#I specifically wanted you to be able to look under the hood (pun intended) And see his messed up little corpse so I had to model -

[ranvwoop]

LOOK AT HIM

[soulmate-game]

Daughter of wonderwoman au where marinette finds out her mother is actually Diana and somehow it ends up with her meeting/being introduced to the batfam maybe because she has super strength and is seen yeeting some bad guys who tried to mug her... Or something.

“... you are running from your problems, Mari,” Adrien’s exasperated voice reminded his best friend. Again. She ignored him, and he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Look, you don’t have to do anything about it! Nobody would hold it against you if you decided to just, ignore that you found anything out at all. But you need to actually think about what we just found out and decide whether or not you’re gonna do anything—“ he side-stepped a piece of trash that went flying in his direction. “—or if you’re gonna move on and pretend nothing happened.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?” Marinette shot back, pushing her bangs out of her face and tying her hair back with one hand.

“No, you’re currently hiding away in Gotham to avoid your parents while you beat up every random group of idiots who thinks you’re an easy mark,” he retorted. Another wannabe kidnapper went flying in his direction, making him sigh and side step again. She had thrown that one with only her one free hand, showing just how upset she was. “You’re ignoring everything in your life, which is not what we meant we said you should get a little space.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marinette dropkicked the last criminal into unconsciousness before stepping back and putting her hands on her hips. She looked over at the now seven passed out men in the alleyway, and the one very frustrated ex-model pinching the bride of his nose. “I think I’m coping just fine.”

“It’s better than being forced to suppress all of your emotions, sure,” Adrien reluctantly agreed. “But not by much. Your angry rampage through Gotham has already attracted more attention,” he raised his hand to point at a nearby rooftop. Several shadows lurked there, looming over the building’s edge. “Which, might I add, is exactly why I told you not to come to Gotham.”

“You’re the one who followed me here,” she shot back before turning to the shadowy figures above them. “Go ahead and come down! But it was self defense, and you can’t arrest or beat me up for defending myself!”

The first figure to drop down straightened your just as quickly, revealing the imposing figure of none other than Batman himself. The little white eyes on his cowl seemed to narrow on their own as he looked down at her.

“That might be true, but I’m sure you know my policy on metas in my city,” he grumbled back at her. He wasn’t necessarily threatening, but he definitely wasn’t welcoming either. With all of his limbs hidden behind the cocoon that was his cape, Marinette would never be able to predict his next move if he did decide to fight. Not that she seemed particularly worried about that as she crossed her arms over her chest and met his glare evenly.

“Oh, do you own this city now? I wasn’t given the memo,” she retorted. “And considering I didn’t even know I was a meta until last week? I think I deserve a little slack. I’m angry and if people think the tiny little girl in pink is an easy kidnapping target, then it’s their fault for making themselves into the perfect practice dummies for me to try out my newly discovered strength on.”

Adrien saw the eyes on Batman’s mask narrow even further. Marinette wasn’t exactly at her most charismatic at the moment, and Adrien didn’t wanna get the both of them into a bad relationship with the experienced superhero who always seemed to know things he shouldn’t know. So he stepped up quickly, getting in between Marinette and the Bat and holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Okay, Monsieur Batman,” Adrien started slowly, making sure his posture was impeccable and his smile bright. “She’s telling the truth, even if she’s not... the most tactful about it right now. She just found out some very concerning things about her origin and Gotham is the best place for her to hide from her problems and let loose a little pent up aggression. But— well,” he grimaced. “We didn’t intend to run into you guys, but maybe it’s a good thing we did.”

“How so?” Batman was clearly still incredibly suspicious of the both of them and wasn’t giving an inch. So Marinette rolled her eyes (she was still very moody) and leaned around Adrien so she could get a good look at the monochromatic hero.

“I thank my lucky spots that we ran into you, Batman!” She said monotonously. “Me and Adrien are paw-sitively excited at this opportunity.”

Batman. Froze.

Not only were those two lines the very first lines ever spoken to him by two foreign heroes a few years ago (with a few key words changed to protect identities), but they had become their code phrase for whenever they made calls to one another outside of their costumes. All at once it seemed to hit him— the golden hair and bright green eyes on the boy, the blue-black hair and normally super-focused bluebell eyes on the girl that were currently sporting very uncharacteristic frustration. Their heights. Their builds. All of this info flowed through his mind and compared to the information stored in his memory, and it only took the span of two seconds for everything to click.

Suddenly Batman was at full attention, back straight instead of looming over them and eyebrows clearly raised high under his cowl.

He knew Chat Noir and Ladybug would never take a random vacation to Gotham. Ladybug herself had nearly waxed poetic about how much the city depressed her just from the pictures she saw online. If she had willingly come to visit, it was more than to just blow off some steam.

“Batcave?” He asked, earning a relieved look from Adrien and a moody silence from Marinette.

“Please,” Adrien agreed. “You can probably help us, actually.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette leaned back in the metal debriefing chair, legs up on the table and looking for all the world as the picture of pure teenage rebellion and angst. Coincidentally, Red Hood was in the exact same position in the chair next to her.

Batman and all of his other bats and birds were in the cave with the two off-duty Parisian heroes. Everyone except Adrien and Marinette still had their masks on, since the two Parisians were still not privy to their identities. Yet.

To be fair, the bats hadn’t known the identities of the two miraculous users either before today.

“Cha Noir,” Batman started, only to get a head shake from the blond boy.

“Just call me Adrien. Chat’s out of the bag—“ he ignored the groans at the pun and soldiered on, “—so might as well use my real name.”

Batman nodded. “Adrien, then,” he amended. “Why are you and Ladybug really in Gotham?”

Adrien sighed. “I wasn’t lying, before. Marinette,” he gestured to his hero partner. “Just found out some distressing family news. Since HawkMoth is gone, she doesn’t need to repress her negative emotions anymore. But she also didn’t want to be around her parents while she processed everything. I told her to choose any other city— really, I begged— but she insisted on coming to Gotham.”

“The never ending cloud cover and constant rain seem thematic,” she finally spoke up, reaching into her big over-the-shoulder bag and pulling out a large envelope. She threw it to Batman, making the thin package slice through the air like a knife. To nobody’s surprise the seasoned hero easily caught the projectile between two fingers. He looked at the envelope and back to Marinette, silent questions floating in the air between them. Marinette decided to answer at her own pace.

