#and finally-DND but with a new coat of paint to make it not obvious. because otherwise you'd have to use your brain and engage with-

[sidhedust]

One day I'll clean up my YT channel and I'll become the "anti" writing advice channel, because it isn't just worldbuilding advice that sucks online :/

I'm no pro or authority figure, but as someone that's writing something unconventional for an indie creator, I believe I have a perspective some people need to hear before they think they suck because they aren't sharing what the color of their character's socks are or whatever.

This being said, I think it would be hard to keep my salt at bay while making it, so I should probably follow a script to avoid coming off as salty over things I went through 2 years ago in regards to sharing my work, the subject matter, and how young the tastes of the average consumer skews.

[sweet-star-cookie]

Ideas for a Rewrite of Pixar’s Onward

So I finally watched Onward, unfortunately not in theatres because of [REDACTED] but what can you do? Gotta be honest, it didn’t wow me. :/ The world seemed flat and boring, and a lot of the tropes and story beats felt really played out and done before, even within other Pixar movies. That said, fantasy themed worlds and the potential creativity therein is a topic that is super close to my heart, and even when the trailer dropped for this movie I wasn’t super impressed with what it had to offer. From the setup of the plot itself, I’ll admit that I was skeptical of it from the outset, perhaps a bit more than usual.

I have my issues with the world building of this film from a visual design standpoint as well, but I’ll save that for another time. For now I want to discuss how I would approach rewriting this film to make it an overall stronger product in terms of story and character development. Obviously there will be spoilers for the actual plot of the movie in addition to my thoughts, so fair warning there.

Okay so when it comes to building a new world for your characters, regardless of its themes or genre, it is important to establish how much of that world pertains to the story you want to tell. As in, are you telling a story about the world itself via your characters, or are you telling a story about the characters with this world as a backdrop? It might seem like a small distinction, but a world’s rules (or lack thereof) can easily divert an audience’s focus within a story. I believe the current version of Onward is an example of the latter, but with a few complications of the former that muddles the direction of the plot a bit. The sense of scope for this film seems to go half-and-half instead, but we’ll get to that later. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about how the world of Onward followed more closely with what we would call a fantasy world; wizards, mythical creatures, knights, a magical staff, the works. But in a pretty rapid-fire scene, we are shown how modern technologies began to usurp the use of magic, thus leading to the modern day fantasy world that is the setting for the rest of the film. Despite how quickly this plays out as a sort of prologue for the movie, I do believe this is a fine set up for a movie like this...

If the movie was about the world.

But as we know, it’s about Ian and Barley’s quest to bring their father back, and almost exclusively focuses on their family. This too is a perfectly good setup, but the movie somehow ends up with both, and it leads to a lot more questions than answers as a result. The prologue setup generates a lot of questions about the world itself, such as the use and discovery of magic, that do have an effect later on in the story, but the implementation of magic itself does not have clearly defined rules about who can use it and why. Modern day law enforcement seems to govern this world, yet any use of magic does not seem to have any bearing on that. Magic clearly still exists in this world, but the audience does not know when or how it appears. Where does magic come from? What is the scarcity of it? Can you get arrested for using magic? Do people who use or own magical items get special treatment? Are magical items more valuable and therefore need to be regulated? How common are they? All creatures in this world appear to be inherently magical, or at least possess abilities from their magic-based ancestors, but seem to have “forgotten” those abilities over time. Both the pixies and the manticore have wings, but it seems that only the pixies need magic to use them. Why? Historical landmarks like the one Barley tries to protect in the film are viewed as passive history, no longer holding much significance. And even the manticore’s map is reduced to a placemat at a children’s restaurant, so the preservation of this history does not appear to be a priority for this society. Moreover, these questions also directly correlate to the main protagonists, namely, why can Ian wield magic and Barley cannot? If Wilden (the dad) could or used to wield magic, could Laurel (the mom) do it too? Are their different kinds of magic? Is there a hierarchy to how powerful one’s magic can be? Ian becomes better at using his father’s staff over time in the film, but how he is able to do so via the staff or Barley’s instruction is pretty unclear. Now, all of these are questions are actually ones that wouldn’t need to be answered necessarily, but only if the film reeled itself in a bit and its scope was a lot clearer. Many other fantasy or alternate world stories have a much smaller scope that doesn’t need to ask these questions of the audience when it doesn’t pertain to the story they’re telling. An excess of world building does not matter if it has no bearing on the current story being told. A good example is in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where the establishment of toons existing in the real world is the entire crux of the story, but how toons became a part of the real world is not explained, and doesn’t need to be for the direction of the plot and characters. You are introduced to the world with only the information you need, and you are taken through the story with that specific set of information. The progression of the plot does not rely on answering the question of why toons exist in this world, so it does not address it. Onward could have achieved this too, if the film didn’t explicitly ask these unanswered questions within its own plot. If the film focused solely on the Lightfoot family without the prologue, all of these questions about the world wouldn’t need to be answered. This is not a “magic was usurped by technology” story. This is a “how do I get my Dad back?” story. Which honestly begs the question:

Why does this have a fantasy setting?

