#now adding deleted scenes into a movie? that is not something bad. sometimes it takes tome to realize something is missing

[eerna]

Obviously Dreamworks is doing this as a way to compete with Disney. I’m not against live actions. However i find it pointless to tell me the same story again just with real life elements. Use the live action to tell me more, expand the same universe that previously was a success for a new story.

Honestly, I find any kind of remakes of good things dumb. I don't really need an expansion on a story that is over and done with, because the fact that it managed to be good despite not featuring those things proves they weren't needed. And the fact that it was animated MEANS something, usually that it features something that can't possibly be done in live action. But there are COUNTLESS properties which failed in their executions that have SO MUCH to discover and reinterpret... so why not focus on them!! I don't think anyone would complain if you picked up a bad IP and made it good!!!!! I am once again asking someone to adapt Sword Art Online into a good story

[jazy3]

Free Guy Review

!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

If you haven’t seen the movie Free Guy (2021) stop reading right now! Drop what you’re doing and go get yourself a ticket! You’ll thank me later!

I loved this movie! I saw it this weekend for the second time because it’s that good! I first saw the trailer on YouTube a while back and then when theatres reopened a few weeks ago I saw the trailer again and my interest was piqued. I had high hopes for this movie based on the fun looking trailer, the premise, the cast, and the sense of fun and escapism that the movie seemed to embody and it did not disappoint. It’s always nice when you have high hopes for something and it meets or exceeds your expectations.

Free Guy is just such a fun and joyous movie. Never taking itself too seriously, packed with lots of heart, cool cameos, full of gaming and pop culture references, and it’s fueled by a unique concept that is well executed. There are just so many things I loved about this movie! It was a ton of fun to watch and the actors clearly had a blast making it. During the movie I kept trying to figure out where I knew most of the actors from but couldn’t place them. When I got home, I googled it and I instantly realized why. The roles are just so different and the actors embody their characters so completely you lose yourself in the film and get completely sucked in. I was honestly so surprised when I figured out what I knew most of the actors from because the roles that they’re known for are so different from their characters in the movie. Their appearances, established ages, and even the accents are so different that I literally did a double take, but that’s what makes the movie so good! Because the main actors obviously didn’t need the paycheque they were just there to have fun and it shows. I think if the situation had been different and the actors involved had been desperate for money or took the role for some other reason it wouldn’t have worked. The film would have come off as cheesy, forced, cringeworthy, or just plain bad. Free Guy is none of those things. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as ‘Guy’ a bank teller in a video game called Free City, Jodie Comer whose best known for playing Villanelle in Killing Eve as programmer Millie Rusk and her avatar Molotov Girl, Joe Keery whose best known for playing Steve Harrington in Stranger Things as programmer Walter ‘Keys’ McKey, and Taika Waititi whose best known for playing Viago in What We Do in the Shadows as the Head of Soonami Studios and the film’s main antagonist and villain Antwan. Rounding out the cast are Utkarsh Ambudka as programmer Mouser and Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s best friend and bank security guard Buddy. In a nutshell, Free Guy is about a bank teller named Guy who finds out he’s a non-playable background character (NPC) in an open-world Grand Theft Auto style video game called Free City. Guy becomes the hero of his own story after meeting Millie, the girl of his dreams, and winning fans all over the world by racking up points by being the good guy and helping others. After leveling up and helping Millie escape a dangerous situation in the game, Guy wins her over and she falls for him thinking that he’s another player. But when the world that Guy knows and all of the people in it are threatened, he teams up with Millie to save his friends before it’s too late. In the real world, Millie enlists the help of her former programming partner and best friend Keys in a race against time to stop their code and all of the sentient characters from Free City from being deleted by Antwan the developer who stole their code when the game’s sequel launches. I love that the movie had a unique premise and didn’t overcomplicate things. There are so many movies that I’ve gone to see over the last few years with such excitement only to be disappointed. For example, I loved Wreck It Ralph, but was so disappointed by its sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet. The trailers made it seem like it would take the premise of the first movie and move things into the online gaming world, and I was excited for that. Instead, the sequel left the premise of the first movie behind entirely and way over complicated the plot and the end result was extremely cheesy and disappointing. Free Guy’s strength is that it’s a self-aware movie made by self-aware people who are excellent at what they do. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, nor should it, and that allows the story to flow and the characters to feel real and genuine. The movie achieves that perfect balance between being entertaining and telling a cohesive and important story because while the movie never takes itself too seriously the people behind it are serious about what they do. This was very clearly a passion project for all involved, especially Ryan Reynolds, and it shows! As he’s spoken about in interviews and on Twitter, Reynolds called on a lot of his friends to be in Free Guy and help him out and the end result was fantastic! I loved all of the cameos! The Chris Evans cameo was by far the funniest and the Alex Trebek cameo got me right in the feels. When I saw the movie in theatres me and everyone else in the theatre gave a collective “awww” when he appeared on screen. Enlisting real YouTubers to show up as fictional versions of themselves to talk about Blue Shirt Guy’s popularity was a nice touch and you’ve also got blink and you miss it voice cameos by John Krasinski, Dwyane The Rock Johnson, Hugh Jackman, and Tina Fey. Channing Tatum appears as the avatar of player Revenjamin Buttons which for the most part was hilarious. One of my few criticisms of the film is that they went a bit overboard the avatar’s antics as Guy and Buddy are attempting to leave and it got bit a cringeworthy. But I know other people found it hilarious so to each their own. I love all of the little details and references in the movie. Just listing them all would be a post in itself. If you’re someone that loves pop culture references and Easter Eggs this is the movie for you. The characters are fun and believable, and you get attached to them quickly. The actors commit completely to their roles which is makes the humour, romance, and heartfelt emotion of the film work. You buy it. 100%. Something that I absolutely loved was that the characters felt realistic and that the dialogue, attire, and settings for each character really felt authentic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a movie or TV show and walked away thinking, “The person who wrote that clearly never meet a kid, teenager, or twenty something in their life! That was so unrealistic.” The slang’s all wrong. The dialogue is so eloquent everyone sounds like they did Shakespeare in the Park last summer. You walk away thinking, “What the hell was that? No one talks that way!” What I loved about the characters in Free Guy is that they felt like real people you could actually run into or walk past on the street. I’ve read in interviews that in addition to the written dialogue the cast did a lot of ad-libbing and improvisation and the end result is both hilarious and relatable. The dialogue feels real because it is. The big exception to this of course is Antwan who is altogether off the wall and ridiculous. Antwan is such an outrageous, absurd, vulgar, and cartoonish character. He’s so fun to watch and the actors clearly had a lot of fun with his scenes! I’ve read that a lot of his lines with Keys and Mouser were improvised and I believe it. When he goes all Jack Nicholson on the servers? Lord. He’s such a great villain to watch. The characters that are established to be in their twenties like Millie, Keys, Mouser, and the other employees at Soonami Studios talk, act, and dress like they’re in their twenties. The actors that are in their forties are styled to look like they’re in their thirties and honestly, they’re in such great shape it works! I mean I was honestly shocked to find out Taika Waititi’s real age. I love how the costuming really fits each character and allows you to learn more about them. Keys’ clothing is your typical gamer chic which makes because as we learn from his interview with Millie coding is his life and what gets him up in the morning. From Mouser’s clothing we learn that he’s a sports fan, but also isn’t afraid to take risks like with that blazer ensemble he wears in his final scene at Millie’s apartment.

Millie’s clothing shows the contrast between her and her avatar Molotov Girl, and Antwan’s ridiculous coat enhances the overall wackiness of his character. Guy’s clothing tells us something too. He wears the same thing every day until he meets Millie in the game at which point, he starts deviated from his Free City programming and chooses a different blue shirt. I also really love that they put thought into why Keys needs to wear glasses. Something I noticed on rewatch is that Keys is far sighted which is why he has his glasses on when he’s looking at his laptop or computer and sometimes when’s talking to other people, but not when he goes to see Millie at her apartment or when he goes to get them coffee at the end of the movie. Another interesting aspect of Keys’ character that I noticed on rewatch is self-confidence is really something he struggles with in contrast to Millie and Mouser who are very confident. Millie is a genius programmer and Mouser is excellent at what he does, and they are both very confident in their coding abilities, but Keys isn’t despite being every bit the genius that Millie is. At the beginning of the movie when they first notice the issue with Guy Mouser jokes that Keys needs to be better at his job. In response Keys meekly says he thinks he’s pretty good at his job and trails off at the end. Mouser is just joking around, but because Keys lacks self-confidence comments like that hit him hard. Mouser is moving towards his own desk as he talks so he doesn’t notice how self-deprecating and uneasy Keys’ response is. In the interview from the indie games conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment, he brushes off the interviewers comment that he’s a genius and says Millie is the real genius because she created the AI engine and he just wrote the code to make it work. Later on, when Keys helps Millie get into the stash house, she calls him a genius and he tells her that as he’s currently sitting on a toilet stealing user code he doesn’t exactly feel like one. Millie responds offhandedly that he never does, but luckily, she knows better. When Keys realizes that Millie was right, and that Antwan did steal their code and their game worked he tells Millie they need to celebrate because once everyone sees their build she’ll be celebrated and she could win a noble prize. Both Millie and Keys are geniuses in their own right. The game wouldn’t have worked without both of their skills and Guy wouldn’t have come to life without both of them working together. Millie’s AI engine made his sentience possible, but Keys is the one who gave him hopes and dreams so that when he met Millie in the game, he came alive. When done right the settings we see tell the story just as much as the characters do and I love how realistic the settings in Free Guy look. The floor at Soonami Studios where Keys and Mouser work looks like a real office and I love that the desks have clutter and personal effects on them like real cubicles do and that they show Keys taking a box of his stuff with him as he leaves. The lobby with the moving water videos and Antwan’s massive but largely empty office fits perfectly with the obnoxious, zany, and over the top character that he is. I also love the contrast between Keys and Millie’s apartments and how those settings tell us a lot about each character and where they are in their lives when the film starts. When Keys comes home from work to find that Millie has broken in, we see that he lives in a stylish one bedroom apartment with an open concept kitchen full of stainless steel appliances, a large living room centred around an expensive wall mounted TV and entertainment system, with his computer and gaming station set up in the corner. On the walls we see artful clusters of black picture frames, through a partially open door we see a bedroom off to the side, the apartment is full of black and white furniture including a plush couch and nice lamps, and features a textured silver accent wall. All of which makes the fact that Millie managed to break in even more impressive because it is clearly an expensive apartment in a nice building. Keys’ style is minimalist and upper scale and based on what we learn about the events that took place before the start of the movie this indicates that Keys got the apartment and all of the nice stuff in it using the money he received when Antwan bought his and Millie’s game. In contrast, Millie lives in a bachelor apartment and spends her time in coffee shops ordering one single black coffee over four hours. This tells us that she kept her original apartment that she had from before the game was sold and is living off the money she got from the sale while she spends all of her time trying to find the proof she needs to win her lawsuit. When we see Millie’s place, we find that it’s cozy, full of plants, throw rugs, quilts, and comfy furniture. She’s got a bike in the corner, you can see her bed from the centre of the room where she’s got her computer and gaming station set up adjacent to the coffee table and the rest of the living room furniture. Her kitchen is smaller and full of wooden cabinets and her bathroom door has DIY multicoloured square panels on it. Keys and Millie’s apartments are very different and through these settings we see the contrast between where these characters are in their lives, their wealth, and their personal style. The song ‘Fantasy’ by Mariah Carey is featured heavily in the film and is guaranteed to get stuck in your head in the best way! Jodie Comer’s cover of it is amazing! It fits the moment where Guy makes it to the island that is Millie and Keys’ original build and shows it to the world perfectly. This movie made me appreciate Mariah Carey’s music in a whole new way and I can’t be the only way. After watching the movie, I went looking for the song on Apple Music, wound up listening to the Mariah Carey Essentials Playlist, and I’ve become obsessed. I knew some of her hits, but after listening to her music more I get why people love her so much. Her five octave vocal range is amazing, and her music is just so fun to listen to. The film has a really great soundtrack overall and I’ve had many of its song on repeat since I saw it. Something I really loved about this movie and the reveal at the end that Keys is in love with Millie and is desperate for her to notice, but she’s been oblivious the whole time is that they don’t do the supposedly nice nerdy guy whose really a jerk trope. So many movies do this where you have a nerdy male character whose unluckily love, looked over, or his love is unrequited, and we’re supposed to root for him because he’s a quote “nice guy”. But really, he’s not. He’s a jerk who feels slighted because a woman in his life doesn’t love him back or notice him and he feels as if she owes him something. The scene at Millie’s place where Millie tells Keys he looks cute when he brags, and Mouser encourages him to tell Millie how he feels is super frustrating to watch but it’s so important to Keys’ character. He asks Millie out for coffee and when she turns him down to jump back into the game, he doesn’t make a big deal about it even though Mouser wants him to. Instead he gets up and goes and gets her a coffee anyway. She goes to tell him her order, oblivious to the fact that he’s memorized it, he tells her he remembers, and goes to get the coffee anyway much to Mouser’s and the audience’s dismay. This is big because Keys clearly doesn’t want to be walking down the street by himself to get coffee. He wants to be getting coffee with Millie so that he can tell her how he feels to see if she might feel the same way, but when she turns him down he goes and gets the coffee anyway because he truly loves and cares about her and he values their friendship enough to put his own feelings aside and suffer in silence rather than lose her and what they’ve built. So, he takes the opportunity to get some air rather than continue to sit there in disappointment. Which is why he’s so confused when Millie runs after him and calls out to him from across the street. He doesn’t understand what she’s doing there. She turned down his offer to get a coffee and he already knows her order so why is she there? I love that they chose to make that scene non-verbal. I think if Millie had come out and made some big declaration of love it would have felt cheesy and overdone. But her running after him and silently communicating through her smile and body language that she understood and that she felt the same way was perfect. It was subtle and beautiful and perfectly acted. It also felt realistic to the characters because in real life when you’ve known someone a really long time and you’ve spent a lot of time with them you don’t always need words to convey what you mean. What Millie wanted to express in that scene was so big and so all-encompassing she couldn’t find the words to say everything that she wanted to say so she didn’t. She just stood there and smiled knowing that being the genius that he is he would understand. It’s like Keys says in their interview, words will fail you, but code never does. His coding worked and now she understands so rather than try and say it all and fail she just looks at him and smiles to show him that she finally gets it. She finally understands what he’s been trying to say to her all this time. And you can see the exact moment Keys realizes why she’s there. The moment where he goes from being confused as to what she wants to realizing that she saw the video and she knows how he feels and that she wouldn’t be standing there smiling at him like that if she didn’t feel the same way. When I watched the scene the first time around, I was anxiously clutching my nachos the entire time because when Keys ran towards her my immediate thought was, “Oh my god he’s gonna get hit by a car and they’re never gonna get to be together! Oh my god!” But then he didn’t get hit by a car and Millie ran out to meet him and for the first time in their relationship she met him halfway and they kissed and it was beautiful! I think because Free City had so much violence in it that’s where my mind went and I’m very glad they didn’t go that route. One of my only criticisms about the movie is that I wish they had stayed on Millie and Keys just a little bit longer. They kiss and embrace and then very quickly they cut to black. I wish they’d linger on that moment just a little bit longer because I love those characters so much and in the scene that follows where Guy and Buddy are reunited we see them hug and then walk away together to start their new lives and I wish we’d gotten just a bit more time with Millie and Keys. I also really loved the parallel between the different kinds of relationships within the movie and how platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones. The reveal at the end about Guy being Keys’ creation and a love letter to Millie and her realizing she’s been loving Keys vicariously through Guy and them finally coming together and being on the same page is beautiful because from the very beginning the movie is full of clues, hints, and foreshadowing that all comes together at the end. Meanwhile, we see the friendship between Guy and Buddy and how important that friendship is to him because it’s something that he created on his own. His love for Millie is born out of the programming that Keys gave him, but his friendship with Buddy is something that Guy created all on his own of his own volition. Which is part of what makes Buddy’s death on the bridge so tragic. I cried when Buddy disappeared. Reynolds and Howery play their characters with such sincerity that his death pacts an emotional punch you don’t expect. I love that the security guards at Soonami are so moved by Buddy’s heroism and are so captivated by what’s happening with the live stream that Millie is able to sneak past them into the server room and stop Antwan from destroying what’s left of the game. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that during the final battle after Millie gets booted from the game and Guy has to fight Dude on his own the glasses he’s wearing are very similar to the ones Keys wears in the movie which I thought was a cool nod to Guy being Keys’ creation. This really is a movie in which you find something new every time you watch it. For instance, the second time around I noticed that the foreshadowing that Keys is in love with Millie, but she’s oblivious to it because she’s so focused on the game was really well done. In the video from the indie game conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment when asked by the interviewer about their chemistry Millie responds first and says that their friends, their relationship is completely platonic, and laughs off the idea that they have chemistry. In contrast Keys falters and is silent and then eventually says meekly that they’re just friends. Millie is looking ahead at the interviewer and to the side away from Keys as she’s laughing and so she doesn’t see Keys’ reaction. At the end of the apartment scene after Millie breaks in to ask Keys for his help, he tells Millie he cares about her and he almost says something else. It feels like he’s about to say, ‘I love you’ but then he catches himself and instead tells her that she needs to leave. When Keys visits Millie’s apartment to tell her that she was right and they’re sitting on the couch he reaches out and puts his hand on her knee and then snatches it back when he realizes he’s gotten too close. He wants so desperately to be closer to her and in his excitement, he gets closer than he normally would before realizing that putting his hand on her knee in that close proximity is not a platonic gesture. Millie is so caught up in the realization that Guy, the person she’s fallen in love with, is an AI and not a real person that she doesn’t notice. My heart broke for Keys in that scene as he realized that Millie had fallen for Guy and kissed him and was so upset about it and meanwhile, he was right in front of her desperate for her to see how much he cares. It must have just wrecked him to go home that night and realize that Guy was based on the lovelorn character he created and that Millie had fallen in love with his creation while at the same time being so oblivious to his real world affection for her. In the scene at Millie’s apartment after they’ve gotten the server from Antwan and Mouser encourages Keys to say something, I noticed on rewatch just how weak and meager Keys’ attempt to ask Millie out is. He stumbles his way through asking her to get a coffee and trails off at the end so it’s no wonder Millie doesn’t clue in that he’s trying to ask her out. And in Keys’ defence he sent her a whole video confessing his feelings for her and all of the little things he loves about her and then told her to watch it and he has no idea if she did or not. We the audience know that Millie only saw half of it, but Keys has no idea if she saw none of it, part of it, or all of it. He knows she got Guy to remember, but she’s also sending him mixed messages. One minute she’s saying he’s cute when he brags and the next, she’s turning him down for coffee to talk to Guy. From the outside it’s so obvious that Keys is in love with Millie, but she doesn’t see it because she’s always looking the other way, not paying attention, so caught up in the game, and too focused on their work to see what’s right in front of her. On rewatch one of the big things I noticed is that Keys is always on the edge of telling Millie how he really feels but he always stops himself because she brushes him or the idea off and because he’s scared of what will become of their work and their friendship if she doesn’t feel the same way. It’s a huge leap. If Millie doesn’t feel the same way it’s going to make their relationship incredibly awkward and could potentially destroy their partnership so Keys decides it’s better not to say anything or only hint at how he feels rather than run the risk of ruining everything. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that in the interview they give Keys says he thinks of himself as an author and that code is what gets him up in the morning and that he loves the ones and zeros of binary because words can fail you and let you down but code never does. At the end of the movie when Millie goes to talk to Guy in Free Life he tells her that he loves her and while he knows that’s his programming he’s realized that he’s a love letter to her and that somewhere out there in the real world is the author. Such a great callback. All in all, I can definitely say that Free Guy has been my favourite movie so far this year! Definitely my favourite movie of the summer. I went to see it twice in theatres and I’ve never done that for any other movie before. I’ll rewatch them at home sure, but I’ve never actually paid money to see something twice on my own. I’m very excited to see the sequel and my hope is that it will be just as good as the first.  Until next time.

[listentothelittlebird]

TW: dissociative episode

This was a whole scrapped oneshot, mostly because I couldn’t fit it in properly... I misread something on a wikipedia page and somehow ended up with “Jason revisited Ethiopia sometime during the Red Hood and the Outlaws, and had major PTSD”. I’m fairly sure I was sleep deprived at the time... (I’m honestly happy with how this one turned out, but it was just out-of-place with the rest of the other oneshots)

This is a “deleted scene” from my series on ao3, Code Bat! 

It was a quiet, peaceful night, until the comms crackled to life.

“N,” Oracle called, “RH entered Gotham an hour ago. The new Super he befriended brought him in, but he hasn’t moved from his location since. Can you go check on him?”

Nightwing frowned. Jason was in town? 

He was happy to have a chance to see his Little Wing, of course, but this was an unplanned visit. Usually he would at least radio in ahead, and dramatically announce his return by searching for them during patrol time.

Something was wrong.

“R and I are still dealing with the drug ring,” Batman grunted, “We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

It seemed even the Bat himself was getting worried.

“I’m turning in for the night. BG’s headed towards RH right now. Let me know how he is, alright?” Spoiler paused, before adding, “I can pull an extra patrol or two, if he needs you guys for company. I’m not an official fam’ member, but I’m more than ready to help.”

Nightwing would have hugged Spoiler if she was standing next to him.

Batgirl was already at the rooftop when Nightwing arrived. She was crouched directly in front of Jason - in his Red Hood outfit, skull-like helmet still on his head - and staring. Nightwing had learnt to read Cass’ body language, and right now she was practically screaming concern. She straightened when Nightwing touched down.

“Unresponsive,” she signed, “Alive, but not there. Like the victims we saw last week.”

Nightwing sighed, a rush of air escaping his chest. It was relief mixed in with new pain, because something had happened to his brother for him to shut down. Something had triggered this.

“RH is dissociating,” Nightwing reported to the comms, “BG says he’s unresponsive. B, once you and R are done, get the Batmobile here.”

“We’re on our way,” came Robin’s tight response, crisp and serious but betraying the slightest of quivers.

In the meantime, Nightwing busied himself with removing Jason’s helmet. His face was blank, devoid of his usual snarky grin or unimpressed eye-roll. His chest was rising and falling in slow, mechanical breaths.

“We’ll take care of you, Little Wing,” Nightwing laid a hand gently on his brother’s shoulder, smiling warmly, “Take all the time you need, okay? We’ll be here.”

There was not so much as a twitch to acknowledge his words. Dick’s gut clenched tighter, even having expected the lack of response.

