#the new film pretty much soured afterlife

[spengnitzed]

Phoebe deserved better writing. Honestly, it’s atrocious what they did to her character.

To inflict trauma upon her is appalling and off brand for a fun movie franchise.

[mst3kproject]

1009: Hamlet, Prinz von Dänemark

I spent a buck-fifty Canadian to download this movie. There’s not much you can get for a buck-fifty Canadian.  One sour soother, maybe, or a chipped coffee mug from a garage sale that has a photo of somebody else’s grandparents on it.  So now you know how much Hamlet is worth.

We all know the story of Hamlet, whether we wanted to or not. King Hamlet of Denmark was murdered by his brother Claudius, who then married Queen Gertrude and stole the throne.  We can’t be having that, so the king’s ghost appears to his son, Hamlet Jr, and tells him he must take revenge.  Junior then spends the whole rest of the play wandering around pondering the afterlife and battering his girlfriend Ophelia before finally running Claudius through during a climactic duel during which pretty much everybody else dies, too, except for the ones who were already dead.  Nobody has ever given me a convincing explanation of why these people have names like Horatio and Laertes instead of Svend and Rolf.

I’m definitely not going to try to review Hamlet itself, Shakespeare’s play, because I don’t know a damned thing about Hamlet.  I deliberately went out and murdered those brain cells with alcohol immediately after writing my final exam.  Instead I’m going to have to talk about this movie in itself, how it fares both as a film and as a retelling of this story.

That second point is a big one.  Hamlet has been done, a lot, and as the bots point out with their sketch about their all-percussion version, it’s really hard to do anything unique with it anymore.  If you’re an acting troupe who wants to give it a try, that’s cool because it means people will get to see live theatre, but if you’re making a movie you really need to bring something new to the table.  An interesting interpretation, an actor or director that people really want to see, an unusual setting or time period, something like that.  This Hamlet has none of that.

I am reasonably sure that what the movie is trying to do is to look like a stage play, much as The Magic Voyage of Sinbad was trying to look like an opera.  Sinbad pulled it off with extravagant sets and operatic bombast.  By contrast everything in Hamlet, from pillars to thrones to flights of stairs, looks like it’s made out of concrete.  There is very little music, which somehow makes the whole thing feel even more doom-and-gloom-y than Hamlet already does.  The costumes go for a semi-fantasy look somewhere between Elizabethan and medieval, which is very stagey, and the effect is heightened by the fact that most of the characters never seem to change their clothes. The actors don’t look comfortable in them, though, which means they look uncomfortable in their characters as well. Queen Gertrude in particular looks like she’s too worried about damaging her gown to move easily in it, and the giant chain around Claudius’ neck is absurd.

Adding to the impression that the movie was shot in somebody’s basement, it’s lit very pootly when it’s lit at all.  A lot of shots are quite dull, lit in a way that shows where things are but doesn’t create mood or drama.  The film is in black and white and the characters wear black, or at least colours so dark you can’t tell the difference, which leaves night shots (such as the one where Horatio and the guards are chasing after the king’s ghost) looking like a bunch of heads floating around.

It is, of course, very difficult to judge a dubbed performance. The actors we’re watching appear to be going for a sort of heightened melodrama, part of the idea that we’re meant to feel like we’re watching a stage play.  The dub actors, on the other hand, don’t seem to have gotten the memo.  A lot of them mumble, particularly Maximilian Schell as Hamlet, which is really weird because he’s dubbing himself.  Sometimes they manage to make the Shakespearean English sound very natural, but that often jars with the physical performances.  I have no idea what sort of accents some of them think they’re doing. There are a few who don’t seem to be trying to do an accent at all, while others sound like they’re aiming for British (because it’s Shakespeare?), German (because the movie’s German?) or Damn Worwelf.

Most of the actors are kind of bland-looking, and those who stand out do so because they look weirdly wrong for the parts they’re playing.  Polonius with his little mustache looks like a physics teacher who feels naked because he’s not wearing a necktie.  He’s also dubbed by John Banner, so if you keep hearing this is so klandinkto! every time he speaks… that’s why.  If Hamlet himself looks familiar, it may be because Maximilian Schell was Dr. Reinhardt in The Black Hole, or maybe it’s because he looks a lot like the guy in Atlantic Rim that I referred to as MacGuyver. He’s a very fine actor who won an academy award for Judgment at Nuremburg, but he’s way out of place as Hamlet.  His Hollywood good looks and crooked little smile make it feel like he’s trying to play Hamlet as a dashing heartthrob.

For all that, there are a couple of moments in this movie that I quite like.  The scene in which Hamlet is nodding and smiling to the wedding guests while the Too Too Solid Flesh soliloquy begins in voiceover is quite nicely done.  It gives you a very visceral sense of this man who is forced to bottle up his anger and grief.  I also like that during the Murder of Gonzago scene, the camera focuses not on the players but on the audience reaction.  Claudius and Gertrude smile at each other when the players talk about love, and then grow uncomfortable as the play condemns re-marriage.  Ophelia’s embroidery is an attempt at symbolism, the arum being a popular funeral flower.  Too bad it’s so in-your-face that it loses all subtlety.

On the whole, though, Hamlet is just dull.  The spartan, ugly sets and dark costumes offer us very little to look at, and in some of the darker scenes there’s almost nothing to see at all. The physical and dub performances don’t match, and neither hold the attention.  Watching it feels like a two-hour slog through a tarry morass of depression.

I kind of wonder what the purpose of this movie was supposed to be. It was made for TV in the sixties, and I guess it was an attempt to capitalize on the Germans’ love of Shakespeare – because Germans do definitely love Shakespeare, sometimes considering themselves to have a better claim on him than England because unlike the English, they respect him.  More Shakespeare plays are performed in Germany every year than in England, and in the leadup to World War II the Nazi regime tried to get rid of him, couldn’t, and had to settle for picking and choosing which translations were ‘German enough’ for them (this always reminds me of the joke about Hamlet being better in the original Klingon).

If this is the case, I would like to know what the Germans who saw this movie in its original broadcast thought of it.  Sixty-year-old reviews of made-for-tv movies in foreign languages are hard to find even online, so I honestly have no idea.  I know that people who have seen this English version hate it, and I have a hard time imagining it being much better in German even when you love Shakespeare unconditionally.  The fact that the Germans do love Shakespeare just makes it seem that much more likely that they’d consider this dreary pork-filled version an insult to him.

It’s also interesting to think about what made the Best Brains pick this one out as an MST3K project.  The movie is definitely bad, and in its own way it fits right in with a lot of the black-and-white crap from the Joel era that tries so hard to be important and just ends up being depressing.  Yet the source material remains as something a lot of people would consider untouchable (the Germans being high on that list… although Shakespeare himself, purveyor of fine penis jokes to Her Majesty the Queen since 1591, would probably be totally okay with the MST3K treatment.  He must have heard way more vicious audience commentary).  My guess it was something they considered a challenge to themselves, in the same way as RiffTrax tackled Casablanca just to see if they could do it.  The Amazing Colossal Transplanted Sci-Fi Channel Episode Guide entry on the episode is kind of interesting, as Kevin mentions the feeling that they had to be funnier than usual in order to live up to the play’s legend.

