#it’s been a while since i’ve done a moot game & i’ve seen a couple going around so i wanted to participate !!!

[amourfae]

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐑. 𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐃 ˚₊· ➳ ❥

mutual game : send me an ask with the “ 🎀 ” emoji, i'll ship you with an idol & assign a matching trope !!! aka i write u a mini-fic synopsis of sorts 💌 — cupid fae 🏹

cupid fae's arrow hearts 💘 ➳ - ft. yunjin + jake ➳ - ft. eric ➳ - more lovestruck victims tba !!!

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 26 part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes! 

I’m Coming Up So You Better Get This Party Started

The Lans arrive just in time to see Cousin Jin Zixun hassling Su She, and they wonder how he has the fucking nerve to come to a party that they are also invited to. 

Su she was invited by his new best friend Jin Guangyao, who deploys a full-on charm attack, wrapping Su She permanently around his little finger. 

Smoother than the Lanling weather that’s how he holds himself together Watch out, he’ll charm you 

Jin Guangyao grew up with women who earned their living by being charming, pleasant, and hiding their true thoughts from their clients, and he appears to have mastered this useful skill set. With Su She, he exudes confidence and authority, allowing the lesser man to bask in his attention.

With Zewu Jun he deploys helplessness and embarrassment, effectively controlling a man with much greater power than his own.

Lan Xichen confronts him about Su She's presence, and Jin Guangyao pretends he didn't know that Su She was ex-Lan. This seems super unlikely, given that JGY is good at collecting information that he can use to fuck with people, and also that he sheltered Lan Xichen from the Wens directly after Su She betrayed him.

Lan Xichen seems like he doesn't believe what JGY is telling him but then he decides to drop it, passive-aggressively saying that since JGY is uninformed, he's not guilty. Lan Xichen is actually assuming a lot here about his right to tell Jin Guangyao who to invite and who to shun, but JGY doesn't push back. Lying is so much simpler.

(more behind the cut!)

Su She wins for most unintentionally sarcastic-seeming toasting expression.

Jiang Cheng, Party Animal

Jiang Cheng arrives at the party, bringing his Jiang retinue and his bad temper. He super obviously casts around to try to find Wei Wuxian, who already told him he probably wasn't coming to the party.

Jiang Cheng is that guy who only comes to a party because the girl he likes said she was thinking about going, and then he spends the whole party saying "hey have you seen Mei Lin? She said she was going to be here but I don't see her."

Jin Guangyao formally congratulates Jiang Cheng on the Jiang clan's success in the hunt, and Jin Guangshan toasts him. As always, Jiang Cheng reacts to praise from authority figures like it's rain in the desert, smiling from ear to ear. He says that the Jiang Clan will donate the prey from the hunt to the other gentry clans. ...what?

Are we seriously saying that when these dudes go night hunting it's not just to remove dangerous bad stuff, it's for profit? 

Like, do they eat monsters? Wear their fur? Make leather from their skin? Carve jewelry from their claws? Is Jiang Cheng wearing a purple monster's skin right now? (There will be an art prompt at the end of this post)

Meanwhile, check out the way Nie Huaisang is looking at Jiang Cheng, wow.

Forecast: Hazing

Having gotten the single pleasant part of the banquet over with, it's time for the Jins to pick on the Lans. Cousin Jin Zixun goads Lan Xichen into taking a drink with him, knowing that this is (mostly) against Lan rules. Jin Guangyao tries to stop him by saying, hilariously, that it's bad to drink and fly on a sword, but CJZX waves this away and keeps pushing, saying that if Lan Xichen won't drink, it's an insult to him.

A random cultivator who is definitely on the Jin payroll backs him up, saying that teetotaling is for losers, and Captain Blowhard boisterously agrees. Loudly agreeing with powerful people is the Yao clan's signature martial arts skill.

Jin Guangyao looks embarrassed and helpless, which is, as mentioned before, his own signature skill. But he's just playing his own part in this piece of theater; everything happening at this party (so far) is happening for the benefit of the Jin Clan. Cousin Jin Zixun is an ass, but he's not actually a loose cannon, and Jin Guangshan is clearly enjoying the Lans' discomfort.