With how much this film goes half-and-half on the relevance of the world to its characters, the more it seems like a coat of fantasy paint slapped on top of a story that could be told with real humans, or any other kind of creature for that matter. The fact that these characters are elves, pixies, trolls, etc. is inconsequential to the storytelling. Magic aside, if you replaced all of the fantasy races and locations with real-life equivalents, what would change about the story or its progression? In fact, if you removed the idea of magic entirely and replaced it with a series of non-magical challenges that Ian faces on his quest, you would have the same movie, just without the fantasy filter. All of the locations in the movie are not inherently fantastical, the school, the gas station, the tavern, even the vehicles and animals in the film, all have really obvious real-world equivalents, which diminishes the fantasy theme even further. Nothing separates them from these parallels. Even the main magic system is an equivalent to DnD and other tabletop roleplaying games in this world, and isn’t viewed as anything more despite becoming a prominent source of power for the protagonists. Again, having the world take a backseat to the characters is not inherently a bad thing, but if you’re going to take the time to establish how this world began and changed over time, then that has to be relevant to the story at hand in some way, otherwise you’re just establishing something that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. So how would I fix this? Well, at this point I feel like you’d have to pick one of the two halves that this story tries to weave together: either open up the world and the relevance of magic within it, or focus exclusively on the Lightfoot family and their relationships. If it were me, I’d pick the latter, because to me the best parts of the film were the parts that focused on the family, especially the relationship between Ian and Barley. The world of Onward really isn’t that interesting as it stands, so putting more focus on that without a complete overhaul probably isn’t a good idea.

To start, I would keep the part about Ian wanting to learn more about his Dad, as well as Barley’s memories and misgivings about not saying goodbye to him. This, like most Pixar movies, is the strongest part and serves as the emotional core of the film. Both of them have their individual reasons for wanting to see their father again, and those motivations can move and change over the course of the narrative. But, have Ian tie his own identity to finding his father, as if his father is the one person who can tell him who he needs to be. A missing piece of him that only his father can fill, and this desire becomes more and more desperate as the film progresses and they run closer to that 24 hour time frame. Those earlier scenes about others who knew and admired his father could help corroborate these feelings, where Ian wishes to carry on the legacy of his father. Perhaps Barley could have similar feelings, as if being called a “screw up” throughout his life made him question the legacy of his father and his relationship with him. A “I don’t know who I am + believe in yourself” message has been done to death, but the execution could still make the ending of this film that much stronger. When the climax happens and Ian is unable to see his father before the sunset, THAT is when you want him to have the Act 3 Pixar realization about the overall message of the film, and how he had a father figure through Barley the whole time. Maybe there’s a point where Barley is hanging onto Ian in the rubble and time is running out, and he tells Barley to go see their father while he still has the chance. Have the internal realization be that Ian doesn’t need to see his father to know who he is anymore, as the journey he went on throughout the movie already gave him that answer, thus allowing him to let go and let Barley get his closure instead. Some of these points do exist in the current version of the film, but I feel that this slight reframe could strengthen it enough so that it is a common theme throughout the movie.

The subplot with the mother and Officer Colt is a strange one, further complicated by the inclusion of Corey the manticore as a secondary character, but I think it could have rounded out the story even more with a bit of work. If there really needed to be a stepparent role for this movie, I feel like Corey could have filled that role while also providing the map for Ian and Barley’s quest (I know getting a Disney Gay is like pulling teeth at this point but hear me out). There is a fairly decent amount of time spent in the movie regarding Laurel’s role in protecting her sons, especially when she recruits Corey into finding them. And with the scene at the tavern, Corey already has a decent idea of what the boys are like, which could make for good chances to bond with Laurel. There’s a good line in the movie that I feel really goes under-utilized, where Corey describes the boys’s assertiveness at the tavern. Laurel assumes she’s talking about Barley, but she’s really talking about Ian, and this surprises her. This is a really good way of showing that another’s perception of one’s character is not the whole picture. With the climax reframed to better focus on Ian’s sense of identity, this could have been an excellent line as a lead up to that climax, and for thematic coherence overall. Ian struggles with his identity while relying on others to make it for him, and that extends to his own mother’s perception of him, which changes as the story progresses. Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of conflict between Laurel and her sons, even when discussing their late father. They’re sad, yes, but ultimately they’re dealing with it okay. They love each other, and despite their differences they have a good sense of solidarity. There doesn’t have to be conflict in that way in every story like this, but her quest to rescue them could have been a good way to bridge that, bringing in a one-two punch of parental resolution at the end. 

