#and then how do you condense even one of these books into a movie. much less get the narrative pov accurately

[butchgideonnav]

ngl. i don't know that i'd ever want to see a tlt adaptation. in this day and age i cannot see it being done justice

[physalian]

Pacing your Story (Or, How to Avoid the "Suddenly...!")

Arguably *the* most important lesson all writers need to learn, even for those who don’t give a damn about themes and motifs and a moral soap box: How your story is paced, whether it’s a comic book, a children’s chapter book, a doorstopper, a mini series, a movie, or a full-length season of TV (old school style), pacing is everything.

Pacing determines how long the story *feels* regardless of how long it actually is. It can make a 2 hour movie feel like 90 mins or double the time you’re trapped in your seat.

There’s very little I can say about pacing that hasn’t been said before, but I’m here to condense all that’s out there into a less intimidating mouthful to chew.

So: What is pacing?

Pacing is how a story flows, how quickly or slowly the creator moves through and between scenes, how long they spend on setting, narration, conversation, arguments, internal monologues, fight scenes, journey scenes. It’s also how smoothly tone transitions throughout the story. A fantasy adventure jumping around sporadically between meandering boredom, high-octane combat, humor, grief, and romance is exhausting to read, no matter how much effort you put into your characters.

Anyone who says the following is wrong:

Good pacing is always fast/bad pacing is always slow

Pacing means you are 100% consistent throughout the entire story

It doesn’t matter as much so long as you have a compelling story/characters/lore/etc

Now let me explain why in conveniently numbered points:

1. Pacing is not about consistency, it’s about giving the right amount of time to the right pieces of your story

This is not intuitive and it takes a long time to learn. So let’s look at some examples:

Lord of the Rings: The movies trimmed a *lot* from the books that just weren’t adaptable to screen, namely all the tedious details and quite a bit of the worldbuilding that wasn’t critical to the journey of the Fellowship. That said, with some exceptions, the battles are as long as they need to be, along with every monologue, every battle speech. When Helm’s Deep is raging on, we cut away to Merry and Pippin with the Ents to let ourselves breathe, then dive right back in just before it gets boring.

The Hobbit Trilogy: The exact opposite from LotR, stretching one kids book into 3 massive films, stuffing it full of filler, meandering side quests, pointless exposition, drawing out battles and conflicts to silly extremes, then rushing through the actual desolation of Smaug for… some reason.

Die Hard (cause it’s the Holidays y’all!): The actiony-est of action movies with lots of fisticuffs and guns and explosions still leaves time for our hero to breathe, lick his wounds, and build a relationship with the cop on the ground. We constantly cut between the hero and the villains, all sharing the same radio frequency, constantly antsy about what they know and when they’ll find out the rest, and when they’ll discover the hero’s kryptonite.

2. Make every scene you write do at least two things at once

This is also tricky. Making every scene pull double duty should be left to after you’ve written the first draft, otherwise you’ll never write that first draft. Pulling double duty means that if you’re giving exposition, the scene should also reveal something about the character saying it. If you absolutely must write the boring trip from A to B, give some foreshadowing, some thoughtful insight from one of your characters, a little anecdote along the way.

Develop at least two of the following:

The plot

The backstory

The romance/friendships

The lore

The exposition

The setting

The goals of the cast

Doing this extremely well means your readers won’t have any idea you’re doing it until they go back and read it again. If you have two characters sitting and talking exposition at a table, and then those same two characters doing some important task with filler dialogue to break up the narrative… try combining those two scenes and see what happens.

**This is going to be incredibly difficult if you struggle with making your stories longer. I do not. I constantly need to compress my stories. **

3. Not every scene needs to be crucial to the plot, but every scene must say something

I distinguish plot from story like a square vs a rectangle. Plot is just a piece of the tale you want to tell, and some scenes exist just to be funny, or romantic, or mysterious, plot be damned.

What if you’re writing a character study with very little plot? How do you make sure your story isn’t too slow if 60% of the narrative is introspection?

Avoid repeating information the audience already has, unless a reminder is crucial to understanding the scene

This isn’t 1860 anymore. Every detail must serve a purpose. Keep character and setting descriptions down to absolute need-to-know and spread it out like icing on a cake – enough to coat, but not give you a mouthful of whipped sugar and zero cake.

Avoid describing generic daily routines, unless the existence of said routine is out of ordinary for the character, or will be rudely interrupted by chaos. No one cares about them brushing their teeth and doing their hair.

Make sure your characters move, but not too much. E.g. two characters sitting and talking – do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them gesture, wave, frown, laugh, cross their legs, their arms, shift around to get comfortable, pound the table, roll their eyes, point, shrug, touch their face, their hair, wring their hands, pick at their nails, yawn, stretch, pout, sneer, smirk, click their tongue, clear their throat, sniff/sniffle, tap their fingers/drum, bounce their feet, doodle, fiddle with buttons or jewelry, scratch an itch, touch their weapons/gadgets/phones, check the time, get up and sit back down, move from chair to table top – the list goes on. Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t – what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.

4. Your entire work should not be paced exactly the same

Just like a paragraph should not be filled with sentences of all the same length and syntax. Some beats deserve more or less time than others. Unfortunately, this is unique to every single story and there is no one size fits all.

General guidelines are as follows:

Action scenes should have short paragraphs and lots of movement. Cut all setting details and descriptors, internal monologues, and the like, unless they service the scene.

Journey/travel scenes must pull double or even triple duty. There’s a reason very few movies are marketed as “single take” and those that are don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t matter. See 1917.

Romantic scenes are entirely up to you. Make it a thousand words, make it ten thousand, but you must advance either the romantic tension, actual movement of the characters, conversation, or intimacy of the relationship.

Don’t let your conversations run wild. If they start to veer off course, stop, boil it down to its essentials, and cut the rest.

When transitioning between slow to faster pacing and back again, it’s also not one size fits all. Maybe it being jarring is the point – it’s as sudden for the characters as it is for the reader. With that said, try to keep the “suddenly”s to a minimum.

5. Pacing and tone go hand in hand

This means that, generally speaking, the tone of your scene changes with the speed of the narrative. As stated above, a jarring tonal shift usually brings with it a jarring pacing shift.

A character might get in a car crash while speeding away from an abusive relationship. A character who thinks they’re safe from a pursuer might be rudely and terrifyingly proven wrong. An exhausting chase might finally relent when sanctuary is found. A quiet dinner might quickly turn romantic with a look, or confession. Someone casually cleaning up might discover evidence of a lie, a theft, an intruder and begin to panic.

--

Whatever the case may be, a narrative that is all action all the time suffers from lack of meaningful character moments. A narrative that meanders through the character drama often forgets there is a plot they’re supposed to be following.

[meanbossart]

[gen] Do you regret becoming popular? In the sense that people mischaracterise your character to be a certain way that he isn't? As you develop him as a character, does it ever bother you that people reduce him to a strict set of traits based on earlier representations before that development happened? I'm curious to know your thoughts!

Maybe I'm too forgiving (nah) but little if not nothing of what I see I really qualify as "mischaracterization" - this is a blog, not a consistent work of writing or visual story-telling like a book or a movie. People might see one comic or drawing and assume x and y - and that's totally understandable and fine. The vast, vast majority of people I interact with are more than anything just curious about it and what the """canonical""" counterpart to their interpretation is. And I love that!

Also, I'm no stranger to the ancient practice of condensing a character down to their weirdest traits for the sake of a good punchline. And I love a good punchline, so I don't mind that either. I cackle every time someone describes my huge scarred up dude as "Babygirl" LOL

The only thing that bothers me is when people misunderstanding my intentions with the Orin storyline I concocted and then turn that into assumptions about me personally, but those are rare and far-between.

If there's two things I resent are A) my art was in a very transitional stage when the butt-grab comic got big, so I just wish It looked more in line with my current style 😂 and B) Chatting with people got a lot harder! I feel bad that I don't just reply to every since ask I get, but If I did that's all I would do. And my DMs are pretty much a lost cause.

Otherwise this has been really fun so far, it's been an immensely creatively fulfilling experience and I don't even know how to express how mind-blowing people's support and excitement toward my work has been.

[jilyawards]

The Jily Fandom Rec List 2024 is a compilation of Jily stories our readers want to keep an eye on for this year's awards.

AUGUST

A Matter of Fairness (completed, 3.9k) by @yallthemwitches. Rated E.

James' Quidditch match is derailed by a very distracting Head Girl.

stitch the wound (completed, 15.7k) by @loverscrossmp3. Rated T.

moments on a battlefield and in a home. there are only so many things you can do when in hiding before you begin remembering.

101 Padfoots (completed, 4k) by @tedwardremus. Rated G.

An accident in potions class results in 101 Padfoots running around Hogwarts while Lily and James work together to round them all up

swimming through sick lullabies (completed, 4.7k) by @gigglesandfreckles-hp. Rated T.

“So, I’ve got a question,” James says, leaning forward slightly. Lily nods without looking at him, busying herself with wiping the puddle of water from the condensation of the glass. “If you were meeting Kallus for a date, why’d you bring a book?” She looks up sharply, her cheeks flushing a soft pink. “What?” He smirks, letting his eyes flicker down toward the book in emphasis. “Were you anticipating a rubbish date?”

the dance of mischief and duty (completed, 3.5k) by @gigglesandfreckles-hp. Rated T.

