#primal vernacular writing

[thatrandomn3rd]

Do yall wanna see the drawings I do at school instead of actual school work???? :D

[heliopauseentertainments]

Thinking about the language fic post, but honestly... I'm more tempted to conlang some stuff together because that's really the best way to actually get underlying language bits to reference. Otherwise it won't make much sense.

Downside: I have too many questions to ask based on the limited information available about the language(s) used by alien robots. I'm not really sure where to start.

I'm not touching on varieties of "speaking hand" yet. Yet. That is a threat.

Let's start with: PHONOLOGY & PHONETICS

For example, question number one: what would any given language spoken by Cybertronians sound like?

There's no reason alien robots should use verbal speech in ways familiar to us, either via human-like vocal tracts even via "verbal" means at all.

Because they are aliens. Because they are robots. Both separate reasons that are somewhat independent of each other.

Some things have to be assumed to be similar as part of the conceit of the material of the material given to us. Material between continuities is quite different so for sanity, lets pick IDW1.

Conceits we're forced to work with:

Cybertronians are repeatedly shown to whisper, shout, and make sounds with their mouths or some sort of vocal apparatus in the mouth/throat area if their mouths have been removed. Therefore, their vocal tract is mostly analogous to ours for most intents an purposes. Perhaps some of the sounds that come out are necessarily different or could have additional features or limitations based on the shapes and motion ranges of their articulatory organs.

Cybertronian speech (for Neocybex specifically) in the original writing of the continuity is rendered in English (under the guise of scifi Universal Translator tech). Sometimes British English varieties, sometimes American English varieties, depending on the writer. While this is a necessary conceit for a comic book meant for an English-speaking audience, this means we don't actually encounter a lot of the sounds (or renderings thereof) of Neocybex and its varieties as it's spoken. This also biases us to understand their cultures through the lens of localization to English (but that's a secondary problem).

Limited stock of Neocybex words are available as a result of the previous point. Mostly we have toponyms (place names), religious vocabulary (the roots of which are usually Latin or Greek and thus could also be seen as the result of localization rather than the original vocabulary), and personal names (many of which are also localized for our convenience). Even legal terminology is translated into English words. We really only get toponyms as a source.

The available word stock is rendered in the English version of the Roman alphabet for the necessary conceit of "writing in English for the audience." That means that sound capture of those Neocybex words is inherently imperfect since it's limited by the writing system. Also as the material is written, we don't know what it actually sounds like (broadly). Romanization is a loose approximation at best.

That makes what their available phonological and phonetic systems look like a bit of a headscratcher.

But we do know one thing for sure.

Windblade can't pronounce /θ/ (the voiceless dental fricative at the end of "earth"). This sound is reportedly difficult to pronounce for Cybertronians and the English toponym of our planet is also not being picked up by their Universal Translator (which amusingly also doesn't work on non-Neocybex Cybertronian languages like Primal Vernacular).

I still have no idea what Neocybex sounds like, but I know it doesn't have /θ/.

Anyway, I'm going to keep pondering this.

I have many more questions.

Are there forbidden syllable structures?

Is it a tonal language to some degree? How is the language timed (mora, stress, syllable, etc.)?

What is the orthography like (because the ones we're given are English ciphers, which is bullshit)? Are there non-verbal components only present in the orthography?

How related to modern Neocybex is Primal Vernacular? Is it the ancestor language? Was it restricted to liturgical use after a certain period?

What is the grammar like? What features are marked and in what way? Does it have grammatical case? Does it have noun classes? Does it mark animacy? Does it use word order to make grammatical meaning?

What is the syntax like more specifically?

What is the morphological typology?

[voice trails off into the distance, still asking questions]

[saxandviolins88]

BRAINROT TIME!!! How I think the Constructicons would sign their names (and their calligraphy in general ig)

see the visualization below cut

Scrapper's handwriting would be similar to technical lettering used by architects - tho I think in a casual scenario he would put a little bit of flare to it - it is also very small and condensed, to match his modest demeanor.

Long Haul's is also similar to technical lettering but doesn't follow the size guides (clearly). He writes so big not only because he has big hands (c'mon pens only come in one size), but also because he has the mindset of: "My writing must be 100% clear and legible because I don't want any dumbaft asking what's written on the damn paper."

Hook obviously would write in cursive, we can all agree on that right? He also would have his own fountain pen (with his name etched on it, in its own case, that also has his name on it), because who is he to write with a simpleton's ballpoint? However when making projects he is forced to write using technical lettering.

Bonecrusher uses part of Hook's writing to write his own name (corny ewww), he also borrows Hook's fountain pen. I imagine him writing with it using his fist because fuck it - this mindset also translates to his handwriting, he doesn't care about consistency, line quality, readability, aesthetics, or anything of the sort, just pure controlled chaos (he also doesn't believe is following the lines on the paper, he makes his own lines fuck it)

Mixmaster is a lost cause. His handwriting is really really reeeeally bad, and he doesn't care too much about it, but the other Constructicons often joke about how he made up his own language. It's not really a problem, since he can understand what he writes(the other Construticons also can, gestalt benefits), and most things on Cybertron are written using digital means (monitors, keyboards, whatever), only on Earth have they switched to paper and pen.

Scavy, being literally ancient, only knows Primal Vernacular. If you ask him to write something he'll most likely panic, he really hates sticking out like a sore thumb among "normal mechs" and the weird looks he gets along with it. He tried learning Neo-Cybex, but he really couldn't grasp it (even though it's simpler than Ancient Cybertronian), as of now he can only speak it (with an accent)

[witchofthesouls]

Oh man, I keep thinking about language barriers between Cybertron and the Lost Colonies.

Now I got two separate ideas:

1) War bride with a twist where it's Megatron, the Decepticon Warlord, the Great Slagmaker, gets stolen and hitched since he accidentally enacted a marriage to a potential Mistress of Flame.

Double points if it's a time where he was stuck as a gun, and the Adepti has a kink or significantly used him in combat for X amount of time. Perhaps used his bladed extensions in rituals for another layer of binding themes and forge/forger symbolism.

2) Tarn and Camien Nurse with a Quintesson experiment. Since modern Cybertron doesn't have femmes or newsparks, they only have really ancient writings about the concept, and that's why Phase Seven is considered a legend as Decepticon High Command is still trying to figure out how to expand the population, like every other scientist and politician since the occupation. It has something to do with sparks, though...

The Quintessons, on the other hand, are very well educated on Cybertronian biological processes and mechanisms, so-

Local virgin leader of a roving torture and execution squad develops another addiction because the Quintessons wanted to ensure a healthy clutch in a Seekerkin carrier, aka they not only modified Tarn's hardware but messed his brain module to continuously seek out pleasure in a carrier.

Now, Tarn is stuck with a foreign mecha whose only line of communication is a dialect of Primal Vernacular that Vos is able to understand. Most of the time. At least, the D.J.D. have a medical professional now.

(And newsparks that haven't been seen for an indefinite amount of tim, but that's several crates of Nuke for later.)

