#it's only funny when it's intentional human design

[antirepurp]

something something the appeal of palworld came largely from the concept of people intentionally parodying and/or ripping off pokemon designs to create an exaggerated and edgy interpretation of the stale pokemon formula, and that appeal gets lost immediately if those designs were generated with AI algorithms, because now the legally distinct piplup isn't an intentionally legally distinct piplup but rather the result of an algorithm creating its typical slop out of the work of artists who likely did not consent to their work being used for the purposes of training an algorithm. a sense of humanity that is required for parody to have an appeal is lost. the similarity to pokemon designs was funny when you believed it was the devs taking real pokemon and modifying them slightly, but now it only feels like the kind of shit you get when you ask an algorithm to generate you a picture of sonic. im less bummed that a game that i was looking forward to might be algorithm sludge and more worried about what the initial hype this game had before these concerns were brought up might signal to bigger game developers who want to replace human artists with algorithms so bad it makes them piss themselves in excitement

[enchantedanimal]

All of the QSMP eggs as dragons!

Now for my design notes/headcanons! (There's a lot lol)

- The color pallettes are (for the most part) based off of their parent/parents. In lore terms, l'd imagine that more time they spent around their parents before they hatched, the more their color developed to mimic them. It would usually be used as a survival strategy with their dragon parents, however sometimes their personality overcomes this and they develop their own color.

- Being dragonets, none of them can fly due to their currently underdeveloped wings.

- Tilin's yellow spots would make Quackity think that Wilbur was supposed to be the other parent.

- Tallulah's colors/features are close to that of a duck. It would likely be a coincidence, but it'd be enough to Quackity to feel like the island was mocking him.

- Tallulah's "hair" is feathers. She's the only one with feathers, and it may either be a cause or effect of her being left in the attic (possibly being mistaken to be an egg from a different species and not a dragon, or the coldness of the attic caused feathers to form).

- Tallulah and Tilin have the same colored eyes since Quackity once said that she reminds him of Tilin.

- Chayanne has fins bc he likes doing mlg water bucket clutches and fishing with Missa.

- Chayanne's tail fin, Leonarda's ear, and Richarlyson's wing are ripped in a spot due to loosing a life. Bobby lost one of his after I designed him but one of his horns would be chipped, and forgot Ramón only had one as well so let's just pretend he's got a scar on his left leg lol.

- Its kinda subtle, but Chayanne has protruding bottom canines, similar to my (and many others') Techno design.

- Fun fact that usually in my style I have the neck spines start from the top of the head. Ramon is purposely "bald".

- Ngl I don't have much to say about Trump bc he died so quick (rip) and I never saw much about him; but his hat is too big for his head.

- Bobby is a wyvern bc it's easier to slap everyone with his wings. He also headbutts and slaps ppl with his tail (those hurt more).

- Bobby's colors are less based after his parents, but the orange/blue complementary colors are kinda more of a nod to Jaiden being an artist (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense now idk my brain just defaulted to that), but feel they match his personality as well. Also his scleras (part of eye that's not the iris/pupil) are black unlike the rest who's are normal.

- Leonarda has a tiny mushroom pin on her hat and their back has mushroom-like spots for the hat she always wears.

- People keep saying that Leo somehow looks like Foolish which is funny bc that wasn't even intentional- in fact was worried that she would be one of the only ones who didn't resemble her parents enough. I did try to make her slightly taller but I'm going to guess that it's the jawline lol

- [Edit bc I just thought of it] Leo's wings are bigger bc they've grown faster due to using them more to glide off of Foolish's/Veg's builds

- Dapper is built to be more bipedal than quadrupedal (their dewclaws on their back feet act more like a normal toe for better traction/ stabilization). This makes it easier to grab (or steal) things for their collection. And hold a taser.

- Richarlyson is based after an iguana! thought it would fit well (it's kinda hard to base him off of 5 different people lol)

- Had to go off of a secondhand info + auto translations (I can understand a decent amount of Spanish but have no idea when it comes to Portuguese so this could be off) but think there was something about Richarlyson having a bad leg both in and out of rp, and think maybe Cellbit said something about him having a prosthetic for it and I thought that was so so cool! It's based semi loosely off of a dog hind leg prosthetic and a human running one; probably wouldn't actually be functional but tried to keep the general shape of the leg.

- Richas and his dads cover it in stickers :)

- Juanaflippa's tail and probably the lower half of her front legs (which aren't visible) are semi transparent from Charlie (yellow comes from Mariana), and it shifts around a bit! It looks more like slime than it feels like it. I've been calling her Bananaflippa endearingly

- Gegg intentionally looks like Juanaflippa a bit (but he's way more slimy)

- Gegg's inventory basically consists of him absorbing random things which are sometimes visible (he is so full of avocado toast). He's like Bob from Monsters vs Aliens or smth idk haven't seen that movie in forever.

There some smaller less exciting details and other headcanons I have for them (such as extra accessories they'd have like Tallulah wearing sweaters) but that's about it! Feel free to ask about anything I like talking about them lol

[kathaynesart]

Replica Holiday Special Winners!

Happy Holidays everyone! It's that time of year and you know what that means! Time to announce the winners for the DTIYS Replica Holiday Special Cover!

I received so many wonderful submissions. Far more than I had anticipated! They were all so unique and creative and it was an absolute joy to look at each and every one of them! I really underestimated however how difficult it would be to choose with them all being so unique from each other. In the end, I decided to gauge the top picks on how well their cover captured the "essence" of what this Special is going to be like! Without further ado, here are the winners.

HONORABLE MENTION - @matchstique

Buddy! I love this piece so dang much! It has so much character and perfectly displays the wacky hijinks we can expect as well as the huge amount of stress our poor boys are under during these trying, pregnancy times. The movement and colors work so well and make me excited for what comes next! Seldom do I see pregnant females shown as the badasses they are, but you have gone and turned Cassandra into an absolute icon with this piece! Bless you!

3RD PLACE - @thegunnsara

Sara, the shear amount of craft you put into your art is STAGGERING. Every scuff on Raph's shell and wisp of smoke screams of a quality I can only hope to attain someday. I literally want to be you when I grow up! That said, the concept of this piece is also fantastic. One of the things I'm must excited about for this Special is getting to see Raph and Casey as they were and witnessing the strong bond they share. I love them dearly and this cover captures their strength and tenacity so perfectly. Gods among men.

2ND PLACE - @cupcakeslushie

Slushie, this cover is so damn fun and dynamic that I can't stop looking at it! Your attention to detail and composition are masterful and the fact that you could fit such a bombastic battle into such a limited space speaks to how crazy talented you are! You also do a wonderful job of retaining both the intensity of the apocalypse but also that playful edge that Rise always manages to retain! It's definitely the cover that would catch my eye on a shelf and make me want to turn the page to see what happens next!

