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theneighborhoodwatch · 1 year

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which character do you think is the most sus and why

honestly i think everyone has at least one trait that makes me Wonder about them, so. i'm just gonna list those under the cut instead. i've gone over some of these in more detail in previous speculation posts, but i don't wanna just link to them for the 48545674567456th time, so consider this a spiritual sequel to that old ass conspiracy board i made. any links are to stuff that isn't readily available on the actual website. anyways:

wally:

do i really need to explain this one

okay i'm just gonna pick one of the less obvious things: have you ever noticed that his bio uses present tense the most? like after the little introductory blurb it introduces him as "wally is" as opposed to everyone else's "(x) was"? someone in my discord server pointed that out once and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

barnaby:

what little we learn about his relationship to wally from the website is Odd; both of their bios mention not only that they were best friends, but that this was stated Multiple times throughout illustrated pages and the like, as if someone was really desperate to impress upon people that These Two Are Totally Besties, We Swear. you'd think this would be a poor attempt to disguise there being some animosity between the two, but that doesn't seem be the case, either.

other than that, though, barnaby actually seems pretty normal - perhaps deceptively so...

frank:

has a first name that ends in a consonant and a surname that ends in a long "-ee" sound, as opposed to everyone else having a first name that ends in a long "-ee" sound and a surname that ends in a consonant.

is noted to have no canonical backstory; the only other character who falls into this camp is wally.

is an entomologist/lepidopterist (or at least an Enthusiast about those subjects) in a town where the only wildlife present seems to be bugs. this was first mentioned in an ask from 2020, so normally i would hesitate to put this here, but post-website launch concept art never shows there being any non-insect (or at least non-arthropod) wildlife, so i think it is Likely that this still applies.

there are Conveniently little to no notes regarding the construction of his physical puppet - all that the WHRP seems to have been able to confirm is that it did actually have a head-spinning mechanism.

julie:

hails from a cave in what is Explicitly noted to be the same forest that surrounds home; post-website launch concept art definitely seems to allude to there being something in those woods, or at least the general idea of julie wandering "out of bounds."

has the most detailed family background by way of her siblings having actual designs and names. her bio clarifies that they didn't live in Home, but no other characters with family members seem to need this clarification. is the implication that This level of detail for side characters is unheard of? then again, barnaby's mom also has a name and design...

can speak to flowers/plants, which definitely sheds a new light on whatever might be going on in this may 2021 concept art. i've seen a lot of people interpret the title of this piece - "liar!" - as an accusation from julie towards someone else (most commonly frank) but given that that the script linked in the february 2023 audition post establishes that julie is capable of lying about what a plant tells her for her own convenience, albeit in a far more playful context... who's to say that she isn't the liar?

sally:

her puppet is all but outright stated to have required more puppeteers than any other character.

having a character who's a playwright/director and whose house is built to resemble a mini theater in a story that relies so heavily on the fourth wall (or lack thereof) as a source of horror feels like a very... Dangerous combination.

some people have tried to draw parallels between her backstory and that of old testament satan, buuuut i'm not entirely sold on this. it feels a bit too outlandish even for me, considering that any remaining christian imagery seems to have been relegated Solely to wally and/or home.

her introductory blurb seems to have a nod towards poppy? "She’s a fire-cracker who is willing to let her imagination run wild in the name of a new adventure, albeit at the occasional expense of her more cautious neighbors." that aforementioned audition script Also all but outright confirms that this is about poppy, given her and sally's interactions there, i.e. sally trying to get poppy to come out of her shell by casting her as the lead in her next play and Clearly thinking very highly of her, but pushing her past her limits just a bit too far too fast. again, much like julie and lying, it's all in a playful context, but i wonder... sally, are you paying enough attention to your friends?

i could also make a joke about my sally/poppy agenda, but. i will refrain. for now.

poppy:

is the only walk-around puppet to not have a live-hand variant.

her puppet also apparently has no surviving photos of it? or at least not any photos of it in its entire eight feet of glory.

in a similar vein to the possible relationship between sally being a playwright and welcome home fiddling with the fourth wall so much, i feel like poppy being a recluse in a series where one of the Main Themes is supposed to be "what happens when a Home becomes just a House/what it's like to live in a decaying home" is a very convenient setup for horror - one that Excites me as much as it scares me. if something happened to her, i wonder, how long do you think it would take for someone to notice?

eddie:

his theme color, purple, is used very sparingly in his actual design compared to the rest of the cast and their colors - it only shows up on his eyelids and maybe the inside of his bag? even designs like poppy and howdy's make more use of their respective theme colors than eddie's. it being on the eyelids is an interesting choice, too, given the eye motif that's been present throughout so far. eyes are the windows to the soul and all that.

purple also makes an appearance just outside of his post office, in the form of a sprig of lavender with a butterfly on it - and, well. something about purple signifying secrecy/hidden truths, perhaps?

according to this post-website launch concept art, the only two clocks in the entire neighborhood are: A) the street clock between howdy's shop and eddie's post office, and B) the watch upon eddie's wrist. both also seem to share some design elements with him (and maybe sally?) - namely, the eyes.

and of course, his backstory. or rather, the fact that his backstory is so half-assed that it's a running gag that he can't remember his hometown and the most we know about his mom is that she has the same job and She Exists, Probably. like that's fucked up in the context of welcome home, right? we can agree on that?

howdy:

howdy is an adult and yet Not a butterfly. he never actually pupated he just got Bigger. this is never explained or addressed in-universe as far as we are aware.

and also this is in the presence of a lepidopterist, aka a guy who should Definitely be aware of the fact that howdy should have pupated by now. foreshadowing for a future point of contention? a future alliance, even?

howdy. the shipments. where are your shipments coming from howdy.

home:

much like wally, this one is so obvious that i feel stupid for even dedicating a bullet point here. just fucking look at anything on the website talking about or involving them. this house is All Unsettling Trivia.

imagine i am beaming this brian david gilbert clip directly into your brain whenever i discuss their relationship with wally until further notice

like i've said before, i don't think they're evil evil (or at least, not evil without reason) but i do think whatever they and wally have going on is, like, Not Healthy. they have codependent swag imo.

#anonymous #ask #welcome home #wh speculation #this post is 50 miles long i'm so sorry

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onewomancitadel · 21 days

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A polemic

So NaNoWriMo (the event in November where you try to write 50,000 words in a month) has announced its position on the usage of machine generation, which is that to ban it would be ableist and classist.

The really interesting thing here to me, is that this is the thing that does your thinking for you and removes your actual participation in generating writing and generating ideas. It is not in my view an actual assistive device in the sense that it enables a disabled person to complete the same task with or near the ability as an abled person and in my view condescending to pretend that it is so.

There was a real worry about the keyboard (or indeed the typewriter) interfering with the creative process of meditating on each word you must write by hand. And then way back when, the idea of writing words down as opposed to oral performance had the same sort of fear shroud it (this is what makes Plato's dialogues so interesting from a perspective of form, because it is intended to mimic those conversational forms in writing. I'm not a classicist please be nice to me). Understandably the argument here is that the influence of technological evolution on the creative process - where the process is the craft - is something we can easily draw parallel from to argue machine generation is perfectly fine.

To circle back to the most recent change, the keyboard, for instance, lets me write basically as quickly as I can think. It is superior for creative writing because I can be fully immersed in my prose work to the point I forget everything else because I am so in tune with it. I forget to meet my human bodily needs - I forget to eat and drink, I lose all sense of time. Essays written on the computer are my preference by far. Meanwhile, I prefer taking notes by hand for uni lectures and classes: I remember things better that way; I can write very fast and take only what I know I need; I don't dither, and most importantly I don't divert my attention from a lecture or discussion to the pure focus of writing on a keyboard. I also keep a notebook for brainstorming, drafting, that sort of thing. My process here resists the idea that keyboard = new = good = supplanting all else, but keyboard also very good sometimes.

But a disabled person who cannot use a keyboard is not going to have an easy time as me - so what are the ways that enable them to transcribe their thoughts? Making it fit for an individual person's disability is going to be a case-by-case basis, but there are ways of tailoring keyboards to the specific limbs or fingers that a disabled person may be able to use, or to fit their comfort needs - it will cost more than a regular keyboard, but there are more programs to support accessibility for disabled people than there were before (sometimes also for trialling the use of these technologies, like with game controllers, I've seen a lot of those in recent times) - which in part is a complicated process because lots of people have different types of disabilities. Somebody who is blind will require very diffierent support from somebody who has sight.

Machine generation doesn't transcribe your thoughts. Machine generation does the thinking and execution. It doesn't matter how you change it or edit it, you have to be totally honest about what you're doing: you're outsourcing your thinking. It is condescending to say that disabled people do not deserve to think. This includes people who struggle with thinking, or struggle with focus, or struggle with mental illness which stymies that actual motivation to write. Thinking, dreaming, and writing are themselves sources of and motivation for existence, and to outsource that, to me, is grossly offensive. (I am not going to introduce my personal background in here, but if you try to dispute that MG should help mentally ill people to write... if there is one thing which alleviates my existence in any way, it's writing).

