#original comedy monologue

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; THE FINAL FINAL

Shen Qingqiu Propaganda:

The entire series is told from his POV and the story seems like a comedy. The side stories from other characters POVs make the story sound like a tragedy. He thought that Luo Binghe hated him and wanted him dead while everyone else knew that Binghe was in love with him.

the whole book he’s using his OWN interpretation of the world to explain literally everything, not knowing that his introduction into the world changed it so fundamentally that his prior knowledge of it is less than useless. he’s like “binghe is being sweet to me because binghe is sweet to people that wronged him before repaying their slight a thousandfold, and he only adds their acceptance of his sweetness to his tally of their sins!! i have to run away forever or he’ll tear my arms and legs off!!!!!!” and binghe in reality is like “wow the love of my life my beloved shizun is scared of me still :( i should act sweet and nonthreatening so he’s not scared of me :(“ and he literally doesn’t have this corrected until the end of the book. but even when that one thing is corrected he still is like “haha okay but these other six things-“ bro……. cucumber bro………….. you homosexualized the world just accept it

He examines the entire reality he's isekai-ed into as if it's still fictional and his inner monologue ignores any "character trait" of the people around him that doesn't fit into his perception of "canon" despite everything he's done to change reality from the canon of the novel he first read. He routinely mislabels his own emotions as well as making heteronormative assumptions about himself and the people around him before he finally realises he's in reciprocated gay love with a man. It's a book that benefits being read twice, so the second time around you can focus on the implications Shen Qingqiu blatantly misses.

Transmigrates into a novel he “hates,” assumes he’s doing a good job pretending to be the character whose body he got stuck in, assumes other characters will stick to their original paths. Lotta assumptions, lots of rationalizing, lots of incredible feats of misunderstanding/misinterpreting things. His internal narration is also hysterical.

Lemony Snicket Propaganda:

(I would like to preface this by saying that Lemony Snicket is the author's pen name, not a real person, and he exists as a character in-universe as well as being the one in-universe who writes the books!) I'd say he's unreliable because he spent time collecting information about the Baudelaire kids and then... wrote books about it. He has no idea what any of their dialogue actually was, what they were thinking, or even the whole plot, he's just doing research into the incidents and then filling in the gaps to make it a story. What ACTUALLY happened to the Baudelaires? Nobody really knows for sure

While the Baudelaire siblings are in potentially life threatening danger, he will randomly start talking about his own life and just leave the siblings hanging. For example, once Count Olaf was threatening to kill Violet, and then Lemony randomly began talking about how he met the love of his life at a costume party. This man CANNOT stay on topic. Usually when a new character is introduced, Lemony tells us right at the start that they’re either going to die or that the Baudelaire siblings will never see them again. Foreshadowing is not subtle in these books. CONSTANTLY emphasizes how miserable he feels while writing these books. At one point he admits that he had to put his pencil down and go cry for a while because of how sad it made him. Once he filled an entire page with nothing but the word “ever” to emphasize how dangerous it is to put forks in electrical outlets. He also repeated a paragraph about deja vu later on in the book to give the reader deja vu.

[0rczy]

ORCZY'S FAN FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS

For following Fandoms: Varian and the 7 kingdoms, Lego monkie kid, JRWI riptide

Hi there! I tought I would share some of my favourite fanfictions I've read since April last year, as sort of a recap and also recommendations. These are all longer stories btw, ranging from 78K to  236K words. Hope you find something that piques your interest :D

If you have any other recommendations, PLEASE share them, I'd love to read more from these fandoms.

VAT7K

-Varian's Tangled Trials by IFoundYouJustineTime and TheArtistsMuse A complete Vat7k story adapting the original creators' plot points into an amazing, 24 chapters (episodes) long fic that reads like an actual cartoon. If you're new to Vat7k or Tangled The Series, or even if you haven't seen the latter (like me), you WILL enjoy this. If you like a fun adventure with a bunch of nerds as a found family, this is for you.

-What Summer Meant to You -If I Really Hated you (and I really, really do) both by Battybatzgirl First one's a battle of the bands/modern AU, second is an AU where the boys are rival engineers, both focusing on the ship Varigo. The writing style is what made me stay and read these to the end. Incredibly funny and entertaining to read, the way Varian and Hugo are characterised is just. So good. If you like a well written, lighthearted, romantic comedy, this is for you. (Both include some skippable adult scenes, but the story is much more about the romance)

-Making End's Meet by Meltthepoint As the author's name suggest, this is a melting point (Donella x Ulla) story, set in a modern setting. Donella enrolls Hugo into this new school, who then befriends Varian. Ulla and Donella meet again. This is about how two women make up and start anew after their lives went into directions they didn't want. The story is much more character focused, a really fun read. Very insightful about the women's characters. An exception, as I still haven't finished reading it. Definitely not the type of fic I can binge read, but I'm really enjoying it.

At the end of everything by Squirrelflight A Night in the woods AU (haven't played the game, you don't have to, to read it), and unfinished as of yet, but man. Worth checking out! Unlike the stories above, this one's definitely darker and has a really tense aura. Love it. The writing is so good it makes me so thrilled about what will happen next! I also really like, once again, the characterisation.

LMK

-You can stay here by KALL A pre canon story about how Pigsy and Tang adopt MK, how MK gets to be in a safe environment and starts figuring himself out. Great writing style, entertaining plot, what more could I ask for? (maybe an update lol) As of yet, unfinished, and hasn't been updated since late 2022. The author actually posted ( https://www.tumblr.com/its-kall-the-clown/735524530668371968/are-you-going-to-be-updating-any-fics-on-your-ao3 ) about wanting to rewrite the story sometime. Which is great! In case you're reading this, take as long as you want!

-A garden across our collarbone by PittedPeaches Spicynoodle soulmate AU where what you write, or in MK's case, draw on your skin, appears on the soulmate's skin as well. Red Son's journey of (very slowly, this is a slowburn) falling in love with MK. A lot of inner monologues, the story plays out more like a retelling of what happened from Red Son's perspective. Kind of like a diary entry and I LOVE IT. I actually didn't understand the pairing before reading this, nor was I that invested in Red Son's character. This fic changed everything. (it also sends you good luck if you read it on the train! I acquired: friends!)