1ST PLACE - @abbeyofcyn

Cyn, the moment I saw this cover, I gasped! It's funny because this is both a piece I could have totally seen myself doing had I done the cover, yet crafted in a unique way I could have never come up with on my own! On top of that, this slick composition scratches my little designer brain juuust right. The use of the hands motif is such a great element because to me, it encapsulates the conflicting themes of family/parenthood with the drama of what it means to be human. On top of that, having each character as one of the digits both connected to and encircling Casey is such a wonderful touch that really drives the symbolism home. Somehow, you managed to peer into the future and perfectly capture how the finale of this special is going to feel. Thank you so much Cyn for such a wonderful piece!

~~~~~~~~~

Now that I think about it, looking back on these winners as a set, all four them actually do an amazing job as individual covers for each of the four "acts" that will make up this special. That was not at all my intention, but it kind of worked out perfectly for that. Gets me all emotional!

I also definitely want to put a spotlight on the other amazing submissions, many of which made it SO close to the top slots! I was going to post these pieces individually but I was worried people wouldn't then go to their blogs to view the covers, so instead have a compilation and links to the full versions! Please check out everyones amazing covers and give them some love. They all worked really hard and it means so much to me. Thank you everyone!

@dreamundraws - LINK @honeylief - LINK @gemini-forest - LINK @memorydarkness - LINK @skullythefriendlyskullface - LINK @v-albion - LINK @its-wabby-stuff - LINK @yris-latteyi - LINK @reagi-df - LINK @chaoscontrol50 - LINK / LINK @murasakibonnet - LINK @hitwiththetmnt - LINK @xandriagreat - LINK @karonkar - LINK @sunydays - LINK (sorry my dear, yours did not appear on my hashtag reference at first! D: But still love it!) @quailaz - LINK @delicatechildwitch - LINK

Thank you again all of you! You all did such an amazing job!

[rhemaji]

Lil rant abt Caine

Caine is just a lil guy, despite it all. From a design standpoint I thought I was gonna absolutely fucking hate looking at him because those chattering teeth toys make my skin crawl- but the art direction really helps make him look more appealing and whimsical than a disembodied pair of talking dentures sounds on paper.

The thing with Caine is I didn't initially like him that much after the pilot. While his interactions with Bubble were quite funny, that one episode left me feeling like he'd just end up being kinda one note or at the very least one note in a way that'd get on my nerves. Then everything changed when Pomni Wake Up Time to Go On an Adventure! attacked

The comedic timing throughout that announcement video was so fucking funny and thanks to his line deliveries and animation/model [?] upgrades- CAINE LOOKED AND SOUNDED SO ADORABLE!!

Legit it wasn't until this came out that I realized I actually could be on board with Caine as a character and it's been uphill from there. Episode 2 was better than the pilot not only comedically and visually but also in terms of showcasing just how actually unsettling Caine can be as an antagonist. Not because he's vengeful or malicious, but because he's so oblivious to how people work. His mind's always buzzing with terrible ideas and he's so so eager about these adventures, but at the end of the day he really really doesn't get the circus crew. Try as he might to include them, keep them engaged [ZOOBLE WAIT!], or even give them what they want [Exit doors] he doesn't realize how traumatic and distressing their current situation can be. The very nature of being trapped in a digital world is bad enough but it's especially rough here bc not only does its god have limited capabilities, you also are very well acquainted with him, and he can't fully understand your pain nor can he truly save you from it. He won't mourn your abstraction. He will not attend your funeral. He will not understand the distress of your arrival, nor the weight of your departure.

This isn't just sad from the pov of the circus gang, it's also very sad for Caine- not because i think he'll ever feel sad about it himself necessarily, but instead because the situation is sad. New members appear over and over, you craft adventures and games and distractions like [i'm assuming] they'd asked you to, but over and over, one by one, they abstract. They stop laughing at your jokes. They don't like you. They want you to leave them alone. It's confusing and maybe even inconvenient.

Where I'm hoping the series takes Caine is that this dissonance between Caine's intentions and the distress of the circus gang gets worse and worse and worse until something's got to give. I'm hoping that maybe at some point a character will try to sit down and talk with him and for it to either sorta get through to him but completely backfire in some form because he misinterprets what the others want from him OR i'd also be down for him to listen, but not understand any of it and proceed as tho nothing happened. I don't want Caine to come around really, it'd be interesting to see how Goose would go about having him come around to being a better host that empathizes more with humans, but personally I do prefer him to keep on keepin' on being this oblivious and eager antagonist.

My favorite Caine lines/line deliveries so far:

"You, my friend, stumbled into an incredible world of wonders, where anything can happen!…e-except for swearing."

"And here we have THE GROUNDS! Drown yourself in the digital lake, or engage in ridery at the digital carnival!"

"What do you think of XDDCC? You're right, terrible, LET'S TRY THAT AGAIN!"

"Kaufmo abstracted? Why didn't anybody tell me?"

"Bubble you can't say that"

"-ZOOBLE WAIT!"

"Why are you all just standing there?! The- The Canyon- C-Candy Canyon Kingdom needs you now!" [according to his VA, this was an actual line flub but hoo boy am i glad they use it bc it's hilarious]

"I know you guys love your NPCs, but if I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC, who knows...what. could. happen..."

That last line there specifically surprised me the most because up until he said that I was under the impression Caine was linked to every single NPC. I even thought he could see through their eyes if he so chose thanks to his "hundreds of all seeing eyes" line in the pilot. Him saying this here implies lots of things. Has Caine forgotten before? Is someone in the circus secretly an NPC ooooooooh~

"Who knows what could happen..."

Honestly, when Caine first said this I did immediately theorize Jax as being an NPC but now that it's been *checks calendar* three months since I watched episode 2, I don't think this is the case anymore. Jax being an NPC would be...something. Jax not knowing he's an NPC would be interesting [i like it when ppl's realities get shattered], but honestly I think this line was a way to telegraph to the audience that no Caine isn't actually all knowing. He didn't know Gummigoo was coming through that portal until he saw him with his own two eyes. My theory is that Caine is only able to teleport, create, censor, transform, and destroy the world around him, but isn't able to see all of it at once unless he tries to. I think Caine's default state is one where he only knows what he sees directly in front of him/what he himself has left waiting for someone else. And rather than implying someone in the gang is an NPC, I think that line in episode 2 was mainly implying Caine can be tricked, that it's possible to hide something from him, to surprise him even. Though I'm not opposed to an NPC we haven't met trying to join under the guise of being human, it'd potentially create some fun tension assuming the audience was given enough reason to care about them.

Jax is actually my favorite character in tadc, but i couldn't fill an entire post with things to say abt him. Caine seems to be- at least as of right now- the easiest of all the characters to try and wrap my head around. I'll probably have a lot more to say about Jax as he exists in canon as the episodes come out [EPISODE 6 MY BELOVED]

but uhhhh yeah, that's all the things i had to say abt Caine. Pls go watch/listen to the fansong Digital Land bye!

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

so like. i have a lot of thoughts about monty finch and sexuality and bodily autonomy and they're only half-coherent so like. strap in.

okay, so monty's gotta have some very complicated feelings about personhood/dehumanization/consent/sex/etc. that would take him ages to unravel, whether you slap him in au or in canon. there are just so many things to say about how monty was created to be an object of pleasure, of desire, and that if this show didn't play out in literally exactly in the way it did, with edwin already interested in charles/etc., then things would have gotten so dubious and complicated so fucking fast because sex is literally what esther was aiming for when she created monty. what does that say about identity and personhood and dehumanization of self both on an internal and external level, all of those comments she makes about his "handsome/charming face" and how he was made to "seduce/tempt" combined with the fact that she is his creator.

esther finch is the closest thing that monty has to a god and a mother and an owner and she is telling him that his only purpose is to be an object.

to be created to be consumed. to be created to be devoured, to be an object of pleasure and desire, to be made to be destroyed, to be hungered for but never be allowed to hunger, to be punished the moment you stray off the path, the moment your feelings become true, to be expected to perform romance/sex by the person who created you, made you, crafted you to be pleasing to the eye, to be made to be used up because you were never supposed to be a person in any way that mattered.

i have too many thoughts about the gothic horror specifically of monty and esther finch and the scenes that take place within esther's house that have less to do with "ooh, spooky crow" and more to do with subjects of taboo and the absolutely fucking creepy vibes that esther has because she collects little girls and birds and she makes monty and the fact that that house is a haunted house before charles and edwin ever fucking enter it, it's haunted by the girls it devoured, it's haunted by the magic that it devoured, monty is implied to have already been killed in crow form before in that house, and he is reconstituted into the form of the Born Sexy Yesterday Trope, he is boy and he is bird and he is designed to be pleasing to the eye and he is a trap like the snake pit is a trap, pulling in magic, pulling in death, he is born out of his own vicious, bloody, death with the intention of luring in someone for their own death but the only two characters who actually display sexual/romantic/whatever interest in monty are characters who are either literally a predator (a cat to a bird) or a self-described predator (esther herself) and monty is supposed to be a predator, chasing after his target, but he is only ever prey.

anyway i find it funny how every character on this show seems to be living in a slightly different genre (whether that be a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, a character drama, a coming-of-age-queer bildungsroman, a rom-com- niko and jenny and maxine in episode 5, shoutout to the girls, etc.) and how the scenes between monty and edwin are shot like a rom-com/sweet romantic story of their own but the fucking moment you pan over to esther watching or to the scenes with esther and monty in esther's house or even to the scenes in the forest you realize that monty, more than any other characters (save the devlin house, shout-out to the devlin house), is living in a straight-up gothic horror and for a moment he manages to convince himself that he's not because if he allowed himself to register the truth he would not be able to process it/allow himself to function within the role that esther crafted for him, as he literally admits with his comment about "all these human feelings"

anyway like. i. just. have. a lot of fucking thoughts all the time about the intersection of parental/guardian abuse and monty's experience with romance/sexuality/bodily autonomy and what all of that bound up together means.

[epicleovilanon]

So the who framed roger rabbit inspired post NRC au? im now thinking abt the tags screenshotted in this post about the movie, and i just. yeah.

because its often that some of the twst chars can be twisted from multiple characters, and thats so the case of jamikali as well.

jamil is twisted from jafar, sure, so he borrows some elements and similarities, but he's also the genie, he's also jasmine. and kalim, yeah okay, he's the sultan, but hes also aladdin, and, one could even say, jasmine. theyre both so deeply intertwined and codependent i wanna make them worseeeeee like, jamil wants to be needed, kalim needs to wanted, the power-imbalance is constantly see-sawing between the two, they could either of them flip the kill switch, but kalim wont and jamil wont, and its so messy.

(i mean. come on guys. jamils grand plan to be free of kalim did not have "murder kalim" as a part of it--his goal was to get kalim expelled. the murder part came when he thought his life was pretty much over and he overblotted. jamil loathes him, jamil loves him, and we all know how kalim feels about him)

and so i think of them after graduation. does kalim set him free? and does jamil get to travel, and then realize, hey. wait. i. miss him? and thats troubling to him too because, how much of this "missing kalim" is ingrained in him by his servitude to kalim. how much of this is just truly jamil? but he misses him.

and kalim knew! kalim knew he would miss jamil, he's been missing him since before jamil even left, but he let him go, of course he let him go, and hes just hoping waiting praying, that jamil might come back. to him.

