#it is extremely obvious to me that i am creating all this backstory for a character who shows up in one optional sidequest thats less than

[redactedgender]

songs i associate with redacted audio characters - speaker edition

!! CW FOR MENTIONS OF ADDICTION, UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS, AND AARON & ELLIOTT'S BACKSTORY !!

this is gonna be exactly what it says on the tin. there'll be some explanations under the cut for what im doing w this!

to keep it brief, im giving each of the characters under the cut three songs from my playlists of them, and go into a little detail on why i chose them/have them in their playlists. sounds simple, right? i'll also be including links to the songs if you want to add them to your own playlists!

with that, let me explain what the fuck is up shjdkfdsh

so a bit of context: i grew up writing karaoke fanfics on wattpad, which if you don't know, were reader-submitted requests for specific characters to sing songs within a short story, mainly in a group setting at karaoke. this has made me extremely specific with music and assigning them to characters, along with finding "singing voice-claims" for characters. so, i have some credentials when it comes to this stuff fjdhsgshjgd

with that explanation out of the way, onto the fun! one of the songs listed for each of them will be their svc (singing voice-claim), except for gavin, because i'm still working on finding his svc (i am leaning towards dpr ian for him though because... don't go insane. yeah)

if that all makes sense...

let's go!

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gavin

horns - bryce fox

; so this is the song i used as the title for my big ol' gaviant smut i wrote (shameless plug shhhhh). this song is just so gavin, especially season one gavin. the sex appeal that oozes from it, the way the singer wants the subject so badly even if he knows she's bad for him. like, s1!gavin wasn't a bad guy, but he was kind of morally ambiguous in a way that could be read as toxic. however, as freelancer's relationship with him deepened, we learn that he values consent and being authentic, something other concubi don't. what can i say, i like good character growth.

human - dodie

; this was one of the first songs i put on his playlist, and for good reason. this song, to me, is freelancer singing this about and to gavin. it's about connection, it's about wanting to see what the other person is like under the persona they've created. this song is what happened when freelancer began learning about gavin past the "sex daemon" persona, but its also what happened when gavin learned about freelancer and how they were more than a "jack-of-a-trades mess of a human". listen i love the two of them so much.

sweet tooth - scott helman

; a more recent addition to my playlist, this one also makes a lot of sense to me. this song is about addiction, and while gavin like, literally needs feelings of desire to live, it also can be said that he probably has had an unhealthy relationship with sex in the past. i also just really like this song. but i think gavin has healed a lot of his attitudes towards his fellow concubi, with freelancer's help and of his own personal efforts.

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elliott

dream boy - waterparks

; we have reached our first official svc! awsten knight of waterparks is my elliott svc. does this is really match my face claim for him? kinda? i had this svc waaay before i had josh hutcherson as elliott actually. but, to talk abt the song itself, i mean. c'mon now. it's literally elliott to sunshine. the vision in my brain is that elliott sings this at karaoke before he and sunshine get together, but are definitely both pining hardcore for each other. there's something about the playful flirty energy of this song that reminds me of elliott in the best way imaginable. he's just a little dorky, what can i say!

wasted summers - juju

; i like some angst! im not all fluff and humor and smut. i appreciate a good angst now and then. my brand of angst is just kind of specific. you'll see that in a sec. but this song just reminds me of elliott and aaron for obvious reasons. how aaron grew up too fast cuz of their parents, how aaron felt jealous and angry over elliott telling him and their mom about magic, how elliott told sunshine he's the protective type because of how he grew up (side note i have many thoughts abt elliott & blake and protection vs possession if anyone would be interested lmao). their relationship just makes me go a bit insane /pos.

still got it - troye sivan

; ALRIGHT THIS REQUIRES A BIT OF AN EXPLANATION. so i basically have a whole mv planned in my big ol' brain around this song, and around the concept of: what if scorpius' memory erasing worked for longer? what if elliott genuinely thought, for a bit, that he and sunshine had a bad breakup, but that he still loved them? and still "wanted them back"? only to then have the memories, the real ones, come back in a flood of sensory overload and horrible realizations? see? i like angst. :]

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porter

brutus - the buttress

; first things first, i dont support this band due to their transphobic comments. that being said, this song is incredibly porter-coded. "my whole life you were a teacher and friend to me / please know my actions are not motivated only by envy" - like this is just about will and vincent. i don't have to explain further.

we don’t have to dance - andy black

; porter's svc! i liked this song for him cuz i imagine treasure is the first person in a loooong time that porter has actually wanted to stay around, even though he's so used to these one night stands and passionate scenes. and even though he really likes treasure, he still goes back to the old him: offering just to dance, just to fuck, just for this to be casual.

car lights - james marriott

; so i have a little headcanon that porter's maker was someone that porter was dating in secret because he (maker) was the kind of guy who would say homophobic things in front of others, but would end the night with his tongue down porter's throat (or something like that). this song is about that kind of experience: worried you're about to be caught despite it feeling so fucking good. also, this song just kinda slaps.

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lasko

stutter - marianas trench

; this song just makes sense, not just in the fact that lasko stammers and stutters a lot when talking (especially when he's excited, god hes adorable) but also in that lasko is basically a hyperverbal autistic/auDHD person who constantly talks even when they don't have the energy to do so (totally not projecting what) and i think that's representation we don't always see. also, imagine him finding this song and dancing to it? yeah.

eraser - ricky montgomery

; lasko's svc! does this surprise anyone? actually it might. i love ricky montgomery so much, his debut album is one of my favorite pieces of music out there and i think he's such a talented artist. his range and subject matter in his songs always screamed lasko to me, and ricky's vocals just match lasko so much. this song is about being socially awkward, which like. yeah. i have like four or five ricky songs on my lasko playlist which is really funny actually hgjkfdhsdh!

my mother wants me dead - carolesdaughter

; lasko "mommy issues" moore anyone? yeah this song is that. i know i could have gone for the mitski mommy issues, but something about lasko tells me his mommy issues are like rage. like, as much rage as lasko can have towards a person. the damn fam and their mommy issues. this song also plays into my hc that lasko used to smoke before starting at D.A.M.N., picking it up after the inversion, and then quitting again once he started healing and met coworker.

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guy

fallin’ for you - r5

; as you all know by now, ross lynch is my guy faceclaim. and while i love the driver era (a kiss is also on my guy playlist, it is in fact the best tde song), ross' voice during the r5 era actually suits guy a little more to me if im being honest. also, its a hc of mine that guy's family did music, but guy had a really bad falling out with his parents and it kinds ruined things for a while. r5!ross's vocals are higher than now, since this was during the disney era, but this song is just too perfect to me not to use for guy.

30/90 from tick…tick…BOOM!

; i mentioned this in my face claim post, but i had andrew garfield as my guy face claim because of this song from the movie. it's just like literally guy tho. we know guy's a writer, we know how writers are. as a writer myself (not professionally), "30/90" is more than just representation of someone wanting to peak before their past "the right age"; this is about creatives wanting to make something that will last longer than their life, and that just screams guy to me. i don't think he wants to be famous, but i think he wants to have a legacy of media he creates last longer than himself.

honey - troye sivan

; listen. "something to give each other" is my favorite album from 2023, and most of those songs remind me of one redacted character or another, so if there's a lot of songs in my playlists from this album, shush. anyways, this song is an obvious choice for guy since it's titled "honey", but if you listen to it, it actually is a pretty sweet (eh? eh??) song. it's about falling for someone and wanting to be with them, and since its a fandom wide hc that guy probably fell in love with honey upon first meeting them, this plays into that idea. look i just love how much of a simp guy is for honey, what can i say?

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if i have any more energy to do more of these i will, but my spring break ends soon so we'll see. also, i managed to make height charts for redacted audio characters & listeners if anyone would wanna see those (they would include my listener oc's). also, if you have any songs you think fit the bois, i may open my asks again if you want to send those to me :0

[moralesmilesanhour]

AND ANOTHER THING! Going off of my tags on my previous post, outside of me just thinking they're cute I also feel like flowerbyte works better for me purely on a narrative level. One of my biggest pet peeves esp for action movies is when the romantic subplot takes over like half the story without proper development. It doesn't matter WHO it is or how much I like the characters individually I will literally fast forward through every romantic scene if it feels shoehorned in. It makes it so tedious you don't even understand. (Haterism ahead. Well not really 'hate' just mild irritation really. this is looong):

So let's look at Gwen and Miles' relationsip. We start ITSV with Miles basically having a one-sided crush on Gwen. By the end of the film they had just agreed to be friends and have known each other for maybe like a week tops, and *maybe* Gwen reciprocates but it's not extremely clear. Whatever occurs between them in between ITSV and ATSV, we don't see (it's implied that they haven't even seen each other at all for obvious reasons so. oof).

But then we jump into ATSV, and suddenly they're swinging into the sunset talking about how they're "the same"...? Besties. Friends. Niece and nephew. Neither of you know each other dfghjkl

Then the wholeee rest of their scenes together is just the film trying desperately convince us through the music, framing, and even other characters' dialogue that there is romantic (notice how i specify ROMANTIC) tension between these two kids that is just so thick you could cut through it with a butter knife. I'm sorry, but is this tension in the room with us right now...? But okay movie.

Now, compare that to the scene in ATSV where Miles and Margo first bump into each other. They're able to establish romantic chemistry almost IMMEDIATELY! One look and a 'hey'. That's all it fuckin' took! They *both* like each other and it's clear as day.

Then right after, Margo is given a quick implied backstory that instantly gives her and Miles a reason to relate to each other that isn't (necessarily) just about them both being Spider-Man (because, in Margo's words, they're ALL Spider-Man and this means you need more than that to form a genuine connection). Neither of them feel like they can be themselves because their environment at home doesn't allow for it, even without the secret identity. Bada-bing bada-boom instant connection in under 5 minutes and I am still awake by the end of it.

Then, finally, we get a scene that shows that they can, to some extent, trust each other. Margo only just met this dude a few scenes ago, but she immediately goes against Miguel's wishes knowing the consequences and attempts to send him back home because her convictions are stronger than her loyalty to Spider Society. Just that act alone makes her a better ally to Miles than like, half the cast at this point.

