TOH Except The Characters Are Replaced By My Failed Google Searches

TOH except the characters are replaced by my failed Google searches

Analyzing all the differences in the storyboards posted by Yasmin Khudari and the final product! - Part 2: Collector Edition!

And so here we are! If you haven't seen part 1, I urge you to do so, as we looked into some pretty interesting and lore rich boards that were cut or done differently compared to their final episodes!

This post will cover all the boards for For the Future, and as always I'll try to be mindful with how many pictures I add for the image limit!

While chronologically the sequence with King and Collector playing pretend comes first, that one gives us a LOT more ground to cover, so I'll start with the Bedtime Story sequence, which is frankly easier to get through!

Analyzing All The Differences In The Storyboards Posted By Yasmin Khudari And The Final Product! - Part

First of all: minor change, Collector used to get big sparkly eyes when asking King to read them a story!

And there also used to be dialogue by Collector after he drops the huge book down, stating that this book usually takes 300 years to get through, but assuring King they usually fall asleep midway. I think this is kind of a funny line and it would make sense with the way King responds "easy..." afterwards, which did make it in the final cut. Of course we still get that impression without this dialogue, but it was kind of funny. The book also appears to have paper pages here, rather than stone slabs.

Minor visual thing that I think is very cute: the scribbles over the "bad" part Collector did used to have little angry faces! I'm so sad they didn't make it in! Look at them! One is sticking its tongue out!

Small but super interesting dialogue change also: King used to read aloud the part Collector scratched out anyway, and go "yikes" as a response to it (fun! and accessible for viewers who may not be able to read it when it comes up for some reason!) and as a result, Collector doesn't say "don't read the NEXT part, skip to where I fixed it", but rather just "don't read the BAD part", confirming he does view it as bad. He also would say "right..." when finishing reading! I like how talkative he used to be here... sad it got lost.

Minor thing! King also used to tilt his head when telling Collector he only lets one other person hold François. This little movement is absent from the final cut!

There's also a dialogue change with Collector, he doesn't refer to Luz as "that human", but rather by name, going "your old best friend, Luz". I wonder if this was changed because the crew thought Collector might not want to admit this about Luz, or if maybe it felt inaccurate since Luz is more specifically King's sister figure.

And finally... oh these boards have gone viral baby. Excited to talk about them!

Instead of saying "I don't like being alone" after asking King at least leave François to watch over them, Collector says they promise not to touch it which... oh myyyyy God, this is so cute.

But I am conflicted about it! I think the inclusion of the line about loneliness makes a lot of thematic sense considering how this is brought up again by King to Eda and Lilith, as a reminder of the pivotal part of Collector's trauma dealing with his imprisonment, but on the other hand! This original line would have driven home the point of how good Collector is trying to be for King, specially with the divergence that comes next.

This! This feels so important! This is a call back to the moment where King tells Collector they can trust him (and this is present in both the roughs and cleans AND the final episode!) and make a pinky promise! This right here is a direct parallel that has King decide that if he tells Collector they can trust him, he should trust them too! This is decisive in portraying them as two kids who are trying to see each other as equals and just have immensely unhelpful circumstances all around them!

I can understand why it was reworked though, again, I feel like they might not want to let the audience forget about The Collector's loneliness because it is such a pivotal part of their arc and it constitutes the very important theming of how wrongful imprisoning someone is, and how punishing children through methods that border on or are straight up torture do nothing to help them grow. If this wasn't brought up again at least once, I can see the crew feeling this section of his character was neglected, and he was made into just a playmate for King to hang out with that'll inevitably turn good by the end.

I just... wish I could have them both, lol but well, other fans also had some pretty big losses in other storyboard changes, so I guess I'll settle for what we have now! I did speculate the theming of trust and telling the truth and striving to see each other as equals will come back next special, so here's hoping this won't be dropped completely!

Anyway, now for the big event! The roughs AND cleans for the playing pretend sequence! For this one, since there are sometimes differences happening between each of the board sets AND the final episode, I'll be adding those simultaneously as things happen.

First of all! Immediate punch to the gut: In the roughs, Willow used to run at her dad and get close to him and try to talk to him, not just wait until the puppets started running and screaming! I can only imagine they took this out because this would just be really sad?? But this show also revels in sadness and they do want to make us feel for Willow so I do not get it... maybe time save? Either way. I cry.

Oh yeah also! As you can see here! The puppets used to, for the most part, have stars for eyes instead of just stylized eyes? It's more subtle in the clean version but their eyes still turn into stars when they're "activated". I'm not sure why this was changed other than to maybe make it easier to animate.

