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anistarrose · 4 years ago

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Summary: Angus leads a virtual book club meeting. Kravitz connects the dots. Taako makes significant updates to the list of people he trusts and things he believes.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Bit by bit, we’re inching closer to the endgame! Lots of plot and angst in this update, but also I think I might’ve implied that Minecraft exists in Faerun, so it evens out, y’know?

By virtue of their trance state replacing sleep, elves were supposed to be good lucid dreamers. Taako had always experienced mixed results, but never moreso than tonight, with a dream that started out all saccharine romantic fantasy — fishing with Kravitz and sharing a kiss after falling into the lake together — before a clap of thunder and an unholy scream plunged the world into darkness and left one single source of light, one last surviving star, cradled in Taako’s unassuming hands.

Then a ripple in the darkness, the invisible maw of some ravenous entity, closed around that final star — and Taako screamed, as loud as he could muster yet still not loud enough to drown the ringing in his ears, as he flailed in the dark against the invisible monster that stole the world from him —

At once, two hands closed around his own, one cold and the other warm. On Taako’s left was Kravitz, aghast but holding himself together, a steely composure to his posture despite the fear in his eyes.

On Taako’s right was a Red Robe — but not Barry, and in fact not anything like what Taako had started to accept as normal for Red Robes. Where Barry had a clouded darkness in place of hands and a face, this lich had pure static escaping from within her sleeves and beneath her hood, crackling and constantly changing shape like lightning, or… like fire.

Taako sat up in his bed covered in cold sweat, heart pounding as he realized his legs were hopelessly tangled in his sheets, and only slightly slowing when he realized there was nothing in his bedroom to run from.

Elves were supposed to rarely awaken late, but Taako’s wizard hat-shaped alarm clock — a gift that Angus that he’d quietly appreciated, even though it should have been redundant — indicated that it was mid-morning, and when he trudged out into the common area, he found no sign of his doormates besides a note written in Magnus’s distinctive scrawl.

I know you were busy last night, so we’re letting you sleep in while we go play Fantasy Kickball on the quad! Killian and Avi are team captains and their rivalry is fierce, so we’ll probably be playing all day if you want to join us! Love, Magnus! (And Merle)

Taako didn’t realize how relieved he was until he felt himself let out a sigh.

He had a sinking feeling that the same dream — or at least, a similar dream — had played out more than once that night, looping over and over again as he repeatedly failed to remember, much less control, where it was going. He felt too exhausted to be operating on even a single minute of dreamless sleep, and didn’t even want to think about holding a conversation with anyone…

Well, with most people. There was someone he’d really been meaning to chat with, before he’d been distracted by haircuts and Kravitz and pottery and stargazing and Kravitz.

He transmuted a mug of lukewarm tap water to a piping hot, high-caffeine tea, then picked up his Umbra Staff, and conjured a familiar phantom steed with twin horns that nearly grazed the ceiling as he reared and whinnied.

“Yooo! Mornin’, Taako!”

“Morning, Garyl.” Taako yawned. “Could you do me a favor, and tell me literally anything you know about the liches you said I used to hang out with?”

***

CalebClevelandFan#2045: All early-installment weirdness aside, I really do think it’s a great introduction to the series! Because of the retcons you’ll encounter later, there are some conspiracy theories that the most recent arc of Caleb Cleveland was ghostwritten to maximize the publishing rate (which I think is hogwash, because continuity errors are going to be inevitable no matter who’s writing) but I guess I’ll let you decide for yourself when you get there! Do you need to stop by the moon again to borrow Book 2?

ReaperAwMan#1672: No thank you, Angus! I think I’m going to try and download the “digital” version, now that I know I can do that on my Stone! Taako told me about that feature and a lot of others last night, so if I can’t get it to work, I’ll just call him and ask him to walk me through it. :)

ReaperAwMan: Did I use the smiley face correctly?

CalebClevelandFan: Yes! :) You’ve picked up on technology a lot faster than my grandpa did.

CalebClevelandFan: Did Taako also choose your username on this app, though?

ReaperAwMan: How did you know? Is it a reference to something? :)

CalebClevelandFan: Um

CalebClevelandFan: Yes, but it’s a long story. It’s not mean-spirited or anything, though! I think it’s pretty funny!

ReaperAwMan: Okay! :)

CalebClevelandFan: Is that all for book club today? If it is, Mr. Kravitz, I just want to say that I’d be happy to talk to you again about Caleb Cleveland anytime!

CalebClevelandFan: It means a lot to me, but I understand if you’re too busy (message edited)

ReaperAwMan: Oh, there’s always time for book club, Angus!

ReaperAwMan: But I admit, I have had a lot on my mind…

CalebClevelandFan: Is it the liches? Since the Reclaimers aren’t in trouble anymore? (By the way, I went to tell Noelle she didn’t have to worry about getting reaped, but apparently she’s visiting family, so I left a message with her teammates Carey and Killain..)

ReaperAwMan: Excellent deduction. (And thank you for that. I hope she gets the message soon.)

ReaperAwMan: You’re right, I’m still hunting Lup and Barry Bluejeans, but… I just can’t shake the feeling that they’re connected to Taako and the others.

CalebClevelandFan: Really? What makes you say that?

ReaperAwMan: Well, I didn’t think much of this for a long time, and now I’m kicking myself for it, but their bounties registered in our system at the same time as Taako’s, Magnus’s, and Merle’s. We figured it was just a widespread detection glitch, which has happened before on a much smaller scale, but now it feels awfully suspicious. The Reclaimers have also encountered Barry at least four times now, without even seeking him out the first three times, whereas finding Barry is my job, and I get a lead on him about twice a year, if I’m lucky.

CalebClevelandFan: That is odd. Did any other bounties show up at that same time? Do you know if they have any kind of connections to Barry?

ReaperAwMan: Only two others, for a couple of people named Lucretia and Davenport. They must be living like hermits, because it’s been 12 years and I know as little about them as I do about Lup. Not a lot of leads there, I’m afraid.

(CalebClevelandFan is typing…)

CalebClevelandFan: Hmm. Huh! I wish I could say those names meant something to me, but I’ve never heard them before in my life! Truly unfortunate, that. But, I do suspect that Barry appearing to the Reclaimers is because the Red Robes made the Grand Relics, and it’s the Reclaimers’ job to track those seven relics down!

ReaperAwMan: You mean to tell me that Barold J. Bluejeans made a Grand Relic, and the Reclaimers all knew that information, but didn’t think it would be important to tell me?! This is simultaneously the most and least surprised I’ve been at any point in my afterlife.

CalebClevelandFan: Well, I guess there’s a reason I’m the moon’s resident boy detective and they aren’t, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Wait. Angus.

CalebClevelandFan: Yes?

ReaperAwMan: Seven relics. Seven bounties.

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, sir, I’m not following. What’s the connection?

ReaperAwMan: I know this is going to sound impossible, but…

ReaperAwMan: Taako is a transmutation wizard. The Philosopher’s Stone can transmute any material into anything else. Merle is a nature cleric, and the Gaia Sash offers control over natural disasters and the wilderness. Then of course, Barry is a lich like no other, and the Animus Bell is the most dangerous necromantic artifact I’ve ever been tasked with monitoring. I don’t know exactly how Magnus fitz into this, or how the other three bounties have managed to hide from me, but…

ReaperAwMan: I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

ReaperAwMan: Angus? Are you still there?

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, I just rebooted my Stone, but I still can’t read your second-to-last message! It just looks like static, but I was inoculated, so that shouldn’t be possible!

ReaperAwMan: I’m not sure what you mean by “inoculated,” but if the app is glitching, then do you want me to call you?

CalebClevelandFan: It may not be the app, sir. And if it isn’t, I fear a phone call won’t make any difference… but I just got an idea! I’m going to go check if Noelle is back yet — she should be able to help with this. Please bear with me for a few minutes, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Okay, then… good luck!

Head in his hand, Kravitz scrolled back up to the offending message, reading it over once more.

I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

It made sense, but it shouldn’t have. Despite all the questions it answered, it raised more in their place — and Kravitz had been ready to accept that he was wrong, ready for brilliant little Angus to chime in with a piece of evidence that refuted it all...

Except that message, and that message alone, hadn’t made it to Angus in the first place — and wasn’t that the most damning, of all the so-called coincidences aligning before Kravitz’s eyes?

The Reclaimers made Grand Relics and consorted with liches. The Reclaimers can’t remember making Grand Relics or consorting with liches.

Someone is hiding the truth from the Reclaimers, and from Angus. Someone is hiding the truth from the entire Bureau of Balance.

Is it Barry? Does he have that much power? Is he working with someone? With Lup?

Kravitz summoned his scythe with the full intention of warping straight to the moonbase, and bringing his four friends from the Bureau directly back to the Astral Plane — not to take them prisoner, but simply to get them somewhere safe, somewhere to talk without Queen-knows-what outside forces eavesdropping or interfering. Yet before he could open a rift, Kravitz’s vision flashed blue, and a faint yet familiar tug directed his focus towards a much different region of the Material Plane.

A voice echoed in his head, too distorted to identify the speaker, but the words themselves were clear enough:

Kravitz, help!

Kravitz’s Stone of Farspeech clattered onto his desk as he raised his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, honing in on the location of the summoning arrow. It was surrounded by undead presences of several shapes and forms, but one aura outshone all the others — one unmistakable red aura, crackling with power, and… desperation.

There was a very short list of people on the Material Plane with access to this kind of summoning beacon — and no matter what dark secrets their pasts held, Kravitz couldn’t bear the thought of any of them being left alone with an incredibly powerful, secret-keeping, Relic-crafting lich who had finally, finally snapped.

With a frantic swing of his scythe, he ripped open a jagged portal to the arrow’s location, and leapt through without even pausing to retrieve his Stone.

Hang on, boys! I’m coming!

***

“If you wanna hear anything about liches,” Garyl declared, “that information comes with a price. Which you know is gonna be oats, ‘cause what would I even do with gold? I’m just a funky little 80’s horse remix, so you gotta hand over those spectral oats, dude.”

Taako sighed. “Garyl. I know you’re not gonna like this question. But before you whine, please consider the fact that I’m not in the fucking mood. Now: does it have to be oats?”

“A pound of spectral oats is worth two spectral carrots or one spectral sugar cube! That’s the conversion rate. If you offer a spectral salt lick, I may be willing to negotiate.”

Taako conjured two floating, semi-tangible carrots with a wave of his umbrella, and levitated them over to Garyl, who took a bite out of both at once.

“That’s the stuff!” he whinnied. “Okay, so. Liches. Whatcha wanna know about ‘em?”

“You said, like — like two days ago now — that you used to get spectral oats from liches that I hung out with. Garyl, I need to know: was that true, or were you just guilting me for not spoiling you with enough treats?”

Garyl’s response was rendered completely indecipherable by the fresh bite of carrot in his mouth, part of which splattered across the floor and narrowly missed Taako.

“This is serious, Garyl! I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while, but it keeps getting more serious.” Taako groaned. “I… I didn’t even realize it, until I was talking to Kravitz last night, but… it’s just… okay, look. He remembers his whole life crystal clear, right down to how many stars you could see from this planet eight hundred and twenty years ago, but…”

He lowered his voice, glancing towards the door. “My past has always just been… fuzzy to me. I never really worried about it, but… I’m just now realizing that this might not be normal. And that if it isn’t, then I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Garyl swallowed the last of the carrots. “Yo, your past isn’t fuzzy to me. You really don’t remember your lich buddies — your lich family? Your literal sister and brother-in-law?”

“No, Garold, I don’t remember the sound of getting electrocuted in a fantasy garbage disposal!” Taako rubbed his forehead with increasing vigor, futilely attempting to massage away the sensation of an approaching migraine. “I don’t know how you made that noise with your nasty horse mouth, but it sounded just as bad as the static Lich Barry was speaking when —”

He gasped — and in the ensuing silence, the static kept ringing in his ears, but not as an audible echo. It was coming from within his own head, like a misdirected electric current leaping from neuron to neuron, generated as his mind repeatedly tried and failed to process what he’d just heard… and Taako knew exactly where he’d felt that sensation before.

“Oh, fuck.”

He bolted for the door, locked it, then frantically emptied his pockets until he found his Stone of Farspeech, which he powered down and then magically silenced for extra insurance. “Shit. Shit. Fuck.”

“Yo, what’s the rush?” Garyl asked. “Didja just remember you owe the unicorn mafia a whole bushel of oatsss?”

“What the hell? No!” Taako cradled Garyl’s snout in his hands, standing on his tiptoes to stare at Garyl in the eyes. “Promise me, promise me right now, Garyl, that you’re not gonna fucking snitch.”

Garyl’s expression turned as serious as a binicorn’s expression could turn, given two horns, technicolor eyes, and glittering lashes to work with. “Taako, you gave me life. I’ve always got your back, man.”

“There’s a second voidfish,” Taako blurted out. “And you’re more ghost than horse, I guess, so you’re immune to it, but I’m not. And I — I think I lost something big to it.”

“Huh.” Garyl snorted. “Damn. Geez, yeah. That would explain some things about, man, musta been…” He closed his eyes, nostrils twitching. “The last twelve years? That sound right?”

“Please, Garyl. You — you might know me better than I know me, at this point, so I need you to tell me — who can I trust?”

“I can’t decide that for you, Taako.” Garyl arched his majestic equine neck, as a single tear rolled down his face, and his mullet billowed in a wind that simply shouldn’t have been possible indoors. “Look at what you know to be true in your heart, and begin the journey towards your truth by trusting yourself.”

“I’m not here to listen to your poetry, Garyl — I need names!” Taako pleaded. “Like, I — I can at least trust Kravitz, right?”