My high school English teachers (the same ones who inflicted The Most Dangerous Game on me) insisted that Hamlet is a play which should make you think.  I’m pretty sure this is not what they meant, but the thing I’ve always found myself thinking about while watching or reading it is the idea of marrying one’s brother’s widow.  The church of the time said that this was equivalent to marrying one’s own sister (Claudius indeed calls Gertrude our sometime sister) and frowned upon it most heavily, and this would have been common knowledge in Elizabethan England because it was Henry VIII’s excuse for divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth’s mother (never mind that he’d also fucked Anne’s sister Mary).  By portraying this as villainous behaviour, Shakespeare was sucking up to the Queen, emphasizing that her mom’s marriage was way more legit than Catherine’s.  Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[placesyoucallhome]

Never-Ending Survey: Q’ruhka

Tagged by: @voidsentprinces

Tagging: Fuck, idk, anyone else who wants to do this

Rules: Repost, do not reblog, tag 10 blogs! 

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Q’ruhka Tia

NICKNAME: Ruhka, Rui, RuRu, Trash Cat

AGE:  He assumes about 24-25

BIRTHDAY: 21th Sun of the Fifth Astral Moon, probably

ETHNIC GROUP: Seeker of the Sun Miqo’te

NATIONALITY: He primarily considers himself a Limsan

LANGUAGE/S: Common, sign language, some Garlean, bits of Hingan and Ishgardian,

SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Demisexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Panromantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

HOME TOWN / AREA: Sagolii

CURRENT HOME:  Topmast apartments

PROFESSION: Admiral, merchant, bar owner

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Cream white just past his shoulders

EYES: Blue and gold

FACE: Diamond

LIPS: Full

COMPLEXION: Copper

BLEMISHES: Not particularly

SCARS:  Crossed scrapes on his cheek

TATTOOS: Tribal tattoos done when he was a child

HEIGHT: About 5 fulms

WEIGHT: 140 ponzes??? (I’m terrible at weights, I actually have no idea)

BUILD: Well toned

FEATURES: Well kept, long, fluffy tail

ALLERGIES: None that he’s aware of

USUAL HAIR STYLE:  Long, slightly wavy, well kept but generally left to whatever style it falls into

USUAL FACE LOOK :  Kind smile, curious eyes

USUAL CLOTHING: Business casual button up shirt and black slacks for most days, or long boots and gloves with a cropped top while working, or recently, a sweater because this sand cat still can’t deal with cold.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR/S: Namazu, otherwise, very little

ASPIRATION/S: He’s not sure at the moment, a crew, but beyond that he hasn’t decided. Finding someone that’s willing to put up with his bullshit for the rest of their lives maybe.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Kind, patient, giving, willing to consider new information and change opinions.

NEGATIVE TRAITS:  Guarded, no self esteem, there are certain things he lies about

TEMPERAMENT: Generally presents himself as a happy shoulder to lean on, ready to help as a moment’s notice. 

SOUL TYPE/S:  Server

ANIMALS: Angora cat

VICE HABIT/S: Drinking

FAITH: Doesn’t follow the twelve, has mixed feelings on deities in general

GHOSTS?: Yes

AFTERLIFE?: Well, he does now

REINCARNATION?: According to his readings on the aetherical cycle, it seems a given

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Pirate

EDUCATION LEVEL: No formal education, but plenty trade education

FAMILY.

FATHER : Qu’halha Nunh He claims to not know

MOTHER : Qu’mazh

SIBLINGS : 6 half sisters, one full sister he’s unaware of

EXTENDED FAMILY: Q’ tribe in general

NAME MEANING/S: Q’ is the Puk tribe, Qu’ was meant to stand for the Quetzalcoatl, which as a child he was fairly certain the adults had made up just to sound cool. Otherwise, there was little effort put into his name as he wasn’t particularly desired by his mother.

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: None of note

FAVORITES.

BOOK: Whatever he’s picked up most recently

DEITY: None

HOLIDAY: Any with food or drinks

MONTH:  Fifth Astral moon (September)

SEASON: Summer or fall

PLACE:  The Willow’s Meet

WEATHER:  Thunderstorms

SOUND / S: Opening a bottle, the rumble of thunder, the whirl of a spinning wheel

SCENT / S: Heavy rain, coffee, something baking in the oven

TASTE / S: Savory, salty, sour

FEEL / S: Soft wool, worn wood, dark glass bottles

ANIMAL / S: House cats, dogs, bats

NUMBER: 36

COLORS: White, black, gold

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Crafting, decorating

BAD AT: Initiating conversations

TURN ONS: Conversation, humor, trust

TURN OFFS: Aggressiveness, ignorance, arrogance

HOBBIES: Knitting and drinking

TROPES: The Everyman, possibly The Watson

QUOTES : “God damn it Gen.” (I need to start actually saving some of the shit Ruhka says)

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie,  what would it be called,  what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about?       A1 :  Possibly some Treasure planet type romp with Wes Anderson type humor/cinematography and probably steampunk thrown in. I honestly don’t have much of an idea.

Q2 :  What would their soundtrack/score sound like?           A2 : Modest mouse with other odd smatterings thrown in, I’ve started a playlist on spotify

Q3 :  Why did you start writing this character?         A3 : He’s particularly new as my characters go, actually, just about a year old, started him in fall/winter of 2018, started attempting to rp him at the turn of the year I think.

Q4 :  What first attracted you to this character?         A4 : He’s so goddamn normal I thought it was funny. He’s not got any magical powers, he has a shitty backstory but it’s pretty bland comparatively, all he’s got to get by on is whether he can charm people and he’s not got much confidence in that. So now he’s the basically the one normal guy surrounded by immortals and magic and warriors. Also it was an excuse to actually put my crafting knowledge to use as he’s a merchant that deals quite a bit in weaving and carpentry. Q5 :  Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : Well, he’s pretty fucking normal isn’t he? Sometimes I wonder if he’s just too boring for anyone to particularly care about. I’ve always cared more for the ‘odd man out’ characters in series, but I perhaps I was in a small minority there. Q6 :  What do you have in common with your muse?           A6 :   We both short as hell, five foot fuck you. Also crafting, always making something. Q7 :   How does your muse feel about you?         A7 :  He’d probably offer me a drink and condolences, hah Q8 :  What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with?       A8 :  All characters have something interesting to them, I like to think Ruhka’s a way for them to get there, he’s got bit character mcguffin energy. But for him to have an interesting interaction, it usually comes down to humor, and he’s particularly easy to fluster.  Q9 :  What gives you inspiration to write your muse?     A9 :  Redemption, I guess. Still being worth something even if you aren’t anything more than normal. Q10 : How long did this take you to complete?   A10 : Fuck, idk, an hour?