[decepti-thots]

Cyclonus X Tailgate (find a way to curse it)

vampire AU but like... twilight style vampires, not cool vampires. cyclonus is the saddest most pathetic sparkly vampire of all time. they're still robots and he is sparkly and purple which really undercuts his stoic looming. he has a crush on the janitor for his apartment building and keeps hanging around at like 9pm when the guy comes by to clean the stairwell twice a week. keeps trying to hit on him but always sounds insulting. talks with an inexplicable primal vernacular accent, which sounds like he's trying to do some kind of 24/7 historical reenactment thing. writes really terrible poetry about how effervescent tailgate looks while he's cleaning or whatever. tailgate asked around about what his deal with and everyone is like 'we keep finding dead turborats ever since he moved in and we keep making noise complaints about the singing but the landlord is scared SHITLESS of him for some reason???'

tailgate, prone to leaps of logic in an effort to make his life more exciting, proves that a stopped clock is right twice a day and decides the guy is a vampire. he keeps trying to trick cyclonus into sucking his blood now. it's going very poorly.

[valvesandthings]

Can you write some nsfw with Vos x Kaon? those kind of fan fics are really hard to find.

I feel your pain, anon. Gotta love the rarepairs.

Vos cried out in primal vernacular as Kaon sent the next shock coursing through his already trembling frame. The lingering electricity from the previous, less extreme shocks still tingled pleasantly in his lines. His spine arched away from the wall that he was cuffed to and he groaned as Kaon continued to send tiny shockwaves directly into his valve. 

Kaon ran his charged digits through the mess of Vos’ valve. “Color?” he asked. 

This was one of the few Neocybex words Vos knew, along with the three possible responses. It had taken time and practice to make the words sound right, but Kaon had always been patient. 

“Green,” Vos rasped. He was so close, his frame running hot with all the extra charge. 

Kaon stood to nuzzle his faceplate against Vos’; their imitation of a kiss. It was thrilling, and a minor distraction. Until Kaon grabbed Vos’ spike at the base and sent the final, and strongest, wave of raw energy into him. 

Vos screamed as he overloaded, thrashing in his bindings as his optics rolled back and he shot transfluid all over a pleased-looking Kaon. 

[tachyon-omlette]

finally, the second installment of Eda interacting with @cuppajj's Lost Light titanformer. it's not as long as the first part, I think, but I had this specific scene in my head and badly wanted to write it despite not having the energy or competence for the longest time. hopefully I did alright.

•••

Though the Lost Light and its crew had been at veritable rest for quite some time now on a strange planetoid within the deep reaches of space, the sole inhabitant of the small world seemed unbothered by their presence, if not somewhat welcoming. He was, for the admittedly short time since he’d approached the co-Captains and crew, predominantly antisocial, but he’d made it known that their often rambunctious company was burdensome to neither himself nor his home.

His home was very strange. One could swear the lightless asteroid possessed a faint aura, one that often seemed to soothe the more restless crewmembers and keep nearly everyone at ease in such a way that did not feel intrusive or inherently unnatural, if one did not think about it too hard. Spirits remained at a constant yet not manic high, and by that metric the prospect of leaving was not something that many had yet considered.

With any luck, that was destined to change.

There was one particular cycle that everything seemed... off. It began very subtly, that aura of comfort dulling down over the course of several hours until it became more of a haze, something that made the constant night seem darker and weighed down every spark with fragments of their burdens which had gone unaddressed and unresolved.

Even the ship’s ever-cheerful cartographer, Lightlost, seemed plagued by that unseen force - and was one of the few to notice that Eda was nowhere to be found. Even though the crew was spread across the planetoid, no one had seen him at all.

"Lightlost."

Until, of course, they themselves were sought out.

"You are a cartographer, yes?"

Lightlost turned - his voice had come from behind - and faced a very dour Eda, his sporting whimsy and near-constant grin both absent. He likely was not exempt from the effects of the strange planetoid, either.

"I am," they responded.

"Then perhaps these are something you might appreciate," followed Eda, offering a rather large cylindrical carrying case that seemed a proper size in his hand, but in truth was nearly as tall as Lightlost. "It is yours, if you want it."

Lightlost took the tube - it seemed strangely old, so they held it gently despite its size - and with some effort unscrewed the top. Inside was a sheet of metal, thin enough to be rolled up for storage yet sturdy enough that when Lightlost extracted it from the tube it proved difficult to unroll, so much so that Eda had to assist momentarily, and it was an effort to prevent it from springing closed again.

When it finally was unrolled, however, it proved a rather intriguing sight. It was a star chart, centralized largely around Cybertron and labeled in Primal Vernacular, with a few crudely-scratched corrections and notations in a glyphic language Lightlost did not recognize. Due to its sheer size, it took a moment before they recognized how old this chart was, and markings they first assumed were simply incorrect were in truth heavily outdated; none of the colony worlds were included because it predated them outright.

This was a map, yes, but it was first and foremost a priceless Cybertronian artifact in near-perfect condition, and Eda was giving it away - giving it to Lightlost - without so much as a second thought.

"Wh..." they began, nearly lost for words. "Where did you get this?"

"Trion fashioned it for my personal use, though I have never found a reason for it," Eda stated flatly. "To have consulted with any of the others posed a great personal risk, but he was a scribe, not an astronomer. I could manage far better without it."

Trion. As in Alpha Trion. As in one of the First Thirteen.

"H- You... I-" Lightlost stammered, countless questions and conclusions running through their processor, overwhelmed with the gravity of the gift they'd been so casually, almost flagrantly given. They were caught between how did you know the Primes and what were you doing on Cybertron and if you once lived on Cybertron why do you now live here, but for the moment could only stare slack-jawed at the ancient star chart.

Eda seemed to deflate further at their reaction. "Forgive me, if this is not to your liking-"

"This belongs in a museum, Eda!" Lightlost exclaimed, thrusting the map towards Eda but stopping short of touching his frame, fearful they might damage it despite its durability. "I can't accept this!"

That, judging from how he recoiled slightly, optics widening, was not the reaction he had expected.

"I am... honored?" Eda began, caught off guard and bewildered. "I was unaware that any of my impedimenta could possess such value."

Then he gently pushed the map back towards Lightlost, expression softening in the wake of his surprise.

"Perhaps that is all the more reason it belongs in your custody; there is no one who could care for or appreciate it as you will. You may do as you wish with it, so long as its fate is yours to decide.”

As Eda spoke, he gently took the edges of the map where Lightlost still held them, and guided the metal sheet back into its prior cylindrical conformation, making sure it did not snap closed and that Lightlost maintained their hold upon it as he did so.

Lightlost looked at the rolled-up map, honored and humbled and awed almost beyond words, then looked back up at Eda.

"Thank you," they said, after a moment. "I will do my best to be worthy of your trust."

They could have sworn his initial reaction was one of incalculable distress, but then at last Eda smiled - and he seemed so melancholy, verging on sorrowful, something profoundly genuine on a level Lightlost rarely witnessed.

