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7fckingidiots · 4 years ago

Note

Would you be alright with writing some HCs about the brothers and a MC who's a trans guy? Sorry if it's a tall order or too vague, they're a big comfort for me and I'd like to see what ideas you have bcs your headcanons are fantastic ;w;

HELL YEAH DUDE!!!! IM ALSO TRANS!!! AH!!!!! demigirl rights :3 but i also find a huge comfort in the boys and i hc all of them as trans because no one can Stop Me •• but i really hope you enjoy these and remember you’re valid and i care u so much! Also i hope you don’t mind but i kinda made it gender neutral so every trans folk could enjoy!

The Brothers With A Trans MC

Lucifer

He didn’t know until you came out to him honestly. He knew all his other siblings were trans but with all the work Diavolo gave him and adding new students from different realms on top of that he hadn’t really had time to notice any minor changes in you.

He feels guilty about this and immediately makes sure(like everyone else)to ask for your pronouns, name, and how you would like to present yourself from now on.

Fixes your ID cards and your papers with Diavolo right after dinner

God. He’s such a dad and he gets you things that have your new name on them. You wake up to see you have a new pencil case with your name embroidered on it with matching pencils. God.....he’s so weird i love him so much

Asmo does most of your clothing shopping but for formal wear he takes you shopping! He’s not about to buy you some cheap tux or gown ok it’s gonna be over 2000 grim and he’s gonna get you three of them STOP HIM

He’s not the best with verbal affection so he writes down notes that are like “you looked very handsome/pretty today.” or when he first starts writing them they’re like “you’re a boy/girl/kid. i’m proud of you.” Thank u mr morningstar

You want surgery or to start hormones??? He will stop all his work with Diavolo and spend forever looking up things for you, he wants you to be as safe as possible(pls he almost fainted after he realized you’d have to give yourself a shot like everyday dhdhdhjdhd hc that demons/angels don’t have to do hormone therapy i’m so JEALOUS)

Practices saying your pronouns in his study when you first come out. He just wants to make sure you feel as safe as possible in his care(and he remembers how terrible it felt to be misgendered)

Guess what....he loves you no matter what :)

Mammon

You’re blind as hell if you couldn’t see his top scars but I respect it

King DOES slip up on your pronoun change but always immediately corrects himself. Satan has a spray bottle that he sprays Mammon with when he does it. Mammon is NOT amused but the same can’t be said for Belphie.

Gender affirming activities??? Oh yeah like robbing a bank?? That’s pretty gender neutral and trans right?? Yeah!!! Wow such a good supportive brother.

If you want you can wear the formal wear Lucifer bought you to the said bank heist. Boom trans rights

You can practice painting his nails or doing his makeup if you’re too nervous to do it on yourself first!! Dw if it’s bad he also can’t do makeup or paint nails so once you let him return the favor you’re both laughing and Asmo is distraught.

KING at dying hair he will get you whatever you need and if you want an entire different hair cut entirely he’s ON it

Very used to being Loud and Brash but if you need someone to talk to about anything really he always calms down and sits down to listen to whatever you have to say.

Lots of gendered gifts from him. This said for men??? Oh ok adds to cart. Oh pink??? For ladies??? yeah that can go in there too

You’re never gonna believe this.....But he loves you and supports you :)

Levi

He was the first one to come out to you at the house!! He was just so excited! Same hat!!!

Gets literally any video game where you can design the protag/have custom pronouns and will play games like that with you for hours

Would you like a pride flag.....for u.....He has too many.....Please take the trans flag please he has no room....he bought in bulk for a pride event and didn’t consider the consequences of his actions

Miku binder but irl. He will get if for you but unironically.....thanks King. He just likes binders with patterns and i respect IT

Dysphoria?? He gives you his hoodie bc that was his trademark dysphoria hoodie and i GUESS for you he can share............he would give u anything just ask nicely he’s sensitive

Reads any character that matches up with your gender and is like!!!!! That’s you!!!! OMG!!!! You in da IRL

Goes back and edits his tweets if they use your old name or pronouns(also has he/they in his bio. this is for nothing just makes me :D)

If you haven’t chosen your name he’s gonna suggest so many fictional characters. POV levi kin assigns you.

You listen to music together that just has Trans Vibes.....maybe u cry together but there’s no judgment!! It’s just nice :)

God it’s wild but! He loves u and thinks ur great :)

Satan

Enby Satan. That’s all :)

He’s very quite about it, he supports you! He’s just not loud like his brothers

He brings you book about gender studies and LGBTQ history that he thinks would interest you(there some of his favorite books and they’ve made him feel the most comfortable in his gender)

Gives you a name list if you haven’t named yourself yet! He cares about you and wants to make sure you have the right name that suits you

He’s the one that tells you that it’s ok if you’re still figuring it all out, learning about yourself is a very tricky process and if anyone knows that it’s Satan

Any of the brothers would kill anyone who misgendered you but with Satan that shit is ON SIGHT

Asks you how you know and what were the signs that gave it away to you, but only if you’re comfortable telling him!! He just finds everyone’s experience interesting and would like to know yours as well.

Spells for fucking DAYS Satan personally kills body dysphoria the best he can(mainly bc he’s HIGHKEY afraid of you getting surgery he hates knives so much)

Makes your comfort food for you when you’re feeling down about yourself and will read whatever you want to hear outloud to you.

!!!!!! GET THIS !!!!!! He loves YOU :0

Asmo

Fucking excited!!!! This means you two are going to buy so much clothing together and he gets to style you let’s GO

Buys you whatever you want but he will make you try it all on so be CAREFUL what u wish for.....ur gonna be there till the store closes yeah......

Paints your nails with the trans pride flag!! Also does your makeup and gives you tips on how to look more masculine or fem!!

VOICE LESSONS

He will help you lower or raise the pitch of your voice if it KILLS him. It eventually becomes like a mini class after school

Helps with internalized transphobia! Hes dealt with his fair share and knows how awful it can be and he will NOT being having you experience that as well we r practicing Self Care now

Picks apart any one who misgenders you until they’re crying he has NO fucking time for that behavior in this HOUSE

Sometimes self care is eating whatever you want and sitting in the dysphoria hoodies while watching chick flicks with Asmo

He likes dressing you up but he’s always sure to set boundaries so he never puts you into something that makes you feel uncomfortable

ALSO edits his posts and takes down anything that makes you uncomfortable!!

He loves you so much!!!!

Beel

another one to hand you The Dysphoria Hoodie and it’s very large and comfy!

he’ll help you make out a work out routine that will help you get the body you want and it makes him really happy to work out with you :)

he’s gonna hold your hand if you have to take shots and will give you puppy eyes if you don’t let him. He’s just worried!!!! He wants to help

stands behind you whenever you’re nervous about coming out to someone, he will NOT have someone making you feel bad or misgendering you

he’ll see food with trans pride colors and gives it too you, probably doesn’t even know what it is half the time but it made him think of you so he makes sure to get it for you

he doesn’t trip up on any of your new pronouns or name and makes it seem like he never even knew them. dead name???? what’s that??? a type of sauce?????

will let you vent to him whenever needed and will always make you a sundae after you’ve finished. it’s comically huge but it’s tasty and does make you feel a lot better, thanks beel

makes sure you remember to take off your binder if you’ve been wearing it for more than eight hours! and if you’ve been wearing heels to feel more fem he reminds you to take those off too and has a pair of slippers for you in his room that you can wear instead

hey! get this! He loves you so, so much :D

Belphie

you’re trans? ok kid join the club. he doesn’t make a big deal at all

are you still gonna cuddle with him and join him in his quest to make lucifer’s life difficult? yeah? ok then cool what’s ur name

if he hears someone misgender you he waits till you’ve left the room and just kills whoever did it, dude’s unhinged what did you expect from him honestly

he’s actually really curious about any hormone therapy you’re on and likes listening to you rant about it to him. he likes seeing your face light up and it partly reminds him of lilith

calls your hormones something stupid like “oh dude, your gamer girl juice arrived.” or “hey your little man potion is here.” ...thanks belphie

will NOT let you sleep in a binder or push up bra!!! not healthy!! let ur chest breath guys

like mammon, he gets you gendered gifts but they’re so fucking weird? you didn’t need a girls version of a collectable hot wheels set???? he got you blue lightning mcqueen sheets?????? those EXIST here????!!!!! when does he even shop......

introduces you to new people like “this is our resident boy/girl/human. they don’t do much but i think they’re cool.”

he really does care about you but he remembers when he came out he just didnt want people to make a big deal about it so he’s just doing what would have made him feel the most comfortable, but you can still see how much love he has for you when you look into his eyes

he loves you, so, so much :)

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jazminetoad · 4 years ago

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The True Straw Hat Crew AU

Water 7 Arc headcanons (Part 1)

Alright, so at this point we have 24 members of the Straw Hat crew by the time Water 7 takes place. Once again, this is a reference to this → post and the list of characters can be found → here

Ipponmatsu goes with Luffy, Nami, and Usopp to trade in the gold for beris

Now, I believe that since Ipponmatsu is an appraiser himself, they would get more money than 300 million (scam or not, even if it was Nami would back him up)

I'm going to say they get 500 million beris (I mean we need the extra money because I'm pretty sure the giant log raft that was pulling Dorry and Brogy along is also going to be damaged)

Now since Nami and Ipponmatsu both value money, I don't think they would lose 400 million

Nami carrying 100 million, Usopp carrying 200 million, and Ipponmatsu carrying 200 million. (Luffy is still not trusted to carry the money)

We still gotta lose that 200 million for Franky, sorry Usopp but you still get kidnapped (We'll get back to that later)

Now I imagine at this point, Vivi and Robin are okay friends (especially when Aokiji almost froze the archeologist to death) so both of them accompany Chopper to town

Pell would, of course, wish to come along but Vivi reassures him she'll be fine and wants to freely explore the town so he would stay back and guard the Merry with Zoro, Cricket, & Wyper

A polite conversation goes between the trio until Chopper sees book store and speeds to the front asking if they can go inside, the girls giggling at Chopper being adorable

"Come on, Robin" Vivi goes ahead and Robin follows behind her but stops when Blueno(?) walks by muttering "CP9"

Vivi is now in the store so she doesn't notice Robin frozen in place, she sees Chopper reading some books already. The cashier lady makes her comment on Chopper's "costume" and by that time since he is now of aware of his surroundings Chopper would ask Vivi where's Robin.

"I don't know, she was right behind me," Vivi tells him confused, they both look outside and don't see Robin anywhere. This concerns both of them so they go to find her

Alright, I kinda want Boodle, Chouchou, Gaimon, Tonjit, and Shelly to have their own little adventure in the city. It'd mostly be for comic relief. I can see Boodle commenting about the structure of the city and the citizens (because he was a mayor himself) then Gaimon and Tonjit just happy to explore a spectacular area they've never seen before. So yeah, they have a fun time (I also want Boodle to be able to meet Iceburg but that could be saved for Post Enies Lobby)

Now, the Franky Family in the original story try to capture Zoro but fail, in this AU I don't think they could get even close to the Merry without the giants spotting them but let's just say they do (maybe they rolled high on their stealth check)

We don't only have Zoro (who is taking a nap on deck), we also have Pell, Cricket, and Wyper on the Merry (the rest who didn't explore the city are probably chilling in Laboon)

It is safe to say, the Franky Family gets their ass kicked no questions there

Kaku shows up later, once again, mistaken for Usopp. However, Pell, Wyper, and Cricket would be awake for Kaku to properly ask questions and explain he's here to assess the repairs of the ship before Zoro wakes up. I think Zoro would still get hostile when the shipwright tears the floorboards to look at the kilos. (Now I imagine, since the bottom of the kilos is strapped to Laboon, I think it would closer to the front that is damaged) (Yes, Merry is still going have to say goodbye, we need the Sunny) That makes Zoro, Wyper, Cricket, and Pell the first to hear the Merry can't be repaired. Which is sad, I know

Kaku then tells the other shipwrights, Luffy, Nami, and Ippanmatsu after coming back to dock 1

Everything is the same until Nami gets back to the Merry and that's when shit goes down

Now to keep the money even more safe, I imagine they keep it in Laboon, the army base, for safe measures. Ippanmatsu is personally hugging the remaining 300 million

Pell, Vivi, Nami, Boodle, Gaimon, and Crocus are guarding the Merry

Now, you know how badass it was when the monster trio + Chopper just wrecked the Franky house

Imagine this, the door gets knocked down and you see Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Chopper (in full human form), Wyper, Cricket, and Coby (because at this point in the story, I feel like after some training with the others that Coby would be stronger) are there. The family are all scared and shit their pants, and when one of them thinks they could stand against the straw hats

BOOM

The top half of the house is just torn off and thrown across the sea and you see Dorry and Brogy are towering over them

And it was at this moment, the Franky Family knew- They. Fucked. Up.

Cut to Usopp and Luffy's fight, they have more audience. I think the most affected ones here, apart of the new cast, is Coby, Vivi, and Wyper

Wyper because he sees how Usopp is fighting and using the dials, I feel like he would be conflicted. He would be proud of Usopp but at the same time it's a fight between the sniper and the captain

Coby seeing how the two friends who are usually happy-go-lucky to a serious fight and are both putting their lives on the line, because he remembers how serious Luffy was back when they first met and the captain's dream was to become king of the pirates, willing to die for it.

Vivi, as someone who had a civil war in her homeland, now seeing two of her friends fighting in a life or death battle. I can see how much pain that would bring her because her childhood friend was leader of the rebel army that was going to attack the palace, so this fight is going to affect her.

Of course, everyone is affected but I'm just adding that because that's how I see their emotions

Usopp still loses but keeps the Merry (they're going to have to try and get her off Laboon which may damage it more but for simplistic sake let's just say it doesn't)

The straw hats aren't going to have to rent out hotel rooms, no, they have Laboon for that. The whale is a mini army base, they don't need to worry about space. They're still going to get a new pirate ship because what's the king of the pirates without his grand ship

Now when they get the news Iceburg was shot, Vivi and Boodle are going along with Luffy and Nami because they also have their own civilization they take care of so I just feel they would try to help Iceburg.

With Vivi being a princess of Alabasta, I don't see a problem with the straw hats getting into dock 1 because she's of high status (not exactly a celestial dragon but a princess nonetheless) but Franky interrupts this then he and straw hat fight

When the foremen come outside to take care of Luffy (and Franky but mainly Luffy), accusing the boy of attacking Iceburg, Vivi and Boodle would step in and say "No, Luffy is not the kind of pirate that would do that. Luffy save our homes." (With Vivi I think it'd be more reassuring since she is a princess)

Now, Paulie, Lulu, and Tilestone would second guess themselves because things aren't adding up (I would mention that the straw hats are just a group of teens but in this AU they aren't all teens)

Lucci and Kaku on the other hand, are like "shit" because they weren't expecting a freaking princess (& mayor) to be apart of the crew so framing the straw hats is going to be a little harder. Especially when both Vivi and Nami mention they haven't seen Robin since yesterday.

I'm sure they wouldn't have to worry too much because it was mainly them (& Kalifa) that we're jumping to the conclusion the straw hats as a whole did this so they weren't letting Luffy or the others get a chance to explain Robin or themselves.

We then cut to Chopper and Sanji hearing about Aqua Laguna (they of course attempt to warn Usopp) but then there's the concern of Laboon. Well, it's not too much to worry about because Laboon can dive deep underwater. They still have to warn the others (and of course then they find Robin which leads to Sanji's side quest)

Part 2 will be coming soon

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hanniiesuckle17 · 3 years ago

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I posted 1,025 times in 2021

461 posts created (45%)

564 posts reblogged (55%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.2 posts.

I added 485 tags in 2021

#rubber ducky you're the one - 72 posts

#kpop imagines - 69 posts

#ateez imagines - 46 posts

#ateez reactions - 45 posts

#kim hongjoong imagines - 44 posts

#ateez - 44 posts

#ateez preferences - 43 posts

#ateez scenarios - 43 posts

#kim hongjoong oneshot - 40 posts

#kim hongjoong - 39 posts

Longest Tag: 104 characters

#cause on my sc story i literally cannot stop talking about jongho and what an amazing comic relief he is

My Top Posts in 2021

Ateez Reaction: The First "I Love You"

A/n: i know im a lil late for yeosang’s birthday but i had to post something!!! plus I wanna do more ateez reactions so if you guys have any reaction requests go ahead and send them! (just reactions tho. No imagines or fics until Blue Skies is finished) also sorry this is not edited ahaha

Tag List: @woodiegochile @mini-meanhoe @leggomylino @hanstagrams @desertofdessert @hoes4hoseok @jeonqqin @geminirules @mrsunshine999 @jisungsjheekies @hannie-squirrel00 @cotccotc @kodzu-ken @konenichi @yangs-jeongin @binniebutter @orangegyu @little-precious-baby @pikacuuuuuuu

WC: 600-700 per member/ 5.6k total

Warnings: suggestive?, heated argument, cute ateez, maybe one or two curse words

Hongjoong:

“All I’m saying is that you could try and spare just a little time, Joong!” Your boyfriend seemed to be completely ignoring you. “Joong! Will you please listen to me! I can’t fight for this relationship all by myself!”

Hongjoong groaned turning to face you. “Y/n, baby, you know I am stretched thin. I spend eighty percent of my day working for the boys, fifteen percent doing schedules that I never am informed of until ten minutes before, and then four percent managing seven hyperactive man-children. I get one percent! One percent to myself!”

At this point, neither of you were doing anything to restrain the level of your voices. You were certain you would be getting a noise complaint from your neighbors for all the yelling but you really didn’t care at this point. “Hongjoong you asked me out! A year ago you asked me out and you decided you wanted to commit to this relationship. You can’t just bail! Don’t I deserve one percent of your time?”

Your boyfriend stood in the middle of the living room, tossing his phone on the couch flippantly. “I’m not saying you don’t! I’m saying there’s nothing I can do about it, babe! My work comes first- you know that!”

Tears pricked at the edge of your eyes. “Nothing you can do? Hongjoong...I’ve sacrificed everything for this. For you. I’ve uprooted my life. I’ve risked my job, my education, my friendships....all for you. I’m in this for the long haul.”

“And you think I’m not?” He yelled back at you.

“I honestly can’t tell! Joong- I love you! Do you love me at all?”

Your heart sank seeing him stutter. You let him stew in silence for a minute or two before deciding that he was in fact not going to say anything. The idol couldn't even meet your eyes. He wasn’t going to say it. Your shoulders sank and you ran a hand through your hair. Finally letting the tears fall you turned away from the man standing in your living room. You had to get away.

“Wow....so this is what one-sided love feels like...”

Not waiting for him to respond you walked out the door, not looking back. You walked out of your apartment building not really heading anywhere in particular. He either wasn’t ready or he wasn’t going to say it at all. The thing was....you were kind of tired of waiting.

It took Hongjoong a few moments to realize what happened. It then dawned on him that you had walked out. Like actually walked out. “Oh, shit...” The lean handsome man sprinted out the door. He didn’t know where you were but he knew he had to find you.

Hongjoong went everywhere he could think of. He ran at least nine blocks looking for you, sweat dripping off his forehead. Suddenly a familiar sign came into view. The bright white light shone like a beacon on the small street. The convenience store where the two of you first met.

The bell rang as he entered the twenty-four-hour shop and immediately his eyes fell on you sitting at the counter. “Y/n!” You turned to look at him and his heart broke seeing the trails of tears on your cheeks.

You made no effort to move and instead, you let him come to you- sitting down on the stool beside you. “Baby...I’m so sorry. You were right I was a total asshole-”

“Hongjoong-”

“Please just let me speak...” Hesitantly you nodded, pushing away the ramen you bought to focus on your boyfriend. “I am in love with you.”

“Joong-”

“I don’t want to say ‘I love you’, because that’s not enough. That’s not how much I feel. You don’t deserve ‘I love you’. You deserve....’I would bring down every star in the night sky to just see your smile’, but that’s a little long. So...I’m in love with you. I am in love with you, Y/n.”

You were at a loss for words. Hongjoong sensed this and reached for your hand. “You aren’t just saying this because I said it right?”

He shook his head and pressed a light kiss to your knuckles. “I’ll tell you a secret.” You nodded- heart beating faster by the second. “Somewhere in my dorm; no I’m not telling you where cause I know you’re going to look anyway, there is a ring for you. Now it’s not a promise ring....unless that freaks you out and then it totally is a promise ring. I don’t plan on giving it to you anytime soon, but it’s there...only for you.”

You grinned leaping into his arm and crashing your lips against his. “I love you so much, Joong.”

Seonghwa:

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308 notes • Posted 2021-06-15 22:45:52 GMT

Ateez Reaction: Idol!S/o Betrays Them on a Variety Show

A/n: So I hope i did a good on this! I love out of the box concepts and ideas like this! Sorry this took so long! After i clear more requests out of my inbox I'm going to write more for ateez and sf9 and take a tiny break from SKZ.

Requested by: @cheesecakesssseue

Tag List: @ashisparanoid @mini-meanhoe @leggomylino @hanstagrams @desertofdessert @hoes4hoseok @yangomangos @jeonqqin @geminirules @crscendoforsung @mrsunshine999 @jisungsjheekies @hannie-squirrel00 @cotccotc @kodzu-ken @konenichi @yangs-jeongin @binniebutter

Warnings: cursing

Hongjoong:

“We would like to thank Hongjoong and Y/n for joining us today on another episode of Running Man!” You clapped next your boyfriend, wind blowing his blue hair out of his handsome face. “So, everyone knows the two of you are basically K-Pop’s hottest couple right now. But, then you go and release a song together! Truly amazing. We love your song Watercolors.” Kwangsoo, one of the hosts complimented.

Hongjoong proudly wrapped an arm around your shoulder. The two of you had worked very hard on the song and it was so much fun to make and release. “Well we are so excited to be here!” He said with a bright grin.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve watched at home, and now we are actually guests for an episode!” You cheered, clapping excitedly.

“In honor of your smash hit, we thought we could get a little messy today. We didn’t have any watercolors...but we thought any paint would work.” The two of you glanced at each other as staff handed you a heavy duty pair of goggles and chunky vest. “We are introducing a new Running Man challenge we like to call Paint War!” Hongjoong gulped before looking at the paintball arena behind him.

“Cut!” The director called.

“You excited?” Hongjoon nervously scratched the back of his head. That was all the response to your question he could give. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” You said with a laugh, holding up the paintball gun.

The cast slipped into the gear and Hongjoong made the staff triple check that your armor would stay on. Camera crew dressed in white jumpsuits and goggles followed you into the outdoor arena and filmed you splitting up in teams of two. “We should take higher ground. Then we can pick them off like bugs.” Hongjoong was shocked at your evil little cackle.

“Baby, you are very scary. Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

Adjusting the camera strapped to your chest, you took your first shot. The neon green paint splattered right across the back of an unsuspecting cast member. You and Hongjoong were an unstoppable team. The sound of paint pellets rang through the warm summer air. Climbing down from your post the two of you parted ways to try and ambush the two remaining pairs.

Before you could shoot Somin, she raised her hands. “You guys are so good, what the hell!” Keeping your gun aimed on the host, you laughed. “Hey, if you shoot Hongjoon, we’ll let you win the episode.” Pursing your lips in thought, you looked over to see Hongjoong pressed up against one of the barricades.

“Deal.” Turning, you shot the nearest baracade three times. “Joongie! We’re the last ones!” Seeing you stand up, from behind a crate, your boyfriend relaxed and dropped the paint gun to his side. His blue hair bounced as he ran over to you for a hug.

“Hey, we kicked ass! Like honestly that shit was-”

Hongjoong’s eyes widened. He looked down to his chest to see neon green paint smack dab in the center. “Nice job, Y/n!” Somin, popped up, highfiving you. You watched as your partner’s jaw dropped lower and lower, his brows slowly furrowing in disbelief.

“Y/N HOW COULD YOU!” He pouted, crouching on the ground. He took off his goggles and held his head in his hands, still in shock. “This is the ultimate betrayal. I feel so betrayed. Top Ten Anime Betrayals of 2021.”

“Stop being so dramatic, baby.” You said kissing the top of his head.

Seonghwa:

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338 notes • Posted 2021-01-10 01:04:44 GMT

Masterlist

A/n: so i know i have like 10001 other fics i have to write but this is just a fun little thing i wanted to try and its semi more lowkey than what i usually do plus there are zero hongjoong smaus (Also thank you Luna for helping me with the header <3)

Summary: Y/n and Hongjoong were only acquaintances in college. They were on the same dance team but never crossed paths until one day both took notice of the other. One magical night after a party resulted in Y/n leaving with a guilty and angry conscious and surprisingly a blue stick. Three years later, Hongjoong is a hit producer and Y/n is a successful single mom. What happens when their paths cross yet again?

Genre: fluff, comedy, angst, social media!au, single mom!au, non-idol au, series

ATTEMPTING TO UPDATE EVERY SATURDAY

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428 notes • Posted 2021-03-10 01:54:52 GMT

Ateez Reaction: Their Kid Gets Sick in the Middle of The Night

A/n: I love parent!ateez. Anything domestic im just like *heart eyes* also dont mind my weird petnames for kids. i just....i love kids......*sigh* anywayyyyyy hope you guys enjoy! im going to be writing for ateez and the other groups on my m.list alot more

S/n: Son’s name D/n: Daughter’s name

Pairing: Reader x OT8

Genre: fluff, slight angst, parent!au

Warnings: cussing?, descriptions of sick children (colds and flus, etc), fem reader

WC: 5k (overall) about 640-ish on average

Hongjoong:

You were in the perfect spot. A dreamless sleep had taken over your mind a few hours ago and you were perfect content pressed up against Hongjoong’s chest, his arms wrapped around your middle. His leg was tossed over yours and you were swaddled in a perfect cocoon of his warmth.