and jamil does, and kalim is a little more confident now in this--because jamil came back to him. jamil will go but jamil will come back, and these days he only says goodbye to say hello again. and yes, sure, jamil is a little, is shy the word? about this, about them, he hides his face in his hood the way he's always done, and kalim loves it every time. he pursues, because he knows jamil. he knows jamil and jamil knows him and jamil came back

jamil came back. and kalim is soaring.

but like, back to jessica and roger! the tags (by @cornfieldsrambles) in the post i linked mention how "“part of the reason she works so well as a red herring is because of the assumptions made abt her both by the characters AND the audience. the femme fatale trope and how female sexuality is vilified in media primes an audience not to trust promiscuous women in film. and jessica initially seems to fit the bill perfectly it's straight up a plot twist that jessica is genuinely a faithful and loving wife to roger. that her intentions are pure (even if she really didn't have to knock him out and put him in the trunk so he wouldn't get hurt. but they lampshade it and it's funny so) hell. reading further into it you could make a case that part of the reason she fell for roger is because he loves her for who she is. he always had faith in her. five seconds after being presented with photographic evidence of her “cheating” he vehemently denies it and then he WRITES HER A LOVE POEM. one line that always sticks with me is “what a lucky gal” from betty boop. from a toon's perspective jessica is lucky to have roger not the other way round. toons don't have beauty standards. not like humans do.the measure of the worth of a toon in society is first and foremost being funny#which. in that case roger is an amazing toon. the notable exception in that case is jessica. who was designed to illicit a *ahem* different reaction in audiences. she is an extremely unconventional toon because she is not funny. that's literally not her intended effect. which is mind boggling for a toon. no wonder she's seen as the lucky one. and roger loves her so fully and unconditionally"

and obviously this isnt a 1 to 1 substitution au, but i am drawing a bit from them for the purposes of this fic, particularly with it starting off a private investigator oc (potentially. it could end up being some NRC character at some point! but for now ive settled on some random OC, as im toying with outsider povs) who has to help exonerate Kalim Al Asim, heir to the Al Asim family, who has been framed for murder.

and of course, we eventually get to the gorgeous, scheming jamil viper! and yeah, see, the red herring in who framed roger rabbit is that she is a femme fatale, she is quite literally 'drawn that way' and lets face it, it could be similar enough for jamil as well--should he and kalim get together there is no shortage of insults that would be hurled jamils way by a lot of people in society alone. but for jamil its also, that he very much did once scheme to get kalim expelled. and he did overblot and get to the point where he tried to kill kalim and then himself. and then kalim covered for him

so you get the "what do you see in him?" besides the obvious, he's rich, he's a cute guy, etc etc. because kalim is a nice guy, and they would think--why would jamil want a nice guy? its gotta be for power. and sure, yeah okay, it is in part, because lets be honest, jamil loves power too, but guyssss kalim knows this and loves him anyways. its about power, because both kalim gives it to him willingly, and uses his own (for altruistic reasons yes! but its power and hes using it!)

kalim is a freak for jamil, his "perfect dream world" still had him get snake whispered, like, he knows and loves jamil for who he is, he thinks the evil scheming is cute. so. 'What do you see in him?" and jamil, with the honest, "he makes me laugh" and he does. because jamil actually loves kalim, he is not normal about him at all.

[therkalexander]

Hello! Genuine question for you, and I do apologize if it comes off as rude, it's not my intent at all, but is there a reason why you decided on making the show adaptation live action? I would think with a story using magic and taking place (mostly) in the underworld, doing something like traditional 2d animation would lead to more room for creative depictions, with vivid colors and grand designs. Of course, this is possible in live action, but it is more limited compared to animation. I was wondering what the thought process behind it was, if you're able to share! I totally understand if you can't share, however!

Before I answer, this is all pure opinion from someone who enjoys animation but is not a graphic or animation artist…

I hear you. Especially since animation would give a lot more options for actors to voice various roles without having to maintain bodies carved out of marble for several seasons. It would allow all the magic to be shown and knit seamlessly into the world.

But, Receiver of Many is a story whose core is intimacy. It’s the major reasons I’d prefer to do live action.

There’s a human quality to intimacy that has a hard time translating to animation. Even when done thoughtfully animated intimacy can feel emotionally hollow. There’s also my weird and super specific fear that someone will make, like, a collage or something with all of Aidon’s animated O faces in season 1 and sell it on RedBubble as coffee mugs and hoodies and car wraps. I mean, that would be funny, don’t get me wrong, but… I dunno. Don’t know how I’d feel about that getting memeified.

There’s the more legitimate fear that if quality animation is too expensive in season one, we won’t get a season two. Or we’d get a season two and three but separated by years between seasons.q

The costs and ability to create a lifelike world in animation is fixed by budget. You get the frame rates you get, you get the animation house you get, but in live action that dollar stretches way further with the right crew and director. With live action, costumers and set designers get to tweak fabric and makeup and lighting in real time.

Also, if we were doing animation, then all the magical elements and sweeping scenery would need to be rendered in full detail simply because the medium we chose would insist upon it. No one is going to be satisfied if we animate the scene in Tartarus and lampshade a bunch of the more frightening or fantastical elements to give them greater psychological impact.

Whereas with live action, we can do that with careful camera angles and reveals done at just the right moment. Even the smallest change in an actor’s facial expression as they witness off screen horrors can unsettle an audience, can make the viewer’s heart rate pick up.

That’s not to say that emotions cannot be conveyed with 2d animation— they absolutely can in heart rending ways, but there’s a spectrum of subtlety and nuance that can only be conveyed by the human face.

These are some of the considerations the pre-production team took before we started on our current trajectory. Im not anti-animation. I’ve watched and enjoyed several multi-season stories where the best way to tell that story was through animation. I personally feel with my story that it might work animated, but it’s not the best medium to tell it.

So your question isn’t rude at all. And it gives me a lot to think about. But because the series is at its heart a story about the relationships between people, it needs to be told in the most human way possible.

[rindragon-from-twewy]

Forte swap au character intros part 2!!!

I love these so much genuinely I'm just so happy with where my art style's been at recently!

Ok I have a lot to say so it's under the cut. Remember; Spoilers for the og story!

I'll go from right to left since that's the order I designed them in (buckle in, this is a long one-)

Fubuki now has Spectral Projection. I liked the idea of giving it to her as she and Vivia are basically polar opposites so giving her his forte would really shake things up. Instead of calling her "Princess" and stuff, I think people would rather call her "Sleeping Beauty" and the themes of that fairy tale would end up seeping in to chapter 4, as well as its mystery labyrinth. Her hair flower is now a rose as a further reference to that. I used nightwear as references for her clothes, imagining them mostly being made out of more silky fabrics for that "rich girl" aura. I kept her hair down and messy and really just focused on making her look comfy. After all, if she's sleeping all the time, she should be in the appropriate attire for doing so, no? But thankfully The Chief gave her some wellie boots so she's not running around the city in soggy slippers. Her tattoos are now a string of stars on her collar bones to further emphasise the idea of dreams/sleep and also the "Z" in her name stands for "Zzz" because I thought they'd be funny. The last name "Bramble" is not only another reference to roses and sleeping beauty but also to Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula because yes, the vampire themes have been ripped away from Vivia and given to Fubuki instead!

Moving on to Halara- I knew right away that by giving them Time Leap, I should make them look more like a time traveller. Initially I wanted to try to make them look like they'd fit in well with the line up for the various Doctors in Doctor Who but unfortunately I couldn't figure out a way to do that without just... putting them in one of the outfits. So I instead decided to use steampunk as a main reference. I like to think that they stare at their pocket watch just to ignore people or as a passive aggressive way of telling them that they're wasting time. Their shoulder tattoo is meant to vaguely resemble an hour glass since that seemed appropriate. I had no idea what I wanted to do for their shirt under their coat so I settled on that black turtleneck tank top that makes the fangirls go crazy and made sure to give them Fubuki's necklace so that they can use their forte! The hardest part was deciding to give Halara goggles instead of glasses. They just seemed wrong without their glasses but it was just as wrong to have glasses and goggles? And so I settled on no glasses. (Mostly cuz I forgot to add them in and by then, I was used to looking at their empty face lol-) When they first arrived in Kanai Ward, Chief gave them the frilliest umbrella at the store because it had the same colours as their coat. Lastly, for their name chance, I changed it to "Clocksmith". It's the name of the profession for a watch mender, similar to Clockford and also "Smith" is the last name The Doctor uses when he needs to use a fake human name.

I'll be deadass, I did Vivia's design at like 3am and was running purely on vibes. So there isn't much perpousful intention behind him like the others. His hair now covers his left eye to make using Post Cognition much easier (sometimes it just activates on its own thanks to his eye already being obscured) but just underneath it you can see his tattoo; a big purple tear streak. I think I was watching a fnaf video at the time so. Marionette reference. Now you may be asking: Why is his hoodie so cropped? Why are his trousers so low cut? Idk- because I think it looks cool? I probably should've (and will in future) give him more bandages around his torso cuz looking at it now, that's not really that many. His big sleeves cover his hands and yes, I know that combining those sleeves with that stances just screams "Hatsune miku", that was completely accidental but I'm kinda here for it??? Gave him like 9 belts cuz I like drawing belts and I feel like his suicial ass would've been put in a real straight jacket at least once. People probably aren't sure if he's a real human entity anymore so Shinigami would probably call him a zombie. But nevertheless, The Chief makes sure he eats something at least once a day cuz his rib cage is definitely visible. For his last name, I changed Twilight to Midnight because it's got the "night" from Halara's "Nightmare" while still being a time of day.

And that's about it. Wow that's... a lot. Honestly if I didn't aspire to be a show runner, I'd probably settle for being a character designer. I'm super excited to show off what I've got in store of this AU's storyline but I've still gotta introduce a couple other characters first! ^vO

[rikeijo]

Yuri!!! on stage pamphlet, Kubo Mitsurou - Character comments

Katsuki Yuuri

The character of Katsuki Yuuri, previously still vague, solidified in the scene in episode 4 when he touches Victor's hair whorl. That scene is also one, where I managed to express an idea I've had in my head for a very long time - I wanted to show something like a moment not connected to the main story, when their relationship changes, but not in a logical way. The same thing can be said about the scene in the last episode when, even though Victor is crying, Yuuri pushes aside his fringe and says "So you cry too!" - Yuuri has this very primal (原始的) characteristic of putting his own curiosity first before feelings of the other person, that's a desire he can't suppress. I think it was our intention to use this characteristic to make the viewers expect that he is surely going to act in a way they cannot predict. Throughout the series, Yuuri's character was shaped by misleading the audience to think they know Yuuri's personality and then showing them in each episode that they were not right about him. That's why the character turned out to be much more complex that we thought he would be in the first episode and I think the viewers can sense that the creators had a lot of fun writing him. We sometimes say that the characters are acting on their own, but in this case I think we were writing the character while being bossed around by him.

Victor Nikiforov