RIPTIDE

-BREAKING FREE! by earlgray_milktea A fish 'n chips Highschool Musical AU (another thing I haven't seen, you don't need to, to read this). The writing is so undoubtedly Disney, it is at times so over the top dramatic, you can't help but smile at half the interactions. The charm is big on this one. The characters are exagerated but somehow not (completely) out of character. Basically if Riptide was on Disney, this is exactly how they'd act. Also it's just really, really cute.

-Depths of Natarus by goldpines Chip Mermaid AU set in an Undersa/Oversea war, focusing on Fish n Chips as well as Jay Ferin (my girl!). Two reasons why you should read this right now. First: the descriptions are SO detailed and immersive! It made me also kinda have a crush on Gillion Tidestrider. How. Second: it made me care about Jay. And the way she's written here is just so so great. You can tell the author knows what they're doing, the feels just keep coming, I alost teared up multiple times. This story makes you feel a lot of emotions at once, an overall amazing reading experience.

And these were my favs since last April. Specifically the ones that made me go absolutely insane. In a good way. Again, if you have any good recommendations (preferably longer stories, but shorter ones are also fine), please feel free to share them.

Thank you for reading this, if you did :D

[rooolt]

my favorite part of original noise boys is how tailored for them the prompts have become. Josh is always given prompts where he truly has to make insane sounds you never even anticipated before, Zac is given a lot of physical comedy and opportunities for little one liners, and Brennan is given the chance to just monologue and make a bunch of shit up

[notedchampagne]

if you're still looking for movie recs!! here's some i LOVE not sure how hidden some of them are but they ARE gems

Moonstruck (1987) - cher and nic cage are extremely italian and say some of the most bonkers lines ive ever heard. nic cage's "johnny has his hand! johnny has his bride!" monologue got kinda memed i think and it might make you think its a goofy movie which it is but its also a genuinely phenomenally constructed and really gorgeous and clever one.

Down with Love (2003) - hyperstylized, chic and campy faux-60s satirical battle of the sexes romcom with maybe the highest joke per minute ratio ive ever seen in a movie. every second of it is hilarious and SUCH a feast for the eyes, all around hysterically fun.

Ida (2013) - Polish black and white film about a nun and her aunt and their family history in the 60s. never graphic or violent but does deal with some pretty heavy topics (namely the holocaust and suicide). a lot more quiet and introspective but pretty short and sweet around 80 minutes

We Have a Pope (2011) - smart, funny, surprisingly melancholy italian comedy about a papal conclave. this one was an instant fav for me, its one of those movies that sort of opens with a thesis question and instead of resolving it just continues to wind it around and reflect in on itself in really cool, weird ways

Certified Copy (2010) - lush, gorgeous, disorienting romance about a french single mother and an english author in tuscany. kind of hard to explain without giving it away but it follows this theme of originals and copies and reflections of reflections. it exists on this like, razors edge of cynicism and sincerity and its SO visually stunning, like there were some shots that actually made my jaw drop

OOH certified copy and down with love definitely grabbed my interest but for the latter thats something id watch on my own time. you know for silly joyous things to see while im drawing.

i am still open for more movie recs but if anyone wants to see the type of stuff i already watched heres my letterboxd

[goatedgreen]

expanding on my dsmp pantomime idea... “well what about exile?” i hear you cry!! not to worry, it can be just as harrowing :)

in the typical panto, when the villain appears on stage, the audience shouts some variation of “HE’S BEHIND YOU!!” and the character gets to do a silly little “huh?? :) who is? where?? :) lol idk what youre on about!!” until the villain is then revealed

WELL, what if exile was portrayed in this manner, cdream coming to logsted, approaching ctommy from behind while he’s monologuing to the audience,,, they do the “hes behind you!!!” as is typical, and ctommy just... stops hearing them. he cant hear the audience anymore

as he laments on stage about how alone he is, the audience cries out to him, that he isnt alone, that they are there to look out for him, but he cant hear them

i think something similar would work for c!wilbur’s mental state in pogtopia as well, as one of the few characters aware of the audience, they cry out to him, “NOOO” when he goes to the button room (several times) but on the last time he’s there, when he says “they all want you to” , clearly addressing the audience, he can no longer “hear” their response, so he takes the “silence” as agreement

disconnect from the audience in a pantomime i think could be a really interesting subversion of the genre and kind of play into the horror elements present in the original dsmp, especially seeing as pantos are meant to be comedies

imagine you go to see a comedy, a pantomime, where you as the audience as expected to be listened to, and partake in the show as a spectator, and the characters just.... stop listening. i think that would be pretty scary

[satoshi-mochida]

Dessert de Otomate 2024 announcements roundup – Fuyuzono Sacrifice, Honey Vibes, Hakuoki Ibun: Berezinskii no Majo, more

From Gematsu

Idea Factory‘s Otomate brand announced new titles, updates on existing titles, and ports during its Dessert de Otomate 2024 event in Tokyo today.

Get the full roundup of announcements below.

New Titles

Fuyuzono Sacrifice

Platform: Switch

Genre: Otome romance visual novel

Tagline: A wish for a bride (sacrifice) in a frozen world.

Keywords: Heartrending Love, Western-Style Fantasy

Staff: Tsunekiyo Fujisawa (producer), Atori Shiina (director), Manuka Midou (character design), Sachi Arino (scenario writer)

Honey Vibes

Platform: Switch

Release Date: 2024

Genre: Otome romance visual novel

Tagline: In a tropical land where beasts (lust) and humans (reason) mesh, a hot and exciting love story awaits you.

Keywords: Beast Ears, Suits, and Three Factions

Staff: Kurage Ichi (character design), Yusuke Takahama (sound), Momoko Terashima (producer), Asami Saitou (director)

Hakuoki Ibun: Berezinskii no Majo

Platform: Switch

Genre: Otome dramatic visual novel

Tagline: “That” makes her both an angel and a demon.

