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kalevalakryze · 1 year ago

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College of Geonosis (Repost)

Reposting this one for @barrissday ! It's definitely high up on my list of things to get back into once Whumptober, Ahsoka week, wolfwren week, sabine week, and Sabine Bingo have passed; I have some great ideas for this and I love everything so much

Pairings: Barriss Offee & Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee/Ahsoka Tano, Ahsoka Tano & Anakin Skywalker

Characters: Barriss Offee, Luminara Unduli, Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker

Tags: Modern AU - Human, Modern AU - College, Slow Burn, Eventual Fluff, Barriss Offee-centric, Muslim Characters, Good Parent Luminara Unduli, Anxiety, References to depression, everyone is neurodivergent, no real hurt (yet)

Notes: This is one I'm actually pretty excited about, but I do have a few things to point out just so any inaccuracies are purely my own lack of expertise over ignorance.

I'm cis, nonreligious, and white. This has typically prevented me from writing or portraying any characters in any other category for fear of misrepresenting. However, when I picture a humanized version of both Barriss and Ahsoka, I cannot see women in my demographic. I'm putting in the work to try to be as accurate and learn as much as possible, however, if I mess anything up, please correct me, the last thing I'd like to do is butcher a representation and do them any less than the full justice they deserve.

I do not know much about any religion truthfully, so I'm learning with each piece I write, and I don't doubt that I will need to revise the more I learn.

I am also completely oblivious to the college experience, so if this works a little too much in the movies or cliche television, that's why. (personally, fingers crossed that one day I'll be able to get a degree, but with the way things have been working, it won't be doable for a while, so I'm just living my college dreams through these two).

Summary: Barriss was half excited and half full of dread as Luminara pulled up to the drop off at last. The dorm building was tall, the Tribunal building would be her home for the next few years, “I’m scared,” She found herself whispering against the window. Her hands were squeezing Luminara’s, and her mother lovingly squeezed back in a heartbeat pattern. “Fear can be a good thing, Barriss,” The wisened woman started, voice soft, even with all the noise of unruly undergrads outside. “Do it because you’re scared, and when you graduate, you’ll feel better about taking that step, the next ones won’t be as scary,” She pulled Barriss's hand until she could offer a gentle tug, leaning across the center console until Barriss’s head fell into her shoulder. “And, even if this doesn’t work out, I’m still proud of you for everything you’ve done to get here,”

Barriss used to believe things would be easier once she graduated high school. Maybe the pressure would stop, after all, she wouldn’t have to pile on her graduation requirements to her early college assignments, she could actually devote her focus on her pre-med track, where she’d earned enough credits during high school. If she could just stack as many classes into each available slot over the course of the year, including holidays and summer vacation, she could be heading for her Masters and her PhD in no time! At least, those were the hopes and dreams.

Her mother had never expressed any kind of expectation on her, not once, but Barriss had always felt… strange. Luminara Unduli was a healer, and so was her mother before her. Like with her own father, Luminara hadn’t known her own, and while the absence never felt large in her life, her mother’s attempts at pulling her away from her work to bond were a greater stressor. Realistically, the young woman knew that her mother hadn’t wanted to pass on the workaholic trait, but she’d been exposed ever since she was little, and if her mom was so perfect and put together, she could be to, if only she could rush through these classes and get a jump on this ‘stable adult life’ she’d been dreaming about since she was young.

Of course, the world worked in mysterious ways. Barriss Offee was moving halfway across the world to the states, where she would, apparently, be rooming with another undergrad in a mechanical engineering track, with minor lessons in law and politics. It seemed a rather… interesting tuition, but then, from the letters the two had exchanged over the summer since the College of Geonosis connected them, this Ahsoka Tano was an interesting character. The girl had apparently graduated high school early, and was going to be attending the same school as her older brother she only lovingly referred to as ‘skyguy’, who was a senior in the mechanical engineering program.

Ahsoka’s letters often rambled on and on, about her summer, and her excitement for the year, or to meet Barriss, or to tell her about ‘skyguy’ and his wife, or her apparently many brothers, she promised Barriss if she’s seen even one of them anywhere in the galaxy, she would know, apparently, for as many as she’d remembered to list off in the letters, they all looked quite similar. Those letters were the longest, and while exhausting to read, she hadn’t wanted to seem impolite.

Her own letters to Ahsoka were typically short, commenting on something she’d picked from pages of rambling to show she’d been paying attention, and filling in her own information whenever asked. Every time her mother retrieved the mail and dropped one of those orange envelopes at her desk, she would smile in a way that confused Barriss, would make her cheeks heat until she would sink further into her chair, pulling an end of her hijab just free enough that she could hide her burning face from her mothers’ knowing gaze.

This was a posture Barriss took for the majority of the trip away from Coruscant, and along the fifteen hour drive to the Geonosian capital, where her new university, new life, and new roommate would be waiting for her. The traffic to get into the school was jam packed, and Barriss considered herself lucky that the school had allowed her to get her assignments, keys, and badges delivered to her home prior to the semester’s start, one of her final tastes of the perks of having a parent much more extroverted than herself.

Luminara’s hand came to rest on her knee, and with a slow, measured breath, both of Barriss’s moved to cover her mother’s hand with her own. Anxiety thrummed in her veins, as they watched the line of cars into the dorms inch forward, and students taking ages to bid their farewells. “I’ve arranged some work, for the first couple of days,” Luminara started slowly, once Barriss’s fidgeting was directly to playing with her fingers, smoothing over the neat black polish on each fingernail, or the brass metal bracelets that adorned her mothers wrists.

The young woman was unable to hide her relief at this knowledge. If it became too much, she wouldn’t be inconveniencing her too much to ask to come home. This was her first trip more than two hours from home, after all, and she was more than a little scared, something her mother had always been keen at keeping an eye out for, and coming up with a solution that wouldn’t further damage her nerves. “Thank you,” She breathed, barely audible from the thumping of a nearby bass. Four young men pulled up in the car beside them, the driver… with a tattoo on his face? Was identical to every other passenger in the car, in a way that made her look twice, but no. The others did not share the goatee and forehead tattoo as the driver banged his head to a song she would never be able to make out.

She hadn’t realized she’d been squeezing her mother’s hand until Luminara had to reach across her seat, to brush her fingertips over the back of Barriss’s knuckles, to remind her that if she started squeezing any harder it would begin to hurt. Her cheeks burned as she released her hold on Luminara’s hand, but the woman did not move her hand away, simply rested her now free hand back on the steering wheel and inched just a bit closer in line. “You’re going to do perfect here, and you won’t be alone, you’ll have Ahsoka, and I’m sure Professor Vos wouldn’t mind checking in every now and then,” She promised, and Barriss felt some of the tension in her shoulders relax.

“I will do my best to utilize the resources offered,” Barriss promised, missing the frown that tugged on Luminara’s lips as her head turned back to the driveway. Enough cars were starting to clear now, that she was able to make a substantial jump in line.

“The temporary office is only ten minutes away, but I’ll only be here for a week, Master Tholme has requested that I return to the home office to work on one of our newer developed strands and vaccines,” She spoke about her work freely and often with Barriss, part of why she’d fallen in love with the pre-med track in the first place. Her mother’s passion for her career helped Barriss fall in love with the world in a way she didn’t think possible, and while she had many obstacles to overcome, she had to stay positive that she would succeed thanks to her hard work and the resources available.

She was half excited and half full of dread as Luminara pulled up to the drop off at last. The dorm building was tall, the Tribunal building would be her home for the next few years, “I’m scared,” She found herself whispering against the window. Her hands were squeezing Luminara’s once more, but this time, she squeezed back in a heartbeat pattern.

“Fear can be a good thing, Barriss,” Her mother started, voice soft, even with all the noise of unruly undergrads outside. “Do it because you’re scared, and when you graduate, you’ll feel better about taking that step, the next ones won’t be as scary,” She pulled the younger woman's hand until she could give a gentle tug, leaning across the center console until Barriss’s head fell into her shoulder. “And, even if this doesn’t work out, I’m still proud of you for everything you’ve done to get here,”

She inhaled slowly, eyes sliding shut as she cherished her last moment of peace. “I’ll take these ones with you,” Luminara promised, before unbuckling and sliding out of her seat. In just a few long strides, Barriss’s door was opened, and her mother’s hand reached to help her out. Another slow, controlled breath, before she grabbed her hand and rose out of the car.

The sounds hit her like a wall of bricks, but the young woman swallowed, squeezing her mothers' hand once more before she moved to gather her two bags from the back seat. It wasn’t much, but she’d practiced packing light. The heaviest things were most likely the books she’d brought, though if it had been up to her, the entire Unduli home's library would be packed into that car, so the dozen or so thick tomes she stashed was a lesson in self-control.

Luminara took one of the bags before Barriss could sling it over her shoulder, and then nodded her way towards the building. “I’ll follow you,” She promised, offering a reassuring smile. The lobby was crowded full of students collecting keys, complaining to the resident assistants, and students saying lengthy and teary eyed goodbyes. She’d studied every map, and had planned for every single scenario that could alter her course to her new home. It was a big step, but Barriss led the way through the winding mazes odd bodies, up until she came to room 332.

There was music playing through a speaker inside the room, Barriss paused at the sight of two figures that occupied the side closest to the heavy wooden door. And older man, long hair, sharp jawline, blue eyes enunciated with a scar that cut across his right eye. His arms were crossed against his chest as he seemed to be caught in an argument with his companion. The woman was young, younger than Barriss even, with dark skin offset by clean stripes of near white skin, she had wanted to guess tattoos, though it seemed highly improbable, most likely an intricate case of vitiligo that cast diamonds and sweeping lines across her face. White and Blue dyed dreads sat piled on top of her head, and her eyebrows furrowed as he spoke.

“If you didn’t interrupt me, every time I tried-“

“I wasn’t interrupting, I was trying to help you,” Which, Barriss believed, threw off whatever intention he was attempting to convey, considering he’d interrupted the younger woman.

The woman’s hands went up in the air as she shook her head. “Which I’d appreciate, if you didn’t interrupt me to do it! I just think maybe you don’t trust that I can handle this on my own,”

“It’s not about trust, it’s about making sure everything’s right,” He pushed himself off the desk then, and a gentle hand on Barriss shoulder had her stepping into the fray, her brows furrowing as she listened to them go back and forth.

“Oh! So you don’t trust me to do it right!” The woman accused, her finger poking into his bicep, which he batted out of the way with an exasperated sigh. “I knew it!’

His posture relaxed, seemingly defeated. “Snips, I never said-“

Her arms crossed defensively over her own chest, now, mirroring his habit of interruption. “No, no. It’s okay, I understand. I’m the freshman, you’re the aide,”The woman turned away from him, going back to angrily folding a sweatshirt that must have been tossed on the made ben when they started their spat.

Their conversation dropped to whispers neither woman could make out, but as Barriss stepped forward, to make their presence known,’snips’ started back up. “If you don’t trust me, why don’t you just send me back,” She snarked, the shirt tossed once again down onto the bed as she spun to face him once more.

“Don’t tempt me, Snips,” He warned, when his hand pulled into a fist, Barriss took note of the rigidness of his hand, it wasn’t hard to see the mechanics of a prosthetic through the black glove he’d placed over it.

“If you’re both finished…?” Luminara started, growing weary of standing in the entryway. Boredom outwore politeness and she stepped past her daughter, into the room, to set the small duffel bag onto the foot of the unclaimed bed. “Well, Barriss, aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” She guided, once she’d finally entered and shut the door behind her.

She caught the man bumping the younger woman’s shoulder, until she’d turned to acknowledge the newcomers. Barriss stepped forward then, cheeks darkening as she dipped her head and curtseyed. “Kinesiology major, Barriss Offer, at your service,” She greeted, her lips quirking immediately at the way the woman she assumed to be her roommate beamed at her.

Ahsoka and the man shared a look, and she shook her head at him. The younger woman’s hand reached towards Barriss. “Glad to meet you, I’m Ahsoka, and this,” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, to the man at the desk, who’d rolled his eyes. “Is my brother, Anakin,”

When Barriss took Ahsoka’s hand, both woman offered near hesitant smiles simultaneously, and Barriss caught the way her mother’s lips quirked as she stepped closer to Anakin, and the way the two bowed their heads together and seemed to be passing on a quiet conversation. “Your majoring in mechanical engineering, correct?”

Ahsoka nodded, her hand squeezing Barriss before dropping her hand to turn and grab a notebook. “Yeah of course! I know you mentioned your pre med track, and I have a brother who did medical engineering too, he wouldn’t shut up about it when I asked,” Ahsoka grabbed a messy notebook from a spilled open duffel bag, messy notes scrawled across designs all across the sheets of paper, almost impossible to decipher as she peered over them.

“She’s been up Kix’s rear getting him to teach her everything he knew pre-med, since she learned her track,” Barriss heard Anakin mention to her mother. She paused, hand reaching to grab the corner of the notebook. Ahsoka had obviously put a great deal of time into learning about the stranger’s interests, so the least Barriss could do was pay attention.

“these are…” The woman blinked, her lips pulling into a smile. “Most of these designs aren’t used until more than halfway through the course, and you’ve already figured out their uses,” She was truly stunned, there were instruction diagrams and equipment notes for pieces she’d only ever hoped to use in the practice one day.

“I watched a lot of Grey’s anatomy,” The woman informed with a big grin and a nod of her head. The notebook was shut and sat back on the already cluttered desk. “It’s actually really interesting, the subject, not the show,” And then a half nervous laugh, Barriss turned her face, her hand raising to her lips to cover the smile that pulled at her own.

It was Luminara who finally stepped in, her hand on Barriss’s shoulder. “Perhaps you two would like to join us for a quick lunch, then? I’m sure Barriss would love to hear all about what you’ve learned,” Barriss’s cheeks darkened, but she did not her head and focus her gaze on Ahsoka, who was looking at her older brother for permission.

“Hey, snips, you’re the adult here,” He defended, his hands raised in surrender and a smirk pulling at his lips. The young woman stuck her tongue out at him cruelly, before nodding her head up at both Barriss and Luminara.

“I think that’d be great!” Ahsoka’s enthusiasm was starting to rub off on Barriss, who’d set her bags down with the intent of unpacking later. They’d been in the car for quite some time now, and she’d be lying to say she wasn’t starved.

Together, the four of them exited the dorm, Barriss and Luminara piling into their car once more, overheated with the summer, while Anakin and Ashoka dispersed into the student parking lot.

With the air conditioning cranked, and their car rolling down the road, the sight of a black helmet and a white and blue helmet further up along the busy roadways was enough for Luminara to speak. “How do you feel about your arrangements?” She prompted, eyes flickering from the road for only a moment.

“I… I do truly believe it will be an enlightening experience,” The young woman frowned in thought. “Ahsoka took an interest in what I told her, and learned more about it, it is quite an admirable feat,” A pregnant pause, as their car pulled to a stoplight. “Do you know her brother, Anakin?” Because really, the way she’d caught the two conversing was not entirely unusual for her mother, but she’d never taken politeness to a friendly level before.

“Do you remember Professor Kenobi? From the Criminal Justice department?”

“You two attended university together, correct?”

“We had, on Coruscant. Anakin and Ahsoka were his charges since they were young. When you mentioned that the university had put you with Ahsoka, I assumed it as a good thing, I’m glad to see that so far, it seems I was correct,”

Barriss cheeks heated, so she reached to turn the air conditioners vent to point at her face. “She is quite thoughtful, and this does ease some of my fears about being put with someone I would not grow to like… I hope the rest of the year turns out to be as fruitful.”

Poggle’s diner was surprisingly slow as they pulled into the parking lot, their sedan pulling into the empty spot between two sport bikes, one black and blue, with the other in a variety of orange, white, and blue. Barriss took immediate notice that the white designs on the helmet and gas tank vaguely resembled her new roommates vitiligo.

“The mosque is nearby as well, I wish to visit with you this afternoon, and help you get acquainted,” Luminara mentioned as the two women exited the vehicle, the car beeping to acknowledge its locked status.

“That would be lovely, I had a difficult time printing the directions at the library before we left,” Because, if there was one person who still used Mapquest, it was Barriss Offee, with an excuse of simplicity, and being able to draw her route along the map to help her stay oriented.

The inside of the dinner was a little dirty, just as spare as the outside, making it easy to see the two young adults, who kept sliding the paper to their straws back on and shooting them at each other. When Ahsoka’s paper projectile hit the floor, Anakin had shot up and declared her the loser, a sheepish smile on his face as the two women approached. “You made it! Hope traffic wasn’t too bad, I refuse to drive a car anywhere in the city this time of year,” He explained as he crumpled up the paper into a ball, dropping it next to Ashoka’s, before reaching into her hair to retrieve his own white paper that had been lost to white dye.

“He is a menace,” Ahsoka deadpanned, taking a sip from the water in front of her. The woman’s legs were tucked up onto the booth with her, childish, but… Barriss couldn’t help but find it endearing, as she slid herself to the inside of the booth across from her new friend. “Anakin said you were an early grad too, right?”

“Oh, yes, actually. I took my classes during holiday, and received credit from the local community college to aid in my enrollment here,” Barriss explained, her hands folding together on the table in front of her. “You graduated early as well?”

“Yeah! Well, kind of! Turns out, with my last placement, I was taking more classes than I needed to, and getting the credits I needed, so when Obi-Wan took me in, everything fell into place, but I did kind of gap it so I could work in Skyguy’s shop. The customer service is trash, but he can get anything working again,” She pointed out, grinning widely at the nudge of her brothers’ elbow into her ribs.

“That is interesting, and I have to say I am quite intrigued on your perspectives, more so education wise, I have not met anyone outside of my desired study who has taken the time to learn about it,”

Ahsoka’s cheeks darkened, and her shoulders shrugged. The waiter came and went, the two girls left alone in their little world. They continued to pass knowledge and stories back to each other, with Luminara or Anakin only chiming in so often to point out an embarrassing discrepancy in the story. Their meals came and went, and by the time they were all getting ready to depart once more, it would have been impossible to believe that the pair had only met that day.

“It was lovely to meet both of you, Anakin, Ahsoka. I will be in town for the next few days for some work, if either of you needs anything, and please, do pass on my well wishes to Professor Kenobi.” Luminara dismissed, her hand on Barriss shoulder as she nodded to the two young adults. “I am going to cool down the car,” And then her mother was walking away, but Ahsoka was stepping up, her hand extended.

“Guess I’ll see you tonight then, roomie?” She questioned with a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. Barriss took her hand, much more confident than she had been upon their first meeting.

“Of course, I look forward to it. It was nice to meet you as well, Anakin,” The man in question raised two fingers to the corner of a split eyebrow in a friendly mock of a salute, before Barriss took her leave back to the cooling vehicle.

“They certainly are different, but.. not in a bad way,” She confided to Luminara as she sat in the passenger seat and secured her safety belt. “I think I will like it here, to an extent,” She didn’t want to promise that she would love the place, but she was now more willing to give it a chance than she’d been before.

“It makes me glad to hear this, Barriss. I’m proud of the steps you’ve taken today,” Her mothers hand did not leave her own the entire short trip to the Mosque, filling with folks all across the city

Even prayer felt more comfortable than it had in the Core. There were less people, she felt like she could breathe, and as the session came to a close, many stayed to converse, to check in. It was certainly more a community than the closed off life she’d come to know.

Barriss would not get to meet the imam, but she did get her name settled so they would know to expect her, if not every day, than at least four times a week. Prayer at home never came as easy to her, especially not as enlightening as it had been that day, and she quite looked forward to seeing if she would fit in to their community.

The return to the dorm was quieter than their first trip, and Barriss had to take a moment to prepare herself for her first true night away from her mother. “I will miss you,” She spoke into Luminara’s sweater as her face buried in her shoulder.

“I’ll only be a phone call away, little one,” The woman promised, her thumb brushing across Barriss’s cheek with her own sorrow painted on her features. “And I will be nearby as well, as you settle. You need only call,”

In the end Luminara did not walk up with Barriss, had guided her to make the hardest steps herself, and she had. The dorm room was dark, and mostly quiet when she entered. Ahsoka was sprawled haphazardly on her bed, with her phone settled by her head and quietly playing music too low for the older woman to make out.

Her belongings were unpacked quietly and carefully. Computer and books organized on the desk, clothes settled into the provided dresser. Her dead phone removed from her bag and plugged in, settled on the corner of the desk as well. When everything was just as she wanted it, and she could complete Maghrib, it was clear two very separate people occupied the space, with her neat organization, and color coded notebooks, and Ahsoka’s mess of books and notebooks opened and sprawled out with diagrams already across the desk.

It was mildly endearing, though Barriss had to wonder if it would ever come to grind on her. She had to hope it would not, as she quite enjoyed her current arrangement. She had many thoughts about the woman occupying the other space, as she retreated once more to the space provided for her fifth and final vesper of the night. She wasn’t necessarily distracted, but she did find herself pondering questions she’d never had before.

Sleep came that night with a new fear, one she had never entertained before, because no one else had ever held such meaning to her life, especially not in such a short time. The fear that perhaps Ahsoka did not like her at all? As sleep found her, Barriss promised, either to the sleeping Ahsoka, or to the ceiling, she was not certain, that she would wish to learn about the types of different engineering as well.

#barrissday #barriss offee #master luminara #luminara unduli #ahsoka tano #barrisoka #barisoka #barriss offee x ahsoka tano #ahsoka and barriss #alternate universe #star wars #repost #shameless repost #and they were roommates #fan fic #fic share #they're both oblivious and dorks and sweet and I love them okay #I can't wait to get back into this one

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shinygoku · 3 years ago

Note

gordon gordon gordon gordon

Gordon Gordon Gordon Gordon!!

He's been sneaking into these asks by proxy, so it's finally time for his dedicated session, hehe~

First impression

WUAAAGH what's up with this WEIRD LONG NOT-THOMAS and his FACE?!

Impression now

His face is still pretty weird! But you know what else it is? Part of an Absolute Legend ✨

Like, man, Gordon is such a big presence and interesting character, the entire premise leans heavily on him. I'm inclined to go as far as to say that the Blue Boys of 1, 2 and 4 here are the three most important characters for the franchise (not at all to knock everyone else lmao) and they slot nicely into a Triforce of Courage, Wisdom and Power, and Gordon has Power in spades!

