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Nov. 10th, 2008 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spokeDear Yuletide Santa,
Firstly, sorry this is popping up a bit late. ^^,
Secondly
You have signed up to write one of my beloved fandoms, in the grand Yuletide tradition of jumping into one of those playpens filled with balls and never knowing which ones you'll come up holding. I salute your bravery! :)
In general I'm willing to try anything at least once, which is how I have found that I like: psychological manipulation (aka mindfuckery), slash and het and everything in between (three-or-moresomes? okay!), magic, science, mysteries, biting humor, aus of all stripes, cross-overs, in-character behavior, geekery, power struggles, mythology and established relationships.
And I definitely don't like: mpreg. I've read it once or twice from authors I already knew I liked, but really. Please don't. Oh, and really sugary romances, but that could just be because they involve people being out of character.
Most of all, have fun! If you're enjoying what you're writing, it will show. :)
Now, the fandoms:
Ronin Warriors aka Samurai Troopers: (If you're not writing Troopers, or you don't like too much information? Feel free to scroll past this, or just go with what's in the prompts themselves, okay?
Okay, here we go.
The fandom, this is my oldest and dearest. I love all the boys, even the Masho (which you'll have noticed in the requests) and anything really that you'd care to write would be welcome. I think I noted in the requests that I would prefer something warm and comforting if it's just the Troopers, and the dark stuff from the Masho, so. In general and about the series is called for, I think. Oh, and I will say I prefer the ST names - because they're prettier. ;p
I started out with the Ronin Warriors, and only discovered it as Samurai Troopers after I got it all on dvd. Somehow, in spite of that, the two are pretty well blended in my head - so any direction you choose to take will be welcome. Hrrrm, perhaps a short blurb on each character? Excuses to squee ftw!
Ryo (and how come he gets exempted from name changes?) : Okay, full disclosure here. Sometimes I want to slap him. This is not out of any personal dislike, but because he's not quite the style of leader I would prefer - he's the sort of guy who becomes the nucleus of a group without even meaning to. He never said he was the leader. No one ever really says he's the leader - it's just that they all follow him around and do what he says and tend to give him last say in arguments - except when Nasuti/Mia takes it.(Thank you, Nasuti.)
What I like is that he's basically this quiet, agreeable guy who likes to hang out and do stuff - just (I'm trying to articulate something I never have before, bear with me) he will never have a problem adjusting to life after magic. If all the magic abruptly ended, he would not have to worry about what to do with his life because he's already living it; and if he gets a little nostalgic for the fighting days, I still don't think he'd angst over it. He did his angsting because of the fighting, after all.
Touma aka Rowen: OMG DORK. GEEK! *glomp* You know, I haven't really thought about why he is cool anymore than I have Ryo? It's just obvious, they are. I tend to get analytical about the characters I think are understudied. Something like that. Okay, Touma: knows where the chemistry lab is! Knows what all the stuff there is for! Could be his own manned space mission, and I don't think I'm the only one who's ever just wanted to steal Tenku solely for that purpose. Just sayin'. :)
I love this kind of character in general, really, who has his head so far into the clouds and so full of the next thought and the next thought and the next one that sometimes he misses what's happening in the here-and-now around him. I love how utterly he does not fit in, and how much he cares about trying, reaching out in his own way to these very strange people he's found himself with. (This ignoring the fact that really he's the outsider - but then each is, in his own way.)
I love him arguing with Ryo when they're stuck with just the two of them. I love that so so much. It was such a bad idea, and being the only choice available doesn't make it less bad. I love that he's willing to be the guy who points out the flaws, actually - even back in the tunnels with Shuu. <3
Seiji aka Sage: He is a mystery to me, he really is. He is a walking bundle of contraditions and issues that still has me going, 'What, wait?' I like seeing his mind screwed with in a way that probably says Bad Things about me. ;p Lesse... I like the way he relates to Ryo, this constant sense of a samurai serving his daimyo, of a knight serving his lord. I like the way even though he is so clearly of the Light and attached to it, there is still the sense of his being tempted by Cale/Anubis's arguments. If he ever were to go to the dark side, I think it would be on account of the light, and being blinded by it. (And he and Shuu are my favorites for that scenario, because they would.)
