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thanksjro · 3 years ago

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More Than Meets the Eye #39 — Tarn Has a Religious Experience in the Cocaine Cave

Last we left off, we’d just seen the climax of Brainstorm’s Time Tour to murder Megatron, as well as completing the roundabout on all of our time loops and preventing Chromedome and Rewind’s divorce through the power of guns.

Anyway, let’s check in on everyone’s favorite gang of Decepticons.

No, not that one. The other one.

We’re back with the Decepticon Justice Division, or at least some of them. Because Tarn is the narrative focus for today, we’ll be breaking this issue into chapters, because that’s intellectual or some shit. We’ll also get what might be an almost-illegal amount of narration boxes. While certainly in-character for Tarn, who has already established himself as pretentious in the most irritating fashion, good god does it clutter up the page. What’s Tarn thinking about, anyway?

Oh right, he still thinks that Vos and Kaon are dead.

Vos’s little phrase there doesn’t translate to anything, by the way. I checked. Honestly, I think it’s a shame; why bother having a fully rendered (if simple) cypher if you’re not going to use it?

Anyway, Tarn, Helex, and Tesaurus are just about finished with Blip, a Decepticon who was unfortunate enough to be at the top of The List at the moment.

Tarn isn’t really feeling it right now though, having lost a bit of the spirit. He’s burnt out, you see; on the DJD’s theme song— which I’ll remind you is one of Ultra Magnus’s favorite songs— on all the murder, and the endless churning of a war that never seems to go anywhere.

Still, a job’s a job, and he’s nothing if not a good performer. He tells Helex to take Blip’s brain out of Blip’s mouth, and Helex complies, in the “censored” way. Originally, Helex was going to kiss Blip’s brain out of his mouth, and that idea got all the way to fucking pencils before someone pumped the breaks.

Which brings me to our artist for the issue, Hayato Sakamoto. Sakamoto is known for having drawn a lot of doujinshi— Japanese self-published comics— several of which were rather racy. He’s done a lot of work for Transformers, including package art and Japanese-specific publications, as well as toy designs. His current pinned Tweet, at time of writing, is a link to his print of Halloween Rodimus, wearing pumpkin booty shorts. He’s got everyone covered in the horny department, what an ally.

Getting back to the issue, Helex spits out some brain juice from that kiss that didn’t happen, while Tarn has a chat with Blip about his crimes. What horrible thing could Blip have possibly done to incur the wrath of the DJD?

No idea what these two think they’re sitting on. Tarn must be the squat king of the fucking universe, to hold that pose through his explanation of Decepticommunism’s take on religion.

Blip has objections to his being on The List, and not just because he’s about to get turned into chunky salsa. He’s literally the only guy who thinks he’s a Sparkeater, and that hardly counts as a religious cult, now does it? But Tarn believes in nipping things in the bud, as it were, and he asks Blip if he has any final words before Tesaurus gets ahold of him.

Blip, to his credit, actually throws Tarn for a bit of a loop, grabbing his mask— bastard couldn’t even commit to properly replacing his face with the symbol of his cause. Blip demands to see Tarn’s face, claiming he’s hiding from something. Tarn doesn’t say anything, walking off to let Helex and Tesaurus finish today’s work. His narration, however, is very chatty, saying that the reason he wears the mask is so that nobody can see him looking away from the moments where he denies his victims the “mercy” of being talked to death, instead leaving the finale to his peers.

Back at their very pointy ship, Peaceful Tyranny, the boys head in for prayer time at the dual life-sized statues of Megatron, Helex leading the sermon of all people. They finish just in time to get yelled at by the tiniest and best member of their team, Nickel.

Hold on, let me look something up.

Christ alive, Nickel, you might as well’ve called the man a slur.

Nickel is their medical officer, and also apparently their adoptive mother, as she chastises the lot for their lack of hygiene and health maintenance. When Tesaurus grumps about having health insurance, Tarn threatens to write him up. Still, it seems like they all have at least some sort of rapport going on. Of course, Tarn has to ruin the fun, by telling Helex and Tesaurus to bring their personal development plans for their employment appraisals.

The appraisals of their murder job, where they murder people.

Later, Tesaurus shows up to Tarn’s quarters, even though he bitched earlier, probably because he knows better than to ignore an order from his boss. Tarn is at least a gracious host, offering a beverage consisting of innermost energon that’s apparently from a guy as old as Tailgate.

Yeah, energon being as diverse of a substance as it is really makes for some weird implications.

Anyway, Tesaurus and Tarn get through the appraisal pretty quickly— turns out the guy who turns into a giant blender on treads is really good at dismembering and murdering. While they do this, Tarn’s narration boxes go on about the importance of administration and professionalism to the Decepticause.

I fucking guess, Tarn.

Tarn notices that Tesaurus is even less into this process than usual, and asks what’s up, even though he already knows the answer. Tesaurus is thinking about Vos. And Kaon, but he feels like a bit of an afterthought. I get the impression Kaon’s the weak link in this team.

The events of the Alternate Lost Light Super-Murder Power Hour took place eighteen months ago, when Quantum-Duplicate Brainstorm called up the DJD to come nab Overlord. His only stipulation? No one else gets hurt, as to not blow Brainstorm’s cover. Yeah, that’s why. Absolutely not because he cares about these stupid Autobots. Tarn agreed to the terms, fully intending to keep this shit covert.

It’s just too bad he and all his coworkers were fucking tweaked out of their goddamned gourds at the time.

The DJD, high as balls off Nuke, because that’s real professional, ran into Drift— who is on The List for defecting, back when he was Deadlock— and they saw red so hard, they painted the interior of the Lost Light pink. With robot blood.

They eventually went back to the ship, at Nickel’s insistence, to steal the quantum engine, only to find that the Galactic Council and the Black Block Consortia were there for the exact same thing. This happened a month ago. Which makes me wonder why the fuck Rewind spent nearly a year and a half laying inside his brother-in-law’s chest cavity. Maybe it was a “Tailgate in the hole” situation.

Kaon and Vos got lost in the fight, assumedly killed in action. We, of course, know that they are very much alive, and actually feeling well enough to commit heinous dismemberments, thanks to the magic of blood donation. It would seem that the twinksome twosome haven’t been able to contact Peaceful Tyranny though, so Tesaurus doesn’t know that.

Tarn acknowledges that they retreated without going to pick up Vos and Kaon from the planet, and Tesaurus makes a comment about Decepticons not abandoning their own. Tarn takes this slight against his Decepticonism, to his Decepticon-masked face, in his room that appears to only have Decepticon badges as decoration, relatively well.

Tarn grabs Tesaurus by the head, practically sticking his fingers in the guy’s mouth, and gets in kissing range as he gives him a taste of the murder-voice. It wholly looks like Tarn’s about to kill Tesaurus over this comment, but he backs off, because he understands how stressful this has been for everyone. In fact, he tells Tesaurus that they’re going back for Vos and Kaon’s bodies, as he pats Tesaurus on the cheek in a way that looks like he’s about to snap the man’s neck. Again, Tarn is just the epitome of professionalism.

Helex interrupts this absolute HR nightmare to report that he just teleported Vos and Kaon aboard, and, wonder of wonders, they’re alive! Yayyyy! Tarn is astounded by this news, but he ain’t seen nothing yet, because Helex then hands him that new version of Towards Peace that Kaon grabbed from Trailcutter. The one where Megatron denounces the Decepticause. Tarn takes the news relatively well.

Tarn reflects on the destruction of the only thing that makes up his personality, going so far as to take off his mask to stare at it contemplatively, like the dramatic bitch that he is. We only get to see the bottom half of his face, as he tells Kaon to meet him in the fueling chamber. I do want to stress, knowing what this son of a bitch looks like literally doesn’t matter, as we’ll find out towards the end of MTMTE.

Deep down in the abandoned mines, the DJD have set up their fueling chamber. Well, they call it a fueling chamber, and it’s technically correct, but what it actually is is the cave that they do their space-cocaine in. Tarn floats in a tank, hooked up to about thirty tubes that pump Nuke into his body while he screams in pain. Kaon, the motherfucker who doesn’t have eyes, is in charge of watching Tarn, as Nickel provides commentary. Nickel’s never been down here before, having been picked up by the ship relatively recently. Kaon tells Nickel that the nucleon down here is special, as it’s been structurally rewritten by temporal bullshit— thanks, Brainstorm— and their stash is irreplaceable, though he’s certainly tried.

Which I guess means that Kaon is their plug. No wonder they keep him around.

Nickel is a little worried about Tarn having hooked every major vein in his body into a bath of liquid cocaine cut with time travel and gas station dick pills, convinced that the guy is trying to kill himself. Tarn’s narration boxes confirm this, as he reflects on his life. Skids is there. I’m sure that doesn’t have any unfortunate connotations.

Tarn opens his eyes to see Nickel slapping at the glass, and he has a change of heart, busting out of the tube and flopping onto the floor and catching himself with his suddenly terrifyingly-large hands.

Foreshortening be damned, they shouldn’t be this huge.

Smashcut to Peaceful Tyranny floating outside of Deathsaurus’s warworld, which looks suspiciously similar to the Rod Pod. Deathsaurus stole this warworld for the purposes of joyriding around the galaxy with all his friends, and that’s the reason they’re there, right? Though the DJD seem to be going out of order of The List, which is pretty out of character for a guy like Tarn. Vos is over by the controls, in his default gremlin pose, maybe he can shed some light on the situation.

…Well, at least we know he’s trilingual now.

Kaon bumps that estimate up to the thousands, having gotten an earful of the inter-Decepticon radio frequency. Tarn claims that Deathsaurus’s defection is a mystery, though he images it wasn’t for any rational reason, knowing Deathsaurus. Tarn then informs his men that this is, in fact, a meeting, and not a super-murder death spree. Seems like a bad idea to not tell your men what the hell is going on until it’s basically already happening, but what do I know? I’m not a murder tank with a hard-on for workplace synergy.

The DJD board the warworld, Deathsaurus greeting them with a box under his arm, seemingly in the middle of something. Up on the topmost catwalk, a couple guys slap the wall for no discernible reason. Vos seems ready to go crab-mode at a moment’s notice.

Deathsaurus asks Tarn to hold his box for him, even as Tarn is requesting a moment to discuss the Megatron issue. Deathsaurus makes a jab at Tarn’s well-known thing for Megatron, asking where his Autobot mask is, then tells him to go stand on the X.

And Tarn does it, because he is the stupidest bitch alive.

Literally how has this man survived this long.

Tarn is, of course, blown the fuck up, though he takes it rather well, only getting somewhat singed. Deathsaurus knew from the moment Tarn called, he was trying to trick him into trusting him enough to get killed. Which he actually wasn’t, for once, but you can’t blame Deathsaurus looking at the statistics and making a call with his self-preservation in mind. Tarn, lamenting how his talents precede him, fires a warning shot, but Deathsaurus is on a roll now, fully intending on removing this threat from his home. The rest of the DJD watch from the doorway. Kaon suggests they do something, but Vos and Nickel know that Tarn wouldn’t appreciate the help.

Tarn asks Deathsaurus to be reasonable— which is a stupid fucking thing for him of all people to say— before immediately using his murder voice. Deathsaurus, knowing this trick already, cuts off his audio sensors. It would seem that he didn’t know that the DJD had a communications officer, however, as he’s surprised when the inter-Decepticon frequency gets hijacked. Tarn finally has his in, having finally gotten enough of a leverage to force Deathsaurus to actually listen to him.

Tarn uses this leverage to talk about the Decepticons’ foundation, which I’m sure is one of his favorite topics. In the beginning, Megatron was sweeping the board, win after win after win, basically taking Cybertron overnight, before looking at what he could do to the rest of the galaxy. Seeing the universe as staunchly anti-robot, he decided he would remedy this injustice by committing genocide on countless organic races, a lot of which didn’t even know who the Cybertronians were.

I fucking guess, Tarn.

Deathsaurus is sick of this history lesson, demanding that Tarn get to the goddamned point. Tarn admits that he’s been a bad Decepticon, equating Megatron to the Decepticon cause, having placed the man on a pedestal that reached into the heavens. But he had a revelation during his drug-induced stupor, when he opened his eyes to find Nickel trying to get him out.

Nickel was picked up by the DJD because her planet— a colony world that was populated by Cybertronians who had come there by Titan— had been razed by a plague created by the Black Block Consortia. Tarn realized that the real purpose of the Decepticons was to correct injustices, and the mass murder of Cybertronians by organics is one of the greatest injustices he knows of. He asks Deathsaurus and his men to join him, in exchange for being removed from The List.

Deathsaurus has an additional condition however; he wants Tarn to kill the rest of the DJD, as repayment for all of Deathsaurus’s men that he’s killed in the past. Tarn, to his limited credit, considering how Tesaurus’s appraisal meeting went, refuses Deathsaurus’s demand.

Deathsaurus then says that they have a deal, much to Tarn’s confusion. Deathsaurus was testing Tarn, to see if he’d be someone worth following. Now knowing that he can be trusted, at least to some extent, Deathsaurus gives Tarn control of his men.

Tarn’s new goal, as an embodiment of the true Decepticause, is to destroy Megatron and those who are currently affiliated with him, seeing as he’s directly opposed to the Decepticons now. The new List currently consists of Megatron and the entire crew of the Lost Light. Tarn’s pretty sure they already got those guys, but he’s not gonna question how they’re all fine now. It’s been a long day for Tarn.

