#the only thing that I 100% would like to rewrite in ii is the whole “evil paper” arc

[steakcreature]

Acceptance

Reunion

[lowcountry-gothic]

After a couple of days processing Path of Vengeance, here are a few conclusions I’ve drawn from Phase II as a whole. If this is all we’re going to get of the Nihil’s backstory (and it may not be; Yoda’s return at the end of Midnight Horizon suggests he’s found some answers on his quest with Elder Tromak and that we might get to hear some of them), then I actually find the story of the Nameless pretty satisfying in how few answers it actually gives. As one of Star Wars’ few forays into the horror genre, the Nameless always felt terrifying and narratively effective in how little they’re described, and yet how viscerally they’re evoked. It feels fitting that we get just a glimpse of their home planet but no real explanation of how or why they do what they do.

That being said, I did find myself piecing together a theory of my own as I read the Planet X segments. The planet is described as so rich and lush with the Force that forests grow back in the span of a year when destroyed, minor wounds heal almost immediately, and even non-Force-sensitive people like Bokana or Shea Ganandra begin to display light Force aptitude. In such a place where the Force is literally overflowing, it makes sense that a creature like the Nameless could evolve to be able to simply drink the pure Living Force from other life forms without unduly affecting the ecosystem. It’s only when they’re removed from the planet do they cease to be a mere animal, becoming something sinister and terrifying, since their normally abundant sustenance is elsewhere so comparatively scarce. On Jedha and Dalna, the creatures are repeatedly described as appearing starved and even bony. This idea would also fit with the recent one-shot comic Quest of the Jedi, which describes the origin of the jewels embedded in the Rod of Seasons and the Rod of Daybreak. They were originally a single gem on Angcord, where its power gave the people of that world Force abilities but as a result ended up draining the planet of its ability to sustain life. The parallels between Angcord and Planet X seem clear, and the common theme seems to be imbalance. The idea that too much life, too much concentration of the Force, can lead to darkness. Far from being a paradise, as it’s initially described, Planet X feels sinister and unhealthy, overloaded with (almost hoarding?) energy and resources and as a result creating something actually hostile to life and to the Force.

I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this. It makes sense, if I’m reading the thematic content correctly, but it also seems to rely on a scarcity mindset rather than one of abundance, which I feel is philosophically wrong as well as inconsistent with the philosophy of the Jedi and of Star Wars as a whole. It also feels vagely dualistic. I don’t know. I feel like I still haven’t fully thought through all the implications, and I need more time to digest all of this. There might also be more coming in Phase III that could shed further light and context on the whole thing.

Finally, it was interesting how the origin of the Path engines (the puns! I love it) seem to be connected to all of this as well. We know from Phase I that the Paths come from Mari San Tekka, so it makes sense that they have a connection to the Force, and that the origin of such an unusual Force ability also stems from Planet X. Shea says she is “rewriting the known laws of hyperspace” as she makes the jump calculations to leave the planet, and we learn at the end that her real name, as well as her mother’s and potentially her baby’s, is Mari. This begs a lot of questions. If Shea is an alias, then it makes sense that Ganandra might be, too. We already know that the Nihil kept Mari alive far beyond the span of a normal human life, so it’s plausible that Shea Ganandra is really the Mari San Tekka we meet in Phase I. Or perhaps her daughter? Or even her mother? We don’t know, and the fact that this is left ambiguous is interesting.

Overall, I’m really satisfied with Phase II. I can’t decide if I like these stories and characters better than the ones of Phase I, or if it’s just that I’ve read them more recently. It’ll be interesting to get back to the time of Elzar, Avar, Bell, and Marchion when Phase III starts this fall.

[mbiwald]

Yeah, I actually was the one who asked him. (I only meant to ask about SL, I formed the question wrong).

He did say there was a funeral, I didn't ask for details like "was there body in the coffin?".

From the show itself contexts is all over the place even if you try French dub. There was that one scene in Style Queen special I think, were the reporter talks about Emily, and from what I remember out of 3 versions (English dub, French dub, French sub) one said she was dead. But yeah, its the typical "We can't say somone is dead cus kids will get sad" thing (they tottaly can show a man slowly turn into a corps). I still remember reading fanfic during the great S1-2 hiatus, when everyone was 100% she went missing.

But if what that guy said is true.. well fuck. Gabriel eaither must have only come up with the idea to bring her back after the funeral (and stole her body???) bc what a mess it would be to explain her coming back later. There is this whole "Universe rewriting" after the wish, but they couldn't keep that straight so God knows what that would actually look like. Presumably she would never "die" in the first place. We also have no idea if she was dead or not. Was that cascet keeping her alive/in a coma? Or was it just to preserve her body, and for Gabriel's sick twisted mind, and his need for her to be perfect etc. But yeah, we can't say the D word.

My favorite fanfic had her and Chloe's mom go on a secret mission to Tybet to find Gabriel's brother Felix.

I will already put the whole healing her thing here. Magic system in miraculous is no existing. Writers do whatever they want. Gabriel can't heal Emily bc that's not what the writers want. Bc if we were to try find a solution, there is plenty :

Alix's Akuma was able to time travel. It was at a cost of others lives, but when did that stop Gabriel?

Chris' Akuma was able to just trevel whenever he wanted. And we saw the changes he made effect the present right away;

Pharaon was about to just resurrect his dead love! Hello? Unless it was never meant to work.

Oh, remember that Akuma that just GRANTED WISHES? And there wasn't even anything wrong with them. It's not like Jagged just though he was a crocodile.

It's not Gabriel, but Fu had the Rabbit miraculous and could have avoid ALL OF THIS. I'm pretty sure destroying almost all miraculous, and killing all the monks was good enough reason to use Fluff. Unfortunately that man was such a coward HE DIDN'T LET THE HEROES OUT DURING WORLD WAR II! I'm sure several MILLION people could really use a portal to get out of certain situations.

Also, He had the Rabbit miraculous. And I mean before season 5. I Miracle Queen? Remember? He just give the whole thing to Chloe, even so she didn't "used" all of them. What? He didn't knew what all of them could do so he just leaft them?

It's really unclear in the cannon, and I don't remember if you mention it in your comic, but to the public (and Adrien's) knowledge, was Emily dead?

I think I remember That Guy tweeting that they held a funeral and everything, but if it didn't happen in universe~ 🙃It's honestly kinda wishy-washy.

Everyone in universe calls her "missing". And that's technically correct, since a body was never found. You can infer that Gabriel didn't do an ol' switcharoo and have a closed casket funeral after having proven that she's D-E-A-D dead because of the choice to use the word "missing" and not "gone".

But they also just act like she's been "missing" for 7 years or something. No one's looking for her, Adrien is fine with his dad moving on to Nathalie, Amelie comes back for her sister's heirlooms. Everyone has accepted that she's not coming back as if she didn't vanish under mysterious circumstances.

But she's only been "missing" for one year! Well, nearly two years if we go off "Ephemeral", but the way everyone talks about her (besides Gabriel) is as if she suddenly died in a car accident or finally succumbed to her very visible and long lasting illness.

But that's not the case. There's no body, as far as everyone else is concerned. She just VANISHED but everyone treats it like when a cat slinks off to the woods to die in peace!

It's BIZARRE how the show wants her "missing" and "dead" at the same time and doesn't seem to realize that there's a HUGE! DIFFERENCE!

As for SL, you'll see in the next page.

[off-in-the-moors]

It the light of recent events, I decided to rewrite/reword my old post about Maggie Stiefvater's use of Owain Glyndŵr.

Name

There are a few good posts about why using Glendower instead of Glyndŵr is a problem: X X In short, using the anglicized name is not only furthering the easure of welsh language but also damaging welsh culture. The "Glendower" was created and first used by Shakespeare in "Henry IV, Part 1", were Glyndŵr was portrayed as "wild and exotic; a man who claims to be able to "call spirits from the vasty deep," ruled by magic and tradition" and a magician. (Not to mention the play was written as Tudor propaganda.) Also, Owain Glyndŵr wasn't a king, but a prince.

Parentage

In The Dream Thieves (ch. 24), after pulling out a shield from the lake, we get this piece of information from Gansey: "And it did seem like the sort of thing that would be brought along to bury with a king. He traced the ravens. Three ravens marked in a triangle — the coat of arms of Urien, Glendower’s mythological father." The problem is it's not true, in any shape of form. Urien (or Urien Rheged) was a late 6th-century king of Rheged, an early British kingdom of the Hen Ogledd (today's northern England and southern Scotland), who in Arthurian legend became "King Urien of Gorre". He did have a son named Owain, namely Owain mab Urien, who isn't connected with Glyndŵr in anyway but name. Owain mab Urien was the bases for the knight Ywain (Yvain/Ewain/Uwain) in Arthurian legend, best known from "Yvain, the Knight of the Lion" and "Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain". Owain Glyndŵr 's real father was Gruffydd Fychan II. Owain mad Urien and Owain Glyndŵr didn't even live in the same time period, with mab Urien died c. 595, while Glyndŵr lived c. 1359 - c. 1415. Why Stiefvater merged them together is beyond my understanding.

Coat of arms and Ravens

As mention previously, the "three ravens marked in a triangle" is the coat of arms of Urien, and is not conected to Glydwr. Glydwr's coat of arms was two lions, he also had flag with a gold drangon (Y Ddraig Aur) and a banner with four lions. Owain mab Urien/Ywian was connected to ravens in two more ways (that I could find): in "The Dream of Rhonabwy" the titular Rhonabwy has a dream were King Arthur has a game of gwyddbwyll with Owain, when "a messengers arrives declaring that Arthur's squires are attacking Owain's ravens"; and in "The Life of Saint Mungo" were is said he's a bastard son of Owain and princess Teneu, daughter of King Leudonus (Lot) who's attributed arms was a raven. The only connection between Owain Glyndŵr and ravens I did find was, in some legends Glyndŵr was in possession of a "raven stone" which allowed him to became invisible. He could also communicated with birds. I found no references of Glyndŵr being called "Raven King". (The only welsh figure referred to as it I could find was Brân the Blessed, but I'm not 100% sure about it. I also did find a polish legend about Raven King, which is kinda cool.)

Reality vs Legend

At it's with any other historical figure with cultural importance, legends grow around Glyndŵr. Like with King Arthur, who was a real people, are know this magical and mysterious figures of stories. Maggie throughout the whole Raven Cycle blurred the lines between what's are the real information and what was just a legend about Glyndŵr, which is understandable, it's a fantasy novel after all but what she did was fabricate information and passed them as true. Another thing is removing Glyndŵr from Wales. Owain is a example of the motif "king asleep in the mountain/sleeping hero", a historical or legendary figure sleeping until with people need him. Owian is also a national hero of Wales. Removing him from his homeland and making him nothing more than a glorified genie for a group of American kids to find is disrespectful. Someone could argue, it was stated in the book, Glyndŵr 's followers moved him to America to protect his body from the enemies and he could as well return to Wales. But this was never a point in the story, him being a Wales prince wasn't important. What was, the characters want of the wish he could grant and Gansey's obsession of finding him.

Maggie's being related to Glyndŵr doesn't give her a pass on butchering Welsh culture. (From what I know, she's a American with German and Scottish roots.) Although she did her research (in a notebook she lost before writing TRC, from what I remember) and visited Wales, she's doesn't have a inside that a welsh person or a person who lives in Wales has.

Thank you for your time, and please, don’t be an assshole who sends anonymous complaints and vagueposting on their blog.

[conman167936]

If I could change one thing about TLOU2...

A few weeks ago, I started replaying The Last Of Us Part II. I want to go on the record and say I think it’s a great game, but for some reason I could never get 100% on board with Abby’s story. And it wasn’t until my most recent playthrough that it finally dawned on me.

There’s one very small change that Naughty Dog could have made that would have gone a long way in making the second half of the game more emotionally investing, and that would be to cut the first few Abby POV scenes, the ones in Jackson.

As it stands, the first act of the game shows a few brief scenes of Abby’s POV before she kills Joel. I believe those scenes should have been removed, so either we see the entirety of Jackson from Ellie’s POV, or we rewrite the Abby scenes to be from Joel’s POV.

Neil Druckmann has stated in interviews that the Jackson section of the game was originally going to be much longer, and the player would have gotten very familiar with Abby before she killed Joel. Part of why they changed this was they didn’t want to take the easy way out by having the player sympathize with Abby too much early on. But in my opinion, they didn’t go all the way with it.

The early scenes with Abby may be brief, but they’re enough to let us know that Abby and her group are not pure evil. She has friendly conversations with Owen, and we experience her struggles with infected (and heights) right alongside her. Now imagine a version of the game without those scenes. We only see Abby from the outside, the way Ellie does. The first half of the game still functions the same way, but then we get the big switch to Abby. Now I don’t know about you, but I always found the first few hours of Abby’s story to be rather boring. And for the longest time, I thought the problem was in the writing of that section. But looking back, I don’t think you need to change a thing about Abby Day One, just make it so this is the first time we’re seeing the world through her eyes. You mean to tell me that this woman that we’ve been hunting down throughout the entire game has a whole life that we didn’t know about? She’s having casual conversations with friends? She has people who care about her? She’s afraid of heights? And no, this doesn’t mean we have to like her. That comes later, when she redeems herself through helping Yara and Lev. The whole idea behind this game is to introduce you to a character you’re supposed to hate, and then halfway through, force you to literally walk a mile in their shoes. I think it’s a genius idea on paper, but in practice, it clearly didn’t work for a lot of people. And we have no way of knowing if this minor change would have made that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but hey, I still think this is a conversation that’s worth having.

[madmaddoxfuryroad]

HSMTMTS: Season 3 thoughts

So I’ve been ruminating a lot about this show today (like every other day) and I got to thinking about what they might do for season 3. Less so plot-wise (I mean season 2 is just over halfway through), but more about what musical they might do, what the cast might be, and how that could tie into the individual characters and their arcs (some more so than others, but c’est la vie).