Why? This entire party, the hunt, everything he's done since the end of the Sunshot campaign, has been designed to increase and consolidate his power. His main goal is to get the Yin Tiger seal, but reducing the status of the Lans is also a good move for him. The Lans have been the strongest opponents to the use of resentful energy, and worked the hardest to conceal and contain the Yin iron in the past. If he wants to use resentful energy as part of his own cultivation, he needs them to chill. 

So this is a bit of a test; will they comply with the will of the larger group in order to avoid conflict, or will they refuse, which will allow him to label them as iconoclastic weirdos?. 

Lan Xichen takes a long look at his brother, who is expressing all sorts of emotions while keeping his face very very still. 

At a guess, he is thinking that this entire party is bullshit, that his brother's willingness to play along with these assholes is bullshit, that being viciously beaten for having a single drink in his life was bullshit, that Wei Wuxian not being here right now is bullshit.

Lan Xichen picks the "go along, get along" path, having his drink and using his magic skill of anti-intoxication to neutralize it, as he'd done previously when drinking with Wei Wuxian. 

Cousin Jin Zixun picks on Lan Wangji next, and since he cannot magically or even non-magically tolerate alcohol, there is a real risk to his reputation if he drinks. But Lan Wangji breaks rules when he feels like it, not when people tell him to. He pointedly ignores the offered drink while Lan Xichen looks worried. 

The rest of the party guests have a wide variety of reactions, none of them helpful, to these shenanigans. Jin Guanshan's son and heir watches with calm interest as the power dynamics play out.

All of this is actually not great strategy for the Jins. The Lans don't play little social games to gain power, because all that time they spend not drinking, not gossiping, and not doing other stuff? Is spent cultivating and practicing sword and musical battle forms. The Lan Bros are overwhelmingly powerful as individuals, and embarrassing them won't change that.

It's moot, ultimately, because Wei Wuxian chooses this moment to arrive.

Darkness Visible

Wei Wuxian actually made a big impressive stair-climbing entrance to Jinlintai a few minutes ago, with camera work echoing Lan Wangji's stair climb at the Wen Indoctrination Bureau from several episodes back. 

But nobody was around to see that, other than us, and when he appears at the party it's in stealth mode; he steps into the frame from out of nowhere, and drinks Lan Wangji's unwanted drink.

Lan Wangji responds by looking at him like this for the next several minutes.

Wei Wuxian doesn't have time for their usual sport of Extreme Gazing, though; he came for a reason, which is to find and rescue Wen Ning. He gets right to it, asking Cousin Jin Zixun where he's keeping him.

Jiang Cheng, who is the king of worrying about the wrong fucking thing, jumps up to try to stop Wei Wuxian from talking. Like, seriously, he's ok with the Jins trying to take his clan's special extreme weapon, but he's not ok with his head disciple being rude in order to fulfill a whopper of a life debt--Jiang Cheng's life debt, in particular--or being rude in order to preserve the clan's independence.

Jin Guangshan decides this is a good moment to bring up the Yin tiger amulet. Wei Wuxian pushes back, hard, pointing out exactly what Jin Guangshan is doing. He says he's setting himself up to be a new Wen Ruohan. 

Lan Wangji pays close attention to Wei Wuxian's reasoning here, and so does Nie Mingjue, unless he’s just trying to mask his confusion. 

Jiang Cheng is too busy being horrified to listen, apparently. Or he just doesn’t agree, preferring to be reduced to a secondary authority, rather than defy a primary authority.

Wei Wuxian is, of course, all about independence; he was literally born to be a rogue cultivator, despite being dubbed “patriarch” himself, not long after this. 

Let’s Go Crazy Let’s Get Nuts

Wei Wuxian gets tired of the scene and decides to lose his temper. He makes a show of being enraged, and he genuinely is angry, but I don't think he's out of control, this time.  

He acts like he's out of control in order to scare everyone, but he makes his points very clearly, reminding everyone that he has power they don't have, that he's good at killing, that he's not patient, and that his teeth are nicer than everybody else’s. 

