#even if the plots are tweaked and streamlined a bit

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

207. A Warning To The Curious (1972)

[nondelphic]

Hiiii! May I ask for some advice? After a really long time of not writing fan fic, I recently started getting back into it but have been struggling… So I started using a little bit of the chat.ai help me but I feel icky about it but at the same time, I’m constantly struggling with writers block and being burnt out… What should I do?

i'm actually really glad you asked this because i've been preparing a post about using ai responsibly for writing, might just post it here lol:

tldr: this post isn’t about using ai to generate your story for you. it’s about how to utilize ai to enhance your writing process while still keeping your voice and creativity at the forefront.

the rise of ai has stirred up a lot of talk about ethics, originality, and how much tech should really be in our creative space. as writers, our work is highly personal, it's a reflection of our thoughts and experiences. so it’s totally normal to feel icky about bringing ai into the mix.

here's a hot take, though: ai isn’t here to replace your creativity. it doesn’t get the deep, emotional layers that only a human writer can bring. sure, ai can generate text, but it doesn’t really understand what it’s saying. that’s where some of the ethical concerns come in—if we rely too much on ai, we risk losing that personal touch that makes our stories resonate.

on the flip side, when used thoughtfully, ai can actually boost your creative process instead of taking away from it. think of ai as a helpful assistant, it can take care of some of the boring, tedious stuff, giving you more space to focus on what really matters: writing your story, your way. it’s not about letting ai take over, but using it to support and streamline your process.

this is not a post about my experience with ai, but i have to say, that as someone with adhd, ai has been a game-changer for me. it helps me keep track of my ideas, organize my thoughts, and even manage my writing schedule when my brain is all over the place. it's like having an extra set of hands (or, you know, a brain) to help me stay on top of everything, so i can focus more on the actual creative part of writing.

the key is to make sure ai never overshadows your original voice or creative vision. ai should be a tool that helps you bring your ideas to life, not something that writes the story for you. if you’re curious about how to use ai in your writing process while keeping your authenticity intact, here are some tips to do it responsibly:

brainstorming ideas: when you’re stuck on a plot point or character development, use ai to generate prompts or ideas. these can spark new directions for your story, giving you fresh perspectives to explore.

dialogue experimentation: if your dialogue feels flat, try using ai to generate conversation snippets based on your characters. it might not be perfect, but it can give you new ideas for how your characters might interact.

synonym suggestions: tired of using the same word over and over? ai can help you find synonyms or alternative phrases, keeping your writing fresh without losing your voice. i've found this very helpful as an ESL writer!

outline generation: got a rough idea but need a structure? use ai to create a basic outline, then tweak it to fit your vision. it’s a great way to get a head start on organizing your story.

character backstories: use ai to brainstorm character traits, backstories, or names. you can take these ideas and expand on them, adding the depth and personality that only you can create.

quick research assistance: save time by using ai for quick facts or historical details. it lets you focus more on storytelling and less on getting bogged down in research. (disclaimer: never 100% trust what an ai generates, fact check everything). i've found it a great starting point if i have a very niche question for my research.

editing help: use ai for basic grammar and spelling checks to speed up your editing process. just remember, it’s your judgment that will shape the final draft, not the ai’s.

plot analysis: use ai to scan your draft for plot holes or inconsistencies. it can help identify gaps in logic or missing links in your storyline, giving you a clearer idea of where to tighten things up.

tone consistency: ai can help you maintain a consistent tone throughout your story by analyzing your draft and suggesting adjustments where the tone shifts unexpectedly.

pacing adjustments: ai can review the pacing of your story, highlighting sections that may be too slow or too rushed, helping you find the right balance.

character consistency: track your characters' traits, behaviors, and dialogue to ensure they remain consistent throughout the story, preventing out-of-character moments.

theme reinforcement: use ai to analyze how well your themes are being conveyed across the narrative, suggesting areas where you might strengthen or clarify your message.

draft comparison: if you’ve gone through multiple drafts, ai can compare them to highlight what’s changed, what’s been improved, and what might have been lost in the revisions.

to answer your question more personally, i think we can never please everyone, and ai will continue to be developed and get better and better. i understand feeling icky about using ai, and you might get judged for it, but do what you need to do, tbh.

i have found myself in a writing routine where i use most of the advice above in my writing process. i write most of my work myself, but i use ai as a tool to bounce ideas off of, and it's been a life changer. i managed to finish my first novel draft with the help of ai, and it fuelled my creativity to have "someone" (or rather something) to feed my ideas and help them identify what i could do better.

[firecoloredwater]

(This got VERY long and accidentally morphed into a fic. The fic starts with Fax's massacre of Lessa's family and her resulting trauma, and also touches on not-quite-real-world climate anxiety, so caution reading.)

I've thought a few times about how I would rewrite Dragonflight if I were going to, how I'd streamline the plot (merge Fax and Meron, to start) and tweak characterization (F'lar can act basically the same if he's, like, 17 instead of 20-something).

But the fundamental crack at the heart of Dragonflight which I've never been able to resolve is Lessa. Because there are two things which are fundamental truths to Lessa.

The first truth is this: she is Lessa of Ruatha. She is the only survivor of a massacre, the last rightful heir to the kingdom, and she raised herself on those truths. She is, literally, a secret princess disguising herself with filth in order to hide from danger as a kitchen servant. But that's misleading, because those fairytale princesses she shares the shape of just want to escape abuse and live in peace. Lessa is actually the lost prince of a conquered land, come home to slay the tyrant that murdered her father and retake her rightful place as king Lady Holder.

The second truth is this: Lessa of Ruatha must abandon Ruatha, in order to become Lessa of Ramoth, of Benden, of Pern, and save the world.

And she can't know why she needs to go, or that she'll save the world in doing so, because if she knew what she was going to do we wouldn't have a full plot of Lessa figuring out time travel and that she needs to bring the Weyrs forward. You can make it a bit better by letting Lessa actually know what a Weyrwoman is, rather than thinking she's probably going to be F'lar's mistress, but she still has no reason to abandon Ruatha, especially not in favor of Fax's son.

I think, to fix it, Jaxom can't be Fax's son.

Lessa was the youngest of a large family. She had several older brothers and sisters; say around eight kids, average 2.5 turns between them, and even if Lessa was only four when Fax arrived, the oldest would have been around eighteen. But I will, for this purpose, say Lessa was ten, and the oldest were in their twenties.

A family that large, with a few kids grown or nearly so, whose hereditary job involves diplomacy, won't all be at home most of the time. They'll be out checking on important industries, visiting allies, sent to a Hall like the noble girls that will someday give Menolly so much trouble, or sent for fostering like those girls' boyfriends. Given the alliance-building use of fostering and Fax's having already taken over several Holds before Ruath Hold, it would be the obvious thing for Lessa's father to have sent one of his teenage sons to Fax for fostering.

Lessa doesn't think about that. She's ten, and she has just watched her entire family be slaughtered. She is hiding in the watch-wher's den, in shock and terrified. She does not think of it until a few days later, when one of Fax's men drags in a mangled body with hair the same color as her brother's, dumps it beside the rest, and declares the job complete.

Lessa's body is there too, of course, or else there surely would have been a search thorough enough to find her. There was a search, but before Lessa they found a servant's daughter of about the right age and description with a face a touch more Ruathan-typical than Lessa's own, and so the search ended.

Lessa is terrified that Fax or his men might realize their mistake. But no one in Ruatha is much inclined to tell Fax or his men anything they might not want to hear. And Lessa, without knowing it, is the most powerful telepath Pern has seen in generations. Even without intention, her desperation to remain undetected is enough to exert pressure on the minds around her.

No one identifies the servant girl. No one looks in the watch-wher's den. No noise that comes from the den sounds like a human child. No one wonders why, in the evenings, someone feels the need to leave human-suitable food near the watch-wher's den, or where it vanishes to before morning.

When Lessa finally emerges, no one wonders where this new servant girl came from. No one questions her soft hands or fancy speech or condescending attitude. They snap at her for being unskilled, and give her the hardest, simplest work, and think no more of it.

It takes weeks, months, for Lessa's shock and horror to settle enough to allow fury to emerge in more than flashes. It takes years for her to work out any plan more specific than survive, and make him pay. It also takes years, though perhaps not quite as many, for her to notice the pressure she can exert on other people without their notice, and to learn to do it intentionally.

By the time Lessa is twenty, Ruatha develops a reputation for being cursed. What grows there grows poorly. What few crafters remain seem to lose their skill. And there are the accidents: rockfalls, impossible fires, drunken fights that turn deadly, all manner of things which can kill, and often do. The more highly-placed a man is (or a woman, though few women can be described in such terms in Fax's Holds) the more accidents seem to find him.

There is weight in the air of Ruatha: the weight of grief, of hatred, of fury, of pain. A constant pricking on the back of the neck; the scent of blood perpetually half-imagined. Healers advise those with poor hearts to avoid Ruatha if possible, or if a visit is necessary, to leave quickly: something there makes the heart race and strain, and given time, a weak one will fail.

But that's not going to stop F'lar!

F'lar is 17, superior, young enough that he has never yet failed, and frantic with terror in his own way. Even a teenage bronzerider outranks all people but more senior bronzeriders (though every bronzerider is F'lar's senior), and F'lar wears both his power and his arrogance like a gaudy cape: he sneers, he orders, he demands, he pushes, and those who are preoccupied with anger and frustration about his attitude--which is nearly everyone he meets--rarely wonder why he demands the things he does, why he is so obnoxious as to stop and ask drudges idle questions about the weather and the upkeep of the Hold.

The truth is, F'lar is arrogant. His father was wiser, but his father is dead, and so F'lar is the smartest man in the world, and never wrong. He considers any behavior other than giving him what he wants to be obstructionism, all people to be his inferiors, and inferior people behaving in obstructionist ways to be the worst possible transgression. As such, he dislikes nearly everyone he meets, and enjoys needling, insulting, and upsetting them. His status makes retaliation impossible.

The truth is also this: F'lar sees the apocalypse coming, and he does not know how to stop it. He has read about how threadfall will consume the planet, and with it all of Pern's people. He knows how many dragons are needed to guard the planet, and how small a fraction of that number currently live. He has watched the Red Star grow nearer, and he has listened to every adult dismiss him with the insistence that it's not that bad, there's nothing to fear, there is no danger coming, and so nothing should be done.

F'lar's father died, and left to him the duty of saving the world. F'lar has never failed before, and he clings to that fact with the same desperation that Lessa clings to Ruatha, and all its recent history.

F'lar is searching for candidates, for the future Weyrwoman and future riders, but he is also searching for allies and scouring every Hold he passes through for its prevailing attitudes and common knowledge. Do the crafters' sons know the Ballad of Moreta? Do the farmers have enough children to weed the fields as thoroughly as they ought? You there, drudge--what do you think of this grass among the paving stones?

He is not pleased by the answers.

F'nor is older, but he calls himself sixteen. He follows F'lar loyally, as a younger brother ought, as a wingsecond must. He goes where F'lar points and does what F'lar asks, and no one questions his motives: as a loyal wingsecond and little brother, he is motivated only by obedience. No one questions, either, when he finds the free time to put on a charming smile and chat with the girls near his age. Did many of the herdbeasts have twins this spring? How has the fishing been; more storms than usual again this turn? That outbreak of illness he heard of in the next Hold over, have the healers gotten it under control yet?

It is true that F'nor is loyal to his father's favored son, and follows F'lar's orders without complaint. That does not make his obedience thoughtless, nor does it mean he lacks his own initiative.

And so they wind through Fax's holds. Here and there, they pick up people as they go: some on Fax's orders, some on F'lar's. Sometimes there is disagreement, in which case F'lar's preference wins, but sometimes things align perfectly, as with a couple they overtook on the road to Ruatha: young man and pregnant wife, with an old runnerbeast and their life packed into a cart. If F'lar insists the young man is a strong candidate (enough that an exception may be made for his age), and wishes to take him to the Weyr, the couple will have to leave all their belongings behind in Ruatha. Fax is hardly inclined to refuse.

The young couple, of course, join the party for their own reasons.

Fax and F'lar do not think of this. F'nor does, and speaks to the couple with smiles and offers to reason with F'lar on their behalf should they find that they hate life in the Weyr. He concludes that they had no plans, that a future in the Weyr is as good as any, and that the common people are rarely inclined to argue with men such as F'lar.

And so the party reaches Ruatha, last of all Fax's Holds, as Fax had hoped that F'lar would find what he was looking for elsewhere and leave before the visit become necessary. Fax keeps his guards close: meat shields in case of accidents.

The visit goes much the same as in canon. Oh, it differs in the details, in the people present and the conversations they have, but Ruatha is still a place of bad food and worse feelings. Fax is tense, irritable, angry, and F'lar loves to needle.

But some details are critical. Gemma, who breaks an argument despite her best efforts by going into labor, is the wife of the young couple. As she is not Fax's wife, this pauses the argument, but does not resolve it, and under the pressure of Lessa's will, it soon resumes.

But F'lar is a dragonrider. For years, he has lived with Mnementh as a presence and pressure on his mind; he is well used to acting only on his own will, and not on the stray thoughts of others. And so it is not him that breaks and initiates a duel. Nor is it Fax, who is less resistant to Lessa's will but deeply fearful of this malevolent place, and unwilling to leave the circle of his guards over insults that F'lar has been provoking him with this entire trip.

