#If we as an audience can imagine what a Narrator might look like - to the best of our abilities - I don't see why Stanley wouldn't

[sysig]

Silly goofy StanNarrator (Patreon)

[3hks]

How to Write REALISTIC and SMOOTH Dialogue

In a story, dialogue is quite important, it helps the readers paint a picture of what's happening and the characters themselves. However, it can be difficult to avoid the unnaturalness and choppiness that comes with a lack of experience. But luckily, I have put together A LOT of advice on how you can get over that rockiness and improve!

*** KEEPING YOUR DIALOGUE REALISTIC, AND PACING ***

>> Keep your characters in character:

Dialogue is a remarkably quick way for readers to determine your character's personality. Thus, you want their speech patterns to remain fairly consistent so the audience won't get confused. If your character is more serious, then they will use less slang and perhaps a more impressive vocabulary. If your character is more relaxed, they will use more slang and compress the words. (such as "dunno," "kay," "y'know," etc.)

Basically, you want their tone to match their traits so the way that they talk is more realistic and personlized to themselves. If the way all your characters speak is the same, there's something wrong. A strong tip is to put yourself in your character's shoes and imagine how they would respond!

>> Take the situation into consideration:

This is another part of keeping your characters in, well, character. Different emotional situations will have a different effect on separate people, so make sure that you have an idea of how your character will act during stressful, irritating, and sad times.

If your character is normally cold, they will struggle if it comes to comforting other people because they have less experience in that field.

>> Don't take too long with their words:

Unlike when narrating something, most people talk just to get the idea across. They will be more specific and quicker with what they say. (This excludes any character who likes to talk a lot.) Unless it's on purpose, they won't dance around the topic. Think of when you casually chat with your friends; you're pretty unlikely to use certain words and/or phrases that might be common to use while narrating.

If you want to explain something complicated, instead of writing out a paragraph of just one person talking, use a question-and-answer prompt! This is where another character continuously asks related questions that get answered by another person, so you can indirectly reveal your explanation.

*** HOW TO WRITE A SMOOTHER CONVERSATION AND DIALOGUE TAGS***

>> Having a variety of dialogue tags:

This is a pretty basic thing to look out for if you're new to writing conversations. Using words like "said," every other sentence can easily make it feel choppy and robotic. Instead, use words like "murmured," "smirked," etc. to paint some emotion into their words. Additionally, vary the location of the dialogue tags! They don't all have to go after the statement, you can include something in the beginning or even the middle, too!

Examples:

Beginning - She tilted her head, "What are you talking about?"

Middle - "Oh," he blinked, "I actually never thought about that."

End - "Wait up!" She exclaimed loudly, waving her hands around.

>> Using no dialogue tags to create a smooth conversation:

Having too many tags can also overwhelm your reader--remember, sentence variety is a crucial part of writing--so you can always drop them if they're unneeded. This applies when your characters (two is the suggested amount) are talking back and forth in a pattern straightforward enough for the reader to understand who's talking without it having to be labeled.

Dropping dialogue tags in these moments can create a smoother atmosphere during the conversation because the reader only has to focus on the talking present.

*** USING SLANG, STUTTERS, FILLER WORDS, AND PAUSES ***

Human speech is often not perfect; when talking, we often make mistakes such as filler words, grammatically incorrect phrases, etc. Hence, for more natural-sounding dialogue, it's important to incorporate some of these.

>> Pauses and stutters:

When reading dialogue, we read it at a steady pace unless it's written otherwise. However, that steady pace can soon get too robotic and too smooth. Luckily, there are several ways to change this! You can use dialogue tags, (ex: she quickly spoke) commas, and ellipsis (...). These are often integrated when the character is hesitant, nervous, answering something, or when they need to admit something. The same idea applies to stutters--they're mainly used to demonstrate anxiousness, which can be found in varying situations.

>> Filler words and slang:

Filler words can really just be used where you see fit. They may be used in the situations I previously mentioned (because it shows someone stumbling over their words) but it's ultimately up to you!

Slang, just like everything else, should not be used too often, or it will seem forced and exaggerated. The point is to sound natural, and increasing amounts of repetitiveness can ruin it. It's also important to remember that in real life, our conversations move slower; when someone speaks, another person usually doesn't respond quite literally, right after. However, in writing, dialogue can actually often seem that way, which is why using tags and these imperfections of speech is pivotal for building a realistic conversation!

*** CONCLUSION ***

Lastly, a key point when writing dialogue is to ALWAYS read the conversations! Whether it be in your head or out loud, it can often help you catch anything that seems off! Additionally, like I mentioned at the very beginning, write dialogue from your character's perspective! Imagine yourself as them and how they/you would talk. Try to keep your dialogue tags, sentences, and word use varied to create a natural conversation!

If you were struggling before, I hope that this (extra) long guide was able to really offer you some insight and useful tips! If you read this far, thank you!

Happy writing~

3hks <3

[chicxxonaa]

I made another Satosugu angst. This one was made cause of a fanart I saw on instagram and because my friend gave me the idea. Really small but hope you like it 🙏🏻

CW: angst, MENTIONS OF CUTTING (narrator talks about cutting open a person and talks of ribs so if you’re a little queasy on it I understand.), Gojo hates dating and can’t cope (he’s so real.)

I fucking hate dating.

…

I hate everything that involves seeing other people on a screen like products on a television where I can flip the channel and see what actually catches my eye.

It so mundane, so superficial.

My six eyes don’t help much either.

When I do find someone who I think might serve as a useful distraction from everything, I see who they are with two blinks and smile on their face. They amount to nothing but cheap talks about who they are, they’re favorite foods, their career, their dreams. Such mundane, boring, stupid shit.

But I stay anyways. Because I have nothing else better to do.

Better than thinking about you anyways.

..

The thought of you haunts my every waking moment like a lucid dream that just won’t seem to remove me from its iron grasp.

I hate talking to all of these people. I hate that they can even think about looking at me. If I could I’d force them to blindfold themselves around me, because I won’t dare another person look at me the way you did before.

I don’t hold hands, I don’t say goodbyes. If I kiss them it’s only because I wanna find your taste within their own body. I wanna find that same high over and over again until it’s enough to make me forget that you’re gone.

I sleep with them, explore every inch and every curve and edge on their bodies, just to see if it can match yours. The only thing that goes on in my mind when I’m a top another is of you. They don’t touch me the way you did. They could never amount to such a high honor.

I’m never satisfied, but I’m still looking for you in every corner of a person I call “my date.”

…

God, I fucking hate what you’ve done to me.

I hate that when I turn on my phone to see a new message of any person that I managed to swipe right on, it’s not yours.

I hate that when I’m alone with myself, I try to imagine your hands on me. As if you were the one making me feel good like you used to. Like how you made me feel like I was above the clouds and in the benevolent kingdom of heaven.

I hate their voices, too high or too low. You had a pitch that was just right for me. An orchestra and everyone else was an audience.

I hate their skin, too dry or too oily.

I hate their hair, unkept and ugly.

I hate their eyes. Their eyes looking at me like I’m the one. Eyes as dull and common as pearls.

But the thing I hate the most is their fabricated persona that they place when they even look my direction. I pierce right through them like a microscope and I can sense how hollow, how agitating of an ego they have so much so that if I had the chance I’d crush them with the knowledge of how insignificant they are to me. Because they will never be where I am. They’re ants on a hill, and I’m their exterminator.

But I stay cause I can’t stand the silence of my life.

There will never be another muse, another stimulant, another being away from this vile place we call earth that will ever amount to you. Had I had the chance I wish I could split you down the middle and crawl my way into your body to make a nest in your ribs. I want to rip you open the same way you did to me.

I want to become your plague in which you never find a cure for.

…

Is this how you felt Suguru?

Did you feel this enclosed around the other’s?

Around me?

Why couldn’t you fucking warn me it would be this hard without you?

…

[missbunnybunny]

- until death do us part-

Part 2 of Hide & Seek

Minors do not interact!

CWs: Dark Humor, Age gaps, simping, crude Humor, cursing, author-san giving widow trauma, TRAUMA, gore, injuries, THIS IS A LONG ASS READING, might forget some, but if I do lmk. If ya want me to continue making these stories, just tell me. Well let’s get on to the madness, shall we?

A/N: I post Irregularly sense college is beating my ass and sometimes I will forget to post. So for everyone that is staying with me THANK YOU🙇🏽‍♀️.

People always have 2 ways of waking up from a nap. 1. Wake up and cover yourself again with the blanket because you can’t give 2 fucks about waking up early. 2. Wake up like a zombie until you get coffee and of you go.

But waking up to the doc twisting your ankle into place was not one of those wake up calls.

So, as the calm and rational person you were, you screamed bloody murder. Clawing and trashing trying to run away, but the doc saw this coming, so she told Ghost to hold you.

After the agony was done, the doc gave a nod of approval, “ There, that should do it. Take a rest for a month or so, Okey, Widow?”