“Look, man, I’m sorry! I could tell you who you used to trust, but if someone took a Voidfish-brand eraser to your chalkboard of a brain, that means someone had to betray you, and I dunno who it was! Kravitz is probably chill, because he seems on the level and you haven’t known him long enough for him to be the culprit — but I’m still juggling like six suspects, and I’ve only got four hooves, man! I’m trying my best to —”

Abruptly, Garyl’s voice died out, and he lowered his eyes. “Well, okay, it would be… five suspects. ‘Cause… Lup definitely went missing before any memories got…”

Taako clapped his hands over his ears. “Can you try not to do that? I’m already on the edge of a migraine without —”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and the next thing he knew, he was brandishing his Umbra Staff — never mind the fact that he’d locked that door just a minute ago, and it had since remained closed.

“Taako?” Lucretia called from the hallway. “Are you alright in there?”

After what must’ve been a suspiciously long pause, “Fine!” was the only word Taako could force out.

“Just dandy!” Garyl added in a terrible Taako impression, and Taako elbowed him in the equine shoulder.

“You’re sure?” The quizzical tilt to Lucretia’s head was downright audible. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

Taako bit back a reply of golly, I wonder if that’s because I don’t who I am or how much of myself I’m missing! but managed something more civil, clamping a hand over Garyl’s mouth as he spoke.

“Just had a late night last night! Took some… personal hours. May or may not be nursing a mild hangover now.”

“Oh, we’ve all been there. Merle did mention you were sleeping in.” Lucretia sounded like her suspicion had been sated — unless, of course, she just wanted Taako to think that — because in a much more casual voice that carried far less gravitas, the next thing she asked was: “Do you mind if I come in? I feel like we haven’t talked since Candlenights.”

“No problem!” Taako replied, probably much too quickly. He uttered the word ‘unlock’ under his breath in Elvish, to magically undo his little paranoia-induced security measure before swinging the door open, and hoping Lucretia wouldn’t notice the door had been locked or go on to question why. “Mi casa es tu casa — ‘cause, y’know, mi casa is technically part of your moonbase.”

If Lucretia did notice the unlocking door, she only questioned it silently, because her attention seemed understandably drawn to the binicorn trotting in place in the middle of the dorm.

“Oh, Garyl! Good to see you too.”

“Haha, yeah!” Garyl chuckled nervously. “Imagine meeting you, here, in a place like this! What are the odds?”

Lucretia lowered herself onto the sofa, glanced at Magnus’s rugged hand-crafted coffee table, and pointed to her feet. “Do you mind?”

Taako shrugged. “Uh… knock yourself out, Luce?”

She kicked off her heeled boots and slung her feet onto the table, laying her staff down in her lap. “Let’s get to the point. I did come here for a particular reason —”

“Oh?” Taako forced a smile. “Do tell.”

“Well, Merle and Leon got into a bit of an argument over — actually, let me start from the beginning. At some point in today’s second game, the kickball went over the edge of the moon, and has probably hit the planet Earth at terminal velocity by now.” Lucretia grimaced. “I hope no one was standing beneath it. Yikes.”

“Home run, baby!” Garyl cheered. Taako simply attempted to nod along.

“Actually, by our rules, it’s a foul with a sizeable penalty. Leon was pitching and Merle was kicking, so naturally they got into a fight over whose fault it was, and Merle threatened — let me see if I remember this all correctly — to ask you, Taako, to ask your ‘new friend the Grim Reaper’ to come up here and ‘reap Leon’s ass’ like said Grim Reaper purportedly once threatened to reap Merle’s own ass. So I was just hoping to get to you first, and stage an intervention to make sure the Bureau’s only artificer doesn’t take a one way trip to the heavens above — not to mention, maybe, ask if you had any idea what the hell Merle was talking about?”

“Well, bold statement saying Leon would go to heaven, first of all. Pretty sure he’d head the way of the plummeting kickball and smash through the planet’s crust. Second of all, um, I guess you could say I know the Grim Reaper? Look, we haven’t been seeing each other for very long, but I think we both feel a connection —”

“Oh! Well, good for you! Don’t get me wrong, that’s fucking wild if you mean it seriously rather than as a goof, but I’m still happy for you!”

“Not a goof. That is the whole story there, though. I’m dating the Grim Reaper, what more is there to say?” Taako grinned from ear to ear, and it felt slightly more sincere than every other smile he’d put on in this disaster of a conversation. “But as a… as an aside… uh, Garyl, do you remember those… six, no, five people you mentioned to me, just before Lucretia showed up?”

Garyl blinked at him with a downright hostility, as if to say You’re circling back to this topic NOW?

“Your, um, suspect list?” Taako clarified. “Of… people on the moon most likely to give you oats? I guess it was more like a power ranking, actually, let’s definitely call it a power ranking instead of a suspect list — but my point is, um, was the ‘Director’ here on it?”

“Yee-esssss,” Garyl replied slowly, still giving Taako the evil eye. “You know what I always say about Lucretia: she… she totes got the oats!”

“Okay!” Taako replied, knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle of the Umbra Staff. “Thanks! For letting me know! About those oat facts!”

“Um,” said Lucretia, which was probably the best reaction that Taako could’ve reasonably hoped for. “I… think I misplaced my oats today. Also, maybe my supply of oats for this entire year?” She reached for her boots. “Is this a hint that I should go back to refereeing kickball?”

“Yes!” Taako blurted out. “Oh, I mean, no, it’s not — I mean, you can leave! But you don’t have to. We don’t mind you being here!”

“We don’t not want you to leave but we also don’t not not not want you to leave,” Garyl added, as if it were a verbal Fantasy Rosetta Stone that would clarify and explain all of Taako’s anxious floundering. “Because we trust and cherish you. And oats! Mostly oats.”

Lucretia slipped her boots back on, then rose from her seat in a regal manner that probably wasn’t intended to intimidate the living daylights out of Taako. “No, you have a point. I should go make sure our secret society doesn’t fracture into warring kickball factions — but I’ll be back to chat more, don’t worry. Hopefully on a day you’re feeling better, Taako.”

She winked at Garyl as she turned to leave. “And I’ll try and remember to bring oats. Gotta move up in those power rankings.”

“It was actually more like a tier list!” Garyl called as she closed the door. When Taako magically locked it behind her, Garyl began pacing around the dorm, his tail swishing with enough force to knock several paintings and decorative vases onto the floor.

“Taako! She never has oats and she knows it! She’s onto us!”

“Yeah, you think?” Taako sunk into the couch Lucretia had vacated, burying his head in his hands. “I need backup who can hear through the static, before she puts it together and comes back to throw me in the brig. I’m calling Kravitz.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that. I’ll keep working on the tier list.” As Taako began to reboot his Stone, Garyl accelerated his nervous pacing to a nervous trot.

“Garyl, if this turns into a canter, I swear to gods —” Taako muttered, tapping the Stone’s unresponsive screen with a shaky thumb.

“Sorry.” Garyl slowed to a halt. “Hmm. You trust Davenport more, less, or the same as Lucretia?”

“What, you think he just pretends he can only say his own name to disguise his role as the evil mastermind?” Taako’s stomach churned. “Shit. You might be onto something. Put him below Lucretia on the tier list. Or above? I dunno how —”

“Wait, I’m not following you, man. Since when can Dav can only say his own name?”

Taako groaned. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say since twelve fucking years ago — alright, finally! Here we go!” His Stone of Farspeech flickered to life, and he navigated to Kravitz’s contact page as quickly as his trembling fingers allowed.

When he hit Call, an eerie silence filled the dorm as he and Garyl listened to one, two, three, four short rings — then, a beep, and a horrendous pre-recorded Cockney accent.

Hullo, greetings, and top o’ the morning! You’ve successfully reached the desk of Kravitz, Emissary of Her Majesty the Raven Queen, but I’m away right now, so if you have a zombie outbreak to report, press 1. If you wish to subscribe to our mailing list of anti-necromancy resources, press 2. If you’re dead and in need of an escort to the Astral Plane, press 3. If you just wanted to have a friendly chat, please leave a message after the caw, and I’ll get back to you once I’m able.

A raven cawed, and Taako started talking:

“Hey, babe, it’s me! Your boy. Um, don’t let me take you away from saving the world from necromancers or anything important like that… but if you’re not busy, I could really use your help, so if you could swing by the moonbase, and — and maybe not tell anyone you’re coming here or that you’re coming to see me — then that would be just swell! Everything’s cool, nothing’s wrong — well, no, you’re a perceptive guy, you can definitely tell something’s wrong — but I’m sure you and me, and Garyl, and maybe Angus will be able to figure it out, no problem! Except, now that I think about it, maybe not Angus, because I’ve put him in enough danger to solve my own problems already — but uh, thanks in advance, love you, see you soon, bye!”

Then he dropped his Stone, grabbed the nearest couch pillow, and screamed into it.

“Hey, hey, relaaax,” Garyl told him. “You heard him — he’ll get back to you soon.”

“Yeah. I know.” Taako took a deep breath, letting the pillow fall to the ground. “He’s just a busy guy, with an important job. He’ll be here as soon as he can…”

Garyl nodded sagely. “And you’d do the same, for him, because that’s love. Unless…”

Taako’s heart skipped a beat. “Unless?”

“Unless someone on the lower end of the trust tier list knows about his connection to you, and to keep hiding the truth, they capture him before he can get here!” Garyl sniffed. “Just like the unicorn mafia captured my dear ol’ uncle…”

Taako pressed the Call button again, and when he was once again directed to voicemail, he picked the pillow back up and resumed screaming.

“Hey, take it easyyy, man. It’s not like they can kill him,” Garyl soothed. “And b’sides, haven’t you got that… that whatsit-called, that magic arrow? You can still check in on him that way, even if the bad guys stole his Stone!”

“Right!” Taako sprung up from the couch, and bolted towards the quiver of arrows that Magnus had casually slung onto the doorknob of his room. “I mean, I’m sure his phone didn’t even get taken from him — he’s eight and a half centuries old, for crying out loud! He probably just misplaced it, or accidentally put it on silent, or… gee, we really don’t have a lot of traditional surfaces to jab arrows into here, do we?”

He glanced around the dorm, gaze finally landing on Magnus’s homemade coffee table. “I’ll just… wedge it in one of the seams in the wood, so it definitely won’t be noticeable, right?”

“You asking me? I’m apparently an amnesia-immune ghost horse, man — what makes ya think I’d ever want or attempt to understand woodworking?”

“Guess you’ve never attempted to understand a rhetorical question, either,” Taako muttered as he crouched on the ground. Clasping the arrow between two hands, he took a deep breath, then plunged it into the coffee table. “Kravitz? I could really use your help, I won’t lie, but — but mostly, I’m worried and just checking in to make sure you’re okay —”

For a sliver of a second, everything seemed to proceed as it should, with an electric blue glow flickering to life inside the arrowhead — and then, it exploded, spitting out fragments of crystal and tongues of vicious astral fire. Taako reflexively turned his head and dropped to the floor, but still felt something sharp and burning prick into his biceps like a red-hot needle, and he held his breath until the sound of shattering crystal halted and the sound of burning wood faded to a faint sizzling.

“So, uh…” Garyl slowly backed away from Magnus’s poor table, which was already more ‘smoldering pile of ash and sapphire dust’ than it was furniture. “This ever happen before?”

“No,” Taako whispered. He raised a hand to touch the stinging point on his arm, and pulled away with a droplet of blood and a tiny pointed crystal both resting atop his index fingertip. “Never —”

“Okay, cool, that narrows down the possibilities,” Garyl concluded. “Either he’s really busy, or we’re really fucked.”

This time, Taako didn’t even bother to grab a pillow before he started screaming.

***

End Notes:

thanks for reading, comments welcomed as always!

next chapter: Ghost Fight (or in other words, we get to see what Kravitz has been up to in the meantime)

#taz #taz balance #taako taaco #kravitz taz #taakitz #angus mcdonald #lucretia taz #garyl taz #taz balance spoilers #fic: ftrala #rosalia writes fic

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Harry Potter: What an HBO Max TV Series Could Be About

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The only real magic left in this world is intellectual property and its nigh supernatural ability to print money. With media conglomerates prioritizing their streaming services, beloved IPs have never been more valuable in garnering interest, sign-ups, and subscriptions for streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max. WarnerMedia, the owner of the lattermost streaming service, also holds the rights to the Harry Potter IP, and of course they want to conjure up ideas to bring the world of The Boy Who Lived to television.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a Harry Potter live-action TV series is in early development at HBO Max, with the streaming service having “early-stage exploratory meetings” with writers for potential ideas. “There are no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform,” HBO Max and Warner Bros said in a statement, but once again, you’d have to be as thick as Cornelius Fudge to believe they aren’t doing their darndest to extend that Galleons-filled universe.

There are loads of avenues a potential Harry Potter TV series could go down. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has proven that Harry Potter fans will embrace different characters and time-periods and there’s plenty of in-universe history to explore. With that in mind, here’s some ideas we’d love to see tackled by a Harry Potter television series.

Harry Potter: The Complete Story

This is probably the most controversial idea. To some, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson are the definitive Harry, Ron, and Hermione and recasting their parts is considered sacrilege. However, Radcliffe seems to know that it’s an inevitability, telling IGN: “It will be interesting to see how long those films stay… it feels like there’s a sacredness around them at the moment, but that’ll go, the shine will wear off at some point. It’ll be interesting if they reboot them and just do the films again or do a series; I’m fascinated to watch.”

A series seems to be the only thing that could really capture all of the details found in the original seven book series. With 10 hour-long episodes a season, a TV series could be the most faithful adaptation of the books, covering everything that the films left out like S.P.E.W., Peeves, and lots and lots of Quidditch. Some may think it’s too soon to rehash the entire saga, while others would love to see nitty-gritty details get their shine.

The Marauders

A TV series following the exploits of James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew during their mischievous years at Hogwarts during the First Wizarding War seems like the idea most ripe for exploration. While the third book in the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, featured a lot of exposition about the old gang and their relationships with each other, the films left a lot of the Marauders story to be implied. There would be plenty of time to feature younger versions of fan-favorite characters like Severus Snape and under-explored heroes like the Longbottoms, and the series could roll right into their graduation, the Order of the Phoenix, and that fateful Halloween night in 1981.