Everybody in the room freaks out to one degree or another--except Jin Guangshan, who is apparently too pissed off to be scared.

It's hilarious that Jin Guangshan thought he was going to get Wei Wuxian to hand the Yin Tiger amulet over by creating a complex system of social pressure against him. Wei Wuxian's favorite way of responding to social pressure is to escalate it into violence, regardless of the consequences; he's been doing that at least since Gusu Summer School and probably a lot longer. Jin Guangshan should know this, given how many beatings his son has taken from Wei Wuxian over the years.

Wei Wuxian does a fantastically sexy scary, theatrical countdown, and Cousin Jin Zixun caves in and gives him the information he wants. It's worth noticing that even under threat of death, CJZX doesn't comply until he visually checks in with his clan leader. He’s genuinely a bad person, yes, but he’s a loyal soldier, which is what most of these clans value most. 

As soon as he gets what he wants, Wei Wuxian is perfectly, smugly, in control of himself again. Everyone in the room is still stunned and afraid, so Jin Guangshan has achieved that much, at least; nobody likes Wei Wuxian having the Yin tiger seal now, including Jiang Cheng. 

As he leaves, Wei Wuxian has one of those conversations with Lan Wangji in which everything is said in glances in the course of a couple of seconds. 

WWX: I love you, I have to leave you; I've got some shit to take care of and I won't be coming back to all of this. 

LWJ: I love you; I'm probably going to have to fight you; your funeral is going to be so upsetting

Wei Wuxian turns away from everyone, and you can see the weight settling on his shoulders, as he contemplates the choices he just made and the choices that are still ahead of him. 

Jin Guangshan, for the first and only time, loses his temper in front of everybody, literally flipping a table because he's so mad about what just happened. 

Art prompt: Jiang Cheng wearing an outfit made of a Chinese mythical creature. Bonus points if it’s a qilin. Bonus bonus points if Zhang Qiling (from DMBJ/Lost Tomb franchise) is standing next to him looking grumpy while Jiang Cheng wears an outfit made from a qilin. 

Soundtrack: Get This Party Started by Pink, Charm Attack by Leona Naess, Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. 

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

RIP Blue Sky Studios...

Established in February 1987... Iconic commercials, early innovation in CGI, packed to the brim with top talent, a rare East Coast-based house, and one of the first studios in a post-Don Bluth age to really challenge Disney and Pixar in the feature animation field...

Gone.

Once a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company had them since early 2019 after the acquisition of their parent company. It looked as if Disney was going to keep them around, despite already having two powerhouse animation studios making family features for them. I wondered back in the day if Disney could rebrand Blue Sky as a sort-of outre little studio that did more experimental, quirky fare as opposed to the more digestible works of Disney Animation and Pixar.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, signs were rather troubling. Despite a management change, you had the rather ho-hum marketing for SPIES IN DISGUISE. To me, Disney sort-of let that one disappear between FROZEN II and STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. I found SPIES IN DISGUISE to be a fun little movie, with a timely pacifist message and memorable gags. Sadly, it did not make its money back. Even more troubling was the constant delaying of NIMONA, an adaptation of Noelle Stevenson’s webcomic of the same name from FEAST and PEARL director Patrick Osborne. From the rumblings I’ve heard, it looked to be an innovative CG film and a next-level family film in general. Like a next SPIDER-VERSE. It was to be released January 14, 2022. 70% of the film was completed by this point... It is no longer a reality, Blue Sky is done...

450+ animators and staffers out of a job during an awful worldwide crisis...

Why couldn’t The Walt Disney Company just sell off Blue Sky Studios to a distributor looking for more animation to stock up on? If they didn’t need more than two animation studios (see the shuttering of their own Disneytoon Studios in early 2018), why shutter them and wait so long to do so? I know that absorbing competition and killing it is nothing new, but this is **expletive** for a multitude of reasons. Multiple talent out of a job, more movies and work squashed, a nearly-completed film likely dead. (It would be great if it was instead on the market, so that someone could snatch it up and complete it, but we shall see...)