Just as it was with Yuuri, I couldn't fully grasp Victor's personality in episode 1, and so his character also solidified over time as I was writing the show. Beginning with the scene in episode 4 when he told Yuuri "I'm not going to hold back" during their conversation on the beach, and then when he was "really hurt" after Yuuri touched his hair whorl, little by little the underlying kindness Victor possesses started to show up more, as even though he had no idea what Yuuri was really thinking, he wanted to get to know Yuuri better and Yuuri to get to know him better too. Actually, I also thought the fact that even staff members couldn't fully comprehend Victor's actions made him all the more charming. Because his actions were impossible to comprehend, the audience too has been watching the show without being able to form any strong assumptions about him and the sense of insecurity you've been getting while watching him was probably also a sign that you started to like the character... I've created Victor by trying my best to draw a cool and beautiful human being. I don't think however, that he could ever be mine. Yuuri also feels this way, but in Yuuri's case he was able to form a very strong connection with Victor thanks to skating. I was writing the show while thinking that I'd like the audience to enjoy the feeling that in every episode, together with Yuuri, they too get to meet Victor they've never seen before, as the relationship between Yuuri and Victor is forming - relationship that was only possible because Yuuri had skating as an excuse [免罪符, it means something like "get-out-of-jail-free card" - funny word choice, but Mitsurou really pushes here the idea that Victor was way out of Yuuri's league. ]

Yuri Plisetsky

In case of Yurio, his character as well as character design were very clear from the very beginning. He was very easy to write. He is my favorite type of character and based on my experience I was sure he's going to be popular. He is the type of a side character, who can outshine even the main character in terms of popularity, so I was careful not to make him "angsty" by e.g. giving him a tragic past or making him have a difficult family situation. With Yurio I didn't want his character to be someone who gets popular because people feel sorry for him, so I gave him family and coaches, as well as new friends, and wanted to show his strength by making him achieve even greater success while being in a relatively good place emotionally. I think I've managed to use the basic manga trope of writing about a strength of found family instead of real family without focusing on the tragic aspects of this trope.

Christophe Giacometti

Chris was born as an ultra sexy character, a character who is very aware of his "eros" and at the same time has the strength to not care when other people stare at him. I decided on the visual side of the character first - I gave him those curled and long, stunningly beautiful eyelashes because I wanted the audience to think: "How grateful we are that such a beautiful skater exists in this world at the same time as Victor!". I also wanted to show the gap between his super cute look with curly hair when he was a child and his present look and suggest that a lot of growing up happened there. While I was writing him, or I should say it was more thanks to the choreography and music we created, the charm that was radiating from him was neither masculine nor feminine, but simply Chris' charm. I personally wanted to make him a "skater who looks good naked" and was having great fun writing him.

Phichit Chulanont

With Phichit, I was aiming to create a pure and energetic person. I've actually heard Thai artists active abroad saying that they want to show everyone the new face of Thailand and also that there are certain aspects of Thailand they were only able to see after they went abroad. So, I felt that young Thai people right now are really making a lot of effort to reconstruct themselves, so I wanted to make Phichit a person who has the spirit to create new things. With the fashion he wears, I was aiming for something Harajuku-like.

Ji Guang-Hong

I've come up with this idea of a Chinese competitor, young but with good skills, as a counterbalance to the great number of overwhelmingly strong competitors who appear in the show. I wanted to make him a character who shows all the signs of becoming terribly good in the future if he continues to gain more self-confidence and experience. When it comes to his personality I was imagining him following the latest trends, like all the modern kids do, or maybe traveling to the USA off-season to train at the same rink with Leo, for example. I intentionally didn't make him really stand-out, because I think he is still at a stage before he can bring out his individual personality.

Jean-Jacques Leroy

Before we even started to think about the story, I effortlessly came up with lines like "JJ won't give up! He can't give up!", so JJ is the character who has already been well-defined even before he was created. We placed a very rough order for his song: a song which feels like it was written by somebody who could win a Grammy. The request we've made for the lyrics too wasn't all that specific but the finished lyrics were well... absolutely amazing! I wanted to make JJ into a character who would make the spectators sing that song while he skates his short program. He is too egoistic, so other competitors who can't get along well with him, simply can't get along well with him, period. He isn't the type who can become friends with everyone. However, he doesn't really care. I wouldn't say that he for sure isn't hurt at all by this though, if you look deep inside, but one of the incredible things about him is that he doesn't let it show on the outside.

Georgi Popovich

We aimed to express different kinds of love and here is the type of competitor who puts all the emotions he's experiencing after he broke up with his lover into his performance. I was thinking that maybe in a country like Russia nobody would have a problem with him doing something like that and so I gave him this kind of artistry, different than the artistry Victor has. And again, also compared to Leo, he's a different type of artist. Georgi is very serious about practice and listens to what his coach says too diligently. But I think he loves himself the most, more than anyone else. He is a narcissist, so he loves his lovers very much too, because they love him. I think that's why he reacts with this "I am the one who can protect you!" thing after he gets dumped. The ability to transform all these feelings into a performance is his strong point.

Nishigori Takeshi

Nishigori was created because I wanted to introduce a point of view of somebody who has gave up on skating. He is also a childhood friend of Yuuri and somebody, who has been watching him from a very close distance - so he's a character with a quite complex setting. He is the only married man [in the show] so I wanted him to be masculine and not somebody who fret over things a lot. I also was thinking that the reason why Yuuri didn't want to go back to his home town for such a very long time, is because of Nishigori and Yuuko. When it comes to Nishigori and Yuuko's relationship, I think Yuuko is the one who started it. She didn't confess her feelings directly but I think it was probably very clear that she likes Nishigori. Because men from Kyushu don't go after a girl who they know they don't have a chance with. They never try to reach a "flower that grows high on a mountain top [an idiom representing a unattainable goal] (laugh).

Leo de la Iglesia

Leo, who was looking up to Victor, is the only competitor who choreographs his programs by himself. He wants to leave no doubt that he is self-producing his programs - he wants to skate his own choreography to the songs he likes to truly bring out his own charm. When it comes to figure skating in the USA, there is a lot of strong competitors in different parts of the country and so there are also skaters of different races. I think there is that conviction that to be able to show your own strengths in these conditions, the most important thing is to express the "I'll be saved by the things I love" core part of you. Leo can't for example jump quadruple jumps yet, but instead he wants to find his other strong points and show them - I wanted him to be a strong person in this way.

Minami Kenjiro

A skater who just made his senior debut, Minami-kun, was created because, just like Yuuri looks up to Victor, I wanted other Japanese skater to look up to Yuuri and Yuuri to be aware that there is somebody who looks up to him. Yuuri had a very bad start at Nationals, so Minami has already won with him once, but I thought I wanted another active competitor to tell Yuuri that he wants Yuuri to continue skating. And so I gave him this pure personality, the kind that Yuuri doesn't possess, so he can yell "I will definitely win with you!". Because of that, he became a character like a classic shonen manga protagonist. And because he has the vibe of anime protagonist I also gave him a matching haircut. I created him feeling that "If Yuri!!! was a shonen manga Minami would definitely be the protagonist".

Otabek Altin

He is a stoic, rugged and serious skater. A type of man who doesn't go to gatherings with other skaters. He left his family and was moving from country to country throughout the course of his training, so he had to wait a long time for a breakthrough. While training, separately from skating, he was also making friends among local musicians, so he has a lot of companions, who are important to him not only in Kazakhstan. He is the type of person who you can trust. He doesn't talk much and doesn't use social media much. But somehow you feel that he can for sure make a lot of progress. He also has this idea to do things that other people don't do. That's why I think that [since he started till the moment we meet him in the show] he's been treating skating very seriously. Otabek is more of a warrior or a soldier than an artist. I see him as this kind of person, who respects competitors who aren't on a level playing field with him and he treats them like comrades-in-arms. That's why, after he met with Yurio at a summer camp and saw his strength, he decided to find his own style of fighting, other than ballet, and he never forgot Yurio, who also had a soldier-like dream.

Michele Crispino

I think Michele loves his sister too much and that's why he doesn't really want to change. He has the skills and skates very good. That's why he managed to get to the GPF and is a very strong competitor, but there's also something missing there and he can't really break through. I wanted to show that his love is of a different kind than the rest of the cast's. I think the kind of love he has for Sara is a little bit different than familial love, but well I think that in his mind Sara is the only person he can trust. But Sara herself thinks she needs to change. I wanted to highlight this change by making Michele a tough/traditionally masculine guy. I was thinking that I want him to use the emotions he has because of his sister to have the break through even if these emotions are not necessarily positive. It was fun writing him.

Lee Seung Gil

SeungGil says pretty harsh things and has the most athlete-like mind of all the skaters. The pressure he is under is huge so, as the real athlete he is, to protect himself from being influenced by this pressure, he doesn't do any fan-service. I think that he is simply a stoic competitor, but because during interviews he says things like: "Is it really necessary for me to answer questions like that?", people misunderstand him and tease him for being cold. The story that I was thinking about for him is that he competes with this stoic attitude, but he knows that if he doesn't become more expressive, he can't win, so he chose a song and costume with an element of surprise. I think this gap is where his charm is. I think he, in his everyday life, isn't interested in things other than skating and usually wears clothes his mum bought for him, or jersey.

Emil Nekola

There are a lot of characters who stand out, so I wanted to design one, who doesn't, and instead simply has a sunny disposition and is like a younger brother or the kid in a group. Skaters from Czech Republic are popular so I thought that it will be a good match to his personality if I make him Czech. The image I have for him is that he is friends with Michele and is the kindest person among European skaters. I was thinking to make him "a big guy who you can depend on". He is very good at physical activities, so I think if, in addition to skating, if he decided to do snowboarding or extreme sports he would be pretty good at them too. He himself isn't really fixated on skating and has a lot of other things he likes to do. But right know he is focusing on skating. That's why, unlike Michele who is like: "Skating is the only thing I have in my life", Emil has a very good way of dealing with the pressure - he is a clever guy.

Closing comments

The things to enjoy while binge watching all episodes

At the end of ep 10, it was revealed that Yuuri at the banquet actually asked Victor to be his coach. If you re-watch the show from ep 1, while having this in mind, the relationship between Yuuri and Victor will surely appear very different. In the beginning of ep 1, when Victor ask Yuuri "Do you want a commemorative photo?", to him Yuuri wasn't someone who really stood out from the crowd. But then, he watched the video of Yuuri skating a perfect copy of his "Stammi Vicino" program, while having some prior knowledge of Yuuri from the "be my coach accident" at the banquet. And as the story goes, because of that Victor's got certain ideas and decided to travel to Japan. If we look at the events from Victor's perspective, it must have been very weird for him, because Yuuri himself asked him to come, but after he came Yuuri met him with this "Why are you here…?" reaction. I think you should be able to enjoy the story even more, if you change the perceptive you watch the show from when you re-watch all 12 episodes at once.

