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hanijunk · 3 years

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Alright boys, girls, and nonbinary folks of the world. It’s 5:36am (1/30 when I first started) as I decide to give up on my attempt to continue to focus on learning statistics, avoid studying for my two upcoming midterms, and put off my two actual essays for two different classes.

Instead we’re going into a dive about ✨ KazuFuuma ✨ . Is this me telling you you gotta ship it? No of course not, you’re entitled to your own ships! You don’t really gotta care about it as a ship. But I do want people to recognize it’s THERE canonically, and how disregarding it is extremely unfair to Kazuki as a character particularly. Also, I’m working on the assumption anyone clicking this at least knows the bare bones about what KazuFuuma (ex. You know they are a ship of Kazuki/Fuuma from Dolce, you know they are childhood friends, you know who Dolce is, you know about Honeyworks, etc.) I’ll be making references to specific things, but I won’t always go into heavy detail. Might just hope you know it or take my word for what it is, and go into analyzing it. Some I’ll put direct references to find, but some I’ll trust you can find it yourself. If you somehow read this MAMMOTH and want reference to a specific thing mentioned, hmu I can help you find it!!

Also I hate tumblr formatting sm if you legit wanna read this 7 page essay but hate tumblr format lmk I'll add it as a google doc link instead too. anYWHO

Before actually getting into the meat of things lemme preface some stuff.

Again it’s like almost 6am so this will be disorganized and very train of thought (and likely long due to the fact when I fly by the seat of my pants I’m known to get unnecessarily extensive). It’s definitely gonna be in large part why it’s important to recognize as a romantic relationship foundation and what about it shapes Kazuki’s character in particular. Maybe a bit of how it’s been built up and its general focus and implications. Dunno yet. We’ll see LMAOO

I say f*ck. Not a lot, just a handful of times. This ain’t something scholarly this is for my own enjoyment so if you don’t like that might not wanna read. And it’s not like spitefully I just curse a lot if you haven’t...read my tags before lol

Again this is through the lens of a Kazuki stan. Of COURSE I’m going to have some level of bias, but if anything that bias may help more than hurt because that means I become FIXATED and think a lot about Kazuki. Which plays into establishing just how important it is that Kazufuuma’s relationship is recognized, especially in a romantic light at this point. Lmfao.

I’ll have a few more prefaces about the actual content below but to keep this from getting too long if you wanna read come below the cut owo

I have extremely limited knowledge of Japanese just taking a few classes in highschool (so like 3 yrs ago) and live in America. This means a lot of my knowledge is gathered through the english translations of the super duper incredible and lovely people in the Honeyworks fandom who provide translations (delaix and takanenene esp have provided so much for me being able to understand Dolce) and my own limited Japanese paired with Google Translate for things that remain untranslated.

This only will be drawing on information I have come in contact with and have access to and making assumptions based on that, most (if not all) of which is in the public domain. So things like the Dolce Manga Volumes released via Animate, exclusive 4komas, and Light Novels are out of my area for the most part (apart from again snippets of translations thanks to this fandom’s godlike and generous translators).

I will not be drawing on anything from the first Dolce album with the exception of Nade Nade. From a meta standpoint, I consider those songs as songs made as performance media as opposed to character explorations. Nade Nade is the exception because (1) it was released a whole year before the album and (2) you can tell it’s explicitly an exploration of Fuuma and Kazuki’s interpersonal relationship even if it’s in a slightly more performance based context than the songs that came out with the Dolce LNs. Easiest parallel I can make to show this is if you held Non-Fantasy, Yume Fanfare, and Samishigariya up against each other, you could tell the difference in intended audience and intended purpose the same way the Dolce 1st album, Nade Nade, and the songs of the LNs do respectively. Even if there is some basis to ground Kazufuuma, for the purposes of this essay I’ll be acting under the assumption the 1st album falls under the Non-Fantasy equivalent category.

THAT WAS A LOT OF PREFACING CONSIDERING LIKE 2 PPL WILL PROBABLY READ IT I just have a tendency to anytime I do anything analytical lay down ground acknowledgements for myself to work on just...cuz it makes me feel less guilty for any accidental misinformation even if I’m writing towards my future self to read lolll IM SORRY WITHOUT FURTHER TO DO HERE’S THE BRAIN DUMP

First let’s go ahead and establish why it needs to be recognized as an important relationship. Again, I’m a Kazuki stan. He’s my favorite character not only of Dolce but also of the entire Honeyworks series, and as much as I love him for reasons outside the ship, whether you like it or not Kazufuuma is an essential aspect of his character and narrative. Of course there’s the fact that him and Fuuma are childhood friends, so that’s going to in part define their characters and interactions with each other and those around them. They’re both going to be relevant to one another and important to one another’s stories to an even greater extent than the rest of the members of Dolce. But on Kazuki’s side at least, it’s an EXTREME amount. A running plotpoint in Dolce Diary is the sheer amount of dedication Kazuki has to Fuuma and how much his thoughts and decisions are influenced by Fuuma, whether it be how he feels happiest spending time with Fuuma, how he decided to get his piercing to represent he wanted to protect Fuuma, how he doesn’t want to dislike food so he can eat what Fuuma dislikes, etc. Not to mention running jokes about his borderline overprotectiveness and downright possessiveness of Fuuma, how proud he is when Fuuma gets praised, or that one 4koma that literally explicitly states he can read Fuuma’s mind when he thinks motherfucking ‘dirty thoughts’ about his childhood friend (Fuuma). I still don’t know what the fuck to make of that last bit. Genuinely. Or the fact it’s a fucking running joke. As in it’s not a one off. It’s been brought up multiple times. Kazuki what the fuck.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have character outside of Fuuma or he doesn’t interact with people other than Fuuma. He’s great friends with Sara, Girisha, and Kippei and is shown time and time again to have fun interactions with all of them, generally acting as the best support friend for every member of the group, not Fuuma alone. For instance how he helps Kippei with his self confidence issues or stays over at Sara’s to protect him from a cockroach (which he fails at lol). Nor is that to say all his interactions involving Fuuma focus solely on his devotion to Fuuma, especially in instances where the manga focuses on Dolce as a group dynamic (though even in that setting there are times where jokes about his devotion are thrown in). He’s kind, he’s stupid, he’s friendly, he’s an amazing character in his own right, and I love him for all those reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact a major part of his character and his character interactions are rooted in Fuuma, and arguably some of his most interesting, eccentric, and notable behaviors and traits revolve around Fuuma (again the mind reading for example).

Hell let’s take it one step further. If you look at the character bios of the Dolce members, you get everyone’s motives for being an idol and interests. Of them, Kazuki is the only one to have another character mentioned directly, not to mention that supporting Fuuma is explicitly stated to be his primary motive as to why he became an idol. Not even Fuuma’s sister is mentioned, though two arguments can be made for this. The first would be that Fuuma’s backstory about wanting to fulfill his dream for himself and his sister was decided later to explain Fuuma’s choice to crossdress though it can be argued it was intentionally done to leave it as a reveal at a later date, to which I would argue I don’t think this backstory was a choice in post. While Fuuma’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra exploring that backstory was released a little less than a year after Dolce was revealed, the preview to set up Fuuma’s backstory was actually the first thing released after the character bios on the Dolce Official Twitter page if you exclude a drawing of Dolce from Yamako. The second argument could be that information about his sister was intentionally withheld to set up the reveal when Fuuma’s extra released to explore it. However, going by that logic (which I do agree with), that would also mean that Fuuma’s inclusion and importance in Kazuki’s character bio also set up his dedicated extra, which I don’t think would be incorrect to assume considering what his actual extra turned out being.

Which brings me to the thing that makes it inexplicable to write off the romantic implications behind Kazufuuma: Kazuki’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra, Suki. I shipped Kazufuuma before even knowing of Suki, sure. But the fact that Suki even exists is a shock to me and drove into me the fact that Kazufuuma wasn’t just my own projection. Again, it’s not a surprise that Fuuma shapes Kazuki’s life. They’re childhood friends, of course they’re going to be important to each other. But this extra explicitly brought Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma under a direct spotlight. At first I was thinking oh, this extra was just to acknowledge the fact that Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship can have romantic implications, but the end of it the conclusion that we got was that it didn’t matter what type of “like” he felt for Fuuma. Originally, I thought it wasn’t anything more than saying there are all types of like, and it doesn’t always need to be explicitly defined, but I appreciated the fact they were aware that they were writing Kazuki in a way that conveyed romantic implications.

Then I thought about it because, again, I love Kazuki of course I’m going to think about his character extra, and realized...that’s not how these character extras have worked. There are only three character extras out as far as I know and have read: Fuuma, Kippei, and Kazuki. If we look at Fuuma and Kippei’s, each extra had a conclusion, sure, but they didn’t have a resolution. Rather, they were simply setting up explicitly what each character’s primary character arc and conflict were. Fuuma’s extra brought attention to the fact that he’s particularly a crossdressing idol by exploring the motives behind it. His choice to be a crossdressing idol is constantly under fire both by himself and the world around him. He’s not immune to those who consider his crossdressing strange, and a part of his story is both finding people who accept his decision to crossdress and to succeed for himself as a crossdressing idol. It’s an essential part of how we understand and define him as a character and it’s a central part of how he interacts with the world around him. For Kippei, it lays the severity of his insecurity under the spotlight and his journey and motives for improving himself. Again, this isn’t something isolated and resolved in the extra; his extreme insecurity and negativity is constantly affecting how he interacts with practically everyone from his fellow Dolce members to his fans despite the fact in all honesty? He’s fucking insanely talented in his own right, his own brother mentioning how smart he is and how he has amazing reflexes. For Kippei, his negativity is an essential part of how we understand and define him and central to how he interacts with the world as much as Fuuma’s decision to crossdress is to him.