...And that creates a bit of a dilemma if Gwiles is meant to be endgame.

As literally everyone and their mother have pointed out by now, Gwen is objectively a bad friend to Miles in this film. But...I would also argue that there are very few instances outside of combat in either film where she's even a *good* friend. And that's sort of the point, isn't it? Gwen has been terrible at friendship for the majority of the time we spend with her because she's traumatized from literally murdering the last good friend she had. Then her dad tried to shoot her. Then Miguel-- you know how it goes. She clearly has a long way to go before even a healthy *friendship* with Miles can start to develop. So that leaves me with a few questions:

A) Why did we wait until the last scene of the SECOND FILM for her to finally decide to be a good friend

B) Why didn't they just give Miles and Gwen more scenes together where they actually get to know each other if their relationship is now so important to the story, and:

C) If Gwen's whole journey is about her inability to maintain strong friendships...Why the FUCK is she the love interest then???

Either we all just got baited, or we are now going to have to spend a decent portion of BTSV watching Gwen try to salvage a friendship that was barely even that developed to begin with, convince the guy whose trust she just lost that she would ALSO make a good girlfriend i guess, and all the while there is now another potential love interest that is clearly, *according to the movie itself*, the better option (or so it seems for now). So like...Where do we go from here?? It just feels like a clumsy narrative decision. And if they do the misogynistic ass 'cat-fight' between two female characters over the main guy I will literally commit a felony. So yeah that's where my head is at right now thank you for reading all the way through my tangent over pixels on a screen sorry everybody

[naranjapetrificada]

Okay I've gotta come into your askbox to scream about From the Firmament!! I am just so continuously impressed by the obvious care you put into every single sentence. Anyway (and this totally isn't just me fishing for more about the next chapter): what's the latest on the Izzy POV section? He's so frustrating for me to write personally (lack of joy and whimsy gets to me 🙃) so I can't wait to see how you handle him!

You are always, always welcome to scream into my ask box, my dear! And it's funny you should ask about the Izzy POV section, because I actually have a draft WIP Wednesday post from this week that was gonna include a snippet of that. In the way that I needed to get the first chapter posted in order to get certain worldbuilding facts established or I was never going to move on, it kind of feels like I need to get eyes on Izzy as he appears in the world of FtF.

It's not even his character that I feel like I'm struggling with anymore, it's mainly a) creating a believable voice and even moreso b) deciding what information to reveal/examine through him vs other characters. His voice is tricky for a lot of reasons but at the end of the day I can wave my AU magic wand and attribute things to the circumstances being different. The other thing though? God.

It feels so fundamental that his perspective should be heavily skewed and extremely divergent from Ed's in particular, and that's felt so hard to pull off. It matters what elements of their shared backstory get revealed through Izzy and what gets revealed through Ed, because things that seemed important to one of them are almost guaranteed to be incidental to the other.

Like a good example is how Izzy has this awe about him (even if he's in awe of an imagined version of Ed) that means that in any universe, he probably places greater weight on the first time he met Ed than Ed does. If you ask either of them what they remember about something they experienced together, Ed's recollection will zoom in on details that Izzy missed but ignore other things. But because it's a shared history, you could look the eyes of either one to explore it.

Because the options feel so endless, the parts of the Izzy POV that have remained fairly static are the ones where he's not directly thinking about Ed or the [redacted], [redacted], or [significantly longer redaction] in their past that would inform how he sees the scene he's narrating. His intro paragraph, initial reaction to Stede, and discomfort with the sense of freedom that always lingers in Stede's wake were super easy to pull together because it's all right there in canon. But in order to figure out anything else I've had to keep writing and rewriting certain things from his perspective or Ed's, bouncing back and forth until it feels right. Which makes the act of writing chapter 3 literally take longer of course, but also makes it harder to approach because it feels like a much bigger task.

Not to turn this into a general chapter 3 update but basically:

Stede's section (yes, only one!) is pretty much done beyond line edits.

See all of the above paragraphs for the Izzy of it all.

Ed takes me a long time, but most of another Ed section has been done since before I even posted the first chapter. A lot of the initial worldbuilding came out of that part, even! Ed also opens the chapter, and I've mostly got that part squared away too.

So basically all that remains is The Izzy Question and the final section, which I know the shape of and shouldn't have anything like the Izzy issues with. It feels like not a lot at all, but also like so, so much. Maybe you asking will give me the courage to share a couple paragraphs from his section though? I was actually poking at it this morning. Maybe getting something out there will settle some of these open questions for me and I can move on?

Thank you sooooo much, I could talk about this forever. If anyone else wants to, you are always welcome to send an ask about my fic if the mood strikes.

[pudding-parade]

Old Capa's Forest by Vany

I hesitated to overview this one, for reasons which I'll go into under the cut, but in the end, I do think the world is beautiful and deserves some attention, so here we are.

As usual, the title of this post is a link to a page that has the world up for download, and also as usual I have re-uploaded a .world file here, just in case the linked paged vanishes. (The .world file goes in your game install files at GameData - Shared - NonPackaged - Worlds.)

There is also a German-language forum thread here in which the creator describes the backstory of the world and shows in-progress pics, etc. My German is extremely rusty, but sufficient to understand that the backstory is about Native (North) Americans, a famine, and grizzly bears, and then settlers moving in. That being said, much of the world looks very German/Alpine/central European, and while that's very pretty, it doesn't fit as American in any sense, native or otherwise. But as a German/Alpine-inspired world created by a German-speaking creator, I think it's wonderful. In any case, I did manage to glean from the forum thread that the world uses all EPs up to Generations and also the SPs that were released up to that point except for the Outdoor one but I'm too lazy to look up what SPs those would be. Sorry.

BUT ANYWAY! There are several reasons for my hesitation in overviewing this one. Among them…

1) In general with these overviews, I want to feature worlds that are complete enough that you can drop in some sims, maybe let Story Progression create some other families, and just play, without having to do anything else. With this one, you can't do that because the residential houses are all empty, some of them not even partitioned into rooms inside. In order for Story Progression to put families in them, you'll need to go through and put at least a fridge and beds in them, plus cribs if you want families with toddlers to move in.

(But speaking of families, many of the houses are tiny one-bedrooms on teeny-tiny lots, which is a huge minus for me, but I suppose may be a plus for others.)

2) There are a ton of trees and other plants. There are so many that it makes it hard to take pics of the lots, frankly. And even though the playable area of the world is relatively small, there are so many trees that I fear the world will lag when it's fully populated and played, unless they are thinned out. And arguably, they should be thinned out on the lots because many of them intrude into the buildings and/or would make playing more difficult because the "plantings" are so dense. Like so:

Now, it is supposed to be a forest-type world, of course, so there ought to be lots of flora, but I think it's a bit excessive. Many of the lots make me want to pull out a chainsaw and a giant weedwhacker, but maybe that's just me.

3) The blurb on the download page (again in German) says the world uses the rabbithole rugs/doors by Jynx, and there's a link to them. I don't normally use that set, but I went ahead and downloaded them and then installed them in the folder that I use to take pics for these overviews. However, they still don't function as rabbitholes in the world. I don't know what's up with that. So when it comes to many of the community lots, I am uncertain as to what they are supposed to be. Some of them are obvious -- one is called a school (in English, so this may be a lot that the creator downloaded), one is called the Krankenhaus (German for hospital), and one is called Wissenschaft (German for science), and one looks like a military base with a barracks and exercise equipment, etc. -- but there are others that aren't so obvious, and I'm not going to go through them and offer my guesses. So, that will require some fiddling if you want to play this world.

4) The world uses store content, at least some of which I don't have -- particularly doors and windows, as you'll see in some of the pics -- so I can't tell you what all might be needed. Other than the rabbithole rugs (which as far as I can tell don't work even if you have/download them, as I said), it doesn't have or require CC, though.

5) Some of the lots are very, very large. There are a couple that are entire mini-villages including both residential and commercial spaces on one lot, so the size is justified, but some of them are just danged big single-purpose lots. Personally, I don't like huge lots at all unless it's livestock-related, so this is a minus in my book, but of course YMMV.

So there are the big downsides, as I see them. On the up side, the world is gorgeous. For reference, this is the world where I took the pictures for this little 'story.' It's big, but not too huge, and the distant terrain makes it feel larger. I'm guessing it's 2048x2048 (but don't quote me on that), but the playing area is fairly small, so it shouldn't take a long time for sims to get from place to place.

What makes the world unique, IMO, is that, as you can see in the first pic of this post, it's created at high elevation with most of the surrounding distant terrain sitting lower than the playable area, increasing the feeling of height. The height allows for, among other things, some truly massive waterfalls, three big ones and a couple smaller ones. Adding to the feeling of altitude (as well as moisture from the massive waterfalls) is the use of fog emitters, so that you feel like you're up in the clouds.

Layout-wise, the world is broken out into discrete sections, which I like. There is an "old town" area with remnants of walls/gates and small residential and community lots built close together, reminiscent of a German/central European town that dates back to the Middle Ages. Then there's a "newer" part with small, densely-packed, more modern-style lots. Then, larger lots are spread around the rest of the world, mostly on roads that are big circles.

The lots are all original, as far as I can tell. As I said, in my game, many are missing doors/windows because I don't have a lot of build content from the Store, but if you have that stuff, this probably won't be an issue. The world has some, but certainly not all, of the "standard" community lots. There's a library, two gyms, a graveyard, a couple dive bars, a vampire lounge, a nectary, and several markets as well as a couple of "real" rabbitholes, namely the movie theater and the police station.

Overall, I feel this world has some excellent bones to it, and it has some truly spectacular scenery. So, I think it's a excellent world to have if you like to finish/renovate lots but not build them from scratch, especially if you like the architectural style. With finishing and, in my opinion, taming some out-of-control flora, this would be a completely gorgeous world that (hopefully) would run well. Or, if you want to take some beautiful, atmospheric scenery pics, it's good as-is. But, it's not as "plug and play" as I'd generally want for these world overviews I do. I do think it deserves a feature, though, just for the world sculpting/decoration and the prettiness of many of the lots.

But enough talk! Time for pictures. Since the rabbitholes don't work, I'm going to dispense with the usual map view and Edit Town pics and just post a bunch of random pics.