Gordon is The Vain One (not James!). He's legit very strong and the fastest on Sodor (which isn't just being a big fish in a small pond because that island has some crazy cool engines!) but unfortunately he lacks humility. His success seems to have been lodged in his head before the series even begins and this Pride is the source of pretty much every single conflict he's involved in.

But when it isn't his self satisfaction in his actions, it's being smug about being such a grand, magnificent Tender Engine and he is snooty as hell about it. He seems to look at smaller engines [pretty much everyone compared to him lol] as a lesser class, particularly if they're small and cheeky and Tank Engines. This may not be the case exactly, but his way of talking to them and some other things he says are very condescending.

However... as much as a gigantic jerk he is at several points, with Gordon I kinda feel like he plain ass doesn't conceive of his words being out of line. That and having to Unlearn things... he's not innately better than everyone else. He sees things in black and white. There are Useful Engines, and those who should be scrapped. There are Noble Tender Engines and Lesser Tank Engines who exist to do the tedious chores on behalf of the Superior ones. Edward doing shunting is seen as Demeaning and contradicts Gordon’s world view that Tender Engines Don't Stunt™, and he doesn't like that one bit! (Also Edward was crossing the picket line but that wasn't Awdry's concern lmao)

Related is Gordon does seem oddly dense at times, like assuming that Tenders are in of themselves a Status Symbol rather than a large lunchbox of sorts lol, or that Tender Engines like him being too heavy for Branch Lines being because something about Branch Lines are degrading. This might be all Elitist Brainwashing influence. But still, that he just takes these as The Truth means I get to affectionately call him an idiot. And there is no other way to explain how he genuinely believes Bill and Ben were going to murder him if he wasn't missing a few brain bolts in there.

Fortunately, he does eventually start to learn the important lessons.... very gradually, but the Early Gordon is a pretty different beast to Later Gordon, and it's wonderful~

Also, I gotta give credit to him for having some moments of utter brilliance and actual grasp of reality and more complex matters, like culture. (Yeah, I'm rolling with his geniune Opera Knowledge from s6 of all things. It's good!) As much as Awdry himself may have disagreed, Gordon was in the right to want a Station Pilot and the Strike was called for (not bullying Edward for it, but myeah) ...but this leads to my next point: He seems to have a mental block when it comes to Emotions.

Certainly, he's as emotional as the others are, it's not just a scale of Snooty, Arrogant, Condescending, Prideful ....well, it is, but ALSO the more mixed and varied feelings: Shame, Sadness, Fear, Ambivilance, Irritation, Anger, Passion, Amused, Delight and so on. However, Gordon is seemingly unaware of how his words may make the others feel, and even at his cruellest it doesn't look like he's aware he's twisting a knife in. To Gordon, he's being honest, but his verbose manner ends up twisting and wriggling away from any valid point like an overgrown vine that somehow links back to how [Other Engine] is disgracing him, Gordon, by association.

Examples include: Being offended by Henry's new shape (??? Gordon dude he nearly died and this is an improvement, a good thing!), saying that Edward's age and difficulty starting a heavy ass packed load of passengers is grounds to be Retired or even Scrapped, other little insulting things like calling the likes of Thomas and James Little insistently (it seems to vary if he's trying to put them down or actually be affectionate), and many more when in the hands of inept writers who have to wheel out the same Gordon Learns A Lesson Plot every other season.

Like I said in the James post, I also think he kinda poisoned the Red guy with his snooty attitude... but I maintain that I think Gordon was unaware of this. He may know he has Influence, and enjoy that, but he really truly doesn't appear to mean to mould James into a smaller, redder version of himself. He's oblivious and from his own point of view, benevolent. Which is in fact a dangerous combo indeed!

It's... a lot o7;;

Again though, if you're looking at the books and s1-s5 of TVS you can see him grow and change. He does take a while to learn the lessons, but as time goes on he moves 2 steps forward and 1 step back, then eventually less steps back entirely. It's great! And so is Gordon. A big dumb meathead with not entirely uncalled for delusions of granduer. A dramatic so-and-so who is the best engine for his job.

I love this sophisticated jock who grows more kindness~ 💙

Favourite moment

Hm! This isn't as easy to decide lol. We all like Gordon Goes Foreign... but you know what sticks in my mind more?

hOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH

Look, I’m not 100% objective, here! But Ringo’s read of this line is fantastic (and keeps making me expect him to finish saying OOOHH SHIT) and it’s also a well deserved bolt of divine retribution for how rude he was being earlier. (As long as my essay already was, he very much needed the knocking down of some pegs here!)

Idea for a story

While both my fics with him thus far have been variations of Pre-Canon, Full-Arrogance and Snobbish Gordon (and both were a lot of fun!) ...but I cannot bear the same expired horse being beaten more when the story is set waaay later but he’s still up his own ass. Please, PLEASE writers, let him hold what growth he’s managed to gain!

I think it’d be good to accept that he’s gonna be outdated sooner or later, so have him help train another High Speed Engine and take them under his wing. The Christopher Awdry books kinda have something similar with Pip and Emma, but I think a better way of having Gordon be involved would be if he was actively doing some mentoring himself, as well as being a neat parallel with Edward, whose type was once Express only but got outclassed by A1s, and so the same can happen to this big A1 -> A3 lad and he can form a healthy relationship with some bright eyed newbie (and maybe have some self awareness and try to stop their head getting too large, lol).

Unpopular opinion

I know I just said him mentoring would be a cool story idea, but in canon? He is NOT a resident Dad type!! He’s a hotshot young man but he’s also a hot mess. He’s physically large but he’s not got the Energy of someone who dispenses sage advice and a shoulder to cry on. At best, he’s a weird uncle! One who means well but you shouldn’t take his life advice to heart because he’s actually just as, if not more clueless than you!

Favourite relationship

I feel inclined to say Thomas here. Emphatically not because Gordon is ‘old’ and Thomas is ‘young’, but because they’re so damn alike and actually make an excellent, albeit unconventional type of Rivalry.

Both are self important with genuine finesse in their respective talents, both are honest to a fault, both have redeeming qualities to offset their initial abrasiveness, and the first TVS episode is centred on the both of them and sets the tone for the series as a whole. There’s more parallels, of course, but I also wanna point out they’re effectively the mascots of North Western Rail in universe too, and I absolutely love this picture:

I also have immense fondness for the Down the Mine paradigm shift! Thomas gives Gordon grief over the ditch incident and later when it emerges the Fat Controller is gonna send for Gordon to pull him out, Thomas is filled with dread. But Gordon isn’t using the chance to lord over Thomas, he’s actually so amused by Thomas’ mishap and it coming at a time where he’s been significantly humbled, they instead become Comrades and I love it. I eat it up! Paint Pots and Queens isn’t anywhere near as good but I adore the little bit where they’re appealing for the other, equals and watching each other’s back~

But yeah, as Friendly Rivals they both feel very authentic and yet, in a daft way, sweet ;3

Favourite headcanon

He still says “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” when pulling the Express. That’s a HC as I think the show phased it out, but I like it lol. I feel like my essay on him contains most of the headcanon stuff, but it’s all based on what’s shown, baybee!

#this is ttte #TTTE Gordon #ttte talk #Gordon the Big Engine #Thomas the Tank Engine #TTTE Thomas #snuck in a bit in there lol #mentioned Edward a lot as well but not in as much depth #I love me some Blue Engines #TTTE

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manyblinkinglights · 4 years ago

Text

MY PERSONAL TAKE ON UNITY-”HUMANOID” FERAL AVATAR RIGGING FOR VRCHAT

First of all: this is actually not that bad. If you avoid the many pitfalls I will lay out for you in this tutorial, the worst thing about the hookup process is the same thing that’s bad about everything in Unity: dragging the little thingies into their little boxies gets kind of tedious.

NUMBERED LIST:

1. Start with Rigify’s meta-human.

2. Modify it by deleting extra bones, and

3. altering the hips and legs and shoulders for compatibility with VRChat’s full-body IK, as per Kung’s YouTube tutorial.

4. Build your quad model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your Humanoid.

5. Lock your Humanoid legs and arms out of weight painting.

6. Rig your quad model, and

7. Get it into Unity.

8. Start putting rotation constraints on all/most of your quad model’s bones (I’ll tell you TWO BIG SECRETS). edit: I forget what two things were supposed to be the secrets. Pick whichever two things helped you most and let’s just call those the secrets.

9. Build and test your avatar, then start tweaking your constraint weights until you get the effect you want!

ADVICE:

part A: You can test an activated quad leg rotation constraint directly in your scene by applying it, and then grabbing your humanoid thigh or shin transform and rotating that, but YOU HAVE TO CTRL-Z IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS. NEVER apply a rotation constraint to a bone that’s been left out of its default position!

part B: Always, always, ALWAYS and only, only ONLY work on your Armature in Blender from full X, Y, or Z isometric view with X-mirroring on.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS:

The levelling bone in your backbone always points directly back, relative to root, from the user’s hips; they twist up and leave it behind if they turn from side to side too far, all the way around, or, god forbid, hit VRCEmote 6 (backflip). You cannot sexy poledance or flop onto the couch in this style of avatar without making a spectacle of yourself.

If there’s some crazy calculus that’d spit out the exact right leg lengths and constraint weights to perfectly eliminate foot-vs-floor clipping at every height, I do not know it. There are just too many variables at play; put whatever leg lengths onto your quad that it requires, and then try to come up with rough, biomechanically-inspired values for your constraint weights such that your quad feet wind up near the same elevation as your Humanoid core’s feet when you enter the Humanoid sit position. If you do this your end result will be PRETTY DARN GOOD at standing and bending/dancing heights, but it WILL get squirrelly as you approach crouch. That’s just the way it is; in fact I recommend replacing the prone and crouch animation blendtrees with the standing ones. While this tutorial will generate an avatar that crouches and crawls around prone okay/amusingly, you do get sent into the floor in crouch/prone and there simply isn’t anything to be done about it.

There is also NO WAY to migrate rotation constraints from one avatar to another. You can copy a fully-constrained avatar and hot-swap in your own edited mesh, but you (basically) CAN’T EDIT bones in an already-constrained armature without turning it all into spaghetti.

ONE.

You need a working, full-body-tracking compatible biped skeleton to start with. But... there aren’t any out there (that I’m aware of) to start with, so I recommend scaling up a meta-human out of the Rigify add-on for Blender... here’s a guy walking you through that bit of it: https://youtu.be/DS885Sk1gSs?t=30 (we will not be making an “animation rig,” we are just getting a human-shaped Armature into the project with almost all of its bones named correctly already. So just do that part.)

TWO.

...and then deleting the face stuff, some other stuff, and the extra four non-finger hand bones out of each hand (make sure not to accidentally nuke part of your thumb, like me, because you might not notice until way later that you’ve given yourself a stumpy single-jointed thumb). You want to go from this:

To this:

I mean, I guess you could leave them, but too many useless bones will come back to bite you later if Unity decides it can’t figure your shit out and makes you drag every. single. handbone. into. the L and R hand slots yourself. Set yourself up for success and don’t skip this deletion step. Also, now’s the time to rename your hips -> spine -> chest -> neck -> head chain, since Rigify has them all as like spine01 spine02 etc.

Your penultimate guy:

THREE.

Now modify its thighs and hips as per Kung’s tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sfTEBAl8sA

Basically, for this armature in particular you need the tops of the thigh bones to be below the entire hip bone, as follows:

AND you need the hip bone to be above the thigh bones (Rigify’s is too far back). Personally, I got good results from just grabbing my legs and scooting them backward.

If you DON’T do this, PC people and three-point tracking people will still be able to use your avatar fine. But full-body people’s hips will jut forward in a super fucked up way. IF YOU FOLLOW THIS TUTORIAL EXACTLY and include a BEND bone, this will be a problem. IF YOU CUT CORNERS and disregard the BEND bone (and/or you choose to lock the hips out of weight painting--valid), you can skip this step. But you seriously might as well do it.

IMPORTANT! The lengths and angles of your bones here determine, in part, the later behavior & vivacity of your finished model. I like this modified Rigify base because VRChat’s IK makes it nice and lively. If you use a different Humanoid base, like a ramrod straight turbocompatible one, or a cool but non-fullbody-compatible style one (hey, go for it! PC and three-point tracking people have rights too!) the flavor of your animations later on will be different!

FOUR. Build your model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your inner Humanoid! Don’t hold me liable for anything that happens to you if you change the armature proportions, but based on this one time I helped a kid hook up their quad horse, you can get acceptable/interesting non-full-body-compatible behavior if you do change them (to perfectly follow your cool dragon neck or whatever). I will continue on as if you did not change them! Anyway, do your thing. If you’ve got someone else’s mesh for this step, do your best to pose it in a neutrally upright standing position, and then put the Humanoid in it like they’re the front half of a horse costume, scaling the whole rig up and down as necessary. Again, ANY CHANGES YOU MAKE TO THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMANOID RIG WILL CHANGE YOUR ANIMATIONS LATER, and break full-body compatibility if you go too far! Here’s mine, see the little guy in there? Try to pick him out from the rest of the rigging:

Your head needs to be placed so it does a good job aiming its head/so you can set the view orb so you more or less see out its eyes, and your neck, chest, spine, and hips should be in its neck and forequarters, but your legs and feet DON’T have to match up with your quad forelegs or forefeet! Your quad feet can be anywhere relative to your Humanoid ones so long as your quad is in its symmetrical, neutral standing posture.

You can see that mine are a bit in front. It’s fine.

FIVE. Parent the mesh to the armature (or uhhh is it the other way around? Whichever way around it is, do it) with empty groups. Go into your Vertex Groups panel and lock out the limbs--that’s shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands and fingers, thighs, lower legs, feet, and toes. You want them zero and kept at zero (unless your want your arms for a taur).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG82fogtuCg WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY. :V You can run the auto weight paint from here and/or start dinking around with weight painting your quad’s neck however is most comfortable for you if you want, but you still need to

SIX. rig your quad model! Okay, here’s the one big rule for your grounded legs (wings and funky lil extra limbs that just wave around can do whatever):

you must leave your Rigify legs straight up and down, no angling outwards, and YOUR QUAD LIMBS MUST BE STRAIGHT UP AND DOWN, NO ANGLING OUTWARDS.

See mine:

You don’t have to have them all perfectly in line from the front like I do, you could have your legs be set at any widths (say, wider stance in the armature hind legs than in the Humanoid ones, if your quad has wider hips), but they HAVE to all be exactly straight up and down, just like the Humanoid legs are. I tried matching my actual gryphon limb angles like in normal rigging once, and it resulted in incorrect foot placement/limb angles when standing neutrally (because VRChat’s neutral stance is not a perfect T- or A-pose). It’s fine if they’re different heights, though--here’s a side picture where you can see that my hind legs are lots taller, and my forelegs a little taller, than those of my Humanoid core:

Okay so maybe this belongs up there under FIVE. but, since you CANNOT add any jaunty character to your quad by adding naturalistic/sideways angling in its armature, the mesh, instead, must deviate from the armature to give you the illusion of a jaunty stance, and I DO recommend doing (just a little of) this. Your bones don’t HAVE to be in the center of your mesh volumes to still work okay, especially when they’re only serving as relatively-restricted legs (knees don’t twist, and neither do a bunch of quad bones driven by them). So, feel free to “pose” your quad legs in an interesting way around their upright bones, especially when it comes to giving your hind legs a different character from your front ones. Otherwise it’ll be way more obvious they’re rigidly linked, despite their different proportions. I recommend angling the apparent set of your hind legs out just a little, so your hind feet seem to be set wider than your front ones.

Not only does this help give each set of your legs its own character, to help with the illusion that they’re actuating totally differently, and that these are definitely your own original character do not steal’s full custom animations and not VRChat’s default ones--but your back legs are going to be operating the reverse of your front legs. This means that when the wearer adopts a wide stance, with their feet well apart from each other (as in many dances), YOUR BACK LEGS WILL CROSS. The amount of space I left between my gryphons’ hind legs, above, accommodates the normal amount of moving around that people do pretty well, but be advised that making a beautiful character with its hind legs neatly, narrowly posed might hit you with some heartbreak later! (You could get around this by instead rigging your quad to have its forelegs be the reversed ones, but this might be a little disconcerting for a fullbody wearer; or you could give yourself a “pacing” gait, where both your front and back left legs step forward at once, but this is a glaringly visible design choice for the kinds of people who notice these things. If you do this, make it a choice, not what-you-did-because-it-turned-out-you-had-no-choice.)

(I did a bunch of bogus shit to make it so I could switch between regular locomotion and a pacing gait, but that’s outside the scope of this tutorial.)

Now, your BOB, LEVEL, and BEND bones!

BOB: Somewhere on your armature, put an unparented bone (any size) along your midline called BOB. (I put mine below my hips and called it dingle.dangle.) Ever ported a model in and left something unparented accidentally? Remember how it disconcertingly gets “left behind”? Well, we’re using that phenomenon to our advantage! BOB will be our rotation reference bone for LEVEL and BEND.

LEVEL: So, LEVEL. Your quad’s back/torso should be/have one big bone coming out of the back of your Humanoid hips, call it LEVEL. It should be the parent for all your quad’s limbs, except for anything you have coming out of the head or neck (idk, whiskers, chinwings, whatever).

BEND: BEND is optional, but recommended; a bone that also sticks out the back of your hips, and stretches out more or less to the end of your ribcage, maybe to the middle-ish of your ribcage. Mine is parallel to the floor but that doesn’t matter much, and weighted at around strength .4 to the ribcage behind my shoulders, a little bit of the back of my shoulders where they meet my body, and tapering off towards my waist. Basically when you wiggle this bone up and down, it should arch and bow your back a little bit, over the top of your other weight paints, in whatever way is visually acceptable to you. Mine does this:

SEVEN.

Now, into Unity. Navigating Unity is mostly beyond the scope of this tutorial, but if you can add a VRC Avatar Descriptor, you can add a rotation constraint. It works the same, you just go find the bone (”transform”) in the hierarchy that you want and add a rotation constraint component to it.

So, get your .fbx out of Blender and into your Assets folder or whatever. Click on it and go to Import Settings, set it as Humanoid, apply, configure. Pick out and add all the bones of your Humanoid armature to the Humanoid panel (if it hasn’t autopopulated--it might!), reset your pose and then enforce T-pose if necessary, delete the reference to Jaw, put Chest in and make sure there’s no Upper Chest, etc., all the usual things. You should see a little green T-posing person in the forequarters of your quad! Hit Done and you’re done. (Look up ordinary VRChat avatar 3.0 import tutorials if you’re having trouble with this step; you’re Humanoid at this point already, same as anybody). Now drag your newly-confirmed-for-Humanoid .fbx into your scene. Open up its hierarchy and look for the LEVEL bone; it should be under hips. Put a rotation constraint on this bone (click on it, Add Component button, search “rotation” or “constraint,” pick Rotation Constraint). Click the little plus to add a target, and drag BOB in there from the hierarchy. Leave the strength 1 above and 1 below (the 1 below will always be left alone at 1 unless specified otherwise), and click Activate. There! You did it! Now your whole entire ass won’t wave around!! You can hop right in and Test Avatar if you want--your head and neck will be the only things that move while your legs will all be stiff like a piñata, but by god, your back will be staying level. Try crouching and going prone!

Enjoy this first, sweet taste of quad success if you’ve gotten this far, because there are many, many ways to screw the rest of this process up, and even with me guiding you, you might find some brand new ones. Applying a rotation constraint correctly is as easy as above, but here are some pitfalls: if you move any bones in Unity with active constraints on them, or bones upstream of an active constraint, they get fucked up. If you activate a constraint on a bone that’s been moved, moving the bone back afterwards will fuck the constraint up. LEAVE YOUR MODEL IN ITS DEFAULT POSE AT ALL TIMES, UNLESS YOU’VE MADE SURE TO SWITCH TO GAME MODE. (Sometimes you get lucky and you can rescue a ruined bone by deactivating its constraint and then going to Modified Component -> Revert on the transform itself. But don’t count on it.)

If you change any values within a constraint while it is active, it gets fucked up. Uncheck “Is Active” before modifying any constraint!

But wait, there’s more! If you hot-swap your model (minimize Unity, open Blender, do edits, export your new .fbx, delete your old .fbx in the save dialog and replace it with your new .fbx, WAIT A FEW SECONDS because opening Unity in the middle of the hotswap borks everything, maximize Unity, it thinks for a second, then accepts your new model while hey presto preserving your rotation constraints), AFTER ARMATURE EDITS, so, again, if yo-- if you--*about to sneeze voice*--

If you hot-swap your model after armature edits, the whole thing can get fucked up and you might have to re-apply all your rotation constraints again.

hhhhh that’s better. Now, you MAY hot-swap your model after wholesale bone additions and deletions, but rotation-constrained armatures lose their tiny minds if you change constrained bone lengths, positions, or angles!

Moving on! You just did LEVEL, now let’s do BEND.

BEND is constrained at .5 strength to BOB. Add a rotation constraint to BEND, set the strength to .5, hit the plus, drag in BOB. (Dial your reflexes in on this sequence because you are going to be doing it a lot.) The purpose of BEND is to bring a little life to your otherwise ramrod-stiff quad spine; you can experiment with strengths (of weight paint, of constraint weight, of bone length) but I recommend you try copying me to start. So that’s: BEND, a bone sticking out to about the end of your ribcage, weight painted at .4 or so to your ribcage and gradienting smoothly away, constrained to your unparented bone BOB at .5 strength (waving around without any constraint put too much wiggle in my gryphon).

BOB, LEVEL, and BEND are the major engines behind my quad rigging giving an acceptable effect! You don’t need to throw $90 at Final IK if you’ve got some time on your hands and BOB, LEVEL, and BEND. :)

Now for ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIMBS!

