#but its premise relative to the scale of the mystery makes a lot of it too high stakes

[saltyfilmmajor]

Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney and Detective Conan work/ intersect well as two franchises that deal with the concept of a universal truth in pursing justice while having absolutely absurd cases or premises that are still emotionally charged

[falkenscreen]

Tenet

If someone tells you they got Tenet the first time, they’re probably lying.

As this is a spoiler-free review, in line with the marketing I won’t be discussing plot details. Suffice to say Christopher Nolan’s latest, starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki, is a sci-fi neo-noir heist thriller which begs questions of our understanding of time.

Nolan’s features offer that rare conflation of the frenetic and contemplative; grand ideas someone like Malick gives you time to reflect on while his contemporary lends you pause only once the months, or maybe days arrive between your intendedly first and here inevitably second viewing. The whole conception propels a phrenic overload tied not, at least at the time of viewing, to purely philosophical musings but the welcome sensory realisation that you are amidst something most viewers (this author included) will not immediately reckon with and enjoy teasing out with the friends, as we did, for at least the immediate hour following and no doubt many more.

Inception alarm bells may be ringing in many heads; a straightforward point of comparison, they are very different. The former remaining a predominantly speculative piece of fiction, Tenet, while more labyrinthine, importantly, and this author is willing to revise this opinion on repeat viewings, offers fewer interpretations, for this is in every sense a noir.

The exception to this rule are the motivations of characters, or a character, as your reading may have it, who while hugely consequential in events do/does not appear on screen; an eerie, thrilling story innovation likely to engender the deepest dives into this mythology.

Progressing with the pace and stylings of a Chandler novel, the tighter frames and shadows that befitted those centred in Nolan’s breakout Memento, absent here, better set the tone for a tumble down a rabbit hole. Unlike the Big Sleeps, Chinatowns and best of the genre, in Tenet our cast of characters by and large are evidently assembled relatively early (things were fine, given the premise, when mysterious strangers passed in the night), by which time the noir imprint overstays its welcome and we all fall into large-scale action fare that barely begets Marlowe or his ilk.

And the action is good; very good. A car chase, a later raid, hanger antics, an ‘abseil’ and a mesmerising third act among highlights, the particular premise (and there are too shades of The Matrix here) proffers us something we’ve barely or ever gotten to see alongside such significantly practical production values. The buy-in will not be unfamiliar to say Star Trek or Doctor Who fans who will easily pinpoint familiar stories and arcs, but Nolan, overly interested in the practical applications and furnished with many bags of money, here possesses a much bigger canvas to play.  

Deserving of attention to detail as regards the layers and intricate set pieces necessary to this action, these sequences are better for, as Nolan is want, their having actually been filmed; with the intrusions of CGI emerging overly obvious and grating. The only other appearance that takes us out of this universe is Michael Caine. As good as it is to see him, Caine’s about one step up from phoning it in and Nolan should have known by now to throw out his checklist.

Spectacular for its plot, staging and that visual which the premise atypically permits, conversely lacking and glaringly so is that otherwise so essential; character. Thankfully absent the need for spoilers I will tell you everything one could glean about every character in the next paragraph.

Washington’s Protagonist (that’s what they call him) has a sense of honour, wants to do the right thing and save the innocent. He’s none too au fait with high society types, but that’s quickly forgotten. Debicki’s Kat, admirably and statedly, will do anything for her son. Pattinson’s Neil, well, he’s a physicist, and nifty with a bungee cord. There is one other character whose casting is treated as a reveal and even as it’s a very lax one I won’t ruin it here. They are by far the most interesting figure, their motivations being mired in the desperation and uncertainty characteristic of late Soviet-era Russia, though that compelling falls away with the likes of his hammy invective lifted directly from Casino Royale’s Le Chiffre.

It doesn’t help that the actor is very bad at playing this sinister figure; their casting only further undermined by a lousy Russian accent they too deployed to ill-effect as a villain in a film this author had graciously forgotten to this point. Debicki saves a lot of their shared sequences; her performance and physical presence here-in lending Tenet much of the gravitas not suggested by Kat’s undercooked characterisation.

The figure opposite Kat being evidently intended to reflect the struggle of the film, there is a conflict in Tenet, a thrilling one, philosophically and present in any decision characters make, between fatalism and nihilism. For they are different things, positing question of action versus reaction and the value of morality itself in the face of its very absence should doom impend. It’s a crucial distinction the movie and those in the firing lines largely acknowledge and use to account for their choices; too inevitably reflective of the divergent readings to come. It all could have played out to such greater heights with a more empathetic, nuanced foil that might have been had he not, say, threatened to feed someone their testicles.

Amidst a long delay and notwithstanding any detractions Tenet was well worth the wait; Nolan gave us something we were excited for and even better left us with something we’re thrilled to see again.

Tenet is in cinemas from August 27

[gunnerpalace]

And I’m 💯 sure that you’re blocked and you can eat it.

But I would like to talk about this idea a little, actually. So, here are a couple of points:

The thing that a lot of modern-day “Bleach fans” don’t get is that as far as Japan is concerned, the only thing that really sells Bleach to the mass-market general audience is Ichigo and Rukia interacting. The hard truth those “Bleach fans” refuse to accept is that most of fights sucked, most of the mysteries sucked, and other than the two of them (and maybe Toushirou and Byakuya) most of the characters aren’t interesting to the average person. If you liked Bleach for any of those three reasons (or any other minor reasons), then you are in the absolute minority of nerds.

The cold, iron truth of economics is that you sell media properties in one of two ways: either by drilling down to a highly dedicated fanbase (e.g., moe-blob anime with extremely jacked-up Blu-ray prices) or by appealing to as wide and shallow an audience as possible (e.g., the Marvel Cinematic Universe). The interesting thing with Bleach is that those two audiences, by the numbers, are actually interested in the same thing: Ichigo and Rukia, and more particularly, IchiRuki.

Bold claim, I know. But you don’t have to look hard to see it. This is why the musicals were focused on them. This is why the LA movie was focused on them. And this is why both of those deemphasized other ancillary characters, especially Ichigo’s human friends like Chad—or Orihime: because they are essentially irrelevant to that largely singular fixture of the series and are forgettable other than to some hardcore nerd. (The only other thing that comes remotely close to being as iconic are the Soul Society fights, especially Ichigo vs. Byakuya.)

This is also why every time the property has been reinvented for a new market (again, e.g., the musical and the LA movie) the focus has always been on early Bleach: because it most showcases their interactions and establishes their foundational emotional connection. This is in large part why arcs that more and more deemphasized their interactions suffered increasingly worse sales, to the point that Bleach was consistently ranked 20th out of 20 in Weekly Shounen Jump’s ratings on a week-to-week basis. Less Ichigo and Rukia, and especially less Ichigo and Rukia together, means less sales. This is why TYBW and WDKALY sold abysmally, and I’m willing to bet that CFYOW’s numbers aren’t too great either considering it features neither of them at all.

This is furthermore why Studio Pierrot gave them so many moments, like the ice-skating and fireworks date that they used to send off the anime: because IchiRuki sells. And not much else does.

So, having established that, let’s talk about your idea.

Ichika and Kazui don’t make sense, because their existence in TYBW isn’t established. They simply appear, like the rest of the ending, with no buildup or explanation. In other words, there is no reason to invest in them as characters; they are simply designs walking and talking on a page. (And surprise, the only people who cared “about” them at all were people like you who were pleased as punch that it was evidence that Ichigo and Orihime, and Rukia and Renji, fucked. And even you lot don’t care about them, because there is nothing about them to possibly care about. You care about them as symbols and nothing more.)

However, what would make even less sense is to introduce them without having TYBW at all. For the anime to jump from Ichigo and Rukia having an ice rink not-date to having Ichika and Kazui running around in their places would be a bit like jumping from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, to Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens in 1983, instead of having Return of the Jedi. It really isn’t possible to overstate how much that big of a leap would lose an audience, whose reactions would be, “What the fuck is this? What happened?”

As I have previously calculated, animating TYBW would take about 4–5 seasons and about 3–4 years of production. So, unless you wanted to pull one of the strangest continuations ever in media history, you’d be waiting for that to wrap first, and presuming its financial success (which is dubious, for the above outlined reasons, and its relative historical print failure which got the manga cancelled).

Setting all that aside, Ichika and Kazui are not photocopies of Rukia and Ichigo; they are genderflipped photocopies of Renji and Orihime. There is a reason why, despite the best efforts of IH here on Tumblr Dot Com, the IR community has never warmed up to them: why would you take a cheap clone knockoff that can’t even trace the original properly when you could just have the original? This will likewise hold true for a general audience. If a random-ass person in Japan knows anything at all about Bleach, it’ll be Ichigo and Rukia. Going, “This isn’t them, but here’s the same great taste but less filling!” is going to get you a response of, “No thanks.”

Setting that aside, what exactly would be the premise? The Espada were retconned in from the aether and people were fine with them, since they were basically just the inverse and mirror of the Shinigami. But people didn’t much care when Xcution were retconned in from the aether. And they didn’t like it when Yhwach and the Sternritter were retconned in from the aether. And they really don’t care now that Tokinada, Hikone, and Aura were retconned in from the aether. Are you really going to have a fifth group of baddies we never even vaguely heard of before showing up? Or are you going to just recycle a set? “Oh, no, Aizen has escaped Muken and has made the Super Fullbringer Espada…” Please. The concept is tapped out: it either has to keep inventing new bullshit and pretending it was always around, or it has to recycle the same ideas but in a less exciting way. Or it has to be rebooted.

It is clear that something or other is happening with regard to Bleach for this “anniversary” event, but the evidence, in my eyes, doesn’t match what you would see for TYBW being animated, let alone for some kind of Boruto-style series.

The event has been marketed in a rather low-key fashion, which is weird considering the 2020 Olympics are a once-in-a-generation event which provide the perfect hype vehicle (and which Shueisha has been using to push other WSJ properties). If you were working on a large or risky project, you’d want a lot of hype—either to prepare the audience, or to maximize your initial buy-in and returns if it’s going to flop (e.g., Anthem). Being cautious indicates both the scale and risk are small.

The emphasis on the voice actors who are appearing at the event are all for classic and popular characters: Ichigo, Byakuya, and now Rukia. You know what fans don’t like? Having a bait-and-switch pulled on them where their classic faves are affiliated with something, only for them to be radically deemphasized in the actual final product. (Just look at the three recent Star Wars movies for some proof of that one.) It is far more likely to be something focused around them.

MegaHouse is making new Bleach figurines this year. But the designs they’ve chosen so far are… Fake Karakura battle Armored Yoruichi (who I’m excited for), and Hueco Mundo style unreleased Grimmjow. If you were going to make merchandise for TYBW or a next-generation show, it’d make a lot more sense for that merch to be… actually related to those events, rather than “classic” designs, now wouldn’t it? To go to the Star Wars well again, they weren’t trying to sell Qui-Gon Jinn or Lando Calrissian toys with The Last Jedi.

To me, all the evidence indicates that whatever it is will be some sort of “Greatest Hits” OVA or something like that, with a focus on the Aizen era of the series. Maybe a lot of the “best” battles redone in really high quality. Maybe a video game. Maybe a reboot of the series from the start. Hard to say. But it doesn’t look an awful lot like TYBW, let alone a next-generation effort.

Now, I’m not saying that either of those things are impossible. I’ve been wrong before in this life (for example, I didn’t think Putin would invade Crimea), and I will be wrong again. I could be wrong about this too. I can only speak in probabilities.

But what I will say with confidence is that committing to TYBW would be fairly dumb as a business decision given everything that is evident about what makes Bleach sell.

And committing to a next-generation series at this stage before doing TYBW would be even dumber.

And doing a next-generation series without doing TYBW would be even dumber still.

Now, stupid people are in ascendancy worldwide in all kinds of endeavors, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone greenlit something so dumb. But if they did, I don’t think it’s going to do so hot.

So, good luck, I guess.

[dappercritter]

ATOM Vol.1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! An Honest Review

I have long waited for the chance to read William Cope’s (AKA @tyrantisterror​) giant monster mash passion project, and as of last Christmas I finally had my chance. The first volume of The Atomic Time of Monsters (AKA A.T.O.M.), Tyrantis Walks Among Us! is every bit the big fun love letter to classic giant monster movies from across both sides of the Pacific that the author has touted on his blog many times. However, although there is a lot of love that evidently went into this story, and plenty of fun to be read, I would not say it’s the best kaiju story I have ever seen, in print or otherwise. Of course, to expect perfection from anything is unfair, but it’s not perfection I’m looking for: it’s consistency. Consistency, particularly of ideas and presentation, has been one of the kaiju (the ever popular Japanese name for “strange/giant monster”) genre’s biggest problems since it first began—be it keeping worldbuilding consistent with themes, or keeping the quality of one shot of the giant juxtaposed monsters consistent with another. Sadly, readers will find that Tyrantis Walks Among Us, for all it’s charms and bravado, suffers from similar inconsistencies.