It is the young man who steps forward, shaking with his own and Lessa's will, and announces himself as Lokan, a surviving son of the late Ruathan Lord, and the rightful ruler of Ruath Hold.

It is, of course, Lessa that allows her brother to win. Fax is a powerful, experienced figher, and Lokan cannot match him.

But Lessa is there. She drags pebbles under Fax's heel, clouds his mind, and slows his reactions. In the end Lokan is wounded, but Fax is dead, and Ruath Hold belongs once more to Ruathan blood.

F'lar is reluctant to let his star candidate go, but if F'lar were to deny Lokan's claim to Ruatha, Lokan would have to be executed. Besides, Fax was no use to F'lar, and the lord holders that replace him might be, and so F'lar declares the Weyr's recognition of Lokan as the rightful Lord Holder of Ruatha. Fax's men are sent away with minimal bloodshed, though perhaps a few accidents.

Lessa reveals herself to her brother, and Gemma survives the birth of her and Lokan's son. Perhaps he is named Jaxom; perhaps his parents name him instead after Lessa, or Lokan's murdered father, or Gemma's father, who saved Lokan's life years ago.

F'lar seeks out Lessa, to her complete disinterest. But Lokan, while in hiding, was in a completely different sort of hiding than she was. He was warned and spirited away by minor holders, allies of their father. In addition to being much older than Lessa when their family was killed, he still had access to harpers and lessons while in hiding, and he understands politics. He encourages Lessa to go to the Weyr, as a Weyrwoman would wield political power and be able to back Ruatha's recovery in a way no other ally could.

It is a brief day, perhaps two, of relief and joy, before Lokan's wounds develop an infection. Less than a week after reclaiming his Hold, he dies.

His son is only days old, but still the rightful heir, and Lessa will never want to interfere. Lady Gemma becomes regent. As she expected and trained to be Lady of Ruatha while it recovered, she is well prepared despite her grief.

Lessa, victorious and devastated and reeling, follows her brother's wishes to the Weyr, and the promise of power that she can use to protect her nephew and sister-in-law.

She will, of course, find the power to do much more than that.

[rangeralthynia]

Mid-April WIP Update

Whelp, I missed updating the last week or two.  RIP.

Editng of the third draft is coming along nicely.  I have gotten up to chapter twelve, and I’m slowly but steadily tweaking and adding to the places I noted in the second draft.  I’m hoping once I am able to get a few beta readers I’ll find even more areas to improve it, as I think I’m becoming kind of blind to some of it’s issues after working on it for as long as I have been.

Which brings me to my next project - I’m making a bookmark!  I’m actually creating it to hand out at the convention I’m doing in June for my etsy shop, and I’m needing some feedback.  I’m thinking about including the synopsis of the book on the back of the bookmark, but I need to tighten it up quite a bit.  The blurb for the novel is below for your reading pleasure.  How would you shorten it and/or make it more streamlined?

At 24 years old, Ashura Kokuei has already made waves at Kuroi Ki, a world renounced criminal investigation agency, as he followed in the footsteps of generations of his family in becoming an Agent and climbing through their ranks at high speed. Despite feeling secure in work and life, it all comes crashing down as he is given an assignment that he knows well and good that he shouldn’t be. An assignment that he knows is only step one of a plot occurring behind the scenes, but with no way of proving it.

Ash finds himself further thrown for a loop when the very assignment he was dreading leads him to meeting Faysal Zennz, a friend of the family he was tasked to work with against his will. Ash doesn’t know what to make of it when all of his defenses are met with smiles and kind words, despite the enigmatic man having every reason to run. Even as he fights against it, there is no denying the growing attraction between the two of them.

 Even as Ash decides to give love a chance with the handsome stranger, the wheels of time continue to turn. Ash must come to terms with the fact that trust is hard to come by, and Faysal is hiding a secret that could be the difference between life and death. Can their blooming romance survive through deceit and bloodshed?

[notophelia]

Vax, the Briarwoods, and things both lost and gained in adaptation

[Spoilers for The Legend of Vox Machina episode 3 "The Feast of Realms" and also for Campaign 1 episodes 24 "The Feast” and 25 "Crimson Diplomacy," as well as a minor allusion to events later in the arc.]

In the midst of half the internet (quite understandably) losing the entirety of their shit over the hotness of the Briarwoods, and specifically of the Briarwoods toying with Vax (and Matt cheerfully assuring Mica during the watch party that the horny implications are "VERY intentional"), I've been utterly fascinated by that moment as a microcosm of how beautifully this whole adaptation thing is working.

As at least one post has pointed out, it's a very different experience from the first time around, not only because of the streamlining/tweaking of various plot details, but because it's a dizzyingly fast chain of events as opposed to a solid 40 minutes (not counting a WEEK in the midst of it, because cliffhanger) of mounting stress between paralysis and healing.

And that's true, and a function of the tools building the story making things read a bit differently, but there's also the factor of audience knowledge and expectation.

When we're watching them at the table, the game mechanics are always there. One of the key ways Matt facilitates immersion is by describing magic effects as perceived by the characters instead of naming them - for instance, telling Liam what Vax feels when his body is paralyzed without saying "Hold Person," and even giving him the cue of feeling something trying to penetrate his mind when he succeeds on the WIS save and isn't affected... which then leads to the hilariously bad attempt at pretending to have been affected.

Which, not gonna lie, I kinda missed in the TLOVM version. But it wouldn't really  have worked, and the way it does play out (a) is fucking terrifying, and (b) sets up the challenge they're about to be facing in a completely different, but equally effective, way.

The tools at Matt's disposal for the workings of Sylas' power in-game were clearly delineated: Hold, Charm, Suggestion, Dominate. He could keep a certain amount of mystery about what he was rolling behind that screen, and with things like making us wonder exactly what he intended to do to Vax's mind if Liam hadn't made that save. But it's the nature of the game for the mechanics to show.

In the animated series, though, things have space be... murkier. And they take full advantage of that - we see Vax struggling, and clearly he can't move, but we don't know if that's all of it.  Especially when it involves the same eye-glow visual effect established a few minutes before, when Sylas was very definitely manipulating Uriel's mind. Add in the way Vax's physical reaction (as noted by half the internet including Mica Burton) can be interpreted in more ways than just fear, and Sylas taking a moment to play with his food with that jaw-trace before the big chomp, and things get very murky indeed.

At this point, by the classic conventions of vampire media, Vax is presumed compromised. If I were coming to the show cold, with no prior knowledge of Critical Role or even of D&D, I would expect/hope to see increased vulnerability to Sylas' influence, probably being used against the group, drawing on the love of his sister and friends to resist and ultimately prevail. (And, as a side note, would think it was a nice little trope inversion to put him in that position instead of, say, Keyleth.)

Funny thing is... I do have that prior knowledge, and I still instinctively have those thoughts about it. Not only that, but I can see certain events as they played out in-game reading as exactly what I just described above.  It'll be interesting to see if they do!

(Also of note: All these people are children of the 70s and 80s whose formative vampire media experiences mirror my own. They know damn well this is what they’re doing. :-D)

[aion-rsa]

Ranking Cinderella Adaptations

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A dream is a wish your heart makes, and if your wish is to see countless takes on the beloved fairy tale of Cinderella, then consider your dreams having come true many times over—including this year, with a new Cinderella by way of Amazon Studios. This latest adaptation seems to have combined qualities of many of its predecessors: it’s playfully anachronistic and eschews the traditional Disney or Rodgers & Hammerstein songs in favor of a tracklist of modern pop covers; it also engages with Cinderella’s career aspirations beyond fitting her foot into a glass slipper.

But this Cinderella owes everything to the other soot-stained girls, animated and otherwise, who wished with all their hearts for decades before her. How does the new adaptation compare to the modern fairy tales, animated classics, and another fairy tale riff with an outstanding Stephen Sondheim tune? Check out our ranking of Cinderella adaptations, from worst to best.

10. A Cinderella Story (2004)

This cult classic is a clever retelling, with peak early-aughts casting of Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray as the star-crossed, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired lovers: Sam toils away at her late father’s Southern California diner, under the heel of a delightful Jennifer Coolidge as her vain stepmother, while Austin is the closest thing to high school royalty as the quarterback with a sensitive side. Regina King as the longtime diner employee-turned-metaphorical fairy godmother who gets Sam to the homecoming masquerade dance is the other key bit of casting, but you’d have to really be a fan of the “fairy tales in high school” subgenre to get on board. Plus, the stable of derivative direct-to-video sequels makes the sparkle wear off with each new, formulaic installment released.

9. Cinderella (2021)

Kay Cannon’s (Pitch Perfect) progressive plot urging entrepreneurial dressmaker Ella (Camilla Cabello), her bitterly materialistic stepmother (Idina Menzel), and other original female characters to choose themselves over the supposed security of marriage is not quite enough to balance the cringey modern soundtrack and anachronistic witticisms. It’s too bad, because this Cinderella puts forth ambitious ideas, and any production with Billy Porter as the fairy godmother should be nothing but fabulous. Compared to most of her predecessors, this Cinderella is a distinctively fresh role model for the next generation of kids, but adults won’t find much magic in her story.

8. Ella Enchanted (2004)

This is a tough one, because the source material—that is, Gail Carson Levine’s 1997 middle grade novel—is unquestionably one of the very best Cinderella adaptations: Ella’s curse of obedience is an apt commentary on manipulating young girls into giving up their agency under the guise of people-pleasing. But the film—despite its adorable, baby-faced stars Anne Hathaway and Hugh Dancy—overcomplicates an already daring plot with a throne-stealing subplot (that Cary Elwes, as the unnecessary evil uncle, can’t save) and an unforgivably cheesy cover of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.” Hathaway’s voice is sweeter than Nicholas Galitzine’s rendition in the new Cinderella, but the giants dressed in early-aughts miniskirts strain even the most loose definitions of fantasy. Despite all that, it (mostly) sells Ella struggling against abuses of her obedience in a way that’s still more revelatory than many straight adaptations. Still, you’ve got plenty of better movie choices; forget this adaptation and just read the book.

7. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1965)

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II originally wrote their classic musical for television broadcast instead of the stage, though it has found its way to the latter. CBS’ second TV production (following the original 1957 version starring Julie Andrews) introduced a bright-eyed Lesley Ann Warren (a.k.a. Miss Scarlet from Clue) as Cinderella, and unlike its predecessor was able to be recorded in color. Between the vivid hues, Warren’s expressive acting, and the array of sets, it all contributed to the feeling of watching a taped performance—an incredibly charming one, at that. But the effect does come off as overwrought at times, making it the lowest of the three specifically Rodgers & Hammerstein adaptations on the list.

6. Cinderella (2015)

While visually Kenneth Branagh’s live-action adaptation of the animated Disney classic hews so closely to its source material that it feels like a lost opportunity to be more original, there are some sly plot tweaks. Lily James’ Ella is not hopelessly naïve about her abusive home situation, yet manages to keep up the mantra of “have courage and be kind” through even the worst mistreatment. Streamlining the classic songs to score strengthens the plot, with Ella’s rare occasion of singing being what ultimately saves her. Fans of the blue dress and romantic vibe will have much to swoon over, even if they’re not surprised.

5. Into the Woods (2014)

Or, then, what if I am? / What a Prince would envision? / But then how can you know / Who you are til you know / What you want? Which I don’t… Anna Kendrick brings us a relatably existential Cinderella in this movie adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical about various fairy tale characters who wind up with questionably happy ever afters—including Cinderella, who decides “not to decide,” then ends up with a philandering Prince. It’s not a complete Cinderella story, but it’s a more memorable performance in a handful of scenes than entire movies have attempted.

4. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1957)

Despite only surviving in black-and-white form, CBS’ original TV broadcast shines thanks to its star: Julie Andrews, then performing My Fair Lady on Broadway, who makes this Cinderella both an amalgamation of her then-current and future roles and a performance all its own. You can see glimmers of her comic talents as Maria in The Sound of Music—this Cinderella also has more wit than other versions—but it’s her voice that elevates Rodgers & Hammerstein’s adaptation of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale into something timeless.

3. Cinderella (1950)

Few Cinderella adaptations have achieved the same sweeping sense of sheer romance in the Disney animated classic: the painted backgrounds, the dreamy sequences reflected in soap bubbles and sparkling through the palace gardens, the surprisingly high emotional stakes that make the resolution all the sweeter. And while it’s become a common Disney trope, the requisite scene in which the stepsisters cruelly rip apart Cinderella’s dress adds a layer of wickedness not present in the Rodgers & Hammerstein adaptations, nor successfully recreated in any of the live-action versions. The same goes for the goofy mice singing “Cinderelly, Cinderelly”—every subsequent CGI mouse lacks the warmth that goes into a believable animal companion. That said, the animated movie’s legacy is somewhat marred by its direct-to-video sequels of diminishing returns, though you also have to give them props for pulling an Avengers: Endgame 12 years earlier with Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time.

2. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997)

For many of us, Disney’s animated Cinderella was a childhood classic, but The Wonderful World of Disney’s ‘90s production was the first time the story truly felt magical. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s songs were updated with contemporary beats, bridging the forty years between the first broadcast and this version: “Impossible” is one of the best songs from the show, but it hasn’t been truly sung until Whitney Houston is belting it out to a starry-eyed Brandy. The production’s effortlessly diverse casting—Whoopi Goldberg as the queen, Paolo Montalban as the prince, Bernadette Peters as the stepmother—only amplifies the universal nature of the story. Almost twenty-five years later, this adaptation still feels like the television event it was when it premiered.

1. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

A truly successful adaptation is one that doesn’t have to feel beholden to its source material. By opening with the Brothers Grimm explaining the inspiration behind their own interpretation of Cinderella, Ever After rewrites all of the familiar themes into a historical fiction—specifically, Renaissance-era France—context. Danielle’s (Drew Barrymore) misfortune as an orphan servant girl is so believable thanks to the cruelty of her stepmother’s (Anjelica Huston, a legend) abuse, but so is her determination and ingenuity to rise above her station. While Disney’s animated Cinderella is romantic, Ever After is a romance: Danielle disguises herself as a comtesse in order to spend time with Prince Henry (Dougray Scott), and they develop an actual relationship, complete with rejection once her subterfuge is revealed. Plus, Leonardo da Vinci is there for comic relief and an unintentional fairy godmother assist! If you want your Cinderella story with a compelling feminist arc but you’re also burnt out on the songs, this is your happily ever after.

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Cinderella will begin streaming on Amazon Video on September 3rd.

The post Ranking Cinderella Adaptations appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[corsolanite]

Pokémon Sword & Shield Reviews are in! ⚔️ 🛡

Areajugones - Ramón Baylos

Score: 8.8 / 10

The new Game Freak game will please both newcomers and more experienced players because, although some sections of this new installment have received less polish, it still has attractive enough content for every trainer to find his place in the new region of Galar.

Gamespot - Kallie Plagge

Score: 90 / 100

In collecting, battling, and exploring, Sword and Shield cut out the bloat and focus on what makes these pillars of the Pokemon games so captivating in the first place. You're not held back by overly complicated back-end systems or hoops to jump through; from the outset, you can start wandering the Galar region, seeing its new Pokemon, and trying out its new battle strategies with very little in your way. This leaves you free to enjoy what Pokemon is all about, and that makes for an incredibly strong showing for the series' proper debut on Switch.

Gamesradar - Sam Loveridge

Score: 90 / 100

Gameplay tweaks and attention to detail make Pokemon Sword and Shield the most compelling Pokemon world to date!

EGM - Ray Carsillo

Score: 80 / 100

The first new-generation Pokémon game to release on a proper home console does not disappoint. New features like Dynamaxing and the Wild Area are fun additions that make the experience of becoming a Pokémon champion still feel fresh. It’s just a shame that Game Freak didn’t lean into the new features more than they did.

Nintendo Life - Alex Olney

Score: 8 / 10

Pokémon Sword and Shield succeded in bringing some new ideas to the table, but they also somewhat guilty of not pushing things far enough. What’s done right is done right, but what is done wrong feels like it’s come from a decade old design document. There are moments contained within that are best the series has ever been, but the joy is at times spoiled by contrasting moments that left us disappointed and did not match up to the rest of what these games can offer. What we’ve got here is an experience filled with highs and lows, from the unadulterated wonder and joy of seeing brand new Pokémon in a stadium full of cheering crowds, to the monotonous and dragging out dialogue we want to skip.

Ars Technica - Andrew Cunningham

Unscored

The short version of this review is that Sword and Shield are fun, good-looking Pokémon games with a solid story mode and some welcome changes to the game’s mechanics.

Daily Star - Dom Peppiatt

Score: 3 / 5 stars

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games. But fun character arcs and inventive, creative designs of new ‘mon are often offset by poor pacing and restrictive world design.The world of Galar is charming, and is a Pokémon interpretation of Britain I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid, but between gating what Pokémon you can catch behind Gym Badges, some half-baked route/City designs and a modest amount of post-game content, Sword and Shield can only be called ‘good’ Pokémon games… not ‘great’ ones.

Eurogamer - Chris Tapsell

Unscored

Pokémon Sword and Shield add some brilliant new creatures, but like their gargantuan Dynamax forms, the games feel like a hollow projection.

Game Informer - Brian Shea

Score: 8.8 / 10

The compelling formula of simultaneously building your collections of monsters and gym badges has proven timeless, but the new additions and enhancements show Pokémon isn't done evolving.

GameSpot - Kallie Plagge

Score: 9 / 10

Pokemon Sword and Shield scale down the bloated elements of the series while improving what really matters, making for the best new generation in years.

GameXplain

Score: liked

Video Review - Quote not available

Gameblog - Julien Inverno

Score: 7 / 10

With these new games Pokémon, Game Freak proceeds as usual in the evolution of the series, small touches, all the more welcome this time they seem absolutely necessary today, like the boxes PC accessible everywhere. Without major disruption but with significant improvements, in terms of game comfort mainly, and while some will probably deplore the reduced number of Pokémon referenced base in the Pokédex Galar, new region that enjoys a care of atmosphere and staging undeniable, Pokémon remains faithful to its formula still winning for over twenty years, at the risk of missing the evolutionary step offered and hoped for by its convergence with the so popular Nintendo Switch. That said, the proposal is still effective for those for whom risk taking is secondary and of course the newcomers, especially children, the first public concerned and whose generations succeed and always succumb to the charm of those offered over the years by Pokémon.

GamesRadar+ - Sam Loveridge

Score: 4.5 / 5 stars

Gameplay tweaks and attention to detail make Pokemon Sword and Shield the most compelling Pokemon world to date.

IGN - Casey DeFreitas

Score: 9.3 / 10

Pokémon Sword and Shield are the best games in the series, streamlining its most tedious traditions without losing any of the charm.

Kotaku - Gita Jackson

Unscored

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world.

Metro GameCentral

Score: 7 / 10

The furore over Dexit may be overblown but even without it this is an underwhelming and unambitious attempt to modernise Pokémon and expand its horizons.

Polygon - Nicole Carpenter

Unscored

The surprise in Sword and Shield is that I’m still finding things that surprise me, even after putting in so many hours. It’s in how Game Freak has made a linear game feel so much less linear.

VG247 - Alex Donaldson

Score: 3 / 5 stars

Pokémon Sword & Shield is all too often a bit disappointing, and in some places actually feels a little unfinished, but it also fully provides that warm, fuzzy feeling that one expects from the series. Crucially, even through frustration, never once did I think about putting it down, which is to its credit. It comes recommended almost for the Galar setting and new Pokemon alone, but with a long list of caveats indeed.

JeuxVideo - L'avis de Kaaraj (French)

Score: 80 / 100

Pokémon Sword / Shield is offered some new very appreciable. Its artistically beautiful world, its more pronounced work on the realization, but also its new generation of Pokémon as well as several additions like the presence of a last part slightly reworked compared to the precedents make it a convincing opus. Its still very classic structure, its overall lack of difficulty and its technical shortcomings - aliasing in docked mode, clipping - however prevent it from claiming the status of unavoidable. The model of the wild lands and faults present there, however, brings a real good idea to the certain potential for the rest of the series, which we hope to see return in the next games.

Everyeye.i - Francesco "Cydonia" Cilurzo (French)

Score: 85 / 100

Pokémon Sword and Shield are complex and convincing games: a solid plot, a more varied gameplay and a very thoughtfully-created level design are the hallmarks of this new pokémon generation.

[ommsims]

story process challenge

i was tagged  by @xldkx​​ to do this challenge, created by @herpixels​​​ , like a month? a month and a half? ago and it’s been sitting half finished in my drafts for nearly as long. *sigh* (regardless, i love stuff like this so even if it takes me forever to get to it, i appreciate the tags! 💕). 

i decided to answer all the qs because it took me damn long enough to get to this, so i might as well put some extra elbow grease into it (plus it was fun!). btw it’s all going under a cut b/c it is long. i apologize in advance.

1. My Writing Process - used to be a hot damn mess. literally word docs strewn throughout my pc. However, I recently switched to using Onenote (it’s what i use to organize my d&d campaign notes) and hoo-boy is it so much nicer. this is how it’s set up and it’s honestly night and day. i can have a page with outlines, a page to organize & order screenshots, and a separate page for drafting text, and i can easily toggle though them without having to switch windows? a big thumbs up from me.

When it comes to actual writing- I used to write my drafts in novel format, which i enjoyed but it made “converting” them into tumblr posts time consuming and frustrating. I ended up scrapping most of the text in the process, retaining pretty much only the dialogue. 

Anyway, nowadays I write in more of a screenplay format: dialogue only + key scene information with the occasional note to self. 

I do keep a master “arcs” page with key events and each individual character’s arc from beginning to end and secondary “outline” pages with slightly more detailed outline for each leg of the project. No screencaps b/c spoilers galore! 

My typical work flow process for a scene goes: (1) brainstorm scene ideas, (2) take screenshots, (3) organize screenshots into a rough storyboard, (4) add 1st draft of text, (5) edit photos, (6) edit text, (7) upload to "drafts” here on tumblr, (8) let sit for a bit (9) take a final look at things/proofread and edit as needed. It may sound counterintuitive, but i find it much easier to write dialogue for a set of images rather than attempt to take images based on prewritten text. I feel more comfortable editing and tweaking tone and content in the text this way. Otherwise, I get frustrated when I “can’t” shoot a scene exactly as it appeared in my head.

2. How I build my scenes - A lot of what i do is rooted in gameplay, therefore my sets are usually (a) play-tested and (b) not super pretty. I’ve certainly improved at decorating & building over the years but more often than not I download lots off tumblr and the gallery because I don’t have the patience, aptitude, or time to build all of my own sets. That being said, I frequently gut builds only to build a number of completely unrelated mini sets inside to reduce the number of times i have to replace lots. I also keep a list of “important locations” and where certain characters live / will move to, to help keep this all straight as there aren’t nearly enough lots per neighborhood or even per world in this damn game...

my least favorite part of scene building is actually decorating. lol. Don’t get me wrong, I love clutter. I honestly do. but fuck me if i expect myself to spend hours meticulously decorating a set, spend another 3 hours toggling back and forth b/w BB & live modes adjusting things to get rid of the damn routing errors. (yeah, yeah, i know i could ignore them, they’re not important, especially in those scenarios where i’m using a set for screenshots and nothing else, but idk. it really grinds my gears.) and then have to replace the lot like a week later because there aren’t enough lots in the game. *sigh*

3. CC/Pose Making - i do not consider myself to be a cc creator nor a pose maker but i do dabble occasionally. And to be completely honest i’d much rather spend my time doing other stuff, so it’s not high on my list of priorities atm. plus there are so many talented cc creators in this community; i can usually get by with what’s already out there.

4. Getting in the zone - Honestly, I do a lot of brainstorming for plot & dialogue in the shower. I don’t have any particular playlists to get me “in the writing mood” but I do enjoy listening to music as I work. Either instrumental stuff or simply artists/songs I like. If something just so happens to “fit” a scene I’m working on, one i’ve got planned, or even just gives me vibes for a certain character or group, I add a quick note to the top of said scene’s draft. Most of the time I stick it in the recesses of my brain and add a quick link when I finally get to the point of posting the draft to tumblr. For whatever reason, when I have one of those “oh this song is perfect for X” moments it’s essentially ingrained in my mind for the rest of eternity. 

5. The screenshot folder - this will most likely give some of you out there major anxiety. but i swear it’s an organized chaos. :)

yep. 32.9gb of screenshots & related things... 

So with the raws from a single random scene selected, you can see i take roughly 10 screenshots per image posted. not terrible i guess but i’m working on it. Typically I take screenshots and once I’m done editing a scene I’ll move them from the general folder to a more specific project folder.

6. Captions - I’ll answer this in three parts:

for my townie story. not really. I prefer using the text box. I tend to write (& re-write) the dialogue for each one of these scenes several times over as I add more “scenes” into my drafts. It would be incredibly inefficient, time consuming, and would waste a lot more space on my pc to have to save .psds of each image just so i could edit dialogue when I decide: “oh hey maybe so and so needs to bring up X in this scene” and then change my mind an hour later.

for niko, noor, & co. I’m a text on image type gal here. don’t really know why, but it gives the project a different energy. ironically it makes it feel more laid-back to me. which i guess makes sense, it’s a much more light-hearted “story” than my townie project. which is, imo, very soapy haha.

for legacy stuff. all text goes below the images in the text box. reasoning: it’s gameplay, I don’t brainstorm, outline, or pre-write for this. I play the game, take screenshots, plug ‘em into my drafts and write some commentary / dialogue to go along with it.

7. Editing - i am a creature of habit and have not majorly changed my editing process in probably a year and a half (when I began using reshade and had to adjust my color correcting psd). it’s a super basic system:

drag & drop my “color correction” psd.

run actions in ps. (i made my own “all-in-one” actions to really streamline the process; i have different “actions sets” for my premades’ story and for other things that get posted to tumblr. even if no one else notices it, i like the little details that keep my projects separate and “identifiable”. 

voila. all set to upload.

sometimes i crop images, add “text effects”, or do more in depth editing (i.e. editing a phone screen or adding rain etc.) but overall i try and keep it simple for myself. 

8. Throwback - i posted an image of one of the first (but never posted) scenes I’d written for my townie project up above. but as for how would i redo a scene i’d already posted. well i’m currently re-doing my townie story so i guess i’ll just say you’ll see how it’s redone when i get to part 1! 😉

anyway, no tags because i’m so embarrassingly late to this party but if you hadn’t gotten around to this tag, wanted to do it but didn’t get a tag, or started it and left it to sit and now you’re thinking “oh god that was months ago should i even post this anymore?!?” consider yourself tagged by me and go ahead and post it for all to see!

