#let's bring the background characters into the foreground a little bit

[twotales]

SGA Background Character Register: S1

Have you ever thought: "I need another character, but I want them to be canon." Or "What department was that rando in?" Maybe even, "Didn't they die?"

I got you.

Notes: - This is just Expedition Members. - Only background characters with names. - Chuck is considered a bg character. (sigh) - Canonically female characters have been marked because there are less of them. - Alive: meaning we never saw them die or been informed of their death. - All of the scientists are Doctors. (My dyslexia freaked when they all said doctor before their names so I left it unlabeled.) -Episode lists show all episodes regardless of seasons.

Remember: It’s just me making these so there are bound to be mistakes, if you notice something be sure to let me know! Thanks.

[devilofthehounds]

God Eater 3 Character Novel | In the Name of the White Flower: Chapter 6

[image id: A novel cover. Hilda Henriquez from God Eater 3 stands in the foreground. In the background are profile shots of Abraham Gadolin (top left) and Werner Gadolin (bottom right). Separating the two are a pair of red armlets, streaks of dried blood overlaid on top of them. The text, when translated into English, reads, “God Eater 3 Character Novel | Chapter 5: Hilda Edition | In the Name of the White Flower”. /end id]

This is a fan translation. Original text here.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Adaptive God Eater. AGE.

With the discovery of "Adaptive Bias Factor", which could provide resistance to the ash that made up the Ashlands, God Eaters who were found to be compatible with it came to be known as AGEs.

However, compatibility could only be determined by administering both ash and adaptive bias factor into the subject's body. If the subject was incompatible, they would die.

To increase the success rate even the slightest bit, veteran God Eaters with high compatibility were selected one after another as test subjects. However, the success rate was below five percent, and many lost their lives during these aptitude tests.

Even so, for the sake of humanity.

With those words in mind, many brave heroes volunteered to take the AGE aptitude test.

Unless someone could overcome this ordeal of a second aptitude test, there would be no future for humanity.

With the sacrifice of hundreds, even thousands of precious souls, research into ash and adaptive bias factor progressed, and a procedure for the aptitude test granting a small but high chance of success was established.

And yet.

"I... lost another subordinate to the AGE aptitude test today."

The heart of one who stood atop a pile of corpses could not be saved.

Late one night, I found Werner slumped over in his room, looking as though he were a million miles away.

"The truth is, I intended to take the aptitude test before anyone else did. I thought that, by showing them the way, I could give them even a little courage... but..."

With Fenrir now effectively defunct, Gleipnir and Governor-General Gadolin had begun to exert their influence throughout Europe.

Werner, the governor-general's son, would never be allowed to put his life at such risk.

"Too many people have died... And now, even the very mention of 'AGE' strikes fear into the hearts of God Eaters. Every day, I can only watch as my comrades die one after another, my only assignment being to suppress the innocents who have begun to riot out of fear and panic... What am I even doing anymore?"

One day, your efforts will be rewarded. You will be able to once again pursue your dream.

I couldn't bring myself to give him words of encouragement. It felt as though it would diminish the weight of the lives sacrificed thus far.

Still, I wanted to help heal his broken heart, even just a little.

I wanted to tell him that no matter how cruel reality became, I would remain by his side.

Without a word, I gently embraced him.

"...I'm sorry, Hilda. I've been pretty pathetic lately, huh?"

Werner smiled weakly as he stood up.

"I've heard that the improved aptitude tests for the second generation of AGEs will begin tomorrow. Let's hope it will reduce the number of casualties, even if only a little. ...Please, rest for today."

I watched as Werner left the room, then hung my head in despair.

Werner was no longer a researcher, eyes shining with dreams. Now, he was only a God Eater, expected to fulfill his duties.

The one I had walked with, the two of us searching for the same light, was getting further and further away. I couldn't help but feel frustrated as I started to lose sight of what it meant to stand by him.

The next day.

I decided to visit Iris and the others in the residential area of the base.

But the children were nowhere to be found.

"Where did everyone...?"

It was strange. There didn't seem to be a single child within the base.

I desperately ran from place to place, searching for Iris and the others.

"Ha... Ha... Hilda!"

Soon, Werner appeared, looking as out of breath as I felt.

In his wide-open eyes, I could see confusion, as well as a faint flame of anger.

"Werner... Iris... The children... I can't find them..."

"...!"

Werner turned on his heel and ran off. Instinctively, I followed after him.

We arrived at the governor-general's office.

As soon as we entered, Werner's fiery, incensed voice roared out.

"Father, what have you done?!"

I staggered closer to Governor-General Gadolin as he silently endured his son's wrath.

"Governor-General... The children...?"

I desperately hoped I was wrong.

In my heart, I held onto that hope as I asked one single question.

"...The children of this base have been sent to take the second-generation AGE aptitude test."

The shock made me fall to my knees, as if I had been punched.

"The adaptive bias factor, as with the standard aptitude test, tends to have a higher compatibility the younger the subject is... There was no other choice."

"Don't give me that! You forced children to become God Eaters?! Why didn't you tell me?!"

Werner grabbed his father by the collar, but Governor-General Gadolin maintained his composure.

"I knew you would react like this. If I had told you, you would have tried to prevent it."

"Of course I would have! Father, how could you?!"

"For the future of humanity."

That one sentence created a decisive crack in something unseen.

The starting point of our dream.

We had envisioned a world where no one would have to say those words.

"Second-generation experiments have already begun throughout Europe. We have no choice but to place our hopes in the children."

"Father... You... Do you understand what you're saying?"

"Despise me all you like. However..."

The governor-general coolly removed Werner's hand as he stood dazed.

"This is the path we must walk."

The governor-general took his leave.

Werner's hands were braced on his father's desk. He hung his head in silence, thinking.

"There might still be time to save at least some of them..."

Carrying those words like a prayer, Werner left the room with a ghostly gait.

I was left alone in the governor-general's office, further from my dream than I had ever been.

"Ah... Aaaaah...!"

I could no longer hold back my tears.

Iris. The children. In my mind, I saw the smiles of those whose hearts had connected to mine, so vivid it bordered on cruelty.

The path we adults had chosen to walk would swallow up the lives of more children than we could ever imagine.

Stepping over the corpses of children to pursue my dream—I could never do that.

That bright dream itself was being swallowed up by the darkness of reality.

After that, I couldn't remember where I walked, or how.

"Seems like children will be taking the AGE aptitude test from now on... Honestly, I'm relieved."

The image of God Eaters saying such things and smiling together in peace was burned into my mind.

I wandered the base, drowning in despair. Eventually, I found myself sitting alone at the end of a deserted corridor, hugging my knees.

Word had it this base would soon be swallowed up by the Ashlands.

Soon, work would begin to complete the underground base, as well as the transfer of key facilities.

Our dream had finally begun to take shape.

Why was I here? Why was I so frustrated?

What had I been working toward all this time?

".........Um..."

As I dove deeper within my memories, my eyes closed to the world, it happened.

A faint voice shook me out of my daze.

"...Huh?"

I looked up. In front of me stood the purple-haired girl, her sketchbook on her back.

"You... What are you doing here?!"

Hadn't the children been forced to take the AGE aptitude test?

The girl, her expression as blank as ever, handed me a tablet she had been holding, though I couldn't even begin to fathom where she had gotten it from.

It seemed the tablet could display video footage from within the base.

You could even use it to manipulate the movement of the cameras and create blind spots.

"Don't tell me... You've been using this to hide from the researchers?"

A feat like that could only be accomplished with pure, natural talent.

In response to my question, the girl opened her sketchbook.

The picture was drawn quickly and accurately, the faces of the subjects captured clearly.

A group of researchers. Children lined up in a row, forming a wall. At one end of the line, a girl with glasses stood with her arms outstretched, protecting another girl.

"Could it be... Is this you and Iris?"

A short nod convinced me.

Iris, sensing the danger, had saved the girl from the experiment.

"It'll... be... okay... We'll... see... each... other... again..."

Pointing at Iris's image, the girl seemed to be trying to convey her will. I couldn't help but hug her tightly.

This child was the hope that Iris—and all the children—protected with every wish they had.

"That's right... Don't worry. I'll protect you..."

Trying to convince myself as well, I swore upon the hope entrusted to me by Iris.

For the child who had always dreamed of protecting her family.

No matter what, I would protect this girl.

"...What's your name?"

The girl quickly scribbled her signature in the corner of the sketchbook.

It was signed "Amy".

[zelkams-art]

#ShowYourProcess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

I was tagged by @milkcrates​, who showed her process of making this gorgeous piece with Wei Wuxian and little A-Yuan!! It was awesome to see how it came to life - and thank you for tagging me! ✨

So I got tagged to show how this Yunmeng brothers + golden core art happened! I already included the digital sketch for it in my sketch vs final compilation, but I guess I can show some more!

This is gonna be long because I like talking a lot, so putting the rest under a cut!

1. Planning

SO.  A golden core pic was on my to-draw list as soon as I finished watching the show. I had a WIP of a different pic for that waiting, but actually I noticed that a very similar thing has already been drawn, so that was kinda dropped. But I’m glad I waited until the idea for this one slapped me! It was pretty much a moment of “w a i t a second” and I had to grab a random piece of paper to sketch it while I still had it in my head.

This is the sketch - as you can see from the coffee stains, it has been through some stuff. On the left I actually tried out some different ideas for the golden core - the 1st one was the winner and led to the whole leaking/water/rain theme. I ended up mirroring the whole sketch because I didn’t want Wei Wuxian’s hand to cover Jiang Cheng’s front hair wisp, as that would make that area too crowded.

Meta-wise: I wanted to show that the whole thing was kept as a secret from Jiang Cheng. But we also knew about it - so Wei Wuxian is breaking the 4th wall and looking at us [the audience] directly, shushing to keep it a secret as well. Then there’s his hand hovering over the blindfold - it was included in the show, but also sprinkles in that extra symbolism. Then there’s the rain - the sky crying for the two brothers, so you’re not sure if those are raindrops or tears on their faces + lotus pond for the Yunmeng vibes. As for the golden core, I wanted to make it kinda messy and leaking like blood + shining and make it the main light source of the piece. Also kinda like a glow stick liquid.

I also like finding fitting music to go with my art and this one was actually supposed to go with Avicii’s Hey Brother, but when I was looking it up on Spotify I saw Kodaline’s Brother right above, gave it a listen and then the lyrics hit me. So I already knew that they’re gonna go in the caption. Also apparently it’s like The Song for them and yeah, makes sense.

2. Creating

2.1 Set up and tools

I use Paint Tool SAI + Wacom Intuos S to do all my art! The entire pic was made on a 2000 x 3000 px canvas, since I don’t like to work too big because of limited brush sizes in SAI + I don’t want to torture my laptop, as my art takes up quite a lot of processing power with a lot of layers and modes and sometimes things like to crash at the final steps 😬.

2.2 Planning and composition

So I started off by doing a digital sketch and focusing on the composition a bit more - I wanted something geometrical, so I went for the diamond shape with Wei Wuxian’s silhouette and the placement of the lotuses. Also the composition is vertical, all the important info is in the middle column - you could cut off 2/3 of the picture and it would still tell the story.

2.3 Lineart

Then I did the lineart over the sketch layer (there was a more detailed one than the “planning” sketch, but it looks like I deleted it once I finished). I usually draw more than I have to and on separate layers, so that I can move/modify things easily later - for example JC’s headpiece here didn’t really make it that much into the final piece but It Was There. Once I was satisfied with the lineart, I cleaned it by erasing overlapping things, like Wei Wuxian’s clothes behind Jiang Cheng’s head.  

2.4 Planning the lighting

After doing the lineart I blocked the characters with a single color and planned the lighting. The golden core is the main light source here, so it dictates which parts are gonna be lighter and which darker (although there is gonna some ambient occlusion from the background + reflected light from the water). I also added water and lotuses in the foreground + painted the background.

2.5 Shading the characters

After that, I started shading the pic. I usually do two steps here - one with “base” shading - focusing on the details and values based on the light source, then the mood shading with more coloring - based on the setting the characters are in. The first one is mostly done with the Multiply tool and base layer blending/painting, the second mostly with layer modes like Overlay and Luminosity. I also colored some parts of the lineart to make the shapes stand out (see: wwx’s front hairs)

2.6 Environment and touch-up details

Then it was time for the water and lotuses + the “special effects” for the rain and all the stuff associated with it - water splashes, mist, sparkling drops! Also some more mood lighting. Lots of new layers to keep everything organized and separated.

2.7 Finished pic

And done! After finishing I usually adjust the contrast/gamma/saturation of my art (or just edit it all in curves) + sometimes sharpen it to bring out details → I make a few different versions and pick the one that works the best. Although with this pic I was satisfied with the raw result so no major changes happened.

3. Posting

For posting I always scale down the pictures and upload them as a draft on this art blog. Then I check if things look okay on mobile as well - from what I’ve noticed my phone makes everything more warm-toned. Depending on the time I finish drawing, I either post it right away or wait until the next day, when there is more traffic on tumblr. I finished this one around 8PM of my local time, which is fine - so I posted it right away (also I was just excited, couldn’t wait 😅)!

As caption I used the lyrics from Brother by Kodaline, as mentioned before!

So yeah, that would be it! 

If you made it till this part - thank you and I hope you have an awesome day! ✨

Let’s keep the artist vibes here - I’m gonna tag (not 5 ppl but shh) @still-snowing​ and this piece that still breaks my heart @driszol​ and this Song Jiyang pic that lives in my head to this day @kushexi​​ and this pic with fox Wei Wuxian and A-Yuan bc it still makes me melt → no pressure of course! or if you want to do some other piece that’s awesome as well!

[alteredphoenix]

Very belated drawing done for Michelle’s birthday meant for 9/10.

I wanted to include kinds of flowers in the composition that would have specific meanings pertaining to Michelle’s character. The hibiscus was an easy first choice (in fact, this pic was inspired by seeing the pink hibiscus flowers one of my aunts grows in her front yard), and in the general sense mean “love and femininity” (because let’s be real here, she’s the Girly Girl to Celia’s Tomboy). 

