#so i'm making extra post (without lore) with some of the extra shots

[neriyon]

Not all who wander are lost - Central Shroud

The Mirror Planks │ Bentbranch │ Gabineaux's Bower │ Everschade

"Our first meeting? Hmm... I was called to heal one of the Wood Wailers posted at Galvanth's Spire. Fairly ordinary case - the man had been mildly injured by some pack of critters, and instead of leaving his partner to guard the road alone it was easier to send one of the cojurers to tend to him.

When it was time to head back to the city, both he and his partner kept warning me of some diremites that had been causing trouble on the road near the West Vein. Diremites weren't really that troublesome, but they were pretty insistent, so I promised them I'd take the detour through the Jadeite Thick to ease their worries a bit.

Walk back home was rather uneventful, but closer to the city gates I could hear some faint groans few yalms off the path. Remembering the diremites, I pushed through the bushes to take a look - and found an beaten up elezen man on the ground.

I healed him and kept him company until his legs felt strong enough to carry him back to the city. Not like I could have hauled the man back to city myself... he was almost twice my height, and had a lot stronger build than me. From his training as a lancer, I learned during our chat. Draevoux Chevalier, he introduced himself. A duskwight who, like me, had left his home to study in Gridania. Unlike most elezen, he was happy to chat about pretty much everything - even the thing that led him to get injured so badly.

Drae, as the man had asked me to call him, had been looking for stronger foes to test his lance on. He had started a fight with a treant sapling, apparently not knowing they were pretty strong despite their generally calm behaviour. Not the brightest idea, but I had to commend his bravery."

[deepdreamnights]

Tribute AMV for Dr. Underfang and Mrs. Natalie Nice/Nautilus.

From TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, everyone's favorite Buzby-Spurlock animated series.

After all, who doesn't love a good bad guy, especially when they come in pairs?

Process/Tutorial Under the Fold.

This is, of course, a part of my TyrannoMax unreality project, with most of these video clips coming from vidu, taking advantage of their multi-entity consistency feature (more on that later). This is going to be part of a larger villain showcase video, but this section is going to be its own youtube short, so its an video on its own.

The animation here is intentionally less smooth than the original, as I'm going for a 1980s animated series look, and even in the well-animated episodes you were typically getting 12 FPS (animating 'on twos'), with 8 (on threes) being way more common. As I get access to better animation software to rework these (currently just fuddling along with PS) I'm going to start using this to my advantage by selectively dropping blurry intermediate frames.

I went with 12 since most of these clips are, in the meta-lore, from the opening couple of episodes and the opening credits, where most of the money for a series went back in the day.

Underfang's transformation sequence was my testing for several of my techniques for making larger TyrannoMax videos. Among those was selectively dropping some of the warped frames as I mentioned above, though for a few shots I had to wind up re-painting sections.

Multi-entity consistency can keep difficult dinosaur characters stable on their own, but it wasn't up to the task of keeping the time-temple accurate enough for my use, as you can see here with the all-t-rex- and-some-moving-statues, verses the multi-species effort I had planned:

The answer was simple, chroma-key.

Most of the Underfang transformation shots were done this way. The foot-stomp was too good to leave just because he sprouted some extra toes, so that was worth repainting a few frames of in post.

Vidu kind of over-did the texturing on a few shots (and magenta was a poor choice of key-color) so I had to go in and manually purple-ize the background frame by frame for the spin-shot.

This is on top of the normal cropping, scaling, color-correcting, etc that goes into any editing job of this type.

It's like I say: nearly all AI you see is edited, most of it curated, even the stuff that's awful and obvious (never forget: enragement is engagement)

Multi-Entity Consistency:

Vidu's big advantage is reference-to-video. For those who have been following the blog for awhile, R2V is sort of like Midjourney's --cref character reference feature. A lot of video AIs have start-end frame functionality, but being able to give the robot a model sheet and effectively have it run with it is a darn nice feature for narrative.

Unlike the current version of Midjourney's --cref feature, however, you can reference multiple concepts with multiple images.

It is super-helpful when you need to get multiple characters to interact, because without it, they tend to blend into each other conceptually.