The stylus on clay tablet, the pen, the typewriter, the keyboard, never did your thinking for you.

The classist dispute is interesting.

I see. (I checked Big W and JB Hi-Fi. Big W has the better deals I think with mouse included. Also, my most beloved keyboard I used to write for several years was $12 originally but my brother got it for free where he worked. Don't knock a cheap keyboard 'til you try it. You don't need a fancy gaming keyboard).

Most people probably have smart phones they can write on (the cheapest you can find are around ~$200AUD), but you generally want to be writing on a computer. Laptops aren't good investments in the long run and are fairly expensive, so let's say you want a desktop PC, in which case I would say get a refurbished computer like me. For the screen, the computer itself, and all the cables needed, I paid $200 including shipping, and it came with a free keyboard and mouse as well as year's warranty. Of course you might have the issue of a desk and chair as well, in which case I suggest op-shops, but if you are Australian don't write off the non-Ikeas; sometimes local furniture shops having sales are actually cheaper.

But if you are really working within limited means with absolutely nothing spare, there are library computers you may be able to access off the top of my head, and if you are a uni student, there are going to be computers available there. If the angle we're arguing is that it's limiting to people living in poverty to bar their use of machine generation, you're basically saying that if you're poor enough, then you shouldn't be allowed to dream and write yourself. Nuh uh.

This is actually so fucking obtuse lol.

In the case of a writing marathon, there is nothing weird about using the library or school or whatever to do your writing. 50,000 words spread across a month means you want to hit a little over 10,000 words a week, so let's say you ideally want 2,000 words a day, and if you're anxious about using a public space that much, let's say you want to go there five days a week so you need probably more in the realm of 3-5,000. But I think it would be fully doable if it's the event you've signed up to, and maybe you'd end up focussing better in a study-oriented space like that...

Critically the argument is founded on the idea that machine generation constitutes assistance and does not constitute the outsourcing of your own thinking. The argument normally launched against machine generation is from the repurposing of original creative material; the usage of machine generation is posited as 'sticking it to the man' punkish rebellion against copyright infringement, e.g.

this refrain was actually was the impetus for writing this post altogether, because it is so disingenuous as well as cruel and embarrassing, but I thought it was really interesting as well. Obviously that's not the angle I've taken throughout this post because I think that there is a weakness to this argument for a reason: yes, machine generation doesn't 'genuinely' remix material in the way the human alchemist imagination does, but the black box processes are kind of an ambiguous grey area. The real heart of this here is the allegation that legal enforcement of something is fundamentally heartless, not that laws and regulations in society are meant to actually service that society. It's concerning when they don't.

So it's really an anarchist sort of punk view versus my own which is that the hope would be that copyright laws protect artists (in the case of Disney it's clearly not so; that is neither here nor there), but that's really why I'm not arguing against that idea. I'm arguing against the idea that machine generation constitutes an assistive device, which it doesn't, because it supplants the person involved. Even if the way you feed an idea to machine generation is the way you've thought of it, its generated text is not yours; the machine generated it, irrespective of how that machine is trained off other texts. Even if you use it to merely brainstorm - and let's be real, that's not what's being argued here - it's offering ideas back at you the way a keyboard wouldn't.

Yes, I hate autofill text too. It should be turned off in word processing documents because it's disruptive.

The insistence is that machine generation is trained off other texts, and when you generate using those texts, you now have text that is some other author's work (because the machine generation is not thinking-feeling). The refutation to this from the pro-MG side is that this is what all authors naturally do, and then the refutation here follows that MG does not naturally transform a text the way a human would, always adding their own spin, always iterating. The pro-MG side then disputes that this difference is minimal and by the time a human involved edits the text - which is necessary at this point - it becomes something else. (That few people seemingly edit the text is beside the point).

I am rejecting this entire argument. I am also rejecting the idea that disabled people and poorer people should have to sit out NaNoWriMo because it may not be within their means, and I'm not going to dispute that at all; actually they should get to do whatever writing challenges they want, within whatever means that they require or desire, the same as any other person. That they meet those goals with different means because they can't do everything the same as an abled person is not in question.

Let's say an abled person chooses to attempt NaNoWriMo writing by hand. It's not roleplaying at making life difficult; let's say the individual has real difficulty with keyboards - or they can't afford a computer! I can handwrite several thousand words in a day and it would be fully possible, though with a lot of handcramping; it would require lots of pausing and stretching. I would get sick of it by Day 2. But it would be no less a legitimate attempt compared to other abled people who choose to attempt the marathon with a keyboard, or vice versa.

But I really wanted to square out my problems with people who launch criticism against MG and people who launch defenses at MG, because it goes around and around in circles. My issue with it is not necessarily an issue of copyright, though no doubt from a legalistic perspective that is in which the defense will be made; my view is one grounded in what the actual activity of writing is, and who deserves to have access to that (everybody) and where MG supplants that (fundamentally). Where writing begins is in your head. It is dreaming, brainstorming, thinking, and then executing that in constructed prose. When you don't do that, you're not writing at all.

#stirring the pot #I am interested how this thesis holds up lol #I fully expect that the copyright angle will predominate discourse for the forseeable future #but at a local creative level I think this is the most convincing argument #there are things beyond the scope of this post e.g. its use in the workplace #but even then I think this angle holds water

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thevindicativevordan · 4 days

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Hey there 🙂 why do you think Alan Moore agreed to write a WildC.A.Ts book for Wildstorm in the first place, considering his open disdain for edgy 90’s cheese (heavily influenced by Watchmen/Rorschach, much to his chagrin) that was all the rage in comics at the time? I mean, I’m personally a big fan of his WildC.A.Ts run, but it does seem like a weird fit, no?

Money dear boy.

"I can write this entire six-issue series in a week, as opposed to all this brainy stuff that takes me months to write an episode. It's not at all fair; it's quite ironic really. Things like Big Numbers, From Hell, Lost Girls - this as far as I'm concerned is the best stuff I've done in my life. It will not make a tenth [of the money] of this frankly brainless garbage that I'm doing for Image comics; but it will support it." - Comics Forum #4, Summer 1993, when 1963 was first rumored.

"The Image stuff is very lucrative and a great deal of fun. It's been a real breath of fresh air amongst the other projects. After wading through entrails in Whitechapel for a month, writing an episode of From Hell, it's really nice to do something...silly." - Hero Illustrated #7, January 1994

"In terms of future comics work, in terms of the serious comics work, by which...all right, I'm doing various stuff for Image, for Extreme Studios, for WildStorm Studios which I'm having fun with and which I still think of as being very valid in their way. I'm trying to create an interesting realm of the imagination for teenage, adolescent, or even younger boys. And that seems valid. But, in terms of the serious work, the next serious comic work that I'll do after concluding Lost Girls will almost certainly be a history of magic." - Feature Magazine Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 1997 (which shows how long we've been waiting for the Bumper Book of Magic!)

"Doing the work for Image, after being away from mainstream comics for a long time, was different. Image was everywhere and everybody wanted comics about super-heroes with a pin-up every three pages and no story. I thought that this is a challenge, so let's see if I can write comics like this. I worked at it for a while. At the time, I had a lapse in consciousness where I thought it was my job to work out what the readers liked and luckily, around about the time I started doing Supreme, I worked out that it's not my job to work out what readers like; it's my job to tell readers what they like. My job is to do what I like and then readers will like it. So I started doing what I liked again and the readers have liked it as well." - Comic Book Artist #25, June 2003

"the whole Awesome Comics experience wasn't a lot of fun; there was a lot of messing about and stuff like that dealing with Rob Liefeld, but I enjoyed the work that I did there. I thought that I'd done a good job on Youngblood; I thought I'd done a good job on Supreme, on Glory, you know? Some of the other things - I mean, Judgment Day - I did the best job I could." ... "But, you know, Rob Liefeld never seemed to put any enthusiasm into any of these drawings; he wouldn't put enough backgrounds or anything like that. It was pointless writing scripts for him because he'd just ignore most of them because he wanted to do the easiest, simplest thing. So, there were limitations, but yeah, it was fun to be on Supreme, on Youngblood, like I say. But by the time that Awesome fell apart, I was starting to get a bit frustrated because I was starting to see how you could actually put together a really, really good mainstream comics company." ... "I'd some great fun doing the various bits that we got to on Supreme, you know. Working with Jim Mooney, and working with Rick, with Melinda and Jim Baikie and - a lot of my favorite people. It was an interesting experience. I don't think that the ABC books would have turned out the way they did if we hadn't had that sort of springboard or that kind of rehearsal that we were able to get for ourselves with the Awesome comics." (then, apparently talking about Rob Liefeld again:) "Well, it was just so - I just got fed up with the unreliability of information that I get from him, that I didn't trust him. I didn't think that he was respecting the work and I found it difficult to respect him. And also by then I was probably feeling that with the exception of Jim Lee, Jim Valentino - people like that - that a couple of the Image partners were seeming, to my eyes, to be less than gentlemen. They were seeming to be not necessarily the people that I wanted to deal with. I was quite happy to carry on doing Supreme as long as it was there, as long as it was providing work for people that I wanted to work their way and work with, and we were getting to the stories that we wanted; I was quite happy to go along with that." - The Extraordinary Works Of Alan Moore, July 2003

Even wizards have bills to pay.