Batgirl had drifted away, standing several steps back. At Nightwing’s questioning glance, she murmured haltingly, “Scary.” She raised her hands to elaborate.

“No body messages. Nothing. Cannot tell what he is thinking, or if he is thinking. I’m scared for him. With other victims, it’s bad. With family...” the next motion was not proper sign language - she made a heart with her hands, then split it. 

It hurt to see family like this.

Nightwing gave a sad, quiet smile in response, and the way he turned back to eye Jason was enough to convey his agreement.

-

Jason came back to himself slowly.

He was never truly gone, not quite. Not for a while, he thinks. 

He’s… not sure about much. Just that he had been able to tell Artemis and Bizarro that he was going to pull a few strings in Gotham to get them a permanent base. 

He remembered fumbling out an address for a safe house that he had, which would be able to last his two teammates for more than a week. He remembered Biz dropping him off in Gotham. He remembered sitting down on the filthy rooftop.

He thinks Batgirl came, then Nightwing. He thinks they helped him into the Batmobile, and he thinks he saw Batman and Robin. 

He… can’t quite recall what happened next. It was like his memories were grinded to a pulp and then drained of substance, leaving behind the crusts of barely-coherent scenes. Flashes of what had happened.

He was in the Batcave, then he was being walked up the stairs to the Manor, one large arm wrapped around his shoulders, one large hand gripping firmly onto his elbow. 

There was the rustling of old paperbacks, distant and distorted, like hearing through water. 

There was Bruce, blue eyes focused on him, gazing at him and murmuring something soft.

“...here for you. You’re safe, Jaylad.”

He felt a sliver of pressure on his face.

Jason blinked. His hand rose to the spot, to where the mildest of pressures were, a calloused hand cupped against his cheek. He blinked two, three times, Bruce’s face morphing into the most genuine of smiles, even as the smell of the library and faint tightness of hunger greeted him.

“B?” Jason croaked, his voice hoarse from something more than dryness. Bruce was still quick to supply him a cup of water. The hand had yet to leave his cheek. Jason, still thrown off and trying to piece together his scattered mind, leaned into the hand even as he downed the glass.

There was a reason his throat felt scratchy. He had been screaming. Screaming at…

By the time Bruce had plucked his empty glass from his hand and set it down, Jason had jolted violently, as the realisation of how he got here, on exactly why he had returned back to Gotham, hit him like a train.

Ethiopia. The rebuilt warehouse. The living nightmare of his latest Outlaws mission.

“B?” Jason’s voice was desperate now. Logically, he knew Bruce was right there. Trying to convince his tortured mind though, as it finally came to terms with what had happened, was not as simple. 

“Dad? Dad…” Jason’s hands reached blindly for Bruce’s arms, scrambling to tighten clenched fists into the fabric of the man’s sweater. Bruce pulled Jason into his chest.

While Jason tried and failed to quell his breakdown, Bruce had maneuvered himself back onto the couch, Jason sat half in his lap and half on the couch. Jason’s arms, tight around his father’s shoulders, loosened as he let out a shaky gasp.

“We - we had a mission,” Jason rambled before he could stop himself, “Artemis was looking for something, and we were helping her look, and-“

“Jay,” Bruce cut in gently, “Don’t force yourself. Please, son.”

Jason, his forehead pressed to Bruce’s shoulder, shook his head even as he barreled on. He had to get this out before his walls went up again, before it became too blissfully peaceful to even broach the subject.

“I- fuck. We went to Ethiopia,” Jason gave a hollow laugh, even as Bruce sucked in a sharp breath of air, “It was fucking hell, B. Pretty sure they were just doing the generic torture shit on me, but they didn’t even need to do anything, really. The location was enough to…to-“ Jason’s voice cracked. There was something wet leaking out of his eyes.

“It looked exactly the same, B. I checked after - it was the same place. It was-“ Jason’s voice gave out for real, then. 

Bruce pulled him tighter, holding his son close as he cried himself dry. Bruce was just glad that Jason had been able to come back to Gotham, that his son was here for him to comfort - was willing to accept that comfort from him still, even after everything that had happened.

“You’re here,” Bruce hushes, when Jason’s sobs had died down to sniffles. He gave the boy - he would forever be a boy in his eyes - a squeeze around his broad shoulders. “You’re here.”

Jason sniffed again, and squeezed back, tight and desperate.

Later, Alfred would enter, guided by his butler senses to bring a meal for Jason. Later, his siblings would check in on him, and Dick would pile everyone into the living room with a movie marathon and a sleepover. Later, Jason would figure out a permanent base of operations for the Outlaws.

For now, it was just a father holding his son, both undeniably grateful to be alive.

-

Jason led Biz and Artemis to an underground bunker at the outskirts of Metropolis. They were right under Superman’s nose, which was both exhilarating and concerning.

He did not fancy meeting any one of Bruce’s colleagues. 

On the other hand, if Superman did stumble upon them someday soon, Bizarro would finally get to meet someone like him. Well, someone who might see him as family, at least. Jason had heard from Tim that Superman was a big-hearted family man that had taken in Kon-El the moment he had trusted the clone.

He hoped Superman would take Bizarro in. The big guy deserved someone else besides him and Artemis.

Speaking of…

“Say, since we’re gonna be working with each other a lot more from now on, can I get insurance that you won’t take a swing at Wonder Woman while I’m in the collateral damage zone?” 

Artemis glared at him, but Jason had weathered Bat-glares, and this was nothing compared to the man. His helmet was off, so she could see his smirk, his red domino stretching as he raised an eyebrow. 

“I’d have thought you’d be on better terms with the lady. I mean, she’d gladly offer you any support you need,” Jason pointed out.

Artemis huffed, “Themyscira should have done more to aid my tribe. They still have yet to do more to aid my tribe. As Diana is a representative of her people, my grudge is against her tribe, and not her personally. Truthfully, Diana saved my life, and I am grateful for that.”

Jason hummed contemplatively. “Well, you should be a bridge between the two tribes,” Jason thought aloud, “Just saying, you basically became your tribe’s champion by getting back the Bow of Ra. If anyone could get them more aid, it’d be you.”

He could tell that the Amazonian needed time to think on his words, so instead of continuing. Jason splayed his arms, “Besides, sweet-talking gets you places!” 

It was implied that such was how he had gotten their base, but the circumstances were probably far from what Artemis assumed. All Jason had needed to do was talk over conversations during dinner and Bruce was showing him possible locations even before patrol rotations had begun.

Artemis latched onto the new topic, regarding their new base with a satisfied tilt to her head, “What were those connections that you managed to find? Gotham is one place in Man’s World that I have yet to understand.”

“Eh, you learn to deal with the city’s fuckery. Like I said, I just had some old strings that I could pull to get us here,” Jason shrugged, and paused for a moment. Everything had been moving a mile and minute, from when Jason had first met Artemis to when they and Bizarro became a team.

He had neglected to tell them his name. Not that Bizarro needed his name, since he even called Artemis Red Her, but Artemis herself had always referred to Jason as Red Hood or Red.

“Jay.” 

At Artemis’ questioning glance, Jason huffed, “It’s my name, I guess. Close enough.”

It was the name the Titans, Roy and Kori, knew him by. Artemis and Bizarro were shaping up to be his second round of Outlaws, and he wanted them to have his trust, too.

There was a weighty glint in Artemis’ eyes. “It is an honour to work with you, Jay,” she stated solemnly.

Jason cracked a grin, “Aw, c’mon, don’t go all mushy on me. Let’s go get Biz before he ransacks the whole pantry.”

He turned to head in Bizarro’s direction, his loud rummaging making Jason glad he had chosen to put them significantly low underground. Artemis trailed behind with a warm smile.

[bearseokie]

dear readers and writers

— a little advice i wish i would have heard before i started this blog and writing in general. sorry i’m that writer that makes post like these, i just want you to understand that things like this change everything. if this looks like a lot, just find the ones that pertain to you.

writers

➤ 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝

there are so many good works that come from you focusing on the genres you are most comfortable with, and only writing those is not a bad thing. it’s not a “you’re not growing as a writer” situation, it’s a comfort zone situation. just because smuts do well doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to write them. just because angsts come in bulk because you can never ignore the emotional bits of writing doesn’t mean that has to be the main focus of every work. just because fluffs are the most reblogged content doesn’t mean it’s the only genre people will enjoy from you. focus on what you love, others will follow!

➤ 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐟𝐮𝐥, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐟𝐮𝐥

if you don’t consistently open your inbox, do it at least once. close it when you feel overwhelmed or at any time you feel necessary. don’t believe that you have to write them all in a short period of time. be statistical about it: only open it for a short game or blurbs. use the requests to fill in blanks or practice writing in different ways. play with the word counts. change up the tone. delete a few, you’re not obligated to actually write them, this is your free time and your work. but sometimes doing requests can change how you write, maybe even give you a breakthrough you wouldn’t have had with writing things from your own mind. and have fun.

➤ 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

filling the warnings up with silly little comments or parts from the story is important, too. even if it’s a paragraph’s worth of potential warnings or triggers, never skip adding them. even if you think it’s something not worth mentioning, it will be to someone. add as many as necessary.

➤ 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝟏𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞

word counts don’t determine how good of a writer you are. from brilliant blurbs with two paragraphs and one line of dialogue, drabbles with less than a thousand words, or full on double digits fics: what counts is that you enjoyed writing it. it made you excited. you paused just to mention to a friend how much you love writing it. you got chills piecing together that one line. that energy gets put through your work and into your reader, seriously.

➤ 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭?

everyone reads. anything. everything. you name it, one person’s read it. whether your confidence in your writing ability is low or not, the process will only benefit you. and you get to spend time writing about some of your favorite people/characters, it’s a win-win. it’s no competition, only a fun time that you get to create and share with the world. try it.

➤ 𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

the more detail, the better the mental picture. if you read something and love visualizing every scene, hearing every line, then you should work for the same within your stories. close your eyes and put your scene into your surroundings, every little detail counts. and although i said word counts don’t mean anything, if your brain does focus on you having large word counts (it happens to every writer, big word counts make you feel cool for writing so much), then this is a sexy step to use because it heightens that number pretty quickly.

short sentences look weird, but are better than run-ons.

vocabulary is sexy and thesaurus dot com is your best friend. need a word but can only think of something similar, you’ll find it there. used the same word three times now and think you’re starting to look insane, you are, use your sources.

you don’t need a banner or aesthetics for everything you write. the writing does all of the work itself. don’t stress about the accessories.

burnt out on writing the same thing / can’t think of what else to put down? break time. take a tangent, write something else, cut it off there (maybe post it) and leave the rest for the future, the cliffhanger or abrupt ending will have everyone on the edge of their seats. you’re still doing well.

if you’re writing to gain a following or have extensive amounts of notes to brag about, you’re into writing fanfics for the wrong reasons. hoping for feedback is one thing, feasting for it as your only source of inspiration for writing is just hurting yourself and other writers in the long run. write for yourself and no one else.

writer’s block? hell if i know, i’ve had it since before i started writing.

readers

➤ 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐢𝐛𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤

a little feedback goes a mile. a simple emoji as a reaction, keyboard smashes, even tagging topical things can make a fanfic writer smile.

but long paragraphs also go a long way. imagine watching a movie you love to bits, so much so that you go online and read reviews of it. that commentary can shift the way you look at the movie forever, and stick with you during other films. it’s the same with receiving and reading feedback on fanfics. I’m not saying go crazy critical with your feedback, do not do that unless the writer says they want criticism, but maybe writing why you love one particular line so much could change the way the writer feels about the entire work or make a reader begin to love the same line so much that they quote it or recommend it. it makes a difference!

➤ 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬?

tell the writer. this isn’t an “i wrote this and it mentions all of these other things, so you should have expected this” game. if it bothered you, it will probably bother someone else, and that needs to be told to the writer. i don’t know what to tell you if a writer writes back being degrading or negative about your concern for that warning, but i promise you that most writers will not argue with whether it should be a warning or not and will just add it. do not be scared to mention something that triggered you if it was not mentioned in the warnings. also, please remember writers are humans and cannot think of everything all the time. we might miss one or two warnings within the work when writing the description, so please tell us.

➤ “𝐈 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬, 𝐢 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠.”

pain. straight pain. your reblog shares that post with your followers. you like it, why wouldn’t they? that reblog stays on your page, it’ll be seen. the tags you put in could help others find more works on your blog, essentially helping more works be found. maybe they’re old and haven’t seen the light of the recent tags in months, but your reblog could help more people still see it, and that makes a difference. we all have those lazy moments where we don’t want to do all of the steps, but even doing them sometimes helps.

➤ 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 ��𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐦𝐚��𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐞𝐜 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞?

readers can scroll through the list for their preferences, find new writers that amaze them, maybe they gain the courage to put together their own fic recs list. all of those recommended fics are still floating around and being shared, they don’t get lost in the tags or the writer’s masterlists. you find/make a recs list: congratulations, you’re contributing to helping fanfics thrive (as they deserve). also, who doesn’t love an entire list right in front of them so they don’t have to go on a scavenger hunt to find new things to read? answer: no one.

➤ 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐬 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐥𝐞?

tags to organize, fics to go through/find/read, oh my. let me let you in on a little secret:

have you ever had that moment where you suddenly remember one line or scene from a fic you read months ago, and you have the vaguest details to go off of in order to search and find it? your fics recs blog would have you covered, just scroll through the feed or the tags and boom, it’s at your fingertips.

now imagine someone else looking for more fics to read stumbling upon your blog. might look a little strange and coded to them, but eventually they navigate and find a new fic they’ll be talking about for months. they reblog it, add their own feedback, their followers see it and join in, and that writer feels immensely appreciated all because you started a recs blog and just-so-happened to reblog their fic. tah dah.

➤ 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐩?

well, so did i. i asked my followers on this blog and my recs blog to send in their favorite fics with some extra details and feedback thinking i wouldn’t get anything, but i got an entire list! guess what’s even better? that list went straight into the tags (thanks to tumblr working properly for once) and now anyone that searches up ‘kpop fic recs’ can find it at any time. same goes for your own. there’s no specific way of organizing a recs list, just make sure the links work and the writers are credited! it helps.

read more! it’s a vast world in your hands, enjoy the words that go along with it.

sorry for this technical rant/advice post, this has just been in me for a while and i wanted to talk about it. I might add more to this as things come up, but for now i hope this helps! <3

[sweetchup]

Hi!! If your ask box is open, could I get a fluffy kurapika x reader? Just something very gentle and soft and maybe some cuddles bc kurapika deserves lots of loving!! Thank you so much!!

Wild Berry Pie

Type: Kurapika x Reader

Au?: None

Word Count: 2,300+

Warnings: None

“Hold on what?!?” You shout; surprise. Hold up, Why should you be surprised? This was Kurapika you were talking about. But seriously? You were going to scold your boyfriend so hard for only sleeping a total of 15 hours this whole week, getting himself injured (thankfully he could heal himself but still), working himself to death and, on top of that, this was all after recovering from a really bad sickness.

Melody hushes you as the other patrons of the cafe turn and glare at you. You let out a small squeak of an apology at them before returning to sipping on your drink, all the while mumbling, “Kurapika… what the heck were you thinking...”

“I’m sorry (y/n)-Chan. I didn’t mean to get you worked up, I just wanted to let you know.”

You look at Melody in front of you, the woman was looking down at her drink in shame. She knew it wasn’t her fault that Kurapika wasn’t taking care of himself but she felt bad for not telling one of her closest friends and Kurapika’s girlfriend, (y/n), sooner. You shake your head, giving a small smile. “Please It’s not your fault he’s acting this way. I’ve been gone for a while and I shouldn’t have left in the first place, I mean I kind of expected this. He’s practically been out of it since York New. Plus, on top of that, he has the amount of stress Nostrade is putting on him due to Neon losing her Nen.”

Melody gives a smile at the girl in front of her. No wonder Kurapika was in love with her. (Y/n) was not only pretty on the outside but also on the inside. Her voice was so soft and heartwarming, it could calm the harshest of storms and also act like a nice warm campfire on a cold bitter night. The smile (y/n) produced, even the smallest of ones, was practically contagious and definitely lit up a room. And her heart, oh her heart, produced such a loving melody. It sung with all her compassion for her comrades, friends and even the well-being of some strangers.

She practically was the light of hope in Kurapika’s life. The small thing that he knew could give him some purpose after all his revenge plans were done. Sure, it would be hard for him, very hard in fact, to figure something out when everything’s all done. But he knew that (y/n) would be there right next to him, never ever thinking of leaving him behind.

“Oh, (y/n)-Chan are you okay?” Melody says concerned as you suddenly stand up. You look at the women in the eyes, yours gleaming with determination.

“I know exactly what to do! Kurapika has an early shift tonight and a late one tomorrow so I’ll make him something special tonight. To get him to relax.”

Melody giggles. Oh how kind you were. “That would be perfect (y/n)-Chan.”

Ecstatic, (y/n) pays for their drinks, giving melody a small ‘thank you' and waves as she rushes out the door. Melody waves back before returning to her drink. Looking at the tea cup, she starts thinking back, back to York New, back to the Nostrade Mansion, Back to the hunter exam, back to that one tragic night and finally thinking of now, on how thankful she was of (y/n) and —

Melody is suddenly startled out of her thoughts as (y/n) slides to the table, almost slipping past her. The girl is clearly tired since she is sweaty and out of breath. Melody blinks a couple of times, unsure of what happened to (y/n).

“M-melody? Do you happen—happen to have the keys to the dorms-s”

Melody blinks some more before breaking out in laughter. Oh how silly (y/n) could be.

—————————

“And…. Done!”

You let out a sigh and stretch your back. It was hard work getting all this done but it was definitely worth it. Putting your hand on your hips you take in the living room in front of you. The Tv was on with a classic comedy movie, ready to be started. Part of the floor and coach was covered head to toe in different blankets, stuffed animals and pillows to lounge on. Then there was the coffee table, which held many sweets, snacks and drinks and finally the main course of it all….

“(Y-y/n)?” A voice says behind you. Spinning around you see Kurapika taking his shoes off with his bag dropped on the floor. He looked amazed as he looked at the set up in front of him.

“Surprise!” You shout, running up to your boyfriend and giving him a hug. Pulling away you boop his nose, “I thought you needed it especially after I heard you weren’t taking care of yourself. Hmph! How many times do I have to tell you to get a good amount of sleep?!”

Kurapika lets out a small smile at you. “Sorry I’ve been very bus—“

“No buts Mister kurapika” you say, poking his chest. “You're so stubborn sometimes. That’s why I have to come and make you chillax~.”

He lets out a small chuckle as you pull him towards the pile of pillows. Though he soon takes your hand off his arm before you can make him sit. “I’m sorry you had to go through so much trouble but I actually have to get some work done.”

“W-What? Did you not hear what I just said?!” You say. Kurapika looks away from you. This idiot. You bring your hands up to his face, forcing him to look at you. “Kurapika you need to rest. You—“

“(Y/n) I’m sorry I need to get this done.” He says in a firm voice, pulling your hands off his face as he walks away. He was longer playing around and you knew if you continued you could anger him. Clenching your teeth you raised your voice a little bit.

“Kurapika if this is about the spiders it can wait!”

He snaps his head around.

“Excuse me?” He says with a dangerous low voice.

“I said if this is about the spiders it can w—“

“What do you know? Huh?!” Kurapika says furious. He stalks towards you and backs you up against the wall. You choke up as you lock eyes with his scarlet ones, “You still have everything! Your family! Your childhood! Your best friend! I got mine all taken away. What do—“

“I DON’T!” You shout. Stopping him dead in his tracks as he sees a tear go down your face. He was so exhausted and out of it that he had taken his anger out on you. This wasn’t right and he knew he needed to calm down. Wiping the tears off your face you continue, “I don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will but I don’t want you to end up destroying yourself!”

“That’s not your job (y/n). It’s non—“

“It is because I love you. It’s my job as your girlfriend, your lover, to look after your well being Kurapika! I would be a horrible one if I didn’t ever try.”

Both of you are silent for a second after your final outburst. A thick awkward silence. You and Kurapika like to deal with your problems through discussions so this was quite rare for you two to have an argument. Even if this one was small, you didn’t know how to react or feel. When you gulped or took a breath too long you felt like you were adding to the tension by making too much noise. You go to apologize but Kurapika cuts you off by giving you a small kiss on the forehead. “I know you do. I just... you know it’s my goal to avenge them, you know?”

Wrapping his arms around you, Kurapika pulls you into a hug. The soft scent of cologne on him fills your senses, making you relax.

After a couple of minutes you two pull away and both give each other a small smile.

“We both lost our cool huh?” Kurapika says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah.” You say quietly, “Can you take a small break though? Just for tonight? I’m just concerned you’ll get hurt or sick again.”

Kurapika sighs and thinks for a second. He decides it was ok to take a break for just one night, he nods his head in affirmation. Smiling, you mischievously tackle him onto the coach. Kurapika groans as you land and peck his cheek.

“Ugh you are heavy. Get off” He says; jokingly.

Your mouth falls open in surprise. “Excuse me?!”

Determined to get back at him for the insult you cuddle him closer and attack his face with kisses. Kurapika, his face bright red, tries to move away from your barrage of affection. You let out a giggle as you pull away, you had completely forgotten you had put on a little lipstick so he had many stained kiss marks all over him. Even one smudge on the corner of his lips.

He raises an eyebrow as you use a phone and take a picture of him. Laughing you turn it around, showing him. Letting out a groan he covers his face, embarrassed.

“(Y/n)!” Kurapika whines, “Delete that!”

“No~~” You whine back, leaning yourself onto his chest.

For the next hour, you two enjoyed each other's presence. Laughing with mouths full of popcorn at the cheeky comedy. Creating small talk, well attempting, while chewing on some toffee. Sharing sweet small kisses and loving stares in between the movie scenes. It was a wonderful and perfect night.

Lightly, you groom your fingers through Kurapika’s soft golden locks as he lays asleep on your stomach. You felt relieved that the Kurta male is sleeping and will hopefully no longer be exhausted when he wakes up. Speaking of Kurta, you look at the covered dish in the center of the table. You didn’t reveal the main course of tonight to him. You sigh. Oh well, you can’t do much about it now.

“What’s wrong, habib albi?” Kurapika mumbles into your shirt.

“O-oh I thought you were asleep.” You say, blushing. You were a sucker for Kurapika talking in his native tongue, even though you only understood some of the simple things. It especially made you melt when it came to him calling you pet names or giving you small compliments. He once told you your pet name ‘habib albi’ roughly translated to ‘love of my heart’.

