#what if disney actually had some consistency and integrity

[frumfrumfroo]

I was reading some old Reylo posts and came across a user on here saying that even if Rian Johnson had directed TROS, it still would've been bad, because of interference from higher ups (Rey Skywalker was a consistent theme across the two scripts - but imo, I think that might've just been because they were collectively mad she wasn't a Skywalker lol).

If this isn't an annoying and tiresome question, what do you think? It's hard to speculate but I do find it a bit fun, because there's always been that 'what if' for me that if Rian had done it, maybe it wouldn't have been awful... I guess the implication here is that, was TROS always going to be bad?

I'm ruminating on it a bit because it seems like Disney has kind of segmented the SW fanbases across their shows - Prequel stuff, worldbuilding stuff, OT stuff, and now the romance/Force storyline stuff. All of these combined elements is what made SW so potent, what made something like Reylo so powerful, but it's what makes it a hard brand to sell.

What we heard was that Kennedy asked Rian to do it, but he said he needed more time to write the script and Iger/DLF was unwilling to move the release date. I'm not sure how verified that ever was, but it's the most depressing fucking thing imaginable if true. The same short-term only, immediate profit and your quarterly bonus over the integrity of the company and the franchise which has been destroying Disney as a studio over the last decade or so.

I do think the most blame for tros must ultimately rest with Iger, but it's not like that absolves JJerio from responsibility for how bad it actually is.

I have answered this exact question before, and speculated on related stuff a few times, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find that post for you.

To me, if we learnt anything from DotF being a thing, it's that there was never anyone at the wheel, plotgate was totally true, and the directors were allowed to do whatever they wanted. If Rian had been making the third film from the start, I don't think they would have tried to impose any major story beats on him. The reason it became such a shitshow was The Book of Henry came out and they realised Colin's script was totally unacceptable way too late.

And once the can of meddling was open and you're back to JJ 'no thoughts, head empty' Abrams as a workman director, the suits were basically writing epIX with Terrio's incest fever dreams as connective tissue. They kept elements from Colin's version because they were trying to save time and use as much of the work which had already been done as possible. There was no commitment to any of those ideas, it's just incompetence and with no direction or ideas of their own, they were making a reddit checklist to try to please the whiners rather than writing any actual story.

Like, none of this would have happened if Rian were involved, because Rian would have written an actual story.

SW is mythology and very few people working at DLF seem to have ever understood that or have any idea what it means. Disney has segmented it because that's what they know, they want to have different product to sell to different demographics to maximise saturation and profit. That's their business model. They don't understand the foundation, the Saga itself, and its universal appeal, they seem content to let that stay dead and focus on compartmentalising and pandering to smaller, separate audiences.

[possibleplatypus]

more thoughts on ant man

So I rewatched Ant Man and the Yellowjacket presentation and it’s really striking how they sound like they’re right out of a fascist military playbook *cough*Hydra*cough*:

We live in an era in which the weapons we use to protect ourselves are undermined by constant surveillance. It’s time to return to a simpler age, one where the powers of freedom can once again operate openly to protect their interests. An all-purpose peacekeeping vessel, the Yellowjacket can manage any conflict on the geopolitical landscape, completely unseen. Efficient in both preventative measures and tactical assault. Practical applications include: surveillance, industrial sabotage, and the elimination of obstructions on the road to peace. A single Yellowjacket offers the user unlimited influence to carry out protective actions, and one day soon, an army of Yellowjackets will create a sustainable environment of well-being around the world.

But it also sounds like how Tony Stark or Justin Hammer might do a military presentation (remembering Tony talking about the “crown jewel of Stark Industries’ ‘Freedom’ line” and his “I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once,” quip in Iron Man, followed by his toast “to peace!” after his Jericho missiles decimate a mountain landscape). And it sounds a lot like Tony’s “suit of armor around the world” that he still thought he was right to create, even after Ultron. 

Not to mention Nick Fury gushing about Project Insight (“These new long-range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles per minute. The satellites can read a terrorist’s DNA before he steps outside a spider hole. We’re gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.”) or Alexander Pierce justifying all of Hydra’s atrocities to Bucky (”Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow we’re going to give it a push. But if you don’t do your part, I can’t do mine. And Hydra can’t give the world the freedom it deserves.”)

I haven’t watched Far From Home or No Way Home, but I understand that EDITH is essentially Project Insight lite, which... 🤢. And let’s not forget the Falcon suit that Wakanda gives to Sam in TFATWS, which basically does the same thing. 

And all of these elements could have come together for a genuine critique of the American military industrial complex and the surveillance of private citizens, but Disney would never say anything meaningful about that, of course, other than the technology is Good as long as it’s in the Right Hands, even when it shows us how bad this technology actually is in other movies.

[twh-news]

Interview: Makeup Artist Douglas Noe on Loki’s Looks Through the Years & Creating Anew for ‘Loki’ [EXCLUSIVE]

Douglas Noe has been in Hollywood for three decades. An award-winning makeup artist, he’s worked on projects such as World War Z, Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man 3, I Saw the Light, and Birth of a Nation. On top of these impressive credits, he’s also been Tom Hiddleston’s personal makeup artist since joining the MCU in The Avengers, designing all of the looks for Loki’s subsequent appearances.

Noe has been nominated for three Emmys with one win, and five Makeup Artist and Hairstylist (MUAHS) Awards resulting in two MUAHS awards. His skills include creating making natural and period looks, prosthetics, hair, and tattoos.

Along with being the head of the makeup department for the most recent Disney+ series Loki, Noe is also creating looks for the new Netflix comedy series True Story starring Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes.

We had a chance to chat with Douglas Noe about his work on Loki, The Avengers, the incomparable value of teamwork on set, and most importantly, Richard E. Grant.

Nerds and Beyond: So you started your Marvel journey with The Avengers, but what drew you to your field in the first place? And how did you get your start?

Douglas Noe: Star Wars was a huge influence to me as a young boy, both sketching and drawing, and a little bit of sculpting but not much. Cut to 1983, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” comes out and I find a magazine called Fangoria on the newsstands where I can order blood and wax and pencils and fake hair. So, I started playing with these things. I was also taken with the horror movie craze that was happening in the early 80s — Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, and others, obviously.

In High School, in 1984, I joined choir thinking I would get an easy credit, but my voice had not changed. So the choral instructor had been waiting for a boy soprano to do a theatrical opera presentation. So with that I sang the lead, I quit choir after that, because my peers were merciless, but, I learned the world of theatrical makeup which I hadn’t been introduced to.

I did years of theater. I went to a performing arts high school — it’s called Fort Hayes School for the Performing Arts in Columbus, Ohio — graduated, went to beauty school, and continued working in Ohio doing industrial, commercial, theater, and opera [makeup]. Worked for Maybelline and Revlon, got restless, worked in Cincinnati on my first film in the summer of 1990, it was July so 31 years ago, A Rage in Harlem. And my boss said you come to Los Angeles, I’ll make sure you get on your feet.

Nerds and Beyond: So you mentioned that it’s been about 31 years since your career started, what’s changed over the course of those 30 years in your field?

Douglas: How much time do we have? I’d say the biggest, biggest change would probably be the way we make these things now. Although another large change, more specific, would be the materials that we use. There’s a constant evolution and reinvention of almost all aspects of the materials that a makeup artist uses. That said, I have to shine a light on the way we do things now with the onset of digital and digital cameras. Shooting on film now has almost completely fallen by the wayside. Film was very forgiving, quite frankly, and now it’s not so forgiving. And because of that, the bar has been raised. The wonderful thing about this journey is watching my peers just get better and better and better, my colleagues rising to meet the challenge of not having anything to hide from with this new way we make films.

Nerds and Beyond: So, sometimes you kind of throw prosthetics to the wayside in favor of a more traditional makeup. How do you make that decision on which one to go with?

Douglas: That’s an excellent question. The decision is based purely on what are we going to see. That’s where I start, what is the lighting? I have a conversation with the director of photography and I find out what is the dynamic. Obviously, I know from the script whether it’s an interior or exterior, or if we’re exterior but we’re going to be on a stage, if it’s day or night. These variables all play into my decision as to whether or not I should rely on my theatrical experience and ability to paint 2D to appear 3D, or go ahead and make small prosthetics and put them where I need to put them and use actual prosthetics in lieu of paint.

That has everything to do with lighting, locations, logistics, and because most of his [Loki’s] wounds appear on his arm and some on his face in the Void, it’s all very moody and very dark. And again, the theatrical quality of the paint is not going to be altered by the changing light, it’s just going to react the same way the rest of the face is going to react. It’s purple light, it’s going to make everything have a purple hue. There was no accounting for any correction that didn’t need to be done. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. It’s real.

Nerds and Beyond: So, you did make up for not only Tom on Loki, but you helped plan out the looks for everybody?

Douglas: Yes, what I do is I surround myself with strong talent. It’s all about team. I designed Wunmi Mosaku, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia DiMartino, and Tom [Hiddleston]. Regarding the rest of it, Neil Ellis, both Dennis Liddiard and I, added to the elements of his scars and wounds, which you would only see in close-ups.

The rest of it, the parameters are set — Blade Runner to Mad Men — and stay in those confines. And obviously, I choose color palettes for the women and there are parameters set for the men, but then it’s about team. I’m a big one on a team and not putting my thumbprints on other people’s work, but rather build other people up so they feel like they own what they’re doing.

My team consists of artists that also have stronger resumes and quite frankly, skills that exceed mine. It’s the mutual trust that allows us to keep a high level of artistic integrity in every aspect of the job. It also means I get the very best from my team, and it shows on the screen.

So, I didn’t have every look in my hand. Dennis Liddiard designed the Mobius character and I had Ned Neidhardt run with Gugu and turn up the volume on some of the elements that she already possesses that we can play with. Her eyes and lips, I think Ned turned the volume on both. And because we’re shooting in order, it’s a progression in the makeup you did.

Nerds and Beyond: When it came to Sylvie and Loki, when you when you’re doing those, did you try to kind of plan them both to have any similar things to give them a Loki look?

Douglas: It’s a fair question, but the answer is no. So again, I think the characteristics and traits that were going to be similar among them, aside from wardrobe and costume hints, were all character driven. And I did nothing with the makeup and hair to try to make them look or even closely resemble each other.

Nerds and Beyond: I want to kind of back up a little bit to Tom in the first Avengers film. That was by far one of his most standout looks. Can you tell me anything about what went into the creation of that absolutely tormented, haunted look that he had throughout that entire movie?

Douglas: Yeah, and that’s probably one of the elements that, because the character has evolved, we kind of left with Avengers because by the end of Avengers, and we carried it into Endgame, he does have a bit of an edgier look in Avengers, and not many people pick up on it. But the reality is he’s a little sculpted in Avengers.

I remember sculpting his cheekbones and temples, and doing a little play on his forehead for when he’s in the cell on the Helicarrier carrier with all that overhead lighting. I did like a little devil horn shadow, which is so subtle. The only person who’s going to notice is anybody who looks back at it and having read this and knows what to look for, but it is so nuanced and so subtle. And that’s the only place I think we did that. But the rest of him is very much chiseled and sculpted, but it’s a light touch.

And I think, again, as he evolved through the Marvel Universe and into the other movies that was something that was easy to leave behind, because I think that look played directly into his evil desire to rule over Earth. We rested that design element with that storyline.

Nerds and Beyond: It’s very clear too and I’ve always loved looking at that, because I’m a huge fan of the character. I’ve always loved kind of comparing how he looked in that movie to the rest of them.

Douglas: You’re on to me!

Nerds and Beyond: I’m not! I swear [laughs] So, what’s your best method for making the actors comfortable in the makeup chair? And with the final outcome?

Douglas: It’s dialogue; listening, talking to them, talking to their representation, whether it be an agent or a manager, and doing my homework and doing my due diligence to find out what’s going to make them comfortable the moment they walk through the door. I do my homework on them. It’s not just IMDb, it’s an internet search. So, I spend some time on the web and find out who these folks are, and if I find out, for example, they’re not one that likes to talk a lot, well, the writing’s on the wall, we’re not going to talk a lot, we’ll cut to the chase and get to the point. But also, it’s about building a rapport and building a relationship. Also, knowing that, I’ve said this in previous discussions, knowing it’s necessary to get out of the way.

Like if, for example, I’m not a proper fit for somebody, I have to be plugged in, I have to be aware enough to understand that it may not be working before somebody says to me, “Hey, this isn’t gonna work.” So it’s just about being open, especially as Tom’s personal on these projects and running the department, knowing that I don’t get to do everybody. I don’t get to put my thumbprint on other people’s work. Because not only is that disrespectful, it’s very often unnecessary, because I hire good people. I hire contemporaries and peers. Truly, you’re only as good as your weakest crew member. I surround myself with good people.

So, take Owen Wilson, for example, it would have been wonderful to do Owen’s makeup, but there were times when he was not going to be shooting with Tom and I was going to need to be ready for Tom or available to Tom, so it didn’t make sense. So I never touched Owen, I had Dennis Liddiard design that look and run with it. And then Ned Neidhardt took over that look when Dennis had to depart. That’s just one example of not trying to do everything.

Another one was the Classic Loki. I wanted to do Richard E. Grant’s [makeup] so bad, I can’t even tell you. I’ve been a huge fan since 1987. I wanted so badly to bring that full circle, didn’t make sense. It just didn’t make sense. So again, I never touched him. It wasn’t necessary. Ned was always there. And I think the same thing happened to me on Ragnarok reshoots, which I ran in Atlanta again with Dennis Liddiard. I wanted so badly to do Sir Anthony Hopkins makeup, but it didn’t make sense. So I was happy to hand it off to Bill Myer.

Nerds and Beyond: Oh man, I loved Richard E. Grant in this show so much.

Douglas: He’s amazing.

Nerds and Beyond: He’s so good!

Douglas: He really is. And he’s that good in person. He’s just so fun and interesting and alluring and attractive. He’s such a wonderful, wonderful person and, of course, a phenomenal actor.

Nerds and Beyond: I was watching little videos that he posted and he just seems like the warmest person.

Douglas: You know, just one last tidbit about Richard Grant is he’s got wonderful stories and as he’s telling them he’ll often stop and pause and just laugh. Just laugh, not for the sake of the stories or for anybody that he’s telling the story to, but because recounting the story brings him true joy. So he’ll stop and embrace that joy. Oh, it’s so wonderful.

Nerds and Beyond: That’s so amazing to hear. What is the most memorable job that you’ve done?

Douglas: The most memorable … That’s a tough one because I have so many fond memories of so many projects. The first Avengers film was memorable because there was a buzz, there was a vibration, a frequency, that was in the air when we were shooting that. We kind of knew we were making something big and something special. I don’t think any of us knew how big or how special it would be, but that certainly is one of the most memorable and most special projects.