[psychopancakethethird]

An Essay On Lena Luthor

A comparison of Supergirl’s Lena Luthor to classic literary characters and an exploration of why she deserves the world.

Buckle up kids I’m a lit graduate so shit is about to get over analysed.

TL:DR version: Lena Luthor has the characteristics of the pure characters only seen in children’s literature. She’s too complex a character for The CW to handle. Lena deserves better from the world and probably won’t get it because she’s such an unusual character.

Perhaps the first stories and characters we are really aware of as children are fairy tales. Every house has their own favourites and the children’s book selections vary greatly, but we all grow up pretty familiar with classic fairy tales. This is in large part thanks to Disney using them as a well of ideas. 

The first tale turned into a Disney film was Snow White and whether you’ve read the Grimm’s retelling or you watched the animation it’s not hard to find comparisons to Lena Luthor. I personally own four different written tellings of the Snow White story (the oldest of which dates back as far as the 16th century) and in all of them she is described as the beautiful. Snow White has always been considered the “fairest of them all”, in the real world beauty is a little more subjective than a mirror telling us who is the fairest in the land. The Katie McGrath fandom will gladly proclaim her the most exquisite beauty the world has seen, while others might disagree. Fortunately though, the tellings come with more specific description too. Snow White has “skin white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony” a “sweet white neck”. Supergirl’s Lena Luthor has the look of Snow White. 

They have more than appearance in common though. Both characters have the wicked mother figure, a woman who treats her with little more than scorn simply for having the face life gave her. Snow White is hated for outshining her mother/stepmother (depending on which version you read), while Lena just looks too much like her mother for her stepmother to cope. 

And before I swiftly move away from the passive non-heroine of Snow White I’d like to point you in the direction of Giambattista Basile’s The Young Slave (one of the earlier tellings of the story) where the stepmother is referred to as “a Medea”. True this is something Lena calls herself in Supergirl, she considers herself a true Luthor capable of limited emotion. We all know that not only is Lena far more emotional and caring than she realises but that this also implies Lillian is a Medea.

I have always felt though, that if Lena Luthor were a fairy tale character she’d need to be one of the more active ones. Lena has never simply sat on her hands and waited for things to turn out great, probably because things never just happen to go well for Lena. Snow White does literally nothing, she lies there dead as far as we’re concerned and a prince rocks up and saves the day. When have we ever known Lena to sit on the side-lines letting someone else save the day? Remember when Mon-El is struggling to take out that one guard on the Daxam ship? Lena just shoots the guard and takes control. I highlight this particular scene because you’ll also remember that red dress.

If Lena Luthor is a fairy tale heroine, it’s Little Red Riding Hood... or more accurately she’s James Thurber’s unnamed girl. I have seven different versions of the Red Riding Hood story, five of which see our heroine take charge of the situation and resolve the issue without need of someone to rescue her. Sometimes she needs assistance, hello Supergirl, but she’s the one to spot the wolf and stack the odds in her favour.

In Thurber’s telling she shoots him from a distance of twenty-five feet because “a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge.” And perhaps I’m being too generous with Lena’s observation skills here because if she still hasn’t figured out Kara is Supergirl she might want to see an optician. Though she has clocked that Sam is Reign... 

Roald Dahl’s Red Riding Hood is even a wolf hunter, who ends up helping the three little pigs out with their troubles. Not too dissimilar from the way that Lena takes it upon herself to protect others. Think about her gala trap, she had literally no need to stop the criminals, she just wanted to help. Kara/Supergirl hadn’t asked her to help, in fact they’d actively discouraged it. But Lena, despite being reviled for her brothers actions, seeks to protect the people of National City.

Speaking of Roald Dahl... Matilda. Am I right?

Matilda is a character who is insanely smart, even at such a young age, and extraordinarily independent. What we know of Lena is that she is a chess prodigy who had already graduated from MIT by the time she’d met Jack aged 19. She runs a multinational company successfully at aged 24...

Lena is insanely smart too, I think we can safely say that. But that’s not the characters’ only link. Matilda is neglected by her family, she’s emotionally abandoned and touch starved. The first caring woman (that really pays attention to her) she meets, instantly becomes her favourite. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say the same things could be said of Lena.

And when Matilda finds herself facing off against an aggressive bully she stands up and uses her power to fight back. How hard would it be to say that Morgan Edge is an aggressive bully that Lena fights with the power she holds as CEO of a multi-billion dollar company?

By the time I’d familiarised myself with the fairy tales and read my way through the Roald Dahl collection sat on my shelf, the next progression in my childhood reading seemed to be The Narnia collection.

So which Pevensie girl do I think Lena shares traits with? Well it’s certainly not bloody Susan. No, Lena has the faith in goodness and the perpetually hopeful heart so reminiscent of Lucy.

Just as we fear Lucy is about to fall under the wicked enchantments of Mr Tumnus (that sneaky s o b) she snaps out of it and shrugs off any chance that she’ll be anything but good. Tenuously reminding me of the feeling I had watching the ‘Medusa’ episode.

But where I really see them mirroring each other is in their devotion the truth while being ridiculed and facing mistrust for it. No one believes Lucy when she tells them about Narnia, once Edmund stumbles into it and denies it’s existence to Susan and Peter things get worse for her. And when Lucy’s story is corroborated at last she isn’t smug she’s grateful. And she begins to find ways to do good in her new world.

Lena has a devotion to the truth and is constantly dismissed as a villain because of her name. Her brother’s actions certainly don’t help her out. When Kara begins to report on the good intentions of Lena Luthor, she isn’t anything but grateful to her new friend. And she sets about finding ways to keep doing good in her new city.

Lucy becomes Queen Lucy the Valiant. And if you’re not totally sure on what exactly that means here’s the definition...

adjective possessing or showing courage or determination.

Lena, as far as I’m concerned consistently demonstrates both courage and determination.

And I’m not even getting into the rest of the series where Lucy continues to show the brave perseverance we see in Lena.

It seems strange to find so much of Lena Luthor in these child characters. She’s a grown woman in charge of a multi-billion dollar company. She’s seen the darkness of the world around her and fully understood how brutal it is, unlike most of our child protagonists. Yet Lena demonstrates the purity of character usually only reserved for the heroes of children’s literature. Is this a sign that Lena, having never been fully nurtured, is still growing into the woman she could be?

Is it that with the love and respect from first Kara, then Sam too, Lena is learning to develop and juggle the many roles adult life throws at us? When we first met her she was single minded in her ambition to repair her families name. Now she’s a best friend, a surrogate aunt, a personable boss, someone who has grieved for the loss of a love and she has begun to consider the kind of person she wants to be (see her inner turmoil about nearly shooting Edge). 

In literature the reward for the child hero overcoming the obstacles and developing into an adult is the happy ending. The fairy tale princesses find true love, Matilda finally gets the loving family she has dreamt of, and Lucy is gifted eternal afterlife on a heavenly plain.

