#IT TAKES A VILLAGE

[hugsandchaos]

Here’s a list of times Danny has been spotted by the townspeople as Phantom outside of ghost fights!

1.) Laying down half asleep on a traffic light post, no one saw him fall

2.) Standing outside on the street during a big blizzard sipping what people are guessing was hot cocoa

3.) On the roof of Casper High looking at the sky

4.) In Casper High’s library browsing the outer space section

5.) In the park playing with a ghost puppy, who unfortunately kept turning into a large ghost dog and growling at anyone who tried to come close (it’s worth noting that Phantom kept trying to calm him down and apologizing, with the exception of Maddie, who seemed to make the ghost dog even angrier)

6.) Having a friendly chat with a large ghost wolf in the nearby woods

7.) On the street during a blizzard, waving at a large ghost resembling a yeti and going “Hi, dad! :D”

8.) Asleep on one of those couches in the local library with a book on astrophysics on his chest

[erinwantstowrite]

Erin the comparison of JL vs the Avengers to Camp Jupiter vs Camp Half blood is toooo accurate 😭

JL: There’s an established system in place and contingencies for every foreseeable scenario

Avengers: fuck it we ball

peter thinks that the Avengers have it all together because they're his teachers and they're constantly telling him to use his brain but it's really because they, for the first time, saw their own "fuck it we ball" mentality in a teenager, and thought "oh my god maybe that is like... super dangerous." like when a parent was younger and they partied a lot and sometimes got into dangerous situations and thought "this is normal" until they had a kid and they quickly realized "oh that's why my mom was insane."

that didn't make them any better, it just made them hypocrites. peter just doesn't know that because they act super responsible when he's around

[always-coffee]

Authors League Fund

Shamelessly pilfered from @neil-gaiman, who wrote this:

I serve on the Board of Directors of the Authors League Fund, which helps career writers in financial need. As an emergency fund, we provide non-taxable cash support for rent, utilities, groceries, medical bills, and other pressing needs. We have been doing this work since 1917, helping thousands of professional writers across the US. If you become aware of a writer who might benefit from our support, please send them our way: www.authorsleaguefund.org. Applications are confidential and handled quickly and with respect.

We help a broad range of writers: authors, journalists, critics, essayists, poets, short story writers, dramatists, and—recently added—graphic novelists and librettists. We have a special focus on health emergencies and writers in retirement, and hope you will keep us in mind if you learn of a friend, colleague, or client who is struggling.

Spread the word...

[theemptyspacehelmet]

Because it’s starting to feel like another Henry Selick/Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas snub, please keep in mind that while Neil Gaiman is an executive producer for DBD, he isn’t as directly involved as a source or writer as he was with GO or the Sandman so make sure to give proper credit to the other writers and show runners like Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz and the other people who worked hard to bring us this show.

[anthrofractal]

DESCRIPTION: Nomiani decides to enter the village square. There’s a Fress at a nearby booth that looks similar to the shopkeep in the Mayli city. There's also the Fress they met earlier, and a much older matriarch surrounded by young Fress, sitting close to a communal cooking fire. CHOOSE ONE: 1) Talk to the shopkeeper 2) Approach the gray older Fress 3) Approach the Fress they recognize

[gmilfs]

[artistmarchalius]

I really like the idea that everyone in the neighbourhood knows Wally is some kind of demon and just accepts it.

Like, one day Home just shows up in the middle of their village green with Wally inside. In that typical kids puppet show fashion, despite thinking they’re kinda creepy or off-putting at first, they take the time to get to know them and realise they’re just Like That ™ and meet them where they’re at. They don’t try to change Wally, they just nurture him and teach him things about people and the world (like one does in a kids show).

Sure, he stares a lot, his house can communicate with him, he doesn’t know how to person and there’s a lot more mysterious oozing happening around the neighbourhood now, but he’s very friendly underneath the sinister aura, loves to paint pictures and is fun to hang out with.

From Wally’s perspective, he shows up in this new place, content to cause havoc and do some demon stuff, but no one is afraid of him. They’re actually really nice to him and they feed him and play with him. He likes them, so they’re His now. He’ll let them keep looking after him. He’s totally the one in control of the situation. He likes it when they give him skritches and tell him stories or teach him about butterflies. Yessir, totally the one in control!

Just like a good host/audience stand in on a kids show, Wally learns a lot of stuff through his new neighbours. It takes a neighbourhood to raise a demon, or something. I love that kind of stuff!