Riddle (or the First Wizarding War)

Speaking of the First Wizarding War, a fully-fleshed out origin story for the most notorious wizard of all-time could be a gripping miniseries. While most of Tom Marvolo Riddle’s transformation into Voldemort was explored in the Harry Potter book series and subsequent films, a TV series could dive deeper, showing his time at Hogwarts and his use of the Chamber of Secrets, the murder of Hepzibah Smith, the gathering of the Death Eaters, and his recruitment of the outcasted creatures like Giants. The series could also give POV to characters important to Voldemort’s story, like Regulus Black, Severus Snape, and Lucious Malfoy.

House of Black

An anthology series could explore one of the Wizarding World’s most notable families, the Blacks. As one of the largest, oldest, and wealthiest pure-blooded wizarding families in Great Britain, there are countless stories that could be told about all of the powerful wizards, both good and bad, from the Black family. The potential to play in different time periods and countries is definitely a draw, and writers would have the ability to create their own stories. Each episode could feature a different story about a different Black family member, but why stop with just the Black family? Maybe there could be a series about the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the twenty-eight British families that were still “truly pure-blood” by the 1930s, and all of the ways that the families overlapped, fought, and loved.

Aurors

There’s a reason that Harry becomes an Auror when he’s older, and that’s because the idea of an Auror is extremely badass. In the Wizarding World, Aurors are highly trained law enforcement officials responsible for policing the magical and keeping the peace in the Wizarding World. In Britain, Aurors are trained to investigate crimes related to the Dark Art and are often called “Dark Wizard catchers.” A crime procedural set in the Harry Potter universe? Sign us up!

Movies

Harry Potter Movie Streaming Guide: Where to Watch Online

By Kayti Burt

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All Harry Potter Movies to Stream on Peacock This Fall

By Alec Bojalad

We know there have to be baddies other than Voldemort and Death Eaters up to no good, so a series could explore all of the nefarious things that people are using magic for and the folks tasked with stopping them. Training is supposedly rigorous, so maybe our story begins with a new recruit. Hell, maybe this series is just a magical version of Training Day. Wait, isn’t that what that horrible Netflix movie Bright was supposed to be about? Damn, well there’s still plenty of potential here for an action-packed TV series.

Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Let’s do an American coming-of-age high school series set in the Harry Potter universe! After spending so much time at Hogwarts, I’m sure fans would love to see what wizarding school is really like across the pond. Known for being the least elitist of all of the Wizarding Schools, an Ilvermorny-set series could expand on some of the class issues that the new Saved by the Bell reboot on Peacock is tackling.

Ilvermorny also has a rich history and a series could highlight the story of founder Isolt Sayre, her “No-Maj” husband James Steward and their struggle against Isolt’s evil aunt Gormlaith Gaunt. With so much known about the Wizarding World in the U.K., perhaps a new Harry Potter property could flesh out the Wizarding World in North America.

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With so much lore and so many expanded-universe stories still left to tell on screen, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is ripe for further expansion. Have an idea for a Wizarding series? Let us know in the comments!

The post Harry Potter: What an HBO Max TV Series Could Be About appeared first on Den of Geek.

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alexsfictionaddiction · 5 years ago

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‘Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all.’

If you missed my announcement post last week, you may not know that I am a co-host of a wonderful readathon that will be taking place from 11th-18th August. My co-hosts are BookTubers Sam, Becky, Erica and Jordan and I would love if you could subscribe to all four of their channels. They are all fantastic creators and their videos deserve a LOT of love!

Today’s post aims to give you some inspiration for your FairytaleAThon TBR. The challenges for this round are in the above image and I’ve selected a few books that fit each one, which you’ll hopefully be interested in. FairytaleAThon encompasses original fairytales, myths, folktales and retellings of them so the possibilties are almost endless! Here are my very best recommendations:

1. THUMBELINA: Read a fairytale or retelling under 250 pages.

ELLA ENCHANTED BY GAIL CARSON LEVINE: 240 pages.

This very funny and sweet retelling of Cinderella is perhaps better known as a cute Anne Hathaway film but the source material is definitely worth the read. It follows Ella, who was given the curse of obedience by a fairy, when she was a baby. This means that she has to do anything that anyone tells her -fight monsters, let down her friends and even deny that she’s in love with the prince. However, there is a beautiful feminist resolution that is sure to delight modern fairytale lovers!

THE SNOW QUEEN BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: 96 pages.

The story that inspired Frozen is over 200 years old but this beautiful new edition from independent publishing house Pushkin is worth picking up for the coverlust alone! The original tale is quite different to Disney’s version but it is still an epic story of love and loyalty in the harsh landscape of the snowy North. When a magic mirror breaks and curses Kay to be blind to all of the good in the world, he is taken by the Snow Queen and locked in her ice palace. It’s up to his friend Gerda to trek across the icy plains and rescue him and his frozen heart.

THE BROKEN SWORD BY POUL ANDERSON: 237 pages.

Inspired by Norse mythology, The Broken Sword is a dark high fantasy that has somehow been packed into just over 200 pages. Skafloc is a human boy who has been raised by elves amidst their war with the trolls. The elves require the use of the sword Tyrfing, which the mighty Thor broke in order to stop it destroying Yggdrasil -the tree that brings the earth, heavens and underworld together. Only the giant Bolverk can fix it and it’s Skafloc’s job to persuade him. As well as this huge undertaking, Skafloc also needs to face his dark changeling self! This is ideal for Tolkien fans who need a quick whimsical adventure in a strange land.

THE WILD SWANS BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: 64 pages.

I’m aware that this is the second Christian Andersen Pushkin edition in this post but LOOK AT THEM! The Wild Swans is a little-known story about a princess whose 11 brothers are turned into swans by their evil stepmother. Despite being determined to break the curse, the stakes are high and huge sacrifices will need to be made to reunite the siblings. It’s a heartbreaking story about familial love and loyalty.

2. GENTLE GIANTS: Read a fairytale or retelling over 500 pages.

CRESS BY MARISSA MEYER: 560 pages.

This sci-fi retelling of Rapunzel is actually the third book in the Lunar Chronicles series. Although each book is a retelling of a different fairytale, the characters do overlap and therefore it is best to read them in order. The good news is that you have plenty of time before the readathon to read both preceding books -Cinder and Scarlet. The series is incredibly unique, quirky and funny with some truly shipworthy romances and madcap adventure.

COMPLETE FAIRY TALES BY BROTHERS GRIMM: 1019 pages.

Ok, so this may be cheating a little BUT what would FairytaleAThon be, if you didn’t dip into some classic original stories at some point? This Penguin Vintage Classics edition of the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm is a simple yet beautiful chunk of a book that I believe should be a staple in any fairytale lover’s library. Featuring the original gruesome versions of classics such as Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Twelve Dancing Princesses and so many more, there is bound to be more than a few of these 279 twisted, disturbing stories that you love!

CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE BY TOMI ADEYEMI: 544 pages.

It was one of the biggest books of last year and its sequel is on its way next year. Children of Blood and Bone is inspired by the Orisha (deities) of West African mythology. It follows Zelie, a young girl with magical powers in a world where magic has been taken away and people like her are hunted by a tyrannical king. However now she is on a quest to avenge her dead mother and restore magic to her homeland. Followed by her brother Tzain, a rogue princess Amari and enemy prince Inan, this is a truly unique YA fantasy that I found completely unputdownable.

WICKED BY GREGORY MAGUIRE: 512 pages.

This prequel to The Wizard of Oz is best known as a hit West End and Broadway musical but the source material is also a fantastic read. Elphaba has been an outcast and persecuted all her life because of her green skin and this doesn’t change when she starts at Shiz University, where she meets the beautiful, queen bee Galinda. After a reluctant start, they soon form a friendship and band together with Munchkin boy Boq and quiet Vinkus prince Fiyero to put the injustices of their world to rights. Spanning over years of Elphaba’s life, Wicked features forbidden love, high-stake drama and challenges your idea of what evil really is.

3. IF THE SHOE FITS: Read any fairytale or retelling on your TBR.

Of course you should use your own TBR for this challenge but I’ve chosen some popular releases over the last couple of years that just might be on your TBR anyway.

CIRCE BY MADELINE MILLER

Not only is it a beautiful book but the story inside is truly captivating, bewitching and heartbreaking. This is a feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Circe, the sorceress living alone on the island of Aiaia with a talent for potion-making and a penchant for turning sailors into animals. In this version, Circe is banished to Aiaia by Zeus when he feels threatened by her unique brand of magic. There she develops her craft, tames the animals, grows herbs and even encounters travellers such as Daedelus, Icarus and Odysseus. After angering both mortals and gods, she needs to decide where she truly belongs to protect the thing she loves most. Madeline Miller is a gorgeous writer and Circe is a masterpiece.

THE HAZEL WOOD BY MELISSA ALBERT

Although not a fairytale or a retelling, The Hazel Wood has many fairytale elements and therefore, I feel it more than qualifies for FairytaleAThon. It follows 17-year-old Alice who has spent most of her life moving around with her mother because bad luck and disaster seems to follow them around. Alice’s grandmother is the author of a book of dark fairytales set in mysterious Hinterland. When her grandmother dies and her mother goes missing, Alice has almost nothing to go on. She teams up with classmate Ellery Finch, who also happens to be a superfan of her grandmother’s stories, to find her mother and discover the secrets of her grandmother’s creation. It’s the perfect remedy if you’re craving some fast-paced, whimsical action. THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS BY PAT BARKER

Ok so it’s ANOTHER Greek myth retelling but this is another book that should really be on your radar. The Silence of the Girls tells the story of the women affected by the Trojan war, who have been largely ignored by the original myth. It focuses primarily on Briseis, a Trojan queen who became a concubine to Achilles after he murdered her husband and brothers. Her life in the Greek camp is a world away from the one she led in Troy and she is now a slave to the army. When commander Agamemnon wishes to claim Briseis as his own prize, she finds her fate entirely at the mercy of the two most powerful men of Greece as the war wages on. It’s an engaging accessible version of the story with some lovely female friendships, intricate and illicit romances and an ending that will definitely touch your heart.

GEEKERELLA BY ASHLEY POSTON

This quirky, nerdy YA romance is enormous fun to read! Vegan food-truck worker Elle is a superfan of hit sci-fi series Starfield, a love she shared with her late father. When a cosplay competition is announced to celebrate the upcoming movie reboot, Elle has to enter. The prize is a ticket to the Cosplay Ball at the fandom’s convention ExcelsionCon and a meet and greet with the new Prince Carmindor. However, when it’s announced that the role will be played by teen idol Darien Freeman (who her stepsisters are obsessed with) Elle isn’t hopeful he’ll do the part justice because surely a pretty boy actor doesn’t know the first thing about Starfield, right? Told through the viewpoints of both Elle and Darien via alternating chapters, it’s full of dramatic irony and the subtle similarities to the story of Cinderella are so fun to pick out. Our group book for this round is its recently released companion The Princess and the Fangirl, so what better reason to pick up Geekerella if you haven’t already?

4. CREATURES OF THE DEEP: Read a book with mermaids, sirens or sea monsters.

As this is a summer round of FairytaleAThon, my co-hosts and I decided that we wanted to dedicate a challenge to stories that feature cool blue waters. We agreed that this book doesn’t have to be a fairytale, folktale or retelling; it just has to feature a mythical aquatic creature.

TO KILL A KINGDOM BY ALEXANDRA CHRISTO

This dark retelling of The Little Mermaid sees Princess Lira as a ruthless collector of princes’ hearts. However, when she kills a fellow siren, the Sea Queen punishes her by turning her into a human and taking away her singing voice. She needs to bring back the heart of Prince Elian in order to return to the sea. Prince Elian is himself a siren-hunter and when he rescues a drowning Lira, she promises to help him destroy all sirens but of course, she has her own motives for getting close to him. Although I’ve seen mixed reviews for this book, I really enjoyed it for the concept. Lira is a much more powerful, more formidable figure than Ariel and the story is much more brutal. I’d definitely recommend it for anyone who feels like Ariel deserved more.

THE PISCES BY MELISSA BRODER

The Pisces is an incredibly strange novel about Lucy who has recently split from her long-term partner and is lacking inspiration for her thesis. In the hopes that it will help her forget her problems, she agrees to spend the summer in LA, looking after her sister’s house and foxhound. While there, she goes on a string of grisly Tinder dates, attends a therapy group for love addiction and falls in love with a mysterious but gorgeous surfer dude… who appears to have scales over the entirety of his lower body… It’s funny, it’s weird, it’s sad in parts but it’s also somehow bloody brilliant. Be warned that there are some pretty graphic sex scenes, so perhaps avoid it if you’re sensitive to that!

THE GLOAMING BY KIRSTY LOGAN

This is a wonderfully charming magical realism book following Mara and her family, whose island is surrounded with magic and stories. When tragedy strikes her family, Mara finds solace in enigmatic Pearl who introduces her to a new way of life and possibilities she never dreamed of. Torn between the traditions of her island and the ever-changing course of the sea while still haunted by the past, Mara needs to decide which is the best path for her to take. Kirsty Logan is a lyrical genius so if you like beautiful imagery and strange diverse storylines, The Gloaming is a great choice for you.

THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK BY IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR

Set in the 18th century, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a beautifully written and surreal read that will appeal if you’re looking for a more literary, social history-led mermaid book. Merchant Jonah Hancock learns that one of his captains has sold his ship for what is apparently a mermaid. Naturally this piques the curiosity of the area and he is soon thrown into upper class circles, where he meets the beautiful, accomplished Angelica Neal. Soon enough, both of their lives take a new course at a high price. It’s a pretty big book so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it if you’re not already a historical fiction reader but it’s definitely a unique story of obsession and intrigue with bags of wit.

