#i try to be more jokey and memey

[mrstsung]

I want this shang but only the version in my head. Only the version i handcrafted away from the narrative and the hype schlock that was mk12/mk1. The version that is his humble beginnings,freshly cursed by the gods,former warrior of earthrealm,having a falling out with his former friend and mentor lord raiden and cohersd by shao kahn to serve under him thus betraying earthrealm. The version i handcrafted and carefully made with love. Tho it can apply to any and many of the various iterations of shang tsung over the years. I feel a young shang's misadventures is long overdue or at least a proper backstory that isn't overtaken and overshadowed by corporate meddling. (I would absolutely love to have mr.tagawa's input more on this personally,and his opinions and thoughts on my backstory for shang. But alas maybe some day)

But anywho. A young shang tsung would be nice but better written or given at least a better script.

Because mr. Alan lee is such an amazing talent. And i feel he deserves so much better as shang tsung,one of THE if not THE MOST iconic antagonist of the mortal kombat series. (As with many other actors and VA for said character.)

Like this shang's aesthetics(minus the claws gauntlets tho they are growing on me but they could look better. Maybe more snake or dragon motifs?),the charm is there,the feeling,the attitude,the actor does an amazing job,but the problem is....legitimately....everything else. When your "antag" is better than everyone else,and i mean that genuinely. Better than the script and plot,better than the protags,better than the other antagonists,etc. Then....it's not good. Of course i love shang and want a win for him once. Especially now he has legitimate reasons why he does what he does,why he is how he is,and you genuinely feel sorry for him,and want to hug him,give him a friend,ffs you just go "ah fuck man, you good?" Yeah. He actually has something shown at least. Not my personal flavor. However for canon to be bold enough to do so is shocking. But what pisses me off as a fan of both mk and shang tsung. Is that...

1. It took them waaaaay too long to make that happen.

2. It doesn't feel sincere even when they did.

3. It feels rushed and plot convenient. And centering shang's whole backstory around liu kang instead of well....shang tsung. At least it feels that way. It doesn't feel like the character has agency. So it feels like a half assed apology for doing shang dirty.

So that's why i don't like the story that shang is centered around. Now if we take the character,the concept of a shang tsung down on his luck,barely surviving off of scraps,even tho he serves a powerful kingdom and emperor with a cushy job as a court mage. That i would love to see. That's exactly how i always saw his og backstory, if you want him to rectify mistakes ACTUALLY FUCKING DO IT AND NOT BACKTRACK FOR STATUS QUO FOR YOUR "PROTAGS OR HEROES" TO WIN!!!! Like holy shit dude. Like crap,the Fanfics are better than canon writing and nrs knows it! They seem to even try to copy what we as fans to but fail so hard. But it's sad it feels so half assed when a "professional gaming company" is supposed to make this. But i feel its corporate meddling,and Hollywood greed that prevents this series,at least storywise and narratively from reaching its true potential.

Sorry for this vent. But this character I'm very very passionate about. But mostly this game series. I love this game. I love playing it. Almost all the games. It's my childhood as many others. And I'm not gonna stand for mediocrity and slander to one of my faves.

But anyways. Enough rambling. Back to shang.

Like mk12/mk1 shang tsung isn't bad at least looks wise. No more different than anyone else. But it still bothers me they all look "samey" and not in a memey,jokey,fun way. It looks sloppy next to him. Ignoring everyone else around him,looking at shang individually. Omfg he's a cutie. He's smug,he's the shang i know n love but just....younger. like in His 30s or so. Around my age. Which is cool. But....i still kinda wish his old man shang wasn't a ruse. I ignore it was a ruse tho so it doesn't count. In fact like i said. I'm rewriting the whole thing period.

Will it be kinda self indulgent? Maybe a bit self inserty,Yes. But i don't care. Because he deserves better than that.

We owe it to mr.tagawa. to shang's character. To all the voice actors and actors and amazing talent over the 30+yrs mk has been around. We deserve a good story,a better story,and even more so,a better fucking game. To play. To learn. To have fun with. Without paying and arm and a leg to even access it. Period.

Shang tsung baby you deserve better. So so so much better.

[inu-jiru]

HB S2E4 Thoughts

Gonna get this out while the episode’s still kinda fresh in my mind, also, again, no I’m not gonna stop watching this stupid show and I won’t stop ranting about it because it’s funny and if that’s a problem, then tough shit.

ANYWAY

I can’t decide where I’d rank this episode. It feels like each episode is worse than the last, but this episode is special for a variety of reasons. For one, I really thought it would be longer and not just 18 minutes. The pacing was ridiculous and that’s saying a lot. As shitty as Ep. 3 was, at least I was engaged at certain points, while here, everything felt like one huge joke that ended with “sad Stolas sniff sniff oh Blizo cares I guesss :C :C :C” I’ve seen people say this episode is decent, but...no??? I like Striker and all but even he got fucked in this episode. Lemme try and list some shit out so I’m no writing a wall of text:

- Loona’s plot was pointless, but I’ve been made aware of her VAs irl situation that was most likely occurring at the time the episode was being made, and I won’t be making a joke out of that. If it was too late to properly make changes to the script, then I can forgive the inclusion. The only thing I really liked about them was that there was effort to do SOME worldbuilding with imp racism. I also found the doctor really cute; I was wondering what ring the Baphomets were native to and now I know.

