#but the whole ecosystem is so weird for movie reasons!

[mossmx]

my delusional The Wicker Man (1973) self insert would be I'd get on the Island to study whatever the fuck them apples are doing on volcanic soil and how they got palms and watermelon (watermelon!!!) so far North.

The Lord would notice how much of a fucking virgin TM I am, but since I'm not rompicoglioni as Howie they don't even think of sacrificing me.

Howie's sacrifice might or might not happen in the background of me looking at any flower ever, completely oblivious. But if I really want to indulge they would give me his ashes to study as fertilizer <3

[brawltogethernow]

I actually misremembered who made the suggestion; this is @heyyoufriendthere (orange⬇️)'s fault. Plaintext with annotations below the cut.

This is the very picture of an intellectual rights fracas Comics will warp to be like films as fast as you can say "huzzah" But when a megamonopoly swallows up the competition It yanks our blorbos back and forth in an ugly retcon perdition When only Fox can make a movie about the Fantastic Four, The Disney-owned comic office will shove the Four right out the door Until the Disney studio absorbs those rights and then you'll find The comics are suddenly awful sorry they left them behind(1) Then in the instant comic fans begin to cheer an awful lot The news comes in from Bleeding Cool(2) the writer is that fucker Slott(3)

Oh yes when comics warp to be like films and leave you quite agaw This is the very picture of an intellectual rights fracas

When Disney didn't have the rights to film the X-Men and their friends The Inhumans were their idea to have that same magic again But absolutely nobody could give a damn about their deal There was a gas or something uh, the Moon? Nobody cares get real EXCEPT for Ms. Marvel, the only Inhuman breakout success They want her all over the screen at excited public behest Oh yes when comics warp to be like films and leave you quite agaw This is the very picture of an intellectual rights fracas For years the MCU was not allowed to say the word "mutant" They twisted themselves into pretzels out to recoup every cent The silver screen had two Quicksilvers purely for dumb spite reasons With roots in even dumber masturbatorial rights reasons(4) Wanda and Pietro had their sixth or seventh origin retcon(5) To fit the "No More Mutants!"(6) edict corporate decided upon Then Disney bought the M word back for 73 billion bucks (A number that should make you want to strangle all these greedy fucks)

Oh yes when comics warp to be like films and leave you quite agaw This is the very picture of an intellectual rights fracas

Now suddenly it's mutant city all over the comic line They let the X-Men start a sex cult; also they can never die With no need for Inhumans they admitted that they're pretty cringe And nobody will ever give their lore a proper reading binge The MCU made Kamala a mutant like immediately Faster than you can say "bad adaptation" or "brand synergy" In short order the comics gave her the murderization hook In such a hurry it wasn't even in her own fucking book(7) Now big surprise she's coming back on the fucking sex cult island They gave it less than one whole month before they played their fucking hand So Kamala's a mutant now(8) and got a shitty mourning book(9) Which when she's coming back NEXT MONTH you might call a pretty bad look

IT'S TRUE WHEN COMICS WARP TO BE LIKE FILMS AND LEAVE YOU JUST AGAW THAT IS THE VERY PICTURE OF AN INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS FRACAS

~ (1) "At the time, we were told that the Fox-licensed X-Men books weren't to be cancelled as they made too much money for the publisher, but the FF as a middling sales solo title could be missed without hurting the bottom line."

From 2014, when Fox was preparing its 2015 release of Fant4stic, until Disney's film branch recovered the rights by absorbing Fox, the FF were conspicuously absent from comics. The Fantastic Four book was discontinued for the first time since 1962 (for most of those decades they'd supported multiple titles at once) along with all associated merch tchotchkes. By 2017 there was a Twitter hashtag, #WhereAreTheFantasticFour. If you want to hear some people be driven slowly insane by this, Stormcast had a segment called Stormwatch where they analyzed any Johnny Storm appearances in a given month. We're talking deep analyses of single panels.

(2) I know I just linked them, but part of the joke is Bleeding Cool's weird place in the geek news ecosystem. They report everything first, so for the first week you know something you can't strictly confirm it's actually true.

(3) I don't have time to enumerate Slott's crimes but we hate him. Source: Dude trust me👍

(4) How A B-List Hero Became Hot Hollywood Property Fox could adapt him because they had the rights to all mutants, and Disney could because they had the rights to all Avengers. Some characters are both because the comics didn't use to care about this. This is the entire reason the MCU introduced a Pietro Maximoff and then killed him off. Like seriously who kills off one twin. No that was not based on any comic story.

(5) They're not currently Magneto's kids in the main comic line. Everyone hates this.

(6) This is a cheap reference to the comic storyline "House of M".

(7) They killed her off in Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 and none of her supporting cast was there.

(8) Kamala Khan to Return in “Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant”

(9) Look at this thing:

WHO are those anonymously multiracial teens and what are they so goddamn happy about?

~

Bonus

[itsadragonaesthetic]

Ok I would like to informally rant about my Opinions of the Jurassic Park novel.

Surface level stuff: Jurassic Park is not about "resurrecting dinos bad" and I'm tired of pretending it is. The entire park was automated. From the electric motor vehicles, the "tour guides", the entertainment, the care for the animals, even the genetic sequencing had little to no human supervision. I fucking HATE that scene in the movie where everyone is like "dinosaurs were CHOSEN for extinction and you're challenging god himself and you will now receive punishment! This is going to fuck up because resurrecting dinos bad!" that scene just wormed its way into the fucking public psyche and I refuse to contract your brain worms. The park was shit because there was no human workforce and they didn't have any specialists for literally anything. They never planned safety precautions or even asked if any of the plants are poisonous. If a normal ass zoo did what Jurassic Park did, it would probably fail just as gloriously. Not to mention Jurassic Park wasn't just a zoo! It was a fully integrated nature reserve with its own artificial ecosystem, a theme park, AND a resort! Ian Malcom thoroughly explains in the book what he ACTUALLY means by "chaos theory". It's not some weird magical math that makes dinosaurs eat people. It's an observation of the inherent unpredictability of the universe. You can do everything in your power to prevent a tiger from escaping its enclosure, but you should still plan for it to do so. Because anything can and does happen. Ian knew Jurassic Park would fail because the whole thing was a shitshow with WAY to many elements working together with literally no supervision or safety precaution.

Am I done there? Have I proven my point? Maybe, but I wanna go higher. I think the author's own vision for his themes are fucking stupid and isn't even the point of the book.

Because you see, Crichton's basic message for the audience was "genetic power bad" and he is WRONG. Let me explain.

First of all, the reason I know this was the original point of the book is because it's a horror book written in a time when people were beginning to become skeptical and maybe understandably afraid of the speed of scientific innovation. It opens with scary ideas that in the next decade, it will become normal for people to get genetic implants to smell like their favorite perfume and other such things. It then gives imaginary but frighteningly possible examples of what could be done with genetic power. Genetically engineered pets and air-borne rabies to name a few. The dinosaurs are scary of course, but the real horror comes from that gross feeling of a loss of identity and faith when you are presented with the idea of your traits and personality being edited like code in a computer.

However! This is not how I see it. I think Jurassic Park's ultimate downfall is capitalism. Every single thing that happens is because Hammond is trying to make a quick buck, and he is willing to completely disregard the chaotic nature of uh... nature, to achieve immeasurable wealth.

I love this book but in a selfish way that disregards the intentions of the author. Fuck capitalism and give me my fucking pet dinosaur (bird) and my gene-editing virus to get rid of my lactose intolerance.

[cazort]

This is so important and not just in creative writing but nonfiction too.

People have often criticized me, saying I "write way too much".

Here's the thing. Sometimes people want to read all that stuff. Like Wu Tang's 36 Chambers, people were like, it's too violent, it's too intellectual, it's too underground, it's too weird, there are too many words, why are you mixing children's rhymes, esoteric movie references, big intellectual vocabulary, and street slang in one big jumble? But people wanted to hear it and it blew up and it changed the face of hip-hop and ushered in a whole new era of music. I take inspiration from Wu Tang. Wu Tang is for the children.

Like I currently run a plant website, bplant.org. One of the reasons I created the site was that I was so frustrated about ecology websites that would have a section for "Habitat" for plants, and it would read like: "Rich woods." or another one would be like: "Wetlands and roadside ditches."

And I'm like, bitch: Flat or sloped terrain? Preferences for calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus levels in soil? How salt-tolerant is it? Is it fire tolerant? What types of disturbance does it prefer? What stages of ecosystem succession is it found in? Can it tolerate heavy deer browsing? Air pollution? Poor drainage or flooding? Can it take shading from a canopy of trees? How competitive is it with ground-level vegetation? What soil textures does it grow in? Yeah, get out that triangular diagram with all the loam, clay-loam, sandy-loam shit, show me what range of that diagram this plant can be found in.

THAT'S HABITAT MOTHERFUCKERS.

I'm gonna write my 6-paragraph-long section on habitat for each and every plant species on this continent and you can't stop me.

And people are gonna read it and are gonna love it, just you watch!!!

And just like Wu Tang permanently changed hip-hop, I'm gonna permanently change people's approach to gardening, landscaping, and ecological restoration. There is poetry and magic in the plants just like there is in Wu Tang's raw verse and in so many students who are being told they are writing "wrong".

So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.

[kojoty]

i do think there are some worthwhile criticisms of how ofmd addresses romanticizing pirates compared to how other popular pirate media does but what really gets me is ppl acting surprised that pirates were bad, even evil people. like have u been living under a rock ur whole life? we know this. ppl have been talking about how romanticized pirates are since potc and that didnt even have real people. this is not new and not a secret

Oh, yeah, cheeky anachronisms and almost 'fan bait' for people who know their history aside, the show definitely probably didn't expect the reception it got and is super cheeky and 'light' with how it portrays piracy. (though, I appreciate that. I was talking to my partner and he goes, wow, the first pirate media I've ever seen that just. Doesn't hold rape as a consequence in the realm of the show, because that's not what this show is about. And it made me think about that. Because yeah!). So the critique there I mostly just have 'uh oh, the show that's savvy with piracy escaped containment and is now in the regular world of people who.... don't know history lol OOPS!'

