#rewriting bad cinema

[thatonelesbianfander]

Rewriting Bad Cinema: Ralph Breaks the Internet (WIR 2)

Okay, so I’m bored and have no idea what to post and I’ve had this idea in my head for a while so welcome to a new series thingy I’m going to do on my account called “Rewriting Bad Cinema” where I go and rewrite bad movies and sequels to something better.

Disclaimer: This is just for fun and not to be taken seriously, this is just my what if takes on how to change a piece of media. Please do not take any of what I say seriously. :)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for both Wreck It Ralph 1 and Ralph Breaks the Internet. If you would like to experience any of these movies yourself without spoilers, please go watch them and then come back here!

For this first installment of Rewriting Bad Media, we are going to be taking a look at Wreck It Ralph 2!

More under cut

For Rewriting Bad Cinema, we're first going to establish the movie's plot, establish its problems that make it bad, and then come up with a way to rewrite the movie that remedies most of the problems as best as possible including removal of some elements, restructuring of the plot, and adding to it.

What's the original plot of the movie?

Wreck It Ralph 2 is a 2018 film released by Disney. In WIR 2, the steering wheel for Sugar Rush is broken in an accident after Vanellope goes against the player’s controls and drives on a bonus track Ralph constructed for her. Litwak attempts to fix the game but is unsuccessful and ends up breaking the steering wheel even more, and after the search for a replacement wheel is unsuccessful, Litwak unplugs the game. This causes all the Sugar Rush citizens to become homeless. This causes Ralph and Vanellope to hatch a plan to go to the internet and find a new steering wheel before Sugar Rush is taken out of the arcade for good. Hijinks and brand placement happens and in the end, Sugar Rush is repaired, the citizens are no longer homeless, and Vanellope ends up staying in a new game on the internet called Slaughter Race.

What are the main problems?

Wreck It Ralph 2 is majorly considered a bad film because of:

Too many brands: WIR 2 is mostly criticized on how often it focuses on brands and cameos. In the first movie, most brands and IPs such as Sonic, Mario, Pac-Man, etc, were placed there as tributes to gaming and the culture that surrounds it. Most of the brands were limited to gaming brands, which made it feel more thought out and less like a cash grab. The brands also had an impact on the movie and its plot and world building. In WIR 2, there is no limitation on the brands represented. The movie includes a whole mess of brands from social media platforms to stuff from the Disney company. This made these additions feel soulless and worthless. The brands also had little impact on the plot and its world building, making them feel more worthless.

Mischaracterization of Characters: WIR 2 is often criticized for how much it mischaracterizes Ralph and Vanellope. For Ralph, it mischaracterizes him into a needy, insecure guy even after he completed a character arc for the same thing in the first movie. For Vanellope, it mischaracterizes her into a selfish person and makes her act a lot like the first movie's villain, Turbo.

No Mention of Past Events: WIR 2 is often criticized for how it just ignores a lot about the original movie. There are barely any mentions of the first movie at all, not even the original villain, Turbo, is mentioned. The only thing that is mentioned is the medal that Vanellope made Ralph in the first movie.

No Use of Other Characters: WIR 2 is also criticized for how little it uses any of the characters from the first movie with Ralph and Vanellope being the only two who are focused on throughout the entire movie. Felix and Calhoun, the other two MAIN characters from WIR 1 seem to have a B-plot in the first part of the movie, but are eventually totally forgotten about and their plot wraps up entirely in the background.

My proposal for a rewrite

Wreck it Ralph 2, in my opinion, is not really a needed sequel. I believe this because of how well the first movie wraps up any lose ends with its ending. However, if I were to write a sequel to Wreck It Ralph, this is most likely how I would handle it.

Removals and Restructuring

First of all, let's just get rid of the internet world entirely. The internet world as a concept was pretty cool, but in execution, there's not really a good way to have the internet world and not have a lot of the brands without it being really confusing. The internet will still be a thing as it seems like a really natural way for the movie's plot to go, but the internet world will not play a factor into the movie's plot.

One thing I kind of liked from the original WIR 2 was the beginning segment before any of the main plot gets started. If you ignore the small bits of mischaracterization from Ralph and Vanellope, it's a nice little opener and establishes what the two have been up to since the first movie pretty well. So, we are going to be bringing that segment with us to the rewrite with a few writing tweaks to recharacterize Ralph and Vanellope into how they were at the end of the movie. Let's also add Felix and Calhoun into this segment to catch up with how they've been doing since the first movie. This slice of life segment will help establish our characters as well as establishing the world for any new viewers who may have not seen the first movie.

Main Plot Proposal

Since we've gotten rid of the entire internet world which was the main premise of the film, the plot is going to need an entire overhaul. So, first, let's change the main focus of the film. In the original Wreck It Ralph 1, Ralph's struggle with his identity and self worth was the main focus of the film and that carries over to the second film with the sequel focusing more on Ralph than Vanellope. For the rewrite, the story is going to be focusing on Vanellope and diving into her character more. For the rewrite, I think it would be interesting to dive into Turbo and the effects his actions have on the cast specifically Vanellope. This would let the movie have a nice message about coming to terms with your trauma and not letting it control you. The catalyst for this? Bringing back Turbo.

Hear me out. The movie opens. It's been about five-ish years since the events of the first, and Vanellope has a problem. Even after everything has been reset and she finally has her life together, she just can't seem to move on from the trauma that Turbo/King Candy has caused her over the 15 years of his reign. She seems to flinch at the mere mention of his name and gets uncomfortable and upset when confronted with anything that resembles him. Ralph, Felix, and Calhoun try to help her with it in their own ways, but since she's a kid, Vanellope doesn't really have the tools required for dealing with her feelings. The day the movie opens up, Ralph, Calhoun, Felix, and Vanellope are all hanging out around the arcade to try to help Vanellope feel better. The four are all hanging out in the power strip when people start gathering around an outlet, finding that a new game is being plugged in. The four go over to investigate, and find that the new game being plugged in is Turbotime Remastered.

Turbotime Remastered Backstory and Aftermath of the Plugging In

Around a decade and a half after Turbotime was released a remastered version of it was created with upgraded graphics, more tracks, a bigger cast of playable characters, and more. Mr. Litwak, being a big fan of the original Turbotime, always dreamed of being able to buy the remaster for the arcade and after not being able to afford it for so long, he has finally managed to safe up enough funds to buy the cabinet. The day the cabinet arrived, Litwak immediately had it plugged in, placing the console right next to Sugar Rush. Meanwhile, in the power strip, all hell has broken loose. Everyone is freaking out about the game being plugged in, especially Vanellope, who is just unconsolable. Before anyone can process anything, a group of people step out into the power strip. In the front center of this group stands Turbo, however, this Turbo is much different from how everyone remembers him. Instead of being this evil asshole, this Turbo is chipper and kind. Turbo excitedly introduces his friends to the power strip, walking to every single person, and eventually getting to the main four. Turbo tries to introduce himself to the four but Vanellope starts freaking out, causing Calhoun and Ralph to get defensive. Felix manages to deescalate the situation before it gets too out of hand and awkwardly apologizes and excuses the group. The group discusses the situation in secret with Vanellope being silent the whole time. They don't really have the time to process anything however, as the arcade is about to open, causing them to all have to go their separate ways.

That day after the arcade closes, Vanellope leaves her game to meet up with the others and ends up bumping into Turbo again. Vanellope starts to freak out again but Turbo doesn't really seem fazed. He helps Vanellope up and introduces himself again. Vanellope introduces herself to Turbo and the two get to talking a little. Vanellope finds out that Turbo has no recollection of any of the events from the years past, no recollection of the Road Blasters event, no recollection of his takeover of Sugar Rush, no recollection of the race and CyBug takeover, nothing. Eventually, Turbo and Vanellope end up going their separate ways with Vanellope going off and joining her group while Turbo heads to explore the arcade with his group.

Plot Throughout the Movie

Throughout the movie, Vanellope and Turbo start talking and hanging out more, eventually forming somewhat of a friendship. Throughout their time together, Vanellope starts telling Turbo about her past experiences with him but doesn't tell him he was the one who caused everything. Turbo responds to this very supportingly, telling her that it wasn't her fault that any of that happened to her. Throughout the rest of the plot, Vanellope ends up refinding herself and starts to move on from her trauma.

B-Plot Revisions

Another thing I really liked from the original Wreck It Ralph 2 was the little snippets of the B-plot with Felix, Calhoun, and the Sugar Rush racers. I'm a sucker for unconventional found family, so I love the small snippets of the B-plot in WIR 2, so I want to carry it over to the rewrite. Now, Turbo being back isn't only going to really affect Vanellope, but it's also going to affect the other Sugar Rush racers as his actions majorly affected them as well. So, for the B-plot, Felix and Calhoun would act as adoptive parents to the Sugar Rush racers, helping them conquer their fears and move on. This plot would happen over the span of the movie and finish before the ending climax in a few shorter scenes. The B-plot would probably get as much screen time as WIR 1's B-plot.

As for Ralph, he would act as Vanellope's support/wingman throughout the movie and a mediator between her and Turbo while she interacts with him and his group. The movie wouldn't focus on him as much as Vanellope since his character arc has mostly concluded nicely in the first movie but he would still get a decent amount of screen time since his relationship with Vanellope is an important part of both his and Vanellope's characters.

Story Additions: Lore of Turbotime Remastered

Turbotime Remastered consists of 6 total characters all complete with a special gimmick that would give each character an advantage and disadvantage in a race. Of course, there's Turbo. He acts as a kind of leader of the group. His gimmick is bug themed and would give him the advantage of being speedy and the disadvantage of not being very durable. Then, there would be Avery, the moral support of the group. Avery would have a land animal gimmick, which would give her the advantage of stealth, but the disadvantage of slower recovery. The next character would be Rocket, the brains of the group. Rocket would have a robot gimmick which would give him the advantage of being very durable but the disadvantage of being the slowest. The next character would be Ivy, the healer of the group. Ivy would have a plant gimmick which would give her the advantage of quick recovery, but the disadvantage of not being very stealthy. The next character would be Quinn, the wildcard of the group. Quinn would have a clown gimmick which would give her the advantage of evading, but the disadvantage of unpredictablilty. The last character would be Deino, the brawn of the group. Deino would have a dinosaur gimmick which would give him the advantage of strength but the disadvantage of speed.

Another addition to Turbo Remastered are the new racing tracks, each being themed to a certain character. For Turbo's map, his would be an updated version of his original map with more variety and turns added to the donut. Avery's map would follow her animal theme and consist of four different quarters each themed to a major habitat that animals live in. Rocket's map would be machine themed, featuring a bunch of robots and machines. Ivy's map would be plant themed, featuring a bunch of different plants. Quinn's map would be circus themed, featuring a three section race through a circus performance. Deino's map would be dinosaur themed, featuring a sectioned race where each section takes place in a period of dinosaur time. These tracks would act as the character's home and place of residence.

In the coded backstory, Turbo met his friends while adventuring and the six ended up forming a somewhat family type of bond with each other. The group all has there counter opposites, with Turbo countering Rocket, and Avery countering Ivy and Deino. Quinn, being the wildcard, would be the odd one out, not having any counters to anyone. Despite their differences, the six all have sincere friendships with each other.