[millenniallust4death]

At my local food bank, I volunteered a few hours to help people fill out the form to sign up for Christmas baskets. I know from doing free, weekly tech support (ie. digital literacy skills) that people in my community struggle with literacy skills and learning disabilities. I don't want families to be deprived of a holiday due to a barrier that I can easily knock down. Maybe similar support is needed in your community?

[ranboo-and-the-like]

There is something so special about watching forever and Baghera walk through tallulahs home. The way they read all of the signs, the way they asked permission to go into and through the house, the way they admired the art. It’s how forever confesses that he is near tears. It’s about when baghs asked tallulah if wilbur sang to her, and rejoiced when she read that he sang to her every night. It’s about their reverence, not making light of the place or occasion. It’s about how Tallulah trusts them enough and is excited for them to meet her papa. It’s about love and family.

[darth-kote]

star wars lore is so great bc sometimes it's very deep and meaningul and philosophical, and then you get smth like space carrots

[sp00ntaneous]

'Village Spoon' wooden spoon carved in Cherry wood with acrylic pigment.

[hugsandchaos]

One of the worst offenses was committed today. At least, in the eyes of some, if not many, of the residents of Amity Park. It was no secret that Phantom liked his privacy and avoided people, aside from the rare sighting of him or him even approaching people. The citizens obviously respected that decision, especially since he was the one protecting them.

One day, he was seen at a park sitting at the edge of the forest, focused on something in his lap. No one approached, but many people could swear that it was ice. Several open books and printed pictures lay nearby, which he’d glance at, then back at the ice. Over the course of four and a half hours, Phantom worked on it, carefully carving and adjusting while adding more parts. People who passed by or stayed a while began to realize what he was doing.

He was making the solar system! Out of ghost ice! He was including the moons of every planet, not just Earth’s moon, which took quite a bit when he moved onto Jupiter. The ice floated in place as he worked. It grew a little bigger until it was finally finished. Phantom smiled, proud of his project, until the worst thing happened.

A person visiting from out of town jumped out with a camera to get a picture of Phantom, startling him into dropping it. When he realized it, he stared at the ice shards now scattered across the ground. He looked utterly destroyed. What followed after was something akin to a riot. People got up and stormed to the stranger, and their relative scolded them. They snatched the camera and quickly deleted the pictures, but Phantom was unresponsive. He just stared at the ice shards distraught.

The Fentons were crazy, sure, but right then and there, people remembered about obsessions, about how several ghosts need to partake in some activity revolving around their obsession for their health. Perhaps they could’ve gotten that right, and space was Phantom’s obsession? Before anyone could try to help or offer comfort, he vanished. And so did the ice.

[raurusthirdeye]

This reblog by @daemosdaen https://www.tumblr.com/daemosdaen/768978868084375552?source=share and this one by @summonerluna https://www.tumblr.com/summonerluna/768899613948264448?source=share

arrived with perfect timing to help improve and probably save chapter 12 from being too indulgent and just pure filler. My initial reaction after reading these posts was a crisis of confidence in what I'd written (at work in the middle of a meeting I was supposed to be paying attention to but started brainrotting halfway through instead), but I took a breather before I did something drastic like pull a @sparklyhyperbole and throw the whole thing in my woodstove 😉. My intent starting out was to write a fluffy pallet cleanser after a few particularly heavy chapters, but I think I found a way to make it much more meaningful, much more useful for plot development, and much less "telling" and more "showing", while still retaining the fluff. (Smut Fluff with plot?) At least, I think (hope) I did, because in last night's writing sprint I also added 600 words of pure almost-but-not-quite-smut fluff, sorta undoing the previous effort, and now I think I need to end the chapter where it's at with the fade-to-black. 😅 Oh well. It'll be some fanservice for my regulars 😆 Because my story is over a year old now I wonder if anyone who's read my fic lately from start to current has noticed any change or progression in my writing through the chapters? I went back and did a cleanup pass a few months ago when @haste-waste said she was going to start reading, but that was mostly grammar and syntax to make it less cringey for future readers. All of that is a very long winded way of saying thanks to the @zelinkcommunity, who are all in all a rather lovely bunch of people to hang out with 😁❤️

[always-coffee]

Pssst, hey, you. Do you want a very cool copy of @neil-gaiman's Coraline, plus some other goodies?

Well, you're in luck! @linda-from-the-bird-site is having a raffle, which benefits the homeless:

You can snag tickets for the price of a coffee, potentially get some awesome swag, and do some good. That's a win/win/win!