To fans…

I think without both the fans who were supporting us and the staff members who participated in production, we wouldn't be here today. I can't thank you all in person, but we are thinking of doing something, so you can enjoy the world of Yuri!!! even more, as a thank-you gift. I'm looking forward to your continuous support of Yuri!!! on ice.

[circus-clangen]

one: this comic tugs at my heart

two: human monkeypaw request goes here

VERY glad to hear that, as that was EXACTLY my intention <33 And here he is! Haven't thought of a name for him yet though... Askbox dump 4 below cut! 🎪

Thank you! His is definitely one of my favorites <3 Answer? A Whole Heck Of A Lot... I'm trying to figure out the best way to reveal it all to you guys, since it's backstory stuff that wont show up naturally in the comic...

This is the most microscopic nugget of truth contained somewhere in this

There's a nugget of truth in here too :)

Exciting!!! Show us all the clangen when you post it I beg

nuff said

No dw Clown is giving him Another medication that is "definitely going to work this time" so we have nothing to fear </3333

FUNNY ENOUGH I skipped ahead a moon recently (moon 43 I think?) and a loner DID join... he's not Bear though....Can't wait to design him

Everyone in the circus is TRYING to be nice they are trying so hard but every day they get closer to Snapping and forcing each of then to wear onsies with their names embroidered on the back in neon letters

TIGERLING!!! BABY TIGER!!! Hope and pray this Tiger has a better life than Mine <33

Only if you show me 🔫 Jk jk you don't have to, but yes PLEASE feel free to make your own circus/carnival/cabaret/freakshow clangens!!! Even feel free to use my circusclan clangen backgrounds!

Whooo that was a lot of asks 🤩 I missed answering them so much

[thefangirlfever]

I needed to make a post about this because...well, the title says everything.

First of all I would like to say that I'm feeling a bit anxious sharing my thoughts about this. I don't know if I'm the most qualified to talk about this but it has been bugging me.

I know a lot of people have already discussed the way Miguel, a POC and a latino man out of all people, has been oversexualized to a point that it feels fetishy and a bit concerning sometimes. I think we can all acknowledge this and that already gives us a lot to think about.

But what I think is really interesting is that not only is Miguel an intentional thirst-trap, he is a thirst-trap created mainly by a team of male producers/ writers. From what I read, the people in charge of his character design were men (I want to say that I am by no mean attacking anyone who worked on this movie. They did an amazing job and I am just sharing my thoughts, not saying they are bad people for this choise or anything. Thank you).

And I find this very telling. Because when I first saw this headline, I thought "Oh finally, women have been given the chance to freely thirst over a male character the same way men do." And I think it was a big mistake from me to think this way. (First of all, there are also men and non-binary simping over him). Because, let's be real for one second there, do we really want to thirst over characters the way men do? I have been an anime fan for years and let me tell you, the way a lot of men/ fanboys view female characters is simply gross (I know, I know, not all men). It's also something I noticed in comics and video games. Like, have you seen the outrage when a video game studio wants to propose female characters who do not look like what some p*rn addicts imagines women are?

My point is that Miguel has been created not with the female gaze in mind, but with the male gaze (and it hurts to say this). That's what I got from reading the part of the interview. The emphasis on his butt, the overly masculine, muscular body... Miguel was created not by following what women like in men but by what men imagine that women like in men.

This is also something we can see a lot in various medias over the last years, especially in the romance genre. The way some "desirable" men are depicted do not fit what women seek in a partner but what men imagine women want (ofc every woman has different criteria when it comes to this). I think it's very blatant when you compare medias written by and for women like Shonda Rhimes's shows, Bridgerton, Outlander... and medias written by men. So, in the end, I think that Miguel has been created with that in mind "Let's make a big, tall, dark and broody, muscular matcho man. That's what the female public wants." (ofc it's never as simple as that but you get the idea).

So... does this mean that it's bad to simp/ thirst over this character? Surprisingly I'm going to say no and I even think that it's important that the women in this fandom keep making content around Miguel! Because when we write fanfictions, draw fanarts of him... we are now picturing him with a real female gaze and that's what brings even more complexity and depth to this character.

I have seen so many interpretations of this character since I joined this fandom and a lot of them were really cool/ beautiful, showing just how much people love this character. When you think about it, it's crazy that a character who only got 15 minutes of screen time can have such a strong effect on a fandom, meaning that he is more than just a thirst trap. I genuinely think that the content created by the fans gives this character his humanity back (because, yes, being sexualized to no end deshumanizes a person. Go argue with a wall, thank you very much). I've seen so many tender, soft but also funny depictions of him making him more than just some ass shots on the big screen. And even on the NSFW corner of the fandom, some people out there are really making him more than just this "feral beast" that we have been sold by giving him back his tenderness, his sensuality...

So, yeah, take this headline with care and think what you want of it. Those were just my thoughts. Feel free to disagree, tell me if I got something wrong or just leave your thoughts under this post because I'm genuinely curious of seeing other fan's opinions. I apologize for the mess of this take.

And now I'm going back to sleep.

[funkylilworm]

Why I think that killing off Adam was the biggest mistake Viv could make

TW: ranting and spoilers

This entire blog is just gonna be me going on a rant about my opinion on why I think Adam shouldn't of been killed off and why he shouldn't be killed off so early and shit , not only did I not see it as unnecessary for the plot, but there's so much Vivienne could of done for his character other than just throwing the whole character away in just one season , I'll be listing things for what they could of done for Adam's character

1. Plotholes

I'm just gonna say it right here and right now, Adam was killed off waaay too early and not only would we be left with many many plot holes like, where is both of his sons (Caine and Abel), the potential they could of used for his character, and ect.

2. Character potential

^^this fucking scene^^ , because the thought of when Adam first pulling up and being like "Hello, Adam here!!" Is just so fucking funny to me (just less plagiarized, and more unique)

and maybe his arrival leads to his words "Hell is forever" ,his own song gets used against him sense not only did he have the audacity to go to the hotel to get back into heaven but he has said it himself, how redemption isn't possible

But references aside ,Adam can have some potential for his character, like maybe he not only comes to the hotel not only for the intention of going back to Heaven because he hates being down in hell but also for the intention of plotting some revenge for what the hotel residents all did to him

,but the longer he stays there the less and less he tries to plot his revenge , the more and more he realized how flawed heaven and heaven's people are most of the time, and ect.

And ect. and he's so indenial of it at first and doesn't want to believe it but no matter how much he tries there's no denying it , deep down he knows it's true but he doesn't want to believe it

3. Character potential (again)

Like maybe Adam has become fallen in the first place because not only did him sinning in Heaven eventually catch up to him, but maybe also because after finding out the exterminations were unnecessary after Sir Pentious entered the heavens gates, it was finally time for Adam to take his fall

They can also actually start touching on Adam's trauma and how it affects him, his trauma being : being forced into a relationship the moment he was created (Lilith and Eve) , having to be the father and/or decendant of all of the human race , having been kicked out of the garden after Lucifer has second handedly invented evil into the world , and said evil causing his son to kill his other son(which is his and God's fault also)

Like maybe sense Vivziepop is putting a slight different spin to things to Hazbin hotel, she doesn't really having to follow the entire list (sense it's her show) , she can still do something with some of it and still find a way to bring it up and with that it could be the reason behind how he behaves , his personality as a whole, and why he wears that narcissistic mask (while it doesn't necessarily excuse his actions)

4. Character design

If Adam was to somehow end up coming back as a fallen angel, as a sinner. Viv can find a way to go crazy with his fallen design, like any other cartoonist in this world, I know that those cartoonist has seen fanart and fan creations of their shows, movies, and characters

I've seen my fair share of seeing really really good fallen designs for Adam and I'm fucking here for it , they're all so good

,it just needs to happen

5. Character development & redemption arc

Like mentioned in Character potential 2 , Adam can have some potential for his character, like maybe he not only comes to the hotel not only for the intention of going back to Heaven because he hates being down in hell but also for the intention of plotting some revenge for what the hotel residents all did to him

but the longer he stays there the less and less he tries to plot his revenge , the more and more he realized how flawed heaven and heaven's people are most of the time, and ect.

And ect. and he's so indenial of it at first and doesn't want to believe it but no matter how much he tries there's no denying it , deep down he knows it's true but he doesn't want to believe it . Like maybe Adam just still acts the same but without him realizing it or acknowledging it he's just becoming a better person and maybe even comedically he just thinks that the misfits gave him a disease /illness when that's not the case

Maybe in the next seasons he could even become a better father to his sons, Caine and Abel but similar to Lucifer, let them do their own thing sense those two are basically adults now and hey, Adam could be more like a cool dad

I feel like Adam has more cool dad energy

6. The relationships he'll end up making

Just imagine the relationships Adam slowly but gradually builds during his redemption arc, like maybe him and Charlie ending having like an fun uncle and niece kind of relationship or something, maybe slowly but gradually he becomes like another friend of Angel Dust's, and ect.

As he processes through his redemption arc he can end up making friends and building relationships down in hell , possibly in the near future Charlie, Vaggie, Angeldust, Alastor, Cherri bomb, Husk, Nifty, Razzle, and Lucifer doesn't fight against him but with him if another threat were to come

7. There could be another antagonists that's worse or maybe even a bigger threat than Adam

Maybe another antagonists could be made that's more of a mystery and even a bigger threat than Adam , that's just like Adam (or not) but amp up the bad traits he has, maybe this time Adam could be the one helping the others fight and rebel against this guy in his own way

8. Another musical number

Another musical number with them singing badly about heaven in song in the near future but this time with Charlie ,Vaggie, Angeldust, Alastor, Cherri bomb, Husk, Nifty, Razzle, Lucifer, and most of all Adam but the reprise has a metal spin to it and this time Adam joins in and does it with his guitar

9. Another reason she shouldn't of killed off Adam is because she'd be killing off fat /plus size representation

Another reason I feel like Viv shouldn't of killed off Adam is because she'd be killing of fat character representation and I wouldn't want a chubby character like Adam to be killed off

,of course we have Mimzy now but she doesn't count sense she's just one character and only just one character and as much as I love Mimzy I feel like the show needs more than just one or two fat characters

And for the people that think "He isn't chubby" , try again and look at him again , how he sits , lays down (like how he was laying after her got shanked in his arm by Charlie), and ect.

10. I just want some vulnerable moments with Adam

Whether that be Adam bawling his eyes out, having a panic attack, having a mental/emotional breakdown, or ect. I just want to see a vulnerable side of Adam, Adam angst if you will

Okay I'm done ranting, bye <3 <3

[yallemagne]

Fucking stupid notes app lost all my notes on this season I’m going to burn Apple to the ground. 

Episode 1 &2: The Phalanx Covenant

Chuck is so fuckin’ obsessed with fixing Sabretooth that the Phalanx saw that and impersonated Sabretooth to trigger the man’s saviour complex oh my god. 

Warlock!!! I love Warlock!!

Sinister: "THEY TOOK MY RESEARCH!! MY MUTANT TEST SUBJECTS!! MY SAMPLES!!" Beast: "Sinister, people are dying." Sinister: "ALL MY NOTES ON MORPH!!!" Beast: "You're making it so hard not to throw you to the Phalanx."

"Your friends cost me an arm and a leg." Who the fuck are you??