“That’s what we found out. You see, one of my friends is a huge science nerd. A genius. And he wanted to compare DNA samples between us to see if there were any genetic components that determined a person’s suitability towards certain Miraculous or other magical artifacts over others. It was supposed to just be a fun side project that he didn’t expect any breakthroughs on. He mostly just wanted to satisfy his own curiosity. But instead of finding out if our DNA was linked to the miraculous, he found out that my parents are not biologically my parents.”

“Hence the whole just finding out that you’re a meta thing, right?” Nightwing spoke up, fully invested in the story. “Did they never say you were adopted before?”

“It’s not in the system,” she replied easily. “My parents have all the documentation to prove that I’m their biological child, except I’m not. When I confronted them about it, they caved and admitted that they had adopted me in secret and covered it up. Apparently a friend of theirs was involved in something illegal, and,” she waved at the envelope that Batman was now opening. “The details of what we were able to dig up are in there. The summary is this; their friend was part of a secret, illegal experimentation to create clones that could defeat the Justice League—“ the air seemed to get sucked out of the room as soon as those words left Marinette’s mouth. Everyone seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. “—a group called CADMUS. They made me, as apparently one of their early attempts. But I didn’t exhibit any of the powers they were looking for, or any meta traits at all, and my body refused to mature at the rate they wanted. They had no use for a seemingly normal human baby that they managed to clone, so they were preparing to kill me and start over. That’s when my parent’s friend stole me, not wanting to kill an infant, and begged my parents to take me in and pretend I was theirs. Low and behold, it turns out that my DNA just needed a very specific series of emotions to unlock it’s latent abilities.”

“Those emotions being..?” Red hood trailed off, earning a wolfish smile from Marinette.

“Intense anger, betrayal, and confused frustration closely followed by the desire to punch other people’s faces in.”

“That last one is just an assumption,” Adrien chimed in. “And maybe not accurate. But the first three, our scientist friend was able to confirm. The rapid experience of a lot of negative but action-oriented emotions released whatever had been holding back the powers in her DNA from expressing themselves,” he had switched to French so that he could explain everything exactly as Max had told it to them, but he knew all of them were fluent anyway so it was fine. They nodded along, processing the information.

The crinkling of paper drew everyone’s attention back to Batman, who had been flipping through the detailed break down of everything they had found about Marinette’s situation and how she was made by CADMUS.

“Uh,” Red Robin nervously spoke up. “What’s up, Batman?”

“Your genetic donors...” Batman breathed, getting a wink and finger guns from Marinette.

“Yup. Isn’t that just the most fucked up thing you’ve ever seen? They were clearly trying to make someone who could destroy the world.”

“That makes me nervous,” Nightwing admitted, getting up and going to get a look at the papers himself. “It can’t be that ba—“

When even Nightwing was left agape, everyone else who wasn’t in on it found themselves squirming.

“Just tell the rest of us, already!” Robin demanded after the silence stretched just a bit too long.

“The unknowing genetic donors that CADMUS used to make me,” Marinette spoke up, still with her legs up on the table. “Are a very mad-scientist’s-wet-dream combination of Lex Luthor, Bruce Wayne, and Wonder Woman.”

“We don’t even know why they added Bruce Wayne’s DNA,” Adrien admitted. “Although our scientist friend thinks it’s because of physique. His hypothesis is that, in order to support the genes of Wonder Woman, they had to add male genetics that could support the production of a very high muscle mass and would lean towards easy development of a very athletic body. Lex might be evil-scientist smart, but he’s a string bean. But if he added the DNA of another multi millionaire who just so happens to maintain a ridiculously fit body without putting any obvious work into it,” Adrien shrugged. “Then maybe the clone would be able to support Wonder Woman’s genetics and that of two human donors without falling apart.”

“So I’m ‘the clone’ now, huh?” Marinette snarked, earning an exasperated eye roll from her friend.

Batman just stared at the both of them for a moment. He walked away without a word, and came back with a fresh needle and a box. He placed it on the debriefing table.

“Can I do a paternity test myself?” He asked, his voice suspiciously less gruff than normal. “I trust the both of you, but I rather be safe than sorry with something like this.”

The both of them just stared at him in confusion. They traded a glance, and finally Marinette shrugged and moved to sit in her chair properly. Her shirt was already short sleeved, so she just held her arm out so Batman could easily get a blood sample.

“Sure, why not. But do you just have Lex Luthor or Bruce Wayne’s DNA sitting around to compare, or—“ she shut up when she watched Batman take off his glove and roll his own sleeve up. Realization slowly sunk in as he asked Nightwing to take a blood sample from him.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, eyes wide. “You’re— and Luthor doesn’t know— holy shit this is even worse than I thought,” Marinette rambled, not even noticing as Red Hood moved forward and took a small blood sample from her.

Adrien put a hand over his face and just laughed for a moment hysterically. “Oh my god,” he looked over at Marinette. “You could take over the world.”

“I have the blood of Batman AND Wonder Woman on MY side,” Marinette joked back, also hysterical.

When the bat’s high tech equipment was able to come back with a positive result only a few minutes later, Marinette and Adrien had to sit on the floor and just let it all sink in. Which Batman did not at all help by immediately unmasking himself and trying to make a proper introduction.

“I wanna go beat up random thugs again,” Marinette whined, pulling at her hair. “I’ll put on a mask, whatever, but just please let me punch people. I need to punch people right now.”

[script-a-world]

hi! im having some trouble figuring out some things about my world. The main country of the story like a post calamity old west, filled with cowboy gangs that occupy turf. But there are also people in towns within the country that have nothing to do with the gangs. My issue is im having trouble figuring out how the two sides would interact, and how the people in the towns would avoid getting raided every day.

Tex: Ah. Well, cowboys... don't do the raiding thing, traditionally - it's actually a job as a cattle herder and sometimes horse wrangler that worked on a ranch. The original cowboys were vaqueros of the Iberian Peninsula. It's a very old cultural tradition, which is typified by doing cattle - and other animals as necessary - herding on horseback. Technically speaking, the Iberian roots refer to a dressage style of the region, known as doma vaquera (aka "Western dressage" or "cowherd style", DressageToday, which is different from the horsemanship style of doma clásica (aka haute école, Wikipedia in Spanish).