Lily Evans is an infuriating mosaic of traits—beautiful and she knows it, captain of the House Quidditch team, and the loudest voice in nearly any room. She has this way of floating through the school, her laughter ringing out as she moves between corridors and classes, one arm usually slung around Sirius Black’s shoulder and the other gesticulating wildly as she spins tales of misadventure. But she also sort of has a point, and that’s possibly the most infuriating part about her.

the road to reunification is not so smooth (WIP, 10.2k as of 31 August 2024) by wisterial. Rated T.

Other than her persistent guilt and loneliness, Lily Evans is doing perfectly okay. That is, until her friends give her phone number to James Potter, an old schoolmate she would very much like to avoid. If that wasn't enough of a problem, Lily meets a boy in the local library, who appears just as lonely as her, and she begins to realize that he may be the son she gave up for adoption eight years ago. Or: The story of how Lily, James, and Harry reunite, and eventually learn how to be a family (with the help of time, their friends, and a lot of ice cream).

bad day wall (WIP, 14.8k as of 31 August 2024) by apalapucian. Rated M.

lily calls it the bad day wall. it's like this weird communal one-liner diary thing. every time i think i'm over her something happens and it hits me just as stupidly intense as all the other times. i'm SICK of it why can't people just LIKE by default the people they LOVE? why do they have to be separate feelings? it would make things so much less complicated or: in sixth year, lily starts talking to a stranger(?) through messages on a wall. she also befriends james potter. these two things are completely not related.

Guilty as Sin (WIP, 56.7k as of 31 August 2024) by ohevans. Rated E.

This is not sustainable. He cannot keep being so god damn perfect or it’s going to ruin her. It sort of already has, really. Lily Evans is a practical young woman, and having sex dreams about one’s best friend that leave one waking up hot and bothered at 3:32 in the morning is decidedly impractical. Especially when said friend—self-proclaimed early bird—started Mamma Mia! together over facetime at half-past eleven solely because she said she couldn’t sleep, even though he likes to get up early and go on long runs before work. And then she went and fell asleep mid-lyric to Dancing Queen and he sent her a string of text messages and stayed awake long enough to finish the movie, all the while she was passed out on the couch dreaming of his face between her thighs. Again. For the third night in a row. (It would be the eighth, but there was one night she had a stress dream about missing her Eighteenth Century Women’s Lit exam.) This is not sustainable.

Check out the previous months' recs too: January, February, March || April || May || June || July

And don't forget to check out the Jily Week 2024 masterlist!

[asksythe]

Dead languages and maybe Wei Ying is long-lost royalty

Today I had a discussion with @pakhnokh​ regarding why Wei Wuxian didn’t know the deeper layer of meaning behind the Lan forehead band. It was a long discussion on Twitter, so I figured I should just make a post here and leave this information out for anyone who might find it useful. 

To start off: The reason why Wei Ying didn't know the deeper layer of meaning of the Lan forehead band was in the book. But it was written in a very opaque way, in one single throw-away line. In the book, when Wei Ying had to copy the Lan rules, he specifically complained that the rules were written in seal script. 

The Useless Ye Olde’ Script

Seal script is a script that predated traditional Mandarin. It was infamous for being needlessly complex and having dozens, if not hundreds different dialects and writing methods. Some forms of seal script were entirely different languages altogether. When Qin Shi Huang united ancient China, he burned a lot of books and forced people to adopt a standard way to write, thus cementing traditional Mandarin as a singular language that is still used today, 2000 years after. A way to visualize how complex seal script was, is that there were 22 different ways to write the word 'sword'.

That is how mind-bogglingly complex it was. And worse, it was the source of much conflict in ancient times. To explain it simply, it was supposed to be one language. But if people could not even agree on how to write the same word, then how could they agree on more important things and cease warring against each other? 

Language standardization was one of Qin Shi Huang’s greatest achievements, if not the greatest, as it laid the foundation for more peace and eventual unification in later dynasties. 

This topic was made into an Academy Award-nominated movie, Hero by Zhang Yimou in 2002. 

(the word ‘sword’ that Qin Shi Huang decided on, thus wiping out the other 20+ ways to write the same word) 

Dating Mo Dao Zu Shi in real history (or, Wei Ying might actually be long-lost royalty) 

In a very interesting turn of events, MXTX has confirmed in her latest interview in Subaru magazine, that the events of MDZS happened during Wei Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (commonly referred to as the Six Dynasties era by English-speaking historians, even though these two don’t perfectly line up).

Yes, the same Wei 魏 in Wei Ying 魏婴, Wei Wuxian 魏无羡.

So the events in MDZS took place in the era immediately after the fall of the Qin dynasty (caused by Qin Shi Huang’s death and his sons not being able to measure up). Therefore, Wei Ying’s generation is in a time after the language has standardized into a single form. 

The Lan rules, at least the first set and the meaning of the forehead band, were written about 500 years before Wei Ying’s generation, at the founding of House Lan. So that would put it squarely in the pre-Qin, pre-lingual-standardization era. 

So by Wei Ying’s time, the Lan rules were essentially written in a dead, kinda useless, and very very hard-to-read-because-it-has-some-hundred-different-dialect language. 

That’s on top of the fact that it was probably written in the highest level of 书面语 shumianyu (written language) possible. I.e. extremely condensed and truncated (with zero punctuation). 

So the Lan rules are more or less a very thick law book of a different nation written in the strictest, most condensed dead language that is in no way, shape, or form still in practical use for Wei Ying (and most other people not Lan). Do you feel like reading it? I don’t. 

And that is why Wei Ying never figured out the original meaning of the forehead band despite having copied the rules hundreds of times (first day in class, he was already punished and sentenced to copying the rules 100 times by Lan Qiren). 

Because he was just copying the words without really reading them. This was mentioned when Wei Ying asked Lan Wangji the meaning of the Lan forehead band, and Lan Wangji replied with, you have copied the rules so many times and you still don’t know?  

But isn’t Wei Ying really well-read and smart, and what about the Wen book?

1/ Wei Ying is smart and well-read. There was one throw-away line in the book that mentioned his having read all the books available to him in Lotus Pier, and that he had read all kinds of trivia (including the Thousand Sores and Hundred Holes curse that got put on Jin Zixun). But it was also stated that he favored practical things or things that interested him. Lan rules in dead, extremely hard to read language are… well… yeah…

There was never any mention in canon where he remembered specific Lan rules unless it was literally beaten into him by teenage Lan Wangji.

2/ In the novel, the Lan rules are singled out as the only materials written in seal script. The Wen books were standard issued to everyone who took part in the Wen education camp. So the chance that it was written in seal script is low to none.  

Wei Ying is not the only person who doesn’t know the meaning of the Lan forehead band

Jiang Cheng didn't know either. Jin Ling didn't know either. During the Wen archery competition, when Wei Ying pulled off Lan Wangji's forehead band, he did ask Jiang Cheng what the hell was that, when Lan Wangji and other Lan members reacted like he did something shameful. Jiang Cheng replied with, how the hell would I know? Their house has so many rules. Just stop poking them. 

Jin Ling didn't know until the other Lan teenagers told him. The only characters who know this in canon are all members of Lan house. The impression that Wei Ying is the only one who doesn't know is 100 percent fanon. Keep in mind both Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling are clan heirs, so their education and knowledge of other houses absolutely are not low. 

In fact, the novel specifically shows that.....the rest of the cultivation world is not that clear on the actual specifics of Lan rules either. This is shown when Jin Zixun pressured Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji into drinking wine, a clear violation of Lan rules, and the rest of the cultivators in the banquet cheered him on.

 These cultivators were also heads of Houses or very high-ranking members. Many of them would have studied in Cloud Recess. So again, people who have high education… still know shit all about the actual specifics of Lan rules beyond a vague, general monk-like impression.

About the only other person aside from Wei Ying (and Lan members) who knew the specific rule that Lans do not drink in that banquet was Jin Guangyao, a character whose trademark is high intelligence and extreme social savvy (plus having roomed with Lan Xichen and taken care of him for unknown amount of time right before the Sunshot campaign)

Are there secret parts of the Lan rules?  

No. The Lan rules are public. The book is very clear on this. All Lan rules are carved into a massive stone placed at the foot of the mountain where Cloud Recess is, where anyone passing through or coming into House Lan can see it. 

This rule stone was first mentioned when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian met for the first time. Wei Ying complained that he didn’t know the rules and why are there so many things forbidden in the Lan rules? Lan Wangji replied with, rules are written on the stone. Go read it yourself. 

The second time it was mentioned in the book, was Lan Qiren’s first class. The first thing he did was complained that even with the stone and rules being in open space, nobody bothered to read. So he will read the rules now. 

The book mentioned at least two different sets of Lan rules that both need to be obeyed: 礼则篇 Lize Pian (Book of Rites) 上义篇 Shang Yi Pian (Book of Justice). Whether the rules are separated further into more sets or not is unknown. 

Why are some Lan rules better known than others? 

Because Lan rules are based on 克己復禮 Keji Fuli, a real-life Confucius asceticism that calls for the restraint/purge of one’s ego and to return to the core rites. This is also newly confirmed in MXTX’s new interview, though it has been more or less heavily suggested in the book itself, with House Lan being known as the House of Gentlemen. 

Gentlemen here is not the Western ideal of Gentlemen, but rather a Confucius ideal and set of values. Confucius is the person who created this ideal in the first place. 

