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opbackgrounds · 5 years ago

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Hi there Sarc' ;) I am sorry if the question has already been asked but I thought it could be interesting to have your opinion about this. While I love most of the female characters in OP and think that most of them are well developed and can be truly good role models for girls I still feel that Oda sometimes has a sexist view on female characters (the jokes about the naked bath scenes for example or Kororo being considered ugly make me really uncomfortable). What do you think about it?

Ah, I wondered when I would get this question.

When people talk about sexism in One Piece they typically are referring to two different things: How women are drawn, and how they’re treated within the narrative. While there’s some overlap here, there’s enough distinction that I want to address them as two separate points in two separate posts, because I guess I had Opinions, and by god there should be a limit to how much text one tumblr post can be expected to hold. Consider this an introduction.

Buckle up, kiddos. This is gonna be a long one.

Nami Face Syndrome Isn’t the Problem...

An important thing to remember with Oda’s art and storytelling style is that almost everything is hyper exaggerated for effect. You don’t go into One Piece looking for realism. You don’t go into One Piece expecting the characters to act like normal people. Everything--from the art to the humor to the battles--is stretched and pulled to its absolute limit in hopes of garnering a particular reaction. When a character is sad they cry big bubbly tears with dribbles of snot coming from their nose. When they laugh their mouths take up half their face.

And when a girl is hot, her tiddies are two great big watermelons stuck to the center of her chest.

What is often dubbed “Nami Face Syndrome” within the fandom is somewhat misleading. After all, why was Wanda, who is a literal dog that walks on two legs, decried as yet another Nami clone at her introduction? I would postulate it’s less to do with her face and more to do with the fact that from the neck down they are virtually identical, something that’s made more obvious because Wanda is literally wearing Nami’s clothes

What makes this frustrating for a lot of people, myself included, is that it’s not that Oda is incapable of drawing more diverse body types, but that he often chooses not to. Take for example the Kuja tribe

or the Charlotte family daughters (thanks to Arthur at Library of Ohara for the resource). It’s pretty clear Oda has the chops to make his women as weird as the men, and he often does! For important characters, even. And yes, as the Kokoro example given above sometimes the gonkness is brought attention to, but for others like Lola and Chiffon it’s...not.

(more on mermaids later)

But Sarcasticles, one might protest, even Oda’s “ugly” characters have ginormous boobs! Where is my itty bitty titty committee representation >:(

To which I can only shrug. For Oda, boobs on a woman are like abs on men. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, they’re gonna have ‘em

Seriously, Oda. What the fuck.

...So What Is?

I have a theory that’s impossible to prove, and that the problem isn’t so much Oda’s character design so much as the ratio of his male to female characters in general. It’s not that every female character is a Nami clone, but Oda has a template he uses for attractive female characters ages 16-25, the same way he uses Robin as a template for attractive women ages 26-35, which is how you get cases of mistaken identity like Viola for Robin or scenes during Reverie where one could be forgiven for thinking Nami’s supposed to be an identical triplet

Oda does this for his men, too. It’s not as obvious because 1) Even men with similar facial features can have a wider variety body types due to Oda having a sliding scale of buffness he’s willing to attach to a pretty face and 2) There are more men.

There are a lot more men.

In groups where the male to female ratio is more or less equal (Baroque Works, Big Mom’s kids) you get a wide variety of designs. But there’s only one female Supernova. There’s one female Warlord. CP9 only has one female agent. Only one of the Revolutionary Commanders is a woman. There are very few female background characters in crowd shots, especially among marines. Big Mom might be the only female Emperor, but she’s not young, In fact, when drawing her at age 28, Oda defaults to a much more generic “pretty girl” face before giving her much more striking, memorable features in her 40s

If you look at Oda’s male characters, the ones that are supposed to be hot are often given the same square jawline and the thin-bladed nose that at one point in time was reserved for Robin. Both Coby and Sabo had very distinctive noses before their glowups, while Ace must have had a laser treatment done on his eyebrows sometime between Alabasta and Marineford.

But the biggest difference on the men has got to be muscle mass. The overgrown noodles of early One Piece are lost to the annals of time. Shanks alone must have gained 30 pounds of pure muscle from the time Luffy got his first bounty to his appearance at Marineford.

Now, I will acknowledge that there is a difference between the increasing sexualization of female characters and the male power fantasy of giving Zoro bara tiddies post-timeskip. While I do think there are certain male characters specifically designed to be the Hot Dude, what I’m trying to emphasize here is that Oda works with templates for both men and women, and both of those templates have been exaggerated over time. Bigger boobs for women, more muscles for men. And when you’re only slotting for one girl in any given group, and that one girl has to be The Hot One then you’re going to have a lot of ladies that end up looking the same.

My love for Otohime on this blog is well known, and I want to use her as an example of what Oda can do when he works beyond this template, because it’s really freaking good

Otohime is neither conventionally attractive nor gonk. She’s dressed in very conservative, traditional clothing and has a narrow waist and small chest.

There are no sharp edges on Otohime. Not her eyebrows, not her jaw, and most of the time not even her hands, emphasizing her gentle nature. You don’t see it as well in this panel, but Otohime’s head is often drawn wider than her shoulders, emphasizing her frailty. Oda gives her a longer neck to compensate, and the overall effect is a very soft, willowy figure.

Her headpiece looks like a sunburst. The audience never sees her fins, so Oda gives her a scale patterned kimono-dress-thingy (my knowledge of Japanese clothing is, uh, not good) as a visual reminder that she’s not human. The sash that circles around her head harkens back to Japanese mythology as a symbol of divinity, similar to a halo in Western culture. And fun fact: Otohime is named after a god, just like Neptune, while her goals and ideals are pure enough to be heaven-sent.

I’m not an artist, but this is a really damn good character design. A lot of Oda’s older female characters are. Dandan, Tsuru, O-Tsuru, Shakky, Kureha, Big Mom, and Nyon are all instantly recognizable and have strong designs, even if a few of them fall into the hourglass figure that Oda often defaults to. It’s just...there aren’t that many of them.

So the question becomes why aren’t there more women, and I think the answer is because, ultimately, One Piece is a series geared at boys. While I wish there were a few more important ladies, I can understand why there aren’t.

Note, that doesn’t mean I think it’s right or that Oda is obligated to include more women. It’s just one of the facts of the shonen manga industry at this point in time.

A more important question, I think, is why does every younger woman have to be attractive? And why do the attractive ladies have to wear outfits that are blatant fanservice? This is something I don’t have an answer for. Oda has said on more than one occasion that he writes One Piece with his twelve year old self in mind. It could be that it’s a calculated move to appeal to his audience, in which case it’s certainly worked because said Hot Ladies are constantly used in marketing and merchandising. It’s the Hot Ladies that top the popularity charts (although, to be fair, who’s there for competition?). In the most recent chapter a new Hot Lady was introduced, and the fandom went batshit crazy for her.

Even the fans who are very vocal about how Oda sucks at drawing women. It’s interesting how that works out sometimes.

Or maybe I’m giving Oda too much credit, and he’s just horny. Not having direct access to Oda’s mind, I don’t have an answer. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a little of Column A, a little of Column B, because that’s usually how life is.

But in a vacuum big tiddies are just a design choice. An exaggerated aesthetic, in a series full of exaggerated aesthetics. It’s when that design choice is paired with in-story comments, actions, and decisions where things really start to get heated. But that’s a whole other ball of wax, and there should be a limit to how much one tumblr post can be expected to hold. I promise I’ll get to the meat of your question next time.

Thank you so much for your patience. I really do think it’s important to start here before diving into everything else, if only because it helps keep my thoughts organized. I hope you’ve found this helpful, and if not, I hope to do better next time.

#long post #dear lord what a long post #Character Design #one piece #I don't know why tumblr fucked up with the formatting of my answer #but I apologize in advance #sexism #sarc talks

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liquid-geodes · 4 years ago

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Can Sheik see wolf link? Do they even know about each other? (Also sorry for asking but your Sheik is not Zelda, right? And goes by he/him, or other pronouns? I wanna get that right for the future)

To be honest I've never really considered the addition of Wolf Link since I have 1-2 other botw aus that involve him but completely gave up on because Linked Universe got as popular as it did and people with think I'm just copying them when I've just always had this idea since I was like, 11 and first discovering that hey, I can make storied up literally whenever I want!

That was of course 9 years ago and I still develop them (have to with each new Zelda game that comes out) but public Tumblr will never hear about it just to avoid unwanted drama, which sucks because I LOVE infodumping about my stories but I'm literally not going through that :/

And TBH I just really wanted to focus on the application of Sheik to a game that is actually heavily centered around Sheikah history and technology, so for simplicity's sake things like Amiibo extras were excluded from the au, BUT in return I added additional elements to the story to sort of make it feel more like Zelda games in the past.

One thing Botw lacked was the importance of the triforce, so I decided to not only add it to the story, but to actually make it an important part of the au itself to add another layer of possibilities to an already tragic tale

And yes, Zelda and Sheik are separate people entirely. Sheik does go by he/him pronouns because i wanted to kind of harken back to OoT when Sheik made his first appearance. I understand why you'd want to confirm since the fandom literally shits itself with the Sheik discourse, and while Sheik's identity is definitely left up to player interpretation in Hyrule Warriors, I like to stay true to OoT Sheik more and while he was Zelda in disguise, Sheik used he/him pronouns in game.

Also we just need more male Sheikah main characters

Also the "main" sheikah characters are very old (or very old AND a child, thanks science side of Purah) it's kinda nice to round out the dynamic and actually let someone of the Sheikah race play a more important role than "hey sorry you have amnesia here's a neat t-shirt and my sister can hook you up with some crazy phone games"

I actually have no idea if I actually answered any of your questions-

#legend of zelda #breath of the wild #link's aus #botw sheik au #botw sheik

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that-shamrock-vibe · 4 years ago

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Round-Up Review: WandaVision (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the Monday after the finale of WandaVision drops on Disney+, so if you haven’t yet seen the entire series don’t read on until you have.

So I was going to do a fully fleshed out review of the entire series of WandaVision, but just as I’m about to finish…Tumblr decides to freeze on me and I lose a day of work so I have now decided to work this review a different way and rather than giving a general reaction and going into a character analysis, I will be breaking it down into what I loved, what wasn’t there for me fully and where I feel we are going next.