I’m pretty good about focusing on the positive aspects of all these things, regardless of how difficult the project may be for whatever reason. The pros always, always heavily outweigh the cons, but I have a lot of wonderful, memorable experiences. Another one, it’s the polar opposite only because of the conditions in which we shot, but Birth of the Nation was one of the most memorable and exceptional experiences of my career. I was on the wrong side of 40, had 25 years of experience, and had still never worked so hard in my entire life. We did a 50-day shoot in 27 days. So proud of the work we did.

It was 100 degrees with 99 percent humidity, we shot it in the summer in Georgia, in Savannah, so it was hot, humid, and just getting the makeup necessary to be on individuals to stay put was its own challenge. And then the other challenges only added to that. But Nate Parker, the director, writer, producer, and lead actor, he is a special human being. And he was inspiring from start to finish. Usually, the first people in are the teamsters, transport department, and usually I’m second. He beat me in almost every single day. He’s in three hours before he needs to be. That was a very special experience.

Nerds and Beyond: Finally, are you excited about the news of Loki Season 2?

Douglas: I’m beyond thrilled! I invite being in the dark a little bit, I kind of like surprises and I like not knowing, so I suspected, but hearing the news confirmed, I was thrilled, naturally. What are they going to dream up? This is amazing. How do you top season 1 of Loki? That’s the burning question.

[haztobegood]

Fic Writer Questions!

Thank you for tagging me @alienfuckeronmain!

1) How many works do you have on AO3? 45

2) What’s your total AO3 word count? 263,147

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? I’ve tagged 9 fandoms on ao3, but really it’s more like 2 because a lot of the fandoms are 1d-adjacent.   

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Nailed By Louis 

The Prince and the YouTuber 

Take On Me

Making Waves

To Wear Your Love

5) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

So far, it’s my Zouis spy fic because it still has an ambiguous ending, until I can finish writing the rest of the story.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I love a good happy ending, so almost all of them! One of my favorite endings I’ve written is for my alpha!Niall/beta!Greg James fic, Now All The Clouds Been Lifted because it wrapped up the fic so nicely and was inspired by something Greg actually posted on instagram. 

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Love and Other Antidotes is the only one so far! I wrote it as a pinch hitter for the Disney Direction fest. It’s a modern Emperor’s New Groove au with Harry/Louis, but kept Kronk and Yzma as characters! It was incredibly fun to step into a cartoon world and I was so impressed at how it all came together.

8) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes, sometimes. I’m currently working on part 3 of the pearls series, but I’m really struggling to find any motivation to write the smut part of the pwp 😅

9) Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I do respond to comments, but I usually leave them in my inbox for a bit and savor them. 

10) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I haven’t, but I have had a couple of people leave some meh comments in the bookmarks

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, I personally don’t allow translations

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, my motivation to write is not very consistent so I would be nervous to

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

I’m pretty one-track-minded when it comes to fandoms and 99.9% of fic I read/write is from 1D fandom. I mostly read/write larry fics, but have started to embrace rare pairs in the past few years! 

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I have 3 main ideas that come to mind

Calling For You - this is the very first larry fanfic I started to write back in 2017, but I never figured out the main conflict so it’s just an outline of random notes

Holy Water Flows - I started plotting this long, intense larry sick!fic based on a prompt I got from the 1000 feelings challenge, but the fandom’s view of several tropes I planned to include scared me away from actually writing it

Covid Island Research Fic - this would be a gender-swapped larry fic with biologist!Louis and geologist!Harry living on a remote island throughout 2020 to avoid the pandemic while Louis monitors the nesting of the  endangered seabirds and Harry researches the increasing erosion that is threatening the island.

16) What are your writing strengths?

I’m usually great at writing dialogue between characters and I love coming up with crazy and ridiculous plots.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

I always forget to track the characters’ motivations and emotions. Sometimes I get stuck on a scene and have to just sit and think until I figure out why a character is doing X so that I can get them to Y. 

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I would try to avoid it unless I had help from someone that actually spoke the language.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The first fic I posted was for 1d but I had one fic for the phandom that I wrote and didn’t post 

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I love so many of my fics for different reasons! But I’ll pick one to share. Changing Weather (For Worse or For Better) is a 5+1 times fic and I got one of my favorite comments ever on it! Someone mentioned that the weather is a character in this fic, and I didn’t realize until they pointed it out, but the weather is so integral to the fic, it really is like its own entity.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

I tag @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @beelou @crinkle-eyed-boo @evilovesyou @laynefaire @daggerandrose @runaway-train-works @reminiscingintherain @lululawrence @louandhazaf @kingsofeverything @allwaswell16 @fallinglikethis @disgruntledkittenface @zanniscaramouche @mercurial-madhouse

[last-flight-of-fancy]

yknow.. i kinda wanna talk about the difference between a retcon and a reveal for a minute, just cause i see those words thrown around a lot (particularly wrt kh) and i think a lot of people don’t really grasp the difference between them sometimes, so i just wanna delve into it a bit if ya’ll don’t mind indulging me.

im also going to preface this by saying that none of these are inherently bad (yes even retcons). and all are probably going to be present in any story medium the longer it exists. all the examples are gonna be kh based bc that’s where my brain lives and bc it’s such a long running series it has plenty of examples of both

so first off. retcon

a Retcon is short for retroactive continuity. it’s when a writer explicitely changes past parts of a story to suit their current needs (or ignores them). this is the one that’s usually used with the most derision, and well.. it’s because yeah, the most glaring retcons tend to be handled badly. sometimes a thing needs to be retconned however. like tifa saying a slur in the OG ff7. we did not need that.

retcon example: in Dream Drop Distance, Young Xehanort lists the three rules of time travel, which is integral to the Big Villain Plot going forward. 1. you cannot take your body. 2. you will not remember your experiances in the other time. 3. you can only travel to points where some version of yourself already exists. however previously in kh2, sora visited Timeless River (Disney Castle in the distant past) and appears to have broken all three of these rules, having not existed on that world (or probably at all that far back), taking his body, and remembering it all afterwards (probably? i think).*

*this being said there remains every possibility that this could still end up being explained somehow. it’s kh it can do that.

A Reveal on the other hand is when the audience is deliberately misled about what is happening in the story, only to have the truth shown later on. Most people know this as a Twist, but many Twists i feel lack the buildup and foreshadowing a good Reveal has (imo). KH is littered with reveals, reveling in it’s winding and confusing plot (despite what people say, it has extremely consistent internal logic considering the length and breadth of the series, it’s just presented in a confounding and often nonlinear manner) to keep people guessing.

a good reveal example (and one that many accuse of being a retcon), is that nobodies can regrow their hearts, which was given in DDD. accusations that this is a retcon are innacurate due to the sheer amount of evidence from as early as Chain of Memories (where nobodies as a concept were first introduced, though i don’t beleive they use that name or explain what they are until kh2) that nobodies could in fact feel things. the reason this gets called a retcon is i think largely because many, many characters outright state it as fact that nobodies cannot feel, and the audience simply goes along with it. however, most of these characters, while they do beleive in their words, are wrong (yen sid, most of the Org13), and the remainder are outright lying (xemnas, xigbar). The key difference is whether clues were left for the audience to follow, or if in hindsight the new information makes perfect sense (which it does).

using old things in new ways is a thing i don’t have a snappy word for but i think is a further subsection of this, bc it’s neither really a retcon nor a reveal in that it does not have the necessary forethought to be a reveal but it doesn’t actively contradict anything stated previously either like a retcon. this one is also harder to pin down as it often requires Word Of God to be confirmed, and otherwise is mostly speculation. you can kinda get a feel for this sort of thing though, if you’re paying attention. some writers are better at it that others, and as always this can be subjective. (personally i think nomura is a mastermind at this sort of thing, incorporating old, completely innocuous things in incredible new ways almost seemlessly, and giving them a whole new context without breaking the narrative)

A good example of this would be the Hollow Bastion science pods, which existed in a single room in KH1 and were left completely alone for another 17 years (*17? ish). Given that the first game in the series is more or less completely self contained and the possibility of it’s continuation not at all a guaruntee, i am inclined to doubt nomura had planned that small detail so far in advance when khux probably hadn’t even been seeded as an idea yet.

and finally Not Anything Actually is when Word Of God says something one time in an interview ten+ years ago and then had a better idea later. that’s just called writing, it’s not a retcon stop calling it a retcon.

[babysizedfics]

Back at it again with a couple more HC prompts, which imma just dump in one, and you can pick which ones you want. Puddles with the kiddos, family baking sessions when both are regressed, Ro wanting attention whilst Logan is reading, so climbing all over his book, how their reactions to new stuffies differ, regressed versus non-regressed birthdays.... Etc... 👍

okokokokok buckle up everyone

Puddles:

this is the only one where i have to be like .. i don't think so :0 see virgil can get very nervous when it rains because he's so anxious about 'is it gonna storm? will there be thunder? will we be hit by lightning? will there be a flood? what if one of us slips and hurts our head??' that he just cannot relax enough to be able to jump around in puddles because 'WHAT IF I SLIP IM GONNA DIE' and the wetness on his skin sets off the wrong sensory feelings so jumping in muddy puddles is a no for him (as much as he loves peppa pig)

and roman is a fussy little thing, he may not care as much for his appearance when he's small but i think he will still be conscious enough to notice if he gets wet hair and muddy clothes - plus i feel like roman's mood is quite tied to the weather, on dark days he tends to fee a little more gloomy, ao again not sure about this especially if he wouldn't have his baby brother there with him

Baking:

OH BOY so roman is a great cook okay? like chef level he has honed his skills so that he can make romantic meals for handsome princes, but baking? nu uh, too technical, he ain't got time for that. Patton is the baker of the house and makes cookies and cupcakes way too often for Logan's liking (but secretly he loves them of course, he's just concerned for everybody's teeths) but both CGs will cook dinner when the boys are little

When the boys are regressed they're not allowed much in the kitchen anymore. after roman tried to make breakfast in bed for his CGs and started a very small but very real fire he has lost some kitchen rights (ficlet coming to you at some point perhaps) and is not allowed in the kitchen without at least one CG. even if he can switch so quickly between headspaces, he ends up either 1) too stubborn to come out of little space, or 2) a kittle bit clumsy when he comes out of it

but to make up for roman being upset by this slight loss of independence (he is a big kid after all) patton and he do weekly baking sessions! and there's always a theme. most recently they had animal crossing themed cupcakes, a little mermaid themed jello (not technically baking but roman wanted to but little fish gummies in the jelly), and... the next one is a secret because i might put it in chapter 7 (: in fact chapter 7 will feature the first instance of this tradition!!

virgil has pyrophobia (fear of fire) and so is never keen to be in the kitchen while there's food preparation going on (but he was allowed to help with the under the sea jello!!) so roman and pattons baking sessions are an excuse for mama and baby bonding time! the tradition didn't start until after virgil's separation anxiety from patton had eased up a little so luckily there's barely any tears

mama baby bonding time consists of but is not limited to: sitting on mama's lap, doing puzzles together, (vee trying to suck on a puzzle piece and crying when he's told not to), mama reading baby books to vee, vee touching all the textures and flaps in the baby books, snuggles

Ro wanting attention while Lo is reading:

this is 1000% canon!! later in the series logan will often be at work in his room and have the boys with him because patton is busy with something or another. they realise they really do need to keep working for thomas' sake but manage to integrate the boys' littlespaces into it. Eg. logan dangling baby plastic keys from one hand to amuse girgil while he's typing with the other

but when it's quiet time, when patton is in virgil's room because the baby is having a nap and papa wants to watch over him, when roman hasn't been little because he's been working or simply not in the mood earlier that day, when logan is just chilling, just reading a stephen hawking book in the living room, when he's literally just vibing, roman can and will launch himself into logan's lap sending the book flying and logan isn't allowed to tell him off because 'I'm little now! i want attention now!! hi mom!!!!'

New stuffies:

AHHHHHHHHH this this this is so so cute!!

roman never used to care much for soft toys before okay? before he was ever a little sure he appreciated disney action figures (he used them to block out scenes he wrote for theatre productions and screenplays and fanfiction) sure he always had a soft spot for Mrs Fluffybottom his childhood toy, but she always just sat on a shelf, he never fet the need to cuddle her or play with her

but when he realises he's little, when he starts playing with vee, when he sees how much vee cares about his soft animals, when patton and logan buy him a present to welcome him to the littlespace family and it's a golden teddy bear (soon to be named Aladdin) with big brown beady eyes and a satin crimson bow around its neck? yeah big kids love stuffies too

and now whenever roman is gifted a new toy (soft or otherwise) he essentially gets the zoomies!!! his brain is going a million miles a minute with all the game possibilities and with the excitement of NEW PRESENT!!! and with the happiness that his caregivers thought about him and he's been a good enough boy to deserve gifts?? yeah he's so so so excited he canNOT stand still he runs around the house for a whole hour flinging his new toy around (yeah he's a bit rough with them and there's been more than one torn limp or loose eye but he doesn't care it just shows how much they're loved!)

