#writing fan fiction is my way to deal with Sunday scaries

[michelangelo-sky]

Never let a good crisis go to waste… chapter 5 is up

“I’ve never agreed to this, it sounds ridiculous.”

“Better than the truth.”

“It’s the most ridiculous lie I’ve ever heard. Are you always so abysmally bad at making things up?” It rattles him, mainly because he is not used to people challenging him so bluntly, well, not anymore. But before he can answer, she mutters, possibly more to herself then him. “I can’t believe Mon took it at face value.”

“She didn’t, of course.”

Eyes narrowed, hands clenching. Worry lines crossing her forehead. She is wondering if he shared the full story behind the debacle, and what it may mean for the talks as well as her own relationship with her mentor.

“But the Chancellor has enough common sense not to ask questions if she doesn’t want to hear answers. Chandrilan culture fosters appreciation for a willful ignorance of small transgressions for the sake of the greater good.”

[zombiebarbee]

The Sunday Times article

DEMON DAZE

After almost 30 years, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s comic fantasy Good Omens has made it to the screen – and in lavish fashion. Benji Wilson discovers how Pratchett’s dying wish came true

Heaven, as it turns out, is in an industrial park in Weybridge. The old Samsung building, with floor-to-ceiling windows and lighting so bright you have to squint, is the celestial set for Good Omens, the BBC and Amazon’s TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s beloved fantasy novel. The floor, in particular, is attracting attention from Jon Hamm, who plays the angel Gabriel.

“Did we put this floor in?” he asks, wearing a power suit and looking more Wall Street CEO than heavenly host. When he looks down, he sees his own face reflected. “I mean, who orders up a silver floor? Of all the choices.” Then an angel rides by on a hoverboard. “This,” Hamm says, “is insane.”

Much of Good Omens could be described that way. Were he alive, Terry Pratchett would probably delight in the description. It tells the story of an angel, Aziraphale, and a demon, Crowley, played by Michael Sheen and David Tennant respectively. They have been on Earth since the Garden of Eden, working for their opposing teams in heaven and hell, one lighting fires, the other putting them out. Over the centuries, they have become friends.

We first meet them as the Antichrist is being delivered to Earth – indeed, one of Crowley’s missions is to deliver the Antichrist to the maternity ward. But they both realise this means the end of humanity as we know it, and, as Tennant puts it, “Crowley and Aziraphale have quite a nice time on earth. They quite enjoy the dinners and the wine and the lifestyle.”

So they get together to decide they’re going to try to avert the apocalypse. “But it’s a comedy,” Sheen says. “It’s in the vein of Douglas Adams and Monty Python. When Neil sent me the first draft of the script, it reminded me of Whoops Apocalypse [Andrew Marshall and David Renwick’s 1982 ITV comedy set in the weeks leading up to the end of the world.] I remember watching that when I was a kid and finding it funny but also quite scary. It’s hard to know what my 14-year—old self would think of Good Omens, but I imagine it might be similar.”

This kind of tonal mash-up intermingling humanity’s most momentous concerns with the quotidian minutiae of “where did I leave my keys?”, is notoriously hard to pull off. For a start, there’s the scope of it: Good Omens has been in production since mid-2017 and has had to recreate not merely heaven and hell, but all of Christian history in between. The beginning of episode three features a sequence catching up with Aziraphale and Crowley at the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, the crucifixion, ancient Rome, Shakespeare’s Globe, the crucible of the French Revolution and on, via the world wards, to the present. We see their relationship developing down the aeons. It’s all been done in less than 20 minutes.

“It’s basically a collection of single scenes,” Tennant says when I speak to him in a church in an Oxfordshire village. (He’s about to go outside and take delivery of the Antichrist.) “But for one of those scenes we got Shakespeare’s Globe for a day. For another, we transformed St James’s Park into Edwardian England for a day. For one scene. It’s fantastic to be able to work on something that has those sort of resources. You wouldn’t really be able to tell this story otherwise.”

Resources means Amazon’s money. That, and the allure of Gaiman’s writing, has drawn in a supporting cast including Frances McDormand as the voice of God, alongside Hamm, Jack Whitehall, Michael McKeen and Miranda Richardson. With a Game of Thrones-shaped hole to be filled, Good Omens is supposed to be a very big deal indeed.

Yet Gaiman, who co-wrote the original novel, adapted it for the screen and is the showrunner, would happily not have made it at all. “I didn’t really plan to give 18 months of my life to making a TV show. I’d much rather be writing novels. I would be making a lot more money writing novels. Nobody would be telling me what to do and my wife wouldn’t be complaining about not seeing me. But on the other hand, this,” he says, pointing at the shiny floor and Hamm running through lines as Gabriel, “was what Terry wanted to happen. And he’s not here.”

Good Omens was published in 1990. There followed almost 20 years of fruitless attempts to turn it into a film. Terry Gilliam received a prepublication copy of the book asking for a cover blurb. He misplaced the letter that came with it and thought he was being sent a story that might work for his next film. He loved it, but, as so often with Gilliam’s grand visions, Hollywood got in the way.

“Terry [Pratchett] and I decided that we wanted it to be television six years ago,” Gaiman says. “We went went looking for a writer – both of us were too busy – but basically we couldn’t find one.”

Pratchett died in March 2015. As he was overtaken by Alzheimer’s in his final years, he wrote Gaiman a letter – something he had never done before. “He said, ‘You’re the only other person out there with the same love and understanding and passion for this that I have. I know how busy you are, but I want to see this before the darkness takes me. Will you do this, please?’ In 35 years, he’d never asked me anything before. So I said yes. And then he died. So suddenly I was dealing with a last request. And I’m honouring it.”

Gaiman and Sheen have been friends since the actor mentioned in an interview about a decade ago that Gaiman was one of his favourite writers, across novels and comic books. Gaiman happened to read this, and sent Sheen a selection of special editions with a card saying “From one fan to another.” Since then, Sheen has appeared in Gaiman’s episode of Doctor Who, and now stars in Good Omens. Part of their friendship is based on a shared love of science fiction – Sheen only mentioned Gaiman in that interview in order to make a point about genre snobs. Many of his favourite writers, he said, worked in fantasy and SF.

Sheen says the snobbery still pertains - “If you’re of a mindset that anything written in a science-fiction context just can’t be great literature, then I don’t think anything is going to change your mind” - adding that there’s a similar prejudice against comedy as high art.

“Comedy films are always seen as impossible to be great films. They’re rarely winning Oscars. Good Omens ticks both boxes, comedy and fantasy – and I like that. When I was growing up, two of the biggest influences on me in terms of how I see art were The South Bank Show on TV and Kenneth Tynan, especially his profiles. Neither of them made a distinction between high and low art. One week is was Shostakovich , the next Billy Connolly. Tynan would profile Brecht, then Morecambe and Wise. I loved that.”

Just because Good Omens is funny, he goes on, doesn’t mean that it’s glib. “I was looking at a scene today when one of the angels says it’s been written that the end of the world begins with unrest in the Middle East, and the Antichrist is being taken to the Pains of Megiddo. I’ve seen that being written in newspaper articles – Isis are trying to engineer a situation where this battle takes place in a certain location because that’s ‘what was written’. People actually think that Trump is the coming of the Christ. Or the Antichrist. People are actually talking about this in fairly mainstream circles.