Which brings us back to Kazuki, of course. In his dedicated extra, in the chapter that’s supposed to explore and establish and bring attention to an essential part of his character, the aspect of himself under investigation is how he feels about Fuuma. It’s not just how he behaves around Fuuma, it’s explicitly an exploration of his feelings, on top of the fact it’s explicitly an exploration about whether or not he likes Fuuma r o m a n t i c a l l y. Literally the conflict is spurred on by someone outright asking “Do you like him?” and having to clarify “I mean romantically.” What they decided to focus on for Kazuki’s character and emphasize and establish is that Kazuki’s like towards Fuuma toes the line between friendship and romance. His ambiguous feelings towards Fuuma (if we leave them inconclusive as Suki did) are just like Fuuma’s crossdressing and Kippei’s insecurity in the sense the weight of whatever those feelings may be are seen in how he interacts with the world around him and influences his behaviors. It would be another story if they introduced the potential and shut it down all within the extra, because then his central conflict would to me be less directly open to romantic potential and more simply about how his arc was meant to explore the dynamic of the behavior of an extremely dedicated best friend. The fact that he may be romantically attracted to Fuuma or may be only platonically dedicated to Fuuma is instead something that looms over Kazuki in the same way Fuuma’s decision to crossdress constantly looms over him. It’s what Dolce wanted to point to and say this is Kazuki’s central character conflict and central arc: exploring what type of feelings he has towards Fuuma.

Sure, it can be argued that there’s only three Dolce Diary character extras, there’s not enough to be sure about that being the purpose of the extras unless we get the other two’s extras. First, at this point I honestly don’t know if or when they’re going to release an extra revolving around Sara and Girisha just because not only has it been over a year and a half since the latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Kazuki’s) was released despite the gap between the first and latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Fuuma’s and Kazuki’s) were within a year of release but also because the Dolce 4komas and comics they’ve been posting to Twitter have decreased (last one being over half a year ago) potentially due to them deciding to focus on releasing Dolce manga content through the purchasable volumes instead. (This is not particularly related to the Kazufuuma argument, just wanted to put out there my two cents on what Sara and Girisha’s extra/focal arc would be. Based on a large part of the Dolce Diary in conjuncture with Can’t an Idol Fall in Love, I’d argue Sara’s would be his journey to regain his passion for performing, and if it’s not that I’d say it’d be coming out of his self-imposed isolation and opening up to people again. As for Girisha, I have less of a concrete idea but I’m assuming it’d be something pertaining to how people often misconceive him whether it be in tandem with his determination, his optimism and sociability, or his stupidity/ability to ignore those misconceptions and work past them. But Girisha is treated like the comedic relief 90% of the time so I’m not entirely sure, but his primary conflict is definitely rooted in misconceptions of him being his roadblock imo. #MoreGirishaContentPlz) That being said, I personally feel like the three are already enough evidence, especially considering it would be honestly even more cruel for Kazuki’s character-centric extra to be focusing on something that wasn’t essential to his character and character arc, anyway. And though it’s not explicitly stated that these chapters are extras exploring a central character, you can kind of tell based on how they are (to my knowledge) the only Dolce Diary updates with cover/title cards each which include their focal character front and center. So working off that fact, the Kazuki-centric chapter established that a pillar to his narrative was his feelings towards Fuuma and that those feelings are still open to romantic potential.

But if you follow me, this is why up until Can’t an Idol Fall in Love With Another Idol’s release, I was terrified of them writing that off. I would have been ok if it was just an arc that was given attention then continued to actively work in the background, as all the character arcs have been over all of Dolce’s content. The fact that they might be giving Fuuma a love interest and giving Fuuma a love arc while Kazuki’s feelings were still up in the air and were still the primary highlighted narrative for him would have been fucking scuffed. To me, it would be like… why would they make him so Fuuma-centric to the point that even his dedicated chapter was not just focused on Fuuma but focused on the ambiguity and potential of him having romantic feelings for Fuuma, yet reduce him to being Fuuma's designated right-hand man. Don’t get me wrong, friendships are just as important as romantic relationships. But again, rather than conclude Kazuki’s answer in Suki to be that his feelings were of friendship, they left it open ended and allow audience members to be actively aware that Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma still had potential to be romantically coded. It would just be so weird to quickly close off that narrative by giving Fuuma a love interest as opposed to letting Kazuki conclude it himself. It would be fucking beyond frustrating for me, at least Eventually, I kept trying to drive my hopes that they would explore Kazuki’s narrative at all down to the ground because it was a Fuuma-centric novel; maybe if anything they’d explore those feelings in his own novel after the fact. But then they kept having little drops here and there of Kazuki being even the slightest bit relevant and I’d go back to questioning “Are??? They??? Is this on purpose??? Do they know what they’re doing or are they just doing this because Kazuki’s just so important to Fuuma as his best friend that he’s there as his right-hand I genuinely can’t tell???” And um. Welp.

Safe to say Can’t An Idol Fall in Love sold me on the fact that they know what they’re doing LOL. And to anyone who thinks that Kazuki’s feelings can still be read as ambiguous in CAIFILWAI as opposed to explicitly romantic - whether it be due to a fear they may pull the “I like him as a friend” card or due to the disbelief that they have an explicit mlm main character in the Honeyworks series - I’d like to cover any bases that may make you think this way. If you think it’s just Kazuki acting like a protective friend, why do you think he calls Yui a rival? If you’ve only seen the MV and think it’s ambiguous or can be taken as the "likfe" for friend, then does that mean you think Yui’s feelings toward Fuuma are also ambiguous or as a friend? With the way Yui responds, she is trying to rival Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma. She and Kazuki recognize whatever feeling it is that they hold towards Fuuma, both of their feelings are the same type. I don’t think most people would argue that Yui’s confession about Fuuma was one of pure respect and friendship. Plus, if anything I’d argue of the three characters in the MV, Fuuma is the one whose feelings are left the most ambiguous despite him being the central character. It’s heavily implied that he may be forming feelings for Yui, but nowhere is it established either in the song or in the MV, especially if you compare it to Kazuki and Yui’s declarations or if you compare it to Sara’s feelings for Uru in Can’t An Idol Fall in Love. Fuuma’s romantic narrative here is trying to figure out how he feels for Yui, while for Kazuki and Yui they’ve established a rivalry because they both have mutually established they like Fuuma romantically.

If the MV isn’t enough for you and Suki isn’t enough for you for...some reason…??? You can check out the snippets of the light novel which the wonderful takanenene translated: one which revisits the conflict set up in Suki and one that covers the confession scene in the MV in more detail. If the fact that the conflict set up in Suki (aka the lurking feeling of not knowing if all he felt for Fuuma was only platonic or more than platonic) was specifically reestablished in the LN for anyone who didn’t keep up with Dolce Diary didn’t tip you off that it was something important, his behavior in the confession scene as depicted by the LN definitely should have. He’s possessive about his spot by Fuuma’s side. He doesn’t want that spot to be taken by anyone else. Even if he knows that they can help Fuuma, he wants it to be him. And this line: “Kazuki then trails off his words, quietly saying ‘That’s why…’ and then gave Yui a slightly painful smile, his cheeks turning red,” before he declares Yui a rival and states he likes Fuuma. If you can tell me you read that line and are still on the fence about Kazuki’s “like” towards Fuuma being romantic, please message me and I will see how I can get through to you. Like it wasn’t even just a romantically coded confession. It’s just a romantic confession. That “like” is romantic. And I’m so proud that he’s not only come to understand for himself how he feels, but that he’s confident enough to ask the person he sees as a romantic rival to speak in private and not only clarify her feelings for Fuuma but before she can even do that firmly establishes that he loves Fuuma with conviction. Kazuki my boy I’m so proud of you. *sniffs*