You could only nod, Ghost asked if that was all. To which the doc respond with a “Yup”. Ghost helps you up, helping you get to the other’s. The silence was broken by a small and hoarse voice “ I hate you”. Ghost responded with an “ I know, sorry, kid.” For the short walk, widow gave ghost the silent treatment.

“You could have woke me up and told me. Can you imagine how traumatic that was?!” Widow told ghost as they were making there way to the briefing table.

Gaz “ What wrong, sis? You look sour.” You hopped over to Gaz and like a lil kid told him “ ask the Ghost over there.” Pouting and hugging him like a child, honestly, it looks like a child complaining to their mother.

Price asked “ Ghost, what happened to widow?” Ghost looked at price and said “ she woke up to the doc twisting her ankle into place. She was told to rest for a month or so.” Priced turned around and looked at widow, “ widow it was for your own good, kid. You can’t hate him forever.”

“Fine” widow said, Walking( hopping ) over to ghost and asking the taller man to get to her eye level. “ you now what I want, if ya get it I’ll forgive ya. Si no te mato.( if not I’ll kill ya.)” widow threatened.

Without a single word goes, turned around, and left the base to quien save donde( who knows where). Everyone was just an audience to the whole ghost and widow show.

“Ya wanna take a sit lass?” Soap asked. Widow nodded and took the sit next to soap and gaz. Price cleared his throat and said “ for the mean time we don’t have any missions, so you can take it easy.”

- one hour later ( SpongeBob narrator voice)-

“ Can someone help me back to my room, I wanna change” Widow said. Everyone looked at the widow, they blinked, and they looked at each other.

Gaz and soap got a shit eating grin, Price realized what they were up to and shook his head. Soap said “ Sorry, lass.” Smiling, Gaz shook his head negatively “ you could ask König to help ya.”

The said man was drinking his coffee while sitting on the couch, the couch looked like a small chair compared to his bigger frame. Hopping over to the tall man, whose attention is now fully on you.

Sheepishly widow says “ König could you please help me to my room.” Widow sounded like a small nervous kid asking their parent for permission. König responded to widows request with a nod.

After König helped( more like carried) widow to her courtiers, he waited outside the door while widow got changed.

Widow was almost done changing, but there was only one small problem, she couldn’t put on her shorts properly. The cast on her leg that kept her ankle in place was no help in the matter.

So with a red face and some courage she made her way to the door. Slowly opening her door widow looked around until she found the tall man. Softly calling out to König “ König could you please help me.”

König looked at the small woman and asked her “ something the matter?” Widow nodded and told König embarrassedly in a small voice“ I can’t put my shorts on.”

König asked just to make sure he heard widow correctly “ You want my help, Maus?” Widow nodded and slowly opened her door, moving away so the taller man could enter.

To say that widow was embarrassed was an understatement, she wanted to be taken out by a sniper so fast right now.

Sure, widow and König didn’t even have a full 24 hours of meeting each other, and now their in this predicament. The shirt Widow was wearing was big enough on her( cuz she stole it from Ghost), so that helped a little.

She handed the shorts over to König “ sorry” widow said, looking away from him. König said “it’s ok” he helped Widow put her shorts on. Widow said “thank you” as she and König made their way to the mess hall.

When they arrived the resident Ghost was their with a plastic bag.

He helped widow to a seat and handed her the bag. She opened the bag and immediately went to hug the man to her side, almost tackling him to the ground. “ Thank you, thank you. Te perdono( I forgive you)”.

Everyone laughed as a very happy widow opened the bag. She pulled a container with her favorite food, lasagna, and a can of soda.

Take notes everyone if you have a problem with widow you might just solve them with food. Everyone watched in amusement as widow happily opened the container hold her delicious goodness captive.

Eating and winging her legs like the happiest girl ever. Price asked “ So is Ghost forgive then?” With cheeks full like a chipmunk widow  happily nodded in her head. König watched in amusement as ghost help clean up widow.

After widow was done enjoying her food, she became sleepy. Ghost noticed and told her “ Come on, time for bed” You sleepily nodded and held your arms out.

For then next couple of weeks everyone helped widow get by and babysat her from getting herself into any trouble, like breaking or twisting another of her body parts.

König and Ghost where the once’s helping her the most. Sometimes, widow would get pouty cuz she couldn’t go out on missions with the boys.

- one month later-

Today was the day the cast was coming off. Everyone and their mother could tell that the resident spider was very happy to have her leg back. König came with widow to get her cast off after everything was set and done.

Widow was jumping of the walls, König watched in both amazement and amusement as to why widow had so much energy in her.

“ Slow down, little Maus.” König told the hyperactive spider. The said spider stopped and did as the taller man said, “ Fine, mi rey( my king)”.

That didn’t last long because once’s she saw soap, she jumped at him, “ Hi, jabón (🧼) y Fantasma ( and ghost) where is he?” “ hey, slow down, would ya lass? He’s coming don’t worry.” Soap said.

After widow had proceeded to violently assault everyone with her hugs, she happily said that in 2 weeks, she could go on missions again.

Soup pulled widow to the side and asked her “ sooo, how are you and König doing?” Widow froze, shocked by the question. “ huh? What cha mean?” Widow asked.

“ ya know, his been following you like a lost puppy. If he had a tail it be wagging.” Soup said. “ I don’t think he likes me.” You told him sheepishly. “ girl if you don’t see the signs, I am gonna wack ya.”

“ ta bien( okey) why do you think he likes me.” You said to soup sulking. “ Every time you walk in a room, his eyes follow you, and you, when you talk to him, he speaks. He verily says a word.” Soup ranted to an oblivious widow.

After some thought, the widow was starting to see the light. Every time she would call him mi Rey( my king), it was like he was lighting up.

And every time he would call me Maus( mouse), her face could heat up just by imagining him calling her that. Soup noticed that widows face was getting red by the second and teasingly nudged her. “ See, I told ya.”

“Don’t tell the other’s please, Dios ( god) this is so embarrassing”. “ don’t worry your secrets safe with me.” This was gonna be a long day/life for poor widow.

After the talk you had with soup, you started to see what he was talking about. Evertime widow would do something stupid, and almost got hurt könig ws there to stop her.

If Widow was hungry and goes to the kitchen könig was there making a plate for the two of you, könig was a lovable giant.

Everyone slowly stared to take notice of the way König was around widow. It was like watching a beast being tamed by his beauty. The second widow left he turned back to his quiet, scary, locked self.

141 would do anything for the joyful widow. They would kill for her just to make sure she was safe. König would do the same and even more.

- meeting-

“ all right, we have a mission from the higher ups. We gonna take down a drug cartel in Guadalajara, Mexico.” Price explained to the team.

As everyone listened and took note on the strategies being told, discussing what what to do and some precautions. After some hours of deliberations, the plan was set. Ghost and soap would be in the front lines, killing of the targets.

König and captain price on the second line, right behind ghost and price. Widow and Gaz on sniper duty, clearing off the dangers to their teammates.

“alright, we’re set. Everyone get some rest, we gonna have a long day tomorrow. You are all dismissed.” Captain price said to the team.Everyone packed up their note/paper and went off to their respected rooms.

The morning came and everyone was hurled off into the UH-60A/L Black Hawk Helicopter. Widow was still so sleepy and groggy that she walked like a drunk person. “ odió las malditas mañana, quiero mi cama.( i hate the fucking mornings, I want my bed.)”

widow said pissed off. Ghost, who was right next to her said “ English widow, you know we can’t bloody understand you when you are speaking, Spanish.”

Widow, said “ well, let me translate why in the bloody fucking hell are we up at one in the morning? I want to go back to bed. Better??”. Ghost responded to widows, sarcasm, and sass with a “ much better.” 

After some hours of traveling you finally made it to Mexico. Price went over the plan one more time to make sure everyone was in place with the plan. Everyone checked their gear and ammunition, adding extra or making sure every lil detail was in place.

- mission-

“3…2…1 move out” price said over the earpiece. The boys mobilized and eliminated their targets. Gaz and Widow were taking out the incoming targets and other snipers.

Ghost and soup called clear over the earpiece. König and captain price mobilized right behind ghost and soap. The mission was going well for the first part.

But this is a battle, and in battle, there are 2 ways it could go, 1.Everything goes well or 2. Nothing goes well, and casualties will happen.

Being a sniper has ups and downs, you can’t move from your spot or you risk being shot. A sniper needs to be very focused, any wrong moves, and you might get your teammates killed. 

The building was cleared, they the boys. The cartel leader was eliminated, and everyone in the building was taken out.

What everyone didn’t realize was that the cartel members called for backup, and they were on their way faster than expected. ghost called over the line “ Bloody hell, they called for backup. Everyone retreat, the mission is done.”