 The premise of the first entry in the A.T.O.M. series follows many well-worn tropes from the standard giant-size creature: set in an offshoot of postwar 50’s world, a mysterious earthquake linked to nuclear testing has revealed a subterranean lost world filled with mysterious radioactive crystals and (what else) giant monsters to the world. As the menagerie of prehistoric creatures make their way across the surface, gobbling up and/or stomping on the unlucky extras in their path, the government scrambles to gain control of the unprecedented situation, sending in scientists, men in black, and the military. The heroes of the story are the sole scientist smart enough to understand the gravity of the situation, their intrepid band of friends, and the good giant monsters who befriend the humans while fighting off the bad monsters to protect their world. Opposing them are crooked government men who refuse to listen to reason and more menacing monsters driven by hunger or simple malevolence. What follows is a mash-up of almost everything giant monster movies prior are made of: giant monster fights, quirky humans bouncing off each other while trying to stop corrupt governments from worsening the situation, discovering strange lost worlds and encountering the creatures that inhabit them, and even encounters with alien and robot monsters.

 What makes the seemingly formulaic Tyrantis Walks Among Us! stand out is it’s personality. The first volume of ATOM is an affectionate homage, but it’s also a something of a send-up and evolution of the giant monster movie. Not only is every giant monster trope treated with a mix of earnest excitement and tongue-in-cheek wit, embracing both the inherent impressiveness and absurdity of the subgenre in the same breadth (including more than a few references to a selection of giant monster films past, some more subtle than others), with a heaping helping of satirical edge in it’s depiction on atomic era America. Elevating this satirical edge is the colourful human cast, whose personalities, talents, and backstories make them some of the most memorable civilians you’ll ever see in a kaiju series while also giving the story its political punch. Dr. Mina Lerna, the human protagonist and paleontologist turned local giant monster expert, who grapples with sexism and ignorance in her quest to make her voice heard—a voice which is telling everyone to stop trying to kill every monster they see and listen to reason—and come out of her shell; Henry Robertson, an African-American reporter for the United Nations News Organization (a cheeky homage to the oft-maligned American cut of the original King Kong vs. Godzilla) who, with Dr. Lerna’s help fights back against the racial bias trying to keep him quiet to offer current and true coverage of the protagonist’s quest to unlock the mysterious of the kaiju; as well as Gwen Valentine, a spunky homage to activist actresses such as Marylin Monroe in her prime, who after being rescued from certain death in a monster-inhabited cavern, offers some much-needed close friendship, good publicity, and funds to Dr. Lerna and their cause. The more villainous humans opposing them also present some amusement and self-awarness, such as the mysterious vindictive government agent J.C. Clark who prioritizes secret government agendas over transparency and honesty, or “Doctor Brick Rockwell,” a machismo meathead straight out of a camp American monster movie who barely passes for a scientist hired as a talking head to perpetuate willful ignorance—as well as sexism—for the government amidst the monster situation.

Of course, this IS a giant monster story and the kaiju side of the cast deserves special mention as well. Despite being deriving from the all-too familiar archetypes you could expect from giant monsters (i.e. dinosaurs, insects, spiders, and reptiles on a giant scale), the monsters A.T.O.M. stand out from the crowd thanks to their colourful characteristics. The majority of which are “Retrosaurs”: alternate history based dinosaurs that evolved from Loricata, a group of ancient reptiles that included the first crocodylians, as opposed to birds and more or less resemble the terrible lizards as they were depicted in older illustrations such as those created by Charles R. Knight. Chief among them is the star monster, Tyrantis, a standard giant green fire-breathing dinosaur but with an out-and-out heroic complex and a goofy side, showing compassion for his fellow monster and human companions, as well as having a tendency to greet new friends and foes by boisterously charging into battle. Joining him are Tyrantra, a even more impressive red-hued female of Tyrantis’s genus, the tyrannopyrodon (i.e. the fire-breath-enabled Retrosaur equivalent to tyrannosaurs); Gorgolisk, a gigantic frilled serpentine creature who serves as the steadfast guardian of the Earth and the mysterious inhabitants of its hollow earth; and Bobo, a big pink and blue quasi-arachnid with a soft heart and a surprisingly playful disposition. The monsters opposing them are no slouches either, such as Ahuul, a ravenous pterosaur-like Retrosaur who takes sadistic delight in swooping down on smaller prey; Myrmidants, a swarm of gigantic fire ants who fight for their colony with equal parts duty and ferocity; and The Terror, a blue-tinted rival Retro  Tyrant who—without giving anything away—only becomes more of a monster as the story continues. Special mention also goes to a giant scorpion, a giant mothman-themed invader, a deadly duo of a giant wasp and mantis, and an entire island of Retrosaurs of almost every species.

 However, as previously stated, for all it’s charming characters and progressive political statements, the first volume of A.T.O.M., like its forebearers, sadly falls prey to the issue of inconsistencies. Everything from the writing itself to the logic of this world suffers from occasional dips in quality to outright plot holes. The first and most noticeable is the abundance of grammatical errors, and while the majority of the novel is tightly written in very sense of the word, I couldn’t help but notice that every few pages there was incorrect punctuation or a misspelled word, which gave a somewhat rushed impression. Another oddity is the sexuality of Dr. Lerna who develops an affectionate attraction to Ms. Valentine, despite the author confirming in a post on the author’s blog made several years before the novels completion, claiming Lerna was aro-ace (found here)—this is more of a metatextual nitpick and if the author made her an asexual lesbian, it’s still quite a progressive choice in that it offers that minority some representation shows ace folk can still pursue romantic relationships—however, it still can’t help but think think it would have been just as valuable to give aro-ace people some representation as well, rather than seemingly backpedalling on a prior statement on a character’s sexuality. Another distraction is how the story seems to be at odds with itself over anthropomorphizing the monsters, where in some scenes they are written with fairly animalistic traits in mind, wherein others they treated as if they were almost cartoon characters. (e.g. Tyrantis breaks into caveman speak in a postscript picture to advertise some more other novels—relatively harmless but jarring nonetheless.) But the most bothersome inconsistencies by far are concerned with the science of the novel. Specifically, despite possessing a narrative that pushes for embracing science and learning, throughout the novel there are numerous instances where outdated biological and paleontological theories are treated as scientific truths, such as when Bobo’s inability to swim is chalked up to the old misconception that spiders breath through their skin and would drown when but in water. But the most damning example would have to be the Retrosaurs, who despite originating from a completely different evolutionary line, largely resemble past media depictions of dinosaurs more than anything else, inaccuracies at all. It could have been fascinating to explore how familiar species such as ornithopods and sauropods would appear if they were derived from ancient archosaurs (i.e. the grand group from which crocodilians originate). This discrepancies between artistic license and science makes it hard to tell just how much of the author’s intent for the origins of these alternative dinosaurs was driven more by a desire to replicate the aesthetic of prior depictions of prehistoric creatures and movie monsters than a wholly original exploration in speculative biology.

 As critical as may be, I do not want to completely discount the author’s efforts. I enjoyed the first entry in the adventures of the mighty Tyrantis and the impeccable Dr. Lerna from start to finish. As a wholly affectionate parody of the great giant monster subgenre, it’s almost everything I could have wanted it to be! What’s more, I would like to see the ATOM series reach its full potential. However, due the author’s attitudes towards modern science and tendency towards error, I don’t know if this series will ever reach that potential. Tyrantis Walks Among Us! is good as a creative comical take on the classic kaiju story with a progressive sociopolitical punch, but as a scientifically conscious evolution of the genre that birthed it, it falls as flat as the tail of a Retrosaur, and it seems it will stay that way—sticking close to the ground and only occasionally swinging upwards.

[alternis-dim]

If someone wanted to get into persona, what is the best game to start with?

to be honest, Persona is kind of nice in that it doesn’t matter a whole lot where you start, since each game is a relatively self-contained story which only has brief mentions or cameos of previous entries! some elements of the lore make more sense if you play certain games before others, but it isn’t anything drastic enough to impact your enjoyment. Hell, I started with Persona 5 and was just fine. So I guess I can just sorta talk about the pros and cons of each game as an entry point to the series! I can also briefly describe their premises in case a particular one seems more interesting, which could help someone with deciding where to start.

this is gonna be long, so I’ll put it under a read more.

Persona 1/Revelations: Persona is the only game I wouldn’t recommend playing first. Its mechanics are pretty outdated and not reflective of the rest of the series, and it’s relatively short compared to the others as well. Not to say that it’s not worth ever playing! In fact, from my understanding it has wonderful characterization, an engaging plot, and lays important groundwork for the franchise’s worldbuilding. I just wouldn’t recommend it for getting a taste of what the series is like.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the first of the dual entries for the Persona 2 duology. It has some of the same cons I mentioned for the first game; it’s relatively old, so its mechanics are a little outdated, and it plays more similarly to an SMT game than the future Persona entries do (for example, the story is fairly linear and occurs over the course of a few days, whereas later entries are strung out over a year). It is a little more refined, though, and the formula is starting to get there. It also has, in my opinion, some of the best character writing in the series.

P2IS is a story about how strange occurrences are brewing in the city of Sumaru because of a phenomenon where rumors actually influence and/or become reality. A group of high schoolers get tangled up with a mysterious man named Joker, who can supposedly grant wishes and, for some reason, seems to hold a very personal grudge against them. They discover their ability to call upon Personas to defend themselves from the demons at his command, and soon end up teaming up with journalist Maya Amano to get to the bottom of Joker’s identity and the source of the rumors which are warping the city. Over the course of their journey, they slowly start to piece together their past in order to figure out why Joker seems so invested in them.

Pros: - Stellar character writing- An intriguing, interconnected plot which is a bit of a rollercoaster but a lot of fun- Lays the groundwork for lore in the Persona series (most importantly the existence of Philemon and Nyarlathotep, as well as the origin of the Velvet Room)- Incredibly mature takes on the impact of trauma and familial abuse (TW for both of those things though)- Canonically bisexual protagonist with a potential same sex dating optionCons:- Unavoidable random encounters and really grind-heavy, as most 90′s jrpgs go- Outdated mechanics that aren’t really reflective of future Persona entries- One of those wiki-heavy games: it’s damn near impossible to unlock certain character interactions or personas without use of a guide- The second game in the Duology, Eternal Punishment, isn’t nearly as accessible to English audiences

Persona 3 is where a lot of the series formula originates from! It’s also my personal favorite, but I’ll try my best to be unbiased describing it. Small note: I recommend playing Persona 3 FES specifically, since it refines a lot of the things that were clunky in the vanilla version, adds more character content, and features a post-game which answers a lot of questions.

P3 takes place in a coastal city called Iwatodai at the beginning of the school year, where the protagonist moves in as a transfer student after being bounced around in foster care for ten years following an accident which killed his parents. Upon arrival, he experiences the strange phenomenon of the Dark Hour: an extra 25th hour in the day where people are transformed into coffins and monsters roam free. Technology doesn’t work during this hour, and anyone not protected by a coffin is violently attacked and seems soulless the next day, a condition local news dubs Apathy Syndrome. A select few people have the potential to stay conscious during the Dark Hour and protect themselves by use of a Persona, and these people make up a unit called the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.). The protagonist joins, and the game follows their investigation of the phenomenon. It’s considered the darkest entry in the series, and for good reason: “memento mori” is right in its introduction. The game focuses heavily on themes of death, what it means to be mortal, how people deal with being confronted with their mortality, what the point of life is, and much more. 

Pros:- Introduction of the Persona formula: school life and dungeon exploration which requires time management on a linear calendar, the knockdown/1-more feature in combat, all-out-attacks, social links. Starting with this game may actually be the best way to go gameplay-wise, since coming back to this game after playing later entries makes it seem clunky.- Dungeon-crawl style of gameplay, which is a lot nicer than random encounters. You explore randomly generated floors and choose when and where to ambush enemies.- Excellent character arcs which enrich the game’s narrative- A dark, mature, and interesting story which explores human natureCons:- Still an older game, so some controls are clunky. One game mechanic in particular that many are frustrated with is the inability to directly choose what moves your teammates will use, instead requiring you to use Tactics to direct how the AI should behave.- Probably has the worst pacing issues out of any game in the series. There’s an entire calendar month where you do basically nothing.- The post-game is grind-heavy and long for the amount of story it offers. Some people just recommend watching a playthrough.- Features an uncomfortable transphobic skit towards the middle of the game.