So it’s not that some rules are better known, but rather the entire image of Lan House is a huge pointer as to how they live their life: with great restraint. 

[heybiji]

hi i found your page cause of your Masks art!!

imma be running a game of masks and was wondering if you have any tips

Oh hello! Very cool you're gonna run a MASKS game, it can be a lot of fun!

I'm not sure how helpful my advice will be since I'm still learning and am not sure how well I actually run the game haha, but for starters there's a whole lot of great advice on Reddit that will help with the mechanics and the structure of the game. In my opinion, the Principles section in the GM part of the core book is critical and succinct and is great advice for running ttrpgs in general.

my top advice is:

"We play to get the next issue picked up!"

Play the game like we want people to buy the next issue and not put the series down! Take chances! Make big choices! Make it interesting! Be bold!!

other things:

Theme. Establish the themes of your story early on. This will help you understand how the world and story should respond to the PCs. And make the themes interesting to you! For example, beyond the general coming-of-age story themes already built into the character arcs, I lean heavily into the concepts of fame, celebrity, and the 24-hour news cycle. And all the things that were going on in the early 2000s.

Be a Fan of the PCs. This is my favorite rule from The Principles. Make sure all your players soak this rule in. The MASKS mechanics mean characters will often make less-than-optimal decisions, so players must feel supported in their character choices. You should be a fan of the characters, and so should your players! They should want to help bring out every character's arc, not just their own.

Treating Human Life as Meaningful is what Makes Threats Real. This is another principle, but yeah, make the world's NPCs feel like they matter, and that will make the world worth protecting. Treat them as people. Give everyone Drives, not just your Villains. Mentally treating even non-villain NPCs as having Conditions can do a lot to help with characterization.

Condense. Condense your world, your NPCs, make the world feel smaller. In our game, for example, having the Protege's mentor also be the same superhero who saved the Delinquent years ago was a great decision.

Playlists. I have a bunch of different playlists for the campaign, from a big one of music of the time (our game is set in 2004) to playlists for important NPCs, to playlists I asked my players to curate for their characters. Music inspires me a bunch, a song can help create a villain for me, and I also like choosing a different "ending" song for every episode based on whatever happened.

Stories. Okay, here's the thing. I don't really care much for superhero stories. Why did I choose to run MASKS, you ask? Because of the emotion-based mechanics. That's my shit. But anyway, I don't take in much superhero media... But I do LOVE movies and television and stories in general, and I think taking in a lot of "short stories" is helpful to develop an instinct on how to pace a story, make a character or moment memorable, etc. And because MASKS has an episodic nature, this is extremely important! The sheer amount of movies I've watched has helped me a whole bunch, since they have to get the Beginning, Middle, and End done within such a short time frame.

Don't Wait. This is an instinct I've picked up from some of my favorite media. Don't wait for The big important moment. Make a lot of big important moments, and make the characters have to make a lot of important choices, and keep the momentum going. Paint yourself into a corner and then force yourself to think of ways out! It makes the story more interesting. (this may not apply to everyone, I get this kind of mindset from shows like Breaking Bad and Succession, which for your story could be too much haha)

Everyone Works. Okay, I am not a benevolent, sweet GM, I will not smile with tears in my eyes and quietly work away and accept that without complaint. no way. I make my players help me a lot. I'm gonna whine. Guys I'm doing so much work! Guys this is hard! Weeehhh! MAKE THEM HELP YOU. RUNNING A GAME IS SOOOOO MUCH WORK OH MY GOD IT'S SOOOOOO MUCH WORK!!! Ask them to take notes! Ask them to treat the world with sincerity! Ask them to make NPCs! Ask them to play NPCs! Ask them to help fill out the world! Ask them to tell you what their character wants to do next so you have extra time to consider it! Ask them to make playlists for their characters to help you figure out how to engage with them! Don't let them just show up on playday!! I'm a "you get what you give" kind of GM. You're a player too and you deserve to enjoy the game as well, and having the other players help you helps a BUNCH. PUT THEM TO WORK.

what else. uh. visuals help a lot with engagement so i subscribed to a bunch of modern battlemap patreons. i run using Foundry which lists the rules upon every roll which is great for me, someone with horrid memory. if you're lucky and favored by god, you'll have a benevolent player that will be the scribe for your sessions and log everything down so they can be referred back to (again, great for someone like me with a horrid memory). remember to give focus to the PC's out-of-costume lives as well. make NPCs in response to your PCs (superheroes, villains, touch on something of a PC in the creation process). be silly. be serious. be sincere.

i'm still figuring out how to run the game, maybe i'll have better advice on a later day, but i hope this can help some! sorry this is longwinded and more a stream of consciousness than it is succinct.

[more-than-tender-curiosity]

What Gatsby musical do you think is best?

The Great Gatsby : A New Musical

Gatsby : An American Myth

And depending on which you pick, why did you choose that one?

I have been outspoken in my criticism of The Great Gatsby: A New Musical to the point where it's kind of marked me as an asshole to fans of said musical, but I'm not backing down. Read my opinions boy

No, but seriously. Let me begin by saying that I came to this point already worn down by so many heartless, obnoxious, cash-grabby adaptations of prior works (Mean Girls, Beetlejuice, Heathers, etc) that bank almost entirely on nostalgia and spectacle and, in some cases, the unknowing of their YOUNG target audience, in order to blind said audience into just calling the music a bop and moving on.

And I'm tired of it. Yes, I'm aware musical theater has always run on adaptations—Chicago and Little Shop of Horrors are among some of my favorites! But I approach every single adaptation of ANYTHING with the same baseline question: is this adaptation justified?

You could take the very moderate opinion of "having more musicals to listen to is a good thing!" but I think that's naive, and falling right into the trap set by creators who are only here for Lin Manuel-level Tony's and that's it. There's no dedication to actually making something new with something already established. Nothing transformative. It's lazy.

That's what I mean by 'is this adaptation justified'. Does the adaptation in question engage with the source material in a way that refreshes it, dives deeper into it, and takes advantage of the new method of storytelling (in this case, from book to stage musical) to showcase how the new method of storytelling benefits the source material? Like in the case of Little Shop of Horrors, it uses satire to highlight deeper issues that are barely skated across in the source material while also pulling forth factors of the source material that were more relevant at the time when it was released.

I for one am exhausted by adaptations at this point. It's always been a backbone of musical theater but now, even outside of theater, we are awash in them. it's been said before that pretty much everything you see now is a remake or an adaptation or a sequel or a prequel or a cinematic universe or something derivative, and that tends to punch down on the smaller, more creative, original ideas that might've flourished if the market wasn't oversaturated with mass-produced corporatized shiny flashy garbage.

This is where the two Gatsby musicals come in.

If you're here, you know that I...dedicate a lot of time to this novel. I could have gone to college and got a degree with the time I have spent on this novel and its study. Unraveling every single sentence, every character motivation, every real life factor that plays in to Fitz's writing of the novel—every draft, every movie adaptation. The entire history of this novel and its creation is carved into the inside of my skull.

Now, one thing you should know about gatsby is that Fitz wrote it when he was just coming off the massive failure of his play The Vegetable. That's not the full title, but I'm not going to bother typing out the rest of it. Because it was bad. It was not good. No one liked it. So, naturally, Fitz wanted to improve on his playwriting skills. Up until then, he was good at short stories and he was good at long, descriptive novels, but he couldn't quite understand how to condense and reformat his novel-writing style into something more like a stageplay.

Gatsby was sort of his attempt. You'll note that Gatsby is only 47,043 or so words, which is less than half of most of his other novels. The action and dialogue are snappy. There is, shockingly enough, less purple prose than prior releases (in spite of Nick spending 23984798347928374 words, approximately, to describe his new neighbor's smile). Scott was trying desperately to pare down his writing and see if he could slowly shift his formatting toward something that could translate to the stage.

Many of you know that The Great Gatsby was a total major uber flop.

There went his dreams of making this a play. And there have been many attempts since, all with very limited success, because for the most part, there is a total lack of understanding concerning what makes this novel a novel instead of play material. All too many times, there has been a disconnect as to what would translate effectively onto the stage as it is written in the book, like the themes of being dazzled by a spectacle but not, as displayed in the novel, the downside of such a thing.

As I said. All too often, there is too little thought given to the advantages of adapting a written work to musical theater. This leads to much of the deeper shades of the story being left to the wayside in favor of shallow spectacle just to keep the masses entertained without actually translating the stunning symbolism and figurative work Fitz put on the page.

This is what happened to The Great Gatsby: A New Musical. They took the most barebones understanding that most viewers would have of the story (that it's a love story, just like Romeo and Juliet!—side-eye), and made everything as loud and as fast and as bright as they could to make up for any lack of exploration beyond what is very plainly written on the page.

This does not work with The Great Gatsby.

I've mourned the gooberfication of Nick Carraway before. I love the 2013 film, as I'm sure many do because it was many of our first experiences with any Gatsby adaptation, but you can see it with Tobey Maguire and you can see it here in The Great Gatsby: A New Musical. So many times I see people call him an unreliable narrator but it's very clear they don't understand exactly why he's unreliable.

This 'gooberfication' I speak of is Nick's attempt to convince us that he's the innocent one here, in every single situation, and everyone around him is a liar and he's always telling the truth so you can trust him. He's the only honest person he's ever known.

Red flag central.