Shuu aka Kento: Again, *GLOMP* I have a soft spot for my earth elements, they get underestimated so very much. x.x He is not a blockhead just because he could crush you without thinking about it! And pick up cars to use as weaponry. And open gigantic huge doors. Although these things are also really cool. :D
See, Shuu is easy-going and friendly and loveable, he lets people get pushy with him (to a point) and underestimate him - and what all of this hides is that he is letting them. This boy is being raised to be the head of a very large family, and I think he looks at things with an eye towards maintaining peaceful friendly relationships - there is a certain sort of noblesse oblige there, in a very downplayed sense - which makes me laugh because everything else about Shuu is loud and proud of it. <3
I think the point where this most clearly shows up is early in the series when he's being a bit louder - because they're not listening to him and he's used to his words carrying a bit more weight than that. ;p I also love how that colors his interactions with Seiji, because they are being raised to roughly the same position in very different families - they both try to step in and give orders, hence getting in each other's faces and on each other's nerves.
Shin aka Cye: Full disclosure time again? I think yes - pacifists should not be recruited to fight in wars! Never ever ever. If you are putting a weapon into the hands of a guy whose real desire is to put it down, you have a problem. That said, I do like his compassion and caring for the others. I have a soft spot for the compassionate that ranks close behind the one for earth-elements. ;p It's just, his underlying pacifism is as out of place in this scenario as Ryo's not-quite-leadering.
Also (and here I am getting into what I like) there is a certain amount of anger underlying that which is creepy. You only get that sort of betrayed bitterness from someone who really believes people could be better and all this fighting shouldn't be necessary; and I do believe he feels that way in a sort of general, metaphysical, the-nature-of-humanity-got-us-into-this-shit way about the whole thing. There is being blinded by the light of ideals, and then there's being poisoned by them (Inescapable references to Naaza. I love it.) and I think the best thing that happened to Shin is having friends to reaffirm his faith in humanity a bit. Especially Shuu, who can deal with it when he snaps.
Okay. Masho/Warlords:
Shutendoji aka Anubis (why must they confuse us all with name changes?): Oh my first love. <3 Not my first fictional crush, though he is certainly the most enduring - and the one who got me into Troopers. When I first saw him being 'picked on' by absolutely everyone else in the show.
Little did I know how richly he deserved it. XD
The tragedy and the beauty of his entire situation, the change from callous selfish arrogant warlord to a man trying his best to make up for all the harm he's done, trying to save the world he set out to destroy - for me that is the heart of the story, the line in the sand around which all the other characters fall. What is loyalty, who am I and what does it mean to me? How do you define treachery when there was no truth in the beginning? How do you explain to those left behind?
Last year I got a story dealing with him, and Rajura, and it was everything I could have hoped for from them - I don't think the same ground needs to be covered twice? But I cannot talk about Troopers without speaking of Shuten. Completely incapable, I promise you. ;p
Rajura aka Dais: Used to creep the holy heck out of me, on account of my having been afraid of spiders. Still does, on account of him being a creepy refined manipulative little bastard. :) Only he has this blind spot that has nothing to do with the eyepatch, see above and enough said. XD
Rajura ...I think is maybe a bit too refined for this battlefield stuff. He'd do better with the manipulation in a social setting, and better possibly against Seiji than Shuu - too bad Anubis/Cale has history with Seiji's family that really gives him dibs. ;p The problem with pitting Rajura against Shuu (and I note that it was Arago's idea in the first place) is that their personal styles are so different it throws them both off their game. This despite the fact that the episode with them facing off for the first time, with that really magnificent screwing with Shuu's head, is one of my favorites. So Much Love, there. :D
So, for Shuu's part it's that his constantly falling for the illusions makes him seem stupid in a way that he really is not. It is a flaw that he's so physically oriented that he believes his sense first and his mind second, but not in itself a lack of intelligence.
For Rajura, he's not paying attention. I've seen this read as Rajura just being ever-so-much smarter than Shuu, but honestly? Puh-leese. He is supposed to be corrupting the boy, with an eye towards recruitment? Not happening, and it's because he's not thinking. He dismisses Shuu because of the physical orientation, he acts as if there's nothing to the boy but brute force - he hammers on this point.
But what we see happening, where Shuu does stumble, is mental angst and not physical gratification. About the physical fall, I'll grant you - but it is a mental struggle to which Rajura responds with a physical attack. *bzzzt* Wrong. If he had just drawn that out, made the fight more of a sparring match over discussion? He really could've got to him.
Naaza aka Sekhmet: Can have more crazies, plz? :D No, really, I love the sense of hissing spitting coiled rage there. And jealously! I always get the sense that there is history going on here that we have missed. Why does he get more chances back in the beginning, and how does he make Nise Suiko, and well, everything. Backstory is always good. ...I feel bad that I do not have more to say, here.
