#LOVE the choice of green for Smith's dialogue

[ladamedusoif]

Tempered in the Fire - Part One

See the Series Masterlist for complete content warnings, historical event information, and series notes.

Cross-posted to AO3.

Pairing: Blacksmith!Din Djarin x F! Reader

Summary: Ireland, almost a decade after the rebellion of 1798. You are an unusual woman: married, but alone; a widow, with no certainty her husband is dead. When your local blacksmith is badly injured in an accident and unable to work, you have no choice but to travel to the next forge, run by a man of few words whose uncertain origins and dark complexion make him stand out among the locals. You are immediately intrigued by this mysterious, taciturn figure - and the striking little boy he’s taken as his apprentice.

Word Count: 3.3k

Rating: Mature (chapter); Explicit 18+ (series)

Content (chapter specific): Blacksmith!Din AU; historical setting; references to violence; references to spousal abandonment; strong language; almost certainly inaccurate depictions of blacksmithing; slightly wonky history; likely slightly wonky renderings of Irish language (technically my third language!).

A/N: Translations for any dialogue in Irish are provided at the end of the chapter. The Irish language was one of the casualties of the colonisation of the island, as it became associated with a lack of education (though the tide turned somewhat in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries) and has never recovered. (Go and listen to ‘Butchered Tongue’ on Hozier’s latest album for a musical reflection on this, it even includes references to 1798)

Tagging interested parties and my usual taglist people - sign up via my taglist if you want to be added (or let me know if you’d rather not be tagged!): @gracie7209, @yourcoolauntie, @tessa-quayle, @lunapascal, @julesonrecord, @trulybetty, @fuckyeahdindjarin, @katareyoudrilling, @perennialdoll247, @joeldjarin, @sunnywithachanceofjavi, @iamskyereads, @tieronecrush, @javierisms, @pedrostories, @readingiskeepingmegoing, @rhoorl, @red-red-rogue, @survivingandenduring, @khindahra, @love-the-abyss, @fictionismyreality, @imaswellkid

This is a quiet place, a landscape rendered in greens, greys, and whites, the simple rural dwellings peppering the good agricultural land that stretches across the county.

Appearances can be deceiving, though. What seems to the outsider as a long-established peace is the result of a more recent and more violent pacification. The fields where young men lost their lives in the pursuit of a dream of freedom give nothing away today, almost a decade after the rebellion was brutally crushed. They didn’t stand a chance against the arrayed ranks of muskets, being armed only with tall, sharp pikes, hammered for them on the anvils of sympathetic blacksmiths around the country.

The people who live and work here bear the scars - some literal, some psychological, but all livid, fresh, and painful.

In this idyll where trauma and anger simmers beneath the surface, his forge is a long, low, whitewashed stone building roofed in thatch. It’s a little outside the nearest village, sitting just off the main road on the way to the next big town. Like most of those who ply this trade, the blacksmith here lives alongside his place of work: one half of the building is the forge, the other is the neat, simple home he shares with the little boy he’s taken as his apprentice.

He’s an essential figure: he makes all manner of metal goods and repairs them, too, in a world where nothing is disposable. He shoes horses, too, and his gentle care for the elegant beasts is well-known around the county.

Still, he’s not the most obvious candidate for a ‘pillar of the community’. Unlike other smiths in the area he’s not known for holding court while he works, regaling his customers with yarns and stories. He keeps himself to himself, mostly, though he comes into the village with the boy to buy supplies, collect items for repair, and return what he’s mended to their owners.

He’s been at his anvil for twenty years, or thereabouts. As is the way of a small community, all manner of stories circulate about where he came from and why there was no obvious family of origin. Most assume he comes from travelling people, who are known for their skill with metalworking.

Such is his reputation for consistently good work, fairness, and decency, though, that no one would ever dream of pushing him to say more about himself. This man of few words, who wears his apron like his armour and sometimes wraps a band of grey cloth around his mouth and nose when he works, to protect his lungs from the soot and smoke, is both insider and outsider in a place where such binaries are normally strictly enforced.

“You’ll be living high on the hog soon enough, then, Din? What with all the work that’s coming your way now.”

He looks up from the horseshoe he’s hammering into shape, dark eyes staring at the silhouette of the local priest, framed by the light of the forge’s small front window. Father Carthy has come to have his horse shod - and, it seems, to discuss the blacksmith’s fortunes.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The priest steps closer to the anvil, a look of surprise on his face when he realises the blacksmith hasn’t heard. “Bad accident over in the forge at Donapatrick. He’ll be alright, but their smith is out for the next few months, at least. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Din dips the shoe into a tub of cold water, sending a hiss and a plume of steam into the air.

“So they’re coming to me?”

“Most of them. Your reputation precedes you.”

He wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Not sure I can take on all that extra work.”

Father Carthy scoffs. “Don’t turn it down, Din. Lean times are always waiting round the corner, just when you least expect them.” He peers around the stone forge at the centre of the room, trying to spot the little figure who’s been hiding in the shadows.

“Sure you have an apprentice to help you, don’t you?”

The little boy stares silently, intently with his huge, dark eyes at the man clad in clerical black.

“Well, he’s inherited your gift of the gab, Din, anyway. Look, you’ll be glad of the few extra shillings. I know it’s not always easy making ends meet, between looking after yourself and the lad.”

Din pulls himself up to his full height, cutting an imposing, broad figure in his soot-marked shirt, leather apron, simple brown woollen breeches, and boots.

“We manage. Gró?” The boy appears at the blacksmith’s side. “Tabhair dom na tairní, maith an bhuachaill.”

He swiftly locates a box of horseshoe nails, each made by hand at Din’s anvil. The priest raises an eyebrow.

“He’ll need English, Din, or he’ll get nowhere. I’d be glad to teach him if-“

Din cuts him off with a pointed sigh. “He understands every word. But this is how we talk to each other.”

Behind him, the sandy-haired boy narrows his eyes and scowls at Father Carthy.

You know it’s not usual for a woman of your age and station to ride alone, but then you’re not usual for a woman of your age and station. And your washtub is leaking, and your horse needs to be shod. Needs must.

You saddle up the horse, strapping the tub on one side, and wrap yourself up in your shawl, securing it at the waist with a well-worn leather belt. You mount the little brown horse and turn her in the direction of Donapatrick and the local forge.

“How did you not hear?” Seán, the blacksmith’s apprentice, stares up at you in astonishment. “Everyone heard!”

You feel like kicking him in the ribs for talking to you like that. He’s no more than thirteen, and yet here he is talking to a woman who could comfortably be his mother (and then some) like she came down in the last shower.

“I didn’t hear because I wasn’t told, and because I have better things to be doing than gossiping around the village.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, regardless. You’ll have to go over to the other forge - the fella over the bridge, about twenty minutes away. You know it?”

You do know it, though you’ve never had reason to go inside. Why would you, when Peter’s forge is so much closer? You don’t even know the other blacksmith’s name, and in this part of the world that’s a strange situation indeed.

“Right, so.” You gently dig your heels into the horse’s sides, she starts to walk, and you make your way to the road that leads down to the river, the stone bridge, and, eventually, the whitewashed forge beyond.

Just as Father Carthy had predicted, Din was snowed under with extra work since Peter’s accident a week or so before. He is exceptionally well-organised by nature, managing his own accounts and records with great attention to detail, and he has extended the system to help him cope with the new demand. With Gró’s help, he organises the items for repair into separate sections, labelled according to whether they belong to existing or temporary customers. He sets up a new ledger to take account of custom orders from people who normally go to the other smith, and takes note of new faces who come to have their horse shod.

Din is cross-checking his records at the table in the main room of his home when he hears the sound of hooves approaching. He asks Gró to peek out, to see if it’s a familiar face or another new customer.

The boy climbs up on the deep windowsill to look out through one of the small cottage windows.

“Is bean ar chapall í - ’s stráinséir í.”

Din stands up and goes to the door, reaching for his apron as he does so.

He cuts an unusual figure, this blacksmith. There aren’t many people around here who look like him. You notice the penetrating dark eyes first, taking you in as you slow and pull up the horse. His dark hair is wavy, curling in places, and you are surprised to see that he’s bearded - if you can call the patchy scruff around his mouth and jaw a beard.

He’s younger than you’d expected, maybe forty, and well-built - broad shoulders, strong, muscular forearms marked with scars from his work, his shirt loose and open to expose a stretch of his tanned chest. He ties on a leather apron as you dismount, and walks out to greet you.

“Good day. I was hoping you could help with a repair? And my horse needs to be shod, too. I’m sorry, I usually go to Peter up in Donap -“

He cuts you off with a nod. “I know. Yes. That’s fine. The tub, is that the repair?”

You raise your eyebrows at how direct he is. Curt, almost. Rude, some would say.

“It is. It’s leaking at the side, here.” You undo the strap and he takes the washtub down. It looks strangely tiny against his substantial form.

He turns and gesticulates with his head in the direction of the open door. From the dark interior, a striking boy emerges, clutching a piece of paper, some string, and a stubby pencil.

The blacksmith gives him instructions and he diligently scrawls a number on the paper, before attaching it to the tub with the string and carrying it into the forge.

“Do you only speak in Irish to him?”

The smith has turned his attention to your horse, examining each of her hooves in turn. He looks at you quizzically.

“It’s what he prefers. What we prefer. He understands English perfectly.”

“Unusual that he’s fair and you’re dark. Is his mother fair? I suppose she must be.”

He sighs.

“I don’t know.”

You can’t stop yourself from letting out a little gasp. He looks up at you, dark eyes frustrated at your constant chatter. But he knows this needs explanation.

“He’s my apprentice. He’s a foundling. I’ve taken him as my own.”

You feel your face heat, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

He strokes the horse’s muzzle, not looking directly at you. “You didn’t know. I can shoe the horse now, though you’ll need to wait. The tub will take a day or two.”

You nod in agreement.

“What’s her name?”

His voice is softer. He’s still looking at your little horse, who’s loving the attention from this new person.

“Réaltín.” She has a perfect little splash of white between her eyes, in the shape of a little star. You couldn’t have named her anything else.

He repeats the animal’s name, and you see the tiniest hint of a smile cross his lips before his serious expression returns.

It turns cold, and you wait it out on a stool just inside the door of the forge, glad of the warmth.

You watch as the blacksmith heats up and works the metal shoes at his anvil, so they’ll fit Réaltín’s smaller hooves perfectly. The light from the fire illuminates his features as he works, highlighting the beads of sweat on his brow and picking out the various shades of brown in his eyes. He has pulled a band of grey cloth over his nose and mouth, which draws your attention all the more to his dark gaze.

The little boy stares at you while the man works, occasionally helping him by fetching an implement or helping work the bellows. You give him a little wave and a smile, hoping he’ll respond. He doesn’t come any closer, but you see him grin for a moment before he disappears behind the broad figure of his master - well, his adoptive father, if what the blacksmith said is correct.

Peter’s forge is always full of chat and song and gossip, a kind of social hub as much as a vital service. In contrast, the only music here is the singing of the anvil as the silent, stoic smith works, interspersed with the whoosh of the bellows and the hiss of the cooling tub. He doesn’t look at you, eyes always trained on the task at hand or at his little apprentice. He doesn’t speak, except to the little boy.

After a few exchanges, you realise something. “Is he called Gró?”

The smith keeps working. “That is what I call him, yes.”

“Funny to call a little thing like that after a poker.”

He turns his attention to the fire for a moment before he answers you. “He kept trying to stoke the fire on his own when I first took him in. I said the word so much it became his name. He likes it.”

Silence. Singing metal. Hissing steam.

He makes sure Gró watches him at every step as he removes the old horseshoes, cleans Réaltín’s hooves, files them carefully, and attaches the new shoes. Throughout, he quietly explains to the boy what he’s doing, and why.

Your stomach is rumbling, and you remember the supplies you brought with you (and had forgotten about).

When they’ve finished the last hoof, you speak up. “I - I brought a cake of fresh bread with me, in case it took longer. And I have butter, too, and a little crab apple jam. I’d be glad to share it with the little lad.”

Gró’s enormous eyes widen with excitement and he grins. (He really does understand English perfectly, you think.)

“We have enough food for ourselves, thank you.”

The boy’s face falls.

“I just meant as a little treat. A thank you, for taking the job when you’ve so much to be doing.”

He sighs, again. “Well… ach. Yes. Come in.”

Their home is neat and simply furnished, and he evidently knows how to look after a household as well as a business. You sit at the wooden table in the main room, which serves as kitchen, living area, and office for the blacksmith’s records. Out of the corner of your eye you spy a ladder going up to the attic, which you presume must be used as a sleeping space. A door leads off the main part of the house to what looks to be a smaller room.

Gró is already on his third piece of bread, butter, and apple jam, a shiny orange smear on the tip of his little nose.

“I hope this tastes okay. It’s always so hard to know when you churn butter, isn’t it?” You sip some of the cool water he’d poured into an earthenware mug for you.

“I don’t know. I’ve never churned butter.”

His reply is so deadpan that you wonder for a moment if he’s joking. You decide he isn’t.