So from that line alone, you have to understand that everything Nick says or does, leaves in or leaves out, is suspect. He's out of his element in New York but he is absolutely not some baby-cheeked little goober who is SO TOTALLY BLINDED by his infatuation with Gatsby that he's just willing to go along with everything and doesn't pass judgment. We joke "Nick says he doesn't judge anyone then proceeds to judge everyone in the novel!" Yeah, no shit. That's the thing. He is a hypocrite made only lesser by the way he plays up the evils of everyone around him, and that's how he gets by. That's how he sleeps at night.

You can cast that into whatever light you like, whether it's the hypocrisy of saying he's so poor when he's living in at LEAST a two bedroom cottage with a maid and modern appliances and his dad is paying for a full YEAR of his life after paying his way through an Ivy League school. Or you could say he does this to throw suspicion off himself and possibly his sexuality, which is a whole can of worms involving Fitzgerald's constant projection onto his characters that I cannot bear to crack open.

Point being, Nick isn't just the passive bystander in all of these situations. He makes it sound like he is, like he's just doing favors for people who are worse than him, and how he disapproves of even everything Gatsby does despite his evident fascination with the man, but at the end of the day, he's just passing the buck. Washing his hands clean. There are so many clues in the book to this sort of thing that should tip you off to the fact that Nick Carraway is not just some silly sweet guy who gets swept up into a life of chaos and crime just to come out cynical. He was already a judgemental, cynical individual who was forced to come all too close to the realization that he, too, is more 'one of them' than he can bear to admit—even in spite of how he attempts to obscure his own hypocrisy.

Nick is not innocent. No one in this book is (besides Pammy, though she's a ticking time bomb if we're meant to understand the wealth she will inherit). That's the whole point of the fucking book. There are a thousand hands each pushing a tiny bit to keep these impossible shades of class division moving, and condemning one person (like Nick does with Daisy or Tom) doesn't solve the problem. Jay still dies. The American dream is still a nightmare. Nick still has a father to fall back on.

Which is why it's so impossibly perplexing to me to display Nick as some sort of lapdog who just seems honored to spend time with these people. Why Jay is just some quirked up white boy who is, quite literally, just too quirky and obnoxious to bear. He and Daisy are so in love and they're so close to each other and isn't it just tooooo saddd to bearrrr?? So romantic????

There's nothing deeper to it. No asking why Fitz wrote any of these characters the way he did. No understanding of the deeper implications of what he was trying so desperately to convey, on both a social and personal level. Yes, it's a love story, but it's also a commentary on just how fucked everyone is by the cages of tradition.

And there is just no trace of that in the Broadway musical. Everything is simple and easily digestible. There is no deeper interaction with the source material, no drive to have produced it at all except, perhaps, to cash in on the new public domain. They got the biggest names they could with the biggest cult followings, knowing so many would just eat it right up and call each song a bop and it would trend on tiktok and they might get a tony and then they'd move on. No integrity. No passion. No justification.

Gatsby: An American Myth is much the opposite.

After hearing a Totally Legal version of the Broadway musical, I was terrified of what ART would do to this book. Now that I had seen just how fearfully easy it was to just slap some 'art deco' and glitter on the stage, write a painfully obvious love song, and move on, I was really concerned that this trend of bloodless, toothless adaptations would continue and I'd have to sigh and move on with my life.

Fortunately, everything I mentioned that bothered me about the Broadway musical is set right in Gatsby: An American Myth. I really should have expected nothing less from Florence Welch in terms of the music (which is, of course, one of the most show-stopping elements of the musical, as it should be) considering her prior works and how they relate to the Great Gatsby. This is someone who has been obsessed with the book longer than I have been and has woven it into so much of her body of work that I'm surprised this musical didn't drop the day it became public domain. I cannot think of a better contemporary musician to handle that facet of a Gatsby musical.

This adaptation itself does exactly what I would have hoped. I am, of course, someone who holds the book and all its drafts to a very high regard—if this is a religion, that's my bible. What's in there, goes, though it's open to interpretation. Typically I would be against adding things at all.

What they added, however, was brilliant. Nothing massive—just, again, ways to take advantage of the musical theater method of production, and ways to modernize and acknowledge more contemporary understandings of the source material. Where the Broadway musical carefully tiptoed around any indication that nick was anything other than straight and in love with Jordan Baker, Gatsby: An American Myth leaned right into the idea that he was made an outsider by his sexuality, and that was part of why he related to Jay so hard. Because otherwise, why would he? He's a middle-to-upper-middle class Midwesterner whose father is paying for a year of his life while he works a little for-fun job in the big city. What does he know about being an outsider?

Gatsby: An American Myth shows you that. Shows how everyone is an outsider to each other in this story, and how individualism destroys a community that would otherwise support you. You can take that on a society-wide level or personal: Jay being totally disconnected from even himself, or the wealthy pretending they don't live on the same planet as the poor.

Another miraculous addition was a sort of bridge between Myrtle and Wilson that just makes sense. I don't want to spoil it too much, but everything they added or rearranged or re-highlighted just goes to display the depth and breadth this story really reaches. They read between every line, proudly displayed the complexity of every single situation and character—how all of them are the victim and all of them are the perpetrator—while STILL making it sound fantastic in my opinion.

It's by no means a flawless work and I saw it early on its production. It's changed since then and obviously I haven't been able to hear it since I saw it live, but I have total faith in the creative team to have not completely thrown away their good intentions in favor of trending on tiktok.

To conclude I would just ask anyone reading to please inspect the media you consume. Inspect the motives of the person feeding it to you. There's not really any sort of Nobility to art, but at this point, with so many shallow attempts to cash in on our desperate search for community and contentment, quality and passion have been thrown out the window. Shoveling this hot shit at us day and night (remakes, sequels, prequels, adaptations) has become another tool of capitalism to keep us just satisfied to not ask for more.

Ask for more. Ask for better. You deserve it.

[hwajin]

#! — 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠

boyfriend stuff during spring!! since it's finallyyyy getting warmer where i live hehe

genre: fluff

pairing: skz x gn!reader

warnings: mentions of food, veryyy soft in general tho <3

ᴄʜᴀɴ

the australian in him longs for warm weather so when it finally starts getting sunnier and the remainings of snow melt away he's outside with you as much as he can! doing nothing in particular as well - he simply loves being out, even if that only means booking an outdoor seat at some café he's invited you to. loveslovesloves taking you on rides as well! he'd pick you up right before sunset, loving how set sun would set later and later with each day, enjoying ever added minute of daytime he can possibly get with you, and would drive around remote field paths or forest clearings to find a spot perfect for sunset watching. would have snacks and drinks prepared, a couple blankets and pillows to throw into the trunk to get comfortable in it.

ʟɪɴᴏ

bro takes you camping even if you hate it 😭. it'll either be a bet or another form of luring you into it, and you're so reluctant to go he has to console you all the way there. like argues that camping during spring especially is PERFECT because it's not too hot or cold, you have some alone time away from everyone, you'll be closer to nature, can enjoy a nice campfire by night and he's so enthusiastic about it all that you can't help but be infected slightly by it (though you obv wouldn't give into his words, arguing back and forth that you can all those things on a different type of vacation.) you'll end up enjoying it though, especially since it's him you're with — you won't have to do much cooking or prepping or bedmaking, even — he knows you're with him not out of full free will so he'll silently (without rlly admitting) takes over everything to make your stay a bit more pleasant. and admittedly, watching the sunset and the following sky if stars with him has a certain satisfaction to it.

ᴄʜᴀɴɢʙɪɴ

he's a romantic so the moment the weather hits anything above 15 degrees celcius he dragssss you outside for good old typical couple stuff. will plan picknicks even though the grass is still damp with condensation and will invite you for ice cream even though you're not yet craving it due to lack of actual warmth but he's just so excited the weather is getting warmer and you can finally do stuff aside from watching movies at home :((. will sulk for days on end when the weather suddenly gets super rainy or super cold again, which you'd have to take into your own hands to cheer him up again - cooking for him or inviting him out for dinner, or simply dragging him outside while it's pouring rain because he can't stop pouting over not being able to go outside - which is all but wrong, and as silly as it'd be you'd end up laughing about getting soaked and cheesily kissing in the rain.

ʜʏᴜɴᴊɪɴ

another romantic candidate though he's less motivated himself if the weather is colder than expected. he loves, however, whenever the sun comes out, even for a little bit - will want to be outside, even if only sitting on a park bench, letting your faces sun bathe while thick coats still kept your bodies from shivering to death. he'd love walks so much too!! would love to explore all sorts of new places by walking around unknown city parts and areas, ocassionally sitting down in restaurants or cafés if they're accustomed to both your liking. you'd talk about everything and nothing, or would sometimes not talk at all - simply sit in silence while he'd unpack his notebook and pencil, doodling you and everything around him to memorize the day.

ᴊɪsᴜɴɢ

is a homebody even when warmer weather comes around so you'd have to be one dragging the man outside 😫. even convincing him for a walk is a task not easily handled, though he wouldn't be able to say to you on the long run if you'd nag at him for the remaining day until he'd actually agree to walk a round or two with you around the neighbourhood (you'd love to walk a bit more, though you'd decide to not let him suffer for much longer.) you'd spend a bunch of evenings outside simply watching the sunset together because you both love how late they are getting and how much longer you can stay up and still see that darkness hasn't yet occupied the night.