Anyway, time for a group photo! Everyone say “mass homicide!”

#transformers #MTMTE #issue 39 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing #overthinking about robots

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dangan-meme-palace · 3 years ago

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The Kaito stans don't understand nuance and intent in language so let's take it from the top. Again.

TW for uncensored usage of some anti-LGBT+ slurs being used in a non-derogatory sense (otherwise they're censored.) CW for Kaito Slur Discourse.

Does Kaito call Korekiyo a slur in the original Japanese version of the game?

Yes. Yes he does.

But let's attempt, for just a moment, to give Kaito the benefit of the doubt here. Ok*ma isn't always used as a slur– for instance the Hitachiin twins from Ouran use it to refer to Haruhi's father, who dresses in drag, and neither party sees it as offensive– so it can be used inoffensively or not depending on the context, much like some of it's counterparts in English.

Which is to say that tranny bars and queer studies most certainly Exist and get referred to as such, but that doesn't mean a cishet guy can go around calling people tr*nnies or q***rs now, does it? Regardless of your stance on reclaiming slurs it's plain to see which usage is meant to shame and degrade LGBT+ people and which one isn't.

So then, here's the all-important question—

Does he mean it in a derogatory sense?

Yes. Yes he does.

Specifically in that moment Kaito yells at Korekiyo to "stop acting like an ok*ma!" implying that acting like a gay man/trans woman (by speaking effeminately, which is what caused Kaito to yell at him) is a Bad Thing and that Real Men shouldn't do that.

Is there any way for what he said and the way he said it to be less than derogatory?

No. No there isn't.

He was yelling. He was mad. His sprite was serious. Korekiyo used a more feminine tone of voice in Japanese and we know that that specifically is what caused Kaito to use the slur. He used the slur in it's derogatory sense correctly. This is not an "oops I used a word I didn't know because my grandparents said it" but an intentional negative comment about Korekiyo's behavior, LGBT+ people, and effeminate speech in general.

And before any poor, misinformed Kaito fan tries to mention it:

Kaito never apologized for acting this way.

When people were spreading that rumor did you ever notice that there are 0 screenshots of that happening? It's because it never did, it's another rumor made up by the fandom.

I hope that clears things up for fans of the game/fans of Kaito who genuinely want to know what's going on. Thanks for reading.

#kaito tag #kaito discourse #anti Kaito Momota #kaito momota hate #first time using any of those tags but i figured it's worth it for people to see #for anyone curious Kork spoke effeminately while talking about paranormal shit which foreshadows his sister's appearance/possesion of him #i have no idea how to trigger tag this so i just put a warning #god ive only had 3 hours of sleep but im sick of ppl saying 'gay ppl call themselves this so its not really a slur and he can use it'--#--as though theyve never realized that the intention behind reclaiming for oneself is different from a cishet man yelling at someone 🙄#*screams*#im stalling. im just gonna hit post

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eli-kittim · 3 years ago

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The Tower of Babel: History or Prophecy?

By Biblical Researcher & Goodreads Author Eli Kittim 📖

The New World Order

For decades, atheists, anarchists, and irreligious organizations——such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation & the American Atheists——have tried to ban religious freedom and religious expression from society, culture, education, and the media. And, by and large, these secular humanists have won that fight. The Bible was removed from American classrooms in the 1960s, and shortly thereafter prayer and the Ten Commandments were also removed.

The current shift toward atheism in America and Europe is largely due to these political endeavours. And in the globalist agenda——as propounded by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, & António Guterres (the Secretary-General of the United Nations)——religion plays a subordinate role in the upcoming one-world government.

In fact, powerful leaders have been conspiring for decades. We’re talking about a global dictatorship that has been in the making since the founding of the Federal Reserve in the early part of the 20th century. It has been affectionately called by Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, & Gordon Brown, among others, as “the new world order.” It’s not a conspiracy theory since many US presidents, British prime ministers, and high level officials——including Charles, Prince of Wales——have explicitly referred to it as an ideal future government that they’re all working towards as if “they are one people” (cf. Genesis 11.6)! This is no longer a conspiracy theory since this totalitarian world government——which has now reared its ugly head by censoring the masses through social media-driven panic, fake news, government lockdowns, and forced mask and passport mandates——is emerging before our very eyes. Surprisingly, the Bible foresaw this attack on religion, and especially on Christianity, and recorded it in Scripture. Psalm 2.1-3 (NRSV) reads:

Why do the nations conspire, and the

peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth

set themselves, and the rulers take counsel

together, against the Lord and his anointed,

saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder,

and cast their cords from us.’

The Tower of Babel & the One-World Government

The modern discoveries & innovations in virology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, genetics, molecular biology, as well as the harnessing of nuclear energy are seemingly implied in the following Biblical excerpt from Genesis 11.6:

and this is only the beginning of what they

will do; nothing that they propose to do will

now be impossible for them.

Might the scheme to “confuse their language” be a form of electromagnetic pulse attack known as EMP? An EMP is a massive burst of electromagnetic energy that can be generated using nuclear weapons. It creates an enormous magnetic field that can cause widespread damage & disruption to electrical and power grids within range. According to Peter Pry, a defense analyst with the Congressional EMP Commission:

You can use a single weapon to collapse

the entire North American power grid. …

Once the electric grid goes down,

everything would collapse … Everything

depends on electricity: telecommunications,

transportation, even water.

This is certainly one way to “confuse” or disrupt all forms of communication.

Since the towers or ziggurats that ancient people built were no match for the modern skyscrapers, might the Tower-of-Babel narrative be a *prophecy* instead of an origin myth about why people speak different languages? Let’s look at the evidence. The Hebrew Bible (Gen. 11.4) says that the people built a tower (וּמִגְדָּל֙ ū·miḡ·dāl) whose top (וְרֹאשׁ֣וֹ wə·rō·šōw) is in the heavens, or will reach into heaven (בַשָּׁמַ֔יִם ḇaš·šā·ma·yim)! Have the ancients ever built a tower that soared above the clouds? Hardly! However, the Jeddah Tower (aka Kingdom Tower), currently built in Saudi Arabia, will be 1 km (3,281 ft) high, “whose top” will literally be “in the heavens.” And it is appropriately called: a “tower.”

Notice also that many of today’s highest skyscrapers are actually called “towers” and they do, in fact, reach the clouds: the Jin Mao Tower, in Shanghai, the Willis Tower, in Chicago, the Petronas Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, even the Empire State Building, in New York City. Here’s a shot of the Empire State Building peeking above the clouds!

The Prophecy Concerning Babylon the Great

Revelation 18.8-21

‘therefore her plagues will come in a single

day — pestilence and mourning and famine

— and she will be burned with fire; for

mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’ And

the kings of the earth, who committed

fornication and lived in luxury with her, will

weep and wail over her when they see the

smoke of her burning; they will stand far off,

in fear of her torment, and say, ‘Alas, alas,

the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For

in one hour your judgment has come.’ …

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a

great millstone and threw it into the sea,

saying, ‘With such violence Babylon the

great city will be thrown down, and will be

found no more.’

Conclusion

All of the evidence——including the language of the Hebrew Bible——supports an *apocalyptic* rather than a pseudo-historical Tower-of-Babel. The so-called “confusion” or disruption of communication may indicate the coming world Judgment in the form of EMP attacks & nuclear weapons, as alluded to in Daniel 12.1, Joel 2.31, Zechariah 14.12, Matthew 24.6-21, Luke 21.20-26, & Revelation 6.12-15 (i.e. the Great Tribulation). And the prophecy is set to take place when the whole world will be united as “one people” (Genesis 11.6), or one-world government!

Genesis 11.4-9:

Then they said, ‘Come, let us build

ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in

the heavens, and let us make a name for

ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered

abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’

The Lord came down to see the city and the

tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord

said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they

have all one language; and this is only the

beginning of what they will do; nothing that

they propose to do will now be impossible

for them. Come, let us go down, and

confuse their language there, so that they

will not understand one another's speech.’

So the Lord scattered them abroad from

there over the face of all the earth, and they

left off building the city. Therefore it was

called Babel, because there the Lord

confused the language of all the earth; and

from there the Lord scattered them abroad

over the face of all the earth.

—

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piecesarefalling · 4 years ago

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Shipping Thoughts

I have very strong opinions about ships, and can (sometimes) back them up with arguments (sometimes I just like or don’t like things for no particular reason), but ultimately, ships have a right to exist whether I or anyone else likes them or not. It’s totally fine to not like a ship, but it seems really excessive to toss accusations of immorality at a ship or a person. I disagree with the notion that bad relationships should be censored out of existence, and their creators harassed, because they’re bad. Maybe the creator is working through abuse they’ve experienced. Maybe they’re trying to find an outlet for their intrusive thoughts. Maybe they had an idea that they just thought would make a good story.

However, while I mostly agree with the sentiment of “don’t harass people because of what they like or ship,” I do disagree with the notion that fiction has no effect on reality, or that people should always be expected and assumed to keep the two separate. This sentiment does a great disservice to the real-world power of fiction. Popular culture is what spreads ideas to the people, and if problematic relationships are normalized, then this bleeds into the real world - it can cause people who are being abused to assume they’re fine, or cause people with bad thoughts or tendencies to think it’s okay to act on them.

So what am I advocating for, exactly? Well, tagging and content warnings - and in the absence of them, one certainly has every right to criticize and call out the creator. Let me explain.

I have a somewhat smaller range of what I think is problematic in a relationship than some - after all, what is and isn’t unhealthy is often determined by how the relationship is portrayed. For example, I don’t believe relationships with significant age differences, relationships with power differences, or even some incestuous relationships are inherently unhealthy - it is very dependent on how the relationship is written, structured, or drawn. Yes, some relationships with age differences have an older character grooming a younger one, or a younger one acting essentially as an uncaring gold digger. But it’s certainly not always the case. Yes, some relationships with power differences involve the person with power using it to manipulate the person without it, or even if they are unaware of the power they hold, its existence makes the person without power feel as if they are somehow trapped or restrained from being as open as they’d like to be. But once again, if handled carefully, this is not always the case. You can find real-life examples of both of these situations, potentially even people you know.

And even with incestuous relationships, unless the actual relationship is abusive, I don’t really see a moral argument against incest (beyond the fact that the vast majority of people are, uh, not going to be falling for their family members, whether adoptive or blood-related) unless the couple plans to have biological children, which can raise the risk of genetic diseases. My reason for disliking fandom ships with incest is less because of a notion of immorality, and much more because the world has enough problems with misinterpreting how and why people show affection without you trying to interpret *every* show of love among family members as romantic and sexual love. If it’s part of an original story’s plot line? Not my favorite, but bearable. But I find fandom incest (again, adoptive or blood-related) unbearable due to what often feels like a deliberate erasure of the complexities of familial fondness.

So really, when I say “problematic relationships,” what I mean is “relationships that are abusive, manipulative, or otherwise unhealthy” and “relationships that inherently lack consent” (i.e. non-con situations, minor-with-adult - unless the age difference is small and the relationship is non-sexual, and zoophilia/bestiality).

If, however, they are tagged as such, or otherwise described as such, then that serves as a warning - a full admission that the author knows this is problematic, but just needed or wanted to write it for whatever reason. It’s the principle behind “dead dove, do not eat.” While you may dislike them - as I often do - relationships such as these are only deserving of moral criticism if they are not acknowledged as bad, and are thus normalized. But through rating systems, and content/trigger warnings, the author is taking time to acknowledge that these story elements aren’t an ideal to bring into reality, and making sure that their unhealthiness is made known. There can be benefits to this, as well - for example, writing an abusive relationship and saying “yeah, this is abusive” can make it so real-world people realize they’re being abused or taken advantage of when they hadn’t before. This is why I actually wish all mediums had content warnings put in by the creators, as I think that would be immensely useful to everyone in the public sphere.

Basically, the way I see it, everybody’s entitled to their opinions, likes, and dislikes, but don’t go criticizing the inherent morality of a person creating content for a relationship unless you think you can back up why it’s bad in a way that the author did not show that they intended. (And going on the immediate attack, while emotionally satisfying, is never a good way to have an actual discussion.)

#pieces yells into the void #ship #shipping #content warnings #trigger warnings #pro ship #pro shipping #not really pro ship but since I do discuss it #considering how few of my ships are considered questionable by popular debate I'm surprisingly passionate about this but #people shouldn't be treated as bad people if they aren't #and I firmly believe that morality is determined by your actions #not your thoughts and desires

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worryinglyinnocent · 4 years ago

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Fic: Forged Through Fire (7/13)

Summary: Amestris. Once democratic, now a military dictatorship. Prohibition is strict; personal freedoms curtailed. All alchemists must be state-licensed or face imprisonment. Foreigners are met with suspicion. It’s a grim place and a grim time, but there are some people able to bring a little light to the world. Behind an innocent-looking bookshop, speakeasy proprietor Chris Mustang has formed an unlikely alliance with unlicensed alchemist Van Hohenheim to provide alcohol to those who want it and medical care to those who need it. When Riza’s newly complete tattoo becomes infected, Roy brings her into this underworld, little knowing the way it will change their lives in the future – uncovering the secrets of the mythical Philosopher’s Stone and the schemes of a Fuhrer hell-bent on achieving immortality, all whilst navigating what they mean to each other.

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Rated: T

[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] AO3]

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Note: So, just in case you read the previous chapter before I edited it, a note on timing. I managed to mix up centuries and millennia because… wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. To clarify, Xerxes was destroyed about 450-500 years prior, like in canon. Not 50 years prior, like my brain decided to originally write…

Also, Atticus was picked as a random Ancient Greek name, there’s no deeper reasoning behind it.

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Forged Through Fire

Seven

Riza looked up from the counter as the bell over the shop door tinkled and Gracia entered.

“Hey Riza. How’s he doing today?”

Riza laughed. “He’s stopped rambling and he’s now annoying everyone, so I think he’s getting better. I know that Chris can’t wait to get him off her hands, but we’re a bit concerned that someone might try to shoot him again if we let him out of our sight.” She went and flipped the closed sign, locking the door. The speakeasy was still doing limited trade in order to keep the money coming in, but it was only open to trusted regulars who had forewarned that they would be coming in advance.

Gracia followed her down into the bar. For all she could joke about it, Riza could feel the tension in the place. Hughes had stumbled upon something so big and so secret that it would affect all of them in the long run.

As suspected, it now appeared irrefutable that Bradley had the military alchemists working on creating the Philosopher’s Stone. So far, they’d had several failed attempts, but a recent covert expedition to the ruins of Xerxes had uncovered some interesting documentation. Barely anyone could read it, but it was nevertheless causing a lot of excitement among the upper echelons of the military.

Or, to put it simply, Fuhrer Bradley was trying to make himself immortal.

“Can you think of anything worse than an immortal Bradley?” Hughes was saying as they entered his sick room. Roy was in there too, sitting in the office chair with his feet up on the end of the bed. There were papers scattered everywhere.

“No, right now I don’t think that there’s anything worse than an immortal Bradley. Hi Gracia, hi Riza.”

“Hello Roy. Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I’m very hard at work attempting to bring down a conspiracy in the military!” Roy protested, gesturing around at all the papers. “And no. Officially I am taking a leave of absence to care for my sick aunt.”

Madam Christmas, who had entered the room behind them, gave a pathetic cough.

“See, my sick aunt. I’ve got Havoc and Breda running interference and Fuery’s been sending all kinds of mixed message telegrams. The top brass are so concerned with trying to work out whether or not Hughes is dead that they shouldn’t be paying too much attention to my whereabouts.”

“Right.” Riza shook her head in despair as Roy swung his feet up off the bed, leaving the room with her and Madam Christmas to give Gracia and Hughes some time alone together.

She waited until he had poured himself some coffee from the large pot that had been left on the bar and they’d settled down at their usual table before she spoke again. “Have you found out anything new?”

“Bradley nearly declared war on Xing as an excuse to get in there and try to find the Philosopher’s Stone, but even his closest allies decided that would be a bit much and it would be better to try and create their own.” Roy took a long sip of his coffee. “You know, I wouldn’t put it past him to just lead a one-man charge on the place, he’s certainly bonkers enough.”

“Is it even the kind of thing that can be created twice? I mean, I know we should all take myths and legends with a pinch of salt, but at the same time, all the bits and pieces I’ve read about it talk about it as The Philosopher’s Stone, as if there is and can only ever be one.”

“Well, I think the military are certainly testing that theory.” Roy sighed. “The worst thing about it is that I have no idea what kind of unethical experiments they’re getting up to and as an alchemist I could be dragged into them at any time. I mean, my specialism sort of keeps me safe unless they need to burn a bunch of stuff but considering the lengths they seem willing to go to in order to both keep the secret and try to succeed, I don’t want to rule it out.”

Riza inched a little closer to him, chancing to put an arm around his back, and he leaned into her side, head drooping onto her shoulder.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he mumbled to her. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

He gave a little huff of laughter. “That’s my line.”

“Well, maybe it’s time for me to take care of you for a little while. You’ve taken care of me enough in the past.”

“Thanks for following us out the other night, as well. I was so frantic; I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there being calm and wonderful.”

Riza laughed. “I’m sure you would have survived somehow.” She held him a little tighter, and he burrowed in closer.

“It feels like everything’s been turned upside down. Except you.”

He looked up at her then, his dark eyes so sad and tired, and Riza’s heart went out to him.

“We never got to finish our conversation from yesterday,” he said.

“The ‘What happens between us now?’ conversation.”

“Yeah. That one.” Roy sighed. “I know that we’ve just ended up in a potentially really dangerous situation, and I know that this is the worst time ever to be talking about it, and thinking about it, and God forbid thinking about the future. But I also know that you’re the only person I would ever want by my side throughout this whole thing, and if we all end up skewered through with one of Bradley’s not-at-all ceremonial swords tomorrow, then I know that not taking a chance with you would be my only regret.”

“Oh, Roy.” Riza leaned in to kiss him softly. “There��s nothing like people being shot to put things in perspective, is there?”

“Nope.” His hand came up to cup her cheek and he returned the kiss, gently and a little hesitantly, but with definite hope and want behind it. “Perhaps I’m starting to see that sometimes the universe just really wants to screw us over, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Exactly. It’s time to let go of the guilt, Roy. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.” She found herself stroking his hair as he resettled against her shoulder.

“We make quite the pair, don’t you think? Both broken up in our own ways.”

“Perhaps.” Riza kissed the top of his head. “But we’ll stick ourselves back together. I think that’s the one thing that I’ve learned the most since leaving home and coming here. The sticking myself back together part. Because I haven’t been sticking myself back together, not really. I’ve had you and Rebecca and Madam and Hughes and Trisha and Hohenheim and all the rest of the crew helping me stick myself back together. And when you get broken, I’ll help you stick yourself back together as well.”

“Thank you, Riza.”

They stayed like that for a long time, and although her arm was going numb, Riza didn’t mind at all. She was enjoying this easy closeness. They had been so close back when he had first known her – perhaps they had never been this physically close, but they’d been so close as people. A part of her had always known that they would end up like this somehow. Maybe not as romantic partners, but definitely as friends.

It was only when Madam Christmas came out into the bar to take over serving and gave them a knowing look that Riza realised Roy had fallen asleep on her, and she just smiled. They’d had a fraught couple of days of it, what with everything Hughes had found out and the aftermath of that; she wasn’t really surprised that it had taken it out of him so much. She was just glad that he trusted her enough to be this vulnerable around her. Well, she trusted him that much, and she guessed that it went both ways.

Madam Christmas came over with a glass of wine; Riza took it with her free hand. It was her favourite, and she savoured the rich taste.

“On the house.” Madam Christmas winked. “I think we could all use a little pick-me-up right now. It’s been a day. I had Rebecca on the phone earlier, she’s been picking up all kinds of stories at the paper.”

Over the last few months or so, Rebecca had become a great friend to them in giving inside information as to what kinds of propaganda were about to be sent out to the general population. Of course, most of what she wrote herself ended up cut and censored by the government-employed editors by the time it appeared in print, but the unredacted versions were always circulated through the speakeasy to great interest. Riza had been happy to set her up with Havoc.

“Good stories or bad stories?”

“A bit of both. Everything’s being swept under the rug, though. As far as Central City’s citizens are concerned, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened in the park two nights ago.”

“Huh.” Riza felt the uneasiness beginning to creep back in. “I don’t like how that implies that people do know that something out of the ordinary happened in the park two nights ago.” She thought back to Hohenheim and the frighteningly powerful alchemy that he’d performed on Hughes, something unlike anything she’d ever known before, and in turn she found herself thinking back to the day she’d burned her back, and his warning that removing her tattoo completely would be too traumatic.

If that was what he would have had to do, she could well see why. Hughes had been unconscious and on his last breaths; she wouldn’t have wanted anything like that to happen if she was anything other than at death’s door.

“No,” Madam Christmas agreed. “It’s worrying. I’m just hoping that there’s nothing that can tie it all back to this place. Rebecca doesn’t think that there is, and she’s running as much interference as she can. Still, I think keeping a low profile for a couple of weeks will be a good idea.” She glanced at Roy. “Are you comfortable like that?”

“Not really. My shoulder’s gone dead. But I don’t mind.”

“Oh, to be young and in love once more. Don’t deny it, Miss Hawkeye. I’ve known you long enough.”

Riza shook her head, but she didn’t respond. Something good would come of it all. It had to.

“Do you really think that Bradley would risk wiping out the entire population of Amestris in order to gain immortality? I mean, surely the whole point of him gaining immortality is so that he can remain Fuhrer and rule over us forever. It wouldn’t be much fun being immortal if he was literally the only person in the country.”

Two more days had passed, and the rag-tag bunch of investigators had become a full-on research force, although they weren’t any closer to finding out what was going on in Central Command than they had been before. Every new piece of information they uncovered just seemed to be adding to the confusion without clearing anything up.

“I mean, if the legends of Xerxes are anything to go by, then he’d get wiped out too.” Hughes brushed some peanut shells off the table and slammed down another piece of paper. “Take a look at that.”

Riza looked up at the clock; it was almost eleven but none of them showed any signs of stopping. The entire crew of Roy’s friends from Central Command were gathered in the bar, and Madam Christmas had closed up shop temporarily to allow them more space to spread out in the main area rather than everyone being cramped in the office that had been Hughes’s recovery room. Hohenheim had given him the all-clear earlier in the day, but he still hadn’t actually left the speakeasy and gone home. Gracia and Rebecca had joined the party as well, and although Madam Christmas was trying to remain as aloof from it all as she could, more concerned with keeping them all safe in the bar than with the military conspiracies going on, she was offering insights wherever she could.

Hohenheim and Trisha had gone home. Riza hadn’t seen all that much of them since the night Hughes had been shot, and she got the impression that Hohenheim was trying to avoid everyone in the wake of what he’d had to do. Not that anyone who had been there and who knew what had happened held his strangeness against him, quite the opposite in fact; they were all extremely grateful that he’d managed to save Hughes’ life. Still, if he wanted space then they would give it to him.

Riza craned over the others to take a read of the paper that Hughes had put down, but the writing was too small for her to make it out.

“What is it?”

“It attributes the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone to an alchemist named Atticus, who was the King of Xerxes’ personal alchemist. But it also says that Atticus died in whatever catastrophe wiped out the rest of Xerxes, so even if Bradley does succeed in creating the Philosopher’s Stone again, it won’t leave him any better off than when he started.”

“Just another hunk of rock in an empty country waiting for some Xingese merchants to take it home to Tim Marcoh,” Roy mused, and Riza couldn’t stop herself from bursting into laughter.

“Sorry, sorry. I know it’s really not that funny. I think I need more coffee.” She extricated herself from the gaggle around the table and went over to the coffee pot. Considering the vast array of alcohol that was available behind the bar and the fact that the coffee pot had never seen all that much use before the night Hughes had been shot, it was certainly earning its keep now. They’d been refilling it almost constantly all day.

“Hey.”

She looked up to find that Roy had followed her over. They hadn’t really had the chance to spend all that much time together since they’d had their talk. Well, that wasn’t strictly true since they’d spent most of the intervening two days in each other’s pockets whilst trying to work out what on earth was going on in the country, but they’d always been surrounded by other people. This moment leaning on the bar was as close as they had come to having a moment to themselves.

“Hey yourself.” She smiled at the memory of the other night. Roy had been so embarrassed when he’d woken up, and it had been sweet to see him so flustered. Naturally, she’d had to kiss him to stop his litany of apologies for falling asleep on her.

He helped himself to another cup, draining the pot. “How are you holding up?”

“All right, I guess. It’s just so surreal that I’m having trouble believing that it’s all happening and I’m not in some kind of crazy dream. More like a nightmare, actually. How come none of this has ever come to light before? Something this big and all-encompassing, surely someone would have found something out.”

“Someone probably did,” Roy said grimly. “And that someone, and all the someones who came before and after them, probably met the same fate as Hughes would have met if he hadn’t had a handy Hohenheim around.”

“It just boggles the mind. Who would even want to be immortal in the first place? Can you imagine having to live on and watch everyone around you grow old and die?”

“I don’t think psychopaths like Bradley really see it in that way.”

“But what about his wife? Their child?”

Roy shrugged. “I don’t think he sees it that way. If you want something badly enough, then everything else falls by the wayside.” He paused. “I… No. Sorry. That’s not an appropriate train of thought.”

Riza raised an eyebrow. “Well, now you have to tell me.”

“It’s about your father. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

Riza nodded. Although her feelings for her father remained complicated, the time and space between them made it easier to look at things through a more neutral lens. She didn’t think that she was ever going to forgive him for what he had done to her, but at the same time, she was no longer wasting her energy being angry at either him or herself. He simply wasn’t worth the emotional investment she had given him for so long.

“I was thinking that I can see certain similarities between Bradley and your father.” Roy glanced at her, but she nodded for him to continue. “There’s something about them both, that single-mindedness and that disregard for others. Your father’s desire to protect his complex array above all else, his willingness to completely destroy your life in order to achieve his own ends… I can see that same drive in Bradley, and I dread to think what would have happened to you if Hawkeye’s goal had been immortality instead of anything else.”

Riza shuddered. “Yes. When you put it like that, I can see why Mrs Bradley and Selim wouldn’t cross his mind at all. I don’t even want to think about my father being immortal. He did enough damage in the fifty-three years he had.”

Roy reached across and took her hand. He didn’t apologise; perhaps he knew better than that now. After so many years of carrying guilt around, Riza had hoped she’d made it clear that he didn’t have to anymore.

“At least it’s over now.”

Riza nodded. “Yes. It’s over now. And in the end, I don’t think my life has been completely destroyed. I mean, it might be if Bradley does something drastic, but I can’t lay that one at my father’s door. I think that I’ve still found something good in spite of him and his disregard for everything.”

Roy smiled, and Riza could see the colour coming up in his cheeks. It was sweet to see it; the persona he wore within the military and when he was around the rest of the customers in the bar was always confident and self-assured, an easy-going ladies’ man, but Riza had known him long enough to know that the real Roy was just as flustered around her as she had been about him when she had first realised that she liked him as far more than a friend.

They were settling now, having put the cards on the table the other night, and Riza knew that, if the circumstances in the outside world had been easier, they would have been moving ahead with the relationship without any concerns. But the circumstances were what they were, and with danger lurking in every corner, it felt premature to be making any kind of long-term plans beyond the fact that they wanted to be together right now in case they never got the chance in the future.

Roy’s fingertips brushed her face, touching the frown line between her brows.

“It’ll be all right.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Somehow, it’ll be all right.”

It wasn’t the firmest or most confident of statements, but it gave Riza some hope, and she smiled, knocking her coffee mug against his in a toast before they went back to join the others. Breda and Fuery were pouring over a book so old it was practically falling apart, and Riza wondered if it was stock from the shop upstairs.

“Can you make out this transmutation circle?” Fuery thrust the book at him. “Armstrong doesn’t recognise it, but he thinks it’s a forbidden one.”

Roy grabbed the book and turned it this way and that, before his eyes widened.

“I think that’s for human transmutation.”

“Ah.” Breda and Fuery exchanged a worried look. Even the layman most ignorant of all things alchemic knew that human transmutation was the ultimate taboo, not just in Amestris but in general.

“So, once we get our hands on someone who can read Ancient Xerxian, that one could prove to be a game changer,” Breda muttered. He shoved it on the ‘keep’ pile of documents, and Riza went to sit beside him and take a look at what they had so far.

She had only just settled down when she jumped out of her skin as a pounding against the door began. It was the back door that led out into the alley with the garbage, the door that Madam Christmas brought all the booze in through; the door that would serve as their emergency exit if the speakeasy ever got raided.

No one used that door on a regular basis, and Riza felt her blood going cold. She looked over at Madam Christmas, who, although as guarded as ever, looked genuinely concerned. She gave Riza a nod and reached under the bar, grabbing the rifle that was always kept there in case of problems and tossing it to her, and the two of them made their way through the bar towards the door. Roy followed them, pulling on his gloves and getting ready to strike. The pounding was not letting up, a steady and frantic hammering, and as tense as the noise was making her, Riza thought that the fact it wasn’t being punctuated with ‘open up in the name of the law’ and threats of the door being blown in meant that they weren’t being raided.

“Please!” The voice was muffled through the thick wood and obscured by the constant pounding, but Riza could recognise it in an instant, and ice ran through her veins afresh. “Please let me in! Please!”

Madam Christmas unbolted the door and threw it open, catching Trisha as she fell in through the doorway.

“Trisha? What’s going on?” Riza rushed to help her back on her feet.

“They’ve got Hohenheim!”

#FMA:Brotherhood #FMA Fanfiction #Royai #Riza Hawkeye #Roy Mustang #Fic: Forged Through Fire

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clearancecreedwatersurvival · 5 years ago

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My honest assessment of every version of MDZS now that I have consumed at least part of all of them, best and worst aspects of each.

The Untamed/CQL, the first version I encountered:

The best part of this show is literally every single moment that wwx and lwj are onscreen together. Every time they gaze into each other’s eyes I am reminded that love is in fact real. The last 20 episodes are just Wangxian on main and I love every moment of the Cloud Recesses part of the flashback. I would absolutely die for Wang Yibo and his absolutely stellar micro expressions.

I love this gem of a show. However, I can also acknowledge it is occasionally prone to corniness and the effects budget was I’m assuming quite low and thus some visual elements are deeply amusing. It’s part of the charm though and not that big a deal. Also it did have to have some aspects of the original story heavily censored, which is sad. But like, tbh, the production team still made it an explicit romance and it doesn’t Feel censored at all. Honestly the romance is that good. Episodes 42-46 in particular are just 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

Also full honesty I fast forwarded through quite a few villain scenes during the flashback cause they were kind of dragging and I wanted to get back to my boys and then I kept being like ‘who the heck is this’ when the villain stuff I fast forwarded turned out to be like actuallly important later.

The original version from the pen of MXTX herself, the book in fantranslation which I read immediately after finishing CQL:

Wow. Wow. The jump from watching the end of CQL and their wistful parting and stuff and then opening the book and seeing there’s a chapter titled wangxian and obviously reading that one first before going back to the beginning and finding out that instead of parting wistfully at the end they fuck off the side of the road and then elope. Amazing. Incredible. The 20 post canon fluffy (and kinky wow very kinky did not expect that but really quite pleased) one shots. Absolutely incredible thank you MA’AM.

The one downside: Please for the love of god why do so many of these anal sex scenes have to feature a lack of lubrication and proper preparation like I can be down with the noncon kink stuff but Dear God please include some lube and a smidge of fingering in there somewhere.

The manhua, of which I only read the most recent 30 or so chapters as of a couple months ago:

GREAT from what I read so far including the fact that it included an uncensored kiss from the book! Didn’t include Phoenix Mountain but did include LWJ getting drunk and tying WWX up with his forehead ribbon, bless up.

The only downside as far as I can tell is that it’s not finished.

The donghua, which I started a month ago and only watched two episodes but then started again today and watched basically the whole thing.

This opinion may be unpopular but this is the best adaptation by far, objectively. Being adapated in animation allows the fights and the magic to be just Incredible. It’s so well paced, better than Untamed, and manages to be quite close to the book while still cutting out and changing a few things. Actually made me cry about the destruction of Lotus Pier and made me sad about Yu ZiYuan.

And the clincher, Wei Wuxian is at his Most Badass. I cannot overemphasize how fucking hyped I was when he appeared amidst a flock of crows on top of a roof to kick Wen Chao’s ass. The fight scenes where wwx and lwj are working together are sooooooooo goooooooooood.

The downsides are yes that it does censor and skim over some of the wangxian content. But here’s the thing. They’re still 100% in love and some lines that I definitely didn’t expect to make it through censorship from the book are included so here’s hoping for some good shit in season 3.

Oh yeah that’s the other downside. It’s not finished, the final season isn’t scheduled till 2021 (but also corona so like who knows what that’s gonna do to production). S2 ends at the beginning of Yi City.

And last but Certainly not least, the audio drama:

Which I have tragically only experienced the clips of that are on YouTube cause I tried to download the fansubs and couldn’t get them to work on my old ass Mac idk what I did wrong rip.

But the parts that are on YouTube. Oh man. Oh man. The Guanyin temple confession scene? Jesus Christ I swear to god I have watched the clips of it on youtube at least ten times I Am Full Of Emotions Dear Universe Please Let Me Have The Rest Of The Audio Drama It’s All I Want. One day I shall prevail over my technological impasse and being that well fed with ship content I shall assume my final form, one of infinite power, fueled only by sheer fannish glee

5 stars

#mdzs #mo dao su zhi #the untamed #wangxian #gdc #CQL #caitie speaks

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multimetaverse · 5 years ago

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DOAFP 1x09 Review

State of the Union was a great ep and Doafp continues to be unlike anything else on TV. Let’s dig in!

Very nice to see Camila trying to help Bobby, and I still can’t believe Fairy Gaymothers was said on Disney. She did try to help though in the end Danielle talking about Cami’s hesitance to come out to her parents as being part of Cami’s process was what did the trick for Bobby. It’s amazing that we get to see adult lgbtq characters interacting with and helping a young gay kid; really never thought I’d see this on Disney

Cami straight up says that she thinks Bobby likes Liam and that the fight was caused by misplaced passion; we’re well into textual territory. It’s interesting that they took the time to spell it out for the audience this ep. If Bobby ends up coming out to Liam or Sam or whoever by using the word gay rather than talking about his feelings for Liam then that would explain the writers having Cami spelling it out this ep but we’ll see soon enough

Glad that Bobby did the right thing and broke up with Monyca, she’s a sweet girl and by the end of the ep seems to get that Bobby likes Liam and not her. Seems like the mention of kissing in a closet at the new party is what finally tipped Bobby over which isn’t surprising given Bobby’s reaction to their first kiss

I’ll give the show credit for not having Bobby kiss Monyca again and for keeping their first kiss off screen. Realistically they’re going to have a very hard time getting Bobby kissing a boy on screen so limiting what they’ve shown when Bobby was with a girl will prove to be very wise should the show have further seasons. I don’t know how familiar the Doafp writers are with Andi Mack but they seem to be learning from its mistakes whether that’s deliberate or not. Cyrus’ story line was horribly censored and unequal when compared to all the straight characters but also compared to with what Cyrus was allowed to do when he was dating Iris, including kissing her twice

From a photo one of the writers, LaDarian Smith, posted ep 7 was already written by the end of May 2019 which suggests that all of the eps were at least in draft form before production started in summer 2019. It explains the coherence of the eps so far which seem to be well planned out. For Andi Mack S1 they only got final permission to have Cyrus come out just a few days before filming the lookback in 1x12 which shows in the writing since there wasn’t much set up for Cyrus’ crush on Jonah and until the lookback it really wasn’t anything that couldn’t be explained away by Cyrus just admiring Jonah. It’s clear that Doafp had permission either from the start or from very early on in the writing to go full steam ahead with Bobby’s story line which gives it a great sense of momentum

We once again get Gabi seemingly brushing off Cami’s concerns about her parents and implying that she should just come out to them already and we also saw that Danielle wants Cami to tell her parents about them. Cami would know her parents best and presumably her fears that they’re homophobic aren’t unfounded but Gabi and Danielle seem to think that nothing bad would happen if Cami’s parents found out. Certainly a story line where Cami’s parents are somewhat homophobic could lead to some very interesting things especially if it happens around when Bobby eventually comes out to Gabi. But if they aren’t allowed to tackle it or can’t pull it off then having Cami realize that her fears were unfounded is a good way to go. There’s no real precedent for homophobia being tackled on Disney; Andi Mack vaguely alluded to it and it did tremendous damage to the Tyrus story line because it was poorly written and not something that the show could ever have pulled off with the censorship they were under. I don’t think the Doafp writers are so stupid to introduce such a serious topic without planning it out but I hope they tread carefully

I would not have thought that it was Spring Break already, it was clear that the season started with the school year already in session but I’m surprised that we are this far along. If they do get a S2 then they’ll have little choice but to skip ahead to Elena’s 7th grade year and Bobby’s 9th grade year

Lot’s of great jokes this ep, Bobby thinking RuPaul’s Drag Race is a car racing show was my favourite with Palo Alto first base being a close second

I really liked the transitions this ep

Ah yes Escape (The Piña Colada Song), the best song ever written about a married couple trying to cheat on each other. I like these little glimpses of Robert’s personality that we get and I love the focus on Gabi and Elena’s relationship

Sam was barely in the ep, certainly the least we’ve seen a main character. This is common to shows like GMW and Andi Mack where main cast members have to be in pretty much every ep even when there’s no real plot for them

Elena finally apologizes to Sasha and we get the full version of the mall poem which is realistically awful

We see just how integrated Sam has become into the kids lives which is why Gabi was holding off on telling them the truth but also is exactly the reason why she needed to tell them the truth

Looking Ahead:

I’m not worried about Sabi longterm but if they’re having a clean break then why is Sam over at their house giving Bobby advice next ep? It’s a messy situation but if he and Gabi aren’t going to be in a relationship then there does need to be a discussion on what if any role he’ll still have in Bobby and Elena’s lives. I do wonder what the ultimate endgame is for Sabi. Weddings make for good series finales but unless there’s a major time skip I can’t see the show going on long enough to have that be a plausible ending for them. Maybe as the show draws to a close they move in with each other or get engaged?

We’ll see if the Elena, Sasha, and Jessica friendship can be repaired. I remember parties where only some people in a class or group were invited though those didn’t happen until I was in High School

We got Sam talking to Bobby earlier in the season and his advice made Bobby realize that he shouldn’t have pranked Liam. As nice as it would be to see Bobby come out to Sam I’m not sure that’s a good choice for the show as that would leave Sam keeping a secret from Gabi about her own son

I do think Bobby comes out to Liam in some fashion and that Bobby will be canonly gay after the finale which is exciting especially as his story line came out of nowhere

I remain skeptical that Cartero is mutual though Brandon Severs has still been hyping the ship up. If he’s telling the truth then we’re just days away from Disney’s first bisexual character which would be very exciting. If he’s not then he’ll have a lot to answer for. Either way he’s either spoiling the show or stringing people along and neither should be happening and I hope that someone gets him to cut back on his twitter messiness. Charlie Bushnell is now on twitter and he’s been much more circumspect and professional not getting too much into Cartero and focusing on tweets about Bobby’s sexuality and the show itself as well as the petitions and campaigns to save the show

On that note, I fear that the show is likely over for good after this Friday. It sucks that the diversity and inclusivity that makes the show so amazing is also why it’s in danger of not being renewed. The cast was due to have a Q&A at the Paley Centre in May before the coronavirus intervened which may be a hopeful sign as it would be pretty pointless to hype up a cancelled show. A part of me hopes that with Bobby being officially gay next after the finale that Disney + may be wary of outright cancelling it especially after the Love Victor debacle but I don’t have much faith in Disney. The series is co-produced by CBS studios and was originally envisioned as being a CW show which explains why it doesn’t feel like a Disney show but how comfortable Disney would be with all the boundary pushing the show has done and would continue to do in future seasons is an open question. Regardless, I’m excited for the finale and hope that it does justice for the truly wonderful season the show has had

#diary of a future president #doafp #Bobby Cañero-Reed #Elena Cañero-Reed #Gabi Cañero-Reed #Sam Faber #Camila #Danielle #doafp reviews

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breadknight-likes-things · 4 years ago

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Bread’s Skate (?!) Journal 09/06/20: The Other Ones: A Look Back On The Tony Hawk Imitators Of The Early 2000's....And BMX XXX.