Keywords: Rejuvenating Water, Hakuoki, Napoleon

Staff: Tsunekiyo Fujisawa (director), Sakigumi Shiki (character design), Kagero Usuba (guest designer)

Updates

Moeyo! Otome Doushi: Kayu Koigatari

Platform: Switch

Release Date: 2024

Genre: Otome romance visual novel

Keywords: Battle, Love Comedy, Manga

Staff: Tsunekiyo Fujisawa (producer), Chouko Tsuyuri (director), Ayu Nekoi (original design), Maro Sasaki (scenario), Ririka Yoshimura (scenario), and Satomi Nakayama (scenario)

Voice Cast: Shogo Sakata, Kazuki Ura, Nobunaga Shimazaki, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

Trouble Magia: Wakeari Shoujo wa Mirai o Kachitoru Tame ni Ikoku no Mahou Gakkou e Ryougaku Shimasu

Platform: Switch

Genre: Magic academy visual novel full of trouble

Tagline: Girl meets boy in this adolescent tale of magic. Your year to seize the future is about to begin!

Keywords: Magic, Animals, Student Council

Staff: Suzunosuke (original design), Akira Natsuno (scenario writer), and Akira Ouse (director)

Voice Cast: Tomoaki Maeno, Atsushi Abe, Ryouta Oosaka, Yuuto Uemura, Kazuyuki Okitsu, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

Otomate Graffit: New Titles

Hiiro no Kakera Tamayori-hime Kitan: Omoi Iro no Kioku for Nintendo Switch

Platform: Switch

Release Date: June 20, 2024

Genre: Otome romance visual novel

Tagline: Destiny is with you once again…

Keyword: Swords, Guardians, Seals

Staff: Tsunekiyo Fujisawa (producer)

Voice Cast: Tomokazu Sugita, Kousuke Okano, Daisuke Namikawa, Daisuke Hirakawa, Hiroki Shimowada, Kazunori Nomiya, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

7’scarlet for Nintendo Switch

Platform: Switch

Release Date: 2024

Genre: Otome romance visual novel

Tagline: The truth of this town is illuminated by the moonlight.

Keyword: Mystery, Incidents

Staff: Chinatsu Kurahana (character design)

Voice Cast: Nobunaga Shimazaki, Tetsuya Kakihara, Showtaro Morikubo, Chiharu Sawashiro, Shinichiro Miki, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

Natsuzora no Monologue: Another Memory

Platform: Switch

Release Date: 2024

Genre: Summer-themed time loop visual novel

Tagline: We see “dreams” in the summer sky.

Staff: Ijou (director), Yuu Nishimura (scenario writer), Rokumaru (original design)

Voice Cast: Atsushi Abe, Naozumi Takahashi, Shinya Takahashi, Tsubasa Yonaga, Kazuhiko Inoue, Nobuhiko Okamoto, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

Altergear: New Titles

Hypnosis Mic: Alternative Rap Battle – 1st Period / Hypnosis Mic: Alternative Rap Battle – 2nd Period

Platform: Switch

Genre: Rhythm and visual novel game

Tagline: This time the battle of right and wrong comes to Nintendo Switch!

Keywords: Rhythm Game, Hypnosis Mic, Rap

Staff: Kazui (character design and original draft), Otomate, King Records (original work), Evil Line Records (original world)

Voice Cast: Subaru Kimura, Haruki Ishiya, Kouhei Amasaki, Shintarou Asanuma, Wataru Komada, Shinichiro Kamio, Yuusuke Shirai, Soma Saito, Yukihiro Nozuyama, Show Hayami, Ryuichi Kijima, Kento Itou, Ryota Iwasaki, Kengo Kawanishi, Takaya Kuroda, Shota Hayama, Yuki Sakakihara, Eiji Takeuchi, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

Altergear: Updates

Rashomon of Shinjuku

Platform: Switch

Release Date: August 8, 2024

Genre: A bakumatsu reincarnation story visual novel refreshed for the modern age.

Tagline: Sever the everlasting karma on the road to carnage.

Staff: Sonoe Kazenomiya (planning, original draft, producer, script), Kanna Natsumi (script), Karin Entertainment (work), Jirou Suzuki (character design)

Voice Cast: Hiromu Mineta, Yukari Shimotsuki, Junichi Yanagita, Kouji Okino, Kouhei Amasaki, Chikahiro Kobayashi, Sho Karino, Atsushi Abe, Kentaro Kumagai, Kenta Nobe, Rowa Kamiie, Takeo Otsuka, Yoshitaka Yamaya, etc.

Official Website: otomate.jp

[pikmininaplane]

So if you’re curious, Pomme’s ‘poetry’ that she wrote like two hours ago on Foolish’s stream is actually a translation of a French meme lol

It’s a monologue that originated from the movie ‘Astérix et Obélix : Mission Cléopatre’, a comedy adaptation of some of the Asterix & Obelix comics – I’d say the movie itself is kind of a French classic at this point

The character speaking is a scribe that was just asked the question ‘So, is being a scribe a good situation?’, and his answer is so long and convoluted that it became a cultural reference and a meme – I think most people I know would be able to quote the first two or three sentences (‘You know, I don’t believe there are good or bad situations; if I had to sum up my life with you today, I would say it’s primarily about encounters’)

My girl Pomme saw Richas writing ‘bad situation’ on a sign and ran with the meme lol

Here’s the full monologue in French if you’d like to hear it:

[blockgamepirate]

Technoblade video recs for newbies!

Just a couple of suggestions with explanations so you can pick the one that sounds the most interesting. I picked these as sort of low threshold starters that should be entertaining regardless of whether you're familiar with these corners of MCYT or not

1. the history of technoblade (1,000,000 sub elbow reveal)

Duration: 12:51

Date: Aug 18th 2019

This is a decent channel intro if you want to learn about the man himself first. It might not be the best introduction to his content because it's obviously not really a gaming video but a channel retrospective, but it IS a good introduction to his sense of humour and his "persona". It also explains a lot of memes that you would otherwise have to have watched dozens of videos to get.

