#me. naively: this sequence will only take four parts at most! easy

[rottmnt-residuum]

Part 6 of Arc II (Part 32)

the elevator music is kokomo btw sksksk

⇇ | ⇽ | index | ⇾ (censored) | ⇾ (gore)

[shinidamachu]

Do you have thoughts on the Aang/Ozai showdown at the end?

Zuko: please. The real hero is a random rock the Avatar.

The final battle was amazing, from an animation poin of view. The colors, the fighting sequence, the symbolism, Aang finally mastering all elements. Just very exciting and satisfying to watch, because it was something that the audience was hoping for since episode one. And they delivered it.

From a writing point of view, though? It was less of a showdown and more of a cop-out. See, I'm not saying, by any means, that Aang should have killed Ozai. Quite the opposite. Not only because it was a children's show. Not only because Aang was a traumatized, non violent, 12 years old. But also because it made sense for the character and for the core themes of the show.

Don't get me wrong, Ozai one hundred per cent deserved to die. Aang himself stated that the world would be a better place without Ozai in it. I just don't think he should be the one to do it. At the same time, is on his hands that Ozai's fate lays and no one else can make that decision for him.

So if killing Ozai off could turn him into a Fire Nation martyr anyway and Aang refuses to do so because of his pacifist principles, what's the other option to defeat the guy and end the war? The authors went with energy bending and, honestly, I thought it was brilliant for a series of reasons.

First, ending Ozai's life seems like the obvious choice, an easy way out. I love the concept of Aang refusing to do what's expected of him and choosing instead to finish the war on his own terms, without compromising who he is, because in theory, that would mean he would have to go out of his way to find a different solution, in a perfect shout out to Bumi's words in The King Of Omashu: "you must master the four elements and confront the Fire Lord. And when you do, I hope you will think like a mad genius."

Second, in a show where bending is intimately related to one's very being, the questions begs to be raised: how much taking someone's bending away is better, more ethical or less cruel than actively killing them? Because it's a fundamental part of who they are, of their soul. Ty Lee had the abiliity to block chis, temporarily making people unable to bend. And it was a terrifying thing for the people she used the technique on.

Lastly, it ends the "killing Ozai would turn him into a Fire Nation martyr" for good, because (ATLA COMICS SPOILER ALERT) Aang let him leave without his bending and a significant amount of people still worshipped the guy to the point of planning coups on the down low and sending Zuko death threats left and right, so we basically got the same result, but Ozai remained an ever present threat to the peace Aang fought to achieve.

The problem, as people smarter and more eloquent than I have pointed out countless times, wasn't the energy bending solution, it was the way it was introduced and then executed.

Aang: hey! Look at these weird Lion Turtle things.

Looking back now, this scene from The Library was obviously foreshadowing the finale, so the Lion Turtle reveal wasn't pulled out of thin air. It had a purpose. Considering that this episode, from Book Two, mentioned the Lion Turtle, who would later teach Aang how to energy bend and that The Guru, also from Book Two, introduced the arc of Aang having to let go of his attachment to Katara in order to master the Avatar State, I can only assume that the original intentions of the writers were very clear:

Aang doesn't want to kill Ozai but he also doesn't want to let go of Katara. That's the catch! To "energy bend" his way out of murder, he has to master the Avatar State. His conflict here, is much greater than before because now Katara is a factor in the equation as well. He either kills Ozai, keeps his attachment and gives up the Avatar State or he masters it, defeats Ozai by removing his bending but has to let go of Katara in the process. It's awesome because it's the hardest possible choice a character like Aang could be forced to make. And we knew he would ultimately do the right thing, but regardless of what he decides, he still loses something important to him, he still has to make a huge sacrifice.

Of course, none of that happens. This was the first and only time the Lion Turtle was brought up. The “letting Katara go” arc was unceremoniously killed alongside Aang the second Azula shot that lightning in Ba Sing Se, but differently from the Avatar, whom Katara ressurrected, it was never brought back. And it’s a shame. Because The Library was the perfect episode to expand on the Lion Turtle and energy bending mystery. 

And the finale? It was the perfect episode for Aang to do what he failed to do in Ba Sing Se: to let Katara go and achieve the Avatar State by his own merits, sacrificing something he wanted for the greater good. The way he hid into a cocoon of rocks? It would have been a great call out to the little crystal tent he made in his fight with Azula when he decided to give the Guru’s advices a try. And it would also symbolize rebirth in the same way Katara breaking him out of the iceberg did. Because now he had finally reached the other side of the river and he is no longer the same person he once was.

But the narrative decided, instead, to rob Aang from any growth, from any substancial change, from any interesting arc. They went with the “love is the most important thing” approach to justify him honlding on to Katara. And I could have bought it if they hadn’t been so dishonest about it.

First: if you love someone, you let them go. Attachment and love are two very different things. No one ever told Aang to stop loving Katara. He was told to let her go. And it makes sense because he was attached to her in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of them, and was keeping him from achieving his full spiritual potential, something he should care a little more about, given his upbring.

Second, in the person of Iroh, arguably the wisest character in the show, Aang is told that he is right for choosing love over power. But this is a false equivalence because it’s not what Aang is doing. The scene makes it look like he is seeking power for the sake of power. That’s not the case. The Avatar State is an inherent power, meaning Aang already has it. It’s part of who he is. He just needs to unblock it and learn how to control it. And he has to do that not for personal gain, but to put an end in the war.

A war that took almost everything from Katara, the person he loves. Aside from Aang himself, she is the person who would benefit the most from him learning to control the Avatar State, since she is the one who has to calm him down every time he accidentaly triggers it and winning the war is a very personal goal of her. Now, this is just conjecture but I firmly believe that even if Katara was secretly in love with Aang (which I don’t buy), she would be the first to tell his it’s okay to let her go. But alas, she wasn’t even aware of this conflict. A conflict she played a key part in.

That being said, I do think that the Ozai dillema was introduced too late. It should have been explored before the Day of Black Sun, giving Aang plenty of time to search for a different solution. It also never made sense to me why killing Ozai wasn’t a problem then. Apparently the explanation that I was supposed to stick with is that Aang was naive. He didn’t know people expected him to kill the Fire Lord until Zuko asked him what he would do when he faced Ozai, since violence wasn’t the answer. But I honestly struggle to accept this because, yes, Aang was naive. 

But not that naive. Not at that point. After episodes like The Siege of the North and The Avatar State, I just don’t buy he didn’t know what people wanted him to do. Plus, Aang has an evasive fighting style, based on always being one step ahead of his opponent. To do that, he has to plan beforehand. What was his plan to confront Ozai in the Day of Black Sun, after everything he went through? Talk to him? Arrest the guy? If that’s the case, shouldn’t it at least be discussed with the gang? It’s never addressed.

Then comes the finale. Aang’s moment of truth. The event we’ve all been hoping for. The one that will turn him into a legend. And Aang is losing. He can’t win without killing Ozai or controling the Avatar State to take his bending away. What will he sacrifice to become a hero? His morals or his attachment? Answer: neither! Because the writers decided he should have everything without give up nothing. So they miraculously make a convenently sharped rock hit the exact right spot in the perfect time unblock his chakra, allowing him to enter the Avatar State.

I’m not even gonna talk about how this is most definitely not how chakras work, because it’s not really my place. But I am gonna talk about the tragic (not to say hilarious) fact that, by trying to make Aang have his cake and eat it too, the writers ultimately made a fucking rock the responsible for Aang’s success. Not his cleverness, not his hard work, not his altruism: a rock. If that rock wasn’t there, in the right place, at the right time, then what? Would Aang finally have done what he had to do, or would he be killed, allowing the war to continue?

That’s my issue with it. That, and the fact that they had no trouble addressing delicate topics, but didn’t have enough courage to let the 12 years old protagonist end up alone. Because, of course, children can’t understand the hero not getting the girl. Right?

RIGHT?

Aang managed to defeat Ozai and get the girl even though there was a whole season dedicated to build up an arc in which he would have to let her go to succed. Even though their last one on one interaction before their last kiss was Aang screaming at her and storming off, while Katara reprimended him for walking away from the issue. Even if he had been acting more and more possessive and entitled when it came to her affection. Even if Katara had shown no real interest in him that way before she suddenly does. But what do I know? Maybe she was hit by a magic rock too.

Aang and Katara happened at the cost of Aang’s character development. Fandom might think the rival ship was harmed the most by it, but that’s not true. Aang was. And it’s really sad. He is an amazing character and he deserved to be the hero of his own story, to have his beliefs tested and to come out of his journey irrevocably changed, not locked inside a plot armor.

[themyskira]

So....have you read the latest Avengers #20, about the current version of She Hulk? How do you feel about that?

I’ve made a point of avoiding Jason Aaron’s Avengers because I truly can’t stand what he’s done to Jen. He took a character who, for all her more recent traumas, for all she can struggle to balance her legal career with her the pitfalls of being a publicly known superhero, loves who she is and embraces being green wholeheartedly -- he took Shulkie and turned her into Lady Bruce Banner, retiring lawyer whose inner ragemonster is just waiting to break loose. It’s some deep-seated bullshit and I’ve been trying my best to simply wait for it all to pass over.

But it was hard to ignore Avengers #20, because this was the issue where Jason Aaron went right off the fucking rails. I mean, he really went full Aaron Sorkin on his readers, and that isn’t a compliment.

Classic She-Hulk: Charming. Witty. Sensational. The Jolly Jade Giantess. The sassiest super-lawyer in all of Brooklyn. More laughs than a barrel of Deadpools. Fun. For years, that’s how the world described my client.  Until the accused came here and flushed all that global adoration down the gamma-irradiated toilet.Jason Aaron She-Hulk: Rrrgh. Objection. Some still like--Judge Jen: Overruled!Classic She-Hulk: The accused would like you to believe she’s not at fault for what happened to my client. That these changes in her personality are the unfortunate side-effect of her new powers, which were awakened inside her by some meddling space giants... and that since that happened she's been doing her best to regain control of herself. To do right by my client and give the world back the gorgeous, green, fun-loving bombshell they know and love. But that’s a complete lie, isn’t it? ... Ladies of the jury, I ask you... is this the face we want to present to the world? After everything we’ve worked to accomplish over the years, is this the sort of muscle-bound downer of a Hulk we want to be?

This sequence takes place in the context of a mental simulation being used by Jen in an effort to build her control over her powers, but in truth it’s just three long and excruciating pages of Aaron taking petty swipes at fans who are unhappy with his portrayal of She-Hulk. Through this exchange, he deliberately frames criticisms of his She-Hulk as shallow, over-the-top and sexist, suggesting that those of us who dislike his barely-recognisable ‘roidmonster Jen simply don’t understand good writing and that we just want a fun sexy green bombshell to wank over.

(Also implicit in this, and indeed throughout the comic, is the view that classic She-Hulk is less meaningful as a character because her comics are frequently humour-oriented. ‘Funny’ is situated in contrast to ‘deep’, ignoring the fact that Jen’s best writers have found room for both, and that Aaron’s She-Hulk fails to be either.)

And that sets the tone for the whole issue. From that point on, the entire comic is just Aaron transparently editorialising that no, you guys just don’t get it, my She-Hulk is better and deeper and more feminist than your She-Hulk.

“I was an omega-level threat in the charm department. I was the Hulk you’d want to have a glass of pinot with. And the craziest part was, my powers, for the most part... made me happy. An incredibly rare occurrence in my line of work. I actually enjoyed being a hero. I loved being the fun Hulk. I loved it a whole helluva lot. So how come I don’t miss it?

“There’s a war on. And the trolls have taken Australia. I’m part of the team that’s taking it back. These trolls come from a faraway realm, but I know their kind. They would’ve laughed at the old me. Made crass jokes even as I was taking them down. This time, nobody’s laughing. And I love it with my all big, green, glowing heart.”

The frustrating thing is, he’s right on the cusp of something genuinely interesting here.

Men who speak angrily and aggressively are apt to be seen as tough, forceful and strong-willed; women who do the same are more often viewed as shrill, nagging, hysterical, bitchy. Many women consciously or unconsciously learn to mask their anger, make ourselves smaller and less threatening. Asserting yourself can be the difference between being seen as the ‘fun girl’ and the humourless bitch.

And the sexual harassment he references -- the sexist jokes, the propositioning, the devaluing of women’s capabilities -- not only are these things that many women, from the most disadvantaged to the most powerful, face to different degrees, they’re relevant on a meta level to the portrayal of women in comics.

All of these themes would be ripe for exploration in the context of classic She-Hulk. Jen is a fun-loving character whose life isn’t governed by rage and the need to control it the way other Hulks are, but that doesn’t mean she can always afford to lose her temper -- as both a woman working in a profession rife with sexism and ‘old boys club’ attitudes, and as a female superhero in the public eye, “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” takes on a whole different meaning.

Conversely, we might also think about Jen’s privilege in this regard -- that by virtue of her public profile and influence and general ability to grind men into a pulp without breaking a sweat, she doesn’t face the same level of discrimination as other women. That other women (particularly women of colour and LGBTQI women) don’t have the same freedom to express their anger as she does, not without consequences. And that -- as both the superhero She-Hulk and as the high-profile lawyer Jennifer Walters -- she is in a position to help other women to be heard and ensure that their anger is answered with change.

As for historical sexism in comics, there’s no better antidote to the male gaze than hiring more women and nonbinary people.

None of that seems to interest Jason Aaron. Rather, in defence of his roided-out Girl Bruce, he seems to be saying... what? ‘I have fixed sexism by making Jen so buff that men are too scared to undervalue or sexually harass her’?

(Which, by the way, they still do anyway.)

Next, we get this exchange:

Deadpool: Why’d you stop being funny? I mean, you were really good at it. You were like... me before me.She-Hulk: Rrgh. Rather be free.Deadpool: How’s that?She-Hulk: Free to be ugly.Deadpool: Um, wait, can’t you be both?

So, the implication is that before now, Jen wasn’t “free” to be her whole self -- that she had to be the fun, funny girl to avoid being seen as too angry and threatening.

And aside from the fact that, as I said, I think there are many more nuanced ways to explore this without negating Jen’s characterisation -- this is just lazy goddamn writing. It’s not an idea Aaron has explored up till now, nor is it reflective of the ways in which Jen has been portrayed in the past. It’s just a messy retcon jammed into the story to justify the ‘superiority’ of Aaron’s version of the character. Once again, the writer is speaking through the characters.

We also see Aaron once again implying that being “ugly” -- by which he means physically imposing, buff, not resembling a typical comic book pinup girl -- ‘frees’ Jen from the constraints of sexism, which is full-blown outrageous.

You think that men only sexually harass women they deem attractive? Really? You think that sexism stops at catcalls and underestimation? You think that Jen, a female superhero in the public eye, isn’t going to be subjected to ugly sexist slurs no matter what she looks like? That is as insulting as it is naive.

Later, Aarons-via-Jen engages in some meta-criticism of the fact that She-Hulk has traditionally been portrayed not as a huge, buff ragemonster but as a sexy bodybuilder (and retconning in a shit-ton of sexual harassment while he’s at it, because remember, sexism only affects women society deems conventionally attractive).

“Cousin Bruce said something once, a few years back... about how envious he was of me. How easy he figured I had it. When he hulked out, he became a giant, deformed monster who couldn’t even wear normal clothes. While there I was looking like a bodybuilder who’d just been spray-painted green. I could wear suits, walk down the street without people running and screaming. Teenage boys hung posters of me on their walls. Must be nice, Bruce said to me, to be that kind Hulk.