“It’s not that hard,” you continue. “And I have the cow and the milk so why not?” You chew on a bit of bread, appraising your handiwork. “Actually, not bad at all, this time.”

He grunts in agreement. “You have a farm?”

“A very small smallholding. Tenant to the lord, like most of us.”

“Your husband works the land, then.”

You stare at the crust of bread in front of you, and clear your throat.

“He doesn’t. He’s…not here. He’s gone.”

The blacksmith’s eyes soften. “I’m very sorry for your troubles. Sickness, or was it in the fighting -”

You look at him directly. “That bastard wouldn’t fight for anything, not even his wife. He’s not dead. Or at least, I don’t think he’s dead. But I wish he was, because then I’d really be free.”

For a moment it looks like the stoic blacksmith is going to choke. He reaches for his own mug and drinks deeply.

“Well, now, I -“

“He upped and went. A few years back. God knows where he is now. He’s not around here, anyway. I’d say he’s skipped to Belfast or London.” You finish your bread. “Lucky the smallholding had come through my father, so I wasn’t out on the road.”

He’s flushed, and evidently a little uncomfortable. Well, he started it, you think.

“How do you survive - do you have children, too?”

You shake your head. “No, a blessing not to have them. And I do what I did before I married - I sew. Mostly alterations and refashioning and repairing, now, but at least I have a trade.”

The smith nods to himself. “A useful one.”

“Not as useful as yours.”

He gives you a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile.

You stand up and start to clear the dishes. “Keep the rest of the bread and the butter and jam. I’ll collect the jars when I come back for the tub.”

He starts as if to speak, standing up from his chair, and seems nervous.

“Could I - we - ask you to do something for us?”

“It depends, but…”

“Clothes. Gró’s clothes are in need of mending. Badly. Would you be able to help?”

You smile and nod. “I’d be delighted to. Lord, has the poor lad been going without mending for this long?”

The smith opens a wooden chest and takes out a small bundle of tiny items of clothing. “Not quite. Peigí normally does it, but she’s been so busy with the work in her yard lately that I didn’t want to ask.”

Peigí is something of a legend in the area, a fiery woman who stubbornly insisted on taking over her father’s trade in repairing carts and wagons - and succeeded. You smile wryly to yourself at the vision of her wielding a needle and thread.

He hands you the clothes, wrapped in a faded piece of red and white cloth. “Oh, hold on.” He reaches back into the chest and retrieves a dark grey knitted sweater that has seen better days. “I don’t know if you darn, too, but he’ll need this in the colder weather, and -“

You take the sweater, handling it with care, and clutch the little bundle to your chest. “It’s no bother at all.”

He smiles, genuinely smiles, at you for the first time. You marvel at how such a stern, hardy man can reveal himself to be quite so soft - eyes crinkling, expression warm and friendly, teeth white in that tanned face streaked with grime from the forge.

“Thank you…?” He pauses, waiting for you to introduce yourself. You tell him your name.

“And you’re…”

“Din.”

“Din. And Gró.” The little boy swivels in his seat at the sound of his name, and sends the sneaky spoonful of apple jam that he’s been enjoying flying to the flagstone floor.

Din accompanies you as you strap the bundle of clothes to the saddle, and mount Réaltín for the journey home.

“I’ll be back in two days for the tub. I’ll bring his things then.”

Din gives the horse an affectionate pat, and nods as you turn and head back up the narrow road.

Gró has come to the door of the house.

“’s bean deas í, a dhaid.”

Translations:

Tabhair dom na tairní, maith an bhuachaill.

Give me the nails, there’s a good boy.

Is bean ar chapall í - ’s stráinséir í

It’s a woman on a horse, she’s a stranger.

’s bean deas í, a dhaid

She’s a nice lady, daddy. (Can also mean ‘pretty lady’).

And yes, ‘gró’ in Irish can mean crow-bar - or, in older dialect, a poker.

[prettymuchteddy]

“I genuinely think that House of the Dragon initially wanted to be neutral”

I don’t think so at all, they’ve been whitewashing Team Black the minute they cast 19 year old Milly Alcock so no one clocks just how disgusting Daemyra is. Do you think the ship would be as popular if we watched 41 year old Matt Smith groom an 8 year old?

Moreover they made Aegon II the love child of Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Snow, thus destroying any chance for neutrality. The Dance is now between a rapist who runs child fighting rings vs. a woman whose flaws were deliberately ignored in the show.

Wow… I wonder who HotD wants me to support from a moral standpoint 🤔

Any chance for nuance is coming solely from a fan perspective, the writers have the subtlety of a reversing dump truck. There’s nothing neutral in their Team Black = heroes and Team Green = villains writing.

In the beginning stages of the show, yeah I believe they wanted to be neutral. When they were writing the show, they made the choice to give positive characteristics like Alicent who in the book is your stereotypical evil stepmother. I think it's small things like that which show they wanted to do but this isn't Game of Thrones where the books are fully written with fully established dialogue, setting, characters, etc. Fire and Blood has conflicting reports on characters and most events are briefly described in a paragraph. GOT was easier to adapt cause they basically got a finished script in the existing books, Fire and Blood not so much. I imagine they wanted to be as compelling as GOT but with too many "blanks" in the original text, they realized they would have to write out said morally grey characters, which isn't always easy. So I think they gave up and went with the easy route of heroes vs villains. Hope this makes sense :)

[blueveind]

RQG 131 - Violent Reactions // Professor Harebrayne - Student of Science

Been wanting to experiment with mixing scenes from Rusty Quill Gaming with fitting video game music, so here is my first real attempt, using a track from The Great Ace Attorney 2 for one of Cel’s first moments in the show!!

(Audio transcript under the cut! Also this sounds way better with headphones!!)

Alex: Who are you playing?

Ben: Zolf Smith.

Bryn: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan.

Lydia : As far you folks know... Cel.

Helen: And Azu.

Alex: And we are going to pick up where we left off, which is, you met a new person and picked a fight with them immediately.

Lydia: Having the tea party now?

Ben: Yeah.

Helen: We did not pick a fight, with them.

Ben: No, no, one of us did.  

Bryn: I disagree.  

Lydia: Absolutely did.

Ben: Well, put it to a vote?

Alex: Well no, why don’t we discuss this in character?  

[From here, the music track ‘Professor Harebrayne - Student of Science’ from the game The Great Ace Attorney 2 fades in and plays in the background for the rest of the scene.]

Alex: So, you are all inside the shop. Lydia, could you please describe the shop for people.

Lydia: Oh, gang, it is so cool. 

[everyone laughs]

Alex: End of description!

Lydia: Yes, it’s just the aesthetic that like rolls off Cel is, like I say, Kate McKinnon in Ghostbusters slashed with Gambit. Everything is far too mechanical for it’s good. There’s actually a hammock that’s made entirely of cogs but looks weirdly comfortable. Like it’s so complicated of the kind of connected gears and chains and things. 

Ben: It’s like a steampunk Wallace and Gromit. 

Lydia: It absolutely is. Mechanically, this character is not wise. The idea of making the most efficient choice is not necessarily at the top of-

Bryn: So, they have a bunch of bad ideas but they all work really well.  

Lydia: Oh my gosh, they really work! They really work. There are lots of kind of constantly turning display cabinets that have all sorts of different potions in a lovely spiral and sort of dancing lights somehow in the kind of pillars in the middle so that everything’s dramatically put up.  And, yeah, total Wallace and Gromit contraption to make, a really exquisite cup of green tea.

Alex: So, Jasper starts serving tea. Do you have a table? Is it just standing? How does this work? 

Lydia: They push a bunch of half made contraptions, some of which look incredibly expensive, off what might, are probably crates that have other contraptions inside them and provides three spaces for you to sit down

Alex: And Jasper starts serving tea to everyone.  

Jasper: Tea? Here you go.

Azu: Thank you. 

Zolf: Thank you.

Hamid: Thank you.

Jasper: And the... there’s people at the front door for you. 

Cel: Alright?

Lydia: Then in Japanese they’re like

Cel: Make sure this lot don’t do anything... well, anything.  Alright? 

Jasper: Yep, yep!

Zolf: We’ll wait quietly.

Cel: Do you speak Japanese?

Lydia: in Japanese.

Zolf: No, Potion of Tongues. 

Cel: Ah, alright. Is English or is that tongues as well? Which languages do you actually speak?

Zolf: I think English is the shared one.  

Cel: Oh, right.

Hamid: Probably easiest, yeah.

Cel: It’s been a while but I’ll attempt to reminisce.  Wait, no, I’ll try to remember. Gotcha

Lydia: Goes off to the front door.

[The dialogue fades out from there, with a few seconds of the music continuing on before fading out as well.] 

[meandmyechoes]

Star Wars Visions review Part 1

binged them all in subs! will revisit the dub. first pass viewing order is 548621793.

[Part 2]  [Part 3]

The Ninth Jedi: Yay, Kara my girl! Look, I know it wasn’t the smartest decision to stan her out of all the girls even before we’ve seen the full series, but I’d like to be somebody different! I have, what you could call the highest expectation of this story. I heard it is actually two standalone concepts merged into one, that it has the grandest of a worldbuilding mechanism. Incidentally, that feels like it turns on itself - that the deviation from “canon” makes it almost its own fantasy story. And I say that going in knowing the rule book.

The aftertaste is: I watched a trailer. which is true, because that’s where the concepts started out. It feels like they set up a world, a quest, the main character and threw in the coolest fight scene to hook you on, and it frustrates me because Ninth has the longest runtime of them all. The lightsaber-smith is such a Japanese/traditional concept that I can understand the inspiration, just that I prefer building your own saber and a Jedi being more than a weapon. However that theme wasn’t lost in seeing Kara has to strengthen herself to earn her namesake. Kara turns out to be a bit ‘main-chara’ (in a perfectly fine but underexplored way) but I do like the confirmation of what I first saw in her: the optimism and fearlessness. Kind of reminds me of Ahsoka bouncing around with that green saber of hers! The character I’m more interested in learning though, ended up being the old pilot droid(s). My verdict for The Ninth Jedi is, I like its details and clues, but I’d like it better if it was its own story. 

8:2 / 7 (Japanese : Star Wars ratio + score out of 10)

The Village Bride: This one, expectation and reality matches up! This with T0-B1 are my favourites, but I think this is a close second because I’d have liked it to be a feature-length film! There are enough materials covering the village’s past and invasion, building up the characters like how Haru and Saku came to differ, Asu’s role, and how Van and F met! It doesn’t feel like a trailer like Ninth because instead of asking you to look forward to the next chapter, Bride feels like an extract with its dialogue delivering just the crucial story, and giving us a concluding climax. I super-love the costumes and visuals. The unconventional lineart and colour choices leave a refreshing impression. Music is killer. Chills every time the vocal hits. I think this hits that perfect mark of melding Japanese (mountain) culture (animism) and Jedi heroism.

5:5 / 10

Lop and Ocho: Lop puts a Japanese story inside the Star Wars framework more than the other way round. The industrialization and family feud works in Star Wars, while rooted in Japanese stories. Lop has the most palatable art style so it is very easy for a layman like me to go 'wow this has money' staring at the rich backgrounds and frame rate. The zinc rooftops, rundown alleys, shitamachi neighbourhood shops are very close to heart. I’m seeing old Kowloon while seeing old Shinjuku haha. The retrofuturism is an essential element of Star Wars that often gets overlooked (at least to me) and I’m glad it is the foundation for the aesthetic and conflict of this short.

And then I feel so dumb not realizing the time-skip haha! I was the one who sieved the trailer and I couldn’t make the connection! I was initially imagining more of a cheerful quest not unlike Ninth. Well wouldn’t you like to be wrong! I do like this more than I expected.

Felt just the slightest bit rushed. Ocho’s transformation and fight sequence are amazing. The final frame with the sakuras at the background just took my breath away. The inscribed lightsaber is a novel idea, but right where my mind swam towards the ‘Japanese’ side than the ‘Star Wars’ side. There were so many details in a frame I would go back to see the Easter eggs. This story is so pretty and when you peel all that away, at its core is a drama that is… an age-old tale. And I’m not complaining, because that's what Star Wars is, a ‘cliche’ that works. It brings novelty to Star Wars, but those are elements I’ve seen in classic stories I grew up with. In the end, Lop works, it is definitely a very high-quality work, but I don’t think it can quite secure a most special place in my heart.

6:4 / 9

[barnesandco]

Ayesha’s 1k+ Writing Challenge!

Writing Challenge Submission Masterlist

Hey, everyone, I'm so happy to be back online - I think I was only gone for a week so that announcement was very extra of me - and to be introducing my first writing challenge! I'm so honored and flattered that so many people enjoy my work, and I'm incredibly grateful for your support since I joined this community. Tumblr is my greatest escape, and you've made it a very welcome and comforting one. 

A sense of community and friendship is particularly important in these trying times, and I extend my heartfelt prayers to everyone struggling right now. I'm here to listen if there's anything you need to say, and I'm sorry I can't do much more than be a metaphorical shoulder to cry on, and to offer this distraction as a brief reprieve from whatever you might be going through.