In trying to figure out what musical they might do, I started first with the obvious: what does Disney own? I don’t think they would return to the HSM franchise (until the final season, but thoughts on that for another day), so anything related to that and other DCOMs I counted out. I also eliminated all Disney animated/princess films. I love them, don’t get me wrong, but seeing as this season they are doing BATB, I don’t think they would immediately go into another animated-film-adapted-for-broadway right after that. So at that point I wasn’t quite sure where to go. Mary Poppins was really the only other thing that came to mind and while I love the film and broadway show I just don’t think it fits the cast well slash even has enough parts to really showcase them. You have Mary and Bert. And then I guess Mr. and Mrs. Banks? Then the kids are a whole other issue. It just felt messy. So I just started thinking about broadway shows that I like, I mean if they wanted to, Disney has the money and could pay for the rights to use most shows. Then everything fell into place.

Into the Woods. I am 100% positive I am letting my bias for this show cloud my judgement, but if you stick with me, I think I can persuade you (or not, your mind is your own and I respect that). First off, Disney owns it. At least I think they do. They made the movie (RIP), so I am going to safely assume they have the rights at this point. Next, yes it contains fairytale elements, which might make you feel it’s a little too close to BATB, but it is such a deconstruction of fairytales and their tropes that I almost feel like it is an amazing follow up to a more traditional fairytale. It introduces conflict and the real world into these fantasy scenarios, which I feel goes really well with high school in general and growing up, expectations being shattered, and learning to alter your world view (I really love this play). Plus, I think it would be exciting to see this cast do a more broadway-type show. Obviously BATB is a broadway show, but I think there is a lot of reliance on knowing the film and less on the play itself. And not going to lie after Julia Lester’s rendition of “Home” last week (which I have not STOPPED listening to) it would be amazing to hear these teens tackle more broadway-style music. Which, takes me to my final point: the cast. What I love so much about Into the Woods is how it is very much an ensemble cast. Yes some roles are bigger than others, but if you have a named character, odds are it’s a fairly good role. And the whole HSMTMTS cast is so talented, I like the idea of them picking a show where it does not feel like anyone is sidelined with their part. Now the only thing left to do is cast it…

FULL disclosure. I ran into an issue early on that I ended up thinking Ashlyn was perfect for every female role and Seb was perfect for every male role. But I was eventually able to push through and cast it (in my humble opinion) pretty well. So I am just going to go off in the order that I cast them, because I think it will help explain my thought process.

THE CAST

Cinderella - Nini. Once I got over my need to hear Julia/Ashlyn sing “No One Is Alone” (loophole to this coming later), this felt like a pretty natural fit and was one of the easiest to cast. For one, I just think Olivia’s vocal range pairs very well with Cinderella’s and she could do beautifully with her songs like “On the Steps Of The Palace”. But what really got me was the way she parallels the character so perfectly. Cinderella is a character who always dreams of more but isn’t quite sure what that “more” is. And because she isn’t *quite* sure what she wants, the character is often seen grappling with indecision (see: “On The Steps Of The Palace”). Most of Act I is her being stagnant and letting the Prince take the active role. Finally in Act II she starts to get a better sense of who she is, who she wants to be, and what she doesn’t want. So this felt like it tied in really nicely with Nini’s journey and would be a great role for her, especially when…

Cinderella’s Prince - Ricky. Yes, yes I know. Ricky and Nini playing love interests? Groundbreaking. But stay with me. For one, I just like the idea of Ricky not getting the lead male role, and this part is perfect for him, regardless. The whole relationship between Cinderella and her Prince mirrors Nini and Ricky remarkably well. The way the Prince sees Cinderella as this perfect maiden who, if he could just be with her, would be the only thing he would ever want/need. But of course this isn’t realistic and isn’t how relationships work, which they both come to terms with by the end of Act II. Their break-up/parting ways scene might be my favorite in the entire play and I think it would be so great for Ricky and Nini to get to perform. In part because the conclusion of the scene is basically them both admitting that they will always love the idea of the other, even though they don’t actually work as a couple. (**I am operating on the assumption that they will have broken up in season 2 and are still broken up, but never really dealt with it). Honestly I recommend just watching the scene I will link it here (it goes from about 2:12:35-2:15:00). Plus, I could totally see there being an episode where they are trying to rehearse this scene, but it just isn’t working so Miss Jenn has both of them improv it or rewrite the lines to something that might feel more comfortable or personal. And I just see that being a really beautiful moment for the two and a chance for growth and closure. I could go on about this dynamic, but I will move on to my final point: “Agony”. First, while it is mostly a comedic song, you can take just the first verse of the song and recontextualize it really nicely as a Ricky pining kind of song, which I absolutely dig (not quitting on my Rina endgame, and you can’t make me) I mean: “If I should lose her, how shall I regain the heart she has won from me? Agony, beyond power of speech, when the one thing you want is the only thing out of your reach”. And BONUS I think we could also get a full-on version of “Agony” in all its absurdist glory with…

Rapunzel’s Prince - EJ. Well, sort of. Technically, no. BUT for the purposes of “Agony”, yes. At this point EJ will have graduated, but I don’t think he will be written out of the show, so it remains to be seen exactly what his place will be. I just think these two 100% need a song together and this is 100% that song. I could see it being something as simple as EJ is helping out with the show, the unnamed kid playing Rapunzel’s Prince is out, so they have EJ fill in. Or they have to have him go on for that kid last minute during the performance. It’s a quick, easily explainable thing that would have SUCH a great payoff.

Jack - Big Red. This was certainly one of the easier ones to cast, but my first thought was of course Seb. Jack is just a boy whose best friend is his cow and Seb radiates that energy. But I needed him for something else. Enter Big Red, the perfect Jack. For one, Big Red has a lot of that starry eyed wonderment that Jack has, that none of the other characters do. There is a purity and innocence to the way Jack sees a lot of things. That pairs nicely with Big Red. And it also opens the door for him to grow and mature more as a character. By the end of the show, Jack is in a place where is needs to transition more to adulthood and with Big Red being a senior by season 3, I think there is a lot of potential here. Also, with Big Red as Jack, I really like the character he is often paired with in scenes, but I will hold back until I get to them.

Witch - Kourtney. Yes. It is her time. One can debate over which character is the “main character” of Into the Woods, but for me it’s the Witch. And Kourtney deserves this. Did I heavily consider Ashlyn for this as well? You know I did. But I grow more and more confident in the casting of Kourtney the more I think about it. First thing’s first: the Witch belts, and I mean BELTS. Dara is such a powerhouse vocally that she would crush every moment of that; I have total faith. But the Witch also has such quiet and tender moments that people don’t think about as much, but are so necessary for the character to be effective and I think she also has that on lock. We have not seen a ton of it (so I would be eager to get more) but when she did her version of “Beauty and the Beast” she was able to find soft but strong moments in the song, and it was so lovely. Then, from a more thematic POV, the Witch is characterized as “the voice of reason”. While everyone else is running around in their fairytale dream world, she is always the one there dolling out the reality checks. And if that ain’t Kourtney. Basically, I think it is her time to get the lead and she would be amazing in this role.

Baker - Seb. Finally settled on a role for him. But really, how could it be anything else? I have felt since the first time we heard him sing (in Truth, Justice, and Songs in our Key, I think) that he was severely underused. The Baker is essentially the male lead, and he has earned it. I don’t think there’s much more that needs to be said here.

Baker’s Wife - Ashlyn. Here’s the thing: could someone else be cast as Baker’s Wife? Yes. And I am sure they would do a fine job. But the thing about this role is that you often don’t realize how fantastic it is until you see someone really great playing it. There’s heart, humor, tragedy, and so much more all wrapped into this character and I would far and away trust Julia/Ashlyn with this above all others. And Baker’s Wife gets to sing a short reprise of “No One Is Alone” so I get to win both ways. No matter how I try to cast it or rearrange characters, I keep coming back to the fact that Ashlyn is just hands down the correct choice. Plus she is one of the better options when it comes to having chemistry with Seb. And I’m not even talking about romantic chemistry, just more about the camaraderie of it, and being able to really see them as a team worth rooting for. They both have an inherent sweetness that makes you care for them, which is crucial for the show. AND this would be another opportunity for Julia Lester to flex her acting after playing VERY different roles in HSM and BATB. Basically, I don’t know when it happened, but I think I am a Julia Lester stan and I only want what is best for her and I think this is it. 

Little Red - Gina. “Didn’t see that one coming did you?” -Pietro Maximoff. And honestly same. There’s always that tough moment in casting when you’ve done the more obvious ones and then you feel sort of stuck with cast choices that weren’t really your choice. But this one really grew on me. Hopefully, I can do it justice. And I will be the first to admit Gina deserves her time to shine because I do think she is amazing. It just isn’t her time yet. It also doesn’t help that Into the Woods is one of the LEAST dance-centered shows and dance it where she really puts all others to shame. So this is where we landed. But it works. I promise. Little Red as a character is pretty naïve, but covers it up with over the top confidence. That feels pretty Gina. I love where her character has gone and all the growth she is displayed in trying to be more vulnerable. But there is still a part of me that does miss mean girl Gina and I think Little Red is a great way to get that energy without backtracking the character development. I don’t think she would be the stereotypical “bratty” Little Red, but I think she could still do something great with it. Also very similar to Jack, Little Red is one of the more innocent characters that has to grow up and face a lot of harsh realities over the course of the play. And I have no doubt Gina would nail that aspect of it, too. And speaking of Jack, Little Red has a number of scenes interacting with him and you know what that means: Gina and Big Red bonding time! I really like the idea of these roles bringing the two closer as friends. And I already head-canon that they would have a ton of fun playing with the fact that they are now Big Red and Little Red (especially since he is on the shorter side and she is on the taller side). Basically I see this as a way for them to build up a really good rapport. I am also pretty convinced that Big Red is a secret Rina shipper, and this would only add to that. And finally even though this is not a dance-heavy show at all, one place where they could add a dance is during “Hello Little Girl”. Now I will be the first to admit that this song is dicey at best, particularly for Disney. But even a scene working on the dance with just the instrumental, no lyrics, could be great. I see it as a partner dance with the wolf (I don’t know dance terms, so maybe this is super vague). And oh, wouldn’t you know it? Cinderella’s Prince is often double-cast as the wolf! (WHAT ARE THE CHANCES) Meaning the Wolf would also be good ol’ Richard Bowen. And I like the idea of getting Rina scenes of them trying to work on the dance, but Ricky is super bad a leading, and they just have fun trying to figure it out. It’s also nice that it is absolutely not a romantic dance so the two wouldn’t feel any added pressure and could just have fun with one another, and that really is when Rina is at its best (not that I would say no to a scene where Gina has to teach Ricky the BATB waltz, but I digress).

Narrator/Mysterious Man - Carlos. By process of elimination, you probably could have guessed who was next. And I know this one also feels like a weird choice but I do kind of love it. First you have the narrator, which is another one of those roles that is only as memorable as the actor playing it, which I think is right up Carlos’ alley. He is always trying to put his unique stamp on things and be memorable and he would take the narrator in a very enjoyable direction. There’s also the matter that I see Carlos as something of an assistant director with Miss Jenn, which makes him a third-party observer of the shows inherently, so it is almost a little meta that he would also end up being the narrator. Then there’s is the mysterious man. I love the idea of Carlos getting to play two very different characters, but I love it even more because the mysterious man is the father of the baker which makes for a lot of sweet moments between the two of them. Yes it might be a little weird for Seblos to be playing father and son, but there is such a vulnerability and tenderness in the moments between the two characters, particularly during “No More” that I can get over it. Because I think they are one of the few pairings on this show that could really pull that off. I just think this character would be a great way to exhibit the range of Carlos.

**BONUS ALTERNATE CASTING**

I really, really love this idea and could not fault them if this was the direction they went, but I ultimately decided against it, mostly because I felt too strongly about another character having the role BUT:

Baker’s Husband - Carlos. I just really love the idea of Seblos getting to be front and center, with their dynamic as the focal point of the show. And honestly Carlos would also do an amazing job as this character. I mean, Seb and Carlos singing “It Takes Two”? How sweet is that? This would also be a great way for the development of their relationship to get a little bit more attention, instead of a side story here and there. There is a lot that could be done with this from a story perspective and I would be here for it.

Unfortunately, then that leaves me unsure of where to put Ashlyn. She could be Jack’s mother, but that feels like such a waste of her. I mean, she would do well and she does have the lead this year, so it’s not SO terrible her having a more minor character, but it just doesn’t feel right. And I really just feel so strongly that she would be the best option for Baker’s Wife out of everyone. And it opens the door to develop the Seb and Ashlyn friendship more, which I am always here for. 

Anyway. Those are my thoughts. If you made it this far: wow and thank you!

[cerealqueenll]

Theory: Why Chao’s Mission Was Always Impossible

I’ve read through Negima’s manga a few times now and like many fans, I was absorbed into Chao’s mission to save her future by altering the past. She had the drive to make her reality one for the better and as a super genius, she was on the verge of succeeding, right?

At this point, I don’t think her mission would ever have come to fruition and she herself may have caused her own future. Please allow me to make my point.

I. The Theories

Chao using a device she made herself, the Casseopeia. This watch allows people to travel back in time and is powered by the World Tree. Chao is in possession of one as if Negi. 

We first see it in action when Negi and Setsuna fall asleep at the infirmary and wake up during the night on the first day of the festival, but are then warped back to the beginning of the first day.

This seems like basic time travel - they traveled through time and are back in the past, but we need to look at the rules of this form of time travel. There are multiple possible theories.

Split Timelines - Each time you travel, any changes you made will either create or allow you to hop to another timeline where the possibility occurred. The idea is that there infinitely many timelines for each choice and outcome that everyone person has ever made. This theory was used in the ever popular Steins;Gate series.