The white lupin came second after a bit of searching around, and in the language of flowers they mean “forgiveness”. However, of all the beasts in her spell kit the wolf is the most prevalent, and though there really isn’t anything concrete to go by besides my own headcanon I always got the impression Michelle embodied the wolf - and had a very tangential connection to Lazui - more than the game let on, and that’s where the second meaning behind the white lupin comes from, and that is “admiration and a voracity/hunger for life”. The original plan was to make the wolf Lazui, but I thought it would be better to make it a standard wolf (”assault beast”) instead. Michelle’s Embleo was another part of bringing the piece together, and apart from Leo’s hers, in my opinion, is the only one that has a very specific shape (maybe a little too specific) but no definable meaning behind it like most of the other Federation players, so to round it off I put the wolf on top, Michelle at the bottom, the hibiscus flowers on the cross part and the white lupins in both the foreground and background.

So there it is! Happy belated birthday, kid!

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 11x06: On the Inside - Analysis

Okay, how did everyone like this episode? I loved it! It might be my favorite episode of the season so far. Partly because of all the horror movie vibes and jump scares. I thought that was delightful. And Lauren Ridloff did an amazing job. But more than that, it's because of all the symbolism and what I think this represents. Seriously, I think I might have like fifty-six theories come out of this one episode, LOL. Not brand-new theories, but just connecting symbols in a way I haven't before. For now, let's talk about the broad arcs here and what they mean.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 11x06. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Basically, we’re following two storylines in this episode. The first is Connie and Virgil. The second is Daryl, Leah, and the Reapers. I suppose you could call Kelly and Carol looking for Connie a third story line, but given that they're searching for Connie, it's really just a subplot of Connie's arc.

Connie and Virgil:

There are a lot of people saying that they might be setting Connie and Virgil up as romantic partners. I think that's probably the case, for a lot of reasons. They were very purposely put together in this house. After the episode, Angela Kang talked about how Virgil basically had to suppress part of his heart in order to get through the death of his family. That's why he seemed a little bit villainous when we first met him with Michonne.

Actually, we're seeing a major theme here that we've seen with other characters. Near the end of the episode, Virgil tells Connie, "I lost myself for a long time." It's very reminiscent of what Michonne said to Carl in 4x14. It's a theme we see where the character goes through some kind of trauma, and the aftermath of that trauma is very much a PTSD thing. They lose themselves to insanity for short time, but then someone is able to bring them back. We see this with many characters over the years. And this is something they're doing with Virgil. So this was Virgil kind of coming back to reality. Michonne gave him the chance to come back first, but he also says that her giving him that second chance led him to Connie and he sees that as Providence.

So basically, A.K. is saying that Virgil lost a big chunk of his heart when his family died, but he's rediscovering it here with Connie. And that's very important. I can't imagine them saying that, or him having this kind of arc, if there isn’t going to be a romance between them. Which, for the record, I think is cute. I totally ship it. (Totally objective over here. As always, of course. ;-))

But the big question is, what does this foreshadow? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

I think this is a foreshadow of Beth and Daryl. I'm sure you're shocked to your toenails. I'll give you a moment to recover. Good? Okay.

A lot of us got Alone vibes from this episode. Just the two of them in house together. The undercurrent of possible romance between them. There's even a hug at one point.

Actually, the white, plantation style house with the white pillars immediately struck a cord with me. Back when they were filming the missing scenes from S5, they filmed in a house just like this one. it wasn’t the “white cabin” as we always refer to the house Emily was seen going into. But it was next door to that one and had a sign up about not mowing the lawn because it would be used for filming. 

I don’t know if this is actually the same house, but I’m willing to bet that this will end up having parallels to something we see when we finally get those missing scenes.

Once they get inside the house, we see Connie holding the door shut against walkers. It's very reminiscent of Daryl doing that at the funeral home in Alone.

The thing is, I don't even think callbacks to Alone are the big cheese. (For the record, we also saw them around Kelly, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

Because more than being a call back, this is a foreshadow. It represents some time in the future when Beth and Daryl will be together inside the CRM and trying to escape. Remember that “No Exit” sign in Beth’s cell?

We have a situation here where Connie and Virgil are trying to get out and there's literally no exit. All the doors are locked, they’re being trapped everywhere they go, they get separated. Even when Connie is in the wall, looking at Virgil, she wants to warn him of things, but she has no way to get into the room with him. There's literally no exit for her.

There are so many parallels to Beth and Daryl.

They emphasize the fact that Connie is lost. After getting out of the cave and walking around for walkers for so long, she clearly lost her bearings and doesn't know where she is or which way to go to get to Alexandria. It puts me in mind of the scene from 6x10, where Carl was talking to Judith and said if she was ever LOST and needed to find her way HOME, she should use the North Star. This is another way in which Connie is being paralleled to Beth. She's lost and needs to find her way home.

Virgil talks about wanting to get Connie HOME. To get her back to her family (which just so happens to be her sister). Of course there's the undercurrent of romance.

I also couldn't help but notice outlets throughout the episode. This house is very dilapidated and dirty. There's grime and rust and darkness everywhere. But we can very clearly see the outlets on the walls, as though they’re brand-new. I believe that's to draw our attention to them. Outlets suggest power, which suggests lamps or batteries.

Remember how I said that the whole battery theory is about resources and that it indicates the CRM? This is why I think this house represents the CRM. And I'm not at all saying that at some point, we’ll see Beth and Daryl running through a house together, as Connie and Virgil do here, trying to escape some threat. I think this represents a much bigger arc of them being inside the CRM and trying to get out. It will probably span a lot of episodes, maybe even multiple seasons.

At one point, we see a red coda pendant hanging in the window behind Virgil. Remember that, via the Matrix theory, red represents the outside world that TF is currently unaware of, and of course Coda suggests Beth. That’s a big part of the evidence for this template being a foreshadow of Beth and Daryl.

I’ll go over all the background details tomorrow, but pretty much every detail I found suggests what I've laid out here. I'm going to do completely separate post on the awake/asleep theme as well as the mailbox theme. That one stemmed from last week's episode (11x05), but I haven't gotten a chance to post it yet. And of course we saw the mailbox feature prominently in this episode as well.

We also have a situation where Virgil basically tells Connie to go on without him and that it’s very important to him that she gets home. And then he gets stabbed, and she not only saves him, but pulls him out of the house. We’ve always said that we think there will be a time when Beth will save Daryl. I think this is a foreshadow of it.

I think we'll have a situation (again, much bigger than what we see here in the single episode) where Daryl will be willing to sacrifice himself, his life, to get Beth back to Maggie. Of course she's not going to allow him to do that, but he'll probably be hurt very badly.

(And for the record, I think we've seen foreshadows of this and other arcs. Daryl getting hurt when fighting Alpha was probably a foreshadow of the same thing. I'm sure we could identify others.) I think he will be hurt and Beth will save him, and that will happen as they’re figuring out how to get out of the CRM.

To touch on Kelly’s side of things, we see her find a camp that Virgil and Connie had previously been at. She finds Connie’s stuff there, and the orange backpack that Virgil must have left behind. The thing that jumped out at me here is that, in the foreground, we saw ropes around the camp with cans attached as an alert system.

That was featured very prominently in Alone, both because Daryl set up something like that at the funeral home and also because the other half of that episode was about Maggie/Sasha/Bob and they did the same thing in their camp. So again, major callbacks to Alone, and to what this is probably foreshadowing.

But my favorite thing about this was connections that I made. Things that kind of confirm events we’ve suspected in 4B, but have never been able to prove. Let me explain.

First, there’s the reunion between Connie and Kelly. And this really jumped out at me. Not only because it's two sisters reuniting, but because of the way it was shown.

When approaching Connie, Kelly is crying and says, "I'm sorry." And that's out of character or out of place in any way. She’s sorry that for what happened to Connie and that it took them so long to find her. All that is completely understandable. But at the same time, Kelly has no reason to feel bad about what happened to Connie. It wasn't her fault, and she's been a dutiful sister looking for her intensively ever since.

But I think the “I'm sorry” will make a lot more sense if we hear Maggie saying it to Beth, given everything that's happened, and especially what happened in S5. I mean, Beth did get left behind.

The other thing is that when they see each other and then hug, the background music almost sounds angelic, like a choir. I mean, they really wanted this to be a big deal, the reunion between these two sisters. And not that the Kelly and Connie's reunion isn't a big deal. It's very sweet, but I feel like this a foreshadow something much bigger. And what other reunion between sisters could qualify for something like that except Maggie and Beth, who didn't get the reunion in season five?

We’ve always said that Connie was a proxy for Beth, and that the cave-in, followed by her being missing was a parallel to Beth’s arc. So, this arc ending in Connie finding someone she’ll eventually have a romance with and then finding her sister is makes me very hopeful for what we'll see when Beth returns.

I have to say that this is kind of a relief to me. Because of Daryl's line back in Still about how, "you ain't never going to see Maggie again," I’ve gone back and forth about whether Beth and Maggie will actually get a reunion. Yes, there are plenty of ways to explain away that line, and I don't disagree with any of them. But I’ve still been really back-and-forth about whether this is going to happen. After seeing Connie and Kelly really reunite, I have no doubt that eventually will see a Beth/Maggie reunion. Yay!

Next, is the fact that Virgil and Connie talk about how the people living in this house lured them into a trap.

This is talked about very much anymore, but was always but what happened in Alone was always so wonky to me. I know it was supposed to be, but the whole thing felt like it was orchestrated somehow. I mean, what happened to the dog? We hear barking, but we didn't actually see the dog again, because when Daryl open the door all the walkers were on the porch. But how did that many walkers get up to the porch without them hearing it?

When Beth and Daryl sat in the kitchen staring at each other, they heard the cans rattle and then at the dog bark. I think that the idea was that Daryl thought it was the dog moving the cans and that's why he was going to open the door and get it to come in. He didn't understand that there were walkers there. But why didn't they hear the walkers? More importantly, why would that many walkers go up to the door if they couldn't see any humans on the inside? It's completely weird behavior for walkers. And then when Beth leaves the house, she just happens to be picked up by a car?

Like I said, I just always felt like the whole thing was really orchestrated, but even at Grady, we were never told that it was. Gorman suggested to Beth that they happened upon her accidentally. Of course, Gorman is the opposite of trustworthy, but we also understand better now the way that these episodes are often approached. We sometimes see things from one character's point of view over another. Clearly, Slabtown was seen from Beth’s point of view, so if she couldn't see the truth about what happened, that's why we couldn’t neither.

My point is, in this episode, Virgil says that he and Connie were herded there like prey. These feral people apparently went to the camp (Kelly says the left in a hurry and something was very wrong, and I think she's right. Given that Virgil and Connie left all their stuff behind; Connie would not have left behind her slingshot on purpose). Which means the creatures came to their camp, scared them away, chase them toward the house, herding them that way, in order to eat them.

Now, I'm not saying that's specifically what happened in Alone, but I think it kind of proves that what happened was an orchestrated trap that was set up to capture Beth.

And we do get the sense from what Noah told her that Grady purposely left the strong behind and took the weak. So, I'm not sure if Beth and Daryl were actually herded toward the funeral home. From what we saw, it really was more like they happened upon it. But I'm wondering if once there, someone observed them, or observed them approaching, and decided that they would be optimal targets. Given that Beth was injured (which they would have known if they saw Daryl giving her the piggy back) obviously it would always be her that was taken, while Daryl—obviously the more survival-oriented of the two—would be left behind.

And I love this connection because it proves (as far as we can prove theories 😉) that there are things they haven’t shown us, not just in S5 with the missing 17 days, but reaching all the way back to S4.

The other thing that's just kind of cool to consider is that, as I said before, the other half of the episode was about Maggie/Sasha/Bob, right? There are a lot of things that their sequence foreshadows as well. And in the episode, Maggie is specifically looking for Glenn, not Beth. However, given that this episode with Connie and Virgil also featured Kelly, Connie’s sister, looking for her, it just doesn't seem like it could possibly be a coincidence that the other half of Alone was Maggie searching for someone. What I’m saying is that both Alone and this episode, 11x06, foreshadow what will happen when Maggie and Beth reunite. I'm sure I could go into the details of Alone find a lot of connections, but I don't have time to do that right now. Maybe during the hiatus. Maybe. ;-).

Daryl and Leah:

Okay, I guess we need to talk about Daryl and Leah’s part of this episode as well. I don't have as much say about the symbolism for them. This is really more about where this is going.

Daryl tortures Frost, which I'm sure some people are going to have a problem with. But A.K. said that this is really about Daryl wanting to stay on the inside with the Reapers. As I said after ep 4, Frost is smart and he understands what Daryl is doing. A.K. said he did exactly what Daryl wanted to do him to do here. Daryl wanted him to give them a basic location but not an exact one. In other words, to tell them the neighborhood but not the exact house. And that's exactly what Frost did. Angela says Daryl did this because he was trying to save Frost’s life. Unfortunately, by the end of the episode, we see that didn't work out so well. But he was attempting to save him.

You have to watch the details closely to pick this up, but the first house that Daryl, Leah, and Carver go to is not the house Maggie is in. That's why Daryl says they should stick around and look around for things, because he knew Maggie wasn't there and wanted to give her time to escape. But the second house we see them go into is where Maggie and co are hiding under the floorboards.

At first, it seems to be empty, but when Daryl comes downstairs, he sees the place where they might be hiding and slides the rug over it. In the end, Carver sees it and checks, but Maggie and the others have already made their escape.

I had to stop and think about that for a minute. Since Beth wore yellow and we think yellow equals life and escape, I would have thought the yellow house would be where Maggie and the others were hiding and then escaped from. That would've made more logical sense. But actually, the yellow house was a decoy.

It gave me a whole new insight into the meaning behind the color yellow in TWD universe.

I still think yellow represents escape, among other things. But it also represents looking for someone in the wrong place. Even if you think about Rick’s mini death fake out in 7x12, there was probably only 12 feet between where Michonne thought he was (right side of the screen being eaten by walkers) and where he actually was (left side of the screen coming out of the yellow carnival car) but still, she was looking for him in the wrong place and assumed he was dead because of it.