“I’d never wanted to punch my cousin so bad. And that’s saying something. I told him about the parts of being me that he was oblivious to. About all the times I’d been hit on during team-ups. The bad guys who’d cop a feel when we were fighting.  The sleaze ball who published photos of me topless when I was in the Fantastic freaking Four. (I’d really rather you didn’t Google that.) No paparazzi ever followed Bruce around taking photos of his butt while he was fighting the Leader. I told him... looking like a big scary monster didn’t seem so bad to be sometimes.”

And here we really get to the thesis underlying Aaron’s argument, the reason he feels She-Hulk needed a complete overhaul.

Like most superheroines, She-Hulk was shaped by the male gaze. It’s fair to say that played a lot into her original character design as a green Amazonian bombshell, whose appearance and comparative level-headedness stood in stark contrast to the huge, monstrous, rage-driven Hulk whose powers she inherited. Heroines in cape comics are supposed to be ‘fun’ and ‘sexy’ (as judged by the men they were typically being written by and for). Jen’s body has frequently been the subject of titillation and her promiscuity has frequently been the subject of crude humour.

Aaron seems to view this as the flaw at the heart of the character, and it’s something he’s set out to correct -- by making her the gigantic, buff, scary, angry Hulk she was never allowed to be at the outset. Sexism thwarted! Strong Female Character accomplished! Give yourself a pat on the back, Jason.

Except, here’s the thing.

It’s true that Jen has often been depicted through the lens of a male sex fantasy. 

It’s also true that many readers have embraced her as a female power fantasy.

As the super-buff, super-strong, seven-foot-tall She-Hulk, Jen doesn’t feel the need to bite her tongue or moderate her opinions or diminish herself out of concern for how others might respond. She doesn’t have to hide her confidence or her sexuality. Through her transformation, Jen gains the freedom to embrace all that she’s been repressing -- the brilliant, witty, brash, assertive, body-confident parts of herself she’s always kept hidden from the world.

In looking at Jen selectively through the lens of sexualised artwork, instances of bad writing and a frankly snobbish undervaluing of humour comics, Aaron zooms right past everything that makes her such an appealing and empowering character to so many readers.

Which brings me right back to Deadpool’s comment earlier in the issue: Can’t you be both?

If your complaint is that Jen is portrayed in a male-gazey, overly sexualised manner that de-emphasises her strength and physical power, hire an artist who will draw her as the buff, badass giantess that she is.

She-Hulk doesn’t need a gamma power-up or a brutish alter ego to be formidable, she’s She-Hulk ffs. And stripping Jen of all her femininity in the process of turning her into a ‘roided-out tank raises some dodgy gendered assumptions in itself.

(For me, Peak Jen is a giant buff green woman in a bright pink designer suit. Not only can she be both, she already was.)

And hey, just gonna throw this one out there again, if your complaint is that since her creation Jen has been predominantly written and drawn from male perspectives for a male audience, resulting in some sexist and oversexualised portrayals, how about you hire some goddamn women and nonbinary people to write and draw her?

This is not the Great Feminist Reimagining of She-Hulk that you think it is, Jason Aaron. This is a slightly more pretentious rehash of that time David Goyer dismissed the character as a “giant green porn star”. You’re trying to ‘fix’ Jen by negating everything that she was previously, which is quite simply bad writing.

And when you find yourself dedicating a full issue of a comic book to calling your readers stupid for not liking your treatment of a character, that feels like a pretty sure sign that you’ve fucked up.

[lgcchaewon]

legacy project: future dreams - bae chaewon’s solo performance. ( & gif source. )

wc: 725, without lyrics & interview.

performing oh my girl’s cupid. < dance practice link for reference, following the true choreography & adjusting to center/highlighted parts for singing lines where it calls for it (e.g following seunghee’s choreo while singing at the side during the first chorus rather than the whole group & mimi alone during the rap)!

outfit. 

chaewon’s morale has seen better days. she didn’t expect to be lauded for her skills. her training time is laughable next to some of the others competing in the show, but sitting at the bottom of the pyramid that first day still stung. she’s spent the past couple of weeks attempting to remind herself that the exposure she’ll get from the show will still be good ... if they don’t deem her totally irrelevant. she has to show them something today that will prove she’s better than twelfth place, that she’s worth legacy’s time and money. this is her future, but it’s the company’s too. chaewon decides to perform an old favourite; cupid by oh my girl. it’s really different to adios, but not too far away from bim bam bum.

chaewon’s most comfortable performing a song like this, something more upbeat and playful. she takes her place on the x on the floor and bows to the camera, introducing herself with a cheerful wave. “this is bae chaewon, junior daytime trainee. i’m going to sing and dance for you today, performing cupid by oh my girl.” she’s as happy as can be for someone who’s expecting to see her own ugly crying face on television pretty soon. 

the music starts, and chaewon starts to shake her shoulders and step to that familiar opening tune. the first stanza goes as it should, with chaewon shielding her eyes from an imaginary sunbeam and winking to the camera as she straightens out her back. 

i see you, a little closer i hear you, don’t run away

chaewon weighed up for a long time during preparations whether she would perform the move for this part standing up or whether she would sacrifice her vocal stability to drop during the move, and eventually ... she decided to stay upright. after all, that’s how yooa does it, right? by eventually, she’ll go on to explain, she decided it in the moment, and is happy with her decision. 

the chorus is a little scary, even after singing it countless times in the last four years since its release. she’s a bit shaky on the first line, thanks to the choreography, but is able to catch her breath for the second, as she steps to center and plays to the camera before going into what she fondly calls the cheer sequence.

hey cupid has shot my heart turn around now, shot my heart hey cupid has shot my heart  uh huh, uh huh hey cupid has shot my heart turn around now, shot my heart hey cupid has shot my heart uh huh, uh huh

chaewon takes this opportunity to take her aegyo to the next level as she shoots imaginary arrows at the camera, smiling big and wide. now that chaewon has settled into the performance, she’s actually able to enjoy it, as she believes people always should when they’re on stage. the next verse and the chorus go as planned, though she’s still not completely stable during the first part of the chorus. 

she decided to leave the rap in, despite a lot of deliberation. she’s not the next underground star to break into idoldom by any means, but she is, in her opinion, okay enough to be your next lead idol rapper. she can keep up with the rap easily, knows it like the back of her hand, but this isn’t a time for her to show off any kind of unique flow. chaewon is following the song and emoting as best as she can to the camera, and she thinks she does a decent job, but she’s still glad to transition into the bridge. it’s easy to stand there daintily, looking over her shoulder and giving the camera a dreamy look as she sings. 

but then: so be it be in love.

she doesn’t belt it quite like the original, lowering the pitch for her own comfort, making sure she can actually sing it without embarrassing herself. maybe it’ll be a disappointment, maybe they’ll think she’s sensible. either way, she puts her all into the final chorus and cheer sequence. 

in the end, chaewon can’t say she isn’t relieved when she juts out her hip and makes a little gun with her fingers, giving the camera a wink on the last beat. she’s still catching her breath as she rights herself. she has a few minutes now before she has to do adios and bimbambum. she’ll change out of her little pink tennis skirt and into a pair of deep red shorts to match the bow in her hair, then the camera will turn back on and she’ll have to settle into another performance.

interview portion:

why did you choose cupid for your solo performance?

“i chose cupid because it’s a song that suits me well! even though it’s different to our main song, adios, i wanted to show a different side of me to the producers and the viewers too. i can be cool on stage, and that’s really fun, but in my real life, i’m definitely not that cool. i wanted to show everyone a look at the personality of bae chaewon.” it’s a plain enough answer, but when chaewon delivers it, she does so with conviction, smiling and nodding, satisfied with herself.

you say it’s a song that suits you well, but you still made an adjustment to the high note. why?

the question makes her stop and think for a moment. are they testing her? do they want her to admit some kind of defeat? she won’t, because she stands by her decision ... she doesn’t have a choice not to now, there’s no way to turn back time. “i wanted to make sure to give my best performance today, and even the best vocalists have to adjust things for live performances, especially when you don’t have a group to back you up. i deliberated over it for a long time during preparations, but i settled on lowering it a little because i ultimately thought it would be better for my performance not to take the risk. i believe cupid’s charm point is its overall energy, and that’s what i wanted to express. like cupid, my charm point is my performance, which my vocals are only one part of. i tried to show you all parts of me today.”

why did you dress up?

“because you have to look good to feel good! my outfits give me energy, and i wanted to look my best for everyone!” chaewon beams as she says this, giving a thumbs up. she’s speaking as candidly as anyone possibly could here. maybe she’ll come across as too naive, too earnest and eager to please - as a foolish try-hard. or maybe she’ll be charming, but honestly? she’s less and less hopeful about that by the day.

[aion-rsa]

How Batman Evolved During Tom King's Run

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Bruce Wayne's adoptive father is the key to Tom King's conclusion to his run on Batman.

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This Batman article contains spoilers. 

Tom King did the impossible. In a comics industry founded on the bedrock principle that only the appearance of growth should ever be shown, he’s told a massive, three-year, 85-issue story that has Bruce Wayne actually develop as a character.

With Alfred’s death earlier in the final story arc, "City of Bane," many would have expected Bruce to shun his supporting cast and dedicate himself to revenge, leaving Gotham littered with shattered criminals as he pushed his grief through his fists and his enemies’ faces. But that’s not what happened. 

We got a chance to talk with King about character growth, how his epic tale developed, and what’s next for Batman, Catwoman, and King himself in the DCU. 

Den of Geek: You talk about Vision, Omega Men, and Sheriff of Babylon being a thematic trilogy, right?

Tom King: Yeah.

Can we look at Mister Miracle, Heroes in Crisis, and Batman the same way?

Oh yeah, 100% yeah. That's what I think of it. Yeah. I'm glad someone noticed.

It's about heroes managing trauma, right?

It is. I call it the Trauma Trilogy. That's just too easy, maybe. I feel like the first story about my war experience and [the main characters of each book] were all someone naively going into a situation and finding it much more complicated than they thought. And then these three were all about, I’ve said this publicly a billion times, about this nervous first-season-of-the-Sopranos breakdown I had in 2016 when I first started on Batman, and sort of how I recovered from that. And I sort of wrote it three different ways. Yeah, it's like some fancy dish, you know. The Trauma Trilogy.

Read More: How Batman Will Change in 2020

So the breakdown in 2016 happened after you had already started on Batman. How far is what ended up on the page drifted from what you initially conceived it to be?

I mean it's pretty close. There's some stuff that didn't quite pan out. Batman isn’t like a series like Mister Miracle or our upcoming Strange Adventures that we're doing. You have to write Batman with some degree of compromise because it's a much bigger platform and overlaps a lot of other books. You have a lot more eyes on it in terms of editorial control. And so yeah, it wasn't entirely a straight line, but considering it was 85 issues of DC's best-selling comic, I think it was a lot straighter than I thought it would be in terms of going from one spot to another.

It was always supposed to be about a love story and that was there from day one. I remember talking about that with my first editor, Mark Doyle...being like, “What is this book about?” And me literally just searching and searching until I found an old clip of the Batman ‘66 TV show. It was just like, “Oh man, I love this." The Catwoman, Batman dynamic.

And it hadn't been in the books in a long time. Not since, like, Judd Winnick, New 52 stuff. So that part about it, the fact that it was just one big love story. That was the same and Bane was supposed to be the main bad guy. But the stuff with Flashpoint, Batman evolved as we went along. I'd say that's the thing that's evolved the most.

We talked that second arc, I think, about Bane, Catwoman, and Batman being three sides of the same shitty coin. But now with Thomas included in there, it feels like it's kind of four points on a graph, labeling each axis. You've got like Batman who had privilege but lost everything at a young age. You have Thomas on the other end who had everything for most of his life and then lost everything. You've got Catwoman, who was born into nothing and kind of hangs on to everything but keeps it at arms length. And you've got Bane, who kind of grabs whatever he can and crushes it to death. As Thomas evolved into this, does that sound like what you were thinking at all?

Yeah, I do think they all represent this idea of who's top of the mountain in their own way. I guess you could say who does Gotham belong to? Bane sees Gotham as a prize that he has to win. Thomas sees Gotham as a burden. For Catwoman, Gotham is just who she is and she's sort of queen of that city. And then for Batman, it's ... I mean that's what the whole question is. What does he mean to Gotham? 

With Alfred's death, was it kind of a backdoor way of you taking a look at Bruce's origins? You know, using the death of a father figure to kind of shock him out of being Batman the way that he was shocked into being Batman?

Yeah, but it was also a way to show what the difference is between Bruce losing his parents when he was young and connected to them, and Bruce losing Alfred having been raised by Alfred. To me that was a tribute to sort of Alfred's parentage of Bruce for all these years and him guiding him through that trauma. Because you expect Batman in that moment to bury himself in anger and go insane and do all the things that drove him to be Batman in the first place. But instead of that, he hears Alfred's voice and he composes himself. To me it's sort of about the maturing of the character and maturing of it through the love of Alfred. I know I said this in the book, there are no good deaths. There's a nobility to death if you've treated your children right.

Read More: Batman and Catwoman Face Thomas Wayne in Final Tom King Issue

Well, I would quibble with that only because I think you could have killed Batman at any point in the last 85 issues and whatever was happening would have been a hell of a way to go. Right? Like he has a heart attack on a ferris wheel with Superman. That's a pretty okay way to do it. 

Wait I did kill Batman! I killed him in annual number two.

Oh yeah! Yeah.

I gave him my ideal death. He dies instead as an old man surrounded by his family.

And that's the good death.

That's a good one. That's as best as you can do with no other choices.

After 85, it feels like that's kind of the direction, right? Batman for so long has been that traumatized little boy, to the point where it's almost a parody, and many of your predecessors have done something interesting with that. But it always feels like the traumatized little boy has been the dominant perception of him, at least in my adult life. Is this your way of kind of trying to push him through it? 

The story of Batman is unending conflict. I'm sure whoever comes after me will embrace the Batman of their own and I bless him for doing it. I know James [Tynion IV, the writer taking over Batman with #86]’s stuff is going to be, from what I've seen, amazing. Batman's not a story that I have the power to end. I just kind of come in and take the reins for a while and then pass it onto someone else as brilliant as James and Tony [Daniel, the artist on the first arc].

But I can sort of, I don't know, tell my story. I don’t know, maybe I'm too old to write Batman. Frank was 29 when he wrote The Dark Knight Returns. I'm 41. But it seems like as you get older and you actually see your parents pass, you see your loved ones pass, you realize that everyone has to go through that trauma. Right? You sort of realize that it can become part of you and something you're proud of as well. The grief never leaves you. It never leaves Batman. It's a wonderful metaphor. But also there's a certain joy to that grief because it sort of unites you with your lost ones.

So hopefully, as you go on, you sort of mature into that. I hate to say that the greatest hero America's ever created, which is Batman, never got a chance to mature into it like the rest of us hopefully get to do. Yeah, I mean that's what that's about. He says, when I was a child, I did childish things and now it's time to grow up a little bit.

Read More: Why Tom King Is Leaving Batman

So the action sequences have been phenomenal through the whole thing. There have been some stellar fight sequences, especially Jorge [Fornes'] last ten issues. Every time he comes in it's incredible.

He’s ridiculous.

They've been phenomenal. When I think back on the run, what I think is going to jump out at me are going to be the quiet moments. The double date, 12 Angry Batmen, Bruce and Selina grabbing a beer and watching football at a bar. What do you think was about those quiet moments that let you make them sing?

