#anyways he works in the production industry. and does stuff. cool stuff

[murkystarlight]

More jobs AU stuff :D

(used the reference yea)

honestly, not sure how I did this.. yeah everything is a bit off butuh- I quiite like it (tried putting more details under cute)

Alr so, Axel and Olivia weere neighbors when younger. They lived on the countryside. One day, Jesse came to visit her grandparents and met Axel and Oliva.

The three became friends and Jesse tried to visit a lot. She also really enjoyed watching the farm animals(no one told her they were gonna be sold). Formed a close bond with a pig she named Rueben. Rueben disappeared one day-- anyways, years in the future, Jesse became a specialist for taking care of animals. She also sells some products.

Olivia was able to hear a lot about where Jesse lives. A few times, she was able to visit her too. Still, she was mainly at home helping the farm. Only a few days a year can she take a break and go out. When she does, she really wants to do a lot. Sightseeing, foods, stores.. what really peaked her intrest was science. Ecpecially to do with enery or machines. She's only seen Jesses phone before.

Axel was always told to be a bright and funny kid. And he liked it. He found joy in making others laugh. Unlike Olivia, he left the countryside and into the city. He still visited a lot. When he heard Olivia's dream, he thought he should help her since... well his career wasn't going all that great. He started to run a yt channel, filming his stuff, just some daily life, or maybe even about Olivia(perhaps for contests). So that it wouldnt matter if he was in the country or the city. It also gave Olivia time to get used to using devices since she helped edit his videos. One more thing about Axel, Magnus was the one who saw potential in him and first offered him to be on one of his shows. Thatshow they know eachother.

Petra, as I wrote in there, wanted to be a fashion designer(clothes, shoes, accessories ect). She always liked seeing Ivors work(she thought he was cool). When she was in school, there was a program she participated in where she got to meet Ivor in person. It went horribly wrong. A bad first impression, some maybe a bit too harsh words directed towards her in front of everyone, the fact that Ivor isn't exactly that much of a nice person in general. She would've just brushed it off, but she just couldn't get back into the work. Nonetheless, she didn't want to give up on her dream she had for years. So with a lot of convincing from a friend plus some small goals and a lot of thinking, she decided to make jewelry. It was the thing she was most interested and talented at anyways so she went on with it.

Lukas didn't exactly plan on being an actor. He participated in like.. music videos or ads as a teen for fun with his friends, then he got some attention. So from then on he studied acting, occasionally doing teen casts. He successfully made it into the acting industry at quite a young age and is still there. He's kinda stuck. He's really active on social network services and... apparently has that many followers(I searched up influencers with the most followers- uh Cristiano Ronaldo has the most followers with 1.01 billion so... that's saying something lol)(after that i tred to roll again but the generator kept giving me numbers over 2billion-). UH.... he loves his cat. There's a cat breed called Ocicat? Has the most similar characteristics to an ocelot(domestic breed). Lukas adopted him from a shelter.

no idea why im still scared about showing them as a couple--

anywyas, this turned into a bunch of random ramblings lol. Sorry, I'm in need of sleep not to mention I have to be studying but i completely neglected it for the past hour or two trying to finsih this up--

Need more info on a specific something... just ask me. I'm good with anything

[greenerteacups]

Thoughts on sydcarmy? (figured i’d ask since you mentioned the bear in one of your asks.)

[normal person voice] THOUGHTS ON SYDCARMY? YEAH I GOT A FEW

To start from the beginning, I've been watching the Bear IRL as it airs, so I've been through all the hiatuses between seasons. And in season 1, I was the conductor of this ship. I was on the train basically from the minute they have that first bit of cooking synchrony in like episode 2 and my obsession with the coworkers-to-lovers trope perked its nose up, but I was promoted to captain when I saw the scene at the end where he grounds himself through a panic attack by thinking about her. Which — hey, by the way, sidebar? Directed to the writers of The Bear? I'm totally on board with the 'let's have more platonic bonds between men and women' stuff, I get why you like that story and want to write it, and seriously, platonic sydcarm, that's cool. That's awesome. But also: visualizing someone's face to anchor you through a panic attack — while in real life not at all inconsistent with platonic friendship — is an extremely loaded scene to drop in the middle of a narrative where the two characters in question have demonstrable chemistry and an intense but ill-defined bond, and your audience, which has been trained to close-read male-female relationships for signs of romantic interest, is going to read that scene as romantically intimate, if not sexual in nature. And they're not, like, ship-obsessed or whatever for thinking that. The visual language of your product does not exist outside of the cultural lexicon where it is being presented, regardless of your intentions. Anyway. [Sidebar over.]

Season 2, and especially the introduction of Claire, seemed to me like a Doylist way to address the SydCarmy train. The upshot to this is they do use this to talk about Sydney and Carmy being Weirdly Intimate Business Partners, and you get a lot of references to Sydney's jealousy, her disgruntlement with Claire, and Carmy's struggle to fuse the two worlds. The downside is that Sydney and Carmy no longer feel like the epic power chord at the center of the show, because Carmy's been shifted into this internal battle between Claire (who in many ways represents being Out of the industry) and Sydney (who, whatever else you can say about her, is very much In). And unfortunately for Claire, Sydney is just way better written. Like, I really did try to be fair to Claire, but it's not even close — and man, I didn't even feel like the writers were trying. Claire and Carmy's crush on Claire are introduced to the audience at the same time, and from there, she has zero scenes without Carm being either present or the subject of conversation. And like, that's so weird, on a show where almost everyone is rich and well-developed, and even the extended family in Fishes get little nods to their internal life. And I — I'm rambling. Point being, I think Season 2 took the wind out of SydCarmy's sails by making their dynamic antagonistic and strained by Carmy's obvious romantic interest in someone else, so I went into S3 with guarded optimism.

And then, like... okay. I'm a Sydney fan before I'm a SydCarmy fan, right? That man's cute and all, but she's the protagonist of this show for me. And at this point, I really do think the best thing for Syd is to get out of Carmy's orbit and go do her own thing. I don't believe in people being "too traumatized" for relationships to work, so I think a lot of the people blowing off Carmy as being "not ready" for love this season are full of hot air — but I do believe that Carmy's trauma is specifically impairing his ability to empathize with and care for Sydney, a fellow restauranteur and subordinate chef/protege, in a way that would make any iteration of their relationship satisfying to me. Getting him to that point would require the writers to dedicate a lot of storytelling and character development in a creative direction that they don't seem to be interested in. They are clearly interested in other things — worthy things! Cool things! Things that can make for a good plot! — but at this point, I was only interested in a version of SydCarmy that existed for about five minutes in the first 1/3 of the show, and it's time for me to face the music. I'm really excited to see where they take Sydney, though. I still trust the writers to do her justice, because they clearly know what a rare thing they have in her.

[ashima066-blog]

In this interview with Denis McGrath, we delve into his fascinating journey as a writer for TV Show Blood Ties, the adaptation of Tanya Huff's Blood books. McGrath, an experienced writer with a passion for supernatural dramas, gives us insights into his involvement with the show, his creative process, and how the writing team brought the characters and stories to life. He also reflects on his role as an executive story editor and the challenges of working in the Canadian television industry. McGrath shares candid thoughts on the struggles and triumphs of writers in Canada, highlighting how the creative landscape is evolving. Let’s dive into the world of Blood Ties with Denis McGrath!

------------questions asked in the interview -------------

Why did you decide to start your blog? (and out of curiosity, why is the word ON all capitalised?) How would you describe your blog?

I started "Dead Things on Sticks" in August of 2005. 2005 was kind of a weird year for me-- my year of "development hell." I had three series in development, which was cool. But I didn't work on anything that got made. So it was also very isolating and lonely. When you're in production, you tend to go into an office and you have to have lots of meetings, and you have lots of real human contact. But I live alone, and obviously when I'm not on a show I work alone -- and around the time I started the blog I was beginning to get stir crazy staring out at Lake Ontario and the Gardiner every day. The only human contact I had professionally was various network people I was developing with. And at the risk of offending hardworking network people everywhere, that is simply not a recipe for meaningful human contact. So I started the blog. Initially I thought it was just going to be a little low-level talk about what I liked on tv, and maybe some process-y stuff about how I write for TV. I've taught screenwriting at Ryerson for years, so I kind of always had that "give somebody a hand up" attitude. But then a lot of the other possibilities started to occur to me. Screenwriters in Canada were very isolated because they don't work together very often. And the industry in this country is messed up, but no one ever really speaks truthfully about why it's messed up. After a while I decided, the hell with it. I'll do it. It's not like anyone's reading anyway. Then, of course, people started reading. And it got to be a gallows thing, "how does Denis ruin his career this week?" But so far, I've got to say that all the "sky is falling," scared predictions I've gotten from people saying "you can't write things on your blog because people will get back at you" haven't materialized. I couldn't be busier right now. I guess maybe it's that, deep down, I come from a place of wanting to do better, and wanting to be optimistic, and wanting to serve the audience better. And I think people respond to that, because deep down, everyone wants to be doing better work. Why's the "ON" capitalised? Just 'cause. Aint I a stinker?

2. How did you get into screenwriting?

Sideways. I always wanted to write. When I first graduated Ryerson I sent a script I wrote down to L.A. It was a "Wonder Years" spec script and I got really great feedback on it from the Executive Producer of the show. But I didn't follow up. I drifted into TV producing, doing stories on media and technology, first at TVOntario, then at Citytv. I had a wonderful time at Citytv, got to interview a lot of people, but was still restless. In 1996 I did a play at Summerworks called "Press'd" -- and my boss at the time, Moses Znaimer, brought a Director friend named Jeremy Kagan to the show. And Kagan flipped for my play. He loved the writing. But I never followed up. About a year later, I'm watching the Emmys and there's Jeremy Kagan, accepting an award for Directing "The West Wing," which was my favorite show at the time. And I decided, if I ever got another break like that, I wasn't going to let it pass by. By this time I'd moved on to help start up Space: The Imagination Station. I met up on-set with a couple of guys producing a show called STARHUNTER. They liked me, I wrote a few eps for their second season, and then I took the big leap. I quit my job and went to the Canadian Film Centre. When I got out, I never looked back. I've been working ever since, first in documentary (I did a lot of lifestyle wedding shows) and now drama I say all this because now I look back and I think the missed opportunities had purpose. I had to get past my fear. People tend to think that you only get one 'break,' but it's not true. You just have to want it badly enough that you are willing to risk everything. Some get there more quickly because they've got youthful bravado or a natural fearlessness on their side. Some come later to it, once they realize that they won't be happy if they don't really try. But the risk taking the risk, is all.

3. How did you get involved with writing for Blood Ties?

I met the Executive Producer and Showrunner, Peter Mohan, when I was at the Film Centre in 2001. We kept in touch over the years. Blood Ties actually was supposed to go a year or so earlier, but didn't because they couldn't get fully financed. I read some of Peter's initial scripts then and really liked them. I was a huge fan of Buffy and Angel, and Anne Rice  but I liked the take on this where, first of all, the female tough talking cop was the protagonist, not the vampire and also that the vampire wasn't all broody and sturm and drang...I kind of felt that cursed 'children o'the night' thing was a bit played out. When the show finally did get going, I wasn't available I was doing another show for the same network, CHUM. (Across the River to Motor City, I co-created it and wrote five of the six episodes) Luckily, my show was only six episodes long and Blood Ties was doing 22. So when they lost a writer (a good friend of mine who wanted to return to T.O. from Vancouver) Peter called me up over Christmas and said, "how you feel about coming out to Vancouver and joining us here?" And I leapt at it because I knew Peter was fun, and a good writer with tons of experience, and I'd seen early cuts of the first episodes and really liked what I saw. So I headed out to Vancouver in time to work on the last 9 episodes.

4. Have you read any of Tanya Huff's Blood books?

Oh sure. I read the first one when I was at SPACE, cause I was curious about the Toronto setting. And I really enjoyed it. I've dipped into most of the others -- some just before I went out to start. The nice thing about this show is that we really did recognize that Tanya's tone was unique...we really are trying to go with the characters she laid out. And the best thing is, she really appreciates what we're doing, too. She knows how different the two mediums are. It's a bit of an embarrassing love-in, actually. I think Tanya's a hoot and a lot of fun, and she praises us to high heaven every chance she gets. It's awesome. I should say actually the Blood stories I liked best were the ones in the short story collection. I thought they were super-cool. I even 'borrowed' a plot twist for my first BT ep from one of the stories. Thanks, Tanya!

5. What's the process when you're writing an episode of Blood Ties?

Notes, notes, notes, and more notes. Tanya wrote a really good bit on her blog about the process of freelancing (she wrote an ep of the series). When you staff it's a bit different. All the writers come up with (or "break") the story as a group. In essence, you figure out what happens in every scene. Then the writer who's going to write that ep goes out and writes an outline. Then you get notes from the other writers and from the network. You change it. You write a draft. Repeat. Then production concerns come up "Can this scene be day instead of night?" "No." "Why Not?" "Because one of our characters in the scene is a vampire." etc, etc. Changes continue right up until the episode is shot. Sometimes you talk to the actors and they have great ideas that you want to incorporate, or the director, or even the network. So it's a lot of rewriting, and the trick is to keep it fresh and retain the nut of what you thought was cool about the story in the first place, and not let it get blanded out to a fine paste. It can be a grueling process, but if you like who you're working with, it can be fun, too. Oh, one more thing while you're doing all the above on one episode, there's the ep behind you and two more in front of you that are in different parts of the process, and you're trying to give notes and keep an eye on those eps as well. So it's chaos. You're working 13, 14 hour days. it's not for the faint of heart.

6. IMDB has you listed as "executive story editor" for nine episodes. What does an executive story editor do?

In TV there's a whole lot of titles that mean the same thing they just connote rank and salary level. A staff writer generally just writes their own scripts. A story editor or executive story editor weighs in and rewrites other people's stuff when needed. Sometimes as they move up writers get "producer" credits like Producer or Supervising Producer, up to Executive Producer where they have production responsibilities, too like they'll be in on casting, or post production but the most important thing they do, still, is write. It's all about moving up the ladder so one day you can run your own show. Being a showrunner is a very difficult job because it requires you to know about so many different sides of the business. But that's why it's got to be a writer in that chair -- because only the writer has the full vision of where the story's been and where it's going. In Canada, the titles are sometimes a bit loosey-goosey'er because there's kind of a fight going on behind the scenes. IN the US the people who are in charge are always writers. In Canada, traditionally the people who have been in charge have been money, or line producers. They're not always the most creative people. Their position is that it's so hard to get financed here that that's the hardest thing to do, so they should be in charge. And Canada loves bureaucracy, and nobody really understands what writers do, so they've been more comfortable with the people who fill out the forms in charge. But here's the thing: they don't know story as well, and not to put too fine a point on it, that's why a lot of the time, Canadian TV is so terrible. The shows that people actually like Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys those are shows where the writers have enough power to influence and fight for their vision. The good news is that writers are slowly winning that creative war more and more of us are getting Producer credits and the power to say 'no,' and the power to bring our vision to the screen. I don't want to downplay the role of a producer they're really important especially in Canada, because more often than not you're working with a much smaller budget. In the U.S. when there's a problem, the answer is usually "throw more money at it." In Canada, that's usually not an option. So having a smart, engaged producer is key. It's just that, up to now, they've overreached a bit, and tried to be the last word on creative. And in the service of that, they've marginalized writers and tried to treat them as crew, basically. So writers write scripts and then are sent away, and then actors change lines, and directors throw out story in the service of being 'cool.' And producers allow themselves to be talked into cutting scenes for budget that they shouldn't cut, and supporting a director who's looking at putting a pretty shot on his reel, but not necessarily serving the series, and making wardrobe choices or set or location choices that don't serve the material well. Nobody's minding the store. Then, when they put the show together, the result is something that was push-me-pull-you'd into existence, and it kind of...sucks. As we get rid of that bad old way of doing things, our homegrown shows are going to get better and better. Viewers will be able to see the difference, like they do with Corner Gas.

7. According to your IMDB entry, you've written four Blood Ties episodes so far (Drawn & Quartered, The Devil You Know, We'll Meet Again, and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly). Will you be writing more?

Do I have credit on The Good The Bad? I shouldn't. I cowrote Drawn & Quartered with Dennis Heaton (he's actually the evil Dennis. I'm the good Denis. I'm not actually that good but Dennis is....well....he's just...he wrote FIDO. He's awesome, but...alright, I'm scared of him. There. I said it.) The other two I wrote solo. I'm jazzed about my eps because they're really, really important eps when it comes to the mythology of the show. I can't really say more. But they're cool. If we get a second season, I would love to write more. I think the eps I wrote turned out really well, and I love, love, love the Blood Ties people. The actors, the crew, the writers -- it was a really positive experience. I hope that when it starts on City TV in August and on Space in the fall that Canadians really embrace this fun little show. It gets really intense as it goes along. And the last set of eps are just killer!

[dxppercxdxver]

alright @teethworm and @szollibisz have enabled me in regards to This Post so buckle up for my very loose and very disorganized (and very long) spies are forever hadestown au pitch

- a couple brief points of clarification: characters like the baron or richard big or the prince have just been kinda. shuffled aside. since the main cast of hadestown is pretty small and also fuck a couple of those guys they suck. also this is basically just The Plot Of Hadestown palette swapped to fit spies are forever. there are some important differences but most of it is just switching one character out for another

- so this whole thing got started bc i realized the line “help yourself / to hell with the rest / even the one / who loves you best” from “when the chips are down” is just a Very owen carvour sentiment

- thus “owen as eurydice” became my jumping off point

- in general, i’m thinking about this as if it were still a staged production, so i have some Thoughts on the aesthetics

- both productions have pretty barebones sets? metal staircases, exposed bulbs, high railings, that sort of thing, and i think they should be allowed to keep those because objectively they are so cool. so basically, the same saf set but slightly more Ornate (filigree on the stairs, some more diegetic lights, that sort of thing)

- in terms of costumes i would want to hang onto the 1950s cold war aesthetics from saf to keep it visually distinct from the more industrial revolution/great depression hodgepodge of hadestown. like don’t get me wrong it’s Cool but also it’s been done and we deserve the ridiculous dresses of the 50s

- music style is still very analog, which both hadestown and saf do really well. lots of chorus work, piano, strings, strong drum beats, stuff like that (also the classic spy movie soundtrack stings like you gotta have those)

- anyway in terms of the Plot, let’s get started with the characters

- owen is eurydice: jaded, hurt, afraid of making connections

- and curt is orpheus: stubbornly optimistic, an idealist, incredibly headstrong

- tatiana is hermes: curt’s old friend who thinks he’s got his head in the clouds a bit, but also cares about him deeply and wants to help him succeed. also, tell me you can’t hear her say “oh, and curt? don’t come on too strong.” i would want her to have a bit more direct involvement in the play just so she doesn’t get relegated to prop role but idk in what context that would work yet

- the fates! barb, cynthia, and susan make up the fates, and they Also have a much more active role in the story, often accompanying curt on his journeys and directly interacting with him (also, they often sing To owen but it becomes increasingly obvious throughout the play that he can’t see or hear them, so it’s almost like they’re eulogizing him while he’s still up and walking)

- hades and persephone we will get to

- so the story progresses as hadestown usually does: curt meets owen, falls in love with him, they make preparations to get married, persephone returns to the surface, summer is great, hades comes to take her too soon

- winter is coming, and they’re not prepared

- curt’s still desperately trying to solve things with his grand plan (idk if i want to keep him a musician or if he’s doing something else but it’s still a more Fanciful solution than owen’s more practical preparation for the cold) while owen watches the winter creep closer

- as per usual, owen realizes they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and sells himself over to hades in the hopes of taking the burden off of curt

- owen gets himself stuck with a bad deal and is forced to help build this giant surveillance system that contains all of hell and is also used to spy on the surface (chimera instead of The Wall basically. that computing power needs a lot of servers and wires and cameras to run it, so there are installation crews crawling around and laying the cables. there are so many worker fatalities hades becomes better known as the deadliest man alive)

- curt, obviously, freaks the fuck out and comes running to tatiana, and she gives him the back entrance to hell (also, please imagine curt mega singing “wait for me” it hurts). she seems... strangely melancholic. wistful, almost

- upon arriving in hell, curt finds owen and tries to take him away but owen is begging him to keep his voice down

- too late. hades can smell a traitor in his midst

- curt obviously begs hades to let owen go, but hades reveals the deal owen got himself signed to (angst! suffering! all that good stuff)

- so curt has his whole “if it’s true” montage where he rallies the chimera build team to his cause, and this strikes a chord in persephone, who’s been quietly studying the whole scene from the sidelines

- now. “how long?”

- when persephone comes to confront hades, it’s clear their conflict is more Personal than just a debate of morals. persephone alludes to hades snatching her from the surface, to their love gone sour, to how they shouldn’t have to continue their cycle with these two, but she’s also strangely reserved and resigned, like she knows her begging won’t do anything

- and here’s when we see a different side of hades. away from the eyes of the public he’s remorseful, but bitter. he’s more sympathetic, and it’s clear there’s an unspoken Something between him and persephone. there’s a history they’re dancing over, and their arguing is almost hollow, more of a performance than an actual battle

- at last, hades agrees to hear curt’s case, and curt sings to him the story of hades and persephone’s love, but something seems to nag at curt while he sings, like his heart’s not quite in it (not because he doesn’t want to leave, but because something deep in his chest is trying to put the puzzle pieces together)

- hades agrees to let curt and owen go on the same condition; don’t look back

- while they’re walking, owen has finally summoned up True Conviction in curt, believing in something wholeheartedly for the first time in his life, while curt’s mind is whirling

- and this is what he figures out

- hades and persephone look oddly familiar. no one knows exactly where they came from. every conversation they’ve had—both with each other, and with curt and owen—has been Laden with subtext, hinting at a personal history they shouldn’t really have. and curt finally remembers what it was hades said to him when he asked why he trusted them enough to let them leave, what made them so special

- hades had said “personal history does have its benefits, mega”

- curt realizes that hades and persephone are owen and himself, many years down the line, aged and bitter. he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know why, but suddenly he understands what he has to do

- as they’re climbing the steps out of hell, curt stops in his tracks

- “curt?” he doesn’t say anything

- “is everything alright, love?”

- curt shuts his eyes

- “forgive me”

- and he turns around, looking down at owen

- and god it hurts to do it and curt wants nothing else than to break that cycle but he knows he Can’t and it’s the only right thing to do

- be the hero

- in the rafters, the fates and tatiana look down at him as owen starts to reach for curt, before a quake sends him plummeting off the stairs

- curt returns to the surface pretending none of this has ever happened and moves to a new town to rebuild as persephone, as he knows he must

- in hell, owen, enraged and bitter, crawls up the chimera ladder until he himself is the boss man of hell, overseeing the whole thing and exacting his vengeance on those foolish enough to make deals with him

- owen as hades, wanting nothing more than to torture curt for what he’s done, steals curt away from the surface. when the hellhounds come, curt shakes owen’s hand and follows him with his chin up

- “it’s good to see you again”

- they arrange their seasonal deal, following in their own footsteps

- at this point, owen too realizes curt must have known but is furious that curt didn’t do anything to stop it and instead doomed them to this

- it goes surprisingly okay at first. curt is happy to see owen again and owen plies curt with fineries and vices of every sort but soon it becomes entirely unsustainable

- owen delights in the power he wields over curt now and curt takes to drinking to forget his time in the underworld, often missing the springtime train

- every autumn, owen comes earlier, because who’s going to stop him?

