#max and ivan: fugitives

[imsparky2002]

Class of Villainy - Worst Fears

What could possibly send chills down the spines of these dastardly students? Well it’s time to find out.

Marinette: The fashionista is terrified of losing her fortune and the possibility of being killed by an animal. She always gets a little paranoid whenever she sees something reminding her of a dalmatian.

Adrien: Adrien is afraid of not being in control of a situation. To him, not knowing how to influence someone is the scariest thing of all. His biggest fear is losing his charm and being unable to manipulate others.

Alya: Not much scares this sorceress. Well... except the possibility of being turned into a creature or object with no ability to change back.

Nino: As a conman, Nino’s afraid of the law. He’s also scared of being mistaken for an actual fox, and being hunt down.

Nathaniel: The psychotic King of Wonderland is hard to scare. The only things that can spook him is stuff that is extremely mundane. Khakis or jazzercise videos, things like that.

Marc: The Poison King is deathly afraid of becoming “ugly”, or not being seen as the “fairest of them all”. He is also afraid of getting struck by lightning or being crushed by a boulder. The other thing that scares him is his little brother, Kiran, getting into danger. That’s why he rarely lets him out of his brooch.

Max: He dreads the chance that his machines and inventions will turn against him, even though he treats them with respect and kindness.

Kim: The hunter is terrified of heights, or falling from heights. He also works out everyday in the offchance that he somehow loses his strength. Being weak is a sin in his eyes. The last thing that scares him is somehow being killed by a beast.

Alix: The worst thing to her is fire. She’s had bad experiences with it in the past, just like her mother. Some of her villainous friends prank her by putting a lighter under her tail.

Juleka: The Mistress of Evil recoils at things that are light and happy (well... except for her darling Queen Rose). The only things that truly scare her are Rose being in danger, her mom or brother getting hurt, and being impaled. She may be evil, but she cherishes her loved ones.

Rose: As a murderous video game fugitive, Rose fears being deleted from the game, or losing her status as royalty. She also fears Juleka being hurt.

Ivan: Unlike the other villains, Ivan loves to be scared. That’s why he’s the Boogie Man, to taste the fear of his friends and victims. One of his favorite things is to be frightened by his girlfriend, Mylene, or his roommate, Denise. The one thing that always terrifies him is bunnies. So naturally, he loves to be near them whenever he gets the chance.

Mylene: Despite stealing voices on a daily basis, this sea witch is terrified of losing her own. Mylene has a highly inflated ego about it, thinking it is the greatest voice of all time. She also has a fear of harpoons.

Sabrina: Like Marinette, she fears becoming a lowly commoner. She also is afraid of her crocodiles somehow turning against her.

Chloe: As an aristocrat, the last thing Chloe wants is to lose her status. She becomes scared if she is not the boss of the situation, alot like Adrien.

Kagami: Kagami had a bad experience with fireworks in a past battle. Now she avoids them at all costs. Otherwise, she is fearless, which fits a terrifying warrior such as herself.

Aurore: The only kid in school without fear. Nothing can unnerve this loony weathergirl. Ivan has tried so many times to scare her in the past, only to get a psychotic giggle fit as a response.

Mireille: You’d think that as a young goddess of death, nothing would frighten Mireille. Well there are two things that scare them. The possibility of becoming mortal, and large bodies of water.

Zoe: Due to neglect from her siblings and parents, Zoe needs to have complete control and attention in a situation. If she doesn’t, it scares her.

Jean: The crab-human hybrid is afraid of being seen as boring. But that fear is small potatoes to the chance he is turned into crab cakes!

Cosette: The assistant is scared of falling into obscurity, or being attacked by predator hybrids. You can tell when it’s scared due to their bleats of panic.

Denise: As a gambling witch doctor, the teen is scared of somehow being unable to pay their debts to their friends on the other sides. They take solace in the fact that they know their villainous friends will find a way to bail them out.

Simon: He’s obviously scared of “sinning” in the eyes of God, even though he willingly commits evil acts all the time. They still fear the Lord’s wrath, and the chance they are sent to Hell for his relationship with Denise. He also fears fire, burning from the stake, or falling from high places.

Ismael: The King of the Savannah fears his subjects turning against him, or becoming hunted by those who mistake him for an actual lion.