2. Skeppy vs Technoblade (The Final Reckoning)

Duration: 18:10

Date: Dec 12th 2018

(Not actually the final reckoning, there were many more reckonings to come)

An absolute classic. This is the origin of some long running gags, including the orphan jokes, and just a great demonstration of Skeppy and Techno's dynamic. It's delightfully wacky and involves a bunch of the funnier games on Hypixel. The two of them also just make each other laugh so much in this one.

(And if you want more, check his "skeppy is mad" playlist or check Skeppy's channels for the collabs Techno didn't record.)

3. the hypixel skyblock experience

Duration: 10:15

Date: Jun 15th 2019

This might genuinely be my favourite Technoblade video, and I feel like he might have agreed because it's been on top of his channel's home page for years, and still is.

This is Techno introducing Hypixel Skyblock to his audience and the first episode of his Skyblock series which is frankly the best series on his channel, don't @ me.

This video has it all, comedy, struggles, adventure, witty commentary, dangerously high concentrations of sarcasm, and also surprisingly many genuine thoughtful moments. The beginning monologue is a beautiful tribute to the original Skyblock (even tho it's a set up for a joke).

This series also includes the famous Potato War trilogy, which is probably his most popular work of all time, but I recommend watching this one first! You can then skip to the Potato War videos or you can watch the whole Skyblock series because it really is the best Techno content out there IMO. And you'll get more out of the Potato War that way. They're also pretty short anyway, 10-12 mins per video.

TBC

[arcticgraverobber]

I just finished: Resident Evil 4 Remake!

Controversially perhaps, even though I'm a huge fan of the resident evil franchise in general, I'm not a huge fan of 4. Even after playing it again and actually managing to finish it for the first time, I still feel it's the biggest stain on the franchise - which I no objectively it isn't, 5 and 6 are in many ways arguably worse and there are plenty of awful spin-offs, but 4 is for some reason the one that bothers me the most.

Fundamentally I think it's aged the worst of the mainline games in terms of game play - the originals might be dated but there also aren't a whole lot of games like them nowadays, so there isn't much to compare them to. 5 and 6 are bad in a lot of ways but they control far more intuitively (apart from 6's awful inventory) than 4 in a lot of ways. If you originally played it a while back, you might not remember how confusing and frustrating 4 is to play for the first time, which I think is most likely the case with people who will claim the remake was unnecessary.

The remake of course in this case is amazing, the resident evil 2 style of controls are a delight to play and the additions in this feel right at home. Finally you can actually stealth in a meaningful way - and who doesn't want to parry a chainsaw with a knife?

The story of the original is the main thing I've always disliked - I love silly b-movie horror, but 4 doesn't feel that way to me like the other resident evil games do - it feels more like a terrible comedy attempting to recreate the feeling of silly b-movie horror, which I find a little obnoxious.

That's perhaps a little harsh on all of 4, it's a mixed bag and there's plenty of the silly elements left behind in the remake, they've just shaved off some parts to bring it more in line with the tone of the rest of the franchise.

The other reason I have little bit of a grudge against 4 is the lack of connection to the overall plot of the game - the fact they just establish that Umbrella was taken down in a monologue at the beginning of the game and then we never get to see it in any mainline games is incredibly frustrating and disappointing, and it's something I hope that the remakes can address. Sadly this game doesn't particularly point to that, though perhaps the DLC does.

The main plot of the game has been polished up a lot too, with the character's having become a lot more fleshed out and interesting. Ashley would be the biggest improvement, instead of simply being a damsel in distress being an actual character with feelings and everything.

I think the remake has fixed most of the issues I had with the original, and maintains the same level of quality Capcom has produced with most of their games. While I'll never like 4 as much as many do, the remake has allowed me to appreciate it more.

Significance: 1/3

Grade: A

[azure-firecracker]

ATLA Live Action Stream of Consciousness (Episode 2, Part 1).

Hang on this show is rated PG? Did they not see the people burning alive last episode?

The fire nation theme with a full orchestra goes so hard. I need Azula’s version too.

Zuko tearing up the room looking for his fucking diary while Iroh just fails to calm him down is peak 16 year old and his dad core and I’m living for it. I, too, want to smash stuff when my beloved things go missing.

Zuko’s right, Aang is a coward which is good because he’s nuanced! Now the show should acknowledge that.

We’re going to Kyoshi island yay!

Another good Katara monologue. They seem to have grasped the hopeful aspect of her character well (and it’s clearly in Kiawentiio’s acting wheelhouse). Now let her break stuff!

Wait if Aang can fly why did he fall out of the sky in the last episode?

On the Waterbending Scroll: @juniperhillpatient talked about this in a great post so I’ll link that here.

The Gyatso memorial was a really nice touch. I think Gordon’s acting was slightly flat (emphasis on slightly) but the way his voice broke on the last line broke me. Since it’s the first time I’ve had anything bad to say about his acting, I’ll give it a pass.

I will say idk if it’s sets of CGI but the whole setting is gorgeous. I’m glad their budget let them add in those details that we didn’t get in the cartoon.

Yay Iroh comedy! Give him more!

They nailed Zuko and Iroh’s dynamic. No complaints. Also since the main trio is less funny (which is fine) the comic relief is much needed.

Kyoshi Warrior makeup looks awesome!

Ooh Suki’s mom is here! And Suki getting some more background/development, always love! Not sure if I would have called “kindness” one of her core traits but it’s not like she wasn’t kind. She didn’t have much characterization to begin with besides “cool strong girl!” so I like that she gets a softer side.

Sokka’s fangirling over Suki this is cute and also hilarious. And Suki is EVISCERATING him with her skills.

Iroh is comedy gold (makes sense since I know this actor has a background in comedy) This episode overall is lighter which I think is a nice break since last episode was pretty intense.

Zhao seems like less of an asshole right off the bat. Is he sneaky or just watered down? (Like Katara-no I won’t shut up about her).

Shirtless Sokka was not necessary I want everyone to stay far away from over sexuality the teenage characters I don’t care that some of them look over Netflix don’t Netflix this.

