#its so fun and the creators involved are all so neat

[goldenflurry]

[insert creative caption here about Sparrow]

I think he’s fun to draw

[glitcheslikeslego]

DISCLAIMER BEFORE WE BEGIN HERE: this is just me ranting and being done with certain sides of the lmk fandom, and not the fandom as a whole. if anyone decides to start trauma dumping or actively trying to start arguments in my replies again, i have a block button for a reason :3c

Okay, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

I think this fandom needs a lesson in media literacy and I am here to give one :3c!

So, media literacy is the ability to analyse stories presented in media to determine its credibility, and who better to talk about analysis than me, that one character analysis bitch uwu.

LMK is very main character focused, especially with MK since he’s, you know, the main character. It leans heavily on the plot of MK and his friends facing enemy after enemy, and with how short the seasons are (10 episodes each), it’s understandable that they won’t give every character large amounts of screen time, this especially goes for side characters, mainly Nezha, Li Jing, Red Son and his parents, Peng, Mayor, the Nine-Headed Demon etc etc. It’s all about MK and his friends.

Just because you like a side character, that doesn’t mean they need a whole season or special dedicated just to them. As seen with Red Son and Nezha, their familial issues are handled off screen, and just because you want to know more, that doesn’t mean that the show actually has to show it. And with Peng and the Mayor, just because we want to know where they are, doesn’t mean they have to show us. They may end up showing up, that’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, but you can’t expect the writers to shove every past character they can into a newer season.

While side characters can be important in moving a plot or explaining it more, they don’t completely matter in the long run. In season 3, the only reason why Nezha gets involved is because Wukong steals the map and they end up in a wild goose chase until Nezha arrives to wreck Wukong’s shit. Aside from that, his other appearances are relatively the same, something happens and Nezha just so happens to get involved and help out, then when all is said and done, he heads off to the Celestial Realm again. Same with Red Son, he just so happened to be involved, helped out a bit, then he and his family just vibe in their fortress. Really all the side characters just show up, help out a bit, then leave to do their own thing. In the end, they don’t really do a whole lot in the long run aside from help.

Now, side characters aside, let’s talk about headcanons. I like headcanons! I like coming up with my own and seeing other peoples headcanons, I think they're so neat! Headcanons on their own aren’t the issue here though, my issue is when people take headcanons and pass them off as canon and factual information about a character.

Take the genderfluid Red Son headcanon. I think it’s neat, it’s a fun and interesting idea, but when people try and use it as actual canon information, it can be pretty disappointing to newcomers who discover that a genderfluid character that they could possibly relate to isn't canonically genderfluid at all, but is instead just a headcanon from one storyboard artist. The person could feel tricked when they come into the fandom for the first time. That’s why I believe if it’s confirmed in the show or the creator themselves said anything about a character, then it’s true, unless stated otherwise.

In addition, just because you like a headcanon, that doesn’t mean you have to force people to like/believe in that headcanon too. And if you don’t like someone’s headcanon, that’s cool too, don’t harass them/bully them for it. The same can be said for ships too, if you do like it, cool, don’t force others to like it. You don’t like it? That’s cool too, don't bully them for it.

Tumblr has tag blocking and user blocking for a reason guys, you aren’t bad people for blocking people who you don’t like/don’t like you, and you aren’t bad for blocking tags for things you don’t want to see. Curate your online experience to cater to yourself and make you comfortable.

So long story short about media literacy and being online in general; take the time to understand what this show truly is, a silly lego show for kids ages 8 and up. Just because you like a specific character, that doesn’t mean they will get the screen time/on-screen development you want, and don’t harass other people over that. And while headcanons are cool, don’t pass it off as factual when it isn't.

Thank you all for coming to my class :3.

[navxry]

SUMMER 01 : SUMMER FESTIVITIES

-> Celebrating festivals in the summer heat is fun, but preparing for them is a different story. (short drabble + plot is a mess but its okay, ignore it lmao) (RULER OF LOVE TAGLIST: @xianyoon ; send an ask to be tagged) [ <- season xx | main page | season xx -> ]

Celebrating festivals aren't known to the two Gods. With their job and their following, it became more of a distant memory with hosting it alongside the others.

Though, if there was one they couldn't forget, it was their first summer spent in the reality they were involved.

At the wake of the summer heat, they watched their followers beginning to create stands for food and games. They weren't aware that some chose this as the time to sell various things, not to mention order such materials for the occasion.

Turning their head to their partner, they raised an eyebrow— almost like they had no idea what was happening. Noticing their expression, the latter chuckled.

"Is this your first time seeing them prepare for the festival?"

"... I suppose," the World Reaper admitted. "I'm not... Familiar with all of this."

The World Creator hummed, turning their head back to see various people help each other. Some seem to notice them and wave, causing them to wave back and gesture to their stands. A sign to continue working, it would seem.

Though, they couldn't help but notice the delivery people that came about. One was a young girl, assisting her grandmother in delivering parcels. She seemed to be having fun with how her bells wound jingle, and the cats followed her with tiny parcels on their backs.

An adorable sight, but they didn't bother to say a word. Not yet.

"Well, why don't we go around for a bit?" the God suggested, offering the latter their hand. "We can help out the others, too. It'd be nice to have them finish before the day of the festival."

They knew it was a good idea. It really is. However, they weren't sure if the others will be... Open.

...

Ah, damn it all. Maybe they can push through it. What could go wrong?

Well, it certainly went wrong.

Now, to be fair, both Gods that are of the two extremes should cancel each other out. And the two of them should, because the events that transpired when they both helped out was out of their control. At least, in preparing for the night of the festival.

Every day was spent peacefully all up to that point: everyone was safe, the two managed to pull some neat shortcuts to make the load easier for all parties, and everyone managed to get rest when needed. However, when the opening was needed to start the festival, the fireworks that was needed was gone.

The deliveryman who was tasked for the job? Also gone.

So here the two Gods are, trying to find some way to mitigate the situation. Everyone was growing antsy, the entire town was getting into flames (metaphorically) about the missing fireworks for the opening, and time was ticking.

With no backups prepared, what were they supposed to do?

...

Well, there was one. And it required a bit of... Foolery.

"I'll make the boxes full of fireworks for them," the God of World Creation stated, preparing their quill. The latter nodded in agreement, preparing their lighter in response, speaking, "And I'll make sure to herd them in line."

"No, not herd them— guide them!"

"Still the same thing!"

"You— ah, alright," the former groaned. "Just... Try not to burn them."

"Well, that's a tall order, but... I'll try."

Though the chaos still reigned, when both Gods had their minds on fulfilling the plan, they'd do it even if it costed them their identities. After all, they were there for their people— they wanted to see this happen.

As the bait was laid at the end of the tunnel, the trap was set in stone. The townsfolks were in a rush, but with the guiding light of the fire leading them to their missing item (by the stroke of luck), they were able to return from whence they came with good news.

It was a long and arduous journey, but the two Gods enjoyed it all the same. After all, they were able to see the festival start with a bang.

Perhaps celebrating such festivities isn't so bad.

@/navxry | do not repost my works | 2024 | entry for may ebg 2024 by @/xianyoon

[kanohimineka]

The Murder of the Power Rangers: A Conspiracy

This post requires brief context of this one: https://www.tumblr.com/kanohimineka/729314732989874176/i-would-like-to-add-i-also-posted-this-to-my?source=share

I didn't want to reblog it, since this is more of its own thing, but whatever, read it anyways.

So, Cosmic Fury is now out, and it seems that our friend Simon has completely let loose. In a brief Twitter Space thingy, he took in questions from fans, where he would eventually answer them. Most of it was pretty innocuous, basic production stuff. However, there were a few moments of Hasbro heavily limiting what could be done with Cosmic Fury. The two biggest examples of this are the first two posts, with Hasbro being the ones to limit Cosmic Fury to a measly 10 episodes, despite Netflix being interested in more, the seeming circular production hell of Once and Always, and the fact that, for some reason, they only had 2 weeks to film the action footage. Of course, there is still some issues on the production's end, but they seem to have interest in continuing Power Rangers, that's just being stopped by Hasbro's Reboot plans, plans that have been in talks since 2019, Both Cosmic Fury and Dino Fury 2 being stopgaps. This fills into a continual issue that I briefly touched upon before. So, let's talk about the economics of the Power Rangers.

Power Rangers started as a massive success, a series designed on the cheap, basically only filming half a show's worth of generic sit com footage, licensing out some weird Japanese show, and ADRing your new actors over it is an extremely inexpensive production for the kind of action show it is, all things considered. Then, the series got massively popular, selling reprints of pre existing Japanese toys with some new branding, ensuring extreme profits for everyone involved, Toei, Bandai, and Saban. However, after some time, the series starts to slump in popularity, it happens to the best of us. However, Power Rangers, being, again, relatively inexpensive, and still having some cultural relevance, allowed it to stay in some form of existence for the past 30 years. It is a series that has been able to coast, staying financially viable, while still not being a gangbuster success. It persisted, giving a decent living to those around it, and allowing artists to create something fun.

It has been hot potatoed between multiple rights holders, who all eventually saw value in the way it was made. However, we jump to today. Now, Hasbro is cancelling that, as mentioned, moderate success to form a reboot of it, helmed by Jonathan Entwistle, a creator who seems like a decent fit, his two big breaks being focused on teens in small towns doing stuff, a decent fit for at least half of the Power Rangers Pipeline. It is yet to be seen how he will do in the more action heavy elements of Rangers, as again, most of his projects are smaller, but he at least seems interested, also working on some sort of Karate Kid reboot. However, it seems they want it to be bigger in scale. They want it to fit that Netflix Limited Series High Budget, Short Length structure, targeting a slightly more mature audience. However, a lot of this seems to come from one main desire. They want the Power Rangers that was there in the 90's

I don't just mean, "They Want MMPR!" though that is a symptom of this issue. What they really want is the size and growth that MMPR had back in the day. Therefore, they're going to pump their whole ass into this project, shifting it to be whatever would be seen as following the popular Hollywood trends. This, to me, is a secret side reason to hire Johnny E. He fits into that MCU Formula of hiring a relative unknown known for a few smaller, personal projects and getting them to make some big action blockbuster. And part of this is to reboot to MMPR. It is the recognizable iconography. It's the version of the Rangers my Grandma would know.

Now, it seems neat that Hasbro would want to invest into Rangers. However, they aren't really investing into what Rangers is. That has been going already, and it is only a moderate success. That's not enough. It needs to be a massive success. It needs to be the next big billion dollar hit. Which means, while they are risking the money, since they are a business, they will be trying to mitigate risk. Which, again, means they will be trying to make the safest choices possible. This means taking the old iconography, taking out the weird unique ideas and grafting on more conventional ideas. You know, making it like the MCU 5 years too late. This is an infinitely deep hole caused by the visualization of art as capital

Now, of course, most art, when made in capitalism, needs to be somewhat financially viable. This is more extreme in things like Power Rangers as they are toy vehicles, ways to sell other products, a practice heavily strengthened by the deregulation of children's television under the Reagan administration. A lot of what is going on with Rangers right now reads as the hyper extreme of this concept. At least before, Rangers was able to fit in that weird little corner of the toy shelf that had its own campy vibe, flowing with new ideas every year, staying viable through the Power Rangers brand. It is this perfect creative balance where new ideas can be forged while also staying to a single IP. Yes, Sentai footage limits this, but sticking to whatever weird ideas Toei makes forced the writers to push Power Rangers further. However, now, Hasbro is bucking away from the Sentai footage, not to be able to be more creative with the brand, but to be less creative. Bringing it to be the old Power Rangers, rather than anything new. That's why I am sceptical. And a lot of what has been discussed has only cemented that in my mind.

If anything, thanks to Simon Bennet for keeping with Rangers for so long, for making one last ride, even through Hasbro can suck. And thank you for liking my silly, pessimistic tweets. And godspeed to Johnny E, I hope you can make something good.