He hums and sits up. “Don’t change the subject.”

You sigh, standing up. Walking over to the coffee table. “Ok but don’t freak out, ok?”

Grabbing a hold of the cover, you lift it up. Revealing a pie underneath.

“(Y-y/n) is that-t?”

“I know you don’t like me looking through your stuff from your village but I remember you mentioning that your mother used to make you your favorite Wild Berry Pie whenever you were stressed. So I thought It counted as an exception.”

You suddenly feel Kurapika pull you into his lap. Looking up you see Kurapika with a small smile along with a couple of stray tears rolling down his face.

“K-kurapika I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for you to be upset.” You reach up and carefully wipe the tears off his face. He soon stops you.

“I’m not. Don’t worry habib albi, I’m not.” He squeezes you closer to him, “I’m actually happy. How did you do it though?”

“Oh! Umm I took one of the old dictionaries you had and looked through the Kurta recipe books until I found the Wild Berry Pie. It’s not exact since we don’t have the same ingredients as the Lukso Province but I got it as close as I could.”

“Ah I see. That sounds very hard to do.” Kurapika says chuckling.

“Yeah it was” You say, leaning over and sighing as you remember the grueling three hours it took to figure out and make. You suddenly sit up, “A-ah do you want me to grab you a slice?”

Kurapika nods his head and you excitedly get up and cut a slice. You had taken so much time in it you wanted it to be perfect. As you lifted it and put it on a plate you sighed, relieved. It had come out perfect. Due to the cover, the pie was still warm and fresh, the right time to eat it at. The crust was a perfect golden color and thankfully not soggy. The wild assortment of berries you added had started to ooze out onto the plate, leaving a nice purple-reddish trail and a pleasant aroma.

You felt proud of your accomplishment and sat back in kurapika’s lap. Now was the ultimate test. Handing him a fork, you watch in grueling anticipation as he takes a bite. Blankly he slowly chews and swallows, causing you to gulp. You messed it up didn’t you? He finally turns and looks at you. Finally, he gives you a wide smile, the first big smile in a while.

“My 'um would be proud.”

You let out a loud ‘yay’ in happiness and kurapika holds you close. You were beyond the moon in happiness that he had said his mom would be proud of your pie. Your pie!

“(Y/n)” You look towards Kurapika’s call to see a fork in front of your face, holding a piece of the pie, “Say ahh~”

You open your mouth and he feeds you the piece. Chewing, you moan at the taste. It was absolutely delicious. Each berry was exploding with a unique flavor. Which ends up creating a sweet blend with the right bit of tartness.

Looking up at Kurapika, you watch as he takes another bite. All the while still smiling. Tonight and every other date were amazing but nothing and you mean nothing was as perfect as seeing this. Kurapika with a wide smile on his face.

You would definitely have to make this pie again.

[thewickedmerman]

The Swan Princess Live-Action Remake: What I’d Like to See

As many of you who follow me are aware, there is going to be a live-action remake of The Swan Princess. I know many of you are tired of these remakes but this one has the potential to be one of the greats because of the fact that the people working on it not only are the ones who worked on the original, but also people who interact with their fans and listen to their ideas. This is a good thing because of how the public has seen so many live-action remakes and have complained about them either being too different from the original (Maleficent and Alice in Wonderland for example) or too similar to the point of being pointless (The Lion King), so the fact that they listen to their fans is very much a good sign. Besides, despite the results of the universally hated CGI Swan Princess movies, a live-action remake is promising, especially since this is a passion project for them and not just a way to make a quick cash grab. That’s what brings us to this post of mine. These are some things I’d love to see in the live-action remake of The Swan Princess. Keep in mind that this is just my personal opinion on things I would love to see, therefore not everyone is going to agree with me.

Staying True but NOT Shot-For-Shot

As I’ve mentioned, bad remakes usually fall into one of too categories. They are either so radically different that they aren’t faithful to the spirit of the source material or are just pretty much shot-for-shot the same to the point where they are pointless. This is the difficult thing with adapting any work of fiction, especial one that is a beloved property, especially into a different medium. You have to know what iconic moments to do but also try to make it different enough to where it can be its own thing and justify its existence. I don’t want it to be afraid to try different things. The live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast was great and just as good as the original but I don’t feel like it made enough changes, not to mention some other problems. I hope it takes the same turn that remakes like Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and 101 Dalmatians took by staying true to the source material but also being different enough to where it’s not the exact same thing. We don’t want to see it be 100% the same because that’s boring and it would have no real point when we’d have the original.

One thing that they could do is maybe take deleted scenes from the animated film that are alternative versions of certain scenes. For example, the scene of Derek in the library and Uberta telling him about the ball. It’s different and helps to show the relationship between Derek and his mother. It shows how quick witted (When he’s not doing things like saying, “What else is there?” lol) and energized Derek is. It’s very fun and is able to show us how Uberta can be a mother that uses guilt to get what she wants from her son. Besides, there is no way for the live-action to capture the amazingness that is Uberta’s lip thing. That’s something that can only be captured in animation and attempting to do it in live-action would just be disappointing.

That’s just one example of using an alternative version of scenes from the movie, which are different but still charming in their own way. Another thing they could do is incorporate more elements from the original ballet, Swan Lake. I’ll get more into certain elements connected to that a little later, but it would show how it’s not only trying to respect the animated film but also the source material that lead to the beloved animated film. In the original ballet, if the vow of everlasting love failed, Odette actually wouldn’t die but instead she and the other swan maidens that Rothbart had cursed would become swans forever come daybreak and never be able to change back into humans again like they were able to before. Odette decided she would rather die than be a swan forever, so she and her prince (Named Siegfried in the ballet) committed suicide and that act of love was strong enough to destroy Rothbart and all his magic. This lead to the swan maidens being able to become human forever and the two lovers dance off to heaven together.

Let me be VERY clear about something, I’m not suggesting that they do this ending for the live-action movie because that really wouldn’t go over well with audiences. However, something they could consider doing is that instead of Odette dying if Derek makes his vow the the wrong girl, have her become a permanent swan. I don’t just meant have her physical form stay that of a swan but also have her end up losing her human mind. Before this, she still had full control of her human mind in her animal form but with Derek’s vow of everlasting love failing, she’d revert to that of a dumb and witless animal. It would have her die in a different sense and maybe it would help represent Derek realizing even more what he loved about her. It would be painful because she’d be gone even though she was still alive, which can sometimes be even more devastating than death. Now, this is just a suggestion and I wouldn’t mind if they decided to just have her die like she did in the original movie. Besides, there would be a happy ending anyway. That’s what is important lol.

An advantage that live-action movies have over animation is that they can be longer than just an hour and a half, so they can expand upon certain elements. We could see Odette and Derek maybe meeting secretly over the course of a few nights (After Odette manages to get reveal the swan spell to Derek, of course) to help their relationship and chemistry feel more organic and natural. The romance in the original is great but everything can be improved.

Other elements could be expanded upon like actually showing Odette’s mother and her giving birth to Odette, as well as King William and his wife longing for a child. Live-action remakes from Disney seem to have a thing for actually talking about the deceased mothers and even showing them interacting with their child. True, Odette’s mother would’ve died after childbirth but it would add something with how protective William is of Odette and even adding a song for the queen to sing, which I’ll elaborate on further when I talk about the music. Odette’s swan necklace could also have originally belonged to her mother rather than being a gift from Derek when she was an infant. It would help give her more of a connection with her dead mother and wanting to be a strong and kind leader like her mother was.

It should also show more of Odette’s sorrow and trauma from her father being killed by her kidnapper and not being able to hug him, say goodbye, or tell him that she loved him one last time. Her love for her father, as well as her people, would give her strength whenever Rothbart would try to break her down. She’d stay strong and wouldn’t back down. They should also try to make it more clear that Derek isn’t really shallow but rather he just has a hard time expressing himself into words. That’s the way I always saw Derek and I think to help audiences identify more with him that they should do a better job of making that clear. They should also show more subtle hints of Odette and Derek liking each other as kids but not being mature enough to admit it to others or even to themselves.

Overall, this remake shouldn’t fall into the same trap a lot of remakes do of basically just being a shot-for-shot remake. Don’t be afraid to make changes to justify its existence but also stay true to the spirit of the original.

Music

With this being a musical, it’s important for me to talk about the music for the live-action remake. A complaint the musical live-action remakes from Disney get are that they aren’t energized enough and aren’t as big and grand as they were in the animated movies. In certain musical numbers I can see where they are coming from. Musicals are a very stylized medium, which require big dance numbers and a chorus with a lot of energy, especially in numbers like “No More Mr Nice Guy”, “This is My Idea”, and “Princesses on Parade”. When making the original movie, they used a lot of choreography that was Broadway-styled. That’s something they should do with the musical numbers in the live-action remake. I don’t mean to copy the exact choreography from the animated movie but still put in a lot of energy. Look at musicals like Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, The Greatest Showman (Apart from the lack luster choreography of “Rewrite the Stars”), Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (With Whitney Houston and Brandy Norwood), Moulin Rouge, Newsies, and any musical with THE GREAT dancing talents of Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and Dick Van Dyke. They have a lot of energy in the musical numbers with elaborate dancing that gets the audiences pumped and excited. They are fun and vibrant.

Now, big dance numbers aren’t something required for all the musical numbers, like “Far Longer Than Forever”, which is more romantic and intimate, but should still have stunning visuals, which I’ll get more into when I talk about the visuals of the film.

It could also take certain songs and make them different. The song “Practice, Practice, Practice” for example, which is played as a comedic number, could be a song for Uberta. It could be used to show she’s concerned about her son and how he’s just obsessed with practicing and trying to find Odette, which everyone (Herself included) considers an endless path because Odette is believed to be dead. It would help show the relationship between her and her son. She’d be questioning what she should do and what her late husband (Who was likely MUCH less pushy and more understanding than her) might’ve done if he were still here. True, it would also require the song to have more lyrics to it and be longer, but it would be a welcomed change. While the song is great and a lot of fun, it’s utterly pointless when you think about it. This would be taking a song that was short and comedic and making it different, meaningful, and adding something to both the characters of Uberta and Derek. Showing Uberta’s love and concern for her son as well as Derek’s stubbornness and determination, not to mention his skills.

Another song that could be used differently is the song “No Fear”. When I discuss the tone of the film, I will elaborate on why the animal sidekicks shouldn’t be in the live-action remake (Even though I love the animal sidekicks). In the live-action movie, it could go one of two ways, either a solo for Odette showing her courage as she sets off to find Derek or could be a duet for both Odette and Derek as they set off to find each other, as well as Derek’s hunt for The Great Animal.

Something important to discuss is the song “This is My Idea”. Apart from “Far Longer Than Forever”, it’s the most iconic song in the movie that people just adore. What definitely needs to be made clear is that they NEED to get child actors that not only look like the actors that are playing the adult versions of Odette and Derek, but can also actually act and sing. I don’t want any lame excuses that they are kids and we shouldn’t expect great acting from them because there are PLENTY of amazing child actors that give it their all. Besides, one of the things that made the song so awesome was that the the younger versions of the two leads were full of so much energy and personality. They really need some strong child actors that can capture the spirit of the song. Not to mention make sure that they can sing, which is something they need for all the actors in general.

With “No More Mr Nice Guy”, with the tone I have in mind for the film (Which, again, I will get to soon) probably would make the jazz styled song feel out of place. I mean, I still want it to be energized but also to fit with Rothbart’s character. I’m thinking maybe a style that is similar to the overture of Phantom of the Opera or “In The Dark of the Night” from Anastasia. Those are musical styles that are more serious in tone but are still fun and energized, which will help bring the song to life in a new way, as well as show that they are growing with their audience. It would show him causing chaos but not so comedically but also not entirely serious. Odile should also be allowed to sing a little in this song, in fact, I have one particular moment in mind. I’m imagining with the line, “Who’s a real dead ringer,” that at first it’s Odile’s real voice but she holds out on the word “ringer” and her voice is transitioning to Odette’s voice. That would be fun and creative.

Of course, with this being a live-action remake, it will need to add more songs to the film, especially since you gotta think about that “Best Original Song” nomination. However, it needs to be careful about where the songs are placed. They can’t be too soon after the previous song or feel like they came out of nowhere. One song I think they could add is a lullaby that Odette’s mother sings to her infant daughter as she slowly dies. I think it should have lyrics that foreshadow the events of the film and the journey that Odette will have in the same way the song “All is Found” did in Frozen II. It should also add a solo for Odette, maybe a song for her to sing when she’s escaping from Rothbart’s prison and flying to the ball that is similar to the song “Speechless” from the 2019 live-action remake of Aladdin. Another song could be a short one that is meant to be Odile just vocalizing like a siren to scare the carriage drivers. The way I see it is that she’s flying around in her animal form (A black swan) singing to give them a feeling of unease and catch them off guard while also occasionally flying fast close by to scare them for fun. All leading up to the reveal of her human form and then the attack of The Great Animal (Which should remain in shadows until the climax). Maybe even a possible duet between Odette and Odile, to show how opposite and similar they are. Just a few suggestions.

The last thing involving the music that I want to talk about is the instrumental music. I want them to have the movie mix three types of music; the music from the original movie, the music from the original Swan Lake, and original music like in the live-action concept trailer. Something the film is criticized for is not using any of Tchaikovsky’s music from the ballet when the film is based on the ballet. I do agree with people that it’s very strange, especially since even products of lesser quality and budget have even used music from Tchaikovsky. However, there are iconic instrumental music moments from the movie that I can’t imagine the film being without, especially the music for Odette’s transformation. Disney also seems to have a thing for adding new instrumental music to their remakes like in Cinderella, Mulan, 101 Dalmatians, and The Jungle Book while still including music from the original animated film. So it would be amazing for them to use all three types of music for the remake to show them respecting the animated film, showing respect for the source material that led to the creation of the beloved animated film, and doing something new. True, it will be hard to make sure they all mess together naturally but it’s not impossible.

Tone

This is one of the most important things about a film, especially when adapting a beloved property, particularly into a new medium like live-action. I do want the tone for the film to be more serious than the animated film but I DON’T want it to be so serious to where it’s too dark, too grounded in reality, and would feel out of place as a musical. Being too dark and serious seems to be a trend with some childhood properties that really have no real understanding of the source material, as proven with shows like Riverdale, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and the upcoming disaster that is Fate: The Winx Saga. Trying to be all serious limits them too much in “reality” and therefore can’t go too far with being stylized and aren’t able to be as memorable. This is also something that goes hand in hand with the visuals, which I will get to later on.

However, there are some things in the original movie that should be taken out for the live-action remake, the main thing being the animal sidekicks. Don’t get me wrong, I love those characters dearly but their style of humor wouldn’t work in a live-action setting. Their style of humor is similar to that of the Looney Tunes, which works in animation but not in a live-action remake. They’ll feel out of place and cause the tone of the film to feel unbalanced. This is also why I don’t think The Hag (Later named Bridget) would work in the live-action remake, but I’ll get to that later.

Jean-Bob, Speed, and Puffin are iconic and beloved characters that do help progress the plot and don’t feel like needless comic relief, but they wouldn’t work in live-action. They’d feel out of place, come off as if they are hijacking the film, would likely look weird with CGI (Especially Jean-Bob), and removing them would allow them to have more time to expand upon other elements.

The film should still have humor but it should come from things like Rogers’ dry wit, Uberta’s pompous and flamboyant personality, Chamberlain playing off of Uberta with his nervous and silly character (While still not feeling too silly), Derek being charmingly humorous and playing off of Rogers, Odette’s savage comments to Rothbart in the way she rejects him and stands up to him and her wit in general, Rothbart’s dark humor, and Odile being a major sass master with a lot of sarcasm and clever lines.

This film should have a balance of romance, being serious but comedic without doing too much of either, having fantasy, being like a fairy-tale, stay true to the original while being its own thing, and just being what the film needs to be. It needs to appeal to the fans while also trying to win over people who aren’t really a fan of the original movie. It basically needs to do what a good remake needs to be, which can be done when you look at the example of the 2015 version of Cinderella. Also, DON’T do make any pop culture references like the CGI movies, which instantly date the movie.

Odile/The Black Swan

Many of you are already aware of how I’m really crazy about the idea of Rothbart’s daughter from the original Swan Lake, Odile, being in the live-action remake. It honestly would be a welcome change for so many reasons. A lot of the fans are wanting to see Odile appear in the live-action remake, so that is one reason to include her. There’s just so much potential with her.

However, before I get into her potential, I need to discuss why it makes much more sense for her to be in the movie instead of Bridget. The Black Swan is supposed to act seductive and also give Derek some hesitation to show that he has a feeling something isn’t right. It shows how he isn’t only interested in Odette because of her looks. This makes more sense with Odile because her behavior and mannerisms should be more like her own rather than like Odette’s, which doesn’t work with Bridget. In all the scenes that Bridget is in, she’s very comedic, wacky, silly, and over-the-top in her behavior and mannerisms. That makes her entertaining, but it doesn’t make sense in the context of The Black Swan trick. It kind of hurts Derek’s character by having him so easily fooled and not hesitating enough. Don’t get me wrong, he does hesitate but it could’ve been better a lot better. Just an observation of mine.

Now for her potential, which she really has a lot of. She’s a seductive and sensual woman that is also a sorceress. I imagine her being very clever, sassy, sarcastic, and just has a badass aura about her. Her personality would basically be Shego from Kim Possible. She should really go one of two ways, either a full blown villainess or an anti-hero with a redemption arc. She’s a fascinating character that would help bring a layer of depth to Rothbart by having a great love for his daughter, and while he is motivated by greed and power, he is also motivated by his love for his daughter and wanting her not to struggle in life like he did.

If they made her an antihero with a redemption arc, it could be because she slowly grows a bond with Odette and relating to having a loving but protective father and never really knowing their mothers. She’d think men were all the same and would be confused why Derek would hesitate when she’s disguised as Odette because she was unaware of genuine romantic love due to always using her looks and sensuality on men to get what she and her father want. Maybe she could take the place of Bromley by helping Derek with defeating her father.

When she dances with Derek, it should feel different for him compared to how it felt when he danced with the real Odette. Both should be elegant and vibrant but done differently. When Derek dances with the real Odette, it should be more intimate while with Odile disguised as Odette, it’s more sensual and makes Derek feel like something is off about “Odette.”

Either way, she’d make for an incredibly compelling character that would help add an element from the original ballet to the film and be something different. Odile is a popular character in the world of fiction, especially for those fascinated with ballet. She’s meant to be Odette’s opposite and yet they could have a connection the same way that Mulan and The Witch did in the live-action remake of Mulan. I also have made it VERY clear that the ONLY real choice for Odile is Bella Thorne. She has the right look, she’s sexy and seductive, she’s gorgeous, she’s an amazingly talented and versatile actress (She’s even getting some Oscar buzz for her performance in the movie Girl), she can sing (Listen to the songs she did for Midnight Sun if you don’t believe me), has experience playing villainess characters, really puts her all into her craft, and everyone who has worked with her has just raved about what a joy she is to work with.

Visuals

There is a lot of things to talk about here. The costumes, the effects, camera work, the sets, the atmosphere, and so on. I’ll try to be as clear and organized about this as possible.

The costumes are a major part of the movie because they help to establish the characters personalities and the journey they go through. I do think the outfits should be as similar to their animated counterparts as possible but also not look too similar to the point where they just look like cosplays. Something live-action remakes often do is change the look of the outfits to the point where they are completely different. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it can help the film stand out, especially when you look at the outfits in the 2015 version of Cinderella. However, it can just as often be a bad thing, such as with Belle’s yellow dress in the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast, which didn’t even do very good jobs with her pink and green dresses either (But her blue dress and her wedding dress were good). I can understand why changing the design of the costumes happens because some things that look good in a drawing don’t translate well into live-action. However, when done well, they can make them look similar enough and add details that are too expensive and time consuming to put into animation. A good example of this is Jasmine’s turquoise outfit in the live-action remake of Aladdin. It looks similar enough while also being a good translation to the real world. Although, I do think they should take more liberties to Rothbart’s outfit to make it look more badass. Not to mention they’d have creative liberties with Odile, but should make sure there is a contrast with her appearance and Odette’s.

Another thing about the costumes is that I want the characters to have a variety of outfits to wear. It’s true that Odette would be wearing the same dress for a majority of the film because of how she’s been kidnapped and wouldn’t give Rothbart the satisfaction of her accepting any outfits he might offer her. However, considering that the major characters are either royalty or well off enough to afford some good clothes, they should really be wearing more than just one outfit. Queen Uberta in particular would be wearing a large variety of outfits (Not just the same outfit in a different color) and maybe even different hairstyles. It would go with her flamboyant personality and style. The younger versions of Derek should also be wearing different outfits and have different hairstyles like Odette did. It shows how people grow and change as they get older. Maybe even make Derek have his awkward phase as a teenager the same way Odette did as a preteen. However, definitely don’t have his younger versions wear the same outfit because it’s weird that he never changed his style at all growing up. Plus, I think the entire fandom agrees that Derek’s weird haircut has GOTTA GO! I’ll get more into the costumes when I discuss diversity because what I have left to say about costumes has to do with “Princesses on Parade”.

As for the effects, I’m hoping that they do their best to mix practical effects and special effects together. Hollywood is too reliant on CGI and people often call it out as fake looking. There are movies that mixed those together like Lord of the Rings, Hocus Pocus, Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the first Jurassic Park movie. The effects in those movies are still praised because they aren’t reliant on just CGI. It can be helpful but it shouldn’t be the only thing that is used.

Something important about the visual look with this movie, at least to me, is Odette’s transformation. A problem I have with the concept trailer (Although, I will give it leeway because it didn’t have much of budget for the effects) and the CGI movies is how Odette’s transformation lacks color, which makes it less magical looking. People love Odette’s iconic transformation with the gold glowing light where she stands (Or floats in the case of her swan form) and her getting surrounded by the pink and purple water (Along with some purple sparkles). It’s such beautifully animated scene because of the vibrant colors that pop in the night time setting that is full of different shades of blue. By making the transformation have normal colored water just makes it not as memorable or imaginative.

The look of Odette as a swan (As well as Odile in her literal black swan form) should still be expressive and slightly stylized like the animals in The Chronicles of Narnia movies, the 2016 live-action remake of The Jungle Book, the live-action Stuart Little movies. It’ll make her feel more human and if they were to use the idea about Odette losing her humanity if Derek makes his vow to the wrong girl, it would show her looking and feeling more like a real dumb and witless animal. But definitely make sure that there is texture to her with the feathers and bill. Basically make sure she doesn’t look fake but not too realistic to the point she can’t be stylized a little. Basically DON’T make the same mistake that the pointless “live-action” remake of The Lion King did.

