#despite its usually cringe dialogue lol

[stincorrect]

Max: *takes out gun* Lucas: I thought you believed in gun control. Max: Yeah. I believe I should control the gun. 

[sneezemonster15]

A lot of adults women behave like incels but less violent and more manipulative. They usually love the cringe romance movies where the main girl is average looking and not like the other girls and manage to make the badboy soft. Generally they hate hot girls bc they are jealous (see the way Skr stans talk abt Ino and feel victorious bc they "won" against her, the hot girl). Those women are full of insecurities, thats why Skr is so relatable.

The way Skr tries to not think about the fact Sske dont wanna spend time with her is the same way some irl women ignore that their husbands are cheating, and if they cant ignore it they will attack the other women but they will NEVER leave the guy. All their self worth is based on having a bf/husband.

Then there are some lesbian/bi women who stan her as an act of feminism. She is a female character who got what she wanted so its a win apparently. Fortunatly those ppl are minority bc as a queer woman and feminist, it is very embarrassing to read those takes. I'm all for uplifting women and for them to get everything they desire but not at the expense of non sexist men. Plus, Skr dont even look so happy at the end of the day. So is it really a win for her and women?

Yeah that makes sense. But it's sad isn't it? Because even trying to have a dialogue with them isn't helpful. There's no point having it if they aren't ready to be receptive to it.

Sakura really sees no contradiction between what she says and what she does.

And yet...

Lol. Till only two days ago, she was found styling her hair in the middle of chuunin exams, all skinned knees and having suffered minor injuries, while her team mates were working. She let her hair grow in the first place because she thought Sasuke liked it. Lol.

What impression can it possibly give to the reader? Kishi had to stress on it too, with another character this time.

Why would Kishi stress so much on Sakura and her obsession with her hair, just to make her say something totally hypocritical five chapters down? Lol. Kishi is very clever about writing his characters act according to the character traits given to them. Like for example, the panel below, Kakashi acts according to his character (where he has a blindspot for Sakura's negative shades) thinks Sakura is not the type to brag when she is actually exactly the type to brag.

Lol, Sakura's whole personality is about being obsessive for Sasuke which in turn makes her violently jealous of Naruto and Ino. She beats Naruto up regularly for no apparent reason and harasses Ino, even though that girl did nothing but try to help her. And she brags, it's the only thing she does properly. Lol.

And yet, she is always bragging, showing off. From start to end.

And I am positive I am missing some panels here lol. She is always looking for external validation. She revels in it. While external validation itself is not a bad thing, since humans need some amount of external validation to measure their abilities, and Naruto does it too, but for him, it's rooted in his quest for acknowledgement and acceptance, so he could make friends and not be ostracized from community. Sakura does it because of her ego. While Naruto has his principles rooted in his belief systems, his emotions and his dream that egg him on to do better, Sakura finds her motivation in the desire to show off and impress people, mostly Sasuke.

She disrespects Ino, Tsunade, and she fights Kaguya while she says this?

Girl, why are you so embarrassing? If you wanna attack her, just do it. Why even mention her being a woman? She wasn't mocking you, she barely even noticed you. You aren't worthy enough for her to notice.

Lol. And things she says about being a woman are just so cringe lol.

No one underestimates her because she is a girl, in fact Kakashi coddles her because she is a girl. She is underestimated because despite training, she is just weak and unskilled, as compared to her cohorts. And if she is skillful, we don't see it in the same proportion measured against the way she talks about herself. Tsunade never had to sing about her being a woman and yet people are bloody scared of her strength. Temari never had to mention it, neither did Kushina. Chiyo certainly briefly talks about how women always get the short end of the stick in their male driven society, but she not only belongs to a much older generation that has seen a hell lot, she is a master puppeteer and a superior warrior in her own right, she has earned it.

It would have been fine if only Sakura had actually consistently kept her word, proven herself through actions and not just empty words. Because when she doesn't, it reduces the value of those words. I don't know if she really meant it when she said women were fickle. Who? Tsunade? Kushina? Chiyo? Temari? Nope, they didn't give any such impression.

She constantly condescends to Naruto despite him having proved himself to be skillful, strong, the one who wins team seven several battles while she stands in a corner shaking and sweating. Thing is, she realises she makes mistakes. She acknowledges Naruto's strength as well, but she doesn't do anything to change. The whole point of a realization is to work on it and correct your behaviour. She is condescending towards Naruto till the end. Konohamaru takes her down a peg when she is being disparaging towards him and Naruto when they are doing the oiroke jutsu contest. She even hits Konohamaru, and he gets pissed off. So he makes a reverse oiroke jutsu just to show her true face, and that face has a streak of blood trickling down her nose lol. But when Naruto uses it against Kaguya, she again condescends to him. Narusakus are kinda embarrassing tbh, Sakura doesn't get Naruto. She thinks she does but she doesn't. She thinks she gets Sasuke but she obviously doesn't. And yet, she makes her 'strategies' in kage arc around her knowledge of Naruto and fake confesses to him. Naruto rejects her. Lol. She goes to Sasuke and tries to kill him (with a kunai...) by tricking him, only to be attacked, twice. Even when she drugs her cohorts before going to Sasuke, they clock her real plan. Lol.

She overestimates herself, even though it's clear that if she only thought things through, she would be much more successful. She is really blind to her own shortcomings even though she tries but remains unsuccessful, which is even sadder.

She does know Sasuke doesn't wanna spend time with her, she also gets a sense that she will always be much lesser than Naruto in Sasuke's eyes, she knows but she doesn't care. Even if it means long term misery for everyone involved.

Yes, I am sure some women find her character relatable. But relatable doesn't mean everything. I relate to Sasuke and I am very wary of establishing emotional connections but I know it's not something ideal or healthy. Connection is what people thrive on. If I ever started to relate with Sakura, I would really be compelled to take a hard look at myself. Lol.

[isagisyoichi]

oooh could you do prompt 20 with isagi? i love him so much

EVANGELINE'S 100 EVENT (NO LONGER TAKING REQUESTS)

ISAGI + PROMPT 20, “YOU LOOK PRETTY”

CHARACTERS INCLUDED: isagi yoichi

WARNINGS: swearing and also ik the boys don’t canonically go to the same school as each other but for plot just pretend that they do and also its just more fun to write them as so. also this is really dialogue heavy and italics are a character’s inner thoughts as per usual

A/N: ISAGI MY BELOVED ;__; i feel u anon i love him sm too so this was so fun to write lol. ALSO I KEEP MAKING THESE LIKE FULL ON IMAGINES INSTEAD OF DRABBLES. apparently i am physically incapable of writing anything in moderation who knew *thumbs up emoji*

y/n looks really pretty. did they do their hair differently today?

“you know, just staring at them gets you nowhere, isagi.” isagi’s eyes go wide at reo's comment as he snaps out of his lovelorn daze.

“i-i wasn’t staring!” isagi splutters, knowing very well he was, indeed, staring at you. a chorus of “yes you were,” and other various forms of verbal agreements ring out from the boy’s lunch table.

“you suck at being subtle,” chigiri states bluntly.

and of course, bachira has to offer his two cents on the subject, too. “and flirting with y/n, don’t forget flirting with y/n!”

“oh yeah, that too.”

“no, i don’t!” isagi denies, despite knowing very well he’s never even so much as called you pretty to your face a day in his life. but it’s not like they have to know!

“oh, so you’ve flirted with them before?” nagi questions suspiciously as all eyes at the table turn to isagi while they less than patiently await his answer.

“well no,” isagi admits, earning a “called it,” from naruhaya, “but i could make a move on them if i really wanted to!” he defends. everyone at the table exchanges knowing looks at each other, with them all thinking the same thing: no he can't.

“oh, yeah?” nagi asks with a raised brow.

“yeah.”

“then do it right now.”

“okay- wait what?!” where the fuck did that come from?!

“if you think you could, then why don’t you?” nagi, ever the instigator, challenges. and right when isagi is about to protest against nagi’s challenge, a number of provocations circulate from around him.

“c’mon isagi, you have tooooooo!”

“you won’t, no balls!”

“do it, i’m bored.”

“400 yen he chickens out,” chigiri less than discreetly whispers to reo.

“you’re on,” reo accepts the redhead’s bet, shaking his hand under the table.

isagi glances at his last resort, kunigami for support, but he only replies, “you’ve liked them for a while and you should really put yourself out there, isagi,” offering an apologetic smile.

“well then, it’s settled, let’s go isagi,” nagi says, before he can even give isagi a chance to speak. nagi pulls the unwilling black-haired boy out of his seat before isagi can even fully process what’s going on.

and despite his protests to let him go, nagi drags a visibly unnerved isagi across the cafeteria to your place at the water fountain, whispering “thank me later,” as he pushes isagi towards you a little bit too hard, accidentally making isagi crash into your side. “shit, my bad,” nagi cringes from afar.

you let out a sound of surprise of the sudden impact, moving slightly to your right due to the slight collision. “i’m so sorry, y/n!” isagi immediately apologizes once he balances himself again, a mortified look on his face. “are you okay?” he asks with concern.

thankfully, you don’t look bothered at all, and instead choose to giggle at his (or nagi’s, technically) mishap. “it’s fine isagi, i’m fine, don’t worry,” you reassure with a kind smile, “gravity’s a real bitch sometimes, huh?” isagi lets out a breath of amusement at your joke, grateful you weren’t currently yelling at him for bumping into you.

“yeah,” he breathes out, smiling warmly at you. they’re even prettier face to face, he thinks.

you two continue to stare at each other, smiling awkwardly at each other for way longer than socially acceptable until you clear your throat and say, “well, i gotta go. it was nice seeing you,” with a wave, starting to turn around, internally cringing at how awkward the atmosphere had suddenly become.

seeing how he already came all the way here (even if it was by force), isagi rationalizes that he might as well go through with nagi’s plan. fuck it, it’s now or never.

“wait! i had something to tell you,” isagi blurts out, making you whip your head back.

“oh, really?” isagi nods, leaving you to answer with a “well, shoot,” gesturing your hands out, signaling him that it was alright to ask.

taking an inhale, isagi starts with, “i just wanted to say...” okay, that’s great, now make the rest of the words come out, dumbass. isagi doesn’t say anything after that, his nerves getting the best of him, resuming the previous awkward atmosphere.

trying your best to encourage him to continue you say, “you just...” whilst jokingly moving your hands in a circular motion.

ah fuck it, just spit it out. “you look pretty today!” isagi exclaims.

his sudden compliment surprises you. it makes you feel warm all over, butterflies fluttering around your entire body. apparently getting told you look pretty by the boy you’ve liked for like, ever will do that to you.

with a grin that stretches ear to ear, you return isagi’s compliment with one of your own, saying, “you don’t look too bad yourself, isagi,” playfully nudging the now, red all over, boy next to you.

“thank you,” isagi says with an appreciative smile of his own. he thinks his day couldn’t get any better. well, that is until you speak up once again.

“hey, lunch isn’t over for another twenty minutes. you wanna walk around with me?”

twenty more minutes with you? who was he to say no to that?

BONUS:

“seriously, can anyone make out what they’re saying?”

“synchronized metallic rats are the future of society.”

“for once, i would love to know what the fuck the things that come out your mouth mean.”

“wait, what the hell, did he just ditch us?!”

“oo, i call dibs on his lunch!”

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

I wouldn't mind that post on VNs!

So I was gonna write three different lists, but then after writing the first part I realized this is very long and takes a while to write and nobody cares anyway so I’ll just post my recommended list only. Well, I mean, you asked, but I doubt you wanted all this lol. Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this stuff, though. Hope you enjoy my ramblings!

An explanation for what this list is: Sometimes I know a game isn't perfect in many aspects but I still had a genuinely good time playing it, hence why I'm recommending it. Also I should mention that I could talk for hours about some of these games so if anyone’s curious about more of my thoughts, let me know.

Alright, now that that's out of the way ...