In order to present a gift of relief, and to share and create more stories of heroism - not that any of it can ever compare to the courage displayed by our health professionals and essential workers these days - and to honor and promote our collective of Marvel fanfic writers, I've decided to host a writing challenge. You don't have to follow me to participate - although that would be appreciated - you just need to follow the rules I've outlined under the cut. If you need clarification on anything, don't hesitate to ask! I hope you'll join, and I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. 

Rules:

Your fic can be about any character(s) from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can also include original characters that you create. If you want to write a romantic fic, I think it goes without saying that it shouldn't be underage (or having an excessive age gap), non/dub-con, incest, abuse, power imbalance/manipulation (e.g. employer x employee or teacher x student), etc. 

The sky’s the limit when it comes to the type or genre of the story, so let your imagination fly! You can write reader-inserts, pairings of pre-existing characters, OCs, or even just solo fics about the character you've chosen. I'm open to canon fics, AUs, fluff, smut, angst, romance, platonic fics, and whatever else you guys can dream up. (If you're writing smut, please let me know, as there are some additional guidelines I'm setting for that.) 

Word count is minimum 250 words, and anything above 500 words must have a keep reading tab. Multi-chapter fics will obviously be accepted - and with a lot of enthusiasm! - but please make a masterlist for any such series.

Kindly include any and all warnings that apply to your story.

The deadline for submission is the 31st of December, 2020.

Please tag me @barnesandco​ in the completed fic - and in every chapter of a series if you've chosen to write one - and also tag your work with #ayesha1kwritingchallenge. If I don't acknowledge that I’ve seen your work within a week of you posting it, please DM me.

One entry is allowed per participant, and you can send in an ask or a DM to participate, in which you should mention the one prompt you would like to use and for which character(s) from the list below.

Prompts

Dialogue Prompts:

"You fell asleep on me." --Taken by @lancsnerd

"Screw you." --Taken by @need-a-fugue

"I've got this." --Taken by @filia-sapientiae​

"I'd never forgive myself for it." --Taken by @oreostars​

"I trust you." --Taken by @readerandcinephileingeneral

"Oh, I'm so offended." --Taken by @iamthe-shadow-on-the-wall​

"Who, me? I would never." --Taken by @kaunis-sielu

"I don’t want to hate her/him/them." --Taken by @suz-123

"I can't explain it, but loving her is just… easy." --Taken by @littledarlinwrites

"You're my everything." --Taken by @chrisevansdaddycap​

"Leave me alone." --Taken by @constantaking​

"That's disgusting." --Taken by @ruffalomakesmyday​

"What on God's green earth was that for?" --Taken by @sweetwritesx​

"Is that a threat?" --Taken by @glxy-otter​

"Promise. Please just- promise me." --Taken by @blue-like-barnes​

"Oh, I could kiss you right now, you brilliant, brilliant woman/man/person!" --Taken by @megthemewlingquim

"You know that'll never work on me." --Taken by @allaboardthereadingrailroad​

"I'd let you if you asked." --Taken by @wordywarriorwrites

"___, I swear to God, if you do that again, I'll feed you to Tony's stupid robot." --Taken by @nekoannie-chan

"You can't do this." + "Then I'll die trying."

"You're stronger than anyone I've ever known." --Taken by @companionjones

"How did I get here?" --Taken by @thestorydetective​

"Why are you smiling this wide this early in the morning?" --Taken by @tinymalscoffee​

"What's the worst that could happen?" --Taken by @phant0m-queen​

"I can't believe they haven't caught us yet." --Taken by @indyluckycharlie​

Song Prompts:

Watermelon Sugar - Harry Styles --Taken by @softpeachbarnes​

Finally//Beautiful Stranger - Halsey --Taken by @shield-agent78​

To Build a Home - The Cinematic Orchestra --Taken by @whistlingwillows​

Floating - Alina Baraz ft. Khalid --Taken by @chuuulip​

Summertime - Ella Fitzgerald

Wind Beneath My Wings - Bette Midler

To Die For - Sam Smith --Taken by @hailhydra920​

I Scare Myself - Beth Crowley

Speechless - Dan + Shay --Taken by @captain-kelli​

Growing Pains - Alessia Cara

Levitating - Dua Lipa --Taken by @samingtonwilson​​

Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers --Taken by @mermaidxatxheart​

Human - Christina Perri

10 000 Hours - Ella Mai

Despacito - Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee

Let's Do It - Ella Fitzgerald --Taken by @smediumsmeatbae​

Honey - Raveena --Taken by @opalsandlace

Talk Too Much - COIN --Taken by @subtlebucky​

Put a Little Love on Me - Niall Horan --Taken by @buckysbest​

Thinking Out Loud - Ed Sheeran

Meet Me on the Battlefield - SVRCINA

Centuries - Fall Out Boy

Titanium - David Guetta ft. Sia

Stay - Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko --Taken by @jalapenobarnes-main​

Eyes Open - Taylor Swift --Taken by @helahades​

One-Line Prompts:

Recovery is tender, straining yellow-blue over his/her/their shoulders and delicate in the shadow of his/her/their smile. --Taken by @iced-capsicle

Laughter tastes like cotton candy. --Taken by @rogersumbra

" All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." -As You Like It, William Shakespeare --Taken by @shakespeareanqueer​

How do you miss something you never had? --Taken by @shellbilee​

They're stuck, and it's all ___'s fault. --Taken by @buckybarney​

Gabe Jones' French skills come to good use. --Taken by @raindroptv​

Self-discovery is a path nobody likes taking, but sometimes, there is no other choice.

"Demons run when a good man goes to war." - Doctor Who, Steven Moffat --Taken by @harley-sunday​

Star-crossed lovers find a galaxy to take refuge in from the rest of the universe. --Taken by @sgtjbuccky​

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that everything goes from order to disorder. --Taken by @alyxkbrl​​

One-Word Prompts:

Sacrilege

Bibliophile --Taken by @nacho-bucky​

Soldier --Taken by @writing-mermaid​

Chrysanthemum(s)

Schadenfreude

Deja Vu

Picasso

Self-Partnered

Petrichor --Taken by @redhairedfeistynerd​​

Serendipity --Taken by @xoxoeeveewritez​​

Momentum

Equilibrium

Entropy

Resplendent

Anemone(s)

Effervescence

Sweetheart

Absolute

Echo --Taken by @wintersoeldiers​​

Nefarious

Picture prompts:

1. Taken by @infj-slytherclaw​

2. Taken by @starrysebastians​

3. 

4. 

5. Taken by @corneliabarnes​

6. 

7. Taken by @bucky-smiles​

8. Taken by @monarchofallisurvey​

9. 

Special thanks to the following authors, who not only inspired and initiated my desire to write, but then encouraged me, supported my work, and were - and still are - tremendously helpful. Others in the following list I befriended later on, and I'm so grateful that I did, because they've helped transform my experience on this site, too. Point is, all of these people are so kind and amazing and marvellous beyond what words can describe. Thank you:

@samingtonwilson @suz-123 @nacho-bucky @evanstarff @tropicalcap @kentuckybarnes @buckyreaderrecs @mermaidxatxheart @corneliabarnes @buckyland​ @bucky-smiles​ @sebbytrash​ @jalapenobarnes​

And thank you of course to my wonderful, magical followers who comment and reblog my stories, and give me all the praise I do not deserve. Thank you for your kindness and your enthusiasm - I cherish it and do everything I can to earn it. Special mentions:

@readerandcinephileingeneral​ @notsomellowmushroom​ @sonjashuterbugjohnson​ @anjali750​ @severelytinyeagle​ @redhairedfeistynerd​ @parmisaanowl @starnight-charmer​ @alyxkbrl​

I'd like to conclude by saying that I debated whether or not to host this writing challenge now, in a time like this. I decided to do so in the end because I need it. Call me selfish, but I need a reprieve. I need to feel like this disaster that has us surrounded right now isn't all there is to the world. And if I've learnt anything from being on this platform, it's that you're very rarely alone. So I hope that this activity can provide some semblance of hope for others that feel the way I do, and if not, then at least a little escape.

So my last but not least thank you goes to everyone who participates in this challenge and thereby makes this shelter from the world's storm, a little stronger, a little safer, and a little warmer. 

I’m excited to see what everyone comes up with, and I look forward to making some new friends. Thank you all and good luck!

[monsterproblems]

Genre: Sci-Fi’ish Comedy

Premise: In a future where the world has been overrun by monsters, a young man risks his life to get to the woman he’s fallen for.

About: Brian Duffield is one of my favorite writers. One of his scripts, Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch, is on my Top 25. And through no fault of his own, another of his projects, Jane Got A Gun, found itself in the middle of a production circus when on the first day of shooting the director of the film just decided not to show up. This resulted in actors dropping out, other actors switching roles, and a full-on game of production musical chairs. Monster Problems was picked up last year. It’s unclear where it is in development. I’ll tell you this right now, though. If I were a studio, this is one of the first scripts I’d green light.

Writer: Brian Duffield

Details: 113 pages (undated)

Okay, so I want you to imagine Sleepless in Seattle. Mixed with a John Hughes film. Mixed with Harry Potter. Mixed with Pacific Rim.

You may be saying, “Carson, that is an unbelievable combination of films. There is nobody in the world who could make that work.”

Ladies and Gentleman, may I introduce you to Brian Duffield. The only person in the world who can make that work. And honestly, I’m in awe of the guy. I really am. I don’t know anyone else on earth who has this kind of imagination, that is also good with character, who can also create a believable and touching romance, who can also add hilarious comedy and lots of heart, whose writing style is sparse yet packed with information, who can ALSO tell a great story, and who always surprises you with his choices.

You just don’t find that kind of writer often. If ever. And it kind of depresses me. Because we’re all supposed to have weaknesses. Those weaknesses are what make other writers feel like they shouldn’t commit suicide. It’s important for them to be able to say, “Okay, sure he can do comedy. But he can’t develop characters like I can.” Duffield can do it all. I guess maybe in Jane Got A Gun, things were a little slow. Maybe when he’s not able to use comedy, his scripts aren’t as entertaining? Maybe that’s a weakness? I guess. Or maybe he purposefully slowed things down in “Jane” because he didn’t want to make all us other writers feel bad.

So what’s Monster Problems about?

This guy, Joel Dawson. A really good guy, this Joel. But he’s been dealt a shitty hand. He lives in this underground bunker with 37 people and he’s the only single guy there. Everyone else is always making out and having sex while he’s just… dreaming of what it would be like to have a girlfriend. Oh, and then, of course, it’s a hundred or so years in the future where the world’s been overtaken by monsters. Bad hand once again. It’s safe to say poker’s not Joel’s thing.

The one thing Joel’s got to look forward to is a girl. Her name is Aimee. She’s got red hair. He knows that because he asked, though he’s never seen her. See, Aimee is in another bunker 30 miles from his. And they can only contact this bunker for a couple minutes a day due to battery issues. And because the hope of being with Aimee is the only reason for Joel to put on his pants every morning, he decides to do the unthinkable – go to her.

Now that might not sound difficult to you or me. 30 miles puts a lot of stress on your quads but it’s doable. Here’s the problem. Monsters. And this isn’t the monster problem you see in Pacific Rim. Or that indie movie, “Monsters.” You know when Will Smith says in the “After Earth” trailer, “Everything on this planet has evolved to kill humans?” And then you went to see the movie and nothing on this planet had evolved to kill humans?

Well imagine a movie where that was actually the case. The second Joel leaves the bunker, he’s attacked by a strange dog-like critter, a raptor-thing, a giant frog, a giant spider, giant killer moths, a weird seven feet tall ghost-like centipede thing, a three headed T-Rex, a giant sea creature, as well as a few other beasts so strange they’re impossible to describe! And all Joel is armed with is a crossbow and a mangy dog he finds along the way.

Joel fights for his life, almost dies a thousand times, saves his dog, gets saved by his dog, meets a father-like figure, meets an astronaut robot, almost dies a thousand more times, etc. There aren’t many things Joel doesn’t experience on this perilous journey. But will he make it to Aimee? And what will happen if he does? Will she be everything he hoped for?

This script. Was awesome.

Period.

It was awesome. Where do I begin? Oh, I know. I’ll begin at the end. Duffield arcs the dog character. You read that right. Duffield GIVES A CHARACTER ARC TO THE DOG! Remember the scene in Cast Away where Wilson, an inanimate object, floats away forever? And you were crying, desperately hoping your date or parents didn’t look over at that exact moment and see you drowning in tears?

There’s a moment that rivals that here with the dog. The dog, you see, was found clinging to the dress of his long-since disappeared female master. He won’t leave with Joel until Joel brings that dress with him. And he’s so stuck on that dress. He cares more about that dress than he does Joel. And then in the end (spoiler), that dress gets stuck in the ocean, where Joel is battling a monster, and he has a choice to either go after the dress or save Joel. And he picks Joel. He changes. The dog arcs. Not barcs. Arcs. And it was so fucking good you cried just like when Wilson died.