Now virgil: this boy is very very very emotionally attached to his stuffies. when he was a "dark side" he couldn't have much soft stuff because it just went against everything the household stood for and he couldn't risk the others finding out about how not-scary he really was, but he allowed himself a single stuffed rabbit that was easy to hide and that he loved with all of his being. it was his security blanket and his one item that could offer him comfort in a oanic attack and his only posession that he felt was true to him and not true to the scary facade he put up to scare thomas and the "light sides" into listening to him

without spoiling anything, that bunny was left in that house when he moved to the "light sides"

and in his new home virgil started collecting soft toys whenever he needed comfort. everytime he felt unwanted, every time he had an anxiety attack, everytime there was a thunderstorm predicted for the next week he would get himself a new soft toy because that was the only way he knew to comfort himself. needless to say he's got a pretty big collection now. you might think he became desensitized to new toys because of how many times he had gotten himself a new one, and you might be partly right.

that is until for the first time ever he is given a stuffie by someone else... when logan buys him a soft toy in apology for accidentally revealing his regression to everyone ((yes i am writing this fic!))

it wasn't really logan's fault, virgil should have been more aware he should have been more careful he should have hidden it all better but the logical side was guilt-ridden nonetheless. virgil hadn't expected much to be honest, the sincere apology was enough for him

but when logan blushed and shyly opened a box and handed him a black cat stuffie? virgil had to fight very very hard not to outright sob on the spot. he simply took it, thanked logan shakily, and prayed that logan didn't point out the fact that tears were falling onto the fluff of his new stuffed friend Jiji

now whenever he gets a new toy it's different than before - it's not because he's upset and needs comfort, it happens less often now but it's more special, it could be for a holiday or as a way of saying he's been very sweet or just because patton simply couldn't resist this one because look at its cute lil eyes! but each and everytime he knows when he is handed a new toy by one of his family members it really means 'i love you'

and he buries his face in its softness - it used to be to hide his tears, but now he just can't help but squeeze it tight and close and let the feeling of love wash over him

Birthdays:

yknow that episode of steven universe where steven wears a regal cape and a golden crown? yeah that's roman whether he's little or not

seriously this kid is very much the 'it's my birthweek!' type

lots of singing, lots of 'but i'm the birthday boy!!' to try to get thtings he really shouldn't be getting (like a third cookie) (and yes patton caves every single time) (patton is eventually banned from making decisions on romans behalf during his "birthweek")

there's not much difference at all between little romans birthday and big romans birthday, he's just an excitable boy whether he's a kiddo or not - this may or may not make the caregivers question whether maybe he actually was a little before virgil's regression was revealed

(irrelevant but patton definitely makes the pun 'you're a little? a little what? finish your sentences silly billy!')

virgil hates his birthday. hates it.

too much attention, too many things that could go wrong, too much pressure on it being a good day. what if his anxiety is bad that day? what if he doesn't want everyone watching him open presents? what if he's genuinely terrified that people think walking towards him with a big grin, singing at him, and carrying a cakeful of literal fire is a somehow a fun activity??

when he first moved into the house he made it very clear that he does not have a birthday so don't even try to throw him a party

naturally roman and patton were devastated, but after a failed attempt at getting virgil to enjoy his birthday they obeyed logan's request that they not try to push the idea on virgil any further

but the first birthday after they become a little family, it's a bit different

they don't push it, not at first, but virgil does wake up to patton already in his room and cooing at him adoringly , immediately sending him into his regressed headspace

then he's given a new soft toy. that wasn't so bad

then roman let him choose what disney film they watched. that wasnt bad either

then logan cuddled him for an hour and they might have fallen asleep together not noticing the smell of vanilla coming from the kitchen

then there was a new paci, a new rattle, another new soft toy, and cake cut up into tiny squares so he could nibble on it with his fingers

there was no loud singing no big surprises no bright lights or fire or anything else that he hated about birthdays

there was only love and toys and comfort. so virgil really didn't mind birthdays much after that

[mcmusing]

After blowing out birthday candles, I have all things genie on the brain. Keep in mind that the following write-up is not a debate of which Aladdin Genie is superior. The actors involved did their own unique versions of him, so it’s impossible to say which is better because it’s such an apples to oranges scenario. This is just a retrospective on the different characterizations of Will Smith’s live action Genie and Robin Williams/Dan Castellaneta original animated one. Yes, Dan Castellaneta. As against popular opinion as this is, Robin Williams alone is not the definitive animated Genie. He was the first voice actor and is a huge factor in the first film’s success with his very memorable performance. However, Dan Castellaneta was able to imitate Genie’s voice to the extent I didn’t know there was more than one voice actor until I was in my teens. To those of you saying you did notice, cut the crap. If you were the same age I was during the 90s, you know perfectly well that you did not notice the slight change in Genie’s voice. If you want to talk about a voice that’s irreplaceable to the Aladdin franchise, that distinction belongs to Iago’s actor, Gilbert Gottfried (notice how in Aladdin 2019, Iago almost never speaks? Yeah, like his voice or not, there’s no imitating Gottfried).

Dan Castellaneta also clocked the most hours as Genie. He portrayed him in Return of Jafar, the animated series, and in video games. He actually recorded all of the dialogue for Genie in King of Thieves, but that proved to be a complete waste of his time because Robin returned after Disney came crawling to him with apologies. Keep in mind that while the animated series was airing, Dan already had a full-time job voicing Homer Simpson and a multitude of other Simpsons characters. So, to make it easier, I’ll be referring to the animated Genie as RobDan.

Something I realized after seeing Aladdin 2019 is compared to Will Smith, RobDan’s Genie treated us kids in the audience like, well, kids. I’m not knocking him for it, but it is a strong observation. Animated Genie never ceases to remind us that he is, in fact, animated. Even when Aladdin is trying to have a serious conversation with him, RobDan Genie is constantly performing magic tricks, making pop culture references, and doing whacky shapeshifting. I’ve seen some describing him as a father figure to Aladdin, but I never once got that impression. If anything, RobDan’s genie comes off like a fun uncle and/or godfather. His only advice to Aladdin is the very generic “be yourself”. Then, when Aladdin remorsefully tells him that he can’t use his last wish to wish him free, Genie goes from congratulatory towards Aladdin for his engagement to Jasmine to being completely offended and calling Aladdin a liar. An accusation he did not make before finding out Aladdin wouldn’t be granting his wish. During the rest of the animated franchise, Genie, despite being free, always goes along with Aladdin and can come off as something of an enabler at times.

While going from animation to live action has been detrimental to most of the Disney remakes, it worked for Aladdin 2019 tremendously. The human factor and character driving is present throughout the entire film and there’s much less of an emphasis on magic. Will Smith is in his human form most of the time and it really makes him feel like his own person instead of being a mere extension of Aladdin. Unlike RobDan’s Genie, Will’s is not a benevolent being but a neutral one. Since he’s mostly dealt with power-hungry masters in the past, Genie only ever gave them what they thought they wanted without warning them of potential drawbacks. However, when he meets the very young and humbler Aladdin, Genie takes a genuine interest in him, naturally stepping into the mentor/older brother role for him. He wants Aladdin to reach his goals without sacrificing his kindness and integrity along the way. He encourages and props the insecure teen up, but is unafraid to rein Aladdin in and openly disapprove of his more questionable choices. When Aladdin initially doesn’t want to give up his last wish, Genie is disappointed but NOT for himself. He honestly sees Aladdin as his only friend and is worried the power is morally corrupting him.

However, there are definite positives to be found in the relationship between their animated counterparts. After they separate on positive terms in the first film, the now freed Genie returns to Agrabah. Even after all his globetrotting, Genie realizes that nothing the world has to offer can compare to the impish street rat he’s grown to love. Essentially, home for Genie is wherever Aladdin is. Yes, he gives into him at times he really shouldn’t, but this is due to the absolute loyalty between them. Besides Abu, Genie is the most stable, consistent part of Aladdin’s life. Even when he falls out of favor with Jasmine and the sultan, Genie sticks by him unconditionally. Aladdin also clearly trusts Genie more than anyone else and yes, this includes Jasmine. After a particularly nasty argument with the royal family, Genie is the one who goes out on a limb to help Aladdin reconcile with them. When Aladdin finds Cassim, Genie is the only one he tells about Cassim’s status as the King of Thieves. Genie has not word of negative judgement about it and continuously encourages Aladdin to have a relationship with his father, regardless of Cassim’s past. Also in the third film, Genie goes all-out to make Aladdin and Jasmine’s wedding the magical event of the century.

Personally, I do prefer Will’s Genie. Again, it’s apple and oranges. People like me appreciate the more human, suave, multi-layered Genie while others get more enjoyment out of the original sweet comic relief version. All three men portrayed Genie to the best of their abilities and all deserve appreciation and acknowledgement for breathing life into the iconic blue magic man.





[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream - Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars is a franchise very near and dear to my heart. I’ve grown up watching the films and have fond memories of each of them, in particular Revenge of the Sith, which I got to see in theaters with my father. It’s a series that has introduced me to great characters, great actors, great ways to tell stories, and if nothing else the movies were always fun. I never saw a Star Wars movie I couldn’t enjoy on some level.

That all changed with this movie.

The Rise of Skywalker is a wet fart of a finale. It is a mess, it is underwhelming, it is disrespectful to the previous two films, and worst of all it’s bland. But hyperbole aside, this movie isn’t a complete and utter waste; it’s certainly not the worst film of all time or anything, or even the worst Star Wars movie. It’s just a sad case of a mixed bag where the bag skews more to the bad side than the good side.

Let’s go over what I actually did enjoy first. Obviously, the score was fantastic, but I think this goes without saying; John Williams has never once screwed around, so why would he stop now? His music honestly does a lot of the heavy lifting emotion-wise, as scenes such as the supposed trinity of this trilogy’s reunion at the end would not have any sort of impact otherwise. Then we have stuff like the practical effects, which is both a blessing and a curse as they seem to be a sort of dancing bear for this trilogy. As great and lively as they make the worlds, they shouldn’t be what gets focus over story and character development… but hey, Babu Frik is great.

Speaking of characters, there are a few who were handled very well in this film. In terms of comedy, there is C-3PO and Palpatine. C-3PO is just a genuine riot here, and almost every goofy little joke he cracked gave me a genuine chuckle. He’s really at his best here. Palpatine on the other hand is just a character who is so inherently hilarious that it is physically impossible to be mad at him. Like, he’s an evil zombie wizard who spends half the film insulting Kylo Ren and then the other half cackling and shooting lightning in his big arena full of hooded weirdos while strapped to a big dialysis machine and wearing a sparkling red vest under his robe. Sheev Palpatine is pretty much the greatest character in human history, and while his role in this film is so stupid, shoehorned, and underbaked, you cannot help but crack a grin at the sheer lunacy good ol’ Sheev brings to the table. The sheer revelation that this man actually, canonically had more sex than Kylo Ren is enough to send a man into a fit of giggles.

In terms of actual character, Rey gets a solid arc marred by some incredibly poor writing choices, but overall stays solid throughout. Her interactions with Kylo Ren especially solidify her as an interesting and engaging character, and honestly the whole reveal that she’s a Palpatine is intriguing and could have added depth to her… but they managed to bungle it. And it’s an easy fix too; early on, there’s a scene where she and Kylo are playing tug-of-war with a transporter that is holding an iconic character. Rey accidentally unleashes Palpatine lightning and blows it up, seemingly killing the character inside… only for the character to inexplicably be alive two scenes later. Now, if Rey had actually killed said character by accident and spent the rest of the film struggling with her nature, it would make her ultimate showdown and rejection of Grandpa Sheev’s ideology all the more sweeter and satisfying. A moment at the end would have likewise been improved if she had simply not chosen to rename herself and instead chose to just simply be “Rey,” but gotta have that sweet, sweet branding! Still, I think Rey is remarkably done here, though not nearly as good as she was in The Last Jedi.

But the real MVP here is definitely Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. I’m just gonna say it: this guy carries the film. He has had the most remarkably consistent character arc in this new trilogy, and that concludes just as well here, though sadly in the most obvious way: with a redemption. However, it comes not from Rey, as desperate shippers had hoped, but from his parents – Leia and Han both play a part in ensuring their son’s redemption. And when he’s redeemed, the way Driver is able to convey the character of Ben Solo with just his face and body language is incredible enough to make the redeemed man feel like a totally different character than when he was Kylo Ren, and all of this is without speaking. Driver deserves every ounce of praise he gets for these films, and while I feel his arc would have been far more satisfying if it wasn’t a carbon copy of Anakin’s arc, it’s a testament to Driver’s skill that he managed to sell me such a cliché turn of events and made it work.

This is where my kindness dries up, however, as the rest of this is going to be pretty negative. The story here is just an incoherent mess; it honestly feels like an entire trilogy crammed into one film, a film divorced entirely from the other two films. The big problem with this trilogy is how there is so little cohesion between films that each film feels like a soft reset, and nowhere is that more clear than here. It doesn’t help that this film decides to cram in a bunch of stupid backspaces to everything from The Last Jedi, the most awkward and egregious being how they write off the “Holdo Maneuver” as a one in a million shot at success despite the fact that using the far more obvious “using the rebels as suicide bombers is a bit morally iffy and such a move should not be used unless we’re totally desperate” explanation would have sufficed. It honestly feels like the writers were chickening out a lot of the time and decided to try and distract us from their yellow-bellied attempts at ignoring the previous film by slapping us in the face with tons of fanservice. Sometimes it works – the voices of all the fallen Jedi in the final act was an awesome touch (I hear you Qui-Gon, Windu, and Ahsoka!) - but most of them time it is just painfully on-the-nose and groan worthy, such as when Chewbacca gets his medal. The worst offender here is Lando, who is so carelessly tossed into this mess of a plot that it feels really disrespectful to Billy Dee Williams.

Speaking of screwing over characters though, no one got it worse than Finn, Poe, and Rose. With Rose, it’s frankly just insulting they didn’t even try. It would have been so easy to redeem Rose in the eyes of the fans that didn’t like her character in The Last Jedi; if The Clone Wars can make Jar Jar a likable character, then I’m pretty sure a big budget Hollywood blockbuster can fix the issues of a poorly written character in its sequel. Instead though, this film takes the coward’s route and relegates Rose to a role less important to the plot than Babu Frik, who despite his integral role is only in one single scene. Poe is just handled as nonsensically as ever, given really dumb jokes and a forced and unneeded backstory as a spice smuggler, complete with an implied female love interest in an attempt to try and convince us the character is heterosexual.

But Finn gets it worst of all. Not only does he get a forced implied love interest (who is black, because we can’t have miscegenation in our big blockbuster films!), but he just in general gets shafted so hard. Finn being shafted has been a running theme with this trilogy. The first film set him up to be an integral, important main character, one who would even become the main character…. And then he slowly faded from relevance as the writers put him in increasingly bad plotlines, culminating with the slap in the face this movie gives us by implying but not outright stating that Finn can use the Force. There were so many interesting ways they could take Finn’s arc and they chose the route that is, quite frankly, the absolute worst. The fact that Finn got totally shafted in such a way despite being a fan favorite is all the more baffling and honestly has me wondering what the suits at Disney were thinking. If they weren’t actually minimizing a character as beloved as Finn was after The Force Awakens out of racism, what were they even trying to do? John Boyega has a right to be as angry as he is.

There’s other stuff that’s obnoxious. Leia’s scenes are all terrible and poorly executed, which comes off as really disrespectful to Carrie Fisher; the romance in this film which, as mentioned above, is totally forced, but special mention goes to the Ben/Rey kiss at the end, which while not some life-ending travesty is so utterly out of nowhere due to the lack of romantic chemistry between the two in any of these films that it’s laughable; the editing is so incoherent and terrible in places that it feels like it was done by someone on a mixture of crack and Red Bull; the complete waste that is Hux and his childish reasoning for betraying the First Order, completing the character’s change from a terrifying Nazi allegory to a complete and utter joke; the fact that the new First Order general who takes center stage gets so little development despite being a great throwback to Grand Moff Tarkin and a genuinely amazing character otherwise, with a fascinating history with Palpatine that is never explored and no meaningful interactions with the heroes; the complete and utter unexplained nature of Palpatine’s return; and just how painfully unfunny a lot of the humor in this film is. This movie just has so many problems, so many flaws, and it ends on such a completely limp and unsatisfying note that it’s honestly kind of sad.

