#i had many more tropes i could have used but alas i had to limit them to 10

[thepancakelady]

𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓷𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓷 + 𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓹𝓮𝓼 >> jam rachata as tinn & film thanapat as chan

[sugutoad]

matchup for @coffeebooksrain18

GREEK MYTHOLOGY MATCHUP

I ship you with Hecate — Goddess of Magic and Witchcraft. Hecate, known for her connection to the moon, Magic and the unseen, aligns in a similar manner with your introspective nature and your love for dark themes.. Both of you sometimes face misunderstandings due to your blunt honesty and RBF, and for Hecate, it is is often because of her much darker realm. But magic in truth is not harmful nor deadly, it is the person who wields the power that chooses to be such. Hecate would adore your honesty and your ability to get through any sort of tension to stand up for what you believe (she, herself, is a minor goddess so overlooked and she always has to stand up for her own self, and your presence and confidence only helps more). Hecate is known for many things, but above all else, she is fierce in her loyalty to Hades. She would cherish you so deeply, giving everything and laying it at your feet. Hecate's more soothing aura would temper your fire, navigating you through bouts of anger with the grace you would need. The both of you are cunning and intelligent, and never backing down from anything (can you imagine the bicker?). Hecate is often linked to animals, particularly dogs, which resonates in a way with your love for animals (Willow!) You, like her, are cunning and independent—which align with Hecate’s nature. And as a little bonus, your fascination with dragons, mythical creatures, and darker themes would fit so well with Hecate’s realm of magic and the supernatural.

HEADCANON

To clarify in this world, you are the youngest of Leto’s children. Your elder siblings couldn’t be much different, yet they were still twins. It was always them together (you found yourself a mix of them). And although you were your Mother’s favorite, it was lonely to grow up without someone who would always be with you as a companion. Leto quickly took notice of it and introduce you to Hecate. Although older than you, you found it easy to be around with her. You first met her underneath a Willow tree, when she poked her head from the leaves, scaring you. But she laughed and quickly you began to laugh too. She understood you better than any of your siblings and she challenged you to be this better person. Hecate was supposed to be a sister to you… but alas, the fates were having quite a giggle to themselves as they weaves your strings. When she had to leave for the underworld, she were persistent that she could be a Goddess here instead. Here with you. As a parting gift, she presented you with a dog (who you would later name Willow, afterall you did meet Hecate underneath a Willow tree).

Although each myth differs, the most consistent one is this story of yours and Hecate. Although many people may assume the northern auroras were created by Selene or Artemis, it was in fact Hecate. The day she declared her love for you and took you in her arms, she used magic to illuminate the night sky in colors of purple and green, knowing that those were your favorite colors. She later took you to the underworld in a chariot of diamond, guided by two horses. Each horse was a deep black, covered in the shadows in truth, but its skin was slightly translucent, allowing you to see gleaming white bones.

Both you and Hecate are quiet individuals and this actually allows both of you to stay in each other’s comfort zone at times (unless Hecate is having one of her mood swings, she will probably push you to your limits at times). But can you imagine it? The room softly illuminated a dim glow as the fire crackles near you (although a cold chill still brushes against your skin at times). Hecate is half-dozed off, her gaze so soft while looking at you as you are in her arms. CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Ship Tropes

wonders why everyone is scared of them (You) x the scary shadow (Hecate)

Not sunshine nor moonlight, but an eclipse

lalala x okokok (alters all the time)

Ship Songs

E.T by Katy Perry

Say Yes to Heaven by Lana De Ray

GODDES OF… WHAT?

You are the Goddess of Introspection and Truth, you personified the ability to guide others on their journeys of self-discovery, showing the paths meant and hidden for people. Your power is simply hidden in your brutal honesty and deep emotional insight, helping those who seek your counsel to confront their vulnerabilities (something that tends to me an humans biggest fear at times) and truly embrace themselves. You serve as a beacon of clarity, revealing hidden truths, fostering emotional growth and to help encourage others to navigate their feelings with courage and understanding. Your connection to nature and its creatures only acts a bonus, as you understand the unspoken words an animal may carry, while offering them companionship and solace. You are often symbolized by a mirror that reflects the soul and with a soft illuminating light around it to show the haven you create for others.

COMPANION

Athena has her owl, Hermes has snakes, but you? Who do you have to represent you and be with you as a companion? Your animal symbol is the Raven. Ravens are often associated darker themes such as death, but they also symbolize wisdom, insight, and transformation, representing both the light and darkness that you navigate others on. Like you, Ravens are known for their intelligence and ability to see beyond the surface, which perfectly aligns with you.

[byakugoseal]

There’s a meta below! Under a cut because I got carried away! Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below because a lot of though when into this bad boy!

Sakura should have been given a chance to further develop her skills post chunin exams long before Tsunade’s tutelage. It was clear early on that she had immense chakra control and an intellect to go with it  — albeit she had the vaguest idea of her own strength and self-worth, impacting her abilities. Unlike the rest of her classmates she did not come from a clan or a family of shinobi and therefore was ill prepared for that life style, she did not get taught from a young age how to harness her own power and abilities. Rather, she was left to think on the life and use what she learned in the academy to help her to fight. While I can concede that at the start she gave more interest in boys and crushes than she did fighting, that should have not impacted her learning. 

During her formative years she should have been taught genjutsu and taijutsu both of which would have gone a long way for her, especially taijutsu when paired with her immense physical strength. Learning these could have paired very well with her chakra control and strength she would develop later on in her life. Her actions and behaviors were also way over played in the anime for laughs (even though none of us were laughing) and how she is depicted in the manga differs but, again, I digress. 

Sakura should have been allowed to fight Sasuke, that could have been a great turning point for her character. By all means she would have ( and should have ) lost. Sasuke is years ahead of her in ability and battle strength, however, she could have held her own for a few moments  — but alas she was saved not once but TWICE. Now, I do not think she would have been able to kill him, her own feelings and emotions towards him run far too deeply for that. However, fighting Sasuke and LOSING would have given her that extra push towards validating her own strength and recognizing that she too was getting stronger. This would have motivated her to do more and become even better that kind of set back of holding her own against Sasuke and losing only to have Kakashi and Naruto step in at that point would have pushed her into her own studies. She could use that loss as motivation to become even stronger, not only in her medical prowess but in her combative jutsus. 

During the war she MANUALLY pumped Naruto’s hear ( which is no easy feet ) in order to save his life. There is a certain point in which it is determined that once “all possible life saving measures have been taken” those measures and efforts can be stopped. However, she chose to MANUALLY pump his heart in order to keep him alive despite her chakra being almost depleted at this point ( not to mention that she held her own and punched a literal goddess on the top of her head once she realized where the blindspot was, but I digress ). She went to GREAT lengths during the war to keep everyone alive, pushing herself to her limits. This was made possible through years of training not because of a tailed beast sealed within her, coming from a great clan or even having a kekkei genkai. 

And on the topic of her “usefulness” or lack there of, Kishi never gave her a chance to be part of the main narrative but rather used her as a damsel in distress trope in needing of saving when she could have actually contributed quite a bit had she been given a chance. If she never contributed to the story or the characters’ lives and could have “easily been replaced by any other medical nin” how come she was the only one who was able to understand Sasori’s poison and make an antidote with very limited information? Yes, she had many faults but you have to take into consideration that not only was she a first-generation ninja but up until Tsunade she was never given the time or chance to develop her own skills and training ( not to mention Kishi just using her and most of the other female characters as a plot device but, once again, I digress ).

[lizhly-writes]

for the recent ask game: 1, 7, 19, 22, 36 :), 55, 73?

(sorry, these are just such interesting questions, i did try to limit myself i promise)

ahahahaaaa okay

1. Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

truly i'd like to say that i enjoy writing multi-chaptered fics more. my ambition is grand! alas: my writing stamina is weak. i'm more prone to comfortably writing 500 words and cutting it off there. nobody resents this more than me.

so i suppose it's accurate to say i prefer writing oneshots and resent the fact that i prefer i writing oneshots.

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

so for multi-POV works of fiction, i essentially switch when i get bored, or when i can't figure out where to go next. if i'm bored, then the next character should be more interesting; if i can't figure out where to go next, then i probably don't have a good grasp on at least one of the characters and need to get inside that character's head to do an examination.

for single POVs? it'll just be whoever I've decided will be the Main Character!!!

19. What is the most-used tag on your ao3?

...boringly enough, it's kim dokja. if you don't include characters, i'm afraid to say that everything is very, very even.

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

hmm. so i don't think i'll ever write anything that will require me to put a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat warning on it. any particular tropes themselves, i probably wouldn't shy away from at least implying, but it's incredibly unlikely that i would -- or even could! -- go far enough to say "YEAH I REALLY MEAN IT THERE'S A DEAD DOVE IN HERE", you know?

maybe the dove will be sleeping. maybe you will think the dove is dead but actually, surprise, it was alive the whole time. it is really hard for me to mean it enough to tell you this kind of thing, you know? i don't have the stomach for it.

36. How do you write kissing scenes?

I was WONDERING what the smiley face was for.

sometimes unromantically (i have described a kiss as tasting like spit more than once), but usually quite abstractly. there are some details thrown in - soft lips, warm mouths, hot tongues, this kind of thing. but am i describing what any of those are actually DOING? eh. not necessarily. does it work? who knows? not many of the kiss scenes i've written have actually made it out into the wild, i don't get much feedback on them.

sometimes i just go 'they kissed' and then i write about the panic that happens after that.

55. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

currently, it's my oc, yang haoran. i don't really have a favorite when it comes to fandom. for some reason, i haven't gotten quite the same joy out of breaking someone else's character in half, you know?

it's probably him because i definitely had some of y'all who enjoyed the story he's in and said some nice things about it. if i hadn't, it's unlikely i would have written him for long enough that i like him this much ahaha

73. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

this is frankly a bit hard because i'm not terribly self aware about my own writing. i would have to say that often times, i don't let tension last long. in longer works, it's unlikely i can stay serious for very long; there's likely going to be a one-liner or joke that's popping up.

i'm also pretty fond of using repetition, often times in the same sentence, to smooth things out or to really hammer in a joke. i REALLY like using hyphens. I have a tendency to start paragraphs with ellipses (thanks, orv), and this certain way of structuring sentences (THANKS ORV) like so:

"This type of phrasing, I'm told it's incorrect", instead of "I'm told this type of phrasing is incorrect."

send me an ask!

[siderealcity]

Oh my goodness, yes. All of this. I think Stormblood is the most frustrating expansion for a lot of players not because it's bad, but because there are so many elements of a fantastic story exploring identity and grief and disconnection, and none of them quite stick the landing because they're fighting against the structural limitations of the narrative.

Rambling discussion about FFXIV narrative design under the cut.

The Lyse reveal is the first not-quite-working part, but you can see where they were going for a sort of Man In the Iron Mask trope there. The long-lost True Heir of the revolution takes off her mask and leads her people to victory against tyranny. It doesn't quite work because we didn't get to spend any time at all with Yda before this. She literally isn't in the game at all from the Bloody Banquet until three-quarters of the way through Soul Surrender. That really only gives her one good patch of story quests to build her up. And they had a lot to introduce with the Griffin leading in to the Far Edge of Fate, but... we needed a few scenes of just hanging out with her and Papalymo, which we never got.

But there could have been time to make her work. The writers have been exceptionally skilled at making characters who were previously extremely one-note retroactively much deeper. (See, every single Ascian.)

Problem #1 arises with the way that they set up the start of every single expansion. I don't know if it's a rule or a preference that they always make the first beat of every new expac a binary choice between two things that you do in any order. Go help Artoirel or Emmanellain. Go find Alphinaud or Alisaie. Go to Labyrinthos or Thavnair. In this case, it was help Meffrid or M'naago.

Lyse is only with us on the Meffrid path, which gives us a few beats of her interacting with her childhood home, but then leaves her entirely out of the whole battle-planning arc with Raubahn. She's just been set up as the primary character (and narrator!) for this expansion, but she's barely in half of it so far. And then as soon as both of those quests are complete, Rhalgr's reach is attacked.

And this is the second problem with the structure, and it hits Hien's character development, too: The expansion narrative is split into very awkward chunks to accommodate the different zones on opposite sides of the world. We have barely even gotten into Gyr Abania at all when we suddenly leave it behind. This is not a great metric for measuring narrative by any stretch, but there's like, 27 MSQ quests in Gyr Abania before we leave, including the "go get herbs" and other fetch quest beats in Rhalgr's reach. There's 10 just in getting in and out of Kugane. A city that isn't even related to the plot. It takes us another 18 quests and a random primal fight to reach Yanxia. The Ruby Sea is cool and all, but was this zone even really necessary to the plot? If it'd been cut, we could have spent more time with the Domans and with the Ala Mhigans.