I mean, the first thing is the art. All three of those things you mentioned, you've got Lee Weeks...there's not a lot of people who can draw a dynamic room with just 12 people talking. Clay Mann doing the double date. Just him elevating himself and becoming the best artist in comics while I was watching. And then Mikel [Janin]. I've been with Mikel for five years now since Grayson. He did the first Batman I did and he’s doing the last.

It's really hard. I mean, as dumb as it sounds, it's probably easier to draw a dynamic fight scene than a dynamic quiet scene. So those guys are doing the heavy lifting.

As far as the other stuff goes. You know, it's ... DC Fontana died yesterday, right? The Star Trek author, and she's famous for saying, “Star Trek is not about objects. It's about characters.” Like, that's her thing. If you're writing an episode of Star Trek, don't make it about the thing. Make it about the people's relationships. So I think that that's what those moments are about is we've had a lot of conflicts. Fantastic, amazing conflicts about things. But I try to make my conflicts about the characters. Just trying to follow what she told me to do. What she said. Not that I ever met her but I remember what she said to do.

So looking back, is there an issue that stands out in your mind as something that you just absolutely nailed? Like, it's the Batman/Elmer Fudd issue, right?

No, I hate it. [laughs] I love that issue, but there's two typos in it. It still drives me crazy. I'll never manage to get them to fix those. When I first got the comp finished, I threw in the trash I was so pissed. "Oh, I ruined this one. Oh well. I'll try again next time." And then I won awards for it, it was ridiculous.

All three of the annuals I really like. I like the dog story that David Finch and I did in the first annual, which was suggested by my daughter when she was like five. 

And I liked the second annual, which has sort of the first dates and the beginning of the end of the Catwoman/Batman relationship. That annual's the jumping off point for the whole Batman/Catwoman series. So that's how much I like it, I'm trying to copy it. 

And I like the fourth annual I did with Jorge, which was just sort of like a chance for me to do a thesis statement on what Batman is. And there was seven days of Batman in seven different genres and then it continued sort of forever. I like those three.

Read More: Why Tom King's Batman #86-106 Would Have Been About

Similarly, is there an issue that you wish you could get another crack at?

Oh man, there's a ton of issues I wish I could ... I mean, I look at the dialogue and I’m like, "Oh, I could have done that better." 

It took me a while to learn how to work with Joelle Jones, who's one of the most talented artists out there right now. And I think, I feel like I did a Wonder Woman issue with her and I feel like I wasted two of them first of all, because the story I wrote turned out to be very similar to a story that Joe Kelly had done. I hadn't read the story but I was very...I would have changed it if I had known. I sort of understood how to write for [Joelle] by Batman #44, which I think is really nice, but I think it's 39 and 40, the two Joelle Jones issues, I wish I could have another shot at doing well.

I really liked those.

TK: They're beautiful! They're drawn beautifully, but I don't know, we could have done something...it was really fine, but I feel like it could have transcended. I missed it.

I guess. The Justice League flirting between the two of them in the cartoon is high on my list of preferred pairings. So like the way that you played with that made me happy. Is there a character you feel particular ownership of now? Like if somebody comes in and changes Kite Man, are you going to throw the issue across the room and scream, "Fuck no, that's not how this is supposed to be done."

No, I think that's kind of silly. It's kind of like when you sign up for this gig, that's part of the agreement and coming into comics is realizing that this is a medium that extends to other people and no one has benefited more from that than me, who's twisted the work of Jack Kirby and Marv Wolfman and Bob Kane and Bill Finger for my own benefits. I feel like denying that to others would be hypocritical. 

Gotham Girl's named after my daughter Claire. Claire Clover is her name. So I do like her. Like I have in my daughter's room a David Finch piece or a page that he did and a page that Clay Mann did they gave to me for her. So I like her because she's named after my daughter.

Wow. That's got to be pretty sweet.

I know. I try to tell her brag, brag to your friends! But does she brag?

Read More: Why Batman Still Matters

She'll get there. As soon as she shows up in a movie, everyone's going to be like, "Oh, you're so cool." Would you do it again? Marvel comes to you tomorrow and says, “We want a hundred issues of Spider-Man. Do whatever the hell you want.” Do you jump at or do you run screaming?

I don't remember anyone ever saying, do whatever you want with Batman.

Well, fair.

It never happened. Would I do it again? I mean I have no regrets about doing it. On many levels, I feel like I'm artistically satisfied with what happened. I feel like I made my career and made my life and I had fun. 

But it's that second thing you said, the control of it. As I move forward, I kind of want to do, I don't know, like, I want to do super ambitious stuff and it's hard to do super ambitious stuff in that environment.

I feel like I got as close as I could get with [Batman]. I had a brilliant editor in Jamie Rich, huge support from Dan DiDio, but I don't know if I'll ever get that much again. Going forward, we'll see. But I just want to do something, I don't know, big and ambitious and literary and I don't know if that's possible anymore. If it is, I'll go.

You did the Sheriff and Omega Men and Vision Trilogy. You did the Heroes in Crisis Trilogy, or the Trauma Trilogy. Where are we going next?

Yeah, something new. I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to move on from fat middle aged men looking out windows, thinking about their lives. I think it'll be like another trilogy of books. It will be Strange Adventures, [Batman/Catwoman], and another book that hasn't been announced yet.

And all of this will be these 12-issue miniseries, like these little novels and they'll all be focused on a new, bigger theme. The way things develop when you're writing, you can write it one way where you're like, "I'm going to write about this theme," then you go write it. But when I do that, it just turns out shitty.

The best way I think to do it is just to write straight through so your unconscious mind brings it to the surface while you fight doing the same thing over and over again. So I'm not 100 percent sure these things are still forming as they form, but it's going to be a lot about all the shit that's in the news every single day. 

As much as Mister Miracle was about sort of the trauma of looking around our current environment, thinking, "My God, this can't be real. I feel like I'm trapped here," Strange Adventures will be about how do we fight back this pernicious stuff that seems to surround us. And I think that's what Batman/Catwoman will sort of be about too.

Read More: The Actors Who Have Played Batman

So hopeful.

Hopeful is the wrong word because some of them are dead dark books. I don't feel hopeful right now. But I feel like, I don't know, it feels like we're in the middle of the war and you don't feel hopeful in the middle of the war, but you still feel like you'd have to fight. You know?

Yeah.

It's more about that feeling, not the feeling that, "Oh God, we're going to win." But the feeling of, "Oh God, we can't lose or else."

And Strange Adventures, I've read the first one and it's ... I couldn't love it more. It's 28 pages. Doc [Shaner] and Mitch [Gerads] are doing crazy new stuff you haven't seen in comics before, which I think is cool in terms of mixing the two arts together. The two, I don't know, styles or whatever.

I couldn't be more proud of it. I remember Garth Ennis famously saying that with The Boys, you out-Preacher Preacher. So we're going to try to out-Mister Miracle Mister Miracle, to steal from Garth.

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Feature Jim Dandy

Dec 18, 2019

DC Entertainment

Tom King

Batman

from Books https://ift.tt/34z0t1B

[visionsofus]

MIT, Time Travel and oh mY GOD IT’S PETER PARKER!

This is the beginning of the sequel, start with the first story here or read on AO3 here (1) and here (2)

|CHAPTER 1| 

If you would like to be tagged in updates please let me know! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things are definitely looking up for Peter Parker. Months have passed since the Snap and his life is finally beginning to get back on track. He has an amazing job at Stark Industries, he's almost finished his first semester at MIT with Ned, he gets to swing around New York on the weekends and things are looking like they might actually be going somewhere with MJ.

It’s almost like Peter is starting to get part of his normal life back. It's a naive concept. Peter knows what he has committed his life to, what expectations everyone has for the hero they know as Spider-Man.

Things quickly begin to heat up and Peter feels the growing pressure of his secret identity beginning to weigh on his decisions, not to mention the mysterious ‘Project Chronos’ which is weighing on him physically and has catastrophic effects on his mental state.

Peter's survived the impossible - death - but could more deadly things be yet to come?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tap, tap… tap

2…1

Peter tried not to grow frustrated as his eyes darted from his worn, silver wristwatch to the front of the lecture hall where the professor was finally beginning to wrap his presentation up. Said professor seemed to have sensed the weariness of his students and was rushing through his final slides.

Tap, tap, tap, tap…. Tap, tap, tap

Peter’s pen tapped distractedly against the black keys of his laptop, which he had been taking notes on until the lecture had taken an unfortunate turn, becoming even more boring than this subject normally was. Unfortunately, that turn had taken place only twenty minutes into the lecture so for the last 30 Peter had been itching to leave the hall.

4…. 3

Peter counted the numbers off in his head as he continued tapping, each tap taking him one second closer to when he could jump up from the cramped seat, slide out from behind the small desk and beeline for the door.

2…4     5…1     4….1

"Excuse me." Someone said quietly from two seats to Peter's right. Peter turned to see a lanky blond boy looking in amusement at Peter’s hand which was still tapping absentmindedly against the keys. "As boring as this subject is, could you please not tap like that?"

"Oh sorry," Peter said his hand stilling before he could begin the sequence of taps again. The boy turned his attention back to the front of the lecture and Peter followed his gaze.

2,1  4,3  2,4  5,1  4,1

When tapped out in Binary Tap Code it spelled b.o.r.e.d, MJ had taught it to him over the Summer and like Morse code and other tap codes Peter had taken a liking to it, as he so often did with such things. He shouldn't have been surprised that someone else in the lecture hall would pick up on such a common code. There were any number of geniuses in this very room, and any number of them might be familiar with the tap code. That was just something he would have to get used to, now that he was at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Alright, I’m beginning to see a few too many glazed eyes out there and I know how excited all of you are to have a few days off this week, so I'll wrap it up here." Said the middle-aged man at the front, shutting his presentation down. Peter shifted in the cramped chair, closing his laptop and reaching slowly for the satchel by his feet.

"Happy Thanksgiving." The lecturer said excusing the students who all made a grab for their things in a hurry to leave. Peter practically launched himself out of his seat, wincing as knocked his knee painfully on the top of the desk. Despite that, he was still one of the first to duck out of the lecture hall, eager to begin the four-day weekend that students had been given for Thanksgiving break.

Peter walked swiftly down the hall and out of the building. In his hurry to get away he was still carrying his computer science and coding textbook and busied himself with trying to shove it into his satchel. He found it slightly ironic that MIT still used physical textbooks where they could, but nevertheless enjoyed the bulky presence of it. If anything, it made him feel like he was actually doing something in the course instead of throwing money at a unit he technically should have been able to bypass.

Peter felt confident in what he had chosen to study, particularly considering the hours of deliberation that had gone into making that choice. He knew that he wanted to study computing and knew that such knowledge would be incredibly useful if he wished to progress in the temporary position at Stark Industries that he had taken up in June. Electrical engineering and computer science had been a sensible choice considering what Peter wanted to do and what he was interested in. Chemical engineering and civil and environmental engineering had also caught his eye and Peter hoped he might get to take on a few subjects from those areas if he got the chance. For now, he was more than happy with the subjects he had selected…all except one.

Peter really enjoyed coding, but the Introduction to Computer Science subject, the lecture of which he had just hastily departed, was a foundation subject for beginnersand used Python programming which Peter had been using for years.

Back when he had been taken on as a sort of technical intern/ superhero intern at Stark Industries under the guidance of Tony Stark, Peter had been introduced to Python and a multitude of other programming languages. He still had a lot to learn for sure, but this class was designed for novices and so Peter found himself growing more and more frustrated with the compulsory subject. It didn't help that the course was structured to move at snail’s pace despite the fact that there were likely numerous students in the class, like Peter, who had previous coding experience.

For now, Peter just had to grit his teeth and get on with things. He still did all the work but couldn’t help cutting corners here and there where he already knew what to do. It was just immensely frustrating having to sit through the lectures and classes when there were a million and one other things that he had to take care of.

(This is quite a long chapter, if you would prefer to read on AO3 click here )

 Peter pushed open the door and exited the lecture hall's building, walking as quickly as he could without running, in the direction of his dorm. He darted in and out of crowds of students heading to or from lectures and within minutes he had reached his building. He swiped his key card and ducked inside, eager to get out of the chill that had set in across campus, winter was definitely approaching.

Peter paused at the small mail room on the ground floor of his building to check and see if anything had arrived for him. Sure enough, a package was sitting in the P section of the pigeon holes, it was small, and he knew the part inside of it was even smaller. Peter snatched it and quickly checked its address to ensure that it was the one intended for him.

His name was printed on the top in the neat writing of none other than Happy Hogan. The package was wrapped in a ring of red confidential tape just in case whoever was delivering it hadn't garnered that information from the confidential sticker on one of the box's corners. Being head of security at SI, Happy always got a little paranoid about sending Peter such expensive and (potentially) dangerous parts. Peter assured Happy that the postal system was reliable and promised to only ask for parts when he was desperate and needed them sooner than whenever his next trip to New York might be. Peter was honestly surprised that Happy didn't deliver the package himself, or at least send an SI drone to do so for him.  

Peter left the mail room and, walking past the elevator, took the stairs two at a time until he had reached the fourth floor.

Scanning his student key card again Peter walked into the 6-bedroom west wing of floor 4, outfitted with a small kitchen, two bathrooms and a reasonably sized common space. It was quiet inside the flat and Peter suspected it was empty, he couldn't hear anything beyond the closed doors he walked past and assumed that everyone who wasn't in class had already gone home for Thanksgiving weekend.

Peter's room itself was small, split down the middle with a bed, desk and wardrobe on either side. He shared it with a guy from Boston called Nic Spencer. He was short with a mop of dark hair and a walk that made most people avoid him, but in the short two months they had been living together Peter had discovered that Nic was actually a huge softie and loved rom coms and Ed Sheeran. He was an easy enough guy to get along with and had the perfect boy next door personality, even if his appearance didn't quite match up with it. Thankfully, Nic was good at knowing when to respect Peter's space. Living together definitely made you more intuitive to the other persons needs and Peter knew when to stay out of Nic's way when he was in a funk, whether that be over college work or a malfunction in the small but fully operational hydroponic system that he had set up on their windowsill.

At present, their room was empty and quiet, save for the goldfish sat on Nic's desk and the quiet whir of the pump for the hydroponic. Peter's side of the room was unusually organised as he had done a quick clean that morning, not wanting to leave it in a state that he'd have to deal with once he came back next Tuesday. Normally, his side tended to get a little bit messy, particularly when his Stark Industries work or his Avengers work or even just plain college work started getting a little too much. The last few weeks had Peter stretched thin, trying to balance endless responsibilities while ensuring that each of his assignments was handed in on time, naturally his room had gotten pretty bad pretty quickly as he started getting home from the library later and later, pausing only to change and leave his clothes on the ground before getting to bed. For the most part, Nic didn’t seem to mind and often times his side of the room was no better.

Peter dropped his satchel onto his desk chair and rolled his shoulder. May had insisted on buying it for him before he left New York, saying that a backpack made him look even more like a high schooler. Not exactly what Peter had needed to hear before moving states to a completely new life, with new friends and new experiences.

It wasn't completely new though. Peter received his scholarship at MIT pretty late (he suspected that taking up his position at Stark Industries had some part to play) but his best friend Ned Leeds had known about his place for weeks before Peter had even been accepted, let alone awarded the scholarship. They'd both been incredibly excited to move together and had applied to the same preference of residential halls only to find they were placed in completely different dorms, likely due to the College's stressing of making ‘new connections’. Nevertheless, Peter was grateful to have Ned there and even if they didn't live in the same halls of residence, they still saw each other every day and texted when they didn't.