How to Take Off Your Mask / How to Fool a Liar King / How to Sing to Open Your Heart (f/m): This is a trilogy of smaller, single-RO games where you can take one of two routes depending on how you act, and they’re all interconnected where you get to meet and interact with the previous games’ characters in the sequel games. I went into this expecting very little but what I got blew me away with how funny, charming and cute the games were. They don’t take themselves too seriously, at one point an angsty male character monologues deeply about some shit, and another one just slides into frame and starts mocking him. It was so fucking funny, holy shit. Also, a central theme is literally racism against catgirls? Which is monumentally stupid, and probably the games’ main flaw, especially in the final game where it pairs up a catgirl with a catgirl racist, but that one still ends with a literal bisexual queen literally making a man her malewife because she fell in love with his cooking, so like ... It speaks for itself. My favorite game of the three is the second one, where you get to play a punchy fake catgirl and romance a pink-haired prince. And honestly, all the female protags in these games are lovely and a breath of fresh air, and the male characters are fun and not abusive assholes either. There’s full Japanese voice acting, and two out of three female protags are literal catgirls who pepper in “nya” and “mya” into their dialogue, and it’s just treated as a quirk of their catgirl race. I AM NOT KIDDING. Yet somehow it never comes off as cringe, because it doesn’t take it self too seriously. These games are just cozy. That’s the only way I can describe them. Cozy and hilarious. Play them yesterday. Dream Daddy (m/m): Man tumblr did this game dirty. This is just a cute, wholesome daddy dating simulator with gorgeous art. Coming out on Top (m/m): So you know Dream Daddy? What if it was EXTREMELY, MAJORLY NSFW? Though I realize how bad the comparison really is, the only thing these games have in common is that they’re gay dating sims and don’t have an anime art style and oh, yeah, they’re both really well-written. Or at least, extremely funny. COOT (heh) is DDADDS’ horny older cousin, and I first encountered the game on a lesbian letsplayer’s YouTube channel. Yes I watched a lesbian play a gay porn game and it was GOOD. I was there for the cringe and fun and got surprised by how genuinely funny and sometimes actually touching the game was. I can’t give it my universal endorsement because it’s not a game for everyone, as I said, it’s extremely NSFW and the menu theme literally includes the singers screaming “SEX SEX” at the top of their lungs. There’s more to this game than the porn, but there’s just so much porn. It can be censored in the settings but it’s unavoidable. However, I still think it’s worth a look just because of how funny it is and how charming the characters are. If you don’t want to play it yourself, at least watch Anima’s playthrough of it. It hasn’t aged super well in some spots but I still go back to it every now and then. Akash: Path of the Five (f/m): This game markets itself as a more “professionally produced” western dating sim, and that’s accurate in some superficial aspects. The game is pretty poorly written, but it’s absolutely gorgeous and has really good English voice acting by actual professional voice actors. The premise is quite self-indulgent, but I genuinely respect that about it. You play as the only female elemental in a village with only men, and all five of your classmates want a piece of you. It’s clear the writers have put some thought into the lore and worldbuilding of this world, but barely any of it comes through in the actual writing and plot, which is basically just a vehicle for you to get together with your boy of choice. The ROs aren’t very well-developed either, and the plot is the same in every route with only minor variations depending on which guy you pick, up to the point where the protag has the same voice lines in some parts regardless of which guy she’s talking about. It also has one extra half-route that’s so bad and pointless I genuinely wonder why they wasted resources on making it instead of spending a bit more on the writing/adding some variations to the main plot. So why am I recommending this game? Well, it’s pretty, and it sounds nice. This game is a himbo, gorgeous but dumb as rocks. Enjoy it for what it is. I know I did. Get it when it’s on sale, I think if I hadn’t gotten it at half-price I would’ve felt a bit more cranky about it. Also Rocco is bae. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons (f/m): Yes that’s the full title, no I don’t know what it means either. You may have noticed how most of the games so far I’ve enjoyed because they don’t take themselves too seriously? Well, this one does. It takes itself SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY. Like, way too seriously. It’s a little embarrassing at points because baby, you’re an urban fantasy dating sim. Calm down. But the game has gorgeous art and 3 out of 5 routes are very good. The last route, the one with your teacher, is both the most problematic yet somehow the one that breaks down the very concept of a dating sim within its own narrative (yes, this shit gets fucking META) and it got so wild at the end that 1) I still listen to the soundtrack for that route and 2) I still remember it to this day despite finishing it ages ago. My favorite route is Shou, he’s a sweetheart, but the mindfuck route is so buckwild that I think the game is worth playing just for that. There’s also a route that’s like a neo-noir mystery? I Do Not Know. This game is many, many things and it does them so sincerely and tries so hard, you can’t help but respect it. It doesn’t always stick the landing but man, just let this thing take your hand and wax poetic at you for a bit. Also get this one at a sale because it’s very expensive to get the full version. I got it for 9 bucks on itch.io and I felt that was a fair enough price, I’d say I wouldn’t have minded paying more for it because there’s a lot of content to enjoy and/or be baffled by. Arcade Spirits: This one’s a bit more weird from what I recall, and I honestly couldn’t tell you much about it, but I remember having a very good time with it and recommending it to a friend when she was going through some tough times and she said it made her feel better. I remember it making me feel better, as well. This is a VN about an arcade and the ROs are wonderfully diverse, with very real human conflicts that get explored in each of their routes. It can get quite existential and heavy at times, but in the end it’s a kindhearted game that I think everyone can enjoy. The main character was also, how you say, mood. It’s a game about getting possessed by a video game and then learning self-love. Ebon Light (f/m): This one’s free/name your own price on itch.io so go play it. It’s a weird plot where you play as a girl who ate an elven relic? And then the elves kidnap you because you’re the relic now. All the ROs are extremely pasty (like, literally white, as in literally the color white) dark-haired elves, except for one, who’s an extremely pasty blond elf, so ... diversity? I honestly don’t know what this game is aside from unique. I used to be a bit put off by the art style but now I think it contributes to the general atmosphere. It’s a weird game that technically doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but still left an impression of “huh. weird” in my mind and I think more people should play it. The ROs are all pretty generic dating sim archetypes but done well, with bonus points to Duliae who’s just a massive creep and I love him, and also Vadeyn who’s the only bitch in this house I respect. The worldbuilding is honestly a bit buckwild and I can’t give enough credit for how unique the elves’ culture is in this game. Definitely give it a go. Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds / Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms (f/m): These two are newer releases of an older Japanese visual novel. I wouldn’t call it a dating sim, it’s ... it’s more of a super depressing historical fantasy epic with some minor romance aspects awkwardly wedged in. It’s seriously some of the heaviest and most grimdark shit I’ve ever played in a VN/otome. I don’t understand why it’s a dating sim, it doesn’t read like one, it’s just historical fantasy based on real world events with characters based on real people, and they kill and they die and they grieve and they suffer. The games are literally about the downfall of the Shinsengumi, there’s no way of avoiding everything going to shit and you get to watch and be in the middle of it all as they struggle to stay alive and relevant in a world that doesn’t need them anymore. And there’s the protag in the middle of it all, being useless and submissive and bland just the way the usual otome protag is. I don’t think these games are necessarily fun, and the romance is certainly a lot more downplayed and deeply problematic just based on the age differences alone with some of the men, but the sheer amount of horror and sadness in these games make them stand out above its peers. It’s like watching a war movie. Since most of the characters are based on real people, they feel like real people instead of the usual otome archetypes, and they are so, SO flawed, it’s interesting to just watch them deal with the shit the world throws at them. It’s an Experience, and if you’re up for it, I think it’s worth the time. Cinderella Phenomenon (f/m): This game is free on Steam so go get it. You play as a really, genuinely shitty princess who gets cursed to be poor and forgotten and she has to help one of the ROs break his fairy tale curse so that she can learn about being a good person herself and return to her normal life. This game doesn’t look like much, but it has a genuinely well-written main character who’s actually at the center of each of the stories and in the overarching plot instead of just being around to make eyes at the real protagonists, aka the love interests. Aside from the main character, my favorite part of this game’s writing is how each route slowly but very smoothly expands upon the overarching intrigue. If you play them in a certain order, you get more and more info revealed to you that you didn’t see in other routes, gaps are filled in as you find out more about what actually happened and why, but every route also stands on its own as a full experience and none is more canon than the rest. There’s also some really heavy emotional parental abuse explored, which I found quite potent at times. The romances themselves were alright, I think Karma and Waltz were my faves.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Season in Review - Winter 2021

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh it’s one of these again, let’s goooooooooooooooo

Yuru Camp Season 2

Yeah I cried at like half of these episodes because of how much I loved them lol.

Yuru Camp was already like my favourite anime from 2018 and this is just that but more.

Visuals have also been improved a lot – show’s super pretty all the time and the comedy faces are a lot funnier. Biggest glowup is Chiaki who’s hair is no longer disgusting.

Show feels a little less forced when it gets comedic so I actually felt a lot more endeared to Aki and Aoi and the like – there’s more proper iyashikei stuff done with them and the comedy is blended a lot more naturally.

It really was just better Yuru Camp.

No other show this season filled me with as much unconditional love as this did – it kind of has to be 10/10 lol.

Beastars Season 2

Like for Dr Stone, this is just everything that was great about the first season but again.

Only now we have what feels like a much clearer sense of progression? Granted I could just be misremembering season 1 but because we are kind of past lots of the initial worldbuilding stage, characters have a little bit more room to take actions that have influences on one another and the setting.

Legoshi is now the ultimate carnivore guilt herbivore white knight ever and manages to be extremely cringe yet very compelling.

Louis runs the fucking lion mafia and reconciles his prey weakness and predator love in a really cool and interesting way.

The pair are extremely gay holy shit the homoerotic tension is off the charts.

Would say despite a greater focus on the narrative and the characters – including a fun follow-up on that murder mystery the show literally opened on – the worldbuilding still manages to be really strong by way of what’s technically filler content but just enhances the experience so much.

Like we don’t need to see cheetah girl and sheep girl go shopping together but all their dialogue about being unable to wear certain types of fabric because of static electricity or cheetah being unable to wear patterned clothing because of her fur – like it’s really quite inconsequential shit but you watch it and you’re like “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck that’s really well thought out and immersive”.

I don’t think I realised how god tier this OST was lol, fuckin jazzy and smooth as all shit, really gives every scene such an amazing atmosphere.

Beastars is just, really fucking good okay.

Dr Stone: Stone Wars

Dr Stone season 2 baybeeee!

Literally everything that was good about season 1 holds true here lol.

It’s just more of what was good about the show. Endearing cast, solid humour, great sense of multipurpose progression and gratification, just the usual “Dr Stone is fun as fuck” shit.

Its approach to its titular war is exactly as shounen idealism as I was hoping for – we set out to achieve a bloodless war and the only thing even closely resembling a casualty is Tsukasa himself – who still ends up in cold sleep to be saved later. Which was pretty damn emotional and feels like a satisfying thing to do with his character.

Visuals have been upgraded, weeeeee.

I don’t actually have much else to say lol, this is just more of a show I love and it’s an arc I loved and I’m so happy we’re getting season 3.

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby Season 2

So, I watched Uma Musume s1 more or less as it aired 3 years ago, I vaguely recall enjoying it somewhat, and I gave it a 6/10. Far from an impressive score to be sure, and today I remember just about as close to nothing as one could.

Suffice to say I didn’t really have much in the way of reason to be excited for season 2 – I expected it to be a cute and fairly easy time that wouldn’t really grip me much further than that, and in fact with a season so full of sequels I expected this to feel like somewhat of a chore in relation to some of the other stuff we had.

You can see how that turned out based on this fucking 9/10 score? For the fucking horse girl anime?

Yeah nah Uma s2 was just, like it completely blew me away.

I don’t think I expected as compelling a sports narrative as that turned out to be from Uma Musume, like I was sincerely completely engaged in almost everyone’s individual dreams and desires to win and emotionally devastated by the outside factors holding them back – before being brought back to tears again seeing them persist in spite of it all. Episode 11 especially had me ugly crying – which anime hasn’t really done to me in a while.

Apparently s1 looks a lot better than I remember but I really liked how season 2 has looked – the character designs are delightfully adorable and animate really well.

Also the voice acting is like, good, like really good, these girls have a lot of very sincere emotion in their performances that really elevate the viewing experience, like it’s shockingly much better than it needs to be.

Best way to describe this season really – “better than it needs to be”. A lot better. Unexpected sleeper hit of the season, already a favourite of the year, as weird as that feels for Uma Musume.

Non Non Biyori Nonstop

Marathoned the entire rest of this franchise about 2 weeks before s3 aired in prep, fell in love with it, and yeah season 3 was no exception to the quality of this series.

Non Non Biyori is just pure nostalgic iyashikei incarnate – like if you ever had fun as a child? Non Non Biyori is for you. It just reminds you of the good times, how much fun every day could be, that feeling of waking up not knowing what could happen and just living each day in pursuit of fun, free of commitments.

And like while that could make you sad about how much you miss the good old days in theory, Non Non Biyori is literally too fucking good to where you won’t even be able to feel anything other than joy watching it.

The only real thing that made this season feel weak to me is that it was competing directly with Yuru Camp which despite aiming to do things a little differently, still feels broadly similar enough to where like, I guess I just couldn’t not compare it to Yuru Camp – which was better in my mind.

Even then a 9/10 is a 9/10 though so fuckin, stop bitching.

Pui Pui Molcar

Shoutouts to WEPcord because I had 0 intention of watching this at first – hell hadn’t even heard of it until WEPcord – and eventually got persuaded to binge the whole thing at the end of the season.

It was among the most enjoyable ~24 minutes of my life.

It’s just like, cute and funny and it looks really nice.

That’s it.

That’s literally it!