Overwrite - This theory says that when you travel back, anything you do in the past can drastically effect the future. Think butterfly effect. This theory also leads to many paradoxes, too, such as the Grandfather Paradox. If you kill your grandfather in the past before your father is born, how can you be exist to kill your grandfather? In addition, there’s another idea that if you travel back in time in a period where you exist, there cannot be two of you, so you will replace your current self. Another idea that falls into this theory is rewinding, where you can redo the past events in your life with your memories of the future intact.

Looping - This theory says you can travel back in time, but you do not rewrite anything. This takes place in a single timeline and if you continuously travel back, many yous can exist at the same time and while it’s discouraged to interact with your past selves, it’s possible. Everything you do in the past is already reflected in the future because the future is built upon your past actions. This idea can be seen in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya series. 

II. Which Theory is Used?

If you’re familiar with the series, you may realize that every single one of these theories has been present in some way, but let’s not jump the gun. During the time of Chao’s revolution, only one of these theories occurred and which one exactly on several occasions.

First with Nodoka:

Most notably, this can be seen when Negi and his lot run into their past selves. They comment how they remembered this happening and despite that, it still occurred.

Because of this, we know what the time travel theory is: Looping.

Now what does this mean? 

III. The Outcome

Because this is the theory that occurs as a result of using Chao’s invention, her going back to the past would not result in a new future, but was likely the foundation in which her future was built. The best way to explain this is look at the same idea.

Ako’s concert.

Overcome with grief with her crush seeing her scar, Ako runs away and at the sight of blood, passes out, thus missing the concert entirely. Of course, she is totally upset that she failed to come through for her band mates and is worried she disappointed her crush.

What happens when Ako is passed out? 

We know Negi uses the Casseopeia and takes her back in the past and she is able to make her concert. Despite it being the past and not traveling through the future yet, the future is already determined. 

Before Negi even used the  Casseopeia for the first time, when he and Setsuna fell asleep, he was still actively participating in the events of the festival with his future selves. That future had already been determined and the outcome was the same, it was simply a matter of going through the motions. 

Chao’s trip to the past is no different than Ako’s. Yes, she jumped a much greater time and Chao did not exist in the past, but it’s been determined that with this form of time travel, it will not change the future because it she was always suppose to go in the past. Think back to when Negi and his lot ran into each other. They knew from the past they ran into each other and despite this knowledge, it still happened. You cannot stray from the course.

IV: Did Chao Succeed?

Yes and no.

Chao did change the future and revealed the existence of mages to the world. 

While this technically rewrote the timeline, from the rules we’ve seen, Negi and his companions were always going to escape from captivity and stop Chao. It’s been set in stone. No matter what Chao did: the future was absolute and had already been set.

V:  Chao’s Future

What happened in Chao’s future, though? She’s always been rather vague, but we know that there was a war and much suffering and she wished to prevent. Poyo did however give us a bit more info:

Hell, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If we take what we know and apply it, Chao was always going to travel back in time and encounter Negi. Her future was set and could not be changed. Thus, Negi would take this experience and what he learned from Chao and use that knowledge in the future. 

Most notably, this would be the knowledge that Chao was from Mars and Negi used this to realize that Mundus Magicus was in fact on Mars. This would lead to Negi establishing  Project "Blue Mars". 

We know for a fact that the Magic World is not destroyed within 9-10 years time. We’ve seen that far into the future and Negi’s plan worked. 

But how does that make sense with Chao’s future.

It’s simple: Poyo doesn’t know what caused Chao’s future. She does not say it was Chao’s word that led her to that conclusion, but research. Will the Magic World eventually be destroyed? If that is what actually happened in Chao’s future, then yes. In the current setup, that cannot be avoided and Negi may have temporarily put it hold, but it will inevitably occur. Or is should, but that leads up to our next point.

VI: Other Time Travel Theories

As I mentioned before, there are indeed multiple theories and each of the ones I mentioned would eventually be seen in the series.

The one that we should look at is the different timelines theory.

With the knowledge Chao gave him, Negi set his plans in motion and Asuna was tasked with being in a comatose state for 100 years so her power could repair Mundus Magicus. 

When she woke up, it was over 100 years later and the job had been completed, but she was alone. Then enter Evangeline and Chao, who send Asuna back to the past.

But how was this different? Due to the theory we established, wasn’t she always in the past then? No! Chao in all her genius made a new device: the TransWorld Machine. 

This allows her to skip to alternate timelines and doing this, she created a totally new timeline where Asuna would be present for those 100 years. 

Because of this, she created a new way to travel through time, but unfortunately, this only allows her to skip around to new futures. Her original time line will remain unaffected by this.

Despite this, we do know from UQ Holder that were are individuals who possess abilities to rewrite time, such as Kirie.

When she dies, Kirie will restart at her save point and can redo her life with her current knowledge. We know this is different than Chao;s method, she Kirie simply restarts. There is only one of her present and her future is not pre-determined. In UQ Holder, they use this ability to prevent many tragedies.

However, we know Kirie is not alive during the time of Negima, but there’s certainly a possibility that someone with the same or a similar ability could exist during this time that would change the future, but as there is no evidence of this, I’m going to say it’s unlikely.

There is another method of time travel I did not mention before that would be called: Dana.

Dana is a noble, an immortal with god-like powers. She’s commonly known as the Witch of the Rift and is able to bend the ideas of time and space. Any set laws are going to be broken when she’s present as she just does not care.

Could she change Chao’s future? Yes. 

Will she? It’s certainly possible, I would not put a single thing past her, but it just depends whether she feels like it or not.

We are unraveling the future of UQ Holder, which has been confirmed to take place on Negima’s original timeline before Asuna was sent back to the past. So, is UQ Holder take place in the same timeline as Chao?

It all points to YES.

But there is a hiccup in this theory.

We are given this chart at the end of Negima and it seems to debunk this entire theory. It’s confirmed Negi did change the future, but this doesn’t seem right. Given the theories of time travel, we know the future has been determined, but Chao even throws a wrench into what she just laid out. 

She says Evangeline helped her make the TransWorld Machine. However, the chart shows she skipped to another timeline where she would meet the Evangeline that would help her, which does not make sense. 

If we ignore that, we still need there are three timelines, so even if Chao did go back and lead Negi to create a new timeline, it wouldn’t matter. It would only create a new timeline and not change another one.

How do we explain Chao’s diagram then? Simply put, we don’t! She lied or it’s a mistake on the author’s end. Time travel makes things infinitely more confusing, so it’s certainly possible Ken Akamatsu made a mistake. If we want to be optimistic however, let’s just say Dana did it.

No matter what way you look at it, Chao’s future could not be avoided and odds are, she came to this conclusion. She’s a genius, she wouldn’t overlook this. Either she went back to set things in motion like it was determined or her honestly felt she could somehow change a future she knew was set. It’s pretty sad to think about it that way, but who knows what will happen in UQ Holder. Maybe we will get to see Chao once again!

---------------------

Do you have other ideas that relate to this theory? Any mistakes? Please let me know!

[breckstonevailskier]

Frozen II thoughts

While there is some good stuff in the movie, it’s sadly held back by the movie’s flaws.

In terms of stuff I liked, well first off, the visual effects are excellent. These are probably the most stunning visuals I’ve ever seen in an animated film. It really shows how talented the animators and artists at Disney are. There’s also something to appreciate about the more epic scale of the story, even if it does come off like Avatar: The Last Airbender or The Legend of Zelda at times. While the songs aren’t quite as memorable as the first film's, they’re well put together (Kristoff’s number aside). Heck, the film has some of the best and most powerful individual scenes I've seen from a Disney movie, including  Elsa's number in Ahtohallan and Anna's emotional breakdown in the cave.

Here's the thing though. While the scenes are amazing, it feels as though the filmmakers came up with a whole bunch of ideas they wanted to animate, and then worried about the story to connect it all. Far too often, the movie kinda hinges on coincidences in order for the plot to progress. For example,  at the end, Anna just so happens to exit the cave close to the dam, which just so happens to be close to the Earth Spirits who can destroy it. Not to mention, she can only do this because she just so happened to veer off the path Elsa sent her and Olaf down. Oh, and Kristoff just so happened to be close enough to rescue her after she woke them up. Like seriously, talk about overly convenient. And that's just one moment out of several that feels really off in terms of connective tissue holding everything together.

It also makes the story come off as convoluted once the main characters reach the enchanted forest, with the movie introducing pointless characters, jumping back and forth in time too much and having a hard time keeping track of all the characters and their intentions.

Ryder and Honeymaren were completely pointless to the story. The trailers made it seem like they were going to be important, and considering this movie went through 50 rewrites and 12 animated versions, they probably did originally have larger parts in the narrative at one point. Instead, they just sort of interact with the main cast once or twice and that’s it. They didn’t really push the story along. They weren’t a part of the main plot or add anything really.

Same with Bruni the fire salamander. He’s cute, but he doesn’t add anything that Olaf and Sven already did as the cute/funny side characters. Just felt like another merchandising opportunity. If they got rid of those three characters, it would have helped the story feel less messy.

Kristoff was also criminally pointless. He feels like he was put in only because he appeared in the first film. He seriously does almost nothing of note until the very end. In fact, he has a continuous span of 26.5 minutes off-camera between the end of his song and his reappearance with the earth giant scene leading to the dam

The ending was also rushed. It needed like an extra 15 or 20 minutes. And it’s kinda odd that we’ve had three Disney-animated related features in a row (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Toy Story 4 and Frozen II) that have all had the main cast split up.

In Frozen II’s case, while this is not as egregious as something like Ralph Breaks The Internet, it still breaks down when you start to seriously think about it. Like, I don't buy that Elsa would so willingly stay behind, even if she does plan to visit Arendelle every week, nor does Anna immediately becoming queen instead feel like anything other than forced. For one, Elsa was the one who was groomed to be queen, not Anna. Secondly, as the tie-in book Forest of Shadows shows, Elsa has a pretty demanding workload as queen even with Anna there to provide her help, and Anna is going to have that as well. As @l-egionaire  has pointed out nicely here in this post, Anna’s going to find herself very overwhelmed and possibly even hate the job. Not only will Anna have such a busy schedule, but she won’t get as much downtime as before, and she will also probably have difficulty maintaining an image of grace in front of her staff, her advisors, her constituents, and foreign dignitaries. Would’ve made more sense for Elsa to return to Arendelle with Anna, Elsa stay as queen while Anna gets duties that give her reasons to go off on adventures away from the castle.

Really, it seems that, in the attempt to make everything bigger and better than the first movie, the writers sacrificed cohesion and proper build-up.

Don't get me wrong though, the movie is arguably one of Disney Animation's better sequels that isn't related to Pixar, so it's definitely not 100% a case of  sequelitis. But that just makes it all the more frustrating, because it's this close to being something truly spectacular, only to be brought down by the problems I mentioned above. If the writers had put a little more effort into making sure each scene flowed properly, as opposed to just getting to each scene they wanted to make (which they would’ve been able to do if Jennifer Lee hadn’t started at the end and worked her way backwards), this could have been one of the best out of the Disney canon. As it is though, it settles for being merely "good enough".

[blackosprey]

I wanna fix the KH3 ending

[ @derekscorner  @kirabook @echo-from-the-void I told y’all I was gonna do this and I finally did. Spoilers ahead i guess]

Analysis: The finale of KH3 has a lot of pacing issues and a lot of nonsensical events that don’t make a lot of sense even within the context of the story. These odd choices tend to be so jarring that I fail to feel much emotion over any sad scenes.

Proposal: tweak and rewrite.

Let’s establish a few things to set the context: first of all, the X-Blade is forged via conflict. Aka, people fighting eachother. Xehanort’s goal is to get everyone to duke it out until his weapon is complete. Second, Xehanort is an egomaniac and wants to ensure it will be HIMSELF who will control the X-Blade and... do whatever with it. (I’m still not 100% sure what THAT is even now)

Boss Rush I

- Get rid of the entire weird fake-out with everyone dying and rewinding time and Union X advertisement nonsense. (That whole thing was a ripoff of Ending E and UX has not earned that in the slightest.) 

- Jump straight to Xehanort raising up that labyrinth and separating everyone so they can all duke it out. He needs those shards of conflict to forge the X-Blade after all. Scattering everyone ensures the Lights won’t overpower them before the weapon is forged.

- Things play out more or less like they did in the game at this point. Sora runs through, helps everyone defeat their opponents. The hypest moments like Terra and Roxas remain intact. Folks get reunited and it’s really nice. Oh yeah KAIRI DOES NOT GET KIDNAPPED. 

Oh No

- Sora and co. manage to defeat all the Norts before the X-Blade is finished. They plan to do the ���push Xehanort out of the world” thing. Now it’s as simple as 7+ vs 1 old man right? 

- Wrong

- THIS is the part where Everyone Dies. Heartless tornado, whirlwind of Keyblades, point is they don’t manage to fight him directly before they all get destroyed. 

- Everyone, of course, except for Sora. Who is extremely upset for understandable reasons. 

- Why Sora? Well, Xehanort’s a sucker for fate, destiny, and all that grandeur, what could be a more fitting way to complete the blade than defeating what appears to the the universe’s answer to him? This kid who’s appeared at every turn to complicate his plans. 

- That, and he knows for a fact that he’s not the strongest of all his friends, and he’s very emotionally vulnerable. Meaning, isolating Sora would lead to a fight he could very easily win. It’d pose no risk to his plan.

- He’s right. Saying that Sora’s distraught and out for blood is an understatement. He doesn’t scream and drop to the ground in surrender, he screams with FURY. It harms his ability to fight. Xehanort easily wins.

- Sora falls to the ground after taking a Goatblade to the chest. The last thing he sees is the X-Blade materialize in Xehanort’s hands as the true KH appears before the darkness starts devouring it like in game. 

I Hear Dead People

- The Final World. This bit plays out more or less the same way it did in-game at first, Chirithy and all, bc I don’t really mind that bundle of sass. Sora pieces himself back together and is only able to do so because Kairi’s just barely holding him back from crossing into death entirely. 

- Here, you could take a moment for Sora to actually process what just happened. He’s less vengefully pissed now and reality of everyone being gone is setting in. He might even be paralyzed by it. And, to top it all off, he died, easily too. Failure’s a hell of a drug. 

