#wizards: tales of arcadia icons

[theeio]

Platonic Zouxie art I forgot to post

[nolanstoolbox]

The creepslayerz!

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Pinterest: thehuntingpxrty

[theslayerbrother]

I will Date for 100 life times Jim Lake

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[thekingofthenameless]

I HAVE 1,000 FOLLOWERS!!! Thank you guys so much 🥺

First banner is made by @honeyxmonkey :D

Second one is made by ✨yours truly✨

To celebrate, I’m going to do a Q&A about TKN! (TKN is an abbreviation for my original work, The King of the Nameless.) It isn’t fanfiction, lol. Please don’t call it a fic.

I’ve been writing for four years, give or take? Before TKN, I was writing a fanfiction based on Tales of Arcadia, and it kept straying further away from canon, especially in regards to Merlin and Charlie. I had trouble actually completing a chapter, making drafts again and again until I took an unintentional hiatus after getting a ton of burnout.

I finally came back in January of this year, and while I’d actually had the idea of making the formerly titled Emerald Embers an original story for a while, this time it wouldn’t let go. It took about three days before I said “screw it” and started revamping everything.

And then I had trouble completing anything for this too 😭. I finally just decided to do some of this year’s writing events and not worry about continuity for now: Flufftober and Angstober! I also have a draft for Whumptober eventually lol.

My Ao3!

Sorry if this seems like meaningless blather to some of y’all, but I’m sick of somehow still being known for ToA, and by extent, Emerald Embers. ToA, I don’t mind as much, because I do still like the series and reblog content occasionally. But with Emerald Embers, I do. I was fifteen years old when I started that, and it’s been discontinued for about nine months. I had two ToA related likes yesterday, and one of them was for Emerald Embers, and I don’t know how y’all keep finding it but I do not want to be known for that. I meant to keep it up as an archive, but I’m getting annoyed with the people who somehow find EE content, and then only like that and nothing else… at least most people know TKN isn’t a ToA fanfiction now?

Anyways, the two main characters:

Merlin Caledonensis Ambrosius. Black trans aroace icon. Would probably look good in anything and has endless drip in his regular outfit. A highly empathetic, dignified, mellow, and smart person who struggles with schizophrenia, psychosis (as a result of his schizophrenia), anxiety, C-PTSD, and misophonia, but is still kind because he doesn’t want others to suffer what he’s been through. Secretly the God of Magic walking among mortals. Raised a literal dragon.

Charlemagne William Ambrosius. Giant dragon. Serious, brave, protective (of Merlin), compassionate (towards Merlin), as well as fierce but loving and loyal, who sometimes takes a little bit longer to care about people due to personality differences. Will readily state his opinions and start arguments without caring. Has no qualms about staring people down while gauging their personality and threat level. Was at first completely normal but is now Fucked Up too.

And here’s the (current) blurb describing TKN! Idk if it’ll fit eventually lol

The King of the Nameless is an adaptation of Arthurian Legend, except… it takes place in an entirely fantasy world. Wizards, demons, dragons, mermaids, and spirits are just five of the magical creatures that inhabit Galdorcræft. Alongside magic being everywhere, corruption runs just as deep in the country of Avalon. Seaside towns that imported benign items like silk are now infamous for attracting contract killers and magic hunters. The idea of murdering magical creatures for their body parts, as well being a falsely presumed threat to humanity, is slowly becoming more widespread through rumors of what their magic can do to heal and harm, no matter how much Merlin Ambrosius tries to stop it. He’s a wizard himself, of course. Everybody knows that. What they don’t know is that he’s hiding a lot of secrets: being the God of Magic and Justice, being born a girl, and trying to cope with madness that makes it difficult to tell falsehoods from reality, for one thing. However, he has his dragon familiar and found family, Charlemagne Ambrosius, to keep him grounded and understand him when no one else will. Unbeknownst to them, the very heart of corruption is in Camelot itself. Uther Pendragon has just become king after his father’s death, and he’s been waiting for this. Maybe now that he’s ruling, he can finally kill Merlin and rid himself of the rebellious, soft, mad advisor. With the most powerful wizard in the land dead, then no one will be able to stop him from killing the monsters that plague it.

Art dump of Merlin and Charlie! You can see how much they’ve both changed from their original designs (first images for both) lol.