Something else important to talk about is the look of The Great Animal. First of all, I think that the way The Great Animal looks should be kept a secret up until the climax when Derek is fighting Rothbart. This includes commercials and trailers because it’ll make an even bigger impact if no one has any idea what it looks like until the very moment they see it. As for the design of it, the original movie had a very interesting design with it being a combination of different animals. The head of a wolf, the wings and snout of a bat, the talons of a falcon/hawk/eagle, the tail of a lizard, and torso of a bear. Not sure if this would work in live-action (It might if done right) but if it can’t, they could get creative with a new design. Making it look either like some demonic creature or something. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be awesome.

With the sets and such, I want them to be absolutely MASSIVE! As I mentioned before, some live-action remakes don’t have things on as big a scale as they were in the animated movie. When you compare the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast, the live-action remake doesn’t look nearly as grand as the original did and was much smaller in scale. I hope that they go all out with the sets to make it feel big, grand, and epic. It will especially help with the “Princesses on Parade” scene. Even with Rothbart’s castle, which would look more decayed, should have an eerie feel to it with a lot of dark colors to contrast with Uberta’s castle and the castle from Odette’s kingdom.

The visuals also shouldn’t be afraid to not be vibrant enough because just earth tones are boring and not as eye-catching. The look of the live-action concept trailer has a good look, at least for the night scenes. The visuals and colors weren’t too dark, had a mysterious atmosphere, it was pleasant to look at, it would make Rothbart and Odile’s magic really pop because of how their magic has warm colors to contrast with the cool colors of the setting, and would show a contrast to the world that Odette was used to before she was cursed. How she could feel the warm sun on her skin and that refreshing daylight breeze blowing through her hair. It’ll make when the spell is broken all the more meaningful because she’ll be able to experience those senses she missed so much from when she was a human that could enjoy the daylight. They definitely need to take advantage of the landscapes as well, since many scenes take place outdoors.

As for the camera work, it’s very important to have a lot of interesting angles, dynamic movements, and pleasant shots. They shouldn’t go too crazy with the camera work to the point where it is annoying and messy, but they should have fun with it. Such as when Odette is flying in the air, they need to take advantage of that. The musical and dance sequences need to have some fun camera work. With something like “Far Longer Than Forever”, they should keep it intimate but also creative and interesting. Not to mention have it look visually stunning with the stars, the moon, and how in some scenes that Derek is inside where there is light to contrast with the nighttime setting where Odette is. The action scenes should definitely be creative, like when Derek uses his bow and arrow. Not to mention have the climax be epic.

A particular camera work I want them to do is to slowly reveal the face of The Black Swan at the ball when she arrives. Yes, we know it’s Odile disguised as Odette, but playing with the camera to not reveal her face until she’s close enough to Derek will make it more exciting. Similar to the way that Cruella De Vil was slowly revealed during her introduction in the live-action remake. That just helps with great storytelling.

Diversity

First of all, listen to me before you pass judgement. I’m not saying for them to racebend characters, especially since many people of color are seeing through that as a, no pun intended, skin deep gesture just for brownie points. However, I want the background to have a lot of diversity with races the same way that movies like the live-action remakes of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella did. One of the great things about the original animated film was that, even though it was about white people, still had racial diversity with people from the background. They weren’t just with servants and peasants but also with royalty and nobility. There were people that looked black, Hispanic, mixed, and it was just for the heck of it, which I love. It shows that the movie is stylized and acknowledges that people of color do exist (Something certain movies fail to do).

However, I want them to take it a step further by not only having the background characters/extras to be racially diverse (Only include more than just blacks and Hispanics) but also show diversity in culture at the ball. What I mean is that the princesses at the ball attending the ball in the hopes of winning Derek’s heart should be racially and culturally diverse. The live-action remake of Cinderella did this, particularly with this one Hispanic princess that had a very cultural looking dress. There were some princesses in the animated movie that were people of color but they were just wearing European clothes. They need to show some diversity for different racial cultures, even if it is only for a the ball/”Princesses on Parade”. After all, the first line of the song did say, “Every single princess on the planet pray to be invited to the ball,” so it should be showing different cultures around the world with these princesses. I mean, Uberta would definitely be inviting princesses from kingdoms far and wide in the hopes of Derek finding a wife. Besides, she never does anything without it being absolutely BIG and GRAND.

Not only should there be diversity on screen, there needs to be diversity behind the scenes. The Swan Princess tried to show some cultural diversity in the movie Kingdom of Music and it was clearly made by people who knew nothing of these cultures. They had racial stereotypes and stereotypes of people of different nationalities. I’m sure that their heart was in the right place and had ZERO intention of being offensive but the result was pretty offensive. This time, I want them to have experts of the cultures to make the outfits, hairstyles, jewelry, and make up be as accurate as possible. Besides, as much trouble as actors that are people of color have of finding work, people of color that work behind the scenes have an even more difficult time finding work, especially those who are women. I’m sure the people working behind The Swan Princess are willing to listen to this because they love their fans and hearing their ideas and concerns. So I’m sure they’d be willing to do all they can to be as inclusive as possible on screen and behind the scenes.

Organic Feminism

Okay, this is something that will be a bit difficult to talk about, due to it being a bit controversial. First of all, Odette was already a strong and feminist character. She was kind but had her limits, wasn’t afraid to stand up to Rothbart but could still show her vulnerability like any normal person, and actually was deconstructing fairy-tale cliches long before Elsa in Frozen ever did. In most fairy-tales, once the characters fall in love, they just get married and all that jazz. However, Odette, despite falling in love with Derek, wasn’t just going to jump into marriage right away. First she wanted to know what he loved about her besides just her beauty, which is very reasonable. She wasn’t just gonna let herself be seen as a prize to be won or someone who was just supposed to look beautiful. She wanted to be admired for her mind and personality, as well as to make herself be heard. You see the disapproving look her father gave her after she asked Derek if beauty was all that mattered to him, but she still didn’t back down, despite her father basically telling her to stop. She cared about her father’s legacy and the people of her kingdom, which is why she wasn’t going to give into Rothbart and would rather die than give him her father’s kingdom. It wasn’t just because she hated the man, even though she clearly hates Rothbart, she was thinking of others. During her year of being under Rothbart’s captivity, she never relented or lost her strength.

Some may say that she just waited around to be saved and could’ve just left to get help/find Derek. However, this statement is absolutely WRONG! She was in a situation where she really couldn’t do much. As soon as the moonlight left Swan Lake, she’d turn back into a swan and it didn’t matter where she was. She had no idea where she was or how to get back to Derek’s kingdom. If she were to try to run away, she’d get lost and turn back into a swan. Even if she were to use her ability to fly in her swan form, she’d be exposed to hunters that could kill her before she could find any help. In both her human and her swan form, she’d be vulnerable to predators, especially in her human form. She lived in a time where women, particularly a princess, wouldn’t be trained in survival skills, especially with her father being so protective. She was out of her element. Not to mention that she could only turn back into a human when she was on Swan Lake and the moonlight touched her wings. If she was lost enough, she’d have a difficult time trying to find her way back to Swan Lake and would have no way to protect herself from the dangers of the world.

She wasn’t someone who just had the mindset of waiting around in the hopes of being saved. She’s way too smart for that. She was just in a situation where she was trapped and didn’t have many options until she and Puffin thought of trying to steal a map from Rothbart’s castle. If she saw a way to save herself, she’d take it but she’s smart enough not to just rush into it without a plan that would just get her killed. In the hand-drawn sequels, she’s shown to take action when she had the resources to do so. She’d rather be making herself useful instead of just waiting around, she just had very little resources to help her in her situation.

This is all leading to the subject of organic feminism. The Disney live-action remakes have been trying to make their female characters stronger, even if they already were strong. For the most part it works but then there are some issues that come along with it. You have Emma Watson (Who I love) refusing to wear a corset and that resulted in the disaster of her yellow dress (Which isn’t feminist if you look as your costume history), Mulan already being incredibly skilled and pretty much magical, Nala losing all of the likability and emotion of her character (She doesn’t even act happy when she sees Simba is alive), Alice being made as a warrior and lost her interesting and curious personality, and the disaster that is the Maleficent movies that just are anti-men. Apart from the dress thing, Belle was well-done in the live-action remake and Jasmine was done very well too.

The point I’m making is that while I’m open to trying to make Odette appear even stronger than she was in the original, I don’t want it to be in a way that butchers her character. One of the reasons that many people hate the character of Alise in the CGI movies (Myself included) is that she’s a major Mary Sue. She succeeds at things too easily when she has had no training, seems to know no fear which makes her feel less human and hard to identify with, and she feels so forced and cringe-worthy. She says things like, “I don’t wanna be a PRINCESS princess! I wanna be a MODERN princess!” That’s so forced and sounds like something a middle school fanfic writer that hasn’t had much experience would write. They need to stay true to the character of Odette. They can improve upon her but make sure she’s flawed and has depth like a real person. Not just generically nice all the time and not perfect at everything.

Letting Fans Help Make the Film

One of the best things about the people that work on The Swan Princess movies is how they never forget to appreciate their fans. They interact with them in real life and online. They even follow me on Instagram, which is AWESOME. They do a lot for their fans, which is something a lot of companies don’t really do unless it means they can make money.

Anyway, something I think that they should do is allow the fans to be part of the making of the film. One example of what I mean is even allowing them to design the costumes, particularly the fans by the name of Nephi and Bethanie Garcia (Who are married to each other). They have made some incredible cosplay outfits that aren’t just good by the standards of cosplay but also by the standards of a big budget movie. They manage to make outfits that look accurate to the animated movies but also updated enough to translate well into real life. They would be the perfect team to work on the costumes of the movie. It would help them get more recognition and maybe get work in Hollywood as costume designers. Here are links to their social media.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thedesignerdaddy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/designerdaddy_/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7bIF8t4eBP-zXhwmh8SDIg

Another thing is that they could include them as extras in the background, including as dancers and singers. It would show how they know they wouldn’t be anywhere without their fans and are showing their appreciation. I would personally love to be one of the directors (Movies can have more than one director) and writers of the film. I know that’s unlikely but if they are willing to let me, I would accept without hesitation. After all, I know that Richard Rich was a new comer when making the original film and I know that he would want to do all he can to help new talent make their dreams come true, especially when they are fans of what was his passion project known as The Swan Princess.

Casting

First of all, this is NOT me telling you who I would cast in the film. I have already done a post explaining that right HERE.

What I want to talk about with this is that I want them to try to cast actors that look as much like the characters as possible. While talent is what is most important, with a live-action remake of animated property we want actors that look like the characters as well because we want to see the characters brought to life. Don’t just choose actors based on bringing in the box office numbers, even though that is important as well. But base the casting on looks, acting talent, being able to capture the essence of the characters, sing talent, making sure that the two leads can handle the vocal demands of their respective roles, and that they are the right age or at least look the right age. They should also include cameos from people like Liz Calloway, Howard McGillin, and other cast members from the original animated movie. It would just be a fun thing to do for the fans and a way to honor these actors for helping to bring the original movie to life.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you guys like it and let me know what you think. Also, did you guys know that The Swan Princess has an OFFICIAL Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube?

Tumblr: @theswanprincessofficial​

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swanprincessofficial/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm_Q3k32sEVQbrANS7-vSjA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/official.swanprincess/

You can even send an email to Odette@swanprincessseries.com where you can ask a question and it might be chosen for the monthly Chamberg Daily News (Chamberg is the name of Derek's kingdom).

[douxbebearchives]

Meet the Author: Jayismz

Hi, J / Jayismz!

Stories can be found here.

Twitter.

Wattpad. 

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When did you start writing Olitz? I started writing Olitz a year ago around December 2019. 

Tell us about yourself! What do you want readers to know about you? I want the readers to know that I’m a pretty humble, easy going guy who loves writing & wants to one day make a career out of it. It’s become a passion of mine. I dislike unnecessary drama & disrespect, & I’m obsessed with fruit snacks. I’m also very easy to talk to, so don’t hesitate to reach out. 

What drew you to Olivia and Fitz? It wasn’t the immediate connection for me. It was the drama between them that pushed & pulled them apart. To see them triumph over all the darkness to show each other a love they never experienced was beautiful.

What made you want to write about them? Honestly? I didn’t plan on writing them but my girl Muses pushed me to do so and I don’t regret it. I love being able to bend and shape them how I please. In ways that the show didn’t.

How would you describe your writing? Drama, Romance, Action, Adventure. Angst as well, depending on the storyline. It’s easy to follow, too. Some points are a bit more subtle but if you read for the sake of the story & not just for olitz smut/fluff then you’ll get the fully painted picture. 

What inspires you to write / create? Honestly? That’s a difficult question. Sometimes watching certain episodes of the show will give me an idea/inspire me. Other times, it’ll be late night inspiration, when I’m supposed to be asleep or life in general. My mind never stops creating, but every idea that I have doesn’t make the site. Also music. That’s heavy inspiration, too. 

Favorite movies, shows, music?

Favorite movies? 1. Dawn of the Dead. 2. The Halloween film series minus one. 3. Jennifer’s Body. 4. The Incredibles film series. 5. The Friday the 13th film series. 6. Insidious 1-2. 7. The Avengers / X-men film series. Even the bad X-men films give me something. 8. Call Me By Your Name. 9. 4th Man Out. 10. Mulligans. 

Favorite shows? 1. The 100. 2. The Witcher. 3. American Dad. 4. Scandal. 5. Kingdom. 

Music? Alternative, pop, electronic, hip hop and r&b, soundtrack, dance, rap, light rock. A little bit of everything.

How long does it take you to write a chapter? I used to be on a once a week schedule but that doesn’t give people time to miss a story and digest the current chapter(s). So, now I wait until I’m ready. Sometimes it takes a week to write, other times it’ll take longer. Depending on how tired, busy and inspired I am. Time limits stress me out. 

Did the show’s themes and plots encourage you or discourage you from writing? The themes I looked for always inspired me. 

Writing AU or Canon? AU.

Reading AU or Canon: some canon is really good, but mostly AU.

________

A favorite line, scene, or paragraph you’ve written.

Though there are many moments I love from all of my stories. The speech Ryan gave to Olivia in Herstory is one of my favorites. 

Ryan: "Option three, we let them bicker and whine and panic because it's you who calls the shots. You are the leader of the free world. You make the tough decisions that mold and shape the world. You break down the barriers of what it means to be president." He slowly strides around the office.

"You're not like the countless men who came into this office and paraded their power as if they were some Gods here to bless us with great fortune and progress only to leave us with broken promises and lies. No, you are Olivia fucking Pope. You are light and you... have more guts than any man I know." Words unwavering, filled with fire.

"Babying everyone with an opinion is not how I see you running this White House. Your White House. So, what's it going to be?"

Reason being is because he sees her for the woman she is here. There’s no underestimation or denial of her skills. Just pure, unadulterated passion and the will to stand by her side knowing that she’s going to make history.

________

Fave Olitz moments? The season 7 conversation when he asked her if he crossed the line. The trail, of course. The lawn kiss in season 6. And also the deleted scene from season 6 where she was leaving the residence and they talked about him having two weeks. OH! And the dug the phone out of the trash moment.

Fave Olitz fanfic moments? I read too much to remember all of them, omg. Don’t hate me y’all 😭. But everyone I follow in the site gives me some of the best moments and they inspire me to write in all honesty.

________

Do you like it when readers engage with you via comments / social media? Of course! It helps. 

Story Reviews: Love them, hate them? I’m indifferent about them. Sometimes they’re so negative but other times, they’re good— constructive even. I read them once every so often before expressing how grateful I am to have people still enjoying my works. Negative ones get deleted without a thought. 

What advice would you give to a new Olitz writer? Just write! Perfection should only matter to you and you only. If it’s perfect to you then I’d say you’ve done a good job. Also, write the story that you want to tell. People tend to scream that something’s not good if the idea they had in their mind doesn’t happen. Stay true to yourself and never let anything dictate the words you write. 

Outside of your fics, do you have any fave Olitz stories or authors? Anything by Musesoftheminds, labellebeaucoup, sweetness04fj, anonolitz, glamour02, loveoverpride, annnnd Keke thegoddess. 

Do you talk to other Olitz authors? If so, do you like the camaraderie? I talk to a good 4 of them. Muses I talk to almost everyday off Twitter, of course, but the other three I’ll reach out and check in or they will. I do like it— the camaraderie. It makes me feel wanted here which means a lot. 

Have you made friends (people you talk to outside of fanfic) because of Olitz / Scandal fanfic? I have, yes.

Before you go, anything else you’d like to share?

Yes. To those that read my stories and newcomers. I’m glad you enjoy my work and I’m happy to continue writing for you all. I know it was a big change with me adding new characters and turning the tides a bit but the reception to them has been so heartwarming.  

I’m happy Ryan has been received well in the fics. He’s an extension of me if I were to put myself in those settings. I used to be so afraid to admit that but it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Adding myself or a fraction of myself in some way pushed me to continue with writing these stories. It’s like I become one with the character thing. Plus, it makes for good dynamics. 

As far as other characters, I tend to use people I know as blueprints as well as other celebrities. For example, Rose / Viper is based on my girl Musesoftheminds if she were in those settings. In When It All Falls & its sequel, Danny is portrayed by actor Marcus Rosner. In Hunted, Walker is portrayed by Charles Melton & Mike is portrayed by Trevante Rhodes. In Herstory, August is portrayed by Henry Cavill and Rose’s husband is portrayed by Jason Mamoa. She picked him herself, LOL. 

And if anyone wants to be in a story of mine, let me know! If it works with the story, we can make it happen now that you know my process. 

Lastly, I want to thank the community for being so open and accepting of me and my ideas. I was afraid that me being an openly gay man and incorporating every facet of that from presentation to relationships to sex would’ve pushed people away, but you’re still here and it means the world to me. And to the writers I speak to personally, thank you for always having my back and for encouraging me to continue. You’ve been nothing but kind & I love you. 

Thank you to DouxBebeArchive for this writer’s spotlight, for always being kind enough to share my works and for being a kind soul. 

xoxo, J

________

Thank you, J, for allowing us to feature you!

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Coffeegleek Day 3

Author : @coffeegleek​

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

At least a few revisions. Then multiple editing passes, and even with my spouse as my proofreader for the past 25+ years, and doing more editing passes before posting to AO3, I still find annoying little typos, sometimes large ones.

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

There was a crack fic I stopped writing years ago. It was a self-challenge during one of those tumblr trope challenges. I was trying to combine all of the tropes into the same fic as they were announced. It got zero traction though so I gave up. I'd love to go back and complete it, make it better. I had the whole thing outlined too.

What do you look for in a beta?

My spouse. We've been together for decades. He's been proofreading my original science fiction work and various fandoms' fanfics since before we were married. He even proofreads my Klaine smut and doesn't blink an eye. (He's a Glee fan too and on tumblr.) He knows what I'm trying to say when I can't find the right words and supplies them. He catches things I don't. What I love the most is for my original work, he's written his own fanfic. It's BAD. It truly is, but it's so heartfelt and earnest. He even came up with a soundtrack should I ever publish my sci-fi novel and the movie or show rights be bought. You really can't get a better beta than that. <3

There’s a number of friends on tumblr that I bounce ideas off of and who give me advice for topics they know far more about than me and google. I try to thank them in my fics.

If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I’m going to steal another author’s recent answer and say that I could never do someone else’s work justice. However, I would love to see the author’s ideas for their fics even if they couldn’t write a prequel or sequel.

I suck at remembering titles and author names. There were two political fics that I would love to read more of should their authors ever decide to write in those verses again. One was where Kurt and Blaine's dads were running for president and Kurt and Blaine were along for the ride, staying in the same hotels at time (where they first met,) having to do school remotely, having to be the perfect sons for the press and Blaine being fed up because his parents were conservative Republicans. Then there was another fic where Burt was president and Kurt was the First Son living in the White House, along with Finn, and it was hard to date when your every move is watched by the press.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I write AU, so canon is only a word often misspelled by me. :) Seriously though, I try to incorporate as many canon elements and characters into my AU fics as I can. It's the kind of AU I like to read as well. What draws me to read and write AUs is taking canon characters, putting them into a different setting, and seeing how they'll react. At their core, they still need to remain the same in principle and have many of the same traits. Like Kurt will always love fashion and be headstrong no matter what. Blaine is always going to have that spark within himself, no matter how depressed or oppressed he gets. Burt and Carole are always going to be loving and nurturing parents at heart. Even in fics where Burt isn't woke, there's a part of him that means well. (Not one of my own fics, but one I read a long time ago.) Different circumstances will change the canon characters and make them react in different ways though. Like, Kurt could end up more withdrawn and hide his love of fashion as a matter of survival and self preservation. He or Blaine could turn into "bad boys." Coach Beiste will always have a heart of gold. Miss Pillsbury will always have a problem with messes. Things like that. I know canon. Give me all the alternate universe versions of it and I will be a happy camper.

Talk about a review that made your day.

I haven't checked for reviews on my fics in ages (because I'm an insecure chicken) so I don't remember any specifically. I do remember there were many that made my day. There are those who take the time to review every chapter. Ones who write only a short note to thank me for writing the fic - both the angsty ones and the cracky fun ones. I love it when someone mentions something that no one else has that I was hoping someone would notice because I was proud of it. I'm not a popular author and don't get a lot of kudos or comments or reblogs compared to many. So each comment and kudos means a lot to me and I'd like to publicly thank every single person who wrote one or hit that kudos button.

Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I once got a troll who decided it was his job to complain that I had misspelled hors d'oeuvres in one sentence out of an entire verse where the word was written multiple times correctly. It was a series of Klaine Advent one shots for the Empty Nest verse. At first I was shocked and replied with an apology. Then I was, "F this. The person is a troll who didn't read any other part of the fic or verse, just this one quickly written one shot entry, and if all they had to say was that I'd misspelled a commonly misspelled word, then they aren't worth my time." I deleted the comment. There's concrit and trolling. It wasn't concrit.

What advice do you have for people just starting to write?

Have fun writing, even the hard stuff. Know that it's okay to take breaks. Try your best and know you'll get better the more you write and the more you read. Pronouns are your friend and free. Don't put, "I know this is going to suck, so whatever," in your fic description. We all suck at times. It's a part of writing. But if you want folks to read it, using that as your fic's summary isn't the way to go. Just my opinions, which won't even buy you a cup of coffee.

Which fic do you most like to discuss with other people? Why?  

