#it is an OBJECTIVELY better show than its source material

[msnihilist]

Went on Twitter looking for SAOA content (there's nothing, don't bother) and was surprised by how many people were posting about how much they dislike it compared to the original. That the abridged ruined the original's reputation, and it's unfunny and ruined the characters, that its fans are the worst, blah blah blah.

And I mean, not to be harsh, but to me, it kinda sounds like, "WWAAHHH, MOMMY, THE OTHER KIDS ARE BEIN' MEAN TO ME 'CAUSE MY SHOW SUCKS AND MY FACE IS STUPID."

[sfstranslations]

what's your process on TLing? like how do you do it? I've always wondered what its like TLing stuff

Disclaimer that it's probably different for everyone, obviously, but for me it usually goes something like this:

(Got long, so under a cut. Minor bonus at the end for My S-Ranks fic writers!)

Get the raws (obviously, LOL).

When I start a TL session, I usually read back a little just to get the context of what's going on, because otherwise you risk getting some of the contextual information wrong.

Time for the actual translating! Read the sentence.

Break it down as best as I can—pick out grammar structure (is XYZ the subject or object etc.), pick out what words I know, cobble together a partial sentence from that. Ends up something like, "Character A {??ed} loudly and lifted their {right? left?} hand."

Look up the words I don't know in the KR-EN dictionary (usually Naver, but also Wiktionary as a backup, both English and Korean) and fill in the blanks. My Korean vocabulary is minuscule so I have to do this for at least one word almost every sentence… I also like to double-check the meanings of some words I'm not fully sure of (see right/left dilemma above 😅), or to see if there's other verified translations that would fit the sentence better if the one I think of doesn't flow well.

Addendum to the above point: If there's a word that doesn't really fit the scene or means some random off-the-wall thing, go on a research spree to figure out why it's showing up here. If this takes longer than 5 minutes, put a pin in it to come back to later and move on; otherwise I risk getting distracted or burning all my energy on research instead of translation, and sometimes the next few lines help me figure out what was being said anyway. Generally I mark these with the {???} from the example above, with a note on what confused me about the bit in question. (These are usually the things that require footnotes!)

If I completed the sentence, read over it to check that it actually makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't and I have to go back over grammar to redo it. Subject/object/topic markers my beloathed

Then once the meaning of the sentence is worked out, check that it flows with the rest of the scene. (If it doesn't, 70% chance it's a quote or reference to something, in which case, again, research or put a pin in it for later.)

Rinse and repeat until the end of the chapter.

First pass complete! 🎉

Go back and do all that research I saved for later :( (Chiyul is niceys to me and only uses odd or flowery wording that I can work out given enough time, but Geunseo is so mean about this. Stop referencing poets from the Tang dynasty who don't have easily accessible online translations for their works. What the hell) (Sometimes they'll reference something obscure and then make an oblique reference to THAT reference instead of the source material because they loooove having characters use injokes which I do love. But it is also majorly harshing my groove. Please have mercy)

Read over the chapter again, Korean then English, paragraph by paragraph, to make sure the translations actually line up and I didn't mess anything up during the first pass. Also for English editing purposes—grammar, punctuation etc. So combination quality-checking and editing.

Pass the baton to other team members for a second round of combination QC/edits; sometimes gets skipped, it depends

Clean the chapter (i.e. deleting all the Korean and running some final checks via regexes for miscapitalizations and the like)

Pick a good excerpt, tag all featured characters, and post! Aaand back to the grind for the next chapter. (…Bit of a simplification. What I actually do is just keep translating until I run out of energy/thinking power for the day. Chapters get cleaned and prepped for posting in batches of 10 only when the last batch have all been posted; e.g. we're on 390-something for S-Ranks right now, so when I'm about to post chapter 400, I'll edit and clean 401–410, and so on.)

Some more notes I wasn't sure where to fit in, below.

Besides quotes/references to external media and language/culture quirks, I also sometimes add footnotes when characters quote other characters from chapters that were posted quite a while ago. This is in part because it's probably helpful to readers but largely because it's helpful to me specifically (I have a terrible memory 😔) (if I don't do it then when I'm rereading the chapter for editing/cleaning I always end up going "they literally didn't say that though…? Is that a mistranslation?" and then it turns out they did say that but it was more than a chapter ago so I forgot. Sighs.)

Disclaimer that I don't translate from MTL anymore!! Quality is worse than translating by hand!! But sometimes if a chapter is really confusing then I'll slap the whole thing into Google Translate so I have an English version I can skim for the context. It's helpful because Google Translate gives extremely bad TLs in terms of English readability so I don't adopt its phrasing into my own TL, but it also gets juuuust enough right that I can identify what the gist of events is. Like if a chapter cold opens on a fight scene and only five paragraphs later clarifies the location of said fight, then the rough MTL lets me know whether I should be translating something as a wall (indoor fight) or barrier (dungeon fight), for example. Also helpful for pronouns, since Korean doesn't use those the way English does; if the character isn't named right off the bat, I don't want to be writing every sentence like "[PRONOUN] looked at [PRONOUN]self in the mirror, noting the dark circles under [PRONOUN] eyes", then have to go back to fill in the blanks 5 minutes later, you know?

I also make style guides for every story I'm translating, which I refer back to while working so I can keep the translations consistent. Whenever we're in a new setting or something gets brought up for the first time, I add it to the style guide for future reference. There's a lot of stuff in the guides that's probably only mentioned a few times, but at least I don't have to translate from scratch each of those few times!

The general style guide has stuff like number/unit formats, honorifics, and notes on spellings I mix up often (I try to use American English for consistency, although personally I prefer a combination of American/Commonwealth spellings (USA you are just wrong about worshiped, it's worshipped!! Do you say shiped?? Huh????)).

The story-specific style guides let me keep track of special names—places, characters, and more—but also things like system message formats. For My S-Ranks, I also have separate sections for the regions with lots of unique terminology (the VR dungeon and China so far, more to come).

Below are some examples from the general style guide and the S-Ranks-specific one.

Oh, one part of the style guide might also be helpful to any S-Ranks fic writers out there—here's the special characters I've been using for system admin messages such as "η๐┰ ሃ๐∪ዩ բმ∪┗┰" from chapter 53. (No replacements for B, J, K, M, Q, V, X, and Z because those haven't been needed so far. Added those in anyway for future-proofing!)

A: მ

B: ß

C: င

D: Ð

E: ∈

F: բ

G: ₲

H: ዞ

I: 𝔦

J: ຽ

K: ƙ

L: ┗

M: ៣

N: η

O: ๐

P: የ

Q: ዊ

R: ዩ

S: ડ

T: ┰

U: ∪

W: ￦

X: ㄨ

Y: ሃ

Z: ☡

Anyway! Hope that sheds some light on the translation process, at least the way I do it. Let me know if you have any more questions or requests! This was fun.

[airandangels]

Text version of graphic above:

We ask that our concerns be clearly and objectively addressed. While we don’t expect immediate fixes, we believe it is our right to be informed about the game’s future. Until each of our claims receives a proper response, we regretfully commit to withholding pulls and monetary top-ups in Version 1.6.

We love this game and sincerely hope to continue exploring its evolving world for years to come. We're committed to investing our time and money—but we also value polished experiences, fair monetization, and mutual respect between players and executives.

We ask Infold to commit to beta testing all future updates to ensure stable, polished releases. As dedicated players, we deserve quality and care—how can we invest in a game we can’t even play?

We ask Infold to preserve the game’s original narrative, ensuring that future content adds to the story rather than rewriting or removing it. A majority of players are deeply disappointed by the erasure of the original intro and the rushed, unpolished state of its replacement. It lacks the narrative care we've come to appreciate and is not something we feel proud to share with new players or our community.

We ask Infold to commit to making Snowy Ballad and Crimson Feathers the first and last sets with 11 pieces. As a community, we do not support any set—at any tier—with more than 10 pieces. Increasing pull requirements midgame goes against fair gacha standards and severely impacts our trust as customers. There are better monetization solutions that can benefit both the company and the players, without resorting to increased pull amounts or reduced in-game resources—as seen in the Miracrown contest, which was reduced from 26 to 24 yearly cycles.

We demand that DIY workshop materials be craftable or available through a trade system using open-world resources, as shown in the 1.3 Bullquet preview. While we understand monetization of dye materials, we expect a weekly amount to be tradeable or craftable across all rarity tiers. We’re not asking for unlimited freebies—but we strongly oppose making them store- or event-exclusive. This way, both F2P and paying players can have fair access to dye materials. A quick calculation shows that it takes 486 radiant prisms just to meet the prerequisites for the color wheel on all the pieces of the Wishful Aurosa, an 8-piece set; even with all the dye system launch rewards, it’s not affordable.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/s/BO8LZngGHe

I support the “Closed Wallets” player action for Infinity Nikki 1.6. Who knows if it’ll accomplish anything, but it has to be worth a crack.

[ducktracy]

Hello! I wanted to wish you a probably late happy birthday!!! I've been seeing your blog around a lot lately and it makes me happy to see someone who loves Looney Tunes as much as i do (super excited to see The Day the Earth Blew Up when it comes out for me next week)

I was wondering what your opinions on New Looney Tunes was? I never watched it cos i really dislike the artstyle but wasn't sure what the general consensus was on it

THANK YOU SO SO SO VERY MUCH!! this is incredibly kind! AH MAN, you are in for SUCH a treat!! it very much deserves to be seen on the big screen—i hope you have a blast!! (now hopefully the UK release will be announced soon!!! i’m sorry to my UK friends we need to get the pig and duck across the pond asap)

ANDDDDD YOU’VE ASKED THE RIGHT PERSON! MAYBE! so i’m one of maybe the few people on this earth who actively enjoys NLT much more than i do The Looney Tunes Show HAHA. TLTS is objectively the better show, but NLT is infinitely more entertaining to me—often by accident HAHA

part of it i’m sure is because i love what they did with Porky and Daffy’s dynamic, as it was really the first thing to bring back screwball Daffy from the dead in decades! i was chatting with a friend who worked on it and he said that they threw Daffy in for the s1 finale because they weren’t expecting to get picked up for any more episodes… and then they got two more seasons HAHA. and i LOVE THE FAT PORKY RENAISSANCE!!!!!!!!!!! it’s such a niche thing to bring back but i love it. they’re unsurprisingly my favorite aspect of the show—so much so i’ve been having to catch up and watch all the other episodes without them, since for the longest time i defaulted to only them

i don’t disagree with the common critiques of the show, it can be pretty dang ugly, every story i hear from friends and colleagues who worked on it makes it sound like it could be a bit of a production hell at times, its humor should often be in the dictionary for second hand embarrassment… but all of those aspects also make it fun to watch, for me? i’ve often been described as a cartoon masochist so maybe it’s that LOL. and it at least doesn’t seem to be filled with resentment for the characters or source material—people who worked on it clearly cared about the characters and series, hence bringing back screwball Daffy or fat Porky or Gabby Goat (which is what got my attention in the first place). the execution is just misguided, but i have a very fun time watching it! accidental or on purpose, it entertains me HAHA

[super-hero-confessions]

One thing I strongly dislike about Tumblr fandoms is how Disneywashed things need to be for them to enjoy it or just not hate it and claim everything under the sun is "bad writing". That's not to say there isn't bad writing in the industry. But with all the complaints about characters essentially being or acting as normal humans would coming from people with exactly 0% background in actual critique, it's pretty clear there's a massive disconnect between what they want to categorize as "good" characterization and what actually is, at least more objectively. I want to facepalm every time this crap pops up but I'd be left without a face at the rate it does.