Pui Pui Molcar isn’t here for a long time but it’s sure as shit here for a good time and if you just want to laugh at these funny guinea pig cars being cute and charming and ponder the mechanics of this world where guinea pigs evolved into transportation yet regular boats and helicopters exist then hey you can do just that!

Not quite “sleeper” hit of the season since it’s highly rated and regarded by everyone it seems and got pretty fucking popular but still, certainly the most pleasant surprise this season.

Attack on Titan: The Final Season

“Final season” they said as if we’re not now waiting until Winter 2022 smh.

Anyway the dramatic shift in the setting following s3p2’s big reveal dramatically increases the scope of the world while still keeping the narrative feeling distinctly “Attack on Titan” in a good way.

Politics that are entertaining, characters having very huge and tangible and believable impact on the wider world, breaking trust, cycle of violence, buzzwords buzzwords, it’s 3 fucking am.

This season has really nice artwork but isn’t very exciting to watch – MAPPA sure as shit have less exciting sakuga cuts and their CG titans are a little offputting – their CG humans even more so. Expressions still very top tier tho.

Eren is extremely based but also scuffed and it’s cool and cringe in a good way.

I like lots of the new characters – Gabi specifically is really great, love Ayane Sakura’s performance.

Yeah idk how to be productive about this I’m tired. AOT good.

SK8 The Infinity

Woah, an anime original about skateboarding? That has actually literally never happened before – I have to pick this one up.

Works out that skating is, to some extent, near and dear to my heart – my stepdad loves skateboarding so I’m sort of interested in it by proxy. Second this got announced I told him about it and I’ve been telling him how I feel about every episode as it released – so that’s certainly been fun.

Actual show quality worked out to be pretty great too – it’s a fun sports narrative that puts “have actual fun with the activity” as its first core theme and goes through decently well written trials and tribulations to get us there.

Also looks really nice – I was a big fan of the character designs and there were lots of great action cuts during boarding around.

Seeing Reki and Langa close together brought out my inner fucking fujoshi so that felt gay.

Appreciate that the supporting cast wasn’t giant but definitely more could have been done with them – SHADOW and MIYA are important for all of a scene and then just kind of get to exposit shit. JOE and CHERRY kind of just are exposition and some jokes you’ve seen before.

Really didn’t much care for ADAM as an antagonist – he’s way, way too silly for me to take seriously, he completely defies physics in a way that makes it hard to be invested in the stakes of his races, and he doesn’t really have a compelling dynamic with anyone around him – not even his attempted main rival of Langa. Wouldn’t strictly say he dragged the show down – it was certainly fun watching him wreck people, but I do think we could have had a better antagonist.

In some sense this is definitely unfair but I do wish it had been a lot more grounded in reality – it’s the first skateboarding anime so if it wants to get people into skateboarding it should probably temper their expectations a little. Also by the show’s end it embraces the power of friendship so strongly as to suggest that skating alone sucks which I think is a bad message to send about an activity that’s perfectly enjoyable on its own. Those and a kind of eh jealousy arc were enough to hold the show back from an 8 for me. 7 is still not bad for a bishie boy sports original anime tho.

Cells at Work: Black

So this is Cells at Work but in a body that’s shitty and unhealthy.

It’s quite a lot more entertaining than Cells at Work – it’s got a good level of edge to it and a clearer structure that made it feel more narratively compelling than regular Cells and fuck, they even throw in major character deaths that got me surprisingly emotional.

Sweet moments also work decently well just because of what they exist in relation to.

Ending kinda shitty though and left a bad taste in my mouth.

Still just better Cells though.

Horimiya

I enjoyed the first couple of episodes more than I expected to but it quickly got boring as the cast expanded and all actual developments stopped.

Like I didn’t go into this expecting to like it because it was a high school romance that Reddit were hyped for so I expected it to be completely mediocre, but it surprised me with charming characters and good presentation in the early episodes.

Said good presentation remains a constant throughout the show, while the midsection or so is just lots of Hori and Miyamura being cute and fun – the will they/won’t they is resolved extremely quickly so we leave off with the feeling of getting to see a fairly realistic and natural portrayal of two high school lovers, I was a big fan.

However sort of throughout most of the show and becoming particularly prominent later on is a very expansive cast of super forgettable characters engaging in really quite bland interactions. Hori and Miyamura’s domestic life was this almost iyashikei romance for me that I really loved but basically every character outside of them was just a stock character template with a stock character arc in a stock high school slice of life.

For as good as the presentation is the show could feel kind of up its own ass at times? Particularly the shots of monotone silhouettes extending out of characters over a white background – didn’t seem to have a clear purpose and came across to me as more pretentious than anything else.

Cells at Work Season 2

It’s more Cells, huh.

Probably looks better than s1? Lot of ugly CG though.

HanaKana is barely in it this time around, there’s like a normal cell boy who gets more screentime

Said normal said boy comes with some cute animal sidekick characters and because of how they’re introduced they feel like a shitty Manic Pixie Dream Girlfriend esque deus ex machina.

Tbh this probably isn’t actually worse than s1 which I gave a 7/10 but literally this and Black is just too much Cells at once for me and since Black was better uh, yeah, s2 felt a bit more like a chore.

I’m so glad this was only 8 episodes.

Urasekai Picnic

Yuri so I was guaranteed to watch.

Light sci-fi horror which sounds interesting and is a nice change of pace for yuri anime.

It’s not that great as a yuri because it doesn’t really reach the point in the story where the relationship between the leads develops.

It’s pretty alright as a horror though – it deals a lot in urban legend type stuff and while there are numerous monsters present, there’s quite a lot of horror in just the atmosphere of it all. The Otherside has liminal space vibes but as an exterior environment instead.

Helping the atmosphere is the really great and unsettling soundtrack – lots of very alien sounding things and jumps from high notes to low notes that are jarring in a really nice way. It’s got real “My favorite song was an untitled file called “ssssddsdrt66677888.ogg” that I found on a flash drive that I found in a landfill in Tunisia” vibes.

The main area where Urasekai obviously falters is in the adaptation itself. We don’t spend as much time in Sorao’s head as we seem to do in what I’ve seen of the novels, so she’s less gay and has less intricate characterisation. And the direction of the show in general is just a bit too weak to really sell you on a lot of the emotions it wants you to feel.

Really this show’s visuals are lacking in just about everything that’s not background art – and even that is only just fine. Character artwork is never impressive, animation is pretty lacking, they use ugly CG models for even mid-range shots of the characters, basically every monster design is some really bad looking CG, and as I said last point, the direction sucks. It’s just not particularly creepy or evocative or tense and it’s straight up fucking bad during chase scenes – it constantly changes the established sense of speed per party or distance between them or what the location is and generally just makes it extremely hard to actually follow, killing all tension.

I would say I was endeared to this show – I liked the characters and want to see them more and pretty much everything they were doing I still found to be fun, but this was clearly a bad translation from one medium to another and it sucks to see that happen.

Sorao best girl.

Soukou Musume Senki

Lowkey sleeper hit of the season.

Mecha magical girls do travelling around weird Japan for slice of life stuff and occasional action with a strong overlying comedic tone throughout.

Unironically funny, endearing cast with good and natural chemistry.

Art is kind of ugly and CG a bit offputting however lots of the choreography for fights is really solid and as soon as you’re used to the style it just actually looks good.

I completely get why this show is as low rated as it is but it was very easy to watch and definitely made my Wednesdays since the other Wednesday show - Re:Zero - was miserable.

Gekidol

Tfw you watch a show because it has ‘idol’ in the title but it’s like, a time travel world destroying sci-fi robot stageplay yuri loli fanservice show with maybe 3 minutes of idol content total.

At no point while watching Gekidol did I really know what I was watching nor why things were that way. Or rather – I eventually knew it was some weird sci-fi shit, but that made me question what the hell all the pointless stage acting idol cute girl window dressing was all about.

Also that yuri kiss in episode 4 made me more excited for the show than anything else but it’s never developed upon and sorta just happens?

Same for that nude gravure photoshoot a main girl did when she was age 13 – it informs one line of dialogue she says but is otherwise just a pointless random oddity.

This show was just kinda boring to watch a lot of the time actually, which combined with the rather complex plot made this show super difficult to follow.

Visually it’s, eh? The art is actually pretty solid and there’s some good and consistent animation but the direction feels weird for the sake of weird, the character designs are impossible to distinguish from one another, and the colour palette is not pretty on the eyes.

Ngl the main appeal of watching this show was being in WEPcord and talking about it with people – where I learned that it’s loosely adapted from some shows done by the real Alice In theatre troupe that’s existed since like 2010-ish, and Gekidol’s anime started being promoted in like 2016 or so, and was fully finished production around 2017-2018 – it only just made it to TV now for some reason. Fuck the full series Blu-Ray released before the 11th and 12th episodes even aired on TV.

Just the meta of Gekidol as well as the meme enjoyment of it in WEPcord endeared me to it more than I’d probably have otherwise, so like, yeah.

Idolls

CG mocap idol sketch comedy thing.

For the most part once you’re past the initial jarring nature of watching this type of animation, the show looks really quite solid. Models are very high quality and quite a bit of attention is paid to how they interact with their environment. It’s really just the facial animations that look bad – they’re early Vtuber tier “snap” expressions with an unappealing art style to boot. Hair is also jank. Other than that though, looks nice.

Funny-ish? Idk, not totally absurdist but sort of wild enough to be fun, also the talking head was surprisingly endearing as a straight man.

Song from the last episode was actually fairly solid, wild.

This is like the first show I’ve watched and like, meme’d to death with a community of even a few others, which did endear me to it a lot, hence the actually decent score.

I mean it’s 10 episodes and they’re all only 8 minutes long, why not watch it?

The Promised Neverland season 2

Hahahahahhahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha

Man I’m anime only, right, and fuckin, in the first like honestly 10 episodes I did find a lot to enjoy. Well, maybe not “a lot”, but like a good amount of stuff.

Granted, I was also very often bored, or straight up finding certain narrative decisions to be bad and dumb.

Then the last episode came, right, and it like, set up a season 3. But it didn’t. Because it then gave us a 2 minute slideshow literally resolving THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE, like what???????

It was so bad it was good, so narratively unfulfilling but so inherently funny to see something cock up so badly.

Really got a lot of schadenfreude out of this one lol, s1 kinda mid to begin with.

Love the meta of it taking 12 episodes for these kids to escape the farms – the literal prologue – and it taking 11 episodes for them to resolve the entire rest of the global conflict lol.

Yeah idk man this was one hell of a trip. Funniest anime ever.

Idoly Pride

Can’t believe we got 3 idol shows this season.

Idoly Pride was probably the most technically well put together of these 3 idol shows – most polished visuals, really lovely character designs, a lot of the music was pretty good – it’s the most conventionally solid anime of the bunch.

But it’s also just kinda boring to watch outside of cute girls. Plots are very predictable and often super cringy, the girls are mad unmemorable with only the 2 leads having any notable character – really the only reason to like any of them is if they tickle your moe (*cough* Suzu and Chisa).

There’s like, a manager character. And he’s just a normal looking black haired anime boy whose only defining characteristics are that he works hard and is dense. Riveting. Dead girl is in love with him for some reason. He has too much screentime and fuckin, wish he was dead.

Speaking of dead, yeah dead girl. Mana. This show’s first episode is a painfully dragged out slog where we learn that the best idol ever died and then her presence hangs over the rest of the show in the form of a literal ghost that can talk to Makino and randomly one of the girls. It’s fuckin, real weird, kind of too goofy to take seriously, really breaks the tone of that first episode especially, and uh, yeah idk.

Honestly calling this boring is kind of all you need to do with it – it’s not really fun to watch and doesn’t add anything interesting to the meta of idols ala Gekidol and Idolls.

Only reason to even watch is because idol completionist.

Re:Zero Season 2 Part 2

This was just torture to watch.

I can’t fucking believe someone approved 12 HALF HOUR LONG episodes that ran the OP and ED almost never.

It would generally take me 2 minutes of an episode to feel like I’d consumed 24 minutes worth of content – by the end of an episode it’d felt like real world years had passed.

I don’t get why every single character in this show has to overexplain their full mental thought process for every single decision they make and every single emotion they feel literally every episode. Several minutes will occur where someone is just saying why they feel X way and it’s the most elementary shit ever but because it takes a while to say the fans have fooled themselves into thinking this dialogue is smart and means something or endears us to the characters.

Why did “Emilia was happy but then her family got killed and she was sad :(“ take 90 fucking minutes, or maybe 2 hours even I don’t fucking remember.

God this just sucked. I hated this.

Back Arrow

Two cour original mecha anime, sure.

It’s 5am and the show could go to shit during the second cour as befalls so many original anime so I’m gonna keep this brief.

Back Arrow is a really charming and funny comedy show with a pretty basic set of characters and worldbuilding as well as some obvious influences but it feels like it wants to be and is its own thing entirely that’s inspired from yet not derivative of several more successful mecha anime. It also feels like a product of the 2000s but I mean that solely as a compliment – shit just feels easier when you’re watching Back Arrow.

