#book adaptations given to people with an actual vision when?

[edennill-archived]

I was reading some meta and anyway — like yes, how the dwarves in the Hobbit (book) are portrayed re: greed and riches and "not a heroic people" is somewhat off, all considering (esp. given the apparent connection to Jews? which might be mostly linguistic, but anyway), and the movie going with "gold-sickness" is understandable if artistically very clumsy, and also lotr is so much better in terms of portraying them as a full fledged culture with an extraordinarily deep appreciation of beauty and craftsmanship... so I was wondering whether the movies could have built on that last idea for better effect.

And I'm thinking even if you just did that, the "gold-sickness" would probably be less egregious, but now I'm also imagining a better world in which the movies invent an actual plausible motivation for Thorin to act on in the last quarter of the story? Perhaps almost in the Denethor-sense of "having really good reasons, but just missing something important" — and oh. You could probably make him a foil to Denethor if you wanted to, in that better universe, though you'd need to find a motivation you could work with in that sense first. Now I wish I lived there.

[cbrownjc]

Hello :) I was wondering if we ever got confirmation about which books Rolin is interested in focusing this adaptation on? I know that they'll probably take elements from most (if not all) VC books, but if they're aiming at 7-8 seasons with some books taking multiple seasons to adapt, they're going to have to pick and choose which books to really dig into.

I was also thinking about production. I've seen people talk about how we'll need to wait another 1.5-2 years between seasons and I kinda doubt that? I feel like we'll start speeding things up and getting a new season every year, mostly because I just can't see them go for 12+ years of production on this show. Very few shows nowadays go more than 10 years, and if they really want to do 7-8 seasons I can't see how they'll manage that with 1.5 to 2 years in between each season. I understand they're in for the long haul with the Immortal Universe but...that's very long in the modern drama landscape.

Honestly I am mostly just hoping to get new seasons more frequently and also be able to see their full vision realized because the longer it goes on the higher the chance they'll run into issues like actor availability, leadership changes that could impact renewals, budget restrictions, etc. What do you think?

Hello!

Okay, first to answer the production question. Now, while many shows rarely go past 10 years wrt production of them, that is really dependent on their Season count. Game of Thrones, for example, only ran for 8 Seasons, and production only lasted 8 years as well.

The Walking Dead ran for 11 Seasons and was produced over 12 years.

AMC has said in the past (or, at least, Rolin Jones has said that AMC has said) that they wanted 10 Seasons for IWTV. RJ, however, has been consistent in saying he has an 8 Season plan.

So whether the show continues on for at least 2 more years after Rolin's 8 Season plan is up in the air right now and we should just focus on, at most, getting 8 Seasons, Which yes, I think will take over the course of 8-9 years to film.

Because I think starting with Season 3, the wait and production times will decrease over time. Remember, the strikes threw a bit of a wrench into things. But what also did regarding Season 2 was that it's clear that Rolin and the writing staff didn't start actually writing Season 2 until AMC had officially greenlit Season 2 back in September of 2022. That is why shooting for Season 2 couldn't start in the fall of 2022, there were no scripts broken, let alone written yet!

And then, once the scripts were done, they still had to start pre-production stuff, such as location scouting, figuring out which sets needed to be built, etc.

So shooting for Season 2 could only start shooting when it did because it was the earliest they could get all that done once they were given a renewal notice.

I think things are very different when it comes to Season 3 because I think, even if the show hadn't already been quietly renewed for Season 3 before it was officially announced, RJ and the other writers were already breaking and writing the scripts for Season 3 starting either just before or while Season 2 was airing. And so given that writing time, plus the fact that they probably don't have to do as much location scouting (since many of those locations were already found in Season 2) pre-production will likely take less time.

I think filming will begin in late October, meaning we'd get an October 2025 release date. Which I think will be the standard release window going forward with each new season and why the wait will be another long one again, but that will also give the production staff and actors breathing room after they are done filming a season before going into the next one.

So for that reason, I can see production of the show lasting 9-10 years, but that is because of the extra 1/2 year gaps between the filming and airing of Season 2 and the one I feel we are going to get for Season 3.

As well as the fact that I think when they get to Queen of the Damned, that will be a true split-season like the one Breaking Bad got for its final season. That show had Season 5, Part 1, and Season 5, Part 2. Because even though this past season was called "Season 2" externally, you can see by the episode numbers that internally, what this really was was "Season 1, Part 2."

Anyway, as to the books being adapted -- and not just having elements taken from them -- Rolin has said for sure we are getting IWTV (which we just finished), The Vampire Lestat (Season 3), Queen of the Damned (which is where he spoke about it being so epic and grand a story that they will probably have to split the season in order to tell it all) and Tale of the Body Theif (which he confirmed after Season 2 was finished that they were beginning to already set up for). He also mentioned at Comic-Con in 2022 that Prince Lestat would be adapted.

Also, while RJ talked about the book The Vampire Armand being important, he's never said it would get its own separate adaptation, which honestly makes sense. Because of the way that book is told, you can just interweave elements of it when you want to focus on Armand's backstory, or even just do a stand-alone episode here and there dedicated to parts of it. It really isn't the kind of book you do a full season on IMO.

So yeah. The books that we know for sure are getting their own, full adaptations per RJ so far are IWTV, TVL, QotD, TotBT, and PL.

I can see them throwing elements of books like Memnoch, TVA, and Blood and Gold into it all, but I don't know if they'll get their own full-season adaptations. As I said, I don't think TVA will. And I don't think B&G will either, as I see it just like TVA -- you adapt elements of it during a season, maybe even full sections of it for a flashback episode or so during a season, but it doesn't get its own full stand-alone season.

The same goes for Merrick, since they already did Louis' suicide attempt and Louis seems to be moving forward from his despair and grief regarding Claudia -- so that even if Lestat did fall into his post-Memnoch coma in the show, I'm not sure this Louis would attempt to end his life again over that loss. (Even more so after this Louis also got that letter from Lestat in the past, telling Louis to please live on in the event of his death.)

I have no idea if they are seriously going to ever do Blackwood Farm or Blood Canticle. Neither book has ever been mentioned, even in passing. Plus, they kind of depend on what and where Mayfair Witches is at or has going on at the time and well, that show . . . 😅

Oh! And they might be looking to adapt the whole Prince Lestat trilogy, but I don't remember if RJ has talked about adapting the whole trilogy -- meaning the entirety of each book -- or just the full first book and then elements from the other two. (Because I do think it's clear that, if anything, we'll get the Loustat ballroom dance from Blood Communion in the final season of the show).

So yeah, I think that this is what we're looking at for the next few years, book adaptation-wise.

[honourablejester]

Some of my favourite ghoul NPCs in Fallout:

My sister and I are replaying New Vegas lately, and we recently did the Come Fly With Me sidequest again, and since I’m talking about Fallout recently and this quest reminded me how much I fucking love Jason Bright and his merry band of lunatics, I figured I’d talk about some of my favourite ghoul characters in the games I’ve played (3, 4, New Vegas). Specifically non-companion characters, no offense to Raoul. I just like some of the ghouls you just run into.

First off, since we’ve already mentioned him, Jason Bright is such a nutjob, and he is the focal point for such a fantastic, batshit quest that you have to adore him. Yes, he’s a cult leader, and yes, he’s leading the ghouls under him possibly to their deaths based on ‘visions’, and yes, he is using Chris’ delusions to help get them there (and also sends us, the player, into a very annoying set of negotiations), but. How can you not adore the idea of a non-feral glowing one cult leader who is leading his flock into space, and manages to find actual functioning rocket ships to manage it? (Well, functional if you help out and don’t sabotage them, anyway). Also, given that Atom may genuinely be an actual god in this universe, I’m not going to fully rule out the visions, especially since he had a sane enough grasp of them to realise that he was seeing somewhere so irradiated that Chris wouldn’t have survived it. But just for the quest alone, just for the sight of those rocket ships taking off and presumably baffling and/or scaring the pants off half the Mojave, I just love this guy.

Second, one of the best characters in any of the games full stop, and also in one of the best and most batshit sidequests full stop, we have Desmond Lockhart from Fallout 3: Point Lookout. Because he’s a ghoulified James Bond fighting a maniacal brain in a jar supervillain in a rivalry that has been going on since the Great War. That’s just. You cannot beat that. He’s foulmouthed and bitchy and ungrateful and an arse, and he’s fantastic. I love that the mansion you find him in is his enemy’s ancestral home, the cheek on this bitchy ghoul man. I love him. He’s just spectacular.

Third, to round out our ‘best batshit sidequests focused around ghouls’, we have Kent Connolly from Fallout 4, because who wants to play a hammy 40s-style pulpy comic book hero in post-apocalyptia today? You? Excellent! The Silver Shroud is such a fun and fantastic questline, and I also just deeply adore and wish to protect Kent. He’s so sweet and sad and gently pathetic, and he’s not remotely able for the wasteland, and he’s trying to help. A pre-war ghoul clinging to the old radio shows he used to love when the world was less overtly hellish to try and help him cope, and not doing so well, and wanting to bring that hope to other people by resurrecting an old-world hero. He’s very sad and badly adapted, but he’s very sweet, and we always wait to take his quest until we have the rifle skill levelled enough to get him out of his little situation at the end of the quest alive. Because Kent is not allowed to die.

Fourth, on a continued theme of ghouls too nice for this world and who I will cheerfully murder people to protect, we have Gob from Fallout 3. Because everybody’s fucking mean to him, including the game itself, and somebody needs to fix it. GIVE ME A QUEST TO FREE THIS POOR MAN, YOU STUPID GAME. I mean, yes, we always murder Moriarty to help him anyway, which does solve the problem, but I HATE the fact that the game lets you tell his mother he’s a slave, and then doesn’t let you fix it. You just crushed her hopes for nothing, and even if you do get him free anyway later, with no quest to do so, you can’t tell her that. I want to stab FO3 so much for that. Why do you put a poor abused, incredibly nice slave man in front of me and then not let me free him? THERE SHOULD BE A GOB QUEST. If only so I don’t accidently crush poor Carol’s spirits with no hope of then telling her better news later. Because I am murdering Moriarty for the man, I’m not going to leave him enslaved. I don’t do game mods, but if there is one mod I want for 3, it’s that one. Let me free him officially and then tell Carol about it.

Ahem. Anyway. Sorry about that. Moving on (never, I will never move on, I will hold a grudge on this forever, but howandever).

Fifth, and still on the theme of the saddest goddamn ghouls in the wasteland, there is Arlen Glass from Fallout 4. Because he broke my fucking heart and I will never get over it. Giving him that tape from his family had me sobbing. A sweet gentle toymaker and family man who was never home because of work, who talked to his wife and daughter primarily over the phone, and who was still at work when the bombs dropped and never made it home to see them at the end. Who ghoulified, and was left with that grief and regret for the next 200 years. He ripped my heart fully out of my chest. Letting him hear his family’s voices again by retrieving that holotape was one of the most impactful things I’ve ever done in these games, and it was the one moment where I desperately wanted to refuse the quest reward. We fortified the Slog to hell and back to make sure Arlen was safe. Again, would die and kill for this man without a thought.

And then, in slightly less obsessive fashion, some honourable mentions:

Captain Zao, Fallout 4. Because there is something so quietly sad about his whole situation, trapped in a tiny vessel while his crew goes feral around him, keeping watch over the ruined country he helped destroy, wanting only to go home, and relying on enemies with extremely justified grudges to help him. No one won the Great War, and Zao is proof of it. We help him, every time. All he wants is to go home, after spending more than 200 years trapped wondering how much of it is left for him to find when he gets there. What the fuck would shooting him do, in the face of that? No one won the war. Let’s just let those it destroyed find what peace they can.

The Vault Tec Representative, Fallout 4. Because I just feel so sorry for the man. You never even learn his name. He was left out to die by his company, and he knows it, and after 200 years ghoulifying and rotting, out you pop, fresh as a fucking daisy from the vault he put you in, just to rub it fucking home. It’s not the Sole Survivor’s fault, but you definitely can’t blame him for being sore.

And finally, Daisy, from Fallout 4. I want to mention her because I do love her, that of all the quests you pick up from people in Goodneighbour, hers is to try and clear out the Library, because she remembers it from when she was a girl and she’d like to see it at least not overrun, if not quite restored. I love a nice bookworm, tough enough to survive Goodneighbour, and to put her caps into trying to bring a little civilisation back to the wasteland.