Humans are messy, stupid, contradictory. They say one thing and then go back on it immediately. They do things we don't like on occasion and then remind us why we love them. Like it or not, it's just true and we all know it. We've all done it. I can understand wanting to make "perfect" characters who do and say everything "right" the first time because of having control over the fiction and when we write it but it is so unbelievably absurd to shit on writing or writers that prefer to make their characters act and feel "human" as opposed to just being caricatures or being the "preferable" parts of people rather than being complete. Especially when we are human ourselves and even these "perfect dolls" are going to be as flawed as their makers, just in ways that are overlooked. Not hyperbole btw, I've legit seen characters actually super well characterized within source material or adaptation in direct comparison to human psyche and psychology and then seen dumbasses go out of their way to call that "bad writing" and then try to swap and rearrange the order in which things happened so it's more "perfect". Straight up ignoring the realistic "human" elements in favor of something more "ideal".

There's so much puppet master writing in fandoms that essentially destroys everything fanfic authors dislike about their "favorite" characters. Writing that removes the more human or unsavory elements in favor of making said character more "ideal", more of a "doll" to play with. This on its own is fine, I promise. Fair enough that fiction is fiction, creative freedom is a thing and should be respected. However, coupled with the endless complaints essentially about writing that doesn't follow this sort of pattern gives me the ick. Fiction is fiction but the people behind it are real. If we have to put the work of others down just to feel good about what we create, what are we actually doing? Is it really "good" or "better", or are we just telling ourselves that at the expense of others because even we're not convinced? Is this just fandom insecurity showing through? Calling everything "bad writing" because we don't feel confident in our own work?

Puppet master writing has become so common that it's also become incredibly boring for me and makes it harder to enjoy fandoms as much as I used to. Don't get me wrong, that still doesn't make it "bad" imho, and I don't even hate it, so I don't think people should stop if that's what they like. Sometimes it can be fun, it's just not my preference especially given prior experience but I'm just so tired of this specific form of writing being confused with "good" and being pushed on everything and also used to shit on anything that isn't structured this way. At this point, I honestly prefer bad grammar and poor editing that retains some semblance of the more "human", frustrating or even melodramatic elements of characters as opposed to the perfect "dolls". Or just crack fic. But obviously, that's more of a me thing.

Idk, I'm just tired I guess. Why is it so hard for people to enjoy a piece of fiction and also acknowledge that they are different people who would make different creative choices without trying to harm or shame others that would make different choices from them? This isn't religion so what the fuck?

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Survey finds more hidden supermassive black holes than expected

Multiple NASA telescopes recently helped scientists search the sky for supermassive black holes—those up to billions of times heavier than the sun. The new survey is unique because it was as likely to find massive black holes that are hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust as those that are not.

Astronomers think that every large galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its center. But testing this hypothesis is difficult because researchers can't hope to count the billions or even trillions of supermassive black holes thought to exist in the universe. Instead they have to extrapolate from smaller samples to learn about the larger population. So accurately measuring the ratio of hidden supermassive black holes in a given sample helps scientists better estimate the total number of supermassive black holes in the universe.

The new study published in The Astrophysical Journal found that about 35% of supermassive black holes are heavily obscured, meaning the surrounding clouds of gas and dust are so thick they block even low-energy X-ray light.

Comparable searches have previously found less than 15% of supermassive black holes are so obscured. Scientists think the true split should be closer to 50/50 based on models of how galaxies grow. If observations continue to indicate significantly less than half of supermassive black holes are hidden, scientists will need to adjust some key ideas they have about these objects and the role they play in shaping galaxies.

Hidden treasure

Although black holes are inherently dark—not even light can escape their gravity—they can also be some of the brightest objects in the universe: When gas gets pulled into orbit around a supermassive black hole, like water circling a drain, the extreme gravity creates such intense friction and heat that the gas reaches hundreds of thousands of degrees and radiates so brightly it can outshine all the stars in the surrounding galaxy.

The clouds of gas and dust that surround and replenish the bright central disk may roughly take the shape of a torus, or doughnut. If the doughnut hole is facing toward Earth, the bright central disk within it is visible; if the doughnut is seen edge-on, the disk is obscured.

Most telescopes can rather easily identify face-on supermassive black holes, though not edge-on ones. But there's an exception to this that the authors of the new paper took advantage of: The torus absorbs light from the central source and reemits lower-energy light in the infrared range (wavelengths slightly longer than what human eyes can detect). Essentially, the doughnuts glow in infrared.

These wavelengths of light were detected by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS, which operated for 10 months in 1983 and was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. A survey telescope that imaged the entire sky, IRAS was able to see the infrared emissions from the clouds surrounding supermassive black holes. Most importantly, it could spot edge-on and face-on black holes equally well.

For a given line-of-sight column density, each panel shows the fraction of detected hard 14–195 keV flux relative to the escaping flux at the minimum column density allowed by each model (NH,0). Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad8236

IRAS caught hundreds of initial targets. Some of them turned out to be not heavily obscured black holes but galaxies with high rates of star formation that emit a similar infrared glow. So the authors of the new study used ground-based, visible-light telescopes to identify those galaxies and separate them from the hidden black holes.

To confirm edge-on, heavily obscured black holes, the researchers relied on NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), an X-ray observatory also managed by JPL. X-rays are radiated by some of the hottest material around the black hole. Lower-energy X-rays are absorbed by the surrounding clouds of gas and dust, while the higher-energy X-rays observed by NuSTAR can penetrate and scatter off the clouds. Detecting these X-rays can take hours of observation, so scientists working with NuSTAR first need a telescope like IRAS to tell them where to look.

"It amazes me how useful IRAS and NuSTAR were for this project, especially despite IRAS being operational over 40 years ago," said study lead Peter Boorman, an astrophysicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "I think it shows the legacy value of telescope archives and the benefit of using multiple instruments and wavelengths of light together."

Numerical advantage

Determining the number of hidden black holes compared to nonhidden ones can help scientists understand how these black holes get so big. If they grow by consuming material, then a significant number of black holes should be surrounded by thick clouds and potentially obscured. Boorman and his co-authors say their study supports this hypothesis.

In addition, black holes influence the galaxies they live in, mostly by impacting how galaxies grow. This happens because black holes surrounded by massive clouds of gas and dust can consume vast—but not infinite—amounts of material. If too much falls toward a black hole at once, the black hole starts coughing up the excess and firing it back out into the galaxy. That can disperse gas clouds within the galaxy where stars are forming, slowing the rate of star formation there.

"If we didn't have black holes, galaxies would be much larger," said Poshak Gandhi, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and a co-author on the new study. "So if we didn't have a supermassive black hole in our Milky Way galaxy, there might be many more stars in the sky. That's just one example of how black holes can influence a galaxy's evolution."

TOP IMAGE:A supermassive black hole surrounded by a torus of gas and dust is depicted in four different wavelengths of light in this artist’s concept. Visible light (top right) and low-energy X-rays (bottom left) are blocked by the torus; infrared (top left) is scattered and reemitted; and some high energy X-rays (bottom right) can penetrate the torus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

LOWER IMAGE: For a given line-of-sight column density, each panel shows the fraction of detected hard 14–195 keV flux relative to the escaping flux at the minimum column density allowed by each model (NH,0). Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad8236

[centrally-unplanned]

I watched the Scott Pilgrim anime! I was deeply ambivalent, which I am sure is a shock to no one who knows me and saw it lol. I think I have a sequence of thoughts, so I will tackle the obvious one first to get it out of the way: Marketing, Adaptation, & Genre Drift in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Starting from top, if you don’t know, the Scott Pilgrim anime is not an adaptation of the original source material, but an alternate history version of the events where the titular Scott isn’t present for the majority of the episodes and Ramona Flowers is the main character. Which has been controversial! Not…amazingly controversial or anything, this is an extremely low stakes scenario and from my analysis the majority of people liked it. But controversial enough to get insufferable Kotaku articles “explaining the backlash” which don’t explain the backlash well. Let me see if I can do a better job - its fun to set low bars for yourself to clear after all.

The backlash starts with the marketing; really just the professional drama-trolls would have objected beyond an initial reaction to Netflix announcing Ramona Flowers vs the World; as a concept it makes a ton of sense, and it is essentially what they actually did (well, we will get into that). But that is not how it was sold:

“Join Scott in his fight for love, life, and rock!” I’d love to, still waiting for the invite! This is the first teaser for the show, and if you do a quick “frame count” it pretty equally privileges Scott & Ramona both, but Scott is still on top and it deliberately hides any sense that it is an alternate timeline. It even has this screenshot as one of its final moments:

Which I am pretty sure does not appear in the actual anime! If it does its in some flashback alt-timeline scene in a later episode, not its implied context (in the actual episode Scott ‘loses’ this fight). I can show more evidence - casting the original cast of the movie to make it seem like a ‘recreation’, statements by O’Malley where he plays deliberately coy with the idea of how similar it's going to be, and so on - but I think I don’t have to, because it was intentional, you don’t have to read the tea leaves on this. The bait-and-switch is part of the marketing, not an accident from it.