I also thought of the Glenn situation in S4. Maggie looked for him on the school bus (yellow). And in both cases, it was because that’s where Rick/Glenn were last seen, but what was UNSEEN was how they ESCAPED. So, TF was looking for them in the wrong place.

And I’m sure something similar will happen with Beth during the missing 17 days. It doesn’t really change what we believe happened with Beth, but it makes me want to re-examine every yellow reference we’ve ever seen on the show, which is probably hundreds by now, lol.

At one point, Carver is coming down the stairs and Daryl runs over to him and starts talking really fast. He says that they (Maggie’s group) will not to come back here, that it wouldn’t be smart, etc. The first time I watched it, I remember thinking that Daryl was being really obvious. It made him seem nervous and like he was hiding something. And he probably was somewhat nervous. The reason he ran over Carver right then, is because he didn't want Carver to see the hiding place where Maggie and the others were (because Daryl himself noticed it when he was coming down the stairs).

But the other thing to remember is that Daryl knows Maggie and the others are down there. He was using this to give them information. He talks about how the Reapers have walls and weapons, twenty people inside their town, etc. That is also him getting Maggie information so she would know what they're up against. It was actually very smart on his part, even if it kind of tipped Carver off.

By the end, they returned to Pope and find that Frost is dead. I thought it was super weird and creepy that Pope started laughing when Carver said they had lost Maggie's group. That's very out of character for him. Angela Kang said Pope was purposely playing mind games to make Daryl and Leah paranoid, but even so. That laugh was just maniacal.

So, not sure exactly where this is going, or what Pope's plans are. He kind of suggests that maybe Frost turned on Daryl and sold him out before he died. I doubt that's true, but Pope also strikes me as the kind of guy who, if he's decided Daryl is an enemy, doesn't actually need proof of it. So, we'll just have to see where this goes.

Okay, that's it for today. I'll do details tomorrow. How did you all like the episode?

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Marauders #22

I absolutely hated this issue, so be warned that’s a lot of salt here, and my usual whining, so skip this post if you’re not in the mood for that.  Also spoilers below.

First impression - what absolute, self-indulgent horseshit.  I hesitate to use “fanfic” in a derogatory way, but a lot of Marauders has read as being very “fanfic” in terms of self-indulgence, and greatly favoring certain characters while denigrating others.  I actually don’t think that’s a bad thing in fanfic.  It can be annoying to read if that’s not what you’re looking for (or it can be wonderful, if it IS what you’re looking for), but ultimately, fanfic is all about self-indulgence.  It’s about writing what you want to see in a story, and if Duggan’s Marauders was someone’s actual fanfic, I wouldn’t have anything bad to say about it.  I might dislike the characterization, and probably wouldn’t read it, but it ultimately wouldn’t matter because it’s fanfic.  Frankly, I’m just as bad about constantly centering everything around Pyro (and finding ways to work him into stories where he doesn’t even belong), because I’m writing just for myself, so I can be self-indulgent.  But I’d expect much better from a professional writer.  I’d expect much better from someone being paid to write a team book.  I’d expect a god-damn balanced book that actually pays attention to the whole cast and gives a thoughtful interpretation to ALL the characters, even the villains, rather than a book dedicated to shining a spotlight on two already well-established characters, and treating them like queens who step all over the rest of the cast. 

So, we ignore almost everything set up at the Gala, including the attack on Christian and the Marauder (the ship) being set ablaze.  Why aren’t the characters handling that, Duggan?  Is that really being saved for another month?  We don’t even know if Christian is dead or not, you can’t even spare a panel for Iceman reacting to this?  Instead, we tell a flashback story that eventually reveals that Lourdes Chantel is still alive, and Emma helped her fake her own death to escape from an abusive Sebastian.

What exactly is the point of this story, in terms of the overall Marauders arc?  Will Lourdes show up later to play a role?  Is this meant to further push Sebastian along some kind of path to redemption (recognizing that he drove Lourdes away with his actions).  Because so far, Duggan doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in rehabilitating Sebastian.  This seems like yet another story establishing Emma GOOD, Sebastian BAD, the same message that’s been getting pounded into the readers’ heads for 22 issues.  Like, we KNOW, Duggan.  We know that you think the sun shines out of Emma’s ass, you’ve already well-established that you think she’s a brilliant, wonderful, compassionate, badass queen, through 22 issues of centering the entire series around her, at the expense of EVERY other fucking character in the book (even sometimes Kate, the other obvious favorite).  It’s gotten beyond tiresome at this point.  Like, I feel like even people who love Emma and hate Sebastian are getting bored by now, because it’s not even good storytelling to have a strawman villain who is no real threat just getting repeatedly knocked down.

So, Duggan has taken both Sebastian and Emma, and further removed any kind of complexity or nuance from them.  Sebastian can’t have a kind or tender side, he can’t ever be shown in a positive light.  His relationship was Lourdes was previously part of his tragic origins, pushing him to be a worse person than he’d been in a past, but no, lets retcon him to be a controlling abuser, whom Lourdes is desperate to escape.  Because it makes Sebastian look bad and Emma look good.  Honestly, it would have been more interesting and powerful to have Lourdes come back from the dead, and be disgusted by the person Sebastian has become.  That would actually have an impact.

And by the way, why did Lourdes need Emma’s help in establishing her new identity?  She was already part of the Hellfire Club, she’s the one who brought Sebastian in, she’s rich as fuck.  Lourdes should be well capable of getting away from Sebastian on her own.  She might need Emma’s help for faking her own death, but the rest of it?  Emma should just do a little hacking to access Lourdes’ personal fortune and transfer it into a new account, and then she’s good to go.  But no, Lourdes has to be treated like a little lost lamb, a helpless battered woman for Emma to rescue.  And Emma’s deal with the Kingpin further exonerates Emma for her past crimes, because obviously, she’s just working off the debt she incurred helping poor, innocent Lourdes!  It can’t be that Emma did bad things in the past because she was ambitious, cruel, vain, and power-hungry, she has to be a woke queen who was always there to help other women.

I think Duggan thinks he’s being feminist with all this, with the “women help each other,” message, and either ignoring or villifying all the male characters.  But he’s not.  It’s not feminist to take a very complex, interesting, powerful woman like Emma Frost and completely remove all responsibility and agency for her past crimes by turning her into an abuse victim and repeatedly retconning her to be better than she actually was.  (To be fair, Duggan is just continuing a trend already started by other writers).  Emma is ambitious, power-hungry, cruel, callous, self-absorbed, vain and snobby.  But she is also brave, intelligent, compassionate, kind, protective, heroic, and self-sacrificing.  All of those things are part of Emma.  She is a teacher who loved her students, and the love for those students is part of what sent Emma on her long, difficult path towards redemption.  Yes, she’s a badass queen, but she is also a flawed individual, who has worked to overcome those flaws and become a better person.  And constantly re-writing the past to make her an “always good” abuse victim who only ever committed crimes because the big bad men forced her into it cheapens that redemption.

Speaking of cheap redemption -     

The Wilhelmina subplot: Wow, Duggan really will prioritize ANY character over Bishop, Iceman and Pyro, won’t he?  I know this is me throwing a tantrum, because “Wah, Duggan is writing someone other than my favorites!” but after 22 issues I feel justified in this whining.  Iceman, Bishop and Pyro are supposed to be regular cast members, and so far Duggan has given more serious development and emotional scenes to Callisto, Forge, Dolores (the human contact at the X-Desk), Masque, Jumbo Carnation, Magneto, the Cuckoos, and now Wilhelmina.  I don’t mind the development for many of those characters, I like Callisto and Forge and Jumbo (although I’m a little annoyed at the Magneto stuff, since he’s already front and center in the Krakoa era, and about to star in a mini-series, does he really need more time in the spotlight?).  But honestly?  Fuck Wilhelmina.  I was never that interested in the Hellfire brats, and I’m not the slightest bit interested in watching the retcon redemption of a character that murders animals for fun.  Why does she get a spotlight story while the three dudes on the team STILL haven’t gotten anything more than vague background hints of character arcs.  I mean, compare the very emotional flashback and Wilhelmina’s breakdown to the half-assed, mostly taking place off- panel “redemption” that Duggan has given Pyro.  Just a single line of “maybe this crew is bringing out the best in me,” with no lead-up, no further reflection, no hints about Pyro changing his ideas before then.  Why did you even put Iceman, Bishop and Pyro on the team if you’re not going to use them, Duggan?  Because you’ve made it quite clear that you’d rather write ANY character other than them.  I can’t even look forward to Tempo and Banshee joining the cast next issue, even though I like them (and I really want to see more development of Tempo), because I know they will be yet more characters that get pushed into the foreground, while Iceman, Bishop and Pyro remain the underdeveloped background clown trio.    

Also, it seems kind of offensive to have a cruel, murderous female character, and then say that her cruelty is entirely due to sexual abuse?  What kind of message does that send to sexual abuse victims?  That it will turn you into a monster?  Why do female villains keep getting sexual abuse as part of their backstory?  Why can’t they just be bad?  Or have something else going on?  So the Cuckoos flip a switch in Wilhelmina and she’s magically “fixed,” or at least on her way to better?  Again, I think Duggan thinks he’s being feminist with this, but he’s not. 

At least Wllhelmina has been a recurring villain in this series, so I can kinda see how her potential redemption may move the plot along, but Duggan is still introducing new plot threads, while leaving so many others dangling.  What about Christian?  What about Shinobi and Fenris?  Will Bobby and Christian ever even speak to each other again?  Will the supposed main cast members of Iceman, Bishop and Pyro ever, EVER get a proper character arc?

Or will we get an entire issue of Emma, Kate and the Cuckoos giving Wilhelmina a redemptive make-over, because girl power, amiright?

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

[gabba-gool-cool]

Remembrance

Chapter One: A flash

Notes: This is a new DabiHawks thing im starting, and yes it will be ChildhoodFriends!AU because that is adorable, cannon can bite me :) Enjoy the story!

Warnings: Yelling, mention of death (not a character in the series), and mention of not eating food (skip this post if you need to, i promise its okay, be safe!)

this work is also posted to my Ao3!

Not many people know this, but Dabi loves to read. He almost always has a new book with him, he rips through them so quick. Ever since he was a little boy, he loved getting immersed into his favorite author’s universes. His favorite as a child were the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. He always wondered what turkish delight tasted like and always checked every closet in his house every day as a child, just to see if maybe, just maybe... Nope, just mom’s coats.

He must have read that series a million times by the time he was eleven years old. His mother loved this about him, and she loved to ignite his fire for reading by suggesting new books and taking him to the book shop every other Sunday afternoon. Her favorite shop to take him to was called Philosopher’s Phosphor. It sold many books, old and new. The little shop also sold homemade jewelry by the two old women who ran the place who Dabi’s mother referred to as Janice and Edith.

The shop was always the perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. All around the shop there was comfortable seating. Pillows and blankets, books all over. Everyone who came it would always stay for at least an hour at a time, just sitting reading, and if you asked nicely, Janice loved brewing homemade tea, at no cost, of course. You could choose to sit and read every book in the shop if you wished, or you could buy and bring home the books, it was up to you. Janice and Edith would always accept any and all book donations, and always marked down their book prices so anyone could buy. And to answer your question, why of course all of the jewelry is handmade, beautifully made by Edith, they are having a sale, would you like this ring? It would match well with your beautiful skin tone.

Dabi loved asking the old women questions about books like, how were they made? How did they get to the shop? How did you pick which books to put on each shelf? However, his most common question was “what should i read next?” Which would lead to the two old women getting up and taking Dabi’s little hand through the warmly lit shop. They would show him to fantasies, mysteries, thrillers, adventures, and even some graphic novels. He loved everything the women showed him, he would always come back with his mother, every other Sunday without fail, to see the little old ladies that would show him a whole new universe to fall into.

They were always holding hands, and always so gentle to one another, as well as all of the customers, but... that was a long time ago. That shop was burned down, the old ladies aren't there anymore, and Dabi hasn't been to that shop in probably... how old was he again? He doesn't know. However, what he does know is that right now Shigaraki will not stop talking... as always.

“Well maybe he wouldn't have had to die if he didn't have had the audacity to be a little bitch!” Shigaraki’s voiced strained. Shigaraki was stood up, hands out stretched to really make his point. He was talking, of course, about a man he decided to murder on a whim just last night. It wasn’t apart of the mission, the man was just walking home, and the poor soul ended up accidentally bumping and slightly tripping the leader of the League of Villains.

“Tomura, he was crying because he was about to die, most people don't like the idea of dying. Shocker! I know...” Spinner rolled his eyes. He respected Shigaraki, but only because Stain did as well. This doesn't mean that Shigaraki cant get on his nerves sometimes. It bothered Spinner how easily Shigaraki could just up and kill someone for seemingly, no reason. If it wasn't for a good cause, if the person wasn't in your way, if the person wasn't the target, then what was the point of killing them? Its honestly just cruel, and in Spinner’s head, kind of disgusting.

Everyone in the League of Villains has, will, and would kill, but not all of them have the same boundaries or rules they go by. This can and has led to many arguments, just like the one that was about to ensue between Spinner and Shigaraki. As the voices of the Stain fanboy and Handyman began to rise, so did Dabi’s body from his stool at the bar. Dabi was sure that the argument wouldn’t end in a casualty so he didn’t have any need to be here. 

Dabi hated yelling anyways, it always got on his nerves. Whether it be him yelling or someone else, he hated it. Not that he really could yell too much himself, his voice nowadays became hoarse and worn by simply talking too much. That's why his normal speaking voice was actually quite soft and generally pretty quiet. He didn’t mean for his voice to be that way, but years of smoking and over usage of his quirk kind of completely destroyed his vocal chords. Either way, he saw no point in yelling. You can get any point across just fine without yelling, sometimes you just need a weapon, but that of course depends on the person and situation he supposed.

The old floorboards in the back of the bar slowly creaked under each of Dabi’s steps. From the bar, there was a side door, which led to a hallway, which led to some stairs, which led to a basement living room, which led to everyone elses rooms. Well, at least the core members of the league’s rooms. It was nice, having a space for himself. The last time he had a room to himself was probably when he was still a little boy. 

Dabi opened his bedroom door.