But Daisy also highlights a bit … There aren’t too many important female ghouls? Ones with cool quests around them. There are quite a few scattered around the various games, sure, but not too many you can really interact with like the boys above. There are a few memorable ladies around, like Keely from New Vegas, the tough as nails scientist who survives Vault 22 in New Vegas, Carol and her partner in Fallout 3, and then Beatrix Russell, also in Vegas, who has a tiny but extremely memorable part in the ‘find hookers for the casino in Freeside’ quest, just for being a (potential) ghoul cowboy dominatrix who likes to have a good time and believes that ‘good times’ are a full-contact sport. Like. She’s pretty damn memorable.

But there is, at least in the three games I’ve played, a bit of a dearth of full-questline-attached, batshit-shenanigans-ahead lady ghouls, and that’s another thing I could wish changed. Heh.

But yeah. Ghouls are some of the best characters in these games, and they definitely have some of the best quests attached to them too. And a lot of them will break your heart as well. Heh.

I do love this universe. A lot.

[marvelstars]

I am really linking this series of interviews by George Lucas going with his analysis for each character in this case Anakin and Obi-Wan.

Here in Anakin´s chapter, Lucas explains Anakin´s real issue isn´t really the darkside or it´s temptations, in fact when he was a kid he already possesed many virtues related to the Jedi, he was generous, without malice, wanted to help and very compassionate despite being raised on slavery in a very horrible environment , his only issue, if you want to call it that, was that he was raised by a loving mother who he loved as well, having a family for him was something natural and neccesary and his main issue when it came to the order was that they simply didn´t work with family units, they worked in a master -apprentice relationships which were foreing to him, he had bonds with people because he was born in a family and a community. The fact he quickly could lose them given many of them were slaves only made him bond with even more intensity which translated into him having difficulty in letting go of his loved ones.

So in Lucas vision, Anakin needed a master like Qui-Gon to teach him the way of the jedi while making a transition between having a family and having a master - apprentice relationship, Qui-Gon actually WANTED to be that father figure Anakin was looking for even when he lived with his mother.

This obviously didn´t happen with Obi-Wan, who wasn´t really into the idea of being Anakin´s father figure and who wanted Anakin to adapt into the Jedi´s life as if he was raised on the temple. Lucas tells Obi-Wan´s biggest regret in both trilogies was having failed as a master for Anakin, because he didn´t adapt to Anakin´s personal needs like Qui-Gon would have done neither did he stablished many reflective opportunties over the nature or the dark and lightside like Yoda did with Luke, Obi-Wan´s teaching style was more "by the book" so in Lucas view Obi-Wan is indirectly to blame for Anakin´s fall to the darkside and the end of the republic. I think there are many attenuating circunstances about this but I could see Obi-Wan seeing it that way. Obi-Wan then begins to make similar mistakes with Luke who also gets in danger of falling like his father before him but who ultimately doesn´t fall because his training was slighty different and had Yoda´s involvement and of course because Luke himself decides to embrace compassion and value family, his bond with the father he barely knew.

Lucas mentions that he considered keeping Qui-Gon out of the story and writting obi-wan as an ambitious young Jedi who wanted to train Anakin for his intense force powers, like Obi-Wan said in the OT but he later decided to include Qui-Gon so he could be the contrast with Obi-Wan personality, the difference between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan is one in which a man pays attention and helps a beggar(Qui-Gon) who in TPM is represented by both Jar Jar and Anakin and another man(Obi-Wan) who gets annoyed at having to deal with the beggar in the first place, which is reflected in Obi-Wan´s dialogue about "Pathetic life forms". Obi-Wan is still ambitious in TPM but not in relation to Anakin, just in the sense he´s interested in advancing his career, in fact he tells Qui-Gon he could be part of the council if he didn´t discuss so much with the council, which actually means Obi-Wan pretty much wants to be part of the Council and advance in his career as a Jedi.

I belive it was Obi-Wan´s original disconnect with Anakin, his sadness/anger over Qui-Gon wanting to end his padawanship in favor of Anakin that despite trying his best to comply with Qui-Gon´s wishes, Obi-Wan and Anakin only connected later in the story when they were both adults but they had so much conflict in their master - apprentice relationship for the way their relationship began, it wasn´t fair for Obi-Wan to teach a student he was suspiscious of because of the council pov of him but it wasn´t fair to Anakin either to have a teacher who started his training out of obligation and who thought he was dangerous, this is why this relationship ultimately failed to give Anakin the emotional and mental skills needed to use his powers adecuately and have a stronger process in his decision making to make choices for himself, having being a slave Anakin had an almost crippling difficulty to make personal decisions for himself, especially when so many people around him made decisions for him, as it stands Anakin´s one decision not prompted by somebody else in the story was to marry Padme.

Anakin having the wrong training, with many regrets over leaving his mother behind, without a father figure to lean on, then gets broken inside by his mother´s death, which leads to Vader´s persona being born inside him, Vader here represents his hate, resentment, whish for revenge over the injustice, which leads to him to attack the tusken raiders and later when he learns about Padmé dying on childbirth, he listens to the "devil"(Palpatine) who tells him he can save her for a price which was a lie.

So from Lucas pov Anakin´s fall began after his mother´s death, but wasn´t fully realized until his dreams about Padmé dying, with him being unable to do anything about it except see her die, this made him want to keep her alive at any cost but the reason for his fall wasn´t about him being particulary attracted to the darkside, or violent or evil, he simply wanted to keep the people he loved around, turning his genuine love into possessive love. He didn´t get the adecuate training for him to make the transition between having a family and being part of the Order in which attachment was forbbiden, an Order in which it was expected of him to give up his family.

The author of the video goes on to reflect how Anakin could have avoided falling if he was sent to the Temple earlier but I believe, given Luke was a lot more older than Anakin when he began his training, being raised by his mother wasn´t the problem, the problem was the training he got was the standard for a Jedi but he needed a training adapted to his particular needs as someone who came late to the temple, but the Jedi Order of the era and Obi-Wan as a teacher, the people and organization of the time in which he got to live just weren´t shaped this way.

Very interesting points by Lucas himself about Anakin´s character and then the Original trilogy is the story of how Anakin gets back from the darkside by making the opposite journey, he gets back his humanity, he gets the compassion he had by loving Luke as a father but this love didn´t become possesive the way his love for Padmé did, because Anakin/Vader were ready to give up his own life if it meant saving Luke, relearning love, compassion, he used to have as a child and getting his own balance back from the time before his mothers death.

[moviemunchies]

I was super-excited to see that the best Spider-Man movie was getting a sequel, and that they were going all-out on the multiverse. Because what really set Into the Spider-Verse apart was not just its outstanding story, but the way it told it, using unique animation style to not only play with the notion that it’s a comic book adaptation, but that it’s a story featuring multiple dimensions with different feels to them.

Miles is back! It’s been a year since his last adventure, and he misses his multiversal friends. He’s trying to figure out his direction in life when Gwen comes and visits, revealing that she has been recruited to an elite group of Spider-People from all over the Spider-Verse dedicated to protecting all realities. When a new villain of Miles’s, the Spot, leaks into the Spider-Verse, Miles follows and discovers the Spider Society, a specific rule of life for Spider-People across the multiverse that brings him into conflict with the Society’s leader, Spider-Man 2099–Miguel O’Hara.

An idea which is far from tested: I think animation is the best way to tell a multiverse story. A lot of live-action attempts to depict the multiverse don’t really do much, aesthetically, with different universes. The Flash television series did try for a little bit, but as the multiverse kept expanding, they mostly gave up with obvious visual differences. Not so here! Each universe has a different animation style, design, color palette, and musical choices, and it all stands out more because it’s animated.

[I suppose Multiverse of Madness does do some ‘Different universes look different’ thing, but those changes are really weird, bizarre things like garish colors and outer architecture in the city, rather than just…. stylistic differences. It didn’t work as well for me.]

Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman is given quite a bit more focus in this story. She has a story in the first movie, but this one has a much more developed subplot about Gwen. The opening of the movie is actually about Gwen, which makes a nice change of pace because we don’t have the female character exist only to prop up the male lead–something still frustratingly common in modern Hollywood.

Miles is still the main character, and he has an incredibly strong story for the film. There’s a subtext about how his attempts to find acceptance with the other Spider-People mirrors the fan reaction to the character’s introduction to the comics (and many other characters to many other fandoms!). The last movie emphasized that anyone can be Spider-Man; this movie helps to cement that Miles, specifically, has every right to be Spider-Man, and have his own place among the greatest versions of the character.

I suspect that in the crowds of Spider-People, different audience members will pick favorites. I was surprised, for instance, about how much  I got attached to Spider-Punk? He’s loads of fun, though like Miles himself, I had some trouble understanding what he’s saying when he first appears on screen. 

Truthfully, it’s downright INCREDIBLE how many different iterations of Spider-Man make it into the movie. When Sony released the trailers, different news sites had articles and slideshows displaying how so many of the Spider-People appearing in those shots were actually drawn from different comics, shows, and games. While most of them don’t have major roles in the film itself, that they’re THERE, and the makers of the film knew about them at all, is incredibly impressive.

I do have the issue though about their inclusion, though. Part of what sets up the conflict of the movie is how Miles differs with what he’s willing to go along with as part of what it means to be Spider-Man. While it’s a great story point, it does seem off that all of these versions of Spider-Man are also fine with Miguel O’Hara’s vision of how things should be done. It IS for the good of the multiverse, to be fair, but that Miguel can call all of them to attack Miles and they just do it without question doesn’t feel quite right for what we know of Spider-Man.

The Spot is a strange choice for a villain for the movie. Not only is he not a particularly well-known comic character, he’s very silly through most of his appearances in the film. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad villain though, and despite being humorous for a lot of his screen time, it’s clear that no one taking him seriously is part of what motivates him to become more of a monster. He’s a joke villain, and it infuriates him, especially because he’s so connected to Miles’s story.

Something that you need to be aware of when watching the movie! This is a cliffhanger. Across the Spider-Verse was originally going to carry the subtitle ‘Part One’, and while the next film (expected for release next year, don’t fret!) has been re-titled Beyond the Spider-Verse, it’s still a two-part film. If you were like me, you might spend a large portion of the movie wondering if THIS was the dramatic moment that would be the point where the movie cuts off for the sequel. And that can get kind of annoying.

[Also there’s no after credits scene.]

This movie is fantastic, but it’s also weirdly complex, and I strongly suspect that I should view it two or three more times to begin to get everything about it. It’s a film that certainly lends itself well to discussion and analysis. Although I don’t think it’s as good as the first movie, that’s more because it’s the first part of a story rather than a standalone installment. When the sequel drops next year, we’ll have at least slightly different ideas about THIS movie, but given the quality of the film, I eagerly anticipate all the things we’ll see and learn, and we can see how they all stack up against each other.

[pinkkop]

I have a lot of feelings about The On1y One and they are definitely mostly positive though not without frustrations and things I wish they'd done differently but I wanted to share my current main thoughts:

This story doesn't feel like it's meant to be just one season.

The way that this first season ended smells so much like it is intended to have a second season. In how the teachers' story was left on a cliffhanger and how all the other characters at the end had been maneuvered into the perfect position for starting the next chapter of Wang's story.

I am not saying we're guaranteed a second season but that the creators wants to create a second season and even maybe made the first season with the intent to create a second. My guess is that the director had an idea/vision for how they wanted to adapt the book into a series and were given support and funding from the production company to make a 12 ep series. This didn't fit the vision the director had so they either had to speed up the plot of the series or only adapt part of the book and just hope that people would like the series enough for the production company to support a second season.

Obviously the plot of the series couldn't be rushed. Like some of the best parts of this show is how subtle, deliberate and slow burn it is. So they had to do the best they could with 12 eps, which they did really well.

I will say though that this series could be 10 times better if we get a second season and I'm desperately hoping for a season 2 announcement before the end of the year.

The story's main arch that we follow wasn't Wang and Tian getting together but Wang realising that he has feelings for Tian.

As such we actually completed a full arch from start to finish. This season ended just as this chapter of their relationship ended so to me it makes sense to end it where it did.

I get that it must be frustrating to watch if you're expecting a classic romance and are really only interested in shows with that kinda ending: think closed endings, usually of the happy ever after kind. But I think there's so much value in the journey and the small victories along the way and I just hope that even if you prefer to have the couple get together at the end, you can still find enjoyment in the scenes that got them to where they are at the end of season 1, like when Tian's suitcase was finally empty and he'd found a home in Wang.

Sure I would have loved just a little bit more resolution at the end of season one but I'm no stranger to amazing shows not sticking the landing so it really doesn't ruin the show for me.