This film… I don’t know about this film. It’s definitely not the worst Star Wars film, because it at least has some genuinely good bits to it, unlike Attack of the Clones which I can only really justify liking ironically. But that being said, this film is just so unsatisfying, and what’s more, it’s not very memorable. Not much will stick with you with this one, and if it does, it might be more of the bad things rather than the good ones, which is a shame, because I do think there’s some good stuff buried under the garbage here, but I don’t know if it’s worth sitting through this film to find. This is not the worst thing ever, I really can’t stress that enough… but it’s just not fun, engaging, or anything that will really make you feel anything meaningful, and sometimes that’s just worse.

Ultimately, this film has an incredibly uncertain audience. It’s wrapping up a trilogy in one of the biggest franchises on earth with a plotline that tries to pander to fans in a way that feels gross and condescending, leaving the film feeling like it was made for absolutely no one. If you like this, that’s fine; Star Wars is a franchise that has greatness ingrained in its DNA, to the point where I can’t say any of the films are really among the worst I’ve ever seen. But I think generally this is not going to be a film worth watching, and certainly one to skip in any future marathons of the franchise. It really is a shame… this trilogy if nothing else was full of potential to be a new take on Star Wars for a new generation. Instead, it ended up as a confusing, corporate mess. 

[mrjoelgarcia9]

Let’s Talk #Digimon: The Movie

What do you get when three loosely related short films are edited together into a feature-length film?

For a review of Digimon: The Movie, feel free to keep reading. There will be spoilers.

While multiple Digimon films have come out since the late 90s, only the first three would make it outside of Japan until Digimon Adventure Tri nearly two decades later.

UPDATE (12/8): Four Digimon shorts were actually dubbed and released a few years after Disney bought the rights from FOX. The shorts were from the second, third (Tamers), and fourth (Frontier) seasons and aired throughout 2005 on ABC Family’s Jetix block. A short from the fifth season, Savers/Data Force, was also dubbed but by a different company and only distributed in Asia. However, between this film and Tri, none of these films were made available in a physical format.

This “film” consists of three shorts. They are reminiscent of Toei’s Dragon Ball Z films, with run times ranging from 35 to 60 minutes. 

On a related note, Fox promoted the film’s indirect connection to both this and Sailor Moon on the home video releases. The only things they have in common are being produced by Toei Animation and some directors.

The franchises’ multiple films were distributed differently in English-speaking countries during the late 90s and early 2000s. The Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon films first aired on TV in an edited format and then released uncensored on home video. The three Digimon shorts were exclusively edited, censored, and combined into a single theatrical film.

To quickly get out of the way, the cold open has nothing to do with the film. It is an original short from the animated series Angela Anaconda, which at the time ran on FOX Family (now Freeform), the then-sister channel to the FOX network which aired Digimon. It only serves to pad out the run time alongside the corny “Digi-Rap” opening sequence. The short itself would later air as the TV episode “Good Seats” with the Digimon references removed.

The rest of the film is divided into three segments. The overall narrative centers around events involving the characters from the anime’s first two seasons who interact in some form or another with a new character made for the film.

Each segment is given a title card to glue the film together. The titles in parentheses are the short films’ original Japanese titles.

Four Years Ago (Digimon Adventure): As the title indicates, it is set four years before the anime’s first episode and focuses on Tai and Kari’s first meeting with Koromon. In Japan, this short originally premiered the day before the anime’s debut.

Eight Years Later (Children’s War Game): Taking place sometime after the first season, a virus called Diaboromon has unleashed chaos on the internet and global communications. It is up to Tai, Matt, Izzy, and the Digimon to stop him before he starts World War III. This short’s premise was also used in the 2009 film Summer Wars (more on that below).

Present Day (Hurricane Touchdown/Transcendent Evolution! The Golden Digimentals): Set during the second season, T.K. and Kari are in New York City when they find another Digidestined named Willis with his own Digimon named Terriermon. He was fighting Kokomon, who was also affected by the same infection as Diaboromon. The latter summons Willis to Colorado, with the two (and the rest of the second season team) joining him to help save Kokomon. This segment was originally released as a two-part short.

This “film”, in its heavily edited format, is a barely comprehensible mess. It is glaringly obvious how many alterations were made to these shorts so they could be presented as a theatrical feature. There are direct-to-video compilations of TV episodes with better editing than this “film”.

Not counting the Angela Anaconda short and rap, the film runs at only 76 minutes. The combined run time of the original shorts, in comparison, is 130 minutes. The respective shorts run at 20, 45, and 65 minutes. The editing is obvious, especially by Kari’s narration serving to glue the segments together. It retroactively integrates Willis, a character only in the third short, by Kari introducing him in the first and Izzy briefly mentioning him in the second. 

The editing is especially obvious with the third short. Several elements were cut out for it to align with the first two segments, such as an entire story thread of the first Digidestined team disappearing and the actual reason for T.K. and Kari visiting New York City being to visit Mimi.

The film features pop songs which feel very out of place even for the dub. The show heavily recycled music from other Saban-produced series such as Power Rangers, so having the film play songs by Barenaked Ladies, Fatboy Slim, and Smash Mouth is both jarring and shoehorned. Interestingly, the latter band’s song “All Star” was featured in this film less than a year before Shrek.

It would be unfair to compare the “film” with the shorts. Any dub-induced plot holes could be explained by seeing the uncut versions, but they have never been released outside of Japan.

Despite the edits, the dub’s voice cast does a great job. Lara Jill Miller (The Loud House) is the only voice actor to prominently appear in all three segments, playing Kari as a toddler, child, and teenager, as well as being the film’s narrator.

The original shorts were directed by two directors: Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) worked on the first two, while Shigeyasu Yamauchi (Dragon Ball Z) worked on the third. The former’s realistic animation style is noticeable, while the latter’s style is just a far more fluid version of the anime. Despite the conflicting styles, all three segments look great and show Toei produced the films with the same high quality animation used in the many Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon films.

At this point, it should be noted Hosoda later wrote and directed the 2009 film Summer Wars, which is often accused of being a ripoff of the second short. 

Both have the word War in the title, a computer virus unleashing chaos to global communications, said virus firing a missile towards the protagonists, and a climax where the hero is supercharged by everyone online giving them energy.

They differ by their protagonists and digital worlds. Also, without giving away spoilers, Summer Wars shows more of the virus’ real world consequences whereas the Digimon short played it for laughs.

The film is worth watching, especially to compare and contrast with the short.

Going back to this “film”, continuity is mostly not an issue. The first two segments clearly take place before and after the first season. The third segment, on the other hand, is not canon.

Ken is nowhere to be seen, likely placing the short sometime early in the second season when he was still the Digimon Emperor. 

Because the aforementioned New York City setup was cut out, the characters are just in America with no rhyme or reason for how they were able to fly from Japan or even get to Colorado. Additionally, it is set far too early to be part of the “Digimon World Tour” story arc. 

Digimon: The Movie would have been better had it just aired on FOX Kids, either as individual episodes or a TV special. It barely qualifies as a "film” by the vain attempt to combine the three standalone shorts with shoehorned narration, numerous edits, an out of place soundtrack, and both a great voice cast and excellent animation. If this film was someone’s introduction to Digimon, they would immediately become confused and lost by the inconsistent shifts in tone, main characters, and situations. 

With all of that in mind, this film is worth watching only for fans of the dub.

While the North American rights to the Digimon anime now appear to be back with Toei, the “film” is currently owned by Disney following their acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

Digimon: The Movie has been out of print since its original VHS and DVD releases. Currently, it is not available to own, rent, or stream in any format. However, the soundtrack is available to buy on digital music platforms and partially stream on Spotify.

As for Summer Wars, it is available to own on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital.

Until next time, thank you for reading!

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

First Monday of the month, woohoo!

(And also kind of a NaNo roundup post because that was last month, after all…)

NaNo:

Sooooo I didn’t finish, lol. Not that I was…super expecting to, exactly, but I was hopeful! I think I just missed too many days in a row and lost all my momentum.

In terms of my goals, I was hoping to write:

1. 20-25k on Precipice 2. 20-25k on our faces like a mirror 3. 10-20k on Other Projects. 4. 50-70k total

In terms of what I actually accomplished:

1. 9,241 on Precipice (Sooooooo....about half of what I’d hoped, a little less. But I still got a fair amount done/prepped for upcoming chapters, plus a couple chapters actually posted, even while doing other stuff, so...go me!) 2. 9,043 on our faces like a mirror (Again, a bit less than half of what I’d hoped for, but I got enough done for the story/etc. to take a real Shape in my head. ...ish. See the specific OFLAM stuff later on in the post...) 3. 10,601 on Other Projects (Hey, I actually met this goal! ...barely, but still! Mostly thanks to the Nikita/Rebels crossover, lol...) 4. 28,885 total

Original Fiction:

I got a decent chunk of a big backstory piece for Lux done (in the form of a “then” and “now” set of scenes/vignettes for the five Archangels)--that being said, I’m not sure I actually like what I have there, lol. I know more or less what I need to cover, but the details are fiddly. Also not sure whether I should refer to Lux by her current name, for consistency’s sake, or use a different name (either Lightbringer or just Lucifer) since she does technically reshape her name after being released when the main Apocalypse storyline kicks off…also debating whether Lux should be/present as female way back when--angels don’t really do gender the way humans do in this ‘verse, but the closest human term for Lux would be genderfluid, sooooo IDK. Also also, for the ‘Now’ part…ehhh, I’m not sure I should have this be the first thing I post involving Trixie…but I’ll keep poking at it and see what comes out.

(I’d also planned to work on the big Kesshare character study saturation for The Farglass Cycle this month, and maybe go back to my untitled first-contact story, but neither of those happened, lol.)

Precipice:

We’re in the home stretch! Kinda. So to speak. Probably three to four more chapters in Arc Seven, which I’m hoping-fingers-crossed I’ll finish by the end of the calendar year??? (But given how much other stuff I hope to work on (see Other Fanfic Projects for more details…)

At that point--and I know I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably put it in an A/N in the next chapter or so, but following the end of Milestones, I’m planning to break off into a second/sequel fic, working title Protectors. This is at least in part because length (over 200k wtf I was anticipating 50-75k, maybe 100k, for these seven arcs @.@), but also was sort of planned even without the Length issue, due to some thematic/structure shifts following a six-year timeskip. Which, if you do the math, you can probably figure out where that’ll land us and why I might be structuring it this way…

Anyway, I’ve increasingly realized that there’s some stuff I should probably set up that I’ll need for later arcs in Part 2 involving some Rebels characters, more with the Last Batch, plus a Sith Apprentice who needs to turn up and die (although the gap between Infernalis and the next apprentice I actually care about/have a name and some kind of Plot for is only about four years in my mental timeline, so maybe there isn’t an active Apprentice in that period*…hmmmmm…), some background about the Hands, etc. But I feel like it’s all a little too disjointed for an entire additional arc. So, Arc 7.5, tentatively titled Preludes, is also going to be a thing XD I don’t think I’ll have a fixed schedule for that vs. the main storyline--and, honestly, it’ll probably work more like a collection of one-shots taking place during the timeskip than a proper Arc, but a little more Relevant than stuff that goes in Bonus Content, if that makes sense? It’ll probably be posted alongside at least arcs 8 and 9. Which, incidentally, take place more or less back-to-back and cover a fairly short period of time, but there is A Lot of plot/setup that goes into them. Like. If I tried to do it all as one arc, it’d be at least twice as long as any of the other arcs I’ve done, possibly including Arc Four--certainly over twenty chapters, I think--plus there’s a good (and by good I mean Horrible) place where I can split the arcs, so…we’ll see how that goes.

(…still not sure what to do with Maul, lol. He may just be Sir Darth Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic, or he might turn up in arc 10/11/13, which are the sort of vaguest of the next seven arcs which make up Protectors, in terms of how much I have planned out…)

(*On a semi-related note, I’ve been asked about Inquisitors a couple times in comments lately, and…well, I’ll probably mention this when I reply to the commenter in question, but I figured I’d set it out here as well, in case anyone else was wondering the same thing but doesn’t read other peoples’ comments. Like I’m pretty sure I mentioned at the start, when I plotted out** the bulk of this fic, I hadn’t seen Rebels yet. I’ve since decided to integrate a few characters/plot points (Kallus and Zeb will feature prominently in a subplot in arcs 13 and 14, for example), but, as a rule, characters and plot points from Rebels haven’t been taken into account unless I Really Like Them and/or they’re a good way to fill in a plot hole in a later arc, as with Kallus and Zeb. So, for example, when I include Thrawn, I’m writing more towards Legends!Thrawn in terms of personality, though the two have blended a bit in my head and I do reference specific events in Disney!Thrawn’s personal timeline; and b) more relevantly, I hadn’t made any plans to include Inquisitors, and that…hasn’t really changed. So, I might have them in Preludes, but they almost certainly won’t show up on-page/be super-relevant in the main arcs of the fic, sorry :/ )

(**Loooool I say “Plotted Out” like I’m the kind of author with a Master Plan or at least an outline. But I did have a general idea of the Major Plot Points going in, such as when Rex and Ahsoka would turn up, Luke’s storyline with Lavinia, how many Apprentices I would need to make them work, etc., and I’ve had parts of Arcs 8, 9, and 14 written for like at least two years now, so I know more or less where I’m going--though they’ll be edited once I have more of the connective tissue in place, in case I’ve accidentally Jossed myself…or I change my mind, which is becoming A Possibility with a major event set to happen in Arc 14, so…we’ll see.)

Aaaaaanyway. Exciting times ahead, I hope!

Other Fanfic:

This month, I finally posted another AU outline, woohoo! …I mean, it was a super-niche Nikita/Rebels crossover with a handful of OCs thrown in but who’s counting XD (I do actually intend to finish Let’s Go Steal a Crossover and update the Ventress one at some point but…yeah).

I also put out a Kallus one-shot that I think turned out really well. May do more of those at some point, who knows…

I made some significant progress on our faces like a mirror, as mentioned above! But now I’m waffling a little bit over structure. Basically, the fic covers Bo-Katan’s backstory from the time Satine becomes Duchess, through the Civil War, and eventually leads to Bo’s eventual break with her sister to join Death Watch. It comes in two pretty distinct halves--what I call the Fugitive arc in my notes, which covers the Civil War, and the Breakdown arc, which is everything after her return to Sundari.