Ending of Wreck It Ralph 2 Rewrite

There are multiple ways for this ending to go. One way is to give new Turbo all the memories of old Turbo and causing Turbo to go mad and try to take over the arcade. This would split off into two possible endings of Turbo either being totally defeated like before and Turbotime Remastered being unplugged, or Turbo being redeemed and making up for all his past mistakes. I'm not going to be going down that route however, as I feel like both endings would be a little too cliche and predictable. The unplugging ending would also probably get rid of a lot of character development that the movie had built up. So, instead, let's do an ending like this:

After Turbo, Vanellope, and Ralph are done hanging out for the day, Turbo is confronted by Avery. Avery spills the beans on how everything Vanellope has been telling Turbo about is about him and starts manipulating him into believing that Vanellope hates him. This makes Turbo angry since he was starting to believe he and Vanellope were friends, and he agrees to help Avery and the others get "revenge". After the arcade closes, the Turbotime Racers invade and take over Sugar Rush, leading the Sugar Rush Racers to have to defeat the Turbotime Racers with the help of Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph before the arcade opens or they will have both Turbotime Remastered and Sugar Rush unplugged.

In the final confrontation, Turbo and Vanellope meet face to face. Vanellope ends up confessing to Turbo that yes, she was scared of him at first but now she's ready to accept that he isn't the same person anymore, and his past actions don't have to affect her anymore. Turbo and Vanellope make up, causing Avery to lash out, leading to a final showdown of some sorts and Avery's redemption. In the end, Avery admits she was jealous of how close Turbo and Vanellope were getting and she was scared of being abandoned. Avery's redeemed and everything goes back to normal.

Story Conclusion

In the end, Vanellope realizes her feelings about the past don't have to define her and she's able to move on and heal from her trauma and live her life free of fear, Turbo doesn't gain any of old Turbo's memories, he realizes that he is a different person from old Turbo and movs on to create his own identity, separate from his old self, The Sugar Rush Racers are adopted by Calhoun and Felix and get over their fears, Ralph continues to be supportive of Vanellope, and The Turbotime Racers learn to not be easily jealous. In the end, Turbotime Remastered stays plugged in, and Turbo and Vanellope's friendship goes back to normal.

TL;DR of the Rewrite's Plot

The trauma from Turbo/King Candy's actions have heavily affected Vanellope to the point its difficult for her to move past it, but when a remaster of Turbo's game, Turbotime, is plugged in, Vanellope is forced to come to terms with her trauma and reconcile her feelings about it with the man behind it all.

Conclusion

Okay, that's all! This was a long one, so if you made it all the way here, thanks for reading! I'm probably not going to do anything with this since this was just a fun little writing exercise, but if you would like to make it into a fanfiction of some sorts or something then feel free to take this idea and credit me! I'm most likely going to do more of these so look out for that! Anyway, thanks again for reading and have a nice day :)

[street-corner-felines]

Zero Day (2002)

[cerusee]

I've never watched any Chinese dramas but I really enjoy your posts/gifs about them and it's got me interested in trying some! Do you have any recommendations for somebody who's totally new to them? Any tropes/background context I should be aware of? The historical/fantastical ones seem the most appealing to me.

Oooooh! My first thought on reading this ask was, “oh, I’m hardly qualified”; I’m only on my *stops to count on fingers* eighth cdrama, not counting the one episode I watched of the Wang Zhuocheng xianxia where he falls in love with a rock. (Long story.) There’s a lot of cdramas out there, and I myself have not even scratched the surface of what’s out there! That said, if you’re interested in historical/fantastical dramas, those ARE the ones I’ve been watching, so I still have some opinions despite being a total noob myself.

Do not start with The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling. Twas my first cdrama, like a lot of western fans, who were drawn to it in part because of the big censored-but-still-very-evident gay love story between the male leads, but honestly, as much fun as it is for the slash fans, it’s not a great jumping off point for either Chinese television in general, or even for its own wuxia-inspired genre setting. I say this as some who is still deep in the fandom four years later, and has immense love for the show: the first two episodes are flat-out bad, the overall pacing is bad (episodes frequently stop MIDSCENE), the worldbuilding is thin (a carryover from the novel it was based on), and without a larger context for why it’s made the way it’s made (stylistic choices, industry conventions, government censorship, genre conventions) a lot about it is confusing as hell to cdrama newbies, which is…so evident…a lot…in fandom wank I mean in the discourse about what story this story is trying to tell. Like, if you came to me and asked specifically, “I’m thinking of watching CQL. Should I watch CQL?” I would say yes, absolutely! It’s so much fun! I’m obsessed with the characters! I’ve written a lot of fanfic about the purple guy! But it’s not a good first cdrama, nor it is the best example of what the Chinese TV industry has to offer.

A MUCH better first cdrama especially if you like the historical/fantastical: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017), which not coincidentally was my second cdrama. It’s one of about a dozen television adaptations of the classic 1957 Chinese novel of the same name by Jin Yong, generally considered to be the inventor of the genre known as wuxia, which is a blend of history, fantasy, and martial arts. (One of the most well-known examples of wuxia in the west is Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which you have probably at least heard of.)

Legend of the Condor Heroes (hereafter known as LOCH) has it all: romance, revenge, evil plots and daring deeds, people jumping off a burning mountain and being rescued by the worst CGIed eagles known to television or cinema, boat adventures, mountain adventures, grasslands adventures, a weird cult leader who lives on a spooky flower island (there will be math), murder, baby kidnapping, more murder, one guy inadvertently racking up a ridiculous number of martial arts teachers, sworn brotherhoods which invariably end with one guy stabbing the other, lots of VERY good martial arts fights, and, of course, Genghis Khan. Technically there are no magic/supernatural elements in this show—no ghosts, ghouls, magic, angels, devils, gods, etc—although the martial artists do have l33t skillz that might qualify as superhuman depending on how you slice your genre conventions, and are awfully fun to watch.

I’ve actually seen two LOCH adaptations (there was one in 2024 I liked a lot, with my favorite Guo Jing so far), but 2017 is a much better adaptation for newcomers as it tells a fuller version of the story and doesn’t skimp on or rush through or rewrite as many elements of the plot as other versions do; it’s meant to be a LOCH for people who haven’t seen half a dozen versions of LOCH already. It has a WONDERFUL cast, including my one of my favorite cdrama leading men, Chen Xingxu,* as the lead antagonist, Yang Kang, who is a trash fire of a person you just can’t root for, but he also can’t help it because he was raised by Wanyin Honglie. You can catch it on YouTube (I recall that there are couple of missing episodes from that playlist, but you can search on YT for those when you get there, to find them subtitled from other channels.)

*If you, like me, come away from LOCH 2017 with your mouth slightly ajar at how great CXX is, I have wonderful news for you! He’s been a lead in at least two other very good cdramas: the 2023 xianxia** The Starry Love, where he gets to play, like, five different characters (huge acting flex, and he’s great, although I would rush to stress I loved a ton of things about this show besides CXX himself), and the 2019 semi-historical drama Goodbye My Princess, which might actually be my favorite cdrama I have seen to date, and arguably THEE best well-made on a technical level, with phenomenal acting, a great script, and editing and directing I am constantly swooning over, but I am not entirely sure I can recommend to you unless you are a Tragedy Enjoyer.

(If you are a Tragedy Enjoyer, please stop whatever you’re doing and just start watching Goodbye My Princess right now, it is phenomenal. It is also available on YouTube. Watch the Director’s Cut, not the regular one! This is important. In its haste to get the main leads on screen together ASAP, the regular version does a Reader’s Digest version of stuff the Director’s Cut spends like five episodes carefully setting up, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, nor does it flow well.)

**Speaking of xianxia! Xianxia is the high fantasy genre, full of magic and gods and demons and people dying and living multiple lives and whatnot. Important to note: xianxias are soap operas (complimentary). They tend to feature female protagonists, sweeping, epic romances, and put enormous emphasis on exploring the nuances of relationships and emotions. I have watched three that I loved (Love Between Fairy and Devil, The Starry Love, and Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), and while technically I could recommend all three, if you were going to watch just one, especially as a cdrama intro, I have to recommend Eternal Love, which really is the quintessential xianxia, the one all other xianxias are kind of shaping themselves around. I have watched it 1.5 times and I can say that it does not properly take off until like, episode 10, or whenever it is that the main couple finally, properly meet. IT IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT. This show made me want to spit blood. I cried multiple times watching it. It made me feel things. It has a wonderful immersive quality that’s hard to describe except to say that the entire show sort of vibrates on its own frequency. The casting is just kind of…perfect? Props to Maggie Huang for portraying the most perfectly hatable xianxia villainess of all time. Absolutely no one is doing it like Su Jin. No one should try. I believe this is available on YouTube, but after an abortive start, I realized it was on US Netflix, and watched it there.

As for tropes and background context: ehhhhhh. I mean, it’s an entire industry? I know substantially less about how it functions than I do about, like, American TV and film. I know government censorship is a not-inconsiderable factor, but I don’t know much of the nuance of how that plays out in terms of filming and airing. Tropes will vary according to subject. Idol dramas (shows built to showcase media personalities regardless of their ability to act) are a thing. Most cdrama audio is still dubbed (this one surprised me!), usually by professional voice actors and not by the original cast, for a confluence of reasons, some of which historically make sense (noisy filming lots rendering original audio useless), and some of which are really stupid (fans throwing hissy fits if lead actors don’t have the “right” kinds of voices for their characters).

Anyway! My recommendations are this: try The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) to start with, UNLESS you would prefer having your heart ripped out of your chest, in which case watch Goodbye My Princess (Director’s Cut, 2019), or UNLESS you love soap operas as much as I do, in which case watch Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (2017). All three are great shows, but they all hit differently/scratch a different itch.

Oh! Lastly! @dangermousie is a great source of cdrama recs. I should note she prefers dramas and tragedies and mostly does not vibe with xianxias. But she watches like eight million hours of dramas a week and reports her findings to us because she is a river to her people.

[zeke-fanfucs]

Changed the school name cause i totally didn’t forget what i named it.

Edit: learn my mamá threw my dirty notebook with my notes on each AU. So I’m going to cry now cause fuck. I have to rewrite and read all my fanfic to get information back.

---

Three Months at Claymoore High

It had been three months since Karmor started his first year at Claymoore High, the school at the end of the district—literally and figuratively. The building looked like it had been forgotten on purpose, its brick walls crumbling under the weight of graffiti, time, and neglect. Officially, it was an alternative school for "difficult youth." Unofficially, it was a last stop for kids the system didn't know what to do with.

And yet, for Karmor, Claymoore had become something close to routine.

Every morning, just as the rising sun painted the cracked sidewalk with pale light, he’d wait at the corner by the rusted chain-link fence for Hipswitch. Hipswitch always showed up five minutes late, with a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in a napkin and a loud “Mornin’, K!” in his slow, Southern drawl.

They’d share whatever food they had—sometimes a sandwich, sometimes leftovers, once an actual slice of cake stolen from a retirement party Hipswitch had wandered into—and make their way to the bus stop. The ride to school was long and rough, the shocks on the old yellow bus barely functional. Karmor used the time to nap, head leaning lightly against the window, while Hipswitch kept watch, earbuds in but eyes always scanning, like he was expecting trouble to find them.

And trouble usually did.

The routine at Claymoore was simple: attend first period, and then the chaos started. Some days it was Albus who kicked things off, usually by punching someone for talking about his mother or spilling something on Faith. He'd swagger back into class like nothing happened, bruised knuckles and all, smelling like cheap booze he'd hidden in a water bottle.

Other days it was Hipswitch, when his sense of justice overrode his common sense—like when he body-slammed a senior who tried to steal Kerano’s lunch money, then coolly turned himself in to the principal's office.

Then there were the twins. Mahatma and Attila.

Last week they nearly burned down the science lab. Mahatma had tried to demonstrate a “controlled” chemical reaction for a project that wasn’t even assigned, and Attila—bored and twitchy—had added a little too much fuel just to see what would happen. They both watched with fascination as the flame burst up the wall, like it was a nature documentary and not a health hazard. No one got hurt, except the teacher’s eyebrows.