And that’s it for establishing Kazufuuma as at least canonically one-sidedly canon and why there’s not only no reason to deny it but also why denying it is a fucking disrespectful move towards Kazuki. He’s a character, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact you shouldn’t write off his struggle to come to be convicted enough to say it out loud. This has been something weighing on him at least a year, if not more (all I know is it started when both he and Fuuma were in some year in middle school). And as a character in a piece of media, I’ve been saying this the entire time, but brushing it off as non-romantic is literally chucking a fucking pillar of his character’s story into the gutter. And to those who may be saying Kazuki’s confession came out of nowhere and is pandering reread this entire fucking essay again I dare you to do it and tell me to my face it’s pandering. Again. Writing off the buildup as pandering is disrespectful to him, disrespectful to his character and narrative, and disrespectful to the wonderful people who have been creating Dolce so diligently and have crafted this narrative for us. Saying his “supposed feelings” and “ambiguous confession” is pandering is like saying Fuuma’s crossdressing is pandering which. If you say either of those I will find you and I will shank you in the fucking gut. Even if you’re not fully into Dolce, recognize these characters are actually very well developed and executed amazingly, as per every Honeyworks character that has come to exist. I don’t blame you if you weren’t aware of the weight of Kazufuuma, but now that you read this I hope you are. That’s mainly what I needed to get out there, but as follows will be me more exploring how Kazufuuma has been built up and generally waving my hand off at where it may be going. If you want you can dip, thanks for reading up to here because I know I repeated a lot because it’s just. So important to drill into your head and has been something I’ve been hung up about constantly. LOL

As for where exactly they’re taking it from this point on, I honestly don’t know. In all honesty, I didn’t even expect them to take it the direction they did. But honestly, I think the direction they went with it is really interesting and better than I could have imagined, in my opinion at least. Honeyworks never ceases to amaze me with their storytelling and narrative choices, and I don’t think there’s any that stand out to me as being severely questionable that they haven’t reapproached at some point down the line. And, again, I think they’re treating this with a lot of care and deserved respect. So I’m just gonna be gushing about how smart they set it up and how smart they’ve been executing it and maybe my own hopes on the direction it could go.

Whether they make Kazufuuma reciprocated I have no real clue or bearings, but to me my gut reaction is they will. Of course, I’m biased, but again if you trace things all the way back to 2018 and step through Dolce’s content and growth from there, I’d say even if they didn’t know if they could execute it like this and see it to fruition, I’d argue that Kazufuuma has been at least heavily implied since the beginning as a relationship they wanted to explore from both sides of the relationship. Obviously I brought up Kazuki’s character bio already, but if you look at the *goes to count* 5th Dolce Diary update already has a joke jabbing at the fact that Kazuki is technically Fuuma’s type (and the way Kippei and Kazuki excitedly react is so cute). The fifth update. And as stated before there are tons of Kazufuuma moments in Dolce Diary, whether it’s played for comedic effect or played straight (and this is post Suki but oh my god I’ve said it before I’ll say it again get yourself someone who looks at you the way Kazuki looks at Fuuma oh my jesus). But song-wise, I mentioned the one Dolce album song I would bring up is Nade Nade and this is where it comes!

Not only is Nade Nade specifically focused on Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship as opposed to the whole of Dolce despite being the first song, it included the setup/preview of the Fuuma-centric extra prior to the full release of the Fuuma-centric extra itself and was released early as fuck. Literally between the 6th and 7th update to Dolce Diary. Sure, it could be to isolate them as a duo for marketing purposes (they’re very often the two promoted idols together if the whole of the group aren’t included), but the way it’s established as a perspective song as opposed to a general idol duet is what fascinates me. Anyone who didn’t know about Dolce prior and only followed Honeyworks for music would be first introduced to these characters through this song alone, and maybe this is where my Kazufuuma bias comes from but I was one of those people LOL. I thought it was just a cute one-off relationship that they had set up for the purpose of a song and that it was an implied friends-to-lovers story that would never get a conclusion. Also I mistakenly thought Fuuma was a girl oop-. In the full context of Dolce, this song in part helped establish Fuuma and Kazuki more solidly as a unique duo out of all of Dolce, but it also specifically explored through Fuuma’s eyes just how much Fuuma recognizes and appreciates the unwavering support Kazuki gives him to follow his dreams as he wishes. For Fuuma, he loves Kazuki too, though whether it holds any romantic potential in the same way Kazuki loves him has never been explored to nearly the same extent. But Fuuma appreciates how Kazuki’s remained by his side and does everything he can to support him, so Nade Nade explores how his way of expressing his love and thankfulness to Kazuki is by never saying that he needs Kazuki by his side. He’s glad Kazuki’s always been there for him, and his reciprocation takes on the form of being ready to unwaveringly support Kazuki and not ask for more than he already has, even if it meant Kazuki would be leaving his side, despite the fact that he really does wish they could remain together forever just as Kazuki does. The one point he lets himself say something vaguely close to always wanting to stay together, he gets a surprised expression out of Kazuki and says an ambiguous “suki dayo.” Of course, this it much less romantically coded than what we get from Kazuki in Suki and CAIFILWAI, but there is an interesting emphasis put on it nonetheless. Keep in mind, this is all established through the song, which released long before not only Fuuma’s character-centric extra released but also Kazuki’s character-centric extra released, so there is at least a substantial setup for Fuuma’s feelings towards Kazuki’s being strong as well and possibly grow to be reciprocated one day.

I think for me the most fascinating part about Nade Nade is how they tied it back around to Can’t An Idol Fall In Love with Another Idol. Again, without remembering Nade Nade, I still thought CAIFILWAI was brilliantly explored and executed, even if some people would have preferred no love triangle. But honestly, revisiting Nade Nade makes me trust even more the direction they’re taking with this. Whether or not they make Kazufuuma canon mutually (which. Even if they for some inexplicable reason didn’t I’m going down with this ship.), I’m sure they’re putting a lot of thought into the story, because the last bit of Nade Nade directly parallels the misunderstanding that arose from Fuuma mishearing the Kazuki and Yui. Fuuma is resolved to support Kazuki in any area he’s given the chance, and that explicitly includes if Kazuki had some girl he liked, which is what he assumes is going on. The fact that they tied this back around in the form of a misunderstanding was really really smart and Honeyworks is always so good at parallels and references back to their older songs, but for some reason I didn’t expect this. I don’t know how to say why, but the fact that the song that started it all, kicked off both Dolce and Kazufuuma, was directly referenced both visually in the MV with a cameo at the start and narratively despite the central dynamic being predominantly explored in this story in particular was that of Fuuma and another potential love interest and involves said potential love interest for some reason makes me think that (sorry Yui) this is all planned out for Kazufuuma in the grand scheme of things. That being said, I don’t know if me thinking it was planned all along is just me with shipper goggles, but the idea it’s come full circle nearly 3 years later is not shipper goggles and a very very well done parallel in my opinion, whether this trajectory was their plan for Kazufuuma from the beginning or not. Just wanted to gush about that some more.

There’s more I could go into especially if I went into specific details about interactions or specific implications established in Honeyworks' Dolce content about different characters that would be fascinating to explore in relation to and under the lens of Kazufuuma, but I think this is uh...plenty long enough. Plus, I doubt you'll stop seeing Kazufuuma posts from me so those ideas will probably just be miniposts or somethin.

Back to the overarching point of this segment, idk what they’ll do with this story in the end, but do I think Kazufuuma will canon? I’m used to looking at ships that aren’t explicitly apparent with a sliver of skepticism, but all things considered (as I stated before) yeah. I don’t see reason why they wouldn’t now that they’ve explicitly identified there is a romantic dimension to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like to me, the setup isn’t something that would be written off as unrequited? And this doesn’t have to play into why I don’t think it will canon, my personal opinion on the Fuuyui relationship (again albeit through the lens of a hard Kazufuuma shipper lmao) has it’s own merits and is really cute, I find it cute in the way I found Koyuhina cute. I personally never really shipped Koyuhina, and especially since they slipped Kotarou into Ima Suki Ni Naru I was more curious about who this kid was and how he played into things I didn’t really see Koyuhina as something that would come to fruition. Similarly, there’s more importance in the overall sense on Kazuki than there is Yui (considering he’s one of the 5 original and focal members of this generation of idols, this would be natural), as well as the fact there’s just way more foundation and exploration in Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship than there is Fuuma and Yui. As for how much of a balance there is inside the LN itself, the fact that they seem to have spent a substantial amount relaying the foundation of Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship and re-exploring it (at least in Kazuki’s perspective) at all on top of how much content there is covering their relationship prior to the LN ever since Dolce’s origin just feels like that relationship holds more weight. Pretty much Kazufuuma feels more established as a priority in general. The way I personally hope Fuuyui plays out is whether they wind up holding mutual feelings or not or whether Fuuma doesn’t feel that way towards Yui is they get a relationship akin to Kotarou and Arisa. Albeit, Kotarou and Arisa never viewed each other in a romantic light, but they had mutual respect and solidarity. That’s the type of friendship I hope comes out of Fuyui. And considering there hasn’t been a break-up in any Honeyworks’ canon relationships (nor do I expect there to be… they’re all perfect for each other LMAO) it would actually be interesting if Fuuyui get together but don’t endgame and Kazufuuma is established as the inseparable endgame after some realization or another, though I don’t expect them to go that route nor do I know if that’d be the best way to go about it anyway. Also final point, Honeyworks seems to have a thing for childhood friends trope anyway soooooo owo All in all, don’t know where they’re taking it, just excited to see where it goes.