With this you could cut Officer Colt’s character entirely, in fact I don’t know why both him and Corey are in the film when they seem to fight for the same purpose in the story. His inclusion doesn’t seem to create a rift in any of their relationships outside of mild disdain when he’s first introduced. I genuinely did not know that Colt was officially in the Lightfoot family until the word “stepdad” was used over halfway through the movie. Otherwise I just assumed he was someone who was involved with the family via arresting Barley and had at least a mild romantic interest in his mother. And given the relevance of Wilden and the strength of their prior relationship, that doesn’t paint him in a very positive light at the start. But if you really wanted to keep him, there needed to be a scene that truly solidified that he cared for Ian and Barley. There is very little to suggest what kind of relationship the brothers have with him, other than Colt’s disapproval of Barley’s delinquency, but by the end of the film they’re suddenly on good terms, as if some resolution was made. He doesn’t seem to do much more other than pursue them like a cop would a criminal, and even when Laurel is worried for them, his search still seems to be nothing more than a part of his job, like it was at the start. 

Perhaps he could save them from something while they’re on the quest, like when Barley sacrifices his van to make the rocks fall. Maybe it goes wrong and the rocks falling still puts the brothers in danger, forcing Colt to abandon the other officers to save them. The brothers may be surprised at this, but it would have come from a genuine desire to protect them on Colt’s part. If you really wanted to establish even a bit of a connection with the brothers, he could’ve accompanied them on part of the quest, doing things that only he could do to help them, and perhaps having a chance to hash out their relationship with him along the way. I realize that Colt having difficulties connecting with the brothers is a common stepdad trope, but if he was to have any relevance at all, he needed a reason to be there. Ironically, Corey ends up having more interactions with the boys at the tavern than Colt does for the entire film. Overall I feel like there was a lot of missed potential with Onward, and while the emotional core was there like it always is in Pixar movies, I feel like it got skewed a bit along the way, thus diminishing the final emotional punch at the end. There are some genuinely great parts of this movie, especially Ian’s final character resolution with Barley, but the whole is not greater than the sum of those parts, and that saddens me greatly. I’m not sure how much of this was Disney mandated versus Pixar implemented, but I hope they can get their groove back eventually.

[2towels]

Roll Check [V:LD]

A Voltron: Legendary Defender fic, Klance.

Theme: DnD AU, KlanceWeek2017

Pairings Klance (Keith/Lance)

Rating: Rated E for Everyone, swear warning

Words Total: 2128

Tags: mutual pining, living vicariously through dungeons and dragons characters, dungeons and dragons dating lmao, lots of dialogue

Summary:

"Wait," Keith paused in their conversation, gesturing towards Lance with a loose hand while the other crossed over his chest. "You DM?"

---

Lance reveals a part of his backstory to Keith, who doesn't want to go through with his destiny.

Klance Week 2017 Day 2: Sacrifice

Alternate Title: Shut up and ask him out roll the dice

Read on AO3 (please)

The tense silence ended with Allura's deep breath, signaling the relaxation of everyone around the table. The Galra were reestablished as horrible, but at least they had delivered their bounty and received their reward. That was all they could ask for, with a campaign as long and exhausting as the ones carved by their current dungeon master.

"Thank space it's over." Pidge mourned, standing with a startling screech being made from the chair below her. "Allura's not allowed to DM for at least three Shiro-level campaigns. I'm done."

Shiro blanched. "I'm not doing three campaigns in a row, before any of you ask. My next one isn't ready, so who wants to step up?" He asked, mentally ticking off all he needed to do to properly prepare for the next adventure he had lined up. Without warning, his gaze shifted to Keith expectantly, who immediately tensed.

The reaction wasn't missed by the rest of the group, Allura especially. "Have you written something up, Keith?"

Shiro smiled encouragingly, but Keith didn't seem receptive of the notion. "Sure." The younger brother conceded slowly. "I could...you know." His nose scrunched and he looked back up at the group. There was no nervousness in his tone, but he certainly seemed disinterested.

Lance, from across the table, watched the scrunch of his nose with overt interest.

"Excellent. We'll meet at Shiro and Keith's place, then?" Allura asked for confirmation, folding her partition and stacking books as the rest of the table followed suit with their clean up.