Stormblood's level design, particularly for explorable world areas, was possibly way too ambitious for their budget. And I get the feeling that their art department just went a little stir crazy and wanted to do something more varied after Heavensward, which consisted of snowy mountains, non-snowy mountains, floating mountains, jagged canyony watery mountains, and Tron.

By the time we get to Yanxia, we have spent more time in Stormblood just going to Doma than we have doing anything else, and then we once again immediately leave to go to another place that isn't involved in the war.

And then we're once again split up from Lyse. And also from Hien, whom we have only just met. In order to spend some bonding time with Gosetsu. Which is a nice story beat in many respects. The Dotharl are the first place in the game where the notion of reincarnation is introduced which is super important later for other reasons, and this gives us a chance to get to know Gosetsu before his sacrifice moment, so it has some weight to it. But like. The major characters. Who are supposed to be the faces of Ala Mhigo and Doma. Have not had any screen time. They get one cutscene together, but that's kind of it.

And while we do wind up getting a whopping three solid scenes in which the player spends time with Hien before the battle for Doma Castle, we don't have any with Lyse. She's asleep when we're having dinner with the Mol. She leaves before we drink sake with Hien and Gosetsu. And she doesn't come with us to scout out the ruins of Doma with Hien.

And I suspect this wasn't intentional, so much as an oversight on the part of the writers. Lyse was the face of Stormblood. Of course they assumed you were spending plenty of time with her. It's easy to be heads-down in the writing and just assume that the thing you all agreed was central to the story was there already, because you knew it was supposed to be there. It's also pretty easy to overcorrect, assuming that players were spending a lot of time with the central character, so it was better to spend your budget introducing everyone else instead.

Suddenly very upset that Lyse never got to go visit Old Sharlayan with us.

That's as much her childhood home as Ala Mhigo -- much moreso, even. Yda took her to the Sharlayan Colony and then much like Thancred, they were basically "adopted" by Louisoix and taken to the mainland to study. I figure Lyse probably *did* go to school alongside Yda, but being much younger than Yda never got her Archon Marks. Possibly she was working on it when Yda died, but then in her grief and depression couldn't finish it (extremely relatable; I know so many people who never finished university because of circumstances like that).

And I just.

Lyse is done so dirty by the narrative. The Yda reveal is poorly handled and means nothing to us (and apparently didn't mean much even to 1.0 players, which was baffling to me when I found out.) At the same time, when you actually read the short stories and her backstory, it really is a powerful story about grief, about impostor syndrome... but the game just. Fumbles the ball on that.

I just... can you imagine? Now-adult Lyse, having liberated Ala Mhigo, finally returning to Old Sharlayan. Lyse meeting Papalymo's father. Lyse, meeting Moenbryda's parents (Yda and Moen had been close, iirc, and Moen knew about Lyse's deception just like the rest of the Scions).

I know why the larger fanbase isn't super into her, Stormblood is the black sheep of the expansions (I liked it, but it's followed by freakin Shadowbringers, y'know?), but I just wish the game devs would give her another chance. Maybe during or after Dawntrail (maybe she can show up in the New World at some point initially as an ambassador from Ala Mhigo or whatever)

[writingwithcolor]

Mixing North America with Old World Cultures in Fantasy: What Are The Issues?

So I sent in an ask several years ago that, due in no small part to your response, I have grown from and eventually led to a complete restructuring of my story. I included a measure of context in this, so if you need to skip it, my main three questions are at the bottom. I think this mostly applies to Mod Lesya.

The new setting is both inspired by and based on North America in the late 1400s where the indigenous cultures thrive and are major powers on the continent. Since there is no “Europe” in this setting the colonization and plague events never happened. Within the continent itself (since it is a fantasy setting) there are also analogous cultures that resemble Norse, Central European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Bengali. Although not native to the fantasy continent, there is also a high population of ‘African’ and ‘Oceanic’ peoples of many cultures, the latter usually limited to coastal cities as traders and sailors. Elves are entirely not-human, or at least evolved parallel to humans ala Neanderthals/Denisovans; they have green blood, black sclera, and skin tones that run from pale to dark. 

The main national setting of the story takes great inspiration from a Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian background, and the neighboring nations are based on the Haudenosee (Iriquois Confederacy), Numunuu (Comancheria), and the Hopi and Zuni (as the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans) (I also know that 2 of these 3 occur much later than the 1400s, but I love the government systems and they provide excellent narrative foils for the more ‘traditional’ fantasy government that takes place in the story). The Maya inhabit the role analogous to Ancient Greece in that most writing systems on the continent descend from Maya script and all the Great Philosophers were Maya (and nobility from across the continent spend lots of money to send their children to schools in the Maya City-States or in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire)). There is magic with varying traditions, practices, and methods spread across the continent, some of which are kept secret from outsiders, so I would hope that this avoids the “Magical Native” trope. 

Beyond the setting, I have three main questions:

When it comes to foodstuffs, I was originally planning to limit myself to Pre-Columbian cuisine from the Americas (eg the Three Sisters and potatoes) but in doing my research, Navajo fry-bread seems to be a fairly integral part of the food culture and that does require flour, which originated in the Old World. Would it be better to incorporate some of the Old World stuff that has since become traditional to indigenous groups?

For place names used in the setting and writing systems would it be better to use existing languages or writing systems or ones inspired by them? EG should I make a language that is very similar to Cherokee, complete with its own syllabary, or should I use IRL Cherokee and its extant syllabary? I ask because I feel like using the real language might step on some toes, but using the conlang might seem like erasure.

One of the main themes of this story is the harm that even a ‘benevolent’ Empire can wreak on people. The Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian culture is the main Empire on the continent, taking cues from both western and American monarchical systems (eg the Triple Alliance (Aztec) and The Four Regions (the Inca Empire)), but when I think about it having any kind of even vaguely western ‘Empire’ spring up from the soil of a North American inspired setting might be troubling.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Do you guys have a kofi or something so I can compensate you for time spent?

I actually do remember you, and I am going to 99% disregard your questions here because you went from glaringly obvious racism to covert racism, and none of your questions ask if your basic strings of logic for assumptions you built into the setting are okay. 

Since there is some extremely flawed basic logic in here, I’m going to tackle that first.

Question 1: Why did you originally title this “Pre Colombian North American Fantasy World” when you have more old world cultures than new world cultures?

A very simple, straightforward question. The actual content of the setting is what made me retitle it.

If you want to write a North American fantasy setting… why are there so many old world cultures represented here? 

Old world: - Greece (as a societal myth; see next point) - Byzantine - Turkey - Norse - Central European - Persian - Arabic - Indian - Bengali - African (which, let’s be honest, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples) - Oceana (which, again, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples)

New world: - Mississippian - Iroquois  - Numunuu - Hopi - Zuni - Maya - Aztec - Inca (maybe? not mentioned as having their own place on the continent, but one of your questions mentions them) - Navajo (maybe? See above)

To account for respecting Africa and Oceana, I’m going to make African cultures count as 3 and Oceanic cultures count as 5, and this is a purposeful lowball.

Old World: 17 New World: 9

It’s a giant discrepancy, especially if your attempt is writing an exclusively New World fantasy. And this is bare minimum old world, considering the fact I tried to limit myself to peoples who would be more likely to interact with the heavy Mediterranean/Alexander the Great’s Empire centricity. 

Question 2: Why does there have to be a Greece analogue?

I haven’t spoken about this topic at length on this blog, but Greek worship in the Western world is a very carefully crafted white supremacy based mythos that was created to prop up European “Excellence” and actually erases the reality of Greece as a peoples.

Cultural evolutionism is a theory that states the (assumed-white-European) Greeks were superior because of their philosophy, their abstract art, and their mathematics. When many of these concepts were refined in Egypt (African, aka Black), or the Arab world (aka brown), but white Europeans did not want to admit any of this so they instead painted everything as coming out of their ideas of Greece lock stock and barrel. 

The theory also ignored Iroquois science, Plains and Southwestern abstract art, and generally everything about North America, because the theory was designed to move the goalposts and paint North America as something it wasn’t, just to make Europeans feel okay taking it over and “bringing it to civilization.”

This theory was still taught in force up until the 1970s, and is still a major school of anthropological thought to this day (and still taught in some universities), so it is still very much influencing the Western world.

While the theory itself is only from the 1800s, it had long-growing roots in white/ noble Europe’s attempt to prop up European “Excellence” during its multiple periods of colonization, from the Crusades, onwards. You can see it in the copious amount of art produced during the Renaissance.

Europeans ignored the sheer amount of settling and travel that happened within Greece and Rome, and you’ll notice how many Renaissance paintings depict Greek philosophers as white, teaching other white people. In reality, we have no idea what their skin tone was, and they could have taught a huge variety of different skin tones. But it was appealing to European nobility to have people like them be the founders of all things great and “advanced”, so they invested huge amounts of time and money in creating this myth.

(Note: I said their nobility, not their population. People of colour existed en masse in Europe, but the nobility has been downplaying that for an exceptionally long time)

Greece took over most of the old world. It borrowed and stole from hundreds of cultures, brought it all back, and was assigned credit for it. White Europeans didn’t want to admit that the concept of 0 came from the Arabs, the pythagorean theorem came from Egypt, etc, and since Greece won, detailed records of how they were perceived and what they stole are long lost. It’s only glaring when they took from other global powers.

Question 3: Why would you pick totally different biomes to mix in here?

Turkey and the Mississippi are very, very different places when it comes to what can grow and what sort of housing is required, which makes them on the difficult side to merge together. They relied on different methods of trade, as well (boats vs roads), and generally just don’t line up.

The fact you pick such a specific European powerhouse—the Byzantine Empire—to mix into your “not European” fantasy world is… coming back to my above point about Greek (and Roman) worship in the West. Why can’t a fantasy world set in North America be enough on its own? Why does it need Europe copycats?

Question 4: Why are you missing a variety of nomads and Plains peoples?

Nomadic plains peoples were a thing across the globe, from the Cree to the Blackfoot to the Mongols. You have hyperfocused on settled peoples (with only one nomadic group named in both new and old world), which… comes across as very odd to me, because it is, again, very European sounding. That continent was about the only one without major populations that were nomadic, and if you look at European history, nomadic peoples were very highly demonized because of the aforementioned Mongols. 

Cultural evolutionism also absolutely hated nomadic peoples, which is where we get the term “savage” (hunter-gatherers, nomads) and “barbarian” (horticulturalists and pastoralists, the latter nomadic); these were “lesser cultures” that needed to settle down and be brought to “civilization” (European agriculture), and nothing good could ever come out of them.

Meanwhile, in North America, nomadic peoples took up a very large portion of landmass, produced a huge amount of culture and cultural diffusion, and mostly ignoring them while trying to create a “fantasy North America” is, well, like I said: odd. 

General Discussion Points

My suggestion for you is to write a fantasy Mediterranean region. Completely serious, here.

With the kinds of dynamics you are attracted to—the empires, the continental powers, the fact you keep trying to make Europe analogues in North America—you will do a much, much more respectful job by going into a really richly researched Mediterranean fantasy world than attempting to mix Europe and North America together in ways that show European traits (settled peoples, agriculture, a single empire dominating the whole culture and being viewed as superior) as the default.

I legitimately cannot see anything in here that feels like it comes from North America, or at the very least, treats non-sensationalized peoples (aka, those outside the Maya and Mississippian region) with respect. 

It falls into Maya worship, which is a very sensationalized topic and is fuelled by racist fascination, assuming no Indigenous peoples could be that smart. 

It falls into settled peoples worship, which is something that has cultural evolutionism roots because under such a model only settled peoples with agriculture are “civilized.”

It falls into placing Western concepts (public schools, large cities, the ilk) as the ideal, better solution, compared to methods better suited to horticulturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers and letting those teaching methods be respected.

There is no shame in writing inside Europe

The Mediterranean region contains Indigenous peoples, contains a huge diversity of skin tones, contains empires, contains democracy/a variety of governments, and in general contains every aspect of what you’re trying to create without playing god with a continent that did not evolve the way you’re trying to make it. 

A Mediterranean fantasy world would still be a departure from “fantasy world 35″ as I like to call it, because it would be different from the vaguely Germanic/ French/ Norse fantasy worlds that are Tolkien ripoffs. You can dig beyond the whitewashed historical revisions and write something that actually reflects the region, and get all the fun conflicts you want.

You don’t need to go creating a European/North American blend to “be diverse.” You can perfectly respectfully write inside Europe and have as much variety in peoples as you can write in a non-European setting. Europe is not the antithesis to diversity.

North America developed a certain way for a reason. It had the required fauna, space, resources, and climate to produce what it created. The old world developed a certain way for its own reasons, based off its own factors in the same categories.

You’re not really going to get them to blend very easily, and if you did, the fact there is such a strong European way-of-life preference (by picking places that mirror European society on the surface) makes me raise an eyebrow. It’s subtle, but very much there, and the fact you are ignorant to it shows me you still need to do more work before you go writing North American Indigenous Peoples.

