#the dark crystal

[teunip]

Nealia pondering the cup with her speech bubbles (rectangles?) conveniently cut off, huh.

End of the year update about my Gelfling OC comic ✨

Progress has been slow but steady! About 20 % of the pages are ready at the moment, so there's still lots to do.

My goal is to get the comic out ASAP in 2025, hopefully much before June, but of course life is unpredictable so take that estimate with a grain of salt.

There's still no official name for the comic lol, I need to think of something clever so I can call this thing something a bit fancier in the future 😅

That's all for now! Thanks for sticking around 🖤

[moos-hues]

some twat cracked the crystal

[stinging-metal]

I LOVE YOU MYSTICS ❤️❤️

[cosmicretreat]

1980s Jim Henson Company Christmas cards.

[pockettron3000]

sketch / doodle?? of Ordon i did last night :p

[gurjianonly]

Yes, yes you are rian

Ermm..okay guys did he rlly say this.. /j

[fribble-tribble]

oh no! tribbles! get them outta here!!

huh? hold on a second.......

!!! SURPRISE FIZZGIGS !!! nice!!

[retroscifiart]

The Dark Crystal (1982). Concept art by Brian Froud

[curioscurio]

[vintageandroid]

Fuck it. 80s Fantasy Movie poll.

I ran out of space. And no, there is no "more than one" option, you gotta choose.

Reblog if you wanna for more reach etc etc.

[goryfluff]

Fizzgig! | The Dark Crystal (1982) dir. Jim Henson & Frank Oz

[longbottomleif]

Reblog if you can hear this image I'm trying to see something

[bucklikethedollar]

idk how to say this without sounding really boomer-ey, but like, what happened to horror content for kids? maybe i’m using the word “horror” a little liberally but i remember when i was a kid there was SO much out there that existed solely for the purpose of scaring kids in a safe, fun, age-appropriate way. just off the top of my head there’s goosebumps, scary stories to tell in the dark, tales from the crypt (little before my time though), coraline, mirror mask, monster house, dark crystal (more incidentally scary but w/e), even courage the cowardly dog; all these really fantastic books and shows and movies that let kids explore being scared on their own terms.

now there’s idk, those new addams family movies? but those aren’t really scary.

i see people talking about the “kid-ification” of horror games and i can’t help but wonder if part of the reason kids latch onto that stuff so much now is because there’s nowhere else for them to experience healthy, safe fear. a little kid wants to get the thrill of being scared, but their parents won’t let them watch any actual horror movies, so they go on youtube and what do you know, there’s markiplier playing another cheap horror game set in a toy store or whatever, and now that kid’s fear quota is being met. (obviously there’s more to it than that, but it’s a theory i have)

this like, doesn’t really matter probably but idk, i feel bad that ~kids these days~ aren’t getting the experience of something scary made specifically for them with their genuine enjoyment in mind, rather than whatever the next fnaf ripoff is that just wants to sell them merch. being a kid and watching a well-made scary movie feels like you’re finally being taken seriously; you’re not being babied or coddled, you’re being trusted to face the skeksis and the other mother and the nebbercracker house and not back down. i wish people were still making media that respected kids that much.

[raycatzdraws]

For your dark crystal au, hear me out...

Bow-wow's make perfect fizzgigs. Like. Imagine Links awakening bow-wows. The one who you can give a little pink bow, and the giant one you have to save from moblins💀 its perfect

Terrifying. Thank you.

Here's Bow-Wow as a ginormous fizzgig and fizzgig as little chain chomps! So many of the creatures in Thra are really detailed and are organic in shape or sharp and chitinous. And then imagining running across a chain chomp, just- here's a gigantic perfectly round sphere. It would be incredibly absurd. I love it.

[perseidlion]

Streaming in Kaos

Well, it happened. I can't say that I'm surprised that KAOS has been cancelled by Netflix. I am a little surprised at the speed at which it was axed. Only a month after it aired, and it's already gone.

That has me wondering if the decision to cancel was made before the show even aired. We have to remember that marketing is the biggest cost after production. If the Netflix brass looked at the show and either decided (through audience testing, AI stuff or just their own biases) that it wasn't going to be a Stranger Things-level hit, they probably chose at that moment to slash its marketing budget.

That meant there was pretty much no way that KAOS was ever going to hit the metrics Netflix required of it to get a season 2.

What makes me so angry about this (other than the survival of a show relying on peoples' biases or AI) is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you decide before a show is ever going to air that it won't be a success, then it probably won't be. If you rely on metrics and algorithms and AI to analyze art, you will never let something surprise you. You'll never let it grow. You'll never nurture the cult hits of the future or the next franchise.

Netflix desperately needs people behind the scenes that believe in stories and potential over metrics. Nothing except the same old predictable dreck is ever going to be allowed to survive if you don't believe in the stories you're telling.

The networks and streamers have a huge problem on their hands. They need big hits and to build the franchises of the future to sustain their current model (which is horribly broken.) But people have franchise fatigue and aren't showing up for known IPs like they used to. The fact that Marvel content is definitely not a sure thing anymore is a huge canary in the coal mine for franchise fatigue. People aren't just tired of Marvel, they're tired of the existing worlds both on the big screen and the small one. Audiences are hungry for something new.

It is telling that the most successful Marvel properties of the last few years have been the ones that do something different. Marvel is smart to finally pull out The X-Men because that is a breath of fresh air and something people are hungry to see more of.

There's pretty much no one behind the scenes (except for maybe AMC building The Immortal Universe) that is committing to really taking the time to build these new worlds. Marvel built the MCU by playing the long game. That paid dividends for a solid decade even if it's dropping off now. That empire was built not with nostalgia for existing IP (don't forget the MCU was built with B and C tier heroes) but with patience. Marvel itself seems to have forgotten this in recent years.

Aside from that, I think people really want stories that aren't connected to a billion other things. That takes commitment on the part of the audience to follow and to get attached to. People WANT three to five excellent seasons of a show that tells its own story and isn't leaving threads out there for a dozen spinoffs. We're craving tight storytelling.

KAOS could have been that. Dead Boy Detectives could have been that. So could Our Flag Means Death, Lockwood and Co, Shadow and Bone, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Willow, and a dozen other shows with great potential or were excellent out of the gate.

If you look at past metrics, you only learn what people used to like, not what they want now. People are notoriously bad about articulating what they want, but boy do they know it when they see it. Networks have to go back to having a dozen moderate successes instead of constantly churning through one-season shows that get axed and pissing off the people who did like it in a hamfisted attempt to stumble on the next big thing.

The networks desperately need to go back to believing in their shows. Instead, they keep cutting them off at the knees before they ever get a chance because some algorithm told them the numbers weren't there.