But the worst—or maybe the best, depending on how you looked at it—was two weeks ago, when the entire group decided to skip an exam in favor of an “educational” movie day. One turned into three. They all passed out in the cinema’s back row during a black-and-white horror flick marathon, only to wake up hours later surrounded by empty popcorn buckets and very bad decisions. Naturally, the exam had been that morning. The next day, Karmor, silent but determined, slipped into the locked teacher’s lounge and “found” the stack of ungraded exams. Somehow, the group all passed—barely. No one asked how. No one needed to.

Claymoore wasn’t a school that played by the rules. And neither did they. Despite all the messes, fights, suspensions, and “concerned calls” home that went to nowhere, something solid was building between them—something no report card could measure. They weren’t just surviving Claymoore. They were making it theirs.

And for Karmor, the new kid from nowhere, mute and strange and still piecing together what it meant to belong, this ragtag crew of broken edges had become something like family.

Not perfect. Not safe.

But real.

---

It had started pouring sometime after second period—thick, relentless sheets of rain that turned the cracked sidewalks outside into shallow rivers. The kind of rain that made even the teachers give up pretending to care.

By noon, most of the school had given in to the weather. Classrooms turned into dim sanctuaries of nap-heavy silence, where overhead lights flickered uselessly against the gray sky pressing at the windows. Nobody was learning anything. No one was even pretending.

Inside Room 204, the gang’s unofficial homeroom and usual hideout, the atmosphere was lazy, soaked in the sound of rain tapping against the windows and the occasional thud of wet sneakers as someone passed in the hall.

Hipswitch and Albus had claimed a battered desk in the back, an old deck of cards between them. It had started as a friendly game of Spades, but somewhere around the second round, it became obvious that Albus was cheating. Poorly.

"That’s your third king of hearts, man," Hipswitch said, eyeing him with a raised brow, vitiligo patches stretching across his cheek as he squinted.

Albus shrugged, grinning like a child caught red-handed but unbothered. “You ever think maybe the deck’s just... blessed in my favor?”

“You’re about to be blessed with a black eye,” Hipswitch muttered, chuckling anyway as he flicked a card at Albus’s forehead.

Albus ducked, laughing, long legs kicked out as he leaned back in his chair. He looked half-asleep already, the edge of a bruised eye from last week’s fight with a junior still faintly purple.

In the corner, sprawled on the floor with his back against a locker, Karmor flipped through a dog-eared paperback he’d pulled out of an old donation box in the library. The cover was faded, some forgotten sci-fi novel with a spaceship and screaming faces. He wasn’t even sure what the plot was yet—something about time travel and doomed planets—but he liked the way the words felt in his head. Solid. Predictable.

Next to him, perched awkwardly on a desk, Mahatma was hunched over a thick, slightly damp medical textbook, whispering to himself as he traced underlined diagrams of lungs and liver structures with one finger.

“Did you know blunt force trauma to the upper abdomen can rupture the spleen without—” he began, eyes wide behind foggy glasses.

Karmor glanced up from his book, barely interested, but nodded like he was listening.

“—any outward bruising,” Mahatma finished, sounding almost disappointed that no one seemed horrified.

“Fascinating,” Karmor mouthed silently, eyes back on the novel.

The book had definitely been stolen—that much was clear.

It still had the barcode sticker on the spine, and the corner had been half torn off, probably when Attila had ripped it off the shelf. Mahatma claimed they “borrowed it,” but Karmor had seen the way Attila had stared down the poor librarian like he was daring her to say something. She hadn’t. No one did, not when Attila looked like he might smile or bite your throat out in the same breath.

Speaking of...

Attila sat in the windowsill, legs drawn up to his chest, eyes locked on the rainy schoolyard like he was waiting for the storm to get bored and attack someone. His fingers twitched restlessly every so often, like he was itching to burn something just to watch it go up.

But right now, the rain had sedated even him.

“Boring day,” he said flatly, his voice low, like a warning or a threat—no one could ever tell with Attila.

Hipswitch glanced over. “Could be worse. You could be losing to Albus the Cheater over here.”

“Hey!” Albus barked, but his grin never wavered.

Karmor turned a page and, for a rare second, smiled to himself. Not wide, not enough for anyone to notice—but it was there.

They were broken kids in a broken school, but somehow, in that quiet, rain-soaked afternoon, things felt almost okay. Like maybe they weren’t just surviving. Maybe they were—however weird it sounded—together.

Even if the next fight was probably just a fire drill away.

———

The peace didn’t last. It never did when Albus got that grin.

It crept across his face like a sunrise over a battlefield—too wide, too sure, and completely reckless. The kind of grin that made people move their wallets to the front pocket and double-check their exit strategy.

Karmor noticed it first.

He looked up from his book, instantly suspicious. He knew that look. That was the ‘I just had the worst idea in the world and I’m gonna do it anyway’ face. He slowly marked his page with a wrapper and braced himself.

“I’ve got a plan,” Albus announced, sitting up like he was about to deliver a TED Talk. “Let’s steal a car.”

A beat of silence. The rain tapped calmly at the windows.

“What.” said Hipswitch, flat as cement.

Albus leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Just for a few hours. We drive outta this dump and hit that burger spot in Rowley—the one with the neon cow on the roof. I know where the keys are.”

Karmor let out a groan, pressing both hands over his face. He didn’t need a voice to express how unbelievably dumb that was. His whole body radiated this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and I hang out with Attila.

“Albus,” Mahatma started gently, already slipping into his concerned doctor voice, “maybe we should think this through—”

Albus raised a hand like he was defending a thesis. “Before you say no—hear me out. My deadbeat father—y’know, the charming senator who forgets I exist?—he just bought a brand-new, shiny-ass, cherry-red Mercedes. Sport edition. Real sleek. He parked it out back of his other house, the one with no cameras, ‘cause the main driveway’s for the press. That car is begging to be joyridden.”

Attila snorted. “That car’s begging to get you locked up for grand theft, dumbass.”

Hipswitch gave him a stare so deadpan it could've been carved into stone. “So your bright idea… is to steal your rich daddy’s expensive car, drive it across district lines to get a burger, and then what? Bring it back with fries in the cupholder like he ain’t gonna notice?”

Albus grinned harder. “Exactly!”

Mahatma visibly short-circuited. “That’s... that’s not how any of this works!”

Albus threw an arm around Hipswitch like they were already partners in crime. “C’mon, Switch. Don’t you wanna eat something that wasn’t cooked by a vending machine and shame?”

Karmor shook his head slowly. He mouthed ‘This is prison time.’

Even Attila looked like he was second-guessing his life choices, which was saying something.

They all stared at Albus like he’d just said, “Let’s go to prison, but make it fashion.”

Albus sat back, arms behind his head, completely unbothered. “Fine, fine. I’ll go alone. Enjoy your government-mandated cardboard pizza. Me? I’ll be out there living.”

Hipswitch sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. “If you crash that car, I’m not testifying. I’ll straight-up pretend I don’t know you.”

Albus winked. “That’s cool. I’ll haunt you anyway.”

Despite himself, Karmor gave a small, silent laugh.

Rain kept falling outside, the world soaked in gray. Inside, Albus’s wild idea hung in the air like a dare none of them wanted to admit they were tempted by.

———

The rain had let up by nightfall, but the clouds hung low, smothering the stars and leaving the world in a sleepy, gray hush. That made sneaking onto the York estate easier. Not that they were exactly subtle.

They slipped through a break in the back fence, scurrying through hedges that hadn’t been trimmed since before Albus learned how to spell “resentment.” The place was huge—grand stone arches, statues of lions, and balconies that looked down on everything like they judged anyone not born in a tie.

But Albus York didn’t live here.

This was his father’s world. The senator. The man who told Albus to “stay out of the papers” and then shoved him into a crummy one-bedroom apartment like he was tossing out the trash. The man who bought cars that cost more than most families made in a year—and left them sitting unattended behind his third home.

“You sure the keys ain’t inside?” Hipswitch whispered, eyes constantly flicking across the shadows.

Albus smirked. “Even if they are, this is way more fun.”

The car gleamed like blood under moonlight. A brand-new, cherry-red Mercedes, low to the ground and purring with potential. Karmor crouched by the driver’s door, sleeves rolled up, his expression oddly calm.

He had watched five different videos earlier that day—each one ending with “this is for educational purposes only.”

Now it was real. His hands moved with a quiet precision, a few wires stripped and twisted, a screwdriver borrowed from the school’s shop room jammed just right into the ignition.

Mahatma, standing awkwardly to the side, looked like he was watching the beginning of a nightmare. “Do you guys have any idea how many felonies this is? Like, this isn’t even juvenile hall. This is real prison. Big men with face tattoos prison.”

“Shhh,” Attila yawned, stretching lazily like a lion waking up from a nap. “Let the idiot work.”

Karmor let out a soft chuckle as the engine purred to life. It wasn’t loud—it was clean, like the hum of danger about to make a very big mistake. He pushed open the door and leaned out.

“Get in.”

That was all he had to mouth. The words barely left his lips before the others moved.

Hipswitch vaulted into the passenger seat, already clicking his seatbelt with an anxious frown. “We are absolutely going to hell for this.”

Albus practically dove into the back seat, laughing like a man who had just won the lottery and set it on fire for fun. “Roof, Karmor! Hit the damn roof!”

Karmor flicked the switch and the hardtop began to fold back, hissing into itself until the cool night air poured in over their heads. Attila dropped into the seat next to Albus with his usual casual menace, slouched and unimpressed but clearly riding the same high.

Then Karmor shifted into gear and stepped on the gas.

They flew down the gravel path, the tires spinning once before finding their grip, and then the whole car surged forward like a shot out of a cannon. The gates loomed up fast—but Albus had “borrowed” the code. The iron bars slid open just in time for them to blast through into the open back streets.

The night swallowed them up.

Karmor’s hair whipped in the wind, his eyes focused but bright with the thrill. The engine roared as they hit the highway entrance, and the world opened wide in front of them.

The highway stretched like a ribbon of freedom under the stars, and the Mercedes devoured it in seconds. Streetlights became blurs. Signs flew by unread.

Albus whooped in the backseat, arms up like he was riding a rollercoaster. “Hell yeah! We’re gods tonight, boys!”

Hipswitch held onto the dashboard like a seatbelt was a suggestion. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die and you’re gonna bury me in a school cafeteria tray.”

“Relax,” Attila said with a half-smile, “At least you'll die free.”

Even Mahatma, despite clinging to the seat in wide-eyed horror, was starting to laugh—nervously, breathlessly, but it was laughter all the same.

And Karmorgrinned like a devil behind the wheel.

For the first time in a long time, none of them were just surviving.

They were alive.

The night screamed by, all silver lines and rushing wind, as Karmor gripped the wheel like it was second nature—like this wasn’t his first time breaking every traffic law on the books. His eyes burned with something wild and alive, and his grin—so rare, so full—spread across his face like moonlight cracking open a storm.

He handled the Mercedes like it was an extension of himself, weaving through sleepy roads with surgical precision. The world around them became nothing but light trails and wind-whipped freedom.

Albus was practically vibrating in the backseat, laughter pouring out of him as Karmor took a sharp turn and the tires sang against the asphalt. “Who is this guy?! Karmor, you’ve been holding out on us, Whelp!”

Hipswitch shouted over the wind, grinning now despite himself, “he drives like he’s in Fast and Goddamn Furious Twelve!”

Karmor threw a glance in the mirror, eyes shining, and flicked on the indicator—not to follow the law, but as a dramatic flourish as he swerved off the main road and into the wide-open space of an empty strip mall parking lot.