I like that we’re expressing Aang’s grief more overtly. Something the original couldn’t do.

I find Aang and Katara’s friendship really wholesome.

Katara talking about Aang knowing how to connect…BUT THAT WAS KATARA’S THING. Why are they taking her good traits and giving them to her male friends istg.

Suki is so cool I love her definitely no character crush here. Her literally being like “I like this boy. Obviously the logical choice is to show him my fighting skills” she’s so real for that.

“Only justice will bring peace” - please tell me Katara being the one to read that line is important because thematically it’s a very Katara line.

Aang’s backstory with people being scared of him and losing control is an interesting new touch that I think could be used really well. (Also seeing some Azula parallels especially with the “lucky” thing but I don’t think I’m that lucky).

I do miss Sokka’s Kyoshi Warrior uniform. The tension though! A little more of a mature tone than the original and idk how much I want to lean into sexual tension of any kind but the characters are 16 so I thiiink I’m okay with this but NETFLIX IF YOU OVERSEXUALIZE THEM ALL I WILL COME FOR YOU!!

Part 2 coming soon!

[magnorious]

Am I The Only One Who Didn’t Want More Loki?

Loki, up to Infinity War, was probably my favorite MCU character. He was wildly entertaining and Tom Hiddleston portrayed him with such charisma that he was more likable than the protagonists from time to time. I remember all the fanfics post-Avengers posing what-ifs, that Loki was the unwitting victim of Thanos’ larger plan, that he himself was under control of the scepter. Redemption arcs and FrostIron all over the place.

Even when his arc yo-yo’d around from actual growth to being flung back to the same damn shenanigans over and over again. Even when they kept killing him just to bring him back. The Dark World managed to be not a complete disaster of a movie for one singular reason: The criminally brief team-up between Thor and his brother. I rewatch that movie now only for those scenes.

I don’t love Ragnarok, but it’s grown on me over the years, mostly thanks to Loki. I wanted to see if they’d finally make him a reluctant Avenger. He’d have been an incredibly powerful asset to the team and the drama and comedy potential sitting right there for the taking could have made for some excellent growth for the entire core team. Imagine the potential if he’d survived the Snap and the remaining Avengers had to accept his help because he was all they had left? Imagine if it was Thor and Loki that had to go to Vormir, instead of Clint and Natasha? Imagine Thor grieving the real, final death of his brother and the rest of the team, who still never trusted him, trying to put aside their differences to keep Thor from falling apart? If Endgame was supposed to be a swan song for the original cast, Loki should have been part of it.

But Endgame came and went. And then “Loki” happened.

“Loki” happened to debut at that phase of Disney+ when “MCU fatigue” was still just the unfounded complaints of an unhappy few. We hadn’t yet experienced bomb after bomb of disappointed and disjointed messes that became Phase 4. If something was bad, well, that was the exception. It would get better.

Between Loki and Wandavision, and Hawkeye and Moonknight, Loki was the only post-Endame property I was excited to see (excluding SpiderMan). So I ignored all the marketing and waited for most of the episodes to air before sitting down to watch.

And… *wow* was that story awful. I can’t be the only one who looked at the Loki on screen and thought “That’s not Loki. That’s fanfiction.”

Can I?

Complaints about the show have been done to death but one point I haven’t seen raised much is what made me quit the show, and Phase 4: Loki was basically aro/ace for 7 entire years of MCU… until he wasn’t, in about the worst way possible.

I know comics Loki is different (and in mythology). I know he was never explicitly aro/ace. I know the MCU has never handled romance well. But we take what we can get, can’t we?

From his introduction in Thor, Loki has never been motivated by lust or romance. All he’s ever wanted is respect, power, and to escape Thor’s shadow. He lasted 7 whole years, four movies, with no need for romance. They could have written something awkward in The Dark World between him and Jane, or given more subtext to him and Black Widow in Avengers, or even him and Valkyrie in Ragnarok. Only they didn’t.

He never had a monologue about wanting to settle down with a pretty girl (or guy). Was never made to look jealous over Thor’s suitors. Was never bitter at not having a love life. Romance did not matter to his character, and no one in the audience thought he was lacking because of it. Loki was, for all intents and purposes, aro/ace for his entire arc until his death in Infinity War.

So I’m watching his little mini-series and, already, the idea of taking 2012 Loki and injecting him with a little video montage of the Real Loki’s development, and trying to pretend that will work, should have been all I needed to know about the trajectory of the series.

Then Sylvie showed up. Her with her magic powers just like Loki’s, a spitfire attitude and curly blonde hair. My first thought was: “Oh my god it’s a young Frigga!”

Frigga, who, in Endgame, had her attendants make sure her adoptive son was entertained in his cell, who taught him magic, about the only soul on Asgard he really gave a shit about when she died, and the only soul on Asgard who gave a shit about him.

The second I saw her, I thought the whole “video montage of character growth” shot was just a little bit of groundwork, reminding the audience of how different 2012 Loki was from the one we’d watched since Avengers. I thought the rest of the series would be about him and young Frigga redeeming this version of her son before he could make the same mistakes the original Loki did. I thought, surely, this is how he becomes a full-fledged Avenger.

Frigga can still die in the end, and he can get the goodbye he deserved, since I’m pretty sure he wasn’t allowed at his own mom’s funeral. The core, the soul of this series, would be that doomed mother-son relationship we were robbed of for shock value in Dark World (I still stand by that a witch as powerful as she was getting stabbed in the back by some grunt is an insult to her character).

Then Loki and Sylvie had that horribly paced episode on Purple Planet (whose name escapes me) and I picked up on the vibes going down and thought… oh no. Oh she’s his love interest. Oh they’re really gonna put him through a rushed, by-the-numbers, bickering-rivals-to-lovers plot. This isn’t Frigga. It’s really just a female him tossing a rotten bone to the LGBTQ Community with a cheap throwaway line.

I still can’t decide which kiss was more cringey, Loki/Sylvie, or Rey/Kylo in Rise of Skywalker.