#alan moore #wild cats #image comics

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thrudgelmir2333 · 7 months

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"No Saints in Peace Times" - The Continuity of Sanctuary in Masami Kurumada's Writing

When you ask the question "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there is no Holy War?" are you really asking just that? This is another Reddit-inspired post. I like doing these. Sometimes people actually do ask interesting questions about the Saint Seiya franchise that I like musing on, I just don't put all my thoughts into a response there cause Reddit in general isn't the best platform for essays. I also often get the feeling that this kind of 'overthinking' is frowned upon in that site. Recently someone was very surprised that I made a pot joke in response to a post about a weirdly colored frame of a character, like they expect me to write essays about the most minute things. I can only imagine because, to a lot of people, answering questions online is about posturing and signaling allegiences and not really having human thoughts about something that interests you. Someone asked on R/SaintSeiya if there are Saints operating in Sanctuary between Holy Wars. You know, if they stick around during those 240-year-long periods when Hades is sealed up and the "cameras are off". And I think it is an interesting question because, again, it's one of those lost world-building opportunities that Kurumada just kind of let the other authors who made the spin-off mangas answer for him. At least in story-telling, you know? As opposed to when he has one of those interviews where he thoughtlessly 'expands' on his story's lore, like when he told people that "Cosmos makes you have eternal youth" or that Gold Saint Cosmos had midlochlorians (or maybe that's just some kind of trauma memory from something else just as stupid he has suggested about his own characters)

This post is sort of going to be about all of that. Get ready for it to be long btw. (don't worry, I threw in a couple of images)

Fertility in World-Building

When people have asked me why I chose to write in Saint Seiya when I have such nasty things to say about it, I always say the same thing.

It's because it's a pretty damn fertile world.

Yes, it's fertilisers comes straight out of Masami Kurumada's ass, but hey, produce is produce.

Again, you don't come up with 2.1 million words (so far) to say about it without there being something special about what Kurumada has done. However, I want to draw an important distinction between that being the merit of his work or the merit of his lack of it. It's not so much that this incredible tree of ideas has been planted in it, but more so that it covers so much fucking ground in terms of creative landscapes, that it can't help BUT be fertile.

Think about it for a second; in Saint Seiya, just conceptually, there is Greek mythology, alchemy, weird Muvian people, Shinto and Buddhist influences from Kurumada's martial artist background (one of his few helpful contributions), Japanese corporatism, mistreated orphans, bizarre technology, power suits and an overall fusion of east and west that is found in the best world-built stories like One Piece.

And this without getting to the astrology.

Right! This is so my dad, I swear!

Wait, what? But that's the same as...

I have friends that love astrology. I have friends that call themselves astrologists. Proudly, so. I myself have a bit of a fascination with it.

But holy shit, is there a bigger field for personal speculation than astrology? This topic is so abstract, based on symbolism and subject to cultural backgrounds that it is the backbone of countless conspiracy theories, religions and lores. Not to mention a synonym for that horrible news-channel commentary-segment culture that now plagues everything from sports to politics.

Which is to say you can basically make up shit about any constellation and chances are people will just accept what you say. You can take astrology and pretty much say anything you want about what it means for Mars to be shining brighter and everyone even remotely interested will take you for your word.

In writing, astrology is the perfect vehicle to create a sense of instant spiritual meaning to your characters' designs and actions. It's like salt; you add just enough of it to the pot and even the most horrible cooking will suddenly seem 'ok'.

And this is all because astrology ultimately has a paradox inherent to it; that its simultaneously the most powerful force in the universe, capable of controlling our destinies all across the distant reaches of the universe, while also being the subtlest and most imperceptible one. My chances of winning the lottery are virtually zero, but that's okay, because it's the month of my Zodiac, so my 'luck' is unusually high. I am BOUND to get something. Right? Good luck proving me wrong.

It's religious thinking. It inflames the senses and gives us a sense that there is order to the chaos, all while making itself unfalsifiable. It's no surprise Saint Seiya is especially popular in societies still culturally tied to their religious rituals, even if abstractly, like Brazil and France.

So when you combine it with all those other elements I mentioned, it makes it so that the world of Saint Seiya has this unusually high potential. You can tell stories about technology, society, struggles between genders, the battle of what beauty means and epic accounts of wars against the Gods, all in one setting. So long as you have the right creative person at the helm.

Right.

What all these elements show is that there is no mystery to Saint Seiya's success. It had all the right ingredients after all. It just needed to be stirred right by someone in the position to do so. But once you capture that initial success, then comes the time to invest on it, to see it to term.

Kurumada, the Idea

So, to answer this question, let's talk about the writer for a moment (or two). Masami Kurumada is sort of a fascinating example of a mangaka. I'm a bit obsessed with the guy. He's one of those creatives that have birthed an enrapturing world out of their minds, like Athena sprung out of Zeus' head, and then just catastrophically failed to understand its meaning, implications or potential, like George Lucas or the Wizard Lady. But Kurumada is also one of the most confounding examples of it, because, as is typical of mangakas, not much is known or understood in the West of what kind of guy he is, or even what kind of creative person. This is just a reality about understanding the people who write and draw mangakas because, not only do they live in a pretty quiet society, socially speaking, usually with their own local social medias to boot, but they themselves typically are the quieter type of people. You know, the artists and the nerds.

So on top of the interpretative ambiguity that goofy characters like George Lucas inspire, there is this added layer of fog around Kurumada, especially in the West. You can make up all sorts of shit about what he might have said or done and chances are you will have reasonable plausability to believe it, or find it a positive or negative.

As a result, if you look up Kurumada and his career, at least through English sources, you'll find that a lot of the writing done about it is by fans. And as a result, it looks unprofessional at best and hegiographic at worst. Conversation about his life in social media dedicated to Saint Seiya carries this weird casual fanboy tone to it, describing his art style in an odd, opinionated way that doesn't exactly scream objectivity.

This, I know, is because to the eyes of people unimpressed by Kurumada, he's not worth writing about, which leaves the fans a bit of a monopoly in the practice of documenting the guy.

Why, just relatively recently, someone circulated a story on R/SaintSeiya that Kurumada not only got into a lot of fights, but pretty much badgered his way into Shueisha to get him his job. The post paints it as an act of badassery, like Kurumada was this confident guy who refused to accept that he got the boot from destiny, much like Seiya and many of his other protagonists when they affront their gods with their heroic defiance. The story is based on a blogpost celebrating Kurumada's 50th birthday with a thorough account of his life that is arguably better than anything in wikipedia, but still very flattering (more on that below) Here's the source paragraph for the Reddit thread's statements:

A sober account of events

You could read this very normal account as the story of Kurumada imposing himself into the mangaka industry with his sheer chadness, as the Redditer did.

OR, you could read it more as an editor feeling sorry for a very passionate artist and giving him a starting shot at the studio. Something he didn't even earn, if the aforementioned contest results are to be believed. Which is far more realistic, but less flattering to the 'idea of Kurumada'.

Ah, the ancient times! When animators could just force their way into animation and comic book studios, sleep at their desks and just be allowed to keep working for these companies! Or accost Walt Disney in the street and demand a job after shoving your dossier of animations in their faces. Or in Kurumada's case, 'showing your gumption'.

This is why you should always be very careful reading accounts of people's lives, especially in 'commemorative' pieces, and especially if they're done by fans. These things are usually more akin to publicity stunts than they are to legitimate documentation. More often than not they are vague and inform their tone with their pre-existing intentions.

However, this sort of lame deitification isn't limited to random social media posts. Here's an example talking about the way Kurumada draws from Wikipedia, the wiki everyone can edit. And yes, this was actually written in a site that is supposed to be about objective documentation:

Transcript of Kurumada Fanboying, found in the Wiki everyone can edit.

I want to make clear that despite my cynicism, whoever edited this page obviously had good intentions in mind. I'm sure they are wonderful people. It takes gumption to volunteer to do this sort of stuff, to borrow a term.

But this is just shit wiki work. I don't need to tell you that describing someone's artstyle as "sometimes can seem rough, but his improvement can be seen when comparing old works to new" isn't so much an objective description of the facts, but more so a subjective, insecure evaluation from someone clearly acting as a lawyer to Kurumada's work. On what's supposed to be the world's biggest online reference book. Hence the "citation needed". And some wonder why the franchise's wikis are equally filled with personal commentary on the show and its characters. People don't just put those up to annoy rival wikipedia editors, it's to point out they've done a shit research compilation in what's supposed to be a reliable source of information about someone. And discussion about Kurumada, not just his wikipedia page, is usually riddled with hegiographic tones, where he's described as someone "who has influenced the greatest names in manga today" or "once competed with the greatest". But it doesn't end there.