Writing in Europe isn’t the problem, here. Writing a whitewashed, mythologized, everyone-not-white-is-a-caricature, ahistorical “Europe” is the problem. And you cannot fix this problem by simply painting European ways of life a different skin tone when the setting isn’t European. In fact, you’re perpetuating harm by doing that, because you are recreating the cultural evolutionism that calls anything you can find in Europe “better.” Indigenous cultures were vastly different from Europe, even if they shared similar trappings. 

Let North America exist without trying to shoehorn its most famous peoples into European analogues.

~ Mod Lesya

[wetalkedaboutthisshinji]

More Jojolion Long ass texts

TOTAL SPOLERS TO THE LAST CHAPTER

I just have lots of thoughts about recent Jojolion revelations.

It took me a while but I think I´m finally at peace with the fact that the Calamity Arc was 90% sure the climactic Jojolion arc and that Tooru is Part 8´s entrance to the Jojo Big Bad Gallery TM, a supervillain group truly on the level of the Disney Villains. I´m only half joking lol.

It hurts bc I was (and still am) a strong believer on Big Bad Kaato. I LOVED the idea of a female Big Bad, especially one that gray and I was very curious about seeing her stand in a Stand Battle.I love evil ladies and that blinded me  I don´t even think Araki chickened out or anything, but that Big Bad Kaato clearly was never the idea for the story he had. Still, Kaato´s scenes, while too short, were damm cool, and Space Truckin´is a damm cool stand, but I still wish we had seen it more. I wonder if it could be used offensively? It at least can trap people from a distance, which is very useful. Im so angry bc its power was sooooo good for some JJBA weird moves, but alas.

One thing I love about Jojolion is that it completely goes against the normal tropes of a shonen/seinen battle manga in that most of the characters are just....people. It really is a Twin Peaks TM plot with more fighting. With the exception of the Rock Humans and Jousuke most of the characters are, like, some guy from town, at worst kinda shady and mean. We have housewives, a model, a divorcee, local businessowners, some doctors and an oddly viscious agriculture university student. Of couse Part 4, which Jojolion mirrors, had some of that, but IMO you really get more of a sense of normalcy on Jojolion, maybe bc Araki changed his way of writing a lot, maybe because Jojolion is more of an ensemble story, maybe because it´s less episodic. So you take these randos and give them superpowers and involve them in fights against supernatural beings and I think that´s part of the reason why the fights are so quick and to the point. Characters like Mitsuba or Kaato are really just normal people that happen to have stands so it makes sense for them not to do the whole strategic Stand Battle. And it bought us some awesome moments. Looking back maybe there were a bit too many “this character looked helpless but NO” but damm if it didn´t hype me up when reading it.

So, yeah, Kaato had her role, did her thing, and got Kei’d. And she was never evil, but rather, like Jobin, more morally gray and she died a martyr. And I wish both had more to do, but the part is long and Araki clearly wanted it to be a 3-way conflict with a clearer villain.....

evil twink Tooru.

Ngl I was at first really against Tooru and wanted him to be just a big antagonist and not THE big bad. After I calmed down and reread some past chapters I feel much more appreciative. I like how he really has a different dynamic, being a "mistery villain" but in a different way to Pucci or Diavolo. He really looks harmless and Araki clearly worked HARD with the misdirections. Theres a reason there were some fools (like me) still arguing against him being tbe antagonist. I checked his intro again back on the Doctor Wu fight and I really like how totally whatever the scene is the first time around. He absolutely could have been a minor character. Rereading it the whole thing is SO ominous AND everything Tooru says has a double meaning. I also like that his oddness can be chalked up to being a romantic rival to Jousuke, which threw off lots of folk (likeAs for WOU I'm also starting to like the fight more and more. The power over causality def is on the same level as power over time or space and I like how the characters are forced to think of loopholes and try out different ways to hurt him, playing with his "kill list" and such. I also like that WOU has limitations and that the Dr. and Tooru have to work with them to be deadlier, which makes them both so much smarter. I KINDA dislike how at the end he turned out to be so stupidly poweful that only Go Beyond can hurt him, which is not the worst Deus Ex Machina (Jousuke had to "figure" out his own stand --thats kinda symbolic for someone with duch a complex identity) but its a bit cheap for a 20+ fight.

Of course the real insanity is how unique of a stand WOU is. I dont think we had ever seen a stand this autonomous and smart? In my opinion thats what makes the fight so unique and Tooru so powerful. Its only balanced stat-wise in that neither Tooru or his stand buddy looks particularly powerful offensive or defensive wise in a conventional fight. Not that they needed it. Cant help but wonder how the hell could they add Tooru as a fighter if theres another JJBA fighting game. Maybe a double fighter?

Finally you gotta love the Magritte (hope im spelling it right) references with the doctor. Araki clearly was having fun and it added some "classic art" thing to the part. Kaato's attack and all of calamity also looked great, if we ever see Jojolion animated Im sure it will be a feast for the eyes.

Ofc maybe all this bs means nothing if Araki does pull a 180° next chapter. But thats the Jojo experience.

If anyone´s interested in this, how do you feel Tooru and WOU stack up against the other Jojo Big Bads?

[the-orangeauthor]

WIP Intro: Raynor

Amidst the vast oceans of Earth, and parallel to its physical reality, lies a realm of intense magic, carefully hidden away from the prying eyes of humans. They call this land, Raynor.

Raynor had been concealed a millinea ago, when the gods decided that few humans were worthy of the gifts they and their children bestowed upon the inhabitants of the land.

Even then, magic has slipped between the veil holding Raynor at bay, and many humans met the magic eagerly. They wrote stories and claimed of other sightings, they used it to explain the complexities of their lives. But too many also harbored the desire to exploit the magic for personal gain.

Now this didn't mean all those in Raynor were squeaky clean and delightful with thier use of magic. The fae were mischievous and the dragons temper was thinly controlled, and the warlocks, masters of dark matter, were the worst of them. But alas, peace was realatively stable in Raynor, no boats being rocked, so to say. But the waves are growing larger...

I've been sitting on this for a while now, but here it is!! I made a post a few months back about how I wanted to create my own universe for my wips to take place in with cross overs etc like how the MCU does it and I have been doing some serious, never before done worldbuilding. It was a steep learning curve but I am so excited to be at the point where I have things to share!

Due to how complex I want this to be I have no timeline for it but tbh, I dont care if I work in Raynor for the rest of my life. I have loads of ideas, both old and new that I want to rework into this place.

Some things you can expect to find in the stories that will take place here:

Character diveristy by the bucket load

POC main characters

So much magic you could drown in it

Found family tropes galore

Female leads and strength both physically and mentally

Epic battles

A little bit of ✨ spice ✨

So many different creatures including, but not limited to: witches, werewolves, vampires, dragons, pixies, mermaids and more!!

Im gonna tag some random people below just to help spread the word, please let me know if you would like for me to add you to a taglist as there will be plenty more content coming soon!!

@asexualbakugou @kosmosian-quills @akindofmagictoo @orangeismorethanacolour @pens-swords-stuff @blueinkblot @writersociety

Please feel free to ask to be added or removed

[teacup-baphomet]

G/t Drabble (Crash landed on a hostile planet trope but NOT via the a tiny vulnerable human in a planet of mean powerful alien bigs route)

tw: a bit of censored cursing. Uh. I’m not sure what else. Maybe broaching of sensitive tops such as sexuality and religion. But not really. Mostly it’s just rlly dumb word play/lame humor and a confused alien being confused (and kinda freaked/troubled due to the confusion? you’ll see if you read it i guess). there is some sad lorg boi times. idk. no romantic relationships. just a shaky friendship is forming between a crash-landed big-arse alien (a human! *gasp*  i woulda never guessed something as vile as that o: ) and one of the much smaller, very much not human locals. most want to kill the poor dude who got stuck on this planet of hostile lil guys who think he’s a monster and immediately decide they much off him asap. so like having this one ally is kinda important to him. But it’s hard. because. lots reasons rlly. culture differences. the language tech can only do so much. the size diff creates definite issues because trust is hard in general. and trusting a big being that could easily cause havoc on your planet mostly just cuz he /seems/ nice is not a very good foundation... there is much to learn between the two before they can be truly good frens. so uh good luck to them lol *raises glass* I mean. I don’t think I’ll ever write these two again. but I’m sure they’ll end up good friends. probably.

Anyway without further adieu, here have a disappointment (read: attempt to be creative but i’m kinda lazy tbh and still kinda bitter I can’t draw for more than like 10 minutes before I start spacing out :/ )

"We are called humans or the scientific name is homo sapiens" spoke the large alien, Lyle.

"Homo sapiens? That is rather long, is it not? Why is a "scientific name" even a thing? Why would that be necessary? Scientific name versus what kinda name? Emotional name? Why are these science names two words? Seems annoying. What is wrong with just calling yourselves simply homos? Or something else just as nice and concise. Straight to the point if you will. Probably. I... Uh.. I obviously don't know what exactly is the purpose of a scientific name as i already implied... Sooo..." The much shorter – and much scalier- native being (called Torrynts) awkwardly looked off the side to stare at the plain, blank, siding of their dilapidated, isolated house as if it were the most interesting thing in the entire vicinity. Which it wasn’t of course. There was a f***ing alien 15 times their size only a few them-sized lengths way…

 Lyle gave his new comrade – and only friend on this gawdforsaken planet that mostly wants him dead- th pondering, and possibly ironically, rather colourfully scaled Torrynt by the name of Kyvlar a bemused look, bordering on coy.

"Huh. 'Straight' to the point you say?" He paused with a small snort. "Well, my not-so-statuesque friend, do I got news for you~"

Kyvlar suddenly blanched, giving a Lyle a look that was like a knife to the heart while blurting out. "Wait, wait, wait! Hold up! We? There are more than one of you? Here? On this planet? Were you just a distraction the whole time. Oh... Oh no.... Have we really been victim a secret homo invasion this whole time! I-"

 Their panicked monologue was interrupted by a most horrendous noise. Like a slowly dying tornado with the hiccups or something.

"STOP. Stop I-I can't. I can't. This is too much much!" Spoke Lyle with his hand covering the bottom half of his  and his eyes scrunched shut.

 'Welp,' thought the Torrynt, 'This is the end. This is when I die. I should have known better than to immediately put my trust in such an enormous obviously dangerous specimen. Ho-'

 Kyvlar’s dramatic internal speech was interrupted when the alien surprised them by uncovering the his face, revealing a huge grin. ‘They weren't upset? Huh?’ The Torrynt blinked owlishly at the human in confusion.

 "Sh*t, bite-size (Kyvlar noticeably paled at the impromptu nickname not 100% the foreign joking tone, well it would have been noticeable to someone their size at least), I know you don't mean to, context-wise, but you reminded me of my great aunt Karen when my Uncle Todd and Uncle Copper decide to have their friends over along with relatives for a gatherin'."

Plastering on a faux distraught look and blatantly mocking tone, he  continue with exaggerated hand gestures. "Oh no, it's the...the...," he paused with snort, "... the homo invasion... No, no, no... Not here... not in this... this good, Christian neighborhood. Aren't just two of them enough? Oh woe is me!" The alien dropped the mocking tone and smirked towards the smaller being. "Heh. Good ol' great aunt Karen could never remember Uncle Todd was Jewish and so was the majority of that neighborhood.... It’s where my Uncle Todd was raised actually…"

 The said smaller being just stared blankly at the homo-no-human they supposed as just “homo” meant something else, they weren’t sure what else, beyond just something else.

 "Uhhm. Wh-what? U-Uhm, so what exactly is “homo” then? And what’s Christian? And Jewish too. What’s that? Are... Are those other types of -uh- intelligent, sentient creatures on your planet? Y-you know, b-beside hom-er-h-humans? Or are these subtypes of humans? What kinda are you? What is a great aunt? or Uncle? Does the great indicate a larger size? Oh gawd, a-aren't you humans b-big enough regularly? Oh... W-wait. O-or are you a great- uhm- great aunt, was it? E-er, g-great something? Ohhh. Zyntall (Torrynt swear). I'm sooo confused r-right now... " The timid tiny being, sighed in frustration before their eyes snapped open wide in a panic, and they did an immediate one-eighty with their behavior, and it was off all their previously trust, as wavering as it was, vanished in an instant, squeaking out a quick "sorry. oh, Z-zyntall... I'm so-so-sooo sorry. I-I hope I d-didn't offend y-you or anyth-thing... p-please, oh please, don't hurt me" while gazing everywhere except towards the much larger alien, hoping desperately the 'bite-size' nickname was just a bad joke...