Shiro nodded and answered for them, Keith distracted by his listless gathering of his own character notes. "That sounds fine. We'll text the group chat with any change of plans, but remember guys: we don't provision as well as Coran, so make sure you bring some of your favorite snacks on your own."

Together, Hunk and Lance grumbled, but they were ignored. As the rest of the table stood, Lance wandered off to find Coran, calling for a space juice order for the next week to hold them over. Hunk eyed his friend from behind with a true disdain, unable to fathom his ability to consume the syrupy product.

"Keith, you'll be okay, right?" Shiro asked quietly, glancing at his watch, "You're not too tired to ride?"

He huffed in response, noting the time himself. "I'll be fine, Shiro. I'll see you at home." Despite having so few papers and items to pack up, he took his time pulling on his coat while Shiro left, lingering if only to keep conversation steady with his closest friends while they were all gathered.

"I'm bringing my new documentaries for you next week, Keith. Later!" Pidge and Matt were the next to leave, tending to carpool despite their different living situations, and Allura patiently lingered in her dining room with her stacked books while the remaining guests shuffled around. When Lance wandered back from the kitchen to his awaiting best friend and the shuffling Keith and Allura, he was humming pleasantly and moving to finally gather his things.

Hunk was slightly dismayed at his friend's lingering, tire easy to see in the yawn he released loudly. "Hurry up, Lance." He bemoaned, watching his friend's disorganization.

"I'll give him a ride home." Keith blurted out, "If you want to head out, Hunk."

Lance, weirdly hesitant, flicked his eyes up towards Hunk. A moment passed of silence, and after, Lance's thin shoulders shrugged. "Alright then." Hunk said, a weird emphasis on his words, "I'll see you at home, Lance. Night, Allura! See ya, Keith." He moseyed to the door and tossed a wave over his shoulder, casting another meaningful glance to Lance before exiting fully and shutting the door behind him.

"Well." Allura hummed, "Lance, you know the house as good as any. Lock the door behind you and don't let the cats out. I'm off to sleep."

Keith watched their newly retired dungeon master wander away into the home, flicking the light dimmer off as she passed the switch, and took a deep breath. He was oddly calm, knowing he was being shoved opportunities by the dozens through his friends these days, but he didn't feel the need to follow through with their implications when he was so unsure, truthfully, of what he was doing in this situation. Lance was fine with being left alone, or so he seemed cheerful to pretend so, waving enthusiastically at Allura's retreating back and calling out, "Night, princess!"

A beat passed of Lance finishing his personal item gathering. "So," He said, "Giving me a ride, huh, Mullet?"

Keith bristled in response, feeling the pull of the bait and jumping at it anyway. "Yup. Hunk looked tired, you should stop joking around after games when he's had a bad run. It makes him mope and complain."

"That's just Hunk." Lance laughed, throwing his head back a little, "And he ignores my moping and complaining all the time, so I think that's fair."

"You're admitting you mope and complain constantly, then?" Keith challenged, maneuvering to the door and holding it open for his companion.

A snort came from him as he passed, lingering outside the door so Keith could come out and he could lock it behind them. "Excuse you. I'll admit I'm whiny when you admit you're emo and love that job at Hot Topic."

There was the bait he could actually resist. With a shrug, Keith shut the door behind him and descended the few steps that led from Coran's home to the street. "It pays the bills for now."

"It does not ." Lance gaped, "You love all the dramatic music and spinney racks of gauges and belly rings. That's the only reason you stay."

"You're right." He responded seriously, watching as Lance fiddled with his keys and twisted at the locks quickly. "I can't wait to put my gauges in."

Lance did a double take, not able to discern the tone Keith was using. "You're not getting gauges. Your mullet would get all clogged in the holes." He challenged, stepping down to meet him face to face, "And you would just look more like Red, proving you are a self-insert."

Unable to stop himself from retaliation towards comments on his dungeons and dragons character, Keith huffed, knowing full well his potato chip breath was fanned directly into Lance's general line of scent. He sputtered accordingly while Keith took another half-step closer. "I'm no more Red than you are Azulle." Keith accused, keeping his eyes steady with the finer gaze of his self-proclaimed rival.

Something seemed to shift with Lance in their proximity. "You know," He said, voice a little softer, "I'm actually pretty disappointed Red hasn't proposed yet. That's what you're doing, right? You can't keep me in suspense forever, here, Keithy."

"Don't call me that." Keith's flush was immediate, their positions intensified when he thought of how far he'd gotten in his character's adoration for Lance's. "Red will propose when he's ready."