It was huge—deserted, wet from the earlier rain, glistening under the dull buzz of flickering lights. A perfect arena.

Karmor slammed the brakes and yanked the wheel.

The car spun—once, twice, three perfect circles. Tires shrieked. The engine howled. The world turned into a blur of lights and momentum.

Albus screamed in pure joy, slamming his palms on the seat in front of him, which was Hipswitch’s, like a drum. “YEAH! Do it again!”

Mahatma, who’d been clinging to the seatbelt for dear life, let out a stunned laugh that surprised even himself. He stuck his head out the window, the night air hitting his face, loud and alive. “We’re going to get arrested and I don’t even care anymore!”

“Now you’re getting it, doc!” Albus yelled, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him with chaotic affection.

Hipswitch, still in the passenger seat, laughed hard enough that his eyes watered. He looked over at Karmor, that grin still on the driver’s face, hair wild in the wind.

“I didn’t know you had this in you, partner,” he said, voice catching on the adrenaline. “You ever not surprise me?”

Karmor just revved the engine in reply, that gleam in his eye louder than any words. He wasn’t just driving. He was flying.

Another donut. Another shriek of tires and gasps of laughter.

They weren’t delinquents in that moment. They weren’t poor kids, broken kids, discarded by the system and told to behave.

They were kings of the concrete. Outlaws in the best kind of way.

Even Attila, who hadn’t said much, smirked in his seat, eyes half-lidded with contentment. “Not bad, mute,” he murmured. “Not bad at all.”

The car finally slid to a stop in the middle of the lot, smoke rising in lazy spirals from the wheels. Everyone was breathless. Laughing. Buzzing like electricity in the dark.

Karmor leaned back in the driver’s seat, one hand still on the wheel, and looked up at the stars peeking through the clouds.

For the first time since he landed in this world, he didn’t feel lost.

He felt seen.

Finally—after the whirlwind of stolen rubber and reckless joyrides—they made it to the burger joint.

It stood like a neon beacon on the edge of nowhere, the glowing blue cow on the roof flickering like it was giving up on life, but still clinging on. The parking lot was half empty, the streets dead quiet, and the air smelled like oil, meat, and freedom.

They pulled up, the engine still humming like it didn’t want the night to end.

Inside, the place was everything Albus promised and more: cracked leather booths, jukebox in the corner playing something old and gritty, and a menu that looked laminated in regret. But the food? The food hit like a religious experience.

Karmor sat with a double bacon burger in both hands, hunched over it like someone might try to steal it from him—and to be fair, someone was.

“Oi!” he mouthed furiously, slapping Albus’s hand away as the older boy made a grab for his fries.

Albus cackled, popping a stolen fry in his mouth anyway. “Hey, man! I brought us here, I deserve at least a tax!”

Karmor squinted, shook his head, then dramatically shoved a fistful of fries into his mouth, guarding the rest with his elbow like a raccoon protecting treasure. Albus just laughed louder.

“Brotherly love,” Hipswitch muttered, half amused, half exasperated. “Y’all ain’t even related and you still act like messy siblings.”

Albus leaned back, arms behind his head, greasy wrapper crinkling under him. “Family’s what you make it, bro.”

Across the table, Hipswitch slid his strawberry milkshake across the table between him and Karmor—two straws sticking out.

“Try this,” he said, casual. “It’s that good kind of fake strawberry.”

Karmor looked at it. Then at him.

Then at the two straws.

A pause.

Then he pointed—accusingly—at the extra straw, raising a brow.

Hipswitch laughed. “You think I’d make you share a straw with me? You’d turn redder than a beet.”

Karmor did turn red. Not pink. Not blush. Red. He took the straw and sipped quickly to hide his face, eyes on the table.

Hipswitch grinned to himself, proud of the chaos.

Meanwhile, Mahatma was halfway through a plate of cheesy fries, hands orange from the fake cheese dust. He looked more relaxed than he had in weeks, legs stretched under the booth, foot brushing against Attila’s like an anchor. Every so often he’d nudge a fry toward his twin, who ignored them completely.

Attila was dismantling a corn dog like it had insulted his mother. Bite after bite, casual and slow, but intensely focused. His eyes flicked up once, locking with Mahatma’s, then rolled when his brother nudged him again with another fry.

“Fine,” he muttered, taking one just to shut him up. Mahatma beamed like he won a war.

They sat like that for a long while—just eating, breathing, being.

No teachers. No cops. No parents who didn’t care.

Just a stolen night that belonged only to them.

Outside, the Mercedes cooled under the dim lights. Inside, the group laughed, argued over dipping sauces, swapped bites with fake threats and real smiles.

For once, it didn’t matter where they came from.

Just that they made it here, together.

The drive back was filled with sleepy satisfaction. Bellies full, the wind still whipping their hair, laughter echoing in the car like the remnants of a dream they didn’t want to end.

That is, until Hipswitch leaned his head back and said, smug as ever:

“No way we’re making it back without a single cop stopping us. Man, this might be the first time we didn’t get—”

FLASHING BLUE AND RED LIGHTS.

The night lit up behind them in a violent strobe of sirens and fate.

“YOU JINXED US!” Mahatma yelled, nearly choking on a cheese fry he’d been savoring.

“Aw, come on!” Albus groaned, twisting in his seat just in time to see a cruiser bearing down on them from behind. “That’s it, we’re dead. We’re not even gonna get juvie—we’re going straight to big-boy prison!”

“I’m seventeen!” Mahatma shrieked, holding onto the door like that would help.

Karmor, hands tight on the wheel, didn’t panic. Maybe a little.

He hit the gas.

The Mercedes screamed forward, tires gripping the highway like claws.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Hipswitch shouted from the passenger seat.

Karmor didn’t answer. Just narrowed his eyes, floored it, and became the car.

Albus started laughing—again.

But things got worse. Ahead, another cruiser pulled sideways across the highway, lights blazing, an officer already tossing down tire spikes.

“Shitshitshit!” Hipswitch barked. “They're trying to box us in!”

Karmor’s mind raced—then instincts kicked in.

He yanked the wheel hard, swerved around the spikes—tires just missing them—and took the next exit at nearly 100. The Mercedes bumped hard onto the offramp, shocks screaming in protest as they cut through the dark.

No lights.

No signs.

Just black roads and abandoned industrial zones.

Karmor drove like the shadows themselves were guiding him—twisting through alleys, coasting between half-demolished buildings and rusted fences until they skidded to a stop behind a warehouse with half the roof caved in and vines crawling up the sides like spider legs.

They cut the lights.

The sirens passed a minute later.

Then the helicopter came.

They ducked inside the car as the chopper roared overhead, a searchlight sweeping across the concrete lot like the eye of God.

No one dared breathe.

Even Attila held still, eyes narrowed, watching the beam like he could bite it if it got too close.

They waited

Ten minutes. Then twenty. Then an hour. Time blurred. The fries went cold. Mahatma chewed his sleeve. Albus fell asleep for a few minutes and snored like a dog.

Eventually, the sky went quiet again.

Karmor turned the key. The engine rumbled like a held-in laugh.

They took the long way back—side roads, abandoned roads, even a stretch of unpaved dirt.

When they finally rolled the Mercedes back through the gap in the York estate fence, nerves raw and hands twitching with leftover adrenaline, dawn was bleeding into the sky.

Albus jumped out first, still barefoot from throwing his shoes at the cop cars during the chase. “WOOOO! We’re legends! Did y’all see that drift? Karmor’s got video game hands, I swear!”

Mahatma climbed out after him, half-dead, hair a mess. “We’re going to jail. We are going to real adult jail.”

Hipswitch just stumbled out, groaning as he stretched. “Next time I jinx us, someone slap me.”

They ran across the yard like kids sneaking back into summer camp—laughing, shouting, cursing—but alive. High on the impossible fact that they got away with it.

And Karmor?

He paused at the driver’s side door, looking back at the car.

The stolen Mercedes. The chaos. The friends. The night.

He smiled.

Then ran after the others, heart pounding, laughter spilling silently from his chest.

For a moment, they were untouchable.

…..

Well until..

The next day.

They were all wrecked. Bags under their eyes, uniforms wrinkled, and not a single one of them had the energy to pretend they weren’t hiding from the cops just twelve hours ago.

But they made it.

Somehow.

No one got caught. No one got arrested. No one had told on them. The stolen car was safely back in its precious garage, and the city was none the wiser.

Now they just had to survive homeroom.

They lounged under the stairwell behind the gym—an unofficial safe zone the teachers never bothered to patrol. Hipswitch was half-asleep against the wall, Mahatma was reading something upside-down and clearly not noticing, Attila was sharpening a pencil with a scalpel for no reason at all, and Karmor was curled up in his hoodie like a sentient laundry pile.

Then Albus pulled a little pink bottle out of his bag.

“What’s that?” Hipswitch grumbled, squinting at it.

Albus read the label aloud, squinting. “Strawberry... intimate massage gel.”

Attila, looking up with a bored expression, smirked. “I dare you to drink it.”

“Bet,” Albus said immediately, unscrewing the cap.

Mahatma finally looked up in horror. “Albus, that’s lube!”

Karmor lunged across the space and smacked the bottle out of his hand like a cat defending its honor.

It bounced off the wall and landed in the trash can with a soft thunk.

Albus blinked. “...I was curious! It smelled like a Slurpee!”

“YOU CAN’T DRINK THAT!” Mahatma cried

Hipswitch just put his hand over his face and sighed. “We survived a police chase, grand theft auto, and hiding from a helicopter... and this is how we go out. Death by edible lube.”

Karmor flopped back down into his hoodie with a silent wheeze of laughter.

Albus shrugged, completely unbothered. “Y’all are no fun.”

Attila rolled his eyes. “You didn’t even flinch. You are truly a different breed of idiot.”

“And proud,” Albus grinned.

They all sat there in stunned silence for a moment. Then one by one, they cracked. Laughter bubbled up—tired, broken, giddy laughter that left their sides aching. It echoed through the stairwell like a battle cry of dumbass victory.

They weren’t normal

They weren’t safe.

But they had each other.

And they were just getting started.

Moral of the story: Don’t fucking listen to Albus. And keep flavor lube away from him.

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

House of the Dragon was built to fail

Which the greatest shame of that is, I truly believe they got an incredible cast of talented actors, it's distressing to see them largely wasted. I've been an HBO fan (in a Stockholm kind of way) for the better part of two decades and even some of their usual pitfalls were accelerated here. While it's easy to just blame Ryan (5 spits for an enemy Condall) it still feels like there's more than just writing or directing so this post won't focus as much on the characterization follies but more on the story's infrastructure. While budgetary concerns with a show like this are obvious considering the dragons cost a great deal of time and money it is odd to me that this is a series rather than a mini-series. By that I mean, HBO for most of their big productions had seasons ranging from 10-15 episodes (Sopranos S1 13 episodes, True Blood S1 12 episodes, The Wire S1 13 episodes, etc) so this is exceptionally short of a season for House of the Dragon. Game of Thrones original run was largely a 10 episode format until the later seasons which were also notably shit.

This structure was never designed to give the characters or an audience time to breathe. While this is something that is continually brought up across the cinema/film community these days it seems especially important here. It also seems very easy for an audience to decide against investing time and energy into a series that only holds you for 8 weeks and then takes another 2-3 years of production. As most of the audience knows, it isn't like there is a shortage of materials for the show to incorporate. It's an active choice to not dive more into the lives and circumstances of these character and their relationships. Now, I'm not expecting Lost 2.0 where every character will get an episodic focal point and backstory. Still, you have plenty of non-dragon riding characters whom you could spend time with that don't require maxing out your VFX budget for. Because as of right now from the posts I've been seeing it's clear that most of the general audience at this point is more invested in the dragons than any human character in the show save for some Stans. I can't say I blame them. Most every character at this point is barely tolerable or straight up deeply unlikeable. That's a failure of the writers and directors explicitly. I think the actors are genuinely doing the best they could with the material they're given.