 Clearly they not only didn't get what so hilarious about the whole thing but also thought he was a monster prone to violence – still. Lyle sighed, all the mirth that was previously in his expression draining out of him leaving him with an uncomfortable grimace on their face. How disappointing... They really wish there was another human here to share in the jesting. But alas, that was not meant to be. At least as far as they knew there was no "homo invasion" in the making. Lyle wasn’t naïve. He knew humans were easy to slip into a gray moral state, at best. The role of villains at worst. And many of his kind would likely take advantage of a planet full of tiny, vulnerable people. Lyle couldn’t help but inwardly cringe at the thought, getting nervous about something that wasn’t an issue. At least now. Currently, human-wise, it was just him on this distant planet. And as far as he knew, no one - well, no other human at least- had any clue where they were. It probably just seemed he simply disappeared. Never to be seen again most likely. Trapped on this random alien planet in scenario that is akin to some sort of a personal hell of sorts.

'Wow. Hello, major depressive episode that’s making me overly dramatic. I haven't seen you since I was - what - eighteen?' thought Lyle regretfully. Calling this planet a personal hell was probably a bit over the top. But still, he couldn’t even seem to keep the trust of his single native ally. It only adds to his feelings of lonely isolation. And he feared his lonely angst will only get worse and worse. But only time will tell.

Giving a small sigh, he mentally prepped himself to try and get back his small friend’s trust. At least he was able to laugh for a wee bit earlier. It had been so long since he had done such. It was nice. Hopefully next time it will not lead to a backtracking in his attempted friendly ships with an open local, or even worse, a hostile local. The little laser guns that native being had stung like a b*tch. It reminded him when he got bit a couple times by some fire ants during a vacation as a child.

-----------

So yeah these were rando improvised characters made on the spot.

But Lyle is a guy (he/him. He’d be chill with they/them too)

And Kyvlar is… a Torrynt. So like they/them I guess. Torrynts don’t have genders. Like at all. I guess they hermaphroditic (intersex if talking by human terms but not really as they are capable of reproduction and they aren’t human so… I dunno… Not even sure if hermaphrodite is a useful term. As idk if hermaphroditic animals, in nature, are capable of reproduction… I don’t think so? But I’m not sure tbh…). There is no variants like there are with human “sex”. And male/female concepts are 200+% foreign to these wee reptile-like aliens (albeit warm-blooded minded, so perhaps more draconian than reptilian idk. Also aliens being described as reptilian gives me hives due to a conspiracy theory that is like super bigoted actually n’ stuff. Very yikes. Don’t want to talk it about it rlly…). Their reaction would def be “wtf. That’s the weirdest sh*t ever” to such a thought as male n female binary dynamics & whatnot. No exceptions. They’d be like why a lot of you guys limiting yourself because of whether or not you are a potential offspring vessel or not. I don’t understand.

So Yeah. Uh. Anyways.

Their conversation about this prolly (or close to this):

Lyle: Hi. I’m Lyle. Just some random dude form Earth I guess.

Kyvlar: a random dude what?

Lyle: uh. I’m a dude. I guess I meant that I’m a boy though dudes don’t really have to be boys I think. But not to derail too much… Yeah. I’m a man/guy/boy/brosef, whatever you wanna call the male gender. Please not by brosef actually, heh. Anyway. Yep. A boy. That is what I am. Uh. How about you. I can just tell… you ….you have uhm two legs. Oh damn. Wait. That sounded so stupid. I wouldn’t assume your gender or anything. I just… You don’t look exactly human so..uh. UGH. Nevermind. I don’t even know where I was going with that... Heh. ANYWAY, so yeah what’s your gender is what I’m trying to say. Sorry I’m awkward as f***. I’m not used to socializing much. Been doing deep space sh** on my own for a few years now and.. uh.. yeahhhh….

Kyvlar: *stares blankly*

Lyle: Uh. Yeah. So. A Gender? Do you, uhm, have one? Or…????

Kyvlar: Uh. I think so? I mean I’m mostly a day-by-day I’ll figure it out then type but I, I really want be able to fix my home up. I want to learn to cook. Kinda suck at it now. Uhm. I guess… Uh. I should probably help you get on good terms with my people so they stop trying to kill you. You seem nice n’ stuff… so yeah. There’s that. I could use a little more purpose in my life. Not to-

Lyle: wait. Huh? What are you talking about? Are you talking about an agenda?

Kyvlar: Yes????

Lyle: *snorts* I didn’t say an agenda. I said a gender. As in A. Gen. Durr. Like are male or female or maybe something off the typical binary track??

Kyvlar: Uh. Er. Huh??? I, I’m so confused right now…

Lyle: Hooo boy. I’m so not prepared for this discussion at all.

-----------

One of these days I’m gonna have a character that’s silver-tongue and smooth af and not some bumbling awkward doofus (*cough* like I am *cough*).

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 26

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because Naia and Kylan are trapped on a mushroom with a snarling Skeksis Satirist. That’s a heck of a place to wait a whole weekend before continuing.

Last times on book: Kylan, Naia, and Tavra have been on a quest to find a bell-bird bone firca that they can use to warn all Gelfling about the Skeksis. There’s been complications and setbacks. Tavra is a spider now, due to circumstances. They have a fourth party member, a Grottan alchemist named Amri. And the Skeksis Satirist skekLi and an army of millions of spiders have taken over the Caves of Grot and the Grottan Sanctuary where the extinct bell-birds used to live. But the upside is that Kylan has trapped skekLi with him and Naia on top of a mushroom. Wait, that’s the upside?

Chapter 26

An epic mushroom top showdown, with musical finish

Kylan and Naia parted, flanking skekLi instinctively. Armed with the staff, the Skeksis’s reach was incredible. With the long weapon, he might even be able to sweep them both off the platform in a single move, should they be in the same place.

Naia says the game plan should be to get the staff away from skekLi but given that their equipment is Gurjin’s Sweet Metal Dagger and the clothes on their backs… outlook bad. Kylan instead wonders whether they should try escaping.

skekLi guesses Kylan’s thought and laughs that a Drenchen’s wings aren’t for flying (they’re more fins for swimming better) so Naia’d be lucky to save herself, let alone Kylan.

skekLi’s beak broke into a grin.

“Though we could then say you had fallen for each other! Ha!”

Oh snap! That’s the wit that earned him the sobriquet Satirist!

Just puns and dunking on people.

I assume he dunked on the wrong person and that’s why he’s in a cave.

The sweet pun dunk has skekLi turn his attention to Kylan briefly and Naia uses the opportunity to close in and… honest to god, she does a SHORYUKEN

Naia surfaced right inside the space made by his outstretched arms, then jumped, holding her fist up and clocking skekLi solidly in the bottom of his bill. His beak made a loud CLACK and he stumbled backward.

Amazing. Incredible. Another thing I’d like to see in puppet.

Apparently, I was right when I said that skekLi is the scrawny nerd Skeksis because both Naia and Kylan realize that he’s not a fighter. He’s bigger and stronger and has more reach but he’s uncoordinated in a fight.

Kylan manages to get inside his guard too and bites his wrist. Alas, he doesn’t get skekLi to drop his staff and the Skeksis also flings him almost off the mushroom. But nice try, Kylan.

While dangling, Kylan spares a glance down.

“I don’t mean to add to our troubles,” he said, “but the spiders are coming.”

You have a gift for understatement, Kylan.

Yeah. The MILLIONS OF SPIDERS are crossing the lake at the base of the petrified giant mushroom so they’ll be climbing up soon. And that will spell very bad times. Even worse times than being trapped on a mushroom with this nerd forever.

Kylan tries to get Naia to run because friends but she insists on not leaving him. Because friends. And because he’s their bard and the quest reward is an instrument and they’ll need him to play it.

skekLi finds this hilarious. Because what a cute quest. Adorable.

“Oh yes. The bone! The bell-bird bone from the Book of Raunip. Krychk told me of it, that you had a bone to pick. Ha! I’m sad to say, you won’t find it here. Poor, stupid Gelfling. All the bodies have been borne away, chewed up by ruffnaw and crawlies and time.”

I mean, he has a POINT. Its been about a thousand trine. On the other hand, the nests and feathers are still here, in flagrant disregard of good sense. So I don’t know what to believe.

But I like that skekLi saw the punpportunity and went for it. I’m still not sure how good he is at satire but he has a wit.

skekLi shifts into Chamberlain-energy PEACE PLEASE mode. He really is like a scrawnier quippier Chamberlain that even skekSil would bully.

He tells Naia if she surrenders and comes to the castle, he might see his way to sparing the other Gelfling. 

“We only need a little essence. A little, only a little. From you and your other half. In exchange, we would feed you. Care for you, as we have always cared for Gelfling. We need only a little to save our Emperor.”

Naia presumes that what the Emperor wants is to steal life from his Mystic counterpart and she won’t truck with that, if she knew what a truck was. But skekLi insists no, if the Emperor is dying then his counterpart is dying. And only special Gelfling essence can save them.

Kylan has serious DOUBT about this, especially how this all sounds too good to be true, and warns Naia that this Satirist is clearly lying. But on he rolls.

“That is what you want to do, isn’t it? Drenchen? Save the others? Save the Crystal? Save Gelfing - save Thra? To do so, help us save Skeksis. Look! We are not mad with Gelfling. Even when it bites us. We only want Drenchen twins, for reunion. Only a little. You would spare only a little, if it might save everyone… wouldn’t you?”

Kylan again objects that this is all pretty fishy, that if the Skeksis just needed a little, they only needed to ask. skekLi responds indignantly yeah like that would go over well. Just dress up nice, stroll into the village, ask to borrow a cup of life goo. Suuure.

Although, the more pressing thing is 1) they were draining Gelfling before they knew about Gurjin and Naia. That’s what set off this whole thing. Rian discovered that his girlfriend had been drained. 2) They don’t know that special twin essence would work. Aughra said it won’t. 3) This good of the many thing is pretty dubious when at this point I’m sure the Skeksis have killed more Gelfling than there are Skeksis and Mystics combined. 

That obliquely reminds me that I’m glad that the big prophecy didn’t get play in the Age of Resistance series. During Chamberlain’s PEACE PLEASE moment, he claims that the Skeksis just wiped out the Gelfling because they were scared of the prophecy that Gelfling would overthrow them. Classic fiction trope genocide backfire. You try to thwart a prophecy by doing a lot of murder and it blows up in your face.

But the series has it so that the Skeksis were exploiting the Gelfling long before they started drinking them, were drinking them before they started trying to wipe them out, and had messed up the environment with their exploitation of the Crystal. So, yeah. I don’t buy what you’re selling, skekLi! Not even at a limited time offer reduced price!

“But listen, Gelfling. Listen. Gelfling people entrusted the castle and the Crystal to the Skeksis. We keep it. We protect it. Dust the mantel, clean halls, and so on. All for free, with never thanks. So, least Gelfling could do is help the Skeksis when they can. What are two lives to all lives on Thra?”

Wow, he is really good at playing up sob story here. ‘Oh woe is us we have to live in a giant castle.’ When we’ve seen and we know that the Castle is/was stocked full of staff and guards and that the Skeksis go around to do a census and tithes.

But it doesn’t matter, skekLi was just saying sweet sounding words to fill space because SPIDERS ARE HERE

Dammit, you let him monologue and talking wasn’t a free action and now we’re lousy with spiders!

The Skeksis chuckled to himself, gnashing his teeth.

“Gelfling waited too long. Time to make a deal is over. Now the deal is only that both Gelfling come quietly, or Spriton dies.”

But but but but, killing time is also what Amri needed to do!

He calls over from one of the bell-bird nests, waving a tiny bone. Even just waving it blows some air through it, releasing an eerie tone that makes the spiders and the skekLi sit up and take notice.

“Play it!” Kylan shouted. 

“Play it? I’m no musician!”

“Just blow in it!”

“Oh!”

Hah!

Kylan: ‘It's a wind instrument, not rocket science, Amri!’

Amri: ‘What’s a rocket?’

Except it's not not as complicated as Kylan hopes.

A long soft note rang through the corrie. It was faint, and only one note, but it brought a chill to Kylan’s spine. The spiders that were closing in on the nest where Amri perched backed away, too close to the sound of breath in the bell-bird’s bone. Even the spiders on the cap trembled, whispering among themselves in hesitation and fear.

But the note did not grow louder, instead fading out as Amri lost breath. Kylan fidgeted in frustration, licking his lips. He knew if he had the bone, he could raise its song to fill the entire corrie. Amri was blowing too hard, or too soft - either way, it wasn’t enough.

“It’s too difficult! I don’t know how!” Amri called. “I’m sorry!”

And that’s why you have a dedicated bard. 

I like Kylan getting frustrated, seemingly not because they’re all about to be spidered, but because Someone Is Musicing Wrong.

He asks Naia to go get the bone and bring it to him but she hesitates to leave him alone. skekLi mocks them, because its what he do, and pokes Kylan with the staff in a patronizing way.