Everyone responded with a “ Rodger that” when you pressed your line to respond, before you could even speak, everyone heard your bloody screams and struggles.“ LET ME GOOO!!! NOOO!!!”

along with more screams from you. Ghost called over the line “ WIDOW!! Can you hear me. SAY SOMETHING! WIDOW!”. Everyone was frozen as they heard you struggling over the line than at you muffled screams, until their was silence…..

A voice could be heard “ finally the fucking puta(bitch) fell asleep” your capture said in annoyance. Until another voice came over the line “Shush, looks like she got an earpiece on her Hermanó(brother).”

Then there was truly an agonizing silence… Widow had been taken hostage.....Panic was in state.They had to find widow before the worst could happen to her.

-Windows POV-

You really get the worst wake-up calls in the world! You woke up tied up to a chair, cold water dripping from your face to your whole body. “ wey, despierta princesa.( hey, wake-up princess)” the unknown man said.

You woke up, the first thing you told them was “ desgraciado fue que tu mamá, no te enseñó modales( fucker, didn’t your mom teach you manners).” You angrily spatted to your captures.

They laughed at your outburst, “ woah there tigresa( tiger), you got some guts. Me gusta( i like it)”. When you really looked at your surroundings, you noticed that the only things in the room was, you and your captives.

The room had no windows, just the door. While you were distracted looking around you, you felt a strong and harsh smack on your face. “look at me when am talking to you, bitch”.

You spit on his face, you could taste the metallic taste of blood in your mouth. You felt a sharp pain in your thigh, one of the man had stabbed you.

You screamed in pain, feeling your blood trickle down your leg.“ That will make you talk, no Crees tigresa( don’t you think tiger)”.

You laughed dryly “ kiss my ass, you ugly fuck”. Your stubbornness only got you pistol whipped on the side of the head. the strong blow was enough to knock you a few inches back.

They kept asking you questions and you kept giving them cocky resources. Yeah, being stubborn wasn't the best thing when you're being tortured.

You don’t remember how long the torture went on for. The blood soaked your restraints. It looked like a crime scene with all the blood. You could have been in that room for hours even days, with no sunlight and no way of telling time you just felt hopeless..

The man had left you just a while ago, you struggled and wiggled. After much pain and struggle you finally slipped your hands from the tight ropes. Your skin felt like it was on fire, and you could imagine that your skin was pilling off you wrists.

You managed to untie your feet, and your left thigh was numb from the stab wound. Your right arm had a gun shoot, and your head was pounding and spinning.

Blood was trickling down every wound you had from your torture,it was like a horror movie scene from bloody Mary. You became a bloody mess, struggling to stay alive.

Trying to stand up and walk was like trying to learn how to walk again, like a newborn. You heard footsteps and talking, you could tell the man were back. Their voices were engraved in your mind. You grabbed the chair and waited for one of the men to come in.

The door opened, the man entered the room, he closed the door behind him and turned the light on. The moment the lights were on, you ran at him, and as strongly as possible, you hit him on the head.

The man crumbled to his knees and fell face-first on the floor. Quickly, you disarmed him, and after you took his weapons for yourself, you tied him up.

Adrenaline was on a hell of a drug, you shoot your torture. They didn't give you mercy so why should you, you heard running footsteps.

A door slamming open, you second capture yelled “ damn it, Rodrigo your not supposed to kill her you-” * Bang* he fell to his knees, the gun shoot in his leg preventing him from standing.

“que mierda, estás loca( what the shit, are you insane)”. you laughed, you didn’t know that was going on anymore.

He stood up and pulled his gun, he shot you on the side. The adrenaline was wearing off, you shoot him. Soon he fell to the ground and with shaky hands you went to lean on the wall.

Making your way to a corner, you vision was becoming messy. Everything was swirling, black and white spots, your only thought wasn’t am I going to die here.

No, it was “I miss, my boys” Finally, it was all was hitting you. Bloody tears streamed down your face, and your breathing was becoming Eratic.

You heard loud running step’s coming your way. You held your knees close to your chest in the fetal position. Looking at the door the best you could, you saw a shadow enter the doorway.

You sank more into the corner and softly cried “ I don’t wanna die here. I don’t wanna be alone.” The figure crouched in front of you, in a small voice the person said “ it’s alright, Maus.”

You looked around and held your hand out, “ König? Is that you, where are you?” He held your hand close to his face and said “am right here, Maus.”

you cried even harder when you realized it was not a hallucination, König was here, your boys where here!. König pulled away from you and wiped you tears away, he couldn’t tell if your crying blood or if was blood from your head wound.

Soon, Ghost came into the room as König was helping you get up. “ Bloody hell, König you really did a number here.” Ghost said. König shook his head and said “ it wasn’t me,it was widow”.

Blood loss was getting the better of you, so as you felt your consciousness slip away from you, you smiled. “ thank you for coming to get..me…” you passed out into König’s arms.

Everything moved so fast, ghost yelling for the doc. Price telling the pilot to get it moving. Everything was chaos, the doc patched you up and started a blood transfusion.

When the chopper arrived on the base, you were taken in for surgery. Ghost and König did an incident report on what they saw in that room. They explained the horror scene and the fact that widow had killed her captures.

There was a newfound respect for widow in the base. She was strong and stubborn, but overall, she was alive.

A week has passed, and you had yet to wake up. To much trauma and exhaustion took a toll on your body. Everyone visited your room anytime they could so they could check up on you, König came to visit you often.

He would ask for you to wake up, that everyone missed you, and so did he. “ Wake up soon, widow, I’ll come back later, okay?” König said as he walked over to the door.

A small hoarse voice called out to him “ König? Are you there?” König walked over to your bedside. He helped you sit up. “ Thanks, everything hurts but, I’ll be okay. ” You told him with a small smile.

The doc came in and did a check upon you. She called the rest of the time. All of you caught up with each other and made some jokes. After everyone left, you and König were alone again.

“ I missed you, mi Rey(my king)” you said. König hummed, agreeing with you “ me too, little Maus”. “Hey, König.” You called after some silence. “ Yes?” He responded.

“Thank you for coming. I was really scared of……dying alone” you told him quietly. König laughed a beautiful sound “ I would do anything for you, my little Maus” he would even die by your side if it made you happy.

______________________________________________________________________________

Girl widow am sorry 😭 don’t kill me. Well until next time everyone. Again thank you for sticking with me and my crazy ass uploading schedule. Don’t kill me for doing this to widow.

Tag list:@konig-breedme

[jeannereames]

There is this question/idea that has always kinda fascinated me and I wanted an opinion of a historian on this.

Imagine someone wanted to makes a tv series/movie about a historical person/event/time period/..., and they wanted to make it as historically accurate as possible while still keeping it interesting and captivating enough for modern, non-historian audiances. I feel like getting the costumes, events and characters 99% historically correct can be possible. However one thing might be a lot more difficult: choosing what language(s) to use.

Do you go for

A) The actual historical languages that were used (but nobody speaks anymore today). Which would be both the hardest to implement and to reach modern audiences.

B) The modern versions of the historical languages. Which would be easier and more accessible but still a bit limiting.

C) Just do it in English. Which is the least accurate but might reach the widest audience.

Which one would you recommend and which one would you personally prefer (if these are not the same)?

Several issues face anybody writing historical novels, or making films. I’ve talked about some of these in the following posts:

Writing Historical Fiction (Well): a 5-part series that discusses the challenges and pitfalls of historical fiction. This link takes you to part 1 with subsequent parts linked within.

A shorter post on common ways to approach historicals in film (or narration).

What (I think) needs to be shown about Alexander in an documentary and/or historical film to approach realism. I talk here about some of the attendant issues especially for making a film.

 Now, to your comment about costumes and events 99% accurate…you’d face two very real hurdles:

Funding…that was possibly the #1 problem for the Netflix docudrama. They didn’t have anywhere near the funding they really needed. Just because Netflix funded it, that didn’t make it “big budget.”

Not confusing your audience with a lot of unfamiliar names and seemingly repeating events. It would require judicious “weeding.”

Oliver Stone’s Alexander did quite well, for the most part, on costuming and sets. Yet it failed for two big reasons. First, he couldn’t resist throwing in too much, and a repetitive script, even while skipping material necessary to help an audience understand why the army followed Alexander to the ends of the earth. Second, he didn’t understand the basic mindset of the ancient world, and so imposed a bunch of modern ideas and attitudes. I wrote a fairly in-depth review not long after it came out. It’s still up on my website.

As for languages…

It would be an enormous mistake to try to use ancient Greek, or rather Attic and Doric Greek, Old Persian, Aramaic, Demotic Coptic, Prakrit, eastern Akkadian … etc., etc. That’s what you’re looking at. First, finding somebody able to write a script in all those languages is impossible. No single person reads them all, even among historians. We specialize for a reason. You’d be paying multiple experts to write a script that nobody living could understand—and would take a lot of coaching for the actors even to pronounce properly. Additionally, you’d narrow your audience to those willing to put up with subtitles.