Anyways hope this made sense and feel free to add your two cents!

This show has been such a joy to watch and I hope the ending doesn't ruin it for people. Then again, HIStory3: Make Our Days Count is one of my favourite shows and 180 Degrees Passes Between Us has a very special place in my heart, so it's really no surprise that this ending hasn't deterred me from loving this show 😅

[c0rpseductor]

rambling about plans for my ffxiv fic

doing another round of reading about writing blind characters for y’shtola purposes and i feel much better about the resource i found this time compared to last time, which didn’t have a lot of highly specific day to day information and seemed to forget very often that other disabilities exist. there was a very frustrating post for me as a cane user due to injury/nerve damage where that person was listing little habits people have carrying a white cane, like tapping their fingers against it or leaning with it and saying that sighted people will never experience the feeling of having an extension of themselves like that, which. Holy shit other people use canes too! this one is good about acknowledging comorbidity and intersecting disabilities and stuff.

anyway. i think there’s really so much to unpack when it comes to making decisions about writing y’shtola’s blindness in a way that’s not totally fucking stupid, especially as a sighted person, so i’m happy to be armed with both generalized “here is why x trope is annoying” and “here is how xyz thing actually works in real life” type information. it gives me a lot of detail to think about and try to incorporate, which is important in a novelization with a tone like morningstar’s especially.

it’s frustrating that there’s not much to go off in canon, too. they do the annoying “this blind character has special powers that negate her blindness” trope, and they also don’t seem to be very consistent about how much vision she has left, if any, and kind of handwave it with aethersight because it’s treated as like…functionally identical to sightedness if not better. except for when they remember she’s blind for character moments. i feel like the bit in endwalker where she can’t see the blasphemies because they have no aether implies she’s TOTALLY blind, but the way she interacts with the murals in rak’tika suggests she has vision left, because she doesn’t ask for anyone to describe what they depict and the only distinction she gives about paints is like, that the paint is old. and i think “her aethersight can tell the difference between the aetheric makeup of paint colors and ink and paper and so on” is fucking dumb.

i can’t decide whether i’d rather have her retain some vision or be totally blind. retaining or having some vision is far more common, and there’s no reason she couldn’t. additionally, that would mean her aethersight could be an assistive technology integrated into her remaining vision rather than something that “makes up” for her blindness. that bit in endwalker Does rely on her being totally blind, but then i feel like there’s less wiggle room to write a less offensive version of the aethersight because we’re back to “it’s a replacement for vision.” i’d also been thinking that emet-selch’s soulsight is more like a separate, more conceptual sixth sense with no real mundane corollary that he simplifies to “color” bc linguistic limitation, and given aethersight is essentially the same ability, applying that to y’shtola’s experience of it might…mitigate that?

it’s one of those things where i think there’s going to be some residual ableism no matter what. :/ i want to avoid as much of it as i can, but trying to change too much about her character or removing her aethersight entirely does pretty drastically change the trajectory of the original story AND remove the few moments where it actually does have the potential to intersect with her ability in an interesting way. if i were writing a less canon-compliant fic maybe i’d remove it altogether, but this is really an adaptation to prose with changes as opposed to a totally new narrative. i don’t want to potentially fuck everything up.

i think one big consideration is going to be her relationship with books, because she’s a huge reader and scholar. braille or some equivalent Should exist in the FFXIV universe and i think y’shtola should certainly be literate in it, but i think it’s also true that she’s probably not going to be able to find braille versions of Many of her Dusty Ancient Tomes. i like the idea of a spell that reads books aloud to her in her own voice, but specifically her inside-her-head voice, because that just seems like a fun detail to add to a magic spell like that. (i saw something like that in an emetwol fic i read except it was the sighted MC listening to an enchanted book urianger gave her that read in his voice. y’shtola is not typically a character in those fics so much as a vague amorphous force of stern disapproval and/or dispenser of noncanon soulbonding exposition, but it did kind of feel like. Hey. Why were audiobooks not the blind woman’s idea)

i could probably work her sorceress staff into having a dual function as a cane, maybe by making it lighter? i think any mobility aid she uses has to be something that can be seamless in combat. if her aethersight is like residual vision or if she has some level of residual vision, then it’d probably suit her okay to transition from cane to staff, she’s gotta stay in her ley lines and she has other ways to remain in touch with her environment. a familiar is also a possibility. i think with very few exceptions (like asking someone to describe a specific sight to her), she would reject any kind of assistance from a human guide; it’s not that she’s above connections with others or interdependence, i just think she plays her emotional cards really close to the vest in the same way matoya did and doesn’t particularly like engaging in that sort of vulnerability. but just like her asking urianger to describe the sky as a moment of emotional resonance and demonstration of trust, i could see that being relevant in other ways in morningstar, like maybe her intending to lead by example for pfeil.

i think their relationship is actually far more important than i initially gave it credit for given their relationships to disability. thancred is also real life disabled in my fic in that he has no vision in one eye, but i think he just has a less intense relationship with disability compared to the two of them if that makes sense? they have different motivations for what they’re doing to themselves but pfeil and y’shtola both take inordinate risks and completely wreck their bodies as a reaction to disability. i think for y’shtola it’s more a sort of dignity of risk thing, where she’s willing to do absolutely anything to get to where she wants and doesn’t necessarily have any internalized negative impressions of her own blindness by shb — maybe part of this is her relying on a variety of assistive technologies rather than JUST residual vision and aethersight and being reckless in other ways. for pfeil it’s actively a “moral” (read: obsessive-compulsive and fawning response) thing; he thinks he’s obligated to hurt himself because his physical disabilities represent a failure to live up to the role of Warrior of Light.

that’s a big source of tension between the two of them, bc pfeil thinks she’s still operating on the internal ableism he’s operating on (and even immediately after being blinded i think hers was never so intense as pfeil’s). conversely y’shtola recognizes that the way he thinks of himself is INCREDIBLY fucked and alarming and that his relationship to risk is actively and intentionally self-destructive as opposed to incidentally like hers. y’shtola didn’t jump after the antidote with the thought of martyring herself; pfeil in her shoes would’ve considered martyring himself the only morally defensible choice, because he’s got worms.

i also think that y’shtola is a person he deeply admires and respects, even though they butt heads not infrequently given she’s a lot more pragmatic and brusque and pfeil is a very bleeding heart on his sleeve type. i mentioned earlier there’s a lot of like, “oh no y’shtola knows i’m banging emet and doesn’t approve!” in m/f emetwol and it’s usually kind of weirdly misogynistic and racist (we HAVE to shit on the WOC for not supporting this deeply white couple!), so initially i wanted to avoid pfeil asking for her take on the relationship after they’ve broken up, but i think actually that’s very in keeping with their relationship and my instinct was correct. y’shtola is more or less a member of his family whose opinion he holds in very high esteem, of course he’s going to want to process something like this with her. i don’t really want to center it on her approval because of course they both agree it was a stupid decision, more on the insight that she has into people that he doesn’t as someone with both autism and limited/stunted social experience due to the horrors.

Jesus this post is long. drives me insane that I can do this but can’t just write the next chapter already

[katerinaaqu]

Honestly I have to confess as some people drew it to my attention that yes I can imagine it is sad for some people who invested so much in this have their love for it diminished or even crushed saga after saga (and I was there. I just got disappointed from Saga 2 instead of the latest ones because I have zero tolerance anymore) but to be frank after all that damage done to Greek myth so far from PJO or Miller's books and now Odyssey with this..it is my secret hope too that this thing will die out and I know is sad for the creators too given their passion and their talent for the project but yeah

Seeing my favorite book, a book that shaped thousands and thousands of generations treated like that just made me disappointed even more when I know that this guy has stuff and knowledge.

He had all the means in his hand to do it right; talent, people to work with, vision, fans...and he chose to twist the Odyssey THAT way? I am sorry but I agree with you here. Wish that what you say is true because I spent plenty of time doing damage control for it so...yeah. there was a million things that could be done properly while keeping the adaptation loose and entertaining (like the first two sagas) but when after a while we were considering ourselves lucky he actually kept it to the same direction then game was being gradually lost and by the last two sagas the same direction was not even kept since important events were changed place randomly for no reason and the certain things added again for no reason has me in a pickle of constantly doing damage control over it (see Antinous post for once) so yeah...

Sorry for the amazing talent these people who worked on it had but I agree with you whole-heartedly.

Epic the Musical ended recently, so now I gonna watch its fandom die. And it's not even a hater's opinion; I still dislike Epic, but this fire has died already. This is just an opinion about Epic as a whole. Thanks to some moments in the later sagas, the whole thing hits differently now: weaker, sillier, even cheaper. We have an expression about a tablespoon of tar in a barrel of honey (I don't use a direct analogy about a fly in the ointment because it's not directly about taste), so we have this tablespoon here and it's going to remain forever now. So I expect that fewer new fans are going to really fall in love with Epic as a story, not just listen to it for some time. Of course, only time will tell, so I'm going to wait for it

[superman86to99]

The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special (November 2022)

We take another chronal jump to the future because we CAN'T not talk about this special, which reads like it was specifically made for us. This 80-page book is made out of four stories by each of the creative teams who worked in the original "Death of Superman" saga back in '92 (minus editor Mike Carlin, inkers Denis Rodier and Dennis Janke, letterer John Costanza, and uhhh whoever did the lettercol back then). The stories are:

"The Life of Superman" (by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding)

The first official Jurgens/Breeding joint since... 1999, I think? I didn't realize how much I missed seeing their combined signature in that little circle; you know the one. This is by far the longest story in the book and, while I enjoyed it a lot, I kinda wish they'd made it shorter so that the others could have more breathing space (especially since the plot will continue in an upcoming miniseries written by Jurgens).

This one is set during the ??th anniversary of Superman's death, when a now adult Mitch Anderson (you know, the asshole teen who thought Superman was lame until a monster came crashing into his house and he needed someone to save him) visits little Jon Kent's school to talk about that historic day. This is a cool starting point because it parallels Mitch's first appearance being forced to sit through a televised Superman interview during class at the start of the "Death" storyline. The main differences are that these kids are much more polite than he was and TVs are way bigger now.

Anyway, Mitch's story is a huge shock to Jon, since the fact that his dad died and came back to life just never came up at home. Jon is upset with Lois for not telling him, so she spends a few pages recapping the entire "Death" storyline while walking Jon through Centennial Park, where Superman's empty (or is it????) (yes it is) tomb still stands.

Meanwhile, a mysterious creature has managed to demolish a whole building in Metropolis without anyone seeing it clearly, but reports indicate that it kinda looked like Doomsday. The Kents eventually come face to face with the creature right in front of the Daily Planet building, and it does look a whole lot like Doomsday, only with four arms... and, later on, wings. Jon names it "dOOmbreaker" (that's how they keep spelling it) but I kinda like his earlier suggestion of "Doomerang" better.

Superman is having a pretty tough time facing Doomerang, since not only is it as strong as Doomsday but it can also evolve and adapt while fighting, instead of having to die first like the original. While Superman fights the monster in front of a crowd of people who are standing way too close (do they want to get good phone pics if he dies again?), Lois goes off to use her journalism powers to find out where the hell it came from. She finds out Doomerang is actually a city worker who helped clean the debris left by the original Doomsday and then took one of his broken spiky bones home as a souvenir. Somehow, the bone has been mutating the guy into another Doomsday for years and conveniently finished the job on the day of Superman's deathiversary.

Lois brings the bone over to Superman, who decides to destroy it to prevent Doomerang from mutating even further. Blasting the bone with heat vision doesn't destroy it, but it does turn Doomerang back into a regular person, meaning that Superman manages to end this particular fight without killing the monster OR dying himself. The end! Until that mini I mentioned comes out, I guess, since it'll probably involve the magic Doomsday-duplicating bone wreaking even more havoc.

"Above and Beyond" (by Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, and Doug Hazlewood)

The sweetest story in the bunch, which is no surprise given that Ordway was always the best at pulling on our heartstrings. This is about Ma and Pa Kent having an understandably tough time watching their son getting pummeled to death on live TV. In order to take Ma's mind off the Doomsday fight, Pa pulls out her old scrapbook of Clark's exploits (which dates back to John Byrne's Man of Steel #1 in 1986) and they go over some other tough fights Superman has managed to survive. These include his tussle with Metallo in Superman #1...

...and the time he brought down Mongul in Warworld during his exile in space. Yes, THE BEARD IS BACK (along with the skimpy space gladiator outfit).