- He doesn’t mope too long. Of course eventually he realizes Kairi’s just barely managed to give him a second chance, and he starts putting himself back together. Figuratively and literally. 

- Once he’s done with fixing himself he needs to get back to the real world. Yes, he does want to use the Power of Waking to find his friends but there’s no time to do that and it’s much too risky- it has dire consequences whether or not he actually succeeds in reviving his friends and while time’s going by much more slowly here, it’s still flowing and Xehanort reeeeally needs to be stopped. 

- Sora knows he needs to shove Xehanort out of the Graveyard. Wonders if he can do this alone. The voices of his friends resonate within. Think of typical “you are not alone, bonds transcend, etc” motivational corn. You’ll know what to do, may ur heart be ur guiding keyyyy. Staple KH Narm. 

- Sora returns, much to Xehanort’s surprise but not necessarily his dismay, and proceeds to slam them both into Scala ad Caelum.

- (If you reeeeeally wanted some UX advertisement time, Ephemera and the other Dandelions could be the power that helps Sora yeet Xehanort right into Scala ad Caelum. Or something.)

Boss Rush II Final Mix+

- Scala ad Caelum plays out very much like it does in-game, with all the boss rushes. However, instead of having just Donald and Goofy in your party the whole time, your party changes with each “stage” of the fight. Members consist mainly of the “friendship trios” of all the games. 

- I’m thinking BBS trio, Days trio, then Riku and Kairi plus Mickey.

- They’re very obviously not all there. They look kinda spectral and appear and vanish suddenly with each beginning and end of a fight stage. You get some opportunities for team attacks with everyone. 

- Culminates with Sora, Goofy, and Donald in the very last battle as they are in canon. Complete with that last bit where it seems like Sora is KOd and gets shouted back to life by everyone. 

We’ll Go Together

- Xehanort is defeated. I’m not sure how I’d want to alter that bit, I’m not even sure if I want to get into that, so if you didn’t like how he died, just replace it with however you wanted to see it. The important part is, Sora still ends up in possession of the X-Blade. 

- He uses the X-Blade to return to the Final World and attempts to rescue everyone. 

- If you want the story to end with KH2 levels of happy closure, you can say the X-Blade allowed him to mess with life and death without consequences. Everyone is happy, the end.

- If you’re ok with it not going that way, then meddling in god’s realm still has a pretty heavy toll. Sora rescues everyone but his tether to life is about to snap before he can get to Kairi. Whether he goes for it or leaves her, he can’t get her out.

- He promised he wouldn’t leave her, right?

- Sora follows Kairi. They embrace as they dissolve into sparks of light and vanish together.

- (Setting up the sequel where Kairi plays the Reapers’ Game to get her life and her boyfriend back dammit)

Sooooo yeah! That’s kind of how I’d fix things up while keeping the badass moments and main concepts introduced intact, while adding some logical character motivation and emotional weight.

[whittertwitter]

How I’d fix Kingdom Hearts III.

Bearing in mind that the issues I had with it were mostly story-related, namely: integration of the overarching plot into (some of the) Disney worlds, pacing, characterization, female characters getting sidelined, and threads left dangling. In terms of gameplay, I’d probably just tie Team Attacks and Attraction Flow to MP (or make Attraction Flow location-specific, like Reality Shift in 3D) and Formchanges to Focus, just so the player has to use them more strategically. I’d also make the Riku and Mickey scenes in the Realm of Darkness playable, or at least have more player input than they do.

First of all, I’d change Olympus to Agrabah. They used the first movie in the first game and Return of Jafar in II, so they really should have used King of Thieves in III. Since the whole reason for Sora going to Olympus in the first place (to gain the power of waking) doesn’t come into play until the end of the game anyway, I don’t see it as that big of a change. If you really need a reason for him to go there, I think either learning something from Aladdin as the diamond in the rough or from Genie adapting to being semi-phenomenal, nearly-cosmic could work. Axel will tag along to Agrabah because: 

 He went there on a lot of missions for the Organization, so he’s familiar with the world and won’t drag them down, plus he could learn a lot from Sora because...

I’ve decided that Axel should struggle to consistently summon his Keyblade, both to mirror Sora’s power of waking thing and to provide the Guardians of Light with incentive to rescue as many Keyblade wielders as possible just in case he doesn’t prove up to snuff.

I think there’s a good character study that could be done between Axel and Cassim, what with them both being charming roguish types who fell in with a bad crowd and struggle with breaking old habits.

I’d also introduce the New Seven Hearts concept here, with Sora and company realizing that Jasmine is no longer a Princess of Heart. From here, Axel’s still struggling, so Yen Sid sends him on a mission to confirm if any of the Princesses of Heart have retained their status; Axel visits Wonderland--or rather, the world Alice is actually from--and Beast’s Castle in cutscenes between worlds in Sora’s first world set, and probably encounters Xaldin in the latter world. (Xaldin replaces Xion as a Nort, because it’s still so weird that he’s got the pointy Nort ears after becoming a Nobody and as a Nobody is obsessed with negative emotions AND needs time to recover after being re-completed, but somehow isn’t a Nort?)

Meanwhile, Kairi isn’t in active Keyblade wielder training yet, but only because she’s at Radiant Garden, where Zexion is focusing on Namine first because it should be easier to untangle just one heart in another than three hearts in another, and Namine’s power over memories would sure come in handy. While she’s there, you could explore her childhood in Radiant Garden. (If her grandmother’s still alive, that’d be a touching reunion!) I’m leaning toward not having her be part of the New Seven Hearts, because going from having a heart of pure light to a normal heart with the capacity for darkness seems more interesting to me. (Aaand now I’m thinking about Master Xehanort taking advantage of that lack of experience with darkness and Norting Kairi instead of killing her. It’d make Sora less likely to fight, which is the opposite of what he wants, but damn it’s so much more compelling than what we got.)

For the first set of worlds, I’m pretty satisfied with how the overarching plot was integrated. However, in Kingdom of Corona, some things aren’t well-explained unless you’ve seen the movie, like Rapunzel suddenly having the crown back. For that one, Heartless/Nobodies could show up when Mother Gothel meets Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and she drops it while running away; Sora could give it back to Rapunzel and mention something about her mother looking for her. Also, I still think Mother Gothel should’ve knocked Marluxia out with the tree branch instead of his Reapers, lol. 

Someone on Reddit made the suggestion to move rescuing Aqua and Ven to between the first and second world sets--possibly with fully playable Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure--and I absolutely love the idea. Others pointed out that it couldn’t work because they go to the Keyblade Graveyard after gathering all the Guardians of Light, which is why I suggest having Vanitas reawaken and assume control of Ven as soon as Sora returns Ven’s heart to his body. 

Other cutscenes will have to be moved up to this point, including Vexen recruiting Demyx and the latter dropping off the completed Replica, which will now go to Namine while Zexion reverse-engineers one for Roxas. (Or not; Namine’s entire existence is pretty weird, so she might be able to generate her own body after her heart is untangled from Kairi’s, leaving the Replica to Roxas.) Regardless, Namine is now awake and starts work on freeing Roxas and Xion; Axel is now capable of consistently summoning his Keyblade, so he and Kairi start training under Riku and Mickey; Sora and company possibly revisit Twilight Town, just so we can get that first world revisit that was in the first game, II, and 3D; and Aqua recovers from ten years in the Realm of Darkness plus having Ven snatched out from under her nose, then gives Riku and Mickey a hand with training.

Monstropolis won’t change too much, though Sora and company now knowing who Vanitas is and having beef with him will impart a different tone. As for Arendelle...Larxene needs to interact with people besides Sora and company, like trying to bully Anna into giving up on Elsa or taunting Hans and turning him into a Heartless; Sora and company need to go to places besides the North Mountain; and there need to not be random out of place musical numbers. Since the 100 Acre Wood was even more of a minigame hub than usual and didn’t actual adapt the plot of Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, I propose cutting it in favor of a Wreck-It Ralph world, with the arcade being one of Scrooge’s many business ventures in Twilight Town; Xigbar would actually be a great Nort if the world needs one, since going Turbo kinda reminds me of Luxu body-surfing through the ages. (While I’m on the subject, I’d replace Ralph and Stitch with Jack Skellington and Tron, that way Sora has all the party members from past worlds that required a change in appearance as Links; Simba would be obtained in Agrabah, Dream Eaters in Toy Box, Jack Skellington in Monstropolis, and Tron in San Fransokyo, and I’m leaning toward Tron being in his Tron: Legacy form.)

For The Caribbean, its biggest problem comes down to the audience already knowing that the chest of Davy Jones isn’t the box the Organization is looking for, so it feels like a waste of time; Sora and company barely having any impact on the plot doesn’t help. Having them actually interact with characters besides Jack would help. I’d also have Beckett play a larger role and Luxord turn him into a Heartless. I thought it was an odd choice to have Dark Riku show up in San Fransokyo instead of the Riku Replica or Data-Riku and make it seem like he’s time traveling (UGH) from when Ansem possessed him...only to have it be a Replica anyway! So yeah, I’d probably change that to Data-Riku in a Replica to make the Bug Blox from Coded showing up actually matter, and I’d have Vexen supervising him instead of faffing about in The Caribbean.

At this point, Zexion and Namine have finally succeeded in getting Roxas free, but are still working on Xion. However, since they now have seven Guardians of Light, the decision is made to rest up and prepare for the Keyblade War, as in canon. I’m keeping the scene with Axel and Saix before the final battle but cutting out the bit about them becoming apprentices to save their heretofore unknown female friend, because it’s just a blatant retcon; Nomura confirmed in an interview after BBS that they were just ordinary kids who got caught up in the Heartless experiments.

As for the final battle itself, my thoughts are much more scattered as of right now, besides Kairi not getting fridged of course. I like blackosprey’s idea of moving Sora’s little jaunt in The Final World to after the boss rush of Norts but before Scala ad Caelum. Since Xaldin’s taking Xion’s place as a Nort, it’ll be Saix who’s tasked with killing Axel and hesitates; Zexion and Namine get Xion free just in time for her to possess the discarded Replica and make the save. I'd prefer Terranort be re-completed after you defeat Ansem and Xemnas instead of being a Nort from the get-go, or have him around from the get-go instead of Ansem and Xemnas, because him existing at the same time as the Wonder Twins is only possible thanks to time travel bullshit. (Same with Master Xehanort, for that matter, but he’s harder to work around. Unless you have Young Xehanort pulling the strings for most of the game, fight him after Ansem and Xemnas and/or Terranort, and only fight Master Xehanort in Scala ad Caelum?) And if they’re going to bring up Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene’s connection to the mobile game, the least they could do is have dead people close to them besides Strelitzia hanging out in The Final World, giving out exposition tidbits.

Also: I know Nomura said this was just going to be the end of the Xehanort Saga, but I really feel this game should’ve retired Sora as well. Part of the reason the ending left me unsatisfied is because Sora doesn’t get any closure, and I know it’s because they want us to keep buying these games, but if they try, they can easily make us care just as much about a new protagonist. Maybe even, horror of horrors, a female one!

So yeah, those are my thoughts on how to improve KHIII! Several days after I said I’d post them. Maybe before the next ice age, I can work up the motivation to post about my series-wide KH rewrite, lol.

[badlydrawndrawnings]

ASOUE SEASON 3, Part 2

There are some things that I enjoy, some things that bug me, and some of those things that bug me are thing I do enjoy but i have to question regardless. The post grew so long I’m cutting it into two parts, and frankly this covers The PP and The End (part one won’t be linking because idk what Tumblr did with that update with links).. We are in the second half of the season, and boy, do I have a lot of hot opinions! Most of it it’s under the read more to not cog the tags.

Frank, Ernest, and Dewey: I feel so validated my theory of Dewy was talking to the Baudelaires last and pretending to be Frank or Ernest is confirm...here at least! Speaking of them, I think Frank was the first one the Baudelaires talk too, then Ernest talk second. In the first convo, Frank or Ernest was Serious and To the Point, and Frank (confirm in book it’s Frank)) was like that with Violet. In the second convo, Frank or Ernest was Friendly and Emotional with his words, and Ernest (confirm in book it’s Ernest) was being a bit cheeky with Klaus and humorous when lassoing Larry Your Waiter up (RIP). Sorry about your brother you two... but boy the shot Dewy floating in the water looks beautiful. 

I think the show was trying to pull a red herring that Kit was ‘evil’ due her asking Dewy to give Frank her regards because no one knows about the unicorn that is Dewy.

Lack of Sir and Charles/Switching roles/The JS Debate: I learned beforehand Charles’ actor couldn’t make it to filming so they had to rewrite him out. Didn’t expect to get rid of Sir (granted, I hear Sir’s actor is like..expense to get back or something and season one was lucky to get him). Still, nice to see that they were able to get Jerome to fill in his (kinda) canon role and Charles. Also, are Charles and Jerome together? That’s a great step up Jerome! Also, nice to know Babs and Miss Bass are together (man I wonder how the in-laws will react to that). I think what really threw me into the loop is that the Netflix Show made JS, the person behind it all, to be Justice Strauss with others JS helps. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the book had ‘JS’ be anonymous as not even Justice Strauss or Jerome knew who is the real JS since they thought it was meet for them (with theories saying it’s Lemony pretending to his brother and the taxi driver in the PP is him. Thanks Netflix for actually confirming the taxi driver part). Didn’t mind Nero being with Esme. I like that (they didn’t show the report who name I freaking forgot. Guess that says something).

