#I want all the raw footage of this pls

[grlpartdoll]

Ok so the first post I made about famous!reader and bodyguard!Simon made me think about something interesting. How would Simon react to his lamb actually getting sick or being in a bad place? I am sick, so this is incredibly self indulgent, lol.

afab!reader, mdni with any of my work pls.

You sip quietly, watching through your lashes as Simon types something on his phone. It's late at night — one am. Way past the bedtime established by the man himself.

There's only one light on, and it's the one in the hallway. It illuminates only half of his face, highlighting a sharp jaw, a scarred brow and lip, a once (or twice) broken nose.

When you shift uncomfortably, he peers down at you again, his eyes immediately brought to you when you sputter a little, water refusing to go down.

"Doc's beeper is off." He announces, turning off his phone and bending his knees a little to lower himself to your height. As you slowly move your cup of warm water down on-top of your thighs, you cup your throat, a desolate frown on your face.

He motions for you to open your mouth, raising a hand to pinch your chin gently between his fingers. He looks at the state of your throat, at the cough drop you're using sitting idly behind your teeth.

He shakes his head. "Still inflamed."

You pout. Quietly, you try to speak, but he shoots you a look you know too well.

"Y'know the procedure, Bambi."

You give a glance at the camera crew stuck at the door. The rule that Simon had firmly introduced and stuck to ever since the documentary had begun filming between the walls of your home — no cameras in your room, and none at the door if it was closed. The only reason its open now is because your manager had scolded him about the documentary not containing enough raw footage of what it was like to live in your skin. All of its current footage was made up of carefully nitpicked moments Simon allowed people to witness and nothing else.

Even this, you know, is eating away at him.

And at you, too.

It's shameful, to pull out your rusty signing skills when there are cameras there. When it's just you and Simon, it's.. different. You know he doesn't judge.

His hand tightens around your jaw a little. Nothing painful. But it jostles you back to reality, bringing your gaze back to him.

"Focus o'me. Just you and me." He whispers. You hope the cameras don't pick it up. Maybe, if you're lucky, they won't have. Afterall, you don't have mics strapped on — the whole crew had been sitting in your kitchen eating when Simon called your name, noticing (or hearing?) you tiptoeing to the bathroom for a drink, and none of them had had time to get mics on anyone because of how quickly it had all happened. Or, well, it could also be because he slammed the bathroom door closed and then proceeded to corner you in the bathroom until you admitted you couldn't sleep because your throat was hurting. He only let the cameras film you after you'd confirmed ten times over that you were okay with them filming you.

You start to go through the words in your head, translating them into jerky movements of your hands. He nods as you sign "it doesn't hurt anymore"

"That's the cough drops," he whispers, and his voice sounds so intimate that you want to melt into it. He tucks your blankets around you, and takes the hot pack from your bedside table, silently applying it to your throat.

With your performance just tomorrow where you're supposed to sing live, this is really not something you want. You get the flu too easily, you have a shit immune system, had always been like that since you were a kid, but today, it feels even more disappointing because it's ruining something important you'd been practicing for a very, very long time.

You hum. It feels tight in your throat, and you cough again, trying to alleviate the pressure.

"Alright, alright, get it out," he moves the two of you around until you're on your side, and he's sitting right beside you. You're curled around him, and he's patting your back, rubbing it soothingly. The flue meds would kick in soon enough — knock you out. But for now, you worry, and you're angry.

You stick your hands up at him. You sign too quickly — clumsily ; "told you we shouldn't have went to the award show. Someone there was sick as hell and we all know it was—."

As he glares at the cameras trying to catch what you're signing, he also expertly catches your hands and lowers them to his lap before you can do or say something stupid, warming them in his impossibly warm ones.

"Stop fussing," he grumbles quietly, probably meaning for it to sound reprimanding, but it comes out more like a plea. "Go to sleep. We'll deal with this in the morning."

You sigh, burrying your face in your blankets. He keeps rubbing your back.

You eventually dig yourself out of the blankets, fever making your body run hotter. He helps you move on top of them until you're laying on your back, your upper body raised by a shit ton of pillows. He sits next to you like you're on your death bed. Something about the situation makes you want to laugh, even though you're a bit upset.

He still holds your hands.

When his hold on them finally loosens, though, when he probably thinks you're finally succumbing to the medication, you move your hands up again and sign, calmly this time ; "sorry for waking you up."

He fixes some strands of hair that fall in your face, sticking to the beading sweat on your temples. He shakes his head, his face severe and strangely.. comforting. Every harsh slope, every cruel swipe of scars, every movement. It all feels like home to you. His hand lingers on your temple. Calloused and scarred too, but he touches you with so much gentleness you only feel the soft edges of his fingers.

"Sleep, kid." He finally murmurs. You know the cameras and the crew don't catch that. "Please. You'll feel better in the morning."

You doubt it, but you close your eyes, and let his presence sway you into sleep anyway.

[save-the-villainous-cat]

Hiii, just dropping a request<3

There's nothing I adore more than a good, old, sweet betrayal so pls make the villain offer a lot of money to superhero just to turn the hero in and have them all by themselves. Make the superhero and the league betray hero, drug them and take them to villain. For whatever reason. May that be to take their time to break them or due to possessiveness. It's one of my really loved tropes so I'd love it a lot if you wrote it. Make it extra angsty for us pls

That's all, thank you for providing us with your amazing work but make sure to rest well and stay hydrated. Much love to you sweetheart 🩶🩵

“I’ve missed you,” the villain said softly, their hands landing on the hero’s shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

Their hands ran down the hero’s throat and with one finger, they lifted their chin. Despite their raw nature, the hero was much too tired to fight it. The drug had exhausted them.

“Look at me,” the villain said. “It’s such a pleasure to have you here.”

And the hero did meet their eyes. Lingering longer than they wanted. It wasn’t easy to escape the villain but that one moment of hope when they’d gone back home a month ago, was insignificant now.

They realised, they couldn’t win. The villain would do anything to possess them. They’d break their knees (they’d done it before), they would drug them (had also happened), they would break into their apartment (more than twice, actually) and do absolutely anything in their power to have them.

And they’d gotten their wish.

“You know I’ll get you whatever you want.”

Living with the villain sounded like a secure future. They’d take care of anything, literally anything but the hero also knew how lonely it was.

There was the villain and nothing but the villain. No friends, no family. The villain was greedy and stupidly in love.

So, the hero’s fingers curled around their nemesis’ hand. It was a fake kind of security but, god, they preferred it over whatever had happened to them. Where had friends led them? Right back to the start, right back to zero. It was a cycle, an endless one.

“Am I really that replaceable?” they whispered, staring in horror at the security footage the villain was showing them. The villain raised their hand to kiss the hero’s.

“Sweetheart, you know you’re not. Everybody knows,” they said.

“Why did they give up on me? I don’t understand, I don’t…” The hero looked at their nemesis, searching for an answer, searching for something. A moment of clarity, a moment of complete and utter clearness. But everything was blurry, everything was falling apart. They were unwanted, unloved.

They didn’t feel like a person anymore. The villain wanted them in a shallow way, they didn’t care about them. Not really.

Bleeding out like a sacrificial lamb.

The villain’s fingers traced the hero’s spine, all the way down and the hero was quite aware that they admired them. Wanting and deserving are two very different things.

“What does it feel like?” the villain whispered. “Knowing that you’re with me again?”

“Like I’m back in hell,” the hero answered. They swallowed and let themselves sink into the villain’s office chair, rubbing their face with the palm of their hand.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.” Again, the villain’s hand was on them, touching their throat and going down to their collarbone. They weren’t scandalous, never tried more than that. As if they wanted an actual relationship with consent and love. But the hero knew that this would never happen, that they would never break to become a pawn.

“It is, I resent you.”

“I saved you. I showed you what these people did to you. They don’t care about you. They knocked you out of their heaven, so they could live more luxuriously. These people love money more than company. I don’t,” the villain said, angry now. “The word became flesh.”

The hero looked at them, frowning.

“Are you religious?”

“Not in the slightest,” they answered. “But when I look at you, I sometimes believe that I am.”

The hero hated that answer more than anything.

[princemick]

Hi! Can you pls explain how you can do red lips on your gifs? Your colorizing is so vivid always especially on lips. I'm so impressed!

HI! yes, I for sure can explain this to you because its actually really easy. so under the cut I'll make a tutorial on how to get this lip focus effect on my gifs.

I'm going to be using oscar because he is the most naturally blushy person on the grid but I'll also quickly explain things you'll have to watch out for with different skintones.

so, the big trick to this is to make sure your lips/blush are a contrasting colour in comparison to the rest of your gif.

(think about the colour wheel, green is the opposites side of purple)

lips tend to have a more purple/red hue to them while skin tends to be more orange/yellow in undertone. so what we're gonna start with doing is adding contrast and making sure greens and blue's are heavier then the yellow/red is.

I prefer using curves and colour balance for this as you can play around a lot and use the dropper tool in curves to make your life easier

now, I like adding a few more layers of colour balance and channel mixer to try and neutralize the colour even more but this all depends on the raw footage and on the skintone.

now that we're happy with our neutralizing colour we're gonna be grabbing hue/saturation which is THE big trick to this colouring

you're gonna grab the lil hand tool at the top left and click on the darkest part of the lips

now this is what your hue/saturation should look like. we're going to focus on the little bottom part and we're going to expand the little tabs and slide it to the more puple part of the colour line.

then, we're going to slide UP the saturation so far as it looks natural, you should be able to instantly see a difference (if you dont, slide around the little tabs until you do see the lips brighten up) I like to darken the lightness too to make the colour a bit more neutral.

with this part you have to watch out with different skintones.

every person has different under tones, people with white skin tend to lean more pinkish while darker skintones especially lewis has more yellow skintones, because of this you will probably make lewis's skin FAR to yellow which is obviously NOT good.

you can still use this style with those skintones you just have to watch out more, neutralize better and get the sliders more purple as their lips also tend to have more purple tones in them.

here's a fantastic tutorial how to get rid of yellow tones in black skin if you do run into this problem with your colouring.

now, you have your basic lip blush, from this moment on you can do whatever you want with the colouring, I like to neutralize more after this, so adding another few layers of colour balance.

then I tend to go into the red and yellow of selective colour and manually play around with making the lips/blush more coherent with the rest of the lighting.

to simplify this I'm only going to show yellow and red but I normally use all colours on selective colour.

and then I just add my normal colouring which can be whatever you like to do. I like adding more contrast and highlight spaces to add more depth to his face and I almost always add one more layer of hue/saturation which will make his blush and lips pop out even more.

which makes this my final colouring result

I hope this was coherent and logical and ya'll understand what my thought process is with my colouirng. if it's not or you want some more explanation on something please dont be scared to ask!!

if yall do use this style and colouring please do tag me I'd love to see what ya'll make!!!

[nikatyler]

Zeph 1.0

can't believe that yesterday i was like eh i'm not sure about that armor, it looks so good on them

(x)

oooh a pretty evil lady!

(x)

same girl, same, about everything that has ever happened to me

(x)

it's been 84 years (more like 16 hours) but i'm finally opening bg3 again ✨

i think i'll do some more goblin camp shenanigans today if possible 👀

ohhh right. essentially i've already murdered like half the goblin camp so now the other half of the camp is trying to murder me, huh?

Me: "ah yes I'm far enough" *the explosion hits Zeph and Zeph dies* *reloads* "ah yes now I'm definitely far enough" *the explosion hits Zeph again and Zeph dies again*

"yeah we've got this" *the entire party dies*

Fucking gnolls man

yeah it's been a long bloody day

HELLO SAY THAT AGAIN

hUH

jesus christ this man is h🫣rny

Okay so I'll go watch a baking show with my mum in a bit and then we're going back and doing da thing 😏

Sorry for not giving updates if you were looking forward to them, anyway a little thing I love is how everyone sleeps on their back. I do that and apparently that's weird to everyone around me? 😂🤨

I will literally be in my bed like 🧍‍♂️

(x)

newest development in my bg3-rotten brain

did i mention this game is doing things to me because it is doing things to me

(x)

Anywayyyy you know what time it is 😌

I may have just spent an hour organizing everyone's inventories and figuring out who gets what armor and all but we're good to go now I think

Explosive shrooms, yay 🤩

(x)

I'm 💀💀💀 I need to go to bed lmao

Okay so basically what happened um. I don't know how but it did. So I wanted to help Astarion. But I clicked the wrong thing. And I pushed him off the boat. And he died.

I RELOADED BUT HOW DID I EVEN DO THAT 😭😭

If there's one thing about me it's that I'll accidentally murder my favourite vampires

(x)

I love Zeph so much they're so prettyyyyyy

Kinda wanna make a modern day version of them in ts4 and have them interact with my other characters. They'd fit right in

(x)

hole hehe. hole

(x)

my bi ass is having a bit of a dilemma rn

(x)

gay gay gay they're in love your honor

HELL YEAH KISS

(x)

Raw footage of me during my latest combat

I was actually so stressed dude 😭 thankfully we made it through but ahhhhh

Does anyone else apologize to the characters when they get hurt? Like sorry lil guy in my computer I'm sorry I'm putting you through this I promise you'll make it out I PROMISE ah fuck you're getting hit again oh no sorry sorry ahhhh

So uh. The adamantine forge fight huh. 🙂

(x)

Granted it doesn't count ts4 correctly rn probably because I haven't updated yet but…yeah 😅😅

(also I have way more hours on ts4 actually, this is just since Jan 2023, I played through Origin/EA app before and then switched to Steam for reasons)

(x)

my fucking thoughts exactly, i hate this battle 😭😭 on a real note i relate to him so much when he's whining DUDE WE LIVE

i should've known he wouldn't take that as a good thing lmaoooooo dude creases when you smile is the biggest compliment smh

FREN!!!