Persona 4 is a refinement of many of the features of Persona 3. The best version to play is Persona 4 Golden, since it has a lot of extra content, but it’s vita exclusive and I’m stuck with vanilla :( Vanilla’s still fine in my experience, at least!

P4 takes place in the small town of Inaba, where the protagonist has transferred for a year to live with his uncle and cousin due to his parents leaving the country for work. Shortly after his arrival, a bizarre series of serial murderers start to occur where the bodies are found strung up on telephone lines. There’s also a rumor that looking into a turned off television screen on a rainy midnight will reveal your soulmate; this rumor is referred to as the Midnight Channel. The protagonists and friends inadvertently discover a parallel world which exists alongside Inaba, which can be entered through televisions but which can’t be exited without the help of a mysterious denizen named Teddie. They discover that these worlds are linked; people who show up on the Midnight Channel turn up dead in the real world shortly after, and the weather is inverse to Inaba’s. They discover that this is because someone is throwing people into this world, who are then unable to escape, and that the Shadows living in it become violent when the fog lifts (inverse to when the fog settles in the real world). This world also has an interesting quirk: people who enter it end up confronting their own shadow, which is a manifestation of the parts of themselves they repress or deny. Denying your shadow leads to it attempting to kill you, and this is likely what caused the deaths of the first victims. The protagonist and team discover that confronting and accepting your own Shadow, however, turns it into a Persona which you can then use to combat the monsters in the world. Equipped with their unique knowledge, the team sets out to save victims, solve the murder mystery, and learn how to accept themselves.

Pros:- A powerful message about the importance of seeking the truth and accepting all facets of yourself- An absolutely incredible murder mystery with clever plot twists and high stakes: getting the true ending is actually difficult if you don’t know who the murderer is, and you’re expected to understand the themes of the game and the characters in order to get it.- A nice in-between for the mechanics of P3 and P5: it’s pretty easy to transfer to either one after playing this one. (also introduces the ability to control party members directly, thank god)- A TON of spinoff content if you find you enjoy the characters and setting- Probably one of the best games in terms of understanding the overarching lore of the series, since it explains how Personas and Shadows work in much more depth than other entriesCons:- Has sort of a wonky difficulty curve. The first couple dungeons are honestly kind of a pain in the ass because of how level scaling works, and it takes a little while to level out.- The character arcs aren’t quite as well-written as previous games, due to the ultimate personas being associated with social link completion rather than events in the plot.- Oh god, such clumsy handling of LGBT topics. Plays around the idea of a gay narrative for one character (Kanji) and a trans narrative for another (Naoto) but ultimately just ends up playing up stereotypes and then backing out before doing anything “risky.” Another character in the party is pretty homophobic to Kanji for a while too, which sucks.

Persona 5 is the most popular in the series for sure, and for good reason. It’s the complete culmination of the Persona formula, and it adds all sorts of stuff to the gameplay and lore. It has a pretty lovable cast, to boot. Not that it doesn’t also have its problems, imo.

P5 features a protagonist who was falsely convicted of assault after attempting to defend a woman from a drunk man harassing her. His criminal record and probation result in his expulsion from his home school, so he moves in with a family friend in Tokyo where a school will accept him until his time’s up. Tokyo’s been strange for a little while now. Mysterious incidents have been causing disruptions for a while. There’s been a surge of “psychotic breakdown incidents” in which people act out unpredictably for seemingly no reason, and on rarer occasions “mental shutdowns” where people seem to completely break and die shortly after. The protagonist and friends get tied up in nonsense pretty quickly when a mysterious app on his phone transports him to a parallel world in which real locations of Tokyo are warped beyond recognition. The protagonist discovers the power of persona pretty early on, which he uses to fight the enemies there. With the help of a strange creature named Morgana, they learn that this is the “Metaverse”, a space in which the twisted desires and perceptions of people are made manifest. It’s a space where a person’s Shadow lords over a “Palace”, an altered version of real-world locations which reflects how that person views the world around them. They also learn that personas are the result of having a strong, rebellious will, allowing you to control your Shadow in combat. By breaking into a Palace, defeating the Shadow, and stealing the “Treasure” at its core, the Palace will crumble and the person in real life will come to grips with the morality of their actions, effectively outing themselves. This is referred to as stealing hearts, and the Phantom Thieves are born; they quickly become infamous in Tokyo, though their reputation attracts unwanted attention, as well as blame… could those breakdown incidents be related to the Metaverse, too? This game focuses heavily on the corruption of society, the abuse and manipulation of people in power, the ways in which our circumstances force us to hide parts of ourselves, ideas of justice, and all sorts of fun ideas of “rebellion”.

Pros:- ABSOLUTELY the best gameplay in the series. The controls are smooth, the battles and UI are streamlined, the visuals are absolutely stunning. This is the one that’s most fun to actually PLAY, bar none.- More of a stealth/heist game than a dungeon crawler, which is a fun spin on the series.- Excellent social commentary on the injustices young people face in a system stacked against them.- A really lovable cast of characters, and social links which actually grant you access to helpful gameplay features as incentive. Cons:- Sort of a small thing, but one of the game’s twists is a lot more fun to figure out if you’ve already played at least one other entry in the series.- Has some serious writing issues. The game has a very strong first half, but then starts to feel rushed the further along you get after a certain point. You can tell that the developers wanted to fit in a lot, but didn’t quite have the time to refine the ideas they implemented.- On that note, some of the character writing starts to regress or even becomes contradictory.- Has a couple instances of homophobia surrounding the Red Light District.

This got long, sorry, but I hope it’s helpful! like I said, you really can start anywhere, and you don’t have to play them in a particular order. Just pick the ones that seem the most interesting and have fun!

[script-a-world]

What are your five rules to new authors about world building? I struggle with this, as a minimalist author. And I would love suggestions on how to build a world in as few words as possible, while the description is still efficient and powerful.

Constablewrites:

Teach us about the world through the characters interacting with it. If your characters never interact with it, is it really relevant to your story?

Culture and society all ultimately derives from people--what they know about the world around them, how they survive in their particular environment, how they ensure the survival of future generations, and so on.

Conflict and tension come from limitations. Infinite and/or ill-defined power kills a reader’s emotional investment.

Don’t answer a question we haven’t asked. Context first, then explanation only if necessary.

Your reader will comprehend your world based on what they know of ours.

Personally, I think minimalism can be a good thing! New authors tend to err on the side of waaaaaay too much world building and explanation thereof. The best way to figure out the balance is to read closely. If you’re reading something that makes you feel really present in the scene, pay close attention to how they do that: the details the author chooses, the things they merely suggest or infer, the senses being evoked, and so on. And remember that contemporary literature has to world build just as much as genre stuff does; I’ve spent just as much time on a ranch as I have on Mars, so while I might be bringing more knowledge/assumptions to the table I’m still relying on the writer to make the world come alive.

Brainstormed:

Do you enjoy what you’re making? If not, let the idea lie fallow to be recycled, and ask yourself what would make you enjoy the worldbuilding again. Even if what you’re doing will never show up in your story, it’s still worldbuilding and therefore great. Just prioritize plot-relevant details, and make sure to have fun.

How different would the plot and/or characters be if this detail was changed? This question allows you to figure out the really vital parts of your world and its natural consequences in your story. The details that don’t affect much of your plot/characters are still good, as they add depth, but okay to parse down for a more minimalist perspective.

How far am I willing to ask my readers to suspend their disbelief? Can be asked of specific parts of your world, like magic systems or physics or geographical oddities, or of your setting in general.

Is this self evident? That is, does this part of your worldbuilding become foundational to the plot and/or setting in such a way that the reader understands and extrapolates without ever requiring the dreaded infodump? Not every detail has to be self evident, and in fact I don’t think every detail should be. There’s plenty of things about the real world that I would love to absorb infodumps about, but the way the sun in the sky affects my day to day life requires no context.

Breadth vs. depth, which is more a function of your plot and cast than setting. If your plot follows your characters wandering through a great deal of varying places/cultures/times/etc or a very diverse cast of different races/beliefs/jobs/etc, you’ll need a lot of distinct and interconnected settings with just enough detail to function and stick out as unique in the reader’s mind. Buckling down on a single world/culture/nation/etc to flesh out its complexities and variants will get far deeper into the why’s and how’s of your plot and/or characters, just be careful not to turn it into an encyclopedia instead of a story. (of course, you could do like me and create a lot of breadth and then murder yourself by trying to achieve depth with all of it)

Saphira:

Worldbuilding itself, and setting up the world, comes before the writing in my book. I find that chronic descriptors fall into two categories:

Those who know their world so well that they want to tell EVERYTHING. These I affectionately call the Gushers.

Those who are discovering their world as they write. The world is a mystery to them until the written word tells the writer where they are. These I affectionately call the Explorers.

I suspect you are concerned about being the former. In my gut, however, I suspect you may be the latter. Now there are different rules for each method.

FOR GUSHERS: Use Constablewrite's rules. Those rules underline what's important.

Worried you're still overboard? Count your paragraphs. How many has it been since something happened?

FOR EXPLORERS: Write as normal. Then go over it and look for the things Brainstorm mentions! Highlight them, or copy the stuff on another document.

When you get to rewriting your work, look at your notes and see what you feel is important! You've already explored, so now you can filter.

Worldbuilding in the scale that we know it is relatively new to novel-writing. (Thanks to Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors in the 1950's? Ish? Research it. Cool stuff.) That being said we're already getting really good at it. We've seen the wild phenomenon of cultural diving that Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Harry Potter have had, and we want to give our readers the same experience!

Though I will note, what draws a reader into the world is the intrigue of the questions they can ask! If we can give our readers just enough information about the world to ask the coolest, deepest questions? We have succeeded.

Tex: I'm not a big fan of generalized advice, especially in regards to "new"... anything. I'm not aware of either your flaws or your strengths, though your use of "minimalist author" intrigues me - what do you consider minimalism? Is it descriptions, is it settings, is it dialogue? Is it something else?

I don't know whether this minimalism is the result of developing your writing voice or the result of underdevelopment in various writing skills, so I hesitate to give any concrete answers. In that respect, I would like to recommend @scriptstructure for the finer points of writing descriptions.

The others look to have covered about everything on this topic, but I would like to reiterate the idea that worldbuilding for the purpose of exposition is heavily dependent upon the plot. Whatever the focus of the plot is, and to some degree that of the characters, is the focus of your worldbuilding.

What's important to your story? Can you remove an element and still make sense? Those are consistently my two biggest guides when worldbuilding because everything outside the immediate needs of the plot are usually extraneous.

Feral: I don’t have rules so much as questions to provide some guidance for new writers getting into worldbuilding.

What quirk of character or plot stands out as being from a society different from my own, and what society would produce this? For a sense of verisimilitude in fantasy and sci-fi, it’s important that the characters not be reproductions of who you would expect to meet in the author’s own society especially when that society does not reflect the author’s own. Dragons, a post-singularity Earth, and a hundred other things that cast the story in a specific genre would create very distinct pressures that would lend themselves to different worldviews, economies, traditions, etc.

Would a particular feature of the world make my character or the plot more interesting? Would it create more problems than it would solve? I always advise against creating a feature of the world that solves your characters’ problems. Features of the world should either a) provide a lovely flavor or b) create obstacles for your characters to overcome or c) both. New writers, particularly those who don’t want too much superfluous flavor might look at Premise Brainstorming, or “In a World Where…” brainstorming to create world ideas that tie directly to the character and/or plot.

Am I avoiding describing something because it is not in my style or doesn’t fit the narrator’s voice? Or am I avoiding describing something because I can’t picture it in my mind or lack the confidence to execute it? This is me all the time. 2 decades of writing, and my first couple drafts are always a little lean on world details because I’m still wrapping my mind around what things really look like and how to take the image in my brain and translate it to the page. It’s ok to take your time getting the world rendered out; that’s what multiple drafts are for.

How have writers I admire and whose writing style matches what I want for myself handled the question of worldbuilding? If you’re not familiar with The City and the City by China Mieville, I strongly recommend checking it out. When I think of so-called minimalist world building, that is what I think of.