"You are too kind," he said.

---

Later that evening, when the majority of the crew either had returned to their rooms or still lingered at Swerve's, Lightlost's thoughts drifted back to earlier - predominantly, to all their unanswered questions.

They glanced at Eda's star chart - theirs, now - across the room. As soon as Lightlost had decided where they wanted it hung, Eda had instantly offered to help, holding it in place as Lightlost affixed it to the wall and covered it with a large armorglass panel (as it was in a public area, and though Lightlost cared immensely for their crew they were not ignorant to their occasionally rapacious tendencies). Everyone had seemed fascinated and amazed by it, kept asking where it came from to which they answered it was a gift from Eda, and for quite awhile Eda was subsequently hounded with inquiries not only for more of his belongings but also how he came to have them... which was a good question. If he'd known the Primes, that made him easily older than the vast majority of the crew. Was he older than the Primes, even?

Their optics were drawn to where Alpha Trion's mapping was intersected with those odd notations. They could not read what the glyphs said, but Lightlost could tell they were corrections, written by someone else; if it was Eda's map, perhaps he had written them? How did he have such knowledge of the stars prior to early Cybertronian expansionism - or were they written afterwards, in which case, was that how he'd found this place? What had led him to live here, of all places, instead of Cybertron or one of the colonies - and why was he alone?

It was amidst these questions that Lightlost at last recognized that the haze about the planetoid, which had earlier beleaguered themselves and the crew, had inexorably lifted - and they realized it traced back to moments after the spirits of planetoid's sole inhabitant had themselves been lifted. When his mood had improved, it seemed, the rest of the small world had followed suit, as if his mood alone determined the effects imposed on everyone else...

Who is Eda, really?

[phoenike]

Tempest

FFXIV Write, day #3 prompt. I forgot that the WoL addresses Fourchenault when he first shows up in Gridania. Let's pretend that never happened 🙈

.

“Master Leveilleur,” Alphinaud says. “May I present to you Tovir’a Tayum, the Champion of Eorzea and my dear friend.”

Fourchenault shifts his gaze from his son to the smiling miqo’te brawler by his side, heavily armed with the tools of the machinist’s trade and a long barbaric dirk at his hip. Strongly built for a Keeper as though the man may be, he only stands a head taller than Alphinaud. An ostentatious plumed hat adds several ilms to his height, but fails to bring him anywhere near Fourchenault’s level.

Fourchenault has seen the famous primal slayer before, but it was always from the safety of the speaker’s podium, or otherwise addressing the crowd as a representative of the Forum. Not until now have they stood face to face, here at the beginning of the Final Days — a chaotic tempest with skies burning and people transforming into hideous beasts in their desperation.

“Master Tovir’a,” Fourchenault hazards, unsure of the right mode of address.

The man’s response comes with a surprisingly deep and masculine timber.

“Sod the bloody gammon, mate, just plain Tovi will do. So, yer Alphie’s old cove? A bene day to ye, sir. Summat to say as ‘ow every chip ain’t o’ the old block, aye?” The man steps forward and, still smiling, proffers his gauntleted right hand.

Pardon…?

The soft Limsan working-class patter takes effort to decipher, a challenge made all the more difficult by how some of the vernacular sailed right past Fourchenault’s head. With dawning horror, he realizes he might just have been mortally insulted, and would not know. Taken aback, he clasps the man’s hand by instinct with his own — and suppresses a wince when he finds it shaken with a painfully strong gunman’s grip.

“Charmed, I’m sure.” He struggles to regain ground.

The man’s face splits in an even wider grin that bares his sharp fangs.

“Likewise, Master Leveilleur, likewise! Yer laddie’s whiddled in me one good ear so much about ye, feels like I already know ye! If we ain’t old butts in no time, ye can call me a monkey’s arse and toss me in the salt!”

Oh, for the…

Well. Looks like he was giving this Limsan character more credit than he’s due.

So, the famous Savior is a simple, grinning gunslinger. An exceptionally powerful one, should the stories be true, but hardly possessed of hidden agendas Fourchenault would need to keep an ear to. Clearly a man all too aware of his good looks, his flamboyant dress suggests a measure of frivolity and — dare one say — wantonness? Keeping one’s shirt open to the waist might be suitable for the Radz-at-Han climate, but there’s also the matter of dignity to consider, more so from someone who symbolizes so much.

“I have no doubt. Now, if you'll excuse me...” Fourchenault lets his gaze slip away, mind already focusing on matters of more pressing importance. In passing, he notices Alisaie coughing nearby, inexplicably red in the face, but decides against wasting precious time on the observation.

[thehorrortree]

Submission Window: November 6th to 12th, 2023 Payment: $100 for stories of up to 1,000 words Theme: Fantastical and speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, myth, fairy-story, magic realism, literary fabulism, and genre/subgenre remixes. The Fabulist Flash, a new flash-fiction project from The Fabulist Words & Art, welcomes submissions from November 6-12 for fantastical and speculative writings of up to 1,000 words. The Fabulist Flash will debut in 2024, and run in parallel to our current short-fiction programming. See below for program details. Word Count & Rate • We’re offering a flat fee of $100 for stories of up to 1,000 words (the equivalent of an SFWA-qualifying rate of $0.10/word), payable upon contracted acceptance. • Going above the word count is fine if you need a little headroom to take the story home, but it’s in your interest to keep it tight, as the flat fee is firm. • You can review our flash-fiction contract here. What We’re Looking For • Fantastical and speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, myth, fairy-story, magic realism, literary fabulism, and genre/subgenre remixes. • Evocative and intriguing scenes, settings, places. • Clear, efficacious writing that doesn’t shy away from the poetry within prose. • Wide-ranging human (or sentient) experiences that we care about, or at least feel. • Yeah: Odysseys, revelation, transformation, dilemma/struggle, fluid dualities. • Nah: Grimdark, military, cops, vengeance, power trips. • Exploded/deconstructed cliches of any of the foregoing … If you’re not sure where your story lands in these various target zones — just send us your best. Great work will shine through. Please Think Twice, We’ve Really Seen Quite Enough Of • Zombies, zombie apocalypse, teen vampire/werewolf romance, cute Cthulhu/nice baby Elder God, etc. • Splatter/gore/brutality • Virtual-reality visitations with the beloved deceased • Mundane fantasies of revenge, sex, financial and business success, etc. • “Another Friday Night at the Elftown Police Station” — or really anything that takes fantastical archetypes or plot devices and makes them vernacular or silly: drinking hard liquor and shit-talking with a primal entity (Death, Cupid, Santa, Time), for example, or an all-powerful god with an ordinary mortal name and ordinary mortal foibles (“Bob, creator of the Universe, woke up one Sunday with a headache”). Maybe you ARE the next Neil Gaiman — but probably not? • “And then she/he/they woke up” (which includes not just it-was-all-a-dream but also we’re-all-living-in-a-giant-simulation) • Suicide and self-harm (we realize this stuff is real and we write to deal with it, just saying that successfully deploying it as a trope in the fantastical fiction we run is very, very difficult to pull off) That said … surprise us. If you feel you’ve written a truly original, compelling take on any of these genre cliches, we’re glad to check it out. Please No • We are not open to AI/LLM-generated text. • No misogyny, sexism, racism, bigotry, hate, etc. (view our nondiscrimination statement). • Previously unpublished works only — no reprints To Submit • Check back on this page from Nov. 6-12, or on our main Submittable portal, for a live submissions button that will take you to our Submittable intake form. • Shunn format or at least double-spaced is great. • Please anonymize your submission! There must be no identifying details on your manuscript. Fear not — your contact info will be collected as part of the intake process, and your cover letter will not be visible to our slush readers. Via: Fabulist Magazine.