(x)

oops

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I'm sorry what

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pwettyyyyy

(x)

I'm sensing that I may have messed up real bad in Last Light Inn yesterday...ooops

I should've reloaded to see if things could turn out differently but I've done a lot afterwards, idk if I wanna go back now 😂 No spoilers pls, that's something for me to figure out in my next playthrough

"ooops" people DIED 💀 people i had previously saved died 💀

(x)

You're never gonna believe who I murdered again

(x)

I'm fucking crying I need you to resurrect him you moron stop shaming Zeph for having a sex life Update we are so back lads

(x)

Funny how fast I went from "I think Zeph is mostly good, they just want to get rid of the parasite and help people along the way" to "actually fuck it darling you're so right some power would be nice"

(x)

Crying laughing sending this to my sibling who's in art school. On point

(x)

"eh we'll be fine i don't need bonuses" *rolls 1*

(x)

daddy Ketheric omg💀💀

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uh anyway

(x)

this is the best they are the best 🥹

(x)

Don't be upset, I will reload, just don't be upset with me pleaseeee 😭

The "please a videogame vampire at all costs" disease is real I'm afraid

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Uh oh it's almost 3am, tomorrow will be an eepy day, well it's worth it

(x)

I'm so close to having a funny number of hours played 🤭

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Killed the workout, now let's kill this guy that I struggled with for half an hour. Almost killed my whole party in the process so I quit and decided to kill my legs instead 😂

(x)

[solcheeky]

[mifunebooty]

omg ok under the silver lake thoughts pls

OKAY SO!!! When this movie came out, i remember i really wanted to see it bc the trailer looked great and i loved it follows director right? So i waited YEARS to see this, even after i settled down to seeing a lot of the bad reviews until i saw it and i took FOREVER TO SEE IT like what in the goddamn this movie could've used an editor bc this movie runs like it stuck on every raw footage. Tbh the entire time i took to watch it, i admit the movie and its plot is quite appealing that eveb if youre like oh i havent gotten to continue it in 2 days, that you still know where you are and the mystery and i kinda like the VERY niche genre of trippy confusing noirs since the big sleep 1946 where everything looks like conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory until it all looks like a big jumble for humorous effect like inherent vice. ANYWAYS i admit this plot really is NOT bad, the plot is good in my opinion but it needed editing like idk about you but this movie could've been easily under 2 hours like the 3rd act somehow didnt pull off the mystery the amount of things the plot made us question and then what???? All of this seediness just wraps to her being in a cult? Okay what about the owl woman and the song messages etc like is all that denial of the cult and then seduction into it? And the ending was crap like what does he do? Stay over that womans apartment now? Andrew is cute in this and i admit the plots appeal takes away things i didnt like the first 10 minutes but the appeal went nowhere, they should've kept the woman dead and towards something else like fine 🙄 thats my thoughts i really thought the atmosphere and trippiness was gonna take me somewhere and i admit with inherent vice and the big sleep, i do not remember how they ended but the humor and trippiness still played it off well and i for sure know it didnt end with its a cult and shes alive type of ending! I agree with your thoughts, definitely could've been 40 minutes shorter especially with the songwriter scene like okay does he actually kill him how does nobody know a rich man got smashed to bits? Who the fuck was he really? All these questions to nothing but oh cult like CULT?????? THATS NOT EVEN NEWS ANYMORE ESPECIALLY IN CALIFORNIA, THERE'S CULTS EVERYWHERE U KNOW OLD MAN AND BRAINWASHED GROUPIES WE ALL KNOW BUT CULT????? Twas just Scientology....

[jimimn]

s-spare colouring tutorial shivi 😔🤲 fdjg please can you do your 'usual' colouring for the tutorial pls thank u!!

Hi! I'm sorry this is so late I was just looking for a proper time to sit and answer 😔 let's go under the cut because it got long hehe <3

So I don't really think i have a unique style/usual colouring or anything rip 😭 I just mostly fool around with layers in PS until I like the outcome. But there are a few layers I use very regularly for my colouring. Those are exposure, levels, and selective colour. I cannot imagine colouring without these lol. Also I sometimes use my old colourings too (and tweak them according to the colours/lighting of the raw file) or add two colourings together or use different layers from two or three different colourings of mine to make a new one lol (but that's mostly when I have time)

For some raw footages I have a vision (?) sort of a thing for a colouring, like, I can imagine how I want it to look like before I start colouring it and I go from there. Like if there's a magenta lighting or a too yellow lighting in the raw footage, I try to eradicate the magenta and reduce the yellow and bring out reds and oranges and blues and browns. But that depends from person to person on their own choices and which kind of colouring one personally likes. 

So the colouring I’m showing here is my base colouring. Like I said, I don’t have a style or usual colouring but I do use a base colouring after which I add/remove layers according to the raw footage/how I want the colouring to look like. Again, I don’t always apply this because sometimes it doesn’t work for every kind of footage. And I tweak/add/remove a lot of layers according to the raw footage (which differs for every video) while im giffing so at the end of the video it might not look how my final gifs look like 😭😭😭😭 I am answering this and I’m slowly realizing that this “tutorial” will be of NO help to you because I just fool around in PS most of the times with layers I know/like to use. So its just something I’ve developed for myself over time? :( Idk im sorry if this will help you but here we go anyway (also im sorry for writing this huge essay)

Also about the vision (?) thing I was talking about earlier, to explain it better I have an example.

This was the shade of blue in the original video:

After colouring this footage, my gif looked like this:

But I knew I didn't want the background blue to be of that shade so with selective colour, under blue and cyan I reduced the magenta and increased yellow just a little bit to give me this:

I'm so so sorry I wish I could've explained it or be able to help you better :( I'm not perfect at this but I've kinda sorta gotten a little hang of it and found my way around after struggling (read: having fun) with giffing for almost a year now asgdfghsj. All you gotta do is experiment a lot I guess. That's what I did.

I hope this helps you just a little bit atleast 😭😭

[fynslife]

Post-War Storm Epilogue: Reunion **spoilers for RQ4**

                                                   1 year later

The wind is chill on my skin as I step onto the runway at the edge of Archeon. It’s been a year since I was last in Norta, a year since I said goodbye to Cal. So much has changed since then.

I’ve come alone this time, leaving Farley with Clara and Kilorn with Cameron, even Davidson stayed behind in Montfort - all aware that this is a trip I need to take alone. My family are safe and happy, and as much as it pains me to leave them again I’ve known for some time that my path would lead me back here. At least this time around it’s by choice, and not as part of a cruel game.

Over the past year I’ve explored the world to the farthest reaches and back,  always keeping one eye on my former home, on Norta. The first broadcast we watched together; my family, Davidson, the Red Command and even Evangaline, huddled around to see the first glimpses of the new country. In the weeks following the battle the High Houses started to return. Silvers and reds were shown to be mixing, working together to build the new world with a fledgling government drawn from both bloods. Cal was elected temporarily as the first Premier of Norta amidst the fall-out, as the country sought to find a new equilibrium. Seeing his face, clear of pain but worn from rebuilding was a smart to my slowly healing wounds.

The next broadcast I saw came six months later. Away from Ascendant, away from my family, I watched as Cal was sworn in officially as Premier. A king no longer, but still a leader in his blood. The footage panned to Cal’s government, a collection of reds, silvers and new-bloods alike, all committed to upholding a better future. I didn’t watch the full broadcast, unwilling to see the marks of resistance still brewing amongst bitter silvers. I have to remind myself that for once, the good outweighs the bad, and with Cal at the head of government it will stay that way. Progress has been slow, but as Davidson would say, inches for miles.

I snap out of my memories, caught off guard by the light rain that has started to fall. My Montfort escorts lead the way to my transport and I find myself once again on my way to Whitefire.

***

The palace remains much the same; the marble polished and clean, free from the gore of a battle long since passed. The throne room however has been repurposed for government - the colours of House Calore have been removed, as have those of Marandus and Jacos. Much like in Ascendant, the colours that now line the walls are those of silver and red, interspersed in equal measure. A physical reminder of the unification of the bloods.

It’s here that I find him.

My breath catches as I watch him from the doorway. Cal seems much unchanged; his broad shoulders cloaked in a simple dark jacket with trousers to match, tucked into military grade boots. His hair is longer than I last saw it, long enough to start curling around his ears as it falls forward. I put a hand to my red earring, the one Cal gifted to me a lifetime ago, as the full weight of missing him crashes into me and I find it hard to breathe. In response my lightning crackles to life in my palm, and Cal’s head snaps up at the sound.

His gaze finds me immediately, smoldering bronze in surprise and trepidation. Cal straightens, seemingly searching for the right thing to say and coming up with nothing. “Hi”, I say quietly, never averting my gaze. A startled chuckle bursts from him, “Hi” he says in return.

I suddenly feel awkward. What if he didn’t wait for me? What if this year apart has changed everything? Cal steps forward as I make to step back, reading the questions in my eyes before I can voice them. “Mare”, his voice is soft and pleading, serving as a balm to my nerves. My lighting crackles once more as the heat in the room slowly rises, and I step towards him. With that one step it’s as if a spell has lifted and we rush towards eachother, desperate to close the space between us.

Cal pulls me into his embrace, his body warm and as strong as I remember. My arms lock around his neck as he lifts me, holding me so tightly it feels as though we could become one from sheer determination alone. I draw back to look at him, tracing his cheekbones with one hand before settling it along his jaw, cupping his ear softly. Cal shudders beneath me, the raw emotion roiling in his eyes as he studies my face as if memorizing it, likely checking for any new scars, ever the soldier. Cal clears his throat as he sets me back down, although doesn’t release the circle of his arms, keeping me close, safe within his cocoon of warmth.

“I’ve missed you.” Cal chokes out. “Everyday, I’ve missed you. Every storm I’ve hoped to see a streak of purple. Everywhere I turn I think I see you.” Cal’s breathing is heavy as his eyes bore into mine, afraid to look away even for a moment. “Is this real? Are you really here?” Cal swallows audibly, waiting for me to speak with bated breath.

I try to sound nonchalant and fail spectacularly, my voice wobbling when I reply, “It’s real. I’m here.” Cal’s body trembles against mine, his growing smile threatening to crack my heart wide open as I continue, my voice betraying me once more, “I’m never saying farewell to you again” I whisper, tears leaking from the corner of my eyes, tracking quickly down my cheeks. The temperature in the room spikes, my body curled in delicious heat as Cal burns. He leans towards me, tentatively kissing away the tears running down my cheeks one at a time, his lips feather light on my damp skin, before drawing back to look at me once more.

“Are you going to kiss me properly or have I got to do everything myself?” I tease half-seriously. Cal’s deep laugh shakes through my body, through my soul, stitching together all my broken pieces, filling my heart with such happiness I feel as though it might burst. “There’s my Mare” Cal chuckles, sobered once more by the sight of my smile, before drawing me flush against him and closing his mouth over mine.

***

The wounds still exist. The betrayals and deceits lie between us as they always have, but they are no longer obstacles. The path that brought us here was treacherous, fraught with sorrow and death, but it has forged us into the people we have become, and are still becoming. My physical brand remains, as real as the emotional scars left behind by Maven in both of us, but the time spent apart has allowed us to grieve and find peace in our own way.

Nothing stands between us anymore. With hearts slowly mending we have only hope for a new world and a better life for all bloods. Our choice is simple and made without hesitation; on this day, and every day from now, we will choose eachother.

-----------

Phew, I hope you guys like this! This is my first attempt at writing any sort of fic, let along posting it. I finished War Storm yesterday and couldn’t bear the way it ended, so wanted to continue the epilogue with this. I needed to see Mare and Cal reunited, ok!

Anyway, I’d love to hear any thoughts on this! Is this how you saw things ending up? I need someone to fangirl with, pls and thanks.

[jeanvaljean24601]

Full-Frame Showdown: Canon R5, Panasonic S1H, and Sony a7 IIICanon, Panasonic, and Sony.