[thecoolerliauditore]

hello tumblr mutual megabuild idk why i wrote all this but i hope this data is interesting 👍

despite um. how i am now. i actually used to be very very anti-mcyt. not in the way of actively saying that i hated its fans or creators but i avoided anything to do with it at all costs on every platform and kind of rolled my eyes when i realised a piece of fanart i otherwise liked was for mcyt.

dsmp in particular i actually still refuse to really interact with.

i think in my case it was a combination of things. While I didn't really interact with people at all, I had friends who did and I'm not exaggerating when I say a good 3/4 of them had some sort of bad encounter with dsmp fans circa 2018. whether it was comparing their OCs to dsmp characters for having similar but overall generic features (curly brown hair, smiley masks, pink hair, etc.) or coming onto their streams/videos just to assert that their CC was better, we were all kind of aware that the fandom was mostly made up of young teens who didn't quite have internet manners figured out yet and it didn't really scream "hey, this thing is neat and you should get into it" no matter how cool sad-ist's animatics were.

that and, you're gonna have to bare with me since I'm getting a little bit broad here, I believe my generation specifically were drilled with parasocial marketing for most of our lives and all of us were simultaneously very sick of it and couldn't help but participate. think early 2000s boy bands into early internet celebs like pewdiepie and markiplier into the popularity boom of things like kpop and vtubers and then finally mcyt. (i would argue professional sports also counts into this but there's a whole other discussion to be had there i think)

if you were a fan of any one of them, you'd probably made fun of one of the others at some point in time, despite knowing fully well you weren't any better. at my most delusional i might've reasoned that My Thing was better because xyz but i think deep down we all knew.

mcyt was especially offensive for me because

1. while studios and production companies get flak for overprotecting its talents, they are also safety nets in case things (inevitably) go wrong with the human factor involved. which people like the dsmp creators (who were very much my only knowledge of mcyt at the time barring watching captainsparklez when i was 10) lack. and

2. the dsmp creators were extremely young, unlike early youtube names like pewds and matpat and so on. im ngl im still incredibly uncomfortable thinking about these school-aged kids getting the amount of fandom they did and people saying all sorts of different things about both them in-story and as people at a time as fucked up as highschool is. Idk but I know highschool me would've been permanently fucked in the head for life facing the judgment of thousands of ppl on the internet for dumb teenage shit. i was a very messed up kid who redirected a lot of my anger at random things and i would've definitely doubled down and became a worse person out of spite if i was (rightfully) called out instead of given the time to realise how unreasonable i was in privacy.

(mind you: i am also of the same mind when it comes to child actors and refuse to engage with things like s tranger things out of the same principle. at least those kids have a studio and adults behind them but yeah I might just be more sensitive about this than the average person)

im not smart enough to offer a solution to the issue because im not sure i can say there even is one but as a whole fifteen year olds becoming famous for their minecraft series is still a scary concept to me and it all culminated in me being very squicked by MCYT as a whole. none of it made a particularly positive impression on me.

i hope this all makes sense? ✌️

*Taking this to encompass all forms of MCYT, from modern streamed SMPs such as Dream SMP and QSMP, to popular YouTube series like Hermitcraft, to old-school series like Yogscast, Aphmau, and Stampy, and single-player series such as Mumbo Jumbo's redstone videos. For the purposes of this poll, any uploaded video format that is primarily focused on content set within the game Minecraft counts as MCYT.

When I say negatively, you can take this in any way, but I am specifically thinking of people who will look down in or be wary of people who say they are into MCYT, or have "MCYT fans DNI" or similar listed on their profile. If you are not interested in MCYT but have no negative connotations with the medium you are free to not answer.

Since I am a MCYT blog the results may appear skewed at first- I don't want to be the "reblog for bigger sample size" guy but if you have reach outwith MCYT spheres please consider it!

[astriiformes]

So! Back in January of this year, I did a little research and was planning on writing up a post on the not-actually-dead-in-the-slightest state of 8tracks, seeing as the site is near and dear to my heart and fandom experience, and I figured it was worth looking into if its resurrection was “real”

I obviously did not get around to writing up my findings but, dear friends and followers, I went to poke at them again today and am thrilled to report that in the couple of months since I started looking into this, I have even better news than I thought I did! In short, not only is the site still decidedly functional, but they have expanded their license library significantly in just the last four months, which I think pretty solidly demonstrates that the team that took over after it “died” is genuinely committed to bringing it back -- and that it’s probably worth migrating back to if you’re looking for a place to host your playlists!

Essentially, in January I went through and listened to ever playlist I had made and took note of 1) how many tracks had been flagged as unavailable due to the site’s licensing situation at the time and 2) the ad frequency, since that could be a turnoff, too. At the time I was fairly encouraged by even by the state of the site then -- only one of my playlists had so many tracks unavailable it had been unlisted, and the rest generally had one or two that had to be skipped over, or even none. The ads weren’t too much of a nuisance either; usually there were only one or two breaks per playlist, depending on the length. However!! My exciting finding today was that, as of right now, none of my 11 playlists have any tracks flagged anymore! Even the one that had been unlisted briefly is back!!

I know the ad situation means 8tracks still doesn’t look quite like it did in its heyday, but I genuinely think the site is still the best one on the internet for making and sharing fandom playlists. The ability to upload any tracks you want to make themed, ordered, easily sharable mixtapes with fun cover art and a functional tagging system to help people find playlists specific to the fandom/character/relationship/etc they want? With a comments section for listeners, and an annotation feature that allows creators to add commentary of their own to each track? There’s nothing else like it on the internet! I’ve been creating playlists there almost as long as I’ve been all that involved in fandom, and thrown in obscure song covers I found on YouTube, old filk tracks you can’t find anywhere else online, recordings of myself reading poems, an audio clip from Cosmos, bits and pieces of TV show soundtracks that never got official album releases -- so much more than is offered on something like Spotify, where even hosted albums can come and go. There’s a reason it was a mainstay of fandom back in the day and honestly? I don’t think we have to be done with it.

After learning all this, I am definitely planning on going back and updating my account with the playlists I’ve made since the site was last accessible, and have plans to work on a few others. I would encourage any other playlist makers to join me in at least cross-posting to 8tracks again, and for other users to look around and see what’s going on there. Playlists are such a wonderful part of fandom, and I want to see more around. We’ve got a neat chance here to help a site that’s perfect for them stay afloat, and I don’t want to miss it.

[veeranger]

can you maybe talk about Va-11 Hall-A? you talking about it a little made me remember i had to play it so i did and I liked it a lot and would like to hear your opinions as I respect you

its only been a few days but i think ive reached all the conclusions about the game i need to. i think VA-11 HALL-A is a really good game and a great visual novel yes its a visual novel dont @ me im right. actually i think its funny the game tells you to curl up with a blanket and snacks like its gunna be a chill relaxing experience because like tonally speaking its kind of not. theres some heavy shit in the game especially near the end and its not the kind of light chatting simulator you might think it is. not saying i think its a stressful game or anything but i alwys thought that was funny. 

anyway heres my real thoughts. im gunna put it under a readmore for spoilers after a certain point

oh also make sure you play the prologue chapter and the anna demo. those are extremely important despite being hidden behind a nondescript menu icon that the game makes no effort to tell you about. thats genuinely my only complaint about the game 

there’s a quote by mike pondsmith, the creator of the cyberpunk ttrpg about how cyberpunk “...can not be about saving the world. You’re saving yourself or your community. The stakes have to be something that involves the player. You can’t just say, ‘The world is craptastic and you can’t do anything about it.’ No. You don’t have to save the world, but you need to be able to save your mother or the apartment you and your friends live in.” 

and i think that ideology was, intentionally or otherwise, probably otherwise because im pretty sure pondsmith gave this quote a few years after VA-11 HALL-A came out, very clearly captured in this story. Jill and her friends live in this terrible shitty city in a terrible shitty world but thats just the setting yknow. glitch city is a backdrop to tell a series of small scale personal stories, not about “surviving in a hellish dystopian” but just...living in the real world. thats just real life for these people you know. every story told in the game is very personal. nobody is blowing up corporate buildings or igniting a revolution its just like, dorothy reconciling her anxieties about being close to her mother, alma’s family troubles, stella and sei’s mutuals traumas and their close relationship, Jill’s grappling with her own life choices. its nothing crazy its very pedestrian and lowkey, its not exactly something you’d expect from a game with CYBERPUNK stamped on the subtitle but it fits the genre extremely well. 

if nothing else VA-11 HALL-A is extremely well grounded in the reality its set in, everything feels lived in and real, like glitch city is a real place you could go to or something. all those newspaper articles about big events right next to articles about some lilim idol or reruns of a nostalgic anime and the danger/u/ posts about weird conspiracies and arguments about stupid weeb shit it just creates a wholesale sense of realism. i once saw someone complain that in persona 5, you only ever hear other students and people in the streets of tokyo talk about whatever is currently happening in the story and at the time i dismissed it as nitpicking but after VA-11 HALL-A i understand that a little better, it creates a game world that only revolves around the player’s actions and story as opposed to a world that keeps turning on its own that your character just so happens to live in. the story of the game might be about Jill and her friends but the world itself is not centered on them, it doesn’t even know they exist. that’s just excellent worldbuilding imo. 

now at this point i want to talk about Jill’s story and please if you haven’t played  VA-11 HALL-A yet and are reading this and you have any thoughts about playing the game please stop here and go play it first I don’t want to spoil this really good story for you.

man i really liked Jill’s story. i had no idea it was coming so the whole thing sidelined me as much as it did Jill when she heard that Lenore died. the way every aspect of the story was handled was so good. i felt the same way Jill did when she lashed out at Gaby for lashing out at her, i felt the same regret she did after she calmed down and realized she screamed at a grieving little girl and i felt the same kind of anxiety she felt when she had a second chance to talk to Gaby and make things right. every note of the story hit for me and it was just good good good. i liked that Jill was able to come to terms with her own poor choices without hoisting all the blame on herself or absolving herself of any wrongdoing either, i liked that she was able to move on and free herself from feeling shackled to her past but was still able to say that she loved Lenore and still does. i liked that it was a gay story even if it was tragic, it was respectful and well written. i also just love love loved how she was able to reconcile with Gaby and start being her big sister again. obviously if you know me you know that’s something i love and so i was extremely pleased with how they were able to continue that relationship. 

just yknow...its like pondsmith said. you cant save the world but you need to be able to save your mother or the apartment you and your friends live in. Jill is able to save herself, save Gaby, not from dying or anything but just like...just from pain yknow. she helps Dorothy save herself and commit to wanting to be with her mother and that in turn helps Anna. she helps Stella and Sei find closure for a traumatic experience in their lives. But even then she can’t save the bar, or save everyone she loves from living in a horrible world. VA-11 HALL-A still closes down in the end but hopefully if you mixed your drinks right everyone you love is able to move forward a little better than how you found them and i think thats pretty damn cool. VA-11 HALL-A is a really good story and its a neat little game. 

oh also i loved Anna she was such a fun presence. make sure you play the Anna chapter after you beat the game!

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Syntax6

Syntax6 has 17 stories at Gossamer, but you should visit her website for the complete collection of her fics and to see the cover art that comes with many of the stories (and to find her pro writing!). She's written some of the most beloved casefiles in the fandom. I've recced literally all of them here before. Twice. Big thanks to Syntax6 for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m delighted but not surprised because I’ve written and read fanfic for shows even older than XF. Also, I joined the XF fandom relatively late, at the end of 1999, so there were already hundreds of “classic” fics out there, stories that were theoretically superseded or dated by canon developments that came after them, but which nonetheless remained compelling in their own right. That is the beauty of fanfic: it is inspired by its original creators but not bound by them. It’s a world of “what if” and each story gets to run in a new direction, irrespective of the canon and all the other stories spinning off in their own universes. In this way, fanfic becomes almost timeless.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

(I feel these are similar, at least for me, so I will combine them here.)

First and foremost, I found friends. There was a table full of XF fanfic writers at my wedding. Bugs was my maid of honor. I still talk to someone from XF fandom pretty much every day. Lysandra, Maybe Amanda, Michelle Kiefer, bugs…these are just some of the people who’ve been part of my life for half my existence now. Sometimes I get to have dinner with Audrey Roget or Anjou or MCA. Deb Wells and Sarah Ellen Parsons are part of my pro fic beta team. I have a similar list from the Hunter fandom, terrific people who have enriched my life in numerous ways and I am honored to count as friends.

Second, I learned a lot about writing during my years in XF fandom. I grew up there. Part of this growth experience was simply due to practice. I wrote about 1.2 million words of XF fanfic, which is the equivalent of 15 novels. I made mistakes and learned from them. But another essential part of learning is absorbing different kinds of well-told tales, and XF had these in spades. Some stories were funny. Others were lyrical. Some were short pieces with nary a word wasted while others were sprawling epics that took you on an adventure. The neat thing about XF is that it has space for many different kinds of stories, from hard-core sci-fi to historical romance. You can watch other authors executing these varied pieces and learn from them. You can form critique groups and ask for betas and get direct feedback on how to improve. It’s collaborative and fun, and this can’t be underestimated, generally supportive. The underlying shared love of the original product means that everyone comes into your work predisposed to enjoy it. I am grateful for all the encouragement and the critiques I received over my years in fandom.