Seen above; paragraph of barely-conceiled speculation in Wikipedia, the wiki anyone can edit

I don't know about you, but half this stuff feels like a loose collection of 'impressions' of what's going on, based on uncited sources and a wonky timeline of events. It sounds less like a careful description of events, and more of an opinionated online article about the rise and fall of an industry artist's works.

This is, again, because a lot of the talking about Kurumada in the West is done by the fans of the height of his career. You're not going to find the name of a man born in the 50s who drew cartoons in the 70s and 80s in the mouths of people who acquired their taste in media in the 2000s. And that's okay. But if you care so much about it, you know, do a bit of a better job filtering what's factual from what isn't. It's not that hard!

Cause otherwise you get weirdos on Reddit who legitimately think that the only reason Saint Seiya isn't more successful is because 'It got screwed by the network' or that Kurumada is some kind of chad for basically pulling ahead of a bunch of other artists that did better work than he did. And then whine about why he can't compete in people's minds with Dragon Ball.

Usually, if you want accurate, unbiased information on what kind of guy Kurumada is, you need to go straight to the source; the man himself. Funnily enough, the only stuff you can find cited in Wikipedia about Kurumada is stuff describing things he's said in interviews or statements about organisations he's worked under, etc

Now, Kurumada is an award-winning mangaka. There's no doubt about his success and impact. Most of us will never seen even one percent of the triumph in life he has acquired, and that means something. The guy is referenced throughout anime, his characters have been used as templates for other great mangakas works (see my post about how Ikki may have influenced characters like Byakuya in Bleach) and many have cited him as an inspiration for their own careers in art, from mangas to cinema.

Poster Kurumada has made for the 2010 Movie "Clash of the Titans". Kurumada was contacted by Warner Brothers at the time to collaborate with Louis Leterrier's movie remake. Louis himself has stated Kurumada was an influence in his work

I mean, you don't get at least 4 other mangakas to write stories set in your world if you don't have some kind of talent, right? Look at all the people whose minds Kurumada has impacted! Perhaps the hegiographic descriptions are a bit much, but there's a root to why they are written?

This world that Kurumada has conceived must be wonderful to delve into, if it has seen so much success and praise. Surely when we dive into the matter, we will find depthful characters, a personal story of a hero Kurumada wanted to talk about and a setting where characters have multiple dimensions to them? We will surely find an answer to "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?"

Yeah...

Well, it's complicated.

The Writing of Kurumada

For those of you who don't know me very well, I write.

I'm not saying that as some kind of statement as to why my opinion is more valid, just to explain why this topic might be important to me.

I'm also not saying that I love writing. As someone once said:

So wise. Someone should put this in hyeroglyphs or something, seriously.

So what do I care about writing if I hate it? Well, this is because there is a difference between you loving something, and something being important to you. You can revolve your life about something that is important to you and still... ----ing... hate doing it. And how limited it is to conveying your thoughts and feelings.

That being said, it does put me in the weird position where I don't really respect any kind of laziness in writing and world-building, because if I was able to spend the last decade of my life writing 2.1 Million words for a franchise I don't even respect,... then someone else not even bothering to do proper world-building and yet being in some kind of position of authority over commenting on it does drive me a bit up the wall.

And, twist, Kurumada's 'world building' drives me up the fucking Wailing Wall. I can see Elysium from how high he drives me.

And no, I don't mean just the recent stuff.

On that topic, for those of you who don't know, Masami Kurumada, in the style of such respectable peers as George Lucas and the Wizard Lady, has spent the last 20-30 years of his life simultaneously not giving a shit about their Magnum Opus and interfering with it in the dumbest ways possible. From revealing that Saga has always just secretly been a "Force Baby" in the same manner as Anakin Skywalker, to stating that the reason Shion lives so long is because "Cosmos is just that convenient that it gives you a long life", Kuru seems to be on a mission to ruin the depth of his world with these milktoast, pandering concepts.

In my opinion, however, the problem stems from much further back, right to the early days of Saint Seiya. Could the signs of his lack-of-shit-given be there from the start? Let's investigate.

And what better place to start than the 50th anniversary account that the earlier Reddit post mentioned? It was so thorough, after all. And it's bound to portray him in a positive light.

Oh.

So the whole thing was an act of spite?

Don't worry, it gets worse.

Uh-uh... okay...

Wait, lol, what?

So... he just recycled a bunch of his own old ideas together?

It shouldn't? Why not?! lol

OH, so it's not laziness, because the people he's selling these old ideas to haven't read them in his other works??? W O W

So, what you could conclude from this, and allow me to influence your conclusion with my own (just like the commemorative piece above tried to), is that Saint Seiya wasn't conceived because Kurumada wanted to tell a story with rich characters that evolve in a dephful world.

It's because he was MAD his previous ideas didn't work with the public and so he manufactured them all into a friendlier, lazier package. One that he could sell to this dumb-fuck public that didn't like his stories.

And he made his whole success out of it.

Yes, this is the origin of Saint Seiya and its writing. The foundational spirit of the story millions of people love to this day (and that I spent half my life obsessing over). A guy sitting at his desk, conceiving characters for a mangaka he didn't want to make, all to chase an idea of success after basically giving up on his personal projects.

If you're the type, like me, that occasionaly peruses the fandom for stuff to talk about, do me a favor; from now on, if you ever see someone whine on the internet about why Saint Seiya can't compete with modern storytelling, just show them these wonderful nuggets. Show them how petty and selfish the foundational spirit of this tale was, how Kurumada didn't even make personal decisions on who should win the galaxian tournament rounds. How he left it to reader surveys, because to him, it didn't matter who won, so long as it was the most popular choice.

There was never any message, any curiosity about this world he was creating, any interest in exploring or discovering things in it. It was just a sad, spiteful, last-ditch attempt at success by a mangaka that didnt even earn his spot at Shueisha being gradually pushed out of the market to make it big during an era of relatively low creative competition.

Kurumada: "Oh, they want trash?! I'll give them trash!! I'll give them all the trash they wa- Oh, it's selling how much? I mean, this is a rich world, filled with wonderful characters! Like Saga! Btw, did you know Saga came from space?"

If you're wondering why this franchise has landed in the hands of people who don't care about anything but selling merch, this is it. It's because even the supposed guardian of the story's integrity didn't give a damn. And the worst part of it is that most of the sources detailing all of this treat it like an inspiring story. Because to them, it doesn't mean anything, because Saint Seiya's narrative value, it's depth in writing, is already decided upon by a combination of its success, nostalgia and how shiny the armors look.

Okay, Thrud, what does this have to do with anything? "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?" or not?

Don't rush me! I'm getting to it!

The Price for lack of vision

Hopefully now you understand why I started this post with two sections basically dumping on Kurumada's whole career. It's to make the point that he's far, far, far from being the right person to fully capitalise on these successful elements Saint Seiya has in its soup in the long term. Kurumada is a jock that happens to know how to draw, and the anime injected enough catholic fantasy into their adaptation to ensure Latin America would always be a viable market. Masami didn't even have enough confidence in Saint Seiya to pick by his own vision which characters should advance in the story during the first arc of his epic tale!

So imagine trusting someone like that to write compelling, rich story arcs.

Or understand the differences between Dante's Inferno and the Greek myths of hell, or how they collide in storytelling.

Or taking a comment about how Shun is an LGBT symbol without doing something spiteful in return, like giving him a two-chapter girlfriend named after the interviewer's magazine?

Or imagining what Sanctuary is like for its characters when there isn't a Holy War going on?

And speaking of characters, to pull another Reddit post that annoyed me (mostly from how utterly dumb and caveman-spirited it is), some meme-manufacturing dummy only interested in farming karma made the shallow comparison that Shiori's Lost Canvas Gold Saint characters would be a good replacement for Kurumada's characters in his story.

Moments like this make me wish I was Palpatine falling down the well.

There's a lot wrong with this suggestion of swapping the Sanctuary Arc's characters with Lost Canvas, the worst being that Deathmask, of all the characters in Sanctuary Arc, should be replaced by Manigoldo. I'm not going to go in-depth about how terribly that would work, but I just want to show how the person who made the meme is signalling to a culture of people who thinks the quality of characters is measured not by their utility and effectiveness to story arcs, but by weather or not they are 'badass'. In their minds, all Manigoldo really has over Deathmask is that A) he was an antagonist instead of a villain and B) he briefly fought Thanatos, the Death God (and lost). And that's enough for them to be a 'better character'.

But while the post is just something the author thoughtlessly created for the purpose of making a number of community approval go up, it also points towards the fact that there is a generalised insatisfaction in a lot of Saint Seiya fans about its characters. I would posit that a lot of the reason so many gravitate to Lost Canvas (even though Saintia Sho is better imo) as a comparison of "Saint Seiya being done well" is because it was the first to show that Saint Seiya could be capitalised on to create a story a bit more character-driven.

Which is to say Lost Canvas isn't great, just that it's better than what we had at that point.

