#i hate hate hate hate hate when people make him vampire-esque but in a royalty way NOO SHUT UP PLEADE

[girlhelpicf]

consider a fact. trad goth nico

[gins-potter]

Casting Thoughts

Yes, I did a long post when the rumours first dropped but hey now it’s confirmed plus we have characters descriptions, and I’m bored so let’s do this all over again people.  Under the cut because it got long

Sisi Stringer as Rose Hathaway

I said this in my other post but I’m pretty happy with Sisi as Rose.

Visually I think she’s a great fit, I love that they casted a WoC in the main role, and I think if she can bring Rose’s humour and sarcasm to the role, she’s going to do great.

The character description mentions Rose being “fiery and outspoken”, happy to jump into the action, and the strongest fighter in her class but struggling to toe the line, which is all very Rose-esque, especially in the first book.  It sounds to me like they have a good grasp on her character.

I’m a little disappointed we didn’t hear more about Rose as a character since she is the lead - it felt like the descriptions for Lissa and Dimitri both gave us a little more to go on - but it is only a very preliminary description so I’m happy to wait for more.

Daniela Nieves as Lissa Dragomir

Daniele is another one who I was happy with straight away.

She’s probably not what I imagined for Lissa visually but that’s not a bad thing either; I will be interested to see if they dye her hair a lighter colour (like a caramel-blonde) but personally that’s not something I need to see for her to be a great fit for Lissa.

I think she has a very sweet face which works well for a character like Lissa but I think she’s also going to be able to stand up in Lissa’s more fiercer moments which is nice to see as well.

The character descriptions mentions her as being “carefree and kind-hearted” who “coasts” through life until a death in the family thrusts her into a new role.  That sounds a lot like pre-series Lissa so I wonder if we’re going to see a bit of that in the show before Andre (and her parents??) die and see that change.  

It’s curious though that she’s described as the younger sister of the heir apparent - which would be Andre - so it sounds like they’ve changed it so Andre was supposed to be King.  Obviously a deviation from the books but I don’t hate it?  I don’t think it would change Lissa’s arc all that much because obviously she was always going to grow up to be an influential royal figure, this just slightly changes the dynamics of it.

The description also specifically mentions that she’s uninterested in “political machinations” and the “hypocrisy of the moroi royal society” which sounds very accurate to book!lissa as well.

All in all I’m very happy with what they’re doing with Lissa.

Keiron Moore as Dimitri Belikov

This is one who’s really grown on me since the rumoured cast list started circulating.  At first I was kind of eh about him but I can really see him as Dimitri now.

I will be curious to see if he grows out his hair or not though.

As far as I know Keiron is not Russian, there’s not a lot about him online, but there’s some instagram activity on his account linking him to UK based companies so that would be my guess as to where he’s from.  They’ve kept Dimitri’s incredibly Russian name so I guess we’re to assume Keiron might be doing an accent and they’re keeping Dimitri’s backstory relatively the same?  I’m not gonna be super mad if they change it just because I think it’s doable for him not to be Russian (I know, I know a whole book is set in Russia but lbr here they could make him from anywhere and just send Rose there in that book).

The biggest thing for me will be his chemistry with Sisi, Danila and Zoey had great chemistry (imo anyway) which saved the move a little for me, so it’ll be important that Sisi and Keiron do as well.  They’ve interacted a few times online which is cute so I’m hoping they were able to do some chemistry reads and that will translate on screen.

The character description mentions Dimitri as being “lethal, disciplined, discreet, and totally committed” as well as living by “a deep moral code” but with more going on “beneath his stoic, watchful surface” which sounds exactly like book!Dimitri to me.

They don’t really specify what his role at St Vlad’s is going to be but they do mention that he is a guardian so I’m assuming they’re keeping some sort of age gap between him and Rose.  They also don’t mention anything about their relationship in the description, be it student/teacher, platonic, romantic, whatever, but they do say he has “an expansive spirit that could threaten to expose the underlying tension between his sense of what’s right and his formal duty to the Moroi.” which seems like a nod to their relationship.