Finally, I think a valuable lesson for writers that you can find in fandom, but not in your local author critique group, is how to handle yourself when your work goes public. Not everyone is going to like your work and they will make sure you know it. Some people will like it maybe too much, to the point where they cross boundaries. Learning to disengage yourself from public reaction to your work is a difficult but crucial aspect of being a writer. You control the story. You can’t control reaction to it. It’s frustrating at first, perhaps, but in the end, it’s freeing.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I participated in ATXC, the Haven message boards, and the Scullyfic mailing list/news group. For a number of years, I also ran a fic discussion group with bugs called The Why Incision.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I started reading XF fanfic before I began watching the show. I had watched one season two episode (Soft Light) and then seen bits and pieces of a few others from season four. I’d seen Fight the Future. Basically, I’d seen enough to know which one was Mulder and which one was Scully, and which one believed in aliens. An acquaintance linked me to a rec site for XF fanfic (Gertie’s, maybe?) so that I could see how fic was formatted for the web. I clicked a fic, I think it was one by Lydia Bower dealing with Scully’s cancer arc, and basically did not stop reading. Soon I was printing off 300K of fic to take home with me each night. I could not believe the level of talent in the fandom, and that there were so many excellent writers just giving away their works for free. I wanted to play in this sandbox, too, so I started renting the VHS tapes to catch up on old episodes (see, I am An Old). After a few months, I began writing my own stuff.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to The X-Files. I’m not a sci-fi person by nature. I think my main objection is that, when done poorly, it feels lazy to me. Who did the thing? A ghost! Maybe an alien? I guess we’ll never know. You can always just shrug and play some spooky music and the “truth will always be out there…” somewhere beyond the story in front of you. You never have to commit to any kind of truth because you can invent some magical power or new kind of alien to change the story. I think, by the bitter end, the XF had devolved into this kind of storytelling. The mytharc made no kind of sense even in its own universe. But for years the XF achieved the best aspects of sci-fi storytelling—narrative flexibility and an apotheosis of our current fears dressed up as a super entertaining yarn.

What eventually sold me on the XF as a show is all of the smart storytelling and the sheer amount of ideas contained within its run. At its best, it’s a brilliant show. You have mediations on good versus evil, the role of government in a free society, is there a God, are we alone in the universe, and what are the elements that make us who we are? If Mulder and Morris Fletcher switch bodies, how do we know it’s really “them”? The tonal shifts from week to week were clever and engaging. For Vince Gilligan, truth was always found in fellow human beings. For Darin Morgan, humans were the biggest monster of all. The show was big enough to contain both these premises, and indeed, was stronger for it. The deep questions, the character quirks, the unsolved mysteries and all that went unsaid in the Mulder-Scully relationship left so much room for fanfic writers to do their own work. As such, the fandom attracted and continues to attract both dabbling writers and those who are serious craftspeople. People who like the mystery and those who like the sci-fi angle. Scientists and true believers. Like the show, it’s big enough for all.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I look at it like an old friend I catch up with once in a while. We’ve been close for so long that there’s no awkwardness—we just get each other! I love seeing people post screen shots and commentary, and I think it’s wonderful that so many writers are still inventing new adventures for Mulder and Scully. That is how the characters live on, and indeed how any of us lives on, through the stories that others tell about us.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I ran the Hunter fandom for about five years, mostly because when I poked my head back in, I found the person in change was a bully who’d shut down everything due to her own waning interest. A person would try to start a topic for discussion, and she’d say, “We’ve already covered that.” Well, yes, in a 30-year-old show, there’s not a lot of new ground…

Most other shows, Hunter included, have smaller fandoms and thus don’t attract the depth of fan talent. I don’t just mean fanfic writers. I mean those who do visual art, fan vids, critiques, etc. The XF fandom has all these in droves, which makes it a rare and special place. But all fandoms have the particular joy of geeking out over favorite scenes and reveling in the meeting of shared minds. It will always look odd to those not contained within it, which brings me to the part of modern fandom I find somewhat uncomfortable…the creators are often in fan-space.

In Hunter, the female lead joins fan groups and participates. This is more common now in the age of social media, where writers, producers, actors, etc., are on the same platforms as the rest of us. Fan and creator interaction used to be highly circumscribed: fans wrote letters and maybe received a signed headshot in return. There were cons where show runners gave panels and took questions from the audience. You could stand in line to meet your favorite star. Now, you can @ your favorite star on Twitter, message her on Facebook or follow him on Instagram. In some ways, this is so fun! In other ways, it blurs in the lines in ways that make me uncomfortable. I think it’s rude, for example, if a fan were to go on a star’s social media and post fanfic there or say, “I thought the episode you wrote was terrible.” But what if it’s fan space and the actor is sitting right there, watching you? Is it rude to post fanfic in front of her, especially if she says it makes her uncomfortable? Is it mean to tell a writer his episode sucked right to his face?

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I own the first seven seasons on DVD and will pull them out from time to time to rewatch old faves. I’ve shown a few episodes over the spring and summer to my ten-year-old daughter, and it’s been fun to see the series through her eyes. We’ve mostly opted for the comedic episodes because there’s enough going on in the real world to give her nightmares. Her favorite so far is Je Souhaite.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t have much bandwidth to read fanfic these days. My job as a mystery/thriller author means I have to keep up with the market so I do most of my reading there right now. I also beta read for some pro-fic friends and betaing a novel will keep you busy.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I read so much back in the day that this answer could go on for pages. Alas, it also hasn’t changed much over the past fifteen years because I haven’t read much since then. But, as we’re talking Golden Oldies today, here are a bunch:

All the Mulders, by Alloway I find this short story both hilarious and haunting. Scully embraces her power in the upside down post-apocalyptic world.

Strangers and the Strange Dead, by Kipler Taut prose and an intriguing 3rd party POV make this story a winner, and that’s before the kicker of an ending, which presaged 1013’s.

Cellphone, by Marasmus Talk about your killer twists! Also one of the cleverest titles coming or going.

Arizona Highways, by Fialka I think this is one of the best-crafted stories to come out of the XF. It’s majestic in scope, full of complex literary structure and theme, and yet the plot moves like a runaway freight train. Both the Mulder and Scully characterizations are handled with tender care.

So, We Kissed, by Alelou What I love about this one is how it grounds Mulder and Scully in the ordinary. Mulder’s terrible secret doesn’t involve a UFO or some CSM-conspiracy. Scully goes to therapy that actually looks like therapy. I guess what I’m saying is that I utterly believe this version of M & S in addition to just enjoying reading about them.

Sore Luck at the Luxor, by Anubis Hot, funny, atmospheric. What’s not to love?

Black Hole Season, by Penumbra Nobody does wordsmithing like Penumbra. I use her in arguments with professional writers when they try to tell me that adverbs and adjectives MUST GO. Just gorgeous, sly, insightful prose.

The Dreaming Sea, by Revely This one reads like a fairytale in all the best ways. Revely creates such loving, beautiful worlds for M & S to live in, and I wish they could stay there always.

Malus Genius, by Plausible Deniability and MaybeAmanda Funny and fun, with great original characters, a sly casefile and some clear-eyed musings on the perils of getting older. This one resonates more and more the older I get. ;)

Riding the Whirlpool, by Pufferdeux I look this one up periodically to prove to people that it exists. Scully gets off on a washing machine while Mulder helps. Yet it’s in character? And kinda works? This one has to be read to be believed.

Bone of Contention (part 1, part 2), by Michelle Kiefer and Kel People used to tell me all the time that casefiles are super easy to write while the poetic vignette is hard. Well, I can’t say which is harder but there much fewer well-done casefiles in the fandom than there are poetic vignettes. This is one of the great ones.

Antidote, by Rachel Howard A fic that manages to be both hot and cold as it imagines Mulder and Scully trying to stay alive in the frosty wilderness while a deadly virus is on the loose. This is an ooooold fic that holds up impressively well given everything that followed it!

Falling Down in Four Acts, by Anubis Anubis was actually a bunch of different writers sharing a single author name. This particular one paints an angry, vivid world for Our Heroes and their compatriots. There is no happy ending here, but I read this once and it stayed with me forever.

The Opposite of Impulse, by Maria Nicole A sweet slice of life on a sunny day. When I imagine a gentler universe for Mulder and Scully, this is the kind of place I’d put them.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Bait and Switch is probably the most sophisticated and tightly plotted. It was late in my fanfic “career” and so it shows the benefits to all that learning. My favorite varies a lot, but I’ll say Universal Invariants because that one was nothing but fun.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I never say never! I don’t have any oldies sitting around, though. Everything I wrote, I posted.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I write casefiles…er, I mean mysteries, under my own name now, Joanna Schaffhausen. My main series with Reed and Ellery consists of a male-female crime solving team, so I get a little bit of my XF kick that way. Their first book, The Vanishing Season, started its life as an XF fanfic back in the day. I had to rewrite it from the ground up to get it published, but if you know both stories, you can spot the similarities.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

The answer any writer will tell you is “everywhere.” Ideas are cheap and they’re all around us—on the news, on the subway, in conversations with friends, from Twitter memes, on a walk through the woods. My mysteries are often rooted in true crime, often more than one of them.

Each idea is like a strand of colored thread, and you have to braid them together into a coherent story. This is the tricky part, determining which threads belong in which story. If the ideas enhance one another or if they just create an ugly tangent.

Mostly, though, stories begin by asking “what if?” What if Scully’s boyfriend Ethan had never been cut from the pilot? What if Scully had moved to Utah after Fight the Future? What if the Lone Gunmen financed their toys by writing a successful comic book starring a thinly veiled Mulder and Scully?

Growing up, I had a sweet old lady for a neighbor. Her name was Doris and she gave me coffee ice cream while we watched Wheel of Fortune together. Every time there was a snow storm, the snow melted in her backyard in a such way that suggested she had numerous bodies buried out there. How’s that for a “what if?”

What's the story behind your pen name?

I’ve had a few of them and honestly can’t tell you where they came from, it’s been so long ago. The “6” part of syntax6 is because I joke that 6 is my lucky number. In eighth grade, my algebra teacher would go around the room in order, asking each student their answer to the previous night’s homework problems. I realized quickly that I didn’t have to do all the problems, just the fifteenth one because my desk was 15th on her list. This worked well until the day she decided to call on kids in random order. When she got to me and asked me the answer to the problem I had not done, I just invented something on the spot. “Uh…six?”

Her: “You mean 0.6, don’t you?”

Me, nodding vigorously: “YES, I DO.”

Her: “Very good. Moving on…”

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My close friends and family have always known, and reactions have varied from mild befuddlement to enthusiastic support. My father voted in the Spookies one year, and you can believe he read the nominated stories before casting his vote. I think the most common reaction was: Why are you doing this for free? Why aren’t you trying to be a paid writer?

Well, having done both now, I can tell you that each kind of writing brings its own rewards. Fanfic is freeing because there is no pressure to make money from it. You can take risks and try new things and not have to worry if it fits into your business plan.

(Posted by Lilydale on September 15, 2020)

[algernoninwonderland]

Miraculous is playing one big game of Calvinball with its magic/power system and it undermines the show quite a bit

TL;DR: Miraculous has, at first glance, a very basic power/magic system… Only whenever it tries to get more complicated than “Moon Prism Power, Make up!” it ends up being an unspeakable mess, due to poor creative decisions that don’t allow for the audience to truly understand what is going on and why, outside of “whatever the plot requires so that we can get to the next scene”. 

It may well be because the people making this show wanted to shift their attention to kwamis and their powers in the future seasons, but holding onto that for seventy-something episodes has done the show a disservice.

Longg isn’t the kwami of Perfection. Longg is the kwami of being a cool dragon. And sometimes, being a cool dragon is enough, you know? Instead of doing complex things poorly, you can tackle simple concepts really well and people won’t think any less of your creation, au contraire.

Throughout the history of the superhero genre, a pretty nifty thing most creators have understood is that you need to explain a bit of how and why the hero’s powers work. Superman is superpowered because it’s all a matter of gravity, a fact underlined in the very first issue of Action Comics, in the very first page of Superman ever. The X-Men are mutants. Sherlock Holmes was bitten by a radioactive detective.

Basically, what happens in most cases is, the creators come up with a set of rules to sort of explain the storyworld so that you know to manage your expectations, so that the storyworld feels more cohesive too. That’s what I call a neat way to allow your audience to suspend their disbelief and feel more involved in the story being told! Things happen and are allowed to happen a certain way for a reason in-universe, there is a kind of logic proper to the work of fiction being built that makes it easier for the audience to fully get into said work.

In Hunter X Hunter, Nen is a pretty cool concept that is well-defined, we see what it is at first with no explanations, and it’s hella intriguing, which makes you want to know more (and that’s deliberate) and then the manga explains it to you a few chapters later and for the most part, Togashi sticks to that definition. And now we understand what is going on and how. Cool, right?

What do we have here? Creative decisions that are often given justifications in-universe to make them more believable in the context of the story being told, even though they are ultimately arbitrary decisions which can be challenged (see how Superman’s powers changed over time, for instance). You can toy with these explanations and that makes for great comedic potential, just look at One Punch Man!