[apenitentialprayer]

1. Lady Philosophy offers Boethius wings so his mind can fly aloft, 15th century manuscript of The Consolation of Philosophy. 2. Geometria teaching monks, from a manuscript of Euclid’s Elements, 1309-1316. 3. Man with a wounded heart surrendering to Frau Minne, 1320-1330. 4. Sapienta directing God’s people to Christ, Hildesheim, Germany, likely 1120s.

Medieval Catholicism presents the extraordinary spectacle of a religion [...] that proclaimed one God in three persons and surrounded that God with three pantheons. First came the saints, a polymorphous group, with the Mother of God at their pinnacle. Their cultural presence was ubiquitous, their shrines beyond counting. Second were the old pagan gods, "disinfected of belief" but still immensely useful for literary and astrological purposes. Poets and intellectuals could not imagine the cosmos without them. Their name survived is planets and days of the week; fragments of their cult lived on in Christian festivals, while every schoolboy learned their myths. Textually, however, these two pantheons never mixed: saints belongs to the realm of belief, pagan gods to that of make-believe. Mythography had no use for St. Catherine, nor did hagiography require Apollo, unless a virgin was denouncing him on the way to her martyrdom. But the third pantheon, the allegorical goddesses, mingled freely with both of the others. The God of medieval Christendom was father of one Son but many daughters: Sapientia Philosophia, Ecclesia, Frau Minne, Dame Nature, Lady Reason, and the list goes on. These goddesses have been something of an embarrassment to medievalists. Literary scholars treat them as personifications or ideological constructs; art historians sometimes glance at their iconography; historical theologians study them not at all. Yet the goddesses occupied a more spacious domain in medieval religious thought than scholarship has yet allowed. They freely cross the boundaries of language and genre, as well as those that more delicate boundary where high seriousness meets serious play and imagination shades into belief. Goddesses abound not only in the creations of poets, but also in the theological writings of clerics and the revelations of holy women. Alan of Lille was a distinguished schoolman, the author of a noted manual on preaching, who ended his life as a Cistercian monk (d. 1202/3). But when he wished to write an epic poem on the creation of a Divine Man, he turned his back on the Gospels and gave the task to a gynaeceum of goddesses. Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), a saintly bishop eulogized by Rodger Bacon as the most learned philosopher of his age, produced an array of Latin works on subjects ranging from optics to sacraments. But he also wrote a poem in his Anglo-Norman vernacular Le Cháteau d’Amour, which has been described as a theological treatise in the form of a chivalric romance. Ostensibly composed for the education of the laity, Le Cháteau lifts the four daughters of God from the Talmud, makes them sisters of Christ without whom God could not govern his kingdom, and then embroils them in debate over the redeemability of man. A century later, Dante rescued even that most disreputable of goddesses, Fortuna, from her opprobrium and set her rejoicing in heaven, “glad with the other primal creatures” (con l’altre prime creature lieta). Of course Dante was not the only medieval pilgrim to visit heaven: many women also found the way, and they too met a galaxy of goddesses there, along with the Trinity and the Virgin, angels and saints. These "primal creatures," as Dante calls them, often bear the names of virtues, as do Grosseteste's Mercy, Truth, Justice, and Peace. But if we follow convention and refer to them as "personifications" or even "allegorical figures," we run the risk of blunting their emotional force and trivializing their religious import. The term “goddesses” may startle, yet it appears not infrequently in the texts under study, and such epithets as “daughter of God” are even more common. The mythic resonance of these terms is surely intended. If we neglect this dimension, we may take the goddesses’ presence for granted and forget to ask why they should have proliferated in the high Middle Ages, appearing in such prominent roles in such a variety of contexts. [...] Medieval goddesses are not one but many. Yet they share a certain family resemblance, for those examined in this book are all distinctive creations of the Christian imagination - neither “pagan survivals” nor versions of “the Great Goddess” constructed in speculative works on ancient religion and psychology. Like other sacred symbols, goddesses could be taken with varying degrees of seriousness: at times they dwindled to the status of rhetorical tropes, and some writers use them parodically. But in the most imaginative and provocative texts, both Latin and vernacular, they add an irreducible fourth dimension to the spiritual universe. As emanations of the Divine, mediators between God in the cosmos, embodied universals, and not least, ravishing objects of identification and desire, the goddesses substantially transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God, introducing religious possibilities beyond the ambit of scholastic theology and bringing them to vibrant imaginative life. How they did so will be the subject of this book. [...] [H]ow did medieval writers and readers understand the ontological status of their goddesses? Did they “believe in” them, and if so, in what manner? What philosophical convictions sustained their fascination with allegory? Is it possible to distinguish the personifications that appear in allegorical poems and visual art from those that appear in actual visions? How could medieval writers reconcile their statements about the daughters of God with orthodox  devotion to the Son of God? For that matter question why did they have such an overwhelming preference for female personifications -for goddesses- in the first place? [...] How deliberately and self-consciously did medieval authors, male and female, explore the possibilities of feminine God-language? Did their experiments encounter resistance?

- Barbara Newman (God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages, pages 1-2, 2-3, 3). Emphases added, and some paragraphs restructured to avoid walls of text.

[petitelepus]

MTMTE Helex and 30

WARNING; CANNIBALISM, EATING SOMEONE ALIVE, GORE, ROBOT BLOOD, ENERGON, DO NOT READ IF YOU GET SICK EASILY!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

"Alright, team!" Tarn started, getting every Decepticon's attention to him. The feared leader of the famous Decepticon Justice Division looked at his team as he took the remote and clicked the huge projector on, showing their next traitor.

"Our next target is infamous coward ChainWreck. Like their name suggest they left their position as a front liner back at war and-" Tarn stopped suddenly and looked around the room. A second passed and he squinted his optics and turned his glare on one of his men.

"Dammit, Helex!" Tarn shouted and the huge con saluted his leader. "Yes Tarn?"

"Where in the name of almighty Megatron is your Conjunx? This is the third meeting they are late of!" The purple con shouted and Helex was honestly just as clueless as his leader was. "I don't know? It's not like I'm glued to them 24/7."

"Maybe you should be so then you wouldn't lose your Conjunx!" Tarn snapped and took a step back, quickly taking some calming inhales before looking at his teammate again. "I'm sorry Helex, I shouldn't have snapped like that. That wasn't fair of me."