Andre Dae-Kim as Christian Ozera

This was one of my favourite casting choices from the original rumoured cast list and I still love it.

The idea of a non-white Christian makes a lot of sense to me and I think Andre could do a great job of Christian’s aloofness (in the first book) as well as his sarcasm and growing confidence across the other books.

His character description confuses me a bit though: “Intelligent and thoughtful, Christian is the pariah of the school and royal court, due to his parents’ unforgivable societal sins.” sounds accurate enough to the book (although idk if thoughtful is quite the word I’d use for Christian - maybe they mean it in the sense that he’s quiet and keeps to himself?).

Even “Well-read and hungry for knowledge” doesn’t sound that far off, idk if he was *that* particularly studious in the books, but it doesn’t necessarily not make sense either you know?

But “he searches for faith-based answers and discovers a kindred spirit who is also looking for the truth” ??? My cynical, irreverent asshole Christian is now a man of faith? I’m assuming Lissa is the “kindred spirit” (again weird word choice but maybe they mean she’s feeling lost because of the death of her family?) but I just cannot see Christian as being particularly religious.

I’m trying to keep an open mind about these changes because you never know they might play out totally different on screen, but I really hope they didn’t make these changes, particularly that Christian is studious and religious, just because they cast an Asian actor as him (because they feel a little like Asian stereotypes).

J August Richards as Victor Dashkov

This is one that didn’t appear on the original rumoured cast list (as far as I saw) and it’s so different to his description in the books that I kind of don’t have an opinion about it as a casting choice.

I’ve never seen him in anything before so purely on a visual level I think he could be a great fit for Victor, I just think it’ll really come down to how he plays it.

As for this character description: “Victor is a Moroi noble vampire with a heart of gold who’s highly regarded for his role as advisor and political strategist to Moroi dignitaries.” as well as mentioning that he has intelligence and influence, sounds pretty accurate to the book.  Obviously if Andre was the heir to the throne, Victor had to be shifted out of that role, but I think his book 1 arc could still work if they wanted it to.

The “heart of gold” bit obviously made me chuckle and I really hope they threw it in there as a kind of decoy to throw non-book-readers off the fact that he’s actually the villain in book 1/s1.

As for giving him a husband and two daughters, my thoughts are: why the fuck not? He didn’t have a love interest in the original books and I’m always down for more lgbtq+ rep.  My only concern is it maybe playing into the trope of evil/villain characters being queer-coded.  And as for having two daughters, well as long as one of them is Natalie I don’t mind.

Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Tatiana Vogel

Okay this is the most bizarre one imo, not because of the casting, but just the character description.

I mean “Tatiana is a Moroi vampire and political underdog who slowly takes the royal court by storm. Motivated by love and a sense of justice, Tatiana has a unique skill of making herself seem of no consequence until we realize much too late that she was always the one to watch.” sounds extremely Tasha Ozera to me, so like why not just make this character Tasha?  Nothing about this sounds like Tatiana, and Tatiana wasn’t even a Vogel anyway (well Vogel wasn’t even one of the 12 royal families), she was an Ivashkov.

In terms of Anita-Joy herself, well I mean we don’t really have a character to compare her to, is she supposed to be more like Tasha or Tatiana?  She looks fairly young, so my guess is actually on Tasha, but we’ll have to wait to see I guess.

Mia McKenna-Bruce as Mia Karp

This is another one that I was instantly a fan of.

I was so not a fan of Mia’s casting in the movie (I can’t even remember who played her tbh but I really didn’t like it) so this Mia is a lot closer to how I imagine her.

I think she’ll be able to carry Mia’s transformation from bratty social-climber to badass fighter really well.