Magic can be a little murkier for sure, because magic doesn’t necessarily follow rational logic. I won’t be getting into the soft/hard magic talk here. Still, if you want your audience to understand what is going on and if you’re not a complete hack (looking at you Joanne Kathleen), you tend to set up some rules so that the audience can grasp what the hell is going on, understand why something is really impressive or really basic. Is it really such a big deal that a character is able to master that one spell? Why? Ursula Le Guin and Brandon Sanderson are really good at that, and manage a good balance of mystery and understandability.

Miraculous fumbles the bag pretty hard when it comes to how its magic/power system works. Which, after 70-something episodes, is not great. 

Part of it is due to the exposition style Miraculous has chosen for itself, which could be great but ultimately isn’t, and part of it is due to poor definition in the first place.

Miraculous hates exposition dumps most of the time, and I think it’s actually a good thing. No one wants to feel as though they’re sitting through a boring class instead of having fun. Well done, guys! Exposition dumps often make you all the more aware of the artificiality of a story. And so, Miraculous mostly relies on context cues as a means of introducing you to the world. They just show you the thing and trust you to understand and interpret it properly. And sometimes, it works really well!

I still sincerely believe that Stormy Weather is a fantastic first episode, and it does its job amazingly well. In 24 minutes, you learn the very basic outlines of how stuff works, relationships between the characters and superpowers. Yes, it’s very basic, but that’s fine, you can’t drop all that new information on your audience all at once. We understand that the power within the Miraculous, that of the kwami, allows for its wearer to transform. This comes with nifty perks, heightened agility, reflexes, amazing strength, magical accessories, and special quirks unique to each of the Miraculouses.

Are we good so far? See, if we stuck to that, it’d be fine. Not mind-blowing but pretty okay still. Doesn’t have to be too complicated to be enjoyable, just look at Sailor Moon!

And then Miraculous tried to spice things up and communicated its ideas so poorly that the arbitrary decisions taken by the writers are glaring, and seriously affect the audience’s suspension of disbelief and enjoyment. 

The kwamis aren’t just cutesy mascots, they’re gods. And yet their powers are very limited. Why? Well, the show doesn’t really bring that question up, we can only try and infer things. Now, what are these limitations, and why do they exist in the first place? I’ve got a vague answer to the first question (a time limit for transformation once the special power is being used).

The answer to that second question is very unsatisfactory, and that’s the only one I’ve got: “because the plot requires it if we want to do such and such thing”. Which is an answer that applies to absolutely all creative decisions in fiction, yes, but there’s usually more to it as well, in competently-made shows at least, it’s not so transparent. Why is Marinette able to wield so many Miraculouses at once? Well, it’d look cool and it’d make her look powerful, so why not! But Adrien can’t. Why? He just can’t. No explanations whatsoever. Just because. It’s magic. Shut up and watch the show.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve got fleeting remarks about being able to unlock kwami powers and maintaining a transformation for longer and whatnot. The problem is, they’re just that, fleeting remarks, and worse, they are so scattered across the show it’s really easy to forget about them in-between episodes, especially since the release schedule is absolute nonsense (it isn’t the creators’ fault, but it certainly has an impact on the way the audience engages with the show). So no, the show isn’t going down the “just roll with it” route, not entirely… And that makes the lack of proper explanation that much worse.

It feels as through the few rules there are in Miraculous are being made up on the fly and… Heh. That’s just not great.

It doesn’t help that the powers themselves are… Really something, huh?

Chat Noir’s power is the only one that really fits with what his kwami is meant to represent. Destruction. Easy to represent, right?

Creation is trickier, that requires being imaginative, and Miraculous isn’t terribly imaginative when it comes to its lucky charms. Hey kids, did you know that you could use a ladder to stop an ice-skater? How creative! I mean you could also use salt to melt the ice, or a baseball bat to smash his kneecaps, then… The point is, being convoluted isn’t the same thing as being creative, and while Chat Noir gets to decide what he destroys, Ladybug gets an item thrown at her and you better believe she’ll find an use to it… How is that creation exactly? Is the lucky charm popping out of thin air creation? That’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it?

Tikki represents convolution, Nooroo is the power of creating minor antagonists…

I had to check the Wiki to remember what concepts the other kwamis are meant to represent. There’s a disconnect between that and the way powers are represented on-screen. Pollen isn’t the kwami of Subjection. Pollen is the kwami of stabbing people with a stinger. How do I know that? I watched the show and nothing else.

If you want your audience to not be confused, if you don’t want your story to feel completely arbitrary to your audience (though it’ll always be just that), maybe take the time to explain things that are crucial for the understanding of the storyworld’s inner workings. You don’t have to give everything away in the first ten episodes, not at all, but you should explain them at some point, take the time to do so if these are more complex concepts that are crucial to your show. And if they aren’t key to your show, you don’t have to include them, and I promise no-one will notice.

[savvyblunders]

Personal Post: Imposter Syndrome, Reading Traditional Books, and thoughts about my own writing

{Just rambles regarding books, fanfiction and some of my thoughts therein.}

It’s been a terribly long time since I read any published books--aside from those written by fellow fanfiction authors. It has reached the point that I find them entirely too cringey. The plots are tame, the characters stiff, the language rote. I especially have a hard time caring if there is a supposed ‘romance’ involved. Forget about het romances, they’re so formulaic that they leave me cold. It isn’t that I have no interest in the portrayal of a relationship between a woman and man, it’s that by and large they might as well have been churned off of a factory production line. 

Part of my objection is to the tired old tropes and gender roles which authors (and readers) don’t seem to realize they’re not only falling prey to, but encouraging with their work. The world doesn’t have to be turned on its head to be interesting, but you shouldn’t know from the first few scenes between characters how it will play out--and further more, not care.

I did read a rather good psychological mystery a few days ago, however. I think perhaps it was successful in part because it was so different from the usual run of stories that people publish, but also because there wasn’t a romance shoe-horned into the storyline. The narrator wasn’t particularly sympathetic, but nor were they entirely unredeemed. I don’t want to give too much away, but it explored the themes of bullying, memory, redemption and revenge, with an enjoyable twist that I didn’t see coming--I was successfully led astray by red herrings, which isn’t always the case when I’m reading mysteries. The book, should anyone be interested, was Girl Gone Mad by Avery Bishop.

{I keep on rambling after the break ;)}

I also read another which was such a stinker I deleted it from my Kindle history and couldn’t tell you the title or author. This beauty had a somewhat interesting premise of a woman who wakes from a six month coma with full amnesia and throughout the book has to struggle with not remembering anything and depending on her husband, children and neighbors for the details of her life. Frustratingly, she finds parts of her personality and tastes have changed--at least as far as they all tell her. She begins to doubt that she is who they say--an issue further compounded when certain facets of her life pre-coma are revealed. Then when the ending arrives, there is a twist and a reveal which could have been pretty neat, only it arrived at the end of such a rote story, with such clunky storytelling and unimaginative language that I kind of didn’t care. It was clear, I might add, that the female protagonist was written by a man. Although blessedly he didn’t go into raptures over her perky breasts, long hair, or other physical attributes [insert vomiting]

My reading resulted in a two-fold feeling. One, traditionally published books are by and large crap. A few months ago I tried reading a book from a famous author whom I used to be quite a fan of. It was part of a series with which I used to be enamored. I settled in, expecting a very enjoyable read. After slogging through three chapters I gave it up. The writing was generic, the characters shallow and the ‘bad guy’ was so sketchily written as to be bewildering, not mysterious. 

That book left me frustrated and annoyed. But it also revealed something to me which I had somewhat accepted and understood prior to that, but not entirely absorbed. Just because a book is traditionally published doesn’t mean it’s any good. Just because an author is well known--or even on the best seller list--doesn’t mean they can write. There are more places to find interesting, funny, heartbreaking, sexy, fun, amazingly written, daring and wonderful stories than at a bookstore or through Kindle. 

The second part of my two-fold feeling was that while, as a writer, I may have much room to grow, I still have valuable skills to offer. My four years of writing fanfiction have honed my talent, refined my style, and influenced my voice, perspective and ability. A good beta, or editor, is invaluable. While I used to write solo and not show it to anyone, simply edit and post, I’ve come to understand the inherent value of feedback. It can be a tricky road, as you might find yourself influenced too much by a reader into trying to suit their tastes rather than your own, but a good beta (eternal thanks to @paialovespie & @hoomhum)--that is to say, a great beta, will not only see the nuts and bolts which might need tightening, but will offer insights which blow your story from ordinary to inspired. The same goes for a ‘personal cheerleader’ (the highest of praise to @mottlemoth) or someone who reminds you at your dark times that you are capable of far more than you can conceive of in that moment. Forget nasty comments online, most of us are our own worst enemies--after all, we know our weakest spots and can zero in on them mercilessly.

Even without a beta, I believe in myself as a writer enough these days (most days) to hope that one day, with hard work, skill, great editing, and some luck, I too could be published. Not a NYT best seller, perhaps, but then, I’m not entirely certain I’d like that. I don’t say this out of any sort of pretentiousness, but because, in essence, these days, I want to write the kind of things that appeal to a more niche audience. I’d like to point with pride at my small book, nestled there on a bookshelf, or available with one click of a button, as something that helps give a voice to a community which has, and still continues to be, marginalized, ignored, fetishized and pandered to, in equal measure. Perhaps it would be for the best if what I wrote wasn’t palatable to the greater reading public.

Of course, those days when I’m full of zest and confidence don’t always last. Like any creator, I fall prey to Imposter Syndrome. Lord, I can’t believe that a time used to exist when I didn’t know what that was! I knew the feeling (oh, how I did), but had no clue that a term existed to encapsulate it. The concept that I wasn’t alone in having days (weeks, months, years) of being cast into doubt that I had anything worth saying--a voice worth listening to--isn’t a new one, but to find out that I’m not alone was unutterably comforting. 

Since, like so many people, I’ve been suffering from a lack of ambition and ability to focus during this global pandemic, I haven’t written much at all, that inner voice rang loud and clear. I’m a fraud, a fake. Any ability I had was used up, clearly as shallow as a mud puddle if a little adversity was enough to dry it out. The struggle to get myself past that was, and is, one that swings from good to bad almost day by day. I had to finally give myself permission to be sad, scared, worried, tired, uninspired. Eventually I decided it was enough that I could find comfort and solace in other’s writing. And oh, how I have! Even though days and days would pass when I couldn’t even muster the interest to read, other times I would consume fanfiction fervently, feverishly. 

And there was so much out there! Adventure, sex, romance, comedy, crack, fluff, hurt/comfort. It seems funny that I can rail against the ‘formulaic’ writing of published books and then turn to ‘tags’ and ‘tropes’ for comfort. But I think the difference lies in the heart that is written into those fanfiction stories. Most of us, while being somewhat influenced by friends, mutuals and fans into writing for a hungry public, are, by and large, writing for ourselves. The old tried and true ‘write what you know’ advice seemed empty and meaningless to me for years. If we only ever write what we know, then how do sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, etc., get written? My brain went to the obvious and ignored the heart of the matter--it isn’t so much what you ‘know’ as writing what you need. What makes you passionate. Even if you’ve never been on a space ship, or been part of a polyamorous, platonic communal family group, if you write it with that yearning and spirit in your heart, it will reach out to someone else.

Fanfiction, at it’s core, is self-comfort.

In my estimation, looking at traditionally published books, it seems that what most of them lack is that heart. The writers aren’t writing because they need the story, or because they are compelled to tell it. It isn’t that they had a hell of a good time writing it, or that they made themselves laugh while doing so. They had a publishing deal to fulfil, a publisher to make happy, a reading public who had certain expectations. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but if it’s your only motivation...then the writing suffers the neglect and a percerptive reader will note the difference. 

By and large, the fandom, the ship, even the trope, aren’t what captivates me most. I’m a pretty eclectic reader. I enjoy a good story more than I do the fact that it is a particular pairing. The draw is how well it is written, any chances the author took, the indulgence into style, formatting, etc. that they allowed themselves. So why should published books be any different? I’ve heard (non-fandom) people dismiss fanfiction as niche. Perhaps it is. But it is also broad, vast, uncharted territory where we’re all having a lot of fun and enjoying the hell out of ourselves.

Maybe those published authors need to spend a little time with us. 

[slliest-clownmari]

Hello again! For the month of June we decided to don our best Icarus costumes because we flew directly into the sun on this one! Extra long disclaimer this time. If you're interested in the technical side what we did and how it went wrong, or want to see the raw numbers, that'll be at the bottom of this post!

Disclaimer: There were two major errors during collection. The first one resulted in five people's views not being collected for the first half hour of the event.  These people were SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs, amounting to about 56k views when added back. The second error left a 45 minute gap in the data where nothing is collected. While these are major errors general trends are still visible and neat to look at!

TL;DR: MCCP21 peaked with 627.4k viewers a little more than thirty minutes into the event. 65.4% of those viewers were watching the Pink Parrots, and 87.9% of those were watching Technoblade. The second most watched team was the Lime Llamas at 16.9% of viewership, 77.6% of that coming from Wisp.