Do I know enough about my world to know what is important and what is not important to include? I recommend the Iceberg Principle for newer writers/builders: 90% of the world isn’t gonna make it into the story. So, that 10% better be enough and relevant.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

Growing Pains: The Story

A television show setup, at its core, is the basic idea, the core elements of the show.  The ‘setup’ is what the audience returns to, week after week, the known part of a show.  Setups are easy to spot, they’re what you describe when you try to get your friends to watch the shows.  Whether it’s a military hospital plagued by hijinks, a group of commandos on the run from the law, or a mystery writer who is constantly stumbling upon murders, these setups are what the individual stories build and expand upon.

In other words, the setup for your television show is the foundation that subsequent episodes explore.  

While there are cases when a bad setup can lead to genuinely good episodes, (or vice-versa) traditionally, a show is often only as good as its setup.  It is based on whether or not the audience likes a premise that can enable a show to continue, and in the case of sitcoms, there isn’t usually a whole lot of premises to choose from.  Especially when it comes to the standard domestic-comedy.

So, what’s the setup for this one?

The premise behind Growing Pains is a very simple one, echoed in plenty of other sitcoms to some degree or another.  The dad of the family, Jason Seaver, decides to take his psychiatry business home, choosing to work as a stay-at-home dad in order to allow his wife, Maggie Seaver, to return to her job as a reporter.  This Happily Married couple work together to raise their three kids, who also seem relatively standard for this kind of show.  There’s the oldest (and Breakout Character) Mike, a troublemaking con-man in the making with a heart of gold, middle child Carol, a smart, scholarly Deadpan Snarker, and youngest Ben, a rambunctious kid who is alternatively too smart for his own good, or not smart enough.

There were other characters, of course, (notably the Seaver baby, Chrissy, who would arrive in season four, and homeless kid Luke Brower, played by a young Leonardo DiCaprio in season seven) but for the most part, the stories were centered around the family.  As a setup, this works really well.

The family dynamic isn’t terribly unique (besides the idea of the father staying home to work), but it does work rather well as a setup.  The show’s main cast is five people who are all different from each other, who can interact with each other in different and interesting ways.  You can count on Mike and Carol to insult one another, Ben to misunderstand a concept (early on, especially), or the parents to be in a clash of opinions about how to discipline their kids.  Mix in a bunch of other supporting characters and one-off appearances, and you’ve got yourself a decent setup for a sitcom.

But there’s more to a show than setup.  While it’s true that typically, a show is only as good as its premise, the stories that spring from it end up being the true test of a television program.  Which brings us to the question:

What about the episodes themselves?

The thing is, there’s a large difference between writing a plot for a movie, and plots for television.  A movie has one plot, that has time to be explored and used to examine the characters within the story.  It can afford to be large-scale.

In a television show, it’s not that easy.

When you write stories for a television show, that means that you need not just one story, but several.  This means that you need characters that you can get a lot of stories out of, and in the case of the sitcom, that typically means comedic stories.  That’s the hardest part about writing for television.  You have to write multiple stories, keeping the show interesting while also remaining true to the show’s setup and characters.  That comes easier when you’re writing a show like Murder, She Wrote or The A-Team, where stories follow a very similar pattern, but writing stories for a show that’s meant to depict a family’s life?  That’s something else entirely.

A show that follows the lives of multiple people in a family can’t really have the same type of plot over and over again, because people change, as do their experiences.  Over the seven years of the show, you watch the kids grow up, and experience lots of things ranging from the humorous (Mike continues making up a false image of himself to impress a culturally refined girl at his high school) to the unfortunately realistic (Maggie’s father dies while visiting the family).  As the kids grow older, the stakes get bigger, and as a result, the show ends up being a multifaceted, seven year charting of growing up and finding a place in the world, shown through each of the kids and their different personalities.  For all of the problems Mike has as a teenager, he slowly matures and becomes a responsible adult.  Carol grows to find that life doesn’t revolve around academics.  Ben goes from a trusting, rowdy kid to a somewhat rowdier teenager, and even the parents change as their household goes from five to six with an unexpected pregnancy later on in the series.

Due to the very nature and time that the show came out, the stories tend to be more realistic than the domestic sitcom plots of old, and sometimes, the ending was less than pleasant.  While there were the typical ‘very special episodes’ of the day (there was an episode where Mike is pressured to do drugs at a party), there were other episodes that took the concept of a very special episode, and made it something a bit more serious.  While many family shows of the time discussed things like drugs, or alcohol, few episodes had the genuinely shocking conclusion of the episode ‘Second Chance’, where Carol’s boyfriend gets into an accident while driving drunk.  Instead of him recovering and everyone ‘learning their lesson’, the character dies in the hospital, and the repercussions of that event do not leave by the next episode’s opening credits.  In short, on Growing Pains, consequences mattered, for everyone.  Sometimes the parents couldn’t ‘fix’ the kids’ mistakes, and sometimes the parents made mistakes of their own.  The parents argued, the kids screwed up, but in the end, the family did love each other, and that’s what was important.

Growing Pains was part of a new generation of domestic comedies, family comedies, that had one chief goal: portray realistic family struggles in their stories.  And for the most part, they did.

Along with shows like Family Ties, the stories for typical Growing Pains episodes focused more on what actual families might be going through, scenarios that, while exaggerated (whether for drama or humor), hit closer to home than many sitcom storylines of the past.  As a result, characters were allowed to grow and be more fleshed out.  They were allowed to learn their ‘lesson’, and it made it a more satisfying experience watching the kids grow up, get jobs, go to college, and start relationships.  Even the parents existed as ‘real people’ with their own concerns and worries.  In short, the stories worked very well at making the characters seem like a real family.  The story was always different, and the characters were changing and growing, but in a consistent way that made sense within the rules of the world, our world.  It was through these down-to-earth, character-driven stories that made the audience feel that we were the Seavers, or could know them, whether we were from Long Island or not.

The writers for Growing Pains knew how to tell stories with characters that made sense and seemed, if not ‘realistic’, real.  They handed us twenty minute snippets of events that we could see happening to us, or that have (in some way).  They made us laugh, cry, and tune in week after week for seven years, to share the laughter and love right along with them.

And in the end, that was kind of the point.

Stay tuned for the next article where we’re going to be taking a look at the genre of Growing Pains.  Leave an ask in the ask box if you have any thoughts you’d like to share!  Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you in the next article.

[upslapmeal]

So I’ve been thinking about how much potential JtV had and how it’s ended up like.......this, and there are two things I keep coming back to:

the world the show exists in feels a lot smaller than it did at the start

the time jump wasn’t equipped to bear the weight of Jane’s grief

This got longer than I planned and whether it makes sense or not is debatable but I’ve just had Thoughts so I’ve stuck them under the cut.

Losing a main character, along with the section of the show that they were the lead of, is definitely a part of that first point. And along with the role of the crime/detective plot being dramatically reduced, Luisa and Rose also stopped being in the show as much. It’s funny going back to watching s1, because the cast and the world just felt so much fuller. The show gave Jane friends, there were mentions of people we never saw on screen, whereas now it doesn’t really feel as though the characters have a life beyond what we see. Characters that are introduced into the show as Jane’s friends seem to vanish as fast as they arrive, and there are cases like Dennis where he more or less disappeared once he was ruled out as a love interest. I know that ‘so these random people are apparently Jane’s friends?’ is something the narrator has joked about several times, but by this point in the show it makes things like a whole bunch of people turning up for Jane’s 30th feel hollow and doesn’t help at all in the richness of the world. It’s not exactly the same thing since the premise of Crazy Ex Girlfriend involves someone moving to a town where they only know one person, but if you look at the cast at the end of the show, they excelled at getting characters to go from ‘random side character’ to ‘I can’t imagine the show without them’ in a way that makes the world of the show feel so much bigger and richer than it did at the start. Yes, JtV has added characters (a favourite of mine being Darci) but it just........idk to me it feels smaller.

And that first point applies in terms of the scale of the story, or of the threat. I think this is a problem that came with losing the detective plot as a main part of the show. Imagine if the show had gone in the direction where we would look back at s1 and think ‘remember when we thought Rose was a big threat? ha!’. @aparticularbandit made a great post pointing out how Mutter could have easily been Bigger and Badder than the show let her be, and then for so long the show didn’t really have a ~villain or mystery, at least not on a bigger scale than Anezka/Magda. And the lack of that, the fact that the show did away with a plot that had the potential to keep getting bigger and wilder meant that containing it more or less to a cycle of drama with Rose/Luisa a) made it feel repetitive and b) removed a lot of the potential for twisting and turning plot developments to complement the more restrained and character-based Villanueva plots. And, looking at s5, I am aware that kidnapping your lead character’s husband and torturing him until he has amnesia is a Big Villain Move but that plot was badly done and I’ve already talked about it endlessly so I won’t go into it here. And maybe s5 has some big plot left planned, but this is about missed potential more than anything.

A third and final thing that makes the world of the show not feel as developed as it could have been is the writers’ seeming reluctance to vary the characters put together for plots, only exacerbated by the show removing a main character. @petramos, @solanospetra and @jetrafied have already said a bunch of good stuff about this, but it’s just so strange that we’ve got to almost the end of the whole show and there’s been what......one? proper Petra/Rogelio scene? Have we even had a proper Petra/Xo scene beyond a brief exchange of hair/shorts compliments? Imagine if we’d had An Adventure In Aunty-ing starring Luisa and Anezka (I know they had a plot together but....still)! Or Luisa and Honorary Aunt Lina! Imagine if we’d got The Lawyering Adventures of Michael and JR! Give us Darci and *spins wheel* Rafael! Idk, going back to the point about lacking characters there’s a limit to how many you can pair up, but even with pairings we’ve seen many times the writers seem reluctant to change the dynamic. The Rogelio/River stuff is feeling old and repetitive, even Jane and Petra who have had probably the best development often seem to loop back to arguing. Going back to Michael, the Michael/Alba dynamic was something I always wanted the show to get to go into more, and then just as they managed to break him and Rafael out of their pattern of rivalry in s3 they killed him and undid everything when they brought him back. We were robbed of The Great Rogelio Rafael Michael Matelio Father’s Day Extravaganza we deserved! There’s just such a feeling of regression and repetition at the moment, rather than genuine progression. 

Putting together this lack of strong growth between all the characters and the lack of a big external threat means that, five seasons in, so much of the drama is still from internal conflict, rather than problems being faced by a big Villanueva-De La Vega-Solano-Cordero(-Factor-Santillan-etc) unit. And I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any internal conflict! That would be unrealistic and it’s good to keep the dynamics moving and changing! But I feel like it should be a bit more Big Family vs Life And Its Problems than it is at this point.

And now (this is a lot shorter I promise) the second point: the time jump. Honestly, a jump was exactly what the show needed at its halfway point. It would shake things up, put the characters in a new place while also giving them theoretically several years of relative calm in-universe, and from a practical perspective it would let them age up the child actors. Maybe it would have been more like the multiple smaller jumps in Chapter 28 than what we actually had in s3, but a jump would have been great. Provided that it was the jump itself that was mixing up the show. The problem was that it wasn’t the time jump that was the big change, it was something that happened immediately beforehand. And I’ve already rambled on enough (you know, looking back at that post I’ve........I’ve just repeated most of it here whoops, there I was complaining about the JtV writers being the repetitive ones lol) about that didn’t give the viewers enough time to deal with something very dark, nor did the continued lightness of the show really feel it did the grief justice. And obviously, they weren’t going to let the show get bogged down in sadness, so honestly I feel the jump should have been the twist on its own. They should have let it freshen up the show without having it bear the weight of something so traumatic.

So. That’s them thoughts written down. 

[astronomifier]

Magnus Archives Relisten, Eps 1 and 2

The Magnus Archives is exploding right now, so in the lead-up to it’s final season (and the first season that i will be fully caught up for), I felt i’d go back to the start and do a grand relisten and ranking of all of the show’s past episodes. I know that the next season is still over 3 months away, but the Magnus Archives has a LOT of episodes, so even starting as early as i am, if i’m to get through them all on time i actually have to listen to more than one episode per day!

I’ll be listening to 2 episodes every weekday until season 5 drops (or i run out of episodes, i have a few extra days incase i miss something for some reason) and giving my overall impressions in the form of a rating out of 10, a brief spoiler-free review, and then a spoiler-marked section on the episode’s place in the larger series. 

Today: Angler Fish and Do Not Open: 

Episode 1: Angler Fish Case #0122204 Statement of Nathan Watts, regarding an encounter on Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh.