I think it’s pretty obvious from all of my rambling that I enjoy talking about both of my series - Empty Nest verse and A Very Hallmark Christmas verse.  I'm not a popular author and I know my fics, especially the Empty Nest verse ones, aren’t everyone’s thing, so I never get to really discuss them except with friends that I bug to death in private and via long replies to comments on AO3. (You all are saints blessed by all of the good and patient gods.) I have so much to say about them - the process of writing them, the world building, research, and character decisions that went into every single one. I know they’re not perfect. I know the Empty Nest verse grew miles beyond the ficlette about Burt and Carole that it was meant to be. I know my sense of humor in the Hallmark verse isn’t everyone’s thing either. I still worked really hard on them and am glad that I did. Empty Nest let me release a lot of the fear and anxiety I had for my Hispanic and gay son after the 2016 election. The Hallmark ones were a needed break to put some humor into my life. If others enjoyed them, great. If folks want to know more, my inbox is always open.

What's one aspect of writing fic that gets you really excited?

Writing humor even if I'm the only one that finds it funny. As I said above, writing the Hallmark Christmas movie dialogue and plot and the actors as they were filming it was a blast. Writing the commercials was fun and exciting. In my angsty fics, knowing I wrote a good scene, line, or moment that brought out all the feels. That's more of “satisfaction of a job well done” than excited.

***

Check out Coffeegleek’s Fics

Humorous Spooky Drabbles -  Humorous drabbles to spookish type prompts based on a tumblr post called October Drabble Prompts #1 by hallofceleano. The parts in bold and italic are from those prompts. Characters include Kurt, Blaine, Burt, Carole, and Finn. All fun; only #4 has some mild angst. #4 is for snarkyhag and regarding #5 - I know next to nothing about Twilight and had to look up Taylor Lautner on imdb. The liberties I took are my own.

A Very Sloppy Christmas - lucy8675309 posted to tumblr a series of gifs with Kurt dressed up as an elf. It inspired me to write the following prompt, which CoffeeAddict80 encouraged me to write as a fic:

I now want a fic where real Santa’s elf!Kurt gets drunk and vents to Blaine about all the woes of working for Santa. He’s over 100 years old and the outfits are terrible. Why couldn’t they wear clothes like the elves did in that one movie? Drunk elf Kurt has no idea he’s venting to Santa’s son.

Bonus if he wakes up and realizes he just had a drunken one night stand. He isn’t sure who it was with. Only that he’s naked, the guy in the bed beside him is naked and showing off a really great ass. Then said guy turns over and after Kurt’s done staring at his dick, he looks at the guy’s face and realizes who it is.

It’s a Twisted World -  I decided to challenge myself by combining the posted 5 weekly Klaine AU Friday themes and adding another one of my own. So that means: Farm, Fairytale, Vintage (1900’s,) Super Powers, Zombie Apocalypse, and Harry Potter World Klaine with a splash of a fic idea I thought of while in the produce section of the grocery store. Each week, the story will continue, though each part stands alone. This is not a brilliant work of perfectly composed fan fiction. What it is, is fast-paced, cracky fun, with a large dose of innuendo. At least it had my son laughing his ass off. I hope y'all enjoy it too. :)

[letterboxd]

Beautiful Day: The Don Hertzfeldt Q&A.

In which the singular creator of It’s Such a Beautiful Day and the World of Tomorrow trilogy answers 57 questions put to him by the Letterboxd community, about death, gills, snacks, back flips, the best time of day to watch a movie, and the sick pleasure of emotionally destroying people.

Since his first animated outings in the 1990s, filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt has had a way of staring deeply into humanity’s soul via a humble stick figure, and his skill at blending existential questions with situational humor breeds intense reactions. To browse Letterboxd reviews of Hertzfeldt’s animated works is to meet film lovers at a rare, collective gathering point: heaping great piles of love for films that do “the exact opposite of helping with depression”.

There’s something optimistically anti-feel-good in Hertzfeldt’s works; a bleak view of the future, and a frank appreciation of death’s inevitability, that makes viewers urgently want to fix the way they’re living right now. “I’ve built a lot of my life philosophy on the messages of this film,” writes Misty, of his acclaimed It’s Such a Beautiful Day. “It has kicked my ass completely,” writes Dirk of the first, Oscar-nominated World of Tomorrow instalment, “making me angry at myself for letting trivial stuff take over things I love and making me happy I have so very, very much in my life to enjoy and be grateful for.”

The filmmaker’s magic lies as much in the process as the content: “Hertzfeldt is able to make every moment count,” writes Artpig, of the second WoT instalment, The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts, “every line of dialogue, every moment of silence, every note of music, every line of animation.” The World of Tomorrow films, says animation expert Toussaint Egan in our Letterboxd Show animation episode, are “some of the best science fiction films, period”.

And his timing. Oh, his timing. Just as the northern hemisphere days were turning cold, and the drawn-out misery of the pandemic was really taking hold all over again, Hertzfeldt tweeted:

WORLD OF TOMORROW EPISODE THREE everywhere october 9 5pm est 🚀

— don hertzfeldt (@donhertzfeldt)

October 8, 2020

And like that, World of Tomorrow Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime was ours, an overnight gift to the quarantined and bereaved-weary, on Vimeo for all to rent or own. The gifts, they keep coming: a master list of movies that have their fingerprints on the World of Tomorrow universe, and now, in recognition of our community’s love for his films—and in his signature lower-case—the answers to questions asked in an exclusive Letterboxd Q&A.

To make things easier for Don, we grouped similar questions (and have noted which members asked what). Read on for more than you ever thought you might get to know about Hertzfeldt’s process, brain, heart and influences.

Filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt.

From “holograms that yell at you!” to the stunning colors, textures and folds of the blue mountains, to attributes David progressively deletes to make room for memories, would you please give us an insight into World of Tomorrow Three’s world-building process? —Letterboxd in the grand scheme of the series, episodes one and two still felt like baby steps to me. episode three was my first chance to really start blowing things up and exploring this universe. when i’m writing, i don’t want to worry about going over the top or think about structure or meaning or really much of anything yet. writing is playtime, it should be fun and messy. i want to go over the top. there is no top. i don’t want to start thinking too much until i’m rewriting and sorting through it all. thinking too much too soon can get in the way, like being too aware of when you’re trying to fall asleep. when you write a diary entry or a text to a friend, there’s no self-consciousness or creative blocks, you just write. it’s casual and fluid and automatic. but if you’re asked to write a term paper or a screenplay, suddenly all those lights turn off. it can be paralyzing. it’s hard to get to that place of truly not caring what anyone thinks and approach all forms of writing just as freely as writing those immediate thoughts in your diary. but that’s what i try to do.

When you start writing a new piece, do you usually start with a plot idea, a thematic idea, one uniform philosophical notion, or a little bit of each? —Kodiak J. Sanders, Trenz, Mr. Tables i don’t think i ever write in a straight line. i’ll jot down a hundred stray ideas over time, and one day i’ll sit down and see what connections might be made out of them. i really want this scene to be in the movie, so how do i get there? this is a good line, how can i get a character to say it? so the actual story usually only starts to reveal itself when i sit down to logic all these bits and pieces out. hey, in order to connect this strange idea to that strange idea, suddenly there is a very interesting third scene.

I’m astounded by how much the animation and the visuals improve with each instalment of World of Tomorrow. What have you done differently for each one? —Aske Lund, Cringetacular the characters needed to physically perform a lot more in episodes two and three so there were more demands put on the animation. when emily 4 dances or david staggers up a mountain, those sorts of scenes were animated in “ones”, which means doing 24 drawings per second versus my usual twelve. it’s still all 2D hand animation, just more of a classic disney approach that gives the movement a smoother look and a little more room for nuance. and obviously it takes a lot more work. but i hesitate to call such things improvements because i’m not sure i like the idea of different techniques being thought of as good or bad. it’s just another way of doing things. it really depends, sometimes super limited animation can be more effective.

Likewise, Part Three’s sound design is incredible. What conditions did you create it in, and what are all those sounds, and how do you have such an incredible command of the cut-to-silence trick?! —Letterboxd thanks, the sound design is always my favorite thing to do. other than julia’s lines, it’s easy to forget that all the animation starts with dead silence. obviously there’s no sound coming from a live-action set. so adding sound and music to everything, usually pretty late in production, is when all the stuff i’ve been working on suddenly starts to feel like an actual movie. this is not a future that works very well—particularly david’s, which predates everything else we’ve seen so far by a century or two—so you’re hearing a lot of creaky old hard drives booting up, electric distortions, and bent circuits from broken toys.

Emily and Emily Prime in a still from ‘World of Tomorrow’ (2015).

World of Tomorrow used to fill me with existential dread, but now with the current state of the world it’s become more and more comforting in a strange way. Do you feel that at all as you make new episodes? —mariano gg i wish that were possible but when i’m making something i’m usually so close to it i’m unable to see anything but all the things i need to fix.

Can you talk a little bit about sourcing the photo-realistic images for the backgrounds in Part Three? —Jack Moulton most of the environments were 2D images i built in photoshop, usually starting from close-up photos of different textures (like sandstone), all sort of reshaped and puzzle-pieced into something new. an easy to see example was david’s cockpit, which was cobbled together from all sorts of different old aircraft engine and machine parts. the trick in building and lighting these locations was always figuring out where the line was drawn in making these places realistic, but not too realistic for minimal characters to inhabit. i kept landing on a sort of painterly looking middle ground.

If the cloning process in World of Tomorrow existed right now, would you go through that process and create clones of yourself to prolong your life? —tim probably not, that process doesn’t seem to work so well.

If you were put into the world you’ve created, would you buy gills? —Lauren Torres i tend to avoid putting my head under because i almost always get water in my ears so i guess i wouldn’t need them. gills also seem like they’d be a real nuisance to keep clean.

What does love mean, and why do your characters go through so much effort to find it? —Andrew Michalko oh man.

In this year of years, what do you hope people will understand about death and its inevitability (or is it all there on the screen, and if so, that’s okay too)? —Letterboxd understanding death and its inevitability is maybe the most valuable thing a person can do for themselves.

Was the absence of Emily Prime in Part Three a practical decision [Don’s then-four-year-old niece Winona provided Emily’s voice] or an intentional departure from the first two films? —Michael it was both. i couldn’t find a way to fit her in naturally and i also felt like the series needed to start growing in other directions and not rest on the past. episode two had also been really difficult to write, it was so reliant on winona’s recordings, and it felt like the dam was really broken when i was finally able to write without any restrictions this time.

In a series like World of Tomorrow, where you headed in a direction that is a lot more plot-driven than your previous work, how far in advance do you plan? Did you always know this was in David’s past, or are these stories told one at a time? —Ryan Welch, Kodiak J. Sanders, julius, Alex Leon i could tell early on that this wasn’t a story like it’s such a beautiful day with a clear beginning, middle and end, but a much wilder thing that could continue to grow. the openness of it is still what makes it so interesting to me. i have all sorts of notes for the next episodes but if i already knew what would happen in episode nine i think that would take a lot of the air out of the tires and i’d start to feel like i was just connecting the boring dots. while writing, i’ve also had to be aware that there someday might be an episode nine so i can’t go wrecking the timelines before i get there.

What were the rocks and the gas pump that Emily fell in love with meant to represent? —Ekaneff she was learning how to love, and like all of us, in her youth she gravitated to a bunch of individuals that were wrong for her.

Aside from the ability to release more frequently, is there something about the episodic structure that you prefer/appreciate, as opposed to creating one larger feature-length film? —SiddFinch1 there’s just more freedom. the traditional running time of a feature film, 90 to 120 minutes, is a totally arbitrary number.

Have you ever considered writing a World of Tomorrow book or graphic novel? —Jay Smith the earliest ideas for world of tomorrow were sloshing around in a graphic novel called the end of the world that came out in 2013. but i don’t have any talent or much confidence in making another book like that. it’s a different world. when i look at someone like chris ware and then look at something like the end of the world, it’s like, “wow, baby made a mess”.

A page from Don Hertzfeldt’s graphic novel, ‘The End of the World’ (2013).

What attracted you to the unique style [of minimalist stick figures]? Is there a sense of intimacy that you feel you can achieve with this simplicity? —Evan Whitford when i was little, before i wanted to make movies i wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist. i think my drawings today might have more in common with newspaper comics than the sort of characters you usually see in animation. comic-strip panels were always composed in a very reserved way because they were generally intended to be skimmed. you needed to be able to read the strip in five seconds so you could be off to read the sports pages and obituaries. the comics pages were also under constant size and space restrictions. so they were minimal by design and the artists reduced their characters to only their most essential parts. there was no room for fussing. charles schulz said “i only draw what’s necessary”. and that’s actually incredibly hard to do. you’re accomplishing so much more with so much less.

i’ve also found that if there’s a scene that’s not playing right and bothering me, most of the time it’s because my composition was too cluttered. i almost always find myself removing things from the frame and trying to pare it down to only what’s necessary. very rarely do i ever think ‘i need to add more stuff in here’. because this shot is only five seconds long and i want you to be looking over here when this moment happens and this character says something, and if you’re distracted by this other flickering junk i put in the corner it’s going to throw everything off.

Animation-aside, which creative medium do you resonate with the most? —Bronkdan music.

How much did you pull from real-life experiences to make It’s Such A Beautiful Day, if any? What research did you conduct into memory? —Gunnar Sizemore, David Sigura, Micah Smith whenever i got a little stuck writing it’s such a beautiful day, i’d go back and reread my journal and pull more things out of it. dreams, conversations, small scenes. reading the journal now, it seems like i stole something from it every few pages. i also heavily researched neurological problems. it’s never said in the movie what exactly’s going on with bill, but i needed there to be a real diagnosis to base the medical writing on. so all the things he’s going through are real treatments or symptoms based on an actual condition. i didn’t want to ever come out and say, “he’s got terminal brain clouds”, or whatever in the movie, because then it becomes a “brain-cloud movie”, and that’s too easy for the audience to compartmentalize and distance themselves from… “brain clouds are so rare, that will never happen to me”. but not being told exactly what’s wrong with bill might help make the story more relatable and universal.

In what ways have you kept your mind fresh creatively? How do you keep yourself from slipping into complacency? —Watchmoviez, Drew’s reviews most creative blocks or stagnation come from anxiety, second-guessing and doubt. over the years i’ve learned to just sort of calm down and trust myself more. it’s like the old aesop fable: when you stop thrashing around in the water, the water becomes clearer and you can see more. if a scene isn’t working right, i can more easily chill out about it these days and trust that i’ll eventually figure it out—because i’ve figured these sorts of things out a hundred times before and i know by now that i’m not the sort of person who’s just going to allow a scene that isn’t working to remain in the movie. there’s a little more panic about that sort of thing when you’re young: “oh no, the movie sucks right now, will it always suck?!” i’ve reached the point where i know that i will not let it suck. and that sort of thinking allows all the movie gears to turn more easily.

Do you have a specific thematic, emotional or other miscellaneous motive in mind when including classical music pieces? —James Y. Lee when i’m listening to music and suddenly the right piece arrives, it’s usually blindingly obvious to me: there’s just no doubt this needs to be in the movie somehow. it’s like the idea has always existed and i’ve just finally uncovered it. it’s the same with writing. when the right thing floats along, it is striking and obvious and into the pile of notes it goes.

How much of your animation style lends itself to experimentation, such as discovering new tricks and pretty shots, that is then discarded if you learn it doesn’t work as intended? —Adam, Jacob i think i’m always experimenting. i figure if it doesn’t work, at least i’ve learned something.

What is the strangest compliment or critique you’ve gotten personally or of your work? —Elliot Taylor i’ve always remembered this one. i am so proud of you came out a couple years after everything will be ok. it was a continuation of that story, so it was basically the first time i had ever made a sequel. and everything will be ok had done really well when it came out. it won sundance and got all these great reviews. so i am so proud of you comes out and i remember reading this review that says, “everything will be ok was probably my favorite animated short of all time. it honestly changed my life. it was funny, sad, beautiful and just so wonderful. everything will be ok, boy did i love it. incredible. two thumbs up. truly, best thing ever. wow. so, unfortunately, its sequel, i am so proud of you, just feels like more of the same.”

A still image from ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’ (2012).

Are there any pieces of fiction that have influenced your work that we probably wouldn’t think of? —Gyani Wasp, Mikolaj Perzyna, Aaron McMillan, Harrison, Axel, Cringetacular, The25centman, Hunter Guidry one thing that pops to mind is the phantom tollbooth. my favorite children’s books were the ones with all the fun metaphors and clever wordplay. when i was plotting out episode two i wanted to lean into that, where visiting different sections of emily’s brain would be like milo visiting the land of math, the land of letters, the land of sound, with different looks and logic to it. so we had the bog of realism, glimmers of hope, broken memories, the logic center, and all the stuff in triangle land and square land. i guess that’s a lot but i wish there had been a bit more.

How did your friends and family respond to the “my anus is bleeding” part of Rejected? —Alex Tatterson they were pretty used to me by then.

Do you know of the work of David Firth, the internet animator? His work is also surreal and has dark humor, but more sinister than whimsical. Would you ever consider making an animation in the realm of horror in future? —KEVIИ HДWKIИS i’m afraid i don’t know him. i’d love to make a horror movie. from a certain point of view though maybe it could be argued that most everything i’ve made is a sort of horror movie?

My first tattoo is of Billy from Billy’s Balloon hanging from his ankle and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. How do you feel about people having your work tattooed and do you have any ink from other creatives that have meant something to you? —Elias it really fucking enrages me when people get my stuff tattooed on them. no just kidding. mostly i feel embarrassed but i’m glad you haven’t changed your mind about it yet. sometimes i wonder how many people have.

Have you ever thought about directing live action? —Abeer, Noah Thompson yes.

Is there an update on your feature film Antarctica? —Rylan California it’s one of many things swirling around.

Will you do a remake of Robocop and why not next year? —Simon no, because robocop is already sort of perfect.

Do you ever see yourself directing a large studio film? Or working with a large team to make something with a higher budget, maybe through a crowd-funded project? Or do you just strongly prefer working on your own? —Vteyshev, Monotone Duck sure. i’ve never preferred working on my own at all. it was usually just the only way to ever get anything made. i haven’t had the funding to pay a big crew, or really much of a crew at all. there’s the old saying: you can make something good, you can make it fast, and you can make it cheap, but you can only pick two. if you make it good and fast it won’t be cheap, if you make it cheap and fast it won’t be good, etc. so my only route in hoping to make something good and cheap has been to totally forget about making it fast.

What did you find digital animation added or took away from your work, and what did those changes do for your storytelling? Will you continue using the digital medium when/if you decide to move on from the World of Tomorrow project? —Alec Lai, Slipkornbizkit, Aldo digital just sped everything up. it’s still one person drawing everything, so we need to remember that speed is relative here, but i felt like i went from riding a bicycle to driving a car. there are many pleasant, wonderful things about riding a bicycle but you’re not going to get anywhere very quickly. and i’m not in my 20s anymore, in fact my 20s and 30s were mostly entirely devoured by making movies in what was maybe the slowest way possible. so these days i am appreciating the speed of digital.

If you could have a conversation with any filmmaker, dead or alive, who would it be and why? —ToBeHonest, Cringetacular if i could resurrect one of my heroes from the dead i think i would feel terrible wasting his time forcing him to have a conversation with me. he might also just sit there, covered with graveyard dirt, screaming in horror.

What is the best time of day to watch a movie? —Sammy night. i always feel a little nuts coming out of a movie and the sun is still up.

What’s your all-time favorite science-fiction film, and why? —Letterboxd 2001. because come on.

What is your favorite of Julia Potts’ films, and why? —Letterboxd i like the one with the severed foot.

Are there any animated films that you felt had a profound impact on you as a child? —Sprizzle probably fantasia. and ray harryhausen stuff. whenever there was a sunday-afternoon movie on TV, my brother and i learned that if in the opening titles there was a credit for “special effects” we should keep watching because we might eventually see something cool.

Which one of your movies is your personal favorite? —Jakob Böwer, RodrigoJerez i don’t know. sometimes it’s the newest one because it’s usually the one with the most experience behind it and therefore feels like it has the fewest mistakes. but then over time i realize they’re all riddled with mistakes. of the it’s such a beautiful day pieces, i think my favorite has always been i am so proud of you. and then i’ll see reviews that say “clearly the second chapter is the weakest one”, and i’ll think, man you guys don’t know what you’re talking about.

One of Don’s layout sketches for ‘I Am So Proud of You’ (2008).

What’s your favorite Pixar film? —Jordan inside out.

What film would you want to be the last one you watch before you die? —Gavin honestly if i’m in the process of dying i hope i won’t be watching movies at all.

Do you have faith in humanity? —Connor Kriechbaum not often.

What is something that worries you about where humankind is headed? —Felix_Bouchard social media.

What is the most valuable thing you have ever lost? How often do you think about it? —Siminup well now i’m getting sad.

Can you do a back flip, mister Don? —Doug maybe with the help of a catapult.

What is your take on the after life? What do you think happens to us when we die? —Luisdecoss i guess that it’s probably a lot like our memory of what the year 1823 was like.

Do you want anything from McDonald’s? —Andrew Rhyne only if i’m in an airport and desperate.

What’s your favorite meal or snack? —Pfitzerone, Evan lately in quarantine i’ve been discovering this particular breakfast burrito.

How’s your quarantine life, Don? —Ivan Arcena it’s okay thanks. eating lots of breakfast burritos.

Hi! I can’t believe you’re going to read this. I am currently filled with an unparalleled amount of joy, wow. This is a long shot but here I go. I’m 17 and your (self-proclaimed) biggest fan. I’ve seen It's Such a Beautiful Day eight times now and every single time I pick up on more details. I’ve watched a few of your interviews and in the AFS one about Rejected you said that the louder you play a movie, the funnier it is. On my seventh watch of It’s Such a Beautiful Day I hooked my laptop up to three huge speakers and I must say—you were so, so right. I made a video essay about the movie. Lol, I’m not sure if this will get to you but Michael Jordan once said something about missing shots or not taking shots or maybe about tequila, I am unsure but I know it was important. Thanks MJ. Not you, Mr Jackson. I’m sorry Ms. Jackson…

I actually do have a question, sorry about the rambling. Every single time I watch the guy at the payphone flip his pencil and go “fantastic, fantastic” I cry. And I think what really does it for me is that “we’ll finally have our day”. Earlier in the movie, Bill’s co-worker talks about how all of time is happening at once. So what I constantly ask myself is if the guy at the payphone is simultaneously having his day and waiting for it. And I’m no longer speaking to that one specific example or even to the movie as a whole but I guess I’m wondering if the idea of all events happening at once comforts you?