Willow seems to have no dialogue when running after her dad both in the roughs and cleans, though in the cleans she does only run after him when he starts running and screaming, just like the final episode.

Also! There is a small scene not present in the final episode but both in the roughs and cleans: When Terra is running around as the owl beast, there is a close up of her obscured face with mouth open looking like a big monster mouth. I can see that they probably cut this due to it probably being weird to get such a close up without giving away it's not Eda, or maybe it was just for some extra time.

Another minor change, when she sees her dad getting attacked, in the roughs, Willow doesn't bring out her staff, instead just covering her mouth. In the cleans, she does the final episode motion normally. I think they may have changed this to reflect her personality better: we do know Willow is the type to want to jump into action to protect those she cares for.

Also minor detail: after Collector says "stop right there, beast" there used to be no frame showing Willow being surprised by this and hesitating, cutting directly to Collector's star descending with him and King on it.

Minor dialogue difference as well! Both in cleans and roughs, Collector did not address the "citizens of Bonesborough", but rather declares "I'm here to stop your mad rampage!" at the beast! I feel like it may have been changed to better reflect his view of playing the hero of the story here, instead of just playing the role of hunting the beast as he may have done before.

However the identification of his role as Luz came in the form of something else, as King used to have added dialogue in both the roughs and cleans, going "Use the spell I helped you find, Collector!" This is very cute, and I kind of wish they kept it in, it solidifies that King is playing along as an important part in the story, just like the actual episode they are referencing! I wonder if it was cut for time or if it was redundant or something...

And then King goes "I believe in you!" with your usual "Thanks, best friend" reply from Collector.

We also have this short little cut moment where you can see them looking at each other happily and there's a weird divergence between the roughs and cleans here. See, they're nearly identical, but in the roughs, King appears to be blushing for some reason?

Granted, we have seen characters blush in non-romantic settings before, even cut blushes in storyboards such as Luz blushing when being happy about Philip being impressed by her (I still feel so bad for her!) ...but it is at least notable here because a lot of people debate whether King actually enjoyed Collector's company and would like to be friends in the future or not, but I feel like moments like these in the storyboards (the bit about trusting each other from earlier on comes to mind) help solidify that they were always meant to befriend each other, King isn't just a miserable participant with no agency whatsoever! His little blush could indicate he feels happy by now to play with them! And there are further boards I will show that further prove this!

In the final cut, this bit is of course, absent, instead just cutting to Luz's eyes widening. This also leads to a funny little divergence in the roughs and cleans, where what I think happened here is that the reaction Luz used to have at Terra coming out of the Owl Beast costume was instead at first going to be her reaction to King and Collector playing together and seemingly enjoying each other's company... which is very funny to me. I think they may have changed this because it may have seemed a little too mean spirited to have Luz react so badly at King being happy around Collector.

Look... I made a GIF to show how they're one to one the same frame... This literally is just funny to me.

Another small cut moment, there used to be an overview shot of the puppets cheering for Collector! This one is very cute. Look at them with their little hands on their hips!!

And because Luz's reaction to Collector and King being besties got switched around, this caused another set of fun divergences in the roughs, cleans, and final storyboards.

In the roughs, Luz has a moment where she looks attentively at the Owl Beast costume as the camera holds on it, likely doing a kind of suspense zoom and then bait and switch. In the cleans, the zoom doesn't happen. However in both the roughs and cleans, there is a close up of Luz reacting with a weirded out face at the same time as Terra says "back to normal" offscreen.

I imagine what happened here is that these expressions from the boards were then re-tooled to be the close up shot we see of Luz reacting to King and Collector, her eyes just widening as she stares in shock.

Further on, Terra also has some cut dialogue and actions, which are the same in both the roughs and cleans:

While kicking off a bit of the costume, she then throws her "hair" back and goes "Bad girls and so on". This is a funny little bit that I can only think was maybe but for time!

And then! We actually have a case of added content! In the roughs and cleans, Collector didn't give Terra any descriptions about Eda being "like a cool aunt" who "actually cares a lot". I do think it was clever to include this, it helps show a little better that Collector actually respects and likes Eda despite how things are at the moment.

After that, both in the cleans and roughs, Terra's dialogue changes a little bit, instead of calling King a "stupid little" dog, she calls him a "little freak" dog, which does sound like a kind of harsher insult.

Another minor change that is barely noticeable, the roughs and cleans call for Terra clearing her throat before going "Ooh, I like musicians", and you can see a BIT of this motion in the final cut, but she doesn't actually do it, just sort of inhales.