This episode is a pretty good start, i think. A clear, but not overlong introduction to the premise of the show and Jon’s stuffy, skeptical character, with just enough hints at various mysteries to keep things interesting. The statement itself is quite a strong opening, with a delightfully uncanny monster that can stand alone as a frightening encounter without further explanation. At the same time, the utter lack of explanation for what the Angler Fish is or wants leaves some questions open to be answered in the future, though it strikes a good balance between making you want an answer and not actually needing them to appreciate the story.

One small criticism of this episode is that our narrator-of-the-week, Nathan Watts, is... pretty boring. Not much of a personality, and really nothing more than a generic drunk college student. This is fine, as the episode is primarily focused on getting impressing the image of the swaying figure into the listeners mind, but in light of future episodes with very interesting narrators, its a bit disappointing. I also felt that Watts’ discovery of the cigarette that matches the brand that is sticking out of a victim’s pocket in a missing persons poster was rather contrived. Took me out of the story a bit. Overall though, a solid, scary standalone story that gives you a feel for the show without making it to complex. 

7/10. I should note something here about how im ranking episodes. Specifically, im scaling it relative to the quality of The Magnus Archives, not all media ever made. Therefore, a 1/10 is my least favorite episode of the show, a 10/10 is my favorite episode, and a 5/10 is a solid, but middle of the road episode. In the case of the Angler fish, the episode is genuinely scary, and manages to be so dispite pulling double duty as an introductory exposition dump, so it pops a bit above the crowd without being overwhelmingly exceptional.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: One thing I love about this episode is that even when we eventually learn what the Angler Fish’s deal is, its’ starring episode never gets less creepy. Jonny has himself mentioned that horror/mystery series run into a problem of losing their horror element as the mystery is revealed, but I think the Angler Fish manages to dodge this. It helps that even though we eventually learn why the Angler Fish is taking people, we never really learn how the creature works or the details of what it does with the people it takes, even as we do learn the final outcome. If anything, learning about the disturbing fate of the Fish’s victims just makes the creature creepier. I also liked the little touch that the tape becomes staticy whenever the line “do you have a cigarette” is uttered. Its not something most people will notice on first listen, but its a little hint at the future reveal that the tape Knows when something genuinely supernatural is happening.

Episode 2: Do Not Open Case #9982211 Statement of Joshua Gillespie, regarding time in possession of an apparently empty wooden casket.

Another good episode to start out. I don’t like this one quite as much as the Angler Fish, but theyre both solid episodes. The coffin is creepy and atmospheric, and the implication of some kind of supernatural mafia that is somehow able to track Gillespie’s spending even after years brings a second flavor of creepiness into the episode. I think the scariest thing about the episode is that final mystery, though: why the hell is Gillespie’s seemingly mundane apartment complex completely uninhabited for the duration of his time there? It implies that the supernatural has some kind of greater influence on the word that deeply unsettles me, for there is no obvious indication that Gillespie’s choice of apartment has anything to do with the coffin, John, or anything supernatural. Also, its nice to learn that Jon (the Archivist) is from Bournemouth. Places him in the world as more than just a disconnected narrator. If there is one criticism here though, its that the vagueness as to what the coffin actually does beyond make weird noises and Gillespies fairly effortless thwarting of its’ mind control keep the horror from getting any further than “somewhat creepy”. Which, i mean, thats something you need now and then, but this episode definitely wont be giving me nightmares anytime soon.

One thing that definitely doesn’t fail me this time round is the narrator-of-the-week. Joshua Gillespie is a bit of a meme amongst the Magnus fandom for his genuinely clever idea to freeze the coffin key in ice, as well as how... absurdly rational he manages to be in this situation. He’s quite fun as far as one-off statement givers go, even if again his backstory is little more than “drug using college student”.

6/10. This episode is above average, and its a fun listen, but it is neither as creepy as the Angler Fish before it, nor as emotionally moving as future episodes of this show will eventually become.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: The Buried perhaps my favorite of the entities. What interests me about this episode, though, is that despite the Cramped Casket eventually becoming the shows’ flagship manifestation of the Buried, this episode calls upon basically every aspect of the buried *except* claustrophobia. There is a line about feeling supernaturally “weighed down”, but its a metaphorical weight, not a literal one. Theres also the discriptor of the key as “heavy”, but beyond that not really any direct references to the Buried’s main theming. Instead the episode focuses on rain and water (i liked the line about Gillespie “drowning out” the sounds. a bit cheeky, but fun). This episode also hints at perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Buried to me: debt. Gillespie doesn’t receive the coffin until he spends some of Johns’ money; until he owes John something. We also later learn that after the events of this episode, the coffin, lacking a new victim, seems to bind itself to Breekon and Hope, somehow. Oh yeah, first appearance of those guys, we’ll talk about them more later. The Buried’s focus on money and debt is never fully explored, but its an interesting thread that pops up throughout the series. I really love how subtle Jonny can be in his writing even when describing bizarre supernatural situations like this one. Also, John is an interesting character. As far as i know he only appears in this episode, but between his odd appearance and his money that knows when you spend it, he’s clearly supernatural in nature. Perhaps he’s an Avatar of the Buried that we simply never meet again thanks to his implied coffin-stuffing at the end of the episode. Thats another odd thing about the Buried: so far, we don’t have any avatars who appear for more than a single statement. I don’t think that really means anything, but who knows. Its amazing to me how many unanswered questions this episode leaves, really. We still don’t even know why John or the Casket were even doing this. 

[beardycarrot]

So, Detective Pikachu.

It was really good! While I’ve always enjoyed the first Mortal Kombat movie for what it is, and the Double Dragon and Street Fighter movies are entertaining in their own rights despite having nothing to do with the source material, I think Detective Pikachu might be the first actually good Hollywood video game movie.

It does have a few issues, but they’re all relatively minor. While the CG is great most of the time, there are a few Pokemon that don’t look great, or even feel like they don’t really exist in the scene. I was concerned by a group of Loudred surrounding a DJ in the trailers, as in the movie itself... yeah, they look pretty bad. Make no mistake, they’re actually utilized SUPER well: you can’t tell from the trailers, but during the entire scene they appear in, they’re beatboxing and creating the music you club music you’re listening to, and it just clicks in a really cool way. Unfortunately, the CG on them just looks smudgey and unconvincing.

I noticed the same issue on other dark-colored Pokemon too: Gengar, Machamp, and Snorlax all stand out a bit. Maybe it’s because their colors feel too saturated for how dark they are, I’m not sure, but unlike most other Pokemon in the movie they stick out whenever they’re on-screen. Thankfully, all the rest work well, and look great. Pokemon with cartoonie white eyes with a little black dot pupil look weird at first, but that was no longer an issue for me once I realized that they were actually depicted with normal eyes, just with completely white irises. It’s subtle, but actually really clever.

Another weird quirk of Psyduck’s design are those three... hair things, on its head. I can appreciate that they wanted to stay close to the original design, but I really wish they’d been depicted as feathers or something, because with the texturing on them, they just look like weird little hair-covered antennae or something. It’s really weird. I have no complaints about the rest of the Pokemon though, and some, like Snubbull, are legitimately amazing.

Anyway, enough complaining about CG, let’s talk story! Being a mystery, there ARE a couple plot twists, one of which I figured out, another that the movie actually manages to keep from you pretty effectively (while still making sense in context), and one that I was completely not expecting because the movie intentionally misdirects you. That’s a pretty impressive number of twists, given the movie’s short run time.

Unfortunately, the length of the movie also means that a few things feel rushed... the villain enacting their evil scheme kinda comes out of nowhere, and I feel like not nearly enough was done to set that up. This comes after a big action scene that I feel could’ve been greatly scaled back, especially considering the ending is also a big action scene... Don’t get me wrong, the [REDACTED] this movie does is on-point and I wouldn’t want them to change that, but the reality of what the villain is trying to accomplish really should’ve been explained at some point.

The writing itself, however, is really funny, snappy, and at times heartfelt, with great performances all around. There’s a slight issue in that all the best jokes are used in the trailers, but obviously that’s not the movie’s fault, and in a theatre full of people who haven’t watched them a dozen times there would probably be a fair number of laughs. It’s also surprisingly adult. Like, legitimately, I’m shocked that some of the jokes alluding to nudity, masturbation, cocaine, and Pikachu being violated were approved. You definitely think I’m kidding right now. I am not.

The Mr Mime scene is also a lot different than I was expecting based on the trailers, and is... well, I won’t spoil it in any capacity, but I’ll just say that it’s another of the scenes that I wish had gone on for longer.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is the female lead Lucy, because she’s... an actual person? She’s not JUST a love interest, she’s not quirky and bumbling to the point of being comic relief, and aside from being shown to be slightly athletic at one point, she’s not hyper-over-competent either. It probably says a lot about Hollywood movies that I consider depicting women as normal people to be a selling point. She’s kind of a cliche character in that she’s a journalism intern hungry for a scoop, and isn’t super well-developed, but as I’ve already mentioned that this movie has a lot to cram in.

One thing I was never really clear on is why Lucy has a Psyduck. In Ryme City, catching and battling Pokemon is outlawed, and everyone has a partner Pokemon to help with their daily activities. For example, Bill Nighy’s character has a Ditto that acts as sort of an assistant, assuming whatever form is needed. A street vendor has a Charmander to light his wok, a cafe owner has a Ludicolo as a waitress (presumably to carry cups on its lily pad thing)... but I’m not sure why Lucy has a Psyduck. I guess just because Psyduck is recognizable to people who watched the original series of the Pokemon anime? If there’s an in-universe explanation, I completely missed it.

If there’s one other thing I’d like to have seen in the movie, it’s Wooper a wider selection of Pokemon. I know that it’s a ridiculous amount of work to make even one CG creature for a movie like this, since they have to design it, animate it, and do a ton of tedious work like making sure that the lighting looks realistic in every single shot, but still. Towards the end of the movie, you really get a feeling that the Pokemon you’re seeing are being pulled from a limited pool, which is unfortunate. It reminds me of the very first Pokemon Stadium game, in which only something like forty Pokemon are available to use. Here’s hoping that the sequel (which is already confirmed to be happening) introduces a lot more, and does more world-building. I’d love to see what they can do with a full two hour run time in which they don’t have to establish the premise or introduce characters, devoting everything to telling the story.

[radiantresplendence]

Dan Handler & Neil Patrick Harris’s

A Series of Mostly Unrelated Coincidences that Totally Doesn’t have Anything to do with a Giant Conspiracy, We Promise Review

So I finished up this delightfully campy reboot of a children’s book series a week or so ago and I figured that I’d share my thoughts. 

To start this off, the production is stacked. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion as star-crossed adversaries, make me feel like this is the Dr. Horrible reunion that we all desperately need. Also Patrick Warburton is the narrator. So yeah, we have Dr. Horrible, Hal Jordan and Brock Sampson all in the same property. That alone is a pretty strong selling point. 

The set work is all quite delightful, it gets bonus points from me due to how bizarre some of the venues that they adapted from the books get. When a run-down carnival in the middle of nowhere is one of your more normal locations, you have something special here. 

The premise of the series is a coming of age arc for the Baudelaire orphans after their parents are murdered in an act of arson and a villainous distant relative, Count Olaf (NPH) covets the children for their inherited fortune. The children wind up bouncing from guardian to guardian trying to evade Olaf before eventually going on the run and beginning to take morally ambiguous actions. 

The series is split into 3 seasons, the first spanning the children's time at Olaf Manor, Uncle Monty’s Herpetology Lab and Residence™, Aunt Josephine’s House on a cliffside overlooking an inland freshwater sea and a Lumber Mill. 

The second details the children’s adventures at boarding school, a penthouse apartment in the city, at a rural and fundamentalist village, a hospital not-up-to-code and at the aforementioned carnival.

The third gets a little more zany, with the children scaling a mountain to staying on a submarine, to working at a hotel run by identical brothers (one noble, one wicked). They get stranded on an island too. 

The performances are delightful, and it’s played for camp as much as humanly possible as a stylistic choice. Olaf, by profession, is a terrible actor, giving an excuse for NPH musical numbers. Also Neil sings the theme song, which has a different verse pertaining to whatever specific episode you’re watching. It’s a very nice touch. 

Honestly, all three seasons are worth watching, even if you haven’t read the books. In fact, this adaption does a better job of clarifying things than the books themselves did. (The screenplay is by the author, so that mean’s it’s canon for you ASoUE diehards.)

I personally think that the second season is the strongest. It has the three best Olaf alias’ back to back to back, in Coach Genghis, Günther: A Very Handsome Man, and Detective Dupin. It’s also the part of the series where the building of intrigue is at its most balanced.

While I’m on the topic of outfits, Esme Squalor is extra AF, and it’s perfect.  