“Cosmic Narcissism” indeed. Whose idea was it to not only give Loki a love interest he never needed, but make it a female version of himself? Perhaps having Tom Hiddleston kiss an actual clone of himself would have been too off-putting for conservative viewers, but Owen Wilson’s character was right there. Instead, they *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* a hint that Loki’s bi without committing to the bit, ignore an actual interesting same-sex relationship, to have him fall for Sylvie, as if she was everything missing in his life this whole time.

If you ignore how bizarre it is that they decided the perfect love interest for Loki was himself. If you ignore how they kicked Mobius to the curb. If you ignore the abysmal development they actually gave the relationship… Loki was a beloved character long before he ever had a love interest.

He didn’t need Sylvie. He didn’t need Mobius. He had motivations, he had other relationships they could have strengthened. He had a rich history, and future, within the MCU. He was, at least to me, my aro/ace icon, and he could have kept right on being that with zero effort or input from Disney. They didn’t have to slap an ace flag over his poster and incur the wrath of the anti-woke. Loki was *fine*.

Instead, what we got was a thousands-year-old mage who forgot he has powers until it was convenient for the plot. We got a character robbed of 5 years of development who didn’t once consider that the clip show might’ve been an illusion. Loki’s supposed to be cunning, quick-witted, silver-tongued. He’s supposed to be a bit selfish and arrogant and flimsy with his loyalties. He’s supposed to be a self-serving asshole until he feels safe enough to let his guard down. He’s supposed to let ego and pride get in the way of humility and admitting when he’s wrong. He’s supposed to be his own worst enemy.

Which… I suppose, by having Sylvie betray him in a scene everyone saw coming, fulfills that one aspect of his character.

I haven’t seen the trailers for season 2, but if the last few MCU releases are anything to go by, it’ll just be more of the same. I love Loki’s character, but satisfaction is the death of desire, and he should have had the curtains drawn in Endgame.

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE B

Shen Qingqiu Propaganda:

The entire series is told from his POV and the story seems like a comedy. The side stories from other characters POVs make the story sound like a tragedy. He thought that Luo Binghe hated him and wanted him dead while everyone else knew that Binghe was in love with him.

the whole book he’s using his OWN interpretation of the world to explain literally everything, not knowing that his introduction into the world changed it so fundamentally that his prior knowledge of it is less than useless. he’s like “binghe is being sweet to me because binghe is sweet to people that wronged him before repaying their slight a thousandfold, and he only adds their acceptance of his sweetness to his tally of their sins!! i have to run away forever or he’ll tear my arms and legs off!!!!!!” and binghe in reality is like “wow the love of my life my beloved shizun is scared of me still :( i should act sweet and nonthreatening so he’s not scared of me :(“ and he literally doesn’t have this corrected until the end of the book. but even when that one thing is corrected he still is like “haha okay but these other six things-“ bro……. cucumber bro………….. you homosexualized the world just accept it

He examines the entire reality he's isekai-ed into as if it's still fictional and his inner monologue ignores any "character trait" of the people around him that doesn't fit into his perception of "canon" despite everything he's done to change reality from the canon of the novel he first read. He routinely mislabels his own emotions as well as making heteronormative assumptions about himself and the people around him before he finally realises he's in reciprocated gay love with a man. It's a book that benefits being read twice, so the second time around you can focus on the implications Shen Qingqiu blatantly misses.

Transmigrates into a novel he “hates,” assumes he’s doing a good job pretending to be the character whose body he got stuck in, assumes other characters will stick to their original paths. Lotta assumptions, lots of rationalizing, lots of incredible feats of misunderstanding/misinterpreting things. His internal narration is also hysterical.

Cale Henituse Propaganda:

Motherfucker is out here saving the entire continent and then gets confused when they become loyal to him. he's all like "oh yea, they're just repaying their debt then they'll leave and I'll be able to slack off" and then he gets mega confused when they DONT leave and instead fight anyone who mildly insults them. He chalks this up to them all just being unstable. Also he casually wins a war, doesn't realize he's a war hero, and casually walks away thinking it wasn't a big deal. Fucking idiot I love him

[13eyond13]

For book ask game, no. 13, 14, 18, 25, 26. Thx :D

Ooh thanks for sending me more book asks!

13. Name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaptation:

Watchmen (2009) by Zack Snyder was a pretty mediocre adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore, from what I remember of both of them (haven't revisited either of them in a long time, but distinctly remember having this opinion back when I first read it... like oh ok, so THIS is what it's actually supposed to be like).

I feel like as a director Zack Snyder is very good at creating epic movie trailer moments or music videos with stylish visuals (this trailer for it looked pretty exciting to me at the time it was new):

BUT then once you go to the theater and try to sit through one of his movies they usually just end up being just the most soulless drawn-out superficial and boring stuff, like watching a 3 hour long commercial. From what I remember a lot of the creative and innovative storytelling and the depth in the original Watchmen comic comes entirely from how it is presented to the reader on the page, too (with stuff like the layout of the panels and the stories-within-stories "Black Freighter" chapters that were cut out of the film entirely that cleverly parallel the present-day action, etc). Definitely recommend reading the graphic novel over watching this movie!

14. Name a book where the movie/tv adaptation is better than the original: Requiem for a Dream (2000) was a better experience as a crazy edgy depressing movie than it was as a novel by Hubert Selby Jr. to me:

I first saw this movie without having any idea what to expect when I was about 16, and even though it's pretty shocking in parts and upsetting to watch I remember really loving it back then and thinking of it as one of my favourite films at the time (I think I had a higher tolerance for certain kinds of edgelord stuff in my stories back in those days sometimes too, haha). This movie has always felt bit like a comic or a live action horror cartoon to me somehow? I think that it kinda goes too far a bit and nearly verges on comedy instead of tragedy at the end due to just how absurd and nightmarish it gets, but perhaps that almost unbelievable heightenedness of it all is kind of why it often feels a bit like a comic or a cartoon to me, too. And I still think there's quite a bit here to enjoy even despite the edginess as well. I think the acting is often very good, the soundtrack and the sound effects and the stylish visuals are great, and that the whole thing effectively creates a lot of very strong emotions like tension and dread and tenderness and wistfulness and loneliness and horror. It's maybe the only Darren Aronofsky film I actually like?