The whole house was very traditional, so in turn, so was his room. He didn't have many toys, so his favorite thing to do was play pretend with his brother and his sister. He would set up whole scenes with his siblings. Sometimes the scenes were from tv, and some were completely from his and his sibling’s imaginations.

His sister was always the doctor or the nurse, she loved Recovery Girl. In fact, Dabi remembers how every time Recovery Girl came on the news, she would always make a little squeal and her little feet would pitter patter in one place in excitement. He always found it funny how his brother ended up being the doctor in the family, now that they were older. His brother, meanwhile, loved being the villain. He loved making up a cool bad guy name and backstory, sometimes even costumes if Mom got involved. His brother would make up impossible, evil machines that could rearrange your guts or make you super tiny, or even super big! Dabi’s brother was always very creative.

This left Dabi playing the hero, and he loved it. He would put on a cape, and save mom from his brother’s evil clutches alongside his sister who would give him magic healing and strength “potions” that was actually just little jars filled with handsoap and sometimes random cleaning supplies that was on the cleaning lady’s supply cart. The chairs would become big rocks to jump from, the couch would become a “safe zone”, and the bathtub would become the ocean. The whole house morphed into their own imaginary world. It was wonderful, until...

Dabi’s room now was barren. It has a bed, a bookshelf and a desk. It’s all he really needed, he supposed. The shelf had three mystery books that he picked up on a mission a couple weeks ago. They were “okay” in his opinion. He hated how quickly he called the so-called “plot twists”,  but least the characters were somewhat entertaining. However, there was a slight romance in one of the books, which was very poorly written, it got to the point where he ended up just dropping the book entirely.

The book in his jacket was one of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, the book series was different from King’s other works in that it was less of a horror novel than it was an adventure series. It reminded him slightly of the books he read when he was younger. He used to prefer adventures and fantasy, but now that he was older, his favorite genre was mysteries. He did indulge in horror novels whenever he happened by one though, he liked a good thriller.

Turning on the light in his room, it gave off a dim light. He needed to change the blub, but he sure it would be fine for at least a little while. Then, it flickered, oh no... and then again, please dont... and finally, with a low buzz and a pop, the light was out.

“Fuck... okay.” he slowly murmured to himself. Slowly dragging his hand down his face in frustration.

He had no idea when he would be able to replace that lightbulb. He had no cash, and he knew for a fact that the league didn't just have some extra lightbulbs laying around, not to mention extra food. 

Damn... his stomach rumbled slightly. Dabi doesn't remember the last time he ate an actual meal, and he doesn't want to remember either. So, since he couldn't get food now or for awhile, he decided to distract himself, as he always did.

Slowly he stalked over to the small window that peeked outside the base. The walls were tall and thick, and he was pretty sure he was the only one with a window downstairs, as tiny as it was. He slowly took off the little tapestry he had hung up to cover the window for privacy. Of course, he couldn't imagine any one peeking through a little basement window so low to the ground, but you never know. Also, Dabi quite enjoyed his privacy, thank you very much. The tapestry blended red, to purple, and then blue in the background with a black silhouette of a dolphin and waves in the foreground. It was an odd little thing, but Dabi enjoyed it nonetheless.

As he gently folded the tiny piece of fabric and set it on his desk, he looked back into his room. Surprisingly, that little window let in quite a bit of light. He silently thanked the window as he plopped down on to his mattress that laid on the ground. Then, he pulled out his book from his big inner pocket on his long jacket, and finally began to read, feeling the thoughts of food slowly drift from mind.

It could've been hours, minutes, or even seconds, Dabi doesn't really know, until he finally snapped his head up from his book and looked to the window. He quickly shot up and went up to the window. He looked left, and then right, and then over again. Huh... that's odd... he could’ve sworn he saw a flash of red right outside of his window.

[empyreansmoon]

Title: Promising Petals

Character(s): Lee Eunjae. Seo Yeonjin. 

Summary: Eunjae’s thoughts had decided to play a never-ending game of tug and war on his brain, leaving the boy feeling immensely tired even if all he did was stay on the couch the whole day. However, when Seo Yeonjin is a part of your life, being confronted about your feelings isn’t that rare of an occurrence.

Warning(s): Internalized homophobia, mentions of homophobia, talk about bad mental health, unhealthy behavior (?) (im pretty sure that’s it!)

Note(s): I kinda recommend reading Moonlit Tendencies and Drunken Heart prior to these since this is chronologically like the third part of Eunjae’s plot! The song associated with this on Deoksu’s soundcloud!

Eunjae’s best friend in the past week had seemingly become the couch in the Empyrean dorms. The boy had found himself occupying his-now designated-corner of the couch from morning till night, not finding any motivation or incentive to move an inch. And with Deoksu monitoring the boys and making sure they all had their meals, and going to the extent of bringing it to Eunjae, it wasn’t like he had to move. 

Unless he had to use the bathroom, especially when Chan found the smart idea to play waterfall noises in the background whenever he wanted Eunjae to stop hogging the remote and leave the room for a moment or so. 

The lethargic feeling seemed to find itself wrapping its roots around Eunjae ever since his meltdown in the practice room not even more than two or so weeks ago. Originally, it was simply present in his mind here and there, almost like a dull pain that refused to leave him alone. However, it began to bloom, allowing the feeling to intensify, the breakdown on the roof seemingly nourishing it’s roots to grow. 

And now? 

The feeling had blossomed into a full-grown flower, allowing for its petals to droop down into Eunjae’s heart and litter him with its emotions. Which is why he couldn’t bring himself to get up and do something aside from laying on the couch, channel surfing until he found something that could potentially even take his mind off things for a few moments. 

A part of him was thankful for the unspoken rule amongst the boys; the rule of how whenever a  boy had a problem and didn’t approach the other three first, they’d take the hint that the boy wasn’t feeling up to talk about their problems. 

Another part of him was wondering if it would be better to talk to someone about this. He was so close to mentioning it to Deoksu that night in the practice room, but the thought of speaking out about his problems made it feel even more real, and Eunjae wasn’t sure if he would be able to handle another thorn pricking at his chest. 

Eunjae raised his finger to his mouth, idly biting on his nails as he eyed the TV, trying to follow along to the movie that had been playing for a little while but whose title Eunjae had far forgotten about. It had become almost a habit for him to do his best in trying to distract himself from his own thoughts by clinging onto something else to pay attention, only for his mind to rest for moments before it reared its suffocating thoughts into the foreground once again. 

Suddenly feeling a harm rest on his shoulder made Eunjae jump ever so slightly, his head craning around quickly to see who it was only to be met with the warm brown eyes he had grown fond of since he was a trainee. 

“I’m heading to Neostar to garden.” Yeonjin often had the same tone lingering in his words, it was almost like he expected for the meaning behind his words to click in everyone’s brain the moment he let the words out, the smile on his face always proving that his intentions were the furthest from trying to be bothersome or malice. 

“Drive safe?” 

“Well, yeah, of course I’ll have to drive extra safe if you’re coming along.”

“I’m coming along?”

“I’m glad you agree!” It was always another experience talking to Yeonjin, for Eunjae. There was something about the younger that was different from everyone else Eunjae knew, he had a way with his words and his antics that made it impossible to become bothered or annoyed with what he’s doing. It was simultaneously the feeling of talking to an excited child in a toy-store and the feeling of being wrapped in a warm hug.

“I”m not following.”

“Well, you kind of have to if you’re coming with me.”

“I didn’t mean physically.”

“Oh...ok now I’m not following.”

“Why would I be coming with you to the garden?” Eunjae questioned with a slightly raised eyebrow, watching as a small frown formed on the youngest’s face, either from the confusion that just sparked in his mind or because of Eunjae not showing interest in his garden. “No offense, buddy, but that’s usually your thing.”

“Yeah, it is, isn't it?” the smile reappeared on Yeonjin’s face once again, this time beaming with pride as Eunjae shook his head gently, wondering how he took it as him praising Yeonjin’s garden as opposed to simply saying he never had any interest in coming along. “I’ve done pretty well by myself, huh? Taehui said he’d build me a greenhouse because of how nice it’s been looking!” 

“Did he say that or did you say that and he didn’t know how to say no again?” 

“Isn’t it the same thing?” Yeonjin titled his head with furrowed boys, his smile almost sly as a few chuckles fell from his lips. “Not the point though. Come with me to the garden.”

“Why?” Eunjae almost groaned, the prospect of leaving his comforting seat on the couch not being enticing in the slightest. 

“You need to go out.” Yeonjin’s tone was blunt and it only took one glance in his eyes to note how his warm eyes had suddenly been invaded with an almost concerned gloss smeared across them now. 

Eunjae knew it would be Yeonjin to confront him about moping on the couch, because of course it would’ve been him. Yeonjin had a knack for not showing the slightest interest in beating around the bush, or dancing around a topic that’s right in front of him. Whenever there was an issue any of the boys had attempted to avoid, Yeonjin was the one to call all of the boys out and the issue at hand out as well. 

It resulted in a few arguments rising here and there, but it didn’t stop Yeonjin and in Eunjae’s eyes it didn’t diminish how his presence was needed in the slightest. Yeonjin was the type of friend who didn’t believe in suffering in silence when it was avoidable, and the younger had no problem making it obvious. 

“You don’t even have to do anything with me.” Yeonjin’s smile had shrunk in size but the warmth and comfort that emitted from him hadn’t waivered in the slightest. “Just come out with me. Get some sun, breathe in some fresh air. That’s it.”

Eunjae wanted to argue with that request and effortlessly go back to lying back on the couch, retreating back into a mind that was nothing but the same silent suffering that Yeonjin despised. But in the few moments they had been talking for, it had been the first time when Eunjae’s mind felt less heavy; more tolerable. 

He didn’t have enough of a reason to reject his friend’s request. Hell, the young boy deserved to hear some praise about his ever-growing garden, at least. 

----

“I can’t believe you stopped for McDonald’s the moment we stepped out.” 

“Hey,” Yeonjin spoke through a mouth full of fries, which Eunjae usually would’ve grimaced at the sight but could only find himself smiling ever so slightly at how much his cheeks had protruded because of how much were in them. “You can’t expect me to work on an empty stomach. It’s just not ethical.” 

The younger opened the door to the rooftop, slipping the keys into his pocket before motioning for Eunjae to head toward a specific direction as he went his own way. 

The older of the two walked to where he saw the few chairs, before he let his eyes take in the rooftop garden. 

Yeonjin’s passion for gardening was something Eunjae had learnt of prior to their debut, specifically when Eunjae first visited the Seo household in Busan. It was where Yeonjin proudly showed off his (albeit slightly smaller) rooftop garden on top of the Seo family restaurant, where he grew the vegetables that used in the kitchen all by himself. 

“Do you like it? I have so many now that I managed to separate them by purpose! There’s a little row for the ones I send back home, and then there’s…” 

Eunjae’s mind trailed off into its own space as Yeonjin continued to speak, slipping in a stream of thoughts that were more than uncomfortable. Watching his best friend aimlessly talk about his garden with the largest smile he could possibly muster on his face sparked, and rather than smiling as his friend’s smile as he usually did, Eunjae found himself raising his eyebrows as he noticed something. 

“Where’s your gardening tools?”

Silence sidestepped into the air between the two friends, allowing for Yeonjin’s smile to almost physically decrease in it’s brightness as he looked away from his garden and met with Eunjae’s eyes again. 

“Don’t need the tools for today.” not wanting to give Yeonjin the excuse to continue whatever he was planning to say, Eunjae opting to fall back onto the wooden chair, distracting himself with the bag of food in front of him. “Just need you here.”

“Yeonjin-”

“Eunjae.” the younger was quick to bit back, not wanting Eunjae to get in a word as he made his way over to him, pulling one of the folded chairs out and placing it right next to his friend. 

“I’m not in the mood for whatever you have planned.” “Yeah, you haven’t been in the mood for a good amount of time, huh?”

There was a lot about Yeonjin that Eunjae had grown to love and adore, and throughout their friendship that was close to hitting a decade, the older couldn’t quite grasp this side of Yeonjin. 

It didn’t take much for Yeonjin to get serious and when he did, it was almost like he was a completely different person and the happy-go-lucky kid that ran through the halls of Neostar vanished without a trace. 

But that wasn’t the part that made Eunjae contemplate wanting to flee the scene each and every time. It was the part where Yeonjin didn’t mind holding back his tongue when it came to expressing what he wanted, and how he always seemed to know what the problem was before anyone ever told him. 

Eunjae had always joked it was because Yeonjin was an angel amongst men, but now that he was in the hot seat, the well of jokes had run dry. 

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to start guessing?” 

“Yeonjin-“

“Is it Eunsoo?” the mere mention of his brother’s name sent a shiver down Eunjae’s back, his eyes quickly darting away from his friend’s. 

“Why would you assume him?”

“Because I know you, Eunjae, maybe sometimes better than you know yourself.” it didn’t take Eunjae glancing at his friend to know that there was the tiniest smile seeping from his face into his words, his hands grabbing the bag of food from Eunjae’s and finding itself interlocking with the older’s. “And I know that aside from our members, he’s one of the few people you love the most. Meaning, he’s one of the few people who would make you react this way. Is it about what I think it is?”

“How am I supposed to know what you’re thinking, Jin?” 

“Well, okay yeah, maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say.” Yeonjin spoke sheepishly, finally looking away from Eunjae for the first time since they stepped foot onto the roof. 

“What I meant is...is it the same issue from before?”

It didn’t take longer than a beat of silence for Yeonjin to nod his head, his answer being given in the way Eunjae’s eyes lowered to his feet. 

“You know, when I was younger, I was really desperate to be accepted by people.” a warm sadness coiled itself around Yeonjin’s words, the smile still present on the younger’s face, yet his tone lacked the same joy. “Like really desperate, like...I used to let everyone at school treat me however they wanted as long as I could be with them. I could tell not a lot of people liked me for who I was at the beginning, so instead I changed myself to be someone who could make people laugh, even if I was being laughed at.” 

“And it took a lot for me to realize that...wanting to be accepted by people didn’t make me a better person, even if it made me feel good for a while. I had to learn to accept who I was, so I would be comfortable with who I was. Originally, I thought I would only have to deal with that at school, but I kind of had the same problem at home...my brother didn’t understand when I came out.”