[drauthor]

New Fic Alert:

So, just to make this very clear, we're blaming @shootingstarpilot for the absolute monster this story has turned into.

Please enjoy the first chapter of It Takes a Village, a story of found family, court drama, and a few guys being both really bad and really good at romance:

If you had asked any one of the Fett brothers if they expected to find themselves embroiled in a fierce court battle involving child abuse and murder because Helix Fett was soft under all the grump and snarling, they would have laughed in your face.

Except Cody. He wouldn't have said he saw it coming per se, but he's not surprised. After all, Stitch was Needle's best friend and he needed help. He knows his brother; they were involved as soon as Helix laid eyes on the kid.

--

They say it takes a village to raise a child; Cody can only begin to imagine what it takes to put a child's abusive parents in jail and then adopt said child.

Due to a series of quite fortunate meetings, the combined power (and villages) of Cody Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Mace Windu are aiming right for the Su-Burtonis--and their mysterious benefactor--and they have no idea what's coming for them.

[alpaca-clouds]

Media Production: It takes a village to make a thing

I want to talk a bit about media creation this week. Mostly because I want these blogs then to be a reference for whenever that discussion comes up again. Because, frankly, I am very tired of people not understanding - and not caring - about how many people it actually takes to make most media they consume.

We see that both when a piece of media succeeds - and when a piece of media flops or is heavily critisized. In both cases both the general public and also fans will usually latch onto one or two people involved in the production to be deserving of either all the praise or all the blame. Usually this is the person with most name recognition, or, if there is nobody like that involved, a general idea of "the writer(s)" or "the director", because while a lot of folks do not quite know what is in the control of either role, it feels kinda right that they should be able to have the most say about the outcome.

And don't get me wrong: There definitely are examples of media where indeed it was the writer(s), director, or whatever person with most name recognition making a project fail or succeed. And yes, this even goes so far as including actors. I can think of at least two movies where an actor, who was very full of themselves, made it almost impossible to work on a set. Just as I can think of examples, where a project would have failed without an actor putting all their name recognition and everything behind it to secure enough money to actually finish production.

But most of the time... It is a lot more complicated than that.

General rule: If a piece of media is not a self-published published book or comic, there is definitely more than one person involved into having gotten that piece of media onto the market.

Yes, even with a book. Sure, generally speaking, an author is allowed to ignore any advice given to them by an editor and publisher, unless their contract states something else (which it rarely does, because publishing industry standards). Does not mean that writers do. And yes, I know definitely cases where at least in my view editors have made books worse - often by pressing for more traditional climaxes of books that originally did not have such a thing. (You know, at times you can resolve the tension in certain books without a big BOOM. But I definitely know a lot of editors who will at least advice authors to do an action finale in a fantasy or scifi book, rather than one where characters talk that shit out.)

And of course, once we are talking "multimedia" there is gonna be a whole lot of people involved. If you have ever sat down to watch that by now 10 minute long credit roll of a movie or game, you know how many people there are. And... yeah, often not everyone gets credited. Because other wise those credits would be 20 minutes.

Of course, of those often hundreds of people, most do not have the kind of power over the project to make it either become amazing, nor fail. Neither the single accountant, nor the gaffer, nor the catering service will probably majorly influence the outcome of a project. But there are absolutely other people than just the director, the writer and the headline actors.

If we talk about both TV and movie production, it usually starts with a pitch or a script. Both are options - though the pitch will usually never get anywhere, unless there already is someone with a recognizable name and/or some influence attached. Though these days it is also very common that a pitch is: "Let's do a movie based on recognizable IP XYZ." At least when we are talking projects with some budget.

But let's not assume the "big budget" stuff for now. If it is not big budget, it usually starts with a script. And that script is gonna get sent into with a variety of producers. Most of them will usually put those scripts right into the trash, because they might on some days receive tens of those things. But some might read a script when it sounds interesting and if they see some promise, they might give some feedback for the writer to workshop it. Often it will get sent back and forth then, until the producer then goes to pitch it to investors and studios. And if the people involved are lucky, it is gonna get picked up.

Now, this is where a lot of people think the involvement of the writer ends - which studios will use to horribly underpay writers, mind you. But no, usually the writer is gonna be involved till the shooting is wrapped. You know why? Because no script will survive the reality of shooting or even just animation.