Oh, and did I tell you about the astronaut? Yeah. One of my favorite scenes all year has this robot astronaut, split in two, only wires holding her together, pulling herself across the terrain, bumping into Joel, explaining she only has 16 minutes left before her battery runs out. And the two just share her last moments together before she dies. And it’s heartbreaking. And I don’t fucking understand how anybody comes up with this stuff. We can talk about structure until the screencows come home. But you still have to have imagination. You still have to come up with unique choices. How does Duffield bring a nearly dead cut-in-half female robot astronaut into a story about monsters taking over the earth and make it work? I don’t know but it fucking makes me jealous.

And then there’s the ending. I’m not going to get into spoilers, but let’s just say what you thought was going to happen doesn’t happen. That ALSO is a trait of great writers. They take you to the place you think you’re going, then totally change things up on you. You realize the writer is in control. Not you.

There were a few other reasons I loved this script. The main character is a lovable loser. But when he befriends this dog and loses his loneliness, we officially fall in love with him. It’s really hard to have a character befriend a dog or save a dog and not like him. As ridiculous and simplistic as it sounds: we like people who love animals. Who will protect them. It’s crazy how obvious this is, yet when it’s done well, as it is here, it makes the character irresistible.

And I love stories where the obstacles are impossible, where the writer is never easy on his hero. His hero has to earn every step he takes. Remember in After Earth, where the main character is basically guided by his father the whole way? So he didn’t really earn anything? He just follows orders. Here, Joel earns every step he takes. He finds the solutions to all the problems. He outruns or outsmarts or outbeats all the monsters.

And the sheer number of monsters he has to take on is ridiculous. At one point he’s trying to get over a rickety bridge when giant moths with needle teeth attack him, teeth that inject deadly venom into him, while a 3 headed T-Rex is trying to kill him, while he drops his only weapon, his crossbow, into the monster-infested waters below. There are so many moments like this where you wonder, “How the hell is he going to get out of this alive?” And because the odds are so heavily stacked against him, we hover over the page with baited breath, reading as fast as we can so we can get the answer.And then at the heart of this script is… heart. See that’s the thing. All these big effects movies have zero heart, have zero characters we really care about. I mean does anybody in the world really care about Shia LaBeouf in Transformers? Here, we care about Joel. We care about his dog. Because Duffield knows that none of those effects will matter. This is about the character. And you will like Joel. You will love Joel. You will love this journey he goes on. You will be shocked by the ending. And when it’s over, it’ll be one of the few times you’ve finished a script and wished there were more pages to read.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[ ] wasn’t for me

[ ] worth the read

[x] impressive (TOP 25!!!)

[ ] genius

What I learned: The key to writing these scripts is mentally stripping out all the big creatures and monsters and robots and effects, and remembering that it’s a personal journey. Focus on making that personal journey work first. Make your audience fall in love with your main character and want them to succeed. And then build that effects world up afterwards. This is such simple advice and yet this is the first time I’ve seen it done in maybe two or three years? If you’re a big-budget writer, get this right and you’ll be golden.

What I learned 2: Choose action over dialogue to build a relationship. — Let’s say you only have one scene to make us care about a key relationship in your script. In this case, we’ll use Joel and the dog as the characters. Scene Option 1 has Joel talking to the dog over the fire. Scene Option 2 has both of them being attacked by a monster, and Joel has to make a choice between either saving himself or trying to save the dog. ALWAYS choose the second scene option. Action always accelerates a relationship faster than dialogue. Obviously, scripts are long so you’ll have the opportunity to do both, but always favor action over dialogue when you can.

[zebraslovescupcakestoo]

The Visit of Bendy De Mon.

In our little two-bedroom home on the suburbs of California, it was a nice afternoon day of April showers. The sound of the rain drops hitting on the windows calms me as I worked on the animation drawings in my personal art studio.

If anyone haven't guessed who I am, apart from my name alone, I'm Mickey 'Mouse' Disney. Yes I know, I'm that 'famous' poster boy for my father's animation studio and our company.

Many people would think why would I live here in this 'humble' house when my 'actual' home in in the higher class neighborhood? Simple, I'm working from the bottom to the top to earn my position. It was my choice to do so.

But that's a story for another time, I can tell you for now however, I'm not like the others who had their parents paved the road for them to get whatever they want.

I picked up my red pen and I continued my drawing of a dalmatian puppy. At least one OF them. I was reading a kids novel book on 'The hundred and one Dalmatians' one time at the book store to see if I can animate more stories to life. I really loved the story of what Dodie Smith have wrote and I believed it can work as a movie animation. When I personally called her, she was thrilled to hear me and shrieked when I wanted to meet her in person. We had brunch at a very nice cafe while we talked about negotiations on the permission to make her novel into a movie. I wanted to assure her that we will put her name in the credits and that we can still 'own' the animation. She told me she was delighted when I said that. Not to mentioned that her other novels are also good like 'I capture a castle.'

We had a pretty good meeting and I was very happy that I granted her permission to used her story in our animation. I tried to make most of it by my own two hands because of how much our spending goes with other animation projects like 'Sleeping Beauty.' If I can prove to my peers and my seniors that I can become a great animator like my father and the others, maybe I might take over our animation someday.

But for now, I must work hard to make it happened.

I then heard some metals clanged and someone I knew very well cussed in his Chinese dialogue. I put down my pen and went to see him if he's hurt. I opened the door and I see my big brother picking up some empty cans. It must mean that sound I've just heard means he might have dropped them when he carried a bit more than usual.

“You know, you could have ask me to help.” I told him. He tsked as he was picking up the empty. “Aren't you busy with your dalmatians project?”

“Not when someone needed help. Here, I'll carry this in your workshop.” I said as I held some of it and carried them to his personal work shop at the end of the hall.

That person I was talking to was my big brother, Oswald 'Lucky Rabit' Disney. He's actually my half brother, but I don't care even if it is true and he's always has my back just like I always have his since we were little. He's a really good mechanic, a mixed martial art expert, and many more talented guy even I cant barely compete! I wish people would see his as himself instead of him being related to either me or our father... I admit that sometimes I got that too when my father was mentioned, but my brother got it a bit harder than me.

But at least some people have started to recognized him as himself!

I put down the empty cans on an available table that wasn't cluttered. “Oswald, mine might not be the best example of 'tidying' his own project room, but you might considered to organized your tools and parts in a bin or boxes. Do you need my help to find some and organized?”

He gave me his usual serious, poker face and responded. “Whenever I did let you help me, You'd get either confused with the monkey wrench sizes, getting tangled in the wires, mix up oil with ink, misplaced some bolts and then had 'completely' forgotten where it go.” He pointed out my past mistakes and put his along with mine.

I sighed at that. “I was just trying to help you getting more organized and save you some time on searching what you needed instead of rummaging this pile of metals. Speaking of which, are those gonna be the paint bombs or smoke?”

“Which ever you made recently. It would be best to stock up as much as we can if ever 'you know who' started to act up suspicious again.” He grabbed his gloves and goggles to put them on so that he can get started on them. I quickly got back to my studio and grabbed a big jar of my 'special' paint I personally made myself. If you're a bit confused, let me explained on what I can tell you now.

Me and my brothers aren't JUST an animator and a mechanic... we have our 'other' identity when there's trouble... but for now, I cannot say more than I should. I entered back in his workshop and placed my 'special' homemade paint at the center of the table. We then hear some sort of a long car honking noise and some tire screeching outside of our place. We looked at each other and we can tell from our expression and our gut feeling that it might be someone we would NOT expect on a day like this. He immediately took off his goggles and gloves while I took my 'special' paint, hid it in a green barrel, covered it with some metal sheet of paper and then covered it again with a stained table cloth. I hurried to my studio to hid my sketches of the dalmatians and the book in my hidden safe behind a framed picture I've made of the characters we were named after. I then rushed down stairs and looked through our living room to see who it was.

I noticed an expensive black and white car model of an Alvis speed twenty SD drophead coupe. I only knew one person who can afford and own this type of car. It was obviously written on his license plate: Bendy De Mon.

Oswald yelled from the kitchen. “What the heck does that bèndàn want from us now?”

“SHHH! Oswald! He might hear you!” I hushed him and scolded.

“He doesn't understand Chinese, remember? Now keep him busy while I 'had' to prepared something.” He fired back.

Even if we don't like him very much, it's not polite to say rude things in that person's presence. Bendy might not be one of those people that I wish would be a bit more nicer, but I need to be on my best behavior.

Our 'friend' had sounded our doorbell and I took a deep breath to calm myself. It's just a visit, right?

I went to opened the door, but then he flung it and nearly hit me when I did.

“Nickel Mousey!” Bendy exclaimed with his personal 'grand' entry. He was wearing a mauve fedora with a black ribbon and a turquoise brooch. He had a mauve vest that was covered by a big, black fur coat that covered from his neck to almost his sock level. He also had his best black and white Stacey Adam’s shoes. He was also holding a dark grey cigarette stick like the ones some of he high society uses to look even 'dignified.'

“Why Bendy Dr- De Mon. What an unexpected surprise. I didn't know you were in California today.” I politely greeted him. “How are you today? I hope the weather didn't spoil your mood.”

He then started to talk like one of those high class tones.“Oh, I'm miserable, dear squeakers. Perfectly wretched! I was fine with the weather but I had to stop by at your father's small potatoes of a studio just to see you and the other bunny. I just 'had' to meet you two at least once in a while aside from whenever I 'visit' your deconstructed amusement park.” He puffed out a smoke and it's scent spread the whole living room. That scent... I really don't want to.

“I'm sorry that we took a day off and that our new amusement park had a few unfinished rides that needed to be either get finished or fixing. But we're doing the best we can and I hope you didn't had a hard time finding us.” I tried to explained him, but he was sort of busy looking around, passed by me and said. “Yes, yes. There's always some excuses. Now where's your studio?” He then demanded as he went upstairs quickly. Doesn't he knew he can take his shoes off here? I followed him as quickly as I could and I joined him in my personal art studio, rummaging and making a bit of a mess in my 'used to be' organized art supply. “Where are they? Where are they?” He demanded as he rummage through my papers. “For devil's sakes, where is it?” He raised his voice.

“Where is what?” I confusedly asked. He came up to me and furiously said. “Your 'secret' project! Don't you dare play games with me this time, Swiss cheese! I heard it from one of your slaves back at that puny excuse of a studio. You were doing some sort of a animation movie separate from the one that the others are working on.”

He heard that? Gosh! I had to think of something to distract him from it. “I really don't have anything new.” I tried to get him out of there. “You mean about this room? I would expect at least a 'dignified' painting instead of that lame @ss cartoon picture of that stupid mouse and rabbit over there.” He pointed out. “I'm sorry if not everyone liked the idea to have a chandelier hanging from his or her office like you do. We have some-” He cuts me off as he rudely pushed me aside. “Yes yes, some small break I needed after what I saw in here. Too much 'cutesie' for me, banana shoes Mickey's pants.” He went out and descended back downstairs as I followed.

God, please lend me your patience.

He looked around the living room again but this time, he took his time. “Seriously Micks, why on earth did you gave up that free position of the head company just to do grunt work? You could have lived in a much grander mansion instead of this 'bearable' shack.” He puffed another smoke from his cigarette holder.

“My old home is very nice, but I would rather earn it rather than gave it to me. Besides, there are some kind seniors I wanted to be approved too. COUGH!” Bendy puffed another smoke in front of my face.

“My dear, naive, stupid, cheese friend. If you want to be on top of the world, you need to do anything necessary for what you want. Nobody will be like you or your fairy tales rip offs. That 'humble' image of a garbage can you put yourself up will not cut it with me and other who wanna be like me around in this business.” He lectured me. “Just look at the way you're dressed today. White rolled up shirt. A red tie, suspenders with yellow buttons attached to your large red carpi pants or shorts, and are those socks? My my, I completely 'forgot' to take off mine when I came in with 'excitement.'” He devilishly smiled. “Too bad I only stepped in water today.”

“Bendy, aren't you a bit too warm to wear that black fur coat? That looks expensive too.” Didn't you have two others already?

“It's a gift from my one true love, dear mousey. He hunted a big black bear on one weekend with a friend of ours. Killed it with his own bare hands and he skinned it. I had to ask my personal tailor to made it just for me, but I 'kindly' reminded him to leave that 'bloody' scent.” He took a good whiff and widely smiled like he was in love. He always had that odd fascinations with pain and blood. “Asides from women, isn't there any 'dignified' man in this wretched  world who doesn't?” He then settles down on the double couch.

“Well I admit, it does look nice, but I'm sure there are many other things-”

“Sweet, simple Mickey. Hahaha! I know, I know!”  He then hit the coffee table in front of him with his two feet as a resting stool.

He opened his arms wide. “This 'humble' horrid little outhouse is the REAL Disney castle.” He laugh it off. Then my brother came in to the room with a tray of tea set for three and three cupcakes I've made this morning. Did I forgot to mentioned that I can bake pastries in one of my spare time? I enjoyed doing so and I even shared with my co-workers too to help with our team morality!