A note before we begin. Unity rotation constraints can’t ever go past 1:1, that is, there is no way to “amplify” a motion to make it a bigger one. You can only approach parity with the reference motion, never exceed it. The clearest example I can think of is a tail. My tail is six bones, and I thought I could constrain each one to the head at .1 and they’d “stack” and make it so a small motion of my head would put an attractive curl in my tail. Lol, nope. The first one rotated the tail .1, the ones that followed each inherited that .1 rotation from their parent and had their constraints satisfied, and did nothing, and I had a tail that barely moved at all. (Blender’s bone constraints work differently and allow this kind of amplification; you can also test things out in there, but I could never figure out which settings would give me Unity-like behavior.) So, with that in mind, bring up a gait cycle of your target animal. If a video is too confusing, look for some static images (like an animator’s gait cycle) that show the gait. Try to see which bones rotate the most, and which rotate noticeably less. Use this to inform your constraint weight values later. If you picked a static image, you can even measure the rotations throughout the cycle to see which move most and least! I don’t know enough to use exactly specific language here, so, to the extreme literalists in my audience.... sorry about what I just said. If you find your ability to magically pick up on what I mean is poor, I’ll just give you my gryphon numbers later! Or you could just try some stuff, like having every bone at max strength & seeing what happens, and then picking just one to turn down to .5 strength and testing again. That should clarify the concept for you quickly.

Alternatively, the quick-and-dirty “I’m NOT HERE to acquire any sensitivities I don’t ALREADY HAVE” test is to just try to get your quad feet as close as possible to your biped feet’s level/height when the biped thigh is picked up to 90 degrees and the shin hangs straight down (the “sit position”). Here’s how mine do:

Now, that’s half of the challenge, noticing which bones in the legs ought to be more or less responsive, and then roughing out an idea of the relative weights/responsivities each leg bone needs to make that happen, deciding which bones are liveliest and should be set at or near 1 and which are stiffest, or least active, and should go around .5 (you might even dip to .3). But (you might scream) what are you weighting these guys RELATIVE to? What are their TARGETS? Well!

...I’m not going to try to explain this. I’ve confused everybody every time I’ve tried. :p Just start with the shoulder constrained to the thigh, then the next bone down to the shin, then the NEXT bone down to the thigh again, then the shin again, and so on (thigh shin thigh shin thigh shin). This will get you 98% of the way there because most of the bones in a tetrapod leg-chain operate in simple opposition to each other. Basically, by rotating the shoulder like the thigh, when you raise your leg, your quad will start to raise its shoulder. By having the next bone rotate like your shin, and then continuing the pattern after, contracting your knee will make your quad contract its whole leg. This breaks down a little at the paw-and-toes, or the distal complexities of the horse, but just start with this pattern by rote. Then test it, and if one of the bones is obviously backwards, swap its target to the other one and test it again.

Last concept: if you have two bones in a row weighted to the same thing (like where you’ve got two bones that do not work in opposition to each other), the second one needs to have a bigger weight to the target than its parent. Because it inherits the parent’s rotation, and then only adds whatever amount that’s bigger. So, for my forepaw, I have it at .5 to the shin, and then the toes are at 1 to the shin. The whole paw acts as a shin-unit, but weighting the hand less than the toes allows the toes a little of their own flair. :v

(Okay that was a third-grade-biology-textbook lie. I actually have my upper paw .5 to the shin and my toes/beans at 1 to the foot. I might have a little bit of weight to the foot in the upper hand/palm part of my eagle foreclaws too. But I don’t recommend you add any weighting to the foot until you’ve got a good baseline result with just weights to the thigh and shin!!!!! The foot does things that you might find confusing and upsetting and which can introduce a LOT of incorrect limb placement/clipping, especially the further up the chain you allow it to interfere; it should be used sparingly or (as in my hind legs) not at all.)

Finally, the more your bone lengths and angles resemble your target animal’s (use a skeletal reference!), and the better you are at deciding which bones should respond a lot (and be weighted with high values) and which should respond less (and be weighted with lower ones), the more visual interest and species-specific character your quad avatar will have! You can see my gryphon’s rig above; here are its constraint values (where I go LR to LR, the left bits of the Humanoid control the left bits of the quad; where I go LR to RL, the left bits of the Humanoid control the right bits of the quad):

Back: LEVEL: 1 to BOB BEND: .5 to BOB Wings: upper_arm.LR.001: .5 to upper_arm.LR forearm.LR.001: .5 to (forearm.LR .5, hand.LR .5) hand.LR.001: .5 to hand.LR Hindlegs (targeted to the OPPOSITE side human legs): thigh.LR.002: .7 to thigh.RL shin.LR.002: .6 to shin.RL foot.LR.002: .9 to thigh.RL toe.LR.002: .7 to shin.LR Forelegs - EAGLE: thigh.LR.001: .7 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .8 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to (shin.LR 1, foot.LR 1) toe.LR.003,5,6: 1 to shin.LR toe.LR.004: 1 to thigh.LR Forelegs - LION: thigh.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR toe.LR.005: 1 to foot.LR Tail: tail.001: .5 .5 to head tail.002: .6 .6 to head, etc. ***

REITERATION OF IMPORTANT PROTIP: Again, the quick and dirty test of your targets and values is to switch to Game mode and hike your Humanoid’s leg up so the thigh is parallel to the floor and the shin’s straight down (the sit position). Does your quad also hike its leg up, so its foot is in the neighborhood of your Humanoid’s foot level? Are all of your bones bending the right way? (Any that aren’t need their target switched to the other kind of leg bone.) If your quad is more or less “also contracting its leg so now it’s up,” then you’re either finished, or really really close!! If your quad daintily raises up its lil’ ol’ leggy for you, test your gait in-game and decide whether it has the right “feel”. If one of the bones is too stiff or too crazy relative to your reference animal’s style of motion, change its value so it behaves better, and hang the sitpose test. People mostly spend time standing, anyway, and your quad will likely look great standing and moving around even if it doesn’t do well at the sit test.

#vrchat #gryphon #text post #long post #dash stretcher

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sleepdeprivedheretic · 4 years ago

Text

Price for Flight (Ch.2)

Warnings: Still fluff, it’s tarnished with smut, at the end, though (Like, you can read the fic and skip the end and it’d still make sense).

Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction taken from real countries, traditions, and gaining citizenship, spun into a story that doesn’t hold these things firmly.

To your surprise, the atmosphere wasn’t much different. The two of you talked, laughed, and joked, but this time, there was flirting, blushing, and talk of planning the two of you meeting again. Of course with busy jobs, one would have to relocate, and find the same one, but in another country.

“I would like to move to Japan with you.” You told him. He looked at you with surprise.

“Ya...ya sure? Chickadee, we can always meet in the middle, ya know? Maybe move to a whole ‘nother place?” He offered, but you shook your head.

“I’m a bit more familiar with Japan, and I can speak and write in the language. I just wanna be there, with you.” You murmured, and you were rewarded with one of his softer looks and a warm smile.

“You’re such a sap. My sap.” He smiled at the thought, and you couldn’t help but replicate it.

“Man, we gotta talk about movin’ your job, things, living arrangements….anyways, my parents are naggin’ me about how I should’ve confessed years ago.” He huffed.

“I think the timing is perfect, now. We’re both adults with good jobs, and we both know what we want, now.” You admitted as you leaned the phone against the wall, giving him a view of your neat round kitchen table, and you stirring your tea.

“True. Heh, I remembered the first day ya bumped into me, all cryin’-”

“Hey! I wasn’t crying!”

“-an’ cute. I think the part in which I hadda major crush on ya, was when ya hands down just introduced me to yer friends. Didn’ care if I was foreign, fat, or bullied, ya did that shit as if ya owned the place.” He chuckled at your flustered expression.

“Well, I didn’t really care of what others think.” You mumbled, and he leaned in the camera, giving you a dorky grin.

“So?” He egged you on, and you huffed out a laugh.

“I thought that you were cute even before I really knew you.”

“Wait, really?” He looked surprised, and you nodded.

“Yeah. You were pretty shy, and you helped out when you could, giving that boy some of your lunch, or bringing in a spare umbrella just in case if somebody had forgotten theirs. You were always kind of nice, and I thought that was cute.” You rambled on, taking glances at him as he looked at you with wonderment.

“Ya remembered that five years ago?” He murmured, and you flushed.

“Well, yeah.”

“How cute.” He hummed with a genuine smile.

…..

“Oh my lord!” You huffed, pulling your wheeled baggage as you made your way to get off of the plane. It was finally happening. Instead of one year like you originally planned, it took two of them. The two of you spent pining for seven long years, and finally, including the year of the aquarium date, it was three years in total that you two were a couple.

Not only did you had to become a citizen of Japan, but you had to job search, save money, and break it to your family that you’ll be leaving the country. It wasn’t easy, but you’ve done it. Of course, becoming a citizen, you had to go through hoops.

Of course, Taishiro kept offering to move to your own country, but you were adamant in your decision. You had to lose your old nationality, support documents that proved your birth, citizenship, and even driver’s license as you had to hand-write a letter in Japanese stating on why you were leaving your old country.

Amazingly, you’ve gotten accepted to move within a year, stating that although you are able to marry, you cannot leave Japan for at least five years, and will be monitored each year to see if you were capable of following the laws and customs.

Save for the lights from the airport, a pitch black sky hovered over you as you made your way down the platform, luggage in tow as you searched for familiar blond hair and bright orange sweater, avoiding the multiple of humming and loud talk of strangers around you.

“Chickadee!” His voice reached towards your ears, and your attention snapped to the direction of his voice. He was standing there, holding a sign with your name on it as he grinned so brightly, you swore that you could hear it.

“Ah! Gummybear!” You shouted out, waving as the two of you made your way towards each other. Truthfully, the last time you’ve actually seen in each other in person was the day at the aquarium, so you were hyped up and buzzing with pleasant nerves. You were here to stay, you thought. You would move your limited amount of luggage to his house, and the day after, talk to your representative about which jobs are available, and how fast you can start.

Your thoughts were cut short as you were enveloped in a tight hug, him squeezing you as he mimicked the actions of his earlier years, scooping you up as you let out a squeak of surprise, and then twirling you around, except this time, a firm wet kiss was planted on your mouth as he held you up, still.

“Oh, Baby, I missed ya.” He cooed, and your face flushed as you looked down at him warmly, your heartbeat quickened it’s pace as time seemed to still.

“I missed you, too. It’s nice hearing your voice that’s not nullified by the phone’s speakers.” You admitted, and he nodded as he reluctantly settled you down.

“Where’s your parents?” You asked.

“Decided to visit us when it won’t be so late and we’re not busy.” He admitted, and then noticed your flushed face.

“Oh! You pervert!” He huffed.

“You had to word it like that!” You whined in defense, and he rolled his eyes.

“’Twas a normal sentence. Ya just have your mind in the gutter. Then again,” A twinkling gleam shone in his eyes as he leaned down, smirking smugly at you.

“-so do I.” He pecked you on your forehead, leaning away as he grinned at your surprised expression.

“’Come on. Let’s go home, Sweetling.”

You couldn’t have said it better.

…..

He had moved into an actual house while two years in the relationship, stating that not only they were cheaper than some apartments, but you and him could always refurnish some rooms and decorate the way you want to. Of course he had showed you pictures of it, but nothing compared to stepping inside the place.

It was nicely furnished, and built, him saying that he only had a few years left to pay it off, but with his job, and your upcoming one, it should be easier. Of course there was a little doubt, but you believed that the two of you would make this work.

“I know that you’re tired, but are ya hungry? I fixed us somethin’ to eat.” He broke the silence as he set your bags down on the floor, walking into the kitchen. You plopped down on the dark orange couch, curling into the side of the arm as he came back in with a large tray, setting it down on the coffee table in front of you. He sat down next to you, pulling you up to lean into his side as the delicious aroma sifted towards you. He chuckled, noticing that your focus was on the plate, now.

“Made it from scratch. Ya probably remember Ma makin’ it, but I thought I’d start givin’ it a whirl.” He explained as you looked at the different bowls of food on the table. Rice, miso soup, grilled fish, pickled vegetables, and green tea laid out before you. You smiled, remembering his mom telling you to sip the tea slowly, and take small bites, and then turning her attention to scold Taishiro for doing the exact opposite.

“Thank you, it smells amazing.” You said truthfully, and he pleasantly hummed, grabbing his own chopsticks, joining you.

“So?” He asked, breaking the silence when the two of you were done.

“Delicious.” You beamed, and he chuckled as he wiped away a speck of sticky rice off of your face. You weren’t surprised this time when he ate it, but you were a little by the way he stared at you and slowly ran his tongue over his thumb.

“Yeah, it is. Anyway, ya wanna sleep next to me or on the couch? I know it’s kinda sudden, but I won’t force ya to be uncomfortable.” He murmured, and your heart fluttered.

“We can share a bed.” You admitted shyly, and he smiled a little. After putting away the dishes, cleaning them, and brushing your teeth, you let out a surprised yelp as he picked you up, holding you in his arms as if you were a bride.

“T-Taishiro!” You stammered, and he barked out a laugh.

“Heh, I kinda wanted to do this for a while.” He gingerly laid you on the queen-sized bed, heeding you no mind as he took off his shirt, tossing it into the laundry basket. You admit, he had changed a lot since the two of you were kids. He was round and had gained muscle mass from working out at the local gym, and all in all, he was very attractive to you. You batted away your tired thoughts as you buried yourself underneath the blankets, entirely exhausted as he did the same.

You let out a surprised little hum in your throat as he pulled your frame towards him, slotting it against his as you to hear his thundering heartbeat while you soaked in his warmth.

“’M happy that you’re finally here.” He murmured, and you nodded in agreement, looking up at him.

“Me too. It feels as if it’s a dream, you know? Saying goodbye to everyone at home, looking for a new job in a different place with different laws and customs.” You let the sentence slur as you couldn’t help but nod off.

“Go to sleep, Darlin’. You’ve got a big day ahead of ya, tomorrow, and I’ll see ya after work, alright?” He kissed your forehead.

“Goodnight, Tai.” You murmured sleepily, nodding into his chest, arms wrapped around each other as the sound of his heart beat lulled you to sleep.

…………………

It was a long day, you had to admit, but it was successful. You were able to start your job within a week, as well as the representative who monitored you, was more than happy to fill you in with any questions that you might’ve had, and was impressed with your politeness, non-criminal background, and over all, good moral character. You smiled to yourself widely, gripping your spare keys to the house as you began unlocking it. He was home, you knew, but it was always safe to lock your doors.

“Honey, I’m home!” You chirped excitedly, and it didn’t take him long to greet you, smiling at your joyous expression as you hugged him tightly.

“Good day, huh? Ya look way chipper than yesterday.”

“I was happy, yesterday, just tired. I start my job in a week! Plus it’s day shift, so we can have more time for each other when we get home!” You rambled on, and his ears and cheeks flushed.

He leaned down and kissed you, then. It was a little more firm than the other ones that you’ve shared, a little different and heavier. To your surprise, he licked at your bottom lip, holding you rather closely to him as he sucked and bit gently. Taking the hint, you opened your mouth, and he hummed in approval, sweeping his tongue against yours, goading you into a small moan. It ended too fast as it began, as he broke away, grinning in victory at your equally flushed face.

“You hungry, Baby? I made somethin special, this time. Just a lil’ somethin’ to tell ya how proud I am of ya.” He changed the subject, and you looked up at him through your lashes, flustered.

“You didn’t have to do that, Dear.” You spared him a glance.

“Wanted to. Ya...ya made so much sacrifice just to be here, ya know? Goin’ through loops just to be with me...an’ I appreciate you. Tonight…if ya don’t mind, I want to treat you specially.” He cupped your cheek, brushing a stray hair away from your face with his palm as he looked at you tenderly. Heart swelling, you nodded.

“Are we going to-?” You let the sentence hang, and his face bloomed into a fierce red as he glanced at you.

“Only if ya want to. I know, it’s a lil’ sudden, and I will never push ya, ya know. I’m just a lil’…ya know.” He finished lamely into his rambling, and you understood.

“Taishiro, we have all the time in the world. You’re not the only one who’s nervous.” You admitted, and he sighed in relief.

“We can talk about this later.” He murmured, and you nodded.

“After we eat your amazing dish.” You grinned, and he smiled.

…………..

He made the two of you seafood tempura, and each bite was delicious. It was nice, you weren’t too tired, so you indulged into some light joking and table talk, surprising each other by offering a bite from one’s chopsticks, laughing as he had the gall to lean down and lick the sauce from your cheek. It was one of the best nights you’ve ever had, feeling so safe in a familiar setting.

“Hah, I love you.” You told him while the two of you cleaned the dishes. He kissed the corner of your mouth and you let out a beaming smile.

“I love you, too.” He admitted, flushing as you leaned against him.

“Do you know much about sex?” You asked, suddenly, and he stilled.

“Well, uh, I know that porn is highly exaggerated, an’ so…I kinda looked up some information on sites. I wanted to be prepared when we...you know. So I went ahead an’ bought condoms that won’t tear, easily, an’ are compatible with the lube.” He rambled on a bit, nervousness evident in his voice.

“I’m glad you thought things through.” You cooed gently, rubbing his back as you felt him relax a little.

“I didn’t wanna rush ya, but I thought they’d be handy jus’ in case. They’re brand new, so it’ll be a while ‘fore they expire.” He admitted. You smiled.

“You’re more than fine. I’m glad that you took the time to do this. You’re amazing.” You reassured him genuinely, and he gingerly took your hand, kissing the pulse on the inside of your wrist.

“Thank you, Sweetheart. I think the “amazing” title, belongs to you, though.”

“We’ll share it.” You grinned.

………….*Nsfw

It didn’t take the two of you long. After reaching the bedroom, he started getting the stuff ready, placing the condoms, moist towelettes, and lube on the nightstand beside the bed.

“Ya sure about this?” He asked, and you nodded, confirming your decision as you tugged at your shirt. His face bloomed with red as he followed your example, the two of your nervously yet wantonly taking glances at each other. You were already laid out on the bed, knees closed together as your arms rested against your breasts, trying not to let the cool air chill you down as you stared at him through your eyelashes, drinking him in while he returned the favor.

His efforts at his gym routine had shown as he stood before the foot of the bed. He had a thick, burly build, and had gained some weight, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Of course you couldn’t ignore everything that was bared out for you, and you felt heat churn in your stomach as you seen his member twitch with excitement from your staring. It had more girth than length, but it was an impressive size, straining upwards with a slight curve as the reddened tip oozed out clear precum from the slit, and your throat suddenly had felt dry.

“You’re very handsome.” You admitted, and he let out a soft smile.

“Says the beautiful woman lyin’ on our bed.” He slid on top of the mattress, crawling towards you with a heated stare as he effortlessly positioned himself to hover above you, grinning softly down at you with an almost cocky smirk.

“My woman.” He leaned down and kissed you, and you returned it, cupping his cheeks gently as he hummed.

“Mmh. Been wantin’ to kiss an’ do other things with ya for the longest time.” He murmured, and you smoothed out the ruffles in his hair, looking up at him with a gentle look.

“Me too. Glad we figured this out.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna start, alright? Lemme take care of ya?” He asked, and you found yourself nodding, not minding at all.

It didn’t take too long, he poured a generous amount of strawberry scented lube onto his fingers, rubbing the sticky yet smooth liquid to warm it up, as you slowly but surely widened your knees, letting his heated stare burn at your secretive places.

“So pretty.” He hummed, kissing one of your kneecaps. You almost jumped a little as two of his fingers slipped past your folds, traveling down to the tight muscle of your vaginal opening as he probed it gently, thumbing your clit as you felt the ache be relieved. He was too far away to touch, but he leaned down, kissing you to distract you from your feeble attempts.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. Don’t think that I might last long, since it’s…ya know, first time doin’ this.” He admitted sheepishly, but you kissed him in reassurance, letting out a cooing whimper as his fingers had entered you, gently stretching your walls as his thumb rubbed a little firmer at your clit. Of course his fingers were bigger and more calloused than yours, so you let yourself feel the oddity of the familiar feeling be twisted into something almost new.

You couldn’t but let out a few whimpers, him biting his lower lip as his eyes were focusing onto you, drinking in the foreign noises that you were emitting that caused his dick to twitch as he was now four digits in, stretching you thoroughly.

“I’m ready.” You blurted out, and he gave you a once-over.

“I’m bigger than what I’m givin’ ya. Ya sure, though?” He asked, his own patience was admittedly running thin, especially watching you climb up that high, bucking your hips to his shallow movements as your arousal dripped onto his hand and sheets.

“Yeah. I think we’ve both been waiting for a long time.” You pointed out, and he nodded his own need was aching and restrained, and you being eager, didn’t help ease his patience.

“Alright.” He reached for the box of condoms, taking one out as he neatly tore the foil and wrapper. You watched in interest as he let out a needy grunt, tugging the ribbed condom upwards, letting the band settle against the thickness of his girth. He looked as if he was about to cum just from doing that, and you swallowed thickly.

He poured more lube onto the condom, wiping the excess onto the sheets as he positioned himself, gently prodding at your entrance. When the tip was in, he opted to lean down, gripping your hands into his as he kissed your forehead and mouth tenderly while he was neatly seated between your legs.

“I’ll be gentle, okay?” He murmured, and you smiled at the cliché phrase, but it melted your heart on how sweet and genuine it had sounded.

“I love you, you dork.” You grinned as he rolled his eyes rather playfully.

“Love you, too. Hold on, Sweetheart.” He ordered, sliding in inch by inch as your walls stretched to fit the thick girth and size of him. Luckily, you were loosened and stretched, already, so it had surprised you on how easily he had fit. Finally, he bottomed out, but he looked as if he was wrecked, trying his best not to finish so quickly. You thumbed his cheek, poking his nose rather playfully despite the serious atmosphere.

“Ya hurt?” He offered to ask. You shook your head.

“No. I feel full. It’s alright, Tai. You can move.” You said softly, and he did, hardly pulling out as he rutted in small movements, one hand rubbing your clit, as if trying to make you have your release, first.

“Baby, I…I’m tryin’.” He bit out, eyebrows furrowed as you felt the small movements stir your insides, the curved head hitting a certain spot just right, and the ribbed condom helped cause a delicious friction within you. You knew that he wasn’t going to last, long, but you were very close, as well. You wished that it would last a little longer, him panting above you as he squirmed, trying not to cum, as sweat and a bit of tears of frustration clouded his eyes. You in your heightened senses and dizzying mind, couldn’t help but reach up and brush away the wetness, leaning up and kissing the corner of his mouth as you did so.

“I’m getting near, too.” You panted out as your hips bucked into his rutting, legs wrapped around him as if refusing to let him pull farther out. He leaned down, huffing in your ear as the two of your breaths quickened.