It's frustrating because while I was expecting this show to disappoint (both because of GoT's outcome and HBO's late game losing streak shout out to True Blood for getting so bad I never watched the final episodes) this production is hitting that wall way sooner than expected. If there was another 2-4 episodes to actually develop the characters and their relationships (even with piss poor writing) it might have helped tremendously but this structure is going to leave an audience wanting more and not in a good way. If there is a season 3 I can't imagine in 2 years that a lot of the current viewership would return. So even the "fix it" episode rewrites fans make don't seem like enough, to me you genuinely need more material, more for an audience to invest in or feel a part of. If this season was even 10 episodes there would have been so much room for improvement. The Last of Us was able to deliver a satisfying plot and character arcs with 9 episodes and there's a huge difference with the way that was received by audiences vs. HotD. The obvious difference is the amount of time they needed to tell that story vs. the amount of time you rightly needed to tell this one, which is case in point why HotD needed more time. So, while a short season can deliver satisfaction in some cases, I don’t believe as a rule it should all be common place to condense stories and characters. Especially considering HotD's compression is coming largely at the expense of the women in the show (Rhaena, Jeyne Arryn, Helaena, Nettles, Rhaenrya and Alicent's respective character assassination, etc). That's to say even if these character plots deviate from the canon they have the room to grow and develop a character completely to an audience. If you're going to change a character from the source material at least make them a well-developed different person.

[an-inspired-eternity]

people have said this before me but i'm going to say it anyway cinema is like the pinnacle of akikasa parallels. the big thing is that to varying degrees akito and tsukasa hide their self doubts behind an aura of acting like theyre hot shit

tsukasa to a more notable degree, as we only really started to see that in action in phoenix- because you're not telling me tsukasa "method actor" tenma being to the point of tears thinking about how far behind he is and that he won't be able to catch up was just him pulling shit out of his ass. i don't believe that for a second.

but even ignoring phoenix, we see hints of it before that

i don't have a ton of good pictures to use just bear with me here. i also feel its a bit less necessary to grab examples for akito given in his case this is a lot more visibly key to his character arc (ie. the entirety of stray bad dog)

that being said. yeah. back to cinema. people have pointed this out (although less seriously than i describe it here) how. despite akito's outward vocal dislike for tsukasa. the two are more similar than he thinks (which is as some of you may know a Thing in my fic, balsam).

also feel like it bears being pointed out the fact that "(if you're not suited for the role) then just rewrite the script!" is sung by kaito. which, with akikasa, definitely hits a bit with the knowledge that wxs kaito is A. tsukasa's main vocaloid B. more or less implied to be a role model/ideal self for tsukasa and C. has literally told tsukasa before to take things one step at a time and not push himself so hard.

tldr;

i am so normal about akito's relationship with the wxs boys (lie.)

[thejournallo]

Don't get mad but I think one thing about people who have mastered manifesting and shifting, either do not know or tend to forget the struggle behind it being a personal experience. Like someone can tell you what to do but not hold your hand and take you there. Manifesting is not hard but it is not easy either.

It's like everyone is blind and we are all seeking the light and those who have made describe colours to the rest in their own way and express relief of finding the light as if it was the process of getting there. I understand that manifesting is easy. I have manifested too even before knowing what it was. My main manifesting was manifesting people away as an introvert. I have had a bad supervisor get transferred before I was moved to the department. I have had an almost empty cinema experience during premier week of a very popular movie(people went later).

I was depressed for the past 2 weeks and could only think of leaving this world and for some reason, I always had a chance. It makes me so frustrated because I have been trying to manifest moving out and a job since last October until it almost drove me mad and I had to stop actively manifesting. I can't ignore the toxic environment I am in but asking now what to do is hard. I can't ask if I am doing it right because it is my mind, my soul and my experience. I don't even know who and what to ask. I could believe, change my mindset, trust in the unseen but what if I don't know belief or trust? What if I am desperate and keep checking 3D is because if I don't escape soon, I might lose myself?

Sorry, it's long and sorta incoherent 😭.

I do agree with everything you said, and you don't have to be sorry. I myself come from a difficult environment, but one thing I did realize while getting into manifestation was the way everything can change if I truly put the belief in myself to the max. It is something I am still learning to do, and I'm still learning that people love me. I have to remind myself of that.

I'm sorry you are in a difficult situation, and I do implore you not to do any extreme act. Everything changes—you may not notice at first, but it does—and life that always changes is worth living.

To answer your question, though, if you keep checking the 3D, it does not mean anything bad. You still have to believe that this will change and has to change because you said so. That's why we have to persist, because even if the reality is in front of us, we can change it by just thinking and rewriting our story. Trust yourself; you are your own god, so act like it. (Sorry if I answered this a little late. If you want, my DMs are open.)

[demon-ness]

Well, since everyone is talking about the movie today.

What the fuck reason could there be for the existence of a movie? This is not a rhetorical question. What is their plan? And let's forget about motives like "they want to give us a pleasant experience" or "rethink the plot of the original." How are they going to make money from this? Life-action is never cheap, but here they will need decent budgets to show bakugan battles. How is this movie supposed to pay off? Do they hope that nostalgia will be enough? I highly doubt that this factor alone will be enough. Besides, life-action movies have finally begun to enter the era of decline, because the audience is tired of this garbage. So how is a life-action movie based on a God-forsaken anime supposed to pay off? Toy sales? Look at g3, the sale of toys in this franchise is bad right now.

Okay, let's assume that this movie itself will be so cool and interesting that the audience will love it and will gladly go to the cinemas. How? How can this even happen? I basically can't imagine how the plot of this anime can fit into a movie. There are practically no filler episodes in the first season of g1, and even so it lasts more than 15 hours. The script will have to be written almost from scratch, otherwise the plot of this damn movie will turn out to be, well, stupid. But even if they rewrite most of the plot, they'll cut out a bunch of characters and somehow reduce the running time to two hours… They will not be able to completely rewrite the very essence of the original. And this is not a plus! Because the very essence of the original is a bunch of battles without much meaning, the standard salvation of the world and stupid schoolchildren. And that's not exactly what's going to help the MOVIE make money. This is an ideal basis for anime, which is an advertisement for toys. But this is a very unimpressive basis for a film. You can object to me by reminding me that there were a lot of small details in my favorite anime, and in the first season even the characters are well written. But, the problem is… Like I said, to make it into one movie, the screenwriter will have to cut out most of it. And I'm just really not sure that this kind of storyline will really attract viewers. More precisely, the required number of viewers.

However, of course, we all know that some movies don't need a good plot. And the actors. Some movies only need giant monsters punching each other's faces to cool music. There are many such films and they often collect the box office. The problem is that the bakugan movie won't be like that. There won't be enough budget. Cool battles of realistic-looking monsters require a lot of money. Therefore, all such films are now divided into two categories - successful films with a large budget, and failed films with a small budget. Do I need to say that no one will allocate a large budget for a bakugan life-action film?

So what's the end result? A life-action movie (this format is losing popularity) based on God-forsaken anime. The plot of this anime is too long and intense, so it will have to be greatly cut and simplified for the film adaptation. And the battles are likely to be sluggish and, well, as poorly animated as in the original. If not worse, because the budget is clearly not going to be large.

I repeat my question from the beginning of the post. What the fuck is the plan? Is this an attempt to kill the franchise? Will it turn out that some madman poured billions of dollars into the budget of this movie? Is there an advertising campaign waiting for us so crazy that even those who hate the very concept of cinema will go to the bakugan movie? What the fuck is the plan?

I don't understand.

[jadedbirch]

I finally watched the 2023 French fanfic of my favorite book, i.e. The Three Musketeers: Milady, part deux of Martin Bourboulon's two-part adaptation of the Alexadre Dumas' novel. I talked about part 1 - The Three Musketeers: d'Artagnan - earlier, but I like to think of them of them together as one oeuvre, since they were shot as one film and then split into two cinematic releases.

Those of you who know me, understand by now that my movie reviews predominantly judge these movies not as standalone works of cinema but as adaptations. I don't ever ask for historical or canonical accuracy (which I have long ago accepted is much too much to ask for), but what I look for is that the plot and the characters serve the underlying spirit of the original Dumas novel. And perhaps this is why, more so than with other - admittedly much more terrible - adaptations, this one just makes me blind with rage. I don't know when filmmakers decided that how we like our morally gray characters is somehow justified, redeemed, and generally de-clawed. If what they were going with here was to make Milady de Winter, the murderous villainess of the novel, into some kind of a post-feminist hero, then they have failed miserably. (Lots of spoilers below the cut)

I don't usually feel the need to put SPOILER warnings on adaptations of the 3 Musketeers, but this ones veers so far off plot that I'm putting it here just in case.

Let's start by saying that it is certainly not Milady who is the main villain of these movies. It's not even Cardinal Richelieu, the man who seems to pull her strings. Rochefort, sadly, does not even appear in this adaptation, and honestly, I feel like docking a point just for that. Apparently M. Bourboulon decided that Dumas' masterpiece just wasn't interesting enough on its own, so he felt the need to "beef" it up, i.e. rewrite the narrative by taking out critical characters like Rochefort and Lord Winter and substituting them with new characters like Mathilde (Aramis' knocked-up sister), Benjamin (Athos' Protestant!!! brother) and maligning poor Gaston le duc d'Orleans by making him the main villain of the duology. Which is a damn shame, because these were all one-note characters foisted upon us at the expense of delightful assholes who made the original novel so fun to read.

And that goes for all the main characters here, including the titular Milady herself. Book!Musketeers are young, reckless assholes, who wench, fight, gamble and generally engage in very questionable behavior. You know, "boys will be boys" - and I do mean that with every possible connotation, i.e. they're horrible. By taking away their youth (excuse moi but Vincent Cassell, who plays Athos, is in his 60's LMAO), Bourboulon would have stripped their bad behavior of any of the benefit and charm of youth. So, I guess, Bourboulon decided to get rid of the bad behavior entirely, instead. Other than Porthos having an occasional bisexual threesome (bless), and Athos drinking while brooding, we don't really see any of the musketeers being the delightful assholes that I, for one, expect them to be. Strip away everything else, but do not ever take the assholery away from me! Here, they are old and they are boring, and honestly, it makes absolutely no historical or narrative sense that any of them are still in the service.

As for d'Artagnan, our hero, he is painted with such a chaste and faithful brush that I'm not actually sure - is this the same shithead who in the book fucks Milady's maid so that he can pretend to be Milady's boyfriend in the dark and sleep with her without her consent??? Hm... nope. This d'Artagnan is so faithful to his Constance, even though they barely touched hands, that he rebuffs Milady's (very assertive) attempts at (inexplicably) seducing him. Oh dear, oh dear, you might say. How is she supposed to spend the rest of the movie trying to get her revenge against him for raping her? Oh, that's right. She's not!