Swapping out his satchel for his trusty backpack Peter added his phone, wallet and newly acquired package to the bag and zipped it up tightly. Happy would literally kill Peter if that part got lost.

Doing a quick scan to ensure that he hadn't left anything behind, as Peter was always careful to do following an unfortunate incident at the beginning of the semester when he had left out his Stark Industries tablet on his bed before going to class. Nic's eyes had been full of questions when Peter had returned to their room later that day. Peter could have sworn that the tablet was in a slightly different position to where it had been when he left and though he was certain that Karen would have alerted him if anyone besides him was using the tablet, it still made Peter antsy. After that he was even more sure that he had made the right decision in choosing not to keep anyof his Spidey tech, including the suit, in his room. It was too much of a risk. So was not having his suit with him 24/7, a thought which had kept Peter awake endlessly for the first few weeks until he had finally decided on keeping a pair of web shooters with him at all times.

Deciding that everything was in its right place, Peter shut the door firmly behind him and headed straight back down the corridor he had been in moments earlier. Now there was the faint trilling of music coming from Sam and Lily's room. Peter considered knocking on the slightly ajar door to say goodbye before the short Thanksgiving break but decided he was too awkward and ducked out the front door of their flat.

Even before moving, Peter knew that he was going to need a place to work outside of his room.   After receiving his work contract from Stark Industries' CEO in May and after many discussions with his aunt and a few amendments to the conditions, he had started working in June. Peter had loved that summer break spent at Stark Industries and for the first time since the Snap he had found himself feeling like he had before disappearing along with half of the population five years earlier. The job had given him the instant gratification of putting his brain to work after so many weeks of hardcore studying for finals. In the few months he spent working part time at SI before moving away from New York Peter felt like his brain shifted and it had been strange to begin studying again, regardless of how useful the knowledge he was gaining was to his part time work.

Before moving at the very end of August Peter had done a quick property search for the cheapest places nearby to rent some sort of workspace. Pepper had offered to help him with the money given that Peter would be doing work for SI there, but peter had insisted on covering it himself.

Peter had reached the ground floor of his building again and burst out the doors, darting around the corner and unlocking his bike from where it was chained with a dozen or so others. Swinging a leg haphazardly over the seat Peter kicked off and started peddling hard past the other residential halls and out into the suburban streets.

He had happened upon the warehouse by surprise and at first it had seemed ludicrous to rent such a large space. All Peter really needed was a secure place to keep his suits and tech while he was working on them. Most of his equipment was remaining at his private SI lab, or the 'Spidey Cave' as May so often called it.

Once Peter had seen the photos of the space’s open plan, the exposed brick wall that bordered one side and the towering windows of the second floor of the old factory warehouse he felt like the decision had been made automatically. It was priced decently, and the deposit wasn’t too crippling, plus the electrical advantages of it being located so close to a power grid was undeniable. Within the day Peter had placed an offer and within a few days the paperwork was signed, and the deposit money gone from his account. Thankfully he had been working at SI otherwise there was no way he could have even dreamed of having a space like the warehouse.

The one disadvantage was that it was a twenty-minute bike ride away from where he lived. Compared to the exertion Peter was used to, it wasn’t much of a hassle and if anything, it was actually a good opportunity to get some exercise now that Peter wasn’t swinging around the city every night. He tried to go out as often as he could but being seen as Spider-Man near MIT and not in New York made him uncomfortable, surely the people he knew could put two and two together if they heard about it? Not to mention the press, who were getting more and more antsy about his identity, he had already been photographed twice while out at night in Massachusetts, resulting in the Avengers releasing a statement that claimed the blurry photos were of copycats and the real Spider-Man was still residing in New York. Luckily, Peter went back home every other weekend which made the tale as believable as it needed to be.  

Peter rounded the last corner and pulled up to the warehouse, breaking as he arrived at the front door and pulling out his keys. He slotted the small key, one of the few physical keys he actually owned given that so many things were key card operated at the college and Stark Industries and turned it. The door opened stiffly outwards and Peter walked down the entry way past the windows that looked into the space of one of the other tenants. Peter had never seen or heard from whoever occupied the ground floor space, but the pealing sign stuck to one of the frosted glass windows read Simple Phone Plans Call Centre which was pretty self-explanatory. Peter walked his bike past the glass and to the stairs leading to the second floor. He took them slowly as he navigated the awkward frame of his bike up and round the flight of dank stairs.

The whole bottom half of the warehouse and the entrance made it a rather unappealing place. Whatever paint was left on the walls was peeling and stained and the air in the stairwell had the uncomfortably pungent tang of urine and sulphur.

The warehouse's grimy interior (and indeed, exterior) had deterred Peter initially and he had worried that his work at Stark Industries and the first-class facilities he was used to had made him snobby. That still didn't make up for the state that the warehouse was in… but it was cheap and relatively close, and his floor was actually quite pleasant compared to the rest of the building… plus who would expect such a place to house information worth thousands of dollars?

Peter reached the top of the stairwell and set his bike on the two hooks he had installed on the wall, suspending it next to the door. Once they felt the weight the mechanised black hooks locked the bike frame in place. The door was another one of Peter's alteration. Even if no one would think to rob the warehouse, Peter wasn't about to leave expensive equipment unguarded. As a result, he had ordered one of the special scanners that was used throughout SI and programmed it to accept his clearance card that he used at his lab back in New York.

Peter pulled out a little black box from his backpack, something he had made right after he'd had the distinct suspicion that Nic had looked through some of his things. Holding the thin device up to his face Peter stopped blinking and allowed the machine to take a scan of his eye.

"Retina scan complete." A small voice said, and the black box emitted a soft click as it released its bottom panel. Peter slid it open further and retrieved his SI clearance card, embossed on both sides with the Spider-Man and Avengers logos.

At first, he had wondered whether it was a better idea to just keep his Avengers/Spider-Man clearance card back in New York but after the first week of waking up at 4 in the morning and getting nervous about it being stolen, he had decided to bring it to college with him. The black box had been a natural addition to security and if anyone except Peter's eye was scanned it was programmed to self-destruct, card and all. What Peter might do if that ever happened and how he would get into his lab was a sort of ‘cross that bridge when we come to’ it kinda thing.

Removing the SI card fully Peter pressed it up to the scanner on the door and heard several clicks as the door recognised him and unlocked, disabling the numerous alarms Peter had set on the doors and windows and roof…. And pretty much any other entrance into the top floor of the warehouse.

Peter sometimes wondered if he was paranoid.

As the door swung open Peter took a relieved look out at his work space. The floors creaked as he stepped forward, swinging the door firmly closed behind him. Back when Peter had first leased the top floor he had been concerned about the structure of the building and the parts of the floor that felt far too weak for comfort. A quick trip down to Simple Phone Plans and a few swings around the rafters reinforcing their ceiling with translucent webs had set his mind to rest.

Peter dumped his backpack on the workbench, taking out the small package and tore the side off to get at the bubble wrapped part beneath. He unwrapped it fully and set it on top of his holo-table, one of the few pieces of equipment that he had brought with him from SI.

"Karen, Happy sent me that part, can you make sure everything is in order?"

"Sure thing, Peter." Karen said back to him from the cheap speakers Peter had placed in each corner of the room.

Peter was sure that everything was in order with the part but there wasn't really much he could do until next week. The part had been scheduled to arrive on Monday after he’d asked Happy to send it out on Sunday for next day delivery. Peter had been working feverishly all weekend on his current project and had been desperate for the part to accelerate his experimentation and get one step closer to-- Well regardless, it hadn’t arrived in time so there wasn’t much point doing anything about it now.

Peter walked over to his mini fridge in the corner of the room and retrieved a soda, popping the cap off and ditching it into the bin in the opposite side of the lab, listening to the satisfying sound of it hitting tin.

The lab was open plan, just as Peter liked it, allowing for plenty of space for him to move around (and swing from the rafters when testing out his webs - or just for fun). A long mismatched combination of tables of different heights and shapes made up a long work top, scattered with tech and tools that Peter had left out the night before. Peter thought it was endearing in its unevenness even if most of it was from second hand shops or dumpsters. In fact, he had grown so proud of the finished product and the fact that most of the tables were pretty sturdy that he had sent a photo to Happy. Naturally, Happy had shown Pepper the photo who was apparently mildly horrified and had asked Peter if she could share the lease or at least buy him a proper workspace. Peter had declined, he liked the responsibility. Pepper had let it go… but not before she had an incredibly comfortable couch delivered to the lab. He had almost returned it, but it proved so useful for nights when Peter didn't feel like going back to his halls of residence and could just collapse on the couch instead that he had agreed to keep it.

The couch was currently pressed up against the exposed brick wall that bordered one side of the workspace. Down from the couch was a lone glass case with his Spidey suit standing upright and ready for Peter to wear, not that he really had the chance these days. Between his college work, Stark Industries and his own personal projects Peter was flat out… and that wasn't taking into consideration the obligations he had back in New York as Spider-Man and to the Avengers.

"Peter, just a reminder than Happy will be picking you up in an hour." A voice crackled over Peter's makeshift speakers.

"Thanks George." Peter said sipping at his soda as he walked back over to his worktop. George was his new AI. Peter had always wanted to develop his own artificial intelligence and as such had spent most of his spare time over the Summer developing George. He was a simple piece of organising software that was programmed to basically run Peter's life and take care of the smaller things that Peter felt a little bad giving to such a high line computer like Karen. Though he used George as a sort of daily planner and time manager at the moment, his abilities could be developed to manage organisations as big as Stark Industries. George's framework had been buried deep in one of the files that Tony had left on the hard drive for Peter. Back then the AI had been incomplete with only a basic scaffold and it had taken Peter weeks to get the hang of the programming and design.

"If you get the 12:14 bus you should arrive just in time to meet him." George replied.

"Sure thing!" Peter said setting his can down on the bench and walking over to the window to look outside.

Despite the convenience of the lab’s proximity to a power grid and his college, and its run-down appearance that made it a wolf in sheep's clothing, what had really won Peter over had been the windows.

Just like the Lab back at SI, one side of the warehouse was made up of floor to ceiling windows - an odd feature Peter thought, though he didn't really know what the space was used for before it was put out to let. The windows meant that during the day Peter didn't even bother turning the lights on, allowing him to redirect the remaining power to his other tech and significantly decreasing the risk of migraines and sensory overload. It was incredibly freeing to have such an open space compared with his shared room and the cramped lecture halls at MIT. Naturally, since moving away from home the new lab had become a sort of escape for Peter.

"The new addition to project Chronos has cleared all my checks but will take a while to assemble with the current model." Karen said. "Shall we store it securely until you get back from your trip?"

"Yeah we might as well." Peter said in dismay turning away from the window and sighing. It had become frustrating with all of the equipment he needed back at his SI lab and only the bare minimum here at his Massachusetts lab. He tried to work on his SI projects as much as he could, but a lot of the physical things had to be done in person, hence part of his reasons for returning to New York every other week. He had tried putting robots to work to assemble some of his projects but always relished the satisfaction of putting the prototypes together himself when he had the time.

"Your bus will arrive in approximately eight minutes sir; shall I purchase a pass for you?" George asked as Peter started locking the place up.

"That'd be great thank you George." Peter replied, walking past the windows and checking the scanner at the base of each which was constantly on, ready to detect any intruder and alert Peter and Karen immediately.

"Also, sir, a reminder that you have three unread messages from MJ, an Instagram message from Ned and as requested, I have compiled today’s news according to anything you may find interesting as well as any articles mentioning Spider-Man."

"That’s awesome!" Peter said beaming, he'd only managed to get George to run expansive media searches recently and even then, he usually malfunctioned because something in Peter's coding wasn't correct. "Great job George!"

"I try my best, sir."

"I've told you before, you don't need to call me sir, at least not until I'm like 25 or something." Peter said smiling still as he strode over to the Spidey suit stored securely in its case. Spider-Man hadn't been in New York for two weeks and the press would start getting suspicious if he didn't show up soon.

"Of course, sir." George said before hastily correcting himself "I mean, of course."

Peter hummed tunelessly as the lock on the suit scanned his eye and recognised him. The glass hissed slightly as it slowly slid back to reveal his suit in all its glory.

To tell the truth, Peter felt kind of deprived of it when he wasn't using it. Compared to months ago when he couldn't get in the suit without crippling panic attacks, he now relished his time wearing it, as rare as it was becoming these days.

Peter picked the suit up by the shoulders and felt it being released by the stand that held it upright within the case. Peter held it before him to admire it. He had created a third suit since working at Stark Industries, one that was personal to him and had his own design and embellishments, it was an excellent suit. That didn't stop Peter from coming back to his original suit every time. It may not have been strong or intuitive as the Iron Spider suit or have as many capabilities as his new Spider-Man suit, but it was still important to him. Tony Stark had given Peter many things, a place of work where he could actually do something with his brain, incredible tech to experiment with, a hard drive containing terabytes of knowledge that most of the world would kill for, among other things. But the most important thing that Tony had given Peter was the ability to be a real Super Hero, he had taken Peter under his wing and brought him into the world of the Avengers where Peter felt he could really make a difference. So, Peter held onto the Mark 1.

Heading over to the grey blue couch that Pepper had bought him, Peter carefully folded the suit up and put it in the duffle bag he was taking back to New York for Thanksgiving.

College had been crazy recently and it would be nice to get away from all his school work, even if that just meant turning to his work at Stark Industries or Spider-Man or the number of other commitments he had to the Avengers. Peter's brain seemed to strain and throb just thinking about the number of things he had to get done. He took a deep breath in through his nose and held for a moment, focusing on his heartbeat and then expanding his senses to the space around him, the fly buzzing up near the top of one of the windows, the soft thrumming of the electricity that powered his security system from the surprisingly unassuming box fixed to the far wall, to the feeling of his fingers brushing against the fibres of his duffle bag. He breathed out slowly.

"Your bus is due in four minutes, Peter." George said over the speakers and Peter darted his head up to glance at the clock sitting on one end of his workbench.

"Right." Peter said nodding and zipping up the duffle bag and slinging it over a shoulder. "Karen?"

"All systems locked down for your departure, Peter." Karen said as Peter grabbed his keys, phone and the black notebook with most of his Stark Industries research notes.

"Alright then." Peter turned, hefting his duffle bag and giving his lab a once over, walking backwards a few paces before deciding that everything was as it should be and heading for the door. "You're in charge while we are away George, anything happens you let me know."

"Yes sir." George crackled over the speakers as Peter shut the door behind him and waited patiently as it locked behind him. Unlike Karen, George's system was still so new and at times unstable, that Peter didn't really want to mobilise the AI quite yet, as useful as that might be. Peter had to admit that leaving a set of eyes… or rather a computer brain capable of keeping an 'eye' on things, made him feel a good deal more comfortable about leaving his equipment in the warehouse lab. Karen on the other hand, accompanied Peter everywhere these days, whether it was in his SI tablet, his SI earpieces, the Spidey suit or occasionally his phone

Peter dashed down the stairs, taking them two at a time and jumping from the fourth stair to the ground floor once he reached the end. A quick glance at his watch told him that four minutes had become two and that if he didn't hurry, he wouldn't make it to the bus.  

After a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, Peter jumped up onto the rooftop of the small block of apartments next to the warehouse and began hopping his way from building to building. Peter reached the bus stop with thirty seconds to spare, his research notebook clasped tightly to his chest and his head full of thoughts of home. This weekend was hopefully going to be an escape from his work and responsibilities, hopefully he'd get to spend some time with MJ and his family and come back to college rested and rejuvenated. It was a naïve thought, Peter knew it, but despite that he still had hope that this weekend would serve more than four days of more work. Little did he know, fate had other plans.