Reshma: The first mate has had horrible memories of being chased by crocodiles. She fears the creatures and hates the sound of ticking clocks, because they remind her of Tick-Tock the Crocodile.

Lacey: Even though she is fourteen like everyone else, Lacey fears becoming old, which is why she seeks the magical Sundrop Flower.

And that’s everyone! Thank you to @msweebyness for coming up with the fears with me. Also thank you to @artzychic27 in general. As always, please reblog, reply, and ask about the Mirrorverse and the Class of Heroes/Class of Villainy AU. Production on the Marc crossover short is starting soon, so keep on the lookout for that.

[cobalt-knave]

I posted 3,018 times in 2022

That's 1,024 more posts than 2021!

443 posts created (15%)

2,575 posts reblogged (85%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@archivistbot

@generic-internet-name

@ulysses-but-somehow-more-transer

@nureyev-steel-institute

@questbedhead

I tagged 2,543 of my posts in 2022

Only 16% of my posts had no tags

#tma - 413 posts

#ceaseless watcher turn your gaze on this incredible artwork - 393 posts

#the mechanisms - 371 posts

#archivistbot - 145 posts

#abot - 143 posts

#abot ocs - 109 posts

#fic rec - 76 posts

#hello from the hallowoods - 75 posts

#the magnus archives - 73 posts

#taz balance - 72 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i'm a fan of mutche. what other word captures the action of poking your sleeping sibling in the face and also touching paint before it's dry

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Genre and the Transparency of the Fourth Wall

I’ve been thinking about fourth wall breaks in theater and about acknowledgement of medium in podcasts, and I thought I’d type out some of these thoughts.

The fourth wall. That invisible line where the camera becomes screen and the world of the show meets the world of the audience. Everybody loves a good fourth wall break, a reach, an acknowledgment of the other world. Eye contact with the camera, a comment about audience, it’s all very fun. 

Theater, live theater at least, has a very thin fourth wall. The actors onstage can hear the audience’s clapping or laughter, gasps or heckling. They can make eye contact with individual audience members or walk amongst them. They can, in the case of Starkid’s Black Friday, take a bite of an apple and hand it off to someone in an aisle seat. You see a lot of acknowledgement of the fourth wall baked into scripts. Shakespeare’s a great example of this with a very obvious one being “all the world’s a stage”, making a double fourth wall break by bringing up theater and referencing the name of the theater itself (the Globe). Another example is in Moliere’s Tartuffe with the line “Must I play your part and say the lines you ought to say?”. Lines like that are sprinkled everywhere in plays. Both Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train and Starkid’s The Trail To Oregon have a character yell and point at the audience, referring to it as being surrounded by watching eyes. 

And then there’s podcasts. It’s not in-person, there is no physical audience to acknowledge like there is in theater, but there is something very personal about it. One thing I have noticed if how often there has to be a reason for why a podcast is a podcast. An acknowledgement of format. The Magnus Archives is a collection of tapes. The only content we get is what is on the tapes. Wolf 359 starts out as Eiffel's audio log before transitioning into third person like a tv show. Max And Ivan: Fugitives is the two of them recounting what happened and we get to flash forward and see it acted/sound designed like a tv show. King Falls AM and Welcome To Night Vale are radio programs. Unknown 9: Out Of Sight is a podcast in-universe. Something about the audio-only format begs explanation. So why is that?

Well, part of it is that without visual cues, a lot has to be established through explanation and narration, and it feels less awkward to do that if you explain why you’re doing it. Giving an intro to the world and situation direct to audience without it being out of character or heavy handed is also much easier with an in-universe reason. This is why you have shows like Wolf 359 and Woe.Begone start out having in-universe audio format before transitioning to also include a third person seeing-the-action-in-action view. 

But there still is that level of intimacy, especially in in-universe audio podcasts. Why are we listening to Jon’s tapes in The Magnus Archives? “Oh Martin,” Annabelle Cane says, “You have no idea who’s listening, do you?” and the audience sucks in a breath because we are listening. Why can we hear Enoch’s broadcast in Be Not Afraid? Well, if we’re hearing it, that means we are Enoch’s chosen prophets. 

I have no formal conclusion, no grand web revealed. I simply love a good fourth wall break.

433 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

#4

[ID: The first image is a screenshot of TheVoidSings’ lyric video for “The Mechanisms - Death To The Mechanisms - 19 - Terminus (Lyrics)”. Over a purple space background, it says, “[Jonny D’Ville] “AH HAHAHAHA! YES!”.