So, my original plan was--prologue covering at least part of the final Epic Screaming Match that leads to Bo’s departure; jump back to the Fugitive Arc; and then follow through until we catch up to the prologue, with a coda/epilogue with her and Pre Viszla. The problem is, there’s…really not a lot to connect the two halves??

I’ve got a couple options on what to do about this, but I’m not sure which would be best.

Option One: Keep the structure as-is and just let it be episodic.

Option Two: Keep the structure as-is and find some way to connect the two halves (i.e., a recurring antagonist; I do have an idea of who this could be, but the problem is, it takes away a good chunk of the focus from Bo and Satine’s relationship for the Breakdown Arc…which I don’t really want to do.)

Option Three: Remove the framing device and focus on the Breakdown Arc, and include the Fugitive Arc as flashbacks, since the Breakdown Arc can’t really stand on its own. (The main issue I have with this one is that, if I want to actually write out future chunks of Bo’s life later--meaning, her time with Death Watch, and getting her from TCW to Rebels--I won’t have these flashbacks and I don’t want to change the structure too radically for any eventual sequels? Also, I’m not sure how I feel about a flashback structure for this fic in general…)

Option Four: Remove the framing device and focus on the Fugitive Arc, ending the story with Bo’s return to Sundari. (Two issues with this one--I really do want to go into the Breakdown Arc; that’s where my interest in this story started. Also, due to the constraints of setting and so on, Bo interacts with…like…two canon characters over the course of the Fugitive Arc? And while I don’t really have a problem writing a story that’s essentially a Backstory Epic for a tertiary character, populated by about 90% OCs, I’m not sure anyone actually wants to read that, except as the lead-in to the Breakdown Arc??? But maybe I’m overthinking…)

…so, yeah. Any thoughts/opinions on which option would be Best? (I may make a separate post asking the same question later, but figured I’d lay it all out here, too!)

Also, I’m working on a Secret Santa project, and probably not going to use OFLAM for SWBB, which means I need to come up with and write a different plotline of some kind, so back to the drawing board on that one…

Also also, I do genuinely plan to get Distaff off hiatus At Some Point, especially since I’ve gotten some new comments/responses lately…but given how much else I have on my plate, writing-wise, that probably won’t happen until next year, alas.

Anyway, the long and short of it is--lots of writing planned for this month! Now let’s see how much I actually get done XD

What about the rest of you? What’ve y’all been up to/what do you have planned for next month?

[kyidyl]

Can we talk about art for a second?

I’m pretty sure none of you are following me for art content because that’s just not what I do normally, but I’ve been working on some stuff and I just wanted to share. Here’s my current WIP:

I’m using sketchbook on my iPad Pro, and...can we just talk about process for a second? I’m gonna put this behind a cut just in case it gets long and because this isn’t my normal content. 

So I’ve been drawing almost my entire life, but I didn’t really start teaching myself anything good until around 9th grade (which is like...14 years old.). I started by copying Disney characters and then I was introduced to comic books and I copied those. I was in college when digital art start making its way into the art world. People would color their pencil drawings (this was shortly before tablets, so...with a mouse.). I grew into an artist around the time people like Aimee Major and Stephanie Lostimolo were really starting to stand out. And I don’t know about other fandoms, but I was in the gargoyles fandom and from what I can tell...a LOT of modern digital art has its genesis in that fandom. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I started using photoshop with version 3.0 and I’ve had a Wacom tablet almost since the day they came out (gen one graphire tablet represent!).

I’ve never, in all that time, gotten the hang of digital painting. I have a hard time with tablets because you can’t tilt them like you can tilt a paper and it takes a weird sort of hand-eye-screen coordination that I just never mastered. But digital art is so beautiful that I’ve always WANTED to be able to do it. I can make graphics and edit photos but I have a hard time with painting. I have seen the million myriad ways of doing it, and most of them start with the same idea: lay down flats and then lighten or darken as necessary. And this never worked for me because a, the airbrush tool isn’t painterly enough for me and b, it takes for goddamned EVER. For. Ever. And I’m a fast artist! I can spit out a whole line drawing in like a half hour-45 mins with traditional media. But I have adhd, and so finishing long term large scale detailed projects is often not in the cards for me. So dumping like 48 hours of work time into a painting isn’t going to work for me.

But recently I’ve gotten back into art again and I’ve been watching the sky artist of the year and I decided I was curious about oil painting and, well, one hyperfixation later, here we are. I don’t have the money or space for actual oil painting, so I went to sketchbook to see if there was an alternative, and there is! So because I wanted to learn how to oil paint I finally figured out how to digitally paint and I’m gonna share that with you in case you, like me, struggle with the time input and focus required to do digital art.

First, I started practicing poses by drawing an outline over any image that caught my fancy. I have a good understanding of human anatomy because of my science background, but my poses aren’t creative and I especially struggle with perspective and multiple figures in an image. So I started to do line drawings over an image. Here’s the stock image I used for the WIP:

Look at all that fabric! Look at the movement! I love it. So I traced it:

Yes, TRACED, because tracing is a tool like anything else.

Then I choose colors. I pick 5: a midtone (the color you want the thing to be perceived as. In my case, you can see it in the WIP at the top.), a slight dark, a slight light, a blackened tone for deep shadow, and a very light tone for highlights. I always default to white light when choosing these colors, and I’ll get to my reasoning further down. The palette for the robe looks like this:

(Ignore the tan and blue, they’re for another project)

Then you start to lay down flats. Now, I do this with the synthetic oil brush in sketchbook because I like the texture (this image though I’d laid down the flats with the airbrush months ago and didn’t want to redo it, hence the lack of texture and the 100% opacity.), and as with oils, my approach to digital now is to layer rather than cover. Staying in the lines isn’t important. In fact, you should go outside of the lines because it will help you get shadows and highlights along the edges later. What IS important is putting everything on different layers. When in doubt, new layer. I work from back to front, which means that the base layer is the background. In front of that is the skin, in front of that is the robe, in front of that is the teal inside of the robe, in front of that is accessories. Hair varies depending on what’s going on with the image. Here I’ll probably put it between the skin and robe. Ask yourself: what is this covered by? And the use that to decide layer placement. Special effects are a whole other thing, as are highlights. I’ll get to that in a second tho.

The next step is to create an oversketch. This serves much the same function as an undersketch in oil painting, only in reverse because your reference photo is under - and covered - by your work. I started doing it because as I was painting I was flicking the layer on and off, making it transparent, whatever just to see where the shadows are on the reference image. It was a real pain in the rear. So I started making the blobs and borders of the highlights and shadows with an oversketch. You don’t need a method for telling which boundaries are for shadows and which are highlights because for that you can just turn the layer on and off. Just mark where the General shapes are. Here’s the oversketch for this drawing:

See? Blobs of General Area. When you’re painting, use them to lay down color and then turn them off when you’re blending because they’re not part of the final image and you don’t want to end up with gaps that were covered by the over sketch. To do this, I use the 9b pencil tool and black, but tbh just se whatever you like. That’s just my preference.

Now, for the shading. I started by trying a bunch of different natural media brushes but I eventually ended up sticking on a kind of weird choice: the fan brush. I keep the flow around 20%, which gives me these nice textured marks to lay down color, but then if I don’t lift the pencil up it stops laying down color and instead starts to blend. This means a, I can make it as smooth or painterly as I like with one tool and b, I can paint and blend with the same tool. No more muddying up my drawings by over-blending with the smudge. No losing the texture while blending because it blends with the texture. And the shape of the fan brush allows me to be smudgy with I like, but also will do hard edges. Plus the blending thins out the colors so I can get neat effects by laying down colors on top of each other because it stays a little transparent. You end up needing to lay down a lot of “paint” to get opacity but that’s ok because it allows you to make more complex colors. That’s good, because things like skin aren’t a color. They’re chemical: they’re melanin in cells over blood vessels and muscle and skin is transparent. Even very dark skinned people have undertones. So when you build up paint this way you can capture undertones without ruining your painting. Which, I’m pretty sure, is how it works in oils. But it translates well to digital.

So at this point, painting your image is basically a calming adult coloring book. You lay down color, blend, check your reference, repeat. But a few things to keep in mind:

- Take note of the darkest and lightest areas of the image. Nothing should be lighter or darker than these areas. Nothing in the drawing above will be darker than her back because that’s the darkest area of the painting.

- See the trees and the forest. Sometimes a detail doesn’t make any sense until you’ve seen it in context. Trust your guide and your photo reference. But also make sure that you don’t get so stuck in the details that you can’t relate one area to another. A fold that goes through two areas should be consistent across those two areas, even if you painted them separately. An area might seem dark in comparison to what’s next to it, but it isn’t as dark as the darkest area of the image so don’t go whole hog. Keep it in context.

- Folds in clothing aren’t nonsensical. They are a result of the movement and weight of the fabric. Ergo, the shadows and highlights that create them should also make sense.

- If you’re having a hard time figuring out where the highlights and shadows are, make a copy of the reference image layer and desaturate in, then turn off the colored reference layer.

Lastly, I’m finding it helpful to keep the highlights from colored light on its own layer. I didn’t used to do this, I used to use the colored light as one of my highlight colors. But the truth is that most objects are shaded by more than one light source, and so I’ve decided to do all the shading as white light and then the green (which will eventually be from some kind of green magic.) is on a different layer. My reasoning for this is that it helps keep the integrity of the shading and it prevents the colors from bending too much and getting muddy. So if I add a green highlight and I don’t like it then it’s easy to remove. I don’t have a highlight and shading that’s now ruined by green because I’ve been using light flow brushes. So colored light on its own layer. How much of a highlight you give it entirely depends on how strong your light sources is and whatnot. So far I’m satisfied with just hitting the high points, but I may change that later on.

When you’re done painting the area, go ahead and erase all of the excess paint around the edges of it and clean it up. I like to leave the black outline as part of the image, but if you don’t want to do that you should turn it on and off as necessary while painting so you can make sure to fill in gaps and get clean lines between the areas of color.

So if you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading my ramble. :)

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 24: A Stranger Among Us (Transcript) - 28th December 2015

tw: death, gore, death of children, disease

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Folklore is a living thing. In many ways, the stories we tell and the lessons we pass on are like a tree - the branches reach out into generations and cultures, sometimes in obvious ways, and other times reaching surprising new places. One good example of this would be of the folklore surrounding small fairy people that we’ve discussed here before. Pukwudgies, trolls, goblins, puka and dozens of similar variations are scattered across the world with amazing consistency and reach. How or why is something we’ll probably never fully understand, but it shows us how folklore can spread, how it can migrate, and how it can build upon the past. At the same time, though, folklore has roots, and they run deeper than we might expect. Some stories that we still whisper about in the dark today have crossed the lips of people for centuries, and in some cases, millennia. When I hear a story for the first time or discover a new collection of tales that have been widely distributed, I often stop and ask myself the same questions: where did it come from? What lies at the bottom of the narrative? What are its roots? Outside of Halloween, there is no other time of the year (at least for European cultures, that is) where folklore rushes to the forefront of everyone’s lives with such significance, such power, and such ease as the Christmas season, and rightly so. There is so much there to unpack and explore: the tree, the gifts, the food, and the nocturnal visit from a stranger, one who has seemingly stalked our lives all year long, and yet we blindly welcome into our home. And if there’s one lesson that folklore has taught us over the centuries, it’s to beware of strangers – they aren’t always who they seem to be. I’m Aaron Mahnke and this is Lore.

When we think of coal in our stockings and food and drink left out for a visitor, we rarely pair those ideas with the image of a woman flying through the air on a broomstick, but in Italy there are those who still tell the story of La Befana. Befana’s story has been told since at least the 13th century, originally connected with the Christian feast of the Epiphany. But while many people have never heard of her, the details of her story are eerily familiar. During her visit, Befana was said to enter homes through the chimney. She’s typically depicted carrying a basket or bag full of gifts, but is also known to leave behind a lump of coal or a single stick for children who fail to behave during the year. Before leaving each home, Befana would sweep the floor with her broom, something scholars see as a metaphor for sweeping away the deeds of the previous year, and then she would eat the food left out for her – oftentimes sausage and broccoli. Side note: cookies and milk sound so much better, don’t they? Interestingly enough, Befana is not the only Christmas legend with a passing resemblance to a witch. In the German Alps, there have been stories of another female figure dating back to the 10th century. Some call her Perchta or Berchta, or later Bertha. Jacob Grimm, while researching his Deutsche Mythologie, theorised that she was one of the ancient Germanic mother goddesses. She and her sisters were said to have taught humanity the arts of agriculture, spinning wool and cooking. Over time, though, her legend began to integrate with parts of the Christmas season. Because of her role in teaching humanity the basics of home management, Perchta’s meaning began to shift over the centuries, turning her into the punisher of those who worked during the holidays, failed to feast properly and, much later, hunting down the lazy, and what better time for her to conduct an end of year review, so to speak, than Christmas? Just how did Perchta dish out her punishment on the people of Germany? Well, a hint can be found in her other popular title: the belly-slitter. During the 12 days of Christmas, she would travel through the towns and inspect the people’s behaviour. If they had followed the rules and done right in her eyes, they were rewarded. If they had not been good, though, she was known to have a very nasty side. Anyone disobedient enough to warrant punishment, adult or child alike, would have their stomachs ripped open. Perchta would scoop out whatever might still be inside, pull out the full length of their intestines, and then stuff the victim’s belly with garbage, straw and rocks. While a stomach full of refuse might seem… a little over the top, that distinction actually goes to another ancient female in folklore.

While stories of Grýla, the mythical giant goddess, are far outside the common narrative of Christmas for many of us, for the people of Iceland she is still a whispered source of dread among children. One of the earliest mentions of Grýla dates back to the 13th century collection of Icelandic mythology known as the Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson. According to the many stories told about her over the centuries, Grýla possesses the ability to locate disobedient children. She can do this year-round, so they say, and because of that she was often used as a parental tool to coerce children into doing what they were told. It was in the Christmas season, though, that Grýla became even more monstrous. That was when she was said to climb out of her home in the mountain and make her way toward the towns. She would hunt far and wide for all the naughty children and then take them back to her cave. Once there, she would cut them up, place them in her stew, and devour them. And, according to the legend, she never ran out of food.

