#i know it's easier for filming purposes and probably gives some new storyline ideas

[jakeperalta]

I hate you covid existing within tv universes

[maxwell-grant]

May I please ask where you set the boundaries when constructing a crossover? (i.e. How far are you willing to bend characterisation of the setting a character's adventures take place in and of the individual characters themselves to make this crossover work? How many settings are you actually prepared to smush together before you feel you're losing more than you gain in this mix? and so forth).

I could be off the mark here, but this question sounds like you yourself got a very big idea planned but you are unsure of how far you can, or want to, push the concept. Two words of advice upfront: 1: Stop overthinking it, and 2: Run your ideas by people whose judgment you know and trust. I run some of my biggest and stupidest ideas by friends of mine and they help me make them less stupid or at least stupider but in a better way.

I mentioned in my post about potential Shadow crossovers that "boundaries" are not the priority to fret over so much as having a good working knowledge of the characters. And part of that is because a crossover, by design, already constitutes the breaking of boundaries. That's by default what a crossover does. You don't wanna test or break boundaries, then you picked the wrong kind of story.

A crossover is still a story like any other. Two characters meeting is not a story, it's a premise. You don't start a story by defining where it can't go, before you've even decided where you want to take it. Some boundaries are important, others aren't. Some boundaries are hard-coded and unbreakable, and others HAVE to be broken for the story to work, and the process of deciding which is which is easier when you have a clearer idea of what are the characters and what is the story you want to tell, and what you can and can't do with either. You gotta understand the properties you're working with, or at least, understand WHY you want to work with them and make this crossover happen in the first place.

For example, you could, very easily, write a crossover between The Shadow and The Spider, just by going through the motions. They are urban vigilantes with fairly similar designs who live in the same time period and fight crime with their supporting casts. I'm sure most writers offered the job wouldn't think twice of putting them together. But as someone who's read their stories quite extensively and who likes and obsesses over both characters, I would not cross over the two, because their stories and characters are fundamentally incompatible with each other in a more "serious" narrative, and you could not merge the two without seriously fraying one or the other.

It's a story that doesn't work, with characters that are not supposed to function together or in each other's narrative real estate, even with a character as malleable as The Shadow. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to write a good Shadow and Spider crossover, but to me, personally, these two are hard-line incompatible. That is, if it's a crossover based specifically on these two, because that changes if said crossover expands to more characters, as I'll get into.

Regarding the question:

How far are you willing to bend characterisation of the setting a character's adventures take place in and of the individual characters themselves to make this crossover work?

By default, any crossover is already going to have to create new settings from scratch based on relevant bits and pieces from the properties in question, so you do get more leeway for bending it.

But regarding characters, it's a question that cannot have a unified answer, because it's even more so dependant on a case-by-case basis. You could argue "only as much as necessary for the story to work", sure, but that's not really a good answer, because a story can do anything it's author wants to, and sometimes the story is not good to begin with, or the characters are just not made for being in the same narrative or even partaking in a crossover to begin with.

No amount of justifications for a story or characterization can excuse an unsatisfying result. Joe Yabuki and Guts are two of my favorite manga protagonists, but there would be no point to even attempting to put them together in the same story, because you'd have to twist either their narratives or their characters past the point of recognizability, which defeats the purpose of making a crossover to begin with.

Like, yeah, we've all heard the argument that Zack Snyder's Superman makes sense in the context of his movies, doing his own thing. Sure. But there's a reason any discussion of that character in the context of Superman in general comes prefaced with "Zack Snyder's" first, and why mainstream audiences who earnestly looked forward to Batman V Superman walked away feeling cheated, because, to borrow RLM terms here, they got "MurderMan vs Captain Hypocrite", and you can't even tell which is which in that description. You gotta give audiences at least a bit of what you promised them.

How many settings are you actually prepared to smush together before you feel you're losing more than you gain in this mix?

This one actually DOES depend on the story, because most stories that aren't just short narratives require multiple settings for it's scenes. Chances are your narrative will already be combining multiple settings, because setting is a word that can refer to "Korea during the Joseon dynasty", "spaceship traveling through lost nebulas" and "the McDonalds parking lot", as if they are the same thing. And in a way, when you look at a narrative's bones, they basically are.

To an extent, I think opening yourself up for a massive crossover of multiple properties of different characters and settings can, indeed, be a better choice than just going off purely by X meets Y. You start off by making it very clear to the audience that the boundaries are thin and you will be breaking them, and you use said framework to instead tell a myriad of stories, big and small. Stories that you couldn't really tell if you stuck to an existing framework or defined strongly the boundaries you can't cross. I'm gonna use Smash Bros as an example:

Smash Bros is arguably the biggest "official" crossover of all time, and it doesn't really have a "story" other than the basic framework that the series was built on, that these were representations of Nintendo icons dueling it out, and the few details that used to define this in the older days (like the characters being trophies and copies, and not the real deal) have been basically pushed aside. The most story you get in Smash nowadays is in the form of what the trailers showThe "point" of Smash was never really to tell a big, dramatic story with these characters. And maybe you really can't tell this kind of story, or a good story, with this many characters to juggle.

But they tried it once.

I'm sure most of you who do remember Brawl, as anything other than the blistering shame of the franchise that it's treated as these days, remember it mainly because of Subspace Emissary, which was this big, dramatic storyline where the end of the world was at stake and all the characters had to pull their weight to fight it. Subspace didn't have dialogue, it didn't have much story other than characters going from scene to scene while fighting, several of the characters either got nothing to do or were written poorly (mostly Wario), and none of this mattered at all, because Subspace, I'd argue, was the one and only time Smash Bros ever really recaptured that childhood feeling of smashing toys together that the franchise was built on.

Because if you remember being a kid smashing toys together, you remember not just doing it because you wanted Max Steel to kick Cobra Commander's butt. No, you did it because you wanted to tell a story where Max Steel got trapped in a rapidly filling water tank along with He-Man's Battle Cat while Cobra Commander kidnapped Max's girlfriend April O'Neil and bombed the city, and Max Steel had to talk Battle Cat into not eating him so they could together save the city and April from evil, and so they reconciled their differences and saved the day. Those things mattered to you. They were the stories you could tell with the resources you had in hand, sagas you did for the sheer fun of it, regardless of whether they were "good", you probably didn't even think of that. Why would you? You had bigger things to do.