[toxicpineapple]

v3 scar headcanons

pondering the orb that is the v3 cast and scars. this is obviously going to be triggering though for a multitude of reasons so i’m gonna slap a big ol abuse/self harm/torture trigger warning on here and then drop everything below the cut. proceed with an abundance of caution :3

shuichi saihara i’m probably far from the only person who headcanons shuichi as having had a history of self harm. i think a lot of people really reduce and water down shuichi’s character to “guy with anxiety and depression” but it’s a very longstanding and personal headcanon to me. i think he has largely gotten over it by the time he attends hope’s peak, but still has the occasional relapse. scars mostly on the inner thigh and wrists.

hoshi ryoma ryoma, i don’t believe has much of a history of personal injury (and injuries he likely got in tennis mostly didn’t leave any scars) but i think he has old scars from cat scratches and bites over the years. also some nicks across his arms and abdomen from various scuffs in prison, mostly onesided; ryoma’s not the kind of guy who fights back, not really.

gonta gokuhara this dude grew up in the woods so you know he’s got all kinds of gnarly scars on his torso and legs. claw marks, bite marks, maybe something on his head from a particularly sharp rock. they’re his reminders of his time growing up with his forest family and i think while gonta doesn’t necessarily experience much of a feeling of “pride” around them, he isn’t ashamed of them either.

kiibo robot. skip

korekiyo shinguuji korekiyo is an abuse victim. i am reasonably confident about this stance. i think on the whole the abuse that korekiyo faced from his sister was psychological or coercive, mostly because his sister was bedridden, but i could see him having a scar or two from that time. what really would’ve stuck with this dude physically is his wack ass backstory-- this guy has undergone some crazy shit for his research, including torture which i won’t get into for obvious reasons, but like. yeah that’s gonna leave a mark. i also am of the opinion that the bandages on his arms cover scars that he created himself, not as a form of self harm but rather for like, blood sacrifice for rituals and stuff? but i did indeed borrow that hc from my brother soo.

kaito momota i think kaito has scars all over his knuckles from splitting them during fights. i don’t think he’s the violent hard hitter the fandom characterises him as, but i do think kaito struggles to articulate his anger, and that can turn into lashing out. especially if someone is being unreasonable or cruel to someone he cares about. so, scars on his knuckles. he might have other scars from similar fights, but kaito strikes me as the kind of guy to go in fists blazing, he definitely doesn’t fight with weapons if he can avoid it. the only other notable scar i hc him as having is a thin scar on his temple from the car crash that killed his parents when he was eight.

kokichi ouma so i’m actually one of the few people who doesn’t necessarily hc that kokichi grew up in an orphanage, i like the hc and i do use it from time to time but i read kokichi as a foster care kid. going from houses where he either had to bodily escape punishment or cause trouble just to get a bit of attention. dice being other members of the system/kids who were also as forgotten and unloved. all this to say i do find it extremely plausible that kokichi could’ve had some extent of physical abuse in his past from particularly rough homes-- and as such has some scars from that time. other scars he received through Shenanigans.

rantaro amami rantaro travels a lot, and talks about all his wack ass adventures and near-death experiences-- not to mention that it is canon in utdp that he will sometimes return home with a concealed injury. as such i think rantaro is pretty scarred up like gonta, primarily around the torso/abdomen area, but he has a few assorted scars on his legs, and a bunch of marks on his hands. my friend jim and i share the hc that he has scars that encircle both of his wrists from a kidnapping incident when he was eleven.

kaede akamatsu bit more of a normal one, palate cleanser, kaede lived a relatively mellow life. any scars she has are probably just from skinned knees and stuff-- EXCEPT for a large scar on her knee from a bike accident as a kid. ouch girl.

angie yonaga angie comes from an island where blood donation is a pretty common practice, so she probably has a few marks on her arms from the procedure. given that i don’t know much else about polynesian culture and angie’s writing is pretty disrespectful as is, i think it’s probably better if i just leave it there as far as any scars she could have gotten in a ritualistic sense. i will say that angie spaces out when she does art, so she might have some scars from accidents caused while working-- she does work with a chisel after all.

miu iruma given that miu was in a car accident that put her in a coma, she probably has a fair amount of scarring all over her body. abrasions, and also burn scars aren’t out of the question. miu is a pretty reckless inventor too so hard to believe she wouldn’t have picked up a nick or two working on her silly little things.

tsumugi shirogane tsumugi sews, but needle pinpricks don’t really leave scarring as long as ur not going fucking crazy with it. i think the vast majority of tsumugi’s injuries would come in from her time working as a bartender. broken glass is pretty nasty, and people probably would’ve gotten into at least the occasional fight. maybe a little scratch on her cheek from a conflict that didn’t get defused before things started flying. tsumugi wishes her scars were cooler, but they are, as she is, quite plain.

himiko yumeno she has an appendix scar on her tummy and a few on her knees from tripping. pretty normal life though.

tenko chabashira hey why don’t we ever talk about the fact that tenko is literally a vigilante? i think that’s a pretty relevant detail of her character that nobody talks about. she’s probably witnessed a bunch of violent crime, and from a very young age, too... i think tenko has probably gathered her fair share of scars, largely on her hands, but some on her shoulders, face, and legs. she’s tough though! she looks on her scars with pride, memories of the times she’s been able to keep girls safe.

kirumi toujou as a competent maid, occasions where kirumi actually gets injured in her work are pretty rare. she’s an overworker though, so i think she might’ve pushed herself far enough to cut herself a few times while cooking. on the more dangerous side of her work, i definitely think kirumi is the type of person to endanger herself in the name of her duty, so scars from various murder attempts-- knife, gun, whatever-- are definitely not out of the question. maybe even a knife wound on the back... but kirumi walked it off. she is a maid, after all.

maki harukawa the obvious answer here is that maki is scarred all over and honestly FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK drs for pretending like that’s not true. in her training to become an assassin maki was tortured repeatedly, using a variety of methods, in order to toughen her skin and make it so that she could withstand great pain. i have a hard time believing there is a lot of maki’s body that isn’t scarred. aside from the scars from her training, i’m sure maki has also collected a fair amount of scarring from missions and such. oh girl.

[sketchy--doodles]

What if...I made a universe based on sparkledogs???

This has been a decade in the making...LITERALLY

I started the idea of Sparkleville around 2014. I made it as a universe where my adopted OCs can all go, as many were sparkledogs/animals. I knew there was hatred towards sparkledogs back then, a pretty intense hatred too, so I figured, what if I created a backstory that explains why these animals are unrealistic in coloration?

Originally, the idea for everyone being so colorful was due to the "Sparkle Disease" and that people could "catch" it and become a sparkledog. And that these animals were ostracized from the "realistic" animals and were forced to live together in "Sparkleville" to keep them away from turning the realism animals in "sparkles".

Now, I think what I am gonna do is have the sparkle come from a genetic source and that there are many types of being sparkle that come from genes. The first one is being born sparkle from one or two sparkle parents, which is more obvious that a child will be sparkle. The other is a sparkle child with two realistic parents, so like a recessive gene. The third, is that the sparkle gene doesn't kick in until later in life, so the animal appears realistic at birth, but may transition into a sparkle animal whenever the gene kicks in. This can be any time in life.

In this current version of sparkleville, there have been research findings that becoming sparkle is genetic, rather than a disease, so Sparkleville citizens are beginning to be allowed to intermingle with realistic animals. There is still a lot of prejudice and self-hatred. The sparkles have to combat misinformation being spread about them in order to gain more acceptance into society.

OK, so here's the main gang (left to right):

Odette Okapee:

she/her

Sparkle Okapi

The main character of the cast. I wanted to do an animal I never made an OC for, and okapis are unique. Odette was born sparkle to two realistic okapis. Her parents abandoned her shortly after birth and she was adopted by a lion couple named Japer and Lailah. The most shame comes from when two realistic parents have a sparkle child. Odette is very much a sparkle too. She even has a fluffy tail and wings. She can barely fly though, mainly using them like how one would use hand gestures. Despite being given up as a baby, Odette is extremely proud of being sparkle. She is very much an optimist and loves to cheer her friends up. She looks on the bright side, but maybe a little too much. She typically doesn't see what problems come ahead of her and it often shocks her. Odette will make friends with anyone, even if they say they hate her.

Octavia Eighthin:

She/her

Sparkle Coyote

Adopted from KolliceKat. A spirited young coyote. Odette's foil and friend. Originally the main character. She has the assertiveness that Odette lacks and sees things more realistically. She once was ashamed of her differences but now has become as proud of them as Odette has, but just shows it differently. She tends to be more confrontational. Has a big brother named Rusty. Plays in the school orchestra.

Cobalt:

he/him

Sparkle Cat

Adopted from shadowtheprotogenowo. He's a lil guy. The trickster of the group. He's kinda immature and gets people into problems, but deep down, he cares for them. He and Odette have a brother-sister-like bond.

Socks

he/him

Sparkle Llama

Adopted from Kitty-of-Doom524. Originally female when I adopted him, but my head told me I should make him a guy instead. He's not exactly the most alert guy. Kinda has himbo energy. Very kind but is not bright. Has some moments of brightness. Don't get him mad though. If one triggers him enough, he will start spitting and stomping on them.

Derek Junior

he/him

Sparkledog

Yes, Derek Junior is a sparkledog. He just tries to hide his identity. After being discriminated against as a youngster, Derek Junior's parents encouraged him to mask any signs of being a sparkle. That included, dying his hair and fur brown, and clipping his wings (he was born with wings). he could actually fly too, before they were cut off. He is based on stereotypical sparkledog designs, even has the anime hair lol. But alas, his rainbow roots show through his hair a bit. He associates more with realistic animals, but has to come to terms with his identity more and more as he interacts with sparkles. On the outside, he is confident, boisterous, and proud, but the inside of him harbors nothing but self-hatred and insecurity. Is always called Derek Junior, never just called Derek. He has a secret crush on Odette.