I also use it to add locations, mainly to keep them looking appropriately background-painting rather than a 3d background or something that looks like a modded photo like a lot of modern animation does.

The potential here for using this tech as a force multiplier for small animation projects really shines through, and I really hope I'm just one of several attempting to use it for that purpose.

Music:

The song is "The Boys Have a Second Lead Pipe", one of my Suno creations. I was thinking of using Dinowave (Let's Dance To) but I'm saving that for a music video of live-action dinosovians.

Prompting:

You can tell by the screenshot above that my prompts have gotten... robust. Vidu's prompting system seems to understand things better when given tighter reigns (some AIs have the opposite effect), and takes information with time-codes semi-regularly, so my prompts are now more like:

low-angle shot, closeup, of a green tyrannosaurus-mad-scientist wearing a blue shirt and purple tie with white lab coat and a lavender octopus-woman with tentacles growing from her head, wearing a teal blouse, purple skirt, purple-gray pantyhose. they stand close to each other, arms crossed, laughing evilly. POV shot of them looming over the viewer menacingly. The background is a city, in the style of animation background images. 1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon clip, a dinosaur-anthro wearing a lab coat, shirt and tie reaches into his coat with his right hand and pulls out a laser gun, he takes aim, points the laser gun at the camera and fires. The laser effect is short streaks of white energy with a purple glow. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster.

While others approach the scripted with time-code callouts for individual actions.

[legitimatesatanspawn]

In preparation for Opus: Prism Peak, I'm replaying the series and getting ready to give Opus: Echo of Starsong a spin.

The series are gorgeous, musically incredible, and live to stab you in the feels. And I say that as someone who rarely cries at games of films. Would these games work better as VNs or books? Maybe. But damn are they pretty.

Opus: The Day we Found Earth

Opus is functionally a hidden object game where you're playing "where's the planet/star/galaxy" with the giant telescope. There's a lot of background lore as to what happened, and essentially (without spoilers) humans have advanced and spread so far across Space that the records of their homeworld's been lost.

You play as a robot who was built by the two last desperate members of the space station, one hoping against hope and the other more cynical about the odds but still trying. With you still trying to find Earth for your creator after a power blackout. As a robot, your character doesn't understand some things he finds while looking through the space station. The AI helping you has a better idea though.

I vaguely remember playing it on Android so it makes sense that the click-and-drag and tap are more in line with touchscreen gameplay. And the 'hub area' (the space station) is vertically designed.

2. Opus: Rocket of Whispers, and the Prologue

Rocket is essentially baby's first resource hunting game where you're wandering around a gradually bigger and bigger zone finding items and helping settle ghosts as you build better and better rockets. Why rockets? Weeeeell, spoilers aside there's this whole thing about sending spaceships off planet with the help of "witches" who pray to send the dead to the afterlife presumably back on Earth.

So kind of like FFX with Sending. Except it's in a post-apoc world where like... maybe two people in the whole area are still alive. There might be more! I hope there's more...

There's also a free prequel game that is a straight walking sim of a P&C game where the other main character wakes up from cryosleep and quickly realizes things went horribly wrong.

3. Opus: Echo of Starsong

Starsong for the record looks to be an insane magitek space drama with spaceship resource management and music-based puzzles. Take Titan AE, mix in some post-war Gundam or similar Space Mecha anime series where things are just absolutely insane, sprinkle heavily with space magic... maybe a dash of Xianxia if there's anything with clan bullshit.

Am I going to be good at this? Nope, not the space resource part anyway. Will I play it anyway? Getting it as part of a bundle definitely helped and while I don't normally play post-apoc games like Rocket I enjoyed it so I'm definitely giving this one a shot.

4. Opus: Prism Peak

Prism's big thing here is a camera and absolutely gorgeous graphics. Functionally it looks like a photography game (examples being Pokemon Snap, Alba: A Wildife Adventure, Umurangi Generation, and Beasts of Maravilla Island) where you're either trapped in memories or the spirit world and... I have no idea how the camera will change things but it looks beautiful. Every title got more and more extra with the graphics (in a good way) and the music so this is gonna be so damn pretty. And the story will probably break my heart like the other Opus games.