The truth is, people are passionate about Saint Seiya and they want to see its potential realised, even if for silly, Dragon-Ball-fans-dunked-on-me ways. They want to see their enjoyment of it validated, elevated to cultural relevance. Some of my most popular posts online about Saint Seiya are posts that... accidentally make Saint Seiya seem smarter than it is.

So, when you ask the question "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?" are you really asking just that?

Writing-in-Depth

That's a warfare pun.

See, defense-in-depth was a style of battle ordering where you deliberately arranged the outer layers of your army to be weak, so as to lure your enemy to attack deeply into your center, allowing you to surround them from your stronger positions and....

Oh, whatever. You don't care about that.

When people talk about 'hidden depths' in a character, usually they refer to discovering that a seemingly superficial character actually has a compelling motive for their seemingly superficial actions. You observe a character, see them doing something strange routinely, don't pay any attention to it, and then you discover its because someone once told them it made their spouse smile, or something. My favorite example is Senor Pink, from One Piece.

Senor Pink in his natural state, surrounded by fangirls

Senor Pink is a wild character. He dresses like a baby, has a baby suckler, wears sunglasses, works for one of the most ruthless villains in all of One Piece and has a Devil Fruit that lets him swim through land. And he's 100% serious about all of those things. This is not a gag he's pulling. This dude is dedicated to this shtick and god help you if you laugh at it.

He's also one of the most surprising and beloved side characters in all of One Piece, a story celebrated for its character twists and turns.

I'd advise you to read up on him, but not only is the picture above worth a thousand words, but you'd risk spoiling yourself a pretty neat surprise about why Senor Pink is the way he is. I will offer a hint in the image below, though.

One of the few female characters in One Piece that doesn't totally look like either Nami or Robin

The Senor Pink backstory was a pleasant surprise to a lot of people. Many already liked him for his outrageous design and attitude to his job, but it was also unexpected that such a touching story would be told about a guy inserted into one of the most villainous crews in One Piece. All his coworkers and friends are sadists, liars, manipulators, murderers, torturers, bullies and tyrants, but Senor Pink transcended his context as a character and showed a depth no one expected in him, to the point it was almost surprising a guy like him still worked for Donquixote Doflamingo.

This doesn't mean that in order to have depth in your characters you need to trick your audience. It just means that you have to show they are about something a little bit more than just their names and their jobs. We, the audience, assumed limitations on Senor Pink based on superficial context, and then discovered he had the depths of a human being worried about daily life, loved ones and loved things.

That, in turn, helps paint a grander picture that we could potentially expect that out of any character in One Piece, even the most unassuming ones. Eichiro Oda demonstrated that there is no reason to think there haven't been 1000 Senor Pinks throughout the story. Through the depth of its characters, the world building is given depth. Meanwhile;

Saint Seiya characters in the wild, doing their mating call

You wanna know what they're weeping so hard about? You really wanna know? They're crying that they have to go kill Athena during the Hades Arc. See, Hades ressurrected them and... it's a long story okay? What matters is that they are invading Sanctuary as Specters, hereby becoming traitors to their honor as Gold Saints. The honor of their jobs.

They don't even know Saori that well, btw. That guy on the right? His name is Camus. He's never even MET Saori. He doesn't know what she's like, or the speeches of motivation she's given or even who her favorite boy to whip is (Saint Seiya joke, Im sorry if you don't get it).

He just knows she is Athena. So he cries. Which is to say Camus cries because he's a Gold Saint and so he's supposed to. Not because Saori means something special to him personally. Camus has never stated anything about himself that indicates he gives two shits about anything other than moralising Hyoga for...

...for crying about his mom? Wait, what? Isn't that sort of what he's doing here?

Wait, what's going on here?! Why is Kurumada's writing like this?!

This, my friends, is where we get to the point of this Thrumblr post.

Are there Saints in Sanctuary during Peace?

So, "are there Saints in Sanctuary outside of Holy Wars?"

What I believe the reddit poster was asking, in a small way, was if there is a world beyond what we are shown in the cartoon that Kurumada has envisioned? Does the writing of Saint Seiya, or even of its spin offs, thread towards an unseen dimension, a hidden world-building depth, that we can all be confident in?

Does the story of these characters continue once the curtain closes on Saga's reign, or Julian Solo's rampage? Or does it all blink into the next conflict?

This question speaks to matters of temporal permanence of ideas in a story, of course, of consistency. In a way it's a test to wether or not its worth looking into the story a bit deeper for greater meaning, or a personal message from the author. Is the story smarter than it looks? Does this imaginary world keep on spinning after the camera cuts to black? I'm afraid to say, no. It doesn't.

Not in the minds of its writers anyway.

Obviously there is continuity the technical way, because it makes sense to be, but it doesn't exist in any imagined or thought-out sense, which is the most important. It all just passes by like Harry Potter's summers at the Dursleys.

This is because the world of Saint Seiya doesn't know what its characters are other than action pieces IN holy wars. They are power rangers, going from episode to episode, battle to battle, uninterrupted. While the occasional moment of break exists, there is no 'living' in piece. We aren't shown what these characters are or what lives they've lived when they're not, because they were imagined by someone who never intended to 'create a world'.

Tragically, even Shiryu, the best character in the franchise, only has a simple farmer life with Shunrei in rural china to look forward to. Not that we're shown a whole lot of it, of course. This, obviously, before he gets called back to do his duty.

Go to her, Shiryu! Go to "Sunrei", whoever she is! Leave this shit-show behind!

In One Piece, we can imagine what happens in the entire world while Luffy and his crew battle Kaido in Wano for a year. We picture gears turning and characters moving because, countless times, Oda, who is passionate about his world, has shown us in side stories and catch-up chapters what they have been up to, and the impact it all had in the main characters without them even realising it. Meanwhile, Kurumada had an entire storyline of Shun being Hades' vessel and ikki failing to rescue him, and neither character got to exchange a serious conversation of confrontation later when met with Hades personally. It's like it didn't even matter to them, or that it didn't happen, because the whole thing was just a temporary fancy in the author's head.

There's no continuity to things, no permanence of objects. Things happen, but they then don't continue or matter. Characters rise and fall like the passing of the tides, barely making a dent in our memory.

At the end of every arc, when Saori and her Saints pose to the camera and it all fades to black, the world ceases to, indeed, exist. Sanctuary dies. It disappears from the imagination and lives no life until the curtains reopen. An absent of war in the characters lives means an absence of meaning, of pertinence, of life and character and depth.

There are no Saints in peace times.

Thrudgelmir2333

Post Scriptum

Now, there could come the day that someone could pose this question to Kurumada. "Kurumada-sensei, are there Saints in Sanctuary between Holy Wars?"

You can already imagine what the answer might be. "Why, yes, of course, and they also hold wrestling tournaments in the style of the greco-romans. Also, have I mentioned that Gold Saints are pre-destined to become so and Aiolia was struck by a Thunderbolt of Zeus when he was a child? What? No, I don't remember who June is."

#saint seiya #masami kurumada #sanctuary #world building #writers on tumblr #character depth

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the-damnable-fool · 1 year

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Dracula (2020), the most disappointing piece of media I've ever seen

This fury has been rotting into my brain for at least two years now, so now I'm going to subject you to it. This is going to be a very long rant/critique/violent catharsis.

Netflix's Dracula miniseries is a three episode series starring Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, and John Hefferman. The show ran for three episodes and was written by Stephen Moffat. You may recognize him as the longtime writer for a relatively insignificant little program known as "Doctor Who".

Episode one presents us with an interesting and well executed premise. Jonathan Harker, scarred and deformed from his encounter with the eponymous Dracula, recounts his experience to Sister Agatha Van Helsing. Much of what transpires is based heavily on the events of the original novel, though you may have already gleaned from the name "Agatha Van Helsing" that some creative liberties have been taken. I won't spoil much, since I believe this episode to be worth watching. Suffice to say that the whole of the main cast is great, Harker and Agatha Van Helsing doubly so, and there's some excellent special effects work being done.

Episode two is, by and large, my favorite episode of the lot. Because of that, I'll speak even less of it. The entire episode is framed as a murder mystery aboard a boat which Dracula himself recounts to Agatha Van Helsing, which is an interesting parallel to draw with the first episode. Dracula is, obviously, the murderer, but the actual twist is truly unexpected. Agatha Van Helsing is one of those rare and delightful characters that comes across as genuinely witty, intelligent, and dangerous in all the best ways. There's very few times a character has done something and I've thought to myself "wow, that makes perfect sense, but I never would've thought to do it". She's a treat, and that wonderful character writing makes every interaction between her and Dracula come across as a devilish battle of wits. What's more, there's some genuinely heartfelt and emotional moments between the background characters that stick with me to this day.

Then you hit the cutoff point.

If you've liked the series so far, and have become attached to its tone, characters, and general quality of writing, you should stop watching five minutes before the ending of the second episode. Unless you want to be disappointed in the worst sort of way I would encourage you to cut your losses, switch off your TV, say to yourself "Damn, that was a really good two-part movie", and move on. It is not worth it. You have been warned.

Beyond this point there be spoilers.