The character description is interesting though.  “Witty, cutting, and just the right kind of ruthless when necessary, non-Royal Mia has a long-term plan to social climb her way into the ranks of royalty, with all the privilege and freedom that entails.” sound pretty bang on to Mia in the first book.

“A plan complicated by her instant chemistry with Meredith, a Guardian-in-training, as Mia struggles to reconcile her attraction to Meredith with her lowly status.” is an obvious deviation though, and one I kind of love???  Give me all the queer rep, and if we get to see Mia confront the issue of comp-het I’m so here for it.  

It’s kind of funny though because I’ve seen theories that Meredith is a replacement for Eddie and Mia/Eddie has always been my sort of rarepair ship.

The last name Karp is weird af though.  Is she supposed to be Sonya’s daughter?  And if that’s the case I wonder if we’re going to actually see Sonya turn Strigoi in the show’s first season or something and that triggers the change in Mia?  Interesting concept but I’m not sure how the timeline will work.

Rhian Blundell as Meredith

So this is another new one, and tbh I hadn’t given Meredith *that* much though in the past but she’s probably close to how I would have pictured her which is cool.

The elephant in the room with this casting is that Meredith’s role in the books was relatively minor - she was just kind of that character that got brought up whenever R.M needed a dhampir who wasn’t Rose/Dimitri/Mason/Eddie.  So clearly she’s going to have a bigger role in the tv show which I don’t mind but I do wonder if we’re going to lose a character - probably Eddie lbr - in order to have her.  They haven’t casted an Eddie yet as far as we know, but I have seen it pointed out that Eddie’s role in book 1 was pretty small so maybe they just aren’t announcing it.  But there’s also the possibility that maybe Meredith will sort of replace Eddie and be the third part of Rose and Mason’s friendship.

I’m very interested by this part of her character description though, “She has little patience for Rose’s volatility or Mia’s elitism, and regularly calls both of them out.”

Jonetta Kaiser as Sonya Karp

I don’t necessarily dislike Jonetta as Sonya but I am confused by this choice.  She looks fairly young, which tbf Sonya was young-ish I guess, but if Mia is supposed to be her daughter she doesn’t look old enough to have a teenaged daughter.  So maybe Sonya and Mia are sisters? Cousins? Just have each other’s last names for no reason? I really don’t know.  They also look nothing alike.

Other than that, I don’t really have an opinion about Jonetta as Sonya.  Obviously looks nothing like how Sonya was described but that’s not new nor a massive concern for me.  

I can’t really tell just from looking at her, and I haven’t seen her in anything, if she would play a good Sonya.  I think with a lot of the characters it’s going to come down to the personality they bring to the part and the writing.

I looooooove her character description though:  “Quiet, careful and decidedly odd, Sonya is not of royal bloodline and sits out on the fringe of Moroi society, preferring to spend her time in the library or her gardens. Not a person who likes a scene, nonetheless she has a quiet but profound power of her own. She is taken by surprise when a Dhampir Guardian named Mikhail shows interest in her, a relationship that will expose both the brightest and darkest parts of her heart.”  It’s everything I would probably want from a description of Sonya and I’m more and more convinced that we’re going to see Sonya’s descent into madness and transformation into a Strigoi play out in maybe the first season which I am so curious how they’re going to work into the timeline.

Andrew Liner as Mason Ashford

Our last one and another one who doesn’t look remotely like his description but again? Not a surprise and not a problem for me.  He looks like he could play Mason’s goofiness really well as well as be a solid contender for a love interest for Rose.

“Charming, loyal and popular, Mason is Rose’s main competition in the quest to become the No. 1 Guardian-in-training. Though their relationship is casual on her side, he is hopeful she will finally look at him and see him as something more.” His character description makes a lot of sense, maybe him being Rose’s main competition is a bit of a deviation? But I think that’s more an indication that he’s supposed to be a strong fighter which isn’t inaccurate to the books.  The rest sounds great.