5. TRY THE GREY STUFF: Read with a yummy treat.

Naturally, your choice of reading snack is ENTIRELY your choice but these are four of my favourites to get your tummy rumbling!

ICE CREAM

The perfect treat for a hot day. Just don’t let it drip onto the pages!

Is there anything more tasty than a plate of warm, gooey, freshly baked cookies? Pretty sure there isn’t!

POPCORN

If your book is painting beautiful cinematic images in your mind or the drama is getting a little tense, you might want to grab some popcorn to add to the experience. MOZZARELLA STICKS

Possibly my favourite savoury snack ever. A few mozzarella sticks dipped in sweet chilli sauce is simply delicious!

6. A WHOLE NEW WORLD: Read a fairytale or retelling with a diverse character.

ASH BY MALINDA LO

This bisexual retelling of Cinderella is one of my favourites ever. Ash dreams of being taken away from her miserable life with her stepmother by fairies so when she meets handsome but dark fairy Sidhean, she thinks her life is about to change. Then she meets beautiful huntress Kasia and begins feeling things she hasn’t felt in a long time. But how can she choose between true love and her fairytale escape? It’s sexy, enchanting, incredibly intense and I absolutely devoured it.

A CURSE SO DARK AND LONELY BY BRIGID KEMMERER

This was our group book for the last round of FairytaleAThon, so if you joined us then, there is a good chance you’ll have already read A Curse So Dark And Lonely. It’s a recently released Beauty and the Beast retelling which has been getting a lot of hype in the book community. It follows Harper, a teenage girl living in Washington DC with her ailing mother and dismissive older brother. When she intervenes in a street incident, she finds herself being pulled into Emberfall, a broken kingdom ruled by Prince Rhen, who has been cursed to relive his 18th year until a girl falls for the vicious beast he has become. With evil forces at work, Harper and Rhen need to defeat more than a curse to save the people of Emberfall. Harper has cerebral palsy and as a result, she has developed a strength and feistiness that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in YA fantasy. It’s a must read for anyone who loves cursed hearts, easy-to-root-for characters and page-turning tension.

EVERY HEART A DOORWAY BY SEANAN MAGUIRE

The first in the Wayward Children series of novellas, Every Heart A Doorway is the perfect twisted fairytale. The premise explores what happens to the children who have been to magical lands on their return to the real world. Ever-changed by their experiences, they are often take to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where everyone is seeking a door to the fantasy world they’ve left. When Nancy arrives, darkness and tragedy are just around the corner. There are asexual and transgender characters, multiple ethnicities represented as well as plenty of dark whimsical adventure. It’s certainly a strange little series but once you start it, you’ll be hooked.

THE WRATH AND THE DAWN BY RENEE AHDIEH

A retelling of an Arabian Nights story, The Wrath and the Dawn tells the story of the young king Khalid who murders a new wife every night. When her best friend becomes one of the slain, Shahrzad volunteers to be his next bride with every intention of not being the one who ends up dead. Through the power of storytelling, she survives night after night and inexplicably finds herself falling in love with Khalid, who appears to be nothing more than a tortured soul -much like the rest of his palace which seems to have more than a few secrets. It’s a novel full of tradition, elegance and fantastic world-building. You’ll definitely get swept up in this one!

7. RAGS TO RICHES: Read the group book.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FANGIRL BY ASHLEY POSTON

Our group book this round is The Princess and the Fangirl and I can’t wait to dive into it! It’s set in the same fandom as Geekerella but is not a direct sequel, so you can technically read it if you haven’t read the previous book. It follows fangirl Imogen who is on a mission to save her favourite Starfield characters Princess Amara from being killed off. However Jessica, the actress who plays her, is desperate to shake off the pressure and intensity from the fandom and would actually quite like to bow out of the series. I don’t want to know too much more about it but I know it involves an F/F romance and I’m guessing there’s a case of switching places or mistaken identities at some point, given that it has been touted as a retelling of The Prince and the Pauper. I am INCREDIBLY excited for this one and I hope you’ll be picking it up too!

Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas for your own TBR. I’ll be posting my own next week, so look out for that. This round looks like a good one!

#fairytaleathon #readathon #recommendations #book recommendations #fantasy #ya #mythology #mermaids #fairytales #books #bookworm

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megareviews · 6 years ago

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Spring 2019 First Impressions

The Spring list is late as usual (is it usual if it’s only the second instance?), but at least I’m closer to the beginning than last year. I’ve reached 50% completion on the doing this for an entire year consistently, so nice.

Aikatsu Friends!: Kagayaki no Jewel (Aikatsu Friends!: Jewel of Radiance): Aikatsu is relatively low on my priority list of magical girl megaseries.

Bakugan Battle Planet: This show actually premiered last semester, but in English, and this season is when the Japanese dub started. Either way it’s somewhere deep in the Bakugan series, which is based off of what are probably my least played children’s toys.

BAKUMATSU Crisis: Second season of an otome game adaption that looked okay when I started it, but I still haven’t watched past the first episode.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Bokuben / We Never Learn): The main show that I know the source material of, and it is just about meeting my expectations. An average guy who has to study rigorously to maintain his average grades is put in charge of tutoring the two smartest people in his school. This might not make sense until it’s explained that he has to tutor them in their worst subjects, because those subjects are the ones they want to major in for college. It’s a nice theme of working hard for what you enjoy situated in a rom-com with some haremy aspects and an unusually high density of goofy faces, so watch it if you like those aspects.

Bungou Stray Dogs 3: I still need to see what they did with HP Lovecraft in season 2

Carole & Tuesday: What happens when a runaway rich girl and a poor orphan girl meet up on Mars? They form a band of course. A tale of two lonely souls finding each other and become a little less lonely in a big world, making music together. It looks great and it sounds amazing, so this is definitely a priority watch.

Chou Kadou Girl 1/6 (Amazing Stranger): Imagine Buzz Lightyear from the original Toy Story except in a 20 -something guy’s house and then failing the don’t move when humans are around rule almost immediately. That’s what this show is.

Cinderella Girls Gekijou CLIMAX SEASON (Cinderella Girls Theater CLIMAX SEASON): For somebody who doesn’t watch idol shows, the theater shorts are pretty fun, though I’m not nearly caught up in this one to say how this season is going.

Diamond no Ace Act II: Oh boy there’s so much baseball this season and a lot of it is sequels.

Fairy Gone: There’s a lot of things going on in this show but I think I can simplify it to military use of fairies to give soldiers super powers. The protagonist has been taking jobs as a mercenary to find her sister who was split from her after their village was burnt down. Then at an auction that she works as a guard, things start going wrong and the thief who appears is none other than that sister. The first episode ends with the end of a three way fight between security and the girls, so I’m not sure where the show’s going at all. Maybe if the show didn’t flash back to the protagonist’s village burning down three times, there would be a little more time to give direction.

Fruits Basket (2019): I never know how to deal with reboots for shows that I can remember, but haven’t seen the original. I know there’s people who turn into animals and a “do the carpets match the drapes” joke, and that’s about it from the 2001 anime.

Gunjou no Magmel (Magmel of the Blue Sea): After a new continent appears in the world, explorers flock to it, not always as prepared as they should be for venturing into the unknown. The main character works at a company to rescue explorers from mishaps along with a few others. The worldbuilding is interesting and the main character’s black lightning is pretty cool looking, but his attitude and decision making abilities kinda put me off for now. That and the comprehensibility of the subtitles I was watching fell off a cliff halfway through the episode.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine (Cinderella Nine in August): So far it looks like a pretty standard club building show based around women’s baseball. It looks nice and we have 4 club members as of the first episode, so they should make it to at least full team of nine pretty quickly. It looks nice outside of an odd montage near the end of the episode when the club plays a game with some local kids, and the character designs are a bit more memorable than the usual baseball cast. I appreciate the fact that they’re playing hardball, but I’m not the type of person to watch anything sports ever.

Hangyaku-sei Million Arthur 2 (Operation Han-Gyaku-Sei Million Arthur): All I know about this show is that there’s a bunch of characters named Arthur and that it’s a sequel.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu (Hitori Bocchi's ○○ Lifestyle): When one of the most socially anxious kids in elementary school gets separated by her only friend when they go to different middle schools, her friend gives her a quest: to become friends with everybody in her new class. She’s got a real go-getter attitude, but from feeling physical pain from trying to talk to a stranger to fainting when somebody actually responds to her, she’s got a rough path ahead of her. It’s a really fun show that gets you rooting for the main character in her attempts of communicating with others in a normal manner.

Isekai Quartet: Four of the biggest isekai series in one short mash-up is a recipe for confusion. Especially since they’re all put together in a school setting where no fighting is allowed, even if there are holy gods and undead abominations in the same class. Anything can happen with all these people taken from their original normal lives, tossed into various fantasy worlds, and then slam dunked back into a relatively normal setting.

Jimoto ga Japan (I’m From Japan): I cannot find a trace of the anime anywhere online and I am glad of this having read the manga. It is just a really dumb comedy about Japanese prefectures that I struggled to read a few chapters of before giving up.

Joushikausei: A silent anime, as in there’s no spoken words, about a few high school girls. It’s an interesting concept, but I found it a bit uncomfortable to watch, mostly due to the whimpering and other nonverbal noises the girls were making.

Kedama no Gonjirou (Gonjiro the Yarn Ball): A children’s show that hasn’t been licensed and no group is fansubbing it, how unusual… It actually looks interesting though so I might search for the raws to check it out.

Kenja no Mago (The Magi’s Grandson): A child raised by a powerful wizard in the country reaches an age where he can move out to the city and attend a magical high school. Unfortunately for him, his parental figures only taught him combat and magic, so he doesn’t really know how to sustain himself in the reals world. It is a decent concept but there’s a 50/50 chance of any scene looking nice or looking awful, and the scene transitions all look like they were made in Powerpoint.

Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slaying Blade): A happy family of coal sellers is destroyed in a night when a demon strikes. The eldest son was out due to a combination of work and a blizzard, and when he returns he finds all but one of his family members completely cold and covered in blood. This last member is rushed down the mountainside for medical aid, only to turn into a demon on the way down. A meeting with a demon slayer turns tricky as he tries to protect his demonized sister who’s fighting between killing instincts and her love of her brother. The opening promises some beautiful animations and the overall show isn’t slacking either, so overall it’s a very promising show.

KING OF PRISM -Shiny Seven Stars-: It’s the TV version of a boy band movie tetralogy which is also a sequel I think?

Kiratto Pri☆chan Season 2: A sequel to a idol anime that I reviewed last year. I think this is one of the first times a sequel has shown up that I also reviewed the first season of, though unfortunately it was for a show that I didn’t watch fully.

Kono Oto Tomare! (Stop this Sound!): One more club building show for this season, this one about a Japanese instrument called a koto. After all the upperclassmen of the club graduated in the previous year, only the main character is left in the club, and needs more members before the club gets closed, the usual. The first new member is a seemingly delinquent 1st year who is surprisingly diligent. There wasn’t too much interesting or unique other than the topic of the club, so music fans might find this more watchable than I.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO (YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World): The first episode for this kind of front-loaded introducing characters and pulled out its premise of parallel dimensions and a device to navigate them towards the end, which means I’d probably have to watch another episode to figure out how I feel about it. It’s nice to not have a giant exposition dump take up the first episode of a show, especially since it will have two cours to tell a story, but I didn’t feel any particular gravitation towards the characters by this point, so I won’t be prioritizing any follow-up on it.

Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin (Midnight Occult Civil Servants): With a job at a place called the Nocturnal Community Relations Division, the first thought of the type of people dealt with is most likely not going to be fairies. Our main character is taken from a world of the ordinary to being able to see and talk to the supernatural creatures that live locally, called Anothers. His co-workers are equipped with magically enchanted police tape and other trinkets to help solve issues that occasionally arise between Anothers. I like the modern fantasy setting, and the fairly low level fights with the supernatural so far, so there’s promise in where the show goes.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Ao Can’t Study): While the name Ao is usually blue, or sometimes even moth, in this case, it stands for Adult Only, the 18+ rating in Japan. This is due to her father’s profession, an erotic writer, and surprisingly, the main character hates her father for naming her that and spends her entire life studying to get into a college far enough away from him. This is thwarted by a guy confessing to her and filling her mind with romance and lewder thoughts, with the help of her father. I hate this as a concept and don’t watch this.

Mix: A semi-sequel baseball anime. I say semi, because from what I’ve gathered it is recommended but not necessary to watch the original first.

Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!? (Why is my Teacher Here!?): It’s about a male student and his teacher, ending up in awkward situations together, like being trapped together in a men’s bathroom stall. A show of pure fanservice through and through, so there’s not much else to say.

Namu Amida Butsu!: Rendai Utena: What started out as an action about cleansing impurities from the world gives us a quick bait ‘n switch to a slice of life about gods bumbling about in the human world attempting to be competent humans. I found it irritating to watch, and it was very clearly based off of a gacha game, which do not have a good track record of making good shows.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma (Nobunaga’s Young Bride): A modern age middle school teacher way down the ancestral tree of Oda Nobunaga meets the bride of the man himself, who traveled to the present from the day of the original Nobunaga’s death. She’s no older than when she left her original time, which leaves her at 14 years old, with no knowledge of modern day Japan so she’s stuck with the main character’s family and decides to be the new Nobunaga’s bride anyways, which… is weird.

One Punch Man 2: A big sequel of the season, and one where people have been waiting with wary anticipation due to the change in animation studio and director. It definitely looks a lot stiffer than the first season, for action and non-fight scenes, but the story is a bit more interesting in my opinion, as the show starts working on fleshing out other heroes and why they fight.

RobiHachi: the first episode of this really is a springboard for setting up what the plot and cast will be, just about starting right at the very end. We’ve got an ultra gullible man in debt, a genius teen with no sense of purpose, a robot rabbit helper, and their spaceship that blares its own theme song when it transforms into a mech. They set off to find a legendary planet that grants happiness after a couple of hijinks on their starting planet. It’s a very busy show, both visually and plot wise, but still an enjoyable experience if you can keep up.