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Sword/Shield: A review of my experience

So, I’ve rung in the new year in style with a bad cold. Fortunately, I received a new Switch Lite for Christmas and a copy of Pokemon Sword, so at least I’ve had something to do while sitting about feeling miserble. I beat the game last night, and I figured I’d say a few words about what I thought of it. There are major spoilers ahead!

Graphics & Music

First of all, it looks absolutely beautiful. I’m used to using my 2DS, so the upgrade to the Switch Lite was quite the jump. When compared to previous Pokemon titles, the game is absolutely stunning to gaze upon. What’s more, the environments are varied, creative, colorful, and just lovely. They were such a delight that when I first started the game and had control of my character, the first thing I did was simply stand there for a solid five minutes just gazing on the dynamic, gorgeous countryside, butterfree flapping in the distance, Wooloo rolling around, people going about their day. It helps that I do love the UK and I’ve visited it in the past, and I have to say they did an excellent job evoking the feel of those landscapes. Exploring the towns and the environments was always a joy. Their layouts were natural, intuitive, and walking around or biking around was easy and fun. I was eager to explore every nook and cranny. Accompanying the environments was excellent music. All of the tracks were on-point. They set the feel of the location and they were all great to listen to.

UI & Battle Mechanics

Another thing you notice right away is the UI has been beautifully updated. It’s logically and appealingly organized, it’s very speedy, and there are a lot of quality-of-life tweaks and updates– such as accessing your pokemon PC from just about anywhere. (or easy access to Flying from the regular Map menu!) These tweaks have really helped smooth and streamline things and make for a better experience. It took some getting used to some of the tweaks, such as a forced Experience Share for the entire pokemon party. I’m still not sure what I think of that, but I kept reminding myself that full-party experience is standard in other RPGs, so it’s not so huge a jump for Pokemon to adopt it as well.

Characters

The game is also populated by many characters that I enjoyed. The character designs were well thought-out and appealing, and the characters themselves were fun. Hop may have a bit of a doofy haircut and be a bit of a dork, but he’s still an enjoyable rival. Professor Magnolia seems cool, as does her daughter Sonia. As we meet each of the gym leaders in turn, I generally liked them, as well. They did a good job adding little bits of personality to each of them. And yes, I even liked Leon, the over-the-top and bizarrely-dressed Champion. He was hammy and I think it worked well for him.

The Sport of Pokemon & Dynamaxing

Something else I found myself really enjoying was how much the game was emphasizing the sport aspect to Pokemon battling in the Galar region. This is something the game has always had to a certain extent, but never to the degree it has here. Pokemon battling was a huge spectacle here in Galar, done in massive statiums to huge, roaring crowds. This is a world of difference when compared to the solemn, trial-like, solitary experience of the Elite Four. It just brings and entirely different energy to the experience. And I found I really liked that. During the first few gym battles, I wasn’t entirely into it at first, largely because the first few gym fights were incredibly easy. But after they got a little harder, I started to get into the feel of things.

Naturally, the whole huge emphasis on the electric thrill of competition and of huge, bombastic spectacle was tied into the gimmick of this particular game: Dynamaxing. And as lukewarm as I was about Dynamaxing when I first heard it announced (I’m pretty tired of these gimmicks– Z-Moves, Mega Evolutions and the likes), I have to give credit where credit’s due: it was at least tied very thoroughly into the plot and into the fabric of the game. It didn’t feel tacked on, and I wasn’t resentful about actually using Dynamaxing. It may have been a silly gimmick, but it was still enjoyable to use, because it made sense to help entertain the crowds with oversized spectacle, and because there was a certain amount of enjoyment in the added strategy it required. I’m glad I was able to get into it.

I think the highest point for me about the gym challenge experience was when I was facing off Raihan. Here’s the chap they’ve been hyping for a while about facing up against, because he’s the last gym leader standing before you move onto the Semi Finals and the Finals. When you walk through the dark corridor out into the pitch, you can feel the electric atmosphere; you can hear people cheering your name as their new favorite trainer hopeful; and then, Raihan, the man who always acted so casual and smooth and cool, suddenly shows his intense side on the field of battle. He flings out two pokeballs and brags about mixing things up for you with a doubles format and with the weather, and dares you to step up for the challenge.

My two front pokemon come out– Snowdrop, my Frosmoth, and Bazz, my Grapploct. After all that weather bragging, I decide to show him, and have my Frosmoth flip his sandstorm weather over to Hail. Surprised, my opponent acknowledges that was a pretty nice move on my part. I then Blizzard and Superpower his first pair of pokemon out of the picture.

I’m feeling pretty good, and then he sends out his second pair of pokemon. I have no idea what the heck the Duraludon is supposed to be. Then he Dynamaxes it, which takes me a little off guard, as I had expected it later, but of course this is doubles so there is no later. I stall for a little bit, trying to decide what to hit the Duraludon with, and my first few pokemon go down, and the sandstorm kicks back in.

I decide to send out my Corviknight out for Dynamaxing. But I’m still floundering over the best tactic for this unfamiliar pokemon. I try Max Airstream to see how much it does, but it’s not a very impressive chunk. Then his Sandaconda gets a Glare off on my Corviknight, which is a pain. I waste one of my Dynamax turns getting paralyzed. I’ve fainted several other pokemon in the process of things. I start to think I’m toast and I’ll need to replay the match. Then I realize this stupid-looking Duraludon is, of course, a Steel type. I’d just recently put Body Press onto my Corviknight for some move variety. On my final Dynamax turn, I use it. It utterly destroys the Duraludon, which had just lost its Dynamax.

My own Corviknight falls back down into its normal state. There’s only one pokemon left on either one of our teams; his damned Sandaconda and my half-health Corviknight. The sand is still up, but my Corviknight didn’t mind that at all. It did, however, mind the paralysis and the Fire Fang the snake kept using. Fortunately, Corviknight is still a tanky beast, and I blasted away with Drill Pecks. It was tense, really down to the wire. Would Corviknight tank enough hits to make it? Would he get paralyzed at an inopportune moment?

Fortunately, he makes it, finishing off Sandaconda and taking the match. As I cheer at the victory, my pokemon cheers too, amongst all the swirling sand. The crowd roars, and I feel a genuine respect for my opponent’s skill. It was a good fight. Afterwards, when I returned to the lobby, people were congratulating me on my victory, and it felt truly nice.

Moments like these are not common in pokemon games. At least, they aren’t for me. I had felt everything during that match– the magnificent spectacle of the dynamaxing, the tricks my opponent pulled, his keen desire to win, the crowd’s thirst for a good match, my desire to pull through somehow. As it turned out, after that, I didn’t have battle quite as good. The Semi-Finals and the Finals were a cakewalk for me. Even the Raihan rematch was ridiculously easy. He changed up his team and made it much worse, so that he had different weather-setters for each poke, lacking any team synergey at all. It was a shame. Perhaps the only reason that match was so close was because I had been briefly intimidated over the doubles format and confused over the  Duraludon, but I do wish those magical experiences happened more often.

Indeed, even my final battle with the Champion was a woeful disappointment. I got off one Dragon Dance with Dragapult and swept the whole team cleanly. That brings up another point, though: the difficulty level of this game. It is … well, not very high. It’s a shame. I realize it’s a tricky balance, since this game is aimed at a variety of age levels, and they don’t want it too difficult for the younger audience. Still, it would be nice for Pokemon to implement a ‘hard mode’ to help deal with this issue. Perhaps if they did, we could have more magical moments like the one I had with Raihan.

Character Development & Plot

The low difficulty wasn’t the only thing about Pokemon Sword/Shield that sometimes brought disappointment. At the end of the game, I also found the plot sort of ended up in a no-man’s land. Almost all of the plotlines felt unfinished. Marnie looked like a really cool character full of potential, but then nothing ever really happened with her character. Team Yell ended up being very different from all the other ‘teams’ of the pokemon universe, in that they were just very vocal and sometimes excessively involved fans of Marnie. I actually liked the idea of the ‘team’ not being a group of organized villians up to no good, but Team Yell’s plot ultimately petered out into nothing. The same could be said for other characters. Sonia was a cool-looking character design and again seemed to have a lot of potential as a character, but I never quite understood the point of her plot. She was … uninterested in research, maybe, but became interested? Or was overwhelemed with the work? Or … what, exactly? When she “earned” the lab coat, it didn’t feel like an accomplishment. There was no weight or clarity to her character arc in the slightest. She didn’t even ultimately contribute all that much, because she failed to even be the one to discover the Sword and Shield artifacts.

Again, we find this trend with others, such as Hop’s development. Hop is a cocky, confidant young lad who idolizes his older brother. Eventually he runs into a trainer who throws off his groove, gets into his head with some comments, claiming that he’s dragging his older brother’s name through the mud by being shite at pokemon battling. Then he starts to doubt and second-guess himself, reshuffle his team and his strategies endlessly, and so forth. Eventually, he seems to ‘get over it’ and gets his groove back, but we never are given a really firm reason as to why he gets his groove back. What brought about this change? We need to see why he’s learned and grown. And really, even when he does pull his shit together again, has he really learned much from the experience? I assumed his ultimate lesson would be to see his brother more as an equal, not as someone to idolize; as a human who can self-doubt and make mistakes just like him. But the writers passed up the opportunity to go that way with the plot. They just sort of … gave up halfway.

The most of a glimpse we get from that is something given to us from the animation itself, not the writers. Out on the pitch, during the final battle against Leon, when he’s just about to toss his pokemon out, there’s a moment when he pauses and taps both hands against his face. It’s a subtle little gesture, as if he’s trying to shake off any gnawing self-doubts and get his head into the game, and it echoes his younger brother, who we’ve seen do the same thing. It’s such a lovely little touch, such a human moment, and to me shows that both brothers have been vulnerable to self-doubt despite their swagger, but in the end can overcome it. I only wish the idea were explored further in the actual plot.

The ‘evil plot’ of this particular game also feels only half-baked and incomplete. The motivation behind Rose’s actions feels entirely absent to me, as does any logic whatsoever. What’s worse, the game leaves behind so many lingering questions. OK, so this slumbering Eternatus is the source of all Dynamax power, and he’s discovered the energy will run out in a thousand years or so. How is waking up Eternatus by feeding it Wishing Stars (which, as Magnolia later reports, are bits of Eternatus itself– so, what, feeding  Eternatus pieces of itself?) going to help with that? Will it produce more energy once awake? So he planned on capturing it and … sending it out whenever they needed more energy? Or just keeping it around as a power-giving pet of some sort? But at the end of the game, the player keeps Eternatus for themselves, so doesn’t that mean Galar is sort of screwed now? How can the power plant continue to function (and Dynamaxing) if the source of that power is now inside my pokeball? Also, how exactly did Rose wake up Eternatus to begin with/bring about the Darkest Day? Just release all the energy he had at once? There’s so much that’s confusing and unclear. Basically, the plotline felt very half-baked. I had the sense the writing for this game was frankly very rushed.

It doesn’t stop there. Oleana, the whole thing with Bede, and other characters are left with tons of lingering questions and unfinished plotthreads as well. I suspect the devs simply ran out of time. It’s a huge shame, because I enjoyed all of these characters and felt there was so much potential there, but that potential was never really realized.

Pokemon

This generation has a relatively low number of new pokemon, and you do feel that a little bit as you’re going along. The older pokemon that are mixed in were chosen well, in that they blend naturally with the environments they were placed in, and they’re spaced out nicely, so you encounter a mix of new and old at a nice clip, so they have that going for themselves. But even still, yes, you do start to wish there were a few more surprising faces. Still, there’s definitely fun to be had with new pokemon, especially for some of the cooler Galar regional variants. (I fully support regional variants and am happy they made a comeback in this generation.)

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, there’s also only a very limited set of old pokemon this game has access to. Any species not listed in the Galar dex simply cannot be transferred over. This has upset many people, but when I played the game, it did not feel lacking for that reason. The sheer number of pokemon in the overall franchise is now staggering. It makes complete sense to not include every species in every game now. They intend to include old pokemon on rotation in future games, and that seems like a fair compromise to me. Am I bummed that my favorite Parasect can’t be transferred to Galar? Of course. But I’m not too worked up over the fact. He’ll see another region someday.

To finish this section off, I’m going to do a rapid-fire list of my top 5 and bottom 5 of the new pokemon.

Top 5

Corviknight: An absolutely gorgeous design and easily the MPV of my team.

Wooloo/Dubwool: It’s an adorable ball sheep/ram. You simply can’t go wrong with that. One of the first to be revealed of the new pokes, but I can never get bored with it.

Dragapult: A very creative, lizardy Dragon/Ghost creature that adorably shoots its own babies as ammo. I love it.

Grappaloct: So beautiful. Love its design, its stance, the way one tentacle is a belt, love its colors and pattern, its eyes, its cry, everything. Such a badass and I love octopi in general, so a real winner. This is the octopus we’ve needed for a while.

Snom/Frosmoth: I mean, in some ways its design isn’t revolutionary, since we already have many moth pokemon. However, Snom is still adorable and Frosmoth is still beautiful, something you cannot deny. And it’s been long overdue to get an Ice/Bug. What’s more, Snom is based off real caterpillars (jewel caterpillars), which is wonderful.

Bottom 5

Inteleon: A very distinctive design style that doesn’t look like it belongs anywhere near a Pokemon game. Just feels very mismatched to me.

Alcremie: I hate sentient food. A massive pet peeve of mine.

Applin: See above.

Duraludon: Sorry, but I still think its design is ugly. I can’t get used to it.

Mr. Mime (Galar Variant): No. Mr. Mime is always horrible. Stay away from me. Keep your creepy variant, too.

The Wilds Area

Of course, a review of the game would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the Wild Area. This section of the game was really very lovely. I enjoyed exploring what was essentially Breath of the Wild: Pokemon, and I think it’s a wonderful direction for the game to take. Wandering around, finding goodies, rare pokemon, Dynamax dens and all the rest is very entertaining and it’s just beautiful. Really makes you feel like you’re out in nature exploring, and really encountering pokemon in their natural environment. I’ve read people predicting that Game Freak is using the Wild Area in this game as a test, and something they will probably expand upon in later games. If that’s what they are indeed doing, then I welcome the change. I can’t say I am super interested in fighting wild Dynamax pokemon with my friends, but I did enjoy everything else.

Summary

So, would I recommend this game to others? It would depend on who you are. If you’re a big pokemon fan, then yes, of course. You’ll enjoy the beautiful locations to explore, the new pokemon, and the excitement of the Galar sports arenas, as well as some colorful characters. However, you are going to find some flaws. The plot and character arcs are going to eventually end up a little lacking, and you’ll find there’s not as much new content as you’d have preferred. While some aspects of this game are very well polished and complete, others feel rushed. Overall, it’s going to be a mixed experience, but I think that if you like pokemon, you will still enjoy it.

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Jan 1, 2020.

[dianaburnwood]

What did you think of the HITMAN 2 story? I personally didn't like it so much. I find the big amount of retcons quite annoying, and I feel like this sudden "reveal" that 47 killed Diana's parents heavily undermines their entire relationship. Love your blog by the way, please do keep at it.

Oh no you asked me about story so it’s going to be an ESSAY answer - sorry in advance but I love these asks so thank you

……………………………….

I have a weird love/hate relationship with HITMAN and HITMAN 2 when it comes to story. It seems to me that it balls up all the tropes it can into one hot mess (though that’s the Hitman series in general), but does so with some of the tightest cinematics I’ve ever seen. 

I’m not a fan of retconning. I think 6 is a very interesting character, and he gives us a wonderful opportunity to explore 47′s past, his emotions, and his trauma, all without making 47 do much of that work himself. 47 is such a tricky character for introspection that I think adding 6 into the mix to explore that side of him was an excellent idea. 

The retcon of Diana’s backstory makes me sad. I think it’ll make for some interesting scenes, and I knew it was coming up in the games after the Hitman comics, which I’ve ranted about a fair bit. I’m still hopeful our girl will turn it around by being more in control than she seems. 

The Providence retcon isn’t the worst thing in the world, and I think a few tweaks could streamline it with the original story. In general I’m not a fan of tying everything up in a neat bow when it comes to different characters and their motivations. Then again, the Partners are interesting, and Arthur Edwards is interesting, so I don’t hate it. 

Aside from the plot itself, I gotta say I love the writing. Those cutscenes are so sharp! How does that writing team come up with the most cliched stuff and then write it so well lmao 

“The Key” and “Partners, Then?” cutscenes in HITMAN really stand out to me. They do so much work at establishing these characters and what the stakes are, and it’s so friggin smooth. And can we talk about “Old Friends”?? They gave 6 a monologue, and it WORKS. Granted that voice actor is incredible, but still, that cinematic was entirely him monologuing and it told us so damn much. 

HITMAN 2 continued this. Sure the cutscenes weren’t as pretty, but that writing was polished (except for the opening, that made me cringeee) 

“Blank Cheque” did so much to establish Diana and 47′s chemistry, history, and sense of companionship. And it was effortless. Homecoming wrapped things up a bit too quickly in my opinion, but you have to do that in a cinematic. “Dead Ends” was an amazing piece for setting up the Partners.

So, overall… I haven’t really given you an answer :D I definitely had issues with the story, but Hitman seems to take liberties with being tropey when it can, because it can get away with it. Maybe the writers like to have fun with it. They’ve definitely done a beautiful job with this when you compare it to Absolution. Even a classic like Silent Assassin doesn’t really hold up to this in terms of overall plot and characters. So, although I have issues with this story, for Hitman I think it’s the best we’ve had so far. 

[13eyond13]

if someone wants to be a writer what are the advices you give him/her to be good in writing?

Ooh, a very good question! I’m certainly no writing expert myself, there’s SO MUCH I have to work on with my own writing, and I usually spend way more time procrastinating on it than actually practicing it these days, but it’s something I think about constantly and strive to improve upon myself, so I’ll give it a shot.

ADVICE I ALWAYS TRY TO GIVE TO MYSELF WHEN THINKIN’ ABOUT STORYTELLING:

1. WRITE THE STORY YOU WANT TO READ, BUT SOMETHING THAT OTHER PEOPLE WILL HOPEFULLY BE ABLE TO ENJOY, AS WELL. Think of a question you have about life or a weird scenario or a relationship that you really want to answer or investigate, and then try to answer that question or explore that intriguing thing as honestly as you can. Doesn’t matter how big or small or serious or silly it is, if it’s an interesting question mark to you then it probably will be interesting to someone else, too. People generally read stories because we want to learn about ourselves and the world around us in some entertaining way. When we see things in stories that remind us of ourselves or other people we know, or that are tackling topics and concepts we’ve often wondered about ourselves, that’s when we really get emotionally invested. And if you can’t wait to find out what happens next in your own story yourself, that will really compel you to keep putting your butt in the seat to write it!

2. WRITE HOWEVER FEELS MOST NATURAL TO YOU, AND DON’T CONSTANTLY COMPARE YOUR OWN METHODS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Some people like to meticulously plot out their whole story before they begin, and some people like to just wing it and see what sort of weird surprises come out. Both approaches are valid, and so is a mix of the two! Play around with it and see what helps you get words down on paper the easiest. It won’t always be effortless, but it shouldn’t feel like a punishment or a horrible chore that you dread every time you sit down to create, either.

3. MAKE TIME FOR CONSUMING LOTS OF GOOD STORIES. Watch cool movies and TV and read books and comics and carefully observe all the people you know in your everyday life. Absolutely everything is a useful learning opportunity if you want it to be. Pay close attention to the world around you, because it’s all inspiration, even the mundane stuff. It’s those little realistic moments that really give stories life and weight and make people pay attention to what you’re saying as having a spark of truth to it. Get in the habit of describing the things you’re observing to yourself, too, because that’s what writing is. The more you read / watch / experience the more you will internalize the art of storytelling and start figuring out what is good and what isn’t, what feels cliche and lazy and untrue and what feels real and moving and fresh. If you think a story really sucks, don’t just zone out, figure out exactly why you think it sucks, too!

4. MAKE TIME FOR CREATING YOUR OWN STORIES WITHOUT OUTSIDE INFLUENCES OR DISTRACTIONS, TOO. Develop a routine and make it a habit and create your own cozy rituals around the act of writing. Whatever puts you in the best mood for it and keeps your head-space open for clearly visualizing your imaginary world.

Personally, I get very inspired by reading other people’s stories, but they also distract and block me from writing when I’m trying to create something of my own. Everyone is different, but I know I need to keep these two things (story-consuming and story-creating) pretty separate, or else I start doubting everything I try to write and picking it apart way too much. Figure out what kind of writer you are and structure your time and your work-space accordingly.

5. GET TO KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS REALLY WELL. The characters that are the easiest to write and the most fun to read are the ones that the author knows well and understands inside-out. Every single character should want to gain something and/or be afraid of losing something, or else they will be flat and boring. If someone only exists purely to be a love object or an opponent to another character and they don’t display any sort of inner life or personality outside of that role, it will show, and they will not be very relatable or compelling.

If a character is feeling really flat or you’re having a hard time getting inside their head, two great first questions to ask yourself are: “What would this character be doing right now if they weren’t involved in this specific plot?” And: “What would they be doing if they could do absolutely anything that they wanted to do in the world?”

Sometimes you won’t understand a character or how they need to develop or the main conflict / goal of your characters or story at all until you write more scenes with them or even get to the very end of your story, but that’s what second drafts and rewrites are for! You can always go back and clarify all that stuff later, adding more depth and streamlining stuff and cutting things out as you see fit.

6. DON’T GET TOO SAD ABOUT YOUR CRAPPY ROUGH DRAFTS. They’re going to suck at first most of the time. Just keep chugging and tweaking things and keeping a positive mindset, it will definitely not be perfect in the first try! I’ve often saved many versions of things I’ve written and then been shocked when I go back to the early drafts at how much worse they used to be. That’s why we have rewriting and editing and getting feedback from beta readers.

7. SAVE EVERYTHING YOU WRITE. Even if you decide to cut it out of your story because it’s not working right, it can almost always be used again for something else in the future. Maybe you wrote a great description that doesn’t suit the tone of the story, or a funny conversation that doesn’t add anything useful to that particular scene. Put those unused bits into a scrap folder and dig them out to use again somewhere else, either in the same story or a different story altogether.

8. WRITE DOWN YOUR IDEAS FOR YOUR STORY AS SOON AS YOU GET THEM. Keep a little memo pad app on your phone or carry a notebook around. It’s easy to forget those useful little nuggets again later if you don’t.

9. DON’T WRITE ANYTHING YOU WOULDN’T FEEL COMFORTABLE READING OUT LOUD. If it would be way too embarrassing to read to even your most ideal and nonjudgmental reader, then it’s probably a bit over-the-top and should be reworked until it feels more natural and more honestly “you.” I forget where I originally heard this little piece of advice, but I love it and think it’s a good one to keep in mind (mostly because I used to do that a lot, and still do sometimes, lol)

10. FIND SOMEONE YOU TRUST TO GIVE YOU HELPFUL CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK ON YOUR WORK. Beta readers are so important! Ideally it should be someone with a good sense of spelling/grammar and an eye for detail who also understands and enjoys your writing and the things you care about, and is also good at articulating exactly why something is/ is not working well yet. This can be scary and embarrassing sometimes, but if it’s the right person doing it they will both encourage you and help you grow by giving you good honest suggestions for things that can be improved or changed. We often don’t even realize all the things that aren’t coming off well in our own writing after staring at it so long, but that fresh pair of eyes is often very good at picking it out for us, and they’re just trying to help us write the best story we can.

11. FINALLY, there are so many great resources for learning about storytelling online or at your library!

Here are a few YouTube channels on the subject that I really like:

-Lessons from the Screenplay (my favourite): [X]

-Every Frame a Painting (mostly about visual storytelling, but still a ton of great lessons): [X]

-Alexa Donne (a published fiction author with decent practical advice): [X]

-Ellen Brock (an editor with good practical advice): [X]

A few books on the subject I’ve read and enjoyed:

-Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

-On Writing by Stephen King

-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (thank you to @translightyagami for the rec!)

And here is my collection of writing advice that seemed pretty legit from Tumblr:

writing advice tag [X]

Best of luck with telling your own stories, and thank you for asking me to blabber like a nerd about it!!

[fluffmonger]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tour Review

So this is like, a week late oops... Anyways! I’ve had time to settle and my general impression is still wow. 

For some context: I do have season tickets to the Civic Theatre, and I’ve been super thrilled by the last season, but when looking at the shows coming Charlie was probably the one I was most “meh” on. I’ve not been part of greater Broadway fandom for long, and knew nothing about it. Besides, it’s a story I’ve already seen adapted twice, neither one really sparking me, so how could another adaptation differ?

Turns out, all it had to do was add strong subtext of Wonka and Charly being neurodivergent, and just barely tweak a plot point to make what I’ve seen read as subtext into actual text, and then top it off with some of the most glorious dark humour I’ve seen in a while, while still holding on to the childlike wonder of everything, and I’m entirely sold.

The Story: So not much changed from what I remember of the book, or really, either of the two film adaptations. Overall it leans far more heavily on the original film, taking songs from it, and the novel than the Depp version. There is one major change that makes the whole show work in a way the others don’t: Wonka is in fact the candy man in Charlie’s neighborhood, and befreinds Charlie through the whole show, and is very heavily implied to have chosen him from the start. Beyond that, this also cut any of the weirdness introduced in the movies like the gobstopper spy guy or evil dentist dads or what have you, and streamlines the story to be much more about a friendship between two people who are coded as being neurodivergent (self identifying as odd, having special interest like focuses on candy making, trouble relating to others etc) than any outside conflict. Its incredibly sweet and charming and just warms my heart. Other changes are present, to update the setting ie, Mike Teavee is now a hacker and Violet Beauregard is an instagram/youtube influencer, but in other ways time periods are very vauge which just adds to the fairytale feel. It just /works/.

The Performance: It was very hard not to fall in love with the characters, and everyone’s performance was spot on. Still standing out to me a week later are Charlie and Wonka’s Performances, both full of energy and love. Henry Boschart was on for Charlie and he was absolutely a delight. I also had a lot of fun with Veruca Salt and Mike Teavee, both technical roles that involved dance and tumbling and such. Mrs Bucket had a lot of heart, especially given that shes a relatively minor role in the scheme of scenes, and her song made me tear up. And! A+ work done by the ensemble in bit roles and dance alike. There were quite a few understudies and swings on during my show, but I’m not sure how they differ to the usual performers as I’m not really familiar with this show. The whole cast is super talented, and played off each other excellently, the comedic timing was spot on.

Some favourite scenes: Charlies mum talking about his dad was... heartrending and so grounded in a show that plays a lot with the fantastic and a distinct fairytale kind of vibe. Augustus Gloop’s intro made me laugh so hard that my chest hurt. I was absolutely shocked by how they handled Mike Teavee’s mom its... not what i expected at all but it works and is actually really funny. Pure imagination was simply magical, especially with how they followed through on Charlie and Wonka’s friendship with the blocking. The Bad Nutcracker was absolutely the best because oh my god. They did that. And the last scene, with the glass elevator, because oh right in my feels. Some Weird bits: the song about where the oompa loompas came from was.... odd? and felt like it came from no where, though the staging was a lot of fun. In some ways I wish we could have spent more time with the minor characters and seen a proper resolution for them, though I can get why it doesn’t happen from a flow/practical stage craft pov.

The Set and Costumes: the set was lovely. In some ways, very minimalistic, but it was very clever with its use of screens. i didn’t even realise there were screens at first so it was  a surprise to me, and made certain scenes really pop, notably the Vidiots sequence and pure imagination. Certain set pieces rolled on and off, the most impressive probably being the Buckets house, imo, which is on stage for pretty much all of act 1. The costuming was also just spot on, from wonkas fantastic dandyism to Charlie’s almost victorian waif look to more modernor regional with other characters. It was a delight to watch, and every choice just highlighted the whole mishmashed time period and fantastic tone that made the story work so well. Seriously though, how do I get a Wonka tailcoat or Mr. Salts fur coat. Please.

Stagedoor! I actually stage doored for the first time ever at this show, and it was a marvelous experience. I was really impressed by how many actors came out considering it was a matinee. The cast were all super super sweet. I was too scared and hyped shaky to try and converse with them, but I did ask Henry about how he enjoyed San Diego, and he waved to me while I was getting food nearby a litttle after. And Noah Weisberg liked the outfit I wore which was !! considering i specifically was going for wonka inspired. Definitely something I’ll do in the future.

Overall: An excellent experiences, and definitely in the top for this season, right next to Cats. I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot, even if you’re unsure if you have the opportunity.

[misscrawfords]

I can’t stop thinking about that terrible movie, The Christmas Wedding Planner. It doesn’t deserve 1/10th of the mental energy I’m giving it and yet here we are.

The main problem is that just a few tweaks could have made it a decent film and that the things that were wrong with it were just so wrong. So I’m making two lists. The first is its greatest atrocities. The second is what I’d tweak to turn it into something watchable, even good.

The premise: Kelsey is a rookie wedding planner, about to get her big break with her rich cousin Emily’s wedding to the oh so charming, Todd. Then she bumps into Connor, Emily’s ex, a private investigator mysteriously charged with investigating Todd. He wants to recruit Kelsey to help him with his investigation. She wants him to piss off. Sparks fly while my suspension of disbelief remains firmly rooted to the ground.

This post will contain spoilers. I really wouldn’t bother caring. Buckle yourself in - we’re going for a very inane ride!

Problems

The leads have no chemistry at all. This is obviously a problem. Buying a romance and attraction between them was just impossible. Their first kiss was meant to be awkward but, my god, surely not THAT awkward! 

This lack of chemistry was added to a flat script that clearly was trying to present Kelsey and Connor as a sparring love-hate dynamic who grow to appreciate each other and eventually come to realise that their connection is really deep as they share the same values. But, uh, that may have been the intention but not the story that came across on the screen. Which was just two people who irritated each other suddenly and for no reason getting upset about how the other was behaving after knowing each other for about three days and then...

THEY GOT FLIPPING MARRIED. I mean. WHAT. They’ve kissed twice. They know basically nothing about each other. Half an hour previously she thought he was a villain. This isn’t romantic, this is INSANE. I give them till the end of the honeymoon.

She’s called Kelsey. Like, that’s not a name. It’s just a random word. (This is petty as hell, but still.)

Kelsey has a “tragic backstory” where her mum died and she’s narrating her life in text messages to her mum which are text message overlays of exposition in case the viewer is finding the plot too complex to follow. I have no idea why this exists. It goes nowhere.

A romantic comedy ends with Emily, described as the most perfectly lovely and sweet person, discovering at the altar that her almost-husband was cheating on her and got a maid pregnant and then dumping him. And then she watches her wedding planner get married to her ex-boyfriend who she barely knows. I don’t particularly care about Kelsey and Connor but I’m very, very concerned about Emily! Make your beta couple happy, you cowards!

Todd was cheating with the maid. Wow, what a radical secret. And then Emily just doesn’t even talk about it. She just accepts the wedding is off and wants to plan a girls trip away instead. She was going to MARRY this guy. Doesn’t she want to IDK hear his side of the story? Why so quick to believe the worst? I mean, wow, clearly she shouldn’t be marrying this guy if she doesn’t care, but she’s meant to be intelligent as well as beautiful!

So basically none of the characterisation makes sense. In that there basically isn’t any. Just plot points that apparently have to be hit. Like, Aunt Olivia is a bitchy Rich White Woman (tm) half the time and a caring, mother-figure the other half. I was getting whiplash keeping up with her 180 degree character changes.

Connor isn’t even vaguely attractive. Physically or emotionally. That’s kind of a problem in a romance film. (I mean, YMMV with the physical aspect but, eurgh really.) He’s as charismatic as a block of wood. She’s... eh. She’s a generic Hallmark movie protagonist.

The way these characters dress and look. It’s so... 90s? I don’t mean that exactly. I mean, everyone looks the same and it’s a kind of glossy Clueless vibe. The women are all in tailored mini dresses and with long waves of hair. The men wear slacks and a shirt and have a bit of stubble. They all live in massive mansions or cute apartments that are all spotlessly clean and neat. They literally look like Barbie dolls except even my dollhouse was more realistically lived in than any of these sets. It’s such a weird aesthetic. And it makes no sense for the demographic these people supposedly belong to.

Perfect, sweet Jane Bennet Emily has three caricatured bridesmaids who are horrible. Why? Why are bridesmaids always jealous, miserable bitches? WHERE ARE HER ACTUAL FRIENDS? Speaking of, who even has weddings like this? What is the deal? Who WANTS this kind of wedding? Who behaves like this about their wedding or their child’s wedding? I’m so confused. If this is some kind of fantasy, I wonder whose it is, because everything about it is horrible. Which brings me back to this all feeling very dated in its aesthetic and early 2000s obsession with skinny women getting carried away with designer weddings in romcoms written by men. IDEK. This is 2018 and we have Set It Up and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. This kind of film just doesn’t belong any more.

So that’s quite enough issues. Let’s try to solve a few and make this a better film.

Most of the problems could be solved by making the lead couple appealing. Cast different actors and write the script that they think they already have. If you can actually buy the narrative of two people who have more in common than they think growing closer from antagonists to partners, then the ridiculous ending where they decide to just get married could potentially work. POTENTIALLY. If they had more lingering looks that were genuinely hot, their awkward kiss melted into something real, their interactions sizzled with wit and suppressed passion then... yeah. Maybe then the spontaneous decision at the end would make you think, “Actually, yes, it’s mad but LOOK AT THOSE TWO CRAZY KIDS!”

Work on characterisation. So Kelsey’s deal is she’s concentrating on managing other people’s happiness instead of concentrating on her own because she can’t let go after her mother’s death. This is kind of heavy for a romcom. Let’s scrap the dead mother altogether. Make Emily her actual sister instead of the cousin who is like a sister and make Aunt Olivia her mum. Streamlines everything. This is better. So Emily is the perfect daughter who is beautiful and sweet and having the perfect wedding and Kelsey is the younger daughter who is determined to make her way in the world without the family money. This causes friction because she thinks her mum favours Emily and her determination leads her to believe that if she gets involved in a serious relationship which would please her mother then she is compromising her desire to be independent. Cue touching moment near the end when her mother admits she’s got it all wrong and she admires Kelsey’s entrepreneurial spirit and reveals that it’s possible to have a career AND a relationship. None of this is rocket science or even that interesting but I’m trying to make this a better Hallmark movie, not Citizen Kane.

Connor’s turn. Good grief, get a better actor for a start. And the entire plot here needs to change now. Because the PI bit is good but being hired by Aunt Olivia because Todd is cheating is just... so BORING. So before we can improve Connor we need to work on what he’s there to do.

Time to look at the actual plot. Wedding planner forced to work against her will with PI to investigate the wedding she’s planning is a genuinely cool concept. We have a bunch of tropes here: spies! we had to kiss for cover! love to hate! fake dating! All of these need to be fully exploited and above all the spying has to be funny. This needs to be the centre of the film. Not a single montage. It needs to circle through every conceivable trope to romantic and comic effect. We need to see these two bickering and flirting and denying their attraction in ridiculous undercover situations. This should be basically 90% of the film. Because that I would watch. But “Todd is cheating” is beyond boring. So what will the scenario be?

A couple of options and I’m not sure what I’d go with at present. Firstly would be sticking with the “Todd is cheating” plotline but... he isn’t. He’s a great guy! The spying is all pointless and both Kelsey and Connor realise that but... just... can’t quite bring themselves... to stop... because that’s their excuse to see each other. Todd and Emily find out in the most embarrassing way possible, and find it hilarious. Because they’re a well-adjusted couple ready to take the next step into married life. Either Aunt-now-Mum Olivia did start it and then has to eat humble pie and realise she was wrong about everything or someone else instigated it. Maybe a jealous ex? IDK. It doesn’t really matter. They’re proved totally wrong and true love triumphs!

The alternative is that Todd is really a bad egg but in that case we need to play his relationship with Emily differently so she doesn’t come out looking like a robot or an idiot. We can do a Much Ado situation where their superficial relationship - Emily desperately trying to please her mother as much as Kelsey is trying to distance herself (two sides of the same coin) - is contrasted with the real and flawed relationship that develops between Kelsey and Connor. Meanwhile, because this is a romcom, while Todd and Emily’s relationship is obviously wrong from the start, Emily builds up a cute friendship with the adorable baker making her wedding cake - who is the only appealing character in the film as it stands. Once Emily’s relationship with Todd is exploded, then give her a shoulder to cry on and the hope of something real with the lovely baker in the future.

But even if Todd is a genuinely rotter, the spying needs to be a smokescreen. If Kelsey and Connor do discover whatever is dodgy about Todd, it needs to happen accidentally and so all their spy antics need to be a complete waste of time except to lead to them falling in love. Because actually spying on people and so on is... not very nice and turns this into a spy film rather than a romcom. Even better, let Emily come to the realisation herself. When Kelsey breaks the news to her (she has to do it, not Connor for maximum emotion, and not ridiculously while she’s at the altar) then Emily has to admit she already worked it out so she can make a really informed decision.

If you’re going to have Connor propose at the end (which is stupid) then the correct response is for Kelsey to laugh hysterically and say something like, “Are you crazy? But you can take me out for a real date!” Cue kiss, applause and credits.

So Connor. Firstly, his background needs to be simplified. He shouldn’t be Emily’s ex. That’s just weird. And the whole money business is dubious and overly-complicated and doesn’t make him look great and is just shoe-horned in for ~drama. He’s just a stranger who is a PI. The end. This ought to be an easy job for him, a boring one. He didn’t count on the genuinely smart, witty wedding planner he got entangled with. Bless his snarky, so over-it cotton socks.

So, I can see you wondering, haven’t I removed all sources of tension? No issue with the ex, no money problems, Kelsey and Connor don’t even affect Emily’s relationship. What is the massive problem that will occur 4/5ths the way through and make our hero and heroine desperately miserable for five minutes before the final denouement? But, my friend, if you think this is a problem, then you’ve completely missed the central premise of this story. They think they’re just forced to work together! As spies! Undercover! But actually! They have real feelings! For each other! Isn’t that enough of a plot? When Emily and Todd’s wedding either goes ahead without problem or is broken up no thanks to the inept spy duo, they have no longer any reason to see each other! And thinking that the other one doesn’t care, they just sadly say goodbye and prepare to part for ever... BUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL SHOCK YOU. Look, this is all the level of conflict this film needs. Nobody is watching this because they want this part of the film to last more than a couple of minutes maximum. Just let them roll their eyes at each other like the Beatrice and Benedick dynamic they so desperately wish they had and kiss!

THE END.

[ardenttheories]

The thing is, the Game Over timeline is integral to some of the themes Homestuck focuses on, and it wouldn’t have been possible without Aranea.

Admittedly I haven’t read that far ahead, but I have seen the flashes and read enough of the wikia pages to have gotten a good enough idea of what happens. 

From what I can tell, Aranea, desperate to gain importance so that she can fix the entire timeline and ensure that Lord English never exists, while also ensuring the timeline that they’re in (which would then become Doomed) remains as the Alpha Timeline, manages to get her hands on the Life Ring, which revives her while she’s wearing it. She then attempts to set this plan into action, but never actually gets anywhere with it, and in her ensuring fight with HIC just about everyone dies. 

The thing is, the whole point of this moment is that it’s our main characters who die. We see everyone we have come to love fall at the hands of an overambitious troll who gets exactly what she deserves because she thought that she could do something that is basically impossible. 

Anyone could have done this. The actual part where she starts to set her plan into action only involves the use of her powers to:

Control Gamzee to steal the Life Ring

Put several of the humans to sleep 

Maybe threw a few planets? I can’t tell if that was a Ring thing or a power thing. 

So you could replace Aranea with anyone who:

Becomes overambitious or maybe a bit desperate to fix the timeline

Can control/coerce someone, or maybe just steals the damn Ring themself

Would be bold enough to try and face HIC when things went wrong. 

So immediately Vriska comes to mind. They have the same powerset, so naturally she’s a good contender - and yes, she is on the pirate ship at the time, but I wouldn’t put it past Vriska to go from “I’ll take on the bad guys MYSELF” to “that was a bad idea, so lets just make sure this douche never existed to begin with!” if she began to get doubtful enough of her own abilities to attack Lord English head on - which, without Meenah, might have been a more likely event. 

It could even have been something Dirk decided to do, albeit a bit later in the comic, because Dirk trying to reign in control isn’t out of his character. Seeing the big bad destroying everything and deciding he has to go - especially if, lets say, Dirk sees Roxy, Jane, or Jake, or any combination of the three, die - but having it fail horrifically, and then having the scene where he says it’s “all my fault”? That would have been much more heavy hitting. 

The point I’m making is that no character is inherently integral to a plot. The author makes them integral by placing them into a certain role. Without the Alpha trolls existing, that role would have been given to another character, or the scene would have hashed out in a different way - still ending with the colossal amounts of death, and still ending with John having to go through the Retcon, but ultimately being tweaked for whoever takes Aranea’s place. 

And that’s the thing. After this moment, in the post-Retcon timeline, Aranea never shows up again. She’s never important again, we never see that specific instance of her - we have no idea if she’s dead or alive, even, - so her actual importance is minimal. And yes, that is sort of the point, but if we replace that with active character development on another character’s behalf? If we see more openly how Vriska feels about herself and the doubts she has, or if we see more clearly Dirk’s desire to try and take control of things to fix them, the shock he feels when he realises it didn’t work, and then seeing one of them be different in the post-Retcon timeline, knowing they’ve grown because of various actions John has done, knowing that outcome won’t happen again - that seems a tiny bit better to me. 

It also doesn’t help for Aranea’s case that she is a small minority of a much wider, much less important cast. Out of all twelve Alpha trolls, maybe two or three of them - Meenah definitely, Aranea until this moment, and Kurloz to a very minor extent - have any sort of importance to the plot. 

None of them are so integral to the plot that erasing them ruins the story - not the same way that getting rid of our main four humans is, or scrapping the Beta trolls would be. If anything, getting rid of them streamlines the plot a bit and gives more attention to other characters - and also gets rid of the shitty jokes Hussie made at the fandom’s expense with them. 

[workrockin]

Big preview of Marvel Avengers By Square Enix

Talking about previews is fun because the game is still in development. The possibilities are endless. We get to dream about playing it. How fun it would be when we get it in our hands.

Even more so when the game is Avengers coming right after Avengers endgame (that is the movie not the game)became one of the biggest hits of 2019 with years long build up.Converging the individual plotlines of star super heroes into a satisfying ending.

Captain America, Iron Man, Spiderman,Thor, Silver Surfer and the Hulk.These are not simply names . They are big franchises. They are the biggest franchises in entertainment. With Comic books, video games, toys, clothing lines, songs and movies made after them. The have got it all.

You can imagine then how tough it would have been to bring it all together. But Avengers did it. With a budget of $386M endgame was one of the most expensive movies ever made. It remains the best grossing movie of all time.

The question for the developers then becomes how can you top endgame?

The studios behind marvel avengers the game

Square Enix is no stranger to big budget entertainment themselves. The studio became a household name with final fantasy 7 and since then Square Enix has been known for high production values.

With kingdom hearts an action role playing game featuring Disney characters SE demonstrated that they can handle third party IP just as well as their own.

SE might just be the most progressive Japanese game development studio. They have taken immense risks in popularizing their games with western audiences. Final Fantasy XV the most recent game in the long running franchise was fully open world action adventure that aspired to get on with the times and was not afraid to test the patience of long time fans.

Their reboot of the sacred Final Fantasy 7 looks to change the core gameplay mechanics, something that fans have adored for almost a decade.

Dissidia Final Fantasy a game that made its way in the PSP almost 10 years ago is the last thing you’d expect from a role playing production powerhouse. A free movement 3D fighting game.

They’ve acquired western studios like Crystal Dynamics and Eidos and thereby gained access to some fan favorite titles like Hitman, Deus Ex and Tomb Raider. Their recent effort with the Franchises have received an enthusiastic response from the fans.

Even Dragon quest Square Enix long standing traditional hit, a Japanese cultural phenomenon has experimented with new style of gameplay in Dragon Quest Heroes. Mixing Dragon Quest Characters with fast paced hack and slash of dynasty warriors.

It’s safe to say that S.E. is a highly experienced studio. But I’ve not written these paragraphs as a PR for them. I just want to underscore that even for a.studio as big as SE the challenge of making a game like Marvel Avengers is very big.

The open world super heroes

While superheroes have been very popular in comics movies and cartoons,their games have not exactly resonated with the fans. Before insomniac’s smash hit spiderman used to be just a quick movie cash in. While Iron Man is a silver screen hit on home consoles it has not been able to weave it’s magic.

Silver surfer on NES has the dubious distinction of being one of the worst games ever made.

And who can forget the disaster that Superman was on N64.

Maybe it’s due to high expectations. Perhaps due to the narrative set by other forms that dictate the video game development but superhero video games have performed below par. They were supposed to massive hits but instead have turned out mediocre misadventures.

That is not to say that all video game superheros have been duds. The punisher did well. As did Marvel ultimate alliance games. Batman games by rocksteady are a shining example of how to do a superhero in a video game.

Outside of traditional superheroes Saints Row 4 translated the open world for original characters. With special abilities and no tradition weighing them down. Infamous and prototype presented their super heroes in a darker light. Immensely powerful characters who were not hesitant to use their strength to get what they want.

Gravity Rush created the most fresh and endearing teenage sensation in Kat, a young girl who could manipulate gravity.

Lego games have kept fans constantly entertained. They are fun and cute and relaxing. Giving the fans a break from the heavy and brooding apocalyptic plots and letting them have a bit of sunny fun.

There’s no dearth of super hero games to take inspiration from. Even then with so many characters and personalities. So many possibilities how can a game be created that brings them together?

The elements of the game

Since avengers is a superhero team, the game allows both single player and cooperative multiplayer modes. In the demo shown at gamescom recently the game transitioned between lifelike cutscenes and gameplay elements seamlessly. As a viewer, in fact, it was sometimes difficult to tell when the movie ended and when the actual gameplay began.

Little indications like the health bar on the top of the screen and the mission objective on the left corner gave a clue that the character is now in the control of the player. It is a testament to the design team of avengers that they have produced a title that has such lifelike graphics.

Avengers seem to be a role playing action game with a focus on a smooth combat. Only a few playable characters were featured in the demo.

Iron man used his suit for firing projectiles. Thor was a mix between melee and magic. Both characters could fly like in movies. Black widow preferred fast but deadly hand to hand combat. Captain america used his shield as a boomerang to make short work of his opponents. And hulk. Well he was smashing fun. More on him later.

While the game isn’t an open world game in the truest sense it seems that the players will have plenty of opportunity to explore the in game world with their favorite character. I’m assuming that it’ll be somewhat like Eidos Montreal’s hit Deus Ex Mankind divided which even though is a highly focused narrative driven game it gives the player a high degree of interaction with his environment.

And if we compare this design choice with the presentation in the movies as well as the comics, it makes more sense. Avengers have to hop around quite a few places before they are through with their adventure. Having the entire action in one city, as detailed as it may be, is not going to be true to the franchise.

There seems to be built in progression for the characters. They gain experience as they complete their objectives and their is a skill tree to unlock and explore. However the devs need to maintain a very tight balance between making the character feel like a superhero while at the same time giving the players more abilities to unlock. An underpowered Thor could leave the player unsatisfied where as an overpowered one would make the gameplay a bore.

In that respect some notes could be taken from the progression system of Marvel Ultimate Alliance while tweaking and streamlining some of the rougher spots.

Another exciting aspect of the game is the story line. Although much of it is kept under wraps it's clear that the game is going for a fresh setting. No infinity stones existential drama. But Avengers this time are going to face a different kind of crisis. Of self doubt, and lack of confidence from the general public whose support they have enjoyed for so long. This time around they have been replaced by an organization called AIM. They must fight to prove their worth again in the eyes of their fans. And gain back their self respect. Are they up to the task? We’ll find out in May 2020. 

Why am I so excited about the hulk?

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post its fun to talk about a game before it has been released. There is so much that can be done. So much to look forward to. The expectations are high. The excitement even higher. The wait itself is a joy.

Way back in the days of ps2 there was a little gem of a superhero game called the incredible hulk ultimate destruction by radical entertainment that gave us gamers a little taste of what an open world superhero action game could be like.

You played as hulk and you caused mayhem in the city. There were no rules. You could jump up high to the top of the building. You could use the car as a skateboard. You could throw missiles back at the enemies. There were no limits.

It was not the open world action that got me excited rather an open world platformer. The idea of jumping and collecting things on top of huge skyscrapers as hulk gave me immense satisfaction.

Many games have tried to replicate the same feeling of 3D platforming exploration but they haven’t quite done it for me.

I know that Avengers is more than just the Hulk. But I hope that they make him as awesome as he was in the ultimate destruction.

See you again in 2020

workrockin@gmail.com

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 28

Spoilers, obv.

I mentioned in the back of the issue that I was thinking that Imperial Phase Part I would just end with no climax. As in, what would be more proggy and self-indulgent than to do that? Just to assume that people would accept a whole year of issues as a single trade, and have that slow build. And if people are expecting a surprise, not having a surprise would be the bigger one?

Except I plotted out the fucker, and realised this issue would end the trade, and that works pretty well as a climax.  Not as big as any of the other ones, arguably, but wider and certainly a change of status quo. Plus it's an unexpected answer to the question of “Who's going to die?” undermining the assumption that it has to be one of our core cast.

This is probably a good example of how I talk about knowing everything in WicDiv, but the execution being more flexible. As in, all these beats are there, but working out how to play them came when planning these two arcs.

It's a hard issue for me, to be honest. WicDiv is definitely in a cause of anxiety place for me now, and thematically I can see why. WicDiv is always a juggling act, but I'm aware I'm juggling knives.

Jamie's Cover: The last of the first half of Imperial Phase. The design continues to the second half of Imperial Phase, with variations. I think this one is particularly beautiful, but pointed.

Elsa Charretier's Cover: We met Elsa when we were launching WicDiv in France. Glenat, our French Publisher, had commissioned her to do a WicDiv print. That was beautiful, and we asked her if she'd be up for a cover. And lo, this was born. The commission was glamour and sex – I think I suggested the idea of a sun in a martini glass. Elsa summoned this panorama that I just lose myself in.

It's also one of our rare Alt covers which is actually coloured by Matt Wilson, who took a pretty radical approach to the image. Matt Wilson for Eisner!

Page 1 Last time I talked about having a surplus of material and working out how to present it, and it actually all compressing down worryingly well. I had my list of things I wanted to happen before the party. I realised that some of them – mainly Sakhmet related – I could move into issue 29. Which left this, which I felt as an incredibly low-key mundane scene made a fun thing to hard cut from to the party.

Roehampton chosen due to me doing a seminar at the University there last year. I felt that Blake would be teaching in a place like it.

Jamie had a hefty re-write of this one when drawing it, and we chewed over the execution in chat a little. “The script is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.”

Wall stuff was also done in conversation. I gave Jamie a bunch of suggestions and we unpacked a little more.  Shall I go though and say what they all are? I'm not sure if I can recognise them in fragments. That's Girl's Generation, the K-Pop band on the left. They were the primary visual inspiration for the Valkyries. Oh – and Jamie tells me that's Katy Perry on the right.

Page 2 I am very fond of the side-eye of Blake in the second panel. Strong Jamie expression.

Behind Blake is... League of Legends, Ghost in the Machine and Voltron.

And another really strong face in the last panel.

Page 3 Oddly, Cassandra's habit of little encouraging asides to people seems to be a thing now. How will people read them in world? Actually sincerely or patronising? I guess it depends how defensive they were feeling on any given day.

Page 4 A call back to Larkin's This Be The Verse, quoted by Luci in the first issue, recalled by Laura in issue 6.

My first draft title was Pride, drawing a line between Blake's parental pride and Sakmet's pride of lions. And then we remembered it'll also call to mind Pride, which when there's a slaughter at a pansexual orgy, is definitely not a comparison we wanted to make. So we went to this.

I suspect these writer notes are mainly my “here are some of the landmines we nearly stepped on” log.

Page 5 Originally the line was a lift of Lady Vox's in Phonogram, but something more noxious was clearly better. I called for the cocaine-tool, and Jamie out-did himself. The mosquito-like device emerging from the helmet is quite the thing. I suspect this is a left over Iron Man idea.

The visual element of the performance of the colouring-stage added symbols came from Matt. He was playing with various overlapping shapes, which were beautiful, but didn't seem to be anything other than a cute aesthetic. And then we realised that if we made them all Amaterasu symbols it'll integrate into the whole book. And lo, it does.

When plotting this issue, it's very much a “okay, what order CAN they be in.” I suspect I'd have rather taken more time to get to the confrontation, but everything else is more important to be in its place. Space is the interesting one – I suspect given an infinite budget we'd have have played more space to introduce this party/temple, probably with a issue-8 style dance-floor shot. But we don't, so we go completely the other way with this very TIGHT open, and put you in the middle of this slightly disorientating party you build up piecemeal. 

Page 6 This involved some consultancy here, as I suspected (and I was right) that the original draft of Cassandra's dialogue let Woden off the hook too easily. We ended up tweaking a bunch to make her angrier to start, and still angry at the end, even after she takes Woden's point. I suspect I'd have gone even further given a chance to do it again.

(I mean, do you believe Woden that he didn't click? Plus that he knows the implicit threat by saying he didn't click – as in, he definitely could click if he wanted to. This is particularly noxious by Woden.)

End of the page is the closest we get to an establishing shot of the club/temple, btw.

Note that Jamie has moved away from a strict eight panel grid here, which suits the material. That panels two and five are these relatively smaller moments means that it would be dead space.

Page 7 And notice the strict eight panel grid here, which Jamie maintains as all these beats are basically of equal narrative weight.

Panel 7 is Jamie redrawing the splash from Brandon Graham's issue. Clearly relevant to what's coming further down the line.

In an issue of fairly bleak jokes, I think Woden's last panel takes the prize.

Page 8 The sequence is the last bit of set-up for the end of the issue. I suspect a re-read of the last couple of issues will see what I considered the necessary Sakhmet beats to get here. Next issue has more, but it's all very morning-after.

Special call out for Clayton for the second panel, which uses a PING! To basically split this panel into two panels in terms of reading. There's Amaterasu's first line... a small delay – and then the next piece of information. This is joined to the left-right movement across the panel from seeing the back of her head (I'm leaving!) to the right side of the panel (Where we then see she's looking at her phone.)

The softest beat of the issue, and probably one that I'd have stressed more if it was only a grace note, would be the reason for Baal's absence. Persephone assumes it's because that she is there, hence the segue in conversation on hurting people.

(In a boring practical way, Baal and Minerva not being here streamlines an issue which all the cast are present at. They don't need to be here, and their absence says more.)

The last three panels on the page are the closest that Sakhmet has come to a speech. Originally, there was about twice as much dialogue, but we worked it over obsessively to get to the core essentials (and try and avoid juxtapositions which we simply didn't want.) C and I shouting various takes and word-switches for about an hour in the living room.

All the WicDiv characters depress me. I think Sakhmet depresses me most of all.

Page 9 Anyway, yes, Sakhmet, that is a very good look.

Sakhmet's entry for the bleak joke competition, evidently.

Page 10 That we cut away from Casssandra means we get to cut back to her after the reasonable stage of an exchange and straight into this.

Hmm. There's something odd about this issue in terms of how pretty it all is, versus the emotions that are flying around. That's Amaterasu all over though.

The third panel was key for us to have Amaterasu's lines juxtaposed by Cassandra's response, so that it couldn't be taken out of context. A character responding to another character's incoherent racism is important context. I considered the archaic spelling “Moslem” but decided that while I'm sure that Amaterasu would use it, it wasn't worth putting in the text. It's offensive enough anyway.

Page 11 Some fascinating character work by Matt and Jamie on Amaterasu's speech to camera. The passive-aggressive nature of her threat is particularly sickly.

Cass' swearing is a delight.

I think I originally did something like “Clawing her eyes out” and tweaked as I) gendered ii) with where the issue goes, sets up all sorts of uncomfortable resonances with both Morrigan and Sakhmet. WicDiv is designed to be viewed as a hologram, so removing data strands that aren't intended is key.

(I mean, I talk about being anxious earlier? That's certainly a reason. There's so many moving parts in this fucker, and for all our efforts we can’t be sure that some of them are going to mesh awkwardly. We can always miss something.)

Anyway – there goes Cass, told to go home, the first of the people to leave the party. Everyone else gradually leaves, until it's just the people who remain. Woden doesn't get an exit, but let's be candid – no-one would have ever assumed Woden would be invited to the orgy.

And Dio takes over as the connective tissue. Hmm. Re-reading this after a few weeks is making me realise how tightly wound it really is. I had a friend write to tell me how many panels the last two issues had. 26 with 127 and 27 with 142. I did a quick count, and this one is (about) 119, so a little down, but when an average mainstream comic would have around 80 panels in (No more than a 5 panel beat, with average panel count lower than due to splashes, action pages, etc) it speaks to how compressed this is running on. No wonder I feel like it's going to explode.

Anyway, Dio. What have you seen?

Page 12 The main worry on this page was not making the storytelling too comic. The “someone leaves” And then “Someone unexpected follows pushing first person out of the way” can definitely come across as slapstick. Jamie doesn't do that, so phew. It's setting up for the destination.

The hyper-distorted close-up-to-reader Amaterasu symbols here are fascinating. Well done, Matt.

Page 13 And out in the street. Matt's glow from the door, into the cold blues of the street is strong. Immediate change of mood.

(Also, has me thinking of the break to darkness in issue 8 before going back to the party, as a structural parallel)

I don't actually use much contemporary slang in WicDiv. I suspect this isn't actually something people have noticed. As such, I had a good hard think before using Ghosting, but it's the right word and sentiment. And – well – Ghosting and Goths is an interesting line.

The goth kids absence from the comic have been notable. As they'd been major players earlier, they were always going to step back so other characters can move closer to the spotlight. I realised pretty early in planning Imperial Phase that the necessary retreat from the spotlight would be a way to explicitly introduce the plot. We could delineate their absence.

Page 14 Yeah, I'm uncomfortable too.

I don't think it's worth talking about this in any more detail now. Probably more later as we continue into the story.

Dionysus is the character who has most often surprised me in WicDiv. When he enters a scene, he goes in an unusual direction. He asks slightly different questions from most of the cast. “She chased him out the building and now he looks like this? Clearly...” seems a fair leap to make.

Page 15 “I love you, but...” is one of the more obvious bits of connective tissue in the issue.

Jamie does an interesting choice in terms of panel 4 and Persephone's response.

Another bit of peak Amaterasu here in the “What happened to my party?” response. Upset of her party not going according to her plans is, of course, how the arc starts for Amy as well.

Matt obviously gets the colouring interesting – all amber here – but Jamie is doing a lot to bridge the gap between two sub-scenes. That fifth panel re-sets it all, and hopefully Amaterasu's voice carries people back inside.

Page 16 The first panel landed very well. There's a lot of emotional weight that this has to carry, and suggesting of other things, and it seems to hold together. I suspect you can patch together all the Persephone Lines To Camera in WicDiv and get an interesting portrait of where she thinks she is.

(I mean, this is Jamie. It's never just about the line. I can't even imagine trying to write this stuff for another artist.)

My favourite person in all of WicDiv may be the guy in the hat in the bottom panel who goes “You know – actually, no, I don't think so. I think I'll have an early night” when presented with this offer. Good call, random person.

Interesting choice of panel breaking by Jamie on the last panel, which gets a sense of the rush of the response.

Page 17 Well, yes.

Page 18 When someone asked me about sex scenes a while back, this was already written and perhaps even being drawn, so I was aware of this in terms of a hypothetical WicDiv scene scene. Let's quote the thing here for reference...

We certainly don’t linger on the sex scenes. There’s an orgy in issue 11. There’s one beat where you see Morrigan and Baphomet in issue 16. There’s the repurposed Sex Criminal pages in 14. There’s very little kissing in terms of what you actually see  - there’s one in 20 and one in 24, so far. While at the same time, characters having sex with one another is one of the things which drives the plot.

Speaking generally, I’ve got no moral reservation about sex scenes in stories per se. It always speaks to the effect the story is trying to have. To state the obvious, in erotica it’s very much the point of the thing.

There’s a couple of problems specifically in WicDiv…

1) Seeings someone have sex has a tendency to make the scene about you watching. Our characters are often, in their own way, viewpoint characters. Anything which makes a character perform for the viewer is against our intent there. There’s times we’ve approached it, and Jamie has very much backed away when we approached the page, as it was just extraneous. Why do it if it serves no purpose? 2) Probably more importantly, sex is usually dead pages in terms of drama. The fight scenes WicDiv does are almost always not about fighting. They’re about a change of dramatic states, a visually interesting way to push the plot along. Go through a fight scene and note down what you learn about each character in it. You can certainly do that in a sex scene… but dramatically speaking, the “decision to have sex” and “how you feel afterwards” are the key beats. So we linger on them a LOT.

But there’s certainly sex scenes I’ve written in my notes, and they’re much more character driven things, one way or another. I suspect one will come up sooner rather than later, though watching how we do it will be the interesting one.

That “interesting” sits uncomfortably with me, as it sounds like I'm foreshadowing this awful mess, when I'm talking in terms of craft. How do you do that and stay to our aims? The things I'd point to here is primarily Jamie's choices – how he chooses to frame nakedness, how he chooses to frame sex. Generally speaking, this is an illustrative scene. The neutrality is key – Amaterasu's nakedness  in panel 6 would be a key one. There is no pose for the readers' eye's delight. This is a character who happens to be naked. Or at least, that's how we hope it's read.

(There's also other things – we thought that if Sakhmet is the first character to be shown naked just as she turns on a killing range, that has a lot of semiotics in there we'd like to avoid.)

Page 19 You know how life can just shatter in a second? I guess that's what we were going for here. Just one character being thoughtless, and...

(Fill in “That escalated quickly” gif, obviously)

For my money, perhaps Jamie's best art of the issue is the last two panels. The suspended glass, and then that close up – which is not one, but both of the best single expressions in the book.

Page 20-21 Amaterasu runs – I've seen some people think that Sakhmet killed her in this scene, which is one of those “you always must remember your audience is diverse in terms of how much they're aware of things like knowing what a character's power looks like, especially when a larger than normal percentage of your readers are new to comics.” I'm not sure there's much we could have done, except maybe a “come back!” from Sakhmet in the first panel. But  that feels too crass for the people who DO get it. Balancing what is too opaque and what is too crass is basically 95% of comics for me.

This spread was budgeted as a single page, in terms of the amount Jamie has drawn. I may have done it anyway, but it is a way to ensure that we have a page turn onto the image on page 22.

(Also visual symmetry with Sakhmet in issue 17, where the black out image is also used.)

Page 22 I like how careful Jamie is here as well. I suspect the page with the most colouring tweaks in it, as Jamie wanted it to have the correct level of horror to it.

I originally had a more on-the-nose element to the image – a message scrawled in blood – but as much as I like a good System Shock homage, it was decided it was just too much. It's a Grand Guignol beat, sure, but not like that. It seems that there is a thing such as “too unsubtle” even for WicDiv.

Page 23 When originally planning the book, I thought this flashback was going to be at the end of Rising Action. After writing it, we realised we didn't need it – Persephone terrible and resplendent, with all the awful potential didn't need anything else. This is probably a good example of what I talk about in terms of when we say “we know all the material – it's just a question of execution.” I find myself thinking of how movies are really made by the editor, cutting scenes around.

(There's certainly things I've wanted to get in this arc which I've lost as something else was always more pressing. You may remember me saying one of my worries about year 3 in WicDiv was it was mainly girls being involved with girls, and there wasn't enough male/male intimacy? That would be an example of something which I'd like to find a place for, but have failed to do so far. Still, onwards.)

As a craft note, I'd point towards “6 months earlier” as a choice worth considering for creators. If you just write dates to control flashbacks rather than stating the relative position, you will lose your reader almost completely. They don't remember what period a story is set in just via numbers. They need either word based hand-holding or something much more visual in the story. Be very careful with this shit.

Page 24 In an issue as compressed as this, a page of Ananke way back in issue 21 me a luxury. But for someone like Ananke, it's so rare I hope it's interesting. Some strong expression work in here.

Clearly the advantage of that mask of hers is that it means it's harder for people to see that she's been crying.

Page 25 A “free” page in terms of budget, though Jamie clearly committed to it  with the hand.

In the third year's hardback, we may include our somewhat hilarious lettering trial runs where Chrissy and Katie tried their handwriting. The final one is actually the work of Marguerite Bennett, who as a self-described Supervillain seemed a good person to ask to do it. Also, I've seen enough of her pen when signing issues of Angela, so knew she had a fascinating font. She was enormously ill and bed-ridden, so it was touch or go whether she would be able to do it, but thankfully it all came together. Thanks, M.

Page 26 A complete re-use of the opening of issue 21, with the final panel turned into a (tweaked) repeat of the penultimate panel. Once more we return and all that.

We'll be doing a little tweak to this page in the trade in the penultimate panel, to put a little glow on the machinery.

Page 27 We had to debate whether to put the present date or the flashback date here, but settled on this.

And that's it. Coming up shortly is the 455 AD special, which certainly fits thematically in with this arc and Andre (and Matt) have done wonderful work on. Then the trade in June, and back with Imperial Phase Part II in July.

Thanks for reading.