- by the time owen and curt come around again, their older selves have everything planned to the minute. there is no breaking the cycle, there is only doing what is right even if it kills you

- and on and on into infinity

tl;dr owen and curt as eurydice and orpheus come into contact with hades and persephone, who are also owen and curt, and it’s a vicious cycle of violence

i hope y’all enjoyed! if it were like. scripted the foreshadowing would have worked. much better than in this text form. but i really liked the idea of having a before and after version of these characters that reflects their journeys in saf because curt and owen before the accident are Very Different than the curt and owen afterwards and i wanted to explore that in a more literal form

if y’all have any questions i’d be happy to answer :]

(and also check the rb’s there may be stuff i’ve forgotten and will add later. maybe not? maybe i got it all down in one go? but who knows)

[grooviestsadpapaya]

ok listen i know we're not entitled to anything obviously but could you please show us something like a loose sketch? a messy doodle or something? i'm sure you have those, every artist does- and just seeing all of your industry level finished work all the time, while very cool!!, is a little disheartening (((forgive me please but it's probably because you're so young and it just seems like you can just bust out a beautiful finished product multiple times a day despite probably only drawing for a few years))) and personally i just kinda want to know your process and/or how much i should despair on a daily basis sorry if that doesn't make sense or if it's rude

No no, it makes total sense, don’t worry. I understand. I just have to keep in mind that I have been pressured a lot by my family to do commissions with my art and make money off my art for a really long time. I used to be (and still am) very worried about not giving people their moneys worth, so I tried really hard to get better and better. I get comments like this irl from my friends and a few times it has made me want to stop doing art. I was picked on by a previous art teacher because he “knew I could do better” when I was turning in my best effort. I always get a little sad when I see these because I really don’t want to make people feel bad, and in my mind for some reason I think they would be hopeful. Like “hey, this kid can do art, then so can I”. Please remember I got good at art because I got hazed and pressured by my family. I love art, don’t get me wrong, but the process sucks. I love seeing my stuff come to life but I also want to apologize to little-me for putting her through that. Please don’t feel bad, just get filled with spite (or hope, take your pick) to get to where you want to be, because I am positive that you can.

Anyways yeah here you go :D some sketches, a storyboard, and also a reminder of where I came from when I first got Procreate lol

Anyways here is first piece in my gallery on procreate. Look at that Mipha ewwwwww

You will get better, I promise. If this is not proof then I don’t know what is.

[stargazer-sims]

Haru: Want to see some pictures of me and Eden skating? I’m pretty bad, honestly, but I managed not to fall over while Eden took these.

Charlie: So, it’s mostly pictures of you skating?

Haru: I took a bunch of pictures of Eden too, but you probably don’t want to see those. We took some adorable selfies together, though.

Charlie: I’m not sure I ever imagined myself saying this, but you guys make a cute couple.

Haru: A couple. I wish I could tell you how awesome it feels to hear somebody say that. About me and someone.

Charlie: You’ve really never had a boyfriend or girlfriend before, have you?

Haru: No, but it’s not because I didn’t want to or wasn’t trying. It’s just.. I’m too annoying, or not interesting enough or something. I don’t know.

Charlie: There’s something I don’t understand.

Haru: What?

Charlie: How does somebody who thinks he’s stupid and annoying and uninteresting manage to become a J-pop idol?

Haru: You don’t need to be a genius for this. I’m pretty and talented enough to have gotten noticed, and that means something. I mean, you know we’re selling a product, and not personalities, right?

Charlie: I guess.

Haru: I got scouted at my high school’s spring festival, rapping in the talent show. The guy from Peak liked my rhymes and my look. So that’s how somebody like me ends up in an industry like this.

Charlie: That’s actually pretty amazing, you know. And you think you’re uninteresting?

Haru: That’s about It for the fun Haru facts, so yeah.

Charlie: Do you like what you’re doing? Like, are you glad you got scouted, or would you rather be doing something else?

Haru: I love it, if you really want to know. It’s the one thing I’m good at, and it’s all I want to do for now. I think I’d like to be a producer some day, when I’m done performing.

Charlie: See? That’s interesting.

Haru: *sighing* I probably shouldn’t be talking to you about this stuff.

Charlie: Why not?

Haru: Because you’re not here to be my personal therapist or whatever. Taiji says I gotta respect boundaries, and I'm working on that.

Charlie: You're not disrespecting any boundaries by talking to me. I was the one who asked.

Haru: Yeah, but everyone says I talk too much.

Charlie: We don't have to talk any more if you don't want to. I probably should be getting to Keigo and Senjirō anyway. Or Aidan, I guess. Is that really his name? It's what he asked me to call him.

Haru: Yeah, it is. Senjirō is his middle name. It's so Western, having a middle name. We don't call him Aidan, and he's never asked us to, but maybe he wants you to because you're Canadian like him. Maybe he thinks you get it.

Charlie: I do, and I get having a multicultural name, too. Eden and I both have Korean middle names, and so does our sister.

Haru: That's cool. My other friend Ji-Hyun is Korean, and he wants an English name. I kind of do too, but I can't think of a good one, and it'd probably be weird anyway, since my English sucks. Taiji says it's ridiculous, but we like the idea.

Charlie: You could ask Eden to help you pick one.

Haru: I could. That's a good idea. Thanks.

Charlie: No problem. I'm here to help.

Haru: I appreciate it.

Charlie: Well, I'd better get to the other guys. More hair colouring in the bathroom.

Haru: *laughing* Get used to us and our crazy demands. We're all super high maintenance.

Charlie: Oh, don't worry. I'm already used to it. Remember who my brother is. 'High maintenance' is a way of life.

Haru: I'm going to send him the pictures you took of me with my new look. I can't wait to see his reaction.

Charlie: He made me promise to make sure you stayed pretty.

Haru: He did? I'm going to ask him if he thinks you kept your promise. I think I can guess what he'll say, but I'll let you know.

[fallindomino]

how i would have changed s2 of hsmtmts

obvious disclaimer but im not a screenwriter or anyth so im not claiming what i want is best, this is just for fun lololol

okay so first of all nini would still have dropped out of yac but she wouldn’t have gone back to east, she would have transferred to north bc she was too ashamed to tell anyone she left at first and maybe she still wants to explore who she is away from ricky and the others

nini could join north’s batb and this way maybe we could have some playful rivalry with lily and nini and more scenes with antoine shdhdjdj also it could have been a great opportunity to flesh out lily’s character so those scenes where she reaches out to ricky and her confession at the end of the season actually make sense lol

speaking of ricky ,,, i think he should have left the play at some point hear me out. he only joined in the first place because of nini and barely wanted to do it at all once he realized he wasn’t gonna be able to perform with her. he could have joined crew and been a manager with natalie or smth considering he rlly does see the theater gang as a second family. also this would leave so much room for ej and ricky development and bants since ej joined the av club and began to pursue film. they could have some convos where idk ricky asks ej how he figured out what he wanted to do after duke didn’t work out and ricky could actually develop some interests that arent the play or nini ,,, maybe fucking art club i mean he did p good on that centerpiece for carlos’ quinceañera.

with ricky not being the beast anymore i think seb should take his place that would be soooo good. and since seb isn’t chip anymore carlos won’t make those snide comments about chip being a small unimportant role and we can just cut that whole fight bc it was dumb and bad. we could still have seb being insecure that carlos is only dating him bc there aren’t really any other gay guys at school. in a heartbeat is great and i did like ricky being supportive in the background it was kinda funny too idk dhdjdjfj

ooh i almost forgot abt rini ahshdj okay so i still think they should break up. but in my version there’s no ricky pulling an ej 1.0 and deleting comments off of nini’s insta, cause with ricky in art club and nini at north trying to figure out what she wants i think one of them would realize that they’re going in different directions and only got back tgt because they made each other feel safe cause what they had was familiar. this could be triggered by ricky mentioning smth abt nini at yac and then nini breaks down and tells him that she dropped out and is at north and doesn’t know where she’s going. and then they can both realize they aren’t good for each other rn and have a less tragic mutual break up.

honestly i really liked the scene of nini taking charge after miss jenn freaked out cause with the character detail of nini giving every person in the cast of productions she’s in a thank you note she just seems really like someone who is suited to lifting others up. this could still be explored at north, maybe she could help lily through her issues that were briefly implied in ep 11 and nini realizes she wants to be a drama teacher and encourage kids to go off book and put themselves into their acting, something she couldn’t have at yac.

okay now ej ,,, so like i said in ricky’s section, more bants between them cause i feel like friendships kinda fell by the wayside due to all the relationships so more friendship !!!! also the scene where ej tells his dad he’s not going to duke shouldn’t have been an ending scene, it should have been fleshed out with his dad pushing back saying how he pulled all these strings to get him in and ej saying he doesn’t wanna go if his own hard work couldn’t get him there. and also more scenes of ej doing av club things !!! and realizing he rlly likes film and wants to do it OMG IT WOULD BE SO COOL IF HE BROKE THE FOURTH WALL AND ASKED THE DOCUMENTARY CREW ABT THE FILM INDUSTRY god i would love that. the only scene we rlly got of ej doing film things was at the quinceañera which made me kinda sad. uhhh also i just wanted to specifically mention how ej got mr mazzara that job at cal tech bc it really showed how he wanted to be there for people not just for gina, who he had a crush on, but for mr mazzara who supported him outside of romance, so i wanna keep that for sure.

gina !!! okay so i mostly liked her arc in this season, the only changes i would make would be to flesh it out a teeny bit (god this hypothetical s2 would have to be like 22 eps at least shdjdjdjfj) anyways besides ashlyn singing home to get gina to stay i think there should be a scene where they actually talk in her room abt how gina feels safer when shes on the run (second chance reference ilysm) hhhh and also a scene of her and carlos actually working out compromises for their choreo cause i liked that bit of development too and fleshing that out would make gina an even better foil for lily, who felt a need to hog the spotlight like gina used to. with gina’s own arc fleshed out her character would feel more whole independently from romance and portwell would be even more rewarding than it is in the current s2. the only thing i would really change abt portwell is that they would kiss !!! in the finale but thats bc im biased.

ashlyn should have gotten a more fleshed out storyline about being insecure about not being a good enough belle or the typical belle. there were some throwaway lines when north did their typical dramatics but the only two real scenes that showed it were when ash talked to big red about it and when she was telling nini she wanted to do a run in “home” bc lily did it. ashlyn should get more screen time where she has to grapple with the reasons she doesn’t feel good enough and big red can still support her but also gina too bc i would like more roommate besties interaction.

kourtney could still date howie, that harry potter shit was cute but there needs to be smth else for kourtney’s arc. idk she’s still into fashion so maybe she could be out here trying to create her own line or smth? this doesn’t have to be resolved in s2 like making a wholeass line takes time and she could work on it into a potential s3. kourtney just didnt get much outside of howie and the stuff at the beginning of the season where she said nini inspired her to be independent and that's why she got a job was just dropped?? so i think that fashion could fill that for her if she’s still dating howie cause like having her whole arc just be the pizza place kinda overlaps w big red’s mini arc abt how he wasn’t settling for hospitality, its what he wants to do with his life.

ik what ur thinking. anna, even if you added more episodes, where would u find the room to add all these plotlines?? well first we cut (most of) the seblos fight, so thats some time saved. honestly most of the time that we r going to gain is going to be from cutting ms jenn’s time. things like ms jenn’s and nini’s car ride would get cut, but mostly all of ms jenn’s romances would get cut down. considering she’s the teacher and isn’t actually a character with an arc how does she have THREE love interests this season?? like all of the weird tension between her and zack can be cut, like just some short scenes of them being competitive can stay. all of the stuff with ricky’s dad can go bye bye we don’t need it. i did like her w mr mazzara so most of that can stay i just didn’t like how he said he would give up cal tech for her, ew no that would be gone.

the MENKIES !!!! this is the last thing im gonna address cause in a perfect world every character would get a long fleshed out arc but then the season would be waaay too long and also im mostly trying to work within material the show gave so this is mostly made up of “realistic” deviations from what actually happened. lol idk what that even means it just makes sense to me. but anyways!! uhhh bro idk i thought them dropping the menkies was funny but it also made the finale really BAD lmao. in this finale, seb is the beast, east still had to deal w the fact that they’re underfunded compared to north but no one is injured, lily is less of a poorly written character and maybe ppl are even rooting for her, and wow i just realized i never actually said what role i think nini should have in north’s show. OOH she could be student director instead of lily cause lily both being in the play while also directing was weird considering omg i just checked and according to her wiki page shes a FRESHMAN?? and they let her be student director? lol hell nah. okay so with all that in mind ,,, the menkies should have been the season cliffhanger instead of portwell. east and north should both be nominated, both schools perform at the menkies, and then the award winner is about to be announced and THATS when it cuts to natalie and the end of the season.

one, this actually gives more tension for a summer s3 as we would be waiting to see the consequences of whichever school won. also i bet people would be wondering if nini’s gonna be transferring back to east or staying at north. people would also prob wonder if ej would be getting the scholarship if east won and what that would mean for his interest in film.

lmao that got longggg and idk if anyone’s even gonna read this but it was fun to do :D

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi hi ! The requests are soon closing so I guess it's time to slip in one just before closing hour! How about some SFW bath headcanons with Ruggie, Azul, Lilia, Jamil and Kalim with their girlfriend, please? Wishing you the best of days!

Anon: I would like bath headcanons.

Also Anon: SFW bath heacanons.

The Writing Raven: .........................................I shall...do my best.

I wish you the best of days (and the best of baths) as well.

I had a lot of fun writing for this prompt, but it’s a lot, so please check below the cut for more content.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

Kalim Al-Asim

He loves soaking in baths! They’re a great way to relax after a long day of work!

Kalim is a baby through and through, he’ll just happily invite you to take a bath with him without realizing the...other implications, or what that situation could potentially lead to. He just thinks of it as another fun way to bond with his girlfriend~

Yes, he still has a rubber ducky (and a plethora of other bath toys). No, he doesn’t care if anyone calls him lame for having them.

He still enjoys bubble baths! In fact, he has this bottle of really fancy, fragrant bubble soap from his home country and it makes these amazingly big suds...! And it smells great too, like a field of flowers and fresh fruit.

Kalim is the type to use excessive amounts of bathing products because well...he’s rich, there’s always more where that came from. Plus, he likes to smell nice and clean!

He dumps the whole bottle of bubble soap into the bath tub before hopping in with you.

There’s plenty of space because his bathroom in Scarabia is huge...it’s basically like his own private hot springs area.

You have a lot of fun making the soap lather up and have a friendly competition to see who can make the best bubble sculpture in the bath.

You also splash each other with water like little kids.

By the time you manage to get out of the water, both of you are super pruney.

Jamil Viper

“Strip.”

The command comes out of nowhere, and it stuns you into silence.

“Did you not hear me the first time? I said, ‘strip’.”

Okay, Jamil repeating it just makes it ten times worse.

When you don’t immediately comply, he sighs, takes you by the wrist, and escorts you to the bathroom, where he has already drawn a warm bath.

This man has gone all out to decorate the bath tub with candles and rose petals and shit. Does he run a spa as a side job or something?

He explains that you seemed stressed lately, so he wanted to do something to help you relax.

Jamil won’t join you this time since he thinks it best for you to claim the bath tub space all for yourself (his bath tub is more of a normal, modest size compared to Kalim’s massive one).

He does, however, assist you with disrobing (even though you insist you can do it yourself).

Jamil also stays by your side as you bathe, even if he’s not in the bath tub with you. Like, he helps wash you and everything (again, even though you insist you can do it yourself).

“Be silent and allow me to do this much for you.”

You shut up and just let it happen. At least he makes pleasant conversation with you as he goes about doing his business. His calm voice reverberates off the bathroom walls and creates pleasant hums.

Your bath concludes with a massage using a scented oil imported from the Land of Hot Sands. Jamil wraps you up in a fluffy towel and sends you on your way to bed--and you feel so relaxed.

Ruggie Bucchi

Ruggie is not a fan of baths. It’s not that he hates being clean, it’s that he feels baths are a massive waste of water--showers are much more convenient for him (and easier on the water bill).

If he has to choose between bathing and licking himself clean, he’d lick himself clean like any self-respecting hyena would.

Ruggie realizes that licking yourself clean isn’t really an option for his girlfriend, so he’ll crack a joke about offering to lick you clean for you.

You are not amused.

Okay, okay, he gets it and he’ll arrange something.

Somehow he uses his vice-dorm leader powers to clear out the Savanaclaw lounge (where they waterfall is) so you can just bathe there in peace and quiet. Plus, the waterfall is always running anyway, Ruggie reasons, so no one has to waste any water by turning on a faucet.

He offers you the basics (soap, towel, etc.), nothing more and nothing less. This boy’s very practical!

Ruggie doesn’t want to bother you too much as you do your thing, but he does kind of stand guard to make sure no drifters wander in and see something only he should get to see.

He’ll probably tackle you in a hug once you’re clean and dressed again, since he just loves that “just washed” scent.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul prefers showers to baths. He thinks baths are a waste of both time and resources--besides, isn’t the sea already one massive bath tub? Compared to that, human bath tubs are pathetic.

A businessman must always appear amicable, so he puts a lot of effort into making sure he is well-groomed.

His bath products smell like...I don’t know, whatever “beach” stuff smells like according to the bath product industry. Salt spray and a cool breeze, with a hint of something tropical.

He only agrees to take a bath with you because the twins bullied him and called him a “sea chicken”, whatever that is.

You are curious about it, so you ask him about his octopus form.

Azul blushes and absolutely refuses to revert back to being a merman for your amusement.

You manage to convince him by reminding him that you love him no matter what he looks like and you want to see all the sides to him.

It’s a tight squeeze in the tub. His tentacles take up much more space than you thought they would.

Azul tells you “I told you so”, but you decide to just get out of the bath and bathe him instead since you want to appreciate all of his body.

You whip out a sponge and set to work.

There’s so many crevices that it takes you forever to clean every inch (it also doesn’t help that Azul is whining and complaining about every little move/insisting you should not touch X, Y, and Z spots, otherwise he might shoot out some ink).

When you’re all done, Azul is basically a quivering mass of bright pink jelly, holding his face in his hands and whimpering--he can’t believe that just happened.

The tweels barge in to laugh at him some more.

Lilia Vanrouge

Llilia usually showers, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t find the occasional bath to be fun, especially in his small form.

He finds baths to be charming and quaint, a reminder of the old days...back when he was still wrestling a wailing baby Silver and a fire-spitting Malleus into the bath tub.

Lilia will happily join you in the tub.

He will use this opportunity to tease you mercilessly, as well as to tell embarrassing bath time stories and mishaps related to Silver/Malleus’s childhoods. So much blackmail potential here.

He’s the type to offer to help you wash your hair, except he will point out whenever you have a split end or an early onset white/silver hair--all in good fun, though!

He’ll surprise you at times by randomly hugging you from behind while washing your hair, or covering your eyes while you’re in the bath and demanding for you to “guess who”.

Lilia probably has really weird smelling bath products...they stink like ash and animal fat (which, according to Lilia, is what they used “back in his day”). You pray to god it’s not actually ash and animal fat bath products.

His towels are a bit frayed from constant use (Lilia doesn’t replace things unless they really have absolutely zero function anymore), but they dry you off just fine--waste not, what not!

[stone-man-warrior]

June 13, 2020: 2:05 pm:

Neighborhood Assessment: A ten minute view while standing on my front walkway was largely unremarkable. It’s overcast and cool outside. There is no wind, no rain. It’s almost silent. Distant freeway traffic can be gleaned from the silence. A goat made goat sounds at Monroe’s terror cell. A big rig air-horn sounded twice with two short tones from somewhere nearby to the south, and sounded as if it was neither on Jackpine or Russell road, but somehow seemed as if the big rig was in the forest area behind Myers terror cell. The horn sound was accompanied by the sound of a truck moving through two gears to a stop. There is nothing to see from my front walkway other than trees, grass, my out buildings and my old broken car projects that are never going to happen because of the terror take-over. From my front walkway I can see the Chapman driveway, and some outbuildings there, and the Monroe Offensive Surveillance Travel Trailer is ever present and visible from my front walkway. Other than that, nothing but trees and forest. I have been noticing a slight increase in small bird diversity, but not an increase in number of small birds in the area. I am seeing a few species of small birds that I don’t recognize as being a local variety There are still no small forest critters other than grey squirrels. ===========================

I said some things yesterday about the offshore lumber mill, and how the lumber may have played a role in the housing of terror soldiers in Southern California in the 1980′s. I want explore that some more. The lumber mill offshore, has been there longer than I know. I learned of it in around 1985 when the lumber we were getting at the job-site had some Asian signature stamps printed on the lumber. Asian people use a wood block printing method to sign their name, it’s an Asian alphabet symbol that is unique to the person who made the stamp. Like a rubber stamp that you keep with you for signing. Every once in while, on a piece of lumber, there was one with a few of those Asian signature stamps randomly stamped onto the wood. Sometimes there were two or three different symbols, other times it was just one symbol on a two-by-four in the stack of new lumber that had been delivered to the job-site. I cut a piece of two-by-four that had one of those symbols on it, and took it to Ventura Blvd where I new of a man who was Asian, and might know what the stamps were about. The man was shocked, excited, and thanked me for bringing that into his shop. I did not understand what he was saying it meant, other than the explanation of the signature, and that it’s someone’s name, and some other information, all contained in small, one-inch by one and one-half inch stamp, or two, or three. I left the piece of two-by four with the man on Ventura. Later, more information about slaves on a boat invented the OSB Omnidimesional Structural Board product, and that is the stuff we were going to be using on the job-site instead of plywood. The carpenters hated the OSB at first, but we got used to it, and it became what it is, a staple in the construction of buildings. Later, the OSB was incorporated into the manufactured truss joisting products, and served as the web between cords... that’s all TMI, but is exemplary of the importance of a product that was developed by slaves on a boat. “The guys on the boat invented this stuff, we are going to use it instead of plywood, and see how it holds up.” Said the foreman. So, in 1980, USA had 20% interest rates to borrow from a bank to buy a house. It was a set-up. Business was stymied. The same way Corona Virus Lockdown is a set-up. People are stymied. Then, Reagan shows up, and suddenly the interest rates are suitable to borrow money again, and a (planned) housing boom happened in California. With Corona Virus, George Floyd murder created another kind of “Boom”, (planned) demonstrations, people all pissed off having been on “lockdown” for three months. I am asking that you see the #SAGcoup pattern, and tactic they use. It repeats. “Lock things up, then turn it all loose explosively” is the tactic.

So the boats making cheap lumber offshore with logs from US West Coast Forests in the years preceding and through the 1980 Ronald Reagan Housing Boom, was a set-up. The logs were going offshore. The lumber mills, in a housing boom, had to compete for access to logs. Lumber mills fell. They closed during a high demand time for the products they make. That was what  the set-up was for, control of the lumber, all of the lumber. With fewer lumber mills around, the lumber industry is much easier to take-over. I have done absolutely zero research about this, it’s all from memory, so, if there are interested people who look at ways the terror takes over, the Reagan Housing Boom combined with the offshore slave lumber mills, to gain control of the entire US Lumber industry, while simultaneously building housing for the Ronald Reagan Commemorative Canadian Terror Army, is a good place to find some truth. The work necessary for that, was orchestrated by shill SAG Governors in Washington State, Oregon, and California, at minimum. That sudden reduction in interest rates from 20% is going to show the extent that the banking industries had been hijacked by the early 1980′s. That kind of “Lock it up, then release the Kraken” idea is one that repeats. It provides a “Known Control Point” when planned ahead of time. Puts a handle on an unwieldy, wild, thing, and does so, at a time of perceived chaos, SAG Style. There was no person by the name of George Floyd. The whole thing was/is staged to produce a time when the people who had been couped up for half of the year, were already about to pop like a ripe zit. The demonstrations that followed, came in the midst of lockdown, for a disease that does not exist. All planned, so the the killing of many thousands of people could take place in the resulting chaos at the demonstrations. The people who arrange the demonstrations provide the enticing bait for the ones who are locked up, and want to get outside anyway they can, they are the intended Victims. News Media is the boat the demonstrator event planners are riding on, and they throw the bait with use of Twitter, to many hundreds of thousands of people in a geographic area, where the police were already hijacked by SAG. The result is a mass taking of Victims, in the midst of live demonstrations and chaos, but offscreen. The show stays front and center, drawing in ever more Victims. The actual methods of kill, are varied and many within the chaos. Capture, torture, farm of assets and personal information, gain the cellular telephone of the Victim where the contact list is at, and then kill, and replace with suitable look-a-like impostor citizens from Canada, with help from the State Police who control the DMV, and with the blessings of the State Governor SAG Shills, US Congress, and US President. California Housing Boom, Ronald Reagan, 1981 helped to make the events taking place today, happen, by providing housing for the Canadian terror army, free of charge. End terror report: 3:15 pm.

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Dinner and a Cat

The cat was nowhere to be seen when I got home that afternoon, and the back door was slightly ajar. I turned off the TV, put away groceries, and made myself a giant mug of hot chocolate.

Honestly, because I could.

A couple of friends had texted me while I’d been out, and I invited them over for dinner. Still, there was time to enjoy some delicious beverage in silence before I needed to start cooking. I wanted to savor the silence.

I work in the retail industry, and some people really have a thing about their morning drink. It’s scary, actually. It’s a coffee, lady. So, when I don’t have to work, I like spending my time with people and things that don’t turn into “Karen” at the slightest provocation.