The founding-of-Rome Italian TV series Romulus used Latin. This worked only because it was one language and was marketed originally to an Italian audience. Latin isn’t Italian by a long shot, but it wasn’t wholly unfamiliar in sound. That said, it was more of an “art film” type. I (an ancient historian) quit watching it after the second episode because it was too much work, tbh. (It was also a lot bloodier than I was in the mood for, in the midst of Covid.)

But if you want to see a (good) example of what you’re suggesting, that’s one. Another, similar, is The Fast Runner, which is entirely written and performed in Inuktitut, an Alaskan language (albeit not ancient), and set in the mythical past. Despite its awards, it’s virtually unknown outside indigenous and art-film circles. I did watch all of that one (and liked it), but it was a single movie, not a series.

(Yes, I’m aware of Apocalypto, but I consider that more an example of why you don’t make a film in a language people can’t understand. It’s in Yacatec Mayan, which is actually modern. In that, it’s not unlike the Inuktitut in The Fast Runner, but the latter works better, imo.)

If you want to make a movie that will be watched and understood by non-specialist, non-art-house audiences, you will have to use English (or whatever language of the country it’s being marketed to). And you’ll need to think some about dialogue. How “archaic” do you want to get? Too much authenticity can send viewers into fits of giggles…probably not the approach one is going for. 😊

That’s why, in Dancing with the Lion, I opted to utilize fairly modern dialogue, then pepper it with a bit of Greek here and there. 1) Words easy to figure out. (“Idou!” = “Look!” as in, “Look, I know you think I’m…”.) OR 2) words difficult to render into English without it sounding silly or overly Christianized. (“Oimoi!” = “Woe!” but equivalent to “Damn!” which evokes Christian ideas.) Not every reader liked my choice, mind, but that’s why I made it.

Other writers, such as several in the newly popular “modern takes on Greek myths” employ something more akin to Mary Renault’s slightly archaizing approach. It’s also been used by Judy Tarr and Jo Graham in their historical fantasies. I like that option too, it’s just not mine.

But I wouldn’t get too complicated, or you’ll confuse (and thus lose) your audience.

But coming back to the number one hurdle to film authenticity in costumes, sets, quality actors, and crew … MONEY. To do it especially well, it doesn’t just take a commitment to authenticity, but an enormous budget. Oliver Stone’s Alexander cost 155 million dollars. I expect you could to it for less than that, but everything from good costumes to rentals of multiple sets used once (like a theatre for Philip’s murder), to horses and stunt actors, to quality CGI…to decent (if not A-list) actors, writers, historical consultants (more than just one as none of us can do it ALL)—that costs. You’ve got to be the likes of Stone to get investors to pony up for that. He started talking about making it way back in the early ‘90s, and it took him to the early 2000s to get the money.

Unfortunately, absolute authenticity is expensive in a story as far-flung as Alexander’s. It’s what a lot of the critique of the Netflix show really doesn’t get. There are still issues with it that doesn’t owe to money, but multiple compromises were made due to a lack of funds.

If you wanted to do Alexander, it might make more sense NOT to try to do it all. Do a portion of his life. See how that sells, then investors might be willing to kick in more money. Inevitably, I think showrunners want to do too much at once.

[soundbulb]

as with all sweeping statements about writing, you need to take it with a grain of salt, but I've devised that an over-commitment to autobiographical writing is the easiest way to ensure you won't make consistently good work. it's easy to clock in young authors, and some of it's symptoms are clumsy pacing, even line to line pacing and over crammed phrases. it's easy to point out in songwriting, but I think of musicians like [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], how they're writing is painfully mediocre despite people saying they're known for this quality. part of this is because they're supposed to be able to play at weddings and target playlists, but beyond that what they're really known for is their willingness to talk about their lives, but if you just look at the writing it's overwrought and clunky; filled with words that don't lend to their story or atmosphere. autobiographical writing carries the ethos that you write things because you believe they're true, not because it serves your work; you write things because that's the way you think it happened, not because it's a good creative decision. you only offer your perspective on your life. shouldn't be surprising then that this usually makes for dull, myopic writing.

memoirs are their own art, and there's tons of ways to do them. I'm not talking about the literal autobiography. good memoirists will even tell you the driving motivation behind their writing ethos isn't literalism or "writing things as they happen". fiction is also best served when you accept that there isn't going to be a Truth in your writing. you're efforts for truth are really efforts for verisimilitude; you just want things to feel real, so you might have to sometimes write something that's true. (most of the time verisimilitude isn't best achieved through truth). your details should be focused, which isn't to say overly strategized, but they shouldn't be wasted on things that feel unrelated but are "true". I think of the way surrealists use details, how they intuitively build the emotional world we live in, choosing to connect objects with deeply held states of existence that are indescribable, but signaled through these objects. the ceiling fan in twin peaks that can best be described as dread, but it's both more specific and more wide reaching than that; how the phrase "powder blue" begins to land the further you get into toni morrison's song of solomon, as this mix of danger and belonging; how the first story sets up the profound confusion and alienation of invisible man. writing is unique in it's direction of attention; in order for your audience to know something is in the room, your narrator has to notice it. every description comes with the implicit fact that your narrator's attention is drawn to it, and the question: why? that doesn't mean that everything needs a cut and dry reason, maybe the reason is just that it commands attention. but your attention can flesh out an entire setting, an entire character. now imagine if you wasted that ability on things that were there, or true, but don't build anything. now imagine if you wasted that attention on feelings, words, scenes that have happened, but don't build the story. this is what makes mediocre writing so infuriating; the hint of deliberation that makes you pay close attention to things only to find they're presence is evoking nothing but the fact that the writer literally saw them. if the purpose of your attention being drawn to something is only to build out a room as it literally was, and not to make the room seem the way it did, THAT is bad writing. things feel realer when they're specific, when they evoke an emotional response, not when they're rote reproductions of reality.

[princeescaluswords]

Re: the unreliable narrator theory in your post about Scott/Allison, I hadn’t come across it before in this fandom, so I did a little digging and wow! Curious what you think about fandom fights borne out of writing devices (Scott/Derek framing you mentioned), cliches/tropes (Scott/Stiles’ many communication mishaps), and errors (timeline mistakes, the infamous 6x20 line). Wild how much energy is wasted arguing about things that are more about the writing process than the characters themselves.

Not to be too contrary, but I don't think the energy is wasted at all. I think these particular arguments are well worth having as many times as necessary. To me, the only logical and functional response when being confronted by toxic culture is to take a stand against it. I'm not trying to imply that everyone should do what I'm doing. Far from it, but I have the background, I have the interest, I have the time, and I have something to say. There's no reason for me not to argue against these particular fandom behaviors.

And, let me be perfectly clear, there are few clearer examples of toxic fandom culture than the "Scott McCall is an Unreliable Narrator" meta. In the great sweep of the United States cultural experience, it's not particularly significant, but it is real. It embodies the privilege, shallowness and dissipation of an all-devouring consumerism.

That sounds pretty grandiose, so I owe an explanation. Art, music, and literature, which contains and is contained by media, is about the experience of change. Even the simplest Tin-Pan Alley song had the purpose of eliciting a shift in its listener's emotional state. It made the audience happy or it made the audience sad. From this we get phrases like "it moved me," which requires us to be the subject. In contrast, consumerism rests all power in the audience; the audience is entitled pick apart media for only what they desire, avoid art that makes them feel uncomfortable, or narrow their music to one or two particular artists or genres. They control the act of experiencing media to the point where it no longer changes them; they are empowered to change it.

The problem, of course, is that this can lead to exploitation. It can lead to a numbing self-focus that prevents a member of the audience from a reaction they weren't already expecting. For example, how many times have you witnessed the audience's reaction to a new show or movie with "which two white guys can I imagine kissing each other?" Anything else that the media might want to express is ignored, or more damagingly, discarded.

And that brings us back to the meta. When the audience heard the line from The Wolves of War (6x20), "I'm gonna tell you a story. Maybe it'll sound familiar," they didn't feel the need to try to make it fit with everything else was they had watched on the screen. Instead, led by a corrupt and vapid BNF, they used it to support the same position that they had held since 2011 -- one that has never wavered -- that the show could not possibly have a Latino as a protagonist. It didn't matter that the line actually fits much more comfortably into the production's constant use of recursion (from the symbols for revenge, the pack symbols, the way that Derek was "a lot like Scott" and that Liam is also "a lot like Scott", that the Nogitsune's attack was "all this had happened before" that the Doctors "how many people died the first time they came here", etc., etc., etc.) because that would force them to look at the story in a way they weren't interested in. Instead, they twisted it into evidence for the conclusion they wanted in the first place.

Ever notice that so many people say that they love Eternal Sterek and they much prefer their fabricated fandom alternative than the actual show. "Eternal" is a good word, because it's the same thing again and again and again and again, violent white men being the ultimate focus of the story, in a bland repetition of the last ten television series they've watched. And because of consumer privilege, they never have to confront the flaws in their "Scott is an Unreliable Narrator" meta. And, oh boy, does it have flaws.