Sarazanmai: 50% connecting with other people through oversharing with them, 50% kappas stealing souls from other people’s butts. It’s hard to describe the show but I’m having a good time, and the art is gorgeous, and special care is taken with little details in the show. I’d say watch the first episode definitely, and then decide whether or not to follow up on the rest of the show.

Senryuu Shoujo (Senryuu Girl): The focus of the show is on the Japanese poetry type of Senryuu, mostly because the main character can only communicate with others through writing these poems. Thankfully, she’s got some good friends and is in her school’s Literature Club, so she has plenty of practice and is around people who appreciate her work.

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san (Meddlesome Fox Senko): The fox gods of the world have a duty to protect humans, and are becoming more proactive in seeking out humans with negative emotions before those emotions go out of control. In comes the male lead of the show, an overworked businessman who has basically just been going through the motions of life by this point. One of the fox gods appears in his house, doing the cooking, cleaning, and other tasks to help relieve the main guy’s stress. It’s comfy and there’s some funny moments, but I feel like the show would be better off as a more episodic show featuring various humans rather than just the one that it looks like the show will focus on. I’m also worried about the romance genre tag that the show has.

Shingeki no Kyojin 3 Part 2 (Attack on Titan 3 Part 2): I’m still on episode 5 of the original series, with no particular motivation to make it any further. More people die in bloody explosions probably.

Shoumetsu Toshi (Lost City): As the title of the show would imply there is a city that has been lost to humanity, as in, it just disappeared one day. The main female character is the only one who survived the city disappearing, and is targeted by a mysterious group due to that, and she tries to return to where the lost city used to be due to a message by her father who went missing with the city. In addition there was a monk with super powers who was standing on a motorcycle’s handlebars facing off against the main girl who could summon her Lost bodyguard with a bunch of guns but that was kinda just thrown in at the end.

Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin Shimasu! (Strike Witches 501st Join Fighter Wing Takes Off!): Oh god it’s been so long since I’ve consumed Strike Witches content. This is a slice of life spin off of the original series, so the context is recommended, but not necessary. The animation is also very much on the rough side for a ten minute long short.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki (Yatogame’s Observation Diary): After briefly being disappointed in the lack of heavy Nagoya dialects encountered in Nagoya, the main character runs into a classmate who happens to have one. In addition, all of her favorite foods and animals are popular or famous in Nagoya, so he sticks around with her for meeting his ideals of what a Nagoyan should be. They then travel the city as part of the photography club to see all the sights of the city.

Youkai Watch!: Despite what it looks like from the title, this is pretty deep in a line of sequels of Youkai Watch.

#Megareviews #first episodes #anime review #Spring 2019

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crsinclair · 7 years ago

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@theunemployedrogue I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. Very clever, haha! (This is three and a half pages of text, holy granola-)

A – Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don't have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPS.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I'm gonna name three, because why not?

Shance (Voltron) – I have written literal essays about this ship and I will defend their love until my dying breath. I still believe it might be end-game in canon, but if it isn't then that's what fanfic is for!

Dai-Nana-Han | Team 7 (Naruto) – Platonic! Naruto was one of the first anime/manga I got into as a young preteen (though not my first anime/manga by FAR), and while I shipped the hell out of everyone romantically as a scrappy kid, as an adult I see more value in them together as a team – as a family. Being able to find your family of choice at such a young age is such a blessing, and you will absolutely catch me crying in the club while reading a #Team 7 As Family fic, because gosh darn it they are so supportive of each other.

If Kakashi is a part of their family then catch me flooding the club with my tears.

Erasermic/Maizawa (BNHA) – DO I EVEN NEED TO SAY THIS IS ONE OF MY OTPS??? My love for this ship is pouring out of my ears. I have songs, I have poems, I have AUs and headcanons, and goddamnit if canon isn't throwing the ship at me at every turn nowadays.

C – A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

BakuDeku (BNHA) (Is that even the ship name??) - I can see the appeal for most people – childhood friends, former bully falls in love with his victum, the hatesex, ect. I CAN SEE THE APPEAL. For me though, it's a big NO. I was very, very heavily bullied as a kid. My most stalwart bullies' names are seared into my brain and every time I come across a person sharing their name I have a panic attack because what if it's them? What if they remember me and make my life hell again? So I could never pair a character I love with their bully. Just. No. Hard stop. If you ship it yourself, I'm not a hater. Ship what you ship! Just don't expect me to ship it personally.

I – Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

Nope! Not a single one. I've had a few pairings that Tumblr got me to stop liking, but a fandom as a whole? Nah. I know when it's a select few being toxic as opposed to a whole group and when it's appropriate to step back from them. My love for fandom is MY love, and no person independent of the fandom will ever make me stop loving.

L – Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn't one of your favs. (Characters you're neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

Uh. Well, I...I don't have characters that I just passively like/dislike?? I honestly think the closest I've got to that Is Mineta, and that's more hate so I'm not going to bother with him. Um. So...

I think I'll use this part to expand on my opinion of Bakugou! I LOVE HIS CHARACTER. If he was a real person, would I ever be friends with him? HELL NO. I would hate him if he were an actual person. But his character is very well written. He's one of the most intriguing characters of BNHA because he's got so many layers – kinda like a very angry onion – that I can't help but love him.

N – Name 3 things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or fandom of choice).

*cracks knuckles* AIGHT HERE WE GO.

Lance (Voltron) – I love him, and because I love him, this is what I'd like to see more of: Lance and the CANON QUALITIES he brings to Voltron. Yes, he's smart. Yes, he's friendly. And yes, he can be a BAMF. But he is NOT secretly a CIA agent with hardcore skills that his teammates just don't see or notice. His smarts come from his adaptability and ability to think outside the box. He's not a tech/engineering wizard – he knows just enough to know what's up and get the right person on it, and MAYBE he can MacGuyver something. But he's not Pidge or Hunk. AND THAT'S OKAY. He's friendly, and that makes him great with Diplomacy – but I wouldn't put him in charge of all negotiations because of that. Lance can be hella abrasive. Just look at his relationship with Keith and Allura. With proper training he'd be a FANTASIC diplomat, but he doesn't have that training yet. AND THAT'S OKAY. Lance is a magnificent shot, his flexibility leaves pole dancers green with envy, and HELLOOO, Paladin of Voltron! He's pretty awesome! But he's not GOD. He's not the second coming of Space Jesus. He's Lance. AND. THAT'S. O. KAY.

We'll see him grow into his own in time, and I'm eagerly awaiting that. In the meantime, please give me Lance with his canon qualities.

Naruto – I would LOVE to see more Dai-Nana-Han | Team 7 As Family fics. Specifically reboots of the series, because tiny Naruto and tiny Sasuke and tiny Sakura are SOOOO CUUUTE.

All Fandoms – PLATONIC LOVE IN GENERAL?? PLEASE????

R – Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Dai-Nana-Han | Team 7 (Naruto) – Though you guys...probably guessed that one, aha.

Klance (Voltron) – I made a post about this ages ago and honestly that's all I want with Klance. Just platonic love between them.

Uraraka/Izuku (BNHA) – I love the idea of them being platonic besties?? If they ever get together in canon that'd be cute, but – come on. Guys. GUYS. There is so much to be said about two people who validate each other without being romantic. And she's his first friend at UA! FRIENDSHIP! SO YOUTHFUL! (Wait, wrong fandom- )

S – Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts original but encouraged)

HEADCANONS BOY HOWDY I HOPE Y'ALL ARE READY

Pidge (Voltron) – This one hurts but also gives me life. My headcanon for Pidge is that, at a young age, they figured out that were Trans. Told the family, all the Holts were super supportive, and Katie was born. But then the Kerberos mission happened, and Katie realized that she was too well known to infiltrate the Garrison as a female. But...she'd be able to go in as a male. So despite having come out, despite finally having the name and hair and lifestyle she was comfortable and happy with...she cut her hair and went back into the closet to find her family. Which is why Pidge coming out as female to the crew was such a big deal – it was not, “Oh I was born female, I don't actually have a dick, sorry I just want to make sure I don't surprise you guys in the future,” it was, “I am Trans, and these are my pronouns.” People headcanoning Pidge as gender neutral is great, I just personally feel that invalidates her coming out as female to the Voltron crew in the first season. That was a big moment for her, and her pronouns deserve to be respected.

Tokoyami Fumikage (BNHA) – This one is kinda morbid, sorry. Dark Shadow is his twin that died iin the womb. If Dark Shadow had been born, they both would have had the same Quirk – a moving, physical shadow – but more akin to Nara Shikamaru's family jutsu. But now Tokoyami has a living, breathing Quirk that is honestly one of the most badass Quirks in all of BNHA. It also explains why his Quirk has its own personality separate form Tokoyami, why he has some measure of control but not complete control, and maybe why it's so terrifyingly...terrifying.

Aizawa Shouta (BNHA) – These are simple and put my soul at peace. He can't eat spicy foods. Like. At all. His mouth catches fire and honestly the chemical reaction makes his chronic dry eye worse. He's also glutten intolerant. Aizawa failed the Hero Entrance Exam but gained enough Rescue Points to impress the teachers and got told in his acceptance letter to Gen Studies to try again at the Sports Festival for a spot in the Heroes Course. He also excelled at Gymnastics in middle school.

Ash Ketchum (Pokemon) – THIS IS OUT OF LEFT FIELD BUT. I have not watched the anime beyond the Hoenn region, but guys. GUYS. FIRST EPISODE? ASH DIED. “What? No he didn't~!” Okay but listen. LISTEN! That moment when the lightning struck when Pikachu did a Thunder, there were Spearows all around, a bike right next to them Pikachu was in front of Ash – AND YET. AND MOTHER-FECKING YET. When Ash woke up, the bike was fecking CHARRED and lying several meters away, the Spearows were NOWHERE – one can only assume that most of them have been DISINTEGRATED (one of them lived, as evidenced by the end of season one in the episode when Ash was attacked by a Fearow and had to give up his newly evolved Pigeot) – Pikachu is laying next to Ash, and while both of them are banged up and exhausted, they are alive. AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF? HO-OH IS FLYING AWAY IN THE DISTANCE. What is Ho-oh a legendary for? Huh? Go on, say it with me – RESUR-FECKING-RECTION. HE'S THE GODS-DAMNED PHOENIX OF THE POKEMON WORLD. TELL ME TO MY FACE THAT HO-OH DIDN'T BRING ASH BACK FROM THE FECKING DEAD, I DARE YOU. I MOTHER-FECKING TRIPLE DOG FARE YOU-

#ravyn rants #ravyn asks #I felt like that one meme of the guy with the conspiracy board at the end there #long post #ask meme #just tagging ship names and fandoms sorry pals #shance #platonic klance #voltron #dai-nan-han | team 7 #naruto #erasermic #bnha #pokemon

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maneaterwithtail · 7 years ago

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No hating on Victor Courtright

Thundercats Roar deserves none of teen titans go's hate

The 2011 reboot basically tried to be super serial and serious. It failed because when you get right down to it Thundercats was in many ways the 80s equivalent of then for what would now be the LOL random 2010s series. It took a bunch of stuff that was popular in its prior decade and sort of cool or could appeal to Kids "now" and then dumped and mixed it on the screen in a weird weird output.

So you get black guy who's also an engineer, cat people kind of reminiscent of Clan of the Cave Bear, Snarf who is definitely not Wicket D Warwick from Star Wars, pinball Wizards leading painfully naive bodybuilders with magic transforming swords over Lisa Frank rainbows into a valley of unicorns, marketable robot teddy bears, and of course an evil pulp sorcerer who might also be a mummy

Also they had to put cat on everything with silly cat puns. Well we're going to fix all that by injecting even triter drama into the Series in 2011. Tigra adopted but we like never found out about his family until we randomly stumbled across them in a cave and apparently now it's the Sixth Sense. Love triangle, despite recollection of Cheetara making her this sex icon I think she actually had very few plots related to being in love with or related to the boys in any way.

Technology is lost magic, magic is believed in regularly. Yeah that one didn't even hold up by episode 5.

Let's brutally show the slaughter and loss of The Thundercats civilization on planet. Like I said half the time we had lame drama in a setup reminiscent of Last Airbender but no where the heart in no small part because they chose to be so explicit they couldn't be deep or appropriate to that scenario/ddepiction

For one the slaughter of the civilization while exploring the wider world they had the wrong cast for it because it inexplicably the Royals were too ignorant, the guy who regularly was supposed to be traveling and doing work was also too ignorant, and Tarah was apparently now just the girl character for the boys to fight over. Thank God for the Thunder kitties and they were the most radical departure from their original selves. But they were a departure that put them squarely in the actual story and situation in a way that took advantage of it. Effectively, aside from the kitties, they were treating the fall of the Kingdom as a little more than set up for nice juicy drama in a way that never felt real. Made all the worse as they took away all the elements that were iconic of the show to focus on this new plot that kind of sort of resemble the show went in a direction that was different but never quite deep enough for me.

Thundercats may not be able to be actually serious just have a sort of veneer of seriousness. Which oddly enough means that going Kitty might actually be the best way to do things. They tried dramatic and serious and all anime and all that stuff. Let's see what being squashy with bean faces gets them especially as squashy series have proven that they can inject seriousness and interesting character interaction overtime even if they start off completely Goofy. This is happened with Gravity Falls, Star Vs , Adventure Time, Gumball ( honestly probably the best functional dysfunctional family since the Simpsons because for all their weirdness you really do get the sense that these people love each other as opposed to Griffin's which have long since descended into mutual favorite abuse victims), ok.ko and so on

And Fangbone while never quite serialized I think it managed to do Savage fantasy some justice but primarily by being a bit Goofy with it. And despite all its episodic Ness and an intentional parody flavor - such as the fact that drool in many ways acts like Steve Lichman or ,...it's this webcomic where they do this super detailed 70s thing where you get the intense feeling everybody's being played by a bunch of old school D&D nerds - Well even with that there are still moments of genuine drama and pathos such as fangbone's isolation from his clan or dealing with the fact that he's in many ways an immigrant learning the customs and culture of Earth while still blending it with the traditions and upbringing of his homeland which is a over-the-top Savage fantasy world along the lines of barsoom (three suns, fast snails, razorworms)

"Magic beatstick" not helping. But just so long as they're consistent with third Earth which- will be honestly a first for the entire ffranchise- maybe could work?