A cool autumn breeze swept down the street as I stood on my front porch, cradling my mug like it was my first-born child. The forecast for the evening promised rain, which would quickly turn to snow — first of the season — so my mind wandered toward the cat. Would it end up spending the night outdoors? Worry settled in the pit of my stomach.

“If you’re out there, kitty, you’re welcome back anytime,” I said to no one in particular.

I mean, I talk to things. OK?

And a few minutes later, it hopped onto the porch as if summoned and sat on the welcome mat. In the daytime, it still looked like it could use about a month’s worth of decent meals, but when the black furball wasn’t shivering, it looked a lot more alive.

“Hey, buddy,” I said.

It hissed at me.

“Not a fan of ‘buddy,’ huh? Yeah, me neither. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Meow.”

“How about Kai? That was the name of my favorite cartoon character when I was a kid.”

“Meow.”

I nodded to myself. “For a cat, you’re basically a genius, so if you’re cool with it, I’m cool with it. I got some real chicken. I mean… I got cat food, obviously, but also actual chicken. I’ll make you some. It’ll probably taste better than kibble anyway.”

The cat got up from my welcome mat and walked into the house, at which point it walked around both floors once. I’d never seen a cat patrol its territory before; Tasha had been an entirely indoor cat. The idea of sharing with anyone had never crossed that kitten’s mind. Kai, on the other hand, took its sweet time and then settled down on the couch.

“Meow.”

Ah, right, the cat wants to watch Netflix. Good thing it doesn’t cost any extra to just have it going in the background all day. I restarted whatever drama was on — in Korean at that — and then headed to the kitchen.

***

Nat and Em came over around seven. By then, I’d cooked up a bit of a storm. I love cooking; it’s what I do when I need to relax. I am not much of an eater, though, so it was nice to have company over.

Nat’s a software engineer for a large aerospace company, and Emily basically performs magic with clay and her hands. We’ve known each other since we were in middle school, although we’d drifted apart when we all headed off to different colleges. It was sheer luck that all three of us now lived in the state and had time to see each other occasionally.

The doorbell rang, and Kai sat up like it was expecting trouble.

“It’s my friends,” I told it — like it was important for the weird furball to know who was at the door.

I wiped my hands clean on an apron and sprinted to let whoever it was in. Natalie Gomez stood on the other side, stunning as always. It doesn’t matter what the woman wears; she always looks like she’s got her shit together. That evening, Nat was wearing a fancy turtleneck sweater and hip-hugging jeans. And she has a lot of beautiful hips in need of hugging.

“Love the sweater,” I said as I gestured for her to come inside. We hugged because she’s a hugger, and there’s no escape. “How’s it going?”

“Eh, you know. Same shit, different day. Oh my god, your place smells amazing.”

I let go, and she bounced inside. Shrugging, I muttered, “You know me. Stress cooking.”

“Yeah, but you’re talented. And I’m not just saying that, either. Hey, looks like you got a new cat.”

I closed the door and followed Nat into the living room. “More like, it adopted me last night. I don’t think it’s dangerous, but maybe give it some space.”

“Does he bite?”

“I don’t even know that it’s a ‘he,’ honestly.” I grabbed a bottle of wine out of the fridge. “Want a glass of um… something red?”

The brown-eyed engineer came over and leaned against the cabinets. “Shit, yes, please. Sorry, it’s been a week. We’re releasing a new product, and that’s always stressful.”

“Well, take a seat, drink some wine, and food should be done in minutes.”

Nat accepted the offered glass and took a gulp. “What about you? How’s Iris doing?”

“Uh, just doing… I guess.” Mom had been on my mind all day, but I wasn’t going to ruin the evening talking about stuff I couldn’t change. “Work’s been busy, and I think I need to make time to go see my family this holiday season.” I tried a smile on for size. “But you know, good stuff, too. I got the library internship, and that starts in a week.”

“Good for you! I remember you gushing about that. I’m so glad everything worked out. Are you still going to work at the cafe?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure, to be honest. The money’s better at the cafe, but I can’t work eighty hours a week, either.”

“No, you can’t. And you have got to take care of you.” Nat smiled. “Look, even Mr. or Mrs. Kitty thinks so.”

Kai had gotten up from its comfy perch on the couch and came over to sit by my feet. I looked down at the curious furball and said, “I bet you’re hungry. How about some seared chicken?”

I’d always cooked for Tasha because I like cooking, and my princess of a cat had enjoyed eating the food I made. I remember spending hours on Google, looking at cat-friendly recipes. After I’d first adopted Tasha, Dr. Hopkins spent a week straight reassuring me that cats were carnivores and could survive on a steady supply of live mice.

So, cooking for Kai was pretty much a matter of pulling out the old recipe book, picking something that sounded interesting, and then making it happen. I arranged the food on a long, narrow plate and set it down on the floor in a kitchen corner, away from us humans. The furball sniffed at the food and then went for it.

“You said it adopted you?” Nat gestured at the cat with her wine glass.

“Something like that. I mean, it was out on my porch last night, and it’s come back into the house a couple of times now.”

“I think you should go back to the shelter and get yourself another pet.”

“I keep thinking about it, and I don’t know, I’m just not home enough to really give a pet the love it deserves.”

“I thought cats were independent,” said the human who never actually had any pets and didn’t want them. Nat had her husband and her girlfriend, and that was enough for her.

I shrugged. “I mean, this sweetheart, maybe. Most cats need at least some attention.”

From the corner, the cat hissed at me like it knew I’d called it a sweetheart. The doorbell rang again, and Nat waved at me to stay put. “I’ll get it. It’s probably Emily.”

A few moments later, a familiar wan face appeared in the kitchen doorframe. Sammy, age three, followed by his mother, Emily, who looked absolutely beat. I knew she worked crazy hours during the fall semester — she taught at a local art college, made pottery, and volunteered for a local nonprofit. And she had a little boy she was raising by herself.

“Hey, Sammy!”

“Good evening, Miss Iris,” said the polite, dark-eyed kiddo. “Ooh, kitty.”

“Can you do me a huge favor?” I asked the little boy.

“Yeah!”

“Can you give kitty a little space tonight? It’s shy.”

Kai hissed at me again but didn’t budge from its food. The boy looked at the cat, all wide-eyed and interested, but his mom put a hand on his shoulder. I handed Emily a glass of wine and gave her a mercifully brief hug. I hadn’t seen Em for the better part of two months, and I suspected she needed a girls’ night out.

“Thanks,” the redhead whispered.

I gave her a thumbs up and checked on the oven. “Well, dinner is basically done. Why don’t you three get comfortable on the couch, and I’ll bring over the tasty, tasty food.”

“Let me give you a hand,” Nat offered. “Meanwhile, Em can tell us all about her students this semester.”

From the living room, Emily groaned. “Don’t get me started. I swear college students nowadays can’t get their noses out of their cellphones long enough to look at fine art.”

I dished up some steamed and seasoned vegetables onto individual plates. I also decorated Sam’s plate while his mother regaled us with her horror stories. Kai finished its dinner but hung around the kitchen, not quite underfoot. I wondered if it didn’t like all the extra company. Tasha had been the star of the show, but I’d met shy cats before; not every animal liked being around humans it didn’t know.

We sat on the floor around the coffee table in the living room and had dinner. Nat shared with us some of her latest hiking adventures. Sammy demonstrated his ability to count to ten. Emily cheered him on. The cat settled down on the floor beside me, close enough that I could feel its warm presence, and stayed there for the duration of the evening.

For a brief moment, I could forget the troubles that haunted my waking hours and just enjoy some pleasant conversation.

And then, life went to hell, starting with the burglar-wanna-be.

[taeguboi]

BTS as... Rockers

Ngl, I panicked a little when I checked on the masterlist because an older post about BTS as rock band members was labelled as this title and I’d already written this one for like 3 members already. There’s various genres I mention, some of which are also metal and pop but I thought a simple general title would be best here.

Anyways, my second post coming back recently. Hope you enjoy.

RM

Mainly a classics man

Loves to analyse lyrics

and loves writing his own lyrics based on his current favourites

It’s like a form of literature to him

Loves to chill out to prog and psychedelic rock

Accidentally had the same music tastes as that weird geography teacher in school

Probably has a pet named after a member of a power / symphonic metal band

sorry I’m a bit of a Nightwish nerd and now I can just imagine him calling for his dog “Floor!” and everyone getting confused because they think he’s just shouting at the ground

this is the kind of genre he likes the most other than classic rock; that’s where the most literature references are. It’s poetry about poetry

Has a journal of art and lyrics quotes for when he’s super into a song

Could be mistaken for a geek in school 

because to a juvenile ear, his taste in music might be challenging to listen to

like no one else had the patience aged 12 to listen to a 9 minute song or an instrumental track

and then even at 15/16, how many people your age would listen to Dark Side Of The Moon?

Guess he would say music is all about sitting back and listening and taking it in

Would love to be a songwriter for the right kind of singer

unfortunately though, he’s a bit of a loner

likes his own company too much

it’s probably the solitude that motivates him to write 

too many more friends than he already has would be too much of a distraction

It’s not a sad situation though

music is what Namjoon loves the most

and “nothing else matters”

Oh yes, let’s have a bit of Metallica in there too

It’s not until he finishes school that he becomes more in touch with what people in the current world of rock and metal like

discovered “Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit like WAY too many years after it came out

“Have you heard this ace song man?”

“yep... in 2004 dude”

“oh”

But he’s no ashamed or anything, no

He’s proud to be a fan of the bands he likes

even if they aren’t to everyone’s tastes

“Well, sorry if this isn’t some 3 minute long four chord song repeating the same 5 words”

If they don’t appreciate it, their loss

Jin

The old ones are the best ones

Think 50s rock n’ roll; Little Richard, Elvis, and so on

mixed with guilty pleasures of songs about ‘my baby girl’

Loves themed music nights

Whilst of course his favourites are the 50s themed ones

he also loves showing up to 60s nights to flaunt the flower power

or 80s nights in a fun wig as some member of a hair metal band

all the styles are very fun

but on a daily basis, he’s basically dresses like a teddy boy

tight trousers with white socks peaking out

jacket - sometimes a suit jacket, sometimes denim

as you can imagine, when a lot of this stuff comes back in fashion...

“Well, I did it first...”

you know, in this era he means he did it first

Loves a good finger clicker song

Once considered doing a tribute act around pubs and clubs

but he couldn’t decide who he wanted to be

Probably should take a role in some live production of Grease

he’s seen it enough times

and he can sing

He reckons he could never do theatre for long though

his fantasies are with playing instruments to perform

talented keyboard player

starting to get the hang of guitar too

but he does get carried away whilst trying to learn guitar

because he wants to add on all the cool moves NOW

He’s got some bangers he created on the keyboard though

he didn’t really intend to create original songs

it just happened one day after a break up

and he listened to Heartbreak Hotel

too many times

he just sat at his keyboard

and made something that really felt special

and then the day after that, he made a more upbeat song

and the week after that, he has 4 full songs in total

Open mic nights become something he enjoys 

a bit of a local celebrity

“Would you play my grandma’s 80th party? Pleeeease?”

and aww bless him, he plays all the throwback songs at care homes

all free of charge

slips in some of his original music too

“Ooh, I’m afraid I don’t remember that one dear, must be my brain”

“Oh, no no no” explains Jin “I made it myself”

Old dears just love him basically

but so do the girls his age

Whilst some think the whole 50s get up is a bit lame

some go wild for it

because he dons all his outfits so well

and his songs feel so true to the era they were inspired by

you gain a love for the 50s just from watching Jin

Talented boy, keeping the 50s alive

Suga

A lot say Yoongi has an acquired taste

an electronic element to rock or metal always makes it more interesting to him

loves industrial music - NIN for days

Linkin Park made most of his jams

cried for half a day at the news of Chester no longer being with us

Likes a bit of new wave, synthpop, all that

emo songs just help you through the bad times okay

Can equally enjoy a dub festival as much as a rock concert

some people think his taste is actually naff

but then they realise he also listens to the likes Foo Fighters or Sum 41

Plays like the same 30 songs on repeat

but his collection has so much more

He has some rock and blues for the road trip

he’s got your 70s singalongs for the party

Was briefly a DJ at a rock bar

got fired for not playing enough popular songs in his set

“wtf I thought this was a bar where people could appreciate this” huffs Yoongi

“yes but people want to sing to ‘down with the sickness’ or something, not ‘down in the park’!”

“stuff you then, I’ll take Gary somewhere else with me”

guilty pleasure: Kate Bush

A somewhat gothic sense of style

but not overwhelmingly gothic

He likes bandannas and black clothes

not always in black clothes though

sometimes the merch he wants just isn’t available in black

but no worries

as long as he can happily flaunt the music that makes him who he is

J-Hope

Can listen to any rock genre

give him something and he probably already loves it

So yeah, the band members are pretty cool and all that

but what Hoseok has more interest in the backstage roles

he’d love to manage a rock band

be a tour manager

guitar tech

Much knowledge is stored in that brain of his

and he wants to put it to good use

He starts out as a promoter and organiser for the rock bar in town

which he eventually lives above 

His events are ace

he can pick out fresh talent that everyone on that scene can enjoy

His showcase nights are the place to be

everyone can agree, he’s got amazing taste

no one can disagree with him

He’s a one man show and still managed to pull it off

he’s the promoter, the sound guy, the tech on all the instruments

way more professional than most other local music events

He takes pride in his work

did I mention he’s so good, it becomes a full time job?

As time goes by, he listens to less and less older music

but that’s okay

he’s happy with the time it takes to listen to all the up and coming bands

in the moment is where you should live

and he can still appreciate a band’s influences should they initiate conversation

“man, this dude really knows his stuff”

“will you manage our next tour?”

“can you do sound at our next gig? our guy’s rubbish”

and that one is like right in front of their current sound guy

The future is bright for Hoseok

his love for rock music could really earn him a solid living

Jimin

Some say he’s a bit of a poser in his leather jacket

but he really does love his rock music

Sometimes a bit behind on modern rock bands or releases

Low key wishes he was born in the 50s / 60s 

just so he could live in his favourite eras

his heart really lies with the classics

60s, 70s, 80s.

90s at a push

not the later 90s where grunge bands did pop

ew

actually any movie made in that time makes him cringe

like he’s all up for good clean fun

but christ it’s like they were trying to go back to the 50s or something

not everything is ‘swell’ you know

Don’t get him wrong though

he does also like some 50s music

He may or may not have spent that one time acting like Elvis in the mirror

it really hyped him up before a night out though

it may or may not have become a thing before going out in the evenings to boost his confidence

His all time favourite bands have to be The Rolling Stones and AC/DC

and no, he couldn’t pick between the two, ever

Doesn’t really have a desire to be in a band

but sort of accidentally picks up the bass to help out a mate in a band

and sort of accidentally becomes a permanent member

It’s just a cover band

but it’s so much fun

Sometimes, you can have a really bad day

and then listening to 23 people singing “I Love Rock n Roll”

kind of lifts your mood

“Play Wonderwall!”

gets a bit annoying to him

kind of wants to hit that one guy around the head with his bass

but he holds back

Because being aggressive wouldn’t be very rock of him

and whilst he does like punk music

he’s definitely not a punk

Screw all that political rubbish

music should be to enjoy yourself with

stop worrying about the world for one minute and

let’s sing about whiskey and cigarettes and just living life

“What do you MEAN you don’t know any Def Leppard songs?”

“For crying out loud!”

He tries to understand that not everyone will listen what the music he likes

“but... like seriously, how can you not though?”

V

Probably likes all the underrated bands

Loves vinyl

definitely collects vinyls

Likes to shop at vintage stores to fulfil his obscure taste

People are like “you paid £60 just for that?”

but to Tae, it’s worth every penny

He likes the classics too

he can sing along in a rock bar to all the well known tunes

old or modern

and there may be loads in his vinyl collection barely anyone recognises

but there’s some more familiar faces too

there’s The Beatles, Guns n’ Roses, Foo Fighters, anything like that

it’s just only like 20% of his huge collection

Whilst his style is inspired by those he idolises...

he can never copy them

that would be an insult to them and his originality

Plays guitar and writes songs

never anything soppy though

actually fairly hesitant to pick up an acoustic guitar

always plays electric

and the songs he makes are about having a good time, life experiences

but not about love

He can listen to a couple of cheesy tracks

he just won’t make any

“Who the heck is John Otway, Tae?”

“Oh, you know, Wild Willy Barrat”

“Willy who?”

“Cor baby, that’s really free!”

“....”

“Headbutts! da da da da da... Headbuttttsssss”

I feel like rocker V loves anything that feels slightly random

probably make his own secret songs that sound silly to others

Probably has a band that never gigs

it’s him singing and playing guitar

and a bassist and drummer that aren’t really sure why they’re here

but they kind of like the unique stuff he does

and the band is almost purposely bad

“It’s the imperfections that really give a song character”

Jungkook

Modern rock and metal

low key emo

Tears Don’t Fall by BFMV on repeat aged 14, his first break up

Lives for festivals

like when he goes to work, that is what he is earning money for

well, that and bills and food

has a jar for each festival he wants to go to this year

Also loves a bit of melodic punk

like when that one Australian band are finally coming to his country

he HAS to go

help me I’m really sad because this is me and The Decline were supposed to be coming to the UK and then this pandemic happened and now I might never see them criii

Has a playlist for every aspect of life

every feeling, every colour, every occasion

songs that remind him of a time, ones where he can visualise a colour...

many people don’t get it

“how many playlists?”

“how can a song be a colour?”

it just is

like come on, listen to this Red Jumpsuit Apparatus song 

and tell him this doesn’t remind you of gold

Could be a journalist

knows everything and anything about his favourite bands

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

because it’s the perfect mixture of everything he loves about music

vests because M.Shadows

So badly wants to be in a band

tries every instrument you could find in a typical rock band

loves the drums

gets stuck on guitar though in his first band

well, he was just desperate to go gigging

he left after a year and a bit though

got boring

forms his own band instead around him being on the drums

Lives for this band

it’s like a rock band but with political lyrics

and they can perform at most events

they just fit any bill

gigs are booked almost every weekend

road trip with the lads

they travel like 50 miles just to be paid in beer only

Dreams of big time collaborations

that will probably never happen and he knows that

but it’s nice to dream, right?

puts on his own gigs a few years down the line

of course his own band are always on the bill

everyone thinks his gigs are a hoot

He even manages to book some lesser known punk bands 

but they are a massive deal to him

“God, I love live music!”

“Do you always wear a black shirt guk?”

“Hey, I’m a drummer! It’s hard work; a lot of sweat involved... I’m sure no one wants to see my wet pits whilst trying to enjoy the show”

and then that person wishes they never asked...

but he’s right

he knows that a good band is all about the hard graft and work

and he is always so thankful for the great rock bands that influence him

[arecomicsevengood]

More Movies I Watched. Should I Just Join Letterboxd?

Is Letterboxd fun? Not really sure if anyone gets anything out of these posts being located here, but also not sure I have any desire to join a website I’m not sure anyone I’m friends with is on, don’t necessarily feel a yearning to be around more people with too many opinions, who are maybe trying to parlay their “expertise” into writing jobs.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2020) dir. Celine Sciamma

I’m going to consider this a 2020 movie as that’s when its wide release was in the States; also, this movie’s great and if considered a 2020 movie is easily the frontrunner for best of the year. Well-shot enough I felt I was in good hands from the very first minutes, which feel vaguely reminiscent of The Piano (which I don’t remember super-well), this movie ends up also have a very intense relationship with music as well. This is a lesbian love story between a woman betrothed to be married to a man she’s never met and the painter who is making her portrait for the approval of said man. The painter is initially working on the portrait secretly, the film’s attention is tuned to the two leads’ furtive glances and studies of one another, the gaze intensely felt, but returned and mutual. Lots of great stuff, real delight taken in faces, the ability to change another’s expression by making them laugh. the power of music, the incommunicable aspects of subjective experience. I watched this director’s other movie, Girlhood, but don’t remember it, and this is a lot better. This is also a lot better than Blue Is The Warmest Color, where the only thing I remember is the long and graphic sex scene. This movie has no such scene. One of these actresses led the walkout when the French film industry gave Roman Polanski an award.

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Oliver Assayas

Just did an IMDB search and found out Assays cowrote a movie with Polanski a few years ago? That sucks. This one’s about an artist’s estate being sold off after a widow dies, as the kids need money. Plenty of nice bits about the subjective value of art and nostalgia. Assayas is not my favorite filmmaker by any means but he’s consistent enough. I guess Personal Shopper is my favorite of his?

Two Friends (1986) dir. Jane Campion

TV movie about two teenagers, told somewhat in reverse order for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Not great.

The Day Shall Come (2020) dir. Chris Morris

Beginning with like a series of “establishing shots” of Miami that eventually get to college kids partying is such a terrible way to begin a movie, really signals a degree of indifference to the language of film in favor of a a product of constant churn of content that “television” once served as shorthand for. Chris Morris comes from TV, of course, so I should know what I’m in for, and British comedy of a subversively-intentioned sort puts it in the wheelhouse of things I pay attention to anyway. That’s not to say I laughed at this thing, but I sort of observed it and its intentions — it never really wants you to be comfortable enough to laugh, and while the posture it takes to its black leads is sympathetic there’s still a feeling of anthropological indifference as part of its satirical thrust. Film comedies are meant to work in a theater because of the contagious properties of laughter, and when you lose that you end up with a thing that, even if I don’t want to subject it to “Hm, this seems kinda racist” thinkpieces that are the worst-case scenario, everything about the movie seems like the best case scenario is a reaction of “I see what you did there.”

Midnight Special (2016) dir. Jeff Nichols

Fits into the tradition of not-a-superhero-movie-but-basically tradition of Scanners and The Fury, but while those are basically the X-Men, this kid, kept from the sunlight because his dad think it will hurt him but really it’s good for him, is basically The Ray, of the 1990s Christopher Priest series I didn’t read consistently but liked a few issues of. The first half of this movie, spent speeding down streets at night, while some weird things happen, involving government agencies and a cult, is considerably better than the payoff, which is the child (a kid from Room and later, Good Boys) is an angel and is going to ascend to heaven. Part of it is so low-key and tense (but in a way where it feels like if it were on mute nothing would appear to be happening) and then the other part of it has these special effects that are fairly corny? So while the whole “indie guy makes a more mainstream movie” thing generates some interest, the idea of what constitutes a mainstream movie at this point in time (while also being a throwback in some ways to eighties Spielberg, or riding an It Follows/Stranger Things wave) means being forgettable.

Atlantic City (1980) dir. Louis Malle

This was a rewatch, which normally I avoid doing, but it turns out I had forgotten basically everything about this movie, besides vague memories of shots of stairwells, the sprawl of its plot, the roaming camera. That, still, is sort of the main thing to take away, because I love how the plot sort of swirls around this apartment building, and the streets of the city, the casino where Susan Sarandon works. She plays a woman whose husband left her for her sister, and they have rolled into the city with a large amount of cocaine. Burt Lancaster plays Sarandon’s neighbor, who lusts after her, but watches after another neighbor in the apartment, an old gangster’s ex-lover. Maybe I would suggest this as a good first Louis Malle movie to watch? Then you could watch Au Revoir Les Enfants, Murmur Of The Heart, Elevator To The Gallows, and My Dinner With Andre, and some of those are maybe better movies but this is arguably the most “accessible” in terms of its relationship to gangster/crime stuff while nonetheless feeling expansive and deeper than that. It relates to Burt Lancaster’s larger career but also has such a depth of feeling it’s not just a film history thing. Wallace Shawn has a cameo as a waiter also, it’s nice to see him.

Cat People (1982) dir. Paul Schrader

This movie’s a rewatch but I remember it being “watchable” but not really good, at least not nearly as good as the original. If memory serves, this has pretty much nothing in common with the original, but there’s a scene in the original that’s very memorable that’s reprised here. There’s a lot of gratuitous nudity in this one, and it even ends with a scene that seems perverse enough it should be memorable- Where Nastassja Kinski’s limbs are tied to a bed in a bit of bondage before she has sex and gets turned into a panther, so she can safely be put into zoo custody, but I didn’t remember at all on account of it feeling more perfunctory than indelible. Also I thought there was a scene where you see a naked man climb out of a cage at the zoo but maybe that’s in another movie too. Remember when Paul Schrader made a facebook post asking whose were the best tits in the history of art?