They visit Muir Island and NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MORPH?? Bullshit.

(I'm headcanoning that Morph and Proteus ditched the island to get burgers and avoided getting assimilated. Because they're my silly little pumpkins, that's why.)

Every time Sinister shows up on screen I get angry iopjgerjio and he's here the whole time. The only positive contribution he's had to the mission was throwing Moira off the plane, lol.

Magneto's grown a beard in the interim to communicate he's lost to depression. Saying fuck it to existence until they tell him the Phalanx got Pietro awww.

"Did you lose your humanity when you were assimilated by the Phalanx?" lol yeah. "Or did you have any to begin with?" oh lol you right you right.

They need to stop doing this shit to Wolverine. My poor boy and his metal bones.

I love that Cyclops is so trigger-happy. He does not tolerate Sinister's presence one bit. "Including Sinister! WHERE IS HE?!” With Sinister in the back, skittering away like a fucking roach.

Episode 3 & 4: Storm Front

I hate this creep. Keep your hands off her, Arkon, put a damn shirt on.

Storm: “That cube is causing the bad weather just get rid of it.” Arkon: “NO! I need it.” Wow, wonder who the obvious villain is. They had to take so many braincells from Storm to force this romance. 

EDIT EDIT! I forgot this bullet point! One of the extras is voiced by Morph's voice actor, I can tell from the screams. Morph cameo!

Episode 5: The Fifth Horseman

I hate this new animation style. I was less harsh on it in my previous writeup, but like nah, this style sucks. They yassified Beast, he just has a dude’s face, I hate it. And they gave Jubilee a new haircut and I highly suspect the reasoning is that they didn't think she looked Girl enough.

Cortez shows up and I hate him! Big shocker. 

This episode wasn’t very good. 

Episode 6: Jubilee’s Fairytale Theatre

Jubilee is so responsible!!! Such a good older sibling-type. Also I love how everyone is reinterpreted in her story, it’s funny. Like Gambit’s accent is ten times thicker. 

Longshot cameo! And? Jubilee's foster parents?

There was a rat?? That turned into a guy?? Morph?? We never see them again so I have no clue, but I’m just gonna say Morph cameo. 

Oh no Magneto kinda slays.

The repeated line of Jubilee being able to get out of tight spots is a bit overdone… and then MAGNETO says it and we’re so back bc that’s so fucking funny.

Episode 7: Old Soldiers

You’re never gonna get me on board, show. I’m never gonna believe that Wolverine didn’t have bone claws. It’s stupider if he didn’t have the bone claws. 

(I have been informed that the bone claws are a retcon. Most based retcon ever because, what, you're telling me that just happened on accident?? bc the adamantium claws certainly weren't by design in the show, they were just like "huh, that's weird, didn't expect that". Like what, was Logan just reminiscing in the tube, thinking "if only I had those knuckle knives from that one mission" and fucking manifested claws to break out??? anyway)

Happy that this episode didn’t end with Wolverine swapping spit with that woman. They’re finally showing restraint. But maybe it should have ended with him swapping spit with the Cap. Just saying.

Episode 8: Hidden Agendas

Again: the new art style and designs are objectively worse, the anatomy is all over the place, Sam looks BIZARRE and I know that wasn’t the intent. Like he's not supposed to look like an alien but he does.

ROGUE CALLING HERSELF LEBEAU!!! "I'm taking a vacation from you." *cosplays as his wife* C'mon now, Rogue, make it official.

Love that Sam DIDN’T fall for the shitty creep claiming the X-Men are terrorists, AND he broke out before they could get him with sleeping gas. Dodging shitty clichés left and right.

Episode 9: Descent

Essex: "Would you say humans have escaped the influence of natural selection? And that we as humans should seize our fate and pursue the next stage in evolution?" Darwin: "That's not at all what I'm saying. That sounds very stupid. Next question."

I'm a bit disappointed... So doing research for my fic (yes I'm self-promoting, I'm a whore), I found that Rebecca was the one to call Essex "sinister" after finding out about his experiments... Here it's just kinda said off-hand by Dr. Xavier. It takes the power from the title.

Episode 10: Graduation Day

I really don't get Gyrich's bullshit here. "You defend mutants... YOU must be a mutant!!" Uh yeah, dude. Duh. If they're trying to establish that Charles has been a closeted mutant this whole time, they did a poor job, because nothing in previous episodes ever implied that he was hiding his mutation. I'm choosing to just interpret this as Gyrich being impossibly dumb, thinking he's worked out some mutant conspiracy, meanwhile, he's the last one to come across this very public knowledge about the Professor.

MOOOOORPH!!!!

Logan telling Scott to tell Jean what to do... dog, no one likes a chauvinist.

"Hey, it's a big island, bub. What, are you on the yearbook staff or something?"

"After what they did to Xavier, why do you still fight me?" << revealing his motivation

"Wait, I just realized something. How much do you love Charles Xavier?" "How dare you ask me such a question? He was my only equal. I owe him my life." "What would you do if you knew you were the only one on Earth who could save his life?" "DO NOT PLAY GAMES WITH ME!"

"Wouldn't he do it for you?" YOOOO "Though beware... If he should pass away while connected to you the psychic stress may destroy you, as well." YOOOOOOOOO

"Hello, Magnus. Surely, you have more pressing business to attend to than nursing an old friend." "Nothing more important."

Folks I am EATING this episode. Picture me at dinner with my mother frantically explaining to her that they invented gay marriage. And divorce.

"Morph, it's nice to see you home." YESS IT IS.

Xavier's speech to everyone on the team :,0 watch how hard I can cry.

"Were I your father, I would tell you that no truer son could ever be." Watch tears shoot from my eyes with the destructive power of Scott's eye blasts.

Honestly... so this is a plot twist for me, that they always knew Xavier was alive... I feel a little cheated?? It does ruin the impact of the goodbyes at least a little. If Lilandra had saved Xavier's life in secret or if it was uncertain that the Shi'ar could save him, so there's some plausible deniability, that would make more sense to me. Why do they treat it like he actually died in '97? Why do they enact his will? Couldn't they just say "screw off Magneto, you know Charles isn't actually dead, also you're a fucking criminal, so there's that"?

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

So that's over, huh? I guess y'all'll see me when I watch some other X-Men show. The only issue is that my enjoyment will be severely impaired by Morph not appearing.

[humbledragon669]

S1E4 – Saturday Morning Funtime Write Up P3 - Saturday (The last day of the World) from "You're better off without him." to "You bad angels!"

As upsetting as it is to not have a photo banner for this chunk of the episode write up, I’m going to launch straight in. The timeline for this episode gets important here, so let me just refresh your memory:

So at the point in the episode where we see Crowley preparing to ambush Hell’s minions, the streetside argument has already happened. Aziraphale has also been attacked by archangels and he has tried to talk to God about the whole situation, but we as the audience are not aware of these two events at this point in the episode. Got it? Because I still can’t get that all straight in my head, I really have no idea why I have such a mental block about it.

Harping back to something I mentioned in the previous part of this episode write up, Crowley looks pretty purposeful during this scene. He’s not gathering his things, he’s not desperately looking for a location to run to. He knows exactly what his plan of action entails. I honestly don’t think he has any intention of running anywhere if he has to do it without Aziraphale – now he’s all about surviving as long as he can, and causing as much damage as he can in the process.

Side note: credit to the set design guys, who gave Crowley a doorbell in the shape of a snake. Pretty sure I need to get one of those for my own front door now.

Also gotta love the costume department, having Hastur’s wig thrown on top of his frog/toad in the most careless way imaginable. Goes to show how much he cares about whether any humans notice anything weird about him by this point.

I don’t know why, but I find Hastur’s reaction to Ligur’s demise snort-laughingly funny. It gets me every. Single. Time. Maybe because it’s just so over the top. Maybe I’m just a bit twisted. Maybe a bit of both. Probably like almost everyone else in this fandom to be fair. I’m not going to feel too bad about it, he seems to gather himself pretty quickly afterwards. And hey, you remember all the stuff I highlighted about the noise that we hear when Crowley or Aziraphale do a miracle? Well we’re about to be introduced to the noise that happens when Hastur does one.

You can ignore the little “ow” at the end of the clip, that’s just Crowley. It’s the noise just before that – the weird “flexing” noise with a bell. It’s very different to the noise we hear for miracles from Aziraphale and Crowley. I don’t think it will come to be as important as the noise associated with our hero pair, but it’s worth noting that it is fundamentally different. It does make me wonder why the miracle noise for Crowley isn’t closer to the one for Hastur. Perhaps it’s to do with intent rather than the caster’s nature.

I think I’ve seen this discussed before, but did we all notice how Aziraphale assumed that when the call connected he was actually talking to Crowley? He doesn’t wait to see if the answerphone kicks in, or if Crowley offers a greeting. I suspect it’s because he has never actually had to talk and listen to the answerphone before because Crowley answers every single time he calls. Which at the very least implies that Aziraphale always knows exactly where Crowley is, but further suggests that as a general rule, Crowley is with the angel whenever he isn’t in his apartment. Food for thought.

This phone call and its placement in the episode contrasted with its placement in the chronology is one of the reasons why I get so confused about the timeline. Aziraphale’s tone when the call is answered is a far cry from the terrified bleating of his hurtful rejection on the street corner, which is the last time that he spoke to Crowley. It’s only when you take into consideration that he has actually been threatened by archangels and told that the war is going ahead regardless that the phone call starts to make sense. At this point he tells Crowley that he knows where the Antichrist is – something he swore that he wouldn’t do less than 24 hours prior. What’s interesting about this about-turn is that he doesn’t really have any new information at this point – it’s his take on the situation that’s changed. He’s (finally) realised that the only way they can fix the situation is together.

I *think* Crowley’s stroke of genius bullshitting speech is the first time we are given some insight into the hierarchy of Hell – he calls Hastur a “Duke of Hell”. Crowley has previously been referred as “the demon Crowley” when named specifically by other Hell residents, so despite his very casual greeting in the first episode (“Hi guys”), this would suggest that he is below Hastur in the organisational food chain of Downstairs.

Clearly the people conducting the theological debate into how many angels can dance on the head of a pin became very frustrated with this ridiculous question, because the research notes become more and more incredulous. The one on the far right is my personal favourite:

Side note: the line is “angels don’t dance”. Not can’t or won’t. Got that? Stash it away somewhere so we can pull it, and the information about Aziraphale being the exception to the rule, back out when we get to the ball in season 2.

I have to say, the amount of work that has gone into the sequence of footage coming up blows me away slightly. The photography effect applied to the footage of the dancing men, the honky-tonk orchestration of the music, the underlying ticking sound of an old movie projector, the costumes, the choreography – it’s incredible how much attention to detail has been exercised to produce less than a minute of film. Did I mention all the work Michael Sheen’s face is putting in? It’s quite ridiculous.

I’m not sure I had come across the gavotte as a dance previous to watching Omens – it’s not exactly up there with the popular ones like the waltz or the tango, is it? Wikipedia describes it as a “lively peasants kissing dance”. Probably not all that surprising that Aziraphale took to this particular dance style when you have that piece of information, which is completely the opposite to how I feel about seeing Crowley (and Hastur and Ligur) doing a bit of carefree disco boogie (which he does to the same piece of music as Aziraphale’s gavotte but with a different musical setting). I actually didn’t even realise it was him until my 3rd rewatch.

Quick question about the journey through the phone system – why does Crowley count down to the exit? Surely that just tells Hastur what the plan is? His plan works regardless, it just strikes me as odd that he does it.

Poor old Hastur, the idea of being stuck in an endless loop of Aziraphale’s voice seems to have him quite frightened. He’s even lost his wig on his entry into the phone system. His final choice of word to use as an insult against Crowley is interesting though; I would have thought that calling the demon a snake was something of a compliment. Importantly, Crowley leaves the apartment with nothing more than his phone – Alpha Centauri definitely looking off the cards at this point.