[fountainpenguin]

Blog Stuff

^ Like, "FYI if you want to block tags" stuff

Little announcement here: Factor It In is on hiatus for now, probably for the rest of 2023. I know where the story is going overall and I know where the next chapter's going, but I struggled more than expected with the "Torus" voice (took like 6 weeks longer than the other chapters and all of it painful :'D)

I don't want to face a timecrunch struggle with TJ and Rose POVs (two characters who will be new to me), so I'm taking the bi-weekly update stress away and putting the 'fic on hiatus for now. But I wrote 77k before a hiatus was needed so I'm proud of that <3

We've got some 130 Prompts coming up as well as "Unicorn Years" for Origin in September (and hopefully a special Friday the 13th piece in October). In other words, FOP stuff is still bi-weekly as usual.

-> As a reminder, the 130 Prompts are posted in the order they are for a reason. You don't have to read them all if you don't want to, but extra context is always nice. If you've been dragging your feet on "Looking Back" by any chance... I might recommend that before the next update, which is "Sentry" ;)

On the "off" Friday I'm planning one-shots for various fandoms, especially shorter character studies. Really want to practice capturing a variety of voices, some quicker one-shots, and maybe I'll try some characters I don't use a lot. Or I'll be self-indulgent and focus on my faves... who knows.

Hoping to post more Come What May as well since you guys were excited to see it back <3... and it would be nice to actually finish a non-one-shot 'fic for the first time in. 7 years.

It's probably been obvious, but I also took a long hiatus from digital art. Traditional art is more comfy for me and I've been trying new digital programs, but haven't fallen in love with anything (i.e. I've been a vector artist for 10 years and moving from my safe space to different programs and styles is... painful).

I think I'm ready to start pushing my comfort zone, but be forgiving of my digital style because I'm playing around with new tools and this is a big jump for me, ha ha. I think I'm going to do some silly, low-stress fanfic doodles with very little attempt to make them look good, just testing stuff out.

I miiiiiight have a few PMV / animatic ideas, so we'll see

By nature of me posting art for my own 'fics, spoilers be upon ye if you're not up to date with my writing. Relatively recent stuff and/or stuff I consider "big" will get the #ridspoilers tag, but stuff I wrote 6+ months ago is less likely to get the tag, so that's how that goes.

-> #Dog's Life spoilers will get a unique tag because the weekly updates and drama make me say "Yeah, a special tag makes sense," so if that's a 'fic you think you want to read someday without spoilers, consider blocking that sooner rather than later :)

-> I'm also adding a #Pixels Imperfect tag to stuff from that universe (and I'll go back and add it to the chapters I already posted). "Pixels Imperfect" is the series name on AO3 for my digital gremlin Traffic SMP content (Everyone can freely wander around New Star Station outside the game and just puts on their roleplay hats when they go in, everything under this series fits under one umbrella of universe canon, etc.)

-> #Neighborhood Watch is the series name for "we take the roleplay lore seriously, this is their life, no digital world and no roleplay hat to take off" Traffic SMP content. I haven't posted anything for it yet, but I've got stuff in the works (I'm playing with a couple "making every season as canon as possible in one storyline" pieces and </3 it's big divorce speedrun hours for Clocker fam rn)

As for the other 'fics, I've been posting stuff like Origin, the 130, and Knots for 7 years and I feel okay about how that's going- I don't normally get spoiler Asks, but my general rule is to wait 1-2 weeks before I say anything spoilery on my blog. I think that's been working fine and we've got a good system, so I'm not changing anything there.

Lastly - and this is also part of the reason Factor is going on hiatus - it sounds like Traffic SMP Season 5 is just around the corner. For my followers who don't know much about this Minecraft deathmatch series, the creators only play for a few weeks - I think the shortest season was 6 weeks and the longest was 8 - and each creator puts out one episode a week (usually Friday).

So, it's a pretty short chunk of time and I don't want to be juggling too many things while it's coming out. I think this year I want to jump in and create some nice content while it's ongoing instead of just doodling off to the side and keeping it to myself... I need to dig up my old liveblog doodles I never shared, hm.