Affliction (1997) dir. Paul Schrader

When there was a little featurette documentary on Criterion Channel where Alex Ross Perry interviewed Schrader, Schrader cited Affliction as one of his best movies. Takes place in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Fargo and A Simple Plan, the vision of small-town life feels slightly familiar from Twin Peaks too — all of these things feel “nineties” in a way. About the cycle of domestic violence being passed on from fathers to sons. Stars Nick Nolte, with Willem Dafoe as his younger brother, who narrates intermittently. Mary Beth Hurt plays Nolte’s ex-wife, Sissy Spacek plays his current lover. James Coburn plays the abusive father but I kept thinking it was Rip Torn.

Rancho Notorious (1952) dir. Fritz Lang

Another solid Fritz Lang movie, that I believe was a favorite of the French new wave filmmakers? (Who didn’t like his German stuff for some bullshit reason.) This one’s a western. A man’s fiancee gets murdered, and he tries t to track down the guy who did it, in search of revenge. There’s a recurring bit of a song narrating his desire for revenge that’s pretty bad. It turns out there’s a large ranch, run by Marlene Dietrich, where criminals can hide out if they don’t ask questions of one another and give her a share of their haul. He forms alliances, does some crimes, gets his revenge, there’s some great technicolor shots of landscapes, it’s unclear how real his feelings are for Marlene Dietrich or if they’re partly put on to win her affections, I don’t think Dietrich is that appealing personally. The thing that makes this movie cool or interesting (and maybe makes it feel particularly American, but seen from an outsider’s perspective) is this sense of bonhomie that is maybe just a total front for long-standing resentment, with love as a conditional thing.

Slightly French (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I found this one pretty watchable. A rough-around-the-edges fairground actress is recruited to play a French ingenue in the press as part of a long play for a director to get his job back with a studio he was fired from after alienating the original lead actress and everyone above him. The director basically only cares about making movies, and is sort of a psychopath, but she falls in love with him. The director’s sister, who warns that she also has no feelings, ends up being paired off with the producer who competes for the star’s affection for a while. Written by a woman, and feels very psychologically insightful and unjudgmental about women’s tendency or willingness to fall in love with people who treat them poorly, and to allow for the movie/genre expectations to respect that choice as the right one.

A Scandal In Paris (1946) dir. Douglas Sirk

Apparently Sirk considered this his best movie. It’s before his melodrama period, and is based on a memoir, so there’s a bit of a biopic quality to it, though it does try to be fairly concise and well-structured. About a criminal who solves a crime he committed in order to become chief of police, ostensibly to become an even bigger criminal who pulls off a huge robbery, who then goes straight instead. The criminal is also a casanova type, who seduces a series of women and makes them fall in love with him and forgive him his crimes. I would probably have liked this movie more if it was a stylized seventies thing and/or liked the actors better.

Story Of A Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

This movie’s wild! One of the best credit sequences I’ve ever seen, establishing a pattern that the whole thing will be told mostly via narration, and this narration goes on to tell so much of the story that the visual storytelling almost seems redundant, or illustrative of the text, in a way I’d never seen in a movie. It’s structured as a man writing his memoirs, and is more literal about that structure than we normally see. But then there are parts where his writing gets interrupted and these scenes use dialogue and employ elision to discreetly set up punchlines… Really cool. Criterion’s website says this was an influence on Orson Welles, and maybe they mean F For Fake?

The Immortal Story (1968) dir. Orson Welles

I hadn’t seen this one, despite being an Orson Welles fanatic, I guess because most people would not consider it a feature film, as it’s under an hour long, and made for French television. It’s not great, kind of feels like a long short film. Welles plays an old rich man who hates the existence of fiction so much he tries to make a story that’s basically a Penthouse letter become true, casting Jeanne Moreau in the role of the woman and a much younger man as the dude who has sex with her. Based on a story by Isak Dinesen, which I’m just learning now was the pen name of a woman.

If You Could Only Cook (1935) dir. William Selter

So I kept on watching Jean Arthur movies, binging them before they left Criterion Channel at the end of June. You would expect them to blend together, and maybe they will in time but having just watched this one it’s great. Totally absurd premise becomes legit funny. The master chef from History Is Made At Night here plays an Italian gangster. The two movies would be a pretty solid double feature, as both feature pretty involved, absurd plots, based around love stories, but also featuring this weird comedic element. This one features Jean Arthur as a down-on-her-luck woman who strikes up a conversation with a guy on a park bench, convincing him they should get a job together working as a butler and cook team. He is secretly rich, and gets lessons in being a butler from his butler, and falls in love with her, a week before he is scheduled to get married to a rich woman he doesn’t actually care about. This movie is just over seventy minutes long. I am pretty unfamiliar with the screwball comedy genre and really wonder how they play with a different lead actress.

The More The Merrier (1943) dir. George Stevens

This one’s great too. Super comedic, with sort of intricately choreographed visual gags, but then the romance culminates in a scene that’s wildly horny, bordering on the pornographic despite the absence of any nudity. That’s a seduction shot in close up, where a sort of oblivious and distracted conversation occurs absentmindedly as kisses move from hand to neck. Jean Arthur rents a room to a domineering older dude (Charles Coburn, the guy from The Devil And Miss Jones, who’s funnier here) who then rents half of his room to a man he thinks would be a good for her. Feels like a big part of the comedy in these is people being absolute nightmares who force other people into going along with things they absolutely hate, and as much as I hate the idea of being someone who can’t handle an old comedy because of my modern cultural mores, such scenes are pretty nerve-wracking to me. Still, there’s something to the storytelling in this, how the initial gags build on themselves when it’s just the two of them, then the introduction of the second man sort of continues the sort of jokes that were already being made, how the comedy sort of snowballs but then takes the shape of this very real romance.

The Impatient Years (1944) dir. Irving Cummings

This was originally conceived as a quasi-sequel to The More The Merrier. It is a weird one, with a vaguely comedic premise it takes a pretty emotionally intense first act to set up. The first half hour has these long dialogues filled with tension of people not really being able to communicate. It’s written by a woman and you can really tell, holy shit, it’s closely observed. But the whole premise is fucked! Begins with a court hearing for a divorce. Jean Arthur has been hit by her husband, and her father (Charles Coburn again) who witnessed it says he can’t recommend a divorce, because then the judge would have to give a divorce to all the couples who got married too quick before the man shipped off to war. A flashback structure shows him, freshly home, smoking cigarettes above the crib of the child he’s never seen before and pretty irritable. The father argues the issue is the married couple has forgotten while they’ve fallen in love. Coburn basically sucks too- he’s in all these movies as this railroading paternalistic figure, and apparently was in his real life a white supremacist? And while The Devil And Miss Jones shows him learning to not be a piece of shit, this movie basically takes his side and argues for him being right. The judge agrees with this plan that they should spend four days retracing the steps of when they first met, before he shipped off to work. And it works, they fall back in love in the movie’s second half. But basically Jean Arthur’s whole behavior at the beginning of the movie is predicated on her having the responsibilities of a mother? And the movie just sort of argues that she’s got to learn to be a wife too, and she agrees, pitching it as this sort of romantic thing, but the actual central cause of tension is never resolved. So this movie is flawed and kinda nonsensical, but it’s interesting, partly because the beginning is like Bergman-level brutal before the contortions of a plot push it into this unnatural light comedy shape.

Arizona (1940) dir. Wesley Ruggles

This one has Jean Arthur as the female lead, opposite William Holden, but is more notable for its scope as a Western. A pretty good example of the genre being about society in microcosm, being forged from this conflict between the wild and domestic spheres. Jean Arthur both brings this semi-feminist sense of freedom to all of her roles, and she also built up a body of work of populist politics and class consciousness. This one has her as a rugged individualist frontierswoman, who runs a series of businesses as a way to make more money and accrue wealth, which ends up being a good vehicle, from a storytelling perspective, to increase the scale of action consistently. The villain runs a series of scams/conspiracies to win a profit via dishonest means. This culminates with a wedding where the man leaves his bride immediately afterwards to murder the person who’s been trying to take over her property. Probably the best western I’ve seen where the threat of Native American violence is a major plot point. It does lack the sense of atmosphere and landscape I value in a western, favoring a more storytelling more focused on plot and characters. Ends with a scene where a dude gets married and then immediately leaves to go kill someone waiting in a bar for him. (I should try to track down the George Stevens western Shane, that also features Jean Arthur.)

Whirlpool (1934) dir. Roy William Neill

This isn’t as top shelf as the other Jean Arthur movies but it’s pretty good. A man goes to prison, fakes his own death for the sake of his wife so she’ll move on. Jean Arthur plays the daughter, who meets him once he gets out, but needs to keep him a secret from her mother, who has remarried but would probably wreck her life for the other man’s sake. This is a pretty weird movie, both structurally, and because the father-daughter relationship feels quasi-incestuous: She abandons dates with her fiancee to spend time with her father, etc. The movie handles it semi-innocently, but I guess I had just been hearing about how when things like this happen in real life, and adult children meet their parents for the first time as adults, there often is an irresistible desire between them. So the movie kind of feels like it’s basically about something super-fucked-up but is trying to depict it as innocent, but also just the raw emotion Jean Arthur displays as she cries when they meet for the first time is really intense! She doesn’t even show up until like 1/3 of the way through the movie but she gives it such emotional weight.

Party Wire (1935) dir. Erle Kenton

This movie’s charming and watchable but yeah not one of the better ones. It’s about a pretty interesting thing- In small towns in this era basically cheaper for there to be a telephone line everyone can listen in on. This ends up being a movie about small town gossip and resentment, where the villains are old women with too much time on their hands. It’s also about Jean Arthur being a wildly charming “real” person who wins the heart of a rich man who every woman is after, so while she’s good in the part there’s an element of formula executed better elsewhere. Here she has a father who’s drunk all the time, his alcoholism is a big running gag that gets a little exhausted. Also apparently there’s an app now that’s basically a party wire?

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) dir. John Ford

Felt pretty ambivalent about this one too, which is more of an Edward G Robinson vehicle. This is meant to be a comedy, but I don’t really think the jokes come off that well, and the sense of reversals feels a little pat. Realized my best friend from high school looks sorta like Edward G Robinson now and worked out a way to remake it starring him. The Robinson version is about a guy who works as a clerk in an office, writes on the side, but learns he is the doppelganger of a killer gangster who just escaped from prison, who’s played by Robinson as well. This leads to his worldly coworker he has a crush on developing an interest in him, but also a lot of cases of mistaken identity with the police, who give him a note saying that while he looks like the person they’re trying to arrest, they’re not the same guy. The gangster then reads about this in the news and breaks into his apartment to get this “passport” from him. The remake I envision plays off of the fact that people are no longer famous for doing crimes enough to attract the attentions of a savvy young woman. But what if it was some dumb Youtube prankster, who is constantly committing crimes, that has the police after him? And then it’s basically the same movie.

Public Hero No. 1 (1935) dir. J. Walter Rubin

More of a heavy-duty crime thing, about the head of a gang busting out of prison, reuniting with his gang to do crimes, not knowing the cellmate he broke out of prison with is an undercover cop. Jean Arthur ends up caught in the middle, falling in love with the cop (not knowing he’s a cop) while being the sister of the criminal she hopes goes straight. She enlivens the movie quite a bit but it’s a  familiar enough plot to still come up a little bit short. Would maybe benefit from more atmosphere in the crime bits and less comedy bits about an alcoholic doctor slowing it down.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

Watched these for Jean Arthur, though they are classics for being Frank Capra movies, Jimmy Stewart movies, and sort of archetypal in their depiction of sincerity and the opposition of the rich and powerful. So that is to say that while my favorite movies I’ve watched recently have felt genre-less, or like they participate in every genre, these feel far more like you know where they’re going pretty much from the start: In the case of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that’s partly because of things like there being an episode of The Simpsons that parodies/reuses it.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) dir. Frank Capra

Also has Jean Arthur as the female lead, here playing opposite Gary Cooper. When they remade this as an Adam Sandler vehicle, Winona Ryder took the Jean Arthur role. Gary Cooper inherits money, comes to the big city, everyone wants the money, Jean Arthur writes news articles mocking him as a rube while slowly falling in love with his sincerity. In the end his decision to give the money to the poor outrages everyone in power and they try to argue he’s not mentally fit. All these Frank Capra movies are longer than the other Jean Arthur movies, (two hours, as opposed to an hour and a half) and also are not really focused on her, though she’s the best part of them.

Ball Of Fire (1941) dir. Howard Hawks

Billy Wilder cowrites this, and it’s maybe his best comedic script? Lot of good jokes in this, feel like this would’ve blown people away in 1941. Gary Cooper plays a naive nerd grammarian who in the course of realizing he needs cover modern slang for his encyclopedia runs into Barbara Stanwyck, as a gangster’s moll, hilarity ensues, they fall in love, both leads are great, supporting cast is big and funny, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds plays a somewhat naive hayseed, the character here is similarly out of his element but it’s because he’s a big nerd, which is a lot funnier. Stanwyck’s world-weariness giving way to affection for a bunch of old people while continuing to use language they don’t understand and sort of run all over them as they fall over here is a great bit. Really well-written, there’s a Billy Wilder movie starring Jean Arthur (A Foreign Affair, from 1948) I haven’t seen but would like to track down. Sort of fascinating preoccupation with gangsters in these movies, but also positing innocence as a virtue, but in a way that runs counter to “virgin/whore” reductionism. I guess a lot of this comes about because it precedes the post-war mass migration of white people to the suburbs? Organized crime was a big part of people’s lives. I hadn’t seen any Howard Hawks movies until recently I think? Unless I saw one of his westerns or screwball comedies in college. He’s good!

The Sniper (1952) dir. Edward Dmytrk

This one’s interesting in terms of feeling very ahead of its time but also like it would never be made now. About a dude whose misogyny causes him to shoot women with a sniper rifle, the same rifle that apparently any ex-soldier would carry. Probably a pretty tough and upsetting watch, as it’s just about a dude being insane, hoping the police arrest him, and him having interactions with women where he very quickly becomes upset when they realize he’s weird, so he follows them with a gun. Director was blacklisted, the only real overt political sentiment is “get perverts and people who assault women serious mental health care after their first offense.”

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Myrkur: the strange and surreal journey of Amalie Bruun

From hanging out with Martin Scorsese and Billy Corgan to appearing in a Michael Bolton video, Myrkur's Amalie Bruun is a black metal star like no other

An old painting hangs on the wall of the compact, one-storey house an hour’s drive out of Copenhagen that Amalie Bruun calls home. It depicts a blonde girl lost in reverie as she walks a grass path high above a fjord: a scene that’s elemental and ethereal at the same time.

The picture, by noted Norwegian landscape artist Hans Dahl, belonged to Amalie’s late grandmother, a refined woman who smoked cigarettes from an ivory holder and drank gin and tonic on a Friday morning. Amalie’s mother used to say that it was Amalie in the painting. It’s not hard to see why.

“I had a connection to it from before I can remember,” says Amalie today, as we sit at a dining table in a living room that’s one part uncluttered Scandinavian stylishness, one part hygge-style cosiness. “The album sounds like the painting looks.”

The album she’s referring to is Folkesange, her third as Myrkur, the one-woman  project she founded in the mists of the early 2010s.

Where Myrkur’s past releases have bridged worlds – black metal, post-rock, blackgaze, classical – Folkesange is different. This is traditional Scandinavian music played on traditional Scandinavian instruments, sung predominantly in Danish. There are some covers, some originals, though there’s not a trace of metal in the music or the vocals. It’s all there in the title: Folkesange. Folk Songs.

That Amalie Bruun is releasing an album of sometimes beautiful, sometimes melancholic Scandinavian folk music really shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed her journey. Partly because that aspect of who she is has always been present in Myrkur’s music – all she’s doing with Folkesange is separating it out.

But mainly because Amalie Bruun has lived more lives than most other people. That, as much as anything, is what puts her out there on her own.

Two life-changing things have happened since Myrkur’s last album, 2017’s expansive and brilliant Mareridt, both inextricably linked.

One: Amalie Bruun got married. Her husband, Keith Abrami, is a fitness instructor and drummer with American death metal band Artificial Brain. The pair became romantically involved after Keith began playing as Myrkur’s touring drummer.

Keith is around, though he stays in the back bedroom today. This is because he is attending to the second life-changing thing that has happened to Amalie recently: the couple’s nine-week old son, Otto.

If Mareridt was the product of the vivid nightmares its creator endured before making it, Folkesange was defined by pregnancy and the impending birth of her first child.

She describes motherhood as joyous, though in her case the elation is edged with sadness. She discovered she was pregnant soon after she started writing the new album. “But I miscarried,” she says simply.

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We ask if she’s OK talking about this. She nods, and explains that the miscarriage pushed her deeper into making Folkesange. A few days after entering the studio with producer (and Heilung co-founder) Christopher Juul, she discovered she was pregnant again. And that’s when the emotion really hit her.

“I was totally out of it, but in a beautiful way,” she says. “I wasn’t my normal human self. I become something else.” She laughs. “Very nauseated.”

She noticed that her vocals were different. “I never felt so in tune with singing as I did then. I had this power and this clarity, which was crazy. But it was the exact place to be, recording folk vocals with this new life growing in you.”

There were worries, of course, as well as other emotions. One of the songs on the new album, Gudernes Viljie (English translation: ‘The Will Of The Gods’) is about the miscarriage. “There were conflicted feelings, dealing with both this new life and this guilt feeling of this other life that never happened,” Amalie explains. “It was never a heartbeat, but you still feel like a mother. It was very intense.”

Amalie Bruun grew up listening to Scandinavian folk music. It resonated with her on a different level. “With my spirit,” she says. “It’s like in England: you have that singer-songwriter folk tradition, it’s historically ingrained. It shapes who you are, even if you don’t know it. Because it’s folk music, it’s told by people for people. So it’s inherited into the spirit of a population.”

Half of Folkesange’s 12 tracks are her versions of songs that she grew up listening to, while the others are her originals, though you’d be hard pushed to tell which is which. “This is a record that I wish had existed when I was young,” she says. “And it doesn’t exist, so I wanted to make it.”

Music, folk or otherwise, is in her blood. Her father, Michael Bruun, is a retired musician. He was semi-famous as a pop singer-songwriter in Denmark in the early 80s. “But he was not interested in fame,” says Amalie. “He’s shy and misanthropic.” Does she take after him? She smiles. “I do. Sometimes I wish I didn’t but I do.”

Her mother, by contrast, was a Jungian psychologist. “She tried her best not to bring her work home, but she did. You get analysed every day.”

As well as folk music, Amalie loved classical music as a child. She learned piano as a toddler, took up violin at five, and eventually attended music college as a teenager. “I wasn’t pushed into anything. It was all my choice. I was never interested in anything else.”

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The first metal record Amalie Bruun fell in love with was Transilvanian Hunger, Darkthrone’s sub-lo-fi black metal masterpiece. Before that she’d listened to the stuff teenagers listen to: Nirvana, Björk, that kind of thing. Aside from her older brother’s Metallica and Judas Priest records, she’d never listened to much metal.

“Usually that transition takes years, right?” she says. “But all of a sudden I hear Transilvanian Hunger. It reminded me of classical music.”

“The Starter Pack” is how she jokingly describes Transilvanian Hunger today. “If you like that, a lot other black metal sounds really pleasant. A lot easier on the ear.”

When she was 22 years old, Amalie Bruun bought herself a one-way plane ticket to New York and started another life. It was the city’s rich and romantic musical history that drew her there: the poets, the punks, the freaks, the superstars. She arrived with no cellphone and nowhere to stay.  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. “But that’s what New York is. You just go there and see what happens.”

She found a place to stay with friends of friends from back in Denmark, and walked all over the city, giving her demo CD to venues. “Just piano music,” is how she describes what she was doing. “Me singing little melodies.”

She played anywhere that would have her, in front of whatever crowds were there. “Oh, it wasn’t the cool people,” she says. “It was definitely uncool. But it was never about fame. I just wanted to go out and earn my stripes a little bit.”

In the early 2010s, she met guitarist and co-vocalist Brian Harding, and they put together Ex Cops. Based in oh-so-trendy Brooklyn and playing shoegaze-inflected alt-pop, they basically screamed ‘hipster’.

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She recoils at the suggestion. “I fucking hate that,” she says vehemently. “I hate the whole hipster thing.”

Ex Cops were ultimately small fish in a big indie rock pond – their main claim to fame was that their second album was executive-produced by Smashing Pumpkins major domo Billy Corgan. Amalie liked being in Ex Cops, but she liked the music industry a lot less. Or at least the part of it she where she found herself.

“I would be in the studio, working on ideas I had written and people would say, ‘Let’s just let Amalie get it out of her system,’” she says. “I was so offended by that. There were comments on what I would wear, whether or not I could have armpit hair in photos. It takes away your agency as a musician and as a woman.”

There were two Amalie Bruuns while she was living in New York. Or rather, there was one living two separate lives.

There was one Amalie Bruun who was making music with Ex Cops and dipping her toes into the world of modelling – she appeared, raven-haired, in a Chanel advert directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese – and, even more bizarrely, alongside 90s crooner Michael Bolton dressed as Forrest Gump in a video by spoof R’n’B group The Lonely Island (Bolton was dressed as Forrest Gump, not her).

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Then there was Amalie Bruun the black metal fan. She mentioned her love of the genre in Ex Cops interviews, even if she sounded almost apologetic about it. “I was,” she concedes. “People thought it was too weird.”

Few people picked up on the references anyway, let alone knew that she was quietly working on a project of her own in the shadows: Myrkur.

She had been writing folk melodies on the violin for years. Gradually she added more and more metal elements. Once in a while she dared play it to other people.

Eventually word reached underground metal stronghold Relapse Records, who released her self-titled debut mini-album in 2014. Back then her identity was a mystery: she was as much apparition as musician. “I wanted the music to speak for itself,” she says of her anonymity, as if it’s the most obvious thing ever.

But mysteries don’t stay mysterious for long these days. When someone joined the dots and uncovered her other life as one half of a trendy Brooklyn indie-pop band, the keyboard warriors went into swivel-eyed overdrive. She was a fake. A poser. Worse, a woman – one who’d dared gatecrash the testosterone-heavy sausage party that is the black metal scene.

“I was blissfully unaware of it,” she says of the negative attention she initially attracted. “Then it was, like, ‘Why am I being hated by people who don’t know me at all. At least get to know me.’” She shrugs. “It didn’t affect me much. I was there to play music, not fuck around with all that stuff.”

She has a theory: that people objected to the fact that she’d worked with Kris ‘Garm’ Rygg, frontman with former black metal avant-gardists Ulver. “Honestly, what really pissed off a lot of people in the beginning was that I did work with some of the Scandinavian black metal artists that they look up to. I think that was very annoying and provocative to that crowd.”

Not that she was a woman? She thinks carefully.

“I think it’s the fact that I didn’t follow the rules of how women in metal should behave. I’m not the first woman in metal, I just did it a little bit more my own way.”

Anyway, she says with a faint smile, she wasn’t above a little button-pushing herself.

“I was never deliberately provocative,” she begins. “But when I realised how little it took I did take a bit of pleasure in it. I knew that if you post a picture with Attila from Mayhem, then they’re just going to go off. But it’s not like I did that just to piss people off...”

If Mareridt silenced the haters, or some of them at least, then Folksange, with its absence of volume, will probably fire them up again. Amalie Bruun couldn’t care less if it does. She has more important concerns. Such as her new life, as the mother of Otto.

She’s not pretending that motherhood won’t impact on how she approaches her career. There will be no big world tours around Folkesange, for one. “You can’t pretend it doesn’t play into it as a woman. Maybe as a man, it’s different. I know a lot of metal musicians, they have kids and they continue the same life. That’s cool, but when you’re a mother you can’t do that. I want the two sides of my life to co-exist.”

Has she worked out how that will work?

“I don’t know yet how that works.”

Is she looking forward to it?

“It’s nerve-wracking.”

Is she worried?

“No, I’m not worried. I’m in control. It will be how I plan it to be.”

With perfect timing, the sound of a baby crying drifts from the back room. Amalie gets up and returns a few seconds later holding Otto, a tiny bundle of nine-week-old humanity.

It’s only then that you realise how unique Amalie Bruun, and Myrkur, is: not just a woman operating in such a male-dominated field, but a mother as well.

Before we leave her and her family, she says that she’s looking forward to following up Folksange with “another metal-style record with distorted guitars”. But for now that’s in the future. Another chapter, another life.