General Reaction:

So I could of very easily gone through this series episode by episode...but based on the fact that not only was this a play-by-play mystery with a lot more questions than answers each week, but also as the series progressed, particularly after Evan Peters arrived at the end of episode 5, the fan-theories and potential spoilers almost made me not want to know what was going to happen because the theories were becoming so grand that the series could surely never live up to expectations, which is why I feel the director of the finalé stated that fans may be disappointed...because ultimately I don’t think the finalé did live up to expectations. But these were expectations built up as an culmination of fan-theories, comic-book insight and also MCU baiting.

By MCU baiting, I mean that the creatives of WandaVision decided to be creative, and possibly playful, by including several red herrings that went absolutely nowhere but were the main conspiracy theories driving the fan-speculations and fake spoilers throughout the latter half of the series.

Dottie...who was she? Nobody important. Evan Peters...was he Quicksilver? No. Was he Mephisto/Nightmare? No. Was he important? Not really. Monica’s mysterious engineer contact, a fan-favourite character? Not even a character from the comics, I think.

Now that’s not to say this series asked questions that weren’t answered satisfactorily, but a lot of them seemed to build up to what is to come rather than giving us all the answers in this series. Is that a good thing? Yes because I feel this will make this series more rewatchable than I feel it already is. I for one of re-watched each episode at least twice sometimes three times each week leading up to the next episode and having just seen the entire series as a whole product I can safely say that characters and elements from this series going forward may have call-backs to the events of this series which will make for clicks, more views and more plays.

Speaking of watchability, can we talk about how interesting it has been to watch half-hour scheduled programming for 9 weeks like the olden days, and the fact we can call television life before streaming “the olden days”?.

But honestly sitting down, for me on a Friday morning at 9:30am without fail, to watch what began as a 25–30-minute MCU sitcom before turning into a 30–40-minute MCU mystery every week harkened back to my childhood and coming back from school to watch my shows which only aired once a week at that time. Feige’s and the creatives in the MCU brought back that feeling of nostalgia for me which I never really expected from a comic-book property.

Speaking of classic televisual viewing, I really enjoyed the standard sitcom setup of this series. I knew of all the referenced shows going in like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family, but it was also nice to see some standard sitcom tropes seen in the majority of sitcoms utilized throughout. From Agatha posing as the nosey neighbour to the fashions of each sitcom era and even the fourth wall breaks both from Billy in the Halloween episode in a Malcolm in the Middle spoof to the following episode literally titled “Breaking the Fourth Wall”.

Also, I will say here that all those MCU “stans” who are complaining they didn’t get the big grand beginning of Phase 4 that was promised to us by Feige as “something different”, the guy’s mantra is to keep it simple and the finalé was hardcore Feige. “Something different” was the set up and delivery of this slice of the MCU and some fans are still moaning about that so some people are just never satisfied.

What I Loved

Scarlet Witch

Give Elizabeth Olsen awards for this season! Make gold rain down upon her! Honestly, I have loved Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff since her formal introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but now we have formally been introduced to the Scarlet Witch she is not only the most powerful female if not character in the MCU but also the best character in the entire MCU to date.

Not only is this series personifying how an individual deals with their grief, but when you consider the fact that Wanda, who is by all accounts a 29 year old woman due to being blipped for 5 years, and has lost her parents at a young age, her twin brother at 25-26 so still a young age and then the first love of her life twice, first by her own hand and then by the Mad Titan so that initial sacrifice was for nothing, it’s just a lot to put on one individual with this level of raw power without expecting her to finally snap and create an alternate reality where everything is under her control.

The creation of her twins, who I will get into further down, was well done and, for want of a better word, organic for the series. But I did like how they showed the real-life struggle of not just having a new-born but having twins. Wanda is trying to maintain control of this world she has created as well as keep Vision in check, but also because the twins are seemingly not under her magical control, she must juggle maintaining the world and its people with being a new mother.

But the biggest crisis for Wanda comes in when Fietro shows up, I still do not believe she ever truly thought this was her dead brother resurrected. It wasn’t until he said “long lost brother” that he asked “Pietro?” and she spent the entire next episode interrogating him until the façade finally slipped and she decided he wasn’t.

After this, everything falls apart for her. Not only is her reality literally slipping with Vision at odds with her, the world constantly shifting between eras and her not understanding what is happening.

This is of course when she is confronted by Agatha Harkness who has not only taken her twins but also been fooling her by being “Nosy Neighbour Auntie Agnes” for this entire time when in reality she is a with from the days of the Salem Witch Trials who wants to understand Wanda’s true potential and then absorb all of her magic.

But when we got to see Wanda’s true potential as she went “Beast Mode” as the Scarlet Witch complete with stunning new outfit and crown, this levels the character up to that top spot in the MCU as the best and most powerful character.

I am excited to see where the Scarlet Witch’s potential will take her next.

WandaVision Love Story

I also really loved the fact that as well as a personification of dealing with Wanda’s grief, this series was truly a love story between Wanda and Vision.

From the first episode when we see them getting “married” and being that unusual suburban couple trying to fit in with seemingly everyday suburban life when the entire set-up is Wanda’s idyllic dream world.

As Darcy said to Vision, the love these two have is real. I did an entire post on why Scarlet Witch and Vision are the best MCU couple, and this series amplifies that. It becomes clear that these two are not actually married and in fact this Vision isn’t even the Vision we have seen developed through the movies, but he is a replication of Wanda’s true love and this is how she chooses to show it.

The fact they go through all of the typical newlywed couple goalposts of marriage, homemakers, kids, a dog, domestic disputes. It’s all there and feels so natural even though we are talking about the relationship a potential Nexus Being and a Synthezoid.

Their final goodbye in the series finale is honestly as heart-breaking as any love-lost in a tragic romance movie. Seriously how many more times is Wanda, and by extension the fans, supposed to say goodbye to Vision?

Agatha Harkness

I love Kathryn Hahn, this series has solidified that for me. Not only is this the first live-action appearance of Agatha Harkness but also the way in which she was modified from the comics is in a way that I would be annoyed with any other way if not for the fact that it was Kathryn Hahn playing her.

Now yes, fans of the comics knew “Agnes” was really Agatha Harkness from the casting announcement, but the actual reveal wasn’t epic because we already knew, it was epic because of the way it was revealed.

“Agatha All Along” has honestly become one of my new favourite songs, it is such a catchy tune, incorporates a couple of classic sitcom nods and is very memorable.

But also, even the fact that the final line of “…and I killed Sparky too” has become so memeable without overshadowing the overall song is such an impressive feat.

The Lopez’s not only capitalise on their Frozen success but also Kathryn Hahn gets to show her musical talents by singing the actual song…it was just incredible.

But yes, Agatha being a villain, as she has been in the comics but not on this scale, was a great decision for this series because Kathryn Hahn managed to inject her own brand of cynical dry comedy with echoes of Cate Blanchett’s Hela to create a fully rounded menacing villainous character.

Not only do we learn about her origins of how she can absorb magic by murdering her entire coven, mother included, but also that she elevates that by being able to steal any magic, even that of the powerful Scarlet Witch, truly makes this witch a threat within the magical realms of the MCU.

Even though she was defeated I am thrilled she didn’t die, she has simply been taken off the board for now but is still able to be put into play if and when she is needed again, maybe in Doctor Strange 2 maybe sooner, who knows?

Monica Rambeau

I have to say, I do not know much about Proton from the comics and genuinely though Maria Rambeau was a bigger character than she was, but considering they killed her off-screen during this series I don’t think she actually was.

I loved how the effects of the blip are still showing their repercussions as Monica returns after being victim to the blip and is immediately thrust into a chaotic post-blip world that echoes the real-world COVID-19 crisis I imagine.

From the start once outside of the Hex, Monica hits the ground running as both a SWORD operative and a self-assured hero trying to do the right thing by saving the town of Westview and Wanda while thwarting Hayward.

I really loved how her “Boss Lady” persona that Agent Woo grants her was very well realised because she did not take any nonsense from anyone. She got the Space Rover so she could attempt to re-enter the Hex, she attempted to reason with Wanda not once, not twice, but thrice.

And when the rover couldn’t penetrate the Hex, she decided to re-enter unprotected knowing what the barrier would potentially do to her physiology…and it did not disappoint.

Monica got powers, she got powers in a spectacular way. I loved how while she was physically struggling to break through the barrier, she could hear the voices of her nearest and dearest (archive footage from Captain Marvel) which spurred her on until she finally pulled herself together and became the superpowered individual she was always going to become.

But she didn’t stop there, not only did she try to once again confront Wanda who at this point was rather unhinged, but she didn’t take her threats lying down and instead tried to break into Agnes’ house before getting caught by Fietro.

However, once she worked out Fietro was really Ralph and was able to free him from Agatha’s control, she wasted no time in running off and making herself useful and just in time as she stopped Hayward from shooting the twins and assisted them in subduing the rogue SWORD agents.

As for Monica’s future, she has been drafted by that Skrull to join Nick Fury’s new team and may return to honour her late mother’s position as director of SWORD. All I know is her future is as bright and vibrant as the energy waves she can now see.

Twins

I love Wiccan and Speed so much, I love the Young Avengers so much, I love Wiccan and Hulkling’s relationship from the comics that is inevitably going to happen hopefully, but the fact this was the origins of all of that gave me everything.

Even before their birth, I loved how the pregnancy was making everything in the house go crazy. Some fans believe this was Wanda’s powers out of control due to pregnancy, I think this was actually Billy’s reality warping powers either acting from inside the womb or amplifying Wanda’s reality warping powers.

When the twins were in existence, I feel Wanda wasn’t prepared for what was going to happen. Billy and Tommy had their own minds and weren’t afraid to show them. Not only with finding Sparky but also with revealing their powers.

It’s fascinating as both these characters have the powers of either their mother or uncle, Billy has reality warping powers and Tommy has super speed. But while both got great chances to show them both in the Halloween episode and also in the series finale, I do believe we have only just scratched the surface of particularly Billy’s powers.

Of course they were always going to be lost at the end of the series, as they were in the comics when they were reabsorbed into Mephisto, in this instance they were seemingly deleted along with their father and the Hex…but then we hear them calling out to Wanda while she’s examining the Darkhold? Is this really them? Multiverse variants? What does all this mean? We need answers!

Darcy Lewis

I was thrilled when I heard Kat Dennings was not only returning to the MCU but being part of different characters’ stories rather than just Thor.

I loved how Darcy was on it from the start by firstly identifying that she and the other three scientists in recruitment didn’t share any common field so that meant SWORD had no idea what they were facing, but then being the one to identify the broadcast of WandaVision.

It did truly feel like we were watching Darcy be us while she was watching the series, seeing her get so invested in the hijinks and the plot twists was very relatable. Kat Dennings sold that relatability just as she does in every performance for me.