AND LITERALLY like. It's just so weird to me. Especially because pirates are... Let's be real. There's a reason their concept sticks so heavily in the back of our minds. They are an uncomfortable, visceral aspect of our history that is so poignantly imbedded in the disgusting, evil, vile effects and greed that colonialism, empire, racism, and christianity wrought upon our existences, and to contend with piracy, you HAVE to contend with just about every evil that our societies to this day have to deal with. If you can't deal with it? Just watch other media. But it's very important, imo, to deal with the icky sticky weird back-of-the-mind monsters that linger in our histories. Pirates are both anti-empire and work within the realms of whiteness at times, and the give and take of that is... IMO one of the coolest ways we can contend with our living realities. It's the same way that cowboys have stuck at the back of our minds-- the old west very much encaptulates in a microcosmic ecosystem/setting every single fucked up aspect of 19th century-modern america. If you don't want to have nuance, or play with historical ickiness in a satirical and farcical and comedic way, that's up to you. But this cancelation/'your fav is problematic' response I'm seeing (that largely feels mostly like a reactionary response to Taika Waititi becoming a more popular film maker and actor in the past couple years, which... Okay, weird that you're desperate to hate him...) is just so... Anti-intellectual IMO! Because it's not even based in any academia, it's based in a fear of exploring historical topics that are even semi-difficult to digest or comprehend.

And literally, if you think OFMD or Black Sails is bad, watch the third POTC movie, I dare you XD

[littleeyesofpallas]

It's funny, I'm normally always really opposed to comic continuities that try to relate too many characters to one another through back stories, because it usually makes the world seem so small, and rather than a big sprawling setting where "anything" is possible it really just seems like the family/friend group drama of like a dozen people who all went to college together. BUT... The Batman marks the second time now that a Batman movie has made me reconsider that...

The first of course being Batman Begins and the really kind of perfect unspoken explanation that the reason Gotham specifically is so full of homicidal maniacs isn't the old outdated scree against the mentally ill; it's that hundreds of perfectly sane career criminal mob goons and hitmen were in Arkham on fake insanity pleas by a corrupt, paid off legal system, AND THEN they went crazy when Arkham got hit with Scarecrow's fear gas, and then they all escaped. So, sure, Batman beat up Crane and Ra's, and the city as a whole didn't get gassed like the plan was, but GCPD absolutely didn't manage to apprehend all of those Arkham escapees. And that idea that Gotham's trend of crazy mask criminals came predominantly out of that one specific event really helps make the whole pretense of the Batman universe make a neat amount of sense.

And The Batman sort of did the same thing, right down to the subtle and unspoken implication; This version of Gotham's deranged criminal terrorist element is implicitly part of the ~500(minus the dozen or so in the attack) radicalized followers of Riddler's live stream. People inspired by Riddler and by Batman to put on costumes and take to the streets to fix what they see is wrong with Gotham. People who were at ground zero for all these political scandals. People who felt active in and empowered by and responsible for this wild high publicity escapade that rocked their city.

And I like the idea that in a bigger scope of a DC universe, even just an implied one beyond the borders of Gotham, while there might be other wacky super villains with gimmicks or gizmos out there, there is still a sense that Gotham is different; they have their own weird criminal ecosystem different from Metropolis or Central City, or Star City, etc...(Or even still distinct from Bludhaven, or Metropolis' Suicide Slums, or Hub City.) And it's not just a weird coincidental tonal dissonance, there's a fundamental element shared in Gotham's crime scene that created these specific kinds of villains. I just like the idea that some specific shared social event (broadly social and not specifically interpersonal*) happened in Gotham that seeded a specific population of Gotham with this idea of costumed villainy.

*it's not quite on the same level of weirdness of Batman and half the Robins and Owlman and the Talons and Batwoman all being related by family... who have close ties to the parents of Hush and Black Mask... Or Poison Ivy, Swampthing and Woodrew and by proxy Gardener, i guess Harvest too, all being the direct consequence of the same series of mad botany experiments.

[mocacheezy]

Things that made watching Transformers (2007) easier and even enjoyable:

[note: B'verse gets the treatment that it gets by fandom for good reasons. There are tons of posts that dissect the bullshit of these movies far better than my second-language-english-non-american self could ever tackle, so I am not doing that, or plan on doing that. But if I decide that I'll get through every continuity of the franchise I will find a way to make it fun for myself. And so, this is my search for golden nuggets in these movies, because they did bring in new fans to the franchise and that's why we have other continuities that we might not have otherwise. Credit where it's due, and some positivity for those that did find B'verse at least amusing if nothing else. ]

🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪

Frenzy

Anytime Frenzy was on screen made me smile because his movements and personality were hilarious, he is just so expressive despite looking like someone super glued a bunch of knifes together. I wouldn't know it was Frenzy if I didn't go to the Wiki, but no matter that, he was funny and that's what matters.

The original Cybertronian robot modes

We don't see them for long, but the glimpses were glorious. Just look at Optimus

Gorgeous. What I wouldn't give to see the details up close. Maybe I'll go looking eventually, but this is just so nice.

We also get a "sexily rises from the pool" scene with Ironhide (probably unintentional and I am biased due to being a robofucker. In any case, very very nice and Cybertronians look so good as aliens)

"Excuse me, are you the Tooth Fairy?"

You see this kid?

This little girl was the only human I cared about in the movie until I saw just how badass Mikaela is, and how cool the military dude is. I don't like kids, but I would lay down my life for this girl.

This one scene just makes me think of what would happen if her parents showed up way earlier. Ironhide would be her guardian and it would be both adorable and hilarious because "Honey, you have to drive in a sentient alien that looks just like our car because the goverment men said so or there will be consequences and potential alien threats."

There are so many joke potentials there; the cultural barrier, the "I am the ine that is supposed to keep her safe" glaring contests, there is just so much shenanigans that could happen.

Also, tea party with the kid. Tea party with the kid.

Sam Witwicky actually reacts like an average human would when faced with the situations he finds himself in

Do I like Sam Witwicky? No, he is the kind of character that I would want to punch irl because of his personality and actions. He is disgusting. But watching him scamper and scream and stutter when faced with giant metal robot aliens that can squish him like a bug? Good, that was a beliavable reaction and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Megatron. Just, ✨Megatron✨

(the best screenshot of the few I could take while watching, no, I am not going back for a better one, he looks perfect like this)

I also laughted at how they kept him frozen like a popsicle. And not even well, like, they COULD'VE made an actual freezer and pop him in instead of using those couple of tubes just so he was displayed for all personell to gawk at. HE CRASHED IN THE ANTARCTIC!

The design looks so good, because it looks ALIEN and POINTY and AGH!!! The colors? There are no colors that would make him stand out, he looks like someone opened a cutlery drawer, mixed up what's inside, threw in some extra knifes for a good measure and then shook the whole thing until this guy materialized from the pile. It is both incredibly annoying and satisfying.

🔪

Mr. Welker did an amazing job with his voice, I don't know what the directions were, but oh man it sure sent shivers down my spine. That is the kind of voice that spells "You are going to die" and I already have my coffin picked out.

EDIT: SO APPARENTLY! IT WAS NOT WELKER THAT VOICED MEGATRON.

It was Hugo Weaving, and yes the man did am amazing job, but I apologize a million times, I was CERTAIN that THE OG VA OF MEGATRON WOULD ALSO HAVE VOICED MEGATRON. LIKE, OKAY BAY, OKAY!

🔪

LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF ICE! With how quick he came back fully online once Frenzy turned off the freeze liquid tubes, I bet he was half awake through the whole thing. Systems just below idling or something, in any case, AGENTS YOU ARE SO DUMB! WHO WAS GIVING SUBPAR FUNDING TO THEM, THEY BETTER BE FIRED!

I also was glad that Sam refused to call him by the name the sector asigned to him, despite Megatron being in stasis. And that he insisted they use the correct name. Good job Sam, acknowledge the threat by the actual name and show respect to a fellow sentient lifeform. Even though said lifeform is hellbent on destruction of the universe and your world.

ALSO, AND I CANNOT STRESS THE LAUGHTER AND AMUSEMENT HERE; the sheer DISRESPECT! They don't disassemble Megatron's corpse. No, these idiots, these absolute morons decide to dump him into the ocean, letting him sink to the lowest possible point (not sure if they did say it was the M' Trench or not), where there are proper freezing temperatures - good! You're learning, good job!! - just... In full. Full corpse. What's left of him. Just blup! Down with the fishies he goes!

I understand that they probably didn't know how to approach Optimus about it, but... At least behead the guy. He came back ONCE, who is to say he won't come back again?! Safety precautions my dears.

They also completely disregard what a giant extraterrestrial metal alien rusting away on the bottom of the ocean could do to the ecosystem at large. Like, I find this incredibly amusing, because this ISN'T something most folks think about when watching a movie but we have giant squids down there. We have so much weird things down there, the ocean isn't even fully explored AND YOU WANT TO CHUCK AN ALIEN CORPSE DOWN THERE?!

Now the real question: is he a looker? *looks at the pictures* hmmmm, depends on if you like knifes. Like, really like knifes. Like really, really REALLY want to get it on with a fine assembly of kitchen knifes that were exposed to the elements but somehow haven't rusted away completely.

I think he's neat.

Needs a good long powerwash though. Preferrably with something to help the whole "I was frozen for more than 50 years and sprang back to action as soon as I woke up" thing that happened.

My man needs to take a moment and get his bearings, like dude. Please. You can conquer the world after some energon and slow system boot-up period. The strain on the systems my dude, you ain't young.

Also love that this "death" was probably reused in TFP because lord golly, do we love our faves ending up under the sea. (Though Megan took a much bigger fall, Bayverse WAS PLOPPED INTO THE WATER LIKE A NEWLY ACQUIRED FISH I CAN'T YOU GUYS I CAN'T!)

In short: I love the comedy of american military giving such disrespect to an Alien Warlord. These guys are really sealing their fate.

I loved the way they got the Witwicky family to be important to the plot

The whole "selling my great great grandpa's glasses on e-bay" thing gives us a very good self insert/OC/rewrite/movie AU potential. Don't like Sam and his disgustingness? Find a way to write a cousin or some far off relative or hell, even just someone who buys the glasses off e-bay and go wild with it!

Archibald was also clearly an inspiration for Isaac Sumdac as far as I can tell, what with both of them using Megatron as a means of helping technology advance.

Only difference being one of them lived and actually talked to Megatron after he came back online and the other got driven to madness and death due to the amount of information beamed into his brain. Isaac also acquired a space baby daughter, so the guy is absolutely luckier of the two.

Mikaela being fucking competent and badass throughout the movie, and not being just fanservice eyecandy

I could do without the fanservice, but her personality? I loved it. I loved that she wasn't crawling to Sam and wasn't being "hard to get". Which is also why I was very displeased at the very sudden "oh yeah, romance! She returns his feelings after he took her for a ride and let her vent her frustrations!". The movie is 2 hours long and they could throw in some moments where these two connect?

Welp, it is an action movie, boy gets girl no matter what, can't complain about the staple in the genre.

However, Mikaela x Optimus? Now THAT is something I considered as soon as the two locked eyes and interacted. Like, even taking my shipping goggles off, these two could have a very interesting dynamic and Mikaela could be a very good protagonist. I wonder what the movie would be like with her as the lead and Sam being the fucking moron she has to drag along with her.