Rules for the Q&A:

In order to participate, you don’t have to be following me! Just send an ask about TKN with whatever question you have! Anon is turned on :) If y’all want to ask about how their designs changed so much and stuff… 👀

I might do this for.. a month? Idk it depends on how long people have questions lol, but again, I still feel like a lot of people still know me for ToA 😭

Artist credits: Soberana Art (on Artstation), @cat-gh0ul, NaldThal (on Ko-Fi), @heropaws, @gaylightisminetocommand, @biposi, @honeyxmonkey, @azurewildflight, @theeio

Links to their individual posts, if applicable: Current Merlin, Original Charlie, Birthday gift, Forest, Cuddles, Sploot, Meadow, Embrace

Taglist: @gaylightisminetocommand, @the-arson-author-gamer, @honeyxmonkey, @danhengsbestie

Also before I answer any other questions I’ll answer @thecomfywriter’s first, since she sent me a dm asking about TKN ages ago and then I forgot to complete a post 😭 It's still sitting around somewhere and I'm so sorry

If you'd like to be on the TKN taglist, just let me know! You can dm me, reply to this, or shoot me an ask. I'm also on Discord as the same username if you want to chat about TKN, get my rambling before you see me make a post, brainstorm with me, etc :)

And I have a TKN server, actually! I should really just. Revamp it idk I have forgotten to keep it updated with my Tumblr and Ao3 content

[aslyfcx]

TAG NINE PEOPLE YOU'D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

Favorite Color(s): Orange, green, turquoise, blue, and red

Favorite Flavor(s): Sweet and uhhhh sometimes salty (depending on the kind of food I eat)

Favorite Music: I'm pretty chill with whatever I listen to but I do like songs that are quite catchy.

Favorite Movie(s): Zootopia, Rise of The Guardians, Nimona, Treasure Planet, Penguins of Madagascar 2014 movie, Madgascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Super Mario Bros Movie, and Five Nights at Freddy's movie

Favorite Series: Tales of Arcadia (Trollhunters, 3Below, & Wizards) & Virgin River

Last Song: I'm Still Standing by Annapantsu

Last Series: Virgin River

Last Movie: Bird Box: Barcelona (I never finished this movie)

Currently Reading: Zombies: Tales of Arcadia by RatthewHolt

Currently Watching: A full-time DBD streamer on Twitch

Currently Working On: Promo for homeofparcels and Eddie Dear & Howdy Pillar icons

Tagged by: Nobody Tagging: @toughgrl , @fordiemercury , @flossinspector , @prettycdds , @wishfulmuses , @hamadaxfighter , @parameddic , @magnifiico , @youllthinktwice , & anybody who would like to do this!

[canmom]

Animation Night 138: Del Toro’s Pinocchio

Happy almost-new Gregorian year everyone!

No huge introduction tonight since it is late and I imagine Guillermo del Toro needs little introduction in these parts, and for biography, I would be paraphrasing Wikipedia’s quite thorough article. I also have seen fewer films of his than I’d like, so I could give you only broad strokes: he has a deep and very genuine enthusiasm for gothic horror monsters and comics, he likes to tell metaphorical stories about fascism framed through fairy tales, he’s really big on body horror.

Here’s the really condensed version. del Toro got his start on horror movies, made his name on comic book movies Blade II and Hellboy 1 and 2, helping to revive the genre, and through that he got enough clout to increasingly do original films like El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) and The Shape of Water which fit the del Toro ‘sympathetic or alien monsters contrasted against fascism’ template, Pan’s Labyrinth especially being the iconic del Toro movie; two gothic horror type movies Crimson Peak and Nightmare Alley; and odd duck Pacific Rim, a gleefully silly spin on mech anime. And I’m a little embarassed to say that I’ve only seen Pan and Rim. I’d rather wait to say more until I’ve filled in the rest.

But I will briefly talk about animation, since it’s Animation Night! Although he began as an eight-year-old with a Super 8 camera, Del Toro was interested in using animation from very early on, originally planning to create his first feature film Cronos as a stop motion film until his studio was robbed. He worked for a long time in special effects makeup, and most of his films have had an animation component, often blended with practical effects. With Hellboy, del Toro deep inspiration from Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion, and asked Tippett Studio (the studio founded by Phil Tippett of Mad God) to make the miniatures and puppets, but I’m not sure if he used stop motion there. Pan’s Labyrinth using elaborate animatronics, The Shape of Water touching up a suit with CGI. Pacific Rim mostly shot its action scenes in CG at ILM, with Del Toro asking them to use a saturated colour and draw inspiration from Hokusai(!) in the wave effects.

Oddly enough, Pinocchio is not the first time del Toro has made a fully animated something. That is actually a series of CG TV shows animated by Dreamworks, the Tales of Arcadia series. It begins with the urban fantasy Trollhunters (not to be confused with the Norwegian fantasy mockumentary), followed by the sci-fi fish-out-of-water 3Below and time-travel Arthurian isekai Wizards (not to be confused with the Bakshi film).