So Episode Fucking Three

Up until now, the series had been doing a great job of constructing some very compelling, well written, and likeable characters. Agatha Van Helsing in particular was genuinely intelligent, witty, bitingly cynical, and had a character dynamic with Dracula that could only be described as "If we weren't diametrically morally opposed to one another, we'd be fucking". The crewmen of the ship they came in on were, while not heavily characterized, very human and easy to sympathize with. Johnathan Harker was both tragic and heroic while he lasted and, while I don't remember much of Mina, I remember liking her well enough. So, what do you do with a slam dunk roster of characters like that?

Well, you kill them all off in an offscreen time jump of course!

Episode three takes place in modern London and I immediately hate it. Agatha, my favorite character, is gone, as are all of the characters we've come to know and love. In their place is Agatha's indirect descendant, played by the same actress and so woefully boring that I don't remember her name at time of writing, and a couple of other generic stooges. There's a junior researcher at the facility, a couple of wildly shallow club-girl side characters that he pines after, and a few others that I forget.

If I'm completely honest with you, I didn't watch the entirety of episode three, and you'll see why in a second.

So the episode starts. We open up on Dracula, soaking wet and crawling out of the ocean on the shore of modern day London. He's immediately surrounded by a group of mercenaries armed with cameras, a helicopter, and conventional firearms, along with our new Agatha Van Helsing wannabe. Long story short, he kills a mercenary and escapes into the city as day breaks, has his cliche little "woah I'm immortal and experiencing the modern world for the first time" bit, and then gets captured in the sloppiest way imaginable.

Turns out, Mina spent the vast majority of her inherited money on creating a foundation in memory of John Harker with the specific purpose of locating and containing Dracula. It's sort of like the Foundation from the SCP universe except they only contain one mildly boring, vaguely bisexual anomaly. They've got money, professional mercenaries, trained scientists, a secret Dracula holding chamber specifically for holding Dracula, the works.

So Dracula gets dragged into the Dracula containment chamber, and this thing is the real deal. Constructed of bulletproof plexiglass and steel, able to be remotely exposed to sunlight at any time, surrounded by open floor and armed mercenaries, it's pretty safe to say that this Dracula containment chamber is easily the finest chamber ever constructed with the sole intention of containing Dracula. All he's got is a table, a chemical toilet, and an ipad loaded with digital books. He gets fed blood through a tube at regular intervals and occasionally gets poked at by researchers trying to figure out just what the fuck he is.

Now, by this point, we the audience were doing our best to get back onboard. Sure, our favorite characters were gone, save for the villain, and sure, the tone had taken a weird lurch with the time jump, but that was all fine. Just have Agatha's great great grand-niece be just as charming as she was and we can all have a grand time watching Dracula masterfully manipulate his way out of the Dracula time-out box. We've seen his guile before, so we're all primed and ready for another fantastic battle of wits, just like on the boat.

But that doesn't happen.

What follows is a brief summary of events that happen in the episode in vaguely chronological order. By reading it you may be made privy to the sudden and utter incompetence of the new lead character and to the wildly stupid turn that the writing took in episode three.

The Harker Foundation finds Draculas coffin at the bottom of the sea in the wreckage of the ship from episode two. For no good reason, Agatha's descendant (the director of this foundation) personally goes to scuba dive into the ocean to take a look at the unconscious Drac.

Also for no good goddamn reason, she sticks her whole ass thumb in his mouth to feel his fangs. He bites her thumb off instinctively, giving him the small amount of blood he needs to reawaken. That's one instance of complete incompetence before the ten minute mark.

Instead of recovering the coffin immediately, the Foundation pulls back and waits on shore with armed mercenaries until night falls hours later. Why they don't just nab him immediately while hes sleeping, I don't know, but I'll count that as a second instance of complete incompetence.

Drac escapes and kills some people, including a few mercenaries. It is established that the Foundation has the power and influence to make these deaths disappear.

Drac is transported to the Dracula holding chamber.

In the course of less than 24 hours, Dracula FIGURES OUT HOW A TABLET WORKS, GUESSES THE FUCKING WIFI PASSWORD BECAUSE ITS HIS FUCKING NAME, AND SKYPE CALLS THE LAW FIRM THAT USED TO REPRESENT HIM TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Do you see why I was furious? Do you see why my friends and I stood up and yelled at the TV screen? Do you see why we turned it off immediately? Do you see why I want to hit Stephen Moffat with a chair?

Needless to say, the lawyer takes a call from someone claiming to be a man that employed his firm two centuries prior completely seriously. He walks directly into the facility with no explanation as to how he found out where it was or why the guards let him past, and threatens to sue the Foundation if they continue to hold his client against his will.

The inferior Agatha throws up her hands and says "welp, guess we gotta let him go" and just. Let's Dracula leave. No consideration for the consequences of doing so beforehand. No thought given to the possibility that they might simply inform the relevant authorities that he'd killed people that very night and therefore should be contained and studied. They just fuckin' let him leave.

So lets recount all the insane leaps of logic that need to have transpired in order for this to happen.

One, Dracula would need to have figured out how the internet works within the span of 24 hours despite having only just learned that electricity existed. I'll give that a pass since its implied he can absorb knowledge by drinking blood.

Two, Dracula would have to guess the wifi password for this top secret, high security facility... Which is literally just DRACULA. Why the fuck was it set to his name? Why was he given a tablet that's physically capable of connecting to wifi? Why didn't the mercenaries that guard him at all times not see him using Skype and say "Hmm, maybe we should stop him from doing that"? Moreover, why the fuck does the room he's contained in even have wifi? Isn't everything I just said a massive security oversight for an organization that's poured millions into this containment facility?

Three, Dracula's lawyer would have to believe that an unknown, unsolicited caller, who has neither modern means of identifying himself nor any records verifying his existence for over two hundred years, is genuinely a client of his from two hundred years ago in need of legal counsel. Furthermore, Dracula would need to have some way of communicating his exact location to this man.

Four, the security teams responsible for keeping the facility safe and free of intruders would have to not only let this lawyer into a top secret facility based solely on his own claim that his client was inside, but let him directly into the main holding chamber that is under constant guard all without so much as warning the fucking director of the Facility.

Five, the director of this facility would have had to completely thrown out any alternative to letting a known mass murdering superbeing out of confinement despite full knowledge of what that would entail. They could've just fought the battle in court. It's easy to prove that he needs to be locked up when you can show the judge the bodies of the people he killed that day. Even if that's too much trouble, why not pop the lawyer in the back of the skull and make him disappear like the mercenary? Or Dracula's victims? It can't be that hard if you've done it three times this episode.

It's the kind of twist you would expect out of a piece of satire, not an actual, serious work written by an accredited writer. To this day I have not seen any other work of fiction take such a sudden and sharp decline in quality, and I doubt that I ever will again. It's as though the writers intentionally made every character at least thirty percent stupider just for the sake of giving Dracula his "gotcha".

So what went wrong?

Honestly, I think that the writers mistook their villain for the main character of the series, which ultimately just doesn't work. Sure, we love Dracula. We didn't come to watch the Dracula show out of our rabid love for Johnathan Harker, we came for the big scary villain. The problem is that a villain still has to be a villain. While we do love him, we don't root for him, we root for the people that oppose him despite the odds. They killed off every recurring character except for Dracula and changed the setting and tone so massively that it was completely unrecognizable from the first two episodes, and they did this because they thought the audience be invested enough in this villain for it not to matter. Not only did it backfire, but the ridiculous amount of plot mandated stupidity and Deus Ex Machina that it took to get Dracula out of his first jam in that new setting completely killed any further drive that I had to continue watching.

This lazy twist not only made the main characters look incompetent, it made Dracula look lame. He's the Prince of Darkness. The fucking Nightwalker. The King of Vampires does not call his fucking lawyer.

Anyway, I'm finished with my rant now. Congrats on sticking it out this long. There's no prize or anything.

#dracula 2020 #dracula spoilers #jonathan harker #agatha van helsing #dracula #media critique #long

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changelingsandothernonsense · 1 year

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Random ask: share something weird/funny/quirky about your creative process (could be writing, could be art) that you've discovered recently and went "huh."

Hi!

I can share a few things, been thinking about my painting process a lot because of the tutorial I'm making, though I don't know if they're unique or anything XD

I spend my doom-scrolling time looking for art references, Pinterest, goggles, I buy a lot of reference packs, whatever for inspiration. Sometimes during a doom-scroll I find a reference that gets my mind working and I have to drop everything immediately and draw it. It basically becomes an intrusive thought until I spit it out in Photoshop. This has been more frequent since going off of my old medications, I got my brain back.

I can not, have never and probably will never make thumbnails or practice sketches because I see the image in my head too clearly. It's not an amorphous concept, I do not feel the need to play with it. (My brother has a similar thing with his music).

I essentially use a bastardised version of the oil painting process when I make my art. And there's a heavy, heavy influence from Baroque styles since I fully admit to being in love with that art style completely. I say this as someone with zero formal training in fine art whatsoever. I just read a lot of books, got hounded by a shiddy partner who gave me a bunch of art-related hang-ups and watched a shit ton of youtube tutorials as I developed my painting process.