Japanese camera makers that have played a huge part in major advances in video production over the last 20 years. While they have lost some ground at the top end to innovators like RED, and to market leaders like ARRI, they are massively dominant in the budget range most of us can afford. And for the first time in a long, long time they have relatively comparable cameras in their lineup. The reason why it's the first time in a long time goes back to the beginning of the DSLR/mirrorless revolution. Each company really targeted different markets. Sony was ahead of the game in moving towards full-frame mirrorless back in 2014 with its Alpha line. At the same time, Canon was still pushing hard on DSLR cameras with an internal mirror system that could adapt to PL mount, and Panasonic was out with the very popular, but smaller sensor GH line of cameras. Not only was Sony out early with full-frame mirrorless, they then came out with the  a7S II which was a huge hit among filmmakers for its high resolution and great low light performance. For nearly a decade, the three giants were competing in different spaces. Panasonic was up against Olympus and Fujifilm for the MFT market, Canon was up against Nikon for the DSLR market, and Sony had full-frame all to itself. That almost changed two years ago with the release of the RF line from Canon, a series of full-frame mirrorless cameras built around a brand new lens mount. But the resolution wasn't exciting. It was a 4K crop, and it just didn't sing to filmmakers. In 2019, Panasonic generated a ton of buzz with the LUMIX DC-S1H, a very filmmaker-focused full-frame mirrorless offering that shot 6K video, could do RAW over HDMI, 4K up to 60fps, and created very pleasing images. Combined with the same color science and log format as the very popular VariCam line of cameras made this an especially appealing choice for filmmakers who frequently rented or even owned that larger cinema platform. If you were on a VariCam show, you could feel comfortable using the  S1H as a C camera or for crash setups. Now Canon is catching up with the EOS R5, which is targeted towards filmmakers with a completely new sensor that is able to shoot 8K internal RAW footage. Now all the big players have options that are broadly in competition with each other. The Canon  R5 does 8K RAW internally. You can shoot 6K on the  S1H, but to get RAW you need an external recorder. For Sony, the current "filmmaker" camera is the  a7 III, which tops out at 4K. In truth, though, we don't care about the resolution number as an end in itself. The key is not the resolution of the file that is created, but the actual measurable perceivable resolution of the final image. If when projected on a movie screen you can't see any resolution difference between the 6K and 8K, then does it really matter? Canon currently is ahead based on the 8K number, but we're going to wait for real-world side-by-side testing with the cameras to see what actually passes the most information along. 8K also requires lenses to actually resolve 8K, which might not even matter if you are shooting with a vintage cinema lens. If you are picking this camera and hoping to shoot with a set of old Super Speed primes or the even older and softer Cooke Speed Panchros, you may not see any difference in resolution at the camera level. Canon has Dual Pixel Autofocus II on the EOS R5 that uses "deep learning" to identifying subjects. Autofocus development is likely going to be one of the key battlegrounds between the cameras. This is vital since Sony has gotten a major lead going in autofocus with some truly impressive results. Autofocus that actually feels like a tool filmmakers might really appreciate makes the a7 III very appealing. Panasonic has a whole host of lenses custom-built for the S1H but hasn't pushed its autofocus hard. While this shouldn't be the main reason a filmmaker chooses a camera, it can be a lifesaver in an interview setup with a subject who keeps leaning forward and back, for instance. If autofocus is a key decider for you, you should focus your attention on who's really ahead of the pack: Canon and Sony. Panasonic S1H As a reminder, in the end, you can make most cameras look like anything. As Steve Yedlin points out, there is so much power in post-processing that a lot of what we talk about when we discuss camera color science is just "wine language." However, color science does matter somewhat on smaller jobs when you won't have much time in post. If you are shooting something where you won't be invited to post, or where it will be online the next day, or even later that night, you want pleasing color straight out of the camera. This category, to me, leans towards Panasonic and Canon. Sony has traditionally had the strangest color science choices, with greens looking a bit off and skin tones a bit shifted towards the orange as well. It's improved over the years, but footage from the FX9 still looks a bit too saturated in the greens for me, and the a7 III fits in that space as well. The first Sony camera to really look good in this area was VENICE. Compare that to Panasonic, who has done an amazing job rolling down the VariCam look into an affordable package. For that alone, Panasonic wins the color competition. While Canon looks quite nice out of the gate, its look is the "look of YouTube," and while it's pleasing, it's very associated with vlogging and the DIY space. Based on footage seen so far, the S1H is the winner here to me. It was also the first  Netflix approved mirrorless camera, despite Sony having had 4K cameras available for several years prior. Panasonic felt like a real contender with its 4K 60fps, but the Canon R5 stomps it with a 4K 120fps shooting mode. If you are doing sports, action, or even a certain kind of narrative filmmaking, that 120fps is going to be killer. Sony is carrying the rear here with only 30fps in 4K mode from the a7 III. But that will most likely change with the up-coming a7S III. Canon uses the proprietary RF mount. Sony uses the proprietary E mount. Panasonic uses the open format L mount, part of the L-mount alliance with Leica and Sigma. While that isn't the biggest industry group, I tend to prefer open formats to closed formats, and that has some appeal. However, the E mount has a more robust lens offering at the moment than either RF or L. If you need to shoot today, and you need a lot of lens choices, E mount is the way to go. But then again, most lenses can be adapted. h96 max x3The only reasonable conclusion I can make is that it's a good time to be a filmmaker looking for a camera around $4,000. There are three very strong choices that are going to give you amazing images no matter what. If you already shoot a lot of VariCam, the S1H is the obvious choice. But the R5 deserves a lot of attention and testing for its new autofocus, IBIS, and 8K RAW, which is a real game-changer at this price point. Sony isn't out of the game by any means with its arsenal of lens choices and famous low light quality. It will come down to what your personal expectations and preferences are in a camera. h96 max tv boxSo which one makes the most sense for you?

[nureyevapologist]

Hiyaaa, if you want an aftg prom still, pls consider: Neil coming home to his and andrew's apartment with one of his newest recruits, and they boy is beaten and battered and neil's first instict was to take care of him because no one ever took care of neil, and andrew's reaction to this! ❤

thanks for this!! i might have veered from the specifics a little and this is like, 70% a character study of neil and 30% Andreil Content but i hope this is okay!!

Neil Josten felt that he owed a lot to the idea of coincidences.

Coincidence was Neil taking an uncalculated risk on the Millport Dingoes the very same year that Riko Moriyama finally snapped and took the bones in Kevin Day’s hand with him. Coincidence was falling into the same orbit as the man who had watched Neil’s father slice a man like lunchmeat and coincidence was him being so single-mindedly focused on Exy that he didn’t notice Neil’s terrible dye job or the white ring around his contact lenses. Coincidence was Andrew Minyard being the single-most observant person Neil has ever met, and coincidence was Neil being forced into his field of vision.

Coincidence was also Neil here and now, stopping off at a convenience store to grab a packet of cigarettes and accidentally witnessing his potential new recruit fall victim to a heavy, parental hand. 

It had only taken one video on a grainy, digital camera to show Neil that this kid had the raw potential to be one of the greatest backliners Palmetto State would ever see. Not fifteen minutes into the footage had Neil shoved aside his other folders and said to Wymack, one thumb jutted at the screen, we have to have him. Wymack had shrugged, assented with a nonchalant you’re the captain, captain and the very next week saw the two of them riding out to Georgia in Neil’s shiny new Lexus.

(“Having a Pro Athlete for a boyfriend sure does have its perks, huh kiddo?” had almost gotten Wymack elbowed bodily out of a moving vehicle.

“Above your paygrade” in a smooth, Andrew-esque tone had Coach laughing for the next ten minutes of the drive, safe and unmoving in the passenger seat.)

So they had approached the boy, Josh, after hanging back in the shadows to watch his high school team completely demolish their opponents. Wymack had loitered, no doubt trying to catch the name of the opposition’s only saving grace, a furious offensive dealer, and Neil had attempted to look cool and friendly as opposed to cold and menacing.

Naturally, the kid told Neil to fuck off four times before Neil backed him into a corner and told him to stop squandering his future by being unnecessarily abrasive. There was something in the complicated ice of this boy’s eyes that Neil connected with, an innate fear that ducked for cover behind aggression and hunched shoulders. One minute he stood every inch his five feet and ten inches and the next, body folded in on itself like he was willing it to disappear, he looked to stand no taller than Neil himself.

“I don’t know what your deal is,” Neil had said, arms tucked across his chest with all of his patchwork scars on show, “but I come from Palmetto State. I’m not here to judge, or pry, or fix. I don’t give a shit about your tragic backstory, I give a shit about the way you single-handedly held up your team’s defense line and I give a shit about putting you on an NCAA Class I Exy team. If you can get over yourself for five minutes, I suggest you sign first and cry later”

Every fibre in this kid’s body twitched like he wanted to run and Neil was hit, not for the first time, with jarring memory of himself in this position, shadows of a dark locker room curling in around his ankles, Wymack promising a future he’d never stayed still long enough to know he wanted. Sentiment was lost on Neil, most of the time. Still, if his family of Foxes had taught him anything, it was that sometimes you had to save people despite them not wanting to be saved. At this point, that may as well be the Palmetto State Motto. Neil had given the kid a few hours to think on it. Go home, talk to whoever you need to talk to, think about it. Just remember that we did not drive out here for a no.

Wymack had, of course, grumbled about having to spend a few hours sweating my damn ass off in the pleasure of your company but had mellowed somewhat when Neil had taken him for a suitably greasy dinner and showed him how to use his new phone to FaceTime Dan. He had allowed himself a few moments to enjoy the scene; Wymack, his face far too close to the screen, cursing Dan out for not texting him all week because saying I miss you is too overrated. Dan, a pixelated blur of joy and exuberance, showing her father every single corner of her new apartment and zooming in on one Matt Boyd, tangled helplessly in the middle of an Ikea side table.

With Wymack occupied, Neil had called Andrew, who answered on the very last ring because he was a certified asshole at the best of times. “Am I to assume you will be elsewhere when I get to the dorms?”

Andrew always makes him feel so known. “I managed to pick another stubborn one”

“Yes,” Andrew says, his voice a slow rumble over the familiar, quiet growl of the Maserati, “because you were so quick to acquiesce”

“I might have been running to grab a pen,” Neil replies. Andrew doesn’t laugh, but there’s a puff of air that Neil recognises as amusement, and his own mouth curls. “I think I sold him, though. A few hours and I might finally have secured a backliner”

“You should hope so,” and then there’s a beat of silence and the tell-tale flick of a lighter, “because I refuse to listen to you whine about it all weekend”

“So you admit that you do listen, when I talk?”

“Absolutely not” and when the silence stretches for a beat too long, Neil lifts the phone from his ear and realises Andrew has disconnected the call. Typical Andrew, but now Neil’s fingers twitch to hold a cigarette and he distinctly remembers leaving them behind at the behest of Wymack’s disapproving frown. Beneath his thighs the sticky vinyl booth creaks in protest when he shifts his weight and he waves a round-about hand at Wymack before ducking out of the diner, knowing that Wymack will see him cross the road toward the convenience store and put two and two together.

It says a lot for how far he has allowed himself to sink into safety and familiarity and family that he doesn’t immediately notice the shouting. He’s caught up in realising his ID is somewhere in the glove compartment of his car and wondering if his sharp scars and sharper expression will dissuade the cashier from asking questions. Behind the front counter is a door, all peeling red paint and a half-hearted Staff Only sign, and the slight space between the door and the frame is the source of the noise. Neil has no interest in interfering. Neil has no interest in even listening to some inane disagreement between cashier and colleague, and is considering returning to the diner empty handed when he hears a sharp crack, followed by a sharper, you are never leaving me, Joshua, not ever and the unmistakeable sound of hands pummelling flesh. Something in Neil twitches to intervene but he isn’t stupid enough to walk into a small room with flying fists so, in a bid of panic, he thumps the bell by the cash drawer once, twice, three times.

A man appears from the back, face flushed the red of barely-swallowed anger, eyes a little wild and searching. Neil smiles something icy and the man is stupid enough to misread it. “Sorry ‘bout that, had’ta catch up on some paperwork in the back. What can I do ya for?”

There’s a moment where everything slows down and Neil files away details like his life depends on it. Blood, smeared across the knuckles of one large, meaty hand. A row of scratches, three raised and red, sit tucked against his chunky neck in an indication that someone had raised a hand to defend themselves. A gold ring, thick and faded, shaped to spell out DAD. Neil doesn’t know what makes him say it, but he opens his mouth to ask for a packet of Camel Blue and what comes out is “someone round the back is casing the place, you might want to check that out”

A self-righteous rage takes over the man’s expression, clouding his eyes and the twist of his mouth and he claps Neil on the shoulder as he passes on his way to the door. Men like him, Neil thinks, are far too predictable for their own good. Something like a memory tugs at his subconscious; Neil at age sixteen, dropping a similar line, waiting for the all clear to stuff his pockets full of food and hightail it out of there before anyone noticed. That, Neil thinks, was a far more sensible plan than whatever this was. He rounds the corner of the cashier desk, nudges the back door open with the flat of his hand and comes face to face with the cowering, crumpled body of his newest recruit.

The kid, Josh, is folded in on himself in the far corner of this office, schoolbag tossed a few paces away, face hidden in his hands. At Neil’s entrance he starts so hard Neil almost feels it like a physical thing and then his face does something complicated when he realises it isn’t his father; relief warring with shame warring with anger warring with hope. One of his eyes is beginning to blacken and there’s blood pouring from a cut in his eyebrow – the ring, the fucking ring – and from one side of a crooked nose. His wrist doesn’t look particularly healthy and the way he holds himself tells Neil that this is not a one off occurrence.

“What do you want?” asks Josh, and Neil has no fucking idea. There are scars on his skin from the hands of his father and the hands of his mother and there were long years of his life where he was so accustomed to being beaten within an inch of his life that he never stopped to think that maybe, he didn’t deserve it and maybe, it wasn’t normal and maybe, someone should have helped him. How many teachers saw his black eyes, his split lips, his bruised arms, and how many of them said nothing. How many strangers saw his mother grip his wrist so tightly that it popped, pulling him into a car or a hotel or an alley, how many men saw his father pummel him like a punch bag?

Without thinking about it too much, Neil holds out a hand. “I want to help you. I want you to come with me”

Josh scoffs, gesturing loosely to his face. “This is nothing compared to what he’ll do if he comes in here and I’m gone”

Neil frowns. “Look at me,” and he points to his own scarred face with equally scarred hands, “look at my face and tell me you don’t think I’ve survived worse than your piece of shit father. Come with me, now, and don’t ever come back. Let us help you”

And there it is again, the flurry of anger-fear-shame-hope. “Why?”

“You’re a damn good backliner,” Neil tells him simply, “and if you let that pathetic excuse of a man beat you any harder you won’t be, anymore”

Hesitation twists his features into something ugly. Neil knows that he has minutes, maybe seconds until the man outside realises he’s been set up. If Neil has to pick saving himself over saving this kid, he’ll probably save himself, but Josh drags himself to his feet and looks Neil squarely in the face. “If I do this…he will come looking for me”

“And he will find an entire team of angry, troubled Exy players who know their way around a racquet” Neil replies. “I can protect you, but we have to leave. Right now”

His jaw goes tight but he nods, once. Neil nods back and together they make their way toward the front of the store, Neil pushing ahead, body strung-tight with focus. Outside he nudges Josh ahead of him, watches him adjust his gait around a lopsided limp, reels in his anger for another day.

They reach the Lexus across the street and a voice from behind calls “Joshua, get back here this goddamn instant.”

Three things happen.

Josh, in a bout of incredible bravery, flips his father the middle finger and falls over himself to clamber into the back seat of Neil’s car. The father, in a bout of incredible anger, starts for Neil like he means to snap his head from his body. Wymack, in a bout of incredible exhaustion at the familiarity of a situation such as this, appears at Neil’s right shoulder and swings a right hook up and under the man’s jaw.