The blissful sleep of you and your husband was soon interrupted by a weak poke to your cheek. A second light jab forced your eyes open. In the dark room you could barely make out the shape of your three-year-old son. Lifting your head up, you checked the time- 1:04- and then over to your husband who was still fast asleep.

Pulling away from your husband’s hold, you turned on the bedside light only to be met with the tearstained face of S/n. “Oh- Goose! What’s wrong?” Your son only cried more and reached out for you. Completely sitting up in bed, you pulled him into your arms- gently stroking his hair. You noticed the back of his neck was cold with sweat.

“Baby? Everything okay?” Hongjoong mumbled, pushing himself off the mattress slightly.

“Daddy.....don’t feel good,” Your toddler said between cries. You continued to tenderly rub his back in hopes of calming your son. “Head....” S/n mumbled, tiny hands pawing at his crown.

Hongjoong now joined you fully sitting up. His dark eyes blinked rapidly trying to push away the edges of sleep still clouding his brain. Your husband motioned for you to pass over his son and you obliged. S/n cuddled up in his father’s lap - clawing at his shirt. “Baby, could you get the thermometer from the bathroom?” He asked, hand on his son’s little forehead.

Your mind was still foggy, but nonetheless, you got up and half jogged to the bathroom. Still tired, you fumbled through the cabinets looking for the thermometer. After a few minutes you returned, the instrument in hand. Hongjoong took it, thanking you softly. The two of you waited while the thermometer read your child’s temperature. S/n’s head was resting deliriously on your husband’s shoulder.

When Hongjoong took out the thermometer, your S/n groaned, nuzzling further into his dad’s chest. “Tummy hurts, daddy...” You almost felt hurt yourself, not being able to help your son’s pain. Reaching out you rubbed his back and looked to your lover for what to do.

A tired look rested on his face. The singer sighed looking down at the tiny instrument. “103.1,” Running a hand through your hair, you got up from the bed and grabbed a jacket for yourself and your son. “Hey, buddy. We’re going to take a little trip okay?” Hongjoong whispered to his son who was still crying from his head and stomachache.

“The doctor is going to make you feel all better, Goose.” You sleepily sang, more comforting yourself than S/n. The handsome man got up from your shared bed, still carrying your sick toddler, and headed into the living room with you quickly following.

“Let’s go to the hospital. Y/n where are my keys?” Hongjoong, laced his fingers with yours after you grabbed his keys and the three of you ventured down to the car. “ The one on Ddobong St is closest right?”

Seonghwa:

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600 notes • Posted 2021-04-25 04:21:50 GMT

*Jeongin and Jisung sitting in jail*

Jeongin: So uhh…who should we call to come bail us out?

Jisung: You know we should call Chan but I really would feel safer just staying here.

762 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 05:15:35 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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dragonnan · 4 years ago

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This is faaaar from a complete list and will be spotty at best but I’ve been pondering MCU characters a lot as I’ve been getting slowly back to work on my mega-fic. I LOVE minor head canons. Simple stuff like favorite foods or what music they listen to or were they ever a smoker or whatever whatever. So I’m gonna give myself the challenge of crafting some head canon and anyone else is very welcome to dive in! (some things are already established via canon)

~ Ethnicity ~ Faith ~ Smoker ~ Alcohol ~ Favorite food ~ Favorite cookie ~ Favorite animal(s) ~ Favorite music ~

Tony Stark: Ethnicity: Mixed European-American-Jewish (he refers to himself as a “mutt”) Faith: “No thanks” being the initial answer but if he feels like opening up he’ll admit to believing there’s likely “something” out there but at the same time figures that “something” stopped caring about humanity a long long time ago. Smoker? Never liked cigarettes but smoked a few cigars when he was younger due to Obie’s influence. He never was a big fan but wanted to fit in with his mentor. Alcohol: Influenced both by his father and Obie, Tony started drinking hard liquor semi-regularly as young as 14 (his Dad let him try his first sip at the age of 6). He pretty much sticks with Scotch or Bourbon but is not opposed to cheap beer at a ball game. In fact the cheaper the better - a requirement for any self-respecting American. Favorite food: hot dogs. Neither one of his parents cooked. Breakfast and lunch were whatever whenever for all three of them but dinner? You better be sure you were at that table before the plates were set down or you could go without (and Tony got a slap from his father when he’d observed that rule only seemed to apply to him). But on the nights he was sent to his room, Jarvis would slip upstairs, later, with a sandwich or, on really rough nights, a couple of hotdogs. Favorite cookie: Those Christmas wreath ones made with cereal and marshmallow with the cinnamon candies. Favorite animal(s): he likes all animals but if he had to pick one for a pet he’d get an iguana. Favorite music: well duh lolol.

Stephen Strange: Ethnicity: Mixed European-American (borrowed from Benedict Cumberbatch’s ethnicity and adding the American) Faith: Originally atheist but now closer to Buddhist. Smoker: Never. Even prior to becoming a sorcerer he has always been conscious of what he takes into his body; especially given the history of cancer on his mother’s side of the family. Alcohol: Wine, occasionally, though he isn’t really a social drinker per-say. Favorite food: The spicy shrimp and pork dumplings from a Thai place in Midtown. Favorite cookie: Hmmm.... not a big sweets guy but he won’t turn away a few ginger-pecan cookies with coffee. Favorite animal(s): dogs - unequivocally. He had a border collie growing up on his family farm in Nebraska. Favorite music: please don’t make this poor man actually have to choose.

Steve Rogers: Ethnicity: Irish (as per comics) Faith? Irish-Catholic (as per the comics). Smoker? Prior to the serum there was no way he could safely do so with his health issues. After he started traveling with the performers all of the girls in the group smoked and he tried it out a few times but never developed a taste for it. Alcohol: he drank A LOT - easy enough to do as it never had any real effect on him. He enjoys scotch and bourbon (a taste he picked up from hanging around Howard Stark). Steve seems to low-key always have the munchies (like most enhanced) and once Tony picked up on that there are always a variety of snacks scattered here and there throughout the compound (also of benefit for Bruce, Peter, Thor, and, later, Bucky). Steve’s favorite foods typically remind him of his mother’s cooking. While they’d never had much (especially after his father died) his mom could do a lot with limited supplies. She used to make a fantastic meat pie with ground beef or tongue. He hates SPAM. They ate it in the Army, constantly, and just the smell will occasionally send him back to those days and not in a good way. Favorite cookie? Oreos. He can clean up a family sized pack in like 10 minutes. Steve loves animals but is especially fond of horses and dogs. There was a dog in his unit in WW2 and Steve, like most of the other men, would share bites of his rations with it. Steve is nostalgic about music from the 40s but finds that 70s rock really resonates with him.

Bucky Barnes: Ethnicity: Romanian-American (borrowing a little from Sebastian Stan’s ethnicity) Faith? Possibly agnostic. Smoker? Heck yes - both cigarettes and cigars. Like Steve, the serum he received (via Hydra’s experimentation) means he gets to dodge the detrimental side effects of smoking. Alcohol: He likes to drink but is almost exclusively a beer drinker. He has a big appetite but refuses to eat around others if he can at all help it. His favorite food is corned beef with cabbage. Steve’s grandmother was an Irish immigrant and would make it every Sunday before the war impacted rations. Since both Bucky’s parents were dead he’d often have dinner with his best friend. Also, unlike Steve, he actually likes SPAM. But then, arguably, he isn’t terribly picky about food in general. Favorite cookie: molasses. Favorite animal(s): birds - eagles in particular - though he doesn’t look too deeply at the psychology of their ability to just fly away. Needless to say a crafty observer might spot a former Winter Soldier tossing seeds towards the pigeons. Favorite music: He’s pretty eclectic though he shies away from anything too loud like death metal. He finds classical very soothing.

Peter Parker: Ethnicity: Mixed American-Scandinavian-German-ish Faith: Protestant upbringing but unsure where he currently stands. If pressed he’d say he’s “leaving his options open” Smoker? “Oh gross!” Alcohol: “Um, too young to drink, thanks! But if I WERE to... you know, try it just to taste it there was this mudslide at one of Flash’s parties that was super good...” Favorite food: spaghetti and meatballs. Lots of meatballs. Favorite cookie: chocolate chocolate chip with chunks. Favorite animal(s): NOT spiders. And NOT birds given how many rooftops he’s traversed layered in pigeon ick. He’d probably say cats. Favorite music: The B side of techno rock - especially Depeche Mode.

Peter Quill: Ethnicity: Half mixed American and half celestial. Faith: His Dad was a god and he killed him so he figures he probably isn’t on the best terms with the Big G God should He... or She... or Them... be out there. Look he just wants to do his thing and cause a little trouble without mixing it up with any other celestial types but if they DO wanna throw down he’d like to point out that he’s 1 for 1 and willing to rumble. Smoker: He would not say no to a really good cigar and may have possibly lifted a case from Yondu’s stash when he struck out on his own. Alcohol: Anywhere any time and in large quantities. Favorite food: A thick steakhouse bacon burger with potato chips right on the patty. Extra cheese please! Favorite cookie: He’s a simple guy with simple tastes. classic chocolate chip no frills no fuss and fresh from the oven. Favorite animal(s): He likes dogs - who doesn’t like dogs? But he really likes cows. Just maybe don’t mention the burger thing. Favorite music:

Thor: He’s a Norse god of legend so I figure we can forego the ethnicity/faith questions lol. Smoker: He has never understood this human custom nor has he felt any inclination to try it himself Alcohol: Beer, mead, and anything capable of knocking him on his ass. Favorite food: chili with ghost peppers. Though nowhere near as hot as the fire chilies of Muspelheim (which would be instantly fatal for humans so its just as well). Favorite cookie: strawberry cheesecake with macadamia nuts. Favorite animal(s): It’s a tossup between bilgesnipe and whales. Favorite music: The mighty horns of battle! He also enjoys old school country, much to Tony’s disgust. The story aspect of that music is what appeals to him.

Bruce Banner: Ethnicity: Italian-American Faith: Catholic in his childhood; currently Atheist or maybe agnostic. Smoker: He tends to avoid any substances for, you know, obvious reasons. Alcohol: See previous. Favorite food: Waffles with sliced mango. Favorite cookie: Oatmeal. Favorite animal(s): Mantis shrimp - “did you know they can generate so much power in their attacks that they can briefly super-heat the water up to 7,700 °C??” Favorite music: Indian- especially Krishna Bhajan.

Clint Barton: Ethnicity: Mixed European-American and Panamanian. Faith: His parents were both Protestant but he’s never latched on to any specific faith and hasn’t really devoted a lot of thought on the matter. He has a sorta loose idea of “maybe something out there” but that’s all the further he’s gotten on the subject. What he tells anyone who asks it’s that his religion is coffee. Smoker: Briefly when he was a teen. Alcohol: Beer - he’s a fan of dark lager. Favorite food: Coney Island dogs, Pizza, and pickle flavored potato chips. Favorite cookie: Monster cookies with the mini M&Ms. Favorite animal(s): Dogs Favorite music: 80s rock and some country.

Natasha Romanoff: Ethnicity: Russian. Faith: She was not given much choice when younger and was raised as “state atheist” (per comics). In the years since escaping that life, however, she has tried to discover more about herself. Her parents were both Russian Jewish and there has been a pull to discover more about that faith - especially since meeting Wanda - who is Jewish. Smoker: No. Alcohol: Some vodka - that’s a given. But she actually prefers wine; and honestly her favorites are wine spritzers. Favorite food: Favorite cookie: Krumkake filled with creme and berries. Favorite animal(s): Favorite music: Overall she listens to a pile of little-known bands and whomever is playing at whatever bar in whatever city she happens to be in. She also is a huge fan of old school Spice Girls.

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coolgirl · 6 years ago

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☕️ Duke Thomas

It really makes my blood boil everytime ppl don't include him on content (fanart, fics, headcanons) and put stupid as fuck excuses on why they did it like.

"he's new I don't know him" he's been around for six years. If you wanna get technical we are robin first got released on 2015, which still means there's FOUR WHOLE YEARS he's been around. (Tan voice) make an effort.

"I don't know where to start" his main comics couldn't be any fucking easier to read. Just pick up we are robin and then the tpb of batman & signal which includes the mini and asserted stories where he's the main character. And like come the fuck on are you telling me the other batkids are any easier to read!? Pick a reading guide I can assure you it won't take you more than a weekend to get caught up on what you missed.

"he isn't part of the batfam" WELL MAYBE IF YOU READ HIS COMICS U WOULD KNOW HOW WRONG YOU ARE

Look! He even made it to the portrait! In fucking DEATHSTROKE a comic not even about the batfam

"he isn't important" UH he was the main character of a whole book, he had a mini, he was in batman, all star batman, detective comics, hell he even had a counterpart in the white knight. He's currently part of the batman and the outsiders reboot which I'll tell u is (chef kiss) and is exploring his character even more, Not to mention he's been namedropped in future worlds such as batman beyond and had relevancy to be mentioned by "future/au" dick on jl, where yes! You guessed it! Puts him by the other robins

WHICH brings me to

"this is a robin piece and he wasn't robin" okay this one annoys the fuck out of me. He had a whole book called we are robin. He was. Robin. He's not anymore, and respecting he said he doesn't want to be Bruce's robin and that he's different/more gives u exactly one (1) brownie point, but damn. He was robin. If you don't add him because he's not robin anymore or was never Bruce's robin then I hope you aren't adding.. literally any of the other robins either, as they also left that legacy behind and hell for years Tim was canonically not robin, and yet he has always been added to it. AND I'm about to blow your fucking mind. A few years ago the official DC website made a post for robins anniversary

And guess! Who! Made it! To the list!

Wow!!! Who would've thought!!!

"he just isnt interesting" well I would've hoped you gave me that excuse right off the bat so I knew I was wasting my time talking to a wall. Like. HOW is he not interesting?? He WAS TRAINING HIMSELF AS A KID TO TRY TO ONE DO THE RIDDLERRR!! HE WAS HANDPICKED BY ALFRED TO BE A ROBIN WHEN THE REST OF THE BATFAM WAS DOING GOD KNOWS WHAT!!! And he has an angsty~ backstory and is funny as hell and empathetic and reckless and smart and A META for crying out loud, whose powers and backstory have been barely touched upon, with SO MUCH POTENTIAL. HE PATROLS GOTHAM DURING THE DAY!!! and he has such a fun dynamic with Bruce, Cass and Jason and Damian, and Dick saw himself on him (and you could make a really good essay on why he could be a great mentor for Duke and their similarities) like PLEASE I can assure you that if you read his comics you will fall in love with him and wish DC didn't pay him dust.

OKAH IM SORRY I WROTE TOO MUCH THERE BUT ALSO it's insane how people write him so much as like. The one who's always like WTF this family is insane like it's so obvious people who wrote him like that have made zero attempt to read his comics and are just playing it by ear like.. he's. A goddamn vigilante. Right off the bat. There's no way he doesn't go as crazy stupid as the others. Yes he lacks the experience the others do which could potentially mean he gets caught off guard more often but it doesn't mean he's like uuuh this family is crazy I'm out of there kshsod. And honestly everytime people say that kind of shit this panel comes to mind

Like uh yes there we have it.

Not to make everything negative I'll also say I very much enjoy his friendship with Cass, they're adorable when written by Hill, and I'm so happy we're seeing more of them in canon. I also love his dynamic with Jason as they're funny as fuck when they're in the same panel. AND sadly DC totally dropped the ball with them but I still think he has a lot of potential with Damian, as they were living in the manor together for some time so that would've been fun to see, not to mention their interactions were also funny and they would've made a terrific duo considering their personalities.

OH also so far batman & the outsiders seems to be focusing more on like. Him dealing with the trauma he suffered (which I'm really digging!!) And his dynamic with the team rather than his solo work, but I would enjoy very much if we were given more about him being a daytime vigilante as it was not only a really interesting concept for a character belonging to the batfam, but also was really unique?? And it was even more interesting when playing it with his meta powers & the side characters he was given on his mini were lovely like :( on going signal book when :( and I'm honestly dying to see him work with more teen heroes that aren't exclusively batfam members. It would be rlly interesting to see him in that type of scenario.. like ahgh

OKAY IM DONE sorry

Send me a ☕️ and a topic and I’ll talk about how I feel about it lol

#sorry if the format gets fucked up im posting from mobile

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lovelykristenbell · 6 years ago

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ET Interview with Jason Dohring after the revival

"It is sad to have to have a sacrificial lamb in order to keep the show pumping, but Jason's so gracious about taking one for the team," star and executive producer Kristen Bell told ET on Friday when she and her Veronica Mars co-stars stopped by the Comic-Con video suite. "But we love each other so much. We were mourning him on set." Dohring, who has played Logan off and on over the course of 15 years, admitted during a lengthy sit-down interview with ET that he didn't initially understand why his character had to die for Veronica Mars to continue on. It wasn't until he had a conversation over the phone with creator Rob Thomas that the puzzle pieces started to fit together, and he came to accept and understand his character's fate after some time. "When Rob said that, my f**king heart just fell out of my body. And I was like, 'Oh my god,'" the 37-year-old actor recalled. Here, in an in-depth chat, Dohring opens up to ET about the pain of saying goodbye to Logan Echolls, why he hasn't told close family members about the stunning ending and why he understands that fans will have opinions "one way or another" about how his story wraps up -- "even though it's not necessarily what people [may] want."

ET: What did Rob tell you about this season of Veronica Mars, since it ends quite tragically for your character in the end?

Jason Dohring: Rob called me. He was like, "We're going to do this. I feel like we're far enough along now," and he started to lay out the story of where Logan was. His idea was Veronica's in a bad place, we're going to see her move from there and into a different state. That's the the arc. And then he said, "They're getting married. Then, Logan goes out to check the car and Logan is killed in the blast." When Rob said that, my f**king heart just fell out of my body. And I was like, "Oh my god." He spent the next five minutes explaining the reasoning for it. And I cannot say that I understood or agreed with what he did. Rob wanted to shed the teenage drama aspect of the show with this on-again/off-again [relationship between Veronica and Logan] and as long as either one of them is still around, I feel like we've told those stories. They're kind of meant for each other. So I think, in that way, it's cool that Logan's exiting this way, and also that he served a role to get Veronica to reevaluate her life. I think that's really cool. Rob also talked about her being an underdog and that people really respond well when she is in that sort of determined state. I think that this really throws her in that and yet opens the door to a brand new life, a brand new setting, a brand new possible list of characters that she could be involved in. It really gives freedom and determination from her point of view for a new start anywhere.

You mentioned that Rob called you ahead of time. How long were you sitting on this secret that Logan dies?

JD: Before we even started shooting, by a few weeks at least, or a month or so. You're thinking with that secret the whole time, and then just getting to the end of that four or five months of production.

What was your initial reaction when you learned Logan wasn't going to survive the season?

JD: Devastated. And then for about three days, I was sort of sitting with it, digesting it.

Were you mourning a little bit?

JD: I had a hard time telling my wife because she has certain family members -- there are family members I haven't even told yet -- who are going to see it. They're so excited, and they're having these huge parties. I'm like, "F**k. I'm really sorry." That party's going to have a sour ending, at least on my family's point of view. I eventually came to terms with it, in no small part, thanks to Rob's explanation of it, and understanding it for the greater good of the show. I told a couple of the cast members who didn't even know. I told Percy [Daggs III] and I told Ryan [Hansen], and they were devastated. They'd come up to me hours later and be like, "J, I just can't believe it. Like, I just can't believe it." And I'm like, "Man, I know buddy. I know." At first, they were like, "That's bullsh*t, man. That's bullsh*t. I don't believe you." And I was like, "No man, it's true." And they just kept saying, "That's bullsh*t, man. You serious man, you f**king serious? Oh f**k." And then it hit them. It was crazy.

You've been in and out of this world over the past 15 years, playing this character for four seasons and a movie. Did you have any worries or concerns about Logan's fate?

JD: I have complete faith in Rob's ability to write the story and when you have somebody like Kristen Bell leading the show the way she does, that's the driving force. I think they're going to be super fine with whatever direction they choose to go, especially now that they have a new possible lease on where they can go with the story.

Had you thought about where you wanted Logan's journey to end at any point?

JD: Adding the military aspect to the role was very cool, and gave a new dimension and helped ultimately serve the story with Veronica's character. I think I did everything that I wanted to do with the role. I got to fully explore this guy in various ways.

It's disheartening to know that the Echolls family has basically been wiped out. Well, with the exception of Logan sister, Trina (played by Alyson Hannigan in the original series). It's almost like there's an Echolls curse.

JD: I know. And when you're on a drama for a few years, that's just what happens. Your character's f**king life just goes downhill.

Because Logan's death was such a violent one and we didn't see a body, fans may speculate or theorize plausible theories about why he's not really dead. Are you anticipating those types of conversations?

JD:I don't know. I mean those are all beyond me. I just hope ultimately the fans are pleased with the whole project. You can look at it that way, and understand that this will launch the series in a new way that's not tired or redundant.

It's hard to swallow knowing that Logan's death is the catalyst for Veronica to finally make that leap and work through her inner turmoil through therapy, even though he had been pushing her all season to look inward. In that sense, Logan is a martyr. He ended up serving that purpose.

JD: There was another scene where we're on a couch. I don't what was understood from that scene, but I feel like Logan was, at that point, willing to sacrifice their relationship if it meant that she'd be happy with her life, and that she would move on. Maybe move out of Neptune, do something that she wants to do and fulfill her potential. I think that's pretty sweet that he would be willing to sacrifice their relationship for that. It's a heroic death that sparks new life.

You're so positive about it all! I'm like, I just need to curl up in a ball on the corner and cry.

JD: Yes, I know. When you're in a corner and you're crying, it's like, what do you do then?

If this is the end of your time with this character and the show, are you ready to say goodbye? If there is another season, do you hope there's room for you to come back in some way?

JD: I think that would be a question for the team, you know what I mean? If that could fulfill any purpose in a story... I have to see what they want to do, but I assume that it would be happier times. Flashbacks to a good life? I can't really speculate, but I would hope it would be something joyous if it were to be anything.

I do want to ask you about Veronica and Logan's wedding at the courthouse. How did you feel knowing that they at least had a moment of bliss, however temporary it was?

JD: It's so funny that you ask these questions and I never really think about it as an audience member. (Laughs.) 'Cause I'm never thinking, when I see it, "Veronica and Logan really had their time..."

It was a long time coming for a lot of Veronica Mars fans...

JD: I think so too. I always felt that they were so awesomely compatibly incompatible, you know what I mean? In the best way. Both had strong wills, which is just fireworks ready to happen. She has care for the world and he has care for her. She has ways that she wants things done and it's not necessarily the way he'd do them, but yet there's this love [between them]. And Logan's relationship with her, everything rolled into it and made it something special. I think that's what you see in the audience appreciation for it.

Was any part of that wedding scene ad-libbed?

JD: No, it was all scripted. Rico was doing his thing. He was crying. Kristen was telling stories about her real wedding in a similar setting in a courthouse. She showed us a picture of her literally crying and [her husband] Dax [Shepard] is laughing at her. I thought that that was pretty funny.

Did you ever think that Veronica and Logan would ever reach a point in their lives where they would both actually agree to say "I do"?

JD: Hopefully, they were on that track. And I think giving Veronica that scare toward the end got her to have this mini wake-up call. But I go back to that conversation on the couch right before. I thought that was noble: I'm willing to sacrifice us, but I want you to be happy. And if you're not going to be happy, then goodbye. When I was rehearsing that scene, I was f**king crying. As much as I love you, I care more about you than that. Brutal.

What was the toughest or most challenging scene from this season?

JD: I think that. Working on that. Sometimes it would really hit me as we're rehearsing, like, what he's really saying is he wants her to leave him right now if it's not going to make her happy, because that means more to him than us.

Logan's journey has been the most dramatic out of all the characters on Veronica Mars. Has that been gratifying for you as an actor seeing how far he's come?

JD:Yes. I appreciate variation. To start out being the antagonist and then getting this romance that was never intended to be. Then feeling that so strongly. Then that's all on the rocks and shredded... And then the military, and then on top of that having a ridiculously sharp sense of humor and looseness of morals. All that is such a joy to play as an actor. I was always trained to look for those choices, so that's where I would try to branch out and make some of those decisions where I could.

I was rewatching the pilot recently and Logan is a completely different person from then until now.

JD: He'd be like, "Where are the hookers? Where are the boobs?"

What do you want to say to fans after they've finished watching the season and may need a second?

JD: I don't know. I mean, they'll have thoughts one way or another. I think if you really step back and you look at what was told and where the show may be going, and how this opens up the door for Veronica... this relationship between Logan and Veronica is just one aspect of Veronica, right? But her helping the world and solving cases and her personal happiness, I think you may see more storylines there. I think that was what really helped me understand the whole thing with Logan -- putting it in context for the future.

You're so glass-half-full about it all, when you could be like, "Ugh."

JD: I know. I was like that. But if you really think about it, you can't just play that over and over. (Pauses for a moment.) I mean, you can... Part of the cool thing is Veronica Mars is a smart show. Rob is very creative and he has his ideas, and I think that people like that. At the end of the third season, the CW came up to him and said, "We're probably going to end the show at the end of this third season, so if you want to wrap it up, you can do that." And he did the exact opposite. He f**king left it open. And that's probably the reason that the movie was made, which is the reason that season four comes. Really it ties back to the creative aspect of an artist who has integrity to his vision. So I respect that and people respect the result of that, even though it's not necessarily what people want all the time.