“That gives Good Omens a difficult context to when the book came out. You’ve got these two main characters who are very much in their own echo chambers – or should be. Yet the action of the piece requires them to break out of those bubbles.”

Tennant goes further. “We started making this in 2017. We knew it wouldn’t come out until 2019, and did wonder whether the apocalypse might have hastened towards us by then. It does give an added piquancy that the world might not be as stable as we thought it was a couple of years ago. By the time this article is printed, who knows where we’ll be?”

Good Omens is on Amazon Prime Video from May 31 and will air on BBC2 at the end of the year.

[joyofcrime-elinorhigh]

Barbie: Princess and the Popstar REVIEW:

 Hello everybody, my name is JoyofCrimeArt and I hate myself. Barbie.

 The Direct-to-DVD Barbie movies aren't something that I, and I assume many of you reading this, ever really thought about to much. They we're always that movie that you would see in the Wal-mart "five dollar" DVD racks. Or maybe you'd see a snip-it of one airing on Nickelodeon at like, twelve o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. Compared to, say, the direct-to-DVD Scooby-Doo movies the Barbie movies seem to be a lot less attention. Which is why it came to such a shock to me that there are SO MANY!  Thirty-six. As of the time of me writing this review there are thirty-six direct-to-DVD Barbie movies. And not only that, but they are divided into several different continuities and "seasons" as Wikipedia list it. The Barbie movies are a massive franchise! I just can't wait until their next film. Barbie: Infinity War. That one will make all the money!  So in order to honor such a long lasting franchise, I figured it was about time somebody gave Barbie the respect she deserves. The movie we're going to be talking about today, Barbie: Princess and the Popstar is the twenty-third entry in what I have titled the Barbie: Cinematic Universe. I had actually seen this one a couple of years ago on Nickelodeon. And it is, as of the writing of this review, the only Barbie movie that I have seen. Why did I choose to watch this movie oh so many years ago do you ask? Well, it was because of the title. Princess and the Popstar. Most Barbie movies have kinda dumb overly girly titles, but this one takes the cake. Princess and the Popstar! Somebody was PAID to come up with this!  And you wanna know the really crazy thing? This isn't even the first Barbie movie to be an adaptation of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." There was another, I'm assuming more straight forward, adaptation in 2004. But I guess marketing decided that Mark Twain's classic novel just...didn't have enough pop stars to meet "Girls between the ages of 2-7" demographic.  But hey, maybe the film won't be so bad. I mean the film is directed by Zeke Norton, who directed both Scary Godmother films. And those films...exist. Anyway, no more stalling. Let's dive head first to Barbie: Princess and the Popstar.

 The movie begins with a pop concert. And honestly, I can't imagine it starting any other way.  Famous pop star Keira (voiced by Ashleigh Ball.) is preforming a music tour in the fictional kingdom of Meribella, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the countries founding. We see her preform her set. We then cut away the kingdoms princess, Princess Tori (voiced by Kelly Sheridan.) standing outside her castle's balcony, listening to the event from a distance.  And if those voice actresses names sound at all familiar to you that's because our two heroines are voiced by Applejack and Starlight Shimmer, respectively, from My Little Pony.

UGH! As if I didn't already have enough reason to hate Starlight Shimmer! ... Starlight Shimmer is the one that everybody hates, right?  Princess Tori wants to go down to the concert, but she is stopped by her Aunt, Dutchess Amelia. And I want you to guess, purely from her design, what her personality is.

If you said, stuffy old authority figure who's too focused on tradition and doesn't get the joke, than congratulations! You can predict a Barbie movie!  Princess Tori wants to go to the concert, but her Aunt forbids it because Tori has to write and preform a speech for the kingdoms five hundredth anniversary event. And she hasn't even started writing it yet. But Princess Tori isn't one for all this "traditional, princess stuff." She's goofy, mischievous, and a bit of a prankster. She's just too much of a rebellious free spirit for all this noise. Like all princesses in animation she dreams of something more. She dreams of being able to live her own life, free from all the rules and restrictions that being royalty presents. But, y'know, she still wants all the riches and glamour. Cause hey, that shit is sweet!  Meanwhile, Keira is busy dealing with all of her pop star duties. She's headstrong, and a bit of a workaholic. She runs every part of her tour, from lighting, costumes, to TV broadcast all herself. She doesn't even let her manager, Seymour Crider, do any of the work and ignores all of his advice. Keira is under pressure from her record label to write a new album. She says she's working on it, but with all the workload of running the music tour she just isn't feeling very inspired. And Crider is the one who has to deal with all the heat from the higher ups. Keira is just tired of all the pressure from the studio, and wishes she could not have all the responsibility of being a pop star. But, y'know, she still wants all the riches and glamour. Because, as we previously stated, that shit is sweet!  I can relate with Keira. The constant stress of deadlines and work on other projects can make ANYBODY feel uninspired. Sometimes people will become so desperate that they'll be willing to do any half-ass project in order to to stay ahead of deadlines. Like doing a lazy Q&A, or reviewing a Barbie movie.  ...  Wait....  So as you may have noticed by now, none of the characters in this movie are named Barbie! So already, this movie is clickbait. As it turns out, a lot of these Barbie movies don't actually star Barbie. Rather they star "characters portrayed by Barbie" which is all sorts of confusing. But hey, it could be worse I guess. They could be portrayed by Amy Schumer. But luckily we still got a few years before that happens.   Oh, by the way, magic exist in this world. Yeah, I know I bring that up pretty suddenly, but so does the film. Princess Tori has a magic hairbrush that changes her hair, and Keira has a magical microphone that changes her outfit. And nothing is really brought up about this. Like the characters in the film say that it's magic, but nothing else is really elaborated upon. Because outside of the magic, the world the film presents seems to more or less be the same as our world. It's not like it's some fairy tale kingdom or anything, it's set in contemporary times. It's never brought up where the magic comes from, it's just there. And it's even weirder because all they use there magic for is for changing there hair and outfit. Y'know, THINGS YOU CAN DO WITHOUT MAGIC!

Either that dress has a very large pocket, or this scene about to get a lot more uncomfortable.    Anyway, the studio blames Keira's manager Crider for not having the album done already. Because like in the real world, pop stars don't have to suffer any responsibility for there actions. Crider is by far the best character in this movie. He is the most over the top, foppish gay man you've ever did see. We learn a bit about his backstory, as he was once a child star himself on this universes version of Alvin and the Chipmunks. But when puberty hit he fell from the lime light faster than Macaulay Culkin. So naturally he is not only bitter at Keira for having to be blamed for all her actions, but also because he is jealous of her fame. He's a great villain not just because of how over the top flamboyant he is, but also because he gives a refreshing breath of cynicism and bitterness that the movie is otherwise lacking. Also he's voiced by Rolf from Ed Edd'n Eddy. He doesn't sound like Rolf, like at all. But simply knowing that makes the whole film a lot more enjoyable.  He tells his bumbling sidekick Rupert (Because why wouldn't he have a bumbling sidekick? I mean have you seen the type of movie this is?) that he plans on meeting Princess Tori's Aunt Amelia during a PR event, wooing her, and then inheriting all her money when she eventually passes away.