[calliecat93]

Callie Reviews: TMNT 2012 Season One (Part One)

Ever since 1984, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise has gone form a cult-status indie comic to a massive mass market. There have been various comics, movies, video games, merchandise, and of course cartoons. And it’s easy to see why. TMNT’s concept, a group of mutated teen turtles fighting evil in New York, is both incredibly bizarre and incredibly appealing to a mass audience. You have action, science fiction, martial arts, and of course plenty of mutant ideas to make toys out of. The fact that this Fall will be releasing the fourth animated TMNT series and that a new movie series is in production shows that even over 30 years later, this is a franchise that is far from losing it’s power.

As a kid, I of course knew that Turtles as a thing and I even watch parts of 2k3. But I was never really a fan until the day I stumbled upon the 2012 show. I fell in love with it and, since it started when I was just starting this blog, it was a huge focus for me for several years. I have since moved on and while I’m going to check out the 2018 show, I don’t think I’m going to be as crazy as I was with this show (but never say never). Back in 2012, I was someone who... lets say ignored the flaws and defended the show far too passive aggressively to the point that looking at my older stuff makes me want to blow up by blog. 

Nowadays, while some of my opinions hold true (like the ‘Donnie is a stalker’ accusations are still bullshit), I am more willing to admit the shows problems, especially now that I can take the show in fully. I also like to believe that I’ve become a better reviewer since I was 19 years old, plus it had been far too long since I went back over the show form the very beginning. So does the show still hold up? Will 25 year old Callie feel differently than 19 year old Callie did? Well we’re about to find out. This is the TMNT 2012 Season One Review!

The Premiere (Episodes 1-2)

Our story begins with a training sequence that introduces us to the titular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. Along with some minor character establishment, like Mikey being the funny one and Raph the violent one, the biggest thing here is one of the shows strengths: the choreography. It’s best exhibited in Leo and Raph’s duel. The movements are very fluid and well-paced. It’s fast, but not too fast, it’s enough to move things along but still let you take in all the impacts. It’s very well done. Raph ends up winning and we are introduce to the boys mentor and father, Master Splinter. Aka, the best written character int he show, but we’ll get to that later.

After the opening theme, we cut to the boys 15th Mutation Day where we get our backstory. Borrowing from the 80′s show origin, Splinter was once a young man named Hamato Yoshi. He had just bought four pet turtles when he stumbled across a shady dealing. Being a ninja master, he was able to fight back, but he ended up getting splattered with a strange green substance. This turned him into a rat, as one brushed his ankle while the baby Turtles become anthropomorphic. Yoshi, taking on the name Splinter, fled to the sewers and raised the four turtles as his own as well as taught them ninjutsu. It’s a simple, but still solid telling of the origin that pays tribute to previous origins, leaves some mystery about the substance and who was dealing it, and is told with use of comic-style panels reminiscent of the original comics.

The Turtles, having lived in the sewers since their mutation, are hoping to convince Splinter to let them finally go to the surface. After some begging, Splinter reluctantly agrees. We then cut to Leo watching a Star Trek: The Animated Series parody where we learn of his desire to become a great hero and leader. This is interesting for several reasons. One, it establishes that Leo isn’t the leader of the group yet, a departure form normal as he’s normally put into that role automatically. And second, ti does a great job at character establishment. In previous versions, Leo is often seen as the boring, overly leader type. Not a bad character mind you, but he lacks the quirkiness that the tough Raph, genius Donnie, and wild child Mikey present. Here? Leo is shown to be an idealistic, naive, but good-intention kid who aspires to be a great hero like he sees on TV as well as give shim some dorky characteristics, like quoting cheesy one-liners to sound more heroic. It helps make him more relateable, funny, and sets up a character arc for when he does inevitably become the leader. Very well done.

The boys finally go to the surface, and are in awe of what they see. They even discover their trademark favorite food, pizza. Given that they only ever ate worms and algae until this point, it makes their love of it all the more understandable. But not all goes well as they soon witness a group of business men kidnapping a red-haired teenager and her father. They attempt to help, but end up only beating each other up and the bad guys get away with their captives. Mikey ends up beating up one and discovers... a brain with tentacles... yipe... he tries to tell the other three, but they don’t believe him. A common trend in the show.

Upon returning home, the boys try to blame each other for the failure before Splinter accepts it for not giving them proper training as a team. While he considers keeping them down below for another year, Donnie convinces him to let them go help the girl due to seeing how terrified she was and how they failed to help her... and because of the crush he developed in a record five seconds. Splinter agrees, but first assigns Leo as the official leader, much to the ire of Raph. They’re eventually able to find the kidnappers vehicle and wreck it, capturing the driver named Snake and they discover a vat of a glowing green substance. A vat that they recognize as the same one that caused their original mutation.

Snake, after Raph threatens to mutate him, leads the boys to the facility where the captives are... and uses the boys bickering as a chance to escape. Leo uses this to trick the crook into thinking that they’re going to plow his van into the place as he conducts a plan to sneak in. All while Roah is an asshole who refuses to listen and outright undermines Leo’s orders. Yeah, Raph is a real jerk during this season. FYI. When Leo shows hesitance about his plan, Splinter tells him of his final confrontation against his rival Oroku Saki, aka The Shredder. It ended in his wife being killed, his house burning down, and his infant daughter nowhere to be found. Well, that won’t be important in any way, shape, or form later! The point being that he lost everything, but gained the boys, easing Leo’s worries about how much is riding on the plan.

So yeah the boys crash the van, Snake gets mutated, the boys break in, fight some guards, and Mikey proves that he isn’t crazy about the aliens.. and then trips an alarm. Smooth Mikey, smooth. They find the captives, that being this version of April O’Neil and her scientist father. Now in most versions, April is an adult woman. Here? She is aged down and is around sixteen years old. We’ll talk more about that later. The bad guys, aka The Kraang, take the captives away and as the boys give chase,t hey are confronted by the mutant Snake... who is a weed monster. Hey, that’s breaking supervillain rules writers! If you have an evil sounding name, that’s what you turn into! Donnie is sent to rescue the O’Neil’s as the other three face Snakeweed... Mikey’s idea, not mine.

The boys eventually defeat Snake via Leo’s direction and mass electrocution while Donnie is able to rescue April, but her father is taken away. April plans to find him however, no matter what it takes with the boys promising to help in whatever way they can. Once home, Leo finds out the complex reasoning for why he was named the leader over everyone else... because he asked. Ming-boggling, right? Well there is actually another reason, but we’ll talk about this in S4. The boys also made the news as their shruriken got found, but come on, what could one tiny news story do that would be bad? Well... being seen by your master’s worst enemy and re-igniting his lust for vengeance might count! Woopsie!

Overall, a solid two parter. It establishes the characters well, has fun fight scenes, the animation is a little dated now but still pretty good, the dialogue is funny, and it does a good job setting up future plotlines while fulfilling it’s own plot. It started 2k12 off on the right foot and was still enjoyable over five years since it’s initial premiere.

The Beginning (Episodes 3-8)

The episodes following the premiere create a steady flow of creating the status quo. You have episodes like Turtle Temper, Metalhead, and Monkey Brains (kinda) that have the boys dealing with the Kraang’s Plan of the Week as they continue their mutagen experiments. It helps with character development and some minor plot progression, such as Raph learning how dangerous his anger can be and Donnie learning to rely on his instincts rather than on his mind 100% of the time. Some are going to want me to comment on the shipping stuff, But I’m gonna save that for later. The biggest issue with these episodes, aside from Monkey Brains, is the Kraang. They are not interesting as villains at all. As great a VA as Nolan North is, the Kraang’s way of talking just gets... annoying. It doesn't help that the threat ultimately becomes either an accidental mutant or Donnie’s robot... well okay a Kraang possessed the later, but it shows that those are more interesting villains than the Kraang themselves and they exist mroe to just have an excuse for a plot. It’s really irking after awhile.

As far as plot goes, it’s mostly your usual ‘Monster of the Week’ stuff. But it has some small things that have a larger impact later. For one, in Monkey Brains, April begins to tap into what looks like some strong emphatic abilities. More on this next season. But due to this, Splinter decides to take April on as a student and train her to be a kunoichi (a female ninja). This will be the largest part of her character for the remainder of the series. April herself... is not utilized as well as she could have been in these early episodes. She’s described as the boys guide to the outside world, and she does serve that in some respects. For example, introducing Mikey to social media in New Friend, Old Enemy to let him make friends without exposing his mutant identity. And in Never Say Xever she takes them to a blind man’s shop so that they can actually experience life topside for once. The issue is we never see April establish bonds with the boys or Splinter after her introduction. In New Friend, Old Enemy she just acts like she’s been friends with the guys for awhile and after showing Mikey the net, doesn’t appear or is even mentioned in the episode again. She disappears after her importance in Metalhead as well, but she is given mroe to work with there at least. I glossed over this when I was watching the show and April does get mroe time with the guys, her relationship with Splinter being one of my favorites. Still, they didn’t do a lot with having April become part of the group or really act on her role as their ‘guide’ and I feel they just wanted to ignore it to get to the other stuff. Which is just a bummer.

So you’re probably wondering about Shredder stuff, right? Well thankfully the Foot Episodes are also the most plot relevant episodes. It starts with New Friend, Old Enemy where Shredder arrives in New York and assigns one of his lieutenants, a famous martial artist named Chris Bradford, to find out about Splinter. The Foot end up encountering the Turtles, with Bradford later using this to manipulate Mikey after accidentally becoming online friends with him. He captures him and use shim as bait to lure out the other three and then follow them to where Splinter is hiding. It fails with the boys using their knowledge of the sewers to literally wash Bradford and his partner, Xever, away. Along with the dangers of meeting people you don’t really know on social media, the episode presents a very unique lesson. In a fight for your life, screw fairness, You fight by any means necessary to stay alive, including fighting dirty. Most shows emphasize on being fair, but this one actually acknowledges that if your life is on the line, you do what it takes to get out alive. It’s a unique message for a kids show and one that I really appreciate.

Next is Never Say Xever where Xever gets to lead the charge. After the boys track down the two and get beat up, Xever receives inlet from the Purple Dragons, who int his version are pretty much a trio of teen thugs. The Turtles fought them off earlier at the shop April took them to, with Leo sparing the leader as an act of mercy. Something that Raph takes umbridge with... as he does with most anything that Leo does in the first half of the series. It’s no surprise that Leo and Raph butt heads, as they do in most series, and it follows their respective arcs. Leo having to deal with being leader as well as realizing that it’s much more pressuring and unforgiving than he thought, while Raph act son his jealousy that Leo got the position even though he’s the better fighter and therefore questioning Leo’s orders or outright just being an asshole for no good reason. But after the shop owner is kidnapped to lure the Turtles out, Leo’s act of mercy ends up saving them as the lead Dragon repays the favor by throwing him back his discarded sword. Which Leo uses to break a water tower to wash the bad guys away again. Angered, The Shredder decides to handle the Turtles himself.

The episodes do a good job in establishing a solid status quo. Bad guy does a thing, one character has their B-Plot to deal with, there’s a clash, the plots intertwine, bad guy gets defeated, and the lesson of the day is learned. A simple routine, but it works here. Plus we get plenty of character establishment and moments which makes you care about them. For example even though Raph is a massive jerk, the end of New Friend, Old Enemy has his comfort Mikey after the deceit and have him see that he’s a good kid who simply got duped as anyone else would. With this being after Raph mocked him wanting to make friends throughout the episode, it helped show that he does have a caring side. Leo frequently has issues with being a leader, such as dealing with Raph and moments like in ITHNiBS where the guys outright refuse to listen to him when he tries to remind them that they’re grounded. Even Splinter has a lot of moments, being a stern but fair parental figure and wise mentor, but is also snarky as Hell. We also see hints to how much the past has affected him, like after April agrees to undergo kunoichi training and leaves the dojo, there’s just a brief moment where he looks down with a forlorn expression. As though wishing that he was telling this to his own MIA daughter. It’s so subtle, but it speaks volumes about his emotional state. 

The characters are ultimately what makes these episodes works and what I would say is the strongest part of the series. You are likely going to relate to or like someone from this show and their progression. But now that we have a fully formed status quo, it’s time to shake it up a little bit and have the Turtles experience their first hard dose of reality.

The Escalation (Epsidoes 9-13)

Episode 9 begins as a typical ‘Mutant of the Week’ plot with the guys trying to catch a pigeon mutant that was after April. But when they do, they discover that he was simply trying to deliver a message... from her father. The message warns her to get out of the city due to a mutagen bomb, but she refuses to leave without him. As such,t he Turtles... somehow... find where Mr. O’Neil is and try to save him. While they get him out of the cell and get the location of the bomb, Mr. O’Neil sacrifices himself when the Kraang outnumber them so that the boys can protect April. All while poor April can only watch, helpless to do anything. Ouch...

The Turtles can only go to where the bomb is to disarm it, but things get further complicated when Bradford and Xever attack, wanting payback from before. Fortunately Donnie disarms the bomb and the four corner the two, but Bradford refuse sot go down quietly and stabs the bomb, but all it does is mutate himself and Xever. But ti also washes them away.... again. I should also point out that this point,t he Turtles have gotten incredibly over-confident since they’ve beaten every bad guy so far, feeling unstoppable. So then... Shredder arrives. Yep. And he kicks their shells HARD. Liek he holds no punches, he easily over-powers all four of them and almost stabs Leo int he head. The only reason that they escape is Shredder getting distracted by his now mutated lieutenants. But the boys retreat, badly beaten up and completely demoralized.

The next episode focuses on the fallout. The four are mostly feeling better, but their fears are being escalated by, of all people, Splinter. This is due to the boys nearly getting killed by his long-time rival re-igniting his own trauma and having nightmares over losing them, causing him to again keep them in the sewers and be far more harsh with his training. The only one doing moderately well is April, who gets intel about the Foot planning to destroy the sewers. The Turtles try to stop it, but get pounded by Bradford, who is now a giant dog mutant named Dogpound. This forces April to get the inlet herself, but she gets caught an captured by the Foot. This further brings Leo down, but to his surprise Raph actually encourages him to pull himself together and lead the team. The Turtles manage to both save April and stop the Foot from destroying the sewers with Splinter apologizing for allowing his fears to affect both himself and his sons. Overall, a solid pair of episodes that bring the boys down a bit, finally has all the plots meet somewhere, and deliver a strong message about not letting fear control you or the others around you.

After a filler episode where the only importance is Shredder forcibly recruiting Stockman to his forces, we get some more Kraang stuff with Episode 12. Where we actually show them being dangerous. Shocker, right?! It also introduces us to long-time supporting character within the franchise  Leatherhead. Here he is an alligator mutant who the Kraang experimented on and it causes him to have violent fits of rage if he so much as hears the word ‘Kraang’. The Turtles end up saving him when the Kraang try to re-capture him, but find his angry bursts, well... dangerous. But Mikey is able to befriend him and it becomes more clear that LH is actually a rather intelligent, good-hearted mutant who has been put through Hell. He gets run off by Splinter though when one of his trauma-induced bursts causes him to attack the boys, forcing the rat master to intervene. Mikey, and by proxy the other three, give chase to an old subway car where LH reveals how the Kraang took him to their home, Dimension X, and experimented on him. He escaped and also took their Power Cell, cutting them off form Dimension X, in hopes of saving humanity from them. The Kraang want it back and act like a zombie swarm as they break through the car. LH fights them off, leaving the Power Cell in the Turtles care.