Other Thoughts

Descriptions of the show specifically mention friendship and classism as major themes which I am very happy to hear about because those are the two parts of VA that I love the most.

Am a little more worried about it being described as “sexy” though, if they shove a whole bunch of meaningless sex scenes in it just because it’s a YA show I’m not gonna be happy.

Seen the show compared to “Game of Thrones” and “Bridgerton” which at first had me like oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck not good not good not good.  But thinking about it more and trying to understand where Plec’s coming from with that description I wonder if means similar to GoT as in the cut-throat nature of the Moroi/Dhampir society cause I can kind of see that.  And as for Bridgerton I wonder if she’s referring to the kind of social-climbing aspects of it, because again that makes sense and it seems like a theme she really wants to concentrate on.  I hope that’s what she means by those comparisons, or that she just wants to compare it to popular shows to get people to watch it.  The worst would be if she tries to throw in a lot of unnecessary sex scenes to make it like those shows, because I hate when they do that, especially when the characters are teenagers.

Interesting to hear that Plec has known about the series since before Twilight or TVD - not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Seems like it’s actually mostly (or all??) written by Marguerite MacIntyre which is interesting because I know people were worried about Julie Plec - I’ve never watched anything by either of them so I’m neutral at this point.

[wyvernseeker]

Well, this is the second or third time I’ve shown a drawing on tumblr before posting it on deviantART. Not that I’m sure anyone cares about that.

This drawing is of my new OC Salvidoria Bathory in her first ever drawing. Salvadoria is so far the second member of the Blanche Forces that I’ve drawn, the first being Onyca Asmodea. For her design, I wanted to do something a little more different, hence I decided to make her an old woman. Or rather, old vampire in this case. For her outfit design I wanted to do something emphasizing Salvidoria is centuries old. Then I remembered the Yu-Gi-Oh! monster card “Vampire Grace”, which featured an elderly (as I see it) vampire woman in a poofy dress, which then led me to remember how (deceased) nobles in the scrapped Dreamcast game Castlevania Resurrection wore such gowns too, which made me decide to give Salvidoria her gothic-esque, Victorian-era esque dress. I also decided to throw a cane in there because I was also thinking about Grand Master Greevil from Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, who also walked with a cane, so as to further the “Evil Old Folks” trope I have present with her (and just like him, she really doesn’t need the cane).

Salvidoria is the vampire grandmother of Romilda and Mathias Cross, as well as the estranged wife of Kincaid/Cinkaid Shenlon. Born around 1000 years before the present day events of World Storyia, Salvidoria is the daughter of the noble Bathory family in the vampire kingdom of Tepestakia. A woman with a fine taste in art, Salvidoria searched around the world for new types of inspiration to draw as well as being unafraid to make challengers and threats part of her art via their blood. Salvidoria’s primary style of fighting is via “Blood Art Technique”. where she uses blood whether it be her own or from her enemies to assault the opponent. As it’s name would suggest, this technique can also allow her to create creatures to assault and attack the enemy with. According to her, fresh blood works best. Despite how it may seem, her default element is Metal.

One day, she by chance ran into her future husband Kincaid. The two quickly hit it off despite their different wealth statuses and species, they found themselves to be enamoured with each other. Ultimately this romance would spell the end of Salvidoria’s time as a noble of Tepestakia, as her relationship with both a non-royal and a draconian was looked down upon by her family and the other royalty of her homeland. When given the ultimatum of leaving Kincaid or face expulsion, she made up her mind instantaneously. Even with her estrangement from Kincaid she still feels no regret or animosity towards him for her decision.