Aaaaaand there it is. The little piece of the puzzle that we didn’t even know we were missing �� a placard that tells us we were missing a window of time. So if we just refer back to my timeline from earlier, we’ve moved from step 8 backwards to step 3:

It looks like Aziraphale is nervous again – he’s wringing his hands in that distracted way that he does. And if he didn’t look troubled enough before the little gang of archangels show up, he certainly looks that way now. There are two things about this scene I want to point out, and the first has to do with the sound. As soon as we’re aware of the presence of other Heavenly beings (Michael’s greeting), all of the speech has some reverb applied to it and the background noise fades out. The result is that we feel like these characters have been isolated from everything around them, and given that nobody pays them any attention at all, I think it’s pretty obvious that that’s the intention. It’s a really clever little device, and once the (slightly menacing) music kicks in, it’s virtually unnoticeable. The second of the things I wanted to point out is that we see Aziraphale panicking in this scene. Not trying to hide something or divert attention, but actually panicking. He stammers, there are unexplained pauses in his speech, his eyes are wide, and he gestures a lot with his head (and later, his hands too). He even backs up when the other three advance on him. I think it will become, in later episodes, very important for us to be able to recognise what a panicking Aziraphale looks like, and this is it.

He has every reason to panic – he’s just been told that Heaven knows that he’s been meeting with someone from the other side. More than that, they describe his companion pretty accurately, and for the second time in a matter of minutes somebody describes the true nature of the relationship (according to my head canon anyway) between Aziraphale and Crowley, which, rather importantly, he makes no attempt to rebut. There’s a tiny beat where the realisation that Crowley is in trouble with Hell hits home and he looks as if he wants to ask Uriel for more detail but Michael moves on too quickly for him.

The fact that this seems like news to him at this point goes to show how little Aziraphale and Crowley actually listen to one another. Crowley has already told him that he’s in trouble with Hell, so this shouldn’t be new information for the angel. Quick side note: it turns out that the word Heaven choose to use for his interactions with Crowley is “consorting”, rather than “fraternising”.

Aziraphale makes an interesting point as he tries to argue his point about the role that he believes angels should play in their administration of Earthly affairs – that being human is fundamentally about having the ability to make choices. Which adversely implies that actually working for Heaven or Hell has the consequence of not being able to make choices at all. He may even be implying that without the human race, angels themselves have no purpose:

Our job, as angels, should be to keep all this working, so they can make choices.

It’s a direct contradiction between the desire for a war that will only result in the rendering of angels as beings futile. I think he’s onto something, but the archangels do not look moved in the slightest.

You can see the moment in Aziraphale’s waffling when he starts to think he’s got a handle on the situation because he stops stammering so much. Once you see it, it’s pretty glaringly obvious. These three thugs archangels aren’t about to let him think he’s getting control though, and we see the second instance of Aziraphale being slammed against a wall in the season. There is a pretty huge difference between this one and the one at Tadfield Manor though. Let’s just remind ourselves of Aziraphale’s facial expression when Crowley “threateningly” pinned him against a wall in episode 2:

And now when Uriel does it in an actual threatening way:

The second of those faces, the one that’s positioned a full foot away from the aggressor instead of an inch, is actually scared. And it doesn’t change the whole time he’s pinned against the wall. He even tries to tell Uriel that they shouldn’t be doing whatever it is they’re about to do to him – he’s genuinely frightened. I’d like to think the whole point of Uriel’s wall slam is really only to provide the audience with a point of reference for the audience to see Aziraphale’s scared face. I wittered on about it in the episode 2 write up a lot so I’m not going to bang on about it too much here, but Aziraphale’s reaction to Uriel’s real threat in this scene proves that Crowley’s wall slam was never a genuine threat – it was just a bit of sexy role play.

Aziraphale also tries to remember the archangels of their true nature during his frightened spluttering– that they’re “the good guys”. What I find particularly telling about the response he gets is that there’s no disputing or correcting of his assumptions, merely an assertion that he has been out of Heaven for too long, suggesting that Heavenly beings maybe don’t consider “goodness” as one of their defining characteristics anymore. Being called “ridiculous” must have been pretty hurtful for Aziraphale here too, seeing as that’s the word he and Crowley threw around between each other just the night before at the bandstand, and when this interaction (as Aziraphale chose to call it) is over, there’s a split second where we can see the fear and dawning realisation that he has lost this particular battle and is well on the way to losing the war. No pun intended.

And just to prove how pure of heart Aziraphale truly is, he can’t even call the archangels a nasty word. He really is the dearest thing, isn’t he? He’s just been threatened and punched in the stomach, been called ridiculous and had his relationship sneered at, and he can’t even manage to throw an expletive at them as they vanish. It’s probably a good thing Crowley wasn’t around to see the whole thing, otherwise I think he would be torn between protective-boyfriend mode and just pointing and laughing at the angel.

Side note: remember all the background noise that faded away when Michael and their cronies showed up? It fades back in immediately as soon as they leave the scene, although it’s very difficult to hear as we have musical soundtrack that continues underneath Aziraphale’s parting blow.

Seeing as we’re about to leave London and return to Tadfield for a short while, I feel like that’s a good place to wrap this part of the write up for this episode. As always, questions, comments, discussion, all welcome! See you next time 😊

[quickcharlie]

Denis Villeneuve discussing Dune Part 2 in an interview with the New York Times today, including whether he will be reading any FeydPaul fan fiction lol

He explains why Lady Jessica’s face is so heavily tattooed, whether Paul considers himself the Messiah and what he thinks of those Javier Bardem memes.

This weekend, “Dune: Part Two” muscles back into IMAX theaters with the verve of Timothée Chalamet rodeo- riding a giant sandworm. After nearly two months in theaters, the film is the current champion of this year’s box office race, with a total take of more than $680 million. (It’s also available to rent or buy on some streaming platforms.) The film’s success is thanks in part to audiences that have returned over and over to get lost in the rocky warrens and spiritual reckonings of the planet Arrakis. One admirer reports he’s seen the movie 25 times to date.

That there’s so much to explore in “Dune: Part Two” is a credit to its writer and director, Denis Villeneuve, who boldly reshaped Frank Herbert’s complex and cerebral 1965 novel “Dune.” Villeneuve split the book and its themes into two films: “Dune: Part One,” released in 2021, focused on the political struggles between two families, the Atreides and the Harkonnens. “Part Two” delves into religious fervor as the two surviving Atreides, young Paul (Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), ingratiate themselves with Arrakis’s Indigenous desert tribe, the Fremen, by allowing the locals to believe that Paul is their Messiah — a prophecy that, if it comes to pass, will mean the slaughter of billions of victims across the galaxy.

Villeneuve has yearned to tell this story since he was a in . His devotion is palpable; every frame feels steeped in monkish contemplation. Yet, he’s also a visual dramatist who doesn’t want audiences to get tripped up by too much exposition. His scripts give only passing mention to core concepts like spice, a psychedelic dust that powers everything from space travel to Paul’s clairvoyant hallucinations.

Though Villeneuve doesn’t want to overexplain, he was willing to provide some answers in an interview via video where every question about the film — even silly questions! — was on the table.

Does Chalamet’s Paul Atreides actually believe he’s the Messiah? What’s the meaning of Jessica’s face tattoos? Villeneuve also got into the erotic lives of his desert dwellers and the extra narrative weight he threw behind Paul’s Fremen love interest, Chani, played by Zendaya. As Villeneuve said with a grin, “Chani is my secret weapon.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

The last time we spoke, you weren’t sure what to make of the sandworm-shaped “Dune” popcorn bucket. It went on to be so popular that it sold out in cities before opening day and is being resold online for around $175. What do you think of it now?

I thought that the bucket was an insane marketing idea. I laughed so much. It is so out there. I don’t know who designed it, but they’re a bit of a genius. I’m at peace with the bucket.

In this film, Javier Bardem’s character Stilgar is reduced to a guileless follower of Paul Atreides, who Stilgar believes is the new Messiah. His conversion is tragic. But also, Bardem’s awe-face has become a funny meme, and the second time I saw the movie, people laughed at almost every line he spoke. Did that reaction surprise you?

No. I am very happy when you say that he is a tragic figure. For me, he is the most tragic figure of all. The idea to bring humor to Stilgar was to make him lovable, to feel the humanity in that character. He’s not an austere figure, he has a big heart. But his beliefs, his faith, his reactions bring humor — and that is something I love about making a sci-fi film, because I can talk about that without offending people because it’s a fake religion. I designed all the prayers myself, so I know it’s fake. I find Stilgar very funny. And when people laugh, I’m happy because that was the intention.

Someone makes a dig that Stilgar has found a savior again. This is not even his first time? All his life he has been raised with that dream. So I suggest that every time a guy comes from outside with a lot of charisma, he hopes he’s found him. Like in the Bible, we have tons of prophets before Jesus came.

The arc of “Dune: Part Two” is Paul accepting that he must become the Messiah — and get billions of people killed. Does he truly believe that he is the Messiah? Or does he just decide to let the Fremen believe that he is? I don’t think he believes that he is the Messiah. I think he feels the burden of the heritage that the Bene Gesserit [the mystical sisterhood that Jessica belongs to] have laid among the Fremen, and he sees the potential to use that religious power to survive. Paul is warned that no man can survive drinking the spiritual water of life. But as that’s part of the lore of a planet seeded with manipulative propaganda by his own mother, I have to ask: Have other men actually been drinking the water and dying? Have they been scared off from trying? Is the warning just a setup for a magic trick?

There are people that have tried it in the past and died. In Frank Herbert’s world, femininity is a power. I think Herbert was fascinated by motherhood, by the power of creation. I love this idea that the power is held by women. It’s something that was ahead of his time when he wrote it and I tried to put the focus on it. You say so much with Jessica’s costuming. In the first film, her look is immaculate and baroque. This film begins with her in rags, but she finds another path to being dressed and treated like royalty. And she gets a lot of tattoos on her face. Why did she get so many more face tattoos than the outgoing reverend mother?

She’s trying to play on the symbolism that was put in the prophecy. She’s supposed to be the mother of the Messiah, so I wanted to bring the idea that she was like the pope of the reverend mothers on Arrakis. There’s some kind of madness in writing elements of the prophecies on her face. Frankly, I think when you drink the worm poison, it affects your sanity — and the same with Paul. I like the idea that we feel she’s going too far. Jessica is already pregnant when the first movie ends, and she’s still pregnant at the end of this film. Which means you had to condense this massive story into less than nine months because her body is a time clock. The idea was to compress the book so that Paul will feel the pressure to get the Fremens’ trust, to start gearing up — but not to succeed, not to have the time to create a real war. Time is against him.

Because in the book, this takes years. Long enough for Jessica to give birth to a very unnerving daughter, Alia. We glimpse Alia as an adult — she’s played by Anya Taylor-Joy — but you skipped over seeing her murder people as a toddler. Was it hard to decide no “murder toddler”?

I think pregnant women look tremendously powerful. To use that power was very exciting. And usually when you see a pregnant woman onscreen, she’s always giving birth. To avoid that moment, to stay in the state of being pregnant, I thought was very Frank Herbert-like. I was going away from the killer toddler, but I thought that was more fresh and original. Honestly, it’s one of the things that I’m proudest of in the adaptation. Speaking of female power, let’s talk about Chani.