I find the phrase "post calamity old west" very interesting; what about the Old West drew you toward it for a post-calamity setting? It may not have looked like the US east of the Mississippi, but for the most part the frontier was highly oriented around entrepreneurialism, egalitarianism, and self-sufficiency - Manifest Destiny's impact on westward expansion is popularly said to have shaped the roots of American culture, distinct from European. Society in the frontier wasn't highly stratified like in the original colonies, but it was quick to develop in something that reflected the friction with the Native Americans, the aggressive politicking that was the developing legislative landscape, and the shift from financial modesty to the dream of wealth.

Cowboys were incredibly important to frontier culture, as cattleherding [and horse... everything ( 1  2  3  4  5 ) were a core component of the frontier economy. Settlers made up another core component, and between the two of them - under Manifest Destiny's set of goals - American law and government was further developed. The building of the railroads to connect east and west coasts had major help from cowboys and their ability to wrangle horses for use in railroad construction, something that helped put the US higher on the international stage in terms of their trading power. Being able to negotiate literally new trade routes, as well as govern them, is a potent draw for any society as it enables them to have a steady source of income to develop themselves further. Since cowboys were an integral part of this, the culture surrounding them was built up accordingly.

It's important to highlight that the Old West was planned, inasmuch as territorial expansion on other people's property can be. As the population of an area grew, and went through the formal procedures of becoming towns, cities, and states (there were some hiccups, as evidenced by the Kansas-Nebraska Act), the amount of law enforcers grew accordingly. In the beginning sheriffs and others were sparse compared to their big city relatives in the more developed regions of the US, and as such they were spread thin.

What was... maybe not unique to the era and region, but perhaps distinctive, is the fine line between "law-abiding" and "not law-abiding". Since the US was galloping toward expanding its territory and defending it (pun wholly intended), picking up the slack as a representative of the US government could be financially beneficial. Bounties could be put out on criminals - whose crimes were frequently theft of cattle and horses when not cash and other goods - and deals were frequently struck with not only cowboys but whichever criminal was currently in the good graces of the local sheriff/town as a whole.

Outlaws, also known as lawmen (sometimes law-abiding!), badmen, pistoleers, pistoleros, rustlers (a particular occupation), and gunslingers (the last one a post-era name suited for Hollywood), are the byproduct of westward expansion in the US. Like cowboys and law enforcement, they had a spot in their society as, literally, a criminal occupation that varied in how far from the law they operated (entrepreneurship, if technically of a different tone than homesteaders and other settlers). Because of the contemporary in situ development of law, criminals could be sheriffs and sheriffs could be criminals.

This lack of stratification that would typically define respectability is what made the American frontier the "Wild" West, not necessarily the lack of physical infrastructure. The US is big, and matching the technology of the East Coast and Europe took a lot of resources, both physical and financial, and many routes were taken to achieve the singular goal of fulfilling the US' vision of becoming a power player in the world stage.

Such an apparent lawlessness was dealt with by using a form of equality, something best said by the adage "if catapults are outlawed, then only outlaws shall have catapults". The multiple layers of politics - from Native Americans to war with other nations and neighbors to quite simply the wildlife - meant that firearms were a staple of settlers, ranchers, Pony Express riders, and stagecoach travelers that had to deal with "the wild" (something that notably wasn't allowed within town limits as a demarcation of civilization). If you want to talk about raiding, the Bleeding Kansas crisis is your best bet to see how the Old West handled such things.

Combining those two above aspects should give you greater perspective on social dynamics of law vs lawless, as well as how the social circles overlapped. The closest I could find to the modern gang war analogue would be range wars, with notable examples including the Johnson County War, Stuart's Stranglers, and Sheep Wars that fit the parameters of cowboys in territorial disputes during the Old West era and region.

I think you might be particularly interested in the Cochise County Cowboys, as a very early form of American crime syndicate during the time when "cowboy" and "rustler" were mostly interchangeable. They're a part of the family feuds in the United States, many of which occur during the time period and in the region of the Old West.

Below (Mod Miri Note: at the end of the post) is a list gives details of the minutiae I haven't covered, which round out the setting of the Old West, up to the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad which effectively ended the era - but not quite to the American Civil War. 

Feral: Everything Tex said. Also...

Something else to consider about the real Old West and the sociopolitical dynamics that came with it is that the Old West was happening during a time of class warfare. And I do mean warfare. An incredible amount of the land was not owned by the people living there. It was owned by the railroad companies, banks, and absentee speculators. Most farmers in the 19th century were tenant farmers, who could be evicted for crop failure - evictions to be carried by the local sheriff. Over a thousand people died constructing the transcontinental railroads, and running the railroads was also a very dangerous occupation. Strikes were happening a lot and the Pinkertons were known to actually battle striking workers. The point of this is to say that the common people might not have had as much of an issue with bandits who targeted banks or trains or fought with sheriffs and security agents. Jesse James was a folk hero who is given attributes of a Robin Hood figure, even though there's no evidence he gave away any of his loot - he did, however, steal from the rich and that might have been good enough for some.

Now you ask how the bandits (or cowboys - is that meant as a reference to the Gunfight at OK Corral? if so, it's a proper noun - Cowboys was the name of the specific gang) would interact with the townspeople. I see 2 general models of this.

Model 1: the towns are part of the territories which are "protected" by the gangs that control the territories. So, gangs wouldn't be attacking their own towns; they'd be attacking each others. And likely trading with their own.

Model 2: the towns are no-man's land on the border of territories and trade equally with the bandits (this model would probably require a very strong law enforcement presence). And trade is a really important thing to consider - you can't eat money. Whatever the bandits steal from banks, train cars, etc, they need to get food with it. And given the very real poverty in the Old West, stealing food outright off farms was a very good way to get a huge posse out for your blood.

If you're not already familiar with Westerns, try some out. Tombstone is a favorite of mine (though it is absolutely completely historically inaccurate). Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a classic. For a more "modern" option, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is a must-read. Even when they're inaccurate, they capture the feeling that draws people to the mythology of the Old West, even when reimagined as post-apocalyptic.

And speaking of the post-apocalyptic West, you're probably very familiar with the Joss Whedon show Firefly and Stephen King's Gunslinger, but if you haven't taken the time, really study them. Because the world building, especially in terms of the balance of chaos and order, are wonderful, and again, they capture that feeling of Westerns that keep people coming back. "Train Job," "Bushwacked," and "Heart of Gold" may be particularly helpful episodes for you.