He grinned maliciously at my brother as he settles it down in the centre of us, smacking his shoes to get them out of the way. “I wondered where was the better half went. Is that a hipster jacket from that new 'rock 'n' roll' upstart singer, Elvis Presley?” Oswald just rolled his eyes and lifted up, but he then got horrified when Bendy groped his butt. “Did you worked out even more recently, or is that just your normal body part that YOUR mother gave ya? It started to look nice, juicy and tempting.” My brother did not have a lot of patience with his harassment towards him and he shows it by attempting to smash his face into the wall with his karate kick. It was so fast that I barely saw it to react. He dented a mark on the wall, but Bendy has ducked it just in time. “Oooooh! You even got good strong legs. Very useful...” He playfully taunted. I immediately broke them up. “Guys, please. No fighting in this house. Oswald, thank you for the snacks, you can sit down over where I was.” He growled and glared at Bendy, but he did as I suggested.

“Would you like my triple chocolate cupcake? I've made them today.” I handed it out to him because it was one of his favorites when we were teenagers and hang out a lot. He made a scorned expression while he took one last puff before me crushed his cigarette in the cupcake I tried to offer. “If it's after twenty minutes fresh from the oven, it's thrash like those stupid cartoons shorts you've made.”

I was a little hurt on the inside, but I tried hard not to be upset as I settled down the now ruined cupcake. “But Bendy, don't you like it even if it wasn't?”

“When you want to make it big in this world, you need to make crucial choices. The right product and marketing makes ALL the differences. Besides, I now like them that way.” He playfully twirled with his cigarette holder with his right hand and rested his chin on his left hand.

“But they're still good even if it was. Why are you being mean to us lately? You weren't like that back then.” I tried to get to the bottom of his saltiness towards us and maybe the image he keeps putting up.

“I'm just telling the basic facts as a 'friend.' You're as soft as ever, unlike your half brother...” He looked at Oswald again with malicious intent as he looked back with a glare, saying 'don't you even think about it, devil shrimp.' look.

“I wondered what else he's hiding underneath those rags... He's actually not that bad looking for a half Chinese. I wondered if I can make him 'dropped' his poker face 'mask' when I'm 'toying' with him...” He whispered to himself. I froze up. Excuse me?!

I tried to offer some tea to forget from what I just heard. “Won't you have some green tea at least?” He got up and then started to head out. “I wish I could stay and 'tolerate,' but I already have my reservation at a more 'refined' restaurant in a couple of hours and the waiting line is horrid. However, before I leave and forget, I will be sitting next to you two at the Oscar award next month. I wanted to have the closest seat to the carpet for when I received the award.”

“But Bendy, Nobody knows who will win this year yet.” I tried to tell him, but he ignored. “Now, don't forget to dress differently this time! I don't like to be seen with a pair of 'common' folks. See you next time, Dorkly Brothers.” He said as he exited the living room and slammed the door. We watched him as he got back in his luxurious car and then speeds off. I sighed and flopped on the double couch.

“What a 'pleasant' surprise HE was!” My brother crossed his arms. “I'm sorry that you had to put up with him because of me.” I apologized to him.

I already knew that he and Bendy have started to hate each other. Well, my brother hated him actually. Bendy has that weird method of taunting... But not in a good way.

“It's not your fault and you shouldn't apologized for him.” He pointed out. “One of these days he'll get what he REALLY deserves.”

“I just wish I knew how he changed so much since then. Sure, he used to be a bit of a trickster, but we still stick together like best friends... Do you think... it's because of the wealth and fame that came in for him?” He did started to act pridefully and snobbish after he took over the Joey Drew Studio the Third. I wondered if I did the same choice as he did with his father's company... Would I be no different from him?

“I can tell from your expression of your face that you were thinking about the choices you would have made.” I looked at my brother in surprised expression. “How can you tell?”

“I known you more than half your life, remember? Even if we grow older, you're still that same cheerful kid who wanted to bring joy to the world. You and Bendy are NOTHING alike.” He tried to cheer me up.

“Thanks Oswald.” I smiled a bit.“Can you opened the windows a bit? I can still smell Bendy's cigarette smokes.”

He opened slightly the window so that there's some fresh April shower scent can cover all of that cigarette's. “Speaking of smokes, how's that quitting therapy?” He asked about my health.

“I'm doing great so far. I've already confessed only to you a few months ago, but since we discovered about our dad's health, I've only had two. But now, I found a new way to ease my smoking craving whenever I was really depressed. Bubble gum!” I reached in my pocket to grab one, but I haven't found it. Maybe it was in the other one? Nope.

He got up and walked next to me. He handed out one of my bubble gum. “And here I was thinking you had a sugar craving again.”I grabbed it and pouted. “I still remembered to eat healthy and brush my teeth, ya know?”

He chuckled. “That's because I keep reminded ya, now, I think I'll throw this one into the garbage since we don't want to poison the birds with his cigarette.” He took out the cupcake I've tried to offered to Bendy earlier and went to the kitchen.

I looked at the hole in the wall from his attempt earlier. This will be a evening project that can wait on Monday... Luckily it's not a big patch job like last time Bendy was here....

“Do you mind to just sweep up his cigarette's ashes? I'll do the mopping after.” He asked me.

“Sure! Mind if I play that record you've bought the other day? That Jailhouse Rock song?” I asked for his permission to used one of his music. I heard it the other day and caught him singing and doing those dance moves... Did you know that my brother had a really wonderful vocals and dance moves? He should try it on the stage! It was amazing!

“Why ask my permission? Just play it!” He agreeably yelled from the kitchen.

I set it up, placed the needle and I let it play as we started to clean up from this afternoon visit. And you know what? I was feeling better already that I didn't needed my bubble gum.

The warden threw a party in the county jail The prison band was there and they began to wail The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing You should've heard them knocked-out jailbirds sing

Let's rock everybody, let's rock Everybody in the whole cell block Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.

THE END.

----- Author’s Notes:

I did a two day writing for the one year anniversary of the BBTIM blog.

This little parallel but plausible story was based from the 101 Dalmatians scene where Cruella made her first appearance in the movie. I did some fun facts I’ve added in the story like I got from the Wiki and stuff.

I know I’ve wrote it in Mickey’s point of view, but I wanted to explained Bendy’s plausible behavior toward one of his chief animating competitors, despite they might be the same age and used to be friends. Plausibly.

Bendy's high class attitude and Boris' looks reminded me so much like Cruella De Vil when combined. Guess why I picked this story board.

I hope you enjoy my little side story, dear users.

BBTIM Characters Bendy, Mickey and Oswald belong to Marini4.

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine #27

Spoilers, obv.

In short, you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts. But as Mark E Smith put it to the Inspirals, Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy. That was a pretty indie start to the notes. Also, incomprehensible to anyone outside of certain demographics. Well, we all have google now. We’ll be fine.

Normally hard issues are hard for everyone. Jamie and Matt go down with me. In this case, the brunt of the problem was mine and mine alone…

(Well, Jamie had to wrestle with the establishing shots in the space and Matt had to do 10 pages with about 2 issues’ worth of colour schemes (and try to solve a visual logic puzzle too) but for once I think this mainly fell on my neck.)

But we’ll get to that, as the results of a lot of heartache are only in a certain section. The rest is relatively easy. Relatively.

Jamie’s cover: we’ve smiled at this a little, in that the discussion of Baphomet’s hair is the closest WicDiv has come to the debate around Billy’s hair in Young Avengers.

I personally just like that he’s still rocking his big metal pole.

Alison Sampson’s cover: Alison is one of those creative force of nature sorts. There are artists who can just be givenn a “Draw this character” instruction but Alison isn’t one of them. She really needs to know everything, so we talked a bunch, and ended up with something distinctly oblique, about confusion. If anything about this issue says that we’re not making it easy, this would be it.

While we’re talking, Alison’s collaboration with Steve Niles, Winnebago Graveyard has just been solicited, and you should order the living shit out of it.

Page 1

The idea for this scene occurred to me – marking your death day – and was so instantly upsetting that I obviously had to write it. Generally speaking, that’s our magnetic north.

Yeah, a WicDiv calendar does seem like an obvious Merch thing to do for Christmas. We’re trying to sort it out.

Having Amaterasu on the page torn out was Jamie’s choice, and an obviously good one given Minerva/Amaterasu’s enmity.

On a craft level, you’ll see how absolutely basic this is – establishing shot with dialogue to link it to internal scene (with dialogue individual enough for readers to know who’s saying it.) Five panels. Two characters. I wanted it simple, if only for contrast – but also a suspicion that the middle section would be harder than it was, and Jamie needed to save his energies.

As a writer in comics, you’re always spending resources. They’re not always money.

Page 2-4

August 9th would be the week after the Ragnarock we saw in issue 6. Putting that whole sequence at the cusp of the world being upended is clearly a thing.

Man, I love Minerva’s hair.

I suspect I was thinking IT with the darkness coming up the sink. IT is the King book which sticks with me, shall we say.

This is an unusual comics “thing” we have to consider – Image ask us what pages we want to send out as previews, and we generally speaking cut it as tight as we can. We’d like to keep as much fun stuff for when people read the issue. It’s a teaser taste, not a first course. So cutting on page 3 would be the place to go… which we didn’t, because that would leave whether Minerva in peril unresolved, which would imply that’s what the rest of the issue about. That’s not what the issue is about in any way, and we’d loathe to give that impression as i) it’s not true and ii) that would be boring impression to give.

Page 4 has some great panels – the pummelling by Baal with Minerva curled behind him. Minerva shell-shocked. Baal’s big-brother glance back. Nice.

Page 5

Enigmatic!

Six panel grid grounds it, obviously.

Page 6

Once more, a return to the five panel. Robust comics. If you're writing a comic, and you don't know the artist, defaulting to a five panel is rarely a bad move. Study Garth Ennis comics. It's not the flashiest of choice, but it's dependable and gives the artist a lot of freedom.

(There's sparser panel selections you can use, but they're a big risk to take if you're not sure you're going to get it back in the art.)

The thing I think of here is Jamie being very annoyed that I’d settled on May 1st, as that meant the panel had to be that wide to fit the calendar design bits in.

Page 7

“Phased” probably says it all.

Page 8-9

Okay. I suspect this is the bit that anyone other than the regulars will be reading this for.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first – each story is delineated by the colour block behind it. Read from left to right in any individual sub-story.

So on this first spread, the top 4 panels of the spread (signified by that big red block behind them all and the outlines) first, then the six bottom panels on the left (orange), the six bottom panels of the right (green), etc.

Obviously we were worried about this for comixology (It’s almost impossible to read in a PDF, obv) so we talked to them about the guided view, which actually walks you through each of the sub-stories perfectly. Yay comixology

It’s printed a little less bright than we’d hoped, so we’ve considered garishing it up a bit for the trade. That said, we’ve had far less “huh”S than we were perhaps expecting.

(In practise, being lost in a whirl of time and space was part of the intent – as the title says, PHASED. You can absolutely read it like you're looking at snowflakes.)

What’s it about? Well, bar the aesthetic effect of decentralising the narrative (and other things) there was the problem of 27 and 28 having a lot of work to do. I had… a lot of solutions. At one point I was thinking that ALL of 27 and 28 would be like the Phased section, just to do everything I wanted them to do, with issue 27 just ending with a page which read <CONT.>

(The one idea which made me smile was playing with doing the whole issue like Ray Fawkes' magnificent graphic novels The People Inside and One Soul. The chapter title would have been BUY THE PEOPLE INSIDE, IT’S REALLY GOOD.)

In the end, I started writing without thinking about how I was going to present it, and generated a bunch of scenes. Far more than was required. After doing all that, I stepped back, and everything tilted a little, and I saw the way through the maze. A lot of the material could just be excised and (after I’d killed a darling) moved to in Imperial Phase Part II. As such, it was a case of arranging what we had into something that felt like a meaningful sequence.

And it ended up actually fitting into 10 pages. I’d budgeted 12, which meant I had 2 spare pages which I used in the final scene for added mood. PHEW!

Oh – the other general thing to say before actually talking about the specifics is that I’ve always wanted to do a comic that runs at the pace of the PREVIOUSLY ON bits of TV shows, and this is the closest we got to that.

On a craft point, it’s worth noting how we tried to introduce various ideas to it. The first 4-page sub-story with Sakhmet/Persephone is the first thing you see and stretches across the spread, with the two other stories as simple blocks. Plus you can read those first two panels as their own things. The coming back to that scene at the start of the page would hopefully make you realise they form a line, and have another look at the colour blocks. The more challenging layouts come later, after the ground-rules have been introduced.

Or so’s the theory.

Anyway! Content! Obviously a lot of closing off stuff people would be wondering about given the last few issues. If WicDiv isn’t doing that story here. Or, at least yet. I know I would be wondering about what London made of a multi-story monster appearing to attack the shard.

(That the first baal scene is commented upon by the second baal/norns scene is another hand-hold to get people through it.)

Man, I still love Baal’s beard.