It sends the man on his ass and in a split-second shared glance, Neil and Wymack make the mutual decision to get the fuck out of there.

Over the course of their drive back to Palmetto, Neil explains the situation with their new backliner, Wymack assures Josh that he will be resolutely protected, and Josh leaks blood all in the fancy seats of Neil’s car. When it doesn’t seem like it will stop, Neil shucks off his hoodie and throws it at the kid, telling him to hold it fast to the wound – after a brief, whispered argument, Neil pulls over and hands Wymack the keys and throws himself into the backseat to try and assess the damage. The ring hadn’t cut his eyebrow so much as it had gouged out a chunk of skin and his nose and lip are bust but mostly dried up. There’s a patch of blood at his side, seeping through his white t-shirt, and he waves that away as split stitches. From what, Neil doesn’t ask. He tries to staunch the bleeding but succeeds only in covering his own fingers in the blood, and in the end Wymack has to drive them straight to Abby’s house.

“Abby is our team nurse,” Neil explains, while Wymack tries to parallel park a Lexus under a blanket of colourful curses, “she patches up sprained ankles but she also patched up every wound visible on my skin, so you can trust her. I can stay, if you want, or I can leave you in her capable hands while I go back to campus and make preparations for you. There’s a spare bed in one of the freshman dorm rooms, or you can stay with Abby, or you can sleep on my sofa. Whatever you need”

Josh tucks his arms around himself, bravado stripped for the day. Neil assumes it will come back, that things will be difficult, that the kid’s attitude will fling itself all over the place, but for now he’s looking at Neil like Neil just saved his life and Neil thinks he just might have.

“You can go,” Josh says, “I have more shit under here I don’t wanna flash to anyone but a nurse, right now. Uh, I don’t…maybe I can stay on your sofa? For a bit. I don’t…”

“Hey,” Neil interrupts, “you don’t have to explain. Sofa it is. Though, I should tell you, my…my boyfriend is visiting right now, and he isn’t the friendliest person you’ll ever meet-”

“Understatement,” Wymack interrupts, “fucking understatement”

“-but,” and Neil flips off Wymack, “as long as you don’t give him any reason to distrust you, you’ll be safe”

He watches the kid for a minute, waiting for something. Protest, anger, homophobia, acceptance. Instead he shrugs, tired, overwhelmed, and climbs out of the car. Wymack follows him out, with a parting jab about Neil’s use of the term boyfriend, and then Neil is left to drive back to campus alone.

Maybe it should be embarrassing that the sight of the Maserati fills Neil with a fuzzy sort of warmth but this past half-a-year has begrudgingly taught him that distance makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever, and that he should allow himself to recognise that he misses Andrew and likes it when he comes home.

Or maybe Bee had taught him that, but he wasn’t about to admit it to Andrew.

The man in question is leaning up against the hood of his car, sleek and sharp in his black jeans and leather jacket, one booted-foot propped against the license plate, a cigarette between his lips. He’s gotten broader, since Neil last saw him, bulkier in the arms and shoulders and if Andrew is feeling up to it, Neil wants to relearn the shape of him with his fingers, maybe even his mouth.

Andrew doesn’t look up when the Lexus pulls in, feigning a nonchalance the set of his jaw doesn’t quite convey, but he does look up when Neil steps out of the car and his face transitions from smooth to thunder so fast it gives Neil whiplash.

“What happened?”

Neil blinks and Andrew’s hands are on him, fingers tilting his jaw this way and that, skimming down the sides of his body, eyes roaming for injury. Neil belatedly realises that he has Josh’s blood on his hands, a little on his shirt and he curves his own fingers around Andrew’s wrists, meets his eye with a calm stare. “It isn’t mine”

“That,” Andrew says, shoulders settling away from tension, “is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Had some trouble with the new recruit. He’ll be staying with us”

Andrew arches a pale eyebrow, studying the blood on Neil’s fingers with a calculated disinterest. Neil huffs. “His father was beating the shit out of him”

“Where is he now?”

“Abby’s”

Andrew studies him for a long moment. Then, “I thought taking in strays was my thing”

“Well,” and Neil smooths his thumbs down over the fine bones of Andrew’s wrists, “someone had to pick up the slack. I couldn’t leave him there. So many people must have seen my mother backhand me and no one ever stepped in. How could I-”

“Stop it,” Andrew says, and Neil stops. “You cannot take responsibility for every single person in the world. It will never make your mother un-hit you”

Neil flinches, but he knows Andrew is right. Still, “I can help him. I can help this one. I want to”

“Alright”

“Yeah?”

Andrew gives him a look. “What, were you asking my permission? Are we adopting this child together?”

Neil laughs, a new thing, tipping his head back, teeth slipping past his lips. “You don’t think we’d make good parents?”

Andrew steps close enough that one of his boots rests between Neil’s two sneakers, their hands still clasped between them becoming squashed between their chests. “I would be a textbook parent. You would be a nightmare”

“I resent that,” Neil tells him “We’re never having kids”

“Obviously”

“Cats, maybe”

Andrew blinks. “Cats? You’ve thought about cats?”

Neil shrugs, once, but can’t fight the smile spilling back onto his face. “We’re getting cats. You said yourself that you like taking in strays”

“No,” Andrew says, firm. “I do not like it. The last one I took in continues to test my patience, so I will not have another”

“I’ve been testing your patience for four years and you’ve yet to get rid of me” Neil reminds him, “I think you’re getting soft”

“I think I am getting back in my car and leaving you here” Andrew replies, allowing it when Neil’s hands wiggle up between their bodies to frame his face.

“I think you’re going to help me make use of my empty dorm room before a freshman backliner moves in onto my sofa”

Andrew doesn’t respond to this either way but he allows it when Neil stretches to press a small kiss to the corner of his mouth and he allows it when Neil takes him by the fingers and leads him into Fox Tower, and he certainly allows it when Neil peels him out of his leather jacket before the door is even closed behind them.

(Later, when Josh announces his presence with a tentative knock at the door, Andrew answers it. Neil watches them size one another up and then Andrew reaches up into his armband for a knife. “Use this on anyone other than your father,” he says, “and I will use it to remove your hands”

If the expression on his face is anything to go by, Josh has no idea what he’s agreeing to in taking that knife, but he does it anyway. Neil has to hide his smile in the collar of his newly-acquired leather jacket.)

[eleanorose123]

a bit late but for the amv ask meme, can you pls do 7, 12, 24, 27? :)

lol I can do my best!

7. fav “raw” amv (not a lot of effects or transitions)

This is actually my favorite style of editing! I don’t mind effects and candy style, but there’s just something about the use of pure footage and timing that I really adore.

Honestly while this one isn’t a perfect raw edit, there’s something about how the flow of the footage benefits the song’s tone as well as capturing the intense emotions and beauty that was the series. Series tribute AMVs that use little to no effects are my absolute favorites.

12. ur fav otp amv

Is it super cheesy that my favorite Shrimpship AMV is one I made? I don’t even have a Youtube upload for it out of fear of copyright so it’s only here on Tumblr.

Video link here

There’s something to say about revisiting a long time pairing, getting better footage/editing software and finding a practically perfectly fitting song for them. I really do love how this one turned out, I love my dork sons.

24. an amv of ur first otp

You know I really wanted to go use this answer to highlight the Rocketshipping AMVs I grew up on and that inspired me to do editing in the first place but of course that was 10+ years ago and they’re all long gone X’D

Thankfully though one of my all time favorite editors @twixremix​ did a beautiful AMV of them in the past which I love [mwah]

27. if youve ever edited, what’s ur fav amv youve made/uploaded?

Fun fact! I’ve been editing for over 10 years :D

Hmmm, I’ve made hundreds of vids, but you know what? I always keep finding myself going back to my Zexal vids. Something about them was just a real success for me. This is my Zexal Youtube account that has basically all of them uploaded, but here’s a few of my personal favorites;

And that’s all the videos I’m allowed to link on a single post apparently! lol but yeah check out the channel for more.

[joannalannister]

Hey, what's your favourite fancast for young!Tywin and Joanna? I'm a video editor and I'd like to edit them but I'm never sure of my fancast and would like to know your opinion on it. (Up to now I've used Celina Sinden and Nick Slater (both from Reign)). By the way, I love your account.

Thank you so much! I don’t really have a favorite but I tend to have, um, paired fancasts? The actors need to give me a match-y-match-y feeling lol.

Also, just fyi, I only fancast for the aesthetic appeal, and acting ability is not something I take into account. If I were actually making a movie, and I had unlimited funds, I would put out casting calls and find actors with a really commanding presence and I would be able to get brown haired actors to die their hair blond and everyone would have medievalish clothing. But I don’t have any of that so anyways. 

1) I like Gabriella Wilde with Tobey Regbo. (example) Tobey Regbo is probably not the best Tywin fancast but I think he goes well opposite Gabriella Wilde, and I really like Gabriella Wilde because she has this doll-like, delicate face. imo you need to give Tywin someone to protect (and fail to protect) in Joanna, and Gabriella Wilde’s face conjures up all the delicacy, femininity, vulnerability etc that I’m looking for.

2) Abbie Cornish and Philp Winchester from Camelot. (example) Winchester has more of the body type I imagine. 

3) Nora Arnezeder and Casper Zafer. (examples: 1, 2) Zafer is probably the best Tywin fancast, he truly looks like he carries this deadly coldness inside him, at least in what I have seen of his work. 

4) Cate Blanchett and Peter Eggers - he would be a realllll good younger Tywin, but good luck finding medieval footage. tbh they’re both probably too old looking even early in their careers - Joanna could not have been older than 28 when she died. Tywin was in his early 30s when Tyrion was born. And Cate Blanchett has this ethereal, wise beyond her years look, which would probably be better for a Targ like Alysanne, but idk, Cate has the emotional depth and pain and rawness I would like from my hypothetical Joanna actress. 

5) If we’re talking about Old Hollywood, Paul Newman and Grace Kelly are quite nice. 

A few other things while you’re here:

Some of the people above are less blond than I would like. In a perfect world, all of my Lannister actors would be perfectly golden blond with cascades of curls, and Joanna would sweep the curls back off Tywin’s forehead and. I’ll stop now. 

Holliday Grainger is young!Genna to me. I cannot unsee this, and, well, this is probably one of the only young blonde Hollywood actresses I can’t see as Joanna and if I see Grainger paired with a Tywin fancast, it, um, just looks like Tywin x Genna to me, oops. Grainger has a very beautiful curvy body and a rounder face that just screams future!Genna to me if she gained a lot of weight. 

Pls not the Cumbersome Bandersnatch guy, I mean, he’s very nice. but. not for Tywin. pls no. 

When I want to show Joanna and Genna as girls together, I like Elle Fanning as Joanna and Dakota Fanning (using footage that puts her at the same age as Elle) as Genna. 

I hope that helps idk! I would love to see whatever you make! Pls feel free to link me!

[munchflix]

WATCHMEN - THE SUPER EXTENDED CUT

IMDB BLURB: In 1985 where former superheroes exist, the murder of a colleague sends active vigilante Rorschach into his own sprawling investigation, uncovering something that could completely change the course of history as we know it.

WARNINGS: Giant blue peen, large bepis. It's blue. Malin Ackerman can't act for shit. Attempted rape. Lots of murder. Some gore. Adult themes? Zack Snyder. Repulsive sex scene. It's not gross, it's just weird and uncomfortable. And unnecessarily long.

RATING: Who watches the Watchmen? Us...unfortunately.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: All reviews are done solely for humor and should not be taken seriously ever. If you cannot handle cursing, crude humor and probably some offensive things, pls do not read this. And please please don’t watch this fucking movie.

MUNCH: I want you to know, first thing, that I will never forgive you for making me watch this for a THIRD TIME. I first saw this in the theatre on my birthday and it was awful then. I spent three hours waiting for it to get better and it didn't and now you're making us watch the super extended version with 30 more minutes of shit I DON'T WANT TO SEE. I am old and I was a fan of the comic long before this detritus was filmed. I was actually excited for this shit. This movie, like a lot of the movies we review once a year, is bad. It's pretty, it's well filmed, it has a brilliant cast, and it sucks like a Dyson trying to fellate a rubber chicken.

BISCUITS: Okay...I'm gonna be upfront about this. We're gonna have to be here for each other during this review. We need to BELIEVE in ourselves, and to share our mental fortitude. That might be the only way we'll be strong enough to make it through. Even then, there's no guarantee we'll make it...but if we do, we'll emerge from the other side as changed women, now knowing the true power that the bond of friendship can hold. Or not. Actually, we'll probably just end up sad. But the point is, we need to be here for each other.

M: The Nixon makeup is so bad. All this budget and he looks like a half melted wax statue.

These are the Nixons, folks.

B: Jeffrey Dean Morgan in old age makeup? I'd still smash that. The DOOMSDAY CLOCK! That's a reference to the comic! Get it?! We're JUST like the comic!

M: That's part of what bugs me, there's so many moments just taken straight out of the comic and then the rest of it is just Zack Snyder mentally masturbating about how cool he is.

B: Let me tell you younguns - long before the days of Suicide Squad and Batman V. Superman, Zack Snyder created the first of many tragic mistakes in the saga of "DC and Warner Bros. Attempt to Movie". It was dark, overdramatic, and had little substance behind its superficially good visuals. But Warner Bros. were all like "OMG Zach, look at all this money. Can you fuck ALL our beloved properties like this???"

M: Nostaaaaaalgia.

B: Okay, Unforgettable - this song was in the comic, it was in the book. It was playing in a scene in the comic but it was when Dan and Laurie tried to have sex for the first time. I don't understand the rationale behind using a song from the comic but putting it in a completely different scene. Why did you make that change? I don't understand why you would do that.