“Daehyeon?”

“No, no. Daehyeon came out before I did.” Yeonjin didn’t look up from his shoes in the slightest, now just barely moving his feet back and forth in a slow rhythm. “I thought it would be a bit easier like that. When Dae came out, it was felt...well, it didn’t feel like it was him that wanted to announce it but something else. He didn’t look comfortable enough in himself to be coming out, especially when he didn’t have a clue if our family was accepting since they never spoke outside of the heteronormative square we were stuck in. But, when he did, the house was uncomfortable for a bit. I think my parents were just trying their best to understand it all, and they did. Told him he wasn’t a different Daehyeon in any sense, and that he’d be their son no matter who he loved.” 

“Yeonu was different. With the way he reacted and stayed completely distant those few days, you’d think he was the one who announced his sexuality like that.” there was a smile on Yeonjin’s face once again, yet this time it lacked the same warmth it always had on his face, the smile almost seeming as if it had to be there. “He got it after a bit, and has been supportive obviously. But, when I told him how I felt about people he laughed at it and thought it was a joke.” 

“He told me it didn’t make sense that I would be attracted to anyone without caring about gender, and that there were two categories. Those who were heterosexual, and those who were homosexual.”

“Yeonu said that?” Eunjae’s eyebrows furrowed at the thought of the same man who always made his way to the local homeless shelter after his shift at the family restaurant, to feed those less fortunate being the same who would laugh at his little brother coming out. 

“Yeah, and obviously it felt like…”

“Shit.”

“Maybe.” Yeonjin finally looked up from his feet to meet Eunjae’s eyes with the lightest smile to have dance on his lips. “He’s obviously understood it and everything now, but that’s not the point. Eunjae, if I were seeking acceptance from him at that moment and I got laughed at, how do you think that would’ve gone? I would’ve been heartbroken, maybe even worse. That one rejection could’ve just...completely messed up how I felt about myself. There’s a chance I wouldn’t be comfortable with myself even now if I felt like I wouldn’t even be able to be accepted by my family.”

Yeonjin took a second to move his body, inching his chair closer, before he reached to ever so gently wrap his hands around Eunjae’s, trying to comfort the boy physically if he happened to fail verbally. 

“When you see others do you think someone is better, or has higher importance, than someone else based on their sexuality?”

Eunaje was quick to snap his head back to facing his friend, finally meeting his eyes with his brows furrowed in confusion of where the question came from. “God, no.”

“Then doesn’t that cancel out the need for acceptance? If we’re all the same in that sense, what’s the point of asking for someone to accept who you are as a person? Why would your attraction to men make you lower than if you were attracted to women?” 

“But, Yeonjin-“

“You should want him to understand you and who you are. But it wasn’t like he was asking for acceptance when he started dating girls, right?”

“No.”

Eunjae felt his Yeonjin’s other hand carefully find its way onto the side of his face, gently moving his head so he could stare directly into the older’s eyes. 

“You shouldn’t feel forced to come out to him or to hide yourself. You are who you are Eunjae, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.” 

“But he shares everything with me.”

“Because you make him feel safe enough that he can tell you everything,” there were the smallest of tears pricking in the corner of Yeonjin’s eyes, the smile still prominent in his face in an attempt to make sure his friend knew it would be okay. “If he doesn’t make you feel safe, that’s not your fault.” 

The silence danced back into the atmosphere of the two boys, this time it didn’t feel as if it slithered in before coiling around them, creating an unbearable feeling. It was a gentle silence, that both boys were evidently comfortable in. 

Eunjae nodded in response to his friend, this time reaching up to wipe at any of the tears that dared to peer over and fall, even if his own began free-falling making them both let out the tiniest of laughs. 

Truth be told, he didn’t know if everything was going to be ok. He didn’t even know if he could understand everything Yeonjin said to him in that split second, or if it would matter to his mental-state in the days to come.

But Yeonjin was right: for Eunjae, he needed to accept and understand himself, before he could possibly ask others to understand him.

And if he was lucky, the same self-love he had decided to work towards in that same moment, may be reflected in how his brother treated him in the future. 

Because that’s how much trust Eunjae was willing to put in his bond with his brother. Even if he wasn’t waiting underneath him with a safety net, he was willing to take the risk of leaping forwards. 

[overdramaticly-dying]

Repo Mantis

A really cute episode with Donnie and Mikey!! Seriously they’re my favourite pairing in tmnt, and it’s really fun to see rise’s take on them!!

-It’s really cute that Donnie brings Mikey along with him in the first place, seeing as Mikey probably isn’t really allowed out on his own all that often, even if it isn’t a ‘mission’

-”Donnie... donnie doNNIE- I REALLY THINK WE SHOULD- DONNIE” 

-”Mikey, next time I would appreciate a heads-up” “ok... HEADS-UP”

-Gotta love how Repo’s cat is in the background (or foreground??? I guess???)

-”OH NO A MUTANT... wait, we’re mutants too, it’s ok”

-Repo just became a mutant... and was like “guess I don’t need pants anymore”

-I will never tire of Mikey and Donnie trying to be ‘smooth’ 

-seriously though- what’s with this family and their ability to pull sunglasses out of nowhere??? I know it’s a cartoon and all, but I’d like to think this is a skill that Splinter ensured his children possessed

-”I’ve got big silver, small silver, and I can make it rain copper, daddy” SERIOUSLY THAT’S SUCH AN ICONIC LINE, BUT I’LL NEVER GET OVER THE FACT THAT IT’S AN ACTUAL CANNON THING THAT DONNIE SAID

-”aaaaaaand sidebar-”

-Donnie and Mikey catch a ride in the back of a random guy’s truck, but judging from the map, it actually took quite a few tries, so that means they were probably jumping around from car to car???

-it’s been pointed out before, but Donnie lets Mikey hold onto him while they’re walking, and it’s honestly not noticeable by how natural he treats it?? They don’t make fun of him for being scared in rise, instead they just support him

-It’s also Donnie’s first instinct to push Mikey down to hide when he hears a noise

-I’m sorry, I love Todd, but his introduction still makes me super skeptical... with Donnie calling him ‘the spine-breaking bandit’, and several other lines from other episodes ( Origami Tsunami, the Evil Leauge of Mutants, Todd Scouts) he’s questionable at best...

-”I’m not scared of some no-good forest dweller!”

-”Maybe we should call Raph and Leo-” “no, nO NO NO NO NO- we got this! think of all the boss adventures we could have in the moon buggy!” Mikey were you planning on not telling Raph and Leo abt the buggy????

-”aaaaand sidebar-” *yeets himself at Mikey to pull him away*

-these good boi’s with straws

-”why did we just do that?” “I don’t know Michele, I don’t. know.”

-Mmmmm idk it feels like we gloss over the line “his superpower is niceness,” a little bit- his niceness convinced Donnie and Mikey to build an entire freakin theme park??? I dunno, I dunno

-then again, how on earth do you argue when Mikey’s sitting there like:

-You’d have to be heartless

-Donnie trust’s Mikey to help him work on stuff, which is really nice to see!! Not only that, but they both look like they’re really enjoying themselves!!

-”NO, STOP, NO”

-Both Donnie and Mikey exit the Rv through the windows...

-”Hey, the purple one’s funny” “I keep telling you guys I’m funny”

-”I think we got a bunch of people pretty oily” he said, after dumping a bunch of oil on people. sidenote: those people were probably pretty confused, huh?

-”Really? there is a bug-zapper? But why didn’t you try that first?” “it didn’t have a ‘3000′ after it!” 

-and instead of further getting frustrated with Mikey, Donnie instead actually writes ‘3000′ just so he’d be happy- even though Mikey was already gonna push it next????? It’s so nice...

-There’s so much I love about that quick interaction, but I especially love Mikey’s face during the conversation- like I can’t describe it, but it’s just really perfect how it changes? Just do yourself a favour and go rewatch this episode, if purely for that scene

-”Hard as nails!”

tl;dr it’s a really sweet episode, and I love the interactions between Donnie and Mikey! Also Repo is a great character, and I hope we see more of him in the future!

Alright, I’m really sorry, but I cannot for the life of me find out who asked me to do this episode- like they asked me to do this one and Newsworthy (which is coming next), and I’m like 80% sure I know who they are, but there’s another person with the same profile pic as them, and I can’t figure out which one asked for it- so I’m really really sorry, but this is for you my friend!!! (I would just feel so awkward tagging u, and then getting it wrong)

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Something I noticed about powers and inheritance, at least as seen in canon...a boy born to a Fairy or Witch mother and a Hero father is usually a Hero, while a girl is usually a fairy or a witch (like her mother). Meanwhile, a Fairy/Wizard or Witch/Wizard pairing will have their children be either a fairy, a witch, and/or a wizard. There are technically male fairies (in Magical Adventure) but they didn't go into detail about it. Can girls be anything other than a witch or fairy? (Part 1)

Is wizard an option for girls? Conversely, can boys be fairies or witches? How does Wizard culture work in your AU? (Part 2)

I've spoken a few times about the gender thing re:witch|wizard|fairy|hero division, so I'll just quote myself real quick:

Gender is nothing more than a statistical average when it comes to the divide between (Witches and Fairies) and Wizards. Wizards are more likely to be male, Witches and Fairies are more likely to be female, but there’s always a (very) small percentage of female Wizards and male Fairies and Witches.

Despite appearance, the division of Fairies&Witches and Wizards is not a gender based one.

Though female Heroes are more commonly seen, male Fairies&Witches, as well as female Wizards do still occur.

^ This is actually why I try to use gender neutral pronouns when talking about fairies and witches in general terms.

Also because I headcanon a percentage of trans men and women as well as non-binary individuals exist within the various Fairy|Witch|Wizard|Hero classes, in addition to the 'statistically unlikely' cis-gendered individuals mentioned above, because Winx Club in the early days had a feel of gender non-conformity. I will never be convinced Palladium wasn't a gay trans man.

I'm never sure if that aspect of the ratio is something I should bring up, because it's not something I had plans to bring to the foreground, or even really look out outside of that one blink and miss it mention in the Alt Con that Palladium is trans, so it always feels like if I did bring it up, it would come across as cheap lip-service done for 'wokeness' brownie points.

I think the inheritance thing might be a little but about 'following in my parent's footsteps'...

[Warning, major tangent below, I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore:]

But let's talk canon and get a bit meta for a few minutes:

Within canon there is a 'lens of focus', if you will. Writers may know this as 'third person limited POV', where we the audience are focused on a certain character, or several characters as is the case of Winx Club, and though we get to see more of the goings on of the universe than they do, we're limited to the parts which are relevant to the main characters and their story.

With Winx Club, it's a story about girls who are fairies. In their story, fairies are the top of the food chain of awesomeness, and the narrative is set up to support a “girl power” theme.

Boys are love interests, male love interests in fantasy series are typically knights in shining armour, in the Winx Universe, that translates to Heroes.

The primary villains are often a warped reflection of the main characters, thus, the Trix are young ladies who happen to be powerful witches.

This is the foundation of the Winx Club Universe as we know it, as we are shown it.

Further, because the show is half about the show and half about selling toys, it tends to ingrain certain idea into itself. (This is where (I feel) the 'degradation of quality' in the later seasons comes from, the doubling down of the focus on the 'target audience' and pushing characters further and neater into their divisions and labels.)

The idea that this (gender bias) is normal and perpetuates the whole of their Universe is enforced, but I don't believe it's 100% the case.

It can't be.

Our own world has shown that diversity and exceptions to the rules happen, only a very controlled artificial system would experience otherwise, and only if it doesn't grow.

Our view of the Winx Universe is limited by what the characters see and do and know, so we're forced to make assumptions on what is and isn't a regular occurrence, but we're also limited by censorship.

The Show itself has a “target audience”, regardless of who's actually enjoying it, and there are guidelines in various countries on what is and is not appropriate for various audiences.

The assumed target audience is very young girls, you can see the way the studio really doubled down on that in later seasons, the Winx became more feminine and uniform, the villains became more cartoonish (as in dumber and foolish as often seen in children's Saturday morning cartoons), even the art style of season 8 gives the Winx a younger and more girlish appearance.

All of this goes back into the reinforcement of gender based divisions, this gender means this label.

Boys are heroes, or maybe once in a blue moon a wizard, good girls are fairies and bad girls are witches.

There are exceptions, Diaspro is a 'bad girl' and she's a fairy, they tried to give Icy (a witch and known bad girl) a tragic backstory redemption in season 8, which is concerning for entirely different reasons. (Also I believe Selena, unlike Mirta, remained a witch despite 'being good now'?)

The point is: The show sets up certain alignments, If you are A+B then you must be C.

But That's just what we see at around the edges of the story the Winx Club are experiencing, and we see a lot to enforce that idea, but lack evidence of is not proof of a negative.

If that last part made no sense: “I don't believe in ghosts because there's no real evidence they exist,” despite the lack of evidence other people do believe in ghosts, no matter how much 'null' evidence someone gathers, they can never prove that ghosts absolutely 100% Do Not exist because they are a non-observable phenomenon, there lack of appearance does not prove their lack of existence. Conversely: “I think that hay bale is on fire” can be proven or disproven by the lack of fire, because 'on fire' and 'not on fire' are both observable state which chance the existence of whether or not there is fire.

“There are only female fairies and witches, and only male heroes and wizards”.

No, we've only seen the divisions and ratios in this manner, but what we've observed is a very limited view of the Universe in which the Winx live, and Does Not take into account how limited their view makes even the background of their story that we do see, or the fact that gender or more than whether or not you have certain body parts.

A Very Large portion of that Universe is Unobserved therefore we cannot offer Observed Evidence of any kind.

And Further:

FanFiction

We control the multiverse now.

[aerielz]

Here's a lb of the When We All Vote special because I just needed to talk about it I guess?

I mean, it really is just me geeking out about the filmmaking and quoting my favorite lines but be my guest

-----------------------------------------------------

It's always amazing to me how Brad's voice haven't changed at all but he looks like a qtip, it's great.

OH WAIT THIS IS A READ THROUGH. THEY'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO READ THE SCRIPT THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE. and smart too.