Are we likely to see Lena receive the reward she deserves for her actions? Probably not, and it’s a little heart breaking. Lena Luthor is a pure soul that is so rarely found in adult characters, much like Kara she has every reason to be soured by the world/universe. But she perseveres, she fights for good, she proves to us that lights shine brightest in the darkest corners. 

But when even her best friend lies to her on a daily basis will she be crushed and malformed into the villain the arrowverse citizens think she is?

I’d like to think the Supergirl writers will respect her but The CW isn’t exactly known for it’s respectful writing.

The trouble is I think the writers have no idea what to do with her character. Shows like this, and shows written by writers like Queller are filled with tedious adolescent tropes that are wholly unsurprising and contrived. The show has descended into the teen drama style of writing, obsessed with romance and displaying very little character development. And Lena Luthor is a unique character. Or at least I can’t think of any adult characters on screen quite like her. Where does a repetitive and unoriginal writer look for a how-to-guide on writing a unique character? She’s too complex a character to fit into tropes.

So far they’ve made a few attempts to fit her into the angsty tropes, and I’ve no doubt they will continue to. But she doesn’t fit neatly into them and it’s not really working. So we’re getting a lot of clunky writing for her. 

In my humble opinion the show is doing a massive disservice to Lena Luthor as a character. I’d love to see a truly skilled writer work with her.

[armorbirdpress]

Armor Bird Reviews: Deadpool 2

If you'll excuse the cringeworthy wordplay to start us off, I've been dying harder than a mook at Wade Wilson's mercy to see the Deadpool sequel, and I finally got my wish last weekend. The first movie is as of now my favorite in the X-Men film canon, and this is coming from somebody who's seen most if not all of the movies over the years and really enjoyed both Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. However, Deadpool topped them both by quite a margin by not only rerailing the Merc with a Mouth, but also using quite a bit of self-deprecation among other humor to blow a mile-wide hole in the fourth wall. So, was Deadpool 2 able to outdo the first film in terms of quality and humor? The spoilerific answer is under the cut!

Deadpool 2 starts off... pretty badly, actually. There is definitely humor and a bit of a jab at the ending of Logan - the film literally opens with a music box shaped like the dead Wolverine, in fact - and we get to see the Merc turn himself to ludicrous gibs literally within minutes of the studio titles. Fine and dandy for an introductory sequence, right? But then we get to see why he blew himself up: someone shot Vanessa while he and his gang broke into Wade's apartment. That... that's not how I wanted to start us off. It was a disappointment to me especially since Vanessa actually gains powers in the comics and I'd have wanted to see that play out in a Deadpool sequel, rather than her getting fridged less than ten minutes in. For reasons I'll get to much later in this review, the impact actually wasn't as bad as Mako Mori getting fridged in Pacific Rim: Uprising - which was in its entirety a bitter disappointment for my taste; I seriously hope a third PR movie does get made after all that fixes what this one made such a huge mess of, but I digress. Having Vanessa's death solely be for the sake of Deadpool's development was an upset I worried would detract from the rest of the movie. I even saw it coming, actually - Wade's narration mentions that like other family movies, which he insists this film is an example of, it starts with "a vicious murder"... definitely not him, but with nobody else significant other than Vanessa and her bringing up an interest in having children early on, I just knew it would end badly for her. Again, I'll get back to her later, but her fate left a sour taste in my mouth and I seriously hoped what followed made up for it.

To my surprise - and to my surprise, to my pleasant surprise - Deadpool's quest to do something decent for once, while undermined a little by his love interest's demise, combined the standard dose of fourth-wall-breaking antics, that continent-wide streak of dark black comedy that only Deadpool could deliver, and an impressive degree of character development while still keeping Wade a demented, murderous flock-head who only endears us because of his deceptively sophisticated sense of humor. Even in-universe, a brief cameo by some of the other X-Men demonstrates that with the exception of Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and the newly introduced Yukio (who I would later find out also showed up in The Wolverine but in a different timeline and portrayed completely differently), nobody wants anything to do with him whenever he shows up at the mansion. And yet he still charmed us all in spite of all of that. I don't know how the heck he does it - perhaps it's his casual transition between talking with the characters and the audience, and vice versa, or maybe it's his self-deprecation and acknowledgement that he's a total a-hole, or maybe it's both at once. But he remains as quotable and memetic as ever in this movie while also learning valuable life lessons about caring for others, which makes him as strong a protagonist as the first time around while still making his character arc here more distinct and special.

By the same token, the film does a good job of making it seem like there's a main antagonist - the spotlight is put on Vanessa's murderer, Cable, that mutant-hating preacher who abused Russel/Firefist, Russel himself, and Juggernaut, in that order - but ultimately having the main conflict being Deadpool trying to do good for both the world and himself without vivisecting people the way he usually does. There's no major threat to Wade in this movie apart from his own inner struggles, including wanting to see Vanessa in the afterlife, wanting to protect Russel from Cable (who is himself slightly mistaken), and wanting to punish those who abused Russel while not inciting him to go down the dark path Cable was trying to prevent in the first place. Likewise, Russel himself wants vengeance against the preacher who tortured him, but if he kills him he'll start wanting to kill more people and cause the bad future that Cable didn't want, so it's down to Deadpool to get him to see sense. Deadpool's ever-present rival, Colossus, also comes to terms with the nobility of the Merc's intentions, and even gets to loosen up and try out his more vulgar approach to life for once. And even Cable himself, who seems like a villain in the second act of the movie, ultimately comes to understand that you don't have to kill people to prevent a dark future and acts accordingly to help Deadpool. The main theme of the movie is that reckless violence only begets reckless violence, and that breaking the cycle can be difficult - it takes a selfless act from Deadpool himself to do the trick in this case - but the act of caring for others, so complicated and yet so simple, is a more sustainable solution than selfishly acting on your own interests. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think the world could learn from Wade's example if only it took the time to listen.

I've rambled long enough about this movie without getting into the supporting characters as well as the blatant (and bitingly subversive) attempt at making it an X-Force pilot. The marketing played up the characters recruited by Deadpool to rescue Russel to the point where some of the trailers even included scenes featuring them that weren't in the final film (and may have even been made specifically to throw off the public). With one exception, not one of them even survives long enough to participate in said rescue - Bedlam gets hit by a bus, Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, Zeitgeist goes feet-first into a woodchipper... Even Peter the memetic ordinary guy dies trying to help that last one, though he and the aforementioned exception are also the only members of the group to make it out in the long term. Only Domino, thanks to her luck power, manages to not only stick the landing but be an awesome character from that point forward. Now, I know that weaponized luck ability sounds Suvian, and if written badly it is. But if a line from Domino when the gang gets to the orphanage where Russel was kept is any indication, she used to live there as a kid - and who knows if she was tortured like Russel was. Exploring the problems of her ability, both in her troubled past and in the present day, could be an interesting avenue to explore in her future appearances. It also doesn't hurt that Deadpool actually throws shade at her luck ability for not being photogenic, even though the Disaster Dominoes she causes allow her to get to Russel with ease. Come to think of it, a further way of deconstructing her luck could be having her eventually become aware of the collateral damage it could cause to others, and try to rectify this oversight before she ends up getting lucky at the cost of someone else's life (Maybe she already has and hasn't realized it? I can't tell). Ultimately, Domino is my second favorite character in this movie aside from the Merc himself, and I hope to see more of her in future X-Men installments.