M: Watchmen in a nutshell. JESUS CHRIST I forgot that the explosions come in about 30 times louder than everything else.

B: Why is the Comedian wearing a smiley face pin on his bathrobe? Because of the symbolism??? Nostalgia. This is from the coooooooooomic. This is the first instance of inappropriate soundtracking, which is alright the first time but gets annoying when you do it over and over.

M: I have no idea. Oh yeah..the movie. The Comedian is fighting a mysterious figure that we'll figure out who it is later. Unless you've read the comic. It's Veidt. Slow zoom on the pin with the blood spatter because it's SYMBOLISM. Also the Comedian got thrown out a window. There's also been half an hour of slow mo and we're only 5 minutes into the movie.

B: *burps loudly* Bob Dylan, because there was a reference to a Bob Dylan song in the comic. Slow shots of our great heroes, The Minutemen. Zacc Snyder, fuck you. These were the original super hero dudes who spawned the existence of all the other masked vigilantes in this universe.

M: Gerard Butler??? Who the fuck is Gerard Butler?? Hang on, I have to look this up. Oh...he's in the Tales of the Black Freighter, which is only in this super-long ultra-extended edition.

This gif makes it look like Gerard Butler is playing Sally Jupiter. This is not the case (unfortunately?).

B: Which we're watching because we hate ourselves. Historical landmarks to set up the time period. Also Silhouette was a lesbian. Dollar Bill got killed when his cape got stuck in a revolving door. NO CAPES! Mothman went nuts and got put in an asylum. The minutemen turned out fine. Also Silhouette is dead. And Gay.

M: Bury your gays. She was only alive for two minutes of credits.

B: To be fair, she didn’t really have a role in the book either. Also, Kennedy is killed. By the Comedian. Which I suppose was implied in the comic...very vaguely. This is way too much exposition. We can read about history, we don't need a recap of every single event since 1940. We aren't that dumb, Zakk. There's more politics in this intro than exposition but Watchmen was supposed to be political. I have big problems with Matthew Goode....goode? How is that pronounced? Look at all that BEEF tho. Arby’s, I got ya new commercial right here.

I’ll take the one on the far left with cheese, please.

M: Slow the fuck down, jesus. I can't type as fast as you thirst. I'm gonna make you type this if you don't slow down.

B: Glad I'm not wearing a retainer. You think Jeffrey Dean Morgan would pay for it? Also Night Owl's costume looks so shitty.

M: Seriously, slow down. I have issues with how contoured Manhattan is.

B: And then everything went bad for the vigilantes and they got banned. This is SO LOUD. Tell Zaque Snyder I get spooked easily. I don’t like loud noises, I’m like a wild animal.

M: Oh yeah so the Comedian is dead. Two detectives wonder how he died. So mysterious. It was Veidt. Don't blame me if you didn't read the comic, it's been out for 30 fucking years.

B: My other issue with this movie, it doesn't ADD anything to it's source material. If I wanted just Watchmen I'd just read the comic. I could read most or all of it in the time it takes to watch this movie. So...Rorschach is ranting.

M: That's all he really does in this movie tho is rant.

B: All the towns in the world and I had to end up in this one. The ballsack town. Comedian kept a picture of Sally by his bed but that's backwards...she kept a picture of HIM on her bedside.

M: Rorschach found Comedian's secret closet where he went to be gay. Or a superhero. Or both. So he knows he's the Comedian.

B: Well, one or two of them were gay...a bunch of guys who wear their underwear outside their pants and this is somehow surprising? More slow mo.

M: This movie could be an hour and half shorter without all the pointless slo mo. Hollis is being played by Stephen McHattie and I love him so much.

B: Patrick Wilson (you can tell it’s Patrick Wilson because he looks exactly like Patrick Wilson) is playing Night Owl and he is a very good boy. The best boy. Although he doesn't have much competition for goodest boy, most of the boys are pretty bad. Hollis Mason is played up to be more Drunk Grandpa than caring mentor figure. Raw footage of Rorschach looking like FUCKING BIGFOOT. Your local cryptid.

*X-Files theme plays*

M: That was 20 seconds of super important extra footage that we missed from the original 3 hour long movie. Okay so movie, right. Drieberg goes home to find his home has been broken into. It's Rorschach. Eating beans. HUMAN BEANS. With HUMAN BEAN JUICE. We saw you lumbering around like Bigfoot on the news. Rorschach's mask is cool tho. One point for you, Zackk Snyder.

B: Rorschach, because he's a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist is like " I think someone's killing masks" even tho only one mask person has died so far. Patrick Wilson is a good actor but his performance in this movie is so blech. I dunno if that was the direction he was given or...

M: Part two of things wrong with Watchmen. Lots of good actors giving boring performances. I love many of these actors but they're so dull.

B: Except Malin Ackerman. It was an experimental time, Chad! All of our Bro Moments. Our BROMENTS.

M: WHY CAN'T I QUIT YOU, CHAD?!

B: Maybe Drieberg quit on account of the Keene act because it started being illegal to do the thing, but Rorschach didn't because he’s crazy. And he's doing more edgelord monologuing.

M: Holy crap the animation.

B: And now with NO CONTEXT we get launched into the Tales of the Black Freighter. It's an anime, apparently. (makes angry angry noises ) this makes me SO mad because the Black Freighter, though a story within a story, had an explanation for its presence. It's being read by someone within the bigger story. In the movie it almost looks like it was animated by Ralph Bakshi. Like the people who did Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Ralph Bakshi had a bad trip together.

This is what I see, every night in my dreams.

M:  I guess this is being narrated by Gerard Butler?? This is so out of place. It takes you completely out of the immersion of the movie to show you this movie. That was super jarring though.

B: The comic had a lot more leeway when it came to blending the stories together. Oh and now we get a shot of someone reading the comic to bring us back. Rorschach in the comic was described as being fascinatingly ugly. I think Jackie Earl Haley is too good looking.

M: And Veidt. I hate everything they did with this entire fucking character. I hate the way he looks, the way he talks, the way he acts, the way he Veidts. I fucking hate him so much. I hate what they did with his story and the whole Manhattan cancer thing. It's DUMB.

B: Why is Dan here? It was Rorschach who warned Adrian. And they're talking about nuclear war, very important to the crux of everything. This lighting is ugly. It makes Veidt look like a greasy boy.

M: He IS a greasy boy.

B: Meeting with Dreiberg left bad taste in mouth. Like cold beans.

M: Rorschach is expositioning everything we've already seen, dialogue straight out of the comic.

B: Rorschach breaks in to see Manhattan. Rorschach asks the real questions: Does Adrian Veidt is gay??

M: That is a HUGE ASS. Btw Manhattan is naked. He is super naked. You will never be allowed to forget that he is naked.

B: Malin Ackerman shows up...to “act”.... The mention temporal interference already, so you won't be surprised at the end of the movie. They really overemphasize Manhattan's eye things. He looks like a sad panda. I have issues with his CGI, he is really over contoured and he looks really...weird....Laurie...stop talking. PLease. Don't act, don't try to act.

Pictured: Sad Panda

M: Now he's taking Laurie on some fucking weird time trip that was supposed to happen three hours from now in the story. Manhattan is just sad in this movie. All his rage and his indifference are gone. He's just sad. He tells her the future and he's sad about it. And now, 99 Luftballoons so we don't forget it's the 80's.

B: This wasn't how this happened in the comic EITHER. Zacque Snyder and his love of throwing random songs into movies with no regard for how they might impact the mood.

M: So Lori is having dinner with Dreiberg just like Jon told her too. I'm giving up on spelling any names right as of right now.

B: They reminisce about their young days when they fought crime and dressed up like lunatics and all that stuff. Ah those days are behind us. We're in our 40's but in the movie we're like 25. Jon thinks there's gonna be nuclear war and also he can't fix my bad acting. They turned Laurie into such a sexy lamp in this movie. They strip everything away from her that made her interesting. I am laurie, I am GIRL. Who needs oxygen when you have another man's money.

You so. Fuckin. Precious. When you. Smile.

M: The Sound of Silence begins playing. We both laugh and denounce Zaeck Snyder and the horse he rode in on.

B: Should have been Take me to Church. I didn't realize how awful the soundtracking was in this movie the first time. They just throw in recognizable songs.

M: Comedian is getting buried. Rorschach is here and Manhattan and Dreiberg. And Simon and Garfunkle. It's not making this scene better. It's making it so much worse. Lori has been randomly teleported to her mothers with zero context. Her mother is Carla Gugino who deserves better than being in this fucking movie. They quote dialogue right from the comic. Did Zaquery Snyder write ANY dialogue for this movie? Her old age makeup is fucking awful and she is overacting this so hard.

B: And then we have the flashback to old days where the Comedian tries to rape her. The entire purpose of this flashback in one sentence. That's the plot point. From the comic. That we need to get into the movie somehow. I suppose they're going for show don't tell. At the moment i'm just focused on how it extends this torturous experience.

M: I have a lot of issues with this part. He beats her far more severely in the movie. They start the scene almost making it look like she did ask for it with all the slow undressing. It's so fucking unnecessary.

B: And then Hooded Justice comes in and this doesn't make sense in the movie when Comedian asks him if he gets off on this. But since they don't get into this in the movie...I think they're just trying to get us to go OH THE COMEDIAN IS A BAD GUY, HE'S SUCH A BAD GUY. We can get that. Why does everything in this movie take so long?

M: Everyone is having flashbacks to their time with Eddie. Manhattan is blowing up the entirety of the viet cong while the Comedian shoots people and Ride of the Valkyries is playing for no reason.

In awe at the size of this lad.

B: NEXT TIME YOU INVITE JON.

M: And then we get the Comedian is a horrible person but AGAIN because he's gonna shoot this woman he knocked up and Jon doesn't stop him. Jon is so fucking ripped that even fuzzed out in the background you can see every muscle.

B: They tell the story of how Eddie got his scar even though he doesn't...have it in the movie? Yeah I killed that woman I knocked up but you didn't stop me because you don't care and well...you're not wrong.

M: And now Veidt gets to have HIS flashback so we can be sure that the Comedian really was an asshole. The Comedian informs everyone that their plan is garb while Jon and Laurel Ann make goo goo eyes at each other which will become relevant an hour ago because they're obviously a couple NOW. He sets Ozymandias’ (Veidt's) map on fire to emphasize his point.

B: Ozymandias will remember that. Watchmen would make a great Telltale game. And Dan has his American Dream flashback where the Comedian is helping with crowd control and we don't care what's going on because the Comedian looks DAMN HOT. In slow mo.

M: Biscuit's thirst meter has increased tenfold.

B: What happened to the American Dream? You're looking at it. Just as beefy and greasy as I imagined it. He had a really nice arm vein going on in that scene. I have a gif of that for uh...research purposes. Very swole.

Pictured: The American Dream

M: I just realized that I don't really thirst after anyone in this movie. The comedian is hot because Jeffrey Dean Morgan but my thirst level is so low comparatively. The only main chick is Malin Ackerman and uh...no.

B: You're getting gayer the older you get.

M: I can't even deny that.

B: Moloch! He's a former supervillian of sorts and Rorschach is chasing him down because uh...I don't know. He just shows up and is like Hey fuck you buddy.

M: I still want an explanation for why Moloch alone has pointed ears. Nobody else in the entire movie has that kind of deformity.

B: And he's like The Comedian just showed up in my house! He was drunk and crying! We've all been there. We've all broken into our former nemesis's house drunk and crying. Maybe that's just me...

M: Except that's what really happened....

B: And the Comedian is like - I did some fucked up shit but this is worse! The shit this unnamed bad guy is doing worse! And he says that Moloch and Manhattan’s old girlfriend are on some mysterious list!

M: It's Veidt. Rorschach tries to nail Moloch for taking a medication made from apricot pits. Which are POISONOUS BTW, DO NOT EAT THEM. Rorschach spends fucking ten more minutes slow mo fucking monologuing about shit we already know and JUST SAW. There's so much extra shit in this movie that does not need to be here. He sounds like fucking Wolverine. Is that Hollis?

B: I can't even tell because this movie is SO DARK. We get a feeble attempt to connect newspaper man and the animated comic.

M: At least it's less jarring. Comic man drools excessively for no reason. They're even leaving bits of THIS story out and making it even weirder and more disparate than it needs to be. Fucking why.

The nightmares, they never stop.

M: Okay Jesus they went from that straight to Loorie and Jon trying to have sexxors and this is so wrong and out of place. And then Jon is six people.

B: god. jon. stop. what are u doing? I took a theatre class in high school and all those kids were better actors than Malin Ackerman. Which is bad because Laurie is an integral character in Watchmen. This happened way earlier and this is why she ran away to Dan in the comic, but it's fine. It's fine. Whatever. I don't care. She gets mad but not really because acting.

M: Jon underacts but that's his entire thing. This is so disjointed. Jon is teleporting reactors to Karnak while they argue. This will be relevant later.

B: Three bepis, no FOUR! Too much bepis for my needs. Or not enough...

M: Jesus Christ.

B: And NOW laurie shows up at dan's place. We needed to drag this out because we were REALLY stretching to get this movie to feature length, y’know?? We were really scraping at the bottom of the Watchmen barrel for content. There's just not enough material to get a good long juicy film out of it.

M: Can we just skip this whole part? I'll summarize. Laurie and Dan spend half an hour whining at each other because Laurie and Jon had a fight and they kinda wanna bang but that will take three hours to get to as well for no good goddamn reason. Meanwhile Jon is putting on a suit to do a tv interview.

B: There's a lot of scenes of Dan and Laurie but there's no chemistry at all between them and there's no buildup to their actual relationship. Even Dan is so nothing in this movie and I liked him. And there's an article from the comic because this is JUST LIKE THE COMIC.

M: Why are they...oh they're going to Hollis...but this isn't how it happened. They literally make this longer for no reason.