#jason dohring #veronica mars #kristen bell #hulu #veronica mars spoilers

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popculturebuffet · 5 years ago

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Analysis of X: Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn

In honor of britan’s premire superhero team returning today, we take a look back at the original team. Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler must team up with a drunkard magical british superman and his chipper shapeshifting sorta girlfriend to save their old teammate from an alternate dystopian future with the power of a god from both a squad of skin stealing wolves sicced on her by a sinsiter reality show producer from another dimension and a group of intergalactic weirdo bounty hunters after her due to an entirely separate omniversal dictator who wants to bang british superman. Somehow, Grant Morrison didn’t write this. I would like to, if I may, take you on a strange journey after the cut.

Excalibur has always been the odd mutant out of the X-Men franchise.And that’s in part because the bulk of it’s mythos and characters come not from the deep wells of the X-Men comics of the time, but from another character Chris Claremont had a huge hand in: Captain Britain

Created shortly after Claremont got his start on the All-New All-Diffrent X-Men, redefining the X-Men forever and making them into the sales juggernaut they were for the 80′s and early to mid-90′s and are again today at long last, Captain Britan was Brian Braddock, a scientist who, while escaping a hired goon who torched his workplace, crashed his motorbike. He was saved by, of all things, Merlin... yes exactly the one your thinking of.... and his daughter and omniveral guardian Roma. They choose Brian to be their champion choosing either the staff of right or the sword of might and, not really being a fighter, Brian chose the staff and a hero was born.

Cap was created for the UK Divison of Marvel and while Claremont did a sizeable amount of work on the character, including introducing Brian’s sister and future X-Man and as of this week Captain Britan herself Betsy Braddock, it was two other men who made most of his mythos and the stuff that would end up being the backbone of Excalibur: Alan Davis, an absolutely monsterous talent of an artist and all around nice guy and... your going to want to sit down if you don’t know this I sure as hell was surprised, Alan Fucking Moore... and if that’s not his actual middle name it should be. Yes he of long beards, genere definting runs and yelling at the young people to get off his lawn and DC to stop hurting his baby Watchmen, THAT Alan Moore worked for marvel breifly. This was his only work with them shockingly. Not so shockingly he and Davis redefined the character, created most of the concepts that would be carried over to Excalibur, and gave the character a spiffy new costume seen above, one so good it’s stuck even into the modern era. Moore, and some other artists in addition to Davis, crafted a long epic about Cap going up against Mad Jim Jaspers, a reality warping mutant who was as insane as his name suggested and introduced many things that would become the backbone of the character, as well as establishing Moore’s habit of taking a less than sucessful B-List hero and utterly turning him on his head. Their also the ones who dubbed Marvel’s main universe 616, a fun fact I honestly had forgotten. But of course after Moore left Cap fell by the wayside, making a cameo or too in other marvel books in the US while Betsy made her way to the X-Men just when they needed new blood most. More on that in a bit. But he wouldn’t stay on the sidelines for long. See Chris Claremont has a habit of taking characters he created and using them later if they’d been forgotten somehow or put off to the wayside. Mystique, one of the x-men’s most iconic enemies... was a Ms.Marvel (The carol danvers one before she got the rank up), enemy. Sabertooth? An old iron fist villian he’d created and taken a shine to. Arcade was inveted for a team up of Spider-Man and Captain Britan before primarily becoming an X-Men villian for most of his life. And of course Betsy was a a supporting character who became one of the x-men’s most iconic members through a weird mind swap with a japanese woman before recently getting her old body back. Claremont dosen’t like leaving his charcters to twist in the wind and thus brought most of them into the x-men mythos. Even Spider-Woman, depowered at the time, ended up as a major Wolverine supporting character. One of Claremont’s strengths as a writer to me is that he never truly forgot anything he created or worked on, and the X-Men benefited greatly from it. So while it probably surprised american readers who only thought of Captain Britain as a c-list hero who teamed up with Spider-Man and Captain America, it’s no surprise in hindsight that for his second X-Men ongoing, having also made a TON of mini series, he choose to bring Brian to the big time. While I can’t find much background on Excalibur, I conjecture that Chris wanted to go a bit lighter.

The X-Men were in a DARK place at the time. I mean the X-Men were never all sunshine and roses but most of the humor of the book and lighter moments were gone at the time thanks to the Mutant Massacre, an event where the Morlocks, a group of disfigured homeless mutants who felt at odds with society and thus lived in the tunnels under New York, were slaughtered by professional hitsquad the Mauraders who killed all but a handful of them and during the fight with the X-men took 3 of them out of commission: Nightcrawler had fallen into a coma after overtaking his already crippled teleportation powers defeating one of the mauraders, Kitty Pryde slowly started to disappear, unable to phase back to solid after taking an electric spear for Rouge, and Colossus was heavily wounded in ways I forgot and since he rejoined the X-Men, aren’t really relevant here anyway. The X-Men were up against the wall against a barrage of ruthless opponents, working with longtime foe magneto since Xavier got trapped in space, as you do, and were not in a really happy place. So it feels like, even if the angst was still present because Claremont would go into withdrawl if there wasn’t some form of angst to work off, Excalibur was created as a way for him to do something different in the X-Mold and lighter so he could go as dark as he needed to. So by injuring Kitty and Kurt, he took them off the board and had a starting point for the team, and by adding Captain Britan and his girlfriend Meggan, a shapeshifting empath brought back one of his own creations and brought him into the american side of Marvel, and gave him an almost complete team. It also had the bonus of likely enticing Alan Davis, who in one of the few background things I could find about this book, didn’t really want to work on an established title like X-Men where there were expectations how it was supposed to look etc. But they were still about one member short of a team... but thankfully chris claremont had squared away a spare x-man for just such an occasion.

Enter. Phoenix, aka Rachel Summers. The daughter of Jean Grey and Scott Summers from the Days of Future Past timeline, Rachel ended up in our timeline, bonded to the Phoenix Force like her mom, and struggling with the power, eventually running away after attempting to kill Selene, an evil sorceress who hunted her in an attempt to drain her power. She fled, not sure wether she should rejoin her team or not, and was instead lured into joining Mojo on the promise of a new start. Mojo.. is this guy.

Strap yourselves in for this one: Mojo is the dictator of another dimension that runs off TV, essentially crafting shows for the media hungry populous and kidnapping the X-Men every so often to show up on his programs, to the point he once swapped Psylocke’s natural eyes out with robot camera eyes that looked like the normal eyes so he could record the X-Men’s adventures as it happened, which itself isn’t a bad concept. He didn’t show up to Rachel in person of course, partly because he’s too lazy and partly because he looks like what happens when lightning strikes a pile of twinkies and exposed wiring and somehow brings them to life. She was sent here for the same reason as Kurt and Kitty: to keep her off the board and set up her return here. It’s one of Claremont’s strengths to me: While he ocasionally forgets a subplot or dosen’t realize how wonky one is, more often than not he knows where the story is going and has a plan for it, and thus set up Excalibur a year in advance in the pages of Mutant Massacre.

Speaking of setup there’s one final thing to cover before we begin, the second X-Men crossover event and the one that directly leads into this: Fall of The Mutants, aka one of the worst days in the life of one Kitty Pryde. First her best friend and human google translate Doug Ramsey died while on a misson with the new mutants, sacrificing himself to save the life of his girlfriend Wolfsbane.

As if someone was challenging god to make her days worth, at the same time as this tragedy the X-Men, at the time made up of Storm, Wolverine, Psylocke, Rouge, Havok, Dazzler, Longshot and with tag along Madeline Piror whose story is too much to get into here, were locked in a battle with force of chaos and actual demon Nemisis, a being summoned by their sorta ally Forge by accident. Forge can also build any device he pleases but since every fifth x-men character has magic ruin their life, someone had to take the bullet caked with demon blood. At any rate the only way to stop him.. 9 souls were part of the ritual that brought Nemisis in, 9 souls were needed for the ritual to seal him up. And the X-Men, being true heroes determined to do whatever it took, gladly offered up their lives to defeat the demon and save the world. As the world looked on, the X-Men died, for once not feared and hated, but honored and mourned as heroes. Of course this being a comic book Forge’s method of saving the world was turning the X-Men into pure soul energy and throwing them at the demon but that somehow makes it more epic. And of course, it’s no suprise one of their dearest friends was watching from Muir Island, which was serving as a recovery ward for the surviviors of the massacre and was run by longtime X-Men Ally and lynchpin of Hickman’s run Moira Mactaggert

Thankfully, Kitty got one tiny sliver of sunshine on the worst day of her life: Kurt woke up from his coma... just in time to tell him the only family he’d ever known is dead. And that’s where we pick up, with our two heroes trying to figure out what to do now they’ve lost everything. But before we FINALLY get started, this bit was way longer than I meant it to be, your probably curious how long the X-Men stayed dead as well.. this is comics and they were the hottest team int he world. This wasn’t going to stick even if Claremont was serious about ending the series. And the answer, and i’m not making this up I counted, is two pages. Yup, TWO PAGES. Not kidding. Ironically enough Roma, the omniversal goddess daughter of merlin I mentioned, got wrapped up in all this and, moved by the X-Men’s bravery, gave them the chance to come back and start over however they like, and the X-Men choose to be unable to be picked up on tape and let the world think they were dead so they could strike back at their mounting enemies. Granted I feel that while the “play dead and take out our worse foes while we have the advantage” is a good part of it, not telling the new mutants or kitty and kurt is not only cruel, but just paints a target on a bunch of teenagers backs. Sure teenagers who’ve faced worse but still. But I digress, that’s a rant for when I cover Fall of the Mutants at some point and this exposition has taken far longer than I wanted it to. And so here we are at the one shot that would forge a team and finally, we can get into it: The cover, way up there is decent. It shows a nice right melee between Excalibur, the Warwolves and the Technet, though it makes it look like Gatecrasher is part of the team when she is in fact one of the issue’s main antagonist and is overall a bit weirdly composed. It doesn't help the proper Excalibur #1 has one of the best x-team covers of all time.

As you can see the comparison dosen’t help the far messier above cover. It’s just average in comparison to the creative and funny covers Davis would provide throughout both runs and the majestic one above. WE open on Kitty Pryde, understandably, having a nightmare, being dragged by a crew of makeup people just off screen and smack into

Oh good marvel’s already working on the new X-Men movie. Thank god I thought they really WERE going to take 5 years to do it. Naturally she is curious why their in hollywood but dosen’t suspect fowl play because well... to put it in a personal persepctive if I saw my grandpa I lost a few years ago or my dog I lost in high school that was the same age as me, alive healthy and back, i’d be confused as hell but mostly? I’d just be relived and hope beyond hope it was real, as poor Kitty is diong. Unfortunatley the illusion something isn’t up lasts all about a panel before this happens.

First of all: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!. Second. as AHHHHHH! as it is.. it could’ve been worse.

It soon becomes clear something is up as Kitty wails around confused, wondering why Rouge’s powers don’t work and why the X-Men are acting as if nothing is real before action is called and they run off.. it’s then Kitty finally encounters a freindly face.

It's now from context clear just what the fuck is going on: this isn't JUST a dream: Rachel has somehow dragged Kitty into Mojoworld through her dreams, warning her, as seen above that with the X-Men gone, their image can be twisted and exploited by those wanting to use it for their own image. This warning is cut short when Fake Xavier starts shouting and soon we get this lovely image.

As we can see Rachel deeply regrets running but Mojo won't let her go.. fortunatley Kitty phases the chains and lets Rachel go, with Rachel promising to see kitty again soon as she flees.. unfortunatley Kitty's pissed off Mojo's actors...

Again, it could’ve been worse.

Kitty wakes up and naturally angsts a bit over that fucked up dream she had and then sees a phoenix in the sky, wondering what could it mean and what could the dream mean.

A lot to unpack here. First off... Perverso...

Second, my heart breaks at that last line.. and it’s true. Kitty likely feels, like a lot of people going through grief, that maybe they could’ve done something. Maybe if she was there she could’ve stopped their deaths and saved the day or failing that, she could’ve gone with them. So she wouldn’t have to feel awful about being here while they aren’t, so she wouldn’t feel the unbearable weight of being one of the last X-Men. But the sad truth is, she wouldn’t of made any diffrence. None of them would’ve taken the last slot and would’ve given it instead to their tagalong Madeline Prior so she could see her family again. They died selfilesly, and nothing she could’ve done would’ve stopped them.

As seen above Kitty tries to take solace in petting her dragon Lockheed. Yes Kitty has a dragon for those who didn’t know about him or were only familiar with her from the cartoons.. though why X-Men Evolution never thought to introduce Lockheed is beyond me. He’s a space dragon that stowed away when the X-Men returned from well.. space, and saved Kitty’s life, taking up residence as her pet. He was later revealed to be far more sapient than he seems, but still hangs around Kitty because it’s an effed up world, but it’s a two player game. But as demonstrated Kitty’s powers have inverted. While she has gotten better, as I talked about in my Mauraders #1 review she was fading from existance shortly after the massacre, her intangiable state is now her natural one. She has to concenrate to turn solid. So in addition to having lost just about everything, her powers are broken too. Kitty then sees a picture of her shortly after she joined the X-Men before having a good cry about how most of the people in the picture are dead and professor xavier got shot up into space. Thankfully he dosen’t have to watch cheesy movies.. unless it’s Cho’d turn to pick the movie. For some reason it’s ALWAYS Cool as Ice. no one knows why.

Meanwhile, in the seas of mood whiplash, we meet Meggan. Meggan, like most of the cast, is a mutant, something I was unaware of until now even though the I just thought she was some sort of magical creature, but no, she’s a mutant and the naration outright calls her one. I’m just stupid or thought they just classifed her wrong I guess. Unlike most mutants, who manifest powers at puberty, she manifested hers at birth. Megan is an empathic shapeshifter, basically meaning that she shifts based on those around her’s perception of her. And sadly her upbringing was not a happy one as, since she was born with fur, her parents saw her as a monster and left her in a caravan alone, with the rest of her romani community making up rumors about her.. and due to being unable to control her powers shape shifted into the monster they thought she was. She was raised on televisoin and thus has a rather naive sense of the outside world, and later bonded with brian after he took her in, her home having been destroyed due to lots of stuff I don’t have time to go into, and she later took up her current default form after realizing she was a shapeshifter in the first place. But yes our bubbly shapeshifter is swimming with the dolphins and due to her emphatic ablites, she can commuincate with them learns how to swim like them and, thanks to her ablities, has shifted to do so the best. She’s lost track of time though and heads home to the lighthouse she and Brian live in. She returns home to find the place ransacked, and since she didn’t feed her mogwii after midnight.. this time, she searches for the cause.. and the cause turns out to be similar to the reason Kitty is crying her eyes out miles away in scotland.

When Kitty and Kurt lost their surrogate family, Brian lost his too. As stated far above Betsy was his sister, and they were very close from the looks of it, and the loss of her naturally shattered the man. Meggan tries to comfort him but.. it goes about as well as you’d expect, especially since Brian has been heavily drinking on top of his grief.

This scene.. is really damn sad but really well written. Brian, as I joked in the teaser, has the powers of superman basically minus the add ons like heat vision and frost breath.. yet he couldn't save Betsy. But as Meggan accuratley puts things, he couldn’t of known she was in danger and she was a grown woman. As I said, she choose to sacrifice herself, and as I didn’t fill in, the spell only works with WILLING participants. All that would’ve changed had he gone is Madelyne Prior would be alive and not him. And it’s things like this that also made me take such umbrage with the X-Men faking their deaths: their causing, real genuine greif to people... while I joked mildly about the telpathy thing, i’m not sure betsy’s range, I AM sure that being a telepath one of the simpliest trick is masking your presence. It’d take a lot of effort and be mildly invasive, but keeping yourself hidden to tell your brother goodbye is hardly more morally grey than faking your death and leaving him in a drunken stupor. This is especailly bad once they get a teleporter shortly into their australian stay, as Gateway could SEND HER to him, with no risk of detection, and have her explain it in person with storm in tow. Instead they hurt their friends and loved ones for a plan that ultimatley didn’t quite pan out.

Meggan herself mopes for a second, understandable as Betsy was her friend too and she's hurt she's gone and blames herself.. before snapping out of it, realizing that Brian is just lashing out and needs help, but unable to face him like he is, she leaves him a pictoral note, since she's functionally illiterate, and goes to get advice from Kitty and Kurt, wanting to help him open up the way he helped her do the same. Meanwhile...

Jesus christ this comic loves abrupt tonal shifts.. but yeah Kurt is excercising, but then reflexively teleports after he takes a hit. As I mentioned earlier Kurt’s teleporting is strained, having gotten injured in a battle with Nimrod, who really hickman you couldn’t of come up with either a better name or a reason he’s called that when you brought him back in House and Powers?, and as a result comaed himself defeating one of the mauraders. And while the coma thing cleared up nicely his powers are still a fraction of what they once were and one teleport while injured no less leaves him too shaky to continue and reaching for the saftey panel. Thankfully Kitty phases through it while checking up on him, having been told through the island’s backup alarms that he was doing this borderline suicidal shenanigan. Kitty naturally lays into him over it.

Kitty's rage is entirely warranted: She just lost her surrogate family and her best friend. Things with her parents are strained. She dosen't want to loose the only family she really has left because he feels the same things she feels and is nearly killing himself to try and deal with it. Kurt apologizes, admitting the painful part of it: that he was HAPPY when he woke up from his coma, overjoyed to finally be alive again, to live again.. only to find out his family is dead from one of his closest friends. And with this i'm reminded of Steven Universe.. just go with me. There Pearl mourned for a good decade about loosing Rose because well.. she was everything she had. She , literally and metaphorically, freed her, she was her world.. and Rose moved on to someone else romantically and then decided to up and leave the mortal coil. Her entire world left her and she had no idea to cope or as she put it in song, "Who am I now in this world without her?" That's what our heroes are dealing with: for Kitty and Kurt the X-Men were their world.. not in such a co-dependent way as rose but for Kurt, it was his family: through them he went from a monster in the world's eyes, hiding from it and tired of having to do so, to a bold hero who refused to hide who he was anymore and who had family and a purpose. For young Kitty, she found parental figures in a time when her actual parents, particularly her dad, were going through a messy divorce, found strength she never knew to the point she EARNED her right to stay on the X-Men after Xavier started a junior class and wanted her to go there, and really came of age. The X-Men made them who they are today and without them.. just who are they? But before they can dive into that themselves our heroes find out something disturbing: they had the same exact dream about rachel, complete with helping her escape. Maybe they really did or maybe it was just a warning, the conculsion our heroes reach, and while Kitty does resolve to do something about it, determining that just because their injured dosen’t mean they’ve stopped being X-Men, but before they can deal with this they get a guest.

No but she’s just as weird and abrubt:

This is Gatecrasher, leader of the The Technet, a group of interdimensional mercenaries and bounty hunters. She wants to speak with the lady of the house but that’s not really and option as she’s kinda on a schedule. You know people to grab, drinks to be drunks, sapient racoons to bone.. that sorta thing.. and the last one isn’t something I pulled out of nowhere the recent Rocket Racoon solo not only brought in the technet but had her fancy the guy. Guess it’s the fuzzy, as Kurt himself will tell you chicks dig the fuzzy. It’s why he’s Krakoa’s orgy meister. Before Kitty and Kurt can find out who Gatecrasher is and why she’s here, Meggan soars in.. and hisses at Gatecrasher. See The good captain and the Technet have a history: they’ve been both enemies and reluctant allies, so naturally Meggan is worried their here for Brian. But this time they have no buisness with the good Captain... and when asked by kitty why she’s here Gatecrasher uses a telecom crystal, some sort of magic hologram recording, to explain herself:

Saturnyne is , as she says an omniversal majestrix. This basically means she runs the day to day operations of the Captain Britan Corps, basically the Captain Britians for every reality, helps give underdeveloped words nudges toward advancment and general multiversal maintince stuff. Sorta like a combination of Omnitraxus and Hekapoo from star vs the forces of evil but without being a racist asshole. I mean she’s still an asshole, just not a racist one. She and Brian have a romantic history. As you can also see each of the team is having a different reaction to her: Kurt is popping a boner just off screen, maybe he can invite her to Krakoa orgy night hmm?, Meggan is pissed because she and Brian were a thing once, and Kitty just found out she likes ladies AND she likes guy. What i’m saying is it dosen’t take an intellectual to get that she’s bisexual. And yes I know she turned down Karma off screen later on but that was A) the result of another writer changing things after the previous writer on both character, Chris Claremont himself, apparently had sizeable ship tease for them. and B) if her ex boyfriend iceman can be retconned to have been a heavily closeted until very recently gay man this whole time, Kitty can also have been sticking to the closet or just simply have not explored that side if we want. Anyways it turns out there here for rachel at Saturnyne’s orders, because she’s apparently a theat to the multiverse.. not too much of a stretch when in one reality her mom going dark phoenix destroyed damn near everything and even here the phoenix force has snuffed out entire galaxies. She’s apparently on her way back to earth, and it’s the Technet’s job to catch her. As for the specifics.. Gatecrasher has no idea. And frankly when an omniversal goddess asks you go fetch someone for what I assume is a yak that has a comparentment in it’s back with millions of dollars stashed inside, you don’t really care. Kitty being Kitty, refuses to help her find their friend and until she knows more, she’s willing to fight her on it. Unfortunatley, as you can probably tell, Gatecrasher wasn’t dumb enough to go after a being that can eat an entire solar system alone.

It's here we meet the Technet proper and a fight between two former teammates, a shapeshifter they only just now met and who only Kurt recognized, and a team of weird as shit but highly trained bounty hunters goes about as well as the classic matchup of Wolverine vs "Anyone trying to get between him and his beer stash". Kitty is quickly taken out by the yellow girl with green hair, scatterbrain, whose power is.. just that: anyone she touches has their brain go all spacey and weird and kitty knocks herself out falling over when Scatter shuts her thinky parts off. And as for Meggan..

This is Bodybag. And his power is exactly what it looks like: he gulps people up and then keeps them in his sack on the back. It’s weird but i’ts my kind of creative weird and it makes sense for a team of bounty hunters to have a member to store their quarrry. Kurt wisely BAMF’s the fuck out of there, but Gatecrasher decides not to persue him: He’s not their target, and if he wants his friends he’ll have to come back for them anyway, so it’s not like chasing him all over is really worth the effort. She does have Bodybag snag kitty though, and plans to use her and Meggan as bargaining chips.

Meanwhile Rachel finally returns to the story, as seen above a bit discombobulated given you know, she just crossed dimensions or whatever hapepned. She then ends up at a charity masqurade party , just poofying out of nowhere and when she tries to you know, leave...

I just... what the fuck kind of charity event IS this? The chains she brought with her but “no one leaves without permisson. “ I just... THIS IS A CHARITY BALL NOT VIETNAM. And who, besides racist assholes, thinks holdiing someone down with chains is a good idea. Just WHAT IS THIS SCENE. Thankfully we get some other party crashers.

These are Warwolves, a new, as far as I can tell, creation and basically Mojo’s literal hunting dogs. Rachel tries fighting them off but naturally, their Psi-Proof so just blasting them with telekenisis won’t work and uses the objects around her, including her own chains to duck them. But she mutters what’s the point it’s just another sound stage.. except as I said, it isn’t. She’s in foggy london town.

Rachel continues her run through the urban jungle eventually ending up in a subway. No not the restraunt, she’s not that unlucky. Duckign onto a train one of the warwolves globs on.

To be fair most hollywood contracts are basically slavery, but Rachel as a point.. she was basically tricked into singing it, again not exactly uncommon, and refuses to take this bullshit.

This bit is awesome, and doubly so as I left out a bit of Rachel's backstory on purpose earlier: she was a hound. Basically it meant she was enslaved and conditioned to hunt down other mutants, only escaping shortly before days of future past happened and then escsaping into the present. So naturally the thought of being enslaved and forced to do some asshole's bidding again, to loose her free will? She'll die before that happens and slaughters the warwolf to prove it.. though also scares her fellow passangers in the process. While Rachel tries to explain thing the warwolves greeve.. and Teleporter, Gatecrasher's lizard thing, has located Rachel. Meanwhile Madison is grappling with the fact that not every issue can be settled by comittee... Meanwhile Kurt arrives at the Lighthouse to find Brian stinking of booze and asleep, so he decides to do the only logical thing he can think of.

I fucking love you Kurt. So since Godzilla is too busy at his tax audit to save him from the depths of the ocean Brian wakes up himself pissed and assuming someone tried to kill him. Which granted Kurt outright admitted he might drown but given the only two friends he has left in the world and an innocent he just met who fought beside him despite having no reason to besides it being the right thing are in mortal peril, he has no time to play nice. Kurt’s responses to Brian’s outrage are fucking amazing.

Fucking brutal and accurate: Brian’s alcoholism is killing him and is just as borderline suicidal as Kurt’s play session with largely the same intention. Kurt has no time for wallowing in self pity, no time to baby Brian, as much as it might be warranted, through his grief. Kurt Wagner needs a hero, and since the avengers and fantastic four would likely take hours he dosen’t have, Brian is his best bet at saving his friends. He has no time for pity or sadness, he only has time to save what he has left. He explains the situation to Brian as well as how the hell he found him: since he at least knew of Brian, likely due to Betsy as she was staying with the X-Men prior to joining and just before the massacre, he dug up the X-Men’s file on him and spent the rest of his time getting to him. Brian is, unsurprisingly, in no real mood to help and mopes that there’s really no point in it… and that’s when Kurt somehow gets even more pissed off and 20 times as awesome, with a speech worthy of Sir Patrick Stewart himself.