That is the step 1: people are thrown about being deceived. The step 2 is simple - this is a deception about an adaptation. I am someone who constantly complains about shows sacrificing cohesion & storytelling for “the twist”, but its too common these days to be that mad over it in a mass way. My designated punching bag over at Kotaku points this out:

This is a recurring theme for metatextual work like Final Fantasy VII Remake and the Rebuild of Evangelion films: initially they’re presented as retellings of beloved stories, only for it to become clear at some later point that they’re going to take more than a few liberties and tell a different story entirely.

The difference here is that FFVII and Evangelion are remakes, not adaptations. FFVII is a video game being made into a video game again; Evangelion is a tv show + movie being made into a movie series. The FFVII decision was controversial, but fundamentally you can just go back and play the original game; fucking everyone hated the idea of the Evangelion rebuilds being remakes because that is pointless, the originals have aged amazingly, and they had to deviate to justify their existence (they failed at that, but a story for another time). Meanwhile, Scott Pilgrim is a comic, that has never been a TV series, or an anime. There is the movie, but did you know a bunch of comic fans hate the movie? You see a lot of comments like these all the time (from a discourse reddit thread debating the new show):

Personally, I thought it was fun. I agree with a lot of your complaints honestly, but I don’t understand how you liked the movie? I can’t stand the movie because I feel like the characters are all flat, especially Ramona who has absolutely no personality at all.

I disagree btw, the movie is great, but it is a loose adaptation - hell it was released before the final volume of the graphic novels was finished, it has a different ending! A short, cohesive movie could never adapt a long-form, episodic graphic novel. And its live action, stylistically very different. So this TV show was both branded as, and was expected to fulfill a demand for, a first “real” adaptation of the comic, that people wanted. The fact that Evangelion deviated in its remake is a poor comparison. Questioning that people want full adaptations of works they enjoy isn’t really worth our time.

Now I personally don’t care about the above two - I am explaining the debate, but they aren’t problems for me. Step 3 is where I start caring - I think Ramona Flowers vs the World is a great idea. They thought they made that, and I wish they had. But in the process of telling the bait-and-switch of the story, they also bait-and-switched the genre. There is this great quote from O’Malley about the original graphic novel’s story from an interview (whose headline we will revisit in another post, don’t you worry):

Yeah, I mean, when I was writing Scott Pilgrim the first time, I just wanted to come up with a very simple story engine: fight, fight, fight, get to the end. That gave me something to hang all this other stuff on, all this slice of life hanging out in Toronto.

Its such a nice summation of what Scott Pilgrim is - the fighting against the evil exes? Its all sizzle and jokes, none of it matters. Its a plot device to structure the real story, which is a slice-of-life romance drama, coming-of-age narrative, and extremely intimate portrait of Toronto’s scene of indie music venues and hipster coffee shops. The joke is that Scott is dealing with all this crazy video game/anime shenanigans on top of actually having to navigate very grounded past emotional damage and present challenges of adulthood. The heart of the comic is not the fight scenes, some of which literally happen in the background while other characters are talking, but scenes of a group of friends hanging out at 11:00 PM at a dive Korean restaurant:

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off meanwhile is not built around this cast. Its built around a mystery plot and Ramona Flower’s evil exes, who she is investigating, and Scott Pilgrim, uh, checks notes travelling to the future and fighting his …aged enraged alternate self from the original timeline…? Anyway, Ramona’s evil exes are mainly joke characters, comic reliefs who engage in crazy shenanigans. Half of the episodes are structured around them, and their episodes are filled with extended comedy bits and very-long fight scenes. Episode two has a 13 minutes long fight scene between two of them, including build-up, over control of the League of Evil Exes. Hell, they don’t even live in Toronto - a ton of the new anime takes place in New York City and a bit in California. The comic meanwhile has panels just…explaining locations in Toronto sometimes:

Listing the hours of operation, its so cute! The anime has no time for this in between its sci-fi plots and fight scenes, and its far cheaper for it.

The decision to focus on shallow characters like Ramona’s exes is downstream of the decision to focus on Ramona without Scott -besides the exes the rest of the characters are Scott’s friends, who Ramona gets to know through him. Which is the final point here - who are the characters people love from Scott Pilgrim?

All of Scott’s friends ofc. Characters like Lucas Lee are memes, not people. Obviously Kim Pine, Young Neil, Knives Chau and so on appear in the anime. Sometimes they have great scenes - like the adorable scene of Knives & Kim playing music together, Knives’s first time really trying to jam:

Which goes absolutely nowhere from a character perspective - Knives & Kim barely interact after this. It sets up Knives doing a comedy-meta musical for the plot, sure…but that’s boring in comparison to real emotional connections, Knives doesn't have an arc. But they can’t have more, because our main character Ramona Flowers doesn’t know these people; she wouldn’t just hang out with them, and she is busy with her mystery investigation. She sees them when she needs them for plot reasons. Kim and Knives and Stephen Stills are much flatter this time around (Julie, to her credit, kicks ass in this one).

Obviously I could point out that Scott & Ramona’s relationship in the anime, given that they have literally one date before Scott vanishes, has no depth to it, but that is easy. The funniest way to summarize this character issue is if you check the tags on Tumblr right now, you are going to be awash in Scott/Wallace shipping posts. Like I swear, at times its straight(?)-up 50% of the posts going on, its a rabid gay horde out there lusting for this sugar daddy/baby dynamic. Which makes sense, they have so much sexual tension & emotional depth as friends…in the comic. In the anime they barely know each other! Wallace hates Scott and interacts with him maybe a half dozen times, primarily to tell him to move out, then does his own shit. This is all people projecting comic!Scott/Wallace onto the current show.

There are more downstream consequences of these decisions & other issues (like the overdone meta elements, or abandoning most of the indie-music aesthetic) but this has gone on long enough. The point is that telling a different version of the story would actually be fine. It would disappoint some fans, sure, but if done well you would likely win them around. Hell, the original comic’s ending kind of sucks, good time to polish some things. But if you change the main character and the genre and the cast focus and all the character dynamics…at a certain point its just its own new story now. A story irrevocably tied to the old one, but not about any of the things the old one cared about. I think you can see why that would be a harder sell than Ramona Flowers vs the World, even if it was a good zany action comedy anime in its own right. You will get backlash from this level of drift - and you will deserve it.

Also fuck Lisa am I right? Jeez, 0 out of 2 for moving picture adaptations. What you get for being blonde I guess.

[doverstar]

Hello hello I was told by your lovely sister, one of my favorite people on the planet, to send you the same question I asked her to see what else you could say about it, since you write a lot of fanfiction and are more familiar with it than she said she was, so here I am!

I wanted to ask about fanfiction. I've really been thinking about that post Artist made about how a lot of fanfiction can be just used as a form of escapism, and not in a good way like Tolkien described it, but as a 'I hate life so I'm gonna read and write extensively about fictional characters rather than working hard/trying to improve my own life' Which I really want to avoid and not do. In the past I've certainly fallen into that trap- I would get so caught up in writing Marvel or Percy Jackson or Harry Potter fanfiction (not to toot my own horn, but was objectively good and I do think grew my skills a lot as a writer and character analyzer) that I would spend every free moment and many of ones when I really should've been working on school or chores or spending time with my actual family reading and writing it. I was probably doing that 5-8 hours a day when I was 11/12. (Yikes) Thankfully, my parents smacked some sense into me lol. It really just goes to show you how, for lack of a better term, soul-consuming, that these kind of fantasy pursuits can really be. Thankfully, I don't do that any more. I actively limit myself to a max of 3 hours of reading and writing fanfiction over the course of a week, which is a big improvement.

So yay! Now I have a definte separation from writing fanfiction to improve my writing and writing it to waste time because all of my energy is focused on it to the point where it is in my every thought. Good! Growth!

But now my new thing is this- I want to make sure that any and all fanfiction I write has a definite point. I want it to point to good things and have clear messages and blue flowers and point to Jesus, even if it isn't specifically a 'Christian' fanfiction.

But how do I go about this trying to intentionally bring in blue flowers and good messages and beautiful themes, and not just only write it for my entertainment because its a piece of media I love? How to I make sure to firstly know what themes I can bring in, and then do it in such a way that's well-written, while also being able to have those fun moments and situations that are both in the piece of media and I've thought up?

And finally, last thing, is I'm wrestling through if I should continue writing fanfiction to 'fix' a story (which is why I started a Percy Jackson and Marvel fanfictions, I wanted to take the parts of each story I didn't like and were poorly done and make them better) rather than make my own point with it. For most of the fanfiction writing I've ever done, my goal was to improve it, to act like a ghostwriting editor the author hired to fix their fundamentally flawed story. But now I'm realizing that I was spending so much time and effort (which don't get me wrong, I do not fully regret, I really do think that I've gotten far better at fiction writing through this) and I didn't even add any more goodness or morals to the story in a way that made it more soul-sustaining and truly good. I wanted to add a lot of bits that made be as a reader squeal and get happy over which... I don't think is bad per say, but its not what I want my fanfiction to be like any more. With my writing, I absolutely do want to improve on the source material, yes, but I also want to figure out what sort of themes and goodness I'm going for with it. So should I continue writing these large projects (cause each piece covers several books/movies) for improvement and also try to expand on the good ideas and themes the authors had, even bringing in my own, or should I just set it aside as that was great, but now I need to focus on making writing morally good and not just for entertainment?

I know a big part of this is wisdom and descretion- things that God has blessed me with but I know I always can pursue more of. So I know a absolute perfect answer to this question will require time and experience. But after sorting through my word-vomiting (sorry lol), what would you say to all of this? Thank you!! <3 I love you and your blog so much btw!

Golly, what a question! I haven't seen what Arti answered yet - I've been at work - but I'm on break now, so I can give it a try! I bet I'll end up saying a lot of what she said, making this an unnecessary and VERY LONG read, but here goes-

I do write a lot of fanfiction, and I have been since I was 8 (aka for a long, long time, gosh I'm old-). I wrestle with a lot of what you've described! I've been on the brink of quitting fanfiction altogether lately; there will come a time when I need to "grow up" in that area and commit to only writing what's just mine. I do have original stories, original worlds, original characters, but like you, when I want to practice and learn, I turn to fanfiction. It's a wonderful platform in that sense!