The two would later have a daughter named Georgia, who fell in love with Aaron Cross, a peacekeeper in the country of Lumen. Lumen had a long history of prejudice towards vampires, and her half-vampire half-draconian was no exception. Several years after the birth of  Romilda, the Cross family fled Lumen due to increasing discrimination. Both Salvidoria and her husband welcomed their son-in-law with open arms and got along well with him. Unfortunately, peacekeepers from Lumen would track down the family in the Drachma Empire and cause Aaron to be killed by his mind-controlled wife and also kill her parents and her daughter before her son Mathias killed her trying to protect his sister. This incident would cause the family to develop a strong disdain for Lumen’s peacekeepers, which over the years and centuries turn into virulent hate. 

Sometime after this, Salvidoria and her husband fell into the service of Noire and Blanche Mikado, as would their grandchildren Romilda and Mathias. Unfortunately the family would be split once Blanche and Noire had their falling out and became enemies, with Salvidoria siding with Blanche and Kincaid and their grandchildren siding with Noire. Despite this, they still love each other and hope they will see their logic and join them.

Personality-wise, Salvidoria is analytical, curious, artistic and  most notably of all, passionate. Whether it be with art, love, servitude, parenting, family or exsanguinating an enemy to death, Salvidoria puts her all into what she does. This can come off as off-putting to some due to her elderly stature. She however can also show some degree of cruelty and sadism to those she fights against, particularly in her throes of passion. She can also be extremely bloodthirsty and violent in such a state as well as being borderline reckless. Because of her history she can be rather prideful of her heritage, although she herself has a firm dislike of racism also due to her past.

While vampires can keep themselves youthful-looking depending on how much blood they’re able to keep intaking over time, Salvidoria’s elderly appearance is due to decreasing her blood intake because of her desire to grow old with and eventually die with Kincaid.

I doubt I’m putting too much optimism in the intelligence of the people who read this post, so I’ll leave it to you all to discover the menaing behind her name.

Well, that’s all I can say about Salvidoria. Please like and/or reblog if you so wish.

[renaroo]

SO... about that Titans Trailer...

Okay, so I wasn’t. Planning on giving this a review but then I watched it and you gave me an excuse. So. Here we are.

I hate teen drama shows but I live with my younger sister this summer so I’m constantly hearing them in the background and I know that I’ve not heard this weird song before but I also know that they allllllllllllll sound like this so there’s already. That creeping sense of 

Oh fuck it’s Riverdale isn’t it

Like. Costume design for superhero shit isn’t easy, you’ve got classic superhero looks that are purposefully garish and meant to stand out while celebrated costumes in visual mass media are toned down and realistic, fitting the style of setting. You can honor both traditions at the same time, what it requires is picking a color temperature for your set’s lights that are less noir mood piece and more lit like a musical. I actually think Moulin Rouge! is a movie where the cinematography deserves more credit for getting that mood balance because it’s definitely what I think of when I’m thinking of ideal lighting and color palettes for superhero live action. 

Marvel’s gotten a little better at figuring this out in the post-Iron Man 3 movies but they went a little too flat and bright in the first Avengers and too drab and dull in movies like the first Thor and the first Captain America.

The whole reason I’m thinking of this is because DC has never once figured this out save for Wonder Woman which had its coloring saved by choosing a sepia-esque lighting that wasn’t Sn*der-saturated so that Wondy’s costume and Themyscira in general popped while the warfront was still diferentiated but earth tones. I would actually point to DCEU movies being the pennacle of trying too hard for realism to the point of being visually embarrassed by their motifs. Which is also why the CGI rendering is always horrible in their movies. Suicide Squad was a little better but almost bipolar in how it snapped abck and forth between color saturation.

Anyway, this is a TV show and you would think that because TV shows are lower budget and more closed sets generally that this would actually be an advantage for the iconically colorful Titans teams because they’re likely to have warmer and flatter lighting choices. Except teen dramas lately haven’t been about that. They’re much darker and “more serious” and they mostly demonstrate that by darkening the lights and having everything go to dark blues with light temperature. That might work well in some places but it’s not good if you have multiple characters you want to show off with different color schemes that are wildly different from each other let alone from the blues. You can do it, but usually that involves introducing additional light sources to combat the darker lights, which is why in our Riverdale case study you have neons show up a lot, especially at Pop’s restaurant. Those neons introduce a “natural” secondary color and lighting source that helps make different hues exist more naturally in the environment without being garish and misplaced. 