So, where will the third Deadpool movie go now that Vanessa is dead? Well... Towards the end of the movie, Cable used the one remaining charge of his time-travel device to retroactively save Deadpool, by using the same skee-ball token he'd taken from Wade earlier as a pocket protector for its owner (previously he'd taken a bullet shot by Cable himself to save Russel and demonstrate his hidden altruism). In a mid-credits stinger, Negasonic and Yukio fix the device... and give it to Wade by mistake. Whereupon the Merc proceeds to abuse its power to undo the deaths of Vanessa and Peter (along with two old shames of Ryan Reynolds' that I won't spoil even here), meaning that surprise, Vanessa escapes the fridge after all! I honestly should've seen this coming, but unlike with the Time Stone in Avengers: Infinity War, Cable's device never was played up as a means of setting right what had gone wrong in Deadpool's history, so the stinger was a bit of a curveball for me at least. Still, it was a massive relief in hindsight that Vanessa's death was undone, since that means she'll have more room for development in the third Deadpool movie. I'd still want to see her develop superpowers of her own (I think she had shapeshifting in the comics) and ultimately end up fighting alongside her fiancee, and in fact that could be the exact conflict of the third movie if I were to guess - his coaching her through her new life and the complications that both of them being superheroes (well, super-anti-hero in Wade's case) would bring to their relationship. Fridging her in this movie was a mistake, even if it was temporary, but unlike with poor Mako Mori, there is at least a very good chance that the upcoming third film could more than make up for it, and I really hope Vanessa gets a much bigger spotlight in said third film than in this one, because gosh darn it, she needs and deserves it. On a slightly unrelated note, I'm also hopeful that Yukio gets more screentime, especially considering her lovable personality and relationship with Negasonic (major props to the producers for the same-sex pairing representation!), and as with Vanessa, I hope she gets a bigger role and becomes more pivotal to whatever shenanigans Deadpool gets involved with next time he hits the big screen. 

As a re-railing of Wade's character, and as the first R-rated X-Men installment, the first Deadpool already did set a pretty high bar, especially since its production was super troubled and it was only after several shake-ups in 20th Century Fox as well as Reynolds supposedly leaking footage of the movie himself that it managed to see the light of day. So was Deadpool 2 a worthy successor? There were a few bumps in the road, sure, but they weren't as consequential as I feared they would, and it was otherwise a hilarious and awesome romp that matched the first film in terms of quality and, yes, even exceeded it, thanks in part to solid supporting characters (Cable and Domino especially) and a slightly less cookie-cutter plotline. It's not perfect by any means - but then again, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as cinematic perfection, and nobody isn't allowed to gut movies they enjoy nor are they forbidden from providing their feedback on what could be done to make these movies better. All the same, the Deadpool series has thus far been a winner in my book, and I rest my case in the wake of Deadpool 2. I look forward to the future cinematic fourth-wall-obliterating adventures of the Merc with a Mouth... even if the rest of the X-Men probably wouldn't.

Grading Scheme:

96 - 100: A+

93 - 96: A

90 - 92.9: A-

87 - 89.9: B+

83 - 86.9: B

80 - 82.9: B-

77 - 79.9: C+

73 - 76.9: C

70 - 72.9: C-

67 - 69.9: D+

60 - 66.9: D

Below 60: E

Grades:

Writing: 10

Characterization: 8

Pacing: 8

Creativity: 9

Consistency: 8

Cinematography: 10

World Building: 9

Music and Sound: 9

Effects: 8

Engagement: 10

Final Grade: 89 (B+)

[obstinxnce-blog]

A REALLY LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY. RULES.  repost , don’t  reblog  ! tag  10  ! good  luck  ! TAGGED.  @discordharmonia TAGGING.   ANYBODY!! just say i tagged you!!!!

FULL NAME : Cecilia Isabel Asgre NICKNAME // ALIAS: Mostly “Ceci” unless someone comes up with something else AGE :  Modern Verse: 21  BIRTHDAY :  October 27th ETHNIC GROUP : Korean, Italian, Welsh NATIONALITY : American LANGUAGE / S : English, some Korean, beginner Italian SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Asexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Demiromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Single CLASS : Middle class HOME TOWN / AREA :  Somewhere in Australia CURRENT HOME :  Her friend Liv’s house PROFESSION :  Online College Student

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : Short, deep brown hair that’s kinda curly and definitely messy. EYES : Small almond shaped light blue eyes FACE : Honestly the best mix of a baby face and a defined face LIPS : Small, a nude pink color. COMPLEXION : Pale BLEMISHES : No notable ones SCARS :  Lip scar, and a few scars littered across her body. TATTOOS : None HEIGHT : 4′11.4  WEIGHT : 119 lbs BUILD : Fit FEATURES : That ‘completely done’ look ALLERGIES : None USUAL HAIR STYLE : Messy, basically a permanent bed head. USUAL FACE LOOK : Poker face, or a serious face USUAL CLOTHING : Probably a jacket over a crop top & jeans. It varies though.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : Her ‘no-feelings’ facade cracking too hard, losing others, not being able to protect herself ASPIRATION / S : None POSITIVE TRAITS : Calm, intelligent, fit, selfless, loving, loyal NEGATIVE TRAITS : Stubborn, reckless, sarcastic, cold, solemn, paranoid ZODIAC : Scorpio TEMPERAMENT : Phlegmatic / Choleric SOUL TYPE / S :  Hunter/Helper VICE HABIT / S : Probably how she will go against authority if she feel it’s right?? Gah VIRTUES / VICES: Caring, will sacrifice her own needs for others FAITH : Agnostic GHOSTS ? : Nah AFTERLIFE ? : Maybe REINCARNATION ? : Maybe ALIENS ? : Lowkey POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : FUC EDUCATION LEVEL : Post-Secondary (College Yr 2)

FAMILY.

FATHER : Harris Asgre MOTHER : Saria Asgre, Carissa Heloise (Step) SIBLINGS : Modern: Julia & Jonas Asgre (Younger) Other verses: Alice Asgre (Older) EXTENDED FAMILY : That Uncle who taught her to fight NAME MEANING / S : Cecilia supposedly means blind, and Asgre means heart (Wow that’s edgy as fuck) HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : idk

FAVORITES.

BOOK : she dunno? MOVIE : AAA fuq 5 SONGS : idk dood she’s not too picky w music HOLIDAY : None MONTH : None SEASON : Autumn PLACE : She cannot choose WEATHER : Cloudy and windy, but not to where it’s freeezing. SOUND : Rain SCENT / S : Floral or sweet TASTE / S : Spicy, sour, or sweet FEEL / S : Soft soft soft soft sof ANIMAL / S :  Fox NUMBER : None COLORS : Cool Colors

EXTRA.

TALENTS : Dancing, she can sing decently?? BAD AT : COOKING! TURN ONS : Being touched in general let’s be honest she’s weak for affection TURN OFFS : She’s way too picky, yet I can’t think of her turn offs bye?? Maybe players and people who keep too many shady secrets ( as opposed to personal secrets ) HOBBIES : Dancing, reading, uhh TROPES : if it’s like tv tropes there’s a lot u h AESTHETIC TAGS : mmm heck uhh  GPOY QUOTES :   dskjfhsdkhf

FC INFO.

MAIN FC / S : Izumi Shimomura (Ajin: Demi Human) ALT FC / S : Bex Taylor Klaus for live action / GoGo Tomago (BH6) OLDER FC / S : Okuni Kumo (Rengoku ni Warau) YOUNGER FC / S : Crow/Raven Arrow (Ava’s Demon) for 10-13, and Kyouka Jirou (BNHA) For 14-18 VOICE CLAIM / S : Kemi Haydee Stanton GENDERBENT  FC / S : idk tho boi.

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?          

A1 :  Name redacted b/c it’s the name of her canon, uhh like a futuristic kind of fantasy thing... AAAND it’d be either live action or CG animated and it’d be about her canon verse.

Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?          

A2 : If you’re talking like a ‘theme’ it’d be really calm and pretty similarly to like ‘Kairi’ from Kingdom Hearts or ‘Lusamine’ from Pokemon SuMo

Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?        

A3 : I wanted a character who was really sassy and defied authority, but she’s evolved into something new now

Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?          

A4 : well i created her, but i didn’t like her as much as i do now until i started developing the first stages of her canon

Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.          

A5 : it’s hard for her to get close to other muses, causing first interaction threads to be a little bit difficult for ne

Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?          

A6 :  we both have rlly dark hair, are korean, and have lived in the nothern usa

Q7 : how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?          

A7 : probably wonders why i hate myself so much

Q8 :  what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?        

A8 : characters who are really rambunctious and characters who can easily read people bc lord knows that’s the opposite of what she wants

Q9 : what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?        

A9 :  video game music mostly

Q10 : how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?          

A10 : uhh maybe a good thirty minutes bc im a bum!!!

[theheadlessgroom]

REALLY  LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. repost, don’t reblog ! tag 10 ! good  luck ! TAGGED. Tagged by @murroyilodel! TAGGING. Okay, um...@askthehatboxghost @asktheghosthost @ask-the-hatbox-ghost @grim-grinning-gwen @hitchhikinghaunts and anyone else who wants to do it!!

BASICS. FULL  NAME : Randall Huit Pace NICKNAME : The Hatbox Ghost, Ol’ Hatty, Mr. Pace AGE : 33 (mentally); 235 (technically) BIRTHDAY : May 9th, 1782 ETHNIC  GROUP : Caucasian  NATIONALITY :  Irish-American LANGUAGE / S : English and a bit of Irish SEXUAL  ORIENTATION : Heterosexual  ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION : Heteroromantic  RELATIONSHIP  STATUS : (Happily) married to Emily Pace nee’ Bloodmere, the Beating-Heart Bride CLASS : Lower class, though one could technically argue that with him being a ‘member’ of the Gracey family (as qualified by being one of the 999 happy haunts), he’s much more well-off now HOME  TOWN / AREA : New Orleans, Louisiana CURRENT  HOME : Gracey Manor AKA The Haunted Mansion, at Anaheim, California’s Disneyland theme park PROFESSION : Haberdasher and resident happy haunt (’attic ghost’, to be more specific) of the Mansion

PHYSICAL. HAIR : (Disheveled, usually) Black hair, very just enough wave and curl in it to make it a frustrating pain to get under control. As a spirit, it has turned a sort of salt-and-pepper gray, with faint streaks of white in it EYES : Initially, they were a very pale green, but as a ghost, they have turned a blank, dead black and white color NOSE : Once upon a time, Randall actually had a  nose! It was rather long, and he felt it attracted too much attention when one looked at him, but with his lack of one as a spirit, he finds he looks rather strange without it FACE : Very sharp and angular as a spirit, there’s more emphasis on his jawline and his cheekbones, which bear a more skeletal appearance now. As a mortal, his face was a little rounder, but there was still definition as to what he looked like beneath the skin LIPS : Very thin, sort of pinched lips-obviously, he lacks them as a spirit now, but they were never large to begin with COMPLEXION : Very, very pale, a trait inherited from his Irish-born father. Strangely, he didn’t get the freckles, but he got the ashen pallor and ease when it came to sunburning  BLEMISHES : None SCARS : Only one-the long, jagged scar that winds around Randall’s neck, from where his head was chopped off by Emily’s fiancee. It is extremely sensitive to the touch, and while he generally dislikes people touching it, he would permit Emily to (very gently) kiss it, which always provoked a heavy blush when she did TATTOOS : None HEIGHT : 4′12 WEIGHT : Probably weighs 100 lbs. soaking wet (Randall’s always been pretty light) BUILD : He was pretty scrawny as a mortal, not exactly super strong, but he’s naturally extremely bony as a ghost (and still isn’t particularly strong) FEATURES : Eyes are very large and highly expressive, and the same goes for his grin-usually, looking at these two aspects of his face, his mood can be read rather easily ALLERGIES : None USUAL  HAIR  STYLE : Cut short, it’s usually very frizzy and wild, sticking out from beneath his hat USUAL  FACE  LOOK : In the ride, you can usually catch him grim-grinning at the riders, leering back and forth as he watches them pass by USUAL  CLOTHING : Fairly simple-a white button up beneath a simply vest and overcoat, trousers, and his father’s cloak, with stockings and simple shoes, matched with his favorite top hat

PSYCHOLOGY. FEAR / S : Fears banishment, mainly, but this fear is only rivaled by his fear that he’ll never be reunited with Emily, and he’ll be trapped with Constance for all of eternity ASPIRATION / S : Reunite with his bride, see Constance be kicked out of the Mansion, see Dorian finally confess his feelings to Elizabeth Henshaw (and perhaps marry her) POSITIVE  TRAITS : Hard-working, loyal, generous, protective, family-oriented NEGATIVE  TRAITS : Pessimistic, cranky, hot-tempered, self-loathing, self-isolating    MBTI : INFJ-T ZODIAC : Taurus TEMPERAMENT : Melancholic  SOUL  TYPE / S : The Helper ANIMALS : Warthog VICE  HABIT / S : He has the tendency to be a bit of a workaholic, and does occasionally work himself overtime-this was most prominent when he was an employee at the haberdashery, and he was struggling to make enough money to get by FAITH : Was raised Irish-Catholic, but given his status as a ghost, he’s not sure what to believe now GHOSTS ? : Initially, Randall wasn’t sure he believed in ghosts, preferring to believe in the hereafter instead. Obviously, he believes now, being one himself AFTERLIFE ? : Randall believed in an afterlife growing up, but again, now he’s not sure, given that he’s still stuck on Earth: He likes to think his mother is somewhere in heaven, though REINCARNATION ? : He’s not sure about reincarnation-he just hopes that it’s not real, lest Emily’s spirit be reincarnated, and he ends up losing her altogether ALIENS ? : Aliens aren’t really on Randall’s radar, they never really have been, but if ghosts exist, then he wouldn’t be surprised if aliens did too POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT : None ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE : He would have preferred to be a bit more well-off in life, as much of it he struggled, as both a child and as an adult SOCIOPOLITICAL  POSITION : None EDUCATION  LEVEL : Home-schooled, Randall is pretty educated just the same; the only thing he struggles a bit with is reading, though he hates to admit it

FAMILY. FATHER : Wilhelm Pace, an Irish immigrant seeking a better life in America. Although he struggled with alcoholism (which ultimately led to his death whilst out fishing), he was hopelessly in love with his wife, and adored his son just the same. Randall didn’t know him well, and doesn’t look too fondly on him, unfortunately MOTHER : June Pace nee’ Burke, an American woman, initially working as a maid at the hotel, where she met Wilhelm. After her husband’s death, she took it upon herself to work every job she could, and provide the best for her only son. Randall was extremely close to her, and was understandably devastated when she passed on from scarlet fever  SIBLINGS : None

EXTENDED  FAMILY : None: Much of the Burke family were already gone by the time Randall was born, and the Pace’s are all still back in Ireland, if there are any alive still NAME  MEANING / S : Randall means ‘shield’; Huit means ‘eight’ (the meaning is debatable), and Pace means either ‘mild-mannered’ or ‘peace’ HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? : He could be compared to the Greek character Orpheus, eternally seeking his lost love, who died tragically on their wedding day. Orpheus is often characterized as forlorn and pessimistic, much like Randall

FAVORITES. BOOK : The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux: After seeing the 1925 adaptation, Randall got himself a copy, and has kept it with him ever since. The only other book that rivals it as his favorite would be Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame MOVIE : As one could guess, the 1925 Phantom adaptation, but truly, any film with Lon Chaney Sr. qualifies-he’s seen them all  5  SONGS : How Deep Is Your Love by the BeeGees, Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You) by Michael Buble, Magic by Mystery Skulls, Forever by Mystery Skulls, Music of the Night by Michael Crawford  DEITY : None HOLIDAY : Halloween, of course! The spookiest day-and night-of the year! MONTH : Any of the summer months, ironically enough: Much of his happiest memories (meeting Dorian, marrying Emily, etc) were born out of the summer, particularly in June SEASON : It’s a bit of a tie between autumn and summer PLACE : More often than not, Randall is most comfortable in the attic: He’s not sure if it’s because he died in an attic or what, but he likes it the best WEATHER : Stormy, with plenty of heavy rain, thunder, and lightening  SOUND : The sounds of the happy haunts (sometimes), a little music in the background, rain pelting against the Mansion’s roof SCENT / S : Roses (as they were his mother’s favorite flower), new fabric, strawberries  TASTE / S : Strawberries, strong black coffee, potato soup, the taste of Emily’s kisses  FEEL / S : Fabric, thread and needles against his fingers, a hot cup of coffee in his hands, Emily at his side ANIMAL / S : Bats, and he’s quite close to the tree-eating snake that resides in the attic during the Haunted Mansion Holiday NUMBER : 2 COLOR : White

EXTRA. TALENTS : Sewing, mending and making clothes, mathematics (when it comes to measurements), a little art (such as sketches for clothing) a little bit of cooking, and a little bit of singing and dancing BAD  AT : Cleaning, keeping things neat and tidy in general TURN  ONS : Blonde hair, tallness, a sweet smile, kindness  TURN  OFFS : Greediness, bigotry HOBBIES : Sewing/hat-making, a little bit of gardening, dancing, and singing (only in private) TROPES :  Off With His Head/Losing Your Head, More Teeth Than The Osmond Family, Died Happily Ever After/Together In Death, Hates Being Alone, Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant; Sour Outside, Sad Inside  GPOY  QUOTES : None

FC INFO. MAIN  FC / S : Lon Chaney Sr. as ‘The Man In The Beaver Hat’ from London After Midnight

ALT  FC / S : None OLDER  FC / S : None YOUNGER  FC / S : None VOICE  CLAIM / S : lordjazor’s voicework for Hatty! (So far, that’s the only one...) GENDERBENT  FC / S : None 

MUN QUESTIONS. Q1 : if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own  movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be  filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 : Although I’d have Hatty be a main protagonist of a new Haunted Mansion movie, if I had the chance to make one on his backstory, I would. I’m not sure what I’d title it, but I think it’d be filmed in Technicolor, in the vein of older horror movies from the 70′s Q2 : what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 : It’d probably be a small orchestra, with an Irish sort of sound for his own leitmotif  Q3 : why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 : June of last year! I started building the blog before I went on vacation, and when I got back, I launched it, and here we are today! Q4 : what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 : When I first read about Hatty (and by extension, The Haunted Mansion), I was very interested in the purported romance between the Hatbox Ghost and the Beating-Heart Bride, and me, being the hopeless romantic I am, took that idea and ran with it Q5 : describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 : I can’t say there’s anything I dislike about him-except he does still kinda creep me out (particularly when it comes to the original animatronic-yikes!) Q6 : what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 : We are both of Irish descent! Q7 : how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 : He’d probably wonder why I’m so invested in the lives of himself, his family, and his friends, even though I haven’t even been to a Disney park yet (I’m working on it, though)! Q8 : what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 : Oh, just about everyone! Gwen Hatchaway, Dori Gracey, Beau Ghast, the Hitchhikers, the Leota’s, there’s never a dull moment between the characters! Q9 : what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 : I can’t really say for sure: I didn’t really pattern my version of Hatty off of anyone, and although I’m sure my characterization has been influenced by other characters, I’m just not sure who... Q10 : how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?         A10 : A whole lot longer than it should have!

[cosmicstardreamer-archive]

 REALLY  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.  RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  ! good  luck  !  TAGGED.  @flareforged​  TAGGING. @tea-and-hexes​ @stayuptildawn​ and whoever else wants to do this!

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :  Nefeloma Marianela Leocadia NICKNAME :  Neff/Neffie AGE :  24 BIRTHDAY :  January 10th ETHNIC  GROUP :  First Nations; Cherokee, Latinx NATIONALITY :  American LANGUAGE / S : English, Spanish, Tsalagi SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  Pansexual ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION : Panromantic RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :  Verse dependent, Canonically single HOME  TOWN / AREA :  Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey CURRENT  HOME : Apartment complex in a nice little space pocket PROFESSION :  Artist/Waitress

PHYSICAL.

