#miles has way too many father figures in too many iterations. this is the one where he has his dad and his uncle and weird old white men | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

marimo-o · 3 years ago

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ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u

(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)

So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)

I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!

So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j

Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.

Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.

And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.

So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.

The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!

At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.

Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.

So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.

Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!

#my writing #abzû #abzu #giant squid studios #ancient history #the moss mumbles #im not joking this is horrible. like it's all just word vomit about sumerian legend -> the game -> the game again (but in second person)#and THEN we get to The Point. god christ

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let-it-raines · 5 years ago

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Wishing on a Star(fish)

Based on the @csprompter prompt | here | that says: Runaway Royalty AU Prompt: In NO way does Prince Killian want to deal with his kingdom or be forced into an arranged marriage. So instead, he chooses to spend the day sailing and debates if he should just disappear over the horizon. Unfortunately, a storm makes the decision for him and blows him off course into unknown waters. When he comes to, he finds he’s being robbed by a mermaid.

~~ 5,700 words; rated T (some language)

Shoutout to @wellhellotragic and @captainsjedi for coaxing me into writing this. I don’t think I’ve written something this quickly in weeks, so obviously I couldn’t hold onto it since I have no self control ❤️

-/-

Bloody hell.

Bloody buggering hell.

Bloody fucking hell.

Every damn iteration of “bloody hell” that Killian can think of runs a course through his mind as he slams a metal gate shut behind him while he’s leaving the castle. The loud clanging doesn’t do much to cover the fact that he’s leaving castle grounds and wandering down to the docks, but he very much doubts that anyone actually cares what he’s doing right now as long as he’s not getting blackout drunk in front of dukes and duchesses or lords and ladies who are here to be impressed by the glamour of gold-lined drapes and cutlery made of the finest silver in all of the seven Northern Kingdoms, possibly even in all of the Southern Kingdoms.

This week has been a show, a way to display pretty and rare things that no one in the village his parents rule could afford, and as much as he’s known that it was coming, he’s dreaded this week in May. Not one for some of the more proper aspects of being royal, he’s tended to avoid these types of functions and balls as much as possible. Liam is the heir, the one who is expected to rule the kingdom and produce heirs of his own with Elsa, and the two of them have been the ones to schmooze with the aristocratic society of Okeanos while he spent his time running off with barmaids at the taverns he frequented while serving in His Majesty’s Royal Navy.

Captain Killian Jones, his Royal Highness of Okeanos.

It’s almost laughable to him that he has that title. He’s not yet entering his twenty-eighth year, and he was made Captain before he even stepped foot on the Jewel of the Realm for the first time eight years ago. The perks of having his father be the King and being fed up with his second son not doing anything with his life.

But his years spent in the Navy, at least in a more active role when they were warring with the kingdom of Aurum, were some of the best years of his life. It gave him a sense of purpose to be on the crew, to be a part of a team even if he knew most of the crew didn’t respect him as an authority figure, and living with sun melted into his skin and salt in his hair was the first time that Killian ever truly felt alive.

Suddenly, though, the one-year anniversary of Liam’s wedding to Elsa, the combining of their two kingdoms, came around, and Brennan decided that it was time for Killian to be wed. In the most naïve of moments, Killian assumed that maybe he would be able to choose his own bride, that he could possibly convince Milah to come back to him from her village, but that naivety was quickly squashed under an extravagant boot when his father told him that he had already picked Killian’s bride.

Princess Ariel of Atlantica.

She’s a gorgeous woman, vibrant red hair almost as vibrant as her smile, and on any other occasion, he’d walk up to her and ask for her hand for a dance. He is nothing if not a gentleman after all. But Killian has no interest in marrying someone as some kind of alliance, out of some kind of duty. It may be but a foolish wish, but spending his early years listening to the cooks and maids gossip about their husbands as he was eating an extra pastry in the pantry made him believe that marriage was for love, not duty.

As someone who has been in love, who has experienced the highs and lows of fiery passion and deep affection, he cannot imagine being the husband of a woman who very clearly does not want to be his wife.

In fact, she wants to be the wife of another man, something she told him the night their upcoming betrothal was announced, and he knew then and there that there would be no marriage. He’d protested with his father, with his mother too, and they’d shut him down in every aspect. Currently, he’s coming from begging once more not to make him go through with it, to let Ariel marry the man she is in love with, but he’d been told no before the words could even pass through his lips.

So, now, Killian’s letting his anger fuel him as he walks over the rocky path down to the docks, his own personal sail boat tied to the moor at the end. It’s a small thing, his Jolly, but it’s got a cabin below deck that’s large enough for him to sleep and prepare food, and that’s all that he needs whenever he’s sailing. There’s no one around, so he takes the opportunity to quickly run through his tasks and steer the Jolly out into the open waters, the sun beating down on his back and likely tanning the exposed flesh from where he rolled up his shirt sleeves and trousers.

The ocean is the place that calms him, miles and miles of blue water stretched in front of him until it molds into the blue of the sky of the horizon. Resentment for his father festers inside of him as well as resentment for his mother and Liam. They have power with Brennan, have the ability to get him to listen, and yet they didn’t help him get out of a situation like this when they themselves were allowed to marry for love.

Cruelty develops in many forms, but one of the most dangerous is in loved ones not listening when one speaks.

That’s exactly what has happened to him, and if he could sail to the horizon and be one with the ocean or one with a remote island away from the pressures of being a prince, that would be exactly what Killian would do.

If only wishes were granted.

Suddenly, the bright blue sky turns dark, sunlight fading in favor of the white glow of the stars above, and the water beneath Killian begins to swirl, everything happening so quickly that he has no chance to even attempt to change direction, to outrun the magic that he’s being sucked into. He may have been promoted to Captain prematurely, but he’s a hell of a Captain and can outrun anything.

Anything but this.

All he has is a moment to tightly wrap his fingers around the wheel before his vision is going back too.

-/-

“Hello.”

“Dammit. Wake up.”

Killian moves to open his eyes, but as the first sliver of light hits, his lids shut tightly, blocking out everything so that all he can see his darkness while his head pounds, the blood running through his veins focusing on his temple and killing him. He might as well have spent a night in a tavern carrying around his own bottle of rum and drinking the entire thing for what this feels like.

Fuck.

What has happened?

“Hello,” a soft female voice sounds as he feels fingertips against his ankle, sharp nails poking at his skin. “I know you’re awake now.”

Slowly, he opens his eyes, lifting his arm to block the sun while he takes in his surroundings. His back is resting against damp sand, his feet cool and submerged in water, and he can smell enough to know that it’s ocean water.

Is he at home?

No, definitely not at home. The greenery is too tropical, too much like something out of the Southern Isles, and with every blink, memories of a darkened sky and a swirling ocean come back to him. There’s nothing after that, however, and he moves his fingers to pinch against the skin at his forearm just to see if the pinch of flesh can aid him in discovering if he’s living in some kind of afterlife.