TL;DR of this *counts* 7 page essay, stan Kazufuuma. Not gonna proof this. Maybe I’ll edit and repost but yall are getting a confusing clusterfuck of ramblings over 2-3 hr periods of me writing across 3 different days at around 5am each day. Uh. If you got this far like and subscribe and-- jk plz reply to this mammoth anywhere you see fit or tell me if you have stuffs to add or counter or whatnot I like hearing people talk about Kazufuuma ;w; I am Kazuki and Kazufuuma brainrot can you tell after reading this? No? Lemme just remind you I’m K--

#honeyworks #dolce #kazufuuma #kazuki haiga #fuuma shirayuki #long post #analysis #character analysis #kinda?#nobody cares trash #also keep in mind this is PURELY for self satisfaction LMFAO read it if u wanna dont if u dont idgaf either way #anyway kazufuuma canon fight me #or have intellectual conversation with me #if you want it on a google doc bc it's easier to read hmu #if you can't tell i think about kazufuuma too much #how much of this is repetitive? probably a lot...

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing. It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side.

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it.

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!]

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people. But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends. And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.

#druck #this post is 3K+ words in word I'm so sorry #but I really hope it makes its way to the writers and is helpful

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

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Hi, I know you’re a fan of namjoon so I wanted to ask your thoughts on this ring thing? I’m kinda new and assumed all these namjoon is married with kids stuff were a joke. But some people seem to totally believe that. I mean where he’d get the time to see a partner and kids is beyond me but who knows? Anyways I was looking at some of their recent pics and he doesn’t wear it all the time - which if it was a couples ring - wouldn’t he? I thought maybe he would only wear it if they were appearing on Run or Korean shows, but he didn’t have it on for either of the new shows they’ve been on recently, as they may not have been as widely watched. I mean I guess it’s none of our business - but I’m trying to rip of my delulu hat for making me think Seokjin gave it to him 🙈

Hi anon, I hope you don’t mind that I’ll combine my answer for you with my answer to another ask since I feel like they fall into the same kind of category, as in people taking things too far and/or blowing things out of proportion. And, coincidentally, both have something to do with rings.

I’ll start with your question though and give you another example that followed a very similar trajectory as the omg namjoon is married with kids because ring narrative/theory. Some months ago, Namjoon posted a few pictures on twitter and among them was a picture of him with another guy wearing a green sweater. His face though was covered. At first ARMY didn’t think much of it, but then, eventually, someone started a joke that “remember that sweater Joon wore for BV4? The guy is wearing the same one, what if that's his boyfriend?” and it went viral.

It started out completely harmless with hundreds of positive and funny tweets made in good humor, no one taking it that seriously knowing that we’d never find out even if it were true. But, as the jokes started to simmer down, everyone had their laugh, the next wave came in and this one decided that this isn’t a joke at all but serious matter. Quickly this harmless fun turned into a witch hunt of “ARMY” trying to figure out who the guy might be, if he is Namjoon’s mysterious friend that once sent him a coffee truck with custom drawn designs on it, perhaps the same one with whom Namjoon already once posted a picture sitting on this garden porch swing type thing, some even trying to prove that the guy is either Seokjin (in which case, what would be the need to cover his face?) or Florist Isaac whom they met during that one RUN episode.

So, very quickly a few idiots turned harmless fun into something almost malicious and got into fights with ARMY who were trying to tell them to stop.

The ring thing followed a similar story. It was once a harmless joke based on the fact that Namjoon wants to have kids one day, so some made jokes about what if he’s already married but we just didn’t know etc. But very quickly that got out of hand as well, going as far as people claiming the little girl in his pictures which he posted around his birthday or something is his daughter (even though it was said it’s probably the child actress from BTS WORLD) and that him making jokes (during a BangtanB while trying on glasses before their MOTS7 press con) about his child being able to read/write hangul at a very young age wasn’t jokes at all but solid proof of the fact that he is married with a child (despite the fact that he would’ve had to have gotten married and his wife pregnant not long after their debut for the timeline to even work out somehow which makes it seem even more ridiculous). This even went as far as people spamming the comments during this vlives with questions about it, flooded his selcas on twitter with questions and “jokes” and, again, attacked anyone who told them to stop.

In all of this, watching it happen from the sidelines as someone whose bias is Namjoon, I was confused why these particular rings (which I don’t even think were the same ones each time) caused such a reaction. The members have all worn so many different rings over the years, on all fingers, sometimes even like eight at the same time, and yet it wasn’t until 2020 and their KBS interview after their first BBH100 #1 that things went bonkers. All because Namjoon decided to take the ring off before they started filming or something.

In all of this I see two things that make me wonder:

When would he have the time to find a girl (since same sex marriage is not a thing in Korea) with whom he would have enough time to befriend her, trust her (considering who Namjoon is, that one is a major thing), fall in love, date and be together for a few years, and then get married? From Seokjin we know they have maybe two or three days off a month and work at least ten hours a day on their BH regulated schedules. Add to that the time they spend in the studio working on music outside of schedules, gym time, a few hours of sleep, and perhaps a few scarce hours of free time to (in Namjoon’s case) go to a museum or ride his bike, does that really leave enough time for romance (with an outsider) that leads to marriage (and a child)?

Is age 26 at the height of their career really the time for marriage? Even more so when you are someone like Namjoon, the leader of the world’s biggest group with more responsibilities than we can likely imagine as outsiders. Sure, he said he wants kids, but he can still have those in his thirties, he can also get married in his thirties, after all, life does not end once you hit thirty despite what some teens believe.

Lastly, I actually think that if it were true, Namjoon, or really anyone from the hyung line, would be the ones who wouldn’t have to hide it, at least not when compared to the maknaes. You could argue that “it would threaten their career” but would it really? Perhaps if the ring were from a man (some namjinists did make jokes that it’s like his promise ring from Seokjin or whatever, but it was all in good fun, nothing more than that), then yes, but connected to a woman? That one member from EXO also came out and said he’s getting married because his fiancé was pregnant and all it did was cause a few fansites to close and a handful of people to “protest” in front of the SM building.

Little correction about my comments about that EXO member, though even with this my point still stands:

From anon: Re: your last post about namjoon’s rings! I agree with everything you said but just a small correction. I’m not an EXO stan but it wasn’t just a a few “protests” or fansites closing. From what I read online, he his fiancée and later wife, and his child were harassed, threatened and stalked to the point where he enlisted early just to give his family some relief. We all know there are people like this in every fandom and I know BTS would be aware of these things, so they’ll be extra careful.

Would there be delulus like this who’d go crazy if Namjoon were to say “ARMY, I’m (getting) married”? Of course. Would it ruin BTS’ career? I seriously doubt it. Do I think Namjoon would actually come out and say it if it were the case? No, but not because it’s bad idol etiquette or because BH wouldn’t allow him, but because people are insane and who knows what they would do.

It’s the same with times when people argue “I wish X ML members would just say he has a girlfriend so the ship wars would end” without taking into consideration the girl’s safety and the fact that a partner different than the one X member is shipped with has never been that big of an obstacle for some before. Just create a conspiracy theory about the company forcing this upon them and voila problem solved. We’ve seen that before when the tattoo scandal happened, and people thought JK might be dating that tattoo artist and therefore it would mean he isn’t in a relationship with Jimin or Tae.

Whatever happens in the members private lives, it is safer for all parties involved if it stays private, even more so if their romantic partners were non-idols, or non-celebrities, or another member.

Now onto the second ring question:

From anon: I am a young army and I am slowly losing my bearings. I've seen Vlive S, H and V. Many say it was a Tk*ok day (?) And all three emphasized it, and the V even wore the friendship ring for Jungkook. Is it true? I don't understand anything about it, I don't see it. After the last BTS interview on TV, I thought Vmin are best friends, not Tk*ok. I thought V said he didn't want Tk*ok and yet he was so happy during Vlive because it was Tk*ok day? Help!

Now this one, I was curious if we’d get an ask about this, even more since, if you’re a reader of our blog, you likely already know what I’m going to say.

Let’s start where you usually do—at the beginning. The day of the vlive coincided with what T*ek*okers have decided on is T*ek*ok Day, based on how supposedly some years ago this was the day Tae and JK named their subunit like this. I tried to find where exactly this happened, as in in which piece of official content, but I couldn’t find anything except for a screenshot. Anyone have a clue or a link?

Side note: T*ek*okers love using the “ship” naming as proof that not only are they real but also proudly showing it off by giving themselves a name but continently forget that they are not the only ones who gave themselves subunit names. After all Jimin and Namjoon named themselves MiniMoni, or Yoongi and Jimin who are MiniMini, Namjoon and Seokjin calling themselves RJRJ last year, or that one vlive with JK, Jimin and Seokjin where they also put together their names the way you build ship names. At the end of that vlive Tae, thanks to come prompting from the chat, named their trio vsope, so does that mean they are a romantic ship now too?

If you were watching that vlive as it was happening, and decided to look at the chat, then you know what was happening. For those who did not, basically the chat was flooded with comments about T*ek*ok Day, asking where JK is whom Tae loves, where his boyfriend JK is, congratulating Tae for T*ek*ok Day etc. Basically shippers took their shipping into a space where it doesn’t belong, into a space where the members can see it, and therefore purposefully broke one of the shipping rules (I even saw some tweet about how they were proud of themselves for literally spamming the chat with T*ek*ok comments which is so wrong, and I mean that regardless of which ship we talk about). In between those were the usual other comments like speak English or say hello to XYZ or say XYZ in whatever language, and very few comments that actually reacted to what the members were doing on screen. Like when Tae said he didn’t shave, instead of telling him that it’s fine, which it is, it’s his face after all, some decided to tell him he should shave more often, basically telling him what to do, which he saw and read out. Great job.