SKIN : Medium/Deep in color EYES:  Purple, on the lighter side. Almond in shape FACE :  Rounded LIPS :  Slightly plump and almost always with purple lipstick on COMPLEXION :  Acne usually depends on her hormones but for the most part she takes good care of her skin. BLEMISHES :   She’s got a few cause she had a habit of picking at the scars but they’re faded thanks to her taking better care of herself. SCARS :  On her wrists, but faded. TATTOOS :  OH BOY OKAY she has a tattoo of the Capricorn constellation on the back of her neck, A moon and star on her back right shoulder blade, a decorative arm cuff on her upper left arm [ it’s got a square maze pattern, then diamonds, and then stars at the end of beads I guess you can say? I’ll upload pics of them ] , pentagram in a circle with wings on both her wrists, many small designs on her fingers including a cross on a beaded chain on the lower and 3 dots on her upper right ring finger, a zigzag band on her lower right index finger, lower left pinkie has a band with connected U’s that have dots decorating the middle, top left ring finger is a crescent moon, top left middle is another zigzag band and 3 dots) Pics: Here, Here, and Here (Warning this one is a lil n/sfw so open with caution) HEIGHT :  5′7 WEIGHT :  170lbs BUILD :  Curvy and has a little chub around her waist, but has muscles when she flexes. Hidden muscles to be honest, but not super defined. They’re just noticeable enough. FEATURES :  Beauty mark under left eye,  ALLERGIES : Soy beans (soy sauce is okay though) USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  Long hair down to her butt in a hime cut. USUAL  FACE  LOOK :  She’s got resting bitch face man there’s literally no other way to put it. USUAL  CLOTHING :  This is actually verse dependent along with pre/post dependent. During her adventure she’ll be in this but post-adventure she’ll be in this.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S :  Being alone, being replaced, not being good enough, betrayal, being lied to, basically anything that has to do with a negative relationship with someone. ASPIRATION / S :  To get married and have a family while being successful in the work business. It seems simple but it seems so hard to obtain for her. POSITIVE  TRAITS :  Selfless, caring, compassionate, empathetic, determined, if you need her she WILL be there. NEGATIVE  TRAITS :  MAN does she have a temper. She can also be very passive-aggressive, bossy, a bit of a bitch at times, easily pushes people away when she has her episodes. MBTI : The Mediator/INFP-T ZODIAC : Capricorn TEMPEREMENT :  Melancholic SOUL  TYPE / S :  Spiritualist/Creator ANIMALS :  Penguin VICE  HABIT / S : Lip biting, making exagerated faces, playing with her hands/hand movements FAITH :  Agnostic/Pagan. Somewhere around there. She’s more the inner soul type of spiritualist than she is the religious type. GHOSTS ? :  Yes AFTERLIFE ? :  Yes REINCARNATION ? : Yes ALIENS ? :  Yes (She’s dating one in one verse) POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  She prefers not to get involved in politics EDUCATION  LEVEL :  Graduated college with a Bachelors in Fine Arts

FAMILY.

FATHER :   Felipe, the man who meant the world to her. He was born in Puerto Rico and moved to America when he was still very young. A very fun loving but hard working man. He’d protect her from her mother’s outburts. MOTHER :   Nadia, a mother who proved not to be much of one at all. Caused Neff a lot of stress and grief to the point of self harm and a suicide attempt after the death of Felipe. Very aggressive and has a complex. SIBLINGS :  None. She’s an only child. Was supposed to have a brother but he never made it past the pregnancy. EXTENDED  FAMILY :  She has a lot of cousins an her grandparents NAME  MEANING / S :  Nefeloma is greek for “Nebula”. Marianela and Leocadia are both spanish names meaning “Beloved Star” and “Bright” respectively. HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? :   N/A

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  I haven’t the slightest idea to be honest. Probably the House of Night series despite how cliche and slightly embarrassing it is simply because it’s about a First Nations vampire that ties in touches of paganism and that is very much her life. MOVIE :  GOSH I don’t think she has one.  5  6 SONGS :  Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine, Which Witch by Florence + The Machine, Trip The Darkness by Lacuna Coil, House of Shame by Lacuna Coil, On A Good Day by Above & Beyond, Peace of Mind by Above & Beyond DEITY :  She believes that all exist honestly but her faith doesn’t really belong to any in particular. HOLIDAY :  She likes Halloween and also Yule  MONTH :  April (showers bring May flowers and she very much loves the rain) SEASON : Spring oh my gosh she loves Spring so much. PLACE : Besides the comfort of home? Space. Any place she can see the stars. WEATHER :  Rain rain rain give her rain whether it be a small shower or a thunderstorm. Otehr than that a nice crisp day, sunny but with a breeze. And those cool crisp nights where you can see the stars. SOUND :  Rain, Thunder, Wind chimes SCENT / S :  Lavender and Vanilla, Peach and Cherry Blossom TASTE / S :  Sweet, Sour, and Spicy foods. Anything loaded with flavor. FEEL / S :  Soft sheets, water trhough her fingers, a gentle caress, strong hugs, that serenity of a quiet night ANIMAL / S :  She loves them all NUMBER :  24 COLORS :  Purple, Blue, Black

EXTRA.

TALENTS : Painting and Singing BAD  AT :  Emotional Stability tbqh but it’s not like she can have that TURN  ONS :  Biting (especially on the neck and bottom lip), dominance fights, talk dirty to me *saxophone plays*, suits TURN  OFFS :  Ignorance (when chosen over learning), People treated as objects/trophies, persistence when unwanted HOBBIES : Painting and Drawing TROPES :  Misery Builds Character, The Empath, Enemy Within, I Am Who? QUOTES :   “I can’t tell you to remember me, but I can’t bear for you to forget me.”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own  movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be  filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 :   Man I’ve always low-key dreamed about Neff having her own anime or vidja gaem but I feel like it would be called something similar to my url like Cosmic Dreamer and it would be a story about self discovery and self love. Like despite the huge thing she’s involved in that makes her very important what matters most is how she sees herself and the decisions she makes for herself you know? Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 :   Man okay it’s pretty much the music player on the blog. Alternative rock, acoustic, really kind of mysterious vocals. Good stuff. Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 :   Neff is my baby and she stands for a lot that I think people can appreciate. She’s got a personality disorder, she’s LGBTQA+, she’s POC, she’s within all the minorities as a ‘main character’ and unapologetically so.  Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 :   Okay so I have an assload of OCs and originally my main fave was a character named Caprice aka Capi. She’s my oldest and longest ‘living’ OC I guess you can say. But when I made Neff she became even more of a breakthrough. Obviously there’s some bias with her being based on me and my experiences and all (even though I kinda hate myself so that’s a bit ironic), but the fact that she’s someone who does what I can’t is a healthy outlet for me for expression. Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 :   What I like most is also what I hate most and that is our similarities. Being hyper aware of your bad traits can drive you up a wall. Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 :   Neff is pretty much my life story with added tweaks to make it extra dramatic because I’m a piece of shit : D Q7 :   how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 :   I MEAN I’D HOPE SHE LIKES ME I’M KINDA HER MOM Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 :   I mean I think every interaction is an interesting one.   Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 :   A lot fo the ‘what ifs’ I ask myself with my own experiences and just things in general. Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?           A10 :   Too damn long.