Mira Muskrat

she/her

Realistic Muskrat

She is the main antagonist. Originally was a cat, but turned into a muskrat. She is the daughter of Elroy Muskrat, a scientist who is researching the sparkle gene and looking into a way to cure it. Mira shares her father's beliefs and wishes for sparkles to be "cured" of their bright colors. Little does she know that Elroy is an actually secretly a sparkle. But Mira spreads her beliefs about sparkles to everyone. Loves to be a fake friend to Odette and other sparkles but is a conniving bitch and backstairs them later. She is a master of manipulating others. Ex-girlfriend of Derek Junior.

I hope you like them!

PLEASE REBLOG! IT HELPS A LOT!

[clawcakes]

doin the ask game for @sonic-oc-showdown because i want to infodump about my funny sonics!!! also ft. plucky and lyre even though theyre not in the tournament just cause you cant have one without the other two, man. original post by @/schondezert956 here

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name? puns. tommy: a tom-tom is a type of drum plucky: guitars are plucking instruments lyre: a lyre is a stringed instrument (bit of a stretch with this one but A. i really like the name lyre, B. naming her violet would've been too obvious)

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range) all 3 are young adults around their early 20s

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)? does a QPR count as love interests? cus they queerplatonically love eachother so much.

🍕 - What is their favorite food? tommy: she loves ice cream so much she's made her bandmates equally obsessed with it plucky: acorns. they'll find one on the ground and crack it open with their teeth and start dining. lyre: shitty instant ramen. she is embarrassed about this and will instead say it's 𝐵𝑜𝓃𝒿𝑜𝓊𝓍𝓇𝑒 𝒹𝑒 𝓁𝒶 𝒞𝓇𝒶𝓅

💼 - What do they do for a living? they're a traveling band, man! they're The Shooting Stars!! their music has 700000000 listeners on spotify (in plucky's dreams)!!!

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies? tommy: she likes to draw in her spare time. her art style is strikingly reminiscent of sunky.mpeg. plucky: they're the kinda Gamer Girl to accidentally electrocute their controller because they got extremely mad at fortnite. they also like to collect pins and cool rocks. lyre: he enjoys and creates all kinds of art, music is just the one he made his profession. she's knitted countless ugly sweaters for her bandmates (and has to stop herself from crying whenever she seems them wearing one).

🎯 -What do they do best? disregarding the obvious answer of "music LOL"... tommy: she's very skilled at making people feel relaxed, whether it's deescalating arguments or calming someone who's stressed. she has a very Chill Aura that makes it easy to be around her. also, silly bear. plucky: keep a positive attitude! it's hard for anything to ever keep her down. lyre: she's a quick learner and a quick thinker, so she's great at adapting to any situation. her actual response to this question would be "i am the best at anything and everything," said while shaking and sweating and gripping the table so hard it cracks.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do? tommy: repetitive tasks are very calming to her, so she's the designated chore-doer of the three of them. she doesn't particularly hate doing anything-- if it bothers her, she'll find a way to make it fun! plucky: they love exploring, seeing new things and meeting new people and experiencing new thrills. the thing she hates doing most is nothing; she is very easily bored and always needs an outlet for her endless energy. lyre: she loves creating, no matter the form; the art of making art is enthralling to her. he hates cooking because he sucks at it and has managed to make every single kitchen appliance explode. including a spatula.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories? tommy: she'd think about it for a moment-- her best memory-- then realize she's just listing off every single second she's spent with her bandmates. plucky: the shooting stars's first venture after the band first formed. it was at that moment plucky fully realized this is what she wanted to do, and these are who she wants to do it with. lyre: when she told her bandmates she loved them, and they told her they loved her too.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories? gonna be real everyone's backstories are so barebones that i do not have an answer for this LOL. theyre just my funny girls i dont want them to be sad

🧊 - Is their current design the first one? not quite, but almost! i basically knew what i wanted right from the get-go, i just had to fiddle with everyone a bit before i got em perfect. it was very important to me for tommy to be fat and hairy and have Susie Deltarune Hair. V here is their first concept sketch from back in may!

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC? sonic music is so fucking good i heard it and was like I GOTTA MAKE SOME GUYS OUT OF THIS. they were specifically inspired by Fist Bump (Instrumental), which is why lyre is violin and not like bass or something. (their species also came from me googling "woodland animals" on google images because i was desperate for inspiration.)

🌂 - What genre do they belong in? sonic fangame that lowkey looks like it was made in roblox

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality? tommy: aromantic lesbian, girl but you can't tell if she's trans or cis or non-binary or all three at once (she/her) plucky: non-binary, aroace (they/she) lyre: bigender, bisexual. bicycle (she/he)

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have? tommy: a single older sister (and a niece that she has claimed her younger sister) plucky: an uncountable number. she could list all their names to you and you'd lose track halfway through. lyre: 0, she's an only child

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like? tommy: her parents "disappeared" when she was too young to remember them-- for all she knows and cares, her uncles are her parents. she sends them letters often. plucky: they love their parents and each and every member of their comically large family! she chats with em whenever and however she gets the chance. lyre: her parents held her to very high regard, expected very great things of her, and taught her all the wrong things. she hasn't spoken to them in a long time.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PICK JUST ONE THING MAN. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH THEYRE MY EEBY DEEBIES MAN. probably their designs (tommy's in particular, she's like my magnum opus).

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC? it fluctuates, as it does with any other of my ocs. at the current time im rotating them around in my mind like rotisserie chicken

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC? NO!!!!!!!

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias? tommy is comically fearless. being around water makes plucky uneasy, due to their electricity powers. lyre will scream at the top of her lungs if she sees a spider.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival? i've vaguely rotated around the idea of making a rival band to the shooting stars, a fellow traveling trio who play emo music and are all super emo (*lyre voice* plucky you know i'm scared of emos!!!). they'd be like the goth to the shooting stars's prep, and whenever they see eachother they immediately get into a fistfight. haven't done anything with the idea though LOL

🎓 - How long have you had the OC? i first came up with their concept in may this year, but i named and finalized them in july! they're babies.

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC? classified

[diodellet]

An opportunity to learn more about Dio’s sexy writing and preferences?? Don’t mind if I do 0wo

☁💢😎🤝💞 🗨

sexy writing u say? U FLATTER ME LODS 🤧🤧

cw: mentions of food, slight (but not detailed) discussion of dubcon ahead, also this post got long so im putting it under a keep reading (edit: SIKE)

☁️favorite fluff trope

i can't write it but i do like it when people lay out detailed cooking in fanfic, like seeing my fave characters working together in a kitchen? MM im now hungry for food And for love! (And generally the food as metaphor for love trope has a special place in my heart.)

++im not the best at visualizing so i also appreciate it when the author takes care to show the steps in preparation and to describe the food through smell or what ingredients it uses. the extra details are very very appreciated, sincerely a girlie whos mind eye doesn't work

++people should use the 'food as metaphor for love' to unapologetically project their culture's food! i think it's really neat and cool!

💢favorite dark trope

usghl darkfic... my forbidden lover.... seeing my bebelabs without the rose-tinted glasses of luving you....

i can't just pick one! favoritism is bad!! (*sideeyes the many flavors of dubcon* *sideeyes zombie/post-apocalypse au*) it's all good and painful for my heart delicious to read!

(my reasons for liking dubcon are simple: i just like it when the pleasure's mixed with something else /shrug/ ++ saying things is hard)

If I dig deep into my memories, there are these 2 post-apocalypse AU fanfics (both are above 100k words and i followed one of them while it was still being written. /that/ was an ordeal i would be willing to go through again if i wasn't being hounded by irl deadlines🥴🥴). i just think that fluff and domesticity hit harder when the characters constantly have to overcome the trials of surviving in a hostile environment. whether they create a found family or eventually die out never finding sanctuary, i think the long agonizing journey they took is still worth it.

😎favorite character trope

haha what are you talking about👀👀 i-i dont have a favorite character type wh-who told you that--

ALEXA PLAY BAD BOY BY RED VELVET AND THEN AFTER THAT PLAY RBB CAN YOU GUESS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER? IS MY TYPE OBVIOUS NOW? NO? I STILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN? RAAAGGHHH *nasagasaan*

in all my open-mindedness, i cannot seem to pin down my favorite characters to a single trope. Because there are too many that i like. BUT the standouts seem to include:

Emotionally-constipated/repressed but In Need Of A Friend

Extremely angsty backstory that led to them developing a tough unshakable facade

GNC appearance (either or both masc and fem?? OR NEITHER, LIKE JUST ANDROGYNOUS?? I LOVE💕💕)

tl;dr: GAP MOE IS A MUST!!!

i need the duality, for science

🤝favorite platonic trope

you will see a trend of indecision and choice paralysis

Hmm, as of late I think I've been reading stuff with a lot of insomnia tropes. so stuff like wandering around at 2am, sitting on the rooftop, stargazing or waiting for sunrise, having pointless meandering rambly conversations (bonus points if they get existential or philosophical), midnight cooking!!!

It's just nice to read about characters baring their souls under the moonlight, without any hesitations. (and how dare i bring romance to a question about platonic love but) to me, a conversation held in the hours between 11 pm to 6 am can sometimes be more profound than slowly building up to a first kiss.

💞favorite romantic trope

ok never mind i lied the indecision was a lie

GIMME ALL THE PHYSICAL TOUCHIES!!

please and thank you 😇🙏

excessive handholding? complete trust in each other to the point of closing their (perceived social) distances? unprompted hugging?? UNPROMPTED TACKLE HUGGING?? C-COUPLED WITH SPINNING AROUND WHILE LAUGHING AND ENDING WITH THE CHARACS PRESSING THEIR FOREHEADS TOGETHER??

(cue me in the corner shaking biting my fist while on the verge of tears)

i like reading about characters being so utterly smitten with each other they're basically glued to the hip. its so gooey and cheesy and sweet and it makes my heart //yearn// it's kinda funny since the lockdown fucked with my sense of personal space, but i can't stop myself from writing a copious amount of physical touch in my fics.

🗨what's a favorite trope you'd like to write [character] in?

