#challengers behind the scenes

[jilllovesmike]

Hair

[buubsii]

Excuse me? 200 notes? Tysmn!! Maybe its time i make a new one, with Art this time, would yall like one thats just art?

[westidia]

oh they look good☺️

[fezcco]

challengers (2024) — bts photos by anthony prince

[tashiduncandonaldson]

the green button down shirt??????? the mike faist cinematic universe will never die 🙏🏽

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[crashin2you]

[filmlogz]

behind the scenes of Challengers 2024 🎾

[courtney-deserved-better]

rayne this, juliayne that. what about wintern (wayne x intern)

[orbitsuns]

[usertashi]

ZENDAYA for ON — via gabrielgomez

[jilllovesmike]

So many thoughts.

[buubsii]

Im sorry, 100 notes already?? Its been like 2 days tysm guys 😭😭

The (kinda) long awaited Art Donaldson collage! [I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO POST THIS ON OTHER WEBSITES WITHOUT MY CONSENT.] (and a bonus Dodge and Art collage from before challengers premiered!) also it was so hard to find art pics on pinterest wtf??

[tinas1469]

Zendaya: A little bts dump in honor of @challengersmovie coming out in a couple days. This is my first time leading a film in this way so ya girls been nervous but everyones excitement and encouragement has meant the world to me. I’m so honored that I get to do this beside these incredibly talented, brilliant (and hilarious) people and on behalf of all of us, we hope you enjoy the film and again…try not to judge the characters too much lol but also #teamtashi

[fezcco]

challengers bts ⤷ via anthonyprinceleslie on instagram

[semperintrepida]

Descriptions and metaphors I haven’t been able to use while writing stories set in Ancient Greece:

anything related to clocks ("tick of time", "like clockwork") or smaller units of time (minutes and seconds)

anything related to gunpowder ("exploded", "cannoned")

machine-related terms ("motored", "pistoned", "windmilled", "[do something] mechanically")

electronic terms ("flipped a switch", "closed the circuit", "picked up the signal")

sneakily anachronistic idioms ("called their bluff", "show their hand")

the concept of adrenaline (and cousins dopamine and serotonin)

any reference to the brain being the source of intellect

so many medical/anatomical concepts — air can be breathed into the chest, but nothing about oxygen in the blood, energy in the blood, blood cells, etc

L-shaped, U-shaped — no such letters by those names in the Greek alphabet

I'm sure I've let plenty of anachronisms slip into what I've written for the AC: Odyssey fandom over the years, but I've tried my best to honor the time period. Every description and metaphor in fiction comes from the POV character (or omniscient narrator), and the words on the page should only be things they would know. (Maybe one day I'll write a little essay about third person limited/close POV and all the ways I adore it.)

That said, AC: Odyssey has a few temporal slip-ups of its own. My favorite is characters saying "okay"—and I'm eternally grateful for that because it means I can use it in my stories guilt-free.

Anyway, it's fun to ride the line between authenticity and pedantry.