There is stuff that sounds amazing on paper, but just will not work in real life on set (or in the animation). Maybe a line sounds cool when written out, but once the actor says it, it sounds wrong. Maybe the writer imagined an amazing scene, but when they try to make it work, it won't because physics are a thing - and working against physics while possible does take more budget than a project eventually has. (Not to mention: In action heavy productions, there are enough writers that have learned to write in something across they lines of "they fight, X wins" and let the director, stunt coordinators, and actors/stunt people figure it out. I have seen fans of certain media rage about those "lazy writers", upon getting their hands on scripts, but... yeah, no this is actually a good practice, because those other people will usually have a better idea of what is possible than a writer.)

Also, directors and actors often have ideas about a story, and will want to change a scene or two.

If you have ever watched anything having to do with productions (no matter if movie or tv) you will have heard actors talk about receiving their pages for the shooting day early in the morning while in make up. That is because of those last minute changes. And that is why usually you do want to have writers involved in the production - and also why writers want writer rooms. Because two to three writers can mostly handle a movie, sure. But a TV production, that covers a lot more screentime in a few months of shooting/animating? You want more people working on it to make the daily adjustments.

And again: One of the main reasons why the writers guild was protesting last year was, that studios did a) not want a writers room (because more writers to pay) and b) actually did not want to pay the writers for those last minute adjustments during shooting. Which we hopefully can agree is very much unfair towards the writers.

The main director(s) will usually make a lot of decisions of course of how things happen on set or in the animation. Ideally a good director in this listens to the other specialists involved - though not all directors do, and in terms of certain productions recently (MCU *coughs*) often do not get the chance. But ideally they will get the input of actors, stunt people, the cinematographer, the people in command of set stuff, and also the people working on the visual effects. While the director(s) are definitely creative people and the role is a creative role, it is also very much a management thing, to get everyone onto the same page.

How much a director is involved in the pre-production (aka: getting an idea of the visual language, getting sets, costumes and whatever prepared, casting talent, getting the character and environment designs done, and so on) and the post-production (aka editing, visual effects, reshoots, retouching and so on) is very different depending on the project. Again, with Marvel Studios in recent years directors are usually only hired for the main production, with Marvel mainly taking care of both pre- and post-production, as most directors do not get to put in their unique creative style - it has to fit the brand after all. But even outside of Marvel it is also very dependent on the director and the kind of project it is, whether the director is heavily involved in this. Some directors will be sitting in the studio every day during post-production helping out whereever they can, others bring people for these things they trust and will only be on call, and some others will disappear on the last day of shooting.

And of course there is always the producers and executive producers. Every media project has them in some way or form. They are the people mainly there to secure funding and work as the communication line between the heads and board of a studio, and the creatives on set. As Guillermo del Toro once said (I am paraphrasing here): "A good producer is there, when you need them, but leaves you alone, when you don't." But... The higher the budget and investment, the worse the producer is usually by this metric.

Please note: By now it is fairly usual that at least big stars (both in terms of directing, and acting) will have their own production studio, and yes, also be credited as producers in a movie or TV show. However, as soon as there is more budget involved, that budget usually comes form a bigger studio or media conglomerate (like Disney, Netflix, Warner-Discovery and so on) and the producers who are responsible for the big investors in a project will have a lot more say. This might lead to something called "executive meddling" about what I am going to talk in two days.

And yes, before I forget. There is of course also game production, which usually is very different from anything else, because game productions most of the time do not start with a story concept, but rather with a general concept/game play concept. This might of course be different when you produce within established franchises, where people might expect a certain gameplay and your question is more what kinda story will allow that gameplay to happen again, but generally speaking: Gameplay will trump story in game productions.

But here is also the issue with game productions: These work very, very differently depending on what studio we are talking about. Sure, the AAA studios work in comparable ways, but everyone who isn't AAA has their unique style, because compared to every other form of media games are still fairly young as a form of media. And while for big budgeted releases certain "best practices" (given these will usually involve crunch for at several weeks) have been established that managers and investors will push for, smaller studios might well have their own best practices (that ideally will involve less crunch). But of course, with games the effect that there is not a single person or group of people to be praised/blamed for something being really amazing, or really bad, is even stronger, because usually game productions are more spread out and have a lot more moving parts that can make a thing really great or really bad.

Though a general rule still holds true for games as well: The bigger the budget, the bigger the power of certain producers and managers to overrule any creative decision in an attempt to appease investors. Because executive meddling definitely isn't a problemt unique to a single medium. But I will talk about that on Wednesday...