(let's go with jamil bcs he's been starring in All my maladaptive daydreams recently)

i wanna write.... band au for jamil but before i can do that i. need to research on bass players. like bass guitar players. listen to me, LISTEN— (imagine im shaking u by the shouldsrs) BECAUSE IT SUITS HIM. SYMBOLICALLY OR CHARACTERILLY OR SUMN

(the bassline of a song is borderline invisible, but when it's gone it just makes the entire thing fall flat. Kinda like how jamil just holds a lotta things together but STILL keeps a low profile. Also bass solos are literal bops, usually they get Shit parts along with drummers bcs a lot of pop music is generic formulaic earworm-derogatory LSS TRASH but Also Also bassists are sexy—*nasagasaan nanaman*)

send me an emoji: writing wishes asks

[dashawfrostart]

This Week In "Time & Again" #1: Vector Bubbles Struggles, and More!

In the previous "pilot" post of "This Week In 'Time & Again'" I only briefly mentioned that the page templates for Chapter 5 have been totally complete. I have to confess: while I was working on scattering speech bubbles all around, it suddenly dawned on me that I was doing it all wrong before 🤦‍♀️ The vector designer in me totally failed... And I will gladly reflect of my past silliness in this post! But first - a little bit of a backstory.

Fun fact: starting Chapter 1 from 2020, usually I tend to create speech bubbles in Inkscape. Usually I used elliptic shapes to make geometrically perfect speech bubbles. In Chapter 3, however, where real crazy stuff was happening in Lothar's part, I wanted to make speech bubbles more irregular, crooked, and at times shaky, and thus, for the first time, I simply drew oval-shaped speech bubbles by hand. Same went for Chapter 4 that also required a more lively, jolly, imperfectly shaped speech bubbles, too - as seen on the picture below.

Starting from Chapter 5, which is supposed to change the atmosphere of the story dramatically, I decided to spring back to the vector speech bubbles. For the sake of seriousness, let's say. I do not always like it when the speech bubbles are extremely geometric. It just doesn't look right to me. Either the empty space in between the text and the outer edge of the speech bubble bothers me, or the absolute perfection of the shapes. I can't really explain that, but it makes me feel weird. For Chapter 5, I decided to aim for more or less perfect shapes, but with a little skew where applicable to make the near-perfect oval shape cling to the text nicer. So I ended up converting the shapes into paths and just manually adjusting the points I need!

As you can see on the pictures above, that shape is not a perfect oval. I could even make it look like a broken egg yolk, need be (just like on the picture to the right) 😅 And that's a very simple solution to my weird problem, right?! Just a couple clicks here and there, and an extra pull on the handles - and here we go, awesomeness! Looks good to me!

... The funny thing here is that this extremely obvious solution didn't hit me until a few days ago. I totally could've used the same method while I was working on Chapter 4, too... But instead, I spent extra minutes and possibly hours trying to draw non-shaky misshaped ovals by hand, sometimes going back and redrawing them numerous times because I didn't like what they looked like. Dammit! 😅

Sometimes we don't see something even when it's right in front of us! Well, now I'm certainly a pro 😁 (at not seeing the obvious things, too, ahem)

I think I will keep doing that for the rest 4 chapters until the end now, because it looks very good, very easy to do and it's quite efficient.

This time, once the speech bubbles were successfully placed in their respective spots according to the sketches and storyboard that I previously drew on paper, I decided to follow a slightly another path - also for a reason. I saved the frames for each page, empty speech bubbles, and the voice lines all in separate files so that I could layer them on top of each other later on in Krita. That wasn't a decision made for the sole purpose of convenience; it was made this way to potentially ease my future rearrangement of the frames and speech bubbles into a form of a webcomic. I've never done that before, ever. So that would be my first experiment with this format. In fact, I'm gonna do twice the amount of work this time, for so far I'm planning on making Chapter 5 to have both versions: the regular letter format page-by-page comic (it will later be posted on my Itch page as a PDF), and the long vertical scrollable webcomic/webtoon. Am I crazy? Well yes, I am! 😁

Perhaps I will elaborate on the choice of format as well as on the decision of such a personal challenge later on, in one of the next "This Week In T&A" posts.

Aside from that, some other important stuff has been done by me within the last few days.

For example, I've increased page resolution by another 1/3, which hopefully will give me enough space to fit in even the smallest of fonts I'd like to use. Since the continuation of this weird story is planned to be quite wordy, I think expanded limits would allow me to nicely and conveniently accommodate the characters, the backgrounds, and the voice lines all together. Neat-o! ... Which is very interesting considering I'm planning on making a webcomic format version as well, so the changes I've noted in the paragraph above might sound counterproductive to some of you. Knowing that webcomic format is usually pretty low-res... But you'll see what I have in mind later 😉.

And finally - I was able to sit down and draw on my tablet for the first time in a few months. Yep, you heard me right. I sometimes draw by hand in my sketchbooks - however in the recent years I've been doing that primarily when sketching WIP designs of the characters for the upcoming chapters, and the storyboards. But I always draw on a graphic tablet whenever I need a complete, full-colour artwork. It's been a long time since I drew anything last time, for I've been working hard on the script above all else... But it sure feels good to return to self-expression in a colourful visual form after such a long break! You can even say, Frosty's back in action! Wheeeee! I have a few random, somewhat creepy artworks with Lothar in my head that I'd like to turn into promos and nice design elements for my websites and the social. And they're gonna be creepy not because Halloween is getting close, nope! But because the next chapters require a bit of spook in them by default! Anyway, no reason to spoil anything for you right away.

But here's a little sneak peek for you anyway! Gotta fuel up the readers' interest somehow after all 😉

That would be enough for now! See you soon! 🙌

[chellyfishing]

so last week for our movie night we watched bullet train and barbarian, two movies that went totally off the rails (no pun intended) in completely different ways. it reminded me of another movie we watched a month or two (?? i forget) ago, do revenge. anyway i kinda wanted to analyze the three of them just for like... fun?

i’m not going to spoil what happens in any of them but i am going to say way more about barbarian than a person should know going into it so if you still intend to see that, avoid.

(we also finished the first season of white lotus yesterday and i won for figuring out who the dead person in the beginning of the first episode was.)

let me start off by saying i’m not a movie person, i can’t really analyze things in terms of cinematic language, mostly what i understand is plot, story, character--writing things. so that’s where i’m coming from on this.

so i guess what ties the three together for me is the amount they escalate. all of them just absolutely rocket off the scale by the end compared to where they started. for do revenge, you think you understand the scale of the escalation until like the third act when everything just kinda fuckin explodes. for bullet train, it’s just a constant escalation as more and more things are thrown into play. and for barbarian, you get a huge spike at the end of act one, and then it craters again until act three.

do revenge i saw a little further back than the other two so i don’t remember it as well and am therefore not going to be able to talk about as much. the obvious comparison is strangers on a train, which is of course deliberate, but the twist to the latter was that one guy was serious and the other wasn’t. that’s not the twist here. it’s not an “i made a little oopsie joking with a dude i met at complete random.” this fully commits to the messiness of everything about revenge and the cycles it creates. and it skews younger than either of the other two films, so this is is a skip if you don’t like teen nonsense, or unlikable characters. do watch if you support women’s rights and women’s wrongs.

bullet train reminded me a lot of a quentin tarantino or a shane black in tone. i don’t think it’s as smart or sophisticated as either of those, but it’s like a spiritual cousin. and let me be clear, i like quentin tarantino films in spite of myself. and even then it’s mostly like, the kill bills (one watch of pulp fiction was more than enough for me). bullet train, while an EXTREMELY sexist movie, doesn’t feel as fetishistic about it, and there’s no fuckin sexual assault. it’s sexist in the way like 20th century action films would sort of take for granted. there are fully two fridged women backstories (it’s the same thing for both of them, it’s the same backstory) and zero living sympathetic women. i still liked this movie a lot. another comparison i could make is hot fuzz, though again, it is nowhere in the same LEAGUE as that, but what makes them similar is that everything in the beginning of bullet train is setup and everything at the end is payoff. i like a story that keeps track of its own nonsense, and bullet train does a really good job of that. it is frequently very unsubtle about it! but there was one brick joke that absolutely floored me and i’m still laughing about it days later. skip this movie if you care about like, nuance and craft, or if you’re someone who has no patience for a delayed payoff. (i would watch this movie with my mom, but i also know she’ll be going “well i don’t like that this happened!!!” in a way that’ll have me going, mom. mom. just watch. just keep watching.) do watch if you want surprisingly likable characters, bright colors, loud noises, and just a good time.

barbarian... the comparison i want to make here is romeo and juliet. no no hear me out!! so in romeo and juliet, you know how the guy comes out at the beginning and is like, actually what you’re about to watch is a tragedy and everybody fuckin dies? it’s because the first part of the play is written like a romantic comedy before it switches genres around act iii. in barbarian, the genre shift is only noticeable in hindsight: the beginning was, in fact, a romantic comedy! but it was written like a horror because the whole film is a horror and they couldn’t have a guy come out and say “the first part of this feels like a romantic comedy but you’re actually here for a horror.” there is still a bait and switch, but that comes from the fact that the horror is a totally different kind to what you were expecting, and coming from a totally different place. unlike the first two, there is a lot of building tension and you will spend most of the film thinking, what the fuck is going on? don’t watch this movie if you don’t like being jerked around by the narrative or if you’re one of those people who gets mad if someone in a horror movie does things you don’t think you would do in their situation. do if you like horror and wanna get a little bit fucked up!! content warnings for off-screen sexual assault.

anyway i liked all these movies in different ways. strangely i think the one i’m least likely to revisit is barbarian, which sucks bc i got a second copyright strike from my isp for downloading it (it’s streaming on disney+ so ofc). it didn’t click with me as much as i was hoping it would, probably a typical case of “everyone talked about how it was so good and i went in with my expectations too high.” whereas for the other two i had zero expectations and ended up being surprised by how fun and over-the-top they were. maybe for that reason i should watch barbarian again, in order to reassess it. i guess i will probably do that.