I start with a sketch, though when I do this I prefer a white canvas and royal blue (it's a holdover from when I used to scan all my art for digital painting, back when I used a mouse and drew exclusively anime vampire boys). I differ quite heavily from more classical styles here just because I don't like black or dark red for drawing. I still use Loomis though.

I layer values starting with mid-tones and then blocking in darks and lights, though I put them mostly together as opposed to leaving them for last. I always skip the eyes and mouth though, no idea why, it's just a preference.

Then I blur the shit out of it and carve it all back in!

Background colour-main base tones-skin-mouth-eyes-hair-clothing-metalics-background detailing if any is necessary.

I may rely too heavily on references but Vermeer traced using the world's most easy light magic trick so...ner!

Like I have 5 up right now for skintone alone.

I've used the same 3 brushes for the last 9 years and I don't want to change them. I modified their settings to my exact liking over the years and nothing else feels right.

I fix all my main lighting at the end of painting, and even out colour mistakes.

My reliance on chiaroscuro as a crutch, there's so much of that. But it gives skin a glowy effect that I'm obsessed with right now.

I actually love painting hands a lot. So I started painting a lot of hands XD

#asks #i can't think of much else but yea #a shortlist #art and creative process

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void-kissed · 1 year

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For that writing thoughts thing, the "taken life, given soul," do you have any thoughts you'd line to share about that? :D I loved it a lot! (dragonsmooch)

Ah yes, my most recent piece of writing!! I can definitely come up with some stuff to talk about from that one for you, friend!~

(source: this post by void-kissed - hey, that's me!)

Name a piece of writing that I’ve posted, and I’ll give you some thoughts and analysis of it! - Alright, let's see what comes to mind! This might get long because I'm not very good at being succinct, so I'll put it all under a readmore if that's alright.

The main thing about this piece is that it's essentially from Vanea's perspective more than anything, and it isn't always as easy to write my F/Os' perspectives compared to my self-inserts' (since, well.. my self-inserts are me, so that makes it easier). It also didn't help that I'm a lot less familiar with the overarching details of the first Xenoblade Chronicles game than I am with XC2 (which, as an aside, is not the second Xenoblade Chronicles game - X should never go unremembered!). But I tried to make it work!

For example, in the opening paragraphs to set the scene, I tried to portray the background events in the sort of way the Machina might be thinking of it, as opposed to the Homs and other residents of Bionis (for example, describing the attack on Colony 9 as "provid[ing] the Mechon with some valuable resources", not really detailing the fact that those resources largely consisted of human beings.)

I also tried to draw attention to the fact that Vanea is, at heart, a scientist, when you think about it! Hence her making sure to keep close tabs on all the parameters, and initially referring to Citri as an "anomaly" in the experiment, and the fact she took an interest in the memories she saw of Citri being a nerd and doing research and stuff with Shulk.

The other girl who got captured and brought to Vanea at the same time as Citri was Fiora, who is actually the one present for the cutscene my writing replaces in the game (although you don't find that out in-game for a while). She's also a childhood friend of Shulk, hence why she was picked out as a potential vessel for Meyneth.

The wound she had sustained was based on when Metal Face stabs her in the game, hence specifically using the phrase "clawed at her clavicle" because Metal Face's weapons are long sword-like claws. Him hitting Fiora's clavicle specifically was partially to provide some nice alliteration, but it also explained why she couldn't have worked as Meyneth's vessel here, because the soul component goes on the pilot's chest.

The section where Face Nemesis is actually assembled, and Vanea is saying lots of short sentences that are all on different lines, was mostly directly copied over from the in-game cutscene my writing replaces. This is how it actually goes, if you were curious:

In terms of differences from the in-game cutscene, I didn't really know how to add in Vanea spotting the damage dealt to Metal Face, so I sort of half-worked it into the "worrying news about a new wielder of the Monado arising" at the start. You can also argue that taking that bit out and moving the interruption about Egil to later on is because Vanea was distracted by how things went with Citri (because she was expecting Lady Meyneth to awaken, not Citri herself).

Another difference is that Vanea's dialogue is slightly expanded, and this is actually because this isn't the first time I've portrayed this scene. The extra lines added in are from the caption I put on a render I made last year showing Citri as Nemesis' pilot!

In the writing, the mechanical hands that Citri should have been fitted with weren't able to be properly fixed, which is why Vanea decides to risk keeping her biological ones instead. This is actually based on something that happened out-of-story - namely, the fact that the mechanical hands that were meant to go on Citri's reference model wouldn't fit typical MMD bone structures properly, so I ended up keeping her base hands instead. So they did quite literally break both in and out of the game, haha! But I like to think it works out, because the fact that the only "organic" parts of Citri left are her head and her hands gives moments like holding hands with Vanea much more significance ^-^

Overall, I also kind of tried to convey the fact that all of this interaction that Vanea ends up having with Citri was not supposed to have happened, at least not according to Vanea's calculations. This is why I made such a thing of Vanea being surprised she remembered Citri's name - she's not supposed to have ever gotten to speak with her, really, yet she finds herself wanting to know more about her anyway. And she does, with time! And that eventually leads its way into the beginnings of a romantic relationship! Because I love Vanea! ^-^

Okay, this is about all I can think of for the moment. Please take a picture of Face Nemesis itself from the game for your troubles, and thank you very very much again for giving me this opportunity, friend ^-^

(For context to give a sense of scale: Citri fits in the torso part of Nemesis, sitting down! So.. yeah, it's pretty enormous.)

#a call from the void #heart of the void #selfshipping #love: a wish for peace (vanea)#selfship: a love to last millennia (vanea/citri)#sort of #self‑insert: vessel of nemesis (citri)#I also mentioned others but they were not the focus #of gods and titans (xenoblade chronicles)#out of the inbox #selfship asks #dragon tag!#thank you very much again for this opportunity friend~ i am still more than happy to take any more asks that are along these lines #and will be looking out for anyone else who reblogs the post so I can ask them the same sorts of things hehe #what can I say I just like hearing friends ramble #for now however it is two o'clock in the morning and I am Tired

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jakemorph · 2 years

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1, 4, 5 (thumps up)

👍

Who's your favorite character and why?

shuwi 😊 i just love a legacy character who breaks into their own identity and gets to stick around that way!!! and her future ancient outfit is so cool and iconic even if it kind of breaks every rule of how to make a comic book outfit easy to draw. despite a flop debut her original run as the black panther was so cool and it was so cool to see a personality that was radically different to t'challa's but not actually opposed to him wearing the suit and making decisions. and after hickman took that away it was so cool to see what Coates and Okorafor did with her :) and how she was allowed to be an independent character from her brother without being sidelined entirely. usually i dont really form attachments to comic book characters i just get attached to the way they are written in certain books which was definitely the case w the Coates/Okorafor era cus i think they could make me like any characters but Shuri is a lil different i just like her. and i think the fact that she's only been in the spotlight for maybe ten years at the most lets her be fresh enough for me to enjoy like that

What's your favorite comic book friendship?

i really liked how in the 90s and early 2000s T'Challa was not really friends with any of the Avengers LOL like being a public identity hero meant he was allowed to treat the Avengers like a job while still having a positive healthy social life on the side. and the fact that Iron Man et al. meant fuck all to him made his friendships w the non powered characters around him all the more special. my first answer to this was gunna be Ross cus even though Ross fucking sucks the way Priest brings them together over the course of 50 whatever issues was just so sweet. but under that same umbrella the T'Challa/Monica Lynne relationship was also so important now that i think about it. and reading McGregor's Black Panther run even if it is like 30 odd years of dense nonsense really added such an important background for their close friendship under Priest. the way they left off at the end of BP'98 was so special and i'll never forgive the 2000s for allowing Lynne to be written out of the story to make room for more shipping 😭

What's your favorite comic book sibling relationship?

OBVIOUSLY T'Challa and Shuri... again Hudlin's original dynamic between them was so snore but again the way she got to butt heads with T'Challa on like a political level as the princess regent of Wakanda made their interactions soooo fun. and the MCU making her the brainy one made for an interesting challenge to make her a scientist in the comics too without treading on T'Challa's existing genius role which just made the comparisons between them even more compelling. like fundamentally they have the same powers magically, scientifically, politically, and they even share the same goals 90% of the time and it's just that difference in personality and that family power dynamic between them that sets them apart and sparks those little conflicts between them. why did Ridley write Shuri as the kind of person who cooks for her brother. she would not fucking do that

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mihai-florescu · 2 years

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do u have any enstars takes/opinions musicwise??

heres som of mine

-jun sazanami is the backbone of eden’s talent and also he’s the only bitch in that group who can dance. i love that unit to death but they certainly Are Moving!!