And it's great because Aaron's earlier scripts read exactly like a play, like, it's really is three lines of stage direction and then just... dialogue all the way down.

Oh God the staging and the direction is so solid damn you Tommy Schlamme. As far as a staging goes this is solid. I mean, the blocking is SO nice??!! And very theater-y! Going minimal was one hell of a good idea, specially considering the time frame. Ugh damn this is a smart production.

"I was thinking how much things change in sixty seconds"

Tell me about it.

The titles! Crying? No I'm not crying you're crying. THIS IS SO PRETTY! I love how they decided to put in moments of the making of, this is a THREAT

I’m gonna screencap the shit out of this episode and cycle the shots as desktop background, it’s decided.

The lines between the act breaks are actually pretty funny and I love the fact that both Eli and Aaron wrote these inserts, because Sorkin is hilarious but then Eli comes with the I Know What I’m Doing with the politics and the speeches are solid.

THE CUTS ARE SMOOTH IN WAYS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE HOW THE FUCK MAN

OKAY I AM SORRY BUT I'M GONNA GO FULL GEEK OVER THE FILMMAKING HERE OKAY just skip to the next bolded line after this one if you don't wanna read about it.

LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW THIS SHOW WORKS (as far as craft is concerned):

You have a classic Hollywood filmmaking style for most of the time: smooth and invisible tracking shots in dollys (little carts that push and pull the camera over a track for smooth movement), beautiful close ups and focus racks (when you pull focus on something on the foreground then change it to the background, or vice versa, without cutting) to make use of your entire depth of field. That by itself ties nicely to Aaron's 40's-ish scripts: heavy plot and lots of fast talking require you to keep moving so things don't get boring, but it can’t be overwhelming because the writing is already like ok wow too much; the jokes need that precision in timing, too, it all needs to be like clockwork. And the atmosphere all of that creates is just right too: the precision and the damn fine acting you need to pull this kinda shit off are a testament to the very themes and setting of the show so *chefs kiss*

AND THEN ON TOP OF THIS YOU HAVE THE SMOOTH STEADY-CAM AND THOMAS SCHLAMME PROVES HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING. because it's so good. The camera floats through the west wing as if it was a character itself, you’re dropped right in the middle of the action. the way the camera circles the characters puts you in their mindset: things are HAPPENING decisions needs to me made. it’s what’s next in visual form. and it pulls the show right into the 21st century, because it’s such a modern thing, such a technical achievement, to be able to stage and 

THE THING IS, THIS IS A STAGE. THIS IS NOT A FULL SET, like they had back in the day. so the staging needs to make sense and the movements have to be thought out to match the next cut. they blocked the staged to allow for continuous long shots of the more complex sequences but some cuts here are still kinda tricky. this is by no means impressive by Hollywood standards but it’s still not really trivial? might be after you’ve spent 8 years filming like this, but all in all it’s not nothing. 

I talked once about how it’s kinda funny that almost half of the shot/reverse shots (dialogues are usually shot like that: you have once person talking, then the other, and you usually shoot the entire convo one side then the other, and then cut them in together so it makes sense. it’s p much the first thing you learn if you go to film school) are out of focus, and about how it’s prob because the schedule must’ve been insane. but I say this out of sheer respect. you naturally spend more time and effort on set pieces and difficult shots but half of this fucking show is a set piece.

I mean IT’S SO SIMPLE. BUT IT’S SO GOOD. There’s nothing extraordinary going on but it’s so beautiful and so well done and I'm constantly blown away by how much this show does with what ends up being just basic filmmaking.

it really all just comes down to great scripts, great acting, and a handful of techniques to bring it all together. and in this day and age when everything became a desperate and artificial attempt to make the audience respond, that is impressive.

ok I’M SO SO SORRY. end of me geeking out about filmmaking

"DONNA!"

My first reaction to this one single line was omg- I missed this so much. and I’m actually rewatching the whole thing it’s been 0 days since I've heard josh screaming at donna. I can only imagine what it was like for them.

I just don't have words anymore to talk about how much I love this show.

God fucking damnit THE ACTING.

JANEL'S ACTING. THE TINY REACTIONS.

On stage you don't have the realism, you don't have anything to help you believe it so it's SO MUCH CLEARER how GOOD these guys are.

Okay I understand if everyone ends up pissed because this is not at all new material, etc etc, but I GOTTA SAY I AM THROUGHLY ENJOYNG THIS THING. Sorkin writing is made for stage and having the chance to see these guys actually doing it on stage is a blessing if you ask me.

You just know this exchange is gonna become gifs that people will subtitle with whatever else line of dialogue they want and I can't wait for it.

I really want to to back to the episode later and compare the acting (which is kind of a dick move but I'm inconsequential to them they'll never know), because Janel is fucking NAILING young Donna after all this time and this is just insane.

"Give it up, tiny"

that's a bold line when it comes to Allison Janney

"I moved my pawn..."

"Well, it's as popular today as it was back then."

Please please please please tell me the bit about the stuffed animal is true. Please. it’s probably not but I don’t care it’s in my head and it’s not gonna go away

"I think if my dog could pull that off his vote should count."

Oh my God.

"Did Aaron write this?"

Oh my God.

I'm-

"You're a sap?"

"It's called poetry, me bucko."

Can you tell that at some point I stopped thinking and just got really into the show?

"He's not gonna-- that's the other guys! He's not gonna gonna privatize social security. he'll privatize New Hampshire before he privatizes social security."

I remember that this line made me actually stop the episode to laugh back when I first watched it and guess what yep I did it again

UGH.

I really love how this episode ends. I really love the feeling of how Bartlett is pretty much teaching Sam how play the game on a higher level, I love the feeling of ‘oh okay this guys is GOOD we get’. I think a month ago in one of those interviews they were doing to promo the thing Sorkin said people respond to the sigh and sound of competence and he’s absolutely right.

oh, and that ending right there was an definitely an "I have no idea what to do about that" solution, but it wasn't a bad one? it clashes, but it’s not bad at all.

I LIKED IT. I really really really liked it. This was really fun and the only bad part is that we're gonna gonna get to see them just doing everything else too. Like, it ended and i was half expecting to see he next episode but it wasn't there and that was the one disappointment tbh

[mildredisabella]

Assignment 2: Storytime!

A Remote Stand-Off 

Starting the assignment 

In this assignment, we were tasked to create a storyboard. Firstly, it started conceptualising the simple narrative that I wanted to tell using the 3 act structure (Setup, Confrontation and Resolution). Afterwards, I went ahead to sketch these stories out to make sure that they represented the vision that I had and then took the photos to bring it to life. Hence, the gist of the story that I was trying to tell was about 2 friends who were bored in quarantine and just turned on the TV and having a debate about what to watch on Disney+. Heavily inspired by some of the conventions and cinematography of the Spaghetti Westerns i.e. the duel scene and the ECU shots of the eyes etc, I decided to have these 2 girls (my friend and I) fight over the remote to see who gets to decide the show they will be watching: High School Musical or Lemonade Mouth. If you’re wondering if this was inspired by a true story, it was but don’t worry we were still friends after this as you can guess from the selfie we took midway because we decided to give ourselves a 5 minute break in between shooting scenes.

Storyboarding  

Fig.1: Storyboard Part 1 (Drawing) 

Fig.2: Storyboard Part 2 (Drawing) 

The storyboard first starts off with a wide shot (WS) or establishing shot (ES) of Disney+ being featured on a TV screen. The scene then cuts to 2 girls, Layla and Isabella, on the couch looking bored and figuring out what’s good to watch. This is the set-up of the scene which leads onto the rising action when both of them spy the remote on the table and reach forward to grab it. These 2 scenes are being shot in close up (CU) and mid-shots (MS) respectively. That’s when both girls grab onto the remote at the same time (shot in CU) which leads to the stakes getting a little tense as it cuts back and forth to an extreme close up of Layla’s eyes first and then Isabella’s, both of them refusing to let go of the remote. This action results in the biggest crisis or confrontation, the duel for the remote and its shot in a MS. In this scene, it is also when the girls started screaming High School Musical and Lemonade Mouth respectively. This then brings us to to the resolution and last shot of the storyboard which is Isabella managing to triumph over Layla and manages to get ahold of the remote as Layla rolls her eyes in defeat. This is shot in an MS so that you can see Isabella raising her hand with the remote in it so she can pick the movie. 

Below is the storyboard but in picture form. 

Fig.3: Storyboard Part 1 using pictures

Fig.4: Storyboard Part 2 using pictures 

Pre-Critique 

To further prepare for the assignment, I attempted to make my narrative foolproof and cutting out the unnecessary scenes I may not have needed. I also went a step further to try and edit some pictures using Photoshop by playing around with the settings that it had to offer. For the first picture, I decided to make the TV stand out a bit more from the background and to do that, I went ahead and selected a new curve layer and using the brush tool, I masked it with another layer where I inverted the masks and modified the layer again. This effect overall did help as the TV is now slightly brighter than the rest of the objects in the background (Fig.5). For the rest of the shots, I mainly played with brightness/contrast to get achieve the desired effect that i wanted as the light source was to my right in the picture (as you can see from the windows), I wanted to make sure everything was brought up to ensure the white balance is there. I also cropped some images like Shot 7 as I wanted to bring out the ECU and the MS shot as I felt it was better in that size than a WS. Moreover in Shots 6 and 7 (Fig.6 and 7), I also played around with the spot healing brush tool to get rid of the pimples that plagued our faces which we were not excited for the world to see although we are still coming into adulthood. After all these pictures have been edited, I layered them all out on InDesign (Fig.12) and used a western background to further bring out the mood of what I was trying to go for which was a story inspired by Spaghetti Western conventions. 

Fig.5: PS work area for Shot 1. 

Fig.6: PS work area for Shot 6

Fig.7: PS work area for Shot 7

Fig.8: PS work area for Shot 3

Fig.9: PS work area for Shot 5 

Fig.10: PS work area for Shot 8

Fig.11: PS work area for Shot 9

Fig.12: InDesign workspace for storyboards (drawn or photos) 

I left shots 2 and 4 unedited as I thought they perfectly captured the essence of the story I am trying to portray on their own. 

To sum up the shots in the assignment: 

Shot 1: WS of the television featuring Disney+ 

Shot 2: MS of 2 girls staring at the TV pondering what to watch

Shot 3: CU of the TV remote 

Shot 4: MS of 2 girls reaching for the remote at the same time

Shot 5: CU of the 2 girls grabbing the remote at the same time and refusing to let go

Shot 6: ECU of Girl 1 (Layla) staring at Girl 2 (Isabella) intensely

Shot 7: ECU of Girl 2 (Isabella) staring at Girl 1 (Layla) intensely

Shot 8: MS of fight for the remote

Shot 9: MS of Girl 1 smirking happily as she emerged triumphant while Girl 2 is rolling her eyes

Pre-Curation

Before achieving the images that I needed to place in my storyboard, I did have some shots that I was not as satisfied with such as these 4 examples below. 

Fig.13: Shot 5 of the remote that did not make the cut

In Fig.13, this was meant to be for the 5th shot and I personally thought was not suitable. This is because according to the rule of thirds the remote is off centre and towards the centre right of the photo which is very uneasy on the eyes and puts the remote not as the focus of the photo as in the left third, Layla’s leg is showing which brings in a lot of elements and the viewer would not be sure as to what to focus on if this image was presented instead of the final one that’s being shown. 

Fig.14: Attempted CU of the remote 

For this shot, I wanted it to be used for the 3rd photo where the remote is in focus which was why I attempted to try for a CU shot. Even though the remote is placed in the foreground of the photo, it is not as sharp as the people in the background. As our eyes are naturally more drawn to the object that stands out, the remote in the foreground which is not in focus would lead audiences to think that the focus is the person in the background when that is not the case. Hence, this shot was a complete fail and did not make the storyboard for its shot size and depth of field. 

Fig.15: Attempted Shot 4 (reaching for the remote scene) 

This shot though emphasising the point that I was trying to make about the 2 girls going for the remote at the exact same time is very uncomfortable to look at as there is no headroom for the girls and even cuts out some of the features of the girl on the right. Therefore, this does not make for a good scene as there is no room for your subject to breathe (cropped head) and the framing is just very awkward and aesthetically unpleasant. 

Fig.16: Attempted Shot 8 (duelling for the remote) 

This shot was one of the many outtakes that did not make the cut as it was very obvious that Isabella has already gotten hold of the remote. Hence, this was a fail on the misc-en-scene and character behaviour where Shot 8 was meant to be the 2 girls struggling for the remote. A challenge while shooting this shot was actually getting the timing right as we needed to time it perfectly so that it showed the struggle of the 2 girls grappling to see who gets hold of the remote. Therefore, to overcome this obstacle, I decided to film us doing the action instead and then revisiting a few frames to get the shot that I needed so that it was timed perfectly which is being shown in the final submission. 

Critiques and Edits 

During the critique session earlier, I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out I did not have to reshoot any of the scenes and that my narrative was easy to comprehend (thank you film school for making me a film school brat) i.e. Shot 1 of the TV was good at establishing the setting and the rest of the events to follow. However, I do realise that I could have experimented with the angles a little more if I did have a tripod but I made do at my friend’s apartment. 

Hence the main feedback I got was to work on the formatting of the storyboard. For example, I should not include the captions that I had previously as this is meant to be a photographic storytelling not a storyboard that I was used to in film classes and to also put the shots that I had into 1 page so that it was easier to see the flow. 

Final Versions 

After listening to the critiques, I made the adjustments accordingly so that my photos and sketches in my InDesign layout (refer to Page 3-5) are put in the 3,3,3 format. I have also removed the text from the bottom and decided to feature it in the blogpost instead. I have also added in the pre-curated images that did not make the final cut. 

Fig.17: InDesign layout 

Overall, this assignment really tested my creativity and allowed me to incorporate some of the film conventions I already know and put it into modern day context. This was a fun assignment that I got to do with friends as I felt that it made the story more realistic and it is a first world problem that we face today as well. 

[japanne]

Making Comics Process 2020

Someone mentioned in a comment on some page that the brief thumbnails I was posting would be interesting to see as a comics making compilation, so I decided to make a current one (the last one I did was from 2015 or something??  I was still doing my pencils and inks on real paper).