[griffinsmith]

fiddled around with my old jackerita au a little! mostly just updated Mr Hound's involvement in the au. not sure if this really interests anyone but here it is and i also needed to write the words somewhere before i forgot lmao

Ok hi I havent written any notes for this au in over a year. Incredible how neurodivergency can allow you to experience things with vigor for a second time

So just to clarify this is for my jackerita au where jackall and margherita escape newgate together and eventually get together, its more fleshed out in these two posts here. This is not related to the jackall & hound au, and the only similarity it shares with that au is the design of mr hound that I use in it – I’m using the same redesigned hound design that you can find under this tag. Hopefully that makes enough sense. also this is all completely head canon and me being silly

Im mostly leaving the au the same, just tweaking some of the backstory of Jackall creating Hound, why he decided to kidnap the queen and use her crown’s jewels to become Hound permanently, and adding a little bit of stuff after he gets his ass thrown into jail. Im also slightly changing Jackall’s relationship to Hound in this au ok with that being said lets go

I previously mentioned that before stealing the queen, Jackall worked as the mechanical engineer for Barkingham, being specifically interested in defending the castle from outsiders, and that he proposed to the queen’s council that tapping into moon magic would allow them to transform guards into stronger versions of themselves. Jackall’s proposal got rejected, and this part is remaining the same

For the new lore, I am replacing Jackall not having the potion entirely ready when he presented his idea to the council. Instead, Jackall is done with the thing, but he hasn’t gotten a chance to try it out yet. He asks for support from the Queen’s council so he can have someone to try it out on. Because the Marleybonian society knows little to nothing about moon magic, and trying something unheard of like this is extremely frowned upon, Jackall did not get his proposal accepted.

Also for more details on that potion - Jackall engineered the potion to flip one’s magical alignment, meaning those who performed storm spells would instead be proficient in myth, and so forth. Additionally, one would have access to higher level spells than one would normally have. The potion, while focusing mostly on battling benefits, was also supposed to heighten one’s ability to physically fight and make one slightly less interested in morals and rules in order to achieve this (emphasis on * slightly *). Or at least Jackall thought as much - he did not spend as much time perfecting this ability as he did working on the other aspects of the potion. He just hoped that once he got funding, he’d be able to work any kinks out of it, but he suspected everything would be fine.

Jackall, after getting screamed at by the council, returns home saddened. He wanted to do something to defend the queen, perhaps even revolutionize how battles are fought in Marleybone! Who wouldn’t want to tap into stronger powers in duels? If he just had some funding, someone to try it out on, he could fully tap into moon magic and science and fully utilize his groundbreaking concoction that would allow users to keep a transformation in and out of fights, something no one had ever done before in the Marleybonian corner of the spiral.

After moping around for a few days, Jackall decided he no longer would wait for the council to come to their senses, and decided he would try out the potion on himself. Then, from there he could figure out how to perfect any minor flaws, and once it was finished, present it to the council again. He was sure future history books would hold him as a hero if he could get that potion to in front of the council. Surely if they saw the positive effects it could bring, they’d give him their support.

And so, at midnight one night, he took a swig of the potion, eager to see what it would do to him. Immediately after ingesting it, he noticed a wave of euphoria rushing through him, deciding that this was the part of the potion lessening his hold on morals a bit. He noted this as a success.

Upon attempting a spell, he was ecstatic to see that his magic had changed from Ice to Fire. After messing around a second or two with spellcasting, he was equally ecstatic to see he could perform higher level fire spells, outranking the normal ice spells he could usually perform. This was also noted as a success.

The potion seemed to work perfectly – his magic had changed appropriately, now a different school and stronger, and he felt more like he could win both duels and normal fights. He wrote the potion up as a great success, and would make sure to visit the Queen’s Council again in the morning to show off what it could do.

And then came a sharp pang of pain in Jackall’s chest that quickly spread through his entire body. As Jackall writhed and convulsed around on the floor for a bit, the true colors of the potion’s “losing your morals and rules” aspect shown through, and after a minute of painful transformation, Dr Jackall became Mr Hound.

What Jackall had hoped to achieve with his concoction was something that would temporarily allow the user to mostly forget about the consequences of hurting someone, while still understanding not to go absolutely hog wild and really hurt people in duels and physical fights. What Jackall ended up achieving was creating an uncaring and self-indulgent alter ego for whomever was foolish enough to drink it. Not to mention, said alter ego now had powerful spells and enough adrenaline in their system to take out an entire clock tower’s worth of thugs. Jackall had accidentally created a monster, but he wouldn’t find that out yet – Hound was still in charge for a few hours.

The potion was also not supposed to change appearances, but for Jackall, the potion turned his gray fur blue, and said fur and hair became rougher, pointier even. Hound, a being concerned only with himself, decided to wreck the shit out of the clothes he had just spawned into and gleefully ran amok along the streets of Marylebone wearing only a tattered overcoat and pants.

The potion’s effects only lasted for a few hours (which is already longer than the 30 minutes or so that Jackall intended it to last for – good work Jackall really knew what you were doing with this potion), but that was more than enough time for Hound to terrorize a few guards at Barkingham and some poor random citizens just trying to get somewhere.

When the potion did wear off, Jackall was dazed but … he was also a little thrilled. A normal person would probably be horrified that they just werewolf transformed into some horrible version of themselves that they had no control over, but Jackall felt refreshed. He’s spent so long stuck under the thumb of Barkingham, not getting to do what he wants – why not indulge every now and then and play into his vices? And so he continues, with Jackall downing a few swigs of the potion every few days and allowing himself to become Hound to do whatever he wants.

Quick note here – while I’ve taken some inspiration from both the Jek/yll Hy/de musical from the 90’s and the original book from the late 19th century, im going to be stepping away from how they portray Hyde slowly becoming like . actually violent and . killing people . so that this au makes a bit more sense for Jackall’s backstory in canon where he genuinely wants to become hound forever. We’ll save that darker side to hound for the other au.

Jackall spends about a month transforming into Hound on and off before deciding he’s tired of being himself, and he wants to permanently become Hound. So far, Hound hasn’t done anything really bad yet (Hound steals from people and attacks people in and out of battles but he hasn’t *really* hurt anyone yet. It’s fine it’s fine) so Jackall thinks it would be fine if he was Hound 100% of the time. A great plan.

In this state of excitement, and also wanting to stick it the Queen’s Council who denied him funding on the project, Jackall decides he’s going to get the jewels off of the Queen’s crown by kidnapping her and further use those jewels to perfect his alchemical solution and become Hound forever. He'll be able to indulge in whatever he wants and no one will be able to stop him - It’s the perfect plan. Jackall still works in Barkingham and sees the staff literally every day and they’re wondering why he’s been acting a little weird lately and yet he still thinks it’s the perfect plan.

And from there, the au remains mostly the same. Jackall breaks into Barkingham the same way I wrote that he did a year ago, and gets sent to Newgate and escapes with margherita and they become the owners of the shopping district jewel shop, all the same as before. However, there are a couple of minor added details.

Jackall stops taking swigs of his potion once he’s in jail. He can’t drink it anymore since its not on him, and he can’t make it anymore there. At first, he misses the freedom that Hound gave him, but as time goes on, he realizes how unsustainable and dangerous that behavior and Hound was, and he no longer misses being Hound. He finally realizes he had created a monster, and he resolves to never again transform into him.

Hound, on the other hand, did not get this memo. Hound frequently appears in Jackall’s nightmares, starting to show up in them about a week into Jackall’s jail stay. Jackall brushes the visits off, but they slowly become more and more vivid, with Hound seemingly threatening taking him over involuntarily. Hound clearly misses the freedom - the embodiment of Jackall's selfish and evil traits does not want to be caged any longer, and this terrifies Jackall. Jackall fears for what could happen if he does manage to take over again - Since Hound has had his urges repressed for so long, surely he would do something really bad if he gets his way again.

The nightmares cease for a bit when Jackall and Margarita break out of Newgate and adjust to their new lives in Wizard city. Jackall never once mentions the nightmares to Margherita, and hopes they’ve stopped for good. But like clockwork, once Jackall’s gotten accustomed to everything, Hound begins frequenting his dreams again, just as strong as before. So far, Jackall’s been able to rouse himself from his nightmares when they start to get dire, but there have been a few instances where he swears he sees Hound’s shadow on the wall when he awakens, even if only for a second.

Alongside with the fear of getting found out for the ex-convict he is, Jackall now has to worry for his alter ego growing stronger and gaining control permanently. It’s not like hiding from the cops is already stressful enough - no, now he has to worry that he’ll involuntarily become an impulsive and careless version of himself who could easily draw attention to his hiding spot on top of all that.

Ok that’s it bada bing bada boom I hope that was cohesive enough thank you for reading if you did!!!! Jackall you idiot you wanted to be hound forever and once you came to your senses you dont anymore. make up your mind boy

[thankskenpenders]

Folks.

I am tired. I am so tired. I don't want to be making this post at 6 a.m. on the Saturday following the release of the new Sonic movie. (I would have made this post earlier in the night, but the ask box is still off because I'm supposed to be on hiatus while I finish my game, so I'm only hearing about this now.)

But, unfortunately, the ride never ends

The short version: Based on descriptions of certain scenes from fans, Penders believes that some of the echidna backstory stuff for Knuckles in the new movie is inspired by his work, like Sonic Chronicles before it. Because he was not involved and he is the legal owner of all of his Archie Sonic material, he is looking into pursuing legal action. (A lawsuit is not happening at the moment. We are at the "he's tweeting about wanting his lawyers to talk to Paramount's lawyers" stage. Well have to wait and see what happens after that.)

(This post will contain spoilers for some exposition dump lore stuff in Sonic 2. It does not spoil the ending or anything like that.)