There's no payoff. If we're supposed to view the show through the lens that Scott's telling us these stories to make himself look better, where's the reveal? Where's our "Rosebud is a sled!" moment? There isn't any. Not in the series; not in the movie. It's not like the show got canceled out of the blue. It is only logical, only sane, that if the whole idea of the show was an unreliable narration, there would be a moment where the truth is confirmed. Unless you actually think that the production, the actors, the studio would spend millions of dollars and SEVEN YEARS and never ever pull the curtain aside. What an elaborate, expensive, and fundamentally unfunny practical joke that would be.

It destroys the themes of the show. As a bildungsroman, Teen Wolf tackled ideas about not allowing trauma to control your actions, the importance of knowledge, and the responsibility you have to your family and friends. It should be obvious to the casual observer because Scott's embodiment of compassion, resilience, and resistance to the corruption of others serve as the signifiers of these themes. If it was all unreliable narration, than nothing that happens really matters in terms of what growing up is like. It would be all delusion.

It's f*cking racist (and sexist). Have you ever noticed that the application of Unreliable Narrator Scott only works in certain specific directions? In these interpretations, Scott is always worse than what the narrative shows, but so is Deaton, Melissa, Rafael, Braeden, the Yukimuras, and Allison. Scott's twisted perception tends to make characters of color and female characters better than they truly are (according to the fandom). Conversely, the interpretation of Unreliable Narration always seems to say that the white male characters are better than what the production actually showed. Even though Narrator Scott has hope for Peter, he is always more noble and justified when freed from Scott's lens. Even though Narrator Scott tries to protect Derek, in the interpretations Scott denies Derek his true position by usurping him. Even though Narrator Scott loves the Stilinskis, Stiles is always capable of far more, and the deluded protagonist misses it. And yet, no matter how much hope, faith, and love the Unreliable Narrator Scott had for these white male character, there is never an interpretation where that hope, faith and love is misplaced. It's always, instead, inadequate.

The Unreliable Narrator Meta, no matter how you look it, is Invalid. It is inconsistently applied, illogical in its consequences, and completely in servitude to a gargantuan confirmation bias. And yet, fandom culture loves it, because it reinforces the consumerism that has hollowed out United States cultural practice.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

A lot of people who dislike The Matrix or American Psycho or other movies that are often considered to be "genre" movies or "literary" movies are dismissive of them because they're thought of as "pandering to genre audiences" or "pandering to literary audiences." But to me, genre and literary movies appeal in very similar ways: they are both escapist media that promise the promise of the world as it is "really" instead of the world as it is.

Take, for example, Life of Pi. On the surface, it's a "scifi" movie -- but it has something that is more common in literary fiction, where "the world" can be an unreliable narrator (fiction is "the world as it is").

Life of Pi is a film about a man who is on a lifeboat with two other men for a long time (the boat sinks later, but this is a story of escape and adaptation). On the boat are two Christians, Richard Parker and his son Arun, who both die; Pi survives.

The movie isn't quite a "found-family story," though. The Christian part is that "God" plays no role, and God's involvement in human affairs is completely off the table.

Pi is a very young Indian man, and the Christians have been on the boat for a long time, and they're going to the zoo in China and then on to Europe, where they have their own adventures. And yet they keep talking as if they're all in the same place -- like, "Richard Parker, the son of [name], has never really left home. He loves being the chief engineer on this boat. But we'll see what happens when we get to Europe." No doubt some of this is to sell the idea that a "real" Indian life is on the boat as well, and "real" Indian life can be "better" than "real" white life.

Pi is not very imaginative; he's a very ordinary-looking and kind of plain boy. The Christians who talk about his "home" feel like they're from his home, and they're telling him about their home.

The world is more alienating than a work of "pandering" could possibly create. The world is made up of people with lots of different stories, and they seem like real people, and there are no "universal truths."

This makes it very appealing. The Christians say that they're from Africa, and the Christians are a "real" culture, and the Christians are in the middle of a real cultural struggle, and "your" culture is made up of people who just want to escape.

Some people think this makes the movie pretentious -- the idea that a movie can have universal themes, or that it is a movie. "The Bible" is a "pastiche of the Bible," "The Catcher in the Rye" is "a pastiche of the literary canon," etc., people say. I don't think so. In fact, I think some of these "pastiches" are very good. "Life of Pi" is not an accurate pastiche; it's its own thing, and it's a very good thing.

I think this might be true of all the "genre" films people make fun of, and this is an important aspect of their appeal.

In The Matrix the world is made up of the Real (the Matrix) and the Illusory (the Matrix is a simulation of the real world) and the way to distinguish them is to notice the real world contains things that you've never seen before (the computer screens are always showing novel things, e.g.).

In the movie Dune, Paul is a young man from the future -- the real world is more alien to him than even in the setting of the movie. American Psycho (where Paul is a young Wall Street trader who, like us all, wants to be Patrick Bateman) is another film like this.

On the other hand, the literary genre of "science fiction" includes books like The Invisible Man, which is more a weird personal narrative about a guy who is lonely and isolated and has a mental illness and keeps thinking the world is full of invisible monsters who will eat him, than an exploration of whether life can really be like that. "Found family" narratives where the characters are stuck in an impossible situation and everyone has to figure out how to get out together -- like, say, the characters of The Left Hand of Darkness -- also appeal to me more than stories about the world being a thing that can be escaped from, and those genres are not "genre movies," but are often included in them anyway.

tl;dr I feel like the appeal of genre movies, especially in America in the last 20 years, arises from the promise of escape -- not escape from an unfamiliar world, but from an unfamiliar world as it "really is."

[briancantorinlasvegas]

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[mooncaps]

my first thoughts on TOH 3x02

Ooh, it’s that bit of score that I liked before. I’ve probably rewatched that scene in 2x21 about ten times now just to listen to it.

Oh no, Hooty! The writers knew he was too overpowered and the fight would be too easy if they had him.

Ayyy, Raine’s okay!

Okay, we are getting Luz and Co. too. I was half-worried that this might be all from the Boiling Isles crew and then Luz would show up at the end.

Whomst?

Wait, this is the space between realms. Where The Collector was. Is this another one of The Collector’s people?

Same, Gus.

Whoa. Interesting choice. I don’t know why I keep getting surprised by how direct and dark this show is willing to go. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Oh, I forgot, but I was wondering that too.

These girlfriends continue to give me life.

Yeah, so that graffiti’s pretty ominous.

Wait, so is he just playing the role of Luz in taming the Owl Beast?

Ha! It’s what she deserves.

Hell yeah! It’s what he deserves.

Oh, the Golden Guard graveyard. This is probably gonna be disturbing.

Are you kidding me?! Everyone gets turned into puppets, but this evil witch gets to pal up to power?!

You know what, maybe playing mother to The Collector is a fitting punishment for being such a bad mother to her own children.

Ooh, is this ancient Titan lore? Or Collector lore? Both?

Yeah, you’re making me suspicious. And that red skin is making me think of Kikimora. Is this her and one of those family members mentioned in her season 2 episode?

(Narrator Voice: You’re half right.)

Creepy.

Oh! Hi Lilith. That’s a new look.

You stay away from my Rainstorm, you decrepit goop monster. (Also, get wrecked Odalia! Even the evil goop monster doesn’t want you.)

Oh, that’s maybe gonna be a tough one to explain to Camila.

So of course she’s looking right at it. Of course.

Oh, mess her up, Willow!

Ugh! Damn you, Kikimora! You’re the one who told King about The Collector in the first place. This is as much your fault as anyone’s and now you’re pulling this crap? Piss off!

Wait, are those The Collector’s eyes? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Dude has every power imaginable.

Ugh! And of course The Collector’s conveniently not listening to this part even though he was listening two seconds ago.

Thank you for acknowledging that, Camila.

Wait, so is it a crystal ball or are we just dangling the audience on the cliff even longer?

Is it actually happening or are they just gonna keep teasing us until the finale?

Yeah, that makes sense. Shapeshifter fits with her multitrack kind of personality. And she even had snakes in episode one. I can dig it.

Okay, these two are sweet. I was kinda shipping him with Gus, but now I’m appreciating this too.

And of course I’m always down for more of these two.

Mmmm, too happy for the final moments of the penultimate episode. The Collector’s about to mess things up, isn’t he?

Awww. Shame we didn’t get a full season 3 so we could have this as a proper scene.

So I guess I’m totally caught up for realsies now. Any word on when we get the next one? I don’t like the waiting part. I typically don’t start shows until they’re over for that reason, but I figured this one was at least close to done.

I’m still very much feeling like they can’t possibly deal with every dangling thread that I’m interested in, but hopefully they’ll at least bring things to a semi-satisfying conclusion.