HOWEVER whenever I read the book that it was based on a few years ago I could barely get past the stylistic choices of the writer to enjoy what was being said (he wrote it in the 70s in sort of a dated stream-of-consciousness type writing style without many paragraph breaks or any quotation marks for separating the dialogue or the inner monologue from the prose, which I just found really annoying and off-putting to read). And the part about the book I liked the best, which was the colourful and extremely memorable dialogue and the slang that the characters use, was taken almost verbatim from the book and brought to life well on the screen too, so the whole time I was reading it I was just wanting to hear it said by the movie characters again instead. idk, I think it's a movie I'd definitely watch again sometime, but not a book I'd ever read again. Just more entertaining and less of a slog that way.

18. Which character from a book is the most like you?

Oh, very good question! Hmm... there are certain characters I relate to a lot for various reasons, but i don't know if anybody would say I'm extremely like them, probably? Of the books I've read more recently I feel like I'm sort of a bit of a Frodo character or something, maybe... his personality and his peaceful lifestyle before he gets sent on his adventure just feel very much like how I'd probably be living and socializing with everybody in the Shire myself, and the way he handles stuff like the burden of the ring on him and his reasons for doing things and how he worries about his friends who insist on sticking by his side and acts sort of secretive and more reserved feels relatable to me as well.

25. If you could be a character from a book for just one day who would you be and why? (Bonus: any specific day in the story?)

I want to be Wilbur the pig from Charlotte's Web getting a buttermilk bath and then eating the trough full of leftovers he gets (as a kid I remember thinking the lengthy descriptions of all the table scraps he was eating sounded really good for some reason, and the buttermilk bath sounded delicious to me as well lol).

26. If you could be a character from a book for their entire life who would you be and why?

I think it'd be pretty fun to be Lestat from the Vampire Chronicles because from what I remember he never feels guilty or angsty about much for too long, and he just knows how to have a good time no matter what. Even when he gets super bored or super depressed and then goes catatonic for a while he always eventually manages to bounce back and find something or someone new and interesting to get enthusiastic about and involved with again. He experiences things deeply and in an open-minded way while still never getting too burnt out by it or jaded about it either. If ever I were cursed to become immortal then I think his is the kind of personality that would make it the most enjoyable, anyway.

[bookish asks]

[dandylovesturtles]

How did you decide who got what sense in I May be Invisible? Like why Mikey got sight, Raph got hearing, Donnie got toucb, that sorta thing? Was it luck of the draw or pacing reasons?

I'm also imaging how crazy it would've been for Mikey to be open that portal and him suddenly hearing Leo's voice pleading for him to stop

So originally my plan wasn't actually to split the senses up; I always knew that they would break the curse in the order Mikey > Raph > Donnie, but initially I was thinking that it would be more cumulative. Like, once Raph got back a sense, so would Mikey, and then when Donnie got a sense he would also get the other two. Which would have made communication easier, but after writing chapter 1 I wasn't satisfied with a few things (both my original draft for chapter 2, which I scrapped, and the progression of the curse breaking), which is when I got the idea to split the senses up. (Don't listen to the author's note in chapter 1 that said I had the story all planned out, the story has almost completely changed from my original outline.)

As for why I picked what!

First of all, I knew the order would be Mikey > Raph > Donnie because that's the order they each awakened/solidified their mystic powers, with Mikey figuring it out first and Donnie of course not getting his until the end of the show. Mikey is also the most mystically inclined so it just made sense to me that he would break the curse first. And I liked the idea of Mikey having to get his older brothers to believe him haha. I also liked Donnie being last because of the initial conflict with Donnie thinking Leo was brain dead and suggesting taking him off life support; with no way to directly communicate with Leo (and he DEFINITELY wasn't going to play feelings talk telephone), he just had to carry his guilt around for all that time until he finally broke part of the curse.

Mikey gets sight because 1, I felt like getting sight back first just felt like the most obvious progression, 2, Mikey, being the most emotionally intelligent of these idiots, would be able to see (heh) through any of Leo's normal bullshit deflections. Basically, Mikey is most able to help Leo by being able to see him, and I think Mikey gets more out of being able to see Leo than the others too (Donnie would probably dispute that but we don't care about his opinion).

I made a joke that Raph got sound because it forces these two bozos to actually talk to each other haha. But also, while Leo is the leader of the team, he still looks to Raph for guidance and reassurance. Getting sound back lets the two of them have more detailed discussions about strategy and plans. Also I thought of the line "I never thought I would be so happy to hear your voice but so annoyed by it at the same time" and I had to do it lol. Again, it just comes back to who I think gets the most out of each sense.

And finally Donnie gets touch. I love touch starvation as a trope so making Leo wait for touch until last just hit that sweet spot for me. And then of course there is the inherent comedy of making the most touch-averse character get touch as his only way to communicate haha. Though, when you watch them, Leo is often touching Donnie casually, leaning on him, putting an arm around his shoulders, nudging him, etc, and I think that contact is something both of them would miss. Donnie would also be simultaneously annoyed at getting the most indirect form of communication and the most stubborn in finding a way around it anyway so it works out. Basically it forces Donnie a little out of his comfort zone for the sake of helping Leo, so you know. ~character development~

Btw since I had decided on this by chapter 2 I threw in some foreshadowing, with Leo's monologue to Raph in the training room (where he specifically isn't looking at Raph while he does it) and his attempt to give Donnie a wet willy (and thinking for a second it actually worked). At least one person picked up on it on a reread and commented so yay!

Mikey getting sound instead of sight could have been interesting too! Certainly it would have been easier for Leo to explain the circumstances right off the bat haha. Mikey would have been equally shocked to hear Leo's voice and may have thought at first that his body was talking somehow, or maybe mind melding with him lol. It certainly would be emotional, in any case!

Thanks for the ask!