Which just unleashes the primal Angry Kylan within. He grabs the end of the staff and holds it so skekLi can’t pull it back (because he is the scrawny nerd of his group.

“I’m not a hostage,” [Kylan] growled. “And I”m not helpless. And I’m not weak! Naia, go get the bone from Amri and bring it to me. Then I will take care of the spiders and this Skeksis liar!”

Kylan has hit his ‘aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you want to go ape shit?’ point!

This is amazing, by the way! Kylan isn’t heavy enough to prevent skekLi from actually picking up the staff so he’s just clinging to it while skekLi waves it around trying to dislodge him. 

Another thing I would very much like to see in puppets!

Naia is still torn because she wants to protect her best friend Kylan and so splits the difference while still trusting him not to die if she’s not there for five seconds. She doesn’t fly over to Amri. She hasn’t flown at all and now is no time to stress test the wings. But she tells Amri to throw the bone to her.

Kylan feels like his heart is exploding with pride because Naia trusts him but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Uhhhhhhhh

You want to THROW the plot critical item across a vast gulf? And its a tiny, hollow bone so it probably doesn’t throw all that well. Not aerodynamic, not very able to fight wind resistance. Is this a good idea? Amri isn’t sure its a good idea but he does it anyway!

skekLi slams his staff into the mushroom ground, breaking it in an attempt to dislodge Kylan. Which he does because Kylan is smart enough not to hang on for that. 

When the staff crystal breaks, the ringing distracts the spiders and the skekLi and the Skeksis can’t do much more than curse as Naia jumps off the mushroom to catch the bone.

Which is falling slowly because it has a web parachute on it?? Good job, Tavra! I don’t know when you learned to do that! Is it instinctual? Are you just that skilled??

Kylan now gets to taunt that Naia totally caught the bone and will be up to give it to him any time now. And skekLi basically goes NUH UH.

C’mon, man! Where’s the wit I briefly knew you for?

Kylan snatched one of the staff’s splinters, stepped, and threw it like a miniature spear. It made its mark, striking skekLi in the shoulder, sticking out like a pin. The Skeksis squawked and yanked it out, but Kylan threw another, and another, sticking him full of darts from his own staff.

Oh my god this is amazing. This is ridiculous and amazing!

“GRAGGGHHH!” roared skekLi. “Stop it! Stop it, Gelfling!”

“Or what?”

“Or - or - wait! Stop it, and! AND! Stop it and we’ll let you go! Eh?”

“I don’t think you’re in a place to negotiate!”

Oh my god it just got better! This is a truly ridiculous scene!

Naia DID catch the bone and she IS coming to Kylan but she’s being obviously chased by ohgodsomany spiders.

skekLi claims he’ll do something kind and orders the spiders away. Before leaning over the edge and just yanking Naia back up to this mushroom cap. 

He’s not good at fighting but he’s great at plucking Gelfling from places, I guess.

skekLi holds Naia up by the back of the neck and tries shaking the bone off of her but she refuses to let go. She throws it to Kylan and the Skeksis threatens to kill her if Kylan plays the bone.

Naia tells him to do it anyway because she’s figured she’s pretty safe from casual Skeksis violence since they need her for twin goo although skekLi is angry enough to go ‘yeah but what if no?’

We might be in movie territory where we have a standoff between a Gelfling, a plot item, and a Skeksis with a hostage except there’s a third party.

Tavra-spider was hiding in Naia’s tunic and runs out along skekLi’s arm and… GOD. She bites him ON the eye. Geez, Tavra! You don’t mess around!

So now we have Tavra-spider running around on skekLi’s head and him freaking out slapping his own head with his non-Naia-grabbing hand and this is all very silly. Also, very serious but very very silly.

And in this silly spectacle, Naia reminds Kylan to play the bone.

The note was a thousand times stronger than when Amri had tried. It filled the corrie like wind, or water, or fire. Its reverberations circling against the walls from the pool at the bottom and all the way up to the sky. As it echoes, it reinforced itself, growing louder and louder until the mountains themselves began to sing with its song.

And the bone flute works! The MILLIONS OF ANGRY SPIDERS just start falling off the walls in droves, Tavra-spider, confined to a spider body, falls off skekLi and does a dead spider impression with her spider legs folded under her. Buuuut it doesn’t affect skekLi as much and covering his earhole with one hand, he makes ready to smash Naia against the mushroom with the other.

I guess that makes sense! It sucks for the Kylan Crew but it makes sense! The Skeksis are aliens to Thra and logically (?? with magic bird bone flute crystal music) aren’t as affected by the song of Thra.

But maybe it just needs the right accompaniment.

The song of the bone-flute faded, but skekLi’s death thrust halted midair. A second note, then a third, vibrated through the corrie. The tones were deep. Primal. Voices, Kylan realized. As the tone-tone chant sank into the walls of the cliffs, Kylan picked up the bone-flute from where he’d dropped it. He played the instrument and found the single note joined the other two with no discordance. It was the song of Thra, after all - the song that would move mountains.

skekLi dropped Naia. She fell with a gentle thump, then climbed to her feet and stumbled away. The Skeksis was frozen where he stood, eyes wide and pupils tiny, panting so heavily that drool dripped from his open mouth.

Naia doesn’t dwell on being a second away from death just recently and notices the New Challengers.

Over on the edge of the corrie wall, urVa and urLii have reentered the plot and and filled the corrie with their song.

I love the Mystic song. I love it more when it saves Naia.

One held a tall bow, arrow nocked, though the point was lowered. There was no need to use the weapon while skekLi was held immobile by the bone-shaking song. He twitched and jerked against the power of his other half. He could do no more harm to the Gelfing, at least for now.

Maybe a Mystic could keep a Skeksis in one place…

Aughra’s words echoed in Kylan’s memory.

This is really cool but its raising my expectations for the Mystics! I know they have other stuff they could be doing but maybe they should go around singing the Skeksis away from causing trouble! 

Plus? Now I’m imagining an urRu barbershop quartet!

[shinygoku]

Thunderbirds (2004)

A review by me, CutCat! This is 8-ish pages long!

Spoiler for the end of the film warning: Alan is in International Rescue. What a twist!

Totally Turbulent

Soooo, Tbirds ‘04 is one of those Infamous Adaptations, at least among those who enjoyed Thunderbirds (’65) and of more recent times, Thunderbirds are Go (’15). It’s one of those Bad Live Action Adaptations to a near sacred property, making it dubious contemporaries with Dragon Ball [Evolution], Avatar [The Last Airbender] and suchlike.

But wait, is it really That Bad?? Why is it as divisive as it is? What caused the film to be the way it is, and quite unpopular at that?

First I’m gonna make a long story very short by saying that a Live Action Thunderbirds movie was on and off production for many years, and that the script we ended up with is apparently better than another one that was pitched... but there are reports of cooler scripts further back that never made it, for various reasons. It’s almost a story of it’s own right but I’m only going by 2nd hand information at best, so I’d rather just link them at the end for Additional Reading if y’all felt so inclined.

With that out of the way, we have the Takes from the Andersons to look at. Sylvia had a very favourable reception to it:

"I felt that I'd been on a wonderful Thunderbirds adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Whereas Gerry had a considerably blunter response at the opposite end of the scale:

"the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

As for me, a mere fan of predominantly the TAG series with limited but fond memories of the 90’s TOS reruns, I’d been inclined to ignore it and write it off as a DBE or TLA lost cause. But the combined effect of me deciding to check out unpopular media for myself, namely Dragon Ball GT and the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, and thoroughly enjoying both; and the other effect of TAG finishing but my fixation reawakening with the need to consume More, I dived deeper into the fan base than I had dared to before, in which I found more reasons to watch it and make up my own mind fairly.

Find out what I thought, and a review of the movie itself, below the Cut! ✂

Stormy Story

Ok, enough teasing, I see good things in the movie but not enough for it to be a secret masterpiece, not by a long shot.

1/3 Stars from Me. That’s Poor. (Compare with 2/3 being Good, and 3/3 being Excellent)

My main beef is unfortunately kinda the crux of the whole story, so while there were aspects I really liked, it had permanently set the bar low, and other issues were not helping matters. I’ll go into the problems after I sum up the plot.

[sitcom harp music]

14 Year Old Alan Tracy is stuck in a stuffy school with only his nerd friend to confide in. Something’s eating him up, and it’s jealousy over how his family are International Rescue, the secret rescue workers whole pilot the Thunderbirds, impossibly cool craft with capabilities vastly exceeding standard technology. Even when he’s allowed out of school and back to the Island, his envy and barely repressed resentment over not being a member himself causes him to go off and sulk and to try taking Thunderbird 1, the hypersonic jet plane, for a joyride.

His father and the leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy chews Alan out for almost compromising the need for the organisation to remain secret, lest their advanced technology falling into the wrong hands. Alas, said wrong hands are already working against IR: The Hood, a diabolical, cold blooded criminal with psychic powers and a grudge against Jeff. After successfully tracking the location of Tracy Island, he launches a missile towards Thunderbird 5, the Space Station where IR monitor potential disasters to prevent as much damage as possible, manned by John Tracy.

With TB5 crippled and John injured, Jeff and his other three older sons all scramble to the disaster zone via Thunderbird 3, the Rocket Ship. But with Tracy Island largely unmanned, The Hood moves in and aims to use the Thunderbirds to rob bank vaults while simultaneously smearing International Rescue’s good name. As the only Tracy brother left on Earth, it’s up to Alan and his 2 friends, Fermat and Tin-Tin, to foil the Hood and save his family, proving himself worthy in the process. He is also assisted by IR’s London Agent, Lady Penelope, and her driver/butler/lockpicker, Parker.

...

Ok, so that’s a summary you may read on the back of a DVD box, maybe it’s a bit long but whatever. Do you see what’s wrong with the story? The massive rift in the formula that should be within a template set by the hugely popular TV Series?

Critical Crux

For me, the main issue with the movie is that the Tracy family are thrown under a bus, or perhaps it’s more like being locked in a closet, in order for Alan to rise up and be The Hero. A show that was about each of them having different roles and personalities to the others, and the movie sees the best way to adapt the premise is to reduce 3 of them to cardboard cutouts who aren’t allowed to do or say anything meaningful, with the exception to this getting the dubious honour of getting a missile and exploding space station to the face.

I can’t clearly express how much this pisses me off! It’s downright insulting and baffling as well. They had pre established characters right there for the taking but go NO! Let’s make OCs to fill this newly created void instead and make the main Message of the film Friendship Teamwork.

Why does every child-skewed media hafta have the Friendship message? It’s a good one, sure, but nothing said in this film about it was fresh or original. Y’know what I see far, far less? Not just in Kid Flavoured Media, but all sorts? The importance of Brotherly Bonds between actual brothers!! I don’t subscribe to the massively misunderstood message version of ‘Blood is thicker than water’, but a story with the siblings actually pushed and stressed and coming out stronger at the end would have ruled!!

[For what it’s worth, the actual saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, i.e. the bonds you choose to forge are more important than happening to be born to certain people. This correct message is still compatible with literal siblings though!]

The other, somewhat lesser Large Issue with the movie is simply that we don’t see much in the way of Rescues with the titular Thunderbirds. We only get the tail end of the Oil Rig in Act 1, and then the ‘Birds are used predominantly to get to London and save 1 Monorail Car with TB4.

Watsonian Woes & Doylist Dilemma

When looking at Media, there’s 2 main angles to consider; Doylist and Watsonian. Doylist is the “real life / meta” angle, the structure of the story or interests of the author being in the plot, that kinda thing. Watsonian is the reason given within the story.

All stories have Watsonian and Doylist reasonings, the trick is to blend them in and not use a weedy Watsonian reason for something stupid happening.

Why bring this up? Because it’s still part of the Huge Problem I have with the film; the Doylist reason for all of IR being incapacitated so easily is so Alan can shine without fighting for focus in a large group. I don’t like it, but let’s go along with it for now.

Believe it or not, but I can accept that a Movie format isn’t going to be the same as an ongoing series. There’s way less time and you gotta hit certain beats. Ideally you also condense the essence of the show into the film while being more than just a long episode. They didn’t hit this note in my opinion...

But other than ‘It has to happen for he story to work’, there’s no damn reason for all the Non-Alan Tracys to be cooped up in the crippled TB5! They put all their eggs into one basket when a considerably more sensible choice woulda been to have a small crew, and the others remain on base. Because even without factoring in a worst case scenario where another missile hits them while in space, killing them all, which totally could have happened for all they know, there’s also the part about them being International Rescue! They gotta be ready to respond to other disasters should those develop. TB1, 2 and 4 were still available for use!

If I was Jeff making the boneheaded decision, I would have taken a second to think about it and have 1 of the Bros come up in 3 with me. Seeing to John shouldn’t be something 4 people are needed for, it would just get more crowded and the oxygen would be used way faster! Considering they all come close to asphyxiating, 2 less people would mean things weren’t so damn close to the wire! (Granted, the movie also has them falling into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up as a hazard, but the whole crew being there doesn’t affect that.)