BUT ALSO! Can we talk about the horrible, excruciating fact that her and Bumblebee drove around with Bee's damaged legs dragging over asphalt all the time he was shooting at 'Cons? There were sparks flying! SHE WAS DRIVING BACKWARDS! She took command of the situation and did what she could because Bee still wanted TO FIGHT!

Also, they way she beat up Frenzy? Gorgeous, I want to slap Sam's non-existent balls off for not atleast saying "thanks". The dude would be sliced thinner than cabbage if she wasn't there.

The millitary man we are supposed to care about because his wife gave birth while he was on duty and we see his baby three times in the whole movie, actually being a pretty awesome and well-written character

Look, personally, I was a little confused at the reason why we were seeing his wife and baby interacting/the scene where she thinks her husband is dead. Mostly because I don't like kids, so scenes like that, when I don't even know who the character is, have no impact at all. Him having a baby isn't going to make me like the guy more, unless I know his character. Him being absent because he's on duty doesn't mean he'll be a good dad (though he looks like the kind of man that will try his best, and I like that in a man). So seeing his wife and kid at the start of the movie seemed pointless to me.

BUT! FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVES HERE!

Lennox is a good character and whenever he was on screen I was invested in what is going to happen to him. He's the kind of action movie lead that would have me invested, despite my meh interest in mainly gun fight oriented action movies.

Essentially, loved the guy, would love to see more of him while also being able to tell what's happening on screen. Also the comedy scenes he was in were usually funny.

~

Okay so these are the things I like about the first movie! It was very long, had to watch it on 2,5x speed because it simultainously dragged while ALSO giving me too much information, but the moments like these and the way my imagination latched onto characters I liked made it watchable. It isn't a movie I'd use to introduce someone to the TF franchise, but it provided me with lots of material for my imagination to run wild.

[alexis-dot-com]

I watched the Monster Hunter movie...

Ripped from twitter:

"So I'm finally watching the Monster Hunter movie and one thing that's stuck out to me is the disrespect shown to the monsters. It sounds weird, but in the games, they're treated with respect to an extent. They're often graceful, and when they're dead, they have their eyes closed. But in this movie, they just cut a Nerscylla's head in half, longways, showing it's brain and it's like, ew. Really doesn't feel like Monster Hunter at all. There's no charm here, no humour, nothing but a gritty, gross movie honestly.

And there's no colour here, at all. The movie's (so far) set in a desert environment, meaning you're just looking at this for two hours.

It hurts my eyes. The monsters are the only thing not sand coloured, and they're all black or dark grey. Compared to the games where they're usually bright and vibrant. In the movie, the Nerscylla is just a black spider. It doesn't even have the same body shape either.

The most charming thing about this movie so far is the Hunter playing with velcro because if you'd forgotten this movie has military bullshit too

Speaking of disrespecting the monsters again, in the games, to put a monster to sleep, you can use a tranq dart, or a coating, and it's relatively non-violent. In the movie, the Hunter shoots and arrow into a Diablos' eye, and we see it close-up with gore and pus flying out of it. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You never actually see the monster parts in the games, so it's not gory at all. A bit of blood comes out as you fight them but it's not like this. This is just gross.

COLOUR! Only an hour and a half in, but there's some colour finally!

oh... again, the games never show dismemberment like this:

Horns, sure, tails, sure, but you never see shit like beheadings in the games. The series is relatively light in tone and this movie just drags its message of living together with nature through the mud.

The only reason you hunt in the games is to protect the ecosystem and keep it in check, and even then you can just capture them instead of killing them.

*o*

This is the best thing in the movie, by far. The 10 second clip of Ron Perlman accusing the Meowscular Chef of drinking from his mug was a glimmer of actual MH.

So, uh, that Monster Hunter Movie... disappointing? Yeah. As mentioned earlier, the games have an element of respect for the monsters you hunt. You may not notice it, but every time you fell one, they ALWAYS have their eyes closed. They're meant to be feared, but respected. And the movie just misses that memo completely. Killing the monsters in some gnarly ways left a bad taste in my mouth. The whole movie felt gross in a lot of ways. Not only a disrespect towards the monsters but to the series at large. That sounds harsh but it's what I felt. The games are dumb, over the top action games with a ton of humour and charm. There was maybe 2 scenes in the entire 2 hour long movie that had even a drop of charm. It felt too dark, too serious, and I'm severely disappointed that Capcom let this movie happen. The series has so much potential for extended media. I know the Resi movies did well financially, but they were critically panned, especially by fans. It felt like a lazy cash-grab and just goes to show that money talks. Even Capcom, a company I respect a lot aren't immune to it.

[phoenixyfriend]

The Naruto/Frozen Crossover

So I was planning on just doing an image ID thing for this post, but apparently the formatting on desktop is such a mess that it’s easier to just make a new post that’s text only. I can also like. Bulletpoint it so that it can be a little neater. All ideas were made with @firebirdeternal​‘s help, because they are the most efficient enabler I have.

Also I added some bits at the end.

Under a cut, because it’s Long As Heck.

I originally had two options: either Mid-teens Elsa and Anna being transported to ninja land sometime pre-canon and running into Haku and Zabuza... or just like. Born as a Daimyou's daughters.

Spoiler alert, we’ve got nukenin and I’m a sucker for an intrusive crossover, so transported to ninja land it is.

Suggestion from Birdie:

Mechanism for crossover: Elsa ices over a Wishing Well by accident after having Wished for someone else who understood her, Anna and her fall in and get Ice Mirror Portaled to Ninjaland, falling out of an iced over pond near a shrine that Haku recently prayed at for similar lonely child reasons?

Which I like! They don’t end up there soon enough to run into Haku, because I want a dramatic chase first, but I like it.

Obviously, Anna is forced to learn about Elsa's powers because it's the only thing keeping them safe

Or at least alive

(Elsa will do ANYTHING to keep Anna safe, and if that means she has to get her hands dirty...)

...neither of them knows Japanese, so, you know. There’s that.

I'm thinking that they end up in/near Kiri at first

And they aren't FAST ENOUGH to get away so Elsa panic-enchants a giant reindeer made of snow to run away across the suddenly-frozen ocean.

She and Anna have to ride and Elsa is probably crying the whole time.

Oh shit this is like. RIGHT after their parents die, I forgot. So that’s a thing! They are in mourning and all that fun stuff.

Point is, they use the powers for a Self Defense thing and BBY Haku is just !!! "Master can we rescue them for Ice Cousin reasons?" Zabuza: Yes, and only for those practical reasons and not because I collect endangered children like people collect pokemon cards.

I imagine that maybe they track rumors of a Yuki-onna down, or the Giant Snow Reindeer rides by and Haku’s just like Wat

The girls just tag along with Zabuza because. Like.

Do they like him? No. Do they trust him? No. Do they enjoy the fact that he considers them pathetic civilians? No.

However, Haku is Baby.

Zabuza is REALLY annoyed at them being Useless Civilian Royals “but Haku likes them so I guess they can stay.”

Age at meeting, three years pre-canon:

Zabuza - 23

Elsa - 18

Anna - 15

Haku - 12

Elsa is 90% anxiety/depression master combo BUT if Zabzua protects her then she's WILDLY dangerous so like. Whatever

Elsa's bingo book nickname options, uninspired:

Winter Witch

Winter Queen

Ice Queen

Snow Queen

Something about a Yuki-Onna maybe

She's Very Stately and kinda breakable but Winter is her Bitch

I mean like, the fact that, if protected, she can shut down the agriculture of a fucking country? That's an S-rank even if she's not that useful in a fight.

She's like. Jinchuuriki-level destruction. Generally speaking she wouldn’t. But she could.

Elsa: What the fuck is a chakra? Elsa: my snow monsters are self-sustaining. Elsa: I'm gonna build us a house.

Zabuza has NO idea how her powers work and it is INCREDIBLY frustrating but “there’s no chakra cost to keep these things going and we have shelters on demand” is too convenient to question after a while.

Haku: Delicate, deadly, incredibly fast ninja work. Elsa: I can't dodge a kunai but watch me wreck your entire country's ecosystem in under a day.

Elsa is a siege weapon.

Meanwhile, Anna is really, really into the physicality of ninja practice.

She's clumsy and she's not very good at ninja stuff, but she sure is determined!

Anna also gets on Zabuza's nerves because she keeps insisting that Haku get to be a kid.

Anna: Let's make flower crowns! Zabuza: No, he needs to train, not- Anna: FLOWER CROWNS

Consider: Haku saying Elsa-nee-sama and Anna-hime.

Or just calling Elsa “onee-sama.”

Anna is also younger than Elsa and way more Fun so she probably gets adjusted to Anna-chan or Nee-chan.

If Zabuza calls Elsa “Hime-chan” or “Elsa-hime” or, Sage forbid, “Elsa-sama/dono” then he’s VERY MUCH making fun of her and he’s probably getting his soup frozen that night.

At one point, Elsa... tries to like. Convince herself to have a crush on Zabuza or Kakashi or something until Zabuza just puts a hand on her shoulder and asks "do you even like men?" "...that's an OPTION?"

Zabuza urging her to try and ask out a Cute Kunoichi and Elsa's like.... I can't decide if she's bright red and a useless lesbian or uncomfortable and ace.

I am SO invested in the siege weapon thing.

SHE IS THE SQUISHIEST WIZARD.

It's not her fault that every single other combatant on the continent is Massively Dangerous in melee! She took a very traditional back-line build!

Enemy: Doesn't it GRATE to protect someone so pathetic, Zabuza? Zabuza: She literally froze an entire castle of enemies to death because they harmed her sister, so. No.

Most Ninjas: Sharp Knife. S-Rank Mega Ninjas: Gun. Elsa: High Yield Explosive Rocket Launcher. Literally loses fights to the Knife People, because she can't bring her power to bear on that scale. But if you can give her Time and Prep? No contest.

Long distance AoE

Like  you know how Nagato is literally dying of starvation due to illness and can't walk, but he's also capable of leveling powerful villages more or less on his own?

Elsa is the same Vibe.

It’s like sealing a bijuu in a civilian.

She's honestly both more and less powerful? Like it'd be hard for her to kill everyone in Konoha in the snap of a finger? But also, she could starve out the Country of Fire in a summer.

She WOULDN'T, but she could.

I always read Elsa as gay or ace but my brain keeps trying to ship her with dude ninjas and I have to yank it back on a child leash.

People insinuate that Zabuza is interested in Elsa and he's just "What? Ew she's like five."

"I'm eighteen."

"Five."

BUT

Elsa! Might mistake trust and companionship for a crush!

I can see THAT happening despite gay/ace.

Also like. I don’t think Zabuza is straight.

So mlm/wlw solidarity?

And Haku is probs genderqueer.

So Anna is THE TOKEN STRAIGHT.