Looking back at Tony Hawk as a series that's pretty solidly in the past can cause someone to easily forget how those games were actually thought of at the time: Hyper popular. As a result of that popularity, it was easy to see a bunch of other games and franchises that wanted a piece of that money, some from Activision themselves, some....very much not. Some of these games were good! Some of these games were so bad that they've become something of a legendary laughing stock in the game landscape as a whole.

As I said, Activision was no stranger to trying to apply the Tony Hawk formula to other sports in an attempt to cash in on the extreme success of their franchise. Sometimes these cash in's actually made for decent, if unoriginal games. Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX was more or less a carbon copy of the Tony Hawk formula, but with BMX Bikes instead of Skateboards, and it actually worked pretty well once you got used to the inherent differences of the two different styles. Other attempts were not quite as fortunate as Matt Hoffman though, and both of them sort of had the same "downhill" problem. Shaun Palmers Pro Snowboarder was an attempt to put the Tony Hawk formula into a snowboarding game, and while that should reasonably work, the linear and all downhill nature of the levels really didn't lend themselves to a fun time.

Following from Shaun Palmer was "Wakeboarding Unleashed featuring Shaun Murray" which is quite a title! It was originally revealed with the far more descriptive name as "Shaun Murray's Pro Wakeboarder" but I have to assume that was changed to...distance the game from Tony Hawk? It's a confusing move to say the least. The game was actually quite decent, more so than you'd assume from something like a wakeboarding game, and you can tell there was some talent behind it, the games issue was that, by design, it was pretty much always on rails. You were literally pulled through the levels behind a speed boat, and even though there was plenty to trick off, it lent a feeling that you were just being guided to the cool set pieces rather than actually doing any exploration of your own, it deserved better. Hell, it at least deserves it's own Wikipedia page, the only mention of it at all is on Shaun Murray's very small Wikipedia entry, an ignoble end for a game that least tried something new.

I had to find a screenshot for Shaun Murray, which I swear is real, and this is the only one I could easily find online. I swear this game happened!

Of course Activision wasn't the only studio trying to capitalize on the extreme sports craze and the Tony Hawk trick heavy style. EA found what I would consider the greatest success with franchises like SSX, and one entry wonders like Freakstyle (which is a seminal game for me as a kid, but one I feel very few people even know exist), a sort of blend of SSX and racing through the lens of Motocross. Hell, eventually EA would make Skate, which outlived Tony Hawk itself for a few years, and I already wrote about earlier this week, an excellent franchise that was nonetheless heavily inspired by THPS.

Now, there are far more imitators and hanger on's, some good (Splashdown, while closer to Wave Race, definitely stole some of it's vibes from THPS). Some incredibly bad (Gravity Games: Vert, Street, Dirt, an abysmally bad Tony Hawk ripoff from the early 2000's immediately springs to mind) and some downright strange (Four words: Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure). But only one company tried so hard and failed so miserably, and that's Acclaim, and BMX XXX.

This is genuinely what some of the worst impulses of the video game industry look like.

Acclaim had found success early on by getting Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX out only one year after Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and it certainly wasn't a terrible game. It felt a little clunkier than what came out of Neversoft at the time, but it was definitely playable. Acclaim also went on to put out Aggressive Inline, which, while it might sound insane to say about an inline skating video game, is genuinely one of the best extreme sports games ever made. So Acclaim had real reason to believe they actually could put something out that would rival Tony Hawk! Then they put out BMX XXX.

BMX XXX is one of the most insipidly stupid things that any company has ever produced, certainly one of the worst video games ever made, and was so bad that Dave Mirra forced Acclaim to take his name off of it before release. You really can boil this game down to two things: Dave Mirra's okay BMX game play, and the horn-dog mindset of a 13 year old boy that just found an issue of Hustler in the woods. It's incredibly embarrassing! Full of hookers, pimps, literal strip club videos, dogs fucking and humor that was shitty and mean spirited even by the standards of 2004. It's astounding that anybody thought this game would sell at all, let alone do the impressive numbers they wanted for it. Even the console manufacturers didn't really seem to want this thing on their consoles, Sony out and out censored the nudity even (which yes, the game featured full polygonal breasts, and they are horrifying to look at today), and though the other two allowed the nudity to slide, they made it pretty clear they thought the game was terrible.

BMX XXX is a punchline today, rightfully, but I think it did so much harm to the idea of a competing extreme sports franchise, that any further attempt to really hone in on an Tony Hawk alike just sort of stopped right there. It actually came out pretty early on, in 2002, long before some of the other games I've mentioned on this list even, but the damage it did was impossible to ignore. Activision kept trying, we still got the occasional excellent SSX game, and we got Skate. Hell, we even got Ubisoft making a couple of tries, first with Shaun White doing a snowboarding and Skateboarding game, then with Steep. The concept wasn't killed entirely, a favorite of mine, Amped 3 for Xbox 360, even came out just a few years later, but it felt like the spirit was gone, and it never really came back. Thankfully, these days, we have more independent developers putting out their own vision of what an extreme sports game can be. I hope this new generation of developers can really get us back to the glory days of the extreme sports game, and even if they don't end up making it too far, at least they're going to try.

And things might get a little weird.

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sashaynwhistleluckygurrl · 5 years ago

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The Most Powerful Women Are Always The Ones You Don’t See Coming

The most powerful women aren’t always the ones who seem overtly bold or assertive, though they certainly can be. They aren’t always the women stepping on toes to get what they want (though getting what they want is part of the plan). They aren’t always the ones that are the loudest – though raising their voices does become necessary so they can be heard.

The most powerful women are always the ones you don’t see coming.

The ones that build empires while others sleep. The ones who plan their comeback meticulously and quietly, behind the scenes. The ones who appear to be lambs, but emerge as the lions. These women are always underestimated, but they’re really the ones who have been in control all along – because they have self-control. Their ability to self-validate does not depend on the approval of others.

These women may be browbeaten, bullied, shamed, criticized, disempowered in many ways, by many different people – but one thing they all have in common is their ability to rise again from the ashes of their adversity.

Truly powerful women don’t wait around for people to give them permission to resurrect themselves. Crucify them or burn them at the stake and they will do what comes naturally – they will be reborn, each and every time.

They have an inner guidance brimming from their eyes, an inner fire in their bones and an unshakeable faith that can seem startling to those who do depend on external institutions and systems to get ahead.

They don’t have to engage in sneaky maneuvers or covert tactics to one-up anyone. They allow karma to unfold without batting an eye, all while refocusing on their own lives and progress. They know their only competition is their past self; they know that their aspirations and authenticity will pave a path for them that is unable to be replicated by con artists or copycats.

These women are original in their own right. They cannot be bought, sold or recreated. They have ownership over every facet of their existence. They possess a strong sense of self-mastery, an appreciation and acceptance of what makes them different and unique. While others are busy censoring themselves and catering to others, powerful women are not afraid to walk alone if it means staying true to who they really are.

While others believe they can tap into achievement by following the rules to the tee, these women know they are at their bravest when they listen to their own gut instincts rather than the dark voices of society. Their intuition and talent allows them to transcend whatever limitations others impose on themselves with terrifying ease. Since the only authority they listen to is their own inner authority, they are able to surpass man-made barriers.

Their success comes as a surprise to anyone who has ever underestimated them. But people forget: the ones who are forged by fire will always be able to recreate it to ignite their triumph.

When toxic people try to latch on and feed on these women, they will always get burned in the process. Powerful women are the harbingers of truth, of change. They naturally expose the darkness in others by standing firmly in their own light.

The ones who are birthed by chaos are always the bearers of revolution.

Their victories stand alone, on their own terms, because they were created by the magic of these women – their blood, their sweat, their tears, their resilience.

Feel free to underestimate these powerful women. It will cause them to rise higher than you could have ever dreamed.

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dcarevu · 6 years ago

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Batman TAS: Robin’s Reckoning (Part 2)

“There’s roaches in here! Roaches!”

Episode: 33 Robin: Yes Writer: Randy Rogel Director: Dick Sebast Animator: Dong Yang Airdate: February 14, 1993 Grade: C

You just can’t do this to me, episode, you can’t do this to me. Give me a great episode like part 1, and then take that, and throw it. Not, like, out the window or anything, but just a couple feet. Enough to damage it a little. Robin’s Reckoning went from an absolute classic, to just okay, all things considered. This story and this show have so much more potential than that, and I partially blame some episodes like this on the massively long library of Batman TAS season one. The crew must have been stretched to their absolute limit, and if less episodes were required by Fox, then some of the lesser ideas likely would have been thrown out. And also there’d be more time to refine episodes like Robin’s Reckoning.

I think this episode faces two main problems. The first one being the animation. The stuff at the very end during the climax was okay, when Robin snatched up Zucco in his fists and dragged him across the dock while on a motorcycle.

Other than that, I would have assumed that this was Akom’s work. Like, their lesser-tier crew. It was pretty shitty going from Spectrum to this, and Char and I both noticed the immediate down-grade. The recap of part 1 at the beginning makes it worse because it’s showing us footage of it as if to say, “Remember this? Well, here’s what Dong Yang crafted for this one…”

The studio usually does on-par work, though, and the episode list for this season was long. I forgive them. One bad-looking one out of the bunch isn’t the end of the world, even though we rarely facer problems like this today. I’m not sure which scene was rendered worse, though. The one where Dick Grayson is hunting down Zucco as a child, or the one where Zucco is freaking out about Batman being in the damn ceiling. Each’s most compelling argument or being the worst shot is Dick Grayson falling into the river, and Tony Zucco’s awful face. I caught on that he’s older now, and all of the stress of avoiding Batman for so long has aged him further. Yeah, that’s not how you draw that. He kinda reminds me of a melting plastic-figurine.

When Dick falls into the river, it looks sooo bad (even the story-boarding seems lousy), but we get a nice-looking shot of Batman’s old costume, which was hard to spot before. I really like the design, minus the gloves. I think Bruce Time liked the design too…

The episode’s second problem was that the emotional impact of the first half was not present. Yeah, we get a nice scene of Bruce and Dick at the beginning when they are fencing (I hope that’s the correct vocabulary), but then it’s kinda just Dick on his own, dressed unrecognizably, talking to people we don’t know, and walking around the city in silence. The moment where Batman showed Robin the Batcave could count, but it seemed to go by so quickly without much of a response from Dick. Shockingly, though, I think that Dick Grayson rescued a prostitute at one point. Char and I both realized that immediately. So I hope we’re on the mark, because if she’s not a prostitute I’m going to feel really stupid. Fox censors so many things, but not that? Huh. Interesting algorithm you guys got there. Anyway, even as the episode progresses and we see Robin and Batman together, it’s not any better except for Batman’s final speech. “It wasn’t that, Robin. It wasn’t that at all. Zucco’s taken so much. Caused you so much pain. I couldn’t stand the thought that he might take you too.” Isn’t that absolutely beautiful? It’s enough to get you teary-eyed, honestly. This whole time we totally believe that Batman is just trying to parent an adult-aged Robin, but no. He was afraid for his adopted son. And that’s what Robin is. Even if they both may not act like it. The other emotional bits went by way too fast. Robin went from zero to one hundred way too quickly. So when he starts leering and sneering at Zucco, it’s not believable. “Okay, Loren Lester, act super angsty and evil! Ready?” And then he gave that performance. “So was that bad enough to be worth fixing? We are running behind. I think we should just use it.” And just as quickly as Robin’s voice changes, he comes back down that fast. Robin is furious. They’ve found the guy who murdered his parents. And Batman won’t even let Robin at him. He finally has the guy, hanging him over a dock, where at least a handicap is waiting, if not a full-on death. Then all of a sudden, “Batman, I… I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Getting to this point eventually would have been good. I just needed another minute or two in length to make it work in my head. Robin’s temper and possible slight-resentment to Batman are basically brought up for the first time in this episode, by the way. And as a lot of us know, this will be a plot-point that will grow the more we watch. I’ve gotta say, after watching Christmas With the Joker, I bet a lot of people didn’t expect Robin to have this side to him. Did you? Oh. You say you did? Okay. Is it fun being a liar?

That’s Dick.

Recently I talked about Robin’s first appearance in the Batman Adventures comic book, and I like the side of Robin that it and Robin’s Reckoning present. Robin is so human in this series. For the most part, he’s not as exaggerated as Batman. He has a dark-side and a bit of a temper, but he also has moments where he lives as a fun-lovin', ordinary, college-student. We’ve seen him goofy, we’ve seen him afraid, we’ve seen him serious, and we’ve seen him furious. And yet, we don’t really know what he does for fun. What he watches on TV (aside from It’s a Wonderful Life), what his secret-obsession is. We instead know about how his emotions function. We learn about what kinds of decisions he might make, or how he may react. It’s knowing a character beyond the surface-level, and that’s how you know your character is strong. Robin may have been a challenge to do right for the crew, but the DCAU-originals decided to work with what they had based on tradition, and mix in some of their own influence only to further improve. Loren Lester’s voice is also iconic as Dick. Although all of this makes me wonder why some people think that Teen Titans is in the DCAU. They’re both Dick Grayson, but they are certainly not the same universe’s Dick Grayson. It’s clear as day to me. While I haven’t seen Teen Titans that much, Loren Lester’s Robin is iconic to me. As iconic as Kevin Conroy is to Batman. Well, almost.

A couple more episodes, and we will be closing the split timeline! A bit ago I got behind on episodes, so I “split the timeline” and covered current episodes along with episodes I was behind on. But after, these next few, all of the posts will be coming out complete in-order again. Hallelujah.

Char’s grade: C Next time: The Laughing Fish

Full episode list here!

#Batman #dcau #dc animated universe #batman tas #batman the animated series #timmverse #bruce timm #robin's reckoning #robin #tony zucco #dick grayson #btas

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pokefan531 · 6 years ago

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Miraculous Ladybug Production Analysis

Today, I will be reviewing Miraculous Ladybug on the production quality. This goes on video quality and knowing its original format. We will be going over the base resolution, framerate, audio, and others. I've done some test by analyzing different sources of the show, and to see the techneical side.

Miraculous Ladybug credit goes to Zagtoon. Images are used for demonstration.

Video Resolution

On TV stations and on digital distribution, it is common to air or stream it on 1080p. In fact, most anime are digitally drawn on lower resolution than 1080p. For Miraculous Ladybug, this is the case.

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p, across all episodes and specials as of current. By taking some frames from Netflix stream, it is clearly upscaled from 720p. I did some check by looking at individual screenshots of the show and look at it on Photoshop. Looking at the characters hairs and some edges, you can tell that the source is upscaled.

It is common for a 3D animated TV show to render at lower resolution than 1080p, aside from the texts and the credits. The credits are clearly 1080p while the background is just upscaled to 720p. The text are clearly sharp and doesn't have anti-aliasing. The Ladybug icon on the left is also 1080p. On the opening, only the text are rendered at 1080p, but it's not as sharp as the credits. Still, it doesn't have jagged edges on the texts. Again, it is mixed with 720p background. Also, the logo scene seems to fit well with debicubic filter. I've tested upscaling filters with Avisynth on the frames to see what was the best. It seems like the studio actually use Bicubic scaling with Blur=1, and Ringing=3 setting. It is the default filter setting on Avisynth's Bicubic filter. I've check some masking between original frame and debicubic and use bicubic again, there was no difference aside from blurring out small compression artifacts caused by streaming.

So clearly, the show is upscaled from 720p with Bicubic filtering, with texts being full HD, especially seeing the credits.

(Although, the scene where Plagg gets sucked in on Stormy Weather, the vertical resolution looks like it's half. We know the show is not interlaced, but what happened?)

(Look at the edges of the objects when watching 1080p quality. It is certainly upscaled. Images from Robostus episode and The Bubbler)

Tonemapping

Like most 3D television shows, all scenes are tonemapped to sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. No HDR or wide color gamut is natively supported. Since it is tonemapped to SDR displays, at certain points, Ladybug's outfits seems to have slight red value cut. It is seen when the red shades are over 255 red value, that it can't go brighter and either shows red banding, or red highlight details may be lost. However, the problem is minor, since other color values are present to shade over it.

Overall, the show looks colorful and looks nice for any displays.

(The suit seems to lost some the bump mapping due to compressed tonemapping? Images from Stormy Weather.)

Framerate

By looking at available sources, it seems like the show is rendered at 24fps. By watching Princess Fragrance and The Mime from official Miraculous Ladybug Youtube channel, I can hear the speed difference from most sources that plays at 25fps. It supposed to sound like the 24fps version. Background music tracks and the theme song are available. They seem to match the episodes' audio speed by reconizing the tempo. A lot of sources are seen as 25fps, with the audio sped up without altering the pitch. Technecally speaking, it would be 23.976fps instead of 24fps, but still is.

Framerate Conversion list

As said above, a lit of sources found are playing the episodes at 25fps with sped up audio, but no audio pitch has changed. It's common for PAL conversion to speed up 24fps content to match their 50hz displays (aside from portable displays and computer monitors show natively 60hz). However, in recent years, they use better technology to speed up the audio without altering the pitch, so that it stays true to the pitch of the original format. That way, no one can tell the difference.

Since PAL regions use the format above, I'll list the countries and channels that airs in 60hz or NTSC regions.

South Korea:

The show is aired in the original format. It's 24fps on all channels that airs the show.

Japan:

The show airs in the original format.

Brazil:

The show airs in the original format.

Canada:

Quebec airs the french version, but airs it at 24fps. Family Channel airs it the same way too.

United States:

On Nickelodeon, they would air it at 25fps. Even though most content in the country would air at 24fps, 30fps, or 60fps, Nickelodeon decides to air their shows at 25fps to make more room for commericals to earn more revenue. That also means they cut the credit sequences for the same reason too, with the credits displayed on last 30-seconds of each episode. The audio pitch is unaltered, however. Even their streaming services airs the show at 25fps. Few of their early episodes has wrong conversion on their website, by converting from 25fps to 24fps, albert, with interlaceing, for some weird reason. They look terrible when Nickelodeon had them on their website back in 2015. It is unknown if KidsClick airs it in the original format since I never watch the show from their platform.

Latin America:

This is the most weird conversion of them all. While the show airs at 24fps, Disney Channel LA did the inverse of PAL conversion. THAT MEANS the audio pitch is LOWER than most sources! When I saw their commericals or clips of the recordings taken from their channel, I can hear the audio pitch being altered, but not the typical PAL way. It is very uncommon for NTSC standards to do this sort of thing. I even went to Costa Rica to hear how the show plays over there. I hear the audio pitch being lower as of last year. This is very rare for any channels over there to do this. I don't know what source Disney Channel LA got for the episodes, but it seems like they got 25fps ones and decides to think it is converted already for PAL regions. Very weird. However, streaming services outside the channel never had this issue. It is unknown if PAL countries like Argentina did this too. Their Disney Channel is basically the same, except it's their timeline and broadcasts in PAL format, 50hz.

It is possible that each country can air the show in their own local channel. However, you would have to be in the spanish community to know if they're playing the show correctly.

Netflix:

As far as I know, they have the episodes at 25fps everywhere. iTunes:

Not sure if they still have it, but I remember them having 25fps playback.

Youtube:

Only Princess Fragrance and The Mime are available. It is in the original format, and so as the clips on their Youtube channel.

Overall, it is commonly seen as 25fps in most platforms. I'm not sure if they preserve 25fps on Shouts Factory's DVDs R1.

Blu-Rays

There hasn't been a Blu-Ray release for the series. It's not uncommon for the series to be released on Blu-Ray. Star Wars The Clones Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Samuari Jack, and Batman Animated series has got blu-ray releases at 1080p. DVDs are never HD, and are usually compresses poorly due to using MPEG2 codec from 1990s. You can only find the HD versions on digital platforms. I only know iTunes would do digital release of their episodes. You may have to rip the episodes yourself from other digital platforms. I know not many TV series here have blu-ray releases, but majority of the medias are movies and anime. In Japan, they have very high sale rates on Blu-Ray releases. Not only you get to watch the episodes without internet, but you have very high quality studio like video at the highest resolution with barely video compression artifacts.

Audio

It is common to have stereo audio on TV shows. However, Netflix seems to have 5.1 Surround Sound audio for the show. Usually, the voices are at the front speakers, while you hear the rest of the sound everywhere, with panning from one or multiple speakers to the next. Nickelodeon has aired the show in surrounded sound format before on their HD channels.

Censorship

Miraculous Ladybug is a family friendly TV series, and nothing weird or inappropiate is in it. It was intentionally made for worldwide audience. However, very few television networks made their censorships to any shows. Miraculous Ladybug never got cuts or alterations for anything, but rather small decisions.

On Disney Channel UK, they did a simple motion blur on some scenes to avoid or reduce fast motion lights to reduce risks of seizures. Most notably, the transformation scenes, catching the Akumas, flying butterflies restoring damaged properties, and fast fight scenes that takes big part of the screen. On Frame-by-Frame, the image either have the next frame blended on the current frame, previous frame blended on the current, or both.

Reducing seizures by motion blur may help, but the show doesn't have any strobe or seizure induring scenes. Most broadcasts would leave the show alone. Even Japan leaves the video untouched, despite having paka-paka laws in place on TV broadcasts for airing Electric Soldier Porygon in December 1997. All TV shows have the "Watch in bright lit room" notice on the beginning of the episode in Japan.

Saudi Arabia has skipped Copycat for some reason.

(The bottom one is from Disney Channel UK. All episodes are censored this way to reduce fast bright objects.)

Conclusion

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p 24fps, with sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. The framerate, whether you're watching 24fps or 25fps, you wouldn't hear the audio pitch being different on the latter, so it's fine. The audio is maxed to 5.1 Surround Sound. Censorship goes from very small to none.

The overall TV show's quality seems pretty good for a TV series. Netflix has all the episodes for two seasons. Even if watching upscaled content, it still looks pretty fine. The audio and sound editing seems pretty great. The animation is smooth overall. The second season is the best season so far. It can be possible that later on, the series may start doing native 1080p rendering. It could be due to the fact that ray tracing on the studio's budget would take too long to render 1080p. Hopefully, native 1080p may soon be used for the future.

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #1080p #720p #3D #tv series #Analysis #Technechical #censorship #upscaling

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chuckling-chemist · 6 years ago

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A Study In Novels

((The second piece I wrote for the @fantrollszine! This one a little more comedic than the other piece I wrote. And don’t forget, if you like it consider buying me a coffee or checking out my AO3 -- where both of these short stories will be going eventually))

Dontoc wasn’t one for reading romance novels.

Maybe it just wasn’t for him. Dontoc much preferred subversive fantasy steeped in lore and original wiggler’s tales from before the Empire found and censored them. Books that praised the Empire or grounded themselves too close to reality weren’t likely to catch his eye. That’s not to say a romance novel couldn’t be subversive or fantastical -- Dontoc’s sure they existed somewhere -- but his experience in the genre was limited to whatever books he acquired secondhand from either his moirail or his hivemate. Which, to be fair, Dontoc held as little interest in books describing in excruciating detail the ins and outs of traditional interstellar subjuggalator pailing that his moirail found morbidly interesting as he did the godawful romance self-published stories his hivemate regularly printed off from some blog and left sitting around on tables when she got stuck on something in the lab.

Then again this current one he attempted to slog through, recommended by his matesprit to give him a good example of the genre, wasn’t any better. It felt less like a novel and more like a subpar lecture on the importance of keeping quadrants filled and separated, combined with a bizarrely saccharine tone out of place for a novel that critics heralded as “diving into the dark, twisted secrets of forbidden flush love between two castes”. It was no more than yet another creepy realistic-fiction that tried to play off the caste difference as something inherently disturbing.

His so-called matesprit, to give the kindest words to a troll forcing their relationship on life support through thinly veiled threats against his friends, lamented his apparent lack of interest in romance novels indicated a lack of romanticism. Had Dontoc not had sufficient evidence to the contrary, he might have believed her.

I reach across the desk, over to the looming seadweller on the other side and he snatches it out of the air. I flush, face turning impossibly teal under his watchful gaze. How did he know I would try to grab it?

“Okay, that is enough of that for tonight,” he said with a groan.

“Enough of what?”

Even knowing the voice instantly to be the chirpy lilt of his hivemate, Pallia, her sudden entrance into the mainblock still made his heart skip a beat. She plopped down on the seat next to him of the black couch, peering over half-moon glasses to grimace at the book in his hand. She didn’t have to say anything to exude the level of judgement he felt from her.

“You, lover of subjuggalator documentaries, cannot possibly be judging me for reading something bad,” he said lightly.

“Oh come on, Dontoc there’s bad and then there’s this.” She glanced down at the book again. “What’s it even about anyway?”

He shook his head with a sigh, letting the finger holding his spot slip out of the book. “Certainly you could wager a guess.”

“Oh a puzzle?” Pallia shifted around in her seat, turning to face him with crossed legs. She was dressed for ultimate relaxation in a pair of sweats and loose sweatshirt, with her hair pulled up in an unusually well-kept bun thanks to a few well-placed pencils. She contrasted him, tall and fully dressed in a three piece suit with his perpetually unkempt short hair, quite perfectly. Her teal eyes sparkled with mirth from behind the glasses. “Do I get any hints?”

He smirked playfully. “You have not somehow ingested enough bad media to hazard a proper guess?”

“Not for romance.” Pallia crossed her arms and huffed. “God Dontoc, I only have one quadrant. Do I really strike you as the romantic type?”

Did Pallia strike him as the romantic type? Dontoc wasn’t actually sure. With her only having one quadrant, he couldn’t accurately say for sure if such were true, or if he simply never had the chance to see her interact with a quadrant proper. She might not be the same affectionate, teasing troll who went out of her way to make sure he felt included around a quadrant. His doubt might just be his own long-time, latent flush crush on her causing him to project.

After all, he did have a flush crush on her. That much was certain. A sweep or two ago, he might have tried to deny to himself, but by now there was no other way to explain the way being around her made his whole body feel ten pounds lighter and pointlessly giddy at any little thing. His other friendships, even his actual matespritship, failed to elicit similar reactions. The closest was his moirail, Valeba, who always always brought serenity with her presence, but even that wasn’t this bizarre effervescence that floated him away from his anxieties. Not that he’d ever tell Pallia any of this. Managing to get a best friend whom he adored, despite their caste difference, was more than acceptable. To ask anything more was selfish.