I would say you're right on the money when it comes to what the Lord has gifted you with. You should use wisdom, and you should use discretion. Your writing should be used to point to what's true, and there should be intention in no matter what you're creating. We're not only called to glorify God, we're called to excellence. Everything we do should be done to the best of our ability!

And what you believe, if you really believe it - about what's true, about how we ought to live and what's important - is definitely going to bleed through into whatever you write. It's the truth, and you've found it, and it can't help coming out. Making something (writing in particular) requires pieces of us, and if that's the case, then our Christianity (for lack of a better phrase) is going to show up in our stories. Even if the characters belong to someone else.

If you find yourself writing a story just to squeal over a ship, just to get secondhand butterflies when the male lead's being dreamy, just to vent some sort of difficult emotion you're dealing with or live vicariously through a character, you should close the laptop. I've written plenty of things that make me feel happy or excited (like you said, that's not bad!) but if that's the only reason you're writing it, it's a waste. And on another, semi-related note, a lot of people only write fanfiction to indulge in emotional pornography. It's not as steep a slope as you might think. When my father-in-law gets just a little drunk every night before bed, it's still sin. It doesn't matter how much or how long it lasts. He's still drunk, and he shouldn't be. So be careful! (she said, to herself, often-)

As for writing just to fix a story - if it's bothering you, and you see what they ought to have done, I say go for it, and here's why: it's teaching you something. It's you figuring out why what the source material did was dissatisfying, and it's you figuring out how your alternative is better. You're essentially teaching yourself what not to do. Now, if you want to write it and fix it and you want to keep the focus on good things, true things, there's still a way to do that. Work out what was good and true already about the source material and draw from that when it comes to theme.

I use a Notes document. I'm not talking about the Notes app on smartphones, I'm saying I open a Word document (or whatever your equivalent is!) for every single thing I write (fanfiction, original, etc.) and I entitle it "[Insert Story Title Here] - Notes.doc" and then I word-vomit at myself. I write at the top what the theme of my writing is going to be this time, and why, and underneath that I explain to myself where I see those good and true themes in the source material and how I'm going to magnify them and use them to point to the truth (specifically some Christian truths) in my story now. I figure out how it will all work and feel canon and then I move on to the pre-write for each chapter. It's good practice, it's great fun, and it keeps me on course when I start to drift into self-indulgence during the writing process. It's fun to visit Atlantica and Stars Hollow and get inside Caitlin Snow's head and show the world why I think Rose Tyler is the best thing to ever happen to Doctor Who - but all of those things can pull me away from the messages I'm trying to communicate.

Fanfiction should not be escapism. I cannot write when I am freaking out. I cannot write when I'm miserable, or angry, or fighting with someone. When I'm low emotionally and my spirit is scratched, I can't complete a single sentence. I can't. I think the Lord did that in me for a reason. I don't use fanfiction to escape reality or to deal with reality. When I was younger, I considered a day when I wasn't writing to be a wasted day. I needed to write. I needed to make something. But I prioritized that over reality, and yes, that is sin. I wasn't escaping, but I was idolizing, and that's wrong. I'm impressed by your self-inflicted limits! I could've done with that at 12 myself.

Fanfiction shouldn't be all self-indulgence, either. Yes, you ought to have some fun when you're making things. But have self-control! I love writing fanfiction and drawing and editing videos. I love it. It's so much fun to me. I get genuine joy out of it. And when I look at something I'm making, I say to myself, "Self, is this a waste of time? Does that part need to be in there or are you just playing?" And then I examine my motives and I examine the thing I'm worried about and I determine whether or not it takes you out of the story or draws you away from the themes (in writing specifically) or if it's okay to add because it's pleasant and matches one of the good, lovely, honorable, etc. things that are true in life that God allows us to have and enjoy, because He's just that good. And then I have to either say to myself, "Self, this is fattening," and delete it, or I say to myself "Hey, dolphins twirl," and leave it in, making sure I'm still on course.

Dolphins twirl! Why? We don't know why they twirl! God does. God made them twirl. God made them animals that play. He didn't have to do that! He didn't have to make the leaves change color. He looked at His creation and called it good when He was finished (you know, before we ruined it). He took pleasure in creating. We can too - as long as it's not pulling us or our readers off course. My husband doesn't have to be a good dancer to fit the biblical picture of a man I ought to marry - but he is a good dancer, on top of fitting what I should have been looking for biblically, and God knew that, and God did that, and I get to enjoy it and enjoying it is not wrong. Dolphins twirl!

Like I said, I'm close myself to putting fanfiction aside on the whole, because I can tell, probably because of the Lord, that it's nearly time for that. It's time to look up and make something more real, for more real reasons. If you're thinking it's about time for that for you, too, pray about it. Writing fanfiction is like anything else fun the Lord has blessed us with (everything good comes from God) - it's fun and good as long as you aren't misusing it. Everything in moderation. People take stories they love and characters they connect to and go and interact with them through fanfiction in a bad way, for bad reasons (or just reasons that are useless to man and beast), and I've done that before myself. I've been one of them. But it's not wrong to expand on the good and true things in stories we love, the things that are in line with what we know God invented, and it's not wrong to hone your craft and learn how to use what you've been given with excellence, so that when the time comes for you to write your own story that points to God, you're ready!

You don't want to be wasting your time or the talents you've been given. I say keep thinking about it, and remember why you do what you do. Stay on course! That's my advice.

Thanks for asking me!

[rosesocietyy]

Brilliant people have said everything that needs to be said about this much much better and I don't got anything substantial to add but I just have to get this off my chest cause y'all I'm still in disbelief

like this is a grown ass person btw oh I simply have to laugh😭

this perfectly exemplifies literally everything cringe af and wrong with these "assigned welcomers". this is just my scapegoat but there are way worse I've seen

First of all, get a job. how, at your fossil age, do you have time to spend all day scrolling through every single iwtv related post and arguing with people who say anything even slightly damning about lestat (which mind you, is literally just objective facts about things he did). I'll dm you a McDonald's application hell I'll even put in a referral for you out of the goodness of my heart.

Second, Lestat is not a real person. he's fake, a made up character, the figment of someone's imagine, non-existent, people hating him will not affect your life in anyway shape or form. He didn't assign you as his PR agent I promise you'll live. "They'll never accept him" ok and?!?

Question, and I'm genuinely asking, is this their first time in a fandom? why is someone having a different opinion about a character they love enough to send them into hysterics like?? 13 year olds on anime twitter have a better grasp on reality that y'all do get a grip!

And like the above posts have talked extensively about, I most definitely noticed whose posts a specific bunch of them love to go under to share their dog shit "explanation" that nobody asked for. When a black person sees Louis being brutalized by his white lover what do you expect their reaction to be? oaur wow this white french slut is so pussy cunt slay period queen? "but louis is flawed too" do you hear yourself? do you listen to yourself when you speak? can you activate the barest hint of brain activity to understand why we would react differently to what we're watching than you would and that knowledge of the source material has nothing to do with it? Just because you read those shitty books and posses no empathy for black people in media doesn't mean you gain some higher understanding of "gothic romance ".

"No but the thing is you don't understand this is a gothic romance and they're supposed to be monsters and lestat has suffered saur much and he's also the real main character so you must love him" so now how exactly does that negate their point about him being an abuser? quickly! sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up when black people are sharing their thoughts on the show cause who the fuck are you fr and what convinced you that you have the right to argue with them about THEIR experiences. that tweet that said white people act like God left them in charge, yeah.

Funny enough, half the people that are so gung ho about him now didn't even fw him at all when they only read the first book. wow it's almost like you were allowed to sort out your feelings about him on your own without insects disguised as people in your mentions calling you slow for not licking his feet.

I despise so much in this fandom. From the bottom of my heart I really truly do. I don't know what I was expecting, I guess more common sense and maturity because the average age in the fandom is quite high compared to other fandoms I've been in but nah, just mfs screaming and crying bc ppl don't jump up and down and scream yipee! everytime their white fav commits abhorrent, disgusting crimes.

I was so caught up in the euphoria of an anne rice property finally being given to skilled creators who'll pick it apart and say something poignant with it that for a moment, I forgot I lived in a world where majority of its audience would sadly be the anne rice crowd.

[israaverse]

This is probably a result of diminishing expectations but it's wild how Civil War was the last movie to give Bucky a decent look, because every appearance since then seems intent on making him uglier and hideouser— okay wait I just realized I'm kinda exaggerating his look on the Falcon show wasn't bad I'm just letting my hate for that shows writing & the it's exemplification of nearly all the ways Marvel used the Cap brand to push propaganda cloud my perception of the visuals..... but everything else! jail. (can you tell I just discovered what he looks like in the quote "degenerate villain" squad movie?)

NGL they did Steve bad but at least they killed him off. Seeing how they made a decent Cap2 with blatant cliffhanger-setup for a sequel continuing that storyline just to... not continue it & instead cast Bucky as The Bad Guy of the Group because of multiple directors+writers (explicitly admitted in interviews) hate for Bucky... is still wild. They practically dropped his entire character development arc after only hinting at it in an end credit scene. And it's a large part of why Steve's character circled the drain too before getting killed off because the core part of Steve's character arc was dependent on Bucky's story arc actually being continued instead of randomly dropped for multiple back to back crossover events.