-> The traffic story canon gets reset every season (i.e. it's unscripted play, there's no continuous plot, and each season starts relationships from scratch), so if you've been enjoying any of my Traffic SMP reblogs, consider looking into it and riding that wave while episodes come out for a couple weeks and we can be hype together <3

-> Stuff for that season will be tagged #traffic spoilers, which is the tag I use across all the seasons, and I'll make a new post with my Season 5 spoiler tag once we get the name reveal.

-> As is traditional when I liveblog, I'll also use the tag #Riddle watches Traffic so you can block that too if you like. Just wanted to let people know in case I have any Traffic SMP followers who want to go in blind and don't want to risk seeing my posts before they have time to block my spoilers tag. #traffic spoilers still covers everything, including new season.

-> I also need to look into maybe switching from Traffic Life SMP as my blog tag to Traffic SMP because I think that's. the right name and it would probably be smart to tag properly... hm.

I think that covers everything I wanted to say. I'll add a list or link to my pinned post as well so people can figure out what to block for spoilers and stuff.

Thanks for enjoying my blog!

[plutonium-sky]

Hey but what if.... skids but dragons

I drew a surprising amount of doodles for this idea at this point, wow- Anyways! I don't think I posted ANY of this to tumblr, so enjoy my various doods of this idea lol

Everything (including the scarce ideas i already have about this) under cut

I'm gonna start with the list of thoughts that I already have for this whole shenaniganery.

All hatchlings look approximately the same, and the way they look as they grow up depends on where they grow, among other things. Still a rough idea. They looks approximately like the image below.

Of course, parents and whatanot also play a big role, but that's the absolute blank version probably.

They mutate every time they go to Eden- or whatever is the equivalent of Eden there. Otherwise, it would be extremely painful to be a growing dragon. Very, very, very painful.

List of what realm is populated with what type of dragon the most (read: most, not all)

Isle: Land drakes, tend to be wingless and, if they do have wings, flightless (but not always.) Don't underestimate them, though- they have other means of transport! Whether it be burrowing or very strong jumping and high speeds of running, they can get around even without their wings.

Prairie: Chinese! Long! And Wyrms! Also wingless, but not necessarily flightless! How? I don't know, have fun with that. Although, Prairie has the most diverse amount of dragons.

Forest: Insect dragons! Or at least real fluffy. The rain is cold and the sun barely touches them, they have to keep warm SOMEHOW! (also, insect dragons are underrated. and not everyone realizes that dragons CAN be fluffy.)

Valley: Wyverns! Speedsters, they are. Tend to be on the smaller side, but they're a blast to hang out with.

Wasteland: aquatic! Gills, lots of fins, and in some cases slimy. Just very good at swimming, but some of them Can fly and most of them can come onto the water too!

Vault: Hydra. More brains to accomodate all that knowledge, they don't need the flight that much, with all that technology they are using! But otherwise they are very good climbers and swimmers (I definitely didn't run out of ideas for uniqueish dragons at this point. Help.)

Eden: The beast watches. (Aka idfk. Let's go with worms. Really, really, really absurdly long ones. Perhaps even like ouroboros.)

FIRST OFF FOR IMAGES: Iez and Cackling Cannoneer dragon sketches from like 4 months ago!! Iez is fluffy, and I wanna make her more insectoid later. However I am completely happy with Cannoneer's design.

Second off: me contacting @ejsuperstar and whining at them about dragons, subsequently drawing Dragon, Local Baby, and Injured messenger as dragons!

And a few more doodles of dragon Cannoneer and Iez with the slightest bit of design changes

Anyways, next batch: Me talking at @serene-sky-kid and then drawing THREE versions of dragon Serene

And then, the stuff from today: Me randomly taking my sky lore buddy's oc ( @iamherefortrains ) and dragonifying them. Alongside dragonifying the valley twins

Elders, as a treat, get to continue being HUGE. And! Also! Extra limbs!! The twins have TWO sets of wings!! And they're also still kinda the big shots of the whole place. Elder dragons!

For your information, I have no idea where this is going. Feel free to pitch in with ideas because it's just been brewing in my head with barely anything new. Cheers!

[the-nysh]

👀👀 I'm already loving the level of detail noted in all these commentaries! And definitely excited for more (with my popcorn ready to share) as the deeper lore and mysteries get revealed.