Jeff! You’re the patriarch and supposedly most experienced dude in the whole movie! Why didja run into that trap with both eyes open? Stressful situation, sure, but in the Rescue Business you need to be able to listen to the cold, clinical angle. You’re risking more of your sons’ lives making such a rash judgement!!

Character Conundrums

This is the part of the review where I begin to really emphasise the differences between TOS and this movie. I’ll hold off TAG for now in the interest of fairness.

The movie is a mixed bag when it comes to the individuals within it. Some have been refreshing updates to stuffy 60′s tropes, but several draw the short straw, feeling even stiffer than their marionette precursors.

Alan - Hoo, boy. The plot follows Alan.... for the third time if you’re factoring in the Supermarionation movies, which was quite the baffling choice as Puppet!Alan is quite the obnoxious jerk. But whatever, new movie, new canon, new Alan. While the Alan of the 60′s was a bizarrely whiny brat of a character considering he was supposed to at least be in his early 20′s this Alan at least makes more sense to be annoying. But yes, he starts off as a sullen jerk with unclearly defined jealousy towards his own brothers and seemingly a lack of grasping the stakes behind International Rescue, viewing being one of the crew as a Cool Job rather than a gruelling, life-risking ordeal. Over the course of the movie (mostly Act 3) he becomes less of a berk and a better team player, even going as far as to save the Hood personally.

Jeff - One of the stronger characters in the movie, even with this poor choice I’ve gone on about already, haha. You get the real impression the job means the world to him, but still secondary to his sons. An update and improvement to the sometimes stodgy and holier-than-thou character from the 60′s, plus his proactive role makes him way less of a backseat driver.

Lady Penelope - Best character and a splendid update to the 60′s Socialite. This Penny is always a delight to see, although her ability to change clothes offscreen sometimes pushes plausibility, haha. She and Jeff also have very natural and endearing chemistry, so for this iteration at least, I’m up for shipping them, something I can’t say for TOS.

Parker - Remarkably true to the beloved puppet version and another highlight. His interplay with Penelope is some of the best dialogue in the whole movie, and was written by Richard Curtis in an uncredited role, or so I’ve read.

The Hood - A shockingly sadistic and cold blooded so-and-so. His Psychic powers have been given a huge boost, and the depths of his spite generates all the tense scenes the movie has to offer. His performance may be the best in the whole film, simultaneously over the top while also completely deadly.

Tin-Tin - Y’know, Tin-Tin is a funny character, in how she’s very different in all versions. I enjoy her in TOS, but her potential as an engineering assistant, mathematician and member of IR are quickly discarded to make her a secretary, which is further demoted to bringing coffee. Ahh, The Sixties! One of her other defining features was the sometimes bickering sexual tension with Alan. Movie!Tin-Tin is still the implied love interest [and the same age] with him, but she’s also an Action Girl extraordinaire, with abilities bordering on metahuman. She can trek through the jungle without slowing down, she can dive underwater for prolonged sequences, and has a variation of her Evil Uncle’s Psychic capabilities, but used for good. Notably, the Kayo of TAG takes significantly more from this Tin-Tin to the original, sadly sans Telekinesis.

Fermat - The only OC I’m gonna dignify with a section here lol. He’s basically mini-Brains, complete with the way he t-ta-tal- -distinctive speech patterns. But yeah, as the hypersmart and nerdy pal, I feel that his role is pretty superfluous, though his performance in the movie got me to soften up, he’s a good kid. Just one who, like, is part of the deal breaking issue I have with the whole film. In a way I think he’d have made a better lead than Alan lmao

Brains - Not much to say here, he’s also a dude in distress for a majority of his screentime. Seems to be older than his TOS self and a bit less subservient to Jeff, but also a father ....or Fermat is his clone. They never make that clear. He’s hit on by the Hood’s Female Scientist and it’s played for comedy, more on that later.

John - In TOS, his role was infamously minimal, as Gerry Anderson took such a strong disliking to the John puppet and the TB5 model that he exiled both into space with a few token shots per episode. So in comparison, this movie is far kinder to John! He has a nice, genuine chat with Jeff, without any mission to initiate said videocall. The movie is also quite mean to John in how he gets bombed by the Hood, his space station in tatters, his arm hurt and then near suffocation with Jeff and most of his brothers. Ahh, the conundrum of being John.

Scott, Virgil and Gordon - No, they don’t even get their own paragraphs in my review. Their lack of presence and importance in the movie is my giant gripe (have you noticed yet?) and it got to the extent that I feel they could have been combined into one character to save casting money. They get maybe 5 lines each, if that. I literally can’t tell Scott and Virgil apart (I know they have name tags on their uniforms, but in most scenes I couldn’t even read that) other than knowing 1 of them is taller. Which that one is, is a mystery.

The only one with a slightly distinctive appearance and air is Gordon, which is another can of worms because he seems to be the designated Doubtful Jerk Brother and that drives me mad!! In TOS he wasn’t as main a character as Scott, Virgil or Alan, but he was still a defined person with his own abilities. And his personality was as a slightly mouthy but the most lighthearted character! Why didn’t they carry that over?!

And yeah, Scott and Virgil are pretty much the Main Two of the brothers in TOS, so their roles being reduced to 1 token act during the oil rig rescue each [Gordon didn’t even get that!] is all the more mind boggling.

Hood’s Minions - Can’t be assed to write their names out, I refer to them as Heavy Dude and Science Woman. Heavy Dude is the Heavy, and his character consists of Dumb and somewhat Sadistic Muscle. Science Woman is first objectified (we see her ass first. Yes, really.) but then it’s ‘revealed’ that as she has Austin Powers level teeth, she’s uuuuuglyyyyy and her otherwise genuine attraction towards Brains is played for laughs with this angle. And that’s still female on male sexual harassment, which doesn’t fly with me. Eeeesh. Bad writing! She does Science Things for Hood.

The Rest - Kyrano and his wife are in this. Wife is Original but basically Grandma’s role, though she doesn’t even get a single word to say. Rip. Also the Hood has a few more generic mooks from somewhere, but seemingly only for part of the movie. Kyrano didn’t do much in the show except get bullied by the Hood and little has changed.

Tone Trouble

I feel like the movie has a bit of an issue with balancing a consistent Tone. Again, let’s look back at TOS. It was a Family Show, designed to not just appeal to little kids, but to also keep their parent and other adult amused. Maybe some of it was also the result of the times, but striking to me is that they allowed the characters to get pretty hurt, complete with red paint being applied to look like realistic blood. Some of the criminals, including the Hood himself, would be very vicious, how he treats Brains in Desperate Intruder comes to mind. There was even firefights resulting in death, like the memorable climax of Operation Crash-Dive, where Gordon has to shoot a saboteur in the back, into the open sea below the compromised plane. He then proceeds to hold the cut wires together with his bare hands. Don’t try this at home, kids!

So while I can understand some of that being removed from the Movie (and TAG), there’s still the irritating going down to a perceived kid’s level for the majority of the film, which is probably also a large reason for the massive structural change. But then, there’s shockingly dark implications here and there, and the haunting sight of the crew trapped on TB5 floating lifelessly in the dark, asphyxiating. But then, again, we have goofy choreographed fight scenes with juvenile stock cartoon sounds. And then, we have Hood force choking Alan?! It has been mostly consistent until Act 3, then the tone goes up and down more than the flying machines.

Revamped Rockets

I’m mostly talking about the main craft here, though I know the Pod vehicles got modified too, I’m not sufficiently a TOS Pod Buff to go over them.

TB1 - Looks real nice! Maintains and even enhances the sleekness, and the idea of a glass cockpit is much better than having 1 tiny window and a dinky TV screen to see by. Oddly dark inside the cockpit considering how much glass there is, though. Probably my fav of the Movie Fleet.

TB2 - Oof. Looks bad, man. Like, really ugly. What have they done to the glorious design that was the Original Big Green? The unofficial mascot from her importance and unorthodox style? They turned her into a stubby, too glossy, chunky bar of green soap. The thick ass legs are a good idea but it sure ain’t enough. Also, she carries 3 smaller pods insteada 1 big one.

TB3 - Like TB1, pretty much the same design but streamlined a little. Docks with 5 sidewise instead of like pen going into its lid.

TB4 - I’m mixed. I like the idea of giving her a glass canopy and extendable arms, but the movie’s version is so boxy she looks more like a small yellow Greenhouse with the rear half of the old Four, haha. The arms also look a little stiff, can they bend? Now, if there was a sleek, glass hulled, variable armed, demolition charges-loaded Four, that would be my favourite possible version ;3 Four is my fav craft in TOS and TAG, for what it’s worth.

TB5 - I say it’s quite a visual improvement over TOS and the odds and ends jumbled look that had, though I do appreciate a bit of Chunkiness. This one really needs to have better defence too, TOS 5 may’ve been able to tank that missile lmao

FAB1 - I know that she would have been a Rolls Royce in the film, but BMW said no, so that’s not a point against the movie. And failing the classic image, it’s cute that it’s a Ford Thunderbird, though I’d have preferred one with those 50′s/60′s stylish fins personally lol. Her ability to fly is new here unless you count the Dream Sequence in Are Go (’66) and the water mode was also seen in that before this, and she gets the job done, though we don’t get to see as many gadgets and gizmos in the course of the film.

Unlikely Uniforms

I really don’t understand these. Why are they off white with minimal accent colours? What was wrong with the blueness of their suits and the broad stripe of a secondary colour? I sure ain’t saying the 60’s costumes were practical or even that fashionable, but they were very distinctive and striking!

Not only that, but for some strange unexplained reason, their uniforms all correspond not to their own speciality, but to which craft they’re currently piloting. Even if they’re all in the same Bird...! So like, four out of five are wearing identical looking red accented suits while locked in TB5. I already find the elder brothers to be the Similar Squad, and their microscopic name tags don’t help!

Why don’t they wear their own coloured uniforms all the time? Then ya don’t need the name tag at all! And the silly implication from the way there’s apparently a whole set of Craft Specific uniforms is that there’s piles of clothes that ain’t getting used in all of them, like the tiny TB4 probably having 6 whole sets on board at the end of the film.

Between that, no blue and the outfits looking like Generic Sports Wear, the only nice thing to say is the THUNDERBIRDS down the sleeve is a cool touch. Which should really say International Rescue or IR...

Mingled Misc.

Yeah, The conflation of Thunderbirds and International Rescue is a tad irritating but it’s actually something I can overlook. It’s not a dealbreaker and it makes sense the Dumbass Public would misunderstand and call them the wrong thing.

Jeff refuses Alan early access into IR and cites “No shortcuts”. Then at the end he echoes this when he is making Alan an official member, saying he did it with no shortcuts. The whole faffing scenario was a giant shortcut!!! Fuck training and being a suitable age, am I right?!

Amazingly I didn’t cover this already, but when Alan shortcuts his way onto the team he’s made pilot of ... TB4. That’s why he’s in yellow accents in the pic. Gordon is seemingly the main pilot of TB3 instead, but the movie doesn’t deign to make that clear. While I appreciate that the 14 year old with no Astronaut training isn’t put in charge of 3 instantly, I resent the careless removal of characterisation. Obviously movie Gordon never served with WASP or won the gold medal in swimming or had a massive hydrofoil crash to nearly kill him but ggggghgggaaahhhhhhhhh

Also what’s with the implication that Four is the Babby’s First Machine? She’s a highly specialised craft that would require different training to flying or Space shit! How dare you?! The most charitable link is that Alan stood around in 4 as Tin-Tin did most of the work herself, but I guess it coulda as some level of experience.

Ford Sponsorship - Gets a bit much! It’s one thing for all the cars to be Ford, but them seemingly owning the News is like an unpleasant look into a world where corporations run everything.... hahahaahaaaaaa........

Marvellous Music

Something the movie really excells at is the tunes! The remix of the Thunderbirds March is good in it’s own right and very welcome, and the new music is all solid. Special mention to Busted’s outro song for slapping so hard even people who hate the movie leave warm youtube comments about the song. I have a habit of listening to it set to TAG footage myself, haha

Sincere Summation

Look, I’ve come off negative in this, but I honestly have a lot of respect for a lot of the parts of this picture. Hood, Penelope, Parker and Jeff are fantastic, the physical models and sets have a lot of care and loving detail poured in, the music is all bangers and other little nods and homages to the show shine brightly. The director got a lot of good work in and I hold him no ill will.

I think the problem is in the Writing and probably Studio Mandates, I’m not 100% sure, but things often get snaggy when the studio you’re working under gets bought out by a bigger company partway through. Again, I’ll refer to the info I’ve seen instead of trying to relay it in my own words.