At the Opera Tonight & (Lack Of) Bertrand : Hey, Netflix...Olaf’s parents death was A HIT MURDER by Beatrice, The Snickets (Kit and maybe Lemony if 13 Secrets is valid, who know about Jacques), and most importantly, BERTRAND. The books made it clear both were involved in some way or form. In fact, the lack of Bertrand is so insulting. Lemony may not say talk about him too much, but damn it, Lemony liked and respect Bertrand and never hold a grudge. Lemony in the show is the same, just less because the writers really did put more of an emphasis on Beatrice as the Lost Lenore and true OTP (????). In fact, why did the Opera events paint the noble side of VFD good with the accidental death? It was hit, and everyone was guilty and not free of sin. Here though, they are guilty as hell but free of sin as ‘it was an accident’. Well, since Bertrand wasn’t involve in the events here...the guy is actually innocent and free of sin good job Bertrand you don’t have blood on your hand (this sounds like sarcasm but it’ not). Also. you a handsome man.

Personal Headcanon That I Will Never Let Go Now Due to the Above Nonsense: Olaf’s parents were part of VFD, and were sympathetic to the fire starting side of schism, but overall close to neutral (Olaf didn’t and will never know, and book implies the schism wasn’t bad until after Olaf did his thing to frame Lemony for the crimes), due to their positions of society as aristocracy, a father in a high government related job (thanks Netflix for making Dad the Chief of the Official Fire Department it almost lines up perfectly) and mother as A-List Theater Performer. They managed to get a faster reunion when Olaf is 17 (Lemony, Olaf, and a few others are supposed to be the same age while the other siblings are older by a few years, and 18 seems to be the legal age of becoming an adult in this world). The three were at the opera for their first time reunion, and Beatrice and Bertrand were given the task on getting rid of them, and they thought ‘oh this will be easy’ because Kit was helping to deal with Esme and they succeeds. They were about to celebrate and leave when they hear Olaf and see him running to his dead parents (they have no idea he was there. If Lemony was involve, then they did knew but used Lemony as a distraction to make sure Oalf won’t witness the deed. As to why Olaf as to see the body? Because seeing a body adds extra fuel to people waiting revenge). Olaf is still on the noble side at this point (if barely), and he doesn’t know the truth until later, after somehow losing the family fortune and a switch to the fire starting side. Incompetent banking may or may not be involve. 

Hotel Denouement (Fire): Bit upset the sign isn’t written backwards, but hell, I want to stay there regardless!!! Also, I like how the show kept most of the fates a mystery expect Justice Strauss (how did she get down from the roof). The books implies Mr. Poe will die another night, so ergo in Netflix Show Mr. Poe and oddly enough, Vice Principal Nero of all people, survive as well. Thanks Nero for saving Mr. Poe for his offscreen date in the future. Side topic, but my headcanon in the books is (excluding Mr. Poe as his is given) Esme, Ernest, Hal, Hugo and Colette and Kevin survived. Those that made it out but died due to fire related injures later on (within a day or a week) would be  Frank, Jerome, Charles, Sir, Nero and the Teachers, and Carmelita. Everyone else is 100% dead (guess I got to change my 100% dead Justice Strauss status lol). The choices were pick due to drama (Esme cares for Carmelita and would be 100% heartbroken to see her die after the two made it out. For Frank and Ernest, I figure losing one brother would change their hostile relationship to a reluctant team up to get out of the fire together. Frank, being noble, gets Ernest out first resulting getting injuries and dying later, leaving Ernest all alone. Sir and Charles were still holding hands when they got out, but Sir died first and Charles went next due to a broken heart) or luck (Hal survived one fire already; I want Hugo, Colette, and Kevin to catch a good break). 

I cried when the ending happened that song f*** me up so bad like things could have been different and happy but I’m stuck in misery and woe. 

THE END/VFD AND SCHISM: I HATE THIS EPISODE SO FREAKING MUCH. Well, the Island parts (lol the red herring of Beatrice II being Sunny just by wanting to be call by her last name). They cut characters stuff with Friday (and her mother), the mutiny (that was the best part!!!)...almost all the stuff that made The End good! Also, wtf was with the BS of Ishmael making VFD? Like, I like how he was the Principal, that I can accept. But I got the impression, and it was actually implied, it been around for a long time before Ishmael was even born. He made it sound like a book club for the prestigious good people that are rich and bored. Newsflash Netflix: IT’S NOT.  Kit flat out mentions that the schism started when she was four, and it only got worse when her generation came. In fact, the schism only got worse when Olaf went after Lemony, making it the schism everyone knows today. The way the show paints it...it’s the pettiness form of petty and revenge and actually revenge I would like normally but I hate it in the context. I have more, but I’m be making a post about it...a (crack-ish/shitpost comparison of sorts you will of sorts. All I can say is the the White Face women are younger than they look or lost their family and sister in a fire while in their 20′s or 30′s (Ishmael and the Man with Beard but no Hair and Woman with hair but no Beard and Co -> Lemony and Co aka Schism start at teenage/young adult years -> Baudelaires and Co).

Honestly the good stuff was Sunny thinking of pushing Olaf overboard, and the whole thing leading up to Olaf and Kit’s death I cried so much.

Chapter 14: Okay, I’m a sucker for a happy ending after so much crap happened. Lemony and Beatrice II found family again (if for a short time), Fiona and Fernald got a Pushing Daisies ending when Captain Widdershins shows up (referring to Emerson Cod’s reunion with his daughter), Quigley reuniting with his stock footage siblings + Hector, the Troupe having a happy ending fulling their dream, and IDV maybe making it to the the islanders in time. Do I admit that the whole point of their ‘last appearance’ with the Great Unknown (or IDV just disappearing) is to give a message that you can’t always know what happens and mysteries are still out there (imo). Yes, but again, I’m a sucker for happy endings, so I’m fine either way. Also, in Season One there was a narration of Lemony with a very tiny Self Sustaining ship in the BG. Since we know Lemony is actually narrating from the future...it’s a given the Quagmire and Hector would survive. It’s a blink and you miss, but it’s there. So yeah, while everything else could be chalk up as a fake happy ending imagine by Lemony and/or Beatrice II, the Quagmire Triplets and Hector were given a happy fate from the start! Okay, I guess they still need to come down at some point but...

I would watch the PP episodes, but never the End unless I want to make myself angry.

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 35

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this may be shorter than usual. Or maybe not? When you've been working (and thinking) on something for a long time, you work past the need to talk about it. I've said it to myself so many times, I don't really need to externalise it. Whatever “it” is, is in the book.

I suspect this is going to grow as we progress across the final year. In a real way, we're at the point of the degree course when we're easing off. It's your project now. Make of it what thou wilt. Easy answers are a long way behind us. But there are answers, at least.

Jamie's Cover: with solicits going out earlier, we're always worried about putting something like this on a cover. Ideally, we'd want it to drop after Imperial Phase II dropped, so at least people would be suspicious of Minerva.

But it's a lovely image – I love what Matt's doing with the light, what Jamie's doing with the expression. Great stuff.

Yoshi Yoshitani: More great stuff. The playfulness of Persephone, the pose. It's just total joy.

Page 1-4

This looks familiar. Once more we return, again, right?

We were obviously planning this from the start, but by the time we've reached this point, Jamie's style has evolved to the point where the extra panels we need to add to the sequence would break the coherence entirely. So Jamie insisted on re-inking the whole sequence, and updating the Minerva panels (as she's seen in more panels later). I did say that if we were clever, we'd have drawn the whole thing back when we did issue 1. Jamie noted that he'd never have been happy printing four years old art in a book.

So yes.

I was originally thinking that this sequence would actually be the opening of Year 4, but when I did the tight plotting for this arc, I realised that you had to really start way back around 4000BC, to set certain themes in motion. I had the option to switch them until quite late though – they're similar lengths, and abstractly can be switched, with a few changes.

I didn't. It's the way to go. And it's a good way to make issue 2 hit hard, right?

It's an interesting thing to think about that those who are following this in singles will have read the 1923 special before this, so know exactly why everyone is here, while those following with trades will learn it in the NEXT trade.

Page 5

For those who follow the idea of page budgets, this counted as a half page.

When writing this first time I got the order the wrong way around, so Amaterasu survived rather than Susanoo. Always check this stuff.

It's another tour de force for Matt here, in terms of the intensity of effects going on. I feel terrible for all the people involved. Thinking through the psychology of this was always going to be the hard one. To pull the trigger, who had the hardest job?

Page 6

Yet again, just look at the reds. I've got an issue with a bunch of fire in, and this is really making me look forward to it. Susanoo is a sweet one. Poor fucker.

Minerva saying “Necessity” feels like a necessary beat, right?

Page 7

This counts as a ¾ page for page budget.

Was waiting for the “Minerva emerging from fire” money shot for 34 issues (plus specials) and Jamie doesn't let me down. Had me thinking of “Figure covered in fluids” being one of those recurring beats in Jamie and my work. Persephone in the fourth trade, America in issue 13 of YA, Emily in Phonogram and so on.

It's the billow of the skirt, innit? Nice, Jamie.

8-9-10-11

Oddly, lettering this so you could work out who was speaking and who to was trickier than you'd think.

Set still getting her digs in now is very set. And, yes, I'm sure people will have a theory on who the fourth head is by now. If not, don't worry, we'll get to it soon enough.

Getting a little quality time with Ananke/Minerva was one of the writing challenges here – this is a scene which is pretty much showing methodology. When the pages came in for this, Chrissy said “I've been trying to make sense of what you meant by this for four years, but now I get it.” So I hope it hits the core beats for most people.

I do love this push and pull between Ananke and Minerva though. It's quietly horrible.

Pop-art head death there, and a return of the flying eyeballs. Also, looking at the various expressions of the heads in the backgrounds on page 9 is pretty impressive. Set in the third panel!

10-11 is the ritual. Trying to work out how much space for this and what you actually needed to show was key. Plus the timing of it – there's an argument you could have taken this longer, or pushed it shorter. Two pages felt right.

Good eye-to-camera at the end, which allows us to...

PAGE 12

...Have an interstitial...

PAGE 13-14-15-16-17

...and segue to Minerva's eyes in the present day. Linking sequence between scenes.

Due to the repeated pages in the first half being “free” (They weren't – Jamie chose to kill himself) this means that the issue is considerably longer than usual. Even so, there are a lot of fish to fry. This is obviously the problem of the structure of this arc – yes, there will be past and present content in every issue. Balancing what we do in each is basically the key... but it also means we have to choose our scenes very carefully.

Anyway – Minerva and Woden, facing off. Just letting two characters push and pull against each other – and, for the first time, really being behind the curtain “with” Minerva. Previously Minerva has been presented as a supporting character, based on her interactions with others (1923 is an exception). Here, Minerva is protagonist, and we get to see her work.

Minerva! Love the dyed bangs. Strong look. Also, great thoughtful expression on the end of the last page... and her making her move on the next page.

Woden calling her “Sweetheart” seems to be a minor peak Woden move.

This sequence is making me think that Minerva would be great at playing the party game Resistance. Tricky thing in this sequence is actually signalling lies to readers. Lies are really hard in comics. Like irony (as in, characters saying things they don't believe) there's certain parts of the readership who have huge problems with it. Signalling what you want to do is paramount, and tricky. I'm not sure there's a right answer.

Last two panels of 15 are particularly good for Jamie and Matt – firstly, we get the time based upon the sun coming up, which gives it an odd atmosphere. Guns out in a room? You'd think nighttime. But no, it's something else.

Secondly, with the steady angle, with Minerva having her back to Woden, we get a chance to see her think about what lie to tell. That's an “Okay – Woden knows about the heads. How could he know about the heads?” think...

Then over the page, making the lie, expression hoping she gets away with it... and then relief when she's called it right. Great steady-angle work by Jamie and Matt, and the sort of performance you can get from them. I wouldn't write this for almost anyone else.

(Favourite detail – look at the shoulders. From Woden's perspective, she's not moving at all. She's only giving facial tells.)

This sequence was also particularly picked over with C, in a line by line way, in terms of what information is being imparted. Minerva and Woden are both absolutely drilling each other for all the information they can get, so what IS being implied.

I laugh at Minerva bundling over to the computer the second Woden is gone. Plus great final expression there by Minerva.

18-19

In an issue that's set half in the past, and the half the present day stuff is with Minerva, we're in danger of losing our lead – so I definitely try and write Persephone particularly present where she gets it. This is an advantage of the captions coming back in – we can slow sequences down and make them feel like they last longer.

It's fun to do Persephone captions. Well, “fun”. You get to hit certain things directly that normally I'd only ever approach obliquely.

The weirdest thing of rewriting was Jon's line about being trapped underground – which was originally “Buried alive.” The question was whether anyone would take that literally, as the lab hadn't 100% been established as being underground.   (and the stairs from the giant machine that lead to the lab go upwards, even though the whole thing is all underground.)

In short: in a plot as dense as ours, it's important to not confuse in any area except where you have to.

20-22

After a scene earlier of lying to someone's face, using the modern communication to do something exploring the same sort of thing seemed interesting. Also, efficient. For those following Page Budgets, the repeating panels of the phone aren't quite “free” panels, but they're relatively low energy panels. Plus it gets a LOT of information exchanged in a direct, quick way. Instead, we spend the effort on the expression panels, to show the journey that's NOT on the screen.

It's not stuff I'd do constantly, but I do like that we do it.

Nice Verðandi-shoulder-touch silent panel too. Yay Jamie and Matt!

23

I believe I originally wrote this for two pages, but with no captions. Jamie felt it was unnecessary, and they'd get a similar effect in a single page. The reason why I did it with two pages is that I wanted to slow the reader down in the process of discovery – there was a little bit more akin to the Rorschach scene in Watchmen, with the procedural exploration of the environment and trying to find a way in too.

In the script I said I may add captions at lettering, but reduced to a page, that felt like a necessary thing. It slows the eye, and lets us join Persephone in her internality.

(I actually wrote most of this as the opening of the next issue, before realising it didn't fit, which was nicely timed, as I realised that with some edits, it fits perfectly here.)

The mural introduced in issue 4, as coloured by Nathan Fairbairn.

Laura's glimpse back on panel 4 is one of my favourite minor moments – Matt's magenta behind the image really adds to it.

24-26

Minerva, in an issue of deniable manipulative shit, this is your most deniable and manipulative thing. Astounded, and I wrote it.

Last two panels call back to Imperial Phase I, for reasons which will become obvious.