[henrysglock]

James' Working Master List

My Bullshit Theories:

Mother Is God In The Eyes Of A Child (Mothergate origins, Vecna’s mother imagery)

Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est? (Neither Henry Nor Vecna Are Psychopaths: An In-Depth Behavioral Analysis)

A Night of Monologues (Splicing together the released 4.07 script and the transcript of One’s filmed monologue. Spoiler: They’re two halves of a whole speech)

Shattered Mirrors and Cracked Walls (An analysis of Henry’s dematerialization scene, the aftermath, and a determination that we’re being shown all 4 timelines interchangeably in the NINA version of the 1979 HNL Massacre)

One Does Not Simply Lose A Gate (The 2nd part of the 1979 massacre aftermath and proof that a timeline exists where Henry/Edward did nothing wrong)

Where Is All The Blood Coming From? (A comparison between the NINA massacre's smeared blood and the carnage resulting from democreature attacks)

A Tale Of Two Vecnas (An analysis of Vecna's scorching in Dimension-X, which shows us two distinct and physically different men)

Pick A Damn Jumpsuit! (Matching up the Dimension-X jumpsuits to NINA massacre jumpsuits)

Barnes And NO!! Where Did He Go!! (A write up on the discrepancies in One’s appearance, tattoo, and color grading in the closet scene as evidence of his disappearance from the plot)

Why Do You, As The Big Bad, Have No Lines Or Powers? (Vecna’s physical form in the UD has no dialogue and doesn’t use psionic powers: evidence and theories)

So Which Is It: Night or Day? (Discrepancies in time-labeling in the released 4.07 script and how they might link to El’s 1983 escape)

Plinko Power! (NINA's plinko game as a microcosm of timeline theory and Henry's time-based powers)

The Mystery of the Move-In Date (Physically speaking, there’s no possible way that the Creels moved in in 1959)

Our Lord and Savior…Vecna? (Why Vecna/001 is God, Based On Analysis Of ST4, The Bible, And Other Supporting Media)

The First Shadow: Who Knew Whom in 1959 (Why Certain Character Were Removed From Hawkins Prior To ST4)

Proto-HeIIcheer: Who Did George and Betty Become? (Why Patty Newby and Allen Munson may be the pairing to watch for in The First Shadow, rather than Patty and Henry)

Fics:

Paper Faces — POTO x ST fusion fic (Complete)

ptolemaea (blessed be the children) — Henry’s fix-it fic (3/?)

Spider Fact, Anyone? — 1959 RPG-style ST minific

Featured Art:

Creel Siblings Outfit Swap

Creelarke Aesthetic Board

Featured Edits:

NYMPHOLOGY (ft. HNL)

The Colors of ST4 (ft. Le Monde)

Henry Creel: Brainless Borzoi

Art:

TUNNEL VISION (ft. Henry Creel)

Edits:

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve (ft. Henry Creel)

Left-Brain, Right-Brain (ft. Henry and Edward Creel)

House of Leaves (Mini-Library):

House of Leaves Initial Analysis

House of Leaves Excerpts

Creel Files:

Henry Files:

Rebuke of Apologism Claims

A Note on Script Analysis

Our First Impression of Henry Sets Him Up For Failure

The Seagull

Stand By Me

The Divine Comedy

Henry and Edward, Jekyll and Hyde

Young Henry, Adult Henry, and the Rabbit Scene

Multiple Henries: Screenshots and Brenner Comparison

Perspective On The Length of Henry's Imprisonment

Vecna as the Villain: Defining Stranger Things' Narrative

I, Tonya and Perspective-Based Truth

Henry's Unseen Costumes

Kate Trefry and The First Shadow

Henry Didn't Manipulate El Re: Soteria

Details the Duffers Must Address

The Fallacies in Henry's Spider Schtick

NINA and Vecna’s Black Obelisks

Henry and Brenner Expansion Pack

Expansion Pack!

Creel Cousins:

Eleanor “El” Creel

The Stare Runs In The Family

Room (2015)

And Soon, Others Were Born

Sleepyhead

She’s Mike’s…Cousin! Second Cousin! Lots of family in Sweden.

Luke and Leia vs El and Mike (Stav’s Post)

Luke and Leia vs El and Mike (2)

Luke and Leia vs El and Mike (3)

Henry/Edward…Anakin…

Family Files:

Heritability of Powers

Psychopathy: Learned or Genetic

Karen, Virginia, and Tortured Husbands

ST5: Which Wheelers Live and Why?

Alice Creel: Admission of Innocence by Omission of Fault

ST4 Victims: A Story By Proxy (AKA The Breadcrumbs Post)

Even if Henry killed Virginia, It Would Be Self Defense

Brenner and Virginia Expansion Pack

Pedo-Files:

Mamas and Papas: Spiders, Flowers, and Bathtubs

Karen, Billy, Virginia...Henry

Will and Vecna Expansion Pack

Will Files:

Expansion Pack

The First Shadow/Creelarke:

Creelarke Origins

IT (1990) Reddie Aesthetic Similarities

Scott's Funeral Scarf

A New Timeline

IT (1990) Aesthetic Updated for TFS

Radiationgate:

Radium Files:

Eben Byers, Radium, and ST3's Soviet Plot

Chemistry Class: Maria Skłodowska-Curie

Radiation Sickness Files:

Psionic Powers and EM Radiation

Vecna's Curse: Radiation Sickness Symptoms

ST5 Predictions

Nuclear Disaster Files:

Henry Creel Literally Nuked Hawkins

Chemistry Class: Nuclear Explosion Imagery

Chernobyl, Hawkins Earthquake and ST4's Soviet Shadow (1)

Chernobyl, Hawkins Earthquake, and ST4's Soviet Shadow (2)

Phantomgate:

What in the POTO Visuals?

POTO 2004: Film Analysis

Dart and Gustave: Love Never Dies

Secret Admirers: Puzzle Tales Connection

Anime/Manga References

Coming Soon: Fullmetal Alchemist

Rambles:

1: On Byler and Rink-O-Mania

2: On Demoslugs

3: On Byler and Open Secrecy

4: Sad Thoughts About Post-S2 Will

5: On Spore Lore

6: On The Rain Fight