Anna is like, the Straight Friend who will go to the mat for her queer friends. Like vicious. In-your-face barking like a mean dog at people who were being bigots.

You know how Elsa in the second movie uses her powers to make toys for kids out of ice?

Okay, so her practicing by making things with Haku.

But yeah, Elsa can't really do "throws ice senbon," but she can do Delicate Geometry Things since she apparently, canonically studies math for fun and loves fractals.

Haku: I can trap you in a prison of ice mirrors, and you are at my mercy. Elsa: LOOK AT THIS CASTLE I MADE???

Haku wants to do Pretty Things like Elsa

OH.

Elsa makes... snow bunnies..

For the ninja distraction reasons but also because it's a Soft Thing that makes her feel better about, uh, everything. And Haku likes bunnies.

Zabuza still takes The Dirty Missions but Elsa gets upset when he does something that hurts innocents and Nobody wants Elsa upset. Even Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset.

When Elsa gets upset, overnight accommodations are suddenly Very Uncomfortable for everyone except her and Haku.

And then Anna gets upset, which makes Elsa even MORE upset.

And then things just keep getting colder.

Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset for many reasons, not limited to: "Is actually capable of killing me from outside of Sword Range if she's mad enough, even if it’s not that easy" and "the Small Children would be unbearably sad if she died and honestly so might I."

She's more of a friend than a ward and he's not entirely sure he's okay with that.

Zabuza: "Ew, friendship."

He has absolutely no idea how to have a social interaction with people he isn't Bullying, Raising, or Threatening to Kill.

Elsa and Anna have no trouble convincing people they're related, at least. Different coloration with almost identical bone structure.

A tendency to burst into song when they feel emotions.

Identical weird accent that nobody can place.

FOOD

The girls are royalty, they don't know how to COOK.

But they also want food from HOME.

It's a lot of trial and error.

More error than not, since they have both no knowledge and also a language barrier to overcome. It probably takes YEARS before they can describe things like Unfamiliar Flavors well enough for people to say "OH that sounds like spearmint."

When they run into something they know that’s familiar, it’s life-changing.

Chocolate is more common in the elemental nations than in Arandelle and Anna may or may not cry about it.

Anna is loudly bossy, even at Zabuza.

Zabuza is gruffly commanding, to everyone.

Elsa doesn't actually like being in charge, but when she talks, people LISTEN.

(Haku is just happy to be here.)

Elsa radiates two things: Anxiety, and Natural Command, and she basically just fluctuates between those.

"I don't want to be in charge but also I'm vetoing this."

So, obviously, the main reasons that Zabuza keeps the girls around is that Elsa is a living siege weapon and he thinks she could be convinced to help him run a revolution in Kiri, and also that the Ice Queen schtick is like. Really good for Haku and Zabuza can’t really say no to the kid.

HOWEVER, Anna is clumsy and messy and all that, so Zabuza starts training her in Ninja stuff. Elsa joins in on the “I need to know how to Run Fast to get away from fights I don’t want to have in the first place,” but Anna’s the one that’s like “TEACH ME HOW TO SWORD.”

It’s honestly not that hard to teach her, she’s just really, really, REALLY enthusiastic.

Once or twice someone asks why she’s so bad at this yet running around with an A-rank nukenin and Zabuza’s just like “I’ve only had her for a year and a half, shut up!” because it’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s that she was a very pampered civilian until like a week before he met her.

He should get a MEDAL for even getting her to low Chuunin.

Zabuza: I'm taking a job from Gato Elsa, who has Training in economics and politics and bureaucracy: I have a better idea.

This is actually not entirely what I’d do but I wanted to make the joke first ANYWAY here’s an actual plot or something.

Oh, also by this point everyone is Canon Ages so Elsa’s 21 and Anna’s 18 and Zabuza’s 26 and Haku’s 15.

Elsa is getting paid to keep the water from interfering with construction, by way of....

ICE COFFERDAM

Elsa with Haku as her Guard while Zabuza is off running his own mission? Which Anna begged to go on because Cool.

Elsa also kind of keeps her involvement on the ice front semi-secret by claiming she’s there as an engineering consultant.

LISTEN canon made her like geometry, I can ENTIRELY believe she’d be excited about the bridge-building.

Gato has hired someone else on the danger level of Zabuza, who is Threatening to Team 7 + Haku? But then when things look bleak Anna and Zabuza arrive and then Scary Sword Man is on our side and oh dear that's a lot of blood.

Which, you know, fun!

Birdie suggested Raiga which I’m not feeling but I do feel the need to bring up as an option.

It’s also not Kisame BUT

Kisame: [giant lake dome filled with sharks]

Elsa: uhhhhhhhhhhh...

Giant lake dome: [is now a giant ice dome]

Anyway

Gato: I'm hiring an army. Elsa: [giant ice wall around his compound] Gato: ... these guys can walk up walls! Elsa: [adds snowman guards] Elsa: ... Elsa: [adds a ceiling]

Just puts Gato's entire mob in a fucking snow globe.

Zabuza shows up twenty minutes late with (Throwing) Star(buck)s just like "Oh, they dead? No? Want 'em to be? Okay cool I'm gonna go pick up Haku, I'll be back in like an hour."

Anna would... LOVE Naruto

ENERGETIC FRIENDLY GOOFBALL

"I found us a baby brother!" "No, we already have Haku." "BUT LOOK AT HIM."

Anna is only a year or two older than Itachi.

OH RIGHT

I wanted to make a joke about how Naruto also vibes with her because he's less judgmental that she can't really... talk properly.

Sasuke is Judgy and Kakashi is Paranoid and Sakura is Uncomfortable.

Meanwhile Naruto is just like "And I Shall Scream."

Anna, who learned Japanese from Zabuza (rude) and Haku (uber polite): WELL FUCK YOU, GOOD SIR Naruto: YEAH WELL FUCK YOU TOO, LADY Elsa, overly formal: I am... so very sorry.

Anyway, generic missing nin fights and all that.

Elsa gets injured in the process and after a variety of arguments, Naruto manages to convince them to take her to Konoha for medical attention.

Elsa is... usually the one getting injured.

Zabuza and Haku are FAST and Anna is at least learning (even if she’s only been doing it for three years), but Elsa is The Squishy Wizard.

If someone throws a kunai... she can’t... really dodge...

So yeah, gut wound.

Normally they find a nukenin medic to patch them up but Konoha is reasonably close and has some of the more skilled medics on the continent and they DID technically help the Konoha nin so like. Gah.

That’s Zabuza’s final thought. Gah.

Just “Fuck it, let’s save the ice queen.”

Elsa ends up in a half-literal-ice stasis state on the way there and it’s happened before (it is not the first time she’s been stabbed), but it’s always terrifying.

Especially to the Konoha genin who are just like WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.

So they get to Konoha, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about extradition treaties and “you are bringing a literal WMD of a woman into our town” and “we can’t just let MOMOCHI ZABUZA in.”

Anyway, it ends up being that Zabuza has to wait outside the village while Elsa is treated inside, and one of the Teenagers goes in. Obviously, it’s Anna, because Zabuza is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with letting Haku enter a village that’s known for having lots of bloodlines, and anyway, Anna’s the sister.

Bunch of stuff, she’s healing, etc, and then one day Anna comes in and is told “your sister had a bad reaction to the anesthetic, we couldn’t save her, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”

She flips out, gets shown the corpse, flips out MORE, gets escorted out to the village walls where Zabuza and Haku are waiting.

Horrified reactions

Zabuza doesn’t want to admit that it’s EMOTIONS because this is his FRIEND, he is clearly just upset about losing the living siege weapon.

Haku is just super confused and goes “But she’s not dead.”

“What.”

“She’s not dead, I can feel her, I can always feel her, it’s like sensing but just her, because we’re both ice. She’s alive, somewhere over... there?”

And points right in the direction of the Hokage Mountain, which for the purposes of this fic and also Drama is where ROOT headquarters is.

YEP we absolutely have that plot point.

Is Danzo overused as a plot device? Probably. Am I going to diabolus ex machina him anyway? Ye.

They kick up enough of a fuss that the Hokage gets called down.

He wouldn’t, normally, he’d leave it to a couple of skilled jounin and call it a day, except Naruto got involved so like. You can’t. Ignore that.

There’s lots of shouting.

Just like. A lot.

And then part of the mountain explodes!

AS ONE DOES

Elsa comes flying backwards out of the hole, catches herself on a spontaneous ice slide, gets to her feet.

Girl is swaying like MAD.

There are absolutely ANBU (both fake and real) coming after her.

At least one of them gets speared through by an ice spike.

Anna runs up to her, tries to hug her, gets batted away.

Elsa’s staring at her in sheer TERROR and starts muttering something about how Anna died years ago, this isn’t real, etc.

Nobody except Anna understands most of it, but Haku picks up enough to translate when Anna’s freaking out.

Elsa starts doing her Ice Castle thing in the middle of Konoha as a coping mechanism, mostly so she can get Up and Away and Shielded By Ice.

This is not a good look.

Especially because she’s singing, which Zabuza always thinks is a bad omen because it means shit is getting real and one or both of the girls are about to get a powerup or be beaten even harder than otherwise. When they start singing, things get More Dramatic And Extreme).

(Zabuza does not like Disney Musical Rules)

Danzo shows up.

There’s a bunch of arguing.

All the medics insist that nothing she was given at the hospital should have caused amnesia, psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, etc.

It’s. Not hard for Hiruzen to guess what happened.

Namely that Danzo, upon finding out that chakra dampeners didn’t do shit since none of Elsa’s powers come from chakra, decided to keep her drugged up and start using genjutsu to make her more malleable.

Because like. An injured WMD just showed up in your village. What are you supposed to do, not try to kidnap her and turn her to your side? Like, come on. What was he supposed to do?

Not that, Danzo. Literally Not That.

IDK how it gets resolved, probably Anna getting to her with the power of love, because Elsa is ultimately Super Disney.

I also don’t really know where to go from there other than “Maybe Jiraiya can get you home, but also I’m pretty sure Zabuza wants you all to get the hell out of here and take over Kiri” but who knows.

Also

IMAGINE ELSA MEETING GAI.

Imagine Ino getting a puppy crush on Elsa.

IDK that’s it for now.

[sepialunaris]

Besides the crazy stupid plot twist and dumb character actions I think the big problen why Jurassic World is a failure of a narrative is that it constantly confuses its own tone and what idea it wants to convey. And as a whole it just sounds like singing praises to capitalism and pinning problems on other aspects instead of the root of the problem.

So JW is said to have been open for 15 years, and its said people are bored with classic InGen retrosaurs hence initiating the creation of Indominus, and yet from the other perspective people are enjoying the retrosaurs just fine? It is not even hinted a bit that they did not not enjoy them besides that bit of exposition.