For easier viewing of the graphs, check out the Google Slides version! Total Viewership Over Time

The event peaked with 627,421 viewers at 8:33PM which was during Sky Battle. Looking at the trend of the data, this statistic is unlikely to have changed if the missing 45 minutes had been counted, especially seeing how the peak of MCC14 was also easily in the first hour.  Data collection began about an hour before the event's official start at 8:00PM and ended an hour after the event's end at 11:08PM.

Viewership by Individual Over Time

A fun game you can play with this graph, sans the labels, is guess which one's Technoblade! So far everyone I've shown the unlabelled graph to has guessed correct.

Three people went live after the official start time of the event at 8:00PM, those being Technoblade, Grian, and AyChristeneGames. Four streamers had gone offline prior to the end of 20vs20 Dodgebolt at 11:08PM. Twenty of the 24 participants had gone offline within 5 minutes of the event end. This is in sharp contrast to MCC14 where it took 15 minutes to have half of the 36 participants to go offline. MCC14 participants were also more likely to start streaming well in advance of the event. (For context, only Twitch data was collected for MCC14.) This is probably a cultural difference between Youtube and Twitch.

Viewership by Team Over Time

The viewership drop off after a team fails to reach Dodgebolt is a lot more severe this time, and you don't really see the two teams who did get to Dodgebolt get a boost either. Best guess is this is because MCCP21 was non-canon so nobody really cared who won the whole thing if their favorites didn't make it. Another observation: Pink Parrots has a much more severe dropoff during the Bird App Poll than everyone else. Unseen here is the viewership increase when Wilbur's fire alarm went off :(

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Individual

So, not the most diverse viewership. The most watched person at peak in MCC14, Tommyinnit, only had 21.1% of total viewership. Even if you combine that percentage with the runner-up Dream's numbers, you only get 38.4% of viewership going to them. There is not a single team from MCC14 who captured nearly 57.5% of the viewership. The most they could do was 39.9% (Green Guardians). Absolutely insane degree of domination.

Top Five (Unrouned) 1. Technoblade (360.8k) 2. Wisp (82.2k) 3. Grian (45.5k) 4. ItsFunneh (44.9k) 5. Joey Graceffa (23.5k)

Bottom Five 26. Burren (78) 25. SeaPeeKay (333) 24. Spifey (403) 25. AyChristeneGames (498) 26. InTheLittleWood (521)

Wisp's numbers were so hugely different from last time (0.1% to 13.1%) that I actually sought out people who watched him to confirm he really had over 70k viewers. He did. This probably has to do with having fewer big names to compete with and being on a team with Tommy and Tubbo. Plus, he’s more familiar to the Minecraft community than Joey Graceffa, so fans of Tommy and Tubbo would be more likely to watch Wisp to see their faves. This isn't meant to belittle Wisp or to attribute his viewership entirely to Tommy or Tubbo; MCC is an unfair measurement of the usual popularity of a creator.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Team vs Survey Data

The predicted viewership graph was generated using data from a poll I ran on Tumblr and a poll run by u/Epic_Ninja_Dude123 on r/MinecraftChampionship.

Difference from predicted counts (Pred. % vs Actu. %) Lime Llamas: +9.1% (7.8% vs 16.9%) Green Guardians: +6.3% (0.9% vs 7.2%) Purple Pandas: -6.3% (6.7% vs 0.4%) Orange Ocelots: -5.1% (5.5% vs 0.4%) Red Rabbits: -4.1% (6.2% vs 2.1%) Blue Bats: -1.9% (2.5% vs 0.6%) Aqua Axolotls: +1.3% (2.5% vs 3.8%) Pink Parrots: +0.9% (64.5% vs 65.4%) Yellow Yaks: +0.5% (0.0% vs 0.5%) Cyan Creepers: -0.3% (3.2% vs 2.9%)

Standard Dev. for MCC14: 10.22 Standard Dev. for MCCP21: 2.89

Thrilled by these statistics!! The MCC14 survey had nearly triple the sample size (862) as this combined survey, but still ended up closer to actual counts. Real life proof of what they tell you in stats classes! A representative sample is the best kind of sample to have. Something I did not consider when using the survey for MCC14 is its source, a blog on Tumblr that talks heavily about Technoblade and Philza, which obviously biased the audience who took it towards the Pink Parrots (Philza, Fundy, Wilbur, JackManifold). Not a surprise we did better this time but really neat to see logic in action! lol

Another interesting thing about the survey: Reddit and Tumblr do vary a little in taste. It's easier to just show you:

What's missing? I chose not to calculate average/median viewership for the creators involved due to the large gap in data. It wouldn't be correct most likely.

So, how did you do this and how did you mess it up?

(I, the writer of this post, mostly do the analysis part of this project, not the programming. Apologies if any programmers are reading this and it doesn't make sense. :[ )

Our initial plan was do do just what we did to collect the MCC14 data but for YouTube instead of Twtich. (For MCC14 we used a Python program to request the viewership data directly from Twitch using their API.) This was much easier said than done. Unlike the Twitch API, which allows you to get stream information very easily just using a streamer's name, YouTube API doesn't have a "front door" way of getting this stuff. So, we went in the "back door."

First thing we had to do was manually collect the user ID for each participant. The next step is where the first error occurred: we needed to get our program to recognize the user ID as a user ID, which was done by writing a rule. This was stuff like how long the IDs were and what symbols were included in the IDs. We failed to include a symbol that was present in five of the participant's user IDs, so the program didn't recognize them as IDs and didn't run them through the part of the program which found the stream ID and collected viewer numbers. This is why that data was missing for SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs in the first 30 minutes.

Another big way in which the YouTube API differs from the Twitch API is that YouTube has a quota system. Every action you can take with the API has a certain number of points connected to it, and you're only given so many points to spend a day per application. We thought we were only making one call to get viewer data for every streamer, but instead we were making a separate call for each streamer. That destroyed our quota pretty quick, resulting in the 45 minute gap in data collection. This problem was solved by moving our code into another application which granted us more quota.

This is an important lesson in testing your programs thoroughly before use!

On the bright side, the YouTube API is much more active than the Twitch API, which would update streamer numbers seemingly at random and not all at once. The YouTube API updated numbers roughly every 15 seconds and updated for all streamers, not just a few. That's why our graphs are higher resolution this time!

Here is the raw numbers: Click me!

Let's talk about next time

SO. Obviously this time around was not super ideal, which is partially on us for not testing more. (At least this was not the only scuffed thing about MCCP21. We were just being on brand, if you think about it.) However! Good news! The quota won't be a problem next time as MCC15 won't be Youtube exclusive.   We have already fixed the YouTube program we used this time around and have begun to merge the two. We might even be able to collect YouTube subscribers and Twitch followers by next time but we're focusing on making sure we get all the data next time.

Thank you all so much for reading! Again, any and all critique and questions are welcome! :]

[lonestarbabe]

do you have any lone star or 911 blog suggestions? i just ditched me 911 side blog and started tumblr life fresh with a whole new main blog, so i'm looking for new people to follow, also do you have any suggestions for just getting involved in the fandom altogether?

Hello! I do have some suggestions, but I will warn you, my list is pretty limited because it’s very hard to find good 911 Lone Star blogs because many are multifandom and harder to discover. Anyway, all the more reason to share what I have.

It’s exciting that you’ve broken from your side blog. I will be stuck here as a side blog forever, which can be limiting, so I’m glad you’ve made the switch. 

I tried to focus on blogs that have recent and consistent 911 Lone Star content, at least during the season, and many of them happen to multifandom so keep that in mind. Many of them also love 911 OG! I’m sure I missed important people I follow because it’s hard to weed through my follow list, so I’m sorry if I do. I’ve also provided some reasons why I love these people, mostly to give these wonderful humans some much-deserved love. (in no particular order just thrown out however my jumble mind sees fit)

First of all, @mybaby-tk, I love your blog and am always glad to see your posts, so you’d definitely make my list of blog suggestions. Lots of good takes. Lots of 911 Lone Star content. I cannot wait for more of your stuff.

@buckleystrand is a must. Some of the prettiest gifs, cute fics that make my heart leap, and just an overall really cool person. I think we’re blessed to have someone so talented in this fandom. 

@evaneddie is the #1 Marjeo fan (and I’m glad about that). They are a great contributor of gifs and also 911 OG content. I’m so glad to see them on my dash and to have someone providing good writing as well as gifs.

@bluestar22x a real fandom hero who always engages with posts. I love seeing this blog and their comments pop up because you always have interesting things to see. Such a great person and has a great tagging system for those who like that kind of thing (would be amazing if Tumblr liked to make tags fully functional haha).

@eveningspirit is also excellent. A wonderful writer (one of my faves) and I think we tend to like the same kind of stories, so TASTE! Seems really sweet and she just has 10/10 vibes. Is great at enunciating thoughts. A real fandom gem.

@bucktks Loves Ronen very much. Makes pretty gifs that I could spend hours looking at. Seems like a very cool human. Aesthetically pleasing blog.

@tylerkennedystrand is one of the first people I found who posted Lone Star content. Lots of multifandom content but still and excellent person in the Lone Star fandom.

@itsnotamarriageproposal TARLOOOSSSSSS I mean that’s pretty much all I have to say and you can feel my passion for this blog.

@lovelessmotel not fully Lone Star, but enjoyable all-around content that seems to fit well with things I like. Very pretty theme. Seems like a cool person.

@reyesstrand this is a Lone Star side blog so you can expect pretty much all lone star content. Wonderful posts. A writer. Just a great blog overall that I enjoy looking at.  

@homeinda-blue has a lot of great thoughts. Multifandom. Mostly text posts sharing these thoughts. Has some good insight that never occurred to me before. A really wonderful person!

@daybreak96  Multi-fandom. Shares lots of cool Rafa content. I just really like this blog. I found this blog looking through the tag, and I’m so glad that I did because I really enjoy it.

@adrianintown Lots of great ideas that I love seeing. A blog that has a good mix of different kinds of posts. Seems like a super smart and fun person. Also likes Animal Kingdom. Writes good stuff.

@soclosebutyetsofar is a blog that mostly focuses on Tarlos but also is in other fandoms such as the 100 and Roswell NM. Great content. I haven’t been following long, but I’m really glad I did.

@911lonestarweek For all the fun of 911 Lone Star Week to keep us entertained during the hiatus. 

@mattcasey AMAZING GIFS. Reblogs  A LOT of Lone Star content. A real friend to content creators and I’m glad to see it. Excellent taste in content. You’ll see 911 mixed in as well as some other fandoms.

@harvestleaves LOTS of 911 Lone Star content. Super supportive of content creators and REBLOGS. Lots of cute writing that I love seeing. I’m so glad that I found this blog.

@bellakitse is one of my favorite writers in this family. Creates excellent content. is multifandom, but I really love this blog a lot and I’m appreciative of all the amazing writing we are given.  

@ronenrubinstein a variety of content, but lots of Lone Star love, and Ronen love, and Ronen as a Harry Styles stan love. Really, I saw Harry and 911 Lone Star in one blog and thought it had to be good. I was right.

@spookycass A nice bright theme that is very sunny. Really great content. Seems like a nice person and I’m glad I follow this blog.

@tkandbuck A variety of content, but the 911 Lone Star stuff is really excellent, and I mean, TK and Buck… how could I not love this wonderful blog?

@tarloses A must follow for all the Tarlos lovers out there. A good balance of content that I enjoy very much.

@marjanmarwanis is allergic to poor leadership ;). I enjoy all the icons that she makes of the characters and cast. Also posts 911 OG icons. 

@a-gay-fish More 911 OG but also just a great blog that has excellent vibes and amuses me. I’m glad to have finally found this blog (better late than never). 

@onceuponatarlos A blog dedicated to Tarlos prompts, so does amazing work. 

@thompsonconnors Multifandom but a lot that I like, so it works for me. Makes nice gifs that I appreciate very much (excellent Grace gifs woooo)

@tylerkennedysstrand  lots of interests, but a fun blog to follow. Not to be confused with @tylerkennedystrand which I did for a while, but I have seen the light now and have realized that this excellent blog is a blog all of its own and worth checking out.

@pikku-myy Probably more of a 911 blog, but also posts Lone Star content and I enjoy the energy of this blog. 

@meneatyoghurt I read this url as me neat yoghurt for far longer than is acceptable, but I understand now and am enlightened. I also just love this blog. Lots of interesting thoughts. I love seeing this person pop up.

@embersinashes Another OG fan who I’ve seen write some really good thoughts on the show, and I love seeing on my dash. 10/10 content. 

@paul-strickland Might’ve been the first 9-1-1 Lone Star blog I followed, so clearly top-notch content and lots of it. Very cool edits. Also likes 911 OG and writes. She is a great addition to the fandom.