Due to the way the pages moved around, Jamie suggested moving the reveal of the skulls to the previous page – they were originally on the final one, but the angle was nearly impossible to pull off, and worked better brought forward. You always want BIG information to be revealed on a page turn, but in this case, the panels are small enough to not register unless you're actively looking at them, plus the REAL meaning of them is only really get-able by those who recall a scene from issue 4.

Hence the flashbacks, to ensure people do recall them. We don't do a lot of this kind of thing, but as this has been a long time back, we felt it was worth really laying out the key facts, step by step. Also, free panels, for the page budget purposes.

(Of course, not for Matt, who is doing a really cool treatment here – the reds and blacks in one timeline, and the pink and blue dots in the flashbacks. Astounding. Give that man another Eisner.)

The “...but everyone else should be” has been sitting in my hard drive all that time too. Odd to hit this stuff as well.

I think I've said that Baal is one of my favourite characters in the whole series. Obviously much more to come here, and probably down the line. He was a character who was always going to become more central the further we got into this – you know I talk about knowing the characters arcs, but not always when the plots come to the top of the mix? There's certainly a take on WicDiv where this is revealed near the climax of Imperial Phase II along with the rest of it. I suspect that would have overloaded it – it needs space, and I'd hate to leave more than a month between this reveal and the What's-Going-On.

It always surprised me that more close readers didn't jump on a “Baal is Baal Hammon” argument, as there's stuff which I considered considerably more obscure that people were all over. He cries fire in issue 12, for example – though a lot of people were noting that 1920s Baal wasn't much like 2013 Baal after the Special. This stuff is fascinating, from my perspective.

Yes, Baal's hot stuff in the final panel. For those who are wondering about his Inanna tattoo, alternate covers aren’t strictly speaking canon, and gods have all kind of miracles available to them. 

Next issue is two weeks late. As well as being one of the hardest issues we've ever done, there's been several real life disasters. Sorry for the delay, but we'll see you next week.

[unwoundvisions]

Okay, finally an explanation for your playlist for you and Cloud. Most of them have certain perspectives and take place at certain points of the fic. Oh! And this playlist is exclusively for the KH2 fic. I’ll probably make a new one for everyone we do but this one is for this fic.

‘Demons’ to ‘So Close’

All these songs describe the early stages of your relationship.

Demons

Is from Cloud’s POV toward the start of the fic. It really gives me vibes for when we were first in Eric’s castle. But even at the start of the fic, I think it’s safe to say he felt this way. He really wants to be with you but he just feels like he’s not good enough for you for various reaons.

When I Look At You

From your POV and shows off how you feel about him from the start really. That’s something that I love now looking back at the fic. Your feelings never wavered even with your memories gone. Cloud just really got confused along the way.

Next To Me

From Cloud’s POV when things between you finally start to develop. He really can’t figure out why you continuously stay with him and want him when he upsets you a lot.

So Close

At the peak of things where it really did seem like Cloud could possibly choose you. He’s finally showing interest back and it’s perfect.

‘Bang Bang’ to ‘Love Remains The Same’

These songs describe the whole Cloud sleeping with Squall thing and the journey to being okay with each other again.

Bang Bang

I picked this one more so for the chores than anything. It just really felt like it fit when you found out about the situation. So yes, this one would be from your POV.

On My Own

Again, from your POV because I just love pain again. The end is what really gets me here. Damn me for picking this song. Listen with caution.

Sorry

This one is from Cloud’s POV. I’ve always kinda seen it that way. But the chores I see a bit differently now. Before I sort of saw it as Cloud just saying okay, I’m sorry, Squall’s the one for me and this just wasn’t meant to be. Now, I see it as he’s realized he’s done something you can never forgive him for (not really but he didn’t know that at the time). In this song, he’s realized how badly he’s fucked up and hates himself for it. Finally, the ‘someone will love you but someone isn’t me’ line, is really just him assuming you would NEVER want anything to do with him again.

Amnesia

This one is sort of from both of your POV’s when you were not talking to each other or arguing. Different parts of the song sort of work for both of you. BUT overall, I think you both kind of wished you could just forget about it all and be happier. Also, I never saw the irony of picking a song called amnesia for you too until just now.

Million Reasons

Is from your POV. It’s when you and Cloud are trying to work things out but it just turns into arguments or he continuously pulls away.

Clarity

From your POV and this song works for the time period above as well.

Little Do You Know

This is from both of your POV’s when things finally start to improve between you. It’s not perfect but you want to try because you really do love each other.

Love Remains The Same

This is from Cloud’s POV and it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore his feelings for you. He keeps coming back to you. Keeps wanting to be around you.

‘Sweet Creature’ to ‘Like I’m Gonna Lose You’

These songs describe how you two finally get together and your relationship.

Sweet Creature

Cloud’s POV again mainly in Olympus and things are starting to come back to him. Again, it’s just become impossible to ignore the feelings anymore.

Talk Me Down

This song is sort of from both of your POV’s just because it kind of shows how knowing something between you two in the past (and not remembering it) is a little frightening. Different parts of the song really suit you both. I mainly picked this one for the line, “Cause your hands and lips still know their way around.’ But overall, it just gives me the vibe of you two NEEDING to be around each other while your in Olympus while things keep trying to come back to your memory.

It Will Come Back

Cloud’s POV. I picked this song for the sexy feel than anything for the shower scene. But the song in general reminds me of Cloud’s sexy feelings toward you because it is kind of primal. Like the main reason he was worried about kissing you for so long was because he knew he would never be able to stop and this song kinda shows that.

Walking The Wire

From both of your POV’s really. It’s after the shower incident and you two are finally together. It’s scary and new but also amazing. It also kinda describes the events after, you two becoming a proper couple and just ready to face anything.

Secret Love Song, Pt II

I know you both were not’ secretly together long. BUT this is a good song from your POV during that time period.

God Only Knows

Both of your POV’s really. I really just love this song for you both. It also works for this time period where your together and happy.

Intertwined

Your POV and it’s honestly gives me vibe for when your both finally alone. Which is sadly rare in this. BUT it also kinda hints at your doubts about Cloud not having any interest in Squall. BUT the overall song is you kinda clinging to Cloud and hoping he doesn’t pull away.

Last One Standing

Cloud’s POV. I also like to call this your battle music because it’s just so epic sounding. Overall though, this song is about the battle about to happen with Sephiroth and how much he wants you to stay by his side.

Like I’m Gonna Lose You

Both of your POV’s. I really wish this song wasn’t so poppy because the chores really shows how much you both love each other. The guy’s part really suits Cloud’s mentantily after the battle to. He really has no intention of ever letting you go again.

‘Moondust’ to ‘Love Of My Life’

These are the sad songs again. Mainly about you choosing to leave at the end and how that felt for you both.

Moondust

We’re back to sadness. This one is from your POV just because I think parts of the song kinda describes you realizing that Cloud needs to be Squall (not really). So, you try to bury your love for him so he can be happy with who you think will make him happy.

Rewrite The Stars

This song is from both of your POV’s. I kinda imagine this as you’ve just told Cloud you’re leaving and even if he isn’t this vocal about his feelings in the fic, he will 100% feel this way. And your parts would of course be the girl’s part which in our case is about you knowing that he should be with Squall (not really).

Evermore

Cloud’s POV. You’re gone and this is basically Cloud realizing just how much he loves you.

Love Of My Life

Okay, I really love this song and it just really works for you both as the official last song. Because you both really love each other but there is this huge misunderstanding. Cloud still loves you. You still love him. Both the lyrics work from both of your POV’s by the end of the fic. Your’s because you think Cloud is just going to be with Squall. Cloud’s because you decided to go.

[thisdaynews]

How Minneapolis Freed Itself From the Stranglehold of Single-Family Homes

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/how-minneapolis-freed-itself-from-the-stranglehold-of-single-family-homes/

How Minneapolis Freed Itself From the Stranglehold of Single-Family Homes

MINNEAPOLIS—On recent early summer day, Janne Flisrand and John Edwards took a victory lap through their neighborhood.

As they strolled along sidewalks shaded by maples and oaks, they pointed out the variety of single-family homes that give the Lowry Hill East neighborhood its signature look: three-story houses from the early 20th century, with big, white-columned porches. Then they came to a century-old brown brick building, also three stories tall, with rows of windows on both sides of a recessed entryway. The six-unit condominium building from 1910 was flanked by 2½-story blue houses—one a single-family home, the other a triplex. It was mini-tableau of housing diversity that Flisrand and Edwards say has become all too hard to build in their part of town. “We’ve had a really long history of apartments and renters in this neighborhood,” Edwards says. “But 20 percent of the neighborhood wanted to prevent that housing for the last 50 years.”

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Well, they won’t prevent it any longer.

Thanks in part to activists like Flisrand and Edwards, Minneapolis just did away with the rules that gave single-family homes a stranglehold on nearly three-quarters of the city. In December, Neighbors for More Neighbors, the group co-founded by Flisrand and Edwards about two years ago to address Minneapolis’ affordable housing crisis, won a victory unseen in any other major American city. The city council approved the Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan, which declares the city’s intent to abolish single-family-home zoning and allow duplexes and triplexes to be built anywhere in the city.

“Lots of people want to live here,” said Flisrand. “It’s a great city to live in. And we have used our city policies to keep people out.”

Cities across the country are booming, but their growth is exacerbating an already critical lack of affordable housing for the middle class and poor alike. The solutions being proposed in many cities run the gamut from rent control to federal subsidies, but Minneapolis has landed on something even bolder that strikes at the heart of how cities have grown and defined themselves over the past century. Single-family-only neighborhoods, a staple of city and suburban planning, are woven into the DNA of the American dream: the leafy, peaceful street lined with stand-alone houses, green lawns and plenty of elbow room. Minneapolis’ new vision of itself would essentially rewrite that code—reshaping the urban streetscape around walking and mass transit and rebooting the American dream to be more racially and economically inclusive.

Minneapolis’ new comprehensive plan has drawn praise from divergent political quarters—both Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who visited Minneapolis recently, and theNew York Timeseditorial page. And cities and states with their own growth-driven housing crises are looking to Minneapolis for clues on how to navigate the political shoals inherent in any debate over development and growth. In June, Oregon’s Legislature followed Minneapolis’ lead, approving a bill to end single-family zoning in large cities.

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How did Minneapolis do it? In other cities, NIMBYs—conservative “Not In My Back Yard” defenders of suburban-style living—often make alliances with left-wing critics of gentrification to choke off new supply. But in Minneapolis, a progressive city council persuaded a broad coalition of racial-justice activists and nonprofit affordable-housing advocates to align with zoning-reform supporters behind a package of housing efforts meant to help both the middle class and the poor. Along with Minneapolis 2040’s vision of a denser city, the city council also approved $40 million in affordable-housing funds and requirements that some developers include lower-cost units in their projects. New protections for tenants are coming next.

“We’ve avoided a political coalition between folks who want to stop development and [those who] support progressive change,” said Lisa Bender, Minneapolis’ city council president. “In Minneapolis, for now, we have a political coalition that is supportive of adding more housing and demanding a race-equity approach to housing access. Now it’s incumbent on the city to actually do that in a meaningful way. And I’m not sure any city has done that.”

***

Minneapolis officials have knownfor the better part of a decade that the city’s economic health was creating a problem.

Since 2010, the city grew 11 percent to 425,000 people. People are migrating to Minneapolis to enjoy the vibrant urban scenes on its main avenues near downtown, its vast green neighborhoods of pre-World War II homes, and its plentiful parks along its many lakes and creeks. The Minneapolis-St. Paul region’s economy is thriving, led by prospering Fortune 500 companies such as UnitedHealth Group, Target and Best Buy. But the metro area is adding population faster than it’s adding housing—83,000 new households, but only 63,000 new houses, since 2010. So home-sale prices and rents are going up. In May, the median home-sale price in the Twin Cities area reached $285,000, up 5.2 percent from last year. Hopeful homebuyers face bidding wars. With vacancy rates low, tenants face climbing rents: The average monthly rent of a two-bedroom apartment in the city reached $1,847 this winter, while the vacancy rate is 3.7 percent. (Economists often consider a 5 percent vacancy rate “healthy”; below that, housing costs rise faster than inflation.). Spiking costs now threaten a cornerstone of Minneapolis’ prosperity, as young people find it ever harder to afford living there.

“Right now in Minneapolis, we have a whole lot of people that want to live here, and we’re proud of that,” said Mayor Jacob Frey. “But we don’t have the supply to accommodate it. And when you’ve got demand that is sky-high but not the supply to accommodate it, it’s just common sense: The prices, the rents, go through the roof.”

Minneapolis’ embrace of urban density began in 2013, when voters elected several young, progressive new city council candidates, including Bender. A Minnesota native, she’d worked as a San Francisco city planner before coming home. “When I moved back to Minneapolis, I saw that housing costs were much lower, but I saw the progression of folks moving in,” she said. “I didn’t see the city having the right kind of aggressive policy in place to keep our city affordable.”

Bender, 41, who became city council president in 2018, nerds out with glee while talking urbanist policy, from housing near transit stops to protected bike lanes. (She founded the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, now renamed Our Streets Minneapolis.) “My very first ordinance was to legalize accessory dwelling units!” she enthuses. To build support among reluctant council colleagues, she recruited allies such as AARP, which advocates for so-called granny apartments and garage flats.

“We opened up the dialogue around who gets to live where in our city,” Bender said.

Next, Bender and her City Hall allies set their eye on Minneapolis’ comprehensive plan, which all Minnesota cities have to update every decade. Usually, these plans are dry policy documents that attract little public attention. Before 2013, Bender said, the city’s feedback was mostly limited to neighborhood associations, so it usually heard from older, white homeowners. This time around, the city council approved an ambitious plan to gather citizen ideas at community meetings, street festivals and farmer’s markets.