Then her fan-girling over the wider MCU, Kat Dennings is a fan of the MCU outside of her own appearances, so the fact she confirmed Vision did not get blipped but actually died and also had that moment in first meeting Monica was adorable.

Also, the fact that Darcy was the one who figured out not only that Monica’s cells were being re-written but also that Hayward had nefarious intentions with wanting to track down Vision, it just gave Darcy a purpose in the series and almost made her invaluable. Monica and Jimmy don’t have the backgrounds to be the “person in the chair” but Darcy does, and I was happy she finally got the chance to showcase it.

Even when she was taken into the Hex and temporarily became the Escape Artist, she was still Darcy in a way, then she became Vision’s source of information and road trip buddy before being left on the side-lines only to then return and help defeat Hayward.

What Didn’t Work:

Too Many Red Herrings

As I said this series and the series creatives had far too many red herrings planted to either fool us or tease us without any solid resolutions.

The biggest one is definitely “Fietro” who as it turns out isn’t Multiverse Quicksilver from the Fox X-Men movies but is instead an in-universe actor named Ralph Bohner who was enthralled by Agatha to play the part of her husband and be her spy and lackey.

Honestly not only am I annoyed that Evan Peters was used for what was ultimately a boner joke, but also it does throw dirt into the wound as to the fact we may not be getting Mutants or the X-Men for a while yet in the MCU.

Then there’s Dottie...similarly to Fietro this could have been a smart way to bring Mutants into the MCU. While yes Dottie was believed to be Mephisto or a witch of some description, I was actually onboard with the idea that this was the MCU Emma Frost. It would have been poetic for Agatha Harkness to be working with Emma Frost to not only maintain her manipulation but also with Emma’s telepathic abilities but also potentially have Emma working as a double agent for the Hellfire Club who also want to harness the powers of the Scarlet Witch similarly to how they wanted to control the Phoenix Force.

Wanda in the MCU has already been compared to Jean Grey, so how about Scarlet Witch becoming the Black Queen of the Inner Circle?

Next, Ultron. A namedrop as many times as this deserves some sort of payoff. Ralph got his and it may have been disappointing but at least we got resolution. So why, when Ultron was named numerous times and we as fans even had Avengers: Age of Ultron being the next recommended watch for us at the end of every episode except the finale, did nothing come of it? If White Vision was voiced by James Spader I would have been happy.

Finally, there’s Monica’s engineer “guy”. We didn’t find out who this was because the contact Monica met with was an Air Force contact delivering the Space Rover, but who was the engineer who designed it? Why didn’t we meet him?

I personally feel this engineer is Reed Richards, there is obviously a rich history of space being connected to Reed’s origins as Mister Fantastic, we know the Fantastic Four are coming to the MCU, it would simply make sense to first introduce Reed as maybe a scientist for SWORD or Nick Fury’s team before bringing in the full team.

I know the other option is Hank Pym, but really if it was Pym then why couldn’t they just pay Michael Douglas for a cameo?

The Future of the MCU

So, what does WandaVision set up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Well, we know that this is the start of the Multiverse Arc that will continue with Spider-Man: No Way Home later this year and conclude with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness next year. It is confirmed that Scarlet Witch will show up in the latter of those two movies, but we have no idea what role she’ll serve in Spider-Man.

The other story this series sets up is Secret Invasion which will happen during the series of the same name starring Nick Fury and the Skrulls and also Captain Marvel 2 which will not only feature Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau but also the upcoming Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel. This puts three superpowered women in the same movie and possibly will be the nexus of the Secret Invasion storyline before the concluding movie being an Avengers level event.

Then there’s also Falcon and the Winter Soldier starting in a couple of weeks, that series will most likely connect to Black Widow due to including Yelena Belova but also because that was originally supposed to come out before WandaVision it is tough to see if it or any other upcoming series except for Secret Invasion will connect to this series.

And of course, there is the upcoming Young Avengers project, we have yet to get confirmation of if this will be a movie or a TV series but we know we are having the players put onto the board in Disney+ shows and MCU movies. We have Wiccan and Speed, we know we are getting Kate Bishop and America Chavez as well as already having Cassie Lang just recast for the upcoming Ant-Man 3 to hopefully finally become Stature, and while we have yet to get confirmation of Hulkling it is possible he will appear in Secret Invasion given the Kree-Skrull elements.

Overall, I rate this series a solid 9/10, this series gave me practically everything I wanted and there were many times particularly in the finale that I felt this was the best Marvel Television series. I still stand by the fact that I think it is but the red herrings of Fietro, Mephisto, Ultron and Monica’s “guy” meant I couldn’t call it a solid 10/10.

Regardless of that, I felt this series gave us something different in an MCU mystery, formally introducing witches into the MCU, the love story of Wanda and Vision was intoxicating, meeting Wiccan and Speed in the early years was glorious and honestly Wanda embracing her destiny and becoming the Scarlet Witch…if the entire series was at that level it would be a 10/10 across the board.

So that’s my Round-Up Review of WandaVision, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Marvel Reviews as well as other TV Reviews and posts.

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itsanidiom · 4 years ago

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Tagged by both @pb-nj and @deepwoundsandfadedscars~<3 <3

1. why did you choose your url?

It’s from an argument I had with my sister once LOL she mixed up the idiom ‘under my belt’ and said ‘I’ve got that behind my belt’. A lot of people get that idiom wrong and me being a little shit was like ‘um actually...’ LOL anyway the argument ended with me shouting ‘IT’S AN IDIOM’ ...but also I just really like idioms in all languages <3

2. any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

QUITE A FEW: Luxor City book blog: @the-empires-of-luxor-city Music blog: @pianissimomezzoforte Future book aesthetic blog (VuX): @vanguard-unit-x Future book aesthetic blog (Swan Lake): @lebedinoeozero

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

According to my mass post editor April 2011 but I know it was actually summer 2010 so I probably deleted a lot of old posts LOL

4. do you have a queue tag?

No~ I think I just queue things sometimes and don’t mention if it’s a queue or not LOL I am on here at random times all the time anyway so you’d never know XD

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

I graduated HS in 2010. I got into a summer art school program to learn about First Nations art because I’m like 1/8 Seminole. A friend in class was like “have you heard of tumblr?” and I was like “No” and thus I was sucked into this place and doomed to spend eternity wandering the...

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Because Oscar Isaac is BAE and Disney did him dirty (along with everyone else in The Force Awakens)

7. why did you choose your header?

Because TOG is one of the best action movies I’ve seen in a LONG time and I love it and I need 2 Old 2 Guard NETFLIX PLEASE STOP CLOWNING ME (;A;)

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

Ah yes~ Les temps de ‘Les Misérables’~ I miss that fandom haha

9. how many mutuals do you have?

I dunno! Quite a few over the years, but many are not active anymore.

10. how many followers do you have?

too many...I love you all but why are you here? lol <3

11. how many people do you follow?

201

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

Yes...but not too often...cause if they blow up i must suffer the consequences

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

Your honor...I plead the 5th

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

This also harkens back to the Les Misérable days. I got into a lot of fights with people who thought they knew French and the works of Victor Hugo better than me (fyi: they didn’t). I will always remember this one because it was so stupid and made me SO mad. They were arguing with me about how to pronounce something in French. I have shitty French now yes but I grew up going to French school so I know how to pronounce shit. It was literally Enjolras’ name (“Ahn-Jol-Rah” vs “Ahn-Jol-Ras”). I was like the ‘s’ is pronounced if there’s a vowel starting the next word after it but it’s not pronounced if you just say his name like “Il s'appelle Enjolras” vs “Enjolras a quitté le café”. Anyway they were like “YOU’RE FUCKING STUPID MY GRANDMA IS HALF FRENCH AND SHE SAID...” I just blocked them... LOL (^^;) Anyway enjoy the mini French lesson and rant

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I usually don’t reblog the post...guilt tripping isn’t my schtick...

16. do you like tag games?

Yeah! I like answering them but sometimes I don’t like thinking about who to tag (see question 20)

17. do you like ask games? 😊

Also yes~!

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Well, I’m still somehow mutuals with @brilcrist‘s side blog @brilandsurrounding (LOL let’s remind her she has a side blog again after like 5 years XD) her art is freaking amazing though she’s mainly migrated away from tumblr during the great purge (follow her on IG you won’t regret).

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

Ehhhhh...no...

20. tags?

No tags~ we end here like kings~ XD

#ask meme #there's one question where I just go off #i apologise in advance #XD

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mimir-anoshe · 4 years ago

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💧&🔥

Just a bit of Cursed/Nimulot analysis… Cause I’m bored. And I might have found some interesting parallels/imagery watching it through for the 7 billionth time that I would love to share. If anyone enjoys writing meta… Which I mean I know some of y’all need your fix… Feel free to use anything/expand upon it. I would, but I’m a new fur-mumma and she’s taking up all my waking hours, so this little shit-post about this new hell hole of a ship I’ve dove headfirst into will have to do. The images are from a video and show produced by Netflix, I own nothing, so pls don’t be a bitch about it Tumblr.

***SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW!!! WATCH IT AND COME BACK!! OR DON’T? ANYHOO YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!*** ⚠️

- beware Tumblr app users, it may be your doom -

Where to begin, with the teaser? Or with…

THE SHOW! Here be just a wee few times the writers/director(s) through the writing/cinematography have mirrored these two ‘protect the kid - warriors till the end’ idiots. I’m sure others have picked up on them… Not in any particular order, here ya go anyway.

1x02 - 1x10

*Insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme*

One scar made by an actual dark god tricking her when she was a child, the others by a very human evil tricking him when he was a child and the consequences for both lasting into adulthood.

1x02 - 1x10

Look at the years of trauma Anakin, look at it! They even use the same damn word! The phonetic tones of disgust! The outcast syndrome! Oof. (And it’s not like Nimue being called demon has to do with a general racial-slur from a human, that is a fey calling her that from her own village!) They both grew up viewing themselves as “demons”, the “abominations”. Even their expressions are the same, fear and sorrow and self-hatred. All they both want is to be accepted! (By their fathers especially). To be loved.

The two who are “cursed.”

1x02 - 1x01

*says nothing*

1x04 - 1x01

“Where to begin? With water or with fire?”

Where to begin? WHERE TO BEGIN??? *dies*

Water ☯ Fire

Sword up ☯ Sword down

Light/Day ☯ Dark/Shadow

Life & Death (Life around her, death in the water) ☯ Death & Life (forest fires make way for new growth)

Long bit: Both characters are associated to the elements of water and fire individually through the environment/cinematography/colour pallet/colour symbolism, and then water and fire is mirrored between them. She is overall water, he is overall fire; but they also have a bit of the other in each other.