Chani is my secret weapon. Frank Herbert was sad to realize that people saw the book as a celebration of Paul Atreides. He wanted to do a cautionary tale against messianic figures, a warning against blending religion and politics. I wrote the second movie trying to be more faithful to Frank Herbert’s intentions than to the book. In the book, Chani is just a follower. I came up with the idea of her being reluctant. She gives us the critical distance and perspective on Paul’s journey. I wanted to make sure the audience will understand that Paul becomes a dark figure, that his choices are exactly what Chani was afraid of. He becomes the colonizers the Fremen were fighting against. And then the movie becomes the cautionary tale Frank Herbert was wishing for.

Paul makes a choice at the end that will go on to kill billions of people. That’s so large and theoretical that it’s hard to grasp. But you structure your climax so that in that moment of betrayal, he’s also betraying the love of his life — a betrayal we understand.

He betrayed her in many ways. But the big thing for Chani is that it’s not about love. It’s about the fact that he becomes the figure that will keep the Fremen in their mental jail. A leader that is not there to free the Fremen, but to control them. That’s the tragedy of all tragedies. Like the Michael Corleone of sci-fi, he becomes what he wanted to avoid. And he will try to find a way to save his soul in the third part.

But “Dune Messiah,” the book your third film is based on, picks up 12 years later with a reunited Paul and Chani. How far did you feel you could push her anger? Because at some point, she’s going to have to forgive him. That anger is tremendous. I don’t want to reveal what I’m going to do with the third movie. I know exactly what to do. I’m writing it right now. But there’s a lot of firepower there and I’m very excited about that decision. In the spirit of no dumb questions, Chani says that Paul sand-walks like a drunk lizard. Which means Arrakis has booze?

Actually, there is spice beer. In the book, there are Fremen parties, even some orgies involving spice. I didn’t bring that into the movies because it’s PG-13.

Body fluids have significance to the Fremen. Spitting is the giving of water, a sign of respect. But tears and vomit are a waste. So what is kissing?

As long as you don’t lose your humidity, you can kiss. It’s an exchange of fluids — an act of love, when you think about it. Fremens love to kiss.

What about the, um, other romantic fluids? You cannot have sex outside, for sure. But they are very sexual. I suspect that all sexual intercourse happens in environments that are protected from losing moisture. When they are in their sietches [or caves] underground, those are sealed. You don’t need to wear stillsuits inside them. We can deduce from that there is no problem to have sex in a sietch.

By the way, who decided that Fremen was pronounced Freh-men and not Free-men? All the pronunciations, I took them from recordings of Frank Herbert’s voice. Frank Herbert used “Freh-men,” which I love. It makes it less on-the-nose.

You kept two major characters out of the first movie and only introduced them now: the princess Irulan, played by Florence Pugh, and the Baron Harkonnen’s nephew Feyd-Rautha, played by Austin Butler. The princess is the first voice in the books, the first face onscreen in David Lynch’s “Dune” [1984]. What made you sure holding them back was the right move, despite three years of fans asking, “Hey, where are they?” When people ask me what was the biggest challenge in making those movies, it’s writing them. In order to make this adaptation, we have to make big, bold decisions. One was that the first movie should be seen from Paul’s perspective. I wasn’t able to do that entirely because I had to go to the Harkonnens’ side to introduce them so that the story will be clear, but I tried to find an elegant simplicity in the story structure. And I wanted, frankly, to keep some firepower for the second movie.

Why is Feyd-Rautha’s gladiator scene in black and white? And what are the splats in the sky above the dome?

Frank Herbert explores the impact of ecosystems on cultures, on humans. How it influences the way we evolve — our biology, culture, technology, mythology, religion. The psychology of a tribe is linked with their environment. If you want to know things about the Fremen, you observe the desert. I wanted to have the same approach to the Harkonnens. They killed nature. It’s a plastic planet. One thing left was sunlight, but instead of a sun that reveals color, it kills colors. When you are outside, it’s all black and white. It gives us ideas about how these people perceive reality, politics, violence in a binary world — it brings the idea of fascism. It also gave me the opportunity to bring images that remind us in our memories of World War II and the Nazi regime. So it’s an idea that I had as I was writing. Then I had the idea to have strange fireworks in the sky that will look like Rorschach drawings. It’s a nightmarish celebration. The perception of a dome is not accurate. It’s just that the fireworks reach a certain altitude and then they explode. But it’s true that it looks like a liquid that falls from the sky.

Forgive me if I am not being fair to sadistic, psychopathic Feyd-Rautha. But all of the gladiators were supposed to be drugged for his happy birthday massacre. The one who secretly isn’t puts up a worthy battle. So I assumed that Feyd-Rautha isn’t that great of a fighter. But at the end, he’s the only warrior who is Paul’s equal?

It’s a show. You see that the Harkonnens are very cruel and their society is very paranoiac. His opponent is known in the books as one of the great fighters, Lieutenant Lanville. I tried to show that Feyd is excited to have a real opponent. He has a code of honor, he respects the effort, and he has fun with it. That’s the idea I tried to convey — he’s not a coward.

Audiences might remember that the Bene Gesserit wanted Jessica’s child to be a girl, that Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides was supposed to be female. And they specifically bred Feyd-Rautha to be a male. Were they hoping these youngsters would mate?

Yeah. They are trying to increase the potential of humanity by breeding the best specimen of each tribe or family. A baby between Feyd-Rautha and an Atreides daughter would have brought peace between Harkonnens and the Atreides, and created an über being.

Will you read any of the internet fan fiction spawned by the idea of Timothée and Austin hooking up?

[Laughs] But you know, we approached their fight at the end like some kind of symbolic union. The way their bodies get close to one another, there’s something animalistic, an intimacy, I was looking for.

I rewatched the first film again recently. It opens with a quote in another language: “Dreams are messages from deep.” I love that quote. It feels like how a film resonates, too. But it wasn’t until I had subtitles on at home that I realized who said it. Of all the important characters and cultures to establish, you gave that major moment — the very beginning of your franchise — to an anonymous Sardaukar from the murderous imperial army that we’re cheering to see get killed. Why?

I love your question. The Sardaukar are the dark side of the Fremen. I thought it would be interesting to have a tiny bit of insight that they are not just tremendous warriors, but they have spirituality, philosophical thought. They have substance. Also, their sound was designed by Hans Zimmer. I absolutely loved how it feels like it’s coming from the deep, from the ancient world. Frank Herbert said beginnings are very delicate times. By starting with a Sardaukar priest, I was indicating to the fans that I was taking absolute freedom with this adaptation, that I was hijacking the book. But you also deeply love the book. So when you make these bold changes, do you feel like asking Frank Herbert for forgiveness?

Yes. There’s so many darlings that you kill. An adaptation is an act of violence.

“There’s so many darlings that you kill,” Denis Villeneuve said of filming “Dune,” a book he loved. “An adaptation is an act of violence.”

[cellarspider]

10/30 The team puts their foot in it

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We return to Prometheus, the movie that makes me want to use the “Leave it” command I’ve taught the family dog.

Apologies if the screenshots are hard to visually parse on this one, this part of the movie is not meant for viewing on a bright, sunny day. May I recommend the alt-text? I've got image descriptions in there, as well as rambles that almost double the word count of these posts.

Also, your daily reminder: Go into your blog settings, scroll down to "visibility", and turn off 3rd party data harvesting! Do it! Happiness is stored in the not-getting-comodified!

My antipathy toward the archaeologists was reaching unprecedented proportions. The only character I didn’t fault for putting his hands on everything like a two-year-old: the literal two-year-old android, David.

Is there a long and dumb history of infantilizing dudes’ behavior? Yes. Was it very funny to see the archaeologists suddenly freak out because someone else was getting too handsy with the alien archaeological finds? Also yes! 

David opens the door, having to climb up a collapsible ladder to comfortably reach the controls, which is a nice touch. The next room contains the head of the decapitated Engineer, and also

I don’t know whether the set designers put this together prior to the decision that this would be where they put the decapitated body, but in hindsight, it seems a little on the nose. What the set wants to communicate is a religious feel–an idol of some kind, delicate reliefs on the walls that some consider to be plot holes because they look xenomorph-y, and a bunch of black urns.

The visual intent, delivered beautifully but with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, is that this is the room where shit will begin to go down. It’s a refined miniature of the egg room in Alien. Something is going to get inappropriately intimate with a man’s face here.

I suppose we are meant to find it a plot twist when that happens later, and not now, but I was still experiencing Archaeological Rage at this point.

Despite telling David not to open the door, they wander in like utter lemons, breathe all over everything, and are surprised when this has consequences. The art starts melting off the walls.

Admittedly, when the moist breath and germs of gormless tourists has caused irreparable damage to ancient egyptian tombs and 17,000 year old cave paintings, it took much longer than this. One of the characters exclaims that they must have disturbed the atmosphere in the room by opening it, which is possible. However, we literally see accumulated dirt in this room. Alien worms writhing in it. This is a plot point for a few scenes from now, because the black urns have started sweating a Mysterious Goop that the audience may remember as “that DNA melty stuff from the opening scene”.

Back when I was talking about setting mood, expectation, and feeling pretty good. I miss that.

There’s apparently a cut scene where Millburn the biologists finds those alien worms somewhere, and has a near-religious experience. It’s the first macroscopic alien life ever witnessed by modern humans. Something that evolved entirely separately from us. He’s in awe. 

The scene no longer has any logical home in the flow of the movie–the worms are only seen by the audience, in the urn room. Millburn left with Fifield the geologist, following Fifield’s panic attack. Still, it would’ve gone a long way to humanizing his character if it was still included, showing that the cast isn’t all treating this like kindergarteners at a toy store, and partially explaining a dumbass thing he does later.

It would also stand in stark contrast to further desecrating an ancient body, which is next on the agenda for our cast.

With the room literally melting and the Prometheus calling in the approach of a sandstorm, they heave the head in a duffel bag and sprint away.

I hate this. There’s the feeble justification that they already fucked up the room anyway, but they have been viewing the body as a thing they want to have, an emblem of their own efforts, and not an ethically distinct class of object that has to be treated with extreme care.

Nope! Into the duffel bag it goes. David, for his part, duffels an urn. I hate this less, for the aforementioned reason of “two-year-old who everyone’s been robot-racist at”. Also because frankly, he’s an android in an Alien movie, one that is very self-conscious about the tropes. He is either going to be an absolute saint like Bishop, or he’s going to be an extension of a callous corporate power like Ash. David is a unique spin on it, but he’s absolutely the Ash.

He manages to be all that and the only one who knows what he’s doing. David saves Shaw and the poor goddamn head from getting swept away in the sandstorm, with calm efficiency and an air of either “I have done a good thing, please praise”, or “yes, I am better at this than you”. Honestly can’t tell which. He’s certainly begun to develop antipathy toward his creators, which is one of the few character arcs that manages to occur in this movie.

So, great. Our cast has blundered into, breathed all over, and botched their exploration of humanity’s first alien structure, on the urging of an allegedly-archaeologist who literally treated it as a christmas present. They return with stolen artifacts and somebody’s head. They do not return with their biologist and geologist, who have apparently gotten lost in the alien structure, despite the geologist also being the one who was making the team a map of the place.

Things do not get better.

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Alt-text rambling citations:

1. https://www.cap-that.com/prometheus/index.php?page=1 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing#Cultural_variations  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#Negative_denotations