And that's what Subspace did. It was big and dramatic and the world was at stake and all these heroes were coming together. Ness sacrificing himself to Wario so Lucas could have a chance to run away. Diddy Kong dragging along seasoned Star Fox pilots to rescue his buddy. Samus and Pikachu forming a bond. Peach stopping a deadly battle just by offering tea. ROB's story arc culminating in actual genocide, hell, ROB having a story arc to begin with. To a lot of people who played Brawl as one of their first games, this would have been their "introduction" to a lot of these characters in any sort of narrative, and to characters like ROB or Ice Climbers, this would have been the only chance they would ever get to be part of a great big dramatic narrative. Hell, Pit sure looked like he was on the same boat at the time, until Smash brought the Kid Icarus franchise back from death, and now Smash is where characters or properties get to stay relevant or at least on life support (Captain Falcon), or make glorious comebacks (King K.Rool). Brawl was what destroyed the idea of there being boundaries as to who could get in Smash or what kind of story could be told within it.

And people don't seem to recall this nowadays, but Brawl was when Smash exploded in fan content, specifically inspired by Subspace. This was the period of the Machinima craze and the fan mods galore and fan remixes and fan art and fan headcanons and fan films, and suddenly it hit people that, just because the games couldn't accomodate the stories they could tell with the premise, didn't mean that they couldn't start telling them on their own. We even got the formerly longest piece of English fiction off of it. The devotion Melee inspired in competitive players, Brawl did for artists and creators who got their start off in Smash fan content.

And because of it, suddenly a lot more people started writing stories with ROB and Ice Climbers and Pit and Captain Falcon and so on than there would have ever been if it wasn't for Brawl and Subspace. Smash gave ROB a story the character likely would have never gotten otherwise. And if you don't grasp what I'm getting at because you still think that fan content is a long way from being "official" or at least respectable, I don't know what you're doing following someone who rants about pulp fiction all day.

The point I want to get across is, boundaries in a crossover are important, yes, they exist for a good reason, but the boundaries should be defined by the story and characters and whatnot, not the other way around. Boundaries in fiction exist to be crossed or tested, they exist to tell you where you can't go so you can try to do so anyway and either fly high or crash.

Sometimes, bending or twisting characters and settings can be both a grave sin, as well as the thing that allows them to survive. Sometimes there are rules that seem unbreakable until someone breaks them without trying. And sometimes, going big and stupid and carefree over-the-top is either the worst, or the best outcome. It's fiction, taking risks and having fun is part of it.

So I'm afraid I thankfully cannot give your question a universal answer.

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow. 

[rhysnrivers]

Odyssey to becoming a Published Author

(Note: with Odyssey being in the title, this is quite a long post.  The link to the facebook page that leads to where my novel can be bought from can be found at the bottom of the post, as can some of the initial artwork done)

So, despite never been a ‘blogger’ per se before, I’ve decided to write this article about my journey from having dreamed about writing and having my own works published, through to actually writing my ideas up and publishing them myself, as I’m sure that there are many an indie author and authoress out there who can relate and have been through the very same journey I have.

First thing’s first.  Rhys N Rivers is not my real name.  It’s a pen name.  There’s something in being anonymous when it comes to writing, almost like a sense of freedom.  This day and age of social media means that almost everything we do is recorded somewhere on the internet, and an opinion or action from ten years ago can be drudged back up to be ridiculed by the Facebook jury and/or the Karens of the internet, in line with the fashionable opinions of the day.  A pen name grants anonymity and to some degree, security.  The only people who know my identity are my immediate family and a few close, trusted friends.

When people embark on a new venture; be it a new hobby, learning a new language, travelling the world, changing jobs etc, the journey actually begins long before said venture starts.  Quite often, the journey always begins in the classroom, at home, in bed, in daydreams.  It begins as a state of ambition.  A plan that one day, will be put into action.

My authoring journey was no different.  Mine actually began around the age of eleven.  I was of the Harry Potter generation where I was the same age as the main characters in the early years when a new film came out each year.  J.K. Rowling got me into reading beyond in school, and I - being one of the cool kids, clearly - read a lot throughout my early and mid teenage years.  It was admittedly predominantly fantasy based, (Tolkien, Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Garth Nix) or Bernard Cornwall’s historical works before I branched out into people like Wilbur Smith and others.  When I was around 14 or 15, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code took the world by storm and I also ended up reading all of his works. School provided a sophisticated reading list, which included Dickens and Golding, and so growing I had read through a rich and broad variety of fiction.

Where actually writing was concerned, I think it was about the age of eleven or twelve that I realised that I wanted to write properly.  I think it was actually after reading William Nicholson’s Wind Singer when I decided, and I set to task in writing coming up with a fantasy novel.  I didn’t start writing the plot straight away; I actually started coming up with characters and places, even drawing out a world map.  That was really fun to do.  It had a sense of total control to it.  What I decided was what things were.  Where a kid may not feel in control of things in other parts of life (insecurities of school, friends, growing up, relationships etc), this was something totally different.  The ability to create your own fictional world, in whatever genre you go for, is a form of escape and release in which you can develop your talents and ideas.  

There were lots of elements to what I was planning out - which included ideas from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Legend of Zelda, The Wind on Fire among others.  To be honest, I’m actually glad that ‘project’ didn’t get very far.  Poor Christopher Paolini, the author of the Inheritance Cycle quadrilogy of books, was slated by certain groups and reviewers for his alleged lack of originality and using of ideas from other stories.  In Paolini’s defence, he was only fifteen when his first book was published, which is something that most fifteen year olds don’t achieve!  But I think that had I completed mine, it might have faced the same criticisms - not necessarily from reviewers or publishers, but perhaps friends and family reading through it first.

School, in particular, provided me with a lot of enthusiasm and inspiration to write (clearly, I was one of the cool kids).  My GCSE English teacher was a great bloke (probably still is) and gave great, honest and constructive feedback to the entire class’ work.  Our first piece of English Literature coursework was a piece on creative writing and I elected to do a piece on the topic of an opening chapter/opening chapters to a novel.  Having just read Dan Brown I did my piece in his sort of style: bloke copping it at the start, trying to prevent some conspiracy from going ahead, then the reluctant hero of the story gets dragged in to solving it.  My piece didn’t revolve around religious groups or secret societies, but around a historical artefact.

Out of 54 marks, this scored 52.  I was more than happy with that.  I had no idea where the story was going to go but I was determined that I would one day finish the story.  To this day, I still have no idea where the story is going, but I am certain that it will be the last novel of a set of three, dragging the main character, a desperately-can’t-wait-to-retire detective, through painstaking research, learning about history that he wouldn’t usually be arsed about and running away from people, of whom he’s becoming more and more of an embuggerance (word-invention credited to Terry Pratchett) to.

For some reason, I really can’t remember why, but about a year later the option was given to my English class to rewrite that piece of coursework (we were about four out of five coursework pieces done by that time).  I was of course happy with my score but I saw this as an opportunity to try something new and see what ideas could again come spewing from my mind.

This time, again sticking with the opening chapter(s) option, I wrote about a start of a medieval conspiracy, beginning around the Battle of Crécy and going…err…I still have no idea where!  But this piece resonated better than the previous piece, earning full marks from my English teacher, along with the comments “…should come with an 18 rated certificate.”  Again, I vowed that I would complete this story one day and see it published.  This one I think I will try to make into a three-book story.