Instead of paraphrasing him, here are his own words:

Now, a disclaimer: I haven't seen the movie. I'll be seeing it Monday at the soonest. I can't currently say how close the echidna stuff is to Ken's work

Based purely on his word here, the claim that Enerjak is in it because an echidna powers up with the Master Emerald sounds like a massive reach compared to the obvious inspiration the Nocturnus Clan took from the whole Dark Legion saga. Like, Sonic Team created the Master Emerald, and it's a power-granting macguffin belonging to the echidnas. That's just what it is, and it has been since before Penders wrote the whole Enerjak storyline. (And hell, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Ken should give himself more credit if he thinks "echidna who powered up with the Emerald" is all Dimitri/Enerjak is. That's one of his more fondly remembered characters!) Knuckles' dad in the film, on the other hand... well, again, I haven't seen it, but at least one person I know who's seen it genuinely thought it was Locke, so uh... he might have more of an argument there. Or it might literally just be "Knuckles has a dad." I don't know yet. Many people in his Twitter mentions are saying they're completely different, but people have been saying that about the Nocturnus Clan for years and that's complete bullshit, so I'm withholding judgment. I'll comment on this further in a few days after I've seen the movie

However, like me, Ken has also not seen the movie yet. He may or may not have a case here, but I think that him tweeting out all of this before he's even seen it with his own eyes is extremely foolish. Yes, fans are making comparisons, but there's also a segment of the fandom that's constantly tattling to him and snitching tagging him on Twitter over every little thing because they want him to start shit. And boy, this really doesn't do anything to dispel the "Penders thinks he owns the concept of echidnas or fictional characters having parents" jokes that I've been trying to clear up for years. Thanks, Ken

Look. Most Sonic fans don't like Penders. This goes without saying. But in all fairness, I will say that if they did base anything off of the material that Penders owns (and, again, can't confirm or deny that myself right now), then he should be compensated for that. Whatever your opinion of the old Archie legal battle, he owns that stuff, period. And no matter how much you like these movies, Paramount is not your friend. They're a huge media conglomerate, and this movie is gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars. They can afford to throw a comic guy a bone if they used his material. Comic creatives deserve to be compensated fairly for their work, even ones we don't like. Yeah, this whole situation is absurd, but I don't want folks to lose sight of that

Hopefully, if he does have a case, that's all that happens. He gets cut a paycheck and it ends there. If he doesn't have a case, he's up against fucking Paramount trying to defend their latest tentpole blockbuster film franchise. Whatever happens, I sincerely doubt that this will put future films in any sort of danger, so please don't let that fear color your response to this news. He does not want to cancel the movies. He wants royalties. And again, there is no lawsuit happening right now. Please do not go spreading around rumors about there being another lawsuit. We're currently at the phase where he tweets about wanting to talk to his lawyers, and tweets are not legal action

But boy. It just never ends, huh? Jesus fucking Christ. Whatever the end result, I bet Paramount's gonna be going over the story ideas for the Knuckles show with a fine-toothed comb. Or maybe they'll just pay Penders off and lean into it. Who knows! I don't. I am not a lawyer, I am a random furry artist who has become the Sisyphus of the Sonic comic fandom. Like Sisyphus, my torments never end, so expect more posts about this as this situation develops (if it goes anywhere)

(In the meantime: please don't bother arguing with Penders on Twitter about this. I know it's fun to try to ratio him, but no argument, no matter how airtight, is going to convince him of anything in the court of Twitter. Even if he is often full of shit, he is right when he says that he's successfully argued the case for his copyrights in court, and you are a random Sonic fan presumably less than half his age. It's not worth it. Go enjoy your weekend.)

[trinrose3]

I hear so many people talking about the Pandora’s box myth and ugh this one always gets me in a tizzy so let’s talk about it:

(first my head hurts really bad and I’m really tired so I’m sorry if I’m not coherent about this <3)

(I am also basing this on recollection as well as Virginia Hamilton’s retelling)

so this myth actually has a few interpretations as to what it means by “hope in the box”. 1) Hope is in the box as punishment for humanitys (aka pandoras) curiosity. 2) “Hope“ was not ACTUALLY Hope but rather a false sense of it so that Hope would remain pure and true amongst the people as new horrors were released upon them. 3) Hope LEFT with the monsters In the box in order to protect humans and the box remains empty. 4) Epmetheus and Pandora opened the box a second time and found hope in the box setting it free.

Some backstory on the myth of pandora that is pretty coherent amongst each version. Pandora was essentially the first human (or at least woman) and was created by the gods and was seemingly well loved by them, than again these are the gods we are speaking of. pandora, also meaning “alls gift“ was extremely well mannered, obedient, and innocent, but EXTREMELY curious. eventually she gets sent to Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus, who she married. One thing to not about Epimetheus is that unlike his brother he is not well known for his forethought and is not one to think ahead and switched his views and actions in a whim (his name is essentially afterthought poor guy </3). Pandora living up to her name and the trickery of the gods was a gift to grow the two brothers apart; though she was too good and poor Prometheus was too wise for this to work. Eventually one day when left unsupervised she finally managed to open the box and let out all evil into the world. how does this relate to the SMP besides the obvious name of the prison? There are a few set of characters that obviously relate to this but in multiple ways so it may get a bit confusing from here:

Sam: he was referred to as Daedalus and was obviously trapped in his own creation just like he was. Sam could also be in reference to Apollo who was only able to warn Pandora not to open the gift from Zeus. Apollo was also threatened with severe punishment if he either aided her or told her what was inside of it. He, along with Dream and Quackity (and other characters, perhaps egg lore but I’m gonna start looking like the crazy dude from its always sunny in Philadelphia if I go further with this) are also representations of evil trapped in it.

Dream: is obviously Zeus in this situation seeing as the one who created the box/the idea of it in the first place. BUT he was also the evil in the box which he stated so himself.

Tommy: pandora in the situation. Both are pawns for the gods, too curious, and trusting for their own good. AND KILLED AFTER OPENING SAID BOX! In some versions Pandora was called to the box by the voice of Hope which was trapped inside it as well which fits with him constantly trying to break back in.

Before I get into technoblade this can depend on your viewing of the myth but let’s mix versions 3 and 4 here. Pandora was obviously empty until Dream got put in and let’s say the first time it was opened was when Ghostbur was put in there. Ghostbur was a metaphor more than anything and instead of evil being released it could be seen as hope being taken away. Same thing with the death of Tommy seeing as he represents Pandora, the beacon of innocence and the double edged gift. Essentially this myth is a triple fold opening.

now where does this lead techno? I’m tempted to say he represents both brothers; obviously without the romantic relation with Pandora in this situation. In some versions (mainly 4) he also hears the Hope in the box or is at least tempted to hand it back to Pandora but doesn’t, and aids her in opening it a second time to find Hope. He’s obviously very wise but hes obviously a bit hypocritical. How does him getting trapped in with Dream relate to the myth? Hes also fucking Pandora in this myth. He opens the flood gates. He’s not innocent, far from it but he is obedient to his ideals and to what he thinks is right. He goes back and freed Dream to repay the favor yes but his main focus and ulterior motive was to find Hope.

He went to find Ranboo. Ranboo was the fucking Hope in the box. Only to be killed by monsters not initially found in the box but created by it.

But Hope came in more than one form in this version Of the story. Tubbo and Micheal are now safe in Technos commune along with Boo. I can’t say how far this domino effect will go but it seems that Hope is doing a pretty Good job so far. It never fully got rid of the evil in this world but it is able to keep it at bay so that the people could keep fighting and living. In a sense of a way Techno was a monster but was reformed (?) or is at least starting to be and he himself is also a representation of Hope.

I may have gonna a LITTLE too deep into this metaphor lol

[ahugenerdynerd]

So I think a lot of us can agree that Titans isnt a great show. But not just with their portrayals of the characters but also with the writing.

I personally can forgive what Titans has done with the different takes of the characters, don’t get me wrong it’s still shit but that’s not what this post is about.

The show is just packed full of bad writing. This coming from someone who has studied film for over 4 years. But anyone who knows anything can see how bad the writing is.

(I will be waiting to pass judgment on season 3 until the entire season is out, so this will be focusing of season 1 and 2)

Analysis under the cut

Firstly they will establish something, only for them to completely forget about that fact next episode. Case and point in episode 7 of season 2 Dick finds out that Deathstroke has been stalking them and is in the tower. After that he rushes back, visibly distraught with a gun in hand dramatically declaring that Deathstroke was there in the building. Only for in the very next episode for that fact to have been completely forgotten and now they’re all just leaving and it never gets brought up again.

This isn’t the only time something like this has happened but it’s the most glaringly obvious one.

Something that they also do which is most prevalent in season 2 is the spacing of the events between episodes. Titans will dedicate entire episodes just for one part of the story. This may work for some shows, specifically sitcoms that are aired on tv. Shows like The Big Bang Theory or Friends that viewers generally aren’t going to be watching in the correct order so they’re made to be stand alone episodes. But Titans isn’t a sitcom nor is it being aired on tv. What they really should have done is spread these scenes out over several episodes as flashbacks rather than to condense them down into one episode. Because by having the full flashback episodes it makes the show feel disjointed and they interrupt the drama and the suspense. It’s like getting to the climax of a film only to be interrupted by a 40 minute ad. You end up not really caring for the episode because you just want to know what happens with the cliffhanger from the previous episode. When really the events of these flashback episodes should be the most important and interesting part of the show. Where we get to see what happened between the Titans that made them brake up and character backstories and the like.

I think the most disappointing use of this is with the episode ‘Connor’. Rather than condensing Conners entire backstory up to meeting the Titans into one episode leaves a lot to be desired. I would have much preferred to have seen his backstory of escaping Cadmus and his relationship with Eve spread out over sever episodes in tandem to what was happen with the main cast. It would have created a lot more build up and anticipation for him finally meeting up with the rest of the Titans. Whereas what we got was one episode where we could easily guess exactly what was going to happen and where too distracted by Jason supposedly falling to his death to really appreciate the episode.

Secondly, is the shows pacing. It is all over the place. Season 1 was especially bad when it came to this and season 2 was only marginally better. Obviously I’m going to be talking about what happened with Trigon.

Fist of all the decisions for Trigon to be the big bad of the fist season was an interesting decision to say the least. But let’s forget about the comic book aspect and look at what made this season so bad writing wise.

Basically it all boils down to set up and pay off. The set up obviously being how the show sets up the climax, in this case the battle against Trigon. And the pay off basically being how rewarding the climax feels for the audience. With good writing you will have a pay off that is equal to or greater than the set up. If there’s not much set up then it’s easier for the pay off to be worth it for the audience. However in Titans case they set up the battle against Trigon right from the get go slowly building it up over the season, painting him as this neigh unbeatable force. Admittedly Titans was already of to a bad start with their decision to include Trigon in the first season what with the comic fans already knowing about his character and having to live up to the pre existing show Teen Titans as well as the animated movies. In a way they set themselves up for failure.