Superman leading a bunch of DC heroes to fight off Brainiac's invasion in "Panic in the Sky" also warrants a mention, which leads to has to be the first Agent Liberty cameo in decades. Side note: all due respect to Brad Anderson, who did a great job coloring the first story, but seeing Glenn Whitmore's colors in this one immediately makes it "feel" more like an authentic '86-'99 comic. (Note: see Don’s section below for a different take on Anderson vs. Whitmore.)

Back to the story, Ma reveals that she had a second, secret stash of Superman-related news clippings where she keeps track of the hundreds lives Clark has saved by quietly transporting donated organs across the country (without even charging for it! Hear that, Flash?). The point is that they reflect on how life can come out of death, unaware that that's literally what's going to happen to their son pretty soon. A beautiful observation illustrated via pictures of Superman punching villains. What more we possibly could ask for in a Superman story? (Other than it lasting more than 10 pages.)

"Standing Guard" (by Roger Stern and Butch Guice)

The Superman/Doomsday fight retold from the perspective of Project Cadmus' Guardian, filling in some of the gaps in the story and answering some questions only a massive Superman nerd could have, like "How long did it take Guardian to drop off Maxima at the hospital?" or "When exactly did he pick up Dubbilex?" Luckily, I am a massive Superman nerd, so I loved it.

So, we see Guardian learning about Doomsday's cross-country rampage and helping Superman in that small town that gets blown up, then in the tree city of Habitat, and then being too late to help him in Metropolis (not that he would have made that much of a difference). The story ends at the morgue where Superman is pronounced dead, when Dubbilex alerts Maggie Sawyer and Dan Turpin that Cadmus' Director Westfield is coming in to take the body for his experiments and Guardian says he's not letting that happen.

It didn't "end there," as you know (or Superboy wouldn't exist), but it's a nice moment. It's cool that, despite how much Guice's artwork has changed, this still feels like an Action issue from back in the day. Part of that is that Stern reuses a lot of old dialogue, but it's also due to his careful attention to detail when it comes to continuity and his knack for keeping characterization consistent -- Guardian, Dubbilex, Maggie, and Turpin are straight out of the '90s. Again: I wish this was longer.

"Time" (by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove)

Finally, this story shows us what John Henry Irons was doing right before and right after Superman's death. This one takes the opposite approach as the previous story: if Stern and Guice made sure to meticulously dovetail their scenes into existing continuity, Simonson and Bog play fast and loose with it to tell the story they wanna tell. In the old comics, we were told that John was buried under a building while trying to help Superman against Doomsday. This one retcons his origin so that John actually gets to see Superman's corpse.

This contradicts John's first appearance in Adventures #500, when he comes out of the rubble days later still thinking he can help Superman stop Doomsday (though he could be excused for being a little confused under the circumstances). However, this retcon provides a pretty strong ending for the story, which is mostly about John trying to reach Doomsday in his single-minded obsession with helping Superman, only to get sidetracked helping people trapped by the destruction in Metropolis. By the time he reaches the front of the Planet building, Superman and Doomsday are already dead. John is devastated, but then he gets up to continue "making a difference" and helping people, setting up the moment when he gets trapped under that rubble.

Yep, that's the psychic lady who later comes up with the whole "Superman's spirit possessed John" story; haven't seen HER in a while. This issue features other long-neglected characters like Keith the unlucky orphan, Myra the orphanage lady, and even Zoid, the kid with the glasses and the camo jacket who gets smoked by a Toastmaster™ in Steel's debut issue.

Overall, this special is like hanging out with old friends, and I love that it doesn't shy away from some aspects of the "Death of Superman" saga that usually get retconned away in all the retellings and adaptations. For instance, when Lois tells little Jon that Doomsday defeated the Justice League, we see the actual 1993 JLA including Bloodwynd, Booster Gold, and yellow ring era Guy Gardner, as opposed to Batman and Wonder Woman or something. One of the pinups even shows up long-haired Aussie Lex Luthor Jr., who is not a character DC seems eager to revisit (just because of how confusing he would be to casual readers, I guess).

This is a great labor of love by all involved and I'm glad it exists. However, I do have one major complaint: no Bibbo. 0/10.

And now, WAY more commentary from the great Don Sparrow after the jump!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and while I grabbed a few different covers, I think the most standard cover was the one with Jonathan Kent gripping Superman’s old cape with an image of Superman grappling with Doomsday set behind him (with further callback scenes on the foldout image).  This centre image is a callback to a couple of famous images—of course, this scene is the very first image in the original Superman #75, but also reminded me of the (excessively airbrushed) cover of the Wizard Magazine Tribute Edition.  Speaking of colouring, the colour throughout this issue is absolutely stunning, and the combination of the 90s style of art with the three-dimensionality of Brent Anderson’s colour is really really appealing.

THE LIFE OF SUPERMAN:

As we move into the story itself, I’m struck with how well the Jurgens/Breeding team can draw these kids looking like actual kids.  We’ve covered it quite a bit in the Byrne era that comic artists can drawn young people as tiny adults, but here, all the students’ dimensions and faces seem accurate.  There’s also a quiet effort at greater diversity among the Metropolis classmates, which is nice to see.

A few pages on, we see the modern Superman for the first time, and it’s wild seeing the Super-team of the 90s drawing the costume of the present age.  Granted, the changes are small, just the movie-style cuffs, the three-dimensional s-shield, and slightly more angular belt-loops, but it’s interesting how familiar and new it feels.  I also think Jurgens is drawing Superman to look a little bit older now that he’s a father.

A few pages after that, we see Lois for the first time, and unsurprisingly, Dan and Brett draw a great looking Lois Lane.  Her outfit in particular says “urban working mom” in a stylish way, and I dig it.  I’ve already mentioned Anderson’s colouring, but I can’t praise it enough—he treads a fine line, by ameliorating the underlying inks, without over-rendering.  He uses largely flat planes of colour, rather than airbrushing every curve, and it’s a really nice marriage, the panel of Lois’ stray hairs leaving a shadow on her cheek is a great example.

As we intercut between Lois’ retelling of the Doomsday storyline, and Superman investigating the new “monster”, the fear in Superman’s eyes as he recognizes his assailant is really well done.  So too is the emotion on Lois’ face as she retells the iconic “cape at half-mast” moment.

It’s a small thing, but I also like the sartorial choices they make for Clark, when he meets up with his family after Doomsday (somehow) scampers away off camera.  Our first glimpse at Doombreaker is a very close recall of a drawing from this same team in the Superman/Doomsday mini (that we should be getting to soon on this very blog!).  Superman taking flight to battle Doombreaker is a poster-worthy image (hurt a little bit in my opinion by the random Superman logo dropped in behind him for no reason).  There’s not a wrong note in this entire portion of the story, so it’s hard—I want to highlight all the art!  But the final panel of Superman flying away is an all-time great.

And to analyze the story a bit—it’s everything I was hoping for.  I was surprised to see the young Jonathan in this book, as the near-adult Jonathan has been so front and centre in the modern stories.  I’ll admit, I missed the dynamic between he and his parents that was done so well by Jurgens, and later Patrick Gleason, so to show this story as a flashback to when Jon learned about what happened to his dad was a really smart way to go.  It also seemed like an antidote to the 1990s that brought us the Death storyline.  This wasn’t a mindless slugfest, and despite the 90s-ness of the name “Doombreaker”, Superman didn’t solve this fight with brute strength.  It took compassion, and investigative reporting on the part of Lois to solve that day’s dilemma.  Right down to the title, it was an uplifting and hopeful story.

ABOVE AND BEYOND:

We are instantly transported back to the original 1993 story as we see the Kents holding each other in front of the television set.  Grummett and Hazlewood certainly have not lost a step, as their art looks as crisp and detailed as all those decades ago.  Glenn Whitmore’s colours are a bit of a comedown after the Brent Anderson chapter, but not distractingly so.  It’s fascinating to see Tom’s interpretation of so many iconic moments of Superman’s career (the Gladiator costume is always a particular highlight because it was such a departure at the time!).

It’s a testament to both Jerry Ordway’s writing, and Tom Grummett’s rendering that this story featuring an elderly couple, and very little non-flashback action threatens to steal the whole book.  The performances on the Kents faces tell a story as compelling as any action-adventure yarn, and it’s wonderful to read, and a very nice little PSA for organ donation, which is a legitimate way we can save lives through our own death, as Superman did.

STANDING GUARD:

Jackson “Butch” Guice inking himself here, and it’s a little scratchier and more textured than we’re used to seeing.  Still has the long limbed, leanly muscled figures we know from his work, but it’s perhaps not as sharp as the work he did on Action Comics, or more recently when he teamed up with Bryan Hitch on a Captain American mini-series, which was some of the best work I’ve ever seen of his.  The faces in particular seem under-drawn a bit, apart from the clearly-based-on-Tommy-Lee-Jones drawing of Dan Turpin.

And as Max pointed out, it seems like an odd choice to leave Bibbo out of a story in which he originally appeared.

TIME:

In a way, this was one of the most essential stories of the book, chronicling the exact first moments after Steel burst out of the ground in the wake of Doomsday’s rampage.  I had always thought he was under the rubble for days, and only emerged after Superman was already dead, but this new story reveals his full actions that day.

The art is a bit inconsistent, but very Bogdanove.  He copies older panels directly, which is effective, but sometimes jarring when they come before and after panels which are inked very differently than Dennis Janke’s hatching would have done.

The linework here reminded me of Kyle Baker, with its thin, precise minimalist line.  As usual with Simonson and Bogdanove, it’s a more ethnically diverse corner of Metropolis, and Bogdanove excels at drawing a variety of facial types.  At times the hulking John Henry looks a little wan, which again can be jarring with what we know of Bog’s version of the character. 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Jurgens’ story is just about perfect, in the way that it calls back almost every element of the original Doomsday storyline, starting—as it did in the 90s—with a classroom setting, and students arguing about who’s the greatest hero.  And how much do you love that Jon isn’t embarrassed of his dad, but rather argues he’s the greatest?  What a kid.

I love Jurgens’ writing of Superman and Lois as parents.  It’s a great moment when Jon voices his displeasure of having to learn about his own father’s death, even temporarily, in a classroom.  To her credit, Lois immediately cops to the fact that they didn’t handle that properly, and apologizes.  It’s the right move, and it’s great to see.

If I have one quibble about the art in the Jurgens’ story, it would be the lettering.  I found the clearly-computerized font for the word “Doombreaker” to not look great in the panel, especially how often it was repeated, and some sound effects are handled better than others.  The “Brakka-chak!” when Doombreaker shoves Superman into a building looks ok, but the “swit swit swit” earlier in the story where Doombreaker spins Superman by his cape just looks so computer-y and tacked on (besides being an odd transliteration—I kinda want to believe that it’s an excited USO show awaiting MASH star Loretta, chanting in anticipation).  But seriously, I do miss the feel of hand-lettered sound effects.

My personal favourite moment is perhaps a weird one, but I’ll explain!  My son’s name is Donovan, and since he was a little tyke, we have always called him “Dono” for short.  So it was very cool to see Jimmy Olsen calling Jonathan Kent “Jonno” for short.

Not to nerd out, but honestly, what do you expect at this point?—there are a couple factual errors within this issue.  One is in the first story, where Superman says it’s new for Doomsday to “speed-evolve” as Doombreaker does.  But Doomsday did the exact same thing in 1994’s Hunter/Prey mini-series, as he speed-grew new bones to cover his ear canals, and also his knuckle bone spurs became weird ropes at one point.  What gives, man?  Also, in the John Henry Irons story, they erroneously have John giving Lois credit for naming Doomsday. But the first person to call him Doomsday was Booster Gold.  Maybe John means she first used it in print?  [Max: I took it as John simply not knowing Booster used the name first... though, if Lois used it in print and didn’t specifically credit its creator, knowing Booster, she’s got a lawsuit in her hands.]

GODWATCH: Been a while since I’ve focused on the faith elements in these stories, but this issue has plenty.  First, when Lois tries to warn Superman, she invokes prayer.  Then in the story with the Kents, their mention of sacrificial love read to me like a Christian concept, and Lee Weeks pinup literally references the cross.

CLAY MANN PINUP:

Anyone who reads this blog even semi-regularly knows I’m something of a connoisseur of “Lois-looking-great” art.  As he showed in the Tom King Batman run, when Superman and Lois went on a double date with Catwoman and Batman (one of the best comics of the last ten years, if you haven’t read it!), Clay Mann draws a stunning, but realistically proportioned, Lois Lane.  Clark’s tailoring is decidedly 90s, but it’s a corker of an image, and my second favourite of the bunch.