The summer after completing my GCSE exams I did the normal stuff: went on holiday with family, chilled out with friends, even attended the World Scout Jamboree that year.  But I also by then had a set of ideas in my head that I wanted to turn into novels, and wrote that list onto a computer, and saved it to my USB memory stick.  I have no idea where I last saw that USB stick…

After I left school I joined the British Armed Forces.  I’m not going to write too much about what I did, where I went etc (not because I was part of some uber-top-secret unit, but more-so that it just doesn’t contribute to this post) but my priorities changed.  I read a lot less and writing properly in the near term future just was not a possibility, or something that I wanted to concentrate on at that time.

In early 2017 I was considering a career change, and during that time I joined fanstory.com, under my real name.  The purpose of doing this was to put myself into an environment with other amateur writers, gain inspiration from other budding authors (and hopefully give some inspiration back), and be in a place where my works could be read among ‘peers’, giving me a good steer on things.

It was on this website where my first novel, Payment, was conceived.  There was a competition going for short stories up to 7000 words long in the horror genre (“Put your readers on edge or terrorize them”) and so I thought this was a good place to test out to see what people think and to  develop my writing style.

It took me a couple of weeks to put Payment together and submit it.  I had never considered writing horror before but this, again, was an ample opportunity to try something new and see what I could come up with.  I decided to go with a 19th Century narrative; much like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker.  I prefer to think or the horror genre as the old neo-gothic styles of writing - the old ghost stories.  Horror, in recent years, both in writing and film-making, has taken more of a gore and shock factor turn.  Personally, I think that will turn horror more into the thriller genre.  To me, horror should be about ghosts, vampires, witches - the occult and the supernatural.  And that’s that I have tried to achieve with Payment. 

What surprised me the most during the writing of this were my decisions to use the first-person narrative - something I used to despise growing up, and the use of a one-word title.  For some reason it used to bug me no end that it was becoming more and more common that artistic projects, be they novels, films, dance, visual art etc, would use one-worded titles.  I used to think that was a cop-out.  But here I am with Payment - a novel told in first-person narrative…

I have always thought that my writing style was/is closest to Terry Pratchett’s.  I’ve never tried to emulate him but his style of using irony, dry humour and satire, whilst also plummeting to some very deep philosophical ideas.  But I couldn’t do that whilst writing Payment.  The thing is with writing horror, is that you have to be able to maintain that macabre atmosphere all the through.  That actually isn’t easy.  I found there always has to be a sense of the character’s isolation, a sense of doom and gloom, and a sense of something about to happen.  

I didn’t win the completion that I entered.  I don’t think it even made the top three.  The votes are cast by the other entries’ writers and maybe a few other people.  I can’t remember if you could vote for your own project but I think you could.  The entries placed above mine, although I thought their storylines familiar with ideas already done, were admittedly much easier to read than my entry.  A 19th century style of writing will always lose to simplicity when people have a number of works to read.

But that didn’t deter me.  I’d created a fictional work and was determined to show it to the world.  I didn’t go ahead with the career change at that point but decided to fully review Payment, at get it out there as a completed project.

Fanstory is a good platform, it really is.  I’m not sure why, but after only a couple of months and having written a few competition entries, I came to stop writing on it.  My old job was getting in the way and to be honest, I was getting impatient with writing on it.  I had the mentality that I wanted to be published right now sort of thing.

A couple of years later, I did go ahead in a change of direction career-wise.  This provided the opportunity to fully revise Payment and make it into a ‘novelette’, more than 7000/7500 words but fewer than 17,500.  I would then prepare it for editing, get the artwork sorted and then publish it online for maybe a couple of quid.

I was actually in Tanzania at the time when I thought that Payment had been expanded enough to put out as a novelette.  Once I’d finished writing, I showed it to a couple of the volunteers I was working with and they both enjoyed it.  Although I was pleased about that, I still wasn’t satisfied with it.  I had touched on quite a few themes in the work but I don’t feel like I had explored them all as much as I could have.  Although complete, it felt very much incomplete.  At the same time I wanted to expand the work into a full novel and also I didn’t - mainly because of the challenge of maintaining that horror atmosphere.

I decided that, in order to put more meat onto the bones and develop this short story/novelette into a full length novel, I needed a goal to work towards; something that has an end achievement that will make me work to expand on what I had already done.  And so I set about looking for horror writing groups and/or competitions on the internet. 

In not much time at all I came across the Horror Writers Association (HWA).  They are a group that cater for all things horror and occult in fiction.  There, you can advertise your works, read or recommend other people’s works and learn about events - namely the StokerCon.

But what attracted me to them the most was their sponsorship of the Bram Stoker Awards (“for Superior Achievement”).  These are awards that are given out to authors and authoresses who have had their works judged in certain categories.  The one that has caught my eye is the ‘First Novel’ category.  A quick reading of the rules informed me of the minimal word limit:  40,00 words.  Perfect.  There’s something to work towards, with a chance at winning what is described as ‘the Oscars of horror writing’.  When I returned from Africa I set about the task of bolstering a 17,000-ish novelette into a 40,000 word minimum horror novel!

I have read Edgar Allan Poe in the past, and even bits of Mary Shelley.  For more inspiration in keeping that spooky, Neo-Gothic atmosphere, I read some parts of Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft.  Despite all of that, I initially found it difficult to write again on the same piece of work that I started almost three years previously.  It was only after reading Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, where I became inspired by her power of description to turn chapters, paragraphs and sentences that belong in quick short stories to ones suitable for a long read.

In January, this  year, I had finally finished.  I expanded heavily on the ideas that I was before concerned that I was rushing through and before I knew it, my word count was well over the 40,000 words I wanted to achieve!  I read it all again myself, edited out any spelling or grammar mistakes that I had seen, and sent it out to beta testers (readers) for opinions and editing.

Following the last edit - of which there wasn’t relatively much to do - my debut novel stands at a word count of 53,850 words!  That isn’t considered very long by today’s standards.  To give a point of reference, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is estimated to be around 77,000 words long (depending on who is doing the word count).  But my novel is longer than The Woman in Black as well as other novels such as The Great Gatsby and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and considering it came from a short story of 7,000 words I am still happy with it.

Concurrently with writing the novel came the task of finding an artist/illustrator for the cover.  That was a more difficult task than I expected.

Not only did I want to find someone who could create a suitable cover, I also wanted that someone to be able to do ‘scene art’; by which I mean a picture at the start of certain chapters.  The reason for this is that I see a completed novel itself as a form of art, and scene pictures add to that completed projected.  In fact, I actually wanted a sort of teamwork between the writing/art found in the Edge Chronicles books by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.  