Nothing about this show is the most compelling thing in the world but if you asked me to name anything wrong with it I’d have nothing to really tell you. It’s a show where the quality can be described as “pretty good!” without much need for anything else. Since it’s currently airing anyway there’s no harm in picking it up to finish – though how likely I’d be to tell someone to sit down and watch 24 episodes of this once it’s done just depends on cour 2 plays out I guess.

Easy recommend if you like what this show looks like – it kind of is exactly what it says on the tin – but if you like mecha anime you’re watching this anyway lol.

MAL score is in the 5.7s or something at the time of writing which I literally don’t get lol.

Though saying that if I had to estimate a score atm I’d go like 6/10 lol. Fun, charming, and obviously entertaining enough for me to not drop it in the season where I wanted to drop anything whenever I could – but mind bogglingly good this is not. Doesn’t make it not worth watching though, but we’ll see what cour 2 has in store.

Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san

Want a show with a weird release? How about this anime that has 2 episodes out because they release monthly? They’re just normal enough TV anime episodes – 24 minutes with a 90 second OP and ED – one real defining characteristic being that episodes are split into thirds but that’s still kind of normal. Unsure what about this specifically warranted a monthly release but whatever.

Quality wise it’s been eh so far – it’s really boring for a slice of life and I barely finished the first episode – second one I didn’t even get 5 minutes in before I had to turn the speed up. Jokes are a bit too Japanese for me to care about and characters aren’t exactly endearing either.

Most notable thing about this show is that it’s full CG but you honestly wouldn’t really be able to tell at a glance – it’s very simple but it looks really nice. Not mind blowing in any way – certainly no Beastars level – but it’s enough to show that you can do CG shows that look perfectly adequate and have nothing really going against them visually.

The actual main reason to care about this show is to hear M.A.O do a Kyoto accent and feel very “woah that sounds weird” the entire time. The end.

Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?

This is a show for which my initial expectations of what I would like and dislike about it were pretty much spot on.

I expected I’d absolutely adore Aoi Yuuki’s performance and that she’d singlehandedly make the show watchable and that the rest of it would just be absolute bullshit I’d hate every second of.

And yeah, this show looks ugly as sin, everything that’s not Aoi Yuuki’s voice sounds awful, the dialogue is unbearable, and when it’s anything other than Aoi Yuuki I’m bored enough to want to claw my eyes out.

Turns out carrying an entire show on your own is a difficult task even for Aoi Yuuki – though once again this is actually just a “this season too busy” thing. If I didn’t crave more free time I’d keep watching this since Aoi Yuuki’s performance for this spider character actually is really great and endearing and exactly as high quality as I expected from her – she really went too hard for a show that’s otherwise as awful as this one is.

Also somehow got 2 cours and I don’t actually know if I could take 24 episodes of this so I’m glad I passed after only 3.

Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun

Self help guide for incels who hate how shitty the world is for them but do nothing to go about and change that.

Basically just tells them how to go about and change it in really obvious and easily applicable steps.

Relates them to gamer lingo because obviously.

Pretty noble cause for a show to indulge in, though not something I personally need, so I was basically just watching to cringe at the haha gamer humour.

Watching so many shows this season though and desperate to give myself more free time in a day that I decided to drop it.

Not bad and any other season I’d finish it but eh. 3 episodes is a decent shot still.

Tenchi Souzou Design-bu

I managed 1 episode.

I think I expected this to be really wild and they'd make all sorts of crazy hybrid animals.

But instead they just make normal ones.

So it's an edutainment show, and I think 2 Cells at Work anime are enough edutainment in a season for me.

Character designs aren't my thing.

It was cool learning about how these animals interact I guess but not that cool because too much emphasis is placed on education and not enough on entertainment.

Might’ve finished in a less stacked season or if this was like 4 minute episodes or something – full length feels too long for this.

Wonder Egg Priority

I just do not fucking know. I have never invested so much of myself into a seasonal anime and consequently have never been so emotionally drained by how one ended up. This is absolutely a show I’m going to need to think on a lot before I decide on any sort of score and definitely fit some amount of rewatches in as well. Would just say to expect a fuller thoughts on Wonder Egg post in the future where I decide on a score or something.

Girl of the Season – Shimarin

Yeah kind of obvious – she just is my favourite character from anything this season and season 2 especially gave us such a charming and loveable Shimarin, totally in love with her. I think I knew before the season even started that she’d be Girl of the Season and yeah, that sure as shit held true.

Boy of the Season – Senku Ishigami

Tbh favourite male is a tiny bit harder since Beastars exists but Senku’s just so charismatic and always fun to watch and super duper based and I particularly love the very sentimental Senku we get as this season came to a close – his friendship with Tsukasa was pretty damn gripping. Man’s just great.

Anime of the Season – Yuru Camp Season 2

Went over all the reasons this was amazing way back at the start, it’s the only 10 I even gave out here, this should really go without saying. Would call this like, my 6th favourite anime of all time – will probs be AOTY but we’ll see.

Overall this was one hell of a season – way more fucking sequels than you’d ever need, couple other random adaptations that were solid, some at the very least fascinating original shows, 3 fucking idol shows, a whole bunch of shit. Would certainly call this an overwhelming season – my completionist mentality forced me to finish a lot of things I didn’t exactly want to and I was constantly looking for excuses to drop things. Not gonna say it wasn’t rewarding finishing what I did anyway but my god I hope there’s literally never a season like this ever again. And yet I’ve already got like 15 shows lined up for Spring, and I think even Summer I’ve got 5 or 6 or so... Fuck I should stop following seasonals, huh?

[nakoujou]

Whiny ramblings about writer’s funk that I need to get out, but don’t wanna clog people’s feed with my wall of negativity.

I’m good now! Just wanted to get it outta my system so I can move on and be boss bitch all day long 😎

if you’re having a low moment too, here’s Suga to swipe it away! 

I feel like a shitty writer in this very moment. Maybe it’s from being overworked (holiday is crazy for marketers across the board, but this year is more intense because of COVID). I’ve been too tired to write properly. Even when I manage to finish a quickie draft, I struggle with editing. I know a beta would erase all stress, but then I would feel disrespectful for not giving them my best work possible to review.

I think about not finishing my Todomomo WIP. The same three rude af Anons keep badgering me to update, then proceed to talk shit about my writing. I’m now just deleting them as I see instead of being petty again. I end up reading them anyway, which puts me in a damper. I could do the usual speal: I know my writing sucks, but I’m trying to be a little better with some form of daily practice. It’s OK to think a newly published chapter is the best ever yet, but then realize it’s meh in a week. That happens, so write on. You’ll do better next time around.

 Today, the motivational speal does not work. I will not blame election or work stress, but those are a factor.

Tomorrow, or likely next week, I will feel better about my writing. I will treat my WIP for all its flaws and not go crazy attempt to re-do every single chapter. The mistakes in First Snow are there as lessons learned (awkward sentences, meh dialogue, filler scenes, everything lol) for new chapters. My goal is to finish it, whether or not I end up being the only reader in the end. I can only improve with each new chapter going forward. I will be okay taking my damn time with updates because ya girl gotta work and sometimes, just wants to binge ANTM and Drag Race in my free time instead of write.

So for now, I’ll write out the hard to believe blessings.

Living in the US is a blessing, despite how shitty our country is right now. Yes, we need universal healthcare and not a shitty president, but have the privilege to vote and speak out against our shitty country.

Working at my job, despite the insane hours and demands and the occasional awful executive, is a dream come true. I get to watch my favorite artists perform live for free, hear their new album before the public, and tell some artists in person what their music means to me. Music marketing is underpaid but damn, the experience and co-workers I’ve met are worth it. It is a privilege to be at a company that lets me work from home.

Writing, despite my lack of descriptive or emotive sentences, is a joy. I cringe when re-reading many sections of what’s published on First Snow and my other Ao3 fics, but that means I’m improving well enough to see those mistakes. I will keep writing. Whether it’s 2K words in an hour or two sentences at night. I will practice because it’s a privilege to write how I like and feel and share it on the internet.

Because this is just ramblings, I don’t know how to end it lol. Thanks to whoever read the whole thing and I wish you a nice day!

[amphtaminedreams]

50 Films You’ve Got to Watch

Hi to anyone who’s reading,

I thought I’d take a break from the fashion posts to ramble on about something else that I’m really interested in for a hot minute. And I say ramble with intent, because I do go ON. 

The topic is film and I thought that I’d make a list of my 50 must watches. These are movies that I feel had the biggest impact on me which means, yes, I do have tattoos referring to a couple of them, lol. My genre of choice is usually horror and although there has been a bit of a “horror renaissance” and a shift towards prioritising good quality storylines over jump scares in recent years, on the whole, they typically aren’t the most highbrow films out there, so there aren’t THAT many on this list. Most of the horror films I listed are just genuinely good quality rather than a straight-up gorefest or anything too terrifying, however, I’m not that easily scared so if you did fancy watching any of the films I mentioned, take that with a slight pinch of salt!

Also, this isn’t anything to take too seriously. I really like movies and cinema but I’m also not a movie critic and this is more of a hobby than something I want to pursue. Like, I’m completely aware of how unrealistic working in TV or film is as a career if your family isn’t loaded. Very aware. Painfully aware you could say (imagine me sighing as I’m writing this). That being said, part of me does want to do a ranking of every film I’ve seen in 2019 at some point this year, so if anybody else is interested in this kinda thing let me know! 

Lauren x

50 Films You’ve Got to Watch:

1. Black Swan (2010)

“I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect.”

I watched Black Swan years ago now and I still remember how disturbing I found it and how exciting that was to me. I was probably a bit too young (young enough that my mum felt it necessary to cover my eyes during the Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis sex scene, lol) but even then I could recognise that it was a beautifully haunting film and Darren Aronofsky has gone on to be one of my favourite directors.

2. Jennifer’s Body (2009)

“And now, I'm eating your boyfriend. See? At least I'm consistent.”

Engrave it on my tombstone: JENNIFER’S BODY DESERVED BETTER. I fully believe that if this movie was released in 2019, it wouldn’t have faced half the criticisms it did back in 2009. It genuinely was ahead of its time. Megan Fox? As a boy-eating, demonic cheerleader? And Amanda Seyfried? Some of the most ICONIC DIALOGUE EVER? It should’ve invented a GENRE. Instead it got paid DUST. Yes, when I write in caps lock, my internal voice is YELLING. I feel passionately about this, okay?!

3. La La Land (2016)

“I guess I'll see you in the movies.”

Again, maybe it’s a basic film bitch opinion to have but I adored La La Land. I saw it at the cinema and spent the last 20 minutes of the film sobbing, only to find my mum and sister distinctly underwhelmed. I indignantly ranted back then to them how perfect a film it was and I’m going to do the same thing now so if you are reading and you didn’t like it, then you should probably just move on because I wouldn’t want to read myself banging on about Emma Stone again for several paragraphs either (don’t worry, I’ll try and keep it to one). I can’t help it. This film was just TOO REAL! Like, in every way but the actual plot and characters, La La Land has the dreamlike quality of a fairytale. The colours are rich and thick and always complimentary, the musical sequences are either like Disney songs or lullabies, and Emma and Ryan Gosling are made for each other. But then life and ambitions and resentments get in the way. And that’s the real part! That’s why it’s so bloody good! 

4. Easy A (2010)

“People thought I was a dirty skank? Fine. I’d be the dirtiest skank they’d ever seen.”

And so we arrive at the movie that actually began my love affair with Emma Stone. Iconic. Iconic in every way. The bad reputation montage is cinematic excellence. For real, though, this is so underrated as a coming of age movie. Like don’t get me wrong, Mean Girls is everything (I easily could’ve included it on this list but I feel like it’s just a given that anyone who grew up in the noughties loves that film) but Easy A deserves just as much credit. It has Penn Badgley, one of the few celebrity males I care about! Amanda Bynes! Aly Michalka! Lisa Kudrow! Did I mention Emma Stone?

5. Kill Bill (2003)

“Now, if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say, now's the fucking time!”

If I had to put any of these films as my singular favourite, it would probably be the first Kill Bill. Controversial, I know; even my dad introduced it to me as the weaker of the two. To list any Quentin Tarantino movie as the one that inspired you to want to be a director is probably a very cliche film student thing to say BUT I’m not a film student and I’ve put my directing pipe dream permanently to one side, thus, coming from me it’s not as hackneyed a statement. Or so I tell myself, lol. Basically, I was in awe of Kill Bill from start to finish. The colourisation is a dream, from the crazy 88 scene to the final fight between The Bridge and O Ren Ishii, and I particularly remember loving the animation sequence despite that not really being my kinda thing. I was just so impressed with how seamlessly something so out of place, considering the live action format of the rest of the film, fit in with everything else; even the scenes that should be absurd instead work with the comic book style narrative. Uma Thurman is of course amazing and iconic af but Lucy Liu as O Ren Ishii is my favourite thing about this film and the line I chose gave me all the bad bitch energy I need to, I think, get me through the rest of my time on this planet. If not, the tattooed version of this still I have on my arm should hopefully do the job. Yep, I truly ascended to a divine level of basic film hoe with that life choice.