Tex’s Further Reading

American frontier  - Wikipedia Timeline of the American Old West  - Wikipedia Territorial evolution of the United States - WikipediaWestern wear  - WikipediaThe Evolution of Western Wear  - True West Magazine Western Economic Expansion: Railroads and Cattle  - US History II (American Yawp) by Lumen LearningHoofs and Wheels: Transportation in the West  - National Cowboy & Western Heritage MuseumLost Skills of Old West Stagecoach Travel  - American CowboyThe Pony Express  - Cowboy ShowcaseWild West Outlaws and Lawmen - The Wild WestJesse James - WikipediaJames Kirker, the King of New Mexico - "American Studies" of the University of VirginiaDunn Brothers (bounty hunters) - WikipediaKansas Gunfighters, KS Outlaws and KS LawmenList of Old West gunfighters - WikipediaCategory:Gunslingers of the American Old West - WikipediaList of Old West gunfighters - WikipediaCategory:Outlaws of the American Old West - WikipediaCattle raiding - WikipediaList of Old West gunfights - WikipediaCategory:Range wars and feuds of the American Old West - WikipediaThe Missouri Crisis   - Digital History from the University of HoustonCalifornia Gold Rush - WikipediaCalifornia Dream - WikipediaSutter's Mill - WikipediaFirst Transcontinental Railroad - Wikipedia

[clairen45]

Red Re-Read: The Company of Wolves and the ST

This meta is long overdue. When I started my blog in January, I had a list of prospective articles I wanted to write about Kylo and Rey, or some themes that I was seeing suggested in the ST. On top of the list was Little Red Riding Hood, and I never even imagined going there without at the very least a honorable mention to Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) and the extended movie companion to 3 of these tales, Neil Jordan’s 1984 The Company of Wolves. Special request by @missnomerblr pushed me to finally complete the task. Also tagging our dear Reylo she-wolf extraordinaire, @ravenmaiden. The aesthetic and special effects left quite an impression on my mind as a child when the movie was released. Of course I was only allowed to watch it years later, and I didn’t get all the symbolism as a young girl, of course... but the idea that men with Frida Khalo eyebrows could turn into wolves, and that the wolf could get as seduced as the girl, were forever ingrained in my mind. How is it relevant to Star Wars, will you tell me? Ok, I will imagine that you didn’t catch any reference before, or read any meta on the sexual subtext of the movies,  but how could you miss the obvious red-themed campaign for the release of TLJ in theaters, with all the characters’ clothing dipped in red, and that little piece, very much unabashed about its reference:

Daisy Ridley even joked at the time about her poster, calling it “Little Rey’d Riding Hood”. That’s a good one, Daisy.

Officially, so many tales have been used by the Star Wars team to describe the ST. JJ compared Rey to Cinderella in his audio commentary to TFA. Sure, it’s a rags to riches story for Cinde-Rey-lla who is an orphan, undervalued and under-appreciated, and who maintains through her many hardships and trials a positive outlook on life and people, and a sunny character. Like your classic Disney princess who can talk to birds and mice, Rey understands every language. And if it’s not with a glass slipper that her prince identify her as his future bride, it is a blue lightsaber that does the trick. A saber, which like the slipper in Disney’s version, gets broken in the process right before the epilogue (part 3). Second reference: the characters were apparently coded as Goldilocks and the Bears during the shooting for TLJ. Again, that’s fair, because Rey, like Goldilocks, takes an adventurous stroll into the woods and ends up borrowing, like a cuckoo, things that don’t belong to her: a saber, a MF etc... She also trespasses onto Luke’s island, and then onto the Supremacy. And, like Goldilocks, in the positive versions, after a narrow brush with danger, she escapes barely unscathed with possibly a valuable life lesson. There is also Snow White, and the glass pod/ coffin that Rey uses to meet with her prince. I will add another element later, but I’ll hush for now. There is also the implicit Sleeping Beauty in the title The Force Awakens and the idea further developed in TLJ that Rey’s powers have been dormant ... until a prince awakened it... And then, there is Little Red Riding Hood.

This tale belongs to the cycle of educational tales about menstruation and loss of virginity. They are pretty easy to spot (intended pun): they are the ones with the color red encoded somewhere, with numbers that evoke the passing of time (12 fairies, 7 days, etc...), and also stories that require the heroine to lose a bit of blood: from the finger pricking of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White’s mom to the potential gore of Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood. And yes, usually menstruation and seduction go hand in hand pretty nicely. Because, traditionally, a woman who bleeds has just become fair game: she is desirable because able to bear children. So cycle of blood it is: menses, hymen, labor. What is fairly subtle, symbolic, and innocuous in cautionary tales aimed at children is brought to full light in Carter’s take on the classic tales aimed at adults. Her heroines, though, are given more obvious agency. More attention is given to the fact that it is also a time of budding sexuality for the heroines as well, a time when desire shifts from narcissim to the desire of the other. In tales, this otherness gets the extreme treatment: the object of desire is a monster, an animal, that normally becomes civilized by the end, so that desire fits conventional standards and doesn’t disrupt society. So the monster turns back into a prince when he can be salvaged (The Beast, the Frog), and he is killed when really too far gone (Bluebeard). I will also argue that, most of the time, the transformed one is actually the princess: though she doesn’t change physically, she has learned to accept her desires and stops seeing male desire and sexualty as monstruous. She has accepted the otherness, so she stops seeing him as a monster. She has changed psychologically. That being said, Carter was not the first one to bring a magnifying glass onto the implied sexuality in Little Red Riding Hood. It is implied for children, but has been very much understood as it was by adults... Think of Tex Avery’s wolf and Red for instance. What chance would have Wolfie against the very savvy and alluring vampish Red Hot Riding Hood? So the story of seduction has been going both ways for quite a long time, with Red being seduced or seducing the wolf... Then you have different outcomes, and frankly, writers and directors have done them all: girls gets devoured by wolf, girl gets devoured and rescued, girl barely escapes, girl outsmarts wolf,  girl kills wolf, wolf falls in love with girl, girl becomes a wolf, girl tames wolf... you name it.

ELEMENTS FROM LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

It was quite a bold choice in TLJ to have Rey in full Little Red Riding Hood Cosplay when so far the elements had been merely subtext in TFA. Red, so far, had been mostly coded as Kylo’s color. But as we get to find out more about him, the color seeps and bleeds, especially in TLJ, the litteral “core” (aka heart) of the ST, the middle chapter which is very much about Kylo’s exposed wounds (both figuratively and symbolically), culminating with Crait, the planet that seems to be bleeding every time you  but skim its surface. Remember also that “raw” was the keyword in the trailer, and defines Kylo: “raw untamed power”. Raw means what it means. Exposed flesh, scorched, flogged. I thought I had read somewhere that the throne room scene had been coded with Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf during shooting, but I have never been able to find the link through my research... Please, if you happen to know or remember that, just let me know. But back to the hood...