But all the madness came to a “climax” when Hobi was reading comments and among some other ones read out T*ek*ok, just the word not the T*ek*ok Day ones, and unfortunately we all knew he wasn’t reading out the Korean word for Thailand, which sounds the same though it is spelled a little differently. In that moment all hell broke loose. Focus cams of Tae’s facial expression in that moment went viral among shippers, most of course claiming he looked so happy, while other non-shippers claimed he didn’t look happy at all. It’s a micro moment so I won’t get into it, who knows what Tae thought in that moment and what his facial expression meant and if it even had any connection to the word and Hobi reading it out loud at all.

Because he read that comment, Hobi was basically crowned the new leader of the T*ek*ok shippers (I thought that role already went to Jimin?) and twitter basically had a meltdown.

As for the ring, I know this is something a lot of ships have, with romantic connotations according to their shippers, so I was curious how these rings supposedly look like in T*ek*ok’s case and if they even match the ring that Tae wore in the vlive. If it would, fine, if not, well…

If it’s not clear from the picture, the “supposed couple” or friendship rings are very delicate and thin, and sure enough I did find a lot of pictures in which both Tae and JK wore them, usually at different times, I will admit that. But the ring Tae wore during their vlive recently was much thicker and had some kind of design on it, therefore it’s a completely different one. Sorry. Why he wore it, if he bought it for himself or received it from someone, what emotional connotation to may or may not have, those are things we won’t know anything about unless he would tell us, so there's no point in speculating.

“Many say it was a Tk*ok day (?) And all three emphasized it” now this is curious to me since I watched the vlive as it was happening, and I didn’t see that at any point in the vlive. Sure, Hobi read that one comment, but if 95% of comments were about that, I wasn’t even surprised by it. Perhaps he thought that it would get people to stop? Perhaps he just read whatever comments his eyes landed on? Perhaps something else entirely? We have no way of knowing it so there is no point in trying to fixate on it. But besides that, they were talking about many other things and having fun making their smoothies, decorating them and just having a good time together with each other and with ARMY.

So, this way of presenting the vlive basically comes down to shipper perception, confirmation bias, and simply, almost, rewriting history.

Rings do not determine who your best friend is (according to a quick google search, wearing a ring on your index finger simply means friendship or self-esteem/authority), after all many of the members have rings either from each other or ones that match, like Namjoon buying Jimin a Cartier ring for his birthday a few years ago which Jimin proudly wore since it’s really pretty, or pink and blue rings (there are several different ones, actually) that Namjoon has worn with Seokjin in the past (which fits into the Namjinist pink and blue agenda), or the rings Jimin and JK have together according to their shippers, and many more. Jimin and Tae have a whole plethora of matching jewelry in form of necklaces, rings, bracelets, even contact lenses (as in wearing one of each pair to match each other), some which were chosen by their stylists and others they bought themselves for themselves (which are all conveniently “forgotten” by those who ship either big ML ship). Though we’ve seen that even with clothes given by their stylists they were still the ones to choose their own accessories, like Namjoon choosing a pair of glasses from a whole box of different ones, or the members choosing rings from two big boxes before going on stage.

Tae himself said, on multiple occasions across multiple years, that Jimin is his best friend, even his one and only best friend, and that he’s the one he likes most which he even proclaimed on national TV. As long as Tae doesn’t say that this has changed in the last, what, two weeks and suddenly JK is officially his new best friend, those who claim otherwise are basically nothing but shippers pushing a narrative that willfully ignores Tae’s own words. Just like they ignore and twist his Weverse comment about how T*ek*okers should get out of their imagination. What doesn’t fit is ignored or adjusted until it does fit.

Lastly, sure enough, Tae really was happy during that vlive but I’m fairly certain (though neither you, them or I will ever know for sure, we’re not in Tae’s head) it had absolutely no connection to T*ek*ok Day, something shippers created and not Tae and JK themselves, seeing as Tae has been in a very good and happy mood for a few months now. Whatever makes him so happy, I truly hope it’ll continue making him happy and I wish shippers (and solo stans) would stop trying to force a reason (which fits them) upon his emotions.

I know it’s easy to get confused by how loud shippers are online, especially as young ARMY (in this case both ARMY who are young age wise but also young in the sense of being new to the fandom), but shipper opinions, in many cases, are just noise, and also noise twisted and skewed a certain way to suit them. If you kept to OT7 spaces on the day of that vlive, no one really paid attention to the ring, most were annoyed by and furious at the shamelessness of the shippers in the comments, and tried to just focus on how fun the vlive was instead.

#answered ask #answered ask by admin 1 #Namjoon #Taehyung #BTS

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nebou · 3 years

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If you're still taking asks for the character meme: Damien from The Bright Sessions?

my sweet, tainted, underappreciated man!

favorite thing about them

i said it before but i love tragedy. and Damien rlly embodies this so hard as someone so completely set out to fail- and so he did. we have this young boy with an incredibly powerful ability who 1.) cant get help from his parents 2.) doesn't have the resources to contact any organization who could help him control his abilities 3.) even if he did, chances are he would be taken in an used for experiments until the day he dies with little concern to his wellbeing. literally his only option is being self taught and- considering that his reality is literally distorted his ability, and his only other example to live a moral life is fucking books, it's a wonder he managed to come out as well as he did, and i say that acknowledging that he committed murder when he was 19. now enter: everyone giving him shit for using his ability when it's the one thing in his life he can rely on. now, i personally think Damien can learn to really control his ability, but just seeing him play the loneliest game of poker with the shit hand he's been dealt, it's delightful to see him spiral. muah. chef's kiss.

least favorite thing about them

that Lauren Shippen ended his arc right when it seemed like his character had finally reached a turning point comparable to when his parent's abandoned him. i cannot stress how much Damien and Chloe's final conversation filled my with so much hope. we see Damien do something idk if he's ever done in his life before: tell himself no for the betterment of another. he's so close to giving into his desire to see Mark, literally driving back to the city, yet seeing Chloe -a victim of him alone, not his ability(because it doesn't fucking work on her), him!- shames him and steers him back onto the path to good. it's such a wonderful moment and leads to all these great possibilities for his characters and.....that's it folks? i try not to rag on Shippen too hard but this really boils milk yknow

favorite line

"Alright, look, you want to do this? You want to put it all out there? I’m powerless. I hope it comes back - I really fucking hope it comes back - but I know that it might not. And I shouldn’t have called you the other day but I- I wanted to hear your voice because this is hard. Living life like a normal person is hard. And The AM has been absolutely no help and I don’t know what to do because I have no bank accounts, no license, no identity without my ability. But you’re still here. And you came here today and that means something—"

it just ;-; and knowing what Mark had come to do ;-; and after everything Damien has done (wrong) to have a relationship mean something ;-; i'm not crying you are ;-;

(also btw i set up a twitter account that posts a random Damien line every 30min if anyone is interested lol)

brOTP

Damien & Rose, without a doubt. such a weird relationship but they're both boundary pushing ppl so it makes sense. also adds loads of fun, light hearted moments to Damien we really don't really get to see from him. i could also see Damien & Chloe being a really fun dynamic, especially post TBS, but i prefer Damien completely leaving behind the TBS crew imho, so it'll have to be a nice what-if

OTP

Damien x an actually fulfilling character arc. SHIPPEN RELEASE CHARLIE IAN FROM VOICE ACTING JAIL I'M BEGGIN YOU OTL

nOTP

Damien and everyone we've met so far from the TBS/AND universe. no one feels like they'd truly appreciate Damien. Mark scrapes pretty close but i think it's more narratively satisfying for both their character arcs to stay a maybe-there-was-something,-but-now-there-never-can-be, yknow?

random headcanon

Damien is a huge masochist- and in denial about it. the type who needs copious amount of comfort after lmao

unpopular opinion

that he's a character worthy of joy and redemption. most the fandom doesn't seem to be able to handle bad people repenting for their mistakes and growing to be better in spite of them but i'm built different i guess

song i associate with them

One Way or Another - Until the Ribbon Breaks

<-- good stalking song

Dizzy - MISSIO

<-- good lethargic song

Run Boy Run - Woodkid

<-- good avoidance song

Red Sex - Vessel

<-- general Damien vibes

favorite picture of them

oh goodness i can't actually pick on but here's my top three

i like this one

and this one

and especially this one(although it make me sad : [ )

thank you sm for asking about Damien, i still have so much i wanna say about him(and draw) but it's kinda hard to set aside the time for him when it feels like the conversation is long dead and over : [

#they exist #damien #tbs #and #balloonwhisk #he brings me the highest highs and the most frustrated of lows

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saucylittlesmile · 4 years

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Anonymous said:You should leave that up, it’s very well-written. I also wanted to add that unfortunately, those same narratives that were perpetuated by certain members of this fandom, that T is “controlling”, “insufferable” and a “fake feminist” have now carried their way over into the hockey fandom as well as they discuss T T and Mo’ r/ship... how disheartening to see these same claims brought over by anons when by all accounts of people who meet Tessa, she is the loveliest person.