Page 10-11

More attempt at hand-holding – the top of both pages being six panel stories, and the second story running across the bottom page, and able to be read by itself.

I suspect the actual hardest thing is the phone messages – partially as the natural order of phone messages confuses the reading of a panel (as in, the new messages are at the bottom) and partially as it turns the Baphomet/Persephone sequences in story in a story. As in, we are now in the present day with Persephone texting Baphomet while thinking about what happened at Christmas.

Not easy. But – y’know – Phased.

Cass continues to go for most sweary character of 2017. I occasionally read people don’t like WicDiv saying that all the characters swear too much. I can imagine Cass leaning into their face and screaming “I SWEAR TOO FUCKING MUCH! MOST OF THE REST JUST SWEAR A LOT. PAY SOME ATTENTION, FUCKNOSE!”

Yes, “someone creates apparitions of your dead family so you can have Christmas dinner with them” may have been one of those “Yeah, that’s really upsetting. Let’s do that” ideas.

We had to work on the colouring here to get the desired effect. In the first pass it was much brighter, which left it too cheery. A “they may be in heaven” sort of vibe. We ended up with something much more sickly.

Persephone’s expression though. :(

Page 12-13

Now we start just going across the page to pummel that in.

If this sequence has a backbone, it’s the Norns, of course. All other stuff is fragmentary – there’s a throughline with Cass.

The nomenclature ShinTwo(tm) only came to me as writing, and made me basically bang my head against the table. I’ve had quite a few people ask if I’m referencing one random star or another. No. This is just the sort of thing a certain sort of pop-star does.

Sticking TM at the end of a sentence and fucking with the punctuation is a joke I first fell in love with circa-Amiga Power. Never forget how ludicrous a corporation’s attempt to own language is. Give them the respect they deserve.

Cass’ body language throughout the dance sequences is just a joy. The first panel on the previous page too. I’m a dancer – by which I mean, I throw myself onto the floor with joy and little care of how bad I look… but god knows I’ve got enough friends who find the whole thing hard. I’ve played Dionysus here IRL enough.

The Cass/Dio conversation here is something I was worried about, and pleased it seem to have gone down well.

Page turn, to show change of direction, obv…

Page 14-15

…and into Cass experiencing another god’s power. I can imagine her end of year list updating.

And this spread is where we start tearing at the morings, and doing a horizontally aligned six panel grid across the middle of the page. Yes, writing this issue was very much like solving a puzzle – as I said, I’d written far more stuff just in terms of raw dialogue and ideas, and working out what could be arranged artistically was the thing.

The middle block also creates a time gap between the opening scene and the latter one.

That the backbone to all of this is a rave sequence draws a lime to where we’ve done similar things – namely, issue 8. However, where it’s 8 panel was about beat and flow, this is about confusion.

Page 16-17

Yeah, another mix up. Shifting sands are shifting and another set of moments.

The Sakhmet panel is bleakly amazing. Nice work, guys.

Man, this spread is a world of awesome. I’m glad I ended it with a joke of the BEEP.

Er… it’s been an odd arc for me. I was writing it with an idea what I wanted it to be, and was annoyed with myself that it wasn’t for what I felt was too long. Drugs, decadence, self-destruction, sex, awfulness… and it was mainly tying up necessary business from Rising Action. I wanted it more awful, and I was frustrated as I couldn’t get it there.

That’s no longer a problem. I think the themes of the arc are undeniable, both in form and content. I should have relaxed a little – the point of these two arcs was always the slow burn. For better or worse, it really is what we wanted.

Page 18

The Cassandra Project was a game mod I wrote for in the early 00s. I did say everything I've done gets worked into this fucker.

(Lead character Charlotte Williams is certainly a early example of a Gillen character – a self-described Sylvia Plath With A Sniper Rifle. Even if you can get it working with whatever current Deus Ex is, I wouldn’t recommend it for my writing. It’s an exciting mess of my influences. It may as well have been called THE CASSANDRA PROJECT: KIERON HAS JUST READ PLANETARY AND STILL REALLY LIKES THE INVISIBLES.)

Page 19

Jamie added the insert panel to show David Blake, as it’s been a while since we’ve actually crossed paths. This led to a somewhat intricate series of questions over how to actually letter the fucker to get the exchange between Blake and Cass to work. We ended with the ellipsis speech balloon, which is always a sweetie.

(For those who are following craft, I wanted the big panel on the machine to reintroduce it as a larger thing. The whole issue has been so cramped and it needs to breathe. Or rather, loom.)

As an aside, “Loom” is a word I over-use in my panel descriptions.

Page 20-21

Yeah, those spare pages I had were really useful at this point.

I played with cleverer grids, but a straight STATEMENT/JUXTAPOSED IMAGE six-panel seemed to do the trick.

Lots of set up for the specials here, most obviously the “rumours about 455.” Also, at the half-way point of the whole two-part thing, we get the meaning of the title. Imperial phase.

I suspect this sequence was strongly influenced by the research for 455, generally. It’s easy writing Blake when you’ve been wallowing in research.

The bathing-in-blood is a nod towards the ever-popular Countess Bathory, who actually invented the bath. True fact.

Madness is a loaded word, and I wish Blake didn’t throw it around so casually – hell, Cass too. It’s much more about obsession and addiction and excess. Still: we’ll try to walk this line.

Lots of lovely Imagery from Jamie here. The Dark Knight Returns Baal/Minerva is the one which makes me smile most, and Dionysus’ is the one which breaks my heart.

Page 22-23

And we finally mention a question that’s been asked ever since the Norns appeared in the book.

Man, Skuld and Verðandi are getting chatty.

Page 24

Man, getting to end an issue with a splash image for dramatic effect. This must be what BKV feels like ALL THE TIME.

Seriously, Matt and Jamie do some wonderful things here. Getting the level of oppressive looming darkness is absolutely what the issue is about, and it’s a testament to that.

Page 25

Comrade Rossignol, my old partner in crime, game developer and co-writer on The Ludocrats, and I have a line we tend to quote to one another. It’s a paraphrase of a quote from Ballard: “My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.”

We quote it as: “stay true to your obsessions and your obsessions will be true to you.”

It’s basically been our respective careers’ magnetic north, but there’s certainly times when I wonder how good it's proved for us as human beings.

Next issue is the end of Imperial Phase Part 1, which – thanks to all the hyper-compression of this one – actually lets to linger with space. But we'll get to that soon enough.

Anyway – thanks for reading. See you next month.

[janeaustentextposts]

Question! I noticed - maybe I'm wrong - that in all the adaptations, the casting for the main characters is similar: Darcy is dark haired, and so is Lizzie; Jane is blonde and (for some fascinating reason) Bingley is ginger-y. Is there a reason? something in the books that I missed? Some extra source? It seemed too much a coincidence (although I do love Ginger Bingley) thanks!!!

First off, I’m going to refer back to Mullan’s What Matters in Jane Austen? again, because he’s done a whole chapter on what her characters look like (and starts off with a basic examination of casting choices in adaptations and the admiration or outrage which always follows.) “How people look is often suggested rather than specified in Austen’s novels.” He then goes on to quote Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, “…paint her to your own mind–as like your mistress as you can–as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you.”

All we know of Jane is that she is considered very beautiful–as much is said by Bingley, her mother (who has no difficulty criticizing her children when they displease her,) and even Darcy must admit it as a fact. Looks are important in novels where often penniless girls must rely on other attractions in their manners and person–”…words used so frequently about characters when we first meet them: handsome, pretty, gentlemanlike, elegant…”. And yet she avoids specifics–perhaps as a reaction to other novels of her era, where a heroine’s precise points of beauty are totted up among her other virtues to make her a peerless wonder. Austen’s heroines are often described by other characters, rather than the narration, as it’s important to consider who is looking, and how, when looking at their judgements. Some people use a mention in Jane Austen’s letters about Jane wearing the colour green and Elizabeth preferring yellow to be some kind of marker of what their haircolours must have been in Austen’s mind’s eye, but that’s a tenuous argument at best, and if Austen had wanted the world in general to know imagined particulars about Jane and Elizabeth, she would have set them down in the text.

We know Elizabeth’s eyes are fine, and dark, but beyond that, we are given no details. On a genetic level, dark eyes are far more likely to occur in people with darker hair, but Austen wasn’t working with genetics–and dark eyes paired with lighter hair can sometimes be a rare sign of remarkable beauty, as in the descriptions of Irene in Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga books. (A description which was entirely ignored in the casting of my future wife Gina McKee, but then Irene’s beauty and her allure is such a pivotal force in the novels that to pin it down as necessarily belonging to certain shades of colouring is to make it more trite than it truly is. Irene’s beauty is something beyond what one sees at first glance–it is transcendent charm.) Dark could mean brown, or also a very dark blue or grey–it’s impossible to tell, exactly. Anne Elliott’s eyes are mild and dark, Fanny Price’s are soft and light, Harriet Smith’s are blue, Jane Fairfax’s a deep grey, (and her lashes and eyebrows called dark, giving us some notion of the likely shade of her hair,) Mary Crawford’s are sparkling and dark…eyes are often the only thing near to a solid description we are given of physical attributes, and even then half of the description is more to do with the expression of the personality or feeling of the character through their glances and gazes, rather than specifically the colour of their irises. (Only Emma Woodhouse’s exact eye-colour is known–they are “hazle” and no adaptation so far has given enough of a shit to make certain of casting.) Marianne Dashwood has very dark eyes, and there is a general comparative description of the figures of the two sisters–but casting directors rarely, if ever, I think, take specifics of figures into account beyond an ‘acceptable’ level of Hollywood slimness.Now, for the casting trends (exceptions to the pattern you laid out being the 1940 P&P’s Greer Garson being a dirty-blonde/light brown Elizabeth, while Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane had very dark hair; and the 1980 miniseries with Elizabeth Garvie’s Eliza also having light brown hair while Sabina Franklyn’s Jane was several shades darker–but indeed, the two more recent and well-known adaptations of 1995 and 2005 have the colourings you mentioned,) it’s probably just down to Hollywood mechanics where you’re going to have to combine the tropes of a comparative Ugly Duckling sister as well as a Best Friend/Beta Couple plotline. Coding a blonde woman (or man) as ‘good’ and a darker-haired person as ‘less good’ has been a Thing since long before cinema showed up on the scene. There’s a reason Laura Ingalls spends so much time inwardly (and outwardly) bitching about her sister Mary’s luck in being blonde (and also better-behaved, though this is never explicitly tied to the fact that Mary is blonde, but just ties INTO the overall notion that Mary is The Better Daughter.) Dark-haired heroines throughout older literature have bemoaned their lack of golden locks (notably also in LM Montgomery’s works, with Anne Shirley’s famous sensitivity about her hair being red, but also briefly in Emily Starr’s contemplation of her own black hair and atypical looks, which gets a bit of verse thrown at it which I can’t find sourced anywhere else so must have been made up by Montgomery herself: “If the bards of old the truth have told the sirens had raven hair. But over the earth since art had birth, they paint the angels fair.“So culturally, in the west, there’s a pervasive notion (especially when it comes to women,) that dark-haired women are the ‘darker’ side of their humanity…the temptresses, the more-likely-to-be-bad. (Though any reasonable reader would be like “…well, they’re human, you see, not out-and-out evil.”) But of course anyone compared to the fair-haired saintly paragon of womanhood would look bad–and so equally is the angelic blonde woman a trope in literature, often but not always used in comparisons against her brunette foil.

In cinema, quite often it’s just to better differentiate between characters, and to use these assumptions which are deeply entrenched in our cultures to play upon our immediate and almost instinctive reactions to visual cues. Jane is super-good, so she’s blonde. Bingley is likewise a bright and easy-going character, with more elements of comedy about him, so he’s got lighter hair, too, either as a strawberry blonde or redhead–but he is definitely the sidekick. I, personally, would be all for a ginger Darcy. Or a ginger-everybody P&P. (But that’s not going to happen, because redheaded men are culturally de-sexed/made less masculine or attractive, whereas redheaded women are more inclined to be overly-sexualized. Humanity is weird.) Darcy is a brooding brunette, because darker hair in the case of a male character gives them gravitas and mystery. It’s that damn Byronic thing coming into play. Dark hair, dark secrets. It’s a visual construct we’ve trapped ourselves into, at this point. Also, when you’ve got two love-stories running more or less concurrently, an audience needs visual markers to help them quickly identify and individualize (and therefore emotionally-invest in) the characters. More morally-dubious and fascinating hero and heroine Elizabeth and Darcy are brunettes because we see them making mistakes and drawing our attention by being fuck-ups. Lizzie can’t be the Prettier Sister, so she’s more automatically made the Brunette Underdog. Darcy is brooding and mysterious–so it’s very easy to make him dark-haired. Their contrasts are in their secondary characters–Jane and Bingley. Jane is prettier, and good-hearted (moreso than Eliza, anyway,) so she ascends to Blonde. Bingley is the Good Friend, and seemingly with fewer social defects compared to Darcy, so as the Nice Man, he gets lighter hair to also differentiate him from Darcy and make him more matchy-matchy with Jane. Our brains are making these connections based on visuals even before we’ve gotten half a dozen words of dialogue from any of these people.