There has already been many metas on the importance of Kylo and Rey meeting in the woods. They could have met on Jakku, they were that close... But they didn’t. There’s the woods, but there’s also straying from the path. Red, like Goldilocks, is cautioned against that. Nothing bad will happen to little girls who stay on the straight and narrow. Possibly nothing at all wil ever happen to little girls who remain on the path... In most stories, though, straying a bit will be the good start for some journey... And indeed, Rey, given a clear path, “the first steps” on the famous Path of the Jedi, through her Force visions, refuses it. Rather than following the path, she runs away... straight into the woods... Where she meets her big bad Wolf. As in the original story, he starts out being more cunning than Red, and is able to get her where he wants her to be. Abduction in TFA. Long way to Granny’s house while he takes the short cut. Plotwise, there are also some common elements. Red carries a basket full of goodies that she is supposed to take to her sick grandmother. Her mother commissioned her to the task. It’s all female realm. The grandmother lives alone, far away, in a secluded place. The grandmother represents knowledge, and also fate for the little girl: one day she will be a mother, and then a grandmother. The wolf wants to get there and get it all: the girl, the goodies, and the grandma. By getting away with the grandmother, he also symbolically tampers with the girl’s future: aka, being seduced/bedded (and not married), she will never be a wise, old, respected lady one day. As for Rey, this is not too far off. Her basket of goodies is short round BB8 which holds information. Information that is of importance to Leia. And which can lead to an old, wise... Granny Luke? living alone in a far away, secluded place... And who in a way represents a potential future for Rey, being the Last Jedi. Kylo also wants to get there. So just as in the tale, there is a potential race towards Luke’s place. And by getting the girl, Kylo is also tampering with her future: dark Side or Light Side Rey?

ANGELA CARTER’S SHORT STORIES

3 tales deal more specifically with wolves in Carter’s The Bloody Chamber : “The Werewolf”, “The Company of Wolves”, and “Wolf Alice”. I am just going to undeline a few elements that can resonate with what we have seen in the ST so far.

“The Werewolf”: the little girl gets attacked on her way to see her grandmother. She defends herself and cuts off the forepaw of the wolf. The paw turns out into a human hand. When she finally gets to her grandmother she finds her really sick and feverish, and understands that the wolf was actually her grandmother. She kills her and takes her place in the house. For that one, I want to underline the idea that monsters can hide under familiar faces, or that something that was deemed monstrous can reveal a human side. Depending on what side you are looking at it. That was the point of the ST in the cross flashbacks that tell us about Luke and Kylo. The monster gets humanized, and we get to see something unattractive and upsetting about someone who had all our trust. I am not saying that Luke is a monster, but that he potentially could have done something monstrous, which it turns out he did, because this fleeting moment turned Ben into a monster. And on the other hand, Rey gets to see Ben the man under Kylo the monster. Special bonus to the Skywalker special in the Werewolf story: the cut off hand. And in the end, Rey is indeed the one in Luke’s stead.

“The Company of Wolves”:  different folk tales and folklore about wolves and werewolves...  I have underlined that one for you: “Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips stark naked. If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you”. It reminded me of half naked Kylo. And then the story of the girl.This description of the girl:

She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance of which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. She has a knife and she is afraid of nothing.

Some of these images of virginity (and virginity consumated and broken) we have seen played out on the screen: from the veil covering the MF on Jakku, the eggs on Ahch-To, the curtains on the Supremacy, to the cave on Crait... In Carter’s story, the girl is not a little girl, she is described as a pubescent, or verge of pubescence, girl, barely formed. She meets a young man in the woods who holds a reamarkable object, “a compass”. It’s nature versus culture. He bets her a kiss that he can get to Grandma before she does. The girl will take her time, she wants to lose that one. In the meantime, the man does away with the grandmother, but not before stripping naked and showing his genitals (”His genitals, huge.Ah! huge!”). When the girl walks in, she is no fool. She understands fast enough. She starts by showing compassion to the lot of wolves howling in the cold night. Then she starts shedding her clothes she “took off her scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies, the colour of sacrifices, the colour of her menses, and since her fear did her no good, she ceased to be afraid”. As the man talks about eating her, she starts laughing: “she knew she was nobody’s meat”, and she joins him in bed. The last line sees her sleeping sound and sweet “in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf”. Which reminds me of Isaiah “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and the coming back of a Golden Age.

“Wolf Alice”. That one is about two awakenings. On the one hand we have a young girl who was suckled by wolves and is found by nuns. Desperate to fully civilize her, they deliver us to the house of The Duke, who is some kind of a monster. You think he is a vampire at first, since he has no reflection in the mirror , then some kind of monster feasting on corpses. But he turns out to be a werewold at the end of the story. So the two creatures are actually very much alike. There were a lot of elements there that reminded me of a particularly twisted AU Reylo, to be honest. To begin with, their circumstances: she is a nobody, without any family, barely a first name, and he is a Duke, with a castle and countless trinkets from the past. For instance, Alice’s description:

Like, the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair.

It could fit Rey on Jakku, marking down each day. She does not have any plans beyond today. She is caught in a stasis.The Duke is constantly described by his hunger: “huge, inconsolable, rapacious eyes. His eyes see only appetite. These eyes open to devour the world in which he sees, nowhere, a reflection of himself”. That also reminded me of Kylo’s need to cover his face and his body in TFA, as if he wanted to disappear. They never interact with each other. The castle is referred to as “the den where she and the Duke inhabited their separate solitudes”. Alice changes, though, as she discovers the passing of time through her menses, and her reflection in a mirror. The mirror scenes can also evoke Rey’s experience on Ahch-To... At first Alice is very happy about finding a girl in the mirror because she thinks she has made a friend, that she has a companion to share experiences with... After a while, she ends up understanding that this companion is “no more than a particularly ingenious variety of the shadow she cast on sunlit grass”. With this knowledge, she puts on a wedding dress that she found in the castle and starts roaming outside. Her wanderings take her to the graveyard where the Duke is having a feast, and where he is hunted by an angry mob who manages to wound him. That’s when Alice (in full bride attire) and him interact, and that seeing him in pain, she nurses him back to life.