While Episode 11 sucks (to put it simply Leo and Raph are overbearing assholes while Donnie and Mikey are just made to be as weak as possible), the other three do a good job at making the villains more solid threats. Shredder was built up as intimidating and powerful, and boy did he deliver. The Turtles face their first major loss and have to deal with the fallout, Leo especially dealing with his first real failure as a leader. Even the Kraang come off as a scarier hivemind and we get mroe stuff on them, like Dimension X and their plans to mutate the Earth. Add that with a strong supporting character like Leatherhead, who is understandably traumatized but is an intelligent being who is trying to prevent others form suffering like him. and it helps make some strong episodes.

The first half of the season concludes with the 13th episodes... that aired as the 14th for some reason. But I’m going in order of my DVD’s and this was after Episode 12, so it’s what I’m going with. It both concludes a lot and opens up a lot for the future. The episode I am talking about is, of course New Girl in Town.

TBC in Part Two....

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #140 - Singin’ in the Rain

Spoilers below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

This post is dedicated to @hyla-brook, as I can no longer watch this movie without thinking of my friend.

1) This film is not only one of the best movie musicals of all time, but one of the best movies of all time period. More on that coming up.

2) The opening credits include the line, “Suggested by the song...” In fact, the entire film was written AFTER the songs with only two exceptions (“Moses” and “Make ‘Em Laugh”), with all the other songs already being released and known to the world at the time. This effectively makes Singin’ in the Rain one of the earliest karaoke musicals (alá Rock of Ages), but today the songs are known largely if not exclusively because of the long lasting popularity of this film.

3) The backstory given by Don (Gene Kelly) is a wonderful opening to the film for almost countless reasons.

For one, we get a strong establishment of the friendship and loyalty which exists between Don and Cosmo (Donald O’Connor) as relationship as important to the film as Don’s love with Kathy. We also get a clear establishment of the film’s sense of humor, giving us a nice juxtaposition of expectations vs reality (“Dignity, always dignity.”) and incredible slapstick moments. It is also one of the most accurate portrayals of how someone finds success in Hollywood: through an endless stream of shit jobs in the hopes that you’ll be noticed. Kelly’s and O’Connor’s comedic brilliance are on full display, and we also get our fist inkling of the tumultuous relationships between Don and Lina.

Don [after he gets a lead in a movie, to Lina who was a jerk before]: “Are you doing anything tonight, Ms. Lamont? [She shakes her head no.] That’s funny...I’m busy.”

4) In case you ever think Hollywood making normal people feel self conscious about themselves is a modern invention:

Female Movie Patron [while Lina is onscreen]: “She’s so refined. I think I’ll kill myself.”

(GIF originally posted by @casey-jones)

5) Lina Lamont.

Lina’s character is established immediately from the second she opens her mouth: drunk on power, more than a bit of a moron, and a selfish jerk. She’s hysterical and Jean Hagen totally loses herself in the character. No, that’s not Hagen’s normal speaking voice, but you thought it didn’t you? That’s how incredible she is in the role, and it is easy to forget how much brilliance she shows off when compared to the trio of Kelly, O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. This film wouldn’t be nearly the classic it is without Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont.

6) In case there was any question: I am Cosmo.

Studio Rep [about Lina]: “The studio has to keep their stars from looking ridiculous at any cost.”

Don: “No one’s got that much money.”

7) There are going to be so many Cosmo quotes in this recap, I’m just warning you. Because, you know, I’m Cosmo basically.

Don [being swarmed by fans]: “Hey Cos, do something! Call me a cab!”

Cosmo: “Okay, you’re a cab!”

8) Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Seldon.

What on earth can I say about one of the greatest actresses of all time in only her fourth credited screen real knocking it out of the park? I honestly don’t know but I’ll try to figure it out as I type. Reynolds is...perfection. In a trio of incredible performances I think she may give the strongest. Her chemistry with Kelly is great, subtle, trusting, and she does just such a wonderful job of making Kathy an amazing character. She’s not some manic pixie dream girl. She has her own desires, her own dreams, her own sacrifices she’s willing to make. Reynolds is able to portray Kathy as honestly good while still remaining interesting, honestly optimistic without being too naive or annoying, and honesty is just the word to apply to Reynolds’ whole work in the film. I love it.

9) One of the things I LOVE about this film is that Don and Kathy are not a “love at first sight” type of relationship. Don’s hitting on her is obviously because he’s a cad, she shuts him down, and then they’re able to have this unique conflict with each other where they both sort of act like jerks. Yet later they develop an honest connection with and affection for each other in such little time, it speaks greatly to the chemistry of the performers. One of my favorite love stories from this era of cinema.

10) The advent of the talkies are captured pretty accurately in this film. Everyone is skeptical about it, thinks it’ll be a fad, but the few likes Cosmo and studio head RF Simpson see how it could (and probably will be) the future.

11) I don’t think there is a better showcase for Donald O’Connor’s skills as a physical comedian than in “Make ‘Em Laugh”.

According to IMDb:

Donald O'Connor recalled, "I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day then, and getting up those walls was murder. They had to bank one wall so I could make it up and then through another wall. We filmed that whole sequence in one day. We did it on a concrete floor. My body just had to absorb this tremendous shock. Things were building to such a crescendo that I thought I'd have to commit suicide for the ending. I came back on the set three days later. All the grips applauded. [Gene Kelly] applauded, told me what a great number it was. Then Gene said, "Do you think you could do that number again?" I said, "Sure, any time". He said, "Well, we're going to have to do it again tomorrow". No one had checked the aperture of the camera and they fogged out all the film. So the next day I did it again! By the end my feet and ankles were a mass of bruises."

The entire number is just packed full of classic Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton style gags all done to a fast pace number and it gets to the reason this old school movie musical has lasted the test of time where others have failed:

Most old school movie musicals have songs which don’t serve the film AT ALL they could be totally skipped and nothing would change. In some respects this film is the same. HOWEVER: the numbers are just so wildly and fantastically fun and entertaining that you are never bored by watching them. You are just so focused on what is going on and enjoying it so damn much you wouldn’t dream of skipping it (for the most part). THAT is why this film is such a classic. THAT is why it stands the test of time.

12)

RF [after pitching a talkie to Don]: “Lockwood and Lamont! They talk!”

Lina: “Of course we talk! Don’t everybody?”

Man RF, you did NOT think that through.

13) For me, “Beautiful Girls” is always the number I want to skip. It just is not nearly as entertaining as some of the other ones. It does nothing for me.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

14) Be still my beating heart.

Don: “Kathy I’m trying to say something to you but I’m such a ham. I guess I’m unable to without the proper setting.”

My heart doesn’t get mushy romantic for much, but "You Were Meant For Me”...It is just so beautifully staged, the lighting and setting is incredible, and Kelly is able to portray such honest emotion in the song that...I LOVE IT!

15) “Moses” is another example of a number which really doesn’t serve the plot in anyway but is just so damn entertaining I don’t really care! Donald O’Connor is great again, and we get some nice bromantic fun!

16) We get like a solid ten minutes of this film’s excellent comedy in two back to back scenes: when the filmmakers are trying to deal with the sound equipment, and when they see just how poorly it worked in the final film. It’s accurate really to today too: audiences will forgive crappy visuals but if your sound is shit then your film is shit. I know this because I’ve directed a number of films with shit sound (most of them back in high school).

17) Don’s conflict is perfectly summed up in one line:

Don: “The picture’s a museum piece. I’m a museum piece.”

The film’s mostly a musical comedy so it’s easy to forget about Don’s conflict, but he’s an actor in a changing industry and his first encounter with Kathy had him questioning his skills. Everything he does for the movies in this film is driven by that issue.

18) “Good Morning”.

Another song which is totally superfluous and serves the plot in no real way, I totally love it. It shows the trio at their best together in a wildly fun and entertaining number. But it was a pain to shoot!

After they finished the "Good Morning" number, Debbie Reynolds had to be carried to her dressing room because she had burst some blood vessels in her feet. Despite her hard work on the "Good Morning" number, Gene Kelly decided that someone should dub her tap sounds, so he went into a dubbing room to dub the sound of her feet as well as his own.

During a TV interview Debbie Reynolds shared while filming "Good Morning" one of her feet was bleeding, requiring flesh-colored bandages beneath her hose. As the trio collapsed on the overturned sofa, she turned her head to Donald O'Connor and said, "Thank God that's over." Watch closely and you can see her say it during the dubbed jolly laughter.

Their effort yielded one of the best numbers in the film!

19) The iconic titular song/number: “Singin’ in the Rain”.

Pretty much everything you need to know about Kelly’s devotion and hardwork in the film can be summed up by this fact:

The "Singing in the Rain" number took all day to set up--and Gene Kelly was very ill (some say with a fever over 101). When it was all set up, Kelly insisted on doing a take--even though the blocking was only rudimentary (starting and ending positions only), and the director was ready to send him home. He ad-libbed most of it and it only took one take, which is what you see on film.

Kelly’s sheer joy and the memorable/simple imagery is what makes the number so iconic. It is truly relatable, and its existence makes walking in the rain just a bit less melancholy.

20) Hey, remember how I’m Cosmo?

RF: “Cosmo, remind me to give you a raise!”

Cosmo: “Oh RF!”

RF: “Yes?”

Cosmo: “Give me a raise.”

21) Okay, “Broadway Melody”...

“Broadway Melody” is THE most superfluous number in the film and honestly the one which could probably be cut. It is very entertaining - and much more engrossing than its equivalent in Kelly’s An American in Paris in my opinion - but it’s just so damn long! It works as it’s own short film. However the visuals are incredibly strong and Kelly is in top form, so it obviously doesn’t ruin the film. But honestly it is the song you are most easy to skip and keep watching.

22) Aww, these two...

Don [to Kathy]: “From now on there’s only one fan I’m worried about.”

23) So far Lina has been a funny antagonistic dunce in the film, but damn if at the end she doesn’t turn into a manipulative evil jerk. I LOVE IT! She shows off she’s smarter than she’s shown [at least a little], boosts her own public image, almost sabotages Kathy’s career, and tries to extort RF into giving her more power. It is the fact she flies so close to the sun which causes her downfall, but damn if she ain’t just EVIL!!!!!

24) According to IMDb:

In the "Would You" number, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) is dubbing the voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) because Lina's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is really speaking, it's Jean Hagen herself, who actually had a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Debbie is supposedly dubbing Jean's singing of "Would You", the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Debbie.

25) These three are just so happy to embarrass Lina.

26) Kathy’s teary eyed look at Don when she realizes he WASN’T being a total jerk by having her sing for Lina and in fact letting the whole world know who she is just...be still my heart.

I miss Debbie Reynolds.

Singin’ in the Rain is a classic of cinema. Even though it falls into the trope of songs which don’t advance the plot, the songs are just SO fun to watch! This film is pure entertainment, with great acting on all parts (especially from the trio of Kelly, O’Connor, and Reynolds) and just honest character writing. It’s SO good! Go watch it if you haven’t!

[ashen-star-mage]

My Favorite Fandoms and Why

I’m a huge nerd. Hopefully that’s clear for anyone who follows my blog or posts. So naturally I like a lot of fandoms, but there are a number that I really really like and some I’ve followed since childhood. 

Pokemon

A fandom I’ve followed since childhood. I was part of the original Pokemon generation who were kids when the first games (red, blue and yellow) came out. I love how even in the beginning there was no end of things to do in Pokemon. Bored with your team? There’s 151 of them and more on the way. Then you could battle and min-max your team to your heart’s content, and way back in the day you could even gamble in Pokemon games. I love the art style of Pokemon and the beloved creatures that are way too easy to get attached to. It’s like to the point where when someone (I’m not naming names) KOs your favorite Pokemon and then it’s time for some serious payback. We’re talking Hyper Beam on a 10% health Pokemon payback. Modern games have given us even more to do in games. If battling isn’t your thing, you can breed them for cool moves and other things (and potentially become a twisted Pokemon eugenicist). You can hunt for oddly colored Pokemon (shinies), something I never had the patience for. You can participate in Pokemon contests, and bond with your team by feeding or petting them. Pokemon designs are really diverse too, from ‘normal’ animals to plants to the gods themselves. Gods that can be caught and battled by ten year olds for some reason. Also it needs saying that for some reason teenage boys (and perhaps girls too) detest Pokemon because it’s not cool. What’s cool for teenage boys? Skateboards and saying ‘radical’ all the time? Ninja Turtles reference by the way. I was definitely in the minority liking Pokemon in my teenage years, but when I got to college, suddenly it was cool again and everyone was allowed to like it just like when I was a kid. Pretty awesome right? I’m really hyped for Sword and Shield, just like I’ve been hyped for every new main series game. 

Star Wars

Another fandom I’ve followed since childhood. While Pokemon took us to a land of wonderful creatures of all stripes, Star Wars takes us to that galaxy a long time a go and far far away where there are adventures, cool ships, and magic space wizards. In my opinion, Star Wars introduced the world to some of the coolest and most iconic ships. Like the wedge-shaped Star Destroyers that struck terror into all who saw them, or the Millennium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. And who could forget the characters. Definitely a diverse cast in terms of archetypes, Luke the naive and idealist farmboy, Leia the tough no-nonsense princess, Han Solo the lovable rogue, Darth Vader one of the most feared men in the Empire and an extremely iconic villain. The list goes on. Even if the galaxy is almost always at war, be it the clone wars, galactic civil war, or other conflicts, it was somewhere I always wanted to go some day. Meet the characters, try not to get force-choked, fly a ship through hyperspace. Star Wars may have started as three very well-done movies, but it has turned into an incredible multimedia franchise. The Legends series (formerly expanded universe) really fleshed out the galaxy and lore beyond what the movies did and so did the prequels. Say what you will, but they had some really good aspects to them. Then there are the games like my favorite of all time, Empire At War, game that would transport you into that galaxy far far away for a few hours at a time and let you blow up stormtroopers or rebel scum to your hearts content. Or clones or clankers (battle droids) if you prefer that. The fans have definitely done their part too, like the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion, two incredible professional-quality Star Wars costuming organizations (both of which I want to join some day). They really do their part to bring the galaxy to life. 

Disney/Pixar

Ah, Disney, the company that has been entertaining us with beloved child-friendly characters and stories for many decades. A lot of generations can say they grew up with at least one Disney movie. I love how Disney movies appeal to people of all ages. They have characters both kids and adults adore and stories and even humor for both adults and children as well. Then there’s Kingdom Hearts, the massive Disney and Final Fantasy crossover that brings tons of Disney characters into one universe. Also Disneyland and Disney parks which bring the magic of Disney to life with animatronics, costumed actors, and various other things. Unless someone outright hates Disney or animated films, there’s bound to be something in the Disney canon for almost everyone. I have too many favorite Disney films to name, but some I’m particularly fond of are Mulan, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Alice in Wonderland (my namesake). I’m definitely planning some Disney cosplays in the future, and now that Disney owns Star Wars, those characters could count too. 