This happens often in films and TV shows–in Coppola’s Dracula, Sadie Frost (a natural brunette) was made a vibrant redhead as Lucy to contrast to Winona Ryder’s more sedate and mysterious Mina. (Though this also had the fun effect of tying in a possible reference to the historical link between redhaired people and vampires, and the whole mythos of redhaired women in particular and sexual allure/witchcraft/spiritual evil–particularly as THIS version of Lucy is much more heavily sexualized compared to her book counterpart. I don’t know how much of the hair-colour-change was on purpose from Coppola’s perspective, and largely it’s just handwaved as being so people could really tell apart the ONLY TWO MAJOR FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM, but personally I think it’s an interesting choice–particularly compared to Katie McGrath’s blonde Lucy.) Again, we see the contrasting of virtue coded in hair-colouring, as Lucy is a character known for her sweetness and purity…as well as being a secondary female character to the heroine, and hence her more-virtuous foil…with lighter hair. Mina’s place as an educated, working, and married woman, with a more active part in the narrative, particularly as her brushes with dark forces mark her as ‘unholy’, makes it easier to code her as ‘complicated’, i.e. a brunette. Interestingly, this is set on its head in Penny Dreadful, where Mina becomes the blonde, doomed damsel, and her friend/lover Vanessa is the raven-haired woman at the center of a maelstrom of fucked up shit full of vampires, witches, and devils. Essentially if you want your heroine to go ‘bad’ a little (or a lot), give her a better-by-comparison blonde friend and have at it.Of course, since these tropes are so pervasive, we do see stories where this is purposefully mirrored or mocked, where the icy blonde is the femme fatale or turncoat who uses her appeal to deceive others–but this relies just as heavily on the initial assumption that a fair-haired character is intrinsically ‘better’ on a moral level.To conclude, this is why I think we see that general trend with colouring when it comes to casting/styling these characters in cinematic adaptations, as we have really very little in the text to go on, but from the characters themselves there are long traditions to draw from for visual cues to quickly and adeptly condition audiences to draw certain assumptions about these characters which enable us to rapidly bond with and understand them to some degree. I want to specify “Western” audiences because the blonde/brunette thing is at its roots kind of a colourism thing which is grossly pervasive in a white supremacist society going back for centuries, and Caucasian beauty standards do not and should not apply globally; but as the media most of us are familiar with is dominated by this white heteronormative patriarchal history, these tropes and codings exist for ultimately gross reasons. Frankly we could all do without them from this day forward, but change can be slow and so these stereotypes continue to exist and blonde people on-screen for now often continue to be the tacit code for ‘these people are the purest bestest people’ while the darker-haired people are almost always more morally-grey, complicated–even troubling–and made more ‘fascinating’ by their more flawed natures. It’s a shitty way of doing things, but we’ve been culturally conditioned to respond to things like that, and so it works.Anyway, thanks for asking this one–my answer went to places I wasn’t fully expecting me to go, but I enjoyed blowing the dust off my film studies qualifications and I always love yelling about culture.

[deniscollins]

The Trouble With Empathy

Does your organization assess job candidates empathy skills? If not, why not? If yes, does your organization conduct empathy training? How? Why?

When my daughter started remote kindergarten last month, the schedule sent to parents included more than reading, math, art and other traditional subjects. She’ll also have sessions devoted to “social and emotional learning.” Themes range from listening skills and reading nonverbal cues to how to spot and defuse bullying.

As millions of students start the school year at home, staring at glowing tablets, families worry that they will miss out on the intangible lessons in mutual understanding that come with spending hours a day with kids and adults outside their own household. We want children to grasp perspectives of people different from themselves. Yet in recent years, empathy — whether we can achieve it; whether it does the good we think — has become a vexed topic.

While teachers attempt to teach empathy through screens, the national context has become complicated in the months since the police killing of George Floyd. “Because our white leaders lack compassion and empathy, Black people continue to die,” wrote a columnist in The Chicago Sun-Times. When Joe Biden posted a video declaring that “the pain is too intense for one community to bear alone,” journalists called the message an effort to “project empathy” — while activists said empathy was not enough.

At the Republican National Convention, Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to President Trump, assured the audience that the president is empathizer in chief. “I just wish everyone would see the deep empathy he shows the families whose loved ones were killed due to senseless violence,” Mr. Smith said.

Few would quarrel with a kindergarten teacher’s noble efforts to teach listening skills to 5-year-olds. But as my daughter and her classmates get older, they will run into thornier dilemmas, our era’s version of old questions: Are some divides too great for common humanity to bridge? When we attempt to step into the shoes of those very different from us, do we do more harm than good? At the same time, trends in American education have worked at cross-purposes, nurturing social and emotional learning in some ways, hampering it in others.

Our capacity to see one another as fellow humans, to connect across differences, is the foundation of a liberal pluralist society. Yet skeptics say that what seems like empathy often may be another form of presumption, condescension or domination. In his 2016 book “Against Empathy,” the psychologist Paul Bloom argued that empathy can cloud rational judgment and skews toward people “who are close to us, those who are similar to us and those we see as more attractive or vulnerable and less scary.” The scholar and activist bell hooks put the matter more starkly. White desire to feel Black experience is predatory, exploitative, “eating the Other,” she wrote.

It’s impossible to perfectly inhabit another person’s experience. The important question is the value of the effort, and whether it leaves us separated by an asymptote or a chasm. Can a straight TV writer create an authentic gay sitcom character? If an author of European descent writes a novel from the perspective of Indigenous people, is it an empathic journey, or an imperialist incursion? “I don’t want to throw out what empathy is trying to do,” Alisha Gaines, a professor of African-American literature at Florida State University, told me. “I’m very critical of it though. Empathy has to be considered in the context of institutions and power.”

Ms. Gaines has devoted much of her scholarship to interrogating well-meaning white attempts at empathy for the Black experience, from the white journalist John Howard Griffin’s 1961 book “Black Like Me,” an account of his project to pass as a Black man on a trip through the Deep South, to a modern re-enactment of the Underground Railroad — whose organizers promised “empathy to the extreme,.” Ms. Gaines said: “If for 90 minutes I run around and look for the lantern in the window, what do I take from this into my everyday life? This is playing a slave, not an enslaved person. The humanity gets evacuated out of it.”

Yet, as a literature professor, she wants students to see books as passageways to experiences unlike their own. “I love books because I’m learning something about people I didn’t understand. I’m connecting,” Ms. Gaines told me. “I wasn’t reflected in books I read as a kid. I understood myself through ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and ‘Little Women’ — little Black kids often have to understand themselves through white protagonists. 

At the same time, for me as a little girl reading ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ as much as I saw myself in her precociousness and her deep feeling, I also knew there wasn’t something speaking exactly to me. It was not a perfect mirror. We want to connect to the material on an emotional register and make space for the fact that each story tells a particular story.”

The impulse to participate in the feelings of another may be biological, rooted in our neurology. In the 19th-century German philosophers wrote of Einfühlung, or “in-feeling” — first translated in 1909 as the new English word “empathy.” They did not mean simulating someone else’s feelings, but projecting your own sentiments and memories in the course of an aesthetic or emotional experience, mingling your consciousness with the thing you are contemplating — whether it is a crying child, Picasso’s “Guernica” or a howling mountain landscape.

In the hands of the social scientists who rule our own time, empathy has become one piece of “emotional intelligence,” a term coined in the 1960s and developed by the psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990. The journalist Daniel Goleman popularized that phrase in his 1995 best seller “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ,” which argued that focusing on emotional skills would reduce school violence and equip students for greater success in life. Research has shown that these capacities are at least as important for long-term happiness and economic security as “hard” skills like reading and math.

In 2004, Illinois became the first state to adopt standards from preschool through high school for social and emotional learning, or SEL. Since then, anti-bullying workshops, classroom rules stressing compassion and wall charts of “feeling words” and “emoji meters” have become more common in schools nationally. “The overwhelming majority of educators and parents acknowledge that teaching children SEL skills is critical,” Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, told me. “At the other end, in corporate America, employers are looking for people who have these skills.”

But the colorful classroom posters and the drive for data through “social-emotional competencies” student assessments — not necessarily bad things in themselves — risk reducing our idea of empathy to yet another job skill. The mania for standardized testing that followed the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act has further hampered teachers’ best and oldest tool for developing emotional understanding: the study of literature.

“I really do believe literature is an empathy tool, and reading literature widely can actually make you an empathetic person,” Sarah Levine, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, told me. In many classrooms, the structure of standardized tests, especially multiple-choice questions and narrow essay rubrics, pushes teachers to drill students on finding arguments and literary devices rather than encouraging them to reflect on their own emotional response. “The standardized testing movement reduces literary reading to fact-finding,” Ms. Levine said.

She recently completed a study of a century of New York Regents exams and found that from the 2000s onward, “the reader disappeared from the questions that these tests are asking students. The reader is being asked to figure out what the central idea of the text is, as opposed to being asked to talk about how a text made them see something differently, or sympathize with someone,” she told me.

“We have to ask: Is this the kind of reading we want kids to do? It makes kids really dislike reading. That doesn’t mean we don’t read critically, but we should be using some of that critical and interpretive firepower on political speeches, political tweets, things that demand attention to the way people are using language because they have immediate impact on us as citizens of the world. We should use fiction for empathy, aesthetic pleasure, examining ethical dilemmas and just the experience of escaping.”

Ms. Levine taught high school English on the South Side of Chicago before Stanford. She said that despite the life of privilege she sees around her now, “the danger we’re exposing students to in English classrooms is just as bad for kids in Palo Alto as for kids in Chicago with many fewer resources. We’re teaching them that literature is not for them, because they aren’t a part of what they read. I don’t mean because they feel, ‘I don’t see Black and brown faces in my literature,’ but ‘I’m supposed to write an argument about a motif,’ and not do what kids do outside of the classroom: read and enjoy the experience.”

Emerson Holloway, an English major at Oberlin College in Ohio, read a lot on her own to make up for the fact that in high school, she didn’t always have “the opportunity to connect and empathize with characters,” she told me.

At Oberlin, she helps facilitate a student group called Barefoot Dialogues, which invites students to discuss a text or work of art over a home-cooked meal in order to “engage in trust and vulnerability to make connections across differences,” she said.

She acknowledged that in academia, empathy across identity lines has become controversial, and it’s crucial to “know your own boundaries,” she said. “You can ask, ‘What’s the point if we’re all so different? I’ll never be able to truly understand,’ and that’s true to an extent.”

Yet the effort to understand feels more important now than ever, she said. When Covid-19 hit in March, Barefoot Dialogues switched to Zoom meetings; its leaders are hoping for a hybrid of in-person and remote conversation this fall.

The college students I interviewed for this story stressed the role of empathy in firing up their curiosity, critical thinking and self-interrogation. “People often dismiss emotion as a weakness,” Andie Horowitz, a political science major at the University of Michigan, told me. “But a certain level of emotion makes you interested in something, wanting to find the truth.”

She explained how her professor in a course on gender and the law led students in a deep dive into the lives of the individuals in cases they studied. “When you understand the people behind the movement, it becomes so much more personal,” she said. “That’s where empathy comes into critical thinking and being motivated to learn more.”

This fall, the sight of students of all ages squirming in front of iPads — struggling to learn about themselves and each other through apps and spotty Wi-Fi — drives home the urgency of social and emotional learning. But empathetic education was under attack long before Covid-19 hit. The desiccation of great books in the hands of testing bureaucrats and the politicization of literature in university classrooms is not a neatly left-wing or right-wing assault. It is a collective failure of confidence in our teachers and students. “When we think our students can’t do something, we’re done. Pack it up,” Ms. Gaines, the professor at Florida State, told me. “Given the opportunity, and the space to be vulnerable and space to say they don’t understand and don’t know, lots of growth can happen.”

This is the gift of liberal education: the invitation to read a book and think about both the variety and the common threads of human experience across time, space and culture. “Empathy extends beyond trying to put yourself in other people’s shoes,” said Ms. Holloway, the student at Oberlin. “Success is not part of that definition, really. The act of listening is a form of that empathy. You’re willing to attempt to understand.” Only by constantly making that attempt — however imperfect — can we learn empathy’s hazards, and its power.

Molly Worthen is the author, most recently, of “Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America,” an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a contributing opinion writer.

[recentanimenews]

Defining Moments In Anime: Goku Goes Super Saiyan

  Defining Moments In Anime is a new series from Crunchyroll that looks at various scenes in anime across all genres to showcase why they are special, fondly remembered, have become popular due to memes, or are just fun. We'll break down the moment itself, provide the context leading up to it, discuss the aftermath of what this moment did for the show and its fans, and figure out why exactly its worthy of being a Defining Moment In Anime!