“Please? Please cum?” He whined, and the sheer plead had sent fuel to your blazing heat as he continued to rub your clitoris desperately, giving sharper thrusts with an almost feral need. Your brain, as the rest of your body stilled as tendrils of shock shot through you all of a sudden, surprising you as you clamped tightly around him. He cursed, feeling your hot and tight channel grip him ever so tightly all of a sudden, and he couldn’t control his release shooting inside of the condom as his posture mimicked your still form.

It was all too soon, but it quelled the burning and aching inferno that threatened to consume you both. He panted, eyes squeezing shut as your hands had found themselves in his hair, again while you cracked open an eyelid, watching him through the constellation of tears that had mussed into your lashes.

Both of your limbs were trembling, and honestly, you were surprised that he was still holding himself up, refusing to crush you as the two of you floated down from your highs.

“You alright, Honey?” He rasped out, and you nodded, feeling way too sweaty and hot all of a sudden. He surprised you as he gingerly moved out when he felt that you’ve loosened up, again. You felt the weird feeling of him sliding out, making you feel oddly empty as you watched him fumble around, slipping the rubber off, tying it into a knot, and tossing it into the waste basket.

“How are you still even moving?” You asked solemnly, and he chuckled lowly.

“Use to work outs at the gym. This is a little different, though.” He answered, grabbing some of the towelettes, moving towards you. You felt tired, yet warm and safe as he quickly wiped the two of you down, wasting very little time as he threw the used items away. Flicking the table lamp off, he laid next to you, scooping you into his side, resting his chin upon your head as he grabbed the covers and tossed them onto the both of you.

He kissed you tenderly, as you showered him with little bouts of affection, squeezing his hand gently or running your fingers through his hair.

“You’re amazing.” You broke the silence, and he hummed.

“You should meet my future wife, if ya think so.” He winked, and you smiled, and then yawned as he chuckled.

“Go to sleep, Chickadee. I don’t have work, tomorrow, so we can just ignore my parent’s calls an’ make love all day.” He chuckled, and your heart swelled with warmth as you kissed him slowly, catching him a little off guard, but he melted into the kiss, as if receiving your affections.

………………..

End? End. Yeah reader gets a job, and they get married and have a rebel little daughter named Kirin (Rita’s @youtubequeens OC that we’ve plotted, lol) who’s a tough little shit.

#Taishiro Toyomitsu #Fatgum x reader #Fluff #My hands had already written the smut sorry #I'm sleepy lol

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hellyeahheroes · 4 years ago

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Playing Doreen Green in Dungeons & Dragons 5E

New year, some bad things out of my system, time to try coming back to regural activities before this year crushes me again. And I know a perfect way. Let’s make a build for d&d, since I haven’t done one of those in a while, using a Marvel character that bings cheers, joy and friendship whenever she goes.

Steve Ditko had an... interesting idea what Squirrel Girl should look like. Funny how people who say modern take on the character disrespects vision of artists who drew her traditionally attractive never seem to think these guys themselves disrespected Ditko’s vision, isn’t it?

Goals: As always I’m lifting the template for this from Tulok the Barbrarian, so let us start with what we actually want from this character. First of all, we need to be able to beat the ever living crap out of everyone. Second, we need to show our foes mercy and hopefully get them to change their ways. Finally, we need an army of squirrels.

Ability Scores: Usually I go with Standard Points Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 - because it is the simplest way. But this built will starve for Ability Score Improvements so I decided to, just like a guy from whom I’m ripping this whole idea from, cave in and use point buy. This will be simple take, however - we will replace standard array’s 14 and 10 with extra 15 and 8

Strength: 8- not something we need to be honest. Doreen is good at everything but in D&D we need to prioritize the most important things.

Dexterity: 15 - Doreen is quick and swift as some sort of squirrel....girl...

Constitution: 12 - if someone does manage to hit her she can actually take that hit and keep going.

intelligence: 8 - wish it was higher but again, we cannot have everything. Yet.

Wisdom: 15 - Squirrels love you, you have senses of a squirrel, you survived Savage Land like a champ.

Charisma: 13 - your have a thing of talking your enemies out of villainy, as long as no one runs in to kick them in the head while you’re at it, which is rude.

Now for D&D’s equivalent of species, Race. It is unclear if Doreen is a mutant or not but I feel like trying to stray away from Variant Human a bit if we can. There is not enough animal-like things about Doreen to make her a Tabaxi, so we’ll go with Swiftstride Shifter from Eberron. You gain +2 Dexterity and +1 Charisma, Darkvision allowing you to see for 60 feet in dim light as in bright light and in darkness as in dim light, but without being able to discern colors, proficiency in Perception and Acrobatics skills, extra 5 feet of movement, Common, Quori and third language of your choice (pick something campaign relevant) and an abilitty to shift into more bestial form as a bonus action, granting you temporary hit points equal your level + your Constitution modifier, another extra 5 feet of movement and an abilitty to move 10 feet away without provoking opprtunitty attacks as a reaction whenever an enemy ends their movement next to you.

Backgorund: Build a custom one for skills in Animal Handling and Persuasion, none they offer speaks to me.

Class levels: We will start as a Monk, gaining proficiency in Strength and Dexterity saving throws, simple weapons, shortswords, a set of artisan tools of your choice and two skills - Athletics and Stealth would be my pick.

1st Level Monks gain Unarmored Defense and Martial Arts, which all work as long as you’re not wearing armor or carrying a shield. As we see from the picture above, it would be hard to call a jacket and shorts an armor. You can add your Wisdom (WIS) modifier to your Armor Class alongside yoru Dexterity (DEX) modifier, you can substitute your DEX in place of Strength for attack and damage rolls of your unarmed attacks and you roll a d4 for the damage and you can spend your bonus action to make an additional unarmed attack. You can also use simple weapons that aren’t two handed or heavy and still get these bonuses

2nd Level Monks gain Ki Points, whose number is equal to your Monk level and replenishes on short or long rest. You can spend 1 ki point to make two unarmed attacks as a bonus action or take Dodge or Disengage actions as a bonus action. You also get unarmored Movement, meaning that when not wearing armor your speed busts up to additional +10 feet.

There is an option for Monk to also gain an additional abbility allowing you to between each long rest choose one martial weapon that isn’t heavy or special and you’re profficient with to treat as a monk weapon. This isn’t something Squirrel Girl would use, I’m only bringing it up because it was added in a book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Tasha, also known as Iggwilv, is considered one of greatest villains in d&d. So it’s a good think Doreen has this whole thing about befriending and trying to reform villains because from next level on we’re gonna be best friends with Tasha and her cauldron. Consider Tasha your Kraven.

3rd Level: We will switch to a Ranger, getting proficiency in Knowledge Nature and we will grab variant Ranger features from that Cauldron. Deft Explorer makes you Canny, doubling proficiency bonus you add to one of your skills, I’d go with Persuasion so that you can convince people like Kraven to switch sides.

You also get Favored Foe - it lets you mark an enemy you hit with an attack for 1 minute or until you break a concentration check (as with spells, it is a Constitution Saving throw you make while taking damage, you need to beat either 10 or a number equal half of damage dealt to you, whichever is higher, or you lose focus). During this itme whenever you hit the target for the first time in a turn you deal an extra 1d4 of damage. You can mark a foe total number of times equal your prficiency modifier betwen each long rest.

4th Level: 2nd Level Ranger can choose a Fighting Style. Let us reach to that Cauldron and grab Unarmed Fighting, which lets your fists deal 1d6 + your Strength modifier damage, 1d8 if you use two hands and 1d4 a turn to a creature you’re grappling.

You may wonder why we picked it if we already have Martial Arts? Well, let us talk about Rules as Intended (RAI) vs Rules as Written (RAW) - the idea that the way rules in a game are written may not necessairly reflect what the author wanted and reason behind many, many, many rules debates in history of RPGs. As Intended you should use your Martial Arts dice with your Martial Arts attacks but as written there is nothing saying you have to. Talk with your DM how they feel about it and if they side with RAW, you can now deal damage like 11th level Monk - 1d8+your DEX modifier. If not, grab Blind-Fighting, which makes your senses so good you can effectively “see” creatures within 10 feets of you even if you’re blinded or in darkness and even notice invisible creatures who aren’t succesfully rolling stealth to hide. Only total cover (like, a wall) stops this, giving you some sweet Squirrel Senses.

Remember when Doreen beat Wolverine? I do.

2nd Level Rangers also get to learn spells. You know two spells of 1st level and have two spell slots you can spend every long rest to cast them.

Longstrider for 1 hour adds 10 feet to your speed. For those keeping track at home that’s now 50 feet while shifting.

Hunter’s Mark requires a concentration but let’s you as a bonus action mark a target and deal it extra 1d6 damage on every hit you deal it and have an advantage on Perception and Survival checks to find it for the next hour or until you break concentration. It it drops to 0 hit points on your next turn you can move it to another target as a bonus action. It’s Favored Foe but better. Mostly because Favored Foe originally was just Hunter’s Mark but many players felt it was too powerful and asked Wizards of the Coast to nerf it in official surveys. To the utter bafflement of everyone who discuss this game online. If I felt more political I’d make a joke this is the first case ever of silent majority being a thing but after last 4 years I cannot force myself to make it funny.

5th level: 3rd Level Monks can Deflect Missiles, letting you use your reaction to catch a ranged attack that would hit you, reducing its damage by 1d10+your Monk Level+your DEX Modifier. If you reduce damage to zero you can spend a Ki Point to send it back at the attacker, making ranged attack treating missile as a thrown monk weapon you’re proficient with.

You also get too chose Monastic Tradition and Way of Mercy from Tasha’s Cauldron will let you both show mercy to your enemies and kick some more ass. You gain Proficiency in Medicine and Insight, letting you read on villains what problems may haunt them and how to help. You also get Hands of Healing, which let you for one Ki Point as an action heal a creature an amount of hit points you roll on your Martial Arts die. You can also not spend a Ki point and replace one of your Flurry of Blows attacks with this. Doreen is kind enough to help patching up beaten enemies. Also, Hit Points aren’t meat points, they can reflect someone’s will to fight. So I don’t see why you shouldn’t use it to cheer your allies up if their spirits are down - Doreen is cheerful and friendly, she is a delight to have on a team and is sure to keep the morale up. Flavor it as a good pat on the back from your Squirrel-loving pal.

Also, you get Hands of Harm. Letting you once per turn and for one Ki Point deal extra necrotic damage on a single attack, its number equal your Martial Arts Die+ Your Wisdom Modifier.

6th Level: 4th level Monks get an Ability Score Improvement, add +1 to your Dexterity and Wisdom, and Slow Fall, letting you reduce amount of damage you take from a fall by five times your Monk level. You can refluff this as gliding down on your flying squirrel gear.

Wish it could help me find better version of this appriopriate picture.

7th Level: 5th Level Monk gets an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice as a part of your action. You also get Stunning Strike, letting you spend a ki point to make the target suceed a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until end of your next turn. And your Martial Die bumps up to 1d6 - we do not use it for Unarmed attack but we do use it for other stuff, so keep a track on it.

8th Level; 6th Level Monks’ strikes become magical for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance and immunities. Also, your Unarmored Movement bumps up by another 5 fee, it’s not total of 55 feet of movement.

Way of Mercy gets Physician’s Touch, which also let’s you remove a single blinded, deafened, paralyzed, poisoned, or stunned condition from a creature you use Healing Hands on or apply poisoned condition to target of your Hands of Harm. No idea how that works. I mean maybe Doreen punches someone so hard they get nausea? And knows first aid?

9th Level; 7th Level Monks get Evasion, meaning that when you make a Dexterity Saving Throw to avoid damage, if the effect says you take half damage when you suceed, you instead take none. You also get Stillness of mind, letting you end one effect causing you to be charmed or frightened on yourself. Makes sense, Doreen clearly is not afraid of anything or anyone.

10th Level: 3rd Level Rangers gain an additional Spell Slot, an additional Spell and one extra Spell from Primal Awarenes class feature - that last one you can cast once per long rest without spending a spell slot.

You also get to pick Ranger Conclave. Swarmkeeper can summon a swarm of squirrels to aid you in combat. Whenever you hit an enemy with an attack you can dicide to make Squirrels bit them for an extra 1d6 piercing damage, force that enemy to make a Strength saving throw or be pushed away from you by 15 feet or have yourself moved up to 5 feet in any direction except up or down. You also get Mage Hand cantrip, except made of squirrels and an extra Spell you know. So for full list of spells you get:

Jump Triples your jump distance, it lasts for 1 minute with no concentration.

Speak with Animals let’s you talk to animals for 10 minutes, also no concentration required.

Faerie Fire let’s you set up lights on a 20-foot cube, making lal creatures in it roll Dexterity saving throws or be outlined, nuliffiling invisibility and giving everyone attacking them an advantage. Sadly, it requires concentration.

Mage hand can let you make a hand out of Squirrels that can carry objects no heavier than 10 pounds and do viarious tasks except for attacking or activating magical items. But this is effectively you sending a pack of Squirrels on an important quest.

11th Level: 8th Level Monks get an Ability Score Improvement, cap your Dexterity.

12th Level: 9th level Monks can now move on vertical surfaces and walk on water like Jesus as long as they don’t end their turn there. Which is good since canonically Doreen is a poor swimmer.

13th Level: 10th Level Monks gain Purity of Body, making Doreen so powerful she can punch poison and disease away from her body. I’m sure she’s still social distancing AND SO SHOULD YOU!

14th Level: 11th Level Monks' Martial Dice bumps to d8 and Way of Mercy let’s you now replace all of your Flurry of Blows attacks with healing and neither that nor touch of harm cost you ki points anymore. You can still only do the latter once each turn.

15th Level: I was sitting on 4th level of Ranger for so long, we’re taking it now for an Ability Score Improvenet....or rather a Feat. Magic Initiate let’s us learn two cantrips and a 1st level spell from the Wizard Spell list we can cas once per long rest.

Prestidigitation let’s you do small things more for mood than anything else, you can fluff it as squirrels helping you.

Message let’s you send someone a message only they can hear and let’s them reply. It’s your phone, basically.

Find Familiar allows us to conjure a squirrel that we can talk to telepatically or see through its eyes. It cannot attack but it can flank and take help action to give us an advantage on attack rolls and when it dies it doesn’t, instead it vanishes until you cast this spell again.. We can even decide to see through its eyes. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we have Tippy Toe!

Tasha also grants you Martial Versitality, allowing you to change Unarmed Fighting to Blind-Fighting now that your Martial Arts Die caught up to it. This is the reason we waited so long for this level.

Level 16: 12th Level Monks get an Ability Score Improvement, invest in Wisdom for better Hands of Healing and Harm and Unarmed Defense.

Level 17: 13th Level Monks get Tongue of Sun and Moon, meaning you can now speak any language. I have no idea how in character it is but I could see Doreen learning extra languages to make more friends.

Level 18: 14 level Monks get Diamond Soul making you proficient in all saving throws. And you can spend a ki point to rerol a failed saving throw. Meaning now you can more or less tank everything bad guys throw at you, fireballs, Hold Persons, shove action.... And your Unarmored movement increases one last time, giving you speed of 75 feet.

Level 19: 15th Level Monks get Timeless Body, making you immune to effects of aging and no longer needing food or water to live. I kinda struggled to justifyu this one, then I remembered old Squirrel Girl from the future who is still kicking butts so here, you can now grow up to be her

Level 20: We will finish on 16th level of Monk and final Ability Score Improvement to round up Wisdom.

Before we go further let me take a moment to address possible alternatives Variant Human could let you grab Tippy Toe at first level and grab a Tough Feat.

3 levels in College of Rhetorics Bard could allow you to be really good at talking to people by making you unnable to roll lower than a 10 on Persuasion, Bardic Inspiration you could use to both support your allies and make your enemies worse with unsettling words, an extra skill, expertise in two more skills and spells like Calm Emotions, Enchance Ability, Heroism, Animal Friendship, Vicious Mockery and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter for puns. But I admit I could not fit them in any way that didn’t feel awkward, they did not mesh well with everything else and cost too much other features I wanted. If you want to go this way I recommend being Variant Human, taking Magic Initiate at first level and putting those Bard levels after Swarmkeeper Ranger ones, final build would be Monk 14/Ranger 3/Bard 3. Both this and previous bullet point would be fully legal under Adventurer’s League “you can use Player’s Handbook and one other book” rule.

Another option were two levels of Rogue for Expertise in Nature and Animal Handling and Cunning Action to decrease your Ki Points economy problem.

Finally I didn’t go for Path of the Beast Barbarian despite it letting you grow tail because that tail stabs people - something your do not.

Anyway, time for Overview:

Pros: First of all, Mobility. you have movement of up 75 feet, meaning with dash you can move 150 and with double dash 225 feet in one turn, ways to move out of enemy range and even move up walls or over water. Second, you make a lot of attacks and between Hunter’s Mark, Swarmkeeper and Hands of Harm can deal consistent damage and you have Tippy Toe to ensure you keep hitting. Finally you’re plucky heart of the team/backup healer, pretty good Party Face and a skill squirrel, making you a very good party member, someone others benefit from very much.

Cons: Your HP is somewhere below 140, which means that only vew hits or one big need to hit for you to be in Power Word Kill range. Second, your Intelligence and Strength are low enough you may fail some nasty saving throws even with Diamond Soul. Finally you have a lot of abilities that use Ki Points and Ranger spells that regenerate only on long rest, meaning you may run out of resources pretty fast if you’re not careful.

Overall, however, I do think this is a good build. You’re hard to hit, you hit hard, you unleash fury of squirrels on your foes and you can take care of yourself. Just remember you have many abilities that benefit your allies and play a very social character - d&d is a game best enjoyed as a social one - get some friends and fight evil.

-Admin

#Squirrel Girl #marvel #Dungeons & Dragons

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dansedan · 4 years ago

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Top 5 cute shit for Harry/Jean/Kim mwah

UHH LISTEN you are getting my absolute bottom shelf bullshit feat. the franctic notes I take on evernote bc I have brainworms

5. I just like their sizes. Like before we get into the actual psychological nitty-gritty of the thing I have to appreciate ZA/UM’s incidental stroke of genius in creating a mentally-ill homoerotic trio composed of a small middle aged man with a delicious waist, a youngish on-his-way-to-bear (complimentary) buff dude and a middle aged ex-gym teacher bear (derogatory, but loving). Like that is one fine package of both h*rny and emotional per cm of sad cop man. All the cuddle possibilities are great. All the s*x possibilities are great. It’s all just great.

4. they’re just fucked up little dudes. I cannot stand thinking about how stupidly screwed these dudes are and I think about it all the time. Fucking... people talk about like, Harry having been pretty bad-off and maybe not having a proper support system but I swear to god not a single day goes by where I do not have to sit down when I am reminded of the fact that I literally can not image kim kitsuragi having any real friends at his age. Like I will confess I very much make kim a bit of a Hot Mess(tm) past what canon suggests but this is one point where I am like genuinely defensive ANYWAY let us not even talk about Jean mr “he’s so screwed over you can naturally slot in some daddy issues and it’s immediately believable” (although I do like to think Jean at least has pretty solid comradery with his fellow cops and has like... acceptable socialising levels.) But despite being royally fucked they’re also like... they’re there for each other, and they understand how it can get to be hard even though it’s hard in very different directions for all of them (your fic was so good with this dude) and they also like, (well I like to write them like this JA but yknow. my characters now im already ranting this much) know they can’t just codependency-it-up forever and have to grow for themselves and as people, y’know? I have a lot of feelings about them going through that sort of uh. “clearly I have a bad social life and also I am literally in love with you so of course I want to dedicate all my time to you and sink into these feelings but also that’s bad” from mainly harry/kim and all the sludge of “maybe being rabidly codependent was bad” from harry/jean and “god it’s strange to find ourselves in this crossroads with this insane amnesiac alcoholic with voices in his head and we are in many ways very different and can feel animosity but we respect each other and know we need to work through it and that we can come to more than an understanding, eventually to an affection” of jean/kim. It’s good also wow this is long maybe I should stop hee hee

3. I love how they have real conflicts and step over each other a lot but they really are just working to be good about it. I like post-mart Harry struggling with how much to close the distance between him and Jean, I have a whole stupid little fanfic outline note dedicated to Jean feeling messy about being jealous of Kim and how to react to his relationship to harry and how to react to all this change in general and anyway I think that’s great and I hate it when people make him just be a jerk because I think Jean is mature enough to recognize that he actually doesnt dislike Kim yknow anyway also just. Kim thinking about Jean and trying to understand his anger and desperation is also good and just harry and kim as a dynamic alone has a lot of interesting crossed wires that end up organized to create a powerful partnership and I think Jean as an anchor to the past makes it even better. It’s good.

2. let’s get back to cute: I think it’s cute how they’re both of the older dudes are super slated towards nerdy but Jean is 100% the type to like know Man Topic Facts and not really have specifically obsessive passions outside of that. Like especially because Jean is the younger one and I love that reversed “are you winning son” dynamic I think it’s really great to picture sort of Jean lovingly putting up with long infodumps from them and then when it comes to his own interests it’s like. “Oh I like this author” or “I enjoy watching movies” and then Harry can give him a lame jokey speech about his generation and their lack of artistic movements and how they really should shape up to it because between Disco and the new, youngest kids, they’re really gonna get swept away from the annals of history or whatever and then Kim can be the one who’s just poignantly detail-oriented about procuring the few things Jean really does feel stronger about, like a particular brand of licquor (I like the whole “they both drink scotch except kim judges Jean’s stupid macho taste” thing from that one fic) or a particular rhythm of daily routine.

1. I like how they all have really bad facial hair. I am a bad facial hair aficcionado.

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mi6-cafe · 5 years ago

Photo

THE LDWS ENTRIES FOR WEEK 1 ARE IN!

Now it’s your turn to READ&VOTE!

Let’s refresh your memory first.

This week the word count was 100 words and this was the prompt:

[drabbles below the line]

HOW DO YOU VOTE?

Read all the drabbles.

Choose three that you like the most.

Fill out this VOTING FORM, telling us your favourites. (You can even leave anonymous feedback for the author).

NOTE: If you are a competitor, you CANNOT vote for your own fic. But please, do vote. :)

The voting period ends at 11:59 PM EST on Sunday night. Results will be posted and anonymous feedback will be emailed on Monday.

Title: 100 Seconds Author: sorion Warnings: implied canon-typical violence Summary: Seconds counting down to words that count.

"One hundred seconds, 007," Q says.