And they made a real bad call snubbing Gerry as a Creative Consultant. Some of his venom towards the film may be from that, as well as his alleged preference to Team America: World Police as a theatrical homage. And I’ve seen that before and wouldn’t really say that’s true to the spirit of Thunderbirds, but yeah...

I’d be interested in any future Thunderbirds Movies, if that’s ever on the cards again. I’d probably be even more up for continuation of the TAG series, or newer new Captain Scarlet with International Rescue involved. Either way, I want new footage of the Birds taking off again, be it puppet, people, CGI, or something new~

Extra Reading

https://securityhazard.net/2017/05/19/thunderbirds-2004/ Full movie review, warm reception. Contains photos of set pieces and costumes.

http://groovyfokker.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbirds-arent-go-unfilmed-versions.html Insight into some of the past issues developing a Movie, but gets some basic information wrong (Since when is Gordon the youngest and TB3 orange??)

Thanks if ya’ve been reading the whole thing! <3

[byakugoseal]

Working on Saku’s CARRD got me feeling all types of way about her.

There’s a meta below! Under a cut because I got carried away! Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below because a lot of though when into this bad boy!

Sakura should have been given a chance to further develop her skills post chunin exams long before Tsunade’s tutelage. It was clear early on that she had immense chakra control and an intellect to go with it   — albeit she had the vaguest idea of her own strength and self-worth, impacting her abilities. Unlike the rest of her classmates she did not come from a clan or a family of shinobi and therefore was ill prepared for that life style, she did not get taught from a young age how to harness her own power and abilities. Rather, she was left to think on the life and use what she learned in the academy to help her to fight. While I can concede that at the start she gave more interest in boys and crushes than she did fighting, that should have not impacted her learning.

During her formative years she should have been taught genjutsu and taijutsu both of which would have gone a long way for her, especially taijutsu when paired with her immense physical strength. Learning these could have paired very well with her chakra control and strength she would develop later on in her life. Her actions and behaviors were also way over played in the anime for laughs (even though none of us were laughing) and how she is depicted in the manga differs but, again, I digress.

Sakura should have been allowed to fight Sasuke, that could have been a great turning point for her character. By all means she would have ( and should have ) lost. Sasuke is years ahead of her in ability and battle strength, however, she could have held her own for a few moments   — but alas she was saved not once but TWICE. Now, I do not think she would have been able to kill him, her own feelings and emotions towards him run far too deeply for that. However, fighting Sasuke and LOSING would have given her that extra push towards validating her own strength and recognizing that she too was getting stronger. This would have motivated her to do more and become even better that kind of set back of holding her own against Sasuke and losing only to have Kakashi and Naruto step in at that point would have pushed her into her own studies. She could use that loss as motivation to become even stronger, not only in her medical prowess but in her combative jutsus.

During the war she MANUALLY pumped Naruto’s hear ( which is no easy feet ) in order to save his life. There is a certain point in which it is determined that once “all possible life saving measures have been taken” those measures and efforts can be stopped. However, she chose to MANUALLY pump his heart in order to keep him alive despite her chakra being almost depleted at this point ( not to mention that she held her own and punched a literal goddess on the top of her head once she realized where the blindspot was, but I digress ). She went to GREAT lengths during the war to keep everyone alive, pushing herself to her limits. This was made possible through years of training not because of a tailed beast sealed within her, coming from a great clan or even having a kekkei genkai.

And on the topic of her “usefulness” or lack there of, Kishi never gave her a chance to be part of the main narrative but rather used her as a damsel in distress trope in needing of saving when she could have actually contributed quite a bit had she been given a chance. If she never contributed to the story or the characters’ lives and could have “easily been replaced by any other medical nin” how come she was the only one who was able to understand Sasori’s poison and make an antidote with very limited information? Yes, she had many faults but you have to take into consideration that not only was she a first-generation ninja but up until Tsunade she was never given the time or chance to develop her own skills and training ( not to mention Kishi just using her and most of the other female characters as a plot device but, once again, I digress ).

[peachdoxie]

Thoughts on lost potential in HTTYD 3? (I was thinking ala Hiccups foil in Grimmel and the thematic shift away from the rest of the series) OR did you not feel that there was any lost potential? (and why I loved the first two movies and I’m trying to find a way to not be disappointed by the third)

I think that, with any piece of media, there will always be some lost potential. There are storylines that could be focused on more than another, or details left unexplained, or characters that aren’t fully developed. But a piece of fiction, despite its vast capabilities, is always going to be limited in how far it can go and what it can focus on. Time constraints and size constraints are probably the two biggest things that limit what a story can tell, but the influences of its creators (which is almost never just a single person) and the constraints of the medium itself are going to have an impact as well.

In truth, I’ve never given much thought to lost potential in the media I consume, or actually in my life overall. I don’t like to focus on “should’ve would’ve could’ve” type things in a regretful or “I wish things had been different” kind of way. I only use them as a way to work on improving myself for the future, like “I could have done this, which would have (likely) made this better, and so I will incorporate this into future actions.” This mentality is been something I’ve deliberately worked on for about a decade of my life now and is something I continue to practice today.

There’s a limit to how far criticism of what I (or someone else) could have done better that I’ll let myself take, however. Too much of “if this had been different then this would have happened” is dangerous, in my view. It’s okay to speculate, but there are so many variables to any given situation that it’s almost impossible to predict how things could have turned out differently. Things like “I should have proofread my paper because otherwise I wouldn’t have lost points for spelling errors” is a lot different than “If I hadn’t decided to join a theater troop this semester, I would have been able to study more and therefore gotten a higher grade in my class.” There’s no guarantee of that. And what happened happened. I don’t find much use in dwelling on “what could have been” based on what happened in the past other than to work to not make them in the future.

(For the record, this philosophy comes from a hyperfixation I had on several specific time travel series in high school and so I got really into learning about various kinds of determinism and time travel tropes and how they might play out in them.)

When it comes to media consumption, I try to take a “no expectations” approach. If I don’t have any expectations, then I can’t be let down if they’re not met. In practice, though, I often do have expectations, but they tend to be very loose. Generally, I’m of the mind of “whatever happens, I want to enjoy it” and if that comes true, I’m satisfied. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that I thought whatever it was is good, in a critical sense, just that I liked it. There are sometimes things that I want to have happen, but I’m also okay with those things not happening as long as I enjoyed whatever it was I consumed.

With all that in mind, when it comes to HTTYD 3 and lost potential, I don’t really have any thoughts on it. Sure, there are things that would have been nice to see, like the film passing the Bechdel Test, but those things didn’t happen. However, there were many things that I really did like and enjoy, and for me, those outweigh the things I wasn’t as pleased with. So I just focus on the things I liked instead. I can’t change the film, only how I interact with it.

This isn’t meant to be like, specific advice or me saying people should be like this. I’m not sure everyone is capable of it, and I’m not sure that it would be a good thing if everyone had this philosophy, though both of those are far beyond my ability to adequately assess. But in order to understand my point of view on lost potential in HTTYD 3, it’s a necessary background to cover (and also I like talking about myself).

I don’t know if that was the answer you were looking for, anon, but that’s my thoughts on lost potential in HTTYD 3.

[eclectic-aussie]

Post ‘S7 the 100′ Trailer Reveal

Wow, that was a doozey! So many questions, so many questions. And also, so many worries since the worst thing about the final season of a show you adore (besides saying good-bye to characters you love) is the fact that they don’t have a chance to fix any F-ups they make in the next season. I’m not try to jinx it, it’s just that I got a little worried about how they’ll finish up everyone’s journey and whether or not they’ll actually properly fix the relationships and people they’ve broken or just put a band-aid on it and expect us to overlook it (Princess Mechanic (and pretty much all of Clarke’s relationships tbh) I’m looking at you) Or worse just send them back to Earth in the Dropship days for a ‘re-do’ which would kind of feel like a cop-out of everything they’ve gone through and their growth as characters ala ‘it was all a dream’.

I’m happy that Clarke is given an opportunity to say good-bye to her mum like she hasn’t really ever been given much time to grieve before, and I’m glad that she seems to be given a possible start to a friendship outside Spacekru with her talk with Gaia. And a new leather jacket and outfit! She must be happy for the wardrobe change after wearing the same thing for 2 or 3 months now?

I am also glad we see Jordan being more himself that the last time, because our cinnamon roll jr needs protecting and his survival (and sanity) is paramount!

The limited amount of Bellamy in the trailer is a little worrying, especially with Octavia saying not to sacrifice his life for hers and her, Clarke and...Hope? running into the locked door and it looking like Hope calls out ‘Bellamy’ while they all look scared, which makes me scared for him because he and Clarke have not gone through hell for 132 YEARS as leaders just to be killed off in the last season. Also the only Bellarke in the trailer is from when he was trying to convince her not to go back to Sanctum as Josephine which sucked, but doesn’t really mean anything off hand.

I wonder who the ‘key to the last war that mankind will ever wage’ is? I mean they’re heavily implying it’s Clarke, but it could honestly be anyone at this point with so many Nightbloods traipsing around. Or if they wanted to get tricky they could mean she’s the key because she could be used as leverage to get one side to stand down or a leader to stop (if say, she was important enough to stop fighting to protect like Diyoza was important enough to Hope to ‘kill’ Octavia) or her death could stop them, if she was the mother of someone key they needed to win or lose? Like if Padme hadn’t have had Luke and Leia the Rebellion wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far. Just a thought. Or her death triggers something, like it did with Sheidheda and Madi? Honestly, it could be anything.

What confused me though, was when Clarke was meeting the visitors near the edge of the protective dome around Sanctum, why were Gaia and Niyla the ones covering her? Where were Miller, or Bellamy (probably in the Anomaly) or Indra or Murphy or pretty much anyone who’d actually trained to use guns instead of the Grounders who were afraid to pick one up until the Mountain Men died? I’m not saying Clarke needs anyone to back her up, she’s a force all her own, but it just seemed odd.

And the creepy dude with the knife smearing blood on Madi’s chin is also worrying. What is it with this show and constantly threatening the little ones?

I really hope they give everyone the chance to work out their issues and their grievances and actually get some closure (Finn and Aurora Blake turning up later on suggests they might) but not as a cop out of ‘finding peace only right before death’ trope they forced out last season with Abby and a few others in previous seasons. Finding peace within yourself or ‘redemption’ being found by sacrificing yourself for a dramatic death scene (not Octavia hopefully, that would be cheap) gets done too often to have real impact.

So I’m guessing it’s going to be: Party 1: Bellamy, Echo, Hope, possibly Octavia. Gabriel might be in there too, though he could have stayed in Sanctum.

Party 2: Clarke, Raven, Miller, Jordan, Gaia and Niylah (for some reason, sure it’s explained)

Party 3: Murphy, Emori...? who stay in Sanctum maybe to keep the peace...?

And Indra probably being one of the above, probably Clarke’s group, because why would you ever leave her behind?

So yeah, really looking forward to this final season, but also more than a little worried that we’ll be left with an unsatisfying ending to one of my favourite shows. Yes I know, I know that’s why fanfics exist, but I’m still worried that they’ll just gloss over a lot of serious stuff that needs addressing on the basis of: ‘there isn’t really time or we just can’t find a place to put it, even if it’s something that’s fundamental to get towards organically patching the relationships between these characters...ahh well we’ll just have Clarke give everyone instant forgiveness per usual and no-one but her and Bellamy need question the borderline evil things they did (tied down and drugged a child to take a nearly lethal amount of her bone-marrow, which was also treason and led to Abby’s death) and have it swept under the ‘we did it for our survival and we’re not Clarke so it’s ok’ rug that’s almost to the roof by now.’ crap they’ve been peddling since season...actually it’s been happening a while, they’re just a lot more blatant about it the last 2 seasons.

After I watched the trailer, I didn’t over-do the analyzing since I thought I’d give it a few hours and Tumblr would have blown-up with a break-down of the trailer frame-by-frame. So I went onto IMDB, mainly because I wanted to see a better pic of a character from one of the snippets shown, and I had a look through at the cast listings for the season which aren’t really reliably filled out until after the episode has aired so it can’t be trusted that much...but I would like to point out there is an August (Leo Howard) in episode 11 which is hmmm worthy given why Bellamy named his sister Octavia, as a lot of people (including myself) have used August or Augustus as a very probable name for a Bellarke kid. I know, I am very much reaching about the ‘suspiciously named’ (how often do character names change before airing?!) characters with brown hair and hazel eyes, with a dimpled chin and jawline and height similar to Bellamy, even if his colouring is closer to...Finn, if I’m honest. Just saying. Also, there was a young woman (I don’t think it was Hope but possibly wrong) in the trailer with long curly blonde hair with purple highlights like Clarke in season 5. Also just saying.

I’ll just keep being equal parts hopeful and terrified for the premiere on the 20th.