Poor, wounded thing... locked half and half between such strange states, an aborted transformation, an incomplete mystery, now he lies writhing on his black bed in the room like a Mycenaean tomb, howls like a wolf with his foot in a trap or a woman in labour, and bleeds.

The whole beginning could have been written for Kylo. And the symbolism at the end is clear rebirth. As she gently licks his face. Where there was nothing in the mirror, gradually appears the face of the Duke under her ministrations:

the prey caught in its own fishing net, then in firmer yet still shadowed outline until at least as vivid as real life itself, as brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally, the face of the Duke.

It sure reads like some smutty AU fanfic... And not far from Rey’s own experiences and interactions with Kylo. Two solitudes that meet. The girl so hopeful to find what she wanted to see in a mirror and finally crying when she understands it was all a lie, a shadow, and not what she wanted. And who turns to another solitary person right afterward, who may be the only person in the world to understand what she goes through. A creature that is caught between two states. A monster tracked down and wounded, whose human face she is alone able to reveal.... Ummm...

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES: CINEMATIC PARALLELS

Though Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Carter’s tales is contemporary to other fairy 80′s classics such as Labyrinth, Legend, The Neverending Story  or Dark Crystal, that one was never aimed at children. In an article from Film Ireland, this movie is best described as

more influenced by filmmakers like Jean Cocteau (Beauty and the Beast) and 1970’s Parisian pornographic art movies that embedded fairy tales with a salacious twist. The result is a film drenched in sensuality, richer than chocolate cake, and sporting enough themes and allegory to keep film students occupied indefinitely.

Neil Jordan worked with Carter herself to write the script for this movie. And, interestingly, most of the crew for the movie came from the Star Wars movies... The story goes like this: in a house in the country, a young girl is sleeping in her bedroom, dreaming, and visibly upset. She has an elder sister who doesn’t like her, and parents who are at a loss about her behaviour. In her dreams, the girl imagines she is a peasant girl from an XVIIIth century village, plagued by wolf attacks. Her elder sister gets conveniently killed at the beginning of the story. The girl spends most of her time with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), some kind of a witch/fairy godmother, who knits her a wonderful red coat, and who warns her about men and wolves. Most of the stories do come from Carter’s tales but are fleshed out. The girl, who doesn’t have a name in the original story, becomes Rosaleen. She also has a suitor in a village boy... But then one day she meets a strange man in the forest and then...

There are indeed many interesting parallels to draw between Jordan’s movie and what we have seen so far in the ST, as far as Rey’s journey is concerned. The Company of Wolves is supposed to be a journey after all, an experience, what Film Ireland superbly calls “ a timeless and psychedelic daydream/nightmare, undulating and shifting”, that is supposed to reflect a young girl’s fantasies and fears as she is on the cusp of womanhood. This is about transformation, and, as the girl is portrayed sleeping most of the movie until the end, about an awakening. Which is not too far off from what Rey is experiencing, albeit in a galaxy far far away, and in a totally different genre. But, it would not be smart to overlook the implications of the title for the first installment: The Force Awakens. We know, from Snoke and Kylo’s conversation in TFA, and from Rey’s conversation with Luke in TLJ, that it is not so much about the Force Awakening (did it ever sleep?); but about someone awakening within/to the Force. And who else but Rey has been awakened? “Something inside of me has always been there... But now it’s awake.  And I'm afraid. I don't know what it is or what to do with it. And I need help. “ Which could honestly be uttered by any teenage girl (granted, boys too) as she experiences puberty... The novelizations insist on Rey’s dreams and nightmares, something we unfortunately never got onscreen...

There are more parallels to draw between Rosaleen and Rey. Rey, like Rosaleen, is the girl with the rose. The wilted flower in her AT-AT was a subliminal call to the Beast’s magic rose in Disney. White roses, red roses, are not just emblems of love, they also represent female sexuality, and female blood.

They both are fighters. Rosaleen carries a knife with her into the forest. And when her grandmother tells her a story that ends with a husband beating his wife, Rosaleen’s reaction evokes Rey: “I'd never let a man strike me!”. Her meeting with the wolf/man is also interesting to compare with Rey and Kylo. In Carter’s story, the man is described as a hunter, but in the movie he is turned into a rich man, a marquis. There is a class divide that did not exist in the short story. When she finally quizzes him about what he really is, whether he is a man or a wolf, his answer is that he doesn’t belong in one or another, that he belongs to both. Something that is further echoed by the Priest who finds the wolf girl and wonders whether she is “God’s Work” or the Devil’s, and finally decides it is better to show compassion to a suffering creature. Like Rey, Rosaleen ponders about the nature of her adversary, and decides first on hurting him: she shoots him after stealing his own gun (like someone we know who got somebody’s saber and struck thet somebody down). But then, when she sees him in pain and crying, she offers her compassion and realizes they are not so different. Her mother had warned her that there was also a beast in women’s hearts, so the ending shows Rosaleen turned into a wolf, apparently from her own free will. She chose to become the man’s companion. Much like our characters in TLJ who realize they are more connected than they thought, and Rey seeing Kylo differently.

I would like to offer further parallels in themes or scenes between the two movies:

Before meeting the wolf man, the girl has a suitor: a boy she met in her village. She is not romantically interested... and sees him more as a friend.

Meeting in a snow forest, both armed

Blood on the snow.... This classical Snow White reference is also a symbol for loss of virginity or first period... In both movies, the guys are the ones “bleeding” the snow... Can’t get more obvious than that...

The “duel” involves a “red moon”... Before the girl gets inside Granny’s house, the moon turns red, and looks like an eye. Starkiller base has this reddish eye, and it explodes (turns red) after their fight...

Both women wound the wolf... Rosaleen shoots at the wolf and wounds him in the shoulder. Rey cuts Kylo’s face and part of his chest.

High waisted pants...

Do you like subtle phallic symbols? (Remember that in Carter’s short story, he was showing his huge genitals... Well, that’s the best they could do... LOL)

And more of that...

From hunter/prey dynamic:

To real intimacy by the firelight, in “Granny’s House”... Luke is the “Granny” of the story...

The compass... It is the object that the hunter shows the girl as a lure. Compass is a song in Rey’s spotify playlist, and we have seen a compass in Luke’s hut.

The mirror, the eggs, and the nest.... The need to breed. Proof that it is all linked and that Ahch-To was indeed sex-ed class.