[iratusmus]

@un-pearable here is your one piece fandom drama that i am always DYING to talk about because its so funny

okay. so im going to set the stage here with some preliminary details so you can understand as best you can the full context of this absolute . trainwreck of a fandom drama.

number one: being a very old, long-running manga, one piece has had its fair share of... well. interesting transgender representation. usually not straight up bad - they help the protagonist and are on our side and also are main allies of the only organization who you could feasibly call the good guys, but also being one piece theyre just kind of weird. because everybody in this series is weird. but in this most recent arc, we get introduced to this trans woman who is... just a woman. no weird stuff she looks like this

number two: one piece's female cast is actually really really good as far as character development/plot relevance/personality go and i love all of them dearly, but we only get a handful of top-tier strength women and everybody is always dying to get more of them

number three: the author has.......... a type. like

i wont bore you with the rest of the examples but half the women look the same. he likes his women like that

alright, so with that all out of the way: lets begin!

so in the most recent arc, we get introduced to this character named yamato, a guy wearing a mask and fullbody covering clothing. yamato is called the "son of kaidou" by kaidou's subordinates, and son by kaidou himself. yamato saves luffy and introduces himself, taking off the mask and revealing...

"but huh???" you might be thinking. "yamato looks like all the other women clones!!! whats going on?"

and the answer to this question is: factkinning

yes, you read that right. yamato is a canon factkinnie. very long story very short, child yamato saw a guy named kozuki oden get boiled alive in a pot of oil and decided that he wanted to become that guy. so far so good.

so as yamato says himself, "kozuki oden was a man wasnt he?! so i chose to be a man too!!" from this point on, luffy starts calling yamato "yama-bro", so luffy is also acknowledging yamato as a man. yamato speaks like a polite young man in japanese, using (typically) male first person pronouns, and furthermore, the official translations use he/him pronouns, and with the transgender rep earlier in the arc, it seems like everything is cut and dry, right? .... right

well. not so much. you see, japanese doesn't use gendered third person pronouns very often, so the translators are forced to make a decision based off of how they interpret the text. and with the typically male first person pronouns, cisgender women can also use them (and one of our cisgender one piece characters does, so there's precedent) furthermore, all the bonus information/merchandise/narrator boxes refer to yamato as a woman.

there's these bonus things called vivre cards that you can buy that lists basic information and stupid trivia about characters, so it'll include name gender height age etc etc. with the previously mentioned transgender woman, her gender is listed as male (heart of a woman), the heart of a woman being a japanese euphemism for being trans. yamato's is just female.

so with all this conflicting information, it's really unclear how exactly the audience is supposed to view this character.

now, with all that out of the way, its time to get into the fandom drama.

it is. as you can likely imagine. very very very ugly. there's a few different factions to this debate, but the main ones are 1) people who want positive trans rep in one piece 2) people who want to be horny for yamato without it being gay 3) people who want more top tier strength female characters. the fighting is visceral and unending and absolutely and entirely inescapable. no matter what pronouns you use for yamato you'll get people yelling at you. female? "no, he's trans. you are transphobic and personally want all trans people to die." male? "no, she's just roleplaying. youre a stupid liberal who cant read and should kill yourself." neutral? "how DARE you not pick a side!!!!! (read: my side)" this has been going on for two very very long years.

so, with all this in mind, its time to get to the grand climax. you see, one piece being your typical shounen, after everything is done and the villains have been vanquished and the heroes have won or whatever, we get our obligatory bath scene. yes, this whole stupid drama peaks at a bath scene. because this is shounen.

so one of the female characters asks yamato if he wants to bathe with them, and he says

(ignore the stupid byplay in the background)

this is visibly juxtaposed with kiku, the trans woman saying that she'd be fine joining nami & the other women in the bath. the only way to interpret this is the author saying, "yes, yamato is transgender".

to say this single panel caused the fandom to explode would be the understatement of the century. for some more context here, the author was going on a month long break to prepare for the final saga of one piece after the next chapter (something that only happened one other time in the history of the series at a very big turning point), and it got so bad on r/onepiece that if you started a fight about yamato's gender you'd get banned for the month of the author's break and then a month after that.

it gets. it gets even dumber than that though. okay see the general culture on r/onepiece is “do not criticize our lord and savior goda” (the author's name is oda so its really just a bad portmanteau that doesnt really work when you say it out loud between oda and god) so any criticism, valid or invalid though it may be, is generally downvoted into oblivion and the comments are spammed with people generally being terribly obnoxious. sometimes this is deserved, and sometimes it isnt.

so last year, a bunch of people who were sick of it created a subreddit called r/piratefolk (named after the aot subreddit, which im assuming came into creation under the same circumstances, r/titanfolk). it was lauded by its like 8 members for being a place to discuss one piece in a somewhat normal fashion, where one can both praise and criticize the series fairly.

so when a certain very divisive chapter came out, the subreddit started attracting a whole lot more followers because r/onepiece was, as per usual, downvoting anybody who didnt like the reveal into oblivion. and thus it started to be filled with people who either a) were trolls who got banned from r/onepiece for breaking the rules and were mad about it, b) were upset about the turn the story had taken and wanted a place to complain where people would agree with them, or c) have genuinely disliked the series for a long time but go on the subreddit for some reason beyond me anyways.

so basically, the subreddit was flooded with people who just wanted to complain and criticize oda/op and r/onepiece. and this, as you can probably imagine, went to the only place it could - a toxic cesspool of reddit men who spend way too much time on their computers and not enough time learning basic reading comprehension skills, because who cares about that when you can call the person who disagreed with your bad one piece take a slur! also anybody who says anything good about oda or one piece is an r/onepiece goda apologist pysop who cant read.

so. badly.

so that was all well and good, r/memepiece people would dunk on them every now and again, you’d see somebody in the comments of a post on r/onepiece complaining about r/piratefolk users, an ardent r/piratefolk apologist would come out of the woodwork to defend their honor and get downvoted into oblivion, and so on and so forth.

now, with the release of chapter 1052 and yamato in the men’s bath… the subreddits had. a bit of a time. it was Not Pretty. r/onepiece has already been discussed, r/memepiece mostly just dunked on everybody and made some “wow yamato hot” posts and so on and so forth. and r/piratefolk………….. well. things got heated.

as has previously been stated, the inhabitants of r/piratefolk are That brand of Reddit Men, so god FORBID you imply theyre gay for jacking off to yamato’s BIG BOOBS. so this wonderful post was made,

and all hell broke loose.

one of the relatively inactive mods of r/piratefolk looked at this and said “yeah okay no” and made a pinned post saying something along the lines of, “this is blatant transphobia. transphobia will not be tolerated.”

the comments were. well. bad. mostly full of people either a) crying because yamato boobs = yamato girl and mod is a stupid liberal b) saying the mod is an r/onepiece psyop or c) being generally transphobic.

so after this there were two subreddits created - r/nikafolk and r/godafolk, obviously derived from r/piratefolk. i forget exactly what the story behind these are but i believe r/nikafolk was started as a “place where people can talk about one piece freely” and by a guy who was banned from r/onepiece and possibly the r/piratefolk discord for generally being an awful person to be around. i dont remember squat about r/godafolk though.

the best part about it all though is that the whole debate was all for naught because none of it matters as of the most recent chapter for reasons i will not spoil. yamato continues to factkin (despite the fact that the reddit men were CONVINCED he'd drop it by the end of the arc), the subreddits had a collective meltdown, and i have been relishing in the sweet sweet schadenfreude for reasons i wont spoil. im feeling very smug right now and its been very funny to see all these terribly annoying people cry.

so yeah thats been the bulk of the one piece drama recently. i sincerely hope this did not put you off of reading the series because i promise its really really good and theres a lot i think you would really enjoy esp in regards to themes and characters and so on and so forth but unfortunately i cannot resist talking about this drama because i think theres something really funny about the author accidentally inventing factkinning and as a result, unknowingly causing drama that is probably beyond his wildest dreams in one of his foreign fandoms, even if it is a pretty bad look for the series.

[bretongirlwrites]

‘Good work,’ said Baurus folding my notes: ‘excellent work. We shall get our agents onto it at once.’

‘Do not call it good work,’ said I, and sank into my armchair, ‘until it has been proven right.’

Baurus bowed and left; whereupon Martin turning to me, said that the business was not one in which he had expected my involvement. – ‘The Blades, after all,’ said he, ‘are spies; I am sure that sniffing out information and sneaking around Bruma is quite what they are used to.’

I became restless; and said only: ‘The Blades have a surprising disadvantage in it.’

‘Which is to say?’

‘That they clank like the Temple dinner-service.’

He laughed; but was dissatisfied; and I would not go on. Only looked about the place as if Corinne might appear at any moment; as if any of the Blades were watching us; as if they might come up unnoticed, in day-clothes which did not clank. It had been perfectly naively, that I had offered to root out our spy; and wanting to stretch my legs; I had not wondered until now if my success in counter-espionage might not quite befit an Arch-Mage.