[sassy-starker]

Talk Too Much

Caffeine, small talk

Wait out the plastic weather

When Tony Stark talked to Peter Parker for the first time, the first thought that ran through his head was, ‘He talks too much.’

The second thought that ran through his head was, ‘I should kiss him to make im shut up.’

The next thing he did was reel back.  He tuned out of the boy’s talking and retreated into his own mind, telling it to shut up and reminding himself that the boy was fifteen.  When he tuned back into the real world, he realized that the boy had stopped talking. He attempted to play it cool by jumping back in and sitting next to the boy on his tiny, twin-sized bed.  He didn’t know if Peter realized that he wasn’t paying attention, but the hero-worship in the boy’s coffee-brown eyes assured Tony that it was fine.

For the entirety of the Germany trip and the entire homecoming incident, Tony Stark had tried to repress all his feelings, pushing them to the back of his brain and yelling at his supposedly genius brain that the boy was too young to have some old, eccentric billionaire pursuing him.

Mmhmm, uh huh, discussing current events

I'll take my time

The month after the homecoming incident, Tony Stark gave into his mind and invited Peter Parker to the lab.

“This is insane!” Peter exclaimed as they entered the lab.  Tony had a friendly hand on his shoulder, guiding him inside.  He tried not to notice the absolute, unfiltered joy in the vigilante’s eyes, but he couldn’t help but notice.  He was too far gone.

“Go crazy, Pete,” he said, reluctantly pulling away from him.  The teen rushed around, not bothering to hide his excitement.  Tony sat down and began working on an emergency Spider Suit, but couldn’t find it in himself to focus.  He kept glancing up at Peter, a fuzzy feeling filling up his chest at how amazed he was by the lab.

Eventually, Peter caught sight of Tony watching him as he had been observing Dum-E and tried to mask his emotions, embarrassment filling up his coffee-colored eyes.  His face flushed, the pink traveling all the way up to his ears.  Tony decided at that moment that he wanted to make Peter blush like that every day for the rest of his life.

“Sorry,” Peter mumbled out, gaze falling to the floor.

“Don’t apologize,” Tony reassured him. “I’m glad a genius like you finds my tech interesting.”

Tony wasn’t lying about the genius part.  He had seen what Peter could do with some junk technology he found in the trash or some chemicals he got from a high school science lab.  The teen had made a computer and his web-shooters from practically nothing.  He knew he wouldn’t regret giving the vigilante full access to the lab.

Tony watched Peter perk up again, lips peaking into a grin and blush fading away but still slightly present on his milky white skin.  Peter started walking around again and Tony kept watching, not even trying to hide it anymore.  He thought he couldn’t be anymore gone with the boy when he spoke up.

Peter was looking at an unfinished project for Stark Industries.  It was a leg prosthetic that Tony was having trouble with; he couldn’t get the ankle to bend as well as a human ankle would.  He looked on as Peter observed it with focused eyes and a tongue stuck out in concentration.

Without looking up, Peter simply stated, “This would work better if the bolt for the ankle was lowered about a third of an inch. The ankle could bend at a more natural angle then.”

Tony got up, stool making a scraping noise against the ground as he did.  Peter looked up, eyes widening and face morphing into one of guilt.  Tony bent down to observe the prosthetic while thinking about what the boy had said.

“I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that out loud.  I’m probably wrong anyway.  I shouldn’t have tried to correct your tech.  I’m sorr-” Peter rambled on and on, but Tony cut him off.

“You’re right,” he said, turning his gaze to Peter and standing straight again.

“What?” Peter replied, voice small.

“You’re right. It would work better if the bolt were lowered.  You solved the problem I’ve been working on for a month and a half in a minute and a half.  You’re a genius.”

Peter flushed pink at the praise from Tony.

Yeah, Tony was gone.

I'm not the forward thinker

You read my mind

On his sixteenth birthday, Peter was invited to the lab.  Tony had been working on tech with him for a while and a good amount of the teen’s work had gone onto the market for Stark Industries.  When Tony tried to pay him part of the profits, the vigilante had refused.  He had even decided that he didn’t want to put his name on the products, humility on full show for Tony to see.  Out of options, the genius had instead decided the shower the teen in presents, giving him one almost every time he came over to the lab.  Peter always tried to refuse them, but Tony never let him.

That day in the lab, they worked together instead of on individual projects.  They were sitting right next to each other as they wired put together the Mark XVIII Iron Man suit.  The lab was silent except for the slight whirring of machines and their breathing.

The only thing going through Tony’s head was, ‘He’s a kid. Don’t be weird. He’s a kid. Don’t be weird. He’s a kid. Don’t be weird He’s a-’

“How’s school going?” Tony asked, desperately trying to make small talk.  If asked, he would’ve said that he preferred the lab to be lively with chatter, but he knew deep down that he just wanted to hear Peter’s voice.

Tony wondered if his father was looking down on him from heaven in shame, but his father’s sins far outweighed his own.  His judgment, even if justified by every melodious angel in heaven, meant nothing to him.

“Same old stuff as always,” Peter told him without looking up from their project. “Classes are easy, which is nice, but it’s still pretty boring.”

“You could always leave high school early and go to MIT,” Tony told him.

“Yeah, but I really wanna have the senior year experience,” Peter admitted.  Tony gave an understanding ‘hm.’

“You got somebody special you wanna spend your senior year with?” the genius teased.

It sent pins and needles into Tony’s heart.  He wanted to kiss the boy and shower him in compliments and take him around the world and make him blush.  He wanted to love him and be loved right back, but he knew that it wasn’t going to happen.  Peter would fall in love with another kid in his grade and go to prom and get his heart broken.  Peter was going to love someone and be loved right back, but it wasn’t going to be Tony.  That’s how it went.  The man knew that --  oh, he knew that -- but he loved and loved Peter anyway.

Peter sighed and tore his eyes away from the project, sitting up straight.  His shoulders slumped and his face fell slightly, helplessness filling up his expressive eyes.  Tony watched as the teen ran his hand through his hair, wishing he could put an arm around his shoulder and run his own fingers through the fluffy flop of hair on his head.

“Well,” Peter mumbled, “I like this guy, but he’s way out of my league.”

“I doubt he’s as far away to reach as you think,” Tony replied as he pulled himself away from the project as Peter did.  The teen snorted at the man’s response but didn’t meet his eyes.

“He’s never gonna think of me like that but I just keep dreaming that he does,” Peter admitted, a blush painting his cheeks pink.

Tony wanted to say, ‘I know how that feels,’ but replied with “I’m sure you’re just doubting yourself.  Tell me about him.”

“Well,” Peter says, a small smile on his face and his gaze resting on his lap, “he’s handsome and a really good guy.  He gets so much negative attention from everyone, but they just don’t know him like I do.  I’ve talked to him so much and I could keep talking to him for hours on end.  He’s so sweet and a genius.”

“He couldn’t be as much of a genius as you,” Tony complimented the boy, which made his blush grow darker.

“He’s known for being a genius.  He once called me one and I said I couldn’t be as smart as him, but he told me we’re on par.  I nearly died of happiness.”

Tony put a friendly hand on Peter’s should, which made the boy look up at him and finally meet his eyes.  He gave him a fierce look and hid his disappointment at how much the teen liked his crush.

“You just gotta make a move,” he told Peter.

Peter never brought his crush up again.

Better to leave it unsaid

Why can't I leave it unsaid?

Peter was invited to the lab on his seventeenth birthday too and he was just as happy to be in the lab as he was the first time he was invited.  That was one of the millions of things Tony liked about Peter: he was enthusiastic about small things.

This time around, the only thing running through Tony’s mind was, ‘Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. But maybe you shouldn’t and-’

And then he looked at Peter smiling at him with rosy cheeks and joy-filled eyes.

He had talked to Rhodey right after Peter’s sixteenth birthday and the man, as always, was the only reason Tony hadn’t fallen apart.

Tony let out a long and dramatic sigh as he flopped onto the couch in the living room.  Rhodey, who was on the chair next to the couch, chose to ignore the genius and continued reading his book.  Tony gave out another overly dramatic sigh and Rhodey knew he would keep doing it until he paid attention.

“What?” Rhodey asked as he placed a bookmark between the pages and set his book down on the coffee table.

“I have a problem,” Tony informed him.

“I figured.”

Tony turned serious and sat up correctly.  He had a concerned and anxious look on his face, replacing his mask of confidence.  Rhodey rarely saw this side of Tony, which made him instantly worried.

“I’m in love when I shouldn’t be and it’s going to fuck everything up,” Tony told the man, forcing the words out of his mouth.  Rhodey raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to continue, but the genius cut him off.

“I shouldn’t even be attracted to him.  It’s wrong and disgusting!  I’m an awful person and my mom is probably looking down on me in shame.  I can’t believe myself, Rhodey!” Tony got up and walked behind the couch, starting to pace back and forth.  “He doesn’t deserve to have me wanting to date him.  It’s awful and I’ve been trying to repress it for almost a year, and I should distance myself!”

Tony paused in his pacing and buried his head into his hands, mumbling out, “But, cara madre Maria e signore sopra di, I am selfish.”

“Well,” Rhodey said nonchalantly, “I’m glad you at least know you like Peter.”

Tony’s head shot up and he whipped around to face his friend. “How did you know?!”

“It’s obvious on your face,” Rhodey told him, picking up his book again, “and it’s obvious on his too.”

The genius just stood there as his friend began reading again.  He was in a trance of shock and fear and, most of all, hope.

Peter was sleeping over at the tower for the night as it was his birthday and Tony, knowing Pepper would be mad if he and Peter stayed up all night working as they had done several times before, decided that they would have a movie night.  They were sat next to each other on the couch with ‘Me Before You’ playing on the TV.

You know I talk too much

Tony couldn’t stop thinking about how close they were.  He watched with loving eyes as Peter rambled on about the differences between the book in the movie, declaring the book much better than what they were watching.  Tony couldn’t focus on the movie, partly because of his crush’s talking and partly because of how distracting it was to watch the boy talk on and on with drooping eyes and messy hair.  Peter turned to him once he noticed Tony watching, but didn’t stop rambling on.

Honey, come put your lips on mine

Finally working up the necessary courage . . .

And shut me up

Tony leaned forward and placed his lips on Peter’s.

We could blame it all on human nature

Tony pulled back and looked at Peter, who had a blush painting his cheeks and ears pink and a shocked expression on his face.

Stay cool, it's just a kiss

“What was that for?” Peter said with a smile before backtracking. “Not that I didn't like it! I really did! It was nice! I liked it a  . . . I liked it a lot.”

Oh, why you gotta be so talkative?

“You talk too much,” Tony told him. 

“Do you not like it?” Peter asked in a small voice and looked down at his lap in embarrassment.

“I like it a lot,” Tony told him.  Peter leaned forward quickly and gave him another kiss, the two moving toward each other until they were shoulder to shoulder.

I talk too much, we talk too much

[blazehedgehog]

On certain shows, such as Animaniacs and Tiny Toons, there is a sort of contempt with censorship reflected in its characters. This got me thinking that writers probably intensely dislike the regulation of their work. Therefore I guess they just want to have freedom from this regulation. Would it be better that the writers are allowed free reign and write whatever they want, no matter what they are working with?

I mean, they totally can do that now, thanks to the internet. Adult Swim shows a version of Venture Brothers where words get bleeped and nudity is blurred, but if you want there are fully uncensored versions of those episodes on different streaming services.

The implications of a question like this are not lost on me, and I’d like to think you aren’t simply JUST asking about Animaniacs and Tiny Toons either, but are coming from this from a perspective of censorship as a whole.

As such, and this may be a controversial statement to some, but I think TV censorship is fine. Usually, anyway. Obviously shows like Animaniacs and Tiny Toons were railing against censorship, and that’s because you occasionally hear horror stories over the years about bizarre, specific problems a censor will have over something genuinely harmless. Like, for example, censors having a problem with Nickelodeon’s Angry Beavers telling someone to “shut up” because it might inspire kids to be rude. Or the story going around about a single British TV censor that railed against nunchucks. Sometimes it is legitimately dumb and unnecessary.

But TV censorship does a lot of good, too. I mentioned just a week or two ago that I am (or was, it’s complicated) pretty squeamish when it comes to excessive gore in horror movies. 

One night in 2013, a local TV channel aired Return of the Living Dead. Now, normally, that’s an extremely violent movie with lots of hardcore language and even full frontal nudity. It’s a kind of a heavy metal movie. And, sight unseen, it’s a movie I’d normally never consider watching, because there are parts that are pretty gross. People could tell me, “oh it’s not so bad” and I probably still wouldn’t watch it, because I don’t like excessive gore, and I wouldn’t want to risk it on principal alone.

But they put it on TV. And not cable, this was over-the-air, network television, the stuff you get for free as long as you plug in an antenna. Even though it aired past midnight, they still had to do their best to cut out the worst, most gross parts.

And in that context, I was willing to watch the movie. It’s legendary zombie cinema and I’m a fan of seeing TV edits of “adult” movies (I saw part of a really great TV edit of Fargo once that replaced all the swearing, it was hilarious).

Through that, through this censored-for-TV edit of a very violent 1980′s horror classic, I could appreciate it. And I thought it was really good! I enjoyed watching it enough that I actually ended up seeking out the uncensored version.

None of that would have ever happened without the censored version existing.

That’s the thing a lot of people are losing sight of in the modern “omg censorship!!!” debate: there are actually acceptable forms of censorship. It can be totally okay to censor something! Not everything always has to be rude, nasty, and uncensored! Sometimes, you even get the rare case where censorship is better!

Take anime like Ghost Stories or Samurai Pizza Cats. In both of those cases, during the process of dubbing those anime, the original Japanese scripts were lost and the American production studios got to play it by ear and make up whatever they wanted. You could absolutely spin that as a case of them censoring the original shows, but it’s also transformative in a way that made those shows more fun to watch. A lot fewer people would remember Samurai Pizza Cats if it was a straight translation of “Kyatto Ninden Teyandee.”

What about Animaniacs and Tiny Toons? What do you imagine an unfettered version of those shows would actually be like? If they didn’t have to write around the censors, would those shows be automatically improved? We may never really know, but at the same time, that censorship was part of their sense of humor. If you took that away, isn’t that in itself also a form of censorship?

A good example of comparison here I think is Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, which is the show that more or less launched Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. The original run of Space Ghost ran just as part of Cartoon Network’s late night programming, when it didn’t have any kind of special name. Cartoon Network had just relaunched the “Space Ghost Brand” through something called Cartoon Planet, which was a block of classic cartoons hosted by Space Ghost, Moltar, Zorak, and Brak. In between cartoons they’d respond to reader mail or do skits. It was weird, a little random, but 100% kid friendly and clean.

Coast to Coast was originally just an extension of that, but through the lens of a late night talk show like The Tonight Show or whatever. Space Ghost would interview celebrities and ask them wacky questions. Early episodes of Coast to Coast were very close in tone to Cartoon Planet, but eventually Williams Street (then known as Ghost Planet Industries) started pushing the boundaries of the show, thanks to the late night slot. It got darker, and weirder, and creepier, but they were still kind of beholden to certain Cartoon Network censorship standards…

…Until the launch of Adult Swim. Here’s a block of programming that spent the first 3-5 years of its existence literally yelling through a megaphone that their late night content wasn’t for children. Williams Street was given a chance to write their own standards, for… well, adults. Space Ghost relaunched, and now unshackled from Cartoon Network’s kid-focused censors, got even darker and weirder. They can swear now! Zorak isn’t just Space Ghost’s foil anymore, now he worships SATAN! This isn’t kids stuff like Cartoon Planet! Isn’t that COOL?

And frankly? I don’t think the show was better for it. There is a point where Coast to Coast gets too edgy for its own good and it loses its charm. There’s a sweet spot to the series, around season 5, where they’re pushing the boundaries but haven’t tipped over the edge just yet. Making the show uncensored (relatively speaking) did not really improve its quality in my eyes.

What you call “censorship” was an ingrained part of what made these shows so good and taking that away does not guarantee any increase in quality. Limitations foster creative thinking. It’s not about the vulgarity they couldn’t do, it’s how they worked around that vulgarity that we remember.

Do not become so obsessed with what entertainment you think you’re “losing” that you forget what we’ve already gained by filling that void with something else.

There are obviously situations in which censorship can be very upsetting and even dangerous. Censorship can absolutely be used as a weapon against the people. But that is not universally applicable in all scenarios. The idea that nothing can ever be censored is, in itself, also a weapon. As always, everything must be considered in moderation.

[dragonofyang]

Let’s Voltron! Ep 175 Transcript

The full transcript of the podcast Let’s Voltron! episode 175 with Donya Abramo as a guest interviewing JDS and LM below the cut. Feel free to use this for all your citation and referential needs.

@leakinghate @crystal-rebellion @felixazrael @voltronisruiningmylife

Vrepit Sa!

[Intro music]

MM: Welcome Voltron fans! This is Marc Morrell, your host for Let’s Voltron! the official Voltron podcast. We’re excited because we have a great interview today. We haven’t talked to these people since the season came out, since season 8, so, we’re excited. I have to bring on my cohost Greg Tyler, welcome Greg.

GT: Hello, Marc Morrell. Hello listeners and fellow Voltron fans across the universe. This is a really, really fun podcast because we have some really awesome guests.

MM: And I also have another guest that I wanna bring on. So, all the way from the other side of the pond, in the UK, welcome Donya Abramo. Donya, welcome.

DA: Hi! It’s really nice to be back again.

GT: Awesome, it’s great to have you back with us again. How are things going with Hypable?

DA: Really good! Yeah, picking up a couple new shows. So since Voltron went off the air, I’ve picked up a few more animated shows, so I’m now covering She-Ra, The Dragon Prince, and I’m also doing my usual everything Marvel. Literally everything Marvel, which, considering there are three movies now in quick succession that’s keeping me busy.

GT: No doubt.

MM: Yeah, Marvel has a pretty heavy spring coming up, don’t they?

DA: Oh, just a little bit, yeah.

[laughter]

MM: Well, it’s exciting to have you on, and I’m-I’m really thankful that you were able to do this even though it’s really strange time of the morning for you right now.

DA: Yeah, it’s actually really interesting, ‘cuz usually this would be 2 a.m. for me, but because you guys have saved daylight already, it’s actually 1 a.m.

MM: That’s awesome that we timed that just perfectly.

DA: Yeah.

GT: That’s right. Who do we have to thank for that? Ben Franklin? I think he knew you were going to be on this podcast hundreds of years later.

MM: Alright, so why don’t we bring on our very special guests, what do you say?

GT: Let’s do it.

MM: Alright. Coming all the way from California--from the other direction--we have the showrunners of Voltron: Legendary Defender Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery. Welcome guys.

LM: Thanks.

JDS: Hey guys, thanks for having us.

MM: [laughter] So great to have you guys on again.

GT: Yes, welcome back.

LM: Yeah, well, we’re glad to be back now that Voltron’s all wrapped and we can kinda talk about it on the whole. No more of this, uh, kinda shifty “we can’t tell ya” stuff.

JDS: [faintly] Right.

MM: That’s right.

GT: Yeah, you were last on when we recorded our fifth anniversary podcast, which was released on the season 8 drop day, so you know, obviously we couldn’t do spoilers during that recording, so now we can, uh, spoil in reverse.

[laughter]

LM: There you go.

MM: And we have another person on with us, so Donya you’re able to ask any questions any times you want. Is that okay?

DA: Yep. [laughter] That would be fine.

GT: Would you like that opportunity, Donya? [laughter]

DA: I don’t know, might be nice.

[laughter]

LM: I think Donya wants to take a nap.

[laughter]

GT: Yeah, so we started recording at 9 p.m. Eastern, it’s 6 p.m. Eastern in LA, and 1 a.m. in the UK, right?

DA: Yep.

GT: Alright, so we got a three-year time-jump in there, just like on Voltron. [others laugh] Er, not quite three years, just a little shy.

JDS: Yeah.

MM: These are decaphoebs.

GT: There you go.

JDS: That’s right.

GT: So, uh, real quick before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this, all those Altean time units - did you guys just know them off the top of your heads, or did you have to look those up all the time?

JDS: Oh--

LM: Oh, yeah, I had no idea at any point. I think those were all made up by the writers. All I ever knew was “ticks” and then everything after that, I was like, “Um…” I would just kinda have to go to the writers and be like, “Which one is a week? Which one is a month?” I eventually got “decaphoeb” which is a year, right?

GT: Yep.

LM: And then we assumed “phoeb” was kind of, like, generally a month.

GT: Right.

JDS: Right, “phoeb” was-was one-one quadrant of the year.

LM: Yeah, and they had a whole thing where it was like “movement”, which, I don’t even know if that was just a day or week--

MM: It’s like a week.

LM: Okay--

JDS: Wow, okay, see you guys definitely know better than we do because we were-

LM: Yeah.

JDS: “Movement” means something totally different to me, it’s like-like a bowel movement.

LM: Bathroom talk, right there.

[laughter]

LM: But yeah, I honestly, I don’t know. What was a day? Do you guys know?

MM: “Day” was a “quintant”.

LM: Alright, yeah! That’s right.

JDS: That’s right, a quintant.

LM: All these Coran lines are popping back into my head.

JDS: Yeah.

GT: Yeah, I remember Lance saying he wasn’t born yesterquintant. [laughter]

JDS: That’s right.

LM: Awesome.

GT: Alright, so Voltron is over, the two of you have moved on to, uh, other projects. Is there anything you can say about what you’re working on right now?

JDS: Uh, not really.

LM: No.

JDS: Other than it’s very cool and fun and we’re-we’re--

LM: Yeah.

JDS: --you know, very excited.

LM: It’s just the lay of the land. It’s kinda how animation goes. You make a thing, then you move on to another thing, and you make a thing.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: But, uh, but yeah.

GT: We’re excited for the next things, whatever they are. [laughter]

LM: Awesome.

MM: So, in preparation for talking to you guys tonight, um, I had gone back and listened to a lot of our previous conversations and everything just to make sure that, uh, anything that we had gone over before, uh, if there was something that we wanted to recapture or re-talk about or something like that we could bring it up tonight. One thing that I remember from going over all of this, we had done an interview with Andrea Romano.

JDS: Mm.

LM: Mm-hm.

MM: And she told us a story about when you guys pitched her the idea of you guys joining for this show. So do you guys remember that-that time? And it was basically where she said, “Okay, pitch to me, you know, what it is that Voltron’s all about and what it is that you wanna do with it.”

LM: Oh, gosh.

JDS: Boy, I… Yeah.

LM: So long ago! You’re asking my memory to do things it does not usually do.

JDS: Yeah, I mean-I mean I think-I think it’s safe to assume that we were probably begging and groveling on some level just to get her on board because we knew how awesome Andrea is, so there was probably a bit of that.

LM: There may have been a little bit of, you know, delirium from some hard working late nights but, uh, but yeah I-I remember the day she came in, I remember we sat in a room and that’s literally all I remember.

MM: So you don’t remember what you told her about what Voltron really is?

LM: Did it involve robot lions?

JDS: Did it involve teamwork? And did it involve, you know, friendship? I’ll bet, Marc, I’ll bet you know.

[laughter]

GT: Well I don’t remember either, so.

MM: I do know that it was a bunch of young people that under, you know, unforeseen circumstances come together and find these robot lions that form Voltron and it’s this giant robot that is formed by these five robot mechs. And along the way they, you know, find out that they’re basically the defenders of the universe. And they have, you know, they have to work it out as a team, and they have to work together, and they have a lot of adventures where they have to go up against the bad guys.

LM: That sounds about right.

GT: That’s a great pitch, Marc, I think we should make a show based on that, what do you think?

[laughter]

MM: Yeah. Well, the thing about it is-is Andrea remembers saying to you guys, “How did this ever work? How did it ever become popular?”

LM: Yeah, I-I think that’s something that probably people would say about 90% of the stuff I watched as a kid. I mean, I grew up on some--like Thundercats--like, and they’re just human people and they look kinda cattish, and then one guy was in-in a cryotube that cracked and then he came out a man. Like, I don’t know, how did that work? We watched that stuff anyway.

GT: And don’t forget “Snyarf! Snyarf!”

LM: Yeah! So, I mean, you know, Care Bears, they’re just little colorful bears with pictures on their tummies and they shoot rainbows out of their tummies. Like, I’m down. I don’t know if everyone’s down, but I’m down. So yeah, I think it was just something that captured our imaginations as kids and stuck with us, and so when it came time to, you know, to-to have it redone through DreamWorks, we wanted to kind of channel our love for the property into something that would maybe be a little updated to what our tastes were more like today versus what our tastes were as children, if that makes sense.