ғᴇʟɪx

starts buying SO many fruits you have to use half of them to bake something for them to not grow moldy omg. like he loves how seasonal fruits are finally cheaper and way more delicious, tasting all the more natural and fitting to spring. starts baking strawberry cakes like every other weekend because he loves bringing it to picknicks you'd plan whenever the weather is warm enough and loves that you love it just as much as the other stuff he bakes :(. would DRAG you to some lake or a public swimming pool the moment it gets a tad warmer because he loves to be in the water when the sun hits the earth in hotter temperatures (it's be way too cold still, but somehow none of you would mind much if it was the two of you together.)

sᴇᴜɴɢᴍɪɴ

he's a determined and hard working boy but i feel like he'd LOVEEE to lazy around in bed in the morning with you, listening to those morning birds that only ever start singing when spring comes around. in general gets so much lazier with you, like he loves basking in the sun when it's out and shining warmly, not thinking of possible assignments or duties — loves just enjoying the starts of spring and early summer with you. is so excited whenever you go to a lake or someplace similar, runs around teasing you, splashing water even though it's freezing still and you end up soaked and falling sick probably but you'd do it all again </3.

ᴊᴇᴏɴɢɪɴ

mall dates all day every day!! he looooves shopping for new clothes that he can wear in warmer weather, especially with you!! loves getting fashion advice from you and giving out some himself, enjoying the teasing you'd confine into. you'd play a game of picking out outfits for the other, purposefully chosing outrageous ones and laughing about it when the other stepped out of the changing room, taking pictures to remember how silly each of you looked. would end up buying a couple matching sets (those that look cool together and not all cringy) and would wear both fits to the next date, be it going out for ice cream or seeing a movie and enjoying how after stepping out of the theater the sun would still not be fully set.

@leihey @happycandynoelle @hyvndee @cotccotc @etherealeeknow @linoskitty @unexceptional-h @rseanne @es-kay-zee @urcracksisx @jeyelleohe @yunkiwii @etheralsung @nyrasneedy @seochhj @spidercomics @chans-starlight @angelwonie @lix-ables @yvniek4ng @ppiri-bahng @sstarryreads @svintsandghosts @bokjaz @llunapastell @sensitiveandhungry @minniesvenus

[bloody-pony]

What I say: a book-accurate adaption of Blood Meridian into film is very much possible. Due to BM's age, published in 1985, it has accumulated nearly 4 decades' worth of interpretation, discussed and analysed in academia and in the wider public sphere. One need only, for example, search for the novel on Spotify, and they’ll be met with a wealth of playlists and albums showcasing the vastly different lenses BM's readers have applied to the novel (a personal favourite of mine is Hellenica's sythensizer-spaghetti soundtrack). This goldmine of art, writing and music, not to mention McCarthy's own prose and dialogue, should make it ridiculously easy for any director to produce a halfway acceptable film that, by and large, ought to largely appease its long-awaiting fanbase.

Most detractors for a BM film cite the novel's extreme violence, but this, imo, is the easiest part to render for the silver screen. Full Metal Jacket and Apocolypse Now prove compelling showcases of the disorganised-organised chaos of war and the violence it wroughts in the hearts of its participants, with no short supply of dark humour, and even The Passion of the Christ portrays human cruelty and suffering with unflinching affect (see Acolytes of Horror's YT video). However, as is the curse of all adaptations of grand novels into grand films *gestures to Villeneuve’s Dune series*, it will never wholly meet the expectations of its hardcore readership, because novels (but especially in BM’s case) rely so heavily—by design—on the imagination of its audience. This is a work where the sun rises "out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus", and where "little devils with their pitchforks" are thought to skitter along the mouths of volcanoes, not to mention the immortal, 7ft tall, 150kg hairless albino who traipses the pulsing red horizon in search of souls to recruit for his plight of perpetual war. How, then, can a film best capture the mythopoetic haze that stains the sands of BM? It's doable, sure (see certain shots from Ken Russell's Altered States or Tarsem Singh's The Fall for the general vibe I'm trying to get at), but like with any calamitous attempt at adapting Homer's Odyssey (not including the 1968 mini series <3), how do you make a myth concrete without clipping its wings?

Like I mentioned earlier, I think the recent Dune films (another book series that, in the wake of Lynch's 1984 adaption, was likewise once considered too dense and rich for film) have opened people up more to the idea of a BM movie, or even a whole franchise (there's certainly enough material to go around, personally I'd enjoy a duology), some may make the mistake in wanting a literal, line for line, act for act, page to screen adaptation. And, yes, thanks to McCarthy's command of plot and prose, he certainly provides material, and with a few edits here and there made for time (*cough cough* James Robert Bell/the imbecile *cough cough*), it can surely be shaped into a 20-hour masterpiece—which I would definitely enjoy—but, nevertheless, a literal adaptation still runs the assured risk of losing that blood-red shroud of mysticsm which makes the world of Blood Meridian so intoxicating. A literal adaptation would reduce it to solely a Western, but, to me, it is placed better as a Thriller (my mind always goes to Harry Powell as Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter whenever I imagine the judge's speeches) or an Epic (see Aguirre, the Wrath of God) or, even better, a Horror (like Come and See). In a way, though, Blood Meridian is so vast, so fantastical, that filming it in the desert, with an endless budget to spend on fake blood and stunt horses might, strangely, prompt other failings. It's partly why I personally would rather see it not expanded but condensed, confined and made abstract, forced into sets like the kind Eiko Ishioka designed for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters or Joel Coen's stark and foggy sets on Macbeth. Music is another tricky thing. The only person I feel could do proper justice with BM's score would be Ennio Morricone (RIP), but Johnny Greenwood is a close second, then again I'm also tempted to suggest no score at all, like with No Country for Old Men. Tarrantino's playing of 'Apple Blossom' by The White Stripes during The Hateful Eight is an interesting way of evoking theme while not adhering to a film's time period, but it's only used best in small doses.

Considering half of BM's dialogue is in Spanish, though it would be marketing suicide, it would be cool if they didn't provide subtitles during the Spanish conversations in the film, keeping in line with how non-Spanish speakers likely felt when reading the book.

Of course, we haven't even touched on the subject of the kid. A big part of the novel is how McCarthy never lets us properly gauge the extent of the kid's participation in the Glanton Gang's slaughter and debauchery. He's no angel, certainly, but his heinousness is only determined by us, the reader. A film may feel compelled to flesh the kid out in ways that undo the intentions of the novel, marketing him as sympathetic or relatable in ways that threaten BM's basis of having no likeable (or even knowable) characters. He is a blank slate that shuffles from bar to brawl, apathetic but not passive and borderline suicidal. He has few defining traits other than his dark humour and his proclivity for mindless violence which he's harboured since birth. The kid is not Paul Atreides or Luke Skywalker, nor is he Holden Caulfield or Arthur Morgan, and if he ever met any of them, he'd either tell them to fuck off or shoot them, or both. He's hardly blockbuster material.

Of course, I'd still love to see the kid portrayed on film. Casting and marketing is another area worth considering for Blood Meridian, as I am of the opinion there should be few, if any known actors cast to play the Glanton Gang. The kid, especially, should be played by a Tennessean random, to keep in line with his anonymity as a character. Glenn Fleshler would absolutely kill it as Judge Holden, going off his performance in season 1 of True Detective. I don't know why, but I always envisioned Tobin as Andy Serkis, but he's probably still far too young for the role. Whoever they'd cast, I don't want to see a single set of veneers or drop of botox. Role them in dirt if you have to, I don't care. I don't want a single member of the Glanton Gang to look like they know what Ozempic is, and cast as many Native American actors and Mexican actors as possible.

Given BM's violence and characters, I worry for the kind of audience it'll attract, media literacy being what it is these days (*gestures at the hundreds of Judge Holden edits all wildly missing the point of his "Before man was, war waited for him" speech*). With the marketing, I take issue with casts of serious films and shows doing dumb promotional content, like those Buzzfeed puppy interviews. Considering the tough subject matter of Blood Meridian, I don't see why they'd need to do anything more involved than simple, respectful interviews and panels.

In the end, Blood Meridian can obviously be made into a film and it looks like we're finally getting one, whether we like it or not. But just because you can doesn't mean you always should, and though I can't say I won't be the first in line to watch, I also can't promise it won't be without obscenely high expectations. Every director is different, and though John Hillcoat's track record with McCarthy adaptations hasn't proved all that inspiring, I am nevertheless pleased to be seeing another person's interpretation of a novel that has captured by every waking moment ever since I read it over a year ago.

What I want to say: Blood Meridian should be a ballet/dance with little to no plot à la Ravel's Boléro or Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (and mayyybe Akram Khan’s Giselle)

[booktomoviebrawl]

We are not judging how bad the movie is, we are judging which adapted the book the worst. There are good movies that are bad adaptions.