Marvel managing to make one decent movie out of CapAm is more of a curse than anything. It'd have been better if expectations never got lifted off the ground and just kept the characters rah rah 🇺🇲 PatriotMonologueBotd all the way through like in the comics, which aren't very good.... at all. If you thought the propaganda is gonna be bad in the upcoming Cap4 movie, the DNC-style patriotism of the Captain America brand becomes is even worse in the comics, and it gets worse to stomach with IRL events making it seem more and more out of touch. Treating the USA flag (and its representatives) as a literary symbol of moral virtue gets more and more ridiculous with each new run of books (like, did you know that a recent run decided to flashback to WW2 just to include a revisionist-fake-history speech about how the Zlonlsts were a large force fighting against the Nazis, whereas IRL the opposite happened). How a single decent adaptation was managed to be pulled out of the source material is still kinda shocking. But now Marvel seems to have remembered that the CapAm brand is meant for their white writers to pull out atrocious political takes via superheroes. Back to tradition!

the fact that writers n directors hate him baffles me bc Winter Soldier is such a good setup but they just let him FLOAT AROUND? A SET PIECE? AN OBJECT OF THE PLOT????? like you MADE HIM THAT WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im convinced that the US military propaganda contracts completely neutered his MCU character bc if u think about it for more than 5 seconds you start coming to Conclusions (didnt WS point out that the US govt hired a bunch of nazi scientists, framed him as JFK's assassin, etc etc etc.....) and they made the decision to just nuke him as a result. Oooh he was just a bad guyyy all alooong SHUT UPPPP hes morally grey even an antihero for a bit but hes not EVIL he is literally the poster boy of being manipulated into doing atrocities for the interests of a greater power and they just. dropped it. on its ass. esp with the stupid Sabra and Zionism bullshit its like ohhh i see we are gearing up for a media push for fascist nationalistic narratives for a draft or more wars and the presence of moral grayness isnt conducive to that so its just cut. got it.

like the Falcon show was........ so clearly cut to erase that moral grayness it made me ill. so ill i even sought out WS' presence in the comics and like you said its just not cutting it even slightly. they flattened him which SUCKS but also they made him UGLY WHICH IM WAY MADDER ABOUT. IF I CANT HAVE HIS MORAL COMPLEXITY WHY DID YOU UNSEXIFY HIMMM

IT DOESNT EVEN MAKE FINANCIAL SENSE BC I WAS ONLINE WHEN PEOPLE WERE FROTHING AT THE MOUTH OVER HIM SO WHYYYYYYYYY DO THEY HIT HIM WITH THE MOST ATROCIOUS WIGS TO EVER BE SEEN IN AN MCU MOVIE IM ILLLLLL

FIRING SQUAD, ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE GALLOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MULTIBILLION DOLLAR MOVIE AND THEY ONLY GOT HIM SYNTHETIC IM SO SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US!!!!!!!!!! SNIPPED LIKE A GODDAMN BARBIE , THE AURA!!!! IM SO MAD

i remember being SO excited when civil war came out bc the kind of political thriller feeling of winter soldier was so enrapturing!!!!! it captured me in a way the other MCU films lacked, so to see him stagnate like he has is just mortifying. especially visually. if they wanted to commit to the whole "hair holds memories"/buzz cut to visually separate himself from what he's done then DO IT!!!! dont linger at the threshold then go back to cash in on his old look but done BADLY. i almost wish he got killed off in civil war or shortly after because hes so clearly become a Plot Device instead of a Character and its so disappointing.

sorry for the super long un-art related post but oh my god this gets me so wound up, Bucky/WS was my first brainrot from back in my forum days (had an RP partner who based their character off him).

[lagosbratzdoll]

Whenever I see adaptations of novels, comics, and games that elevate the source material, I get deeply and monstrously bitter. Wheel of Time, Foundation, Percy Jackson, The Boys, Outlander, Big Little Lies, Pachinko, Sharp Objects, WATCHMEN!!! All are so good, so beautifully written and moving that when you stack shit like Game of Thrones beside them, it falls flat on its face.

I still think about Jon telling Angela that he is in every moment they spent together all at once. Every time I think about Watchmen S01E9, my throat gets tight and my mouth wobbles. A triumph of storytelling. When you compare this with the disappointment that is Game of Thrones, it becomes clear that being mediocre, white, and a man often leads to success even when you fail.

I get angry because it’s possible to take novels/comics with so many moving parts and rich history, update them for our time and make the rich source material even richer. Those men just didn’t know how. 

And before anyone says the first three seasons are good. Are they? Are they really? Or are we just blinded by the perceived faithfulness to GRRM’s work when we weigh it against the utter shit show that was the last season? The show lifts all the best parts wholesale from the books and magnifies all the worst parts. 

They portrayed the Dothraki with a lack of care compared to the Free Folk. They furthered the lack of non-white perspectives by erasing what little we had. Presenting freedom as if it is worse than chattel slavery. The extinction of the Dothraki in service of white Northerners who were less than welcoming. 

The show does not name more than half of Daenerys' more prominent Dothraki characters on screen. Killing Irri, Jhiqui and Doreah to further isolate Daenerys. Transferring all the better traits from women to the men in their lives. Turning Jorah from an old paedophilic creep into whatever the fuck that was on the show. Alluding to the “first they came” poem for rapists, slavers and other monsters. Peddling the gentle slave-owner myth as if owning a person is not inherently violent. 

Having Missandei be beheaded in chains to fuel madness for literally no reason. Cersei could’ve bargained for her life or at least some concession from Daenerys with Missandei’s life, but they have her behead Missandei for no other reason than to piss off a woman with a large army and an even larger dragon. It made little sense then, and it makes even less sense now. 

I know it’s a bit much to still be so affected by that dumpster fire almost a decade in, but I saw that interview with those idiots yesterday, and I have been furious ever since. 

[problematic-fodlan]

Replaying to this because this pissed me off so much.

https://www.tumblr.com/problematic-fodlan/777909485306036224/reading-so-many-of-these-anons-makes-me-think-of-a?source=share

There was a 10 year gap between when the movie "Fanboys" came out and Three Houses came out, anon. Internet culture changed far more drastically than you might realize. You can't just paraphrase the words of a man who, despite being a well respected critic in his own right, was starting to become wildly out of touch with the younger generations by that point.

That film was made to make fun of fandom culture and fans of sci-fi and fantasy as a whole, using tropes older than most of the Three Houses fanbase and taking from anecdotes of fandom culture that was once allowed in the public between the 70s to early 90s. You also took out about half the paragraphs that you paraphrased in order to try and make your point.

A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It’s all about them. They have mastered the “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies. Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That’s why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to. But enough about my opinions; what about “Fanboys”? Its primary flaw is that it’s not critical. It is a celebration of an idiotic lifestyle, and I don’t think it knows it. If you want to get in a car and drive to California, fine. So do I. So did Jack Kerouac. But if your first stop involves a rumble at a “Star Trek” convention in Iowa, dude, beam your ass down to Route 66.

That's the whole of what you edited down and paraphrased from that article; an opinionated, negative perspective of fandoms from a man who was three times the age of most of the people who would go see that film at the time. Talking about fans doing things that haven't been allowed in ages (like camping outside on the side walk for special fandom events). And looking down his nose on how people decide to spend their time just because it's not something he personally wanted to do. Not everyone wants to ride Route 66. Some people do just want to line up and go to a Star Trek convention in Iowa for a romp. And that's fine.

All you're doing is showing that you think you're better than everyone else because you don't personally care about what people do in their downtime. If people want to debate the merits of a cheesy strategy game whose whole gimmick is "pick your favorite war criminal", that's their business. You don't get to decide that they're "socially inept" like that.

Yeah, there are a few people who are really overzealous, and being forced to quarantine and watch the world burn around us as we're forced to stay in place for 5+ years did nothing to help.

But you can't just paraphrase and edit down a decade old article calling fans "socially inept" when you aren't even willing to stop and consider "hey, am I helping the situation? Or am I trying to sound smarter than I actually am?" All you're doing here is making it sound like you think you're better than people submitting to this blog.

If anything, this blog shows that there's actually a better understanding of the source material than you think. People critique the game all the damn time. They debate it all the time. They're as critical of the game as the game is critical of the some of its main themes. Is it always good? No. Sometimes discourse goes too far. And nothing about Three Houses is perfect. But the fandom is not nearly as "socially inept" as you're implying it is just because they have a lot of passionate takes and know so much trivia.

If you feel the need to look down on people like that, then go find something else to do and leave the fandom people alone. You clearly don't think they're worth even the most basic of common decency and respect.

Also, need I remind you: One of Roger Ebert's favorite films was The Mummy starring Brennan Frasier, a film that is notoriously fun but also filled with a lot of racist and sexist tropes towards POC?

Roger fucking Ebert was not immune to this kind of hypocrisy. And neither are you.

-

[see-fee]

What are you thoughts on Apple TVs Foundation version?

Ah. I never wanted to talk about that, but I guess my thoughts on the subject are as worth putting down as any, so here goes.

Boring, dumb, cringeworthy, badly written by hacks.

Bad showrunner/writers, bad cast (one or two exceptions). Bad everything except the visuals. I couldn’t be bothered to continue past the second or third episode, where I Raych-quit from the sheer stupidity.

Not because it strayed from Asimov’s work (though it can hardly be called an adaptation when it so flagrantly disregards its source material). I can assess and enjoy adaptations on their own merits. The show is simply not entertaining—a cardinal sin for entertainment. Things happened one after another and I just didn’t care. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

It wasn’t even enjoyable in a greasy burger/guilty pleasure way (e.g. Whedon’s Firefly or early JJ Abrams like Fringe). I’ve gotten far more discerning with age/maturity but I do still watch dumb popcorn fare (including the I, Robot summer blockbuster). And this show wasn’t that for me. Because it was sold as more than that, in a world where shows like Andor exist.

Because it pretends to be smart when it clearly isn’t, when its incompetent writers have never written anything of value in their lives. Very stupid people are behind it: Goyer and Friedman. Showrunner and writer David Goyer is a talentless hack whose own writing/producing portfolio is riddled with trashy bottom-of-the-barrel superhero mediocrity (rated as low as 3/10, 4/10, 5/10 on IMDb, and the way ratings work is that there are false positives but no false negatives), who somehow weaseled his way into successful franchises where other writers did the heavy lifting. Its other writer Josh Friedman has nothing remotely decent under his belt, either. These cheap hacks have obviously never read or understood their source material beyond a perfunctory skim (and if you believe anything they spew, I've got a waterfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. Two words: publicity & marketing.) The proof is in the pudding—Goyer and Friedman lack the brains to handle the material, let alone deviate from it.

I didn’t finish the season because I don’t think it gets better. The core problems I noted aren't going anywhere, and plenty of sensible people with good taste have shared the issues they have with it, and much of that is in line with my own experience or expectations of quality.

Season 2 reeks of jumping the shark. I’ve seen the trailer and laughed at its ridiculousness. It was a flurry of “we have Star Wars at home” scenes and also for some bizarre reason there were dragons? Or something? They’re not even pretending to be Asimov’s story any more—which is probably better for everyone involved.