The pain is definitely there, but where is he?

“Did you hurt your head?”

His head snaps back to the sound of the woman’s voice in front of him, and when he sees her, he swears that he’s delusional and is definitely halfway into some kind of afterlife.

The woman in front of him is gorgeous. Her skin is fair, much fairer than his, but covered in faint freckles that he imagines become more plentiful the closer one is to her, and she has long, golden hair falling off of her shoulders in thick waves that he knows of many a maiden who would be envious. The hair covers her unbound breasts, pretty pink buds right in his eyeline, and as much as he would like to look, his gaze glances upwards to look into the depths of her emerald eyes instead.

What exactly is happening to him?

“Can you speak?” she prods, her fingers squeezing his ankle once more. “You are definitely old enough to know how to speak, but who am I to say? Some have their voices taken away from them, and I know nothing about you.”

“I- I can speak,” Killian stutters out, his throat achingly dry. “Do you have water?”

The woman arches a blonde brow and splashes water from the ocean with a flick of her hand. “We’re surrounded by it, actually.”

“Well there’s no need to be a ponce about it,” Killian huffs as he digs his elbows into the sand and starts to move backward, realizing that he very well might be in danger here. This woman seems innocent enough, even if she’s dressed a bit indecently, but he can’t be sure. He isn’t sure of much right now. “Who are you? Where am I? Where are your clothes?”

She rolls her eyes, the green disappearing for a moment, before slinking back into the ocean so that she covers herself, only her shoulders and her hair visible to him.

“One question at a time.” She raises a singular finger to prove her point, and her right arm is covered in bracelets and jewels, the metal clanking together noisily. “My name is Emma.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Swan.”

“Is that your real last name?”

“No,” she smirks, the pink of her lips inviting but he knows temptation and lust when he feels it. There’s too much that he doesn’t know, and his legs don’t feel strong enough to run away. When he pats on his thighs, he realizes that he doesn’t have his dagger either. “But it’s what you can call me. I’ve been told that I’m as graceful as a swan.”

She flicks her hair over her shoulder then, the smile on her lips fading the slightest bit, and he catches the smallest bit of a lie there. He’s always been good at reading others, but she’s confusing him with her façade. He can’t tell what’s underneath it all.

“Alright then, Swan,” Killian says pointedly, “where am I?”

“An island.”

“For fuck’s sake, I knew that,” he groans, getting enough energy to sit up so that he can brush the sand off of his shirt. “Can you give me a little more detail?”

“I don’t know any more detail,” Emma says with a dramatic flourish that he can tell is fake. She seems more the type to enjoy cynicism or being facetious than being dramatic. “It’s an island. There’s no name, and no one lives here. So, I guess you could call it whatever you want. Name it after yourself for all I care.”

His heartbeat picks up, heat prickling over his skin that has nothing to do with the sun shining down on him, and his worries multiply until there’s too many to count. Danger is likely surrounding him, even if Emma claims that no one else lives here, but then again, if no one lives here, how is he supposed to get home?

Where the hell is his ship?

“Do you know where it is? If I were to show you a map, could you tell me where we are? What about the stars? Do they appear at night? Is there night here? Are we still in the Northern Isles? Have you heard of Okeanos? Why the bloody hell are you in the water?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Emma chuckles, clearly amused by him. What he would give to not sound like a fumbling child. He should get it together, not show his weakness or his nerves. Hitting his head has obviously troubled him, but he must be calmer now. “You need to calm down. I get it. It’s confusing. This has happened a couple of times, so I’m pretty used to explaining it by now.”

“You often find people shipwrecked to this island for no one?”

“A few times.”

She submerges in the water, every bit of her disappearing, but then he sees a flash of red scales, ones belonging to a mermaid, and the vibrant color of her tail calms him if only because he knows that she’s not a siren for they have gray and black scales to shadow the darkness of their hearts. Shit. What is even happening?

“I’m a mermaid,” she tells him when she emerges closer to shore, her breasts on display for him again, no part of her seeming demure. “Well, no, actually, I’m a human who has been cursed to be a mermaid, and I’m the only one who lives on this island. I don’t know how it happened before you ask. Everyone always asks, and I have no idea. I could have wished on a damn starfish for all I know. I don’t really know how long I’ve been here, but I do know that I’ve had three people show up here. All of them have long since left since everyone always leaves, so it is possible. That should be hopeful for you.”

“Why can’t you leave?”

She nods her head to the side, pointing out at the ocean. “There’s a barrier. Every time I swim close to it, I get catapulted back here. I don’t – I don’t know what’s happened, so I can’t tell you more. There’s fresh water half a mile inland.”

With that, she dives back under the water and swims away, the ocean rippling behind each flick of her tail until there are no more ripples and he’s left sitting on the beach unsure of anything. Most of him is still hoping for this to be a dream, for him to wake up in his bed and for it to be his wedding day. He never thought that a marriage to someone who he doesn’t wish to be betrothed to would be an occasion and commitment he seeks out, especially when he was very literally sailing away from all of his obligations, but he craves at least the familiarity of knowing that bits of his life are set out before him.

His worst nightmares have now become his hopeful dreams.

-/-

Days begin to pass as he explores the island. Emma was right about a fresh water stream half a mile into the island, and once he finds it, he drinks as much as he possible can to rehydrate himself. All of his years of schooling and Naval experience did not prepare him for this, for living so primevally when he’s always lived in luxury, but he likes to think of himself as a resourceful man who can think on his feet. Very rarely has anyone ever acknowledged his intelligence, most everyone focused on his privilege or on the talents of his elder brother, but without sounding boastful, he knows that his intelligence is nothing at which to be scoffed.

And his time in the Navy allowed him to think on his feet and live off of scarce resources in a way that wouldn’t have happened had he stayed in the palace.

If he doesn’t die on this bloody island, he’s demanding that every Naval man is taught how to survive like this. He’s sure as hell not marrying someone he doesn’t want to when he’s somehow become stranded. He may have wished to go back to that life in his beginning moments of being left alone here, but this time alone has given him bits of clarity.

For the first time in years, he can hear his own thoughts overpowering those of his family.

There’s a makeshift shelter that must have been made by those people here before him, and instead of being stubborn enough to build his own, he makes use of it, making necessary repairs and improvements with what he can. It’s not the best shelter, but it will keep rain away under the tartan roof and the large jungle leaves that that tangle together above him. Either whoever was here before truly was able to escape or Emma was lying to him and they died. She wasn’t telling the full truth, but she wasn’t blatantly lying.

Intriguing.