- The main plot was...wow. I’ve seen people talk about the behind the scenes stuff with Stella and Andrealphus and I was so nervous that it would appear and it kinda did and LIKE? WHY? I could be looking too deeply into it but it really feels like they were doing weird, incest-y vibes, and what creeps me out about it is how childish Stella is in this episode. She has this one-tract mind and has to be explained shit that realistically she should already know, like she’s fucking 5, and that plus the incest vibes gives some bad implications. I doubt the shit will be looked into in any meaningful way but stay classy, Viv.

Incest aside, so cute how Andrealphus has to be the brains behind the situation. A woman CANNOT do anything for herself or think logically in HB. Andrealphus’ plan doesn’t make any sense either. Don’t kill Stolas and manipulate money and power out of him...somehow? Are people just forgetting Ozzie’s? Do people STILL not realize Blitzo has a Grimore? Shouldn’t Stolas be ruined already? Even if he wasn’t, killing Stolas and manipulating Octavia while she’s in the mourning stages would be a much simpler plan then whatever’s coming next. I know they don’t have the guts to kill Stolas but make it make sense PLEASE.

- Striker was ruined for me, honestly. I wasn’t his number one fan or anything but I thought he was interesting, but here he’s just some moron with a secret lair that gets revealed in two seconds by the Rango-Ripoff mariachi band, and keeps getting all his quips and shit ruined by Stolas “I can’t think of anything except dick” Goetia. I can’t even be interested in what he said about losing someone to the Goetia because Vivzie HAS to do some jokey, memey shit with her villains every five seconds. Crimson, as stupid as his plans were, was far more serious, and that’s a problem.

- M&M were just there, like, their rematch didn’t even feel like a dramatic part two, and Moxxie fighting those guys at the gas station really spits in the face of “you’re strong for both of us” and the previous episode.

- Blitzo. Blitzo Buckzo. How do you get surprised that Stolas can get hurt when you LITERALLY saw Striker aiming a blessed gun at him. I’m so sick and tired of this show pretending like there’s something there between him and Stolas. There’s not. There’s nothing. Blitzo is just blasé until the plot NEEDS him to suddenly look sad or sound sad and then it’s right back to “Ugh Stolas what do u want” in the next episode. What’s really cute is that I know there’s gonna be post after post about how deep the last minute of the episode was and how Blitzo is just so afraid to show love :C and how Stolas is blah blah blah, which is ironic because these are the same people who say “oh it’s just a cartoon”, “oh it’s a comedy” “it’s hell so who cares”. Well, I don’t care so I guess if that’s what Viv was going for then congrats.

- Stolas had no reason to stand there for 3 seconds looking at Striker and not doing anything. And why didn’t he just go full demon and eat that bitch, like fuck would it kill you to be smart, my dude? I don’t even know why Stella had this happen, like what if Striker decided to go for a two for one and blast her as well? What if she got caught in the crossfire? WHERE WAS OCTAVIA IN THIS EPISODE?

Shit, that’s all I got for now. The more I think about this episode the funnier it gets to me ngl

[masschase]

I absolutely get what you mean and FWIW I think you have excellent ties between who Anteros is as a developed oc and as an in-game character. I'm thinking of moments like the post-Revelation art that we can so clearly see fitting into the in-game world while still giving this glimpse of who Anteros is. I honestly assume all the in-game Boss stuff just happens unless told otherwise by rewrites and stuff.

Bit of a tangent but I think about this a lot myself. I don't show an awful lot of Casey being the way she is in-game because I've already seen that, I've played it. I take it all as a given. I also don't show her laying out tactical plans or doing paperwork or leading large-scale battles or any of the other stuff I say she's good at. I don't really portray like, "the Boss shit", and I worry that makes her character seem off-putting bc "fucking about making silly jokes in space and fucking Matt Miller" is not a personality.

I never intended to make an OC and I did so by filling the gaps, so in my head I'm fairly confident in her charactersation, at least in my writing. Unfortunately those are the gaps between all games. I worry my work is seen as a complete joke for following SR4 canon in the first place. But also when I only show the gaps I recognise that paints a certain picture that I can't really escape from. I realise it shouldn't matter if someone likes my OC but I also recognise that it highly affects how people see me and what I have to say.