For Nimue this symbolism is often done through her environment, showing her connection to nature as the fey queen and that she does not hide who she is if she can help it. She does not hide externally, so her elemental symbolism becomes EXTERNAL.

Whilst for Lancelot though he is often surrounded by fire, the idea of water/tears is either symbolised through the fairy tale style of the artwork or referenced for him through his name as “the weeping monk.” Hinted at in his characterisation of guilt and self-loathing, the way other characters respond to him (”the one who cries”/”you see it all through those weeping eyes”). His main conflict is an Internal fight between who he is and who he needs to become, so a lot of his main symbolism surrounding water (and even fire as pertaining to magic - ashfolk - and not killing fey) is INTERNALISED, hidden, cut off from the Hidden themselves. Symbolic of him hiding his connection to the fey and that other side of himself, the “human” (morally speaking) side, and therefore hiding who he truly is… Lancelot.

For Nimue, fire means life. Being chosen and her magic saving people. For Lancelot fire means Death, his deeds, “the fires of hell” and the destruction of the “ash” folk and his heritage. He believes hell fire is his fate, going by the “even if I am damned.”

For Nimue, water means death. In the water she takes revenge, where that Paladin almost drowned her. Into the water she falls, where they think her shot dead by arrows. The water is her fate as the Lady of the Lake. For Lancelot, water means life. Tears, emotions, taking responsibility, feeling the weight of his guilt and mourning for the things he has done/lost. For him, water - not ash -means a second chance to be better. To put out the fires and heal.

Though in the end, for both of them, water & fire most of all represent death and rebirth.

1x03

^If you don’t understand I can’t help you. ☯

1x01 - 1x07

Now this one I found quite interesting. Remember that even if Nimue directed the second one, it is still the Power/will of the Hidden at play. (Or should I say the will of the Writers/director) Chosen? Mirrors? Night and Day? Fire… Embers to Ashes? We shall see, but I think it was definitely on purpose.

^I’ll just leave that here, the fuckers kept missing each other for an entire season (WHICH WAS ON PURPOSE THE WRITERS DID THAT ON PURPOSE just as an fyi). The fact that there is this much sexual tension, anticipation, mirroring, fate, destiny and chemistry between two characters who have never even mET should be ILLEGAL! They affect each other immeasurably without ever even meeting, so imagine what will happen when they do...? *pterodactyl screech*

Whelp there ye go. Under the next gif I also did a bit on the Teaser trailer, as that just fucked me up a bit I have to tell you! Up to you whether you want to continue digesting my mad ramblings or not. *Shrug* Thanks for coming to my TED talk guys– 😂 Somebody fucking smite me down like the eldritch horror of writing I am dear god think of the children…

THE OFFICIAL TEASER TRAILER:

Arthur running for the Sword of Power, because you know, King Arthur.

“The Legend says…” The Legend of King Arthur and his Sword Excalibur/Caliburnus? The line is very meta, a reference to the in world legend that this story will create, but it’s also expecting the audience to be savvy of the actual legend of King Arthur and his knights. Both these ideas intertwined into one. Aka, the trailer expects us to have pre-decided expectations for the story we’re now being told, because we’ve already been told it before; this fairy tale of celtic myth/history. All the “spoilers” about Arthur, his lineage, Morgana, Guinevere, the Knights, even the lady of the Lake herself come with that knowledge. However…

Surprise surprise, the Weeping Monk (killer of fae)/ Lancelot (eventually Arthur’s most trusted KNIGHT) instead picks up the fae sword from it being embedded in the ground, subverting our expectation, it definitely fucking subverted mine, but not in a GOT way, in a ~good~ way. I was like, “Whosoever be this fine hooded fellow hath stole away both sword and my good sense!!! 👀”

Also harkening back to the legend of the sword in the stone (another expectation), which the action itself signifies that person be - as Merlin so eloquently puts - “The one true king.”

Ok… Symbolic wink wink nudge nudge towards his true nature (inside and out), saving Percival, potentially becoming the greatest warrior and protector of his people and eventually a Knight of the Round Table; and perhaps King of our Hearts??? Ok, sure thing “concept” trailer. I’ll bite.

Ok… *deep breath*

WHOMSt the fUCK decided to frame (fae “ashman”) ?Lancelot? with the ~SWORD OF KINGS~ (also of fae origin) A N D the line…‘the one true king’ ALL IN ONE… instead of Arthur?

‘BELONGS to the one true King?’ Belongs, hmm interesting word choice… This done in a worms eye view shot meant to make the viewer feel like the character is above/superior/basically we’re kneeling before them? (Which I mean sure? but…) Hmm??? HMMM??? I don’t understand CONCEPT Trailer what is the CONCEPT you’re trying to get across? One hand on his paladin sword and the other on “fae hope” Excalibur I get, he has to make an important decision, one that will either save his humanity (and his people) or destroy it (them), yeah yeah sure that’s F I N E…

…but what about the “KING” SHIT HMMM?? Is there something you would like to share with the rest of the class? *sips tea whilst staring straight into the camera*

it may mean nothing don’t quote me

…Anwaaaay… We all know in a fight Lancelot can kick Arthur’s ass so that’s not whats going on here. Arthur is P I S S E D. They’re not just bog standard enemies here. I mean WPM kicking him in the ribs was pretty “fuck you” and they were just enemies there. In this instance the sword is in play, Weeping Monk has taken something from Arthur that he feels “BELONGS” to him - in this case symbolised by WPM taking “his” sword - and that’s making it personal.

“You stole my sword ya bitch!” And what is the sword linked to? Power? Sure. The right of being a King? Yep. And also a certain Queen… No no no, this is the Concept of rivalry. It shows that whatever relationship Arthur and his “Knight” will have in the future after all the “die die die” starts to sizzle down will - in its genesis - be a rivalry. Probably mirroring Gawain and Arthur when they first met to an extent. A rivalry for power? For something else? Who Knows!

*whistles innocently*

And down down down he goes. He’s FALLING. There are many metaphorical concepts associated to FALLING… Falling from “grace” (in the eyes of the Church)… Falling because he has a sky full of guilt crashing down upon him… falling for h… falling in Lo… into the Water!!!! Until he is completely submerged. Water, the idea of cleansing, of washing away who you once were/trauma/sins of the past so you may be reborn a better version of yourself. His old ideals are defeated, he submits to his true heritage and allows it to wash around him so he may begin to heal.

Though if we’re talking metaphors, water is - for obvious reasons - always associated with the LADY OF THE LAKE… Nimue. He has fallen into her world. (pss he’s gonna fall for the Chick in the Lake - I think - there ye go). Water is associated to memory/reflections and mirrors. And he is CRASHING through this mirror… This idea of reflections/mirror images is even more ironic when you’ve watched the show.

And as he falls beneath the water with the sword of a King, she rises out of it, with the sword of a Queen… Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s in the biggest shipping hell of them all? Either these two are going to be really good at relay, or there’s some conceptual significance here. The specifics? No fecking clue, will need to wait for a season 2! There is also some interesting use of Z~oo~m in this last bit, but I’m sure it’s pretty obvious to you all. Summary: just visually in a concept “teaser” trailer, the zoom in on them both, the reverse mirroring, the literal and symbolic visual of water and the Sword (of rulers) connecting them frames these two characters together, that’s just in the concept trailer. Links their legend together. TBH IT LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE LANCELOT FELL INTO THE WATER AND TURNED INTO NIMUE WHAT IS THIS GREEK SOULMATE SHIT I’M–

*calms down* This trailer and the show also definitely said to the original Arthurian Legend “RIP but I’m different.” I mean, Nimue is definitely not Lancelot’s mother figure in this one, that’s all I’m saying.

I think this legend might be a wee bit different 😉*cackles*

#nimulot #nimulot meta #nimue x the weeping monk #nimue x weeping monk #cursed spoilers #nimue x lancelot #my meta #mad mimir meanderingly mumbles #Tumblr is my only escape for this - I wouldn't go near twitter with a thousand foot pole if my life depended on it #where to begin? I don't think I'll ever get over that line - I die every time #my pupper was literally like 'mum what the fuck are you doing writing this shit give me LOVES'#also Nimue owns my heart if Lancelot doesn't marry her I'm going to thanks BYE #my shitty humour~~

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galadrieljones · 5 years ago

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Author Meme

tagged by @thevikingwoman. thank you!! <3

Author Name: galadrieljones (gala)

Fandoms You Write For: Currently Red Dead Redemption 2, but I’ve written a LOT for Dragon Age: Inquisition, also Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Last of Us.

Where You Post: AO3 and tumblr

Most Popular One-Shot: I’m not totally sure. I don’t do a great job of keeping count. My little story “Unsigned” about an unnamed Lavellan who has Solas’s baby, and then gets a letter from him asking if he can see her, is definitely up there. In terms of overall popularity, Yours, Sadie Adler is a more popular one-shot across platforms (tumblr and AO3 combined).

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Still The Dead Season (DA:I, Solavellan), just in terms of sheer numbers. But TDS is quite old by now. In terms of popularity to progress, The Lily Farm (RDR2, Arthur x Mary Beth) has surpassed TDS by quite a bit. Which is surprising to me, because it’s a rare pair. I’m so thankful?

Favorite Story You Wrote: Usually my favorite thing I’ve ever written is the thing I’m writing now, which would be The Lily Farm. But like viking, I love all my stories. Though sometimes I do still think about the little one-shot where Solas and Sene meet for the first time (“Nobody”) and the one-shot where they kiss for the first time (“The Party”). Those are big moments that never made it into TDS, because they’re backstory, and I really love how I wrote them. I miss my tol elves. But they’re safe, and that’s what counts.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: I usually still get nervous when posting any and all smutty chapters/fics. Idk. I have the least amount of experience writing erotica, so I feel like I’m still learning and gaining confidence.

How Do You Choose Your Titles: Obsessively. Lol. I love titles. For me, titles play a roll in the message of the fic or chapter. Sometimes, they come very fast. Sometimes, they take some real thought. Usually, I title my chapters or fics after a recurring theme or image. So like, my latest chapter of The Lily Farm is called “The Wayward Minister.” This harkens to something Hamish says in an earlier chapter when he’s giving Arthur advice about his wedding. It also most obviously gestures to Reverend Swanson, who is a main character in the chapter and a very important thematic character in the game. But it also subtly points to Dutch, a “different kind of minister,” and how Dutch is notably ABSENT at the time of Arthur’s wedding (ie: wayward). So like, there are TWO wayward ministers in the chapter, and a hint toward a line from a previous chapter. Sorry there is usually a lot going on with my titles lol

Do You Outline: No. I usually just hold the story in my brain, which means it changes shape over time, but that’s okay with me. I also tend to plan just by sketching out important scenes ahead of time. I will rarely write down summaries of what I’m writing. I definitely don’t chart or list. For me that is all very stifling.