"It's alright." The huge smelter said but he frowned and that didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the team.

"Uuh, this doesn't belong to me but is everything alright with you guys?" Tesaurus asked and Helex frowned. "Nothing out of ordinary."

"C'mon Helex, this is a safe space." Kaon said and Vos spoke in Primal Vernacular and Kaon smiled a little, "Vos is right, you can tell what's in your mind."

"It's just...!" Helex frowned even deeper and grounded his denta together in frustration. "They have been avoiding me and been distant... And I fear they might be... Planning to run away..."

"Helex..." Everyone looked at each other sadly. The big guy was really in love with you, but if you truly wanted to get away... It would break his spark. But there was the big IF in the room that had to be handled.

"With all due respect, you do know what we must do if they have strained off from our holy mission?" Tesaurus asked and Helex nodded. Leaving Decepticon Justice Division was simple. You didn't. But if for some magical reason you decided to really leave for good then you would do it with your spark extinguished for good.

"Yeah... Just..." The huge smelter nodded and quickly wiped his face with his smaller set of hands, "Let me do it. I don't want anyone else to dimmer their spark..."

"We are here for you if you need us."

Helex smiled. He was truly lucky to have such an amazing leader, team, friends, and perhaps even family. Suddenly the door to the room slid open and everyone turned to look who dared to enter but they saw it was you.

"Hi guys." You greeted them and they all blinked in shock. You were covered in energon from helm to pede but worst was your face. Everyone looked at you and you kinda just whistled there like you were picking flowers and not covered in gore.

Helex felt his spark freeze and he quickly got up and ran to you, grabbing your arms with his bigger hands and your face with his smaller pair.

"Primus, what happened to you!? Are you hurt, what happened?! Who hurt you!?"

"Nothing! You should see the other guy. He is the one you should worry about," You snapped and your Conjunx let go of you and you frowned. "What did you do?"

"I got the traitor. ChainWreck? Dealt with him." You said and every Decepticon in the room blinked. ChainWreck was a huge tank and a coward? Yes, but you claimed that you had handled him all by yourself? You were barely as big as Kaon, how would you have managed that?

"You say you took down a tank, all by yourself?" Tarn asked suspiciously. You nodded and smiled, "The guy never saw me coming."

"Pardon my attitude, but I find it hard to believe you." The purple con said, "Don't get me wrong, I believe he didn't see you, but that you took him down yourself? I think I need proof."

It was clear that Tarn was suspicious of you, but you just rolled your optics, "You get your proof but first...!" You turned your attention back to your Conjunx and smiled happily.

"Happy Anniversary hot stuff!" You cheered and Helex stared at you with his crimson optics wide as a smile slowly rose to his face. "You remembered?"

"Of course! How could I forget the day you and I promised to be with each other until the day we wouldn't be?"

"But... If you remembered then why have you been avoiding me?"

"I was planning your Anniversary gift! I wanted it to be a surprise." You said and with a click, you opened your subspace and pulled out a gift packet wrapped in blue paper and tied with red ribbon.

You gave the gift to your lover and he took it happily. It looked just like any other gift-wrapped packet... if only there wasn't energon dripping from the packet's bottom seams.

"What the frag is in that packet?" Tarn asked but Helex and you completely ignored your leader as you stared at each other's optics.

"Proof of my loyalty and my love." You murmured just loud enough so everyone could hear and Helex's optics softened. Tarn blinked. "No, seriously, what's in the box?"

"Go ahead hot stuff." You nodded, "Open it."

The huge smelter looked at the box in his huge hands and used his smaller set of arms to open the lid. What he saw made his optics widen and spark swell in his chassis.

"You got me ChainWreck's brain module!" He gasped as he picked the module with his smaller hand and lifted it to the light so he could inspect it in its full glory. "It's even perfectly removed from the helm!"

"Only the best for my Conjunx" You cheered and Helex didn't wait any longer, he swiped you into his bigger arms and kissed you on your energon covered lips. The rest of the DJD averted their eyes, giving you the privacy you should have asked for, but were too horny to do so.

"You taste absolutely delicious...!" Helex growled when you two pulled back and you practically purred at him with your yellow optics gleaming, "Must be the fuel pump I ate."

"You ate the fuel pump? That's the juiciest part of the mech!" Your huge Conjunx smiled and you grinned back at him. "It was so plump, I wish I had you there sharing it."

Other Decepticons looked almost sick but Tarn toughened up and looked at you. "I hate to break the sweet moment between you two, but we must address the matter. Did ChainWreck suffer?"

"Oh, he did suffer. Really badly, might I add." You said and your leader blinked, "Don't tell me you-!"

"Oh, nothing like that Tarn!" You swatted your hand over air and the feared Decepticon sighed in relief. You smiled, "I ate him while he was stunned by my stun gun."

"He was alive!?"

"Oh yeah, they're the best when they scream." You licked your lips at the memory and rubbed your stomach. "So warm and juicy."

"I think I'm getting sick..." Tesaurus grumbled as he held his own stomach. That was so hypocritical of him, he put cons and bots alive into his blender and he was getting squeamish for you eating a traitor.

Vos said something, but you weren't fluent in Primal Vernacular like the rest of the DJD. Kaon took the Pet and left when the brain module was pulled out. But there was this another question that popped up.

"You didn't think I'd betray our Holy cause?" You looked almost hurt as you asked and Helex felt horrible for even thinking about it for a second. You frowned and grabbed his huge hands to get his attention and finally, he turned his optics back to you.

You smiled, "I’ll always be here for you, but if anything was to happen to me I want you to eat me. And of course, I expect you to offer yourself for me to eat if it goes another way around."

"That would be my honor. I can't imagine a better fate than being eaten by my loving Conjunx."

"Primus, are you two hearing yourselves!?" Tarn shouted in the background but the two of you completely ignored him.

"I didn't get you anything..." Your love said, sounding disappointed in himself but you smiled and pecked his hands. "It's okay. When you're done eating that brain module then perhaps... You could eat me out?"

"Why won't we share the brain and then eat each other?" Helex grinned back at you and you giggled as blush ghosted over your cheeks. "You huge flirt! Are you sure you're not on? Because you're making me feel hot~!"

"That's it!" Tarn snapped, "Everyone out! The meeting is over! And you two better shut your room door properly or I'm writing a warning to you two!"

[wordstrings]

your writing never fails to amaze me. your particular style and use of language is so gooood. would you mind sharing any general writing tips you have, either process-wise or more technical advice?

A) Thank you!! ❤️

B) I don’t mind sharing! ...I just don’t know if I have a lot to share, lol. I kiiind of talked about “my process” in this post but it’s certainly not “advice” and I do not recommend emulation.

