#not the characters and details from the source material obviously

[tippenfunkaport]

FYI, I have also locked all my fanfics down to registered users only because of the AI scraping on AO3. I'm one of many fan creators doing this right now and I know it stinks for users without an AO3 account, but it's the only option writers have available to us at the moment to stop our work from being scraped and stolen.

If this makes you mad, the Federal Register is currently open to comments on AI accountability until June 12th, 2023.

It only takes a second to leave a comment to ask for legislation that works used in AI creations or training MUST secure the express consent of the original creator before they can be used. If we can get protections for artists, writers, musicians and everyone who creates that their work cannot be used in AI without their permission, we can go back to making fanworks freely available without fear of them being misused. Until then, we're stuck playing defense until the courts catch up.

(If you're a fan creator looking to do this as well, AO3 has a tool to let you do all your fics at the same time in seconds. On your dashboard, go to Edit Works and you'll be able to change the status on everything at once.)

If you missed the context, AO3 recently found that the archive was scraped for use in AI services like ChatGPT and Sudowrite. While they put in protections in December 2022 to try to stop it from happening in the future, it's not foolproof and there is nothing they can do about works already swiped prior to that date. The archive is recommending fan creators restrict their works to registered users only to prevent against additional large scale scraping in the future.

[blondephenobarbitol]

If there's one thing TGWDLM fans are gonna do, it's think about the implications. And the implications of the opening number are crazy.

So. We know that the show isn't completely chronological since the opening number takes place before the meteor hits. So that song is a sort of "flash forward" moment. But when you think about it, we don't really know how far in the future it takes place.

What we do know is that by the time it's happening, Emma is infected. She has a little solo in it singing about how Paul is pining over a barista

And we know that this is meant to be an infected Emma specifically. Lauren had other characters in the show, if they wanted to avoid the Emma implication they would've just dressed her as one of those.

So we know this is meant to be Emma.

And Emma isn't infected until the very end of the show. She's dragged off stage during the credits. So since she's infected in the opening number, we know the number takes place after the events of the show.

Another important detail is that Paul is infected before Emma. He's the one that passes it on to her.

So back to the opening number, Emma is infected. Which means by just following a simple timeline, Paul must also be infected. He should be singing and dancing, right?

But that's not what happens. Paul misses his entrance.

If Paul is infected, then there's no reason he should be missing his entrance. Furthermore, if he's a part of a hive mind, there's no reason other members of the same hive mind shouldn't know where he is. They are literally all connected by one brain, and yet both Mr. Davidson and Bill express they have no clue where he went.

What I'm saying is that Paul is not infected. He was infected (again, we know that because Emma is infected and he was infected before her) but now he's not anymore.

I'm saying there's a way out of the hive, and Paul found it. That's the only explanation that makes sense given the facts of the situation. Sometime after the events of tgwdlm, Paul is able not only to break out the hive mind, but to hide from it.

And if he broke out, others could do the same. Maybe even Emma.

Edit because a countertheory has emerged: Yes it's possible that everyone is infected the entire time and the show itself is just Pokey replaying the events for the fun of it. But it seems unlikely to me. First of all, each of the Lords in Black has a distinct personality. They all are evil, but within that they seems to fall somewhere on a spectrum of "silly billy" to "prick." For example, Tinky is more of a silly billy. He toys with humans without much of a motive and more for just shits and giggles. But in every instance, Pokey's more on the extreme side of prick.

He's one of the few with an actual motive behind what he does. In Yellowjacket, it's confirmed that Pokotho hates the sound of anyone's voice except for his own. The events of TGWDLM don't happen because Pokey is bored, they happen because he is executing a plan. So I don't think that he would just have them play out their little scenario just to entertain him, especially just one small island? I just feel like he'd be more focused on world domination.

If the theory is that all this is happening after Pokey's already taken over the whole world, no one was successful in stopping him, then yes it's plausible, but still weird. There are a strange amount of things in that show you just think an eldritch god wouldn't include.

Edit 2: New evidence has emerged???

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is loosely based off of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Paul's last name is even a nod to the main character, Matthew. At the end of the film, Matthew survives, and continues living among the infected, pretending to be one of them. And wouldn't that be just such a fun little parallel...

Obviously it doesn't prove anything but the source material doesn't lie folks.

[kidspawn]

And Now, A Comprehensive Essay I Never Thought I'd Write:

I've seen people upset with Gabe's character in the show thus far. Saying he's too toned down, too "pathetic white trash" as opposed to abusive jerkass. I do understand why people are mad, but a few words in defense of this portrayal - and why it still works.

One: "He's too nice/soft/passive"

Um... absolutely not? This dude had me cringing and tensing up as soon as we meet him. Percy tenses and goes on the defensive, starts shooting comebacks. Gabe, seeing a tense and emotionally drained child, immediately comes at him, berating him for misbehaving.

He snaps at Sally, basically loses his shit at the idea of her leaving the apartment. She has to negotiate with him to leave her own apartment? To use the car? I don't care if she's "standing her ground" more. (Which, she isn't, but that's a whole other topic.) He's still being a douche.

There are aspects of Gabe's book characterization that are lost in media translation. For instance, Percy giving him money. "Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our 'guy secret.' Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out" (The Lightning Thief, pg. 31) This is Percy's internal monologue. When Percy enters their apartment in the book, Gabe is just a dick. Yes, he's not pestering Percy for money but he's doing everything else. I wouldn't be surprised if this information about Gabe comes to light the further into the story we go. Rick Riordan isn't trying to erase the abuse, but drawing attention to the intricacies and subtleties of abuse.

Two: "Sally is too assertive/fights back/etc"

Please, kindly, screw off with that "perfect victim" line of thinking. Just because Percy and Sally aren't crying, sobbing, etc, doesn't mean they're not being abused? First of all, that would be out of character. No doubt about that.

The only thing different between the scene in the book versus the show is how Sally manipulates/negotiates with Gabe. She has a different tone here, sure, but let's face it - Sally doesn't particularly like Gabe. He is a means to an end. She doesn't care too much about hurting his feelings here. She's placating. She's leveraging what little she has to get something from him. In the books, it was bean dip. In the show, its sandwiches and watching a game together. Sally doesn't care for Gabe, but Gabe obviously has interest in Sally, or spending time with her. She's leveraging her time and her resources to get her kid to Camp Half-Blood. She knows what's going to work because she's been dealing with this for so long.

And don't pretend like Gabe using the word "please" is changing the horrid tone he uses with Sally. Neither Percy or Sally flinch when he yells. This isn't a rare occurrence. Gabe probably yells all the time. But it's been happening long enough they're both desensitized to it.

These aspects aren't that different from the book.

Yes, the abuse is subtle, a few tweaks to appease an admittedly young target audience. But it is there. It's solely disappointing to me that subtext has seemingly been lost.

Three: "He's just average white trash."

Is that not... the point? He's... just a basic mortal? He's so abysmally human, so utterly mundane that he masks Percy's smell. He's crummy, and slimy, and awful. He doesn't strive for more, he doesn't aspire for more. He's a bully. He's awful to Percy, he yells at Sally. The only thing different about him in the show so far is he hasn't hit Sally yet.

(Yet. By the way. There's only two episodes out. We find out he's hitting Sally at the end of the source material. He never hits Percy onscreen, it's stated in internal monologue.)

Details will be lost in translation, of course, but please I cannot stress enough how little of the show we've seen. We don't know how they're going to explore Percy's characterization and reaction to abuse. There will be flashbacks, opportunities to flesh out the relationships and characters. Just because Rick changed aspects to keep people from being triggered doesn't mean he's going to let audiences go on believing this kind of behavior is ok. (At least, I hope he doesn't.)

Gabe Ugliano is still a piece of garbage. He is a horrendous human being. It's baffling to me that no one's believing that based on what we've seen of him. Not once did I think he was "toned down." I had a hard time rewatching that scene. The verbal belittlement, the subtle manipulation and control he's asserting into their lives. He's awful to Percy, he's awful to Sally.

Also, I reiterate: there are only two episodes out. Give the story time to breathe. Give the team time to deal with this storyline and flesh out this aspect of Sally and Percy's relationship.