But I honestly do think that going for animation over Uber detailed still shots might honestly have been the smart move

And they do use the the advantages of easier animation and dynamic style in the opening. Especially if like most recent series it's going to be 11 minutes each episode. You're going to have to up the energy there and take advantage of the fact that you can minimize the storyboarding ccrew to maximize in episode fidelity and direction with fast turnaround

But let's not assume anything about the producer's masculinity or ulterior motives but at the very least he's engaging with apprehension people have.

Besides some of the responses people have been making are actually proving Return of Slade from Teen Titans Go right! do you want to be responsible for proving Return of Slade from Teen Titans Go right?

#thundercats #thundercats roar #fandom nonsense #thundercats (2011)#victor courtright #respect #hope #pulp fantasy #response #just some guy #diversity & comics

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prism-rush · 7 years ago

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Prism Rush Prism Kingdom event summary

I figured I might as well try and write a summary of this event now that I have unlocked all the stories I am going to get (everyone but KPR Shin) and while it’s still semi-fresh in my mind. It’s a really challenging thing to try with all the overlapping/simultaneous stories, but well here we go haha.

So basically Kakeru gets all the boys to participate in the beta test of a new VR game, and Scwartz Rose of course ends up involved too. Everyone gets their class decided by answering a series of questions and is then transported to a random area of the map.

Hiro ends up turning into a king, which is a bit of a shame for him since he’s the only one with gamer experience. His roll is basically as an NPC who hands out quests. (It’s rarely mentioned, but I have seen a few profiles which list gaming as his hobby and he shows a lot of knowledge about gaming in this story.)

Kakeru ends up being a merchant character overseeing the game. Another NPC-like presence, he doesn’t do much.

Taiga (a theif) and Kazuki (a swordsman) happen to generate next to each other and agree to be teammates, much to Taiga’s joy. But as soon as they try, an error occurs which kicks Taiga out of the game.

Kazuki receives a quest to find a legendary sword from Hiro and he succeeds.

Yukinojo becomes a samurai (complete with compulsive -degozaru sentence ender) and receives the same quest from Hiro.

He meets with Leo shortly after, but tells him he needs to achieve his quest alone. But he teaches Leo a powerful special move.

Yukinojo then climbs a mountain and somehow levels up to 99 waiting for a sword which doesn’t appear. (I think the joke is supposed to be that Kazuki already got it.)

Leo, a ninja, had been trying to do quests to fight monsters before meeting up with Yukinojo but not getting very far since he always lets them go. Now armed with a powerful special move and knowledge about how games work, he rapidly levels up.

Taiga arrives back into the game after getting kicked out, but finds himself in a different area nowhere near Kazuki. He begins using his thief skills to steal stuff from monsters while hoping to find him. But he then gets in trouble when he angers on a monster too big for him to handle and is saved by Leo who berates him for stealing. Still, they form a team as Taiga sees how strong Leo is.

The first person Shin meets in the game is Louis, both archers, and they quickly form a team. Rather then progressing through the game together though, Louis more than content just to listen to Shin’s stories. Until Shin mentions that in his quest he has encountered an impassible puzzle. But Louis quickly realizes that if the two of them stand on the opposite sides of the door and touch their hands together, it will open. However, only one of them can pass through. So Louis decides to become the sacrifice so Shin can continue, which he does, as Louis sadly watches his party member status change from 2 to 1.

Outside the cave Leo sees Shin and instantly notices that he looks sad. So Leo quickly invites him to join their team. Taiga is reluctant at first since teams can only be 3 members and he had his heart set on teaming with Kazuki, but they ultimately decide to join forces to defeat the Devil King and find who they are all looking for. (Shin for Louis, Leo for Yukinojo, Taiga for Kazuki.)

Meanwhile, Kouji, Minato, and Yu have all met and formed a 3-person team as well. Despite the fact that they are all magic users (Yu a wizard, Minato a cleric, Kouji a scholar) and Yu is the only one who can attack, Yu is confident in the strength of their team because he is sure he can carry them all. They receive the same quest (to defeat the Devil King) as Shin’s group as Hiro wonders if they know what they are doing.

Kouji, Minato, and Yu reach the Devil King who is of course Alexander. However they quickly realize they how screwed they are as Yu, the only attacker, can only attack with magic which Alexander is strong against. So they hopelessly try and whittle away at his health while Yu attacks and Minato/Kouji support with little effect.

But before all hope is lost Shin’s party, three physical attackers, arrive at the rescue. The two teams join forces and after being healed by Minato’s cooking they are ready to go.

Meanwhile Kakeru (who has been hanging out with Hiro) sees that all six of them joining a party should not be possible and they have activated some kind of bug. The bugs continue when they reduce Alexander’s health to zero but he is still not defeated. All of a sudden the graphics glitch and everyone becomes pixelated.

This effects everyone including Kazuki heading to the castle, Yukinojo on the mountain, and Louis who has only just reached Shin through a roundabout route and was just about to call out to him.

Kakeru realizes the game is glitched beyond repair at the point and reboots it, kicking everyone out. Basically the end.

#prism rush #king of prism #prism kingdom

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metawitches · 5 years ago

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But First, A Brief, Non-Exhaustive Tour Through My Favorite Romantic Vampire Media

Though I have been writing reviews on this blog for more than three years, I have been keeping a dark secret from you, dear readers. I haven’t really been keeping the secret on purpose, but a lie of omission is still a lie, so please, try to forgive me. I don’t think this reveal will come as much of a shock to my regular readers.

The truth is, I have a deep, lifelong love of vampire romance. I’m open minded, and can consider other supernatural romances as well, but werewolves are so packminded that I question their devotion to their beloved. Ghosts seem so thin and superficial. Zombies are interested in brains, but I want more than just a relationship of the mind. Angels and demons both have to leave their beloveds in the lurch when they get called into service by the higher- and lower- powers they serve. A shapeshifter is an inconstant lover in so many ways, how could we ever develop trust?

There are exceptions: Oz from Buffy. The medieval ghosts of Lynn Kurland’s paranormal romance novels. The sentient zombies of In the Flesh. The married angel-demon couple from Midnight, Texas, another Charlaine Harris story. And no one is more trustworthy than True Blood’s own shapeshifter, Sam Merlotte.

As a general rule, witches and wizards are the only other supernatural beings I truly find exciting, with their wide range of abilities to charm or bewitch the pants off a girl, depending on the mood.

Since I’m a witch myself, and wizards are a dime a dozen, can you blame me for looking for a little more variety in my fantasy life?

Bring on the dark, brooding vampires, who are the epitome of devoted, romantic lovers, are immortal, manageably dangerous and adventurous, definitely where they’re supposed to be during the day, gorgeous and who can share their blood. Blood which, if used in small quantities, will heal without turning a human into a vampire, but which can also make the user immortal if desired, so they can share everlasting love with their vampire lover.

What could go wrong? Don’t answer that, we all need to discover some things for ourselves.

I admit, this is a hereditary issue for me. My mother and older sister sat me down in front of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows in 1966, when I was 5 years old, to watch the trials and tribulations of vampire Barnabas Collins, of the supernatural Collins family of Collinsport, Maine. Collinsport was a mysterious town on the cold, rocky shores of northern Maine, just like the small towns in coastal northern Maine my mother’s family had lived in for 300 years, until my parents moved us to upstate NY.

With the amount of inbreeding that went on in the small early populations of northern New England, I wouldn’t be surprised if I share some relatives in common with Barnabas Collins. 😉 I certainly share the vampire’s love of night and inability to handle strong light.

(Yes, I live in New Mexico, why do you ask? This is why hats, tinted glasses and long summers with warm nights were invented. True Blood is a Southern Gothic for a reason. The Twilight vampires can keep their rain soaked, cold climates.)

I still have a copy with this original cover.

Dark Shadows ran for 6 seasons, through 1971. Then I moved on to films and book series, most notably Anne Rice. I received 2 copies of her book Interview with the Vampire for my 16th birthday, in 1977, because my friends and family knew me well, and I haven’t looked back since. Though the author clearly favors the character Lestat, tenderhearted Louis will always be my favorite of her vampires. He is, after all, the vampire who was interviewed.

There were other favorites through the years, such as the film The Lost Boys in 1987 and the Dark Shadows revival in 1991. There were viral vampires, such as The Strain and The Passage, descendants of Nosferatu rather than Dracula. Viral vampires are better not mentioned if you prefer your vampires to be romantic. There was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, film and series. Who could resist Angel? He was so irresistible that David Boreanaz has starred in one TV series or another continuously ever since. I definitely resisted Spike, though I know others didn’t.

There was The Vampire Diaries on The CW, which ran for 8 seasons (2009-17) and spawned 2 spin off series, The Originals (2013-18) and Legacies (2018- ). The first 4 seasons of The Vampire Diaries were as good as any vampire media I’ve seen anywhere. I lost interest when the storylines were watered down by splitting the cast to create spin offs and some of my favorite actors left the franchise, but those vampires are obviously still doing it for others.

Over the years, Ann Rice has written more than a dozen books on vampires, plus other series on other supernaturals, some with her son, Christopher Rice. She managed to make a mummy sexy. Her original vampire trilogy was turned into two mediocre films. I also had a fling with Katie MacAlister’s Dark Ones book series in the 00s, a fun vampire soulmate series. Now I notice she’s added a few installments since I last checked in with it about 10 years ago so, yay! Something else to read over the winter.

The big vampire story of the 00s was Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight book series, which my kids and I shared the way I’d shared Dark Shadows with my family as a child. The Twilight films were terrible, terrible things. I recommend skipping them. But as with so much that’s perceived to be originally aimed at teenage girls, the Twilight books have been unfairly maligned. They are full of universal themes and vivid characters.

Bella is a great character for anyone to follow and she has a romance to die for. She does so much more than have a boyfriend and a baby in her books, but even if that’s all she did, it would be enough. Navigating personal relationships is a huge part of life, and for someone from a background of abuse and neglect, like Bella, learning how to have healthy relationships when you are older is a long term challenge.

If it takes a vampire family to show you what real love, care, equal relationships and decent parenting look like, there’s nothing wrong with that. There are very good reasons why Bella’s romance is in love not just with Edward, but with his entire clan. Because of her childhood experiences, she’s in love with the idea of transforming from a human who has difficulty defending herself against the human monsters in her world, who include her parents, into a vampire who can protect herself and her entire devoted vampire family from even the fiercest of supernatural monsters. After a youth full of struggle, she finds her own power and uses it on her own terms to win a war, in addition to conducting an epic vampire romance.

There was a last, forgotten, one and done vampire TV series of the 00s, Moonlight, on CBS, starring Alex O’Loughlin, who quickly went on to become better known as Steve McGarrett in the Hawaii Five-0 revival, and Jason Dohring of Veronica Mars. Moonlight aired during the 2007-08 season, so it was affected by the infamous, endless writers’ strike which killed more than 1 show that year. It was just hitting its stride when the season was cut short.

As a vampire romance noir which explored multiple historical time periods plus the present day, it was sadly ahead of its time for broadcast TV. Plus, though the show had already been completely recast after early sample filming (except for Alex O’Loughlin), the writing still focused too much on the relationship between O’Loughlin’s main vampire character, Mick St John, and the lead ingenue human female, Beth (Sophia Myles), rather than the much more interesting and complex relationship between Mick and his ancient vampire, on again-off again wife and maker, Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon).

The show was course correcting in that direction when it ended after 16 episodes, an unusually short season in those days. I would be thrilled with a reboot of Moonlight that was done right. (It’s currently streaming on cwseed.com.)

Alas, the media deities rarely listen to my brilliant ideas, so we are subject to the slings and arrows and fangs of outrageous fortune. But just 4 short months after Moonlight went off the air, a new vampire romance rolled into town, and it wasn’t shy about telling us what it wanted. True Blood was the answer to all my vampire romance prayers.

Let’s Finally Review True Blood Season 1

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True Blood aired on HBO for 7 seasons, for a total of 80 episodes, from the fall of 2008 to the summer of 2014. It’s based on the 13-14 book series The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. The TV series was created by Alan Ball, who was handpicked by Charlaine Harris because she felt he understood what she was trying to do with the books. He stayed on as showrunner for the first 5 seasons, which were all critically acclaimed.

The TV series stars Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress who lives in Bon Temps, a small town in rural Louisiana. Sookie sees her telepathy as a disability because she has a hard time turning it off, which makes it difficult to concentrate on anything else or to have normal human relationships. As a result, she’s socially isolated, other than a few close friends and her family- the warm, generous grandmother she lives with, Adele, known as Gran (Lois Smith), and her charming but selfish, promiscuous brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten).

Sookie works at her friend Sam Merlotte’s bar and restaurant (Sam Trammell), where she’s also friends with much married fellow waitress Arlene (Carrie Preston) and fabulous short-order cook and hustler, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis). Her best friend and Lafayette’s cousin, Tara (Rutina Wesley), begins working at Merlotte’s as a bartender at the beginning of the series. Most of the town passes through Merlotte’s at one time or another, since it’s a popular local hangout.

Sookie’s parents died in a flash flood when she was a child, but other than that and her telepathy, her life has been normal, even humdrum. Until vampires came out of the coffin a few years ago, as far as she knew there was nothing extraordinary about the world. She still has no idea why she’s psychic.