Complete: ?? I have completed a couple of chapter WiPs: The Dead Season and Last Call. Outside of fandom I have completed one (1) very big fantasy novel that is currently in a drawer. I have a million completed little fics and short stories I have no intention of counting them lol.

In-Progress: The Lily Farm and also technically Zero (HZD, Aloy x Nil), which I still have deluded myself into thinking I’ll get back to some day.

Coming Soon: More Lily Farm. Also a sequel to Yours, Sadie Adler that I’ve been cooking up for some time. But it’s hard for me to switch back and forth between my Happiness AU and then the sadness of what happens in canon. Honestly it’s like emotionally distressing :’)

Do You Accept Prompts: Yes, always. I like to work from an overflowing backlog. It gives me little things to do when I feel like writing in bits and pieces, and not worrying so much about editing.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: I am really excited to just keep going with Lily Farm? I have many things in store? I love my readers because they are emphatic. They’re always like, FUCKING DUTCH FUCK YOU DUTCH and they are great defenders of my sweet darling children Arthur and Mary Beth. I love surprising them and bringing them new updates. It makes me so happy.

Tag Three Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions As Well: @bearly-tolerable @a-shakespearean-in-paris @idrelle-miocovani <3

#author meme

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gorogues · 6 years ago

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alchemisteevee replied to your text post: i will note, it's been like that for years

Aw geez, Tumblr really is a disaster. I hadn’t heard that before. Thank you for letting me know! Hopefully that means it’s just general crappy site functionality rather being deemed explicit, and does make me feel a bit better.

maswartz replied to your ask post: What do you think about Flash calling MM his greatest foe?

It's a very Silver Age concept, because Sam was his greatest foe before Crisis (and especially in the Silver Age) and the comics were really clear about that. Some people probably disagreed about who was the greatest villain then and now, but that was the narrative intent. And you can see it reflected (har har) in letters from back then.

And it's fitting for The Batman series because I get a really Silver Age vibe from a lot of it, and Sam having a henchwoman is definitely an early comics aesthetic; yes, there have been costumed henchpeople into the modern era, but they aren’t common and are typically reserved for old-school characters and those with an old-school vibe. So everything about Sam in that series reminds me of the Silver Age, and thus I think it’s really spot-on to harken back to his status as Flash’s #1 foe back in those days. Pretty brilliant, actually, because Sam isn’t the villain we’d usually think of in the modern era.

#alchemisteevee #maswartz #words

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kyletoom · 6 years ago

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Let’s make a Gameboy Advance game! Part 1

If you’ve come here, then you’re probably either here for my Gameboy Advance game development or are (at the time of posting) a time traveler who has already seen what else I will be posting in the future and came to the past to see the beginnings of it all play out. Both are completely valid reasons to be here, but first, let’s cover the basics:

About Me:

I’m a hobbyist game developer/college student studying Computer Science. I have an interest in Japanese things and have recently studied abroad there. I am also my University’s Game Development Club president, and I haven’t been mutinied yet, so that’s a good sign. My first game system was the Gameboy Advance (there is no such thing as coincidences, eh?) and my favorite game is Pokemon Emerald.

Why Tumblr?

Simply put, I wanted to share my adventure in game development with more people, and this seemed like a good place to do so. I also have a few friends here already, so might as well join the party. I have a Twitter too (@kyle_toom) but that platform isn’t particularly well suited for long devblogs.

What will you post?

At the moment, I am considering posting about once every two weeks. The reason for this is that I want to deliver quality posts... and am a busy person who can’t spend all day blogging and making games :P As for what I will be posting, for now, I will be talking about making games for the GBA, but in the future you can expect me to talk about another very special mostly-secret(TM) game. I am a programmer by nature, but I want this blog to be accessible to non-programmers as well, so I will leave the technobabble confined to technical note sections of the blog and explain things from a non-programmer’s perspective otherwise.

GBA! GBA!

Alright, alright. Let’s get to it.

Well first things first: how does one get started? There are two main ways to program a GBA, but we will be taking the C route. C is a programming language that is significantly easier to work with than the other option, assembly. Here is a sampling of each to see the visual differences:

Assembly:

Yeah okay, it looks complicated either way, but at least with C you can give things names to make it a lot more readable. Both codes simply fill the screen with a given color, so nothing too fancy. However, thanks to modern compiler technologies we can turn C code directly into a GBA game file (referred to as a ROM). If anyone is wondering where I got the information to make GBA ROMs, you can find the tutorial I used here. Needless to say, though, it is geared at experienced programmers, so be warned.

So let’s make a simple GBA ROM! Well first thing’s first, we have to get an image, “sprite”, onto the screen.

Yay! We got a tiny 8 pixel by 8 pixel sprite onto the screen! That was easy enough right? Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. I made a sprite that uses two alternating colors in a palette and then put it at the coordinates (16, 16). As opposed to what you learned in math class, the coordinate system in the GBA starts with (0,0) at the top left, with the y-axis increasing as you go down. The reason it does this is because of how memory is structured and how the GBA handled scanlines. Yes, scanlines, just like an old CRT screen TV. Normally computers can flash an image onto a screen all at once, but GBAs do it one line at a time. This means that if you change a sprite’s position in between lines, you could end up shearing the image! Thankfully, there is a few millisecond period between finishing a frame and starting the next, so we actually change the sprite’s position in that brief time.

Another thing about images in the GBA is that they are almost always paletted images. This means that instead of using any color under the rainbow, an image has to use a small selection of colors. Technically you can draw to the GBA with its full range of colors, but this is actually too slow to draw at 60 frames per second with. Thanks to the Tools menu in VisualBoy Advance, the emulator that I use, you can actually see the palettes stored in memory:

The first (technically 0th) spot in sprite palettes is actually reserved for transparency, so I started adding colors at the next two spots.

Next, let’s make the square move! Because the GBA runs at 60 fps, it is pretty easy to write up some code to add consistent movement to a sprite.

But a little 8x8 square is pretty boring, huh? Why don’t we add a 16x24 sprite then? Well, things get a little bit tricky with that, actually. We can have 16x8, 16x16, or 16x32 sprites with the GBA, as well as other dimensions that satisfy the expression 8*2^n, but we can’t actually have 16x24 sprites. This leaves us with two options: take up extra space and use a 16x32 sprite to draw a 16x24 sprite, or use two sprites, a 16x16 and 16x8 sprite. I actually like the second option better so I will do that.

Player sprite borrowed from my friends at Monster Crown, an upcoming monster taming game! Woo! You can check out their fully funded Kickstarter here.

So that was no problem, right? Well, this time I have been vastly oversimplifying it. You can’t just take an image’s data and store it in the GBA’s memory directly. If you did, it would look something like this:

Now THAT harkens back to the good ol’ days with Missingno on Pokemon Red and Blue! This is because while normal computers take images row by row, the GBA can only work with 8x8 “tiles”. If you split it up correctly, this is one of the ways you can represent it:

The main thing that you don’t see happening here is that each third of the image is actually split into two 8x8 chunks. The data of the first chunk has to completely finish before you can get to the data of the second one, as opposed to storing the information row by row like normal. This is how the 8x8 tile that is the left side of the character’s head is actually stored:

Because this is a pain in the neck to do by hand, I actually made myself a tool to do it for me. After all, the motto of programming is “if you keep having to do something, make a function or program to do it for you.”

Well anyways, that’s enough for now. Next time I will show you how I add backgrounds and animation to my demo.

If you would like to try the demo out for yourself, here is the GBA ROM file.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!

Programmer time

Okay, time for me to let my programming talk run free! This time, I would like to talk about what we call I/O registers on the GBA.

You know how normally to get something on a computer screen you have to call a function? Yeah nope, not on the GBA or similar systems. Instead of calling a function to get a sprite on the screen, we have to write to a certain memory address. Except not even that! For instance, address 0x6000000 isn’t actually at that location in memory, as the GBA doesn’t even have that much memory to begin with. Rather, the top few bits of the memory address indicate which chip on the GBA to send the data too. While 0x6000000 is byte 0 of VRAM, 0x4000000 is byte 0 of the BIOS.

Anyways, to get a sprite on screen we have to do several things. First, we have to load the sprite’s image data into a certain part of VRAM. And then we have to load the palette into Palette Memory (yes it’s separate). Finally, we have to go into what we call Object Attribute Memory (OAM) to tell the sprite where to go on screen, which palette to use, which properties to have, and if it’s even supposed to draw or not.

Okay, so that’s not too crazy. But of course, every bit of every type of memory has to be utilized! Something that threw me off for a bit was that the y coordinate for a sprite takes up 8 bits of memory... While the x coordinate takes up 9 bits. Lots of bitshifts and bit masks.

The final caveat with memory has to do with how each memory is built into the circuit. Some chips are 16 bit, some are 32 bit. While this generally doesn’t do much, if you try to write a single byte to VRAM then, well, you’ve written two bytes with the same value. It very much enforces that 16 bit value when it comes to VRAM and I believe a few others. I can already tell that working with memory is one of the hardest parts of working with the GBA...but onwards none-the-less!

#gamedev #retrogaming #gameboy #pixel art #devlog #devblog #pixelart

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oneweekoneband · 8 years ago

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GUEST POST: Jessie Lynn McMains on "Letterbomb"

We’re worried about the two of you, all our other friends said. The two of us being me and my then-best friend/roommate, Maggie. We thought our friends were being boring and just not getting it, but oh my God, I’d be worried about the girls we were then, too, if I encountered us now. Our whole situation was weird and sad. Long story short, earlier that year we’d burned half our bridges—some of them because they needed to be burnt, others simply because, hey, the match was already lit—and become this codependent unit of two. We barely left each other’s sides, we barely left our apartment, we were broke and depressed and self-medicating with pills and weed and liquor. I truly, truly do not understand why I romanticize ye olde days so much, because when I look at them objectively I think: My life is better in almost every way than it was back then. Yet I continue to long for the past. But I digress—it was September 2004, me and Maggie vs. the world, and the few friends we hadn’t set ablaze rarely wanted to hang out because they were either worried about us or depressed by our habits. Because a party is no longer fun when it happens every night.