@tarlosgifs It is what it says on the tin, which is why all Tarlos lovers should give this blog a look.

@xtarlosx 911 and lone star (and some other fandoms). Lots of Tarlos love. Just accidentally pressed unfollow as I was writing this, but I followed again so we’re good lol. In general, just a great addition to my dash and posts just the right amount. 

@hearteyesemergency 911 but also lone star. This blog has a really good flow. Nice to look at with excellent content. 

@probiechavez  Also OG 911 fan. But is a 911 Lone Star side blog. Great content. Love seeing it on my dash. Probie Chavez, as in Mateo, and this blog deserve so much love.

@guesswhofern before starting this I said to myself DO NOT forget @guesswhofern because in my follow list this one is tucked between a bunch of other non Lone Star follows. Anyways, all the Lone Star content on this blog makes me happy, and this blog supports creators a lot, which is amazing.

@mtngirlforever a multi-fandom blog, but one you have to follow because of all the Lone Star talk that goes on there and a bunch of excellent content. One of my faves. Also, some Tarlos RP is that’s your thing. If it’s not, it’s tagged so fear not. Can’t say enough about this blog.

@actuallytkstrand multifandom.  Mostly 911 and Lone Star. A good balance of text and non-text posts. Just the right amount of content. Some good lone star memes (we don’t see enough) and good takes.

@thegayfleet a blog dedicated to gay things. Provides pics from lots of Ronen’s photoshoots. Also has a lot of other gay content and gifs from Lone Star and other shows with gay characters.

[ayashiki-i-i]

Last Friday, I had the absolute joy and privilege to see Be More Chill in London!

(Yes, last Friday, this has been sitting in my drafts for over a week because I couldn’t figure out how to appropriately convey my delight with this show, and also yes, joy and privilege, call me dramatic but I swear to god nothing on this Earth makes me appreciate my life quite as live theatre.)

I have loved this show for a very long time. Not quite since its first Two Rivers Theatre run, but very early on from when it caught the internet’s attention. I was at the start of what was to become a viral sensation, and I was with the show, rooting for it, hoping for it, ever since. I feel like I walked the journey from crossing million hits on Spotify to the Broadway alongside the cast and creators. I felt immensely happy and proud for these people I never met when they announced their off-Broadway return, and I honest to god cried the day they opened on Broadway. Needless to say, I was overjoyed, literally jumping with happiness, when they announced they will stage a production on West End. Or technically off-West End? I’m still very confused how The Other Palace is not West End and Victoria Palace literally around the corner is West End... Anyway. I have not walked into that theatre on Valentine’s Day with low expectations.

And my Mount Everest high expectations were far, far exceeded and shot somewhere into the stratosphere.

I really can’t with words describe how much I loved this show. Joes Iconis and Tracz managed to hit some very special spot with this musical. It’s truly hard to describe, but this show just makes you happy. It makes you involved and interested. And I gotta tell you, I think we hit the press night, because there was a bunch of people (very respectfully) scribbling on their pads and iPads during the show, so this wasn’t an audience primed and geared for this type of musical. And that’s not even counting all the parents chaperoning their teenagers. And I can guarantee you everyone had a great time. During the intermission I went to get a drink and witnessed several conversations between aforementioned parents that all pretty much amounted to “wow, this is actually good!” It’s honestly such a treat to be in an audience that’s genuinely enjoying themselves.

This show is funny, and heartfelt, and charming. So charming. It has somehow a vibe of a really well done high school production, which could maybe sound like a criticism but i swear it isn’t!

I haven’t seen much of the previous productions, except few clips from the Two Rivers bootleg slime tutorial, but I really tried not to watch too much, hoping against hope there will be a revival one day (I try not to watch shows I have a chance of seeing one day. I’m fortunate to have the chance of having the full experience live so I try not to ruin it for myself lol). I gobbled up all the official promo clips and videos from the NYC revival, being super unlucky and managing to plan my New York trip in that small window when BMC just closed Off-Broadway and before it got on Broadway. I haven’t even listened to the Broadway recording, because by the time it came out I knew they’ll be staging a production over here. So i went in quite blind. With all that previous ado, this is how it was:

The book is so good. So so good. Many times when I fall in love with an album, the actual musical doesn’t hold up because the book doesn’t compare (hi, Dear Evan Hansen). But BMC is as engaging and fun between the songs as during them. Tbh I don’t love the changes to the songs they made, but I don’t really hate them either... Now having listened to the Broadway recording they reverted somewhat back to the original album on West End and I’m happy they did, but still. Especially Pitiful Children did not deserve the cuts. But I mean its still mostly the same album and it’s brilliant and fun, and ok, Looser, Geek or Whatever is a bop.

(Although I always kinda liked that Jeremy didn’t have a typical big “hero song” because he keeps mentioning how he isn’t a hero and it was kinda ironic that his own show refused him the hero treatment, but the song is solid.)

This cast is EVERYTHING. I’m sorry all previous casts, I love you and I respect you but i really think the British cast is (so far) the peak? Obviously as I said I don’t have the full picture to compare, but honestly these guys are all so good and I can’t imagine anyone else in these roles, they set the bar so high. Yes, even Michael. Omg I’m so sorry George Salazar! This role is his in a very special way, and I feel blasphemous saying this! But that’s what makes Blake Patrick Anderson so special, because I didn’t think I will ever be able to accept another Micheal than George Salazar. But from the first moment Anderson appears on stage, you don’t think of George Salazar. This right here is a Micheal and that’s it. I think he’s slightly less... Manic, than Salazar, and more caring, but also more stubborn, and nerdy. My friend said after the first act the character’s problem is that he’s a bit too likeable and it’s almost unbelievable he would be a social outcast and she was right. The dude is so damn likeable! So charming, so positive. And then Micheal in the Bathroom hits and omg does it hit. Also Blake Patrick Anderson has a really long name is very pretty. A+ snack. I’m in love. Scott Folan is, uh, I don’t really love him vocally... Ok I liked him until Loser Geek of Whatever. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t his day. Or maybe that song is just written for Will Roland and no one will ever measure up? Tbh I haven’t seen Roland sing it live so who knows, maybe it is one of those songs that’s hard to perform without yelling a bit. Praying circle for the West End cast album? However Scott Folan’s acting is a masterclass. He’s so awkward in the first act, so sad, but also sweet. Actually I said i didn’t love his singing but when his voice cracks all over in his first few songs it’s superb and also his “Christiiine~” is really beautiful and lovely, so, dunno *shrugs*. And then in the second half he totally sells his confidence and assholer-y and like... They seem like two different jeremys, the squipped and un-squipped one. But ultimately he just gives such good-kid vibes. He seems like the perfect midpoint between Will Connolly’s shy Bambi and Roland’s geeky recluse. This Christine is absolutely feral. Like, you have no idea. Some people commented on the video of I Love Play Rehersal from the rehearsals that this Christine is not chaotic enough, so I’m seriously worried how chaotic Stephenie Hsu was? :D In any case Miracle Chance I thought was perfect, the ideal mixture of quirky but relatable, sweet but strong. Also she is hilarious. I’m pretty sure she got the most laugh out of the audience, not just because the actress’s absolutely perfect comedic timing but also that role is so well written. Like you really can’t get the full idea of this character until you watch the show, you know? It’s very layered, but each layer is easy to get so she makes a really fun character to watch. The Squip is hot. Like so hot. And his costumes are wonderful. And I know I’m not the only one who didn’t love Jason Tam’s accent as Squip and like... I think I know what he was going for but it just doesn’t work for me. This Squip is a lot more like Eric William Morris, just more hot. Oh yeah I mean the dude is fantastic actor too, and his voice is something impressive, but mostly I was just thinking “hot” whenever he was on stage :D James Hameed’s Rich is vocally stunning. By far the best Squip Song I have ever heard. Also he has Pickle Rick tattoo?? It’s fucking brilliant I HATE IT! :D Millie O’Connel is perfect of course. She has such a presence on stage. It was hilarious when she came out after the show, with her hair down and make-up off and said hi and people mostly kinda ignored her cause... She’s really a hurricane on stage and when she dials it down just a notch I really think people don’t connect her to her stage persona :D

(Also like, massive kudos to The Other Palace’s stage door, cause they allow you to just hang around the bar where the cast has to go through to leave the place, so no dirty alleyways stage dooring in rain and cold and possible pickpockets around.)

I really loved the staging, and it’s very small, very minimal, which isn’t something I normally like, so well done! They definitely dialled back from the Broadway (the bean bags are back!) and honestly the minimal props and simple set really suit this show. It adds to that almost-like-a-really-good-school-play charm. But also they have this massive LED screen as the background so they can change and move and animate their backdrop and it’s honestly so impressive. The artwork is so perfectly in line with the show’s aesthetic. And it’s building up and up towards the show’s climax which I thought was pretty subtle and pretty neat creative decision.

Ugh this is so long I didn’t think it would be so long :D But I have one criticism I cannot not mention. And I kinda always had this, but seeing it live it jumps out on me more - I don’t feel Jeremy and Christine :| I mean don’t get me wrong. The actors have amazing chemistry, their added song is the one that I actually really like and it makes sense, there’s so much more meaningful interaction they have in the show than the songs wold suggest. But. It still doesn’t quite sit well. Besides the fact that I don’t think the show’s narrative is about Jeremy getting the girl - that’s not really his character arc. But also, although they’re not incompatible, he gets the girl he doesn’t even really know, and she definitely doesn’t know him. I think I would prefer if they just stayed friends at the end, but if there had to be romantic conclusion... Well, I mean who doesn’t ship boyf friends, but seriously if Michael was a girl I’m pretty sure he’d be the romantic endgame for Jeremy. You know the type, the old friend who was by the protagonists side and believed in him all along? Yeah. But besides that, i was surprised to find I kinda liked Jeremy with Brooke too? I mean they have the same problem as Jeremy and Christine, with not knowing each other and all that, but at least it’s mutual, and they seemed to have a spark. But maybe it’s just because I unexpectedly really, really loved Brooke (she doesn’t have much space on the album and no one ever really talks about her, why does no one really talk about her???). She defies a lot of her archetype, she seems like such a sweet person. I guess I would just like to see more of her, and more depth to her, which a romance with the protagonist would’ve given her.

But tbh the show devotes a lot more time than I thought it would for Christine and Jeremey’s relationship to develop and it isn’t unrealistic, so it ended up being a pretty minor issue, which i though would be a bigger one.

Tl;dr (oh my god why is this so long????) this show is everything I wanted and more. The West End cast is amazing, charming and delightful and each of them is perfectly cast to really embody their character, while giving some fresh outlook on characters I thought I knew very well and filling very big shoes of the original cast I thought couldn’t be replaced. Also I didn’t talk to any of them but they spend a long time hanging out with the fans after the show and seemed genuinely super nice and pleased with the love the show is getting. The book is more than an equal partner to the music I already was in love with (also Joe Iconis was at the show I saw! I didn’t talk to him because I’m me and I will forever regret it!). The Other Palace’s staging and direction is wonderful, and the choreography is impressive and very on brand with the rest of the show, very modern, very electro and robot. I enjoyed every second and the standing ovation at the end was well deserved.

Just to re-affirm how much I loved this show - just few days after seeing it I booked a ticket to go see it again almost immediately lol. So if anyone is seeing it this Wednesday 26th Feb and you can telepathically pick me in the audience come say hello!

(Or like, drop me a message like a normal person if you’re also going alone and want to meet with someone to seem less like a weirdo! :D)

[ganymedesclock]

Something I think is a really interesting exercise is that player-controlled characters that don’t speak up much / at all (e.g. Chell from Portal) still actually have what constitutes a canon personality. They’re often perceived as blank slates, but they’re really not.

There are several things that, in a meta sense, will tell you about a character you’re controlling. 

1. The hard parameters of the game.

Have you ever noticed, in Zelda games, there are a bunch of characters you’re incapable of attacking? No matter what lethal implements you flail in their vicinity, Link will never launch a damaging or killing strike on them. There are also some regions in-game where you, the player, are unable to make Link draw his sword.

Thing is, the guards do not corner Link upon entering a town and confiscate his sword. His equipment is not explicitly magic and only able to harm monsters. In fact, the divide between “enemy species” and “friendly species” is basically arbitrary- in Twilight Princess, for example, you can attack gorons with impunity right up until they become allies.

This makes it clear that Link is consciously staying his hand. While it’s a very simple statement to make about a character- Link will not consider attacking those he perceives as civilians or allies- it’s still a clear statement. Link might be a punk sometimes (the game does gleefully give you options to mess with people, such as parading around near-naked or standing on tables in Breath of the Wild or specifically taking out your lantern in Barnes’ bomb shop in Twilight Princess) but he is driven by a hard line of ethics. Furthermore, IIRC only a handful of games will allow you to steal and then, at specific opportunities. In Skyward Sword, an entire sidequest is started because, upon breaking someone’s chandelier, the plot-furthering thing to do is to go talk to the owner directly, suggesting a Link who isn’t morally opposed to cutting and running when someone’s justifiably mad at him, but who is more likely to (the reward and emphasis is heavier on) own up and apologize.