B: I know it would be really hard to cut anything from Watchmen, because pretty much everything is significant - there's no material that can really be removed that wouldn’t be missed in the final product. BUUUT they just added a whole ton of meaningless shit to this damn movie! At the expense of scenes we actually wanted! Dr Manhattan has his tv interview. This is not gonna go well. Everyone is like wtf are you talking about Jon. Dan and Lori beat up a bunch of thugs because uh...they're living for thrills?

M: Some reporter dude stands up and starts shit with Manhattan. He accuses him of giving everyone cancer. I'm sorry I caused all that cancer. You'd think Jon would KNOW whether or not he caused cancer...he was a fucking physicist.

B: Jon doesn't know whether or not he's radioactive. Spoiler alert: he ain't. He's just had his intrinsic fields removed - really simple procedure, like taking out the appendix.

M: *cronches pizza rolls*

B: A lot less screen time for Janey Slater in the movie, too. She's like "PRETTY PATTIES TURNED MY FACE PURPLE!!!" and then Doc Manhattan teleports everyone out of the studio because he's very emotional rn. That makes...one person in this movie with intense emotions.

M: You're right there...nobody in this movie really shows much in the way of emotion. Everyone's just sorta like "well, the world's going to shit - huh." I REALLY don't like the way they incorporated Tales of the Black Freighter into this movie.

B: Idec what's happening in this stupid anime. Man wants to get home before the freighter. Builds raft out of bloated corpses. Freaky eyes. It's supposed to parallel various elements of the 'real world' storylines but it's so jarring that drawing those connections becomes nigh on impossible. In the comic, panels from TotBF were often right alongside panels from the main story, but you couldn't really do something like that in a movie. They also still don't really do anything with the newspaper corner bits.

M: Did they actually show Dr. Manhattan leaving Earth?

B: No. Not yet.

M: So they just throw us into this scenario?

B: Yep. Dr. Manhattan got ANGERY and was like "y'know what? I'm going to Mars to deliver some exposition!! Way later than this happened in the comic, but who gives a flying fuck??" And we sorta get the explanation of the way Jon perceives time - but again, much less effective than it was in the comic. Everything in this movie is so DARK. 'Dark and gritty' doesn't usually refer to the visuals of a story.

M: Jon got stuck in an experimental machine where they were doing SCIENCE. He got disintegrated.

B: Just look at the SYMBOLISM...I mean, uh, the time. Jon's narration sounds like ASMR. He eventually manages to reassemble himself, but now he's blue....and nAkEd.

M: This giant naked blue dude shows up and Janey is just like "Jon?? Is that you??"

B: Jon is super-powerful, so the govt lords him as a weapon and uses him to help end the Vietnam war, and a lot of references to nuclear power.

M: I know his symbol is supposed to be a hydrogen atom, but it kinda looks like the power button on an Xbox.

Particle man, particle man...

B: This movie feels significantly gorier than the comic...which is not necessary. Janey is worried about how powerful Jon is - or she just wants him to put some fuckin' pants on.

M: Speaking of things that take you out of the movie - Jon's ENTIRE backstory in one flashback. Worked in the comic, not in the movie.

B: Jon macks on a 16 year old girl and is like - why is this a problem? My girlfriend is getting old, I gotta get a new one. Also I'm tired of earth. Going to mars.

M: We literally zoom out from Jon's ass crack.

B: There is no reason to put a physical or cgi camera that close to anyone's ass crack.

M: Jon has fucked off and now they're interrogating Laurie about where he went. She randomly assaults one of them because she can? Why are we having this slo mo smoking moment? And now another flashback to the Comedian... oh right, we have to have Laurie's version of why this guy was a douchebag.

B: Eddie's like, you think I'd fuck my daughter? And Sally is like - yah you might.

M: The gubmint is freaking out because their giant blue naked nuclear weapon has gone to Mars. I hate the Nixon makeup so much. He looks so fake. They wasted their budget on Manhattan's cock. I can't believe we still have 2 hours of this shit left.

B: (separate tangent about her cat) I'd rather focus on my cat than this movie. Why is this scene happening? Why is it significant? Is it supposed to increase the tension with the whole nuclear war thing??

M: I don't know. Why is it going on for so long? They figured out he's on mars because there's a blue spot? Uh...Laurie is beating up a guy and chaining him to a radiator? What....What did that have to do with ANYTHING? The gubmint is now attacking Veidt for trying to create free energy...?

B: This scene is just for Ozymandias to explain his backstory...I guess??

M: I honestly have no idea what's going on.

B: It's supposed to parallel the scene in the comic where he talks about Alexander the Great and stuff...

M: This happened at the END of the comic tho.

B: But here it's just...confusing. The choices they made just generally leave you feeling confused. Not like the comic did. It's ‘Vight’. I'm right.

Adrian Veidt is gay is the most discussed in the media in the few years ago.

M: Oh and now the scene where a hitman shows up disguised as a pizza guy so we can slow mo more totally excessive gore.

B: There was plenty of violence in the comic but...you can be dark and edgy without being this damn gory. Dan and Laurie have yet another meaningless conversation at a table and now Dan is suddenly on board with Rorshach's paranoia??

M: And Dan invites her to come over but in the comic she literally ran to him immediately after Jon left. Jesus now Rorshach is fucking monologuing again. They're fucking with the order of events again and it's pissing me off.

B: They don't seem to do it with any rhyme or reason. You have to make changes to adapt to a medium but there's zero apparent reason for the changes in chronology...

M: Rorschach breaks into Moloch's house so he can get caught again. Why the fuck would Moloch know about any of this??

B: But Moloch is dead. It was a SET UP.

M: I'm losing all plot cohesiveness because of all this nonsense. I can't remember what actually happened. Ten minutes of Rorshach slow mo fighting his way out but he's gonna get caught because Veidt organized all this but they don't tell you that in the movie because of reasons.

B: We're not explaining a lot of the plot because it's happening so slowly. They caught Rorschach. They takin' im to prison.

M: Rorschach don't care. He got shit to do. And now maybe back to the animation...? Yes.

B: They do like 1/16th of this shit with the newstand corner. They should have just not at all done it. They just seem like framing to put the Black Freighter in there.

M: Except they don't do it every time, and that makes it worse. And they made weird ass changes to this story too. It's supposed to parallel what's happening in the main story but it's making NO SENSE.

B: This also adds nothing to the story and it breaks the immersion.

M: It mostly seems like an excuse to be gross. And now for Rorschach's mental health evaluation.

B: He's psycho bonkers crazy. Part of the concept of Watchmen is that everyone has issues. The complex psychology.

Look inside your local garbage and you may find a friend and boy.

M: Aw who cares about that. Let's shoot off some more fingers! We get his entire backstory in very very short flashbacks. He's still nuts.

B: This was over the course of quite a while in the comic.

M: Yeah but suddenly we're pressed for time in the seven hour long movie so we gotta condense his entire story into a ten minute scene. Which makes this feel rushed, which is fucking weird considering how drawn out every fucking thing in this movie is.

B: The comic felt like a bunch of stories being told at once but all tying in together at a certain point. Convergent stories The movie feels like a bunch of different stories that happen and then they're over. They're not tying anything together. (Biscuits starts singing Linkin Park because this part is so fucking dark)

M: So he's telling this story about how he killed a guy for kidnapping a girl and Biscuits is looking up the name of that song because she can't remember what it's called and still singing.

B: It's called Shadow of the Day...it’s like the one Linkin Park song I know

M: Okay. And Rorschach is gonna....kill this guy with a hatchet???

B: That is NOT how that happened. He tied him up and set that house on fire. But now he's gonna hit that guy in the head 20 times. And now he's Rorschach. There is no Laura, only Zuul.

M: ...Dana!!

B: Oh...Dana....is that from...

M: Ghostbusters!

B: I didn't wanna say it and have you be like - No it's from the Exorcist!

M: That would have been pretty funny in the exorcist. There is no Pazuzu, only Zuul.

B: Rorschach delivers the iconic line - I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me. The angrier he gets the more gravelly his voice gets. Meanwhile back at the ranch...Lori looks at Dan's shit.

M: You gotta be more specific. In this movie it might be actual shit. She's looking at this ship.

B: He's got some cool etchings, and a stamp collection. She sets things on fire. In the comic she thought it was the cigarette lighter. That's not how you put out a fire.

Laurie is an expert firefighter.

M: She doesn't have any brains.

B: She's an animatronic being controlled offscreen. Everything is so bland in this movie. We really aren't given any reasons to connect with Dan and Laurie.

M: This scene isn't helping either. It's boring and we don't care what's happening because we don't fucking care about Dan and Looooooorie. I can't think of a couple with less chemistry than these two.

B: Do you know what this means??

M: Yes.

B: We're getting close to the sex scene. It's like a case study in how not to do a sex scene in a movie. It's like the most awkward horrible thing that can be done. These scenes were in the comic, but not like this.

M: They're not gonna bang right now anyway because Dan can't get it up because uh...Adrian isn't doing gymnastics in the background and Unforgettable isn't playing.

B: Patrick Wilson's titty.

M: Did we really need to...

B: It's okay. Patrick Wilson is reasonably attractive. I would give those titties a six. Maybe a seven. Compared to having to see Malin Ackerman's tits, I would give them an 11. They're better than Manhattan's tits, which are cgen and disgustingly hyperdetailed.

M: BACK TO RORSCHACH. Who is being threatened by a little person named Big Figure because that's fucking funny. I guess. But it's also canon. And now Dan's dreaming but there's no actual meaning here because they do it wrong.

B: It really would have been better to put that in there after Dan and Laurie stop trying to bang instead of going to Rorschach?

M: And then IMMEDIATELY back to the animated parts with NO warning.

B: That was the worst editing I've ever seen. Sharks are eating the corpse boat.

M: I'm so confused. How did that shark get back up into the boat thing....

B: Who the fuck cares anymore.

M: Back to reality?? Snoop Dogg threatens the comic reading man because uh...

B: Snap back to reality...OH there goes gravity...something about spaghetti. And now back to Dan who is staring naked at his suit. There's too many behinds in this movie.

M: Are you gonna rate it?

B: I like plenty of naked behinds in other contexts.

M: I'm not even gonna ask.

B: Dreiberg is pretty ripped for being supposedly flabby and old. Laurrrrrie decides they should go fight crime.

Unfortunately, Malin Akerman.

M: Night Owl's costume is so bad. Like Ozymandias’ costume and...most of the costumes.

B: Laurie's costume is mostly see through because she can't fight crime if she's not sexy. We don't get any explanation of Dan's bird love in the movie. He's a good bird boy. That's a tongue twister.

M: They're saving people from a fire. I kinda want to go take a nap.

B: Why is he shooting into the burning building???

M: I don't know! Oh it's a water tower.

B: I thought he was just shooting up a burning building.

M: I'm sorry but she would be DEAD from that backdraft. There is no way. So now they gotta drop people off so they can bang in the owlship. Which I don't wanna see. SKIP.

B: This isn't how this happened in the comic at all.

M: Back to Rorschach again. They don't do the whole language pun thing which was so fucking cool in the comic. Big Figure. Small world. Why is all Rorschach's shit cut out??? Don't tell me they didn't have time. They see one dead guy and they know Rorschach is alive?

B: Professional dead guy appraiser.

M: Oh yeah there's a whole prison riot going on but we don't know why in the movie because they don't explain it.

B: Now Dan and Lari are gonna beat up some guys but it's so fucking dark it's like I'm watching Fan4stic. More slow mo.

M: They had to cut Rorschach's story to make time for all the slow mo.

B: I hate Night Owl's outfit. Leri's doesn't look anything like the comic either. I punched that guy! I'm a strong independent woman!

M: Rorschach goes to kill Big Figure in the bathroom which also fucks up what happened in the comic. Luri calls Rorschach an idiot and they start bitch fighting but Dan is like come on we gotta go. We have an hour left. We have to start building each other up.

B: (sings Livin' on a prayer )

M: NOT HOW THIS HAPPENED EITHER. Jon shows up after they get back and kidnaps Liri to mars where there's no air because he's a dick like that.

B: Diet bepis.

M: Laurie somehow knows she's on Mars because there's a giant glass sculpture there. Like on Mars. You know. Back to Snoop and his gang who randomly decide to take out Night Owl but pick the wrong one and beat up Hollis. Poor Hollis.

Yep, definitely Mars.

B: Obviously the editors don't care about the timeline either. Liri's mother is on the phone with Hollis talking about what happened the night before but I thought this was the same night? Who genuinely cares?

M: This movie is rated almost 5 stars on Amazon. You go Hollis, punch at least one of em!

B: The gang beats up Hollis and kills him because it's JUST LIKE THE COMIC. Hollis has flashbacks while he's getting killed. And killed by his own award. But we don't get the scene where he GOT the award. It's fine. I'm not mad.

M: Back to fucking Rorschach and Dan and Laurie and I'm tired of typing that sentence. Rorschach suddenly is sure it's the pyramid people doing all the bad but he has no fucking evidence? Dan lays the smack down and the bromance can continue.

Just like back in college...

B: We're just two dudes in a rad bromance....They're going to an underworld bar because they're looking for seedy dudes.

M: How would these dudes even know about the pyramid thing?

B: That's just how Rorschach do. Follow the money. Rorschach writes a lot of youtube conspiracy videos.

M: Dan finds out some dude helped kill Hollis.

B: Also back on Mars...ugh..his dick is moving back and forth and I know that’s realistic but ugh...It’s different when it’s just a still panel in a comic and not...this...you're made of molecular nothingness, can't you just suck it up into your body or something?

M: Back on Mars Jon goes on his seven hour long predestination trip while his dick wiggles.

B: Jon I have feelings, pls believe me.

M: You can't fucking...you can't...you can't fucking take all this dialogue and re-arrange it and make it work. It doesn't work, now it just seems empty and nobody cares. Lauree was having a total breakdown because Jon wanted HER to make him save the entire earth and now just stand there looking bored.