And as I’ve made abundantly clear that’s the point of this story: The X-Men’s temporary death was unfair, left a lot of pain in their wake and left our heroes scrambling to figure out where do they go from here? And it’s here Nightcrawler is the first besides Meggan, whose simple world view means it was a lot easier to process things and took her three panels to get herself in gear to help Brian, to really turn a corner on his grief. He’s sad his friends are dead, he wishes more than anything that he could’ve died a hero like them instead of living with the misery and sorrow of them being gone.. but he’s alive. And he’s going to honor them the best he can by being the kind of man they wanted him to be. And to me this is why Kurt became leader: out of the five he has the most experience, with only Brian rivaling him in that, but also the most drive. He may of lost everything, but by god he’s going to keep moving. Sure his friends died, it’s the risk of the trade.. but they’d want him to live, to take up the sword and keep fighting so that the dream dosen’t fade out. It’s why, as much as I don’t agree with it, they kept hteir resurrection a secret: because the safety of all mutants, of their friends, is more important than one man. And Kurt is going to honor that. But not before giving Brian another verbal bitchslapping.

Of course it’s not easy as Brian DID die to become captain britan.. and the memory haunts him. And he wonders when it’ll come from him.. and he’s afraid of it. But the question is will he let his fear of the reaper swallow him whole or live like Kurt, fighting on anyways. To truly live.

Meanwhile Rachel is the only member of the forming team to not have had a full on mope sesh so she gets on that, but it only lasts for about a panel and like most of the angst in this comic is warranted: Rachel comptemplates if she should go back to the X-Men.. but realizes despite running out on them , their family, and she has no other options. But before she can learn the truth the technet are upon her and bodybag scoops her up. Gatecrasher plans to release Kitty and Meggan and one thing I like that I hadn’t noticed in previous reads is Gatecrasher is a fairly intresting antagonist. She’s not “evil”, she’s just a merc wanting a payday, and in this case was hired by a legitmate if pompus source. While she takes Kitty and Meggan, it’s more out of pragmatisim and as noted she plans to release the two when she could’ve let Bodybag digest them, and when first showing up is perfectly cordial to Kurt and Kitty, and only fights when it’s clear our heroes won’t let her just walk off with their old friend. It makes me glad there’s far more of her and the technet to come as the series goes on and a ton more in Alan Davis run when I get to that. Their intresting characters with unique power sets and inject a sense of fun into what would otherwise be a fairly dreary story. Anyways before she can do that the warwolves strike and are too dumb to know when to quit so a fight breaks out and Gatecrasher beats the piss out of one while Kurt arrives, watching from the shadows. As for why no one’s spotted him... i’ts simple: One of his powers is to blend into shadows. It’s not used often and it’s forgotten quite a bit, but it is one he’s used on ocasion and even IF Claremont just retconned it out, his foes are too busy to notice. Kurt once again shows how awesome he is and tricks one of the wolves into slashing the bags containing his friends open. Gross but oh so triumphant.

Unfortunatley his victory is short lived: Meggan and Kitty are still woozy as, while I didn’t mention this earlier, Bodybags bags contain a paralyzing goop so they still aren’t quite ready to fight and while Rachel is, she can’t psy zap the dog. Luckily for Kurt gatecrasher yanks it away. Unluckily, she prepares to beat him into furry blue chunklets on the ground. Luckily...

Brian has finally gotten his shit together to save the day.. for all of a panel…

While Brian is fighting who or whatever that is Rachel and Kitty try to get into things but are blindsided by ringtoss and joyboy whose powers well...

Yeah while ringtoss, if still weird isn’t TOO out of the ordinary for Marvel, Joyboy seems like he’s some sorta lost Jojo’s bizarre adventure stand. It’s also another reason to love the technet as again, their powers are just so fucking creative and weird. But that’s also what makes them such a threat: Their powers aren’t what most heroes usually deal with, and thus they have the element of surprise, helped by the fact their all from separate dimensions, meaning even in space, where their likely more ready for nonsense, they still have the upper hand by being races most space peeps aren’t ready for. Speaking of not ready,w ehave two last members to cover...

They speak for themselves, and while they do so Brian tries to rescue Meggan but is stopped by scatterbrain. Nightcrawler notices their asses are getting kicked and figures out WHY: The Warwolves and The Technet are teams. They work together regularly. Excalibur at this point is three former teammates in a disorienting situation and two british persons they just met. And if they don’t’ start working together they aren’t going to last. So Nightcrawler decides to fix that by knocking a warwolf into Ringtoss, who then collapses into waxwork whose touch takes out both and leaves Rachel free. Rachel quickly takes out Joyboy and with him out of the way, Kitty and Kurt can focus on Gatecrasher:

And with that Gatecrasher knows when to fold em and teleports the team away to fight another day, while the Warwolves slinked off in the confusion. Both will be back, obviously, but for now our heroes have one, Brian and Meggan make up and make out, and with the chaos settled Kitty, Rachel and Kurt have a tearful reunion.

Our heroes celebrate with a campfire and memories of their fallen comrades, with Rachel admitting she’s not sure what’s real or not after her experiences with Mojo. Brian prepares to leave and take care of the Warwolves himself.. but Rachel objects. The three others don’t have lives to return to, and just because the X-Men are gone dosent’ mean Xaviers dream should die out, likening them to the symbol of King Arthurs sword Excalibur. Kitty and Kurt start to agree, pointing out their dream taught them that if theirs a vacuum left in the X-Men’s legacy, someone will use it for their own ends. Rachel affirms her reasons for staying as a team, saying she’s tired of running: She’s done so all her live and she wants to , for once, stand for something. Meggan, having had similar problems in the past, agrees with her and the rest of the crew quickly come on board and thus we close on this image as a new team, and a new legacy, is forged: Excalibur is born.

Final Thoughts: The Sword is Forged is an utter classic and a great way to start things off. Our heroes are established, Rachel, who I felt was a bit thrown around by the plot during her time on the X-Men, is fleshed out a bit more and given purpose while Brian and Meggan are decently introduced to the audience. My only real complaints is that Davis and Claremont sometimes forget that American audiences won’t know who half these people are and while they introduce the Technet and Saturnyne well enough, they still never backtrack to explain them better later and what history I DID get I had to dig up for myself online. That aside the story, while having a lot of angst, is well done and has a good flow to it and ends on a high note, the characters are likeable enough, the villains are all creative though the Warwolves feel slight next to the Technet and will get fleshed out a bit more in the series proper. And of course I’d be a moron if I didn’t compliment Alan Davis wonderful art, which captures the whimsical tone well, the emotion in certain scenes perfectly and holds up beautifully years later. Overall The Sword is Forged is a great team origin story and if you liked what you saw here I’d recommend checking it out. Next time, hopefully tonight, we finally get to to the new Excalibur as Brian and his sister and thrust into the shit and a new Captain Britain is born. Until then, courage.

#analysis of x #excalibur #captain britan #meggan #nightcrawler #kitty pryde #rachel summers #the technet #gatecrasher #warwolves #mojoworld #x-men #chris claremont #alan davis #dawn of x

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie We Almost Got

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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a cult classic amongst ‘90s pop culture enthusiasts and Power Rangers fans. Even with its fairly standard ‘90s adventure movie plot, wherein the Rangers lose their powers and have to go on a mystical quest to gain new ones, the film still sticks in the mind. Main baddie Ivan Ooze chews all the scenery, there are some impressive fight scenes, and the Rangers save the day by kneeing a monster in the balls. Yes the CG is dated, the story doesn’t hold up to some of the better episodes of the show, and it’s not in continuity with the series but if you want to have a movie night with friends of a certain age, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a solid watch.

While many love the film exactly as it is, it didn’t go from script to screen completely unchanged. An early draft of the script we discovered, dated October 15, 1994, written by Arne Olsen and David Kemper (the final film credits Arne Olsen with a story by John Kamps and Arne Olsen) has many changes that if included could have made for a very different viewing experience. The script contains new characters, fleshed out backstories, altered scenes, and makes us question the long-standing belief that the people behind the film didn’t “get” Power Rangers.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of every single change from script to screen. There are hundreds of them throughout but we’re focusing on the biggest changes that add new context to the film.

Fleshed Out Backstories

Even though this film isn’t in continuity with the Power Rangers TV series there’s still a lot here for fans to dig into that offer clues to a much bigger universe happening behind the usual stories we’d get in the show. While the script doesn’t have the opening voiceover, which originally gave much of the backstory for Ivan Ooze, here the characters themselves deliver it.

Zordon tells the team that Ivan Ooze “rid entire cities of their adult populations, then twisted the minds of the kids into following in his evil path.” So Ivan’s luring of children and getting rid of their parents wasn’t just a one-off plan for this film, there was some precedent behind it! He further explains that a rebel faction of young people “known as the Order of Meledan” rallied against Ooze and lured him into a hyperlock chamber that was then buried deep underground.

Some of that was given in the movie’s original intro but it still paints a more detailed picture of Ivan. The Order of Meledan, long whispered about in hardcore Power Rangers fan circles, paints an intriguing picture. Later in the script Dulcea tells the Rangers how she knows Alpha and in doing so reveals more about The Order.

She describes it as an interstellar peace keeping force headed by “the finest commander in all the galaxy… Zordon of Altare.” (Yes, they misspelled Eltar throughout the script as Altare.) Zordon was more than a commander though, Dulcea calls him a “legend” and without him the universe would be “a very different place from what it is today.”

Power Rangers: A Guide to the Multiverse

By Shamus Kelley

This is incredibly significant. Zordon’s backstory in the show was vague. We knew he had a physical form at one point and battled Rita but to get confirmation he was the head of a force of warriors? This is the kind of information fans always suspected before the 2017 film made it a central plot point and the recent Boom Studios comics began to address it. The film isn’t in continuity with the show (or the comics for that matter) but to know at one point Zordon was given more history and was all over the universe saving people, should give Power Rangers fans chills. We can only wonder if this build up of Zordon’s character was only to give added weight to this film or if they were laying the groundwork for further films to explore it.

Dulcea doesn’t directly mention what happened to The Order of Meledan but after “our enemies” were defeated she returned to Phaedos (where she resides in the film) and Zordon and Alpha moved on “to continue the struggle elsewhere.” Did they take The Order with them? Who else was a part of it? Questions we’ll sadly never get the answers to.

The script however does give us more details about “The Great Power.” In the film it’s mostly kept vague, a simple power source that gives the Rangers their suits back and allows Zordon to return from the dead. The script takes more time explaining it (which was likely cut out for pacing and time reasons) where Dulcea explains that it originated in another time and dimension, brought to Phaedos by the now all but extinct “Nathadian” race. They were the ones who built the stone monolith later seen in the climatic “Guardian” fight in the film and stored the power inside to keep it hidden from their enemies.

The Nathadians are continually brought up in the script, with the race actually being the origin of the term Ninjetti. During the team’s training with Dulcea (more on that later) she lays out that, in Nathadian, “nin” stands for “man” and “Jetti” stands for animal. Ninjetti is man and animal, together as one, “the highest state of being.” How does Dulcea know all this? She’s the sole living descendant of the race!

While the film itself gives us precious little about Dulcea and mostly leans on her past connection with Zordon. Here at least we get a bit about her culture and how that ties into the Rangers’ new powers. It makes Dulcea less of a plot device; she gets to be a person.

Perhaps one of the most fun backstory additions in the film is also tied to a changed scene. In the final film Alpha uses the last remaining power in the Command Center to transport the Rangers to Phaedos. In the script however they travel by a spacecraft that belongs to Alpha.

Hidden in the command center is “a Stinger PX-3000 with dual thunder-cams, long held to be the most reliable Interstellar Craft in the Galaxy.” Alpha relates that he arrived on Earth in the craft over four hundred years ago. Kimberly isn’t impressed, suggesting they swing by a car wash because it’s so dirty inside.

It’s a small beat but it’s fun and suggests that Alpha arrived on Earth independently of Zordon. Maybe the two parted ways at one point and he went off to have his own adventures. We know Alpha has karate chopping action, so maybe he’s the hero of a far off galaxy!

(Snoggle, who never made it into the finished film, can be seen all the way to the left.)

New Characters

While reading through the script I noticed that while the structure of it isn’t all that different from the finished film, a lot of sections were cut, likely for time or budgetary reasons. A few side characters didn’t make it to screen, one of which is the long rumored Snoggle. Glimpsed in behind-the-scenes photos and videos for years, Snoggle has held an air of mystery as a huge dropped part of the movie.

Power Rangers and How It Adapted From Super Sentai

By Shamus Kelley

For anyone out there wondering what his point in the movie was, his role in the script isn’t that significant and he’s mostly there to be a sidekick to Dulcea. He’s described as “a helper, an anteater-like creature” who doesn’t speak English. His biggest contribution to the plot is lightly mocking the Rangers as they train with Dulcea.

Far more interesting is the never before seen Queen Tengu. Yes, while in the film the Tengu simply obeyed Ivan Ooze’s commands. here they have a leader. She’s created out of a bolt of energy from Ivan and is described as having a different color than the rest of the Tengu along with “glowing red eyes.” It’s also specified that she speaks with “squawk subtitles.” She gets to play an integral part in a cut fight scene we’ll get to later.

Also, Fred’s mom is in script. She doesn’t do much but hey, she’s there for the lead kid character to worry about!

Changed Scenes

Most scenes in the script have at least a few differences, changed words, small bits of description that didn’t make it into the film, etc. We’re going to focus on the biggest changes, scenes and moments that would have made a significant difference to the film.

Remembering the Cast Changeover

Kimberly’s mini speech about how Zordon has been like a father to them all is in the scene just after Ivan attacks him. Her heart to heart with Tommy also take place not on Phadeos but on Alpha’s old ship as they travel to the planet. The other Rangers join in on the conversation with Aisha’s touching addition, “you know, meeting Zordon… teaming up with all you guys… it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Rocky chimes in with, “it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to ALL of us.”

It’s a great little moment that not only brings the team closer together but also acknowledges the then recent cast changeover that happened in the TV series.

Ninjetti Powers

The biggest changes though begin when the Rangers are given their Ninjetti powers. Instead of just a swirling light the Rangers put their hands in an urn. There they see and take on the shape of their animals, the costumes appearing as Dulcea describes their traits. In a bizarre omission most of the Rangers get flowery descriptions of their animals (“cunning and swift”, “agile and sublime”, etc.) Rocky doesn’t get any! Dulcea just says “Rocky, you are the Mighty Ape” and moves on. Ouch.

Adam’s now legendary line “I’m a frog” isn’t present in the script but a slight variation of it is. He simply says, “a frog” when given his powers. Dulcea at least tries to make it sound cool, calling the frog “the artful jumper.”

Added Stakes

There’s a bigger ticking clock added when the Rangers head to the monolith in the forest. Dulcea relays that once they cross the threshold to the inner sanctum they only have about two minutes to release the power or it’ll self-destruct, “causing a thermonuclear reaction of such magnitude that the entire planet will instantly burst into a billion flaming particles hurtling through space.”

That’s…. a lot. In the film we just had the threat of Zordon losing his life but here the Rangers themselves will bite it if they don’t unlock the power fast enough. If that idea was kept that would mean they couldn’t have a long fight outside the monolith so that’s probably why it was cut.

Tommy Is An Idiot

The scene at the monolith itself of course lasts longer than two minutes worth of screen time, with the Rangers all trying to find a way to unlock the great power. In the absolute funniest moment of the script, Adam suggests they have to break through as “our Ninjetti animals.”

Tommy takes this hilariously literally and the script delightfully describes how he “dives through the air, hits the monolith with a resounding crunch.” Don’t vote for dummy, am I right? For all of Tommy’s status as the most legendary Ranger of all time, in the show itself he’s actually pretty stupid. How he became a doctor I’ll never know.

Bringing Zordon Back to Life

The Rangers do finally unlock their powers thanks to a communication from Zordon just before the monolith explodes. He tells them to keep their spirits up which somehow makes the Rangers realize they have to master the spiritual side of their Ninjetti powers.

The team wins the day but instead of teleporting from Phaedos to the city as they do in the film, they instead go back to the command center. There the scene largely plays it as it did later in the film with the team using their new powers to restore the command center and bring Zordon back to life.

It’s hard to know whether this scene was shot in the film with the intention of it being used after they left Phadeos but was switched around in editing but eagle eyed fans might want to give it a watch again.

With the Rangers bringing him back to life Zordon gives the Rangers new power coins as “a reward for your amazing bravery” which will unlock their new Ninja Zords. No explanation is given for where the Zords came from which… is the most Zordon thing this script could do. He always had an extra Zord fleet just hanging around whenever the Rangers learned a lesson. Maybe the writers of this film understood Power Rangers more than we give them credit for!

The Final Zord Battle

The Megazord fight in the city goes for much longer than it does in the film, the CGI costs most likely preventing some of the wilder events the script describes such as the Megazord getting tossed into Angel Grove First National Bank and the Megazord delivering double punches, drop kicks, roundhouse hooks, and spinback kicks. Would have loved to see that PS1 cutscene Megazord try and pull those off!

Later in the fight Ivan grabs the Zord and takes them to “Westside Bluffs” where he tosses them off a cliff but of course Tommy saves the day by swooping in with the Falcon Zord and attaching himself to the back so they can fly. This is almost immediately undercut as the fight continues underwater. Ivan ends up landing in an active underwater volcano, which was, again, probably deemed too expensive to pull off with the limited CGI resources of the film.

New Powers

One of the most well known cuts from the film is that the Rangers were originally shown without the visors in their helmets. This was done to better convey the actor’s emotions during filming of the action scenes. The idea was thankfully scrapped but it’s prevalent in the script. Alpha tells the team he’s retro-fitted their helmets with new “Omni Scan devices.” We aren’t sure if this is just another power-up or if “Omni Scan” is just a fancy description for “we took the visors out of your helmet so I guess you have a slightly bigger range of vision and your identities are now completely exposed.” The Rangers go visorless again later in the film when they get their powers back.

The Rangers also get new individual powers. Billy has an “Audio Enhancer” that takes the form of an “Auto Phonic Receiver” that pops out of the side of his helmet. Rocky has a Power Tracker that’s basically a scope that snaps into place over his left eye. Presumably this would have been inside the helmet. This is an earlier version of the scanner he ended up using in the finished film.

Power Rangers: The Unproduced Episodes

By Shamus Kelley

Power Rangers: Ranking All 26 Seasons

By Shamus Kelley

Ivan Ooze also gets a few new powers of his own. Instead of the scene when he tricks the Rangers into thinking he’s a security guard and then morphs into his true form, in the script Ivan makes an even showier entry. The Rangers spot a “grotesque horned creature” that springs out of a cave and lands in front of them. It snarls, exposing long dripping fangs. Only then does it shape into Ivan Ooze. He then doesn’t unleash the Oozemen on the team but instead zaps six rats. Previously mentioned in the script, they’re transformed into “six hairy rat-beasts.”

These rats were built for the film but were scrapped for not being high enough quality. However, they did find a use when filming on the movie went over schedule and they had to shoot episodes of the TV series in Australia (these scheduling issues caused several planned episodes to be scrapped and lost to time, which you can read more about here). The rats were deemed good enough for the show and appeared in the “Return of the Green Ranger” mini-series.

Back in the film, Tommy gets to show off a new power when he shoots laser blasts from his eyes. Saba, called the “Saba Saber” here, doesn’t get to save the day as he does in the film. When the rats are incinerated by Tommy’s blast they turn back into the six original small rats.

Even the Megazord gets a cool… old/new power? While in the film the Rangers just whip out a sword, here the script describes the Rangers summoning the “POWER SWORD.” It even drops from the heavens like in the show! This probably wasn’t supposed to be the original Megazord’s power sword… but what if it was? How much of an amazing callback would that have been? Mostly likely though it would have been the same design as in the film, just dropping from the sky like the original Power Sword did.

New Scenes

The biggest sequences cut from the film feature the Rangers training as Ninjetti. While in the film they were given the powers very quickly, here we get several extended training scenes with Dulcea. She trains each of the Rangers individually, walking along a bamboo log on her hands with Kimberly, lifting a giant boulder with Aisha, fighting Billy with a whistling stick blindfolded, and Tommy flying through the air from a rope. Adam and Rocky don’t get any training because I guess this script really has it out for those guys. Throughout all this Snoggle watches and is just a sassy little jerk to them.

These scenes were probably scrapped either for time or the fact that they’d been shot with Mariska Hargitay, who’d replaced Gabrielle Fitzpatrick after she was injured just before filming began. However after months of shooting the producers then decided to reshoot all of the Dulcea scenes which they brought Fitzpatrick back for. We’ve seen behind-the-scenes footage of Hargitay performing these scenes so perhaps they were deemed too expensive to mount again or simply cut even after the reshoots.

In what is perhaps the best idea cut from the script, the Rangers are all struggling to master their Ninjetti powers. Rocky, at least getting one moment of character, lashes out at Dulcea,

“I don’t even know why we came here in the FIRST place! Without our Morphin Powers, we’re just a bunch of TEENAGERS!”

Duclea doesn’t let this stand when she tells the team, “you have been relying on your Morphin Powers for so long that you’ve forgotten how to rely on yourselves.”

Power Rangers Seasons We Never Saw

By Shamus Kelley

Putting aside that the Rangers regularly fight unmorphed, this is actually a really great idea. This could have made a fantastic arc to the film that would justify only having one morphed ground fight at the beginning. The Rangers learning they need to be powerful even without their powers could have been a great test of their characters. By undergoing this training they’d realize the value in not just relying on their morphed abilities. This lesson isn’t really stressed throughout the script but it’s still an absolute gem of an idea I wish had been expanded.

Later during a new action scene that replaces the bone dinosaur fight; the team goes up against the Tengu Queen. This fight takes place near a chasm, with the Tengus blocking the team’s path across a tenuous rope bridge. The Rangers get to show off their new skills and even deliver some groan inducing one-liners such as “pheasant dreams!”

In a move directly ripped from the show, the Rangers can only defeat the Tengu by aiming for their beaks. Z Putties, much? Adam gets his moment to be cool when he defeats the Queen Tengu by leaping toward her, looking her dead in the eyes and quips, “polly wanna cracker?” This is how he defeats her, I kid you not.

This fight is the main action set piece for this part of the film. We don’t get the “Guardian” warrior fight outside the temple. While those designs would be missed it at least keeps the Tengu a bigger threat in the film than simply being blown up by Ivan.

The film ends not with a display of fireworks but with perhaps the cheesiest scene in the entire script. The Rangers are in the command center and Alpha holds up a camera and asks them to say cheese. I’ll just quote the description of the rest because it’s perfection.

The kids share amused looks and all together they LEAP INTO THE AIR, PUMPING THEIR FISTS UP VICTORIOUSLY.

“POWER RANGERS!”

WE FREEZE FRAME.

Okay, the writers of this script DO understand Power Rangers.

Was The Script Better Than What We Got?

With all these changes in mind, would the movie have been better if this draft of the script was left intact? Not really.

In isolation some of these changes are fascinating but taken as a whole the script really isn’t that much better than the movie we ended up getting. Yes some of the little additions of lore are fascinating for Power Rangers fans but they don’t add much to the story. The movie still doesn’t have a character arc for any of the Rangers or the rest of the cast for that matter. It’s a generic 90’s adventure movie with the Power Rangers mixed in.

It also suffers from desperately trying to give all the Rangers something to say in every scene they’re in. While I appreciate the sentiment, this leaves large chunks of the script dedicated to giving each Ranger a line of dialogue whether it’s needed or not. That dialogue is also completely interchangeable. No work has been done to try and distinguish how each of the Rangers talk (you could say the show had this issue too). They’re all just generic heroes, except for the odd smart guy line from Billy or heartfelt declaration from Kimberly.

Without that the movie just moves from set piece to set piece, only wringing emotion out of Zordon’s near death which is undercut by his revival before the Megazord climax. The filmmakers made the right call by placing this scene later on.

But if we’d gotten this script as is it’d still maintain its cult classic status. Power Rangers was an absolute juggernaut at that point in entertainment and that alone would earn it a warm place of nostalgia in fans’ minds. Yeah it’s a sloppy movie but who cares when you can watch (or read it) and get that same feeling you had when you saw it for the first time as a kid.

But for real, why does this script hate Rocky so much?

The post The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie We Almost Got appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years ago

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TOP 10 INK AND COLOR ARTISTS OF 2019′S REVIEWS

This year I felt the need to also do this list. Why? Well, when I was going through the most prominent artists with a 10 score, I noticed that some names were in almost all of them, but they weren’t the main artists. These artists are mostly inkers and colorists, and they are industry professionals, that usually worked for the publisher directly. This is the main reason they were involved in most of the art teams. Some of these were working for hire though. But you will also notice that unlike the writers and pencillers lists, this one is a lot more diverse.

NUMBER TEN JOHN HIGGINS (1949 - PRESENT)

John Higgins (born 1949) is an English comic book artist and writer. He did significant work for 2000 AD, and he has frequently worked with writer Alan Moore, most notably as colorist for Watchmen.

John Higgins was born in Walton, Liverpool. After leaving school when he was 15, he joined the army and, on leaving, spent some time in a commune in Wiltshire. He returned to Liverpool and, in 1971, resumed his studies at Wallasey College of Art. There, in 1974 he qualified in technical illustration, which allowed him to get a job as a medical illustrator at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

After getting his first comic book art published in Brainstorm in 1975, he drew the cover for 2000 AD No. 43 in 1977 and decided to go freelance in 1978, with an eye on becoming a comic artist. In 1981 he started getting regular work at 2000 AD, one of his early projects being the art for a Tharg's Future Shocks by Alan Moore, as well as doing covers for Marvel UK.

After this he worked steadily at 2000 AD and joined the British Invasion in the mid-eighties—notably doing the colouring on Moore's Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke, a job he got through colouring Steve Dillon's art on Moore's ABC Warriors story. This led to more work in the American market, although he has kept working on British titles too especially with Judge Dredd over 20 years.

He provided the art for Greysuit with Pat Mills, as well as working with Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti on The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning and Jonah Hex No. 28.