 Crider, Rupert, and Keira arrive at the castle the next day and Crider begins his plot to woo the duchess. Meanwhile, Princess Tori and Keira and immediately hit it off. They are both huge fans of the other, and become fast friends. Tori offers to give Keira a tour of the castle. They begin talking about the problems that they are both going through. This is where they hatch the idea to switch places, and do so using there magic hairbrush and microphone, in order to make themselves look exactly like the other.  Oh, and they also each have a dog. Because hey, little girls like dogs. There are some brief scenes we see between the dogs where they talk to each other in "animal language." but overall they don't contribute much to the plot, other than added marketability. Interesting side note, in the 2004 Barbie: Princess and the Pauper film they both had cats instead. Again, I guess dogs were just deemed more marketable.  Keira and Tori, now disguised as each other, continue there tour of the castle. This is when Tori decides to show Keira, the person she literally just met, the castles most valuable secret. A secret that only members of the royal family are permitted to know about. And this is where the movies gets WEIRD!  Okay, so they activates a secret passage and find a tree. And this tree, which only blooms once every five years, is a magic tree. That is guarded and cared for by a group of magically fairies. And the tree grows diamonds, which Tori says royal family uses the money from these diamonds to help the people! Though the fairies still give a diamond each to our protagonist. Again, it's weird because the world they create in this films universe SEEMS fairly real to our own. But then they just add random magical elements to it with no explanation. They could of at least included some backstory on where this tree came from. It feels like there just trying to check stuff off there "pandering to little girls" bingo sheet.

AH! BINGO! I GOT BINGO!  

Unfortunately for our heroines, Tori FORGOT TO CLOSE THE SECRET DOOR PANEL BEHIND HER and Aunt Amelia ends up finding the two snooping around the secret garden. AND SHE DOESN'T CLOSE THE DOOR EITHER! How the heck has this secret been kept for five hundred years? She get's mad at Keira (Who's still disguised as Tori) and the three leave the chamber. But unbeknownst to them, since Aunt Ameila DIDN'T CLOSE THE FRICKIN' SECRET PASSAGEWAY Crider finds out about the diamond tree. And now he decides to change his plan from marrying into money, to just stealing all the diamonds for himself. But that conflict can wait, because we have pop songs to preform.

 This movie has a lot of pop songs. Like, about a third of the movie is pop songs. And I have to say...there actually really good. If you're into that kinda pop punk type of music that is. The voice actresses each have a separate singing voice in the form of Jennifer Waris (Tori) and Tiffany Giardina (Keira) and both singers really knock it out of the part. Not only that but there is also some really well done choreography. Not only that, but the film also really takes advantage of the CG medium, with some impressive camera angles and panning shots. I mean it's not the greatest thing ever or anything, but for a direct-to-DVD Barbie movie, I was pleasantly surprised. I feel like this is where the passion was when it came to making this movie. Like the story was second to the music.

 However, I would be lying if I said that the music didn't drag on a bit. Just due to how much is in the special. Not only that but several songs are used more than once, which isn't that bad because they sound really good, but it does make it feel a bit repetitive. That said though, I was suppressed by how good this aspect of the film was.

 So Tori and Keira both begin trying to fulfill the role of the others. However, the both seem to have a bit of trouble living up to the expectations of there new roles. Typical stuff you would expect from a

"Prince and the Pauper"

adaptation. Tori, now being disguised as a low class...world famous pop star....decided to take this opportunity to explore her kingdom beyond her castle without escorts.

(Because, yeah, a pop star TOTALLY wouldn't have escorts with her when she's walking through the slums of a foreign nation.)

And Tori ends up coming across something she's never seen before. Poor people!

 More specifically two poor little girls, who are taken a back by "Keira's" presence. We learn that, despite how glamorous the castle life is for the royal family, the kingdom itself is actually suffering. A major drought had occurred in the kingdom the year prior, and while the wealthy nobility we're not effected much the poor people are still suffering, and Princess Tori was completely oblivious to what was going on the entire time.

 So now that Princess Tori has finally

 Checked

 HER

CIS

 WHITE

PRIVILEGE!!!

 -she decides to try to do right for the people by holding a free concert for all the underprivileged children. (Since the kids she met weren't able to afford to go to the concert at the beginning of the movie.) Not only that, but the whole royal family would be in attendance, and the concert would be broadcast live on TV to help raise awareness for the issue. Though Tori and Keira agree that they need to make sure they swap back before the concert starts.

 Keira (disguised as Tori) begins to finally be able to relax without all of her pop star-ly duties. She begins to play and have fun with Tori's two little sisters, (who quickly figures out who she is.) And as it turns out, this break from all the stress of preforming and recording is what Keira needs in order to get re-inspired.

 The day of the concert arrives, and Keira tries to meet up with Tori to swap places before the show begins. But rut-row, Aunt Amelia shows up and finds that "Tori" never ended up writing her speech. And because of this, Amelia refuses to let "Tori" go to the concert and locks her in her room. I do like that Keira actually does try to tell Amelia about the body swap ploy, in order to get her to let her out of the room. But Aunt Amelia doesn't believe her, and heads out for the concert.

 As this is all happening, Crider and Rupert begin there plan to steal the diamond tree. They walk back into the castle claiming that the duchess sent them, and because plot the guards just let them in unsupervised.

 Meanwhile at the concert, the crowd begins to get restless, and Tori is forced to go on stage and preform as Keira. She get's onstage, and is nervous. She begins to preform, badly. But then, with the power of "doing it her way"...whatever the hell that's suppose to mean, she is able to give a performance good enough that nobody is able to tell who she is in a pop song performance that last a total of five minutes straight in this seventy minute film!

 The concert is a success. But wait, Crider and Rupert have successfully broken into the castles secret garden and have to face off against the fairies. Hey look, it's fairy vs fairy!

 ...

 Am I allowed to make that joke?

  Also Rupert brought bug spray to kill the fairies, which is pretty horrific for the villains bumbling side kick. Especially when you realize that this would be a Barbie movie that would have one of the villains using chemical weapons on his opponents. Granted, this doesn't happen, because Rupert accidentally bough hair spray instead, but still. It was his INTENT to use bug spray! Also, of course the villains of a Barbie movies use hair spray as a weapon.  

 Crider cuts the roots of the diamond tree all of the trees in the surrounding area begin to die. To which I have to ask....why? Is it like a redwood thing, where all the trees are actually just a part of this one organism? If that's the case than why don't all the tree's grow diamonds? Or is this a magic thing? Prior to this scene the tree was never implied to have any magical abilities besides growing diamonds. Was a jewel heist just not deemed an exciting enough climax, so they felt the need to raise the stakes here?

 Keira, with the help of Tori's dog, are able to find a secret passage way out of the room and she and Tori both notice the dying trees and run to stop Crider from escaping with the tree. They also switch back into there real identity, and I just now realize as I'm writing this that Crider does not question this very much. HE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE WHOLE IDENTITY SWAPPING THING.

 Also, let me talk about something that bothers me. There was this character earlier named Prince Liam who's "potrayed by Ken." He had a few scenes early on with Keira (who was disguised as Tori at the time.) I didn't bring him up because he honestly didn't really do anything that was important to the plot. But then, suddenly in the climax, he shows up like he was a main character or something. And he's annoying. He feels really tacked on, like the producers realized that there wasn't a romance element to this film and decided at the hour mark that there needed to be one. Except that doesn't even work because he doesn't even end up with either girls. With I admit was a pleasant surprise, that neither girls in the movie end up with a love interest. But it makes Liam's existence even more worthless. Also he's kinda misogynistic, talking about saving the "damsels in distress." even though they save themselves. All Liam does is take down Crider's sidekick.

