’ll have to try and make it quickly.

I was talking about personality types with my brother recently, and we were both discussing how in businesses and in society the diversity of personalities plays an important role. In any structure different tasks are accomplished by different types of people. A well running company or business relies on having a bunch of different personality types doing things that their personality does well and other types are not so good at. The same goes for the social structure of communities and even politics and government. You need people of different abilities and thought processes to keep the various machines of humanity working well. So, what if personality types become more or less prevalent based off of the current needs of society. Just as nature can compensate for overpopulation or underpopulation in animals by changing genders or reabsorbing pregnancies, so too might the stresses of society make some personality types more or less likely to show up in a given population. So maybe INFJ’s used to be rarer, but the needs of society has made the number of people born with that personality type rise?

It’s just something to consider when stating that INFJ’s are so very rare so all those people who think they might be INFJ must be wrong. . .

#INFJ #mbti types #mbti personality types #infj personality #infj problems #infj philosophy #midlifecrisis

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bb-ma-2 · 4 years ago

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industry feedback

Sabrina Cotugno responded, but as our correspondence occurred over a period of a week and several days, I didn't post all the feedback I received immediately. I believe we're done for now though, so here's what they've said:

March 23: "—Okay here’s some notes!! I’m feeling pretty tired right now so hopefully this makes sense!! —I’m interested to see where this story goes! The characters all have nice clear personalities, Agatha in particular is super charming. The glitch is an intriguing concept as well. —You introduce the setting twice—first in the initial establishing shots, and then through the main character’s eyes after she wakes up. I’d cut the first establishing shots and, instead, open nice and close on our main character. Only when she looks out at her surroundings do you cut wide to reveal the location. This way the audience is more in the character’s head, since we’re discovering the wider world at the same time she is. —On pacing: I’m working on the assumption that this is the beginning of the story. Disregard this is we’ve had previous time to get to know the characters and rules of the world…. But IF this is the beginning: You’re introducing a lot of unusual and interesting ideas that need a bit more visual explanation. I.E.: —What are the flowers growing out of the main character’s eye? What’s going on there? Is this a new thing for her? I admit at first I just thought some flowers had fallen onto her face, and it took me a while to realize they were a consistent part of her design. We see her interacting with them and trying to pull them out a few shots later, but that interaction is interrupted by: her reaction to the world around her and her reaction to the person with the bucket. Because it’s interrupted by that stuff, it’s difficult to clearly establish this important part of her design. I’d step it out like: —She notices the flowers. What the fuck?! She sits up, tugs at the flowers. They won’t budge. She gives up. THEN…. —She looks out and notices her surroundings. Big wide shot! Reveal the world! —Then, we get a nice close-up on her to see her clear reaction to her surroundings. —And then, in theory, she notices the bucket person? Honestly, I’m not sure if we need this character here? We meet them later anyway, and I’m not sure what they’re doing out in the wilderness. It took me a while to realize that the bucket character and Agatha were two separate characters. —Agatha throwing her skull as protection is really fun—is there a way to introduce the fact that she can detach her skull earlier? Maybe have her play around with her skull head in her introductory scene? —Here’s the most common storyboard note I give, it’s: switch up your medium shots. You’ve got several minutes near the end of JUST medium shots, which can feel repetitive and jump-cutty if used too frequently. Look for shots that are more about broad physical motion and turn them into wide shots. Look for shots that are more focused on facial acting and turn them into close-ups. —For your over-the-shoulder shots: as a general rule you don’t want the focus of the shot to be the over-the-shoulder character—because they’re turned away from camera, we can’t really see them properly. For instance, when the main character (Exa?) introduces herself, she states her name while facing away from us in an over-the-shoulder—which feels odd because she should be the focus of that shot. I’d swap that shot out for an over-the-shoulder from over Agatha’s shoulder or a single shot on Exa. oops, I meant "Disregard this IF we’ve had previous time to get to know the characters and rules of the world…."

I think I'm a little confused as to the purpose of this animatic? You mention that it's going to be a pilot eventually, but I think we might have a different definition of 'pilot'.....