Fire Emblem

A tactical RPG with one of the world’s saltiest fanbases (at least in my opinion). I’ve described the series as chess-meets-Final-Fantasy to people who have never heard of it. Basically you have an army of very relatable characters who can talk to each other for combat bonuses and you have a bunch of enemies and undoubtably a giant evil dragon to fight. These games have been pegged as being rather difficult, considering weapons can break mid-battle, characters who die in battle never come back (until recent games), and experience points are limited (more in older games). Fire Emblem used to be such a niche series, only known to a few dedicated fans, but luckily Fire Emblem Awakening saved the series and made it really popular, to the point of being a mainstream series now. I only got into the series in high school, but I’ve been hooked ever since. The mix of strategy, RPG elements, and interesting characters and plots really was a winning combination. The character relations are deep, especially when there are 40+ playable characters per game. Each character can talk to around half a dozen others several times, revealing character backstory, personality, and interesting and sometimes funny interactions between them. I think Fire Emblem Awakening is one of my all-time favorites, and not just because it saved the series. It was a great standalone game. Some of my favorite characters are Lilina from Binding Blade, Nino from Blazing Sword (just Fire Emblem in the international release), Lissa, Chrom, Frederick, Robin, and Nowi from Awakening, Flora and Mozu from Fates. I even cosplay Mozu. I should honestly dust that cosplay off and wear it again. I love the character.

 Hyperdimension Neptunia

Definitely still a rather niche series. It’s extremely meta and loves trampling on the fourth wall. This series is basically the video game console war (Wii vs Playstation 3 vs Xbox 360) with all the players (pun intended) personified as anime girls. It’s not just those systems either. Sega is a major player, as in main character major, and video game piracy is personified too. The characters are fantastic and their interactions are equal parts endearing and hilarious. There are way too many video game references and tidbits. Like how Vert (Xbox personification) complains about overheating just like a real Xbox 360. Or how the enemies you fight are based on classic video game enemies like the ghosts from Pac-Man or the space invaders. This franchise is rather unique for me in that I like almost every character. With Star Wars or Fire Emblem for example, there are definitely a fair number of characters I’m neutral towards, but both those franchises have way more characters than Neptunia. I think my favorite characters are Vert and Nepgear (personification of the Sega Game Gear). 

RWBY

Say what you will about the animation style at first (believe me, I was turned off at first but then I came back years later to give it another try) but this series has some of the most epic fight sequences and choreography in any series I’ve seen. All the main characters have superpowers of varying sorts called semblances and throw in a bunch of cool weapons that are also guns and you’ve got a recipe for epic combat. It’s so tragic and sad that Monty Oum, the series creator passed away, since he was a real driving force behind the epic fight choreography. I normally don’t like series just because the fighting is good (I’m not into most shounen battle anime). There needs to be more than just epic fights. I like character-driven stories and RWBY provides quite the diverse and likable cast. The team dynamics (RWBY stands for the names of the four characters on team RWBY) make for very interesting character interactions. 

Disgaea

Probably the most wonderfully absurd fandom on my list. Disgaea is about playing as the demons as they get into mischief and are forced to fight even worse demons and sometimes rogue human super-villains and angels too. Also did I mention the exploding peg-leg penguins called Prinnies who also talk like surfers for some reason? Because they do exist and they’re so great they even got a few games that star them as the main character... even though they’re supposed to be the fall guy and cheap slave labor of the Disgaea universe. The main characters, Laharl being a great example, are a departure from the ‘good guy’ protagonists of your typical RPG. He’s greedy, petty, and likes to brag about himself. Sure he’ll do the right thing after much prodding, but he really likes to play the role of the villain too. Aside from the absurd characters and plots, there’s the absurd game mechanics. Lv 99 look too low for you? Try Lv 9999 and then reset to lv 1 and grind back to Lv 9999 multiple times. Also stats reaching the millions and billions and damage several magnitudes beyond that with the right overpowered sword (which you can level up by going inside it). 

Tales Series

A series that’s somewhat similar to Final Fantasy in terms of being a mostly fantasy RPG, but also with hack-and-slash team battle mechanics. It’s a series that I feel is terribly underrated and needs more love. Final Fantasy is great but I feel like Tales deserves more recognition. The series has a lot of great characters and heavily emphasizes character interactions and character development. A perfect example is Luke fon Fabre, a character whose spoiled, whiny, abrasive personality makes him hard to like, but due to certain events he becomes one of the most beloved protagonists in the series (and a personal favorite of mine). This series is known for playing archetypes and tropes straight (like the chosen one trope, or unshakable destiny) and then turning them on their heads and deconstructing them, only to reconstruct them, then deconstruct them again. The combat is fast-paced and exciting, and while I love turn-based combat as well, the Tales fights, especially boss battles are fantastic. I describe the series as Final Fantasy meets Super Smash Bros in terms of battle system. My favorite game in the series is Tales of the Abyss. 

[careergrowthblog]

10 Steps for Reviewing Your KS3 Curriculum

Now that schools are getting into the swing of the new GCSEs and KS3 assessment continues to present various challenges, it’s natural that a lot more attention is being given to the curriculum content at KS3.  Of course some will say that Ofsted’s much-trailed renewed interest in curriculum is playing a part too – but I’ve been seeing this process underway in many schools since way before Ofsted started talking about its framework.

Some schools have the luxury – or challenge, depending on how you see it – of starting fresh with a new school, building a curriculum from scratch.   Most schools will be starting with a messy legacy slate, rather than a clean one and it can be hard to know where to begin.  Some school leaders will have a crystal clear vision for the curriculum of their dreams; for others, it’s just not where their expertise lies and it can be incredibly daunting.  Here is my guide to how to go about it, assuming you’re more towards the ‘somewhat daunted’ category.

1. Develop a deeper knowledge of the detail of the curriculum you already deliver. 

This really is a good place to start.  If you don’t consider yourself a curriculum expert, the first step is to find out exactly is going on in your school and start to form a deeper understanding and wider set of opinions about it.  Beyond any data of any kind, what do your students actually learn about? What concepts and experiments do they do in science? Which books do they read in Year 8 in English? What periods of history are studied in Year 9 ? Which artists are covered in Year 7?  It’s important to know – and to care about the answers.

In my previous school we undertook this first-round mapping and it was fascinating. https://teacherhead.com/2016/07/02/emerging-ks3-curriculum-map-and-exhibition-plan/

The next round of questions is ‘why?’ What’s the rationale for the decisions that have been taken – if there is one? If you check, you can also see how it links to what it says in the national curriculum documentation: how does all that blurb come to life in reality?   As you get into the detail, you develop a clearer picture of the learning experience your school actually delivers.  It’s not a set of GCSE results and report grades – it’s all the knowledge that flows from the curriculum – and it can be a revelation to find out what content your own school actually delivers.

2. Look at examples of other curriculum models for reference

It’s so easy to work through a school system with a narrow view of what is possible in curriculum terms based on our own limited experience.  So, an important task is to get your hands on the curriculum models and materials from elsewhere.  You can see my 40 models  from 2017 for example – at the macro timetable level –  but really I’m talking about getting to see what other schools teach in English, in history, in art, in science.. find out what else goes on and take a view of yours compared to theirs. Of course each Head of Department can do this for their own subject and the results can be pooled.

3. Develop a set of principles informed by the initial explorations, with input from a range of stakeholders, linked to an iterative consultation process. 

Once you have a feel for your curriculum as it is, informed in part by feedback from parents, teachers and students, you’ll have a better sense of what your values are.  How important are languages, history, art and music, dance, food tech, Latin, PE? How important is it that Shakespeare is studied in depth or Dickens…. or 20th Century fiction or a range of classical music or history beyond the UK? It’s very hard to make good decisions if you don’t know what your red lines are around some of these choices.   It’s also important to decide who decides! Does the English department get to pick the texts or do other people get their say? It’s not about trust; it’s about a shared ownership of the curriculum.

4. Develop some alternative models for the overall time allocation structure, in parallel with the subject review process to allow for interplay. 

I’ve written up one walk-through of the though process here. and here’s a summary of the outcome.

In purely pragmatic terms alone, it’s obvious that you allocate time at least partly in line with the value you place on different subjects.  However, there are numerous structures to explore including carousels and so on.  I’m a fan of the Year 9 bridging year, lots of time for MFL and four options at KS4 – but that’s me.  As with many things, it can help to look at 3 or 4 contrasting options to work out which you prefer and if anyone doesn’t like an idea – they need a better total solution, not to simply lobby for more time for one subject.

Of course you can’t plan the detail of a curriculum if you’re unsure how much time you’re going to get to deliver it in – so there needs to be some interplay between the macro planning and the detailed subject review process.

5.  Create a review process within each subject area – ensuring the capacity is there to deliver a strong outcome, starting big picture, then drilling down to the detail.

This is the meat of the process; the core: each subject needs to undertake a ground-up review of what is taught at KS3.  This should build up from fundamental concepts, the overarching narrative structure – ie how the story of the curriculum unfolds year to year –  what content to deliver, what to leave out delivering a justifiable balance of breadth and depth. What happens at KS2 and KS4 will be influences – but ideally there will be a rationale for the KS3 curriculum on its own terms.   It’s an important process of any subject leader to undertake.

Leaders and their teams will need time allocated for this process – several sessions sequenced across 12-18 months and that all needs planning.  Some teams will relish the challenge and produce a superb outcome. However, it might be that some teams need a lot more guidance – it’s naive to assume everyone has the knowledge and confidence to build a curriculum from scratch – so it will be worth looking for external sources or curriculum designs that might provide the guidance people need.

6. Map the curriculum in a raw state based on each subject’s preferred curriculum 

Once you have a set of curriculum strands developing, written from the perspective of  each subject discipline, it’s possible to bring them together and see what it all adds up to. It’s really helpful if everyone has used a similar format and similar levels of detail at any given stage so you can look across in terms of time and see if common elements are present.   With a clear structure, you can start to look at the overall diet for each year group and check that there is a degree of coherence between subjects, with themes and connections emerging rather than being imposed.

7. Look for authentic links between subjects that might support deeper curriculum ties and inter-disciplinary learning. 

I’m a firm believer that authentic links that emerge from subject disciplines designed on their own terms are better than those forced onto subjects, constraining or distorting them.  Once an overall map is produced, subject leaders and teachers can look to see where they can cooperate, coordinate and co-plan so that the curriculum strands interweave.  Sometimes, as in the illustration below, it can be case of trading specific content areas to avoid unnecessary overlap; at other times, it can be good to teach something from different perspectives, always conscious of what the other perspectives are.

8. Map a range of set-piece learning experiences and entitlements that run across subjects, making adjustments, filling in gaps. 

Here you are looking to see whether anything falls between the gaps of each subject planning in isolation.   This might include large-scale residentials,  theatre production projects, inter-disciplinary projects, large-scale community projects,  short-run units ( eg on coding, learning an instrument, debating.. whatever).  These things become embedded in the curriculum and everyone needs to see where they fit.

9. Review the curriculum by subject and whole-school from an assessment perspective, matching authentic assessment opportunities to the flow of the curriculum.

As the curriculum comes together, this is the opportunity to see where assessments fit best to support learning.  It’s a nightmare when the assessment tail wags the curriculum dog, so here’s your chance to get things straight.  If you have an overview of the flow of units across the curriculum you can see the impact of imposing centralised data-drops at certain times.  You can also check that each department has a sensible flow of assessments and manageable, meaningful tracking to inform their teaching and reporting.

10.  Review the curriculum vertically and horizontally (by subject and by year group) through various lines of enquiry: reading, homework, access to knowledge resources, speaking and listening, checking that the overall roadmap has clarity and coherence.  

Finally, look across the curriculum for year groups and along the subject sequences to evaluate whether the overall diet of certain features you value is present and coherent.  This might include the diet of reading, ‘oracy’, open-ended response projects, ‘hands-on’ making, opportunities to be creative and pursue personal lines of enquiry, homework… and so on.  Some things only need to be included once in one part of the curriculum;  others should be embedded throughout. The mapping and review process will show you the for tweaking or whole-scale change.

It’s important to give your school a good length of time for this and to create opportunities for all staff and for parents to get a look-in – so they can see what’s coming.

Good luck with it! It’s probably one of the most rewarding and impactful things you’ll ever do.

            10 Steps for Reviewing Your KS3 Curriculum published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

[zak-graphicarts]

‘Byte Me’ - Pixel Art Workshop Review

In this workshop, I’m exploring a retro 8-bit aesthetic to my characters and the economic approach games such as Mario took to animation, additionally to discussing why the pixel has become so popular in modern culture. 

Recently, computer games with a retro style have become rather popular in modern culture - with examples like Minecraft, the popular app Ball Kings and the NES game consoles being reissued to eager fans. There’s a nostalgic appeal to pixel art, a loving look back at a bygone era of digital graphics and games. These simple pixelated graphics effectively paved the way for on-screen imagery - allowing gamers to play as a character rather than just a shape or line.

South Korean illustrator Jaebum Joe is renowned for his use of the style, which follows an approach that allows the artist to produce more detailed and exciting characters, with differing body shapes and fun character designs. His work harkens back to the side-scrolling beat ‘em up arcade games than a pixel platformer, with a Street Fighter aesthetic that results in a brilliant and striking animation for Nike, of an imaginary basketball game.

Nike / RUN_IT. (2018). Jaebum Joe.

Whilst I won’t be taking this more detailed approach, his work possesses a life and cinematic excitement unrivalled by any other pixel artist in his field. Joe isn’t limited to striking, flashy movements either - with his Tiger Office being a perfect example of a much-needed subtlety. It’s only fifteen seconds long, but the quiet whirring of the PC booting up and the flickering lights illuminating a quiet, lonely workspace speak volumes.

Tiger Office. (2017). Jaebum Joe.

In contrast to this more detailed and exciting approach to pixel art is Ivan Dixon, who works with significantly less pixels to embrace that retro aesthetic and nostalgia. Where Joe is focusing on exciting character designs, Dixon is an animator at heart - and how his characters move reflects this. His website is a showcase of extremely fluid and lively characters bouncing around in their small pixel boxes, with a naive and child-like sense of fun that’s rather infectious.

Avengers. (2018). Ivan Dixon. 

His characters are often inspired by pop culture, with characters from films, games and popular tv shows all getting the bouncy pixel treatment. It’s this limited, cyclic animation approach that I’ll be exploring in my response, but in a more restricted way.

It’s Dixon’s limited colour palettes and embrace of the pixel aesthetic that I’ll be responding to in this workshop. The more detailed Street Fighter style is exciting too, but I’m looking to create a character and animation that’s clearly retro pixel art - so I’ll be sticking to a strictly 8-bit style.

Step 1: Draw

The process began by creating a few sketches, using grid paper to create a square module of 8 by 8 squares. For these drawings, I was working off a few observational sketches, taking inspiration from these to create my own character.

All of the examples I’ve looked at use bright colours - something studios did at the time to grab the gamer’s attention and make up for the lack of character detail. I wanted to follow this idea, so used a combination of green, purple and orange pencils to build my character.

My main idea was to create a supervillain character, looking at comic book villains such as Green Goblin, Joker and a whole host of other bad guys that also sport the same green and purple colour scheme. These pencil sketches, whilst just quick coloured studies, provided most of the design process for me. When you work digitally, there’s an unconscious restriction and lack of experimentation. We’re so quick just to ‘undo’ anything that isn’t perfect the first time, that we might miss a great idea. With a pencil and paper, the pressure is off and I’m just sketching whatever comes to mind.

Step 2: Pixelate

Having a basic idea of the character I want to create, I headed into Photoshop in order to build a digital version. After setting up a new custom document with the correct specifications, I could then begin piecing together the bit-mapped image.

Pixel art is a style I haven’t really explored up until now, but it’s a process that I found rather intuitive and straight forward - as I’m restricting myself to a 8x8 grid, there’s no half pixels or diagonal lines - so it’s just a process of dragging and dropping blocks onto the grid.

When building my character, I played around with adding different features and colour schemes, but decided to leave the eyes, nose and mouth - instead, I explored a minimalist approach that resulted in an appealing character design, I think.