Change My View: I sometimes wonder if I ought to give it another go, though I don’t have Apple TV anymore which adds to the friction. If anybody mature (I'm a full decade past my meme years) with decent taste (more modernist than postmodern internet shitposter, more objective than rabid fanatical addict) wants to tell me how this show has some merit despite its flaws and is worth my time, please do. I’m all ears.

Criticism on writing + cast below 👇

Characters, dialogue, plot are badly written/designed.

They do stupid things for stupid reasons (mostly: the plot requires it). Reciting prime numbers beCaUsE mAtH. (Cube did it better.)

That early swimming pool sex scene—whereas it was plausible for the characters in Game of Thrones or the Expanse, here in the hands of dumb writers it’s a girl thirsting over a guy she just met because The Plot Requires It, so that this guy can randomly stab Seldon later in a truly idiotic turn.

Machiavellian characters like Salvor Hardin get downgraded into some basic military chad guarding the Ethereum logo, for some pathetically trite Chosen One storyline and a lame what’s-in-the-vault mystery with a hilariously awful payoff. (I laughed so hard when I found out what it was. That you-know-who was literally in the vault.)

The two decent cast members are surrounded by a pack of Z-rate bargain bin actors whose previous credits hover in the 2/10–5/10 range.

Lee Pace is recycling his Joe MacMillan from Halt and Catch Fire but with a chest-baring wardrobe, since he’s the designated eye candy. Jared Harris is phoning it in, also recycling the same role he’s cornered a niche on: whistleblower-guy-who-gets-ignored-then-dies, a la Chernobyl and The Terror.

Laura Birn is doing a passable job with what she’s given to work with, but, in an utterly inexplicable design choice, the poor woman must stand in an asinine arms-akimbo pose all the damned time because we need to remember iT’s a rObOt. Who can cry and have sex but not stand normally. Or something. (Humans did it better.)

Terrence Mann was a forgettable snooze-fest—so was Lou Llobell.

Leah Harvey and the rest I saw were laughably awful.

[blackgwenstacy]

i do feel like (might be biased because i ADORED the first one) this feels like a deliberate compromise on the part of the writers. you have this story which is rich with diversity and a plot about rejecting the conviction that suffering is necessary. both of these things are alienating to the hates-snowflakes/hates-diversity crowd. and you also have hobie, who reads alternately as a caricature of a punk who breaks stuff for no reason if you’re ignorant of leftist politics, or as an objectively correct dissenter waiting/working for alliances to dismantle yet another corrupt system. making the movie more pro-cop feels like looking at the source material, which is unavoidably full of cops, and leaning in to the hero worship as an intentional counterbalance to the majority-alienating remainder of the narrative. it feels the same as the sam wilson captain america show compromising on its politics to elevate the status quo, but at the very least in spiderverse the police are symbols of an ideal and policing itself is not a component of the plot. essentially it feels like they wanted to dodge the anti-wokeist backlash by putting in something for the racists at home.

i don’t know that this absolves the movie of responsibility for the falseness of its portrayal. i do think that we aren’t getting superhero movies that don’t play both sides anytime soon. i also think spiderverse threaded this needle better than marvel has lately by keeping policing away from the actual core themes of the movie. i also also think it was probably a necessary compromise to keep the movie drama-free with the boycott crowd. the situation sucks all around.

this is all very well put. i do think the film caters to both “sides” better than other superhero films have managed to pull off, which is kind of sinister if you think about it too hard 😒. then, of course, you have the whole theme of “escaping the narrative”, which could be a set up for them to do something different in beyond the spiderverse in regards to superheroes and policing. i don’t wanna reach too hard, but we’ve concluded from the interactions w gwen + her dad and miles + the spider-society that policing in general = bad. the ending on earth-42 leaves room for doubt, but there is another film for a reason

[exhibitionsvisited]

2024

This year I visited 320 exhibitions, this is my top ten:

Francis Alÿs, Barbican, London

Superb show by Alys that is a real lesson in how to curate video art, visually, sonically, conceptually spatially and above all else seriously playful. 

2. Donald G. Rodney, Nottingham Contemporary and Spike Island, Bristol

I was lucky to see this retrospective of Rodney’s work twice and was rewarded by seeing two different ways to tell a story of the artist’s work. Charged, chilling, poignant, poetic, humbling, angry, beautiful and so much more.

3.Martyn Cross, Hales Gallery, London

Best show of painting I saw all year, Cross is doing something that is anachronistic in that it feels like nothing I have ever seen before and reminiscent of much that is good in art from the past. Hugely refreshing and rewarding.

4. Lubna Chowdhary, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

A show with a smile on its face that made me gleeful and indeed put a bouncing smile on my face. Much richness beneath the surface of the work, but wowzers what surfaces on the work, is incredibly materially rich.

5. Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Barbican, London

A show I had no expectations for, not having any knowledge of Sunstrum’s work before and actually only popping in to see it while also visiting the excellent The Imaginary Institution of India Art 1975–1998 exhibition. Sunstrum’s work was a real feat in bring the cinematic to painting through embedding the audience into the spatial time and space of an encounter with the narrative. Stunning and surprising.

6. Yelena Popova, Ione & Mann Gallery, London

Stepping into the gallery from the speakeasy-like entrance up the unassuming front door and staircase was like entering a completely different space from the bustling London streets – calm, contemplative, zen-like lessons in slowing down and paying attention.

7. Dan Rapley, Project Space Plus, Lincoln and Angear Visitor Centre, Nottingham

A lesson in how to look with fresh eyes, one body of photographs was displayed sculpturally in the middle of each space, inviting the viewer, like Rapley to look inwards at the materiality of the microscopic in his blown up photographs of details of slides he has sourced. The other body of work beautifully creates new mysterious and evocative compositions, collaged together by layering the found slides on a light box and rephotographing them.

8. We are the Monument, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

I don't think there is a better public gallery than the Graves Gallery at the moment who are considering how to re-energise their collection, largely by letting artists such as Yuen Fong Ling (and at the same time another brilliant show curated by Victoria Lucas. Clever, playful, dynamic in the way of curating, which feels as deft, elastic and magical as Houdini. It is truly an example that i wish others would take note of, not to copy but to see what can be done.

9. Hew Locke - What Have We Here?, British Museum, London

Superbly told through careful curation, excellent text panels that combined objectivity with subjectivity in a brilliant way to address multiple and complex colonial narratives.

10. Japanese Art History À La Takashi Murakami, Gagosian, London 

I was expected to be too cynical but ended up completely bowled over, seduced and in love with Murakami’s new work that brilliantly balanced spectacle with nuance, attention to detail on such a huge scale.

This year I visited the following exhibitions

10th Jan, Zara Sands and Olly Centres, General Practice, Lincoln

12 Jan, Bodies for Practice, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

2nd Feb, Seasonal Strokes, General Practice, Lincoln

9 Fefb, Chris Ofilli and William Blake, Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Chris Ofilli, Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Woman in Protest, Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Richard Hamilton, Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Yuri Pattison and J M W Turner, Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Zineb Saleh Tate Britain, London