Propaganda below the cut (spoilers may apply)

Persuasion (2022):

They massacred my girl!! That is not Anne Elliot!! The whole point is that she's beaten down and thinks she's missed her chance at happiness and is bullied by her family, not making mean and snarky nods to the camera :( They completely missed the whole point of the dynamic and it's SICKENING! They also cut Mrs Smith who is arguably one of the most important characters as she highlights Anne's lack of focus on title and rank and her family's comparative obsession with it + it's only through her that Anne learns about Mr Elliot's true nasty nature. Also they cut the 'I am half agony, half hope' line from Wentworth's letter at the end so what's even the POINT of adapting it if you don't have that!! Oh my god!! My poor favourite Austen novel :( (I do want to make it very very clear that my issues with the movie come from the writing and adaptation and not in any way from the race blind casting. The casting is superb and I'm genuinely so disappointed that they got such a bad adaptation bc so many of the cast are literally perfect)

Where do I even start? They tried to 'modernize' both the protagonist and the love story and managed to take out everything that made it good in the first place. Anne Elliot in the novel is quiet and good and helpful, full of regret. In the movie, she constantly turns to the audience to mock everyone around her, feeling so much better than everyone, to the point where nobody understands why Captain Wentworth would still be in love with her, or have fallen in love with her in the first place. Eight years before the plot starts, she broker her engagement to him because she was persuaded by a family friend that it was a bad idea. No way would movie!Anne have let herself be persuaded. They just tried to do a Fleabag/Emma type of thing without understanding what made either the novel or those two things work and thereby ruined it completely

Whoever made this didn't understand the point of the novel at all. They completely screwed up the character of Anne Elliot (the protagonist), which in turn screws the rest of the movie, as the original story only works because Anne is the way she is. Also, it's a period piece but the characters are talking in modern slang the entire time. And not in a clever way but in a very cringey one. If Jane Austen knew, she'd probably turn in her grave, and rightfully so.

Legend of the Guardians: Owls of Ga'hoole:

While the animation is gorgeous, it unfortunately condenses basically the entire series into one movie which makes for a very rushed end product that misses a lot of the best moments and characters of the series

While I do enjoy the movie, it acts less as an adaptation, per-se, and more of a... *reimagining* of the books which it's based on. Quite a few plot points, settings, and characters are either cut out or merged, at least a few characters were created specifically for the movie, characters' personalities and relationships are notably altered from the books, characters and ideas are explicitly introduced significantly earlier in the movie than they were in the series, in part because of their merger with other characters and factions... one particular plot point that has always stood out to me was Soren and Eglantine reuniting with their parents at the end of the movie, while in the books they were killed before the events of the third book (which was the final one being adapted, so to speak, by the movie), having been murdered by their third and eldest child, Kludd. This is all putting aside my own personal gripes about character design choices and species alterations between the books and movies, which were presumably more stylistic choices than anything - The Guardians of Ga'Hoole wiki's page for the movie actually has a whole section dedicated to noting the differences between the books and film. I do truly believe that Legend of the Guardians is a worthwhile movie both for fans of the books and those who have never read them, but it is best treated as a standalone reimagining of the story, rather than an adaptation.

They attempted to squash the plots of a 20+ book series into a single movie. It did not make for a cohesive or compelling plot. Ruining any possibility of creating a sequel. Also messed up the worldbuilding.

Different villainous groups were merged completely undermining the commentary the books were trying to make.

Showed information/backstory reveals that was supposed to be revealed later in the series, robbing it of any mystery or significance. The audience was not given a reason to care.

Warped the characterisation of one of the protagonists from contemplative and philosophical to a fool who makes lame jokes.

[krissielee]

I was one of the people who was doubting nicks and taylors chemistry 😭 I changed my opinion after few clips that prime dropped before the movie and I really enjoyed the movie and only read the book after watching it. I do think it's fine the way it is I just wish we got to see henry and alex communicate before alex did his speech but other than that I enjoyed it and it's fun to rewatch 🫶 also I hope you feel lots better so soon and thank you for answering 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

See, I never understood the no chemistry allegations, but the second we started getting clips and stuff it was like ... how can people still say that? Even now I've seen some people say they have no chemistry! It's nuts! Knowing how much effort Matthew put into finding the perfect Alex, how can we think he wouldn't have recast Nick if there hadn't been chemistry from the start??? We got the perfect cast, as far as I'm concerned.

But also the changes. Sorry, June is NOT essential to the story. I love her and I miss her, but she is not needed to make the story move forward. Her character can easily be bundled with Nora's to get the same results. Same with Raf--he's easily my favorite side character but he's not the reason the story plays out as it does. And while Leo is great (Casey said they imagined Stanley Tucci playing him and that would've been the Greatest Thing Ever), this Alex is already older than the book and being a child of divorce isn't as crucial to his development, especially with the added emphasis on race in the States.

I can see why the changes are hard to swallow, but I say this as someone who almost always complains about changes (seriously--@machtaholic has listened to me complain about every movie adaptation since the beginning of time and how details are different, and yes I'm still thinking about Tristran's ear in Stardust), but weirdly, in this ... they don't bother me. It's still Alex and Henry's story. It still hits the same beats and has the same heart of the book, condensed to only hit the important notes.

I love this movie so much. I have watched it a zillion times and there's no end in sight. Probably going to watch it tonight, since it is October 2nd, lol.

[amrv-5]

Horrid Horrid Day of the kind so rarely experienced trying to treat it as a dubious comedic blessing and also remember it’s cool to experience stuff even stuff that sucks and makes you (?) feel bad (probably???) freeverse insanity monologue to my own blog so I don’t commit a homicide

most of it death by 1000 papercuts sort of things besides like 3-5 big Actual Genuinely Bad Comically Ridiculous Chaotic Events (middle of the night hotel eviction and subsequent 35 mile relocation to a Diff Hotel for my parents due to the City Of [Redacted] abruptly buying out the rooms (?!) for the one they were in for some sort of emergency housing thing?? (this is real and really happened)) but after 12.5 hrs and then well 999 other things that happened mostly to Me etc.💥💥💥🔨🔨🔨💥💥💥🔨💥🔨😭🔨🔨🔨💥💥💥💥 godddd complicated relationship w parents aside it is so much to be Completely On and doing the Team Emotional Management the whole time whyyy am I the only grownup… can’t be tired or a little annoyed at being subject to last minute undiscussed demands on my time or even Drop The Cheerful Facade Of Bland Enthusiasm For A Second because I’m Ruining Things For Everyone. but also I’ve got 1 week break between semesters formally and I would like to: Sleep In + Get Meaningful Rest. please. Big ideal day plan wld be to sleep for 12-15 hrs read in bed for a few more go for a little run eat some oatmeal lay around watch movie without thinking about annnnyyything important all day. Is That So Much To Ask. Is This An Unreasonable Demand .

Well anyway I’m being soo dramatic and everything’s really pretty much fine. I cn recognize it’s nice that people went out of their way to make a trip here + want to spend a lot of time together it’s just that due to the Aforementioned Complicated Relationship the Spending Time Together is like. Well u know how wild boars when you stab them you have to have a special Boar Spear with a cross-bar because otherwise they will just keep running up your spear while impaled to Get You, The Spearholder? Well that’s what my relationship w my parents is like in this particular year. Getting stabbed and it sucksss but unfortunately there is the sense that if one keeps going thru the Horrid Feelings there may be some degree of satisfaction (easier or realer relationship? emotional connection? satisfaction of knowing I Tried My Best?) at the other end… but it has to be me (wild boar in this metaphor) doing alll of the work and experiencing the majority of the discomfort in pursuit of unclear ends… ahhhhhh sigh. good reminder I guess that I just still react weird and with maybe a greater than warranted degree of emotional sensitivity to extended intentional infringements on my space + autonomy that don’t take into account that I’m a person with opinions and an inner life and also I Slept Bad and several other problems so I’m much less patient than usual today. condensed: I’m At My Freakin Limit Dot JPEG rn. anyway. ouuughhh. home now going to run a bath (insane. who does that) turn off lights and just sit there in hot water for a while stewing (ha) until I feel less tense + tired (Big Win: reasonably tense + tired ≠ depressed…) maybe light a candle also. I wld bring a book into this if I didn’t know for a certainty I’d drop it in the water immmmmediately and the lathe of heaven doesnt deserve that from me. fuuuck. This probably makes me look insaaaane don’t read this. Or do whatever its my blog though sorry if u followed for fic and are just getting extended musings on my inner mental life + to do lists. In My Defense there’s a read more and if u see this You Clicked It And So Gave Ur Viewing Consent. In conclusion 👨‍👩‍👧🚗🏨🌃😭😔😑🤷‍♀️🙂➡️🛁🕯️📖🛌

[masterwords]

Hello, do you mind if I ask for a lot at once for the OTPs one? They're just too good to resist 💙

(20) Choose one song that perfectly describes their relationship.

(22) What reminds each of their partner?

(42) What's their favorite type of weather to enjoy together? (getting snowed in together, watching thunderstorms, etc.)

(51) What’s a non verbal way they say I love you?

(48) Who's the better driver? - I feel like having to preface this by saying I mean it ordinarily and not when they're after unsubs probably means it's not Hotch, but...

Also #59 made me lol given the many many conversations had about that particular question and Hotchgan already

Do I mind the chance to go fully feral about them? No, sir, I do not mind at all. <3

20. Choose one song that perfectly describes their relationship.

Oh...oh no. There are so many! ONE SONG?! Okay I'm gonna do two, because there is one that screams them on-screen, and one that screams them in my head. And so you get two.

On screen, I always think about "Trust" by The Cure.

There's no-one left in the world That I can hold onto There is really no-one left at all There is only you And if you leave me now You leave all that we were Undone There is really no-one left You are the only one And still the hardest part for you To put your trust in me I love you more than I can say Why won't you just believe?

And then the Them in my head, their theme song is "Restless Heart" by Peter Cetera. For all the reasons.