 Crider runs to his limo, but is blocked by the dogs. Cause y'know, a pug and a King Charles spaniel just COMPLETELY BLOCK THE ENTIRE PATH!  So he ends up be stealing a horse drawn carriage in order to make his escape. Tori get's into Crider's limo and we get a kinda fun car/horse drawn carriage chase striped right out of the end of Ouran High School Host Club.  How is it that I've reviewed two things with that very weird and specific climax?  Anyway, they cut off Crider's carriage, but he has an ace up his sleeve. Turns out his leopard print tuxedo is also a GLIDE SUIT and he jumps off a cliff to make his dramatic escape! And that's why Crider the best character in this movie.  But then Keira just zaps him with her magic microphone and turns his suit into a dress. And Tori zaps his hair to make it look more feminine.    The villain is defeated, but the tree is still dead. But Tori has an idea. They suspect that maybe the diamonds that grew off the tree could act as the trees seeds. They go back to the garden and take the diamonds that the fairies gave them earlier and plant them into the ground. The fairies use there magic and at first it doesn't look like it'll work. But then, the tree begin to regrow and all the life returns to all the other trees all over the castle. This is actually a clever twist, except for the fact that the tree still has diamonds on it, even though they specifically say that it takes five years for the diamond to bloom.  BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT, WE HAVE A CONCERT TO FINISH! Yeah, Tori kinda just bailed in the middle of that. Tori and Keira both show up on stage, and preform together. Tori writes her speech and and talks about making changes to the kingdom's irrigation and social serves system to help the people harmed by the drought. Tori learns about responsibility and Keira kinda learns to relax...I guess? And the movie ends on a pop song. Y'know, a good book end.

Puffy Ami Yumi?...  So that was Barbie: Princess and the Popstar! Overall what do I think of it?  Well, to be honest, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kinda checking the time while watching it. Heck, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't even a little bit tired of thinking about it while writing this review. The main problem is the basic premises. Princess and the pop star. The whole point of "The Prince and the Pauper." is that it's a rich person with a lot of responsibility and a poor person with no responsibility changing places. But here, it's a rich person with some responsibility swapping roles with....another rich person with some responsibility. There's no real contrast, and because of that we only get the bare basics of character development or an actual moral. The overall animation is...okay. You can see there's ambition, but the lack of budget really makes it look like a Sims 3 machinima. The main villain is fun, but the rest of the characters are pretty basic. And the pop songs, while being extremely catchy and well choreographed take up somewhere between a third and a half of the film. And I feel like if the film used more of that time on more important things than maybe it would of been better.  If you want a movie with some so bad it's good elements (some actual good elements worked in) you MIGHT enjoy this film. But you  have to have the patience to get through some of the more tedious bits. Also I feel like a REALLY little girl might like this. I know people say "Kids deserve good things too." and there not wrong. But it's important to remember that kids have different taste than we do. When I was a kid I loved the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, so that should be evidence of that. But if you want a GOOD girl power type of show or movie....there's plenty better out there. Steven Universe, My Little Pony, Star vs, Hanizuki, the list goes on and on. Those shows are girly AND can be legitimately enjoyed by anybody, young or old. This really can't.  That was my review of Barbie: Princess and the Popstar. If you've seen the movie by some...odd chance...tell me what you think of it in the comments down bellow. I would love to start a conversation. Anyway, see you next time for hopefully something better. Have a great day. (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/Barbie-Princess-and-the-Popstar-REVIEW-744926224 DA Link

[furederiko]

1st post for the month of August 2017! And it's the 'Clash of the Reds'. Yes, a belated write up for Kyuranger episode 24!!!

NOTE: This recap-view is for the episode that aired on Sunday, August 6th, 2017 07:30 JST. It was initially meant to be published last week, just a few days after it was broadcasted (precisely on August 8th). Unfortunately, the plan got sort of derailed. Long story short... the social media detox that was only planned to last for a week, got unexpectedly extended for another because I was bedridden afterwards. So yeah, hence the long delay. But not to worry, recap-view for episode 25 will arrive very soon to make up for that!