Out-of-universe, we can’t do these things because they’re not programmed into the game. In-universe, though, there’s actually nothing stopping them, making it a deliberate action on their part. This also will involve things like how the story progresses- to use Twilight Princess again as an example, while Link needs Rutela’s blessing to get the third fused shadow, and thus pragmatically needs to save her son, he also refuses to talk to Ilia about her memory or try to get her to come with him back to Ordon before saving Ralis. This suggests that his motivation is in part personal compassion. 

Later events in the story also would suggest Link has a lingering grudge towards both the doctor and the knights that refused to help in the situation- advancing the plot requires you to threaten the doctor with his tab and then search his house behind his back and if you’re in wolf form in Castle Town- only available after getting Ralis to Kakariko- Link isn’t afraid to snap at the knights, though he doesn’t bite or kill them. He’s more willing to get rude with someone who offends his personal sense of ethics.

Furthermore, there’s a matter of how obstacles are presented to you, and what you’re encouraged to do in response. Zelda is a series that focuses on personal adventure, a great deal of travelling long-distance, puzzle-solving and dungeon-crawling. You’re rewarded for being inquisitive, clever, helping others, and poking around. While the sidequests aren’t mandatory, you will only get Link at his absolute best and brightest when he’s been roaming the wilderness and doing favors for people. And you also virtually never have a consistent home base to return to- most games make it clear you’re basically leaving home and staying away for a good period of time when you revisit. So an interpretation on Link that reads him as someone who lingers at home heavily and doesn’t want to leave, ever, is unsupported by canon.

This can even be sneakier than something tacitly unavailable to the player- consider an NPC or party member talking at great length in a somewhat uninteresting manner. Does the dialogue go all the way with perfect legibility? Does it scroll onward into the background, or get interrupted? Any of those options tell us something about the character and their relationship to the speech. Are they listening? Are they zoning out? Are they expressing active contempt or implicitly cutting off the speaker with a gesture or expression?

2. Superfluous Actions

This is technically under the umbrella of game parameters, but I wanted to give this some special attention. Unfailingly, there are things a player character will do either without the player’s input, or that the player can direct them to do with no obvious merit to them.

Abzu, as a game, has a large number of basically superfluous controls. The “interact” button, while useful, also lets out a chirp, and not only does this have a neat visual effect in other areas, if you have a drone accompanying you (as you do several times throughout the game) making the Diver chirp with nothing to interact with prompts the drone to chirp right back, even varying how many times they chirp in a way that seems to respond to how many you gave them, albeit not on a one-to-one ratio. Which is absolutely adorable.

Another button lets you do flips; a third allows you to ‘boost’, which can be used to jump out of the water. You can ride on the back of larger sea creatures. Pretty much none of these are actually required for the advancement of the game. You don’t have to sing to the drones, you certainly don’t have to repair all of them you find. Riding a creature is never necessary but in the steam version of the game you get multiple achievements for doing so. You can sit and meditate and watch the fish as long as you want.

All of this creates a very playful, compassionate, and inquisitive personality for your player character, the Diver. What’s more, encountering a dying shark at one point in the game, Diver, unprompted, will come over to rest their hand on the creature until it passes, and then bow their head and move on.

In Hollow Knight, at several points you’re able to sit beside someone; one of which is the last time, in-game, you’ll be able to see a character who is implied to either die, or simply abandon his weapon and wander off alone afterwards. Like the Abzu example, you’re given an achievement for sharing this moment with him. There’s no tangible in-game reward. And yet the game gives you the option to do so, when that option is not normally present. It tells us, whether we as players take or leave that option, Ghost- the character- considers this moment and this person special enough to at least consider something they don’t normally do.

Some superfluous actions can be very subtle. Things like a camera moving on its own, implying the character’s attention is pulled to something the player didn’t actively choose to look at. In several games in the Zelda series, Link will turn his eyes and head towards certain things of notice, which can tell us, if we’re stumped on a puzzle or how to proceed, that Link may have quietly figured it out faster than we did.

3. Flavor text

Unless the text is actively being provided by another party in-game, it’s fair to assume any way something is described reflects how a character feels about it. For example, in Hollow Knight, the in-game bestiary has comments added by several other parties, but it also has succinct explanations at the top of what the creature is. These comments seem to lack much personality compared to the deeper elements in the journal, but on one particular entry, the Sibling, the Hunter’s comments on the bottom make it clear he has never actually seen this creature before- while the top entry not only describes it, but conveys rather intimate knowledge about its origin.

This stands out, because the player character, Ghost, is familiar with the Siblings- they are basically the lingering spirits of dead vessels in the location Ghost was raised and abandoned. Since, again, the Hunter implies he’s never been to the bottom of the Abyss, it’s likely Ghost is even the one who specifically labeled that particular entry the “Sibling”.

In Breath Of The Wild, food is a major game mechanic as the primary healing and stat-buffing item, but, we are also given lavish and detailed descriptions of the flavor profile of each. There’s basically no two ways about the obvious evidence that this particular incarnation of Link, at least, is a very dedicated and educated foodie- though, apparently, not someone with such a sophisticated palate that he won’t scarf down something “so gross you can’t even look at it” or made with inedible ingredients.

This can even tie into the game parameters thing- given the simplicity of the cooking system in the game, it’s clear that Link’s experienced hands are guiding the player- we might pick a handful of ingredients and toss them into a pot, for example, but, for Link, it’s clear that he’s going through a lot of trouble to cut, pare, fricassee, saute, garnish, and plate his dishes appealingly, even with limited equipment. You can interpret that a lot of ways- are we assuming Link is the type who lovingly handcrafts tools from the materials he finds to take his cooking to the next level and carries a cooking kit with him regularly, or is he more the type who waited until he made it to a town to get distracted by a pretty knife set? 

While I just finished talking up the game parameters as a form of characterization, you do have to make some accommodations for what makes a fun and streamlined game experience. The creators of Breath of the Wild didn’t feel the need to complicate the cooking system with other tools besides a big metal pot- but in-universe, we can enrich our read on the character because Link is clearly not just stewing, but cooking a bunch of different ways that would call for specialty tools, so, how and where is he getting them? That’s more of an interesting subject for personal interpretation, but, that’s one of my favorite parts of this- what canon gives us virtually never creates a complete picture, but it will virtually always point us in an entertaining and interesting direction. Perceiving Breath of the Wild’s Link as a blank slate, I might not think about his relationship with cooking tools, but looking at canon and that very few of the created meals look like campfire food- many of the dishes are on plates. Which raises the obvious implication Link is going out of his way to acquire dishware, carry it around with him, and clean and reuse it. (Even if, in a more realistic setting without a vast, inter-spatial inventory, that dishware would probably look more like travel carry containers, like cheesecloth packages tied with twine, jugs and flasks for elixirs, beverages and soups, wooden and metal boxes)

And that can be super useful for a fanfiction, roleplay, or other writing scenario- it implies something about Link’s daily routine. I could write a scenario with him carefully whittling a skewer, or scrubbing dishes in a bubbling stream. And that he’s so interested and motivated by food, he probably does carry soap or something else to keep his hands and plates clean, given Hyrule’s level of technology he probably knows what germs are, and someone so proud of their cooking wouldn’t sicken themselves or potential dinner guests by using unclean containers. It becomes a springing ground for a lot of other headcanons.

4. Tone of the game

Every game has certain attitudes and worldviews that emanate through the setting, as well as a sort of overarching atmosphere that presides over the story. While it can be funny to imagine the protagonist of a moody, atmospheric piece as jarringly contrasting it, unless given evidence to point to that, it’s not going to be canon-supported.

Chell, from Portal, is resistant to many of these forms of characterization. She provides no flavor text, she doesn’t have a lot of superfluous actions besides tacitly refusing to catch Wheatley in early Portal 2, and while we do have the benefit of a bonus comic, Lab Rat, that gives some insight into her behavior, as well as the questionably accurate portraits that suggest how Rattman, at least, sees her, there’s not a lot.

However, it’s pretty much fair to assume that she’s a smart aleck- not just because the game gives you plenty of opportunities to, and in some situations, runs on the premise that you will try to spite and disobey the various people controlling Chell’s situation at the time*- but because the entire tone of both games is primarily snarky. Everyone you run into is some flavor of wise guy. Everybody’s a little/lot sarcastic, everybody’s a little/lot eccentric.

The one way that Chell obviously breaks from the mold is she’s not highly talkative- and this is impossible to miss because her refusal to talk is called out canonically all the time.

So we can guess that Chell being a wise guy- reinforced by her other actions- is per setting standard, and she’s probably a little weird, because everybody here is, we can tell that she doesn’t love to hear herself talk or is especially prone to monologuing like many of the other characters in her setting, because this contrast is actively called out, and makes her noteworthy and interesting as the protagonist.

Comparatively, Ghost from Hollow Knight is characterized as a very willful and brash creature through their environment- many of the areas in the game are pointed to as appealing to those that seek glory and aren’t afraid to put their life on the line to get it. While challenging the Mantis Lords is essential to proceed into Deepnest, that is not made apparent anywhere besides the Lords’ throne room themselves; while talking to Quirrel outside the village gates has him muse that Ghost probably intends to challenge the Lords.

* while you do get achievements- something I pointed to earlier in the Abzu example as an inclination something is more in line with their personality- for listening to GLaDOS and Wheatley to a fault, those actions end in Chell’s immediate death- since in-universe she is mortal and has no means of respawning, it’s fair to assume those are dead ends and thus, not actions she takes, just something the writers threw in because they thought it would be funny. 

Basically a good rule of thumb for all of this is evaluate how its framed and the context- there is no one gospel of characterization here and especially in more meta frameworks like Undertale, characterizing Frisk requires building a comprehensive read on how to separate Frisk as their own person from you, the Player, and your will- since you have an acknowledged in-universe presence and the ability to override Frisk’s inclinations.

[753398445a]

A Liveblog of Harley Quinn 2x2 Riddler U

Full disclosure: I read the synopsis for this episode at one point and still remember that it involves Riddler doing something vague but bad to people in a school. Also, YouTube decided to recommend me a video titled ‘Harley Quinn 2x2 Reaction! Batgirl Vs. Riddler!!’ so I suspect Batgirl may be in this one. I know that when I look for liveblogs I want both the person’s reactions to the events and thoughtful analysis of the material, and I'm sorry that I won’t be able to fully provide the former.

So predictions: I think Riddler will die by the end of the episode. Also the trailers showed what appeared to be Harley and Ivy incognito with Batgirl, so that’s probably going to be them infiltrating the place. Not sure why Clayface wouldn’t be tapped for that kind of role, maybe something happens in this episode that puts him out of commission? Speaking of commission, I think Commissioner Gordon is going to be involved, on account of his niece or daughter (I don’t know which she is in this continuity) having a role. And of course Batgirl is going to fight The Riddler, with said fight apparently being worthy of two exclamation points. Random shots in the dark: I think Bruce will wake up but be an amnesiac, and I feel like Sy’s been in a lot of episodes lately so they’ll probably not have him in this one. [Four outta seven ain’t bad.]

Something I appreciate is that while the writers are having Harley be pro-anarchy they’ve also been pointing out how much losing civilization would suck, like with that line from Ivy last episode about difficulty acquiring sushi and now with Harley’s frustration over needing electricity. I wonder if by the end of the season she’ll have changed her stance on this sort of thing.

So they don’t know Joker is alive, which is something pretty obvious but the implications thereof only just now clicked for me.

...that pretty clearly means that he did use the rendered fat of dead zebras. Which raises the question of how/why he knew how to make candles out of dead animals - I feel like that’s a pretty niche skill. Also, how many zebras were there, if he killed multiple (or at least, had access to the corpses of multiple) and there’s still one in the background? I don’t really visit zoos but I would think zebras aren’t something they’d have a lot of.

Oh, so he’s the Dean of Riddle U. What a fun coincidence! You know, Jim Rash is a really talented guy and I’m happy he was chosen for this role. I preferred his role as a supervillain in Sky High to his role as a supervillain here, but that’s more because I love that movie so much than any sort of flaw with his performance as Nigma.

So beyond looking forward to Jazzfest, Ivy also likes a band that Bing describes as ‘an American folk rock music duo‘. I guess she has varied taste. Or possibly just wants to display the poster despite not liking the band, which would fit with the aspect of her character previously established in episode seven - she cares a lot more about what people think of her than she lets on.