22. What reminds each of their partner?

Well, first of all they are both sentimental fools. That's a fact. Sunrises and coffee breath, the sensations of an early morning run. Gunpowder and shredded paper at the firing range. Popcorn and icy condensation pooling on a sticky bar table. The smell of hotel shampoo and dusty air conditioning and the echo of walking down a new yet always the same carpeted hallway every day/week/month. I think they travel so often together that anything has potential to be a reminder - when you do so much life with a person, they are woven into every aspect of it.

42. What's their favorite type of weather to enjoy together? (getting snowed in together, watching thunderstorms, etc.)

I'm going to speak to their older years, when the adrenaline junkies settle down a little and learn how to enjoy moments. LOL While I do think they can find a way to enjoy almost anything together, I think a heat wave has to be it for them. Grilling in the backyard, gardening, drinking iced tea by the gallon. Derek can walk around naked if he's so inclined (and there isn't anyone around to see), Hotch can nap in the hammock, and life is good. But a good snowstorm in Chicago, the kind where you have to dig yourself out of your doorway just to go get your mail, the kind where you drag your kid's sled behind you down to the corner store to haul your groceries home because no one can drive...is a nice way of forcing them to settle down a bit. To just sit quietly in their snow-insulated home, curled up beneath blankets and watching movies or reading books, cooking and sleeping.

51. What’s a non verbal way they say I love you?

Oh you know I'm a sucker for this one. So much of what they do is nonverbal. The things these two can say to one another with just a look. Derek learns how to make coffee the way Hotch likes it, he learns the exact measurements because he might not care that much (coffee is coffee), Hotch does. He would never turn his nose up at caffeine, even terrible police station slop, but there are just certain things that he enjoys and it's a pretty small sacrifice to pull out the measuring spoons in order to see that look of bliss when it's exactly right. And Hotch, touch-starved king, loves to rub Derek's shoulders. And back and feet and whatever else he's tweaked by running full speed into danger.

48. Who's the better driver?

Uh...sorry Hotch. Just because you do most of the driving thanks to your need to control (or your intense car sickness) doesn't mean you're the better driver, it just means you're the boss. LOL I do imagine Derek is actually a pretty good driver. He learned to drive in the congested streets of Chicago, he worked as a cop which meant a lot of driving time, he rides a motorcycle, I bet he's got some very good driving music intuition...I just think he's probably got a very good sense of direction (hello vibing it) and he's comfortable behind the wheel. When boiled down, I just don't think Hotch likes to drive as much as Derek does, like the simple act of driving doesn't bring him pleasure like it does Derek, he simply needs to. And therein lies the difference to me.

AHAHAHAA. Oh...59. That's a hard no from me, dawg.

want me to talk about hotchgan? i will...at length...and hey, if you don't vibe with those questions, ask some of your own. i'll talk about them all day.

[muekyn]

okay. im going to talk about the fnaf movie.

SPOILERS UNDER READ MORE!!!

overall, i thought it was very good. somehow making a whole series of a video game condensed into 1.5 hrs is not something easy to do. i think with what they were working with, they executed it pretty well. costume design was superb, and the acting from josh hutcherson was amazing.

that being said, i did find some scenes didn't belong. for example the fort scene, though i'm sure many people have pointed that out already.

i felt like they were trying to tow the line between silly/cute and scary/suspenseful, but in my opinion i don't think they needed to do that? i think if they leaned in fully to the horror aspect it would have still been a very enjoyable experience.

the scenes with vanessa disappointed me, just a bit. it felt like she was only there to progress the story/exposition. and the fucking fort scene with her... in that scene, vanessa is like "oh freddy fazbears' is so fun yayayayay" and then literally in the next scene she's telling mike "if you ever come back here IM GOING TO SHOOT YOU" ???????????? like why? what did mike even do?

the old bf made an observation that william afton was just straight up not fleshed out, at least not as much as either one of us had hoped.

i personally think if they had just included like... a 5 minute scene of william afton on his killing spree (without outright showing william afton), it would have done alot for his character. i felt like he was just kind of thrown in there towards the end, which makes me sad bc william afton is such a unique character with sooo much backstory integral to the lore of fnaf, and it just felt like he was alluded to the whole movie? idk.

there were some questionable moments. it was funny how freddy literally just murders the aunt and no one even questions it? mike would have come home to a literal corpse in his house, how does he explain that to the police?

and it made me sad how little they showed of foxy. :( foxy is my all time favorite (i literally brought a giant stuffed foxy plush with me to the movie) and it felt like he was the most forgotten animatronic. bonnie seemed to be the main center of attention tbh, he was in almost every scene where the animatronics were. but it makes sense since scott cawthon thinks bonnie is the creepiest animatronic lol.

those are my main criticisms.

but i still loved it, very much so!

when the matpat cameo came on screen... it was a shocker. i gasped so loud. the people in the movie theater literally laughed at me lol bc i gasped SO LOUD, I COULDNT HELP IT i was so shocked. AND WHEN HE SAID ITS ONLY A THEORY???? i ate it up. idc if it's cheesy, I ATE IT UP.

also i thought it was cool that the movie is (i think but could be wrong) five nights long! a little easter egg that i thought was neat. the old bf pointed this out to me.

another nice touch is in the beginning of the movie when mike is reading that dream theory book. a good callback to matpat's dream theory on fnaf (you know the one). and it's also a good way to tie in what's currently happening to mike with his dreams in the movie.

i really appreciated the subtle little ways they tied in the movie with the games, like the little "it's me" in the mirror during the scene with mike in the security room. and foxy's humming!!!! i loved it i loved it i loved it! the little noises they used from the game made me so happy!

but yeah. i'll stop ranting bc i can go on forever lol. while it had it's flaws, i don't think they affected the overarching storyline.

this is it my gamers. eight years in the making, and this is the end result.

my score? 4 cupcakes out of 5. :>

[coulsonlives]

Finished all eight episodes and well, that was underwhelming. Here are my main impressions.

Clothing was too clean and looked like it came out of a cosplayer's closet instead of being actual, lived-in clothes (if there's one thing the failed movie did right, it was the clothes)

Zuko was decent

Sokka had an a+ personality but was missing some nuance

The Sokka and Suki meeting was boring and had typical teen romance cliches galore

Appa and Momo were cute

Not sure how I felt about them starting with 100 years ago, and the cut between that time and the present day was jarring, I feel like the title card should've been there instead to break it up. And just the title card, none of that weirdly glowly, oddly-colored narrative with the bending examples and stuff, it looked so odd

If Katara were a spice, she'd be flour, if she were a book, she'd be two books, where the heck was her fire and spunk and generally just. differentiating traits because I didn't see any and it was so boring to watch her

Like honestly! She didn't have her motherly/parental role thing going on, even in a toned-down way, and she was missing her passion, I just. What else is left

Bumi was scary af man

Lots of the compositing was blurry as shit and it was distracting, probably a lot of newbie, abused comp artists with pay cuts given dneg was working on it

Aang revealing himself all mystically with the intense music, then two seconds later the music stops and he slides down on the ice with a thump made me lol, and I don't think that was the intended reaction

They're in the arctic and you can't see anyone's breath, why is that, tell me

Suki removes her makeup in like 2.4 seconds without missing a single bit of it, teach me your ways gurll

Momo is actually cute and not a demon, praise raava

The fire nation armor is pretty brutal, the shoulder pads are like obvious cardboard that isn't even trying to look like metal (I still can't really tell if it's supposed to be metal? That's not a good thing fam)

Way too much exposition and 'telling, not showing', some of the convos dragged on for wayyy too long

The fox thing was unnecessary, but I liked Yue's added motivation to help Aang as well as her people

What the f did they do to Azula, the foundations of her character are totally different from the og show and she barely even feels like a villain. Some of her lines about being inadequate or 'not good enough' felt really contrived too

Lots of strange cuts and camera work, more than a few times there was a person talking and the camera was looking at their waist or something else for no reason lol, and there wasn't an establishing shot when there needed to be, so things were just disorientating a lot of the time

Lots of things happened but the show just. didn't give any time for them to marinate. Sokka telling Aang he abandoned his people, he knew it, blah blah in one of the early episodes? It's poignant but it lasts like five seconds before the scene totally changes, I got major whiplash, fam

The lion roaring sound effect every time someone firebent, please stop I beg

Azula being defiant was interesting and the lightning scene was cool but I still miss Daddy's Pet Azula

Sokka screaming on Appa was funny

My favourite scene was probably the dude going 'but we're the forty-first!' and Iroh telling them, 'and you're all alive because of his sacrifice'. Like dang that hit hard and I loved it. I liked how they added that

Avatar Roku was like ?? um. I know he and Sozin were goofballs but cmon man

The shots with Koh capturing Sokka and Katara were cheesy as shit especially with the sound effects lmao, it looked like horror movie jumpscares from a b-movie

Some of the acting was hammier than a ham sandwich. Even Zhao gave me that impression at times especially with the dang spirit fish scene

Pippinpaddleopsicopolis the third

I know they had to condense a crap ton of episodes, but it really felt like the show was just checking off boxes at times instead of (like I said earlier) letting anything marinate

The opening scene with the earthbending and firebending was cool, it's a shame the rest of the show didn't live up to that

The bending vfx looked good. The choreography did feel a bit disconnected though, and not as martial arty as I would've liked

I felt like I could blatantly see some of the reasons the og creators left the show

Grumps tbh I'd give it like 4/10.