I come on here to do whatever's fun for me at the time. Fun can and does include serious takes on things. But a lot of the time my hcs on here are often jokey, contradictory, frivolous. Sometimes I worry people will see stuff I talk about in a jokey/memey way or even stuff that's direct from sr4 and dislike me for those "hcs" even though it's tumblr so people are usually nice enough not to say these things.

Making this a space where I can try and stop being so anxious and sensitive and just be passionate about things is the only reason I've generally been able to be so enthusiastic about others' work. I guess recently I've gone back to doubting myself so much that it's making it harder to reblog new people and such. I'm going to stop talking bc this feels less like an interesting addition and more like hijacking now!

But yeah, honestly, I think you have a really good balance with Anteros!

one thing i’ve been concerned about as of late is that i worry people may misinterpret anteros slightly and perhaps read him as being too far off from the boss character itself, citing his tendency to cry easily and just general overemotional-ness. and i think that overshadows a lot of the truly terrifying actions he commits. like i may have a specific canon i’ve written, but to be 100% clear, the events of the first two games in particular still happened pretty much as shown. anteros is still the one who blew up angelo’s plane, he’s the one who locked jessica in a trunk and let her get crushed to death, the one who helped bury shogo alive.

where in sr1 he’s more just doing as he’s told to get the approval of julius, by sr2 he is much more noticeably intense. his unpredictability comes from a place of uncertainty; i characterize him as someone who is driven by his emotions, however due to both the stress of being a newfound leader and the permanent physical and mental effects of having been in a coma for literal years, his emotions become much more intense and initially much more difficult to manage. now to be fair, he’s never been the best at managing his emotions even before he joined the saints, but it definitely gets exasperated post-sr1. and i think that fragile unpredictability, especially in sr2, is what cements him as a genuinely intimidating leader.

i suppose all that to say i wanted to go a different route with the boss character than what’s just kinda given. the boss is interesting in and of themselves, but i wanted to go the route of like. somewhat combining the boss of the first two games with the boss of the latter two. humanizing them a little more without removing the fact they’ve still done horrible things. additionally sliding in that i think anteros is someone who was made leader when he didn’t really want to be but has just accepted it anyway. he makes bad decisions, he hides things from his friends, and he inadvertently drags others into his identity crisis.

but i think that’s what makes him interesting, at least for me when i’m writing him. he’s someone who, at his core, has always had little sense of self. he put on a face for most of his life—he’s a performer—and just when he was potentially figuring himself out, he dies. but he comes back five years later, and he’s come back to everything changed. when he looks at himself in the mirror, is he himself? he doesn’t know. that’s why he continually falls for authoritative people in his life—they’re telling him what to do, who to be, how to act. but suddenly he’s in charge and he has no one to hold him accountable but himself.

[animatiddies]

Some shots from Step Inside, a children's show that originally ran on CBeebies from 2002 to 2004 (and continued being played up until 2012). Not many people saw it, since it was the third show to ever air on CBeebies and isn't exactly one of their most popular creations, but those who saw it (including myself) recount it as giving them nightmares or traumatizing them. And can you blame them?

There's so much about this show that makes it unnerving. The only human character is Mr Mopple, and the way he interacts with the puppets is obviously simplified and overacted so that children & preschoolers can understand, but it makes the experience so uncanny - especially with the music, which mostly consists of piano tones and silence. The voice acting is also not very fitting of the (horrifying) character designs, with Boris the Bookcase and Chloe the Clock having a raspy quality that doesn't fit a kids show at all.

This show holds a special place in my heart as one of the first pieces of media that I can remember watching, and an example of my first exposure to puppetry and the art of plush/puppet construction. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but it definitely made an impact on a lot of british kids in the early 2000s.

[aikainkauna]

I was actually updating the whole If Tumblr Went Old Hollywood post to make some bits clearer where I failed and shit (do feel free to reblog with additions of your own! It’s a free-for-all), but I got thinking that I missed one major meme.

Namely, if fandom went OH overnight, who’d take Nic Cage’s place as the guy whose face gets pasted everywhere for lols? I’m crowdsourcing this, because I can’t really think of who the Golden Age equivalent of him would be. Any ideas?

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

are there any tropes/types of fics that you generally dislike what youve read of, but still think has potential? (some personal examples of mine would be chatfics and de-aging fics. the former often being too ooc and memey and the latter often being too fluffy, not addressing the more serious aspects of the situation or even being downright creepy sometimes (often by being a shipping fic at the same time))

Honestly those are the two examples I would use.  There’s a movie called Searching about a girl who is kidnapped told from the perspective of her family’s google searches, texts, and video calls about trying to find her.  I think someone could pull off a good chat fic that starts jokey and memey but gradually gets more serious as one person stops responding.  As for de-aging fics, one element I haven’t seen used before is the issue of consent.  People tend to take for granted that even young children are still autonomous individuals and just do whatever to them like they’re a pet.  I want a fic that is forced to question that by virtue of the child in question actually being someone older who cannot consent others performing certain invasive childcare actions.