9 Feb, Cat Flap Blink, Terrace Gallery, London

9 Feb, Victor Bengtsson, Public, London

9 Feb, Martin Aagaard Hansen, Tanja Nis-Hansen & Kazuyuki Takezaki , Union Pacific, London

9 Feb, Mao Yan, Pace Gallery, London

9 Feb, ,Ziping Wang, Unit, London

9 Feb, Zach lieberman, Unit, London

9 Feb, Conversation Galante, Pillar Corris, London

9 Feb, Frank Bowling ,Hauser and Wirth, London

9 Feb, Uman ,Hauser and Wirth, London

9 Feb, Willem Sasnal, Sadie Coles ,London

9 Feb, Anna Barriball, Frith St,London

9 Feb, Emi Otaguro, Masanori Tomita, Nobuya Hitsuda & Yutaka Nozawa , Sadie Coles,London

9 Feb, Come Home, Sadie Coles ,London

9 Feb, Zineb Sedira, Goodman Gallery,London

9 Feb, Marc Chagall, Alon Zakaim, London

9 Feb, Polymythologies, Tiwani Contemporary,London

9 Feb, Jeffrey Gibson, Stephen Friedman,London

9 Feb, Claire Gavronsky, Goodman Gallery ,London

9 Feb, Rose Shakinovsky, Goodman Gallery ,London

9 Feb, Olivia Flax, Holtermann ,London

9 Feb,Burri, Miró , Ermnst, Nahmad Projects,London

9 Feb, Gerhard Richter, David Zwirner ,London

9 Feb, Drawn into the Present, Thaddeus Ropac ,London

9 Feb, Andy Warhol, Thaddeus Ropac ,London

9 Feb, Pauline Boty, Gazelli, ,London

9 Feb, Karel Appel, Max Hetzler, ,London

9 Feb, Alexis Hunter, Richard Saltoun, ,London

9 Feb, Premiums 1, Royal Academy ,London

9 Feb, Entangled Pasts, Royal Academy ,London

16 Feb, Punk: Rage and Revolution, Northampton Museum & Art Gallery

16 Feb, Material Matters, Northampton Museum & Art Gallery

16 Feb, Elke Pollard, Northampton Museum & Art Gallery

21 Feb, Practice Research, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

22 Feb,  Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Nottingham Contemporary

22 Feb, Dora Budor, Nottingham Contemporary

22 Feb, Danica Maier, Beam, Nottingham

1 March, Andrew Bracey, General Practice, Lincoln

8 March, Darren Diss and Brian Voce, The Hub, Sleaford

8 March, Jo Cope, The Hub, Sleaford

20 March, Mirrors Windows Portals, project space plus, Lincoln

23 March, Feng-Ru Lee, Weston Gallery, Nottingham

23 March, Dan Rapley, Angear Visitor Centre, Nottingham

23 March, Saad Qureshi, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham

23 March, Fascinating Finds from Nottingham's Caves, University of Nottingham Museum

23 March,Peep Show, Bennington Gallery, Nottingham

23 March, Shahnawaz Hussain, Bennington Gallery, Nottingham

23 March, Osheen Siva, Bennington Gallery, Nottingham

23 March, Debsyo Bolaji, New Art Exchange, Nottingham

24 March, Jason Wilsher-Mills, Lincoln Museum

12 April, When Forms Come Alive,  Hayward Gallery, London

12 April, Virginia Verran, Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London

12 April, Secundino Hernández , Victoria Miro Gallery, London

12 April, Neal Rock, New Art Projects, London

12 April, Salvador Dali, Clarendon Fine Art, London

12 April, Unravel, Barbican, London

12 April, Soufiane Ababri, Barbican, London

12 April, Ibrahim Mahama, Barbican, London

12 April, Lobert Zandvilet, Grimm, London

12 April, Reina Sugihara, Arcadia Misa, London

12 April, Marria Pratts Carl Kostyal, London

12 April, Richard Serra,David Zwirner, London 

12 April, Marcelina Akpojotor, Rele, London

12 April, Fathi Hassan,Richard Saltoun, London 

12 April, Erwin Wurm,Thaddaeus Ropac, London 

12 April, Harold Cohen, Gazelli Art House, London 

12 April, Adam Pendleton, Galerie Max Hetzler, London 

12 April, Nancy Haynes,  Marlborough, London 

12 April, Shizuko Yoshikawa, Marlborough, London

12 April, Shizuko Yoshikawa and Bridget Riley, Marlborough, London

12 April, Betty Parsons,Alison Jacques, London 

12 April, Woody De Othello, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London 

12 April, Peter Blake,  Waddington Custot Galleries, London

12 April, Standing in the Gap, Goodman Gallery, London 

12 April, Ulla von Brandenburg, Pilar Corrias, London 

12 April, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Goodman Gallery, London

12 April, The Leisure Centre, The Brown Collection, London 

12 April, Shine On,Sadie Coles HQ Davies St, London

12 April, Albert Oehlen, Gagosian, London 

12 April, Gavin Turk, Ben Brown Fine Arts, London 

12 April, François Morellet,Annely Juda Fine Art, London 

12 April, Thomas Allen, Ronchini Gallery, London 

12 April, Darya Diamond, Pippy Houldsworth, London

12 April, Li Hei Di, Pippy Houldsworth, London

12 April, Florence Hutchings, Redfern Gallery, London

12 April, Marilyn Lerner, Spruth Magers, London

12 April, Barabara Kruger, Spruth Magers, London

12 April, Edward Burtynsky, Flowers, London

12 April, Terry Frost, Flowers, London

12 April, Cinthia Marcelle,Sprovieri, London 

12 April, Matthias Groebel,Gathering, London 

12 April, Raqs Media Collective, Frith Street Gallery, London 

12 April, Kati Heck, Sadie Coles, London

17 April, Trim, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

26 April, Marking Time, General Practice, Lincoln

8 May, Cache 05, Anglia Storage, Lincoln

8 May, Sacred Spaces, St Peter and Gowt, Lincoln

8 May, Parting of the Minds, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

8 May, Paul Letchworth, Gallery St. Martin's, Lincoln

11 May, Anna Reading, Uffington Notice Board

12 May, Common Ground, Uffington Village Hall

15 Ma, Groundings, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

29 May, Caravaggio, St Johns Cathedral, Valletta

31 May, Durer, Mdina Cathedral Museum

31 May, Joe Pellegrini Petit Collection, Wignacourt Museum, Rabat

31 May, Anton Agius, Wignacourt Museum, Rabat

4 June, Now I'm Here, Later I'll be There, Cadman studios, Stoke on Trent

7 June, Come to Fruition, Peter de Wint Building, Lincoln

18 June, Meet the Future, Grosvenor Building, Manchester

18 June, A to Z and Back Again, Holden Gallery, Manchester

19 June, Counter Culture, Djnogoly Gallery, Nottingham

19 June, John Newling, Lakeside Gallery, Nottingham

2 July, Oliver Ventress, General Practice, Lincoln

10 July, Sense of Belonging, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

12 July, Donald G. Rodney, Spike Island, Bristol

12 July, Aperiodic, Kit Form Gallery, Bristol

20th July, Text and Texture, General Practice, Lincoln

24th July, Resonating Museum Walls, Lincoln Museum

6 August, The Time is Always Now, The Box, Plymouth

16 August, Al Held White Cube Bermondsey, London

16 August, Joe Bloom, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London

16 August, Muhammad Zeeshan, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London

16 August, Rahima Gambo, Gasworks, London

16 August, Steve Klee, WIP Space, London

16 August, Nudge it, Terrace Gallery, London

16 August, Guild, Fillet space, London

16 August, Francis Alÿs, Barbican, London

16 August, Meera Shakti Osborne, Peer, London

16 August, Steph Huang, Tate Britain, London

16 August, Alvaro Barrington, Tate Britain, London

16 August, Keith Piper and Rex, Tate Britain, London

16 August, Franciska Themerson, Tate Britain, London

16 August, Balraj Khanna, Tate Britain, London

16 August, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London

17 August, Songs of the Open Road, Halycon, London

17 August, London Pictures, Gilbert and George Centre, London

17 August, Damien Hirst, Phillips, London

17 August, Supernova, Flowers, London

17 August, Asi Joy Samuel and Claudia Yu, Frieze no. 9, London

17 August, Yinka Shonibare, Serpentine Gallery, London

17 August, Judy Chicago, Serpentine Gallery, London

17 August, Minsuk Cho, Serpentine Gallery, London

17 August, Gerhard Richter, Serpentine Gallery, London

17 August, Agnes Scherer,  Sadie Coles, London

17 August, Matthew Barney,  Sadie Coles, London

17 August, Isabella Ducrot, Sadie Coles HQ, London

17 August, Bertolt Brecht, Raven Row, London

17 August, Phantom Hymn, Modern Art, London

17 August, Awaken Metamagical Hand, Gazelli Art House, London

7 August, Roe Ethridge Gagosian, Davies St, London

17 August, Minoru Nomata, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London

17 August, Dominique White, Whitechapel Gallery, London

17 August, Archipelago: Winds in Orbit, Whitechapel Gallery, London

17 August, Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, London

18 August, Yoko Ono, Tate Modern, London

18 August, Jannis Kounnelius, Tate Modern, London

18 August, Inside Job (the Tate Staff Biennale), Tate Modern, London

18 August, Art and Text, Tate Modern, London

18 August, Gillie and Marc, St. Pauls, London

18 August, Lina Iris Viktor, Sir John Soane Museum, London

23 August, Nick Simpson, General Practice, Lincoln

23 August, What? Now, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

31st August, The Kola Nut Cannot be Contained, Welcome Collection, London

31st August, Being Human, Welcome Collection, London

31st August, Jason Wilsher-Mills, Welcome Collection, London

31st August, Penny Slinger, Richard Saltourn, London

31st August, Grace Weaver, Max Hetzler, London

31st August, Rheim Alkadhi, ICA, London

31st August, Vanessa Bell, Courtauld Institute, London

31st August, Henry Moore, Courtauld Institute, London

31st August, Tavares Strachan, Hayward Gallery, London

31st August, Graham Crowley, Domobaal, London

31st August, Contemporary collecting David Hockney to Cornelia Parker, British Museum, London

31st August, Rembrandt and his Children, British Museum, London

31st August, Liorah Tchiprout, Pippy Houldsworth, London

31st August, Hockney and Piereo: A Longer Look, National Gallery, London

31st August, Discover Degas and Miss La La, National Gallery, London

31st August, Don Brown, Sadie Coles, London

1st September, Ed Clark, Turner Contemporary, Margate

1st September, Lynda Benglis, Turner Contemporary, Margate

1st September, Portfolio X Windmill Community Gardens, Turner Contemporary, Margate

9th September, MA Fine Art show, University of Northampton

11th September, MA Fine Art show, Staffordshire University

13 September, Take one A Day, Usher Gallery, Lincoln

14 September, Erica Eyres, Turntable Gallery, Grimsby

14 September, Dale Alcock, Unseen Arts, Grimsby

16 September, MA Design Degree Show, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

20 September, Lubna Chowdhary, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, PostNatures, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Colour, Form and Line, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, A Passion for Prints, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Odilon Redon, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Art and Identity, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, We Are The Monument, Graves Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Show Your Metal, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Tess Jaray, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Festival of the MindMillennium Gallery, Sheffield