MM: Okay. So at that time did you know it was a 78-episode contract?

JDS: Yes.

LM: Yes we did. That was probably one of our biggest lies. You know, sadly. We try not to lie too much, but I’ll tell you, I’m gonna blow-blow the whole industry up right now: if an animated show tells you they don’t know if they have a second season, they probably know they have a second season.

JDS: That’s right.

LM: There’s a really good chance they already made it, and you know, so, where we always have to tell that, like, “Well, we hope people watch it and if they like it, well, maybe. We’ll see!” But it’s such-it’s such a lie.

JDS: The way it works, you know, is we have to make these things so far in advance for them to even make air, uh, that-that second season is either picked up or-or in production or midway through production or… yeah.

LM: Yeah, and I think there’s always just like, uh, that desire to, you know, be able to break that news. I think for-for whoever handles that kind of PR/internet traffic side of things, like, we want to be able to announce the next season and they’re like, “Okay, that’s fine, whatever.” W-we’re just making the show.

GT: That raises an interesting question. Do you have to be--and I know this is gonna sound silly--but do you have to be trained when you join a new project? Or are you so accustomed to the way this stuff gets marketed that it’s second nature to you now?

LM: A little bit of both.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: I think, like, upfront, so, um, I-I’ve always been, I guess, a little more truthful than I should have sometimes in my earlier projects. I made a, uh, movie through Warner Brothers. It was called Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, but it was about Supergirl. And they didn’t call it Supergirl, they called it Superman/Batman: Apocalypse.

GT: Right.

LM: And so when people would ask, I would be like, “Yeah, they had to put a big boy name on it ‘cuz they didn’t think a girl movie would sell.” And then I would get my PR guy and say like, “Hey, hey Lauren, you’re not supposed to say that.” And so, uh, I had to kinda learn, you know, sometimes you need to be a little more positive? [laughter] But, you know, hey man, sometimes people need to hear the truth.

JDS: But I’d say also specifically to Voltron, like it was pretty un-unprecedented in terms of like, an animated series of its kind getting picked up for that many episodes right off the bat, so… I mean we always joked that it was, like, the worst-kept secret ‘cuz I think Playmates at some point had, like, toy fair, like, put up a thing saying “78 episodes guaranteed!” and I think Tyler maybe said it because he hadn’t been told not to say it on some radio pod--some radio show. So it was like the worst-kept secret but it was also pretty interesting ‘cuz we were like, like one of the only shows that I know of that got picked up for that many episodes--

GT: That is amazing.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: --right off the bat.

MM: So, did they want you to write a story that only had a 78-episode arc, or did they tell you “there’s always an opportunity if this gets really big that we could have more”?

LM: I think--I don’t know--like at the time we were told 78 episodes, and that was it. And I think, like, maybe there--er, in our minds--like, if the thing was just, like, gangbusters, then there was a possibility for more, but I think what they actually learned over the process of making a 78-episode thing is that 78 episodes is a whole lot of a thing.

MM: Right.

GT: Oh yeah.

LM: And then, the-they’d actually made close to that of some other shows and realized that they really don’t need that many episodes. No, not every show has a serialized story and can maybe go that far, but for us, yeah. I think-I think ultimately when they started to kinda realize those numbers, it was like, “Alright, 78 episodes, that’s good enough.” And we were always planning for the 78 anyway, so uh, like honestly if they’d given us more we would’ve been like, “Uh… What’re we gonna do now?”

JDS: It’s funny, you know, we-we sort of, like, had this-this, you know, loose structure of sort of, kind of, where this story could go, but at some point you know, the show and the characters, they just kinda take on lives of their own to some extent and you-you zig where you thought you were gonna zag, a-and you know, the thing kinda goes where it needs to, so it’s like you… I remember we were, sort of, excited about the fact that like, hey we can like--and we did to some extent set some things up that could pay off later, but there was other stuff that we just-it was just kind of going and we were just on this-this production train, you know? We were like, “Oh wow, this-this thing is happening.”

MM: So, had Tim Hedrick, at the beginning, had he written out anything like a story bible that would kinda say “this is what’s gonna happen at the beginning”, “this is, like, a hazy middle area”, and then “maybe this is the end”?

JDS: No, our bible was about as loose as you’ll find. It was basically just to kinda pitch the show in its concept. So there was no… we would talk in meetings about maybe where we thought the characters’ arc would go.

LM: Yeah, I mean we had character arcs that we ended up, you know, having to completely adjust through--during the creation of the show because of, you know, whatever note here or there. So, like, we would have, like, some characters we thought we knew where they were going to end up that didn’t happen, and some characters we didn’t really know at all and then that just kind of solidified as it went through.

JDS: Right.

LM: And then, uh, a-and I’ll say, we really didn’t know--I’d say the biggest things we knew was we wanted Zarkon, kind of, for the first arc, and Lotor for the second arc, we didn’t really know, like, what we wanted for the third arc yet.

JDS: Right. That sort of started to present itself later.

LM: Like, and we had some, like, weird ideas that, like, never felt really personal, and then we kinda realized Honvera/Haggar was kinda the most--you know, the character who’d been with us the whole time. And uh, it was--and I was happy ‘cuz, you know, I like it when female characters can be involved in good ways and bad ways.

JDS: Yeah.

MM: Did you ever feel like you needed to, you know, give a certain complexity to those villains with always the chance that they could be somehow redeemed near the end?

JDS: Uh, I mean, I think we just like the idea of complexity in the villains, like, just-just generally and that came from, uh, Avatar but I think solidified on Korra. Uh, you know, when you look at a character like Amon or you look at a character like Zaheer, like, there were aspects of those characters that I totally agreed with.

LM: Mm-hm. Yeah, we also liked the idea not every, like, villain gets to be fully redeemed. Like, maybe there are things that are a little too bad to come back from. I think because we had worked on Avatar and Zuko was such a huge thing and he was such an awesome character, we didn’t want to immediately make everyone Zuko who was like yeah, and ultimately everyone becomes a good guy in the end.

JDS: Right.

[Hosts make noises of agreement.]

LM: So we wanted to, uh, to just have that door open.

JDS: But we also just didn’t want to do the mustachioed villain that’s just, like, a villain for villain’s sake so it was, we were playing this middle ground.

LM: Yeah, where you have characters who are doing bad things and you can kinda explain how they would get to that point.

JDS: Right.

LM: And ‘cuz that’s just, honestly that’s just a fascinating thing for me. Like I enjoy kinda studying what events would have to happen to get this character who you think would never do this thing, what would have to happen to push them to do that thing. That’s just something that I find incredibly interesting and love exploring, but uh, you know, hey man, shit gets crazy.

JDS: It does get crazy.

[Hosts laugh]

DA: Was there, um, was there a character who you were absolutely certain that their story was going to turn out a specific way that just flipped and went the, like, in the complete opposite direction to what you were expecting in the course of just figuring out the story?

JDS: I mean, you know, I-I think the big one for us was-was Shiro. You know, we’ve sort of talked about this publicly, we were orig--the original creation of Shiro was to set Keith up as the leader.

LM: I mean he was essentially our Sven. You know, we just changed his name from Sven to the original.

JDS: But we were going to keep him around a little longer than Sven lasted.

LM: Yeah, that was our whole thing was, like, “Okay, we still want to kinda do that Voltron thing where this character leaves the show, but we don’t wanna make--we don’t want him to feel disposable, we want him to feel like a super important character.” And then that kinda ended up kicking us in the butt because then the execs were like, “This is a super important character! You can’t, you can’t--”

MM: Well he became Space Dad.

LM: And it’s--and you know it’s--they were really just kinda channeling, I think, the love that they ultimately knew the fans would have for that character because he ended up being such a huge fan-favorite and, you know, we really can just thank the writers for that because they made sure that he did not feel, uh, you know, expendable.

JDS: Like, like, sort of expendable and--and also, like, you know, on one hand he fills a potentially boring space, which is, like, yeah, the leader/soldier/hero guy, and they very much made him not that, and, you know, that’s I think a perfect example of like, uh, a story point that just evolved on its own and sort of took a direction that we couldn’t have foreseen but we were-we were ultimately super happy with.

LM: Yeah.

MM: With knowing that Shiro was going to be sticking with you throughout the-the rest of the show, did you ever think of going back and telling us what his childhood was like, or who his parents were, or anything like that? He was one of the few characters who we really didn’t get that kind of a backstory on.

JDS: You know, we had originally a flashback pitch, uh, that showed Shiro I think with his family at a young age. It just, it became not as important to tell as some of the other aspects of his life, but also we had a lot of other familial backstories with the other characters that we wanted to cover.

LM: Yeah, and--I think, yeah, some of Shiro’s backstory just ultimately felt a little bit repetitive. I’m sure we could’ve, like, looked into it more and tried to find a way to make it stand out from the other characters, but ultimately when you’re, you know, moving at breakneck pace and trying to make these stories just happen, you know. I wish we would’ve had more time to sit there and-and really make every part of every character figured out 100%.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: But, when you’re moving so fast and you’re, “Okay, we have this, it feels like it’s stepping on the space for this other character, okay get rid of it.” Move forward. And that’s--that’s just kinda how these-these shows happen.

JDS: And it’s-it’s the same way that we, you know, we would sort of run in. With this many characters in a show, we’d often run into the thing where it’d be like, season 2, the big, sort of, the loudest aspect from the fandom would be like, “Oh, this character isn’t getting enough screentime.” And it’d be like, “Okay, we got, you know, this many episodes, we got this many characters, we’ll get to ‘em, but there’s only a certain amount of time.” And that’s all while juggling all the production craziness of, like, having three or four shows in production at a time.

MM: Yeah, I remember asking you at the end of season 6, uh, where was Matt? [laughter]

JDS: Yeah.

LM: Yeah. Well, Matt, actually, was--he started to become a little bit of a casualty of the availability of his voice actor because, uh, Blake was so hard to get into the studio, we literally found ourselves just writing him out of episodes.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: Like, and-and it was sad because I-I was really excited that we’d gotten Blake, um, and I was a really big fan of him from Workaholics, but he’s busy. He’s a busy actor, and so I think I had always wanted Matt to be a little more involved, but hey when you can’t get the actor in you just, you know. It--I guess you either have to get a sound-alike and we never really liked having to do that because it never sounded alike.

JDS: Right.

[laughter]

LM: So, uh, so yeah, he kinda--we ended up kinda crutching a ton on Sam, which I think was not at all expected.

JDS: Right.

LM: Because Sam was always kind of--his head was definitely on the chopping block, of like, “Hey, do we wanna give Pidge some sort of, like, she had a success with Matt, do we wanna give her, like, a failure with Sam?”

GT: Right.

LM: And then, like, I had no clue how-how integral he would become to that final Earth season, so it’s--I guess it’s good that we didn’t just axe him.

JDS: And it-it’s tough, like, it’s-it’s, you know, we call it, like, stunt-casting sometimes, but that’s-that’s the risk you run with, you know, hiring actors that voice-acting is not their, like, their main profession--

LM: Like their main bread and butter.

JDS: Yeah, like that’s--

GT: Like Norman Reedus.

MM: Steven, like Steven Yeun.

LM: Yeah. And Steven, he really bent over backwards to make himself available for us, but even-even with him we ran into a couple episodes, like, I think-I think we even, we’ve talked about it there was one episode, the game show episode!

[Hosts make sounds of understanding]

LM: Well you’ll notice in the beginning Keith sounds really groggy for no reason, and we literally just couldn’t get Steven in to re-read that line. It was like, “Alright! Well, this is going through.”

MM: “He’s just groggy.”

LM: “That’s production! Sorry.” It’s, you know. But hey man, sometimes that’s the fun of it. You can watch that episode and be like, “Oh, that’s one of the problems with making a TV show on a fast schedule.”

JDS: Right right right.

GT: So one of the things--and this is of very minor importance by comparison to character arcs--but one of the things that I noticed over a lot of Voltron merchandise: the tie-in books, uh, the toys, was all this stuff about each Paladin being a guardian spirit of this or that or what in the other, and the lions were labeled that way, too. What happened with that stuff?

JDS: This is where our, like, you know, our-our producing minds and our consumer/product, sort of, minds, uh, uh--

LM: Diverge.

JDS: Yeah. Where we sort of, like, grew apart. We sort of went divergent from each other. And, you know, early on I think that was a pitch that we got when we had, like, meetings and I think had we, I don’t even know how to say this--

LM: Yeah, it was--it was something that was not really in our original pitch--

JDS: It was--it was pitched to us from, like, the consumer/product standpoint, like, “Hey, this would be a good thing to latch onto.” And it just wasn’t really something that we were--

LM: Yeah, I think there were symbols that they really liked that they wanted to use in some of the consumer products, and like we’re all for it--

GT: Yeah, like different lion logos or whatever?

LM: --but we-we couldn’t really, like, it wasn’t inherent in our story and we struggled to find a way to work it in, and ultimately I think we just kind of came--we knew, like, we had voiced our opinions on the symbols. We weren’t super fond of the design, we’d done some designs to fix ‘em, and they had, kind of, just, I guess--

JDS: They had already moved along with their designs and so it was just--

LM: --and so we didn’t really want to work them into the show, just ‘cuz we didn’t feel like they could adhere to the aesthetic we’d created. And so we’re just like, “I’m sorry, it’s gonna have to be, like, a weird offshoot point”. So, you know. But it’s a lesson to learn that, uh, I wish we had control over everything in the show, but we don’t, and there’s other offshoots with the consumer products, and-and they kind of work in their own little bubble and we work in ours, and we try to meet up to--as best we can--to make things work.

JDS: But it doesn’t always work.

LM: Yeah, I mean we worked the lion upgrades in, like, that was asked specifically for the toys, and we found a way to, you know, get those into the show and make them feel kinda natural. But we couldn’t do it with everything.

GT: Right.

MM: There was a 3D-VR experience called Voltron VR Chronicles--

JDS: Yeah.

MM: --and that first episode that came out was called “Seeds of Corruption”. It was a Lance-focused episode, and they had said there would be more episodes coming. Did you ever hear what happened to that?

JDS: I think, yeah we were-we were, like, sorta peripherally involved, uh…

LM: I mean, yeah, they showed it to us along the way, and it was really cool to see it take form. I-I just don’t, I don’t know, I know that there were plans, they had like a story arced out.

JDS: Yeah, I think ultimately, a lot of it just comes down to if that-that was like a-a rip-roaring success, you would have absolutely seen more, but I think maybe,I don’t know, maybe-maybe there just wasn’t support because it didn’t-it didn’t get the numbers that they needed.

LM: Yeah, I don’t know how many Voltron fans have, like, the full VR/PS--

MM: Right.

LM: --VR setup. So it’s kinda--sadly I think it’s kind of a niche sale and I think when you’re marketing to something that’s-that’s not really, like, globally, massively accepted yet, maybe it’s a little harder to really get a big return on your investment.

JDS: I’d say V--like, I’d like to know exactly, sort of, on a-on a-on a bigger scale--like, VR in general. I’m excited about it still from, like, an artistic perspective, but I still haven’t quite seen, you know, the promise of-of all the things that were, like, supposed to be happening right now.

GT: Yeah, what’s the killer app, right?

JDS: Yeah, and I’m-I’m going back all the way to Lawnmower Man, guys, come on.

GT: Yeah.

JDS: Got our rig, while we’re spinnin’ around.

MM: What we need is a place called The Oasis like in Ready Player One, where we’re all connected and we can watch Voltron episodes completely in 360 degree immersion.

JDS: One day.

LM: There you go.

[laughter]

GT: Yeah, I’ve often wondered how that’d even work. To have full 360 degree immersion, how do you make sure you’re looking where you need to look as the story unfolds around you?

JDS: Right. That’s the big question.

MM: They cue you to look in certain directions to make sure that you’re following along with the story, but it also gives it an opportunity, if you are-are really interested in looking in a different direction, then they might have alternative options like Choose Your Adventure type things.

GT: Yeah, that’d be really tough to write in a-in a effective way, I guess--

MM: Right.

GT: --as a story. But getting back to-to-to what you talked about with the consumer products and all that good stuff, I mean, to a point it boils down to this Voltron not being creator-owned but rather a licensed property. And so I was wondering how would you--how might you compare and contrast Voltron with licensed properties you’ve worked on in the past such as various DC characters, G.I. Joe, and-and whatever you might have in the hopper right now. How would you compare and contrast Voltron with those others?

JDS: Uh, I mean, well, it’s interesting, like, I think Voltron is unique in the sense that it’s still--I don’t even know if it’s, like, owned by World Events--but it’s still, they still very much have, like, a say in the creative direction of it so that’s-that’s one aspect that we found unique, uh, even when producing the show. But I think it’s also, it was this property that had kind of, you know--I know you guys have been carrying the torch--but kinda gone away for a while, right?

GT: Oh, absolutely.

JDS: So we were kind of coming up with a lot of this lore and this backstory on our own. We were obviously using stuff from, you know Go--Beast King and Voltron, but it was unique in that it was just gone. So I think it was off people’s radars for a while, whereas like the DC stuff that we worked on, like DC’s been around the whole time, you know? People kind of know what to expect, they know generally who the characters are, what their personalities and backstories are, so it was--it was unique in that, like, we were, like, kind of reintroducing this and in a sense, it absolutely isn’t creator-driven but I think we got, sort of, put into, like, a, uh, a creator position on it.

LM: Mm-hm. And we were thrilled to be able to do it. We were thrilled to be able to bring, like, our vision to this show and I mean, essentially it almost felt like we were kind of almost recreating it, like, in our own little way. Whereas a lot of the times when I worked on a lot of the DC stuff, like, you know, I was never recreating Superman, I was just telling a story in his world, you know, with that character. And there was always, like, a very specific set of rules as to what that character could and couldn’t do. We could never really break that mold. But with Voltron, we have a lot of freedom to remake these characters how we felt we wanted them to be for the story, so I mean that was really great. I personally never worked on something that, I think, was gonna have such a large, kinda, consumer products, um, push behind it. I had mostly worked--a lot of the DC stuff was just kind of--

MM: They were just stories, right?

LM: Yeah, they were stories, they were one-offs, they were--they kind of, they expected--they knew, like, they were going to go to the specific kind of comic book fan market and-and that was it. It was just kind of like, “Here’s one piece of art that’s out there, enjoy it or don’t enjoy it.” And then Voltron had so much more around it, the whole franchise and, like, how this was going to play out in other departments. It wasn’t really just us there to, kind of, make the decisions.

JDS: It was the first time we had been in so many meetings with so many other departments that were, like, pitching us their vision for Voltron, which, you know, sometimes it was like, “Okay, that’s kind of a neat concept,” and sometimes it was like--

LM: “We’re not doing that.”

JDS: “We’re very scared about what we’re seeing right now.” Like, how do we nicely tell these people we’re not gonna do it?

LM: I feel we’ve told the--I think we’ve told this story before of, like, how many times we got asked if Voltron could talk.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: Yeah, they just really wanted to make a little, a helmet that, you know, you talked in the helmet and then your voice came out and it was Voltron’s voice. And I’m like, “I’m sorry, he’s not--it’s a robot! It doesn’t talk!” But--

MM: You got him to talk in “The Voltron Show”.

JDS: Exactly.

LM: Yeah, that was our wink-wink.

JDS: That was the total nod to that moment.

LM: All just so they could sell Voltron helmets. Just kidding.

[laughter]

JDS: There was a lot--it was a lot--it was a lot of coordinating beyond, you know, beyond uh, a scale we had seen before. And we were coming off of Korra, which was literally just, like, “Make a story. There is nothing tied to this beyond a story.”

LM: Yeah. And it was cre--you know, Bryan and Mike’s creation and then they got to make their own artistic vision there. And so, yeah, going from that and then coming to Voltron where we very much had to, kind of, play game with the studio and we were, like, 100% understanding of that going into it. But yeah, it’s a different part of the industry and you just, you adjust, and it’s just part of your profession, your career, and as a professional you-you figure it out and you make it work.

JDS: Right.

GT: Okay.

MM: Did you guys have any sense for inclusion, in diversity, in representation, all that you kinda wanted to bring into the show even when you were starting out?

LM: Yeah.

JDS: I mean I think that was--the idea was to-to make the characters, you know--you know, the original Beast King obviously was a bunch of Japanese characters which was, you know, totally appropriate for its time and, uh, you know I probably think Sven was probably the bad version of trying to, like, give these characters divergent voices in the, uh, in Voltron.

LM: But yeah, I mean, we always knew that we wanted to feature, like, a diverse cast as much as we could. Yeah. For us, our story was always our story, and within that story we wanted to be able to feature as much diversity as possible.

JDS: We never made it, like, the focus. They were just characters that happened to be from different, different backgrounds, but, you know, the Earth that we had sort of conceptualized was kind of more of a united Earth where everything was blended anyway. So it wasn’t, you weren’t going to get, like, a ton of, like, accents or the sort of trademark, you know, things when shows are bringing in diverse characters. It was just like, “Yeah, that’s Lance! He’s Cuban. That’s Hunk.” You know what I mean?

LM: And a lot of those things we never even really mentioned in the show, they would maybe make a little reference to it, but I think people didn’t know Lance was Cuban until Jeremy went out and said it. And then people didn’t really know Hunk was Samoan until Tyler went out and said it. For us, it was just like, “These are our characters.” And we maybe had these ideas of who they were, but the show didn’t center around their ethnicity, the show centered around how they deal when they fight this war.

JDS: Right. It was more personality-centric than it was anything else.

DA: With that, because obviously it becomes very difficult in terms of, like, with diversity--especially in animation because it’s in its infancy almost in terms of branching out and also being able to represent different areas--was there ever a time where you thought you actually wanted to make it more explicit who they were and where they came from and their backgrounds to, sort of, just to make it more, kind of, like, obvious where they’d all come from? Or was it always just you were going to allow that-that breathing room, that space for people to kind of look at these characters and maybe take a piece of them to sort of represent themselves? Like was there more of, like, an openness that you wanted to take with that diversity or was there ever, like, specifically in your head that you wanted to try and say more about it but the story just didn’t allow?

JDS: Yeah, I mean, well, there was little cues, right? So there was, like, an episode where Lance sort of said he missed Veradero Beach, and like, he sort of, you know, we had like small little homages to it. I think, you know, for us the big one obviously was Shiro, and we had a different story planned for Shiro. And when we explained his backstory and-and, you know, we were showing he was, you know--this wasn’t ethnic diversity--but we were trying to have some representation with-with LGBTQ+, and that, you know, we might’ve been pushing a little too early, too soon, for where maybe the-the studio or the industry was-was comfortable at the time. Um, and so obviously we-we had to divert that story. But I think we didn’t want to put too much import on anyone’s ethnic background. We wanted them, we wanted people to be able to find what they found appealing purely based on-on-on character, on-on the content of the individual character’s character. So it was-it was vague, we-we, you know, and it wasn’t intentional, it just, it wasn’t a focus of ours to make it overly explicit that they were--you know, Keith. Nobody knows where Keith landed in terms of anything.

LM: Yeah. It’s always, it’s-it’s tricky because the thing that you risk I think by super nailing down a character, is you can make one group really happy, but then you can also exclude a lot of other groups. And we-we wanted to--we would’ve loved for everyone to be able to be represented but couldn’t have, like, a million characters in this show, like, with large talking roles to feel like everyone really got their due. So what you oftentimes have to do is realize you have to create these characters and hope that people can see themselves in them. And sometimes the more--I mean it even happens with story, and like some of our crazy space magic stuff: the more you nail it down and explain it, like, kind of, the more the magic is taken out of it. And I’m not--I don’t want to say that’s for every situation ever, I think, I hope that everyone gets explicit representation somewhere, somehow, and hopefully in the coming years there will be so much representation across the board that no one will ever feel left out because they’ll be able to see themselves somewhere. But this, you know, we just had one show and a limited amount of characters to do it in, and so I think we didn’t want to nail down every one character so specifically to make anyone feel like absolutely “you are not in this cast”.

JDS: Right.

MM: So, out of all the characters, who did you feel had the most obvious representation other than Shiro?

LM: Huh, I, uh, I guess I would just say, just, Lance because Jeremy said he was Cuban and everybody was like, “He’s Cuban!” You know, it was a celebration, but I mean beyond that I know, like, I think Pidge was, like--we wrote in the bible that she was Italian, but like, that was never really, like, a thing ever--and I don’t even know if I would fully categorize her as that.