Having shown a few of my peers, I’ve found the success of the design lies in the simplicity, I feel. It’s purposely restrictive and minimal - and it finds a power within that limitation. Something I didn’t account for was my audience assuming the character is naked - the pink was supposed to be a costume, rather than skin - so I had to reconsider my choices if I wanted to illlustrate a super-villain character.

After experimenting with a few different colour palettes, I initially decided to use a monochromatic brown colour palette - going against the flashing vibrant colours of Dixon and Joe in favour of a quiet, subtle aesthetic. 

Just in this pixelated style, I find there to be great potential using this technique. There’s a universal appeal to the style that cannot be overlooked, the naive quality of the designs engage audiences of all demographics due to it’s child-like creativity and sense of fun.

Step 3: Animation

My next move was to animate the character. Our tutor showed us how to do subtle movements using replacement parts, however I wanted to create a walk cycle so I made separate illustrations using the same character design. Working on my research into examples of how to animate walk cycles, I only needed four frames to capture that limited movement, but I think it really works here. 

To create the sequence, I created separate illustrations for each frame: a contact and passing pose, and reversed them to create a walk cycle. It’s a bit jarring, but it works and the audience knows the character is walking. Its a fun asthetic that I hope to explore further. It’s a simple frame by frame animation, dragging the body down on the contact poses and then up again as the body steps up. As a looping animation, though, it’s quite endearing. The rather crude movements and jolting actions results in a visually interesting walk cycle, separate from any other sequence I’ve created so far.

The brown colour scheme works, exploring that idea of nostalgia once again, but I do feel as if removing the bright colours removes a life to the piece. The animation is still successful, but if I were to create another pixel walk cycle, I would want to experiment with a range of colours beyond the monochrome palette I’ve chosen here. It’s interesting, but the pixels aren’t properly arranged here - there’s some overlap that defeats the 8 bit style. 

Having identified this, I went back and used my original bright colours, embracing the bizarre character design and cleaned up the actual animation. My final piece is much more exciting and successful, I think. 

My animation is more restricted and minimal in design than the examples I’ve looked at here - but there’s a charm in that simplicity. If we compare my animation to fellow student Alex’s pixel characters, we can see we’ve both taken a relatively minimalist approach to design - something that’s inherent to the 8-bit restriction. Like myself, Alex decided to create full body figures, rendering famous characters from 70s horror movies. It’s her Cthulu avatar that I think is the most visually exciting, an ominous red eye amidst the blur of dark green tentacles makes the avatar look suitably omniscient and more than a bit sinister.

Alex has also stuck to the more abstract pixel approach, using a limited grid to embrace that retro aesthetic. If we compare this to an artist like Joe’s work, there’s a noticeable difference in style and concept - we’re actively embracing that lo-fi, pixelated look whilst Joe’s working on creating a more refined piece that looked like it jumped out of a 90s street fighter arcade game. Both approaches are successful, but Joe’s results in a much more refined outcome and visual style that I wasn’t really going for. It almost hides the fact it’s pixel art, and Alex and I wanted to embrace the process with our examples.

Although not animated, there is a life to Alex’s designs. I think it’s the dark grey backdrop and floor - a frame to the characters - that results in a piece looking like it’s about to bounce in true Mario fashion. I’ve said these pieces are appealing to a universal audience, due to the simplicity of the designs - but now I’m going to attempt to discuss why pixel art is so popular.

There’s a few factors as to why pixel art is seeing a somewhat of a resurgence in games and animation, as described by a few articles on the topic on the internet, from art discussion blog Widewalls to the more mainstream media hub IGN.

The main factor, of course, is nostalgia. People who were born in the early 80’s and later grew up with games featuring pixel graphics - and now, they’ve got their own money to spend. Adults see these games and apps with that retro pixel aesthetic, like Ball King and a whole host of other platformers, and they’re reminded of their happy memories as a kid, playing those games. Nostalgia for the time of old is an extremely powerful tool on any audience, so game developers take advantage of this effect and produce games and animations that capitalise on that warm feeling.

It also helps that these pixelated games are rather cheap to make, in comparison to 3D rendering and graphics. It’s an open door for anyone - both big studios and independent developers alike. It’s approachable and comparatively much more easy to make. It’s this simplicity of process and technique that inspires hundreds of artists to produce works of their own, and it’s a way in to the gaming industry for many independent developers and small studios hoping for their big break.

Finally, there’s definitely something to be said about the inherent simplicity of the process - pixel art is commonly not detailed, and doesn’t need intensive rendering. It’s not intimidating, doesn’t look too intensive and as a result - draws a wide audience in. When games have high-quality graphics and specific settings just for the image resolution, fps and graphics card, casual gamers might feel a little alienated. As that myself, I can personally agree that this is the case. I go to a pixel game because of the neat aesthetic, but also the simple charm of the minimalist design.

This simplicity consequently reflects the simplicity of the mechanics - when an audience member sees a game with pixel art, say Kirby - they aren’t expecting a difficult experience. Contrast this with the latest Fallout game and it’s a different story altogether. Complex graphics can be appealing, but as a whole - it can intimidate and even alienate a wide audience, who associates high graphics with ‘hardcore gaming’ - a style of gaming that might not be appealing or approachable to the general public.

Just in that brief discussion I’ve been able to explore why I think pixel art is so popular with a wide audience - but a good development from this would be to ask other students why they think pixel art has such a hold on the games industry, or contact pixel artists asking for their opinion on the matter. I’ve only looked at a few perspectives with my discussion, so exploring a few more would be a good way to further establish the context of this workshop.

In this workshop, I was able to learn a new process within Photoshop - how to create not only a pixel character, but how to animate him too. It’s a rather intuitive and straightforward technique, but one that allows me to work in an entirely different and exciting aesthetic. This visual style is universally appealing, and it provides an interesting contrast in not only style but movement in comparison to my other walk cycles I’ve produced so far.

There’s some real potential in this process, and I’d love to create a whole host of characters using the process, exploring different movements. Perhaps I could take some of the characters I’ve already designed and pixelate those, for example Michael.

I’m really inspired by the incredibly fluid and bouncy motion Dixon has been able to integrate whilst keeping to those pixel restrictions, and I could look at that approach as a potential development. Seeing a pixel character just bounce like a traditional animation is just appealing to me, so exploring how he creates these animations, by breaking them down frame by frame, would be a good way to follow this line of enquiry. 

Moving forward, though, I’m going to be jumping from two dimensions to three - beginning some stop motion walk tests using my armature. So far I’ve explored digital and pixel animation, and I want to challenge myself to produce some stop motion tests too. I’ll be building a puppet, but I want to begin exploring the medium of stop motion and a physical walk cycle before I move onto producing an actual model, using my ready-built armature. We’ve recently acquired the professional stop motion software DragonFrame, a programme used by animator in the industry at the moment, for films like Isle of Dogs and Kubo and the Two Strings - so I’ll also be attempting to get to grips with the program in the process. 

Actions

Make some stop motion walk tests using my armature, get to grips with professional and industry standard stop motion software DragonFrame.

Potentials

Produce another pixel walk cycle animation, based on my character Michael

[panpanpanini]

Thoughts on MLP The Movie: Unpopular Opinion Edition

(I made a small post about this a few weeks ago, closer to when the movie premiered, but now that the hype has kind of fizzled out I thought I’d take the time to fuss more in-depth.)

So... I really thought the MLP movie was bad.  Terrible.  I had sooo many problems with it, so where do I start?

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!! 

My two biggest complaints are:

1) The movie didn’t hold up in terms of quality-- nevermind MLP expectations, it was just a bad movie in general.

2) Target demographic was noticeably shifted (downwards), especially when compared to the show.

Let me start by saying I’m not at all notorious even among friends for being this grouchy, self-elevated, overreaching entertainment critic/analyst.  I can enjoy most things at face value, ie. MLP.  I despise fanaticism (not fandom, fanaticism), and I’m long past the mindset that if I like something, I have to be blindly uncritical of it.  

Please also note that I have not read the movie prequels or supporting media, and I went into this movie with only limited knowledge of those materials.

*deep breath*

(1) So, starting from the top: “It was just a bad movie in general.”

Visually, the movie barely held up for me.  Anyone who’s even had a basic flash animation class knows about this thing called ‘motion tweening:’ it’s an optimized process for creating movement, with which you can set a path for objects to move and deform as opposed to painstakingly animating each frame one by one.  It’s a much quicker process, but the (immediate) result often looks way more mechanical than its traditional counterpart and can often come off as... soulless, or even lazy.  It was unbelievably easy to notice this throughout the movie and it was a huge distraction for me.

You can more easily see what I’m talking about here.

As a side note, I was never really on board with the ToonBoom style from the get-go; I eventually got used to it, but I was never able to totally immerse myself in it-- the whole tweening thing just cemented my dislike for it.  

Continuing my comments on style, the new character designs were interesting, but... so many of them felt too disconnected from established MLP universe conventions.   In fact, the only ones I could only get on board with were the hippogriffs (with a preference towards their seapony forms).  My biggest problem with them has to lay in the fact that nearly all of the new characters-- background and supporting-- were bipedal, when in-show nearly every new race introduced has been on all fours like our titular ponies... and to add insult to injury, so many of them had hands!  Their designs just felt too distant for me to connect that they live in the same world as our pony heroes.  

Note: I realize most of these creatures inhabit lands self-defined by Celestia to be ‘beyond Equestria,’ but that doesn’t dismiss that they still felt like they belonged in a movie not prefaced with ponies.

(Tempest is a little different.  She was visually darker than most ponies than we’re used to seeing, and to the surprise of nobody the poster child for edgy pony OCs, complete with the perfect voice.  Unfortunately, her intimidating demeanor was sometimes too much for me, as it’s much more *effectively* threatening than what we’re used to seeing in-show-- the closest being the Shadow Pony in the S7 finale.)

On a more positive note, I really enjoyed the new environments.  Just the fact that we had new locations to begin with was endearing already, but unlike a lot of the other stuff (see above) they were on par with what I was expecting from MLP on the big screen.  I seriously think the environments had more character/place in the MLP universe than most of the (we’ll call them NPCs) NPCs that occupied them.

Speaking of character, I can forego most of what I’ve talked about above in lieu of a good story (spoilers: the story wasn’t even all that fresh, it was predictable and full of classic kid’s movies tropes).  What I can’t ignore is blatant out-of-character writing.

“But Salt Mom, if you hate out-of-character writing, why are you still watching the show post-season five?” -Most Starlight Glimmer Opposition

As I mentioned at the start, I still enjoy the show at face value.  We’re seven seasons in; our beloved ponies have seen some noticeable character development over the years, which is what some people (perhaps those ruled by nostalgia for the earlier feel of the show) like to label ‘out-of-character writing.’  But the changes are justified by their development, which is why I don’t see it that way.  The movie, however, seems to completely forego character development and reduces them to (at times, vapid) caricatures of themselves and the out of character writing is now completely obvious to someone like me who doesn’t typically enjoy ponies through heavy analysis.  

Pinkie was by far the most glaring.  Pinkie is already one of my least favorite ponies, so maybe I’m biased here, but she was for the most part written as comic relief.  She wasn’t a pony Grubber-- she did play the part of ‘voice of reason’ in the climax with Twilight-- but she had an irritating tendency to completely downplay the seriousness of their situation, as they all did (she was just the most obvious, second being tied between Dash and Rarity).  Since when have they all been so naive?  Except for Twilight, all our heroes had minimal speaking roles (and even more damning, speaking roles with substance), most notably Fluttershy.   

Other problems included the princesses (once again) being victims of weak writing-- they’ve been proven to be capable of putting up more of a fight than we were shown, jeez!-- for the sake of putting the Mane 6 in the spotlight, probably something some people would call ‘forced progression’ (related: bad pacing).  

... Which leads into the movie’s general issue with logic.  

OH BOY.  I had so many issues with the movie logic.  As mentioned before... the ponies’ general naivety, their blatant disregard for the grim nature of their situation...  Capper betrays them, doesn’t explain his reasons, doesn’t get a proper chance to apologize, and our ponies are totally cool with him by the falling action sequence of the movie?  Celaeno’s crew (and similarly, the seaponies) is swayed into changing allegiances with a simple, three-minute song?  The Mane 6 add six or so characters to their posse and suddenly it’s possible to take back Canterlot, after being overwhelmed so easily in the beginning, when the princesses weren’t yet turned to stone?  Really?  How could Tempest-- a pony who comes off as smarter than the rest-- be so desperate to have her horn back that she couldn’t foresee the Storm King’s betrayal?   

*angry flailing motions*

In summary: the animation was mechanical, character designs suffered from a serious disconnect with established MLP canon, and everything from logic to pacing to character behavior suffered from bad, trope-y writing.

---

(2) “The movie demographic was shifted noticeably.”

(A lot of what I’ve addressed above can also be applied to this section of grievances.)

Very few times have I watched anything in general and walked away feeling like a real dumbass.  This was one of those times.  Everything from the humor, the songs, the logic (see above)... it all came together to make me feel dumbed down and like a huge moron for even buying a ticket.  Overall, it was extremely apparent to me that they’d knocked the target demographic down a few years, and that the movie was made with younger kids-- rather than families as a whole-- in mind.  

The brand of ‘humor’ (I use that term loosely) employed by the movie has to be the cringiest one in the book.  It was clear that it was the most vanilla one they could have gotten away with and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot because honestly, none of it was funny at all.  Grubber was purely on the screen for comic relief (we literally don’t see him again after the finale); Pinkie’s naivety was obviously supposed to be funny, as were Rarity’s trademark dramaticisms-- They got close sometimes to pulling a laugh, but then it just... fell short and wound up feeling more pathetic and forced than anything.  Was it even humorous to the kids? 

I laughed literally once during the entire movie, and that was at a very transparent marketing joke (perhaps not deliberate) made towards the beginning, after the Mane 6 fall from Canterlot and band together to decide how to proceed.  They end up saying something to the effect of “hungry, hungry, hippos” as they’re brainstorming and I chuckled because... Hungry Hungry Hippos is also a Hasbro property. 

I thought I might be able to find solace in some of the songs-- I’d heard SIA’s contribution in the days leading up to the movie and thoughts it was a decent tune-- but alas... They turned out to be completely vapid, with the sole exception of Tempest’s song.  Compared to the extensive library of songs we’ve gotten in the show, the lyrics and melodies we got in the movie were neither clever nor catchy (I recall thinking that rhyming schemes were nearly non-existent) and I found myself waiting with bated breath until they were over.  “Time to be awesome?”  Blegh.  Completely forgettable.

IDK.  Maybe I need to see the movie again to confirm my position with it; after all, I had already decided I didn’t really like it before the end of the first act.  For the better part of a year I couldn’t get away from the hype surrounding MLP The Movie, but when I finally saw it it didn’t deliver on the same level and ended up being a huge let-down.  It was lacking in a lot of things standard to its TV-counterpart, including what makes the in-show universe so appealing (lore, memorable songs, and magic), and if they end up putting out a sequel I hope it can bounce back in the same way EQG2 built on the shortcomings of its predecessor.  

That’s all I’ve got.  If you’ve managed to get this far, thanks for reading.  ✌

(Bonus) Things I would have liked to see: an entire pirate fleet (instead of a single crew); more Capper and time spent in Klugetown; more Storm King and the land he comes from; the hippogriffs actually doing something (isn’t Queen Novo supposed to be friends with Celestia?) to contribute to the finale, even if it was them swooping in just before the final fight.