Our existence at Cloud Ruler Temple had been so filled with innocent narration, that Martin did not know he was pressing at a secret, in asking for the whole story. – ‘I know people in Bruma,’ said I at last, ‘and I am sure they wouldn’t have spoken to a stranger. No matter how… how clanky. It does not matter, anyway. I think I have succeeded.’

‘And perhaps very well,’ said Martin. Then fiddling with his sleeve a bit: ‘There was a rumour a while back about your… involvement with the Thieves’ Guild.’

I almost sat up; but steadied myself; and repeated what I had always said, that the rumours came from a resentful source and were rigorously dispelled. ‘A damnably annoying business.’

‘I can imagine. There was no… truth to it?’

He had pressed enough; and looking about, I saw no glimmer nor clank of armour. That he asked out of pure curiosity, I did not doubt; but, – 

‘What precisely,’ said I, ‘your Highness, would you do if there were?’

Martin took the point very graciously; and staring quite in astonishment, as if it were not he who had asked the question, began to smile. 

‘It is a storm in a teacup,’ said I, ‘at any rate. I am only a Footpad.’

Even as I said it, I went to the invisible shadowmark on my wrist, and scratched at it. He did not take his eyes from me; and though I believed it come of a strange sort of admiration, which those living innocently have for those who have gone beyond the norm, he could not help but look around himself; and when he was sure of his audience, he said:

‘Sometimes I fancy I am the only one with unbefitting secrets. It is at once a reassurance and a bolt to my pride, I think, to know that, –’

‘Have you unbefitting secrets?’ said I: ‘oh! you have not told me any of them, –’

Martin blushed; but was so honour-bound to reply, that he hardly noticed the clanking which approached from outside. The door and his mouth opened at the same moment; and I caught hold of him when Baurus re-emerged, and silenced him. He glanced at me, and at our visitor; and I likewise; and in the place of two eminent Cyrodiilic leaders, Baurus to his bemusement found two quite unbefitting bundles of laughter.

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Chapter 3: First Performance

Narrated by Nikki.

Narrator: [Your Name], actually... I’ve had some great experience on the stage.

Narrator: When designing costumes for Yoyo, I did a little bit of a cameo appearance.

Narrator: I was clumsy. Nevertheless, a great memory it was.

Narrator: Yoyo’s college hosted a music festival in her sophomore year.

Narrator: She formed a band right upon entering the college and bought a set of drums. Can you imagine that?

Choose either “Even Yoyo has moments like this, Nikki?” or “Yoyo always has her own opinions.”

If “moments,” ...

You: That’s a big surprise.

Narrator: It’s cool to be a rebel sometimes, right?

If “opinions,” ...

You: Yoyo is an independent soul.

Narrator: Yes. She’s always after her passion, including having a band. That never changed.

--

Narrator: She prepared a song for the music festival, rehearsing and revising day and night.

Narrator: One day, she dragged me into her room.

Yoyo: Hey, design some stage costumes for us!

Nikki: Why...?

Yoyo: What do you say? Time to prove yourself!

Narrator: With her hand on my shoulder and a burning gaze meeting my eyes, I just couldn’t say no to that passion.

Nikki: Ok. I’ll try.

Narrator: The next day, Yoyo took me to a rehearsal. She looked small behind that full set of drums.

Narrator: But everything changed when she started playing.

Narrator: A storm of beats, it was. Her powerful style was the backbone of the entire band.

Narrator: Yoyo shared an approving glance with other band members, smiling.

Narrator: I never knew Yoyo could be so cool before, although now she’s somewhat ashamed of having a band.

Narrator: I was motivated by the rehearsal. I must have Yoyo and the band appear in the most appropriate fashion, with my own design.

Narrator: So I became an observer of their rehearsal sessions, to analyze their motions, positions, and ambient lighting.

Narrator: I had a front row seat, so close to the energetic action on the stage. Sometimes I even sing along, totally unaware.

Yoyo: Come up here and sing!

Nikki: What? Me? No way.

Yoyo: Why?

Narrator: I was refusing out of habit, but Yoyo came to the edge of the stage and crouched down.

Yoyo: Didn’t Mom take you to fashion photography and TV drama production sites back then? Why are you afraid of being onstage now?

Nikki: That’s not the same...

Narrator: Have you ever felt your own voice be unfamiliar, like, out of control, when it passes through speakers?

Choose either “That’s how I feel” or “It’s good to get the hang of it.”

If “feel,” ...

You: Yes. The song ends up not quite like what I imagined.

Narrator: Exactly. I’m afraid the voice of not-quite-me might cause me to freeze onstage.

If “good,” ...

You: Because you’re too nervous. Try a few more times and you’ll get it.

Narrator: Maybe if I have the opportunity to practice.

--

Nikki: Facing a camera and actually being on the stage, they’re different!

Yoyo: Why?

Nikki: Because! I belong in an audience seat.

Narrator: Yoyo slightly tapped my head and shook hers in exasperation.

Narrator: Then she returned to the center of the stage. Watching her go, I was somehow feeling a little bit down.

Narrator: The costume design was a breeze. Yoyo found someone to help speed up the process.

Nikki: Hey, Yoyo, you got the number wrong. We have one set extra.

Yoyo: No, I didn’t.

Nikki: But...

Yoyo: The extra clothes are for you, during the music festival.

Nikki: Huh? But I’m not going on the stage.

Yoyo: We’re in this together.

Narrator: Yoyo forced the outfit upon me, and left with the rest of the band, leaving me there on my own. I was clutching the costume.

Narrator: The venue was packed on the day of the festival. The passionate crowd was getting excited.

Narrator: All those hands, waving light sticks, made a glowing sea, girting the isle of radiance that is the stage.

Narrator: A spectrum of young souls.

Narrator: I was thrilled to see the costume of my own design shining in the spotlight. It was a visual representation of the music.

Narrator: The stage is a place of power, where my design shone in a special light.

Narrator: Yoyo’s band prepared two songs for the event. In between, she pointed at me without warning, and announced...

Yoyo: This is Nikki, our costume designer.

Narrator: All those gazes focused on me, almost instantly.

Narrator: I was dumbstruck, looking at Yoyo for help.

Narrator: That’s when she extended her hand and invited me to the stage.

Narrator: Thundering applause, from a galaxy of light sticks. My heart felt a surge of power and urged me toward the stage.

Narrator: Yoyo held my hand tight, and pulled me up there.

Narrator: As if breaking through an invisible barrier, I popped up in a whole new world and lost myself.

Narrator: Yoyo passed over the mic. I took it and realized the audience had been eerily silent.

Narrator: I could hear every sound, from my own heartbeat to my amplified voice booming over the venue.

Nikki: Hi, everyone. I’m Nikki, the costume designer.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 4

[wartbetweenfourwalls]

Collected thoughts on Netflix Persuasion, as promised:

First, the things I liked:

1. The actress who played Louisa was perfectly cast and she Understood The Assignment. She was genuinely a joy to watch. She said some truly baffling nonsense, and the whole thing where she was trying to convince Anne to go after Wentworth was weird, but none of that was the actress’s fault. I hope to see her in more stuff.

2. The actress who played Mary was clearly having the time of her life pouting and sighing and complaining. She had some of the most egregious instagram therapy lines, but I would have liked to see her as Mary in a better version of this movie. The same basically goes for the actress who played Elizabeth.

3. Dakota Johnson doesn’t seem like she’s ever directly to blame for Anne’s Whole Deal. She didn’t make anything better, really, but you can tell she’s got a firm handle on what she was told to do. The director and the screenwriters are definitely more responsible.

4. They significantly reduced the number of characters named Charles. (There are five in the book and two in the movie.) I’ve always thought there were an unnecessary number of Charleses in the book. I didn’t approve of the ways that they achieved this (other than changing Charles Hayter’s name to Henry Hayter, which was fine) but at least we were less likely to get confused.

What I didn’t like:

(for this section I’ll skip over the obvious stuff, like the weird plot changes and the way the script and direction leached all tension and subtlety out of the source material and how Anne’s characterization was a crime. I knew all these things were coming, and while they infuriated me, there are people who have expressed these things much more comprehensively than I feel I’m capable of.)

1. The big thing that bothered me was the absolute lack of visual texture or detail. The cinematography, the set dressing, the costumes were all uninteresting at best, and even though there were several shots pulled straight out of 2005 P&P, none of the sets in this adaptation looked lived in, and so little attention was paid to the background that you could forgive anyone for forgetting when and where this was all set. Even the location shots were unforgivably bare and sparse. That might be down to budget constraints, but still. Do something, anything to make me want to look at your movie!