[chromecaptain]

Rise of Skywalker Ramble (SPOILERS)

!!!ROS SPOILERS!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

So FIRST OF ALL, yes there are pros and cons to this movie & I get why some people are upset. Nobody is wrong for disagreeing with or disliking the movie! I just also hope people can extend the same courtesy & not try to tell me I’M wrong for loving it. <3

The Cons:

Rose as a character has been almost completely shelfed & serves no purpose in RoS besides representing a continuity, which is disappointing.

Leia’s death was...anti-climactic. I understand they had limited resources when it came to actual Carrie footage and sound files, & you can really tell that her parts were spliced in/worked around bc they stick out compared to everything else. Maybe a better job of editing could have been done, I don’t know, but she didn’t flow with the other characters since...she wasn’t there.

For Leia to reach out just to say Ben’s name and nothing else, and to die from the effort of just that was....hrm. I wanted so badly for her to say “I still love you” but alas, that’ll just have to be a headcanon.

There’s so much going on in the movie that there’s no time to breathe. It is near-constant action, which gives it the feeling of being rushed.

3P0′s memory being restored again was kind of too convenient and took a lot away from his sacrifice, so...:P

Hux gets YEET’D much like Phasma and his character joins hers in the trash compactor of throw-away characters of this trilogy, which really is an honest shame. I feel your pain, Hux-stans. I’ve been feeling it since TFA.

We got the Knights of Ren but we only really got to see them....walk around menacingly? Underwhelming, and I hope we’ll get more of them somehow, in comics or other media.

The Pros:

HOLY SHIT THE VISUALS??! There are so many absolutely breathtaking moments in this film, and it felt like JJ was really trying to step up his game considering the visuals Rian gave to TLJ.

Adam Driver did an AMAZING job. Like, the character of Kylo Ren has always felt a little wooden to me, but Adam seriously gave some raw emotion and vulnerability to this performance that far exceeds the other two movies. 

HUX JUST UP IN HERE BETRAYING THE FIRST ORDER JUST TO SPITE REN, WE STAN A PETTY BITCH IN THIS HOUSE XD

Chewie mourning Leia absolutely GUTTED me D:

POE, YOU DID AMAZING SWEETIE!! YOU TOO, FINN!

FUZZY SPACE HORSES

I know it’s been a common trope, but like...BENDEMPTION Y’ALL. 

CONGRATULATIONS REYLOS, IT WASN’T INCEST XD

UMMMM...Poe used to be a spice runner and I’m LIVING FOR THAT?! I want to know more about his sordid past and I HOPE SO MUCH that we’ll get more of him, maybe on Disney Plus or more comics, etc.

THE REBELS FINALLY WON, Y’ALL!! This war has been going on for literal GENERATIONS, and they FINALLY DID IT, and it was so satisfying holy shit. THE GALAXY FINALLY GOT ITS SHIT TOGETHER.

Overall, I absolutely want to watch this movie again, and I LOVE how Rey’s journey and story played out. Long live the new Jedi Queen. <333

[sodomyordeath]

Queen of Drags

Finally the post many of you asked for since the show went into heavy promotion.

This is going to be long. To keep this from being too boring I decided to publish it in form of an ongoing conversation between myself and the one and only Chiara.

Me: So let’s start with the cast and the jury.

Chi: On the jury side we have Conchita Wurst.

Me: Guess we have to disclaimer this?

Chi: She’s our friend, She knows and loves Drag and is a talented and amazing performer. So disclaimer done.

Me: Next we have Bill Kaulitz.

Chi:  Wasn’t he in some kinda child band?

Me: Yep Tokio Hotel, they are still around. he was also a judge on an music casting show back in the early 2010s. 

Chi: Garbage music[1]?

Me:  “Deutschland sucht den Superstar”. So nothing you or I would call music.

Chi: Right. Garbage music.

Me: And we have guest judges.

Chi: One per show right?

Me: Yea even in the final episode. They use a point system. Each of the for judges awards points. The highest number per episode is the number of contestants left.

Chi: The lowest is one or 0?

Me: Normal people start with one.

Chi: So decimal system than?

Me: Smartass.

Chi: I am smart and I have an amazing ass.

Me: No arguing with that.

Chi: So who are the guest judges?

Me: In order of appearance:  Olivia Jones, Amanda Lepore, Leona Lewis,  Pabllo Vittar, La Toya Jacksona and for the final Laganja Estranja

Chi: So 4 judges that know there shit and 2 professional singers. That’s a lot better than a typical Drag Race season.

Me: Yes and they actually do matter due to the point system they used.

Chi: So what do you expect from our 3 permanent judges?

Me: Obviously the best insights will come from Conchita and some of the guests. Bill will focus on overall performance aspects, stage placement, lip-sync etc. and Heidi... well looks and she brings the “girl at the drag bar” perspective.

Chi: Well we cheated here didn’t we?

Me: Yes because that was how it played out and Conchita felt like kind of the head judge the entire season but what we expected because of the pre show PR was Heidi dominating the show and giving us her model casting show 2.0.

Chi: Did Pro 7 fuck it up with the trailer where they framed Heidi as the head judge?

Me: Well at this point in time I don’t think they tried to provoke the backlash they got. They just tried to frame the show in a way so there usual audience sees someone they are familiar with.

Chi: So you don’t think the baited the queer community and press into a push back just to get the buzz going?

Me: You mean a PR campaign that would exploit a marginalized community to sell a commodity? That would by cynical!

Chi: ...

Me: Moving on. Let’s talk about the artists.

Chi: I honestly didn’t know much about any of ‘em.

Me: Not even your “home girl”?

Chi: Do I have to remind you that I’m from Zurich and  Hayden Kryze is from Bern? Plus I wasn’t in Switzerland for an awful lot of time in the last 2 years.

Me: Right and she's rather young isn’t she?

Chi: 20

Chi: Speaking of age Catherrine Leclery is the oldest cast member with 48 and seems to be the one who’s in the business the longest, Hayden is the youngest.

Me: Hmm, what I noticed is that anyone but Catherrine is under 35.

Chi: I feel old now.

Me: I knew about the 3 Berlin girls but never worked with any of ‘em. 

Chi: That’s Bambi Mercury a bearded queen not related to our friend Bambie the high priestess of gore. Candy Crash a funny bitch who paints her face on youtube and the “infamous” Katy Bähm.

Me: You know Candy had me when she renamed Katy into “Käthe Baum”

Chi: *lough crying* me to bitch!

Me: But really Candy is a miracle she managed to age 5 years since she was in a documentary in 2018 

Chi: *sings* Forever Young, I want to be... forever.. 

Me: Still I like her and people I know, who worked with her, like her.

Chi: Too bad she doesn’t make wigs...

Me: *spills drink* *side eyes Chiara*

Me: Looks like we both are not turning into Käthe Baum fans any time soon.

Chi: I learned a saying from the southern United States “Bless her heart”

Me: Moving on. Janisha Jones.

Chi: We didn’t know her before the show

Me: But our good friend Ephe Drine knows her and as a Munich queen with spanish roots (like Ephe) she’s somewhat of my “home girl”.

Chi: We did run into her however and she’s a lovely person,an true artist by heart and a way better drag performer than it came across on the show.

Me: She sadly was the first one that went home but if you get a chance to see her. Do it. She doesn’t disappoint.

Chi: Next up is Samantha Gold.

Me: Oh yea our full figured Bar Queen from Hamburg with Austrian roots.

Chi: Old school drag. She was the second one out. 

Me: She did sing live on episode one and her performance was...

Chi: ...not as strong as we would have expected from someone who does that for a living.

Me: Moving on.

Chi: Now my “home girl” Hayden Kryze.

Me: She’s young.

Chi: She sure has talent but it felt...

Me: Aimless and her performances where sloppy

Chi: Unpolished. She sure can move and the whole “I can be a manly man but also a hot drag queen” segment was...

Me: She’s young

Chi: Speaking of young Aria Addams.

Me: Not related to my drag daughter Wendy Addams

Chi: That we know of. I mean age wise she could be hers.

Me: And they sure have the same fire and undeniable talent.

Chi: She was the big one for me. She grew episode to episode was never afraid to try something new and wasn’t annoying. I’d love to work with her at some point.

Me: Speaking of people one wants to work with, Vava Vide.

Chi: I had no idea that there even was a drag scene in Stuttgart.

Me: There were 3 standouts in the cast when it comes to drag as visual performative art form, Vava Vide, Bambi Mercury and, to a lesser degree, Aria Addams.

Chi: I do agree but I would also include Janisha. Alas her time on the show was too short for her to really show it.

Me: We are missing one.

Chi: You clearly had a nap under the shade tree my love. You forgot Yoncé Banks, the first Queen of Drags.

Me: Oh you are right but I really forgot about her because, and that’s just me, her kind of pretty girl drag packaged with rather limited dance performances and the most questionable tuck since Jade Sotomayor on Drag Race season one is very very boring to me.

Chi: You never tuck.

Me: I don't do pretty girl drag so I don't have to.

Chi: ...

Me: Come on it’s not only the tuck it’s the fact that her tucker underwear was clearly visible ever single episode. Make sure that your stage outfits do fit kids.

Chi: So you don't agree with her winning?

Me: Well, and that once again is just me, she’s a one trick pony that never stepped out of her comfort zone in any meaningful way and she should have gone home for her Horror/Halloween performance.

Chi: You sound like Michelle Visage.

Me: Oh my dark lord you are right.

Chi: lol

Me: Anyway I would have loved to see Aria Addams win because from the top 3 she has the most potential and showed the most growth.

Chi: I have to admit for all the lip service production was paying to Drag as an art form during the season and even when the sent the other “pretty girl”  Katy Bähm home over Bambi Mercury I had hope. Handing the win to  the rather conventional Yoncé Banks felt like a let down.

Me: That’s what I’m saying. It felt like “We want a mainstream compatible winner for our sponsors.” and the medical problems Aria had sure helped create the perfect pretext to do just that.

Chi: My background is in marketing and the cynical voice in my head does agree with you but do we really want to know?

Me: Does it actually matter in the end? I think not. This show sure had it shortcomings but it managed to do 2 things. First it felt a lot more relaxed and “real” than Drag Race ever did. I loved it when they all went out partying. Second to give the German public an idea of how wide contemporary drag as an art form is.

Chi: On the competition side I liked the point system they used. I loved Conchita who was an amazing head judge and all the guests did really really well. Amanda Lepore is in deed one of the sweetest humans alive and Laganja Estranja is a grown up now.

Me: And she single-handedly gave a masterclass in how a dance focused Drag performance looks in 2019.

Me: There was a little too much crying for me and we never got into any depth about the problems we as a queer people face. Only this snippets with the “same old same, old” mainstream media always pulls when they talk about us.

Chi: That’s a narrative problem in wider media and the editing sure felt exploitative in some parts. Especially you as a long time activist pick up on such things almost intuitively.

Me: Yes it felt a little odd that Katy’s sob story had more screen time than real activists like Vava got and I absolutely loved it that Bambi refused to part take in the trauma navel gazing.

Chi: Oh yes Bambi had a couple of power moves in this season and I love the fact that she had the trans flag on stage with her in her opening performance.

Chi: Any last words?

Me: Aria Addams should have won the title. Candy Crush should have stayed longer and the top 3 should have been Aria Addams, Vava Vide &  Bambi Mercury because I greatly enjoyed what they brought to the table.

Chi: I’m not mad that Yoncé Banks won but I’m underwhelmed by it. I want to put the focus a little on  Catherrine Leclery[2]. She was never afraid to try something new and turning her Fairytale performance into a political statement about the rights of Indigenous people to a fucking Disney musical song was very very smart.

Me: Over all where do we stand?

Chi: Better than expected. The artistry was there the talent was there the presentation was fine for the most part. Going clubbing and having that spa night made this show more real and honest than all seasons of Drag Race combined.

Me: They did have a budget for the show and they used it well. For the future I hope they can get rid of some of this tired reality TV tropes like this fake and over exaggerated conflicts and keeping around contestants because they are a source of drama. I want to see the performances in full not this snippets that look like they’ve been edited by an hyperactive 10 year old who got his hands on 6 cans of red bull. Season 2 will show if it will evolve or turn into the usual shit show that passes as tv entertainment these days.

Chi: I fully agree.

Me: Congratulations to Yoncé Banks for being the first “Queen of Drags”

Chi: Congrats!

Picture: Martin Ehleben / ProSieben

Instructions: To get our voices right read her lines with a Swiss accent and mine with a Bavarian one.

Note: The content of the post is edited together from conversations Chiara and I had over the last couple of weeks since the Show started airing. I translated and rephrased when needed so she ends up sounding a bit like me at some points. I’m sorry about that. 

[1] For those of you reading this and are not in the know we both are multi instrumentalists and vocalists with a spectrum from delta blues & early jazz all the way to technical death metal and post industrial 

[2] She hails from Brazil with black and Indigenous roots