I combed Facebook for a very long time, joining all sorts of groups and pages for amateur artists to show off their works, hoping to find someone who I thought was suitable for my work.  To my dismay, there was very little, I thought, that I could go off.

Around October time I put an advert on a freelancing work website, just for an idea of who else is out there and possibly able to take this up.  I did receive a fair few responses but, again, there wasn’t really anyone whose work suited what I was after.  A couple of them, one of them being an art company based in Central Asia, actually got quite nasty about it.  They were expectant 

It was when I was on a course in Spain that it was suggested to me to look on Reddit, as Reddit “literally has everything on it.”  I had never actually been a proper Reddit user before; I’d clicked the odd link from Facebook but had never really interacted with it before. 

The guy who suggested Reddit to me was right - Reddit has literally everything on it.  There’s so much information to be found on so many topics it seemed unlikely that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for on it, and so I combed through a few sub-reddits dedicated to (freelance) artists and checked some of them out.

So I once again posted out an advert looking for artists and this time the response were much more positive, and enthusiastic!  It really was quite uplifting to see and hear from so many people who were interested in taking up the project and I received so many messages.  Everyone who commented on the post and/or messaged me with links to their portfolios, I checked out their work.  I honestly don’t think there was a single person whose works of art that I wasn’t impressed by.  There is so much that can be found at deviantart.com and artstation.com and so much talent to be viewed and be in awe at!  Everyone who directly messaged me got a return thanking them.

One of the people I got talking to was a young lad from Sweden called Daniel Percy, whose artwork I also checked out.  My preferences came down to him and another guy from Germany, and after speaking with Daniel he agreed to take on the work.

Daniel does a lot of freelance art work, predominately doing concept art work for electronics companies (I want to say video games but don’t take that as gospel), but he still found the time to do this properly, compiling several drafts of the cover and inside sketches.  We collaborated quite often on what to change, ideas to put in etc.

The finished artwork is incredible!  I’m showing some of the initial first-sketch ideas here along with the final book cover, along with a couple of since-altered scene pictures, just for an idea of his talent.  You’ll have to buy the book to see all of the finished sketches ;)

And the final thing to think/worry/mull over until stupid o’ clock in the morning, was the publishing aspect.  Luckily, ever since I’ve thought about writing (as an adult), it has become increasingly easier to get your works out there.  The rise of the internet and social media age has made self publishing so much more accessible, and that is the route I have gone down.

At first, I wanted to go down the traditional printing route.  I - again showing cool I was as a kid - always liked the idea of a fresh and printed book in my hands.  But, there are two reasons why I haven’t done this:

The first one is environmental.  Even before the climate change debate became a fashionable thing to signal your virtues about, I was uncomfortable about the idea of trees being cut down for my creation, unless I could be 100% certain that exact same area would be immediately replanted.  It’s true, there are forested areas specifically for this kind of thing but the amount of bureaucracy involved, along with the middle-men, wouldn’t make it an immediate thing.

The second reason is that the majority of writers who send their works in get rejected by so many publishers.  Yes, people refer to J.K. Rowling’s story of being rejected twelve times (and again later by one of the same publishers when she first wrote as Robert Galbraith) before Harry Potter became a hit, but as the option of the internet is there, it makes sense to negate that possible rejection.  In the event that my works do get noticed and attract the attention of publishers, then great!  But if they don’t, at least by online publishing, I’ve still achieved putting my novel out to the world.

Finally, today, Friday the 13th (intentionally - it is a horror novel after all ;p ) of March 2020, I officially became a published author.  It is a fantastic, monumental feeling.  My story, my novel, my creation, is out there for people to buy, read and hopefully, enjoy.

If there’s any advice that I can give for anyone aspiring to be an (indie) author, it is this: just write your ideas down.  Sounds simple, if not downright obvious, but it really is incredible that so many people don’t achieve their dreams or aspirations simply because they don’t do them.  The world of authoring and indie writing is so much more accessible now than it was even fifteen years ago, that is takes a great lot of effort not to find at least one platform to get your works out onto.

It is also incredibly easy to find every excuse in the book to not write at all.  School, work, family etc, being the big ones, and they are legitimate reasons.  But they are only obstacles themselves to an extent, before you yourself make them obstacles.  Start small.  Set yourself half an hour on an evening.  No more, no less.  Half an hour to start getting your ideas onto paper and then after a week, you’ve spent three and a half hours writing.  You’d be surprised at how much you’ve achieved after three and a half hours of concentrated effort.

If you need motivation, there are plenty of people out there, particularly on the internet, who give great examples of motivation that apply to all disciplines.  Joe Rogan, for just one example, has plenty of people on his podcasts who talk and give advice on self-betterment, and it can apply to anybody.  If you want to write, you will find the time and means to do it.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes; everybody finds their ways at different times. 

As to my next works, what am I going to be writing next?  Well, shortly after writing Payment as a short story I thought of another idea to write about, and use that particular project to actually develop my writing style.  This next one, of which the first ‘act’ as such does already have a skeleton outline to it, is a light hearted yet philosophical at times medieval adventure, combining humour and seriousness together.  I’m not going to divulge ay more information the storyline because, although it’s a simple idea, I believe it’s one that no-one’s done before and some smart-arse with more time on their hands than I can easily bash something together using my idea!

The school coursework pieces?  They are still on my ideas list and will no doubt be developed into their own proper projects and they hopefully will also be published just as Payment is!  The fantasy that I started aged eleven?  Absolutely no idea.  Whilst I would certainly like to do fantasy, going for originality is going to be difficult, as the standard format (young hero finds out he’s the ‘chosen one’ and goes on a long quest) has been done to death, as have a lot of fantasy ideas already.  George R R Martin had the idea of using the idea of old English houses warring against other in the past, and that was used to great effect even before he threw in the ice zombies!  So that one is going to be a case of properly allocating some time to sit down, think and decide how I’m going to go about, but make no mistake, I will go about it!

Thank you all for taking the time to read through this!  I hope its provided at least some entertainment or light (ha!) reading, and I hope you’ll feel interested to buy my debut novel!

My Facebook page can be found at:  

https://m.facebook.com/Rhys-N-Rivers-Writing-101015961412385/?ref=bookmarks

All the places where Payment can be bought from can be found there.  I thought it better to post one central link than the individual ones.

[eng2100]

blog 04 - avatar (the one with the blue people not the last airbender)

preface

I went into this with absolutely no feelings about this movie beyond the absurdity of how many sequels it’s apparently going to get. As an artist, I find the visual effects extremely impressive even to this day, but as a storyteller, I thought this story was almost so inoffensive that it’s offensive. 

However, I think that engaging with things in good faith is a good way to find ways to expand your horizons and thoughts, and I like to enjoy things despite my dad’s insistence that I like to not enjoy things. (It’s not that I like to not like things, it’s that it’s easier to entertain people when it’s a bad review. Tough crowd.) I’m a firm believer in the idea that cerebral analysis of media adds to the joy of consumption rather than takes away from it, so let’s dive right in.

I like structure, so we’re gonna layer it like a delicious theme cake. 

1. the elephant in the room

Everyone has seen Pocohontas. Everyone has seen Dancing With Wolves. I’m not really here to rehash arguments, but I think getting into this movie without addressing what first comes to everyone’s mind when they think about it is pretty much impossible. The “White Savior” trope is more or less a narrative cliche in which a noble white person will take a stand against the Bad White People on the side of a sympathetic oppressed people-- Native Americans see this plotline probably the most, but black people still see it today every now and then (Green Book got nominated for a lot of Oscars, after all. The hunger is there for easily digestible feel-good race relation drama.) Wikipedia sums up the White Savior trope better than I could, so here it is:

“At the cinema, the white savior narrative occupies a psychological niche for most white people, as an expression of their latent desire for interracial goodwill and reconciliation. By presenting stories of racial redemption, involving black people and white people professing to reach across racial barriers, Hollywood is catering to a mostly white audience who believe themselves unfairly victimized by non-white ethnic groups, because they are culturally exhausted with the unfinished national discourse about race and ethnicity in the society of the United States. Hence, films featuring the narrative trope of the white savior have notably similar storylines, which present an ostensibly nobler approach to race relations, but offer psychological refuge and escapism for white Americans seeking to avoid substantive conversations about race, racism, and racial identity. In this way, the narrative trope of the white savior is an important cultural artifact, a device to realize the desire to repair the social and cultural damage wrought by the myths of white supremacy and paternalism, regardless of the inherently racist overtones of the white-savior narrative trope.“

Native Americans factor into this most significantly in the case of Avatar-- aliens in movies are hardly ever just aliens. Whether they represent an oppressed underclass (District 9), childhood innocence (E.T.), or fear of foreign invasion (War of the Worlds), aliens are an easy vessel to carry almost any idea you want them to. So if the Na’vi are more or less an ideological stand-in for Native Americans during the conquest of America, our protagonist Jake is the future space cowboy to the Cowboys and Indians In Space.

Both Jake and Grace sort of fall in and out of the White Savior space-- ultimately Grace condescends to the Na’vi a little more and she has a more complete character arc that ends with her transcending this trope, but Jake is whole hog in it. He’s like, the legendary prophecy warrior. He’s The Guy. 

(Pictured above: The Guy)

James Cameron grapples pretty hard with the White Savior trope-- he never truly goes one way or another about it and the concept of Avatars-- as in the Na’vi bodies that Jake and company jump into-- significantly...well, complicates the idea of race relations in this movie. There are certainly some uncomfortable ideas about identity wrapped up in the concept of body swaps (if this idea interests you, Altered Carbon is a really good read), but re: the readings and lectures, the concept kind of works towards what is ultimately the broad takeaway of the movie.

In summary: no, we’re not doing this whole review about White Guilt in Space. Now that that’s out of the way...

2. james cameron predicted late stage capitalism

Imperialism

"The policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies."

Avatar is about imperialism. This is as broad and pointed a theme as you can get from a movie that draws such heavy inspiration from Native American and Aboriginal cultures. Interestingly enough, the movie’s futuristic setting goes hand in hand with the commentary about the military and Western Imperialism. 

The company in Avatar, and all the almost comedically evil military men, are very brazen about their lack of ideological purpose. They are on Pandora for money. They are being paid to go to Pandora to take its resources-- the delightfully named “Unobtanium” in specific. As mentioned in the reading, Unobtanium is valuable for its properties as a superconductor, and I’m not a STEM kid, so I’ll leave it at that for simplicity’s sake. 

That the mercenary force on Pandora is so open about their exploitative intentions draws an interesting parallel to the world of today that’s maybe a touch haunting, considering that Avatar came out some years ago. In politics, at least up until now, you notice the use of a few common euphemisms as smokescreens for more extreme ideas-- for example, the Right’s: “protecting American jobs”. 

Protecting American jobs is a euphemism for racism against Mexicans-- it was the most common smokescreen reasoning for the border wall pre-Trumpian politics. Trump and company have since dropped the euphemism all together. The death of a euphemism usually means that the euphemism is no longer culturally or socially required-- you can just come out and say whatever horrible thing you mean. In Avatar’s universe, it’s clear that the political-economic climate has come to a point where they can just say that they’re there to steal the Na’vi’s resources whether they like it or not.

The movie and the lecture both draw specific attention to the parallels the film draws explicitly between military tactics used in the movie, and real-world events. “Shock and Awe”, a tactic coined by the Bush era, is referenced in exact terms-- it being a display of overwhelming force intended to break the fighting spirit of the enemy. The commander character whose name I just read but I can’t remember now says that he is a veteran of both Venezuela and Nigeria-- both real world locations in which the U.S. has invaded and destabilized for material interests under the guise of American ideology. 

In Avatar, we see the thin veneer of “freedom and democracy” as the driving forces of U.S. intervention stripped away explicitly. The opening narration of Jake’s arrival to Pandora has him say that “on Earth, these men were soldiers fighting for freedom...but here, they’re mercenaries”, however, the line between a supposed freedom fighter and a mercenary is borderline nonexistent. 

3. western scientific objectivism sucks

Another current running through Avatar is the juxtaposition of what is “real” with what is “unreal-- aka Western objectivity science versus belief systems. This is embodied in the character of Grace, a scientist and anthropologist who has been researching Na’vi culture for some time. The reading characterizes her as “the happy face of liberalism” that tries to put a nice coat of paint over the same imperialist ideas that the more blunt military types embody-- she is kinder to the Na’vi and sees their culture and planet as worth preserving, but she is ultimately dismissive of their beliefs and of Eywa (”pagan voodoo”) the same as the other mercenaries.

We’re gonna put on tinfoil hats for a little bit here to make a relation between Western culture (imperialism and colonialism) and capitalism and paganism. Are you ready?

Okay.

So you know how they burned witches at the stake at the onset of the Industrial Age in America and the pagan practices of “hedge magic” were pretty much obliterated? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Capitalism is a system that can only operate materialistically-- people aren’t “people” but “workers”, and the concept of magic and belief exists in terms that capitalism can’t define, and more importantly, can’t exploit. So witches were burned and women were placed with great reinforcement back into domesticity, where their function in capitalism was to give birth to and rear new workers.