There have been other stories of strangers told throughout the centuries, but not all have happy endings. In fact, there is often more loss than gain when it comes to the visits of some of those legends. In the northern Alps, stories have been told for generations about the travelling stranger known as Belsnickel. Considered to be one of the helpers of Saint Nicholas, Belsnickel travels ahead of the big, red man and dispenses his own form of Christmas cheer – with physical abuse. Descriptions of Belsnickel liken him to the wild men of old, with torn and dirty clothes fashioned from animal skins and furs, and a face that is covered in a snarled, filthy beard. Some stories report that he wears a mask with a long tongue protruding from the mouth. According to the legend, which spans centuries in both Germany and the American state of Pennsylvania, Belsnickel would enter the home of a family and scatter nuts and sweets on the floor for the children to collect. And then, with their backs to him, he would lash out with a switch made of hazel or birch, whipping their backs and leaving red marks. And Belsnickel isn’t alone – another travelling stranger from the same region, one who has seen a rise in popularity around the globe, is a creature known as Krampus. At first blush, Krampus sounds similar in many ways to the other strangers in European folklore, but what sets him apart is truly frightening. It is said that Krampus visits the homes of children during the Christmas season, but he doesn’t have a dual nature – there is no reward or special treat when he comes to town. No, his sole purpose and passion in life is to dole out punishment on children who have failed to obey and do their work. Like Belsnickel, he too carries a switch, but in most stories there are more than one. Apparently, he beats so many children that he needs a few spare branches, so he carries them in a bundle. In addition, he is often depicted wearing chains and some form of large sack or cart because ultimately, Krampus isn’t as interested in beating children as he is in taking them. When he arrives in each legend, we are greeted by the appearance of a wild, demonic creature with long horns, cloven feet and a twisted face. After beating the disobedient children, Krampus chains them up and tosses them into his sack before vanishing as quickly as he came, taking the children with him back to hell.

The origins of Krampus are still unclear, but some scholars think that the legend predates Christianity. Instead, they believe that the story has roots in an ancient alpine myth of a horned god of the witches. Even the switch, his weapon of choice, might have been a carry-over from the initiation rites of witches, where the novices were beaten. Far from forgotten, festivals are held throughout Europe to this day that feature many of these legends; events like Krampusnacht in Germany and the Befana festival in Urbania attract tens of thousands, who dress in masks and dance and celebrate. Like Halloween, these are instances where monsters and strangers have been embraced and elevated to something of a children’s story, which is ironic when you understand the roots. Stripping away the detail, Krampus has (from a 30-thousand-foot view) more than a passing resemblance to Pan, the Greek horned god of nature, shepherds, flocks, and mountains. Along with his musical flute, Pan is often known for robbing the innocence from people, usually through sexual means. In a culture that saw the threshold between childhood and adulthood as the loss of virginity, Pan figuratively stole people’s children, and when you think of it that way, it’s more than easy to see similarities, not only between Krampus and Pan, but also between Pan and a character that Disney has helped us all fall in love with: Peter Pan. While he might be able to fly, has no horns and is missing the cloven feet that Pan sports in every image and statue, Peter Pan fulfils the role perfectly. He arrives at night, he carries a flute and lures our children away to another place. It’s a modern story with a familiar ending, but it was far from the first of its kind. That honour, according to some, falls to a small German village in 1284. You might already know the story, but the truth beneath it is far worse than you’d ever expect. In 1284, the German village of Hamlin was struggling with an infestation of rats. Now, I’ve only seen a few rats myself over years, but I also don’t live in a densely populated urban area like New York City or London. But in medieval Europe, from what I can gather, rats were as abundant as squirrels, only bigger and more disease-ridden. It’s hard to imagine the impact that an infestation of rats could have on a town today. If we found a half-eaten bag of flour in the cupboard, there’s a grocery store down the street where we could get more, year-round. But in the Middle Ages, food was grown locally and used throughout the year. If rats ate and ruined the food supplies, there was little a town could do - rats meant death in many instances. According to the story that has been passed down through the centuries since then, a stranger entered Hamelin in the Spring of 1284. He was dressed in colourful clothing, possessed what we might call today as a “silver tongue”, and claimed to have a very unusual, although also very timely, skill – he was a rat catcher. As a profession, rat catching dates back centuries, but it’s rarely seen as a safe and sanitary job. The risk of being bitten or contracting some disease carried by the rats has always been a hazard of the job, and while the exact nature of their involvement has been up for debate for decades, most scholars agree that rats have been key players in the spread of plague - particularly the Black Death of the 14th century, and there were few truly effective tools at their disposal, which made the job that much more difficult. Some rat catchers used a special breed of terrier while others made use of traps, but the most effective tool for centuries was also the most minimal and inexpensive of them all, bare hands - and seeing as how most rats prefer to stay hidden inside dark places, this was a risky technique. The motivation for it all, though, was the meritocracy of it; the more you caught, the more you earned, and while there’s no documented proof of this rumour, it’s been whispered for centuries that rat catchers would sometimes raise their own rats in captivity and then turn them in as part of the job, inflating their numbers and then their pay. This allowed them to pad their pay checks when business was slow, and it also earned them a shady reputation. As a side note, one of the most famous rat catchers in London’s history was a man named Jack Black, who claimed that his black-tan terrier was the father of all the black-tan terriers in London, and who pioneered the art of breeding rats and keeping them as pets. He even wore an outfit made entirely of scarlet cloth, with a big, wide sash across his chest that had two cast iron rats on it. He was probably also a riot at parties, but I can’t confirm that – just a hunch.

The man who walked into Hamelin that June wasn’t any less of a character, if the legends are to be believed. He wore an outrageous outfit, although his was reportedly one of multicoloured fabric that was known back then as “pied” (which was typically a sort of blotchy pattern), and he carried a tool that no other rat catcher claimed to use - a flute - and the mayor of Hamelin trusted the man. Maybe it was the not-so-subtle allusion his appearance made to the ancient stories of the god Pan, a deity who tended flocks of animals and played a flute; maybe it was the man’s marketing ability, that silver tongue and outrageous outfit; perhaps he overpromised and won the mayor’s approval - whatever the reason, this stranger was said to have struck a deal. He would catch all the rats in town, he told the mayor. He would lead them out of the town and away from their lives and he would do this, he said, with his musical instrument, a pipe that he claimed would lure them away. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have been sceptical. The mayor, though, was desperate. Sure, they haggled over the price, but in the end the stranger won. The exact amount of money differs from version to version of the story, but in all of them it’s an exorbitant sum, and that’s the point. Hamelin was so desperate that they were willing to overpay for a solution, and then he got to work. According to all the stories, and even the children’s tales we were raised on, the piper picked up his flute and began to play. As if driven by some magical force, all of the rats in Hamelin scuttled out of their hiding places and began to crowd around him; streams of them, thousands of them, all writhing in a mass at his feet. Then, when it seemed like they had all come out, he marched out of town and down to the Vesser river. The stories say that he was beyond successful. Most accounts say that all but one of the rats drowned in the river that day. Hamelin’s troubles were over, for a while. You see, the piper returned later to collect his money - he had done the job they had hired him to perform, the rats were gone, but for some unknown reason, the mayor refused to pay him. Now, the stories don’t say why, but we can speculate. Maybe it was because the stranger didn’t return with any bodies to show for his work, as was the custom for a rat catcher. How could the town pay him per head when there were no heads to count? At any rate, the mayor turned the stranger away and the man, clearly taken advantage of, stormed out of the village, but not before turning to face the people of Hamelin and proclaim a curse on them. He would return one day, he said, and when he did, he would have his revenge. Remember, this is a story that has been passed down for 800 years - most of what we know about the real events is pure legend, based loosely on scattered reports of a stained-glass window in the church there, in Hamelin. The window itself was lost in 1660, but there a drawings of it that predate the destruction as far back as the 14th century, and the earliest mention of these events is a 1384 entry in the Hamelin town records. The events were recorded, of course, because the stranger did return. According to the story, though, he changed clothing, trading in his colourful robes for the uniform of a hunter. Gone was the salesman; the stranger was returning for vengeance. While the adults were in church on June 26th, the stranger strode into town and began to play his flute again. This time, rather than crowds of writhing rats, it was the children who clambered out of the houses. They flooded the streets, gathering around the strange visitor, and then, when they were all present, he marched them out of town, never to be seen again. There are, of course, a number of morals to this story, but the one that has stuck with us for centuries remains ever-true: never trust a stranger.

Folklore is full of strangers. In many stories, it’s flat-out amazing just how much freedom we have given them in our lives. Even stories of someone as benign as Santa Claus have an element of danger when you view them from outside cultural fishbowl. Here’s the story of a strange man who stalks our children year-round, noting their behaviour and secret desires, who then breaks into our homes, eats our food, and leaves a few presents to prove that he was there. For the people of Hamelin, though, that stranger cost them far more than a plate of cookies. Their ill treatment of the man who came to town led to the loss of their children, and as difficult as it is to believe, the story of Hamelin is true – part of it, at least. Scholars are in agreement that the rats were a later addition to the tale, showing up about 300 years after the events were said to have taken place. But as far back as the records go, there has always been a stranger, a visitor from the outside, who leaves with the children, and although it’s taken a very long time to figure out why, some historians think they have the answer. To understand the truth, they say, we first have to understand the political culture that Hamelin found itself in. In 1227, about 50 years prior to the events of Hamelin, a battle took place on the border between what was then the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark, pushing the Danish border north of modern-day Germany. As a result, a whole new territory opened up that needed colonists. Men called “locators” were assigned to travel the land and find volunteers to populate this new territory, who often wore colourful clothing. They were eloquent speakers. They were, in a sense, a lot like today’s door-to-door salesmen. The empire needed farmers and craftsmen and soldiers to protect these new lands, but it was hard to find people willing to uproot their lives and travel north, especially when that new land was alongside a contested, military-heavy border. It was a hard sell, and so when the locators came knocking, rather than shipping off a handful of adult volunteers, townsfolk would sometimes get creative. Instead of paying with their own lives, they would sell their children to these men. The proof, it turns out, is in the phonebook, and on Google maps. Many town names along a line between Hamelin and Poland bear a striking resemblance to town names from medieval Germany, oftentimes even showing up more than once. Even more compelling, surnames from the 1284 Hamelin town records still show up in phonebooks in Pomerania, a region of Poland along the Baltic sea. The folklore, you see, tells a colourful story, one that’s as easy for children to swallow as a spoonful of honey, but the truth that the story hides turns out to be far less palatable. An entire town, desperate for a solution to their economic and social challenges, actually sold their children off to recruiters hoping to colonise new lands. It’s a plot reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in that these people constructed a fantasy around certain events, and then passed that lie on to later generations in order to justify their actions and avoid questions. In the end, an outsider did indeed come to Hamelin that day, but he wasn’t the one who took the children. No, it turns out that the true monsters were already there, living in the house next door, shopping in the market, farming the fields. The most dangerous stranger, it seems, isn’t the outsider – it’s the one that hides among us.

[Closing statements]

[connorrichardson-bth-blog]

Stop Motion Animation-History

The magic lantern was made in 1603, it is an image projector using pictures on the sheets of glass, some sheets contain moving parts. It is considered the first example of project animation.

In 1824, the Thaumatrope housed a rotating mechanism with different picture on each side. When rotated, you saw a combined picture. The Thaumatrope is a Victorian toy constructed from a simple disk or card featuring a different picture on each side and attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled rapidly the card rotates on its axis and the two images appear to combine. Invented by John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), an English physician, in 1825, the Thaumatrope was the first instrument to exploit the persistence of images on the retina. Paris’s Philosophy in sport made science in earnest, first published in 1827, expounded his belief that scientific learning in children could be stimulated through a combination of amusement and instruction, using demonstrational toys such as the Thaumatrope.

In 1831, the phenakitoscope feature spinning disks reflected in mirrors that made it seem like the pictures were moving.

The optical toy, the phenakistoscope, was an early animation device that used the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion. It was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1841.The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. A variant of it had two discs, one with slits and one with pictures; this was slightly more unwieldy but needed no mirror. Unlike the zoetrope and its successors, the phenakistoscope could only practically be used by one person at a time.

In 1834, the zoetrope was a hollow drum that housed images on long interchangeable strips that spin and made the images appear to move.

The zoetrope , invented in 1834 by William George Horner, was an early form of motion picture projector that consisted of a drum containing a set of still images, that was turned in a circular fashion in order to create the illusion of motion. Horner originally called it the Daedatelum, but Pierre Desvignes, a French inventor, renamed his version of it the zoetrope (from Greek word root zoo for animal life and trope for "things that turn.")

A zoetrope is relatively easy to build. It can be turned at a variable rate to create slow-motion or speeded-up effects. Like other motion simulation devices, the zoetrope depends on the fact that the human retina retains an image for about a tenth-of-a-second so that if a new image appears in that time, the sequence was seem to be uninterrupted and continuous. It also depends on what is referred to as the Phi phenomenon, which observes that we try to make sense out of any sequence of impressions, continuously relating them to each other.

In 1868 the flip-book, also known as the kineograph, reached a wise audience and it credited with inspiring early animators more than the machines developed in this era.

A flip book is a collection of combined pictures intended to be flipped over to give the illusion of movement and create an animated sequence from a simple small book without machine.

Very popular at the end of 19 th century and the beginning of 20 th century, but still produced today, flip book is the American name even used in France, more often than its French name folioscope. British people call it flick book or flicker book; in Germany Abblätterbuch (books to be flipped through) in the 19 th century and then Daumenkino : “thumb cinema”, name that we also find sometimes in the US at the beginning of 20 th century (also called thumb book) as well as less usual names such as flip movie, fingertip movie, riffle book, living picture book or hand cinema.

Some authors compared the flip book to the Magic Book or Blow Book, a fashionable kind of books in 19 th century that allowed animations or optical illusions. Actually, the only common point is that they both use the principle of animation. The actor and historian of magic, Ricky Jay, is the author of a great work devoted to these small books

In 1877, the praxinoscopre expanded on the zoetrope, using multiple wheels to rotate images. It is considered to have shown the first prototypes of the animated cartoon.

The Praxinoscope is a typical optical toy from the 19th century. It consists of a cylinder and a strip of paper showing twelve frames for animation. As the cylinder rotates, stationary mirrors in the centre reveal a ‘single image’ in motion. The Praxinoscope was invented in 1876 by Charles-Émile Reynaud (1844-1918), a Paris science teacher, who marked all his examples ‘E.R.’. The toy became a great commercial success and won recognition at the great exhibitions of the period.

The Silent Era, 1900-1930:

The Silent era happened in the early 20th century. This was the marks of the beginning of cartoons. Many animators form studios , with bray studios in New York proving the most successful of this era. Bray helped lunch the careers of the cartoonists that created Mighty Mouse, Betty Boop and Woody Woodpecker. In 1906, was the first entirely animated film, Using stop-motion photography to create action. In 1908, the first animated film using hand drawn animation, and is considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon. In 1919 Musical Mews and Feline Follies introduces Felix the Cat- Often considered the first animated star.

in 1928, Steamboat Willie made a cartoon which was the first cartoon with sound printed on the film, and is the first noble success for Walt Disney Studios.