So let’s commence using chapter 47, Page 12 as the example.  

I usually do something a little differently every time I do a chapter, but one thing that has never changed over the almost 20 years I’ve been doing this, is my affinity for using Microsoft Excel to organize my chapter writing.

This details the page in question.  I’ve got a basic description of the events in the first column, the year in the second, the chapter in the third, and details in the fourth.  (I pulled out the rest of the scene so as not to spoil it).

After the writing for a scene, it’s time for thumbnails!  I still enjoy doing these in a notebook.

I use a dedicated spiral notebook, split my page into quarters, write in the dialogue, and maybe adjust it at this time if I need to.  I changed Collamair’s dialogue to: “Oh.  Whoops.  Sorry.  This is my room.  I forgot to give you one, didn’t I?” (you can also see I misnumbered my pages somewhere earlier so 11 here is really the comic’s 12th).

I use the frixion erasable pens for this, so if there’s small changes to make I’ll just erase and fix.  For major changes I’ll just move onto the next open page space.  You must not remember to set hot things on your pages or the ink will fade.  Put it in the freezer to try and return it!

 Following the success of paper thumbnails it’s time to move to Clip Studio Paint.  At this early stage I do a couple of chapter wide passes.  

1. Create all the page files with the grey and red bordered template page I have.

2. Put a ruler on that file rough in the sizes of the panels.  Think about panels that might go for full bleed and delete the template border as a note for myself.

3. Put in the text.

4. Translate thumbnails digitally which brings us here:

I shifted Collamair’s dialogue a little more, and I flipped the last Collamair from my thumbnail.  For some reason he was facing the opposite direction, even though it’s a general rule to keep your characters facing the same way if possible in a conversation.

After the first pass of real rough sketches are laid in, I do a second slightly more detailed pencil pass

I’ll get all the expressions in, and the outlines of the clothes on the characters.  I’ll adjust the size of the people and the position of the text bubbles.  And this is as detailed as I get for my pencils.

I will also mention here, I’m not sure if I forgot to include this or actively decided not to, but “Colly and Struan laughing and having a good time” got dropped at some point???  Who knows when or why now???

Once I’m done with these sketch layers, I merge them together and start inking.  This is done in a scene by scene basis.  First I’ll open all the files for a given scene, flip all the canvases and draw the faces of the characters.

Then I’ll flip them back to look for weird parts and ink the rest of their bodies.

After inks are done, I’ll make another very rough sketch pass on the old sketch layer for the backgrounds.

Then, again, scene by scene, I’ll go through and ink them.  These backgrounds were blissfully easy.

I started something new this chapter.  I saw a video on twitter randomly talking about how to make panels with Clip Studio, and it’s SO EASY.  So I started doing those in this program as well.  That was one of the last 2 things I used to do in Photoshop.  

After all the inking and the panels are done, it’s time to color.  I have a shitty swatch file that you can see below where I keep track of colors for outfits and backgrounds in every chapter.  

The second new thing I started to do was flats in Clip Studio.  I’m excited about it so I broke it down a little bit in detail.  Below is a Struan that I have used the fill bucket tool on a new layer with the inks marked as a reference.  I do this for backgrounds and foregrounds.  You can see just plain old fill bucket leaves some stray pixels that are hard to get, especially in Struan’s sleeves here.

Well, worry not, for there is something else I saw on twitter, the Filter>Correct Line>Adjust Line Width

When you do that you can see the color overflows the lines a little bit.  But all the internal white pixels are gone.

NEXT!  you take you fill bucket with the color marked “clear” and some area scaling, and you just click a bunch of times in your panels outside of the characters.

Ta-daaaaahh.  There’s a few places where a little bit of manual cleanup is needed, around his elbows, but this method appears to be much faster than the old B-Pelt method I was using in PS, and I am happy with it!!

Here’s the fully flatted page with this method used on the bgs and fgs. Eyes are also added in, but on their own layer so they don’t get desaturated at all. And Colly’s shirt has his pattern to add at some point.

When flats are done, it’s time to move, scene by scene, through the shading process.  I’ve started using “Hard Light” blending for the shading since the last chapter, so this is also pretty new!

The bg and fg again get their own shading layer.  I’ll cover the bg in the shade color and then paint or gradient fill the highlights in over that.  I might add on some other extra mode for fancier lighting or if I want to shift all the colors, but I always add on an adjustment layer for desaturation at the end. 

Brushes that I use are almost all from Frenden.  The pencils are blue and red “real” and  “layouts.”  Faux-rel Painter Scratchboard is my inking pen.  Most of the shading is Concept Craig normal and Wet.  Hair highlights are Painterly (Wet), and I also use the default soft airbrush on a variety of things.  The plaid is “real pencil.”

And here’s a final view of the total layers I’ve used for this page, and also the ridiculous palette file if you’re interested in that!  

[compassroseproductions]

[Image Description: The party of Everyone Dice is gathered in a wasteland, staring into a portal. In the foreground, Burnie and Cordelia are holding hands, with Burnie on the viewer’s left and Cordelia on the viewer’s right. Their other hands are against stone pillars framing either side of the image, light bursting between cracks in the stone. The same light is also enclosed in Cordelia and Burnie’s connected hands. In the background, Zaala stands just behind Burnie at the viewer’s left, Shay stands framed between Burnie and Cordelia in the center of the image, and Alois stands just behind Cordelia at the viewer’s right.

End Image Description.]

Everyone Dice: Session 003 - Into the Geistlands

Recap art by @darkthare 

“Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another session of Everyone Dice!”

Our session started with a shout out to tumblr user @amediocrepigeon, a plug for Humble Bundle’s racial equality bundle, and our announcement about The All-Nighters. (Note: The premiere date for The All-Nighters that we originally announced in session 3 is no longer accurate, and The All-Nighters will now be premiering on Saturday, July 11th, at 9:59 PM Pacific, 11:59 PM Central on the Compass Rose Productions Twitch channel.)

And with that, we started playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Kacey quickly recaps the second session, and we start with Alois & Burnie’s autopsy of the prisoner. Burnie casts Detect Magic as a ritual on the corpse.

Erin: “Meanwhile I will literally be performing an autopsy on this guy.”

Lynn: “I will help with the literal autopsy after I do the magic autopsy.”

The guards seem unsure about the necessity of an autopsy, and reticent about letting them perform an autopsy in the guard house. The guards prepare to move the corpse to the morgue for the autopsy. Burnie does sense something faint in the corpse’s chest, and it’s similar to the coins found in previous undead.

After moving to the morgue, Alois uses what’s left of the ritual she had performed on Tristan the night before to heal his corpse for three points.

Erin: “It probably won’t do anything but…” Lynn: “Low-key mortifying.” Everyone: “...” Lynn: “No, it’s high-key mortifying, actually.” Kacey: “Yeah, it’s high-key mortifying.”

As expected, healing the corpse does nothing, but Alois wanted to see what would happen. She then performs the autopsy. She understands the theory behind it, but this is her first time performing an autopsy. It’s not a very clean autopsy, given her lack of practice. She finds a coin inside him, the same as the others, burnt into his heart. She also finds a strange, fibrous plant growing from the coin that has pierced into the corpse’s lungs.

A little out-of-character discussion happens when Scottie learns that his assumption that the entire party was hanging out for the autopsy was incorrect, and it’s established that Zaala is with Burnie and Alois, sort of watching from the doorway.

Neither Zaala nor Burnie have ever seen a plant like this, and it looks unnatural. Alois, however, has heard of it, but never encountered it personally before. It’s incredibly rare, and known as Redweed. It’s typically used as a poison. A seed, when ingested, will grow quickly, drawing nutrients from living tissue and often killing the host.

Alois asks who was looking after the man and recommends to arrest the guard who brought him water. Burnie recommends not jumping to any conclusions, but thinks speaking to the guard would be a good idea. The guard said the water came from one of the town wells.

Alois: “I think that we should go into the well.” Burnie: “I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit there!”

Alois says that nobody should be drinking from the well (which probably incited a little panic), and she and Burnie get into a disagreement over whether or not testing the water on animals is cruel or pragmatic. Burnie believes the lives of the citizens are more important, and Alois believes the animals are also citizens.

While Alois, Burnie, and Zaala were attending to the autopsy, Shay and Cordelia were getting the supplies granted to the party by Lord Gerhardt Ulfrich, including an ox and cart. Shay wants more health potions than the two included in the supplies. Gerhardt also hands Shay something that looks like an old compass and calls it a Wayfinder. The Geistlands shift around people as they travel through, and traditional navigation is unreliable. The Wayfinder will allow people seeking a specific destination (an ancient ruin) to find it regardless of how the land shifts around them.

Shay and Cordelia enter a shop and Shay haggles for the purchase of 2 more healing potions in exchange for bringing back a rare herb (“like a white lily, but it’s not a lily”) called a Moonswallow Flower from the Geistlands. Cordelia purchases tobacco, and Erin, out of character, tries to egg May into stealing the tobacco instead. On their way out, the potion-seller says that if they find more than the two agreed upon flowers, he would be willing to pay for them.

Burnie and Zaala go to meet the others at the cart and Alois goes back to the river to speak with the fish. She warns the fish to avoid red, and then asks if there are “any caverns that have a bucket in it,” looking for wells without calling them wells. The fish haven’t seen any buckets. Before returning to the party, Alois tries to look for supplies for health potions. She ends up, as it turns out, in the yard behind the potion shop accidentally stealing his plants. When she realizes that the plants are in someone’s yard, she leaves the herbs she had gathered behind.

Erin: “She’s a bastard, but she’s not a stealing bastard.” Lynn: “She’s not a bastard, she’s baby.” Erin: “She’s a baby bastard.”

The party departs from Luchev into the Geistlands, and even though the party is heading in a straight line, it isn’t long before Luchev is no longer behind them, but to their right, and is, strangely, continuing to grow distant as they follow the Wayfinder.

The party finds a shrine in the Geistlands with a collection of both ancient and much newer coins in its collection bowl. Shay recognizes the shrine instantly as a shrine to The Wandering One. Cordelia and Burnie put coins into the bowl. Alois doesn’t understand why they’re throwing their money away, and asks why gods need shrines. Shay and Burnie explain that it’s an offering for safe travels or respect. Zaala and Alois both put coins in the shrine. Zaala: “My people don’t worship gods, as such, but we will pay respect where respect is due.” Lynn: “Burnie smiles big at Zaala.”

Burnie stops to do a quick prayer, Cordelia kneels in front of the shrine to pray as well, and Shay drops a coin into the offering bowl before the party moves on. As Burnie prays, the clouds part a little and a small ray of sunlight bathes the shrine in light. “That’s all Burnie needs to know.”

As the party leaves, Cordelia steals a handful of coins (focusing on newer coins) from the offering bowl. “You’re gonna get us cursed!”

Finally, the party settles down for the night, and they discuss possibly foraging for food, but ultimately decide it will be safer not to risk getting lost in the ever-changing Geistlands and instead eat the rations they were given. Burnie and Alois resume their disagreement over the value of humanoid life over beast life.

Burnie goes to talk to Shay. “I’m just gonna make casual conversation.” She asks if Shay left anyone behind in Urtu, asks about her sisters - “Why specifically sisters?” - and family. Shay has a younger sister, Ava, who she misses, but she’s still doing her own thing, so she won’t be going back anytime soon. Burnie asks if Shay has ever been in love. “What is love, really?” Shay doesn’t do love and romance.

Burnie asks “What did your sister look like?” Like Shay, mostly. Long, brown hair. Not tall, but she was a child when Shay last saw her. Burnie continues asking after Shay’s sister.

Burnie: “What’s your favorite flower?” Shay: “...What?” Burnie: “Your favorite flower. I’m just curious!” Shay: “I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it; I don’t really like flowers, ‘cuz once you get ‘em they have a limited amount of time before they just die. They’re kinda useless.” Burnie: “You could press them and they could stay with you forever.” Shay: “That’s not really my thing.” Burnie: “My favorite flower is the Delilah.”

(Note: A Delilah is a type of Dahlia.)

Shay doesn’t react, or tries not to.

Cordelia and Shay opt to sleep inside the wagon. Burnie and Zaala plan to sleep outside the wagon. Alois is setting up to sleep under the wagon. The party begins discussing watches, and has to explain what a night watch is to Alois. Zaala takes first watch, Burnie second, Alois third, and Shay last. “When you are in a group, you should rely on the group.”

After watches have been established, Alois casts Speak with Animals on herself and Burnie so that they can speak with the ox. His name is Steven. He doesn’t like the grass in the Geistlands. Buttercups are his favorite flower.

Zaala asks after Burnie’s conversation with the ox. Burnie suggests showing Zaala some of her pressed flowers, and Zaala seems… reticent about it.

Zaala: “If you think I should, then I will.” Burnie: “Well, I don’t want to force you to open up to her if you don’t want to.” Zaala: “It’s not that I don’t want to open up, it’s they’re… special to me.” Burnie: “Of course. Then no, maybe not.”

Zaala didn’t start pressing flowers until she and Burnie started traveling together, and Burnie has absolutely seen the pressed flowers. For a few minutes before Burnie goes to bed, they look over Zaala’s pressed flowers together in her little journal. All her handwriting is Giant script, and for the first dozen or so pages it’s nothing but handwriting. After that is when it shifts to including flowers from places that Zaala and Burnie have been.

Before the break, we talk about our dice giveaway (on Twitter, entries close on 6/30/2020, winner announced on 7/1/2020) of a set of HeartBeat Dice’s pride dice.

After the break we jump back in with Zaala’s watch and a Perception roll of 9. “Playing someone with low perception physically hurts.” When Burnie’s watch starts, she begins by making sure everyone else is definitely asleep, and then leaves the campsite, putting the cart between her and Zaala. She asks Delilah to manifest. (AJ has a face journey.)

The ghostly figure of Delilah takes shape before Burnie. “Delilah is a little bit taller than Burnie, even without the hovering. She has narrow shoulders, thin hips, but is clearly more muscular than Burnie… She has a long face, super long, like straight, dark hair, wearing a simple tunic, with long pointed, like elfin ears, maybe half-elfin ears.”