Blue Sky Studios were no slouches. ICE AGE established them, big time. In fact, I’d say they helped show the industry that the features world wasn’t just Disney’s game anymore. Disney had seen rivals in feature animation in the past, notably Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi, but they continued through the decades while Bluth and Bakshi’s feature opportunities waned. Blue Sky, alongside DreamWorks and a fledgling Sony Pictures Animation, changed that, and they were here to stay. And it’s quite sad that Disney had to acquire this notable studio and shut them down, they would’ve thrived elsewhere because of the success of their previous work and the amount of talent they have/had over the years.

They have a pretty distinct body of work, too. ROBOTS, HORTON HEARS A WHO!, RIO, EPIC, THE PEANUTS MOVIE, FERDINAND, SPIES IN DISGUISE. Some of them, I’d argue, were quite innovative. ICE AGE stabbed at cartoony, Looney Tunes-esque humor and visual design. The work in that movie rung more Warner Bros. than it did Disney or something more naturalistic in design. Their later work embraced that kind of outlook as well, but you started seeing other studios doing this as well: DreamWorks with MADAGASCAR, Sony Animation with OPEN SEASON and CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, and so on. The antithesis to the ever-more-realistic Pixar styles. Then Blue Sky just straight up redefined the computer animated feature with THE PEANUTS MOVIE, which not only kept the comic strip aesthetic of Charles Schulz’s iconic characters and world, but adapted them to a computer animated world while doing something new in the process. PEANUTS MOVIE, along with similar pictures like THE BOOK OF LIFE and CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, are indeed stepping stones to SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and what lies beyond that feature. In short, Blue Sky played a big part in computer animation showing that it didn’t just have to look like Pixar movies, or most other computer animated works that were out at the time of ICE AGE’s early 2002 release.

Who knows where that could’ve all gone. NIMONA looked to be something new and exciting, something to really push things forward and widen the computer animation canvas. A musical called FOSTER also sounded like it had potential. When TWDC acquired 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), Fox Animation in general had several animated films in development, hoping to branch out beyond their one studio... All of that seemingly died after the Disney acquisition, with only Blue Sky and a couple of Fox primetime TV-showed based movies (i.e. THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE, another - and inevitable - SIMPSONS picture) left. Now Blue Sky is gone. More animation, gutted. And for what? Disney didn’t have to do this...

It’s even more egregious when you consider where Disney was in 1991... As opposed to now, 2021...

Think of this... Under the controversial Michael Eisner, The Walt Disney Company was willing to sink a massive amount of money into a project that had already been cancelled. Said project was given to blockbuster king Steven Spielberg, hit director Robert Zemeckis, and animation mastermind Richard Williams. This was not even a few years after Disney was a quiet establishment being circled by corporate raiders that could’ve ended them for good... And what came of it. WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. An innovative animation-live action hybrid movie for a more adult audience. One of the biggest films of 1988, a bonafide blockbuster that Disney hadn’t seen in years, and more than lit the fuse of animation’s 2nd Golden Age.

Then, in 1990, a former animator of theirs turned big-time director realizes that a short story he wrote while at the company was still owned by them. That man was Tim Burton, and he expressed interest in revisiting that poem. A studio was set up, with similarly outre director and former Disney animator Henry Selick taking the helm. The result was an innovative stop-motion film that leaned more towards horror and German expressionism than something like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST did. The result was THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 1993. A respectable hit then, an iconic classic today. Without NIGHTMARE, would have ever gotten future stop-motion efforts like CHICKEN RUN and everything Laika has made?

Finally, in 1991, Disney makes a three-picture deal with a small computer graphics studio based out of Marin County. One of their main guys was a former Disney animator as well, similarly outed for being too ambitious. Their plan? Make the world’s first all computer-animated movie. That studio was Pixar, their first movie was TOY STORY. Need I say more?