It was a crushingly lonely time. As much as I loved Maggie, it’s impossible to have all your needs for intimacy, connection, and affection fulfilled by one person. All my other Chicago friends thought I was a bummer to be around, my faraway friends were, well, faraway, and my romantic life was a shambles. And the Fireside Bowl—the legendary punk venue of Chicago—shut down; that place was the site of so many of my best memories that losing it felt like I'd lost another old friend. The other thing I remember about that September was the constant staticy noise in my head. I likened it to having a radio antennae connected to my brain that picked up the soundwaves of the city, so not only did I have to listen to the voices that were already in my head—I heard everyone else’s chatter, too. Everything was lonely and hard and cold and loud and I was just fucking exhausted, really.

It was in that bleak landscape that I heard American Idiot. I hadn't loved a Green Day album since Nimrod. (Warning had a few great tracks, but the album as a whole didn't thrill me), but I instantly fell in love with American Idiot. And there was one particular track that felt like it was speaking directly to, for, about me--"Letterbomb." As I said in my piece about "She," I love the Green Day songs about/from the point of view of girls. They're so different from the casual misogyny that infects a lot of other pop punk bands' Songs About Girls (I'm not naming any names, but...) Sure, maybe the girls/women in Green Day's songs tend to be a bit larger-than-life, a bit idealized, but they're also rebels and troublemakers, and they have their own distinct emotions. It's so refreshing! American Idiot features three of them in a row--"She's A Rebel," "Extraordinary Girl," and "Letterbomb."

"Letterbomb" opens with the unmistakeable vocals of none other than Kathleen Hanna, someone whose words and songs had meant so much to me for nearly as long as Billie Joe's had. In her sweet-bratty singsong she chanted the exact thing I was feeling: nobody likes you / everyone left you / they're all out without you / having fun... The song is a poppy punk rock rager, wherein Billie reassured me that as bad as things were, my life wasn't over (it ain't over till you're underground). And then the final verse harkens back to that lonely feeling from the opening. She said, I can't take this place / I'm leaving it behind / Well she said, I can't take this town / I'm leaving you tonight. I heard that and I thought--maybe I needed a break from the city that was beating me down. Though I loved Chicago, maybe what I needed more than anything was a change of scenery. And some new friends.

Jessie Lynn McMains is a writer, small press owner, and the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Racine, Wisconsin. Recent and forthcoming publications include 10 Poems By Jessie Lynn McMains, an e-chapbook released by Hello America, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk, a memoir-in-fragments revolving around punk and her misspent youth, coming from Pioneers Press/Punch Drunk Press later in 2017. She is also a long-time zinester—she published her first zine the year Dookie was released. You can also find her on Tumblr at @rustbeltjessie

#green day #jessie lynn mcmains #rustbeltjessie

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thebrewstorian · 8 years ago

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Pop Culture Conference 2017: Beer Culture: Session 4: International brewing

The last session of day one in the beer culture track at the PCA/ACA 2017 conference was on international beer culture.

And yes, you’ll understand why I’ve included this picture if you keep reading...

First up was Sam Goodman, who gave a paper entitled "Beerexit: politics, identity, and nation in British Beer Exit." It was fascinating on many levels, but the main one for me is the overlap in this sort of "political performance" I feel like we've been drowning in on our side of the pond.

I'm a bit obsessed with British mysteries, but am far from fluent in the nuances of British politics, but Goodman did a great job establishing the connections between beer, political/national identity, and pub space. He focused specifically on some main players in the Brexit vote last spring: Nigel Farage, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson. All wealthy elites who, as Goodman said "convinced poorer class they understood" through lies, some statistics, and beer. And interestingly they used bars as "impromptu" stages for political rallies

On a more general level it's easy to see how British beer brands and movements like CAMRA link to regionalism or national pride, but Goodman sees in this a tendency to lionize an imaginary British past, as well as justify an exclusionary or aggressive form of nationalism. We can understand this through what Raphael Samuel calls theaters of memory, which are seen at the end of empires when citizens are keen to remember and celebrate the past as a part of their desire to hold onto a disappearing world.

This is seen in many ways, but for the purposes of beer culture this harkening back to a time when Britain was pre-eminent is reflected in pub culture and consumers. Pubs in England have been seen as a "leveled" space, a third space where personal and professional lines blur. Historically, pubs have been a place for politics and a celebration of national mythos, this sense of living in an old country and having regular encounters with national history/heritage. And for consumers and politicians this has taken the shape of a "performative pint drinker," the man in the pub persona.

We looked at great pictures of these politicians drinking, with one of the best sites being the Tumblr blog "Pictures of Nigel Farage with a Pint."

Apart from the very Britishness of their surroundings and their tweeds or hats, these men are also adhering to an unspoken (but maybe well understood) rule that they drink an IPA. This acts to call attention to a post-war heyday when you could celebrate Englishness -- and to them this is before the decline of all things traditional (read “good”) c/o the EU where the focus has been more on inter nation cooperation. But even if you don't actually understand the back story of the British pub culture or get the EU issues, it doesn't make a difference because you can still catch the broad English stereotypes.

Tim Martin, a known leave supporter, owns a pub chain that nicely illustrates this -- JD Wetherspoon. It opened in 1979, is known for being cheap with long open hours, for whimsy and eccentricity, for repurposed business or commercial buildings, and for its MANY locations. These spaces definitely play up the link to nostalgia and British history, but also offer an opportunity to think about issues such as an "Anglo-sphere" or history linked to empire building.

Interestingly, though Paul Nuttal has bemoaned the decline of British pubs and British life, this hazily defined traditionalism via British beer and pub rallies doesn't always come across to voters, and so he's now looking to move away from the pub thing. Though he probably won't move away from the "tweed."

Speaking of national identity, John Gillespie have a great talk called "The People’s Drink: The Politics of Beer in the German Democratic Republic." The post-WWII German state was shattered by the war and 1945 eradication of their entire government. Provisional governments were set up by the Allied Occupation, resulting in the east/west split we know about. This split solidified in the 1950s as the cold war heated up.

Obviously beer is an important part of German identity, linked with both material and traditional values. It was used as a sort of propaganda in the German Democratic Republic. Gillespie discussed how the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (and Soviets?) thought about when and where beer was appropriate in a socialist state, specifically how it could show shared values and be adapted to a larger socialist agenda.

East Germany couldn't keep up with the West Germans in production since they had less money and support for rebuilding their infrastructure. Though major manufacturing facilities weren't renovated or built right away, in the 1950s/1960s there was work done to reimagine and renovate drinking spaces, removing the dark pubs, focusing on avoiding abuse, increasing the production of bottled beer to break the link with social spaces (despite renovations), and how to be in line with the policy of "social engineering" championed by the Socialist Unity Party. Part of the regime's message was "we are in this together," and beer was one way to highlight a shared national identity. They wanted people to know that they were building German "Everyman."

Liquor was not part of this plan, but although beer and wine didn't face as much objection, any alcohol consumption was still complicated for socialists and communists. Drinking beer led to contentedness and leisure time. At the same time, it was a sort of social lubricant, and many workers saw pubs as a social space and a place for solidarity. So a total prohibition wasn't ever adopted, but a key point to alcohol related policies was to link to the "people, acknowledging the politics of consumption (whether they are good or bad) and see how beer could be seen as a cultural commodity in a system where socialism provides the same "comforts" as capitalism.

So in this new image of beer there was an inherent social message. You could consume it in modern cafe and restaurants, at home in leisure time, outside in sun, etc, etc. There were accepted spaces for alcohol consumption that were linked to healthy proletariat citizens.

Finally, because there was an understanding of how important beer was for the general world image, as well as their self image, you did see infrastructure improvements and solid course of growth for East German breweries.

One thing I am still curious about is the idea of opaque and transparent nationalism or coercion via a sort of celebration of national identity. I will resist my urge to get very political right now, and will avoid commenting on the "America First" rhetoric by asking you to think on your own about whether the Englishness and socialist campaigns I've described in this post are honestly communicating with the general populace. Or are they counting on people to be swayed by soundbites, fun pictures, and fancy words?

#pcaaca17 #brexit #britain #english beer #german beer #beer and nationalism #beer history #beer #international beer

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yuli-ban · 8 years ago

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Anarchy in Prague/Belle Grand-Mär Megapost

See, now this is a megapost. The goth one was only about two unique pictures. This one has three.

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Current theme song for Anarchy in Prague. Harkens back to the days when it was described as a “Stoner Rock Scott Pilgrim”.

Drawn by @dalf

She’s 27 at the time the story starts. She is literally on the edge of being a Millennial (I’m one of those who thinks the cut-off between Millennials/Generation Y and iGeneration/Generation Z should be 2001, but some say it’s actually 1996).

Drawn by @alouissever

If two people share a 1-Up, how would that work? Also, you can tell they’re getting close to 30 just by how stoned they look when, in fact, they’re trying to stay awake for New Year’s. I love this aspect of Anarchie, rambling about how Millennials are growing old and are no longer the dominant youth generation. In 2024 (which is 7 years away), there will be 40-something Millennials. I’ll be 30, holy fucking mother of fathers.

Drawn by @dalf

Muriel and Malfiore. Pan’s goth “girls”. Muriel’s, like, 28. However, Malfiore/Marie is 37. She’s still a Millennial, yo. 2024-37=1987. She’s a fucking ‘90s kid and she’s already growing some grays and finding the protoforms of what will one day become wrinkles.

Drawn by @alouissever

Arthur and his sister, Daria (yes, I know it was Darya; deal with it). Daria’s nonplussed about how childish Venus remains.

Drawn by @alouissever

I actually couldn’t find the bottom image for the longest time, so I think this is the first time I’ve posted it to Tumblr. See? It’s not all reposts. I kinda like how Venus looks like a ghost in the second picture, but Dalf forgot about the Saint Vitus logo! And yes, that’s a Pepper robot. I imagined that they might gain a bit more utility between now and 2024. Also, funny thing about Venus being a “hipster”. She’s actually not. She’s more of a moddie than a hipster. But since Arthur’s a hipster, she sometimes tries to be one ironically.

Drawn by @dalf

Arthur Tartakovsky, Venus’s ultra-hipster boyfriend. This was before he gained his ironic mustache. He used to be in an indie pop band in an earlier draft, but nowadays he’s still in an indie pop band. The actual change was his other hobby: before, he was a comic artist. Now he’s an indie game dev specializing in retro games and VR cyberpunk. The world of indie game devs can get hectic, especially in a tight job market. He has to deal with rival devs sabotaging each other and himself sometimes, which is why he developed electrokinetic powers.

Early sketches of the original trio. Only Venus has really changed visually. She was much less notable.

