I finally gathered enough motivation to make GS!Cluster's design instead of thinking about it in my head for the longest time. I have a ref for them but it doesn't say much.
So here: Can terraform, teleport, and has high senses and strength. About 4,500ish years old. They/it pronouns. Their eye is covered most of the time due to sensory issues.
yes my handwriting is bad but anyway
This is the first character design for my SU AU: Lapis. She reforms earlier than canonically.
Firstly, sorry for being very offline and only reblogging a post or two. If you’ve been on my Twitter, you would’ve seen me retweets about my fave show but that’s about it…
Anyways, I just wanted to mention that this year has been pretty crappy for me. Not only do I get sick that I needed to go to the hospital 🥲
but… just last month my pet passed away suddenly. He was told to be heathy and well and the vets checked and couldn’t figure out why. They just had a theory that it was an acute infection since those get birds quickly. But, it really affected how I functioned for the rest of my uni term, I went into hyper focus on my studies and was constantly stressed the entire time.
All of this just made me slack in my fics, which I’m absolutely sorry about! I haven’t updated the Raya fic at all, and I’ve been absentee Beta to my friend who write the avalance ‘The Demon Within’. He understands, but I haven’t updated any of yous on a this! But I’ve been getting better, and now that uni has let out, I’m gonna start uploading chapters again! Be on the look out, and it’s great to be back!
I just also wanted to take this moment to thank you guys for sticking around 😊 seeing you all blog or comment really brings more motivation back…
Anyways, See ya’ll on Ao3!!!
https://www.name-generator.org.uk/?i=106hffej
https://www.name-generator.org.uk/?i=1pjaix3z
@welcome-to-green-hills
SO! Firstly, I know that this movie’s fanbase is dwindling overtime, which makes sense, it’s been a while since the movie came out and Disney also did a pretty crappy job in advertising it so-
Anyways, recently, the few people in this fandom have been noticing, over the last few months, a lot of critique videos have come out about this movie in its cultural execution, story, themes and so forth. And while it may hurt some people in this fandom to watch someone absolutely dog over our favourite movie…
They are totally right.
TBH, I’ve noticed a lot of these flaws within the movie since I first watched it and put out that rant about me loving/critiquing the film (which is here if you wanna read :3). And just to make it clear to everyone! It is absolutely okay to still like this movie despite its flaws.
Like yes, Disney did do a wrong move with how they decided to make an amalgamation of different SEAsia cultures rather than focusing on one. Cause while I did feel represented in some factors, it wasn’t an overwhelming feeling of YES THIS IS THE MOVIE, it was more like aw, nice warm and fluffy… even as an animation student I knew I only would refer to this movie when talking about the animation more than then cultural representation.
Which I will still say, that while Avatar the Last Airbender had this same amalgamation treatment… it is still regarded as one of the best animated shows in existence. Why is that exactly? Well, like I mentioned in my previous review of the movie, it is because it had more time.
TIME
From my own previous experience with writing, animating and planning stories/short animations, time is what makes or breaks a story. And this can mean anywhere, like in production, run time, release dates, when movie/show airs… etc. In Raya’s case, while the animation was absolutely amazing, the runtime of the actual movie is what was its downfall. And even though I had a paragraph of this in my previous rant, I’ll be more in depth here:
The two main things that time impacted the movie by was four things: Themes, Story, Character, and Character Relationships.
The STORY - The story is already such a large and complicated story. I was surprised when I was first watching that they decided to go through this route because the story was so massive, that trying to cram it in under two hours, nicely, it such a huge undertaking. So already, with such a limited amount of time, a lot of exploration of the world and a natural unfolding of the story felt so rushed. This is why I agree with the sentiment that this story should have been given the ‘ATLA treatment’ because so many shows (both animated and live actions) that had gone through this, getting enough time and space to really pace out their stories… which ended up with such breathtaking and amazing stories being told.
The THEME of TRUST - This theme would have been a good idea to explore as it is very nuanced and there are different views of approaching trust across different cultures. However, with how little time they had to focus on the nuances of trust, they decided to go for a more black and white viewpoint. Which definitely did disappoint me since this is such a good theme to investigate! With how polar both Raya and Sisu are with their viewpoints in trust, it could have led to compelling situations about discovering the ‘grey’ of the themes of trust. But, the movie went in the route that Sisu was right with how she trusted her siblings for her to be able to help save the world. However, with the runtime, I understood that it led to all of these nuances being smoothed out with an iron since they didn’t have enough time to focus that with a large story, multiple characters, and it needing to be an action movie too. This all resulting in a theme that was unsubtly shoved in the audience’s faces at times rather than a more paced and subtle one.
The CHARACTERS - I mentioned this in my last review of Raya, but the reason so many characters felt one-dimensional was that a lot of them didn’t have time to actually show or explore their own personalities and backstory, which is an absolute shame since having visual explanations of what happened to them would have me even empathise with them more. So, because of time, a lot of the characters got shortened down to their character gimmicks or types. The only ones really felt fleshed out was Raya and Namaari.
The CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS - One thing this movie definitely forgot it… is that particularly in any Asian countries, the connections to family (blood or not) is really important. That these ties between your friends and ties and obligation to your family is what really cements a large part of our cultures. While the connection between Raya and her father was made, a lot of the relationships between the characters didn’t get explored too much. Again, a shame since this could have been totally a ‘found family’ situation! And let me tell you, I’m a sucker for those. Like I totally imagined Boun being the closest to Raya since he was the first human to join on their quest. Even blood relations, such as Namaari and her mother, could have such a compelling dynamic. But it was left towards the end to create some last minute tension… just imagine how their relationship would have changed over time! But alas, time totally cut it off.
So yes, I still have a lot of feelings about this film, and how it could have done things so much better. So does that mean I hate it? ABOSLUTELY NOT! You’d have to pry this movie out of my stone cold hands. I’m such an asian mum about this as I show my love through ‘critiques’ (and liking all the Rayaari post :3).
SO… of you all agree with my points and haven’t checked out my fanfic… Shameless plug but check it out! It’s the whole reason why I decided to write a rewrite, cause I love this whole film’s premise and just want to bring it to the heights it should’ve gone!
Firstly, for those who are following my Raya and the Last Dragon Fanfic, I haven’t been updating recently because I kind of had an emergency happen recently that warranted me needing to go to the hospital 😅 but hey! I’m all fine now and recovering nicely. I’ve been trying to catch up with the chapters I missed, but I’ll definitely will update regardless of the day when I get back to a good amount of chapters already written 😄
Stay safe ya’ll!
Chapter Summary
Fang soldiers and a very determined Fang princess chasing their tail, Raya and Sisu run across the barren desert to get as far as possible.
📷Hey Dexter, I got more gems for you📷 *hands over a bag of green shards and a poofed purple gem*
Oh uh...thank you Steel *awkward smile having bags under his eyes, gets shards out bag first*
Chapter summary
In a stone walled crevice of the mountainous horizon of Tail’s caves, lies the skeletal Tail chief, a dragon gem shining in her hand ready for the taking. Raya and Sisu head over there, eager to retrieve this gem… and see what six years does to you.
We know the Cluster is still alive, at some kind of peace and aware, but do we get any official word on the status of the smaller "clusters"/forced gem shard fusions?
Chapter summary
Raya, Tuk Tuk, and their new group member Sisu take a break from their trip to the next dragon gem shard, at a campfire under the stars. As most things are told around campfires, Sisu shares a little about herself and dragons like her…
Chapter Summary
Raya has been searching all the lands for any sign of the dragon Sisudatsu, and she has reached her last hope, in a forgotten stream ending at a dried old boat wreck…
just that little "mnh-mnh" from Garnet, so much emotion in two little non word syllables, fear and pain and disgust. powerful but hard to watch if you know at all what fusion means to them, even more so with the context of later episodes.
does anything else in SU compare for pure horror than our first encounter with the forced fused shard and their glitchy, screaming, nightmare forming process? i think not.
Dragons as Warlock patrons is a popular idea for homebrew, but despite being such an obvious choice, there still isn't an official dragon patron. I'd imagine the reason for this is, aside from avoiding overlap with the Draconic Sorcerer, Warlocks have "Otherworldly" Patrons, which are almost universally creatures from other planes, whereas dragons are explicitly worldly. However, with the release of Fizban's, there are now some good options for dragons using the existing patrons. To name my ideas:
Archfey: Adult or Ancient Moonstone Dragon, possibly one with enough influence to be comparable to an archfey in its domain, or perhaps an Archfey with a penchant for faerie dragons.
Celestial: Angelic follower of Bahamut, or possibly even Bahamut himself.
Fathomless: Adult or Ancient Turtle Dragon, or potentially an exceptionally strong Ancient Sea Serpent.
Fiend: A sufficiently powerful Abishai, most likely a Red Abishai, or possibly even Tiamat herself.
Genie: I'm honestly at a loss since Genies aren't nearly as vague as the other patrons, though as a Genie patron offers elemental power, flight, and damage resistance, in addition to Wishes, it would make sense for someone seeking to emulate the powers of a dragon to make a bargain with a Genie whose power most closely resembles that dragon.
Great Old One: Shadow Dragons, as hinted at in Fizban's itself that a sufficiently powerful Shadow Dragon would be comparable. I'd also say an Ancient Deep Dragon would make sense as one of these.
Hexblade: An Awakened or Ascendant Dragon's Wrath Weapon, steeped in the hoard of a Shadow Dragon. This could also work for a Shadow Dragon directly, though that depends on how willing your DM is to stretch the definition of a Hexblade patron. Works especially well for a Silver or White Shadow Dragon, as Hexblade Warlocks can learn Cone of Cold.
Undead: Dracoliches, Draconic Shards, Ghost Dragons, and Hollow Dragons. Hollow Dragons in particular are the best example I can think of of a good-aligned undead strong enough to be a patron, but all options allow for a wide variety of undead, draconic patrons. This is also the only patron where a dragon (the Red Dracolich, Dragotha) is explicitly included as an example of a patron!
Undying: See the above list, as the Undead patron is more or less a redo of the Undying concept. In fact, you're probably better off using the Undead patron from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft instead of Undying.