Cause one of the best things about rereading is immediately recognizing the last page of this prologue, "the same song of humanity still sang," as a complete 'bookend' loop, both beginning and closing on that message of continuing hope. Humanity still lives on and survives, even long ago in a galaxy far far away on a distant, desolate planet (or 'paradise') amid death & destruction the debris even resembles cross-like graves the 'same' way that we (the audience) have long survived and will continually live through on earth. :') The song of life still beats--without being lost in silence; the familiar, comforting essence/heart of humanity can still endure.

Some additional notes from these few (4) prologue pages:

The blast crater is visibly long, with a clear directional impact. As opposed to a symmetrical, circular impact crater from a fallen meteorite or a......(post-Hiroshima) dropped nuclear bomb. This 'blast' is uncannily large but different, as if it'd been aimed or shot/released parallel to the ground, sweeping up most of the viable yet unsuspecting city of July along in its wake. Chilling and ominous, like a mysterious, unknown type of disaster reported.

The overhaul translation (vs Dark Horse) gives us some additional units of time. This July city incident coincidentally happened in the month of July (the 21st, yr 0104 measuring from the start of...this land's origins) eleven hours before the current time at 1pm...so that means the initial blast happened at 2am the night prior, likely while the city was still asleep. D: With the extra implication that this mysterious lone figure sitting there in the epicenter, lost and bundling himself hunched among the rubble at ground zero, had either been there (as a survivor or suspect) for the entire 11hrs, or...this moment at 1pm marks when he arrived (or woke) later to take in the desolate expanse of the scene. 👀

"The layer we see beneath the cloak is protective, those belts holding together who he is" -- I really like the way this is described, as I've seen people describe his many intricate Tetsuya Nomura belts & buckles akin to 'bondage' gear - but it makes sense that he's tightly wrapping, bonding, and locking himself away. Both with tight restraints of confining suppression and layers of supportive protection holding together what's left of the tattered person inside. :') Yes we CAN go deeeeper~

The 98anime does happen to include vague, reoccurring bits of this scene from ep6: 'Lost July' as fragmented memories recalled by another original character's pov - from a citizen of the city who survived to tell the tale. Which yup is very different from how the manga goes! As the images of the figure in tatters and destruction amidst an ominously wounded red sky are familiar, but it's presented almost like a miracle: where the entire city is destroyed but somehow no one died from the blast (they killed each other in the fallout's chaotic in-fighting later.) Which is a pretty huge divergence! (as indirect human consequences of the disaster as opposed to direct, caused by something [redacted & undetermined]) Because the manga's actual truth is horrifically shocking in contrast. That coming in from the 98anime, with this information in mind, really does feel like enlightening whiplash for the severity and tone of this important incident alone.

Lastly, this ch00 'High Noon at July' (which Stampede references as the title for ep12), as a brief 'ground zero' prologue to set the mystery and tone, is completely different from the ch00 pilot - aka the 'proof of concept' chapter included as a one-shot omake in vol2. The latter which was also adapted in the 98anime's ep4: 'Love & Peace' and characterizes an early prototype version of Vash with traits before his Trimax personality was really settled. (Another reason why 98 Vash behaves so differently from Trimax Vash.) So noting this here in case there's confusion on which 'ch00' officially starts the manga's story!

High Noon at July

For the first post of @trigunbookclub​, I’ll start at, where else, Chapter #00 of Trigun Volume 1, High Noon at July!

The way the manga opens is so drastically different from the way either anime opens; it’s sparse in detail, simply an atmospheric opening, and yet it immediately tells the reader so much about this story.

I won’t usually do this, but since this “chapter” is so short, I want to go through it page by page. I’m also still figuring out how I want to do this, so this post might lean more analysis-heavy than others, though I’ll still keep this spoiler-free.

It opens looking on a blast crater, in the center of an otherwise pure black page, with the text telling us the time and place. It notes that this city, july, had been destroyed 11 hours prior. 

The next page (really a double-page spread) shows the destruction in greater detail, and introduces a figure, wrapped in tattered cloak, the only person visible in this desolation. Did they cause it? What exactly happened here? 