The first season is, in context, the most reserved. This is considering a house full of snakes, an inland hurricane and workplace accidents. 

The third season gets a little too cloak and dagger to work as well as the second. It’s all about conspiracy and secret missions. Even still, The Penultimate Peril stuff is awesome.

You can tell immediately the care that was put into making as much of the series as possible done correctly. For example the great unknown is a leviathan, much like my childhood headcanon. Also the significance of The Sugar Bowl is explained, but Esme’s obsession over it isn’t too terribly justified, but I think that was intentional as it’s in character. 

The series gets away with serial arson and grisly murders from pure camp alone. What’s also interesting is that Olaf loses his threat as the children mature. Near the end of things, Olaf is only really dangerous because he has poisonous mushrooms. 

It’s a good watch though, lot of foreshadowing for the later stuff in the earlier seasons and a good re-imagining of the series. 

Some thoughts...

The Hook-Handed Man is the best. 

The waiter and Mr. Poe’s assistant make the best duo. 

Dewey is a myth. 

I both like the way that the schism was handled and also wish it was left a little more mysterious. Having Olaf be the linchpin seemed a little much and it doesn’t really explain the Quagmire Triplet’s involvement in things. 

I like the way that the high court members were handled a lot. 

Coach Genghis Impression, “I want you to STAND UP, and show me how high. You are.”

[ospreys-watch]

Bird’s Eye Review: Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Video game adaptations tend to not do very well as feature-length films, mainly due to the length of most games being far too long to squeeze in the extensive details and lore many games entail. As such, game adaptations of any kind often tend to do better as graphic novels or animated series (i.e. Persona 4: The Animation or Netflix’s Castlevania). And with the absolute travesty that was the trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog film (I honestly don’t know if overworking the animators to redesign the title character will save that movie), I admittedly had some reservations when I sat down to watch Pokemon Detective Pikachu on Sunday. However, the general response from my friends who had seen the film had been very good, and the response online even better.

I think what partially saved this film was that it was only covering the plot of a single game in the series’ 20+ year history; a Nintendo 3DS title with the same name, that wasn’t all that connected to the main series. The plot of the film (and game) centers around Tim Goodman, who teams up with a talking, wise-cracking Pikachu to discover what happened to his father Harry, who supposedly died in a car accident. However, the Pikachu has no memories of its past, with its only clue being Harry Goodman’s address stitched into its hat. It should be noted that the premise and some other plot points are the same between the game and film, but most of the characters are different to include a bit more diversity. From here on out, I’ll only be discussing the film.

When Tim goes to his father’s apartment (and meets Pikachu), he encounters and (stupidly) opens a mysterious vial containing a purple chemical; as he opens a window to air out the room, unknowingly causing a group of wild Aipom to go on a temporary rampage and attack the pair. This begins the investigation of a second plot point—a strange chemical compound called R being produced to drive pokemon mad. It becomes clear that Harry was also investigating this R, as when Tim and Pikachu manage to find a lead and encounter an underground pokemon fight club (Ryme City, where the film takes place, does not permit pokemon battles, normally a staple of the game series), the club owner recognizes Pikachu—and doesn’t take kindly to its return.

There’s so much I want to discuss about this film, but I’ll begin with the pokemon themselves—they’re fleshed out beautifully in this film, as if they actually belong in the scenery, affected by lights, shadows, water and other aspects of their environment. There is a scene early on where Tim is licked by a Lickitung, and saliva appears on Tim’s face right beneath the massive CGI tongue. Later scenes seamlessly blend CGI pokemon attacks with special effects, such as fire and water. Human actors are impacted by animated characters very clearly, though I feel like in some cases the movements were a big exaggerated. Pikachu’s fur is shown as short and fuzzy without seeming to be too much; Charizard’s scales have full detail, and even details of an electrical burn from a previous battle. The pokemon characters are a seamless blend of human and animal, visibly changing expression and showing that they’re not beneath instincts (such as when Pikachu is scratched on the chin and begins tapping his foot like a dog). My favorite pokemon depiction in the film, however, is Mewtwo. Heeded in-universe as one of the most powerful pokemon in existence, the genetically-created psychic type is shown as a blend of highly intelligent, yet still an animal at its core. It communicates telepathically, and I absolutely love the way they blended the audio for Mewtwo’s voice, using two voice actors, one male and one female—Mewtwo is a genderless pokemon, so this was a very nice touch. It’s clear the people who worked on the film were people who loved the series and wanted to be as loyal to it as possible.

The human characters were, honestly, a bit flat, but nothing terrible. Tim, played by Justice Smith, is a cynical adult who gave up his dreams of being a pokemon trainer and hasn’t spoken to his father in years, harboring a sort of resentment toward him—he at one point in the film states it sometimes felt like his father, who lived in Ryme City while Tim was cared for by his grandmother (his mother had passed), cared more about pokemon than his own son—this can sometimes be a sentiment shared by children whose parents work demanding jobs, or travel frequently for work. Lucy, played by Jessica Newton, is an okay character, but at the same time, I feel like she looks too young to be an adult character (that’s just a personal thing, though). To be honest, she reminded me a lot of Hilary Duff during the Lizzie McGuire era—and that’s a bit young. But that’s really a minor gripe; other than that, Lucy’s a nice supporting character who proves herself to be useful to Tim without falling into the “sexy lamp” category (i.e. she has enough of a presence on the screen where she can’t just be replaced with a sexy lamp—look that test up if you’re curious), not to mention having her own ambitions that happen to coincide with Tim’s.

Naturally, the one who steals the show is Ryan Reynolds as the titular Detective Pikachu. He’s crass, overconfident, and a good foil to the much more strait laced Tim. It’s pretty clear he’s pulling a lot from his role as Deadpool in 2016’s titular Deadpool, but that doesn’t make him any less funny in the role.

Now, at this point, I want to talk about a few things in the film that bugged me, or I felt were worth noting. They’re relatively minor, but they are spoilers, so they will be down below the Read More.

[[READ MORE]]

I feel like the dialogue was a bit weak in some areas; most noticeably in the scene where Mewtwo speaks to Pikachu before merging Harry with him. Mewtwo simply states that “not all humans are bad.” I understand this is a children’s movie, but Mewtwo is a highly intelligent creature, and is highly likely the same Mewtwo from Pokemon: The First Movie, who said the famous line, “The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” I simply feel like “not all humans are bad” could have been said in a more sophisticated way. On the subject of Mewtwo, I understand he’s a powerful pokemon, but the idea of him being able to merge humans and pokemon seems a bit out of his range of abilities as a psychic-type.

The other issue was with Ryan Reynolds playing the actual father at the end of the film. Ryan is far older than he looks, but his youthful appearance did not work for him in this film—he simply looks too young to be the father of an adult son.

The villain’s motive, to merge people and pokemon to advance humankind, is a bit more complex than the typical, “take over the world” plot—the villain is an old man, confined to a wheelchair, who wants nothing but strength, and uses Mewtwo’s body and DNA (to produce the chemical R) to achieve that end. I have seen some arguments that the film is ableist because the villain is disabled. I just don’t think the film set out to be that way, and calling it “ableist” may be going a bit too far—granted, I am not physically disabled, so I can’t speak for anybody whatsoever.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I highly recommend it—the people who worked on the film made it clearly as a love story to the decades-old series that’s inspired and entertained millions of players since its inception, and their hard work and research shows, from subtle dialogue hints (Pikachu says “Arceus” instead of “God” at one point, referring to the godly pokemon), to references in the environment that are there and gone in the blink of an eye. It’s a good film that’s worth a watch, with a decent mystery and plenty of action.

Gotta catch ‘em all, indeed!

[twitchesandstitches]

Disney Growth AU

One of my holdovers from my old blog was what I called the Disney Growth AU, and I’m bringing it back! Mostly for the odd snippet or story post here or that, and partly as a component in some of my other AUs, since those mentions might not make a whole lot of sense without this AU’s particulars.

And also since it would fill a bit silly reposting older stories or edits of them without giving everyone the background of this AU, and anything i happen to think of. No sense posting stories and just throwing you into it blind, even if you’re familiar with it. It would just feel strange!

The Disney Growth AU is a combination of all the various disney properties (or at least the ones that fit into the Disney animated canon, with the various cartoons as having a more nebulous connection but are present), centering largely around the Disney heroines and major lady characters of their respective franchises and sub-series, with a focus on magically induced transformations and a particular emphasis on hyper curves (gigantic boobs, hips and butt, with variance for individual body types and personality-appropriate looks, and with more monster-y/human divergent form styles) and giantess.

In that later case, the princesses and other heroines are absolutely massive, with none of the usual limits i typically have in my usual AUs or giantess scenarios for the sake of tiny/giant interaction; they are a mile high at minimum when not deliberately suppressing their powers, and when they’re fully powered up, the giant Disney girls can be as big as entire planets, if not solar systems… and even larger than that, with their proportions scaling up to match.

Of note, this AU is broadly split into two continuities of a kind; one where this AU is its own thing and its relation to other fic ideas isn’t important, and one where it is a sub-set of Crossthicc as an important aspect of the multiverse, and the distinction has to do with which aspect I’m playing up.

Both versions heavily emphasize magic, and the basic premise is the same: the heroines, or princesses (whether they are actually royalty or not, such as in the case of Mulan or Moana; the title is a catch-all for ‘important heroine’ as a consequence of their actions) are living embodiments of raw magic, both conduits for the stuff of the soul and transformation, and generating it in the same way that stars create elements and light. This causes them to transform over time, growing bigger and curvier, and eventually take on more individual, inhuman alterations to reflect their raw power and coolness.

Their villains are, of course, around and up to No Good, and in between slice of life shenanigans, pranks, and attempts to simply live their lives while also being benign giant goddesses, they might thwart the plans of their equally gigantic villainesses and foes, who have transformed to become Big and Thicc too, and seek to impose absolute dominance over all existence.

In the former case where its a standalone AU, the setting is more mundane… as much as they CAN be, in the context. They live on a single version of Earth, with a different history to justify how a Powhatan diplomat, ancient Chinese war icon, Germanic fairy tale, and outright mythical figures can all exist at the same time. Effectively, they have been given a Kingdom Hearts style lighter and softer treatment, with ancient countries still existing in the modern day and altering history in subtle ways for this all to make some kind of internal sense. (For instance, modern America may not exist; instead you have the original countries of the First Nations expanded and industrialized and existing as a broad union similar to modern America,) Something similar applies to outright fictional countries or landmasses, with the world altered so that their likely geographic locations makes some kind of sense. Agrabah, for example, is a bit of a tricky case.

In this case, all the princesses are modern women, but have existed in many incarnations throughout history as great peacekeepers, champions of justice, mighty warriors, and paragons of virtue to teach others. In relatively recent times, their actions ensured a massive burst of magic that permanently brought raw, wild and Good magic back to the world, imbuing them all with it and making them living generators of it, awakening new power and making them into new goddesses, with great stature to match. Apart from now being potentially planet-sized and warping local space via their raw power just to fit into the world - packing mountain mass into a very small area - their lives are still mundane, and much of their time is spent adjusting to their new power and finding things to do with it.

Something similar would apply with the villains, most obviously Maleficent and a cadre of other villainesses following her; while not as powerful as the heroines, they are nonetheless massive and powerful goddesses… just not on the same level as the heroines, but they have the benefit of a massive horde of spooky monsters and less imposing foes that are mighty in their collective dangerous-ness.

Periodically, Marvel characters may make appearances (especially the more cosmic ones, such as Thor); assume this is a meeting of the multiverse kind of deal, with the other Earth perhaps being merged into the Disney one and the superheroes making do, with the new supervillains coming into conflict with the villains. Alternatively; emphasizing the Awesome of the heroine and supporting characters to serve roughly the same purpose as having legit superheroes here. For instance, consider Maui as being a Thor analogue by emphasizing his myth-appropriate raw strength and heroic deeds. Guy pulls up oceans during fishing trips!

(That said, the Marvel Growth AU from my old blog is now its entirely own thing, combined with some ideas I have for a DC one as well, as well as BNHA/My Hero Academia, as a cohesive general superhero setting. The tone of Disney Growth AU is more mundane slice of life that just so happens to take place for giant hero ladies dealing with their newfound powers, and just a hint of epic fantasy.)

Generally speaking, i will probably tag fics and thoughts specifically meant for this AU as JUST ‘disney growth AU’, for the sake of simplicity, without additional specifications.

The other version of this AU is explicitly intended to work with Crossthicc, and relies on the multiverse aspect and incorporates more obvious elements from the different versions of the characters in question. In this version, the princesses are explicitly goddesses; not just powerful heroines made mighty, but actual goddesses, and have been for some time.