[firestorm09890]

On Wuthering Heights and Canto VI (part 1)

if I don’t ramble I’ll die (spoilers, obviously)

so far this is probably the closest canto to its source material. we've got so many of the same things- Hindley being an asshole and treating Heathcliff poorly when running the Heights, Heathcliff only running away after hearing what Catherine said, Catherine getting married to Edgar (Linton, I guess? now that's interesting) and then dying, Hindley drinking his life away, even details down to Hindley asking his father for a violin on his trip where he picked up Heathcliff are the same.

The scene with Cathy talking about the feathers in the pillow was especially interesting to see, because that was such a small thing with a different context in the book and it's here in a different form.

What changed the most is that on his trip away from Wuthering Heights, instead of doing whatever the fuck he did in the book, Heathcliff ended up getting friends, AND got to see Ishmael go and destroy herself in the name of revenge firsthand, so he now has the character development to not perpetuate the cycle of abuse. I like that kind of canon divergence. we'll see if he gets worse from here, though!

I really appreciate them leaning into the gothic horror potential of a ghost in a house (though, of course, given how project moon stories go, it probably isn't just a ghost in a house, but like, that's what it gives the image of right now)

so, Linton. Linton Edgar, from the Edgar family. That's.... weird. Especially since Wuthering Heights already has a character with the given name Linton, and especially since Linton Edgar (LCB) and Linton Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) are both very sickly (and, ngl, Linton Edgar is just as whiny as Linton Heathcliff....). But Linton Edgar seems to be filling the role of Edgar Linton. Linton Edgar also has an older brother who "left" and that's how he ended up with most of the family fortune, and neither Linton Heathcliff nor Edgar Linton had an older brother. it's definitely a standout when compared to all the stuff from above that's one-to-one with the source material. since they're already setting up some weird mirror world shit, I'm inclined to believe this is also related to that, but what the hell are they cooking

Nelly seems way too cool and cute, which makes me think she'll either betray us spectacularly, or die horribly.

Josephine, on the other hand, is hilarious and I hope she survives no matter what. I wasn't expecting Joseph at all and they went and genderbent him (gotta meet that old hag quota). Her personality is mostly the same, though the dedication to god seems to have been replaced by a dedication to the establishment, which makes sense in this setting.

thrilled to see how things get more fucked up

[webcomic-character-tournament]

are you tired of how many character tournaments just become a popularity contest?

how regardless of seeding, even high contenders can almost arbitrarily be knocked out early on, leaving you with nothing to root for?

if you're feeling that, and if you like any webcomics, you should participate in the webcomic character tournament!

the primary goals of this tournament are:

to celebrate the medium of webcomics as a whole

to find new webcomics to read, and to recommend your own favorites

to highlight indie creators and help them build a wider audience

to have fun rooting for and celebrating your favorite characters!

in order to accomplish these goals, instead of a single elimination bracket, i will be using a mcmahon system inspired tournament structure!

this means that no character will be eliminated, and you can participate in polls rooting for your favorite character throughout all the rounds. characters will also be roughly matched up based on a system that determines how well known their work is, so most rounds should be relatively evenly matched, allowing people to fight for their favorites on their own merits

more details about how the mcmahon tournament will work can be found under the cut!

submit as many characters as you would like to here! the deadline is tentatively next saturday, june 3rd, at 4pm EDT

tagging some other tournaments i like whose participants i think might be interested :) @wlw-webcomic-bracket @obscurewebcomictournament @gaywebcomicsshowdown @autisticgirliesbracket @yuribracket @secretthirdthingtournament @nonyanderepoll @funkylittlebaldcharapoll @divorced-tournament

no submission is specifically banned, but try to keep in mind the spirit of this tournament when deciding what to submit.

under the cut after my more detailed description of the tournament structure, i also ramble in a lot more detail about my philosophy regarding submission eligibility, but it's not necessary to read all that before submitting characters

mcmahon tournament details:

matchups will be decided based off of a survey sent out after submissions are over gauging participants' familiarity with all of the competing characters' source materials. each character will be assigned points based off of how known their source material is, and each character will go up against a character with a similar popularity score for the first round

characters will be awarded points based off of if they lose, win, or tie their match and have that added to their total score, and then they will again be paired against a character with a similar updated score

depending on how many characters are participating, this process can continue either until there is a definitive ranking of all characters, or until just a few top winners are clear

i haven't entirely decided on specifics such as whether points will be awarded by a simple 0 for a loss, 0.5 for a tie, 1 for a win or by percentage of the vote, and if initial popularity points will be counted in the final ranking, or if i will try to rank winners from within their initial popularity categories, but i hope that won't matter too much, because in my opinion the main fun of this isn't the final results, it's for people to have fun in the individual rounds seeing their favorite character's points go up!

submission guidelines:

if you are submitting characters from extremely popular webcomics, try to limit yourself to just characters that are among your top favorites of all time, and maybe try to submit stuff from lesser known works as well

similar goes for webcomics that are more widely known for adaptations into other media forms (one punch man, tower of god, heartstopper, etc.)

i'm not specifically banning any comic for having bigoted content or its creator being a bad person, there's a wide scale of stuff i could decide to include in that definition or not. in the goal of celebrating favorite characters, obviously a lot of people love characters despite flaws in the work they're from, but also keep in mind the goals of recommending works to other people, and helping uplift and promote creators you like, and try to find a reasonable balance from there

what counts as a webcomic:

physically published works that you can find pirated or scanlated online probably don't count

comics whose publication is centered around physical releases, who also have simultaneous online releases by their publishers (comics on manga plus or comixology, newspaper strips with online sites, etc.) probably don't count

comics published through traditional publishers that are exclusively online (such as shōnen jump+ comics) still probably don't count

comics published online through companies that exclusively publish online (such as lezhin) are still discouraged

stuff like line webtoon or tapas official comics are more acceptable, as there are a lot of free comics from independent creators around them and many of these comics started out that way themselves, so they exist within a culture of webcomics more so than the aforementioned comic categories

stuff that is paywalled beyond just having an early release system is discouraged

comics that are no longer online but accessible through archives are fine though, especially in the wake of sites like smackjeeves being deleted there's a lot of stuff in webcomic history that can only be found that way now!

webtoon style comics absolutely count as webcomics, they're an exciting way of fully making use of webcomics' digital format! simultaneously however, i feel like with the rise of mobile webtoon apps, there are many people who read webtoon style comics but who dont further engage with webcomics, so i'd definitely encourage submitting a variety of styles of webcomic!

none of these rules are set! feel free to submit whatever you want, i just list them so you can try to find a balance between the different goals of this tournament when submitting stuff.

anyone can submit as many characters as you want, but just maybe if you find that a lot of your submission ideas are from comics in some of the more discouraged categories, limit yourself in how many you submit from those categories and only submit characters if they're absolute favorites of yours you want the opportunity to celebrate, and maybe try to also submit a character from something that isn't in a discouraged category too!

theres no penalty for not going with this, but i think because choosing characters by number of nominees doesn't really align with my intentions for this, depending on how easy it is to sort submissions i might just go off of vibes, so you might just be less likely to have a character make it to the tournament if their comic is in more heavily discouraged categories is all

[youryurigoddess]

Case study and analysis of the 1992 Good Omens movie screenplay (“the shitscript”) in light of the ongoing WGA strike

As one could suspect, the topic of the 1992 Good Omens movie screenplay and its infamy has recently emerged from the depths of the fandom. In light of the ongoing WGA strike it’d be good to properly address this issue, starting with Neil Gaiman’s own recollection written in 2004:

It’s basically the same old story — of brilliant creative workers struggling under the pressure of detached studio executives and being legally forced to mutilate their work again and again for no artistic or economic reason — we’ve heard before in many different contexts.

If you’re reading this and somehow still wondering why writers are fighting for their rights at the moment, their job security hasn’t changed much since then. Please follow the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, and other unions’ official channels for detailed information and ways to help the cause.

Anyway, it took over a decade and an enormous effort to print the screenplay in a limited edition of 552 copies. It can’t be distributed otherwise due to IP law, but some fans shared its fragments online and heavily criticized them, dubbing the 1992 source material #shitscript

There’s been obviously a lot of controversies over the changes in the plot and the relationship between the main characters. And rightfully so — the number of iterations has created something very different from the beloved book and the award-winning show we can all enjoy today.