The Disney of today would’ve never in these three instances. Blue Sky could’ve been their chance to really make some kind of a splash in a post-SPIDER-VERSE world. Various shorts made at Disney Animation (including Osborne’s own FEAST) suggested this, and some Pixar shorts as well... But nothing really came of this. In terms of features being put out by Disney Animation and Pixar, only parts of MOANA, INSIDE OUT, and SOUL put this kind of thing in a long-form format. Blue Sky, who operated on smaller budgets, could’ve been their arm for more experimental feature animation. I say this because while Disney doesn’t need to hog up animation, Blue Sky was owned by them, and I felt the best way to go about this was to re-establish them as a more experimental studio. Make the most of it, you know? But no, they had to shut it all down.

When a studio shuts down, I feel a chunk of the animation world is just broken right off... While some of the artists are apparently being welcomed into various Disney houses, it sucks to see a studio with its own identity and output gone. Of course, my hope is that everyone employed there will have somewhere to go by April (when the studio shuts down completely) and that maybe, just maybe a new studio could be formed up from the remains. (Think Don Bluth setting up shop upon his departure from Disney in 1979.) Somebody has to get their happy ending, right? I know it’s moot asking for such a thing in this hellscape business of massive octopus conglomerates engulfing everything into their eight tentacles, but...

I wish everyone involved well, and that they’ll prosper afterwards. I certainly hope the 3/4 completed NIMONA doesn’t remain unfinished. (Netflix? Someone?) I hope to see some good come out of this...

[sage-nebula]

The human bias I’ve seen is . . . frankly astounding.

Ever since season one released, I’ve seen many, many, many people trying to justify the humans using dark magic. I’m not sure if this is because the majority of characters we’ve had time to get attached to thus far are human, or if it’s because as humans themselves people don’t want to admit that humans could and in fact often are terrible, but the fact that so many people are dislocating their shoulders to reach for any excuse, no matter how wild, for humans using dark magic is incredible.

Here are the facts as we know them so far:

Despite everyone wanting to vilify the elves and say that the elves alone were responsible for casting the humans out of Xadia, we actually have far more evidence to suggest that this decision was ultimately made by the DRAGONS. Evidence includes:

The opening narration tells us that the dragons AND elves cast the humans from Xadia. We see the elves on horseback, but we’re specifically told that this was a decision the dragons made as well.

The dragon king is the one who guards the border, by his own will, to make sure humans can’t cross and gain access to magical beings. He is a king defending his people, and it seems that his people are all of Xadia. 

The moonshadow elves are reporting to the dragon queen. They are in Katolis to kill Harrow and Ezran on orders from the dragon queen. They answer to HER. If there is a hierarchy in Xadia, then I would say the dragons are at the top, and the elves are right below them. The elves serve the dragons. They act as the Dragon Guard, and they act as the royal assassins. The elves aren’t the ones calling the shots in Xadia; the dragons are.

We have not yet seen elves be hostile to anyone without either provocation, or direct orders to act as such. Runaan sends Rayla after Marcos, but that fell in line with their assassination orders (which were in turn a response to provocation because Thunder and Azymondias were (allegedly) killed). Runaan specifically states that, “Life is precious. Life is valuable. We take it, but we do not take it lightly.” Elves value life, and they value other beings. They live in harmony with the other beings of Xadia. And clearly some of them have no issue interacting with humans, given that a human was able to get his hands on a sunforge blade in season one! We’ve seen nothing to suggest that elves would treat another race as second-class citizens, or that they wouldn’t value the lives of other living beings. In fact, the entire reason why they agreed with the dragons to cast humans out in the first place is BECAUSE they valued life!  Conversely, we’ve seen that humans who freely use dark magic don’t have that same respect for the lives of other beings. Viren is more than willing to sacrifice anyone in the guard to protect Harrow. Claudia shows open glee at “squeezing” magic out of magical beings. Viren shows amusement at Runaan looking terrified in the coin. Claudia wanted to have Runaan bound so that she could torture the magic out of him. Viren stole Azymondias’ egg for later use, and Claudia---in direct contrast to Rayla pointing out that Azymondias’ egg contained a baby---saw that same egg as a “thing” and a “weapon.” Whereas all the elves we’ve seen treat other living beings with respect, we have direct evidence on-screen of dark magic users not having that same care or respect for other living creatures.