Bond knows. His reliable inner countdown always lets him know how close death is. Eighty seconds until he has to be off the empty German plane.

Sixty-eight seconds to not only outwit his personal death, but the death of everyone the crashing plane will kill in London.

Forty-seven to break the auto pilot, divert destiny from its path and the plane into the channel.

Thirty to grab a parachute, listen to the increasingly panicky voice in his ear.

"James! Fifteen seconds!"

Thirteen seconds for a jump and three words.

"I'm coming home."

Two.

One.

Title: Delayed Author: Ksania/Starrboned Warnings: None Summary: It wasn't flying that scared Q the most.

The stuttering departure board snaps into place, merciless and cold.

Delayed.

Impatient, Q taps his fingers against his thigh.

It wasn't flying that scared Q. He knew better than most how safe planes were, the intricate mechanisms that kept them afloat.

They didn't always land; Q waits for the inevitable to happen.

His eyes blink with the board: one, two, ten thousand - the seconds melt into months. Q stands still while the airport is buzzing around him.

"Q?" James's voice cuts like lightning through fog. "Have you been waiting for long?"

Q shakes his head, smiling thinly.

"Not at all."

Title: Flight Plan Author: Anyawen Warnings: None Summary: A chance sighting requires changes on the fly.

Be a dear and change my flight, won't you?

You'll survive 3 hours in economy class.

FIN2424 to Valencia. Leaves in 35 min.

I'm not a bloody travel agent. Book your own holiday.

I had been hoping to get back to London. Spend some time spoiling your cats. And you. Unfortunately ... <image0805202013.jpg>

… That's Nīkau Tama.

Indeed. They're announcing last call for boarding.

Keep your pants on.

Where's the fun in that?

Ticket confirmation is in your email.

Thank you, darling.

Just catch the bastard and come home, then you can thank me properly.

I prefer 'improperly'.

...

So do I.

Title: Seatmates Author: IrishWitch58 Warnings: None Summary: Departure lounges are lonely, until they're not.

Airport departure boards were depressing if you rarely had the chance to decide your destination yourself. Bond watched the crowds as he waited for his flight to be posted. He was supposed to be accompanied by a Q branch expert but they were late. He'd kissed Q goodbye early this morning, holding him close in the grey dawn light. Saying goodbye was getting harder lately. Someone moved up next to him and he blinked. “Q? But you hate flying.”

“Overstated,” Q responded succinctly. “Valencia is warmer than London and I hate cold worse. There are perks. We're going first class.”

Title: Boarding Author: SouffleGirl91 Warnings: None Summary: He waits to board the plane.

“Flight BA25007 to Kingston is now boarding.”

Heaving a sigh, he stood, clutching his ticket. Was he really doing this? Boarding a plane to Jamaica on the trail of a washed-up double-oh, just to tell him- no. No thinking about that right now. That could wait. It was a long flight. Plenty of time to decide how to tell him.

Shuffling into line, he fingered his passport. He missed having the power to skip the rigmarole and just board. But this wasn’t a sanctioned mission.

The new Quartermaster had better things to do.

This was personal. Bond had to know.

Title: Homeward Bound Author: Iambid/Flantastic Warnings: None Summary: It’s late, Q’s tired and James’s flight is due.

Heathrow is deserted.

Q is alone in the waiting area except for a lone family, waiting for a loved one. He’s waiting for James. He’s not sure if James ever thought of him as a loved one, not since Madeleine…

The arrivals board clatters, the quaintly old-fashioned sound waking him from his doze. He’s so tired, should have been in bed hours ago, but James asked him to be there and even after everything, he can’t say no to him.

He thinks to himself that maybe James is the loved one as he stands stiffly and waits for his agent.

Title: Vision Author: sunaddicted Warnings: none Summary: some dreams are bound to never become real

"I had a dream" Raoul stretched amidst the rumpled sheets, reaching out to land a hand on James' belly "A nice one?" "I was at an airport" "Why?" "Leaving" "For?" "I'm not sure, the flight details kept blurring and changing on the board" James looked down at Raoul, as if the key to his dream lay amidst those distorted features "I was leaving London. Permanently. It felt better than I always thought it would" shame burned on his tongue. Raoul hummed, thumb tracing the pucker of a scar "It was just a dream" and like one, they had no future.

Title: Fight and Flight Author: stormofsharpthings Warnings: no Archive warnings apply Summary: All the comforts of the first-class lounge

It hadn’t been his finest moment, Bond admitted as he prowled through BritishAir’s first-class lounge. He’d had a monumentally stupid fight with Q and stormed out, demanding to take the next mission available.

The departure board flickered. His flight was delayed again and Bond groaned — more hours of inaction to brood over his poor behaviour.

He paced until the board flickered again, showing a further delay, and he slumped, defeated.

After a while, he rubbed his face and looked up glumly.

COME HOME, it flickered.

Bond sighed, a rueful smile emerging, wondering if make up sex was an option.

Title: Time and Place Author: Venstar Warnings: none Summary: Travel

It was a simple process. Approach the board and wait.

“Time Agent 007.”

The only acknowledgment of his name spoken softly through his earpiece was the slight turn of his head.

“Your countdown. 5,4,3,2,1…” The voice trailed off as the board flickered before 007’s eyes divulging his next destination. “You will have seventy-two hours to complete your mission. Good luck in 2424.”

“And when I’m done? How about dinner, Q?”

If a snort could sound posh, leave it to Q to figure that trick out.

Q countered his offer. “How about you return my equipment in one piece?”

“With pleasure.”

#10

Title: The Destination Board Author: ladymars Warnings: No Warnings Apply (Canon Character Death?) Summary: M remains vigilant, even after everything.

She finds the oddest device when she first arrives. A departure board flickering with the destinations of the colleagues she had left behind. M does remember that 008 was to be deployed to Havana and that R had a conference at Frankfurt. Her new friends here tell her there's much more to explore and enjoy, now that she has time to repose, but she decides to linger. No rest for the wicked, of course. She catches an expected arrival at Altaussee, Austria followed by an unexpected one. Huh. She should have suspected he would have boarded a plane for him.

#11

Title: Trinity Author: sparklycitrus Warnings: None Summary: An unholy alliance.

When the airport bulletins all over Europe began to glitch, Q was at home, packing. He’d already given away his cats, and the only things he was taking consisted of a single suitcase and his laptop. The train ticket Bond had sourced him sat securely in his pocket. He was cutting it a bit close, but there should still be time left before everything crashed. Literally.

In a remote part of Russia, Raoul Silva turned from the camera feeds to the man next to him. “Clever boy,” he commented, to which Bond merely smiled, as they watched the chaos unfold.

#12

Title: Buggering Off Author: AtoTheBean Warnings: None Summary: He shouldn’t hope...

JB: Where are you? Oh, for fuck’s sake. NLQ: How did you get this number? JB: That doesn’t answer my question, Q. NLQ: No longer Q, actually. You’re not the only one who gets to retire and bugger off. JB: I came back. NLQ: Then you can carry on destroying someone else’s tech. JB: ... JB: Please. I need to talk with you. Just give me a hint. He shouldn’t hope… shouldn’t invite this man into his fresh start. His thumb hovers above the screen. He snaps a picture of the split-flap departures board, hits “send,” and runs for the gate.

#13

Title: (dis)quiet Author: azure3795 Warnings: none Summary: Waiting for an arrival.

Slots on the display board are flipping, a monotonous voice from the PSA intercom ever drowned out by the bustling of people arriving and departing drones on, and he waits.

He cradles a travel cup in his hands, the half drained beverage inside long since gone cold and sloshes around with dead weight. Logically, he knows it no longer provides the spot of warmth he seeks.

No matter.

“Q?”

He nearly jumps, but uses the momentum to plaster on a smile that doesn’t resemble a grimace. Good enough.

“Bond,” Q greets and thinks not of the Walther in his bag.

#14

Title: A Grand Romantic Gesture Author: scarytheory Warnings: none Summary: Q is waiting for his flight to Berlin.

He was drinking his second coffee when Bond came.

“What are you doing here? Don't tell me you're trying to stop me in some grand romantic gesture?” he was joking, but his smile faded when he saw Bond's reaction.

“Oh, God. You are, aren't you?”

Bond sighed: “I'm bad at this. I should have prepared a speech. Or should I sing?”

“Please don't.”

“Just… Can you please stay? For me.”

For a moment Q wished he could do that. But nothing would change, he knew that, and deep down, even Bond knew it.

“Goodbye, James.”

The plane was leaving soon.

Thank you to our amazing drabble writers for their contributions this week!

Edited: Voting is now closed and results are in! You can view them here!

#LDWS #LDWS2020 #signal boost

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

Text

Hell is For Children: Animorphs as Children’s Lit

[Guest post from Cates!]

So a couple of months ago Bug asked me to write a post about why Animorphs is Middle Grade/Children’s Fiction, not Young Adult. Since she asked, I’ve read several wonderful posts from other people questioning or explaining what the difference is between Middle Grade and Young Adult, where Animorphs fits, and why it matters. Here’s my two cents as a children’s literature scholar.

To start, Animorphs’ 20,000-30,000 word count per book is a big hint it’s not YA fiction. Obviously, a book with a low word count is not automatically a children’s book, and a book with a high word count is not automatically a book for adults. But if Animorphs was aimed at teens, Applegate would likely have been expected to make the books longer. While there are a lot of great YA novels that are as short as or shorter than your average Animorphs book (check out BookRiot’s list of 100 YA novels under 250 pages,) most YA series, and especially fantasy or scifi YA series, are expected to top 100,000 words. (The three books in the Diviners series by Libba Bray have a total wordcount of 520,000 words; Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy tops 400,000 words, for example.)

Animorphs’ word count isn’t enough on its own to exclude the series from YA classification, but Animorphs’ short word count also fits the trend of children’s—not YA—series fiction in the 1990s. In order to understand this trend, and why it produced books specifically for children, not teens, we need to jump back in time to WWII. Because so many American men were drafted into the military, women took over jobs that had been almost exclusively done by men, like mechanics, sales, electricians, etc. When WWII ended, thousands of men returned home, but women didn’t leave the workforce. Realizing they had an excess of young men and not enough jobs, the US government created the GI Bill, allowing soldiers to attend college for free or at a steeply reduced cost, thus stemming the influx of workers and giving the economy and industry room to grow.

At the same time, families were having children (and those children were surviving) at an unprecedented rate. Thanks to the GI Bill, college was no longer something reserved for wealthy white men, but something available to the middle and even lower class. A college education offered social and economic mobility, and the Baby Boomers, children of the GI Bill recipients, became the first generation to grow up with the idea that college was something that could and should be pursued by all.

Then, the Baby Boomers began having children in the late 1970s through early 1990s, meaning a large chunk of those children (including Bug and I) were in elementary school in mid 1990s to early 2000s. Thanks to their parents, a higher percentage of American adults than ever before had attended college. Thanks to advancements in women’s medicine, psychology, sociology, and education, among other fields, people understood as never before the importance of instilling a love of reading in children at a young age. The huge middle class was willing to invest lots of time and money in their children’s educations, because at this point not having a college education was seen as a barrier to success.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. (Kidding).

Children’s publishing exploded in the 1990s because children—or, more accurately, their parents—were seen as a huge, untapped market. Previously, children’s publishing didn’t receive as much money or attention because, the logic went, children did not have money and therefore couldn’t buy books. But then the publishing industry realized that there were literally millions of parents willing to spend money on their children’s education, and publishers like Scholastic, Dutton, Dial, Penguin, Random House, and others rushed to take advantage of this new customer demographic.

Of the ten books featured on this Scholastic bookfair poster from 2000, seven are series fiction.

Serialized fiction—ie, stories that took place over the course of several books about the same characters and/or in the same setting—was the perfect way for publishing houses to capitalize on this new market. And hoo boy was it successful. From 1993 to 1995, Goosebumps books were being sold at a rate of approximately 4 million books a month. That means roughly 130,000 books were sold every day.

Here’s a few names to bring you back: Bailey School Kids, The Magic Treehouse, Babysitter’s Club, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jansen, Horrible Harry, Secrets of Droon, The Magic Attic Club, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bunnicula, The Boxcar Children, The American Girls, Amelia’s Notebook, Dear America, Wayside School, Choose Your Own Adventure…we could keep going for days. All of those series have two things in common: one, they were either published between 1985 and 2005 and/or experienced a huge resurgence in the 90s, and two, they’re all middle grade novels. Some are aimed at younger children, like Junie B. Jones and The Magic Treehouse, and some are aimed at older children, like the Dear America series and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The point is, Animorphs is so clearly a product of its time (and not just because of the Hansen Brothers references,) it slots perfectly into the trend of series fiction for children. If you want to claim Animorphs is YA, you also need to claim all of the series I just listed above.

Now, let’s talk about the main argument I see in favor Animorphs being YA: the dark content.

This is my personal wheelhouse. I’m planning on someday doing my PhD dissertation on trauma, violence, war, and trauma recovery in Middle Grade—not YA—fiction. I always find it funny when people use descriptors like cute, sweet, innocent, silly, light, and simple to describe children’s books. While there are certainly plenty of children’s books that are one or more of those things, there are also dozens that are the polar opposite—dark, complex, serious, violent, and deep. I once read a review of The Golden Compass which said “it’s not like other children’s books with a clear cut good guy and bad guy and a simple message.” I don’t know how many children’s books the author of the article had read, but I’m guessing not a lot. Let’s just do a blunt reality check with a few of my favorites—including some picture books which are typically for an even younger audience than Middle Grade. Spoilers for all of the books I’m about to mention.

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki This book follows a little boy who is sent to a Japanese interment camp during WWII. He and his family deal with abuse, starvation, and sickness. Suggested reading age*? Kindergarten and up.

*(For this and all subsequent books I used reviews from Kirkus, the Horn Book, and School Library Journal to determine suggested reading age.)

Check out this picture of Shorty playing baseball while an armed soldier watches him from a guard tower. Isn’t it cute, sweet, and innocent?

Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco Pink and Say are 15-year-old boys serving as Union Soldiers during the Civil War. Confederate Soldiers kill Pink’s mother, Pink and Say become POWs, and Pink is hanged because he is African American. Suggested reading age? First grade and up.

Fox by Margaret Wild This book starts grim and just gets grimmer. Dog and Magpie have been burned in a wildfire. Dog loses an eye, Magpie a wing. Magpie rides on Dog’s head—she is his eyes, he is her wings. Fox comes and convinces Magpie to leave Dog and come with him. There are definite sexual undertones. The book ends with the possibility that Dog and Magpie will be reunited, but no certainty. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

[The text says “He stops, scarcely panting./ There is silence between them/ Neither moves, neither speaks./ Then Fox shakes Magpie off his back/ as he would a flea,/ and pads away./ He turns and looks at Magpie, and he says,/ ‘Now you and Dog will know what it is like/ to be truly alone.’/ Then he is gone./ In the stillness, Magpie hears a faraway scream./ She cannot tell if it is a scream of triumph/ or despair.”]

Tell me this isn’t a total punch in the gut.

The Rabbits by Shaun Tan The introduction of rabbits to Australia is used as an allegory for European colonization and the casual destruction of the Aboriginals’ lives and cultures. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble A girl spies on the British during the Revolutionary War while her brother fights. He’s killed and there’s actually a description of her finding the “bloodstained hole” in his coat where the bullet struck him. How cute and silly! Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

Meet Addy: An American Girl by Connie Rose Porter I think this works as a nice comparison to Animorphs because it’s another long-running, popular series aimed at kids just starting to read chapter books. Among other incidents, there’s a graphic description of Addy watching her brother get whipped by an overseer and a passage where another overseer forces Addy to eat worms. I actually give American Girls a lot of points for not shying away from the uglier parts of history. They don’t always get it right (*cough* Kaya *cough*) but those books are more complex than I think most people realize. Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville From the sight of a child starving to death to homeless children freezing in the streets, Coville certainly doesn’t avoid the darker side of human nature. Pretty sure most adults only noticed the funny green alien on the cover. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

“That was the day we crept, invisible, into a prison where men and women were being tortured for disagreeing with their government. What had already been done to those people was so ugly I cannot bring myself to describe it, even though the memory of it remains like a scar burned into my brain with a hot iron.

“Even worse was the moment when it was about to start again. When I saw what the uniformed man was going to do to the woman strapped to the table, I pressed myself against the wall and closed my eyes. But even with my hands clamped over my ears I couldn’t shut out her scream.”

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai The Vietnam War, migrants drowning in the ocean, refugee camps, racism…this book is a bit like Animorphs in that it’s got a surprisingly dry sense of humor even as awful events take place. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson A pretty harsh look at the realities of America’s foster care system as told by a girl who could give Rachel Berenson a run for her money. It’s not afraid to show that parents aren’t automatically good people. Suggested reading age? Third grade and up.

Stepping on the Cracks and Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn If WWII, bullying, dead siblings, draft dodging, and parental abuse are too light and fluffy for you, you can always read about a child consumed with survivor’s guilt because she started the fire that killed her mother. Suggested reading age? Fifth grade and up.

“‘How do you think Jimmy would feel if he knew his own sister was helping a deserter while he lay dying in Belgium?’

‘It wasn’t like that!’ I said, stung by the unfairness of her question. ‘Stuart was sick, he needed me! I wish Jimmy had been down there in the woods, too! Then he’d be alive, not dead!’

Mother slapped me then, hard as she could, right in the face. ‘Never say anything like that again!’ she cried. ‘Never!’”

I could go on (and on and on and on) about trauma narratives for children, but suffice to say while I think Animorphs is probably the most brilliant one I’ve ever read, it’s far from the only one. Kids’ books can be dark, which is good, because if we only tell stories about white, able-bodied children living in big houses with two loving parents then we’re excluding the majority of real children’s lived experiences from our narratives.

There’s one more point I’d like to address: without sounding overly accusatory, I think a lot of the compulsion to consider Animorphs YA instead of children’s fiction is born of the adult bias against children. I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but Children’s Literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva created the term aetonormativity to describe society’s tendency to value the adult over the child. Like I discussed above, we have this idea that children’s books are somehow sweet and innocent, while YA fiction is darker and grittier because it addresses so-called ‘adult’ topics like sex, drugs, suicide, violence, and death.

As I hope I’ve established above, just because a book addresses these topics that doesn’t automatically mean it’s for teens. Books about heavy subjects can, are, and should be written for children. I think most of us are fans of Animorphs because it’s a series that sticks with us long after we close the neon-cloud covers. It’s a series that strongly disputes the notion of a clear right and wrong, and doesn’t shy away from the atrocities of war. And it was written for children. It was sold to children. It was read by children.

Some of us adults are just cool enough to read children’s books that treat child readers with the respect they deserve.

— Cates

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pervasivescariness · 6 years ago

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[ PERVASIVE SCARINESS COMMISSIONS ]

Yes my friends it’s that time again! I am reopening commissions! I’ve gone through and updated my TOS, updated my prices and changed some of the options offered.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* Info under the cut *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

First and foremost, please take a look at the >> TOS << it’s all shiny and new and covers everything in this post and more! Now onto the good stuff...commission info!

[ What I’m Offering ]

HALF BODY (waist up, arms included in pose) ✧ Black and White Lineart: $25 ✧ Flat Color: $35 ✧ Painted: $45

FULL BODY (head to toe, baby) ✧ Black and White Lineart: $40 ✧ Flat Color: $60 ✧ Painted: $80

Flat Rate Character Portraits (shoulders up): $15 ✧ Portraits will be in black and white lineart unless a color wash is requested. ✧ Color wash is limited to a single color (I usually throw a gradient over it so it’s not entirely flat).

Extras

✧ All prices listed are for a single character. Add half the price for each additional character. ✧ $10 extra for intricate armor, weaponry, outfits/patterns (not sure if your stuff counts as ‘intricate’? Ask me!) ✧ All portraits come with the option to have a transparent background, solid fill background, a gradient fill background or a simple shape (solid or gradient) at no additional cost. ✧ More detailed backgrounds will have an additional fee depending on the complexity of the request. ✧ I’m not taking NSFW pinup requests at this time.

Got an idea that’s not covered? Hit me up and we can discuss the idea and pricing! Want a portrait but have no idea what pose you want? I am more than willing to flex my artistic creativity and come up with a good pose with you! Just ask!

I am opening ten (10) slots total at a time for full/half body portraits. $15 Portraits do not have a definitive cut off and will remain an open queue as long as I don’t get swamped. If they are piling up, I will cut them off until I am caught up, but these will generally remain open.

[ Payment? ]

All payment is in USD through Paypal Invoice. For $15 portraits, the full amount needs be paid up front before work beings. For the rest, an invoice will be sent after the initial discussion/draft phase.

[ Okay How the Heck Does This Work? ]

You send me an email with what type of commission you want (full/half/portrait, line/flat/color), the character and references. I’ll get back to you and put you on the list. If the list is full, I can put you on the wait list (free of cost) and notify you when I have a slot open.

Once we hash out your details, I’ll draft up the idea and send it over for approval. If everything looks alright and you don’t have any revisions, I’ll send the invoice! Once that’s paid, work will begin on your piece properly. $15 Portraits need to be paid up front before any work will begin on them.

I will send updates at every major stage of the piece. (i.e. the initial draft, the line work, then the colors before sending you the final).

You are allowed revisions during the draft. Once line work has been completed, you are allowed moderate revisions. Once color has been done, I will only accept minor revisions, excluding things such as color correction or small missing details (i.e. forgotten scars, face paint, freckles, etc). I am willing to work with you to ensure your picture is as true to your character/idea as you wish, but please work with me and communicate any issues before the final piece. As much as I love to please, I cannot spend days revising a piece again and again and again. So if something isn’t looking right, do not hesitate to tell me early on!

Your final piece will be sent free of watermarks and at a lovely 300dpi. You’re free to post, use and edit your piece for non-monetary, personal use. (Things like banners, avatars, character pages, etc.)

[ THINGS BEE DRAWS... ]

✧ Blood/Gore/Body horror (to an extent) ✧ Tasteful nudity (think classy pinups) ✧ Armor ✧ Mechs / Robotics ✧ Weapons ✧ Original Characters (Any fandom! Just need proper references!)

[ THINGS BEE DOES NOT DRAW... ]

✧ Hardcore NSFW ✧ Racist/hateful ideas/illegal stuff ✧ Giraffes (the actual animal)

If you’re unsure, feel free to ask for clarification!