Drawn by @dalf

I already did the posts where @pan-pizza gets his nuts crushed. I see no reason why I should post them again other than to goad Pan into reblogging this megapost. Pan, do not reblog this.

Drawn by @alouissever

Drawn/animated by @spookyfishcakes

Drawn by @nicolas-px-art

Early form of Malfiore. She always wears Ed’s clothes (a la Ed Edd n Eddy), but it was much more faithful in the earliest sketches. Just ask Alouisse-Ver. Also, she used to have Daria’s hairstyle.

Muriel’s first sketch, back before she had her top hat. I created her as a loveletter to Pan Pizza and his gothosexual tendencies; Malfiore was always going to be a part of the story.

Drawn by @alouissever

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Anarchie’s still got a lotta stoner rock in it (Venus’s band and their scene mates are all either stoner rock or heavy rock), but even back in 2014 when I first created the story, I left some room for indie rock. Nowadays, they both take up an equal amount of space. If it ever becomes a movie or a cartoon, it’ll probably be the only one in history where the OST consists of Nebula, Kyuss, Radio Moscow, and Orange Goblin right alongside The Pillows, Kodaline, Arctic Monkeys, and Porno Mags. Radiohead one second, Pentagram the next.

And, for now, that’s all for Anarchie. I’ve yet to commission pictures of Kalo, Syd, Adamski, or Azura Meco, but those are coming. I’m just actually working on the story. Shocker, I know. Even I’m surprised. I just did a 30,000 word outline in about 10 days; the real rough draft should be finished by April.

And now for BGM, which is basically “Anarchie + Cyberdelic Pharmaceuticals”. The early posts here don’t show that off well, but the world will know...

Title card still pending.... I made that 3 yea— holy fuck, I made that three years ago?! How is it 2017 already?

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Pure stardream. It sounds like dreamrock, honestly. The moment I heard this, I knew I had found BGM’s BGM. No pun intended. It was either this or Stand Up.

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Belle. Belle Grand-Mär. British moddie, real name “Indira Elizabeth Jones”, elective mute, severe and antisocial, freeskating and freerunning traceause, yadayadayada. If Venus was a female Scott Pilgrim fused with Murdoc Niccals, Belle is Ramona Flowers + Haruko Haruhara + Ryuko Matoi + Garnet + a mime + Neku Sakuraba + a silent cartoon character. I’m glad I’m a writer. Try creating a silent character! You’d better have mastered visual emotion.

Aurora. Real name “Farideh Moradi”, Persian-Briton moddie, freerunning traceuse, Belle’s closest friend and whatnot. She literally got her name from the reference to the Aurora Borealis in A Flock of Seagull’s uber-80′s hit “I Ran (So Far Away)”. The 2020′s are basically the ‘80s with more cyberdelia, after all.

Bomb. Real name “Madeleine Violetta Dumont”, French moddie, actually dead and works as a psychokinetic grim reaper whenever she feels like it. Also Belle’s rival and foil. Freeskating traceuse. She was created in 2009 as the lead character in a story that was literally “JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future + The World Ends With You”. This is why she seems like someone badly took a character from each of those games and fused them together.

Drawn by @alouissever

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Parov Stelar’s beautiful little electroswing track. It’s so 2020′s. BGM has much more of a stardream atmosphere than the down-to-earth feel of Anarchie. There’s a lot more chiptune, dreamier rock, electrofunk, and whatnot. If you took the soundtrack to Super Mario Galaxy and Steven Universe, mixed it with the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio Future, and made it thrice as eclectic, you’d get something like BGM’s presumed BGM.

You may have noticed that all the characters for BGM thus far are moddies. That’s no mistake or coincidence— it’s a moddie story. It has a stronger character than Anarchie, to the point I can even call it when aspects of Anarchie “seem like something out of BGM”. Moddies are already getting started, though no one’s yet calling them moddies. But you see how vaporwave’s gotten so big? How neon and pixel art is dominating Tumblr? Seapunk and dyed hair are everywhere, everyone loves hallucinogenics, and everyone loves the ‘80s once more. Major Lazer, for the fucking win. Right now, we say that these are signs of hipsterdom. But in the 2020s, we’re going to look back and realize what it really was— the birth of the moddies. We’ve not yet reached the moddies— we still need a Transhuman Be-In, cheaper OLEDs, and a Sgt. Pepper moment for electronic music (where people stop seeing it as purely dance music). And I don’t see anyone who owns a robot like Pepper or ASIMO yet either. And while luminescent hair is definitely a thing, it’s not yet become a common thing. Nor has leaving up Christmas lights all year, or being obsessed with bright primary colors.

But we’re getting there. And the thing that will trigger the final separation between post-hipsters and moddies isn’t a Transhuman Be-In, but simply time: us Millennials are indeed growing older. I was born in ‘94, and I’m 22 going on 23. Millennials brought back hipsterdom, but ‘10s hipsters suffered a brutal blow due to the loss of Bernie Sanders and the rise of Donald Trump. Our whole zeitgeist became fragile. Hence why people are looking for harder music instead of the previously comfortably twee indie pop and nu-folk. Being vintage and authentic hasn’t helped us one bit, and the kids— those younger than ourselves— don’t believe in our ideals. They just see a blizzard. Some may mock the hair colors, but they secretly love it. They want something more than what Millennials are offering. They are loving several aspects of what’s big— aforementioned things like vaporwave, electronic music, dyed hair, cyberpunk revivalism, ‘80s and ‘90s love, etc.— but other aspects, they are eager to discard. There’s a strain of neo-futurism in the iGeneration, which isn’t surprising considering they were raised as something of a proto-cyborg generation.

And that’s the moddies in a nutshell. Kids who recognize they live in “The Future™” and wish to own it. They don’t just listen to electronic music because it’s cool; it also aids that whole sense of living in years that previous generations thought were purely sci-fi. They don’t see electronic music as just dance club/background music. They want electronic versions of prog rock and conscious hip hop. They’re more than happy to drop acid and fuck robots. They don’t love the obsession with a minimalist future with sterile colors— they want neon. Neon lights, neon paint, and a cyberdelic attitude. If that means making cities look like one giant rave, so be it. Because ha ha, they live in the Future.

You can forgive them for their incredible optimism; they’re just kids. And they want you to know it.

#Anarchy in Prague #moddie #indie #goth time #Scott Pilgrim #post-hipster #Belle Grand-Mär #hipster #2020s #neon rock #dreamrock #pixel art

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weaselbeaselpants · 8 years ago

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Tim Burton and race: A critical approach by a life long white fan-girl

This is an old thing I wrote back in October back when Burton made some not so sensitive comments about diversity. It’s been lying in my box forever and though times have already changed so much since Halloween, I think my argument deserves to at least be shared. If you have anything to add or talk about it with me, feel free to talk to me in my inbox or message me with your thoughts.

--------------------------------------- From October 2016, three weeks before Doomsday or so

For those who don’t know, Burton basically said in an interview about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, that he gets angry at people trying to “force” diversity into his casts. The only black guy in sight of his new film is Samuel L. Jackson…as a villain. Combined that with his comments about how he thought Brady Bunch was offensive for it’s “PC thing” and “they don’t force white ppl in blaxploitation movies dur it’s fair”, and let’s just say people aren’t happy with him...Burton being such a big artistic force in the goth fandom it reinstates a problem I see a lot with goth-subculture and that’s a lack of recognition to the gothic people of color. Even though I’ve met black Goths, Hispanic Goths, Indian Goths, Asian Goths and so on who love the same things I do, they’re never portrayed in the media as much as the practically undead zombie girls like Lydia Deetz (and yes I know that pale skin is kind of a character design thing rather than exclusion, but you know what I mean). Goth and horror are a sort of unifying subculture. Death and uncomfortable subject matter is present in every culture and spoken in every language. It connects us all, from wanting to share that cultural significance with the rest of the world, to simply giving people who don’t have that much of an ethnic or cultural identity a place to be with others like you. Simply put: it’s a subculture.

So there’s the fact that not wanted to be more inclusive is troublesome but I think it can be argued with. Timmy isn’t a studio, he’s a man. He can make a movie about whoever he wants. As a feminist I’m actually kinda impressed by how well he can direct movies about women and just female characters in general.

However, Burton hasn’t always had the best track record of diverse roles. If his casts aren’t 90% wonderbread, he has this really bad 80s habit of shockingly blunt racism in an otherwise modern and progressive film.

There have been moments where he proved this wrong, such as in Mars Attacks

his really old Hansel and Gretel film

and Batman

but then there’s this scene which I always found uncomfortable in Beetlejuice

this line from The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy

And most potently of all, as it is one of my favorite Tim Burton movies, Toshiaki from Frankenweenie:

Burton’s assertion is that diverse casts are not always necessary for whatever film he was making, especially when they’re period pieces. But let’s be real here, aside from Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd, when has a Tim Burton film ever harkened to one specific part of the world or culture? Pretty much never, so his argument, which amounts to the tired “forced diversity” excuse, is really weak.

And yet, I don’t think Burton is trying to be offensive or is truly hateful in anyway. If you ask me, he needs to realize that his vision isn’t just his anymore.

What I mean is, I wouldn’t call Tim a racist in the sense that he actively hates anyone. I’m saying that if he is racist, it’s because he doesn’t understand the issue with diversity. Burton unknowingly does write with a culture in mind, and that culture is the one he grew up in: Middle-class white Suburbia where people were shallow and toxic to things outside of the norm.

Burton’s best films always feel like they’re written from the heart. That’s because he understands what he’s a fanboy of and knows how to put it in his words. If there is one unfortunate trait Burton has laying around from his life in Burbank, it’s that as forward thinking as he may want to be or thinks he is, he doesn’t understand what it means to be a non-white person dealing with his problems. He doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal because race seems not to matter to him personally, so the all-white-casting getting called out doesn’t seem so much like a concern but more of a nitpick to him.

And again, the man makes movies based on the stuff which influenced him as a kid. Those movies were not dark fantasy novels or children’s books (which is one reason for why I have such a problem with people handing him those movies because his name is on Nightmare Before Christmas). Burton grew up on old horror/B-movies dating back to the 20s. These were movies that were entirely based on mood and emotion, not really on logic, and you see that carry into his own work a lot.

I don’t wanna dig back into 90s Tim Burton to find any evidence when for all I know, he’s probably changed his opinion, but if his weird intro to “House of Wax” is any indicator I think he idolizes these movies way too much. He sees the best parts of them and wants to make his own films like that, without questioning all the implications behind his favorite films that he never thought about because he wasn’t one the receiving end of a joke.