You can see this dichotomy between the science of objectivity (what is “real”) and belief systems (what is “unprovable”, “unobservable”) in the way Grace uses scientific terms to justify the Na’vi’s spirituality. A very powerful through-line can be seen in the way that imperialism, capitalism, materialism, and objective science intersect. Their interconnected natural collective consciousness is like the raw function of a brain to her, likened to a network. It isn’t until Grace is mortally wounded and experiences the Na’vi’s healing ceremony that she is able to transcend the capitalistic, materialistic terms for definition for Eywa to have a spiritual experience, and to become one with Eywa herself (”she’s real.”)

In a plot that hinges on the material (Unobtainium) interests of a capitalist mercenary force, the ultimate refutation of this is the Na’vi’s spiritual values.

4. avatar: endgame

So what is this all working towards? Well, the idea of an interconnected spirituality like Eywa. The idea takes root in geomantic ideas, more commonly known as “feng shui”-- it’s sort of the concept of an earthly energy, a flow that moves through and connects the Earth and its people and creatures. The strange braid cord things that allow the Na’vi to interface with certain points and other creatures is a very straightforward metaphor for that concept of feng shui and geomancy.

Here we come back around to the concept of Jake as the White Savior/chosen one/The Guy. It’s kind of obtuse, but the general theory is that Eywa chose Jake as a sign that all peoples must needs transcend their boundaries and become one with the larger concept that Eywa represents. This of course comes packaged with an urgent environmental message-- our life is that of the planet, and to exploit and sacrifice one is to sacrifice the other.

Pandora, Eywa, and the Na’vi represent the polar opposite of everything that capitalist imperialism is. Thus, James Cameron, ironically, used a huge budget Hollywood endeavor to refute everything that Hollywood is. Now he’s making Alita: Battle Angel. 

Funny how that works. Oh, I made myself sad.

[thiswreckageivebecome]

The Winter Soldier is Still Here (”Unhinged” - Part 17)(Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x reader)

Description: You’re working at the local farmers market when you meet Bucky and catch his eye, not only because you’re the only one who sells plums, but because you treat him like a normal person. As a friendship begins to bloom, it quickly grows into a relationship and you learn that life with Bucky isn’t as easy it originally seemed. I SUCK AT DESCRIPTIONS!

Word Count: 1312

Warning: Language.

Author’s Note: Not every aspect matches with the Marvel films or comics. I chose to include and ignore some of the choices Marvel made for various reasons. Just know going in that not everything lines up with the storyline Marvel created and that is done on purpose.

It’s finally here. I’m sorry it took so long!

BUCKY POV ---------------

Right now my head Isn't screwed on right And I can't decide what I want

Every sweat just breaks me a little And I know you can't take this back and forth It's not really safe for you in the middle When you close that door you see It's unhinged, it's just like me

I stared at the door for quite some time. I have no idea how long I just laid there, staring in unbelief. Part of me half expected her to come back through the door any moment, smiling with a joke to lighten the mood. I could almost see and hear the scene in my own mind.

A shadow appears behind the glass on the door. I lay there, recognizing immediately the outline of her. She stands there momentarily, before leaning into the window to see if she can see me well enough through the cathedral glass. She would give up, an almost visible sigh, and walk through the door with a smirk on her lips. "I bet you thought I left, didn't you?" She would ask me, flashing a Dunkin' Donuts bag my way. I would smirk back, pushing away the legitimate fear mixed with relief. "You? Never? You told me you wouldn't leave me," I would attempt to joke to mask the true stress that had mounted my entire body as I thought she had finally chosen sense in getting away from me. She'd cross the room cheerfully and when she reached me, she'd lean me up so she could sit and place my head in her lap and begin to run her fingers through my hair until I fell asleep, perfectly content in that moment. Then a thought literally made me shake.

She actually left. She left. She told me she loved me...and she walked out the door...out of my life. My mind seemed to go completely blank due to shock. As stubborn as she is, I didn't expect her to actually leave. I felt my head grow cold. It was as if the farther she got away from me, the iciness crept back into my mind and body. I just...can't believe she actually left. I know she'll be better off without me. I know she's safer. She'll be happier. She won't be as worried all the time. She can get back to her life, a normal one. I could hear myself listing positive facts to combat the underlying depression that was creeping back in. One of those Ed Sheeran songs she loves popped into my head.

Ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt you. But ain't nobody love you like I do. Promise that I will not take it on personal If you're moving on with someone new... Until then I'll smile and hide the truth That I was happier with you.

Ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt you But ain't nobody need you like I do I know that there's others that deserve you But my darling, I am still in love with you

This was my life now. Back to the never ending darkness. Maybe once I got the guts to go back to the tower, or if they found me first, I could see if Tony could figure out how to erase her from my memory. The coffee table fell down. I didn't realize I had been gripping the leg of it. I had squeezed it until the wooden leg broke in half. How could I ever think that? How could I ever forget her? I couldn't. I'd rather live through this hell of a life and have a few good memories of it. Glimpses to prove that I could be happy at some points even if they were very few.

My eyes flickered to the door quickly when I saw the remnants of a shadow, hope inside my chest doing the same. The door opened and in my mind, I saw her but after I blinked, it wasn't.

"Steve."

I uttered his name but it was a dumbfounded utterance. I was still shocked and it felt like I was dying all over again.

"Hey man."

He came in and sat down in the chair beside the couch and just looked at me.

"So you're back to you, huh?"

All I could do was make a noise that was an attempt at a yes, but it didn't have any meaning or life behind it.

"How's Natasha?"

"She's okay. She's resting."

There was silence for a long time. He didn't say anything, nor did I. I think it was the first time I could remember-which wasn't saying a lot-Steve not being able to find what to say. After I couldn't bear the silence any longer, I was able to muster up the words I didn't want to believe.

"She's gone."

He looked at me, suddenly confused by my words and who I was talking about. Then he realized.

"No, Buck, she's back at the Tower. She's okay. She's waiting for us to find you and bring you back."

"She's gone."

"Buck- she's not. She's at the t-"

"Steve!" My tone gained his attention and made him stop. "She's gone. She was here.....She's gone." He looked at me bewildered.

"She...she was here when I got here. She knew where I'd end up, Steve. I didn't even know I'd end up here, but she did. She was waiting right here." I sat up and pointed at the couch cushion to my left. "She was here waiting patiently, fearlessly, despite what she had just witnessed." I waited for him to ask me something, but he just waited for me to continue, knowing that'd probably make things easier on me. "She...hugged me, held me, explained she felt drawn here...cleaned me up. She told me she loved me." He couldn't stop himself.

"And left? Maybe she's just gone to the store, Buck. She probably went to get some antiseptic or some-"

"No. She's gone." I knew I was staring at nothing, the bleak black hole that was red eclipsing in my heart and life.

"Buck, you don't kno-"

"I told her to." That stopped his argument. I could hear the anger begin to grow in his voice.