[ CONTACT ]

Ready to commission me? Send an email to [email protected] Got a question? Drop me an email or an ask/dm here and I’ll do my best to answer your questions!

Check on the queue and commission progress on my > Trello <

More examples of my work can be found > Here <

Thank you guys! I look forward to working with you! <3

#pervasivescarinessart #commissions #pervasive scariness commissions #art #digital art #announcement #commission info

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team--mike · 6 years ago

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Analysis/Prediction for Danganronpa: Deadication

Hey guys! I know I barely post on tumblr at all but I just thought... I have something to talk about... That's incredibly long... And about Danganronpa...

So where else to go than tumblr?

I recently started following a fangan ( @dangandeadication ) called Danganronpa: Deadication. If I had to pick a reason why I liked it so much, it would have to be the character design and art. Their Discord community is pretty great and involved as well. I'm a busy boy so I can't be as active there as I'd like...

You can check out part one of the prologue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5krOHv_ls4

Anyways - what is this post about?

It's about my predictions for this Killing Game. I'm not one to simply pick randomly who lives and who dies, there's a method to my madness. I have this fancy shmancy way of making predictions for Danganronpa, and it's called the Elevator Prediction! We simply take a look at the picture of the students in the elevator before the first trial, and we cross off people based on their position. Any sane artist wouldn't group all the survivors next to each other, now... Would they?...

Wait... Deadication doesn't have one of these yet...

Oh, well. I'll just use my detective instincts to place these characters based on their talent, personality, and official Danganronpa games.

A few disclaimers before we begin:

There will be spoilers for DR1, SDR2, and DRV3

I'm explaining my thought pattern here along with each character and why I predicted what I did. I apologize if I sound overly critical - that's not my intention. I had fun thinking of these predictions and I'm looking forward to seeing how they pan out!

There's one more thing that I'd like to explain as well, and it will help contextualize some of my choices.

One of my favorite writers, Brandon Sanderson, writes some great books involving magic. I bring this up because a few ultimates here (Lucky Student, Psychic, Illusionist, Alchemist) are explicitly "magical". The extent of their abilities is unknown for the most part. Being a writer, Brandon Sanderson created rules about writing magic stories, and being a writer myself, I really took this one to heart. (reference: https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/)

"An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic."

What does this mean? Basically - if the magic isn't explained - it feels like magic can solve any problem at any point without warning. There's no mystery to it at all - it just happens. Explaining magic systems is a really great way to actually add to a mystery - it gives the reader rules to follow when the theories start forming in their head. Now go replace the word MAGIC with ULTIMATE... And this creates a framework for working with ultimates in mysteries. It’s so much harder for readers to solve mysteries if it isn’t what can and cannot be done in the universe.

An example of this is Tsumugi's Cospox in DRV3. Her ability was cosplay, and with it, she could basically disguise herself as any character. It was inevitable that a murder would happen with her disguised as someone else, and there was no telling when, or how... Except that they immediately explained the extent of her powers in Chapter 1 after the first killing. This took that possibility off the table - and made all the future cases that much easier by focusing our minds on what was actually relevant instead of some gotcha that wasn't explained.

Again - this is only a guideline - it's not a hard-and-fast rule that everyone has to follow - so my predictions could be off because of this. It's all guesswork anyways, and I'm sure at least half my predictions, if not all of them, will be wrong. But that's the point, isn't it? XD

Without further ado, let's get started!

Yuuma - lucky student Ok... He's lucky so he can't die right? We don't know how lucky he is, but if we base it off the first two games, then yes, he'd basically be unkillable. There are a couple ultimates here that could get around that... But that would be weird because those ultimates are magical and it seems that Danganronpa Luck is too big a barrier... Keep in mind we've had a survivor Lucky Student and a victim Lucky Student, so what's left? Verdict - CH1 blackened

Shu - bounty hunter Here's another babyface that basically screams "Don't fuck with me!". Considering the case of Fuyuhiko I'm not pinning him as someone who has a change of heart, and considering his profession I think he's not going to be a blackened. I think that would be too obvious. So what does that leave us with? A victim. Also I'm offing him in chapter 1 because if he's not killed early then he will be a suspect in every subsequent case. Which might be a good thing, but I wouldn't want to deal with that :P But who could possibly kill someone trained to kill... Hmmm... Verdict - CH1 victim, failed attempt to kill Yuuma

Toru - filmmaker Everyone's always comparing him to the Actor and saying that there's some important story element here since their ultimates are so similar. I can't help but think the same. I don't think this dude is the Mastermind, since that would be too obvious in my eyes, however I feel he's involved in some way. If Deadication pulls the same thing that DRV3 did with Rantaro, then they can have some backstory for this guy while also having him dead, all while throwing the suspicion off him as being involved in this game due to him dying early. Verdict - CH2 Victim

Otoha - basketball Literally Akane and Tenko. One of them died and the other survived. Maybe she's a blackened? I don't have much else to say here honestly. I guess she's cute. Verdict - CH2 blackened

Kyusho - detective Alright this is such a clear reference to Kyoko that there might be something actually relevant here - maybe this is an AU where Aoi and Kyoko mashed their names together and adopted him? Maybe the real Danganronpa is going to be mentioned in this game? I doubt both these points but they're good to bring up. So we haven't seen an evil detective yet from the other games so I'm getting that vibe from him. Especially one that doesn't explicitly commit murder... Verdict - CH2 accomplice, CH3 victim

Ayuna - psychic Ok so Psychic means either two things (1) she's a complete airhead OR (2) she's a complete airhead but also Hagakure. Considering my stance on magic powers as explained earlier, I think her powers are going to be meaningless. Maybe she sees a vision that ends up getting her killed? Verdict - CH3 Victim

Sakumi - alchemist Alchemy means either two things (1) she's another complete airhead OR (2) there will be some poison case in this game. I'm honestly feeling the latter. Alchemy is another vague ultimate that has to be explained - and I can only see this being relevant to poisoning. There hasn't been a poison double murder yet and I'm assuming that Deadication will be keeping the same format of double murder since it's classic. But I could be 100% wrong since I'm a sucker for strict guidelines. PS: She's also cute. Verdict - CH3 blackened

Reika - ??? Hmmm I wonder what it could beeee... With this illusionist/alchemist/psychic/occultist quadrafecta I'm thinking she's along a similar vibe, maybe witch or something. We haven't had a ??? blackened yet... thinking-face-intensifies... I'm thinking their ability will be revealed as the cornerstone to this case. Verdict - CH4 blackened

Minoru - barista Ace Attorney - Godot's theme plays in the background Wait what slot didn't I assign... Oh yeah that's right Verdict - CH4 victim

Iori - gardener I have no idea. He has a Kokichi Ouma face sprite but he's also very knowledgeable about plants. He's probably gonna be a Gonta type - a Hope Boy. Verdict - Survivor

Megumi - attorney Franziska Von Karma was best girl in Ace Attorney, and now Megumi is giving me that same vibe. Now here's someone who can talk her way in a trial... As I'm pinning Kyusho as chaotic, maybe Megumi will be the voice of reason throughout the game... Although I really am suspicious of everyone. There's always a survivor with a head on their shoulders (Kirigiri, Shuichi, Hajime) Verdict - Survivor

Haru - occultist I totally feel that Haru is going to play a big part in this, and have some sort of change-of-heart that makes them a better overall person. They're also cute as well so I can't just kill them off. If at any point in the story Naohiko dies, I fully expect Haru to take his place. They're the most main-character-like out of everyone else. They'd probably take the Byakuya or Fuyuhiko slot in the survivor list. Verdict - Survivor

Keiji - surgeon Come on now you wouldn't make such a large meme NOT a survivor... I feel he's going to be very much like the survivors Kazuichi or Hagakure or Himiko - thinks he's tough shit but he really can't do a darn thing. Verdict - Survivor

Luna - arctic explorer Um I don't have much to say about her except I like her and she's super cute and I want her to survive. She's the waifu survivor like Aoi and Sonia and Maki. She's also smart as well so her surviving would actually make sense. Verdict - Survivor

Ok guys! That's it! We're done with all the predictions for Dead-

WAIT! WHAT IS IT? I'M FORGETTING ABOUT TWO CHARACTERS?

Oh yeah you're right. Whoops.

Hitomi - illusionist Ah yes, the detective's sidekick, just like Kaito and Chiaki and Sayaka. She's overly optimistic, which makes me think she's evil, but there are two reasons why I don't think she is (1) I can't possibly envision any angry or distressed Hitomi sprites AND (2) With an ultimate like Illusionist, it would be too obvious that she's a killer. Based on the principles of magic as I explained earlier, her illusion abilities should come with some set of rules. And these rules weren't explained to us in the prologue - so I'm sort of throwing her ultimate to the curb for now and ignoring its effect on the story. Which is probably wrong, but ah, what the heck. I have a bigger prediction for Hitomi based on her relationship with Naohiko as opposed to her ultimate. Verdict - CH5 victim.

Naohiko - actor The man of the hour himself, the green haired protagonist. Before we begin - let's go over what happens to the protagonists in the first three games: Makoto - survives. Hajime - survives but his past self is the mastermind Kaede - is a blackened and dies in chapter 1 Considering Kaede's case - I'm doubting that there is a protagonist switch at all in this game. I'm pretty sure that they switched during Chapter 1 because of the Hope Fragments and the character development and attachment. As much as I loved Kaede, there wasn't a real reason to have her die in a later chapter. It just wasn't a good game design choice. Now Deadication isn't a game so this might be different but I'm tossing this aside for now. There's also the possibility of Naohiko dying, but I don't think he'd be the one to die in chapter 1. The main character actually has a relevant ultimate this time - actor. One that can be used as a blackened... and a mastermind... dun dun DUN... Technically this is different from SDR2 since Izuru is his own original character and not Hajime Hinata. What I'm going to propose is slightly similar to Hajime's case but it's different in the fact that Izuru had absolutely no effect on the Killing Game other than starting it. One more thing before I explain what I think will happen to Naohiko - let's take a look at the other masterminds' goals: Junko - Inflict Despair on everyone watching Izuru - Preserve Junko and the Remnants of Despair Tsumugi - Entertain everyone watching Now there's one thing that I think is clearly missing here... And that's a personal motive, one that isn't based on world domination or entertainment. Especially because this is a fangan that doesn't explicitly have to be tied to the main series - and it's getting increasingly difficult to do so anyways. So let's recap - A personal motive that isn't based on the Hope-Despair conflict, yet also requires Despair to work properly. This one really wracked my brain but here's my theory: Naohiko is a schizophrenic just like Toko is. However, he does not know that he has this other, "evil" side to him. There are a few reasons for this: (1) If he noticed it, he would clearly get it treated. Which spelled doom for this evil persona. (2) He's the ultimate actor. Actors retake scenes often enough and they have so many fans that it's typical if he forgets something. This evil side - let's call it Hikonao because I'm boring - has been waiting for its chance to overtake the real Naohiko - and this killing game is just that. Bring Naohiko to Despair, and then his real side and his evil side will be one and the same. So Hikonao sends a letter to Toru stating something about working with Naohiko - only if he brings 14 other ultimates to this secluded area. The letter is signed H - which implicitly brings suspicion on other characters like Haru and Hitomi. Hikonao can be doing things at nighttime or during the day that Naohiko wouldn't remember - and that could clue the reader in to what is happening... (and it also could get us to suspect Hitomi's illusions instead...) Hikonao's plan is to bring the largest possible Despair onto Naohiko - and that would climax in killing his own beloved, Hitomi. In the chapter 5 trial, Naohiko realizes that he is the one that killed Hitomi - and we have to explicitly argue that he didn't kill her, knowing this - something that hasn't been done before in a game, even with Kaede. And then, just like in game 1, Naohiko isn't actually executed due to some ambiguous reason. And then they find the letter from H, find some more stuff, and the mastermind trial. This also brings up an important point - just like the Gonta case in DRV3. If someone else's consciousness kills someone, are you guilty? I have a feeling that Naohiko will end up expelling Hikonao and everything will end happily ever after... Verdict - CH5 blackened and mastermind. Oh and he's also a survivor too

Now I know that you guys think this is a crazy crackpot theory but it's based on writing principles! Even if I'm entirely wrong, I have become a better mystery writer because of it! The more you think about these things, the more you dive deep into how these games are put together and the best way to order and position the story and killings so that things make sense together.

To those of you who have read the entire thing, thank you so so much! I appreciate it, especially since I rambled at times. I'm really looking forward to this project and I know everyone will do a great job with Deadication!

That's it for now. Team Mike, signing off!

#danganronpa #fangan #fanganronpa #deadication #naohiko #hitomi #theory #prediction #dr1 spoilers #sdr2 spoilers #drv3 spoilers

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okamidensetsu · 7 years ago

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-4th Annual Best of List(s)-

The Rest Of The Best (of my acquired toys) of 2016

This is my rest of the best list for 2016. Not all of the toys above were necessarily released in 2016, I just happened to acquire them during that year.

These are the toys I cut out of my top 10…Yes! Top 10 toys of the year. 2016 was the year I purchased the most toys I have ever bought in a given year. And I’ve said it the past three years jokingly, but it’s been a tradition that I can never stick to a top five toys of the year. But I think due to the pure volume of good toys I’ve been fortunate enough to pick up, I’m finally throwing the top five rule out! But I digress... The toys on “The Rest of the Best” are not in any particular order, although there are 3 on this list that I wanted ever so badly to add to my top 10 that just had to be cut to refrain from having more than a top 10! Thanks for reading and enjoy!

This one is coming in January of 2018!! I’m over a year late!!!! Life certainly got in the way this past year and a half. I didn’t even start photographing these toys til 6 months ago. It’s been rough but I just couldn’t miss a year. I’m happy to start rolling these out finally!

The Rest Of The Best:

10. Star Wars The Black Series - 6″ Scarif Stormtrooper Squad Leader - I absolutely love this design! The Black Series does this suit justice! I would still love the chance to pick up the S.H. Figuarts version of this one, but TBS gets the job done here. This one has great paint apps and posability! Just a well rounded figure at this price point. My one complaint is the elbow joint, but because of the range of the hand/wrist joint I can pull off lots of poses rather naturally!

9. D-SPEC - Metal Gear Rex - I said it in my original post, but at retail pricing, I’m not sure I could recommend this figure. But I feel like the $30 - $50 range is perfect for this one. The pictures do a poor job of getting the overall cuteness of this one across! This is an amazing representation of Rex and all that he represents. The silhouette, despite its super deformed stylings, comes across perfectly. The engineering stuffed into this little form is also impressive. While its transformation into “tank” mode is rather simple (as is the actual transformation in-game), it still gets the job done and comes across really well. I’d highly recommend this one if the price is right!

8. Figma SP-068b - Sarah Bryant - Ironically this figure looks better than the original release of Virtua Fighter for the Saturn. And that statement alone is why I’m so very excited (as well as thoroughly confused) as to why or how this figure exists! When I saw these get announced, it was an instant pre-order. While it started out as an ironic (but also pricey) purchase the lasting effect was much more than a joke. I love the Figma Virtua Fighter releases. The nostalgia I have for this particular game is undeniable. I played the hell out of the original VF release growing up. Just owning these brings a smile to my face. And seeing them represented on my shelf is a surreal but beautiful thing. But this isn’t just pure nostalgia. This is another silky smooth figma release. Unlike the original game’s release; the janky polygon look really lends itself to GSC’s famous joint system and translates perfectly to an unhindered toy experience. Honestly Akira could have had this slot as well..but Sarah Bryant’s alt outfit is just so badass - it had to be here.

7. Lego General Grievous - I don’t feature Lego enough on my blog, but Grievous (and another certain set) made me change that almost immediately. The scale of this one is impressive to say the least. Almost a foot tall and boasting an arm span of around the same length, he is a behemoth of construction. And due to how he is constructed (and this goes for the rest of the line) he is very posable and playable! While I can’t say definitively that Grievous is in scale with the rest of his line-mates, he definitely looks it when standing next to the rest of the build-a-figures. Despite how you may feel about the prequels, Grievous has always been a fun character with an awesome design. If you can find it near retail (and especially below) I implore you to pick this one up! I guarantee you will still be impressed by the scale!

6. Transformers Titans Return Deluxe Wolfwire & Monxo - A toy I have dreamed of getting an updated release for years! Growing up with transformers and seeing G1 Weirdwolf for the first time ignited the idea of a grail in my childhood. Fifteen years later and here we are. While the hype for this one passed over me years ago, I was still very excited to be able to get this figure. I pre-ordered this wave months prior to release to just to be sure...and it was all for Wolfwire. This one might be higher on my list if his name were still Weirdwolf. Just kidding. Wolfwire is pretty good too. I was thoroughly impressed with the wolf mode and his robot mode. I am not usually impressed by the posability of a Transformers “vehicle mode” but the quadruped was very emotive! What a treat at the Deluxe scale.

5. Lego Ideas Wall-E - I love Lego. I love Wall-E. This Lego Ideas set was a perfect match. Coming in at a fun and impressive scale, Wall-E is playable in all the ways you’d expect and (just like his on-screen counterpart) incredibly emotive in its subtlety. I mean Wall-E is like 75% eye movement/head nods and this nails it. @approachingfarewell and I had a really great night drinking and building this one together. The one complaint I had was remedied before I even opened the box. The neck joint from the original build is kind of a hot mess, but they include an alternative build in the box. And if for whatever reason you don’t have these instructions, you can pull them up online.

4. Acid Rain - The Taste of Coffee - Acid Rain delivers again. This time a set based on the story that started it all. I gush about this line constantly. This one delivers on everything you would expect: incredible amounts of detail, playability and durability. The new feature here is the gore. I did not want to picture that here but if you wanted to see what that looks like you can click on the link to the original set. I really hope they include gore with future releases as well. It adds another layer of grit to these toys that other lines just don’t have.

3. Play Arts Kai - D-Dog - I freaking love D-Dog! It’s very rare we get a quadruped representation of a given character (and I just so happen to have two on this list)! Usually animal representation is relegated to a small statue or a simplified toy. So not only was it a surprise that this DD was released, but it was also a great figure in its own right. I could get DD to sit..which on its own is very impressive. Not only does this one has a lot of range, but it also boasts lots of great accessories too. You actually have some decent customization/load out options for your desk operations. I got this goodboi on sale and I feel like that was a steal...but also the retail price for all of the PAK these days are just gross. Get this at a price you are comfortable paying and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

2. Transformers Titans Return Legends Gnaw - This was a great year for Legends releases. Another certain Legends release will be featured in my Top 10 but unfortunately this one just missed the cut. This ferocious yet adorable release was one I regret not army building while I had the chance. I might try to get a Takara version that’s how impressed I am with this release! While limited by the sculpt, there is just so much detail and character in this little package it’s really easy to look past these minor grievances and appreciate what is there. But unfortunately there were just some toys that did it better for me. It was really hard for me to put this one lower on my list but I cannot recommend this figure enough. Even if it’s just to have as a little desk buddy.

1. Transformers Titans Return Deluxe Brainstorm - What a shame that this was a limited release. In my opinion this was a better use of the Blurr mold than Blurr himself. The wings of Brainstorm in vehicle mode add so much more to the silhouette that I feel this should have been the Brainstorm mold, and then Blurr could have been the limited release. But that is purely a personal belief. This all comes down to aesthetics, and this one just does it all for me. I mean look at that cockpitcone-gunshield thing! It looks fantastic in vehicle mode and held in robot mode. And the colors. If you were to put Brainstorm’s colors on a pallet wheel I wouldn’t even know where to begin but they sure made them work here. It breaks up the sculpt incredibly well. I love this figure. It was so hard to take this off my Top 10..but alas here we are. The top 10 starts here!

Thank you for reading! I will start posting my Top Toys of 2016 soon!

『Toys of The Year 2016』

#toys #toys of the year 2016 #toys of the year #mgs toys #mgs #d dog #star wars #star wars toys #figma #the black series #lego #transformers #titans return #transformers titans return #toy photography

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ask-artsy-oncie · 8 years ago

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Disney and their Representation of Animated Latin@s, in response to people getting in an internet fist-fight over Coco

I’ve had some very choice words for Disney in regards to their representation of Latin@s ever since I was 14 and actually started thinking about it with a conscious mind.

As my sidebar states, I am half-Salvadoran (from my father’s side) and half-French (from my mother’s side). When I was 14, the 3D remastered release of Beauty and the Beast was in theaters, and I went to go see it with a friend, who is full Mexican. It is her favorite Disney Princess movie, so by the end of it, as we were exiting the theater, I made some stupid joke, something about being French and therefore being more like Belle than she was. It was all in good nature, of course, nothing to be taken seriously, but it got me thinking. When I got home that day, I asked my mother why, if there’s a French princess, there isn’t a Latina princess, too. What she said to me in response is still burned into my mind today, and continues to inspire me as an artist.

She said to me, “Because unless you go out and make one, yourself, Pocahontas is the best you’re going to get.”

Unfortunately, in this year of 2017, I feel like this is still true, today.

If you’re a die-hard defender of Disney, you may not like me after reading this. I want to emphasize that I don’t hate Disney as a company, and I don’t (at all) hate all the movies I’m going to bring up in this post, but I do think Disney has some serious flaws when it comes to racial representation. Yes, other companies do, as well, and the animation industry as a whole is very White-washed. But Disney is the massive giant of a company that looms over all of them, it has the most influence, and enjoys flaunting off how inclusive it is, when, in this case, that is far from the truth. This is an unpleasant conversation to be had, but it’s important and needs to be addressed.

vvvv More under the cut vvvv

I should really go in chronological order, but since I opened up with the princess talk I might as well start off with Elena.

I do want to make a note of something before we really dive deep into things. I want to say that I’m going to only be looking at Renaissance Disney onward, which excludes The Three Caballeros. This is because it’s mostly going to focus on representation that affects children currently, and not only is The Three Caballeros a product of its time (1944) (much like Speedy Gonzales, I might add, who me and many other Latin@s have no issue with, personally, but is a harmful stereotype, nonetheless), but not many children are exposed to it, anymore. That would be like expecting millennials to have been exposed to Charlie Chaplin when we were little. I cannot dissect this piece of media, neither positively nor negatively, without being unfair to Disney as a company today. Ever since its Renaissance, however, Disney HAS pushed and continues to push and revive and market all its successes since the Renaissance began with The Little Mermaid, so everything from that movie onward is fair game.