JDS: I wouldn’t.

LM: Yeah, I think that we really didn’t super nail down much of anyone.

JDS: Yeah, I mean, we just, you know, just tried to create a cast of characters that visually you could tell were from different backgrounds.

LM: It’s tricky ‘cuz there’s just, there’s--sadly there’s a nasty part of fandom out there where people will say, “You can’t cosplay this character unless you are specifically, like, the exact look of that character.” And we just don’t-don’t always want to give fuel to that sort of fire.

JDS: We want everybody to be able to find something that they appreciate and that they can latch onto about the character of all our characters.

MM: Okay. Like, I was thinking, like, Ezor and Zethrid. They kinda looked like they ended up together.

JDS: Sure. Okay.

MM: Okay.

LM: Oh, you want to talk about that?

JDS: You know, we’ve sort of talked about it in-in the past. We’ve-we’ve talked about it in-depth in the past. There was specifically with LGBTQ representation, I think there was a line within the studio and within the industry as a whole when it comes to shows of this type, which are sort of, like, traditionally marketed to be, like, boys toys, action/adventure, 6-11, which are, like, kind of these-these buzzwords that-that go out when you’re creating these things, um, where, like, characters on the periphery are fair game to some extent.

LM: They’re less-scrutinized.

JDS: They’re less-scruti--yes, less-scrutinized.

LM: Especially in a, in a boys toys, uh, show, if they’re female characters, they’re definitely less-scrutinized.

JDS: There’s just less import put on them in terms of they’re gonna sell a million toys. Um, and that’s--

LM: That’s a sad reality.

JDS: That’s a sad reality. And one, I will say that on a positive note is changing. And I truly believe that, like, we’re entering an age with animation and IP, if you look at something like Overwatch--

MM: Right.

JDS: --you know, which we, again, we sort of used as, like, this, like, barometer when we were pitching out storylines to the executive branch and-and at that time it was like, “Well, that’s a video game, and that’s meant for teenagers,” and that’s--you know, they were looking for-for reasons for us to not to divert or to change course. And you know all-all within, like, from sort of a business perspective you can kind of see it through that lens and go like, “Okay, but I mean, guys, this isn’t really a big deal.”

MM: You just made a show for all ages, right?

JDS: We made a show for all ages, but we were broaching subject matter for, you know, for kids to sort of, like, you know, maybe think about. And that’s something that we hang our hat on, I mean we did it on Korra I think really, really well and I think Mike and Bryan were-were pioneers with that and-and-and taking an IP that allowed its audience to age up with it. So we were sort of hoping that the audience had been on for long enough that they were like, evolving along with the show. But, you know, maybe we pushed a little too hard too soon. I think Ezor and Zethrid were clearly not, you know, uh, characters that were, sort of, front and center enough for the studio to, uh, to have any worry about.

LM: They weren’t quite the characters that, I think, they were kind of hanging the franchise on, so, uh… And that-that’s the thing is like, you’ll get a lot more freedom with some kind of side characters than you will a lot of times with the main characters.

GT: Yeah.

JDS: Keep in mind, guys, like, the other reason, you know, that Shiro stuck around was because he was the soldier character that was meant to sell a ton of toys. So it was like, “You can’t kill this guy because he’s like our, he’s our Optimus Prime. He’s our Duke. He’s our, you know, Liono, he’s our main guy. He’s our, you know, He-Man.” And, you know, that’s from a business perspective, like, if you’re sort of, like, looking at this thing without any, like, sort of social structure around it, like, it’s-it’s an ugly truth that sort of presents itself. That’s, by the way, part of the reason we wanted to use him as, like, the leader that sort of, like, allows the other character to sort of fill that position and rise up. It be-it became a, uh, uh, a strong throughline for Keith’s character to live up to his potential, and we did that to some degree, but we had to adjust the story.

MM: Yeah, well you had them saving each other constantly throughout the course of the series.

JDS: Yep, and it was, hey, it was one of those changes we, like, think totally, like, helped the show, so it’s...

LM: Yeah, it’s part of the job.

JDS: It’s part of the process.

LM: When you get a change, like, you know, you don’t just just kinda stomp your feet and storm off, you just, you try to make the best story you can, so ultimately when we get the note “Shiro has to be in-in the show and--forever”, then we don’t just be like, “Well whatever, we’re just gonna write him out of these episodes and treat him like-like nothing.” No, we’re gonna find a way to make his story still very important to the show and we’re also going to find a way to not disservice Keith and just make him--I mean he could’ve been season 1 Keith the whole series, where he just barely does anything, but we didn’t wanna do that. We always had, um, you know these ideas of him rising to be more, and so how do we service both of those characters? And we just kinda had to roll with the punches and-and hope that we were able to do so in a satisfactory way.

DA: So was that a huge thing, like the-the perception from the, sort of, toy companies of him being, like, this really stereotypical macho, kind of, symbol? Was that a huge reason why you kind of started to subvert that? Or was that idea always in your head, or the back of your mind for what you wanted Shiro to be around the time when you found out, like, he wasn’t going to be leaving the show? Like, when did that shift and when did he start to shift into the character he then became further down the line in terms of, like, showing his disability representation, but also you know, the queer representation as well? When did you start to, like, try to fold that in to kind of, like, subvert that macho hero perspective?

JDS: Uh, I mean, you know, I think the subversion, that’s like an aspect of it. We-we absolutely, you know, sort of knew we wanted to work in, you know, queer representation into the show. It was just, for us it was a matter of when and we knew we had to, like, try to--I don’t know--ingratiate ourselves, make sure that we were doing the show that the studio was happy with before we broached it because we knew it was a big deal, uh, for the studio and kind of for this genre of show.

LM: Yeah, and-and specifically in this genre, like, there are things that I-I’d always hoped we’d be able to do with the show that I definitely didn’t put in the bible ‘cuz there’s this kind of unspoken rule where if you push too hard too fast, you’ll probably get a no. But if you prove to them that you can make them a good show, and then you ask for it, like, once you’ve proven yourself, there’s a better chance that you’re gonna get a yes.

JDS: Yeah, you’ve sorta got a track record behind you.

LM: And so, like, I had, you know, always had these ideas of like, what if this-this macho guy was actually queer? That was about the time when I came across the bury your gays trope and I realized, “Oh, that’s not something we wanna do.” I knew what we needed Shiro to do in the story--which was we needed him to kind of exit the story--and so it was like, “Okay, well, you know what, let’s not do the representation through Shiro, let’s find it in another character somewhere down the line. We’ll move forward with this story.” And so then when that--

JDS: And this is still when we were still under the assumption that Shiro was not going to be in the show.

LM: Yeah, this was literally, like, development before we were even full-time in-house at DreamWorks working on it.

MM: Mm-hm.

LM: When, you know, we come in, we’re working on the show, and then at some point we get, y-you know--

JDS: The mandate.

LM: The mandate that, like, he’s gonna stay alive and that’s when we started thinking, “Okay, well then, we can--some of the things we’d taken off the table we can actually do again.” So we weren’t necessarily working them in hardcore from season 1, but I mean you’ll notice that, you know, Shiro isn’t, like, wink-winky eyein’ at any ladies, he’s always just a very respectable man. We knew his, I guess his sexual orientation was not something that needed to be explored in the first season, so it left that door open to us.

JDS: But yeah, I mean, I-I think the important thing was that, like, even in our original pitch in which, you know, Adam wasn’t part of the Galaxy Garrison, and-and doesn’t die in Earth’s invasion and all that sort of thing, like, the idea was to show representation but not--i-it didn’t affect Shiro’s character in any way. He didn’t-he didn’t act any differently, he didn’t fall into any of the tropes that you would, you know, in shows like I had growing up, like, a show, like, you know, for instance like Three’s Company where it was like, “Oh, Jack Tripper is pretending to be a gay man, so anytime Mr. Roper comes up he’s acting super effeminate.” Not that there’s, you know, anything wrong with acting effeminate, but it was its own trope. Shiro was sort of, like, bucking-bucking that in our eyes.

DA: So with that, obviously, you know the story changed with Adam and Shiro from what you originally envisaged. When in the development stage, like, when did you get the go on that? Like, when did you get the yes? Was it when, like, was season 7 all wrapped? Was it already done? Was it already, like, in the show and then you had to, like--

JDS: Yes. Here’s the weird thing, right? So this is--I’m gonna give you a very, very loose sort of fast and dirty breakdown of how it went down. So, we had a pitch for Adam and Shiro. It made it all the way to, like, storyboards. It made it through premise, through script, through storyboards. It got storyboarded, it was like a day out from shipping. And then, you know, we got called into a conversation where we were told we couldn’t have Adam and Shiro in a relationship. So we’re sort of in this weird position where we’re like, “Okay, well, let us pitch you, like, a version where, like, maybe they’re not saying things that are so explicit,” and maybe, you know, we can adjust the dialogue. So we pitched that back, and that sort of got rejected again. And at that point we were a little confused because, you know, Overwatch was out, and-and Steven Universe was obviously taking off, so we were sort of pointing at those things and-and we were getting pushback because it was like, “Well, you guys aren’t creator-owned. This is a show that’s, you know, more boy-centric, like, 6-11.” And I know this, it-it sounds horrible, but these were the excuses that we were hearing back.

MM: But by that time you had known who your audience was, right?

JDS: You know, we did, but-but the marketing machine that’s behind a show, like, those millions of dollars are spent and are going in a certain direction. And for us to, like, and… they’re millions of dollars, like, so from a company perspective, like, we were making a show that was diverting from maybe its original purpose. And that’s me, you know, sort of just looking almost from the outside in as much as inside we were. That-that’s all we could sort of take away from it. So we were given-given, like, notes on how to revise the scene, we salvaged as much of the staging as we could, so like the original version had a lot of the staging the same, but they were in an apartment and not in the Galaxy Garrison lounge, and you know, Adam was changed to be like a flight partner and so, you know, make it very much like a Goose and Maverick relationship. That got produced. That got made, the entire season got made, and we were well into making season 8 when the door sort of squeaked back open, um, and at that point I want to say Shiro was at least in development. And I think--She-Ra not Shiro. She-Ra. She-Ra--within, uh, within the studio, and I think the studio was just, sort of, beginning to sort of open its eyes to-to the possibilities of there being representation in their shows and there not being a huge backlash, a huge public backlash, for it. So they said, “Hey, maybe you can revisit that scene.” Adam’s, you know, fate was already sealed at that point, unfortunately. And so we had this decision. Do we revise the dialogue and have some level of representation versus no level of representation? And we had to make that decision really quickly and we decided to do it, hoping that confirming a character, being able to say that publicly, would, you know, make some in-roads and at least open more doors in the future for shows of this kind. And you know, obviously things turned out the way they did. We were very aware of-of the trope of bury your gays, but we thought that this was, uh, uh, a more important step to take. I think, we’ve said it before, like, our biggest, you know, regret was going to Comic-Con and making--

LM: Yeah, we--and, though the problem is we worked in animation a long time. We’re very used to that idea of, like, some progress is progress, like, small steps, like, you know, like... I’ve been--I’ve been campaigning for, like, more female involvement. I got two ladies in a main cast of seven, that’s-that’s nowhere near equality, but I was doing, like, backflips because, you know, every--any other time it could’ve just been one token female. We’re used to kind of those baby steps and and taking what we can get and appreciating it. We can’t expect the public to understand that, and that was where we kind of lost sight. We thought, uh, our excitement w-would, you know, I guess, somehow--

JDS: Carry through.

LM: --carry through and-and I think it was kind of like a snap back to reality, for me for sure, just realizing, oh yeah, like, we’re the people who’ve been in, you know, like, the pitch-black room for five years, and then we get, like, one window cracked open. And then someone comes over and is like, “Why are you in this pitch-black room, this sucks.” We’re like, “No, no, no, that window that’s cracked open this is the greatest room ever!” Like, you know, it’s-it’s sadly we’ve been, I guess, a little… our views have been skewed.

JDS: But I-I-I would say this, too, that, like, if given the choice again, I-I d-I don’t know what the right answer is. Like, I wanna say we’d make the same decision again because it’s the choice of confirming a main hero character, or nothing at all, like, that’s kind of the position we found ourselves in.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: Obviously, guys, if we could learn from this, and, like, go into, like, Voltron 2.0, or go into, like, next show 2.0, the assumption is that you would-you would have that built into the character from the get-go, and you would-you could--everybody would be on the same page.

LM: Yeah. You would-you would get signatures so no one would change their minds.

JDS: Yeah, it wouldn’t be a thing that y-you sort of had to, like, wait to ingratiate yourself to the studio with, and all that. So--but I think, I think we’re getting to that place. I think the industry is getting to that place. It sucks for us personally that we had to take lumps along the way and we wish we could’ve done things better, but, um, and in our case--and in that situation--it was sort of like…

LM: Yeah, we made the only choice we had to make, and we hoped, uh, that it would mean something to someone.

JDS: Yeah.

MM: Alright, so, you guys had a lot to deal with there. You had a marketing machine that was marketing to a different audience. During the course of you working on the show, DreamWorks had been bought out by Comcast, so Universal became y-your parent company, right?

LM: Yeah.

JDS: Yup.

LM: Yeah.

MM: So there were things that happened that--there were deals that were already made through DreamWorks when it was just DreamWorks, and now there were changes being made as a result of Universal coming in. So there were a lot of hands in the till--I’m sure there were a lot of people that gave you notes during the course of production and everything--and you had to take it all into consideration and still come up with the story you wanted to tell.

JDS: Well, I mean that’s kind of the case on any show. I mean, this was a lot because we were such a product-driven show, but-but as a showrunner, when you’re working on existing IP, that’s kinda par for the course. This was another added layer on top of that, obviously, we were broaching subject matter which, like--again, in, like, Steven Universe, I think Rebecca’s said that she dealt with her own version of this and that was on a creator-driven show. And Korra was obviously able to broach the subject matter at the very, very end of the show, but that was not--that was not the understanding of the show, you know, while it was in production, that was something that happened at the very end. But again, we were in a-in a unique situation in that, like, you know, we were-we’re working on this IP that-that is, it’s not our thing. The other element that we had to contend with, you know, Lauren and I had this moment where we kinda, like, were like, “Is this something we, like, walk away from?” And that’s not really on the table either because we had a crew there. Because we had, honestly like, investment in the quality of the show that we made up to that point, and to sort of hand that over to somebody else, it was just--

LM: Yeah, it’s just a matter of, you know, there’s the obvious way where you ask for a thing and, you know, you don’t get it, you get mad, and you leave. But we’re, I think, just much more accustomed to just as-as professionals, you ask for a thing, you don’t get it, you try to make the best of what you’ve got and you find a way, like, I’m sure there’s a version where it’s so dire and so awful that it’s nothing near the show that you wanted it to be and then you-you walk away. But we felt like we could still send the correct messages. Like, even if, if we ended up with, like, a hard no, no representation situation, we could still at least try to send positive messages through the body of the show if it weren’t through an individual character’s representation.

JDS: Right. I-I think our-our big lesson, too, was, like, “go all in or go nothing at all”. Is that our takeaway from this, or, you know it was just a lot to learn from the entirety of the experience, so it was-it was a big stew. There was a lot of moving parts. And that’s not to take away from-from anybody being, like, hurt or even worse, you know, offended by, like, how things shook out. We’ve learned from everybody’s reactions on this subject matter in particular, but it was--that was the truth of our circumstance.

MM: Okay.

GT: When you guys, uh, were researching Voltron, I mean obviously the two of you had seen some of Voltron back in the day, but when you were researching this IP--which had been more or less dormant for quite a long time--how did you go about doing that, aside from watching the show? Did you, you know--for example, you know, the pilots’ uniforms didn’t match the colors of their lions. Was there some research involved in figuring out what was done back then and how you wanted to address it in the new show? Something like that?

LM: A lot of it we just kind of followed our gut. Like, we definitely, I know I watched the old show, I watched Beast King GoLion on Crunchyroll of all places and just got myself refamiliarized with the show. One of those things that was always kind of confusing to me was, like, the differences of the pilots’ uniforms. And we looked at, like, comics and-and other, kind of, shoot-off material that had been done for Voltron and they had, I think even Voltron Force, they kinda changed the colors of the outfits to match the lions, but you know, that was, I think just, you know, me, I know my personal opinion and, you know, Joaquim feel free to jump in if you have differing opinions.

JDS: I agreed with you ‘cuz we did it.

LM: We did it! Like, I, I had always imagined, like, I think because as a kid I had, I had attached the characters more to their colors than to their specific lions, and in my kid brain I didn’t even realize, like, I had to kind of relearn that, “Oh, the red guy’s in the black lion, not the red lion. And the blue guy’s in the red lion, not the blue lion.” Because I know the pink girl’s in the blue lion, because that’s the one thing I remember. And so, when I would see, like, the comics had changed their outfit colors, it always felt weird to me, ‘cuz I, I had identified those characters so strongly with their colors. And so we kinda came up with this storyline that ultimately, you know, we liked because it progressed the characters, it didn’t keep them--we didn’t wanna be the-the show that did everything kinda like, nothing ever changes, everything stays the same through the whole show. And so this idea of the characters starting in one lion and then progressing to the next, but keeping their, their original colors and then ultimately in my happy child nostalgia place getting us to the original, like, Voltron line-up was something that, I don’t know, I was really excited about.

JDS: Yeah, I mean it was, it was a cool way to sort of, like, you know back into the familiar for, like, old fans, um, but I think that’s the really unique thing about Voltron in general. It’s such, I mean you guys are-are well-versed in it, but for a-a vast majority I’d say of the fans that grew up watching it when they were kids, it’s this foggy show that you had, sort of these, like, big pillars that you could latch onto in terms of what you remembered about it, but putting all those things together didn’t always necessarily make sense, so… I mean I remember at some point even when we were, like, in the early days of, like, making the show, I made this huge, like, mistake talking about Shiro and Sven and it was... I remember both Lauren and Tim correcting me like, “No, dude that just wasn’t the case” and I was like, “Really?”

LM: Yeah, like, Joaquim at one point he was like, “What, Sven wasn’t in the black lion?”

JDS: And he wasn’t and it was like, “No,” and I was like, “Really?” And I’d already done the research and I’d somehow again sort of undone and gone back to what my child brain remembered.

LM: But yeah, I mean, even looking at that old art, when you look at Sven’s outfit, he has, like, the black outfit and he has this gold trim.

JDS: He’s got the gold trim, man!

LM: He feels like he should be the leader. But it’s like, he’s got that special gold trim that no one else has, but it’s just kind of a weird thing.

JDS: But he was also kind of emotionally, like--

LM: He was kind of like, you know--

JDS: --kind of the big brother. I don’t know.

LM: He was--Keith was your standard kinda 80’s hero/leader guy, but, I mean Sven was the one who, like, put his life on the line to protect Lance, and so he was always the guy that I respected a ton. And I just appreciated that character.

JDS: He’s just, he’s just--yeah, exactly.

GT: Yeah, that makes sense. And another example--and I’m not just listing that as, like, the thing, but another item--I mean, clearly Voltron’s design was revised. One thing that disappeared was the emblem on the-the chest with the cross, which you know, you know, there in GoLion, there is an implication that there may be some, uh, western cultural impact on the planet Altea just through some of the gestures in the earlier seasons wherein the presence of a church on the planet and things like that. Was the thought to revamp this design, was it just to give it its own, its own distinct look? Or was it, was it sort of looking, “Wow, what is this here for? Does this-does this symbol mean anything in this new version of Altea where these lions are made from a comet?” I mean, I-I’m just curious as to how some of that kind of stuff--not just the uniforms, not just the emblem, but those sorts of things--as you look at the old stuff going, “Hm, what can we use, what can we discard?” You know what I mean?

JDS: Well, I mean, I think there’s the want to avoid sort of, like, the-the inherent, sort of, religiosity of it all.

LM: Yeah, well, like a huge part of it is just as we’re creating this story, we’re making an Altea that Earth doesn’t know about so no Earth symbolism should really show up over there. We kind of had to just jump the shark with lions because we’re like, “How do they know what lions are?” I don’t know. Nobody knows.

JDS: Hey by the way--no--but we pitched an idea.

LM: Did we?

JDS: We did. Where, where, uh, we show Alfor on, like, his sojourn and it was like, we show Alfor on his sojourn to, like--

LM: I think we were trying to, like, have some sort of time-travel, or-or was it, like--

JDS: No, it was like we see Alfor doing cave paintings on Oriande or something like that--

LM: --like he saw cave paintings that were lions or something, I don’t know.

JDS: --but he saw the mythical creature on Oriande and that gave him the idea--

GT: The guardian?

JDS: --to make their likeness. But we also pitched a really bad version where it was, what was it? It was like, I forgot what it was, like they go to Earth and they see, they see a lion, a real lion, and they go like, “Oh my gosh! It’s a,” I don’t know, “it’s a mythical whatever whatever!” And they’re just like, “No that’s just a lion.”

LM: Yeah, I don’t know I just think--

MM: I’m glad it wasn’t five yelmores.

[laughter]

JDS: That’s right.

GT: Oh my.

LM: I tried to pitch like, the hoobajoob idea that the comets, they’re like lions with trailing manes and I think Tim just looked at me like I was on some hippie shit.

[laughter]

JDS: But a lot of that stuff, I will also say is just kind of the randomness of how, like, these shows were created back in the day. I don’t think any of the creators of the original Beast King GoLion put, you know there was obviously thought put into it, but I think sometimes it was like, “That’s just cool” or “that’s western iconography that we find appealing, let’s put it on there,” you know. A-and working within that or-or sort of figuring out what to keep and what to lose, you know, we lost Voltron’s lips ‘cuz it creeped us out, like, cool in the show. He looked kind of Egyptian, you know?

GT: Yeah.

JDS: So… yeah.

GT: Yeah, that makes sense. A-a-and you’ve just mentioned cave markings, which leads to another question I had which was a story point in the very first episode, or the first, the pilot showed that there were cave markings in the hiding spots of blue, yellow, and green lions at least, if not also red wherever the heck it was. But Keith had been studying the markings and-and they told stories about a blue lion and had clues about an arrival, and-and it seemed like that night might have been when the arrival had been foretold, and of course on that night Shiro crashes to Earth. So what were the thoughts about who made those cave markings and when?

JDS: Yeah, I mean, so this is where we get a little loosey-goosey. Um, but, you know, I think the idea at the time was, like, you know, civilizations rose up and fell around, around the lions and-and those were sort of the remnants of-of maybe, I don’t know, maybe somebody interfaced with the lion on some level and could, could figure it out? We-we kept it super loosey-goosey. The same thing that, like, the most loosey-goosey of it all was, like, going into Keith’s shack and the frequency lining up with the, with the formation of the rocks and the mountains. That was--

GT: Yes, Fraunhofer lines.

JDS: --none of that makes any sense. It was just visual tomfoolery.

LM: The long story short is we tried to work something in there, and then we got, like, focus-test notes that was like, “Kids are bored, make this scene shorter.”

JDS: Yeah.

LM: And then we cut out a ton of stuff and it ended up being like, “I got these vibes, and then you landed.” And then we never went back, a-and yeah.

JDS: We had, we had a kind of thorough explanation for, like--

LM: We tried. We did.

JDS: --but it was, even that was still loosey-goosey and anytime you’re putting, you know, a suspect board up and you’re tying things with-with red string, like, good luck. I don’t know. That’s all I got to say.

GT: That makes sense to me. [laughter] The answer is “because.”

JDS: Yeah.

LM: Yeah.

GT: That works, that works.

LM: I would’ve loved to be able to have everything figured out on, like, a Star Trek level, but I’m telling ya right here--

GT: I’m work-I’m working on that, Lauren. I’m really working on that.

JDS: Much in the same way that we had to work around the loosey-gooseyness of the original series, maybe somebody will have to take these things, these wacky ideas and just make sense of them.

LM: Yeah maybe someday, someone will, like, fix our mess up.

GT: Ah, you didn’t mess that stuff up. It’s fun stuff that just gets me thinking, worldbuilding and all that stuff.

DA: So, obviously when you went into the epilogue in season 8, I’m bringing it back to, like, the Shiro and Adam thing.

GT: Yeah.

DA: After the response to season 7 and then moving into season 8, when you did eventually get the sort of “go ahead” to move into the epilogue and show Shiro getting married, was there ever a consideration that potentially Adam may not have died? Was there ever a consideration that you could have brought him back, mostly because with the chaos of, like, the war when you got to, uh, was there ever in the back of your head a thought that you might be able to revisit that original storyline a-and bring that back too and end that way?