It’s… objectively not good. Wouldn’t be considered a hit back then and certainly not by today’s standards. I don’t think I would watch it in any other way than through channel surfing. However, it’s not a monstrosity some people believe it to be and not a case of low effort.

Let’s start with the world building: the setting wasn’t changed to the US. It’s still very much based in the UK, mostly London and Tadfield, although the latter lies now by the sea and seems much more ominous. Interestingly, the British Museum becomes a prominent location as well.

The main character and the designated hero is not surprisingly Crowley, this time in his 90s anti-hero glory. If you haven’t watched many movies of this era, esp. dark fantasy, this trope involves middle-age disenchantment, cynicism, as well as hefty doses of sarcasm and brooding.

90s anti-heroes are a dark, grim, and unnecessarily violent embodiment of power fantasy, matching the destructive ideology of that time. Combined with uber-masculinity and performative strength over weaker characters, nowadays they naturally evoke more cringe or worry than awe.

1992 iteration of Crowley is basically in his Furfur era. Deeply unhappy and stuck in a dead end job, all he talks about is how he hates Earth and his assignment here, considering a transfer to Alpha Centauri as his one and only possibility of career advancement. Or life, really.

The talking part is important here, because he clearly compensates by insulting everything and everyone. He hates on the whole planet at length only to confess that he’d rather stay here with Aziraphale due to “no good restaurants”, “no decent bottle of wine” in Alpha Centauri.

Yes, he’s verbally abusive in his automatic response to stress. But doesn’t hate Aziraphale. In one particular scene he calls Azi stupid twice only to assure him that they are friends and to offer to solve the problem when he sees that his words were taken seriously and hurt him.

Crowley refers to him as “my angel” and “my dear Aziraphale”, agrees to Aziraphale’s suggestion of sharing a room, praises the angel as a “miracle worker around the home”, drinks the tea he makes for him, and generally proves to be much softer towards him than he wants to admit.

Aziraphale, on the contrary, wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s the one engineering ways to spend more time together, following Crowley around, checking up on him (including miracling himself into his apartment and office when no one answers the door), offering help right away.

He’s successfully calming Crowley down through his anxiety attacks, overcomes his dislike of heights (!) for Crowley, directly challenges him and even breaks rules only to make Crowley stay with him. Crowley seems to be his main motivation in this movie, not the saving the world.

1992 Aziraphale also has the most badass scene in the whole Good Omens multiverse to date, taking a 180 degree turn from the typical guardian angel we all know and love to the real angel of wrath protecting Crowley from harm in his true form.

But there’s no Their Side in this universe. The only semblance of that concept appears in the context of Anathema not representing either of their respective bosses, but humanity. “That’s the trouble with the humans. They’re on their own side.”

This Crowley appears not as much on Hell’s side as under Satan’s heel. He’s scared of him and subservient, and needs Aziraphale to prevent his escape as a pretext to do what is right. He lets the angel stop him by pretending that he doesn’t even see him cheating during their duel.

By finally standing up to his toxic boss (Satan is like Gabriel during the body-swapped trial, suave and cruel) and leaving Hell’s side to do good, Crowley takes an emancipated and employee-focused stance instead of fighting for his relationship with Aziraphale like shown in S1.

Which is a shame, but matches the overall tone of the screenplay and the times it was written in. The concept of free will, while simplified in a true Hollywood-style to issues like mind control and fear, is still crucial to this interpretation of the Good Omens original plot.

Especially the character of Anathema is seen fighting both of these things. There’s no Agnes Nutter with her prophecies here, only a 21-year-old witch and her will to thwart the ultimate evil versus her fear of doing it at a cost of one boy’s life, versus Satan’s brainwashing.

Madame Tracy appears slightly redesigned as a new character as well, but isn’t 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 for the most part. She’s been enjoying her youth way too much to see how fast it was fleeting, and this sudden realization left her in shock from which she denies to come back.

Unfortunately she’s also the one who took in baby Adam and now stays under his care. The level of his parentification is unnerving, much like his bullying and loneliness. He struggles to be loved and ask for love, which becomes his main quest beyond, y’know, the apocalypse thing.

Don’t worry, despite everything all ends well just like in the book. The family of two gets a chance to start again on much healthier terms and Anathema to live for herself for the first time in years. Our heroes get back in their car, Crowley tempting Aziraphale with an apple.

All in all, this whole post is a very long reminder for Amazon Prime to #PayYourWriters, #PayYourActors, and #RenewGoodOmens! The strike is still ongoing and crucial for any new content for this and many other fandoms #GiveMeS3orGiveMeDeath

[mylasteverlution]

Please go into detail about the feld computers

Okay so! We get quite a bit of information about the Feld Playback Experiment, a lot more than I realized before writing this post. The interface of the game (menus, dialogue engine) is actually designed to look like its on a Feld computer. Plenty of other people have talked about that, so I'm not going to go into it here, but I will drop this archived post from the developer's blog for those who are interested.

One thing I do want to highlight from that post:

This computer uses long strips of film for feedback (projection), memory (storing on magnetic tape) and interfacing (submit commands in handwriting) purposes

The strips of film for feedback and the magnetic tape storage are what I was expecting. But using handwritten commands for input was not on my radar! This would be what's called offline handwriting recognition, where text is converted by the computer after it's written (as opposed to online, where you use something like a stylus on a screen and the computer interprets it as you're writing). This is comparatively pretty difficult to achieve, and very error-prone, as everyone's handwriting looks slightly different. Most modern versions of this use machine learning techniques, but I'm assuming these computers used very basic character extraction and recognition engines.

Trant is the only in-game source we get for the Feld computers. And after doing some digging I found him saying something similar:

"As I was saying, the device itself was very elegant, fragile even. One could write directly on the tape using a special chemical solution. The machine would then analyze the handwriting, perform operations and project output onto a white screen. It was a beautiful, delicate thing."

I initially interpreted him saying they "perform operations and project output" to mean that they can process internally, unlike radiocomputers. But this post from the developers is making me think otherwise (thanks @sollandan for sharing this on my other post!):

"These machines have on-air processing. Large prime number stations criss-cross the air. Advanced tape computers use arrays of antennas to sieve through their calculations to perform advanced calculus on site: to run programmes and communicate between the remote corners of the world."

The advanced tape computers being referred to here have to be the Feld computers. I'm still not sure how this kind of processing would work. As far as computing goes, prime numbers are used primarily in cryptography. Maybe their version of 'processing' somehow involves decrypting? People have theorized that the world in Disco Elysium is made of information. If all the information already exists, maybe it's just a matter of decoding it? I'm honestly just spitballing here, but I'd love to hear other people's theories.

Regardless of how they work, it seems pretty clear to me that the Feld computers are meant to parallel the rise of digital personal computers in our world. Like how Trant described them here:

"An elegant folding mechanism of rollers and ferrotape ribbons, portable enough to be a take-it-home solution, revolutionizing business machines, possibly even bringing them to the average consumer."

This reads almost exactly like promotional material for early home computers made by IBM, Apple and such. (Side note: 'ferrotape' here refers to ferric-oxide coated tape, used for magnetic tape storage and popularized for use in computers by IBM in the 50s.)

But in Disco Elysium, this revolution never took place. Computers never made it to the average consumer, as is clearly demonstrated by even the RCM having only limited access to radiocomputers. The only characters I know of with access to computers are Soona (obviously) and Trant (plus his kid), who seems to be much wealthier than the average citizen of Revachol. The thematic significance of this form of communication never becoming available to the masses is not lost on me.

That said, I think ending this on one of the most interesting hints we get on what happened to the Feld Playback Experiment is appropriate:

YOU - "Why did the revolutionaries destroy it?" TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Who knows? Maybe it was an accident, or maybe they didn't want the technology to end up in the wrong hands. Either way -- they're all gone now, all three versions of the prototype. Nothing but debris and ashes remains inside that building." He takes a step back; the boardwalk creaks mournfully in the wind. SHIVERS - Two seagulls circle in the sky. You look up and think: really? Or was there a fourth prototype that remains hidden in the mausoleums below Coal City?