And our audience perspective character doesn't work. Gray and Zach seems to come from a middle-upper class family and yet they never visited the park for years despite having a family member as a high level staff? Knowing their son is obsessed with dinosaurs? And the only reason they were sent there was because it was an excuse to cover up their parent's divorce? In the case of Darius Bowman from CC it makes sense, but this is weird. It's kind of nitpicky, but okay my point is, what makes them ineffective is that they are new eyes to the park and Zach cannot represent "ahh ppl who already seen this many times get inspired to see the beauty of ugly 1993 retrosaurs" because he has never been there either. So its just weird to include their POV when it deosnt complement the Indominus narrative and if it does it feels forced and loose.

And its more bizarre when the movie seems to be more obsessed with showing "oh my god look at this capitalist paradise! John Hammond's gentrification deeam fulfilled!" and panning on random buildings and starbucks with the Jurassic Park theme. Besides "do you have dinosaurs in your dinosaur park" it just wooshes the anti-capitalist social commentary of JP, more crazy when its loads of product placement. I know that they did plan a panning shot with dinosaurs which would've been effective and narratively fitting rather than *pan to giant building* so idk why they even did that. And so idk if this movie wants to criticize capitalism and consumerism combined with the privatizing of the genetics could give way to ethical and environmental issues or do they want to say "god powers are allowed for capitalists if they are nice" (ahh and based on leaks for JWD, its the latter. They made John Hammond a messiah for protecting his unethical business from the 'bad capitalists' omg)

There's also the issue of 'authentic' dinosaurs (hence why I keep mentioning retrosaurs from the start 😂, i want to talk about this too). The scene with Wu and Masrani works, but ultimately the whole movie fails it. It is lifted from one of the few good scenes from the oroginal movel with Wu and Hammond, and concerns about how ALL dinosaurs from this park are genetic hybrids from the start. And well it would've worked well to explore the ethics and capitalism approach but honestly with the whole movie as comparison it just sounds like "guys this is the reason why they are not realistic and feathered please dont ask us about it again." The fact that they are hybridized retrosaurs get ignored and thrown under the rug besides that one scene, and we never again explore how unnatural all of them are as the movie time to time again keeps promoting a division between "legit" dinosaurs and Indominus, the character Lowery keeps pushing. And the latter... aslo shows how much they want to praise the first park and John Hammond despite it being a metaphor of capitalism failing from wanting to conquer nature, despite it being the exact same thing as modern JW. "They didnt need these hybrids they only had real dinosaurs" is already an errornous statement since all of them were frog hybrids, so if its wrong... what was the point of bringing it up? JP didn't just fail because Dennis Nedry sabotaged it, it was bound to fail for its attempt to control nature as Ian said. However JW attributes the singular creation of Indominus as the reason for its failure (and by attribute hoo boy how many plotholes did they engineer to pin it the blame. Suddenly it knows its being thermally monitored? Or does it just releases electromagnetic energy to make ppl around it dumb or jam cellphones, god im rambling), and if they continued making retrosaurs it would've been fine? So what was the message? "Its okay to mix dinosaur dna with frogs but don't add to much to the mixture"? "Its okay to play god with capitalism but dont go too far"? Instead of mentioning both concepts as unethical and the concept of Indominus as an already flawed concept pushed even more unethically, the increasing level of tolerance for playing god already shows a shift of morals from the JP and JW. So once again its 'capitalism is actually good, its just the evil ppl thats the problem'

It honestly just erases the brilliant potential of how that narrative could be engaged. Of course its obvious the park would want to promote their retrosaurs as legit and Indominus as a different flavor despite both being hybrids but the latter being pushed to the max, so both of them are bound to have intersecting problems. However not everyone would've been fooled by such promotion. And yet from our POV only Wu was aware of it; the view of them as retrosaurs is treated as an understatement to be ignored as we are only allowed to see things and agree with opinions from the POV of Lowery or the kids against Hoskins' cartoony "lets convince our president to use dinos to steal oil" idea.

It could've honestly touched on many aspects of de-extinction or concepts like the Chickenosaurus, as well as the complex moral dillema around many genetic issues, but the movie just wants to shy away from it and impose a black and white morality of "Indominus bad unnatural" and "retrosaurs good natural." Not unnesary military commentary that doesn't work (dinosaur's effect in the environment would be more devastating than them acting as military weapons so pro-US imperialists can be proud (one bullet will kill them, I swear yeah ik this is a 'scifi' franchise, but the logic hoops you need to jump from that. One raptor died from getting hit by a rocket launcher as they should. So what US wants to use these bags of flesh as weapons to steal oil? There is nothing they can do that dogs or dolphins can't do better). The only time its kinda shown is when Indominus is killing Apatosaurus for fun, but... real animals like humans, dolphins, chimps do that too. And the movie treats this as something unnatural or makes it evil. Scorpios rex despite being ugly actually accomplishes the ecological horror of having an invasive creature invade an ecosystem (despite the ecosystem itself alr being flawed and superficially created) and being able to reproduce through parthenogenesis). And I doubt they would touch on this in JWD despite the variance of animals they will show, as even Atrociraptor is not going to be called out by name in that film, that they can change its name in post production.

[serendipitous-magic]

You might've talked about this already, but any tips for writer's block???

(Disclaimer: many of these are paraphrased from writing advice I've seen and liked myself, but can't for the life of me remember where I saw it or who said it.)

1) For existing stories: have a plan. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t like planning stories, have the most basic of skeleton plans. You don’t have to come up with the whole plan at once, and you don’t have to plan every little detail. But when you think of a plot point or scene or detail or whatever that you want to use later in the story, jot it down. Don’t count on yourself to remember it. You won’t.

And if you’re a person that hates planning stories, don’t think of it as a plan. Just think of it as saving the ideas you want to use later.

-_-

2) Write down your daydreams.

No, seriously. One of my biggest challenges in writing is that when I’m trying too hard, nothing happens. My best ideas happen when my brain is just playing, not even writing, just like... Going off on intangible adventures while I wash the dishes and listen to music. I’ll surface from some complicated daydream about a band of cowboys staging a horseback rescue mission for a friend being held prisoner on a moving locomotive, ending with the horse leaping over a narrow canyon Spirit style, and suddenly I’m like “wait, shit, this is good.” This applies for individual scenes, but also plot - the same thing often happens (to me at least) for larger plot points. I’ll be happily daydreaming a scene and suddenly one of the characters tearfully says, “I expected this from the others. I did. But from you? My own brother?” And I’m like WHOA WAIT, THEY’RE SIBLINGS? PLOT TWIST! And like... sometimes that shit makes it into the actual story I’m writing (or I write it down and save it for a future story) and becomes a major part of the plot, lol.

Point being, the things you come up with when you’re not even trying - when you’re just having fun, fucking around in the fandom or in whatever various universes you’ve created in your brain (anyone else? No? Just me?) - those effortless ideas are often some of the best ones. Because of how human brains work, it can be really, really hard to force yourself to make something good.

So if you’re just happily daydreaming, and you find yourself thinking, “Damn, this is actually pretty good,” write it down. You might be able to use it later.

-_-

3) If you’re in the middle of a story / scene and you get hit with writers’ block, or you find yourself rewriting the same sentence or paragraph or page over and over, or simply feel unable to continue forward - your problem is not that sentence / paragraph / page, it’s several sentences / paragraphs / pages back.

For example: if you can’t seem to figure out what a character should say next, first try the usual thing and plan ahead. Where does this conversation need to go? What needs to be revealed? What emotional beats need to occur? What information needs to pass from character to character? Does it need to continue? Maybe you just need to cut the scene or have the next plot point happen there.

But if none of that (the “usual stuff”) is working, don’t look ahead, look back. Your problem is probably actually a few lines ago. The conversation meandered too far from what it was supposed to be, or the conversation could have been three lines and it just kept going on for two pages after the plot point ended, or you’re not sure what the emotional beats of the scene are supposed to be so you’re floundering.

When trying to move forward isn’t working, look back instead. Mid-story writers’ block is often a sign that something went awry a little while ago, and you’re seeing the symptoms now. The stubborn paragraph is the check-engine light, not the engine itself. Go back and read over the last page (or more, depending on how big the issue is) and see if you can feel out what the issue is. Did the plot point end two or three pages ago and you just never stopped the scene? Are you relying too much on action and dialogue but forgot to describe the scene as it goes on, so it’s all happening in kind of a vague gray void? Did you get into a rut of repetitive sentence structure because you lost the flow a while ago, and now you’re just cranking out words mechanically?

-_-

4) Don’t be afraid to write “stupid version:” at the top of the page and just go for it, in the most cheesy, over-the-top, bad, obvious, flat, boring, illogical, improbable, unbelievable way. Or whatever way ends up coming out of you. You can go back and fix it once you’ve found the ideas you want to hold onto. Remember, “the first draft (whether that’s for the entire story, or just a draft of a single scene, or a single page, or a single paragraph) is for making it exist. The second draft is for making it functional. The third draft is for making it effective.” (I’m paraphrasing and I don’t remember where that quote came from, I’m sorry.)

-_-

5) If you’re having writers’ block on in coming up with new ideas, here are some things that work for me:

-Write down your daydreams (see above)

-Listen to music. Soundtracks and video game music are great because they’re designed to support a narrative, and to almost tell a story of their own. But, like, any music. I often end up making little “trailers” in my head when I listen to songs I’m currently taken with, and sometimes I’m like “Hey those could be some good elements for an actual story.”

-Look back at old notes for story ideas, if you keep any

-Or, look through any medium you use to save ideas - playlists, pinterest boards, art, whatever.

-Consume other content. I know that’s old advice that literally everyone gives, but hey, it works. You’re great and your brain is great, but you are not a closed ecosystem. You can’t just keep creating, growing, thriving all on your own without taking in and integrating other people’s ideas. Read something. Watch something. Read fanfic, see what the fandom’s up to. Reintroduce yourself to an old favorite with new eyes, or seek out something you’ve never seen before. Watch one of those old classic black and white movies that you never got around to watching. Read a book in a genre you don’t usually read. Find a terrible, I mean truly awful show and watch it with someone you can laugh with. Look at art. Ask the people in your life about their passions and their weird little cornerstones of knowledge.

-Give yourself time. Let yourself percolate. Let yourself think.

-Write yourself into an idea. Open up that dreaded blank page, switch to red ink, and just start typing like “Okay so it’s a werewolf story I think but not one of those pulp romances with the Alpha Wolf or whatever shit, I think I like the idea that it’s about the pack dynamic, so like a family story? But maybe the main character is a human. Do they get adopted by the pack for some reason? Why? Maybe they like... saved one of the pups or something. How did the pup end up in danger?” Etc.

6) It’s hard to force your brain to be interested in something it’s not currently interested in. If you’ve been super into sci fi and are all about Star Wars and Firefly right now, but you’ve been meaning to write a gritty crime mystery for like ever... you’re probably gonna have a hard time writing a gritty crime fiction if all your brain wants to think about is spaceships. (Unless you set the gritty crime mystery in a sci-fi setting 👀)

Trying to control your muse is like trying to leash a cat. You’re probably gonna have way greater success (and way more fun) if you just write whatever the hell you wanna write, whether that’s a 300K spy drama or another fake dating AU for your OTP even though you’ve already written two. (I promise you, nobody’s ever gonna get tired of it.)

[andmaybegayer]

The cultural positioning of typewriters, or: I promise I’m not corporatecore come back it’s fine.

I got a typewriter! If you want a documentary breakdown of that you should read this post, but this is going to be about what typewriters were used for back in the 20th century and how utterly batshit the entire ecosystem there was.

Typewriters were used by three main groups of people: journalists, authors, and secretaries. I don’t really care much about the first two, because while they used typewriters, their job was not typewriting. Typewriters were popular for journalists and authors because typewritten drafts and manuscripts were easier for editors and typesetters (and indeed, legibility is a big reason for the adoption of the typewriter in all parts of the world) but typing is not what journalists and authors do. Authors compose and edit, and journalists research and write, but only secretaries type.

(I read an interesting paper about this three-way split, you can read it here)

In the 1800′s, secretary was a job given to a strapping young man with a bright future in business so that he could learn the trade, but after some wars and other social pressures that reduced the supply of male secretaries, and a convenient confluence of women learning the skill of typewriting, the female secretary became a thing. Suffrage movements were pretty happy about this for a while: Women in the office! How progressive! Of course, the role of secretary very quickly stopped having a progression path to management, and it picked up all the usual misogynistic stereotypes that you probably know today.

If you’re over 45 you probably know what the job of secretary used to look like, but for those of you who aren’t, for most of the 1900′s secretary was a job that revolved around typing letters, missives and notes in a legible and consistent format. This is important, because the alternative sucks shit. If you were mid level manager Johnson Q. Goodfellow at the Racism Company, and you needed to tell the Racism Factory that they needed to produce 400 more units of Racism this week, you could try calling up the manager at the factory and telling him this. Unfortunately, there’s all manner of things that could go wrong here. He might misinterpret you saying “produce 400 more” as “produce 400 only”, in which case you might have a Racism shortage. Or he might mishear entirely and produce only four more, if your accent is particularly bad.

Instead, Johnson Q. Goodfellow could get a secretary to create a missive (in quadruplicate, using carbon paper) and get the 17 year old who hangs around your lobby to courier two copies out of town to the Racism Factory, and you can keep two copies for your own records. Very low chance for errors now, since either side can refer to their copies to find out what was intended. A secretary would also add dates and ensure all communication meets business standards.

(This is also why there’s no red telephone between Washington and Moscow. It used to be a teletype: a text transfer machine. Later, it was Fax, and nowadays it’s encrypted email and text chat. All text-based systems, written in the sender’s native language and translated on the other side to provide the lowest chance of a misunderstanding and high chance of being correctly recorded.)

How would that letter get written? If you were an audio or shorthand typist (a highly skilled profession requiring extensive training at a secretarial school) you would either be a personal secretary to a single executive or a high-ranking member of a secretarial pool. Either way, your manager would dictate a letter, and you would have to convert it into a typewritten document. Originally this would be done by a secretary capturing the speech in real time in shorthand, and later it would be captured on a microcasette and transcribed with the assistance of a dictation machine. On the other hand, a simple copy typist can only work in the secretarial pool, and you would get a hand-written draft from a manager, likely one too low-level to have his own secretary or even his own microcasette recorder. This would possibly be sent back for checking, either by the manager or by your superior, and then all copies would be sent wherever they were needed. The jobs are otherwise similar, apart from a lack of real progression for copy typists.

(A good pop-media example of shorthand typing is the “speed test” song from the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, a rendition of which I will link here. It’s also a treasure trove of the kind of ridiculous stereotypes that existed around the secretarial profession, as a musical made in the 60′s about the 20′s. Millie is a fawning social-ladder-climber who gets her job explicitly to someday marry her boss, who is a self-absorbed dipshit. I was a stagehand on my high school’s production of this, so I know the whole thing from memory. Please send help.)

Why don’t the managers type their own letters? Well, partially because of the weird skill split on typing: typing was a woman’s skill back then, many men would not even know how to type, and those that did may be extremely slow hunt and peck typists who would make many errors and produce uneven, sub-par manuscripts. Secretary was kind of considered a fallback profession in some cases: schools taught it to girls the same way woodwork was taught to boys. You don’t necessarily want to become a carpenter/secretary, but if you can’t find a decent company job/suitable husband, the skill can support you until you track one down or die. Man, the 20′s-70′s were insane.

There’s some interesting status stuff to talk about here. If you’ve ever seen an old movie where a rich dude takes out a tape recorder and makes a note to himself, that’s the movie’s way of telling you that this guy is powerful enough to have a personal secretary. It implies that later he’s going to put that in an envelope and leave it on someone’s desk and the next day when he comes in, any reminders he made will be on his calendar and any notes will have been typed out in full.

Secretaries type as a profession. The speed expected of an acceptable secretary is a sustained 70 words per minute, which is about what I can do in an extended session. A good secretary could easily surpass 100, and there’s an old navy typist training video of the fastest typewriter typist in the world reaching 180 wpm on demand, and since correction on typewriters is tedious, your accuracy was expected to be near on 100%. On old manual typewriters the skill of keeping all letters even was an additional challenge, since you provided the mechanical force for the type bars. Electric typewriters, like the one I have solve this problem, but it’s still a complicated skill.

Before the invention of the typewriter, the only way to produce clear, reliably text was typesetting. Typesetting is of course, a noble profession, but not something you can easily do in the office on a whim, and wholly unsuitable for one-time messages. Standardized writing in the office reduces the chance of errors and improves your ability to find out who’s to blame when something goes wrong.

Nowadays secretary is not really a job that exists anymore? You mostly hire Executive Assistants and groups of lower managers share a single Executive Assistant rather than accessing a pool of secretaries. Typing is also no longer the name of the game, instead it focuses on maintaining schedules, synthesis of letters from prompts from your manager, and serving as a gatekeeper for mail and meetings. The name has changed because the job has changed, describing an executive assistant as a secretary would be like referring to the blades of a combine harvester as a scythe. That’s not to say secretaries don’t or can’t type, they are still often the most skilled typists in an office (I have seen multiple photos of macbooks with the coating worn clean off their keys by a legal secretary or medical scribe) but most executives are now capable of performing an adequate job of typing and editing on a computer.

If you wish to do some further reading, interesting resources I found while doing some research that I haven’t linked above for this include:

This quora answer from a woman who was a secretary in the 70′s

This series from an EE magazine about what it was like to work in a typing pool

[fixedfire]

i went to a friendsgiving this year with my heart open. turning 30 brought people back into my life that i never would have imagined and i wanted to continue to build old friendships back up. i put my heart on my sleeve and ran with it all full steam ahead and am trying to be the friend, once again, that people deserve. the one that doesn’t end up being forgotten or misunderstood.

it’s so hard to find myself moving forward in life yet constantly needing to replace every fascet and definition of love and friendship. every time i lose a close person to me, i tend to lose a whole version of myself and a whole ecosystem of friends and memories become shrouded in hateful and hurtful truths. it’s happened more times than i can count. i don’t want someone’s skewed impression of me to dictate my relationships with other people. but i know i’m better off alone than wondering what is true. what was real and what was easy to believe at the time?

is it a red flag when you notice it only while reminiscing? there has to be another word for it. it just makes me feel weak. easy to confuse. never missed by them the way i find myself missing “before”...the friendships and adventures and supportive parts of the journey that had nothing to do with the ultimate reason we didn’t work out.

friendship is strange and people float into and out of your peripherals all the time. and yet— the older i become, the smaller this insane world turns out to be. the cycles overlap. people appear and disappear. the feelings and emotions bubble and burst and settle back down again after an exhausting few days of over analyzing. a song, a joke, a movie.. all fucked and dripping with the stain of “before”. maybe this is just my own messed up internal dialogue and everyone else has better coping mechanisms to allow them to truly cut the past off at the neck.

i’ve been on both sides of the block button and there are frankly some people i had never thought i’d have to see again unless i chose to seek them out. and yet. this past weekend, i was thrown entirely off by seeing a face i knew a long long time ago. a face of a friend who wanted more. a face of a friend who left. twice. a face of someone who wanted nothing to do with me and the life i’ve had after that final day— we never spoke again. a person who i considered a true friend until their motives became clearer and clearer with time. someone i didn’t want to hurt who decided to hurt me. lie to me. read this blog without telling me. mock me with a fb status...

i have regrets, of course. i regret not defining things in a more mature way. i regret being the type of girl who let others decide her fate, hanging on the words of men and hoping they would lead me to the truth of a life i could actually see myself living. instead of just being honest and raw, i was scared and anxious and vulnerable. i let my (soon to be realized) awful best friend at the time influence my thoughts through her unwavering sense of superior judgement and unmatched ability to cut me deep with one sweeping statement of what she felt was absolute truth.

i didn’t know how to make a choice that wouldn’t ruin some aspect of my life. i wanted to be selfish while also conveying that i was really hurt.

that friendsgiving brought a person back into my life that i only recently added on instagram to wish them a happy birthday. they just happen to be mutual friends with the person/people i used to know. and there was his face, in nearly every shot. the memories bubbled up. they keep bubbling up. i keep wishing i had a stronger memory of the Bad and a weaker memory of the Good. a tighter grip on how hurt i used to be by their actions and how ultimately better off i am now without the pain they caused. our friendship was once very important to me. and i think seeing him in a such a setting with good friends, having fun with someone i really like, just reminded me of how we could have been if we didn’t push it further. didn’t push each other away.

i’m not waiting for an apology or closure.. i’m just sad. sad about what i’ve been through. sad about not being able to make and keep friends over the years. sad that my selfdoubt escalates any time i think of how easily i’ve been swept aside and forgotten about by people who can still plague my thoughts. i wonder if i’m the only person who feels this way, who is driven into a spiral of weird feelings by a 6 second video clip of a practical stranger in pretty much every sense of the word.

those i knew, those i loved, those that left, those i lost... they are all strangers now. i hardly even recognize myself so I only hope that they’ve grown to be a stronger person and that they don’t suffer from this insanity i feel when it comes to the past and the pain it caused. i’m trying every damn day to be better than i was and maybe that’s enough.

[spaceotter42]

Terri Minsky Talks About Her Finale Decisions

Andi Mack EP Terri Minsky on Legacy, the Series Finale and Movie Possibilities

Photo Courtesy of The Disney Channel

From Paste

Andi Mack is over; long live Andi Mack!

By Alexis Gunderson  |  July 26, 2019  |  5:41pm

If you haven’t caught up with the Andi Mack series finale, turn back!

Well there you have it friends. With Andi’s (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) momentous high school decision, a joyous group singalong to “Born This Way,” and the long-awaited proof that both Buffy (Sophia Wylie) and Marty (Garren Stitt) and Cyrus (Joshua Rush) and TJ (Luke Mullen) like, like like each other, Andi Mack, Disney Channel’s boldest and most groundbreaking original series to date, is officially over.

Having gotten Andi Mack showrunner Terri Minsky on the phone for a long, deeply spoilerific conversation earlier this month, we’ll have a lot more to say about the finale’s wholesome perfection and the series’ parameter-shifting legacy in a moment, but first, let us just say this: Honestly, more series finales should just be one big party.

Get the drama out of the way early! Turn down the lights and turn up the jams! Give a grandma an inflatable T-Rex costume and an open dance floor! Sit a couple of boys down on a romantic fireside bench and let them finally hold hands! Seriously, showrunners—dancey, joyful series finale parties are where it’s at. Don’t sleep on Andi Mack’s excellent example.

If you’ve paid any attention at all to Paste’s previous coverage of Disney Channel’s groundbreaking family dramedy, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time we’ve suggested that more shows should be doing what Andi Mack was doing from Day One. More shows should be exploring the shape of non-traditional family setups. More shows should be letting teens tackle platonic friendships with thoughtful joy. More shows should be making intergenerational family dynamics a focal point of their storytelling. More shows should be letting the specificity of their characters’ full identities—from cultural background to race to sexual orientation to the ability to see crafting treasure where anyone else would see trash—inform their growth. More shows should let teen boys be tender, and more shows should gently call teen boys out when they’re being benignly oblivious to the inner lives of others.

More shows, in short, should just BE Andi Mack. And while its series finale, “We Were Here,” was a disappointment insofar as it officially marked the end of our time with the Good Hair Crew, it was a wild success in showcasing every other thing, big and small, that made Andi Mack so fantastic from the beginning. From the emotional (and actual) growth in Andi’s new-normal family set-up to the core four’s rock-solid friendship to the official blossoming of the puppy love romance between Cyrus and TJ, “We Were Here” found its sense of finality in the same kind of infinite possibility wrought by change upon which the series originally began. Nothing is final, the finale told its fans, except how we care for others.

But enough of our sentimentality. We promised a FULL SPOILER exit interview with series creator Terri Minsky, and we live to serve. Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Paste: Terri! First of all, congratulations on the series! How are you feeling, now that the finale is finally here?

Minsky: Thank you! You know, it’s actually gotten harder as we’ve gotten closer to the finale, because I think I was in some sort of state of—I won’t say denial, but [making] something from start to finish, that’s a first for me in terms of a television show. So originally I was feeling really, really good about it, like I did something. But now […] that I’ve done what I wanted to do, exactly what I wanted to do, and it’s turned out even better than I had imagined, it’s kind of weird to have done it!

Paste: Oh, we can only imagine. That’s not a feeling a lot of people get to have.

Minsky: And now that it’s really over, over, over, I [do] miss it more than I really have at any other point. I just look at the finale and I remember how those kids were so emotional, but how they were able to snap right back into the scene and whatever they were playing and not have that ending feeling about them. By the end they were all just such amazing, professional, incredibly talented people, I just look at them and I think, Oh, I wish I could be THEM when I grow up!

Paste: Same, honestly. To have that kind of emotional maturity at any age, let alone fourteen, fifteen?

Minsky: Incredible. I’m dying to see what they all become, all of them for different reasons.

Paste: What was the process of getting Andi Mack to this specific ending point? Did you have a three-season arc going into the project, or did you even know that three seasons would be where you’d be ending?

Minsky: I would love to say yes, but the truth is, I didn’t. It really was very much a process—the stories that came out of the room, a lot of them were obviously very personal to the writers themselves, and then the actors, what they brought, who they were. Everything was kind of like a plant that grew on its own, developed its own ecosystem.

In terms of when we learned that this would be the series finale, I don’t totally remember, but we were breaking Season Three and looking for our cliffhanger, this is like episode 10 out of 21, when we found out. So it was early enough that it was really great to be able to think, okay, we want to tell these stories, we want to get them in, we want to make sure that they lead to a place where it will conclude. I didn’t want to have people feeling cheated, especially if they’ve been watching the whole time. But it was hard, very, very hard, to know at Episode 10 and not be able to tell anyone. We definitely cried a little in the writers room, but [in terms of organic storytelling], it also made sense.

Paste: When it came to actually writing the finale, how did you approach that? What was the feeling like on set as everything was wrapping up?

Minsky: So, this is the first finale that I’ve written. It was the last episode, I was obviously going to write it, but we were still editing and writing and punching up and shooting all the ones leading up to it, and so it was almost the easiest script I ever wrote, because it was, like��� we knew what was going to happen, it was just a matter of at what point, and what were the words going to be. Then I was done, and the writing room was so great about it and very supportive, and then we turned it in, and then there was the table read, and then we were shooting, and I was like WAIT A MINUTE! Wait a minute, this is the FINALE!

Paste: What was the process behind making “Born This Way” the party’s climactic moment?

Minsky: I have to give total credit to Paul Hoen, the director for [the episode], because we knew that we wanted to have the 2.0 party from the first season, we wanted to do a callback to that. So we had the story, but in terms of performing a song, that was all Paul. He’s done so many movies, and so many set pieces, I think he just had it in his head. So he made a list of songs and showed it to me, and the next day he said, we’ve got “Born This Way.” And I was blown away. I still am. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how he did it, but we have it, and it was so great, so great.

Paste: Well, and it’s such a recognizable dance party anthem, and so recognizably an LGBTQ pride anthem, that it feels like the perfect finale button to the episode. Like, saying that Cyrus’ coming out arc wasn’t just thrown in to be thrown in, but was developed very intentionally.

Minsky: Oh, it makes me so happy to hear that.

Paste: So we know the show has a very passionate fanbase in general, but when it comes to the Cyrus+TJ storyline, that passion is even more intense.

Minsky: Well, I think a lot of it is the fans reacting to seeing things on a Disney Channel show that they hadn’t seen before. On the one hand, I feel sad that this is the first time, I feel honored that we were the first time, but I also would like nothing more than to not ever again have something like this be such a big to-do. I just want characters to get to be who they are, to not have to explain, apologize, come out. But the fact is, now there’s this audience that’s paying attention, and you want to do right by them. I felt like they were there for us, and I wanted to give them something to thank them for being patient, for sticking around, for hoping, for paying such close attention. I’m just really hoping the finale is… I know it can’t be everything, but I hope it’s going to be something.

Paste: Can you talk a little bit about the process of deciding what that end moment for TJ and Cyrus would be? As both fans of the show and professional critics of serial storytelling, we found the quietness of their big moment to be exactly right, but we know that there will be fans who will still wish there had been more, or who will hold up the kiss between Buffy and Marty as a comparison, wondering why Cyrus and TJ couldn’t have the same thing.

Minsky: I feel like… they’re still in middle school, you know. And I know that people do things in middle school, but I guess I feel like it’s so. much. for, you know, the captain of the basketball team, to hold hands with a boy in the middle of a party. Like, the look on his face? I feel like a kiss, in a way, would have not been realistic to these characters. A lot of that story, a lot of that journey between Cyrus and TJ was subtext, and I think that whatever they were saying to each other, they weren’t actually saying in words. And even that final conversation isn’t explicit. I love that they have that moment reaching for each other and holding hands, in my mind, in the world that we live in, in the story of this relationship, that is a lot.

Paste: Oh, we remember being fourteen! Holding hands felt way more intimate and scary than some kind of awkward first kiss.

Minsky: I think that first physical contact with somebody is so intense. The feeling of their hand and your hand intertwined, how unusual and connected and intense that is. I just felt like this was the story of these characters, that they finally understood what they were saying to each other, and it wasn’t like they had to wonder, is he saying this? or is he thinking this?

In terms of the story, it didn’t need a kiss. Adding a kiss would have been doing it just to do it, to be first, and I didn’t want that. I would love if we were going to go on and have another season or another story, I would love to have the first LGBTQ kiss on Disney.

Paste: Well, at this point, if an Andi Mack movie ever did happen, it seems like the ideal outcome would still be that theirs wouldn’t be the first gay kiss on Disney. Like, the real power of Andi Mack has always been for us the number of doors it has opened to the shows that will come next. Cyrus and TJ walked so characters we have yet to meet could run.

Minsky: Oh, that’s true, yeah! I DON’T want to be the first gay kiss on the Disney Channel, you’re right.

Paste: We’ll come back to the dream scenario of a movie in a minute, but first, are there any stories you got to tell that you’re especially proud of?

Minsky: You know, the funny thing is that from Season One, we had wanted to do a story about that sort of casual racism, that idea of people thinking it’s okay to touch a black girl’s hair because it’s so cool. And we had touched on that in different moments, but then finally here we were in Season Three (Note: episode 3.17, “Arts and Inhumanities”) and it was like, we’re doing it! I’m very happy that we managed to get that in. But I’m also so happy that we did a Bar Mitzvah. I’m thrilled we got to read from the Torah. I love the shiva episode, Cyrus coming out to Jonah over bagels. I’m just so proud of all of it.

But if you want to know the one thing I’m most proud of, it I’m proud we got that cast. When I think back to the beginning of it all, Peyton was eleven. You just don’t know how these things are going to go. So to have it come to life the way that it did, it was just one of those things, like a Black Mirror episode, but a good one? You know, I’ve wanted to do a mother-daughter show for a long, long time, but I guess it took me this long to do it because I had to wait for Peyton Lee to be born!

Paste: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your experience with Andi Mack?

Minsky: It sounds GOOP-y, but it really was a dream experience. Working in television, people are always like, that’s so cool! But it’s really not. It can be hard, there are compromises, you can feel like you’re not doing anything worthwhile, and this was the exact opposite. And when this girl in Kentucky started this Andi Mack Thousand Cranes Project and there were these paper cranes with people saying what the show meant to them… I mean, that was very powerful and meaningful and a gift, and none of it was anything that I could have foreseen, and I’m just so grateful. I’m grateful to the willingness of the cast and to Disney’s support and to fans being so expressive. I’ve never had a job like it before.

Paste: What do you hope audiences will take away from the show?