Questions on that are: 1) Is this the entire animatic or part of a larger animatic that I'm not seeing? 2) What is the purpose of this project? I understand that it's for your school program, but what is the goal here? Is this basically going to be a thesis film? Is it a portfolio piece to apply to future jobs? Is it something you're planning on pitching to a studio? (If the latter, people don't often pitch shows to studios using animatics--they're way too labor intensive! and usually you'd want to go through several rounds of studio notes before committing to a pilot script/board) 3) What kind of program are you in? Is it an animation program or another kind of graduate program? I ask because you seem not entirely confident in your professors' notes, and that may be a good instinct--animation is a really niche industry and there aren't many teachers who are really qualified to teach in this area er, or rather.... I don't want to say 'they're not qualified' but they may not have the specific expertise to really guide you to to get the specific skills/portfolio you need

April 6: --So, I would definitely encourage you to do a bit more research on animated pilots! Pilots are generally one full episode length--either the first episode or an early episode (say episode 4). --The job of a pilot is to convince the studio that they should greenlight your show. That's what sets it apart from a "teaser"--generally speaking, you want to clearly establish all the major elements of a show in that first episode. the Steven Universe pilot is a great example ("this is a show about a human boy with three superpowered moms. Here are their powers. Here's how they work. There's going to be music. There's going to be action scenes.") The pilot of Hannibal is also a great pilot (it takes time to clearly establish all the main characters, their dynamics, and the major setpieces of the show--the big, artsy murders, Will's "This is my design" schtick, Will and Hannibal's manipulative therapy sessions) --Ah hah, actually shoot, reading through your previous answer, it looks like you already understood that a pilot=selling tool. But to expand on that: you want to avoid teasing. Instead, you should be revealing and dramatizing. A lot of pilots will END on a teaser that hints at the overall season arc, but ONLY after spending the majority of its runtime answering the basic questions of "What is this story? Who are these characters? How am I going to tell this story? What sets it apart from other stories in this genre?" (Again, to use Hannibal as an example, taking full scenes to demonstrate how Will's "superpower" works, how the murders are more like art pieces than your typical grisly CSI murder, how Hannibal is depicted as more of an ally and friend to Will than an adversary..... these are all things that clearly explain, "This is what an average episode of this show will look like. These are the things that set it apart from other crime procedurals.") Right now in your pilot you're teasing a LOT about the basic premise of the story but have not revealing a lot of answers. Again, you can have one or two things teased at the end, but not at the expense of basic clarity--and you have to reveal enough of the story/world/characters that the audience could feasibly start guessing what the answers to those teasers could be. --I may have mentioned this before, but generally speaking individual creators don't make pilots on their own--they're much too expensive. Generally, you make a 'story bible' with art and writing that explains the basic premise of the show, the characters, and world, and then pitch it to studios. If the studio likes it, they will option the project and then give you the budget and resources to make the pilot at the studio --An exception would be something like Hazbin Hotel, but that basically required the creator to create her own studio, funded by a very successful Patreon, with her own full crew of animators working under her. Honestly I would only recommend this route if you are very business savvy and would also be OK producing the ENTIRE show independent of a studio (therefore rendering a pilot pointless) --So overall, I would recommend using this project as A) a personal project B) a portfolio to sell YOUR SKILLS as an artist for future industry jobs--storyboarding skills, 2D animation skills, design skills. However, I would say that if you want to use this piece as part of a storyboarding portfolio, I would recommend going back in and cleaning it up to industry standards--referencing currently working industry board artists for that level of clean (i.e. Steven Universe, Amphibia, Rise of the TMNT, etc.). The goal you want to reach is for the person reviewing your board to understand the story clearly without having to read the dialogue or ask follow-up questions. Hope that helps!!

I then had some questions to wrap up,

"1) Do you think that, as it is, it holds up better as a mock series teaser then? Basically stop trying to call it a pilot and own the vagueness/mystery of it. In other words, if it's not trying to be a pilot, do you think it works/is engaging?

2) I have a written 'project proposal' that I have to arrange with my professors, instead of trying to sell this as an "animatic for a pilot", would you recommend I change it to "story bible with animatic"? That seems like the right path to me at this point but I thought I'd ask

3) And finally... Would it be okay if I sent you a sort of update in a few months (june-july ish) to get your feedback again? By that point I'm hoping to have redrawn the characters (so they actually look like their references) and implemented the advice you've given me for the animatic. It should be the last time as my school year finishes in September, but I I completely understand if you'd rather not. like I said earlier I know you're very busy"

To which she responded,

1) Hmm, this is a tricky question for me.... I would say my primary issue goes back to the fact that it doesn't feel like a complete statement. I feel the text of the animatic would need to answer a few more questions before it could properly "tease" an audience into wanting to see more. I'd say your meat-and-potatoes questions are: What does your main character want/need? How is she going to achieve it? What kind of obstacles is she likely to face? What are her flaws as a character? How do they hold her back? How will the world of the story force her to confront and grow from those flaws?