"You told her to? You told her to leave?" I could only nod, waiting for the tongue lashing that meant nothing because she was gone and that was all that mattered. "Buck! Why the hell would you tell her to leave? Bucky, she's the most important thing to you and the main source of happiness in your life, for Christ's sake! That's the last thing you need!" He rose from the chair and began to pace. My eyes didn't follow him, but my senses knew the movement well.

"I couldn't...risk...hurting her again, Steve. You know that."

"Buck! You didn't hurt her! You literally stopped yourself! You saw her and came to your senses! YOU came back because of her! That's progress!" My body and voice rose in response.

"So what, Steve?! How close was I to hurting her? Had Natasha not been there, I would have hurt her!"

"Dammit, Buck! You don't know that!!"

"Steve. I do know! I'm the one stuck in my own mind, remember! I know exactly what I would have done and how bad I would have hurt her. Natasha was the only distraction that saved (y/n)'s life!"

My words didn't quite shock him, but they stopped his argument nonetheless. He returned to his chair so I did the same, letting my blood pressure return to normal.

"Do you know for sure?"

"I told her to leave. She didn't say much for a while, just continued to clean me up. She finished, put away the cleaning supplies, told me she loved me...and walked out. She was about to cry. It's the best I can figure. She didn't even argue it." I paused and when I tried to speak, the words caught in my throat. "She always argues it..."

@damnjackyyy @flibertigibbet23 @smilexcaptainx @jade-cheshire@wolfgamzee@ff-exotic12 @i-had-a-life-once@bunchofandoms@nutmeg2080@sebsugartits@angela-fangirl101@awinterloveuniverse@inkeddreamers@puezzy@haso0osah101 @mrshopkirk @heir-of-light-33@wickeddreamer21@xuaniexuan@myearthguardian@jpthrough@yurikochan@heyreadthis@gabby913@peterjackson143 @fuckoffbroseph@giggles2107 @islandpeeps@klf1999@midnightsinger @dracodormiensnunquamtitillandush@crystalrose1218@civilwarkilledme@the-renaissance @mitra-k-w@justaroundthecorn-er @omgpokelove@welcometothecity@nopevilleluas@ironicallyinspired@riskymorris@taliacorona @mmxiibalpreet @sophiewyszkowski@idiosyncratic-mortals@titaniumurie @isle-of-flightless-birdz@im-screaming-because-of-fanfics@cami25393 @sebbystanlover-vk@queenofthe-bitches @wowthatstasty@kezznog  @hp-hogwartsexpress@genlovesdcb

Part One           Part Two            Part Three           Part Four

Part Five              Part Six           Part Seven          Part Eight

Part Nine           Part Ten            Part Eleven          Part Twelve

Part Thirteen     Part Fourteen   Part Fifteen          Part Sixteen

[kickmag]

Brown Mark Talks The Revolution & Prince (Interview)

A little over one year ago the unthinkable happened when Prince Rogers Nelson unexpectedly passed away amid mysterious circumstances. The superstar musician who was always everywhere had just given a concert six days before he was suddenly gone. Fans had to digest the previously unknown facts about his battle with pain killers that led to an accidental overdose. By the time these things became public knowledge fans were only concerned with the shock and pain of his loss. Thirty-eight years of seeing Prince’s purple funk onstage came to a sudden stop and family, fans and those who knew him are still trying to heal from his passing.

The Revolution was the band that became legendary for making music with Prince during his prime until his 1987 Sign o’ The Times period when he put together a new lineup of musicians. All of Prince’s various periods have their specific merits but there was always something romantic about The Revolution. They were introduced to the world in Purple Rain within a highly fictitious storyline about Prince being a musical autocrat. But Brown Mark, Bobby Z, Wendy, Lisa and Dr. Fink gave their own creative impulses to Prince in rare moments of collaboration. The years of their absence never stopped the fans from wanting a proper reunion. This year The Revolution toured the United States to share in the mourning process with the fans and each show made the acceptance of Prince’s death a little easier. Brown Mark talked to Kick Mag not long after The Revolution’s tour stop in Detroit and he talked about Prince, The Revolution, Detroit, his days with Mazarati and his next creative destination.

“But who broke Prince I would have to say I would have to give it to Detroit”

How has the tour been?

It’s been awesome, it’s been a real healing not just for us but for the fans we really didn’t realize how many lives we had touched throughout the years but it’s becoming more and more evident People are very very happy that we’re out here doing this it’s a good feeling.

How was Detroit?

Detroit is always like a second home to Minneapolis. They accepted us with open arms. The lines were around the block and it was just crazy they were the loudest crowd we’ve had so far.

How did Prince and all of you develop such a close relationship with Detroit? I remember as a kid listening to The Electrifying Mojo and I would hear him interviewing Prince from the limo and of course all of his music. Is it safe to say that Detroit embraced Prince on a national level before Minneapolis?

Yes, that’s him. I would say in the Black community yes, most definitely. As a musician as the development of that Minneapolis sound no. Minneapolis, the atmosphere developed Prince but who broke Prince I would have to say I would have to give it to Detroit. Detroit really set the stage for him to really do what he does and be accepted throughout the nation. Detroit was home for him. I remember when I first joined the band during Controversy, and he was like “Wait till we get to Detroit” and I was like “What’s going on in Detroit, “ And when we got to Detroit it was like holy crap, I see what’s going on.

How much had you all played together before Prince’s passing?

We did three shows together three or four. He had asked us to stop bevause he wanted to reunite and if we were out there doing it, it wouldn’t be anything new he wanted us to wait for him. So we kind of put it on hold and we stopped playing together just for that purpose.

So there plans in the long run for you all to reunite? Were there plans also to maybe record a new album?

No, it was strictly just to go out. We bugged him especially me. He had me to fly out to Paisley and do a lot of projects with him and other groups that he was trying to put together because he would always form a different combination of people to take out on the road. So I had been out there three different times and I was like ‘Why don’t you put The Revolution back together?’ He says “Why would I want to do that?” and I told him “Because the fans want you to.”

He was like “Maybe at some time we’ll be able to do that.” So I was always pushing the issue and I know he had talked to Bobby and Matt on a few different occasions about what they thought about going back out on the road with him. So it was being talked about and I’m almost confident we would’ve gotten back together had he not passed.

How did you know the fans wanted you back together?

Just by the conversations. It wasn’t just me. I talked to Matt I talked to Bobby at different intervals and time periods about it. Really he had been out of touch with the group. He had been in touch with me throughout the years but like the girls and I think like Bobby they were out of touch for several years so he wanted to know how they felt. I know he talked to Bobby and Matt about putting the band back together. We basically were back together we just didn’t play, kind of just waiting for him.

What can you tell me about the album you all recorded in the ‘80’s that’s in the vault?