A synthetic blood which can sustain vampires, known by the brand name Tru Blood, has encouraged vampires to take the controversial step of revealing themselves as a species to humans. Amongst both vampires and humans, some have embraced this revelation and some fear what it will mean for the future. Sookie makes her very first vampire acquaintance, with the vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), when he stops by Merlotte’s to try a Tru Blood. Bill is attempting to mainstream, meaning he’s trying to blend in with humans as much as possible, rather than living the full vampire lifestyle, which naturally disregards human manners and customs. Normal vampire ways tend to alienate normal humans fairly quickly. They can even be deadly for humans.

Vampire blood can be used as a recreational drug, so there are dealers who capture vampires, drain their blood, then sell it. Sometimes they kill the vampire in the process. In the first episode, an unethical couple lure Bill into the parking lot to drain him, which Sookie overhears using her telepathic ability. Sookie is surprised to discover how easily some silver and the promise of a tasty snack can disarm a vampire. She rescues Bill and their relationship is born.

Due to the images her telepathy puts in her head, Sookie has never been able to date human men, so Bill is her first boyfriend. His main attraction is that she’s unable to read his mind. Perhaps because they are technically dead, vampire minds are a blank to her. For a telepath who’s always “on”, this is soothing.

True Blood season 1 is a Southern Gothic, paranormal, horror, mystery, romance, urban fantasy, much the same as the book it’s based on, Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark. Though the subject matter is intense, the writing is relatively fast-paced and there’s a dark comedy element to it that keeps the horror aspect from becoming overwhelming. The show isn’t as light and breezy as the books; in addition to the book’s humor it uses visuals and a heightened reality to emphasize the outrageous nature of Sookie’s world. The characters frequently comment on that outrageousness and on the ironies taking place around them.

In season 1, there’s a serial killer on the loose who provides the season long mystery arc. The killer is after young women who’ve been with both vampires and human men. Since Sookie has a vampire boyfriend and is frequently around other men, she eventually becomes one of the targets.

The show’s theme song, Bad Things, by Jace Everett, perfectly encapsulates the mood of True Blood. It’s an upbeat country song that promises an out of control romance, which plays over the opening credit sequence of each episode. Humans and animals experiencing intense situations flash by, while names are superimposed over them. The activities in the visuals aren’t necessarily even immoral, they’re just filmed in a way that makes them feel creepy, until you aren’t sure anymore what’s actually bad and what’s just making you feel bad.

Like an insidious vampire who wants to have his way with us, the opening credits act to lower our boundaries and confuse us, so that we’re disoriented and easily taken out of our normal lives. Whether we’re being glamoured, romanced, drugged or conned, the first step is to convince us to leave our previous concept of normal behind.

The first year I watched True Blood, I thought the opening sequence was the grossest, most horrible opening credits sequence ever made. Now I love it and think it’s one of the best. Is that a good development or a bad one? *shrug* I still can’t watch the maggots though. The vampires haven’t completely taken me over.

True Blood continues to lower our defenses and push our boundaries once the opening credits end. Vampires and shapeshifters are welcomed into normal society. They take part in panels on CNN, discussing legal changes which have been proposed to help or hinder their assimilation. They stop at the 7-11 to pick up a 6 pack on their way home. They have difficulty getting a contractor to come out to their rural home and need a referral from a friend. They are business owners, employers and employees. They worry about getting blood stains out of their laundry. Possibly a little more often than most of us, but still.

They sleep underground in the graveyard when they can’t make it home before dawn. It’s sort of like crashing at a friend’s house. Okay, that one is pushing the boundaries of normal human culture. There is an entire vampire culture that exists outside of human sight, but we only touch the surface of it in season 1.

Sookie is drawn into this world as she seeks to solve the murder mystery and enlists Bill’s help. She visits a vampire bar run by the ancient vampire sheriff, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) and his vampire progeny, Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten). They learn of her telepathy and seek to use her talents to solve their own mysteries.

Shenanigans ensue for 7 unparalleled seasons.

True Blood Season 1 vs The Southern Vampire Mysteries Book 1 (Dead Until Dark)

True Blood season 1 follows Dead Until Dark, the first book in the series, closely, using the same serial killer plot as the main mystery storyline and Sookie’s romance with Bill as the supernatural focus. The book was originally published in 2001 and my 2008 paperback copy is a quick 292 page read.

Neither the TV season nor the book are my favorite of their respective series, mainly because I am emphatically not a fan of Bill Compton and eventually I start to gag over the way Sookie continuously drools over him. But they are both entertaining and introduce the world of Sookie and Bon Temps with enough suspense, heart and humor to draw you into the next book and season.

In season 1, the TV series faithfully recreates Charlaine Harris’ version of Sookie’s world, from Gran’s old but well-loved farmhouse to Eric Northman’s vampire tourist bar, Fangtasia. The series also included mainly the same characters and subplots as the book, with a few alterations. The main difference is that the TV show expanded on plotlines that were only briefly mentioned in the book, such as recreational V(ampire blood) consumption by humans, Lafayette’s off hours activities and the vampires’ struggle for equal rights.

Many of the supporting characters and their backstories are much more developed in True Blood season 1 than they are in book 1. This is an unusual difference between a book and a movie, but it’s not as surprising when you realize that the Sookie Stackhouse novels are narrated in the first person by Sookie herself. Expanding on other characters isn’t a priority for her, even though it could be aided by her telepathy. She’s basically obsessed with Vampire Bill and the murders in this book, whereas she’s known the other characters her whole life. It’s natural for her to have little interest in providing extra details, so she tells us enough, but we don’t get a full biography.

Two characters who go on to appear in multiple books are left out of the TV series, Bubba and JB du Rone. Bubba is based on a very famous real life singer, so they probably figured he’d be distracting, as he typically is in the books. JB du Rone is a sweet man-child who shares some similarities with Lafayette and eventually becomes close to Tara. I suspect the Lafayette we see on screen is actually meant to be a composite character, with many tweaks and Lafayette’s brains.

The biggest change from Dead Until Dark is the addition of Tara Thornton to the cast. In the books she doesn’t appear until the 2nd installment, Living Dead in Dallas. Several major season 1 subplots revolve around Tara, including the set up for the main storyline for season 2, and she’s heavily involved in other characters’ plot arcs as well. Rutina Wesley is such a vibrant presence that it’s hard to imagine Bon Temps without her version of Tara, so this was certainly a welcome change. With Tara comes her alcoholic mother, Lettie Mae, played by one of my favorite actresses, Adina Porter.

Another notable change is the expansion of the storyline for book character Amy Burley, played by Lizzy Caplan. She and Jason become involved with a vampire played the Man in the High Castle himself, Stephen Root, with disastrous consequences, but it’s fun while it lasts. The Amy-Jason-V subplot is particularly effective, with its psychedelic visuals, sometimes subtle violence and obsessive relationships.

The actors and the visuals drive home the multiple abuse aspects of this plotline in a way that would be much more difficult using only words. The genius of True Blood is that the writing, acting, music and visuals come together to make an entertaining, memorable show while showing the dark side of society and how that dark underbelly can bring pain and pleasure. But True Blood wouldn’t exist if Charlaine Harris’ genius hadn’t already given us the snarky, bold, scandalous world they are elaborating on.

True Blood is streaming on HBO’s websites and Amazon Prime. Charlaine Harris has a new book in her current Gunnie Rose series, A Longer Fall, coming out in January 2020. Until then, I’m amusing myself by revisiting Sookie Stackhouse.

Images belong to those who created them.

Book vs Screen Review: True Blood Season 1 vs Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris-But First, A Brief, Non-Exhaustive Tour Through My Favorite Romantic Vampire Media-Bring on the dark, brooding vampires. #TrueBlood #CharlaineHarris But First, A Brief, Non-Exhaustive Tour Through My Favorite Romantic Vampire Media Though I have been writing reviews on this blog for more than three years, I have been keeping a dark secret from you, dear readers.

#Alex O&039;Loughlin #Ann Rice #Book vs Screen #Charlaine Harris #Dark Shadows #Dead Until Dark #Katie MacAlister #metacrone #Quick Review #review #supernatural #True Blood #Vampires

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selfinsertbartender · 7 years ago

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D&D Pride

I’ve seen a bunch of people celebrating their LGBT+ tabletop RPG characters this month both on here and on twitter, and I wanted to get involved! Seeing as I don’t have much in the way of artistic talent, I figured the least I could do is list the LGBT+ characters I’ve played in the past and some of their exploits, from earliest to most recent!

It was while I was making this list that I realized I’ve accidentally made almost every single character that I’ve played for more than just a couple of sessions queer. Oops? Anyways, full character info under the cut!

* Ramiel Uroven - Asexual Ramiel was my second character of my first serious D&D group (I changed characters several times for various plot reasons)! Growing up on his family’s farm outside of the Human capitol city, Ramiel always admired the Paladin Corps and was eager to become a knight when he grew up. Upon reaching the age when he could be certified, he was barred from joining the Corps after it was discovered that he was technically a Tiefling (in 3rd edition, Tieflings were humans with demonic ancestry; in Ramiel’s case, his great-great-great-great-grandfather married a succubus, making him just 1/64th demonic). Ever the upbeat young man, having been denied his dream of becoming a Paladin, he decided to do the next best thing: turn around and join the anti-Humanist Theroubrian Empire as an Antipaladin in service of Hextor, the god of war and chaos (keep in mind, at the point where Ramiel joined the party calling them “morally gray” would have been generous). He didn’t join out of any sense of solidarity with the Cult of Hextor’s dogma, he just wanted to be a knight. He eventually went on to become the Avatar of Hextor (after a series of like, four nat twenties in a row?? it’s a long story) and was promoted to a General position in the Empire’s army. He eventually parted ways with the party after some... personal differences (he was ordered to kill the two leaders of the party for betraying the Empire, and he’s nothing if not loyal). A more recently rebooted version of Ramiel had him have distant Fae ancestry instead, He was actually successful in becoming a page for a local lord and starting his own knighthood training, but he was kicked out after it became clear he just stopped aging. In this version he was still asexual but more homoromantic, as he’d had a sort of illicit relationship going on with his lord.

*Ariel Ophanim - Pansexual/Nonbinary After fleeing from the Theroubrian Empire, the party joined up with a group devoted to keeping the world’s forces of good and evil locked in a stalemate known as the Defenders of Balance (note: this campaign was a good year before The Adventure Zone even started!). Assigned to watch over the new recruits upon their induction was Ariel, an Aasimar rogue and long-suffering right hand of the leader of the DoB. Ariel was the image of a covert field agent: sneaky, no-nonsense, and very, very pretty, and they knew it! So imagine their disdain when they were instead assigned to babysit a wild bunch of ragtag asshole newbies for their first real mission. The leader of the DoB had taken Ariel in when their home had been ravaged in the war between the Humans and the Theroubrian Empire, however, so they felt that they owed it to the leader and reluctantly accepted the assignment. Ariel filled a much-needed leadership role in the party and even managed to herd the group into completing some respectable work for the DoB investigating claims that their former employers were attempting to open a portal to the Demonic Plane. Ariel ended up sabotaging the ritual to summon the hell portal when they threw themself in front of Dimitry, an NPC ally with whom Ariel had a burgeoning romantic relationship, and became the ritual’s sacrifice in Dimitry’s place. Ariel’s sacrifice still opened a portal, but instead of dragging everyone present to the Demonic Plane, it instead dumped the party, Dimitry, and Cree (the succubus wife of the leader of the Theroubrian Empire, responsible for opening the portal and killing Ariel) into a pub that existed between planes.

*Saoirse (aka “Yew Mann”) - Gay Within the extraplanar pub the party met a knight in antique armor and a horned helmet claiming to be a human paladin of a long-dead god. This knight, who claimed to be called ‘Yew Mann’, joined the party as they went hopping between planes (which actually consisted of our group playing a bunch of oneshots of other tabletop games using our characters) looking for a way back home. When the party got suspicious about Yew’s refusal to remove her armor with anyone else around, it was eventually revealed that she was not, in fact, a human paladin. She was actually a young Rakshasa sorcerer from the Demonic Plane named Saoirse who fled to the inter-planar pub after her lover, a female Tiefling, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She took on the form of her lover to appear less obviously demonic, and at the pub she made friends with an old paladin who came from the Material Plane at a time hundreds of years before the present. After hearing his tales about humanity and the paladins and their heroism, she desired to live as a hero in the Material Plane herself. She received the old paladin’s armor and spear with the intention of disguising herself as a human once she figured out a way to get to the Material Plane (which, of course, is when the party arrived....) She told all of this to Cree, the Theroubrian Empress, in confidence, and in return Cree started to convince her to accept herself. Their friendship would eventually save the human Paladin Corps from a Theroubrian attack, as Yew pleaded with Cree to call off their mind-dominated Terrasque (again, a long story). After the Theroubrians retreated, Yew decided to leave the party so that she could serve on the Theroubrian council and act as a sort of moral compass for Cree and the Emperor.