There’s no answers given, however, as the next spread zooms in on the figure, but still nearly everything about them is indistinguishable, covered by the tatters of the cloak. (honestly, it looks a bit vincent valentine from ff7, lol.) It’s a wonderfully composed page; the shadows of the cloak are done in a stark black that draws the eye, and only afterwards do you look closer to see the intricate details that make up the clothing: belts and buckles and metal plates.

(Not to dig too deep into just one page, but you could really take this depiction as symbolic of Vash’s character: he hides who he is beneath an eye-catching exterior, the myth of Vash the Stampede. It’s a tattered cloak, sure, and maybe it also makes things more difficult, as the cloak in this page covers his eyes, but still it covers what he doesn’t want others to know. Yet, even the layer we see beneath the cloak is protective, those belts holding together who he is.)

Finally, the last page shows another shot of the crater and the sky above against a pure black page, this time from the point of view of the figure. The text on this page says “Far from here, in a distant time and place, the same song of humanity still sang.”

And that’s really the thesis of the manga, isn’t it? (or at least a thesis, you can make a case for a lot of things.) Even in the midst of utter destruction and desolation, humanity lives on. 

And the particular choice of words is interesting too! Saying the “song of humanity still sang” technically has the same meaning as “humanity still lived”, but feels vastly different. There’s more hope to it, more life, in a way.

I will have much more to say about these lines later, but in the interest of keeping this spoiler free, I’ll leave it for now.

These four (counting the double page spreads as a single page) pages tell you a lot about what this story is going to be about. It’s science fiction, as evidenced by the use of “stardate” on the first page. The title, “High Noon at July” is reminiscent of a western, and thus suggests that perhaps it was a duel or a confrontation of some sort that caused this destruction. Yet, in the destruction, there is hope.

We’re still left with questions, however. This chapter doesn’t answer anything, simply gives the reader some imagery and details that leave you wanting more. And, of course, the next chapter answers none of them, but that’s another post!

(scans are from @trigun-manga-overhaul by the way!)

[juliesiege]

now's the time i guess. I'll probably RB this with more thoughts later but rn I'm trying to fall asleep and i think this will fix me. basically.

In 4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin Sam Winchester, Dean acts in some way that could be interpreted as interest toward a high schooler (at oldest 18, while Dean is probably 29 which. Oof) (it's been a while since I watched the exact scene but I remember thinking that it could potentially be interpreted otherwise, though that might be my Dean apologist/understander brain speaking. He's performing half-hearted interest. Maybe. Idk. I don't make the decisions, I just come up with the possible answers. Take this entire parenthetical with a grain of salt lol). Anyway here's the superwiki transcript.

(Now without watching it, my parenthetical still stands. From this I can't discern shit about Dean's intentions. Dean licks his lips constantly. He licks his lips before having a thought. Sam also has a history of taking a lot of what Dean does in the context of women in bad faith. Note also that Sam himself is the first person to vocalize it and the framing of a potentially underage girl as jailbait is in itself a potential yikes. But that's not what I'm here to discuss.)

I'm here to discuss. Is Julie Siege responsible for this. Idk, man (gn, I'm Californian). I don't know her. If there's any metanarrative lore associated with this episode, it hasn't come my way yet so. Without further ado. Possible explanations.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was interesting and non-offensive.

Julie Siege wrote this because she thought it was in character for them and no other reason.

Julie Siege wrote this because she was writing to the style of the boys club she was working in. Remember that the Supernatural writers room was a very macho environment, especially S4-5.

Julie Siege wrote this as a way of trying to gain acceptance in that space. See above.

Julie Siege didn't write this. Kripke era scripts were highly collaborative and a single writer would rarely be responsible for the entire script [my source is the 4.03 commentary track. See the superwiki page for a link to a transcript for that]

Modifiers on the above: She didn't write it, 1) but she liked it, 2) but she didn't care, 3) and she didn't like it but kept quiet bc boys club, or 4) and she didn't like it and argued against it but was shot down. Oh and 5) It was added in after the script was out of her hands entirely.

Julie Siege didn't write this. It was ad libbed in or it came into creation on the day of filming some other way (directorial choice? idk how these things work)

All of this specifically to say. At the end of the day you really just don't know if a writer is responsible for small moments or certain lines, particularly in the Kripke era. I have other thoughts about the probability of such things in the other eras but that's a post for another time.