...okay, I should note that Naaza and Shin are a good match in the fighting, mostly because of what I believe about the underlying anger in Shin, and if anything's going to draw that out and/or make it worse, it would be Naaza's mad deliberate gleeful cruelty.
Anubis aka Cale: Can we have more psychological manipulation? I don't think so. Rajura, take notes, this is doin' it right. *little bow towards the Warlord of Corruption*
This guy is some kind of awesome, really. I have a friend in this fandom who has said she thinks he is the warlord closest to Arago's core, to what he actually is, and I'm inclined to think she's right? He's certainly doing to Seiji what Arago tried to get Rajura to do to Shuu. There is a distance to him, a hungry needing aspect to the cruelty so that you see him eating it up when gets under Seiji's skin - like while he enjoys playing with his prey, on some level this is actually food to him and therefore not a game. But when he's not working, there's this almost unwavering focus on Arago - and from Arago, a certain talkative indulgence - like a couple of magnets.
And I mean, I don't even know how to sum that up except. You know. *purr purr purr*
Kenbukyo aka Saber Strike: And here it's... I mean, sense of unrelated history much? What happened there, where did he come from, how did he get so worked up about things as to end by cutting ties with Arago entirely? There is so much nobility there, and a sense that he was this part of this old established order, that at the least it was not just him - what happened to the separatists, to anyone who would've thought invading the ningenkai was a bad idea?
Where did he get Kokuen-oh/Black Blaze, even?
Xiaolin Showdown:
This show did not last long enough, and it made me sad that the quality of it dropped so dramatically before the end. I like the characters as we meet them in the first, oh, roughly half - before the writers dropped the ball with Chase, I think from not knowing how to maintain such evil on an episode-to-episode basis...
Raimundo Pedrosa: I do love that it ended with him being made leader, because I thought from the start of that arc that he was the obvious choice. So much of his self-doubt comes from his own laziness and repressed energies, which then feeds the self-doubt = feedback loop. Given work that matches his potential, he will shine. I like how, for all his maintains his 'cool distance' attitude at the beginning, he is touchy-feely clingy and emotionally needy - see glomping onto Omi when they'd lost him in New York.
Once he settles into himself as a leader? He so tops.
Jack Spicer, Evil Boy Genius: Oh, Jack. <3 So much wasted potentially for badassery. If they hadn't discarded him as a serious villain it could have been so awesome. I like him when he's in his zone, being a genius inventor and coming up with evil schemes. Telling off Wuya is also nice.
Telling off Wuya when she came crawling back? One of the series high points. It really was. So much love, there. <3
The interesting thing here is that we never see the other villains succeed in world domination. Twice we have time-travel scenarios that involve Jack having succeeded, and something is going on there. Clearly it was something awesome and grandiose even beyond present-Jack's expectations. ;p
The thing I like about the two of them together is that they have certain similarities - touchy-feely attitude, a certain clinging need - but these things are for different reasons. Raimundo needs to work harder before he can believe in his own potential, his own worth as a fighter and part of the team - Jack has no doubts whatsoever of his own evil potential (until they started sliding with him) but does doubt whether he's loved, as a person and not for his abilities.
Most intriguing point between them in the whole series? Raimundo sees these similarities - we see him picturing himself in Jack's outfit when Hannibal Bean is messing with his head.
Commercials:
What I like here is the way there are stories told without words. (Oh, lookit irony. It's shiny!) Mostly I wanted this one to be really open ended, that anything at all you can come up with will be good, and here are the links to the sort of commercial I'm talking about:
Volkswagen: Big Day (One Million Miles, J Ralph) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOrbo6DX9U
Is he there for her? Him? Both of them? Who knows!
Gears of War (Mad World remake, Gary Jules) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8
Okay, giant spiders are always a plus. I have never played Gears of War and have no idea what's going on - but it's Mad World and there's a giant spider. <3
Um. I really have nothing to say on the rest of them. Just, aren't they pretty?
Halo (Raindrops Prelude, Chopin) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rridXskgWg
Volkswagen (Pink Moon, Nick Drake) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY
Nike: Leave Nothing (Ecstasy of Gold theme, Ennio Morricone as sampled by Jay-Z) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlXRengzZoc
Reebok: Migration (Train Song, Vashti Bunyan) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-mmGIIE3xk
I lied - migrating football players are funny. And wildly impractical! And funny. "Look, mom! The football players are migrating, can I go too?"