“You simply strike me as the type to have read enough bad media, regardless of genre, to take some sort of guess,” he said. “Or have I somehow misread that one and you happen to unironically enjoy ‘Subjuggalating Mentor to Highbloods is Put Under Great Scrutiny after Explaining to Bluebloods the Importance of the Mirthful Messiahs Upon Inquisition. When the Bigoted Seadwelling Upper Staff Wish to Cull Her, She Goes to the Courtblock to Defend Faith In Schoolfeeding, Alongside a Plucky Tealblood Looking for His Big Break’?”

She snorted. “Please. I don’t think a single person unironically enjoys that. How can anything fall face first into every stereotype while acting like it doesn’t? There’s never been a more--” she paused to slap her forehead with an amused groan “--oh of course! The book’s hemoist isn’t it?”

Dontoc grinned. How could he not? “Oh, extremely. The highblood is the dominant one in the relationship, and he is honestly worse than you would expect.”

“Tall, well dressed and…” she tapped her finger on her arm in thought… “indigo? That strength is attractive to a lot of trolls.”

“You are not far off. Think higher.” He gestured upward toward his own twitching fins. “Much higher.”

“Violet? Really?” She looked at the cover again doubtfully. “But this looks like some kind of rich businessman type of story. I thought the violet caste normally keeps to themselves.”

“Oh they do. This book bypassed such a problem by saying he simply moved onto land when he was very young, shortly after his lusus was culled by extreme hemorebels, to get ‘more out of life’. Or perhaps it was not. Honestly, the backstory was brushed aside in favor of having the two stare blankly at each other.”

Pallia raised her eyebrows. “Is the protagonist’s backstory any clearer or is it just as bad?”

Dontoc shrugged helplessly. “If I tell you her backstory, I assure you it will give away her caste immediat--”

“Oh, so she’s a tealblood. Probably ten sweeps old, if they’re playing off twenty sweeps as young somehow. Tiny waif of a troll too, I bet.”

Well. That happened. Dontoc blinked owlishly at her assessment. Every single piece was completely true, down to the size of the tealblood. There’s no way she read the book. He would’ve seen it somewhere. “Um...how...how did…”

“You said if you tell me the caste, it gives it away. Teals and jades are the most rigid in jobs, but jadeblood romance is mostly always two women, while this love interest is male.” It was her turn to smirk, pointy fangs poking out from underneath her lips. “Despite your best efforts, you still gave away way too much.”

“You asked for a hint,” he pointed out.

“You said you weren’t giving it to me.”

He hummed, running a hand through his hair. “I suppose I did. My mistake then. Perhaps we can try this again the next time Careen insists I do some reading.”

Pallia’s amiable expression dropped into a far more worried one. “She insisted? Really? That’sss abssolutely…” she trailed off with a shake of her head. “Ignore me. That’sss not my place.”

Dontoc set the book down on the floor, shifting so he could face Pallia better. She must’ve scooted closer at some point. Or maybe he just hadn’t noticed how close they were? It was only a loveseat after all. “Are you certain? After all dear, I--”

“It’sss fine. Ssserioussssly.” She gave him a reassuring smile. It looked somewhat forced, but it was clear she didn’t want to talk about it. Better to just move on. “So, anything else to guess about the book?”

“Hm? Oh, yes right. Let me just, ah...” He reached toward the empty space in his lap for the book, but Pallia got to him first, stopping him with a soft hand. He looked at her with a puzzled expression, a stark counter to her amused one.

“Dontoc you put the book on the floor,” she said with a chuckle.

He glanced down at the floor, realizing with growing horror he most definitely did put it down on the floor. Heat pricked up his neck, causing his lips to twist into a sheepish grin. He wiggled his hand out of Pallia’s to run through his hair instead. If nothing else, the action helped calm his nerves. “So...so I did. My apologies,” he said finally.

She shrugged. “None needed. Do you even need the thing, or is the book that forgettable?”

“I ah...well, poorly constructed story or no, it is comforting to some degree to hold it. After living in what may as well have been a library alone I suppose it just...it just happened.” He sighed, a mixture of bittersweet and wistful. Memories of his childhood flooded back in waves. The lonesome library ran by a kindly jadeblood. Her impeccable ability to find whatever he should read next. The other kids trying to steal and damage them. His instructor taking his copy of The Grimdark Narrator’s wigglers tales and insisting it was inappropriate for him to read it.

Thank God Pallia was there to keep the focus, or else who knows how long he’d reminisce on the parts of his life he’d rather forget. “So you said it’s a violetblood right? And a tealblood? Not any other mid-caste.”

“Erm...yes.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Though I am not sure why that is important. It is just a caste gap. From what I understand, those are quite common in romance.”

“Oh they are. Totally common. Which is funny, considering it happens anywhere else and people can’t take it.” She pointed down at the book on the floor, the cover of which showed a lone desk covered in papers. “But that’s beside the point. So the teal is probably some personal assistant to him?”

Dontoc nodded slowly. That much was hardly a guess. While in reality tealbloods got well-to-do, white collar jobs, it seems any time a tealblood actually showed up in media, they were subservient to some higher caste. Not the same way the lowbloods were, how many of them were maids or butlers at best, but the paid equivalent of such didn’t feel like much of an improvement to him. “Of course. Did you not know that teals are little more than suck-ups to the Empire? Constantly following around the Empress to compliment her and give her the newest gossip on the common folk. After they round up all the little bad trolls, of course.”

Pallia crossed her arms, smirk playing at the corners of her lips. “Did Careen let you in on that hot tip?”

“Oh no, someone far more reasonable in such a regard. Someone with a good head on their shoulders, you see.” Pallia seemed to sag in disappointment until he added, “It was Pothos.”

“Oh my God!” she squealed. Her whole body convulsed with laughter as she fell back into the couch. “You are not allowed to do that again!”

“...Make you laugh?” he asked cautiously. He didn’t think she was upset, but at the same time her worried look when mentioning Careen earlier had him on edge. “You are ah...you are--”

She heaved herself up and nodded, bun askew and grin plastered on her face. “Oh I’m great. I cannot believe you got me to think about that bumbling idiot. Did Careen tell you about when she thought we’d work as a quadrant?”

Dontoc shook his head: she hadn’t. While Careen was always eager to do nothing but complain about Pallia, and had been downright enthusiastic to tell Dontoc all about when his hivemate supposedly expressed flush interest in Pothos that he didn’t return, she never gave any more details. The whole story felt off in a way he couldn’t fully explain (in fact, it was another one he was willing to brush off as him projecting his crush -- sure, he can’t imagine Pallia wanting to be with a troll who truly thought skull shape indicated intelligence but maybe it was only wishful thinking), but he never told Careen such. It was good to know he had every right to be suspicious.

“How did it go?”

Pallia snorted. “About as bad as you’d expect. He learns I have a hint of an interest in something, and just starts talking over me like he’s suddenly the expert. He knows the chemical formula for table salt. That’s it. Wouldn’t know a stem cell from the stem of a plant.” She paused, eyes suddenly going wide. She wasn’t looking at him, not anymore. Her gaze was pointedly focused on that book. “Wait a second. This is her book right? Does Careen have some kind of thing for violets and teals?”

Dontoc rolled his eyes. “I doubt it. She has an odd hatred for teals. Jades too, to a lesser degree. She will not voice it, but it is present. Besides, if she really wanted you to be paired up with a violetblood to conform to her romance tropes, there are far better options.”

Pallia chuckled. “Yeah, at least if it’s like...us, it subverts that ‘teal employed by violet’ thing.”

Whatever train of thought he had immediately crashed. His face burned, and fins fluttering in embarrassment or not, there was no cooling it down in time to reduce the flush. “Ah….uh…” he swallowed harshly, realizing as he spoke his mouth was suddenly dry as sandpaper, “excuse me dear, what?”

“Oh you know. Technically speaking, you’re my research assistant. Not the other way around.” She paused, closing her eyes with a sigh. If she recognized how flustered he was right now, she wasn’t saying anything. “Then again though, considering the whole Preypal thing...maybe that doesn’t count? But sponsorships don’t count as employment. This might be more complicated than I thought.”

“You’ve thought about this before?”

“Well yeah. I mean…” They locked eyes, and he only just noticed the blush creeping on her own face. “I get bored waiting for the ion spectroscopy to finish. The logistics of how our lives would function within a work of fiction is far from the weirdest thought experiment I’ve had. I think that one started with a conversation I had with Aisral? I dunno.”

“But you have thought at length about the logistics of us...uh…”

“Ssssort of? In the same way I’ve thought about like...I dunno, me and Aisral or something. Purely hypothetical. Don’t worry. I realize you’re with Careen and talking about it’s probably strange to think about dating your hivemate...” Pallia trailed off, letting out a quiet, awkward laugh as she rubbed her neck.

“Oh impossibly so, but continue.”

“But seriously, it’s not the most unlikely thing I’ve heard. More likely than anything in that book, anyway. If that makes any sense. Sssorry for worrying you.”

“Think nothing of it.” Okay. So it’s only that they’d make a better story than whatever dribble Dontoc was reading. That’s probably true. While not the worst novel he’s come across, there weren’t many worse. His fluttering pulse calmed down enough that he actually felt he could breathe again. “If it helps, I would much rather read about us than this couple.”

Pallia smirked. “Even the pailing scenes?”

Dontoc’s face fell. He erased those from his memory, too. “Okay, we’re finished here.”

#fantroll #homestuck #hiveswap #fanfiction #fantrolls #ft #fantrollszine #homestuck zine #my writing #dontoc #pallia

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deanky · 6 years ago

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Total - Writer’s Q&A

Total TV: Do you collaboratively write the scripts together?

Pete: No, typically no.

Andy: We wrote this original script. But typically, no.

Pete: Typically it's been a script from some outside source, or one of us, and then everyone just sort of rewrites it, working together.

Total TV: Do you ever find yourself relying too often on the power bands as an out?

Andy: We have blasted a lot of people this year.

Pete: It's been a banner year for blasting.

Andy: It's always good to have somebody get hurt or killed. [laughs] No.

Pete: That's kind of our pie in the face.

Chip: That's an SAT question, I think.

Do you each of you play sort of a different kind of role in this?

Pete: I'm the daddy.

By virtue of sheer age or other qualities?

Pete: I'm the father of all creative kind of people.

So that episode where all the characters get pregnant and people might think Space Ghost was the father--that was actually you?

Pete: [laughs]

Dave: We all have very different personalities, but I'm not sure if we play different roles.

Andy: We all have different senses of humor.

Do you each identify more with a particular character? Does someone tend to come up with more Zorak lines, say?

Andy: That kind of used to be the case. We used to have a writer on the original shows who really identified with Zorak. He could write really funny evil lines. But I think it's changed quite a bit. We all pretty much have a feel for the characters and have developed them more to the point where they're more diverse.

Chip: I tend to be kind of drier and smaller than, say, Pete. Which sometimes translates as not funny at all. Pete's a lot goofier.

Pete: Andy and I work on Cartoon Planet together, which is a whole different sensibility. And we bring a little of that in.

And Brak even occasionally comes in--is Brak going to be doing any pop-up appearances in the new Coast to Coast episodes?

Andy: A little. Nothing big. Lokar's got a big role in one episode. [in Brak voice] Yeth, that would be a wonnn-derful thing. [in Andy voice] I forgot what I was gonna say.

Are you always the keeper of the Power Book, Andy?

Andy: No. That's what I was gonna say. We try and take turns. But I get frustrated if I'm just sitting there. I don't mind doing the keyboard thing but Dave likes to do it, too.

Pete: I don't like to do it at all.

So you're no good for online chats?

Pete: Not at all.

Andy: I just feel like I have a harder time expressing . . .

Dave: It's like you've said, you have the attention span of a four-year-old.

Andy: I do. And it keeps my mind focused. To have it in my lap makes me think about it. Plus, I express myself better just straight from my head than I do from my heart. [laughs] 'Cause I [Brakishly] lub you all. I don't know. Maybe I'm just making that up.

What about you, Dave? You haven't characterized your sense of humor.

Dave: Usually masturbation jokes. [laughs] That get cut out.

Andy: But we're saving them all.

Chip: For the Christmas show.

Andy: Dave's always working blue.

And he's wearing blue. Actually, one thing I find really charming about both Space Ghost and Cartoon Planet is that, much as I love a good dirty joke, I love the fact this is so subversive without ever crossing those kinds of lines. Which is one reason why it's great to watch with your kids.

Andy: Yeah. It's good that anybody can watch the show. But there are sometimes that we think, man, I wish we could say that.

Like what in particular? What's your favorite blue scene that had to be cut?

Andy: It's not really blue.

Pete: I don't think we want to go on record with that.

Dave: It's hard to make the characters believable people without being able to use a wide array of words.

Andy: We can't use the word crap any more.

Really? You can say that even on CNN, I think.

Chip: We can use it around here. In the room.

Pete: You can't get around the fact that yeah, a lot of people like cartoons, but a lot of those people are children. We just have to be more careful.

Dave: We actually just indulged ourselves about two weeks ago with about two pages of material on the script for Beck that we just knew right off . . . we were just writing it for ourselves.

Andy: And we handed it in too, didn't we?