They are, in-universe, widely worshiped across the multiverse under many different names and culturally relevant touchstones, but when one person pays homage to a raven-haired personification of Good Governance, and another gives their love to a goddess of orphans and adoption, it is still Snow White they worship. Consequently, they are enormously powerful and have a lot of potential domains under their influence, and mostly dwell upon a vast plane of magic that dwells beyond the material realm. This huge coterminous plane is effectively an elemental plane of magic, perhaps the metaphysical engine that keeps the World Tree of the mortal universes going, supporting that delicate soap bubble that is so easy to pop… and constantly on guard from the dreadful things trying to do just that.

It is possible that even this realm is but a reflection of their true divine power, a somewhat accessible an diminished echo of their full nature, but it's so mighty that they cannot properly exist in the mundane plane without wrecking it, instead manifesting as avatars. Depends on the need of the scenario, honestly.

The MILF fleet of crossthicc comes across these goddesses during their travels, earning their favor and interest, and a few of them send mortal avatars to stay with the fleet and experience the mortal universe, far weaker than their true selves but still shockingly powerful, and members of the God Squad that is a club of benign deities that for whatever reason are endorsing the MILF fleet.

Their home planea is much more mythic in tone, with an explicitly magitech vibe; imagine epic D&D style fantasy in an infinite universe of soaring mountains and mighty landscapes, with magically empowered technology serving the role of more mundane technological advances, and magic being absolutely universal. Take your grandest high fantasy ideas, ramp them up a 100 times, and mash them into the tropes of nobility and honor being actual forces of nature, and you have the basic approach! Here, mighty heroes fight grand monsters… and usually it's the goddesses doing this, the mightiest beings in all the cosmos, and fighting manifestations of entropy and cosmic non-existence. Their villains here are embodiments of forces like that, perhaps linked to the mysterious monsters the mortal plane is plagued with.

In this realm, mighty brave warriors ride on fearsome dragons to confront demon kings, mountains get up and walk to wrestle with one another, and the geography of the plane can shift at a moment’s notice when the currents of magic are strong enough. IT is in fact a source of magic, and does not conform to mundane notions of space-time. The plane is infinite, continuing forever, with ever more wild landscapes dissolving into chaotic potential and randomized impossibility as you get from civilization: mountains made of teeth, seas turning into boiling oil and crystalize laughter… and it gets weirder from there.

The goddess-heroines are so powerful that they stabilize this realm with their mere existence, growing more powerful and drinking deeply of the magic they generate and are empowered by, growing stronger still, and in doing so, they also reinforce the mortal realms, which is given life by this plane in some fashion. But the universes of mortals have been badly wounded, and the same applies to the princess’ realms too, and horrors pour out from them, and they must constantly quell those in hope of helping to bring peace, in some fashion, to all realms.

It is also important to note that given the different scale, they are far larger than in my usual giant lady fare; since space is more of a polite suggestion, this causes few problems, and they aren’t just planet sized. They are often universe-sized, if not even bigger, though they can adjust local space to fit them if they please, and even if they don’t, their presence causes no damage if they don’t wish it; their steps could reduce worlds to powder, but not a single living thing will be bothered by them stepping down.

(It is also possible that this realm is a primordial birthplace of souls, or an afterlife; people who perish come here, and after they work through their remaining problems, they pass on to another afterlife and perhaps later reincarnation. IT is the fate of evil beings to be reduced to food for the princesses, becoming monsters to be slain that reflect their evil hearts… or both. Some few mortal villains retain their willpower and become meances the princesses strive to defeat, and these are the villains of Disney canon that otherwise don’t fit the motif for the villainesses. Something similar might apply for the heroes and prince-types, but in terms of heroic spirits or great priests/followers of the goddesses in life. They came to love their goddesses so much, they remain by their sides forevermore. The goddesses themselves, or their bodies, may also constitute an afterlife as well.)

One more note; while this applies to the more mundane AU too, it's more prevalent here: the princesses here aren’t just based on their Disney interpretation but have elements from their other fictional interpretations too. Those who are public domain fairy tail characters, such as Snow White, have attributes from those stories as well as their many different stories incorporated in some fashion. Those who are historical figures will have attributes from real life applied more freely; for instance, in both AUs, Pocahontas is more like her real life analogue (apart from being the same age she is in the movie), down to that not being her actual name. There may also be liberal Fables (the comic series) invoked here, because i just plain like that series.

However, this AU is still intended to be mostly epic fantasy and high adventure, and should have a more or less light tone; thus, exceptionally dark or grim elements (such as those rooted in what may be the Grimm storyteller’s potential issues with women) will be ignored outright, reinterpreted, or applied in-universe as faulty propaganda.

There may also be a lot of mythological elements brought in. For example, the Seven Dwarves of Snow White are her adoptive fathers, in a sense, and are mostly Norse mythology style dwarves (and possibly svartalfar/dark elves, depending on whim), with their disney names, Doc and Sleepy and such, as pet names Snow had for them. For instance, Brok and Sindri are definitely there; Grumpy and Doc, respectively.

Effectively, in whichever AU, all the Disney cartoons are canon, with the ones more akin to Disney’s fairy tale vibes being more closely tied. More gray areas will be subject to weirdness; for instance, the series of Kim Possible might either be as more or less mundane figures in the magical plane of the goddesses, or as characters from a universe of superheroes who happen to have a connection to an appropriate goddess.

[subfunctions]

i’ve been thinking about “modern” AUs with aloy and some of the npcs as the teen squad, and elisabet, gaia, the alphas, and some older npcs as the adult squad, but i realized that i’m just bored with normal settings no matter what.

so i wanted to spice it up with another AU, and then i thought.................. jurassic park. with robot dinos.

ted decides that he can make more money and some good pr by making a show out of his cool military robots and some “greener” designs that he allegedly stole from miriam tech. in an attempt to smooth over some lawsuits, he invites elisabet and gaia (human in this AU), their team, and their families/invitees of choice to the island amusement park for it’s pre-opening, as a kind of good faith gesture, while showing it off to investors and other business and scientist folk.

and of course...... life finds a way. even artificial life.

scattered thoughts:

let’s call the island....... osiris park, maybe. ostensibly for the reference to cycles and resurrection and the father of horus, but mostly for the irony.

i’m thinking that there would be some kind of renewed environmental efforts, maybe with some extreme environmental damage and climate change rearing its head again due to, you know, constant robotic warfare and corporate greed still going at it. and maybe FAS is taking the brunt of the blame for claw-back efforts of previous decades being undone.

so it’s elisabet and gaia putting their heads together for the same basic outcome (environmental restoration, except on a smaller scale), and that’s why a team from all over the world (alphas, betas, gammas) has been gathered under a project spearheaded by miriam tech.

but now miriam technologies and faro automated solutions are reluctantly working together, along with other corporations, governments, etc., for the purposes of renewed environmental efforts. hence why ted is trying to get back into elisabet’s good graces - dropping lawsuits, offering to settle on the stolen ideas thing - as she and gaia are the people making waves where green robotics are concerned. this would be a few years before when the faro plague would occur. insert timeline tweaking where necessary.

so the miriam robots are the GAIA machines we know and love (like grazers), and ted’s stolen designs, on the island, are modified versions of unused miriam ideas and are the HEPHAESTUS robots we know and love (like sawtooths). a specific line of war machines, the chariot robots, are being showcased for the first time on the island as well.

the alphas would serve the same basic functions, with some tweaks, and their individual divisions would have the same names (HEPHAESTUS, etc.). for clarification: patrick is there for the purposes of preserving endangered species (plant and animal) until certain habitats are restored. samina works with the team as chief cultural consultant, since there’s a lot of cross-national work going on, and the APOLLO division is in charge of navigating that web and making sure that their efforts reflect cultural preservation and don’t step on toes. ayomide (the MINERVA alpha) is a retired military captain turned security programmer for the project. travis is there as another lead programmer, and the HADES division is dedicated to correcting errors in the project. and the rest are pretty self-explanatory.

there’s always a bunch of young people running around miriam, people’s kids/relatives/interns/etc., and the alphas have sort of taken them all under their respective wings.

so, family/friend stuff, and what kind of nerds everyone would be. it’s going to align with the first gen -> second gen alpha set-up i have in my fic because i’m attached to that now:

elisabet and gaia are roboticists/engineers and aloy’s moms, and maybe rost is elisabet’s adoptive brother or step-brother? and elisabet and gaia are super busy, of course, so rost often takes care of aloy, and aloy basically has a dad-uncle along with two moms. (and i’m gonna imitate a basic idea from the wonderful @project-another-dawn and say that rost is a caretaker/ranger for the now-closed yellowstone national park. also, teersa is aloy’s great-aunt through rost.)

in this, the second generation are all in their mid-to-late teens.

aloy takes after her moms in a variety of interests, but she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life yet. she’s leaning towards engineering.

sona has known elisabet and gaia for a long time and is an engineer who originally did military work until she became disillusioned with it. she specializes in aerospace engineering, and she currently works for miriam under the AETHER division. varl and vala are aloy’s best friends. varl has an interest in genetics and hangs out with patrick a lot. vala is interested in climatology so she spends a lot of time with the AETHER alpha. (still haven’t thought of a name for him, guerrilla games please give me details). haven’t thought of a last name for sona’s family either, but i’ll get there.

they’re all invited to go with the sobeck fam, and varl and vala tag along. sona and rost don’t go, but they catch wind of what’s happening on the island and haul ass to get there later in the story.

ersa and erend are travis’s niece and nephew, and he often declares random days as ‘bring your niblings to work day,’ so they’ve become close friends with aloy and the other teens. he brings them on the island trip. i guess their last name could be tate too, so i don’t have to come up with a modern surname for them. both of them are interested in engineering. erend leans towards agricultural engineering, so he and naoto (last name watanabe, i’ve decided) get along well, and ersa is interested in hydraulics engineering, so she hangs out with the POSEIDON alpha a lot. (guerrilla games, please).

petra (the oldest of the second generation, in her early 20s) has a robotics internship with miriam and is very close with margo, her supervisor, who invites her to the island. haven’t thought of a last name for petra either, r.i.p.

ayomide is vanasha’s mom, and vanasha is fast following in her programming footsteps, so she ends up hanging around miriam with the other teens as well. vanasha okilo! a last name!

charles and tom are talanah’s adoptive dads after her father and brother died in an accident that may or may not have been FAS’s fault. (another lawsuit that ted wants to smooth over.) talanah shares charles’s interest in the natural world, though she leans more towards wanting to study zoology.

jiran is a military investor who works closely with FAS, and nasadi and itamen are avad’s step-mother and half-brother, while older brother kadaman died in a mysterious accident. (i don’t want jiran to be dead in this AU because i want him to get eaten by a machine at some point.) nasadi and samina are cousins, and samina has been mentoring avad, who has an interest in cultural preservation, so samina offers a standing invitation for them to visit miriam whenever. nasadi does so often to get the kids away from their father. (everyone loves itamen, especially vanasha.) no last name on the avad fam front yet, either.

sylens is there at the island’s pre-opening as a preeminent figure in his field; i’m thinking programming. but he’s maybe actually there for shady thievery reasons. he hates corporate science (tm) a lot because seeing pure science twisted to serve money really grinds his gears, so he’s lowkey enjoying watching the mess that FAS gets itself into on their robot dino island.

and the premise, of course, is that life finds a way, and the artificial life on the island goes bonkers while everyone tries desperately contain it to the island and shut it down before it spreads, while also trying to stay alive.

the general idea is that the machines evolved on their own because the complexity of their programming is almost indistinguishable from the complexity of natural life and starts mimicking it. like, it’s because their programming is highkey illegal to begin with (and i think something similar went down in canon, as in someone said fuck the turing act, as part of a plot to sell military bots to various entities and then seize control of them from their owners, and then, well.... Regret), but the machines going rogue is an unintentional side-effect and is simply life finding a way.

but there’s a subplot about security being tampered with, and the island being cut off from the rest of the world, and private black ops showing up, and it turns out that it’s the people who illegally programmed the machines to begin with (far zenith a.k.a. ted’s buddies) trying to cut their losses and cover their tracks the second they know it’s irreversibly gone to shit, because there are a bunch of geniuses on the island who are going to figure it all out real soon.

there absolutely has to be a scene where ted tries to be hip (tm) and in with the teens, and none of them are having it. it’s all [knife emojis] in the group chat.

i’m not going to do anything with this soon because i don’t have time and i have other things to write, but i’ve been thinking about it a lot, and i wanted to get all of this down.

this would also be my general set-up for any “modern” AU where everyone is a big nerd family. i’m not saying that someone should steal this whole thing, but.... i would love.... to read anything with said set-up.