"Wait until you're older, dear."
Firstly, sorry this is popping up a bit late. ^^,
Secondly
You have signed up to write one of my beloved fandoms, in the grand Yuletide tradition of jumping into one of those playpens filled with balls and never knowing which ones you'll come up holding. I salute your bravery! :)
In general I'm willing to try anything at least once, which is how I have found that I like: psychological manipulation (aka mindfuckery), slash and het and everything in between (three-or-moresomes? okay!), magic, science, mysteries, biting humor, aus of all stripes, cross-overs, in-character behavior, geekery, power struggles, mythology and established relationships.
And I definitely don't like: mpreg. I've read it once or twice from authors I already knew I liked, but really. Please don't. Oh, and really sugary romances, but that could just be because they involve people being out of character.
Most of all, have fun! If you're enjoying what you're writing, it will show. :)
Now, the fandoms:
Ronin Warriors aka Samurai Troopers: (If you're not writing Troopers, or you don't like too much information? Feel free to scroll past this, or just go with what's in the prompts themselves, okay?
Okay, here we go.
The fandom, this is my oldest and dearest. I love all the boys, even the Masho (which you'll have noticed in the requests) and anything really that you'd care to write would be welcome. I think I noted in the requests that I would prefer something warm and comforting if it's just the Troopers, and the dark stuff from the Masho, so. In general and about the series is called for, I think. Oh, and I will say I prefer the ST names - because they're prettier. ;p
I started out with the Ronin Warriors, and only discovered it as Samurai Troopers after I got it all on dvd. Somehow, in spite of that, the two are pretty well blended in my head - so any direction you choose to take will be welcome. Hrrrm, perhaps a short blurb on each character? Excuses to squee ftw!
Ryo (and how come he gets exempted from name changes?) : Okay, full disclosure here. Sometimes I want to slap him. This is not out of any personal dislike, but because he's not quite the style of leader I would prefer - he's the sort of guy who becomes the nucleus of a group without even meaning to. He never said he was the leader. No one ever really says he's the leader - it's just that they all follow him around and do what he says and tend to give him last say in arguments - except when Nasuti/Mia takes it.(Thank you, Nasuti.)
What I like is that he's basically this quiet, agreeable guy who likes to hang out and do stuff - just (I'm trying to articulate something I never have before, bear with me) he will never have a problem adjusting to life after magic. If all the magic abruptly ended, he would not have to worry about what to do with his life because he's already living it; and if he gets a little nostalgic for the fighting days, I still don't think he'd angst over it. He did his angsting because of the fighting, after all.
Touma aka Rowen: OMG DORK. GEEK! *glomp* You know, I haven't really thought about why he is cool anymore than I have Ryo? It's just obvious, they are. I tend to get analytical about the characters I think are understudied. Something like that. Okay, Touma: knows where the chemistry lab is! Knows what all the stuff there is for! Could be his own manned space mission, and I don't think I'm the only one who's ever just wanted to steal Tenku solely for that purpose. Just sayin'. :)
I love this kind of character in general, really, who has his head so far into the clouds and so full of the next thought and the next thought and the next one that sometimes he misses what's happening in the here-and-now around him. I love how utterly he does not fit in, and how much he cares about trying, reaching out in his own way to these very strange people he's found himself with. (This ignoring the fact that really he's the outsider - but then each is, in his own way.)
I love him arguing with Ryo when they're stuck with just the two of them. I love that so so much. It was such a bad idea, and being the only choice available doesn't make it less bad. I love that he's willing to be the guy who points out the flaws, actually - even back in the tunnels with Shuu. <3
Seiji aka Sage: He is a mystery to me, he really is. He is a walking bundle of contraditions and issues that still has me going, 'What, wait?' I like seeing his mind screwed with in a way that probably says Bad Things about me. ;p Lesse... I like the way he relates to Ryo, this constant sense of a samurai serving his daimyo, of a knight serving his lord. I like the way even though he is so clearly of the Light and attached to it, there is still the sense of his being tempted by Cale/Anubis's arguments. If he ever were to go to the dark side, I think it would be on account of the light, and being blinded by it. (And he and Shuu are my favorites for that scenario, because they would.)