6. Marie Antoinette (2006)

“This, Madame, is Versailles.”

The first Sofia Coppola film on this list, I love this woman’s work to death. Regardless of the content she’s working with, the end result always gives me the feeling I’m watching an extended music video. They always have this almost dreamlike quality to them and everything from the colour palette to the camera movements to the soundtrack in Marie Antoinette is tied together perfectly.

7. Mother! (2017)

“You never loved me. You just loved how much I loved you.”

I was tense throughout the entirety of Mother. As a socially anxious, obsessively tidy control freak, this whole film was like something from one of my nightmares; think unwanted house party on crack. I was mentally screaming along with Jennifer Lawrence for all of those people to get out, whilst simultaneously just staring at her face because she is so fucking gorgeous! Even when she’s completely lost it! Totally unrealistic but it makes for some really pretty shots! And then there’s the ending which left me kind of like “what the fuck did I just watch?” Which is what Darren Aronofsky films do best. They’re terrifying but also quite beautiful and Mother is no exception.

8. Gerald’s Game (2017)

“Everybody's got a little corner in there somewhere. A button they won't admit they want pressed.”

I finally got round to watching this for the first time the other day and I absolutely loved it. It probably helps that the last Stephen King adaptation I saw was Pet Sematary, so despite the praise this got at the time, my expectations weren’t super high, but I think this really is a perfect horror film. It’s clever, doesn’t rely on jump scares, and the creepy scenes that are in there really get under your skin. It drags a little in the middle though it’s beautifully shot, acted and has one of the few “body horror” scenes in a horror that’s actually made me cringe.

9. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

“I think that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares, Martin, we've got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.”

I don’t want to say too much about this film and spoil the plot, so I’ll just say that it’s incredible. Devastatingly sad but also wonderfully hopeful at the same time, and solidified my interest in psychology! I could watch Jennifer Connelly all day.

10. Alien (1979)

“This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”

As a horror fan, I don’t think I need to explain why this film’s on the list. It’s been raved about and video essayed and called a pioneer of the genre ad nauseam. Again, not that this is really anything new but part of what I love about this movie is the context of its release and success; before Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Ellen Ripley, it was a rare occurrence to have a female protagonist in an action-based movie. Alien really paved the way for women to take up space in a previously male-dominated genre.

11. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

“Crazy is building your ark after the flood has already come.”

I saw this for the first time at the cinema and pretty much went in blind. I hadn’t seen Cloverfield but I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Final Destination 3 was always my favourite of the franchise, lol) and there wasn’t really anything else on worth seeing, so my sister and I chose this and it was an experience. Like, of all the films on this list, this is probably the one that had me most on edge and I’m not sure watching it on your laptop on Putlocker will do it justice. You need the curtains pulled to, the volume way up and complete silence.

12. American Psycho (2000)

“Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now, you fucking stupid bastard!”

There isn’t a dull moment in American Psycho. Every line is quotable and every scene is straight to the point. I feel like this film is a masterclass in that Stanley Kubrick quote about editing where he says he liked to get rid of everything that was not absolutely vital to advancing the plot or the audience’s understanding of the character in any way. Plus, the ending is trippy af! Or maybe I’m just a bit oblivious to something that was quite obvious throughout, who knows. Either way, what the final scenes really mean are fun to think about.

13. The Descent (2005)

“I'm an English teacher, not fucking Tomb Raider.”

Okay, so I literally just watched this the other day and had to begrudgingly remove Silent Hill to make space for it (I KNOW it was critically panned and I KNOW the video game is better but I liked the visuals, OKAY!?) because The Descent is truly one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen. Before we even get to the supernatural element of the creatures, which are genuinely creepy for once, there’s a party bag of other phobia-inducing sequences that had me emotionally exhausted within the first half hour alone. Claustrophobia, darkness, heights, actual cringeworthy body horror, The Descent has something for everyone. The way it utilises space (or lack of for that matter) and darkness and panicked camera pans makes you feel as if you are really down in the cave with the characters. To add to that, I was actually rooting for all of them too; it probably helped that they were English rather than the typical American slasher cast but I found them to be a believable and likeable group of women. I truly did want them all to get out alive *spoilers*, which only made the ending all the more devastating and although the general narrative is quite predictable, the way in which things get wrapped up left just the right amount of shocks and questions to leave you reeling.

14. Eighth Grade (2018)

“Gucci.”

No film has ever captured what it’s like having social anxiety during “high school” (it’s called secondary school here in England, I know, but you get me) better than Eighth Grade. A tribute to the feeling of never quite fitting in and wishing you knew how to do what everyone else seems to be able to do naturally, it encapsulates that awkwardness with an accuracy that is really impressive considering that 1. it’s Bo Burnham’s first film, and 2. he’s not...like...a 13 year old girl. It is just as funny as it is sad and Elsie Fisher is great and so, so believable. Girl should’ve won some kind of Oscar.

15. American Beauty (1999)

“I don't think that there's anything worse than being ordinary.”

I wavered on whether or not to include this film on the list due to the Kevin Spacey controversy and decided that I had to with the disclaimer that I watched it quite some time before the stories about him came out and won’t ever watch any of the new things he inevitably ends up doing (because Hollywood has a notoriously short memory when it comes to the actions of disgraced male actors, lol). You can’t deny the amount of talent and skill that went into making a film so graceful and elegant and yet in equal parts unnerving, and I don’t think we should refuse to acknowledge the achievements of everyone else on that set because of Spacey’s behaviour. 

16. Bandersnatch (2018)

“The past is immutable, Stefan. No matter how painful it is, we can't change things. We can't choose differently with hindsight. We all have to learn to accept that.”

As I was watching/playing through Bandersnatch, I didn’t necessarily love it. I think I’m echoing a common sentiment when I say that I was kinda confused. I was desperately trying to *spoiler* avoid the option of the protagonist murdering their dad (he seemed like a nice guy!?) but somehow always ended up there by their logic. So I watched most of the endings and then I went on and busied myself for the rest of the evening. AND I COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. One minute I was completely deluding myself into believing the whole parallel universes thing was true and that I should test it out (don’t ask), and then the next I was thinking how disturbing it was that we’d been basically been inside the head of a person experiencing a mental breakdown severe enough for them murdering their dad, who had only ever wanted to help when you think about it objectively, to seem rational. The confusion started making sense within the context of the experience of the protagonist and our role as the audience and though I hadn’t realised it at the time, I’d been completely absorbed in the episode. Maybe the confusion wasn’t intentional, maybe I’m giving Charlie Brooker too much credit based on the recent couple of series of Black Mirror BUT I can’t deny that Bandersnatch left a huge mark on me, and after all, this is the man who wrote White Christmas. 

17. Get Out (2017)

“White girls. They get you every time.”

Going into this film, I was cocky. I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting what’s going to happen in things, probably just because I watch too much TV, but from the trailer I was sure I knew exactly what was going to happen. And then, I was completely blown away. The ending was SO SMART, in terms of both the within universe storytelling and also the metaphorical narrative/commentary on the way our society treats black men and women. Like those early episodes of Black Mirror, it had me like “how the fuck did Jordan Peele think of that!?”. I can only dream of being as creative in my writing one day. Even little plot points like where the “police” car turns up at the end and your stomach sinks and you realise the intention of that is most likely to help you empathise with what the average African-American person feels in their day to day life when police make themselves present, what with institutional police brutality and racial profiling; it’s clear so much thought went into this script.

18. Ghost Stories (2017)

“It's funny, isn't it? How it's always the last key that unlocks everything.”

I don’t have all too much to say about this one apart from that I love a well-constructed English horror. I feel like it’s something we don’t do all too often and to be honest, I’m struggling to think of many English horror films in the first place. Ghost Stories is a great example of why we need more; it’s smart and spooky and folky without hitting you over the head with all those elements and Andy Nyman is a perfect lead. Love a bit of Martin Freeman too.

19. Girl, Interrupted (1999)

“Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you, or me, amplified.”

Maybe this is the 13 year old black and white Tumblr girl in me jumping out but I still adore this film. I know it’s not necessarily the most critically well received but Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Brittany Murphy are 3 of my favourite actresses and I do love the script. I also like the way that Borderline Personality Disorder was characterised in Winona’s character Susanna (I’m wavering on whether to call her a character as if I recall correctly the book was based on the author’s real experience) in that it was quite subtle and that she wasn’t portrayed as manipulative, or aggressive or basically, as the villain, which I feel is usually the go-to. It focussed more on the mood aspects and the way that people with BPD tend to latch onto and idealise others, as Susanna does with Lisa, and these are both things that I have personally struggled with in the past.

20. Hereditary (2018)

“All I do is worry and slave and defend you, and all I get back is that fucking face on your face!”

It was hard to find a quote that encapsulated what makes Hereditary so great because so much of it is about what isn’t said, if that makes sense. It’s a lot of pained silences and resentful looks and horrified screams, and doesn’t that sound like a fun time? Honestly, it’s not necessarily, lmao. Shocker. It has you feeling like something awful is about to happen the whole time, deep in the pit of your stomach, but I like that in a film, when it does make you properly feel. Ari Aster gets slow-burning dread just right in his exploration of dysfunctional families and grudges, with a few heart-sinking shocks thrown in for good measure all without overdoing the jump scares. There are a lot of deeply unnerving “supernatural” moments but there are just as many horrifically realistic familial conflict scenes that give you that whole “something is wrong” gut instinct in equal measures. It’s been a year and I’m still so angry that Toni Collette didn’t get an Oscar nomination for her performance, because it was really the perfect opportunity to break down the invisible wall between horror and critical recognition. On a more positive note, I loved Midsommar too (not as much as Hereditary but it was still a trip) and I cannot wait to see what Ari Aster does next. Once again, I’ll be in the cinema on opening night.

21. Heathers (1988)

“Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.”

Heathers is iconic in every way: the outfits, the cast, the lines. I mean, the acting can be a bit iffy at times but I honestly think that without Heathers, Jennifer’s Body might never have existed and that’s a world I wouldn’t want to live in. There was so much choice when I was picking a line to summarise why I like it so much and of course, “fuck me gently with a chain saw, do I look like Mother Theresa?” deserves an honourable mention. You almost made it bby. The TV remake? We don’t speak of it.

22. Hot Fuzz (2007)

“The way we see it, it’s all for the greater good.”

It might not be the “artiest” movie ever but I’ve seen Hot Fuzz so many times and it never gets old. Though I used to love it when I was younger purely for the PG-13 gore, now I appreciate it for the absurdity and the ridiculousness and to be honest, the total believability of the plot when it comes to towns ruled by low-key hostile, doddery old white people. I should know, I live in one.

23. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

“You probably heard we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business. We in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.”

I wish I wasn’t a hoe for Quentin Tarantino films (I’ve felt personally attacked by many a poundlandbandit starter pack) but I am. The breakneck pacing, the tongue in cheek dialogue and the gore all make this one of my ultimate favourites. Also, I have a huge crush on Melanie Laurent. Yes, it’s the French accent. No, I don’t know the mechanics of how that works. I hear someone speak French and I want to marry them! I can’t help it!

24. Ingrid Goes West (2017)

“Are you actually insane?”

This seems like a random choice to have on the list seeing as it was never really that hyped up, nor did it receive masses of critical acclaim. It did get positive reviews but that was about it. However, as soon as I saw the trailer, I knew I had to see it. Months, and an £8 purchase from HMV later, I finally got to watch Ingrid Goes West and I loved every moment of it. Whilst Aubrey Plaza’s character, I feel, is an exploration of a lot of young women’s insecurities and self-doubts and fears, blown up to monstrous proportions (or maybe just mine, lol), and a 90 minute film about that doesn’t sound all that revolutionary, this one is as intense as it is stylish and darkly comedic and that’s what puts it on the map for me. 

25. Insidious (2011)

“I like to call them travellers.”

So this film scared the ever-living SHIT out of me when I was younger and though I now consider horror my favourite genre and watch it on the regular with absolutely no qualms, 13 year old me was (not to use the world lightly) mildly traumatised. I genuinely couldn’t be home alone by myself or sleep at night without thinking the old woman ghost from the beginning was outside my room for a good 6 months or so. Like it literally exacerbated an already present sleep disorder to the point where my understandably frustrated-at-being-woken-up-nightly-by-her-panicking-daughter mother got me referred for CBT (to reflect on a time when I didn’t know what CBT or CAMHS was is…blissful, lol). And maybe because of that, in my mind, I still conceptualise it as one of the very few horror movies that has actually scared me, hence its place on the list. That scene where we first see that Star Wars looking red faced devil? I’d probably still nope out even now.