LEE WEEKS PINUP:

An absolute stunner from one of my favourite artists and comic people.   The big red cape reminds me of a Bill Sienkiewicz piece, but it has that naturalistic, brushy feel of all of Lee Weeks work.  Great concept, great layout and great drawing.  My favourite of the bunch, actually.

WALT SIMONSON PINUP:

Unmistakably Simonson’s linework, with Laura Martin’s colours just lending a little bit of extra texture.  While Simonson’s looking a bit looser than other days, it’s still a strong piece, even if I’ve never liked the ram-horned look on Doomsday.

FABIO MOON PINUP:

Naturally, Moon’s quirky style is going to be a departure from the dynamic realism we expect from Superman comics, but the style matches the mood very well, here.  The concept of Jimmy using his signal watch for a Superman who will never come is a great and sad idea.  I do find the unidentified extra Planet staffers a bit distracting, though.  That might be Ron Troupe with his blazer over his shoulder (I guess his ”JAM” sweatshirt was in the laundry), and the mustachioed fellow could be Steve Lombard, as drawn in Superman stories from much later than the death storyline.  The other two ladies?  Not sure.  Maybe Alice and Cat Grant?  Or is it Daphne and Velma.  But the fact that I’m debating about it shows that maybe they could have been left out.  [Max: That’s definitely Alice for me, and therefore Cat next to hear because it’s just be weird to have an extra random person.]

BILL SEINKIWEICZ PINUP:

There’s Bill himself! He is such a master of energetic and photorealistic artwork that I have to wonder if he had someone dress up as Doomsday for this shot. Another interesting artistic take.

GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ PINUP:

A great circular layout, bringing the eye into the centre (and Superman’s face) both with the framing of Doomsday, and also the muted colours at the edges. Managing to include Jimmy and Lois is just the icing on the cake.  Great.

JAMAL CAMPBELL PINUP:

Another powerful, if simple image, with Lois’ grief front and centre, and the “Reign” storyline that followed behind her.  My only quibble is I prefer drawn lettering rather than computer fonts, but that’s a minor one.

CARMINE DI GIANDOMENICO PINUP:

I quite like the Superman movie inspired crystals as a motif, and the layout is well designed.  Doomsday looks frightening, which is a strange contrast from the placid expression on Superman’s face.  Buuuuuut, I have a few issues here.  Generally, I think computer artwork can make an artist a bit lazier, and we see that here.  The arms are literal mirrors of each other, which just feels a bit unnecessarily hurried. And one of my major pet peeves of the modern era is artists refusing to draw the actual Superman logo onto the figure.  Here it is slapped on (with at least some colouring to denote his chest muscles) in my opinion too high onto the uniform.  Lastly the planet Earth behind him (another thing modern artists often skip drawing) is not even a high-resolution image, and you can see the jagginess even in print.  

CULLY HAMNER PINUP:

In my top three of these pinups easily, it’s exactly what I want from a pinup—seeing familiar and beloved characters from the story, looking as they did in the original story, but interpreted in the signature style of the artist.  Terrific sense of motion here with unique, blocky colours in that Hamner style.  Love it. On the whole, I was surprised and pleased with how worthwhile the issue was.

[bookwyrminspiration]

How do you think the elves survived in the Ice Age?

The last one ended well over 25,000 years ago, but surely there would be Ancient Elves that were alive then that would remember living through that. The frigid weather would make it difficult for life to grow, which would make it hard to make food and find shelter. Many of the humans that were living in this period eventually died. The Elves have a higher chance of survival due to their abilities. They have flashers who could create light that would help them grow crops. They have hydro kinetics that would help them make drinkable water. They have pyrokinetics that could create fires so people do not freeze. The one issue is clothing; there is no ability that could help them create it. As long as they cultivate crops that they could use to make clothing, then they should be fine. I hope this appears in the books in the future, as it would be fascinating to discuss.

I think you've pretty much answered your own question! However, I highly doubt that anything like this will appear in the books in the future.

This is a heavy focus on irrelevant worldbuilding when looking at the series' context, and even as interesting as it would be, the time it would take to discuss this kind of thing wouldn't fit in the story or appeal to a large enough number of people to justify it. I personally love worldbuilding! But knowing about events 25000 years before the story takes place isn't relevant enough to include it

But back to the question. I am not, by any means, an expert on Ice Ages, but I think it might not actually have been as significant of a problem as it might seem?

It appears that an Ice Age is predicted to have an average temperature of 48 degrees (about 7 celsius), which while not necessarily pleasant, isn't immediately devastating. It would've been a gradual thing, allowing time for the elves to adapt. Probably so slowly no one truly noticed a difference, since the process wasn't being sped up like global warming.

And while those temperatures seems to be above the growing range for cotton, wool is an excellent resource for both warmth and clothing. It doesn't harm sheep, so I could see ancient elves utilizing that. However, sheep weren't domesticates at that time and people didn't know how to spin wool, but also elves are supposed to be more advanced so maybe they'd made those advancements at the time--and since these are keeper elves, it's also possible they had a better plant that survived at those temperatures.

Growing things might be the hardest part, as my very brief investigation into the question says that's not great temperatures for most plants, however, some would do alright and the elves also have a very different set of flora. So while not ideal, I think they'd get by.

I suppose my answer, based on an admittedly limited knowledge about Ice Ages, is that they'd survive as they do now. It may be harsher conditions, but it would've been a gradual descent they could adapt to and live through same as the humans who made it through. They don't need to do anything special, but have an advantage given their abilities and skills.

I mean, night vision, temperature regulation, and such seem like great leverage against an ice age, and could explain why they've fallen out of use; they're no longer as helpful.

However! I am not an expert! I may be missing something important, so take this all with a grain of salt :)

[n1kolaiz]

The Six Realms

Okay, so I was pretty close to giving up on writing analyses but I'm back LMFAO plus I see we're close to 100 followers and I just want to thank you guys for being so very supportive <3

Alright, I'm not sure if anyone's ever written about this, but if an analysis like this exists, please do let me know because I'm kind of curious as to what other people think about this, too!

Remember that time Fukuchi spoke about bringing "about the five signs of an angel's death"?

I read a little bit more about it, and as a minor content warning: this analysis will focus on a few religious aspects (Buddhism + Hinduism). So if I get any of the facts wrong, firstly: I do not mean any disrespect to either religion, and secondly: please do correct me if I interpret anything in the wrong way.

Spoilers for BSD chapter 90 onwards + BEAST!AU under the cut!

So I'll start by talking about the Decay of Angels. As we all know, the members include Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Sigma, and Bram Stoker, and their leader, Fukuchi Ochi. After Fyodor's arrest, the Decay of Angels came into light with Nikolai murdering four government officials in a week. These murders symbolise the Buddhist cycle of existence, or otherwise known as samsara: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

"We are the Decay of Angels—hiding here as terrorists, a 'murder association', five people who will announce the demise of the celestial world."

Nikolai Gogol, chapter 57

Samsara is described to be a concept beyond human understanding. According to Hinduism, samsara is the physical world where every being has its soul trapped into a physical vessel. The Hindus believe that everything has a soul, and due to a soul's attachment to desire, it is forced into a deathless cycle of being born, dying, and reincarnating into a different body. In Buddhism, the ultimate way to break free from this cycle is by obtaining nirvana.

Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment or awakening. In Pali, the language of some of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word is nibbana; in both languages it means "extinction" (like a lamp or flame) or "cessation." It refers to the extinction of greed, ill will, and delusion in the mind, the three poisons that perpetuate suffering. Nirvana is what the Buddha achieved on the night of his enlightenment: he became completely free from the three poisons. Everything he taught for the rest of his life was aimed at helping others to arrive at that same freedom.

- TRICYCLE'S definition of nirvana

As Fukuchi mentions in the panel above, there are six different realms of existence. These realms represent every possible state of existence, but one cannot live in a specific realm forever. Depending on whether or not one's past actions were morally good or bad, an individual is born into one of these realms. Basically, the controlling factor of which realm a person is born into is dependent on their respective karma. The realms are separated into two categories: the hellish ones and the heavenly ones.

The Deva Realm: where beings are rewarded for the good deeds they have done. This realm is void of anything unpleasant. It is basically paradise— empty of unfulfilled desires, any form of suffering, and fears of every kind. Religious individuals, however, do not seek to be born into this realm since its attitude is more or less carefree.

The Asura Realm: where demigods are admitted. Asuras are driven by greed and envy, and may come in conflict with human beings since they are quite similar. They are powerful beings, but quarrel with each other quite a bit, making this realm quite undesirable to be reborn into.

The Animal Realm: where beings are given the form of an animal (you probably guessed that lol). Individuals here don't actually have good karma to take pride in, but rather, they are born into this realm to work off their bad karma (by being slaughtered, hunted, or forced to work, etc). Being born into this realm forces one to atone for their past sins by living out their life as an animal.

The Hell Realm: where one is punished for their evil actions. The most merciless of realms, where one pays for their transgressions through pure suffering, methods of which include: dismemberment, starvation, and psychological/physical torture. However, once a person's term is fulfilled in this realm, they are presumably promised to be reborn into a higher state.

The Preta Realm: similar to the hell realm, in which beings pay for their past sins (specifically: greed and stinginess) by having to survive through hunger and thirst. This realm is also known as the 'ghost realm,' because some pretas are psychologically tortured by being forced to live in places their past selves have lived in. They are invisible to human beings living at that time, which pushes them to face the depths of despair and loneliness. Your typical horror movie, really.

The Human Realm: the only realm where one's actions determine their future. The status (social ranking, physical wellbeing, and so on) of a human being in this realm is determined by their past actions, but due to the fact that a person has their own conscience to differentiate good morals from bad, the actions they commit in this realm have the power to determine which realm they are sent to next.

Okay, so now that I've got that out of the way, let's shift our focus to the Book. Very little is known about the Book, but the basic fundamentals of how it works is that whatever is written in the book will come into existence only if its contents follow the rules of karma. In addition to that, only a few sentences can be written into a single page of the Book, and it must follow the current narrative of the story.

If I'm not wrong, the first time the Book was mentioned was by Fitzgerald, who wanted it to resurrect his deceased daughter in hopes of restoring his wife's mental health. The next time the Book is brought up is when Fyodor's intentions to possess it are divulged; his goal was to decimate the global population of ability-users. And now, the current arc has the Book as its central focus, with a single page in Fukuchi's possession.

[ BEAST!AU spoilers ]

The Book acts as the central point of multiverses, with each character's lives differing from universe to universe.

Dazai committing suicide in this alternate universe stands in sharp contrast with how he decided to start up a new life in the main universe.

Oda staying alive to act as a mentor to Akutagawa in the ADA differs from how Oda uses his death to prompt Dazai to "be on the side that saves people."

And of course, the way Atsushi and Akutagawa have their positions switched in the two universes depicts how different their lives would be if they were given the chance to be mentored by different people— these are just a few examples of how the Book houses an endless amount of possibilities.

[ end of BEAST!AU spoilers ]

Hypothetically speaking, this kind of reminds me of the differing realms I mentioned before, where suffering is promised in some realms, and better things are granted in the rest, depending on one's karma, or the deeds they've done in their past lives. In this scenario, perhaps one's past life can be understood as one's current life in a different universe. That's just a personal opinion though. Take it as you will.

side note: Keep in mind that the person who is more or less impervious to the Book's effect is Dazai, with his nullification ability. I wouldn't want to propose any theories in this aspect (I don't believe I'm fully fact-checked ;_;), but I could use Dazai as a raw example of how your choices affect your future. If Dazai had decided to stay in the Port Mafia after Oda's death, or if he even decided to go through with his suicidal fixations, life would've been different for him in the root universe (obviously, ryley) I mean, you could basically understand that from how he ended up in the BEAST au, but imagine if he really did slip up in his decision-making in any of the universes.

Many analysts have proposed that he went MIA (early in his life) from the main universe for a while to figure out how the BEAST universe worked, whilst having the Book to his advantage. Perhaps his actions were guided? I'm not saying he's all-knowing, but he's sure as hell smart. I'm not sure if Kafka was trying to highlight the concept of karma when it comes to Dazai, but if he is, then I suppose you could say that Dazai is pretty much unaffected by the rules of karma, existing as the centerpiece of all the multiverses. No Longer Human is the namesake of his ability, but the book talks about disqualification from societal norms and generally, the world. I was talking about it with a friend, and they reminded me that Yozo (the main protagonist) was pretty strong in his views against society. Like he didn't speak out of total defeat, he spoke out of defense. If there was anything Dazai actually lost to, it was his guilt— "Living itself is a source of sin."