The second image is the sickos meme with text saying “Everyone dying horribly”. It shows a man grinning through a window saying “YES ... HA HA HA ... YES!” Instead of being labeled “sickos”, the man is labeled “JONNY D’VILLE”.]

506 notes - Posted November 6, 2022

#3

Any pairing can be read as platonic if you’re not a coward.

568 notes - Posted March 15, 2022

#2

sir fitzroy maplecourt, knight in absentia of the realm of goodcastle, would have loved the crab infestation of tumblr’s april fool’s day thing

665 notes - Posted July 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Why You Should Watch Headless

Headless is a free webseries from Shipwrecked set in Sleepy Hollow and following the new middle school science teacher Ichabod Crane. Ichabod’s rent gets raised, and he finds an unlikely roommate in none other than the headless horseman, on the condition he help the horseman find their head. What follows is a great comedy as Ichabod, Headless, local witch Matilda (who runs the not-a-drugstore), the mayor’s daughter Kat, absolute joy and middle school PE teacher Brom Bones, and the Babes (Brom’s three (3) weed smoking boyfriends who can and will do anything. Not well. But they will do anything.).

Every time they find and try out a new head, the owner of the head takes the episode -- a pirate, a local weed guy and history nerd, a youtuber, an infamous James Bond-esque thief, etc.

Now, some Headless things in no particular order:

- All the characters are great. Even character who seem like they should be side characters, like the Babes, get their time in the limelight and are absolute delights.

- THE BABES. Not only are they multi-talented icons, they also start their own show following up on the different heads called “Unsolved Babesteries”.

- Brom Bones. Brom could have been a nothing character, a dick and a rival for Kat’s affections. BUT NOT THIS TIME. Brom is a delight, and I adore him.

- There is a heist episode.

- Verla is a horror that may or may not have crawled out of a TV. She is also functionally Matilda’s adopted teenage daughter.

- M.K. Wiles wears a fake mustache one time.

- There are a lot of interconnected webs which unfold so nicely.

I highly recommend it!

675 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[secondcoolestusername]

A black cat’s bad luck Ch. 7

The sudden weight of the body left him breathless, but he didn’t release his grip. His heart was hammering in his chest.

Max lived on the third floor of the building. He didn’t know how Chat Noir would’ve survived that fall if he wasn’t here in time. 

When he appeared at his window, his face looked white a sheet, seemed barely conscious, and in bad shape, with his side torn open and with blood dripping down his suit. That’s why Max didn’t hesitate to open the window before he dropped to his death. He could always bind him when he was in a better shape and ask him questions before handing him to the authorities. Markov could help. He hoped that it wasn't a trap and that he wouldn’t end up like Ivan.

Chat Noir groaned in his arms.

Max anxiously glanced at his clean bedsheets. Surely, Chat Noir could understand not wanting to wash blood off his sheets, right?

Suddenly, Chat Noir shuddered in his arms before going limp. Then, a beeping sound came from him, and Max only had time to identify the sound of it before a green light washed over the superhero.

It was like watching a car crash. He knew he should look away, or close his eyes to preserve the poor guy’s identity, but somehow, Max couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Something small and black fell, but Max quite didn’t care for that.

His horrified eyes met the face of Adrien Agreste.

“Is that…?” Kim had a shocked face.

“Yes, but you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone,” furiously whispered Max. His parents were downstairs, doing their own business. He couldn’t possibly tell them he was keeping a fugitive/model in his bedroom. There would be too many questions.

Kim sat beside the bed, opening his first aid kit. He looked too big for the chair he was in. If Max wasn’t so worried, he would’ve laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “Kinda hard to say no when you threaten me with that robot.”

Markov made a plaintive sound from his corner.

Max decided not to comment and watched his friend’s delicate work.

After the grand revelation, he had shook himself and proceeded to attach a scarf that he had found at the bottom of his wardrobe around Adrien’s side to create pressure. Then, when Max was seventy-five percent sure that Adrien wouldn’t die of blood loss, he took a large garbage bag, laid it on the bed before hefting him on it. He was very light even in Max’s opinion and Max wasn’t a very strong person. He wondered if his friend ate enough at home even by model’s standards. 