*Ewan Saxton - Gay Real name Ewan Uroven, he was Ramiel’s younger brother and was forced to hide his familial ties (and his heritage, as a Tiefling) in order to be accepted into the Paladin Corps’s college of magic. At first Ewan struggled to adapt to his new environment and at learning how to harness his magic, but a boy his age named Tomar began to help him. While Ewan struggled with most schools of magic, with the help of Tomar he found that he excelled at Abjuration and made it his goal to become a great antimagic wizard. Ewan only got so far as to share a kiss with Tomar before his relationship with Ramiel (younger sibling of an enemy general) was discovered and he was forced to flee the Paladin Corps capitol with the party. During his time with the party there was an attack on the Paladin Corps in which the mage college destroyed, leaving Ewan uncertain about the status of his boyfriend (our campain went unfinished shortly after this). *F.E.I. - Bisexual/Trans* Born under a different name, FEI was the youngest of six children of a Kenku adventurer-hero and a former petty criminal. She wasn’t the most well-behaved kid, and she took her affluent childhood for granted up until the day that her mother took ill and died soon after. FEI’s father, who could never quite leave his criminal behavior in the past, stole all of her mother’s fortune and abandoned his children, forcing the six of them into becoming criminals themselves in order to fend for themselves. This tragedy drove FEI down a dark path, until she fell in love with a girl who taught her that she had to live her life to the fullest. This, along with her mother’s dying encouragement to be truer to herself, drove FEI to leave her home behind and start anew, living as a woman for the first time in her life in a new city and with a new name. Initially she intended to leave her criminal past behind her, and despite predjudices against Kenku she managed to join the local city guard. However, her shame and self-loathing still remained in the back of her head, a lack of self-worth which, like most Kenku, she felt could only be medicated by the accumulation of wealth. Thus, despite her desire to leave that life behind, she fell into a gang of Kenku criminals called the Blackbirds. FEI currently works as a corrupt mole within the city guard, though perhaps the appearance of a group of dangerous assholes within her city might push her into abandoning her criminal activity for good and finally follow in her mother’s footsteps. And that’s it for the LGBT+ characters! The canonical ones, at least. I have a handful of others, all of whom (aside from one) I really only played for a couple of sessions and didn’t get much of a chance to delve into their stories. But in the spirit of D&D Pride, fuck it, let’s queer them up too. *Ernbrecht Stonefist - Asexual A Dwarven druid of the stone and the middle son of a noble family. He adhered to a strict set of rules and guidelines while essentially serving as his family’s “eyes” to the world outside of the Dwarves’s island. My very first character of my first serious D&D group, he didn’t remain with the group for very long (because he wasn’t very interesting/fun to play with a brand new party). Glad not to have the burden of the expectation to produce heirs, since he won’t be gettin it on with anyone anytime soon.

*Sirocco - Aromantic/Agender A half-Giant cleric of Varuna, god of the celestial seas. Varuna whispered to Sirocco and told them to baptize the world, that all may join Varuna in the celestial seas beyond the planes. In reality, Sirocco was a cleric of the water and madness domains, and Varuna was actually just some demi-fiend fuckin with them and making them drown people in their Bag of Holding, which was filled with water (the DM let me get away with this because he thought it was hilarious). Didn’t get a chance to play them long (campaign got interrupted by summer break), but they were a lot of fun. Their crowning achievement was single-handedly digging out and creating a river, building a village alongside it, and starting a cult (all of which was constructed above another player’s lich dungeon. Long story). Doesn’t care for romance, too busy being a vessel for their god.

*Weone Harksted - Gay Literally only played as her once, so I don’t even really remember what I was going for. She was a Dwarf cleric of light and I’d interpreted that as being a “sun mage” or something. She was an avid scholar and had some horrible ancient secret book and was more than prepared to destroy a civilization to get to the bottom of that mystery. Also, she likes girls now.

*Musca - Bisexual Ah, Musca. My big, beautiful Gnollish bard. Such a kind heart. Such an indomitable spirit. Also, he swings both ways. I’ll find a group that will let me play as you one day.

#dndpride #tabletop stuff #tabletop #long post

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years ago

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Blockbusters assemble: can the mega movie live the digital era?

From Star Wars sequels to superhero dealerships, blockbusters still rule the film industry. But with Amazon and Netflix tearing up the freeing planneds, are they on shaky sand?

Is the blockbuster in hassle? On the surface, to hint such a thing might seem as absurd as handing out the wrong envelope at the biggest phenomenon of the movie docket because you were busy tweeting pictures of Emma Stone. This is the blockbuster were talking about. Its Luke Skywalker, Jurassic World, Disney, The Avengers, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Pixar. Its the Rock piercing his fist through a structure. Its the effects-driven culture juggernaut that powers the entire film industry. Does it look as if its in trouble?

A glance at the balance sheet for its first year to year would cement the view that the blockbuster is in insulting health. Total gross are higher at the present stage than any of the past five years. Logan, the Lego Batman Movie and Kong: Skull Island have all drew in big-hearted gatherings globally. And then theres Beauty and the Beast, a true-blue cultural phenomenon, currently racing its method up the all-time higher-rankings. All this and theres still a new Star Wars instalment, another Spider-Man reboot, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, plus sequels of (* deep breath *) Guardians of the Galaxy, Cars, World War Z, Kingsman, Transformers, Fast and the Furious, Planet of the Apes, Despicable Me, Thor and Pirates of the Caribbean still to come. Hardly the signs of a crisis, it would be fair to say.

Dig a bit deeper though and the foundations that blockbusters are built on start to look precariou. Last-place month, Variety produced a fib that painted a picture of an manufacture scared stiff by its own future, as customer flavors accommodate with changes in technology. Increased pres from Netflix and Amazon, those digital-disruption barbarians, has caused the big studios to consider changing the behavior they exhaust movies. The theatrical space, the 90 -day cushion between a cinemas introduction in cinema and its exhaust on DVD or streaming, is set to be reduced to as little as three weeks in an attempt to bolster dwindle dwelling amusement sales. Its a move that service industries sees as necessary, as younger onlookers develop more adaptable, portable viewing procedures, and certainly numerous smaller productions have begun to liberate their cinemas on-demand on the same day as in cinemas it was one of the reasons that Shia LaBeoufs Man Down grossed a much-mocked 7 in cinema.

Ana De Armas and Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049. Photograph: Allstar/ WARNER BROS.

At the same time, investors from China long thought to be Hollywoods saviour have suddenly chilled the best interest, cancelling major studio slews as the Chinese box office abides growing hurtings( with domestic ticket auctions merely increasing 2.4% in 2016 against a 49% rise the year before)and the governmental forces crackdown on overseas investment starts to burn. Contribute to that a couple of high-profile recent busts Scarlett Johanssons Ghost in the Shell, Matt Damons The Great Wall, the unintentionally creepy Chris Pratt/ Jennifer Lawerence sci-fi Passengers, Jake Gyllenhaals Alien knock-off Life and you have an manufacture thats not as expanding as the blockbuster bluster might suggest.

Hollywoods response to this instability has been to double down, focusing on blockbusters to the exclusion of just about everything else. In the past decade the summer blockbuster season has mission-crept its lane well into spring, a phenomenon that has been period cultural global warming; this year, Logan was liberated a merely three days after the Oscars intent. The ensuing consequence is of a full calendar year of blockbusters, with a small drop-off for Oscars season in January and February and even in that span this year we still visualized the liberations of The Lego Batman Movie, The Great Wall, John Wick 2 and the regrettable Monster Trucks.

Meanwhile, the mid-budget film that hardy perennial that used to help prop up service industries by expenditure relatively little and often deserving plenties( belief Sophies Choice or LA Confidential) has largely been abandoned by the major studios, its potential profit margins seen as insufficiently high when the cost of things such as commerce is factored in. Which isnt to say that mid-budget movies dont prevail, its merely that theyre being make use of smaller, independent studios ensure Arrival and Get Out for recent successful specimen or most commonly as TV series.( Theres that Netflix, disrupting situations again .)

In essence, what this all means for service industries is the fact that it blockbuster or failure. Studios have looked at the altering scenery and decided to react by replenishing it with superheroes, war wizards and CGI mortals, acquiring more blockbusters than they used to, but fewer films in total. The old-fashioned tentpole formula, where a few large-scale films would shelter the mid-range and low-budget nonsense, has significantly been abandoned. The blockbusters are about reducing the films these studios produce down to a minimum, reply Steven Gaydos, vice-president and executive editor at Variety. They clear nothing but large-scale bets. You have to keep improving a bigger and more efficient spaceship.

Its a high-risk strategy and one that, in the form of Disney and their Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar dealerships, has brought big rewards. But this abrupt ratcheting up of the stakes means that the cost of default has already become far more pronounced. Last-place time Viacom was forced to take a $ 115 m( 92 m) writedown on Monster Trucks, while Sony took a writedown of roughly$ 1bn on their entire cinema disagreement after a faltering couple of years.

Hugh Jackman in Logan. Photo: Allstar/ 20 TH CENTURY FOX

While those losses might be explained away as the outcomes of bad stakes on bad films Monster Trucks was infamously based on an idea by an executives five-year-old son they hint at the holocaust who are able to ensue if a broader, industry-wide difficulty were to present itself. Namely, what if the public loses its appetite for the blockbuster?

Its not entirely without instance: in the late 1950 s, as television would be in danger of steal a march on cinema, studios responded by travelling large-scale. Spectacle was seen as the key: westerns, musicals and sword-and-sandal epics predominated. But gatherings soon thrived tired of these hackneyed genres and ticket auctions continued to shrink. That era the industry survived, thanks first to the infusion of vitality provided for under the jumpy, arty New Hollywood films, then later with the early blockbusters such as Jaws and Star Wars.

Could such a mass tuning-out happen again? Surely, theres an spooky resemble in the way that Hollywood has reacted to changing durations with width and spectacle, but also in their narrow focus. Once an sexual thriller such as Fatal Attraction or a musical drama such as Footloose might have reasonably been considered a blockbuster. Nowadays the blockbuster almost exclusively is still in the action, fantasize, boys cinema or superhero genres.

The superhero film including with regard to towers huge over the industry, as every studio tries to replicate the formula set by Marvel. Ever-more niche caped crusaders are being given their own cinemas Batgirl, Aquaman, the Gotham City Sirens in an attempt to unearth a new Deadpool. Spider-Man and Batman have once again been rebooted in an attempt to freshen up the respective franchises. And, of course, everyone wants their own cinematic macrocosm a immense galaxy of characters that together can generate a apparently infinite number of spin-offs, sequels and prequels. At this very minute, the creators of Call of Duty are actively seeking to turn their shocking shoot-em-ups into a series of interlocking films, while James Cameron a director whose preferred approach of cracking a seed is with a sledgehammer, you suspect is creating a universe around his smash-hit Avatar, replete with five sequels, graphic novels, actual fictions and, most bewilderingly, a Cirque du Soleil show.

These shared natures actively tribunal the sort of gatherings who will turn up to every movie, buy the action fleshes, don the cosplay outfits and ingest the branded breakfast cereal in other words, teenage sons. The dominant ideology is fanboy culture, says Gaydos. It is adolescent. It is the conflicts by violence. It is wish-fulfillment, spectacle and diversion phone and delirium, if we are seeking to get Shakespearean.

Truly, the geeks have inherited the earth. But what about the rest of us? How many people have the time, force or inclination to sit through, say, all the cinemas in the forthcoming Universal Monsters shared universe, which begins this year with a reboot of The Mummy and has resuscitations of Wolf Man, Van Helsing and the Invisible Human in pre-production? Greenlighting this serial of movies without be seen whether anyone is going to bother to watch even the first of them looks like a risky struggle, and the most recent plight of the Divergent YA movie franchise, whose recent movie is being exhausted as a Tv movie due to lack of interest, offers up a cautionary tale that studios should perhaps be paying attention to.

Cars 3. Photo: Allstar/ WALT DISNEY PICTURES

But whats impressing about all these blockbusters is how youth-skewed they find themselves, at a time when a one-third of cinemagoers in the US are over the age of 50. Older gatherings can experience The Avengers as much as everyone else, of course, but sloping your sell primarily towards young people is a risky strategy. Young parties tend to be the most fickle audience, one whose attention is split in thousands and thousands of regions, mentions Gaydos. Theyre too the gathering least able to splash out on cinema tickets. And of course theyre an audience who are becoming increasingly accustomed to watching material on their phones, laptops and smart TVs.

In other terms, theyre the ones likely to action through the seismic change service industries is currently fretting over. If they lose interest in the modern blockbuster in the way that younger audiences turned away from the westerns, musicals and historic epics in the 1960 s, the studios will have to find something glistening and brand-new to wave in their faces and this time they wont have something akin to the New Hollywood to court them with, as that kind of transgressive, edgy, groundbreaking fare is increasingly revolving up on the small screen.

Perhaps the best thing the studios can do in the face of this new world is to show some imagery in how they develop and present their blockbusters and there are signs that this is already happening. Producer Stephen Woolley, who has worked on cinemas such as The Crying Game and the forthcoming adjustment of On Chesil Beach, quotes Deadpool as a film that has subtly managed to shift the feeling of the superhero movie. Its taking a much more sophisticated viewpoint of that world-wide and ridiculing it, while at the same reinforcing it. It was a clever have-your-cake-and-eat-it from the people who made it.

Meanwhile, Disneys successful live-action reimaginings of their animated pieces most notably Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book suggests that its possible to play the sequels and remakings activity without it seeming like a retread over old floor. Most outstandingly of all, the musical think this is making a comeback with the success of La La Land, that rare mid-budget movie to have spanned over into blockbuster status, grossing more than $400 m at a budget of $37 m.

Woolley is aware of the risks twirling all over the blockbuster, but considered it important that mass extinguishing is still some road away, if it ever comes. The chance you have is that audiences are fickle, and they could abruptly turn off, he says. Something occurs for them to say: Actually, we dont such as those movies any more. And theres always this inkling that it might materialize. But every time it seems to happen on the blockbuster front, another movie comes out to prove you wrong.

Ultimately, though, what might keep the blockbuster safe for the time being is not the films themselves but all the stuff around them. The thing that the studios are doing is something akin to a hypermovie or a supermovie, mentions Gaydos. Its a whole other thing. Its a toy-delivery arrangement. A Cars movie will gross $500 m or $600 m but the Cars commodities will exchange$ 4bn. Ultimately the movie is designed to be a monster sell implement for merchandise and theme parks that produce billions and billions.

As Hollywood agonises over its own future, it might be that the best direction for the blockbuster to survive is to subsume itself into bigger, most secure revenue streams: playthings, recreations, merchandise, live attractions. So if you want to keep the blockbuster around for a while longer, you should get your Superman outfit on and run yourself a container of that branded cereal.