26. It Follows (2014)

“It could look like someone you know or it could be a stranger in a crowd. Whatever helps it get close to you.”

There’s not too much to say about It Follows, other than that it’s a good horror film and more importantly just a really good film. I feel it’s a crucial, early part of this warmly welcomed horror renaissance we are now fully in the thick of where writers are focussing less on making people gasp and more on actual good quality cinema. It’s a simple concept that leaves enough room for you to ask your own questions whilst still feeling somewhat complete, and not annoyingly open-ended. The shots are good, the characters are normal enough to be believable, and the colour palette is Fincher-esque; the muted tones perfectly complement the feelings of dread that run throughout. Whilst you don’t need to be concerned with what the whole thing is a metaphor of in order to enjoy the film, the possibility of there being that second reading of the narrative, for me, elevate it to a higher level. In other words, it’s got *Shrek voice* layers.

27. Juno (2007)

“I'm just gonna go ahead and nip this thing in the bud. Cuz you know, they say pregnancy often leads to…you know...an infant.”

I love Ellen Page. I love Michael Cera. Together they are the best thing ever. See, I’m not really much of a rom-com girl but I see this as less of a rom-com and more of a coming of age film with romantic snippets and great one liners. It’s sweet and whimsical and funny but also really fucking real in parts, and it’s definitely what I would consider a modern classic. If you haven’t watched it already, do!

28. Suspiria (2018)

“Love and manipulation, they share houses very often. They are frequent bedfellows.”

Witches! Ballet dancing! Decapitation! Tilda Swinton! What’s not to love? As soon as I saw the trailer for Suspiria, I knew I had to see it. Creepy but also beautifully shot and scored, it was worth the 8 month wait from the Venice Film Festival and eventual caving and watching on 123Movies after I couldn’t find the DVD on Amazon; I finally got to tick it off my watch list only to like it so much I had to add the original Suspiria back on.

29. Mulholland Drive (2001)

“I hope that I never see that face, ever, outside of a dream.”

Another film which had me like WTF by the end, I really recommend Mulholland Drive for anyone who wants to be vaguely creeped out and extremely confused at the same time. See, I really love a film where you spend the next few hours after watching researching all the different interpretations and reading interviews with the director. That sounds sarcastic, but honestly, I love it. It’s a moody, film-noir style mindfuck of a movie and even after doing my research I’m still quite baffled. That’s the best part. 

30. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

“Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon, orange in the evening.”

It took me a while to get on board with seeing Marlon Wayans in a serious role (I’ve seen White Chicks far too many times, clearly), but once I did, I was into it. To be totally honest, I don’t think there’s a single happy moment in this film; it comes up quite frequently as one of the most disturbing of all time, which I’m sure Aronofsky probably thinks of as another notch on his belt. Whilst imo, that’s quite a grandiose claim, Requiem for a Dream definitely stuck in my mind after I watched it. Even if you’ve never watched the film, the ending sequence is notorious for how fucked up it is and I do think it’s earned the infamy. What stuck out more to me, though, was how purposeful every shot and sequence felt in terms of trying to let you into the character’s states of mind, the short lived bursts of euphoria and the panicked downwards spirals.  I think it will always be one of the most compelling films about addiction for highlighting how terrifyingly out of one’s control it can be.  

31. Room (2015)

“No one is strong alone.”

This film made me cry buckets. Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay are wonderful, and everyone involved deserved all the Oscar hype. Every line was so heartfelt and emotive, and I loved Tremblay’s voiceovers. To translate the stream of consciousness of a kid from page to screen in a way that it remains believable in spite of its wisdom (not like those tweets where people try to make out their kid just casually made some off the cuff scathing political jibe at the dinner table) is quite the feat and similarly, I’m in awe of how the director managed to communicate the pain and confusion of the characters on a level that transcended the physical confines of said room. The escape scene had my heart in my mouth. All this being said, I should really read the book because it’s supposed to be even better. 

32. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

‘When I'm around you, I kind of feel like I'm on drugs. Not that I do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case I do them all the time. All of them.”

Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are two of my favourite actors and so it’s a given that Scott Pilgrim is one of my favourite films. It’s such a fun, easy watch and the video-game inspired directorial style makes it, in terms of cinematography, probably the most memorable Edgar Wright film on this list imo. The concept, based on the graphic novel, is quite a simple one but that doesn’t stop it being entertaining from start to finish. The rest of the cast is great too: Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Mae Whitman, Aubrey Plaza and Alison Pill (Ivy from American Horror Story, anyone?) All make appearances, plus Chris Evans. He’s Captain America or something, right?

33. Scream (1996)

“No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface, I wanna be in the sequel!”

The Scream movies were my absolute favourite when I was just getting into “horror” as a 13/14 year old because they were always pretty tame in terms of scares but nonetheless, always a trip. Though, controversially, I’d probably say I enjoyed Scream 4 just as much as the first one (I am a bit of an Emma Roberts stan), I chose the first one purely for how iconic it was and how ahead of its time. It mixed satire and horror in a way that hadn’t really been done in such a mainstream way before and made it possible for films like Cabin in the Woods and The Final Girls to do so well.

34. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

“Take car. Go to Mum's. Kill Phil, sorry, grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.”

I’ve seen Shaun of the Dead way, way, way too many times and I’ll still probably watch it again the next time ITV decide to show it too. It makes me laugh, it’s got lots of good gore and it’s easy to follow. The perfect film to put on whilst eating a take away, as long as you’re not too squeamish, lol.

35. Silence of the Lambs (1991)

“Well, Clarice. Have the lambs stopped screaming?”

Jodie Foster’s portrayal of Clarice Starling makes her one of my favourite movie heroines of all time; quietly courageous, she was the type of female lead that really hadn’t cropped up all that much in the films that came before Silence of the Lambs. And despite its problematic handling of certain issues, it’s a fucking incredible film. The thing about Hannibal Lecter is that they don’t have to tell you that he’s always one step ahead, you see it for yourself (the elevator scene!) and so it kinda feels like he’s looking into YOUR soul too. The confrontation at the end between Clarice and Buffalo Bill is one of the most nerve-racking 15 minutes or so of film I’ve ever watched, and if I ever get asked to justify why I’m scared of the dark again, I’m going to point straight to this scene. Yes, I’m a baby but my fears are VALID!

36. Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

“I do this! Time after time after time! I do all this shit for other people! And then I wake up and I'm empty! I have nothing!”

As you can probably tell from my inclusion of Mother! on this list, I love Jennifer Lawrence, and this is probably my favourite drama film of hers. The way that she and Bradley Cooper portray two people struggling with mental illness is refreshingly honest in that it shows it can make you quite an unlikeable person at times, albeit someone who is just trying their best to survive. That being said, in spite of the subject matter it’s still a relatively light and easy-to-watch film. The diner scene in particular is a masterclass in realistic conflict and reaction, and I hate to be “ooo, edgy” but several of the lines did strike a really deep chord.

37. The Babadook (2014)

“Sometimes I just want to smash your head against the brick wall until your fucking brains pop out.”

The best thing that the Babadook does, much like It Follows, is instils a sense of deep seated dread in you before you even see the supernatural forces at work. The washed out colour palette, apparent emotional disconnect of Jennifer Kent’s (who also directs!) character, and the disorienting movements of the camera all help to create a lingering unease that is just as effective as the grossly uncanny appearance of the monster/ghost/creature/whatever-you-want-to-call-it himself. It’s obvious that Kent had a very clear vision of the story she wanted to tell and even more so that she is a very talented woman; I hope to see even more female directed horror films in the future if the Babadook is anything to go by. The way this film blurred the lines between the inner struggles of a grieving family and the outside supposedly paranormal influence was unsettling as fuck and to get into the psychology of a mother left on her own to raise a small child and how terrifying that might feel is something only a immensely intuitive and empathetic woman could do. Props to her.

38. The Craft (1996)

“We are the weirdos, mister.”

Not to sound all halloween-is-the-only-day-of-the-year-I-care-about VSCO girl (although that might actually be quite an accurate description of me to be honest), but if there’s one thing that sticks in my mind about the craft, it’s the aesthetic. It’s kind of what I aim to emulate in every aspect of my life, NBD. Seriously, when I was trying to pick a still, I was spoilt for choice. The rituals, the outfits, the witchy interiors; there’s this one GIF of Nancy, Rochelle, Bonnie (and maybe Sarah?) lighting all these gorgeous candles and if I could walk around with it permanently looping on my forehead, I would. And ignoring my shallow reasons for liking The Craft, it’s just a really good film. Nancy Downs is probably one of the most interesting female villains of all time and I’m obsessed with anything that explores magic and the occult. It’s equal parts dark and girly, not to use that in a derivative way at all, in that not only does it teeter on the line of being scary, it’s also a gritty exploration of female friendship, power and jealousy. If you are a halloween-is-the-only-day-of-the-year-I-care-about VSCO girl, definitely watch it; more power to you.

39. The Favourite (2018)

“All I know is, your carriage awaits and my maid is on her way up with something called a pineapple.”

I’d seen The Favourite twice within, like, a month of it being released in British cinemas and I do not have a single regret about that; well, maybe a minor regret in paying over £12 to see it in the Leicester Square Odeon with the assumption that the extra price meant fancy seats (it didn’t), but on the whole, I’m pretty happy with my life choices. Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, and the period Mean Girls comparison drew me in but I came back the second time for the costumes, the dialogue, the editing and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Or Rachel Weiss, in other words. See, The Favourite is superbly casted in that Yorgos Lanthimos must have known we can’t help but see Emma Stone as the “good girl”/protagonist and so it took me a whole second viewing to see her character for what she really was, and realise The Favourite is in some ways less a story of Abigail Masham’s rise to power and more the tragic disintegration of Sarah and Anne’s relationship. I’m sure you can view the film both ways but to view it as the latter brings a whole new dimension to it and the ending, imo. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t go into the film expecting some vaguely historical lesbianism and that definitely made for a slightly awkward birthday viewing with my family BUT I wasn’t at all disappointed.

40. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

“If you dig a hole in the yard, better make it a big one.”

This film is slow-moving, weird and the acting can be stiff at the best of times, and yet somehow all these things add to the (take a shot every time I say-) dread that builds throughout. You don’t know exactly how things are going to end, but you do know it’s not well. Like in his latest directorial entry of The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos excels in the realm of the strange and vaguely fantastical through his script, score and cinematography, and so even though the settings are quite mundane, The Killing of a Sacred Deer kind of feels like some macabre modern fairytale, the moral of which I can’t quite work out. I can’t imagine anyone playing Martin more unnervingly than Barry Keoghan and I’m never going to complain about Nicole Kidman, but it’s the imagery of the tears of blood, Steven’s children dragging themselves along the floor and the ending scene that stuck with me long after the film had finished. If you’ve got the patience and you enjoyed the style of The Favourite, there’ll definitely be something positive for you to take away from The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

41. The Orphanage (2007)

“Seeing is not believing. It's the other way around. Believe, and you will see.”

When I was first told by my year 11 Spanish teacher that we were going to be watching The Orphanage in class, I definitely didn’t foresee myself including it in a top 50 films list 5 years later and yet here we are. I mean, I shouldn’t have been surprised really as she did tell us it was good and I had frequently seen it included in lists of the best horror films but as with pretty much anything our teachers would put on as an excuse not to teach for a few lessons (I’m really NOT complaining here, they deserve the break and I would definitely do the same, lol), my expectations were definitely low. Side note, I also since found out that Bilbao seems like a pretty cool place and there was a reason she kept banging on about that too, and so moral of the story, teachers do sometimes have some decent recommendations BUT my assumption was that The Orphanage must be pretty tame for her to show it to us. Parents-even of 16 of year olds-love to complain, lol. And to be fair,  it isn’t so much in your face scary so much as it is kind of tragic with an undertone of spooky but I really enjoyed it. I want to say that part of what I enjoyed about it so much was the mystery element but honestly I think a lot of that comes from the fact that it’s in Spanish so I had to work to follow what was actually going on. 

42. The Ring (2002)

“I can't imagine being stuck down a well all alone like that. How long could you survive?”

The Ring does visuals better than any other horror. The contorted faces of Samara’s victims, the infamous tape and the shots of the well all have a staple in pop culture for a reason. Whilst I don’t find Samara herself particularly frightening, the lore and mythology surrounding her feels so authentically creepy; the tape in particular reminds me of the kind of weird YouTube video you might stumble across when you’re supposed to be trying to get to bed late at night and instantly hate yourself for watching. Naomi Watts is a compelling lead and though I was probably rooting for Sarah Michelle Gellar in the American remake of the Grudge more (I still low-key associate her with the live-action Scooby-Doo and I have no shame), to compare other noughties horror classics, on the whole The Ring is definitely the better quality movie.

43. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

The Shawshank Redemption is just an unequivocally good film. On paper, it doesn’t necessarily have any of the things that draw me to a movie in it, but it’s brilliantly acted, written and shot. It’s frequently cited as one of the greatest movies of all time and I think that’s a very fair statement.