B: Dan and Ror have broken into Veidt's office searching for answers. Dan is an expert hacker. Creator's name was Jeff Jeff, born on the eighth of Jeff, 19-Jeffity-Jeff. So I put in 'Jeff'.

M: Do they even mention in the movie that Adrian Veidt is supposed to be like, the 'smartest man in the world'? Actually, we don't really learn anything about Veidt in this movie...What do we really know about him? He's rich? He makes plans? Possibly homosexual?

B: *Hacker voice* I'm in. Boys Folder, iconic. Veidt doesn't really keep his most secret government and corporate secrets very...well-hidden. Next to his boys, yanno.

M: Adrian had a team of like three people in the comic. His suit...

B: It has nip- It has NIPPLES!!!

M: *chokes to death laughing* I've never heard anyone so angry about nipples in my whole life.

A toast, to my suit’s nipples.

B: Did Batman and Robin teach the human race nothing???!!? Nipples on superhero costumes = a bad idea. Veidt has killed all his scientists. AND NOW - My Bubastis rant. Whhyyyyy is Bubastis in this fucking movie??????? She just shows up in this scence with NO EXPLANATION. Just, "oh hey...Ozymandias has a giant mutant lynx." and why would she even EXIST in this continuity - he doesn't need the eugenics program in this version of the story. Was he just like "I want a mutant cat, please make me one."

M: How do we still have 50 minutes of movie left??? Oh, I guess...Tales of the Black Freighter. This is still going on. Crazy guy has reached land and kills some people, believing his hometown has been taken over....who really cares. Was there really anyone clamoring for them to put this into the movie?

B: *basically says nothing for this entire bit*

M: *basically says nothing for this entire bit*

B: NO TRANSITIONS, YEAH!

M: Now we're back to have the least impassioned discussion about saving the world ever. "Jon, no, everyone will die...." That's not how this happened - that's not how ANY of this happened. Y'know what, Jon, ya big naked blue freak...

B: Laurie sounds like a teenager who's mad that her parents won't buy her a car.

M: "Do that thing you do..." This is making me irrationally angry, and I've seen this TWICE.

B: This part makes me SO mad. Irrationally mad. They fuck this up so much. We do not get any context to explain how much Laurie hated the Comedian, and why him being her father is such a big deal.

M: Also, in the comic, it was a big deal that Laurie had this realization of her own volition. It came naturally as she tried to fight back her past memories (which were not at all like this), instead of just being magically brought out by Jon.

B: They completely squander Laurie's biggest moment of emotional development, in turn squandering Jon's turning point in deciding to save the world

M: I liked the whole snowglobe bit in the comic...I thought that was like really powerful, but in this she just...throws a temper tantrum.

B: Ugly cry face. At least...I think she's crying. Might just have smelled some expired doppelganger. Jon's speech about life is also...rushed. And they leave out my favorite line. “Come, dry your eyes, for you are life - rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg.”

Acting, I think...

M: Laurie looks like she doesn't understand a single thing Jon's saying to her right now. "Jon...you're talking science again, and I don't understand it."

B: I've already complained about the inappropriate scoring. It hasn't gotten any better.

M: So Dan and Ror are heading to Antartica at record fucking speed. Rorschach tries to tell Dan how to drive the fucking ship Dan designed and built. All Along the Watchtower is playing at record loudness for no reason. Somehow they made it to Antartica in five minutes.

B: They're heeeeeere.

M: If Veidt knew they were coming why wouldn't he just open the door instead of letting them fry it with lasers? Veidt is sitting there pretending that he doesn't notice them creeping in to kill him. Suddenly we are shown that Veidt is somehow some superhuman fighter and gymnast which wasn't included in the movie at all.

B: Come on and SLAM. Hello there, sailors.

M: And now for some exposition while a vigorous swordfight is going on. Not really. Veidt is still going on and on about how smart he is and how he organized all this shit.

B: As with any mystery, it ends with the villian explaining how he did everything.

M: In the comic he literally says he's not a comic villian and wouldn't do that, but you know.

B: I could have sworn there was an alien in here....like there was something vaguely about an alien?? This is alien invader erasure and I will not tolerate it. That would break the suspension of disbelief, I guess. If Veidt wanted to make an alien and use that to unite the world.

M: Yeah that would be bonkers, especially in a world where giant naked blue men with god powers exist.

B: He is smart enough not to monologue BEFORE he pulled off his evil plan.

M: And now we see earth exploding or whatever because of Veidt and uh...suddenly we're back at the fucking animated comic.

B: The whole idea of him uniting the world against Manhattan just doesn't click for me. The alien was supposed to be neutral, to be anomalous. It also doesn't make sense that he would drive Jon to leave earth.

M: Way to pull us the fuck out of the super important ending. Slow zoom back out to the kid reading the comic who complains that it makes no sense. I feel you kid.

B: They're trying to pull everything together here with the clock and the therapist guy and everything but it was all crushed by the alien invader but now it's just Dr Manhattan's..energy force?? But they'll be able to recognize that it was Manhattans? Didn't they know that Veidt was trying to use his energy too??

M: Yes.

B: Oh it's bad. Oh no.

Bubastis’ one moment in the movie...

M: Jon and Lurie return to earth post uh..time bomb or whatever. Jon realizes the energy signature is here. He is not muddled or confused or anything though like he is in the book, so he just immediately goes to Antartica to kick Veidt's ass but then immediately goes through the intrinsic field subtractor like a fucking moron. Why would this even effect Jon? Why would the smartest man alive not figure out that it wouldn't work?

B: Laurie says things....she shoots Veidt but he catches the bullet because he's uh..just that radical. Stuff is happening.

M: For not being a comic book villian Veidt is super fucking acting like a goddamn comic book villian. Jon shows up all super huge now and he's kinda mad at Veidt. But not that mad. Veidt uses his magical remote control to show melty face Nixon demanding peace.

B: And this works because...why not?

M: Because the fucking movie has to end SOMETIME. In the comic there were hundreds of screens showing everything but you know...America. Veidt is like - this is our victory Jon and Jon SHOULD be like - you used me to blow people up dude. Fuck you.

B: Uh uh, can't do that, you'll screw up the peace! Rorschach is like fuck no, I ain't keeping this a secret.

M: I'd side with Rorschach with this tbh, Veidt is a fucking madman. He's like the fucking Governor from the Walking Dead. Ror goes out to try and tell the world but Jon kills him.

B: But of course he wouldn't do that, he told the world 35 minutes ago!

M: He literally did. Rorschach explodes and Dan gets all sad. That was my favorite Rorschach! Now Patrick Wilson's ugly cry face.

I loved that Rorschach like a Rorschach...

B: Jon decides to leave and Laurie is like but why and he's like - well I can't go back to earth NOW.

M: I don't understand why Dan is trying to kick Veidt's ass now. He already agreed to let the mass murder slide. Veidt seems unconcerned.

B: We don't get the whole nothing ever ends quote either, which was a big deal in the comic.

M: They fucked the ending hard though. Like with a chainsaw.

B: They fucked the whole movie hard. With like 17 giant dicks. This shit is way fucked.

M: So I guess Dan and Lbrbbrie go back home? And visit her mom cos you know.

B: And all the reconciliation Lrry had to do in the comic is reduced to one pathetic encounter with her mother. And it means NOTHING because we only get one little scene where Loree is SAD. The whole movie is this way. It's just a bunch of stuff that HAPPENS.

M: I don't give a shit about any of these characters. There's a lot of Lyrie and Dan kissy facing and talking about stuff that doesn't matter now.

B: Nothing ever ends but that's not..at all the way it was supposed to be done...at all.

M: WHY ISN'T THIS OVER, GOD. Straight outta the fucking comic we get the last bit where the greasy kid pulls Rorschach's fucking notebook out of the crank file to publish it so 30 years later they could write the mess that is Doomsday Clock.

B: Not EVEN gonna get into that. That's a whole other screaming fit. But that’s a comic, not a movie.

M: *AGGRESSIVE HEADBANGING TO DESOLATION ROW*

B: *AGGRESSIVE HEADBANGING TO DESOLATION ROW*

M: I don't have any closing thoughts. I'm tired of typing. I hate this movie. I hate what they do to every fucking Alan Moore venture. He deserves better. Write less deep shit Alan and they might actually do you right one day.

B: I find the existence of this movie to be a highly overrated phenomenon. I do, however, fucking love the My Chemical Romance cover of Desolation Row.

Munch and Biscuits out, yo.

[omgkatsudonplease]

For the song prompts: "Boredom and Joy" by Jets Overhead. ^_^

day 3, part 2!

and yes, NICA (numerical integrated computer array, but i’m really bad at acronyms so pls feel free to suggest alternatives) is the AI version of @nicaforov. listen,,, evil AI is out, thirsty AI is in 😉

For Nevans, the act of the forehead and fingertip touch is deeply intimate, a show of trust and affection. Here is my mind meeting yours, it says. Here are my defenses, all laid bare at your feet. I am vulnerable at your touch, my mind open to yours and yours to mine.

Kissing Yuuri is more than he could have ever imagined.

He feels a weightlessness he’d never felt before, a sense of perfect clarity and rightness as the Terran’s fingertips press into his own. Yuuri breathes into their space, his lashes fluttering in wonder, and Viktor is blown away at the sheer wealth of information that Yuuri’s mind grants him at this touch. The underlying buzz of fear and anxiety, the strength, the stubbornness, the love – everything a contradiction and yet all of it impossibly amalgamated into the wonderful being kissing him now. 

It’s everything Viktor has ever wanted to feel, and he never wants to stop feeling it, ever again. 

“Are you okay?” Yuuri asks as they pull apart. “You seem… winded.”

“It’s a good winded,” Viktor says quickly. Not entirely – just this one kiss feels like the first bite into forbidden fruit. Now that he’s had a taste, he doesn’t want to return to normal, to a life without Yuuri in it. 

Which may happen, as his time is running out. He cannot ascend the throne unbonded; Gosha has already had to hand down his place in the succession because he’s been unable to bond with any of the Candidates. The prospect of returning to Neva after this, and making a Candidate his bonded consort just to ascend the throne doesn’t appeal to him at all anymore. 

(Gosha, as someone who had thrown himself into the study of ruling the planet, had wanted the throne more than him. He would be better suited, if it weren’t for his relatively terrible empath skills.)

Viktor tears himself out from his thoughts when he feels Yuuri’s fingers against the back of his hand. Unthinking, he turns his hand over, baring his palms. Yuuri smiles, trailing designs across Viktor’s skin.

“We should get up,” Yuuri says after a moment. His room is starting to brighten, anyway; Viktor suspects the hue of the light is meant to mimic Terran daylight. “NICA, what are we doing today?”

There is a meeting at 0800 standard hours, she replies. Captain Babicheva would like to discuss the job given to the crew by Prince Viktor of the House of Nikiforov. A pause. The Prince is in your quarters with you.

“Yeah, I got that,” Yuuri says, laughing. “What are the specifics of the job?”

The location and safe return of Prince Yuri of the House of Nikiforov, replies NICA. Prince Yuri is an adopted high-empath Nevan formerly of the noble House of Plisetsky, a cadet branch of the House of Nikiforov. His powers were discovered at the age of 5, and from thereon he was adopted into the main line and is currently second in the line of succession.

“That’s not public record,” Viktor remarks, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know ship computers had access to royal documents.”

“NICA’s sort of one of my pet projects,” Yuuri admits, his cheeks flushing pink. “Mila actually put some of the Nevan stuff into her when I was coding for her information retrieval system. She said it was ‘just in case’, so…”

Captain Babicheva has eluded Nevan Searchers for three Standard years after fleeing the planet in an attempt to escape an intended bonding to Prince Alexei, NICA chips in cheerily. Prince Alexei is currently unbonded, but has an official companion, a Terran named Kat Parson – 

“NICA, you could’ve told me that before we went to Neva in the first place,” Yuuri points out.

Captain Babicheva set the security on that information to a ‘need to know’ basis. I have deduced that you need to know. 

“Thanks.” Yuuri sighs. “NICA, can you order me a coffee?”

Viktor follows him, fascinated, as they head through the halls of the ship towards the galley. The Firebird is an older model of a standard Nevan long-distance starship, able to accommodate a crew of fifty with escape pods to spare, though clearly the current crew is much smaller than that. Based on some of the patches and quirks in the panelling and the Terran-coded ship’s computer, though, it’s clear that the Firebird has gotten some modifications during her time with this crew. 

“I also put NICA on my own ship,” Yuuri adds as they pass the doors marked ‘hangar’. “In fact that’s where I do most of the tinkering; better she messes up the Vicchan instead of the Firebird, you know?”

“You named your ship after your dog?” asks Viktor, eyes wide.

“Well, her real name is the Victory,” replies Yuuri, shrugging. “I got her when we escaped an Orson raider fleet, so it felt fitting.”

Viktor gapes. Until now, he’s never heard of anyone who’s escaped an Orson raider fleet and lived to tell the tale. “How did that happen?”

“You should ask Phichit for the story, he’s got musical numbers,” replies Yuuri, as they step into the galley and he heads straight for the replicator. “Thank god for still being in orbit – I sometimes forget what real coffee tastes like when we’re out in space for ages.”

“Are you just trying to turn me off going out to space with you?” teases Viktor. “Because it’s not happening.” 

Welcome, Prince Viktor of the House of Nikiforov, the ship’s computer suddenly says. Viktor blinks at the replicator panel, now displaying a variety of menu options. We have a variety of standard Nevan cuisine to order from portside for your comfort and enjoyment.

“It’s spaceport food,” says Yuuri, already halfway through his coffee. “Nothing fancy.”

Viktor purses his lips and looks at the menu. “What if I want to try something else?” he asks. 