This Milady is no villainess but she's certainly no post-feminist heroine either. Her backstory is so cliche, it is for to weep, and I raged and ranted at great length about it here. She was forced to marry at 15! To some unnamed man who beat and raped her! And whom she killed - a totally justifiable homicide - before somehow falling in love and marrying Old Man Athos and bearing him a child (future Mordaunt? I see you, cutie!). But alas, Old Man Athos learned of her past crime - because she told him - and turned her over to the authorities, resulting in her being branded (natch) and then hanged (convenient how Athos doesn't actually get his own hands dirty). This Milady has literally Never Done A Thing Wrong. Since there's no Lord Winter, there's no poisoned husband. She never succeeds in killing Buckingham or having him killed. She never tries to even so much as look at d'Artagnan wrong, in fact, they keep saving each other's lives for Reasons of the Narrative, none of them particularly compelling. And finally, our poor Constance, I was really rooting for her to survive this AU, but alas. She ends up once again doomed by the narrative, but so stupidly, that I honestly don't know what to say. It made absolutely no sense for Queen Anne to hide her in England with the Duke of Buckingham since doing so would have implicated her in both treason and adultery. BUT WHAT IS LOGIC? Anyways, suffice to say, it's not Milady's fault that Constance ends up dead in d'Artagnan's arms by the end of the movie.

Don't get me wrong. This Milady is very hot (she is played by Eva Green, after all). But there's really nothing interesting or compelling about her as a character. She's a survivor, determined to survive. WHICH SHE DOES. Yay, it's a Milday-is-alive-at-the-end AU! And, honestly, good for her. By all means, girl, you kill that old man who betrayed you and handed you over to be hanged! He doesn't deserve you! And you abduct your own son and smuggle him out of France to teach that old man a lesson! But for the love of all that is holy, can you please, PLEASE raise him to be at least a tiny bit evil???? Please???

I am begging, can we just let villains be villains? Milady's original character was so much more fabulous not because some man beat and raped her but because of her ability to bend men to her will and whim throughout the novel. She outwits and outmaneuvers all of our "heroes," leaving a titillating trail of bodies and broken hearts in her wake, and it takes TEN MEN in the end to hunt her down and execute her. And listen, Athos spends the rest of his life trying to atone for it. THAT IS HER POWER. This Milady? Blah. And while we're here, this Athos? Double blah. I don't care, let her kill him. There's absolutely nothing interesting about this man. (And yes, I think hanging your wife for lying to you and then becoming a murderous alcoholic about it is very interesting, Athos. Very interesting, indeed.) I'd rather watch Vincent Cassell in Eastern Promises 20 more times - now THAT was a character worth his acting skill!

As for the movies themselves, it's sad to say that the only time both my wife and I felt ANY level of investment was close to the very end, when we were waiting to find out whether Constance was going to die. And most of that was due to the extremely convoluted narrative bending that defied logical sense and occasionally space and time. We did not give a shit about anything else, which does not, generally speaking, a great cinematic experience make. And where Part I at least gave us a few moments of levity and a great win for humanity in bisexual Porthos, Part II is merely dark, drab, and joyless.

Final grade for both parts: I give it a C- as a film and a D as an adaptation, in which the only thing that saves it from being an F is Eva Green's hotness.

[axo-wisteria5]

!Deadpool and Wolverine Spoilers!

I saw Deadpool and Wolverine yesterday and I need to get my thoughts out.

-I loved it so much! I have not loved a MCU film this hard since gotg3 came out. It was so fun and silly, and a real love letter to everyone who enjoyed the fox films. I really hope we get to have more content of these two. (I would love to see a Spider-Man film with these three. I don’t know if that is ever going to happen, but I do know that it would so funny.)

-That opening sequence went so hard

-seeing Chris Evens Jonny Storm on a cinema screen in 2024 truly shocked me. I thought he was going to be another cap variant but hearing him say flame on shook me to my core. Genuinely did not know how to react. The fantastic four films were the first ever marvel films I watched and fell in love with. So seeing him reprise that role, even if only for a few minutes, made me so happy.

-Deadpool’s and Wolverine’s relationship was great. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman play these characters so well and have a lot of great chemistry together. I love how they portrayed their dynamic, especially how much weird, aggressive, homosexual tension Deadpool and Wolverine gave off. (We all know that they did more in that car than fight).

-Hugh Jackman

-‘Why is Thor Crying?’ ‘Till Your 90’

-soundtrack was amazing

-loved Channing Tatum as Gambit

-the scene where Peter came to rescue Deadpool and all the other Deadpool variants stopped fighting because of him was one of my favorite scenes. It was so cheesy but I think that why I loved it so much. Also loved it when the TVA master and Peter were eye fucking each other and Paradox just yelled what the fuck is happening.

-When Deadpool and Wolverine walked out after being thought dead with Iris playing in the background I could feel my brain chemistry rewrite itself. I could not put into words how much I love that scene.

-so happy that they got their happy ending

-The end credit montage was so bittersweet. After the movie ended I was in a daze, but when I got home I just started to cry. I really love the fox marvel films. I know that a lot of people think or thought they were bad, however they have always had a really special place in my heart. The fantastic four movies were the first marvel movies I ever loved. And although I didn’t watch the x-men movies as a kid, my mom has always loved them and has always loved Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. So, when we watched them together when I got older I sorta already had this pre-established love for these characters. So, watching that end credit montage made me super upset, however I do think that it was a lovely ending for that era

[streetlamp-amber]

GUIDELINES

about the author + blog rules

⤾ NAVIGATION 　　 → MASTERLIST

✧˖*°࿐ABOUT THE AUTHOR

.·:*¨ ailís — 23 — they/them (okay with girl gendered terms) — bisexual enby ¨*:·.

ꕤ — i’m bilingual, my first language is french but i only write in english (though i might incorporate french in some fics/one shots).

ꕤ — i'm back in school for the first time after dropping out of college four years ago so i'm struggling with keeping my school-work-social-activist life balanced (because yes i also got involved with my university's student committee for Palestine literally during the first week of class). i'm currently a free student, meaning i'm in no particular bachelors program, and i'm hesitating between majoring in art history or photography. i won't be following any posting schedule on here, i write when i have time to and i'm a little bit of a perfectionist so i won't rush myself to fulfill your requests with writing that i'm not satisfied of.

ꕤ — things i like: blueberry bagels with cream cheese, autumn, concert photography, poetry, music (arctic monkeys, lorde, blur, wallows, inhaler, fontaines dc), movies (studio ghibli, nolan’s dark knight trilogy, irish cinema, french cinema), tv shows (peaky blinders, broadchurch, derry girls, true detective, doctor who, the sopranos, new girl), sports (montreal canadiens, liverpool fc, celtic fc, f1), the colour green, europe (but not england or germany), cillian murphy, david tennant, art museums, batman.

ꕤ — i’ve been writing fanfiction for years (it all started with very poorly written one direction imagines on instagram and wattpad when i was thirteen…), improving both my writing skills and my english vocab + grammar along the way. my earliest works available are from 2021 (on ao3) because i’m too ashamed of anything posted before that (and it was also very bad).

ꕤ — i’m very multifandom and will mostly write content related to my most recent hyperfixations. there’s a list down below with all the characters i read and am interested in writing fanfiction for.

✧˖*°࿐WRITING + RULES

ꕤ — this blog will be mostly dedicated to one shots, blurbs, headcanons, drabbles and maybe short series.

i do write long series on wattpad (and also on ao3 but that one is currently on hold). i’m in the middle of a friends series rewrite with a joey tribbiani x female oc storyline that i’m very invested in (this might be the first multi chaptered fanfic i ever complete). i also started writing a tenth doctor x witch oc au but i’m taking much longer to update this one as it will mostly be original episodes instead of following the doctor who storyline. i also have a tommy shelby x oc fic that’s been on hold for a year that i plan on eventually getting back into writing.

ꕤ — i honestly don’t really care about canon (especially when it comes to stuff like the dc universe). i will always respect identity traits that are important to the character like race, sexuality, disability, etc., but i might get ooc sometimes when it comes to their personalities.

ꕤ — i will try to keep my reader inserts as physically vague as possible except if it’s indicated that the reader is afab. however, i am physically disabled with chronic pain so i might incorporate some aspects related to that in my writing (it will be indicated at the beginning of the post).

ꕤ — i am okay with minors interacting with my sfw writings but if i see anyone under the age of 18 interacting with nsfw stuff you will be blocked. i can’t stop you from reading it but i am not comfortable with you interacting with that content.

ꕤ — requests will be answered once i’m done writing them. i will try my best to do so as fast as possible but i tend to write multiple works at once so if you see me post other things after you sent your request, don’t get deterred. if you send a request i don’t want to write, i’ll reply to the ask to also let others know not to request something similar.

ꕤ — do not translate, copy or publish my work on other platforms without my permission.

!! DO NOT REQUEST !!

major character death (canon or non-canon), underage reader or character, incest, any kink involving fluids, noncon/dubcon, self harm, eating disorders, yandere, abuse, manipulation, butt stuff, cheating/infidelity, a/b/o

✧˖*°࿐CHARACTER LIST

✵ doctor who

⋆ tenth doctor

✵ peaky blinders

⋆ tommy shelby

✵ dc universe

⋆ batman/bruce wayne ⋆ batmom/batfamily ⋆ scarecrow

✵ bridgerton

⋆ benedict bridgerton

✵ supernatural

⋆ dean winchester

✵ broadchurch

⋆ alec hardy

✵ true detective

⋆ rust cohle

✵ harry potter

⋆ sirius black ⋆ barty crouch jr ⋆ fred weasley

✵ glen powell characters

⋆ tyler owens ⋆ jake 'hangman' seresin

last updated 27 january 2025.  　　 divider by @saradika

[daddymus-mamatron]

Greetings, I come in peace. So...I saw your tag about a TFE plot rewrite on a rb and. I'm very intrigued. Please kindly elaborate 🙏🙏🙏 (Forgive me if I'm too nosy! Feel free to ignore this ask. ⁄⁠(⁠⁄⁠ ⁠⁄⁠•⁠⁄⁠-⁠⁄⁠•⁠⁄⁠ ⁠⁄⁠)⁠⁄

Oh it is a PLEASURE to talk about it!!!

Ramble under cut because it's going to be long

When I was in college I had a class on cinema and my brain decided it'd be my new hyperfixation. Now that'd be fun and dandy except I got a little too into it and all I can see is patterns, archetypes & trope.

Like there is maybe 10 movies/TV shows that I didn't see the plot twist coming from a mile away. My stupid brain pick up on the most minuscule details and unravel the whole plot in a second. Which sucks sometimes.

Enters TFES.

It's great but there's a few sentences/frames that drive me insane.

When they throw the Cons in jail after episode 1, the rest of the Decepticons must know about Mandroid, they'e so close in there and in later episode it's shown they can chit-chat easily

Megatron is nice now and that's it?!?!?? He hunts & imprisons Decepticons and he's free and it's fine?!?!? AND HE STILL WEARS THE DEECPTICON BRAND?!?!?!

Speaking of cells, I knew G.H.O.S.T. was iffy the *Second* they showed the empty cells. THERE'S NOTHING IN THERE NOT EVEN A BENCH OR SOMETHING WTF?!?!

Bee casually mentioning that Rumble exploded because Soundwave was low on energon.

Swindle saying they should wait for the 'plan' instead of breaking out after Hashtag Oops

Bumblebee carrying restraining bolts

Karen torturing the 'Con, how long did that go on for?!?! How come they never spoke up about the torture??!

On the same subject, Tarentulas mentions a gun that erase memories and then we never hear about it again

There's more but I have more things to say so moving on

*inhale* THEN!!! Then there's the deleted scene (The confrontation between Megatron & Shockwave + Soundwave & Starscream freeing Shockwave) THEN!!! Then there's the mentions in the official guide that were never explored/explained

SO

I said fuck it and wrote down all the things that bothered me, asked my pal @shotimus what other things she thought were weird/missing/not explained [Shots is the TF expert, I'm still a noob] and I threw that all together in a blender. Took my favourite parts of multiple continuity (IDW, Aligned/Prime, Shatter Glass, G1 & Earthspark) and made a 6k OUTLINE of the fic I wanted to write.