MM: Can I suggest something?

[The others make noises of assent.]

MM: Okay. You brought back Daibazaal and Altea, so if they could come back, couldn’t Adam come back?

LM: Well, I-I’m gonna an-answer Donya’s bit first, I think the-the issue that we ran into was we had basically made this whole story on Earth where, you know, it was, the whole story was made, kind of, without us really having access to, to that relationship. And so bringing Adam back when he was essentially killed off as a straight man, it was not something that we had any need to do during our time on Earth. And so I think to bring him back at the end would’ve--in our story minds--just kind of, uh, brought up those questions of where was he that whole time. You know, “Why-why didn’t he show up in the rebellion?” sort of deal. It just seemed like it was a pretty far jump to go.

JDS: I will say this, too, like, as much as the door squeaked open on how we could revise the dialogue between Shiro and Adam, you know, I think to, to speak to some-some of the fandom’s complaints even about that scene was that the dialogue wasn’t necessarily explicit even in our revision. And that was, you know, due to, like, what we could and couldn’t say, uh, between the two characters. So even though the door was open, um, it was, it was squeaked open, um, and by the time fan reactions started coming in we literally had, like, a month left at the studio. A-and this is-this is just, like, the sad truth of it. So when the studio realized that we’d all collectively stepped in-in a huge mess, you know, th-they put the ball in our court and said, “What do you want to do?” And we said, “We would love to be able to confirm on-screen a-and make it very explicit and, and also play to the fact that Shiro was able to find happiness and was able to sort of find that balance that, that even in the Adam and Shiro, uh, storyline he wasn’t able to kind of find.” So that’s how we, that’s how we arrived there, I think, to if we were to introduce Adam, it would have left… I don’t know. I’m thinking of it purely from a story perspective, like, we would’ve had to have an epilogue that almost ran an entire episode long to, sort of, see him survive the wreckage and then… I don’t know. I-I-I don’t know. I-It wasn’t, it wasn’t something that came to our heads. So to answer your question: no, we didn’t really think about it because in our brains Adam was-was gone.

LM: Yeah, and to answer your question, Marc, it--this was never directly featured in the show, but our-our kind of personal logic when we were making out that scene of Allura making the sacrifice and kind of rebirthing some of these planets. Our-our thought was she was able to, through, through her actions, give life back to any planets that had been taken, kinda, before their time. To give back to that land, that quintessence-kind of-formed landmasses. And so any planet that had, kind of, died because it lasted its life cycle didn’t come back, but Daibazaal met a premature death. Altea did, even Olkarion. Like those planets would come back, but we kind of drew the line at souls. She couldn’t necessarily bring back a lost soul. That just seemed a little too god-like for us.

MM: So did that include any planet that had its quintessence removed by the Komar?

LM: That includes the moose planet!

MM: Oh, wow!

JDS: Moose planet makes a comeback.

MM: Okay.

JDS: But none of that is to take away from, sort of, like, you know, the seriousness of-of the question that you asked, Donya, because you know, look even, even in crafting that epilogue, like, i-it was done at the end, it was done as an--as an appeal to this amazing fandom that we garnered over the course of the series that we knew was there from-from, especially from working on Korra, but we just didn’t know it was going to be--and I think the studio definitely didn’t know it was gonna be--so prominent. So, we wish, believe me, had our original story, sort of, been told the way we had initially, you know, conceived it with Adam, and he wasn’t shown dying in a-in a battle, you know. We’ve discussed where we could’ve taken that story, you know, with like Veronica returning with the rebels and then Adam being part of that and there being a reunion, but like, it’s like weirdly armchair-quarterbacking something. Some of that that never took place.

MM: Mm-hm.

JDS: So it’s tough for us to kind of reconcile those two things. There’s a ton we would’ve done differently had we been given the opportunity, but we tried to make the most of the opportunities that were given to us. And that’s kind of where we landed on that.

MM: I know you guys probably haven’t listened to our, our episodes, our podcasts, right?

LM: Um, not all of them.

MM: Okay.

JDS: Yeah. I definitely listened to some of the key ones.

LM: I’ve been off the grid for a little bit for the past few months, so, uh--

JDS: Yeah, we disappeared.

MM: Okay.

LM: Been trying to get some, uh, some house, house stuff done, so my internet has been on and off.

MM: Alright. In response to what happened with Allura, I had an idea that there was a concept that was established at the beginning of Beast King GoLion that there was this goddess or queen of the universe and I was thinking, you know, that Allura had made this sacrifice, had brought back all the realities, had brought back Daibazaal and Altea, and basically saved the universe. This sort of makes her, you know, on a new realm. She is sort of the keeper of the stars, the caretaker over all realities. And it seems like a role she would’ve assumed at the end there, especially since we saw the lions going to her silhouette. She basically risked everything to bring back all those realities. I was just wondering, when she said goodbye to Lance and he got those Altean markings, is it possible that she left a piece of herself on Lance so that if Voltron ever needed to return, she could return as well through leaving, like, a horcrux of herself on Lance?

JDS: Uh, I mean, horcrux is the first I--I don’t even know what that means.

LM: That’s a Harry Potter thing.

JDS: Oh. Okay. Sure.

MM: It’s that Harry Potter thing where Voldemort had split himself up into seven different objects and as long as at least one of those objects was still intact with the horcrux, then he could come back.

JDS: Cool.

LM: I like all of that, and I’m gonna say you need to pitch it to whoever makes the next Voltron.

JDS: Yeah. I think the big thing was that, was we were just trying to leave, you know, with, with as much as we wanted the sacrifice to resonate in terms of what it means to give yourself to a cause, I think that post-credit scene was very much that, was the door being left open to, you know, the symbols glowing, to Lance feeling a sense that Allura was out there, to the lions going out.

LM: That she was somehow speaking to him through the lions.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: And then the lions leaving to, you know, whatever reason. If it’s told them their job is done or if it’s to go do something else, and then ultimately we see them heading toward that Allura-shaped nebula. Like, I always kinda had the story in my head was that her quinessence was ultimately kind of reforming and coming back together and we don’t know how long it’ll take, but one day, ideally, Allura would be reborn and the lions would be there to pick her up.

JDS: And I’m gonna pitch this here for the first time.

LM: Okay.

MM: Okay.

JDS: The lions go to the nebula, they merge with the nebula, become a sort of vision-like Allura deity being that comes back and we’ve got a mega-robot Allura godlike supercomputer--

LM: Yeah, and then she is Space Angel, which I think is what you were trying to say.

JDS: Exactly, she becomes Space Angel.

MM: Okay. You guys also mentioned that you pitched an ending that might’ve included some of the main characters being killed off.

JDS: All of them.

MM: Yeah.

LM: Well, yeah, well, just in, you know, in that, uh, very Voltron-like teamwork scenario, we always liked that idea of that ultimately Voltron the robot was a weapon and that it was a very powerful weapon and that all--so much of this war was basically came about because of that weapon and Zarkon’s, you know, looking for that weapon, he wants this power back. And the idea of if they take that weapon off the table will the universe be a better place? And so in ultimately having to make the sacrifice that they would have to make, they would also be, you know, taking that weapon off the table. And honestly, like, in doing that, when you have all of the characters kind of exit at the same time, it just kind of leaves the door open for anyone with an imagination out there to immediately write them all right back into the story at any point if they just want to boink ‘em out of, you know, wherever it is we sent them.

JDS: Yeah, I’m thinking of Infinity War. Uh, but you know, I’m also--it, it’s funny, like as we talk about this stuff, and we sort of, like, make comments off the cuff and say, like, “Yeah at one point they were all gonna die,” that’s not to, like, take any of the import of what that means to, like, a fan watching it or people who’ve invested their time in the show. Literally, like, when we’re in the writer’s room, everything is on the table. Um, so we-we-we talk about, like, all options.

LM: Yeah.

MM: So there was, was there a happy ending option?

JDS: That, that was something--I mean I’m sure there was an option where it was like everybody lived and everything was happy a-and Lance and Allura had a baby, or, you know, whatever. We wanted to make a show that ultimately demonstrates that there are consequences. As fantastical as the show gets, as crazy as the show gets, that there are consequences and that sacrifice can be meaningful. So, I don’t know about you guys, but like, I know I’ve lost people that are very important to me in my life. The lessons they taught me live on through me and live on through my, my child now, like I pass those lessons onto my child. That’s an important message, you know, and that’s an important concept for people, I think--especially kids--t-to understand. It stinks to lose somebody, but it’s important to honor their memories.

MM: You solidified that pretty much in “Day 47”. One of your storyboard directors from Studio Mir, Seok Jin Jang, you paid tribute to him in “Day 47”. That was really cool.

LM: Yeah, yeah, we lost Seok Jin during the production, um, it was amazing, he actually got to work on every episode up until the very end and it was incredibly unfortunate that shortly after, you know, he finished storyboarding that last episode he was taken from us. And it-it affected us all pretty badly, and the directors specifically--because they had worked so closely with him--and he was just such a shining light of happiness and positivity. He was so unbelievably talented, that when we lost him we just felt like we’d-we’d lost something that we were never going to get back, and that, you know, the world had kind of been robbed of this amazing human being, but, you know, we don’t get to, to write that story, that’s life.

MM: Mm-hm.

LM: And so we could only do what we could do, which was move forward and hopefully pay him some sort of tribute and know that he lives on through the amazing, you know, work that he put into this show.

JDS: And I mean, he really did. Some of, some of the key moments that you remember from the show are directly, you know, his doing and his point of view on how the story would unfold visually.

MM: Mm-hm.

JDS: And honestly, his memory, like, it-it’s cliche to say it, but his memory, you know, can live on through the art because he affected the show and everybody who worked on it so positively.

MM: Right.

GT: That’s very cool. Obviously Voltron: Legendary Defender is very character-focused, moreso, I think, than the prior shows, certainly the original, where, you know, they always form Voltron, they always slash up the robeast, they win, end of story. It was very common. Uh, in this show, where we’re focusing very heavily on individual characters and the bonds that each Paladin has with his or her lion, was it hard to write scenes with Voltron itself, the robot?

LM: Well, yeah, I think you can see he-he didn’t come out unless we really needed him. Like, and he really only came out to kind of, like, fight things. Because ultimately, the robot hims--I say “himself” but it’s a robot--doesn’t have a personality, so there’s not really, like, character stuff to get from that robot. And, you know, it’s all about the pilots that are inside of it. And so, you know, we can definitely, like we know how to handle, like, those characters and to do those fight scenes inside of Voltron with those characters, but, but if we were just to make a show about a robot kinda running around, it, I think we would--it would be a struggle.

JDS: Yeah. And he’s, you know--ultimately he became the symbol of teamwork and so we-we tried to, like, set Voltron up as a symbol for the universe to kind of rally around. But yeah, I mean, you know. I wouldn’t say it’s tough, it’s just, it wasn’t--it didn’t become our fallback every single episode. We were more trying to tell, you know, character pieces. But, that’s also, y-you know, a path that can potentially get a bit divergent from the intent of, you know, where the show was originally being marketed towards.

GT: Oh, I see. Yeah, I was just, I was just curious because obviously, you know, you’ve got all these characters with all these character arcs, the main story arc, and all these different threads, and then, I-I mean in tha--in the context of that, I mean I’ve loved Voltron obviously since the original and all that, so you know, for me to say, you know, this sounds kind of silly, but i-in the context of the show being as deep as it often was, I just wonder if it felt sometimes like, “Oh, yeah, we better form the robot now.” [laughter] As a writer, you know what I mean?

JDS: There’s that, there’s other stuff that, you know, sadly as we were dealing with-with fallout from, like, disappointed fans over, you know, certain storylines not coming to pass, o-or things not happening, uh, from a character perspective the way they would want. Sometimes things like, you know, Voltron and the Atlas merging got totally lost in the noise of that and we--I will scream to the heavens to this day that, like, that was awesome. Like, they became a super-robot, like, come on people! Let’s give recognition to super-mega-ultra--

LM: Z-zenith, I mean, you haven’t used “zenith”.

JDS: Zenithtron. Yeah.

LM: But, uh, yeah, I mean we, we--at our hearts, they were more ships than they were characters, but we take great pride in our ships. We love the castle, we love the Atlas, and we love Voltron and the lions. The lions became, we kind of tried to make them into slightly more character-like with their abilities and--

JDS: Their personalities, yeah.

LM: --yeah, have personalities, but that was something that was-wasn’t, you know, in every other version of the show. That was something that we kind of threw in there for our show. And, uh, but we always try to respect it and love our ships as much as we could because we actually appreciate that stuff, too. We appreciate good design and interesting things and, like, you know, like, I frickin’ love the SDF-1 with all my heart.

GT: Oh, yeah.

LM: So, uh, you know, it-it definitely doesn’t talk and definitely doesn’t have a personality, but I appreciate whenever that ship is on the screen.

JDS: And it’s a symbol, it’s a strong symbol.

LM: Mm-hm.

GT: Mm, yeah. And I am totally enamored with the Castle of Lions. I love, love the original the original design, and I think I told Christine Bian when she was on the show that the Legendary Defender version is the only version since the original that I’ve absolutely fallen in love with. It’s just a gorgeous design.

JDS: Aw, that’s awesome.

LM: That’s amazing.

MM: I wish we could’ve had a Castle of Lions toy! [laughter]

LM: Yeah!

GT: Yeah.

[laughter]

GT: Back to consumer products. Give me a spaceship toy!

LM: Let’s get some LEGO Ideas people on that! But, uh, but yeah, there was always a concern, I think, in the consumer products side of like, how, how the scales would never match. You would have to make the Castle the size of a small building to make it actually to scale. But we’re not super sticklers on scale, I would gladly just had a really cool light-up, frickin’ sound-making Castle of Lions.

JDS: Just make it a ship. It’s a ship. It’s like a Star Destroyer. There are Star Destroyer toys out there.

LM: Yep.

MM: Yeah. That there are.

GT: Sure.

MM: Well, I’m curious about the release schedule of the different seasons. I mean, certainly the first 26 episodes came out 13 and 13, then the next 26 episodes came out in 6 and 7 episode batches, and then Netflix went back to 13. Do you know any reason why the, you know, the first change went to the smaller seasons and then why things went back to 13?

JDS: I don’t think we know the exact reasons other than, you know, it’s sort of emerging technology, streaming, especially at the time when we were still making the show, a-and and Netflix was trying to figure out who the audience actually was and all that. They were, they were just trying to play with different models, so…

LM: Yeah, a-and a lot of it’s just kinda trial and error and experimentation. I think they’d released some 13 episode seasons and I remember specifically them saying they wanted, kind of, they wanted, I think, more awareness of Voltron year-round, so if they could release episodes. There was even one-one pitch that we kind of chuckle about where they were like, “What if we release one episode every two weeks?” And we were just like, “That’s just like being on TV! What are we doing?”

JDS: Yeah, that’s just network TV, man!

LM: Like, this is streaming! The whole point is you can, like, release a batch. So, you know, they played around with it, it wasn’t ever anything that affected our production schedule. We were always just making these shows at a steady clip, and so we’d get a lot of questions about that, about, you know, “How did it affect production?” It never did. It was really just a matter of when they, kind of, chose to upload them to Netflix and in what numbers.

JDS: Yeah, it didn’t affect the production, but it affected us having to then choose, “Okay, well this feels kind of like a natural break time,” or “this feels kind of tent-poley” where you could leave on this moment, but they weren’t always the natural places we intended for.

LM: Yeah.

GT: Okay, that makes sense.

JDS: Yeah. But they-they’re figuring it out, man. I mean--

LM: Yeah. Clearly they figured something out, ‘cuz then they put us back to 13, so what’s up.

MM: Yeah.

[laughter]

MM: One thing I wanted to ask before you guys go is that there’s this petition out there that was signed by, like, over 30,000 people.

GT: Jesus.

MM: Uh, asking if there was going to be a-an alternate version of season 8. Is there such a thing?

LM: No.

JDS: No.

MM: Okay.

LM: Sorry, guys, we don’t have that kind of time or money.

JDS: Yeah.

MM: Right.

JDS: And you know, I mean, look. We made the best show that we could make under the circumstances given and, um, to serve an alternate ending, I’m guessing it would be to address, uh, Allura’s sacrifice and--

LM: Or Shiro.

JDS: --Shiro, or maybe, yeah, or maybe there’s-there was, like, the thing that you pitched, Marc, where maybe Allura undoes everything and everything resets. Er, I-I don’t know exactly what it would be. We heard all manner of--and again, Lauren and I tried to stay off of social media just-just to not deal with anything negative that was coming our way--like, we obviously heard people’s concerns, and took that very seriously, but we heard some conspiracy theories that there was an alternate cut and there was this, that, or the other. And I hate to burst any bubbles and this will probably only lend to more conspiracy theories, but there is no alternate cut to Voltron.

GT: That’s okay.

MM: There’s basically a Voltron version of the Kobayashi Maru, it’s-it’s an unwinnable scenario.

LM: Uh, pretty much. That’s pretty--we made the show that we believed in to the best of our ability, and you know--

JDS: And within the parameters given.

LM: --you can like it, you can not like it. And-and that’s it.

JDS: And that’s perfectly fine. There’s-there’s--that’s totally fine. Everybody can still get along in the world, and, you know. It’s all, it’s all good. We-w-we, we did what we could.

MM: We’ve been reviewing season 8 episodes. So in each of these podcasts we’re doing, we’re reviewing season 8 episodes and we’re finding that a lot more people, you know, like revisiting these episodes with us and some people, you know, talk about some things that-that maybe they didn’t agree with, but overall it seems like when you take it episode by episode, things are a little bit better than they had originally perceived.

LM: I mean that’s good to hear. I would hate for, like, one moment that someone disagrees with to, you know, I guess put a negative wash on everything because ultimately a lot of people worked really hard and put an awful lot of love into this show.

MM: Yes they did.

LM: I mean, that’s just kind of how--I mean that’s how we do it. We work hard, we try to make the best shows we can--that’s all we can do--and then we put them out for people to, to love or hate and to judge as they see fit. And that-that is up to them, and they are allowed to do it. But that’s kind of, that’s kind of where it stops.

MM: Yep. I gotta tell ya, out of all the Voltron versions, I like Voltron: Legendary Defender the best, so...

LM: Oh, that is high praise! Thank you very much!

JDS: Coming from an expert such as yourself.

MM: It’s based on my ideas that, uh, if I was to pitch another Voltron show I really would work off of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s characters because you built such an incredible universe, all these worlds, all these different, uh, types of, you know, alien races, and everything. Just an amazing thing, the Voltron Coalition, the Galra… Just… it’s very deep, very rich, and, uh, you know, thank you to y-your character designer, y-your props and background supervisors, and your color supervisors, your special effects and your sound people, and your music people, and all of your animators, and it’s just, wow. Incredible job.

JDS: Yeah. I mean, everybody came together to do, uh, I think something-something that hopefully, like, can-can be looked on in-in some years and people can-can still find appreciation and, and we’re just happy to have been a part of an awesome crew.

MM: Oh, definitely.

GT: Yeah, I want to second, I-I’m, I totally love Voltron: Legendary Defender, I mean I, you know for a-anyone to say they liked absolutely every aspect of any show, I can’t imagine that ever happening with any show. But I just love the show, it was, uh, i-it was very obviously made with a lot of love, a lot of talent, a lot of skill, and a lot of this found-family that we see in the show, in the fiction itself. So thank you both, and to everyone who worked with you bringing this show around, it’s just, it’s been a lot of fun.

LM: Awesome.

JDS: We appreciate it, yup. And you guys were totally paid to say that, so right back atcha.

[laughter]

GT: Oh yeah.

MM: Yeah, I don’t think people realize we don’t get paid for anything.

JDS: Yeah.

[laughter]

LM: Yeah.

GT: Donya, did you have anything you wanted to say?

DA: I mean I’ll just reiterate--

JDS: A-and Donya, if you want to end on a question, too, that’s fine as well, like--

DA: That’s okay, um, I mean I can always follow up with you on, like, anything, I feel like.

JDS: Alright.

DA: I don’t want to keep you too late. Um… [laughter] And you know how I get when I start asking questions.

JDS: Sure, rabbit hole.

DA: Yeah, basically. But yeah no, I do want to reiterate that because covering Voltron, and obviously I got on-board, like, on season 2 because I think when season 1 came out, I, I was, like, caught up in some stuff and I was away and basically didn’t pick up immediately, but it really has been almost a life-changing experience for me, as well. And I think without that, and without, like, everything that came with it, like I’d be in a really different place, I think, than I am right now. So it has been, like, such a huge part of my life for, like, the last few years and especially, like, quite formative in terms of, like, where I was because, like, I turned 30 as like it was coming to an end, or close to an end, and it just, like coincided with, like, this weird switch and change in my life, as well, and there are pieces I’ve written, like coinciding with the show that had, like, hit really emotional personal beats that are, like, that’s always going to be a part of my life now, so it’s just… yeah. I guess, just thank you for that because without it, I think the last two years of my life would have been very different. And there are people that I would’ve never met without it, like, you know, Marc and Greg included, you know--

GT: We love you, Donya, you are the best.

MM: Yeah.

DA: Yeah, I love you, too. Um, you know, there are people that I reconnected with in my life, friendships that I reforged that had sort of come back around because our paths crossed again because of Voltron. So, like, in, like, big ways and in little ways, like, it’s like, really altered, like, the course of my life in some ways. So it’s, uh, I’m always going to be very, very thankful to that and to, like, everything that you’ve done over the course of the show as well with, like, being so gracious with your time and everything with, like, when-when the show was still in development and, you know, talking to me, a-and even talking to Marc and Greg as well and everyone involved in covering the show, like, you gave so much of your time, even just outside of the production of the show just to talk through everything, so, yeah, thank you.

JDS: We appreciate you guys, and again, like, the show helps bring people together or has helped bring people together or forged new friendships, that’s like, the best case scenario for us.

LM: Absolutely.

JDS: If it’s made people feel good, if it’s made them learn things about themselves, then that’s all we can ask for, like, you know. Uh, that’s, like, the best reward.

LM: It really is, and on a completely, like, completely selfish note: I just like that you let us kind of talk about the stuff that goes into making the show, guys. I mean I know I’m a person who enjoys listening to the commentaries and listening to, like, the behind-the-scenes stuff, and so for any of the people out there that really enjoy that, you guys have-have gone out of your way to bring people who are involved in this show on and ask them questions about that and get some of that knowledge out there. A-and some of that stuff is just interesting to people.

MM: Yes.

JDS: And you guys do it because you love it.

MM: Yes we do.

JDS: And that, I think, is, is another thing that people really have to, like, appreciate. It’s done out of love because like you said, you guys aren’t seeing any--

LM: You don’t get any kickbacks.

MM: Nope.

JDS: Yeah, you’re not getting kickback.

DA: Yeah.

JDS: Uh, but it’s, uh, you know, without you guys a show like this could easily go unnoticed. But you guys, you know, you talk about it. You, you get people thinking about things, so, we appreciate ya.

GT: Thank you.

MM: You have no idea just how many people have been inspired to be better people as a result of this show. Th-there’s, you know, tons of artists who we spotlight that say they became better artists as a result of the inspiration of doing Voltron fanart. Cosplayers who became better cosplayers as a result of doing Voltron cosplay. Writers, you know, fanfiction writers and other types of writers that had, you know, gotten better at their craft as a result of working on Voltron fanfiction or something like that. So in many, many ways you have inspired people to be better and to come together in a way that they’ve never come together before.

JDS: That’s amazing. That’s… amazing. That’s, uh, something that we can take with us to the end, um, and, that we will, we’ll, you know. You don’t realize it sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re in the middle of it, but when you get a little perspective on things and you, sort of, take the long view, this is definitely a pillar of, uh, not only our careers, but, uh, of our lives and we can, you know, have an appreciation for everything you guys did and everything the fandom did, and everything the studio and our coworkers, yeah our crew, did. That, that will stand the test of time.

MM: Yeah. So thank you.

JDS: Thank you guys.

LM: Thank you.

GT: Thank you both so much.

MM: And can we ask you to do it just one more time?

JDS: Sure.

LM: [laughter] For sure. Hey, this is Lauren Montgomery.

JDS: Hey, this is Joaquim Dos Santos.

LM: And you’re listening to--

JDS and LM: Let’s Voltron!

[outro music]