And for this story in particular, I'd want to reveal enough of the world that I could begin to guess at things like: What is the glitch? What kind of world is this? Um, this is a little trickier to explain, but since this story exists in a fantasy world and there are SO many mysteries--what is the glitch? who is the main character? Is she from this world or another world? Is this world real or does the glitch indicate that it's a video game or something? Incidentally, these are the kinds of questions I commonly ask students who are working on their own original stories. I find those students often have pretty clear answers when I ask them, at which point I say, "Cool. Now put the answers in the board." I think there's a culture online of "don't be obvious" or "don't spoil the audience"--I would say, when trying to sell a new story to an audience, don't worry about that kind of thing. Be obvious. Keep in mind that many animated shows are only 11 minutes long, and in the age of streaming, most showrunners only have one episode to convince an audience to watch THEIR show and not the dozens of other shows that aired the same month, or thousands of other shows they could access via streaming. Don't worry about giving too much away! Be stupid and obvious!

However, I am aware that as a student you only have so much time until your deadline--if you're in a phase where you should be finished with pre-production and starting production, I would not recommend making major changes to your story--that will only cause you to rush through your work later. If you need to finish the animatic soon and start on animation, I would recommend ignoring my advice above and focus on producing the animatic you have currently at the highest quality you can. Even if it doesn't necessarily work as a selling tool for the story--which is perfectly fine, I would strongly recommend pitching to studios right after graduating anyway (studios are complicated and predatory to young artists, and I recommend taking several years to work within the studio system to understand how it works from the inside before trying to be a showrunner)--it can still work as a portfolio presentation piece if you take your time on your animation and go back and polish this board 2) Story bible with animatic should work! 3) Yeah, feel free to send an updated version! Though again I am wary of deadlines and am a little skeptical that giving feedback so close to your deadline would be SUPER helpful--I may only be able to give 'polish' notes at that point that you would still be able to implement By “text of the animatic” I just mean that when I flip through the storyboard, I can understand the answers clearly without having to ask questions or read about it in the action notes. Personally I don’t recommend using board notes/action notes/descriptions at all. The only time I’ve used those are when working with an overseas outsourced contract animation studio. The function of action notes are essentially insurance—the board should read clearly on its own, but if an overseas studio misinterprets the board, you can point to the action notes and say, “you should have done what was in the action notes. Because this was a mistake on your end, you have to fix it on your own time (rather than requesting additional money to pay for a mistake on our end)”. In any other case, action notes are redundant and should be taken out of any portfolio or presentation

It was overall incredibly helpful and enlightening, especially with what pilots are and how they work. Sabrina's really helped me figure out what I thought I wanted to do, and what I actually want to do. I'll elaborate on this a bit more in my essay and how I applied it to my animatic directly.

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gretchensinister · 7 years ago

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Burgess Wilderness Recreation Area 19/?

And so continues the story I began for the Black as Pitch Halloween event. It’s the kind of story I’m sure you know well. Five college kids, a cabin, and a state park that just doesn’t get many visitors any more… (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Part 18)

“What’s your name?” the human asked Pitch.

Pitch sat up a little and blinked slowly in delight. The human’s fear, which had been ebbing and flowing, was now at an ebb, but Pitch had never expected him to ask such a question so soon! His name! A beautiful, unnecessary ornament he’d given himself, something that showed how different he was in kind compared to the other creatures of the forest, and now, something that the human who he thought might become a companion for him was asking about! It was a good sign! A very good sign. “Pitch Black,” he said.

The human blinked a few times in quick succession, and Pitch wiggled his shoulders a little. The human had liked his name! He had made the best choice of the humans in his territory.

“My name is Sandy,” the human said.

Pitch relaxed completely against the ground, resisting the urge to roll over. The human had offered his name in return! True, he had said it a bit strangely, as if it didn’t mean anything, but when he was near a human, Pitch could easily map the things he knew onto human language, and he soon understood Sandy’s name.

Sandy! There hadn’t been much sand in the forest before the humans had built their many structures, but now he was familiar with it. The humans had lined one of the small lakes in his territory with a broad border of sand. It was a pleasant light brown, and the humans liked it very much. Pitch had tried lying on it the way they did, and he found he liked it, too. Nearer the water the sand was wet, and held tracks, and Pitch could make shapes in it if he wanted. He could almost build small copies his favorite caves so he could look at them all at once. Farther away from the water, the sand was dry, and on warm days it soaked up the heat from the sun and after dark it stayed warmer than the air for hours. It was soft and comfortable and not as full of distracting smells as soil or leaves. Whenever he was active, Pitch always made sure to take some time to fall asleep on sand.

His companion was well aware of how much he enjoyed sand, too. That was why, even though she didn’t like the sand that had been brought in, she kept a section of the sand by the lake clear of all plants and animals. She had also allowed one of the humans’ rectangular sand pits to remain perfectly clear, while the others were left to whatever maintenance the humans still came into his territory to perform.

Sand was one of the few human things he’d ever bothered with, and one of the few human things he’d found that he liked. How wonderful, then, that this human, one of only two that he’d ever thought of making into a companion, was named after such a substance.