Higgins is also a writer. He wrote and drew his first Future Shock at 2000 AD and did the same for Razorjack, a comic book mini-series from Com.x, which was reprinted in 2009.

Higgins has worked in a number of different areas providing artwork for animation, film and book covers like The Cabinet of Light and The Morgaine Stories. In 2012, Higgins worked on the Before Watchmen project, drawing the serialised feature "Curse of the Crimson Corsair" which was initially written by Len Wein. Higgins later became the writer of the feature as well.

In 2016 he provided the art for six stamps commemorating the Great Fire of London, illustrating them in the style of a comic strip.

In 2017 a collection of his artwork was exhibited at the Victoria Gallery & Museum in Liverpool, in an exhibition called Beyond Dredd & Watchmen: The Art of John Higgins.

Higgins made it into the list thanks to his work on “Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Watchmen”.

NUMBER NINE ROMEO TANGHAL (1943 - PRESENT)

Romeo Tanghal (born 1943) is a Filipino comics artist who has worked primarily as an inker. He became well known in the industry in the 1980s for his work on DC Comics' The New Teen Titans.

Romeo Tanghal was born and raised in the Philippines. A self–taught artist, he started doing comics illustrations after graduating high school. He briefly worked with various local publications before emigrating to the United States in 1976. His first published work in the U.S. was "If There Were No Batman... I Would Have to Invent Him" in Batman #284 (Feb. 1977) for DC Comics. He then drew short stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Weird War Tales. He later became the inker on such features as Super Friends, "Scalphunter" in Weird Western Tales, and "Gravedigger" in Men of War. In 1980, Tanghal became the inker of George Pérez's penciled artwork on The New Teen Titans. Tanghal drew two origin stories for DC's digest line during this time, a ten-page short story in DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (Nov.–Dec. 1980) featuring Zatara and Zatanna and the origin of the Penguin in The Best of DC #10 (March 1981). Tanghal began working for Marvel Comics as well in 1986. He inked the comics adaptations of such films as Labyrinth, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Willow. Tanghal did character design and storyboards for Sunbow Entertainment from 1985 to 1987.

Tanghal received an Inkpot Award in 2013.

I usually think of Romeo when I think about the team of Wolfman and Pérez. Their work on New Teen Titans is the main reason he made it into this list.

NUMBER EIGHT LYNN VARLEY (1958 - PRESENT)

Lynn Varley is an award-winning American comic book colorist, notable for her collaborations with her then-husband, comic book writer/artist Frank Miller.

Varley grew up in Livonia, Michigan. Moving to New York City, she found work at Neal Adams' Continuity Associates. She debuted as a comic book colorist on Batman Annual # 8 (1982), written by Mike W. Barr and penciled by her then partner Trevor Von Eeden. Around the same time, she became professionally involved with Upstart Associates, a shared studio space on West 29th Street formed by Walter Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Val Mayerik, and Jim Starlin. Varley colored the first two issues of Chaykin's American Flagg! Frank Miller later became part of Upstart.

Varley provided the coloring for Miller's Ronin (1984), an experimental six-issue series from DC Comics that proved that comics in unusual formats could be commercially successful; and The Dark Knight Returns (1986), a four issue mini-series that went on to become an outstanding commercial and critical success. Miller also noted that Varley helped create the futuristic slang that Carrie Kelley and other characters use.

Subsequently, Varley colored other Miller books, including The Dark Knight Strikes Again, 300, Elektra Lives Again, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (with Geoff Darrow), as well as a number of covers for the U.S. editions of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. She also colored the backgrounds for the 300 movie (2007), produced by Miller.

Varley has only worked sporadically in the comics industry since 2005.

Varley and Miller were married from 1986 to 2005. They moved from New York City to Los Angeles in the late 1980s and moved back to New York shortly before the September 11 attacks.

Because of her collaborations with Miller, Lynn made it into this list thanks to her work on “Ronin”, “The Dark Knight Returns” and “Wolverine”.

NUMBER SEVEN GLYNIS “WEIN” OLIVER (1949 - PRESENT)

Glynis Oliver, also credited as Glynis Wein is an artist who has worked as a colorist in the comics industry. For several years, she was married to Len Wein. She returned to her maiden name in 1985. She was born in England.

She has been recognized for her work in the industry with a Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1973.

Glynis has an extensive career in comics, but the reason she made it into this list was her work on “Uncanny X-Men”, more specifically “the Dark Pheonix Saga” and the “Wolverine” mini-series.

NUMBER SIX BRAD ANDERSON

Not to mistake with the creator of Marmaduke.

Brad Anderson is a cartoonist and comic book colourist. He began his career in 1998 working for DC Comics in 1998 on the title Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. Ever since he has worked on countless comics for different publishers including Dark Horse Comics and Marvel Comics

Most recently, he has been working on titles like Batman Eternal, Green Lantern, Justice League and Convergence.

Little is known about Brad’s life (odd considering the popularity of the material he is part of). He made it into this list thanks to his work on the “Witching Hour” crossover and also on the Shazam Origin that run on the Justice League book.

NUMBER FIVE ANTHONY TOLLIN (1952 - PRESENT)

Anthony Tollin is a professional comic book colourist. Tollin started working for DC Comics in the early 70s as an assistant to Tatjana Wood in the coloring department. In the early 80s, he became the main colourist for DC, doing almost all of the covers of the publications of the company at the time. Tollin worked for DC until the early 90s, when he started working for other publishers.

He is in this list thanks to his work on “Vigilante”, “Ambush Bug” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

NUMBER FOUR ADRIENNE ROY (1953 - 2010)

Adrienne Roy (June 28, 1953 – December 14, 2010) was a comic book color artist who worked mostly for DC Comics. She was largely responsible for coloring the Batman line (Batman and Detective Comics) throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Roy attended an art school in Wayne, New Jersey, where she studied painting techniques. Her first contact with comics was through collecting Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula, The Sub-Mariner and Conan the Barbarian. Roy's first work as a comics colorist was assisting her husband Anthony Tollin, who worked for DC Comics at the times. But it was long-time colorist Jack Adler who would give her the first job at DC: the cover of DC Special Series #8 (featuring the Batman, Deadman and Sgt. Rock team-up). Adler and Sol Harrison (who was also a colorist) were considered by Roy herself as her mentors and both trained her on coloring during her first years at DC.

Roy was also responsible for the coloring on many other titles during that time period: The New Teen Titans, The Warlord, Weird War Tales and Madame Xanadu. Nevertheless, she is predominantly known for her work on the Batman books: Batman, Detective Comics, Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Batman: Gotham Knights, and Robin.

When computerized colors arrived to comics, the assignments to classic colorists decreased a lot. By 2000 Roy was largely out of work, despite training herself on the computer. Roy spent her last days battling cancer and died in Austin, Texas, at age 57 on December 14, 2010.

Adrienne Roy illustrated most of the comics of my childhood, and her “fuchsia” skies are pretty much her trademark on many Batman comics. She made it into this list thanks to her work on “New Teen Titans”, “Batman and the Outsiders”, Tales of the Teen Titans”, “The Judas Contract”, “Batman” and “Detective Comics”.

NUMBER THREE TERRY AUSTIN (1952 - PRESENT)

Terry Kevin Austin (born August 23, 1952) is an American comics artist, working primarily as an inker. He is best known for his work embellishing John Byrne's pencils on Uncanny X-Men from 1977 to 1981.

Austin grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Wayne State University. He started inking comics as an assistant to Dick Giordano and Neal Adams, doing "Crusty Bunker" work for Adams' Continuity Associates. Austin came to prominence in 1976–1977, inking Marshall Rogers' pencils on a celebrated run of Batman stories for DC Comics' Detective Comics collaborating with writer Steve Englehart. During this same period, Austin inked Michael Netzer (Nasser) on DC's Martian Manhunter in Adventure Comics and Green Arrow/Black Canary in World's Finest Comics, as well as Al Milgrom on Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel. He later teamed with Rogers again on Marvel's Doctor Strange.

In 1977, Austin and penciler John Byrne became the new art team on Uncanny X-Men. With writer Chris Claremont they produced a series of stories — particularly "The Dark Phoenix Saga" — which elevated the title into the top-selling American comic book.

Austin resides near Poughkeepsie, New York, where he plays volleyball and gets together often with fellow comics veteran Fred Hembeck.

Terry is a very popular inker that has almost no presence online (only through Fred Hembeck). He made it into this list mostly for his work on “Camelot 3000″ and “Uncanny X-Men”, most specifically, “The Dark Phoenix” saga.

NUMBER TWO DICK GIORDANO (1932 - 2010)

Richard Joseph "Dick" Giordano (July 20, 1932 – March 27, 2010) was an American comics artist and editor whose career included introducing Charlton Comics' "Action Heroes" stable of superheroes and serving as executive editor of DC Comics.

Dick Giordano, an only child, was born in New York City on July 20, 1932, in the borough of Manhattan to Josephine Labruzzi and Graziano "Jack" Giordano. He attended the School of Industrial Art.

Beginning as a freelance artist at Charlton Comics in 1952, Giordano contributed artwork to dozens of the company's comics, including such Western titles as Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, and Wyatt Earp, the war comic Fightin' Army, and scores of covers.

Giordano's artwork from Charlton's Strange Suspense Stories was used as inspiration for artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1965/1966 Brushstroke series, including Brushstroke, Big Painting No. 6, Little Big Painting and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes.

By the mid-1960s a Charlton veteran, Giordano rose to executive editor, succeeding Pat Masulli, by 1965. As an editor, he made his first mark in the industry, overseeing Charlton's revamping of its few existing superheroes and having his artists and writers create new such characters for what he called the company's "Action Hero" line. Many of these artists included new talent Giordano brought on board, including Jim Aparo, Dennis O'Neil, and Steve Skeates.

DC Comics vice president Irwin Donenfeld hired Giordano as an editor in April 1968, at the suggestion of Steve Ditko, with Giordano bringing over to DC some of the creators he had nurtured at Charlton. Giordano was given several titles such as Teen Titans, Aquaman and Young Love, but none of DC's major series. He launched the horror comics series The Witching Hour in March 1969, and the Western series All-Star Western vol. 2 in September 1970.

He continued to freelance for DC as a penciler and inker. As an artist, Giordano was best known as an inker. His inking was particularly associated with the pencils of Neal Adams, for their run in the early 1970s on the titles Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Comics historian Les Daniels observed that "The influential Adams style moved comics closer to illustration than cartooning, and he brought a menacing mood to Batman's adventures that was augmented by Dick Giordano's dark, brooding inks."

By 1971, frustrated by what he felt was a lack of editorial opportunities, Giordano had left DC to partner with fellow artist Neal Adams for their Continuity Associates studios, which served as an art packager for comic book publishers, including such companies as Giordano's former employer Charlton Comics, Marvel Comics, and the one-shot Big Apple Comix. Several comics artists began their careers at Continuity and many were mentored by Giordano during their time there.

He had a brief run as penciler of the Wonder Woman series which included a two-issue story in issues #202–203 (October and December 1972) written by science-fiction author Samuel R. Delany. Giordano drew several backup stories in Action Comics featuring the Human Target character as well as the martial arts feature "Sons of the Tiger" in Marvel's black-and-white comics magazine The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. He was a frequent artist on Batman and Detective Comics and he and writer Denny O'Neil created the Batman supporting character Leslie Thompkins in the story "There Is No Hope in Crime Alley" in Detective Comics #457 (March 1976). Giordano inked the large-format, first DC/Marvel intercompany crossover, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976), over the pencils of Ross Andru. Giordano inked Adams on the one-shot Superman vs. Muhammad Ali in 1978. Throughout the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Ross Andru and Giordano were DC's primary cover artists, providing cover artwork for the Superman titles as well as covers for many of the other comics in the DC line at that time.

In 1980, DC publisher Jenette Kahn brought Giordano back to DC. Initially the editor of the Batman titles, Giordano was named the company's new managing editor in 1981, and promoted to vice president/executive editor in 1983, a position he held until 1993. DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "Giordano held the respect of talent as one of their own, and kept their affection with his reassuring calm and warmth."

Giordano provided art for several anniversary issues of key DC titles. He and television writer Alan Brennert crafted the story "To Kill a Legend" in Detective Comics #500 (March 1981). Giordano was one of the artists on the double-sized Justice League of America #200 (March 1982) as well as Wonder Woman #300 (Feb. 1983) He was promoted to Vice-President/Executive Editor in 1984, and with Kahn and Levitz, oversaw the relaunch of all of DC's major characters with the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series in 1985. This was followed by Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1986. Giordano inked several major projects during this time such as George Pérez's pencils on Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne's pencils on The Man of Steel and Action Comics, though during this period he always employed assistants for inking backgrounds, filling in large black areas, and making final erasures.

From 1983 to 1987, Giordano wrote a monthly column published in DC titles called "Meanwhile..." which much like Marvel's "Bullpen Bulletins" featured news and information about the company and its creators. Unlike "Bullpen Bulletins," which was characterized by an ironic, over-hyped tone, Giordano's columns ". . . were written in a relatively sober, absolutely friendly voice, like a friend of your father's you particularly liked and didn't mind sitting down to listen to." Giordano closed each "Meanwhile..." column with the characteristic words, "Thank you and good afternoon."

The Vertigo imprint was launched in early 1993 built upon the success several titles edited by Karen Berger including Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Sandman, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and Shade, the Changing Man. Giordano inked six issues of The Sandman in 1991-1993.

Beginning in 1987, Giordano was in the middle of an industry-wide debate about the comics industry, ratings systems, and creators' rights. Veteran writers Mike Friedrich, Steven Grant, and Roger Slifer all cited Giordano in particular for his hard-line stance on behalf of DC. This debate led in part to the 1988 drafting of the Creator's Bill of Rights.

Giordano left DC in 1993, and still did the occasional inking job, but later returned to freelancing full-time. In 1994 Giordano illustrated a graphic novel adaptation of the novel Modesty Blaise released by DC Comics, with creator/writer Peter O'Donnell. He was one of the many artists who contributed to the Superman: The Wedding Album one-shot in 1996 wherein the title character married Lois Lane.

In 2002, Giordano launched the short-lived Future Comics with writer David Michelinie and artist Bob Layton. Since 2002, Giordano had drawn several issues of The Phantom published in Europe and Australia. In 2004, Giordano and writer Roy Thomas completed an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. They had begun the project in 1974 but the cancellation of many of Marvel's black and white magazines put it into limbo. The finished story was collected into a hardcover edition in 2005 and a colorized hardcover edition in 2010. In 2005, F+W Publications Inc. published the instructional art book Drawing Comics with Dick Giordano, which he wrote and illustrated. His last mainstream work appeared in Jonah Hex vol. 2, #51 (March 2010) for which he drew the interior art and the cover. His last comics work was pencilling and editing Baron Five, published by Hound Comics.

Giordano married the former Marie Trapani, sister of fellow comics artist Sal Trapani, on April 17, 1955. She died from complications of her second stomach cancer surgery in February 1993. They had three children together; Lisa, Dawn, and Richard Jr. Marie's death, combined with Giordano's increasing hearing loss, hastened his decision to retire from DC. Following the death of his wife, Giordano split time between homes in Florida and Connecticut. In 1995, he moved to Palm Coast, Florida, where he continued to work full-time freelancing, until his death. Giordano had suffered from lymphoma and later from leukemia, secondary to the chemotherapy. He died on March 27, 2010 due to complications of pneumonia.

Giordano served as mentor or inspiration to a generation of inkers, including Terry Austin, Mike DeCarlo, and Bob Layton.

Shortly after Giordano's death in 2010, The Hero Initiative created "The Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award", which debuted at the 2010 Harvey Awards ceremony held at the Baltimore Comic-Con. The award recognizes one person in comics each year who demonstrates particular generosity and integrity in support of the overall comic book community.

Giordano received recognition in the industry for his work, including the Alley Award for Best Editor in 1969. He won the Shazam Award for Best Inker (Dramatic Division) in 1970 (for Green Lantern), 1971, 1973 (for Justice League of America), and 1974. He won the 1971 Goethe Award for "Favorite Pro Editor." Giordano received an Inkpot Award in 1981. In 2009 he was awarded the Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award.

My favorite anecdote of Dick Giordano, is from Karen Berger (from the book “The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison”) about Grant Morrison’s thick Glaswegian accent.

“When I first met Grant, I was with Dick Giordano and Jenette Khan. I had set up appointments pretty much every hour with different writers and artists in this suite that we had rented to meet people, and Grant was the last person we saw on one of the days. And Dick Giordano was very hard of hearing... he wore two hearing aids and when Grant came in, Grant started talking and [Giordano] just took off his hearing aids and left the room. He couldn’t even read his lips.”

Dick Giordano is a legend, but he is in this list because of his work on “Camelot 3000″, “Tales of the Teen Titans”, “Vigilante” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

NUMBER ONE TATJANA WOOD (1926 - PRESENT)

Tatjana Wood (née Tatjana Weintraub, in Darmstadt, Germany) is an American artist and comic book colorist.

Tatjana's father was Jewish, and her mother was Christian. During World War II, she and her brother, Karl Joachim Weintraub, were sent to an international Quaker boarding school in the Netherlands. Gaining Dutch citizenship was not easy, so after World War II, the Quakers arranged for the two to travel to New York City in 1947. Karl went on to the University of Chicago, while Tatjana stayed in New York, attending the Traphagen School of Fashion. In 1949, she met Wally Wood, and they married August 28, 1950.

During the 1950s and 1960s, she sometimes made uncredited contributions to Wood's artwork. One of the stories she worked on was "Carl Akeley" in EC Comics' Two-Fisted Tales #41 (February–March 1955). She did a number of animal drawings for that story.

Later, beginning in 1969, she did extensive work for DC Comics as a comic book colorist. She was the main colorist for DC's covers from 1973 through the mid-1980s. Wood did coloring work on the interiors of comics as well, including Grant Morrison's acclaimed run on Animal Man, Alan Moore's issues of Swamp Thing, and Camelot 3000. She won the Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1971 and 1974. Tatjana has had no significant credits in the comics industry since 2003.

She is also a skilled dressmaker and weaver, who has crafted theatrical costumes and pictorial loom tapestries.

Tatjana's brother Karl died March 25, 2004. He was a distinguished scholar at the University of Chicago and the author of two books, Visions of Culture: Voltaire-Guizot-Burckhardt-Lamprecht-Huizinga-Ortega y Gassett (1966) and The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (1978).

Tatjana Wood has been mostly uncredited for most of her career. It is only thanks to interviews and reprints that we know of her work on many essential books, like the original Swamp Thing volume.

She made it into this list because of her work on “Swamp Thing” and “Camelot 3000″.

There were more artists that didn’t make it to the top 10, but were considered: Bob Oksner, Bruce D. Patterson, Tom Ziuko, Tom McCraw, Alfredo Alcala, Mike DeCarlo, Joe Rubinstein, Klaus Janson, Malcolm Jones III, Norm Breyfogle (for both lists) and Steve Oliff.

Being an inker or a colorist in comics can be an ungrateful job. But they mean a lot to certain artists. It is not the same to be inked by Romeo Tanghal or by Mike Royer. And because most of these artists had permanent contracts with their publishers, they ended up growing up in the industry. To all of them, thanks for the comics!

#2019 #artists #inker #colorist #comics #review #tatjana wood #dick giordano #terry austin #adrienne roy #anthony tollin #brad anderson #glynis wein #glynis oliver #lynn varley #romeo tanghal #john higgins

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior Feb. 14, 2020 – SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, FANTASY ISLAND, THE PHOTOGRAPH, DOWNHILL, OLYMPIC DREAMS

It’s Valentine’s Day on Friday and President’s Day on Monday, which means that this weekend is going to be absolutely nuts in terms of getting four new wide releases. Last week’s Birds of Prey did not do even remotely close to where I predicted/projected – almost half!! -- and here I thought all those raves reviews might help, but apparently not. It will still make money with its global release but it’s gonna fall short even of last year’s Shazam! and many have already started questioning whether an R-rating is the way to go with a movie semi-targeted towards younger women. (Warner Bros. has already sent out a mandate to theaters to change the title of the movie to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. I cannot believe that it took this long for them to figure out what a terrible title they had previously!)

With the four-day weekend, it’s very likely that Paramount Pictures’ SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, will prevail, as it brings the beloved SEGA video game character to the big screen with James Marsdenand Jim Carrey, the latter starring in one of his first big-screen appearances in a while. It should be an easy victor this weekend in a market that could desperately use another strong family film.

For those unfamiliar with SEGA’s flagship video game “mascot,” Sonic has appeared in all sorts of other media including animated series and comic books, so one can say that the character is almost but not quite as well known and popular as Nintendo’s Pokemon, which has had a much wider reach in terms of both games and cartoons.

Of course, it’s impossible not to look at Sonic the Hedgehog and completely ignore the relative success of last year’s Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, which had the added benefits of a popular A-list star in Ryan Reynoldsand a summer release. That opened with $54.4 million and made $144 million domestic and $429.7 million worldwide.

On the other hand, Sonic does have Jim Carrey, who hasn’t been in an American wide release since the 2014 sequel Dumb and Dumber To, which only made about $156 million worldwide. At one point, Carrey was one of the biggest box office stars with multiple $240 million plus domestic blockbusters. Maybe the kids won’t be as invested in Carrey’s Mr. Robotnik, but many parents who grew up with Carrey’s comedies will be happy to see him in such a perfect role.

The Presidents Day weekend allows one extra day for parents with kids needing something to do with them sans school. Even so, the biggest movies on the weekend have been superhero movies, including Black Panther, Deadpool and Fifty Shades of Grey, the latter two definitely not for kids. (Daredeviland Ghost Rider also fared well on the weekend.) In fifth place for the weekend is Warner Bros’ The LEGO Movie, which made $62.5 million over the four-day weekend, but that was in its SECOND WEEKEND! So yeah, lots of money to be had for a family movie even though the biggest opener was Christopher Columbus’ Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (now on Broadway!), which opened with $38.7 million ten years ago.

I have to imagine that Sonic is more popular, and even with the tragic misstep of that first trailer last year which got such a negative reaction to Sonic’s appearance, Paramount delayed the movie and went back to the CG drawing board, there will be enough fans interested to see how he translates to the screen that $40 million over the weekend should be doable even with three other wide releases. I also don’t think reviews will be so bad, so it should be good for $100 million plus.

Mini-Review: For whatever reason, Sonic the Hedgehog is the kind of movie that lazy critics love to dump on, maybe because it’s a kids’ movie or because it’s a movie based on a video game they played as kids, or more likely, a character their kids know from popular cartoons and comic books. It doesn’t help that judgments were mostly cast when the first trailer hit last year and Sonic looked different than what people expected. Regardless, I went into the movie with very low expectations, maybe because I really had no passionate connection to the character despite being generally familiar with some of the games.

We meet Sonic as he’s being chased by robots, and we flash back to him as a kid on a planet where he’s able to zoom around freely, until he’s discovered by predators that are hunting him (it’s never explained why), so his mentor owl gives Sonic gold rings that can take him off-planet. Sonic ends up in a small town called Green Hills where he watches the townsfolk in hiding for years, including a local police officer (James Marsden) and his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter). The former eventually discovers Sonic after he causes a major power outage that gets the attention of the government and its genius robotics scientist, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey).

Despite not having much previous connection to Sonic, it’s hard for me not to appreciate this character, because I’ve been known to zip around myself. I also enjoyed Sonic’s haste since who knows when we might see that movie based on one of my favorite comic characters, The Flash. Sonic does a good job capturing the intensity and yes, speed, of having speed powers in quite a masterful way compared to previous attempts, giving me hope that a Flash movie is possible. (Granted, they do rip-off the fun thing Quicksilver does in the recent X-movies by slowing everything around Sonic down to a halt, but it’s still amusing.)

Probably the most genius idea by Sonic’s filmmakers was to convince Jim Carrey to return to the big screen as Dr. Robotnik. He quickly reminds us how hilarious he can be when going as fully into a character as he does this one, and it’s prime Carey vs. the semi-lazy Carrey that made movies in the early ‘00s. Robotnik is a super-genius with no patience for anyone on a lower level of intellect (aka everyone), and Carrey takes that idea to the utmost extreme. (It’s hard not to compare what he’s doing in this movie to what Ewan McGregor does in Birds of Prey and see how Carey does it effortlessly whereas McGregor was clearly trying too hard.)

That’s not to take away from Marsden and Sumpter, Sonic’s other prominent human co-stars, who bring such a warmth and humanity to those characters that you rarely even think that you’re watching them interact with a fully CG-character. (Kudos to Ben Schwartz and what he brings to Sonic as his voice.)

Sure, the plot can be a bit predictable with certain parts clearly geared to kids, but there’s also slew of pop references that display some real talent in the writing of the movie so that it can be watched and enjoyed by people of all ages.

Is it possible that Sonic the Hedgehog is the first thoroughly entertaining movie of the year? Yes, indeedy. (Definitely stay through the first bunch of credits if you are a Sonic fan!)

Rating: 8/10

One of the more interesting releases of the weekend is BLUMHOUSE’S FANTASY ISLAND (Sony Pictures Releasing), which as you can guess is a PG-13 horror version of the popular ‘80s show, starring Michael Peña as Mr. Rouke, the head of a program in which people can pay lots of money to achieve their greatest wishes… with a catch! Since this is Blumhouse, you probably know that the catch involves some sort of horror/thriller premise, and if you’ve seen the trailer, you might get some idea how it works… or not. (I wish I can say more but I’m under embargo!)