So like. Yeah. It's hard to attribute certain specific items or "crimes" to certain writers unless you definitely know for sure and with confirmation (or unless there are observable patterns that heavily suggest it) that it was something that they wrote or endorsed. In the Kripke era.

There's a S1 or S2 extra (i think it was for 1.03 dead in the water) where i think it was Sera Gamble who says. People will come up to you about an episode you wrote and be like, oh i really liked this line! But most of the time it was a line that someone else wrote. Which is basically the tl;dr for this post.

So yeah tl;dr: the inner workings of television writing are more complex than one might initially assume, so don't assume anything. (Insert my prior disclaimers here.)

[ariabauer]

i've been dipping in and out of the carmilla fandom so some things don't make sense to me. what's the woman in black? how does that relate to ell? i'm so confused? help

I’m a novelist at heart so we’re going to plot the Carmilla movie out as if it were a novel based on what we know and some conjecture. 

Right. Hello. I’m on a 6:6:12hr cycle and basically living in the lab until these flies die so I’ve got a few moments to give you the high level version of the Carmilla movie plot as I understand it based on what’s been released. What I can’t provide you with here is proof. I just don’t have the time for a huge theory.

The movie takes place 5 years after the close of the series and Hollstein is living in an apartment in Toronto where Laura is a reporter for a Toronto newspaper and still doing her vlogs in some form. In story structure terms, this would be their ‘ordinary world’. We hit our ‘hook’ at the 5% mark with what I’m guessing is Laura having some seriously bad dreams (see trailer where she wakes up on Carm’s lap. shots like that, waking up, usually denote dreams). Her dreams are ghostly dreams that are a warning of something bad. Probably a result of ‘The Woman In Black’ (we’ll get to this more). Naturally, Laura can’t help digging.

Then I’m going to guess that we hit our Inciting Incident at the 15% mark. This probably Carmilla re-vamping.  Laura’s dreams were one thing but this is a big problem that needs fixing. In my opinion, if Carmilla was only un-vamped by a gods power then it would have to be something equivalent to effect that status or else Inanna’s power would have to wane. Honestly, I’d guess that at some point this is going to be a “I knew something bad was coming and Carmilla needed her vampire powers to confront it”. My only question is if that “I” is going to be one of the old gods or one of the new characters.That said, we know Sophia was on set for a little bit so I”m at least hoping they ask Ereskigal/Inanna what’s up. Like, I really don’t see how you could do revamping without talking about the gods that vamped and unvamped her to begin with. 

Between Laura’s ghost dreams and Carmilla’s revamping, Hollstein heads out to figure out what is going on. Usually this would be the 25%ish (probably more like 20% in this case) when you “leave the ordinary world for the new one”. Probably through Laura’s dreams, they know to go to a ghost house in what I’m guessing is Austria but who really knows. It just makes sense to me to bring us back to Carmilla’s roots if we’re going to bring Ell into it. I’d love to say it’s a house from Carmilla’s past but I have no proof of that. They bring together the gang to help them solve this condumdrum (obviously if Carmilla starts revamping the first person you call is Laf). 

This is when I’d wager they meet the Bronte sister who are apparently ghosts (i’ll admit i wanted them to vampires). This ghostly reveal will probably be the real 25% first plot point. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd plot points always have to be turning points and this is where we hit the real ghost story stuff. The Bronte sisters (ghosts of the original authors) appear to be haunting the place and Laf probably finds a way to make them semi-tangible for dancing and whatnot. That said, we only have 2 Bronte sister and I have real serious and large theories/questions about what happened to the third. Again, I think they have to be somehow tied to Carmilla’s past because she just has so so so much of it. All through this, Laura is still having creepy dreams.

The 35-40% mark is when I’d guess that we really hit TWIB in black for the first time. I’d also wager that this is dance scene leading into the First Pinch Point. There’s some fun but then we hit that short scene in the teaser where Laura’s in her ballgown and just takes off in panic, I’m guessing that Laura sees TWIB for the first time, recognises her from her dreams, and takes off after her. 