However where they really let themselves selves down was with the pay off. After having all this build up for the battle against Trigon, the final product falls extremely short. Where they really went off was not including the finale for the season in the actual season but instead moving it to the fist episode of season 2. I don’t know about any one else but when I went into season two after how season 1 ended I was expecting a majority of the episodes to be about the trying to defeat Trigon. But not even 40 minutes in and he’s defeated. This felt extremely unrewarding and underwhelming after waiting an entire season and the time in between to find out what’s going to happen next, only for him to be defeated almost immediately with little to no fuss.

This battle should have definitely been drawn out more. Taking place over several episodes or at least and entire one, where all of the Titans have to work together and struggle to defeat him. Rather than Raven just going out there herself and beating him instantly. There was no reward there. It was just over.

They had a similar problem in season 2 with Deathstroke, one of the Titans main villains. Going through all this build up and emotional turmoil only for him to just be stabbed and oh look he’s dead. You don’t just kill Deathstroke.

Side note: no one checked for a pulse, so I am personally of the opinion that he wasn’t actually dead but was just laying there playing dead hopping no one realised

Finally in this list of examples of bad writing is their tendency to introduce something new out of nowhere with no previous foreshadowing. The most obvious example being in season 2 episode 7 where out of no where we find out that Dick is hallucinating seeing Bruce. This came out of absolutely no where when there should have really been some build up to this. Maybe we could have seen Dick acting oddly, or Talking to no one or really anything. But we got nothing. It felt like someone had just come up with the idea on the day of filming with no previous forethought. Not to mention the fact that it basically only lasted the one episode, with it briefly coming back in episode 11.

Tl:dr: Titans had so much potential to be a great show but they just fell short with the writing. Everything just feels very rushed and not very thought over and they definitely could have done better.

P.S There is definitely still good writing in Titans however. Mostly to do with their portrayals of mental health. So don’t take this post as me just dissing on Titans. Maybe I’ll write another post about the good writing or analysing their camera usage, idk.

[tymime]

Rescue Rangers movie review

Hoo boy. I have a lot of opinions about this... thing. And a lot of mixed emotions.

The good:

Making fun of poorly made reboots and remakes. It’s about time somebody with a lot of clout (Disney that is) came out and said “hey these are terrible”. For years I’ve felt like too many animation fans have been too apologetic about these sort of things. The fact that Disney of all people, who are one of the main makers of such reboots/remakes, let someone do this is pretty amazing. I’ll give them credit for that.

Making fun of uncanny valley animation. Again, something that should have been made fun of years ago, and also something Disney is very much guilty of.

Including toons from other countries and mediums. For a very long time I’ve thought that characters that are CG, stop-motion, anime, etc. can and should be considered toons, and interact with more traditional Western cartoon characters. I’m very glad to see it, though I am bummed that somebody else beat me to it. The Amazing World of Gumball already kinda beat them to it though.

Disney acknowledging the existence of mockbusters is surprising. But again, Gumball already kinda beat them to it.

Acknowledging some toons that have been unfairly forgotten. It was nice to see Roger Rabbit and Bonkers get cameos.

The bad:

This movie is most emphatically NOT canon to the Roger Rabbit universe. It’s some strange alternate world where the rules and the timeline are radically different, and I have no idea why they didn’t bother trying to make it not contradict WFRR and its kin.

For example: Chip and Dale have (obviously) existed as a pair well before the 1980s, and have appeared in many other cartoons since. The same goes for Peter Pan.

In the Roger Rabbit universe, toons don’t usually age. (Otherwise how would Baby Herman remain a baby?) In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode “Fields of Honey”, it’s established that toons keep their youth via laughter, and that toons that don’t get enough laughter grow old and eventually fade away. I suspect some people wouldn’t regard Tiny Toons as a canon source of lore- I’ve talked to at least one person who didn’t think so- but I don’t see why not, since it’s so obviously inspired by WFRR, including unofficial cameos by Roger himself: https://tinytoons.fandom.com/wiki/Roger_Rabbit If you want something closer to WFRR, there’s Mickey Mouse’s 60th birthday TV special, which has Roger in it. Mickey definitely doesn’t look 60 years old in that, now does he? And besides, this movie contradicts itself by showing all the other toons as ageless. Chip and Dale themselves stop aging once they become adults. Why should Peter Pan be the exception? Especially since his whole bit is being forever young? Just for the lulz?

(Also apparently Peter’s backstory is awfully close to what happened to his voice actor Bobby Driscoll in real life. In extremely poor taste I’d say.)

The movie also contradicts itself regarding the whole “CG makeover” thing. Somehow “Ugly Sonic” is a separate character from regular Sonic, and yet Baloo and Pumbaa retain their “live-action” designs. On top of that, Lumiere has somehow not retained his “live-action” design. The movie’s internal logic is basically non-existent.

Uncanny-valley CG characters being toons. This is partly a matter of taste, because I refuse to accept the idea that such characters would ever be considered cartoons. For one thing, none of them have ever been created in our universe to be cartoon characters- why or how would they be elsewhere?

The Rescue Rangers characters being CG animation masquerading as traditional 2D. The animation was good, but it was incredibly obvious that it wasn’t what it was trying to imitate. They had real 2D animation elsewhere, but I guess they spent most of the budget on other things to do it for real.

The voices. I don’t know why Hollywood studios keep replacing voice actors with celebrities I’ve never heard of. Fans of the original voices would object, and people who have never seen or don’t like Rescue Rangers probably wouldn’t be tempted to see this movie anyway. They could have at least made them sound sped-up. Why Tress MacNeille was the only original voice to return I have no idea.

Gadget having children with Zipper was incredibly squick-y. I don’t even wanna think about it.

I have no clue where the writers got the idea that the original Rescue Rangers show frequently had Dale get hit on the head with a pipe, or that Gadget told bad jokes that got everyone laughing. I admit I haven’t watched the series religiously, but I have seen every episode at least once, most of them twice, and I don’t remember anything like that happening that often.

The cameos. Animation has gotten way too obsessed with packing their movies full to the brim with cameos lately and it’s getting tiresome. It works in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lego Movie, and Wreck-It Ralph because it helps set up the worlds of the movies. Ralph Breaks the Internet and Space Jam: A New Legacy felt more like “Look how many properties we own!”, and this movie feels like “Look how much money we spent convincing other studios to lend us their characters!”.

I really take offense at the idea that the Paw Patrol would turn vicious enough to permanently injure someone’s private parts. It just felt like an unnecessary jab by some mean-spirited writer who doesn’t like the show. (It’s an okay show. I’ve watched a few episodes, and yes, it’s kinda dumb, but there’s nothing really wrong with it.) Also, I was very confused as to why they kept calling Nick Jr. “Nickelodeon Junior”. Did some Paramount lawyers object or something?

In conclusion: This movie could have been absolutely amazing, if only somebody had said “wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense”. It’s like... it was written by people who only had a passing familiarity with what they were referencing, who were trying very, very hard to appeal to superfans, not realizing that those superfans would be able to point out all its flaws. It just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

[terminaxshowtime]

so, what are your favorite blorbos from your fandoms?

okay i don't have blorbos for all of my fandoms but here is the list i made. even though you probably only want a select few I'm giving you the full list anyways.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Joseph, Kakyoin and Foo Fighters! You might notice a pattern, but I love the silly characters. Joseph is my favourite character in the series (he's a really clever jokester with questionable morals, what's not to love) but I also love the other two (cherry boy and plankton gal) very much.

Friday Night Funkin'

Okay, I, surprisingly, only have two for this one- Hex (obviously) and Garcello! I, um, obviously like Hex, but I also really love Garcello too! (my friends joke that i have a weird thing for smokers which might be right even though I hate smoking DON'T SMOKE) I may or may not have cried for several hours straight after watching his mod for the first time. Both characters are super nice and super chill, which was HUGE for FnF mods back when they were created. Great characters.

Gravity Falls

(Can... can I say "all of them?")

Okay, no, there's only 3. Main one is Stanley, but I also love Stanford and Bill Cipher. Stanley is... probably one of my favourite characters from anything, ever, if not THE favourite character. He's funny, a conman, has literally of my favourite traits ever and definitely has self-worth issues. Pretty tragic character ngl. (Also I think Alex said he would smoke if Disney let him so maybe that counts for something.) Same kinda thing goes for Ford. Very tragic, but also pretty funny, kinda find him relatable as the 'smart kid' (which gets... exhausting very fast) and I love him too!

And I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Bill Cipher. He was my favourite character when I first watched it (yeah second time I watched it I realised 'oh nevermind i like stan more') probably because of how FUCKING INSANE he is. He's threatening, TERRIFYING, and hilarious. Also I am a SUCKER for possession of any sort, so...

Madness Combat

(Once again, can I say 'all of them'...?)

This is kinda obvious. My blorbos are Hank and Deimos! Mostly Deimos. He's funny, he smokes (LMAO SMOKE EM' OUT STRUGGLE OST STARTED PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND AS I WROTE THAT) and is just really cool. I don't know WHY I like Hank, I just... kinda do. He's mostly up to interpretation, though, which is probably why.

Other (I-Can't-Be-Bothered-To-Write-Reasoning-Right-Now per fandom)

Now, this will be updated in the future as I think of more, but for now there's...

- King Dedede (from Kirby, I love him so much, he emanates raw blorbo energy)

-Korosensei (from Assassination Classroom, he is very silly and also kinda sad but he got therapy from children so that's good)

-Hu Tao (funny funeral director! kinda sad backstory but she's very... hu tao)

-The Narrator from TSP (can someone give him a hug? please? PLEASE?!?!?!?)

- (Toon) Bendy from BATIM (he is LITERALLY me. Why wouldn't you love him he did nothing wrong)

- the ENTIRE cast of the hell's studio au by doodledrawsthings because MY GOD (although i will admit i love joey and bendy ever so slightly more)

- REIGEN ARATAKA REIGEN ARATAKA REIGEN

-Queen (from Deltarune, she is of the superior species, and extremely hilarious).

IN CONCLUSION, I LIKE CHILL, VERY FUNNY, VERY SILLY CHARACTERS WITH OCCASIONAL BITS OF ANGST SPRINKLED ON THEM.