20 September, Festival of the Mind, Persistence Works, Sheffield

20 September, Jack Grinno, Gloam, Sheffield

27 September, Jake Williams, General Practice, Lincoln

10 October, Dan Rapley, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

18 October, Joe Duggan, Russel Square Gardens, London

18 October, Braque, Matisse, Picasso, London

18 October, Elizabeth Magill, Anthony Wilkinson, London

18 October, Douglas Abdell, Ab-Anbar, London

18 October, Murray Clarke, Nahmad Projects, London

18 October, Kehinde Wiley, Stephen Friedman, London

18 October, Fabienne Verdier, Waddington Custot, London

18 October, Susie Hamilton, Paul Stolper Gallery, London

18 October, Hew Locke - What Have We Here?, British Museum, London

18 October, Mathew Cerletty, Herald St, London

18 October, 5 Years, Maximillian William, London

18 October, Pei Wang, Workplace, London

18 October, The Stars Fell on Alabama, Edel Assanti, London

18 October, Jonas Wood, Gagosian, London

18 October, Yelena Popova, IONE & MANN Gallery, London

18 October, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pilar Corrias, London

18 October, Golds, Ordovas, London

18 October, Jack Whitten, Hauser & Wirth, London

18 October, George Rouy, Hauser & Wirth, London

18 October, Austin Lee, Carl Kostyal, London

18 October, Ella Walker, Pilar Corrias, London

18 October, Alison Wilding, Alison Jacques, London

18 October, Lygia Clark, Alison Jacques, London

18 October, Kapwani Kiwanga, Goodman Gallery, London

18 October, Gary Hume, Sprüth Magers. London

18 October, Anthony McCall, Sprüth Magers, London

18 October, Oscar Murillo, David Zwirner, London

18 October, Pouran Jinchi, Gazelli Art House, London

18 October, Ruba Salameh, Gazelli Art House, London

18 October, Libby Heaney, Gazelli Art House, London

18 October, Heemin Chung, Thaddaeus Ropac, London

18 October, Robert Longo, Thaddaeus Ropac, London

18 October, Danh Vo, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London

18 October, Magdalene Odundo, Thomas Dane, London

18 October, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Vigo gallery, London

18 October, Terry Adkins, Thomas Dane, London

18 October, René Daniëls, Modern Art Bury Street, London

18 October, Jordan Wolfson,  Sadie Coles, London

18 October, Urs Fischer, Sadie Coles HQ Kingly St, London

18 October, Marlene Dumas, Frith Street Gallery, London

18 October, Freelands Painting Prize 2024, Freelands Foundation, London

18 October, Hew Locke, Hales Gallery, London

18 October, Helene Appel, The Approach, London

18 October, Germaine Kruip, The Approach, London

18 October, Gary Hume, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, London

18 October, Simryn Gill, Richard Saltourn, London

18 October, The Look, Transition Projects, London

24 October, Georgie Jones, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

25 October, Grayson Perry, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham

25 October, Paula Rego, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham

25 October, Race and the League of Nations, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham

25 October, Donald G Rodney, Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham

25 October, After the End of History, Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham

25 October, Assunta Ruocco, TG, Nottingham

25 October, Mohammad Barrangi, New Art Exchange, Nottingham

25 October, Mailnish Harijan, New Art Exchange, Nottingham

25 October, Dorothy Bohm, Beam, Nottingham

25 October, The Last Horror Show, Backlit, Nottingham

1 November, Anne Stanfield, General Practice, Lincoln

8 November, The Distribution of Shapes in Space, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

12 November, Donald G. Rodney, Nottingham Contemporary

12 November, EM24: Escape Simplicity, Surface Gallery, Nottingham

12 November, Kolam (கோலம்), Primary, Nottingham

25 November, Small Encapsulations of Pleasure, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

10th December, Bodies of Practice, Project Space Plus, Lincoln

13th December, Zeinab Saleh, David Zwirner, London

13th December, On Kawara, David Zwirner, London

13th December, Peter Buggerhaut, Holbermann, London

13th December, Jan Fabre, Mucciacca, London

13th December, Joan Synder, Thaddeus Ropac, London

13th December, Jessica Wilson, Ranching, London

13th December, Enchanted Alchemie, Levy Gorvy Dayan, London

13th December, Susie Macmurray, Pangolin, London

13th December, Motion in Stillness: Dance and the Human Body in Movement, Victoria Miro, London

13th December, María Berrío, Victoria Miro, London

13th December, Gabriel Hartley, Seventeen, London

13th December, Martin Cross, Hales Gallery, London

13th December, Kenia Almaraz Murillo , Waddington Custom, London

13th December, Özgür Kar, Emalin, The Clerk's House, London

13th December, The Equal Right to Live and Blossom, Kate MacGarry, London

13th December, Merlin James, Studio M Maureen Paley, London

13th December, Sang Woo Kim, Herald St. Gallery, London

13th December, Parker Ito, Rose Easton, London

13th December, Merlin James, Maureen Paley, , London

13th December, Somaya Critchlow, Maximillian William, London

13th December, Kutluğ Ataman, Niru Ratnam, London

13th December, Nicholas Hatfull , Josh Lilley, London

13th December, William Wright, Josh Lilley, London

13th December, Sass Popoli, Lungley Gallery, London

13th December, David Nash, Annely Juda Fine Art, London

13th December, Candida Höfer, Ben Brown Fine Art, London

13th December, Takashi Murakami, Gagosian , London

13th December, Miguel Ybáñez, Grimm , London

13th December, Seth Price, Sadie Coles HQ Davies St, London

13th December, Anna Weyant, Gagosian, London

13th December, Salvo and Andreas Schulze, Spruth Magers, London

13th December, Lenore Tawney and Toshiko Takaezu, Alison Jacques , London

13th December, Hank Willis Thomas, Pace, London

13th December, Ernst Love, Goodman Gallery, London

13th December, Mary Ramsden, Pilar Corrias, London

13th December, Alice Barber, Luxembourg + Co, London

13th December, Ndayé Kouagou, Gathering, London

13th December, Daniel Silver, Frith Street Gallery, London

13th December, Klara Liden, Sadie Coles HQ Kingly St, London

13th December, George Shaw, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London

13th December, Paul Housley, Cedric Bardawil, London

13th December, Forrest Bess, a.Squire , London

13th December, Lubaina Himid, Hollbush Gardens , London

13th December, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Barbican, London

13th December, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998, Barbican , London

20th December, Joy, General Practice

[egg-emperor]

How do you think eggmans father reacted after he found out about his sons animal cruelty?

I imagine that Ivo's father was unintentionally enabling of a lot of his son's behaviors, like his bad attitude and actions. He'd scold him when something he did interfered with and inconvenienced him personally more than anything else because he had a bit of selfishness and ego in him too, though nowhere near as bad as his son.

And that was only for the things he was actually around to see. I headcanon that his father was often very busy with work both in his main big Robotnik Corp business stuff and his side stuff as a mechanic in their garage, so he didn't see Ivo that often. It was very easy for him to do a lot of bad shit without his father ever having a single clue.

He would pretty much always do it far from his father's view and have plenty of time and ways to hide all evidence. When Ivo was only toying with animals themselves, his dad didn't get to learn about it. He may have discovered some of the aftermaths a few times but he had no idea that his son had done it and he couldn't prove anything.

If he had, he would've had an intervention because he'd know it was a bad sign and most concerning of his behavior. He knew of his behavioral issues of being bratty and bullying people too but he just put it down to him being spoiled, wealthy, and intelligent, so he was arrogant and had a lot of pride but he didn't have time to fix it.

Though I do imagine him learning of just one instance of his cruelty towards animals. That being through his first prototype of a robot that he ever made with the very early version of the Motobug idea I mentioned. That was a lot harder to hide with its size and all the materials and tools in his father's garage he used to make it.

But Ivo didn't even try to hide it because once he had figured out how to use the animal as its power source and could get it to move, he was very proud of himself and wanted to show it off to absolutely everyone. He found that causing trouble with it and scaring people was very fun and used it to torment people with immense glee.

While it looked different and rough back then and was less advanced, it was impressive for his age and had almost all the main components it has today. Razor sharp blades for claws, a motorcycle wheel, and animal encased inside. Biggest difference is it was like an RC as he didn't have the tech for it to move entirely independently.

He controlled it remotely because he didn't have programming to make it move where he wanted it, only the animal inside it, so he'd lose control of it at times but that just made it more fun to him. It crashed into a lot of the stuff in his father's garage and messed it up and Ivo didn't care to clean it up, he was too thrilled by his accomplishment to care.

So he drove it around and was happy to torment any creature or person with it. A fucked up robotic bug zooming at high speeds towards you on a motorcycle wheel welding sharp claws would be terrifying and his enjoyment in seeing their fear was another early sign of his sadistic streak, he loved his dangerous new toy and wanted to show it off.

He was still engrossed in this when his father finally got back from work and then he proceeded to proudly show it off to him. He was very amused by his father's fright and how he shrieked when Ivo made the unidentified high speed object make circles around him after having hours of practice in controlling it better which made it more menacing.

This was the biggest reaction Ivo ever got from his father for work he did and things he built. When he was impressed or proud of him, he wouldn't show it because of his own pride, other times he just didn't think it was as impressive in comparison to all that his father, Ivo's grandfather accomplished- and then most of the time he wasn't around to react at all.

So Ivo was pleased to get any big reaction, even if it was fear. It brought out his cheeky mischievous side and gave him a laugh. That was also a way Ivo's father unintentionally encouraged his bad behaviors because while he didn't approve, his reaction was so entertaining and he had the reward of having all his attention for a little while so it made him want to keep trying to get it.

His father's fear didn't last long, it quickly turned into just being appalled at the use of his expensive materials and state of his garage. He said "If you're gonna use my shit and make a mess of the place to make one of your weird inventions, the least you could do is make that thing trim the hedges or something instead of threatening me with it" XD

Ivo was also happy about the way his father actually seemed to express interest in the use it could have, so he decided to try it. He messed up other people's hedges practicing but when he felt he got it down, he trimmed the ones in their yard with it. But his father's reaction wasn't much more than "That's nice" in a mumble in passing before he went to work that day.

He didn't even know about the animal trapped inside for a while until he said he was going out to play with it again and his father noticed him reaching inside to take the animal out to see if it was still alive. He certainly thought it was very weird that an animal was in there but his suspicions and disapproval was never as strong as it should've been.

When Ivo saw him looking at him dangling the creature above his head teasingly, he explained he'd been powering it with that and his father found it hard to believe and figured the animal wasn't hurt and was just really like a passenger, which he knew must've been unpleasant for it but it didn't appear injured and at least it kept his son occupied.

So he just let it be and just told him to get it away from him in case it was diseased or something. So he knew his son was being mildly cruel with animals but only once and he didn't see enough to know how bad it was, otherwise he would've been horrified. He didn't know its life was being used up to power it and that it would eventually die.

Only then would he have realized it was a lot more messed up than what he thought was just a much milder, still dangerous and bad but mostly light-hearted cheeky fun of thinking it'd be funny to attach blades to a motorcycle robot he made. But that combined with the dark truth of what happens to the animals would've been a huge concern.

He never found out about the other ways he'd torment animals for sadistic fun both inside and outside his weird experiment inside the robot. Perhaps a couple of times he came close to catching more but Ivo could excuse it, say the critter tried to attack him and he defended himself, or the dead animal was roadkill or a study for homework.

His father never looked into or asked enough questions to learn what was really happening or his son's true intentions, he was too busy and didn't see what he did find out as serious as it was because Ivo didn't let him see the worst. It was the same when it came to him bullying, making his father think it was just banter that went a bit too far.

He at least knew his son's bad behavior in being bratty, snobby, egotistical because he was spoiled, rich, intelligent, and related to his famous grandfather. But he kept spoiling him because as long as he got his way, he wasn't as much as a nuisance to him personally and it was the one way to show him love as he was too busy for much else.

There are times he definitely should've taken it more seriously and as warnings and tried to get them fixed when he noticed. But there were times he just genuinely didn't understand the severity of the shit he got up to, or didn't even see it at all because he wasn't around him long enough. So in many cases, he was unintentionally enabling.

But Ivo being alone for hours to do whatever the fuck he wanted let him get up to all kinds of crazy and deranged shit on his own accord with no one aware to stop him or encourage it and he just genuinely loved it, so really he's the real reason why he's so terrible XD