Then again, that's my personal interpretation since everyone has their unique perspective of his writings. In terms of the actual adaptation, you could translate the word 'disqualification' to 'insusceptibilty' when if it came to the Book's effects on Dazai? This side note is becoming really long lmao anyways I'll link a few theories which afflicted me with brainrot down below.

Another thing before I wrap up, the name 'Decay of Angels' stemmed from Yukio Mishima's book entitled 'The Decay of An Angel.' This is the final novel to the author's tetralogy: 'The Sea of Fertility.' The main protagonist, Honda, meets a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki, who takes the form of a young teenage boy named Tōru. The last novel of this series enhances Mishima's dominant themes of the series as a whole:

the decay of courtly tradition in Japan

the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics

Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era

Again, this could be referred to what Fukuchi goes on to say:

Some people view the concept of samsara optimistically, justifying it by saying that perhaps each individual is given a second (third, fourth, fifth, who knows) chance to refine their actions in order to be birthed into a better realm, with their karma being the independent variable.

On the other hand, other people, specifically the Hindus, view the cycle of existence as some sort of plague. To them, the flow of life and being forced to endure the suffering of mere existence in any form was somewhat frowned down upon. Some Hindus viewed samsara as a trap. Besides, having one's soul being limited to a physical body for the rest of eternity was not very appealing, especially since where they ended up at depended on the karmic value their past actions surmounted.

Even so, particular types of Buddhists don't seek nirvana, but instead, like the Hindus, they make an effort to be good people of society, building up their good deeds to increase the likelihood of being reborn into one of the better realms.

As mentioned before, the Deva Realm was the home of angels, the most carefree, gratified beings to exist. Fukuchi describes these angels as the people who don't get their hands dirty, the people who act as the puppeteers of society: politicians.

In terms of parallels, angels were the most fortunate and powerful, but they didn't have anyone ruling over them. A lack of supervision would lead to the abuse of power, which is what I believe Fukuchi was referring to. Deeming himself the Decay of Angels, he sought to prove himself as the 'sign of death that falls on the nation's greed.'

A few fun facts (okay, not really) about Yukio Mishima: he committed seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) on the day he held a speech to voice out his unpopular political beliefs to the public. Mishima deeply treasured traditions and opposed the modern mindset the nation was advancing forward to adapt eventually. In his last book, The Decay of an Angel, he spoke about the five signs which complete the death of an angel:

Here are the five greater signs: the once-immaculate robes are soiled, the flowers in the flowery crown fade and fall, sweat pours from the armpits, a fetid stench envelops the body, the angel is no longer happy in its proper place.

The Decay of an Angel, p.53

The reviews about this series I've read so far describe Mishima's works to be quite complex; his writings demanded a lot of time to deconstruct and understand. They were highly symbolic, and he was pretty obsessed with death and the 'spiritual barrenness of the modern world.' I think you could attach a few strings from here to the mindsets of the DOA members. Of course, this parallel is completely abstract, but I'll go on rambling anyway:

He should have armed them with the foreknowledge that would keep them from flinging themselves after their destinies, take away their wings, keep them from soaring, make them march in step with the crowd. The world does not approve of flying. Wings are dangerous weapons. They invite self-destruction before they can be used. If he had brought Isao to terms with the fools, then he could have pretended that he knew nothing of wings.

The Decay of an Angel, p.113

I suppose you could resonate Nikolai with that excerpt. As much as Fukuchi takes the lead in this whole murder association, I'd like to believe that each member of the DOA plays an equally interesting part in whatever movement they're trying to execute. Fyodor feels it is his god-sent purpose to cleanse the world of its sins, his motto being, "Let the hand of God guide you." Sigma doesn't know where he belongs, since his origination comes from a page in the Book, and is fueled by the desperation to find a reason to live. Bram holds one of the most powerful abilities which is counted to be one of the "Top Ten Calamities to Destroy the World."

What I mean to say is that the DOA members are incredibly powerful, and they're not your ordinary antagonists (or I'm just biased). It's not just overthrowing authorities, mass genocide, and world domination— you could say that each individual is trying to utilize their purposes to their fullest expenditures, and the way they're trying to assert their plan into action is a little more passive-aggressive (framing the Agency, having a convo with a suicidal dude in jail, etc). They're the gray area between evil and good. As they framed the good guys for their own crimes, they're trying to conquer the bad guys for exploiting the innocent as they please.

This post would definitely age well if all hell breaks loose in the current arc (as if it didn't) and Kafka doesn't give us a happy ending.

That's all I have to say for now I guess! Thank you for reading, and once again, if anyone else something they wanna share, feel free to do so <3

sources (tryna follow Q's example ^_^) :

the six realms

samsara

the decay of angels

beast!au

the book

the sea of fertility

yukio mishima

theory: dazai’s emotional/mental state in beast!au

q’s theory: dazai being the protector of the book

theory: beast!dazai and the book

[thefaeriefeatherdark]

So essentially my thoughts are this:

You have three Kon's, which is great. I love Kon.

This is probably the best way I can think to make that work in a new interesting way.

Kon (Comic book version):

This version has a lot of overlap with both other characters simply because it's where those characters are coming from. He had a 100 issue ongoing and a whole bunch of stuff in Reign.

For him I'd keep the 90s stuff. We can keep the he's part Lex Luthor and part Superman if that's something we really like (though personally I'd make him part Lex and part Paul Westfield). He's created to replace Superman when Superman dies.

The stuff we want to lose presumably: We don't need the bit at the end of Meltdown where he no longer ages (especially since that got undone in Sins of Youth). We can probably either age Tana down or otherwise ignore her.

We can keep the Hawaii stuff. We should keep the Cadmus stuff. We probably want to lose a lot of the 00s stuff when Kon gets a lot of the Kryptonian powers.

I'd either keep Kon at Cadmus or explore a new status quo. Maybe put him in Hollywood, or he's looking for Cadmus or something other than the Kent farm.

Costume wise we probably end up with either a take on his very early 2000s costume (Dark red and blue) or his 90s costume (this might be an issue with Maik having a similar design). I'd keep his current hair, 2016 stubble thing, and then late 90s early 00s Dark Blue and Red costume or give him a redesign to be more Jack Kirby leaning (but keep the casual clothes/street wear).

Powers: TTK which manifests in Flight, Super Strength, and Invulnerability along with the more visible version where he can make objects explode or hold people stationary, along with a TTK sense where he can sense objects by extending his TTK field around them.

Connor Kent (YJ version+):

This version probably needs the most additional bits since he's from a team show and wasn't given much solo hero stuff. So. Add the 2000s stuff from Johns and Lemiure to him. He's the one who ends up on the Kent farm. He has Wolf.

Put him on a version of the Outsiders. My suggestion is to make that version a mix of the 03 TT and the 00s Outsiders. Nightwing is the leader, the team includes Indigo, etc. I'd actually put forth having Connor have a budding relationship with Indigo (though you might need to age Indigo down for this) before it's revealed that she's Brainiac 8 and she turns on the team. YJ and the Outsiders team up to take her and Lex down along with mind controlled Connor. After her death M'gann leaves the team. Obvious drama between her and Connor, etc before they eventually get involved.

Connor doesn't get much attention from Superman (both as a result of larger crises going on in Superman's life and because Superman's prior dynamic with Kon-El was largely uninvolved save to provide him aid when it was necessary). Connor views this in a moody teenage light of Superman being embarrassed by him. Eventually Superman discovers that Connor has been living in the Outsiders head quarters and offers him a place to stay on the Kent Farm.

You use the obvious YJ+ 2000s look. You'd also apply some of the YJ missions to the Outsiders, which fits better since the Outsiders are a fairly Covert Ops team.

Powers: Super Strength, Heat Vision, Freeze Breath, Invulnerability (I'm assuming we're not doing Flight), Super-Hearing, whatever other stuff you want to add.

Maik-El (sort of a take on the RotS film):

This guys the hardest frankly. Maik struggles with something that's non-existent for the others. While Kon and Connor have fairly distinct personalities and concepts behind them, Maik's basis is actually a fairly decent adaptation of Early Kon.

My suggestion to some extent is. He's the first shiny product from the Lex Luthor brand. Drawing from the early adventures of Superboy where he was much more arrogant and attention seeking. He represents to some extent the merger between the definitely legitimate business Agenda, and Lex Corp. This gives them the ability to create a brand new display of Genetic and otherwise modded beings.

Going further I'd suggest giving him a team. Like Give him a squad of Mass Produced Boyband/Teen Idol figures. My suggestions are, new team, the Point Men, Infinity Inc(from 52), or the DNAngels. I think obviously that you need to also introduce some concept where you deal with what happens to Lex's DNA sample after he creates Maik.

You need a new cast of villains for him and to do some work to make him fully functional but I think messing with an idea of him as starting as more of a villain character.

You might be able to steal some N52 characters/villains for Maik. Specifically mess with the idea of him as a puppet of Lex. Maybe I'd even go further and give him some kind of identity as Lex's kid?

You'd also need to work to give him some distinctions from Kon.

I'm thinking you really lean into the "He's the one Lex has time to mess with". You make it so Lex has modified his genes, and him as much as possible to make him a better hero.

My proposition for writing him separately is that he might be the smartest of the Superboy's, even if he's still young and headstrong, and clearly fucked up. Like, I think he's probably fluent in a bunch of other languages, for marketing purposes.

Powers: Cybernetic enhancements (maybe some kind of inbuilt energy weapon?) + whichever Kryptonian abilities he gets.

I think the Cybernetic Enhancements both make sense with Lex's forte of Lexosuits. I also think Lex having put a bunch of electronic bits in Maik gives you a possible exploration of Lex using this as a form of control over Maik, and then eventually you can do a narrative exploring the way Maik uses those later on, like Maik viewing his cybernetic pieces as a part of Lex and eventually figuring out how to define himself.

OKAY. That's 90% of my commentary.

I really do think there's a lot of cool stuff in your pitch. Your core issues are gonna be building out each of the heroes casts and ideas beyond the basic stuff you already have.

I also can see some obvious character notes that run throughout and connect these three, each of them struggling with being controlled and manipulated, Kon by Knockout, and Connor and Maik by Lex (and if you take my advice also Brainiac 8 for Connor).

I do have some small questions...

Is the intent for Connor to be a Cadmus creation or a Lex creation? (I'd probably make him an early creation of Lex's before he got his hands on Agenda maybe specifically made by Dabney Donovan and Amanda Spence).

Would Lena Thorul be a member of Supergirl's cast? (Because I think Lena Thorul is rad and every reboot of the character has been far less cool).

Is there a plan to make the characters distinct in appearance when not in Superhero get up (even though there's some differences my suggestion would be giving Kon a more 2016 look and maybe a darker skin tone since a lot of fanworks interpret him that way, Connor can look just like YJ Connor, and then giving Maik green eyes [More Lex-y])?

While all these characters are Superboy would they have taken on names of their own? (I can easily see Kon taking on a new name once he's in his 20s, but presumably Maik and Jon would probably be using the same name for a bit, and if Connor has slowed aging he'd probably be using a different name).

Is Matrix canon?

I might sketch up some concepts designs for Kon and Maik (if that's okay with you), but I'm not the greatest artist in the world and I forget to do stuff sometimes so we'll see what happens.

EDIT: OKAY WAIT I FORGOT TO EXPLAIN AGENDA!!!

In DC there was Cadmus (or the Project) which did weird stuff with DNA, originally this was treated as Rad because it was the 70s and Genetic manipulation and Cloning weren't really a foreseeable thing at the time.

By the 90s what had become Cadmus was treated as a little more villainous with some good guy elements to them (Jim Harper/Guardian and Dubbilex being core examples). The Head of Cadmus created Superboy using his DNA modified to add Telekinetic abilities to mimic Superman's powers(in the original origin).

Now, eventually they kill the evil head of Cadmus (Paul Westfield). They want to treat Cadmus as more of a good guy thing at this point. So in Superboy they introduced Agenda who were an Evil Genetics group. They made Match (which was a whole thing) by kidnapping Superboy and using him as a template. Facility explodes, etc.

Later however while Superboy is working for Cadmus Agenda reappears as a villain and it's revealed that it belongs to Contessa (who was either married to Lex Luthor at the time or had just divorced him). Anyway they do a bunch of evil stuff, including trying to gain power by embarrassing the Superheroes by planting a spy on YJ (in the form of Match pretending to be Superboy).