Minsky: To me, the thing that I felt like I wanted to say to the audience is when Andi says to Jonah, do you ever wonder what it would have been like if we had met when we were older? And he says, someday we will be. And I think, for me in my life, nothing that I thought, “well that’s the end of that story!” turned out to be the end of the story. And I do want people to see those [kids as] people and think of them and wonder where they are, or try to guess what they might be doing.

Paste: Okay, we promised we’d get here—what about an Andi Mack movie? Any thoughts on what that could look like, should every fan’s dream come true?

Minsky: Oh, gosh! I would love to do an Andi Mack movie at some point. I want to get back with those characters, I want to get back with that cast, I want to be back in that world. But as my mother always said, you should leave a party when you’re having fun. And we had so much fun.

All three seasons of Andi Mack are now available to stream on the Disney NOW app.

[tyrantisterror]

The worst thing about the anime trilogy for me is the ungodly amount of wasted potential. Like, the concept of a planet overrun with monsters is a really cool one that hasn't been explored in this franchise before, and they also have the freedom of animation, and they decide to focus on Discount Eren Jaeger instead? From what I've seen, the two prequel novels actually delve into this aspect a lot more, and I wish we got that story instead.

That’s the worst thing for me too, and while I generally focus on the wasted potential of the high concept sci-fi and monster stuff - a kaiju apocalypse, kaiju-based ecosystems, etc. - I want to use this ask to bring up one of the wastes that the writers actually had the gall to claim was their focus.

Characters.

For a “character focused” story, the anime trilogy has some of the blandest main characters of any Godzilla story.  And there’s no excuse for it - we spend so much time listening to these fuckers talk instead of watching monsters, and the premise of their story is so weird and interesting, that there is no reason they should be this fucking bland.  You’ve got members of an evil transhumanist alien race who want to enact a grey goo apocalypse for the percieved good of themselves AND humanity.  You’ve got a second alien race of Cthuhu cultists who are preying on humanity’s despair to convert them to their cause.  You’ve got two different groups of human remnants - one that abandoned the planet and feel guilty for leaving it behind, and the other that has learned to live under the heels of giants.  All of that is such good, fertile ground for unique characters!

So where the fuck ARE they?

Like, of the cast, the only ones I can remember the names of without looking them up are Haruo, Metphies, Maina and Miana, and Yuko - Haruo because I hate him with great intensity, Metphies because he’s The One Good Character, Maina and Miana because, like characters in a Stephen Moffat show, they had a strong personality when they were introduced only to slowly have it bled out of them as they turned into the protagonist’s sattelites, and Yuko because her complete lack of depth is so flagrantly out of sync with the amount of pathos the series tries to wring from her inevitable fridging that it’s downright comical.

There were so many different characters you could wring from the series’ premise - so many unique perspectives on a kaiju conflict, ones past Godzilla movies couldn’t do - and they chose instead to focus almost solely on a fucking Ahab character arc!  So many Godzilla movies have Ahab character arcs!  It’s the most well trodden human character archetype in the whole fucking series!

I mean, I guess they gave us Metphies, who is one of the series’ best human(oid) villains and easily has the best dialogue in the whole trilogy, but fuck, they could have had so much more.

[cancerousjojian]

peter parker college!au

part 4 ; biology tutor

summary: you’ve somehow landed a study date with none other than peter parker. you just hope he doesn’t find out you’re only doing it because you have a massive crush on him and aren’t even in biology.

pairing: collegestudent!peter parker x reader

a/n: i missed this series so i decided to bring it back! i’m not even going to bother tagging btw because its been so long. i hope you enjoy anyway.

[the series masterlist]

Peter Parker can barely sleep that night.

He’s far too busy thinking about the cute girl from down the hall who wants him to tutor her. He thinks of every moment he’s seen you, and he remembers them all. Your first meeting was quite awkward, and admittedly so was the second one. He doesn’t know what, but there was something about you that made him feel like he was back home in Queens, a feeling he could get used to.

Of course he tells Ned all about it when he returns. Ned thinks his best friend might be developing a major crush on you, and he’s correct. He notices that the smile never leaves his face as he talk about how smart you were, to which Ned replies, “You’ve never even had a class with her, how do you know that?” “I don’t need to know, dude, I can just tell.” Ned nudges him with him his elbow with a smirk on his face. He knew this crush would likely not go away any time soon.

He reviews his biology notes all throughout his morning European history lecture, not even bothering to pay attention. Peter wants to make sure he has everything together for your tutoring session. And when he returns to his dorm at the end of the day, he’s nervous to say the least. He sees you in passing in the hallway, and you flash him a smile that nearly stops his heart.

“Hey, Peter! Study sesh still on for tonight?” You ask, fumbling for your key to your dorm.

“Yeah, definitely!” He says back to you. He was going to go to the movie night in the dorm lounge, but he wouldn’t cancel on you for anything. This was his chance. Maybe, just maybe, he would ‘make a move’, as Ned urged him to the night before.

You’re struggling to get ready that night. Julie cooes at you as you check your appearance in the mirror once more. She’s going through your side of the closet, picking and choosing possible outfits. “Ooh, wear this!” She holds up a hanger with a red, floral patterned dress to her own body and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

You’re still doing light touch-ups to your makeup and you look at her in the mirror. “Julie, it’s a tutoring session, not a backyard barbecue.” Her smile fades, but not before a chuckle escapes her lips. She sighs then, placing the dress back and flopping down on her bed.

“I ship you and Peter so hard.”

“As you’ve said.” You comment. Your roommates comments about your crush were all but endearing, and you were glad you had someone to root for you like she did.

You realize it’s 5 o’clock, Peter would be expecting you now. You reach over and grab your favorite destressed denim jacket off the hanger and slip in on, giving Julie a twil in your outfit. Julie sits up to look at you and a smile emerges. “You look great.”

You silently thank her and she helps you collect your bookbag and textbooks. “Now go get your man! I expect a three-page double-spaced report on what happened when you get back!”

You just roll your eyes playfully at her, waving a final goodbye as you slip out of your room.

Peter is in the middle of color-coordinating his notes (which is surprisingly difficult, mind you, especially when he and Ned wasted ten minutes arguing over the difference between blue-green and turquoise), when you knock on the door.

He feels his stomach do a small flip, and Ned is getting up to answer you. He smiles widely as soon as he does. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey, Ned.” You return his smile even though you’re a little thrown off at him answering the door instead of Peter. “W-where’s Peter?”

“Oh, he’s in here. I was just heading to the library,” he slips past you and before you know it, he’s halfway down the hall calling out a goodbye to you and Peter.

When you timidly enter the threshold of his dorm, he’s sitting on his perfectly-made bed, notes spread out across it. You immediately take in the decor of his room– a Star Wars poster hangs above his bed, and the room is overall surprisingly clean and organized for two teenage boys.

But Peter doesn’t even notice you observing his whole room. He’s too busy taking this whole situation in. You somehow even look more alluring than he remembers and– was that a new jacket?

He really can’t get enough of you.

The words come out before he can stop them. “You… you look nice.” He offers you a sheepish smile.

You feel like you might explode, your cheek surely reddening at his compliment. “Thanks, Peter. So do you.”

You smile instictually at the boy and he clears out a space for you to sit across from him on his bed. Your heart starts beating rapidly for some reason, and you couldn’t stop it even if you tried.

You’re both sitting in silence for a moment, kind of just staring at each other. Neither of you really knew where to go from here. Not to mention, you still haven’t really decided if you would at least try and tell him how you felt. But judging by your complete silence, Peter wouldn’t know your feelings. At least not today, he wouldn’t.

“So,” he awkwardly clears his throat. “Where should we start?”

“Um, I guess what I don’t really understand is the whole ecology aspect?” You say, and can’t think of how absurd you feel. You weren’t even in a biology course, you just wanted to spend some time with Peter. Luckily, Julie was and you remember her telling you about how boring the ecology lecture was.

Peter shuffles through his notes to find the ones from that lecture, and your eyes are still scaning the walls. He’s explaining ecosystems to you, but you’re not reallt listening. It’s then that you see it– a framed picture of Peter and Tony Stark sitting on his desk. You audibly gasp.

“Oh my God, is that you and Tony Stark?” You point at the picture. Peter turns to see what you’re looking at.

“Oh, yeah. I had an internship at Stark Industries in high school.” He smiles, getting up to grab it and hand it to you to get a better look. You’re visibly impressed, and Peter can tell.

“That is so cool,” you’re still staring at the photo in awe, and Peter blushes. He can’t believe this is happening to him. “Not to sound, like, I don’t know, weird but I love Tony Stark. All of the Avengers actually.”

Somehow, his heart starts racing even faster than before. “Y-yeah, me too. Iron Man is defintely my favorite, though. Thor is cool too.”

You look up at him only for a second to smile. “Spider-Man is definitely my favorite.”

Peter feels like he might pass out.

“I’ve heard he’s a cool guy.”

“I bet,” you hand the photo back to him and he puts it back in its rightful place on his desk.

You can’t even focus on biology anymore, you’re too busy wondering what else Peter had done aside from his Stark internship. And you thought he was out of your league then, he was almost unattainable at this point.

Wait until Julie hears this.

You and Peter spend the rest of the night talking about anything but biology. You’re laughing at all of his jokes, which makes you all the more attractive to him. You listen to him tell stories from back home, and you find out that you have much more in common than you thought.

You both realize it was almost 10 o’clock when Ned returns from the library, several books in hand. Peter’s heart sinks when he realizes you’re collecting your things, on your way out. He opens the door for you, and you’re both standing in the hallway facing each other.

“Thanks for the help again, Peter,” you say, placing a hand on his arm. “It really means a lot. I actually had fun learning about ecosystems.”

He smiles nervously. “Of course. I had fun too.”

A moment of silence passes again and you start to notice how many awkward silences you’ve already shared together when Peter clears his throat. “Hey, um, I was actually planning on going to this film marathon thing that the science department is sponsoring next week, and… would you want to come with? There might be some professors there who can give you extra help with all this stuff if you still needed it, too.” His hands are clasped and they feel clamy. He’s anticipating your response.

You answer without even thinking twice. “Yeah, definitely. That should be fun.”

He’s beaming now. “Great!”

“Great.”

“Awesome.”

“Fantastic.”

You both start laughing, and you realize you’re both talking to avoid yet another awkward silence when your phone vibrates in your hand. You glance at it to see a text from Julie; What happened?! Why are you laughing?? Another follows a moment after; I’m waitingggg. No pressure.

“Is that your roommate? Julie?” Peter says when he notices you reading from your phone.

“Yeah, I oughta get back.” You shove your phone into your pocket and start walking back to your dorm. “Later, Parker.”

“Night, Y/L/N.” A grin.

“Tell Mr. Stark I said hello!” You’re touching the handle to your dorm door before the conversation is even over.

“Will do!” He calls back, and you both slip into your respective doors.

Yup. Peter Parker was definitely falling for you.