Burnie: “How are you, my love?” Delilah: “Lonely.”

It’s been a long time since they’ve been able to interact, and they’ve missed each other. They kiss, and Burnie talks about Delilah’s secrets. She asserts she has no secrets from Delilah, and Delilah says “that’s not true,” and looks at the party. Burnie wants to know if Delilah knows Shay, and Delilah teasingly asks if Burnie’s jealous. Burnie says she doesn’t get jealous, and Delilah says she does get jealous.

Burnie asks if Delilah trusts Shay, and Delilah says Shay is a good soul. When Burnie asks if she wants to talk to Shay, Delilah says “maybe one day. I don’t think she’s ready … quite yet.” Burnie: “I’m not jealous. I just wanted to know if you wanted to talk to her.” Delilah: “You’re a little jealous. You wanted to know if there’s someone else who had earned my affections.” Burnie: “All I know is that right now there’s not someone else and that’s all that matters to me.” Delilah: “We can wander through time, eternity, and there will never be anyone else, Beatrice.” Burnie: “I feel the same way, Delilah.”

They sort of dance as they spend the rest of Burnie’s watch together. Outside her passive perception, she doesn’t actually do a proper watch.

Alois’ watch begins with a perception check of 24. She sees a procession of spirits following a guide - a large, multi-armed figure - of some sort. She calls out to the spirits. “Hi! What are you doing?” The procession doesn’t stop, but the guide shifts and looks at her. Eventually the figure goes back to the spirits. “And Shay will keep watch like a normal person.” Shay’s watch begins with a discussion about whether or not floor dice are acceptable. Ultimately Shay’s perception check is a nat 20, and the group decides to accept all floor dice. In the far distance Shay sees a ring of stones, above which there appears to be no cloud cover. “That is suspicious.” Her watch passes otherwise uneventfully.

The party starts back on their journey, choosing to eat rations as they travel. After following the Wayfinder for a bit less than half the day, the party approaches the stone ring that Shay had spotted. Cordelia hears a soft thrumming from the stones, and she’s fairly certain it’s the melody from her dream. While Burnie is using Detect Magic Cordelia and Alois approach the stones, and Alois touches one (Cordelia waited for Burnie to finish what she was doing). Alois feels an almost electric tingle from the stones. When Cordelia touches the stone, it shifts, and the melody increases in volume. The whole party can hear it now.

Burnie asks if Cordelia has ever been to these stones before, and rolls Insight against Cordelia’s “no.” Cordelia is, in fact, telling the truth. The party continues puzzling over the rocks for a while longer. May: “This is a bad die, I’m getting a new die.” AJ: “You need a dice jail.” Scottie, nodding sagely: “Gay baby jail.”

The music is getting louder, and Cordelia asks if Shay, Burnie, and Zaala want to try.

Zaala: “...If… sure? Sure.” Burnie, looking at Zaala: “Okay… Well, if you’ll do it, I’ll do it.” Zaala: “This is what journeys are for, right? New things.” Burnie: “New things.” Zaala: “Including singing stones.” Burnie: “And talking animals.”

Burnie, Zaala, and Shay touch rocks, too. Shay and Zaala feel the electrical current, but when Burnie touches one of the rocks, a streak of white light flickers in the cracks. Zaala crouches down on Burnie’s level to see what she’s seeing and asks her to touch the rock again. Everyone sees the light flicker through the cracks. Cordelia touches the same rock that Burnie had, and the music gets louder and a white flicker happens followed by a blue-green flicker. Zaala wonders if it’s a puzzle.

Cordelia: “Um, um, give me your hand.” Burnie: “Alright.” Cordelia: “Touch that rock!” Burnie: “Alright?”

The two join hands and touch separate rocks, forming a chain between them. The rocks shift and move and form standing structures. White and blue-green energy pulses within the cracks of the rocks. Burnie speaks with her deity in Primordial, and she hears a sound like someone tearing an enormous piece of paper. In the middle of the circle, a rift tears open in the fabric of reality and a portal opens. Through the portal is a cold-looking mountainside (and it’s Scottie’s turn for a face journey, though milder), near the top of it, maybe 30 feet away from where the portal lets out, is a ruined, partially collapsed tower.

Scottie: “Does the mountain look familiar to me? With how much I traveled Bralia?” Kacey: “Yes, it does. These are the Snowcloak mountains.” Zaala: “Well, that’s… home.” Cordelia & Burnie: “That’s what?” Zaala: “That’s home, through there.” Cordelia: “You live in that tower?” Zaala: “No, not the tower, but the mountains. That’s home.” Burnie: “Do you know of any rock formations like this near your home?” Zaala: “No.”

Zaala proposes that the party finishes the job and comes back to the rocks. Someone quickly skirts the perimeter of the rocks, and the Wayfinder always points to them. Zaala says she thinks Roderick must have escaped to Bralia, and she and Cordelia believe they must go through to finish the job.

Burnie and Cordelia let go of the rocks to see if the portal will collapse. The rocks shudder briefly, but they hold. As soon as it’s obvious the portal is stable, Zaala walks through without warning and Burnie follows immediately after. The rest of the party follows behind them, bringing the ox and cart along with them.

The session ends there.

[somilkyshaky]

Skam España - Season 2 - Episode 1, Clip 2: Yo no noto nada.

(If you don’t understand why I’m posting this, here you go) + The first clip if you missed it.

Well. Their meeting. Obviously, there will be a lot to say.

Cute, drunk/high dumbasses. I stan this duo + Dani being a big brother + Ruben and the stare.

I mean. STARE. I love Skam España for the details. Like, I know there’s a shot some seconds later where we clearly focus on his stare. But here it’s on the background and yeah, I just love details + I love how Cris intentionally lets Eva with Cristian, I mean, friend’s duty (+ the wink, I’m falling).

--

Um yeah, Viri being the third wheel. I mean, their positions are so meaningful. Nora is clearly enjoying talking with Alejandro (which is reciprocate, of course), BUT we still have Viri in the middle of them, BUT the fact they’re only talking to each other bring the thing that Nora starts to forget about Viri and her clear feelings (+ Amira still being really bored, I love her so much + I won’t talk a lot about Norandro, I really will focus on Cris).

--

Can we just take a second to appreciate this beauty? Thank you, we can continue.

--

Okay first, hello Joana. Then, can we just say that on the FIRST FRAME where we see her, she’s already staring at Cris? I know some seconds later they affirm she already knows Cris, and there’s this whole thing about the “heart skipped a beat” post and I fucking stan; but my simple ask is: What’s happening in her head at the very moment? A mix of excitement and gay mess I suppose? + I haven’t noticed before but, why didn’t we see her before in the party (in the first clip)? Is it some sort of a “poetic cinema” thing to show that this is the first time Cris notices her? If it is, that’s brilliant.

Can we just take a second to appreciate this beauty? Thank you, we can continue.

Oh, and can we just talk about the colors? They are surrounded by blue and orange-yellow. It gives so many vibes at the same time. Cold and warm colors. As if two worlds were colliding. Love it.

Plus, funny how we discover an entire new Cris, “alone” outside the nightclub, she seems so calm. I mean 10 seconds before she was laughing with everyone and now, she seems so peaceful. Two facets of Cris that may be one at the end of the season? (We’ll talk about this in the clip Iftar huh?).

--

Can someone explain me how Cris doesn’t notice the stare? I mean. Come on girl.

Let’s start the “Joana being bold” challenge.

She is the one to say hello, even though the girl in front of her didn’t notice her (Bold+1).

--

 This makes me laugh every time. Cris’ clumsiness. I can’t.

“I’m Cris.” - “I know.” (Bold+2)

--

Okay, so they’re saying hello, that’s normal, BUT we have Joana clearly kissing Cris’ cheek, and I DON’T kiss the cheek from a girl I just met, sooooo BOLD+10. Plus, I just love Cris’ face some frames later, she seems so confused, like “uh okay, I’m not used to this but I don’t mind either.”

--

Okay so now we have THIS. I have nothing else to say. Just THIS.

Well, in fact I have something else to say, around this moment, the music is so low that we could think it disappeared; I think it shows the start of the conversation, or even, the start of the connection between these two.

--

Cris caught in her staring + the BEST GAY PANIC EVER of my entire life. I live for this shit, seriously.

Joana’s famous biting/liking lips, I can’t, I should count them.

Joana’s little smile when Cris tries to find her tobacco, which clearly means, “here’s my opportunity to continue the conversation”. No but, more seriously, I think she’s just making fun of Cris in her mind and that’s cute.

I just love her posture, kind of hugging herself. She looks so small, and if you look her right hand, you can see she’s already doing this thing she always does with her nails/fingers. That’s amazing how, in what? 20 seconds? We already have so much information about Joana (new girl from literature, clearly nervous and bold, etc. but anyway).

--

Then Joana’s stare. She takes the opportunity of being close to Cris to look at the details (I do it myself, so yeah, I can relate). I mean, you can see she’s not just staring at her, she’s carefully looking at her, even watching her. 

--

Cris starting the conversation. It doesn’t feel awkward or anything, she really wants to say something in the very moment, or maybe it’s just Cris being really at ease with everyone she meets + Joana reacting to THE song (which appears just when Cris starts talking to her, coincidence? No). Dude, seriously, when I saw this clip for the first time, the first thing I thought was: “Nooo, they didn’t, right?”.

Joana being bold by mentionning “Blue is the Warmest Color” Bold+11 (you feel it coming huh?) + I’m sorry but there is a real chemistry between these two. I mean, their smiles? And they laugh with each other so normally. It feels so fluid between them.

--

This look: “What the hell is she doing?” oh and BOLD+1000. I’m sorry but I just fucking laugh every time I see this scene.

And the way she holds her hand, I mean, I seriously want someone to hold my hand the same way.

And here we are. The connection. This is the first time they stare at each other at the same time. And yeah, Cris seemed a little dazed by Joana’s move at first but then, just look at her. She is listening to Joana; she completely enters the conversation and keeps the connection. Oh, and Joana gets a little closer from Cris, just saying but bold+1001.

Cris has a little movement with her lips as if she was trying to answer Joana’s question (bold+1002 for mentioning the heart beat), but it was clear she was going to stammer something more than anything (gay mess, we all know it guys). She doesn’t push Joana away when she rests her hand on her chest, though. At the very moment she stares at her hand, it feels like she’s trying to process what’s happening and it’s so damn funny. And then…

Look at this precious smile.

--

I will never get over these English subtitles, really. It says everything. Even though, I just noticed that both of them clearly get closer again during the stare. This is super intimate. 

--

And then the connection breaks. We even have something a little “sad”; let me explain. We have a panic from Cris and kind of a “return to reality”, but most importantly, we have the “relief” of leaving the connection with Joana, as if it was something she wasn’t allowed to do.

And just, guys, Joana taking all the time in the world to remove her hand is so damn funny, bold+1010. She doesn’t want the connection to break though: Cris completely turns her body to face Ruben; but Joana, she doesn’t change her posture. Her body and her head are still turned to Cris, only her eyes move to look at Ruben.

--

(I’m sorry, the pictures are shit) Joana, we all saw you rolling your eyes girl. Look at this frustation xD Oh and guess what, here we start with her “bitting nails” thing. I don’t know if it’s because there’s the famous Eloy in the equation and she thinks about it, or just because she’s upset because of Ruben. Personally, I choose option 2.

--

THIS. I mean, guys, I have no word. It’s so fucking funny.

--

Bold+1050 and the girls mocking Ruben. Love it.

--

They’re exchanging their last little smiles and gazes, and it’s still not awkward though, even if Cris’ gaze is a little shifty, it’s really warm and even conniving (when I say it’s not awkward, I mean the two girls, not the situation with Ruben next to them xD). But, that’s true, we have a dazed, or at least a confused Cris after what just happened.

--

I just love to imagine Joana and Ruben’s conversation before entering the nightclub after Cris and Eva left. I mean, I’m laughing alone like an idiot, but yeah.

--

Am I the only one to feel attacked by the nightclub colors? And the music is so loud and yeah… aggressive. Everything’s fast, everything’s going wrong and you feel the tension in the atmosphere.

--

Boom. Just look at the difference between the two pictures. When Joana appears, the colors become “soft” again, or at least, there’s not this “fog” in the room anymore. And we also have a color changing when Ruben enters the shot. Fuck, that’s just brilliant.

--

Cris reaction though, even if she isn’t defendable because well, I’m sorry but everything is her fault, all this self-control, wow (Oh, and surprise the fog appears again).

--

My god this look. I mean, wow (Tamara is brilliant). There isn’t anger, but a really stern and closed face, but if you look closer her eyes, you see concern and scare (which, I suppose, are for Cris at the very moment). I don’t think she would’ve intervened, but clearly, there’s the protective mode activated here.

Of course, we have Ruben the white knight coming to save Cris, but well, we all know it was necessary in this situation.

Cris protecting Eva. Really, I love it. I’m not doing the reactions of all the people around them, but damn, everything is in character, Jorge, Hugo, Amira, Alejandro, the girls, everything is in the details (I really could stare at every frame of the clips so the actors are involved and god, all these details, that’s amazing).

--

And then... The last shot with at first the focus on Joana’s worried face who then looks at Cris, which make the focus goes on her is WOW.

Having Cris in the foreground and Joana in the blur in the background is beautiful. Cris, in the foreground of her mind (represented by the red), knows she fucked up and we clearly see shame/embarrassment (lowers her head and hides her face), but it’s like there’s still this girl, Joana, even in all this mess, in the back of her mind (represented by the purple and the blur). But here, everything is overwhelming, the fight in front of her and the thought of Joana (the colors guys, red and purple, they assemble each other but not in the good way; but to me, purple is way more welcoming than red). Yeah, poetic cinema. Also, Irene’s acting, it’s another level.

--

Okay, this was super long, but I love doing this. I’m not saying that I perfectly understand or interpret things. That’s MY thoughts of it, and if you don’t agree, feel free to correct me!

Oh, and bold score: 1050. (Plus, I really should write something about Joana’s clothes. I really think there’s a meaning behind all her outfits.)

Anyway, thanks for reading, the third clip is coming!