The one (1) thing I was doubting the most about the plot of the fic, is Starscream is older than Megs & OP in my AU. I saw a comment on Reddit once that blew my mind (goes like this: If we’re sticking pretty closely to G1-esque Starscream, it would be pretty easy to show some more of his motivations for being so conniving. 

Just show some glimpses of the life he imagines he should have and why he is so convinced he should have it, and there could be many specific ways to go about that. All you’d have to do is show why he’s like this—you wouldn’t have to get the audience to think he’s in the right or being reasonable, and it would be interesting.) Took that and ran with it. This post reassured me I wasn't too insane for making SS older

SO

So he's a golden child that got more and more bitter as the war went on and he was more and more abused. Because I have to torture my fav blorbo.

AND THEN S2 CAME OUT

It was so bad.... I have MORE THINGS TO REWRITE. Like Soundwave ripping the 'Con badge off Megatron. There's another thing I wanna talk about it's a surprise so I'll refrain.

And that's where I'm at OTZ

The fic in question is actually a whole ass series because I'm possessed with a demon and I must rewrite the whole show?!?!?

[destinyc1020]

Marvel rn is like swimming against stream. Like nobody wants see urself in bad likes,any famous actor with reputation or good directors don't want risk of reputation. Big problem is marvel not giving any creative freedom to any director so famous ones don't even want deal with them even for big money.they don't wanna be all like puppets.

Constant rewrites too,like actors or director don't know that they get next day if they change overall mcu plan.

Like saw day ago twt with big amount likes about that spiderman without directors but +- with scripts and already dates of filming it's all bad signs. I agree with that, director should have own vision, prepare for projects, maybe change something in script in their taste and only then calmly shoot film without reshoots. With spiderman4 Thay have nothing for now only ideas.

And about mcu. I stand bely it, almost all their films just bad. I was last time in cinema for mcu film for nwh before that infinity war.

I couldn't understand some of what you were saying in your ask, but I think that as long as SM4 can secure a decent director, and hires good writers, the film should be fine. 👍🏾

Fans WANT to see a SM4. It's not like Hollywood is pushing the sequel of a franchise that nobody wants to see, or nobody asked for.

So they have the fans on their side. Fans want to see what happens, and they want to see more villains and characters in the spidey universe come to life.

I personally think though that Tom should sign on to ONE film at a time, instead of signing a 3-movie deal contract right off the bat.

Plus, I'm sure that eventually he would want to move on to smthg else in the future. 😊

I don't get the impression that he wants to play Spiderman for the rest of his life.

[amiaima]

Cinema (English Version)

Translation by amiaima

All of a sudden, everyone started acting out

A scenario that had absolutely no sense.

This feels exactly like a movie,

This is exactly like a movie.

Everywhere you go, there's a story

I encountered countless mistakes on this path

How many more would I find if I reviewed it?

Are there flaws I can't see?

Is there anything bad about it?

Please tell me, if you find I'm blind to it all.

Delusions at dawn

Escapades so precious and

A misunderstood hero roleplay

A traffic jam, a line with no end in sight-

There's nothing I can do about that though.

"This isn't how it was supposed to play out."

"What was the end supposed to be then?"

I forgot the more I thought about that

Oh no, this must be wrong.

I'm not fit for situations like these

I'm not done though-

Should I quit or still act like a fool -

But nothing feels right! I always wonder, when will I

Get to be the star of this show?

Laughing every time others are better than me,

Crying every time more worries fall upon me

Feeling disappointed knowing my hopes can't be

I can't blame anyone else, and it bothers me

The brilliant lights of the city shine on me

Highlighting my features full of defeat

The time to start is right now!

Yes, let's try again, again, again

This must be wrong.

I'm not fit for situations like these

I'm not done though-

I know I could stop here, but it all,

Kept repeating thousands of times like a broken record

I'll just keep hoping for a better tomorrow.

Delusions at dawn

Escapades so precious and

A misunderstood hero roleplay

A traffic jam, a line with no end in sight-

There's nothing I can do about that though.

I recognized something back then,

An old painting or something of sorts

When was the time that I...?

All of a sudden, everyone started acting out

A scenario that had absolutely no sense.

What are you all playing at?

Who are you all trying to be?

There's no way you could be one of them, right?

Still not enough...

We aren't there yet.

I know this can't be the end

If you don't fit in

Just rewrite the entire script!

For the most part, I'm sure it'll always be me

The leading star will only be me!

Someday we'll say bye-bye

Right as the show comes to an end.

Smile wildly

For the curtain call and the applause.

I changed the future so I could finally fit in the role.

Finally how you like it, how you want it,

It's the time.

I made it here all the way from the bottom.

Just like a movie, this is my story.

[fablecore]

i was curious what you thought of the live-action One Piece now that season one is out! personally, i have the same compliants as Geoff of Mother's Basement (youtu.be/43K-H_dtQ9g?si=2n0MLLPmdw0vARk7) where, personally, my main compliants were (1) how clean some of these well-worn outfits and set-pieces were and the bigger one was (2) how Garp was altered but i, like Geoff, have my hopes that s2 can fix that by showing that this is the experience (mostly part from Mihawk) that changed Garp into more of the Garp we see in the manga. "a high 8 or low 9 out of 10" indeed. overall, i think its okay as an adaptation! i like Sanji's perviness being toned down, i dont mind most of the shuffling and changing because it is an adaptation with timeslots and seasons unlike a limitless manga with arcs however long it wants. i can understand if you or others dont like the live-action adaptation though! i just like that it was a good gateway to help me turn some of my friends into One Piece fans, less scared of how BIG One Piece is now the live-action has given them a limited taste, towards the manga or the OnePace.net-editted version of the anime (though i do still plan to have them watched some of the anime-only filler that is fun lmao maybe ill throw a sleepover or something, idk, i just like how OnePace fine-tunes the padded-out pacing problem the later One Piece episodes have) thats the main plus of the live-action adaptation to me

but im curious about your thoughts if you have any?? its okay if you never plan to watch it, i know a few other fans like that and i dont mean for my wuestion to be all peer-pressure-y or anything ♡

i've never heard of onepace until now! i'm in the same boat, i've been watching opla with my sister who's kind of interested in starting one piece but is also intimidated by the anime's episode count. maybe we can watch onepace instead. thanks for letting me know ☺️

i've only seen the first two episodes (but don't care at all about spoilers and have seen a lot already). i didn't like the first episode, zoro particularly, but the second was fun! well... it was camp. combined, i would give it the verdict of "aggressively okay" but this isn't a judgement on anyone who liked it. if you did, i'm happy you had a good time. i just have cinema brain.

what i liked so far: helmeppo's >:O face and his puma trainers. the vfx team in charge of luffy's rubberyness. buggy's "surprise, shithead!" nami's den den mushi earpiece/cellphone.

the rest:

zoro’s zombified no energy go girl give us nothing monotone. 😐 <- why did they tell him to make this face in every shot

they cut the scene where luffy gives zoro his swords back and replaced it with helmeppo ass

"a man needs to be strong. but he also needs to be good.” you are going to cut off a pirate rookie's arm and then obliterate his ship and crew later 👍

what is this whole thing about being "morally good" and "one of the good guys" and "a good pirate" it's ICKY

justice for silly winky vain nami. how are they going to do the personality shift into broody serious arlong park nami when she's been broody and serious the whole time

nami spent like 30 minutes unlocking one (1) locked cage. i guess it's because she and zoro needed to talk/get some exposition in, and i'm not going to suggest a better option because i don't want to rewrite half the script. i just found it amusing because normally it's "suspend your disbelief when a character does something amazing for the plot" and not "when a character is noticeably worse at something they really have no business being this bad at. for the plot"

i'm starting to think that zoro and nami lost core personality traits because the writers wanted them to be luffy foils instead of their actual characters

i did hear taz was the best/most charismatic actor out of the straw hats. i'm assuming this is because they let him be sanji instead of making him into a luffy foil since they have enough luffy foils

cameraperson's love affair with low angle closeups and fisheye lens. i don't hate it (it's camp) just pointing it out

i'm literally so serious about mackenyu's insufferable zoro voice. whenever i hear him talk in that joyless southern california kardashian vocal fry my blood pressure shoots through the roof. who made him do that

even though i have issues with the writing, i think objectively opla has done a decent job of pleasing fans. i'm not one of them but i know there's a lot. but on a technical and artistic level... deep sigh palms pressed together listen... i was hoping for spellbinding artistry from the showrunners. beautifully lit scenes, beautiful camerawork, excellent technical chops, lingering shots of luffy's bruised knuckles, the slightly frayed fabric on zoro's swords, a super close-up of a log pose with the crew talking behind the compass needle, their bodies distorted by the glass. fingerprints on kerosene lamps. barnacles on rotting wood. a searingly hot-blue summer sky (super saturated in post) over shells town or wherever. i wanted lush gorgeous rich interesting artistic ideas from the directors and cinematographers. i haven't seen any of that so far, and what i have seen doesn't compel me to watch more. i'm not saying the actual cinematography was bad! just. okay. it was okay.

(but also some of the nighttime/underlit scenes are bad. put a dang key light on your actors 🤺)

concluding thoughts: at the end of the day, if netflix wants to keep throwing millions per episode at tomorrow studios, i'm fine with overlooking mediocre filmmaking and storytelling. i want everyone in the production crew to get their bag. i hope this show runs for another 50 seasons and is powered by union labor forever and ever until the end of time amen

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift." by Patrick (H) Willems

[originally posted august 22 2023]

I worry that young aspiring filmmakers will see these [AI-generated film trailer parodies] and choose to use AI instead of actually going outside and putting their hands on a camera. That, to me, is just depressing as hell.

i have an on-again off-again relationship with the video essays of Patrick Willems. he's one of the very last video creators consistently carrying forward the internet-critic tradition of framing criticism with fictional elements as if the review is occurring in a story, and he's been unwavering in his commitment to the bit for damn near seven years now if not longer. unlike a fair few who've utilized this device in the past, however, Willems is himself an experienced filmmaker with a stable of consistent collaborators helping both behind and in front of the camera. this means his videos are, generally speaking, well-edited and pretty nice to look at. this experience also factors heavily into his criticism, leading to work that is consistently appreciative of and empathetic towards the innumerable material challenges faced during any given production. he is well-versed in film history and cares deeply about the art-- so he uses his criticism as an opportunity to play with cinema instead of simply commenting upon it. as a film school graduate who worked grip/electric for a few years and now makes video essays myself, i think that's pretty cool.

unfortunately, i sometimes find the finished work a little… lackluster. there are a couple videos i really, vehemently disagreed with (looking at you Rewriting The Matrix Sequels), but most of the time it just leaves me a little nonplussed. to be clear: his stuff is never bad, and i've actually found his recent work to be a marked improvement (that Bollywood video is the kind of thing i DREAM of making!), but overall i guess i'm maybe a little too familiar with the specific knowledge pool he's drawing from to get as much out of his stuff as i'd like. relatedly, while i admire his use of the fictional framing device and have nothing but enthusiasm for its continued use… i just, uh, also, kind of, don't really get a whole hell of a lot out of it when he does it most of the time. it's low budget amateur film-making, the quality of which is all over the place. but i am also someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the video essay's capacity to fuse art with criticism, so i can be probably unfairly harsh when i feel it's not "properly" utilized. the fictional framing device at its best complements the criticism either literally or symbolically, and i find that in Willems' work they're often more distracting than complementary.