Humans don’t have to use magic or find accommodations around using magic to survive (meaning it’s not a disability), but they also don’t have to use dark magic to use magic at all. While humans aren’t born with magic inherently inside them as elves and other magical creatures are, human mages can still use magic so long as they have an item that contains a primal source within it, such as a primal stone. Primal stones are rare because they can only be crafted by master mages, but while we’re told on the website that the method of crafting them has been “lost to time,” presumably human mages knew how to do it a thousand years ago. What this means is that dark magic wasn’t necessary at all, but rather was done out of convenience. Because if you have to lug around a primal stone, you can only use magic from that one primal source. But if you murder another magical being to use THEIR primal energy, well, that’s a lot less of a hassle, isn’t it? And before you say that humans have an excuse for not wanting to lug around primal stones, remember that even moonshadow elves need pendants if they want to use their magic in the daylight. Using primal stones for human mages is no different. In fact, it’s even better for them because it doesn’t damage their bodies the way that dark magic does.

From the official website: “The ease and potency of dark magic caused humans to hunt and poach magical creatures to harvest their energy.” Humans didn’t begin using dark magic because they were Oppressed™, they began using dark magic because it was easy, it was convenient, and they didn’t care how many magical beings they slaughtered to be able to make faster, fluffier pancakes. You can argue that it was “just butterflies,” but we’ve seen that Viren has no qualms about draining elves of their very souls, that Claudia uses the bones of slaughtered magical wolves to bend their spirits to her will. And even if it started with bugs, clearly it wouldn’t end there. As we know from poaching practices in real life, hunters of exotic game always continue climbing once they’ve driven one species to extinction. Once they finished with magical rabbits, they’d move up to magical wolves, up to unicorns, up to centaurs . . . they wouldn’t stop. Those who are hungry for power and who hold no regard for life like that don’t stop. 

Dark magic has been compared to smoking cigarettes by both Giancarlo Volpe and Aaron Ehasz, in that it destroys both the caster over time, as well as those around them. We could also take the analogy further to mean that there’s never any excuse to start doing it, it’s always a bad and indefensible decision done for stupid reasons. Trying to find a reach for why humans just ~*~had~*~ to hunt and poach magical creatures is going right against the point trying to be made with dark magic, which is that you never ~*~have~*~ to do it.

It was wrong for all of the humans to be driven out of Xadia as they were. The image we have of that moment was supposed to invoke images of the Trail of Tears, and we’ve been told that many humans died due to how harsh of a journey it is. That the dragons and elves put innocent humans through that is, yes, indefensible. But using dark magic in the first place is ALSO indefensible. King Harrow actually spells this out for the audience in I believe the second episode when he tells Callum, quite plainly, that “there have been wrongs on BOTH sides.” This is NOT a show where an entire race of people are going to be vilified. Humans have done indefensible things. Elves and dragons have done indefensible things. Individuals on both sides are going to be horrible, while individuals on both sides are going to be great. That’s just how life is, and the fact that this show is depicting that is honestly great.

“Who started it” becomes a rather moot point at the end of the day once murder and death is brought into the equation, but nonetheless, trying to justify the original humans for using dark magic despite how they hunted and poached to do it by saying that they had to do it to defend themselves against malicious, horrible, tyrannical elves is honestly incredibly frustrating. It’s frustrating that a show that established within the first couple episodes of the first season that this was NOT going to be a cliché show about a war between Good and Evil is being perceived as that by the fandom. It’s frustrating to see people dislocating their joints trying to reach for any excuse to make the characters they like Pure and Justified, rather than just accepting that it’s okay to like characters who have done, and sometimes continue to do, awful things. There is nothing that can be said or done to justify humans using dark magic, just as there’s nothing that can be said or done to justify the mass deaths caused on the journey from Xadia to what would eventually become the human kingdoms. There have been wrongs on both sides, and everything we know so far says those wrongs started when humans decided to use dark magic because it was more convenient for them. Which, again, is a moot point when considering everything else, but those are still the facts as we have them. So please, for the love of everything, stop trying to vilify the elves (and don’t even start trying to vilify the dragons, either, because that was NOT my point). Thank you.