The core things to understand is: They're an evil cloning organization that belong to a woman who married Lex Luthor.

My proposition is simply to move that to a point shortly before Maik makes his appearance and to lean into the more... "Shady Business/Evil Corporation element".

There's also a note that a lot of their stuff got confiscated by the US government at one point when Lex was president, so Lex has made use of Agenda's tech before.

Essentially simplify that down and have Lex use Agenda to create Maik-El after he marries Contessa.

The Separate RoTS Kon and Comic Kon AU

@thefaeriefeatherdark

So this AU is basically part of my own extended DC universe (we all have one and mine is still very much in development), where Connor (Young Justice Superboy), Kon (Comic's Superboy), and Maik (Reign of the Supermen's Superboy) all exist concurrently. Kon is the first clone but it is the one with TTK and Lex as the other father (all three technically are in this scenario), and it pretty much plays out with ignoring him getting erased cause I'm not playing that game with DC. After Clark finally gets used to him being around, they find out about Connor, who, unlike Kon, has more Kryptonian abilities, mainly what he has in the cartoon, but I think he deserves heat vision and ice breath because I like them and he deserves something too. Clark is a lot worse to him than he was to Kon, if only because how does Lex keep getting his DNA and Connor is a tad more standoffish and he didn't feel like he was ever part of Young Justice here because, well Kon was already there and you don't need two Supers (stupid hypothesis I know, but what can you do?). Also unlike Kon, he does age, albeit slower than most people. Young Justice does keep inviting him to join (the team being from their original run plus M'gann and Kaldur, but he thinks it's just pity and ends up on the Outsiders. He still ends up with M'gann though cause it's a cute ship to me. After they get married and Jon is around 10 (no Bendis time skip and the aging is different because otherwise Lois would be having Jon at 75, and a key point of this AU is to fill Ma and Pa Kent's outside table with family), is when Lex displays the newest "invention" of Lexcorp, Superboy. Now, I never watched Reign of the Supermen and have very cursory knowledge about it, so this will deviate a lot more than the rest. Superboy (here-fore referred to as Maik due to later reasons), is made basically act how the music industry used Justin Beiber when he was a child, and he is 12 because he looked like a 12 year old when I saw him. He is literally a marketing ploy for Lex to show off he can mass produce Supermen who are more obedient and humans can trust since they're American Made. Lex uses him literally to show up Superman and even has him fight the other three Superboys to show how much better the man made ones are, always during disasters. One day during a disaster, he fumbles it hard, causing more destruction than should have happened (ignoring that Lex caused the disaster in the first place), Lex takes him to the lab to euthanize him with a kryptonite syringe. Kara was having lunch nearby with some friends and hears Maik screaming and crying and excuses herself and busts into the lab and sees Lex trying to pin Maik down to kill him and she goes feral. She burns Lex's hand so he drops the syringe and then gets up close and personal. The end of the fight being that despite being at least 100' underground, Lex is lands outside the hole Kara made and she keeps going, horrifying the onlookers until Maik finally climbs out (only super jumping, flight comes later) and tells the crowd what Luthor tried to do to him, but obviously, a human being turned into a squeak toy by a Kryptonian isn't good for optics, despite the youth's pleas. Luckily, Lois and Jon heard the commotion and Jon throws a rock at Kara who stops and realizes what she's doing, spits on Lex, grabs Maik by the hand and flies off with him. Clark, Lois and Jon find them at the farm with Ma making them sandwiches to eat. Kara and Maik explain what happened and afterwards, Clark says they need a name for him if he's staying. Given he's 12 physically and less than a year old legally, he has to stay somewhere and since Lex has a boner for both Kal and Clark, they decide he should stay with the Danvers who are okay with the situation but scold Kara for almost killing a person even if he deserves it cause she was raised better than that. They say they need to name him something and Kara has been teaching Jon, Kon and Connor some Kryptonian and Jon suggests Maik El, which I don't know if there is a Krypotonian language that's actually made-

[sprawa-przybyszewskiej]

Ekphrasis in The Danton Case, Thermidor, and their adaptations

Ekphrasis is invoking a piece of visual media into a literary piece. It can be done for a variety of reasons, from entirely pragmatic (mostly grounding the literature in reality - if the invoked piece is a real piece of art, one you could find in a museum, for example) or more poetic (drawing some symbolic meaning between the piece of art and the idea behind the text).

In Przybyszewska's plays ekphrasis is nonexistent, at least on the foreground. I don't recall any clearly established visual, given to the readers by the original author. It's not weird in any way - how many pieces of medai do you recall which refrain from its sophisticated and additional piece of subtext and iformation? Hundreds, probably. The only other artistic thing that she has weaved into her plays is La Marseillaise, which is invoked twice in The Danton Case. There are also three book references to Othello, Orlando furioso and this one book Robespierre summarizes to Saint-Just when he's talking about hatred (but of which I have no idea if it's a real one - it probably is - or not). Other than that - nothing, plus the books count only a little, forekpfrasis should be, as I said, visual in nature.

Of course, the historical aspect of her works is what grounds them in our reality, and so cleverly, too (seeing as they're not really historical plays in any way or form, but manage to fool most anybody). And thanks to her extensive stage directions, we have no need of any additional element helping us visualize the scenes, for she does it perfectly enough on her own.

However, seein as these are plays calls for a mirror ekpfrastic effect and thus theatrical and cinematographical adapations are born. And they, on the other hand, have a potential to be filled to the brim with visual refernces. Here I would like to have a look at a few, which are taken from one of the most well known staging and the famous Wajda movie (plus some). In no particular order, there goes:

This is the very first scene of a controversial theatre adaptation of The Danton Case. Instead on portraying Robespierre as a firm leader, who only in the very end collapsed temporarily under the huge responsibility he now had to bear, the director decided to portray him as someone physically weak, not in the sense Danton meant when he called him a weakling, but in the sense of somebody who already bears so much responsibility, pain, physical ailments, doubts and whatnot. Just: everything, everythin a human could possible deal with, he deals with, and has to do so in a way that doesn't make people suspiscious about his "shortcomings". There is a interesting parallel between him and Saint-Just, whose upright and unbreakeable character is symbolised by a neck braces, something which people wear after a spine endangering accidents - and incidentally, wasn't it Saint-Just who accused Robespierre of "breaking his spine"? But not in this adaptation, oh no - here their very last scene is cut extremely short and they recite the last few sentences along with some Thermidor lines as two floating heads, a vision into the future which awaits them.

Enough about Saint-Just, though, let's focus on Robespierre and Marat. I must admit I know next to nothing about him, only what some passage here and there in this or that historical study might tell me, but I know, as does everybody, that he was known as L'ami du Peuple, which is why of the reasons, I think, why the director took this image and transposed it onto Robespierre: to make him even more likeable, to show for the umpteenth time that it is Robespierre whom we should cheer on and whom we should feel sorry for. This might also be a parallel between their both's tarnished health, their premature deaths and - last but not least - the role of an icon of the Rvolution both of them play in nowadays' audience's minds. You don't have to study history to knowwho Robespierre was, you don't have to study art to know this painting. Even if you don't agree with some more in-depth explanation of linking this person to this painting, it is a good opening image. It captures our attention in a good way.

I had mention Saint-Just and there he is, in the background of the picture, symbolically assisting Danton and his clique in their last moments. Instead of shwoign them in torn shirts, the director went into another direction altogether and enshrouded them in white sheets from heads to toes, making them all look like very stereotypical ghosts, whom they will all become in just a couple of moments.

In Polish culture, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about ghosts is Dziady, an old slavic tradition that is now replaced with the Catholic All Souls Eve. Dziady is no longer, apart from perhaps some small minorities who still practice old pagan faiths, but as a ritual, they are immortalised in a play by Adam Mickiewicz, undoubtedly the greatest Polish poet ever. Everybody know this play, some scens - by heart, and they were and are being staged pretty much constantly from one point on. Needless to say, they inspire a lot of art, and I decided to show this very fmous poster by the most famous Polish poster designer, Franciszek Starowieyski…

…who is important in this case, because he played David in Wajda's movie.

Not many people know - because his other carreer overshadowed by a lot his first one - that Wajda was a painter. Who actually hated his art, some of his pieces are in the national museum of contemporary art in Łódź alongside stars such as Władysław Strzemiński (the hero of Wajda's very last movie), which is a fact he absolutely detested. I dont know, nor do I care, why was that, because what matters is his previous education as an artist at the very least helped him not only to envision the visuals of the movie, but also acquainted him with great works of art. On which he could model this or that setup. I think it's a nice little detail he catsed Starowieyski as David, a real painter acting as another real painter, it adds a layer of reality onto the movie, and presumably makes for a more natural acting in the few scenes he was in his studio (I also think they look alike).

Speaking of David's studio, I once stumbled upon a lecture which drew parallels between some scenes in the movie and some paitings, which was mostly focused on character and costume design, and truth be told didn't contribute much to the overall watching experience of Danton. However, I must admit the lecturer had a very good eye in this one particular case, in which he pointed out that this quick shot in David's studio pretty obviously invokes the Fussli's The Artist's Despair Before The Grandeur Of Ancient Ruins. I don't think it's a coincidence (or at the very least, would be funny if it were) this shot is shown during the scene where Robespierre starts to grasp at desperate measures to save the country/save his own face in the trial. It is an artist's despair, only artist of a different kind. And it is a despair when being faced with a (possible) ruin of something great, even if its greatness is not yet formed, as opposed to the greatness passed.

The very last example I was able to think of was this photo I found of The Danton Case from 1975. It is one of those old, very classical (I presume) adaptations, which are mostly filled to the brim with riddiculosly attractive people and very often deliberately drew from other sources of artistry, like the one pictured above. No matter what the real relationship between Louise Danton and her husband was, in the play it is portrayed as something atrocious, and I cringe whenever directors try to make it something else without good reasons for doing so, so I am very glad in the past at least they stuck with classicaly depicted acts of violation against women, not because it is a violation, but because in the classical stories (like the myth of Persephone shown in the sculpture above) the woman will usually get her revenge. Just like Przybyszewska's Louison did.

Thank you for bearing with me until the end, and if you have any other examples of this come to your mind, I compel you to share them with me!

List of pieces of art in the order of their appearance:

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat

Franciszek Starowieyski, Dziady

Jacques-Louis David, Self-portrait

Heinrich Fussli, The Artist's Despair Before The Grandeur Of Ancient Ruins

Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Rape Of Persephone

[kookiepredictions]

Jungkook Ideal Type

This was a request so I thought I’d start from here.

Jungkook has high expectations in terms of ideal type because he actually has very small expectations from them. This is obviously confusing so I will explain.

As mentioned in an earlier post, in a relationship, Jungkook is a very giving person. He hardly ever thinks about what he can get from the person he loves. Most of his fantasies are about what wants to give to them. However, he is pretty aware of this personality trait in himself and knows that it is something that can be easily manipulated. This is why his screening process of letting people in is so strict and fussy. He wants to make sure that the person who will be the subject of all of this generous affection, is someone who naturally understands what he needs without him having to ask or demand, because it’s not his natural personality to ask for anything. Even if he needs something, which everyone does, he will just keep it to himself and stay hurting on his own when no one understands it. He is quite aware of this whole process and cycle and therefore feels that he needs to be extra careful of who he brings into this. This is why his ideal type personality traits are so nit-picky-like. They mainly cover the aspects of the ability to understand his own personality traits, which are complex and quite confusing, often even to himself.

Now getting to the specifics, the previous point leads to the most important characteristic that Jungkook wants in his partner: someone who understands him in all his myriad moods. When Jungkook is in his best form, he is the best partner, friend, son, brother, colleague that anyone can even hope to have in a lifetime. But no one is always is their best form and Jungkook is no exception. But what sets him apart from most people is that he has a general awareness of this, and therefore knows that when he goes into his dark place, he is also a really difficult person to handle. And he thinks it would take someone exceptionally understanding to stand by him in those moments. He fears that anyone who gets into a relationship with him only for his good, brighter moments, will stand to be shocked at his not-so-bright moments and then will start unloving or possibly even hating him and it will leave him with a heartbreak that he will never recover from. It’s also a possibility that he has already had an experience of this kind and therefore is even more careful about who he chooses now.