- Assuming the show will be 48-49 episodes in total, that means it's officially around its halfway point. Yes, eventhough things are already feeling so heavy and serious, we still have HALF a season to go from here! NOTE: If it's 48 episodes in total, that means this episode marks the end of the first half. If it's 49, then the next one (episode 25) serves that purpose. - We should know by now that Kyuranger isn't the type of show that likes to drag plot points. This episode is just another solid proof of that. Just three episodes in, and Tsurugi's facade of bravado has been peeled away, revealing a more sentimental true personality. Interestingly, we also get to see him struggling with memories of the past. I wonder if it's in a way, implying that Tsurugi is suffering from a... war PTSD? O_O. In order to get to the bottom of this, he needs to know 'the truth'. Thus, he sends out Spada and Raptor on an important mission. Which of course, also serves as the show's usual excuse for characters to be absent from the episode. Not that I'm complaining... - But the two aren't the only ones who need to be... benched out. This episode is clearly a double focus for the Reds, as they try... or rather, 'forced' to work out their differences. Hence... it doesn't even take long for everyone else (sans Commander Xiao, who stayed on the Rebellion) to get literally swallowed by our MotW, Malistrate Gabbler! IMHO, this right hand of Tecchu is a scary MotW that should really have had higher rank in the Shogunate. Why? With his ability alone, he actually succeeds in taking down SEVEN Kyurangers all at once! WOW, right? - Anyways, eventhough he doesn't approve Tsurugi as Kyuranger at first, Lucky begins to... sense there's something 'wrong' with Tsurugi. Commander Xiao wisely helps him realize, that the 'legendary hero' tends to act the complete opposite to his words. Proof? Tsurugi's boasting about immortality, eventhough he had already lost that ability before his cold-sleep. And hearing a holographic projection of Don Armage making fun of his fallen comrades, causes him to lose his composure. Symbolizing that inspite of his words that dismissed them as 'expendables', he actually CARED for them. Also, he's telling the Kyurangers to be his shield, yet he's the one who does that to protect Lucky! Oh the irony... - Speaking of being a 'shield', the show introduces a new character in this episode: Kuervo (VA: Daisuke Namikawa, who previously voiced Engine Speedor in Go-Onger). He's one of Legendary 88 Warriors that represented the Corvus Constellation System, their strategic advisor, and also a personal close friend to Tsurugi. He was the one whom Tsurugi refered to as 'sacrificed his life for him', during the battle against Don Armage in the past. Thus obviously, he's the one responsible for leaving behind a deep 'scar of friendship' in Tsurugi's heart. Fun Trivia: The word 'Cuervo' is actually the Spanish word for 'Raven/Crow'. And yes, in case you're unaware, Corvus is the Crow Constellation! So as always, TOEI isn't even trying to be subtle when it comes to names. LOL. - Intriguingly, assuming Kuervo's truly dead, then that means there's only one sole candidate who might end up becoming the new Don Armage: Olion (whom you can see using a sword and a mostly white outfit in the flashback scene). Remember my theory that proposes Olion as the Darth Vader of the show? This reveal just adds that notion. Then again, we never really witness Kuervo's body (just like Scorpio) as well, so anything's still possible here. Beside, we also know how that much-hated Jedi eventually became Vader? Meaning we can't rule out anyone yet, because the rule of death is pretty much flexible in science-fiction. - Lucky challenges Tsurugi to share his story (get it? his-story? XD), even if just to put them both on the same page. Instead, that makes him understand the reason behind his stand-off-ish demeanor: Tsurugi simply doesn't want to sacrifice any more comrades in battle. Aaaaaw... T_T. That's why he wants to deal with Gabbler and Tecchu alone. So yeah, someone's definitely having a lone survivor syndrome! Tsurugi even proves that point, by taking Lucky's Leo Kyu Globe as hostage, to prevent him from joining the fight. Fun fact: I just realized. True to his 'Soldier' namesake, Tsurugi is acting like a drill-sergeant. Showing all tough and mighty bravado on the front, but secretly tries to protect his comrades. He even has his share of warfare PTSD. That's a really good angle right there. - Due to the duration, of course said twist doesn't last long. Tsurugi gets into a fickle due to his previous wounds, and Xiao and Lucky arrive to save the day. The younger Red then proposes a new 'system' to Tsurugi's face: "If the current saviors... and the old savior work together... We... can create a new legend!". So yeah, ignoring the fact that it might have arrived a tad too quickly (I WAS expecting more resistance and stubborness)... the 'Rivalry of the Reds' has been resolved. It shouldn't come off as too surprising though, as Draco Commander says it best... "Say what they will, these two get along pretty well.". Indeed, they ARE actually two of a kind. Probably the reason why they're both Red, right? LOL. - While Draco Commander distracts Tecchu, the duo works together to free the other Kyurangers. Good timing, because they are all (including the mechanical ones like Balance and Champ, the joke's on them) almost on the verge of having all their life energy drained! With none of them being fit enough to join the fight (thus preventing any of the mecha sans Gigant Phoenix to be used), it's up to the Reds to handle the giant battle as well. Taking down Gabbler is easy, but what can they do when Tecchu decides to tag along? That's when a miracle occurs. Or in the words of Tsurugi, "It's about to be truly legendary!". - Yes, the other 10 Change Kyu Globes (including those of Spada's and Raptor's... who are busy tinkering around with a lever-like contraption) join the battle in their own free will! They boost the power of Leo Voyager and Phoenix Voyager, thus forming... the 12 Kyu Globes combination, Kyutamajin. Gotta admit, it's a rousing and exciting sequence. As for the robot itself, when I first saw the catalogue picture, I thought the new combo looked weird and odd. But now that I've known the concept and seen it in action, saying I've warmed up to it would be a huge understatement. Because I'm actually DIGGING this combination! Sure, some parts still looks a bit awkward (like the giant ball on top of the head), but this is a smart design, that unites all 12 heroes in one mecha without overdoing it. And this is coming from a guy who actually liked those messy-complicated clusterfuck formation in Go-Onger and last year's Zyuohger. LOL. In a way, it's a solid mecha. - The problem is, only the two Reds are using Kyutamajin! And knowing how the internet works, this has surely rubbed some fans in the wrong way. Of course, since this episode aired two weeks ago (once again, this recap-view is a week late), everyone should know by now that there's a logical reason to why only Leo Red and Phoenix Soldier are sharing the control of this mecha: because the others are being saved for episode 25! LOL. Then again, it's not like the Reds aren't hinting about it throughout this episode. I mean, they ARE repeatedly asking the tune of, "Can we really move it with just the two of us?". They're not even being subtle about it. I guess impatient fans wouldn't be able to see these hints past their complains, huh? LOL. NOTE: Kyutamajin isn't even using its ultimate finisher in this episode. "Kyutamajin! Meteor Booster!" is a just a secondary attack that only manages to take down Gabbler. Don't forget, Tecchu is still at large! - Tsurugi officially joins the team, as proven by his Kyuranger License. Yep, the one that Kotarou delivered for the team at the start of the episode. Something that even Xiao hasn't owned before (hence why he 'forgot' all about it, huh? LOL). It's nice to see all 12 onboard the same ship, right? Hold on, the question here is... what about Spada and Raptor? - Turns out, they are in Planet Tocky of the Horologium System, in search of the Horologium Kyu Globe. Why? Because Tsurugi wants to use it... to travel back in time, and see with his very own eyes, what really 'happened' to Don Armage. Yep, time travel is the show's next big arc! And this discussion comes at the right time, because Spada and Raptor pop up on the communication screen with a 'distress call'. Why? Because something is going on in the Planet that can't be handled by only the two of them... A few additional notes before I wrap this up: - Bandai Japan released a Special "Henshin Series" episode after this episode was aired. And it was.... hillarious as always! I thought the company was going to release one after every episode (they should, tbh), so it was a bit of a bummer when the series stopped four months ago in episode 6 (following Mr. Pega's short-lived debuted). The fact that the previous extra members (Xiao and Kotarou) haven't had their time in the spotlight yet, also added to the disappointment. So obviously, the arrival of this special episode was more than just a pleasant surprise. That's right, because all extra members get their chance to show off! Interestingly, this video didn't include Phoenix Soldier's henshin pose. Does this mean we'll be getting another one in the future? Especially with that rumored new transformation gadget? Here's hoping... - More movie scenes can be seen in the opening, as well as the new trailer that debuted after the episode. There were two standouts from them. First, Leo Red is using Herakles Kyu Globe in the movie, to somehow deal with the Kerberos one. Second, there are obvious scenes hinting that Commander Xiao is killed in the movie. Remember, this is Japan and their habit of spoiling things in advance. Eventhough the movie is doing really good! Then again, should we really believe that Xiao is dead? I seriously doubt it. Just look at what happened to the Kamen Rider Ghost's summer movie last year... LOL. - Haruka Tateishi (Amu of last year's Zyuohger) is giving an exclusive on-location tour for Kyuranger's G-Rosso action show. Go ahead and see it, it's all kinds of fun. Makes you eager to see her character returning to meet the Kyurangers in the upcoming Versus Movie, right?

Overall: Tsurugi's 4-part debut arc has come to a close. Thanks to the show's swift pacing, it didn't take long for the legendary soldier to get grounded and humbled down. Even his signature arrogance has already been taken down more than a notch, revealing a more painful and broken nature. I love how he and Lucky seems to exhibit contrasting personality from one another, while in actuality, they are still the same color. Yes, the conflict between them got resolved a little too quickly for my taste. Then again, it also proved my point that they are basically two of a kind. And in a way, Tsurugi was welcomed to the team in an organic manner, so I'm not complaining. Overall, a great albeit imperfect episode, with a stunning but equally imperfect debut for a new mecha combination. But that's because the next episode will be... something else! You'll see... Next week: Prepare for tissue, because Kotarou is giving us all the feels! PS: Expect the recap-view for Episode 25... in just a few hours from now! ;D

Episode 24 Score: 8 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: August 15th, 2017 - Version 2.10. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

[amorremanet]

“what am i writing” meme

Okay, so, @bizeke​ tagged me in a, “what are you writing right now” meme, and I’ve been trying to figure out how I wanted to answer it because, for once in my life, I don’t have a huge pile of WIPs. Like, I’m deliberately trying to rein myself in and refrain from letting the rabid plot-bunnies have their way with my brain to the point that I end up getting nothing done because I get overwhelmed by how many possibilities there are and how many ideas I have.