2. There was no score to speak of. I imagine that this problem and the one before it are connected, since they both display a general disinterest on the part of the team, but come on guys. Give me some public domain piano music, or even more weird generic pop songs like that one at the end. (speaking of that, Jesus H Christ that was so jarring and on-the-nose and the stupid cherry on this whole stupid farce of a sundae.) A story like this could benefit from a score that develops the emotions of each moment and speaks to all the things that go unsaid (though this adaptation seems incapable of leaving anything at all unsaid)

3. I said I wouldn’t talk about the obvious stuff, but the narration was so stupid. I found myself thinking that it wouldn’t be as grating if she’d just talked to the bunny instead of the audience. Most of the time it wasn’t needed, either? Like they heard “show, don’t tell,” and decided they would both show AND tell. Since that’s better.

4. Captain Wentworth was Bad. The casting was bad, the acting was bad, the direction was bad, and the writing was bad. Who was that guy. People have said that he was wooden, and that he and Dakota Johnson have no chemistry, and honestly, those are, respectively, an understatement and a disservice to Dakota Johnson. He seemed sort of drunk half the time? like he was slurring a little and he was so gruff and his anger was so transparent. Where was the charisma? The gleeful spite? The shift from resentment to respect?  You never get a sense of why she or either of the Musgrove girls had any interest in him in the first place.

5. Speaking of the Musgrove girls, Henrietta was robbed!!! I realize that it’s easier to slim things down in terms of focusing on the one who is going to end up being the romantic rival, but they never gave her anything to do at all! and what we saw of her dynamic with Louisa was so fun and cute. It would have been nice even to see her react to Louisa’s fall, which she conspicuously Did Not.

6. Why does Frederick try to be friends with her before Louisa’s fall, by the way? Shouldn’t he still be mad at her, or at least at war with himself? The way they rearranged events in this movie made sure that none of the events/people’s reactions to the events made any sense. I said I wouldn’t talk about this but I lied.

6a. And why did we completely abandon Louisa as a character after her fall? Why were there no stakes? We don’t even hear about her other than the “oh she’s engaged to a captain” misunderstanding bullshit. Like Anne totally forgets she might be dead????

7. A lot of people say it seems like no one here read Persuasion, but I think it’s more likely that they did and they just didn’t like it. I’ll admit, Persuasion is not Jane Austen’s most tightly plotted novel, and the back half is sort of weird, but she is still a thousand times better at writing than the people who are involved with this. The absolute hubris of thinking you know better than Jane Austen.

TL;DR: Persuasion miniseries when?????

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

The OPM Baseline

It's really interesting to me to look through stories with OP protagonists and see how they handle assorted bits of their story.

The Gamer is about someone whose special power, in a world of gods and monsters, is that he interacts with all the magic systems as if they were a game. Where others have to physically craft things he can do crazy mass-production using a crafting window. Where others feel pain he just sees his hp bar go down. And where others have to go on vague feelings and assessments, he can look at people's status windows to get a really accurate guess of who'd win in a given fight. Between this and his ability to just plain Level Up, he's gotten very, very powerful. I do feel like there are problems with the conceit in terms of how narrowly one has to consider "games" to not have the ability give him infinite power immediately, because in truth games have all kinds of systems and ways the user can interact with them. But for the purposes of this discussion the important bit is he's an OP protagonist.

Thing is, like OPM this series has the camera bounce around to assorted characters - be they the schemers he'll have to fight later, his subordinates and allies, or new characters whose allegiances we don't know yet. One Punch Man spends a LOT of time on these other characters, because an OP protagonist with infinite force has to be presented with situations he can't solve with the application of more force. And it's useful to the comedy to remind us of what the status quo is so that we keep a firm grasp on how far outside the status quo Saitama is.

Jihan Han, The Gamer, is basically just...a whale in the ocean. They kind of blew past the "big fish in little pond" situation, and he's a big power player now, even on the world stage, and others are also huge and powerful, and...Some of the time when I'm reading it I'm unsure what it's for. In shounen battle manga fights represent a clash of ideals. I haven't seen an indication that the wars Jihan involves himself in have the same moral underpinnings. They're just wars, because supernatural forces are at war and he's defending his side. There's not the comical value of OPM, because the consequences are too high and the author's trying to make us feel like he's at risk some of the time.

I feel like the story has gotten wrapped up in its own systems, and unlike, say, Erfworld, those systems don't bear any inherent interest to gamers (who one would presume to be the intended audience of The Gamer) because they're just bog-standard - in fact the idea that all games are "bog-standard" is important to the shape of the narrative.

Bah, got off on a rant.

The point I was originally going for was that it's interesting to me how OPM (and Erfworld, now that I think about it) gets away with spending an enormous amount of time with its main character offscreen, and The Gamer really doesn't. They do it, but they don't get away with it. Even if you're not super into Jihan as a character, it's too much his story and I'm still okay with battles between his dearest friends and their foes, but then...imagine if the Naruto Chuunin Exam arc had included a Kiba vs Ino fight. At that point Kiba's had maybe two lines and Ino we only know as "the other girl crushing on Sasuke who he doesn't care about." The Gamer has this kind of battle all the time. Maybe if I were more up on Korean mythology I'd be getting a Battle of Ragnarok vibe from the fights? I dunno. It doesn't play them up that way, and doesn't do anything to bring people who don't know these characters into the fight. For all its flaws Battle of Ragnarok had an announcer, a narrator, and an in-world audience, any of whom could step in to bring the viewer up to speed on the powers people had, the secret abilities being unleashed, and (perhaps too bluntly sometimes) what ideologies were being pitted against one another.

And you might think Garou vs The B-Team in One Punch Man would have the same vibe as The Gamer or a Kiba vs Ino scenario - we haven't gotten to know them when the fight starts - but it doesn't, because you know Garou even if you don't know the B-Team yet, and you know what he's fighting for, and you get a real introduction to them during the fight itself.

[sciencestyled]

Unplugging the Mystery: We’ve Got the 411 on a Reality That’s More Code Than Consciousness

What’s up, digital denizens of the interwebs? We’ve stumbled (gracefully, of course) upon something that makes your favorite sci-fi flick look like a children’s bedtime story. Don’t worry, we’re not here to talk about another conspiracy theory. No aliens or government cover-ups here. We’re pulling back the curtain on something far more… electrifying.

Now, imagine (we know you’ve got a wild imagination, so run with it), a world where reality as you know it is as genuine as the compliments you throw at your boss before asking for a day off. Yes, darling, we’re probing the tantalizing, spine-tingling world of the simulation hypothesis. And who better to narrate this electrifying exposé than the Matrix’s own silver-tongued devil, Agent Smith?

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter, “Not this again,” stay with us. We promise, it’s about to get juicy.

In the soul-stirring narrative spun by our eloquent anti-hero, humans (that’s us, in case you forgot) are likened to ants. Predictable, easily amused, and utterly clueless about the grandiose spectacle of existence that hovers just beyond our grasp. Cue dramatic gasp!

Agent Smith, with his penchant for the dramatic, leads us on a whirlwind exploration that’s more exhilarating than a roller coaster ride through the cosmos. Are our joys, sorrows, and Instagram-worthy moments nothing more than blips in an intricate simulation?

“Hold on a second,” you interrupt, your voice echoing with the indignation of a cat denied its favorite treat. “I’m real, thank you very much.” But oh, sweet child, that’s where the thrill lies. In the mesmerizing dance between certainty and doubt, reality and illusion, existence and...well, non-existence.

Agent Smith digs deep – and we mean archaeologist-finding-a-buried-civilization deep – into the world where pixels and code breathe life into every sunrise you Instagram and every heartbreak you tweet. We’re all stars of our own reality show, but the twist? The audience might just be a bunch of posthuman entities munching on cosmic popcorn.

And while you’re contemplating the prospect of being the Kardashians of another realm, let’s flip the script. Quantum physics, the bad boy of the scientific world, flirts with the simulation hypothesis like a moth to a flame. Uncertainty principles, qubits, and entanglement – it’s a love story more tumultuous than any Shakespearean tragedy.

So, what’s the verdict? Are we prisoners in a digital paradise, or free souls navigating a physical universe? Ah, dear reader, we wouldn’t spoil the ending even if we could. But remember, every revelation, every gasp of astonishment, every existential crisis – it’s all part of the show. And between us, who doesn’t love a good show?

With every word, every concept, every enigmatic idea, we’re not just peeking behind the curtain; we’re tearing it down. It’s reality unplugged, existence uncensored, and truth unveiled. Are you ready for the ultimate revelation, or will you scurry back to the comforting embrace of ignorance?

The choice, darling, is yours. But remember, in a world where codes might weave reality, every choice is a programmed spectacle, and we’re all stars of the show.

So, grab your front-row seats, folks. It’s about to get meta. Welcome to the reality where nothing is real, and everything is splendidly, terrifyingly, exhilaratingly possible. Who needs reality TV when you can live in a simulation this scintillating?

But fret not, in the eloquent words of Agent Smith, “just because you believe you’re awake doesn’t mean you aren’t still in a dream.” Sweet dreams, darling, and welcome to the show of a lifetime, where every second is a pixelated spectacle, and we’re all stars in the grandest performance of all.

Encore, anyone?