[writingquestionsanswered]

I have fandom original characters I want to convert to their own story but I’m not sure how, their like interactions, conflict, plot is all planned out but I don’t know how to figure out world building (it’s a urban fantasy) without A- being to close to the source material or B- being over complicated / not making sense for the plot

5 Ways to Create an Original World for Fanfic OCs

There are many different ways to approach this, so we'll walk through some of the key steps in figuring out what will work best for your story.

1 - Look at the Story Needs - Perhaps the best place to start is to look at the needs of the story in terms of genre elements, plot points, and characters. For an urban fantasy, we know we're looking at our world or a similar one, and a city, suburb, or town as the primary setting. We also know magic and the supernatural will play a role in this world, along with mythical creatures and a protagonist with a foot in both worlds. So, next we look at your plot and the major plot points/events to see what elements are needed. For example, if your antagonist is going to be a supernatural council, you know you have to flesh that out, including how and where they operate. Or, let's say the climax takes place in a big factory where some of the main characters were exploited as workers. We know that industry will play a role in this setting, so that and the specific factory are things you'll want to flesh out. Finally, look at character needs. Let's say it's important that one character lives on a houseboat... so we know the setting needs to be on a body of water. Or, let's say one of the main characters is a college professor and some of their most important scenes take place at the college--we know you need to flesh out the college setting.

2 - Find a Reasonable but Altered Approximation of the Canon World - If the canon world is space and the main setting is a spaceship, try putting it in the ocean on a marine vessel or ocean colony. The ocean and space have a lot in common in terms of being vast, dangerous, and relatively unexplored. Marine vessels and ocean colonies have a lot in common with spaceships in that their closed, self-sufficient environments filled with a lot of people in a relatively small space. So, that would be a reasonable but altered approximation of the canon world. For your urban fantasy, if the canon story takes place in a big modern city, try setting your story in a similar city but 150 years in the past or future. Try moving it to a city in another climate/region or country. Or, move it from a modern city to a modern small town. These alternatives have much in common with the canon setting but plenty of opportunities to make it something new and different.

3 - Do a Canon Mash-Up for World Ideas - Let's say your fan-fiction is based on The Mortal Instruments series, but let's also say you've been binge-watching Game of Thrones lately and are really enjoying it. Is there some way you could merge the two? Take a world similar to GoT (let's say King's Landing or The Citadel specifically) and have your urban fantasy take place there? What if it's a contemporary version of one of those places? Or, what if you take the Seven Kingdoms/Great Houses concept and move it into a modern city setting? There are lots of possibilities here for finding a new world for your fan-fiction-based story that still keeps some of the necessary world building details, just in new and interesting ways.

4 - Turn the Canon Situation On Its Ear - Let's say you wanted to take your Star Trek OCs and write them into their own original story, but obviously you can't use the world of Star Trek as your setting. Well, what if you took Star Trek and put those people into our current world or a whole different setting. What would their lives look like? How would that affect your OC characters? Or, for your urban fantasy, again using The Mortal Instruments as a canon example. What would happen if TMI took place on a generation ship? What would the roles of the characters be and how would the plot play out? How would that affect your original characters?

5 - Do a Zero Draft Exploration - Last but not least, just start writing. Don't worry about building the world ahead of time. Start with a really basic idea for how to take your character out of the canon world/setting and see where it takes you. Even if you feel like you're writing chapter after chapter without anything special about your world, or with a world that's closer to canon than you'd like, just keep with it. Write to the end. Because you could literally be in the climax or denouement when your brain goes off in this unexpected direction, and suddenly the whole new world of your story falls into place. Even if it doesn't work it's not for nothing, because it helps you become more intimately aware of the needs of your characters and story, which will help as you go back to step one and rethink things.

Happy writing!

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[legend-of-binkus]

5 LoZ Details You Might Have Missed in the LU

You know… I’ve seen a couple posts about Zelda lore recently and it got me thinking… it’s fun to write head canons and explore theories and stuff (I definitely indulge in the theory side of the fandom quite a bit) but I also really want to show my appreciation for canon and how well Jojo incorporates it into the LU.

Jojo really understands the source material. There’s obviously more references than just these five, but these are a few that I think are really cool. Also... I've been wanting to make something like this for awhile… just been lazy.

—

1. Time uses a mix of OoT's spin attack and TP's jump strike to protect Twi.

When wolfie goes down, Time is pissed. He demolishes a horde of monsters like it's nothing by combining two iconic zelda moves. The jump strike in particular is cool because it's one of the Hero Shade's Hidden Skills— moves he describes as "forgotten ways that do not leave our bloodline."

Love little details like this. Twi doesn't use magic, so it seems the shade actually adapted his techniques when teaching them to fit Twi's fighting style better and I kinda love that.

2. Sky's mannerisms

From friendly jabs at others hair, to talking with his hands, to how he holds adorable creatures that want to maul his face off, Jojo nailed Sky's character.

Sky's handling of tiny creatures in particular is quite funny to me, because we went from Twilight-Princess-Snow-White-Link-Animal-Whisperer-Extraordinaire to Skyward Sword Link holding the little gremlins as far away from himself as possible.

3. Time's pose mirrors his statue from the Wind Waker

Within Hyrule Castle in the Wind Waker there's a large stone statue that is meant to be a monument to the Hero of Time. Wind grew up hearing the legends of the hero and it's part of the reason he's so in awe of Time.

Seeing him mirror the pose, it's no wonder why immediately after he began questioning Time about his original adventure.

4. Hyrule's magic

Taking a 35 year old game and trying to transfer details over isn't exactly easy, but the way Jojo worked around some of this is pretty cool. For Hyrule's magic Jojo modeled it after the Champion's abilities from BotW (which Nintendo modeled after the spells in zelda 2, so full circle!).

Healing magic in past games was usually pink, but Mipha's magic emanated blue from her hands and so Hyrule's magic followed suit. Urbosa summons lighting with a snap of the fingers, and so does Hyrule. I imagine the jump spell is meant to be Revali's Gale (which Jojo did great job of transferring an 8-bit model over for), and if Hyrule ever performs his shield/reflect spell, I'd bet you anything he'd achieve it by either clenching his fists and holding them out or pounding his fists together like Daruk.

5. Two Master Swords?!

Interesting how Legend hasn't said anything about this... because he has to know, right? (gonna be delving a tiny bit into theory territory here)

Unless you've played his games, you probably wouldn't be able to tell that the sword on his back is the Master Sword. But it's an... upgraded(?) version of it. Well I suppose within LU context it's more like a patch job. ALttP was the debut of the Master Sword but it's iconic design didn't come around and stick until OoT.

The small hints that Jojo has given us that the Master Sword wasn't in "perfect condition" for Legend is super interesting! Looking at the way Legend found the sword compared to Twi, it appears like much of the blade had to be redone. The cross-guard is missing its little spike, and the grip has already been covered by what appears to be cloth or leather. The rain-guard (the part that connects the blade to the hilt) seems to also be missing a piece.

Legends sword is now called the Tempered Sword, but there's still hints as to what it was. The cross-guard had to be replaced but it's kept its blue hilt. The pommel is the same and of course the sword still bears the mark of the Triforce.

It also freaking glows when in the presence of the fully powered Master Sword!

Now why is this? My theory is because the previous hero died. The whole reason Legend and Hyrule exist is because there's a universe where Time fails to beat Ganon and dies.

I want to really delve into this deeper in a future theory so... shameless self promo. Stick around, check out my other LU theories in the meantime!

And of course let me know your thoughts and favorite zelda references! I'd love to hear them! <3

EDIT: Here's that Legend's sword theory!