As the weeks pass on, each day marked into the trunk of a tree next to his camp, he looks for Emma. Most of his time is spent inland, collecting water and food from foul that he finds. The berries are plentiful, but since he’s unsure of which are poisonous, he avoids them. The only real time that he gets to search for her, even unconsciously, is when he’s drying his clothes on rocks near the shore or when he is standing in shallow waters looking for fish to spear. She’s nothing but a ghost, however, and like so many things now, he wonders if she was real at all.

Piecing together the threads of his memory is proving to be more difficult than he thought, and he foolishly keeps hoping that maybe there truly is some kind of magical starfish to wish upon that will take him home.

Forty-two days in, his skin tanned and his hair long, the hair on his jaw hastily and messily shaved with the same spear that he uses to catch fish, he finally sees a flash of red out in the ocean and the ripple effect that comes afterward. She’s moving closer to him at a quick pace, and Killian is both thrilled and terrified all at once, a combination of emotions that he hasn’t felt since the time that he and Liam took their horses and rode them up the steep cliffs of the mountain and nearly tumbled over when they reached the climbable peak.

There’s a splash in the water, and he sees Emma use her arms to climb atop a large rock that he usually dries his trousers on. She’s as beautiful as he remembers, her hair even longer than it was before and her skin more tanned, but the sunlight glints off of her in a beautiful array of colors that can’t be replicated.

Enchanting.

“Swan,” he calls out, and she jumps, her knuckles turning white and her eyes widening almost as if she’s afraid.

It’s now that he realizes that he asked for her name, but she didn’t ask for his. Why would she not?

“Hello,” she warily greets, adjusting her hair over her shoulders so that he can now see that she has starfish covering her breasts. He can’t help but chuckle at that, at the impracticality of it, and it honestly must be some kind of magic for he’s sure that the starfish should not be able to live like that. “You haven’t built a boat to escape yet, I see.”

“It’s a bit difficult to build a boat, Swan. I have no tools except for a spear that I found from whoever was here before me. Who was here before me, love?”

“A man.”

He arches a brow. “Can you tell me more than that?”

She flicks her tail against the water, covering his face in salt spray. “No. He was a man, they all are, and while I used to get to know them, I don’t anymore. Everyone leaves, so why should I bother in making conversation?”

His heart breaks for her the slightest bit. As much as he likes to spend time alone, most everyone craves human contact. She should. She’s obviously been stranded on this island for a long time, and if she was cursed, she had a life before this. She likely had family, friends, someone she could have been betrothed to. He’s been here for forty-two days, and all he wants is to talk to someone.

To her.

“I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon, love.” He raises his arm to brush the hair back over his forehead. “And maybe if you trust me, if you at least ask for my name, we can work together to try to get you out of here too. All curses can be broken somehow.”

Her eyes squint to study him, her lips pressing into a straight line, and the stern expression on her face doesn’t change. “What is your name?”

“Killian Jones.”

Purposefully, he leaves out any and all titles that he has. He’s stranded on an island where no one is. He can be whoever he is, his own person outside of his family, and he is simply Killian Jones.

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s your only reaction to that?”

“I’m not your friend, Jones. You can’t help me. You think you can, but you can’t. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

Killian steps closer to her, his feet sinking into the damp sand the closer he gets to the ocean. “I’d like to talk is all. I tell a damn good story, and I don’t see anything wrong with a little entertainment. No pressure, however, Swan. Any partnership we have is as much up to you as it is to me, but I think we could make quite the team.”

“I’ll consider it,” she huffs as her eyes flicker up and down his body.

“Good.”

Emma swims away then, her tail a flash of red in the water, but two days later she returns when he’s drying his shirt on the rocks. His clothes are beginning to wear thin, and he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do about that. Or how he’s going to build this ship to go home. He should likely start searching for wood, but for now he takes the time to idly chat with Emma and ask her about what she does during the day since she obviously has to have a way to bide her time. She doesn’t give away much, just the smallest bits of how she has a lagoon that she likes to spend time in and how she enjoys seeing how many times she can circle the perimeter of her boundary in a day. Apparently, she’s improving her speed.

Little by little and day by day, they speak more. Every evening he walks from inland to the shore and finds her waiting on a rock that he comes to think of as her rock. It makes him smile, finding her there, and he also smiles at how much she’s opening up to him. It’s lonely living out here, and he’s only been here for seventy-seven days. Who knows how long Emma has been here?

Maybe in a comforting move for himself but one that is truly for Emma, he asks her about her life before this. She’s from a kingdom in the Southern Isles, Misthaven actually, and while he’s never been, he knows enough about it to be able to ask her questions and follow along with her stories. She knows of Okeanos as well, but obviously not enough to know that he is the Prince, and he likes simply being able to talk about horseback riding and the adventures he and Liam have gotten up to or about his favorite kind of pastries.

Emma is a big fan of pastries, he discovers, and one night, it’s all they talk about, debating the merits of pies and sweet cakes and if cinnamon should be included in a cup of hot cocoa. According to Emma, it should, and he takes her at her word. He’ll have to try it when he gets home.

Home.

He needs to figure out a way to get home.

So, during his days, Killian finds wood and vine, scouring the island for resources to both build a stable enough raft to sail home and also have provisions to keep him alive. He has a faint idea how far away he is, how long this trip will take, so he needs to be prepared. He also needs to start figuring out a way to break Emma’s curse. Over the months, he’s grown so fond of her that he thinks he might even fancy her. For the first time in his life, even including Milah, he’s been able to talk to someone without fear of being proper or saying the wrong things. He can share his love of recreational activities, complain about his parents, and tell of his wishes for his life that he’ll never be able to actually live out.

Emma’s heart is so visibly broken, the men who have been here before him obviously being the ones to break it even if she doesn’t say so in clear words, and as much as he wants to get away, he’s not sure how he could ever leave her.

Her laugh is even brighter than the sun, and he doesn’t know how he would survive not being able to hear it.

Making her laugh is what he looks forward to every day, and one-hundred-and-three days in, he starts making camp on the sand by the ocean so that he can spend his nights talking to her too. The way she speaks, so carefree of expectations, is the most refreshing thing he’s ever heard, and he could listen to her sailor’s mouth full of colorful curses for hours.

“You like reading, right?” she asks him tonight, her cheek resting on his chest while she looks up at him. She kept complaining about sand getting in her eyes when she rested on the sand, so he offered his stomach, even if it means that he’s now resting in the damp sand.

“Aye,” he sighs, his fingers toying with the tips of her damp hair, “I am. I’ve read maybe a few hundred novels in my lifetime. I have a – there’s a library that I have access to, and I want to manage to read all of them.”

“How will you ever live if you spend all of your time in a library?”

How will you ever live if you stay on this island forever, Emma?

“Through the stories, of course.”

“Do you think any of those stories can help me with my situation?” Emma whispers, her voice so quiet that it could very well get carried away with the wind.