“There’s some meals from most Federation planets,” replies Yuuri. “I’ve been trying to perfect my mother’s katsudon recipe, but it’s strangely hard to code for breaded pork cutlets?”

“Ooh! I’d like to try that,” says Viktor. The replicator makes a whirring noise. 

“Ah, I feel like I should apologise in advance.” Yuuri laughs. “Maybe if you ever find yourself on Earth sometime you should find my mother and get the original recipe. Nothing else will ever compare.”

Half an hour later, Viktor realises that if he ever does do that, he might expire on the spot from good food, because the replicator katsudon is one of the most delicious things he’s had in his entire life. 

“Wow, this is amazing!” he exclaims. “Who made it?”

“The replicator,” says Yuuri. “Though, technically it was NICA controlling it. Again, it’s not really authentic, since she has to break down our existing food stock to create the raw ingredients, so sometimes she runs out of, like, the pork toner or the egg, or… I’m sorry. Bad time to discuss it.”

“Well, I don’t have a point of comparison, so it tastes good to me,” replies Viktor matter-of-factly. He looks up at one of the lights. “NICA, it was delicious!”

Thank you, Prince Viktor, replies NICA. I’m deeply touched.

After eating, Yuuri leads him into the wardroom where the meeting is apparently scheduled to take place. Mila is there, along with two Allegrians, the dark-skinned Terran Viktor vaguely recognises as Phichit, and Dr Minami. The ship’s doctor is sitting off to the side, though, and he waves at Viktor as they come in.

“Feeling better?” he asks. Viktor smiles and rotates his wrist upwards thrice. The Allegrian gesture works; Dr Minami smiles and repeats it.  

“Thank you for joining us today, Your Highness,” Mila says as the door closes behind Yuuri. “Phichit has intercepted transmissions from Nevan Law Enforcement about the origins of the metal you turned in last night.”

The anger. The panic. The confusion. Viktor’s stomach turns as the reports are projected for everyone to see. “The Mandalan Empire,” he breathes.

“No way,” says Phichit. 

The projection fades. Everyone looks over at the Terran, who has a hand clenched firmly against the table. “It says it’s Mandalan in origin,” one of the Allegrians points out.

“Most of the Mandalan delegation were severely injured,” Phichit points out. “They’re in no position to be stealing princes.”

“Maybe they did that and someone else took advantage of the situation?” asks Yuuri. Phichit sends him a betrayed expression.

“Seung-gil is a student, not a terrorist,” he hisses.

“Maybe not him, but one of his colleagues –”

“Which one of us spent the evening talking to them?” demands Phichit. “Chris, you can back me up. They support Prime Minister Park and the Emperor’s peace policies. They would never.”

The Allegrian named Chris bites his lip. “They were supportive of the Federation treaty,” he agrees after a moment. “But –”

“Okay, maybe it’s just my little human gut instinct, but I know they’re innocent,” snaps Phichit. “Wrong place at the wrong time. Someone stole a Mandalan bomb and set it off –”

“It was a Mandalan ship energy core,” corrects Mila. “They’re extremely volatile in contact with liquid. There’s a Mandalan ship out there with no or very little energy; those things are extremely pricey because they’re so efficient otherwise.”

“That only supports my theory!” Phichit exclaims, throwing up his hands. “Why would the Mandalans sabotage their own ship? I bet you someone did it to make it look like the Mandalans want to breach the treaty. Maybe the warmongering hawks in their Imperial Fleet paid them.”

Viktor takes the security footage of the blast, magnifying it until it fills most of the space. “Has whoever done this sent any demands?” he asks.

“Not that the Nevan Police know of,” replies Mila. “While they search planetside, we’ll check the logs at the spaceport. Chances are, whoever did this would want to get out of Nevan territory as soon as possible, especially if they’re also responsible for the explosion.”

“I think I know who did it,” says Chris suddenly, holding up his commlink. Viktor only catches a glimpse of a conversation hovering above the commlink before Chris dismisses it. “Seung-gil texted me, says he just got discharged from the hospital but can’t find his ship anywhere.”

A pause. “You think… no way.” Phichit shakes his head.

Chris nods. “Whoever stole Seung-gil’s ship probably has the Prince, too.”

[spottingfakenews]

Fake News: A Documentation

During these days, finding factual news is hard because of the existence of fake news which can be found in any sites as long as you have internet access. Fake News is news that is not true and intentionally misinforms the readers. Sometimes fake news creates panic among the readers too. Stories are also made for different wrong purposes. Fake News or stories influence people’s views, push different political agendas, and sometimes confuse the readers that can often be a profitable business for people who publish articles online. Fake news can be spotted in different platforms, may it be political, medical, showbiz, academe, entertainment and sports. 

This blog will be use as a compilation of Philippine-based fake news which gave a huge impact to the country.

Politics

This is an article which circulated again last August 7, 2020 about DILG Secretary Eduardo Año statement about the investigation of tricycle back rides. It circulated the second time wherein it was not the DILG’s current policy. This fake news caused confusion to the citizens whether what guidelines to follow about back rides.

Multiple Facebook postings have been shared with an image attributed to the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA) that displays a bogus remark from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. According to the image, Duterte stated that the government has finished delivering cash relief to those impacted by the new coronavirus outbreak. The graphic, however, has been doctored; it has been modified to incorporate the alleged Duterte quotation, and the PNA has disowned it. On April 6, 2020, the graphic was shared on Facebook.

The accusation has been making the rounds on social media, with one post containing an image of Robredo and the caption "Remember her promise." If none of the eight diretso wins the election, she will resign as vice president. Do you believe she will keep her word?” The assertion appears to be based on an article published on May 7, 2019 by The Adobo Chronicles. According to CrowdTangle, the story has been shared by 44 Facebook groups and pages, resulting in 6,945 total interactions from 1,546,053 combined followers. In a tweet on May 15, the Vice-President had already disputed the report.

Medical

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) searched three warehouses in Meycauayan City, Bulacan, allegedly collecting phony cigarettes, bags of raw materials for cigarette production, false Bureau of Internal Revenue tax stamps, shredded plastics, and obsolete cigarette-making machines, according to the story. The article was accompanied by a video titled "P500-M Fake Cigarettes Raided by BOC in Bulacan." The Department of Health has not issued any warnings about the coronavirus being transmitted through fake cigarettes or that it has reached the Philippines.

According to the Department of Health and reports from local government units in Pampanga, the first ever mutated Cov-2 illnesses were discovered in Sta. Rita town on Monday, January 4, 2021, and there are now three verified instances of the new Covid-19 variety. "The DOH stated one is still hospitalized to a certain hospital facility," according to the report.

The footage was shared on April 14 by the Facebook page RUDY Baldwin and the YouTube channel NivLogs TV. Claim Check, a Facebook monitoring program, identified these postings for verification.

“PLS SHARE THE GOOD NEWS,” the Facebook page said in the description of the post. ANTIVIRAL INJECTION FABUNAN APPROVED na (already).” In the meanwhile, the YouTube channel's description reads, "APPROVED NA NI PRES. DUTERTE, , LOCKDOWN ILILIFT NA (FAI authorized by President Duterte). The lockdown has been removed.)

Academe

These are the three top fake news happened in the academe but we will focus more about the issue about DepEd announcing Grade 13. 

The Department of Education, through Education Secretary Leonor Briones, has announced the addition of a Grade 13 course. Kyle Santelices made the allegation on Facebook on April 19, posting what seems to be a screenshot of a news item showing Briones. The snapshot includes the designations "live" and "breaking news," as well as the title "Department of Education announces Grade 13."

The Department of Education has not announced the existence of a Grade 13, and Briones has not said the phrase attributed to her.The watermark on the claimed screenshot of a news article reads "breakyournews.com." The website is a meme generator that allows users to change the headline, ticker, and picture in a news report template.

Sports

Fake news about the Philippine Sports did a great impact last 2019 because the Philippines hosted for the SEA Games 2019. The most trending fake news at that time was the Photo of Philippine flag used as tablecloth 'in SEA Games 2019' event. 

During the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games 2019, a photo of the Philippine flag being used as a tablecloth for catering services was allegedly shot. “But wait, there's more,” reads the description of the post, which is ascribed to journalist Ricky Velasco in the screenshots. This is for all the SEA Games 2019 mishaps. Athletes who are taking part in the competition are fed. But using our flag as a mantle for a tablecloth? It's worth noting that the flag even reaches the ground.”

The photographs were not taken during any of the SEA Games activities. According to Papina, they were taken in 2015 during a "undisclosed occasion." Papina informed Rappler in a Facebook message that the photo was taken from a November 2015 post by a friend. He claimed, "From what I gathered from my friend's post, it happened in 2015 at an unidentified location."

Entertainment/Showbiz

Fake news in showbiz can sometimes be intentional by bashers or people who wants to take down a certain personality. The most recent fake news in showbiz was the act of junk to the ABS-CBN’s franchise renewal. 

According to YouTube channel Showbiz Fanaticz, the Supreme Court (SC) has already thrown out ABS-franchise CBN's renewal. The channel uploaded a video on Wednesday, July 8, titled: “BREAKING NEWS: KORTE IBINASURA NA ang FRANCHISE Renewal ng ABS-CBN| LEAKED VOTE DOCUMENTS INILABAS!!  (Breaking news: ABS-franchise CBN's renewal has been rejected by the court.) Documents from the vote have been leaked!) ”

The renewal of legislative franchises is decided by Congress, not the Supreme Court, under Republic Act No. 7925, or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act. As of this writing, ABS-request CBN's for a temporary restraining order against the National Telecommunications Commission's (NTC) cease and desist order is still ongoing before the High Court. On Monday, July 13, the Supreme Court will begin discussion on the petition.The quo warranto suit brought by Solicitor General Jose Calida against ABS-CBN was also just dismissed by the High Court on June 23. Furthermore, Showbiz Fanaticz's video made no mention of the SC. The video merely mentioned a source from the Manila Times that purportedly included leaked records indicating congressmen's votes on the ABS-CBN franchise renewal issue.

In conclusion, in this world of technology wherein your fate depends on the tip of your fingers, we should be aware of all the things that happens in our surroundings and spotting fake news is one. We should be a critical thinker when finding information and gathering data most especially with important news. We should always fact check and thorough when reading articles online. Let us always think before we click!

[stellar-0]

Anuchard: devlog ~02 - changes

Happy New Year 2018!

a new year, and a second devlog! it’s been a while, but i wanted to do this more often actually so i don’t have to summarize so much stuff. 

short brief if you’re feelin’ lazy to browse the first one, it’s a roguelike dungeon crawling + boss-feeding game + action combat. (???)

“so this is a dungeon crawling action game, and you have beat monsters in the room to proceed, usually we got the boss to kill in the end of the floor, but in Anuchard, we feed the boss to win. yes the boss need to be FED”. 

pls click “Keep reading” to continue! (just had to shorten posts so it doesn’t flood tumblr’s dashboard/ reblogs)

those lines were used to describe our project to people playing our demo at conventions. 

on last year’s showcase, we could only provide the combat part of the game (which has no procedural system yet), people said they’re mostly interested in... grass cleaning orz. and lot of people said the movement’s too heavy or rigid. well it was our first intention to make the weapon feels heavy, but i realized it was not intuitive enough to understand our vision (the frame count is low, the weapon doesn’t look heavy). lot of them even asked if the MC’s weapon is a broom, haha.

^this was a raw footage video we had submitted to Bitsummit5, didn’t get selected tho^ it has been exactly one year.

we then thought about how our project doesn’t have any unique selling point. then Rico, had inspired by clea’s interest on making non-violent or non-competitive games, finally proposed the idea of Boss feeding. we cook for the Boss to win them, that’s it! 

the time we mentioned about planting, cooking and feeding the boss to our random audience (and one senpai in Bitsummit5) i noticed a slight smile of curiousity and interest. i think “oh! this might be our key gimmick.”

the feeding mechanic’s not tested yet so... let’s wait a bit more.

we’ve been on and off, and some burnouts, scheduling, design, financial problems and stuff. 

our team is still the same from the start; 3 persons. Me (Laz) on graphic, Rico on code and clea on audio. we were trying to pull this off with smaller team than the usual. also were trying to make it quick, but turns out rather impossible because we’re inexperienced to deliver some new things we never make (bad pre-production phase, duh).

Discarded or Suspended Features

overall we’ve been progressing and through numerous design changes, some interesting stuff are deleted too.

here are some review worthy list of canceled or suspended features:

Bad Ailments

there was an enemy that leaves trails that slow player. it was implemented, and had planned to make poison too. but we decided to store that, and instead, we put more types of enemy. speaking of enemy types, here are the current list:

but i’ll cover about enemies next time.

Seed and Dungeon Planting

if you have watched the first video, there was a moment when the player is able to plant a temporary assisting “obstacle” inside the Dungeon, you get Seed and plant it right away-- or we save it later for planting in the Orchard (hometown). 

discarded for now along with the Seed system, since we need to simplify things.

Obstacle: Bomb

was actually a great tool, but for a tight battle, the control is still too complicated. we might reuse the bomb mechanic for enemy tho.

Garen Charge Attack (OP)

(League player anyone?) this was most satisfying OP move. most of the players on showcase day were overusing this move to clear the levels. discarded because we need to nerf MC’s base ability, because we need to implement food buff.

Phonecall Food Ordering

order food from the Orchard. this might be the latest thing got discarded. (tumblr can’t accept more video so i got GIF for ya)

discarded because now we’ll bring the foods to Dungeon ourselves.

extra: fun phonecall sprites XD

that’s all for now. please do wish me discipline and prosperity to write blogs more regularly.

check out other posts about Anuchard!

useful links:

dev hashtag on twitter: #anuchard

twitter: @stellarnull 

tumblr blog: @stellar-0

Rico’s twitter: @ricolemba

clea’s twitter: @clealeshlick

my twitter: @lazcht

Ciao!

~ @lazcht