The Master Sword of the Downfall Timeline

[intogenshin]

destruction as a means for healing

there's very interesting parallels between watatsumi island and scaramouche.

there's so much i need to explain regarding lore and buddhism to understand how I'm almost giving up, but i really like the idea overall, so we persevere.

buddhism is divided into three branches. mahayana is the one that spread to japan and syncretized with shinto

inazuma's narratives take inspiration from japanese mahayana buddhism (obviously), especially for characters like ei and to a lesser degree kazuha

watatsumi was inspired on ryukyu kingdom (i wanna complain about this in detail but not today) who had their own religion, most closely related to shinto. they did receive foreign influence, but the pattern im tracing is only in terms of the themes, not implying buddhism is directly tied to its culture

the goal of buddhism is basically to meditate ur way out of the cycle of reincarnation. the world is illusory and ur trapped in it because u cling to ur suffering (im simplifying it), so ur supposed to follow the doctrines and practices in order to integrate them to ur life in a way that it becomes natural.

things like ei quelling her desires or being against visions or becoming disossiated from her sense of self are all nods to these buddhist principles. so is kazuha choosing to let go of his pain and burdens (material and emotional attachments) in order to live with inner peace.

on the other hand, we have watatsumi and scaramouche who do anything but. their lives are defined by the sins of their pasts and the resentment they carry with them.

watatsumi descend from enkanomiya, and i need to point out this pattern:

they were abandoned by a god (the primordial one)

then they were granted divine knowledge (from istaroth)

they used this knowledge to create technology (aberaku built the artificial sun, helios)

they turned this technology into a divine object of worship (the political class convinced their people helios was a real god and began the corrupt ruling of the sun children)

they suffered until another god helped them out of compassion (orobashi agreed to be their god and took them to the surface)

now read those again with scaramouche in mind.

it is curious then, that their paths would cross during the inazuma chapter via the distribution of delusions. (convenient sidenote, the concept of delusion is the source of evil in buddhism)

watatsumi feels a lot of resentment against narukami for killing their god. so much so, that they were willing to use delusions which drained their life force in order to defeat them, and even after the war is over there are some resistance soldiers who wont let go of their resentment.

the delusions here are a key element, since they were literally made with the remains of their god. and scaramouche was the one tasked with distributing the delusions. the allegory is so in ur face its kinda hysterical.

now heres where it gets fun: the remains of orobashi are the source of the problems scaramouche faced in the past. tatarasuna was built to smelt swords with jade steel, which is made from crystal marrow extracted from orobashi's skeleton. and the illness that takes the life of the little child later is caused by the tatarigami, the surviving resentment of orobashi.

(COME ON)

these two narratives are so so closely tied its impossible for it not to be intentional. and u might ask ok but whats the point then, and to that i can offer:

mahayana buddhism was made as an alternative to theravada buddhism, and then vajrayana buddhism was created from mahayana buddhism. the differences dont matter much for the context of this post, in simple words vajrayana focuses on tantric practices and rituals. in mahayana u cultivate ur path out of suffering with meditation, and in vajrayana u add tantras and rituals to that meditation.

its probably not as simple as this, but mahayana sort of centers the worship on compassionate bodhisattvas (deities who have delayed their enlightment to help humans), and even though they all have the same symbols, there might be a bit more emphasis on wrathful bodhisattvas in vajrayana buddhism. overall these deities are idealized symbols, ur not meant to be them, they are symbolizing a virtue (i assume??).

whats important is a branch of vajrayana did make it into japan, becoming shingon buddhism, which centered its worship around one key wrathful bodhisattva: acala, also known as fudou in japanese. this is basically a symbol of enlightment through destruction. he's a deity that destroys ur pain and suffering, ur obstacles for enlightment. obviously its symbolic, but the feeling and vibes it invokes are quite different from the compassionate symbols of mahayana.

there is one ritual for fudou where things are offered to fire, so its basically purification through burning, through destruction and renewal of the self.

aka:

scara/wanderer's design is based off a shugendo monk, a super syncretic religion made of everything that reached japan. but, they have special worship for fudou and the fire ritual.

scara literally faces his suffering and sins (as in, the accumulation of karma in buddhist concepts) in the form of shouki no kami, and he fucking obliterates it just as he gains his vision. this is healing through destruction, at its least symbolic form, reaching enlightment not through meditation and not through "peaceful" methods of quelling emotions, but through goddamn rightful rage. (i am screaming this into the void it makes me nuts)

in a less literal (and exciting) way, kokomi also finds a way to redirect the resentment of the watatsumi soldiers into a path of self advancement. she doesnt punish them for their desire to take this resentment into action against the shogunate, instead she lets them form a special division where they will train not for revenge, but for the protection of their people. the rage is not quelled, the violence is not stopped, just redirected into actions for collective and personal well being. which is what ur supposed to do in buddhism, as far as i understood (the concept of chanda, and all that)

anyway, yeah, healing through violence. i love scaramouche

[chiptrillino]

your outfits are always so beautifully designed in your atla art, how do you think of making them so intricate?

thank you anon. this is gonna be an awful reply probably but i just do? i personally prefere it this way otherwise i have the feeling that something is missing or is to similar to someone else.

the end goal is of course to emphasize the character and their quirks and habits. also how they change throughout the story. i have the luxury that animators don't have, which is time. (well not really with a fulltime job on the side and family that drains me...) so i can my time to think about designs and details depending on the scene or mood i want to portray.

something i appreciate about the atla fandom is that most of us put in the time to do more research and try to reflect more the real live cultures on which the nation were based on. all of us have different interpretation on what specific shapes reminds us off. but if you spend time with different source materials learning you can't help but get influenced and it will reflect in the design and artwork.

i just think its fun. make sokkas kuspuk or clothes pale blue to withe because he goes hunting and he needs the color to blend in better to not be spotted to soon. it changed obviously to a darker blue once they begin to travel through. the EK jet scribbles on the scraped FN armor peaces to make them more his own. katara suddenly has a splash of purple in her clothing during season 2 because she outgrew her kuspuk but doesn't want to part from it. so she replaced the hem with a longer purple fabric. zuko has robes that look fancy and elaborate but actually depict the blue spirit fighting the dragon emperor because he simply is a theater nerd. aang has more then only one outfit and he has a cape to keep warm and cozy fight me!

i am not a writer, i am bad in describing characters with all their quirks and history i like to give them, with words. so i try to add that in the drawings with my designs.

[ot3]

Ok, now after all that Phoenix dad asks, i can't help but share my own unnecessary opinion. I feel like the rapport between Beanix and Trucy is too good for him to be a shitty parent, but the game strongly implies he has alcohol problem. Like no matter how I squint at the source material Beanix is alcoholic. And it's really hard to imagine him being a great dad if he' s spending their meager funds on "grape juice". ( Although with his life at this period I would really wish that at least he did the parenting gig right)

oh man i have been getting a lot of asks on this subject over the past coupe days and mostly avoided answering them because i just sort of more or less said my piece on the matter and didn't want to keep dragging out the same points but this take. is a really insidious one imo. and i feel like you've unwittingly touched on The Elephant In The Room regarding this entire discussion.

I don't think you really meant any harm by this and i hesitate to ascribe any real-world politics to people based on how they interact with fiction, but it's really difficult to see people talk about addiction in fiction this way and imagine they would have more sympathy for real addicts.

Someone being an addict does not de facto make them a bad parent. Someone being poor does not de facto make them a bad parent. I would also argue that someone being too poor to fully provide for their children doesn't de facto make them a bad parent either, because poverty - especially child poverty - is a structural problem and not an individual one.

But I digress, that's not really relevant, because there's absolutely nothing in ace attorney 4 that suggests that the wright's financial problems are caused by phoenix's drinking! Nor is there anything that suggests his drinking has caused him to in any way mistreat Trucy. Anything we see that could be loosely interpreted as neglectful parenting, such as bringing Trucy to poker games or leaving for long stretches to work on the jurist system, can be linked to their financial situation. And you're immediately correlating between the financial stuff and the addiction. Not illogically, but what you have to remember is that alcoholism is often a symptom of poverty, rather than the other way around.

Addiction is obviously very bad even if its not at the point where it's causing your entire life to fall apart! But phoenix is clearly functional and competent during the events of aa4, so i think to act like struggling with addiction is in and of itself enough to negate all of the good parenting he does is just suuuper shitty.