Let me tell you what: as a Ne-dom (ENTP), this is one of the worst punishments that I could ever imagine and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, like, ever.

But I’m actually trying to stick to it, because it’s in the name of trying to focus on and do right by the project that is my main Thing right now, in basically all areas of life. Unfortunately for my desire for instant gratification, it’s going to be long. I mean, it’s a novel, so that’s part of the deal and one just has to suck it up and live with that, or just never write novels unless you can crank them out at a Stephen King-esque pace. Unfortunately for how much I like the community (and validation!) that comes built in with writing fan-things, it’s also original fic (which is also scary as fuck, but hey).

So, to get this part out of the way first: the “as yet untitled because I suck and titles are hard fml” project is a novel. It’s a superhero story with LGBTQ protags who are also largely neurodivergent, mentally ill, and/or otherwise disabled. The main story concerns a ragtag bunch of misfits — some of them super-powered mutants and some not — who come together in a new team and in just trying to do some good in the world for various reasons (and working together because they all realize that they can’t actually do that much on their own), they stumble into a bigger plot and wind up pitting themselves against a half-shadowy cabal of big deal neo-fascist supervillains (some mutants, and some not, though in their case, the non-mutants are generally treated like pets, rather than people and full team members).

ngl, the three biggest causes for this project were:

1. I needed a new project for my thesis because fuck this shit, I don’t wanna be in grad school anymore, and after having my project jerked around by practically everyone in my department at one point or another, the fanfic thing I settled on wasn’t working and I am really well and truly beyond fucking sick of grad school;

2. I had this one character in particular — the oft-mentioned mutant disaster, Sebastian — who I initially drew up for this game that my Sunday night tabletop group was playing last summer. The idea of there being mutant superheroes was similar, but Double Cross’s system is heavily inspired by the Parasite Eve series of video games, with a little bit from the novel that inspired them (by which I mean that the rule-book is pretty explicit about it; sure, they build on the world in their own ways to give players more options for their characters, and bring in some other influences, but they don’t hide that their primary source of inspiration is Parasite Eve).

Anyway, the Double Cross system relies a lot on character-driven drama and works it into the gameplay (one example is the “Lois” system, where you make up NPCs who help keep your character tethered to their sense of humanity, so they won’t get completely taken over by the shiny super-mitochondria that have gotten inside them and could make them turn into a monster). Additionally, I’ve been playing with my GM, Jake, since we were in high school, and I know that he likes having as much stuff to use against the characters as possible. I also know that it makes games with him more fun because he gets better ideas that way

(which is also why I knew damn well that the short, historical setting horror thing we did in January and February was going to be short, but still gave him a ten-page backstory for my French Jesuit priest that I could’ve backed up with sources for, “yes, this was actually a Thing in early to mid-17th century Paris” or, “yes, this was part of the process of becoming a Jesuit in that time period” had he asked for them)

Which, for Sebastian, meant that I started writing with the intent of it being three things

a brief apology note to Dr. Maeda (a scientist Jake borrowed from Parasite Eve because he’s a really fun character, whom Seb hadn’t really had an altercation with? But with his self-deprecating humor that almost no one else finds funny, Seb had accidentally made Dr. Maeda think that he’d offended him, and he wanted to apologize for that);

one letter to his older brother Max that would’ve been written while Seb was in rehab (which, in an idea that I straight up lifted from Augusten Burroughs’s memoir, Dry, had the prompt, “write to someone close to you and express your feelings about them and your relationship” and it had a lot of instances where Seb quoted something from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis and somehow, whether fairly on himself or not, connected it to his and Max’s situation, in which he cast himself as a fuck-up on the level of Bosie Douglas. It also had a lot of snarky footnotes);

and one that he would’ve written to Max after the party’s first big adventure together (the major TL;DR point of which was, “ahahahaha, I was trying so hard to get my life together but oh no, shit, I fucked up and everything is terrible, you were right and I was wrong and now I can’t give you all the details of why you were right because the FBI says a lot of it’s classified but you were right and I fucked up and oh my god why” — just… with a lot of tangents and backstory and yet more snarky footnotes)

—but because I’m me, I quickly lost control of that idea.

I figured out the entire timeline of major events (largely but not entirely by hand, and in a few places, there is arguably too much detail, like how I know all of the classes that Seb took in undergrad, where it all fit into his substance abuse history, and exactly how that exacerbated his already Not Good mental health)

I did a lot of writing and a lot more revising and then more writing and then some research — like sketching out a list of TV Tropes that applied to Seb and his backstory, and by, “sketching” I mean that I listed them, and in most cases, I wrote up explanations for why he deserved the tropes or how I was trying to play with them

some of which were fairly brief (e.g., the explanation for his exact brand of being a Stepford Smiler is only 185 words, most of them actually being about how he made it to nearly 30 without having anyone suggest that he might be living with depression)

while others were kinda not (like, the 2,400-word explanation of why he got, “Angst, What Angst?” and “Conditioned to Accept Horror” on his list, which got listed together because they were part of the same larger problem and helped to fuel each other)

I went through multiple versions of all of those letters except the first one (and, in the case of the second, even made the drafts full-on “canon” things in their own right, documenting Seb’s ongoing attempts at paring a draft down enough to share in group therapy, because that was part of the in-universe conceit about why he was writing to Max in the first place)

I added other letters still (like, one to Pete that Seb was writing in rehab, with the in-universe prompt, “list 99 problems that you have that don’t have anything to do with your brother or his wife, because seriously? you’ve been going on about him so much, it’s starting to feel like you’re talking about shit with him in order to get out of talking about anything else in your life”; and one letter to Max that Seb wrote before his first overdose, which would have jossed his, “oh yeah, totally an accident, can I go back to class on Monday please” lie because it was explicitly a suicide note)

—and all up, by the time Jake decided that he was having trouble bringing things together into a larger game after the first adventure, I’d written about one order of words

”Order” here meaning, “a unit of word length measurement equivalent to the length of Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix, i.e. 257,045 words”

—which I exceeded somewhat but not by enough to make too big a difference, not least since most of these drafts will not be making an appearance in the novel itself.

So, I was like, “Well, fuck. I did all of that and we’re not even going to keep playing that game? ……Screw this, I didn’t do all that work for fuck-all nothing, I’ve gotta find something else to do with Seb and his story”

This first necessitated going back to the drawing board, scrapping a lot of the stuff that was directly related to Parasite Eve or Double Cross, or finding a new way to reconfigure it so that it wasn’t just me lifting shit from either of them

Because I’m me, that led to more and more ideas coming up, which in turn pretty much guaranteed that…… okay, yes, Sebastian got to be a POV character first, because in all due fairness, he was here first and the story wouldn’t exist without him…… but he’s not quite, “the main character” in the same way that, say, Harry Potter is (nor would he really want to be)

And TL;DR: this whole thing started because I wanted to help my GM make my character suffer, only for him to drop the game, after which I didn’t want all the work I did to go to waste and be totally meaningless, so hey

and 3. ……Well, I mean. I had a lot of ideas that I kept trying to turn into fanficcy things, but at a certain point, I just had to admit that they would have gotten into, “unless you can show why this is a legit interpretation or development for these characters, it’s going to be OOC” territory

and after enough rounds of this, I gave up and went, “Okay, fuck it, FINE. Rather than try to shoehorn any of my pre-extant fictional faves into these ideas that they do not actually fit into, only for the sake of writing them as fic and getting more or less immediate Validation, I’m gonna go write my own story! With mutants! And canon LGBTQ characters! And canon neurodiversity! Because FUCK IT, that’s why!”