Pete: Yes we did.

Who do you hand it to? Is there like a network censor?

Chip: Yes. But they're the last ones to see the show.

Pete: By the time it gets to them, we've probably taken everything out.

Dave: We show the scripts to Mike [Lazzo] and Keith [Crofford].

What are you working on right now?

Pete: We haven't named it yet. But it's Erik Estrada.

That should be a great one, cause it's CHiPs! Moltar must be having an orgasm! Oh, I can't say that.

Dave: We cut that scene out. The famous lava scene.

Andy: You came in when we were rewriting the cold opening. We have Moltar writing lyrics to the CHiPs theme and singing it for Erik Estrada.

Can you give me a little preview of that?

Pete: C'mon, Andy.

Andy [picks up ukele and plucks two notes]: No. I don't know them really.

Oh, c'mon.

Andy: OK, here was go. [sings in tuneless, leaden Moltar voice] Poncherello! California Highway Patrolman! Poncherello! He is a really good cop, and that is no lie. Poncherello! He's always scoring the hot babes down at the disco. He sets the dance floor on fire, dancing with them, yeah. [laughs]

Pete: And Erik's getting makeup, preparing.

Andy: And when Moltar sings about him dancing, we found a sound bite where he gets all excited and says, "That's him! That's Poncherello! That's the way he is!"

So when you're fitting a script around an interview, do you start by cutting the interview up? Or does it vary?

Andy: We watched that Erik Estrada interview like all week last week.

Together?

Pete: Yeah. We watched the interview, everybody picked highlights that they liked.

Andy: We've got transcripts of the interviews so the original writer will get most of his lines from the transcript and also look at the videotape. If it's a really good interview, it really helps in the writing process. You can use those questions and responses by the interviewee and just kind of write around it and Space Ghost it up.

Dave: The interview's sort of inspirational because it gives you direction. But in another sense it's very limiting because you're limited by how they inflect it. Something on the page will look completely right, but if they're saying it questioningly, or if they're yelling or whatever. . . .

And that you're stuck with? You can't really tweak that around?

Andy: Yeah. Plus we'll never take their words and make them the negative. We'll never take out of the transcript where the celebrity is saying "yes" and then ask them a question like "are you gay?"

OK. But certainly you do take some of the responses out of context, or recontextualize them.

Well, yeah, we do. [laughs] But not so far out that it's insulting to the guest.

Oh, c'mon! I've seen you guys do that!

Andy: Sometimes we do try to make the guest look stupid.

Dave: I think the temptation, especially in the beginning, was to take out little sound bites and paste them in. But I think we've all kind of learned the lesson that a lot of times that doesn't work as well as it does on the page. A lot of times it's more interesting when it develops as a conversation between these characters.

Pete: Yeah, a lot of things happen in these interviews when you watch the raw interviews.

Andy: It's good to watch the tape for little faces they might make, or different laughs.

Dave: Like Mark Hamill did this laugh [Andy ho-ho-hos] and we kept doing it over and over and it just annoyed Space Ghost.

How far along are you in the process now? How many episodes have you scripted?

Dave: Five are in the can, two will be completed in the next two weeks.

Chip: There's several that are very close, and we're just waiting on animation.

Do you work on several scripts simultaneously?

Dave: We try to write one at a time.

Paul: We currently have three scripts on the table that we're working on.

What about the new episodes you already have in the can? Any previews?

Andy: One who's never spoken before will speak.

Dave: And one will die.

Pete: We don't have a death.

Chip: Sure we do. Sort of.

Pete: Oh, yeah. That is true. One will die.

I don't want too many hints or too many details. 'Cause I'm also a fan.

Pete: We may have a musical.

Andy: May.

Oooh.

[Cartoon Network publicist Paul Seifken sticks his head in the door]

Paul: Uh, Mike asked me to see if the writers could get back to writing.

#space ghost #sgc2c #this one is so fun #definitely 1996 or 1997 #i really wish they kept that scene in untitled in I want moltar singing ponch song

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absolxguardian · 6 years ago

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Master and Apprentice Propechy Analysis

Alright, with Master and Apprentice giving us snippets of Jedi prophecies, it’s time for one of my favorite things, analyzing them with not just the hindsight of over 60 years of events on the characters, but with the knowledge that narrative imperative means that the prophecies cover events in the main story. So let’s go:

“She who will be born to darkness will give birth to darkness.”

I can very confidently say this refers to Leia. She’s Vader’s biological child, and her son will be Kylo Ren. The original prophecy was also in Old Alderaanian, making it even more relevant to Leia. Qui-Gon brings up a possible interpretation of the prophecy having already passed, referring a Malastaran duchess with an evil father and a Dark Jedi daughter. I’m going to say narrative imperative makes it about something the audience already knows about. And something involving the family of the likely Chosen One is going to give the events more weight to the Force, if you want an in-universe explanation.

“When the kyber that is not kyber shines forth, the time of prophecy will be at hand.”

Qui-Gon ends the book believing that the false kholen crystals on his mission indicate that his mission starts the time of prophecy. I don’t really agree with him. To start, there’s nothing about this mission that makes it more prophecy-like than any other mission Qui-Gon went on with Obi-Wan. It’s not their first, and it’s not the one right before TPM. Qui-Gon does have visions that end up being correct, but he didn’t even have them before the mission. And visions aren’t really prophecies.

If you assume the time of prophecy is the time periods covered by the movies (again narrative imperative and the Chosen One prophecy), either TPM or ANH/Rogue One starts the time of prophecy. Qui-Gon’s first vision after seeing the kholen crystals consist of them turning red, like bled crystals. I could see bled kyber crystals not being considered kyber because they’ve been damaged. If that’s the case, then TPM will mark the first time the wider Jedi order encountered Sith lightsabers in a thousand years. And so that’s when “kyber that is not kyber” shines forth. Or if the “time of prophecy” is the OT then the activation of the Death Star would be when kyber that is not kyber shines forth. The laser is powered by kyber crystals, but the modifications and impersonal activation of them could make it so they’re no longer true kyber. I don’t really have a preference for either marker, but I don’t really agree with Qui-Gon.

“When the righteous lose the light, evil once dead shall return.”

Obviously, this could be about the complacency of the Jedi Order leading to the return of the Sith and most likely is, but there’s another more specific reading for this prophecy. And that’s Maul. This would make the Jedi losing the light when they enter the Clone Wars. Now if the prophecy said evil once dead would return because of the righteous losing the light, then I’d say it’s definitely the Sith, because the survival of the Sith comes directly from the Jedi’s problems. Maul’s return is a less direct cause and effect, but the prophecy doesn’t require the return to be because of the Jedi’s problems.

“The danger of the past is not past, but sleeps in an egg. When the egg cracks, it will threaten the galaxy entire.”

Yeah, it’s the Sith. I don’t think there’s any deeper symbolic meaning of the egg part, it’s just that things grow in eggs, but can’t hurt anyone while inside one.

When Qui-Gon is musing over the whole idea of prophecies, he thinks about a prophecy that “said the Sith would disappear yet appear again”. We don’t know the exact text of the prophecy, but I could see it as being either of the previous two. Jedi studying that prophecy agree that it references to a possible return of the Order, which it obviously does. Qui-Gon mentions that it could be about Darth Wrend, a Sith who was assumed dead but then returned to fight the Jedi. Again, I think narrative imperative requires it to be former. I also think we can say that Qui-Gon studying this prophecy is why he’s so confident Darth Maul is a Sith.

“One will ascend to the highest of the Jedi despite the foreboding of those who would serve with him.”

Qui-Gon believes the prophecy refers to him, but since he never accepts the position of the council, it can’t be. And it’s clearly about Anakin. Thank you random Jedi Seer for having such a straightforward prophecy.

“Only through sacrifice of many Jedi will the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless.”

The most obvious interpretation is that the destruction of the Jedi somehow “cleanses” what they did to the clones. I’m not sure how the Jedi Order falling makes up for what happened to the clones, it certainly doesn’t improve their situation. The only thing I can think of is that it’s somewhat implied that Order 66 only works once (Tiin was only able to pull his Order 66 trick because the clones with the inquisitors were new, but Bilabla’s clones keep hunting Kanan. On the other hand, the few Imperial clones we know of aren’t obsessed with the Jedi anymore), and so with it fulfilled, they’re finally freed from the inhibitor chip. But it seems like a pretty bad deal, but I could imagine the Force or the Seer considering freedom from possible literal mind control enough.

Another reading I could think of is that the masses of the galaxy: slaves, clones, and exploited poor beings are the nameless because no one pays much attention to their plight. With the Jedi Order reset, the sin that was their complacency and being bound to the Republic is destroyed. You see that with Ezra, Kanan, and Ahsoka, but Luke clearly falls into the same trap. Qui-Gon says that the prophecies can be filtered by the Seer’s basis (so it’s a tool to learn about how they see the world), so it’s possible that the Seer just saw Rey’s new light-side Order as Jedi, or maybe Rey ends up calling them Jedi. Of course, this is if it does turn out Rey does the likely thing of forming a new and improved Jedi-like order.

“When the Force itself sickens, past and future must split and combine.”

The stuff about past and future made me think of the World Between Worlds, but nothing about that time really strikes me as making the Force sick any more than the Empire after Rebels. They were single-handedly causing climate change on Lothal, and with the Loth Wolves, the planet seems to be very important to the Force, but I can’t really see Ezra’s time travel as “splitting and combining”. Maybe the Force was just worried about Ahsoka, since she holds the spirit of the Daughter.

However, there’s another way to read this. With the Cosmic Force “awakening” in TFA and Luke noticing a change in the Force when Rey arrives, it’s implied that the events ST trilogy is affecting the Force itself. With them returning to Jakku, where the definitely dark-side abyss is located, it's possible that part of TROS deals with the Force being sick in some way. Rey learning from the Jedi of the past, but also using her own morality and ideas to create a better order and that’s past and future splitting and combining. Take what works from tradition, but make your own future. If my second guess is true, then it means that this prophecy has actual predictive qualities for us, and that’s pretty cool.

“A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored.”

So you know how I’ve said that I wouldn’t make a Chosen One theory without the actual text of the prophecy, well here it is. It’s also simpler than the several page mostly-censored version from legends. Well to start, unless there’s some translation gender weirdness (like the original language of the prophecy had no gendered pronouns and the translator’s own basis influenced them), Rey isn’t the Chosen One. But don’t get excited, Kylo Ren can’t be the Chosen One either, because the identity of Kylo’s dad is pretty important. In fact, the only way I can see the Chosen One being Luke is that “born of no father” isn’t literal, but instead, it's about how when Anakin fell and Padme rejected him, he forfeited the right to be Luke’s true father. I like that reading, but the ending of ROTJ seems to imply Lucas doesn’t agree with me.

In fact, I’m now firmly in the “Anakin is the Chosen One” camp, and I’ve left my “series of Chosen Ones” headcanon. The main reason is the “through him” part. It implies that it’s not Vader’s actions that cause balance in the Force, but that it’s an unintended consequence of his actions. Now people have joked that the two-ish Jedi and two-ish Darksiders after ROTS mean that Anakin balanced the Force then, and Rael even brings up that same idea, that balance is when light and dark are equal. But when the Empire rose, it was only the numbers of Sith and Jedi that were equal (and they weren’t even that equal, with the Inquisitors, short-term surviving Jedi, and the almost Jedi like Ahsoka). The Sith were clearly more powerful. However, as I mentioned before, there’s a good chance the Cosmic Force “fell asleep” after ROTJ. And there have been hints that extensions of the Cosmic Force like the Ones or Force Ghosts are actually aberrations. Anakin brings balance to Mortis by killing all of the Ones, and the Father seems confident Anakin will do the same to the wider galaxy. Now he may be wrong, but I’m more inclined to trust a Force god over someone like Maul. And Qui-Gon’s story in FACPOV makes it clear that when a Force ghost manifests, it’s an unpleasant and unnatural separation from the Force. Somehow, the end of the Sith caused the Force to smooth out the aberrations that are consciousness independent from the whole. Well, until TFA. And if that is true, it explains why the Force Ghosts couldn’t give Luke advice until TLJ.

“He who learns to conquer death will through his greatest student live again.”

Obviously “he who learns to conquer death” is supposed to be Qui-Gon, but the question is, who’s the greatest student? Qui-Gon becomes the master when he teaches both Yoda and Obi-Wan after his death, but I wouldn’t describe anything of what Yoda or Obi-Wan does counting as living again. Neither of them really live up to Qui-Gon’s temporal goals. Also, who is supposed to be the greatest? Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon’s only temporal student, and you can’t be the greatest when there’s no competition. But Qui-Gon only taught one thing to Yoda.

The fact the obvious interpretation doesn’t quite fit has led me to another reading, one that also predicts the future from our view as well. And that is that Luke ends up conquering death a lot more metaphorically through Rey. The TROS trailer has, what we have to assume to be Luke’s Force Ghost saying “we have taught you all you know- a thousand generations live in you now.” It sounds like Luke is somehow speaking for other Jedi spirits or at least the contents of the Jedi texts. As I discussed earlier, Force Ghosts are aberrations in the Force. So Luke conquering death is more metaphorical. His beliefs in both the failings of the Jedi, but the need for the Jedi to exist will come to fruition in the form of Rey’s reborn Jedi. And Luke has had many students, but since they all either fell or died, Rey is certainly his best one.

#sw #star wars #pt #st #qui-gon jinn #master and apprentice

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