Now, about Elena...

I will admit to having not watched Elena of Avalor. I hardly watch TV anymore as it is, and that actually ties into the real point I want to make about Elena. I cannot argue against or praise Elena of Avalor for its content (though in the commercials I’ve seen promoting the show, I couldn’t help but notice that there are characters who mispronounce her name as the more English-sounding “Elaina”, which is offensive in its own right), but I don’t plan to, because for its content to really matter, it has to have been seen. No, instead, I don’t count Elena of Avalor as true Latin@ representation purely because of her inaccessibility. Elena may be officially the first Latina Disney princess, but she is treated so poorly that she may as well not exist.

I’ve already mentioned that I don’t watch TV much, any more. That’s not just a personal thing, that’s actually a pretty accepted trend. I’m not kidding, if you still think that TV is going to eventually stomp out the popularity of the internet, I can’t help you. Animated movies, though, they’re still a very widely viewed form of media, and Disney animated movies still continue to get billions upon billions of dollars in box-office (Disney/Pixar owns four of the top five highest grossing box-office movies), that doesn’t even count DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital sales after the movie is released for home viewing. If Disney really wanted to make Elena this new Disney princess to stand alongside all the others (which seems to be the plan, considering she’s on the official Disney Princess website, though this website seems a little poorly kept, seeing as it has yet to include Moana, and multiple titles and profiles, including ones for Frozen, which Disney can’t get enough of, seem to be missing from the main page.) they would have given her a full-length film with high-budget animation.

That’s not what we get. Instead, Elena gets a television cartoon series (which is a step-up from her originally announced side role on Sophia the First, another children’s cartoon series, granted) that, according to the aforementioned Disney Princess website, airs at 7:30 PM.

Also known as: The recommended bedtime for most young children.

This piles on a few factors as to why Elena of Avalor becomes inaccessible to many children who would benefit from seeing a Latin@ princess (Latin@ children). I cannot tell you the amount of White people I have seen look at Elena and oogle over her because “she’s representation!”

Sorry to sound like a bitter tumblr user, but please, I ask that you check your privilege.

In order for someone to regularly view Elena of Avalor AND give it ratings that show Disney that people are watching and that Elena is profitable, they must:

-Own a TV

-Have a Television Service Provider (TSP)

-Have Disney Channel or Disney Junior (which are premium paid channels)

-Consider letting their child stay up past the recommended bedtime just to watch TV, and that’s only if they know Elena will be on at that time. We are assuming this is the average parent who doesn’t actively check Disney-dot-com to see if there’s a new Disney Princess.

To see the newest Disney Animated film, they must

-Have access to the local movie theater (transportation)

-Have money for movie tickets.

Disney has treated Elena the way many TV networks (back when we were kids and TV was still widely popular) would treat a program that they eventually want to get rid of, by putting it in a time slot they know most people can’t watch it at and blaming the bad ratings on its unpopularity before removing it entirely. Disney will most likely keep airing Elena because it’s good press, they look like inclusionists by doing so, but Elena has her own “inaccessible little time slot”, which happens to include a poorly chosen air time (why could she not be a Saturday morning cartoon?) as well as the fact that she’s on TV at all, as opposed to the silver screen.

I have to say, that for the while that I worked at Toys R Us, it was rather heartwarming to see Latin@ children buying Elena dolls and accessories, it truly was, but that’s of the children who bought Elena merchandise, period. The sad truth that non-Latin@ (or ignorant Latin@) Disney fans have to face is, most Latin@ children recognize Peppa Pig before they recognize Elena. No kidding, they go absolutely rabid over Peppa Pig. This is because Peppa Pig airs on public-access television in the morning, and is accessible for the very reasons Elena of Avalor is inaccessible. And, truth-be-told, even more Latin@ children recognize and buy Frozen merchandise at Toys R Us, because they need neither a TV nor a TSP to have seen Frozen. Disney, by touting the fact that they now have a Latina princess while refusing to give her a spotlight on the silver screen, shows its (very large) Latin@ following that really, all they care about is the pat on the back that they get for having representation. To them, it doesn’t have to be good representation.

(Side note, does anyone want to rant with me over the fact that the Face Character for Elena at Disneyland, instead of saying “cheese” or even just saying “queso”, just spouts out a random Latin American food when you take a picture with her? She tried to get my sister to say “pan dulce” with her. If that ain’t the classic “stereotyping Latin@s based on the food we eat” then I don’t know what is.)

Alright, now let’s head back to the Renaissance: The Emperor’s New Groove

I don’t really have a problem with this movie. There’s not a lot I can really complain about it, representation-wise. Mostly, I’d like to tell you what makes it so great so I can later contrast it, in terms of concepts, to Coco (and, oh, boy, will I get to Coco). What makes Emperor’s New Groove such a terrific example of “how to treat a Latin@ animated movie” are as follows:

-It doesn’t take place in Mexico (instead in pre-colonial South America)

-Just the fact that it’s pre-colonial and recognizes that there was a civilization in Central and South America before Spain marched its way on in

-It acknowledges the culture it’s portraying outside of the holidays said culture celebrates

-Despite the fact that its title bares resemblance to the Hans Christian Anderson fair tale, it is more-or-less an original story with little influence from European fairy tales (though it does strike conceptual similarities with Caliph Stork, a German fairy tale)

I really do like Emperor’s New Groove as a piece of Latin@ representation from Disney. But, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suffer from the very fatal flaw of casting White actors to voice colored characters. Other than Yzma’s VA, Eartha Kitt, none of the other voice actors are people of color. I mean, I love David Spade, but, having been so famous for his place in a comedy duo with the late Chris Farley, he was about as type-casted for Kuzco’s role as Anna Kendrick was type-casted to play as princess Poppy in Dreamworks’s Trolls. As in, there was none. (Ironically, he and Anna Kendrick are type-casted for rather similar personalities). Not to say that David Spade didn’t do a great job, but there was very little keeping Disney from grabbing an aspiring Latin@ voice actor, other than the draw that Spade’s name gave to the movie (and even that wasn’t much, as this movie has a really small box-office profit by Disney standards, it was even beat by Bolt and Chicken Little, which are commonly hated Disney movies). And that’s just the lead role, that doesn’t account for, again, 99% of the voice actors being White.

This isn’t even a Disney-exclusive issue, either. Dreamworks’s The Road to El Dorado, which came out the same year, which is also conceptually a great Latin@ movie (despite the leading characters being Spaniards), also suffers from casting much of its colored characters with White VAs. At the very least, the leading lady was voiced by a Latina, but that’s a super small step in the right direction.

This is, of course, a trend we’re just only beginning to see the end of, with movies like Big Hero 6 (I’m getting to that, by the way) and Moana giving more attention to VAs of color, so I may have to chalk Emperor’s New Grove up as another product of its time, but this is definitely something that needs to end as soon as possible.

Of course, though, the Emperor’s New Groove is still not a Disney princess movie, as much as we love to joke about Kuzco being a Disney princess, so, as good as this movie is, I’m not changing my argument about there being no real Latina Disney princess, yet.

Unfortunately, due to its poor box office, this movie kind of faded into obscurity in terms of marketing. Of course, people of my generation remember it fondly and reference it frequently, but Disney didn’t treat it all that very well. (It got a TV series, but so did literally every Renaissance Disney film that they could manage. It wasn’t some special treatment.)

I think I’ve said all I can about this movie.

Now, I wanna talk a little about ham-handed representation that is: Honey Lemon.

Honey’s a sweet girl, really, she is, and I don’t dislike her as a character. In fact, I’m super glad that Disney gave us women in science in Big Hero 6. Honey and Gogo are wonderful inspirations and role models for young girls, but that doesn’t excuse Disney from the fact that Honey isn’t a good example of Latin@ representation. And I’m not talking about her looks. She looks pretty Latina, while still keeping physical features from her comic book counterpart. No, instead, Honey is an example of unnecessarily changing a colored character’s race to another marginalized race, purely to be able to say that they have a Latin@ in this movie.

Honey Lemon, who in the comics bares the legal name Aiko Miyazaki (Honey Lemon was only her super hero name), was originally a Japanese science student. And her race-change isn’t a unique case for this movie, either, as the all-Japanese cast of the comics was changed to a more mixed-race cast for the movie. While it looks good on Disney’s part to do this, it wasn’t necessary at all, and they could have very well had a main cast comprised entirely of Japanese people. Hell, Disney, this movie takes place in San Francisco, and a Japanese-meshed “San Fransokyo” at that. Have you been to the Bay Area? It wouldn’t have been unrealistic at all to have a main cast (of just five human characters, mind you) that was only made up of Asians.

What Honey Lemon (as well as Wasabi) represents in reality is the idea that marginalized races are interchangeable. There is nothing inherently Latin@ about Honey Lemon, and despite the fact that her voice actor is Latina, I can’t help but feel like her accent feels forced at times, as if the directors were trying to get her to “sound more Latina” so she could become more marketable. Diversity is a wonderful thing, but because changing the races of these characters was, again, just so unnecessary considering the source material, it’s just another way of Disney showing us that people of color are exploitable, so long as they can get more “progressive points” for the more races they choose to portray. Honey didn’t feel like a gift, what she (and Wasabi) felt like was Disney’s desperate grab for a medal and praise.

Again, I don’t hate Big Hero 6 by any means, but you can’t pretend it’s representation. Its diversity is disingenuous and serves only to be a crowd-pleaser.

Alright, now we’re getting to the big boy, the elephant in the room. You thought this post was already super long? Get ready to delve into Pixar’s Coco.

By now, you’ve probably either seen or heard of Coco’s teaser trailer. This movie isn’t even out, yet, but, as per the norm, it is anything but free from internet speculation and criticism.

I do want to start by saying that, no, this movie isn’t going to be a total nuke to Latin@ representation. Its been flaunted as having an all-Latin@ cast, and that’s amazing, that’s something that we should have had all along. It’s something that not even Jorge R. Gutierrez’s The Book of Life (I’m getting to that, okay?) can tout due to Channing Tatum’s role as Joaquin Madragón and Ron Perlman’s role as Xibalba. Not to mention that, yes, it is another main-stream animated movie featuring Latin@ culture, and, technically, we Latin@s should be thankful for it. But, not so fast: if the LGBTQIAP community is allowed to openly criticize and not accept LeFou’s sexual orientation as proper representation in Disney’s live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, then why should Latin@s blindly accept every bone that’s thrown our way without thinking critically about the media that we consume, and its origins?

It’s no secret that Coco is being compared to The Book of Life in terms of concept, character design, set design, prop design, and even composition (the way certain scenes are shot).

(via @kristoffbjorgman, but I got this via @pan-pizza ‘s blog, he is a Latino Youtuber who seems to have a very strong opinion about Coco.)

But should we be so quick as to call it a rip-off? Well, that’s up for debate. Though the composition of some of the scenes does look disturbingly similar, I don’t think conclusions should be jumped to in either argument. Firstly, much of what makes this movie feel like such a “rip-off” are its Latin@ elements and aesthetics (the imagery of the guitar, the marigolds, the select colors used, even the grandmother’s wicker wheelchair, which was compared to Anita Sánchez’s) and exist more because of the movie’s setting than some kind of copyright conspiracy.

Coco also seems like it will be more focused on just familial love than The Book of Life’s messages on romantic, familial, platonic, and even self love. That doesn’t really make it less, it’s good to see Disney and Pixar moving towards the trend of familial love. But plot-wise, that also makes it dissimilar to The Book of Life. The trailer for Coco also shows the young protagonist, Miguel, falling into the land of the dead by means of curiosity, rather than the desperation to follow his poisoned love interest, as Manolo Sánchez does.

Conceptually, though, one cannot argue one way or another whether this movie had taken ideas directly from The Book of Life. The point brought up that, if Coco began production in 2013, then it couldn’t possibly have taken from The Book of Life, which was released in 2014, is deeply flawed, and the reason why this point is flawed is the very reason that Coco becomes problematic. The Book of Life does not exist in a vacuum, and was not always intended to be produced by Reel FX from the moment of it’s creation. Jorge R. Gutierrez pitched this movie over and over to multiple animation studios, including Disney, for over a decade before it was accepted by Reel FX. He was turned down from everywhere else, again, including Disney.

This is also not the first time Gutierrez was turned down by Disney, as he also pitched a show for Disney Channel called Carmen Got Expelled, which never got greenlit.

I really just cannot even begin to explain how much having a tall, curly-haired girl, much less protagonist, in a TV show would have meant to me as a kid.

Incidentally, it’s interesting that the show that Jorge R. Gutierrez did end up working on for Disney, as the lead character designer, was not made by him and had absolutely no references to Latin@ culture within said character designs. (Not that I’d expect there to be in a Canadian-created show, but it is so very interesting that this is all they allowed Gutierrez to work with)

But, tangent aside, it is within the realm of possibility that Disney did take ideas from a failed pitch, assuming it would go nowhere with anyone else, when Lee Unkrich wanted to make a Dia de los Muertos film.

But there’s something more to say about the mere idea that Coco could be ripped off from The Book of Life. And that is

that it doesn’t matter if it’s a rip-off or not.

People really seem to be having a lot of fun pointing fingers and trying to start some kind of studio war because two movies look similar. What’s happening because of this is that it alienates and divides fans who believe that there is ripping off going on, and fans who feel the need to defend Disney, into an “us vs. them” mentality. It becomes an argument about whether someone stole from someone else, and that’s something no one can really prove or disprove unless this was a widespread press-statement from Pixar admitting their theft. It’s a pointless argument that’s only going to end in hurt feelings and it does not matter.

There is something that does matter, though, something far more problematic and impacting to any artist of color looking to create something for mainstream media, and that is the comparison between the origins of The Book of Life, which is used purely as an example in this case, and the origins of Coco.

As mentioned earlier, Jorge R. Gutierrez and The Book of Life was rejected from multiple animation studios. Why is that? What was the reason he was given to defend keeping such an interesting, fresh concept from being created? Oh yeah.

Gutierrez was told that there was no audience for that kind of movie, that “no one wants to watch a Mexican movie”.

This was what held off The Book of Life from mainstream media for over a decade. The thought that nobody wants, or cares about, a movie that takes place in Mexico, about Mexicans and their culture. This was what was told to a Mexican artist and creator, who poured not only his heart and soul, but also his culture and life experiences, into his work.

This also just doesn’t make any sense, considering the very large Latin@ following Disney has. It’s not like we need another White princess, even back in the 2000′s.

Or maybe it was just that Disney didn’t want to add a Latin@ creator to their payroll?

Because, fast forward a decade, and the “sugar skull” aesthetic has become rampantly popular among White Americans, mostly attracting middle-aged, White, stay-at-home moms who like to feel “cultured” yet have nothing to do, and teenage White girls who also think it’s cute to wear Native American head dresses as accessories. Don’t believe me? Look at the kind of merchandise it’s found on:

(Thaneeya McArdle is White, by the way, you’d think they’d let Latin@ artists create art books portraying their holiday and culture, but this is another example of my eventual point.)

(Michael’s literally just caters to middle-aged, stay at home White moms with nothing to do. I worked there for over a year, I’d know)

(Oh yeah, Hot Topic is a huge (arguably the biggest) offender, and they market the holiday as if it were something edgy or emo, to attract their demographic, when that’s nothing to do with the holiday, at all. Literally, just google image “sugar skull hot topic” and prepare to be disgusted.)

(And don’t think I’m leaving Party City out of the fun!)

I don’t think I have to say that this is cultural appropriation, but I will. This just adds to treating us like a costume, treating our culture and Dia de los Muertos as some kind of marketable fashion, even more so that what they did to Cinco de Mayo. They are not celebrating us or our culture, just using us as some kind of accessory, all while they want us out of the United States and stereotype us as lazy, criminals, and un-assimilated (should I bring up the fact that Trump won among white people on a racist platform that targeted Latin@s?)

During this time, Pixar employee Lee Unkrich, a White man, took a trip to Mexico, viewed Mexico from a tourist’s perspective, and decided to make a film about Mexico.

And it got approved immediately.

This is what I’m talking about. The origins of Coco represent a very real racist mentality that is still present in the animation industry. It is still an incredibly White-dominated industry (as even the director of Coco, who is a woman, is still White. Come on, Disney, even Dreamworks got a Chinese woman to direct Kung Fu Pandas 2 and 3) and that they still only want stories from marginalized cultures so long as White people tell them, and they are not stories for White people to tell. It is almost impossible to tell them correctly and do them justice, and you only shut out artists from said cultures who could tell the same story a million times better. And this goes without saying, but not everything is about White people and for White people. Sometimes it’s time to sit down and shut up and just listen. This is a problem in the industry that we still need to climb our way out of, and people should be thinking about this rather than whether Coco was a rip-off or not.

I’d argue that it was ripped from the hands of Latin@ artists.

I do want to bring to light that Jorge R. Gutierrez is rooting for Coco as a movie. It makes sense, of course, there are many Latin@s working on it, and it’d be damning to us for Disney to look at Coco as unsuccessful and then just say “well I guess there really was no audience for that”. But that doesn’t stop me from criticizing it and its origin, same as, again, it doesn’t stop us queer people from criticizing LeFou’s sexuality at the risk of Disney saying “well, I guess people just don’t want to see gay characters”. I genuinely do not think that I can sit through Coco and enjoy it, just because I know of why it exists in the first place. I’d love to enjoy and support it, but animation is also the industry I strive to be in, it is my life goal, and look at the way they treat creators like me.

This isn’t the only thing that bothers me about it, conceptually, either. Coco is the second mainstream Latin@ movie in a long time, and what do they decide to make it about? Dia de los Muertos. Between that and the wave of sugar skull aesthetics becoming so popular, I believe that Dia de los Muertos is now officially the only thing that White people care about regarding Latin@s (other than our food and booze, of course, but we all know what happens when you try to make an animated film about food.)

Going back to what made The Emperor’s new Groove and even The Road to El Dorado so great, there are so many more aspects of Latin@ culture that could be delved into, expanded upon, shown to the world outside of just one Latin@ holiday, especially if you go back to pre-colonial Latin America. The Book of Life can be about Dia de los Muertos because, first of all, it was created by a Mexican person who does not view his own culture as just an aesthetic or accessory, but also because it was the first of its kind to do so in mainstream media, and I’m not saying this because it came out in 2014 in contrast to Coco’s release date of 2018, I’m saying this because it was a concept for a decade prior. There was nothing like it at the time of its conception. But now we’ve heard this song and dance number, before. There’s more to Latin@ culture than Dia de los Muertos, just like there’s more to White American culture than Christmas. Coco, is, again, capitalizing on the aesthetic and appeal of Dia de los Muertos more than it cares about telling a Latin@ story. If it cared about telling a Latin@ story, it would have had a Latin@ director, and it also wouldn’t have tried to copyright Dia de los Muertos. Yes. This is an actual thing that happened, that Disney tried (and failed) to do. If you’re ever in doubt over how little Disney actually cares about Latin@ culture outside of its marketability to White Americans, just take a look at what they’ve already tried to do. Coco exists because Disney wants to market a Latin@ story to White American audiences.

Disney/Pixar is a behemoth of a company. They can afford (and afford to accept) directors and artists from Latin America to tell a Latin@ story, because if there really is no audience for that, and they tank in box office, they still have billions upon billions of dollars to fall back on. But they don’t want to, they clearly don’t want to. I think that the comparisons to The Book of Life are funny to a degree, but it’s so distracting to the real issue at hand.

In short, we need to think more about the media we consume and who influences it and why.

TL;DR: Disney has a strong history of poor, or poorly handled Latin@ representation, it doesn’t matter if Coco is a rip-off of The Book of Life, because what matters is the racism in the animation industry that kept The Book of Life from existing for a long time, and that allowed Coco to exist in the first place. It’s important to critically analyze media and its creators.

#Disney #Pixar #Coco #pixar's coco #book of life #I spent 8 hours writing this by the way #it means a lot to me #and I refuse to be silent about it #thank you if you took the time to read it #because I feel that this is super important #and I know I'm going to make people upset with this #people I love and care about #But I refuse. REFUSE to not speak up about the way I've felt for the longest time #So if anyone's so upset by this that they really want to fight me about it #go ahead and fight me #I will not be swayed.

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thelongestdamnreviews · 8 years ago

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Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

I forgot to get a screenshot of the title, so here's a picture of me stabbing a cyclops in the head with the logo watermarked on the image.

I saw that Dragon's Dogma was in the December Humble Monthly and I had some interest in the game, so I jumped on it for $10.80 with a few other games. I wound up finishing the game at 53 hours and finishing the postgame to unlock New Game Plus at 65. I played the game with the Xbox 360 controller only. I took my time, but I didn't complete all of the quests or even touch Bitterblack Isle (DLC area). I played a little of each class but stuck mostly with Strider/Assassin.

Life in Cassardis is pretty nice as a fisherman. The days pass by in absolute peace and you couldn't be happier. And then one day, a dragon attacks your village and you feebly attempt to fight it off, only to get your heart ripped out of your chest for your trouble. But you don't die. You become something more than human, an Arisen, an ageless but not immortal being challenged by the dragon to reclaim your heart. But along the way, there are many people who need help, and what better way to sharpen one's skills than slaying countless monsters and taking their loot?

Nope, it's not even one of those conceptual hearts like the shape. It's your actual, beating heart the thing takes!

Dragon's Dogma is a third-person action RPG. To me, it felt a little like a mishmash of elements from The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, and even Phantasy Star Online. It still manages to stand as a unique product all the same, though. The game takes place in a wide-open sandbox like TES, the combat is weighty like Dark Souls, there is climbing on giant enemies like SotC, and the team aspect reminds me of PSO though your allies are all AI-controlled. You jump, you swing your weapon, you'll probably get knocked down, stunlocked, and die a few times starting out. What I liked about the world was that enemies don't scale, like in Morrowind or Dark Souls. If you go to an area you aren't meant to be in for a while, you'll certainly feel it in the encounters. But on the other hand, you'll eventually hit a point where you overpower your enemies.