Killian hums, unsure of how to answer her question. He can only think of one solution, but he’s not entirely sure that it won’t send her diving back into the ocean to never return again. So, he holds that one close to his chest until he knows for sure that it has the possibility of working.

Or, at least, until he’s brave enough to try.

“What situation, darling? The one where you find me so handsome? I don’t think you can change that.”

“You’re an ass.”

“You sure do like talking about that particular part of my anatomy.”

“Well, it does also match your personality.” She smiles up at him, something soft and happy, and Killian’s heart very well may flutter in a way that it hasn’t for years. “But no, my situation,” she insists, splashing her tail in the water for emphasis. “Do you have any ideas?”

“No, darling,” he lies, partially at least, “I don’t have any ideas that I know will solve your little issue, but I promise I’ll keep thinking.”

Time passes slowly and yet quickly all at once, and Killian spends his nights with Emma, the two of them wrapped up in each other as much as they can be. She’s been here for four years, apparently, and once a year, a new man shows up and then eventually abandons her after promising not to. It explains so much about her behavior at first, about the way that she treated him, and as Killian teaches Emma about the constellations in the sky that allow him to know that he is not too far from home, he promises himself once and for all that he cannot leave her here.

He loves her.

There’s no rhyme or reason to it, no way for him to explain it, but according to all of the stories he heard as a child, this is the way that it’s actually supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be fiery arguments and even more fiery love-making sessions to make up for it. That’s entertaining and enthralling all at once, and while he’s sure it happens in every courtship, that’s not how it should be all the time.

Love should be the ability to sit quietly in each other’s company without living in search for words to fill the air between two people – or a person and a cursed mermaid in their case. It should be trusting someone else with the depths of your heart or allowing them to make you laugh. It should be exactly what he and Emma have as warm breaths of air puff onto his chest from where she’s fallen asleep on him after talking to her about the Cygnet constellation in the sky that reminds him of her.

As the sun rises in the sky the next morning, Killian groggily helps Emma back into the water. While she’s never said how much she needs to be in the water, he knows that she can’t stay out of it for too long. Last night was far too long. So, with her arms draped over his shoulders and her tail held in his hands, he walks the two of them into the ocean, not caring about the way the water weighs his clothes down, until they’re mostly submerged.

Emma blinks up at him, sleep still in those beautiful emerald eyes, and she’s got this drowsy little smile on her face that he wants to lean forward and taste. He doesn’t get a chance, though, because with the orange coating of the sky behind them and the cool ocean water around them, Emma presses forward and slides her lips over his.

Bloody hell.

His lips are dry, hers too, but there’s something soft and glorious about the kiss anyways. It’s slow the way she moves her mouth, almost hesitant, and he gently guides her by tilting her head with his hand and by taking control of the kiss to deepen it. A current runs between them, the flames of fire stroking his spine and his desire, and if he were drowning in the water, he wouldn’t care.

All he cares about is drowning in Emma.

Suddenly, though, Emma pulls back, her eyes widened, and his stomach drops at the thought of her regretting the kiss. But then there’s a swirl in the water, one that resembles the swirl of the ocean that took him to this island, but instead of darkness, everything is as golden as Emma’s hair.

“Emma, what’s happening?” he gasps out, clutching onto her a little tighter.

“I don’t – I don’t know.”

He sees a flash of green, and then everything goes black.

-/-

When Killian wakes, his head is pounding, his heart beating too quickly, but he doesn’t care about any of that. His first thought is Emma and where she is, so he opens his eyes despite how awful the blinding light is and goes out in search for her.

Luckily, she’s right by his side.

And she has legs.

Holy shit does she have legs, but that is something for him to focus on at a later time.

“Hi,” Emma croaks out, and he helps her stand, her legs nearly giving out on her. She’s wearing no clothes, not even her starfish, so he quickly takes off his shirt and hands it to her, the frayed edges landing just at the tops of her thighs. For the first time, he sees her blush, as if she could be embarrassed, and he finds that he’s fond of that too.

He’s fond of everything about her.

“Hi,” he chuckles, leaning forward and cupping her cheeks so that he can kiss her again, just to reaffirm that the last kiss was real and because he loves her. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

Emma glances around, her eyes taking everything in, and the most beautiful smiles stretches from the left side of her mouth the other, her eyes crinkling with it. “Misthaven.”

“Misthaven?” he gasps, shaking his head in confusion. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter except that you’re home. Emma, you can go home to your family.”

“What about you?”

“Well, I’m obviously coming with you.”

“Are you?” Emma laughs, her eyes focused on him.

“Of course,” Killian chuckles, pulling her closer and wrapping himself in her embrace while Emma buries her head in his neck. “My love, I don’t have much experience with magic, but what we shared on that island, what allowed you to leave and return to your home, that was True Love’s kiss. I love you, Swan, and while I’ve got no real clue what’s ahead of us, I will always, always be by your side.”

(This may very well be the craziest day of his life.)

“I love you, Killian,” she whispers into his neck, and he feels the words over every inch of his flesh. “Thank you for not leaving me.”

“Never.”

Emma pulls back, smiling at him again, before taking his hand and tugging him forward on the beach. She obviously knows where she’s going, and he trusts her to follow her footsteps.

“Killian?” Emma questions.

“Yeah, Swan?”

“I’m going to take you to my family’s home, but I need you to know something first.” “And what’s that?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath. “I’m the Princess of Misthaven.”

Killian barks out a laugh, disbelief running through him, and he can do nothing but bring her knuckles to his lips to kiss. “Funny thing, my love, I’m the Prince of Okeanos.”

“Well, it looks like we have quite the adventure ahead of us then.”

#wishing on a star(fish)#cs prompts #cs fic #cs ff #cs fic prompter #captain swan fic

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meggannn · 5 years ago

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the itsv commentary is so full of great facts and bts info so i wanted to write down all my favorite parts, but i just ended up writing down anything that was interesting, which was honestly most of it. four thousand words later i ended up with their commentary on practically half the movie. i’ve put the interesting or funny bits that i jotted down behind a cut if anyone is interested.

this commentary audio had Phil Lord (co-writer, producer), Chris Miller (producer), Bob Persichetti (co-director), Peter Ramsay (co-director), Rodney Rothman (co-director, co-writer), but it was kind of difficult to tell who was talking most of the time, so i didn’t include names on who said what, unless I knew for certain who was talking.

The first Miles sticker in the film is a “glitch” flashing on the Sony Pictures Animation logo. “Already putting his stamp on the movie.”

RIPeter is meant to be an amalgamation of all the Spider-Man we know, “good and bad” (as the dance happens, someone corrects him:) “Good and GREAT.”

(“I’ve got an excellent theme song, and a... so-so popsicle.”)