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes: “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” When I read this I immediately thought about your movie. I think the idea of all of time happening at once makes all of life feel less important but more special. You know? Anyway, I suppose I’d just like to know what inspired the lines about time in the office scene. This isn’t much of a question, more an incoherent ramble but thank you so, so much for all you’ve done. I feel so incredibly inspired and so deeply moved by your work and I know that so many people in this comment section and around the world would agree. I can’t believe I’ve been given the opportunity to ask something. It really is such a beautiful day. :) —Eli Osei (co-signed by Vooder) that old guy at the payphone was someone i saw at the laundromat once and he borrowed my pencil and the whole thing just played out like in the movie. i just thought it was such a perfect little scene that i’d just witnessed. anyway, the idea of time being a landscape and everything taking place “at once” just came straight out of a science magazine. i don’t know how, but apparently it’s been more or less proven to be true? we perceive time in one direction, but the past and the future are always all around us. think of it as though we’re driving our car through a landscape. even though the mountains we saw ten minutes ago are behind us now, it doesn’t mean those mountains have ceased to exist. they’ve only ceased to exist from our point of view. we’ve only just driven past them. the mountains, like your childhood, are still going on back there. anyway, i had never heard of that before and thought it needed to be in a movie.

A still from ‘World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts’ (2017).

Are you a fan of Kurt Vonnegut by any chance? It may be coincidental, but I love how you both utilize science-fiction settings and concepts like being “unstuck from time/memory” to explore the human condition. I feel his writing and your animation are both capable of making me laugh wholeheartedly one minute and weeping genuine, sorrowful tears the next. —Vooder i’m embarrassed to say i’ve never read him and i’m told on a regular basis that i should. that all started after i am so proud of you came out with those discussions about time being a landscape. but i almost only ever read non-fiction. it’s a long story. but now i’m almost afraid to ever read vonnegut after all these years of build-up.

Hey Don, this is really cool. I don’t have as much of a question, more of a comment. It’s Such A Beautiful Day has gotten me through a lot of hard times, being in middle school sucks, I think everyone knows that: and your movie has made life just a wee bit better for me. It also gave me the inspiration and motivation to finish my first feature! Thanks lots. Love from Indiana —Blood Mountain: Experimental Cinema <3 hey thank you. yeah middle school was pretty much the deepest pit of hell. there’s this old saying, “if you find yourself in hell, keep going”. and i’ve never understood that saying. “keep going”, because, i guess, you can always just go deeper into hell?

Hi! Has the vitreous humour in your eyes started to deteriorate and have you experienced floaters within your eyeballs? If not, that’s okay. Just remember it’s part of life, so don’t get scared when it happens! Just keep moving on! But if you do have them, follow-up question: Do you think it’s funny that the body of vitreous fluid that allows your sight to be clear is called the vitreous humour, and when it detaches it’s anything but humorous? I find that pretty humorous myself, in, like, an ironic way. —Clbert1 i actually blew a blood vessel in my eye a couple weeks ago and the whole thing turned bright blood red. it didn’t hurt or anything, i just walked into the room all disgusting and my girlfriend was like, “what the fuck?!” and then the next day i had further weird eye problems. i just went to the eye doctor yesterday. i think i will be fine but i was thinking, wouldn’t it be like the most heavy metal thing ever for my biography if i just suddenly went BLIND? “and then in 2020, HE WENT BLIND.”

Will Intro ever be released to the general public outside of theater screenings? —Melissa okay yes you’ve talked me into it. on that note, i noticed that the poster of intro used on letterboxd is a weird fake and i’m not sure where it came from. someone just used a picture from rejected. if fake posters are to be made i would prefer it if they used a picture from raiders of the lost ark or something.

Do you have plans to combine the World of Tomorrow shorts into one feature-length film à la It’s Such a Beautiful Day? —David Sigura, Sam Stewart, An_Person no, it’s going to be much longer than a feature-length.

Will we ever get a ‘Hertzfeldt 4K Collection’? Or at least a Blu-ray with It’s Such a Beautiful Day and all episodes of World of Tomorrow? —Teebin, HippityHoppity there is actually already a blu-ray for it’s such a beautiful day. up next we’ll do some sort of world of tomorrow blu-ray of the first three episodes. but 4k is too many k’s. you don’t need that many k’s.

Would you ever consider comprising an OST album of all the songs you used and mixed from your films? —PhiloDemon i don’t think so. i read that for many years cat stevens resisted releasing his original songs from harold and maude on any records because he thought they were more special if you could only ever hear them in the movie. i like that.

Do you get a sick kind of pleasure from emotionally destroying people with your movies? —MaxT26 yep.

What’s been your ongoing experience of the outpouring of joy and love of your work? —Henry gratitude. how sad for me if, after all this work, nobody was watching at all.

Related content

Don’s invaluable Twitter thread about “old-school animation camera stuff”

A Few of the Fingerprints on the World of Tomorrow Universe: a list of influences curated for Letterboxd by Don Hertzfeldt

Modest Heroes: the Letterboxd Showdown for indie animation

The Drawn Cinema: Analena’s list of rough animation, pencil textures, watercolor effects, dynamic brushes and other poetic artistry.

Beloved Indie Animation: a list by Gui

Animated Sci-Fi and Fantasy: an extensive list by Stonefolk

‘World of Tomorrow Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime’ is available now through Bitter Films on Vimeo.

[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a deleted scene (julia)

i mentioned this and a couple other scenes from “little t&a” in an earlier post-- i’ve cleaned up and added to the bare bones of this. it’s really just an alternate take on the paul portion of chapter 25, where julia calls prior to or maybe instead of ace. thanks for the encouragement re: posting these, i appreciate it!

The phone rang before he could decide what else to do, whether to wait on Gene or eat something or waste awhile in front of the T.V. It startled him a little. Ever since Gene had come, he’d rarely been in the house enough to hear it ring. Another cushion from reality.

He ignored it. It kept ringing. Six times. Seven. Eventually, the answering machine tape started up, and he heard his own, actual voice, another piece of bewilderment.

“Hey, this is Paul Stanley. If you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. Thanks.”

“Stan?”

He froze.

“Stan, this is Julia. Mom gave me your number--”

He picked up the phone before he could think to stop himself, throat suddenly desert-dry.

“Julia.”

“Who’s this?” The question was abrupt and immediate. Irritated. Julia was always far quicker to irritate than he was. The agitation still sent slight pinpricks of fear driving into his skin. Paul swallowed hard. He hadn’t even thought about it. God, he hadn’t even thought about what it’d be to talk to his sister the way he was now.

“I-it…” and, stupidly, he started to cough, trying to buy himself a second or two more on the line, desperately trying to drop his voice down at least a little, for all the good that would do. A week and a half ago, he would’ve hung up. He would have rather gone another three years without speaking to her. Now, something was tugging at him, awful and aching and desperate. “Julia, it’s-- it’s--”

“Who?”

“Don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up.” He took a breath. “I… I just want to… I can give him a message for you. Whatever you’ve gotta say, just let me know, and I’ll--”

“Has he told you about me?”

“Yeah.”

“He said I was crazy, didn’t he?” Julia snorted. “He is, too. He’s been in therapy since he was fifteen.”

Paul swallowed thickly.

“Really?”

“Stan’s a wreck. He wants everybody else to be just as fucked-up as he is.”

Paul’s tongue felt like cardboard. He wanted to argue with her. It had been three years since he’d seen her. Three years. He’d never reached out to her on his own. Never invited her to a concert, positive she’d come loaded or with a bunch of druggie friends or-- or mental. Julia was supposed to be somebody hidden away. Somebody with a carved-out space miles and miles apart from his life.

He didn’t support her. Not directly. He knew his parents gave her some of the money he sent them. He knew they had her contact information. He knew Bill had it, too, in case something happened to her that KISS’ publicity machine had to cover up. But he’d made a point of knowing nothing himself. Like not knowing where she was meant she couldn’t affect him. Couldn’t infect him, either. The terror he’d had as a child, not wanting to be in the same room with her, her anger, her rages, had morphed over time. Gone from terror of her to terror of being her. Wondering whether he’d be just the same. Whether he’d be a secret his parents didn’t want to bring up, whether he’d end up on pills and drugs and off-and-on committed, too. It scared him worse than anything else, going crazy, really crazy-- not just all worked up inside his own head, but out of control.

Sometimes, at his lowest, he thought the only reason he hadn’t had anything heavier than therapy as a teenager was because his parents couldn’t stand the thought of having two fucked-up, lunatic children. It was bad enough as it was. Him missing an ear and her crazy. Hilsen had assured him over and over that that wasn’t the case, reminding him he’d come of his own volition, reminding him he showed no signs of her illness. But he never could convince himself entirely. Not with the rest of what they had in common. The bisexuality he could pop off about casually to Gene or Ace or Peter or Bill, or even hint at in the music mags for shock value. It bothered him when he was at his lowest. It bothered him to know she was like that, too.

It bothered him more these days than it ever had before. Growing up, they hadn’t looked any more alike than most siblings, but right now, especially with his face softer, features not quite as jutting and angular, the similarities stood out more starkly. It was still his face, sure, but the flickers of resemblance were more pronounced, more uncomfortable. He’d kept thinking about her-- oh, hell, he thought about her a lot, anyway, every time he called his parents, every time he took Ericka out to the movies or to an amusement park. But she’d never been on his mind half this much before the curse. He was even talking to Gene about her at random-- Gene, who’d never figure out how much he’d pissed Paul off by calling him by Julia’s name.

(julia is out of her mind)

(she was nuts even then)

(you’re too hard on her)

(i have a right to be)

He couldn’t speak. He heard Julia blow a loud sigh against the receiver, and he was surprised she didn’t hang up at his silence.

“You don’t believe me, huh? God, I have all the stories on him. I see what’s in the magazines. Whatever he told you is a bunch of shit.”

“I know how he is.” Paul swallowed again. It wasn’t just his tongue feeling like cardboard now. The whole roof of his mouth was almost like sand. “He wants to talk to you.”

“No, he doesn’t. He hates me.”

“H-he… he wants to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For putting you down.”

It could’ve been him. Some of what had happened to her could have happened to him. Nineteen years old and knocked up by God knew what boyfriend. It could’ve happened easily. Just someone willing to pay him a little attention. As a guy, he’d fallen for Gene over something as pathetic as a tiny reassurance, and ended up all over him as soon as he’d gotten the opportunity. As a girl, a real girl, dumpy and easily rattled, desperate for attention and approval, he would’ve been the same. Would’ve gone for whoever looked his way, been willing to do anything. As a girl, he would’ve reaped all the consequences, too, instead of being able to shrug most of it off in the morning after.

“He can’t mean that.”

“He does, he…” Paul trailed, not knowing how to say it. “He didn’t know how bad you had it. Maybe he’s not ever going to know. He…”

“What the fuck did he say to you? Who the fuck are you?”

“Julia--”

“Who are you?”

He couldn’t tell her. Not like this. Not the way he was now. She’d never believe him. He couldn’t drop his voice down enough to really sound like himself. The inflections and the lisp were still there, but the pitch was all screwed up. She’d think he was trying to-- to make fun of her, or hurt her. Something. She’d never even realize it was him.

“H-he’s just been talking about you a lot, lately. That’s… that’s all.” Paul swallowed. “Let… let me have your number. Please. I’ll have him get back in touch.”

“He won’t call me.”

“He… he will. I swear.” His throat felt warm. “Maybe, maybe he wants to see you.”

She laughed shortly. He could almost picture her shaking her head. His throat only felt worse with each passing moment, heavy and hot, as he realized he was edging on a promise he couldn’t keep as long as he stayed this way.

Julia was the first memory he even had. Julia, much taller than he was, carrying around that Muffie doll, with the blonde hair and blue dress and red socks. He remembered wanting to just touch that doll, knowing, somehow, it had to be special, because she was holding it. He had gotten hold of it as soon as she set it down, tugging off the socks, and then she’d snatched it back. 

All that time. All those years a room apart. Knowing her, being scared of her, angry with her, and now even the chance of connecting again was gone completely. The way he was now, he couldn’t ever see her again. He’d never, ever be able to see her. If he wanted even a shot at making things up with her, he’d have to go back. If he wanted his family at all, he had to stop fooling around, stop the outings and teasing and get it all over with. Cut it out for their sake, if not for his own.

“You’re nuts,” she said, and hung up the phone.

[sparrowsabre7]

Thoughts on the Snyder Cut Chapter 6 of 6

The awful “you smell good” line is changed back to the original “you spoke” which clearly couldn’t be used in the Josstice cut since dark Superman was a lot more chatty there, whereas he is entirely silent in the Snyder Cut to this moment. 

We take a bit more time to breathe on Clark’s return before going into the Batcave for what I think is the first time as a group in this version. I actually quite enjoyed Barry whizzing round the cave in Josstice as a bit of humour that actually made sense to me. Here he just says “wow!” which is now coloured a little by the death mere minutes before or his new friend’s dad... 

There is a nice “This is Alfred, I work for him” from Bruce and Alfred despairing of where he’s going to find enough tea cups, a wry commentary on the fact he’s never really needed more than 2. 

More breathing with Clark, though this movie seems to do nothing but breathe sometimes... he mentions Lois’s ring which I don’t think was brought up in Josstice, but despite spending more time with Lois, the moment still doesn’t really feel earned. Martha is then reunited with her boy too, again feeling unearned since this is actually the first we see of her this film. 

Bruce acknowledges the dream sequences from Batman V Superman in a scene that adds nothing but act as an ominous teaser before they embark on the Flying Fox (fixed by Cyborg in another addition with little actual purpose not least because the exchange between Cyborg and Bruce makes no sense “It wanted to fly, it’s in her nature” “Yours too” - we’ve already seen Cyborg fly like 20 times already). We get a brief planning scene and then it’s off to the final boss!

But not before we have another fatherly advice montage - this time for Clark from the disembodied voices of his two dads as he sadly wanders around the ship before emerging in the infamous silver and black suit. 

This scene is nice though, mirroring the emergence from “Man of Steel” and showcasing his improved mastery of flight, paying homage to the films that came before. Ah spoke too soon, ruined with a jesus shot that smacks you over the head so hard you’ll get concussion. 

The team disembarks and zooms into battle, the batmobile sequence is still a highlight and I don’t think much has changed from it, nothing that jumped out at me at least. 

There’s a scene added back in with Clark visiting Alfred, which was on the original disc as a deleted scene. I understood why it was deleted then and it adds little here too, save for logistically explaining how Superman knows where the team is.

Wonder Woman, Cyborg and Aquaman confront Steppenwolf. REALLY fucking sick of that wail now.  This doesn’t seem dramatically altered, meanwhile Barry is off doing a big run to charge up Cyborg. 

While this may have more narrative purpose than the saving the Russian family scene from Josstice (which I loathed, that family sideplot was SO dumb) it still relegates Barry to basically not doing much. Also, he gets tripped up by a blast from a gun, he’s faster than fucking sound, there should be no reason he got hit by that. Also, oh my goodness is Ezra Miller (who is otherwise pretty solid) gurning it up over his injury... 

Superman appears and it is a lot more badass than in the 2017 cut, but it does IMMEDIATELY raise the question (again) of what is the point of the other League members. He tears Steppenwolf apart with greater ease than he fought Zod or Doomsday and yet, this guy is meant to be this incredible force to be reckoned with.

Meanwhile the mother box pulling apart doesn’t go so well, so all the other Leaguers literally stand and watch as Cyborg fails to pull them apart waiting on Barry as a portal to Darkseid opens. The boxes explode and Barry goes back in time to undo it, forcing me to ask again, my god, why DOES he move his arms like that when he runs? 

Jesus we’re still 30 minutes from the end and we’re still doing vision sequences fuck me. I am so tired now. I just want it to end.

Ok the mother boxes are freaky demons in the vision showing Victor a life he could have. He ultimately rejects it and pushes them apart with Superman’s help (this seems to take basically no effort on Superman’s part compared with Josstice where it knocked both of them to the ground.) They then decapitate the basically beaten Steppenwolf (and use what I hope to christ is the last Amazon wail) for the body to fly through the portal and the team to have a good stareoff with Darkseid before he teases a now defunct sequel with generic bad guy statements. 

A very slow mo team pose closes out the battle and still doesn’t accomplish the same level of “fuck yeah” in 1 minute and 34 seconds (I counted) that “Avengers” did in 10 seconds with the 360 degree shot.

The epilogue begins and Cyborg magics his dad’s tape recorder back together to listen to his message. I don’t know how, I guess because he’s part motherbox? Arthur heads off to find his own solo movie, hopping in the back of a truck amusingly paralleling the scene in “Endgame” where Hulk visits New Asgard (though unintentional of course). Ryan Choi is there to remind us Ryan Choi was in this movie. Bruce and Alfred set up the Hall of Justice which seems unchanged, and then Barry showing his father he’s got a job in a crime lab, which now has added “foot in the door” content. Bruce helps Clark’s mum move back in, “I did a mistake” and “bought the bank” quotes still intact. Wonder Woman looks mournfully at the amazon arrow (sans wail) and then Barry manages to look even sillier when running. Batman stands atop the bat-tank from “The Dark Knight Returns” in another neat piece of fanservice that makes little sense, before Clark removes his specs and rips open his shirt to the S; something which definitely has less of an impact in the black and silver than in the red, blue, and yellow. 

We now come to the post-credity end of the movie (even though it’s pre-credits) with Luthor having escaped jail. Deathstroke also heads up to Luthor’s yacht as in Josstice’s post-credits but the context is changed dramatically, with it being about a personal hit on Batman (who took Slade’s eye apparently) rather than building the legion of doom. 

Ok, boy, still not done, more endings than Return of the King this one. We’ve jumped into the Knightmare world again, apropos of nothing. IN fairness, trenchcoat Batman is absolutely a look. Mera and Cyborg are there because reasons. As is Jared Leto Joker who sounds and overacts like an anime villain. A reacharound joke. hilarious. I actually tried defending Leto’s Joker back in the Suicide Squad era, but there’s no salvaging him. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt but he’s just so cringeworthy. Oh apparently Harley Quinn is dead in this timeline. Batman also says “make no mistake I will fucking kill you” with all the conviction of a man establishing his consumer rights to a no questions asked refund. Ok Deathstroke is there too. With a mohawk. Barry has his time travel armour from BVS and then Superman shows up. 

Bruce now wakes up (jesus fuck, let it END) and Martian Manhunter is at his window which doesn’t seem to phase Bruce in the slightest, dispensing “an army is coming, we need to fight” platitudes. Ben Affleck seems to be playing this scene like he’s Ryan Reynolds (and tbh that’s actually working for me).

And it’s over. I’ve ranted long enough here so I will summarise in a final post

[viviansternwood]

How do you make a gif?

What a fantastic question. 

This will be a full-blown tutorial, and I’m going to do my best to keep this as beginner-friendly as possible, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask via inbox or DMs or whichever way suits you.

You will need Photoshop to be able to follow this tutorial. I will be using this particular gif as an example:

The rest of the tutorial is under the cut.

Step 1. Download

First we download the video we’re going to gif. It always has to be in HD quality, preferably 1080, but sometimes 720 can work too, but no less. Gifs will not look good if the video you’re giffing is in bad quality.

The idea is to use torrent as little as possible because of the consequences, so, depending on what I want to gif, my method of download will vary. If it’s a relatively recent and well-known movie/tv show, then I usually check out this website for movies, and this one for tv shows.

If it’s something more obscure than that - say an old movie - you’ll have to use torrent, unfortunately.

For youtube videos, I use this app.

Step 2. Screencaps

Now that you’ve downloaded your video, you’ll need to make screencaps. The app I use is MPlayer OSX Extended - it works only for Mac. For both Mac and Windows, you can use MPEG Streamclip, but I prefer the former because it can be used for any format, whereas MPEG Streamclip only works with mp4.

I actually don’t have MPEG Streamclip anymore, so this tutorial will only show how I personally make screencaps, so with MPlayer.

The steps are simple:

Open the video

Find the scene you want to capture

Pause the video

Hold ‘command + shift + S’ until the scene ends

Make sure you choose a folder in which you want your screencaps to save (before you start capturing). To do this, while your video is open, go:

Mplayer OSX Extended > Preferences

This window will open:

At the bottom, where it says “Save screenshots to”, you can choose your location.

Step 3. Importing Screencaps

Once the screencaps are done, we open Photoshop and go: File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack

Next it’ll open a browsing window, and you find the folder in which you saved your screencaps. At this stage I like to make sure I only upload the shots that will be on my gif, leaving out the extra ones I may have captured (like the beginning of the next scene, for example).

Use Shift to choose a lot of shots at the same time:

Then click OK.

While they’re uploading to photoshop, make sure you don’t click anywhere until the process is finished because otherwise it might not upload all the shots.

Step 4. Editing

Once your screenshots are in, the first thing you need to do is decide on the size of the gif. There are specific sizes which tumblr supports so that your gifs don’t appear blurred. I’m going to make a list of all possible combinations that I know. This will go from largest possible size a gif can be to the smallest and will show how it will look in gifsets (all the gifsets will be mine, sometimes from sideblogs).

Any number of gifs, one in a row:

540x540 (example)

540x450 (example)

540x320 (example)

540x240 (example)

An even number of gifs, two gifs in a row, side by side:

268x404 (example)

268x350 (example)

268x300 (example)

268x268 (example)

268x220 (example)

268x192 (example)

268x150 (example)

9 gifs:

177x177 for side gifs and 178x177 for the middle gif in each row (example)

In this case, I will be making a standard 540x240 gif.

First we resize the image. Because these are caps from a movie and not a TV show (resolutions are different for TV), the cap is wide but short, that means that I change the size of the image by height. To do this:

Image > Image Size

This window opens:

Where it says “height”, we type in 240 and click OK.

Then we zoom in to a 100%.

Next, we make sure the timeline is open. To do this: 

Window > Timeline

Once that’s done, down at the timeline, we click “Create Frame Animation”:

At the right of the timeline, right under the layers, we click on this little thing:

And choose “Make Frames from Layers”

The frames will now be in reversed order because that’s how the layers always upload, so we click on that little four lines thing in the upper right corner of the timeline again and choose “Reverse Frames”:

And now is the time to have a look at your frames and see if you need to delete any. Make sure that if you delete a frame, you delete a corresponding layer as well. The gif will have to be under 3mb for tumblr to display it correctly, so make sure there aren’t too many frames. But this isn’t a huge issue because once you’ve saved the ready gif, you can always reopen it and delete some frames.