And it was a fitting name, too, not just one that told him what Sandy liked. Sandy was soft and warm, as Pitch had discovered when he carried him to the clearing. He wasn’t quite the right color for sand, but his hair was close. He reminded Pitch of summer, in a way, and also the sun, but not in a way that was dangerous or unpleasant to him, so he wasn’t worried about the results of the transformation he would undergo. Pitch thought his companion would like that sunny quality as well.

“Sandy,” Pitch said. He slowly blinked at him again. He loved that name for a human, for his companion, and he wanted him to know.

***

Well, now I know its name, Sandy thought. Kind of a silly name, really. We were terrorized all night and all day by a monster named after a color. He wondered, though, if he was supposed to take the monster’s recent actions as part of its name—the wiggling shoulders, the slow blinks. Then again, maybe those were just more signs of its alien-ness or animal-ness. Maybe it was like a cat with those reactions. One of its attacks had been blamed on a mountain lion, after all.

But if it was cat-like, that would be alarming, too. Didn’t cats do that slow blink thing to show that they loved you?

I always wanted someone to fall head over heels for me, Sandy thought. I really should have been more specific. But, speaking of being specific…

“You referred to your, uh, offspring as ‘she,’” Sandy said. “If you were to be referred to, what pronouns would you want to be used?”

The monster’s—Pitch Black’s—eyes narrowed and head tilted, but it didn’t say anything right away.

Could be figuring things out, Sandy thought. Maybe I should’ve phrased the question a different way. Did I really just ask a monster in the woods for its pronouns? What the fuck does a monster know about pronouns? “I, um, can explain a little more if you don’t understand the question.”

“I can understand most things you say, as long as I am near you. I can understand the patterns your thoughts take.”

“But you’re not…you’re not reading my mind, are you?” Sandy asked. That could be really bad. But if Pitch Black could read his thoughts, Sandy felt that this situation would be playing out differently, even now.

“Hmm, no,” Pitch Black said. “I do not know of anyone or anything that can do the thing you mean. My companion and I do something that is almost like what you mean, but it is still not exactly the same. As a being like one of us, you would understand this better.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Sandy said.

“I still know much about your current state of being,” Pitch Black said. “I can sense all your fears, and many of your other emotions as well, though these are harder for me to detect.”

That could be a serious problem. “Do you mean, like, you can smell adrenaline?” Sandy asked. “The hormones that cause the fear response, etc.?”

“No,” Pitch Black said. “I can smell those things, but I detect the emotions themselves. I am not limited by flesh in many ways.”

This situation was going to be even trickier to navigate than Sandy had thought. But…okay, okay. He could love a challenge, and he was certainly curious as to whether or not he would succeed, here. He could keep those emotions at the forefront of his mind, and push away the fears he had. What good was fear now, anyway? Pretty much everything had already happened.

“I have figured out what you meant by pronouns,” Pitch Black announced, unbothered by Sandy’s pause. “If someone was to refer to me not by a description or by name, that someone should use the word ‘he’ to refer to me.” Pitch Black tilted his head the other way. “But who will be talking about me in such a way? My companion and I, even if we had a third, would not need human language of this kind.”

It was a good question. And it wasn’t like knowing the monster’s pronouns gained Sandy anything. He didn’t even know what criteria the monster had used to decide what pronouns to use. There was no indication that Pitch Black thought of himself as a man in any way. It might have even been some latent sexism in his own mind that had led Pitch Black to choose the set of pronouns that he had, Sandy considered gloomily. Or even latent transphobia! Maybe Pitch Black was trying to indicate something about his genitals by choosing those pronouns. Or something about the role he expected to play during sex. Sandy made a strange face after that thought. This conversation was delicate enough without adding worries about transphobia or monster dicks to it.

“I asked because it’s a courteous thing to do among humans,” Sandy said. He’d better stick to honesty, or something like it, if he was to have a hope of dealing with everything else that was rattling around in his head. “I thought it was especially important to ask you because you’re not like anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

Pitch Black settled again, blinking slowly. He didn’t say anything, not like a person who would likely have taken that statement as a compliment.

Don’t play to the rules of a game he doesn’t understand, Sandy told himself. He’d probably taken what Sandy had said as a favorable statement of fact, but not something specifically meant to make him feel flattered. Could Pitch even be flattered? Sandy didn’t plan to ask that question out loud.

But he would ask something, if only to take up time. “What drew you to me?” he asked.

#blackaspitch #Pitch Black #sanderson mansnoozie #I love sand I've always loved sand #you might not believe me but I DIDN'T intend for the story to go this way #rise of the guardians #rotg #fic #if you like it consider reblogging #I live and breathe for comments

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