Jungkook has an innate ability of aesthetically appreciating beauty and his head is bound to turn at the sight of someone pretty, but the majority of it is in a more artistic manner, so the subject of beauty can be a woman, or a man or an object or anything else, without always having a romantic or sexual connotation. So although he is a “man” man who enjoys looking at beautiful people with the occasional thought of “smash-worthy” in his mind, he’s also the type to judge a face on its closeness to the golden ratio. It’s just the artist in him lol. When it comes to relationships, Jungkook is definitely the type to find someone a lot more beautiful when he develops feelings for them. Someone can look really average in the books, but if Jungkook is in love with them, they are the MOST BEAUTIFUL person in the world and no Maxim cover model can ever compare to them in his eyes.

Having said that, he appreciates a person who takes care of themselves. It’s an often misunderstood demand because people might think he wants someone skinny and perfect but his mindset behind it is really his own principle of prioritizing health and fitness in life. It’s something he does for himself because he believes it to be important and right. Therefore someone he would spend his whole life with should naturally prioritize this as well, because he doesn’t want to spend his whole life convincing or arguing about something that should be considered as a necessity. However, he doesn’t have a set body type that he idealizes. For him, the personality trumps looks and if he does expect his partner to look a certain way, especially now that he is a famous idol, it’s because he knows that whoever will become his partner will be subjected to a lot of judgement and criticism from really harsh people and the media, so he feels that someone who naturally has an understanding and love of their physical upkeep, will not have to go through an unnecessarily rough time adapting to these societal demands. Interestingly though, personally, Jungkook is a lot more lenient about his partner’s looks. Being a K Pop idol has actually desensitized him to physical appearances because he constantly sees both the before and after glam-room changes, and he now values the things that do not change with or without makeup. Even at his age, he’s the type of mature who knows that no one, no matter how beautiful, will always stay looking the same way, and that if one’s love is dependent on such a fleeting thing, they will never find true fulfillment in life. Peep the old interview in Sydney where BTS members were asked to describe their ideal type in one word and Jungkook said “nice girl”. He has the makings of being the type of husband who, you know how women’s bodies change when they give birth, would shower even more compliments about how great they look so that they don’t feel insecure about themselves. The flipside of this is that if he ends up disliking someone, they’d better run for the hills because Jungkook will say and do everything to make them feel worse about everything about themselves even though he actually doesn’t mean it nor does he consider anyone unattractive for their physical appearance. He tends to be a lot more critical about his own looks that others’.

Besides being someone who can fully and patiently understand him, Jungkook has no other “demands” from his partner. He’s flexible about everything else. It’s just that understanding Jungkook automatically means that his partner has to have a set of really complex and nimble personality traits themselves. Patience and empathy are key elements here. Don’t be too quick to judge him. Like any other 22 year old, he’s in a stage of forming and crafting his own life view, so there are plenty of rough edges that show through without him intending as such. Be willing to listen to his viewpoints without instantly adjudging him wrong. Be open-minded as well as aware of your own limitations. Are you judging him because he is wrong or are you judging him because of your own limitations in thoughts and beliefs? There is that little window of exchange that Jungkook opens and if he feels violated off his own freedom of thought and speech, he quickly shuts it down. On the contrary, the more space he is given to be himself and figure things out for himself, the bigger that window gets and eventually one day, there is no wall at all.

Jungkook admires someone with their own goals and ambitions. It doesn’t have to a very big goal, it just has to be your own and something you are really passionate about. He doesn’t expect his partner to be a hugely successful anything or bring in a lot of money to the table. Jungkook tends to hold this concept that he has to be the bread-earner of his family, so he doesn’t depend on anyone else for his own material needs (kind of a reason why he moved out of his home to follow his own career path so early in his life), so it’s really not about the money or the status. Rather, because of this wanting to be the provider, he tends to feel insecure if his partner is a little too passionate or successful in their own career because then he starts to worry if he will ever mange to match up to that, but that is a minor egocentric blockage that he has to work on which I feel like he will. The reason why he wants his partner to have their own passion is because Jungkook himself doesn’t work solely for money. He works (or at least really wants to) for his ideas and visions. And he needs someone to understand the importance of this in his life.

Although he seems quiet and introverted, Jungkook really enjoys a good conversation. His Aquarius dominated chart really shows through here. It is a stimulant for him to the point that it can be foreplay lol. Jungkook doesn’t engage in any and every conversation because 1) he’s not interested in superficial small talk all the time, and 2) it’s sad really that he has been, for the most part of his life, not taken seriously for his speaking or even thinking skills. He’s been more treated as this person with the “body” and everything a body can do (I’m mostly talking about singing, dancing, exercise, but yeah what you’re all thinking about as well), so he keeps the “mind” part more to himself and only opens up when he feels like he won’t be judged or belittled for what he has to say, because secretly though, he knows that he’s a lot smarter than a lot of people around him. But since he has been directly or tactically told to shut the hell up all his life, he now does it on his own without having to be told. But of course, he wants the one he chooses to spend his whole life with, to be someone who wouldn’t do that and with whom he can have many hours of conversations with.

This directly says that his ideal type can’t be someone who is overcritical of them. That is because Jungkook is overcritical of himself and what he needs is someone to balance that out by encouraging and motivating him to see his better side, and even when he needs to be corrected or critiqued, which he actually wants his partner to do for him, it has to be with genuine love and understanding and not with the intent of insulting him. His own mind and self-talk is pretty demeaning to himself that erodes his self esteem every day, and he doesn’t need someone to add to that.

He likes someone who speaks with love and gentleness but he can also tell when someone is being a fake sweet talker so don’t try that on him lol. He likes honesty with respect. Also when he said in his interviews that he wants someone who can teach him new things via a relationship, he wasn’t lying. A lot of things he wants in his ideal partner are also things that he wants to learn for himself. So if he wants his partner to be honest and respectful, it doesn’t mean he only wants them to be that way while he gets the clean chit to do whatever he wants. Rather, he wants his partner to be that way because he wants to learn to fully embody those qualities too.

Jungkook has a very dominant masculine type personality, and deep down, he longs for that to be balanced. This is why he actually craves for someone with an equally strong personality as his own, who won’t be daunted by the strong aspects of him, yet be fluid enough to fill in the cracks and crevices as needed. The yin to his yang. Like I said, Jungkook’s ideal type right now is flexible for the most part. It is less of ticking from a list of “I want this and this and that” or how she looks and is on the outside, and more of who will best match and adapt with his personality which is also changing every day. This “match” also has to be beneficial for his partner because he believes that an ideal relationship is about the happiness of both people, and when he’s interested in someone, he’s often obsessed with the thought of whether he can keep them happy. So his ideal type is someone who not only fulfills him, but someone whose needs he can fulfill as well.

[rougedraconteur]

This is the power couple I’ve wanted for a while now. Just look at them. She has enough of her own established audience and show-biz power and control of her career arc that she doesn’t have to play the newbie needing favors. She was amazing as Lucy in Across the Universe, one of my favorite movies of all time, and Glee played off that movie more than once, scenically, musically, tonally, especially with Chris and Darren, who carried The Beatles music as a throughline of their emotional journeys. And she was a strong lead in Westworld, playing a complex character.

Evan has not shied away from a tough personal story, either, and has not been afraid to reference it, even for this role. While Darren references Faust, and of Seymour selling his soul, during interviews, and waxes poetic over his love for Howard Ashman, Evan talks of pulling from the actual emotional and physical pain of abuse for her Audrey. Not the usual conversations around promoting this show, for sure, but both really interesting and smart and authentic, and yet they still can turn on a dime to reference the comedy, the horror, the camp nature of the show, and the inspired visions of Howard Ashman and Alan Menkin to adapt a B-movie classic by John Corman into a doo-wop shoo-bop dark dream. With giant man-eating space alien puppets seeking world domination from Skid Row.

Not a fan of Adam Shankman, for multiple reasons I won’t go into, iykyk, but since he referenced the show and Darren’s performance on social media, I feel (also for reasons) he owes Darren some solid work in a movie, preferably, which is a genre Darren is still trying to crack professionally. I find this odd, since the camera loves him, but I think he is such a type that he needs the right chemistry with a co-star and a great script and director that know how to showcase him properly.

Shankman and his sister owned the rights to a very quirky book/possible rom-com that I would love to see these two in, given the right screenwriter to adapt the text, and the right director. I know John Chu will go back to his Crazy Rich Asians franchise when Wicked is done, but he would be perfect to direct, whether it’s a musical or not. I just felt Shankman had lost several steps when I saw his work on Disenchanted, as compared to the original, and that maybe he should produce some work with younger talent at the helm to make his work fresher and more approachable to younger audiences.

Or give it to The Daniels, see if they can find something very current and deep and relevant to these characters and their “untethered” point of view, which I think could resonate with Gen Z right now. The story is a twist on an “around the world in 80 days with a very odd but compelling someone I just met” story that I think these two could pull off perfectly, as sexy intellectual traveling companions discovering the world and each other, if done right. They are both romantically swooney and cute and still equal parts hot and sexy and yet still boldly strange and weird in a sometimes dark and challenging way. They seem to have great chemistry, the emotional connection is strong, and they look so good together. (I know some people are crazy about Glenn Powell as the new rom-com king, but he just does not interest me at all. We need more choices here, if big-screen rom-coms are ever to truly come back.)

I know Evan is working on starring in a Broadway musical with Amanda Seifried, a rework of Thelma and Louise, which sounds incredible, and this will help to prep her for a starring stage role with a longer run, and the rigors and routine of NYC life and the stress of eight times a week live shows, including promo.

And while Jeremy Jordan prepares to take on a well-previewed Gatsby in a musical for the Broadway stage, I am still hoping fingers crossed for Darren to be leading a future well-funded and moodily grandiose Gatsby production with original music from Florence of Florence and the Machine. It’s her dream project, so I would expect something iconic (like Phantom of the Opera) and taking time to fully develop.

These two (Darren and Evan) are so smart, they may not want to be in a rom-com,possibly seeing it as a limiting and confining genre to promote, career-wise, but I think they could maybe make a thing of it, like Tracey and Hepburn chemistry.

And Margo? I know you are taking time off now, so people won’t get tired of you, once the Oscars are over, but if the new Pirates of the Caribbean franchise you are behind with Disney ever gets off the ground, can you include these two some way?

via evan rachel wood’s instagram story.

[brittlefcrged]

I’m working on streamlining a hodgepodge of histories from a few old OC’s for this revamped version.  Right now what I’ve got is the basics as follows:

born in Russia; musical prodigy, ended up orphaned at 8 when parents died on the way to a performance (haven’t decided if it she will have been a singer or a pianist/ composer in this version).  was adopted of sorts by manager until she turned 13 and attempted suicide after several years of abuse and having been given drugs to manage her ‘moods’ (which were partially psychic visions and partially just an accumulation of trauma).  

woke up in hospital with retrograde amnesia; remembered nothing of her life prior or her musical career, was dumped into governmental care and shortly after was adopted by a very upper crust blue blood american family that was looking to add to their ‘perfect family’ recipe - two other children, one older sister, one younger brother.  

tried her best to fit in and adapt, was still under the care of a psychiatrist & psychologist, continued ‘episodes’ and some bullying at school and home by older sibling continued to trigger incidents, she was pulled out of school and tutored at home.  younger brother and her were very close, until he died in an accident where he drowned in the frozen lake they were ice skating on - she tried to save him, ended up getting stuck as well, she was the only one that could be revived. 

she continued to see him and talk to him, she was institutionalized after the mother had her own little mental breakdown; reese ended up in a posh sort of halfway house that she generally doesn’t actually stay in and wanders around a lot - she’s technically under supervised care and has meds that she’s supposed to be taking that she generally doesn’t.  she sticks with lithium that she gets from staff under the table or buys from a couple people she knows off the books on the streets bc it does the most to quiet the voices and dull the overwhelming sensations -- sometimes, kinda sorta.

she has independent wealth from her biological family and some of the proceeds of her music stuff from when she was a kid, she is also an artist of some renown in niche circles - semi apocalyptic prophetic supernatural gauche horror type art, very surreal and either extremely glittering city or burning hellscape or sometimes both - she paints what she sees in her daydreams and nightmares etc.  she (her manager / legal advocate whomever, technically) owns a warehouse somewhere that is basically her studio and home, though technically she’s supposed to reside most of the time in the mental health facility that she’s registered in care of, but typically as long as she’s not causing problems for the clinic or her legal / adoptive parents no one really cares.

she is prone to alcohol and drug use, she does have highs and lows, she does believe that her visions et al are hallucinations and symptoms of mental illness; she does not typically have any reason to believe otherwise when plots start.