I guess that one could say that I finally hit, “fuck it.”

In universe, the mutant thing isn’t being treated as an oppression allegory in its own right (I say, definitely looking pointedly at the X-Men, but not exclusively at them, because in fairness, they are so not the only guilty parties here), and the issue of metahuman licensing isn’t being used as a metaphor for any example of governments illicitly keeping tabs on oppressed or marginalized people.

Like, there are still major flaws in the system and how it’s enacted on people because it’s the U.S. government, but the entire thing is treated more like taking driver’s ed and going to the DMV because the fact of the matter is that we are talking about people who have shit like super-strength, telepathy, and heat vision, and it’s fair for other citizens to want to make sure that they can control their powers, and that they know and agree to abide by certain laws about how they can and can’t use them

(e.g., yes, it is considered rape if you telepathically coerce someone into sex. Exactly what charges you’ll face vary from state to state, but it’s still rape, and unless there are some seriously extenuating circumstances — like, say, if you have two teenage telepathic mutants who didn’t know that they were mutants and thus couldn’t control their powers, so both of them have broken the law here, but unless there was some other kind of force or coercion involved, neither can be held criminally responsible — you will be prosecuted if you get caught.

Whether or not you get caught is another issue entirely, and it’s a huge mess for a lot of reasons, but in theory, this is how the law works.)

The novel I’m working on now is also going to be the first in a series of four or five — give or take “Dunk and Egg”-esque tie-in stories, mostly because I’m still a Ne-dom and, even without all the world-building being set in stone at present, I’m already attached to and intrigued by several characters and parts of my world that aren’t part of the “main” storyline

(which is, itself, already an ensemble cast production, just with focal/POV characters for each installment because otherwise, I would probably pull a GRRM, get overloaded by all of the different POVs and trying to balance them effectively, and then either die or be photographed running around in a giant hamster ball because I’m trying to run away from my problems that I created all by myself)…

…but also partly because it is annoyingly easier to find potential “legit” places to publish shorter works and get yourself “legitimately” established by putting out some of those first.

You lot get three guesses each as to why I find this annoying, the first two don’t count, and if you guess literally anything but some variation on, “But, Kassie! You’re in the exact same TL;DR club as GRRM! One of your more popular TW fics was a 23k vaguely stream of consciousness beast in which you committed the same literary sin that you bag on Marcel Proust about all the time, because almost nothing actually happened”?

……then I probably love you for having such faith in me, but you have way too much faith in me because… yeah, no. That’s pretty much it. The “legitimate” “grown-up” publishing world’s fondness for short stories annoys me entirely because I don’t like being brief, or cutting things out, or so on and so forth.

Shit, I’m having enough trouble in Pages right now today, because I decided that this one beat in one scene of the novel was getting too far into territory that is actually meant for the chapter right after it, so I’m trying to figure out where to cut it, so I can then relocate the dialogue to where it makes more sense. Trying to be succinct…… is not one of my strong suits, period.

To be fair? The novel… well. It wouldn’t be a Thing without my years in fandom and my immersion in fan culture. It just would not be possible without that part of my background.

On one hand, that’s due to how many ideas I wouldn’t have been exposed to without fandom discussing them in the different ways that we have, and how many things I wound up reading or watching because I saw that other people were enjoying them and I wanted to know what was up, and then all the criticism that I saw from fans of said things about issues of how stories and media are shaped by the sociopolitical structures that content creators live with

And on the other hand, it’s because my story is a literary pastiche that is not entirely a deconstruction of the genre, but rather a recombination of different tropes and pieces of the superhero genre, plus pieces from other genres because fuck the idea that genres can or should be strictly delineated and kept separate from each other at all times that’s why, where I acknowledge that there is little room to actually do anything that is “entirely new” — both in the sense that we’re all influenced, both consciously and not, by everything around us, so you can make the far-end argument that nothing is “purely” or “entirely new,” since that would require things to be made in a vacuum, and in the sense that… well. I mean.

Come on, I’m working in an established genre that has had several different voices and perspectives chime into it in various fashions since it first got started with the original Superman comics in 1938 (and even that is arguably not the start, since the origins of the genre go waaaay the fuck back, and almost no one writing about the genre critically likes to let it just be its own thing without bringing up precedents like Gilgamesh, Heracles, and the Scarlet Pimpernel), and even if I weren’t also bringing in things from outside the superhero genre, I would have no significant chance of doing something that hasn’t already been done at some point, by somebody, somewhere.

Moreover, uh. I get why the Ang Lee Hulk isn’t everyone’s taste, I do. It’s not my favorite anything but any means, but I enjoy parts of it. But that being said, there are, in the superhero genre, certain expectations that certain tropes and story or character elements will appear in some fashion, even if they’re being brutally deconstructed, and Ang Lee tried his best to weasel out of a lot of them because he didn’t want his movie to have the, “stigma” of being, “just a superhero movie.”

Which is a shame, because a lot of his ideas about how he wanted to interpret Bruce Banner as a character, interpret the dynamic between Bruce and the Hulk, and so on? Those actually could’ve been really fun…… but he didn’t want to make, “a superhero movie,” so he ignored the value of all the shit that he should’ve been using to actualize these ideas on the screen, and he had to essentially paste that stuff on like, “Fine, here’s your superhero bullshit, you fucking comic book nerds”

Which all sort of adds up to, “I mean, I’m trying to challenge or play with some of these genre staples — and some of the more optional ones, I’m doing away with because they’re common but not necessary and I think they’re not part of the stories I want to tell, or they’re very particular to certain mediums that are not the one I’m working in — but…… fuck, man, it’s still a superhero story. It’s not like you can’t tell superhero-influenced stories without these things, but if you’re telling a flat-out superhero story, then…… yeah, you kinda do need to at least acknowledge them, and if you don’t have some kind of appreciation for the genre, then why the fuck are you working in it”

(And this is a brief aside to point out that Ang Lee isn’t the only content creator who’s been called a genius and has been guilty of going all like, “fuck superhero stories, they’re just pointless stupid trashy kid stuff for babies, lmao” while also being involved in working on one.

The list is probably even longer than I know, but I feel especially obligated to point out that Heath Ledger had nothing but disdain for the entire superhero genre before playing the Joker in TDK, literally only agreed to do that because Christopher Nolan was involved and Batman Begins had been noticeably “higher-quality” by most people’s standards than the Joel Schumacher Batman movies and the then-extant X-Men movies, and really only seemed to have come around about the quality of certain stories that he read as character prep — like The Killing Joke, The Man Who Laughs, and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

—and frankly, he and Nolan both seem(ed) to see those stories [plus a handful of others, in Nolan’s case] as special exceptions were, “not like all the rest of the genre,” rather than seeing them as indications of what the entire genre can be capable of.