50% is where you hit the middle of the story with the midpoint/second plot point. I’m guessing this is where we get the “TWIB is Ell” reveal both because it makes sense plotwise and because s1 (which was plotted amazing well) places the Carmilla Karnstein vampire reveal right at this point as well. (don’t ask me how much time I’ve spent looking at season/series plot as practice). Now everything after this get EXTRA conjecturey simply because if you’re going to give an audience spoilers, you always pull most of them from the first 25 (maybe 50) percent to keep your climax a surprise.

So to answer your original question, cupcake, Ell is The Woman In Black and played by Dominique (who you may know from Wynonna Earp). The Woman In Black is a literally reference to this other old novella that’s a ghost story and seems like is giving the Carmilla movie a lot of influence. Basically, TWIB is this woman whose son was killed in a carriage/swamp accident and not appears as a ghost whenever a child is about to die.

Basically, she’s a warning for girls and boys dying.

You know who else was a warning for girls and boys dying? Ell. In s1, she appears to all the anglerfish’s victims and tries to warn them “not to go into the light”. This clearly isn’t a vampire/Dean thing because she wouldn’t want to warn them. Ell’s doing this under some other power. From the movie, we can discern that Ell is still doing this and that her soul hasn’t moved on yet. That’s why I’m guessing that it’s Ell/TWIB in Laura’s creepy ghost dreams. She’s trying to warn Laura, the same way she tried to warn Laura in s1. The reason she’s appearing to Laura is because they already have that mental connection from Laura nearly being anglerfish food. What I can’t decide is if it’s Ell who revamps Carmilla or if she’s trying to warn them against the person who actually revamped Carmilla. 

Regardless, I’d wager that this is the point where we get the teaser stuff of Laura in the other old timey dress, apparently having tea with Ell, and the whole mirror thing. The whole thing is a little trippy mostly just flashes. That said, I do NOT like the idea of Ell as the antagonist of this story. I think that role should belong to the Brontes because ‘the vengeful ex’ is a trope I hate. I want Ell to help Hollstein, Laura not to have to be jealous, and Carmilla to get her reconciliation. Personally, I think a good way to villainize the Brontes would be to have their missing third sister who wasn’t cast be dead due to some action of Carmilla’s/Dean’s (probably in a carraige related event) and they want to get revenge but act all nice at first. That’s very old timey novella.

I’m sorry that I don’t have time to go into the mirror shot and Carmilla in the old timey dress but it doesn’t relate directly to your question. Just know there’s some super interesting stuff there but it would take a while to go through. That said, I have this theory that probably only Laura (maybe Laf and Kirsch) can see Ell because she’s a ghost and that at some point Laura and Ell share a body. That’s really the traditional reason for shooting a mirror scene like that where you’re surprised to see your hand move. A different face in the mirror would denote that you still look like you to yourself but everyone else is seeing something different.

Also, mirrors fit wonderfully into vampire lore (cough the mirror between us) and it would be cool to have them pop up.

By the time we hit the second pinch point at the 65% mark, we should have a good idea of who Ell is and hopefully have Laura understand her. I’d like if some of Laura’s growth could be not immediately jumping to conclusions about people. I’d also put the Bronte’s Evil reveal here.

The 75% mark or third plot point should be your lowest point of the movie, the moment when everything goes wrong and forces our heros to pick themselves off their feet to throw themselves towards the climax. I haven’t actually decided what this is yet but I kind of like something bad happening with/to Carmilla. Specially, I like that scene where it’s Carmilla all in black and grabbing old timey Laura. But until we get more information, we don’t really have anything to go on with that one.

At some point we have to hit our climax but again, without knowing who our antagonist is, I have no idea how to call this. I’d say that Laura somehow gets Carmilla back, Ell joins their team, and evil is vanquished. Somewhere in there, Ell and Carmilla get their reconcillation and then let’s end with a Hollstein engagement because I WANT IT AND YOU CAN”T STOP ME.

(for more details on all of this, you can see the post I wrote with my theories based on only the character names which turned out more accurate than expected). 

But there you go cupcake. With no research and written in 10 minutes based only off things I happened to remember, here’s what I’ve got. I tried my best. 

Hope that helps