This relates back to Frankenweenie and my honest to god theory as to why Toshiaki…is Toshiaki.

Toshiaki feels like he wasn’t supposed to be offensive but is because of what role he served for the story. The kids in Victor’s class are parodies of horror movie staples. Nassor is a parody of Boris Karloff cause his pet is a mummy and the same logic is applied to Toshiaki: He’s the kid who brings back a Kaiju, so he’s Japanese and has the hokey mannerisms associated with the bad Godzilla dubs from the 50s-70s. Problem is the roles these background characters fill is still an antagonistic role to our main character, or at least an obstacle. Add that Toshiaki’s accent, attitude, intelligence, perfectionism and you got a prime example of what were you thinking? Unlike Oogie Boogie, which I truly think was unintentional, this choice in writing and voice acting was bad and should have been thought over more.

Besides his whiteness and age, I think there’s another explanation for his narrow-minded view. And it’s the thing that’s made a lot of Socially-impaired kids love Tim Burton stuff: he’s never been a people person. If you’ve ever read one of his biographies you’ll know that Burton had enough problems just trying to understand people as a whole. With the only world outside his own messed up one was a world where diversity doesn’t matter because no one around him would have that problem or were sad-but-true backwards depictions of a minority by a white majority.

Burton sees story first and doesn’t get why things like making sure the actors are one race or another is a problem because to him, it isn’t a problem. It’s the essence of what he loves and what he wants to say that takes center frame in a Burton movie. He’ll put himself and his own struggles as well as those influences onto his characters (just was Cesar from The Cabinet of Dr. Calligari and compare it to Edward Scissorhands). Because so many of the things that inspired him as a kid starred predominantly white guys, he doesn’t think it’s failed because what he’s sees as successful is right up there on screen. Burton’s guilty of what a lot of white people do: not considering what it means to want your culture properly represented or portrayed in a film.

----

I truly don’t think Tim Burton meant to sound as backwards as he did or meant to hurt so many people. But the fact is, he did and it would be great if he realizes his mistake and says some form of apology. He should know that saying there’s a time and place for diversity is not only insensitive but very close-minded, especially when you don’t bother to explain yourself with dignity.

In every other sense, Burton seems like a mostly cool guy to talk to, a very-down-to-earth guy all considering. I hope that he somehow talks about this with people. He shouldn’t demand apologies, but if he gives people the chance to speak that’d be reason enough to at least call him responsible for his actions.

So can I(or you) still like Tim Burton’s movies, death-of-the-author not withstanding?:

Absolutely.

Burton and his work are flawed. I think there’s merit to a lot of it, but I’m not gonna act like it doesn’t have those problems nor defend them. I’ll celebrate everything else I love about Burtonfandom and advocate for more inclusion and better behavior from one of my favorite filmakers/directors.

We should be able to talk about if a filmmaker is being an ass or not like adults, not children. One ugly trend I’ve seen on tumblr is for people to skim someone’s blog, see a couple things they like, then make an assumption about that person based on what they geek about, even going so far as to denounce their opinion or say they are just as bad as the thing they like. Yeah, sometimes what people like/watch is saying about them, but that’s no reason to go into a blame game and acting so rude. I personally don’t care for Nostalgia Critic, but if I went around declaring everyone who liked it was a money-grubbing sexist jerk cause I think he is, I guess I’d have to denounce a lot of my friends who deserve to keep their opinion as I deserve to keep mine.

I want people to talk about Burton’s stupid little comment, but I don’t want a witch-hunt of fandoms to start by association. We should save rabid Burton hating and witch-hunting when it turns out the man is actually Mel Gibson living a double life.

#Tim Burton #racism #diversity #representation

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nerdcorp · 8 years ago

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Nerdy Journal - March 21st. Everyone is Sick and I’m Still Up.

So here I am, at three til 7 a.m. and I can’t sleep. My father is sick with the flu, and compounded with the stress of my Grandmother’s stroke and subsequent rehab (amid family drama surrounding that), I think he’s finally hitting the wall health wise. He almost needs this flu. It’s making him take a few days to sleep and rest. He’s one of those men who really can’t seem to take time for himself ever, so I’m hoping we can get him some much needed rest these next few days. This is also making me worried about getting the flu. I felt a little under the weather today, but I’m hoping its just the drastic change in weather (again) and not the asshole that is...the flu.

So since my last journal update, a lot has happened. We lost the site due to a catastrophic error. We’re not sure what happened, but it definitely wasn’t my fault. Nope. Not mine. I did not do it. I did not accidentally kill six years of work. Nope. Totally wasn’t me.....Sarcasm aside, the part that sucks the worse is the fact that my own mistake cost me six years of amazing content that I created. Sure, others lost their work too, but (and this is a true stat), I wrote 89% of all the articles on that site. My soul was in that site. So it felt like a death in the family when I realized that all of those years of hard work and brand building went for not.

However, we’re back. We relaunched the site, under the NerdCorp banner (RealNerdCorp.com) and we’re still trying to figure out what it’s going to be, but right now I’m just happy we have it up and running. Ace and myself put in a few tough hours trying to fix things. I owe @ageoface187 a lot for his help in getting things back up and running. He’s been my partner since 2009 in this goal of ours and I couldn’t ask for a better comrade. I took what I knew about coding and redesigned the site myself with a brand new layout, putting in my own touches on the site and while it’s going to evolve over the years, right now I’m very happy with our new starting point.

Also, we have a very active YouTube page now. For a while we weren’t getting too much traction with Brand Banter being the only thing we posted, but since we upped our content output we’ve grown by about 300%. While not impressive to many, we’re up to 40 subscribers and over 4,000 total listens. We’re happy about this, and Marcus and myself will continue to produce content for the channel on a weekly basis.

And in more tragic news, the comic shop I called home closed up and announced they were going out of business, I shit you not, a week and an hour before my grandmother’s stroke. I now personally hate Wednesday’s. My shop was literally right around the corner from me, making my trips easy and fun. Now, with everything going on, and a change in work schedules and the like, I’m no unable to make the 50 minute round trip to my second favorite store every week, making my purchases few and far between. Though, I’m angling to get that in this week. Right now I’m going every three weeks and that needs to change.

Now in less tragic news, lets talk Paige. Firstly, hacking sucks, it’s wrong and leaking nude photos is fucked up. Of anyone. However; we’re treating this differently than other leaks in the past. Hulk Hogan, Tom Phillips and Seth Rollins all had nudes or private and sensitive information leaked against their will; yet were vilified or mocked. Why aren’t we extending equality to all who are victims? Also, that being said, I’m not a proponent for the treatment of said NXT Women’s championship. When I heard about that, that was...wrong. Especially since we don’t know if others, like Bayley or Asuka have carried that same title. For those who don’t know, you get a belt as a congratulatory gesture after winning it in most major companies. Hell, even the NWA does (did?) it. So it may of been Paige’s own version of the title. Fine. However, if it’s the expensive traveling belt? That fans pose with in pictures? That women use in storylines? That has been in circulation for the last few years? If you’re allowing that belt to be used as a sex toy, and then letting others come into contact with it, then we need to have a serious conversation. Because yes, that is in fact how diseases spread. Like Hogan however, I do hope that Paige and the other celebrities involved in these hacks get justice.

The World Baseball Classic is nearing it’s conclusion and I’ve got to see so much of it that I’m about to explode with delight. Firstly, can I just say what a bunch miss of opportunities are happening right now for MLB? The diverse collection of talents on both team USA and the Netherlands should be highlighted and showcased, but instead I feel like more people want to talk about high profiled, over paid basketball players sitting out of games when healthy, then the amazingness that is the WBC.

The final four are Japan, USA, Puerto Rico and the Netherlands. Now, as of this writing, Puerto Rico knocked the Netherlands out of the championship round, and Japan and the USA play tonight. I’m rooting for the US to finally make the championship round, but as always Puerto Rico and Japan are proving to be very daunting teams.

YouTube wise, I’m really getting into viewing content on there a lot more. I’ve dropped Going in RAW from my watch list, as “Steve Here” is just a pandering tool, who mocks every little thing in an attempt to be “edgy” but is so uneducated about the things he talks about, it actually comes off as pathetic. His co-host “And Larson”, does a great job trying to bring credibility to the show, but seeing fans in the comments lambast Steve for basically being the kind of fan that no one likes, is hilarious to me.

I did start watching Jordan Underneath recently. While I’m not a big “horror” fan, I do love the vibe of the 1950-60′s horror themed comedies like The Addams Family or The Munsters (mostly the Munsters). I also love the old 30′s-40′s horror icons, like The Creature, Wolfman, Dracula, etc. They’re my Halloween Heroes. So for me to find Jordan Underneath, it’s kind of like finding a new version of that “ghostly humor” I enjoyed. His content is rather spotty at best, in regards to when he uploads. If you’re part of his Patreon, he has more shows, so there’s always another avenue. However, even with the limited selection and the time in between, he puts out a great product. Well thought out, well researched and well put together. The best part of this though isn’t even the games or the opinions but his comedic timing. He has a timing and personality that is in line with my best friend’s comedic opinion. So for me it’s like I’m listening to my best friend talk about something. It’s truly a fun time. Its nothing to “spooky”, and he really makes the games that may seem too dark for some, a lot more inviting by going into the idea of how people can embrace darker subject matter in ways of getting themselves through their own dark periods. It’s refreshing, and inspiring. He’s up there now with Phillip DeFranco in my book as can’t miss shows.

GameAttack, What Culture Pro Wrestling, DidYouKnowGaming? MatPat’s(?-spelling) stuff , UltraSargent and Parallel Universe Productions continue to be must see’s on YouTube. Though, WCPR is slacking a bit here and there.

Found out recently that The Mega’s put out a new cut of some of their songs. If you’re interested in Mega Man music set to rock-tones, check it out. Plus, one of their band members was recently featured in an episode of Powerless, as the Joker-victim who took the antidote in the alleyway. Yup, he’s in the band.

Speaking of Powerless, it’s my now second favorite DC t.v. show. I love the campiness of it. It really harkens back to the 60′s era Batman. That, shockingly enough “Riverdale” and “Arrow” have proven to be this years best in terms of top to bottom comic related shows. However, iZombie’s third season is about to premiere, so, there might be stiff competition.

Finally, thank you to all of our new Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Mixlr and Facebook followers. We appreciate the love and growth you’ve shown us. You can follow us on all those platforms by going to RealNerdCorp.com and clicking on the corresponding links in the menu and sidebar. This was an exceptionally long post, so thanks for listening to me rant. I have more but, eh, this is good enough.

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