“That joke saved the movie.” “The dance move or the popsicle?” “The dance move. I resisted that dance joke and Rodney pushed hard for it (…) It told the audience what movie they were watching.”

“It was Rodney who was really pushing for him to be in this relatable idea of [Miles] not knowing the lyrics to this song but singing along.” “We started animating before the song was finished. It was really easy to not know the words then.”

“There are three very long shots that introduce Miles.” (The shot at home, the shot of him walking past Brooklyn Middle, the shot of him entering Visions.) “That was a deliberate choice, to open with a big crazy Spider-Man montage, and then with Miles, start a different pace, long shots, and just watch him and how he is, and don’t get too fancy with it. Although ironically these shots are really fancy.” The shot of him walking past Brooklyn Middle and the one of him walking into Visions are meant to directly contradict each other: his comfort zone vs him out of place in new surroundings. (Megan’s note: My take is that with these shots they might have been trying to represent his home, his past, and his future.)

“Everything [in this scene from color to sound] is meant to go from a very heightened experience with Peter to a very naturalistic experience with Miles.”

For the scene in the car, Shameik and Brian sat in chairs to set up in a car, with microphones and a rearview mirror. “Brian might have even been a little annoyed at Shameik a couple of times, and I think you can feel it in here, in a really wonderful way.”

(Talking about the chromatic aberration) “Sometimes it looks like you’re watching a 3D movie without the glasses on.” “That was on purpose.” “Every frame is supposed to feel like a piece of printed art.”

“On the cover of Great Expectations, there’s an image of Magwitch grabbing Pip’s shoulder in a cemetery.” “Foreshadowing!”

A side character named “Smiley Kid” is in several shots of miscellaneous Visions students. “Because he’s not a real person, I think we can say he is our least favorite person.” “I think he comes around. He’s great, then he’s bad, then he’s great again.” “He’s like the extra in every live action who worms his way to the front of every shot.” “He just almost always looks in the camera.”

Miles’s expression when the teacher calls him out at trying to fail was “completely ripped off of President Barack Obama.”

Benson Avenue was meant to call back to where one of their fathers grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

(“Hypnotize” by Notorious BIG playing on Aaron’s stereo) “Biggie Smalls in an animated Spider-Man movie. In what universe?” “This is the ideal timeline that we’re living in.”

(This comment is said as Miles presses his face on the glass:) “That changed people’s perceptions of the movie. When we had this in, it really lit people up.” (To be honest, I can’t tell if this comment was made in response to Biggie Smalls, or to Miles pressing his face on the glass.)

They all loved Mahershala Ali. “The shoulder touch would work if your voice sounded like Mahershala’s.” Everyone was in awe every time they recorded with him. “He makes you want to be a better person when you’re around him.” “He’s got a high bar.” “Then he goes away and it kinda wears off.”

The subway Aaron brings Miles to was a place he and Jeff used to paint in when they were young, which adds another layer to him talking about/missing Jeff when he mentions it to Miles. The age difference probably means Aaron was younger than Jeff, and now he’s the older one with Miles here.

There’s a bigger history between Jeff and Aaron that’s only hinted at, and part of it is the reason why Miles has his mother’s last name, not his father’s. It’s implied Jeff was worried his bad history would follow Miles if he took his last name. Also because “then he would be named Miles Davis.”

They were excited to depict a spider-man experiencing spider-sense for the first time.

“We did the most expensive thing. In all choices.”

“People ask, How does Miles with a cop and nurse parents afford Jordans? And the answer is, they were a gift from his uncle.”

(On Kingpin’s animation possibilities.) “We always had this idea that he was the living expression of a black hole. The right for him is this floating head on a body that we could scale up and down depending on the shot with hands at the end of arms.” “While creating a black hole, he is a black hole.”

Someone felt very passionate about including the dimensional map showing the other universes the collider was connecting with. “It felt so important to me.”

(Paraphrasing this one) “Once Phil and Lord gave the MO to push convention, the gauntlet had been thrown, we started getting crazy stuff back. And a lot of the time our art direction would just be like, ‘Yeah! COOL!' ‘Do more of that!’”

(Peter rolls his eyes as the Prowler menacingly steps forward) “I like that [RIPeter] is exhausted at the idea of being killed.”

“The Prowler chase sequence was the first sequence that went through the whole pipeline.” (This and the cemetery scene were the first.)

(The burst card of Miles jumping over the subway tracks) Bob Persichetti: “I had such high hopes to do a lot of burst cards, I think that’s the only one I actually did.”

(as Rio comforts Miles in Spanish) “We never translated on screen (…) The idea being, this is the fabric of Miles’s life.” “This was inspired obviously by Brian Michael Bendis” (co-creator of Miles Morales and his longtime writer) “and Miles’ bicultural background. But also Phil Lord grew up in a bilingual house.” “And I took Spanish in high school.”

(Stan Lee cameo) “[Stan is] the only performer in the movie who we went to. Everyone else came into recording studios, but Stan Lee, we dispatched the microphone to him.” “Everybody wanted to animate Stan.” “If you hit pause any time a train goes by, because everyone wanted to animate Stan, he’s in almost every single train.” “He’s an extra in a lot.”

(Miles reading comics before jumping off the building) “If you notice in that comic book, it’s True Life Tales of Spider-Man, and to keep his cover, his name is not Peter Parker. In the comic book, his name is Billy Barker.” “Great.” “Who could ever figure that out, right?”

A bunch of drawings around the grave of Peter Parker’s tombstone were all done by different kids of people on the show.

They mention the cemetery scenes was one of the first ones finalized. When they were still trying to figure out how to bring Miles to life, “you can see that his performance evolved from this [cemetery] scene.” “It’s super expressive.”

There was lots of debate on how much paunch should be on Peter B’s stomach. There are something like 3-5 different body models used throughout the movie.

They all loved the scenes of Peter B in his apartment: the cut to him crying in the shower, to pinned to the bed with his butt out, to his pose on the futon flipping through channels. Someone really liked “[his] little quivering [spidey] eyes on the seahorse shot.”

The comic book page-flipping device was a “late breaking” realization of how to transition between flashbacks and present day.

Chris Miller did the voice of the cop dispatcher on the radio saying the “Child dressed like Spider-Man dragging a homeless corpse behind a train” line. “The role I was born to play.”

In the walk-and-talk scene in the alley, they felt inspired to take a lot of crazy shots. “We were passionate that a Spider-Man movie needed to be shot from their point of view, where every surface can be the ground.”

“Because of questions on the internet, we took of one of Miles’s shoes. Just in case anybody wanted to know why he was sticking.” “Another thing that I was passionate about but nobody cared about but me.”