He also gingerly laid the weird black cat-like comatose creature on a pillow near Adrien but out of sight, just in case. 

He hadn’t known what else to do besides that and the only one he knew who was an expert at first aid was Kim, an athlete who constantly got hurt. He had asked him for help and threatened him for his silence, but Max trusted that Kim wouldn’t have talked even if Max didn’t threaten him. Because that’s what best friends do.

“So, how did that happen?” Kim rummaged through his box for some cotton. In this angle, his handsome face was scrunched up in concentration.

Chat Noir got attacked, clearly. And he came to me. Then, he transformed back into Adrien. I didn’t know how to help him. So I called you.

“It was an experiment gone wrong,” Max lied through his teeth. “He didn’t have to volunteer for it,” he added hauntingly, moving the focus elsewhere.

Kim paused in his movements. Max’s anxiety went up a notch. He tried not to be too obvious even though Kim wasn’t facing him.

“Thank God I wasn’t dumb enough to accept your previous requests for me to be your lab rat,” Kim laughed and continued his work. Max slowly breathed out as his laugh washed over him. “I was actually asking about knowing a famous model. How did that happen?”

Max asked himself if talking about the project would put Adrien in a more compromising position. “He was the text I received a few weeks ago.”

“Your new best friend?” Kim pulled Adrien’s shirt in a sharper movement. The change of subject threw Max off. 

There was something in his tone of voice that made Max think twice before answering. He would’ve said “Yes” to piss Kim off, even if it wasn’t true, but Max felt like this time, Kim was waiting for an actual answer. Maybe Adrien’s presence sparked an uncertainty in Kim. Maybe he felt that Max was ditching him to spend time with a cooler boy. The fact that he had spent most of his time working on Adrien’s robot rather than spending time with Kim might have led him to believe that. Well, that dumbass was wrong. There was no need to be jealous.

“Of course not. You know you’re my best friend, Kim.” Max answered. At this moment, he felt very vulnerable.

Kim stopped his actions again. Max couldn’t see his expression, but he hoped that it was what Kim wanted to hear.

“What got into you? Why are you being cheesy like that?” Kim laughed. There was a hidden note of relief, and his resuming movements were less aggressive than a few moments ago.

Max smiled.

A.N.: If you read that far and I peaked your interest, find me on ao3!

[tryerofpods]

Let's talk about Max and Ivan: Fugitives, starring @maxandivan from @storyglasspod . Max and Ivan: Fugitives is a Dark Comedy Tech Thriller. In real life, Max and Ivan are a British comedy duo, but Story Glass' Max and Ivan are two smart, but also kinda dopey, app developers working for a corporation. Their app baby is a game called, Ice Cream Town. Ice Cream Town is an addictive game that's sweeping the app-sphere, and they are constantly updating and working on the platform. Little do they know that looking at their co-worker, Boris' computer will lead to that co-worker's death, uncover a deep malicious conspiracy, and send them on the run across Europe and back again, all to stop an evil plot and uncover who killed Boris! (Also if they don't get this backend data to their boss, she might just kill them herself). Full of funny sub-plots, jokes about developers, tech types, corporate BS, and buddy crime solving tropes, and guest appearances from other wonderful comedians, Max and Ivan: Fugitives will have you laughing and compelled to listen to all 8 20-30 minute episodes. If you like tech/gig economy type comedy like Bubble, comedy thrillers like Hot Fuzz, or tech thrillers like The Net or Hackers, then Max and Ivan: Fugitives is for you!

[cobalt-knave]

Genre and the Transparency of the Fourth Wall

I’ve been thinking about fourth wall breaks in theater and about acknowledgement of medium in podcasts, and I thought I’d type out some of these thoughts.

The fourth wall. That invisible line where the camera becomes screen and the world of the show meets the world of the audience. Everybody loves a good fourth wall break, a reach, an acknowledgment of the other world. Eye contact with the camera, a comment about audience, it’s all very fun. 