There's really a lot of bizarre distaste for anything resembling Addiction and Poverty amongst ace attorney fans, I've seen really nasty sentiment from people wrt aa4 that, once you cut through what they're actually saying, boils down to 'implying phoenix could ever be an alcoholic made him a fundamentally less good/less likeable character' and man. i just think that really sucks.

especially considering the fact that shu takumi has been pretty open about the fact that 1. he writes phoenix with a lot of Himself in there and 2. he's had, to say the least, a somewhat involved relationship with alcohol. He talks about drinking through work extensively in a pretty cavalier way. I don't expect everyone to know these details but i think anyone who has ever laughed about how shu takumi wrote most of JFA drunk needs to stop and wonder why they think making phoenix an alcoholic crosses some sort of moral line. Along those lines, I also feel similarly uncomfortable when people try to insist non stop that 'its just grape juice, there's no way it was supposed to be implying anything, it's just a joke.' it just feels super disrespectful to try and ignore the narrative implications here coming from a creator who has struggled with alcohol because you think it somehow taints the wholesomeness of a character he based off of himself.

i would urge you and everyone else who has had similar thoughts to please just sort of take a moment and re-asses the opinions you have on this subject and see if you're not just voicing some pretty harmful kneejerk responses to seeing alcoholism depicted or alluded to in ways you're not really used to. Because this just is not the take in any way, shape, or form.

[starkwing-co]

Hey there, Tumblr people! This very moment marks Wing Co blog’s debut!

Expect posts with my personal artwork and animations, mainly Nintendo (especially WarioWare) and original stuff.

To celebrate this important milestone I made 9-Volt and Fronk from WarioWare Inc in the rendering style of official Pokemon art (mainly Sugimori’s and a few others) as a practice for the ’official’ artwork of my main characters ^w^ (and took some inspiration from Frenemy Frenzy’s title screen in Get It Together!)

Tbh, I rarely draw with such fine detail (as a timesave, obviously) but it's sure is fun putting in random garbage that most people won’t notice... since I absolutely adore this shading method

(there’re even some barely visible textures here for extra authenticity to the source material!)

[i-heart-hxh]

I see people posting things like, "Why are some people obsessed with proving your ship is canon? Who even wants their ships to be canon, it's more fun when it's not?"

I get where people are coming from with this sentiment--it is fun to have your own headcanons, your own control of how you're interpreting the characters, not being reliant on what canon gives you, etc. I'm very much in favor of people doing whatever they want in fanworks, canon be damned! Ship what you want, go wild, ignore canon altogether if you want!

But with HxH and especially Gon and Killua, it IS important to me how essentially canon it is for a number of reasons. One of these is that the bond between them is one of the main emotional cores of the series, and to reduce it down to "Haha no homo! They're just bros! If you see it in ways other than that you're delusional!" is a disservice to what Togashi is writing--and it's essentially willfully misreading the source material.

Obviously, no one is obligated to ship it themselves, no one is obligated to like seeing it in a romantic light, but it irks me when people pick apart all the incredible nuance and beautiful details in HxH, all the rich subtext and meaning, and then pretend that the very present subtext and romantic framing between Gon and Killua isn't there at all. Especially as throughout the years I continue to learn more about Togashi and look even more deeply into HxH and it becomes increasingly more and more crystal clear how intentional it seems, how much of this is thoughtfully put in there for people to pick up on.

There's so much shounen out there that puts on a veneer of gayness--essentially giving the audience just enough vaguely gay things for the female audience (as well as gay audience, etc.) to latch on to for marketing/merchandise reasons, while mostly pushing het ships in the canon material officially. (And I'm not saying in all cases it's like that, but I do think that's the trend specifically with shounen series.) With Togashi, it very much seems like he creates it out of his own genuine personal interest and because that's the story he wants to tell--the kind of story he's wanted to tell for a long time and can get away with now because of changing social norms and the fact that he's already incredibly popular and he owns HxH outright.

And as someone who loves Togashi's storytelling--all of it, not just the gay parts, of course--I care about what he's trying to create and intending to convey and it bothers me to see people outright denying it out of their own biases. I feel like people who deny it's there or refuse to see it in that way at all are missing a big chunk of the series, an important and intentional part of the series. (And this extends to other parts of the series that are queer, too, like Alluka for instance. There's so much in HxH that is queer in some way! Denying it all is there is ridiculous!)

And again, it doesn't mean people have to ship it, everyone is allowed to see what's there and ultimately choose to see it in a platonic way if they want, it's more when I see outright denial that this is the author's intent when all signs point to it being so that bothers me.

I think part of this is people just being casual viewers/readers of the series (though some of it is pretty blatant IMHO) and not being aware of all the Deep Lore that points to it being way more than in your average shounen, but a LOT of it is simply homophobia. It's frustrating being in a fandom for years where there are a bunch of people who go about picking apart all the nen powers and the beauty of Chimera Ant Arc in exhaustive detail and then utterly and completely deny that there are sound, well-documented reasons why a large part of the fandom sees it as a gay/queer work.

So hopefully this explains some of why I bother to argue the canon aspect at all, and why I think it matters to a lot of people specifically in HxH fandom.

[neoflect]

sharing some of my disorganized jojo musical thoughts now that ive had a week to sit on it and ive rewatched it several times over. i intended to wait to publish something like this until a subtitled version was available, but im not seeing any indication that thats happening any time soon so for now youll have to deal with my loose interpretations from my extremely rudimentary and rusty japanese… so take what i have to say about the finer points of characterization with a grain of salt. gratuitous spoilers below obviously, both for the original source material and the changes made in the stage production

my feelings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. of course there are things i can criticize or that i would have personally done differently but oh man… i have literally not thought about anything besides this fucking show for a week. im 100% confident in saying this is a better adaptation of the source material than the tv anime. sorry to the davidpro staff, i respect their hard work and their love for jojo and their dedication to what is by any metric a pretty difficult property to adapt off of the page, but i dont know if i can ever forgive them for leaving half of the first episode’s storyboard on the cutting room floor in order to fit a standard half-hour tv slot, especially considering that what they cut is some of the really crucial character-building stuff. happily those scenes are not only reproduced in the stage version, some of them are expanded upon!

with the quick disclaimer that i’ve only managed to get my hands on the final 4/14 performance with shotaro arisawa and yoshihisa higashiyama, from what i’ve seen the casting is perfect. i’m sure there’s a rip of the 4/13 performance somewhere (i’ve seen clips) but i haven’t been able to find one… every single performer knocks it out of the fucking park, the cast chemistry is incredible and even the minor characters are loaded with charisma. and mamoru miyano… my god… mamoru miyano i owe you an apology. i was not familiar with your game. of course hes been killing it for decades at this point but i had soured on him a little bit recently because i felt like he was overcast in everything and i just didnt connect with his dnt reinhard at all, so when the casting was initially announced back in august i was underwhelmed, and of course my standards for the dio role in particular were astronomically high… i’ll go more into detail later in the post because i have so so many things to say about dio’s characterization here but mamoru miyano’s performance is like, life-changing. i had impossible expectations and he exceeded them.

sorry if im gushing. i am a hater by nature. its unusual for me to be so thoroughly pleased with something. im not even a musical theater guy. these are strange new feelings for me.

just to balance things out i’ll talk about a couple of the things that didn’t really work for me: first of all, the music is just ok. my initial draft of this post called the music ��bad” but three additional viewings later i have warmed up to some of the songs. i don’t know if this is a shortcoming by dove attia as the composer or if it’s just me, as i said i’m not a musical guy and a lot of the genre conventions of musical theatre are not really the things i look for in music that i enjoy, but like… even at their worst they are serviceable. nothing here is sonically unpleasant to me. high points are “resolve of the ripple” (zeppeli’s hamon training song, a jazzy swing number - it’s simply catchy and fun to listen to) and the closer “phantom blood” (a sweeping ballad that reprises the earlier “light and darkness”/”golden spirit” leitmotifs into an epic duet between jonathan and dio as they join hands and walk off into the darkness together… made me cry! i wont lie! on every single one of my numerous viewings this one got me misty eyed!)

wait i forgot this is supposed to be the part where i’m being critical. ok my most loathed song in the musical is “dio’s world”. sorry dio nation. it doesn’t really work for me. i think this might be a case of my standards/expectations being too impossibly high because it’s not even really the worst song in the whole thing. and of course miyano eats it up so it’s not really his fault. i just find it kind of underwhelming… i find the melody a little grating, it’s kind of just a generic rock number, it’s just missing a particular je ne sais quoi…. the essence of dio isn’t there… lyrically though i am obsessed with the premise of dio recruiting his minions by selling himself as a kind of social revolutionary who is upending and inverting the brutal hierarchy of post-industrial victorian society with zombie blood magic. you win some you lose some.