“One of the big tricks of this sequence and of this relationship was to let you believe that Peter was a good guy even though he was being a real… turkey… to Miles.” (Peter saying “No, does it look like it’s working? No! No, it’s not…”) “This was one of the few moments that we added kind of late just to know that he was a sweet pea underneath it all.” “Finding the right level for his not caring about Miles, and then learning to care about Miles, finding the right level from the beginning all the way through to the end, was something that took a lot of nuance.”

The interrogation/alley and burger scenes probably went through the most amount of reworks and rewriting than any others, because there was so much exposition and “you got tired” watching two heavy information scenes in a row. And given how often they said “this scene went through so many iterations” in this commentary, these two scenes must have been a LOT of rewrites. (Some of the alternate burger scenes can be seen in the film’s trailers and alternate universe cut.)

“I still kind of miss the unfinished version of this shot, where his feet… He had no toes for a really long time for some reason.” “You had to say like fifty times, ‘We’re gonna add toes right?’” “‘We’re gonna get his toes on there, right?’”

“One of the things about Kingpin is that he just magically appears outside of the car. Because there’s no way he could get actually get through the doorway.” “Maybe in the future where you guys are watching this ten years from now, someone will have figured out how to animate that. But in 2018 it’s still impossible.”

(Miles finding Peter in the vents) “These moments were really when you started to feel the relationship between the two of them develop.” “I love that Miles has to fight to occupy the same space and become an equal to Peter.”

(Peter mockingly blah-blahing as Doc Ock explains the danger of the collider, then saying afterward “Oh nevermind, that is bad.”) “For the sake of a laugh, we undercut the stakes, and then immediately had to buy the stakes back.”

“We went through probably 70 different version of what Miles would look like while invisible … and I like how how he comes in and out of invisibility was stylized to some degree.”

They say the Doc Ock/Peter scene was “really really bad at one point” and now it’s “one of the most wonderful surprises.”

Ock’s computer is based off of Phil Lord’s actual desktop. Some files are cut off the edges of the screen because they just dragged things off of the internet.

(Peter glitching in the chair) “I’m remembering all of the conversations that determined that it was funniest if you left Peter’s head unglitched.”

It was Justin Thompson’s idea to use soft robotics for this version of Dock Ock’s tentacles.

Everyone, from animation to the sound team, saw Doc Ock’s tentacles about 3 months before completion, went (exasperated) “Oh THAT’S what they look like? We’ll have to redo X Y Z whole thing…”

You can tell they loved the monitor joke. “Very silly things happening around very cool things.”

The Bagel! text was added last minute. “That was a joke pitch by Justin that was taken seriously.”

“Everyone felt empowered to pitch crazy ideas, and that’s why it felt so rich and deep.”

“It’s no understatement to say that this look in the forest is one of the hardest things in a movie like this. To make something look realistic is something we know how to do pretty well. But to make it look graphic and illustrative is almost impossible.” “Especially when you’re close and far to trees within the same shot at times.” “We had so many conversations with Danny, our V Effects supervisor, like, ‘But, you guys, we’re going to be in a forest, you really don’t want the leaves to rustle in the wind?' ‘No, we’ll be okay!’” (Later, when Peter and Miles swing off together, the leaves rustle:) “See, the leaves can move, guys!” “We just CHOSE for them not to.” “It was an absolute creative choice.”

“This is another moment in the story when we really open this beat up to let Peter and Miles have a victory together and cement their bond, that you really were rooting for their relationship. We breezed through this quickly and you didn’t have the same connection with the two of them.” “One of the things in the screenplay that we discovered really late is that you needed to have a lot of smaller, positive accomplishments throughout the center of the movie to have it work right.” “(…) This middle section of the movie is about Peter and Miles learning to fall for each other, basically.”

(During Gwen’s intro) “We give just enough to hopefully tease you guys into being really into each one of these characters’ origin story.”

“One week of days and nights just passed in that one shot.” “She hit a time anomaly on her way to this dimension.”

“She vibes with Miles after he had been bitten by the spider, and she purposefully bumped into him there, in case you didn’t catch that.”

“We were trying to make Ock such an intelligent and socially awkward person that then turns into this really formidable equal to Kingpin.”

(When Peter thwips May’s doorbell and then exhales with his hands on his hips.) “One of my favorite poses in the movie.” “That pose gets a laugh all by itself.”

“‘You look tired’ is a thing my mom says to me every time I see her.” “It’s accurate.”

“I fought hard to have (May) kick that door open.” “I tried to cut that and then you uncut it, correctly.” “Let’s be honest, she’s not treating her house very well.”

(In the Spidey Lair) “Lots of Easter eggs here.” “We should’ve put an actual Easter egg in this shot.”

They debated for a long time putting the B-team spiders in the picture at all, knowing it would be more work, wanting to make their characters worth being in the picture without taking away from Miles. “Nothing worked in the movie until it had something to do with Miles and his story.”

(On the spider team testing Miles:) This angle was “late-breaking, on the backside”: “This made it feel like they all cared about Miles, even though they maybe didn’t believe in him.” “Just Peter going ‘Cool it.’ For the longest time we didn’t have something like that.”

(Pretty sure this is Peter Ramsay) “When you’re making a movie it’s like you’re building an emotion machine. You’ve gotta have all the parts calibrated the right way, make sure it’s properly oiled, cause if it isn’t, the gears are gonna stick, and you’re not gonna feel right.”

The Prowler Sound™ is not a jaguar or cat, but an elephant. “We only did the dark scenes first cause they were easier to light.” (Some of those scenes they mention are Miles running from the Prowler, the cemetery scene, Miles writing the note in Aaron’s apartment.)

They tried about a million songs for Peni while she makes a new goober. (The song used is not in the soundtrack, but it’s “Want It Here” by Xenia Pax.)

(On Peni’s Heelies) “This shot’s not long enough to get her from the kitchen to the couch.” “Is that why?!” “That’s one hundred percent why. Just put those little wheelies on here!”

In the first draft, there was an idea there RIPeter was a grad student under tutelage of male Doc Ock so that’s how Liv and Ock knew each other.

“The table pushing into Miles. That was something my older brother, when we would fight when we were kids, he would do that to me.”

(When Aaron closes his eyes, refusing to kill Miles:) “That little look. ‘Cause he knows what’s coming.”

(They’re all quiet as Miles carries Aaron to safety, caught up in the scene.) “We’re all kind of gripped.” “We’re supposed to be giving interesting anecdotes here, guys, come on.” “It was so cold that day…”

Prowler’s death was the first session they did with Mahershala. “He’s a method actor, and his death scene, it was like he was really dying.”

“We gave animators the freedom. You can make Miles unattractive. He can ugly cry, because this is raw and it feels so emotional.”

(When Miles throws his sketchbook out the window, only for it to immediately come flying back in:) “It’s a one-shot transition from deep emotion and regret and pain. We said, ‘He’s gonna throw the one thing out that really represents his uncle, yet it’s gonna come flying back in.’ It was hard to make that shot work.” “It’s a great story statement that you can’t lose the things that make up your past.”

When everyone is talking about someone they’ve lost, an alternate line has Ham saying “I lost my uncle. He was electrocuted, and it smelled so good.” It got a lot of laughs, but the team says that from then on, the audience “resisted” Ham because he killed the mood, and it was hard for people to see him as anything other than a goofy cartoon, so they changed the line to “Miles, the hardest part about this job is you can’t always save everyone.” (Megan’s note: I think they probably didn’t bother to re-animate the others’ facial reactions after changing Ham’s line, because judging by the reactions from Peter and Miles in this shot it feels like Ham just said something annoying/out of place lol.)

When Peter says “It wasn’t their decision” (for Miles to stay behind), Miles has a very quick reaction shot where he turns away, bites his lip, and shakes his head. Someone mentions it’s one of their favorite shots of Miles.

(On the scene with Miles and his dad at the door) “When Brian Tyree Henry saw this scene [with a rough performance, just animation], he got the movie. It made such an impression on him. He was very happy to come in and pick any lines up for us and just keep working.” “We were working on the shots on layup for this. The idea of having them be on thirds to start, then coming closer, and finally ending with the final split-screen shot at the end.” “And Jefferson crosses the scene, which I think is really interesting. They start off on opposite sides of the screen. He makes the first move.” “It’s amazing to me to see Miles transformed by his father.” “It feels earned.”

“In an earlier version of that scene, Aunt May gave him a version of that speech, which was nice, but it needed to be Dad.”

(Later on, someone mentions:) “Tom was the first one to say ‘It shouldn’t be Aunt May at the door, it should be Dad.’ And we all sort of slapped our foreheads going ‘That’s absolutely right.’”

“After our premiere, my 9yo son [Luca? Luka?] asked me this. ‘So Papa, you know Miles spray-paints one of those suits and it becomes his suit. Super cool, Papa, but it shouldn’t fit him. It’s way bigger.’” (Laughter) “Did he have to wait a few hours for it to dry?” "We cut out the sequence where Aunt May sewed it tighter and altered it.” “And they had the hair-dryer express drying it. ‘Your friends are in danger.’ ‘Well just let me let it dry first!” “I tell you, spray paint, five minutes and you’re dry.” “She pre-altered it. She knew he was coming. She said, ‘It took you long enough.’ It all happened in advance.”

“The scene of Miles falling and everything slowing down and I always appreciated that Phil called out he was ‘falling and rising’ and the same time.” “It made the movie. A rare thing that goes from the stage directions all the way through production and onto the screen.”

“This sequence used to end with him getting hit by a truck. But really felt like it was time for Miles to get a big victory.” (Megan’s note: This scene is shown in draft stage in the alternate universe cut. Miles makes his leap, free-runs over some trucks and buildings, and his scene is interrupted when he gets hit by a truck and crashes to the ground. There’s a moment where he collects himself, the pushes himself to his feet and runs off into the city to join the others at the collider. I interpret this idea to be their showing how Miles fully embraces the “Get back up” lesson, since Miles’s pose in the sketches imitates the same one in the basement when the spiders are hazing him and he’s on the ground.) “And now people applaud.” “There’s a general attitude with this movie that was like, ‘How can we do things differently?’ That was a case of when we were like, ‘What if we didn’t have the audience feel really good in this moment?” (Laughter) “What if we had them feel really bad? Right at the moment they want to feel good, what if we made them feel terrible?” (Joking) “Let’s poke THEM in the eye.” “I think in early drafts, we just were like, Miles is losing and falling short the whole movie until the very end. And when we put that up, we realized that you needed to see him slowly winning and winning and winning until he won even bigger at the end.”

A set-up that never fully made it in the movie is that Fisk runs charities for Spider-Man and that’s why the dinner was set up like it was.

The bread scene was on the chopping block for a long time. “By adding this interaction, and making it about Peter and MJ and something real, all of a sudden this scene was worth it.” “It’s necessary to know what Peter’s giving up by sacrificing himself.” “It lasts just long enough because we learned that if you stay way from Miles too long--” (They interrupt here to point out two cameo people at dinner, “Danny and Josh,” who I couldn’t get a cap of) “--We lose our connection to the movie in a way. But at this point we care enough about Peter to want him to get back to MJ too.”

“The servers that were holding the movie were moving slow by the end of this shoot. And we had the best computers.” “At a certain point I think we overloaded Imageworks’ server. There was a moment they were afraid the movie was going to break their machine.” “Which was our whole idea. Our whole approach was, how do we break these pipes that make the movie?”

(During the final collider fight sequence, but they don’t specify what idea this was about specifically:) Chris Miller: “One of the only times I can ever remember saying ‘Okay you’ve gone too far.’ There was one brand where I was like, ‘I don’t get this.’ A few of the drawings that were somehow even more insane than this.” “What you’re saying, Chris, is that there’s a version of this scene that’s even crazier than this?” “Literally the only time I can remember going, ‘Okay guys, you’ve done it. You’ve broken it.’”

“I’m sure there’s are filmmakers watching this, so I think this is a learnable lesson from this sequence. Which is if you want to put something super crazy in your movie, wait until the very end when a lot of movie has been spent on your movie and your release date is 3 to 4 months away and they literally cannot stop you or else they have no movie.”

One of them points out Miles webs a turntable to propel himself upward. (Megan’s note: Miles also does this just as his own theme starts playing, which starts off with a record-scratch. I thought that was cool.)

(The moment when Gwen calls Miles “Spider-Man”:) “That choice went through a lot of iterations like “What’s the end of their relationship?” That she calls him Spider-Man instead of giving him a kiss on the cheek? It makes me well up just thinking about it.”

Kingpin breaks the glass of a building and the pieces fly toward Miles. Bob Persichetti calls these “Dorito chips.”

After the train enters a collider steam, there are versions of the interior of the train that flash from all five dimensions. There’s a futuristic Peni version, an old-timey Noir version, there’s a Gwen version… “As it passes through the beam, you get to see five versions of the train existing at once.”

(Vanessa and Richard seeing Kingpin) “This idea of repeating mistakes (for Kingpin). No matter what, he was gong to keep repeating these mistakes.” “He’s still who he is.”

“It was my dream to have Kingpin headbutt Miles and it finally came true.”

Each one of these character is in a black costume, and black surrounds them, and yet you can still see what’s happening.

“I remember people wanting to cut the shoulder-touch at the end.” “Who wanted to cut this?!” (Overlapping chatter) “No names in the screen.” “I remember feeling, oh my god. You’re LUCKY you got the shoulder touch in.” “The fact that you could pay off a set up that wasn’t even a set up…”

(On Miles seeing inside the universe as the collider explodes) “And then this. How long can it be? Let’s make it way too long!”

“The Anvil (that clanks at the end) was in Ham’s pocket?” “In the hammer space.”

(Miles hugs Jefferson) “This was the moment everybody went ‘Oh, YES.’ No matter what, we have to get to the hug, and the disguised voice, and the ‘I love you.’”

Someone describes the ending soundtrack as “Miles’ playlist meets Aaron’s playlist meets a superhero movie.”

They indirectly confirm Peter B and MJ do get back together. “Peter B gets his happy ending.” Another bit someone mentions was a late addition.

“I like that the movie starts and ends with Miles in his bedroom by himself.”

“We could do a whole other commentary saying completely different things.” “Probably four.” “We should do an alternate universe commentary.”

“You’re your own champion, I think that’s the idea. This is a story of empowerment. A champion is not coming from outside of you to come and save you. It’s your job.”

(As the credits roll) “Every name you see right now, we’ve seen them cry.” “We’ve made them cry.” “Every name you see right now has yelled at us.”

(On the post-credits scene) “We thought of this (post-credits scene) two months ago.” (They recorded this commentary in Dec 2018.) “We wanted to get Miguel in there and show the opportunities of where the multiverse could go.”

“I looked this up. This IS the most expensive dumb joke of all time.”

“We didn’t finish cleaning the cell on that close-up of Spider-Man.”

#into the spiderverse #miles morales #peter b parker #spiderverse stuff

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theloniousbach · 5 years ago

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A LISTENER'S JOURNAL #21: GOIN' (BACK) TO KANSAS CITY

My best, longest standing jazz friend who is also from Kansas City called my attention to Nathan W. Pearson's Goin' to Kansas City (University of Illinois Press, 1987). The good old Eden Webster Library had the volume as support for our strong jazz program. It was checked out a couple of times within a couple of years of publication according to the card in the book and has possibly gone out through electronic check out like mine since or used in the stacks. Still, a moment's pause on the fate of scholarly books.

It's a shame because the oral history with all of the players captured a dying generation, a passing moment. They conducted them in the mid-1970s when we were discovering the music generally even if KC swing was hardly our starting place. Jay McShann was around town as "the last of the Blue Devils;" talk was afoot for a Jazz Hall of Fame to go with revitalizing the 18th and Vine District; and we saw the Count Basie Band at KU (I was close to Freddie Green watching him impassively chording on a possibly unamplified, barely mic'ed arch top, eyebrows only slightly raised as horns crescendoed behind him. The Count himself showed that beaming smile and turned the band with deceptively simple mostly right handed lines. The magic was there, but the horns were mostly second or third generation. Maybe Jimmy Forrest played tenor.).

But, particularly with this return to this music, it is so clear how much of the KC aesthetic informs my sense of jazz: blues, riffs, driving rhythm.Basie was the starting point. I recall, admittedly hazily, that my dad vouchsafed that he preferred Basis to Ellington. We had a two record album put out as a fundraiser for the Congress of Racial Equality (that too is a story to unpack because my parents' politics had an influence, even they might say too much influence, on my life) with a whole side of the Basie band that I played often. I do know that I got the Verve "Essential Count Basis" album before I got "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," putting those Neal Hefti 1950s charts, Joe Williams blues, and that core repertoire ("April in Paris," "Jumping' at the Woodside," and a proper "One O'Clock Jump" in my brain. A previous off label album had a long jammed version of "OO'CJ" that only backed into the theme at the end--and that was unacceptable though now I'm curious about how they did it.).

But, man, Basie could swing hard with a brassy swagger. Those bluesy riffs set up solos, accessible, smart, and succinct. Basie himself was a presence and there was something about his presence. I recall vaguely seeing them (and possibly, separately, Ellington) as a kid as a local grocery store had a tiered trailer they could put in a parking lot with the band on it. That is the probable source of my father's preferences.

So KC jazz through Basie was formative. The prompt from the book is to get into the bascally 1930s roots of what I heard (and what caught Dad's ear as a teenager).There are just snippets of Walter Page and the Blue Devils and Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. But there is some with Basie playing a much bigger two handed piano. The recordings are earlier, reflecting less developed technology and likely less than ideal studio or remote conditions. The music is less developed too, so it sounds corny. Yes, the 4/4 rhythm is insistent, but we sneak things into it now; same with the harmonies in the horn section. But the blues is there loud and clear with riffs sounding even more focused because recordings could only be three minutes long.

The real rediscovery is the early Mary Lou Williams. I knew her some as a revered figure, including as a mentor to Monk and others. My mother's piano bench has a jazz instruction book by her that I wish I had now. But in these early recordings she is strong and varied and defining. There are even about five trio sides that really showcase her talent. I can hear the future there, even as I use her to epitomize the KC sound.

But, the KC sound is both distinctive in the moment, but has some of the future in it. Of course, that is precisely my lens--that jazz is at its heart blues, driving rhythm, and riffs. But it spurs the transition.I was acutely aware that Charlie Parker was from Kansas City, hitting New York with Jay McShann but cutting his teeth around town at the clubs and union hall. There was a jazz opera about him that we saw at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art when I was a kid and an antipathy to opera that I haven't shaken.

I am a child of bebop, but I am not steeped in the nuances of Parker's career, certainly the way I am with Monk's. I saw Dizzy Gillespie a couple of times in the 1970s (maybe even with electric piano and electric bass--not for fusion purposes just that's what people played) but he too is an ebullient presence and huge ears (as important as bebop is, he also promoted Afro-Cuban). I did of course dig back through Miles to his apprenticeship with Parker, but it's "Birth of the Cool" and the "Cookie'/Relaxin'/Steami'/Workin'" sessions with Coltrane where it starts for me.

It's a revelation to hear Parker this time with KC swing as the context. It slows down the caricature of harmonic pyrotechnics around the changes and I heard better what he was doing with the changes to create countless beautiful melodies. I heard a singing Bird--and that's a treat. I've read of his voracious musical curiosity, exploring the more modern European Art Music Tradition (Stravinsky, Impressionsts) to find melodic ideas.

The other revelation is the connection, including KC, with Lester Young. I know him (and the other great tenors of the 1930a--Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins--who influenced and transitioned to bebop) too little. Yes, the Billie Holiday dates but Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" tribute is far more familiar in many iterations than what Mingus celebrates. But Young is another captivating melodist. There's a delicacy and vulnerability to his playing that I didn't quite expect. He is a Kansas Citian through and through, but his tone commands a different kind of attention as we lean into it.

Pearson's book also captures the role of the Pendergast machine's corruption that shielded the city from the worst of the Great Depression and allowed the margins where this outlaw music could prosper.

My home town!

#listener's journal #2019 #jazz #Kansas City

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