44. The Shining (1980)

“Wendy? Darling? Light of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in!”

I love The Shining. In terms of scares, not all that much happens in it, but what we do see (the corpse in the bath tub is fucking horrifying) undoubtedly leaves an impact. The score is so unnervingly perfect that I can still hear the sound that’s made when we see those 2…puppets? Costumed people? Basically some kind of weird furry activity-which believe me, makes sense if you’ve seen it-going on. And I only need to see a still of the Overlook Hotel and I can immediately feel the sense of claustrophobia and growing tension that Stanley Kubrick so effectively communicated. A lot of people shat on Shelley Duvall’s acting at the time and whilst she obviously didn’t match Jack Nicholson’s energy, she did come across as a woman genuinely traumatised which is sad when you do consider the effect that shooting the film had on her. With that aside, The Shining is a massively pivotal part of horror history and I’m very excited to see Doctor Sleep this year!

45. The Virgin Suicides (1999)

“Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl.”

It really is a toss up between Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides when it comes to Sofia Coppola’s best film, and so of course I had to include them both. See, whereas Marie Antoinette could be the visual incarnation of an album like Marina and the Diamonds’ Electra Heart or Charli XCX’s Sucker (if you ignore the less than fortunate ending, lmao), The Virgin Suicides plays out more to the tunes of something less bubblegum pop and more breezy and mellow, maybe LDR’s Ultraviolence or Honeymoon. You could say in a way that this film romanticises suicide and you’d definitely have a point, but I think considering the fact that it’s based on a book and was made in a time when we were less aware of the damage popular media can do (I think there’s a similar point to be made about the way the villain of Silence of the Lambs’s gender is portrayed and linked to his motivation), I give it a pass. It does also kind of make sense for the film to take this approach; the Lisbon girls are viewed through the eyes of a group of boys who are infatuated with them but also ultimately know nothing about them. In a way, it’s almost a critique of the way these boys think and a commentary on just how stifling and confusing young womanhood can be. I think it’s a beautiful film and a perfect adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel.

46. The VVitch (2015)

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

Is it sad that I have this quote tattooed on my back? Is it biased for me to say no? Because for me, just as much as the Virgin Suicides is about how stifling society’s expectations of young women and how they are supposed to think and act, The VVitch is about the demonisation of girls who go against this and how liberation and sexual freedom for so long were perceived as the result of some kind of satanic and deeply disturbing force at work rather than individual expressions of freedom and femininity. The ending is HAPPY, okay, and if you take away the misty, barren landscapes and the isolation and the paranoia and the baby eating witches and the accusations and the demonic goats, it’s kinda a dark feminist fairy tale to go against puritan panic. I mean, let’s be honest, *spoilers* Thomasin’s siblings were annoying AF. Not that I’m condoning child murder on any level, but you know. In a narrative context was it really so much of a loss when those little shits got the chop?

47. Thoroughbreds (2017)

“At the end of the day, I have a perfectly healthy brain. It just doesn't contain feelings. And that doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. It just means I have to work a little harder than everybody else to be good.”

I love Olivia Cooke. I love Anya Taylor-Joy. I love concise, cutting dialogue, the idea of middle class American social politics, and a little bit of (fictional, of course) murder thrown in there for good measure. Thus, I really love Thoroughbreds. If you watched it with the sound off, it’d be a Polo Ralph Lauren promotional film that gets really dark at the end, and what’s not to like about that?

48. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

“What are these people watching, people like me?”

I still haven’t got round to reading the book this film was based on and I feel like that’s something I need to get on top of ASAP, because it’s been sitting on my shelf for a long ass time. However, based on the little I know about how faithful a film adaptation it is, I think Ezra Miller and Tilda Swinton were a wonderful pairing, and this is a film that’s all about the characters, so it’s a good job they were so well cast. Miller does a great job at getting right under your skin and answering a lot of my questions about what leads someone to commit the kind of horrific crime that his character, Kevin, does. Arrogance, done subtly, is hard to pull off but he nails it, and Swinton is very, very believable as a haunted, grief-stricken mother wrestling with the natural question of the part she played in her son’s actions and the scrutiny that comes with it. Not only that but from the offset, every part of the cinematography helps to convey the feeling of impending doom that builds right up until the climax. The colour palette in particular, which for the most part doesn’t stray too far from the mundane greys and bleak washed-out tones perhaps reflective of Eva’s state of mind, does a great job of foreshadowing what to come when it quite purposefully does take a diversion. It’s all about the red, apparently. Take note.

49. Whiplash (2014)

“Any fucking moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what's expected of them. I believe that is an absolute necessity.”

You honestly wouldn’t believe that a film about drumming could feel like a horror and yet here Whiplash is, leaving me on the edge of my seat and wincing for, like, 2 hours straight. Tonally it couldn’t be more different from the other Damien Chazelle film on this list (La La Land), and yet it flows just as seamlessly and has his same impeccable rhythm; every word, yell and snarl slots perfectly into place and every swivel of the camera is flawlessly executed. If you’re looking for an intense and fast-paced drama, I can’t recommend Whiplash enough.

50. Zombieland (2009)

“Twelve's the new twenty. Gun please.”

Zombieland has only one fault: that Jesse Eisenberg’s character wasn’t played by Michael Cera. But it has Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson so I’ll let it slide. Not much to say about this one other than it’s a wild ride from start to finish, but simultaneously easy to watch and probably the most lighthearted zombie film out there. Almost like The Hangover or something along those lines, but with the addition of the undead. It’s a hard film not to enjoy and I’m just really hoping they don’t fuck up the sequel.

DISCLAIMER: 90% of these stills are from Filmgrab, it’s an amazing website!

[spirit-shroud]

Fanfix ask: I N K Q V Z

hewwo! ♥ from this ask

I: How many fandoms have you written in?  Do you have a favorite? technically, i’ve written fanfic for d gay man, h*mestuck, toontown, w*zard101, world of wardumb, undered tale, deltaed runes, hyperlifter, bard game, moonlighter, oneshot, dust: AET, Portal, no.6, and more recently, pokemon. i only have ut/os/swsh up on my ao3 tho because most other stuff is Very Old or just generally incomplete/not the general vibe of the fandom lol

undert*le was fun to write for just because of how rapidly my hits/kudos/comments went up but tbh i really only wrote for it because of the attention my fics got even tho they werent like.... remotely good. half of that is  looking back on my past work and cringing just bc it’s my past work but like. idk. im really hoping that writing swsh stuff will be a similar high but it’s something i feel a lot better taking my time and putting actual effort into my writing for 

N: Any fic ideas brewing that you’d care to share? oh always, heres some upcoming chapters of legendsfor the ones im actively working on/have been adding to lately: Tangled in Glimwood - the usual two end up dangerously lost in the glimwood tangle and have to set up camp for the night, armed with like, half a steel move and a trusty cast iron frying pan between them to make sure they’re safe from all the rude ass fairies. includes fun friendly banter such as ‘hop i swear to god you CANNOT eat the glowing mushrooms they are DEFINITELY SUPER POISONOUS’ and ‘this is why nobody in your family has any taste buds left’ and ‘do you think phantumps remember being alive? do they have any of their memories? if we both became phantumps, do you think we’d recognize each other and keep being friends? is that weird to think about?”  Hopscotch - hop has always been there for reader, so when his spirit gets crushed by bede, you step in and offer emotional support and it’s mushy as all hell. this fic entirely is being written bc i’m pissed there’s no option to hug hop during the game. i cant summarize it either its just ‘hop feels bad so you do something about it like a good friend instead of a Silent Protagonist Bastard Fool’ 

Striped Pajamas - a semi-sequel-but-not-really? a sequel if you squint? to sea vents where marnie, hop, and reader hang out again and have a sleep over and like. play video games together and it’s NICE they have FUN and my girl SMILES FOR REAL BC ITS WHAT SHE DESERVES 

Homecoming - reader + leon have been together for awhile and he’s bringing them home to meet his mom+little bro. it’s mostly uneventful and even awkward, as i’d imagine that kind of thing would be, so reader spends most of their time hanging out w this neglected nine year old child who really wants to show them his craftmine builds and amaze his future sibling-in-law with his intensive knowledge of Weird Science Facts

Pink and Blue - y’kno who’s nice? piers. optimal bro material. a lot of exhausted gay energy in this dude. this one is like. post-championship cup reader + hop just adopt this poor washed up man since they’re sad kids seeking guidance and he’s a sadder adult with too much time on his hands now that he isn’t a gym leader. sort of like, a ‘mentor who’s life is falling apart needs a new son’ sort of trope bc that’s pretty optimal. 

this got kinda lengthy but i do have more bc i have WIP Disease ™

K:  Do you have a guilty pleasures in fic (reading or writing)? idk how to actually define ‘guilty pleasure’ tbh. like. i like what i like and that’s all there is to it. x reader fanfic is a circus and i’m the ringmaster, bitch

Q: Do you like getting prompts from your readers? yes!! always!! i need to update my writing request page on my blog n maybe people will like. send me some dkfjhsgkjdhfg

V: Are there certain comments you’ve received on your stories that have stuck with you? its not a specific comment but ive been thinkin like. daily abt that guy who lovingly commented on 15/17 of my und*rtale fic collection despite it being very clearly abandoned for years. like. i still need to come up w a new chapter to thank em but i just dont have any un*ertale juice in my system rn 

Z: Is there a story you’ve written that doesn’t seem to get much love? not really tbh, like, i think out of the 5 fics i have on ao3 rn (fragmented, speechless, bad dialogue, my burden is light, day to day legends) they all have the expected amount of hits/kudos per their audiences. id really like some comments on ch1 of d2dl before i got ch2 posted but it doesn’t really bother me too much that there isnt any yet. its 1 chapter and it’s been only a week lol 

i also wish mbil had more comments but also the one hot fandom isn’t very large, the x reader one hot community is even smaller, and i havent updated that in like. a year dkfgjdhfg

[sp4c3-0ddity]

took a while but i finally got to that thing that @cgf-kat tagged me in!! <3

What is your total posted word count on AO3? (Go to your Works, then click Statistics.)

I have...741,803 words posted on ao3 (although i don’t think this includes drafts?? if not then add maybe 10,000 to 15,000 or so words?? and maybe another 10,000 for fics that are confined to tumblr for the time being??)

How often do you write?

i try my best to write daily, mostly in the evenings, and lately i’ve been successful. sometimes (either if i’m in a low motivation slump) i’ll write more sporadically

Do you have a routine for writing?

HMM i usually have to get to a point in my day where i feel like i won’t be interrupted frequently...which is why i usually delay my writing till after evening prayer or after the rest of my family goes to bed, because then it’s quiet and peaceful and i’m not going to have my parents asking me to do something at random. otherwise i don’t think i have a proper routine?? tbh i rarely even go back and read the last thing i wrote, except sometimes when i last stopped in the middle of a scene

What’s your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?

Tropes:  mutual pining, action/adventure (is that a trope or a genre??), friends to lovers, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort (with more comfort than hurt), slow burn (which tbh i can’t really write except as pseudo-slow burn where there are scattered scenes over a wide span of time), nonlinear plot/narrative (which is now funny to me because i recently learned my mother hates flashbacks in stories lol guess this means she’ll never read anything original i write ;_;)

Pairing:  plance, undoubtedly which is probably why i forgot to answer this and had to go back and edit the post after publishing it lol

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

oh gosh i’m actually torn between a few different fics?? so i’m going to categorize them:

Tidal Lockdown wins for most recent favorite and even if i could’ve done better with prose i’m really happy with the pacing and plot (and it was born of my desperate need to write action at the time married to the Concept of Lance affectionately calling Pidge a nerd while ignorant of her past with bullying). and of course i need to thank @rueitae for inspiring the plot lol

Growth is one i can go back to and still be interested in rereading (is that weird to say about my own fic??) and it’s also an oddly good pick-me-up if i get sad about the prospect of non-canon plance which is silly but here we are

Falling’s Not the Problem is like...it has a lot of cliches but it was probably my first Serious Attempt at post-canon plance and i’m still proud of it, despite its faults

Your fic with the most kudos?