Del Toro is credited as the ‘creator’ on all three series, which turns out to mean he originally planned it as a live-action TV show, which he turned into a book - a book which got picked up for a film by Dreamworks, and then finally evolved into a TV series. I’ll admit, I haven’t really looked into this much more than that, but it’s apparently scooped up a lot of praise and many awards.

OK, so, enough preamble, Pinocchio then. It’s a famous novel from 1883 by Italian writer Carlo Collodi. I suspect you know how it goes, at least in the broad strokes: puppetmaker Gepetto creates a living puppet, but he wants to be a real human boy; he becomes a serious troublemaker, and gets cursed for it, famously with a nose that grows whenever he tells a lie. Like most novels of the time, The Adventures of Pinocchio was first serialised in a weekly magazine, before getting compiled into a massive volume compiling all of Pinocchio’s many misadventures. (I think it’s interesting how serial fiction is making a big comeback lately, but more on that elsewhere.) In the first part of the serialisation, it ends with... Pinocchio getting executed by hanging, I’m not even kidding, it was supposed to be a ‘be moral’ tragedy. However, if I’m reading the summaries right, Collodi decided to retcon this and serialise it into something longer.

There’s a lot of Pinocchio-related things coming out right now. Disney are continuing their pattern of tedious expensive CGI remakes of their early traditionally animated movies, there’s an upcoming Souls-like game Lies of P, and there’s even a Russian animated film Pinocchio: The True Story. I couldn’t begin to tell you what kicked off this Pinocchio fever, since the book has been in the US public domain since 1940 - not coincidentally when Disney’s first adaptation came out. I was a little tempted, not gonna lie, to do a night where we watch all of them, but I don’t think I could sit through that lmao.

I showed Disney’s original Pinocchio on Animation Night before. By virtue of its position in history, and the ludicrously complex animation, it has positioned itself as the definitive filmed Pinocchio - the one that all subsequent adaptations must in some way respond to. For more on that, read Animation Night 84: The Walter Dismey.

Funnily enough I actually I fell asleep during that one (I was very tired that day and in a very cosy place...), so I’m actually going to watch it again. It is relevant, because that Disney film was part of del Toro’s inspiration. He set out to make his Pinocchio as far back as 2008, describing it as a lifelong passion project, and that he appreciated what he called horror-movie like aspects of the original as well as the traditional animation. Wanting to set his one apart, del Toro stumbled on the designs of illustrator Gris Grimley, and hired him. Along with Grimley, he found a co-director in Mark Gustafson, a stop motion animator who’d worked with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mister Fox and evidently had some experience with working with normally live-action directors. Later cam art director Curt Enderle from Laika and usual collaborator del Toro Guy Davis to design characters; the models were built over here by a specialist company called Mackinnon & Saunders. For more see here.

One of the things that interests me reading about it is that the animation is described as being very naturalistic, with a lot of attention paid to blinking, shifts of gaze, and that kind of thing. That sounds like a fascinating angle to bring to stop motion, and I hope I’ll have the energy to write about it after the film. Narratively, I’ve avoided learning too many spoilers, but I know it involves an ‘Italian youth training camp’ so I think I can guess how that’s going to play given del Toro’s usual themes. But we’ll see! I’m told there might even be songs.

I think that’s all I want to write tonight. So here’s the plan! We’ll take another, more wakeful go around OG Disney Pinocchio (1940), and then dive into the exciting new flavour of anti-fascist stop motion Pinocchio (2022).

Animation Night will go live now at twitch.tv/canmom, we’ll begin the movies in about half an hour at 20:40 or local equivalent. Would love to see you there!!

[theslayerbrother]

Claire in Wizards is Pretty.

please don’t repost anything. “♡” if you use/save!

[neonwizardheehee]

What's your icon?

Your question came at the right time, Anon, I was thinking of changing it actually hahaha

But yes it's Hisirdoux from Wizards Tales of Arcadia in this Fanart/post:

Hopefully this helps <3

[editswhite]

HISIRDOUX/DOUXIE ICONS♡

[skysearring]

Don't mind me,just giving you Jlaire moments <3

[cinnamoncoco1]

Zoe Ashildr

Lesbian Headcanons (1/?) art by tenyai

[hisirdovx]

ZOE ASHILDR + blond hair

↳ based on her concept art!!

[nolanstoolbox]

Tales of Arcadia icons

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[donamarocas]

give credits if you repost, please

like/reblog if you save

follow me for more

Xoxo ❤️✨

[daylightsedit]

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[draqonsblues]

wizards lockscreens !

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