  A terrifying, golden aura has enlightened Planet Namek as Goku's rage has boiled over and he's on the verge of an astonishing transformation. On June 19, 1991, fans of Dragon Ball Z were able to witness a turning point for the series with episode 95, "Transformed At Last!! The Legendary Super Saiyan, Son Goku." At the time, people probably didn’t have a clue as to how this episode would change the course of the Dragon Ball Z series, much less how it would become an iconic part of popular culture for the next three decades. While that moment became one of the first things people think of when it comes to Dragon Ball Z, how did we get to this point in the series? To find out, we need to explore the context of this scene, its generational grip on anime and media with more parodies and references than you can count, the trend of athletes and celebrities themselves becoming Super Saiyans, and why it’s been so fondly remembered.

  So, how do we get to this point? What led up to Frieza pushing Goku to his limits emotionally, which causes the transformation? A significant amount of time has been spent on Planet Namek as Krillin, Gohan, Bulma, Piccolo, Vegeta, and now Goku attempted to track down a new set of Dragon Balls. The Ginyu Squad has been disposed of, and all that stands between Earth’s mightiest warriors and the Namekian Dragon Balls is the one person who destroyed the Saiyan home planet: Frieza. By this point, Frieza has transformed into his final form and wreaked havoc on everyone. Goku has even managed to pull out a Spirit Bomb, but that wasn’t enough to take Frieza out. Instead, Frieza gets really mad and tries to finish off Goku once and for all, only for Piccolo to sacrifice himself to save Goku. In order to really show Goku who’s the boss in this fight, Frieza lifts Krillin, blows him up, and threatens to do the same to Gohan. This is the ultimate catalyst for Goku’s forthcoming transformation.

    The episode makes this moment into a big deal, as it should, although it's unlikely that anyone knew how big of a moment this would end up becoming. The change in demeanor that Goku has, the (literal) electricity in the air, and how emotional everyone is within the episode makes it seem so memorable. None of the other initial Super Saiyan transformations match this in terms of intensity and how they’re remembered. Vegeta’s transformation (which happened thanks to nearly dying from a giant meteor) is almost an afterthought in the Androids Saga. Even when Gohan is able to do it, it’s more of a given that he would be able to pull it off, and it’s not seen as a show-stealing moment that will shock fans.

  Despite the fact that this episode took eight years to come out overseas, the concept of Super Saiyans is something that is still talked about to this day and is a moment that really took Dragon Ball Z on a different trajectory from the original Dragon Ball. The series became, in a sense, an arms race for power as each new villain would be more powerful than the next, which would cause our heroes to find some new way to match that via more elaborate Super Saiyan transformations or through the help of fusions. Essentially, power levels weren’t quantifiable by numbers (but more on that later) and instead were just feelings that people had that made them know if someone was truly dangerous or not. The idea of Super Saiyans has continued to grow exponentially through Dragon Ball Super and will keep going if the series moves forward.

    I don’t know if many of you were around when Dragon Ball Z was huge in the late 90s/early 00s and could have predicted that Super Saiyans would still have this much staying power to this day. There were so many people during that time that had “SSJ_(insert user name here)” instant messenger IDs, emails, message board handles, you name it (myself included). You’d read about these fabled Super Saiyan 5 transformations and a post- Dragon Ball GT story called Dragon Ball AF because people needed more. Years later Super Saiyans would still be parodied in shows such as YuruYuri or the moment itself would just be referenced, such as in NARUTO Spin-Off: Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals. Or, in some cases, you'll just see edited gifs of celebrities going Super Saiyan like Michael Phelps, Miguel Herrera, and John Cena (with subreddits and meme pages archiving and creating even more). Jaden Smith practically had a whole song about it. 

   Source: "Jaden - GOKU"

  When I first watched this episode, there was such a fever pitch of excitement for where the series would go next. It's strange to think that the idea of spoiler culture really wasn't a thing, so my friends and I would try to devour any information we could get for the arcs that hadn't been dubbed into English yet. What would you do with all of that time where you're stuck with re-runs? Find Dragon Ball Z fan sites, of course, read about the Androids, Cell, and Buu sagas and have your mind blown. Plus, you could also find some strange fan-subbed images of Goku cursing up a storm and totally believe that's what the dialogue actually was. I can vividly remember reading up about The Great Saiyaman before it aired in America and rushing to school the next day to tell my cousin about it. Knowing about these new levels of Super Saiyan didn't diminish their magnitude when the series finally got to them. In contrast, when Dragon Ball finally aired in America, seeing Goku change into a Great Ape didn't feel as impressive. On the other hand, you could come up with your own original Dragon Ball characters to placate the downtime. There's certainly something nostalgic about this time period where I wanted to know everything I could about new Super Saiyan levels, new characters, new stories, and anything new that pertained to Dragon Ball Z.

    I can't exactly remember if I saw it when it premiered or caught a reairing of the episode later on. Regardless, the episode really felt like a turning point for the series when watching this moment for the first time. Sure, Super Saiyans were hinted at, but this was still a huge deal to witness. When I reflect back on Dragon Ball Z, this is easily on the shortlist of top/best moments from the entire series and something I will always want to go back and watch. Back then, home video releases were inconsistent and then you'd have to wait an additional couple of months to see them on TV. It was excruciating. But despite that, this moment is probably the catalyst for me wanting to just find out everything about the series as soon as possible, rather than wait another six months for the next set of episodes to come out. If I somehow could travel back to when I first watched this episode, I'm sure 9- or 10-year-old-me is just sitting there in awe with what transpired and mentally saying "holy crap" a lot.

  What makes this moment so fondly remembered by fans and makes it such an iconic moment in anime? One easy answer is that big transformation sequences are, to put it plainly, really cool. It’s one of the reasons why the magical girl genre has thrived for nearly 60 years. It’s also an extension of the power fantasy where you want to believe you have something that’s untapped and hidden within you that can help you out of bad situations.

  The Saiyan's distinct look also stands out from anything else that was happening in Dragon Ball Z as super spikey blonde hair and blue-green eyes makes more of an immediate impact. You might think that was a choice to make these characters truly look different, but in reality, Akira Toriyama just wanted to cut back on coloring Goku's hair black in the manga, so he decided on something that could be represented in an uncolored way. And even though Toriyama would also try to quantify Saiyan power levels with S-Cells almost 21 years after the debut of Goku's transformation in the manga, the feeling and emotion behind turning Super Saiyan is still in the forefront of the cultural memory, as opposed to some other Sci-Fi series.

    There’s also a distinct shift in Goku's demeanor when he first transforms where he takes on an even more serious approach that borders on cockiness at times. Something that might not be as well remembered from this part of Dragon Ball Z is that Goku’s hubris nearly comes back to bite him after not being prepared for Frieza's full power. Goku had to learn quickly that having a higher level of power doesn’t always mean you can take it easy. Goku was serious in big time fights before in both Dragon Ball and Z, but here he was bringing a different level of intensity that fit more in line with an edgier culture that was beginning to take hold during that time. 

  As Goku’s rage begins to envelop him after the death of Krillin, lightning strikes and his power starts to terraform the ground around him. His hair stands up in a way it hasn’t before and begins to flash with a golden radiance. Soon afterward, his power skyrockets as he’s enveloped in a yellow light that transforms him into what many thought was just a legend, a Super Saiyan—a defining moment in anime that won’t soon be forgotten.

  What do you remember most about the first time you saw Goku become a Super Saiyan? Is it something that's stuck with you? Let us know down in the comments below, along with any other moments in anime you'd like to see featured!

---

Jared Clemons is a writer and podcaster for Seasonal Anime Checkup where he can be found always wanting to talk about Love Live! Sunshine!! or whatever else he's into at the moment. He can be found on Twitter @ragbag.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[jenmedsbookreviews]

Today I’m delighted to welcome Dr and Author, Carol Cooper to Jen Med’s to help spread a little more #booklove. We’ll find out all about Carol’s favourite reads as soon as we’ve found out a little more about the woman herself.

About Carol

Carol Cooper is a doctor, journalist, and author.  Following a string of popular child health titles and an award-winning medical textbook, she turned to fiction with her acclaimed debut novel One Night at the Jacaranda.  Her latest novel Hampstead Fever has been picked by WH Smith for a high profile promotion in their travel bookstores.

You can follow Carol on Twitter, Facebook and her website, Pills & Pillow Talk

…

One Night at the Jacaranda

One man dying of cancer. One struggling journalist. A group of single Londoners. One night that changes everything…

The trouble with speed dating is that three minutes can last a lifetime, and ever since he was diagnosed, Sanjay doesn’t have a lifetime to waste.

For one booze and hope-fuelled night, the lives of a group of 30-somethings criss-cross. As well as Sanjay, lawyer Laure, divorced doctor Geoff, beleaguered mother-of-four Karen and traumatised ex-con Dan all face each other across the Jacaranda’s tables in their quest for love, solace or amazing sex.

Undercover journalist Harriet is after a by-line, not a boyfriend. She’s a struggling freelance with a live-in lover, who unexpectedly has to choose between the comfortable life she knows and a bumpy road that could lead to happiness.

As they each discover in turn, relationships aren’t just about finding someone special. They’re about finding yourself.

Amazon UK | Amazon US

…

Hampstead Fever

IN A LONDON HEATWAVE, EMOTIONS REACH BOILING POINT… Ex-con Dan has it all. The perfect job and a new baby with his dream woman. So why is he still an outsider?

Laure had baby Jack late in life. It’s only natural she’s a little over-protective. Motherhood is terrifying.

After surviving serious illness, Sanjay’s got his life back. Now he wants adventure. Where does that leave girlfriend Harriet?

Karen’s love life is reduced to casual sex with the football coach. As a divorcee with four kids, romance is on her to-do list, just below the laundry.

Doctor Geoff’s relationship with actress Daisy is bound to be a bit dramatic. But why all the mystery?

A slice of contemporary multi-cultural London life to make you laugh, cry, and nod in recognition.

Amazon UK | Amazon US

Childhood Sweetheart Favourite book from childhood

It’s close between The Wind in the Willows and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But The Wind in the Willows wins by a water-rat’s nose. I’ve read it again and again, and again and again.

First love The first book you fell in love with

English Fables and Fairy Stories, by James Reeves. It had 19 wonderful stories, including Dick Whittington which always made my cry. My love for the book was possessive and intense, and ultimately destructive, though I didn’t mean it to me. I coloured in the black and white illustrations in that beautiful hardback, ruining many of them.

Biggest book crush The book character you’re totally in love with

Until recently, it was Mr Darcy. But now it’s Bob, from A Streetcat Named Bob.

Weirdest book crush Well… duh

Ashley Wilkes. He wasn’t the most obvious heartthrob from Gone with the Wind, but he was gentle and gentlemanly, so perhaps it’s not the weirdest crush. A complicated character, he loved the South, but not the Confederates, and he was educated and principled, but also weak and indecisive. I always wanted Scarlett to end up with him.

Hardest break up The book you didn’t want to end

Funeral for an Owl by Jane Davis. It’s the extraordinarily sensitive story of a 14-year old from South London who’s escaping gang violence as well as a home where nobody cares about him. The two teachers who try to help him end up struggling with right and wrong, and with their own weaknesses. The dialogue and local atmosphere are spot on too.

The one that got away The book in your TBR or wish list that you regret not having started yet.

Girl on the Train. That one left the station without me.

Secret love Guilty Reading pleasure

It’s probably Dan Brown. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Although, if you’re very observant, you may catch me re-reading the occasional Enid Blyton title. With their childhood innocence and lashings of ginger beer, her books are semolina for the soul.

Love one, love them all Favourite series or genre

All of Dick Francis’s books, though my favourite is For Kicks. I don’t especially like racing or even horses, but I love his characters and the breakneck pace of his novels.

Your latest squeeze Favourite read of the last 12 months

The Green Ribbons by Clare Flynn. The story starts in 1900 when Hepzibah loses her parents in a tragic accident and, aged only 18, she has to make her way in a hostile and chauvinist world.

Blind date for a friend If you were to set a friend up with a blind date (book) which one would it be?

The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa al-Aswany. Set in Cairo, it has a wonderful cast of characters, each with their own story and their own dilemmas, so the book has something for everyone. Those who don’t know Egypt will be entranced by the setting, while those who are more familiar with the country will smile and nod in recognition.

Greatest love of all Favourite book of all time.

No contest. It’s Cocktails and Camels, by Jacqueline Carol. This is the fictionalised memoir of a young woman growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, around the time of World War Two and beyond, when the city was very cosmopolitan. It’s also the funniest book I’ve ever read, and not just because the author was my mother. Sadly it is now out of print.

…

Thanks Carol. Some really great looking choices in there. I’m really keen to read A Streetcat Named Bob if I ever find a spare moment. And another vote for Dan Brown. I really do have to read one of those books and see why everyone lists him as a guilty pleasure. Seems fairly controversial 😉

What do you all think? Any of these books make your personal book love list? Let me know in the comments and be sure to stop by again on Saturday as I have the lovel Lorraine from The Book Review Cafe spilling her book love confessions.

Have a fab day all

JL

#BookLove: Carol Cooper @DrCarolCooper Today I'm delighted to welcome Dr and Author, Carol Cooper to Jen Med's to help spread a little more #booklove.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]