[bellmo15-blog]

I Loved The Bionicle Movies

Today is Bionicle Day!

… Okay well actually it was Bionicle Day yesterday for me because time zones but everyone else is celebrating it today so still counts. As you can probably tell from this journal I admit I rushed to put together because I got inspired to, I don’t actually have anything special planned for today. I mean I COULD just get out my old tub that contains all my Bionicle sets I own and show some of those but most of them are either deconstructed or broken and even then the idea of getting out a bunch of toys just for the sake of this day only to put them back once it’s over isn’t that appealing. So instead, I wanted to talk about some bits of Bionicle related media that I really like and hold a special place in my heart. The movies.

Now if you follow me mostly for the art I commission then chances are you know what ONE OF the reasons I love one particular movie are but in truth I actually like all three of the classic Bionicle movies and there’s actually a bit of a deeper reason for that. You see, I was pretty into Bionicle since day 1. I got the original 6 matoron from the McDonalds happy meal promotion back in 2001 and while I didn’t get every single set in this themes lifespan, I still collected enough that I was super into it from a really young age. Then I learnt about the first movie that was getting released, the Mask of Light and with how into this line I was of course I wanted it. My parents eventually got it for me after like a few weeks after it came out with me eventually getting both Legends of Metru Nui and Web of Shadows for my birthday in 2005 and of course I loved them but one of the reasons why that is was because of something I only found out while watching the first film.

Bionicle had lore! Obvious statement to say now especially with how much of a meme it is just how much lore Bionicle had but back then I barley looked up anything online relating to Bionicle and only really just played with the sets my parents would buy for me and the commercials for these sets rarely played when I watched TV so I had no idea there was actually this big, grand storyline that was going on. I mean yeah, I do remember the Rahkshi sets coming with a comic panel as well but I never really read them so these movies were my first clue that these were not just some cool LEGO toys I was building. These were cool LEGO toys I was building that were also actual characters with their own stories, personalities and roles in a world that was only going to get bigger from this point onwards. Yup, these movies were basically what kick started me wanting to pay more attention to the lore of the theme. Or at least as much as I could or have the patience for.

A majority of the lore for Bionicle was told though books, both comic books and story books. And even back then I wasn’t much of a book reader only really reading books that were required of me in school or this one Mario themed choose your own adventure book on a train ride during a school trip where we had nothing else to do since we couldn’t bring out portable game consoles. My mindset back then was basically “if it doesn’t involve characters actually talking or moving pitchers I’m probably not going to be interested” and one of the few Bionicle books I did get I only really wanted because it came with a version of Tahu’s Hau Nuva after it’s been poisoned by Lerahk so most of my Bionicle lore knowledge came from the movies.

Granted that probably might not of been the best call on my part growing up since with how expansive Bioncle’s lore is these movies tended to be VERY condensed versions of that years storyline at the time and would often skip over major parts such as the Toa Metru’s hunt for the great disks being condensed into a minuet long montage with the Morbusa from that half of 2004’s story only being seen in the background of that montage and not being able to see the Toa Hordika test out there new abilities like they do in some of the comics. Hell, Web of Shadows actually has a pretty big lore breaking error in it with Nuju using X-Ray vision even though while Nuju’s mask does have some degree of X-Ray vision one of the negatives to being a Hordika is that you CAN’T use your mask powers!

But, with how my preferred way of consuming media growing up was purely visual could you really blame me for wanting to get my lore from these movies!? To the films credit, Web of Shadows DID also have Roodaka, Norick and Nuju’s voice actors from the film doing voice over for a few comic panels in the special features of the DVD and also a short preview of the flash animations for that year so I did still engage in some of the lore outside the movies.

Another reason why I enjoyed the movies as much as I did growing up, and this is going to be a VERY hot take I know but it’s actually because of the designs they gave the characters in the movies. Some people REALLY do not like the movie designs for the characters because of some of the liberties they took for certain characters but I actually think they look really dam good. Stuff like how the Nuva chest pieces are uniquely coloured for each toa instead of all just being purely silver like they are in there sets, having actual hands and fingers, the Turaga having robes re-enforcing the whole wise elder thing, the Rahkshi being actual nightmare fuel compared to their original sets, female characters like Gali and Nokama having slimer figures compared to the male characters, the Rahaga’s helicopter blades that get lowered when not used, the Hordika have one arm that was permanently having there weapons fused to them while still having a semi normal if elongated arm which really helped drive home how the Hordika transformations literally turned you into a monster, it’s hard for me to not like these designs a lot. Granted they aren’t perfect translations of the toys since Pohatu doesn’t have the inverted torso his set usually does and Makuta not looking a thing like his actual set (although to be they were basing his design of an early prototype LEGO sent over during Mask of Light’s production and his finalised design for retail hadn’t been decided yet) but most of the issues I do have with the designs are so minor they aren’t worth me making a big deal over. I never had Sidorak growing up but even if I did I’d MUCH rather his design in the third film than his original set. I DID have Roodaka though and let’s just say it caught me off guard when I found out she was a woman. Yes, I really did think Roodaka was a guy before watching Web of Shadows. Considering Roodaka’s race consists of both male and females AND there’s not body differences between either gender meaning that even the guys have those boobs… yeah.

Still on the topic about how these movies presented themselves there’s also the soundtrack to these films and allow me to be blunt. Holy fuck, these movies go hard with there soundtrack! It’s kinda hard to explain how good these are though a written form but I seriously encourage you to look up the soundtrack to these films and give them a listen. They are actually all officially on Spotify to my surprise, and I am so glad they are because it’s a great trio of soundtracks. I mean they had no reason to go as hard as they did with the soundtrack for a direct to DVD movie trilogy, but they did and I love it! These movies might not be perfect by any means especially since Mask of Light literally resurrects a character a few minuets after he dies which I hate in ANY story but the amount of work they put into these movies on top of just being really fun movies with some pretty good morals if you look into them is what kept me watching them multiple times as a child.

When I got back into Bionicle again last year one of the first things I did was watch these movies again since they were all on the Bio Media Project website which is an archive of every single bit of Bioncle related media there was including the movies and I still enjoyed watching them as an adult as I did as a child. I mainly used Bio Media Project for watching them because I haven’t been able to find my old DVD copies of these movies. Sadly, Web of Shadows was the last movie we would get in a long time. The Bionicle storyline might have continued but we were not getting anymore movies at least until 2009 which was always sad to me. Because the storyline from 2006-2008 was this big multipart story where Mata Nui, the God of the Bionicle world, was dying and our heroes needed to find the Mask of Life to save him with the story arc eventually ending in the reveal that Mata Nui wasn’t actually a god but rather a giant robot and everything that had happened in the lore up to this point had been happening inside this robot! AND the toa sets for 06 and 07 specifically were some of the Matoron from 01-03 which included Jaller and Hali who were in the first movie so seeing a film where these characters I knew as being small civilians who were barley able to defend themselves turned into super powered badasses would have been so cool. Honestly, I just wanted to see how these hypothetical films would of adapted the character Karzani! That guy is the definition of “Oh good god, how are we going to translate this mentally unstable miss mash of parts into our style!?!?”

I would try to make more of an effort to play the flash games beyond this point since I did go onto the internet a lot more from 2005 onwards to varying degrees of if they were cannon or not and also got Bionicle Heroes which even as a child I knew wasn’t cannon but it wouldn’t be until 2009 when we would get one more Bionicle movie. And it was terrible!

This isn’t even a “Oh, I grew up with this movie and loved it back then and now as an adult I don’t like it” thing either. No, even as a child I knew this movie wasn’t very good! Unlike the previous three movies which were made by Mirirmax, The Legend Reborn was done by a new animation studio of TinclleTown Toons and it shows. Because to put it bluntly, this pretty much felt like a watered down version of the previous three movies. The animation to me at least looks worse, the soundtrack was pretty forgettable, the dialogue felt incredibly awkward at times, it toned down a lot of the more darker aspects of the previous films for silly slapstick and while the characters do look a lot more accurate to the toys this time they also for some reason put these spinning gears on them that are pretty distracting. Yeah, it’s not a very good movie. The worst part about this movie being as toned down as it is was is that the story line of this year was set in a pretty violent place as well and outside of the Glatorian Areans where you couldn’t kill your opponent’s there were no rules on Bara Magna and anything goes. It was pretty much the Bionicle equivalent of Mad Max but with cool cyborg people. I watched this last year as well and had to stop in the middle of the climax because unlike the last three movies I couldn’t download an MP4 of this one so I had to stream it from Bio Media Project itself since I wasn’t aware it was the only Bioncle Moive you can still buy normally today via Youtube for some reason and it froze before the reveal of who the traitor was. I only ever watched this film once before this point and it was the night after my mother got me this film and I really don’t think I missed out on much not rewatching this as much as I did and I’m only really talking about it here because I know if I don’t, I’ll get a bunch of comments asking me about it.

So yeah, that’s pretty much all I have to say. The Bionicle Movies excluding Legend Reborn were my favourite Bionicle related media growing up and with how into Bionicle I’ve been again since the middle of last year I thought it was only appropriate to talk about it for Bionicle Day. Now then, since I am still in a bit of a nostalgic mood I’m off to go play some Bionicle Heroes while blasting the movies soundtrack and then maybe later visit the old websites on my Windows XP Virtual machine. Because 2000’s nostalgia is like cocaine to me right now!