Anonymous said:Thank you for everything you said! I just want to hug you for speaking out and doing it nicely yet honestly. Thank you so much!

Anonymous said:Please leave it up. Everyone in the fandom needs to read it. You said it as well as it could be said and it needs to be read. Please

Anonymous said:You nailed that response. It was honestly so cathartic to read that. I was mentally going "yes!" "exactly!" "SOMEONE ELSE SAW THAT!" thew whole time I was reading.

Anonymous said:haha all these anon preaching how it’s not fair that s got hate and t didn’t seem to forget all the hate that t got over pure speculation. nothing was confirmed and everyone was spewing hate directly to her. yet she kept a brave face and class &never ran away from sm and kept doing her. i respect that bitch for that alone. her family, sponsors, friends, and all business partners were targeted with hateful comments all over pure speculation. there wasn’t even confirmation that she was dating ap.

Anonymous said:Even the ‘love’ this fandom has had has only been the the last few years. For the decade before that, it was her who wasn’t a good enough partner for Scott, for him to find another one at every turn, she was faulted for every mistake they made, Sochi was her ‘fault’ because they deemed that it was Tessa who didn’t want to skate anymore, she wasn’t pretty enough, she was accused of faking her injuries, etc, etc. I could write a thesis on the horrifying way this fandom treats her.

Anonymous said:What people did to Tessa and Scott was horrible, but I think what people did to Jackie, the divorce files were the worst thing this fandom ever did. Saying she was horrible because she was "married", people looking for all the photos and all her friends, accusing her of being a lot of things without proof, looking for her address and all the millions things. She was always a private person, but people chased her because she was dating Scott. That's absolutely sad, everything is.

#thanks guys #seriously

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thicceon · 4 years

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My Final Views on Pokémon Sword & Shield

There’s my Trainer! Isn’t she lovely? Anyways, this is a game I had so many strong feelings about, so I feel like jotting this down so I can give it a lil’ bit of closure.

The National Dex

This was perhaps the game’s greatest controversy leading up to release, so I want to give my thoughts on this first. I don’t mind the absence of the National Dex as long as it improves the game all around. I think it’s an okay decision moving forward. However, in these games you can tell half the existing Pokémon were cut just to save time in order to meet a holiday release, not to actually improve the game.

Presentation

The game makes a powerful first impression. The campaign’s strongest moments are probably the first couple hours. The narrative really caught my attention in the beginning and I felt SUPER hyped for my first few gym battles. The story’s climax is also pretty exciting. Game Freak did step up to the plate where it counted most, fortunately.

Gameplay

The game is bare, short, and vapid. Halfway through it’s REALLY apparent how rushed the game is. You end up zooming through tiny routes that feel more like hallways than anything, and only have a couple Trainers in them. Most “cities” are smaller than the ones in Red & Blue. There is a town that’s literally just a corridor with a Pokémon Center and outdoor gym. This is also one of the coolest cities in the game, so seeing that wasted potential is very frustrating.

The NPCs feel lifeless and have nothing interesting to say. I don’t see anyone else talking about this! The NPCs in BW, XY, and SM actually had some very entertaining dialogue once the tutorial stuff was out of the way, whether it was hilarious, straight-up weird, or genuinely thought-provoking and insightful. Everyone feels so...boring.

The Wild Area is...rough. It looks horrid. However, it’s still where I had the most fun in the game. It’s a great concept and I think Game Freak had a decent first go at creating an open world Pokémon experience. It wasn’t a particularly fun place to explore per se, but it was enthralling just to be able to control the camera and go where I please. Being able to see glimpses of other players here is also a wonderful addition, and something I’ve wanted from the series for a while. All in all, this area has a delightful MMO feel to it. Raids are also very fun! It’s great to have a co-op feature to play with friends, and the rewards and rarity of Gigantamax forms gives you a good reason to do them!

There are many wonderful QoL features in this game. Pokémon’s UI experience has never been smoother. There's one rather large caveat though, which is the online experience. It’s nonsensical not to include a friends list for easy trading and battling with your pals, and most of the time the stamp system just doesn’t work. It’s extremely frustrating, but sigh it’s workable.

I also must say that I hate the Exp. All being baked into the game. The feature itself is not the problem, it’s the fact that I have literally no way of turning it off, despite previous games allowing you to. This was borderline game ruining for me, as it killed any sense of satisfaction I felt leveling my Pokémon. It genuinely felt like the game was raising my Pokémon for me. Yeah, not for me.

The post-game is practically non-existent. There’s a lifeless husk that qualifies as a Battle Tower of sorts, but that’s all you’ll find, Champ. But of course, this has become standard for modern Pokémon games.

Graphics

The Wild Area looks very shoddy, however, the rest of the game looks genuinely beautiful! The overworld textures are poor, and this is not a high-fidelity game by any means, but the general art direction and colors are gorgeous. The new Pokémon have nice models, and the older ones have greatly improved textures. The cities all look distinct and lovely. However, the pop-in of NPCs is very apparent and feels jarring. I can tolerate a little pop-in, but this draw distance is short enough where I will just about hit NPCs that appear before my eyes while biking.

Pokémon still lack battle animations that are even comparable to the Stadium games. _That’s _the type of stuff that should be improved by cutting Pokémon.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack is decent and has its own flare. There are a few standout tracks, my favorite being the Slumbering Weald at the beginning. Gym battles have a great chanting effect that really adds to the atmosphere. My biggest complaints are that a few of the city themes are weak, and theres a real lack of route themes.

Story

It feels rushed and empty, like everything else in the game. Conceptually I think it’s pretty strong, and as I said before, the climax is great. However, the story beats leading up to the climax are hilariously rushed and character’s actions begin to make zero sense. You also visit areas that were so obviously meant to be dungeons, but were condensed into single rooms. One significant scene didn’t even get a proper cutscene and was instead told via a slideshow that looked like screenshots of the models painted over.

As for the characters, I’m extremely disappointed with how underdeveloped the main villain was, despite him having an intriguing, and surprisingly contemporary motive. I was also bummed out that Marnie, a rival advertised as being significant, had practically no story relevance whatsoever. Team Yell also was very underutilized.

Hop was okay; decently developed. Bede is probably my favorite rival in the series since Cheren. I’m one of those people that’s been complaining for a decade about how we haven’t had a jerkass rival since Johto, and I’m very pleased to finally have one again. His arc is also solid, though a bit under-explored.

Leon was good. It’s rare for the series to tell us who the Champion we’re fighting is before it’s time to tango with them. It was nice to see him have a presence throughout the entire game, and it was interesting to see the types of responsibilities a Champion has, such as protecting the region and...signing endorsement deals.

Closing

Yeah, the game is okay. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not a train wreck. Just okay. It’s very apparent that it was meant to be so much more though, and that’s frustrating. It feels like even 6 more months could’ve made a world of a difference. I don’t believe Game Freak is lazy. I don’t believe they’re incompetent. However, I do think the yearly release schedule of Pokémon games really hampers the potential of not only the games, but the developers.

But perhaps that’s just what we have to accept from such a juggernaut IP. Sword & Shield is about the quality you’d expect from most MCU movies, or those live-action Disney remakes. It’s solid, and it’s the standard fun you’d expect from the property, but it lacks any depth.

But I can’t really bring myself to call it a step back for the series. It does its fair share of things better than XY and SM, even if if those two games are much fuller experiences. Right, this is a decent first real entry for the main series into the home console market. However, it’s still nothing compared to the sheer breadth of content available in the GBA or DS games.

But this game signified to me that the “golden age” of Pokémon is really gone for good. Sword & Shield was never concerned about living up to those titles though. Gaming has changed. Gamers have changed. And thus, Pokémon has changed. Most games aren’t intended to last you the better part of a year now, unless they’re a live multiplayer service with consistent updates.

As a veteran superfan that's been absolutely enamored by the franchise since before I could even read, I’ll admit that I find it a bit of a challenge to judge Pokémon games on their own individual merit, rather than against the now substantial catalogue that makes up the legacy of the series. Sword & Shield isn’t worried about living up to the past, it’s a step towards the future, clumsy as it may be. However, that future is still going to need some more substance to it before I can consider it a bright one.

#pokemon #sword and shield #minty speaks

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goprandall · 6 years

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DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.

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its-moopoint · 7 years

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Mirror mirror on the wall, what does this reflect on them all??

Mixed feelings all around, almost as many as people/bloggers here. Funny how we all react differently to the same stimulus/incitement or in this case what feels like bait/taunt. I see disappointment, frustration, anger, lost of respect, sadness, confusion, exhaustion... I see fans giving up on everything Outlander, others trying to explain this new act, some blaming S&C, some giving them an escape... and the crazy thing is I relate to them all and it all. Stating that from the very beginning none of us knew what the whole truth was, a thousand different scenarios and theories could be made up with all what we were seeing/reading/hearing and what we were being given (note the difference between them both please). Now, my problem here resides in the fact that such a mess has been made of things that no matter which one of those scenarios turns out to be the real one it won’t come out completely clean from shit and nonsense. It’s all tainted one way or another. I’ll explain myself. Bear (no pun intended) with me, let’s assume narrative #1 is the real deal and Sam was single, fell for Skipper and they have been together for a year (is it?) now plus Cait had been with that T guy all along. There are some questions to which the answers are NOT PRETTY: - is that really MM&S’ relationship’s true timing, so close to her having another boyfriend? (stinks, I’m never one to break up another couple) - why has Skipper/Sam/someone close to them been leaking info and pics about their “private” lives from the very beginning? (stinks even more) - why let your misogynist bully blue-checked of a “friend” make statements about your love life that you aren’t able/willing to make yourself? what is more, why in the middle of that twitter war and harassment you choose to acknowledge and like and interact with shipper tweets (as easy as it would’ve been to ignore them in the ocean of tweets and mentions you get every freaking minute) (beyond shitty) - why would you forget/avoid to mention your boyfriend of 3 years in the 2 minute speech you have to give on what was your most important award and achievement to date? (sorry honey, you already know I love you, no need to declare it publicly as other hundreds of celebrities have done and still do each time they win something - again pure bullshit) - why if you dislike shippers and agree with the big bully that we are all crazy, you go like his tweet then go hurry and unlike it? If those are your true feelings OWN IT woman, you can’t have your cake and eat it too (yep we are disgusting but I’m wearing my Unusual Lady T-shirt as I type this, may help clean my hands of this shit) - why the rainbow mockery?!?! Yes it now feels like that. - why if your co-star is your BFF he has been dating a girl for a year and you fail to simply acknowledge her in SM till today? The normal thing would have been to give a follow back the moment she follows you (didn’t happen), or later on when she likes stuff you post (hi there Cait, it’s me!), or later when your BFF retweets her...but no, it wasn’t official enough till today (maybe she’s pregnant and they are in the countdown...you know what’s down? A pile of shit, yeah). So yes, you get the gist of it, many more bullshit I’m sure I’m forgetting. Let’s go now with story #2 and that version in which this whole thing has been and still is fuckery to hide the real relationship between Sam&Cait. Okay, they are forced to hide it because of work/industry reasons or/and they want their privacy. Poor them, having to play along and go places they don’t want to go and post and tweet pics they don’t want to, being active part of a farce that results in many of their fans being insulted and bullied, leaving them defenseless and at most saying they ignore (all the while knowing they are in the right). Many people here claim as long as S&C didn’t get directly involved then they couldn’t get blamed by what other people (Shitner, MM, etc) implied so when the “coming out” came it would be clean. Well, after today’s shitshow now this is not possible anymore either. Cait had already wished him a happy birthday, today’s tweet was nonsense. - why today’s picture with 5 people on a kitchen doing nothing, just posing for the camera no cake no birthday celebration to show whatsoever? And on Cait’s feed and by her own hand. Again notice she HAD ALREADY tweeted him happy birthday. - why follow the girl back today? Again it would’ve made the narrative more believable if it had happened at the very beginning. Now we also have the gay scenario #3, in which Sam is in the closet, Cait his BFF willing to cooperate at the beginning but not so much after a while (IFH) enter goldilocks. Well this would be very sad but would make sense from many points of view (why no jealousy from any SO would ever be involved when facing very inappropriate behaviour between costars). Still many games and fuckery being played by al involved and fans paying for them. Now add a hundred more scenarios apart from those mentioned above and in-between (Sam and Cait did date at the beginning but it was too much, Cait wanted out and he was heartbroken from bimbo to bimbo, they have always been just friends albeit very touchy feely ones) I guess what I’m trying to say is in the end it doesn’t matter what truth comes out (if/when it does) if in the process there has been all this nasty business of constant fuckery. I don’t like that so I’m reacting the only way I can and that I feel counts: in numbers. As a fan and merely a number, today I’ve unfollowed both S&C in twitter and instagram. I don’t mean to go away cause I still look forward season 3 but I’m gonna be a lurker, no likes no sharing in their stuff anymore. Of course this is just my POV, coming from my own experiences (funny became a celeb cynical because of Jennifer Aniston, epic let down and since a few weeks ago people here started comparing her and skinny-legs, yes Justin, to Sam and Cait. Fuck my life). Feel free to agree or disagree and share your own opinions if you feel like it and thanks for listening/reading.

#sam&cait #reflectionsandrainbows

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decoding1432 · 7 years

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If you want to unstan...

I’ve seen many of you losing interest or more like beginning to change your stanning experience. When I first began to read things about the industry & stuff, I sort of got this discourage as well. It hurt me to know that my idols’ lives weren’t as real as I had in mind. But now, more woke than I could ever imagine, I realise… After all they’ve gone through, I admire them even more & how lucky, how truly lucky I got when these five ladies entered into my life.

They’re not robots. Yes, they’ve gone through things we would consider extremist & unrealistic but let me tell you something: We fell in love with 5 beautiful humans who grant us access to a little piece of their hearts in every interview, in every performance, in every snap story.

Just because their lives happen to be quite frenetic at times or happen to be quite hard to understand for us fans, doesn’t mean they feel any less, that they are any less normal. Well, in this latter, maybe I’m wrong… You know what? Forgot what I just said, they’re not normal, they’re exceptional.

“Not all heroes wear capes” As cliché as it may sound, it’s nothing else but the truth. The five of them have saved more lives than we could picture. They’ve helped so many souls out there (including mine) to heal whatever wounds we had, wounds crying out desperately for attention. To mend whatever broken piece we had inside, that kept on thickening the cut. They’ve been there every step of that unsteady path. Even if it’s them doing the dumbest video, while watching it you can’t fight that grin. You can’t even try, cause you know damn well won’t resist to those five goofy smiles . Camila was right, some people don’t understand one of the many meanings behind idolisation.

We fell for five girls. We learned how to stand up thanks to five girls. They gave “heroe” a new synonym & “love” a new meaning. We got interested due to #that one song. We started becoming attached thanks to their voices. We chose to stay because of their personas. It’s the small things that make us cherish them even more day by day: The way they appreciate fans, the way they are grateful to the people they work with, they way their humble reactions get when finding out they’ve been nominated (even tho we know sometimes they deserve more than just one) the way they get so excited after after having won an award, the way they behave all goofy on snapchat, they way they would randomly get all turn on about food in the middle of an interview, the way they jam out to aleatory songs in the car, the way their friendship is shown on & off stage the way they care & are passionate about fixing the world’s problems… I could continue cause the more you think of this side of them, the more extensive the list gets. The point is: ALL OF THAT IS REAL. They are five beautiful humans who despite the business’ injustice & constant treachery always make sure to put a smile on our face even when they’re not having the best day themselves & reminding us how important & how much we’ve impacted their lives in one way or another just like they ignite the same effect in us.

How many of you want to deny the fact that they can turn the shittiest day into the brightest?

They connect people from all over the world & manage to bring it together for one purpose.

“I’m ⅕ of our purpose” Normani expressed. Guess what? Camila is still part of that purpose despise of having parted ways earlier. She’s still in pursuit of making the impossible possible. No matter the amount of pics or gifs they crop her out from, OT4s can’t erase her from the group’s history & Camilizers by discrediting & bashing the other four every time they’ve got the chance, won’t be able to delete the memories (memories that by the way mean a lot to your idol).

YOU DON’T NEED TO BELITTLE ONE TO PROTECT THE OTHER. It doesn’t make you a better fan. When I see anyone commenting things like: Why hasn’t (x) tweeted in days? Or why doesn’t (x) log in that often? Seriously, why do you think all of them have reduced their activity on Twitter, esp the past year? It’s no secret that they don’t enjoy SM like they used to. It’s all hate, all comparisons, all the time. Among other aspects:

Imagine, LAND had to endured reading on a daily basis for one year long a thousand “go solo” mentions, & they had to pretend like everything was fine & they weren’t breaking on the inside.

Imagine, I bet Camila was hoping for the hateful tweets to stop when she left, unfortunately these incremented even when she gave ot4s what they were expecting for so long.

As for C stans, they are constantly claiming that LAND couldn’t care less about watching Camila slip away. Does this looks like they didn’t care, like they were happy to see her walk away?

Them five have created an universe where each one of us is given the chance to coexist. However whatever happens inside THEIR WORLD IS THEIR OWN PROBLEM.

If they screw up, it’s doesn’t mean don’t call them out, do call them out but measurably, it’s not about attacking right aways. The girls aren’t perfect, they make mistakes obviously, like the rest of us. Quoting from another theory:

“As the audience, I’ve noticed we tend to expect a lot from celebrities. All celebrities in general. One fail & the internet won’t let them forget (even after they apologised). We have to remember that THEY’RE HUMANS TOO. An aspect that most haters choose to erase from them is the fact that THEY FEEL. Being in the public eye is hard enough. Our jobs as the audience is not to turn this even tougher for them. More than one celeb has addressed how they can have everything on the outside but at the same time feeling empty & destroyed on the inside.