The Golden Age of American Animation, 1930-1950s:

During what many consider to be the “Golden Age” of animation, theoretical cartoons became integral part of popular culture. These years are defined by the rise of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM and Fleischer.

In 1930, Warner Brother Cartoons was funded and created the Merrie Melodies series.

In 1937, Walt Disney releases Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first animated feature to use hand-drawn animation.

The American Television Era, 1960-1980s:

The animation industry began to adapt to the fact that television continued its rise as the entertainment medium of choice for American families. Studios created many cartoons for TV, using a “limited animation” style. By the mid 80s, with help from cable channels such as The Disney Channel and Nickolodeon.

In 1960, Hanna Berbera releases The Flintstones, the first animated series on prime time television.

In 1961, The Yogi bear Show, a spin off of huckleberry hound debuts on national TV.

In 1963, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises wins the Academy Award for Best Short Film for The PinkPhink and continues to create shorts for theoretical release.

In 1964, Flitz the Cat is release- the fist animated adult feature film

Modern American Era, 1980-2014

The CGI (computer generated imagery) revolutionized animation. A principal difference of CGI animation compared to traditional animation is that drawing is replaced by 3D modeling, almost like a virtual version of stop-motion. A form of animation that combines the two and uses 2D computer drawing can be considered computer aided animation.

In 1984, The Adventues of Andre and Wally B was the first fully CGI animated film, created by The Graphics Group, the precursor to Pixar.

In 1987 The Simpsons was Made,  The Simpsons is an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and in 2009 it surpassed Gunsmoke as the longest-running American scripted primetime television series.

In 1995, Toy Story was the first fully computer animated feature film, was released.

In 2014, Big Hero 6 is the fist Disney animated film to feature Marvel Comic characters.

[zdbztumble]

But What About Kairi, Or: Today’s KH Ramble, Part II (KH III Spoilers)

Meanwhile...

My play-through of KH III has taken me through the last of the Disney worlds, Big Hero 6. Besides reminding me of why I’m not the biggest fan of that movie, its day/night options make for a fun mechanic, and the layout of San Fransokyo is great. Baymax has some cute battle dialogue, and Donald’s reaction to “Keyblade Hero 3” was a good laugh. Of all the non-Pixar worlds, it’s also probably the best-integrated into the main plot. The reappearance of the Replica Riku, and the revelation of yet another plot, this time a burgeoning rebellion inside the real Organization XIII, nearly made my head explode, but on balance, it’s a solid level. The unorthodox beginning to the last Gummi zone was a pleasant surprise too, though I’d say that the Gummi ship sequences were at their best in KH II.

But then we come to the Badlands of the Keyblade Graveyard, and...ooh boy.

The battle that opens this level is fun, and a worthy successor to the battle with a thousand Heartless in KH II. I may have been a bit over-leveled for it, but it was still a good time. The cutscenes that followed, on the other hand, had me sputtering in disbelief. To begin with, the fact that all of that was a cutscene is baffling. All seven Keyblade Wielders facing down Terranort doesn’t sound like a good boss battle to anyone? Or hell, just Terra and Aqua? They’ve got the real stake in that fight. And Donald’s surprise spell, which I gather was a big Final Fantasy Easter egg, made for a cool moment that would have been much cooler as something that appeared in the course of battle. But that cutscene was also baffling on a story level. The Demon Tower becoming a Demon Tornado certainly made it bigger, but all the characters reacting to it with such despair was hard to follow when the distinction between the two isn’t all that great. Sora’s total collapse was especially out-of-character. The staging of this cutscene, it’s choice of camera angles, action, and pacing, all failed to sell the supposed magnitude of this threat. Coming off of a single battle, massive though it was, didn’t help.

And then...there’s Kairi.

I’m struggling to think of another series where a character supposedly of the main cast has been so consistently mishandled the way Kairi has since the end of KH II. The writing for her has been absolutely abysmal. And it’s in abysmal in a way that, rather than souring me on the character (which has happened in other series), I’m increasingly sympathetic towards her in a critical sense looking at Kingdom Hearts as a story.

That sympathy doesn’t come from Kairi being a favorite of mine. I don’t see how Kairi could be considered a favorite character, because I don’t consider her a complete character. The best way to describe Kairi IMO is as a potential character. She has tremendous potential to do great things in this series. Her wholesome, “girl next door” personality gives her a charming if rather conventional starting point, and the fact that she’s a freakin’ princess - one of the Princesses of Light, no less - who can’t recall her past offers a wonderful hook into stories. I said before that I’d revisit the idea of a KH prequel game, and IMO, the best choice for a prequel story is to explore Kairi’s past. Imagine that; a BbS, or equivalent game, that explored her life as a princess in Radiant Garden, how she came to lose her memories and end up on Destiny Islands, and why she could wield a Keyblade at the end of KH II. Was her personality still the same before she lost her memories? Could the confederation of Disney villains been aware of her and the other Princesses even then? If the prequel must expand on the Xehanort saga, then could Kairi have had anything to do with Ansem the Wise’s research, and could that explain her amnesia?

KH III has, so far, suggested that’s going to deal with at least some of this. Eventually. Maybe. If it gets around to it. But the point still stands that fleshing out one of the main characters of the series instead of inventing three new ones and pulling a third twist with the villain seems like the much more sound storytelling choice to me. A prequel game that focused on Kairi could also contain a hook that, combined with Maleficent’s unresolved fate at the end of KH II, would’ve provided a much more organic segue into a KH III story than pulling all sorts of stunts to re-open the Xehanort saga.

But that didn’t happen, and we’re left with the reality that Kairi’s backstory has barely been touched upon since the first game. Kairi herself is barely present for Coded, BbS, or DDD. In the latter case, that being a game primarily focused on the Destiny Islands gang sans Disney battle partners, Kairi’s absence seems a terrible wasted opportunity. That could be made up for if the revelation that she was training as a Keyblade Wielder had a payoff, but so far, KH III has yet to provide. She’s had two cutscenes with Axel, neither of which actually show any training, and then what little you see of her in the Badlands (more on that later.)

Once again, this feels a wasted opportunity, because this series has a precedent that would allow for Kairi to have more of a role early on in the game. Remember the Roxas segment at the beginning of KH II that served as an extended tutorial? Why not have Kairi’s training be the tutorial of KH III? It would make sense story-wise for her to be the player character as you learn or review basic controls, there would have been opportunities for cutscenes to flesh out her character (and Axel’s, much as I hate to admit it), and a clever bit of writing could’ve passed the torch on to Sora right on time for the story to begin in earnest. And why not turn the swarm of enemies battle that opens the Badlands into a multi-party affair? Start off playing as Sora with Donald and Goofy, switch after a certain stage to playing as Riku with Mickey, then to Ven with Aqua, and then to Kairi with Axel. You could go back to Sora for the finale, but this way, everyone gets included, and the character in most need of material gets to shine for a moment.

Instead, Kairi is probably the least-featured member of the party in all those cutscenes. In the moment when Aqua directs her, Mickey, and Goofy to get the wounded to safety, Kairi isn’t even in the shot. Pretty much the only time she’s in frame in that cutscene is when she’s either being saved or reaching out to Sora.

And here’s where we come to a tricky part of the issue, because I’ve seen some rather strange commentary on Sora and Kairi’s relationship. One school of thought seems to hold that Kairi becoming Sora’s love interest is what costs her any opportunity to stand as a character unto herself. I can’t follow this line of thought, for several reasons. The first being that Kairi can’t exactly “become” a love interest when it’s clear from the start of the first game that Sora has a thing for her. Being a love interest and a solid character in your own right aren’t mutually exclusive either. But I also don’t understand this argument because Sora and Kairi’s relationship has been neglected just as Kairi herself has, and that’s a real problem given its importance to the series.

In KH I, Kairi serves as the stakes and as the prime motive for both Sora and Riku. While she herself doesn’t have much to do, she is pivotal to the story, and her bond with Sora being so strong that her heart takes refuge in his, that she can restore him from a Heartless, and that they somehow find a way to promise to see each other again even as they’re separated in the finale, is the reason why. Kairi indirectly serves as the prime motive in CoM too, with Sora’s memories reworked to replace Kairi with Namine. And while she shares the role of motivation with Riku in KH II, Sora is still mindful of her throughout the game, even slipping into romantic thoughts at least twice.

Now, lest you think I have nothing but praise for the early games in the series: in those games as in the later ones, Kairi is still underdeveloped as a character. She is basically there as the love interest and little more. Being a lifelong huge sucker for first love/young love subplots in fiction, I’ve been taken by Sora and Kairi’s relationship since my first playthrough, but it works as well as it does almost entirely because of Sora. Sora is developed as a character throughout the games, as well as being the protagonist and the player character. Because he is such a charming and likable character, and because he cares so much about Kairi, that carries over to the audience, or at least this member of it. It would be a stronger relationship if Kairi were more developed as a character, which is all the more reason to do so.

But even if you accept their relationship remaining on the level of “hero and love interest,” there’s been a terrible case of neglect since KH II. It wouldn’t be a factor in BbS, naturally, but by leaving Kairi out of nearly all of Coded and DDD, the relationship drops out of the story. Cut to KH III, which does want to present that relationship as being as important as it’s ever been, and the long dry spell is felt. It doesn’t help that KH III is so densely packed with other material, much of it devoted to Organization XIII either taunting Sora or sniping at each other. Several of the Disney films selected offer parallels to Sora and Kairi’s relationship that aren’t noted, even as previous games did so and this one draws parallels in other relationships.

Which brings us back to the cutscene in the Badlands. Sora’s desperation to save Kairi is evident, and an earlier cutscene where they finally share paopu fruits was adorable, but neither has the same impact as they would have had if Kairi had remained prominent as a character, and if her relationship with Sora had remained relevant in previous games. It speaks to how well that relationship was presented in the first three games that it can still exert some sway over the heartstrings despite that, but there has been real damage done to one of the central bonds of the series by the neglect, and nowhere is that damage more apparent than when the story stresses Kairi more than anyone else when the Demon Tornado swallows up the party.

Now, I left off just as Sora emerged in Olympus after literally putting himself together, so perhaps some of this will be addressed by the end of the game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. And in the meantime...that whole Final World sequence was trippy as all hell and those Soras damn hard to catch, but I loved it. Absolutely no idea what that cat thing is supposed to be though.

[tamgerines]

KH3 First Impression and Complete Thoughts

BACKGROUND: i've played kh1, com, kh2, bbs, 2.8, and a bit of khux. i've watched coded and 3d on yt, so i know the story relatively well. this is an impression of my first playthrough. i did my run on standard mode and watched the secret ending on yt. i mostly did this for story, so this will have my initial impressions based on my run that will not cover extra content like the phone mini games and cooking.  my opinions are subjected to change if i ever do any later playthroughs. pls, feel free to disagree w/ me.

!!! WARNING: THERE WILL BE A LOT OF STORY SPOILERS!!!

AUDIO: 

Music: utada is queen!!! that opening song!!! also i kept noticing how lit the songs are in each world esp frozen???  and aqua's. worth a replay just for the soundtrack alone.

Voice Acting: everyone sounded great for the most part. sora’s va have certainly improved and sounds less strained. his vanitas voice has suffered significantly though lolololol. i think i read that someone called it a wannabe dark knight voice? the organization sounded incredible, w/ my fav being xemnas, marluxia, and larxene. the disney and pixar va’s are incredible w/ my fav probably being randall in monster’s inc. 

some ppl did not get vas like xaldin and laxeaus. and phil in hercules. which were all very disappointing bc in the scenes that they were in, they would just stand around woodenly, and it’s very noticeable. 

VISUALS: 

mostly a+. environments are beautiful. water and frost textures are amazing!!! you can really feel that waterga and blizzaga. fur textures in monster's inc. could use some work. little details like the sails moving in potc rly make the worlds come alive. this could be a me prob, but environments in certain worlds make it very hard to see map markers, treasure chests, and disney emblems (which are supposed to be hard to find, but still). mostly in tangled.

strangely enough, this is the only game where i prefer in game graphics to cgi. it's already highly expressive and there's something creepy and uncanny about the cgi esp in the final fight. and it's mostly bc sora's thin chapped lips throughout the entire game suddenly becomes full.

DESIGNS: 

i don't love everyone's outfit or sora's outfit changes in this game besides toy story. this is something i alrdy knew going in, but i've always felt like the outfits in kh1 and 2 rly suited each of the character's personalities. and this is not just destiny trio but even chars like roxas, the twilight town kids and the hollow bastion crew. the move towards a uniformed look makes no sense to me like is it to unify the key bearers as one force against the organization? i could understand why destiny trio was wearing plaid but why the twilight town kids also? by the end of the game, almost everyone was wearing black and it's just boring to me. like there's a right way to do uniform while retaining characters' individual looks, and that's the wayfinder trio in bbs. in this game, not so much.

an aside, but i'm sort of disappointed in the hud moving to 3d too. the 2d portraits have always been part of kh so it's kinda a bum to see it go away.

i don't love the lvl designs but it might also be due to a narrative and pacing issue that i'll expand on. any case, vertical maps are a challenge to figure out. i don't consider myself bad at directions but there are so many moments, esp in hercules and tangled where i would be like where the heck do i go next (and i have the map) only for me to look up and find a shotlock teleport point (and this isn't so much a thing that heightens the difficulty but a time waster).

lvls and bosses in previous kh games have always been known for their gimmicks and mechanics, but in this game particularly i found it to be more tedious? and this mostly applies to frozen: who the fuck designed frozen? who the fuck thought it's a good lvl design to have sora climb a mountain, get kick off it twice, and climb it again as good lvl design? who?

all the disney bosses started blending together for me bc they're literally all giant monsters and rly easy. i think the mistake here is the fact that the disney worlds are put back to back whereas in kh1/2/bbs you have the interruption of original worlds and an actually playable important parts to the main story, in this game all the important storyline in radiant garden are locked in cutscenes interspersed throughout the game between finishing disney worlds.

a lot of ppl might disagree w this, but i miss the cinematic reaction commands and limit attacks. we still have them but i find them to be on a much smaller scale in the form of drive finishers and situation commands, but i find them to be less imaginative in kh3 in order to be less """"disruptive""" to the gameplay. i've always found cinematics charming in previous games as a way to show sora interacting with his party members during combat. little things like beast putting a hand on sora's shoulder, aladdin leaning on him, or riku bumping his fist have a way of making the friendships he forms feel organic. outside of link commands/ summons, in this game, he........just throws a lot of ppl around or is thrown around?