the second sticking point for me is the costumes. they’re perfectly serviceable… adequate… but i mean when it comes to jojo “serviceable” and “adequate” costume design obviously falls well below what’s expected, right? a lot of the outfits have kind of a boxy, almost flat-looking kind of unflattering fit on the actors, which if i wanted to be generous i could attribute to the challenge of bridging the gap between these frail slender musical theater twinks and the two-meter-tall 250lb roided-out beefcakes theyre meant to be embodying. (bearing this discrepancy in mind a lot of the insane martial arts stuff in the second act doesn’t really land with the oomph that it should, but i also understand logistically why this kind of casting is not practical, and all things considered i think shotaro arisawa does a really incredible job of embodying jonathan joestar even though he kind of looks like i could snap him in half over my knee like a twig. he’s very cute. so i’m not mad about it.) of course, again, logistically, i understand that in a stage musical production, where actors only have minutes to complete costume changes, some sacrifices have to be made to the creative vision in the name of practicality. nevertheless this is jojos bizarre adventure!! i want to see some fucking baubles!!!!!!

which is all to say that… after carefully considering it for some weeks… i still have extremely mixed feelings about dio’s grink ass feather bathrobe look. it’s not that i dont think its something he could wear (the concept of dio lounging around in his gothic vampire palace doing re-animator style body horror experiments on the local wildlife in this “officer i have no idea what happened to my husband”-ass nightgown is nothing short of hysterical to me) but then he wears it into combat and i felt a little disappointed… it has the same unflattering fit issue as the other outfits in the show, and it is just such an un-araki-like design… where are the gaudy color combinations? the bizarre geometric patterns? the tease of an exposed boob/thigh/midriff? erina gets a stage-original dress design that i have fewer issues with because the excessive pleats and ruffles have more of an araki-esque sensibility, but every time i look at dio’s robe it feels like there’s something missing.  i’m going to choose to be nice about it because it’s not at all a deal breaker and, again, mamoru miyano devours the look. it’s fine. it’s always fun to have a new dio outfit. if anything, the fact that the blu-rays are being marketed as “2024 cast version” gives me hope for the possibility of a future production with a new vision for the costume design. (although the fact that this was such a difficult production - with stunts and pyrotechnics and moving setpieces - that its entire first week was cancelled indicates to me that the prospects for a future production from a different company are impossibly slim. i guess there’s always hope?)

in terms of the writing and the changes that were made from the original narrative, honestly i don’t really have an issue with anything that was cut. sorry if there are any diehard stans of Poco’s Unnamed Sister out there who are steamed that their favorite minor late phantom blood character got the axe, i kind of understand how you feel because i’ve been malding over david pro cutting the Danny Lore for eleven years, but i think it was the right choice and the story flows so much better. the real juicy meat at the core of phantom blood as a narrative and the thing that brings it head and shoulders above so much of the rest of jjba is the character-driven drama - that deliciously pulpy victorian gothic family tragedy - and the relationship between jonathan and dio. the musical beefs up the character drama and slims down the action-driven second half by trimming out the extraneous battles. the only real downside i see to this is that the absence of tompetty and his prophecy makes zeppeli’s arc and death feel INSANELY abrupt, but tbf that’s not a deal breaker for me. sorry zeppeli. you were born to die.

okay. okay. i think 1500 words into the post is enough fucking around so let’s talk about the real reason why you and i both know we’re here

musical dio is SO fucking sad. he’s positively wretched, you guys. he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and forced to eat cement when he was six. he cries even more than he does in the source material and even when he’s not crying he frequently delivers his lines as though he is moments away from bursting into tears. back when the musical first opened i was snooping on the reactions on jpn twitter and one commenter said they could see miyano’s tears and snot from the nosebleeds even without opera glasses, a remark i initially assumed was hyperbole but that i now think probably was not. araki’s dio is certainly tortured and a deeply pathetic crybaby beneath all the cruelty and posturing, but changes in the musical and miyano’s embodiment of the character bring this pathos to the fore. he is literally haunted: dario’s ghost lingers, a manifestation of all of dio’s traumas and insecurities that emerges from the recesses of his memory to taunt him with the reminder that he will always be his father’s son, all the way up until the very minute that jonathan breaks down the door to his vampire lair. i am OBSESSED with this - not only for the obvious reason that i delight in dio’s suffering personally but also because kong kuwata is a delight and he fucking kills it every time. also lends itself to a category 10 leitmotif moment at the top of the second act when dio emerges from the charred ruins of the joestar estate singing dario’s theme and calling out to jonathan - if i had to pinpoint this is probably the moment when this musical stuck for me as the Real Deal. they Get It.

the first solo number in the show is dio’s disney princess I Want song (amazingly, simply titled “dio”) where he weeps for his late mother and his wretched lot in life, and then - in a creative decision that made me clap my hands and hoot and holler at my screen in real life - there is a reprise of this number (delivered, naturally, through tears) when dio is almost arrested for murder and decides to become a vampire instead. so there’s this amazing hopeful uplifting inspirational orchestral music accompanying the onstage action of dio ruthlessly slaying jonathan’s dad and then getting pumped full of lead by a bunch of cops. it is brilliant. 10/10 no notes. it’s moments like this that i think really sell the “softening” of dio in the stage version for me, even though i am historically Not A Fan of fanworks that take a similar angle - like, yes, he is sad, but specifically he is narcissistically obsessed with the spectacle of his own suffering, he is boiling over with bitterness and rage for everyone around him who (by his own estimation) could never hope to have suffered as much as he has. this sensitivity and self-pity he wallows in are not expressions of a guilty conscience or a desire to change - they’re entirely the opposite - every cruel and monstrous deed dio commits is always justified to himself because he is simply the saddest little boy who has ever existed. he has been done wrong by the world and so there is no limit to the depravity he may reasonably respond with. i’ve seen several commenters describe this as a drastically different interpretation of the character from araki’s dio (and someone told me on twitter that mamoru miyano himself has also said this, but i cba to go digging for an actual source so take it with a grain of salt?), but i… dont think thats the case! dio’s obsession with his own weakness and his self-perception as the eternal underdog (as compared to jonathan) are certainly more exaggerated in miyano’s performance, but i don’t think this is an angle to the character that’s been manufactured out of whole cloth. the genre conventions of the stage musical force the melodrama up to eleven and dio’s incredibly repressed angst is the most rich vein to mine for that. hair-trigger sadist dio is still here, it’s the same guy, he’s still killing people mercilessly, you’re just getting to see him sing a big ballad about his feelings instead of confining those to an internal monologue.

if anything, the exaggeration of dio’s pathetic/cowardly/crybaby traits combined with his megalomaniacal aspirations and bottomless well of cruelty is just right. it’s perfect. fucking around, finding out, and then trying to weasel his way out of the consequences with crocodile tears just so you don’t see him drawing his knife to cut you clean open… yeah. thats the stuff. thats my one true blorbo. sad to say i will love him for ten thousand years.

i think that might be all i have to say… or at least all i feel like saying here… most likely ill come back and edit this post later. i certainly have some additional thoughts and some more esoteric/controversial takes but they’re not suited for a public blog. real ones will understand. im keeping my eyes peeled for somebody to translate this thing but to be frank i am kind of enjoying this little corner of fandom as it is right now: just the asians and the true hardcore phantom blood phreaks. i have not had this much fun in jojo fandom in almost a fucking decade. as soon as somebody publishes an english version my timelines going to get flooded with all the most deeply annoying “kono dio da” “speedwagon waifu” reddit guys and 15 year olds and my suffering will proceed. unfortunately this is my lot in life and i am doomed to be here forever because dio put a worm in my brain

[graywritesoccasionally42]

So I wrote an entire essay comparing Loki from The Bifrost Incident to Loki from the Prose Edda for my Medieval Literature Class, and I figured I'd post it here in case anyone wanted to read my analysis on her character

Essay Under Cut--(my formatting got fucked up by the hellsite but what can you do?)

“Is this truly me? What have I left behind?”