-there are so many jazz instrumental parts that pop off So Hard that are cut off in the game versions. was anyone gonna tell me about the baller bass/piano segment in joyfulxbox

Eve>Adam music wise

As for the intrumental comment, i for one would love to play a beatmap only with the jazz instrumental from joyfulxbox, i agree they cut out some really good bits. They also cut out my favorite parts from Risky Venus where both the instrumentals and vocals make me ascend (<-huge Crazy:b music enjoyer here)

Well, most of my music takes are very subjective but not particularly hot takes. I do know that some ppl got mad i like Fist of Soul. As if it's not catchy as fuck. The chorus goes so hard. The mv is silly campy too. Men would rather learn to use fire magic to fight with than talk about their feelings</3

Hmm what else. I dont actually find myself listening to a lot of cutesy songs. Ra*bits, Branco, Puffy Bunny, Ryuseitai even, i cant say they're things i listen to on the daily (as opposed to Valkyrie, Crazy:b, Undead, Eden). Not because they're bad, just not what i gravitate towards.

In the veeery beginning of me being an enstars fan, i did not care for MaM songs. I dont know when exactly the switch flipped in my brain and now Yukai Tsuukai That's Alright is one of the songs that is an instant serotonin booster for me. All MaM songs, but this in particular.

Oh this is a hot take: i often play enstars with the audio off and listening to a video essay or some youtube videos that dont require you to look in the background instead. Like when i draw. Ive reached quite a few perfect combos of songs i had never pced before doing this cuz i could focus on the note placements instead of getting distracted by the music. I have a terrible sense of rhythm, so not following the song's rhythm doesnt affect me what so ever

#ask #somnus

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1997berserk · 4 months

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10 & 24 for any fandom you want!

tysm!!

10. Worst part of fanon?

Honestly regardless of fandom, I think my engagement with fanon (as opposed to canon + my own interpretation) is pretty limited. I appreciate 100% that some people prefer to engage in diff ways than me and that's fine but the worst part of ~any fanon for me is that I think it encourages people to make assumptions ab characters/themes without understanding why you're characterizing them that way. imo you miss an essential part of engaging with art if you start with a popular interpretation and try to prove backwards using canon, rather than developing your takes from what you observe or independently want.

24. Topic that brings up the most rancid discourse?

Oh, the hypocrisy of toxic relationship discourse every time, every fandom. Probably it's not what I consider the most noxious— I'm never these days in any actually popular fandoms really so I get exempt from a lot of the most significantly annoying discourse luckily lol. But it's really bizarre to me to have always been in fandoms predominantly for works on "toxic" (poor word choice, but ykwim) relationships or dynamics and consistently see some really truly arbitrary line drawing going on. I thought about this with Saw a lot because like, I'm primarily invested in Lynn and Amanda (clearly) but I see people from various fandom backgrounds have a huge problem with shipping John and Amanda and I can't really understand that. We're all clearly playing games with the characters' dysfunction and suffering and so on, and there's such a huge range of interesting interpretations that could lead to shipping them, or not doing so. I think my favorite part of fandom stuff is that my preferred takes can be SO different from others' and I get to see different interpretive views, so I get annoyed seeing the nouveau generation of ship wars work against that.

#thank youu #ask #ask game #sorry this was long lol

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onewomancitadel · 2 years

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WOW. Incredible response. I havent read your fic yet but now I am seriously considering it. I walked into this blog thinking Jaune/Cinder was just some weird crack ship. I believed all the typical stuff I see you mention like "she 2 evul theres no way!" lol but as I continued reading I slowly started to realize that this ship made sense. A LOT of sense. Im still trying to overcome my "you cant date a villain" programming but your posts are peeling back the layers of my biases. Again, thank you.

(Context).

This is a lovely message, thank you! I'm very glad you enjoyed my response. Most of all, whether or not you agree with what I say here, I just hope you enjoy figuring things out on your own and come to your own conclusions.

The reason why I take issue with that idea of 'you can't date a villain' er, programming, as you say, is because I think it's an idea taken for granted that doesn't appreciate what an individual story be trying to say... and I think trying to unpack some of our assumptions about the way stories should work is interesting. I am a big fan of R/WBY, for instance, and I wonder what it is about my background that makes me different from others who really don't like, say - let's get polemic here - Penny or Ironwood's character arcs.

So, I think that if you come to your own conclusions and draw your own boundaries about what you're comfortable with in fiction and you still don't like villains, redemption arcs, or - anything, really - you are more than allowed to do that, and you certainly don't need my permission to do so to begin with.

On the other hand, I really appreciate you taking the time to read my blog and respectfully interact with me, even if we're not necessarily working on the same wavelength (or might be working towards that? lol), and I was (and am) more than happy to elaborate on my ideas - particularly when sometimes things that are obvious to me are not necessarily obvious to you. I can point you to posts that might be helpful (if I can find them) and tags, or I am happy to expand as well... I am actually very happy to interact with people, and getting a good anon is really fun to respond to.

The question of Jaune/Cinder as a rarepair as opposed to a crackship is something we've discussed before, and I've had an anon before say very recently to me that they believed the same thing:

Oh yeah, we have had the crackship vs. rarepair debate before (and somewhere back September last year I responded to an ask by redhoodhungergames about Knightfall as a rarepair but I can't find it), and the linguistic evolution of conflating rarepair with crackship meanwhile crackships nevertheless take on fandom precedence due to panfandom baggage (e.g. searching to insert the same archetypes irrespective of canon context and pairing them together even if wholesale inventing most of the characterisation).

So, that's rather interesting... once you see and don't just look...

Nyeheheheh.

Personally I feel on this level Jaune/Cinder works as a successful twist, which whether or not it's in everybody's personal favour, has strong motivation in favour for it. (Or, let's say that Knightfall being controversial might be a reason in favour for it).

Regarding my fic, you are welcome to read it ('it' being my longfic, but there are others on my profile... you may not want to get to those first though lol) but do spare me if you don't enjoy it. (; There's no pressure though, and really I just wanted to emphasise that I don't think of myself as a professional meta writer, and also that I genuinely struggled to intellectually articulate 'why' they ought to love each other... it's something very emotional to me.

Also, from what I've been told and the vibe I get from my readers, my fic doesn't exactly follow the form of other R/WBY fics, and that can be a good or a bad thing depending on individual taste. I'm not trying to make it sound more than it is, just if you have certain expectations, it might be affronting. I'm not trying to sound pretentious or anything or make it sound like more than it is, but why I'm wary about recommending my work at all is because a) it's intensely personal and b) I don't read other R/WBY fic and come from a literary background and really emphasise the mythic/fairytale/literary elements of R/WBY. So, what you see here about the way I talk about R/WBY canon definitely influences my writing.

I am definitely happy to expand on any more topics, I did link you the Knightfall masterpost and I can talk about other R/WBY ships if that would help.

Now, on a more specific point about Cinder being too evil: that's the really interesting part because Knightfall is linked to Cinder's redemption arc. So to understand Knightfall you need a coherent theory of redemption and redemption in R/WBY. I don't read this romance as happening independently of her redemption arc, so anything I say under my Cindemption tag is equally applicable to how one needs to view Knightfall. I enjoy the idea that Cinder's meant to be the Fall Maiden (redeeming our perspective of the power - as more than just a powerlevel - through her perspective), and Jaune's meant to finally help (and fall in love with) this Fall Maiden... just not the one you thought. It's bittersweet, but it ends on a hopeful note.

Knightfall is the thematic lynchpin to everything I think is valuable and interesting and at the heart of R/WBY, from Ozlem to the Maiden power to how the heroes will prevail and what it means to be heroic... it's one part of the picture, for sure, it's not the Jaune and Cinder Show, but I think that's part of what makes the ship really beautiful, the fact it's this essential connection against an epic backdrop.

I can never predict if something goes wrong in the story, but I do feel satisfied that things I thought were going to happen have happened in the show based on the way I intuited them... so they do have some sense of coherent storytelling and foreshadowing. The reason I bring up Penny and Ironwood is because I felt those story points were self-evident and flagged very effectively, and thematically justified... cue me logging onto Tumblr and seeing otherwise lol. So, I feel like I have some understanding of the show and why it does things the way it does, and that's why I feel taking other Jaune or Cinder ships for granted is terribly dangerous, because I've seen other things taken for granted - like Penny becoming a new main character and joining the cast and having Friendship Hijinks - that ended in a lot of intense personal pain for people. Similarly to them, though, I would never want to lead anybody astray (not that they did, but I am talking about some stuff that is very emotionally... touching, let's say), and so that's why I think coming to your own conclusion is necessary. And more fun. (:

It is very interesting to receive this ask because yes, I've had a few people say as much as you're saying, and what I'm personally wondering is how the show seeks to accomplish this (this potential change of opinion). As a Cinder fan for a long time, it's been interesting to see more sympathy for her after V8, for instance. I would say now is as good a time as any to be a Cinder fan, which is really saying something for how bad it used to be lol.

As I said, Knightfall would be a crazy twist (so would Cindemption for those who don't see it coming) and it would recontextualise their characters together... and to me I think really justify both of them lol. So there's a lot wrapped up in it that's really interesting.

Thanks again for your lovely ask and hope you have a good day. Thank you for your genuine interest and being so considerate! <3 <3

#seraphina's asks #user: anonymouse #knightfall

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