A soft gasp. "So he will propose?" Lance asked gleefully, face falling as Keith stepped away. "I mean, if that's what Azulle wants, Red would probably know. He's pretty intuitive, like I keep telling you guys." Keith took another deep breath as he headed towards his bike as casually as he could.

Lance fell into step behind him easily. "That's true, but not when it comes to Azulle. Remember when they first kissed? Red has no idea what Azulle wants, like, ever. He just knows he wants to do it. Which is the sweet part." A wistful tone carried into the lankier boy's words, "They just want to make each other happy. What have you got in store for the party without Red next week? No more angsty knife hunt for now, I guess."

Keith turned suddenly, almost bumping into his shadow of a friend and leaning back against his bike to feign casualty again while he spoke. "It's a really basic dungeon. I know I can DM because I used to do it for Shiro and Matt between their competitive complicated backstory campaigns, but I..." A frustrated noise bubbled from his throat, and he was surprised to hear Lance's hum of understanding.

"You don't want to. You're a simple guy, Keith. I like that." In the dim moonlight, there was the smallest hint of color on Lance's cheeks, but he carried on, "Yeah, I always feel like I'm not doing anything right when I DM, so I haven't done it since the group became the whole group, you know? I can only imagine between Shiro's sad shitshow of tragedy and Matt's eternal moral quests that you just don't like to break into those types of stories. Oh, man, especially since you're the follow up to Allura's fallen kingdom story. Damn, that one was good. Did you see me crying an hour ago? I was hoping it wasn't obvious, but man...That was brutal."

"She's really bent on painting the Galra dirty." Keith commented quietly after Lance visibly realized he had rambled a little, shoulders bunching. "But yeah...I'm more so into the actual playing. I know I can do it, but it's not my thing."

Lance shrugged and moved to lean next to Keith on the bike gently. "It is what it is. You'll do fine, especially because Pidge complains the most besides me and she only wants a quest to move forward. You'll definitely meet that criteria if you're a hothead DM as much as you are a player."

"Wait," Keith paused in their conversation, gesturing towards Lance with a loose hand while the other crossed over his chest. "You DM?"

Soft blinking replied, and the dim hint of color came to his cheeks again. "Yeah. Blumfump taught me officially, actually, and I did campaigns with Pidge and Hunk mostly, but that's how I met Plaxum and Swirn and them in the first place." After a quiet second, he added, "I actually saw you, Shiro, and Matt at the Post playing a few years ago...Pidge caught me staring and that's how I met her. Then Blumfump eavesdropped and started forcing all the information about the game on me. Fun times."

"We haven't played at the Post in ages." Keith nodded, remembering back when they used the store-provided resources before they had all the books of their own. Coran had aided their collection, for sure, in the end. "You should DM next week." He said decidedly.

" What ?" An uncharacteristic squeak came to Lance's voice as he glanced fast at Keith's serious expression. "It's your turn, man."

"No. I don't actually have anything ready. Shiro just volunteered me because he knew I can throw things together last minute. You're really good at weaving stuff together, though, and I know you help Allura all the time, even when she isn't realizing it. You DM. We can still do it at my house." Keith explained, crossing his arms a little tighter when he realized the dampness of his palms.

"You don't have to sacrifice your DM moment just because you know I've done it before." The reluctant boy huffed, swinging his leg onto the bike at last, "You might never get a chance again. You know Shiro and Allura keep plots lined up months in advance. Allura would have started another tonight if Pidge hadn't been so salty about her new Dwarven pot."

Keith slid into the space on the bike in front of him, passing a spare helmet Hunk must have left on the handlebars to Lance as he pulled on his own. "I'm not sacrificing anything." He rolled his eyes, unable to fathom the concept of it being such a loss. Almost hesitantly, he added, "We can...do it together, if you want."

"Co-DM?" Lance scoffed but paused as soon as the sound had left him. "Well. Okay."

"Really?" Keith twisted in his seat just as Lance wrapped his arms around him, causing a proximity unprecedented by the physical contact. Realizing the intimacy as soon as it occurred, Lance flinched, but stubbornly did not move his hands from Keith's front. This close, and so focused on the other boy, Keith could clearly see all the color rushing to Lance's cheeks in a rosy bloom. "We can—" He swallowed, realizing his voice was thick and Lance was too close, "We can plan at my house sometime this week if you want."

"You have to let me know when you're not stuck in Emo City." Lance said, slow and quiet. The jab at Keith's job was lost as Keith gave a slight nod and turned again. His hand hovered over both of Lance's on his midsection before he seemed to right himself, feeling the bike rumble to life underneath them and blazing forward to take their new dungeon master home.