Strangeness and Charm, which i’m not sure counts since it’s a collection of many short fics, so let’s go with A Slip of the Thumb

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

HMM i think i do poorly with prose and the internal thought processes of the characters, but i also think i’m improving?? also...i’m awful at sustaining my interest in my own stories. often if i don’t finish something in a few days i’ll drop it, either because i got captivated by a Shiny New Idea or because i got bored with the “old” one

sometimes i also read my writing and cringe at how often i use certain turns of phrase, and how simplistic my vocabulary can be

Now something you do like?

i think i’m good at writing dialogue!! which is funny because i’m awful at talking irl can my ability to write decent dialogue please translate to a glib tongue and good conversation skills please?? every time i’ve been eloquent irl was an accident, i swear

also i’m very conscious of pacing a plot and certain reveals?? i adore slow reveals and hate narration/exposition/excessive description so i try my best to balance that sort of thing and prefer to spoon-feed things, plants seeds of foreshadowing, stuff like that...at least in theory

***

okay this took me longer than it should’ve but...now i tag @alwaysinsonder, @vivalachocolate, @amillionsmiles, @nadiarizavi, @mistyhollowpro, honestly @ any writers that see this and get interested (tag me back <33)

[unwillingadventurer]

Thoughts on Christmas special. Some negativity (obvs) under the cut so if you don’t wanna hear it, don’t read it. Some positives hidden in there too lol

Ok so we decided to watch the Christmas special after wondering whether we should but we got curious about Jodie and our Dad wanted to watch it so we agreed to give it a shot. 

As as episode it wasn’t that bad, like it didn’t send us to sleep like last year’s but we also didn’t get much out of it. We couldn’t even remember why Twelve was regenerating despite seeing the last episode so that didn’t help us. The setting was a nice one, all snowy and at the South Pole and at the end of their lives. The death theme was a good idea but has been done ‘to death’ by Moffat so many times so we literally have no idea whether Clara, Bill etc are dead, alive or what they are by this point. We’ll probably get called stupid for not knowing the plots but it’s not our fault these episodes rarely hold our attention and we spend so much time cringing at dialogue that we miss stuff. 

Anyway the idea of the two Doctor’s was nice and we love the transition from black and white to colour, like it was beautiful and the whole ‘709 eps earlier’ was cute. We got a kick out of all the black and white bits. But if only it had stayed like that. Ben and Polly weren’t really needed but at least they weren’t being mocked. David Bradley looked good as Hartnell, he has good mannerisms and he does his best but he just doesn’t feel like him. We found his very slow speech pattern slightly irritating and none of the script allowed him in any real humour that we’re used to. He’s at the end of his life but he’s also been through so much, he could make a joke here and there (he had time to be sexist). There was none of his grandfatherly charm, chuckle, hmms, protectiveness, nothing. We could have forgiven it though had the sexist stuff not been there. Also we did chuckle when he was being rude to Twelve i.e sunglasses, screwdriver lines, going on about saving the day because it was true. See why couldn’t this have been it? We could have enjoyed it then? Though we do find the constant need for meta to take us out of the story but what’s new? There was even a line about jokes being cut! If only Moffat could have cut the sexist ones! Anyway we’ll come back to the sexism later.

We loved the Christmas truce bit (we’re actually writing a fic set at the event so not sure whether bother now but anyway...) but so not surprised that Gatiss made an appearance again *snore*. The trenches bit was beautiful and the singing and the football and we’d personally love a whole episode devoted to that instead of constant episodes that switch settings throughout. Anyway that bit was nice and the Twelve and One emotional moments were not bad. 

For some reason we used to love Bill but found her annoying here. Maybe it’s because we want her to be a real person not whatever the hell she was in this. And for an episode moaning about 60′s sexism, where were the real women in this episode? Cameos from Clara and Nardole were ok but we’re not fans of them so we didn’t really care. 

Twelve’s regeneration speech went on for so long our mum looked at us and said ‘Just die already’ and it just felt so scripted. As usual, Peter’s performance is amazing but it was just too long for us and because we’ve had so many issues with the era, we didn’t feel as sad as we should’ve. Though in general, regeneration's excite us more than anything because we get excited about new Doctor’s. And Jodie looks cool from that brief scene, looking forward to that. Wonder what’s happening there, can’t wait for an entirely new fresh start.

Ok back to the First Doctor which was by far the worst part of the special, let’s face it the rest was a decent enough episode to enjoy. But we couldn’t enjoy it because we were distracted by the insanely out of character One who sounded like a drunk relative insulting everyone at Christmas. Now we read the spoiler lines to prepare ourselves and thank god we did because if we’d heard it without knowing we’d have choked on our twiglets. One line we may have shrugged off but nearly everything he said was sexist and frankly just embarrassing, He said more sexist lines in this one episode than he did in his entire run and he never said anything that bad ever. The worst thing is that Moffat didn’t even do any social commentary anyway. Everyone defending it kept saying ‘don’t bury your head in the sand, we need to comment on it’ like firstly, the One era was never that sexist and secondly, it wasn’t to discuss anything sensitively at all, it was to place crappy chauvinistic lines in One’s mouth for lolz and have 12 look good in comparison as he shouts ‘you can’t say that’ like One is a writer for the Daily Mail. It wasn’t even seen as bad just sort of ‘haha look how old and sexist I used to be’. 

And being shocked at Bill being gay is just...ugh. He’s a time travelling alien who respects all life, just piss off, he loved Oliver Harper. And women made of glass? What the hell? He admired all his female companions and who’d describe Barbara, Vicki or Sara Kingdom as fragile? Hated that bit where he and the Captain were laughing, it was so disgusting, One would never do that. And why would he think men can’t be nurses? He had no problem with female astronauts! The whole thing was cringy as hell, we had to keep apologising to our parents. Also the ‘smacked bottom’ line, ugh everyone keeps saying ‘well he said that’ yes to his GRANDDAUGHTER! not to a grown woman stranger. He was treating Susan as a child which is the whole point of her bloody arc and it plays into the ending where he is forced to realise she has grown up without him really paying attention. People say embarrassing comments like that to their grandchildren. They don’t say it to twenty-something year old women, unless they wanna be slapped.

As for the sending the ladies back to the TARDIS. Where does everyone get this idea One did that? Half the time, they all went into the action and he stayed back? In the Reign of Terror, Barbara goes undercover which he allows whilst he waits! He laughs when Vicki runs off to investigate, he never sends any of them back because he believes they’re fragile, and to be honest we’ve seen that happen in other eras more including new who. Remember Eleven sending Clara back without telling her, or Nine with Rose? Also, ironic since Twelve sends Bill back to the TARDIS in the same episode. And One not being able to hug Bill, really, that adorable man who hugs every woman he travels with? Why are they making One out to be so cold, anti-social and pervy? This is The Tenth Planet not An Unearthly Child! The whole special made it seem as though Twelve was everything wonderful and One was useless and didn’t even have heroic moments. But that was the whole point of One’s arc, that he grew and changed and respected everyone.

So all in all, not happy that we’ve already seen people slagging off One, slagging off Hartnell and using this now as an excuse to bash the One era because they can come up with two lines from 130 eps they think are sexist (or racist which has nothing to do with this anyway). And some of our friends have got hate for expressing an opinion which is not on. The First era was progressive in lots of ways which of course was not celebrated because its easier to pretend that it was so horrible back then and that in comparison we’re better than that but really not much tbh and we find this current era much more troubling than any episode in the 60′s. 

We hope new fans aren’t put off him because who the hell would want to watch a sexist, homophobic old goat? If you want the real First Doctor, watch any of his episodes and you will learn he is absolutely nothing like portrayed. He is an explorer, a grumpy but lovable rogue, a fighter, a granddad, a friend, standing up for injustice, a citizen of the universe and gentleman to boot. Now who do you believe? two of One’s biggest fans, or the writer who hates One era and has said so many times. The man who felt that Barbara and Ian stole screen time away from the Doctor. Yes that’s right, the female companion had more than the Doctor but he didn’t like that! Sexist huh? Verity Lambert would be so appalled. And all for what? A few jokes that weren’t funny? Sexism on Christmas Day, such fun! Did we really need that because the next Doctor happens to be a woman? Did Twelve only just realise that women are ok? sighs. No thanks, roll on next year! We hope we can love Who again.

[miraimisu]

Ask a Writer!

Tagged by the lovely @i-masshiro​, thanks babe! Love you tons, such a sweetheart D’: 

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

It doesn’t mean anything in particular! An old best friend of mine helped me pick it up when I was struggling with new decent nicknames. This is the one I use for all my accounts now.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/favorites, follows/subscriptions, visitor hits, kudos)

These Stones We Skip, definitely. It’s got like 90 comments (half of them me responding to those, so it’s narrowed down to 45 haha) +2k hits, 100 kudos more or less, and a bunch of bookmarks! I’m super happy with how the fic is being read and that people like it this much! Also if anyone waiting for an update is reading pls forgive me I’ve been busy I promise I will update pls don’t sue ;;.

3. What is your FFnNet/AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

Actually, I think all my icons are Uraraka icons, excepting the one I got for FF.net which is actually Asuna from SAO. Last time I updated the page I was heavily into SAO so... pretty self-explanatory. My love for Uraraka needs no explanations either.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

I do! And most of them are an incredibly fun bunch of them. Long, usual commenters are my shit, not gonna lie. Although I have lost some of them as my updates have become slower, but I hope they come to read someday.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Not really, unless it’s for some kind of reference. There was this line I hit where my style got smoother and a bit more polished, but from there below it’s kind of rubbish and I can’t read anything. All good things I write I can’t usually read because of self-awareness.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

None and none lmao, I always drop kudos but I don’t think I have ever bookmarked anything, nor subscribed to because I don’t really have much time to check out stuff-- and when I do, I totally binge read it.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Fantasy AU because it’s consumed my life now.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

I got 10 subscriptions on AO3 and 60 bookmarks!

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

I would like to someday find the strength to write something venty someday, as I recently found out I somehow write much better and feel more satisfied when I vent my anger on writing. Something that doesn’t happen really often, but it happens and it’s great therapy!

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Tons of things, most particular. I would like to become less paranoid over people not seeing my scenarios, thus making my style less complex to the untrained eye. Also, fighting scenes make me cringe because I suck so hard at making them depsite having clear pictures in my head /cries. 

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

I am now very focused on Kacchako and iirc ir used to be a rarepair? but I think it will break out of that zone soon.

12. How many stories have you posted on FFNet/AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

3 on AO3, and 31 on FF.net. 

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

Tons of them that sounded great in my head. It’s that small snapping process of realizing a powerful story is too weak to be posten, and kinda let it rest.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I keep them in my head and plan to write them. Only the fantasy AU for kacchako has made it out of my head, lol.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Yes, and it was a wonderful experience.

16. How did you discover FFNet/AO3?

Weirdly enough, from DeviantArt! I would usually go there searching for art pieces and found some deep small fics, whose authors would usually have a FF.net account. I only knew of AO3 last year, but I think I read one a bit before that. Not exactly sure when.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on FFNet/AO3?

Not at all, there is too many talented people in this damn kaccha house  (⁎˃ᆺ˂) they are all so good jdskak

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

People usually call me Mira, but use others for Discord. 

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

Lots of them! Every author that lies in my recs gallery has inspired me in one way or another. Though that place is kinda outdated so I may have to add some more, but all my friends have inspired me overall. They are all wonderful writers and artists and it’s amazing to be so surrounded.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

Don’t feel pushed to write queality straightaway, and always read other stuff to build new vocab and structures. Everytime you read, you will most likely learn something new as every author’s view gives you a new perspective on things. I have found it to be a great practice!

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Plot, always. Everytime I am listening to music and come up with a new snippit, I jot it down anywhere I can. Google’s Keep is a pretty nifty tool for this!

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

Well, I only got maybe two! One of them was pretty lukewarm and more of an advice that I followed, and it was a good one despite the harshness of it. On the other hand, I got one comment that told me they were giving up on my story because it was too thick style and lore wise, but I didn’t mind at all tbh-- I already knew I was facing these kinds of risks when I started writing long things like these.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Fighting scenes in general kind of take a lot of time for me to work with, and same with some simply dialogue bits that I am like: and what now!? D:

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

My fantasy AU! pls if sb is reading Im sorry I will update soon don’t press charges thank

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I usually jot the deets down and push it aside until I am done with my main thing. It’s probably my best habit when it comes to planning, lol.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

Not really. I usually try to plan when I wanna update, divide my chap’s aproximate word count and split it in days!

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Oof, definitely. Mostly because my English has improved along with my writing and that helps. A lot.

28. What is your favorite story(s) that you’ve written?

I did write one in Spanish that got lots of good feedback and invested readers, and I had a blast writing its lore and characters.

29. What is your least favorite story(s) that you’ve written?

I wrote a pretty dark fic once and it’s a fic I know I wrote well? but I am kinda ashamed of looking back at it.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Maybe working on something that is a little bit more professional, or just enjoying myself. Got no clue tbh.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

I think I can be pretty ominous in some parts and be very subtle with foreshadowing. The art of subtlety is something I worship everyday.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Trying to live up to those little scenes I had in my head, and writing them as good as possible. And description in general, sometimes. And word count consistency is something that worries me sometimes. Oh, and the endless fear of poking a plothole bigger than a damn blackhole.

33. Why do you write?

To make people entertained and happy if they want something to read!

I nominate the great artists and gals @animeniac​, @kacchanswife​, @hondaroo​, @kacchas​ and @liltoothbrush​! If you don’t reply I’ll press charges so hahaha!