Probably the most technical thing I pay attention to when writing is sentence structure. (If I don’t pay attention, the formula I fall into most often is “[Character] [verbed], [verbing] [pronoun] [noun] [conjunction] [verbing] [adverb].” Rinse and repeat until the fic is over.) I try to vary the pace within a paragraph by using shorter and longer sentences, switching up the subject and predicate order, and other things I’m sure have grammatical names but I always despised learning grammar for the same reasons I despised geometry: things just are, and they work because they do, and I hate being forced to memorize and regurgitate the rules that explain why, mathematically, a triangle is a triangle when look, it’s just obviously a triangle, leave me alone.

The other thing I consciously do that I can at least somewhat describe is: use phrasing that feels true to the source material. For a Good Omens fic, I’ll write something like: “When Aziraphale opens the door, he’s certain he has found an alternate dimension by mistake. The flat grey expanses of the walls and odd jutting geometric shapes seeming to float from the high, high ceilings almost give the impression of Heaven, if Heaven were to be sliced up and shuffled about like a tile puzzle, then drenched in dry, powdery ash and left for eons to petrify in the dark”* because that kind of narration – a bit flowery, a bit rambling, a bit irreverent – is characteristic of Good Omens. But for Supernatural, it would be more appropriate to reflect vernacular like: “Dean’s still trying to catch his breath, and it’s been at least twenty minutes since he stopped running. Or, was forced to stop. Caught. Christ, that had been terrifying. That heart-pounding, leg-burning, chest-constricting chase, being primally stalked and hunted, knowing there’s a cosmic wavelength of fucking intent on your ass – he’s pretty sure his adrenal glands won’t recover until he’s eighty. Assuming he makes it out of this alive.”** Admittedly, a lot of this goes out the window when writing a stylized AU. But keeping the dialog recognizable as the characters, regardless of their setting, is something I value in things I read as well as write.

A few other quick-hit notes:

Make friends with your local thesaurus. No need to go hogwild synonyming everything, but different words carry different connotations. Find the one that fits your intended tone.

Decide on a point-of-view and stick with it. If we’re seeing things through Character A’s eyes, then the exact motivations or feelings of Character B likely shouldn’t be directly narrated. We can observe Character B, and probably draw some conclusions about them, but we shouldn’t be told exactly what they’re thinking (unless Character A can read minds).

Do what you want. Ignore everything I said. It’s fanfiction, not an academic paper. The point is to enjoy yourself.

—

Footnotes:

* This One Day of Days

** The Benefits of Hypnotherapy

[dollwritesarchive]

💞 hiiii lovie!! i use she/her pronouns and i love sweet nicknames like baby, kitten, etc! i have long dark brown hair and brown eyes and i wear glasses 24/7 because i have horrible eyesight LMAO. i’m also 5’1 1/2 and i LOVE film! i think i’m a kind and understanding person, but i can definitely be really hotheaded when i’m angry! im 10000% the therapist friend and i cant stand knowing if someone is sad, or just angry at me! im a people pleaser at heart sjsjsjs! im an english major in college and i love anything and everything vintage! could i have a letter from loki please?🥺 🔥

Loki takes extra special care when crafting your letter. his handwriting is immaculate, the parchment looks and feels as if it’s plucked directly from the medieval era, and he’s sealed it with emerald wax and petrified rose petals. it isn’t delivered in your mailbox, but placed methodically upon the center of the welcome mat, so it is all but impossible to miss when you step outside.

Little Kitten,

I’m aware that mortals do not partake in the art of letter writing anymore, and to be completely honest I can’t for the life of me understand why. They would rather type away on their handheld computers and deconstruct their vernacular instead of expressing themselves via the physical intimacy of their own handwriting. Personally, I find the latter much more sincere, as you well know as this is not the first you’re receiving of my written word.

I hope you enjoy reading these, and perhaps imagining me crafting them. A dip of a quill into the raven ink, the swooping of the point as it bleeds these words into the parchment, or the flick of my wrist to sign it without spilling so much as a stray drop. Everything, and I do mean everything, must be absolutely perfect before I will allow you to read it.

I will make this visage more accurate for you this one and only time. I am seated at a large, gilded desk. As you know, much of Asgard sparkles in golden hue. Candlelight makes the night all the more peaceful. Or, what is that earth word you taught me last weekend? ... Zen? It bathes myself and the parchment in a flickering glow that I only wish I could watch you absorb.

There are so many thoughts of you in my mind (many of which are quite inappropriate) that I feel overwhelmed, in all of the best ways. I know that I will not see you for several more nights after this one, so I will simply have to please myself to the thought of you. It won’t be so difficult, however, because your moans for me are imprinted on my mind, the image of your back arching as if you were partially feline, completely nude and coming undone beneath me... these are the thoughts that keep me somewhat satiated until the next time I am able to get away to see you.

But fantasies only go so far, love. Perhaps now you know why I am so primal whenever I finally have you in my arms again. So I hope you can forgive me the next time I kiss you too passionately.

- Loki O.

[onlineviolence]

snatched the primal vernacular font now I don’t have to worry about  writing a fictional language incorrectly 

[aion-rsa]

Did The Dark Knight Really Influence the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

https://ift.tt/2QyP40k

In 2008, there were two seismic events in the superhero movie genre so close together that you’d be forgiven for thinking they signaled the same thing. Over the span of a few months, Marvel Studios launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) via Iron Man, and director Christopher Nolan changed the perception of how seriously to take these movies with The Dark Knight. Both are credited as watershed moments for how audiences and (more importantly) the industry approached such stories; and The Dark Knight is specifically singled out as the gold standard by which all other masked crimefighter films are measured.

However, was Nolan’s haunting vision—one in which a lone avenger is the last, best hope for a major American city on the verge of collapse—really that influential on its genre? The Dark Knight certainly had a monumental impact on the culture, then and now. You saw it when Heath Ledger’s searing interpretation of the Joker made him only the second actor to win a posthumous Oscar, as well as when the film’s exclusion from the Best Picture race changed the way the Academy Awards handled its top prize. And just last year, The Dark Knight became only the second superhero movie inducted into the National Film Registry.

Yet when a friend watching last week’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiere told me Marvel was returning to the “realistic” approach of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and by extension The Dark Knight, I couldn’t help but disagree. The new Disney+ series may have a slightly more grounded aesthetic than the last time we saw these characters (back when they were fighting space aliens over magic stones in Avengers: Endgame), but the medium-blending existence of the series belies the idea that Marvel took anything significant from the insular and self-contained Dark Knight Trilogy.

The Dark Knight vs. Iron Man

It’s interesting to look back at just those 2008 films since at face value they bore minor similarities. They both were focused on fantastically wealthy billionaires using their fortunes to fight wrongdoing on a potentially global scale; each movie was directed by filmmakers with indie cred thanks to Nolan helming Memento (2000) and Jon Favreau writing and starring in Swingers (1996); and each starred unexpected casting choices with Ledger as the Joker and Robert Downey Jr. jumpstarting a career comeback as Tony Stark.