The rest of the cast is decent including Maggie Q (from Mission: Impossible 3), Lucy Hale, Portia Doubleday, Michael Rooker, Ryan Hansen, Jimmy O . Yang and more, plus it’s directed by Jeff Wadlow, who last did Blumhouse’s Truth Or Dare (a very bad movie!) and then Kick Ass 2 before that. (He was supposed to direct Sony’s upcoming Bloodshot movie but he left that to do other things, like this.)

Unfortunately, Sony Pictures Releasing (another specialized imprint from the parent company?) seems to have taken a cue from Screen Gems by deciding not to screen the movie for critics until Thursday afternoon (just like with The Grudge!), plus there won’t be ANY Thursday previews for this. It’s a shame since… well, I can’t really tell you if I liked the movie or not since I’m under embargo until Friday. J

Either way, it seems like a strong enough counter to Sonic and Birds of Prey that it should be good for $15 million plus over the four days. Personally, I think it would have opened even bigger if Sony and Blumhouse had shown some balls and screened it for critics in advance, but what do I know? I’ve only written about this stuff for ALMOST TWENTY FUCKING YEARS! (Not sure I’m gonna review the movie but we’ll see.)

I know far less about Universal’s Valentine’s Day offering THE PHOTOGRAPH (Universal), which I guess is a romantic drama that’s targeting African-Americans looking for something to see on the biggest date nights of the year. In fact, we’ve seen some interesting hits on this weekend just by putting “Date” in the movie title, as was the case with Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore’s 50 First Dates ($45.1 million four-day opening) and even Date Movie ($21.8 million), which satirized romantic movies. But the real winner has to be a movie that went all out for Valentine’s Day by actually going with the title Valentine’s Day, which helped it open with $63 million over the four-day weekend ten years ago. ($23.4 million of that was on Valentine’s Day alone!)

Since I won’t see The Photograph until Weds. night, I can only talk about the little bit of marketing I’ve seen and what’s out there. Apparently, this is more in the vein of Valentine’s Day in that it’s a series of intertwined romantic stories, but it has an impressive cast of African-American actors who are on the verge of breaking out such as the great LaKeith Stanfield and amazing Kelvin Harrison Jr., as well as Rob Morgan (from “Daredevil” and Mudbound) and Courtney B. Vance. I’d be neglect if I didn’t mention any of the women involved and having Issa Raefrom the TV show “Insecure” as the primary female lead is something that shouldn’t be ignored. Stanfield isn’t the only connection to Jordan Peele, though, asLil Rel Howery from Get Outis also in this movie as is Peele’s actual wife, Chelsea Peretti!

I actually had to double check to make sure Peele wasn’t one of the film’s producers, but no, this is from Will Packer, a producer who is responsible for so many huge hits among African-Americans that one of these days I won’t underestimate his drawing power, even though all three of his 2019 movies underdelivered, including the comedy Little (co-starring Rae), although did well compared to their lower budgets.

In that sense, The Photograph could be compared to Packer’s Screen Gems comedy About Last Night, which opened with $27.8 million in just over 2,200 theaters in 2014, but that also had the power of proven box office draw Kevin Hartto bring in audiences. I certainly don’t want to be accused of underestimating Packer again, but with such a generic title and premise (and next to no marketing?), I’m just not sure the movie will deliver despite being decent counter-programming for AA audiences. With that in mind, I think the movie will probably make somewhere between $12 and 14 million.

Then there’s DOWNHILL (Searchlight Studios), the new movie from The Way, Way Back directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (who also won the Oscar for cowriting Alexander Payne’s The Descendants), this one being a direct remake of Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s 2014 film Force Majeure.

In this version, Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus play a squabbling couple who travel to the alps with their kids, but after barely escaping an avalanche – one in which he runs away leaving his family behind – they start questioning their lives. The film also stars Zach Woods (also from “Veep”), Miranda Otto and Zoe Chao, and though it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (just like the duo’s previous movie), it did not receive great reviews, as it currently sits at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I don’t think that will matter since like Carey above, Ferrell hasn’t been oversaturating the market with movies in the past couple year, maybe because his last movie, Holmes & Watson, reteaming him with John C. Reilly from Step Brothers bombed with $41 million worldwide after horrifying reviews. Fortunately, Louis-Dreyfus is far more loved thanks to her run on “Seinfeld” and her Emmy-winning run on HBO’s “Veep,” and that should help get people into theaters despite all the competition aboe and below.

Searchlight (no more Fox!!) will be releasing the movie into roughly 1,500 theaters, a moderate release to see how it fares, and the extended holiday weekend (plus the chance of it attracting older moviegoers on Valentine’s Day) should help it make $5 million plus over the extended weekend.

Mini-Review: If you’re reading this review hoping for a play-by-play of how Downhill differs from Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, then you’re bound to be disappointed, because a.) I don’t really remember it, b.) I wasn’t as big a fan of the movie as so many others, and c.) I’m going to assume that a lot of people never got around to seeing it.

In this version, it’s Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus as Peter and Billie Stanton, and there’s much more focus on their roles as parents and the responsibility that goes with that. Once again, Peter runs off when a controlled avalanche comes their way, but they don’t really talk about it so much even as it hangs over their heads.

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash once again find a manageable way of making “dramedy” out of a situation, making sure not to go for constant visual laughs or the zaniness Ferrell usually goes for. (Granted, we can totally believe him as a careless father/husband who does dumb things.) In fact, Ferrell plays his role fairly toned down, which allows Louis-Dreyfus to shine in what’s, oddly, a quite rare movie appearance. How they deal with the aftermath of the avalanche comes to a head when Pete’s work-buddy Zack (Zach Woods) arrives with a ladyfriend (Zoe Chao) allows the two to go at each other. It doesn’t get quite as intense as Marriage Story, but it’s obvious that they both have reached the point in their marriage where they need a separation.

It is kind of amusing that Miranda Otto almost steals her scenes with the two leads because she’s so funny as a hot-to-trot European guest they keep running into and who sets Billie up with a hot Italian ski trainer. There’s a few other funny characters but it mostly stays on Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus either alone or together, and that’ll be enough for most people.

Faxon and Rash find interesting ways to play with the basic premise, although Downhill is very much comedy with a lower-case “c,” and like the original movie, it should lead to some interesting conversations.

Rating: 7/10

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this… (bearing in mind that the below are all four-day projections). It’ll be interesting to see if the name change for “Birds of Prey” will make a difference, but look for NEON’s Parasite to make its first foray into the top 10 this weekend after 19 (!!!) weeks in theaters, thanks to its Best Picture win last Sunday.

1. Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) - $44 million N/A (up $1.5 million)* 2. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) - $20 million -39% (down $1.5 million)* 3. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (Sony) - $15.8 million N/A (up $.3 million)* 4. The Photograph (Universal) - $13.5 million N/A 5. Bad Boys for Life (Sony) - $8 million -35% (up .2 million)* 6. 1917 (Universal) - $7 million -23% 7. Downhill (Searchlight) - $5.6 million N/A (up .2 million)* 8. Parasite (NEON) - $5 million +300% (up .4 million and one place) 9. Dolittle (Universal) - $4.5 million -30% (down .4 million and one place) 10. Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony) - $4.2 million -24%

*UPDATE: A few minor updates based on actual theater counts with Parasite being expanded into 2,000 theaters, the widest its been so far. I feel like most of the new movies will do well, including Downhill (which will be in 2,301 theaters vs. the 1,500 estimated earlier in the week). Anyway, it should be a fairly hearty and robust weekend at the box office.

LIMITED RELEASES

Before we get to the regular limited releases opening Friday, I want to mention two special releases for Weds. night, Trafalgar Releasing is giving a one-night screening of The Doors: Break on Thru - A Celebration of Ray Manzarek, which I haven’t seen but I’m definitely interested in as a fan of the ‘60s group (and Manzarek’s keyboard work). You can get tickets for that here. Also, Kino Lorber is giving one-night release of Emily Taguchi & Jake Lefferman’s doc After Parkland to commemorate the second anniversary of the shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people and began a nationwide student movement for gun control. It’s a fairly sobering and emotional doc, as you can imagine, especially since so little has been done to prevent incidents like this even two years later.

My favorite movie of the weekend is Jeremy Teicher’s OLYMPIC DREAMS ( IFC Films), opening at the IFC Center Friday. It stars Nick Kroll (who you’ll know from “The League,” “Oh, Hello” and other things) and (actual Olympian distance runner) Alexi Pappas, who you may or may not be as familiar with. Pappas plays Penelope, an American competitor in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, who is feeling lonely and unable to connect with others until she meets Kroll’s volunteer dentist, Ezra. While at first, it wouldn’t seem like they would have anything in common, they spend a night hanging out and while some might be expecting something romantic, since this is opening on Valentine’s Day, well I won’t ruin what does or doesn’t happen, k? Either way, it’s a wonderful film co-written by Teichter, Pappas and Kroll, and if that sounds like a familiar formula, then it is indeed the one Richard Linklater used for his sequels to Before Sunrise with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Olympic Dreams isn’t nearly as deep and philosophical (or wordy), but the two actors are so wonderful together, and they actually filmed this in the Athletes Village at the Olympics (the first film to do so) which adds some authenticity to the sweet little movie. (There will be a sneak preview Weds night at the IFC Center with Teicher, Kroll and Pappas all in attendance!)

Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig returns with THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS (Vertical), a star-studded ensemble piece starring Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel and Bill Nighy (who appeared in Lone’s previous film Their Finest). This is a New York City story about six strangers whose lives intersect and mingle while trying to find help, hope and love. I know it sounds like the Crash-style movie we’ve seen far too many times before, but I have faith in Ms. Scherfig and hopefully I’ll have a chance to watch it in the next day or two.

I also still haven’t gotten around to watching Kenji Tanagaki’s action-comedy ENTER THE FAT DRAGON (Go WELL USA), starring the always-amazing Donnie Yen as police officer Zhu, who is sent to Japan on a routine police escort of a suspect… who mysteriously dies, forcing Zhu to call upon a former undercover inspector to help solve the murder. I’m assuming the latter is the “Fat Dragon” and Yen didn’t gain 200 lbs. for the part.

Opening at the Quad Cinemaon Friday and in L.A. on Feb. 21 is Dimitri de Clercq’sFrench/Belgian film You Go to My Head (First Run Features) about an architect who finds a young woman lost, alone and in a fog in the Sahara after a mysterious accident, but when he takes her to the hospital, he claims to be her husband. As she gets better, he creates an elaborate life to fill in the life they shared which she can no longer remember. It also sounds perfect for Valentine’s Day, so you have plenty of options!

I didn’t have too much to say about Céline Sciamma’s PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (NEON), because I think I wrote about it last year, and I haven’t seen the movie since the New York Film Festival. Set in the 18thCentury, it’s about a woman painter who travels to a remote island where she’s commissioned to do a painting of a grieving widow, who she ends up falling in love with. I probably should see the movie again as it didn’t really connect with me the first time, but I can totally understand why others love it so much. (Unfortunately, the 7:10 screening on Friday night at the Angelika with a QnA moderated by my pal, Valerie Complex, is already sold out!)

The second documentary in the last year about a man named “Cunningham” (a different one this time) is Mark Bozek’s The Times of Bill Cunningham (Greenwich) about the famed photographer who died in 2016… and whom I know even less about than I did dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham. Apparently, he was a New York Timesphotographer for four decades and had a long relationship with First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and this doc is even narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker! It also opens at the Angelika and City Cinemas 1, 2 & 3, and maybe L.A.?

Due to the usual conflicts and circumstances, I wasn’t able to see Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s Ordinary Love (Bleecker Street) as planned, but it’s an appropriately-timed romantic drama starring Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville as a middle-aged couple who must deal with her beast cancer diagnosis. I actually am interested in seeing this, especially to see Neeson back in serious drama mode (it’s been a while), so hopefully I’ll have a chance to see this down the road.

Also opening Friday is Tanya Wexler’s Buffaloed (Magnolia), starring Zoey Deutch as Peg Dahl, a young woman living in Buffalo, the debt collection capital of America but hopes to get out of town and into an Ivy League university. When she’s accepted to her top choice but can’t afford the tuition, she gets pulled into the rope of debt collection. Also starring Judy Greer, Germaine Fowler, Noah Reid and Jai Courtney, it will open at New York’s Quad Cinema, the Loz Feliz 3 in L.A., Buffalo’s North Park Theater and more theaters.

Another SXSW 2019 movie is Richard Wong’s Come As You Are (Samuel Goldwyn), starring Gabourey Sidibe, Grant Rosenmeyer, Ravi Patel, Hayden Szeto and Janeane Garofolo. The three guys in the middle play men with disabilities who go on a road trip to a Montreal brothel to get away from their suffocating parents. Sidibe (from Precious) plays their travelling nurse who drives them across the border to help them lose their virginity. This is an English remake of the Belgian Film Hasta La Vista about the real-life adventure of Asta Philpot.

Sara Zandieh’s indie rom-com A Simple Wedding (Blue Fox Entertainment) also opens in theaters and On Demand on Valentine’s Day, this one following an Iranian-American named Nousha (Tara Grammy) whose hopes for a Persian wedding are dashed when she falls for a bisexual artist/DJ named Alex (Christopher O’Shea). She has to make sure her parents don’t realize they’re living together before marriage. The film also stars Shohreh Aghdashloo, Rita Wilson, Maz Jobrani, Peter McKenzie and James Eckhouse.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

Some cool festivals and series in New York are happening this weekend to offer competition for all the choices above.

Let’s begin with the “Winter Showcase” for one of my favorite annual film festivals, the New York Asian Film Festivalsubtitled “Love at First Bite,” since they’re including a special Valentine’s Day screening of the Korean hit Extreme Job followed by a reception including delicious Korean food. The rest of the line-up is probably more appropriate for the rep section as it will including Asian classics like Stephen Chow’s God of Cookery (1996), Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman (1994),Tampopo (1985) on Saturday, as well as Ritesh Batra’s amazing The Lunchbox and more on Sunday.

Up at Film at Lincoln Center, there’s the annual “Neighboring Scenes,” the annual celebration of “New Latin American Cinema,” opening Friday with Joanna Reposi Garibaldi’s Lemebel, a documentary about writer/visual artist Pedro Lemebel and his controversial performances amidst Chilean upheaval. Of course, I’m most interested in the Brazilian offerings, but sadly, there just isn’t enough time in the day/week to see as many of the films in this series I’m curious about including the New York premiere of Ema from Chile’s Pablo Larrain (Neruda, Jackie). Click on the link above and check out that line-up.

Further North (in terms of global geography) but South (in terms of New York City geography) is this year’s “Canada Now” series, taking place at the IFC Center from Thursday through Sunday. It will kick off with Guest of Honor, the new film from Canada’s Atom Egoyan, starring David Thewlis and Laysla De Oliveira as father and music school teacher daughter whose lives become complicated when she’s put in prison for earlier crimes. There are seven other movies in this series, most of them getting their U.S. debuts, so that’s another alternative for what could be a busy movie-going weekend.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Lots of stuff premiering on streaming services this weekend including the British animated sequel A Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon on Netflix, as well as the rom-com sequel To All the Boys: PS I Still Love You, which will premiere on Weds and may end up being the “Netflix and chill” choice for many young people on V-Day. (I honestly never got around to seeing the first movies of either of those yet!)

Over on Hulu, they’re premiering the gender-swapped series loosely based on Nick Horny’s High Fidelity, this one starring Zoe Kravitz, the daughter of Lisa Bonet, who appeared opposite John Cusack in Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Hornby’s book from 2000 that was one of my favorite movies that year! Wait a second, even though Kravitz plays a character named Rob, just like Cusack, is she meant to be the daughter of Cusack and Bonet’s characters in that movie? That would be intense! (But probably not. I’m sure I’ll check it out.)

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Metrograph’s Valentine’s Dayweekend offerings include Casablanca (1942), Howard Hawks’ 1944 film To Have and Have Not, the 1932 film Trouble in Paradise, Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956) and another screening of Makoto Shinkai’s animated Your Name. The “To Hong Kong with Love” series continues through the end of February, this weekend screening Yellowing (2016), which I haven’t seen.This weekend, the Welcome To Metrograph: Reduxwill offer two more screenings of Edward Yang’s 4-hour 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day, while Late Nites at Metrograph will screen Nagisa Oshima’s 1978 film Empire of Passion, also which I have never seen! Rounding out the weekend’s Asian offering is the Playtime: Family Matineesoffering of Yoshifumi Kondo’s 1995 animated film Whisper of the Heart, which guess what? I haven’t seen that either! Clearly, I need to try to get to one of the four movies, right?

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” is the Susan Sarandon-James Spader romantic drama White Palace (1990). Oddly, the Alamo is CLOSED on Valentine’s Day.. is this true?!? On Sunday is a special “Drew Believers: Drew Barrymore Movie Marathon” with four of Barrymore’s movies in 35mm! (As of this writing, there are a few seats available near the front.) Monday’s “Fist City” is Sam Raimi’s The Quick and The Dead from 1995 and that’s quickly selling out as well. The “Terror Tuesday” is James Gunn’s hilarious Slither and then next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the 1987 Ken Russell film Gothic.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Wednesday’s “Afternoon Classic” is the 1961 Oscar-winning musical West Side Story. Weds and Thursday night’s double feature is Robert Altman’s 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Sydney Pollack’s 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford. This week’s “Freaky Friday” offering is the classic The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, while Friday’s midnight movie is True Romanceand Saturday’s midnight is 1978’s Mean Dog Blues in 16mm! This weekend continues the “Kiddee Matinee” run with the Alfonso Cuaron-directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Monday’s matinee of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart is already sold out but that night is a Robert Clouse double feature of The Pack(1977) and Darker than Amber (1970). Tuesday’s Grindhouse double feature is 1976’s Sky Riders and 1981’s Force: Five.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Thursday is a “Black Voices” double feature of Car Wash (1976) and Cooley High (1975) with guest including Bill Duke in person. John Sayles and Joe Dante will be on hand Friday night for a “John Sayles: Independent” double feature of Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981). This weekend is the “HFPA Restoration Summit” including a Saturday afternoon presentation called “Serge Bromberg Presents from the Silent Era” with the Lobster Films founder, while the one and only Jane Fonda will be on-hand Saturday evening to present a 4k restoration of the 1972 film F.T.A., which she produced with Donald Sutherland. Saturday night is a screening of The Black Vampire, the 1953 Argentine adaptation of Fritz Lang’s M, and there’s more classic cinema on Sunday as part of the series.

AERO (LA):

Thursday’s “Antiwar Cinema” matinee is Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War from 1969 with an all-star cast, while that night is a Eugene Levy/Christopher Guest double feature of A Might Windand For Your Consideration. The AERO is ALSO showing Casablancaon Valentine’s Day and then Saturday is another Levy/Guest double feature of Best in Show (2000)and Waiting for Guffman (1996) with Levy doing a discussion between films. John Sayles and Frances McDormand will appear in person for a Sunday afternoon double feature of 1996’s Lone Star and 1999’s Limbo.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

MOMI is going a bit crazy with its Valentine’s offering but it’s a good one…Jane Fonda in 1968’s Barbarella as part of its new 2001-inspired series “See It Big! Outer Space”! (If MOMI wasn’t all the way in Astoria, I’d totally go.) It will play again Sunday with Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) playing on Friday and Saturday and 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Pictureon Sunday. Sunday will also be a repeat of Kubrick’s 1969 film 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm with a discussion before the movie between Doug Trumbull and Piers Bizony. There’s also the usual DCP screening of 2001on Saturday afternoon, as part of the exhibition. On Saturday, they’ll screen Marjane Satrapi’s excellent Persepolis(2007) as part of its “World of Animation.”

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Starting Friday, the Forum will be screening a DCP restoration of Luchino Visconti’s L’Innocente (1976), starring Giancarlo Giannini. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is Guys and Dolls from 1955, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra. (If you read this on Wednesday, you can catch Joseph Strick’s 1963 film The Balcony, starring Shelley Winters, Peter Falk and Lee Grant, in 35mm.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

The Quad’s run of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman continues through the weekend, and there will be Valentine’s Day screenings of Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy on Thursday and Friday night. (How romantic!)

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES (NYC):

The Anthology’s great “The Devil Probably: A Century of Satanic Panic” continues this weekend with screenings of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, Alan Parker’s Angel Heart, another screening of Rosemary’s Baby, as well as screenings of Race with the Devil on Weds. and Thursday night. I missed it last week but they’ve been showing Mark Rappaport’s 1975 film Mozart in Love the past week, as well.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

The Cage-athon continues Weds. with Neil Labute’s The Wicker Man (2006) and 2009’s Knowing on Thursday. Valentine’s Day sees screening of Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, as well as the 1987 Nicolas Cage movie Moonstruck, co-starring Cher. Spike Jonez and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation (2003), starring Cage, repeats on Saturday.

NITEHAWK CINEMA (NYC):

Williamsburg‘s “Uncaged” series continues Friday with last year’s Mandy at midnight and 1983’s Valley Girl on Saturday morning. Casabalanca is also playing at the Prospect Park on Thursday, and unrelated but Back to the Future will play there on Monday night. Billy Wilder’s 1954 film Sabrina, starring Bogart, Hepburn and Holden will play on Saturay morning.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Luis Buñuel is back with Belle de Jour from 1967, starring Catherine Deneuve. Waverly Midnights: Hindsight is 2020 will screen the animated Ghost in the Shell, while Late Night Favorites: Winter 2020 will also go with an Anime film, Paprika.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Jack Lemmon is off Weds. and Thursday but will return Friday with Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce (1963).

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

BAM will continue to show Horace Jenkins’ 1982 film Cane River through the weekend.

Next week, the second to last week of February (man, it flew right by!) will include Fox’s The Call of the Wild, starring Harrison Ford, and the horror sequel, Brahms: The Boy II.

#TheWeekendWarrior Movies Reviews SonicTheHedgehog FantasyIsland Downhill ThePhotograph OlympicDreams Repertory Streaming

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Cloak & Dagger - ‘Shadow Selves’ Review

"What if I just want to hurt people?"

Well, this one certain gives us a few things to unpack.

Cloak and Dagger catches up with some supporting characters, while bringing us up to speed on what Mayhem has been up to since last season's finale. Oh, and gives us a mediation on the essential nature of self, as you do.

The 'shadow self,' according to Jungian philosophy, are those parts of one's personality that you reject or choose to not know about. That's a horrific oversimplification, and I apologize to any psychology students who might be reading this. It's not really my field. I had to google just to confirm that much.

Most obviously this is a reference to Brigid and Mayhem, implying that Mayhem is that shadow self that Brigid has always had inside of her, neatly separated off into its own body. I believe there was a Star Trek episode where something similar happened to Kirk, but it was a little less... let's be polite and say 'nuanced,' than what we get here.

Actually, the Star Trek comparison is useful here, particularly when compared to the explanation that Mina gives us in this episode. Since I'm going to actually talk about it, I've felt obligated to look up what it was called, and it's 'The Enemy Within,' for anyone wondering who didn't already know. Additional apologies to Star Trek fans for the oversimplification I'm about to launch into. Fans of both Jung and original series Trek, please contact me directly and I'll send you an apology fruit basket or something.

In 'Enemy Within,' Kirk is split into 'good Kirk' and 'evil Kirk,' and the point is very much that even good people have bad stuff in them and it's a character study of who Kirk is as a complete character. That being the purpose of the experiment, one Kirk is very definitely 'good,' and the other definitely 'evil.' In 'Shadow Selves,' Mina describes the process that's been splitting her test mice into two, and therefore by proxy what's happened to Brigid, as resulting in one version of the self with no activity in the brain's rage center, and the other version having activity only in the rage center. Your basic Hulk scenario.

But neither of those descriptions fit what we actually see of Mayhem's character this week.

Mayhem isn't full of rage, particularly. She's task-oriented and happy to kill people she views as 'bad,' but that's not at all the same thing. If anything, Mayhem is a much better cop than Brigid. Sure, her first instinct is to track down and kill her other half, but she gets distracted almost immediately by wanting revenge on the guy she was already looking to get revenge on before the personality split, and then never shows an inclination to kill Brigid again, despite the half a dozen times this episode alone in which she could have done so.

Great job to the showrunners for the Mayhem backstory we get tonight, and the way it pulls a lot of the pieces of this season's plot together. Mayhem starts with wanting revenge on Connors, isn't able to find him, and then decides that since she wants to kill people anyway she should focus on finding bad people to kill, becoming Dexter with Day-glo fingernail polish. Plus, she's clearly capable of being thoughtful and kind, as shown in her comment about Ty being her friend. It was nice that Delgado gives her the advice that pushes her in the direction of punishing the guilty, by the way. Put a pin in Delgado, we'll circle back to him in a minute, but there's one last point about Mayhem that I want to touch on before we move on.

This show is one of the rare examples in which every single change they've made to the source material has made the show stronger. The exception, as I've said before, being not having Ty stutter, but that's more of a practical consideration, so we'll let that slide. In the comics, Mayhem is essentially what you'd get if Toxic Avenger and the Punisher made a beautiful love child, but having Mayhem and Brigid be two separate beings who share Brigid's memories and thought processes was a brilliant move and is really paying off for them. The way that Mayhem clearly wants Tandy to side with her and be her partner on the investigation is just one aspect of the overall impression that what Mayhem really wants is to prove that she's better than Brigid, and that's fascinating. I can't wait to see where this is going.

But Brigid isn't the only one whose darker side has come to the fore here, and now we get back to Formerly-Father Delgado. Wow, was I not prepared for how dark they went with Delgado. I questioned last season why they threw in such a randomly dark note as the reveal that Delgado had killed a kid while driving drunk, but now I think they were just preparing us for this next stage in his character development. I don't have a ton to say about drunk street preaching nihilist Delgado except that I'm impressed that they went there, and it was nicely handled how he factored into Mayhem's evolution from seeking vengeance to becoming an actually effective rescuer of human trafficking victims. That was not where I saw any of that going.