This wider approach tapped into the 52 percent of Minneapolis residents who are renters, many of them young and keenly interested in lower housing costs but also climate change, transportation and racial justice. “When we set up enough room for the community to actually weigh in, and not just the folks who are opposed to things, there is a lot of public support for increasing housing options,” Bender said.

By 2017, housing had become a major issue in the city elections. Frey, a young councilman, was elected mayor on a platform of increasing housing density, tripling spending on affordable housing, and reducing residential segregation. “I unabashedly took stances saying that I believe in affordable housing in every neighborhood throughout the city,” said Frey, 37, a Virginia-native lawyer who moved to Minneapolis after running a marathon there.

Frey wanted to increase housing supply to meet demand, but there’s another reason he wanted to end single-family zoning: racial justice. He and others say single-family zoning evolved as a way for Minneapolis and other cities to practice racial discrimination by another name.

Since 2016, Minneapolis residents have exposed their city’s history of housing discrimination in a way that’s unusual for an American metropolis. Inspired by a project that digitized the federal government’s 1930s redlining maps, which declared black neighborhoods “hazardous” for investment, volunteers for Minneapolis’ Mapping Prejudice project have scanned and mapped 17,000 local real-estate deeds with racial restrictions from the 1910s through 1940s.

“When those explicitly racist policies became illegal through the Civil Rights Act, we and other cities throughout the country started doing things implicitly through our zoning code,” said Frey. “And we’ve set it up so that unless you can own a really big home on a really big parcel, you can’t live in huge swaths of the city.”

In 2018, city staff debuted an early draft of the Minneapolis 2040 plan. A broad planning document with 100 policies on everything from carbon-free energy to tree canopies, it attracted the most attention for its “Policy 1,” which called for increased housing density citywide and an end to single-family zoning. The early draft would’ve allowed four-unit buildings everywhere in the city. Larger apartment and condominium buildings could be built closer to downtown and along public transit routes. The new rules applied to renovation and new construction: subdividing houses, building additions, new construction on vacant lots, and new construction after existing housing was torn down.

The initial proposal divided Minneapolis, as opponents rose up to defend single-family zoning. Red lawn signs warned of developers bulldozing neighborhoods to build apartments.

“I’m not sure we bought the argument that more density increased affordable housing,” said Lisa McDonald, a former city council member and a member of the anti-2040 group Minneapolis For Everyone. “We felt we’d get very little affordable housing, but we would be giving developers carte blanche.”

That left Frey, who ran for mayor as a progressive, in the awkward position of defending the for-profit housing industry, which quietly supported the 2040 plan but didn’t publicly advocate for it. “People who need homes can’t be collateral damage in an antideveloper, antibusiness agenda,” he said. “We have people that need the supply.”

***

That’s when the deal-making started.

To overcome the opposition, Frey, Bender and their staffs reduced the promised new zoning in single-family neighborhoods from four-unit buildings to triplexes. They negotiated with council members over changes to future zoning on transit corridors in their wards.

To build a coalition behind the plan, the council voted on two other housing policies the same week as Minneapolis 2040. First, it approved Frey’s budget, which funded $40 million in affordable housing programs, up from about $15 million. Then, the same day council approved Minneapolis 2040 by a 12-1 vote, it passed an interim “inclusionary zoning” ordinance. Common in other big cities, inclusionary zoning requires apartment-building developers to set aside some of a complex’s units for people with below-average incomes. “This city council won’t support making it easier to build housing without a requirement that some of that housing be affordable,” Bender said.

The package deal helped gather support for the 2040 plan from nonprofit affordable-housing advocates, who were lukewarm about zoning for more density.

“It’s great that a city has said we’re going to open up the zoning books and get creative about how we can boost density,” said Russ Adams, executive director of The Alliance, a nonprofit advocate on racial and economic justice issues. “But without regulation, the market is going to behave exactly the way it always behaves.”

Meanwhile, representatives of the for-profit housing industry support Minneapolis 2040’s embrace of higher density but say it won’t likely solve the housing shortage on its own.

“If it produces 50 units in a year, in my mind, it’ll be a big success,” John Rask, a homebuilder and the president of the builders’ group BATCHousing First Minnesota, said. “I don’t think anyone sees 500 units a year coming out of triplexes. But every little bit helps.” Other parts of Minneapolis 2040, like increased density along transit corridors, should help, he said. But he argues that the city needs relief in parking requirements, lower city fees, and expedited permit and zoning approvals, rather than an inclusionary zoning policy.

Local housing advocates are also skeptical that eliminating single=family zoning will advance racial justice. Minneapolis’s racial disparities are among the worst in the nation. The gaps between white and nonwhite homeownership and poverty in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region are the largest among the nation’s 25 largest metro areas. Three out of four whites in the region own their own homes; only one in four African Americans do. Density in more neighborhoods may give people of color more choices about where to live, but it doesn’t address the wealth gaps that past discrimination helped create.

“The city has to put its money where its mouth is, and redistribute resources to make high density equal affordability,” Dr. Brittany Lewis, an urban affairs researcher at the University of Minnesota, said. “A lot of small developers of color are trying to get in the development game because they want to invest in the communities in which they live. And it’s extremely challenging.”

Tabitha Montgomery, executive director of the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association, feels conflicted about the Minneapolis 2040 plan. “In theory, adding housing units to the city will be helpful to persons of color,” she said. Minneapolis’ low rental vacancy rate especially hurts immigrants and black women, she said. “Our wealth level doesn’t allow us to be competitive sometimes with other persons who are pursuing housing.” But Montgomery isn’t convinced that Minneapolis 2040 will end up benefiting the most vulnerable. She wants the city to focus more on nonprofit affordable housing.

The mayor says he especially wants to help black and indigenous residents become homeowners. Homeownership is a major goal in the city’s $40 million affordable-housing budget. The Minneapolis Homes program, with $5 million funding this year, offers downpayment assistance loans for homebuyers and city-owned vacant land and vacant houses for sale. Frey notes that North Minneapolis could especially benefit from the program, since the city owns 300 vacant homes or lots in North Minneapolis alone.

Now the Minneapolis 2040 plan is before the Metropolitan Council, the Twin Cities’ powerful regional planning board, which is widely expected to approve it later this year. After that, the city council intends to enact the planning zoning changes into law. The 2040 plan may become an issue in the 2021 city elections, if its opponents get their way. “We’ll be looking at bringing in some council members who are listening to the citizens more,” said McDonald.

But the mayor predicts the 2040 plan’s results will eventually vindicate his approach. “While people might hate my guts for a couple of years,” he said. “I’m confident that a little down the road, it’ll be apparent that we took the right route.”

Read More

[hevensowner-blog]

Publishing some sort of Proposal Without Losing Head

Publishing a good sized proposal can sound an absurdly Herculean process. Conceptualizing, writing, updating, formatting, and producing a 1, 500-page page with 120 artwork? In 30 days to weeks? Doesn't seem probable. But it happens on a regular basis.

And there's that rub. Proposal stores (the publishing people, often embedded with large corporations, that manage a lot of these monster productions) are generally notorious for functioning staff and subcontractors ragged within a 20-hour-a-day race to create and deliver these documents before its due. The long a long time, the rate with burnout, and the amount of disorder in a lot of these environments are well-known.

As a proposal editor< along with the editorial manager with Computer Sciences Businesses (CSC) proposal submission group for several years, I oversaw that publication of good sized, complex, high-quality plans under extremely limited deadlines. But my company and I were able to avoid the standard angst because people cultivated a a certain number of, organized production natural environment. You can practice it, too.

Along using my lessons figured out, here's advice to get a saner process from all very reputable proposal experts in the flooring buisingess: from CSC, Rhonda Wright, senior citizen manager, and Ginny Furth, idea coordinator; from Booz Allen Hamilton, Margo Goldman, senior citizen associate, and Carolyn Quinn, link; and from SM&A, idea consultant Rachael Neenan.

Rhonda Wright tells, “Proposal publishing can be an art. It ought to be, when you're offered five days to create 1, 000 internet pages. " As using any art, what you study from the masters ought to be practiced and then adapted to fit your own needs.

Select a project sponsor

Want a recipes for disaster? Go lean and bring about one freelance publisher to proofread ones proposal. Then assume that they can format ones proposal, make coffees, and-oh, yeah-organize ones production schedule together with workflow. An astonishing amount of companies operate in exactly this manner.

A better process? Assign a concentrated project coordinator to help oversee your output schedule and e-book process end to separate. Having someone manage the important points of production lets the top honchos like proposal managers consentrate on their core duty: developing a successful proposal strategy. Therefore lets your output staff edit, pattern, and format that document without distraction.

Really, your coordinator ought to be a trained idea specialist who has learned the intricacies of RFP (request for proposal) that will manage a output workforce of 10 to help 30. At minimum amount, he or she ought to be highly organized, accommodating, and accustomed to help working under taut deadlines.

In add-on, Margo Goldman tells, coordinators “have to get the right personality. They need really need a certain power, a certain assertiveness. Right after they say 'no, ' people essential info that they necessarily mean it. " Carolyn Quinn highlights that a sponsor “also must be ready to stay calm with tense situations. inch Or as Rachael Neenan guides it, “No matter how difficult the case, you can do not ever blow your collection. Staying professional can be so important, because everybody else on the team reacts back. " In many other words, if ones proposal coordinator will lose it, your whole staff might lose it, way too.

Add key staff members

In addition for a project coordinator, you would like two other experts: an editor and then a desktop publisher. The proposal editor will establish a style page (sometimes called that “wall of truth") for any proposal and update the document again. The desktop publisher will establish a style-based template for any proposal (usually with Microsoft Word), framework text, and assimilate numerous files inside one. The computer's desktop publisher, who ought to be skilled in artwork software, will also generate the figures applied to the proposal.

If your primary proposal is with substantial size (say, across 100 pages), these leads will likewise oversee the succeed of other writers and desktop publishers assigned to your effort. Because the leads carry a great deal responsibility, it doesn't pay for to force-fit someone in the job who's not necessarily fully qualified. Consistent with Wright, “Your leads ought to be true experts who figure out what they're doing. Using people which aren't publishing professionals are often very costly-and can really jeopardize the idea. "

By the best way, you don't imagine your proposal ought to be edited? Maybe not necessarily, if you tend not to mind your clientele reading that hunan resources and then a pubic key infrastructure are component of your solution.

Schedule production in more detail

A production arrange should work backward in the proposal deadline together with incorporate time with regard to writing and studying, designing the proposal cover along with the template for the written text pages, formatting and having the copy, idea editing and proofreading, possessing author and idea manager reviews, conducting one more quality check, together with printing, assembling, boxing, together with delivering the idea.

It's tempting to forgo organizing a schedule since “schedules always slide. " But that's how come you need an individual, and why building your garden shed coordinator should place out every meanwhile deadline that's had to get from project set out to completion. When a lot of these deadlines slip, you'll indeed ought to reconfigure your arrange. But you'll know clearly where you are supposedly and what still ought to be done to connect with your final contract.

What to do once your schedule is drifting out of hand, but the higher-ups don't appear to care? Remind them in the dollars being wasted by way of the extra hours wasted. “If somebody decides in the eleventh hour to swap the proposal's web template, " Wright tells, “a coordinator may well explain that making a really change will require a certain number of hours-at a particular number of dollars each hour. When the companies do the math concepts, chances are they'll drop the concept. "

Hold standup staff members meetings

Getting your team together for only 10 minutes every day and 10 minutes inside afternoon can save you hours of sacrificed effort that proceeds from misunderstanding priorities and job specifications. The reason for a standup? To help assess progress with interim deadlines, assign priorities during the day, answer questions, and adjust ones schedule as needed so that the project remains to normal. The project sponsor should lead that meeting, and just about all key production staff members should attend.

Mind you, a “standup" assembly means just that-everyone should fully stand up. Keeping people on the feet nearly ensures that meetings continue to be short and concentrated.

Use progress-tracking fire wood

Your proposal is usually 800 pages longer, is being authored by 23 authors, and it is currently divided inside 140 separate Ms Word files. Pick where Section II. 13. M. iv is?

If you happen to religiously maintain some sort of tracking log, you certainly will. Your log should list just about every piece of that document, including that cover, spine, together with back cover; that tabs and event tables of contents; the resume cover letter; every text department, broken out just by volume, section, together with subsection; and just about all supplemental material, which include appendices and contraptions. Your log ought to track the progress of each one piece through each step in the publishing cycle, which include writing, editing, format, author reviews, together with quality checks.

Wright says that will she expects the woman's project coordinators “to fully understand the status of each one single piece on the proposal during every minute in the production cycle. " Her coordinators' progress logs allow them to take some action.

One of the excess benefits of this product, says CSC's Ginny Furth, is it's far standardized and suited for all the department's plans. “I can give off a project I'm taking care of to any many other coordinator who's been trained in the way, " says Furth. “They can continue the project flowing in the evening, so I do not have to be at the office round the clock. "

Control workflow together with versions

Your editor comes with spent six a long time polishing the executive summary in the event the proposal manager happily hands you his rewrite in the file. Guess precisely what? You've just sacrificed version control.

And avoid these unhappy seconds, you need a pc for moving files in the production process and being sure that only one people is handling a file each time. Your system is often as simple as placing each a component the proposal within a manila folder not allowing people to figure on a section unless they also have that very folder facing them. Or you may load your files into an electric document-sharing system enjoy Microsoft SharePoint, which allows merely one person to “check out" and use a file each time.

“One of things that can really does one in on some sort of proposal is if you happen to lose version regulate, " says Quinn. “When authors give us a file to figure on, we advise them, 'That's it, it's our file today, we own the idea, don't do whatever else to it. ' We help it become very clear with control over a file each time. "

Schedule some sort of relief shift

It's not actually unusual for Goldman to help schedule freelance editors to get started on a good sized project at 6: 00 k. m. on some sort of Friday or 9: 00 some sort of. m. on some sort of Sunday. As shortly as she spots that work might flow outside usual business hours, she rings in place her freelance staff members and books a 2nd shift.