But their goals and approaches were worlds apart. The obvious thing to note, besides The Dark Knight being a sequel to Batman Begins (2005) and Iron Man being an origin movie, is that Iron Man had an slyly hilarious sensibility, and The Dark Knight fancied itself an allegory about post-9/11 America. The former’s success was engineered in large part by Downey’s gift for comedic improvisation and freestyle. Indeed, co-star Jeff Bridges said in 2009 that he, Downey, and Favreau were essentially improvising their scenes from scratch every day during primitive rehearsals. “They had no script, man,” Bridges lightly complained with his Dude diction.

By contrast, The Dark Knight appears at a glance to be an exercise in self-seriousness and lofty ambition. Every scene, written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan, appears like a chess move, and each character a pawn or knight who’s been positioned to put contemporary audiences in a state of pure anxiety with War on Terror imagery and dialogue. Of course this clocklike presentation is itself another Nolan illusion, as smaller players like Michael Jai White, who portrayed gangster Gambol in the movie, have been quite candid about. As with almost every film, there is still a level of fluidity and workshopping on Nolan’s set.

Ultimately, the bigger difference between the Nolan and eventual Marvel approach is what each is hoping to accomplish with the film they’re currently making. More than just offering a “realistic” vision of Batman, The Dark Knight attempted to tell a sweeping crime drama epic that would stand alone, separate from its status as a Batman Begins sequel. Rather than being “the next chapter,” The Dark Knight was meant to be a cinematic distillation of Batman and Joker’s primal appeals writ large. With this approach, the film also broke away from the superhero movie template Batman Begins followed three years earlier, and which nearly all superhero films still walk through the paces of.

In essence, The Dark Knight showed that superhero movies could be dark and mature, yes, but they can also be subversive, unexpected, and genuinely surprising. Nolan’s previous superhero movie, as good as it is, followed the beats set down by Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie nearly 30 years earlier. They’re the same beats trod by Iron Man and pretty much every other superhero origin movie, including a large bulk of Marvel Studios’ output. The Dark Knight, by contrast, reached for a cinematic vernacular separate from its specific genre. The movie’s not subtle about it either. The opening scene of Nolan’s epic wears its homages to Michael Mann’s Heat on its sleeves, and the story’s structure has more to do with Jaws than Jor-El.

The approach shook audiences in 2008 after they’d come to expect a certain type of movie from masked do-gooders. In The Dark Knight, superhero conventions could be subverted or obliterated when love interest Rachel Dawes is brutally killed off mid-sentence, or stalwart Batman is forced to claim a pyrrhic victory over the villain by entering into a criminal conspiracy and cover-up with the cops. The thrill of novelty was as breathtaking as the movie’s allegorical elements about a society on edge.

And even with The Dark Knight’s open-ended finale, it stood as a singular cinematic experience, complete with then-groundbreaking emphasis on IMAX photography. Nolan was so adamant about making this as self-contained an experience as possible that he jettisoned his co-story creator David Goyer’s idea of setting up Harvey Dent’s fall from grace for a third movie. Dent’s fate, as that of everyone else’s, would be tied strictly to the events of the movie you’re now watching.

“We Have a Hulk”

In Iron Man, and then more forcefully in Iron Man 2 (2010) and the rest of its “Phase One” era, Marvel Studios demonstrated a wholly different set of priorities. Similar to how Batman Begins paved the way for Nolan to do what he really wanted with that material, Iron Man 2 came to encapsulate Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige’s grander designs for the type of movies he was making. Where The Dark Knight was singular, unconventional, and two steps closer to our world than its comic book origins, Iron Man 2 was episodic, entirely crafted around audience expectations for a sequel, and even more like a comic book world than our own.

In other words, the first Iron Man gently submerged audiences into the fantasy by beginning with contemporary images of Tony Stark in a Middle Eastern desert; Iron Man 2 then made sweeping strides in defining what that MCU fantasy is as quickly as possible: Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is introduced solely to establish the superspy who will be vital to The Avengers two years down the road, and the central narrative about Tony Stark fighting an old rival is put on pause to reintroduce the character Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as a supporting, and superfluous, side character. The post-credit scene even arbitrarily introduces literal magic with a glowing hammer that has absolutely nothing to do with the story you just watched. Still, it’s a hell of a teaser for Thor which was due in theaters a year later.

With the release of Iron Man 2, Marvel Studios’ emphasis became diametrically opposed to the driving concept behind The Dark Knight Trilogy. Rather than each film being an insulated, standalone cinematic experience like the Hollywood epics of old, Marvel’s movies would be interconnected episodes in an ongoing narrative saga that spanned multiple franchises and countless sequels. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unlike Nolan after The Dark Knight, Feige and his stable of writers always know where the next movie (or five) is going, and have a better idea of what the overall vision is than any single director working within this system. Ironically, this returns power to the studio and producer as the seeming authorial voice of each movie. Like in the Golden Age of Hollywood, directors are more often hired hands than influential auteurs.

However, this means the aspects Nolan really valued on The Dark Knight beyond a gritty “realism”—elements like spontaneity, subversion, and a distancing from superhero tropes—became antithetical to the type of movies produced by the MCU. For at least the first decade of its existence, the Marvel Cinematic Universe flourished by creating a formula and house style that is as predictable for audiences as the contents in a Big Mac.

When you go to a Marvel movie, you more or less you’ll get: an ironic, self-deprecating tone, a story that often revolves around a CG MacGuffin that must be taken from the villain, and a narrative in which disparate heroic characters come together after some amusing, disagreeable banter. In fact, more than Iron Man, it was Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012) which refined the Marvel formula into what it is today.

There are of course exceptions to this rule. Black Panther became the first Marvel movie since Iron Man to arguably tackle themes significant to the real world, in this case specifically the legacy of African diaspora. It also became the first superhero film nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture as a result; James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies might follow the narrative formula of most MCU movies, but they’re embedded with a cheeky and idiosyncratic personality that is distinctly Gunn’s; and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016), directors Joe and Anthony Russo, as well as screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, attempted to inject a little bit of that “realistic” aesthetic from The Dark Knight. But only to a point.

Particularly in the 2014 effort, there was a push by the Russos to rely on in-camera special effects and cultivate what they often described in the press as a “1970s spy thriller” style. Ostensibly, the hope may have been to make The Winter Soldier as much a spy thriller as The Dark Knight was a crime epic. In this vein, there were even attempts to graft onto the story very timely concerns about the overreach of a government surveillance state, which had only grown in the decade since the U.S. PATRIOT Act was passed, despite a change in White House administrations. However, all of these ambitions had an invisible ceiling hovering above them.

Despite having overtones about the danger of reactionary if well-intentioned government leaders, like the kind personified by Robert Redford’s SHIELD director in the movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier couldn’t become too focused on the espionage elements or too far removed from the Marvel house style. The story still needed to interconnect with other Marvel films, hence Redford’s character turning out to be a secret HYDRA double agent, and it still needed to give audiences what they expected from a Marvel movie. Thus how this “1970s spy thriller” ends in a giant CGI battle with citywide destruction as Captain America inserts MacGuffins into machines that will blow up HYDRA’s latest weapon for world domination.