To me the best kind of celebrity is the one who is nothing but grateful towards the fans & the one who takes the time to continuously learn to educate them. The girls might have screwed up in the past, & bc they ain’t robots they will continue to, but if I’m well aware of stg is that they have proven multiple times to be this type of celeb”.

If they fight or fought, it’s their altercation & none of us has the right to pry into it, worse speculate based on our prejudices only to enlarge the problem ten times more.

Even when we have evidence right in front of us…

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0:56 “We respect one another enough”.

“I have love & respect for all four of my bandmates whether you choose to believe it or not… For those of you who enjoy speculating & creating drama that doesn’t exist, please keep in mind that myself & the other girls in the group are PEOPLE, we feel hurt & sadness just like everyone else.”

For real, can she be more clear?

youtube

I mean the immediate “NO” when the interviewer asks her if there was actually conflict between her & C around that time, I don’t know you but it seems totally honest to me. Then what she adds: “I think that is definitely all about people’s perception & thinking that they know more than they actually do… They really think that they know the whole story when they really– they don’t”.

Do you seriously believe controlled statements, parents’ tweets or worse “insiders”? Are you choosing to trust first the people that manipulate the girls for a living than the girls themselves?

If you want to unstan because of a fabricated narrative, go ahead…(Again, even if the quarrel happens to be real, it’s not our business. If they are meant to fix it, they’ll do, if they do love each other like they said in those interviews, they’ll might forgive one another when the time comes).

To the remaining OT5s that are unsure of which side to incline… YOU DON’T HAVE TO PICK.

OT4s & Camilizers will try to persuade you through their tweets, indirectly or not. They shape the story based on their perspective. A blinded point of view if I may add because even when the evidence is there, the truth for them is basically built on “excuses” to despise the contrary party. That’s how toxic it is.

No one is forcing you to support all the girls or to follow both acts (just respect) but I genuinely feel sorry for you if you decide to unstan one side as a result of a petty absurd storyline & the ambition of men in suits cause then you’ll be missing of five incredible role models & two worthy journeys.

#fifth harmony #camila cabello

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akashicrecordsgaming · 7 years

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Alola, A-L-O-L-A Alola - Pokemon Sun & Moon

Well, it’s been long enough since SM came out that we should have all got our kneejerk reactions out of the way, and it’s been long enough that I’ve cleaned it out once and I’m starting it again (Shameimaru has too), so buckle up cause I’m gonna say some bad things about the sacred cow. Yep, that means spoilers too.

I don’t normally start with Narrative but good lord the pacing in this game is absolute garbage. It has probably the slowest start of any Pokemon game so far - the entire first island (of four) is just mind-numbingly slow and boring, with most of the game mechanics unavailable, and while being on rails early on isn’t unusual for a Pokemon game, it feels incredibly blatant in SM, to the point of being obnoxious due to the presentation. As the game continues, it looks like we’re going to reach a high point when a Nihilego busts into the Aether Facility, but then it just... continues being totally tepid. Then it looks like you’re going to reach another high point where Lusamine goes completely bonkers and fuses with the Mega Beast, except then you don’t actually fight her - you battle her exactly like you would a trainer, despite the fact that she’s just turned into pokemoncthulhu.

In general, SM’s plot feels pretty thin on the ground and schizophrenic. The world-building is really stellar, but there’s no sense of pressure, unlike the previous two games - there’s no big effects on the weather threatening to wipe everyone out, the villains haven’t managed to steal a march on you and build a doomsday laser or anything like that. In theory, you even go into fight Lusamine because you’re on a rescue mission.

On the positive side, the island challenge idea is a lot more interesting than gyms usually are (in part because the premise of a gym - that is, you’re dojo hunting, a practice that hearkens to Japanese jidaigeki and martial arts films, although it allegedly has its roots in real life - has become diluted over time), and they do a much better job than usual worldbuilding. Unlike previous regions, Alola really seems like a place where people live and have lives, rather than being a series of hubs to train your Pokemon in.

A spot I think might be an issue of real contention are Team Skull. On the one hand, they’re hilarious; on the other hand, while villain teams have always been pretty goofy (except arguably Team Rocket who are pretty worrying since they’re a legit mafia and sometimes undertake straight-up terrorist action), Team Skull are really hard to care about, which becomes a problem when the game sometimes expects you to drop what you’re doing and put them in their place, since the tone is pretty wobbly.

Overall, while SM deserves praise for actually mixing up the formula in a main-series game (which hasn’t been done before - all experimentations on the formula were relegated to side games), it’s obviously been a shaky process for them, and SM’s tone and pacing are wildly schizophrenic, which isn’t improved in the post-game (unlike ORAS’ amazing Delta Episode).

For Narrative, I give SM a 3 out of 5: it has a fantastic concept which is hampered by a schizophrenic execution, but the attention to detail elsewhere is spectacular.

I could talk about the Audio but being real here, I’d basically just be sharing my opinion of the soundtrack, without any real objective basis near or far. If you’re interested, that opinion is that it isn’t as good as XY or ORAS’ soundtracks, but it’s still a Pokemon soundtrack so it has great tunes and the audio quality is just fine.

Instead, let’s talk about the Technical side of things. Although the game essentially runs on the same engine as XY and ORAS, they’ve changed up the UI a bit, putting moves on the right and letting you see known type effectiveness against the target at a glance. You can also now check your move details straight from the combat menu, and tapping Y twice auto-applies your last-used item, which is great when you’re on a catching spree.

On the other hand, let’s not even freaking talk about the PSS replacement. Well, we will talk about it because otherwise there’s no point in having this site but jeez. You’re now only online when engaged in Festival Plaza (and then you have to go through a double-prompt to actually get online). Want to interact with a friend? You need them to also be on Festival Plaza, and online, at the same time as you, then refresh your guestlist until they turn up, then make them a VIP to guarantee you’ll be able to interact with them at all. Yes, you can make this easier by disabling other aspects of the system, but then you’re disabling other aspects of the system to get it to do something that should be simple, and overall it’s a huge step back from the XY/ORAS PSS system. Forget about pickup trading/battles - they’re gone.

I’m also going to have to dock the game for being really laggy when it wants to be. Apparently this isn’t a problem on the New 3DS but it was a big one whenever the effects got a bit interesting; my 2DS chugged like an autistic fratboy.

All things being equal, I’ll give SM a 3 for the Technical: it took some steps forward, and some steps back, and came out about average.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the Gameplay room first: I like Z-Moves. They’re a lot of fun, they add some surprise swing/comeback potential, and they generally don’t feel as incredibly powerful as Mega Evolutions in the previous two games have been. The little dances are also great, particularly since several of them incorporate actual hula choreography.

In terms of challenge, this game manages to be more challenging than ORAS or XY, largely because of Totem Pokemon: when they come in, their own take on Z-Power activates, giving them stat buffs, which helps to avoid the traditional problem with creating a challenge in a a boss fight in Pokemon; setting up has a big opportunity cost, in which time (because the AI doesn’t normally switch) the player can just swap to something more useful for hosing whatever the boss is trying to do. On top of that, several of the Totem bosses are dangerous picks to begin with: Totem Wishiwashi’s Schooling gives it incredible stats even before its Z-Power kicks in, Totem Mimikyu gets a free turn to do whatever it wants thanks to its unique ability... and then there’s Lusamine’s Clefable in her Cthulhu-Lusamine form, who is probably the hardest Pokemon in the game to get past. It’s not very threatening - it’s limited to Metronome (Shameimaru assures me it has Cosmic Power and STAB Moonblast but it used neither against me) - but even with a big level advantage and possibly a type advantage, it’s an incredible wall.

There’s also a sort-of-new gimmick regarding how most Ace Trainers now work: they won’t even look at you if you haven’t beaten everyone else on their route, but their fights all involve a clever tactic or a showcase of a game mechanic that wouldn’t be out of place in the competitive scene. The very first Ace Trainer, for example, runs a suicide lead with Stealth Rock and a Red Card to force you to start switching and taking entry damage, and it gets more interesting from there.

Unfortunately, the game does tend to fall into the same rut most Pokemon games do, but let’s be honest: if you’re old enough to be reading this site of your own volition you probably knew what you were getting into when you bought the game. It also revamps some older concepts, such as replacing the widely-disliked HM system with Ride Pokemon, which isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely a big step in the right direction. It’s a shame the Ride outfit looks so dorky though.

Oh, and I had a weird glitch when I fought Kukui: he broke all the rules and used two Z-Moves in succession, but that might be because my ailing 2DS was in sleep mode for like 18 hours between rounds, so I’m not weighting it as a Big Huge Bug.

For Gameplay, I’d rate it a 4: it’s definitely moving in the right direction and is a step up from previous Pokemon main-series games, but it’s still weighted down by a few flaws here and there.

Overall, SM represents a pretty bold new step for Pokemon, with an attempt for a main-series game to put its narrative front and center. That said, it’s clear that there’s a long way to go in terms of presentation and execution if they want to continue the trend in a fashion that will satisfy both brand-new players and franchise veterans.

And the awesome JoJoMon pictures is from this guy’s tumblr..

#pokemon #pokemon sm #pokemon sun and moon #AkashicRecordsGaming #gaming #game journalism #review #game review #yatagarasu

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