And last but not least, Ty and Tandy continue their promised power-up. Tandy's ball of light which lit up the whole warehouse was cool looking, but my inner fangirl nearly passed out with joy when Ty finally unveiled his full body of darkness effect and then we got to witness firsthand someone inside the dark realm of his cloak being tormented by visions. Now all I need to die happy is for Tandy to ride 'inside' him to crime scenes and leap out throwing light knives.

Bits and Pieces:

-- The debate between Ty and Tandy as to whether they should just step back and let Mayhem kill the human traffickers had valid points all around. Generally speaking, I'd put myself on team 'yes, please murder the human traffickers' but Ty's concerns about the victims being collateral damage was fair. That said, I did not feel bad when Mayhem ran that one over with a truck.

-- Mayhem climbed out of the lake 242 days earlier, so Evita's statement last week that it had been eight months was more or less on the nose.

-- The extremely mini story-arc of Dale, the skeezy desk clerk at the transient hotel, was a thing of beauty. From creeping on Mayhem, to backing away, to the obedient puddle he'd become by the time Brigid came to find the hotel was just perfection. This show really does understated very well.

-- Haven't we all wanted to beat up a refrigerator?

-- Oh Mina Hess, I'm so glad that you're OK. Mina has apparently now added microbiolical bio-chemistry and behavioral research fellow to her already impressive track list of Structural Engineer, Thermodynamics expert, plumber, renewable energy expert, and about twelve other unrelated specialties. At this point I think it's best to view Mina like Reed Richards, i.e. all purpose science-y person who knows all the science-y stuff when it's needed. Plus just maybe she'll encourage a few more girls to pursue STEM careers, and that's a good enough goal in its own right.

-- Today I learned that SRO stands for 'single room occupancy,' a type of hotel that in a less dignified age I would have referred to as a flophouse.

-- Tandy mentions in passing that she and Mina have kept in touch. I feel like we were cheated out of a few highly entertaining explanation scenes.

-- Special shout out to Emma Lahana for the physical work she's doing to differentiate Brigid and Mayhem. Mayhem moves in a very distinctive shoulder forward way, which is very different from how Brigid walks. It's a nice, subtle detail, and should be praised.

-- Apparently I was overcomplicating the kidnapped girl plot last week. They seem to just be human traffickers who panicked and let Mikayla go because Ty had suddenly appeared in their ambulance so they had to cover their tracks. I kind of appreciate the show letting me work that out for myself.

-- 'The Glitter Gutter' is a great name for a strip club.

Quotes:

Mina: "Don’t worry, these cosmetics were tested on humans."

Brigid: "She’s not me." Tandy: "She’s got your face and she’s got your badge."

Dale: "No one went in your room. I didn’t mean to make eye contact, I’m sorry."

Tandy: "What is this?" Brigid: "This is Mayhem."

Mayhem: "And in another lifetime, Ty was a friend. At least he was to me, I don’t know if he’d say the same."

Tandy: "Hey Ty, look. Ya got a deranged map twin."

Mayhem: "You don’t get to play the victim. (Slashes his throat) Well, now I suppose you can."

Fuchs: "Who’s up for Awkward reunion pancakes?"

Lots of good stuff here, with only a couple of awkward plot contrivances to really criticize. For example, it's a little hard to swallow that Brigid being pulled from the lake would make breaking citywide news under those circumstances. Still, if that's the show's biggest sin, my shadow self is happy.

Three and a half out of four shadow dimensions.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#Cloak and Dagger #Tandy Bowen #Tyrone Johnson #Brigid O'Reilly #Mayhem #Marvel #MCU #Cloak and Dagger Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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lokis-lady-death · 6 years ago

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Interview with a God

Tom Hiddleston/Loki x reader

Prompt: I have always heard people joke that Tom Hiddleston is actually Loki playing Tom playing Loki. So, let’s write about it XD

A Oneshot? A Two shot? A mini series? I have no idea, but this idea has been eating at me so I wrote it thusly. Beware.

Interview with a God

You had been sitting behind the desk at People’s magazine for years waiting for this opportunity. Articles about nonsense, trailing after celebrities at red carpet events, pretending to care about ball gowns and suits, all for the moment you would be handed the biggest, most sought after piece of People: The Sexiest Man Alive 2018.

You practically squealed when you were given the assignment.

“I hope you conduct the interview with a bit more grace, Ms. y/n,” your director joked.

You took a moment to calm yourself before asking, “Who is it? Who won?” You had been impatiently listening outside of the main office to hear who were the candidates, absolutely drooling over the idea of getting to meet them face to face. But there was one in particular you were holding out hope for.

“Your Tommy boy got it unanimously.”

Another squeal. Thomas William Hiddleston. You had followed his career long before he became a Marvel sensation but you had to admit his portrayal of the god of mischief on the silver screen had sent you soaring. The idea of a one on one meeting with the Shakespeare loving brit was almost more than you could handle.

“I’m elated for you, y/n, really. But do try to keep it in your pants, you’re representing our magazine,” the director instructed. “Keep the fangirling to a minimum. I’ll have your questions emailed to you once we contact Mr. Hiddleston and set up a good time to speak with him.”

You smiled slyly. “Absolutely.” With a fake curtsey, you added, “I shall conduct myself with dignity and grace before my king.”

The director laughed and dismissed you, promising the email to be sent by the end of the work day.

That evening you laid across your bed with your laptop, going over the interview questions.

“Oh it’s so boring,” you muttered. Everyday questions, things you know Tom’s heard a thousand times. You chewed on your lip, eyes going across the room. Avenger’s was playing in the background on your TV. The iconic Loki KNEEL scene was on. Tom played that character with so much bravado. So much enthusiasm. So much passion. You looked back at your list. “A few different questions shouldn’t be too much for Hiddly to handle.”

*****

Tom was staying at The Plaza of New York, awaiting a photo-shoot with Entertainment Weekly for the upcoming Avenger’s four movie when he received the call from his agent. He would be named The Sexiest Man Alive 2018. To say he was flattered was an understatement.

Once off the phone he received the email from his agent, from People, outlining what would be discussed. He let out a sigh, scrolling through the questions. All the same as any other interview. He glanced down at the bottom and saw the Interviewee name. Having never heard of you, his first instinct was to do what any other self respecting person in the 21st century would do: Facebook.

A smile crept over his lips while he scrolled idly through image after image of you and your friends.

“Gorgeous,” he said to himself.

He paused when he saw you in a shirt that read “Loki is my King”. He couldn’t contain his laughter, reading comments of naysayers stating that he was a villain. “You just don’t understand his characterization,” you had argued full heartedly. “Loki is deeper than people give him credit for.” He raised a brow at this, staying on the image a moment longer before closing his computer.

Tom’s smile widened and a flash of green sparked in his eyes. Perhaps this interview would be different than others.

*****

The day of the interview arrived. Dressed in a light green floral blouse and knee length black skirt, you arrived an hour early to prepare. Originally the director instructed that you would conduct the interview in a conference room at Tom’s hotel, but when you arrived the room was not only not ready, but it had not even been booked for you. Absolutely horrified your first big break was already falling apart, you were relieved to hear from Tom’s assistant that he didn’t mind meeting with you in his room.

You controlled your inner fangirl at the idea of being in such an intimate setting with your favorite actor, reminding yourself you were a representative for People magazine and had to behave. You clutched your mini laptop close to your chest as the assistant led you up to his suite.

Outside, the assistant paused before opening the door. “You have your questions?” he asked.

You nodded eagerly.

“You are to stick to the agreed questions,” he warned, “You are to keep the meeting as brief as possible. You are to respect anything Mr. Hiddleston wishes to keep private.” Only when you nodded did he slide the key through the entry, pushing the door open to let you in.

You took a deep breath and stepped through, nearly jumping when it slammed and locked behind you. You were surprised the assistant wasn’t coming.

Then it dawned on you. You were alone in a hotel room with Tom Hiddleston.

You looked around the room, stunned this was merely a hotel suite. The wall was painted with floral silhouettes, the furniture lush with golden trim, a nearly obnoxious chandelier set in the living room. There was even a staircase leading to an upper level that must have held the bedroom and bathroom.

“This is bigger than my apartment…” you mumbled.

“Yes, I suppose it is a bit excessively grande, isn’t it?” You turned to see Hiddleston stepping out of a side room, donning his iconic toothy grin. “Good afternoon, Miss y/n, it’s an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He held out a hand for you and you panicked for a moment, drowning in the sea of rosy gold locks on his head, his glorious facial scruff, the fitted navy pinstripe suit. After what must have been the most awkward second of you life, you reached out to shake his hand. But he didn’t. Instead, he bowed, lightly brushing his lips across your fingers, his eyes locked onto yours.

“Oh!” you squealed, calming yourself, clearing your throat, and finishing with, “The pleasure is all mine. Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Hiddleston.”

“No, please, call me Tom.”

Internally pterodactyl shriek echoed before you offered a smile in return. “Tom, excellent. Alright. Well. Let’s begin, shall we?”

Your heart thumped loudly while he led you back the way he came: a much smaller room, furnished with a quaint loveseat and armchair. He took the chair and left you the couch.

The laptop plopped into your lap while you cleared your throat again, trying to collect yourself. When you glanced up, you could see he was watching you intensely. “I’m sure you’ve been going over the interview questions?” you asked for no other reason than to deflect from what an absolute mess you were.

“Mhm,” he answered, leaning back in the chair and crossing a long leg over the other. His eyes never left you as a sly smile graced his perfect lips.

“Ok well,” you cleared your throat, unwilling to meet his gaze. “Let’s begin.” You clicked on your laptop, reading the most painfully obvious, overly asked question of any award winning celebrity. “So what was your first thought when we called and said you won?”

He closed his eyes, as though imagining the exact moment over in his head. “I said I believe you meant to call Chris Hemsworth, let me give you his phone number.” You let out a short laugh, typing away.

The questions went on like that, simple, obvious, obnoxious even. But they were what the magazine always went with. Basic background of his life, how he rose to fame, relationships.

You almost rolled your eyes asking about the last one, knowing no one ever gets anywhere asking Tom about women. His love life was a mystery, outside the Taylor Swift fiasco that you refused to even acknowledge.

Unscripted, you asked if what Shakespeare quote he most often lived by.

“Oh easy,” he said smoothly. He straightened up, locked eyes with you and coolly went on, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” You felt a flutter in the pit of your stomach. After swallowing hard to calm down, you took in a deep breath.

Tom straightened his jacket, ready for the end of the questionnaire. He knew it was coming, knew it from days of preparing with the email from his agent. You bit your lip seeing him shuffle slightly, his long fingers fiddling away at the button of his blazer. You looked back down at your laptop and clicked a different folder. You eyes went back to Tom. He was watching you again, his eyes low, his expression unreadable.

“Do you think that your character, Loki, would be abnormally sexual?”

Tom’s hand came up to cover his face as he made a snorting sound while trying his damnedest to suppress a laugh. “I…” he stuttered, “Wow, I uh, that… Was that in the email?”

You bit your lip and looked down at your laptop again. “No, it’s not. And you don’t have to answer if you feel uncomfortable....” You felt a cold sweat form as you cursed yourself for asking such an explicit, unscripted question. You weren’t just some random interviewer from a Youtube channel or Comic Con. You came from a reputable magazine. You had certain guidelines to follow, a reputation to maintain.

While you went on your inward turmoil, Tom cleared his throat.

“I would say Loki is exceptionally sexual.” You felt your cheeks flush as you managed to look him in the eye. He had a mysterious smile on his face, no longer sitting back in the chair, but leaned in closer to you. “And I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to say I….” Tom corrected, “He would be quiet a deviant.”

You glanced down at your laptop, knowing you were pushing the envelope. “Would you think Loki likes to be submissive or dominant in the bedroom?”

Tom threw his head back, his laugh erupting from him. He shot you a half cocked grin before standing from his seat. You just knew he was about to end the interview and you had half a mind to ask if he would keep your fangirl questions secret.

But then he did something you weren’t expecting. He began to remove his jacket, even rolling up the sleeves of his button down shirt. Before you could fathom what it was he was doing, he was beside you on the couch, one arm wrapping around the back. Not quite touching you but obviously there.

“Oh, that’s a silly question, y/n, you know the answer to that one,” he said slowly in a low voice. You let out a sharp breath, feeling you heart begin to race again at how close he was. “I want to be your king.” He closed his eyes and turned away as he laughed at his own words, realizing what he had said.

You laughed along with him, though you knew you were so nervous your hands were shaking on the keyboard as you stared at the screen, unable to face him. “So if you…” correction, “He is dominant, what do you think is his favorite move? Seduction wise?”

He ran fingers over his beard, thinking for a moment. “Hmm…” he hummed. “Oh that is a tough one.” His eyes came back to you, analyzing you. “I would say,” his finger brushed your knee where your skirt stopped, “Loki would want something intimate.” Slowly, he brushed up your leg, speaking in his sultry voice, “I would want it slow. Painfully slow. Something to build the tension. Watch your body ache with need.” He was halfway up your thigh, still going. You wondered if he realized he had said ‘I’ again. “All because, deep down, the main purpose would be to make you beg me to give you what you really want. What you really need.” Your eyes watched eagerly without pulling away, almost daring and hoping he would continue.

Instead he stopped, smiling at you as you felt your blush deepen. You let out a sharp chuckle, absolutely embarrassed at yourself for wanting him to go on. Almost absurdly casual you deflected with, “How often do you find yourself forgetting you’re not actually Loki?”

He stopped laughing. His grin turned sly, his eyes darkened. Tom leaned in and retorted with his trademark villain voice, “What makes you think I’m not really Loki?”

You felt a shiver down your spine, letting out a rigid laugh. When he didn’t laugh as well, you finally looked at him.

Sitting on the couch, in head to toe costume, complete with the black hair extensions, black and green leather garb, heavy boots and devilish grin, sat Tom as Loki. You were so startled you cursed, jumping from the seat, dropping your laptop on the floor.

“Oh my god!” you exclaimed, completely flustered now. You felt on edge but let out a laugh regardless. “Oh, shit, I can’t believe you did that! You…” You looked around, waiting to see either a stunt double or the real Tom step out. But no one appeared. “...got me.”

It was a joke, wasn’t it?

Loki stood, his smile widening. He only took one step and he was upon you, looking down into your eyes, his glee never wavering. His hand came up to slightly lift your chin, not so much to make you look at him. You were already doing that. It was to show you he was truly there, he was truly in control. A panic ran through you but your mind still didn’t conceive what was happening.

“How did you set this up?” you asked, your voice threatening to crack under each word. “I didn’t even see anyone in the hotel room, how did you manage a switch like that….”

“Oh come now, y/n. You know exactly how I did this.” His fingers traced along your jaw, up your cheek, gently tucking your hair behind your ear. Your eyes were wide, your mind arguing within itself of what you knew to be real versus what you were seeing now.

You stepped back, letting his hand fall from you. “This isn’t funny,” you managed. But you backed into another person, it was so instant you didn’t even realize he had already vanished from before you. Before you could turn, Loki’s arms wrapped around you, a hand over your mouth to stifle your whimper, the other bringing you tightly against him. Despite yourself you felt a twist in the pit of your stomach, a scream inside of you that wanted more.

His lips brushed your ear as he whispered your name, asking, “With your provocative questions, my darling, I am simply curious. What are you willing to do to satisfy your king?”

Part 2 is UP

Like my garbage? Read more of it! Master List

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x5red · 6 years ago

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Sixty fun & fascinating facts about the classic Supergirl (4 / 4)

At last, the final fifteen fun facts in a series to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Kara Zor-El’s debut in DC Comics. This is the last batch of Supergirl info-nuggets, bringing the trivia total up to sixty, one for each year since her introduction.

As before, each snippet of data relates to the original Supergirl, the intrepid Argo City teen who leapt from that crumpled Midvale rocket ship. Covering her original Silver and Bronze Age incarnation, in comics and on screen, each factoid is calculated to intrigue and delight – hopefully even seasoned Kara fans will find a few morsels of trivia that had previously escaped their attention.

So, one last time: enjoy…

46. At one point she was blacklisted from being mentioned in DC publications.

In 1985 to mark its 50th comicbook publishing anniversary DC Comics launched a mini-series, Crisis on Infinite Earths, that sought to rejig its entire fictional universe to better address the new, more mature, direct sales audience. Childish elements were removed and iconic characters rebooted. Superman was to be recast as the only survivor of Krypton, meaning Supergirl not only had to die but be erased from all past events too. DC, however, decided that erasing Kara from fictional history was simple not cruel enough -- in a move straight out of a George Orwell novel DC airbrushed her from in-real-life history too.

Supergirl became she who shall not be named, seemingly banned from being mentioned, even in the editorial pages. When DC couldn’t avoid using her name, as happened in Secret Origins #42 (July 1989) when discussing Phantom Girl’s first appearance, they masked it with asterisks like an expletive -- ”S*P*RG*RL”. DC even went as far as to exclude Kara from a bio of writer Paul Kupperberg in the pages of Power Girl #2 (July 1988), despite Kupperberg‘s long tenure as Supergirl’s chief writer, and Power Girl being a parallel-universe re-imagining of Kara. Yet the Maid of Might remained popular with at least some DC staffers, as Alan Brennert proved when Kara made a highly unauthorised crafty cameo in his Deadman story inside Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989) -- Brennert only avoided censorship thanks to DC editor-in-chief Dick Giordano volunteering himself to do the story’s artwork.

47. Prior to her role as Supergirl, Helen Slater had struggled with eating disorders.

In an obscure 1988 interview for UK tv with psychologist Oliver James, Helen Slater talked frankly about how winning the role of Supergirl helped in her ongoing battle with Anorexia and Bulimia. Asked about the cause of the conditions, “Control was one part of it”, Slater admitted, adding, “I think Bulimia especially, which I did suffer from from 13 [...] is a lot to do with not having a safe space to express anger.” She went on to credit her Supergirl fitness trainer, Alf Joint (“the most beautiful man in the world”) with overcoming some of her fears around food by using Chocolate Brazils (chocolate dipped nuts) as positive reinforcement after a hard training session.

48. She celebrated her 75th birthday in 2018.

It is generally accepted that Kara Zor-El’s birthday, when using the Gregorian calendar on Earth, is 22nd September. That date comes from a reply to a reader’s letter published in Adventure Comics #389 (Feb 1970), but said reply didn’t give the year of Kara’s birth, meaning readers couldn’t work out Kara’s age. (“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age”, wrote Oscar Wilde, ”A woman who would do that would tell anything.”) Fortunately a little bit of detective work means that fans can work it out. A story in Action Comics #305 (Oct 1963) gives the date of Kara’s arrival on Earth as 18th May 1959, and both the Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 (Nov 1982) and Action Comics #270 (Nov 1960) suggest that Kara was 15 years old when she landed. This means that she was born in 1943. So, as of her most recent birthday at the time of writing (22nd September 2018), she would require 75 candles on her birthday cake. Good thing she has Kryptonian super-lungs..!

49. Her nickname was Hot Dog.

Every fan knows that Kara Zor-El is Supergirl, and that Supergirl is Linda Lee Danvers, but how many fans know that Linda Lee Danvers was also... “Hot Dog”..?!?!!

Yup, that was her name when she was dating Philip Decker, music conductor and part-time lecturer at Lake Shore University, Chicago. The pair’s romance had blossomed in the pages of Supergirl Vol. 2 thanks to a shared love of Jazz music, and they spent an increasing amount of time together in each other’s apartments. It was during one such session of intense snuggling that Philip let slip his nickname for Linda: “Hot Dog”, a name what was met with uncontrollable giggles from Linda.

50. Her makeup bag hid a couple of super secrets.

Of course, if you’re one of the world’s greatest superheroes it is important to look your best when saving the world, but Kara’s beauty kit not only helped keep her looking immaculate while fighting injustice, but also concealed a couple of tricks to keep her dual identity a secret too. In Action Comics #270 (Nov 1960) Kara celebrated her sixteenth birthday. Her gift from the Man of Steel was an innocent looking lipstick which, in reality, hid a secret compartment to stash her super-compressed costume. “If you ever have to conceal your costume quickly, or remove it to go swimming...”, explains Superman (perhaps anticipating other activities that a young woman might get up to that could require stripping off clothing.)

Years later, in Supergirl Vol. 2 #17 (Mar 1984), Kara added more secrets to her makeup bag when she finally decided to ditch her brunette Linda Danvers wig. She still needed a way to switch from Supergirl’s flowing blonde locks to Linda’s brunette bob, of course, and the alternative she devised was a special energized comb that reacted with colour-sensitive molecules to instantly transform her hair’s style and colour. Clever stuff..!

51. She and Brainiac 5 weren’t really an item.

Despite now being firmly romantically linked in the eyes of many comic fans, Brainiac 5 and Supergirl’s relationship only really became serious during the 1990s Earth Angel era. Back in the Silver Age, when the pair first met in Action Comics #276 (Apr 1961), Kara was initially weary of Brainy, recognising his family resemblance to Superman’s arch foe. Her attitude softened, however, as the story unfolded, even calling him “sweet” by its close. As the years rolled by Brainy is clearly smitten by Kara, but she rarely reciprocated his affections. Finally, in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 2 #294 (Dec 1982), Brainy brings matters to a close: “You remember that crush I had on you? [...] I think I’ve finally worked it out of my system.”. In response Kara teases, “Really? What a shame. Here I was, starting to think how cute you were.” (Needless to say, Brainy is left dumbfounded as Kara promptly flies off.)

Kara dated numerous men during the Silver and Bronze Age, including long-term relationships with Dick Malverne and Philip Decker, but these were generally in her Linda Danvers identity. Brainy is the closest thing “Supergirl” came to a boyfriend -- perhaps that’s why some fans like to focus more on him rather than Linda’s beaus.

52. She was a fan of The Bionic Woman.

One of the problems of being a superhero is that your evenings are often taken up saving the world, leaving little time to catch up with popular tv shows. But on her odd evenings off-duty, what was likely to be on the Maid of Might’s tv screen? Unsurprisingly, Kara seems to have been a fan of superheroine shows, as demonstrated by comments in Superman Family #184 (July 1977) while she was battling an unnaturally fierce electrical storm in the skies over Santa Augusta. “Great way to spend an evening out”, complains a frustrated Girl of Steel, “If this storm doesn’t let up, I’ll miss ‘The Bionic Woman--!’”

53. She was a big fan of seat belts and personal computers, apparently.

Being a superhero doesn’t pay very much, if anything at all. That’s why DC Comics always liked to line up product endorsements for its big stars, and the Girl of Steel was no exception. Supergirl’s first apparent appearance in adverts (outside of selling DC’s own magazines) was in a late 70s commercial for kid’s underwear, but pretty soon DC had secured more prestigious work for Kara when in 1981 they had her extol the virtues of Tandy’s new line of 8 bit micro computers. More important work came in the mid-80s, when Kara teamed up with Honda and the US Department of Transportation to promote the adoption of car seat belts. The Maid of Might appeared in two full-length give-away comics (and on-screen Helen Slater even appeared as Supergirl in a tv advert.) Kara was so committed to the cause of road safety that she even did the second give-away comic after her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths -- now that’s dedication for you..!

54. Only one woman worked on her comic-strip during the entire Silver and Bronze age.

It is a sad reflection of the industry in the 60s and 70s that if one totals up all the writers, artists, and editors, who worked on the Supergirl strip during the Silver and Bronze Age, there’s only one female name on the list: Dorothy Woolfolk. Editor for Supergirl Vol. 1 #1 (Nov 1972) only -- yup, a single issue -- Dorothy launched the Girl of Steel into her first self-titled comicbook before giving way to industry veteran Robert Kanigher for issue #2. Allegedly a larger-than-life figure, Dorothy was a rare example of DC allowing a woman to work outside of the romance genre during the Golden and Silver Age; she is even credited by some with suggesting the idea of Kryptonite to Superman writer Jerry Siegel.

(Away from Supergirl’s own strip, two other women briefly worked as editors on comics featuring the Girl of Steel in a guest capacity. Karen Berger and Laurie Sutton both edited 1980s Legion of Super-Heroes issues containing Kara cameos.)

55. Her most iconic costume contained a pair of clocks.

The problem with slinky skin-tight superhero costumes is that they don’t leave much room for the practical necessities of life... like pockets... or watches. But that never stopped the Girl of Steel from sneaking a few hidden practical elements into her outfits. Most fans know that the inner lining of her cape hides a secret pocket (where she stashes her everyday clothes when out superhero-ing), but how many fans realised that the three discs aligned over each hip on her iconic 70s hot pants outfit actually acted as a pair of clocks? According to Krypton Chronicles #2 (Oct 1981), by placing three fingers on the discs over her right hip Kara is telepathically informed of the time in New York (her then home), while the same action on her left hip reports the time in Kandor (Krypton’s capital, famously miniaturised in a bottle by Brainiac.)

56. The USA was actually one of the last countries to see the Supergirl movie.

The Girl of Steel may have been able to zip around the world in an instant, but apparently her movie couldn’t. After opening on Thursday 19th July 1984 in the United Kingdom, then days later in Ireland and Japan, the movie slowly made its way around the world, opening in the Philippines, Australia, and Spain during August, and then France and Canada during October. By mid-November, however, American audiences were yet to see the Maid of Might grace cinema screens.

The delay was caused by Warner Bros. withdrawing from its US distribution deal near the end of production, causing producers to scramble for a replacement. Eventually, on Wednesday 21st November -- over four months after the UK debut -- the Supergirl movie hit US cinema theatres thanks to fledgling distributor TriStar Pictures, but with almost 20 minutes of material chopped out. It wasn’t until 1998 that the full international cut was legitimately available in the US thanks to an Anchor Bay VHS video release.