A lot of points can be made between Luke and the grandmother. If, unlike Luke, the grandmother is more than willing to teach the girl, they both have magic skills. She turns out to be a (good) witch. The girl loves her grandmother and believes all her stories to be the truth, but her mother warns her at one point about the grandmother’s biased view of the world. Luke’s views also turn out to be partial, and the truth slightly twisted. During one of her strolls, the grandmother encounters a snake...

Remember Luke on Dagobah?

When the wolf faces the grandmother, he shows up with blood on his mouth, implying that he has “enjoyed” Rosaleen. The grandmother asks what he did with her. The wolf: “Nothing she didn’t want”. We find these two ideas first in the smut hut when Luke is shocked to discover that Rey has allowed herself to get this close to Kylo, and then when Kylo tells Luke that he will destroy Rey...  Also, if the wolf kills the grandmother, no blood is shed. When the wolf attacks the grandmother, she breaks as if she were a doll. She is thus a simulacrum: she was not a real person, she was the image of a person. Just like Kylo unable to kill Luke because he is just an image projected from across the galaxy. I think this is a very intriguing point. The point here is to shatter illusions, dreams, and fantasies. The girl in The Company of Wolves is sleeping next to a horror book called “The Shattered Dream”.

Other possible parallel? The pack!

The Snow White references and subversion. From this:

To this:

I was also interested in the little scene when the grandmother explains how the Devil meets a young man in the wolf and gives him the potion that turns him into a wolf. This reminded me of how Snoke ensnared and turned Kylo... Heck, for that matter, Snoke is even like a very grotesque Terence Stamp!

Oh, and the Hamlet scene...

And yes, I can definitely see some parallelisms in the potential ending as well with Rey running away with Kylo... Look at this poster for the French DVD, which fuses the face of Rosaleen with the wolf and compare it with the TFA poster where Rey and Kylo merge their weapons (prelude to sex, right?) and complete each other, as well as the concept art in Art of The Last Jedi that merged their faces for Ahch-To:

The point is not to say that the writers thought of this movie or this set of story to create the ST. Maybe they did, but that doesn’t really matter, anyways. The many similarities, in my view, are mainly due to the fact that both stories tap into similar themes. The coming of age of a girl, the fears and fantasies stemming from the desire for the other, the ambivalence between disgust and attraction about sexuality, the fear of losing oneself and one’s identity (the path, the compass, the metamorphosis). Again, this is a tale as old as time. Which is why it has so much appeal and resonates into our psyche. Maybe this will never be the main event for many people who will just enjoy the cool battles and special effects. Maybe it is this extra depth that irks the discontented fanboys, because, though they don’t fully see it, they still understand that something else is at play there... But this is why this movie will endure the test of time as a story. Themewise, it has universal SEX appeal.

[lorrainecparker]

VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017

The beginning of August saw the 44 year old ​SIGGRAPH ​conference​ (​S​pecial ​I​nterest ​G​roup on Computer ​GRAPH​ics and Interactive Techniques) return to Los Angeles for the 11th time, and this year the topic was almost exclusively VR. As this is ProVideo Coalition and not VirtualReality Coalition, I’ll be taking a more filmmaker-centric approach to this recap. That being said, the word of the week was “immersion”, and at this point I’m confident we’re on our way to ​The Matrix ​within the next 5 years.

The Exhibition Hall

The TL;DR of SIGGRAPH this year was that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are here, and there are plenty of companies developing tools for it, mostly surrounding the ​interactivity of the technology​. That includes tracking in various forms, eye strain and fidelity solutions, and feedback simulation. The feedback tools can utilize simple things from ​inflatable bags worn about your person​, all the way up to more complex things such as a large drum you would, I suppose, hang in your garage to ​simulates heat, wind, and frosty wind​. Or an HMD that reads your mind.

VR is in an interesting spot, as there is plenty of potential but not a lot for the consumer to do with it right now. There’s a handful of games and even less in the way of passive entertainment, but that brings up an interesting dilemma. People keep hand-waving VR gaming as the obvious but not the end-game (pun not intended), and that there’s a ton more on the horizon. What makes one’s head tilt is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much else to do with it (HP, in their press event, said 76% of VR content is gaming) but the companies recently diving in seem to believe there’s a whole heap of new experiences on the horizon that aren’t “silly games”, mostly in the commercial sector. Consumers care about experiences, commercial folks care about transforming workflows: lower cost, optimized investments in training and simulations, and shorter dev cycles. To that end, it’s up to individual companies to decide what (likely proprietary) programs best fit their needs.

The problem with the aforementioned poo-pooing of VR “games” comes down to the definition: what is an interactive experience if not a game? Games are becoming more and more cinematic, with franchises like ​Metal Gear Solid ​really pushing the boundaries of acceptable cut-scene length at an hour a pop in G​uns of the Patriots,​ and turning ​MGS:V​ into a sort-of hybrid television show/open world game. More recently, ​Fallout 4​ eschewed much its personal choice-driven roots in favor of a more linear, film-like experience. A perhaps-woefully small push towards interactive cinema, as seen by the ​Summer Camp ​demo​ in the VR Village, exemplified this strange blurry line.

User Playing Summer Camp

In ​Summer Camp, ​you’re a kid in a barn with another kid, getting into some mischief, and your buddy discovers a mystical ball with magic powers and some semblance of intelligence. I won’t ruin the demo since it’s pretty short, but some fun things happen and you’re instructed to complete various simple tasks to advance the story. It’s things like “hide behind those hay bales” or “turn on the faucet”, for example. In gaming, we call this being “on rails”, as opposed to an “open world” experience. Just like in most current games that utilize this mechanic, the main portion of ​Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality , if you ignore the requests made of you, the characters will implore you using different voice lines and tactics. The difference here is that the entire experience is on rails. It’s billed as a VR film that ​you​ experience, but does that make it an “interactive movie” or a game? What’s the difference?

The big thing the conference showed us is that the future of this new medium is limited only by the human imagination, and perhaps a few more years of display tech advancements. That said, it feels as if everyone’s waiting for the next shoe to drop in terms of someone coming out with “the next big thing” in VR. We see this in more filmmaker-centric conferences in the form of “our camera enables creatives to be creative by giving them the power of 20K sensors and smaller form-factors”. Filmmaking is at a point now where the only thing stopping anyone from putting together a compelling movie is a compelling script. In my estimation, we’re already there in the VR space as so many of the computer-based technologies that empower traditional filmmakers are shared by VR creators. So let’s dive in to the nuts and bolts of what got us there.