It’s easy to wonder if the movie was developed a little longer, and didn’t have to play by a certain set of rules and expectations, that instead of backpedaling into comic book motivations, Redford’s character would’ve been a well-intentioned patriot amassing power “to keep us safe,” and in the process destabilized the institutions he claimed to revere.

Read more

Movies

What Did Batman Do Between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

By David Crow

TV

WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

By Gavin Jasper

A Universe Without End

The Marvel method breeds a heavy need for familiarity and comfortable predictability, as opposed to disorientation and discomfort. Yet both methods are valid. While Nolan achieved near universal praise for The Dark Knight, his attempt to replicate it with the even more ambitious The Dark Knight Rises—an unabashed David Lean-inspired epic that took more from A Tale of Two Cities and Doctor Zhivago than DC Comics—left fans divided. It also was a narrative dead end for the corporate/fanbase need of an ongoing franchise. Nolan instead reached a final, artistic, and emphatic period for his cinematic interpretation of Batman mythology. By comparison, Marvel Studios has created a new cinematic vernacular that only ever uses dashes, semicolons, and commas. There is always more to tell.

Nolan reflected on these changing circumstances for superhero movies in 2017 when he said, “That’s a privilege and a luxury that filmmakers aren’t afforded anymore. I think it was the last time that anyone was able to say to a studio, ‘I might do another one, but it will be four years.’ There’s too much pressure on release schedules to let people do that now, but creatively it’s a huge advantage.”

This lines up with what Jeff Bridges said about the evolution of the Marvel method way back in ’09 after the first Iron Man: “You would think with a $200 million movie you’d have the shit together, but it was just the opposite. And the reason for that is because they get ahead of themselves. They have a release date before the script [and they think], ‘Oh, we’ll have the script before that time,’ and they don’t have their shit together.”

Bridges’ unhappiness with the new process notwithstanding, Marvel was rewriting the playbook about how these types of movies were made. Nolan’s approach of one at a time and years-long development processes created three distinctly different and relatively standalone Batman movies. But Marvel has shifted the idea of not just what a franchise can be, but also what cinematic storytelling means.

Instead of three movies, their rules and structures have generated dozens of well-received and adored entertainments, that when combined can produce experiences as unique as Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019): two movies that were more like a two-part season finale on TV than individual stories. And the latter became the highest grossing film of all time.

The success of this approach is further underlined when one considers competitors that tried to emulate both Marvel and Nolan’s approaches, relying on a lone auteur to build a shared cinematic universe—while also arguably taking the wrong lessons from the “dark” in The Dark Knight title. In the case of the DC Extended Universe, that approach collapsed on itself after three movies, leaving the interconnected “shared” part of its universe in tatters, and fans and studio hands alike divided on how to proceed with the franchise.The Marvel Cinematic Universe took a narrower road than that of The Dark Knight. But it turned out to be a lot smoother and much, much longer.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3lKi0hp

[eloquent-music]

Tagged by: @forgedcold​ Tagging: @unknownsoldiers​ , @coldbloodedcopter​, @trustme-imamedic​, @abuzzingofbumblebees​, @vicsaur​ AND ANYONE ELSE IM JUST LAZY to remember everyones urls

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬

FULL NAME:  Damus of Tarn (don’t call him Damus, ever).  Tarn of Tarn. NICKNAME:   Tarn. Damus. Glitch. Smooth-talker. Peanut. GENDER:   Unknown HEIGHT:  ~40 feet  (I dont like how hes like supposed to be 36.5 so hes gUNNA BE TALLER OKAY. I firmly believe he’s taller than most Autobots with how terrified they truly are of him) AGE:   Somewhere between 5.3-6.0 million years. He was around when Megatron was writing in the mines ZODIAC:   Capricorn SPOKEN LANGUAGES:   Neocybex, Primal Vernacular

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬

HAIR COLOR :  Gunmetal Black (in his holoform but the top of his helm is that color anyways) OPTIC COLOR:   Red BODY TYPE:   Dummy Thicc  VOICE:   Baritone Voice (sounds like a fine glass of whiskey) DOMINANT HAND:   Ambidextrous  POSTURE:   Stoic, he never slouches SCARS:   Severe facial scaring all over his face under his mask. Though his mask is always littered in scars as well. Theres deep grooves in his brow plating all the time. There’s usually always scuffs on his mine plow on his chest. There’s scarring on his viscera from when part of it was taken out for his Decepticon insignia TATTOOS:   He got another Decepticon insignia on his protoform but it isn’t visible BIRTHMARKS:  Unavailble. His original pair of servos and later on new claws always had burns from his undeveloped powers.  MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S):   His iconic facemask, the biolights that adorn his frame head to toe, double fusion cannon on his right arm

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝

PLACE OF BIRTH:  Unknown but happens to be a Point One Percenter and was forged HOMETOWN:   City State of Tarn  SIBLINGS:   Unavailable PARENTS:   Unavailable, Taken too soon to the Jhixian Academy

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞

OCCUPATION:   Leader of the Decepticon Justice Division, Former Commandant/Warden of Grindcore Prison  CURRENT RESIDENCE:   His starship, The Peaceful Tyranny and the Planet Messatine CLOSE FRIENDS:   Helex, Vos, Kaon, Tesarus, Pharma, Deathsaurus,   Megatron (used to) RELATIONSHIP STATUS:   He doesn’t really know (is currently trying to form something with Pharma) FINANCIAL STATUS:   Irrelevant. He has means to get what he wants even though he is wealthy DRIVER’S LICENSE:   Doesn’t need one CRIMINAL RECORD:   Convicted for many different crimes, including murder of all degrees (including Cybertronian and other alien species), war crimes, torturous acts against Cybertronians, assault, and so on VICES:   Irritable, Merciless, Hypocrite, Extremely Violent, Voracious (for violence), Capricious, Stoic, Loyal, Devoted, Laid-back (only sometimes)

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞

SEXUAL ORIENTATION:   Demipansexual PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE:  Tarn prefers being the top but he isn’t at all against being a bottom if he has that trust in the other LIBIDO:   Sort of in the middle, depending on the situation really. When he’s working and otherwise occupied, it can drop off. Gotta rile him up and that’s when he’s unable to quench it LOVE LANGUAGE:  Words (or singing, written or verbal) of affirmation, Quality time. In rare cases a bit of physical touch

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG: Chopin Nocturne Op.48 No.1,  Empyrean Suite HOBBIES TO PASS TIME:   Writing poetry, Studying the Cause, singing (like karaoke), playing the piano LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED:   He’s pretty much stuck in the middle, it doesn’t sway too much except for when he’s being creative with poetry and music. If you wanna go deep, he mostly uses his frontal and parietal lobe FEARS:   Loss of purpose, no guidance, wasted his life for nothing, being too openly emotional to someone in secret SELF-CONFIDENCE LEVEL:   High but in most of the time he has a lot of self-hatred for himself VULNERABILITIES:   Being too devoted, being blinded (not physically), he’s somewhat predictable