Similarly, there's another cut bit in both the roughs and cleans where Terra would cough and gag right after this line, indicating she would maybe be disgusted by Eda and Raine's relationship. I think this could've been a funny bit but I understand if it was cut for time or maybe the VA couldn't cough at that moment due to complications for any reason.

This next scene is also slightly different! And contains also small differences between both the roughs and cleans! Collector, instead of saying, "You're not being very nice right now", goes "I never pinky swore to THAT."

In the roughs, he assumes more of a frowny expression, just looking kinda angry at Terra like in the final cut, but in the cleans, he gives this sinister ass smile that I love love love! Oh, my little son named warcrimes who commits atrocities and I adore it.

Minor change: Terra used to plead "no no no no" before getting turned into a puppet in both the roughs and cleans, but this is absent in the final cut.

Alright, this next part gets REAL complicated with the divergences not just towards the final cut, but with both versions - rough and clean - between each other. There's a ton of dialogue changing and even action/expression changing, and I'm very excited to talk about it.

First, in both the roughs and cleans, after going "Collector, buddy, you gotta stop doing that." King doesn't plead "Think about what you're doing to these people", but instead says "You're running out of people to play with." I imagine they may have changed this to make King seem more sympathetic to the plight of the people getting turned into puppets, whereas the first one showed more of his practical side knowing just what to say to Collector to get them to question things, as Collector would probably respond better to being reminded this is less people to play with. Another reason why this may have been cut is because one could argue Collector can still play with the puppets, just that they won't be sentient.

Here is where we run into our first divergence: present only in the cleans, King also adds "plus, you could've really hurt someone!" I imagine this bit was added in the cleans to make up for that need of showing King's compassion, but I think the reason this was also changed is that it doesn't make sense? We know the puppets aren't getting hurt, sure it's terrifying to lose control of your own body and be forced to be a doll and sleep within that wooden carcass, but they're not at risking of being actively hurt and can be easily fixed if anything happens. This is of course still bad, but the threat of physical harm doesn't make sense in this case particularly.

Because of this divergence, here's where the roughs, cleans, and final cut split into three different versions:

In the roughs, Collector responds by continuing to seem sad and going "But we'll NEVER be able to play Owl House right without an Owl Lady." He then pleads: "Maybe if you let me talk to Eda myself-" which... certainly seems a lot different than the chipper "maybe if I ask her real nice, I won't have to turn her into a puppet" from the final cut. This reads even more like Collector wants to connect to Eda and talk to her, but is being actively kept from it by King. I can see why maybe this was cut as it would make King look a little bad for barring Collector so much from seeing Eda if he is so well meaning, whereas the final version actually seems more threatening and like King has a reason to not want them interacting yet.

In the cleans, however, because King added that comment about maybe hurting people, Collector responds in a really interesting way: "You said this game was pretend, why do I gotta worry about stuff like that?" Both the roughs and cleans as you've probably already picked up lack that malicious "you're so boring" jab at King, but this one is definitely the one with the most striking contrast, as this one directly implies Collector WOULD worry about hurting people, and is just confused as to how this could happen in their game.

This makes King go into his little speech about playing pretend having consequences, but this one is also slightly altered: Instead of saying "playing pretend", King says "living in a fantasy has consequences, too. Real ones". And ohhh! I would like to bite my fucking arm off at this!! Do you see this shit! Not only is this perfect fodder for the theory Collector is trying to shut himself away from the grief he feels over the titans and refusing to confront his past trauma and generally repressing his emotions, but! It is even more of a DIRECTLY DRAWN parallel to King, by HIMSELF, at King's season 1 self and his backstory of having once believed he was the King of Demons.

But of course, I can see reasons why this may have been changed. Namely, "living in a fantasy" may have confused audiences while "playing pretend" is more of a direct description of what is happening. Also "real ones" may have just been cut for extra seconds. Lord knows they need those.

After King says that, Collector launches into his usual excited talk of Eda, though he doesn't say "no substitutes allowed". However, just like in the roughs, how he refers to talking to Eda here is pretty different. Here, he says "Maybe if you'd let me talk to her, she'd wanna play-"

Again, no mention of turning her into a puppet. Hmmm.

So, I have some theories. First is pretty straight-forward, they added the threat of her maybe getting turned into a puppet to keep the stakes high and give a reason for King to really object Collector talking to her. The second one... well, it involves a lot about Collector's arc in this episode and how it may have changed over time, but I want to talk more about it once we finish looking at all the boards for differences, and believe me, we aren't done yet.