“The way that will we've avoided burnout over time is that we now have an extensive merchant network, " Goldman tells. “We use a whole lot of temporary support, each of those for editing together with for design. We think of yourself as very careful regarding the hours that most people work, and we really increase and add staff members to spell people right after they need it. inch

Incorporating a minute shift into ones production schedule enables more work to remain done on the day while preventing the lowered return and increased errors which come from working ones production staff 12 and 15 hours on a daily basis for weeks at a time. It also helps maintain your most fundamental professionals fresh and focused right after they are practical.

“I am a giant proponent of that life-work balance, inch says CSC's Wright. “We have individuals who worked for a us a long time and who likewise have spouses and little ones. People like that aren't visiting stick around when we aren't flexible with the schedules. We ask our staff to travel out on a limb for individuals, and we ought to be willing to do the identical for them. inch

Proposal groups that will don't operate this way are known since “body shops, " and people regularly place multimillion dollar deals inside hands of output staff fueled only by the few cups of coffee and some hours of sleeping. Lots of places practice it. But that doesn't help it become any less hazardous.

Know when to speak about no

Quality can be a goal, but the deadline is a supreme goal. Proposals submitted to the us government minutes late get famously been rejected-leaving that submitter with tons of paper and a huge number of dollars with publishing costs off the drain. “Publishing a proposal is not really like publishing some sort of novel, " tells CSC's Ginny Furth. “It's not visiting be read more and more through generations. " Each time a deadline is in danger, she says, “I am not necessarily above pulling a folder using somebody's hands. inch

Goldman says, “Carolyn together with I are top-notch writers, but we are extremely practical most people. We know when to allow to go, and at the final of a job, we will not work with the trivial. inch

Last-minute changes for a proposal should become only if people address RFP concurrence issues or resolve errors which were egregious enough to threaten the offer. In other key phrases, should production be organized to insert some sort of missing serial comma? Virtually no. To fix some sort of typeface smaller as compared to that allowed by way of the RFP or a misspelling inside client's name? Without a doubt.

Leave ample time period for printing

Take into account that the final measure of publishing-printing, putting together, and boxing some sort of deliverable-always takes longer than you hope. SM&A's Neenan says considered one of her pet peeves is usually that “everyone feels that printing amazingly happens in a few minutes. Even individuals who been in that proposal business with regard to 15 years consistently underestimate plenty of time that's required. " To get a large proposal, Neenan recommends creating a full day in the schedule dedicated just to printing together with prepping a page for delivery. And by the full day, she means the standard business day-“not with 5: 00 k. m. one morning until 5: 00 some sort of. m. the following. "

Enjoy precisely what you've created

As soon as you finally have the proper staff on your team along with the right procedures available, working on a proposal may actually be a entertainment. “The proposal environment can be so collaborative, " tells Furth. “There's a really sense of teamwork together with, over time, you feel a close friends and family. "

“Sometimes, you do not even have to help talk through precisely what you're doing, " says Goldman in the proposal environment. “It's like being relating to the best of that military teams-everyone just knows where to start. "

Creating a proposal shop such as the one Goldman teaches takes time, but it's more than worth it. Your proposals might run more properly, fewer people might scream at people, and both you and unfortunately your staff will like a saner standard of living. Publishing a panic-free idea isn't easy, but it can also be done. Follow the most effective practices outlined these, and you'll possess a great chance of putting your following large proposal to help bed on time-without losing an excessive amount sleep yourself.

[wupassman]

Reviewing SweetStoryBro’s Review of the Shenmue story

https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro/status/831177322803892225

Some first ofs:

I am writing this directly adressing Sweetstorybro because it feels more natural and less impersonal to address him but that doesn’t mean it’s not intended for anybody else. I am one of the big backers (toy capsule set pledge) so I have a lot to say about this game I fought 14 years for to get that Kickstarter.

I am sorry if this may read a lil bit like a scatterbrained person wrote this. I basically take notes as I listen and since I managed to lose my write up for the first half of the podcast I had to rewrite that from memory too.

I really like the effort and research you put into this, while in places I can add something overall this is very sastisfying for a long time fan and definately a pretty goddamn complete rundown of what the story is about and how its executed. That being said generally if there’s agreement there is not a whole lot more to add so if I don’t outright disagree you can assume I agreed.

Let get to it then:

I think you did a really good job at explaining in which way Shenmue surpasses your average gaming experience, while its clearly a game it kinda goes past playing but experiencing. As you pointed out this game can be a very different experience for each player based on how hard they are looking to find connections and generally explore the world (and progress the story at just the right pace as to not miss a single cutscenes XD It’s not too easy to make a 100% run but if you do, things like Nozomi moving isn't as much out of the blue, yes she basically leaves as abrupt as he does but it's foreshadowed during the convos with her). Yu indeed built a very lifelike world with tons of lil details and NPCs that felt real. I really like how you brought up that book explaining what Yu was trying to do with this world. That was a thing I fan haven't heard of before. Indeed it is a very key aspect to differentiate between japanese and chinese, which of course becomes a much bigger deal in part II even, when Ryo is removed from his stomping grounds but in Hongkong. It's actually p interesting how a game about chinese culture was kinda a main idea from the beginning, as he was inspired to be making Shenmue (then Akira RPG/Project Berkley) many years prior, when he travelled China in order to research martial arts for Virtua Fighter.

As this is a perfect segway I’ll be skipping ahead a little bit here and talk about the fighting system.On of the main genres I always played were fighting games so I personally appreciated the super simplified VF fighting system (try VF3TB from the same time and youll know the difference) and being such a player I wouldnt even have thought of wanting to play this with analog stick. Golden rule of fighting games: dpad = accuracy, analog = wishy washy. That being said I am not at all opposed to change it up for Shenmue III and make it feel more like Sleeping Dogs. After all back in the day it was a different controller not quite as handy for 3D games (the lack of a 2nd stick means a lot). As long as the fighting is tight and responsive it works for me either way, iof there is a change that needs to happen it’s the camera. I am not really holding it against the game cuz it’s really old but the camera screw ups during fights could leave you clueless which way youre facing at times.

I wouldnt worry too much about the thing with the chapters. The games don’t equal chapters. It’s more like arcs/themes (as you later said when talking about the PostMortem). From basically the very start Shenmue was supposed to be split into 5 games and as of yet the plan/hope is that the final game will be Shenmue V. Shenmue I was only 1 chapter but Shenmue II was 3.

At the risk of completly blowing any kind of credibility I might have and just come off as a crazed fanboy: The pacing of Shenmue I had purpose. It very much corresponds with the mental state of Ryo. Feeling of grief and feeling lost. Shenmue I basically is about running into a brickwall and trying a different path until at the end he finally finds a way to get his passage to China. Until then his plans were shattered and ruined a couple of times and it weighs on him. And it should weigh on the player too. It’s part of how you manage to get this deep connection to the character because you as a player are forced to live out the day as is (or just go for the blocking out that your dad was killed and spend all day in the You Arcade). this is further emphasiszed that in Shenmue I theres rarely ever good weather and most of the soundtrack is depressing too. The days getting long is absolutely intentional. I can see how this might not be the most fun kind of gaming for a lot of people, but this is why different games exist. Shenmue’s job is not to appeal to players who can’t enjoy a game where shit doesn’t explode every 5 seconds. It is important to tell people who are interested so they know what theyre in for but its not actually a negative for the game itself because it actually perfectly fullfills what was required for this part of the story.

There is no way to talk about this without explaining how this correlates with the 4 themes Yu brought up and why Shenmue II is such a change of tone. It’s not just the fact that Hongkong is a bustling metropolis. It is very much the fact that due to the unseen part on the ferry and much more so because of all the masters and other freaks he meets in Hongkong that he opens up more. Again the change in tone of Shenmue II is also accompanied by visual and audio cues. THe soundtrack of Shenmue II is overall more upbeat, depressing themes do play in the more run down quarters but overall the game sounds cheerier. Likewise its not just that Hongkong of course is a much more colorful place than the suburban area he grew up in. It’s also basically always sunny in SHenmue II. Granted it makes a lot of sense due to the different seasons the game takes place in but of course with a highly artistic work like this, this is not a coincidence.

Let’s move right into the next part here. Yes Ryo behaves like a jerkass towards a lot of his peers. While there is a chance that the Voice Acting has some to do with it (No dissing Corey Marshall, the man is a hero!) it is still fully intended for him to be as cold and brooding as he is. You can tell by the face animation, which is p goddamn good for a game that old. Every Shenmue player made jokes about how Ryo’s happy face looks the same as his angry face. His moments where he is at least not totally miserable are rare and special. He is consumed with grief in Shenmue I. Shenmue II is about moving forward from that. HENCE DEPARTURE. not just locally but mentally. I really need to compare the interactions he had with the 2 most important females in his personal life.

The first one is obviously Nozomi: These conversations are awkward for more reasons than just them sucking at talking about their feelings (which btw isnt just them being teens but really very much them being japanese in this era too). Keep in mind both are aware of the feelings the other one has so they have a very close relationship. You’d think close enough for him to actually tell Nozomi what hes on and about to do in order to find the killer of his father. He doesn’t He’s very sparse with the information he shares which is entirely rooted in the fact that revenge is highly egoistical (heres a theme that gets such importance placed upon in Shenmue II). That doesn’t even mean hes an egoist, cuz he is not. He is just super preoccupied with his grief and aparently nobody really knows how to help him finding a better way to deal with it (given his age that makes sense too, no complaints there). As I mentioned earlier tho it depends on your play how many scenes with Nozomi you’re going to see (the Shenmue Passport cd is a good reference). Also since it wasn’t actually out of the blue that she would be going to Canada soon it is quite understandable she has a hard time telling him about her feelings too. This is not only a well known story beat but IRL youd think whether you wanna tell someone you love them when you know for a fact you’ll be moving overseas anytime soon. Especially when you consider the circumstance that if Ryo wasn’t on his revenge trip he’d assume his role as patriarch of the Hazuki Dojo.

Now lets fast forward to disc 4 of Shenmue II (THIS GEM!) and inspect the interactions Ryo has with Shenhua. These are amazing. They’re literally the best conversations Ryo has in all of the 2 games. Shenhua’s cheery and innocent, good natured personality makes it exceedingly hard for him to be the brooding jerkass anymore. A lot of that has to do with all the people he met who became his friends/mentors in Hongkong/Kowloon. He grew because of them. But Shenhua’s personality helped a great deal too. All of the sudden there are no distractions. Just the environment and her. What else would he do but chat with her? If you havent played Shenmue II I implore you to just youtube the conversations he has with Shenhua and compare with Nozomi yourself. It’s like night and day and p much the ultimate signifier for his growth throughout the progress of the game. Now this is venturing a into fan theory territory: the fan base is p much split down the middle of what kind of romantic role Nozomi is going to play in Ryo’s future. To me shes the child hood love interest that never became more due to him being preoccupied and her frankly not actually being available either. It would seem sensible to accept this as a chance missed as a part of moving on. I am positive he is going to end up with Shenhua as she resumes transforming him from this brooding dude preoccupied with revenge to a guy who truly internalises the lessons he learnt in Hongkong and adds a big helping of humanity to it. 

Not to excuse his behavior towards Ine-san and Fukuhara-san (because you rightly identify them as cold) part of that is also rooted in japanese culture. With Iwao’s death Ryo became the patriarch of the family. Ine-san may scold him but in the end it is not her place to deny him. Likewise Fukuhara-san was Iwao’s student so that kind of transferred to Ryo now. The bigger point here is that he abandons his responsibilities for them. I don’t think it’ll have actual negative impact for him in story, but there is likely going to be a moment of awakening that it is high time he returns home and takes care of the martial arts school.

I am sorry this actually took a 2nd day to finish but I got busy watching Collisions 2017. I only listened to it once but in seghments. Since I am such a huge fan of the game I wanted to be fair and not overanalyze your review and find nitpicks where there arent any.

While the individual play style is entirely up to each player it is my recommendation for everyone playing this, it to give it time. Let it breathe. Just waste your time away doing fun stuff. You’re going to miss out on a lot if you’re playing it in the way youd play most linear games where you just resume with the next goal in the main quest like crossing of a check list. You are not supposed to leave this early. During my fast plays I still never finished before christmas. At best I managed a jan 15 arrival in Hongkong just to see if I manage to arrive on my own birthday lol. But in all seriousness the time limit for this game is so goddamn long because you arent really suppoed to rush through this too fast. Leaving by the middle of January or even by the end of it makes for an overall better experience IMO (lol I just heard the 10 hours thing and I damn near lost it haha. look as I said it’s ok to play it any way you see fit, but seriously 10 hours literally means just the main quest. no goofing off. You’re missing out on stuff and an overall more majestic experience is all I am saying) To me the harbor segment was super fun cuz it was cool figuring out how you get the most out of each day, incl at least some good toy collecting and maybe training (usually didnt need that anymore at this point). By no means I am trying to tell you to like an aspect you didn’t, but to me this very much comes down to how deep you immerse yourself in the world. If you let the time go by slowly (dont run basically😉) such things as working have a deeper impact on how you experience it - then 2h lunch break still feels like 15 minutes. It was literally the opposite for me in that the harbor is when I am p much forced to move the plot forward instead of just goofing off so much. I know people who share this kinda play style feel the same way that the harbor is - to us - where it really picks up.

Before my review of this is over I’d also like to personally recommend the japanese dub over the english dub. Yeah the english dub feels weird at times but this is also intentional. A good comparision to that would be the lines in the Spartacus TV show. Just like that one was speaking latin in english the Shenmue dub was speaking japanese in english if you get my meaning. The VAs talked about this on the SEGANerds podcast during the kickstarter. Of course due to having played it so much it works for me but it’s easy to tell the difference. At the same time I can not praise the english VAs enough for being incredible heroes who promoted the Kickstarter hard, it was amazing. I love all of you guys. Thank you for your passion. Will def play Shenmue III in both japanese and english to honor all of you!

I warned ya it’s prolly a lil bit all over the place. Anyway thanks for the review. give the man a follow: https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro