#I didn't watch the director's cut apparently

[ofswordsandpens]

falling down the rabbit hole a bit here because I've just found out that there are 3 different versions of this film with 2 completely different soundtracks each made by a different composer and two completely different endings.

So depending on the version you watch, you will have: different scenes, different versions of the exact same scene, different dialogue (or cut dialogue all together), different music, different characterizations, and a different ending, which is like, a little insane.

the common consensus online seems to be that if you want to watch the most thematically coherent and character driven version of this movie you need to watch the director's cut but apparently that one has both the less favored ending and less favored soundtrack (there's pretty contentious debate about the soundtracks). but overall, people think bits and pieces of each movie is handled better than the others, so I guess the most fully-realized way to experience this film is to like... watch all 3 versions and then frankenstein the parts you like together in your head to make a coherent story... which is also insane

watched legend (1985) for the first time and its so pretty and so striking it kind of doesn't matter that it kind of really sucks a lot of the time lmao

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

TONIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

One thing Myspace had going for it: it was exuberantly ugly. The decision to let users with no design training loose on a highly customizable user-interface led to a proliferation of Myspace pages that vibrated with personality.

The ugliness of Myspace wasn't just exciting in a kind of outsider/folk-art way (though it was that). Myspace's ugliness was an anti-cooption force-field, because corporate designers and art-directors would, by and large, rather break their fingers and gouge out their eyes than produce pages that looked like that.

In this regard, Myspace was the heir to successive generations of "design democratization" that gave amateur communities, especially countercultural ones, a space to operate in where authentic community members could be easily distinguished between parasitic commercializers.

The immediate predecessors to Myspace's ugliness-as-a-feature were the web, and desktop publishing. Between the img tag, imagemaps, the blink tag, animated GIFs, and the million ways that you could weird a page with tables and padding, the early web was positively bursting with individual personality. The early web balanced in an equilibrium between the plunder-friendliness of "view source" and the topsy-turvy design imperatives of web-based layout, which confounded both print designers (no fixed fonts! RGB colorspaces! dithering!) and even multimedia designers who'd cut their teeth on Hypercard and CD ROMs (no fixed layout!).

Before the web came desktop publishing, the million tractor-feed ransom notes combining Broderbund Print Shop fonts, joystick-edited pixel-art, and a cohort of enthusiasts ranging from punk zinesters to community newsletter publishers. As this work proliferated on coffee-shop counters and telephone poles, it was visibly, obviously distinct from the work produced by "real" designers – that is, designers who'd been a) trained and b) paid by a corporation to employ that training.

All of this matters, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Communities – especially countercultural ones – are where our society's creative ferment starts. Getting your start in the trenches of the counterculture wars is no proof against being co-opted later (indeed, many of the designers who cut their teeth desktop publishing weird zines went on to pull their hair and roll their eyes at the incredible fuggliness of the web). But without that zone of noncommercial, antiestablishment, communitarian low weirdness, design and culture would stagnate.

I started thinking about this 25 years ago, the first time I met William Gibson. I'd been assigned by the Globe and Mail to interview him for the launch of All Tomorrow's Parties:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html

One of the questions I asked was about his famous aphorism, "The street finds its own use for things." Given how quickly each post-punk tendency had been absorbed by commercial culture, couldn't we say that "Madison Avenue finds its own use for the street"? His answer started me down a quarter-century of thinking and writing about this subject:

I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from? What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger. I didn't see it coming until a few years ago, but looking back it's very apparent.

I watch a sort of primitive form of the recommodification machine around my friends and myself in sixties, and it took about two years for this clumsy mechanism to get and try to sell us The Monkees.

In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since. The scene in Seattle that Nirvana came from: as soon as it had a label, it was on the runways of Paris.

Ugliness, transgressiveness and shock all represent an incoherent, grasping attempt to keep the world out of your demimonde – not just normies and squares, but also and especially enthusiastic marketers who want to figure out how to sell stuff to you, and use you to sell stuff to normies and squares.

I think this is what drove a lot of people to 4chan (remember, before 4chan was famous for incubating neofascism, it was the birthplace of Anonymous): its shock culture, combined with a strong cultural norm of anonymity, made for a difficult-to-digest, thoroughly spiky morsel that resisted recommodification (for a while).

All of this brings me to AI art (or AI "art"). In his essay on the "eerieness" of AI art, Henry Farrell quotes Mark Fisher's "The Weird and the Eerie":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

"Eeriness" here is defined as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI is eerie because it produces the seeming of intent, without any intender:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

When we contemplate "authentic" countercultural work – ransom-note DTP, the weird old web, seizure-inducing Myspace GIFs – it is arresting because the personality of the human entity responsible for it shines through. We might be able to recognize where that person ganked their source-viewed HTML or pixel-optimized GIF, but we can also make inferences about the emotional meaning of those choices. To see that work is to connect to a mind. That mind might not necessarily belong to someone you want to be friends with or ever meet in person, but it is unmistakably another person, and you can't help but learn something about yourself from the way that their work makes you feel.

This is why corporate work is so often called "soulless." The point of corporate art is to dress the artificial person of the corporation in the stolen skins of the humans it uses as its substrate. Corporations are potentially immortal, artificial colony organisms. They maintain the pretense of personality, but they have no mind, only action that is the crescendo of an orchestra of improvised instruments played by hundreds or thousands of employees and a handful of executives who are often working directly against one another:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

The corporation is – as Charlie Stross has it – the "slow AI" that is slowly converting our planet to the long-prophesied grey goo (or, more prosaically, wildfire ashes and boiled oceans). The real thing that is signified by CEOs' professed fears of runaway AI is runaway corporations. As Ted Chiang says, the experience of being nominally in charge of a corporation that refuses to do what you tell it to is the kind of thing that will give you nightmares about autonomous AI turning on its masters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

The job of corporate designers is to find the signifiers of authenticity and dress up the corporate entity's robotic imperatives in this stolen flesh. Everything about AI is done in service to this goal: the chatbots that replace customer service reps are meant to both perfectly mimic a real, competent corporate representative while also hewing perfectly to corporate policy, without ever betraying the real human frailties that none of us can escape.

In the same way, the shillbots that pretend to be corporate superfans online are supposed to perfectly amplify the corporate message, the slow AI's conception of its own virtues, without injecting their own off-script, potentially cringey enthusiasms.

The Hollywood writers' strike was, at root, about the studio execs' dream that they could convert the "insights" of focus groups and audience research into a perfect script, without having to go through a phalanx of lippy screenwriters who insisted on explaining why they think your idea is stupid. "Hey, nerd, make me another ET, except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars" is exactly how you prompt an AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Corporate design's job is to produce the seeming of intention without any intender. The "personality" we're meant to sense when we encounter corporate design isn't the designer's, nor the art director's, nor even the CEO's. The "personality" is meant to be the slow AI's, but a corporation doesn't have a personality.

In his 2018 short story "Noon in the antilibrary," Karl Schroeder describes an "antilibrary" as an endlessly deep anaerobic lagoon of generative botshit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/18/104097/noon-in-the-antilibrary/

The antilibrary is a generative AI system that can produce entire librarys’-worth of fake books with fake authors, fake citations by other fake experts with their own fake books and biographies and fake social media accounts, on-demand and instantly. It was speculation in 2018; it’s possible now. Creating an antilibrary is just a matter of investing in a sufficient number of graphics cards and electricity.

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/after-the-internet

Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.

It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.

The most febrile, deeply weird and authentic prompts of the most excluded outsiders produce images that feel the same as the corporate AI illustrations that project the illusion of personality from the immortal, transhuman colony organism that is the limited liability corporation.

AI art is born coopted. Even the 4chan equivalent of AI – the deeply transgressive and immoral nonconsensual pornography – feels no different from the "official" AI porn churned out by "real" pornographers. "Shrimp Jesus" and other SEO-optimized Facebook slop is so uncanny because it is simultaneously "weird" ("that which does not belong") and yet it belongs in the same aesthetic bucket of the most anodyne Corporate Memphis ephemera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

We call it "generative" but AI art can't generate the kind of turnover that aerates the aesthetic soil. An artform that can't be transgressive is sterile, stillborn, a dead end.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Jake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_fanzines_(21224199545).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[everythingisromant1c]

p2: three reasons why you can't stand co-star!james potter

co-star!james potter x actress!reader

summary: you were finding the first days of shooting your new TV show to be absolutely amazing, aside from the fact that you absolutely could not stand your co-star James Potter. unfortunately for you, you spent enough time around him to narrow down his most irritating qualities to only three:

a/n: hey so this took waayyy longer than i would've hoped to release, but i promise this series is not going anywhere, so tysm for all the loveee and all ur guys' patience <33

also pls pls pls feel free to send in prompt requests for this series i am so all ears

full series: Trouble in Hollywood - masterlist

1. He was insufferably good at his job

You wished you could say working with James Potter was such a challenge because he was simply bad at his job. But the thing was: he wasn't. It turned out he was really the impeccably good actor that your director Minerva seemed to swear he was, as if the talent truly was seeping through his veins. Somehow, that only made working with him more frustrating to you.

"Aaron, you've got to believe me."

James had come to you during the middle of hair and makeup and asked you to rehearse lines with him even before official rehearsals for the day's shooting began, saying it would make him feel more prepared. And, as much as you hated it, you felt the same. Your only regret was thinking you'd be able to stand him and his arrogance before seven in the morning.

"Why should I, Cassidy?"

The brunette responded to you fully in character, leaning back against a nearby vanity with his long legs crossed in front of him as you sat in your cushioned chair. He apparently got out of hair and makeup in under a matter of minutes, looking effortlessly put together with his curls hanging perfectly over his forehead—you didn't have the same luck. Your lovely makeup artist Mary seemed to be unbothered by the interruptions, continuing on with your makeup as you rehearsed your lines, though you caught her amused smile every once in a while from her reflection in the mirror.

"Because..." you began, trying to stay in character as your brain scrambled for your next line.

"You're supposed to say," cut in James, "'-because we can only trust each other right now.'"

"Please stop telling me my lines, James." You repeated the irritated request you'd uttered all morning to him as you put a tired hand to the bridge of your nose, one that Mary moved away hurriedly.

"Watch your makeup," she pleaded with a powder-filled brush to your nose , and you winced apologetically.

"Did you just want me to stand here and wait for you to remember them?" James's voice poked at you irritatingly as you stared up at him from your seat.

"Yes, that's exactly what I want." You fought from rolling your eyes. "You could at least give me a second. I didn't even ask for my line."

He raised his brows with an acquiescent sigh. "Whatever the lady wants."

Ignoring him, a skill you were growing like a muscle, you cleared your throat in focus, trying not to move too much as Mary blended some product on your neck. "Because we can only trust each other right now."

James quickly jumped back into character, right on time. "That didn't mean anything to you the other night."

"I already told you I'm sorry for that. When I heard all the rumors, I ..." you cursed at yourself as your mind drew another painful, embarrassing blank.

"-I didn't know what to think." James looked anything but guilty as his voice met your ears once again, finishing your line for you without fail.

"James!" You glared at him, doing your best to stay out in your chair and not storm out of the trailer he'd so brazenly infiltrated. You shook your head to yourself through your reflection in the brightly lit mirrors . "You're impossible."

James shrugged innocently. "I don't get why you're mad at me for trying to help."

"I'm not."

He scoffed, putting a dramatic hand to his chest. "So is this what you look like when you're happy with me?" The corner of his aggravating lips lifted along with his shoulder in a small shrug, before turning away again. "Isn't very much like how I've pictured it."

You didn't miss the way Mary let out a small breath of laughter from her nose as she switched over to doting on your hair. You gritted your teeth.

"I mean, I'm not mad at you for helping. I'm mad at you because you're annoying."

He crossed his arms defensively, his lips still quirked up, and you fought against the urge within you that had your eyes following the movement of his biceps. "I'm annoying?"

The feigned disbelief in his voice snapped your back to your right mind.

"Yes," you answered plainly. "You and your posh accent."

Maybe you'd stopped making sense, but it was too early for you to care. James was watching your meltdown with what you could only identify as merriment, his unfortunately unignorable presence taking up too much space in the cramped makeup trailer.

Thankfully choosing to ignore the part about his accent, he put up his hands innocently. "Last time I checked, I wasn't the one who keeps forgetting their lines."

"We just got the updated script for this episode last night." You shifted in your chair to face him, and you heard Mary wince from behind you, probably getting fed up with how much you were moving around, though you were too annoyed to stop yourself. "How the hell are you already off-book?"

James shrugged smugly, shoving his hands in his pockets as he leaned forward. You squinted your eyes at him. "An actor never reveals his secrets, love."

You twisted your mouth in disgust at his words—because you definitely felt something as he said them, whether it was disgust or not you didn't want to think about—and probably only made him more satisfied. "Mary," you groaned, looking at her through the mirror in front of you. "I think I'm going to be sick."

She shook her head and gave your reflection a sharp look back. "Not in that freshly ironed shirt you're not."

You sighed, settling back into your chair and sparing another glance at the man to your right. He tipped his head at you, almost tauntingly, and you felt your jaw tighten. It was going to be a long day.

2. Everyone else seemed to love him

You'd been going about your Thursday innocently, filming scenes when called upon—finally having memorized all your lines properly—and somehow getting through the morning without any irritating interactions with your least favorite person on set at the moment. That good feeling, of course, could only last so long.

"What's this?"

Minerva, your director, had been walking around set with you until you both stopped at the sight of a crowd forming outside one of the sets. You followed her, making your way through the crowd of your fellow actors and crew members until you were met with a nauseating sight: James Potter.

At the sight of your director, his already proud smile grew to a beaming one, almost blinding, as he greeted her. "We've all been really busy with this week's filming schedule, Minnie, and you mentioned what a hassle it's been ordering enough food for everyone every day with our budget, so I pulled some strings and got my family's chef to cater our lunch."

Your jaw slacked as he nodded his head to his left, where a number of tables were set up with what looked like pizza ingredients, a moustached-man in a chef hat standing behind the scene proudly. You couldn't believe your eyes. Apparently, neither could the woman next to you.

"Oh my- James this is ... amazing!" Minerva—or Minnie, as James somehow had grown accustomed to calling her—turned to your co-star, expression as bright and beaming as James's crowd-pleasing smile was. "But you shouldn't have gone to all this trouble-"

"It was no trouble at all. Francis was more than happy to help."

He waved a hand at the chef, who you assumed was the 'Francis' in question, who nodded back at him happily with a pizza cutter in his hand. It was like something out of a movie, the way everyone clapped for James who stood at the front of the crowd like the beloved man he was. You felt sick to your stomach.

"What's wrong? Do you not like the pizza?"

You'd taken your lunch shamefully, making sure to hide your amazement at the endless selection of pizza toppings that James had arranged at the build-your-own-pizza station, and were sitting with Remus, who you'd met at auditions for the show and luckily got casted in a role other than one that'd gone to James, and Sirius, another one of your co-stars who you'd quickly become friends with since you spent practically all your time on set nowadays.

You looked up at Remus briefly before returning your gaze to the pizza in front of you, the perfect slice underneath the sun seeming to taunt you. "No," you grumbled. "The pizza's amazing."

Sirius chuckled. "You'd think you'd be happy about that."

"I would, aside from the fact that it was Potter who brought it in."

The black-haired man tipped his head at you curiously. "What's your problem with James again?"

You shook your head forebodingly. "Don't tell me he's brainwashed you both with his hundred-dollar pizza too."

"I doubt the pizza's that much money." Remus bit into the slice in his hand, talking through the bite. "But it is pretty delicious."

"It is," Sirius nodded. "It was pretty nice of him to cover lunch for the day. If anything, you'd think you'd like him more for this."

You groaned. "He brought in his family's private chef, for God's sake. It's not like he rescued a cat from a tree or something."

Sirius and Remus shared a look as you spoke. You knew you sounded ridiculous, but you currently lacked enough dignity to care as yet another slice of pizza sat on your plate, ready to be eaten.

"James is actually a really nice lad," reasoned Sirius. "Take it from us. We kind of grew up with him."

That fact had yet to escape you as soon as you'd met the two of them. According to the stories they'd relayed to you, Remus's mum had been an on-set tutor to James growing up when he was acting in some movie, while Sirius's parents had been producers for some of James's parents' films. Safe to say, the three of them certainly left you feeling inexperienced in the world of acting.

"James should be the least of your worries," urged Remus. "He's harmless."

"If he's so harmless, then why has he gone out of his way to be a pain in my ass since I met him?"

Sirius snorted. "We said he's harmless, not that he's not an idiot sometimes."

"But," Remus added, "whatever James has done, just know that it always comes from a good place. The man doesn't have a mean bone in his body."

You sighed inwardly. The James Potter you knew seemed to be very different from the one that everyone else seemed to be familiar with, and it was driving you crazy.

3. He was an obnoxious flirt

When you said 'flirt', you not only meant that he flirted with you—unfortunately—but that he seemed to flirt with anyone in sight, whether he realized it or not. In fact, you'd been forced to watch as he smooth-talked one of the hairstylists on set for the past ten minutes.

You couldn't hear everything they were saying, thank god, but you were sure she was probably more charmed by the fact that his last name was Potter than anything he could remotely come up with to win her over. You'd had enough conversations with him to know that the movie-star smiles he offered were enough to charm people before they realized just how insufferable he was.

After what felt like hours, he said something to the woman in parting and left her looking flushed and smiley as he strolled away. You sighed, happy to finally be rid of distractions, and looked back down at the script on your lap that you were trying to memorize but stopped almost immediately as you felt an unwelcome presence lingering from in front of you. You looked up and fought a groan.

James tipped his head at you innocently. "You wanted me?"

You tensed at his phrasing and did your best to go back to ignoring him as you focused back on your script. "I did not."

Not taking the hint, as usual, he stayed put, shoving his hands in his well-tailored pockets. "Well, you've been staring at me for the past ten minutes, so I just assumed you had something to say."

"Well, you assumed wrong." You gave him a tight-lipped smile from where you sat. "And I wasn't staring. I just miraculously found it hard to concentrate on memorizing lines when you were harassing that hairstylist right next to me."

He squinted at you quizzically before shaking his head, finding your banter more amusing than you probably were. "Admit it. You're obsessed with me."

You scoffed, blinking rapidly to truly portray your disbelief. "You wish. Reality is, Potter—I think I hate you."

James peered at you with a glint in his eye like he'd never heard anything more amusing, leaning back against the wall next to you. "You think?"

You shrugged tightly. "The jury hasn't come to a decision just yet." You thought back to the unfortunately delicious pizza he'd provided, and all the things that Remus and Sirius had said to you that stood in stark contrast to practically every other experience you'd had with him.

James grinned, finding teasing you the most entertaining part of his day, even on set for a TV show. "So I still have a chance?"

His eyes glistened and you reeled. "A chance to what? Did you not hear the 'hate' part?"

"Hate is a strong word, don't you think?"

You shook your head. "Strong, but appropriate."

"Ouch." He touched his hand to his chest in that dramatic way he always did, something you blamed on his actor roots. "Your words hurt, you know." You rolled your eyes, truly trying then to get back to memorizing your lines so James would have nothing over you during filming the next day, but he didn't seem to care. "Look, I get it. You said you hate me. But really, I don't think you do."

You sighed, setting your script aside as you looked up at him with finality. "And why is that, Potter?"

"Because," James began, and you didn't like the tease in his tone as he looked down at you. "A little birdie told me you had some say in whether or not they cast me in South Bay. And that you actually encouraged it."

Your lips parted, those words being the last ones you expected him to say after weeks had gone by since the chemistry read. You didn't know who'd ratted you out, but whoever did would be getting a stern talking to. Or a partially stern one, since they were more than likely your boss.

You shrugged weakly at him. "That ... that doesn't mean anything."

James's thick brow lifted effortlessly. "So you're not denying it?"

At his challenging look, you relented with a drop of your shoulders. "I'm not. It's true; I told Minerva I think they should choose you to play Aaron becuase you are good at your job, James. As much as it annoys me. I mean, you're clearly a great actor, you get all your lines memorized overnight, not to mention the entire crew is in love with you for some reason-"

"Oh, I see."

You paused, looking at the way James's slight grin turned into a shit-eating one. "What?"

He tipped his head at you tauntingly. "You're jealous."

You let out a laugh harsher than you meant it to be. "Please. There's nothing about you I could possibly waste my energy being jealous over."

The brunette tutted, and you hated the feeling it sent through you. "For such a great actress, you're not a very good liar."

You felt your breathing shallow for a moment, not knowing what to do with the compliment that flowed so easily from his lips like he hadn't given it a second thought. You pushed the thought aside, focusing on the insult part of his statement instead, and rolled your eyes.

"Look," James continued at your expression. "Jealous or not, we're going to have to work together on this show for God knows how many more months. Years even, if it gets renewed for a second season." The thought both filled you with excitement and dread as it came from James's lips. He looked down at you with an honest curiosity. "How much longer can you go on pretending to hate me?"

You noted that what he was saying was true, letting the words sit in your chest for a moment, but you also noted that you had more fun being petty. You tilted your chin up at him. "Funny that you think I'm pretending."

James put a hand on the table you were sitting at, leaning forward slightly and making you freeze up. "Funny that you're still not a good liar, love."

Your throat felt tight with something you wanted to again dismiss as disgust at both his proximity and the delicate word that fell from his lips. You let an unpleasant pinch form between your brows. "I thought I told you not to call me that."

James felt something warm, almost giddy, form in his chest, and it didn't matter that you looked like you were considering slapping him right then. He let the corner of his lips quirk up. "You're adorable when you're mad."

"Don't call me that either." You huffed, picking up your still un-memorized script and standing. "I'm going to my trailer."

James quirked a brow, following you with only his eyes. "Is that an invitation?"

You rolled your eyes, walking away and calling over your shoulder. "Absolutely not."

taglist:

@ilovejamespottersomuch @empath-bunny @santaasi @veysxrge @bitterspoons @ladyhestiaa @rorybear14

[pancake-breakfast]

Sorry it took me so long to get these notes up. Between internet issues and pure busy-ness, it's been rough. But here they are! The notes from AX Day 1's Trigun Stampede panel! Now with images! (Sorry for Chilchuck's head in most of them. He's awfully tall for a half-foot.)

Trigun Stampede presented by Toho Animation, Studio Orange, and Crunchyroll

The guests for this panel were Yoshihiro Watanabe (producer at Orange) and Katsuhiro Takei (producer at Toho animation), with Steve Liu from Crunchyroll hosting. (They had a translator as well, but Watanabe promptly stole her job.)

One other thing I'm going to note before we get started is that this was Takei's first time talking about all this in front of an audience since Episode 12 aired. He kept looking out at the practically full auditorium (the panel was held in one of the ballrooms, so easily one of the biggest rooms at the venue) and seeing all the fans and cosplayers and just grinning from ear to ear. He was clearly very exited.

Introduction

They started off by playing a quick video recapping Season 1. (It really made me want to watch the show on a big screen. It looks great even on a projector!) After the video, Liu started in on the interview questions. Please don't take anything below as a direct quote unless it's in quotation marks; I'm not that fast with my notes, so I'm mostly paraphrasing and relying on my memory, either of which could include my own misinterpretation or just be flat-out wrong.

The first question was, how do you feel about the future of the series?

Watanabe said their passion (for creating more of the series) was burning within them.

Takei noted that when the show was initially announced at AX some years back, they were very nervous about it since they were remaking a well-known and well-loved title, but today, looking out at all the fans, he felt a lot more confident.

Behind the Scenes of Trigun Stampede

They then showed some concept art from the famed Trigun Bible. This included what Watanabe called "Vash's projection of Rem." Seems like they came up with this design before coming up with Vash's dark design.

They also shared some concept art of what most people assume to be spiky-haired Vash...

...but which Watanabe quickly noted is actually Vash in Episode 1. You know, when he's hanging upside-down. Takei added that Muto, the director, was a bit mischievous and had a tendency to lie to the staff about when certain designs would appear in the series. He apparently hid a handful of Easter eggs and foreshadowing (like Vash having spikier hair) throughout the series.

They also had some concept art of Knives and of Vash's wing.

They then showed some concept art for some friends all y'all might recognize if you read the manga....

...but in case you didn't, I'll identify the characters below:

Top Row: Vash the Stampede, Millions Knives, Meryl Stryfe, Roberto Deniro (the blank one), Legato Bluesummers

Bottom Row: Monev the Gale, Dominique the Cyclops, Leonof the Puppet-Master, E.G. the Mine, Nicholas the Punisher, Midvalley the Hornfreak, Hoppered the Gauntlet, Rai-Dei the Blade (his name doesn't actually look like Rai-Dei here, though, so they may be calling him something different or they may just be subbing in kanji; it's too small for me to tell), Grey the Ninelives, Livio the Double Fang, Zazie the Beast, Elendira the Crimsonnail

If you're sitting there thinking, "Aww, they came up with all these designs but we saw so few of them!" then I have news for you! Watanabe said we should be keeping an eye out for more of these folks in the next part.

Favorite Scenes

Next, Liu asked both of the guests about their favorite scenes, and before they got into talking about them, we were shown a video not just of the final scene, but the storyboard, the rough cut version, and the version used for dubbing, all on one screen.

Takei answered first, and he chose the scene from episode 1 where Vash goes up against Chuck Lee, a.k.a. the military policeman from July.

(The audience kept laughing at Vash's wonderfully goofy face in the storyboard.)

When asked why he loved that scene, Takei noted that everything they wanted to accomplish in Trigun Stampede was encapsulated in it. In the manga and '98, Vash is more funny and tough (although "a good-looking guy"), and here in Stampede, he's rather more wimpy (although "still a good-looking guy"). This scene is a good blend of both sides of Vash.

It also showcases a "good action scene," which he clarified by noting there aren't many anime where so much drama and emotion is centered around one bullet. Takei also noted (though it's hard to convey to you all via still images) that Muto trusted his animators to improve on the storyboards. He's not as strict as some other directors and didn't want them to feel confined to stick to it too closely, but rather wanted them to enhance what was storyboarded out as they felt was appropriate.

Which leads to Watanabe's choice for favorite scene: the one where Vash is running through his shattered memories toward Rem and finally breaks free of Knives' prison and yeets Knives himself out. (Alas, Watanabe did not, in fact, use the word "yeet.")

Watanabe said he chose this scene because he loved the details that the team added to it after the storyboarding. The storyboard just had Vash running, but they added all these subtle movements and emotion that created a much stronger impact. When the completed scene was presented in Studio Orange, all who saw it were in awe.

Upcoming Trigun Stampede Merch

First up, as many of you already know, we have the Special Edition DVD/Blu-Ray set, which is currently available via preorder on Crunchyroll.

Second up is a new Vash figure! So new they haven't finished coloring it yet, BUT they did note this will be Black Vash (a.k.a. Grape Juice Vash) from Ep. 12. Takei is particularly excited about this because he always wanted to get the Black Vash figure from back in the day, but wasn't able to, and now he's gonna be able to get his own Stampede version. This figure is actually designed by the same person who designed the Vash figures for the manga back in the day. Interestingly, after they picked him but before they met to collaborate on designs, he came up with the current design for the figure. This worked out exceedingly well, since the design Orange wanted for the figure was basically the same thing.

Also, this Vash figure will soon have a Wolfwood companion figure. Because you can't have just one of them. The Wolfwood figure is still being designed, so alas, no images of it yet.

There's also been a restock of the orders for the clothes collaboration they had with SuperGroupies before, so a bunch of that stuff will be available again soon. They're also adding a new item to the lineup, and that's a black version of the Vash jacket. (I checked their website and it looks like they might also be adding a Livio EoM jacket. Hot.)

Preview Stuff for the Next Season

Ok, first and foremost, I'm gonna note there was NO TRAILER SHOWN, so let's crush those hopes now lest they linger and lead to disappointment. What they DID show was this:

First, a preview image of the characters for the upcoming season....

TBH, the only difference I really noticed is Knives' hair seems fluffier, but new art is always nice! Also, this one looks like a win for foot, ankle, and/or hand fetishists.

Second, we got a lovely video thanks from Nightow himself!

(He said he wanted to be there, but unfortunately there wasn't a strong enough headwind for him to run to the con. And for the curious, he's wearing a Guillermo del Toro shirt.)

Nightow being a fan of Stampede and overjoyed that so many people love his story isn't new. (Wonderful, but not new.) What IS new is he drew this nice little piece of art for us all.

He said this was his first time drawing Stampede Wolfwood. He had to get them to send him 3D images of the Punisher to be able to get it right, but he enjoyed making it! He said "it felt old and new at the same time." He can't believe next year will be the series' 30th anniversary. (Congrats, OG fans. Now we can all feel old together.)

The third thing they released was this.

Given the amount of trouble I've had posting this, I'm sure plenty of you already know that the next season/final chapter is going to be called Trigun Stargaze. Liu asked Takei about this title, and Takei said something like, "I don't know what this is about. Trigun Stargaze? What's that? This is news to me." He then (after noting he had just been joking) launched into what little he could tell us about the upcoming season.

He said he can't talk about the reason for the specific title, but that manga readers can probably make some good guesses.

Trigun Stargaze will take place 2 1/2 years after Stampede. They want to keep in mind the original concept behind Stampede, that being that because the previous Trigun stories have been so amazing, what they create needs to be amazing, too. He said they're proud of what they've made so far. It went beyond your imagination. He hopes Stargaze will go beyond your imagination, too.

Cosplayer Highlight

They decided to call all the cosplayers up to the space in front of the stage next. There were SO MANY COSPLAYERS!! Foolishly, I didn't take a panorama.

Costumes included '98 and Stampede versions of Vash, Wolfwood, and Meryl, as well as a handful of Millys (Millies?), not one but TWO groups doing Barbie & Ken-styled Vash and Wolfwood (the Barbie Vashes shouted, "Hi, Barbie!" at each other when everyone went to sit back down), an old-school Legato, a Zazie, and a group fully cross-playing the characters (with Meryl and Milly being male while Vash and Wolfwood were female; they did NOT change the costumes for any of the characters).

Liu handed out prizes to a few of them (they didn't have nearly enough prizes for all of them), and then they had all the cosplayers bunch up and face the stage and the guests turn around and took a picture of everyone. (If anyone has a link to the picture anywhere, let me know and I'll add it here. No, you can't see me in it; I'm much too far over to the side.)

Guests' Closing Thoughts

They were actually running early on the panel, so Liu opened it up to any additional comments either of the guests would like to make.

Takei still seemed overwhelmed by all the cosplayers (like I said, he spent the whole panel grinning from ear to ear at the audience), and he noted he had been worried about the Stampede characters being accepted by the fans. This was his first time seeing all the cosplayers, and he said that made him "feel safe."

Watanabe said he loved looking at the "multiverse" of Trigun. It had these previous iterations, and now it has Stampede, and the fans have both adopted it and adapted it, blending the different versions together and even adding their own things, and he really appreciates that. Takei added that while they created Trigun Stampede, if in 50 or 100 years, a new Trigun series is made, that would be great.

The animation for Stargaze is in process. Watanabe said he just recently saw some of it (a clip of only a few seconds that he, of course, couldn't show us) and it blew him away.

Both Watanabe and Takei are fans of the manga and the original series, and Takei said he's really wanted this series to happen, so he hopes we all look forward to it, too.

[lowkeyrobin]

MORGAN DAVIES ; behind the scenes

summary ; childhood friends to lovers with actor pookies 🤞

warnings ; language

disclaimers ; idk specifically how the others act irl because I obviously don't know them personally, be aware that they might be a little out of character ; Conan Gray references, reader is described to have positive sensory experiences with hair and scratchy/fuzzy textures cause why not

requested by ; @callsignwidow

word count ; 1.2k

masterlist

"Hey Morg!" You smile, seeing your long-time friend leave the set, walking towards you. "How's it going?" You ask, handing him a bag of takeout food you'd just picked up for him.

He accepts it graciously with a smile. He's dressed in a blue sweatshirt and black pants, a few droplets of fake blood splattered across his blonde hair. "Thank you! And good, you wanna come up?" He asks, pointing back at the apartment complex where the movie was being shot in.

You nod with a shrug, "Yeah, let's go enter the demon possessed apartment complex"

He pats your shoulder, pulling you inside to hide away from the scorching New Zealand heat. You walk up the multiple flights of stairs, reaching the filming floor. You're happily greeted by Gabrielle and Nell, the two having been eating lunch in the hallway. Alyssa and Lily were finishing up a scene inside, prompting you to take a seat with them and Morgan.

He opens the bag and shares the chips and gauc with the girls, and opens up the styrofoam box to reveal his quesadillas.

"Those are the greasiest quessadillas I've ever seen" Gabrielle chuckles, watching Morgan use one of the shitty napkins in the bag to dab away some of the grease.

"It's Taco Bell, of course it's greasy!" He exclaims, taking a bite of the cheesey tortilla. "Right, Y/n?"

You quickly nod, rushing to his defense.

"What point are you trying to prove?"

"I dunno"

⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓

"You showed up just to ruin shit for me! I tried leaving all of you in the past for a reason! I wish you'd just stay in my memories, go away!" You shout, "There's no reason to think we could ever exist again. Get over it!"

Tears run down your cheeks and neck, dark, artificial circles under your eyes. Tear stains cover the outer corners of your eyes. Your hands were balled into fists, fingers clenched so tightly that your knuckles were turning white.

"Cut!"

You exhale, shaking hands with your costar as you step off the set. Your familiar blonde friend rushes to your side to hug you, cheering on your performance.

"That was crazy! You're so like, it's surreal when you act like that, really." A smile painting his face, arms slung around your shoulders.

The shorter, faded sides of his mullet scratch your jaw a bit, a weird comfort you found in his hugs. His hugs were always so warm and welcoming, so scratchy and fuzzy, like that childhood nostalgia of TV static. He didn't mind your hands getting lost in his hair, he knew the sensory was a positive stimulation for you, something that grounded you.

"That was so good! Holy fuck!" He smiles, patting you on the back as you fully exit your character's state of mind and thoughts, and separate theirs from yours. "That's impressive, really. You on-command cry so well!" He chuckles, patting your cheeks a few times to show you some physical love.

"Thank you, thank you" You lightly smile, accidently looking down at his lips a little too long before looking back up at his eyes.

The directors, producers, and cameramen all had their backs facing you, giving some sense of privacy as you two talk. You'd finally finished the day around nine, your tiredness apparent to Morgan. You stand far off to the side, out of everyone's way.

"C'mon, I'll take you home" He offers, leading you outside as you nod.

You'd walked here. You wanted to go home with him and just jump in your bed and sleep. You'd been up since nearly four this morning to finish up the final scenes of this movie you were working on. Finally, though, it was over.

⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓

On the car ride home, which was luckily within two hours of the final set you were on for the passion project movie you were starring in, it was relatively quiet. You couldn't sleep in the car, you rest your head against the seatbelt, and stare out the window, watching all the trees and lamp posts on the side of the highway pass by.

The blonde, driving, let you connect your phone to the radio to play music. You'd been playing some calmer music, considering you were tired and weren't in for anything upbeat.

Morgan knew the location of your home like the back of his hand, like you were his second home, because you were. Being so close for so long created a weird string between you two, something so lovely and fuzzy inside the both of you.

You drink the bottled love water out of the cupholder in the center console, which he'd brought just for you. Even though it was still cold from being in the fridge, it bubbled a warmth inside your stomach. A warmth that reminded you of the person sitting next to you. The person who gave you unconditional love and support through everything.

You end up falling asleep halfway through the drive, which he notices quickly. As you arrived at your destination, however, he had to make a decision. Either wake you up, or ruffle through your belongings, get your house keys, and carry you inside as carefully as possible.

Of course, he picked the latter.

Luckily enough, the interior lights turning on as he parked the car didn't awake you, clearly fallen into a deep slumber. He opens the door to your residence, then carries your backpack of belongings inside, then finally, you. He carefully lays you on your bed, then covers you with a light blanket that sat at the foot of your mattress.

He runs a hand through his hair before you stir, catching him off gaurd. He fills with worry and guilt, not having wanted to wake you up at all.

"Thanks, Morg" You mumble, hiding your eyes in your arm, shielding yourself from the light pouring in from the hallway and the lamp nearby. "You can spend the night if you wanna"

"Okay" He nods, "I'll be out on the couch if you need me" He turns around, walking towards your door before you stop him.

"No, like-" You speak, rubbing your eyes a bit before he quickly turns off the lamp for you. "-You can lay in here. You don't have to sleep on the couch. We've been friends for like, ever, it's fine"

"That's the problem" He mumbles

"Huh?" You hum, squinting your eyes as they adjust to the lighting, looking up at him.

He lightly sighs, "I don't wanna be just friends. Okay? And that's awful of me to say, considering you probably won't remember this because you're exhausted and we've been only friends for so long. Anyways, I'm... I'm gonna go sleep on the couch, if you need anything"

"Morgan-"

"What?"

"Come lay down, you dork"

"What?"

You roll your eyes and flop back down onto your pillow. "Get your ass to sleep next to me before I knock you out myself"

"Loud and clear," He replies, quickly scurrying to your side after turning the hallway light off. He toes his shoes off at the end of the bed and climbs into it with you, keeping distance. "So about..."

"Yeah, yeah. Goodnight, love" You reply, pulling the covers over your shoulders.

Astonished, only a singular select word is able to leave his lips.

"Goodnight"

[novelmonger]

Some highlights from the Director/Writer Commentary of The Return of the King with Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh:

As they mentioned in TTT, they were originally going to put the Smeagol vs. Deagol fight as a flashback during the Dead Marshes. Before they decided to use it to open RotK, their placeholder idea for a scene to open RotK was to do a sped-up helicopter shot from the Paths of the Dead, across the plains of Edoras, to the Golden Hall where Aragorn wakes up from a nightmare (and then goes and talks to Eowyn). Very glad they went the direction they did!

In the final shot they used when Smeagol takes the Ring out of Deagol's hand, the actor playing Deagol actually blinked, but they liked Andy Serkis' performance so much, they had Weta go in and freeze Deagol's eyes so they could use the shot XD

You know, I forget sometimes that they didn't even have Saruman in the theatrical cut at all. Boggles the mind.

In the scene where Aragorn comes out of the Golden Hall and goes to stand next to Legolas, who's looking out at the night...Viggo and Orlando weren't in the country at the same time, so they shot them separately and then put them together @_@

You know, I never thought about this before, but when Gandalf touches Pippin's face, they had to make sure his hands looked extra big! So they used an actor called Big Paul, who had the biggest hands they could find, and Ian McKellen directed him for how to move his hands in the shot XD And Big Paul is the Rohan guard who gets shoved aside when Merry and Aragorn rush up to the top of the wall to watch Gandalf and Pippin leave!

THEY SHOT A SCENE OF LEGOLAS TALKING TO TREEBEARD ABOUT THE ELVES LEAVING MIDDLE-EARTH?!?!?!?!?!?! :O Originally, it was going to link the Isengard scenes to the scene of Arwen and the other Rivendell Elves going through the forest, but then because of all the Edoras stuff in between, the connection was lost. They also said something about Legolas reciting a poem! And joked again about putting it into the 25th anniversary edition. THAT TIME IS COMING UP, PETER JACKSON!!!! I WANNA SEE THIS SCENE!!!!!!

a;lkdsjs;kdfljds;fjl NOW THEY'RE JUST TEASING US. They talked about a "library scene" during the whole sequence where Arwen goes back to Rivendell and confronts Elrond about how he saw her son, etc. They wouldn't say what happened in the "library scene," but talked about how they should include that in the 25th anniversary edition too. a;ldkfjs;dkfljsd;kfljdslfk

The people on set who had a crush on Sean Bean were called "Beanstalkers"! XD That's the best; every fan to this day ought to call themselves that!

Similarly to the scene with Legolas and Aragorn, the little bit with Legolas and Gimli as everyone's getting ready to leave Edoras was filmed separately because Orlando and John weren't in the country at the same time. So they filmed Legolas' shots with Brett, John's scale double, then filmed John's shots later, filming both of them against greenscreen. Then they took some unused footage from the Edoras set and put it in the background. It just boggles my mind how many of these cobbled-together scenes there are, because it feels so much like all the characters are together in the real location!

RED ALERT RED ALERT THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!! They mentioned Beregond!!!! 8D When talking about why they put in the scene where Pippin and Faramir talk (when Faramir says the uniform Pippin's wearing was made for him when he was a child), in order to forge the connection between them that will ultimately lead to Pippin saving Faramir's life, they talked briefly about Beregond! They describe him taking Pippin under his wing, showing him about the city, and called the relationship between them "quite sweet" :3

Another little connection between Pippin and Faramir I don't think I've ever thought about before, that apparently Billy Boyd thought about when doing these scenes, is that Pippin is the only son of the Thain of the Shire, so there may have been a certain amount of pressure and expectation on him. Obviously, he's so young and probably didn't spend too much time worrying about that while scampering about the Shire, but maybe that's something he thinks about while watching the way Faramir and Denethor interact. Maybe a contrast to the way he would interact with his own father, maybe a reminder of the way he would be scolded? Hard to say, but it's interesting to think about.

Uuuuuuughghghg, so frustrating to listen to them talking about the scene on the steps where Frodo sends Sam away DX No matter how many times and how many different ways they explain why they did it, the explanations never quite make sense to me. "We needed there to be more tension." WHY WAS IT NOT TENSE ENOUGH THAT THEY WERE GOING INTO THE LAIR OF A HUGE EVIL SPIDER?! "There wasn't really anything happening on the steps otherwise." YEAH, BECAUSE YOU PUT THE WHOLE CONVERSATION ABOUT STORIES IN THE PREVIOUS MOVIE! Also, why not just cut from one or two shots of them climbing this awful staircase to a shot of them entering the cave? "There needed to be a payoff for Gollum's scheming." WHY WAS GOLLUM BETRAYING THEM TO SHELOB NOT ENOUGH OF A PAYOFF?! "We knew InStInCtIvElY that Frodo needed to enter the cave alone." WHY? WHY?! I've never understood that. They get separated eventually in the book, so why not just ramp up the tension of that in the movie, instead of making the characters so OOC? "We knew it would shock readers of the book, and if we'd changed that, what else might we have changed?" You know...I really, really love these movies, and I appreciate what these three were able to accomplish so much...but sometimes I kind of hate them too -_-

The horses didn't want to walk down the hill on the cobbled streets of Minas Tirith, because their steel shoes were so slippery on the stones. So they all had to be re-shod with rubber shoes. What were horseshoes made of back in ye olden days, though? Iron? Did people run into the same problems back then?

I never really noticed this before, but Aragorn never wears Anduril on his belt! He straps it to his horse, and every time you see him with it, he's just holding the naked blade. This is because they made Anduril so long it was really hard for him to wear it from his belt or to pull it out of the scabbard in a natural way XD

The aerial shot of all the Rohirrim leaving Dunharrow was originally shot to show Gandalf's cart heading into the Shire, but since they didn't use it for that, they repurposed it for RotK!

To get Elijah Wood to foam at the mouth when he's stung by Shelob, they gave him two Alka-Seltzer tablets to put in his mouth and work up some foam with his saliva. I've always wondered how they do that sort of thing in movies, but no one's bothered to explain until now....

Sean Astin's audition scene was holding Frodo after Shelob ;A; Apparently, they (or at least Philippa Boyens) were a little skeptical that an American actor would be able to do Sam's character right, but actually a lot of the English actors who auditioned for the role had a hard time with the Shelob aftermath scene, but Sean nailed it :')

Other than the close-ups, they used a dummy for Faramir on the pyre most of the time. Now I'm just imagining John Noble crouching on top of the pyre, cradling a dummy XD

The first Orc that Aragorn kills on Pelennor fields is played by his son Henry! XD

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. They actually filmed Sam pushing past the sort of psychic barrier of the Watchers at the gate of Cirith Ungol, but they didn't put it into the extended edition! I love that part. Like...I'm not even sure why, but I've always thought that was such a cool little detail, and I've always been a bit bummed it wasn't in the movie, though I was thrilled to see the actual Watchers at least there as a sort of homage. And all along, they'd actually filmed something for that after all and I never knew! :O

You know, I never thought about it before, but it makes sense that they had to replace the sky digitally in a lot of scenes in Mordor, because of course when they filmed it, the sky wasn't always completely cloudy, but Mordor needs to have a complete cloud cover at all times.

When Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens first saw the footage of Sam carrying Frodo up Mt. Doom, they sent a fax (lolol 1999/2000 technology) to Sean and Elijah. They made the first page look all formal and official, and then on the second page it just said, "You made us cry." :')

Andy Serkis refused to have Gollum stand on two feet until the scene in the Crack of Doom. There were a few times that PJ directed him to lurch onto his feet or something, but Andy wouldn't do it. He wanted to show the difference in Gollum physically when he has the Ring again. What a cool detail!

Originally, the whole part where Frodo's hanging off the ledge and Sam is begging him to reach for him happens after the Ring is destroyed. It's really interesting to consider the slight nuances of how different that would be. The final version makes it almost seem like the Ring is still calling to Frodo, like he wants to fall into the lava and join it, whereas originally it was more like "I've lost the Ring and now I have nothing left to live for."

PJ made a sweet comment in the scene where everyone bows to the four hobbits: "This is a moment where there's always a huge sniffle in the audience when the movie's going, and it's usually me." XD

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! They shot scenes of what happens to the other characters when the hobbits return to the Shire! There is footage out there somewhere of what Legolas and Gimli do, what happens with Faramir and Eowyn!!!! ;aldkfjsd;fkldslfkjd 25th anniversary edition LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

[milkytheholy1]

The big screen

Request: Hello ˙˚ʚ(´◡`)ɞ˚˙

Can You do a Rise Leo x a crush fem reader were the reader is an actor for a movie as the maniac villan but she is very shy irl (maybe Leo finds a fan fiction about reader, would he read it? XD) Is ok if you don't want to do this 😅

---

The air felt thick with the amount of smoke flourishing out of the toppled-over buildings, the outlandish sounds of innocent screams and car horns were blaring in the distance. You stood there, in a circle of broken glass and debris, smirking. Your hands twisted in an unnatural way, wavering around a deep red magic, glaring with dead eyes at those who crossed your path.

"This is your last chance," you all but hissed, fingers rigid and teeth bared, "Leave me alone!"

"Annnd cut! Alright everyone, let's do a reset! (Y/N) head to make-up for some touch-ups." yelled the director, swivelling back in his chair to face the monitors. The illusion of the fake world you played in dissipated as the green screens became more apparent, the smoke machine was turned off and the speakers blaring screams was muted. With a quick sigh and a sip of water, you headed back to your trailer, awaiting your turn for make-up.

The moment you saw your trailer come into view you let out a small smile, just a few minutes' rest would feel heavenly after such a long shoot. The second the door closed you let out a long sigh, the scarlet leather of your costume moving stiffly as you flopped onto the small bed.

Unbeknownst to you there was a figure sitting on the opposite side of the van, lounging on the sofas and making himself rather comfortable, "You. Were. Amazing!" he beamed, slamming his comic book down on the counter. You jumped, completely forgetting that you had invited, well snuck, Leo onto set today. Your cheeks soon matched your coat, as you started twirling strands of hair with your finger, "You really think so?"

"Uhhh, think so? I know so!" he beamed, "I was watching the whole thing from the catwalk, you were so cool!" he stood up and posed in front of you, "This is your last chance," he crooned, trying his best to repeat the line with the same delivery as you.

You couldn't help the giggle that slipped past your lips, "Perhaps you should go back out there instead of me, you're much more suited for this role than I am." you wanted it to sound like a joke, but deep down you knew there was a lingering feeling of truth in your words. Leo groaned, "I wish I could perform out there, but I would never be able to capture the unique beauty that is you."

God you almost wanted to swoon with how gentlemen-like he was being, "What if I wasn't meant for this role, we've already done so many retakes, I just don't think I'm getting this right." you looked down towards your knees, drawing patterns in the fake dried blood and dirt. Leonardo frowned, moving to sit by you and your extremely delicate costume; which he made a note to avoid touching.

"It's normal to have reshoots and whatnot, that's show business, baby!" he keened, jazz hands reluctantly following closely behind him. But when you didn't smile he knew he needed to jack up the sincerity.  

"Heeey, you're doing amazing! There's not another actor or actress who could nail a role like that, other than you, of course." he brushed your cheek with the pad of his thumb, willing you to look at him.

"Besides, they choose you, after all. Right? You were asked to audition by the director, they chose you to play this part! That's got to mean something hasn't it?" his wide smile was infectious, it slowly but surely made its way onto your face too, "I guess you're right?" you mewled.

A knock at the door broke you both apart, Leo inclined to hide in the shadows of your trailer. With a timid voice, you spoke up "Who is it?"

"It's Tyler, the intern, I'm here to take you to hair and make-up."

You nodded your head, not like this Tyler was going to see it anyway. You turned to Leo with a grimace evident on your face, "I have to go now, I wish I didn't have to though."

"Hey, you're gonna make a killer movie!" Leo bribed, "Plus you're gonna win so many awards, maybe even an Oscar! Which I'm totally tagging along with, by the way."

You couldn't help the snort, "Go get 'em, tiger." Leo smiled, giving you an earnest thumbs up. You nodded your head, took a deep breath and swung the door to your trailer open. You were ready and you were gonna nail this. And who knows, maybe you will win an award or two?

"And the winner for best actress of the 2024 Oscars, goes to....(Y/N)!"

[ririsasy]

About the scars

During this scene when Deva was eyeing Varadha's scars (my boy Varadha was so anxious he didn't know how to tell Deva that he needs him, look at his eyes moving around because he didn't feel like he has the right toward Deva, he was ashamed but he didn't have any other choice) I was wondering how Varadha got those scars and even after I watched the movie for a couple of times I still didn't know how he got the scars lmao I thought it was just from a fight that we didn't got to see on screen, just a scar to show us from Deva's perspective how hard the life in Khansaar have been for Varadha till he even got so many scars now on his body that Deva didn't even know about.

But they did show us how Varadha got the scars!! (I realized it when I watched it again tonight with my sis lol that's why I feel like the more I watch this movie the more I can appreciate Prashanth Neel as a director, he is so meticulous, I mean look at his blatant close up shot so we could see Varadha's fresh scars (and yet it escaped me for a couple of time lmao sorry Prashanth but your movie still so campy! Forgive me for losing focus) and he likes to call back on scenes making it like one perfect loops and Salaar is his masterpiece). It was from a first fight that break loose with Rangaa's gang that cause the whole ceasefire. probably from ranga's own blade because he was carrying a blade as he was running yet again toward Varadha before Rudra called him. It was fresh deep cut in this scene. That's how he got the scars, Rangaa made those scars 😭

Because here when he was first announced that he would be a Lord again he didn't get those scars on his face or behind his ear yet.

I was wondering how Deva going to take revenge to the person who put those scars on Varadha, they have solved everything apparently lol just like the way Deva would have wanted it, precisely like how that person wanted to cause harm to Varadha. Rudra said that Rangaa wanted to slit Varadha's throat when he barked in wanting to take Varadha's nose ring. And yes Ranga died by Varadha's blade as he slit his throat and Deva was there beside him watching like a grim reaper that he was when it came to making sure that vengeance is served according to their own threat to Varadha. (They can stab him or cut his head off or give him to his own rabid people that he made and let them consume him or whatever and yet he died by getting his throat slit open because this couple, varadeva, they both crazy and like to keep score.)

(Rudra boy just so you wait for your prideful mannar tribe nose ring you keep taunting Varadha with I can't wait for Deva to pull it off of you).

[the-labyrinth-of-me]

Alan Wake 2 revived and expanded my love for art.

Long read under the cut

I used to read a lot as a kid. It was the first thing I did in the morning on the weekends - grab the book I was currently reading from the nightstand and continue where I had left off the other day, then go and have breakfast later. I didn't like the other language related stuff I did at school - although I was always good at it - like reading and learning poems, interpretations, the likes. I needed fiction to dive into. As I arrived in the late teenage years, I stopped reading completely, and discovered my love for music. That never faded, but reading was an interest that had simply died. When I moved out from my parent's and into an apartment with my boyfriend, I started watching movies and shows, which I never properly could at home since I didn't have my own television. Life was okay back then, ups and downs, nothing out of the ordinary. We played Alan Wake for the ole XBox 360, simply because my boyfriend was a passionate reader and the game was about a writer lol. I had so many books around because of my boyfriend , but almost never grabbed one of them (aside from Game of Thrones and maybe a handful of others, at most).

I never viewed all of those creations, those art forms, as art, however. For me, art was always reduced and exclusive to weird sculptures and undefined paintings. Stuff nobody could understand. If it's not making sense, it's art. Nothing from the entertainment field especially. And entertainment never was art for me.

A few years ago, my private situation changed. Boyfriend and I got married and we started a family. That's when entertainment related art became a sort of escapism for me. Something I could dive into rather than family business. I still didn't connect the things I was into back then as art. That only changed when I was captivated by Alan Wake 2. This game single-handedly changed my understanding and tolerance not only for my favorite forms of art (namely music and video games), but got me into exploring for myself what art is. Listening to interviews with people involved in making this game also contributed to that as they talked a lot about art. As per usual with my hyperfixations, I thought about this game, the characters and the storyline a lot and jumped into all kinds of rabbit holes. And one day, I realized that this game that is highly revolving about artists (as per the Dark Presence's nature) does in fact not feature many, many kinds of art, but can truly be called an artistic work, and is an ode, a homage to art. This game celebrates art and its existence and it doesn't tell you which form of art is better and which one is worse. It cherishes and values anything that resembles and represents art, cherishes and values creators. Artists. Poets. Novelists. Photographers. Musicians. Actors. Directors. Filmmakers. Painters. Video game delelopers. Even fan fiction authors. It is those that make fun of these art forms that the game reprimands and punishes. Hartman and the Mormants namely for abusing artists, only seeing them as tools, as content creators for the sake of creating anything, as long as it fulfils a selfish purpose. The game takes us on the journey of creating, of success and failure, try and error, rewriting, scratching, editing, more drafts, doubts, depression, the list goes on. Also addiction. Apparently, Stephen King wrote some of his books while he was drunk and he couldn't remember later what he even wrote (hello to Alan and his memory problems). Artist's addiction definitely is a subject in the game. It helps them see and expand their creativity, yes, but also causes problems, naturally.

So what is art? It's anything that triggers an emotion, basically. A song that deeply touches you. A painting that reveals more its beauty the longer you observe it. The composition of nature, captured in a photograph. The Dark Presence feeds on emotions. Alan can't escape from the Dark Place until he ties emotions into his story through Saga. His work doesn't work without emotions. And if a certain kind of art form doesn't resonate with you, try another one. During an interview, Ilkka said "never only choose one form of art, always be open for others". I tried to follow his advice and he's right about it. And I found out that, by engaging with art, you might discover a thing or two about yourself as well, because art is tied to your emotions. It's a journey through your memories, your soul, your feelings. I discovered that I appreciate art much more than I thought, and I could kiss Sam Lake simply for the Lake House DLC and its take on ai art, and the exploration of what art is, when art is art, who defines if and when someone is an artist. It's an interesting thought process that I haven't finished for myself. Sam also taught me to always carry something to write in case you get an idea for a story lol.

What did the game ultimately bring for me, then? How did and do I profit from it? Well, first of all, I joined an English writing and reading club in my hometown. I'm more comfortable to talk openly about my fanfics. I got back into reading. (roughly 150 pages left in House of Leaves). I'm more sensitive to the beauty of nature, which I try to capture in photos. It kind of feels like a piece of a puzzle I've been missing without realizing it. It has only happened once so far that a piece of media has had such a huge impact on me before (rest in peace Arthur). And the Alan Wake community is so lovely too.

I would go as far as to say that art is arguably the biggest invention of the human race. Not only because the existence of art can be traced back to thousands of years ago. But because engaging with art causes to trigger what I define as our most important trait: emotions. Sometimes I wonder if people who don't have an interest in any art form see and feel the world in a different way. If they might even be disconnected from their emotions in some point, from their vulnerability. Art makes us vulnerable. This can be scary. But, like I said, it's worth the journey to discover more about ourselves. Because without art, we'd just be apes.

[pedripics]

https://www.tumblr.com/pedripics/759636813878099968/imagine-there-wasnt-snow

what’s the backstory to pedri’s signing? 👀

this is a bit of a longer story but i am gonna try and sum it up under the cut

When Pedri was still playing for Juventud Laguna in Tenerife (he was 13/14 years old back then) various clubs across Spain were interested in him including Real Madrid, Villarreal, Atlético Madrid and Deportivo de La Coruña. He did some trials at CD Tenerife, but they told him that he was too skinny and small. He also had a trial at Real Madrid, but they ended up telling him that he wasn't good enough yet and not on their level. CD Tenerife ended up being interested a year later, but Pedri chose Las Palmas over them in 2018 (by telling them that "he is still skinny and short" lmao). Back when he was doing the trials at Real Madrid, everyone at his family's Peña tried to contact Barça to tell them that they had a player who is basically Barça to the core, but Barça's scouts weren't interested in him for whatever reason. Toni Otero, Las Palmas' technical secretary at the time, who also signed Pedri's first contract at Las Palmas, had worked at Barça as a scout for two years prior to joining Las Palmas. He decided to contact former Barça midfielder José Mari Bakero, who was the head of the youth academy at Barça at the time, after seeing Pedri play for just ten minutes because he was convinced that Pedri needed to be a Barça player. He told him, that even if Pedri is just 16 years old, he needs to fly to Gran Canaria to check him out because it will be easier to sign him now instead of in a few years as there were multiple other clubs interested. Bakero flew to watch Pedri play and was instantly convinced, so he contacted Ramón Planes, Barça's technical secretary at the time, to tell him about Pedri. Planes had simultaneously also been contacted by Rocco Maiorino, Las Palmas sporting director at the time, because Maiorino was also convinced that Pedri was made for Barça. Ramón Planes decided that they had to sign Pedri quickly and basically begged Bartomeu to pay the money for Pedri as there were several board members who didn't want to take the risk and invest in a 16-year-old boy who had barely made his debut in the second division. He created a WhatsApp group chat with scouts, executive members and people from the board and after every match Pedri played for Las Palmas he would send in videos of Pedri's performances to try and convince them. Even after he managed to convince them, he kept on sending videos of, in his words, "every good shot of Pedri" to convince them that the investment was worth it. By the time Barça got involved, there were various offers from other clubs on the table (some with more money involved as well) but Pedri only wanted Barça. The original plan was for Pedri to do the pre-season in 2020 with Barça and then go out on loan, as Koeman thought that Pedri was still too young for the first team. He had offers from various teams including Bayern, PSV Eindhoven, Ajax and Dortmund, and Bayern even sent in an offer to buy Pedri for apparently €12 million just two days after the 8-2 but Pedri and the club refused. However, Pedri managed to convince Koeman during pre-season and well, the rest is history.

[salty-dracon]

POV: You're a tired college student sitting in the lecture hall before Reca's class in 2.6

(written entirely based on the 2.6 trailer)

(update: I have never written anything so inaccurate in my life I wanna curl up into a ball orz )

You're attending Penacony's Paperfold University College. It's the middle of the night (it's Golden Hour, Penacony, it's always the middle of the night, good luck waking up on time for your classes LMAO) with a professor your film major buddies have only described as "passionate" and one outwardly finds super weird. You looked him up on the universe's equivalent of RateMyProfessor and he's sitting at 3.5 out of 5 stars because no one can live up to his exacting standards and also he's apparently a little crazy? Like you've had sadistic professors who loved failing their students, but you'd think they would mention that in the reviews. So who knows what that means. Hopefully nothing bad.

Anyway this is just a one-time seminar for fun so you're thankful, but the art building sucks. You're sitting in the coldest, draftiest lecture hall you've ever seen. You can hear the radiator hissing. The desks are so scratched and cut-up they look like they might give you splinters. For how many years have these desks existed? How many generations of animators and film people have been taking notes on this thing? Is this what all film majors have to suffer through? Hell, is this what all art majors have to suffer through? Thank goodness you're... not that.

And there's a chalkboard. If there's one thing you don't need when you're this exhausted, it's the sound of chalk squeaking on a chalkboard.

And while you're watching the seconds tick by, in walks a trio of people your age. and you're looking at them and you're like, none of them have ever been to a college before. (Probably offworlders.)

Like there's this guy with black hair who's just super quiet (way too quiet, and way too serious) but when's the last time you saw a college student carrying around a fresh case bound notebook that doesn't look like it was bought at the mall? Those things get destroyed if you carry them around in your bookbag for too long- you figured that out your first week. He looks way too ready to take notes amidst the background noise. He's writing the planet name, system date, and "Seminar with the film director Mr. Reca" at the top of that expensive looking notebook's second page. And the ink isn't feathering or bleeding through the page. Your animation friend would probably be obsessed with that paper, she keeps going on about how important good paper is, but you can't afford the stuff. Maybe you should ask him the brand later.

And he's being talked at by a pair of chatterboxes. One of them is, once again, way too well-dressed to be a habitual college student. She did her clothes up in blue, pink, and white to match her hair and eyes. It's pretty cute, all things considered- you wish you still had the energy to dress up like that at 6am. Maybe you should ask her for fashion advice. The pitch of her voice rises above the din of the room. "Ooooooh, I can't wait! This is going to be so cool! A seminar by a real film director! It's a shame Mr. Yang couldn't attend. He'd love this kind of stuff!".

The second chatterbox is this snarky looking person you can't really get a read on. They didn't even bring a notebook. They outright state they've never been to a college before. And now they're going on and on, trying to compare this lecture hall to buildings on planets you've never really heard of. "A museum on the cold, frosty planet Jarilo-IV"- your mind wanders for a moment as you consider what that would be like. Still, something about them seems to signal that they're a singularity of experience. They've probably seen more in a system year than you have in your entire lifetime. That might be why they keep speaking in words you don't understand. What's a 'surprised Pikachu face'? Must be one of those jokes that only makes sense if you were there to witness it.

Yeah, this strange-looking friend group is probably from off world. And they're probably adventurers at that. They probably don't want to be bothered with the ramblings of a tired college student.

The door opens. You hear leather boots on a wood floor, and the room quiets with the weight of a man's presence. He's finally here.

You sure hope everything goes smoothly. Getting stuck in the Oak Family's dream ruined your weekend that one time, but that was a long time ago. Seriously, what's the worst that could happen? The professor traps the room in some kind of film reel dimension and a horde of monkeys attacks the campus? ... Nah, that would never happen.

[pharawee]

Sorry to bug you, but could you give me the cliffs notes on what happened to Best and Chahub and the issues with 9naa? Thank you

Sure thing!

So basically when Best and Chahub's series Check Out first aired on iqiyi it was unavailable to watch in many countries. This prompted the director of the series to give an interview saying that the series was too explicit to show on any other platform such as youtube, and that they were looking into maybe broadcasting it via onlyfans.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with onlyfans and what it's used for, but you could argue that it's a very strange thing to say for a professional director who would probably be better off showing his series on other platforms more suited to traditional longform entertainment (like gagaoolala, the patron saint of queer media 🙏).

Add to that that pornography is illegal in Thailand, and any mentioning of it in an actor's portfolio is probably... not that great.

The director further said that during the filming of the intimate scenes they decided to do away with all protective clothing because it just couldn't be done otherwise (decades of spicy scenes in film beg to differ but ok). The actors were fully naked. They didn't decide this beforehand but directly on set. Many fans have later speculated that due to the stressful and time-sensitive nature of a film set, this might have been coercive and exploitative.

The scenes that were later shown in the series were actually not especially spicy. Certainly not spicy enough to call them "25+". Actually, they were so unremarkable (as far as spicy scenes go) that the series has since been re-released on youtube (albeit probably as a cut version? I'm not sure. I haven't watched it) - the very platform 9naa was so sure would ban them if they even so much as looked at the upload button.

Throughout the whole shock value promotion (because what else could it possibly have been?) the actors themselves stayed strangely quiet. They're apparently on record saying that they value their intimate scenes as art. That's it. There was no further promo. There were no follow-up jobs. Best and Chahub weren't in the special ep (according to mdl Best was but I can't remember him showing up hm). They were either quietly dropped by 9naa or bid their time until their contracts expired.

None of this is especially scummy or even illegal (at least as far as we know). It does leave a sour aftertaste however, because companies like 9naa always have the upper hand over their actors. A lot would have to happen for an (inexperienced) actor to speak up because breaking contracts and NDAs would mean losing their jobs and potentially being blacklisted and/or sued (even Yoon Phusanu only came forward after Y.Ent had already broken contract by not paying him until a set date).

So if a company makes weirdly sensational claims that they later either conveniently forget about or passive-aggressively backtrack on, then that's weird. If they show no interest in promoting their own talent and have a strangely high turnover rate for rookie actors, then that's even weirder.

And this isn't an isolated case. 9naa had a whole series planned with MFlow Entertainment. Beyond the Star was supposed to star actors from both companies, only for MFlow to later finish and broadcast the series on their own due to "differences in vision and work attitudes", editing out as many of 9naa's actors as they could. Weird, don't you think?

And, most recently, Cheque Wacharawee (from 9naa's Venus in the Sky) withdrew from any follow-up projects in a letter posted to his instagram because he had concerns due to work attitudes and couldn't even reach 9naa's lawyer (notice that he too only spoke up after 9naa had already violated his contract). 9naa reacted days later with their own very subdued announcement that has since been deleted. Very, very weird.

Who do you think is to blame here? The actors (most of whom are inexperienced and in Chahub's case haven't really acted since), MFlow (a small but reliable company that makes series that aren't always the most cohesive but at least the actors seem happy 🙏) or 9naa who's at the centre of it all?

Personally, as a fan of both Best Vittawin and Cheque Wacharawee, I've decided to no longer support or watch anything by 9naa. Kiseki Chapter 2 sounds nice and I hope its leads are doing well. Maybe the company has since learned from their previous unprofessionalism but people should at least be aware that they have something of a shady track record.

And if you want to support Best, you can watch his new series Knock Knock Boys which is set to release soon. 💜

[suzukiblu]

WIP Wednesday: Congratulations it's a metaweapon

“I don't give a shit what you think!” Superboy snaps at Spence, so apparently he didn't hear Beta either. “We're leaving now, so back the fuck off before I make you back off!” 

“Not a chance, brat,” Spence snorts. “Guards, grab the–” 

“Subject Match,” Beta cuts her off with, watching Superboy with narrow, still-wary eyes. “You heard your father. You're leaving with him.” 

“What the hell are you talking about, Erica?!” Gamma demands incredulously as everyone else in the room stares at her, Match included. That's not something in his programming or a contingency plan in any of his uploads. 

Beta definitely knows something the other directors don't, Match thinks, eyeing her assessingly. And something Spence doesn't, too.

[franki-lew-yo]

Finally was able to watch Le Petite Vampire from 2020, which interested me the moment I saw it was made by the director of The Rabbi's Cat.

Flawed but cute. More thoughts under the cut

Captain of the Dead (Little Vampire's adopted dad) is 100% tumblr sexyman material that's collecting dust. I had to draw him with Pandora. But, speaking of that...

The plotpoint surrounding the Gibbous (the villain) and Sleeping Belle (CotD's sentient ship)... well no matter what it would always have detractors since Gibbous is the incely villain and the movie basically forgets that at the end with them- which, to be clear, is fair. But, even as someone who likes a 'and then the villain changed/found love in someone else' theme I thought it was poorly handled. Imagine if the Diamonds in Steven Universe was amplified to 100. Don't do this to villains.

The first time I watched it (and subsequent viewings in English) I didn't know that Gibbous had apparently zapped Sleeping Belle's memory- they didn't make that part entirely clear. I just knew ''wow um, that's rushed and also NO don't have him leave his moonman motif and her be normal size- GROSS". Upon learning that that was the intent in the original french I was mad.

No!! This is my version of the ending and YOU ARE GONNA LIKE IT!!

((pic of Pandora watching Captain and Little Vampire sleep is unrelated))

mincing manboy moonface x giant undead pirateship mermaid lady or die. We could have had it all but you played me to the beat.

Also they kind of forgot about the elderitch snot thing at the start of the film but okay...

[loonarii]

MADE IN KOREA: EP. 1 (my thoughts on the tv show for that british kpop bg sm decided to do for some unknown reason)

So if you didn't hear, SM Entertainment is the latest kpop company to dip their toes into the concept of a western kpop group - we had VCHA from JYP and their show A2K, KATSEYE from HYBE with their show Dream Academy (and I believe upcoming Netflix docu-series?), and now we have 'Dear Alice' from SM with the show 'Made In Korea: The K-Pop Experience'. Unlike the previous two groups, Dear Alice is a boy group, and are specifically all British, whereas the girls of VCHA and KATSEYE are from all over the world. As your local british kpop stan with access to BBC iPlayer (where this show is streaming) I decided to watch and drop my thoughts on the show and see if its any good, basically.

Right off the bat, the pitch to SM was clearly: 'we will make you a new One Direction' - like you can easily pick out of the lineup who is supposed to be Harry and Zayn and so on. It's not a stupid idea because after South Korea, the UK is probably the biggest exporter of music groups beloved internationally, but I doubt whether kpop stans will take to this well. At least they are promoting this on the BBC, directly to the UK, which is presumably their target audience.

They keep calling this whole thing an 'experiment' which it obviously is, but the higher ups at SM seems to be very on edge about the whole thing - after the groups first performance to Heejun (the director basically) she called a fucking emergency meeting with the SM team and the british producers - there generally seems to be a lack of confidence in the success of the group.

In the beginning of the episode they briefly mention (but for the most part gloss over) the audition process for this show, claiming they chose the five boys for their talents in singing and dance. Throughout the episode though it becomes apparently clear though that they (in the nicest way possible) don't really hold a candle to the debuted idols from SM. The whole show is based on this 'make a british kpop group in 100 days' gimmick, but the truth of the matter is you need a lot more than 100 days to become idol level good at dancing and singing - most idols train for 2 years minimum, some upwards of 6. I have no idea why they didn't choose boys with more preexisting skill in the audition process, or just give them longer to train - perhaps there could've been a bootcamp for a month before the going to korea bit to build basic skills - none of the 5 seem to be overly familiar with the kpop industry and it seems that pretty much all of their context as to what is expected of an idol is drawn from the SMTOWN concert they attended before their training began. They came off as quite unprepared, and Heejun's harsh comments to them in their evaluation clearly came as bit of a surprise to them. It is only episode one though, so i think if anything, now they know the level they are supposed to be at.

All of them apparently have a background in theatre or dance in some capacity (one of them is a tiktoker... ok) but only Dexter and maybe Reese struck me as having much aptitude for kpop dancing, but again it is only episode one so I'll cut them a little bit of slack. They struggled a lot with coordination and accuracy, but from my perspective as a dancer myself and kpop stan, the dance they learned to their song 'Feel the Vibe' (we will get to that don't worry lol) was not what I would call hugely difficult?? the members other than Dexter lacked a lot of fluidity but none of them were awful and I think with a lot more training they could be quite good. Olly seemed to struggle a lot with the dance, and there was some chatter from the producers that members could be cut, and if I had to guess anyone right now to be dropped (momentarily, I'm assuming anyone they kick is going to pull a Momo and be brought back) it would be him.

The song 'feel the vibe' is like.. what you would get if you asked an AI to spit out a 'boy group song' - it has a little bit of RIIZE energy so I wouldn't be surprised if this was an abandoned demo of theirs, but it also feels a little kidz bop? lmao? It's fine basically, not very exciting but not totally unlistenable. My main concern is that its quite a high song especially in the chorus, and the boys seem to struggle to hit the notes. Giving them a song that is out of almost all of their ranges is kind of setting them up to fail especially when they had a week only to learn it. Their poor vocal performance also explains why Heejun was so unconfident in this groups success - SM is is the kpop company known for its vocalists, being able to sing like Ningning or Taeyeon may not be necessary to succeed and debut in other big companies, but in SM vocals are crucial. Again they did only have a week, so at the very least potential is there.

They did a lot of b-roll content of them seeing the sights of Seoul, they did a gangnam style bit (god help me) met with Shindong (...), met RIIZE and TEN of WayV etc etc which was cool i guess - i hope this is a mainstay in the series and not just an introductory element.

Overall the show is not boring by any means, if a little cringey at times, my only concern is that the group that will emerge on the other side will not be up to par? I guess we will see.

[duhragonball]

End of Evangelion: 25'

Yeah... that's...

"You don't understand!" is pretty much Neon Genesis Evangelion in a nutshell.

Or "You do (not) understand! (true²) Director's Cut" is how the franchise would put it.

Let's just get on with this.

I watched End of Evangelion last night. Well, early A.M. I took a nap and woke up at midnight and it seemed like the right time to watch a thing like this.

I did not enjoy the movie. I'll explain this, of course, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. There are positives, sure, but I went into this thing hoping for a more satisfying conclusion than what was presented in the TV show, and I didn't get it. Both endings suck. There you go.

Let me back up a bit. So the TV series ran from 1995 to 1996. The final episodes, 25 and 26, were controversial because they were expected to wrap up the whole story, but instead they went in a bizarrely abstract direction. Both of those episodes apparently take place inside Shinji Ikari's mind as he struggles to accept being part of a collective gestalt of every human mind on Earth. This is the result of the "Human Instrumentality Project" a concept mentioned in Episodes 1 -24, but never adequately explained. The final episodes just skip past the part where Human Instrumentality was achieved and shows the result, without bothering to discuss the background or the cause, or the long-term ramifications.

From what I gather, the main reason Episodes 25 and 26 were Like That was because the studio was short on time and money, so a more satisfying conclusion was not practical. But since the series turned out to be so successful, they were able to take another crack at it with End of Evangelion. The film is very clear about its purpose as an "alternative" to Episodes 25 and 26. It's divided into two sections, numbered 25' and 26'.

I'm not sure the viewer is expected to pick one over the other. The original 25&26 take place in Shinji's mind when Human Instrumentality happens. 25' and 26' take place in the outside world, showing the events leading to Human Instrumentality and the aftermath. There may be some continuity issues to iron out, but a fan could easily accept both endings as canon.

That's not my problem here. The problem is not that there are multiple endings, or that the endings are too "abstract", or that the endings aren't "happy". Fundamentally, my gripe is that the endings are confusing. Perhaps it might be said that the endings are pathologically confusing.

I think this is one of those Big, Emotionally Raw Works, where you can't really discuss it without revealing something about yourself in the process. So let's do that. End of Evangelion makes me feel stupid. There's parts of the movie where I'm just completely confused and I have no idea what is happening or why. It feels less like entertainment and more like I'm about to take a test I didn't study for.

Except I did study, because I've literally been taking notes on this thing for the past three weeks. I was looking forward to this, and last night I'm near the end of the movie wondering what the hell I'm going to write here, because I don't understand what the hell happened in the movie.

So I poked around a fan wiki for a bit, trying to get a handle on some of the major concepts, and as I read the articles, I realized that a lot of this information just stone cold never made it into the TV show or the movie. There was one thing I looked up that had to reference a Playstation 2 game that released six years after the movie premiered.

It's not that I'm too stupid to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's that the franchise appears deliberately designed to hide information from the viewer. You're just supposed to roll with it, I guess. Or spend days researching all this side material. Read the manga, read the wiki, read fan commentaries. I hate this. I hate this so much.

So maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe the anime was just badly designed. That would be comforting, except I still feel stupid for investing so much time into trying to understand this thing that seems purposely rigged to defy understanding. It's not just the ending. That's what everyone talks about, but the ending is just a symptom of a bigger problem. The beginning is really slow. Then the middle starts to get weird, and there's a lot of mysteries and subplots and lore that gets set up with the implied promise that "we'll explain later". And the ending(s) drop that ball. The surgery was a success, but the patient died.

I feel stupid because I got a reply to one of my liveblog posts, I think Episode 12, in response to some comment I made about all the characters having the same backstory. Ritsuko has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother. Misato has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist father. Shinji has a complicated relationship with his workaholic scientist father. Is that a theme or did they only have one idea? My point is that eventually it stops being clever and starts being redundant. Later, we learn that Asuka has... a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother.

"What, are you stupid?" asked the reply guy to my wry observation. They deleted it a few minutes after I saw it, so maybe they felt some remorse over the comment. Normally, I let these things slide. I might respond if I get legitimately hot about it. But this one got to me. "Am I stupid?" I asked myself last week. I seem to be complaining a lot about this show, but it's supposed to be a classic. Am I not giving it a chance? Am I missing something here? Am I just not smart enough to appreciate this thing? Am I just not trying hard enough?

If you're reading this, Reply Guy, please know that I didn't take it personally. I'm not upset with you at all, but I am trying to be honest with myself about this. This Neon Genesis Evangelion business has been frustrating me all month long. Now I'm at the end and it all feels very hollow, like I wasted my time.

I think that's my philosophy on life. I try to seek out new things to explore, usually stories, and sometimes they don't work out the way I wanted them to, and that's okay, because it's the journey that counts. Shinji Ikari keeps shutting down throughout his story, asking why he should bother doing anything, because he's too terrified of the possible outcomes of his actions. My thing is that bad stuff happens all the time no matter what, and you just sort of have to recover and move forward, because that's the only way to see what happens next. So I'm not sure if I can relate to Shinji or not.

Anyway, let's talk about Shinji masturbating in a hospital room over Asuka's comatose body.

I had heard about this scene, but I didn't realize how long and pathetic it is. Asuka had a nervous breakdown in Episode 23. This movie has to follow up on that, becuase Episodes 24, 25, and 26 each refused to pick up on her character arc.

Meanwhile, Shinji is wracked with guilt and dread over his battle with the 17th Angel in Episode 24. He had to kill Kaworu, but in spite of Kaworu's betrayal, he was still a friend to Shinji when he needed it the most, and he was such a good sport about getting killed, you know?

So this movie has to get us back to that moment, when Shinji and Asuka are at their lowest ebb, and I guess they decided that Shinji should go see her in the hospital because he's desperate to talk to someone about what's he's been going through. But Asuka's unresponsive, so he starts shaking her like he's trying to wake her up. Instead she just rolls over, which somehow exposes her half-naked body, and Shinji is so overcome with lust that he rubs one out right there and then. Doesn't even get a Kleenex, doesn't find a place to sit, he just whips it out and goes to town right in front of her.

I guess this is supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't land. It's not even a matter of the joke not aging well. Yeah, this is a 27 year old movie, but Shinji admits this is terrible behavior almost immediately. The "joke" didn't age at all. It was stillborn. This is like when you go to a graveyard and you see one of the tiny graves and the dates are from the same year. That's how funny this is.

The most charitable reading I can give this scene is that it represents the hypocrisy of Shinji's whole deal. He constantly insists that he can only do as he's told, because he's afraid of people not liking him if he makes a mistake or thinks for himself. But here he's doing some pretty disgraceful shit, and I sure as fuck didn't tell him to do this. did you? Did anyone? Of course not. He goes limp for most of the rest of the movie, but not here. Nossir. Seems pretty sure of himself in the minute or so it took him to finish his business.

The other aspect of Shinji on display here is that his ideal social interactions are one-sided. He's most comfortable with people when they can't see what he's doing, when they can't touch him back. That's why he wished for isolation in Episode 25. Here, with Asuka unresponsive, he's basically got the same thing.

I suppose the flip side of this is when Asuka kissed Shinji in the TV series. Her hangups are kind of the opposite of his, where she wants to be in charge of everything and everyone constantly showers her with praise for her achievements. She wants to kiss Shinji but she can't be vulnerable enough to admit that, so she orders him to just stand there and be kissed because she wants to "pass the time". And she makes him hold his nose shut because she doesn't want to be breathed on while she does it. I mean, they both have intimacy issues, but at least Shinji had a chance to consent to her weirdness.

In the NERV base, the crew wonder why they're still on alert status, since the last Angel was defeated. There should be no more threats, and it kind of makes sense for NERV to be disbanded. The only business left is the Human Instrumentality Project, and none of these ham-and-eggers know what that is.

But Misato has some information about it, which she mulls over while she's in her car. I guess? Let me explain this in more detail, because the movie never totally gets into the "why" of it all.

Okay, so the SEELE group has access to something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls". According to the NGE wiki, SEELE got it from the two angels that came to Earth, Adam and Lilith, in the distant past. SEELE has used the information contained in the scrolls to establish themselves as the secret rulers of the whole world. And they founded NERV, and its predecessor organizations, to study the Angels and figure out how to preserve the human race.

They talk a lot about Second Impact on this show, but they never explain exactly what caused it. Second Impact was not a meteorite strike or a rampaging angel who self-destructed, or even a lab accident. It was caused deliberately by SEELE, as part of an effort to contain Adam, who lay dormant in Antarctica.

If I understand correctly, this was necessary because at some point, Second Impact would occur anyway, and then Adam's children, the fifteen Angels we saw in the TV series, would come looking for Adam's body and unite with it, triggering a Third Impact that would definitely wipe out humanity. This is all supposedly explained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So SEELE's play was to trigger Second Impact deliberately, so that they could confront the Angels on their own terms. This gave NERV time to develop the Evas to fight the Angels, and to shrink Adam down to a more manageable size so he'd be harder to find.

Once the Angels were all defeated, SEELE could then trigger Third Impact. See, the TV series made it seem like the objective was to prevent Third Impact, but that was never possible. Third Impact is inevitable, I guess, so the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to evolve humans into something that can withstand the disaster. Thus, the Human Instrumentality Project, which will combine all human minds into some sort of disembodied superorganism at the moment of Third Impact.

However, throughout the TV series, SEELE has butted heads with the NERV Director, Gendo Ikari, about how this plan is to be implemented. Gendo wants to transform humanity into something new. But SEELE seems to want to retain their human nature and just use the plan as a lifeboat until the disaster has passed. At least, I think that's the disagreement here. Like I said, I had to learn about SEELE's agenda from the description of the PS2 game. It's not exactly a shock that the cabal of worldly oligarchs should want to save themselves and hold onto their wealth and power at the same time.

Gendo, on the other hand, seems mostly fixated on reuniting with his wife, Yui Ikari, who apparently died in 2004 during an experiment with Eva Unit 01. In the TV series, it was heavily implied that Yui lives on inside of Unit 01. Since Gendo's version of Human Instrumentality involves drawing up human minds into a noncorporeal union, I guess he figures that this will include Yui's mind, even if she has no body. It's unclear in this movie if Gendo actually intends to include anyone but himself and Yui in this merger, but in Episodes 25 and 26 of the TV show, Human Instrumentality is presented like it's all humans, even dead ones, and Gendo Ikari talked about it like that's what his version of Third Impact was supposed to be.

I suppose the only thing keeping Gendo and SEELE from turning on each other was the Angel threat, but now that this is over, SEELE attacks. First they try to hack NERV's supercomputers, but this is foiled when they recruit the aid of...

...Ritsuko Akagai, who betrayed NERV in Episode 23 when she destroyed all the Rei clones they had in storage. But she's the only one smart enough with computers to block the hack, so she crawls back inside one of them and uses her dead mother's notes to build a more robust firewall or something. I think she j-pegged a RAM or something, I don't know.

Ritsuko wonders why she's even bothering, since she already turned on Gendo. They had been banging on the down-low, but she got fed up with him when she realized he loved his dead wife more than Ritsuko or her mother, who also used to bang Gendo on the down-low.

With that cyberattack fended off, NERV now has to brace for an actual attack. Admiral Clownshoes notes the irony of NERV defeating all those Angels, only for their final opponent to be the humans they were trying to save.

Tactically, the entire battle is a formality. SEELE runs the whole world, and they can send wave after wave of soldiers into the NERV facility, which is already badly weakened after months of Angel attacks and budget cuts. NERV's defenses were designed for dealing with Angels, and their greatest weapons were the Evas, except Unit-00 was destroyed in Episode 22, and Unit-02's pilot has lost the ability to sync. Nonetheless, Misato wants the pilot kids secured, since she knows SEELE's goons will try to take them out first. She orders Shinji to deploy in Unit-01, and even though Asuka's in no condition to fight, she has her put in Unit-02 and then sent to the bottom of the lake. It's not much of a hiding place, but at least she'll be safer there than inside the base.

Where's Rei? Well, no one can find her, but she's gone down to the room where they keep Lilith and she's soaking in that orange goop they have down there.

Perhaps anticipating this, Gendo excuses himself and orders Clownshoes to take over the defense of the base. Clownshoes seems to know what he's up to, and sends his regards to Gendo's dead wife.

At this point, it's basically a race to see who can trigger their version of Third Impact first. SEELE wanted to use the Lance of Longinus and Lilith somehow, but since the Lance is in space now, they now plan to use Unit-01, the only Eva created from Lilith. That's what makes it special, apparently. Units 00 and 02 were made from Adam, I guess?

Anyway, Gendo plans to do it by combining Adam and Lillith together. He's got Adam's body within his own, and he wants to join with Rei, who contains some essence of Lillith. This was Rei's main purpose all along, I think.

Meanwhile, Misato leaves her post to find Shinji, who was sulking in some corner instead of reporting to his Eva like she ordered. She saves him from some goons, but they're cut off from Unit-01, so she has to find a way to get him where he needs to go. She also has to convince him to cooperate, since Shinji's completely gone to mush in the midst of this new crisis.

As she drives him to where they need to go, she explains (most of) the necessary backstory to him. Second Impact was triggered deliberately to buy time for Human Instrumentality, and humans are descended from Lilith, just as the Angels came from Adam. So in that sence, the human species is collectively the 18th Angel, just another candidate to inherit the future of Earth. Humans, like any of the fifteen Angels spawned from Adam, have the opportunity to trigger Third Impact and secure their place as the dominant life form of Earth, but we had to beat all the Angels first to do it, and then find a way to survive Third Impact when it finally happened.

And while Gendo plans to do with with Adam and Lilith, SEELE wants to use the Eva series, somehow, so it's vital that Shinji use Unit-01 to destroy all the other Evas.

Speaking of destroying Evas, Asuka finally wakes up in Unit-02, which is currently getting battered with depth charges. She still can't control the Eva, and she just keeps whimpering that she doesn't want to die. Eventually, she hears her dead mother promising to protect Asuka, and she realizes the truth: that Asuka's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin, was absorbed into Unit-02, much the same way Shinji's mom was absorbed into Unit-01.

Now, at long last, Asuka can operate her Eva again, and she goes apeshit on the SEELE troops. They sever her power cable, but she doesn't care, boasting that five minutes is plenty of time to take out these creeps. This is honestly the best part of the movie, because they had reduced Asuka to a pitiful shell for so long, and now she's finally taking charge and whoopin' ass.

It won't last.

With the conventional forces beaten, SEELE sends in nine Eva Units of their own. These are units 05 through 13, but they all look the same, and I'm not even sure they have pilots. It's a pretty cool design for a "bad guy" Eva, but they don't figure into the plot very much. They're here to destroy Asuka and Unit-02, and Asuka has to destroy them to stop SEELE.

Meanwhile, Misato has almost gotten Shinji to the Unit-01 launch bay, but she got shot, so she tells Shinji he's on his own from here. Shinji continues to resist taking any responsibility here. He says he's not worthy to pilot the Eva because he hurts people. He killed Kaworu, and he "did something terrible to Asuka". So at least the movie recognizes that. I guess it was included just to show the audience that Shinji isn't exaggerating when he doubts himself like this.

Misato refuses to indulge his self-pity, and she doesn't care how much he cries or tries to use his past actions to disqualify himself. She tells him she's made plenty of her own mistakes, but she still learned something about herself anyway. Hey, I guess Misato kind of gets what I was saying earlier. I guess this makes her my favorite character?

Well, yeah, but I don't like how she gives him a long kiss goodbye, then promises they'll "do the rest" when he gets back. I mean, she dies immediately after he leaves, so I think she was just feeding him empty gestures to motivate him while she still could, but... that's kind of fucked up.

Meanwhile, Gendo and Rei reach the room where Lillith is to begin their attempt at Third Impact, but they find Ritsuko waiting for them. She pulls a gun on Gendo and tells him that she sabotaged the supercomputer while she was reprogramming it to stop SEELE's hackers. Except... when she tries to execute her plan, the computer doesn't do it. This is because it's been imprinted with the mind of its original creator, Ritsuko's mother, and apparently mom still carries a torch for Gendo, even after Gendo screwed both Akagis over. Gendo then pulls a gun on Ritsuko, and says "I truly..." but the sound cuts out as he says the rest of it, so we don't know what he wanted to tell her.

In any case, she calls him a liar after she hears it, so either he told her he loved her and she didn't buy it, or he said something really cruel and she knew he didn't mean it. Either way, Gendo shoots, her which normally would suggest his true feelings, except I think this Human Instrumentality business works on dead people too, so life and death kind of becomes meaningless in this movie. We see a ghostly apparition of Rei as Ritsuko falls into the LCL fluid. We also saw ghost Rei when Misato died, so this seems to be a thing now.

Meanwhile, Shinji makes it to Unit 01, but it's immersed in Bakelite, which Misato had ordered dispersed through the base to impede the invading goons. I'm not sure how it got here, though, unless the bad guys used Misato's own trick to secure Unit-01. So it looks like Shinji can't get in the robot, even though it's not a robot, and he doesn't even have to be inside the stupid thing to control it. He literally proved that on his first day on the job. Yo, Shinji, get in the robot, your mom loves you.

Meanwhile, Asuka seems to be doing just fine killing the bad guy Evas without Shinji, but just as she finishes the last of them off, the Lance of Longinus suddenly flies back to Earth and improbably stabs Unit 02 through the face. Uh... how? Why? What the fuck?

Also, all the Evas Asuka defeated suddenly reactivate. With her battery drained, Asuka is helpless to stop them as they crack open Unit-02 and eat it. I'm pretty sure Asuka herself is killed during this, but we don't see a body.

I guess this was the catalyst to get Unit 01 off its duff, as it finally breaks out of the Bakelite and grabs Shinji like it's gonna put him in. Unit 01 busts out to join the battle, and it's thig big impressive spectacle. It even has angel wings now.

But it doesn't actually do anything. Shinji just gets a look at what's left of Unit-02's mangled corpse and screams.

And that's the cliffhanger for 25'. There's a credits sequence, then a dedication note from the director, and then the second half starts as Episode 26'. So this is a good place to take a break.

If you're curious, the part where Eva 05-13 show up to confront Asuka is about where things ended in "Evangelion: Rebirth". But 25' is about twenty minutes longer than that, so I'm not sure what the significance of that cutoff point was supposed to be. I guess it works as a cliffhanger, but it's kind of dumb to have Asuka finally wake up and kick ass, only to get utterly destroyed a few minutes later. Then Shinji shows up to set up the real cliffhanger.

To be fair, this half of the movie is better than the second half. Mostly, it benefits from the parts where they actually show the characters recovering from Episode 24 and beginning to move to the next phase of the story. This was what the TV show failed to do with its Episode 25. Now, we get to see the SEELE vs. NERV battle that was only implied before, and we get to see how Human Instrumentality is arranged.

We also see why it needs to be done. In the original ending, it seemed completely arbitrary, like Gendo Ikari just decided this was a cool thing to try and he just did it to the whole world without asking anyone's permission. Here, it becomes clear that if Gendo doesn't pull the trigger, SEELE will, and it's just a race to see who can get their vision accomplished first.

And we actually get to see the other characters in this version. Asuka wakes up and gets her groove back, Rei's part in the drama is revealed, and Ritsuko and Misato get shot. Seeing this stuff makes me even more irritated that the TV series just jumped right past it all.

Still, this half of the movie has problems. For one thing, a lot of runtime is spent just showing troops slaughtering NERV personnel, and showing Misato leading Shinji to his Eva. Also, there's a healthy dose of Gendo and Rei just staring pensively at Lilith without actually doing anything. A lot of the footage doesn't actually progress the plot, and only Misato and Shinji's scenes are useful for providing exposition. Gendo and SEELE's words are too cryptic to be of much use.

The main point of this installment was to reinforce things we already knew: Rei's important to all of this somehow, Shinji is a sad sack, and Asuka is helpless. And maybe it needed to be reinforced in July 1997, more than a year after the TV show ended, but I don't think it needed to be hammered home this much.

And like I said from the start, this whole thing relies on a lot of ridiculous stuff that I feel like I should have been told about in the TV series. How did the Lance of Longinus come back? SEELE couldn't have arranged this, since they were the ones who were so upset about losing it in the first place. Why are there two methods to trigger Third Impact? How did Asuka's mother get sucked into the Eva and yet she remained in human form long enough to go insane and hang herself? Why did the bad guy Evas suddenly recover from their injuries when it was convenient for the plot?

Perhaps most critically: Why are they just treating Third Impact and Human Instrumentality like the same thing? Like if you do one, then the other one just automatically happens? Is that how it works? Then why were they so worried about the progress on that project? It could be done at will, right?

Oh, and how did SEELE figure out how to do all this stuff? They have their own fleet of Evas, which seem to work better than NERV's. They made their own Angel in the form of Kaworu. They seem to know how to make Third Impact happen, without Gendo's help. And however they got this far, they seemed to pull it off without anyone from NERV knowing about it. So why did SEELE even need NERV in the first place? As it currently stands, the only reason Gendo's ahead of them is because he's physically closer to what he needs to work with. SEELE could have nuked the base from orbit and hauled Eva Unit 01 from the wreckage.

Again, the whole movie just makes me feel like I missed an episode, except I didn't. I watched the whole thing, which leads me to assume that the next chapter will clarify everything, except it doesn't, as we'll see next time. See you there.