After this, the roughs and cleans meet again, and both of them feature King going "n-no", but unlike the final cut, his dialogue is slightly different here again: he doesn't say "Her curse is still in effect." He says "She's still... not feeling well... y'know. The curse and all that." It's a subtle difference, and it does use more words and pauses, so I think they may have just changed this for time.

The roughs and cleans and final all diverge again here: In the roughs, King reassures Collector by saying "I'll talk to her about joining the game, don't you worry." In the cleans, it switches to "D-don't worry! I'll talk to her for you". In the finals, we have the known "But I can check if she's feeling better." Here we have a progression that I think shows us the difference between King promising Collector something we really aren't going to see- which is Eda joining the game, to say he'll talk to her for him which is similar but vaguer, and then, just saying he'll check on her. I feel this change may have occurred so his promise is mostly kept here.

Slight divergence: Collector goes "you promise?" as a response in all versions, but only in the cleans and final version does he do that little lean while smiling. In the roughs, he used to remain kind of sad looking. I wonder if initially they were going for Collector initially doubting King, but discarded that in favor of his more confident behavior.

And hoo boy, this next divergence is another that makes me kind of insane. You see, while King says the same thing in all three versions, "You can trust me, Collector" and offers a pinky promise, his expressions and motions! They are so different in storyboards!

In the final version, you'll recall King has his gaze averted while offering the pinky and looks kinda sad while doing it. In both the roughs and cleans though...

Look at how happy he seems doing it! He looks at Collector the whole time, only looking away at their pinkies for a second, then they have a moment where they just look at each other happily!

So this is that further implication I was talking about, that King and Collector, at least in some iteration of the story, were written to actively be friends, and not just have a one-sided thing.

Again, I have a few theories about why this was changed. Another straightforward one is just that they wanted to show King was still worried about things and not just nonchalant about the misery around him. Another possible, less straightforward one is that they really wanted to keep the thing about King actually caring about the Collector and not wanting to hurt him a surprise. In a way, that makes sense, younger people may fall for this, hell, I've seen at least one or two people online confess they really thought King wanted to kill Collector with that line from him. So to show them being so indisputably intimate would kind of spoil that.

That being said though... I have another theory, the very same that connects as to why other things have been changed, but again, it's kind of big so I wanna talk about it after we're done.

Only in the roughs now, there's a small bit where we see Camila scoot over to Luz's side to ask "Is that the little guy you've been telling me about?" (Notice in the final cut she also says little King, not just little guy. I feel like this was done to avoid confusion on who she referred to.) In the cleans, it just cuts instead of showing her getting there.

There's also a big divergence in the roughs, cleans, and final result here. First of all, in the roughs and cleans, there's no zoom in on Camila's face.

Then, in the roughs, after Camila comments "ay, que lindo", Luz gives out a giggle and goes "Verdad?" which means "True", like she was saying "true, right", like!! It's like ikr for spanish basically. However, she looks sad right after, and so does Camila upon realizing Luz still feels bad. I think they probably cut this for time, really, as well as maybe they thought Luz wouldn't be in the mood to laugh at her mom reacting the same way she did when she first met King.

In the cleans, however, this scene is way more depressing. Camila still gushes over King like normal, but here, Luz's reaction is just sighing and giving an eerily blank looking dejected expression. My god girl. You are not doing well. And of course, Camila does get sad seeing her this way.

Minor change, Collector used to not say Archive House, just the Archives!

Another minor but fun change: Amity used to reply to Camila's question about the eyeballs being normal but not Collector, by going "Yeah, that's basically it."

Some pretty heartbreaking cut dialogue here as well, in both the roughs and cleans, after Hunter says they should follow Collector and King as Belos is probably trying to get back to the Collector, Willow points out they're flying too fast.

The roughs and cleans diverge here a bit, but Hunter's reaction is more or less similar.

In the roughs, Hunter goes "Flap would be able to-" before cutting himself off and storming off.

But in the cleans, this is made further more upsetting, as he says "Flap could-" then pauses for a moment, entirely silent, realizing what he just said. Then he announces "It's fine." and walks off, stating that "there's more than one way to find him."

I! Really mourn these losses! These are such neat little moments that solidify Hunter's grieving and I wish we could've kept them! I can only think they may have been cut for time, the crew felt they didn't need to add more, or they didn't want to rub it in.