I can tell that at no time is this show going to put an iota of thought into any of this sort of detail because in this BLUE ASS SHOT of this trailer they have Raven’s purple hair look like it’s been photoshopped in by me -- they managed to make an already cool color like purple look unnatural in a scene that has cool temperature lighting. This is going to be shot like complete shit isn’t it. 

What time am I at--

FIFTEEN SECONDS???

Dick’s a police officer so that’s a positive. I like the actor’s smile too, he looks just. Very Dick Grayson-- hahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahaha

oh my god

oh my god.  Was that supposed to be Robin jumping over rooftops in the background. Is that what that was. IT WAS AN UNMOVING BLUR. IT JUST KINDA WAS DRAGGED ACROSS THE SCREEN I CAN’T--

Oh jesus. Did Dick Grayson just step on someone’s neck and break-- FUCK BATMAN

FUCK BATMAN

HAHHAHAHA

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

I was wrong -- all that shit I started with? Obviously I was overthinking. This is a glorious comedy.

Okay all that aside we get rapid montage which is supposed to wow us with cameos for DC diehards and impress us with the quality of composition of shots and the special effects quality for people like my sister who don’t care about Comic Con because I’m playing trailers loudly on my laptop while she’s rewatching Pretty Little Life of the Secret American Teenage Drama Queen. 

It does none of these things. It’s no longer a comedy, it’s depressing because all that shit I said about the colors and mood lighting and temperature increases rapidly when you have terrible CGI transformations Beast Boy and... fire spouting... Starfire. Hm. Someone took that name a little literally didn’t they. 

Wait

Is that Dove. From Hawk and Dove? Killing people?

Um. I mean none of these characters save for Starfire and Raven are really all that down with killing under any circumstances in comics but Dove in particular... like why have Dove as part of the team if you’re not going to bother with the Avatar of Peace part and the eternal conflict ongoing of wanting to use tremendous powers while promoting nonviolence. I know this is something I tend to care more about than most people with superheroes, but that’s literally the only reason to have Dove in anything ever. A great example would be the single Justice League Unlimited episode involving Hawk and Dove which tackles that exactly. 

Who makes these live action decisions for DC. Is it Joffrey Johns? I bet it’s him. It has to be on some level. 

Oh my god this music is so bad. I listened to nothing but emo music for a solid 18 months of my life and my favorite band to this day is Nightwish and I find this unbearable. 

I 

what

Evil inside of me I kinda like it. I mean. I guess. That is... a conflict for Raven to have sure.... But it’s also way more boring and tedious than it was in the 80s? Like. There’s five million supernatural teenage dramas that have already done that exact conflict But With Vampires or But With Werewolves. I should know! My sister watches them in the background! I know all about Diaries of the Teen Dog Vampire. 

I’m hip

Oh and that scream. Okay, so also in film there’s this thing called a sound board and there’s a lot of cheap, royalty free sound mixes and noises that if you pay attention to editing and sound design there’s some sounds that have been really overplayed in media lately because people are too cheap to have their foley artist record a sound for themselves. 

That scream that Raven just did that you know you’ve heard before is one of those and there’s nothing wrong with it I guess it just. makes everything about this feel cheap. The writing’s cheap. The characterization’s cheap. The lightning’s cheap. The character design is cheap. This god awful song is cheap. 

they broke the glass

THEY BROKE GLASS. IS THAT FOR ME? WAS THAT MEANT TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER BECAUSE THEY BROKE GLASS IN THE TRAILER. alright fine two points to Gryffindor. 

That puts them at -80 so everyone clap

Welp that was definitely a Thing I watched. Hope everyone enjoyed this educational review.