57. She was Wonder Woman’s sister.

Incredible as it may seem, for a brief period Supergirl was Wonder Woman’s sister. The incident happened in Supergirl Vol. 1 #9 (Dec 1973) after Kara finally had enough of being two-timed by boyfriends as Linda Danvers, and hit upon by men as Supergirl. When Kara bravely rescues an Amazon warrior ship under attack by fierce sea creatures, Queen Hippolyta offers to adopt her as a daughter, making Kara the sister of Princess Diana (aka Wonder Woman.) Realising that the Amazon’s island home is free of men, Kara accepts, but a medical emergency forces her back out into the Man’s World to seek the ingredients for a serum. With the emergency over, Kara considers that maybe she was too hasty in turning her back on all men, and leaves her new Amazon home to give them a second chance.

58. She valued her privacy.

When you have as many extraordinary abilities as the Girl of Steel, the usual fears and phobias just don’t apply. Why be afraid of heights when you can fly? Why be afraid of snakes when your skin is not only fang proof, but bullet proof? But Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #4 (Feb 1983) revealed that there’s one thing guaranteed to make Kara Zor-El flee in terror -- fear of having her everyday identity exposed. The issue sees Kara hypnotised into seeing her greatest fear by the villain Ms. Mesmer: as a result Supergirl continually sees her Linda Danvers identity reflected back at her in windows and mirrors. Convinced that everyone can see through her disguise, Kara seeks solace with her adopted parents. It is only thanks to the calming influence of her mother, Edna Danvers, that Kara has the courage to go back out onto the streets as Supergirl to defeat Ms. Mesmer.

59. Her first kiss was with a very hirsute Jimmy Olsen.

The opening season of the Supergirl tv show teased a possible romance between Kara and James Olsen, and in some ways this echos very early Supergirl stories where the pair were occasionally seen as a potential love-match. Indeed Jimmy Olsen was actually Kara’s first kiss, although the event came about in a highly unorthodox way. The pages of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #44 (Apr 1960) saw Jimmy transformed into a werewolf, and Superman reasons that the curse can only be lifted by the kiss of a young girl. In steps a fifteen year old Kara Zor-El, who gives the cub reporter a delicate peck on the lips, reversing the spell. A year later Jimmy managed to turn himself into a werewolf for a second time(!) in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #52 (Apr 1961), but Kara’s kiss proved ineffective that time.

60. She didn’t entirely die in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Obviously it is a matter of record that the original Kara Zor-El gave up her life in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (Oct 1985) – at least until DC later saw fit to retcon that particular story line – but in their attempts to erase the Maid of Might from existence, DC had forgotten about a rather inconvenient story published just a year before, in Supergirl Vol. 2 #19 (May 1984).

The tale dealt with a Supergirl clone who had assumed the identity of Linda Danvers. The clone had no super powers, but she did have all of Kara’s memories and personality. The story ends with a twist: rather than take the easy way out by having clone-Kara conveniently fall under the wheels of a speeding bus, writer Paul Kupperberg has the two Kara’s work out a deal. ”It’s a big world out there… with plenty of room for two people with this face!“, explains Supergirl, “We can find a place for you… a name of your own…” And with that the two Karas go their separate ways, meaning that although superpowered-Kara may have surrendered her life in Crisis, powerless-Kara (her clone) presumably continued to live out a regular life anonymously somewhere in America.

And that’s it -- all sixty..! Thanks for reading, Hope you enjoyed the series and learned at least a few snippets of trivia along the way that you found amusing or thought-provoking.

Don’t forget to come back in 2048, when it will be time to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Matrix Supergirl... Or maybe not..!

#supergirl #superhero #superman #dc #comics #superheroine #dccomics #silver age #bronze age #comicbooks #lex luthor

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dgcatanisiri · 6 years ago

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So... Let’s see how this works. We’ll adjust the format as needed if this doesn’t work, but hey, here we go.

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway.

Our first installment takes a look at Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic. Obviously, as this game predates the modern DLC model (there was the Yavin market, but that was maybe a grand total of ten minutes tops of content, if we’re generous), so there are some awkwardnesses involved in making DLC for this - if nothing else, when the game ends, it ends, to keep playing, you have to start a new character. On another, there’s the level cap, stopping our leveling up after hitting Level 20. As the game presently exists, that should happen after being locked into the endgame combo of the Unknown World/Star Forge, but adding more content means that cap gets hit sooner.

So understand that we’re assuming that there is the ability to play post-game and a higher level cap, as well as other quality of life style additions (in this case, probably among them are various additions from KOTOR 2, but that’s a subject for another day). I’m also willing to assume that there is content for characters (even if the respective voice actors have passed, retired, or just wouldn’t return), in the same style as modern games. The assumption here is that these DLC ideas would have been written, produced, and published during the active production cycle of the respective games.

As this is the inaugural edition, let me explain the format. There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable (unless it’s part of a hardwired point, like the above mentioned point of no return of travelling to the Unknown World, as an example), and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

And a further note - I reserve the right to come up with more ideas for any given game that I have already written up, naturally. I haven’t decided how I’ll handle that yet, but it’s entirely possible there will later be more ideas.

Okay, housekeeping matters out of the way, let’s get down to business!

The Yavin Excursion

Yavin 4 was the site of Sith Lord Exar Kun’s power base. In understanding more about him and his fall, the Jedi Council believe it may be able to shed light on the fall of Revan and Malak. But the secrets of the Massassi temples hold more than just the ghosts of the past, but a threat for the present...

(Available after Dantooine)

Tack this on to the existing content of the market in orbit of Yavin, I suppose. But the connection to the Tales of the Jedi comic seems like a good starting point here – investigate one Sith Lord to examine the motivations of another, find out why the first guy fell to the dark side, which will hopefully explain why the other guys did.

I see this as both a lore exercise – to offer the players more exploration of this era, considering that the Tales of the Jedi comics have been harder to come by as time as gone on, so allowing some more in depth portrayals of the time – and a chance to kind of approach the question of what drives someone to the dark side. Exar Kun fell by an overwhelming curiosity, Ulic Qel-Droma, his apprentice, fell by a desire for revenge, and later lost his connection to the Force (put a pin in that fact – we’ll be back to that come the DLC for KOTOR 2). Millennia later, Anakin Skywalker falls because of his fear of the loss of those he loves. Two of these people were redeemed, one refused to give up his power.

If anything, this would be a good chance for some foreshadowing of Bastila’s eventual fall (so perhaps this would be locked to before the Leviathan catches the Ebon Hawk), on top of asking the question that later drives KOTOR 2 – what were Revan’s motivations in turning to the dark side? Obviously, this is up in the air from a character perspective (and, honestly, so far as I care, from the player’s too, because I despise the whole “the Sith Emperor warped their minds” BS, and I’m ready and willing to disregard it, even in acknowledging The Old Republic). The first KOTOR never really focuses on the why of Revan’s fall, since Malak is the game’s big bad, and the Revan reveal is a plot twist – since this is DLC, the player would probably be expected to know it going in, so why not explore that, right?

As for what this threat is... I’m a little shakier on this. I’m thinking a Massassi warrior/beast of some kind, the same kind of Sith alchemical abomination we see in the terantatek or hssiss, only a much more powerful end boss kind of thing, a living relic of Exar Kun’s evil (given that, canonically, Exar Kun’s spirit survived to the Jedi Academy novel trilogy, he certainly can’t be the final boss), perhaps fed and kept alive by the powers of the remaining Massassi who worshipped Exar Kun as a god – in this case, looking to take advantage of the Ebon Hawk’s arrival to spread their master’s will across the galaxy and speed his return. Sith alchemy played a part in a lot of the Sith portrayals from this timeframe, and it’s kind of disappointing that KOTOR never really utilized these mutants, just had them as mindless high level bosses.

Vector

The rakghoul plague infested the lower levels of the planet of Taris. When the planet was bombed by the Sith, it managed to escape among the many refugees as well. With their experiences on Taris, facing the rakghouls, the Jedi Council sends the crew of the Ebon Hawk to investigate its spread to the planet Ralltiir – and stop the Sith from obtaining it as a weapon!

(Available after Dantooine)

The rakghouls were just kind of dropped into KOTOR with no explanation – they were a threat as a creature and as a plague in the Undercity of Taris, but no one ever spoke about what the plague’s origins were or where the rakghouls came from. And then along came the Vector mini-series of comics (hence the name for this) that put the creation of the rakghouls down to a Sith Lord, Karness Murr. Sith alchemy, the gift that keeps on giving.

But either way, considering that the rakghoul plague is something that even the Upper City of Taris was concerned about, that clearly says that it could easily have gotten off planet, especially in the panic of the evacuation. And really, with the added knowledge that this was originally Sith alchemy, it’s almost certain that some aspiring Sith would discover this and try to twist it to their advantage.

I pretty much pulled Ralltiir’s name out of a hat, primarily because it’s a fairly common named planet, but with little actually associated with it. It also makes a great place where the Republic would demand an immediate concern, because it’s a Core World and an economic hub. It’s a great place to have a plague that Republic heads would say would draw in the Ebon Hawk, whose crew had familiarity with the rakghoul plague, despite the threat of Malak and the search for the Star Maps.

I also see this as a way to give Mission and Juhani more content – Mission is a hard character for me to really justify remaining with the crew after Taris, given that she’s a teenager, I feel VERY uncomfortable taking her around on what is effectively a commando mission, while Juhani was very nearly hacked out of the game. Both of them grew up on Taris, in the lower levels of the planetary city, where the rakghouls aren’t just a distant threat. So give them this additional portrayal and focus because they’re familiar with the plague, maybe even knew some people who were infected and transformed by it.

The villain would be a Jedi-turned-Sith, someone who had turned to the Sith at some point after being a Jedi historian. A part of me wants to draw on one of the Jedi who would later show up in the Exile’s vision on Korriban, mostly because those were the Jedi we see recruited by Malak, and so less aware of Revan’s face, though that seems a touch much. Regardless, they’d previously acted as a historian, and is driven by the potential power of the rakghoul plague – Muur’s talisman is lost by this point (again, see the comics), but the rakghouls themselves remain, and, while I’m ignoring the whole “the Sith Emperor did it” thing with Revan, I also like the concept of the rakghouls evolving into the nekghouls, gaining sentience.

This is also a way to add a little bit more of a question to the results – do these evolved rakghouls deserve the consideration of being considered more than mindless beasts? Are they at all a continuation of the person they once were? Or are they just violent creatures that need to be put down? Is the guy trying to control them being corrupted by the dark side, or was he always evil?

So the central question here would be asking “what makes a monster?” Is it the mindless savagery of beasts, or the knowing cruelty of intelligent beings, and where is that line?

Sleheyron

The volcanic world of Sleheyron holds a Star Map. The Ebon Hawk and her crew set out to discover the secrets hidden there, but must be cautious, for the planet also holds a group of Darth Malak’s most powerful apprentices, who have, in their isolation from their leader, created their own plan for the fall of the Republic...

(Available after Dantooine)

Sleheyron was planned to be part of the hunt for the Star Maps – six environments are described in the Rakatan ruin on Dantooine, the life-giving worlds (oceanic – Manaan, grassland – Dantooine, arboreal – Kashyyyk) and death-giving worlds (desert – Tatooine, volcanic, barren – Korriban). Sleheyron was the volcanic world, but got cut for time, early enough that there really wasn��t a lot of material that made it out, with the planet just becoming part of Yuthura Ban’s back story. So, hey, free reign to develop something here.

Honestly, one of my big questions is, if Malak was with Revan as they travelled the worlds to find the Star Maps, why doesn’t he do something about the fact that these locations led to the big secret weapon that gives the Sith Empire its power and forces? Wouldn’t he have thought that maybe some form of guard or another would be a good idea? Sure, the Korriban one was guarded by virtue of being in the tomb of Naga Sadow, but the others? Here, we get a chance to have a group of Sith having taken control of this planet where there is a Star Map that can add to what our heroes have assembled (but, being DLC, this isn’t required to take on). They’re specifically there to guard the Map.

This becomes a bit of a game of cat and mouse – how to act before the Sith apprentices (probably former Jedi themselves) can find them, capture or kill them, hand them off to Malak. (Probably also means that this should be a later stage planet to visit, but hey, player choice of direction, right?) How do these Jedi move around a planet while the people in charge are out to get them? Draw on the mechanic from KOTOR 2, where the people on Dantooine recognize if the Exile goes there while a lightsaber is equipped, maybe.

Actually, I’d like to see some mechanic that tracks how much the player uses the Force while wandering around – the more they use the Force, or the more powerful the Force effects they use, the more likely they are to summon Sith execution squads or something. Sort of like KOTOR 2 and Nar Shaddaa, where the Exile’s actions drew the attention of the Exchange and Visquis, only in reverse – the player and company need to avoid catching the attention of the Sith until they’ve raised a rebellion against the Sith overlords, or at least gained enough public goodwill that the Sith can’t just openly take them away and execute them, something like that.

I like this idea because it allows an opportunity to play more with non-violent approaches, alternatives that aren’t “murder everyone because combat gives more experience!” Here, the idea is that you WANT to fly under the radar, avoid combat. And, if combat happens, you also have incentive to not use the lightsaber for a stretch – gives players a reason to put points into blasters or non-lightsaber melee combat, because I don’t know about anyone else, but the second I get a lightsaber in these games, I don’t ever use a different weapon. Here, the player is in the position of HAVING to switch up their play style, or, if they don’t, have to be that much more cautious in their actions here. This is a story piece that hinges on what you do with your words.

The ultimate confrontation with the Sith and the Star Map, in my mind, takes place in a cavern of an active volcano (or maybe one that has been dormant, but, because what’s the Sith without random acts of evilly evil, they’re managing to coax back to life). Here’s where there’s a pretty big question in the construction of this DLC – are we working in the confines of the game engine of the time or with newer, more modern systems? Cuz I’d kinda like something that took place within the volcanic areas of the planet, given that’s what the planet is described as. But I don’t think that KOTOR’s original engine would really be able to explore that to its fullest, given the limitations on it. My big idea would be to have the climax of the planet’s arc have the threat of a volcanic eruption, potentially with the base of operations for these Sith being flooded by lava.

If that is an engine limit... I really have no idea what the alternative would be, but, hey, since this is pie in the sky as it is, why not call for the engine advancement that lets it be a thing, where we have to outrun a lava flow or something.

Echoes of the Past

The strike team that fought Revan is being targeted by Malak’s assassins. The crew of the Ebon Hawk take a journey to the graveyard of the attack on Revan’s ship, the battle that led to the defeat of the dark lord. But the dead don’t rest easy, especially amongst the ruins of the Sith Lord’s vessel...

(Available after the Leviathan)

The strike team that captured Revan is kinda the forgotten element of the game as is. This is a team, and yet we only hear about Bastila’s involvement. Which, sure, she is the member on our squad, she does have the Force Bond with Revan, but... Who were the others? Where have they been during the war?

And it seems like Malak would think of them as a threat period – they were the Jedi who were there to face off against Revan, the Jedi thought they’d have a chance against this great Sith Lord, the leader of the Sith forces of the time. But Bastila is the only one the game ever concerns itself with, and doesn’t even mention if the others lived, who they were, why they were chosen... None of that.

So here we get to explore them. The added bonus is that I see this as a post-Leviathan mission, one that we play with full awareness of our player character’s identity. How much of that awareness we pass on is one thing, and it really allows us to explore the idea “who was Revan before, who is Revan now?” Because that’s going to come into play when dealing with the people who were at one point sent in to kill Revan – sent to kill us, the player character.

I also like the set piece idea of a graveyard of ships, where the characters are walking through the husks of dead vessels – the Harbinger sequence in KOTOR 2 is still a favorite of mine. Granted, this would probably be a bit of a conceptual retread of that part of that game, but hey, why not get some variation of the same old gameplay, right? Plus, it’s different here for the fact that this will have some personal connection to Revan – this was their ship. Did they consider it a home? Just a place?

That leads to the bigger plot element, though. These Jedi know Revan as a threat. They’re going to be suspicious of Revan the whole way through – “are you the Jedi the Council thought you to have become, or are you the Sith we were once sent to kill?” Like I’m sorta thinking this is a case where we’d get these teammates as companions proper now that I’m considering this in detail, and this all builds to the main confrontation. Like we wouldn’t take our Ebon Hawk buddies on this one, but two of these guys.

That confrontation would involve the assassins being revealed to be loyalists to Darth Revan, with their mission having begun with attempting to avenge their fallen Lord, but now, with Revan returned to them, having tested their skill over the course of their luring Revan back to them, they are willing to take up their banner once more, leading to the choice – be Revan, the Sith Lord, or Revan, the Prodigal Knight.

And yes, I know, this is the same thing we see with Bastila later. In some ways, that’s the point. Choosing the light or the dark is not one you make once and are one that path forever. It is a constant, repeated choice, one that must be made, again and again. It’s something that has to been affirmed and reaffirmed, because it will always come up again. Here, it’s just “we offer you power and loyal servants,” while Bastila has the offer of their Force bond – hell, if this were real DLC, I’d say patch in some element to the endgame of Bastila trying to use their bond to lure Revan over to her side on top of things.

What Remains

Darth Malak’s assault on Dantooine was meant to destroy the Jedi. The Ebon Hawk is the one ship that might be able to break the Sith blockade and rescue the people trapped behind their lines, as well as recover irreplaceable Jedi artifacts hidden away at the enclave. And Revan has a need to confront the Jedi Council...

(Available after Leviathan)

This one has always been in my mind as something that, in many ways, we needed to see happen. I look at this as being the necessary confrontation with the Jedi Masters that we need, because they’re using Revan. Revan was reprogrammed to be their weapon against the Sith, and what exactly were they going to do if and when the war was over and they’d no longer had need of Revan?

A mission to Dantooine, done by the ship that could escape the blockade of Taris, to attempt to rescue and recover the Jedi, break the people there out of the iron grip of the Sith, at first does seem somewhat at odds with the portrayal of Dantooine in KOTOR 2, but it still makes sense if you think of the first priority being to evacuate the Jedi and the relics they were saving – the Jedi become the reason that any rescue comes, not the people stuck there. The Jedi and their artifacts are prioritized over the people now under the thumb of the Sith.

Especially if the only real encounter we have is with the Jedi themselves, seeing them in the midst of their exodus, dealing with the Sith occupiers and executioners, all of whom would have once had friends here – I see this also including a Republic military outpost to Dantooine prior to the attack there, because there honestly should have been one anyway (this I chalk up as much to the more limited engine of the game as anything else), and that providing some extra characters to events, which makes it all the more devastating having their former comrades in arms now there to kill them.

As much as this is about confronting the Jedi for the way that they intended to use Revan, this is also an exploration of the divide of Republic and Sith, that those now calling themselves Sith were once the best and brightest of the Republic. Yes, the Jedi failed to come to the aid of the Republic in the midst of the war, but that doesn’t explain the violence these former soldiers engage in against their own people. What made the rank and file Sith soldier agree to this?

That examination of motivation would, I feel, be a part of why the resulting confrontation with the Jedi would matter so much – what drove Revan? What drove the Sith? What drove the Jedi? Because they mindwiped Revan and implanted them with a personality to use them as a weapon. They didn’t “turn an enemy to their cause.” They violated Revan in an effort to use them. When the war was over, what did they really think would happen?

Specifically, we need to confront Zhar, who, given Kreia’s utter disdain for him in KOTOR 2, I get the impression that he was the major proponent of this idea. His actions may have been justified as “for the greater good,” but it always seems like the greatest of morally questionable actions are justified with those words. Do we confront him with rage, forgiveness, or... something else? Because this is a case where I can see both condemning him to death and condemning him to live as a punishment. I could even see this being a case of him bowing to Revan’s judgment, and no option having a light side/dark side shift, because this isn’t about the Force. This is about justice.

Whether or not the Jedi admit it, a life was taken the day they implanted a personality into Revan’s body. The Jedi need to be called out and recognize that they do not have clean hands after what they’ve done.

Revan’s Shadow

Although Revan’s legacy, the Star Forge and the Sith army, have been defeated, there are still questions of Revan’s journey. There was more to it than Star Maps. The crew of the Ebon Hawk reunite on the planet Belkadan to find out more of the Rakatan Empire, and its ties to the dark side of the Force. And along the way, Revan will find more of their lost past...

(Post-Game)

The fact is, we get very little of Revan in the game proper, little about who they were as a person before the fall. This is conceptually to hide the fact that the player IS Revan, of course, but... It creates a lot of little issues for me – I mean, like half of these prospective DLCs are about expanding something of Revan’s motives and past. Obviously, this is a blank slate for the player, because they wanted to leave this open for us to decide, but they DID make a few definitions of who Revan was with the existing content, with the case of the Star Map on Kashyyyk.

And for me, personal identity is a big lingering question for this character – again, I’m choosing to ignore the handling of Revan as a character in The Old Republic, and I’m gonna include the tie-in novel in that, so no one is allowed to say “the novel said [x]!”

This is someone whose entire concept of who they are is in question once they learn that they are a constructed self, created by the Jedi Council as a weapon. Who ARE they? Who have they chosen to be, and, if they could reclaim the parts of themselves that they lost with the Jedi’s mind wipe, would they? Obviously, there’s no time in the main plot to focus on these questions, but I feel like this would eat at them afterwards, leading them to having to find answers. And what kind of friends would the others be if they let Revan do this alone?

I picked Belkadan pretty much because it’s an out of the way planet that has been identified as part of the Rakata’s Infinite Empire, so it made as much sense as any planet to be the site of this. I mean, the involvement of the Infinite Empire is certainly a good option for a place that questions who Revan is.

This would be a place where Revan had gone, after the Mandalorian Wars, a place where they were trying to connect to the Force, to understand the questions – why did the Jedi Council believe they shouldn’t be involved in an existential threat? Why is Revan drawn to these Star Maps and the destination they point to? What awaits them if they go, and what will change about them? What answers are to be found in asking an energy field that can offer no direct response?

Obviously, I’m thinking in terms of finding recordings of Revan, so requiring a voice for Revan – Rino Romano did the little soundbites when male Revan interacts with things, while I don’t know who did the voice bites for female Revan, so they’d be options, or new VA’s altogether. While part of me does want to go forward and make Revan a fully voiced protagonist (because I’m just used to that nowadays), I could accept this as being something only for old!Revan, not present!Revan.

The idea is simply to explore the driving motivations of Revan and decide plainly who Revan wants to be now. I kinda see the ending reach a point of ‘hey, you can reclaim your old memories, you can decide what personality is dominant, what do you want?’ and Revan being able to choose who they will be from here on out.

This is also a good place to require at least Bastila and Carth. Obviously I’m kinda leaning more into the light side ending for this, but... Well, the dark side endings tend to be untenable for future content anyway – Revan as the reclaimed Sith Lord, leading the army against the Republic was never really a viable future, because the Republic had to survive. So yeah, we’re gonna take the easy route and assume light side here. So Bastila and Carth, as Revan romances, would also have a contribution to make, building on the questions of “I’m in love with the person who was Darth Revan, can I accept this?” Like I said, a lot of questions that the game sidestepped, and this one matters for the sake of the relationship being able to continue after the ending of the game.

The Rakatan Prize

The Unknown World – Rakata Prime, Lehon – has become a subject of a great many conversations. Now that the Star Forge is gone, the planet is accessible, and many are eager to investigate its mysteries and forgotten technology. Having had firsthand experience, the Republic has asked the crew of the Ebon Hawk to return...

(Post-Game)

And then, there’s the Rakata. Not that Star Wars isn’t full of ancient empires that rose and fell millennia ago, but this was KOTOR’s contribution. And really, they’re almost superfluous – hell, if the Unknown World were rewritten so that the Rakata had gone extinct, the only thing that really would be necessary would be finding a way into the temple. I kinda think that would even tighten things up a little, especially given how often I’ve hit the level cap before meeting the Council of Elders.

The Rakata are a mystery, and the idea here is to investigate that. Build up the whole element of the Rakata having lost their connection to the Force, and the fact that they’re trying to explore this (because we’re assuming light side against here and that the Elders survived, including the scientists investigating this).

Because this is one of those things that stands out in Star Wars lore, when beings are stripped of their Force connections. Ulic Qel-Droma, the Exile, this is something that is traditionally a case of an individual, not a species.

We also have the remains of a galactic empire to examine here. If a species once ruled the galaxy, it’s inevitable that there are those who would see that empire be reborn. The threat of this DLC becomes this group who aspire to reconquer the galaxy using the mind transfer technology that puts the Rakatan prisoner in that white space box that would allow them to trap the minds of Jedi and other Force users to take their bodies and use them to go forth and conquer the galaxy.

Ultimately, the question’s going to be whether or not to restore their connection to the Force – do the Rakata, a race of dominators of the galaxy, whose humbling by the forces of nature has not managed to truly change them, deserve a second chance, or should they have their attempt to restore their own connections to the Force wiped out, leaving them vulnerable to an inevitable extinction?

Because this is one of the big things with Revan, the idea of redemption, change, second chances. Does Revan extend this chance to these people, people who clearly have more than a few members who have no interest in peaceful coexistence? But if not, do they deserve to be condemned to extinction?

And, as a bonus...

Romance Content – Bisexual Carth, Bisexual Bastila, Gay Canderous, extended Juhani romance

Because Carth and Bastila should be bisexual, and Juhani’s romance deserves to be more proper. Meanwhile, Canderous should totally be an option as well, and yeah, I’m gonna be selfish here and say that he should be gay, rather than bi (because, again, I’m ignoring the novel, there is no wife). Because this means that there’s a favoring for same-sex romances, and that never happens. My list, my way. Star Wars is gay culture.

#dg rambles #dg talks video games #dg's hypothetical dlc #knights of the old republic #kotor

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