Which is not to say that I acknowledge the validity of any other non-Cesar Romero live-action Joker, because unless someone really wows me or they come up with an idea that Mark Hamill could do live-action and managed to talk him into it, that’s probably not going to happen, and both Nicholson and Leto can eat me because they were just awful as the Clown Prince of Crime. Awful in different ways, admittedly, but still. Just. AWFUL. Absolutely abysmal.

It’s also not to say that the superhero genre is entirely awesome, since… lmao, Sturgeon’s Law, people. 90% of everything is probably some kind of bullshit. It can be entertaining bullshit, sure, but it’s probably still some kind of bullshit.

What I am trying to say, though, is that the entire genre is not special for having a lot of bullshit in it, because frankly, EVERY GENRE has mostly a lot of bullshit in it, so holding the superhero genre to some special double standard is ridiculous and elitist, and no, we shouldn’t look at things like Watchmen, A Serious House on Serious Earth, or anything else you might want to put on a, “special exceptions” list as being separate from the genre that spawned them.

They’re superhero stories. Barring some examples like Watchmen that have characters that were new when they first came out, these stories literally have characters like Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman running around, having adventures and fighting bad guys. Being of an allegedly, “higher quality” than any random issue you pick off the rack on Wednesday does not mean that they aren’t superhero stories

—and I realize that most of the people reading this already probably kind of feel the same about the elitist nonsense that goes on regarding pretty much every example of genre fiction, except for like big-budget sci-fi and fantasy that either sticks to very conventional models, and/or is written and/or directed by someone we might call an Auteur™, like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, or Guillermo del Toro, or like GRRM would be called if he made movies

……but this tendency grinds my gears anyway because the fuck what even, people. All of the genre fiction that gets bagged on like this has an established history with enough examples to prove that they are is just as widely varied in content and “quality” as yet another movie about a cis white dude and a cis white lady who want to be together but they can’t because of Reasons Or Something, wow such innovation, very forbidden, etc. etc. obviously NO ONE has EVER told a story like this before in the entire history of human storytelling, ha ha ha, GAG)

But anyway, as I was saying. Pastiche or something.

Still, it’s not a deconstruction properly because as much as I love and am creatively indebted to some of them — with Watchmen on the, “it has problems but I overall love it even if I don’t always agree with what Alan and Dave had to say or how they said it” side, The Dark Knight Returns on the, “Frank Miller can go step on a rusty nail and get tetanus, what a douchebag” side,

Deadpool in general on the, “I mean, I respect that you have a vision of what kind of fourth wall-breaking self-aware hijinks you want to get up to, and I enjoy it sometimes, but on one hand? For all I don’t agree with everything that’s said in Wisecrack’s “Philosophy of Deadpool” video, I do think it’s fair to say that you guys often have a lot in common with hipsters, and that you have the potential to do cool shit like Cervantes did Don Quixote, but that you often don’t go as far as you could with it, which can sometimes be kinda disheartening. More importantly, though, your vision is cool and has a place at the table too, but it’s not MY vision, so you do your thing and I’m gonna do mine and if I ever do get published, I hope I can meet Gail Simone because I would just die” side

and several others falling at various points of somewhere in the middle and shit — uhhh? It’s just??? Like?

I just… don’t… really… want to write a massive deconstruction?

I mean. I enjoy reading some of them (or there are others like TDKReturns, where it’s less that I enjoy them and more that they’re important to the genre’s history but I hate them and the only reason I haven’t literally set fire to my copy of that book is that…… shit, man, that thing was expensive, and if I set it on fire, I’d have to either buy a new one or get a .cbr file for free, which would be illegal and I obviously do not condone it, nope, not at all, nudge wink ssssh)…

and I won’t deny that they’ve influenced how I approach the genre as both a reader and as a creator (I mean, ffs, I have a minor character who was literally inspired by a mix of Rorschach and my desire to petulantly piss off every fucking dudebro fanboy who reads Watchmen and doesn’t get that Rorschach is supposed to be seen as completely reprehensible. Yes, he’s a different kind of reprehensible from Eddie Blake and Adrian Veidt, but all of them are still pretty reprehensible, that’s kind of the fucking point. The only so-called “heroes” in Watchmen who accomplish anything of major historical significance are either completely reprehensible, or they’re Doctor Manhattan and so far removed from their former sense of humanity that they might as well be on a different existential plane entirely)

……but, for all I enjoy deconstructions, I don’t want to write one, personally.

And anyway, the original point to all of this is that my story wouldn’t exist as it does without fandom because, on one hand, I got exposed to pretty much all of this through/because of fandom, or while I was in fandom; and on the other, the way that fandom relies so much on envisioning new possibilities for characters and stories, and combining seemingly disparate elements into new shapes, and mashing up tropes and ideas that don’t seem to go together but finding a way to make it work…… like?

That’s shaped me so much as a writer, even outside of fandom, that I don’t know where to begin finding examples of it in action, because it’s just everywhere in my writing tbh. And I don’t think that it makes anything I’m doing, “new” as such, because I’m probably overly aware of what most of my different influences are and how they’ve influenced me in which ways and so on…… but I don’t need or want to completely reinvent the wheel, I just want to have fun making up my stories and maybe bringing in something that other people enjoy and can read without feeling like their time was wasted, y’know?

…also, I will totally admit to certain fandom mainstay tropes and idioms having different degrees of influence on my story, and to deliberately trying to work in phrases like, “to toe out of one’s shoes” that are almost exclusively found in fanfiction because…… uh, I know where I came from, and while I might have various problems with where I came from on a pretty much constant basis, I still love and respect where I came from, so why not use some of our idioms and popular tropes?

………also? I’m doing it because I want to, that’s why.

Just like how there was no actual NEED, as such, for me to make Yael and Elizabeth a deliberate middle-finger to Marvel and their penchant for baiting Cherik, and then screaming, “OH WAIT NOOOOOPE, NO HOMO, DON’T LET’S BE SILLY, CHILLAX YOU STUPID FANGIRLS!!!!” — like I could’ve had them in the story and the world without doing that…

…but I wanted to do that, so I’m gonna do that, and since I’m not violating any copyright or intellectual property laws because what I’m doing doesn’t rip off anything more than general concepts that Marvel has no exclusive or protected ownership of, and even if it did, what I’m doing would count as a commentary or satire and be protected by the First Amendment and the US Supreme Court, therefore no one can do shit about shit to stop me from having my two badass older lady lesbians who are, in fact, married and are co-headmistresses of their school for the exceptionally gifted. Nah nah nah nah nah nah, ha ha ha ha ha ha.

(……………I am a serious adult writer who takes her writing seriously. …also, I’m sorry, and I’m done now, and thank you for reading if you have, and if you got to this finishing point, please go help yourself to like…… a cookie. Or five. Or idk, any kind of treat you want, I don’t know you and I’m not your boss, so I can’t guess what your idea of a treat is much less tell you what to do. Okay, I’m done now, bye)

ETA: ……oh, and I guess that I tag whoever wants to do this themself, because I just spent a few hours writing it and I don’t wanna look at it anymore, not even to pass the meme on, so…… heeeey, free invite, you can do a meme just because you want to and then blame me