[2whatcom-blog]

Cosmology Has Some Large Issues

What do we actually find out about our universe? Born out of a cosmic explosion 13.eight billion years in the past, the universe quickly inflated after which cooled, it's nonetheless increasing at an rising charge and principally made up of unknown darkish matter and darkish power ... proper? This well-known story is normally taken as a self-evident scientific reality, regardless of the relative lack of empirical evidence--and regardless of a gradual crop of discrepancies arising with observations of the distant universe. In current months, new measurements of the Hubble fixed, the speed of common growth, instructed main variations between two impartial strategies of calculation. Discrepancies on the growth charge have enormous implications not merely for calculation however for the validity of cosmology's present customary mannequin on the excessive scales of the cosmos. One other current probe discovered galaxies inconsistent with the idea of darkish matter, which posits this hypothetical substance to be in every single place. However in keeping with the newest measurements, it isn't, suggesting the idea must be reexamined. It is maybe value stopping to ask why astrophysicists hypothesize darkish matter to be in every single place within the universe? The reply lies in a peculiar characteristic of cosmological physics that's not typically remarked. For an important operate of theories equivalent to darkish matter, darkish power and inflation, which every in its personal method is tied to the large bang paradigm, is to not describe identified empirical phenomena however quite to keep up the mathematical coherence of the framework itself whereas accounting for discrepant observations. Essentially, they're names for one thing that should exist insofar because the framework is assumed to be universally legitimate. Every new discrepancy between statement and principle can in fact in and of itself be thought-about an thrilling promise of extra analysis, a progressive refinement towards the reality. However when it provides up, it might additionally recommend a extra confounding drawback that's not resolved by tweaking parameters or including new variables. Take into account the context of the issue and its historical past. As a mathematically pushed science, cosmological physics is normally regarded as extraordinarily exact. However the cosmos is in contrast to any scientific material on earth. A principle of the whole universe, primarily based on our personal tiny neighborhood as the one identified pattern of it, requires lots of simplifying assumptions. When these assumptions are multiplied and stretched throughout huge distances, the potential for error will increase, and that is additional compounded by our very restricted technique of testing. Traditionally, Newton's bodily legal guidelines made up a theoretical framework that labored for our personal photo voltaic system with exceptional precision. Each Uranus and Neptune, for instance, had been found by means of predictions primarily based on Newton's mannequin. However because the scales grew bigger, its validity proved restricted. Einstein's common relativity framework offered an prolonged and extra exact attain past the furthest reaches of our personal galaxy. However simply how far might it go? The massive bang paradigm that emerged within the mid-20th century successfully stretches the mannequin's validity to a form of infinity, outlined both because the boundary of the radius of the universe (calculated at 46 billion light-years) or by way of the start of time. This large stretch is predicated on just a few concrete discoveries, equivalent to Edwin Hubble's statement that the universe seems to be increasing (in 1929) and the detection of the microwave background radiation (in 1964). However contemplating the size concerned, these restricted observations have had an outsized affect on cosmological principle. It's in fact fully believable that the validity of common relativity breaks down a lot nearer to our own residence than on the fringe of the hypothetical finish of the universe. And if that had been the case, right this moment's multilayered theoretical edifice of the large bang paradigm would develop into a complicated mixture of fictional beasts invented to uphold the mannequin together with empirically legitimate variables, mutually reliant on one another to the purpose of creating it unattainable to type science from fiction. Compounding this drawback, most observations of the universe happen experimentally and not directly. As we speak's house telescopes present no direct view of anything--they produce measurements by means of an interaction of theoretical predictions and pliable parameters, during which the mannequin is concerned each step of the best way. The framework actually frames the issue; it determines the place and the way to observe. And so, regardless of the superior applied sciences and strategies concerned, the profound limitations to the endeavor additionally enhance the chance of being led astray by the form of assumptions that can not be calculated. After spending a few years researching the foundations of cosmological physics from a philosophy of science perspective, I've not been stunned to listen to some scientists brazenly speaking a couple of disaster in cosmology. Within the large "inflation debate" in Scientific American just a few years in the past, a key piece of the large bang paradigm was criticized by one of many principle's unique proponents for having turn into indefensible as a scientific principle. Why? As a result of inflation principle depends on advert hoc contrivances to accommodate virtually any knowledge, and since its proposed bodily subject is just not primarily based on something with empirical justification. That is most likely as a result of an important operate of inflation is to bridge the transition from an unknowable large bang to a physics we will acknowledge right this moment. So, is it science or a handy invention? Just a few astrophysicists, equivalent to Michael J. Disney, have criticized the large bang paradigm for its lack of demonstrated certainties. In his evaluation, the theoretical framework has far fewer sure observations than free parameters to tweak them--a so-called "negative significance" that might be an alarming signal for any science. As Disney writes in American Scientist: "A skeptic is entitled to feel that a negative significance, after so much time, effort and trimming, is nothing more than one would expect of a folktale constantly re-edited to fit inconvenient new observations." As I focus on in my new e-book, Metaphysical Experiments, there's a deeper historical past behind the present issues. The massive bang speculation itself initially emerged as an oblique consequence of common relativity present process reworking. Einstein had made a elementary assumption concerning the universe, that it was static in each house and time, and to make his equations add up, he added a "cosmological constant," for which he freely admitted there was no bodily justification. However when Hubble noticed that the universe was increasing and Einstein's answer not appeared to make sense, some mathematical physicists tried to alter a elementary assumption of the mannequin: that the universe was the identical in all spatial instructions however variant in time. Not insignificantly, this principle got here with a really promising upside: a potential merger between cosmology and nuclear physics. Might the courageous new mannequin of the atom additionally clarify our universe? From the outset, the idea solely spoke to the speedy aftermath of an explicitly hypothetical occasion, whose principal operate was as a restrict situation, the purpose at which the idea breaks down. Large bang principle says nothing concerning the large bang; it's quite a potential hypothetical premise for resolving common relativity. On high of this undemonstrable however very productive speculation, flooring upon flooring has been added intact, with vastly prolonged scales and new discrepancies. To clarify observations of galaxies inconsistent with common relativity, the existence of darkish matter was posited as an unknown and invisible type of matter calculated to make up greater than 1 / 4 of all mass-energy content material within the universe--assuming, in fact, the framework is universally legitimate. In 1998, when a set of supernova measurements of accelerating galaxies appeared at odds with the framework, a brand new principle emerged of a mysterious drive known as darkish power, calculated to fill circa 70 p.c of the mass-energy of the universe. The crux of right this moment's cosmological paradigm is that with the intention to keep a mathematically unified principle legitimate for the whole universe, we should settle for that 95 p.c of our cosmos is furnished by utterly unknown components and forces for which we've no empirical proof by any means. For a scientist to be assured of this image requires an distinctive religion within the energy of mathematical unification. In the long run, the conundrum for cosmology is its reliance on the framework as a mandatory presupposition for conducting analysis. For lack of a transparent various, as astrophysicist Disney additionally notes, it's in a way caught with the paradigm. It appears extra pragmatic so as to add new theoretical flooring than to rethink the basics. Opposite to the scientific supreme of getting progressively nearer to the reality, it appears quite like cosmology, to borrow a time period from know-how research, has turn into path-dependent: overdetermined by the implications of its previous innovations. This text is predicated on edited excerpts from the e-book Metaphysical Experiments: Physics and the Invention of the Universe, revealed by College of Minnesota Press. Read the full article

[titmasjack]

Capturing Reference Footage

Having had the chance to reflect on my initial ideas over the past few weeks as I had my introduction to Maya and had seen the character I will be working with. I decided to take a step back and reiterate my ideas by focusing on a new concept and bringing that idea to life through capturing a range of new reference footage. 

Based on the feedback I received from both peers and whilst with Sarah Perry, we came to the conclusion that my character's performance lacked a certain amount of personality, leaving the actions to be generic and bland. This lack of characteristics through their actions left the audience wanting more to be desired from the scene as there was nothing gripping or exciting about the characters movement leaving it realistic yet boring. 

I quickly realised that I needed to come up with a new premise and began brainstorming a range of ideas and concepts that would give my character meaning when interacting with the box. Not only stumbling upon it but giving the character reason and intent through the way they interact and respond to the box itself. Giving the character more of a personality, this would give me an opportunity to flesh out the character and their background giving me the chance to build a more realistic persona that I can work off as a foundation for my ideas. 

Having filmed myself before in this project, I found myself confident in the idea that I would be able to perform my concepts up to the charisma and personification that I needed to give a realistic and believable performance that would act as the foundation for my animation when coming to storyboarding and creating an animatic in the upcoming weeks. With enough footage to select and choose an outcome that best supports my original idea.

Establishing Ideas

Honing in and focusing on one singular idea, I worked on a series of iterations that challenged and played around with the context of my character. Exploring alternate avenues that could spark new ideas and little elements tweaks that would work towards a final cut of my reference footage.

In the hopes of producing an animated outcome that embraces the pantomime esque performance that is being pushed within the brief, I tried to experiment with my use of timing and how my character vastly changes between his shape, posture and overall stance within the frame. Exaggerating the quick cut change of pace, I wanted to highlight in my work how I pushed and emphasised the anticipating of my actions, using holding frames to extend the build-up to action, I wanted to juxtapose the quick and slow pace that fluctuates throughout the variety of my tests.

Focusing on the scenario of a western cowboy there was a lot of stereotypical traits and movements that I could pick up straight away. Such as leading the characters to walk with the hips, this pyramid-shaped stance conveys a sense of dominance and power much associated with typical cowboys. This intimidating appearance is meant to convey a sense of confidence and is further emphasised throughout the placement of the camera as the character is relatively large in scale to the box, to take up and be more intimidating throughout the course of the shot. The camera angle plays an important role in how my character is perceived throughout the duration of the animation. Limited to a single camera angle, I wanted to ensure that my character stays dominant within the frame by staying to a wasted height to ensure the camera isn’t looking down on the character. Perceiving the box to be a smaller scale than the character and his actions.

Character Subtext

To achieve the most believable performance in a range of body posture and facial expressions, much like my previous attempt at filming reference building a subtext for the character allowed me to get into the role a lot easier and transform my body into a posture more appropriate and fitting of my character. To convey a deeper understanding of their approach and reaction to the box, this gave me a sense of direction and instinct into what the character would do in response to the box and its contents.

The following is the main dialogue and subtext I used when filming my animation reference. As a guide to establish my character's motivation when encountering the box itself and their eventual reaction and change of expression:

Scenario 1: ‘What do we got here boys’(referring to Mystery Box)

‘I ain't seen nothing like it...’ (confused and cautious, but remaining confident in his pursual of the Mystery Box)

‘DRAW!’ (Pulling a finger gun on the Mystery Box to show his superiority over the box and its contents)

‘Fucker thought he could get away from me’

‘That’ll teach him’ (acting smug over his clear emotional win over the Mystery Box who doesn’t retaliate at all)

Scenario one focuses on the characters boasted confidence in defeating an inanimate object in a power play between the two characters on screen. Clearly proud of his achievements to overpower an inanimate object he conveys a clear smug look over his victory against the box. A highly tense interaction with the Mystery Box, his sudden change of pace is focused primarily by the change of speed between his initial approach to the box to his sudden flip and fast-paced actions when encountering the box itself.

Visual Reference Reflection

In comparison to my original idea, I feel that my new concept brings a lot more life to the character and retracts from the dull and diluted actions of my initial tests and experiments. The vast change of pace is brought upon by the characters background and bringing context to the character makes a more relatable and portrayable performance that I will be able to exaggerate and emphasise to fit the pantomime visual style that I hope to achieve throughout my animation.

I feel that I have enough variety in my experiments where I hope to be able to produce a final cut that showcases an amalgamation of my favourite moments, dictating my work to a stage to where I can begin production on my final storyboard, animatic and the blocking out stages of my final animation. I feel confident that my new idea is a huge improvement upon my previous work and will be able to engage and keep hold of my audiences attention throughout the duration of my 15 second CG Animated short.

To summarise;

I discussed the development of my ideas by producing a new concept for my Mystery Box project through visual reference.

Used visual reference as a means to capture the actions and attitude of my characters personality.

Using this footage, I hope to create a final cut that amalgamates the best aspect of my references to create a final outcome.

Break down the key poses of my favourite visual references into a range of storyboards in preparation for the upcoming weeks.