Minor dialogue changes ahead, Gus doesn't say "it looked like they were playing a game", but specifically focuses on The Collector, saying it looked like (they) were playing pretend (hmmm, possible Gus role with the Collector foreshadow?) Similarly, Luz doesn't described it as a "messed up version" of her life, only HER life. Gus also doesn't refer to them as puppets in roughs and cleans, but rather as toys.

Before climbing up the debri to look at the Archives, Luz would say "The Archives..." dramatically, in both the roughs and cleans. Also, may just be the nature of the roughs being roughs, but in the rough storyboards the Archives look way more like a bunch of floating debri strung together rather than a full on circular castle.

And... that's it basically! Whew! That was... quite a lot as you can tell, just these two scenes had so much material they practically overshadow the sheer amount of content the first part of this little analysis project had.

Okay, so. Again, as the guy who usually goes cuckoo crazy theorizing on every little thing related to the Collector, this was a feast for me, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very intrigued by how much Collector's characterization -specially in relation to King- changed from the storyboards to the final product.

One thing you may have already clocked just from this is that The Collector and King used to seem much more like close friends, as well as there was less of an emphasis on Collector's loneliness and implied trauma rather than on the issue of trust between King and Collector- can they really call each other best friends if they don't take the steps to trust each other and be honest with each other?

Hell, there's even ANOTHER modified detail from the storyboards where King used to SMILE while beaming up with Collector after meeting Odalia.

So... what happened? Why did they change this? I've given you my reasons before but have been teasing one big theory all along, so I will say it now: I think they were pretty confident up to a certain point in diving into the themes of friendship and trust and telling the truth with Collector and King that I've already kinda identified as remaining in this episode, but that got kinda built up for the next episode, but then they realized "oh shit, we are barely touching on Collector's own trauma from being put in hardcore solitary for hundreds of years and having his psyche shattered into pieces from that we should probably. Focus on that huh."

And so was born a revised version of the episode that focused on King feeling a lot more general pity and sadness for the Collector, and the Collector in turn also being allowed to show more sadness that wasn't just related to not getting why his games are going wrong or why King won't let him talk to Eda. One where a more young and/or impressionable audience may be excused to think King didn't like Collector that much, but the twist is that he does, in fact he feels bad for them and relates to them.

Put simply, these earlier versions were nice, but they lacked the drive back to focus on the metanarrative Collector brings to the table of how terrible it is to punish a kid- or anyone- with extended solitary imprisonment, even if they did do bad things or are still doing them. And honestly, I'm still conflicted! I still like both of these a lot, I really think I would have enjoyed this earlier version with them being clearly besties maybe even more, but I also can't say I wouldn't have been frustrated if they never brought up Collector's trauma and issues ever again, specially after setting that up through Season 2B.

But well... I still will hold these storyboards near and dear to my heart, and I hope this post will reach many more people and spread the good word of the King and Collector endgame besties agenda being real!

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batsinnappies

4 months ago

hey everyone be careful

I don't know if anyone has talked about this, but lately this has been happening in other fandoms too. There'll be these bot accounts that straight up steals people's posts and adds "expand" "read more" "continue" as a link in the end of the post - DON'T CLICK ON THAT, it's most likely a malware or something of the like.

so if you see a post like this: no profile picture, something that looks reposted (I've seen this happening to artists too) and a link at the end, even if the post has tags, that's a bot. Block and report it.

stay safe, and I hope @staff finds a way to stop these bots soon!

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batsinnappies

2 months ago

straight men have beauty standards for men that are completely different than the beauty standards women and gay men have for men and then they get mad when they conform to the beauty standards other podcast bros set for them and women still don’t find them attractive

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batsinnappies

2 months ago

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

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batsinnappies

9 months ago

It disturbs me how many people don’t know the anatomy of a pen/pencil/brush/stylus/tool of choice when held by an artist. I would have thought this was common knowledge!

There is a tube inside your tool of choice that is filled with art. When you first pick it up for the day, there’s a very small blockage (the red part in the diagram that I have helpfully provided for you) of bad or awkward art that has sunk down and settled near the tip. The only way to get rid of it is to draw it out onto a page/canvas.

Once you do that, you can get to the good art! It’s totally normal. It happens to everyone. That’s why people do warmups before they draw - they know that awkward art is lurking right near the tip, so they’re getting rid of it.

New artists especially seem to not know that it’s there, and sometimes they might think their bad art blockage is never ending, but if you keep drawing, you’ll get to the good art. Sometimes that awkward art blockage can build up a little bit if you go a long time without drawing, too. Just keep going, though. I promise you that you can break through it, if you just keep going.

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