Shuu aka Kento: Again, *GLOMP* I have a soft spot for my earth elements, they get underestimated so very much. x.x He is not a blockhead just because he could crush you without thinking about it! And pick up cars to use as weaponry. And open gigantic huge doors. Although these things are also really cool. :D
See, Shuu is easy-going and friendly and loveable, he lets people get pushy with him (to a point) and underestimate him - and what all of this hides is that he is letting them. This boy is being raised to be the head of a very large family, and I think he looks at things with an eye towards maintaining peaceful friendly relationships - there is a certain sort of noblesse oblige there, in a very downplayed sense - which makes me laugh because everything else about Shuu is loud and proud of it. <3
I think the point where this most clearly shows up is early in the series when he's being a bit louder - because they're not listening to him and he's used to his words carrying a bit more weight than that. ;p I also love how that colors his interactions with Seiji, because they are being raised to roughly the same position in very different families - they both try to step in and give orders, hence getting in each other's faces and on each other's nerves.
Shin aka Cye: Full disclosure time again? I think yes - pacifists should not be recruited to fight in wars! Never ever ever. If you are putting a weapon into the hands of a guy whose real desire is to put it down, you have a problem. That said, I do like his compassion and caring for the others. I have a soft spot for the compassionate that ranks close behind the one for earth-elements. ;p It's just, his underlying pacifism is as out of place in this scenario as Ryo's not-quite-leadering.
Also (and here I am getting into what I like) there is a certain amount of anger underlying that which is creepy. You only get that sort of betrayed bitterness from someone who really believes people could be better and all this fighting shouldn't be necessary; and I do believe he feels that way in a sort of general, metaphysical, the-nature-of-humanity-got-us-into-this-shit way about the whole thing. There is being blinded by the light of ideals, and then there's being poisoned by them (Inescapable references to Naaza. I love it.) and I think the best thing that happened to Shin is having friends to reaffirm his faith in humanity a bit. Especially Shuu, who can deal with it when he snaps.
Okay. Masho/Warlords:
Shutendoji aka Anubis (why must they confuse us all with name changes?): Oh my first love. <3 Not my first fictional crush, though he is certainly the most enduring - and the one who got me into Troopers. When I first saw him being 'picked on' by absolutely everyone else in the show.
Little did I know how richly he deserved it. XD
The tragedy and the beauty of his entire situation, the change from callous selfish arrogant warlord to a man trying his best to make up for all the harm he's done, trying to save the world he set out to destroy - for me that is the heart of the story, the line in the sand around which all the other characters fall. What is loyalty, who am I and what does it mean to me? How do you define treachery when there was no truth in the beginning? How do you explain to those left behind?
Last year I got a story dealing with him, and Rajura, and it was everything I could have hoped for from them - I don't think the same ground needs to be covered twice? But I cannot talk about Troopers without speaking of Shuten. Completely incapable, I promise you. ;p
Rajura aka Dais: Used to creep the holy heck out of me, on account of my having been afraid of spiders. Still does, on account of him being a creepy refined manipulative little bastard. :) Only he has this blind spot that has nothing to do with the eyepatch, see above and enough said. XD
Rajura ...I think is maybe a bit too refined for this battlefield stuff. He'd do better with the manipulation in a social setting, and better possibly against Seiji than Shuu - too bad Anubis/Cale has history with Seiji's family that really gives him dibs. ;p The problem with pitting Rajura against Shuu (and I note that it was Arago's idea in the first place) is that their personal styles are so different it throws them both off their game. This despite the fact that the episode with them facing off for the first time, with that really magnificent screwing with Shuu's head, is one of my favorites. So Much Love, there. :D
So, for Shuu's part it's that his constantly falling for the illusions makes him seem stupid in a way that he really is not. It is a flaw that he's so physically oriented that he believes his sense first and his mind second, but not in itself a lack of intelligence.
For Rajura, he's not paying attention. I've seen this read as Rajura just being ever-so-much smarter than Shuu, but honestly? Puh-leese. He is supposed to be corrupting the boy, with an eye towards recruitment? Not happening, and it's because he's not thinking. He dismisses Shuu because of the physical orientation, he acts as if there's nothing to the boy but brute force - he hammers on this point.
But what we see happening, where Shuu does stumble, is mental angst and not physical gratification. About the physical fall, I'll grant you - but it is a mental struggle to which Rajura responds with a physical attack. *bzzzt* Wrong. If he had just drawn that out, made the fight more of a sparring match over discussion? He really could've got to him.
Naaza aka Sekhmet: Can have more crazies, plz? :D No, really, I love the sense of hissing spitting coiled rage there. And jealously! I always get the sense that there is history going on here that we have missed. Why does he get more chances back in the beginning, and how does he make Nise Suiko, and well, everything. Backstory is always good. ...I feel bad that I do not have more to say, here.