In this case I have 36 frames, and I’m going to take it down to 34 just to be safe. This is what the gif looks like at this stage:

Once that’s done, the next step is to set the delay. Every giffer does this according to their personal preferences, but I personally do this. If your gif doesn’t involve any talking - so you won’t be adding text, then set the delay to 0.07. If it involves adding text later, don’t touch the delay at all at the moment, it’ll have to be done later. 

Because this gif doesn’t involve adding any text, I’m setting the delay to 0.07. Again, hold Shift to choose all the frames.

The slowed down gif looks like this:

Now it’s time to crop! Choose the cropping tool and type 540x240 where it says “ratio”:

Choose the crop positioning to your liking and press enter.

The gif at the moment:

Now we do last preparations before colouring. For this, click at the little four lines again:

And choose “Convert to Video Timeline”.

Then choose all the layers and go Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

Then go Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen:

Which will open the window for smart sharpening, and here are my settings:

This is another one of those things that is down to each giffer, but what I usually do is, if it’s a really small gif, like 268x150 for example, I set radius to 0.2. If it’s a huge close up to a person’s face or a really big gif, like 540x540, I set the radius to 0.4. For all other gifs I always keep it on 0.3.

Then click OK.

Next, go Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Here are my settings for this:

Then, move the noise layer under the sharpening layer (I don’t know if this changes anything, but I always do it this way lol):

The gif ends up looking like this:

Now the editing is done, and it’s time to colour! 

Step 5. Colouring

This is by far the hardest thing a giffer has to do, so if you don’t immediately get the hang of it, don’t be upset. You’ll learn eventually. I’m still learning, personally.

Again, all of this is very much down to each giffer, but here’s the way I do it.

Press the little “fill layer” button and choose Curves:

So the way I use curves is to even out the entire shot’s colouring. So if the scene is too red or too green or too blue or too yellow, it gets rid of the excess of that colouring and brings it down to normal. Can help so much in some cases.

What you do is choose the middle pipette in the window, which is to sample image to set grey point.

There’s also the option to set white point (bottom pipette) or black point (top pipette), but I don’t use those because it screws with your lighting too much.

To choose a point, I usually use the person’s eyebrows or hair. Sounds ridiculous, but it does work. In this case clicking on Dunkleman’s eyebrow makes the image too green:

So what I do instead is click on his hair, where it’s reddish brown, somewhere here.

This makes the image noticeably less red compared to the original:

But also, it made the image less vibrant, so we’re fixing that next. Fill layer > Vibrance:

And then I set Vibrance to 100, always. If the image is still not vibrant enough for my liking, I set saturation (in the same window) to 10 or 25 in some cases. And for this gif, I will set saturation to 10. 

Here’s how the image ends up looking (just make sure it doesn’t make their faces ridiculously red or something, but if there’s some excess of colour, don’t worry):

Now go Fill layer > Exposure.

Here are my settings for this gif:

With exposure, it’s just a matter of keeping that balance between lightening it as much as possible but without their faces or bodies looking as bright as a christmas tree, and then adding offset and gamma correction to return normalcy to the picture.

Here’s what the image looks like now:

It’s obvious right now that their faces are a little too red and too yellow, so we’re going to fix that. Go Fill Layer > Selective Colour:

The task here is to make their faces appear as if they’re stood in normal daylight with no other filters. So as close to normal skin colour as possible. Be careful when giffing people of colour so that you don’t whitewash them. 

In this case, I’m adding cyan in reds:

And taking down yellow in yellows:

And here’s what the image ends up looking like:

I’m quite satisfied with this result, so I’m going to leave it how it is, but sometimes I will tweak things more and use colour balance and other things.

Step 6. Add Text

Make sure you group your colouring layers at this point and then add your text as the top layer. 

Step 7. Save the gif

To save a gif moving, you go File > Export > Save for Web:

This window opens up, and make sure that in the bottom right corner, where it says “looping options”, it’s set to “forever”:

As the last step, I add dither because it evens out the edited colours in the background. I tend to use “pattern”:

Then we press “save” and our gif is done!

Step 9. Reopen

If you added text to the gif and followed my advice, you wouldn’t have touched the delay back at the beginning. This is because converting to video timeline kicks the delay either into 0.03 (too fast) or into 0.07 (too slow for speaking gifs). So you have to reopen the gif now and set the delay to 0.06 (that’s the speed I like for my gifs where someone’s talking on them).

This is also a good time to delete some frames if your gif is 3mb or over. Remember it won’t move if it’s not under 3mb!

Hope all of this makes sense, and let me know if you have any questions!

[wmhalliwell]

ashlee’s gif making tutorial

@amysperalta​ has requested a gif making tutorial from me and i’m happy to oblige! everyone has a different way to gif and some ways don’t work for some people, so this is just how i personally make them. i’ve also never made a tutorial before, so let’s hope this doesn’t end badly.

this is the gif i’ll be making for the purposes of this tutorial:

things you’ll need:

a version of photoshop

some way to get frames from a video file (i’ll give some options)

patience

step 1: getting your frames

there are many, many ways to do this. there are multiple different programs to do this with (kmplayer, uplayer, gom player) but i personally use mpv (via @kylos​ lovely tutorial here; which i also highly recommend as a gif tutorial since it gives a different way to create a gif file) because my mac doesn’t accept any other type of program. 

note: BE SURE THAT WITH ANY PROGRAM YOU USE, IT IS SET TO SAVE EVERY FRAME. some people may lie to you and say a program grabbing every other or every third frame is fine, but it’s 2019 and we don’t do that any more. the tumblr gif limit is 3mb, which means we can have smooth, non-choppy gifs by gathering every frame from a scene.

okay, so i gather my frames, and typically keep them in a folder, separating scenes cut-by-cut so it’s easier to handle. for example: 

from there, i import them into photoshop using: File --> Scripts --> Load Files into Stack; this screen pops up, in which you browse for your frames hit OK. this will automatically upload all the frames into the same file for you. be patient! depending on how many frames you choose, it can take a few minutes to upload all of the frames.

i always save my work after every step. so once frames are uploaded i save the file. be sure to have “timeline” (or “animation” on some versions of photoshop) opened in your view. my photoshop looks like this when i open the file:

now, i’m going to click “Create Frame Animation” at the bottom. This will give me a timeline to work with at the bottom. Next step, go to the three little lines on the right side of the thingy that says “Timeline” and go through these steps: 

and then

now, you have a working gif! you can hit the little play button at the bottom left of the screen and it should play for you.

step two: cropping and sharpening

there is plenty you can do for sizes on tumblr. the general widths are 540px (big), 268px (normal) and 177/178px (small). it’s all a matter of the type of set you’re making. also be aware that the gif limit is 3mb. the bigger the gif, the fewer frames you can have. most of my 540px gifs have between 20-35 frames, while some of my 268px frames can have 75-90 depending on the coloring of the scene.

but for the purpose of this tutorial, i’m making one 268x160. i go to the crop key at the left side, and set my ration up top to 268 and 160.

then i crop the gif! (note: sometimes, files will have a black line on one side of a video file; typically the bottom or on one side. the black line will be no more than 2px big and sometimes hard to see until you’ve cropped it. be sure to drag the cropped area away from the edge of the files that have this dark line, as it when appears on the final gif and looks bad. one of my more recent sanditon gifsets fell to this and i didn’t realize until i had posted it. 😖)

now we have to size it. you do do this by going to Image --> Image Size or using the keyboard shortcut. it should automatically keep the aspect ratio, thus when you change width to 268, the height should change to 160 automatically. 

hit OK and now you have your base gif!

next, we’ll be sharpening and setting the frame rate, two very important things. to sharpen a gif, there is no way you want to go do it frame by frame, so you can use an action! these are really helpful. i have one i use for most gifs, and one i use for lesser quality. the one i use for this gif is this one here. to use this, you’ll have your photoshop open, you can go to your actions in your barthingy on the right by color swatches which should look like this:

click that and find the three grey lines at the top right. click them and this will pop up. you’ll go to “load actions” and then browse for the action you downloaded. 

once loaded, it will show up like this and have a nifty play button! 

make sure you click on/highlight the “play me!” line and then hit the play button on the bottom of the box. it will go through the motions for you and sharpen your gif. once that’s done, you can hit the big action button to close this box to get it out of the way. now, to set a frame rate, you’ll go down to the timeline and highlight all of the frames and then click while holding shift and this will pop up.

you’ll select “other” and type in “.05″. this is the most commonly used frame rate. most movies and tv shows will look fine using this for scenes, especially ones with subtitles, etc. for more artistic scenes, sometimes i’ll use “.06″ to slow it down just a hair. also make sure that your gifs are set the loop “forever”.

and there you go! a gif fully sharpened and moving at the proper speed:

this is also the time you can choose your frames. meaning if you uploaded like 200 frames and only wanted to use 50 of them, you can go through and delete them in the timeline. there’s a little trashcan button there.

note: once you’ve sharpened and set your frame ratio, be sure to go into your levels box and click the top frame. it is also useful to have the first frame in the timeline always highlighted as you’re editing the rest of the gif. 

step three: coloring

there are endless ways to color. there’s loads of people offering psd colorings. (psd means an editable photoshop file btw) you can also make your own. i have a whole slew of psds i’ve made for certain scenes that i’ve kept and reuse, tweaking each time. this isn’t a coloring tutorial, but i’ll show you a quick way to make a simple coloring. (i purposely chose a well lit scene for this gif tutorial for this reason. making dark scenes look good, or scenes with bad color balance is a whole other tutorial lol)

first off, make a folder above your frames. you can name it whatever you want; it will automatically call itself “group 1″. this is where you’ll be putting all of your coloring layers so they stay together and you can also save it to use again.

from here on out, we’ll be adding layers, using the half black/half white circle down at the bottom; just click on it and it’ll pull up a list of things you can use. note that when you add coloring layers, you start at the bottom and add other layers on top of it.

always start with “levels”. i lighten up almost every scene i gif, since it gives me the chance to play with contrast on my own terms.

then we’ll do a “selective color”; this one is just to set some blacks while giving contrast. be sure to select “blacks” at the top and change just what’s below:

most gifs also need some “color correction” at this point. (this is a layer you’ll keep coming back to to tweak as you add more above it fyi.) for this one, i’ll make it a bit more green and red.

the gif right now looks like this....which isn’t perfect, but i can see where it will get to from here:

now we’ll add a layer of 100% “vibrance”

not every gif needs 100% vibrance, but i tend to like how colors look when i use it and we can fix any weird colored skin in later steps. and now some curves for contrast:

the gif now looks like this:

which is much too yellow certainly, but gifs always look worse before they look better when it comes to coloring! next, we’ll make another layer of “selective colors”. this is when you’ll play with each color within the same selective color layer. i’m guessing i’ll utilize more blues and less yellows under “yellow” and “red” but let’s see what happens:

now it looks like this!

which is a lot better. i’ll probably up the blacks +10 (using the same selective color layer) just a bit so crowley can be his angsty self entirely. i also want to up the greens because i love bright gifs.

the great thing about selective colors is that they’re easy to manipulate. and you can even have multiple of them over one another to really zero in on one color. and if you find that you can’t get the gif to look right at all, you can also return to your color balance layer and tweak it until it looks better and is easier to manage.

so now, my finished gif looks like this: 

(this is not the most exciting gif ever, but it works to show how to play with colors in a well lit scene).

there is a number of other things i do/can be done in making gifs, but these are the basics. 

be sure to go to File --> Export --> Save for Web and follow my settings to save your gif. (there are many ways to save a gif, and each gif tutorial will give you different settings. i recommend trying them out and see which works best for you.) pay attention to the “bicubic” quality at the bottom. and when your gif is small enough (under 3mb), be sure to click on the “original” tab at the top and save it while on that screen.

and, because i’m feeling nice, let’s have a quick subtitles moment:

bonus step 4: subtitles

i know there are easier ways to make subtitles but this is how i do mine. using the ruler around your photoshop space, drag one vertical line over your gif. the program should automatically “snap” them to the middle of the gif to create your perfect center.

then take the text tool and write something in it, no matter where or what size, just so you have something to manipulate. you’ll find that it too will snap to the center to match the ruler line, giving you a centered text box! you can have it whatever distance you want from the bottom (don’t go too close or tumblr will cut it off) and then you can edit the text color/font/etc. these are my settings.

and i also have an added stroke and drop shadow to it which you can get to from Layer --> Layer Style:

and so it looks like this: 

it is important to add your text layer ABOVE your coloring folder, otherwise the coloring will affect the text. and it’s good to have different colors for different people talking.

i hope that all made sense! feel free to send me any questions (i’m sure i must have made you confused or missed a step or something), or if you have any other tutorials you’d like to request.

[cooltrainererika]

Alt-talia Compilation: Bloody

Greetings, everyone. It seems Halloween has ended already... but the event isn’t over yet!

So this is another fic for hetaween; or rather, another compilation! This is for 10/27: Bloody. Now, I thought I could skip that day, because I thought it had to be about Halloween specifically.   But it turns out that wasn’t the case. So I’m going to release some here. I was thinking releasing a Hetalia Emblem fic for this prompt… but man there were so many ideas for this one. These aren’t the only ones, even. I’m just posting this now so that I can get it out while I can, with more to be added in reblogs. If I can, I’ll try to do the HE one though.

Since the first story ended up being way longer than expected, I decided to put it at the end, with the shortest fic, a scene I’ve had an idea for a long while that could be considered a companion piece to “Past The Finest Hour” in a way, at the beginning, kind of like animated shorts before an animated movie. There’s also a deleted scene that is actually an alternate version of the main feature, but I couldn’t follow up on it. I might post something using the same basic idea for “Nightmare”, though.

Also, once again, I must reiterate that Alt-talia is generally a more morally grey, dark AU. Also at least a few popular relationship dynamics in canon are absolutely shattered here, so keep that in mind. And the main story references a certain... infamous historical incident. It doesn’t feature it, it just references it, but I warned you. And these will all be referencing some kind of violent incident or time period in history. I just hope I gave them the respect they deserve. And since I can’t think of any era cues, I’ll just state upfront that said fic one takes place in the 60s, after the 1963 Élysée Treaty specifically; eventually, I’ve managed to narrow it down to not long after said treaty, probably 1963 - 1965. Also, I tried making the characters speak in an accent, but since they have border languages that are similar, they’re speaking that here instead. Also accents might cause Narm.

Note: I use a word that is often classified as a slur here. However, I feel that it’s appropriate to the era.

So, without further ado...

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(Also… people who read my fics, please reblog? I’ve spent so much time on them, I want more people to see them.)

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Keep Calm

The Battle of Britain had been raging for days; and Canada was growing worried.

The bombing had just begun and it was bad; quite bad. He had finished ushering another contingent of civilians into bunkers and tunnels, following the signs that now covered the city, hopefully safe from the fire and fury that rained upon what used to be their homes.

“Ah, Canada-“

And there his father was.

His head, a good part of of his face, and neck covered in blood.

Matthew just barely held back a scream.

“Father, your head is covered in blood, can you not see that?! Please take it easy!”

“Ah, this?” He was terribly serene, but that was punctuated with a cough.

“Terribly irritating, I must say-“ more hacking coughs “-Jerry, that nuisance. The blood is stinging my eyes-“

And with a painful-sounding cough, he coughed blood.

Canada’s face paled as it stained his uniform.

“GOOD GOD! ...Sorry at the outburst, but how can you call that ‘terribly irritating’?!”

The Blitz had indeed been affecting him; however, his face, as usual, was calm, as if he had a somewhat annoying cold.

More bombs fell, and again he coughed red, making Canada flinch.

He had never seen his father this hurt; the cliffs of Dover had protected him since the time of the Norman Conquest, and he probably hadn’t experienced this much damage, especially in his capital city, in that long a time.

But yet…

“A mere few square kilometers destroyed, is all…”

“MERE?!”

“We are nations, Canada. And can you not shout? I’m quite fine, thank you.”

He took off his scarf, compressing his wound. 

“I shall get back in the air in two hours now. You need to take flight soon too, lad. Chop-chop.”

Matthew, the personification of the Dominion of Canada, sighed loudly.  

“I’m not a ‘lad’ anymore father.”

His father chuckled.

“You are finally growing up, Canada.”

Even after all these centuries, his father’s ability to seemingly be unfettered by anything always never ceased to surprise him.

“I could use an ale now, however.”

“Father! Please!”

As he had been outside, guiding the citizens to their bunkers, many had been just like him.

Maybe, the best way to spite the enemy was this after all; to show that you wouldn’t be affected by their attempts, that no matter what, they would always remain as they always had been.

After all, his father hadn’t become the largest empire the world had ever seen for no reason.

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Unbreakable

Byelorussia bled.

With every Nazi her ragtag group of partisans killed, intentionally or not, her flesh tore and burned, and her mouth tasted of choking, suffocating liquid iron.

If she were human, she would have probably died from pain alone long ago.

She was able to cover most of them by now before the others noticed, and it helped that her old, worn uniform was becoming more and more loose-fitting as her emaciated body grew thinner by the day. But the others surely knew something was wrong.  Her headscarf had become torn from use as bandages, and she couldn’t afford to use much of their already limited resources.

Unbeknownst to them, some of that blood belonged to their families, friends, and neighbors.

She knew what they were trying to do. Many of the partisans urged her to take a rest, at the very least; but her usefulness to the group never faded, much to their confusion. But her nation status, unbeknownst to them, gave her the ability to make them easily dismiss strange idiosyncrasies of her existence.

However, she was only even able to walk by sheer force of will. They had started changing their tactics; less Nazis killed, in favor of other methods of sabotage, made the massacres less frequent. Her swamps and forests slowed them down already, and she gained great satisfaction in knowing the anguish and annoyance she caused Germany and his allies. Though occasionally she pitied the clearly inadequately equipped ones, sometimes barely better than they were; usually Italians. 

Germany’s leaders had apparently told him she was more harmless than her siblings, easily subjugated; a worthy slave. Judging by their obsession with furthering their “Aryan Race”, and being a rare female nation, she sometimes shivered at the implication of that; they already treated her as less than human when they caught her and sent her to work, though so far they hadn’t done anything of that sort to her... yet. The fact that they took infants they deemed “Aryan” enough was even stronger evidence to it. But by now, they surely knew she was more than merely Lithuania’s wife waiting for his return from battle at home, cooking and praying for him, even all those centuries ago. She did not know exactly why, but she had to survive. She would not die here.

She was a nation after all. Or at least, she believed she was. 

She couldn’t be sure about her future; by the time the war was over, it was almost guaranteed she would once again be taken into the Soviet Union, an easy picking, too weak to fight back, into the strangling clutches of Stalin. Even now, most of the partisan groups she had found herself in were Red Army detachments, and as much as she hated admitting it, without them she would be almost completely at the Reich’s mercy by now, constantly under his jackboot. Or worse.

However, that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting through today. And then, the war. And she was going to see the end of it, even if it meant dragging herself there.

She looked over their supply; due to lack of resources, Petrol Bombs - or Molotov Cocktails, as Finland, their inventor, spitefully called them - had proved to be a boon to them.

Soon, an important convoy would be passing through; that would be their chance to strike.

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Now, for the main feature...

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An Uneasy Forgiveness

Blood.

West Germany’s hands dripped with red.

His lungs felt like they were on fire from the hyperventilation, his heart raced, his vision blurred.

Now, he scrubbed his hands under the cold water, raising the intensity and rubbing the soap onto his hand again, the water glugging into the basin.

“Verdammt, verdammt, verdammt!”

Tears pricked his eyes as the man continued to try in vain to get the dreadful liquid off his hands.

Simple tears became sobs as he rubbed his hands raw.

On his hands was the blood of every Jew, every Pole, every Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, every Gypsy, every homosexual, every so-called “traitor”, everyone else he had determined as “less than human” he had destroyed the lives of.

“Verdammt, Verdammt, VERDAMMT!”

But yet, it wasn’t something he could wash away.

“Hé! What are you doing this early, I can hear you all the way from-“

Germany didn’t notice that the other occupant of this place had woken up and spotted him, until in the mirror, he saw him.

He froze, his red, puffy eyes meeting with the other nation’s.

France.

Germany’s eyes widened, unable to move, hyperventilating, shaking like a leaf, as he attempted to speak, but all that his throat produced were pathetic whines.

He felt his cold stare on him.

“What are you doing?”

“Frankreich... the blood, it won’t...”

His voice cracked, but he didn’t care.

But he didn’t notice the concern growing across France’s face, despite himself. He saw no blood; though he wouldn’t have been surprised if they indeed started bleeding from how frighteningly red and chapped they had become.

“It won’t...”

And he saw so much... vulnerability in the young man’s swollen eyes, his tear stained face, his disheveled hair, his youth making itself painfully apparent.

“Blood?! I don’t see any blood! What’s your deal, brat?”

“Frankreich... please...”

Germany felt the water shut off.

“Stop.”

“But...”

His normally deep voice sounded so meek and frail. Despite him being slightly taller than him, the younger man might as well have become a child again in front of him. No... if this were Germany as a child, he would have probably reveled in making the little hellspawn cry harder. At the time at least.

He avoided France’s gaze, afraid to even look him in the eye.

“I... I’m sorry for waking you. I...I’m s-sorry that you had to stay with me... I... I know you hate me... I know I can’t just sign away what I’ve done to you...”

Germany knew that France wasn’t here because he enjoyed his company. He had made a point and show out of demanding he get a separate bedroom. He knew full well that even within the ECSC, everyone only cooperated with him because they were even more tired of war more than they hated him. Belgium was the only one who reached out to him; he didn’t know why, after what he had done to her in both wars, but it was most likely just realpolitik. He knew, under her meek demeanor, she most likely still despised him. The rest, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, and yes, France, all of them, made no such gestures. He felt it every time they met; how Luxembourg “accidentally” blew smoke in his face, how the Netherlands spat at him as he spoke if he didn’t outright berate him, how Italy refused to look at him as he toiled on the assembly lines.

And how when they shook hands that fateful day, where they officially buried the hatchet, France’s arm seemed oh so rigid, his smile forced.

Of course they did.

After all, it was their blood on his hands too.

He crumpled to his knees, sobbing. His younger self would have probably been disgusted at how he looked now, on his knees at the feet of his former archenemy. But that didn’t matter anymore. His pride didn’t matter anymore.

France was speechless.

It was so very bizarre. Not only was this type of behavior almost unthinkable for a nation, especially for such a man as Germany, but not long ago, France would have been euphoric to witness the sight of his most hated rival pitifully crumpled on the ground in front of him, vulnerable, broken, pathetic. From the day this brat was born, he had resented him. Him and his emotionally stunted, cold-hearted, warmongering father both. His very birth had been possible because of him being humiliated, his capital starved and besieged. He would have probably kicked him in the gut and laughed, spat at him, or at least taunted him.

And to be sure, he still felt some of that.

But, like when he met him in Berlin after he surrendered, another emotion gnawed at him from inside.

Pity.

Then, sympathy.

This wasn’t the genocidal, wrathful, goose-stepping Germany who had proclaimed his people superior above all else. It was the starving, weak, scared Germany he, America, and England had delivered bread to in that Airlift over a decade ago.

He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t Prussia.

And he had come here for a reason. He might as well do what he came here for.

“Get up.”

Germany, still quivering, looked up at him.

France made his way to the door of the bathroom.

“I said, get up. I thought you were good at taking orders? Or are you trying to be an annoying brat?”

He might as well try. It wasn’t like he wasn’t guilty of anything anyway.

And after some hesitation, Germany followed.

——-

Germany laid on his bed, letting the soft pillows absorb his tears. He had calmed down somewhat, or at least to the point where he could speak coherently.

“Mind if I borrow your smokes and lighter?”

No reply.

“Then. I might as well.”

On the nightstand was a pack of HBs. They were no Gauloises, but they would have to do. 

He took out a cigarette as the younger nation began to speak again.

“I didn’t want to believe it at first. I think my mind repressed it. But... I can’t run from the truth anymore. I just don’t know what to do. What... what can even be done after something so terrible? That awful man manipulated me. But... ultimately, I fell for his words. I was naïve. We all were. Ultimately, it was our fault...”

France, his back leaning lazily against the bedframe, lit a cigarette. 

Germany squeezed the sheets in his fists.

“You hate me, don’t you?”

France took a puff; he grumbled a bit about the weak taste and aroma. A few moments passed as the smoke rose.

“Maybe.”

“...”

“But I signed that Friendship Treaty. We shook hands. We officially agreed that our past was behind us. I was sent here to spend a few days with you so we could learn to get along, and I agreed to it. I could’ve followed President De Gaulle’s orders - he’s a good man, that De Gaulle - but for once, I didn’t. I might as well try to start doing what I’m supposed to.”

Germany looked at him, his cornflower blue eyes still wet, but no longer leaking new tears. He was, once again, silent.

“...Besides.”

He took another puff, the smoke dissipating in the air.

The prisoner laid at his feet, cursing him out in his Arabic dialect on the floor of the dark, cold cell, bloody coughs staining his combat boots between pained shouts, hatred-soaked shouts that Allah would damn him to hell.

He clenched his eyes and rammed his boot into the colony’s stomach again. 

“...The truth is, I have to deal with you, no matter what. You’re my neighbor. And we’re nations. We stick together when it’s best for our interests, and we fight when it’s best for our interests. Pretty sure you know this well; your father knew this better than anyone else. And now, trying to be your ally is probably in my best interest, though not so sure about ‘friend’. But who knows. And we want it to stay that way. Might as well try not to fight it.”

He put the cigarette out, the cigarette making a quiet “pssshhh...” sound as it was pressed against the ashtray.

“I’ll try to forgive you. Can’t guarantee for the others though. Though I don’t think I’m the most important one you should be apologizing to for your latest fuck up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel and Poland never completely forgive you. Maybe not even in a thousand years. But know that... I’ll at least try to start over. We need to go about this together, whether I like it or not. Might as well try to help show you a different life than what daddy Preußen taught you.”

Germany’s voice hitched again. It was clear he hadn’t made his mind up about his father yet. Understandable. And France wasn’t one to talk about parenting either.

“Thank you... really...”

Now it was France’s turn to remain quiet, as he let the younger one speak.

“When I was little, I remember vater told me that my future and survival wouldn’t be decided by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood. He was quoting Chancellor Bismarck, I believe. Hopefully... I won’t need that advice anymore, from now on.”

“I see, you’re pretty good at this too.”

France lit up another cigarette.

“But if you do anything silly again, remember I’m the one with the nuke.”

“Jawo... Ja.”

“Good. We could go for a smoke later. You probably need one. But I’ll be going back to bed-“

“Don’t leave. Please.”

The older man sighed.

“Fine, you damn brat.”

Their eyes met.

“...Are we friends?”

“...Hopefully. Now, stop acting like that. It’s jarring. You need rest.”

A pause.

“…But if you need a smoke now, I’ll light it for you.”

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Deleted scene

The metallic, gruesome stench of blood surrounded Germany.

Nothing, nothing but darkness and blood. He gasped for air, his feet kicking in the thick, vile liquid searching for a floor that wasn’t there.

Eventually, the blood became hotter and hotter, first merely a singing heat, then searing, blistering, until the unbearable, tortuous heat pierced its way to his bones, boiling his flesh, only his struggles to keep his head above the surface keeping him from screaming in agony.

“Hilfe! Hilfe!”

He managed to choke out, before the scalding liquid spilled into his lungs.

Finally, with that, he sunk.

Deeper and deeper, he sank, the agonizing pain never stopping.

As he sank, he thought he saw many shadows, of all sexes, ages, and sizes, staring at him solemnly, quietly.

Among them, he thought he saw the rest of the ECSC, Russia and Poland, watching his descent with what must have been contempt.

It was then everything became cold as death.

————-

 (Explanation: the deleted scene was a reference to Dante’s Inferno; according to Dante, in the 7th circle of Hell is the realm of the violent, where souls are immersed in a boiling river of blood. However, it was maybe a bit odd I was using an Italian story for Germany)

Characterization notes: England is the epitome of Stiff Upper Lip in at least this time period in Alt-Talia; he isn’t quite a tsundere, to say the least. He’d be classified more as a kuudere perhaps, but not quite due to the whole British politeness thing.

Belarus is a big one; as readers who’ve read my other fic know, I write Belarus quite different than from canon. She’s probably one of the most human-like, in that her wish is to live a peaceful existence, not power or prestige, and unlike in canon she comes off more as a victim of circumstance than an instigator. While other nations would be motivated by a lot of nationalism, here she just wants to survive first and foremost. She’s generally quiet, even well-mannered, and excluding the Jews and Roma was hurt the most in WWII in terms of proportion of population; estimates of Belarusian deaths go as high as a quarter of the population, and including deportations and displacement the number can go as high as half (!). I like writing her because she just comes across as a woman with a tough life who just gets the crap beaten out of her for no fault of her own except geography. But when driven into a corner even she will be willing to bite back, if just for her people. 

[onewaywardwitch]

Just A Typo (11/?)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Hacker!Reader

Summary: It was a simple challenge between a very competitive group of friends. A challenge that ended very differently than anticipated.

Warnings: A cliché trope and a lot of shouting

Word Count: 2106

A/N: I promise the gif is accurate for this part.

“I don’t get why you can’t just ask him out,” Becca whined as she glared at me across the table. We were sitting in Angie’s apartment which was a refreshing change from the high-tech atmosphere of the tower. After begging and pleading and annoying Tony for nearly eleven hours straight, he finally agreed I could leave for a few hours, provided I was brought there and back. He didn’t seem to appreciate me persistently hanging around his lab.

We were talking about Bucky. Again. It's not as though I was the one to bring him up. Since Becca visited me in the tower last week, she’s been more determined than ever to make something happen between Bucky and I. Somehow, she managed to convince Angie to join her on her mission. So now I had to deal with the pair of them constantly inserting themselves into my love life. Or lack of.

“I can’t do that,” I scoffed. “It's Bucky. He’s not looking for anything like that. I'm just grateful he talks to me at all. He’s pretty quiet with most people.

Angie clapped her hands together. “There, you said it yourself. He doesn’t talk to many people, but he talks to you. He clearly likes your company, judging by what Becca said happened last week.”

“Oh please,” I waved her off. “Becca exaggerates everything- “

“Hey!”

“- nothing happened. He was just curious about what I was doing on my laptop, so I showed him. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that, for a very empty corridor, you both were sitting awfully close to each other,” Becca replied, smirking at my flustered face while I struggled to come up with an excuse.

“Why don’t you just focus on your own love life?”

“Oh I am, trust me.” She grinned proudly, nodding in Angie’s direction who just gave me an exhausted look.

“Becca’s decided to join my gym,” she explained. “She picked me up last week and has now fallen head over heels for another woman who goes there.”

“We’re soulmates! I can feel it,” she defended. I simply rolled my eyes. This wasn’t unusual for Becca. She caught sight of a woman in the grocery store or in the bank and promptly fell for them. It was endearing how passionate she could be, but it didn’t make it any easier when the relationship ended and Angie and I were left to help her move on.

“But for once Y/N's life is more interesting than mine so that’s my current priority.” Before I had the chance to interrupt and disagree with her, she went on. “Look, you're clearly a mess and have no idea what to do with all your feelings- “

“Oh dear God, are you about to give me the talk?”

“- so why don’t you write it down.”

I rolled my eyes at Angie who shrugged in reply, not bothering to hide it from Becca. “What?”

She grabbed my laptop from the bag I brought with me and opened it up. After a few moments of her messing around on it, she looked up at me and cooed, “Aw, you have his email.”

“What are you doing,” I questioned, trying to sneak a peek at my laptop but she moved and sat away from the pair of us.

“Ok, say we write an email to him. But we don’t actually send it, of course,” she added quickly, noticing how I was about to interject from her first statement alone. “That way you can get everything out there so you know what to do. You can practice how to ask him out.

I laughed nervously, chewing on my bottom lip and glancing at Angie for support. “I mean, it couldn’t hurt.”

“Great!” Becca clapped her hands in glee. The pure joy that was radiating off her was shocking. She loved playing matchmaker a bit too much. “We’ll start it off simply. ‘My dearest Bucky, my loins burn in your presence- “

“What the hell!” “Why would you write that!” Angie and I yelled at the same time. I stared at Becca incredulously. “I want a date with this guy, not a restraining order.”

“Then tell me what you want me to write.”

That’s how the next hour or so went; with me baring my heart and soul while Becca told me I sounded like an idiot and needed to rephrase. Angie chimed in every so often with a “Becca, shut the hell up” or a supportive “that sounds great!”

Together, we broke everything down. We went through it step by step, word by word. It wasn’t uncommon for me to start blabbering before stopping myself and telling Becca to delete everything I just said. I was surprised with how helpful I found it. Admitting to myself and my friends that there was a slight possibility there was a spark between Bucky and I was almost therapeutic. And definitely healthier than the whole ‘lock it in a box’ schtick.

“And I was wondering if you drink? Well, obviously you do. Y’know, you’d be dead if you didn’t drink water. But other drinks. With people,” I rambled on and rubbed a hand over my face. “Scratch everything I just said, that was so dumb. Just end it with ‘I’d like to get a drink with you sometime’.”

“And that’s that,” Becca announced, mockingly wiping a tear from her eye. “I'm so proud that not all of that sounded moronic.”

“Gee, thanks for your undying support,” I replied sarcastically as she rolled her eyes.

“So, all you have to do is say to him everything you said here. You’ve already done it once. The hardest part is honesty. Now you’ve been honest with yourself, you can be honest with others.”

“If I'm being honest, Angie, you need to stop reading those motivational books. You're starting to sound like you swallowed a few dozen of them,” I commented. I turned to Becca. “You can shut the laptop off now. I think I should just go talk to Bucky while I'm in the right head-space.”

She shot me a thumbs up and went to exit our work. I was putting on my jacket when I heard the ping from the laptop.

It was like a scene from the most cliché movie ever. We all turned to stare at one another at the exact same moment, mouths agape in horror. Becca was glancing from the screen and back to our alarmed faces. She did this several more times before any of us did anything.

“Wha- please, please, please tell me that was not what I think it was,” I managed to sputter out. Angie clutched her scarf as though it was the only thing tethering her to the ground. I appreciated her dramatics on my behalf.

“I am so sorry,” Becca whispered. “I thought it was the delete button.”

“NO!”

I rushed over to where Becca was cowering and looked at the open email that now had a little ‘sent’ button in the corner. I quickly scrolled through, hoping it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was worse.

“Wait, you didn’t even delete the stuff I told you to cut out!”

Oh, it was much worse.

“Maybe it's not that bad,” Angie offered.

“Well, Bucky’s gonna see that I said, ‘shall I compare thy ass to a summer’s day?’, so that’s not ideal,” I exclaimed, giving Angie a pointed look.

This was horrible.

“Don’t forget the whole ‘burning loins’ part.”

It was this moment I decided I hated my friends.

Angie sensed that I was about to throw Becca out the nearest window and rushed over, struggling to think of how to console me. “  It's going to be alright. First things first, does he check his emails often?”

I snorted. “He’s like a hundred years old. I think he forgets he has an email half the time.”

“Great. So we just hack into Bucky’s phone and delete the email. Simple,” Angie said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Becca and I shared a look. It did sound pretty simple when she put it like that. Technically, cyber security was what I did for a living now. And this was technically a cyber threat. To my happiness. How hard could it be to delete an email?

“The only thing is, Tony set up all the tech in the tower to be much more difficult to breach ever since what happened with us. I helped him make every electronic more secure. You have to be in the building and have whatever it is you're hacking into in your possession.”

“Field trip to the tower to save your relationship. Yay,” Becca said quietly, waving her hands slightly in mock excitement. She was still hiding behind a cushion, scared that the second she came out I would attack her.

She wasn’t wrong.

~~~~~

We somehow managed to make it inside the tower without anyone being suspicious of our behaviour. We all seemed to realise that we would we terrible spies; we couldn’t lie for shit. At least, Becca and I couldn’t. Angie was a lot calmer, acting like her true neutral self. She was able to whisk me away from a colleague who had said hi to me and I replied with a very loud “I work here!”

It wasn’t that difficult to get Bucky’s phone. I was just glad we didn’t bump into anyone on the way to the gym. While I was distracted watching him with the weights, my ever-faithful friends snuck over to take his phone which was lying on the bench. His hair was tied up in a bun, which was a style he hadn’t tried before but damn, it was definitely working for him.

“Hey, you still don’t want that restraining order, right,” Angie hissed, snapping me out of my trance and beckoning me to leave with them.

~~~~~

“We should be good here,” I told them, closing over the door to Tony’s lab. We headed towards the back where we would be less likely to be seen. “Pepper’s been giving out to Tony about the lack of breaks he takes from work, so she’s dragged him away for a few hours at least. I think my nagging earlier might have had something to do with it too.”

We hooked the phone up to my laptop and, with three expert hackers working on it, we unlocked it quickly.

“That wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be,” I said, cringing as I saw the first line of that email once again while deleting it.

I could only imagine Bucky’s reaction if he had seen it. That email was unfiltered madness and I wished I could do more than just delete it. I'd rather burn it from screen. If Bucky had even got a glimpse of it, I would have been ruined. His stupidly perfect eyes would glare at me in horror while I took one of the quinjets to an uncharted planet not in our solar system.

As we were leaving the lab, we froze when we heard Bucky shouting, and nearly tripped over each other when Sam came running past us in a panic.

“He’s gone mad!” He panted, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds as he paused to speak with us. “He says he’s sick of me taking his stuff. He flexed his metal arm at me! I don’t even know what he’s taking about!”

I went to comment, but he was gone before I could help him with his unfortunate situation. Becca stifled a giggle and Angie and I turned to her with a questioning gaze.

“I slipped Bucky’s phone into Sam’s back pocket,” she cackled. I grinned at her. She was a pain in my ass half the time, but Becca really did lighten up every shitty situation.

Bucky came thundering down the hall, a murderous look on his face. The three of us just pointed in Sam’s direction. He grunted in reply and we scurried down the opposite direction.

~~~~~

“Y/N, can we talk for a minute.”

I felt my blood run cold as I heard Bucky’s voice. Angie and Becca’s eyes grew wide from where they were sitting on the sofa.

“And, uh, what do you want to talk about,” I asked, facing his general direction but refusing to look him in the eyes.

“Um, I got a really weird email from you…” He trailed off, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “Something about my ‘intoxicating smell’?”

My two ‘friends’ bolted from the room before Bucky had even finished his sentence.

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[boldlygowriting]

The 5 Man Band vs. the 5+ Man Band

I was inspired by this video by Overly Sarcastic Productions. They do an excellent job of explaining what a 5 Man Band is and its origin. If you want any extra information about tropes, you should check out their Trope Talk series on YouTube. 

Anyway, let’s get into this!

Essentially, the video describes the 5 Man Band as a cohesive group of five characters with each character falling under one of the following categories: 

Leader

Lancer: the second in command 

Heart: the soft, emotional center of the group 

Brain

Tank: the muscle of the group or expert fighter, has some powerful influence of some kind.

Although almost any of these can be switched out for comedic relief. 

AND sometimes roles can be added and switched out for what you want. For example, in a non-action setting. 

A brain 

A beauty

A jock 

A rebel 

A recluse. 

Some examples of the 5 Man Band you might be familiar with are: the Teen Titans, the Voltron team, Scooby-Doo, and Power Rangers (not including the Black or Green Ranger depending on which iteration you’re looking at), and the Breakfast Club.  

As a writer who’s currently putting together their own group of characters for a sci-fi superhero story, it seemed like a 5 Man Band was perfect for building a team. It offers a pretty simple template for making a balanced team, building your characters’ traits, and abilities or skills. But I knew from the beginning, I wanted 6 characters for my team, not 5, which led me to a new question:

What’s the difference between a 5 Man Band and a 6 or 7 Man Band? And, is one better than the other? 

I found out...well...technically, the 5 Man Band is better...but don’t click off yet! I’m not deleting one of my characters, I’m not discouraged and you shouldn’t be either. 

The reason why 5 Man Bands are technically better, is because everyone has a distinct role and some people can hold two. If you’re familiar with any of the 5 man band I listed above, you can clearly distinguish the role of each character and if not, they might be holding two: For example, look at the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie. 

Fred is clearly the leader, Velma is the brain (but I also put her in the lancer position), Scooby is the heart, Daphne is a tank (go Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Shaggy is comedic relief. You can play around with the 5 Man Band and how you can decide if you’d like to or need to add an additional character.  

You can swap out downplay these traits as needed as well, like how Velma is known for being smart, but she’s clearly the one who helps out the most when solving the mystery between her brainstorming with Fred and deciphering the pyramid, she’s clearly second in command. Also, Lancers are known for being the one that eventually forges out on their own, and Velma was the first split at the beginning of the movie. 

That’s what makes the 5 Man Band great in comparison to 6 man band, characters can do “double duty” and end up more layered and helpful because of it. 

 In a 5 Man Band, everyone has a distinct role which can help you build their personality and if you want to give them more oomph, you have room to. I’ve found once you exceed 5 the importance of each member gets a little muddled. 

Two mainstream superhero groups started off as 6 man bands: The original Avengers (2012--not in the comic books, that’s a whole other story) consisted of 6 characters, and the live-action Justice League (2017) also had 6 members. 

Although, not a superhero group, the flock from one of my favorite book series, Maximum Ride, consisted of 6 characters. 

Looking at the Justice League, almost everyone is doing double-roles and I suspect, besides the writing that’s part of the reason why I didn’t really see them as a team. Aside from the fact that I thought it was an okay movie at best. 

Batman and Superman can both serve as leaders. Although, after they revive Superman, it’s clear he’s moved to Lancer status. But you never get the sense of knowing who exactly is in charge. 

Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Superman all fit the definition of the tank and although Wonder Woman could be considered the heart, she’s not really portrayed with those traits in this film as much as she is in her solo film. The Flash is clearly comedic relief. No one, in particular, is considered the brain despite Bruce Wayne’s intellect and Barry being a genius, unless you count Cyborg, who I would only place into this role because he has expert knowledge of the Motherbox. 

Otherwise, he’s pretty unimportant. 

The problem is that some characters are pulling more weight than others making the team unbalanced, less interesting and less fleshed out. I didn’t really care about any of them. 

Of course, you could totally argue that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have their own stand-alone films, so of course, they do more, but just because some characters are more popular doesn’t mean they should make the other characters you added less interesting or less developed. What’s the point of adding underdeveloped and less interesting characters? 

A poorly written group can be top-heavy and leave some of its characters in the dust (eg. Cyborg). 

Does that mean that all 6+ man bands are going to be horrible and you’ll only care about half the characters? NO, definitely not. You can have the same problem with a 5 man band if you’re not paying attention, it’s just more likely in a 6+ character group. 

My MC, Hal, is the Leader.  His cousin Xavier is the Lancer, who also doubles as primary comedic relief. Evelyn is their Heart. Reyka is the Tank. Aren is the brain. And Jack is something I call ‘the dissenter; someone who is not a natural team player, but has a common goal with the main group and may act as their foil.

On top of their given roles in the team, I know that each has fleshed out backstories, hopes, wants, dreams, etc, that are as equally known as Hal’s. Everyone is treating each character like a person and not a trait, role, or plot point. 

 In 6+ man bands, it can get overwhelming to flesh out each character which is how you end up with top-heavy teams and forgettable characters. But it doesn’t take much to write a few scenes to flesh them out, especially on a team, because they’re teammates for Pete’s sake! Have them learn about each other, do some team building, something! 

Now that that’s covered that explained with 5 Man Bands are technically better, here’s where they’re technically not. A poorly made 5 man band reduces them to their roles. The brain is just the brain and only really talks about their area of expertise. The Leader is the perfect hero with blonde hair and blue eyes and is never wrong. The comedic relief only spits one-liners. Etc. No one wants to read or watch a one-dimensional character. In that case, do the same thing you’d do with empty characters, fill them up with personality. Start giving them some good traits and bad traits outside of their role, hell, maybe even some traits that contradict their given role. 

They both have the pitfall of empty, boring characters. The goal is to not have that. Most important, in a group of any size, make characters that play a specific role in the group not just in completing the mission (or whatever your end is).  

I’ll be using Teen Titans as an example. Robin and Raven have trouble letting go of things and having fun, Cyborg and Beast Boy obviously don’t and can get each of them to lighten up when they need to—or in Raven’s case express some emotions. If anyone needs a hug or a fun day, Starfire is there for support. Raven has a sobering attitude which is good for when any one of the team members needs to look at something seriously. Robin also offers this, but as a leader, it’s more centering, where Raven’s can be a bit depressing. They work, not just as a superhero team, but as a group of friends. 

The point of any group is to have characters that operate best as a unit and complement each other while having each having a distinct personality. They’re individuals that also fit well together in a team and, hopefully, as friends. 

If you want, let me know what your favorite Man Band is and what it’s from!