You’re talking about Roadhouse Garden that’s Roadhouse Garden. I was the first to quit. It gets to a point where you reach this pinnacle and it’s like where do we go from here? There really was nowhere for me to go. Prince had a lot of places he could go but for me, I was just the bass player. And I wanted more out of my life than just being the bass player. I wanted to produce and do my own thing so I split. The album had been done probably a year before that because we were always a year and a half in front of the next release.

When we were out on tour with Purple Rain the Around The World In A Day album was already done. He didn’t even want to stay out on the road with Purple Rain he was ready to move on to Under The Cherry Moon and do this whole other project very impatient he would get bored very quickly. But when I left the group I think that it was to a point where everybody started getting the same idea like where do we go from here.

I think even Prince battled with the idea of wanting to go back into a solo arena where it was just Prince with backup musicians. Instead of Prince being in a band because we were really the only band he’s ever been in. All the other bands were just backup musicians. When I was hired into the band we were just backup musicians. We became The Revolution around 1983 we formed the name and became a separate entity. We had a voice if we didn’t like something we would say that sucks If we liked it we would say hey let’s work on it. We had a voice where the other bands never had a voice. It was “here learn this song” and he would take them out on the road and they would play. I think he got back to that because we wrote a lot of the stuff on Sign o’ The Times. A lot of the stuff that ended up on there even was Revolution stuff that carried over. The Sign o’ The Times album remember he got Shelia E, he asked me to play bass, I said no but what he did was formed a group of musicians and called them NPG. The New Power Generation wasn’t a band it was a concept that’s why how many New Power Generation groups maybe five or six of them. It was never the same members and a lot of people tried to say that was his new band no it wasn’t that was a concept.

What’s up with Mazarati will that music be back in print will we get a new record from them?

You know I’m getting a huge push to re-release that stuff. I might do it because they’re in rehearsals right now. They’re planning on surfacing in August of this year. And hopefully they will but there was a lot of issues substance abuse and many different things happening so they kind of fell off the map for decades. There’s four original members and two new guys. They sound incredible they’re definitely seasoned now compared to the way they were when they just started. I’m excited I’m working with them so we’ll see what happens. I hope to be able to do another record with them. That group that’s a special group I call them special cause they’re crazy.

What about The Revolution making a record has that ever been discussed?

Not at this point, we’ve thrown the idea before here and there but nothing serious because we’re just not there. Our mindset is about helping the purple family the worldwide purple family to get through this it’s a lot bigger than people realize. A lot of people are really hurting at his loss.

Where were you when you found out?

I was at home and I just woke up and one of the people that was on security detail in Minneapolis called me immediately and said there’s a fatality at Paisley I’ll call you right back. I was like what do you mean there’s a fatality? “Somebody died at Paisley I don’t have a confirmation if it’s Prince yet.” I’m like are you kidding me and five minutes later he called me back and said: “It’s him.” I just hit the floor.

When was the last time you had spoke with him?

About nine months prior I would say he would call me periodically at my home just to see how I was doing and reminisce on old times. He would have me come out to Paisley and do different things. But when that happened it hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s like losing a family member. He was my big brother we fought, we laughed, just like family members.

When was the last time you had seen him before he passed?

Last time I had seen him was right before he went on the road with Third Eye Girl. Before Third Eye Girl came together it was me and John Blackwell and he had called us out there with Ida, the bass player in Third Eye Girl cause he was forming another project and then he decided to do the all girl thing so that’s where Third Eye Girl came from. But that’s the last time I had seen him.

“Every night to get on that stage with him it was surreal”

What do you remember most about filming Purple Rain?

Acting class. It was crazy I tip my hat to actors because I’m not an actor. It takes a highly skilled person to come out of body and pretend like you’re something that you’re not. That’s a skill. Acting class they teach you that you have to exercise scenes that are just not you. They would give you characters and you would go through these scenes like impromptu. You pretend like you’re husband and wife and your child is on drugs and boom you’d have to jump right into character. It was crazy but I loved it.

What about the concert scenes?

It was like shooting a video. A live concert that’s fun but to film concert footage for a movie it’s you’re stopping every two minutes. You’ll get started and all of a sudden it ‘s like stop, cut! They’ve got to fix some lights and you’re standing there for the next 30 minutes yeah boring.

What are some of your strongest memories being a member of The Revolution? Do you have any crazy memories of when things reached the heights of Purple Rain?

Yeah being able to travel the world with a superstar, I mean we were all superstars back then but the real superstar was Prince. Every night to get on that stage with him it was surreal. It was like wait a minute this dude is bigger than Elvis Presley, this is like The Beatles and I’m up here. That was like every night that would go through my head.

So you were very humbled by it all?

Totally. I was like wow I made it I always talk about yeah I’m going to make it one day and I was like I made it now where do I go? But traveling the world seeing the different people react, different crowds, different reactions. What was really cool too was seeing how Prince was developing. I remember the funny kid that would go roller skating with me around Calhoun Park with some lavendar shorts and some legwarmers. I watched the kid that went from that to a full-blown rock star. I watched that development I got to witness that the transition was amazing. All the way from the car he used to drive to what kind of stereo system he would put in his automobile. I knew every little detail about it so to see him reach that pinnacle of success was pretty surreal.

What else have you been doing and do you think you all will tour again?

We have to see where it takes us we don’t make promises because we don’t want to let anybody down. It’s really up to the fans and right now there’s a movement going on where fans all around the world especially in Australia. They’re petitioning that the promoters bring us there. The tour we just did was basically at our own expense. It cost us as band members we didn’t make any money on it, we just did it for the fans to see just to see if we could do a reunion. And we realized very quickly that wow this could really take off. So it’s really going to be up to the fans and the demand they create for it because other than that you’re dealing with a whole other beast with promoters because they’re just hardcore. They’re the ones who have to bring a band into the city if we don’t bring ourselves. We’re just kind of sitting back waiting to see but so far we’re getting a lot of attention.

Do you all have any plans to continue to tour after this year?

I got an album I was releasing right before he passed and I put it on hold because I couldn’t go there I had to deal with this. So now that this is moving I’ve been back in the studio on and off for about one month and my writing’s coming back because you know I shut down I had writer’s block. I couldn’t think but I found that part of the healing process is to create. Prince was a creator and he taught me how to create. I find that the more I write the better I start to feel again and now I’m writing with the spirit of Prince you know like my style has changed a little bit because is passing did something to me. It opened me up to a whole other vision of what I should do myself. I had a book I wrote 10 years ago and it was in editing stage I was about to send it to him to get his approval on it and he passed away. A lot of things I had going on I put on hold. The book is called My Life In A Purple Kingdom about a little boy who grew up with a dream and then came Prince. But there’s too many books out there now so that’s going to wait for a while but I am going to work on a record and I talked to Stokley of Mint Condition he’s going to be helping me with some of it and some other folks so that’s going to be my next project other than Mazarati.

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