actually, before i explain why any of this commentary is relevant to the video at hand, i want to go on something of a tangent. one of my favorite single-video uses of the fictional framing narrative is Hbomberguy's Ctrl+Alt+Del essay, but my gold standard for its multi-video use is in RedLetterMedia's film review series Half In The Bag. the latter Plinkett Star Wars Prequel reviews arguably set the mold here (for better and worse), which RLM carried forward through at least the first two or three years of HITB. basically, every review is framed as two VCR repair guys not repairing VCRs and instead talking about the movies they just saw, then charging Mr Plinkett for that time as billable hours. i like their implementation because while the framing devices are in-character, the facade is completely dropped the instant they get into review territory. Willems is similar in this respect, which i think is good. too much fiction in the body of the criticism risks breaking the back of the whole essay.

in those first years, HITB did a pretty admirable job of using the fiction to comment on their subject. one of my favorite examples from this era is their review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where they spend the bulk of the review talking about the empty excesses of Michael Bay's frenetic, messy action setpieces, full of tonally inconsistent and sophomoric humor… only to end their review with an excessive, sophomoric, disgusting five minute setpiece where two adult men roll around in fake diarrhea and vomit all over themselves. you really just have to see it for yourself, it's a masterpiece of gross-out humor done for a good reason. as the years wore on they eased up on that fictional framing device, until covid happened and it suddenly came roaring back to great effect. they've eased up on it again since then, which i think is good. you can tell when these things are perfunctory. the fictional frame is at its best when it's as playful as it is purposeful.

okay, so what the fuck does any of this have to do with Patrick Willems' video on AI film-making? the short version is, it's got me rethinking how harshly i judge this specific variety of amateur film-making.

to summarize, Willems here is discussing viral AI-generated parody trailers of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar in the style of Wes Anderson, released by a company called Curious Refuge. this one's clearly coming from a personal place for him, and not just because he made a parody trailer for Wes Anderson's X-Men back in 2015. he has a lot to say about every AI-booster's fabulous yarn about how they're "democratizing" art creation, specifically that it's bullshit nonsense. i've gotten in trouble for expressing similar sentiments on twitter (which i can't link to because my account was permanently suspended over """death threats""" and honestly? good fucking riddance), particularly the insistence that LLMs and image generation algorithms make art accessible to some vaguely defined disabled population. it's an offensive notion on a number of levels-- it relies on an ableist assumption that art-making is somehow inaccessible to disabled people, as if specialty tools do not exist, as if the paralyzed have never painted, as if the blind have never written books. it assumes that art is somehow a secreted and gatekept skill, and not the single most common human compulsion outside of our basest needs. but even if these were nonfactors, there is simply no amount of accessibility gained by these technologies that outweighs the industrial-scale plagiarism, automated labor-discipline, massive carbon footprint, and generalized annihilation of the entire internet's usability they represent. these tools are not without their legitimate uses, but until they are vehemently and inescapably regulated on an international scale there is simply no case to be made for them as they currently exist.

Democratizing storytelling is what affordable film-making equipment did. It's what, like, iPhones did, it's what the internet did. Those things gave people outside of traditional structures without huge budgets and resources, the tools to create films and a free platform with which to reach a wide audience. Arguing for AI film-making is saying that people no longer need talent or skill. By this logic, why would you learn to play the violin when you can use AI to create a fake violin recording of the piece of music that you want to play?

it's easy to be against this AI grey goo crap, and still fall into obvious rhetorical traps meant to cede ground to the worst people on planet earth. Patrick Willems deftly avoids these pitfalls and calls it exactly what it is: laziness and plagiarism. the examples he focuses on are especially egregious because the guy who made them didn't even come up with the idea himself-- he asked chatgpt to make him a list of videos that would go viral on youtube, then had some algorithms whip them up. he did no work. no work went into the creation of these things. their supposed "quality" is composted from the unattributed and uncompensated labor those models were trained on. it is a function of what my girlfriend has been referring to as "the age of the executive auteur," describing this moment in history where talentless executives want to remove artists from the art-making process for pure algorithmic profit that goes directly and solely into their own pockets. ghoulish CEOs and tech boosters who want to be revered the way artists often are, without having to put any of the work in, and without having to listen to criticism. they don't just want to own everything, they want to be loved for it too.

it reminds me of Maggie Mae Fish's video about off-grid youtubers, a crowd of independently wealthy failsons who like to crow about their amazing self-sufficient housing projects that they did all by themselves… except for the parts they didn't. she makes a fantastic observation in that video that i've found myself coming back to often-- that for rich people, paying someone else to do work for you is ontologically indistinguishable from doing that work yourself. the exchange of capital comes with an exchange of credit. it is the base assumption that underpins every capitalist boss's relationship with their workforce, and we see it on full display among the guileless herd animals of silicon valley. AI art is only and exclusively a mechanism for doing to art production what the ruling class have long since done to industrial labor, annihilating the worker's claim to its value, disintegrating the jobs held by artists to disempower and destabilize them so that they will accept worse pay for more work. it is precisely the kind of horseplay that's got damn near all of Hollywood on strike. the actual technology itself sucks, obviously, and it will always suck no matter how much better it gets. the quality of the end product is immaterial-- it's about wage theft, man. it's about greed and labor discipline. same old story, different day.

They love the idea of using AI for film-making because they don't actually have any talent or skill. For them, AI is like a cheat code that allows them to seem like actual artists without doing any actual work.

but let's get back to Willems. he does a great job deconstructing how these supposed parodies don't even really embody anything meaningful about Wes Anderson's style, pointing out that anyone who thinks they're emotionless, stoic, austere films clearly hasn't watched any. the dude makes comedies about broken people struggling to find meaning in their lives, for crying out loud! the popularity of this algorithmic trash is an extension of pop culture's long-standing illiteracy when it comes to Wes Anderson. something about a director with a distinctive visual style short circuits the brain when you haven't watched any movies made before the new millennium, i guess. how pretentious to be all having your own vision or whatever lol lmao

what really hits home for me, though, is how he compares these parodies to his own Wes Anderson's X-Men trailer. he talks about spending time watching all of Anderson's films to date in pre-production, taking notes not just on style but on substance, on theme. he treated the project as an exercise in understanding a film-maker's approach to their craft, then got his friends together and spent a couple weeks running around New York filming the thing. the resulting short film is, let's be real, kind of sloppy and cheap-looking. but so what? in the making-of for it, Willems talks about the specific logic of the composition of this X-Men team and the inspiration behind the costumes. here we catch a glimpse of the layers of labor which go into the production of even the simplest amateur work-- research, writing, self-analysis, location scouting, costume design, props, lighting, camera work, and on, and on, and on. sure, it looks cheap. but it was made by hand with love and care, it embraces what it is and doesn't try to be more. i speak from experience with these kinds of projects when i say, the finished work is almost superfluous, except as proof of labor. the real value comes from the experience of making the thing, and the lessons you learn along the way. collaborating on even the silliest and cheapest of short films can be a transcendent and life-changing experience.

Artistic influence is Wes Anderson taking his love of Hal Ashby, Francois Truffaut, and Jacques Demy, and processing them into a unique approach that expresses his own view of the world. AI art is just a machine for plagiarizing existing art.

this is sort of a perfect illustration of what AI art simply cannot replicate. under the proposed normal of those boosting a post-LLM world, there is no barrier between the having of an idea and the realization of that idea. it's a world where ideas guys finally get the credit they insist they've always deserved. what they fail to understand is that everything which makes art special comes in the phase between having the idea, and finishing the work that idea inspired. they refuse to acknowledge that art is work, and work takes time, and that people who draw and write didn't just wake up with this ability by magic divine endowment. they aren't "hoarding" their skill. if i'm a good writer today it's because i spent the last 14 years and change being a really bad one. all this talk of accessibility and democratization sounds suspiciously similar to the "telling me to read is ableist" line of thinking, where we equate the simple and undeniable fact that getting better at anything requires Hard Work with a pilfered and ill-defined language of oppression adopted by bad-faith actors to justify why they never have to change or learn or improve in any meaningful way, to justify why criticizing them for their actions is actually a sort of hate crime.

Willems ends this video teasing a second part focused exclusively on the idea of "content," the way so many artists and entertainers today frame the fruits of their labor as if it is no different from paste in a tube. like Willems, i've long despised "content" as a descriptor and think its widespread adoption is nothing short of corporate-fueled stochastic terrorism against any creator who dares to presume that what they make has any value without the platform. it's like i said in my video about Netflix in 2018-- the only thing platforms have to sell is the platform. the ongoing grey goo-ification of the internet has renewed my conviction that "content" is the enemy (or at least an enemy), because its success relies on a baseline assumption that all things are reducible to their predictable financial valuation. this moment is not just about copyright law or labor exploitation; it's a come to jesus moment for our entire culture, forcing us to confront the only logical endpoint of art under capitalism. it is time for us to decide for ourselves what we value.

AI is getting better all the time, but at its very best you will only ever get serviceable imitations of mediocre products.

with Matt Mercer playing Ganondorf in the american localization of Tears of the Kingdom, i decided to revisit the 2009 online miniseries There Will Be Brawl where he also plays Ganondorf. this series was incredibly ambitious, an attempt to make a dark and gritty film noir playing on the full-cast absurdity Super Smash Bros Brawl. i'm not going to pretend that it's better than it is, because i haven't been able to sit through the whole thing since it aired. it's very much of its time, and boy was that time problematic. but in the same way that films i once would've thought of as mid have skyrocketed up my rankings simply by virtue of having real sets and props and costumes and lights that are actually turned on, i find TWBB's excess of paper-mache props and dollar store wigs immensely charming in hindsight. it looks cheap, and the performances aren't always great, but so what? this is something that no algorithm could ever produce. it's a fanwork that took countless hours of labor, and while the finished project has no shortage of flaws, it may well have been an essential starting point for dozens of careers. it is an audacious idea that was executed to its conclusion, a feat that vanishingly few projects of its ilk have accomplished.

this kind of thing used to be youtube's bread and butter. i still quote The Legend of Neil all the time ("hello, uh- old man?" "you may call me… old man"), and my sense of humor is eternally linked to the forgotten pivot-to-video creations once hosted on The Escapist, Cracked, College Humor, and countless other long-dead platforms. these kinds of parodies fell out of fashion because they tend to be cheap and silly-looking. the rise of Marvel came at the apex of the 2000s hyperrealism fetish in genre media (Spielberg's Minority Report ruined science fiction cinema for at least twenty years), so everything had to be grounded and look photorealistic. we want immersion, man-- we don't want to see the zipper on the rubber monster suit. i think this is an unspoken motivation behind the AI hype cycle. what's the point of even attempting a genre parody if you can't make it look exactly as good as its Hollywood equivalent? we don't want to see a cardboard imitation, we want to see the perfect thing we can imagine in our heads brought flawlessly into reality!

i share Patrick Willems' sentiment that this is depressing as hell.

Willems shook something loose in my head with this video, because i came away from it completely rethinking my relationship to his fictional bridging material, and the generally low production value of most anything high-concept on youtube or other video platforms. there is something to be treasured in even the most slapdash of amateur films, when the work is done with love. there is inherent value to human endeavor in the attempt, even a failed one, to bring an idea into reality. it's the work, the experience, the memories, the chemistry of it all that matters. i want to live in and encourage a culture where people are allowed to make shit that sucks and not have it ruin their lives, so that they can keep making shit until they're good at it. art is not a machine, it is not algorithmic, it is not statistically predictable. like all things truly human, it is an act of defiance against entropy by a soul in transit.

anyway it's a good video, go give it a watch