First off, the PC. It’s got to be powerful and usually that means building your own, often in a big case, or spending a lot of money on a pre-build. Then there’s the giant cable-tail you’ve got following you around, jumping under your feet when you least expect it which at best ruins immersion, and at worst rips the HMD straight off your head and snaps your neck in the process.

HP has developed a backpack-mounted high performance PC specifically designed for VR use and development, called the ​HP Z VR Backpack​. At $3295, the 10lb computer is kitted with a nVidia P5200​ graphics card with 16GB of memory, an ​Intel i7 vPro​ processor, and is HMD-agnostic. In other words, it’s “just” a fast PC you wear on your back. It’s also got two slots for 75mAh battery packs that are mounted by your hips to complement the internal 50mAh battery that are hot-swappable and together will last about an hour. With consistent swapping and charging, 4 batteries will last you about 8 hours. You can also detach the computer and dock it, allowing you to use it as a standard PC. Wearing it is a pleasure, feeling more like a full Camelback than a PC riding around on you. In regards to the “portability” of VR, this is definitely the next step. Beyond that? Full body tracking.

HP Z VR Backpack Harness

HP Z VR Backpack Dock and 2 charging batteries

Companies like ​Motion Reality​, ​Realis​, O​ptitrack​ and ​Vicon​ had full body tracking demos on display, and all but two, Vicon and Realis, were rifle-based. Vicon, coupled with ​Manus VR​’s hand tracking technology, was able to demo an incredibly immersive neon-samurai game in which you can move every joint in your body and see a 1-to-1 translation of those moves in-game. Looking down and seeing your legs, holding out your hands and articulating your fingers, is honestly incredible. It’s the difference between playing a game and being transported into another world. It’s almost impossible to describe the feeling when the tracking is perfect beyond “putting on a costume”. You genuinely feel like you were wearing the samurai armor, aided by the elastic bands holding the tracking points on your arms and legs putting pressure on your limbs, mimicking the armor in a physical sense. An unintentional but welcome side-effect.

Vicon wireframe display, user getting suited up.

Motion Reality, powered by HP’s aforementioned Z VR Backpack, were running a great demo featuring the ​Dauntless combat simulator​ in which you and a partner could either shoot at each other as big avatars in a city (think Godzilla) or together walking through a “kill house” type simulation shooting at wooden targets that pop up. Once hand tracking, which needs its own system, reaches a consumer-level price point and power draw we’ll be in a whole new world. It’s incredible how little things like finger articulation without a controller can drive that immersion home. Once you can move every inch of your body and see those motions translated in the digital world in your HMD you really do feel differently about the experience. That’s going to be the ​next ​next big thing.

HP Reps talking, Dauntless players behind standing by.

Then there’s ​Neurable​, the company that decided attaching a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to an HTC Vive wasn’t terrifying. It uses EEG technology combined with “proprietary algorithms” to detect what the user is thinking, such as making specific choices when prompted, and uses that information to make selections in the program/game/etc. This demo had a line out the proverbial door, so I was unable to try it myself, but people seemed to think it was impressive. It ultimately might have more applications in the healthcare sector than entertainment, but it’s still pretty new.

Neurable headset

On the software side, there were companies like Boris FX and Blackmagic touting the 360 Video or VR-centric updates to ​Mocha​ and F​usion 9​, respectively. It seems that at this point, most brands have a VR editing mode bundled in their packages. Boris also has a new plug-in version for Premiere, AE, Avid, Nuke, and OFX which is a welcome change from having to throw things into the standalone program for planar tracking (think using large texture selections as tracking points instead of high-contrast dots) and the like. The object removal module is really, really impressive. About as simple as “circle the thing you don’t want, that’s gone now”. As a filmmaker, that alone made me pause and consider dropping the $700 Boris wants for their current iteration of the Mocha plugin.

Fusion 9 station

From MAXON we saw a rather substantial update to ​Cinema4D​ in the form of the ​R19 release​, both “under the hood” and in regards to simple usability. The new viewport is leaps ahead of the old one, they’ve got a new media core, native MP4 support, a new sound effector, new easy-to-use fracturing features and more. There is also, of course, a spherical camera feature and near-realtime rendering of lights and PBR materials so you can see what your final look will be as you go as well as a new motion tracking features for filmmakers to quickly and easily place 3D assets in pre-recorded plates. As Paul Babb, CEO, said “it’s the age of rendering” now, so your product has to be fast. It seems as though C4D is holding a full house in that regard.

C4D Booth

Overall the week gave the impression that we’ve hit the critical point between “it’s just not there yet” and “what do we do with this?” You might also say it was the year of optimization. Tracking is better, interfaces are better, forecasting is possible, and the consumer is much more aware of what’s available. At the same time, it seems like we’re still in the deep end paddling for some edge we can’t see.

Sure, there’s plenty of interesting tools and applications, but creativity is novelty plus utility. Pixel perfect tracking? Useful, but obviously needed. High performance computing power in small, wearable form factors? Same. A wakeboard or stair simulator? ​Definitely novel…

Even for the medical applications, it’s not the VR tech that makes it useful but peripheral technologies in scanning and design that makes something like high resolution scalable models of real patients possible. The VR space just allows for easy interaction and manipulation of that scan. This is where I think AR will leapfrog VR in terms of usefulness, and VR will remain more an entertainment outlet. But who knows?

At the beginning of the conference, animation legend ​Floyd Norman​ was interviewed and hammered home the importance of story over flash. Mr. Norman was the first African-American animator to work for Disney, working directly under Walt for the first time on ​The Jungle Book​. Throughout his talk he reinforced the concepts given to him by Walt, which he summarized as, “don’t watch the movie, watch the audience”. Walt meant that if the audience doesn’t buy it, your film doesn’t work. You can have all the tech in the world, but if they don’t serve the story they have no real purpose. Immersion comes from getting entrapped in the story, not necessarily in the realism of your environment.

What we have here, today, is a new tool. Like digital cameras, smaller lights, faster film stocks, and VFX before it. This conference showed us that we’ve recently surpassed the novelty portion of VR which means it’s going to falls on us, the creators, to bring the necessary utility and emotional experience to draw people in, create empathy in the viewer and yes, immerse them in new worlds.

[As a total side-note, ​Unreal 4​ was the secret winner of the whole conference. ​Everything seemed to be powered by Unreal. If you’re looking to get into the 3D industry, in any form, you might want to download U4 and start learning it now.]

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First Found At: VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017