Speaking of Ivy’s subplot from the Queen of Fables episode, its Kite-man (Hell Yeah!). I agree with Ivy, that joke was cute. Heads up: The remainder of this paragraph incorporates information I’ve heard about regarding future episodes. Honestly I was halfway expecting to hear that they’d broken up offscreen to make way for Harlivy, hopefully the fact that they haven’t means the writers will pull from the comics and make that an open relationship. It’d suck to either kill him off or break them up and then just immediately have her get into another relationship.

That’s Barbara, right? I feel like its gotta be, but it could be a fake-out. Harley, you can’t complain about Clayface’s unnecessarily complicated characters last episode and then make up such weird names in this one. Damn it, I actually expected there to be some sort of payoff for that Clayface bit but couldn’t figure out how to phrase it. I was expecting it to be more of an eleventh-hour type deal, but still! Also, I should’ve asked this earlier but how exactly is Harley planning to co-opt the water and electricity?

Surprised to see that Dr. Psycho is still chafing about his role on the team, it seemed like he’d accepted it. I don’t think that the writers are building up to anything with that, for the record - he’s just the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist who has to be miserable with his lot in life for our entertainment.

I noticed the sound of sirens during that establishing shot earlier and didn’t mention that it didn’t make sense (because the cops are gone) out of a desire to be less nitpicky. Apparently that actually wasn’t a mistake on the part of the creators, but rather foreshadowing. Neat!

Harley and Ivy dancing to the music is a fun touch. I like when shows incorporate little details like that that don’t actually matter. Also, Jim is here. Called it! He’s doing about as well as could be expected, to be honest.

Can’t Dr. Psycho make forcefields? This is cool and all but I feel like it isn't necessary. Also, I’m wondering if this excursion will culminate in that shot in the trailers of him emerging from the portal atop what I’ve been told is a parademon.

How could the party be a fundraiser for Jiminy if Barbara already had time to score wristbands for it. Unless the bands just work for any party? Or maybe that jump between the scenes of her being chased by Harley and Harley and Ivy invading her dorm was a lot longer than it seemed.

Loving this subplot with "Stephanie”. I’m honestly curious about how things go between her(?) and Chad.

Clayface is still vulnerable to electricity? Pokemon logic taught me he would be immune. Eyyy, that’s the Inquisotortor guy! Also, Poison Ivy doesn’t resist electric attacks? Its like these guy’s haven’t bothered to learn the type effectiveness chart at all!

God, Harley’s a dick. I find it entertaining, but a major part of her growth last season was in not taking her team for granted, so her doing so again is disappointing.

Clayface, no. Chad set you up, don’t fall for his silver tongue again!

Still no Frank. Wasn’t his last appearace him mentioning that he was getting more sun exposure than what was ideal? If he doesn’t show up soon I’m gonna assume that it was a fatal amount.

[rptv-starwars]

'The Empire Strikes Back' at 40: What the 'Star Wars' sequel's iconic special effects owe to Ray Harryhausen

By Ethan Altered-States (Ethan Alter)

Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo Movies  •  May 27, 2020

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/the-empire-strikes-back-star-wars-special-effects-ray-harryhausen-212159259.html

[article was edited for brevity, clarity, and to omit dumb commentary by the original author]

Dennis Muren poses with an AT-AT walker behind the scenes of The Empire Strikes Back. (Photo: Lucasfilm)

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Both Ray Harryhausen [special effects creator prominent in the 1960s for stop-motion animation] and The Empire Strikes Back (ESB) are celebrating milestone anniversaries this year. 2020 marks the 100th birthday of Harryhausen, the special-effects pioneer behind vintage Hollywood spectacles like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, as well as the 40th anniversary of the second movie in the Star Wars original trilogy.

But they have more in common than the calendar year: The AT-ATs and Tauntauns that walk through ESB are inspired by Harryhausen’s menagerie of stop-motion creatures, from cyclopses to krakens. “They had character, they had performance and they had purpose,” says Dennis Muren, who parlayed a childhood spent watching Harryhausen’s films into a groundbreaking career as a Star Wars F/X legend. “They were wondrous to look at, and the designs of the shots were dynamic. Ray’s work grabbed you emotionally, because it began with him. I’m the same way: being emotionally connected to the performance and design of a character who, simply put, looks really neat.”

Currently the Senior Visual Effects Supervisor and Creative Director at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Muren first joined George Lucas’s pioneering visual effects studio in 1976, when it was still making and photographing spaceships in a Van Nuys warehouse. After the success of Star Wars (A New Hope), Muren followed ILM to the Bay Area as Lucas planned for a sequel. “It was the hardest film by far,” Muren says of how ESB came together behind the camera. “Everything just got bigger. The spirit of the film was still fun and adventure, but it had more romance, it had more action, the Empire was bigger and the universe was bigger than we thought on the first movie.”

Muren’s role also expanded with ESB as he took point on directing the fleet of miniatures in the film’s iconic opening on the ice planet, Hoth. With the advent of digital technology still many years away, Muren and his team brought the Rebel’s herd of tauntauns and the Empire’s squad of AT-AT walkers to life by hand. And through it all, he followed the example established by Harryhausen.

“I always think of the Cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, who comes out of his cave roaring and angry, and his hands are up because he’s ready to grab one of the sailors,” explains Muren, who later won his first Oscar for his work on the film. (He currently has nine statues, the most of any living person.) “That’s what I always strive to put in my work: that there’s a reason for that creature to be there. You’re not just giving the audience an effect: You want them to feel something from it, whether that’s ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing,’ or ‘Oh, that’s really creepy,’ or ‘Wait, that’s impossible!’”

In honor of ESB's 40th anniversary, Muren walked us through the seemingly-impossible task of making the Hoth sequence, and his own close encounter with his F/X hero.

Yahoo "Entertainment": You said that The Empire Strikes Back was the hardest Star Wars film to make. What was the reason for the degree of difficulty?

Dennis Muren: Well, The Phantom Menace may have been equally difficult, because there was a lot of real groundbreaking work on that in terms of getting all the digital stuff to work. But we had two supervisors on that. For Empire, we had just moved up from Los Angeles, and only brought about 12 people up from the 50 in L.A. and had to hire locally just to get the thing done. All of us working on it wanted to top ourselves, and George had already done that with the designs. The number of lands and battles you saw in Empire was at least five times more than you saw in Star Wars. You had an ice planet and a city in the clouds — how are you going to get that to look right?

Doing any kind of compositing over a light-color background is very, very hard. And the whole movie was full of that in addition to your normal space battles. The vision was so big, and we had a couple of years to do it, but it took us so much time to get the fire to do it and the people to do it. We all wanted what George wanted, which was also what the audience wanted: to show you that this universe is so much bigger than what we saw in Star Wars.

Yahoo "Entertainment": What was the most challenging part of the Hoth sequence specifically?

Dennis Muren: The opening tauntaun shot was one of the most difficult things, and the most interesting. The story behind that was that George had brought back this helicopter shot from Norway [where the Hoth exteriors were filmed], and it was about 200 or 300-feet off the ground with the cameras looking straight down. He didn’t know whether if that shot was going to be necessary to the movie, but at the very end, he said, “Yes, it’s necessary to have this shot. Do you think there’s a way you can add a Tauntaun to this?”

There wasn’t! There were no tracking markers on the ground that would have helped us make the stop motion camera map exactly with the moves the helicopter made, and then we could have combined that with an optical printer. But none of that stuff was there. I thought about building a big model, but I didn’t think it would work with the background. George said, “Well, just think about it.” I spent 15 minutes thinking about it, and figured it out in 15 minutes! I learned an amazing lesson from that: There’s usually an answer, there’s always some way that you can fiddle around with what you know to attempt. If I had stopped thinking at 14 minutes and 59 seconds, we wouldn’t have had that shot in the movie.

Yahoo "Entertainment": The tauntauns definitely feel very Harryhausen in their design and behavior. Did their form match what you could accomplish then with stop-motion or did the stop-motion dictate their form?

Dennis Muren: George had the idea for a galloping horse kind of thing, and I think Ralph [McQuarrie] and Joe [Johnston] worked on the design. I was involved in how we were going to create a setting that looked like it was going to be real, and wouldn’t be encumbered by any of the cameras. I don't know how many shots we had of it — maybe 12 or 15 or something like that, and they were some of the last ones we did. There were a couple that George added right at the very end of that. It was like, “We can finally take a breather after two years, but no, there’s one more shot!”

Dennis Muren (behind the camera) filming Suzanne Pasteur (a friend of Lorne Peterson's) on her horse for tauntaun movement reference. (Photo: Lucasfilm)

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Yahoo "Entertainment": I remember connecting to them very strongly as a kid — I always through they’d be fun to ride.

Dennis Muren: That comes from the design and purpose of it. It doesn’t act like an evil creature: It’s a fairly big, bulky thing and it actually looks kind of cute with a horn and steam coming out of its nose. It’s not a creature that could kidnap you or anything — it’s just a beast of burden. That’s true of all the Star Wars movies: The behavior is familiar, so the audience can relate. Even with the designs of the spaceships; I tried to show how they would bank off to fly to another planet or something, like an airplane would do in the air even though there’s not gravity in space and that would never happen. It looks really neat and you can relate to it.

Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on a tauntaun on the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. (Photo: Lucasfilm)

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Yahoo "Entertainment": In terms of the AT-AT walkers, that’s a case where you’re bringing character to a non-living thing. There’s behind-the-scenes footage of the ILM team studying elephants for movement reference.

Dennis Muren: When we saw the designs, we thought they were kind of like big animals. We went to an animal park in Dunn, California, and put a bunch of chalk marks on the elephant and had it walk by left to right and right to left with the camera on. That gave us the weight; those things would have weighed thousands of tons, and we had to make it look like they had gravity or else they were just going to look silly — not as powerful and as evil as they're supposed to look. We also shot the elephants in slow motion to make them look even bigger, and observed traits like how far up the knee goes up and how far forward the body travels. Does the foot just lift up? Does it drop back down again? All that stuff was used as a basis so that when we went to animate, we had a body part to do that.

We also had some really good equipment to look at the frames as we were shooting them and make sure the animation was working well. Like now, there's all sorts of stop-motion photographers, and ours wasn’t done like Ray would have done it where you couldn’t tell if you made a mistake and could go back and say, “Did I move this too far?” We were able to compare and say, “Oh yeah, we did move it too far,” and then change it to move to a better place. So it's probably more of a fluid motion than you might have seen before and that was important. Any sort of chatter in the stop-motion looks like the mechanics of the walkers. They're all mechanical anyway, so there's got to be little bumps and grinds in the motors. So that adds to the feeling, you know?

Yahoo "Entertainment": Besides Hoth, what was your favorite sequence to work on?

Dennis Muren: I don’t know — they’re all so different! [Laughs] I really like the asteroid sequence; that might top Hoth a little bit. It was also really difficult, but a lot of fun to do. George wasn’t interested in the beats of the action, but the attitude. It had to have a certain clarity to see what was going on, which was difficult because the asteroids were coming in from any direction. I did a mock-up of that sequence and realized that everything had to be based on the Millennium Falcon blasting through the asteroids. We came up with the idea of having all the asteroids going in one direction, from one side of the screen to the other, and then you could show how the Falcon makes evasive maneuvers.

Yahoo "Entertainment": Did you get a chance to meet Ray Harryhausen before his death in 2013?

Dennis Muren: Oh, yes. I was probably about 14 at the time, and he used to be in the phone book as was almost everybody else in those days in L.A. I called him up, and he was living up in Malibu, so my mom drove me two hours up to his house, and I met him and his wife. They were just the nicest couple in the world. They invited me in for an hour or two, and we kept in touch. As I got older, I went back to his garage and showed him my home movies, and he showed me some of his early home movies. He was a kindred soul. He later moved to England, so I didn’t see him very often after that.

Special effects legend Ray Harryhausen working on a model for a Clash of the Titans character. (Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection)

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Yahoo "Entertainment": Did he ever visit you while you were making Star Wars or Empire?

Dennis Muren: No, but I did see him while I was working on Dragonslayer. We were at the same studio in England, and he was making Clash of the Titans. I think I brought him by to show him the dragon, and the rear-projection work. We were working on the next step beyond stop-motion, which was the combination of animation with a motion-controlled motorized camera. He didn’t entirely relate to that, and I can understand why: It could take five days if you’re lucky to get a full shot. At the end of the day, [his method] didn’t have quite the realism that ours ended up having, but he also had the energy to just get in there and grab the figure with his hand and spend the next eight hour animating it.

After Empire and things like the Tauntaun sequence especially, I realized that we needed to get away from stop motion and try and look for something else. I would say that we didn't get the tauntaun to move quite as much as we wanted to, and there were some shots that we didn’t quite finish. But George was utterly accommodating about everything, and there was a feeling of real accomplishment when it was all over. Empire just opened everything up: You can see there’s a lot more stories you can tell, and they’re still going on.