Health had an interesting mechanic I've only seen in fighting games prior--a recoverable damage portion of the bar. You have a green health bar, representing your current health, and when you take damage, you may have some white health bar, which represents how much magic and some other effects can heal you. Grey/black bar is completely gone and can only be restored with items, resting, and some other things. If you have a healer and neglect to take any restoratives, you can still be whittled to death, so keep that in mind. Stamina governs all skill use, be it weapon or magic, as well as sprinting, clinging to giant enemies, holding objects/enemies/other people, and so on. Thankfully, you can sprint infinitely in safe areas, so that's a very nice touch. A weight meter pops up whenever you cross the next weight category threshold, and it's visible at all times when you're looking at the inventory.

Sword, bow, or magic? There are nine Vocations in DD, and they're all based around these archetypes and combinations of them. A Fighter uses a sword and board to safely approach and dispatch enemies, while its advanced version Warrior uses only two-hander weapons to destroy enemies, and a hybrid Magick Knight can cast party-wide buffs and attack at range with unique spells as well as knock some heads in melee. Each Vocation has nine ranks which determines the active skills and passive boons you can buy and equip, and each Vocation also adds a specific amount of points to your stats when you level up, so there is some potential for min-maxing. You cannot sculpt an entirely-unique character out of all the skills you learn--for example, even though your Fighter can use a sword like the Assassin, you cannot use their Gouge ability. Passive skills at least do transfer over, so there is still some flexibility to be had.

Your Pawn is able to use six of the nine classes and they can learn and use skills exactly the same as you do. You get to design your hero and their stalwart ally, the latter of whom will learn from your actions and attempt to act as you do when it comes to combat and other actions--this can be both good and bad, understandably. Breaking off of combat to go pick flowers could result in your Pawn doing the same, just the same as clearing out the goblins escorting a cyclops first . Monkey see, monkey do. You are also able to hire two additional Pawns created by other players, though you've no impact nor control over their behavior or skills. This is the most prevalent online aspect to the game (the other being an instanced fight against an optional superboss) and it's kinda neat to see how other people have built their helper, not only in appearance, but skills, behavior, and personality.

Pawns are a lot more helpful than this picture leads you to believe, believe me.

A neat thing about the character builder is that the features have a gameplay impact. Apart from character height affecting hitbox, short and tall characters climb at different speeds, much like how a heavy character burns through (and recovers) stamina slower than a beanpole character, but they also don't flop around as much when a monster tries to shake them off while climbing. Which is more important to you--stats or appearance? You have specific things like faces and noses and eye shapes, and you can somewhat fine-tune them with sliders, like eyeball spacing or eyebrow height. You're only able to pick hair/eye/skin color from a list as opposed to setting RGB values, but few games allow the latter. There is a pretty wide variety of equipment for a number of slots: Head, torso clothing, torso armor, leg clothing, leg armor, arms, a cloak, and two unseen jewelry slots. Almost everything provides some modicum of defense, though some people would rather try to make an attractive ensemble out of the gear their class can use.

The game repeatedly warns to be careful out in the wild during its loading screen tips, and it's not kidding. While you are able to pause the game and spam health restores when things go poorly, you can't expect to do this and win every fight. Part of combat is watching enemies and knowing when to block or dodge and when to strike back, but also striking to stagger or knockdown foes. This applies mostly to the melee classes, but ranged classes need to make use of positioning and knowing where the enemies are, so one can't sneak up and interrupt your spell. One neat thing is that you can actually grapple several non-giant foes that are staggered or downed--you can either pick them up direct to toss off a cliff for an easy kill, or hold them fast so your allies can get free shots while your opponent is vulnerable. And your Pawns will do these too, so pay attention and work together to efficiently cut through everything in your way. Just remember that even with a lantern, nights are still incredibly dark and spawns change depending on the time of day.

When it comes to big monsters, you and your allies can and are encouraged to climb them, to gain better access to a weak point, to have a way to damage it even while it moves across the battlefield, or just to keep yourself safe from its attacks. These fights are really where the teamwork aspect of the game shines. You might climb on top of an armored cyclops to remove its helmet so your bow-using Pawns can drill its eye with arrows. You might have a Mage pawn enchant your weapons with fire, which you then use to knock a griffon out of the sky by setting its wings on fire. You might also hold on for dear life while the thing you're clinging to rages, pausing to replenish your dwindling stamina. And the battle music changing as you've got the beast on its last legs is a nice touch too. The controls are the only really bad part because it turns into tank controls (left/right to turn as opposed to move left/right) and it can be difficult to tell which way you're moving sometimes.

Quests are your standard "kill X things" or "get Y items" and there are several optional escort quests. There are no different storyline quests like the guilds in TES games, so that might be a letdown to some. Several quests are given out on the notice boards in various safe areas, and these generally automatically reward you when you meet the criteria--though with some, you might suddenly find yourself with an extra heavy weapon you weren't accounting for, impacting your looting. Other quests tend to deal more directly with people, as there's a somewhat obscure affection system which has some impact on the ending. If you do some quests for one person and they start blushing with a pink glow around their heads while talking to you, you might have stolen someone's heart yourself.

And speaking of thieves of hearts...

Music overall isn't bad. Most people speak with a British accent or at least inflection (pretend that makes sense), and the dialog is a little dated. Not like Elizabethan, but I can't remember ever hearing "aught" or "afore" before. It kinda stands out to me, especially given how much Pawns tend to talk. Pawns will make comments about things, either randomly or in proximity, and they'll note enemies and what strategies work if they know them. There are only so many voiced lines so you'll be hearing them quite a bit, but that kinda lends the game a bit of charm. I wound up using a trainer to adjust the sound levels due to the game assuming you're using headphones or surround sound, which I wasn't. Look up the game on PCGamingWiki for information about that.

The only really glaring problems I had were with the save system, fast travel, and combining. There's only one save slot. If you start a new game after having a save already, you erase it. Thank goodness there's a mod for a save manager (or just using Steam Family Sharing) but that's still pretty limiting for a game like this. The game also autosaves, but it's somewhat unreliable. I have lost a couple of hours due to reloading a checkpoint save despite a manual save being more recent, but just get into the habit of manual save/loads. There is fast travel, but it requires Portcrystals in the world and Ferrystones in your inventory. There are a few Portcrystal stations placed in the world you can teleport to after an early quest, and there are portable Portcrystals you can place and warp to at almost any time--but there are only four in one run of the game and you can place a max of ten in subsequent loops, giving you a total of 13 warps with the three permanent locations. And you are able to combine the things you find in the wild and buy in stores together to generate new items. For example, a Shackle plus one of different kinds of metals gives a Skeleton Key, or you can combine herbs together to create more potent curatives. When you select an item to start combining, you are given a list of known secondary items and the final product if known. My issue is that there's no way to have that in reverse, a list of things you've made and when accessed, gives a list of every combination that makes it. A minor issue I'll admit, but not having to consult a guide to remember how to make a Cerulean Concoction would've been a nice quality of life improvement. At least you can do it right in the field instead of needing to be back home with your specialized equipment.

Overall, I liked Dragon's Dogma. I hyped myself a bit and it didn't quite make the mark, but I had a great time with it. Just wish it was possible to have multiple characters without mods, so I could make specialized people like I always make in TES. It controlled well and it was nice to have a small team at my back for an ARPG outing, and for the AI to mostly work well. And slightly spoilery, but the final act (before postgame) was pretty satisfying. When I think of a final boss dragon, this is kinda how I want the fight to go. Even though it took me a little while during the actual fight because I kept getting grabbed or knocked off. The game was a decent challenge, mostly at the start, but a lot of difficulty can be mitigated with a good team setup and bringing along the right items...and knowing your enemy, of course.

Here we go again! And wow at the timing on this shot.

They're masterworks, all. You can't go wrong.

#pc #recommended

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arvyllena · 8 years ago

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Unleashing the inner fangirl

ABOUT BIGBANG

BIG BANG is a k-pop group formed by YG Entertainment in South Korea with five members consisting of G-Dragon, T.O.P, Taeyang, Daesung and Seungri. The group officially debuted in August 19, 2006. They are well known at writing and producing their own songs that makes them truly remarkable and unique from the other groups.

All the members have had the chance to release solo songs that relied heavily on their own skills. I believe that this is proof that they’re not just all for show – no one was put into the group as a filler to compensate for any shortcomings. Individually, they are great. Together, they’re even greater. And this is what I love most about them. They are well deserved to be able to achieve the label of “King’s of K-Pop” in the industry.

ABOUT THE CONCERT

The first time that they held a concert in Manila was their “ALIVE TOUR” back in 2012 where their hit song, “FANTASTIC BABY” has originated. Unfortunately I was still residing in Saudi Arabia at that time, finishing my high school and the distance caused the complication. I was very eager to attend their first concert that I actually saved enough money to afford and purchase a VIP ticket and be able to see them up close. The main problem is that I don’t have the wealth to buy my own plane ticket. That was a devastating moment for me that I even begged my parents to allow me attend and just pay for the plane ticket and the rest of the expenses would be on me for the sake of the concert. But sadly, they didn’t allow me too as it seemed costly, insignificant and a waste of time. I didn’t have any choice and just sulked until the concert was over. From then, I vowed to myself that I will and must attend the next concert that they will have.

Finally, the time has come. BIGBANG MADE in Manila was held way back 30th of July year 2015 in the Mall of Asia Arena. The memories from that day were still crystal clear as I was very grateful and it was my very first time to attend and experience a concert by my long time cherished and admired k-pop group.

The selling of tickets started from May 30, 2015. However, I wasn’t able to save money this time around it is because I was already in college and it was very hard for me to save especially the cost of living in the Philippines was expensive. Luckily, my birth month was approaching and I segued to my dad if I could get my birthday present a little early. By June 1st, I cannot believe my eyes that I was holding an early bird VIP STANDING ticket and I was really excited and pumped up for the upcoming concert.

A few weeks before the concert, there was a countdown event held on SM Megamall called Happy Fiesta and a gathering of BigBang Philippines Fans Club that I am part of as a member. The event consists of contests such as dance battles and solo performances related to BigBang. There was even a games, raffle draws and ticket giveaways to be enjoyed and anticipated by the audiences. There were few lucky winners that was able to grab a VIP ticket for free.

As it was my very first concert, I realized that I didn’t have any companion by that time. It felt awkward just by imagining that I am alone during the concert. There was this event group created in Facebook by VIPs and I started to post there asking anyone to be my concert buddy in the VIP DANCE area. Fortunately, there were few who responded in my post, one is named Roslyn, a high school student from Ramon Magsaysay High School which is a block away from UST and we clicked right away. Next is Zhai, she’s already a working IT professional from Davao and exerting her utmost effort just to be able to see BIGBANG perform. Right after they commented on my post, we have exchanged numbers for us to contact one another on the day before the concert. Lastly, my good friend Allen was also attending the concert when he knew that I was going. We’ve met in one of our classes during summer and asked me about BigBang and that’s how we ended up being concert buddies.

JULY 30, 2015: D-DAY!

The night before the event, I started conditioning myself and prepared my things such as clothes and accessories to be worn on the special day. I decided to wear the black BIGBANG shirt that I bought online matching with a white shorts for the special occasion matching with the other accessories such as the crown headband that has light switch and it is turned on during performances. Apparently, I lost mine during the intensity of the concert.

A day full of excitement and remarkable memories that will forever be etched in my brain. From the moment that I opened my eyes, there’s nothing that I can’t ever think of but only the concert that I am attending to. The concert starts at 8PM but I was already up and preparing by 6AM. Because I was too far from the venue, I decided to leave home by 7AM and commuted by riding a UV Express from Novaliches to MRT North Avenue station heading to Taft Station and rode small jeepneys from there that are bound to Pasay then arrived at MOA Arena by past 9AM and met with Allen. The reason behind of me being early is not only because I was too excited but also there was a time for admission for VIP ticket holders that was scheduled to be opened by 10AM. Assuming that there would be a lot of people, it would be a great advantage for me to be ahead on the line and not crowding over afterwards. After we have admitted, I met up with Roslyn and had a lunch with her and Allen at Chowking. Because we were way too early for the event, we had to come up with a plan how to kill time. And to be able to do that, it is impossible to not spend some money. The best way that we could ever think of is to watch a movie that would last at least 2hrs. Minions was the movie that we picked and has the perfect time slot among the other movies at that time. When the movie has ended, we still had a few hours left before the show. We decided to buy coffee at Starbucks and just hang there for a while until it’s time for us to queue to get in the arena.

Just when I thought that I would be just walking in so easily inside the arena, there was a horde of people waiting in line regardless of being a VIP ticket holder. Until we reach the threshold of the arena, the place was jam packed with people who wants to get in the arena already. When we were able to enter the arena, the place is slowly filling up with VIPs. To my surprise, I saw my former block mate from Nursing named Saichie in one of the crowd and she decided to tag along and enjoy the concert with us.

The concert was delayed (because Filipino time) for about 15-20mins. The opening was a video clip prepared by BigBang as a trailer for the concert. After the film, the five of them are being introduce one by one from the intro of their new single. The audience had a blast of their opening performance when they started to perform “BANG BANG BANG” from their new album MADE. It was an exuberant atmosphere that made my heart race especially when I was able to gaze at them up close. And because we were in the VIP DANCE are, I got separated from Allen and Saichi for a while when the stage started to move.

THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS

The performance consisted of their new songs such as “Bae Bae” which is a chic song that has the feels of one-sided love and it’s a timid yet innerly passionate character with a strong feeling of spirituality, masculinity and femininity. “Loser” on the other hand is a hip-hop/R&B track with a slow tempo and emotional melody that portrays the insecurities of the members and in spite of being famous, they want the public to know that they are still human beings who get their feelings hurt and smile sometimes. “We Like 2 Party” portrays the friendship and the 10-years bond of the five who had been through a lot together and they wanted to show their fans the casual side of them. “Sober” has a catchy beat and melody but it has a deep meaning into it. They wanted to illustrate that no matter how you dream big, if you don’t do anything, then there’s nothing bound to happen. Being sober is to wake up from a dream and live in the reality. “If You” is the latest single that they released at that time and it’s somewhat ballad that was different from their former songs which made them more unique from other groups that they can pull off different kinds of genre. Their new songs were followed by some solo performances and some of their old hit songs.

Those moments were hard to explain as it was just pure happiness that I felt all throughout the show and there are no words to explain how amazing it was. For 3 hours, I was just looking up at them and my nape started to feel numb and it felt like I was going to have stiff neck but it didn’t held me back from admiring them even more. It was truly a night to remember and I couldn’t ask for more. We took a lot of pictures and videos during the show until it ended although most of them were blurred. The moments that I was able to capture were all clear in my mind and I will forever treasure and cherish them in my heart until the next concert that they will have.

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terryblount · 5 years ago

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Dragon Ball Z Kakarot PC Review

It seems that gamers will never give Dragon Ball Z a chance to quit. Every time this 1989 anime looks ready for a peaceful retirement, it is once again dragged back into service sending 90’s kids spiraling into nostalgia, while a whole new generation falls in love with the show. Fighting games in particular have turned Akira Toriyama’s masterpiece into a magic goose with an infinite supply of golden eggs.

Yet, what lies beyond the fighting game genre for Dragon Ball Z has always represented something of an enigma for developers. The epic stand-offs against insanely powerful enemies are certainly a fundamental part of the anime, but they form part of deeper journey of Goku’s personal growth. No DBZ game has really been able to relay this in a meaningful experience.

Look Gohan! Daddy can move sideways in this game too!

Enter Dragon Ball Z Kakarot. With this game, Japan-based studio CyberConnect2 have taken the arena brawler formula from many of their Naruto titles, and wrapped the entire Dragon Ball Z epic around it. What they cobbled together is a wholly different kind of DBZ game with commendable respect for its source material, yet still falls prey to one too many of the open-world genre pitfalls.

Rock the dragon

Like the majority of Dragon Ball Z fighting games out on the market, DBZ Kakarot is similarly a melange of crucial story moments from the anime crafted into a playable experience. The anime’s main drawing point has always been the utter spectacle that ensues when powerful protagonists come face to face with god-like villains, and these moments are undoubtedly the stars of the show here.

Where CyberConnect2’s latest game distinguishes itself from its peers, however, is DBZ Kakarot’s interest in what leads up to these major showdowns. Rather than just ushering the player from one big fight to the next, the gameplay on the open-world maps becomes an opportunity to put time into grooming your character for the multiple boss encounters within each chapter.

I bet if you went through the anime frame by frame you would find scenes that match these pictures perfectly.

In other words, outside of fighting iconic adversaries like Androids, Frieza, or Cell, DBZ Kakarot takes on a much more relaxed and free pacing where the player can fly around the world hunting for collectables, can do some training, or pummel lesser enemies. Each locale has been utterly packed with oodles of the aforementioned loot which serves the purpose of enhancing your character’s abilities.

DBZ Kakarot is at its strongest when the game can make this entire experience feel like you are playing through the anime rather than watching it. Running on the Unreal Engine 4, the character models look utterly fantastic, and at times I had some difficulty distinguishing them from how they look on the show. This is easily on par with gorgeous visuals from Dragon Ball FighterZ.

The developers have also ensured that the fighting sequences do not hold back from eye-watering lighting and particle effects, as well as the actual sounds that defined the quirky aesthetics of the anime. By the time I reached the Kaio-ken four scene between Goku vs Vegeta, I squealed like a little school girl! You could feel that intensity through the screen, and in moments like these DBZ Kakarot shines.

Still my favourite scene from the entire anime

Unfortunately, while many in-combat animations have been done rather well, the open-world dialogue sequences are truly cringeworthy. The show’s real voice cast – including Seán Schemmel and Christopher Sabat – do their best, but the horrific wooden acting and Final Fantasy X-level awkward pauses between lines make these scenes an utter pain to sit through, and there are a LOT of them.

It’s over nine thousaaaaaaaand!

When the first moment arrived to try my hand at the combat mechanics, I instinctively switched over fighting game mode in my mind. As is the norm whenever I play a new fighting game, I anticipated the usual routine of pausing the game and committing some basic combos to memory before punching Piccolo right between his pointy ears…

Except there weren’t any combos or multi-button attacks to speak of. Instead, I learnt that the player will have access to the three basic actions throughout DBZ Kakarot’s combat sequences: Melee attacks, long-range energy blasts and that… blink/step… thing they do. That’s it. Only three inputs that always form the backbone for those flashy enemy encounters.

See how I totally missed Zarbon here? The game wants you to use energy attacks strategically, which means you cannot just spam them.

The reason why CyberConnect2 have gone with such a simplified, consistent combat system is to ensure that the leading character can be rotated as the story progresses, without the need for the player to learn new fighting moves. Moreover, keeping things simple also ensures that DBZ Kakarot keeps a balance between open-world, story-driven moments, and the more intense combat scenarios.

As such, the combat is based primarily on paying attention to the enemy’s attack patterns, and subsequently deciding what your character should do in that moment. Is the enemy close enough to attack, are they blocking, are they about to discharge an energy attack, or should I try to dodge their next move? You form an instinctive loop of these questions in your head the more you play.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Dragon Ball Z without the signature super moves, so the game does let the characters’ individuality shine through in these abilities. The player can therefore choose between a maximum of four different slots to fire energy blasts at enemies, and when fighting in groups, you can even call on your partners to assist with their super attacks.

I hope you like tutorial text; this game will throw A LOT at you! This is a big no no as this means the game was not designed so the player can learn how to play intuitively.

While combat is overall a robust and multi-layered system, I wish it could have been more responsive. The game does most of the work for you, but inputs are still dependent on the character finishing their animations, which means it was easy to descend into button-mashing. It was frustrating seeing characters failing to block, or not striking in an opening because they were still powering ahead with that combo you entered five seconds ago.

Open-world woes

I reviewed One Piece: World Seeker last year which, like DBZ Kakarot, is another Shonen Jump publication that finally shed the yoke of the fighting genre in exchange for an open-world design. Regrettably, several issues – such as a bland world and sterile gameplay – fatally ruptured what could have been a great recreation of the anime.

It seems that DBZ Kakarot was not paying attention to World Seeker’s failings as it duplicates several of them (albeit to a smaller degree). The most obvious problem in DBZ Kakarot is how the open-world gameplay yet again feels underdeveloped, and extremely repetitive.

You read that correctly, one of the side missions is literally helping Master Roshi find his porn. Why? Just WHY?

The different maps like Planet Namek or the island-strewn oceans around Kame House are decent replicas Dragon Ball Z’s settings, and they are pleasantly spacious. However, these areas rarely elevate beyond being collect-a-thon, sand boxes to find the same items over and over again. Even side quests are nothing more than finding lists of items, or fighting the same minor enemies over and over.

DBZ Kakarot’s reasoning behind these agonizingly generic, open-world quests is that the player is expected to use items like Z Orbs to upgrade their skill trees, or food ingredients to cook stats-boosting meals to consume before battles. In this way, the game is intended to convey the experience of preparing themselves for major encounters later on in the chapter(s).

Seriously, “She’s not happy”!? This is the best reason they could come up with for doing this side quest?

The reality is that I played through large chunks of DBZ Kakarot where I became aware of feeling utterly bored. Like One Piece: World Seeker, there is nothing broken in these systems even counting the cringy cut scenes. The issue is that the fun wears off after a few hours once you realise the open-world gameplay is a one-trick-pony. There is simply not enough variety in gameplay to justify the grinding.

Like anime, like game

I have an inkling that DBZ Kakarot was perhaps envisioned in the early phases of development as a turn-based JRPG since the game is built around strong elements of stats and grinding. This might explain why something feels seriously incomplete, and why DBZ Kakarot plays like different elements of open-world and RPG games that have been desperately cobbled together.

My takeaway from the forty or so hours spent in-game is that I vacillated between moments of nostalgic joy in reliving one of the most epic anime series ever conceived, and an overwhelming sense of ‘Are we there yet?’ There isn’t really another game based in the DBZ universe quite like this one, yet I cannot ignore how the devs failed miserably to make open-world gameplay more interesting.

Sorry folks, while DBZ Kakarot can certainly lay claim to a fairly solid foundation, I wish I had better news for you. It feels like a superior, more fleshed out Dragon Ball Z game constantly threatens to conquer the bland moments, but the experience just doesn’t get there. In December 2020 when the inevitable top ten lists come out, I’d bet most content creators are probably going to say “Oh right, I actually forgot about this game!”. Get it on sale if you must.

Good visuals

Engaging boss fights

Loyal to the DBZ narrative

Battle cut scenes

Bland side quests

Very repetetive

Too much collecting

Open-world cut scenes

Tutorial screen overload

Too much talking!

PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an XBox One controller

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