...okay, I should note that Naaza and Shin are a good match in the fighting, mostly because of what I believe about the underlying anger in Shin, and if anything's going to draw that out and/or make it worse, it would be Naaza's mad deliberate gleeful cruelty.
Anubis aka Cale: Can we have more psychological manipulation? I don't think so. Rajura, take notes, this is doin' it right. *little bow towards the Warlord of Corruption*
This guy is some kind of awesome, really. I have a friend in this fandom who has said she thinks he is the warlord closest to Arago's core, to what he actually is, and I'm inclined to think she's right? He's certainly doing to Seiji what Arago tried to get Rajura to do to Shuu. There is a distance to him, a hungry needing aspect to the cruelty so that you see him eating it up when gets under Seiji's skin - like while he enjoys playing with his prey, on some level this is actually food to him and therefore not a game. But when he's not working, there's this almost unwavering focus on Arago - and from Arago, a certain talkative indulgence - like a couple of magnets.
And I mean, I don't even know how to sum that up except. You know. *purr purr purr*
Kenbukyo aka Saber Strike: And here it's... I mean, sense of unrelated history much? What happened there, where did he come from, how did he get so worked up about things as to end by cutting ties with Arago entirely? There is so much nobility there, and a sense that he was this part of this old established order, that at the least it was not just him - what happened to the separatists, to anyone who would've thought invading the ningenkai was a bad idea?
Where did he get Kokuen-oh/Black Blaze, even?
Xiaolin Showdown:
This show did not last long enough, and it made me sad that the quality of it dropped so dramatically before the end. I like the characters as we meet them in the first, oh, roughly half - before the writers dropped the ball with Chase, I think from not knowing how to maintain such evil on an episode-to-episode basis...
Raimundo Pedrosa: I do love that it ended with him being made leader, because I thought from the start of that arc that he was the obvious choice. So much of his self-doubt comes from his own laziness and repressed energies, which then feeds the self-doubt = feedback loop. Given work that matches his potential, he will shine. I like how, for all his maintains his 'cool distance' attitude at the beginning, he is touchy-feely clingy and emotionally needy - see glomping onto Omi when they'd lost him in New York.
Once he settles into himself as a leader? He so tops.
Jack Spicer, Evil Boy Genius: Oh, Jack. <3 So much wasted potentially for badassery. If they hadn't discarded him as a serious villain it could have been so awesome. I like him when he's in his zone, being a genius inventor and coming up with evil schemes. Telling off Wuya is also nice.
Telling off Wuya when she came crawling back? One of the series high points. It really was. So much love, there. <3
The interesting thing here is that we never see the other villains succeed in world domination. Twice we have time-travel scenarios that involve Jack having succeeded, and something is going on there. Clearly it was something awesome and grandiose even beyond present-Jack's expectations. ;p
The thing I like about the two of them together is that they have certain similarities - touchy-feely attitude, a certain clinging need - but these things are for different reasons. Raimundo needs to work harder before he can believe in his own potential, his own worth as a fighter and part of the team - Jack has no doubts whatsoever of his own evil potential (until they started sliding with him) but does doubt whether he's loved, as a person and not for his abilities.
Most intriguing point between them in the whole series? Raimundo sees these similarities - we see him picturing himself in Jack's outfit when Hannibal Bean is messing with his head.
Commercials:
What I like here is the way there are stories told without words. (Oh, lookit irony. It's shiny!) Mostly I wanted this one to be really open ended, that anything at all you can come up with will be good, and here are the links to the sort of commercial I'm talking about:
Volkswagen: Big Day (One Million Miles, J Ralph) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOrbo6DX9U
Is he there for her? Him? Both of them? Who knows!
Gears of War (Mad World remake, Gary Jules) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8
Okay, giant spiders are always a plus. I have never played Gears of War and have no idea what's going on - but it's Mad World and there's a giant spider. <3
Um. I really have nothing to say on the rest of them. Just, aren't they pretty?
Halo (Raindrops Prelude, Chopin) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rridXskgWg
Volkswagen (Pink Moon, Nick Drake) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY
Nike: Leave Nothing (Ecstasy of Gold theme, Ennio Morricone as sampled by Jay-Z) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlXRengzZoc
Reebok: Migration (Train Song, Vashti Bunyan) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-mmGIIE3xk
I lied - migrating football players are funny. And wildly impractical! And funny. "Look, mom! The football players are migrating, can I go too?"
"Wait until you're older, dear."
