#he's got some issues in both iterations of him tbh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

faetaiity · 2 years

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HII! If you don’t mind could you do the rise tmnt guys (separate if u don’t mind) reaction to a normally rlly sweet and happy reader getting angry/snapping at something for 2 seconds (reader secretly has bad anger issues ☠️) like reader is doing homework and then just randomly punch’s their computer and just takes a deep breath and goes back to normal LMAO

Tysm for ur time! ^^ have a nice day and remember to take breaks <3

Yeah! I relate to the Reader in this ask a lot tbh.

Separate! Turtles x Gender Neutral! Has Bad Anger Issues! Reader

Post Format: Headcanons

CW/TW: Yelling, Mild Angst for Leo, Crying, and 'mild' Leo 'slander' lmao ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Raphie:

You're playing a game with Raph and Leo, unfortunately, Leo ends up winning and taunting you in particular, mainly because you preformed the worst

You grit your teeth as you hear him gloat "Oh ho ho! It seems I've won a game, it was bound to happen anyway, with how horrible you are at anything we play~"

Normally this wouldn't be too bad, you'd leave as soon as he was done piggishly gloating, but he HAD to jab you in the fucking ribs

Tears prick your eyes angrily as you tell him to 'shut the fuck up and shove the award up his ass', this causes him and Raph to wince at your harsh words

They don't know how to respond, Leo ended up awkwardly walking away, unnerved with your sudden display of hostility

Raph walks up to you and asks what's wrong, you take a deep breath and try to relax for a few seconds

You talk about how you actually get angry and frustrated a lot, it's just physical touch makes it harder to push aside

I actually HC him to still have anger issues like his previous Iterations, but on a lower and more mellow level

he gets irritated sometimes when things don't go the way he wants them, (aka safely and quickly) or when Leo is a pain in the ass, but he never takes it out on people or openly talks about it

He understands a lot.

He hugs and kisses your head, making you promise that you will tell him when you're starting to get a little too angry so he can help smoothen the situation

You nod and thank him

"Anytime <3"

Donnie:

Also has some bad anger sometimes

You're doing homework with him, usually you didn't need help, but you wanted him to explain certain trigonometry concepts to you because the Teacher was downright horrendous at explaining things.

You both got frustrated when you couldn't understand what Donnie was explaining, you because you were usually a really fast learner and didn't understand why this was so fucking difficult, and He was frustrated because he considers this relatively easy

It gets hostile when he says in what you misread as a condescending tone "How can't you understand this?! It's like teaching ABC's to a Kindergartener! It's simple!", you growl out a 'Fuck you' and start packing your stuff, just wanting to leave the lair and cool off

He doesn't stop you, he only huffs and puffs in irritation

Leo would be near the entrance of the lair and would probably crack a stupid joke, causing you to snap a "Back off!" at him, making him squint his eyes, trying to make sure this isn't someone else.

Once you leave the lair, you start to assume this will put a strain on your relationship up until he breaks into your apartment and apologizes a couple hours later

He struggles to understand that you won't get things as quickly as he does, he understands that concept with his brothers, but not with you

Mainly because he considers you smart, he's not good with apologies but he wants you to know that it wasn't your fault

It would probably lead to a long talk about you two and your anger, you two promising to be more open about your frustrations and to vent it out in a healthy way and not demean each other for what they don't yet understand

and that would lead to a rather uncommon case of Donnie cuddling you, with you two finishing your homework and watching Jupiter Jim movies

Leo:

Okay, unpopular(?) opinion but he would totally unintentionally rile you up

He's just so.... Jokey and to someone who doesn't know him, Probably Narcissistic, Dense and Immature

Which, with the Last two, he can be, but he definitely is NOT narcissistic.

Knowing him, He'd probably make a smartass comment, come up to you saying "huh?! Huh?!" Over and over again, you KNOW he's not trying to irritate you, mainly because you've never actually shown irritation or aggression when he does this (Because you're used to this behavior even before you dated)

Like in the Raph scenario, he jabs your ribs with his fingers, causing you to yelp and glare at him, he just looks at you, completely misreading the situation, thinking you're just being playfully angry so he fUCKING JABS YOU AGAIN

You snarl out a "WHAT THE FUCK, LEONARDO!?" and instinctively shove his hand away from your side

He looks shocked before actually becoming a little sad, looking akin to a kicked puppy

You sigh and relax, feeling guilty you softly mumble out, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell... I'm just in a bad mood, you didn't deserve that treatment." he averts his eyes, clearly still hurt

I'm gonna be honest, you're the only one who truly accepts his jokes aside from Mikey (Mostly), so he kinda.... gets depressed

Over the next few days, he might become slightly timid with making jokes around you, and might actually fall into a small depressive episode, feeling as if his coping method irritates his S/O

It'll take a long talk about boundaries with jokes and reassuring him that it was just a bad day, and you genuinely don't mind his jokes

that talk actually made people like Donnie tolerate his jokes more, as now he doesn't usually include physically jostling, pinching or poking people in his jokes

It might take a few days of mild, timid jokes before he goes back to his absolutely wild personality that you fell in love with.

Mikey:

Gonna be honest once more, he is the least likely to see you in an irritated state

He is super in-tune with your emotions and can tell when you're irritated or sad so he can get you out of that situation... 98% of the time.

But also, like Leo, I could see him being unintentionally irritating at times, it never bothered you up until this point because its Mikey! one of the most lovable goofballs you know!

But if you're already in a bad mood and he's being a little too rambunctious, I could see you snapping at him a little, and then instantly feeling guilty

Like Leo, the minute you snap at him, he gives you the biggest kicked puppy eyes, tears softly falling down his face as you wince and apologize profusely

He forgives you, albeit asking for a reason as to why you barked at him

He might turn into Dr. Feelings to help you talk about your outbursts and why it's not a good response to irritating stimuli

Similar to that episode with him and Donnie lmao

He doesn't blame you; he knows everyone has their own emotional baggage, but he makes you promise to tell him when you're getting closer to having an outburst so he can help you.

You agree and place a kiss on his beak, making him churr happily

there's probably a lot of small sessions with Dr. Feelings about your anger over the next couple weeks/months until you can handle it better

All of Them:

They love you even if you snap at them sometimes (and them sometimes snapping right back)

The last thing they want is to make you feel negative/neurotic emotions because of them

While they wouldn't change anything about themselves, they know you don't want them to do that anyway.

You have issues, they understand that and are willing to talk to you about boundaries, so you don't have or get a bad reaction from you or them.

#rottmnt headcanons #rottmnt #rottmnt x reader #save rottmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles x reader #rottmnt x gn reader #donnie x reader #donatello #raph x reader #raphael #leo x reader #leonardo #mikey x reader #michelangelo

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theworldsforgottenboy · 4 years

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Well, I’m hyper fixating on heathers now

I watch heathers the movie last night and then watched a lot of animatics from the musical (there’s probably some gaps between songs so if I’m wrong about something please tell me), and I have some thoughts. I was challenged by my dad to write a film review, so I thought I’d post it

Overall I liked it a lot, the musical more so than the movie.

The movie

All the use of homophobic slurs was definitely uncomfortable, and for once in my life made me grateful that we live in the present where people (except for my brother) understand that gay or homo or (god forbid) fag isnt an acceptable insult. The “gay suicide” was also in bad taste

As someone who has struggled with depression and suicidal ideation, all the suicides in general got really uncomfortable. I didn’t feel too bad about heather chandler, but as it kept going the more grossed out I got with the theme

I cried during Martha’s suicide attempt, it struck really close to home. Martha is probably my favorite tbh

Serious pacing issues, everything happened in the first 30ish minutes and then slowed down somewhat until the end, which felt drawn out.

Movie!JD can go die for all I care (pun intended) even if he does have great cheekbones and eyebrows.

He’s so manipulative and insane, and I guess if that’s what they were going for, Christian slater did an amazing job, but he never got to the right level of intimidating with him, which again might have been on purpose for the whole cute boy thing they were going for in the beginning, but as they went on with it, he only got a little more scary even as he was going to blow up a school.

On the positive, I can believe this iteration is an actual psychopath

His character is so dramatically different than his musical counterpart it’s giving me whiplash

Veronica is fine, I guess. I don’t really have strong feelings about her character other than her diary entries were a mood

It had some nice moments too, I liked the slushy scene

The musical (heads up this is mostly about jd)

The songs were excellent, my favorites were freeze your brain, dead girl walking and reprise, meant to be yours, candy store, seventeen, and I am damaged

It gives context for some things in the movie, like why Veronica is with the heathers if she hates them so much

Somehow musical!jd is my favorite character?

I honestly could talk about him for a while, he strikes the perfect balance where his actions horrify me and to a rational human are completely wrong, but I still am incredibly sympathetic to all that has happened and the myriad of mental issues he has

He’s the perfect mix of villain and misunderstood pupydog in a way that doesn’t overshadow eachother

I like how it’s clear that he’s a deeply troubled person and isn’t pure evil, yet is crazy and dangerous and needs to go down, which is really sad

I am damaged tore my heart out after all of everything, I listened to it before watching the whole thing because it was on my Spotify playlist, but it hits harder now that I’ve seen it all, it feels so tragic yet so unavoidable.

The JD/Veronica relationship is complicated for me, it’s definitely seriously unhealthy in its current form, but it plain to see that in a twisted fucked up way he does truly love her, even if it does manifest into killing everyone who hurts her (I’m not defending it, but it does tug at my heartstrings a little)

On the other hand, I think if he was just a little less fucked up, or if he got meds and therapy, they could have worked out. If he just let them be Seventeen, it could have been beautiful.

I can recognize both right? I ship it, but only in a alternate universe where he wasn’t so lost

And part of me hopes he made it to heaven despite everything

The rest of the musical was awsome too

Sorry for the long post I wanted to talk about it

#musicals #heathers #heathers the movie #heathers the musical #jd heathers #jason dean #jdonica #au i guess

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hauntinghyrule · 5 years

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Y’all looking at that one canon!shadow swap!shadow comparison piece you did... how do ya think those two would react to each other???

It depends on what point in the story they met!

Before Canon Shadow’s redemption arc, Light Shadow’s thoughts would probably be something along the lines of ‘oh Goddesses not another one, I’m already outnumbered four to one here’ and Canon Shadow would probably be… kind of disdainful of Light Shadow’s slightly more nervous tendencies?

(Light Shadow has fewer anger issues than Canon Shadow, but more anxiety issues)

Post-story, though, they’re both in a healthier, happier place (fix it AUs for life, okay), and I think they could get along!

Post-redemption, Canon Shadow would see Light Shadow’s nervousness less as a humiliating trait to exist in any iteration of himself, and more as a challenge. He knows all his own snark and mischief is under that shell somewhere, and now that Light Shadow finally has a group of friends (a family) where he feels comfortable and secure with his place in, Canon Shadow would want to help him crack that shell.

Similarly, post-story, Light Shadow has faced down four of his own demons and found friends (a family) rather than enemies, so he’d be ready to take that chance again with this version of himself. He’d be a little envious of Canon Shadow’s powers, tbh - all the reverse!Four Swords Links have powers like that, it’s the one thing that’s still got him feeling like a bit of an odd-man-out.

… I think the first crack in that nervous shell, the first little bit of snark to slip out, might be based on the fact that reverse!Vio and Shadow figured their relationship out faster than (at least some versions of) canon!Vio and Shadow. What if Light Shadow teased Canon Shadow about his Obvious Pining? Hmmm…

#kae replies #anonymous #/#//#///#four swords #four swords headcanons #shadow link #role reversal au #first and forever otp #vidow

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hexadecimalmantis · 5 years

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Argonaut Games Research

This post was originally going to be an absurdly long documentary video, but I realized it would have been a bit boring, so I ultimately decided on making a glorified blog post.

When I joined BioMedia Project last year, I was tasked with researching Bionicle: The Game and its sequel Bionicle 2: City of Legends. I have talked about both games in great detail many times before, and I think we all know about the issues that plague both of them by now. Bionicle: The Game is seemingly incomplete, and filled with content that was cut early on, and Bionicle 2: City of Legends never made it past a private movement demo. For context about Bionicle 2: BioMedia Project managed to obtain an Xbox build of the movement demo a few years ago. It has a few issues, such as broken audio and some missing graphical effects. I began reaching out to former developers in an effort to piece together the entire story of Argonaut Games, and uncover more secrets about both games. (Initially) With the assistance of Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming?, I began contacting some of the developers. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Argonaut Games was split into two different facilities during the development of Bionicle: The Game. The first being Argonaut London, and the second was Argonaut Sheffield. I decided to reach out to the former developers from the London branch first. I initially didn’t get any replies, but I remained persistent. After waiting a few weeks, I eventually I got a reply from a former artist. Keep in mind that personal details about the former developers I contacted will be expunged in order to protect their identities and to prevent harassment and spam.

This is the first message I received after I inquired about Bionicle: The Game:

“Hi, yes I was lead artist on Bionicle. I'd say that it was a game that we cared a lot about, and to be honest we had high hopes for, at least initially. As always with game dev there wasn't just one cause of the games problems, but probably the biggest was we fell in love with the games setting and bit off far more than we could chew. We should have started with far more cautious goals, but we wanted to tell the whole story. I'm surprised if there was that much unused content on the disc TBH but the original scope of the game is definitely visible in naming conventions etc. we had intended each character to have toa levels and toa nuva (if thats the right term?) their powered up versions - before adding the 7th. Given that they have different abilities that was a huge ask of the team.

(Redacted)”

This message was about what I expected, the devs were a bit too ambitious and were unable to complete their ideas during the given development time. I later asked about the developer signatures stored within the BIGB archives, and asked them if they had worked on any of the Kopaka areas, since I found their signature within a subset of those files:

“the 'signatures' probably just refer to the designers - which is a relatively small subset of the team as a whole. I oversaw the project from an art perspective, so characters env, frontend etc then I ended up doing some animation work on the bull, onua, the weird door thing. I didn't work on Kopaka - that work was done up in Sheffield, I used to visit their studio to review stuff & sign it off.”

I’m sure the Bull was probably the Kane-Ra seen in Onua Nuva’s level. There are some pre-release trailers that show a Kane-Ra attacking the player with unique animations too. After that, I asked him about Argonaut Sheffield and their work on Bionicle 2: City of Legends. To my surprise, I got this:

“No, I didn't I thought they were disbanded alongside Argo”

This essentially meant that nobody from Argonaut London was aware of the development of Bionicle 2: City of Legends. With this information, it was easy to conclude that Bionicle 2 was created solely by Argonaut Sheffield as speculated. After failing to get more replies from former developers from Argonaut London, I shifted my focus to Argonaut Sheffield, intrigued by the messages I received from the former artist.

After a bit of waiting, I got a reply from another former artist.

“Hi,

Yes, I worked on Bionicle as a character artist along side artist (redacted). He was my mentor back then as it was my first industry job. I think we modelled about 130 odd characters/modular models back then between us. The character concepts we're drawn up by (redacted).

Argonaut Sheffield was previously Particle Systems who made I-War, the PC Sci Fi game and some other iterations. It was a technically adept small team and great to work with. I didn't have much to do with the London branch. We went on to try and make some failed movie tie-ins alongside them at a later date. Catwoman, Zorro, Star Wars, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and also Bionicle 2.. which was going to be a fluid parkour type platformer. Which never materialised as after being there just shy of two years, London shut us down.

I'm actually working back in the offices where it all happened now. Which seems strange. I did work at Sumo Digital as a lead Char artist for ten years in between. I know there's a basement full of hard drives still here as one of the old directors still rents some space here.

(redacted)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I received concept art for both Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle 2: City of Legends in this message. The art was later posted on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/HexMantis/status/1099883979942084608

Aside from the plethora of art, this message provided some insight about how Argonaut Sheffield came to be. It was previously known as Particle Systems before it assimilated into Argonaut Games. After this exchange, I reached out to a former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time I provided a set of questions for the developer to answer in an effort to obtain specific information. After waiting for nearly a month, I got a reply:

The questions I asked will be enclosed within [ ] to avoid confusion.

“Hey!

There's some incomplete credits here (redacted)

but you could try contacting (redacted) as he was the lead programmer there. He used to work at PKR too, also owned by (redacted).

(redacted)

[Asked about the main development platform for the games]

1) Yep it was PS2. The PS2 version was handled by Argonaut Edgeware and programmers in Sheffield did ports for the other platforms

[Asked about the cut content from Bionicle: The Game]

2) Sorry, I wasn't involved with that bit. I was responsible for adding the hyper threading features on the PC (redacted)

[Asked about interactions with the London branch]

3) Yep, we worked together on it. Designers and Artists in Sheffield were working on assets for the main game.

[Asked about I-Ninja’s compatibility with Bionicle: The Game]

4) I think they should be compatible with each other. I-ninja came out a bit later though.

[Asked about Bionicle 2: City of Legends]

5) Maybe, not sure as it was a long time ago and I then moved to the Edgeware studio. If they did I guess it was just a prototype for a pitch

Good luck with your fact finding!“

I later asked if they knew of any early builds of either game, and I got this reply:

“Hey!

Sorry for the late reply. I believe everything was archived by Argonaut and EA. I'm not sure if anyone archived it personally at Argonaut or not but there were a lot of people working on it. They created archive PCs with everything you need to make the game from the source assets.

Thanks,

(redacted)”

The concept of the supposed “archive PCs” was interesting, but I doubt any of them are still around after all this time. After this, I contacted another former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time with a focus on Bionicle 2: City of Legends:

“Hi William, I must admit, I'm curious where you found my name in the demo. Do you have a source code drop to go with it, or did I leave my name in an error message in the binary package itself?

Either way, yes I did work on the demo, albeit briefly. The engine the demo is built on is largely the same engine used in Bionicle (the original PS2/Xbox/PC game), Catwoman, and I-Ninja. It has an older pedigree than that too, but those were the games it was used on while Argonaut Sheffield was part of the Argonaut group. I was one of the programmers who ported the engine over to PC & Xbox for the original Bionicle, which is why I was involved in the demo in some capacity.

I'm still in touch with a lot of the designers who worked on the movement demo; the lead designer, (redacted), has said that I can pass on his contact details if you'd like to get in touch with him. You can contact him at (redacted).

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I was not surprised to get confirmation that Bionicle 2 used the same engine as Bionicle: The Game, since most of my existing programs I wrote for Bionicle: The Game were compatible with the Xbox demo. I asked if a PS2 port of Bionicle 2: City of Legends ever existed, since the Xbox demo we have has DualShock button mappings present in the game:

“Ah, I'll bet that's because I'll have compiled and built the disc image, so it's embedded my PC's name into the image. The level select would have just been for test levels where I was looking at specific bugs, performance problems or new features.

I really can't remember if we did PS2 or PC builds of the demo, other than the development binaries the design team would have been using. It's unlikely we'll have done a full ISO for the PS2, because the spiders caused real performance problems and we'd have wanted to show it to the publishers on the fastest available hardware.

By the way, the Xbox version will have reference to PS2 hardware because the original engine was PS2 only. The easiest way to port the engine was to, as far as possible, just get the Xbox and PC versions to pretend they were doing exactly the same thing as the PS2. For example, the game scripts don't need to know that when they get a button press from Cross or Circle, they're actually getting button presses from A or B. So although the names are going to be PS2-centric, they're still doing Xbox specific stuff.”

I was surprised to find out that the Morbuzakh Spiders were the primary reason for shifting Bionicle 2 to the original Xbox. I guess it makes sense, given how little time Argonaut Sheffield had to optimize the game. Switching to the original Xbox appeared to be a quick and easy way to avoid the hassle of optimization.

I later asked about the audio issues present in the Xbox demo, and for some general information about Bionicle: The Game.

“Hi William,

I'm afraid I've got no idea why the demo would be silent - it's been far too many years for me to remember the exact details, and I have no idea which version of the demo is the one which has been circulated. The full code for the audio system will have been present, because it was just a continuation of the engine used on Bionicle, and I'm sure the designers would have had at least some placeholder audio to hook up.

Audio is habitually the last thing to get hooked up in any game development, and since most developers prefer to have a silent build and listen to their own music while they work, it's not unusual for it either to be neglected in early internal builds, or for it to have been hacked to be silent (assuming the demo was one built locally rather than for showing to a publisher).

In terms of the development situation on Bionicle, although we weren't directly in the body of main developers, I think most of us were aware that the game wasn't progressing as well as it should. As well as the code team doing the porting work, our design and art teams were making the 'adrenaline levels' - which were the short lava/ice/tree surfing levels. They were only supposed to be short breaks between much larger levels, but it became increasingly obvious towards the end that these relatively small levels were still a large percentage of the actual content, and the other larger levels weren't coming online as fast as they should. QA in particular do full play-throughs on a regular basis, so they have a very good view of how fast the game as a whole is coming together.

I'm not 100% sure on all of the reasons for the delays in development, having been a relatively junior developer in a satellite studio at the time, but the reasons discussed at the time with leads and producers are fairly common ones that I've seen and heard about on other projects since. Inexperienced publishers or IP holders who haven't worked with game developers before often don't understand the lead times involved in producing content.

It's very hard to explain to customers who are used to working with companies like advertising agencies, who can turn around a complete change of direction in a matter of days, that you need to make and lock down decisions months or even years in advance. I think the penny finally dropped for Lego about three months out from submission that if they kept holding up approvals and kept requesting changes, they weren't going to get any game at all on the shelves - which of course meant we all had to crunch like hell to get the content in good enough shape to ship!

Cheers,”

An example of the aforementioned “Adrenaline sections” is the Tahu Nuva level from Bionicle: The Game. This level is actually internally named “Ta Adrenaline” as well. It’s obvious at this point that Tahu Nuva was originally going to have more than just surfing sections in his level, given the evidence in this message and the fact that he has a full set of unused walking animations.

I eventually contacted the designer mentioned by the former programmer, and got a reply after a month. (This designer was kind enough to restate my questions in his message):

“Hey,

I'm so sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. I was launching a game and I completely forgot about this.

1. What was your role as a designer like when working on both games? What kind of work did you do?

I was lead designer at Argonaut Sheffield, and we were brought in to help out on Bionicle the Game. We were responsible for what was known internally as "the adrenaline sections". The game was split into third person. exploration and combat levels (which were developed by the main Argonaut office in London), and the fast moving on rails sections that we created. As well as leading the team on these sections I was directly involved in the Tahu Nuva Boss Race near the end of the game.

2. Were you aware of content being cut or removed when working on Bionicle: The Game? Did you work on anything that didn't make the cut?

Like with any game there's work that involved that never sees the light of day. There were a lot of changes to the design over time, sometimes for practical reasons, other times because Lego wanted them. I seem to recall that in the original design you would play as each Toa normally and each one again in their Nuva form in large open levels - with the platform adventure and the adrenaline sections seamlessly blending into each other. Quite soon after we were brought into the project a much clearer separation was made between the two, but I'm sure there was lots of the preparatory work for that ended up on the disc.

3. Do you know if any other character models aside from Matau (The green character) were created for Bionicle 2?

No other characters were made for that demo. I think we had a matter of weeks and everything had to be done very quickly. That build represents a build that we sent to Lego (And Giant who eventually became TT Games) for approval and hopefully for more funding for the company. And we spent a lot of time agreeing the visual look of the character, as it was very different from what we'd done in the first game.

The work done on Bionicle 2 was entirely done up in Sheffield so we had a lot more control over the content. We knew that the Bionicle audience was getting older, and their gaming needs were becoming more sophisticated and we wanted to do something that would appeal both to that audience and be an interesting game in its own right. We felt that the first game had been so compromised by production issues that it ended up being very disappointing. We wanted to make something fluid and interesting that was a joy to play as a platformer, and had the dynamism and the sense of scale that the Bionicle world deserved.

4. Do you know if any other builds of the Bionicle 2 movement demo exist? Like a build that has working audio?

I don't remember for sure if we ever ended up with a build with audio. But it feels a bit unlikely that we would have got to the stage that we did without their being something in there, especially if the audio assets were on the disk. Somewhere in the depths of my home I think I have a PS2 version of the demo, so I may see if I can get that up and running and find out. As I think - so far - the only people who have had access to the game have played on Xbox, right?

Thanks”

Of course LEGO was being difficult during Bionicle: The Game’s development. They did something similar with Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, and that certainly did not end well. This message was a big deal for us at the time, not only did we get a lot of information about both games, but we also got confirmation that a PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends actually exists! Unfortunately, this developer never replied again, and I was beginning to lose motivation.

I decided I had enough of Argonaut Sheffield at that point, and shifted my focus to Argonaut London once more. After waiting a bit, I got another reply from a former AI programmer.

“Hi William, sure thing, although it was a long time back so may not remember too much :)

probably easier to use my email (redacted) though as I rarely login to Linkedin.”

We later communicated via email:

“Hi William,

on the unused level front, it’s entirely likely that a bunch of the designers and strat coders ’play areas’ would have ended up in the build. Not sure if you’ve had any background info on how a lot of the Argonaut games were built, but here’s a brief rundown :)

So, when I started at Argonaut in 1997 , I joined the Croc 2 team, who were using the first updated iteration of the engine they built for Croc that had its own scripting language written (originally for the level designers to use) to write all the gameplay elements, while the engine coders focused entirely on the main engine for the PS1 (and a separate small team handled porting the engine to GameCube/Dreamcast, PC etc.). The idea being that ASL (Argonaut Strategy Language) Strats would be cross platform as they were just interpreted by the engine.

As it turned out, ASL strats were a bit too complex for the level designers to write themselves without coder assistance, so Argonaut let them focus on the actual level design itself (using the editor that just became known as the Croc Editor) and got gameplay specialist coders (like myself) to work on the strats. This worked out great as we could focus on individual items or groups of them independent of what was happening with the engine and we could quickly tweak a strat and run it on the devkit without doing a full build of the game (which took *AGES* back then ;) ) as well as some basic debugging capability.

This meant that most of the level designers and strat coders usually had a level slapped together with all the bits they were trying out. I don’t know if my one with all the Matorans following you in a chain still exists, but there were some pretty strange ones. In theory these wouldn’t end up on the disk but the build system was pretty clunky, so it’s entirely likely that some ended up there.

So by the time I got drafted onto the Bionicle PS2 project, I’d worked on Croc 2, Aladdin Nazira’s Revenge, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Bionicle Matoran Adventures on GBA. All but the last one using revisions of the Croc Editor and ASL. (The Emperor’s New Groove, Harry Potter 2, Malice, Catwoman & iNinja also got written with the engine). I say revisions as not a lot was actually added to either over time. Also, by Bionicle PS2 I was kind of an emergency response coder for strats, as I got parachuted in after the project started to help fix a lot of problems with how ASL was being used and design issues with the levels.

There were a lot of issues with Bionicle (not as many as Aladdin or Catwoman started with and my 4 days on Malice were certainly interesting, but they’re entirely different stories ;) ). Mostly from inexperience as the team working on it had a lot of new hires or ones that had been drafted from other teams that didn’t use ASL or the Croc Engine, so they weren’t familiar with its limitations. There were some HR issues going on too, but I’m not going to get into those. The team were mostly all professional and good at what they did, but struggling with a relatively clunky engine. By this point Argonaut had split off most of the engine coders to the “Tools” team and we had to officially request any engine or editor changes we wanted through their chain of command (and they weren’t interested in working on the ‘old’ engine).

There were also some issues with inexperience in games from the Lego UK side too. So a lot of the overall design rules were a bit flaky and lead to a lot of levels and gameplay getting changed. The “No Weapons” rule was one we thought was pretty odd, considering the swords, pikes etc. in use. Apparently they’re tools, not weapons. So we weren’t allowed to use them as direct combat weapons for gameplay, only for magical ranged effects. There was also a lot of issues of really big levels being designed without consideration for what could actually be rendered on screen at the required frame rate on PS2 with the old Croc engine. Even updated to PS2 and with everything the engine coders could do to optimise it, the engine and ASL were struggling to do what the designers wanted.

I don’t think it’s a case of biting off a bit more than they could chew (we successfully wrote Harry Potter from scratch in 9 months in time to release with the film using the engine but that was very much a dream team of all the right people with the right skills and a publisher working well in sync). More a case of it being a new team of people not so experienced with the system and a publisher that wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted. So things were that bit harder to get done in the time available.

In theory, some older gold disks are likely still around. (redacted) was one of our engine guys on the project and “Master of the Build” (he was the only one who had enough tasteless Hawaiian shirts for the numerous submission build days). I’ll have a dig through my CD collection, but it’s unlikely I’ve got any Bionicle builds surviving. I *might* still have some strat code floating about on an old hard disk. I do seem to have some of the Catwoman build code that used mostly the same (although slightly updated) engine though.

One thing that I think got axed was my chain of Matorans. The idea was a level where you’d be picking them up from around the level and they’d follow you to a rescue point. Normally this wouldn’t actually be that difficult to code, but ASL never actually had any arrays! I’d been asking for them for a couple of projects by that point but they never got added, so my Matorans were each working as their own array elements and frantically messaging one another in a chain, which never quite worked reliably enough with ASL, so we shelved the idea.

(redacted) was one of the strat coders working with me on Bionicle. I think he’d just joined Argonaut then, but luckily, knew his stuff.

(redacted)”

I guess a few of the unused levels I found in the PS2 port of Bionicle: The Game are examples of “play areas” given how small some of them are. This message also provided some insight about ASL, the proprietary language both games were created with. This gave me a good idea about how difficult ASL was to use as well. The fact that Arognaut also had many new hires that couldn’t handle ASL’s idiosyncrasies certainly didn’t help Bionicle: The Game at all.

I later reached out to another former AI programmer affiliated with the previous one. They had some interesting things to say:

“Wow, I'm really surprised that anyone is that interested in Bionicle, because I didn't think it was a very good game, but I'm happy that you felt strongly enough to do this, I guess. That's quite an impressive bit of digging.

[Asked about ASL]

Q1) ASL wasn't a great language to use, it was being developed at the same time as the engine so it was constantly changing and was occasionally broken as well. The turnaround from making a change in code to testing it on the target device was quite slow. And coming from C++ the lack of modularity was frustrating. There was some talk in the team about wanting it to be object oriented, but anything that made it cleaner and less prone to repetition would have been good. My memory of it isn't that good since it was 20 years ago. I remember the collision and animation systems being awkward and crude as well though. Do you know about the other games that the system was used for? Catwoman took the animation engine a bit further, but it was really horrible trying to program the animation blending for finite state machines with a language that was so hard to debug.

[Asked about scrapped content in Bionicle: The Game]

Q2) I don't remember much about what was scrapped. There were different teams working on different levels and playable characters, I mainly worked on the Tahu levels and the final boss. I think there might have been some stuff scrapped from the other characters. One or two of them were developed by the team who were doing the cross platform conversion for us, and we didn't see much of what they were doing and only saw it quite late.

[Asked if any early builds of Bionicle: The Game still exist]

Q3) I have no idea - perhaps Sony or EA have archives of the earlier builds. Someone on the engine team might do, I can't think how or why a strat coder would have one.”

The issues with the collision system they mentioned are definitely present in Bionicle: The Game. It’s quite easy to glitch out of bounds, as speedrunners have demonstrated many times. We later talked about general programming concepts and discussed ASL further:

“Reassuring to know that I'm not imagining Bionicle being pretty bad! I think object oriented was just flavour of the month in 2003, Java was a highly respected language at the time and we thought it was the future. It would have been nice to work in a language that was used in other places, because having ASL on your CV was a pretty crappy prospect for seeking other work. At least if you used Fortran or Pascal it was recognised by employers as a mainstream language. WTF is ASL? I worked in two other organisations that had proprietary languages and it was annoying. The good thing about starting work at Argonaut at least was that ASL was a proven language that you could make games with, and it did let you get down to the relevant bits of gameplay you wanted to take control of. Before that I worked at Phase 3 studios where they had never made an action game before, and we spent a lot of time programming systems that had hardly any effect on gameplay. So I was grateful for ASL and the toolchain for making it easy to do some limited things. I was very impressed by someone on the iNinja team for getting ropes to work with a vertlet algorithm, we stole that later for the green Bionicle to use. I think the High Voltage Software studio might be using a different language with the same initials? I can't see how it could possibly be Argonaut's language. I'm pretty sure there was some talk about opening it up as middleware to sell other studios but I don't think we ever got there. Many of the staff from Catwoman went on to work at Rocksteady, Sony and Ninja Theory, but I think they just started using whatever engine was in place there. You could find hundreds of people who had brushes with the language.”

I asked about other studios using ASL for their games:

“What release date were the games? Argonaut folded in 2004 I think, so the creditors might have managed to sell off the technology as cheap middleware of last-gen consoles

or perhaps they were licensing the tech while we were using it, and I just hadn't been aware of it”

I sent him some notable examples of games using ASL from other studios, such as The Conduit and Ben 10: Protector of Earth:

“That fits the picture then - liquidation in 2004, sell the technology in 2005, two years of learning the systems and developing content, release in 2007

The PS3 would be the current gen console by then, but the PS2 had a large enough user base to make it a viable market, especially for movie tie-ins and children’s games”

I later asked if there was any possibility that Argonaut received parts of ASL from other sources:

“That's an interesting question... I don't know but I think Argonaut were using strats since 1993 and the language gradually evolved from Starfox to Croc and so on. I think it was around before High Voltage existed. It does seem like a massive coincidence that the header is VOLT but there aren't many words that sound cool to programmers so I still suspect it is just a coincidence. Programming was Argonaut's strongest suit, it doesn't make sense that they would buy tech in like that. I was only at the company for two years or so, ask someone who was there longer.”

Then out of the blue, another former designer from Argonaut Sheffield reached out to me about Bionicle 2. After that, I asked them a few questions:

“Hi William,

Great to hear from you. Let me see what I can do to answer your questions!

[Asked about the development process of Bionicle 2]

1. Designing the demo was a bit of a break from the usual licensed Dev. We had creative control so got to decide what direction we'd like to take things in (hence a departure from the 'standard' platforming fare of the time!) My role was predominantly as a technical designer - that was, creating ideas and prototyping/building in the tools. For the demo I was responsible for populating and scripting some of the functionalities in the level.

[Asked about the broken audio in the Xbox port of Bionicle 2]

2. Not sure on the silence in the build tbh... I seem to remember doing some work on creating and implementing some spot FX and seem to remember we put some audio track on the front end screen. With this being a closed pitch demo, I honestly can't remember if we'd created the track or sourced it from elsewhere!

[Asked if they knew about any other builds of Bionicle 2]

3. I believe a have a variety of unreleased games and demos on various formats somewhere. Most of them will be PS2 from that period.

Thanks”

When they mentioned owning a variety of unreleased games and demos, I was immediately intrigued. I later asked if they had a PS2 build of Bionicle 2 and offered to send him a copy of our Xbox build of the game in exchange for it, and to my surprise I got this:

“Hey William,

Cool, I'll have a search when I get some time and attempt to extract it for you!

Thanks”

I was ecstatic. Finally, after months of searching, I was about to get something tangible! But the days passed, and those days turned into weeks. I was beginning to lose hope until I got this message:

“Hey William,

Quick note on my progress - I've not forgotten! I delved into my garage over the weekend and came away with 3 CDs labeled bionicle 2 with various dates on!

I'll attempt to create an ISO of the latest date and share with you when I get a mo (most likely the weekend again!)

Thanks”

Not only did he have a build of the game for the PS2, but THREE of them! After seeing this, I decided to wait for the weekend to arrive. Unfortunately I would be very busy on this particular weekend, but Bionicle was still my top priority! So I proceeded to bail on my friends to wait for an obscure as hell prototype game from a discontinued children’s toy line to show up in my inbox. However, on Sunday, the weekend was coming to a close, and I had heard nothing from the former designer. My waiting and persistence later paid off after I got this message:

“Hi William,

Give this a go - no idea if it works - let me know!

(redacted)”

At last! I finally got it! The latest known PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends! But there was a problem. The game didn’t boot. Just my luck. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I ended up rebuilding the entire iso with some proprietary tools, and by some miracle, it booted up in my emulator. It’s about what you would expect: It’s similar to Xbox build in many ways, but it is also different. Unlike the Xbox port, the audio works, and there are some extra graphical effects and animations. I was also able to get the game to boot up on a real PS2 without issue.

I can’t say exactly when BioMedia Project will release this build to the public, but I'm sure it will happen soon. Until then, feel free to watch some gameplay footage of the demo on my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Dvmzz92F3oo

These past couple of years have been pretty crazy for Bionicle. The Legend of Mata Nui was found TWICE, and there has been so much more activity within the community as a result. I’m glad I was able to make my mark and get this unreleased build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends into the hands of the Bionicle community where it belongs. If you made it this far, Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, don’t forget to share it. I spent a lot of time researching this, and I would really appreciate it. Special Thanks:

BioMedia Project

Liam Robertson

Fraug L. Coolman

#bionicle #lego

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rubberduckyrye · 5 years

Note

Bls do the list stuff for Kurochi... my son... but also Kaede, hit me with ur thoughts on her

Send me a character and I’ll list: (Kurochi)

Favorite thing about them - Everything??? Like literally everything??? I love his sass, I love his personality, I love his motivations and character........ and is it vain of me to say I love his design? Ehe~

Least favorite thing about them - He’s not canon and this is absolutely unacceptable.

Favorite line - Oh gooood. I have no idea. He’s got so many good lines. Though I think I’ve gotta chalk it up to this specific line: “If that’s what you think, without thinking through it at all, then that really does make you a pathetic detective.” This is the first of many iterations of a post chapter 4 trial scene, specifically a response to when Shuichi calls Kokichi “dangerous”, but this one??? This one is my favorite for some reason. It sums up nicely the issues with both Kurochi, who is biased and loyal to Kokichi to a fault, and the rest of the class, who are using Kokichi as a scapegoat and not thinking about the consequences of their actions.

BrOTP - The twins, ofc! But I also brotp him with like.... everyone.... but I think that I kind of brotp him and Kiyo a lot tbh? Also Miu and Kaede.

OTP - Shuochi, Kairochi, Jadochi, Kurochi dating all three??? Yes pls. (Also why Shuichi isn’t a Brotp for Rochi, though I can also see them as bros)

NOTP - I don’t really have strong feelings. Probably Kurochi and Maki tbh? More so because I laugh at the idea of that ever happening.

Random headcanon - While Kokichi has Mr. Hopps, I imagine that Kurochi has a stuff animal that was made by his mother that is equivalent in sentimentality. Probably an animal that Kurochi was a huge fan of as a toddler. Umeko wouldn’t just make Kokichi a plush, she’s make both her babies plushies.

Unpopular opinion - Uuuuuhhhh that requires me to know popular opinions and not agree with them. Except the popular consensus is that Kurochi is a precious baby and I mean. That’s just canon.

Song I associate with them - This is totally cheating but Lollia’s cover of Exorcism is still His Song to me. Lollia’s cover of Rolling Girl fits both twins imo. This World To You by Eve and Rachie’s cover of Circles makes me think of Kokichi thinking of his brother in a dead!Rochi AU. Juby’s cover of Self Inflicted Achromatic also reminds me of Rochi... okay there’s a lot of songs I could associate with him okay???

Favorite picture of them - Uh this feels weird cause a lot of stuff I made fndnajdnka but honestly??? I love all of the fan art people have made for Kurochi. They’re all so cute and good and I always want to see more hhhhhh

Send me a character and I’ll list: (Kaede)

Favorite thing about them - I just love how relatable I find Kaede tbh? Like the fact she’s very ADHD just makes me happy. I relate to that so much. I feel like personality wise, I’d be most like her too.

Least favorite thing about them - Hmmm, I gotta say the kinda creepy sexual stuff is gross but bad writers are bad and the Author is Dead to Me

Favorite line - Oh Geez... Nothing really sticks out to me sadly? TBH I can only think of the great one liners Kokichi and Kaito had fnjndkjndjka. I do like it when she’s v done with Miu and like “You haven’t learned anything!”

BrOTP - Saimatsu. I personally really like this ship as platonic friends more than romantic.

OTP - Uuuuuh, I kind of like Momomatsu, Irumatsu, Oumaede can be good... I haven’t seen much else for other ships that I liked

NOTP - If we’re talking about romantic ships only, Saimatsu. I think the ship’s been kind of soiled for me from all of the Shuichi haters that were just salty the first main game girl protagonist died. I can’t see them in a good relationship now, sadly.

Random headcanon - Kaede is on the chubby side and you can’t convince me otherwise

Unpopular opinion - Ya’ll saw this coming but I don’t actually hate it that Kaede died and was replaced with Shuichi. I think both had potential for character growth, but Kaede’s growth would have leaned more into the negative side of things. with how bad the writing can get, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaede would’ve been written in such a way that made her unlikable.

Song I associate with them - Anything with piano in it tbh. I don’t actually have any songs that I listen to that make me think strictly of her though.

Favorite picture of them - Something about this picture of Kaede is just so cute tbh

#tacobellebandit

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fycarmensandiego · 6 years

Text

My thoughts on the new show

It’s not really a proper review because how would I even do that, so here are my various thoughts, somewhat collected! (This is long as hell, fair warning.)

General thoughts:

Le Chevre and El Topo are definitely a couple. I’m so glad other people in the tag are seeing this too. My first inkling was when they were hugging each other after graduating, but it was Carmen’s comment that they only ever work together that really got me like “oh they’re gay.”

Speaking of gays, Dash Haber (Countess Cleo’s courier) is one. His voice is so gay-coded, I knew this one immediately. Not crazy about him being an antagonist (even among antagonists), but he amused me, so he’s good.

Even if they have the same names, these are different characters. The exceptions here being Carmen, the Chief, and possibly Julia. This isn’t a Tomb Raider: Legend case of putting characters in different situations and slightly changing their personalities, or even a Tomb Raider 2013 case of radically changing their personalities to coincide with their new paradigms. Chase, Zack, Ivy, and the rest are really entirely new characters that simply share their names with past characters. It’s almost as if the names are references to the past shows and games than ties to those characters.

For the most part, they even have different designs. Zack is certainly the most radical change, but even the most similar have some changes. Prof. Maelstrom isn’t nearly as stocky as his namesake, and while Dr. Saira Bellum has wild hair like Dr. Sara Bellum, it’s a strange shape as well as a strange color, and her skin is darker.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in the franchise, either. Minnie Series from Where on Earth is apparently a totally different character from Minnie Series from the original Where in Time game. Adventures in Math changed a lot of the characters’ designs and backstories: some, like Jacqueline Hyde, still had the same core, but others, like Jane Reaction, are so different they have to be considered different characters. And then there are all the different iterations of the Chief: old white guy, middle-aged white guy, middle-aged Black gal, hologram, presumably white guy shrouded in mystery...

I will say that as a result of this, I was disappointed with Zack and Ivy. Not because this Zack and Ivy are bad characters, but because Where on Earth Zack and Ivy are my favorite characters in the franchise after Carmen, and I was looking forward to getting to see them, or at least characters resembling them, again. But, it is what it is.

I get the Kim Possible comparisons, but they’re not where I’d jump first. There are similarities: both are action shows with deliciously OTT villains (though the VILE gang wish they were as effortlessly iconic as Drakken, Shego, and Señor Senior, Sr. and Jr.) and similar art styles, and Player/Wade is a fair comparison. But I have to say I’d never have thought of that comparison if I hadn’t seen it here on Tumblr, perhaps because KP was rooted in Kim and Ron’s daily lives (Sailor Moon-style), whereas CS is rooted in its overarching plot (Chuck-style).

I do agree with another comparison: Coach Brunt and Countess Cleo, and Eartha Brute and the Contessa. I saw a post in the tag earlier today that brought this up, and while I hadn’t thought of it - probably because the Where in the World show is one of the parts of canon I’m least familiar with - it seems legit to me. I had wondered why these two were seemingly born out of nowhere, when the other three had their names and likenesses drawn from Where on Earth characters. (Shadowsan seems to me to be based on Suhara’s design and, to some extent, personality, with Shadow Hawkins’ name.) The specific theory that post espouses, that it’s a legal issue, seems possible to me. Although the World villains did appear in other Carmen media, I know WGBH and WQED own the copyright to the show, though they licensed the franchise from Brøderbund. So I have no idea what the legal tangle is behind that show, and I imagine it’s very complicated.

Speaking of WGBH: I wonder if Zack and Ivy being from Boston is an incredibly subtle reference to its location there.

I have mixed feelings about the art style. It is great in still shots, but I found it a little hard to watch as animation for very long.

I don’t ship anything – yet. Julia’s clarification of “travel partner” is certainly ripe for shippy implications, but for me there’s really not much on a personality level to ship her and Carmen at this point. (Likewise Carmen and Ivy, or Carmen and Zack.) I could definitely get behind Julia having a crush on Carmen, the way I feel OG!Jules certainly does.

As to Gray... he was plainly asking Carmen out / hitting on her when he gave her his card. But even on the way to the date, she insisted she saw him as an older brother figure. Like with Julia, I could potentially get behind it in future, but I’d have to see it developed further. There’s also the matter of him trying to kill Carmen, which I’m not crazy about... Carmen’s forgiven him since he was under orders from VILE, and his mind-erase courtesy of Dr. Bellum has given him a fresh start, but it didn’t change who he fundamentally is as a person, and that person made the decision to join VILE and ultimately to agree to kill Carmen. But I’m not totally anti-Carmen/Gray at this point.

(In re Carmen’s sexuality: I have always felt strongly that all of Carmen’s previous incarnations were ace/aro, but this Carmen? The sapphics have claimed her, and I’m here for it. I’m fine with her being gay, bi, or pan. I’m fine with her being acespec and/or arospec, or not.)

I was surprised by the violence. Scenes of literal attempted murder would never have made it in previous shows or games! In fact, a lot of the melee combat wouldn’t have. The franchise hasn’t always been totally non-violent - Ivy whacked the occasional villain around on Earth, and ThinkQuick and Stolen Drums both required the player to destroy VILE robots, the former featuring robots with personalities - but I don’t think it’s ever been shown in such detail as the combat scenes in this series. I don’t have a problem with it, exactly, but it was a little jarring.

Things I didn’t like:

The educational moments were utterly didactic. I guess you could say the same about Earth, but I feel like it integrated the education into the plot better, and it certainly made the educational moments more fun by working jokes into them. Meanwhile, this show is taking the Stolen Drums approach of info-dumping for two minutes and then moving ahead with the actual plot with no attention to education thereafter. To go back to my favorite video game (I warned y’all), fucking Tomb Raider: Legend did a better job integrating education with action. And it’s not even supposed to be educational!

Stop trying to make “caper” happen. It’s not going to happen. It’s a perfectly good word to use from time to time, as it always has been in canon, but for “The ____ Caper” to be every episode title, and for it to be used at every opportunity in the script when “theft” or “heist” or another word could have been used just as easily gets annoying. The thesaurus: it exists. Also, it’s so overused that at a certain point I started thinking of the culinary garnish instead of a crime. (And I’ve never even eaten capers. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen them in person.)

I’m not crazy about the newly established genesis of Carmen’s name. Having her grow up with no name but “Black Sheep” makes me feel uncomfortable tbh, and while I like the significance of her choosing her own name, pulling it off a hat label seems cheap. And out of character for someone as thoughtful as Carmen.

Some of the villains seemed like real cultural stereotypes. Thankfully, it was not nearly as bad as Adventures in Math, or we’d literally have had Le Chevre saying, “Hon hon hon, baguettes!” but Shadowsan and Paper Star in particular made me uncomfortable as they felt like very stereotypical “Japanese” characters. The same could be said of Coach Brunt, who while not a stereotype of any marginalized group, was definitely a bit one-note. Coach Beiste, but evil and Texan.

Cross-language misspellings. Namely, Shadowsan and Le Chevre should be Shadow-san and Le Chèvre, should they not? The omission of accent marks has always been one of my major bugaboos, and while it’s not the first time the franchise has done it, it still annoys me. Shadow-san’s missing hyphen annoys me even more, since the hyphen indicates that other honorifics could be used, and in fact, it would (if I understand correctly) be more appropriate for his students to address him as Shadow-sama or Shadow-sensei while his peers call him Shadow-san.

I felt some real misogynistic undertones to Tigress. In a show that otherwise is quite female-forward, it irked me that of Carmen’s four classmates, only one is a girl - and she’s the one who becomes Carmen’s rival. And then for that to continue throughout the series, setting her up as the mean girl to Carmen’s good girl (in many ways, the Regina to Carmen’s Janis Ian), really bothered me. I certainly don’t think female characters have to be perfect, or expect perfect representation, but it feels like Tigress’ development just was not done mindfully, and instead they let themselves fall into misogynistic tropes. It’s not like you to pit women against each other, etc. etc.

The ages and timeline confused me. Carmen seems to be in her late teens or early twenties throughout the main part of the series (I saw a post that mentioned she says she’s 20), yet she was clearly still a preteen or young teen when she stole Cookie’s hard drive. Since Cookie’s delivery is an annual event, its information shouldn’t last Carmen those several years to grow up.

By a similar token, Player seems to be the same age in the flashbacks as in the present day. As a result, he seems a little older than Carmen to start, and a few years younger to conclude. It messes me up. Not least because, not gonna lie, I want to be sure it’s okay for me to be so gay for Carmen.

Things I liked:

The references to previous canon. Along with the aforementioned names, we have:

Rita Moreno’s cameo! (Please, please, God, give us another Rita cameo and cameos for the rest of the Earth cast next season.)

Mentions of punning names. This was delightfully lampshaded with Gray’s original codename of “Graham Crackle” and the subsequent drags from his classmates. And while most of the other characters didn’t get punning names, one of the two who did was Rita’s character, Cookie Booker, the bookkeeper - or, indeed, book-cooker.

The very meta plot point of Carmen getting her outfit by stealing it from Cookie, voiced by her previous incarnation’s voice actor.

Frequent utterances of “Where in the world is...” or “Where on Earth is...”

Tigress’ name, a reference to an Earth episode where Carmen faces a new rival. I don’t know if the Duchess plotline was also a deliberate reference to this episode, or a subconscious one, but it’s so similar that I can’t think it was total coincidence.

I’m thinking “the cleaners” are a reference to the Ick brothers, the janitors from World and USA 3.0.

Carmen is ginger. I have a significant bias for redheads. (I dye my hair red and am only half-joking when I call myself transginger as well as transgender. Heaven on Earth-era Belinda Carlisle is one of my major style rolemodels.) Carmen suddenly being auburn for the first time just makes her even more endearing to me than one would have thought possible. Plus, Ivy and Zack both being redheads? Iconic.

Carmen is also gorgeous. Now, unlike some of you, I have never previously been gay for Carmen; she’s always been more of a big sister figure to me. Instead, as a kid, I was gay for TV!Jacqueline Hyde, Ann Tikwittee, and Ivy, in that chronological order. But the moment I saw this Carmen with her hair up in the trailer, I was a goner. And in her cocktail dress at the charity auction, or her black catsuit at the end of episode 9? I thirst. There were several other points as well where I was just like, “Oh my god, she’s so pretty.” Yes, darlings, I am very gay.

That choker. Most fashionable thing Carmen’s ever worn. Fight me. We love a stylish queen.

Player has a fidget spinner. And it’s only seen briefly, which to me says it’s an everyday part of his life, not something they threw in to try to seem cool... Which in turn allows me to point to something and headcanon that Player is autistic. He’s also known mostly by a username, and spends most of his time working on his special interest, and doesn’t seem to be one for socializing in traditional ways. We love an autistic prince. (Also, this makes him in some ways a male version of my girl Futaba from Persona 5. Again, iconic.)

(To be clear, especially since it wasn’t in my little self-introduction the other day, I’m self-diagnosed on the autism spectrum. So well-written characters being autistic is really fun for me.)

Player is from Niagara Falls, near where I live (I’m on the outer edges of the Buffalo/Niagara Falls MSA), while Zack and Ivy are from Boston, where I’m moving next month. Totally personal to me, but I’m so delighted. Now, granted, Player is on the Ontario side of the Falls rather than the New York side, but still. (Hell, who can blame him for not living in Niagara Falls, NY? It’s a hellhole.)

The VILE leaders stay iconic. Countess Cleo’s crush on Zack in his “Duke” guise is hilarious and adorable, and Dr. Bellum’s obsession with cat videos? Legends only.

Paper Star is generally fantastic. It’s actually too bad for me she’s a villain, because I find her super likeable. Her tendency to hum/sing to herself is also really endearing, and she’s another one who’s easy to headcanon as neurodivergent. I really hope we get more of her, and more of her outside combat and the daily business of villainery, because she’s easily my favorite of the VILE crew.

Tigress is also awesome. Yeah, the female character bias is real, but she’s def my second-favorite, which amplifies my annoyance at the aforementioned misogyny. To be honest, though, part of it may be that she’s basically Amanda Evert, my girlfriend from - you guessed it, folks! - Tomb Raider: Legend, with purple lipstick.

Zack and Ivy met Carmen while casing a donut shop. This is so delightfully silly, and I adore it. Like, who the fuck robs a donut shop of all things? I feel like it could’ve been a reference to them being fat, maybe one that was meant to be developed further but ended up on the cutting room floor? On that note...

The fat positivity is real. Zack and Ivy are still able to move around and are even somewhat athletic; the Countess crushes on Zack; and nothing negative is said about their weight (except the potential implications of the donut shop). I love this.

Carmen and Jules’ conversation. As I said above, it’s not enough for me to start shipping them, but I love that Carmen casually addresses her as Jules rather than Julia. It’s so much like when people I don’t know well call me Soph instead of Sophie, which I always love because it connotes that closeness. Moreover, since Julia’s previous incarnation / namesake was almost always called Jules, and was Carmen’s former detective partner, I feel like there’s an implication that Carmen coined that nickname and it became her primary moniker. It’s just so good, and shipping or no shipping, I really hope we get more interactions between them next season.

The voices are good... mostly. Maelstrom is definitely the one I was most impressed with, as his voice has a lot of character while still being easy to understand. Liam O’Brien was doing a great Tim Curry impression there, but much less egregiously campy and therefore more believable. Sharon Muthu was also fantastic as Dr. Bellum - not as fantastic as WOEICS!Sara’s voice actor (Candi Milo?), but then, who could be? And Kari Wahlgren’s performance as Tigress was snarly perfection.

Gina Rodriguez is a big departure from Carmen’s typically low-pitched voice, but she’s perfectly fine. I never sat up and went, “Wow, what a performance!” but I can’t find any fault with it either. Finn Wolfhard as Player is obviously cross-promotional stunt casting, but surprisingly, it’s also perfect casting.

On the minus side... Zack and Ivy. Part of it is that their accents are so ridiculous that it’s distracting (see above Tim Curry comment). Part of it is that, at least to my ears, the accents aren’t believable - I thought they were supposed to be from Brooklyn until they mentioned Boston. I actually don’t fault the VAs for this, as they both have moments where I got the sense they’d be capable VAs for the characters (and I know Abby Trott is talented as I loved her in Tales of Berseria and Nier: Automata), but rather the voice director(s) who pushed them toward those performances. I feel like if the direction had been different, I’d have liked Zack and Ivy a lot more.

That plot twist. I truly never saw it coming. I suspected that Coach Brunt was not, in fact, the one who found Carmen, but I’d actually thought it might have been Prof. Maelstrom. The extent of Shadowsan’s revelations was a big surprise to me. Kudos to the writers for pulling that off.

Conclusion:

It’s not the series I expected. It’s not the series I hoped for. But it is one that I enjoyed, both on its own merits and for revitalizing the franchise. As I said last night, it is a hell of a feeling to have new Carmen content in 2019 (that’s actually getting attention), and for it to be really good content is a relief.

If anyone else wants to share their thoughts, either one-on-one or with the rest of the community (as it were), please do! I’d love to talk more about this series and this franchise and the thieving queen of my heart, Ms. Carmen Sandiego.

#cs2019 #carmen sandiego spoilers #reviews

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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Ok. Your future Lucy x flynn and present Lucy x Wyatt is giving me serious Fringe vibes. Like it HAS been done so not 100% crack theory haha. That said, as a S1 LW shipper I am still trying to envision a scenario where I am pro LW again in any timeline/iteration. They have completely ruined any romantic dynamic there for me and apparently I have forgiveness issues haha.

I’m still open to the idea of L/W, but mostly in fic, and only in canon after some SERIOUS dealing with Wyatt’s issues in season 3. (Which I am not holding my breath for, tbh, but maybe they’ll surprise me…?) If he’s going to go straight from losing evil!pregnant?Jessica to “I’ve always loved you Lucy let’s get back together,” I’m gonna… sigh. Mostly sigh, though some eye rolling will also be involved, and there is no acceptable answer from Lucy at this time that is not “I care about you a lot too and I am open to seeing where this goes again, but you are a mess right now and you need to take some time to think this through.” I recognize that Wyatt was put in an unenviable position (though I am judging the writers for the way the W/L/J thing was handled) but he’s just… been so dense? And is being presented with a Get Out of Jail Free card, because hey, Jessica was evil, no need to think about his behavior, apologize for it, atone for it, consider if he could have done better, etc. That doesn’t sit well with me, and how they resolve it (or don’t resolve it) is going to hang over my feelings about them going forward into season 3.

Also, we’ve seen Lucy have patience with Wyatt’s issues over and over, give him space, encourage him to rekindle things with Jess even when it hurt her, give him the chance to figure things out, defend him etc. In return, we’ve had… Wyatt being jealous, pulling the possessive card, trying to get Flynn to stay away from her, trying to have a special relationship with Lucy and Jessica both, avoiding making a choice, slut-shaming Lucy for the idea that she might have slept with Flynn… etc. Yes, she called him out for those, but it’s not really enjoyable to watch Lucy constantly be the one having to make the sacrifices in the relationship, while Wyatt does whatever he wants and gets away with it. (Also, he’s back in the bunker at the end of 2x10, so he doesn’t pull the sacrificial moment/decide to walk away in turn that I was hoping he would. Le sigh.) When they said that Wyatt was a bad husband, I was hoping that got dealt with (and again, there could still be a scene in the finale where he and Jessica get to ACTUALLY GOD DAMN TALK and resolve this somehow, which I really hope for). Instead, they’re going for the escape hatch of “nah Jessica was evil, it’s cool that he acted like that.” That is… gross, frankly. I hope for a LOT better, given that they’ve promoted the show and the season so heavily as empowering women. Killing the love triangle with a lazy, tired, misogynistic cliche is a seriously clanking misstep and one I would, again, hope they were better than trying to pull. Plus, Wyatt never has to answer for anything in the show or fandom, which is… tiring, and this just reinforces that. (Flynn stans drag him the most and call him the Garbage King and laugh at his failures all the time, I’m just saying. There seems to be less of a sense of humor re Wyatt.)

I don’t want the L/W connection and relationship to disappear, I still ship Garcyatt and Flogan like crazy, and I recognize Wyatt’s importance as a character and I like what he brings to the table. But I feel you hard that they have currently tanked L/W in canon, and I am not sure I trust if they would properly build it back/deal with it in a season 3, rather than just hand-waving it. So yeah.

#timeless critical #timeless salt #wyatt critical #anonymous #ask

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luckilyluculent · 6 years

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2, 6, 7, 13, 17, 18; Eleanor: 31, 34, 39, 45; Felix: 26, 35, 40; Belsaadi: 36, 38, 43.

This is long as hell so all the answered questions are under the cut

EVERYBODY(as of 5/22/2018)’SQUESTIONS –

#2 – WHAT OC CHARACTER IS/HAS AMENTOR?

The first OC of mine that likedirectly leaps to mind whenever I see the word “mentor” is probably Henry Blake—he’s.One of the many unlisted and not directly on my blog, but his literalprofession is teaching and you don’t get more mentor-y than that! He’s alsotaken people under his wing before directly. Henry was also straight up made asan homage to my first ever like, thought out character (a warrior cat namedFicklestar lmao) and one of the more important things to the character he wasbased on was his role as mentor to a friend’s character. I wanted to keep thatprevalent in all iterations of this character, Henry is just the most recentreally (though he and Ficklestar aren’t even that similar rofl).

I’d also probably categorize myboy Malik as a mentor as well, seeing as he just sort of. Casually adoptseveryone and everything that he comes across. He would definitely like to thinkthat’s more of him just defecting to be a pack leader, but he spends so muchtime teaching others and trying to help them grow that I can’t help but want tolabel him as that. He’d make a great teacher if he wasn’t so busy trying tokeep all of his adopted children safe smh.

#6 – WHAT OC IS THE MOM FRIEND?

Funnily enough, I think thatlabel would go to my character Cat the most. Mostly because he’s the one thattends to take a position of responsibility and look after everyone. Likeliterally, he basically quietly sits back and watches most of the time. But he’salways there with an open ear or shoulder, and because he’s veryobservant/insightful he tends to notice when things are going wrong or ifsomeone needs help. Cat’s also got like, a super strong mama bear streak withthe people that he cares about and though he’s usually very calm, cool andcollected he gets real mad real fast when someone he loves is in trouble.

#7 – WHAT OC REALLY NEEDS THE MOMFRIEND AROUND?

I wanted to give this to Bels—I reallydid, but like I’ve realized that a huge part of Belsaadi’s character narrativeis that I wanted her to learn how to stand on her own. Not just with people,but sometimes in front of them and without them. So this took a little bit morethinking on my part, and I actually think I’m going to land on my character Eleanorfor that.

Eleanor is just very young andnaive! She was prone to making snap decisions that weren’t so great, andDamakos (who I am dubbing the mom friend of that party, sorry Tess) was oftenwho she looked to for guidance when she thought that she needed some. Eleanorneeded someone in general that filled a role of looking after her, and I’vetried playing her outside of her original party and it has just felt odd andincomplete. Maybe I can try again sometimes, but who knows.

#13 – WHICH OCS COMPLIMENT EACHOTHER THE BEST?

HM this is an interestingthought. I don’t often think of my characters as duos or as hanging out—out ofthe D&D squad I’d probably say that Eleanor and Belsaadi would make areally good compliment to one another. Eleanor has enough gentle warmth toreign in the times that Bels tends to dip toward more bloody and not-so-goodsolutions, she’d be very good for keeping Bels firmly “good” aligned to behonest and would be a good force for her to not only look after (and thusfinally take on some responsibility) but also to keep her mindset towardherself more healthy since Eleanor’s not afraid to call people out and steerthem gently into more positive thinking. Bels would be great for Eleanor inthat Bels would probably encourage her to try to consider people’s intentionsmore. She’d let Eleanor flourish in her positivity but would actually probablybe one of the few characters that would try to curb her naivety, using her ownexperiences to guide and steer her straight. So they’d both sort of guide oneanother, which would be lovely in its own way. Bels would also absolutely callEleanor out often on her choice of men, which is something Eleanor needed tbh.

As for the whole Delry crew(which is where the likes of Cat and Henry and Malik are popping up) I wouldlove, absolutely love to have my Jester and Flavius tear shit up together. Youtake my sassy magic-eating demon-boy and mix him with the swashbuckling rogueand I’m sure they’d have some really fun adventures together. They wouldn’tnecessarily compliment each other emotionally (if anything they’d get into alot of trouble together and Jester would aggravate Flav’s want to keep peopleat a playful arm’s length and Flav would aggravate Jester’s issue of notnecessarily caring about others if he doesn’t know them at all). Still! They’dbe a fun like, fighting team in any case. Their physical and magical abilitieswould compliment in fun ways, and I’d love to write it out sometime.

#17 – WHICH OCs DON’T KNOW EACHOTHER, BUT WOULD HATE ONE ANOTHER IF THEY DID?

…Bels would hate my characterStephanie. Steph was the first dnd character I had and lawful evil, and Belswould have just enough insight on her (Steph, even though she was a bard, hadmost of her stats in intelligence) to pick up on the fact that Steph was mostlytrying to manipulate everyone into liking her. That alone would drive Bels upthe wall, but Stephanie’s need to play dumb so consistently that she keepsinformation that could ultimately help others close to her chest unless itbenefits her would make Bels want to wring her neck. Steph wouldn’t care forBelsaadi because she’d call her out all the time, and that would make heruncomfortable and honestly just. Pissed off most of the time.

#18 – WHICH OCs WOULD MAKE THEWORST COUPLE?

[steeples fingers] I.

Huh.

…

Probably my character Gawain andEleanor. Gawain’s basically a paladin housing like 200 ancient evil spiritsinside of him (like Gawain himself would be fine, but not like… the one withthe fun ghosts in him) to protect his brother. He’d probably try to see how farhe could push Eleanor’s want to “save” him by doing truly awful things—first tostrangers, then to her family and the people around her. Eleanor wouldn’t stickaround for the whole thing, but she’d hold out faith for long enough to gethurt and it would… eugh. It’d be bad. Toxic, abusive. Not a good time.

ELEANOR QUESTIONS

# 31 – DOES OC HAVE SIBLINGS? DOTHEY GET ALONG IF THEY DO? DO THEY WISH THEY HAD SOME IF THEY DON’T?

Oh yeah! Eleanor’s the youngestof several siblings and she gets along really well with all of them. In fact,of all my characters Eleanor has the most healthy like, family relationship Iswear. She was using Sending to contact her parents regularly while adventuringon the road, and even sending letters and gifts to other members of her family.I’m fairly certain she’s on good terms with her extended family too tbh.

#34 – WHAT IS SOMETHING UNUSUALOC HAS BONDED WITH SOMEONE OVER?

Perhaps the oddest—and one of myfavorites—thing Eleanor ever did to bond with someone was to dangle off of Theo’sbicep to see how strong he was. This while wearing her full armor by the way.Also her entire friendship with Athrun in general? The fact that he talked inher head constantly when he was a warlock and she was just like “mmkay!” thewhole time basically? It was pretty wild.

#39 – WHO DOES THE OC CONSIDER TOHAVE LEARNED THEIR MOST IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON FROM?

Pelor—yeah she’s that kind ofcleric haha. Eleanor just wouldn’t be Eleanor without Pelor to guide her, it’ssuch a large part of who she is and what she does and what she views as goodthat I honestly can’t even really play her in a game that doesn’t include himin the pantheon. She’d probably follow that up with saying her father—he taughther that being kind was not always easy, it would often—in fact—be the hardestthing she could do, but to embrace her kindness because it was part of who shewas.

#40 – HOW MUCH DO OC’S FRIENDSKNOW ABOUT THEIR PRIVATE LIFE?

Eleanor is pretty open withpeople that she loves and cares about! She tends to tell those she trusts whenshe has a crush on someone, and has never been the sort that likes to lie. Shedoes, however, often hide when she’s not feeling happy or good about something—it’sher job to be the happy cheerful one after all! She’s their sunshine! Sometimesshe feels like she has to put aside her fears because of that.

FELIX QUESTIONS

#26 – DOES OC HAVE A HARD OR EASYTIME MAKING FRIENDS?

Well, considering that during aone shot Felix very warmly convinced two guards of the place we were sneakinginto that he was a recruit and ended up mopping the floors for a good portion ofthe boss battle—Felix makes friends very easily. Having a high charisma helps,but Felix is just a warm and friendly person in general. He rarely dislikespeople, and when he does he tries to see their point of view before stickingwith it. He’s pretty endearing too, even if he’s a bit of a dope.

#35 – WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANTRELATIONSHIP IN OC’S LIFE?

This is a little hard to say—currentlyI’d probably state his mother, though his friend Cass is edging up there to behonest. He’s always been supported and loved by her, and she did a lot for himwhen he was transitioning in just being a great loving force. She didn’t evenreally blame him for when the house burnt down in the end! He cares very muchabout her and wants her to stay safe, no matter where he is and what he ends updoing.

#40 – WHO MOTIVATES OC?

Is it odd to say himself? Felixisn’t a selfish boy by any means, but he believes in growing and learning andbeing the very best you can be! He doesn’t like to let things get him down forvery long, and is quick to motivate himself and push himself forward when hefeels he might end up in a slump. Though he can be sad or upset like manypeople and faces a lot of situations that make him worry, he wants to besomeone good and help people out!

BELSAADI’S QUESTIONS:

#36 – HOW HAS OC BEEN AFFECTED BYTHEIR FRIENDSHIPS?

Bels has changed so much as a character since she firststarted her journey—genuinely being loved and cared about by other people was ahuge factor in that. Bels actually kind of cares about herself now? Which isutterly wild to me. She cares abouther future, and what she does. She doesn’t want to throw her life away but livefor the people that she loves and cares about—and for herself. Which is huge. Bels started out filled to thebrim with self-loathing, half certain that the reason she was abandoned andtreated how she was was her fault. She’s grown in confidence since then, butalso in the person that she is. She’s not just someone who can turn into a bearnow, she knows her own flaws but she’s aware of her strengths too (and not justthe physical ones).

Also, god can I talk about whatwould have happened if Rowan died? She loved Rowan, Belsaadi adored Rowan. It’sthe strongest example of platonic love I have literally ever written in mywhole life. I love them and their relationship to pieces, and for a long timeif Rowan died Bels would have just. Stopped. I couldn’t imagine her withoutRowan at all.

And then I thought, but Rowanwould not like that.

And then Bels started thinking Rowan would not like that. Bels lost a lot ofpeople on her adventures—first Darth, her sort of adopted brother Meero andeven her very first friend Nilus. Rowan was the last of the main party still left with Bels, and I knew losing herwould break her heart—but it wouldn’t make Bels break herself. Or breakentirely. Or just stop trying. Because Bels lost so much she finally learned what it meant to lose people you loved.

She learned that you need to keepliving and carrying on the pieces of them with you. You try to be cautious likeDarth, but sometimes you’re reckless like Meero, you laugh like Nilus whenthings seem darkest. She learned that you’re all at once the people you loveand your own self, and that she—Belsaadi—deserved to live even if she lost itall. That she could get sad, get angry, but she could never let it poison her. Because ultimately what all thosepeople, the people that loved her, would want is for her to keep livinghappily.

Anyway. So yeah, she changed alot. My Bels, I was proud of her by the time that campaign couldn’t continue,even if we never reached the full end of her story.

#38 – HOW HAS OC BEEN AFFECTED BYTHEIR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP(S) OR LACK THEREOF?

Ah. I talk a lot about howBelsaadi falls in love easily—far easier than any of my other characters. I don’toften consider that trait a flaw, but when you go to the extent that Bels did thenI definitely do. Belsaadi was so, sodesperate for love. Even after she got it she was always clawing for it ineverything she needed—and Bels, she had a lot of love to give, but she was desperate. And that was a character flaw. Bels had a lot ofromantic relationships that were either barely touched or regrets that shenever acted on. It made her very prone to leaping headfirst into it. She lovedthe idea of love.

#43 – HOW DOES OC MEET MOSTPEOPLE?

Lately? In moments where shefeels like her life is on the line unfortunately. Or when someone else’s lifeis on the line. Whether she’s stepping through portals to answer misguidedcalls for help or if she’s trying to keep herself and her friends alive—a lotof her adventure has been GO GO GO. There haven’t been many lasting friendsthat she’s made where she was feeling something below the level of EXTREMESTRESS. Guess that’s what you get for trying to save the world.

#long post #asks #ocs #d&d #dnd #beingatoaster

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isagrimorie · 7 years

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[initial reactions] Doctor Who 10x12 - The Doctor Falls

I take it back.

I do like Capaldi!Doctor. Post-Clara Twelve is some of the best moments of DW and I’m glad to have seen it and I feel it is because the show finally settled and relaxed, and Peter Capaldi did the same the quirky actorly tics he had were gone and he was simply the Doctor.

Twelve and Clara -- The Hybrid thing, I think this is what would’ve happened if Ten and Rose continued on together, they were getting there tbh. Clara Oswald though was more Doctor than anyone (which was awesome especially in the end) but having two Doctors is not something the universe is ready for, especially when they just keep enabling each other.

Then post-Clara after realizing how far he went to save Clara he wiped his memories of Clara in a cathartic reversal of what happened to Donna Noble.

And this leads back directly to the changes we see to Twelve when we see him with Bill Potts.

I really love the TARDIS team in this iteration with Twelve, Bill Potts, Nardole, and surprisingly Missy (Gomez!Master).

This is a fantastic ending bringing together the Doctor’s fraught history between the Doctor and the Master, and what better way to do it but to have two Masters. Simm!Master who is still locked in spite and resentment and Gomez!Master/Missy who after long years together is beginning to change, who is finally ready to stand with the Doctor but the Doctor would never know how he finally got through with his friend.

Honestly, while I enjoyed Ten and Simm!Master’s interactions I was never this interested, Capaldi, however, has a brilliant way of infusing history in his performances first with River and now with MIssy.

And Michelle Gomez, she is fascinating-- volatile and so filled with emotion, enough that Twelve can’t help but hope.

I am so sad that Missy wouldn’t meet Thirteen (maybe, who knows The Master never really dies).

But god, Twelve’s appeal to both Masters, to his friend to the Simm!Master who is all about burning things down, and his resentment overriding the desire to be with the Doctor, to Missy who has changed but conflicted about the change.

Still, the Master backstabbing themselves and laughing about it was perfect and very Master. But gosh, am I gonna miss Gomez!Master a lot.

And then there’s Bll, poor Bill who had to wait 10 years and then converted to a Cyberman.

The slow build-up to the body horror of becoming one, is I think a lot more effective then the rescue of Bill by Heather! I admit that was a clever deus ex machina in a Moffat way. I have issues with Moffat but I can’t deny he makes clever use of Timey Wimey future-past stuff. And I love that Bill got to be herself more than anything, even as a Cyberman, that it was her choice.

Bill Potts is so brilliant and amazing, I’m glad she gets to continue to be so by being herself -- not becoming her own Doctor but becoming more of who she is.

And Twelve resisting his regeneration, which makes more sense than it was from Ten. It hurts to live again, to be someone else again after having such a long time finally being content as who he is.

I’m glad I caught up.

#initial reactions #doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #gomez!master #missy

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nyangibun · 7 years

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So, about marvel... top 3 characters and why you love them? same for otp? mcu or comics? both? also have you read Ajas/Fractions Hawkeye and if not drop everything. and DO.

Oooh good questions… Thanks, Anonny.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not a comic book expert. I never grew up with it and only got into it a few years ago.

1) Wade Wilson aka Deadpool is my absolute favourite. Joe Kelly’s run of the comics was probably the best out of all the iterations because that’s when Wade had heart. He was created as a parody of Deathstroke from Teen Titans, sure, but Joe gave him relatable human qualities. He was funny, sarcastic, as well as traumatised, scarred, insecure and self-loathing. It was very explicit that Wade had PTSD and it played out in many of his stories. Wade was also deeply insecure about how he looked. I just think as funny as he is, later reiterations of Wade often overlook that part of him. And he doesn’t flirt with every character in some misguided toxic masculinity where ‘straight’ men do it as a joke and to be dominating in a situation, but Wade is canonically pansexual so when he flirts with another character, it’s usually because he’s attracted to them. I like that about him as well.

2) Matthew Murdock aka Daredevil is a close second. He is such an iconic hero. Gritty and dark, but with a very distinct moral compass. I like that he’s more of a low-scale hero as in his story arcs almost always revolve primarily around Hell’s Kitchen because that’s his home. Not to say he doesn’t go out and do bigger than life stuff in the comics, but you know what I mean… Matty’s connection to Hell’s Kitchen is literally his most defining factor sometimes. As I’m not as well-versed in the comics for Daredevil though, I have to talk about the Netflix version. I think they did an amazing job by really grounding Matty to more human elements. He’s very real whereas, in the MCU movies, the heroes are very much extraordinary. Yeah, Matty is too, but if you watch the fight scenes, they’re choreographed so well, in the way that you can see him struggle and begin to tire.

3) Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch is also a favourite. I don’t think the MCU did Wanda justice because Wanda’s character has always been defined by her struggle with her powers and coming to terms with who she is and what she can do. She’s canonically also Magneto’s daughter and she was constantly exploited by men around her because her powers are so immense. Tbh, I need to read more Scarlet Witch comics, but from what I know, she’s infinitely more complicated and conflicted than what the MCU makes her out to be, and a lot more vulnerable. I think by killing off Pietro so early, they cut out a lot of Wanda’s development from the comics, and then cut that in half by not having Magneto be her father, but then, I don’t know. MCU’s never been great with their portrayals of women, so it’s less about what they didn’t include and more about them needing to hire female writers. But that’s another topic entirely lol.

But I would also like to say as a whole I much prefer the X-Men stories to the Avengers. I find the whole mutants storylines much more compelling. And from there, I really like Gambit and Wolverine.

And oh my god, honourable mention here, but:

4) Jean Grey aka Phoenix! What’s not to love about her? She’s one of the strongest heroes/villains in the entire Marvel universe. She’s incredibly complex and just utterly fascinating.

My favourite ships… well…

1) Spideypool – But not MCU’s Tom Holland as Spiderman. I mean in the comics when they’re older because in recent issues, Deadpool and Spiderman are just adorable. Their camraderie, Peter’s constant exasperation with Wade and Wade’s constant flirting and banter with Peter. How they still team up. Just everything about them is great.

2) Thunderblink – This is new and not comic book canon, but from Fox’s new The Gifted show about mutants. John Proudstar aka Thunderbird and Clarice Fong aka Blink have stolen my heart. Big, strong John, who is as pragmatic as he is full of heart, and sarcastic, guarded Clarice, who struggles with finding her place in the world. I am so trash for them already and it’s been 5 episodes. I just love them, okay?

3) Scarlet America – This is 1000% a crackship since I do really ship Scarlet Witch and Vision in the comics and stuff, but in the MCU-verse, I love the idea of Wanda and Steve Rogers. I think they’re similar in a lot of ways. They’ve both been experimented on and are completely displaced in their current world. And I know in the movie, Steve is supposed to care for her in an older brother kind of way, but Chris and Elizabeth just have so much great chemistry together that it comes off non-platonic. But this is a crackship so I don’t expect it to be canon. Although, Steve and Wanda do have this sexual tension in the comics that’s kind of canon! ;D

Thanks for the question!! Sorry, this is all a bit rambly. Hopefully it made sense!

EDIT: Also no I haven’t but I am looking into it now!! *_* I love me some Hawkeye tbh

#marvel #wade wilson #matthew murdock #wanda maximoff #spideypool #thunderblink #scarletamerica #mcu #asks

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dawnofspeed · 7 years

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so i went and saw ‘justice league’ with my li’l bro and bestie tonight.

spoilers ahead.

i want to preface my entire thing with saying that lately i’ve felt conflicted about joss wheedon’s work (and even unrelated with the deadpool 2 movie) because of joss’ whole ‘i’m a feminist but the reason i’ve been horrible to women is the patriarchy’ (and with deadpool 2 the whole... forcing a stunt person to do a stunt they weren’t ready for and got them killed). But also as a filmmaker i know that there are tons of people who work on these films that have nothing to do with those things, so i’ve decided to keep them at the back of my mind and just focus on these slightly problematic films on their own merit. (no i won’t talk about dp2 in this. it’s just been on my mind bc i saw the new trailer and spoke to my bestie, another film graduate, about the issues with stuff tonight and yeah. soz.) ALSO PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING ARE OPINIONS. if you like something i don’t, that’s great. all the power to you. i am literally just writing thoughts and opinions and i only just finished a film degree so... y’know. not an expert.

moving on.

i loved a lot of this movie. as a whole it was a great ensemble piece. the cast was solid, the acting was solid, the script was solid. the plot worked well. i think it accomplished setting up the justice league, introducing us to characters and their backstories while driving the story forward. i also liked that it really seemed to know its source material and kept to the actual point- superhero movies shouldn’t be completely dark. they can be fun, they can be funny, they can be hopeful. whatever problems i have with joss wheedon as a person and the things he’s said and done, i think he can write and direct well. and he knows what he’s doing. the few women in the film he also balanced well. i didn’t feel like he was ‘buffy’ing any of them (something he sorta did with kitty pryde in his astonishing x-men, as much as i loved it. although that could also be because buffy was sorta based off kitty, joss’ fave x-men character).

i enjoyed all most of the characters. the whole justice league was great (alfred included, c’mon, he’s totally a team member at this point). i do think that diana was different in this film than her wonder woman one, there was just a different tone but you can also kinda just explain that away as this is post-steve trevor, it’s been a while since the events of ww, and that’s just what it is now. towards the end of the movie it felt more tonally in sync with her in ww, so that may be it. also bats pushing diana to lead the team? i loved that. i’ve never known much about victor but i found his story intriguing in this, he was fun, and my reservations about him being in the flash film are totally squashed now. i maintain that batfleck is my favourite of all batmen. this movie sealed it for me and i definitely enjoy his performance more than any that came before him. i mean. i enjoyed michael keaton but he was just never totally batman for me. clark was SO much better in this movie. he was light, and funny, and 100% the superman i actually love. i didn’t want him brought back to life and then afterwards?? i was like?? nah, you’re right, clark IS a good guy. how have i never seen this before? i just hated dceu superman before this film. arthur curry is cool. i have never been a massive aquaman fan. i didn’t hate atlantis. but i just... didn’t really care? then. they made him cool, and fun, and so much potential. i’m intrigued about his backstory. i wanna know more. i wanna unpack his personality. just. wow. but the standout? barry all the way. i was a bit anxious about how they were going to do it. i love ezra, but we’ve seen so many iterations of barry at this point that i was just really worried about what aspects they’d keep and how they’d navigate his background and his powers. but they did an amazing job. they kept his sense of humour while also maintaining his kindness, his intelligence, his zest for life and i love how even when he’s terrified he goes out of his way to do the right thing. added to his ‘i assume he’s an attractive jewish guy’ when he’s talking about his security footage. i just. love him. i do think some of his qualities are wally west?? like??? but my brother kept insisting that in the early comics barry was very playful and jokey, not just puns and dad jokes, so i’m inclined to believe him. also alfred was a+++ i love him. alfred forever. so that clears up most of the mains. plot? well i’m gonna be honest. i know... very little about darkseid and any of that stuff in the comics. i did think it was a great way to bring in both atlantians and amazons. and that cheeky green lantern reference at the beginning. and my brother swears he saw hercules but i only know marvel’s hercules so?? i??? dunno???? i also think it had high stakes, a ticking time frame, gave them the ability to bring superman back AND create a justice league. all while never trying to cram more than one actual plotline into a film. (like. a LOT of other dc movies.) i was happy with it. i never felt like it ran too long or i got bored or any of that so i’m. yeah. great. also loved that no one was forced into a freakin’ love interest or hampered from saving the world or anything by romance. did think that clark waited way too long to meet up with them for the end battle. like. did he spend all that time making a new goddamn suit? what? got a hair cut? like. why did it take you so long? you’re SUPERMAN. lois told you ages ago to get moving and help out. did you spend all that time like chatting with your mum? also, sidenote: thank you trailers for not spoiling this film. i didn’t expect the superman rebirth. i went in just knowing the jl was gonna kick butt somewhere and we were gonna get introduced to them all. the marketing on this film was spot on, and i loved that surprise and being pulled through the whole movie trying to guess what the hell was gonna happen. double thumbs up. ok. i will go over the things i didn’t like. which were very few. but first i kinda wanna talk about a few other cast/character things. i’m gonna be honest. not a massive fan of amy adams as lois lane. besides the fact that to me she doesn’t look like lois lane, and doesn’t embody (TO ME) anything that lois does... she also (TO ME) doesn’t have any chemistry with henry cavill. i don’t feel a thing. sometimes i might be like awwwww, cute. but that’s more of the situation rather than any emotions i get off of them. but that’s kinda nitpicky here as she was already cast as that character and no one was going to change that for the justice league. i will admit i felt more for her in this film than any of the others, and i enjoyed her more than in the others. but she was still... not lois. now... amber heard as mera. i will admit that amber looks like mera. and i enjoyed her limited performance and i’m sure she’ll do a great job in the aquaman film and i hold nothing against her. but. if arthur curry doesn’t need to look like comic arthur curry than. why does mera? we only had three women in the whole movie, really. two had limited parts. mera could have been a woc. she could have been not supermodel gorgeous as amber is. (i love amber i do but... who looks that goddamn gorgeous?) already the entire film felt like impossible standards of women. the amazons are varied in body shapes yes, but those costumes. then mera is AMBER. and gal is. gal. i just. there are so many races on earth. asian and hispanic women (and people) exist. not that the movie... shows that... at all. in fact, between the dceu and the mcu there’s one hispanic character on the movie screen. and he isn’t even a superhero (yeah, the friend of antman’s. and no i’m not counting netflix. that’s not a movie screen. yes rosario dawson is awesome.) heck the cw only added a hispanic woman in the last year. before that cisco was pretty much on his lonesome. wait. that might not be right. i’m sure arrow had a guest star that moved to lot... meh. i don’t keep up anymore. all i’m saying is... if mera had been cast woc then that would have continued right on through to aquaman too. but i have nothing against both amber and amy. they’re doing their jobs and i wish them all the best and i will try and enjoy it as much as possible. my few criticisms:

- ... not a big fan of the costume design. i was so confused about wonder woman’s until i remembered it was probably the one from bvs which i hated. i have no idea what was happening with superman’s. batman’s was fine. flash was fine. cyborg’s was fine. loved aquaman’s (and mera’s). the amazonians? what? why???? you could tell it was a male designer. every vital organ was pretty much on show and it was all sexy, just like how wonder woman’s skirt was shortened and the front was like almost a loincloth. just. no.

- production design was ok? like there were very few standouts to me. batcave was pretty good, the flash cave, and anything with aquaman’s fishing village. pretty sure that was filmed in new zealand tho and those guys are on point with their pd. studying their stuff over there, man. pd orgasm tbh. ever since lord of the rings those guys are just amazing.

- camera work was great at times and then just weird in others. i think that had a lot to do with cgi demands, which i’ll get to in a minute.

- the lighting? i mean yes, each scene requires different lighting depending on the place, time of day, people and props... but. there’s this one scene in the field with clark and lois and i was like. confused because it felt like they got first year film students to light it. it was off. and if they were trying to reproduce a field at sunset in a studio with green screen that might make sense but to me it didn’t feel like a gs scene.

- which brings me to my next point. cgi and green screen. there felt like a lot of it in the movie. pretty sure the fight after clark is revived is green screen. the entire last battle has so much cgi that i felt like it was avengers on steroids. also kinda felt like i was watching a video game with like real people pasted in. and while i get WHY it was like that i also felt like. there could have been ways to do it differently. when i watch stranger things i know there’s cgi. but i never get that feeling, that i’m watching a video game. which is important. because i want to stay sunk into the film. not be thrown out and feel like a different medium has taken over. my challenge for jl2? keep me in the film. find a way to make the sfx stay real. possibly a nitpick but like i said, this is my opinion. so that’s it. that’s my long ass dissection and feels and thoughts. i am so looking forward to every solo movie and also being introduced to iris west and atlantis more. im me or d/cord if you wanna chat about anything or if we’re not pals you can send me a q via askbox.

#spoilers #justice league spoilers #jl spoilers #long post #nita blogs #ooc #not rp related #really #except for that i wanna rp as dawn in the dceu SO BAD NOW #hmu if you wanna plot dceu things with me k

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aheartofwood · 7 years

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the king arthur movie is SO BAD, guys.

imagine a baby and a kitten got together and tried to edit a movie with only the vaguest idea of arthurian legend based on the backs of the VHS of the disney version and also the lion king for some reason, and also the barest idea of how human brains can accept and understand editing and narrative. imagine a pretty good video game opening for 2001, but watched thru the haze of a really strenuous flu and it’s rented and ancient and was chewed up by at least two dogs so it’s glitching a lot. imagine a knight’s tale……………Reimagined™ (needlessly) by a team of randos who only speak italian and their ideas are being translated by jen from the IT crowd in that one episode where she pretends she can speak italian. imagine a movie with a budget of four dollars (except the budget was HUGE). imagine an opium dream within a dream of robert downey jr’s 2009 sherlock holmes where jude law becomes a boring, leathery king who has a bad habit of constantly sacrificing the silent women he supposedly loves to an undulating pile of lovecraftian horror water ladies that live in his shame toilet in his penis tower basement ONLY to super saiyan into a really bad DnD dude with a motorcycle-insignia-metal skull head and the torso of two The Rocks smashed together (sorry, The Rock) instead of (a much better) watson. imagine eragon, but somehow exceedingly, fremdschamenly, schadenfreudingly worse. not many things get both german expressions, in a gleefully terrible adverb form at that, but this movie——oh, THIS movie——-deserves them.

the letters of the opening credits roll (or creep?) across the screen. the kerning is bad. all the T’s have a phallic, buffylike, sword motif going on and it renders the names unreadable. the colors and the blurry shots look like something out of monty python. again, who hired this editor? who watched this movie, kissed their fingertips like an italian grandma, and gently set this eldritch horror adrift on the tides of eternity to be received with fear and loathing by millions of human eyes? the elephants from lord of the rings attack the bridge from legend of zelda, and that red flamey eye guy from eragon (mordred, for some reason, in a shake n bake wig) ?? or possibly from inkheart?? is defeated. remember, we know nothing about these characters. feel nothing for them. and the trend continues. katie mcgrath appears, of course, in her standard and splendid emerald green, and then immediately dies. none of the shots in the first 20 minutes of the movie match up, we go from scenes with several people to ultra close ups of faces—-it’s like the “mmmm whatcha say” SNL skit, but serious. the movie continues to not know if it’s playing itself seriously or if it knows how bad it truly is (how bad me be?)

finally we get ONE establishing shot of a sweeping wall (maybe? the camera never stays still enough to tell) and the audience (five people) grounds ourselves, sort of. we get a whip-fast, but not whip-smart, super evolution of arthur’s childhood, in which he shoves coins into a wall (see kids!!! if u just put YR COINS IN YR WALLS instead of BUYING GODDAMN AVOCADOS, U COULD HAVE A CASTLE!!!!) and hearkens back to his character in pacific rim, bc he’s just a scrappy, vaguely appropriative white guy that loves 2 fight stuff. oh, his mom is killed when he’s young ofc. charlie hunnam eventually fucks off to the island w the sword in the sort-of stone (none of the physics makes sense in this movie?? the sword in the stone dropped into a lake, but is now in a chasm on a different island which shows no sign of the ruins of arthur’s childhood town?? in the final fight scene, charlie hunnam is several floors up from scythe-y jude law, but then suddenly they’re fighting on the top of saruman’s tower scuse me at the whipping sea-level, then suddenly BACK IN THE TOWER bc i guess it wasn’t destroyed????? bc then it gets destroyed again??) of course, charlie hunnam is the One Man who can Grip the penis sword, even though in an interesting turn of events, They are Testing Everyone by shipping them in boats to the island (this seems like an egregious waste of resources). charlie hunnam got in this unfortch sitch bc i forgot, but the guy who put him on the boat chuckled darkly and said he was “”””getting on a different boat””””, but like, doesn’t everyone end up there?? it had the air of the DMV, on purpose, so why was this a threat? how did he avoid it for so long? are there that many people in the kingdom??? also, if i was him i’d straight up pretend i couldn’t lift it tbh and come back for it when They were getting donuts. oh, another inkheart thing—the BLONDE MOM SURVIVES (!!!??? somehow???? unexplained? she had a HOLE THRU HER BODY??) and maybe has memory loss or something and spends her days being somehow indispensable to jude law despite doing nothing but moving a plate.

i cannot explain the rest of the plot, because i do not understand it. charlie hunnam just EXPERIENCES things with a world-weary, almost kingly worldliness, despite flashing in between being an innocent farm boy who doesn’t wanna do anything and a self-assured wisecracking hustler. there are some good jokes about boring white dude names in a medieval setting, and no more humor forever is allowed in this movie or any movies ever again. a chris parnell lookalike with a hat says he can shoot 75 yards but not 175, then shoots 175 with absolutely no introduction/buildup/continuance/jokes and spends the rest of the film as robin hood. there are some other dudes?????? more women (the brothel ladies that rescue arthur from the river ((not unlike….the prince of egypt…..)) are killed to further manpain, including lucy, who is Special for an unexplained reason. jude law murders his daughter (i guess???), who has a russian name and a tendency to sit around and stroke birds and stare sappily out the window (i feel u, johanna). everyone is wearing medieval versions of suits. there are many iterations of snake, ranging from economy-sized snake to a Giant Fuckmaster Snake Mother. at least five cloaks are cast off. eric bana becomes a literal rock. everything has the vague, shuddering feeling of an improv show where everyone wants the final word/bit. there is grit, there is dirt, there is snake blood, and there is clanking. so much clanking. charlie hunnam is bravely hurling one-liners but no one is listening. what is the sound of only one hand on excalibur???? apparently not as powerful as…………T W O hands on excalibur.

the editing continues to be bizarre. they keep trying to do the inception thing where they talk about the plan while showing the plan, therefore (in inception, correctly) allowing us to get to the good parts, but there ARE NO GOOD PARTS or even parts at all and they don’t fully commit to the dang method anyway. the shining light of the film, an unnamed mage woman with good bone structure and sweet harem pants (and who COULD have at least been set up as morwen but was not) who can possess animals and also make a lot of dust fly around behind her, becomes charlie hunnam’s spiritual guide?? sort of?? maybe love interest??? she seems to have no interest in him or inhabiting the worldly narrative/plane of this movie. i do not blame her. anyway, she’s got the eagles from LOTR on her side. she dopes the shit out of charlie hunnam (again, why) with a literal snake and he solves his daddy/uncle issues (line @ jude law: “”””you created me”””””) in an incomprehensible nonlinear part of the narrative (she was captured, but i guess jude law let her go before hunnam got to the castle???? bc he’s Not So Bad After All? bc he was bored? eating a sandwich? fuck idk so she could have met him in the middle of fuck knows? i mean if they have medieval lyft or medieval twitter DMing or something??) also, he may or may not have gone to a ””””””DARK””””””””island, but he did NOT solve his daddy issues there. he did, however, fight some rodents of unusual size from the princess bride.

ok that is all the energy i have; this movie has sapped me, i am nothing in the great maw of its terribleness. other stuff happens. we have a happy ending, with 4/6ths of the Round Table built (literally and figuratively), and some Vikings conceding to charlie hunnam for no other reason than he’s a bro, i guess. line: how do u scam money out of a viking? u talk to them. SEE MILLENNIALS ALL U HAVE TO DO IS TALK AND PPL GIVE U MONEY or be born the true heir to the throne of (fake england).

the worst part is that i don’t understand how jude law, who is 44, looks the same the entire movie and watches as charlie hunnam, who is 37, grows up and eventually challenges him. eric bana, who is 48, doubtlessly had fictional charlie hunnam arthur at like 27-35, making jude law the same age in that fiction. i guess men can just ???? play any age????????? forever??????? honorable mentions: the soundtrack, jude law’s eyeshadow, and the preview for atomic blonde.

#long post #king arthur #i love arthurian legend okay #and honestly i loved this movie #from hate springs love

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