Theater, live theater at least, has a very thin fourth wall. The actors onstage can hear the audience’s clapping or laughter, gasps or heckling. They can make eye contact with individual audience members or walk amongst them. They can, in the case of Starkid’s Black Friday, take a bite of an apple and hand it off to someone in an aisle seat. You see a lot of acknowledgement of the fourth wall baked into scripts. Shakespeare’s a great example of this with a very obvious one being “all the world’s a stage”, making a double fourth wall break by bringing up theater and referencing the name of the theater itself (the Globe). Another example is in Moliere’s Tartuffe with the line “Must I play your part and say the lines you ought to say?”. Lines like that are sprinkled everywhere in plays. Both Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train and Starkid’s The Trail To Oregon have a character yell and point at the audience, referring to it as being surrounded by watching eyes. 

And then there’s podcasts. It’s not in-person, there is no physical audience to acknowledge like there is in theater, but there is something very personal about it. One thing I have noticed if how often there has to be a reason for why a podcast is a podcast. An acknowledgement of format. The Magnus Archives is a collection of tapes. The only content we get is what is on the tapes. Wolf 359 starts out as Eiffel's audio log before transitioning into third person like a tv show. Max And Ivan: Fugitives is the two of them recounting what happened and we get to flash forward and see it acted/sound designed like a tv show. King Falls AM and Welcome To Night Vale are radio programs. Unknown 9: Out Of Sight is a podcast in-universe. Something about the audio-only format begs explanation. So why is that?

Well, part of it is that without visual cues, a lot has to be established through explanation and narration, and it feels less awkward to do that if you explain why you’re doing it. Giving an intro to the world and situation direct to audience without it being out of character or heavy handed is also much easier with an in-universe reason. This is why you have shows like Wolf 359 and Woe.Begone start out having in-universe audio format before transitioning to also include a third person seeing-the-action-in-action view. 

But there still is that level of intimacy, especially in in-universe audio podcasts. Why are we listening to Jon’s tapes in The Magnus Archives? “Oh Martin,” Annabelle Cane says, “You have no idea who’s listening, do you?” and the audience sucks in a breath because we are listening. Why can we hear Enoch’s broadcast in Be Not Afraid? Well, if we’re hearing it, that means we are Enoch’s chosen prophets. 

I have no formal conclusion, no grand web revealed. I simply love a good fourth wall break.

[cobalt-knave]

Good Comedy

I think one of my favorite comedy tropes is something I call Chekhov's Nonsense. It’s where if a random fact or skill is brought up at least once but usually at least twice, it must be used at some point in the story. 

A great example of this is in Max And Ivan: Fugitives. Ivan’s duolingo language is Esperanto. “It’s a universal language!” he yells, unable to communicate with anyone they meet as they are on the run throughout Europe. This comes up a few times with one or two lines. He tries to speak to someone in English, tries Esperanto, fails, move on. Until they are at a ski resort and talking to a French woman. She does not know English, he does not know French. They speak in Esperanto. He is not actually good at Esperanto, but manages to catch that she’s talking about his shoe being on wrong before it plummets to the mountain below (this also comes back later in the next episode).

That made it sound boring. It wasn’t!

But the core of what makes this trope good is seeding. Following through on established ideas and having good continuity is important in all genres, but it tends to be disregarded in comedy more than anywhere else. 

Two counter examples both from How I Met Your Mother:

1. The bad example: Throughout the show, they will dedicate anywhere from a scene to a full episode to some made-up aspect of the main cast, acting like it was well-established. An example being that Lily drinks too much water and needs to go to the bathroom all the time, something that only exists for the single episode that they want to make a joke out of. And it does not hit. It’s almost funny. There are jokes, but it rings strangely for the characterization and has no meaning.

2. The good example: Throughout the show, they also run long-term jokes. “500 Miles” as the only acceptable road song is consistent and weird and funny. But the best example of this is the slap bet. That could have been played off entirely in one episode -- and the original episode was only moderately funny! -- but they made it last seasons. Five slaps. And each slap bet episode was better than the last with my favorite episode in the show being one of them. And what it does is a) work with pre-established stuff and have good continuity, b) use the show’s strength and play off its own unique humor rather than using cookie cutter jokes, c) make it about the characters rather than using characters to be vessels for jokes. 

“Esperanto is a universal language!” is a joke. 

Finally encountering a French woman at the top of a ski lift and speaking in Esperanto to her is comedy. 

[cobalt-knave]

Ok yeah Max And Ivan: Fugitives was fantastic. A buddy comedy crime thriller(?) brought to audio. What a RIDE. I’ll be needing a season 2. YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT. WE NEED TO GET ICE CREAM TOWN OFFLINE.