A look into how The Bifrost Incident interacts with its source material

Title from “Losing Track” by The Mechanisms

In the early 1200s, Snorri Sturlson wrote his famous collection of Norse mythology called The Prose Edda. In this compilation, we met many gods, goddesses, and creatures, including one who is arguably the most popular Norse deity--Loki, the god of mischief and general shenanigans. The Prose Edda presents Loki as dishonest, violent, at times incompetent. Recently though, about 800 years later, Loki has attracted the interest of many modern writers who have adapted Loki’s story to explore contemporary problems. One particular adaptation, The Bifrost Incident by English steampunk band The Mechanisms, imagines her to be just,  intelligent, and loving. There are many striking differences between these two versions of Loki, the most significant being gender, mortality, and how their stories end. This is important because this album re-examines and redefines Loki’s identity, and how we view this Norse deity in a modern context.

To fully delve into how The Mechanisms’ adaptation works, I think some context for the band is necessary. The Mechanisms were an English steampunk band, self-described as “Storytelling Musical Cabaret'' that operated from 2010 until 2020. The Band members themselves were in character at all times as the immortal pirate crew of the Starship Aurora. They also took on the roles in the tales they told. So for example, Tim Ledsam was the guitarist for The Mechanisms, but when he was onstage he played Gunpowder Tim, Master at Arms on the Aurora, and when the band performed The Bifrost Incident, he voiced the character of Loki. The Mechanisms were best known for their clever reworking of mythologies, creating queer narratives and telling queer stories, and their love of tragedies. In their last concert (recorded as a live album), Death to The Mechanisms, Jonny D’ville--the band’s first mate/lead vocalist. played by Jonny Sims--and Ashes O'Reilly--the band’s quartermaster/bassist, played by Frank Voss--had a conversation that encapsulates the crew's relationship with unhappy endings: 

[Jonny]

"We happen to stumble across tragic situations where everyone dies. I mean, obviously there are stories where people live but we just choose not to tell them."

[Ashes]

"Yeah, 'cause they're boring."

[Jonny]

"Yeah…”

The fact that this conversation happened during some technical difficulties in the song “Terminus”, the finale of The Bifrost Incident where the entire star system is consumed by a Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, only adds credence to their claims. 

With that bit of explanation out of the way, let’s discuss the similarities between Sturlson’s work and The Mechanisms’ adaptation of it. Loki from The Prose Edda and Loki from The Bifrost Incident share many important similarities. These similarities are important because they make the character recognizable, giving us a reference point and allowing the audience to connect the new version to the original. The Mechanisms play on the audience’s knowledge of Norse Mythology, creating an insider audience. Listeners feel like they are in on the joke, as they understand what myths or details are being referenced. The Mechanisms also use these similarities to create puns, as they often do in their albums. For example, in The Prose Edda Baldur is killed by Mistletoe, and in The Bifrost Incident Loki kills Baldur with Missile 2 (the second missile).  

Another thing The Mechanisms’ adaptation has in common with Sturlson’s work is how they develop ideas through music. The Bifrost Incident is a musical album, with each song continuing the story, much like the soundtrack to a musical. It alternates between spoken narration and songs, weaving music into the fabric of the tale. The Prose Edda does this as well! We have evidence that the original myths were probably put to music, connecting this modern work to its source. 

This being said, there are significant differences between the Loki of The Prose Edda and the Loki from The Bifrost Incident. I’ve selected just three to discuss at this time, the ones I think are the most important. The first is gender. In The Prose Edda Loki and Odin are firmly male, using exclusively male pronouns. There is a specific instance in the text where Loki turns into a mare and gives birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed. This is seen in a negative context, as a way to shame or punish Loki. In The Bifrost Incident, however, Loki and Odin are gender-bent, using exclusively female pronouns. Loki’s gender expression in the album is further complicated by how her character is voiced. Gunpowder Tim, who as far as I can tell is a cisgender man, voices this specifically female character. The use of a more masculine-sounding voice actor for a character that not only uses feminine terms and pronouns but also is married to another woman in the album introduces a new, interesting layer of queerness to the narrative. Because of this casting decision, it’s a commonly held belief among fans that Loki is a trans woman in the album. These choices help the audience explore modern queer themes through the lens of Norse mythology. And it creates a contrast to how gender, sexuality, and queerness in general, were talked about in Snorri Sturlson’s time. 

The second difference I’d like to discuss is Loki’s mortality (or lack thereof). In The Prose Edda Loki is a god, an immortal being that could affect the world around him and cause problems on large scales. This allows many myths to happen, most strikingly the ones where Loki transforms into an animal to either cause problems or fix a problem he caused. Now this is complicated by the fact that Snorri Sturlson did not believe the characters in the myths he was compiling were gods. He lived in a Christianized world, trying to compile stories to save them for poets. Either way, Prose Edda Loki is an immortal deity. But in The Bifrost Incident, it is important that all our characters are mortal. It intensifies the tragedy of Loki and Sigyn, their sacrifice and Odin’s demise. It helps us relate to the characters in a way that we don’t get if they’re immortal. In the narration “Cold Case”, we learn that Loki was thought to be dead, and in the song “Sigyn” we get the heartbreaking reunion between Loki and her wife, Sigyn. But the reason I cry every time I listen to “Sigyn” is because of how heartrendingly happy Sigyn is to see her wife, alive and in front of her, and then see that relief ripped away as she realizes that Loki doesn’t recognize her. The humanity, the fear and permanence of death, of losing those you love, is one that we as an audience can easily relate to. 

My final difference, and possibly the most important difference, is the ending to Loki’s story. After killing Baldur in The Prose Edda, Loki is chased down by the Aesir and eternally punished: He is imprisoned below the earth, tied down with the entrails of his sons, and has a snake set above him to drip poison into his eyes. His wife, Sigyn, stays with him by choice, holding a cup above him to catch the venom, but the vessel can only hold so much before it must be emptied. So when Sigyn has to empty the cup the venom gets into his eyes, and his thrashing is the etiological myth for why earthquakes happen. Eventually, Loki is destined to escape and kick off Ragnarok (the end of the world), where he fights against the Aesir--sailing in on Naglfar and fatally injuring Heimdall before dying himself. These all add up to an ultimately evil view of Loki, even if he is a bit sympathetic. He turns against the gods and his children are the cause of much destruction. However, the Loki of The Bifrost Incident has a completely different characterization. After her memories are returned to her, she leaves Odin to her madness and goes to find Sigyn. She tells Sigyn what they must do to delay the eldritch train as long as possible, keeping the end of the world from happening for 80 years-- 

“They uncouple the [train] carriages behind [them] and Loki lays upon the altar. Sigyn pushes a single line into her wife's heart and holds it tight. All she lets through is a drip drip drip, flowing through the glyphs and gears. When Loki's heartsblood is gone, the train will arrive, but until then, they are together.”

Loki chooses to sacrifice herself to stop the end of all life in her star system. This is almost directly opposite of how Loki acts in The Prose Edda. She is noble, in contrast to his cowardice. 

I think it’s important to consider why these changes were made. Some are more obvious--The Mechanisms always committed to the bit at full throttle. It’s evident from their stage presences that they cared about the storytelling more than anything else. So many of the more minor changes are to keep to the aesthetic choices the band made--setting it in space, steampunk and cyberpunk imagery, and the puns we talked about earlier. Some choices were made to turn the original myths into queer stories. Making Loki and Sigyn a lesbian couple, as well as having Loki use feminine terms and pronouns while being voiced by a traditionally masculine voice actor, fall into The Mechanisms’ commitment to telling queer stories. Many of the band members themselves are queer, and the vast majority of their fanbase identifies as LGBTQ+. And finally, The Mechanisms only tell tragedies. We discussed this at a few earlier points, how the change from god to mortal fed into the tragedy of the story they were trying to tell. 

So why does this matter? Why should we care about a Steampunk concept album written in 2017 that no one has ever heard of? The Prose Edda was written to preserve poetry, religion, mythology, and meaning post-Christianization. Why was The Bifrost Incident written? I believe that it’s a commentary on corrupt government systems, as seen with Odin, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers of pushing too far without the proper safety precautions. It’s also just a fun retelling of myths that most are fairly familiar with in a fun, new setting we never would have expected. The Bifrost Incident takes stories written hundreds of years ago and creates a modern narrative that is as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking. And I hope this paper, if nothing else, convinces you to listen to the Album.