GAMEPLAY:

already sort of went through parts of it in the previous section, but overall combat was smooth. i love how mobile sora is in this game. the improvement to his running speed and addition of all the mobile skills like dodge roll, super slide, flow motion, blizzard skating, etc. makes combat feel fast paced and juking so easy.

magic is super improved on ever since 2.8 and feels satisfying to use esp bc i feel like ur given a lot more mp now and with the ability to save the last of your mana for cure, it feels like you're not always budgeting your magic.

underwater combat was smoother than i expected.

it's a mistake putting almost all the commands on the triangle button. there's so much options you can do in combat and you'd mean to activate one thing, but then an attraction flow comes out and you just want to die. it gets a bit easier as i went on and got more used to the controls, but in general, i still think it's a mistake to not to have an ability or something to disable certain features like in kh2 fm.

gummy ships continue to be a thing. why. i don’t like how i have to turn the camera myself now ;;;. 

i'm not a speedrunner or anything, so i can't say too much else about fighting. the physical combos to me did feel like he was spinning a bit too much tho.

STORY: oh, fucking boy.

i'm not mad, i'm not disappointed, and i'm not even surprised. i already knew that post bbs, kh has already departed far from the franchise i loved as a kid and still today, at least story wise. but let's walk through it.

Disney Worlds: the disney worlds was literally a retelling of their movies. and unlike in kh2 and bbs, where visits to disney worlds were split into two parts, with the first part following the disney story and the second part being heavily tied to the main kh story and thus having original content, the disney worlds in kh3 only get one long visit. and the integration of kh into disney was just done so poorly. remember how kh villains used to kidnap princesses? remember how they used to actually conspire to take disney characters' hearts and turn them dark? remember, you know, when they were still evil and actually interfered with the worlds? in almost every world in kh3, an org member just comes says vague menacing things to sora, calls him stupid, and then leaves. yeah. and oh, maleficent and pete looks for a black box only to not find it, and leaves. AND THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

the pixar worlds + bh6 were the only ones with any actual new content and they feel so fresh. i esp loveeeeeeeed toy story omg. the script was so good, funny, and heartwarming. the pixar consultants should have helped kh all the way tbh.

like previous games, there's an attempt for each disney world to thematically tie into the main kh story. in this game, it was as heavy handed as ever, probably even more so. 

Original Worlds: onto the meat of kh, the main story was rushed up until the end. you have a slew of disney worlds, then bam, they slam you with all the human bosses and the important story stuff. 

the ‘awakening’ of roxas, xion, and ventus were very rushed. you literally have one moment they’re no there then two seconds of white screen and all of a sudden they’re there. 

there’s a shit ton of shoehorned character redemption arcs: vexen, demyx, saix, eraqus, xehanort, xemnas, ansem. all were done either offscreen or by some miracle, they reached an epiphany after sora beat his keyblade into their heads. 

the only death scene that i actually liked, that a lot of ppl complained about, was vanitas bc yes, although i thought his character had so much potential, it was at least a consistent and sympathetic death. bless him, born a villain die a villain. same with xemnas bc i loved his last speech. 

xehanort was a shitty villain through and through. no one understood his motivation; it’s like nomura took a page from thanos’ guide of how to write villains, gave him some stupid ass goal to have a keyblade war to restart the world, and then just have him...get everything he wanted? his estranged friend comes back in ghost form for whatever reason and is just like ok we’re cool man even tho u took my student and indirectly murdered me and then gets taken up to heart heaven, like O K. and like what’s the most frustrating is that it’s implied they’re keeping him as a villain??? bc fucking ymx is like ooohh imma just go back to my own time via time travel. it’s too late for u sora hurdur. 

and the younger members of the organization, the ones that we do know were in khux. we don’t get to know how they became nobodies and they don’t get a redemption??? really???  

you can tell they tried, TRIED, hard to give everyone closure. and they miserably failed to close plot points. they actually opened more. who the fuck is the unnamed girl in lea and isa’s storyline? why the fuck did you mention her if you were going to play the pronoun game and not name her??? what the fuck was in the black box??? why are they looking for it when no one know what’s in it??? why the fuck was repliku inside of riku the whole fucking time??? why have org members be norted if they can still have agency and choose to betray xehanort??? why the fuck was BOTH sora and riku in different worlds in the secret ending????? ? ? ? 

and tho i’m very glad that wayfinder and sea salt trios get their happy ending, the destiny trio had their characters assassinated. kairi was teased to become an independent character of her own and fight alongside sora, only to get shafted to become a damsel in distress, again, literally replaced by xion in one of the last battles, AND referred to as ‘motivation’ for sora by xehanort lol. sora, the guy who’s always going my friends are my power, ONLY grieves about losing kairi, accrediting all of his strength ONLY TO HER. riku, who spent the first game desperately trying to get kairi’s heart back, and who protected her from saix in the second, suddenly doesn’t give a shit about her and is just there as sora’s moral support. it’s so frustrating that nomura has the audacity to say that this series is primarily about friendship and then pull this shit lol. it’s transparent. 

CONCLUSION: 

i think for me, the quintessential kh trilogy has always been kh1, com, and kh2. as far as i’m concerned, the story should have ended there for destiny trio. and it’s like nomura said, how he feels more sympathetic towards villains now, i think nomura’s ideas have outgrown his main character. 

sora’s journey worked in 1, com, and 2 because he had an overarching goal to find kairi and riku and return home. not everyone has to understand heartless vs. nobodies or dark vs. light but at least, anyone can understand the desperation of saving your friends. when that framework is taken away, sora’s goals and motivations become unclear; he’s a kid and has little reason to be caught up in xehanort’s plans, the keyblade war, or the organization’s agendas. and his failure to grow with the increasing complexity of the plot, to investigate for himself the bigger picture or even come into a similar realization of his own darkness/ balance like riku, makes him unfit; he’s a reactionary character instead of an active one. that’s why this game, being experienced from his point of view, felt mostly like a catch up to speed for sora and a set up to nomura’s next big thing instead of a genuine ending.  i honestly don’t think nomura knows what to do with him and with kingdom hearts anymore. 

kh3 is a game wrapped in nostalgia and promised something bigger than it could fulfill. and aside from better graphics and improved gameplay, the story wasn’t worth the wait. 

[whittertwitter]

How I’d fix Kingdom Hearts III.

Bearing in mind that the issues I had with it were mostly story-related, namely: integration of the overarching plot into (some of the) Disney worlds, pacing, characterization, female characters getting sidelined, and threads left dangling. In terms of gameplay, I’d probably just tie Team Attacks and Attraction Flow to MP (or make Attraction Flow location-specific, like Reality Shift in 3D) and Formchanges to Focus, just so the player has to use them more strategically. I’d also make the Riku and Mickey scenes in the Realm of Darkness playable, or at least have more player input than they do.

First of all, I’d change Olympus to Agrabah. They used the first movie in the first game and Return of Jafar in II, so they really should have used King of Thieves in III. Since the whole reason for Sora going to Olympus in the first place (to gain the power of waking) doesn’t come into play until the end of the game anyway, I don’t see it as that big of a change. If you really need a reason for him to go there, I think either learning something from Aladdin as the diamond in the rough or from Genie adapting to being semi-phenomenal, nearly-cosmic could work. Axel will tag along to Agrabah because: 

 He went there on a lot of missions for the Organization, so he’s familiar with the world and won’t drag them down, plus he could learn a lot from Sora because...

I’ve decided that Axel should struggle to consistently summon his Keyblade, both to mirror Sora’s power of waking thing and to provide the Guardians of Light with incentive to rescue as many Keyblade wielders as possible just in case he doesn’t prove up to snuff.

I think there’s a good character study that could be done between Axel and Cassim, what with them both being charming roguish types who fell in with a bad crowd and struggle with breaking old habits.

I’d also introduce the New Seven Hearts concept here, with Sora and company realizing that Jasmine is no longer a Princess of Heart. From here, Axel’s still struggling, so Yen Sid sends him on a mission to confirm if any of the Princesses of Heart have retained their status; Axel visits Wonderland--or rather, the world Alice is actually from--and Beast’s Castle in cutscenes between worlds in Sora’s first world set, and probably encounters Xaldin in the latter world. (Xaldin replaces Xion as a Nort, because it’s still so weird that he’s got the pointy Nort ears after becoming a Nobody and as a Nobody is obsessed with negative emotions AND needs time to recover after being re-completed, but somehow isn’t a Nort?)

Meanwhile, Kairi isn’t in active Keyblade wielder training yet, but only because she’s at Radiant Garden, where Zexion is focusing on Namine first because it should be easier to untangle just one heart in another than three hearts in another, and Namine’s power over memories would sure come in handy. While she’s there, you could explore her childhood in Radiant Garden. (If her grandmother’s still alive, that’d be a touching reunion!) I’m leaning toward not having her be part of the New Seven Hearts, because going from having a heart of pure light to a normal heart with the capacity for darkness seems more interesting to me. (Aaand now I’m thinking about Master Xehanort taking advantage of that lack of experience with darkness and Norting Kairi instead of killing her. It’d make Sora less likely to fight, which is the opposite of what he wants, but damn it’s so much more compelling than what we got.)

For the first set of worlds, I’m pretty satisfied with how the overarching plot was integrated. However, in Kingdom of Corona, some things aren’t well-explained unless you’ve seen the movie, like Rapunzel suddenly having the crown back. For that one, Heartless/Nobodies could show up when Mother Gothel meets Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and she drops it while running away; Sora could give it back to Rapunzel and mention something about her mother looking for her. Also, I still think Mother Gothel should’ve knocked Marluxia out with the tree branch instead of his Reapers, lol. 

Someone on Reddit made the suggestion to move rescuing Aqua and Ven to between the first and second world sets--possibly with fully playable Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure--and I absolutely love the idea. Others pointed out that it couldn’t work because they go to the Keyblade Graveyard after gathering all the Guardians of Light, which is why I suggest having Vanitas reawaken and assume control of Ven as soon as Sora returns Ven’s heart to his body. 

Other cutscenes will have to be moved up to this point, including Vexen recruiting Demyx and the latter dropping off the completed Replica, which will now go to Namine while Zexion reverse-engineers one for Roxas. (Or not; Namine’s entire existence is pretty weird, so she might be able to generate her own body after her heart is untangled from Kairi’s, leaving the Replica to Roxas.) Regardless, Namine is now awake and starts work on freeing Roxas and Xion; Axel is now capable of consistently summoning his Keyblade, so he and Kairi start training under Riku and Mickey; Sora and company possibly revisit Twilight Town, just so we can get that first world revisit that was in the first game, II, and 3D; and Aqua recovers from ten years in the Realm of Darkness plus having Ven snatched out from under her nose, then gives Riku and Mickey a hand with training.

Monstropolis won’t change too much, though Sora and company now knowing who Vanitas is and having beef with him will impart a different tone. As for Arendelle...Larxene needs to interact with people besides Sora and company, like trying to bully Anna into giving up on Elsa or taunting Hans and turning him into a Heartless; Sora and company need to go to places besides the North Mountain; and there need to not be random out of place musical numbers. Since the 100 Acre Wood was even more of a minigame hub than usual and didn’t actual adapt the plot of Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, I propose cutting it in favor of a Wreck-It Ralph world, with the arcade being one of Scrooge’s many business ventures in Twilight Town; Xigbar would actually be a great Nort if the world needs one, since going Turbo kinda reminds me of Luxu body-surfing through the ages. (While I’m on the subject, I’d replace Ralph and Stitch with Jack Skellington and Tron, that way Sora has all the party members from past worlds that required a change in appearance as Links; Simba would be obtained in Agrabah, Dream Eaters in Toy Box, Jack Skellington in Monstropolis, and Tron in San Fransokyo, and I’m leaning toward Tron being in his Tron: Legacy form.)

For The Caribbean, its biggest problem comes down to the audience already knowing that the chest of Davy Jones isn’t the box the Organization is looking for, so it feels like a waste of time; Sora and company barely having any impact on the plot doesn’t help. Having them actually interact with characters besides Jack would help. I’d also have Beckett play a larger role and Luxord turn him into a Heartless. I thought it was an odd choice to have Dark Riku show up in San Fransokyo instead of the Riku Replica or Data-Riku and make it seem like he’s time traveling (UGH) from when Ansem possessed him...only to have it be a Replica anyway! So yeah, I’d probably change that to Data-Riku in a Replica to make the Bug Blox from Coded showing up actually matter, and I’d have Vexen supervising him instead of faffing about in The Caribbean.

At this point, Zexion and Namine have finally succeeded in getting Roxas free, but are still working on Xion. However, since they now have seven Guardians of Light, the decision is made to rest up and prepare for the Keyblade War, as in canon. I’m keeping the scene with Axel and Saix before the final battle but cutting out the bit about them becoming apprentices to save their heretofore unknown female friend, because it’s just a blatant retcon; Nomura confirmed in an interview after BBS that they were just ordinary kids who got caught up in the Heartless experiments.

As for the final battle itself, my thoughts are much more scattered as of right now, besides Kairi not getting fridged of course. I like blackosprey’s idea of moving Sora’s little jaunt in The Final World to after the boss rush of Norts but before Scala ad Caelum. Since Xaldin’s taking Xion’s place as a Nort, it’ll be Saix who’s tasked with killing Axel and hesitates; Zexion and Namine get Xion free just in time for her to possess the discarded Replica and make the save. I'd prefer Terranort be re-completed after you defeat Ansem and Xemnas instead of being a Nort from the get-go, or have him around from the get-go instead of Ansem and Xemnas, because him existing at the same time as the Wonder Twins is only possible thanks to time travel bullshit. (Same with Master Xehanort, for that matter, but he’s harder to work around. Unless you have Young Xehanort pulling the strings for most of the game, fight him after Ansem and Xemnas and/or Terranort, and only fight Master Xehanort in Scala ad Caelum?) And if they’re going to bring up Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene’s connection to the mobile game, the least they could do is have dead people close to them besides Strelitzia hanging out in The Final World, giving out exposition tidbits.

Also: I know Nomura said this was just going to be the end of the Xehanort Saga, but I really feel this game should’ve retired Sora as well. Part of the reason the ending left me unsatisfied is because Sora doesn’t get any closure, and I know it’s because they want us to keep buying these games, but if they try, they can easily make us care just as much about a new protagonist. Maybe even, horror of horrors, a female one!

So yeah, those are my thoughts on how to improve KHIII! Several days after I said I’d post them. Maybe before the next ice age, I can work up the motivation to post about my series-wide KH rewrite, lol.